So tomorrow is Social Media Day in case you didn’t know..  A global initiative according to Mashable which exists to help all of us around the planet be more connected.

While I understand much of the value in these big one-day initiatives..  Shouldn’t every day be Social Media Day?  Should we really be promoting the use of Social Media in isolation…  something separate that we talk about and raise awareness of just once a year?  Are we having a “read your email” day next week?  Or what about a “use the telephone” global conference the week after?

It wasn’t that long ago that many companies had a “custodian of the email” – someone in the organisation that did the email.  All email in or out was filtered through that person.  Sounds unthinkable now that every member of staff, across every division isn’t give access to email to communicate.  Why then do so many businesses still treat Social Media the same..  given to one person (often the wrong person!) or department.

I’m all for shouting about the value of social media, and for helping as many people and businesses see the full potential of it, helping achieve whatever objectives they have (that’s what we do!), but this isn’t a one-day thing..  a puppy is for life, not just for Christmas, and for Social Media to truly work for organisations it needs to be seen as just a new version of the telephone or email.  It’s just an evolution of how people want to talk.

This is the full version of an opinion piece that is featured in this month’s .NET magazine.

Something I am becoming increasingly aware of these days is the long list of educational achievements that appear on young people’s CVs.

Whilst these are impressive in their own right, I have to say that as the owner and managing director of a marketing design agency, qualifications are far from the top of my list of priorities when I’m looking to fill a vacancy within my own organisation.

I recently held a series of interviews to fill the position of Web Development Assistant at NSDesign, and I noted with interest the disparity in skillset that exists between the recent graduates and those who had gone straight from school into work.

On the whole I found the latter group to be far more competent and capable of handling the tasks that I would ordinarily task a junior web developer with, as opposed to the former group, even though they had been studying the subject full time at university for three or four years.

Like all employers, I want only the very best web designers and developers in my business to ensure smooth operations, and fundamentally to fulfil and exceed our customers’ expectations.   That is why I employ staff based on a whole variety of factors, rather than on their educational attainments alone.

As an employer, what I’m looking for is staff with the technical know-how, communication skills and initiative to do the job well. Whether a candidate has gained these skills through formal education is secondary – and young people interested in entering this industry should definitely bear this in mind.

Technical skills

First and foremost, what most employers are looking for in a web designer or developer is someone with the relevant skills to do the job properly.   A ‘typical’ day’s work for a web designer will involve anything from visual interface design, wire-framing and user experience planning to front end development and coding using the latest web design standards.   Employers want to see evidence that candidates have these skills and they are able to apply them in practice – and not just apply them, but apply them well.

When I was conducting interviews recently, I was eager to find out from recent graduates what they had been taught about at university.  From their feedback, it quickly became clear that web-design degrees focus on table-based layouts – often ignoring vital and fairly basic web design elements such as semantic mark up, standards and CSS.

By comparison, candidates with relevant work experience were well versed in these elements – they had the practical skills that I was looking for and would be able to hit the ground running.

Unlike other professions, web design doesn’t lend itself to the conventional university learning environment of classroom teaching and library textbooks.  In practice, it requires candidates to be familiar with the latest technologies, trends and software – that means practical skills-based learning, not immersing one’s self in a textbook.

One of our web designers – Paul – is university educated, having completed his Applied Graphics degree in 2005.  Paul says he gained a lot from his studies – he was taught about flash animation, 3d modelling and multimedia presentations and learned the basics of web design.  However, he admits that if he could go back in time he wouldn’t choose the same path again.

After three years working for NSDesign, Paul’s advice to others looking for a career like his is to  concentrate on building a strong portfolio to show an employer at the interview stage.  Rather than go to university, Paul thinks that the best way to learn the ins and outs of web design is through the wealth of web design tutorial websites, blogs and books on offer – these are all geared towards teaching people the principles of good design, high standards and technologies that are being used in the industry.

As an employer, I have to agree – the web provides a huge array of up-to-the-minute learning tools, and youngsters that take advantage of these and come up with the goods are by far more employable than those who have been learning about table-based layouts.

Customer service

Next up on my list of priorities for suitable candidates is an awareness of the importance of customer service standards.  I’m sure most employers will agree when I say that a business can have the best designers in the world, but if they are unable to communicate effectively with clients then that organisation is doomed to failure.  Key responsibilities for a designer include meeting with clients to discuss their requirements, deciphering briefs, and delivering training on how to operate websites, blogs and social media networks.

