Our tasty training sessions available for everyone

(GBR) Up until today, all our training offerings have always been delivered in-house for our cross-sector range of clients.

We thought it was time to extend the opportunity to all…

We’ve scheduled two of our beginners level social media training courses with the price set at a pilot rate of £250 (to reflect our new foray into this space).

Delegates will get a full day of MediaSnackers magic: a delicious menu of social media platforms, tools and ideas, served through our immersive learning approach (patent pending). We guarantee that not only will this be like no other training course you’ve ever been on, but also you will leave with the confidence and skills to start creating media and exploring the social web to help you do things quicker, cheaper, sexier.

Here’s the course blurb :

New to all this social media stuff (either personally or professionally)?
Need to get to grips with the basics fast?
Don’t want to just focus on one platform/website all day?

This course is quick and easy to understand with lots of hands-on opportunities to leave you feeling confident of being able to tackle many websites, applications and services used today.

We will address many common questions and concerns whilst paying attention to the explanation of social spaces, signing up to new websites, and walking through their use and maximising the most general features.

There will also be inspiring case studies and examples plus time to reflect with opportunities to question us throughout the day.

Here’s a flavour of what will be covered in the course:

- Online collaborative spaces such as Google Docs and Bubbl.us
- Creative blogging techniques through Blogger
- Dynamic image tools using Flickr and Animoto
- Digital storytelling through sites like Slideshare and Issuu
- Other popular platforms including Youtube and Twitter

Spaces are limited to 3 per organisation/company to ensure a diverse learning group—if you would like more than 3, please contact us directly.

Check out what our past clients have to say.

Here’s the details:

Each venue has been chosen to reflect our dynamic teaching style, our list of technical requirements plus because they are within walking distance to central railway hubs to ensure accessibility and our green ideals.

We will be scheduling more dates in the new year which will include our Intermediate and Advanced level training—let us know if you would like us to come to your town/venue.

As you can see places are limited so please click on the appropriate date/venue above to book now and avoid disappointment.

If you have any queries or questions please don’t hesitate to contact us directly.

Investing in digital

(WORLD) The MediaSnackers podcast focusses on individuals, organisations or companies who are simply impressing us and which are crying out for more discussion.

Guy Levine is the CEO and owner of Return On Digital, a digital communication agency who focusses on creating “outstanding return on investment”.

0.00—0.16 intro
0.17—0.53 background on Return On Digital
0.54—2.10 what is the investment and what is the return
2.11—3.21 tangible example
3.22—4.55 digital vs traditional marketing
4.56—7.43 the rise of social endorsements plus open graph / facebook ‘like’ button
7.44—9.21 questioning the ethics
9.22—10.10 future
10.11—10.20 outro

Subscribe directly through iTunes by clicking on this icon (download iTunes for free here).

Not using iTunes? Then just copy / paste this feed and drop it into your aggregating software.

Want to suggest someone or put your virtual hand-up to be interviewed? Then get in touch here.

Devour our other podcasts.

TRANSCRIPTION

Guy: Hi, my name’s Guy Levine. I am a digital marketing geek. I’m the owner of Return on Digital.

DK: Well, it’s a pleasure to have you with us Guy. So tell us a little bit about your company and what you do there.

Guy: Return on Digital’s a digital marketing agency. But we like to think we’re a little bit different because we try and always focus on getting a great return. But we do search engine optimization, pay per click, affiliate, social media, everything that you’d expect a digital agency to do nowadays.

DK: Wicked. So how long have you guys been doing that?

Guy: We’ve been doing that now in various different guises since the year 2000.

DK: Wow, okay. Do you’re well established. That’s brilliant. So let’s get into and talk about the meat of the stuff regarding the ROI and the context of digital. So first of all, what is the investment and what is the return relating to this discussion and what you actually do there?

Guy: Yeah, I mean from basically what we see around the — from the SME market up to the, you know the large companies. A beginning kind of investment monetary wise received that that as coming around this thing as the 500 pound a month investment. But then , there’s a lot of investment of time as well whether it be creating content. or more importantly creating a message that people find interesting.

