The Value Of A Blog

So I have finally succumbed to the idea of setting up my blog in a little more personalised state.

So if you head over to http://jamespoulter.co.uk you will find “Sunday Latte Lamentations” in a somewhat under construction phase.

I am setting up on WordPress (hosted by lovely fellow @leesmallwood – a thoroughly decent chap) . Which obviously means a overhall of themes and widgets, but also a re-evaluation of why I blog, what I blog and how I blog.

After a lovely morning spent down in Kent @ Huggies HQ (Client: Kimberley Clarke) meeting some of the UK’s finest Mum bloggers (@glowstars @YoungMummyUk @Kellyfairy to be precise) really made me think.

I started out blogging as a way of documenting my thoughts and poetry that I began writing in a more serious fashion about 3 years ago (hence the title of this blog – spurred by a poem I wrote by the same name). It really was just the thoughts, ideas and melody that roll out of the life rhythm that is being a Londoner. However over time that changed and moulded into what my blog is today, an amalgamation of social communication-marketing-culture thing, with a quasi-Christian slant on the world. Which interestingly is never what I set out to be about, it just kind of happened that way.

After chatting to the Mums this morning it appear that my experience is not to dissimilar to a lot of bloggers out there, we all start with a passion, a realisation that others might give 2pence about our thoughts, and a desire for a connection with those who share that passion, but over time things get in the way that dilute that (SEO, Google Analytics, #tags).

By no means am I saying that this dilution is a bad thing, I think is just inevitable, however I do wonder what it is that keeps people like you coming back to read these musings.

So that leads me back (kind of) to where I began, as I re-evaluate the way I blog I would love to know why it is you read what I write. What topics interest you, what would you like more of or less of? Or do you honestly just end up clicking inanely on whatever tweetdeck serves you up? (I know I am guilty of that).

I am not out just to please the crowd, but if writing, blogging, journeying, or whatever you call it is truly about passions, and a desire for connection, then it’s always nice to know what you connect with, what you are passionate about, what makes you tick.

So please – let me know.

Monday Musings: The Gutenberg Effect

Morning All. Welcome to your Monday. Here are some digital nuggets to sink your little nashers into for the week of March 8th.

Kicking off with a video spotlight: How The Interenet is Changing Advertising.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

This cracking little “epipheo” presents captures very succinctley something which as been nagging at my brain for a while. Something I like to call “The Gutenberg Effect“. For me the technological shifts that have truely rocked the world have always brought about a new way of thinking and with that new way, an outburst of creativity has spread like wildfire.

Looking back to creation of the printing press, what Gutenberg achieved was not only a technological shift, but a cultural one that allowed people for the first time to hold the printed word in their hands and read it for themselves. A technology that was a key driver in the cultural shift that ultimately ended up becoming The Reformation.

We have seen this process repeat throughout recent history with the creation of commercial radio springing up from the creativity of HAM radio set users in the early 20th century, and then far more recently in the boom of satellite television. Each has created a shift in the way we communicate with one another. Each has demanded something new of the sender and recipient of communication. With print it was undivided attention. With radio it became a background medium, with TV a shared collective experience.

The internet in general, but increasingly the social web provides a different form of communication. A new kind of shared experience, that is not media specific, time specific or geography specific. An experience that is neither broadcast nor narrowcast. Yet is still a shared experience, but that experience is fundamentally different, as for the first time the way in which that experience is consumed lies in the hands of the recipient, NOT the sender.

This means big things for the advertising and marketing industries. It means a change of mindset, a different thinking is required, as we can no longer control or stipulate that a communication has to be consumer OUR way. But be open to the fact that our communication will be consumed, when, where and how the recipient wants. The sooner that marketers get that this shared experience is a movable typing twittering tubing experience, not a media experience, the better.

