Can we please stop saying “twitter beats news agencies with x y z story” its nonsensical, twitter is a PLATFORM, news agencies are a business.

The fact that it “beat” news agencies to report the story, misses the point – do we/did we ever say mobiles “beat” news agencies to the story when the first on the spot report is called in from a mobile? No, of course not.

So why do we feel the need to do this with twitter?

I’m a twitter fan as much as the next agency guy, and yes I’ve used the Hudson river plane photo as a good example of the immediacy and viral power of twitter but it’s another tool that can be used by the news agencies, not a competitor.

…Marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under their control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Generally I think it’s a good idea to have the same protections for consumers online as in print.

What does this mean for you?

• Consider doing a comprehensive content audit to check that your website complies with the guidelines.
• Ensure your employee handbook covers social networking communications too so that all staff are aware that what they say on these platforms may be covered by the guidelines.
• Update staff to explain that Facebook/Twitter etc are now covered by this code.

More info: ASA Digital Remit Extension

By no means do I claim to be an expert on ASA code, all comments/discussion welcome below.

Excellent seminar this morning on Social Media by Luke @socialtech I’d recommend his straight forward nongeek approach (@poolefamilylaw)

…I thought I’d share with you all one of my secret special training methods…

Any time I use a “buzzy word” (yuk), technical term without explanation or unnecessary acronym… I invite my clients/audience/hecklers to point it out. I keep a score, then donate £1 to charity for each one.

On Wednesday I raised £1, this make me happy.

That makes £8 in the last few months, which I’m donating to the relief effort in Pakistan + a bit more I’ll chuck in myself.

At first it was quite hard but as time’s gone on I think this simple thing has made a big difference to my workshops.

Sssshhh don’t tell anyone, ok?

Hopefully we’ll come out the other side with a shiny improved web presence…

“as the internet becomes increasingly important for business, using digital communications and social networks to increase sales and reach new audiences is a trend that’s steadily growing. But whether the aim is to improve customer engagement or increase the bottom line, online presence needs to be carefully managed…” (Article by Sue Weekes)

Great article, I’m very honoured to of been asked for some quotes… and have them used! Check it out: “building your brand online” (Edge magazine)

The UK Business Book Festival on Sept 10th

I’m very honoured to of been asked to speak during the ignite session and get involved with the event in general… sadly, I’m out of the country on that day but that doesn’t stop me sharing it with you.

Regular readers of this blog will know I’m passionate about growing more of a tech/creative community in Bournemouth (from my involvement in Startup-meetup, meetdraw and Bar Camp Bournemouth) and events like this form an integral part in focussing attention on this part of the world.

If you’d like to present at the ignite session (5 min slots) please drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch with the organisers.

It’s been a busy and exciting time here at socialtech towers, we’re in the process (in case you hadn’t noticed) of re-branding all our sites and, more importantly, expanding!

It gives me great pleasure to introduce James to the team!

Name: James Williams (no relation to Luke)

Job title: Production manager = James makes tea, phonecalls and video.

Hobbies: Music and film making

I’m also really proud to say that James has reached the final (last 10) in the Vice Magazine / Kopparberg Klash artistic short film competition – see his entry over at the (unfinished) ebusiness media site

James will be representing us at Meetdraw, while I’m on holiday – please say hi!

The focus of the event was e-learning and learning technologies. I’ve had a couple of people ask for a copy of my notes, who were unable to attend, or who saw my tweets and wanted to know more and so I’ve (finally, sorry!) typed up my notes here.

All of the talks were excellent;  there were a few key topics I was listening out for and I’ve paraphrased the bits from those talks I especially took away and added some of my notes to them.

NB: Quotes are in “double quotes” my notes are in italics.

Matthew Poyiadgi, CompTIA @mattpoy

Social Media is just a fancy way to describe the zillions of conversations that are happening online.
I hate giving things a badge like “social media” it’s evolution to me, not some new mythical beast that no-one understands.

Successful models usually give content away for free, with only 5 or 10% paying users funding the service. How could this work for you?