But we’re kind of seeing, which is more importantly, is that we’re seeing on financial investment that there’s normally a five to ten times return on real investment of actually cash generated through generating leads or increasing from the exposure, or things like that. And I think, you know, one of the ways to take digital really seriously is to actually apply some metrics to it that allow you to put financial data to it. Because as times are tough, people are more and more having to verify what they’re spending their time on. So yeah, I think that’s really important to do.

DK: Yeah, definitely that times ten financial investment thing is a wow factor right there. So give us a tangible example of, it could be a past client so you don’t mind talking about them. But let’s see what someone has put in and they literally got out?

Guy: Yeah. Okay. to kind of cover that for the whole gamut of people that are going to be listening, we’ve done work for a small boutique, private dental practice believe it or not. Dental, it’s a, but you would never believe how much money is in private dentistry mind you, unless you’ve been to a dentist recently and got a bill. But, they’re based in the Liverpool City Centre. They come to us, they had a really shocking presence. We sorted out a website for them, we did loads on testimonials, getting social media going for us. I mean, they pay about two, 2,000 a month including like Google adwords. But, and they’re consistently doing between 25,000 and 35,000 pounds worth of treatments every month directly attributed to someone ringing up the phone saying, “We found you on Facebook, we found your website, we found you on a local map listing and we’d like to come in and talk to you.”

DK: Wow. That’s a big wow. So that’s brilliant as an example there. So what is, kind of to extend the conversation then, what is different between digital marketing and the idea of traditional marketing then?

Guy: Yeah, I think digital versus traditional. I think ultimately they’re both the same thing. For me, marketing’s about attracting new people. Selling’s about converting them. But I think what’s different with digital is it happens so quickly. I mean, if we look at I go to the food place eat this morning to get a hot chocolate on the way into work. you know, the guy serving me who looked like the manager, managed to serve me without making eye contact once and with only uttering I think three words. One of which was, “What do you want?” Well, you know, one of, “What do you want?” and the other one was, “That’s two pounds please.”

So I go onto twitter now and say, you know, don’t eat, if you’re going to eat, being prepared, the customer service is rubbish. And before I know it, 1,700 people have seen that plus it posts to Facebook. So digital marketing is speed and also to include an element of tracking in the — so that everything you’re doing, email, SEO, Facebook, you can track back to actually see the return on investment. Because it might well be that digital’s not quite ready for your business yet or it might well be that its more ready than you think and it needs a signal to spend more budget or time on it.

DK: That’s interesting. And we’re also seeing the kind of emergence of stuff like the “Like” button and social endorsement which is kind of what you’re talking about there, isn’t it? That we hold off networks because we’re on social networks. But are networks then is a sense of a pool that we kind of hit and dip into and take from, and also inform relating to our social and commercial activities? So talk about kind of how you’re looking at this Facebook like button but also the open graft and all that stuff?

Guy: Yeah, open graft and Facebook “like” button is the most exciting thing that’s happened in a long time in social. I think, that’s interesting, I was reading a book yesterday on marketing to affluent people. And what they were saying is if some big CEO of a busy company gets a sore back, they don’t get the yellow pages and they don’t search on Google. They ring up they’re other really big CEO affluent friend and say, “Who’d you go to when you’re back’s really sore?” So there’s this element of recommendation that a digital market has never really been able to tap into.

But now what happens is, websites can put in their, a little piece of code that connects them to Facebook. And when someone comes onto that site, they can click this button that says, “I like it”. It does two things, it pushes that to your Facebook feeds so everyone else can see it. But more importantly, when someone else who’s friendly with you on Facebook comes onto the site, they see the name of their friend who’s also liked it as well. So if I was going to a restaurant and I logged into the page to have a look at the menu or something like that. I say, “I like it” and then either coincidentally or because a notice went up on my Facebook account to say that I was going. Another friend comes in, they say they like it. It’s like the old fashioned recommendation marketing and referral marketing but done digitally.

The other thing with the open graft that we’re experimenting with now because I like to think we’re a little bit cheeky and want to blur the edges. But if you’ve ever seen when you want to go onto a website and it says actually, “Connect or log in with Facebook.” What you can actually do now is take the data that people are showing openly in their profiles in Facebook and as someone subscribes to your newsletter or to download something on your site, pull that data in with their subscription requests. So what we’re seeing now is instead of just getting Guy Levine, Manchester, we’re getting Guy Levine, Manchester, works for a Return On Digital. Likes triathlon cycling and is born in 1979. Which from marketers like, well I was about to swear, but absolutely amazing.

