blending the mix

PR Week’s 10th anniversary competition has really got my attention, not necessarily for holding a competition  (there are competitions aplenty of which my buddy Steve deservedly won!), but for the manner and tools they have used to do it.

The competition allows US readers to vote to produce the nation’s favourite PR blogs leading to one ultimate winner. This is supposed to be for the US, but the esteemed Neville Hobson has managed to creep in to the list too - and quite rightly so - good on you Neville!

I like these kinds of competitions – but they are normally carried out by the publications themselves and this is where I have got to give PR Week enormous credit here.

As a beacon to the PR industry, using the latest social media tools in this way, it does much to dispell the myth that the PR industry is “past it”,”too late” or crap but there is something so appealing about the way they have used one of the latest bunch of UGC tools to generate buzz.

So surveys in blogs or websites is nothing new, but let me shed some light onto BuzzDash which will hopefully demonstrate why using these kinds of surveys are such a good idea.

Take my little experiment below (no, please do…it is embeddable, see the small blue button at the bottom "share this buzzbite")

Widgetised Survey Distribution - Not only do we have a UGC survey that I can put anywhere, but so can the users/readers too.

Community - Note the other small box "voter comments". Cool, not only can people cast their vote and see its’ impact in real time, but they can also add something of value to the survey buy leaving a comment.

Suddenly, we have moved away from a simple static survey seemingly there for the benefit of the publisher to something which users can distribute and participate in.

Don’t forget that the surveys can also be voted for on the BuzzDash site, and you have the opportunity for the survey to be seen by many more people than a conventional static one.

Website stickiness…it hasn’t gone away yet, even in the fast-moving Web 2.0 world!

Oh, BTW, my bet is that Brian will win it

I’m not going to be too gushing about David because I know he is an avid reader of this blog, but the sentiment is there, even though the words may not be

David, in between running Edelman Europe, has managed to write a book called Crowdsurfing. The video below gives you a far better insight into what the book is about than I could so enjoy the video:

Crowdsurfing from David Brain on Vimeo.

David picked this one out and I also remember Steve talking about it too. Having NOW seen it, I can totally see why it is worth watching.

Overview: Player makes video of EA Games’ Tiger Woods golf showing Tiger playing on water. Not good. EA games respond with their own video.

Result: Awesome WoM and a problem nicely brushed under the carpet. “That’s the way to do it”.

There seems to be an inherent coolness about responding to problems via social media. At this stage in its lifecycle, brands who address customers using social media show that they are prepared to do something different, go just that little bit further to get their message across. At the moment I think customers appreciate this effort much more than we think.

Why don’t you give it a go?

Thanks David, Steve.

So folks, after a ling time, I am finally going away on holiday. I’ll be back on the 21st August and be back at KMP Towers on the 26th.

In short, if you need to keep up with what’s going on you couldn’t go far wrong by giving these good folk a visit in my absence:

Steve Clayton
Neville Hobson
David Kinsella (a fellow KMP bro)
Stephen Waddington
KMP (these guys seem to know what they are doing

Have a good August!

Hasta lluego, A+, see ya!

Ok, some more ego massaging here, hot off the inclusion in the Ad Age Power 150 list (No. 437 at the moment) and my inclusion in Spinning Around’s Top 50 UK Marketing Blogs - 48th I am now officially a SOB (Successful Outstanding Blogger). Big thanks to Liz for bigging me up - nice to see my work recognised by such an esteemed peer.

Cool stuff I was readingJune 27th toJuly 5th:

• Rohit Bhargava Social Media Bio: M YB I O - Rohit’s social media biography
• Resume 2.0 « The Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius - A great piece about the social media release
• Again, One Clueless Person Destroys the Privacy Of Millions - Overview of the beginning of the end for data privacy
• Training Field Teams | Retail Sales Training | Field Marketing | Tips | Advice - Sales training advice
• Pam Ragland’s Have Anything Blog - interesting thoughts about personal development from Pam
• FT.com / Companies / US & Canada - FriendFeed openness puts pressure on rivals -

I am posting a series of Qik videos, kindly taken by Neville Hobson from this morning’s Marketing 2.0 Seminar.

This one is Ronnie Brown from Outside Line who created one of the best blogger engagement programs I have seen to date for LG when promoting the Viewty. As a direct recipient of the activity, I was delighted that they were able to explain in more detail, the strategy they developed.

Ronnie, Chris - thanks again.

Enjoy!

I wanted to attend Fuel Conference for three main reasons:

1) Tara Hunt - Talking about the subject of her new book - The Whuffie Factor
2) Ted Hunt - Innocent Drinks, talking about how they have embraced social media to become one of the UK’s most revered brands (for more than just their product)
3) Alex Hunter - Head of Group Online Marketing, talking about how Virgin America launched without Beardy ad went from near disaster to an incredible success through the use of social media.

Alongside all that, Richard Moross from Moo.com explained their incredible rise to stardom (using social media) the crayzee guys from Soocial.com showed how craziness and fun can be as contagious as any planned marketing campaign.

Presentation of the day has to go to Steve Pearce of Poke.

Biggest Takeaway for me? Social Media is only as good as the people behind them. Try as you might, if you haven’t got the passion and motivation for it, you’ll keep banging your head against the brick wall. And maybe that is a post for another day!

Despite Plurk enjoying more of my attention recently, after a fair bit of conference Twittering at the great Fuel-Conference (organised by Carsonified - much more to come shortly!) I thought I’d get a better idea of how and when my Twittering has taken place.

This follows my recent Twitter content overview from TweetCloud - and has given me a really useful view on how important Twitter is to me - and as such, why, despite all the downtime Twitter remains so crucial a communication tool for us all. TweetStats shows me this.

Looks Like Wednesdays are my busy days! Midweek boredom? Chances are something is kicking off or hitting the mainstream after a Monday launch/release.

I am pretty consistently active throughout the day (damn Twitter makes to so easy!) but this is essential to engage with the ongoing conversations. Is it me, or is this sounding increasingly defensive ? The evening peak will no doubt be when my West Coast friends are onboard and active too!

I much prefer using the web interface to Twhirl, but am growing increasingly fond of Twhirl - especially when it becomes Seesmic-compatible. I also use mobile a lot, but I am guessing this may come under the web interface as Opera Mini allows me to view in standard version.

Which kind of contradicts what Rescuetime suggests I spend my time on, a pretty similar split between Twitter.com and Twhirl (3% for Twitter.co vs 2% for Twhirl):

Another point of note is just how much content gets fed in through Twitterfeed. Twitter is an important source of my blog traffic, showing just how important it is to get my content into Twitter.

There’s a few other useful stats (such as most frequent replies and another version of the aggregated hourly feed, but I won’t overkill the stats!)

All in all, it is a pretty useful range of stats to understand the way I engage with Twitter.

From a marketers point if view, these stats taken from an influencer’s twitter ID would give me almost email-marketing style optimum opening times and day informations, for product/news launches which, coinciding with summize, would give me some interesting feedback into my product/service launch.

More later on Summize - especially its recent Sentiment measurement tool.

UPDATE: The Boleg Brothers videos have just been show on BBC1 show The Apprentice! Get in there!

Thanks go to my Apprentice PiC (Stephen) for this genius find from The Boleg Brothers

The Apprentice started out life as an attempt to provide formerly intelligent people with an opportunity to work for one of the UK’s most successful business leaders…until 2008.

In light of the shocking stupidity of some of the contestants this year, the above video is the icing on the cake! Utter genius - in fact, it’s the only thing that has some level of intelligence to it!