Hey y’all it’s Thea here again with my third, and dare I say “final”, Cannes Diary from my first visit to MIPCOM earlier this month (Incidentally here are blogs # 1 and # 2 – if you missed them…)

Today I thought I’d talk to you about the YouTube presentation at MIPCOM – called “The Next Generation”.

Most of us, particularly those who are on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, watch at least one video on a daily basis. Well if the stats (below) in Patrick Walker’s talk are anything to go by anyway…

Since we at NSDesign love our “stats” – both reading them and sharing them, I thought this would be a good time and place to share some staggering ones with you:

ON YOUTUBE THERE ARE:

• 3 billion views per day. (a 50% increase from the year before). BTW That constitutes to about half of the world’s population watching a video a day.
• 600 million unique world wide views per month (from 31 countries and 40+languages)
• 400 million youtube views daily on mobile (doubled in the past year)
• 350 million devices that youtube is enabled for (smart phones, smart televisions, game consoles – “that’s increasing dramatically”)
• 100 million times a week – “youtube is social” – getting shared (an example is…)
• 300 years worth of embedded video is consumed on Facebook every day
• 600 tweets per minute contain a youtube video link
• 20,000 partners, specifically revenue-generating partners on youtube
• 48 hours of video is uploaded every single minute of every single day

 Youtube’s aim at MIPCOM seemed to be to align themselves with more revenue-generating partners, and possibly to promote their True View (skip-able) advertising and Playbook (which I’ve had for months and months, but like so many e-books I download, still sits on my desktop gathering the proverbial cyber dust).

Video is where it’s at and anyone who is a content creator of any type should be utilising YouTube. Businesses, musicians, video/tv/film makers – to name but a few – should all have a presence on there and be adding content to it regularly. But like everything in life, it’s a matter of finding the time to go from idea, to filming, to editing, to uploading, and only then promoting it.

Do you have a video channel? How often do you update it? How many subscribers do you have? If you subscribe to our channel, we’ll subscribe to yours! [Well if it's original content you're creating. I'm not gonna subscribe to people who only post babies singing or dancing, or cats being cute...]

Hey everyone it’s Thea here again! Apologies for the delay in following up last week’s Cannes Diary # 1 about the entertainment conference called MIPCOM.

While all those big, important individuals and companies spent time shmoozing, wheeling and dealing with each other, I spent much of my MIPCOM time in countless talks.

In many ways, apart from a few key contacts I made, and the weather, the talks were my favorite part of MIP. There was no pressure to “sell” myself or indeed my “content” – but rather the role was one of spectator or even sponge.

It was an amazing privilege to be in big and small rooms, gaining insights from visionaries and leaders of some of the biggest brands in the world, oh, and the odd celebrities too!

Below are some keynote and general talk highlights for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed the talk when Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos of (the rather controversial of late) Netflix took the stage with Mike Lang from Miramax.

Sarandos’ stand out quote for the talk for me personally was “If you want to see what people really want, look at what they’re stealing,” Then, the theory, I guess, is to give the legitimate, affordable and accessible (across different devices) content to them and they’ll opt for it rather than piracy.

In a slightly new direction, Netflix (most comparable thing to it in the UK is Lovefilm), is to create their own content. At this point Sarandos gives a friendly nod to his good friend Stevie Van Zandt (Soprano Actor and member of Springsteen’s E-Street band) – who’s starring in their newly announced show Lilyhammer. The trailer looks great and the show will be premiering on Netflix itself (and hopefully they’ll find a UK outlet to let us folks outside the US, Canada and Latin America view it too!)

Miramaxi’s Lang specifically discussed the company’s bold, revised future with its movie library of 700 motion pictures, has received 284 Academy Award nominations and 68 Oscars, including four Best Picture Awards.

What both men emphasised are the changes that are constantly taking place in terms of how, when, where content is being viewed, and the need to continually innovate and adapt. This actually was the theme for most talks at MIP. This, and personalization/customization, and collaboration.

Viacom’s Robert Bakish, gave an interesting talk about his company Viacom and its new channels like the female-oriented Blink, and its core channels like Comedy Central and of course not forgetting the erroneously named MTV (when was the last time you saw a music video on MTV? Sheesh don’t get me started…That’s a rant of mine best saved for a different time and place).

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the insights of Bakish and his take on the new demographics, new distribution models and new metrics stating his channel’s mission is to continually re-invent itself or risks facing irrelevancy.