DK: But is it a danger there around the whole privacy issue? Because in essence, you could be scraping data that the user or the individual doesn’t really want to be used in the marketing context? They don’t mind like their friends knowing that they’re into triathlons and cycling. That’s cool, that’s why they’re on Facebook to connect their mitts. But they’re not on there really to connect to brands, or are they?

Guy: Yeah, I mean brilliant question. And I person — I subscribe to the school of thought that if I could be born and have like a chip put in the back of my neck, like some kind of furry animal. But then just walk straight through passport control, not have to worry about ever carrying any cash, never having to do a tax return because someone knows exactly what I’m spending and where I’ve been. Like that’s cool, because it makes my life easier.

And I think it’s also, it’s the difference between the mindset in GenX, GenY’rs and everyone else. I think most GenX’rs are happy to just social online, privacy’s not so much of an issue. It’s kind of these old fogies that have an issue with it. And we’ve been trapped by CCTV and mobile phones for years. Everyone’s kind of got over it. But then, the other thing is if I walked into a business or I mean, we went on holiday and we got given a questionnaire before we went to the hotel asking what kind of things we liked. And when we checked in, it had six of my favorite CD’s waiting in the room and four books that I sort of liked to read but never got around to it. And I was like blown away. So if that could happen automatically because of my online preferences, I’d be much happier.

DK: Interesting. So we need to wrap this interview up. Just give us an idea of what you kind of get excited about regarding your future plans there or what trends you’re seeing on the social horizon?

Guy: Yeah, I think we’re getting excited more and more about social, we’re getting more and more excited about local search; like kind of really microcampaigns that are going on. And I think like every passionate business, we’re excited about the growth that we’re having and hooking up with people like MediaSnackers to really get a digital mindset going on in this country. So the — we can all benefit from it. And hopefully give ourselves some cool financial prospects as a country in the future.

DK: Definitely. Well, thanks very much for giving up your time Guy. I really appreciate it.

Guy: Thanks.

A snack-sized insight

(WORLD) I first came across this adaptive term back in 2006 at a small gig with the BBC. It was coined by Ashley Highfield, who was the then Director of New Media & Technology for the Beeb (one of the main guys behind the iPlayer) and is cited in this speech he gave back in 2004 (when there was no iPad or iPhone let alone geo-location services or even YouTube and Twitter).

The term and idea has become a staple slide in all my speaking gigs up until today and is described as thus:

Martini media is digital content which can be accessed anytime, anyplace, anywhere (the strapline to the well known alcoholic brand).

We challenge our clients, and anyone who will listen, to apply this concept the next time they are in a meeting discussion any marketing or advertising efforts. It’s such a simple question to ask : how can this be Martini’d? Or put another way, can the content created become digital takeaways so it can be shared?

Check out our mobile vouchers idea : snacksize mobile movies which, when shown at the box office, will give a reduced ticket rate—demonstrating the principle in practice.

Is this something you can use?

MediaSnackers Speaking/Masterclass

For charities and community groups

(GBR) Lottery funding, council funding, government funding, trusts and foundations, business sponsorship, individual donors. And most of these are grants, not ongoing funding. Micro grants of £250. Small grants of £5,000. Medium grants of £30,000. Large grants of £100,000. As you might expect, it’s a truism that the larger organisations get the larger grants. And government support is overwhelmingly channelled into the major charities, agencies and organisations.

And that’s just the start. You must generate your own funding. Offering services, training, membership, consultancy, products and information, advice and signposting. And constantly proving the value of your work. In numbers. In changes. With robust evidence (especially in these difficult funding times for the public sector).

The two paragraphs above apply to the majority of public/community sector organisations, social enterprises, agencies, charities, partnerships and even individuals. It also applies to some council services, especially the non-statutory ones such as sports and arts development.

Funding. Certainly a maze to get through. Either a frustrating, confusing conundrum of multi-modal pleading, or a wealth of opportunities to bring in tons of dosh by asserting your worth?

