Too many businesses are just “doing” social without training… or worse… without a strategy.

We’re on a mission to sort that out for 2012, the first step is a week of training courses open to anyone:

The Get Social in 2012 training week is the 23rd – 27th January 2012 at the RT Media offices in Wimborne

• MONDAY 23rd: Introduction to Social Media
• TUESDAY 24th: I’m on LinkedIn, But…
• WEDNESDAY 25th: Twitter 101
• THURSDAY 26th: Facebook for Business
• FRIDAY 27th: Better Blogging

All sessions are 9:00 for a 9:30 start, finishing at 12:30.

Please contact Corli or Luke at RT Media on 01202 888192 or email Luke to book your place.

For more details, see Get Social in 2012

Extra super 2012 BONUS :: To help you on your journey here are 3 links I think are essential reading for 2012 (don’t forget all the things I bookmark as interesting can be found be clicking the delicious icon up there top right!)

1. Facebook makes up 52.1 percent of all sharing on the web in 2011
2. The psychology of social commerce explains why and how people shop together
3. Sony says choosing the right social network is critical, we agree!

I promised to write a quick blog to link to some of the things I mentioned
(in no particular order…)

Networking events locally for web/creative folks:

• Meetdraw
• B+W Meet
• The Creative Crawl
• Bomo Creatives
• Show & Tell

Software that I love and use:

• Customer database system - Capsule CRM*
• Accounts – FreeAgentCentral*

Books I mentioned:

• Richard Wiseman – The Luck Factor
• Tony Buzan – Use your head

The top tip of what interviewers are looking for from Ernie Robinson my old boss at Eldridge Pope:

“Can you do it, Will you do it & Will you fit in”

- wise words that stuck with me that I’ve kept in my mind as both an interviewee and interviewer!

If I’ve missed anything, please leave a comment and I’ll add it!

UPDATED 14/12/11: A handy set of bullet point notes from Phil Hawkins

*affiliate links

This is a post I started on Feb 15th (originally titled “Is 2011 the year Facebook goes into decline”), I wrote a post about the life-cycle of social networks but wasn’t bold enough to publish it – I wish I had.

The recent changes (and impending change of profiles into timelines) on Facebook for passive sharing (read, listened) from explicit sharing have generated a lot of debate:

Is Facebook’s seamless sharing wrong or not?
(both from RWW amusingly)

…and there are plenty more discussing these changes in minute details, I’ve added my thoughts to the second of those posts in the comments.

There is a more philosophical question here that I haven’t seen asked yet – what are the factors that make people change social network?

Let’s think about MySpace vs Facebook and some of the factors that caused the exodus:

1. MySpace had the critical mass, it was the clear leader until a couple of years ago.
2. Facebook offered a simpler, cleaner interface that made connecting with your friends easier.
3. MySpace got bought by News Corp and was seen as a big company rather than a cool young upstart.
4. MySpace “got old”.

How do these stack up with Facebook?

1. Facebook is the clear leader, that could change.
2. Facebook is rapidly getting more cluttered and the volume of information is creating, in some, a feeling of information overload.
3. Facebook is now seen as a big scary, privacy dismissing beast.
4. Facebook has your mum, gran and aunty on it… it’s “got old”

If people leave Facebook it will be because:

• They feel they’ve lost too much control
• The signal to noise ratio gets out of balance
• There is another big privacy issue
• As a business user, they change the rules of the game too many times
• The early adopters move to somewhere else and people follow

So where next?

Google+ ?

No, I don’t think so – It won’t be to go to more-of-the-same and whilst some wrote it off too early (before they launched business pages, was too early to judge in my opinion) Google+ doesn’t have these key differences the next big social network needs to become the new #1.

Who does?

I thought Diaspora could of been a candidate, it needs some muscle behind it to grow into those shoes. One thing I’m certain though is that the game is changing, users are uneasy and if I was Facebook I’d be worried.

As ever, I’d love to know your thoughts.

Here are my slides:

I spoke about Brand and Reputation Management, Social Media Amplification and adding the magic to your event.

And, as a good summary here is an interview I did afterwards to WinkBall.

Diaspora is a “privacy-centric distributed social network”, anyone can download the source code and set up a pod on their server meaning they have control of the information and user data on that site.

Every pod can talk to each other seamlessly, thereby creating a distributed social network.

What if I don’t want to set up my own social network server?

You don’t have too, there are publicly available ones, including joindiaspora.com and diasp.org.

Think of the pods/network as a bit like the way email is distributed, in that anyone could have an email server of their own or use a public one (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo…) and you can seamlessly email other people.

What does it look like?

It’s minimal in feel, uncluttered and most things are obvious after a short look around.

Once I had an invite, it didn’t take long to set-up the account and connect it to my other sites (Facebook, twitter).

