I came across this youtube video from Coca~Cola (launched today 7th September 2010) that is truely REMARKABLE, and one that clearly everyone involved in will talk about, think about for a very long time to come. In fact I don’t think they’ll approach a Coke machine ever again without thinking about it or wondering ‘I wonder if…’

This is such an effective offline engagement – a sequel to the youtube viral sensation posted back on the 12th January 2010 that currently has 2,644,680 views – that transfers WoM (word of mouth) in WoW (word of web) and shows you don’t have to spend millions to reach millions…

Good Ideas Don’t Just Happen

A good idea takes time to develop so you need to bounce ideas around and let them develop into an concept that people will understand – relate to… and if they do they’ll want to share it with everyone.

If you’re wondering where to start then the web makes it easier for us to get the creative juices flowing look at other videos and see what makes them effective. Read comments left by people to understand what spurred them to leave a comment! Keep in mind that you’re looking for that ‘one thing’ that provokes a reaction in them.

And finally…

Quite often, the best ideas are the most simple ones. The online space is in expensive in real terms – i.e. it doesn’t cost you anything (other than your time) to post a tweet, upload a video to youtube etc – so use this to your advantage.

So what video’s have you seen that made you take action? Post the links in the comments below…

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The Idea

Imagine if you could create a political party made up from people you believed would not only be right for the job but also have their finger on the pulse of their online community.

Then imagine that the people around you (family, friends, personal/business network Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter or other social media platform etc) thought the same as you…

Well now you can (at least for fun that is) and help fantastic causes at the same time. (see ‘All for a Good Cause’ below)

We want you to put together a list of people that you believe could run the UK. You can put forward ANY individual you feel would be ideal e.g. Richard Branson as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, First Secretary and Lord President of the Council, Kirstie Allsopp as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families or Paul Weston as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The candidates within your Cabinet don’t need to be ‘famous’ but will need to be found online so the people can research them and then decide if they agree with you. We also encourage you to put links to other sites that have posts from them or people writing about them that will support your reason(s) for putting them forward. And don’t forget to let the individuals know as well

All for a Good Cause

As well as being a bit of fun, our aim is to create awareness and raise funds for the East Anglia’s Children Hospice who has launched its first major capital appeal – The Treehouse Appeal – to raise £3 million to build and equip a new purpose-built children’s hospice in Ipswich for life-threatened children and their families in Suffolk & North Essex. EACH relies on the generosity of the public for 100% of the funds needed to make this project a reality.

However, as well as putting forward your Cabinet, we also want you to have a nominated charity, that you feel passionate about and one that your Cabinet will be promoting. The top 5 supported Cabinets by the 5^th May will be the ones that go forward to the ‘Search for a Cabinet -Social Media‘ election on the 6^th May.

How will the funds be raised?

On voting day, 6^th May, people will vote using PayPal. Each vote will cost £1. 100% of the proceeds raised will be split evenly across all 6 charities (5 Cabinet nominated charities and the EACH Treehouse Appeal ). So every vote will count!

The Cabinet Positions

There are actually 32 positions within the cabinet – although not all of them attend every cabinet meeting. So from these 32 we need your input on whether to reduce the list to a smaller number to represent the ones you feel are most important?

Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service
Leader of the House of Commons and Lord Privy Seal
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, First Secretary and Lord President of the Council
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Secretary of State for International Development
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
Secretary of State for Health
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Leader of the House of Lords and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Minister for the Cabinet Office, and for the Olympics and Paymaster General
Secretary of State for Scotland
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Secretary of State for Wales
Secretary of State for Defence
Secretary of State for Transport
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform
Minister of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Minister of State for Housing
Minister of State for Science and Innovation
Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and Chief Whip
Attorney General
Minister of State for Regional Economic Development and Co-ordination; Local Government
Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families
Minister of State for Transport

Using your Social Media Networks

Promoting your Cabinet, and nominated charity, will be left to you i.e. encouraging the people you know in your networks to take part and spread the word to their networks etc. Each time someone posts support in favour of your Cabinet it will receive 1 point and the 5 Cabinets with the most points will be put forward as the ‘Search for a Cabinet – Social Media Party’ nominees.

