digital consultant

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for February 7th

susi — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:00:02 +0000

These are my links for February 7th from 16:28 to 16:39:

Don’t Disconnect Us – This website is all about getting people campaign against the Digital Britain bill. Most intriguingly, it's actually created by ISP TalkTalk who say they have campaigned against the Digital Britain bill. All very curious…I find these brand sponsored 'campaign' sites somewhat suspicious, non-the-less, it's pretty good with info on joining the campaign and petition There's also a competition Inspired by Dan Bull's rather ace 'Dear Mandy' song against Digital Britain's disconnection policy, this competition, supported by Stephen Fry, encourages users to submit their creative responses against the trial without jury of Mandelson's Digital Britain. Great songs and poems, folk, punk all sorts.
Matrix: Companies Should Factor ‘Social Influence’ Into Total Customer Value – Jeremiah Owyang takes the popular case study of Heather Armstrong, the famous cult author who tweeted and destroyed a washing-machine manufacturer through a negative Twitter post to her 1M+ followers, and applies the idea of social influence in measuring a customers values, and suggests how you could tier customer support to popular users, and the risks of this. I don't like this much as it sort of goes against good service and engagement as being something everyone should expect from business, but I suspect this is the future of the social web.
YouTube’s Take From Movie Rentals: $10,709.16 – YouTube are experimenting in premium content: crucial to allow them to monetize and survive. However, their trial of five independent films charing $4 a rental didn't yield the highest numbers, but shows that this could become a powerful platform for distributing the usually loss-making independent film.

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for February 7th

susi — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:00:35 +0000

These are my links for February 7th from 14:01 to 15:59:

Six Pixels of Separation: Stop lurking and step it up on social networks – There aren't a lot of great videos about digital strategy (hmm that gives me an idea…) but this one by Mitch Joel to promote his book Six Pixels of Seperation is really great and focus on the 'why' of digital strategy, rather than asking about the 'what' (the tools and technology). Spot on the money, and I'll be developing some further thinking on developing the 'how' through my clients and on this blog during the year.
Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization – I loathe the 'science' of search engine optimisation (or 'snake something oil' as a social media person I knew called it), but I'm realising in work I'm doing currently that it's actually still quite critical as a low-cost way to get the traffic to your site that you deserve. I'm recognising a growing gap between the 'being good' (aka 'built it and they will come') social media 'evangelists' and the web science as commerce SEO people (whilst I think both approaches alone are flawed, it seems hard to get these two groups to work together). This Aug 2009 is priceless, and could probably be described as 'the only SEO article you need to read ever'. It explains what the most crucial on page elements are and how you can optimise copy for them, but intriguingly contains a chart that reveal that on-page copy only accounts for a horrifying 15% of a web page's success. It's all about reputation, time in market, and link juice – thus showing that we need social marketing to make sites work.
Behind the scenes of a travel feature – pt 1: transparency and the trouble with top tens – Travel writer Fiona Cullinan's blog is an experiment in crowd-sourced journalism. This 4 part article on how she used web 2.0 tools to crowd-source a top 10 article on romantic destinations was particularly interesting to me as I spent nearly 5 years editing a travel website (www.pilotguides.com) and wrote quite a few top 10 articles for magaznes too. The process is largely subjective, but Fiona tries to put some scientic approach to opening out access and reviewing the data. The verdict: crowd-sourcing takes nearly twice as long, with larger margin for off-the-mark content, but perhaps makes editorial richer and more diverse.

Digital Consultant links for February 5th through February 7th

susi — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:00:39 +0000

These are my links for February 5th through February 7th:

Charlie Brooker | iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno – Probably the only post to read on the storm-in-an-iT-Cup that is the launch of the iPad, yet another shiny-shiny gadget from Apple which has made the elusive marketing leap from a gizmo to a life-changing-experience. As someone who just doesn't do Apple at all – and prefer proleterate and less expensive devices like the PC and Nokia, this speak to me. "It's an iPhone for people who can't be arsed holding an iPhone up to their face. A slightly-further-away iPhone that keeps your lap warm."
BBC – Media Literacy – I came across this BBC microsite whilst watching the BBC's new 'soap bubble' online drama E20 (a spinoff from Eastenders). The site gives a few video based resources for younger people to undertand the idea of media literacy – including clips from Screenwipe an a interview with teen digital ambassador 'JellieEllie' (I met her years ago, not really sure what to make of what she does now). E20, the BBC are hyping as a 'game changer' as being a significant budget online drama. I disagree – it's a great piece of drama, but as the Controllers interviewed say, the rules of storytelling are the same on the web as TV. I'd like to see the BBC invest in a REALLY innovative interactive drama that does make use of the online medium – E20 is just telly on the web, designed to be packaged back to be telly on the telly. The videos aren't event commentable and embeddable. Channel 4 do some more interesting content for teens in this space like Smokescreen.
Tories challenge BT and BBC as part of ‘100MB broadband’ pledge – Zip. Pains me to type this, but here's another very good electioneering policy from the boys in blue: they want to speed up broadband to 100Mb by 2017 by breaking up BT monopoly, which puts crippling prices onto accessing broadband at super high speeds. As far as I'm concerned, this couldn't happen sooner.