Profile pages are a bit sparse at the moment… with only a few details to fill in – don’t want you D.O.B. listed? Don’t enter it. Simple.

and yes, the first picture I posted was of my cat…

When you invite a friend, you choose an aspect, you can manage these later (adding people into more than one if required):

The settings section is deliciously simple and clear:

Easy, clear options to switch on/off email alerts, download all your data as XML and close your profile:

I love the way you post updates, it’s very obvious who will get to see it – the globe shows if it is public (available to search engines and published to your RSS feed) icons for post to twitter, tumblr (not enabled) and Facebook too, decide which aspects to send it to (think circles / friend lists). I can only assume it’s called aspects as groups will be used for something else in a later version.

Why might people love it?

• It only uses the more secure HTTPS.
• All changes/developments to the code are very open for discussion (not lumped on you by a big corporation), 100s of developers have contributed to the project and you too can have your say on how it works.
• It’s not owned by a huge cookie hungry corporate (Google + Facebook, I’m looking at you).
• You can set up your own pod if you want.
• There’s currently no games and only 1 app so far called cubbies – I see this as a plus, others might not agree I suppose.
• Being anonymous or using a pseudonym is absolutely fine – will this lead to lots of trolling? Time will tell.

Diaspora uses hashtags in a similar but more integrated way to twitter – allowing you to follow topics you’re interested in and subscribe to them.

Overall impression:

It’s early days for Diaspora, but I’m really impressed so far – there is a hard-to-put-my-finger-on thing that I just really like about it. Perhaps it’s the minimal feel, the geek in me that loves the distributed nature, the simplicity of the privacy settings or just the sheer openness of the development process!

One to play with if you’re an early adopter, for less technical types wait for the beta release.

If you’d like an invite, get in touch!

UPDATED: I loved these words from Yosem @ Diaspora, so I’m reposting them here

“The media has painted us as the David that will either slay or succumb to Goliath. (Insert FB or G+ for the Goliath, depending on the media’s narrative.)It’s also a function of competitive differentiation. You only know what something is by comparing it to something else that exists. The media has chosen to compare us to FB & G+, which is understandable.

The better comparison, however, is AOL vs the WWW. When AOL appeared on the scene, it was the only commercial email provider. You couldn’t send email to Prodigy, for example, from AOL, and vice versa. AOL would force you to navigate the Internet through AOL’s portal. Then the (free or open-source, use your preferred term here) WWW came on the scene. Soon thereafter came communication protocols that enabled different email providers to connect their users with each other. AOL clung to their walled garden approach and slowly over time was transformed from a monopolist into just one of many actors on the open web …continues“

Full details of the training and consultancy services we offer will be on the RT Media website with this returning to its original form as the (RT Media) social tech blog.

For immediate release:

Branding Gets Social with RT Media Acquisitions

Dorset based strategic branding and digital agency, RT Media, has completed the acquisition of two Bournemouth based companies – social media training and consultancy business, SocialTech, and creative agency, Ozone Creative Solutions.

Ross Thornley. founder of RT Media, explains: “We recently carried out a strategic review within the business with a view to increasing resources, skills and generating growth. Both SocialTech and Ozone complement our existing capabilities and will further enhance our offering, expanding our branding expertise into all online communications and leading to a wider solution for our international, national and regional clients.”

Founded in 2008, SocialTech has built a reputation as a leader of social media training and consultancy. Its clients include Channel 4, E.ON, Condé Nast and Dorset Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI).

Luke Williams, Director and founder of SocialTech, comments: “I’ve always held the team at RT Media and the outstanding quality of their design work in the highest regard. When the opportunity to merge our businesses became available it was an obvious fit, in terms of culture and approach, and as a logical extension of their brand communication to offer an extended range of services.”

As a total creative resource, Ozone Creative Solutions brings expertise from its impressive folio of advertising, direct mail, sales literature, Point of Sale, interactive CD and online design work to RT Media. Its ‘straight talking’ and ‘clear creative thinking’ approach is also a natural fit for RT Media, as Tony Ridgway founder of Ozone, comments:

“Our view has always been to get the job done, and get it done well. The team at RT Media has a similar approach; they like to get under the skin of the business to challenge the client to really know what is actually required to achieve their business objectives. We have already started collaborating on several campaigns and new business wins, which has shown us just how much potential we have, working together.”

Steve Mills, Business Development Manager at Nutrichef said “As a long standing customer of RT we were asked to be one of the test clients they worked with pre-merger to support the re-launch of our new web site. Adding the social media knowledge from SocialTech to the branding expertise of RT worked very well, dramatically extending our reach online.”

Ross adds: “This is a coming of age for RT Media. Integrating the three very like-minded, skilled and professional teams has given us a very strong platform for growth. It is a new era, both for us and for our clients, who will most certainly benefit from having this level of resource for their campaigns.”

Find a Facebook page with location information (ie one you can “check in” to) for which you are not an admin, click on the info tab on the left hand side and you should now see “edit” appear in the top right – OMG OMG!! etc etc…

*ok so actually they can’t, but be prepared for customers to THINK that’s what is now possible…

During one of the recent changes to Facebook places, they felt it would be handy if anyone could “suggest” updates to the location information only.