It was his talk I first learned the term “millennials” (just another term for Generation Y), their key demographic at MTV. Millennials are ambitious, team-oriented, more self assured and my personal favorite – “pathologically social”. They crave “authentic reality” – hence their recently-launched UK hit TV show Geordie Shore. Check out the stats it boasts in the image above! Staggering.

Another fantastic talk was Fox network’s President of Entertainment, Kevin Reilly, who gave an interesting talk about things like creativity (citing a 2010 IBM poll of 1500 CEOs say “creativity” was the #1 “leadership competency to successfully navigate an increasingly complex world.”) as well as seeing failures as success (a favourite topic of mine)

“Success is often built on the shoulders of failure – from which new configurations emerge. There was an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal about some American companies rewarding employees for bold failures in an effort to spur innovation. It cites a study that shows the most successful people also tend to be those with the most failures. The rewards are meant to reinforce what was learned from the failure, rather than sending the message: ‘You screwed up’.”

He goes on to discuss how “social” (meaning tv, media et al) is changing our viewing habits (again a major theme throughout the entire week at MIPCOM).

“There is a reason that Facebook just kicked social TV into high gear. As one blogger said: ‘When people start consuming content through Facebook, it enables a new world of friend-to-friend discovery that is potentially worth more than any promo campaign on the planet.’ In other words, better than any network today can provide.”

Halfway through the session, Reilly brought out 24-star Kiefer Sutherland and Heroes creator Tim Kring to discuss the new Fox show Touch.

As geekish as this is to admit, that half hour (or whatever it was) being a mere yard or two from Sutherland was a definite highlight of my week in Cannes. His show Touch (trailer here) does  look amazing, but sadly we’ll not get to see it until next Spring!

A definite one to watch out for!

One of the few woman speakers I saw at MIP, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Disney’s CEO Anne Sweeney talk. Dubbed “the most powerful woman in entertainment”, Sweeney cited some amazing stats about social media – especially Twitter usage.

“According to a recent study by Deloitte, TV shows are the most common conversation topics around the world – and the subject of more than a billion tweets this year alone.“

(In fact of all my tweets at MIPCOM, my quoting that stat was probably my most retweeted tweet!)

Sweeney went on to describe television as the most powerful medium in the world predictingthat “Tomorrow it will also be the most personal. There is no one future for television. It will be defined differently for everyone.”

We’re starting to see that happen already, of course and that’s a good thing, I think.

A final highlight was seeing the World Premiere  of another new ABC show called Missing (trailer here) which, like Touch, looks amazing! Even better though, after the pilot aired in the Grand Auditorium, it was a Q&A with with writer/creators, stars and so forth. Once that ended, we were bussed down the road to the “Red Carpet” event at a nearby hotel. That was the most glitzy moment of the week. I was able to take a bunch of photos and exchange a few words with stars Ashley Judd and Cliff Curtis (Left) (where I made just about the biggest fool of myself, and that’s all I’m saying about that!)

 Anyway I think that is enough sharing for one day. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to MIPCOM next year with a project of my own next year or simply to hear more killer keynotes! I know I said in my first Cannes Diary that there were three installments but maybe two’s enough? What do you think?

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.

Hey y’all, it’s Thea here again. Earlier this year I penned a few diary blogs from my trip home to the Silicon Valley – in particular to a mobile conference at Stanford and a day trip to Google. So it occurred to me to do something similar for my recent trip to the South of France.

First, it is probably worth pointing out that the opportunity to go to Cannes arose via social media, LinkedIn, in particular.

You see, I came across a post on a group that the opportunity for a (partially) “funded” trip to MIPCOM in Cannes presented itself.

For those of you, who like me, weren’t aware of what MIP was – it’s conference that caters toward content of all types – largely that meant television, but also games, films, technology and even social media applications too.

You’d be amazed at just how big this event was. The absolute biggest global content producers/promoters were there – Disney, Sony, YouTube, Fox, NBC International – to name just a few.

One thing that became readily apparent was that big or small – we’re all in the same boat vying for unique ways to capture consumers through content and find ways to monetize it. The second thing that was most apparent was just how challenging that is becoming for all of us – the niche companies like mine, the middle ground and even for the big players too.

TV’s ALL ABOUT THE SECOND SCREEN AND THE SOCIAL

A few of the top buzz terms discussed at MIP were – “Transmedia” and also the concept of the “second screen”. I’ll save the former for another day, but generally speaking, on the notion of second screens – the primary screen would be a television, and the secondary might be a computer, tablet, or mobile phone. Yet these days there it’s been cited that there are more handsets than televisions around the world – so one might question if television has now become the second screen. (That too is another discussion for another day).