Digital Consultant links for February 3rd through February 5th

susi — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:00:26 +0000

These are my links for February 3rd through February 5th:

Telegraph to stop chasing unique users – The publishing industry is moving away from chasing numbers of readers (strange as that's their print model) and is looking to create commercial channels that favour engagement rather than quick hit read and leave, common with online news. It's an interesting bent, as it signifies that even readership – the wholly grail of on and offline publication – becomes less significant in the need to upsell. No doubt they are taking the lead from The Times who are rumoured to be introducing specialist, paid channels in niche subjects.
Building a hyperlocal website: 5 things hyperlocal can do and be, times 5 – As a founding member of CreativeNottingham.com, I'm speaking at an event in March about local blogging, so this article interviewing some of the biggest names in UK and US in hyperlocal blogging with their thoughts on how local blogging provides an immediate, powerful force against the merging of newspapers is very interesting.
App Recommendations from MediaCampLondon – I was at MediaCamp London on Monday, which was a great get together organised by London's social media mafia as an unconference to talk about all things to do with the social web. My highlights were Heather Taylor from Paypal talk on filming video interviews for the web which had some extremely useful advice for my new video content project, and Caron Jane Lyon from PCM Creative getting everyone to talk about their 'Doh-Ray-Me' of their social media journey – how they came to it, why and how it is useful to them. In the extreme tech category, this talk by Jamie Riddell discussing apps (mainly for iPhone but some Twitter and more general web apps) has some extremely useful links for those who are running community or business projects in social media marketing.

Digital Consultant links for January 31st through February 3rd

susi — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:01:29 +0000

These are my links for January 31st through February 3rd:

TRIZ – A powerful methodology for creative problem-solving – TRIZ is a technique of applying 40 different parameter queries to a problem which is used extensively by engineers. It's a technique that could, at some levels, apply to business process, e.g. considering segmentation, 'nesting' (store within a store), or local variations.
Six Ways to Find Social Media Talent – Some savvy words from Harvard Business Review on recruiting social media talent – that elusive combination between deep social media skills and fit with advancing your business objectives – which involves, basically, empowering other employees to recruit using social media tools in those spaces.
WikiLeaks whistleblower site in temporary shutdown – Sad news for open democracy: WikiLeaks, anonymous uncensored site closed due to lack of funds. The price of 'open information' is, it seems, to high.
Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online – Great article featuring facts & figures on how people are consuming video content online. As cable TV and web video has increased overall consumption, the attention span of video duration and spread of number of views has shifted downwards, creating a mass divide between amateur and professional content. There is a rise in niche content, but a decrease in the likelihood of having a 'hit' which could come from either user-generated or professional content.

Digital Consultant links for January 29th through January 30th

susi — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:01:03 +0000

These are my links for January 29th through January 30th:

Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right – Pepsi are another major brand who are dropping their Superbowl ad this year and diverting the $20M (!) into social media engagement campaign. Staggeringly their crowd-sourced new brand development Mountain Dew gained traction from half a million Pepsi fans. This show, where brand loyalty exists, social media is a superb way of using fans to test the market and create word-of-mouth engagement. Big bucks thrown at social media will shift the landscape again, perhaps not all in a postiive way for smaller businesses.
CIPD – Social networking for HR – I'm speaking at this CIPD event on 4 Feb in Kettering with Alec McPhedran from Skills Channel TV. We're talking about social media for HR professional and developing social media strategies.
The state of social learning and some thoughts for the future of L&D in 2010 – Detailed article with links to top 100 social learning resources and how learning professional are using digital/online tools within learning contexts.

Digital Consultant links for January 27th through January 28th

susi — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:05:07 +0000

These are my links for January 27th through January 28th:

We7 Trying Premium Subs As Question Hangs Over Free-With-Ads – More evidence that the salvation of free music streaming sites to counteract illegal downloads isn't stacking up: We7 emulate Spotify by selling subscriptions to meet the shortfall of advertising incomes. One limitation seems to be that ad agencies aren't used to selling audio pre-roll adverts, or producing them (WeBuyAnyCar.com anyone?)
Digital Strategy: Removing the Social Media Roadblocks – Some solid advice from Digalicious on how to proof your case, particularly in a corporate or bigger business environment, to proof the case and examine risks of adopting a social media strategy, from a CEO, legal, HR and marketers case.
MP3 pioneers launch ‘deluxe’ file – A new format to rival the MP3 and compete with Apple's new iTunes LP bunding in lyrics, song information and even other files like videos with an MP3. However, is this just for the multimedia-philes, when the 'good enough' cheaper (and smaller) MP3 files are likely to suffice for many? I find it interesting that now digital files are also becoming 'deluxe', which could lead to increases in legitimate file purchases.