More on that in the coming weeks…

in other news…

A fantastic dissection of HootSuite for the unitiated from my chum Gemma Went

10 Great Newbie Twitter Mistakes Made By Businesses from Mike Johansson on Social Media Today

And a great presentation from Coca-Cola on Social Media care of Robin Grant @ wearesocial

Monday Musings: #Like Minds & Social Communications

Welcome To Your Monday. Here are some musings for the week of March 1st (eek – it’s here already) 2010.

We kick off today with a couple of summaries from the fantastic #LikeMinds summit, which took place down in Exeter, England on Friday and Saturday last week. We Are Like Minds is a very interesting blend of business, culture, technology and marketing – all connected by (to use Mr Blanchard‘s term) – Social Communications (we are ditching social media for now…). You can check out Olivier’s summary of the summit here. After much internal debate (and some nagging from @drewellis) I had to turn down an invite, which may in hindsight been a mistake – as it looks like all involved had a great time, evidenced by the enthusiasm of my friend Gemma Went‘s summary of the conference here.

The Like Minds 2010 Team (via @thebrandbuilder)

Just to take up Olivier Blanchards point, as I think he has got it as close to right as we can at the moment, “Social Communications” may be an important change in our vernacular – as he make a very well made (and succinct) point – it was never about media in the first place. I truly believe we are not far away from (as I mentioned last week) that social “media” is going away. What we are seeing around us at the moment is not too dissimilar from the evolution of the printing press, radio, television or telephony, merely an evolution of communications.

We are right to point out that there is something of a cultural phenomenon going on here though, so for now to keep the “social” bit attached to the term seems appropriate, as this is a fundamentally different method of communications that what we have seen before, particularly in the business world. Never before has such a freedom of interaction been allowed to foster in business culture, navigating between hierarchy and rank to just connect people to people – finding like minds. That is something different. So for now “social communications” will have to do.

In other news:

“What the Hell is Social Media?” (Good question in the light of the above!) – A great little video wung its way into my reader this week via fellow Surbitonian and all round good guy Rax Lakhani.

A great explanation of integrated communications in the form of “The Big Social Media Marketing Plan” (or should that be communication?) from the pen of Penn Olson

And a fantastic productivity tool via @lifehacker called InBox2 which combines email and socialnetworking to better organise tasks and files in a lovely way. One to try out! (Windows only for now sadly, but a good web app for all you Mac’s out there).

Monday Musings: Social Media IS Going Away

Welcome to your monday, here are some musings for the week of February 22nd.

Kicking off the week with a cracker from a good friend of mine, Mr Jeff Pulver.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

In this video, (origin) filmed during the Real Time discussion at DLD10 which was held on January 25, 2010 in Munich, Germany, Jeff discusses the way that social media IS going away.

Other cracking reads this week include:

Read about how Facebook Mobile Is Now Bigger Than Twitter from Mr Brian Solis

Find out how 30 publishers are charging for online content from the gentleman Neville Hobson

A thoroughly insightful read from my friend and Ex-Boss John Bell on The Psychology of Influence and Sharing

And to round-up your Monday, get further accustomed with TheWayoftheWeb, and look into whether PR should pay bloggers to post?

That little lot should keep you occupied till Tuesday! Enjoy – J.

Monday Mocha Musing – Edition 2: Guest Post: Facebook’s fresh privacy fracas: By Lewis Webb (Shiny Red)

Good afternoon all. This week’s Monday Mocha Musing comes from friend and fellow social media expert Lewis Webb (@lewiswebb) from Shiny Red “ joint venture between The Red Consultancy and the founders of UK blog network Shiny Media.” Lewis has been working in Social Media since 2002 and has worked across a wide range of tech clients to more consumer brands.

Lewis’ post this week looks at the new content regulations of Facebook, and how it may effect your digital freedom, and copywrite protection.

And now… on with the post…

 

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, worldwide license to use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, scan, reformat, modify, edit, adapt, create derivative works and distribute, any user content you post on or in connection with the Facebook Service.