Probably somewhere between the two.

So what MediaSnackers wants to do here is offer a brief digest of funding signposting and the context of why this could be important to us/you:

LOTTERY FUNDING

It’s got a Marmite reputation in some sections of the press. The National Lottery started awarding grants in 1995, and has funded thousands of thousands of projects from pigeon racing clubs to major visitor attractions. The funds are awarded and administered through various different types of organisations:

• Arts Council England

• Big Lottery Fund

• Heritage Lottery Fund

• Sport England

One of the best schemes is Awards for All, a simple small grants scheme making awards of between £300 and £10,000 which aims to help improve local communities and the lives of people most in need. The application form is short and simple and you will find out if you are successful within six weeks.

You can search information on current funding programmes across the UK through the National Lottery Gateway.

THE DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Most of what you’ll ever need to know about UK and European funding opportunities, publications and training is offered by The Directory of Social Change, who have been supporting the voluntary and community sector for over 30 years. And its products (all of which offers updates to your inbox):

• Trust Funding : 4,400 trusts giving £3.6 billion

• Company Giving : 490 companies giving £808 million

• Government Funding : over £2.3 billion local, regional, national and European sources

• Grants For Individuals : £362 million funds for welfare and education

OTHER

Check out these reliable sites/directories who help in keep you abreast of new developments in social policy and legislation plus detailing grants and available monies:

• Funderfinder—the original oft-quoted online resource for funding finding, or finding funding for that matter

• The Association of Charitable Foundations—the leading membership association for trusts and foundations in the UK with over 300 members ranging in size from small and local grant-makers to some of the world’s largest foundations

• DirectGov—a list of funding schemes

• Charities Aid Foundation—working to create greater value for charities and social enterprise by transforming the way donations are made and the way charitable funds are managed

• 
The Charity Commission—registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, so it’s our job to make sure all charities meet all their legal requirements and to work with charity trustees to put things right if they go wrong

• Community Foundation Network—aims to help clients create lasting value from their local giving
  through the network of community foundations

• The Funding Network—enables individuals to join together to fund social change projects

• National Association for Voluntary and Community Action —the national voice of local support and development organisations in England.

• ACRE—national network of Rural Community Councils

• GuideStar UK—the first place to look for comprehensive information about every charity

Have we missed anybody out? Leave some ideas for other funds, your experience of dealing with any of the agencies listed and/or success stories, tips, tricks etc in the comments.

The Post Amble

MediaSnackers have never received a grant. Organisations/brands have paid us to do speaking/masterclasses, training, consultancy and projects. However, we do have funding expertise and we’re delighted to offer help in your employing us as a partner in your fundraising bids. That’s not to say we’re going to sit in on planning meetings or proof read your lottery application. That’s up to you. What we do offer is the open invitation to let us know when you have a project idea that will use MediaSnackers as your social media partner. That might be in a one-off youth project, a creative consultation, a capacity building training programme for your staff, board and/or volunteers or a more open brief to audit your current online presence and offer solutions to keeping you abreast of social media.

Sadly we’re a bit busy to offer much one to one advice, but we know how you might get this. First off, look both online and offline. Talk to your local authority, many larger metropolitan and county councils employ ‘external funding officers’ who are charged with bringing in funds both directly to the council as well as helping local groups, clubs, agencies and organisations to bid to grant makers and other funding sources. They can’t ever guarantee success (no bid should ever have 100% chance of success) but these people can immeasurably improve your chances with realistic advice on all aspects of a bid such as proper budgeting, full cost recovery, proving outcomes or evaluating realistically. Other available sources of information, advice or signposting include Councils for Voluntary Service, Libraries and education or employability providers. Your area might have a local funding forum that might be worth joining or keeping your eye on, for example, all credit to Sheffield City Council who top a google search if you simply search for ‘funding forum’.

Then there’s online. Be it the ‘good causes’ lottery funding, the many trusts and foundations who are often looking to fund innovative projects, central government funding or a survey of area-based grants resulting from the often confusing world of Local Strategic partnerships, there’s information online related to your one. Or there should be. Set up RSS feeds so that you can bring the web to you, some funders like deadlines and quick turnovers, others maintain grant programmes unchanged for years, either way you can use search terms to narrow down your research e.g. ‘youth technology funding’ or ‘social media grants’. By being forearmed and forewarned of funding opportunities (or indeed, cuts to funding) you can save time and effort by targeting your applications to those sources offering the best fit to your work.

