blending the mix

And here is a short Qik from Neville of Bill introducing the event and laying out the social media landscape:

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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!

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It’s been a while since I contributed something of significance to the blog (many of you would argue that I have rarely done that, but that’s another story ) - I have been mad busy with client projects, client presentations, seminars and finally the launch of our Social Media release tool, PressRoom - all of which have made me realise that PR and communications, not technology are at the heart of what I actually do - and maybe this is what PR types need to realise too.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still a Client Services slave with commercial objectives, but the tools and projects I work on and conversations I have with clients are not about tech solutions, or marketing ones, but PR ones. Social media (I know, I know - whatever that means!) blogs, community management and blogger outreach for example, are not about the technology - they are nothing more than tools with which to build relationships. And who is best placed and most experienced to do this? PR people.

However, when presenting my now well-versed seminar on blogging and social media for business, it is very apparent that many PR types are struggling to come to terms with the fact that they already have the core skills to make a dramatic impact on the the “social media” space. The overriding observation is that the industry is scared to death of what they see as technological barriers to letting their skills go.

As a commentator said at the launch of our PressRoom tool (which was full of PR people) “As a PR person, I look at tools like the Social Media Press Release and marvel at the opportunity this presents. As a client looking for a PR agency, I am sat here wondering why on earth you are asking such basic questions (such as “What is Twitter”)”.

In the US, people like Brian Solis and Geoff Livingston are trying to de-mistify the whole technology thing for PR people, whilst in the UK well-respected names like Stuart Bruce, Stephen Waddington and Becky McMichael are just a few names following suit -showing that practicing what you preach is a perfect way to prove that Social Media is not about technology, it is about developing relationships - which is exactly what PR people do.

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As some of you know, we have launched a cool new Social Media Press Release tool - and what a lot of interest it is generating.

More soon, but for now, check out the video:

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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!

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Here ya go buddy!

Work your magic on Corporate Comms for me!

David Hughes from paul Fabretti on Vimeo.

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I just had to point to this amazing piece of work as found by Coolia Julia from here. she makes a great point about how this may add a bit of spice to Friendfeed (which is what we have all been thinking!).

That said, Plurk’s main USP, a timeline which displays posts along a horizontal orientation looks much better on mobile (as does friendfeed) where the timeline is NOT visible, so so maybe this is just another gimmick. It does though, provoke some interesting discussion about how timelines are now being presented.

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Check out these folk - I am sure you will recognise one or two of them! Taken on my flip video and (slightly reduced quality by vimeo!)

Some peeps from Fuel Conference from paul Fabretti on Vimeo.

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I just HAD to share this:

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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.

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