Note: Posting support of a particular Cabinet is Free, voting on the 6^th May will cost £1 - so it’s important to remind the people in your network(s) to cast their vote – make everyone count…!

Cabinet Submission Deadline

Deadline for submission of your Cabinet is the 23rd April at 12am and all Cabinets submitted will have their own page hosted on socialmedia.uk.net where people can post their support of your proposed Cabinet. The top 5 Cabinets with the most support will be put forward to the public vote on 6th May (in line with the UK General Election)

Then you have up until the 5th May to rally support of your Cabinet by using any means possible (e.g. Twitter, Facbook, Linkedin tc…)

All this activity will take place on http://www.socialmedia.uk.net and will be up and running on Monday 12^th April.

Let’s make every vote count…

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Yesterday evening I was told at the end of presenting a proposal that we’d won the project for a European product launch. There had been a few late nights ‘Sat by the Mac’ pulling ‘stuff’ together – oh, and that is me on the left – so it was great feeling to get the immediate go ahead…

The journey there

But I nearly didn’t get to the meeting – as my car broke down on the M4 only 10 mins away from getting there! I’m sure you can imagine the colourful language that was exiting my mouth in between inhalations…(!)

Fortunately, the chaps said that they would stay on – ‘phew’

Having to stand on the verge in the rain was not much fun however. But I had a good feeling that everything would be ok – very calming feeling…

Hitching a lift

Then I eyed the recovery vehicle pulling in (they only took an hour to get to me thank you HSBC Recovery ) and I thought to myself “I hope I can convince the driver to load the car on the back and drive me the last 10 mins so that I could get to the meeting…”

And fortunately – again – for me he said yes :0)

Fantastc…!

The meeting

Got to the meeting an hour late – met the chaps and went through the proposal – with findings – and then presented the visuals at the end…

Then, when I saw their faces, I didn’t care what had happened to my car, nor the fact that I was stuck without transport back to Bath or that I hadn’t eaten all day… The feedback and instant notification that we’d won the pitch was nothing short of a ‘perfect moment’

So what was so different about winning this project?

Well, we’d only been asked to take part in the pitch last Friday PM – and although they new it was short notice (Monday PM deadline) they asked if we’d be up for the challenge?

Over to you Churchill …. “Oh yessssss”

So I took the brief over the phone while Polly drove us back down the M6 after our holiday in Cumbria. They emailed the files Friday evening and I started producing on-page/off-page SEO reports for benchmarking. Set up my Radian6 dashboard to monitor the online conversations from the last 30 days and established where they were taking place – then tweaked it over the weekend. I called 6Consulting (UK arm of Radian6) and spoke to Paul to asked for advice on getting the best info we could over a short period of time and he asked Tom & Rhiannon to help out and review the R6 dashboard I’d setup (Dad always told me to measure twice and cut once ) – which saved me so much time (thanks for all your help) so I could carry on writing the proposal and then incorporate benchmarks for SEO and the social media findings.

Yesterday morning we received the remaining files, so I briefed Louise and Simon – two of our designers at m4 – at 10 am; who then worked their magic to make sure that I had concepts to take with me by 3pm (which the client wasn’t expecting to see because of the short notice)

…And finally

What made this win particularly special for me was seeing the look on our new clients faces. Then knowing that I would have the pleasure of letting Louise, Simon, Paul, Tom & Rhiannon know that together we’d won the pitch!

What I truly believe is that there are actually no limits to what can be achieved with the right ‘team’ – internal and/or external – all pulling in the same direction…

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I love my job because I get to find out what people are talking about online, communicate, engage using social media everyday. But what has always been ‘challenging’ was monitoring and measuring. That was until I started using Radian6.