Example: Monty Python gave away good quality, well edited short clips on youtube to replace all the fan clips that were often in bad quality… and increased their video sales by 23,000% that year.

“There is currently 6.6 billion people on the planet sending 6.7 billion texts a day.“
The short message format is king and it’s here to stay… I’ve always argued it’s a trend, not a fad.

“If we build the people, they’ll build the business.”
B. Wise, Tupperware in 1953

A frequently quoted barrier to training is:

“What if we train people and they leave?” → “What if you don’t and they stay?”

Quote of the day! I live-blogged a few bits and this quote had by far the most RT’s.

Mike Pilbeam – VP Sales and Technical Operations at Cisco.

Cisco have fully embraced social networking within their company. Their business is driven by web traffic, they extol the value of social networking to their clients so it is logical for them to fully embrace social networking within their business.

The approach is to try everything, always say yes. Then allow the people to act as filters through ranking.  Around 30% of ideas tried, didn’t work.

So how do you create a balance of new approaches and technology with skills and experience?

How closed loop mentoring benefits all:

Gen X – content is you
Gen Y – content is separate to the individual

Gen X – if you can’t hand off, you can’t take more on
Gen Y – Shares naturally

There is a lot that both sides can learn from each other about their approaches to learning.

Cisco loves bandwidth, so they largely replaced email with video within their organisation for internal learning – they found they saved time as people presented short videos, which were easier to understand. The scheme was so successful they now use it with some of their suppliers too*.

“Enablement is all about collaboration”

It is equal parts :

• people
• content
• community

“Enable people to be lazy, make it easy to find, consume and publish”

Developing new training:

Philosophy:

• Every possible answer exists somewhere in the company, in an email, someone’s head or in a piece of content – the challenge is there are multiple answers, some good, some bad.
• “If it works, polish it… if it doesn’t bin it”
• Good ideas/guides/content will be formalised into training, bad/poor content is deleted.

Findings:

• People liked gaining stars for their content so they wrote good content.
• Demand for self-branded and customised learning/learner interfaces grew as adoption grew.
• Key to success becomes content + lenses and not your imposed filter.
• Learning and development culture has to be informal.

Systematic re-use of content is encouraged – designs, technology, information and content. Where possible all content is recycled.

Flip video cameras are used for team updates, short, quick to produce video content replaces longer emails.

Problem:

• Resistance to using new technologies

Solutions:

• Find thought leaders, the people whom others turn to to find answers and use subject matter experts as moderators.
• Able to interact with the forum via email, subscribe to topics and reply. Through time, those who used it via email moved to using the forum directly.

*It’s also interesting to see some details of Quad start to appear, if you haven’t seen this yet it’s worth a look. From first glance it’s a real-time LinkedIn with Video.

And a Springer’s final thought” from the round table discussion:

Why does eLearning have a higher take up in the US?

Culturally in the US training is paid for by the individual and self directed, take up of e-learning is 4x higher… when the downturn hit, e-learning usage on Sundays rocketed… co-incidence?

Hope this is useful, if you’d like me to clarify anything please leave a comment.

Thanks to Kelly at Element K for organising a great forum, I look forward to the next one.

I then took this list into wordle to get another perspective, the larger the word the higher the frequency it showed up in my list.

Marketing is the clear winner.

I also thought it was interesting that 3 sites use “useable” which some people would argue isn’t a real word…

Interesting that the “All employees” option will only be available to paid up members, but is free for now.

Uses?

If you wanted to work for specific organisations, you can now subscribe to them to receive an email when they post a new job (assuming they used LinkedIn to do so of course).. probably has some uses for recruiters too.

One idea that I’d suggest to any organisation looking to recruit, is to monitor if anyone is following your company page – I think it’s interesting that you could see potential candidates before posting a job advert.

Do you think this is a useful feature? I can’t see much use in it yet (apart from recruitment), if it published the news items into people’s feed it would be more useful.

See also: LinkedIn Blog about following company pages