That’s paraphrased directly from Facebook’s new terms and conditions, which – as you can imagine – has caused not a small amount of discussion in the world of social media. From expelled students and  Royal breakups to its over-intrusive Beacon platform, Facebook has been courting controversy rather more than it might like to admit over the last 12 months. On top of this, the social network has yet to answer questions around data portability in a convincing way. While reception to its interoperability platform “Connect” was positive, their spokesperson at Le Web in Paris was rightly called out by Michael Arrington for paying little more than lip service to the idea of open standards in social media. At its core, Facebook remains a walled garden and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

These new T&Cs don’t help its cause one bit, but while those “in the know” will tut and shake their heads in despair, it’s unlikely that the average Facebook user will notice any difference at first – so why should they care? Well why not compare this attitude with Flickr’s “if it’s not public, it’s all yours” content policy – which, incidentally, terminates should you remove it from the site unlike the new FB small-print. It seems that in the world of social media there’s an ideological debate going on where companies on the statist Left want to control and take ownership of content, while the open-source Right takes a more libertarian approach to it all. Of course there’s a balance to be struck, but this recent development only strengthens the argument of those who shy away from social media for fear details about their lives being controlled by or falling into the wrong hands. But perhaps the social network should be more concerned about the “what-if” factor… as an established consumer brand around the world, if FB trips itself up through misuse of the new “agreement” any time soon, you can expect the backlash to go beyond the online media set to its core audience of (so-far) contented everyday users.

Thanks to Lewis for this, you can also find it on the Shiny Red Blog, and Lewis’ own musings at Social ProBiotic

Next Week – Nick Fell, Ogilvy One (@nickfell) will give us his musing. Check it out here, next monday.

Monday Mocha Musings: Edition 1 – The Art of Acknowledging a Subscriber

Welcome to Monday Mocha Musings:

Welcome to the first in our ongoing series of Monday Mocha Musings. Each monday afternoon we will endeavour to bring you a little tit-bit to chew over on the way home, or for the rest of the week from a guest writer.

This week we kick off with a ditte on the dangers of auto-tweeting, tweetbacks and auto-following on twitter, friendfeed and beyond, from Nurhafihz (@hafihz). A true marketing professional and a forward thinker in many realms on digital PR. Check him out here – http://www.hafihz.com/ or tweet him up.

Now… On with the post!

 

MMM Edition 1 – The Art of Acknowledging a Subscriber

By NurHafihz

This is what happens when cheap tactics, a lack of proper fundamentals in marketing education and having read a “marketing tip” all mash up:

Personalization becomes Frankensteinish.

I’m talking about replies to subscription, submission, followups. Take for example the Twitter subscription. If you’re like me, and your twitter community is quite a size, you might have noticed this strange phenomenon when you’ve subscribe to some people. You know something is going on when 9 out 10 that you have subscribed reply to you with this template:

Auto-Follow - Killing The fUN?

Hello there! Thank you for subscribing! I appreciate your time. Why not follow me at….

What the? I have followed you. Don’t push your luck by asking me to follow your site too. And you might have been remarkable if only you thanked me in that manner. If you used a standard algorithmic auto-reply, shame on you. If that was really you typing, here’s my alternative template for you:

Good <insert time of day he subscribed> , thanks for your support <insert twitter’s name>. I noticed you’re an expert in <insert twitter’s pitch>. What do you think of <insert question> ?

The Meaning: Personalization is a shorter door to bulding trust than frequency in communication. Don’t misuse it.

Thanks to NurHafihz for this week’s Monday Mocha Musing: This post can be found also at @hafihz‘s website – http://www.hafihz.com/school-of-marketing/the-art-of-acknowledging-a-subscriber/

Get Involved:

Would you like to write a Monday Mocha Musing for us? Let @jamespoulter know! or see the About page for more details.

Next Week – @lewiswebb guest writes a MMM – Check It Out Next Monday