So what is Radian6?

Well, there is a sentence on the Radian6 website that sums it up very nicely:

Radian6 gives you a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web

And it does exactly what it says on the tin!

As I said, one of my main challenges was setting up a dashboard that would monitor and provide me with exactly the information I needed. But since I started using it I now log into my dashboard everyday without any concerns that I might have missed something. I’ve tried several other monitoring tools – some paid, some free and in my honest opinion Radian6 wipes the floor with them…

Radian6 is intuitive, well designed and easy to create up to 8 ‘unique’ dashboards for what you want to specifically monitor – your’re really not bound by any constraints, unlike some other monitoring tools. And rather being supplied with 1000′s of posts that just contain certain keywords and phrases – e.g. sales type posts etc – you can filter out all that noise and monitor/engage with conversations that you need to be aware of that have been posted on:

• blogs
• images
• videos
• forums
• micro-media
• comments
• forum replies
• facebook
• mainstream news

Radian6 Features

Dashboard

People say a picture paints a thousand words so here’s one I made earlier

The above is how I like to set up my dashboard. These are the dashboard widgits and there are 44 different widigts to choose, from 6 different categories, and these are all worth mentioning:

1. Basic Widgits

   River of News
   Topic Conversation Cloud
   Topic Analysis by Media Type
   Topic Trends
   Influencers

2. Social Media Metrics and Analysis

   Trend Topic by Media Type
   Topic by Language
   Topic by Region
   Top Viewed Videos and Images
   Topic Sentiment Trends
   Metrics: Volume Comparison
   Metrics: Total Comment Comparison
   Metrics: Video Views Comparison
   Metrics: Total Vote Count Comparison
   Metrics: Follower Reach Comparison
   Metrics: Total Inbound Links Comparison
   Metrics: Total Unique Sources Comparison

3. Twitter Analysis

   Top Tweeters
   Tweet Volume Trend
   Tweet Volume by Region
   Tweet Volume by Language
   Share of Twitter Follower Reach
   Twitter Share of Unique Voices

4. Brand Analysis

   My Brand River of News
   Brand Cloud
   Brand Mention Count by Media Type
   Unique Source Count by Media Type
   Brand Trends by Sentiment
   Positive Sentiment Brand Cloud
   Negative Sentiment Brand Cloud

5. Competitive & Industry Intelligence & Analysis

   My Competitors River of News
   Competitor Cloud
   Competitive Trends
   Share of Voice
   My Industry River of News
   Industry Cloud
   Share of Conversation
   Industry Trends
   Share of Conversation by Comments
   Share of Unique Voices

6. Workflow & Engagement

   My Tasks
   Assignment Breakdown
   Engagement Status Breakdown
   Content Classifications

With this amount of possibilities you’d be hard pushed not to be able to listen/monitor and engage and it’s difficult to point out what I like best… But other than what you’d expect me to say: metrics etc etc etc, I think the Workflow & Engagement Widgits are fantastic. The ability to assign conversations to specific team members and then review the audit trail is an amazing tool that will not only enable organisations to train team members on different scenarios using real information but it will ensure that social media policies and procedures are being followed – proactively.

Sneak Peak of Radian6 Engagement Console

And the exciting news is that Radian6 are very soon going to release an Engagement Console that is a complete real-time social web client, will help you coordinate team social media engagement across the business, shows topic profiles right alongside personal or business Twitter and Facebook streams, lets you set one-click workflow for frequently used post routing, assignment, and classification and feeds all this data back to your Radian6 dashboard for reporting and analysis. Amazing…!

…And finally

Having a fantastic product is one thing… but what convinced me to ‘sign up’ to Radian6 was their customer service. And I want to thank Tom List, Rhiannon Cassin, Paul Taylor (6Consulting website – 6consulting on twitter) and Mike Huggard (Radian6) for making it the easiest decision I’ve ever had to make.