NSDesign’s Designer and front end developer, Matt, briefly studied graphic design at college but dropped out after a year, opting to teach himself the tools of the trade instead.    He describes himself as a bit of a jack of all trades, having gone on to work in a variety of different jobs, including retail, manufacturing and call centre jobs, learning about web design in his spare time.

Out of all of our staff, I can quite honestly say that Matt is the one that excels at customer service – much of his work involves meeting with clients to discuss their aims and objectives and to train them on WordPress and other content management systems.

At first glance, Matt’s CV may seem quite eclectic, but his experience in the world of work has been absolutely invaluable to his ability to be excellent at his job and contribute to this business.  His background has given him the confidence and business acumen he needs to do conduct his role effectively.

Rather than being a drawback, Matt’s lack of formal education is in fact his biggest selling point – he’s used his time productively to gain business experience and practical expertise that really pays off from the point of view of an employer and from our clients.

Ambition and initiative

Last, but certainly not least, what I’m looking for in a candidate is an ability to show initiative at work.  As is the case in all industries, one of the biggest pressures on employers these days is time.  The majority of my working week is spent outside the office – delivering workshops, meeting clients and following up business development opportunities, so what I need is staff who can deliver high quality websites and designs on receipt of a tight brief.

I was thoroughly impressed with one candidate I interviewed recently when he showed me his own portfolio site with various personal and mock client websites that he had worked on.  He had no formal training, but his dedication and quality of work spoke volumes, and he was the one I ended up hiring.  I could see from the quality of work he showed me that he was ambitious and that he loved this kind of work.  Nothing beats that – showing that you are willing to go the extra mile really speaks volumes at the interview stage.

The same goes for one of our web developers Martin.  He started out in the web industry after teaching himself about the trade through books, tutorials and web forums.  Entirely self-taught, Martin has now been at NSDesign for five years.  Now that he has established his career in web design, he has decided to embark on an Open University course to obtain a BSc degree in Information Technology.

I’ve always admired Martin’s ambition and enthusiasm for his work, and his desire go back to university now speaks volumes about his dedication.  It is interesting because Martin has gone full circle – only now, after teaching himself about web design and succeeding in establishing himself as a web developer, does he feel it is important to provide solid educational foundations for his learning.

Whilst I’m confident that Martin can give his job 110% without a formal education, this recent move demonstrates his commitment to his career – from an employer point of view there is nothing better than that.

Dell has appointed a new president and chief commercial officer following the recent resignation of Paul Bell, who will retire as president of public and large enterprise on 30 March.

Steve Felice will take up the reins in a couple of months. His remit is to lead the company in selling more packages of technology products and services to customers, including web hosting and cloud services.

Felice will look after all customer business segments, including public, large enterprise, small and medium enterprises and consumer.

Dell hopes that the new appointment will help it to develop and market its products to create a sales organisation that is “more customer-focused, more collaborative and better able to deliver innovative and practical solutions that meet customers’ needs.”

Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell, told one industry website: “These changes will enhance our sales and marketing efforts, bringing us even closer to our customers and increasing the speed, agility and responsiveness of every aspect of our business.”

“Steve has been a trusted colleague for more than 12 years and shares my passion to serve our customers. Under his leadership of Dell’s sales and marketing organization, I am excited about the many opportunities ahead of us.”

Doubtless the emphasis will be stronly on internet marketing.

Organisations across the UK could reduce their carbon emissions by half if they moved their data storage to the cloud.

According to a new study published by the Carbon Disclosure Project, companies could achieve considerable cost savings and carbon reductions by 2020 by migrating their IT systems to shared data networks.

The study found that many companies will not take too much convincing to make the move. Many of those surveyed are already planning a move to the cloud and plan to increase their adoption of cloud computing from 10% to nearly 70% of their information technology by the start of the next decade.

The Carbon Disclosure Project says that companies who do this could save millions of pounds, with that figure running into billions in the case of larger companies. This is because organisations that use cloud computing buy less hardware and use servers that are located elsewhere, which cuts down on running costs.

Some people argue that the cloud also reduces the amount of time that it takes for a company to start trading.

