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Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

The Bits They Left Out

06 Jul

Found this post by Alastair Campbell very interesting — all about his experience of appearing on Top Gear and the bits they left out of his interview.

What particularly struck me were his comments that Twitter and other digital platforms enabled him to tell the story of what was edited out of the final TV show. In other words, the internet meant the full interview was still “broadcast” in a way that it wouldn’t/couldn’t have been a few years ago. What’s more, people online are talking about this material that didn’t make it onto the TV show.

It just goes to show that interviews aren’t necessarily linear any more — the bits they left out can be just as important.

 

The Digital Budget Part 1: Why It’s All About Cider

24 Mar

Never mind the state of the economy, the jobs market or indeed the imminent election — today’s budget online was about cider.

TV producers will be running round preparing evening news bulletins (been there, done that) but are still several hours from going live. It’s more than half a day until morning newspaper readers open print editions to read detailed analysis of today’s budget speech. Meanwhile, online communities have already had their say on the detail. (Of course some of this is on TV and newspaper websites but my point here is that the internet is realtime, rather than on an appointment-to-view basis).

A glance at Twitter shows “White Lightening” (albeit a typo) is now a trending topic. Interesting to see also that Alistair Darling himself is trending — not “budget” or “tax” or “Labour” or anything related, but the man. It’s personal, and the talking points are around the Chancellor and increasing tax on cider.

Looking at conversations across the digital space — from blogs and forums to Facebook, YouTube and beyond — I’ve used Radian 6 to create this word cloud of the hottest topics:

Right now Radian 6 has identified these terms as being at the centre of budget buzz. You can see what’s really driving wider conversation online — it’s cider again, along with discussion around spending (both cuts and increases) and topics connected with housing and business.

Monitoring conversations gives us a realtime view on what’s front of mind, as well as enabling us to identify the most influential players in the discussion. An opportunity here would be for interested parties (be they the Government, the opposition or any other stakeholders) now to look again at their stories and messaging around each of these issues in order to see how they can shape the conversation, using digital tools to facilitate the next stage of the discussion.

Ultimately social networks give online communities a way to examine and talk about every part of the story, however large, however small. Today it’s about cider — and when the election comes you can be sure that internet users, ordinary voters, will examine every detail, regardless of whether the politicians want them to or not.

 

Simplicity

22 Jan

It works.

It can excel.

Can it be creative? Absolutely.

Freshness, honesty and authenticity — three things it can still do.

Grabbing attention. Success in pitches. Winning awards.

A focus on what matters, getting back to the story.

Acting on insight, rather than impulse.

Creating digital reality.

It can still have layers and depth.

Useful and integrated.

And it can be just as memorable as anything else.

Goes down well and can bring real success.

Plenty of scope to get noticed and be memorable, even become a classic.

It can be just as clever and brilliant.

It can be great, truly great.

Simplicity.

Posted via web from Don’t Go Mad

 
 

10 for 2010

18 Jan
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Telporting to 2010 -- Reproduced Under Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/gilderic/4222496679/

10 sentences about 10 of the digital trends I think will be hot in 2010. By no means definitive or exhaustive but here’s a starter for 10…

1)       Getting INLINE. It’s all about the message, not the medium, as an integrated communications strategy becomes the only way to make sense of the digital world; new research from WS shows influences on purchasing decisions and why brands need to tell their stories in the right place at the right time.

2)       Preposterously simple. Blogging and other social media will achieve genuine mainstream adoption by becoming despearately simple to use — check out new service Posterous which removes any remaining geekery from blogging, making it as easy to write a blog post as it is to email your friends.

3)       Social search. Google now incorporates results from social networks (including Twitter) which means brands need to create content that people will put on their profiles as way to raise the visibility of their stories in search.

4)       User generated revenue. Ford’s Fiesta Movement has created an online community to test-drive cars, with members reporting back on sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook in a move that’s apparently generated tens of thousands of sales leads.

5)       Business Twits. If you don’t already have a Twitter strategy then now’s the time to develop one as the internet darling is poised to introduce official B2B tools.

6)       Video news releases. Engage traditional media in an untraditional way using online video to turn complex news into globally popular coverage.

7)       Spending (even) more time online. Big players like Google want people to use the internet more – from watching video to writing spreadsheets, all within a browser-based operating system – and they’re likely to invest heavily to convince us because they make more money if we’re all living online.

8)       Where 2.0. We barely bat an eyelid at GPS these days and now so many of us have it in our phones the landscape is ripe for full exploitation of location-based services along with the mobile apps that mean you can do just about anything on the move.

9)       Get a life. Make content work harder by pushing it out to as many (relevant) communities as possible using a lifestream like Friendfeed or Facebook and become more visible in more places more of the time – this works offline, as well as online.

10)   Return on Involvement. Shifting to a model where ROI is based on delivering an engagement strategy which delivers against a business objective measurable in more ways than just website traffic.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Internet

 

Don’t Go Mad on Posterous

16 Jan

“Preposterously simple” is one of the themes in my 10 for 2010 lookahead. I’m putting my money where my mouth is by experimenting with a Posterous version of this blog– you can find it at http://posterous.dontgomad.com if you fancy a look.

 
 

Preposterously Easy Blogging

17 Dec

Blogging has certainly become easier in the last year or so — not necessarily the content creation part, *that* involves engaging brain which no amount of technology can replace, it’s more the physical act of posting the content. Having said that, it’s become “easier” rather than easy full stop. That means there’s still a barrier to entry and so blogging has retained some level of technical knowledge. Until now.

New service Posterous removes any remaining geekery by making it as easy to write a blog post as it is to email your friends – one of the ways digital communication is now achieving genuine mainstream adoption by becoming desperately simple. And once digital communication becomes seamlessly integrated (or INLINE, as we call it), then that’s when things get really exciting.

Postscript
Time now to put my money where my mouth is. I’m going to give Posterous a roadtest by creating one at http://posterous.dontgomad.com I’ve set it to autopost content across my main blog www.dontgomad.com and my Twitter account www.twitter.com/dontgomad to form the basis of a simple lifestream.

Posted via email from Don’t Go Mad

 
No Comments

Posted in Blogging

 

We’re hiring!

03 Dec

We’re looking for someone to join the digital communications team here at Weber Shandwick in London. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more and we’ll talk. Looking forward to hearing from you — my contact details are on my blog homepage.

 
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Posted in Internet

 

Open Mic

27 Nov

Rather than write something myself today, here are a selection of essays from esteemed WS colleagues in the latest edition of our ’33 and a Third’ newsletter. Enjoy.

 

How to engage a blogger — mummy knows best

23 Nov

I re-read this blog post today written by one of the leading mum bloggers — a reminder that the best way to engage people online is to start by listening to them and meeting their needs, rather than pushing your own agenda.

Key points are:

  • Be useful
  • Get to know the blogger before getting involved
  • Be creative
  • Include the blogger in the planning
  • Provide product samples if you are inviting them to review something

This all sounds straightforward but it’s a reminder that bloggers aren’t traditional journalists. It’s essential to recognise that a different approach is needed and hearing it directly from a blogger is the best way to bring it home.

 
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Posted in Blogging

 

Social Search

30 Oct

A little bit of geekery today — but don’t go mad! It’s all rather clever stuff from Google in that when you search they’re not only scouring the general internet but potentially also sifting through your friends’ social profiles to find relevant content for you.

Given that the vast majority of people start their internet journeys from a search engine, this  development shows just how important it for brands both to sort out their own websites and crucially create content which people will take away and place on their social profiles.

I’ll leave it to Google to explain how the search bit works:

 
 

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