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If you haven’t noticed yet, the talk of the town is how to integrate social media into everyday business. Whether from a small business or a global organisation perspective, everyone’s trying to find the ‘best way’ to incorporate social media in some way to solve their ongoing business challenges.

But eventually organisations – big and small – need to evolve and discover the best ways to integrate these communication tools into their management and business practices.

A tale of two strategic approaches

Over the last few of years, I’ve seen a variety of ‘right’ approaches. First came Forrester with the POST methodology:

• People
• Objectives
• Strategy
• Technology

This approach was a good start as it spoke a language that Marketers understood – campaign strategy. But the problem with campaigns are that it’s traditionally how agencies and marketing departments organise themselves. “when are we rolling this out”, “how long will it run for” etc etc etc

This is also how many organisations, that ‘outsource’ their creative and marketing functions, start “dipping their toe in the water”, using several one off ‘social media campaigns’. The problem with a ‘campaign’ approach is that it’s one sided and social media is about communicating differently, building relationships and engaging with people. Afterall, you can’t expect relationships to deepen after a series of ‘unique campaigns’.

Like Rome, relationships aren’t built in a day! Imagine telling a friend that you can only be a friend to them for 12 weeks! It doesn’t need a Degree to guess what their response would be…

On the flip side to Forrester is the Dachis Group, who published their ‘Social Business Design’ methodology stating:

The only way to compete in the future is re-organize the entire enterprise from the ground up with a framework to be a social business by design.

Now this is fantastic and I believe they’re right… But, and it’s a big BUT, I don’t know many organisations that will ‘set a side’ the way they’ve always done things to “try” a new way to grow a company. If you do I’d love to meet them(!) Let’s face it, even if the management teams agree, the shareholders will probably have something to say about it…

Happy medium – for now

So this leaves us somewhere in the middle. We can’t loose sight of the fact that we need strategy, guidelines and procedures to outline how things will get done, establish goals and metics etc (otherwise how will we know if we’re heading in the right direction…?) But, from an online communication (operational) perspective we need to ‘drop’ the word campaign from our vocab entirely! And although there are people within an organisation that “get” social media and understand how it can benefit their company, there are other people that still need to be convinced that this new “socialite medium” craze will last before they invest any of their time into it. So addressing culture change/transition will be a big factor to have answers for. (Baby steps come to mind)

… And finally

Each business is different, that’s what’s so exciting about social media – it’s not a one size fits all thing. At last the ‘generic repsonse’ can be put in the ‘Smithsonian’. The personality of the company needs to out-shine the usual corporate chatter, and this is something that cannot be copied; it’s as unique for each organisation as our own personalities are to you and me.

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In business, how you communicate online (through social networks) will determine how successful you are. Businesses need to think of communicating online more as a private party: if you have an invite, then you’re in, but if you’re trying to gatecrash then everyone will turn into ‘Buba’ the bad ass doorman…! – and they’re all qualified to issue you a SMASBO (Social Media Anti-Social Behaviour Order) on the spot!

I don’t think that you’ll be surprised that these offline rules also apply online, but more so as you’ve an obligation to disclose you’re intentions and be fully transparent – that way you’ll begin to make allies within the communities that you would like to be part of.

Interruption… more like disruption marketing(!)

And this is where I have ‘issues’ with how some organisations use traditional forms of communications, for the most part, they try to distract me from where I want to focus my attention: TV ads, magazine ads, bus stop ads etc all want me to stop what I’m doing and give them 15-30 seconds of my time. And in some cases online, through rich media, although they’re more ‘interactive’ you’re still limited to a context that is largely interrupt driven.