From the Facebook pages FAQ: “On Pages that list an address and choose to display a map in the Info section, anyone viewing the Page sees an “Edit” link. This link allows people to notify Facebook of any location information that may be missing. Note that people aside from Page admins can’t edit the information that displays on your Page even though the link is labelled “Edit.”"

And breath… Facebook love making these changes, they certainly keep me… “entertained”.

If you want to switch off this “editable” (note, it’s not actually editable) information, as an admin, select: Edit Page / Basic Information / untick the box labelled: Show this map.

1. The flash flooding
2. The tragic loss of a red arrow at the airshow

We’ve also seen what has been dubbed as the “Schrodinger’s dictator” (conflicting reports of Gadaffi being alive and dead), which in a similar way closer to home also occurred with the red arrows pilot: some saying he was rescued alive by dog walkers, whilst others that he died on scene.

Add to this the false reports of riots doing the rounds on social networks and I felt a blog post was in order.

My thoughts in no particular order on when to RT / FWD or re-post:

1. Please THINK before you post – it’s to easy to get caught up in the “first, first, first!” online culture.
2. Forwarding unconfirmed rumors can become self-fulfilling (as I’m sure was partly the case with some riots around the UK). I saw (and due to past involvement in radio, started receiving phone calls!) a growth in rumors that the McDonalds in Bournemouth was on fire… having walked past it only 5 minutes earlier, I was quick to point out it most definitely was not to those asking me and subsequently onto twitter & Facebook.
   In the case of the pilot, whilst mainstream media was careful to state the situation of the pilot was unclear, many were saying he was alive – while I’m generally an optimist, imagine what his wife would of been going through if she’d been anxiously scouring the web for news…
3. Consider the reliability of your sources – having a large number of followers does not necessarily make you either a reliable, or authoritative source – exhibit A: @queen_uk – a lot of people were RT’ing a post from a twitter account with a following in the ten of thousands, a quick look at it’s history made it clear it was a barely reliable (or literate!) source.
4. Rule 32 of the internet: “Pics? or it didn’t happen” – if someone states something as fact, challenge them to provide proof, if in doubt don’t re-post or clearly label it as unconfirmed/unreliable.
5. Use NSFW if the item you are forwarding is Not Safe For Work! (As a rule of thumb, if I wouldn’t share it with my mother, it’s NSFW).
6. Remember not everyone loves: LOLcats / motivational saying / Jokes…

What would you add to the list?

I had a discussion on twitter yesterday, prompted by a question someone asked me last week: what would I learn/master if I was a student or job seeker today?

I’d focus on mastering html5 and building for mobile first then web.

Personally, I think we will soon be at a place where we develop for mobile first (tablet or phone) and web browser second, I agree with @iangeek when he says that’s not as true for b2b though.

A couple of folks said they’d focus on gis (ie location based), which is a good call also.

I think, as an industry, we’ve been guilty at times of mis-selling apps when a good mobile web site would do the job.

Lets be honest, if a client says ‘I want an app’ we see dollar signs, it costs money to build an app properly… And that’s the problem, in most cases a well built mobile web site would be cheaper to develop and platform independent (great you have an iphone app, what about the larger user base of android? Or blackberry business users? Let alone new platforms like windows phone 7 or the new one from alibaba)… but that is worth less and not what the client asked for is it?

This is the crux of the issue, we should be doing more to sell people the right solution, the one that gets the best ROI and the widest coverage… Not just the one that makes us the most money.

Too early to tell. If you’re not an “early adopter” type, don’t waste time looking at it just yet.

UPDATE: The early adopter phase is growing rapidly, as of today 03/08/11 the user base is 25 million and growing, time on the site per user is increasing too… have a look personally, ready for the business pages launch.

Main body:

Another google product, another twitter stream full of “invite wanted PLEASE!” type messages… I was lucky to get on quite early and shared the wealth as soon as I could.

Initial gut feeling… I like it. I like the use of circles, an idea that I’ve always sort of used on facebook with the friends lists feature… which is horribly clunky. This however works REALLY well, I like it a lot. It will take some discipline to add everyone into circles to start with, but once you have, it’s a simple way of sending messages to certain groups of people.

The people themselves don’t know the name or membership of a circle, just that they got that message from you.

What about business pages?

Good question, at the moment it is only for personal pages, businesses will get additional functionality but there isn’t any more info than that at the moment.

Is there a mobile app?

Yes and the android one is pretty good, the iphone one has been submitted to the app store, but as of today not live on itunes.

I totally agree with Scobelizers article that “your mum wont use it”… yet. I think it’ll be interesting to see whether the changes at Facebook announced this week deaden some of the impact google plus has (especially the video chat “huddle” feature)

It is still in a beta type phase, once business pages are launched and the user base matures I think it could be one to watch, some analysts are saying the +1 button is already wider used than “tweet this”.