Digital Consultant links for January 26th through January 27th

susi — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:00:54 +0000

These are my links for January 26th through January 27th:

Why the Idea of the Apple Tablet May Be Better Than the Reality – Steve Jobs has layed down the competition with Amazon and the Kindle, and are developing an Apple i-flavoured tablet which, in typical Apple style (may) revolutionise and breath life into the publishing industry. However, the hefty price tag and service charge are a major barrier, and it's best to say 'wait and see' for now – but one to watch.
The Moment Social Media Became Serious Business – - Tammy Erickson writes a brilliant little piece on how technologies have changed the way communications and workflow exist throughout history – from the telephone and the fax through to social media today, allowing multiple, discerete pieces of asyoncronous and virtual one-to-one and one-to-many communications. It's becoming integral to how we work, and a core tool of serious business.
Accidental Leaders and Managers programmes by Hyper Island – Calling all Yorkshire creative/digital folk: This Thurs is deadine for first batch of the highly recommended Accidental Leaders & Managers course run by Inspiral (a company I did the inspiral.biz project and others with) and Sweden's Hyperisland – the fair-haired wunderkids who are cleaning up the creative training sector with their radical nordic approach. Recommended for business owners.

Digital Consultant links for January 25th through January 26th

susi — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:39 +0000

These are my links for January 25th through January 26th:

Revealed: The most effective Healthcare Engagement Strategies in the world – Creation Interactive are a digital engagement specialist agency, who have a lot of clients in healthcare. I've started working with them recently in the emerging field of digital engagement (which I predict will become big in 2010). Their recent healthcare engagement awards list some interesting approaches global businesses are using in investing in community content and services using social media settings which benefit both users and increases business reach. The win-win of digital engagement.
Finding The Long Tail In Music – More interesting US led discussion on the long tail – does it work in music? Can musicians succeed without the music machine's marketing muscle? My own research showed a lot of pros and cons, and was inconclusive. Mike Masnick from Techdirt is firmly a new media evangelist, but the overall discussion here is varied.
HarperCollins Publishers Expands Its Digital Strategy With the Launch of Inkpop, an Interactive Writing Platform for Teens – A somewhat interesting diversion: teen publisher divison of major publisher launches a platform for teen writers (and those writing for teens) to publish short stories, poems etc. and uses community and user rating to seek out fresh talent. The platform itself for me was somewhat drab but functional, but it shows a new openness in publishing to putting editorial out to graze, and letting the market talent scout (thus saving time and money).
Twitter User Growth Slowed From Peak of 13% in March 2009 to 3.5% in October – Hubspot's latest report on Twitter shows a slow down in new user registration, but an increase in user activity. It's actually really difficult to track Twitter as most people use third party apps to access their Twitter feed (I use TweetDeck). This article shows the average tweets, followers and following which is the baseline means of measuring the success of Twiter. Looking at the graph, it looks like the media spark gave Twitter an almighty boast in mid 2009, before a slow down to earlier, lower levels.
Why Diversity Can Backfire On Company Boards – Article on how to successful manage the (usually unsuccessful) fusion of diversity in board membership. This applies equally to a corporate, independent small company, or an arts or non-profit board.

Digital Consultant links for January 22nd through January 25th

susi — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:00:38 +0000

These are my links for January 22nd through January 25th:

Your Brain Can’t Handle Your Facebook Friends – Intriguingly most people can only really maintain interaction with about 150 people. This is a common theme looking at sizes of 'tribes' but it seems people don't change much, and it equally applies to Facebook. With 700 friends each on Twitter and Facebook, I've recently started to segment people down to 'essential' (regularly check their posts) and 'other' (check if I have time). How are you handling your social networks nowadays?
Artists of the World Unite! – Great review of Seth Godin, the guy who coined the phrase 'conversational marketing', new book "Linchpin" which is all abou thow people in a business need to change their thinking to fit in with the web 2.0 world. Also some useful ideas about not following social media just to feel like you're not missing out. How true.
Essential Social Media Tools for the Small Business – Yet another SM guide…this time with some useful links to articles about tools and optimising your presence on Facebook and also Yelp – a new one to me (predominantly US site) which collates reviews and interactiosn around physical presence retail businesses, and is challenging Foursquare by including 'check in' options. Location based digital social marketing, accessed by mobile, will be VERY BIG by the end of 2010.