Let Attendees Be Participants

I wrote a while ago about the issue with Social Media events being that they aren’t Social. I suggested a few reasons why this is – but they really boiled down to two core problems:

  1. Ego
  2. Ego

Ego in the first instance is like speakers like to hear themselves talk, and Ego in the second instance is that we love to say we heard ‘so and so’ speak. (Thank you, Jeff Jarvis, for inspring me to tell the truth, and use the word Ego here.) Unfortunately, these aren’t conducive to effective learning. Continue reading

Polarising People: How Far Is Too Far?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpViu8kY3o

If you can’t see the video above, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

This video above is one of my favourites – by Apple Fellow, AllTop Founder and experienced startup entreprenuer Guy Kawasaki. The presentation is called “The Art of Innovation”, which contains a number of steps that I have adhered to for years now, and found them all to not only be true, but to be foundational truths that have taken me further than I would’ve gone without them.

One of Guy’s points is “Polarise People” – something I’ve talked about before. The idea is you want people to love you or hate you, but never to feel ambivalent about you. Jim Collins talks about this in From Good To Great (affiliate link) when he says that “good is the enemy of great” – meaning in today’s competitive market, having something that is just “good” is your enemy – you have to make it great. Continue reading

A Video After I Voted

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAkRiMiJVaw

If you can’t see the video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

In this video I just share a few branding thoughts and community thoughts over voting. I wrote two very popular posts last month, one called My Vote For Sale: Price Engagement, which was about my disillusionment about the lack of engagement from candidates with their constituencies. It was so popular, that it’s the third result in Google for “vote for sale“.

My second post was about 10 Do and Do Nots for Social Media Campaigning in the Election, which has some great comments and great advice in at the end from all the collaborators around this blog.

This post now wraps up the story really – I voted – but even as I did, there were a few final parts of unengagement that I experiecend. Namely two things:

Continue reading

If Your Blog Is REALLY Your Home, Then:

96 Maison de FéeEveryone know’s Chris Brogan‘s famous analogy of a blog being like your home, where you invite people back to, and your Social Media profiles being like outposts where you meet those people in the first place.

But if your blog is REALLY your home, then the implications are deeper than just bringing them to a place where you can show off your content in order to get your ego stroked.

Chris recently pointed out a few ideas when discussing “Rethink Your Web Presence” – which I’ve taken and extended to what I think are the deeper implications is your blog is your home. Consider that:

1. When people go to a diner party, they ask “who here is like me?” It is a safety thing. When we design our church experiences, we are always aware that when people enter a church room (or networking room, or any room where there are unknowns), they immediately ask “who here is like me?” – it is a safety thing. Faces are a great way to virtually show that people here are like you – to grant Social Authority – which is what Facebook’s social plugins are doing. Continue reading

What is the Real Asset?

The Paper BoyIn talking to some newspapers recently, I’ve started challenging people to think about what their real asset is. As information becomes more and more commoditised, and price is no longer the differentiator that it once was, rethinking what a business’ real asset is is critical to staying alive today, let alone gaining a competitive advantage.

More often than not, the real asset is the thing that you can’t take away. Let’s consider some business types:

For Newspapers

If a newspaper thinks its asset is the delivery of news, then what happens when someone can deliver it that faster, sooner, more individualised and as it breaks? The newspaper can try and become more technologically aware or resist it like Murdoch, or it can understand that its real asset is the ability to gather to news.

Think about it – a local newspaper knows its local community like few others do. If it wanted to pull together and network local businesses, identify and rally around a cause, gather information about a happening, it could do so easily. Continue reading

4 Issues With Comments, And Why Most Blogs Are Anti-Social

Last Friday I posted a video about the gripe I have with bloggers who tag “What do you think?” onto the end of blog posts in order to make them social. What followed was a really great discussion in the comments section that I want to highlight and then add some more ideas to mixing pot.

I have four issues that I’ve drawn from the comments you made, and bolded the main points, as this has turned out to be a longer post than usual.

Why Comments Matter

They matter because that’s when blogging becomes social. When I look at where I’ve come in the last year, I can direct much of it to the comments on this blog, and the follow discussions on Skype and face to face. I always say that connections trump community, that is, a connection with someone who is engaging two-way with you is far more valuable than someone in the community that just blindly ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’ your stuff on Facebook or Twitter (and the offline equivilents of such tokenism.) Continue reading

What ‘Social’ Means For ‘Broadcast’ Businesses

Another photo of Scott GouldOn Friday 4th June, I’m speaking at Creative Brkfst in Plymouth about what ‘Social’ as a media and a mindset means for what are traditionally ‘Broadcast’ businesses.

There are a lot of fears for SMEs regarding Social Media – mainly that it is a fad, that they will fail at it, and that they will waste finance in doing so – but as with most fears, these really stem from a lack of understanding. We fear what we don’t know. What doesn’t help is the incredible amount of talk and buzz word heavy jargon, the supposed heavy reliance of technology to achieve success (thereby creating gatekeepers), the shoddy way in which most agencies provide Social Media services, and the tragic tales of brands who screwed up with Facebook like Nestlé.

What I’ll be doing is going through the Social / Broadcast Matrix and presenting a clear, framed explanation of what broadcast is, how social is an opposite of that, and how the two work together, rather than cancelling each other out. If people can understand what the mindset is, I’m confident they’ll quickly understand the media.

We’ll then look at the three ways in which Broadcast Businesses can move into Social Business.

Creative Brkfst is all about about Good Ideas (love the slogan), and as a primarily creative meetup, what I’m going to be doing with the 40 minutes I have is actually demonstrate all four modes of the Social / Broadcast Matrix by having discussion, keynoting, feedback, etc – so get yourself ready for a really engaging morning.

Best of all, it’s free. Meaning you get a morning of my time for free, as well as coffee and breakfast.

If you want to come, then you can get details here: http://creativebrkfst.eventbrite.com/

“What Do You Think?” – The Social Cop Out

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L55d4BeLbow

If you can’t see the video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

When people tag on “What do you think?” to the end of a blog post, I think it is a cop out for trying to be social. It’s done because, hey, we need to be social. But it really annnoys me  because I feel that my thoughts are just an afterthought to the blog post.

In my opinion, you should either: Continue reading

The 4 New Faces of PR

New PR 2010 Framework, Draft #1

In September last year I drew up the above framework in a series of 3 blog posts looking at the coming extensions in PR that are coming and will come over the next year. You can catch up on the posts if you want to quickly: The New PR, PR, Static Wine, and Dynamic Wineskins, and PR 2010.

To help you quckly get up to seed, the above diagram illustrates a host of media that find themselves in different places with regards to their ‘spreadability’ and their ‘relevance’. Facebook, due to it’s alogorhthyms and such, is individually relevant and highly spreadable because there are fewer restrictions on it than there are TV, which is more mass market and less individually relevant, and has more restrictions. There’s more about it here. Continue reading

Some thoughts on Social Shopping and Click Consumerism

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed5vJeaEuzA

If you can’t see the video, click here. You can see the video on YouTube.

At the moment we’re having a lot of discussions on the Like Minds LinkedIn group, and one of these discussions recently was about Facebook’s new Social Plugins and how people felt this created a new level of trust and social authority.

As you know, I did a video about this last week, in which I use lots of long words and jokes to basically point out this is move means we trust something more if we see our friends have liked it. Continue reading