If someone’s browsing at work the chances are that they are searching for some specific work related content. At home, when they go online, the individual is looking to relax, learn, engage with friends or to be entertained. Their/our time is precious… and this kind of approach needs to be re-considered…

Be interested and be interesting

How you conduct yourself in a social context is key to you being accepted. The main point to remember is to work with the people that are already a part of the community and then become part of it. Establish your value and develop a sense of respect for the people there – it will be reciprocated. Gauge the tone of the community by listening (reading old posts) and then responding (chat). Learn what triggers certain types of conversations and view these as potential future points to reflect on.

Within the social media networks, you have the same responsibility that comes with being invited to party – just remember that you’d like to be invited back again right! If you get it right, you’ll be able to talk with your audience on a level that will not happen anywhere else…

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I asked this question last week at Be2Camp, “Are you afraid of social media?” After a few looks around the room people started to put their hands up – not all, but enough for the question to stick in my mind as something to discuss here.

It’s not the first time I’ve asked this question. Generally when I do – especially on a 1-2-1 basis – people open up and tell me that it scares the S**T out of them… Now you might be saying ‘what is there to be afraid of ?’ Well, to-date most responses have been combinations of fear of the unknown, fear of lack of privacy, fear of retribution and/or negative response and even fear of engagement – what if people engage and what if they don’t…

So I hope that the following will come across as a kind of virtual social media ‘chill pill..’

Social media business use – what people worry about

Although the fears are slightly different, it doesn’t matter whether you want to use Social Media to promote you, an organisation or high profile brand, people have the same inherent fears, and these are:

• Lack of knowledge
• General apathy and ignorance
• Privacy issues – especially as there’s now a grey line between your business and personal accounts – as more and more customers get to know the ‘people’ behind the brand label…
• ROI, the traditional return on investment – but as you’ll know if you’ve read my previous posts, I actually believe the new ROI is return on involvement (Prescribing return on involvement for the new digital economy and ‘You can’t bend the Return on Involvement rules‘)

But those aren’t all of them, and the following are ones that come up time and again:

Afraid of Feedback

As I said, one of the main fears here is feedback… So many organisations are terrified of feedback. But let’s think about that for a minute – you can’t be expected to skate on ice for the first time perfectly can you! But you know in advance, as soon as you’ve made your mind up about going, that you’re going to fall over, but you take steps to limit the amount of pain you will feel through damage limitation. The same applies here. Think about things in advance…

There are of course ‘practices’ that your customers or clients expect – transparency, honesty, integrity – in other words … the real you. If people are seeing you being productive, not hard selling, helpful and having fun then they will engage. However, when there’s a problem, and I mean when not if, then people want to see you take action to put it right, so remember that:

Delight can arise as the result of great experience, or, because you handled an experience that was less than great … In a great way.

Fear of wasting time, money and resources

Is social media worth the time and effort? Simply, yes! I get to speak to many different businesses – large and small, and up to now, I haven’t come across one that couldn’t benefit in someway from using social media to enhance their communications. In fact, the ones that are using social media in the right way are finding that the relationships they had before are reaching far deeper levels and it allows them to act quickly when then need to and be pro-active to keep ahead of the curve. I say this also from my perspective being involved in business development… A blog for next week perhaps? (let me know)

Fear of employing the wrong people

More and more companies are using social media to find prospective employees – and vet them. And they want these people to have not just an understanding of social media but they want them to know what tone they need to communicate in based on a specific platforms. Also, more companies are adding a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn feeds to their own websites and there are now and more company employees with their own blogs than ever before…

And here’s the fear ‘chill pill’

The social media fear is real… but it’s controllable. I mean it’s not like you’re going to be on ‘I’m a Celebrity’ and get asked to eat or be covered in fish guts is it… or fly on plane (yes I’m afraid of flying…!) now that is something that doesn’t appeal at all.