One statistic being banded about was how something like 60-65% of American teenagers were watching television but doing something else at the same time.

Picture above – watching my father’s Californian TV on mine in Glasgow.

Well, I’d argue that it’s not just the teenagers…

Months ago on here, I blogged about the Evolution of my TV viewing, through my slingbox player, wherever I am in the world, I can watch TV with my father who is at home in California. Most days we view shows together, while having a Skype chat window open to discuss what we’re viewing. Did I mention that my dad will be eighty on his next birthday? So it’s not all about the kids, folks.

Technology these days enables us to engage with others while shows are airing – allowing us to vote, discuss, play along with etc.

Though it’s possible in a variety of ways now it certainly looks like it will become even more common place in the coming year or so especially if Anthony Rose has anything to say about it.

Anthony is the man behind Kazaa and the relaunch of BBC’s iPlayer. He is now poised to launch the “next big thing” – Zeebox - a real-time platform for social TV viewing.

Initially starting as an iPad app – you’ll be able to following with your friends and contacts on Twitter and Facebook, and tag content, but as it progresses, broadcasters may have widgets for certain programs.

At some point, due to your own preferences and tags, advertising will be targeted to you, and it’s likely that you’ll be able to buy things straight from it too.

Zeebox – is set to launch any time now. We’ll see if it lives up to its hype.

In any event, to a content creator and consumer like myself, it is an exciting and socially vibrant time.

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

Hey guys, Thea here again. Further to my earlier blog about Social Media Week having kicked off, I thought I’d do a follow up, a short wrap up, if you will.

It was a very busy week for us NS Social Media types – what with us, like most people, having full time jobs and yet still trying to get out there to participate as much as we could.

Like any festival, conference or the like – there is a danger of being “too much” on. In my opinion, life is better with quality not quantity, but that’s just me. In many cases, there were things happening concurrently, and I’d want to be at both – which is, of course, impossible.

As luck would have it though – the vast majority of the sessions were recorded and streamed, so it was possible to watch LIVE while at work, or later at a more convenient time.

Wednesday night Gary took part in an event at Glasgow’s Film City called Socially adept or socially inept? How to do, learn and use social media for business. It was, as ever, an engaging and informative talk from him – this time recounting some of the stats from our recent Social Media ROI survey. There are a few of my snaps on our NSDesign flickr page – if you’re interested.

SM STATS

There were some surprising results in the survey like: Nearly 40% of the Scottish businesses doing Facebook don’t think it’s useful. Ironically, the winner was Twitter – which most people don’t initially “get” – but was found to be the most used and useful.

Another key social media tool was blogging which 64% of our respondents found useful (that’s quite a bit more than the aforementioned Facebook stat).

Also on the bill were: our cultural client, Clare McLeod @IntermezzoArts, who uses social media to promote the arts, Inner Ear’s @dougalperman discussed having a plan, then doing the campaign, and most essentially recommended using tools for measurement (an interesting example of SM tool CO TWEET was given), and finally the ever-controversial social knowledge authority @MurrayBuchanan recounted the tale of how he grew his Facebook followers to the thousands only to dump them down to just his nearest and dearest. (Frankly, after years of doing social media daily, I can’t really blame him,…)

Thursday morning I gave my own social media bite-sized talk for The Business Banter crowd. I was speaking on my 10 Quick Tips for LinkedIn Success – which I’ll no doubt post as a blog later this week. It was a nerve-racking experience but overall pretty fun. I might just do it again. My fellow presenters all did a fantastic job to amuse and enlighten us.

With each talk I attend I usually walk away from it with some tip, suggestion, nugget or thought. It’s often something as simple as checking out a website, or a suggestion on how to do social media more effectively.

Friday I was in work all day but rushed to Skypark to hear the closing keynote of Social Media Week, delivered over Skype, from Don Tapscott. Don is the author or Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006) and a new book Macrowikinomics – Rebooting Business and the World. While it was interesting, I have to admit it was all a bit over my head. I ended up leaving Skypark feeling that it was all a bit anti-climactic. Of course the excitement raged on, in town, but after a long week of work and Social Media all I really wanted was some food and to put my feet up.

It was a good experience over all. I got to catch up with many of my peers from across the Central Belt. I heard some of them talk and share their stories. Like most people I didn’t get to half of the talks I wanted to see but thankfully, as I said, there’s always the LiveStream. Speaking of which, off to finish watching the talk on Responsive Design.