Paul Stemmler, from Citigroup, told one news website: “Carbon reduction is one driver, but not the primary driver. “The primary driver is time to market. Developers used to take 45 days to get new servers, but in the internal cloud infrastructure that we operate in our own private network, it takes just a couple of minutes.”

Hey y’all it’s Thea here again talking money today! Over the last five or six weeks, both here in Scotland and in Cannes, I must have been to around four or five talks about Crowdfunding or Crowdsourcing.

Each time I go, I get slightly more inspired to give a go to a campaign of my own to complete the film I started making in 2006, but continue to have one or two reservations about it…more for the effort required to do a good campaign than the lack of belief that it will work!

Yesterday morning was a Comms Breakfast talk hosted by Michelle Rodger the co-founder of a new Scotland-based, Crowdfunding platform Bloom.

Before we go on talking about that, let us start with the definition of each term because though they are often used interchangably they are  slightly different in definition and aim.

Wikipedia describes Crowdfunding as “the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations”.

Whereas Crowdsourcing is “the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to an group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.”

Crowdsourcing, (a term first coined just a few years back (in 2006) by Jeff Howe in a Wired Magazine piece called “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”) is more geared toward user generated solutions or content. Funding as it sounds deals more with the monetary aspect.

GO GO MAKE IT HAPPEN!

In Cannes @ MIPCOM, I had the chance to attend a small talk by CEO of what is arguably the second most well known Crowd Funding site – Indiegogo. Slava Rubin presented a lightning fast talk – starting with a great video of an example of what could be funded on Indiegogo (see video here Satarii) – which is practically anything (even IVF treatment or funerals!)

Ruben defined Crowd Funding as “a lot of people getting together who have a passion to make one idea happen”. (He ads that often you’re getting something in return, a “perk” or reward or something).

Slava says there are “four reasons anyone funds anything in life”:

1) …they care about the person, the cause or the campaign

2) …they want the perks – the products,  the service, the experience, the limited edition item, the ‘behind the scenes’,…

3)…they want to be part of a group, or something bigger than themselves

4) profit

The last one was not considered in this occasion, because it’s so hard to fund through the crowd anything for profit (“practically illegal” he says).

Slava Cites Factors in a Successful GoGo Campaign:

1) An Honest Pitch – be sure that yours is personal and engaging

2) A Video – Campaigns perform 122% better if they have a video on it. Note: not a trailer but a personal message (stating what’s in # 1)

3) The Right Deadline – Choose the time from 1-120 days. Choose a goal that’s fit for purpose, optimise for as short as possible while still being relevant and working. The average is 30-70 days.

4) Have Unique Perks – Make the perks unique, creative, low, high and medium. Make sure they’re not something someone can pick up too easily (if at all) elsewhere!

5) (like #1) Honest and Engaging copy in the campaign that is inline with your video and pitch. “This is who I am”…state your aim because, first and foremost, people want to know WHO they’re funding more than the film/project/product etc.

Slava’s Other Suggestions:

- be proactive – if you have four more people on your team, you’ll raise 70% more money then if you try to go it alone.

- do many updates, more than thirteen constitutes 65% more money raised than if you do five or less updates

- your number one tool for promotion is email, then Facbeook, then Twitter. Effectively “email destroys FaceBook and Facebook destroys Twitter” in terms of engagement and calls to action.

- be consistent – you need to keep asking, at least seven times or you won’t get it (the support). Be super direct. State clearly in the subject line “31 Days to 100,000 Euros for this Movie”.

He closes talking about “Social Proof” in the first 30% or 40% of monies donated is likely to be your family and friends (and presumably their spheres of influence) but as you get passed that you start getting what he calls “stranger dollars”. People who don’t know you who will start to contribute to your campaign.

The whole idea of Crowdfunding as I said at the start of this is intriguing. I’ve seen incredibly successful campaigns, and some much less so. I don’t know about you but seems every week I am contributing to someone’s film, or album or project of some description.

Though there are a few hundred of these types of sites, it’s exciting to see one launching right here soon, in Scotland, called BLOOM – Venture Catalyst (I love that last bit!)

If you have some money to spare, why not find some projects to be a part of?

Incidentally here are my Three favourites:

PledgeMusic – I’ve contributed to at least six albums on here this past year.
KickStarter – I have contributed to around four films this year on KickStarter.
Indiegogo – I’ve contributed to one (or possibly two) film on this platform this past year.