Large organisations produce email newsletters, such as the Big Lottery, good ways to get a ‘feel’ for the type of projects they’re keen to fund. Sometimes the simple language of funding priorities can require some lateral thinking. Older Peoples projects using facebook. Mental Health initiatives working with blogs. Poetry on Twitter. Council care services on an iPhone app.

Our advice would be to produce an over-arching project plan, considering all the basic tenets of project planning, budgeting, resourcing, scheduling, delivering, monitoring and evaluation. Or, as we prefer to put it, the why, what, who, how and what next.

Get as many people to proof read this (use google docs or wikis to avoid too many bouncing emails) and certainly involve as many stakeholders as possible in making sure it adds up, not just in terms of money but also in terms of what you need to do, how you want to do it, and how the funding will help your organisation both in the short-term but especially in the long-term. This is one of the most important things to grasp: you may not ever get another grant or funding from any source, in fact some funders don’t necessarily want you to start relying on them; most have targets around accessing new applicants, and all of them know that their investments will be seen to have made have more of an impact if they are equitably distributed to many different geographical areas, different types of group, different ages, different aims, different numbers of people.

Which brings us back to MediaSnackers. We try and work on projects and with organisations and people that want to use social media to remove barriers, improve communications, be transparent and commit to enabling staff and participants or audiences engage with social media to have their say, reach more people, develop communities of interest and change their services, making them easier, better and cheaper. Employees with creative new ITC skills and awareness that are enjoyable, innovative and can be used in both their professional and personal lives.

Change is scary (especially to management) so they might not be changes in a big way (although, don’t get us wrong, we like revolutionary zeal) but , wholesale or piecemeal, in a way that makes things smarter and easier to measure. Which is why we get so much work and have such a great client list and a brilliant reputation. That’s not a boast, it’s a fact. A fact we can prove with a wealth of archived evidence. Narrative, audio and video testimony. Numbers of people who read our blog posts. People who follow our tweets and piggy back on our Delicious stream etc.

So that’s why we think we make a great partner and why our approach is an asset to your funding application. We have the track record and a super-fuelled website allowing prospective funders to quickly assess our pedigree, expertise and versatility. We ask only three things:

• Let us know. We won’t take very kindly to hearing we’re scheduled to do training in Chester when we’re already booked in Chicago. We won’t necessarily be able to block out dates in case you get your funding, so be flexible with dates. Funders should understand this. The best projects change and develop after funding is granted. Of course they should. Not so they barely resemble what you wrote in your bid. Or you’re in trouble. But you should be able to re-plan to check every aspect of what you want to do, is the timing still correct or have you learnt something since your bid was written (often a timescale of up to three months) or do you have to re-address the commitment of partners or the cost of resources? We find it easy to quote our fee based on simple information. Please do check with us though, we have to pay the rent and our fees are what we are worth.

• We are quite happy for you to mention specific projects we have undertaken. If you’re a theatre, you’ll find examples of our projects in the performing arts by searching on our website. What we don’t think we should have to do it to re-write what we have done and achieved. It’s already there, on our website, available to all. With testimony, dates and rates at the click of a button. In the past we have sat down on steering groups and painstakingly ‘fitted’ our services to a specific bid. This didn’t rock our world and we don’t think it’s the best use of our time. Which is why our website does it for us. If it doesn’t, let us know. But please do your homework, it’s your bid and project/event and you own it.

• Please play nicely. We have a reputation that we’re very proud of, without this we would be much less and probably would just go back home and get proper jobs. But people seem to like us. So please bear this in mind. We have minimal overheads and maximum impact. And we’re more than happy to go up against other companies or agencies for jobs. But we won’t trek off to London at our own expense to plead for a contract. We don’t need to. If we need to represent, we prefer to chat on Skype. More green, more lean, can be seen and just as keen.

All this being said, we’re open, fluid and would love to discuss and embellish anyone bidding for some funds as their social media provider/partner. Feel free to contact us direct to start the adventure and we hope you found this helpful.