Let us know if you attended any talks. Which were your favorites? What was the best bit of advice you walked away with?

Hey everyone, Thea here again. I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had much time to write blogs at all. This week is Social Media Week taking place all over the world. Glasgow, it has been claimed to be the biggest outside the USA. That doesn’t surprise me as many ‘weegies’ do seem pretty clued-up and passionate on their tweets, likes and shares.

As I was working in NSDesign on Monday, I didn’t make it along to any events the events. Today, however, I made up for some lost time by attending many talks.

The first few were at the Glasgow Film Theatre and part of filmcamp Glasgow. Caught the tail end of a talk on Crowd Sourcing in today’s film-making arena (which was pretty apt for me as I’ve been contemplating a Kick Starter campaign for my own little project).

After that it was BlipFoto.com founder @joetree. I love the idea of this little, Bafta-winning Scottish dotcom. It’s an engaging site whereby you upload one (and only one) picture every single day as a sort of video journal.

I tried it a week ago or two ago, uploaded one photo, and have not done it again since,…but I suspect I could (and will) get into it.

Being a fan of Flickr already, this appeals for my joy of taking pics on the go.

Joe also had pretty impressive stats of usage of his site (as seen above) – which most of us site owners would envy…

Just before 5pm it was a mad dash down to Bothwell Street for Future Forward, an event hosted by our friend Benedetto Bordone (@tlcstudios).

There were four, interesting talks on the night and some good banter too. I took a wee shot of Hera Hussain - in action at twenty one years old, and tweeting less than a year she’s taken to it like a duck to water.

The whole day’s been great. It’s always interesting to hear my fellow Social Media peers’ experiences, thoughts, recommendations, best practices and so forth.

Plus one of the speakers, Jim Henderson, a business coach, even gave me a book – Positioning the Battle for Your Mind. Sounds right up my street, and I do love a FREE book, so thanks Jim!

Wish I could spend the day attending more talks tomorrow, but alas, there’s working to be done at NS HQ – so I shall resign myself to the one, rather special, evening talk from our very own head honcho – Gary Ennis. His talk - Socially adept or socially inept? How to do, learn and use social media for business. On Thursday it will be my turn. My first ever Social Media talk. It’s on the subject of LinkedIn, delivered early on Thursday morning for Business Banter. It’s FREE, short and sweet, if you’re up early and want to glean a few tips on the business networking site. I am just one of half a dozen speakers – so it’s bound to be a great coffee morning in Esquires in Glasgow. Hope to see one or two of you there. Better go, I’ve got to put the finishing touches on my talk.

If you’re in the Central Belt of Scotland it’s not too late to sign up for some talks. Learn more about Social Media Week Glasgow – and why not take part.

At a recent panel session at the Turing Festival, I commented on how the use of Forums had diminished lately, seeing them replaced by social media alternatives – namely Facebook and LinkedIn groups, this was instantly “tweeted” by a few people:

@iandubya Ian Watson
#tfest businesses increasingly not running forums on their one sites – using Linkedin, Facebook etc.. @nsdesign
26 Aug

Following the conference, I was contacted by Barry Hynd who runs the excellent Scottish Business Forums, and he asked me to explain in more detail about what I meant, explaining that his own forums had been experiencing slower growth, and was therefore looking at new ideas to boost usage.

I sent Barry a quick email, and he kindly gave me permission to publish that email here..  so what follows below is a quick summary on why Forums are Dead, and why they will live on…  in my personal opinion of course!..

The issue of Forums losing traction is a tough one.. 

to be honest – that “tweet” where I’m cited as saying “forums don’t work – do it on facebook”, was specifically meant in regard to “corporate forums” – ie: forums/discussion boards run by companies, to get their members/customers/stakeholders to engage with them..  eg: the “Pizza Hut” forum (assuming there is/was such a thing!)…

Not to be confused with forums with a somewhat independent slant to them, where the focus is on a shared niche/topic – such as “Scottish business”. For that I do think there’s still a place for them..  however – saying that – I can see more and more “communities” moving to Facebook groups, or LinkedIn groups, some of which are thriving, while traditional forums are losing traffic and interest… 

I think it all comes down to the fact that “I’m on Facebook”, so if I find you there, it’s easy and convenient to talk to you, whereas with YOUR forum,you’re making me play by YOUR rules, and I have to remember to visit YOUR website, and YOUR login…”

Does that make any sense to you?  I’m not saying there’s no place for forums, but everything I see (and it’s been going this way for some considerable time), is that the traffic is moving on to social channels, so the communities need to move there too to ensure a continued engagement…

Am I right or wrong?  Are Forums evolving to be just another subset of the big Social Media Channels?