Special Mention has to go to:
Bloom – the one I’ll keep an eye out this coming year!

Maybe early in the New Year I’ll create a campaign of my own to complete my film and we’ll put the theory to the test…Watch this space!

So a while back I wrote a wee blog about QR Codes. Well, I thought I’d follow that one up a bit, as last week I attended the October New Media Breakfast about them.

The speaker of the day was Jim Divine from Cyberlogo.

Citing the rise of handsets, Jim urged the use of QR Codes, specifically ones containing logos, to connect with clients.

Some great examples were shown -  such as Jim’s own Twitter-inspired cyberlogo (Pic right), one for T3 Magazine, and one for Cake Decor (Pic left: a chocolate chip looking logo) and a make-up company too.

Possibilities are endless.

BEST IN SCAN

If you’re looking for a good scanner (of the many out there) – Jim recommends i-nigma. (I immediately downloaded it and began scanning on my Blackberry. Worked a treat).

Or if you’re an iPhone person Optiscan might be the one for you. (From iTunes: “Optiscan lets you create, scan and share QR codes straight from your device”.)

Like the sound of that.

One of the great advantages of these QR codes is their versatility. You don’t have to link to just a site, you can link to your V-card details, a calendar event, an SMS or a direct dialer to a phone number.

Another advantage is you can, through many QR code creators, update the link as time goes to keep it fresh. There will often be a charge of this, so get your initial code from a place that will allow changes if it’s one you’re going to be updating.

Personally speaking, I find QR Codes challenging. They don’t always work for me and that can be frustrating. In fact on this page on Jim’s site I couldn’t even get them to load! That said, with Gary’s iPhone they often worked better. (So more fool me for having a Blackberry I guess).

Finally if you are considering using QR Codes yourself, take a look at this piece in the Drum recently to make sure you’re not ‘doing it wrong’.

On Wednesday I’ll be speaking to a group of marketing students at Napier University. They want to discuss how marketing is being done through social media.

In our training workshops we quote a misconception about social media. “A lot of people think it’s another channel for marketing. It isn’t”. And then we explain the importance of “a conversation” and a fundamental shift in the way you interact with customers and get your message across.

It strikes me that as soon as you think of social media as a form of marketing, you’re doing it wrong. Social media at its best is an attitude, an ethos, a way of life right through the core of the company – like the writing through a stick of rock, where you’re engaging with your customers on instinct.

Of course, you have aims and objectives. But good social media keeps these hidden. The consumer should never be able to see your intentions, your marketing fingerprints shouldn’t be visible.

Apple is a great example. They opened a new store at Braehead recently. Most companies would have promoted this heavily and discounted on price. They didn’t. I received an e-mail from Apple telling me the store was opening. The mainstream media covered this. On the day Apple employees at the store held a ceilidh in full view of everyone before the doors opened.

What did they do on social media?

Nothing.

What did the crowds who turned up do on social media?

Everything. They wrote blogs, tweeted, shared pictures and video and discussed the whole experience.

It strikes me that most businesses’ marketing objectives for the opening of a new store would look like this…

i) Get the person to come to the store

ii) Get them to buy something

I reckon Apple’s objective would have been something like this…

i) Get the person to tell someone else about the store opening

Who’s doing the better job of marketing?

Even if the traditional company achieves big footfall and shifts products..at what cost has this been achieved? There’s the costs of the campaign leading up to launch, then the cost of discounting.

The Apple approach doesn’t cost anything. It gets more people into the store and more people paying full price for the products.

The ceilidh and chanting the Apple employees took part in before the opening of their Braehead store wasn’t the intense “team bonding” session I originally through it was. Instead, it’s extremely subtle marketing. It’s not about what they’re doing..it’s carefully designed to make me, as a consumer do something for them. In this case, the blog I wrote and the video I shot of all the staff coming out to meet the customers.

It’s me telling other people about the store opening via social media and I was convinced I was doing this because I wanted to.

Now I realise Apple made me want to.

And I’ve got another piece of insight because of my role as Gadget Guru on STV’s “The Hour”. We’d contacted Apple’s PR team several times over the years asking for product demos we could use on the show – iPods, iPhones, iPads etc. They never played ball. I thought maybe our show wasn’t big enough for them but it turns out they hardly ever let anyone preview their products. I thought they’d forgotten all about us but just before the Apple store opened at Braehead I received an e-mail from their PR team.