The real fear factor I believe at the heart of all of the above can be expressed simlly as ‘fear of acceptance’. We want to feel apart of something, we want to belong. But communicating through social media is almost the same as when you move house, i.e. When you move into your new home you go down the local pub, chat with the people behind the bar or the local shop – because they know what the ‘tone of the village’ is like. They tell you places to go, places you definately shouldn’t go and let you know that Mrs Samson in Number 73 likes to speak her mind… the same applies with social media. So ask your customers or clients how they like to interact online and start engaging with them there before venturing out – they’ll let you know how you’re getting on

From a professional standpoint, the fear factor can be controlled just by remembering how you naturally behave offline. Yes, you’ll find some people online that should have a SMASBO (Social Media Anti-Social Behaviour Order) but you’re not one of them. So, just be transparent in what you say, be you and become a trusted source for the people you engage with and the people around you.

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I was having a chat with my friend Andrew today, and he brought to my attention a website which I think is a fantatsic idea – and one which has a worldwide community.

The site is Book Crossing, and it’s aim is to make the world one big library…! How?

Register with Book Crossing and then register a book, jot its unique BookCrossing ID (BCID) down in it, along with the website url (you can get some labels for the inside cover directly from site). But if it’s already a BookCrossing book, you can skip this step.)

Read your book and then use the BCID (Book Crossing ID) to make a journal entry on it – what you thought of the book etc…

Release the book out into the wild and wait for it to write home to you.

In a world that is rapidly turning digital everywhere we turn, what a fantastic idea that gives life to old books and unites book lovers through the power of social media. Plus, what a great way to launch a new book to an already existing community…

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Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting – this was meant to be yesterday’s blog – but I didn’t get home until 10.30pm and felt a bit knackered. Promise I’ll catch up by the end of the week What was that saying ‘the road to hell is paved with good intensions’ …!

Since yeaterday. a few people asked how I source images for presentations etc so, I thought I’d quickly run through what I do…

Yesterdays talk started last Thursday. Paul Wilkinson asked me if I could fill in – which I felt very humbled and pleased to do. Normal questions during the call then occurred: audience type, length of talk, any specifc topic. Great, got a picture in my mind…. bugger, 3 days to prepare and I’m away for 2 of them oO

But I do like a challenges

Thursday, 28th January 8:06PM (listening to Kings of Leon)

So, Thursday night I had an hour to put the ‘plan’ together’ 1:05 mins later, as Gordon Ramsey would say …’Done’

Sunday, 31st Jan 7:45AM

Start selecting images. Only one place to go for those in my humble opinion and that is Flickr.com. Fantastic resource, with many, many, many images available under Creative Commons.

After gathering together a list of ‘keywords’: community, eyes, landscape, unique, control, engage, conversations, questions and adverts I was ready to go… (love this bit – I could look at images all day!)

Entered the first key word ‘community’ and checked the results. Now one of the great things about Flickr is you can sort the results by: Relevant, Recent or Interesting – and it’s well worth checking out all three of them. After repeating the same process with all the keywords (like to state the obvious) browsing and the occasional snack…7 hours 15 mins later I had my images that I wanted. 3pm on the dot… done.

Thanks goes to: Slide1: waynemethod slide3: dcdead slide4&5. jup3nep slide7. jeff_engel_2000 slide10. marketingfacts slide11. bigcrustyape slide13. dogfacedboy slide14&16. beija-flor slide 15. flemingcool for such fantastic images.

That was pretty much it… just a little bit of power point, nothing fancy, no fades, no moving images etc – I can do them but didn’t want to detract from the images – what are your thoughts on that?

Monday, 1st February – Be2Camp Day – What you missed?

I have to say that the attention to detail that Paul Wilkinson put in to this event with the energy of Bernie Mitchell was great – it really set the tone. And although Paul couldn’t be there due to #EEPaulFall – he was missed (personally I blame it on one too many shandy’s but my lips are sealed ) Get better soon Paul…

What is Be2Camp?

Check out the Be2Camp website, but here’s an overview from their site:

About Be2camp – Be2camp is for people interested in how the latest web applications and web design techniques (Web 2.0; eg: RSS, blogs, Twitter, Wikis, etc) could help build a better, more sustainable built environment – planning, design, construction, even occupation and management of buildings, infrastructure, landscape, etc.

