SocialTech is dead… long live the RT Media social tech blog!

Posted by luke on Sep 19, 2011 in Blog, Press coverage | 5 comments

I’m delighted to announce that this website is now the RT Media social tech blog, following the merger of SocialTech Solutions Ltd. with RT Media Ltd.

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.”

Anyone can edit your Facebook company page

Posted by luke on Sep 15, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

…no really they can!*

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.

My thoughts on when to fwd, RT, re-post etc

Posted by luke on Aug 22, 2011 in Blog | 2 comments

This week has been a busy one for Bournemouth, hitting the headlines for a couple of the wrong reasons:

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?

Why sell mobile apps when a mobile web site would be better?

Posted by luke on Aug 3, 2011 in Blog | 2 comments

The short answer: we’re in business to make money.

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.

Non-plussed by Google Plus?

Posted by luke on Jul 25, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Summary:

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”.