On the 29th January 2009 Internet World ran a one day conference hosted by the “social media elite”.
For those of us working within the social media sector the hot topic at the moment is how can we effectively measure and monitor the impact of specific social media campaigns? This is currently the sectors Achilles’
heel and I hoped that Vicky Brock the board director from the Web Analytics association would help shed some knowledge on social media best practises etc.
Initially I was a little disappointed that she did not delve into a list of tools that she currently uses to benchmark, monitor and track her own social media campaigns. However Vicky did pull a fluffy white rabbit out of her hat when she informed the floor that the World Bank had released its open source BuzzMonitor code on their CRS site. This was a subject that I knew nothing about. We at Nitro Mobile have since downloaded the code are looking to build upon its infrastructure in the next month or so (I will let London Bloggers know once the tool has been completed for you to have a play with).
Cesar Mascaraque the MD from Ask.com Europe brought some interesting key points to the conference. This includes stating that he sees a future in vertical search and that he is currently looking to purchase vertical search engines in key sectors.
All of the speakers without exception were excellent and many highlighted interesting points as they delved into their own compelling case studies. However many of the discussions were extremely basic and rather then looking at “the future of social media” we were often left reminiscing on what has already been. It also really grinds my gears when a speaker asks the floor to “put your hands up if you are on Twitter…….OK, OK….. put your hands up if you are tweeting now…”. Two separate speakers started their presentations with this statement!
In reflection, the event was informative and I think that everybody who attended came away with a better insight into how they can apply social media marketing more effectively. From a personal perspective a few key points aided my research and made the day well worth attending.
Written by James Norris, Strategist at Nitromobile Ltd
The kind offer to post here (thanks Andy) is very timely for me. Recently, much of my energy has been abducted by a challenging blog-related issue at my new job. One of my new charges – the crowdsourced scientific publishers – Faculty of 1000 – want me and a colleague to tell them what to do about blogging. You’ve heard the story before: they’re pretty sure they should be active residents of the blogosphere, but couldn’t easily say why, much less how.
The team is perfectly placed to shine in the blogosphere, having as they do the keys to some really rich content in a specialised field (Biomedicine). However, speaking to a few of them, it didn’t take many grins, frowns and sucked teeth to discover that amongst them is a scarcity of paid-up believers, an encouraging number of fence-sitters who seem willing to be convinced, and a handful of true doubters.
It seemed quickly obvious that the “How” will never be of interest if not pre-empted by the “Why”. In order to win over a small number of the team to becoming our keen bloggers, we need to justify the effort, and this proof should be founded upon a few digestible benefits, backed-up by real examples. I see these benefits being:
- Getting into dialogue with an influential audience
- Exposing and immortalising your current thinking, rather than letting it be lost
- Feeling the personal rewards of the very exercise of writing
- Presenting the otherwise unknown human face of the organisation
The How – the sustainable process – will only work if we can evangelise each potential new writer to the mindset and culture of blogging. I want to find, a few weeks down the line, people writing posts and commenting on external blogs without prompting; enjoying doing so. We’ve invested in some complex, enterprise-level platform with which to manage our blogs and I pray it will be easy to use, otherwise it will be a huge task to empower our writers to get going. Once they start I’m sure some support will be needed at first but I hope to let go and watch them run with it.
With the likelihood of starting with a negligible audience, there could be a feeling of “what’s the point?”. With the sensitivity that comes with corporate publishing, especially when it’s this specialised, editorial inertia could grind us down. Lastly, few time-poor executives find it easy to generate interesting commentary regularly or, worse, may feel compelled to post “safe”, self-promotional company news which no-one wants to read.
The plan is to invite anyone interested to a workshop, which my cohort and I will host once he joins me from his previous post, being, thankfully, a blogger and scientist in Oz. By sticking to good reasoning, presenting examples, and if the tools are usable, I can’t wait to see each new blogger finding that enlightening moment when a well-placed comment evolves into a conversation with someone they respect.
That’s our starting point, in summary, in theory, with faith. Fingers are crossed. We’re writing the workshop at the moment but this is all new, certainly to me, so we’re working it out as we go. If you’ve done this before, or feel like you should have, speak up. In any case, I hope to report back once we’re on the other side.
Posted in Meetup on 13. Mar, 2009
Last Tuesday witnessed a spectacular London Bloggers Meetup, even if a do say so myself. Well, in actual fact everyone that attended seemed to have some pretty good things to say about the night. In case you are wondering, it was the St Patrick’s special LBM sponsored by our friends at Guinness and Bushmills Irish Whiskey.
So what made it a good night?
Well, apart from marvellous cocktails, the lessons on how to pour your own pint of Guinness, the prize draw for two tickets to the Guinness Premiership rugby final, the spacious bar offering free drinks, the delicious canapés, the talk from Drew Davies on behalf of the Equality & Human Rights Commission, there were of course around 50 members of the growing LBM community in attendance. Some regulars, some new faces and some I haven’t seen for a while, all of which made this an interesting night. I enjoyed catching up with Cedric (look forward to the England v France six nations match tomorrow), Tom Dickinson, Daniel, Navin… the list just goes on and on. Thankfully there are some great photos courtesy of Peter Marshall and Splendid for you to enjoy.
For those who want more information on Drew’s talk, head to the Map of Gaps website at http://www.mapofgaps.org. It’s a pretty phenomenal project and I know Drew would to hear your reactions to the campaign. Did you know over 30 million women live in Britain and each year 3 million experience rape, domestic violence, stalking or other violence. However, one in four local authorities do not provide any support to these victims. See what you can do to change this at the mapofgaps.org.
The Equality & Human Right’s Commission is actually sponsoring the next #LBM and Drew will be coming along again to talk about this and other work the Commission is involved in. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about all their great work by registering for your place on the 24th March now.
If you are planning on enjoying St Patrick’s on the 17th March (next Tuesday) don’t forget to raise a glass of Guinness, or a Bushmills, in appreciation to Diageo for once again showing the London Blogging Community some real love. I for one, will be enjoying a Guinness Extra cold which in around two weeks time will be consumed from my very own customised Guinness pint pot, simply marvellous.
Andy
PS and I almost forgot to thank Haran, Emma, Chris and team at Splendid for doing a, well, sssuperb job!
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