Be2camp events – Be2camp 2008, the UK’s (possibly the world’s) first ‘unconference’ focused on Web 2.0 and the built environment, was held in London in October 2008. 2009 saw Be2camp North in Liverpool in May, Be2camp Brum in Birmingham in August, and Be2camp@ WorkingBuildings and RIBAforum09 in London in October.

This was the run of the day:

• Tom Inglis (Reorb) (blog)
• Ian Fordham (BCSE) link to Ian’s talk
• Me (M4 Design) – mine’s here
• Bob Thompson (Remit Consulting) Link to Bob’s talk

Construction and property Pecha Kucha – quick-fire presentations

• Jim McHale (Memoori) Link to Jim’s talk (link to be added)
• Dave Glennon (Bovis Lend Lease) Link to Dave’s talk
• Bob Pinkett (Peter Brett & Associates) Link to Bob’s talk
• Nicholas Ayre (HomeFusion) Link to Nicholas’ talk
• Joanne Rourke (Peter Deer & Associates) Link to Joanne’s talk
• William Hawkins (CIC) (link to be added)
• Tim Latham (Prefio) Link to Tim’s talk

Golden Nuggets

Wherever I go I try and collect nuggets: information that can be applied immediately – with immediate benefit; and here are only some of the ones I heard from the other speakers…

“Test it, try it then look at the response”

“The energy that comes through from when you connect with someone with similar interests…”

“If you can’t find an example of how to use social media effectively in your own industry, look outside it”

“It takes something special to reach the inaccessible “

“If you find something useful…pass it on”

“If you bury your head in the sand everytime someone mentions social media – it’s going to be dark for a very long time”

Those are only some – sorry not to provide more – there were wayyyyy too many. Anyway, you should have been there. Talking of which, check out the Be2Camp website to find out when the next one is…

Thanks to everyone I met there – and let’s keep in touch … often

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One of the largest sporting events in the World, Super Bowl, is almost as important to the world of advertising as it to the sports in America. But this year, one thing will be different… A company well known for its Super Bowl advertising isn’t advertising this year. Instead it’s putting advertising $s into social media (SoMe) networking… It’s like companies are waking up to the fact that people using SoMe platforms are here to stay and they want to talk, and they want to be heard

Since organisations first saw the internet as a space to occupy with ‘push messages’, we’ve pretty much got used to seeing ads of all different guises everywhere: pop-ups, banner ads, roll overs, pre-rolls, post-rolls and even a site dedicated to ad space by the pixel (The Million Dollar Homepage)

But SoMe platforms are different as the traditional ‘push message’ is seen as an intrusion – an invasion of personal space – and like Space – it’s like shouting in a vacuum ‘no-one hears you Aadvertising or trying to ‘hard sell’ in the SoMe space has exactly the same effect. So the first rule of Fight Club applies here, “you do not talk about Fight Club Selling!”

Pepsi's Refresh Everything project . Voting starts 1st Feb 2010

Pepsi (Pepsico) is one of the world’s largest traditional advertisers, but this year their $20 million ad spend is being used for its SoMe project ‘refresh everything‘, promoting “sharing ideas to solve world problems”. Their overall aim? To move customer relationships from impressions to connections… refreshingly refreshing You can download the ‘Idea Toolkit‘ then upload it, promote it and let the people vote for it.

The Director of Social Media for Pepsico, Bonin Bough, said:

We’re always going to buy impressions, but if we can’t drive those impressions and have those impressions be the beginning of a relationship that starts a deeper connection with audiences, then we’ve kind of lost where the real power of social media is at.

Personally, I think this is a great way to engage with people, identify ‘their’ causes – while softly promoting the Pepsi brand at the same time. Take a look, and let me know what you think…

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