Hey y’all, Thea here again, just back from another New Media Breakfast in Glasgow. Today’s fantastic presentation was given by a rather enthusiastic, Jennifer Holloway, of Yorkshire-based Spark Branding.

In a  Malcolm Gladwell sort of way, Jennifer kicked off asking the audience to hazard a guess at a variety questions like where she’s from, how she voted in the last election, if she was in a relationship (and if it was with a man or woman) etc.

The idea being that we form an opinion of someone in the first seven seconds of contact. Incidentally, Holloway asserts this holds true even if that contact is online.

WHAT’S YOUR MESSAGE?

Have a think for a moment about what your profiles, for instance on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook – say about you, your business and your personality.

I don’t think I was alone in leaving the room wondering about what mine say about me, and vowing to do an audit of each before the day’s end.

Much emphasis of Jennifer’s talk was placed on LinkedIn which, of course, most of us realise is a valuable tool for business and networking. (You may have read my post last winter 8 tips for Getting the Most out of LinkedIn…)

We all need to promote our personal brand according to Jennifer and to add personality to it – even on LinkedIn.

PEOPLE WORK (BUY OR DO BUSINESS) WITH PEOPLE THEY LIKE

The talk really boiled down to one, simple premise – “we do business with people we like” (well, at least whenever possible). So we need to be as likable as possible – both online and in person.

The thing is we all need to put our best foot forward, of course we do, but we also need to keep in mind that we’ll never be able to control how other people perceive us.  There will always be people who love us (our company too) and those who loathe us. We don’t have any real control over either group.

“PERSPECTIVE IS A MIRROR NOT A FACT”

One gentleman thought Jennifer’s own profile picture was “shifty” whereas others liked it and even called the picture “cheeky”. It reminds me of my favourite quote that “perspective is a mirror not a fact”.

It would stand to reason that the one most likely to do business with her was the one who found her “cheeky”.

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE PICS

Have a look at your own LinkedIn profile, if you have one that is. Is the profile picture a professional one? It should be.

Leave out the glam wedding day shots, or the one where you’ve cropped out your best mate in a face-lock.

Instead opt for a clear head shot with a hint of personality. [NOTE: One amusing example showed was a woman who looked like a vamped-up sex kitten, but was actually a lawyer; she, arguably, went overboard on trying to show she wasn't a stereotypical lawyer, I'm just sayin'...]

AS FOR THE CONTENT…

As for the words filling your up your profile be sure to add something interesting. For instance, a prime example comes our very own MD’s profile. In addition to talking about all of the ways NSDesign can help you and your business, – there’s a little bit about Gary’s own personality in there too:

“A true people person, Gary’s other interests include magic and juggling, which he often uses to entertain the masses – from local playgroups to conference delegates!”

I love it. This, I’ve no doubt, will be a conversation starter with some people out there.  It won’t interest everyone of course, but it might just the line that causes someone out there to do business with him.

OTHER PROFILE SUGGESTIONS:

• Take a look at your own profile/s online and assess the photo and the copy.
• Put yourself out there and promote yourself (and your business) with “conviction”.

• Ditch any “Old School” worn-out patter, add some personality and  blow your own trumpet (at least a little).

• Find your own balance between under-selling and over selling yourself.

On that note, I’m off to critique and revise my own profiles and maybe add a little about that Road Trip I did back in ’06 – and the documentary about it I hope to one day make…

More than half of all UK holidaymakers use social media to plan their holidays.

New research conducted by online travel agency sunshine.co.uk polled 1102 holidaymakers in the UK and found that exactly 54% of them would use the likes of Facebook and Twitter before making a booking.

Those polled said that they used social media to gather information and reviews about their desired destination, for example requesting personal recommendations from other users.

Just over 60% of respondents said that they used Facebook to research their holidays, contrasted with 17% who said that they used Twitter to do so.

The ease with which people can post comments and photos on Facebook is thought to be a major factor in its popularity with those researching their holidays.

The number of people using social media to research their holidays was second only to those using dedicated review sites such as TripAdvisor, where site members post up and discuss reviews of their holidays.

Chris Brown, co-founder of sunshine.co.uk, said: “Research is a vital part of booking a holiday. It was really interesting to find out that many ask friends, family, or even strangers on social media platforms about where to go on their next holiday.”

The news could spell the death of the printed holiday brochure, and should give the whole travel sector a wake up call about its internet marketing strategy.