Would the STV cameras like to attend the opening of the new store “and speak to the crowds who’ve turned out about why they’ve queued through the night and how excited they are”?

Doesn’t that speak volumes about this company’s approach?! Anyone else would have promised behind the scenes access, an interview with the management, maybe even an exclusive free gift. Not Apple. All they’ll do is let the media speak to some of their biggest fans! And although STV stayed away on the day, several other outlets did turn up and that’s exactly the coverage they got.

Fascinating.

No other business is like Apple. But we can learn from them. And this demonstrates that if a business has got things right at its core, then they’ll have success on social media without typing a single word.

Hello ya’ll Thea here again. As I promised in my last blog Social Media Week Wrap Up, here is the transcript of my first (and possibly the last, ha!) Social Media talk…“10 Quick Tips for LinkedIn Success”.

I started by taking a show of hands of how many were on LinkedIn (LI). Pretty much everybody – as you’d imagine. Then, I asked how many felt like they were utilizing it to its fullest potential (because frankly, most people, in my opinion, aren’t). About three people raised their hands. This talk wasn’t for them! It was my hope that the vast majority of the audience would go away with even just one tidbit to try at home later.

So if you’re not a LinkedIn expert, then this one’s for you. Starting at the top here we go…

(1) MAKE YOUR HEADLINE NEWSWORTHY

Make yourself interesting. Avoid sticking “Business Development Manager at ACME WIDGETS” as your headline. That tells me absolutely nothing about you or your company. If you don’t change the default text, LI just uses what you put for your most recent job entry.

You just have to remember you’re more than your JOB TITLE – so consider giving a bit more information. Imagine you were walking up to someone at a networking event, how would you introduce yourself and describe what you do to them in an interesting way?

Also your headline is a key search area on your profile – so use it wisely.

(2) CHANGE THE DEFAULT TEXT

Do you have a website? Does it have a name? If so, then put that. The default text in LinkedIn merely says “Company Website” or “Blog” on your profile (see above).

Honestly, I can’t believe how many of my contacts haven’t bothered to change the default text there, and are thus they’re missing out more key search optimization. As in the example above of someone who has more than 500 connections. Room for improvement there, my friend…

So if your profile says “Company Website” – or “Blog” then please do me a favor, go home and change it to its real name OK?

(3) PICTURE PERFECT

Stating the obvious here but don’t leave it blank (i.e. the grey default avatar), or stick your logo in as your profile pic – save that for your company page.

Instead use a good, professional headshot whenever possible.

LinkedIn is not Facebook – so avoid your holiday snap, a cropped picture from a night out with your friends, and always remember that first impressions matter.

So put your best FACE forward…

(4) DYNAMIC PROFILE

Don’t make your profile read like your CV – with bullet points listing the tasks you do. Ditch the dryness and find engaging things to say about yourself, your job and or company. Use positive wording, correct spelling and good grammar. (Write it in Word and paste it in if needs be.)

Make people WANT to connect with you. A good example, and I am not just saying this because he pays me – is NSDesign’s head honcho Gary Ennis. His profile tells a story, not just lists a bunch of things he’s done or achieved. It has personality (see the last paragraph – magic, juggling, geeks etc – you get a good snapshot of what he’s about…) and I believe it makes you want to connect with someone when they do go that extra paragraph if you will.

And speaking of connecting – that’s what LinkedIn is all about…so when you do….

(5) ALWAYS BE PERSONAL

If you’re going to add someone to your network, it’s good to start off with a comment on how you came across them, where you met (if you have met somewhere), or how you’re connected if by a group, contacts in common and so forth.

One thing to avoid is using “friend” for someone you’ve never met or spoken to.

Even if you have met, never leave the default text - “I’d like to add you to my professional network” – please, please, please, always be personal with a message. It only takes a minute.

One guy added me recently. I didn’t know him. We’re not in the same industry. He didn’t put a message and he called me a “friend”. For principle, I hit “ignore”. I know not everyone is as picky as me about this, but equally I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are!

If you want to connect with someone, then be worth connecting to in your request!

(6) GO ON GROUPS

If you don’t know a person, but want to connect with them, find groups they’re on and join and begin genuinely engaging on them.

