My blog as a QR code

As generated by KAWYA

Social Media Week 7-11 February 2011

If you haven’t already heard next week is Social Media Week. As a result they’ll be a whole bunch of social media events taking place next week in London. Several are free.

 

Jeremiah Owyang’s presenation at LeWeb

I’ve been following Jeremiah Owyang’s blog for quite sometime. LeWeb describes him as an influential thought leader on web strategy, interactive marketing, and social technologies.

Last week Jeremiah gave an interesting  presentation “Social media and big business: trends for 2011” at LeWeb in Paris. He spoke about what happened in 2010, his predictions for 2011 (based on research) and what he believes companies should do.

You can watch the full presentation below but I’ll just mention his predictions here.

His 2011 predictions

He predicts slow steady growth in social media spend.

Internally companies are going to focus measuring social media. While their external marketing will focus on integrating social media into their website, brand monitoring, training, staff and advertising. The biggest area of growth will be hiring people with social media skills.

You can also read FreshNetworks blog about it here.

My 10 most popular posts

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Here are my top blog posts of all time. Some were written back in Autumn 2009, so some bigger players may now have come into the industry. However some subjects are still very important such as numbers 7 & 8.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

1. Upcoming London social media events – this post has been especially popular
2. UK digital marketing blogs worth a look – seems to be popular again recently
3. 5 quick wins to generate sales using social media
4. ROI – making events pay using social media technologies
5. Social media marketing services in London
6. Triiibes 1st birthday
7. How to use social media to listen – still a very important subject
8. Brandwatch in focus – still useful
9. Social media is about relationships not campaigns
10. 5 ways to drive traffic to a blog

LeWeb iPhone app

A lot of people I follow on Twitter, I actually found on the LeWeb Paris 09 app last year. LeWeb Paris, a two day conference where top industry entrepreneurs, press and bloggers will gather to discuss the web marketplace, is coming around again next week.

The app they’ve created for the event is impressive, although I’m sure the speakers’ pages were easier to navigate last year. However it bundles together a whole host of social information into one very useful app. It is worth downloading and having a play. You will see how social media can be utilised to enhance event organisation.

Open Leadership – my review

I’ve been meaning to write this review for some time. First of all the book took longer than expected to read, because I got sidetracked checking out all the references. Secondly the book is so good that I delayed reviewing it, wondering whether I could do it justice having only read it once. Anyway here it goes.

Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell, has written another outstanding book about social technologies. Seth Godin’s quote on the back cover says it all.  He says – “Buy two copies of Charlene’s new book, one for your boss and one for you.” Charlene herself says she wrote the book for her Groundswell followers, who wanted to explain to their executives that any digital strategy would fail without the right organisation and leadership in place. She says greater openness is inevitable. She paints a picture of what this might look like, the risks involved in being more open, counter measures that can be put in place, the benefits of openness and how to achieve it. I would say that the book is relevant to social media managers, corporate communications management, senior management and change managers.

Rather than describe what is in each chapter, the introduction, which does exactly that, is available here on slideshare.

The questions and tools she suggests using are also all available for free on the Open Leadership website here. I suspect the directory of social media policies is the most popular download.

Since being open and using social technologies is new territory to everyone, mistakes are inevitable. A whole chapter is dedicated to “The Failure Imperative”. Indeed it is almost worth buying the book for this chapter alone.

The only thing I found lacking in the book was that she did not address the increasing threat of cybercrime. I’ve read and attended numerous talks on social media and no one ever mentions the risks people (staff and customers) are taking by being so open and transparent on the internet. I would like to see social media thought leaders responsibly address this issue.

Bill Boorman on Twitter

I went to hear Bill Boorman, or rather @BillBoorman,  speak last night at Social Media London Meetup. For those of you who are not familiar with Meetup.com, it’s a fantastic website, where you can find details of “meetups” happening near you. Interests range from badminton meetups to social media meetups.

Anyway Bill, who is in the recruitment business and has a Twitter following of over 6,500, spoke passionately about how he uses Twitter. He’s (helpfully) already written a blog post covering most of what he covered last night. You can read it here.

@ChairmanSam recorded a short (30 min) video of the event. It can be viewed here.

Building communities with Flowtown

So you’ve finally set up a Facebook fan page and Twitter account. What next? Sure you could email your whole database telling them you are now on Twitter. But what if your customers don’t have Twitter or Facebook accounts? You’ll just be bombarding them with irrelevant information – spam.

By analysing your customers’ email addresses, Flowtown, can segment your database according to their social media usage. This for example will show you which customers have Twitter/Facebook accounts. You can then send relevant messages to your customers based on their profile. For example you could send an email to customers who have a Twitter account telling them that you are now on Twitter. Targeted messages are always more successful.

Have a look below at a short video from Flowtown.

Education is being transformed by technological developments

Technology is changing the classroom experience for both teachers and students alike. I found this out first hand while taking French classes at City Lit.

Our teacher there made full use of the technology available. For example she used Powerpoint to explain the grammar and played YouTube clips for the listening exercises.

After the class she posted the clips and files as well as the homework to our class Moodle site. This meant that students could log in and review the exercises and videos.

Additionally it meant that anyone who missed the class could catch up in advance of the next class. I quickly adapted to this new method of learning.

Traditional classroom learning

Subsequently I spent two weeks in a school in France learning French.

However aside from the conversation classes I experienced a certain amount of frustration at the lack of technology being used. For example I spent a lot of time copying down grammar from the blackboard or overhead projectors.

Additionally they lent us books for the two weeks which we then had to return. I haven’t felt inclined to buy the book which means I can never review the exercises.

Also we watched films from recorded video cassettes, which again meant that I could not re-watch the programmes.

The whole experience was somewhat  frustrating. Having become accustomed to using technology for learning I simply have no desire to return to the old teaching methods. I also felt it limited what I could learn.

Challenges in implementing new technologies

Adopting new technologies is not so simple, as it challenges long used teaching methods. I found this out in a casual discussion about my holiday with a teacher. He got quite heated and told me to buy the book and said that students who do not want to copy work from the blackboard are lazy and do not want to learn. I wish him good luck, because he is going to need it.

Further reading

Read about one teacher’s experience of Moodle here.

Request for examples

I came across this request for help from The New York Times.  They are looking for examples of how technology is affecting teaching and learning. If you are a teacher or know any teachers perhaps they would be interested in participating.

Social media is about relationships not campaigns

I’ve constantly heard this mantra being repeated in social media circles and I agree with it.

I’ve been avidly following City Lit’s online campaign against possible spending cuts. There is no doubt that having already established relationships with students on social media networks, it has been easier to get the campaign off the ground and picked up by mainstream media.

For example City Lit had an active Facebook fan page and Twitter account in place, so tapping into these networks helped get the message out and quickly. Previously they would have just had to rely on their public relations staff to send out letters and press releases. Or today without a network in place, they would have had to quickly scramble to build up loyal followers.

Instead with use of social media and a network in place, City Lit was able to quickly mobilise students to help spread the word. Social media’s features such as “share” buttons play a big part in making this possible. Some students have even been inspired to blog about what City Lit means to them.

Additionally City Lit (and their followers) was able to leverage any publicity they did get, such as news articles and mentions on television programmes, through posting them on networks which again was shared with friends and followers.

I wish City Lit the best of luck in continuing to be able to provide such a wide range of fantastic courses for both advantaged and disadvantaged Londoners.