Groups are an amazing opportunity to learn information, find jobs, become aware of opportunities and events – as well as to connect to people who you might not have ability to get in front of so easily otherwise.

Local groups are a fantastic source of getting relevant information, sourcing contacts, various specialist recommendations etc.

Recently on one of our local groups, there was a post offering a funded trip, for a content conference in Cannes called MIPCOM. I replied and I just returned (blogs about that to follow here soon!)

This was an opportunity I’d never have been aware of had I not been actively engaging and monitoring that group.

So definitely check out relevant groups to your interests or sector.

(7) RECOMMENDATIONS

You can use LinkedIn to get past OR present colleagues, suppliers, customers or bosses – to say a few nice things about you.

Some people I’ve come across have NO recommendations and others seem to go to the other end of the spectrum and have zillions.

For me, I personally would opt for few quality recommendations, over quantity but to each their own on this one and it may differ according to your sector.

(8) TAGS

Only recently, I discovered that if you go into your Contacts you can tag them. You may wonder why you’d want to do that, but say you were having an event in Glasgow and you wanted to message all of your contacts that were local, you can type in “Glasgow” and it shows you all the people you’ve tagged with Glasgow and you VOILA you can message them all in a ‘oner’.

Please don’t use this feature to SPAM people or you’ll quickly start losing connections!

(9) DATABASE DOWNLOAD

Has anyone ever lost their phone, or their contacts due to an email malfunction? I updated my software on my Blackberry a few months back and overwrote my entire address book accidentally (nightmare!). But with LinkedIn’s contacts area, you can export all your contacts (via a variety of formats) and import to your computer email program and/or into you phone’s address book.

I highly recommend periodic downloads of your contacts. Just because, you never know…

(10)  GET CONNECTING!

My top and final tip is just get out there and start connecting. Like anything in life, you get out of LINKEDIN what you put into it. It’s work to build up a solid network online just as it is to do so OFF. But if done right – it can lead to more contacts, mentors, suppliers, clients and maybe even friends.

Thank you.

PS: Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn but only if you make your request personal

Google will kill off ten of its experimental services as part of what it is calling a “fall spring-clean”.

On its blog, the internet giant wrote: “Technology improves, people’s needs change, some bets pay off and others don’t. Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features.”

Amongst those being scrapped include Aardvark, the social question-and-answer service that allows users to submit questions to people in their social networks.

Google acquired Aardvark for US$50m (￡30m) around 18 months ago. The service was founded by a team of ex-Google employees.

Other services to be closed down include Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Google Pack and Image Labeller.

Meanwhile, Google Maps will no longer support Flash APIs and Google Web Security will cease to be on sale, although it will continue to support existing customers.

Google says that shutting down these services will improve the overall Google experience. All the Googlers working on the soon-to-close projects will be moved over to “higher-impact products”, according to the organisation. These products are expected to include Google+, as well as web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs.

The news follows the shut-down of Google Labs a few months ago.

Jessica Ennis wants to win a gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

That’s her goal and I’m convinced she’ll achieve it.

What’s interesting is the work she’s doing right now in order to make sure she does.

We’ve had some insight into her regime these last few days because she’s given some interviews to promote the event.

Alongside all the gruelling training sessions and careful diet she sticks to, what’s fascinating me is her mental preparation.

There’s still more than a year to go until that heptathlon gets underway but even now, Ennis is being incredibly disciplined in her thinking. 

In an interview with The Guardian she revealed she hasn’t let herself picture the stadium yet, but “probably will next year but not until the latter stages before the competition”.  Note how specific she’s being about this – she’s actually decided when she’ll allow herself to start thinking about it.  There’s a level of detail and a commitment to the decisions she’s made which puts her apart from most of us.

She also made it clear that despite the attention and comments she gets in the street, from the media and even her fiancée at home she firmly keeps her focus. “I do not think about it” she says.

I’ve never sat in front of a life coach but I’ve thumbed through enough books in Waterstones to know that “positive thinking”, “visualisation” and “goal setting” can be big parts of achieving success in sport, business and life in general.

But that interview with Jessica Ennis really hammers home the discipline required in your thinking to get what you want, even months in advance of a particular event.

Without turning ourselves into machines, there’s a lot we can learn from her and her Team GB colleagues.