Written by Matt, our Cultural Bod

Related stuff : check out the Arts Funding Network plus the conversation around #artsfunding on Twitter.

Is your balance off?

(WORLD) We sign up, we use what we need to get the job done and then we leave. Game over, right? Well, yes if you love the main feature of an online service. However the people that build you great tools, think much further ahead to all the possibilities, features and connections that drove them to make that tool in the first place. Which means, there’s a high chance that behind the basic set of features you use, there will be a whole bag of extra features you’ll love too. Take a little time, to dig deeper into your favourite spaces and hunt down the great links and buttons which provide you with more fun, power and value.

A great way to do this is to form a little group of like minded individuals at your workplace or friend circle to brainstorm uses for a new tool in your business. Who knows what you’ll dream up and unleash on the world?

Here are a few of my regularly visited sites with features, that I feel, are not utilised enough. I’ve illustrated what people mainly do and how you could use them, if you took the time to explore:

YouTube

What you do:

• You host your videos
• You embed them into your blog or send the link out to friends
• You search and view and subscribe and enjoy

What you could do:

• Consider your video title as important as keyword terms that people search for
• Create a relevant description that links to all your other social spaces
• Change your homepage layout to insert all your Insight Statistics
• Connect up all your social media accounts
• Create an interactive game using your videos. Check out this example by Free Runners Damien Walters and Tim Shieff. What could you create?

Twitter

What you do:

• Add your friends
• Follow trends
• Chat and laugh
• Tell me stuff

What you could do:

• Find common phrases to inspire you. Don’t just search for single words, try phrases and sentences
• Search for what’s really important for you. Use Twitters hidden advanced search area to really drill into those millions of tweets
• Create lists for everyone and structure them too—New people / Inspiring / Company’s / 2010 / Private
• Explore the business use, with howtos, case studies, tips and more from the Twitter guys themselves

Blogs

What you do:

• Build a website and make it pretty
• Show me some or all of you
• Write a lot and share with your friends
• Sit there alone and know not what to do

What you could do:

• Start with a focus a love or passion. Blogs work best when they have a focus. Find what rocks your world and document it all
• Create a routine and share all the gems you discover. Frequent posts, no matter how small or insignificant builds traffic, establishes a routine in your week and helps develop a tone of voice for your words
• Explore some groups and make new friends. Conversation creates ideas. If you need some, there will be others out there to spark off your brain cells. LinkedIn, Yahoo and Google groups have a whole community ready and waiting. If you don’t find one specific for your ideas, create one!
• Pay attention to commentary before steaming in with opinion

So there you have it, a few ideas and extra features to explore related to the spaces you love. How about you, are you using any hidden feature that you hold close to your chest? C’mon share it here, that way we can all join in the fun. Let us know in the comments below.

Photo by foxbert

The secret to all this stuff—just between you and me obviously!

(WORLD) The following piece of advice is shared often with clients and others who are trying to get their head round all this social media gubbins.

It’s simple, it’s obvious, and can be applied to any platform / situation / strategy / sector.

Here we go:

This pearl provides something to check yourself against as newbies (and us oldies) craft their social media use with an eye on subsequent strategic development.

Here’s the rule applied—in a real room with real people would you:

• talk about yourself constantly—we’ve all met these people and wished they had a mute button. Please don’t do this online. Here’s a nice test: check out Wordle and put the link to your blog/site in there, if it’s all about you then it’s time to shift the focus of your content.

• cover your head with your company/organisation logo and/or introduce yourself just using the company/organisation name—time to step from behind the curtain and become human again. Brands can’t tweet, people have to tweet on behalf of brands. Being people is what it’s all about.

• only talk in press release headlines—boring, boring, boring. If you are going to share this stuff make sure its in context and adds value to the conversation.

• automate your responses without taking into consideration the person you’re talking to, their level of knowledge, why they are interested etc—of course we all have stock answers and similar things we say in certain situations, however, if you said the same thing EVERY time you’re not a person who cares but a robot who nobody cares about.

• wear a dressing gown and expect people to take you seriously—being human does not equate to being unprofessional.

• stand at the back, never engage with others and then call it a crap party—having a blog and not updating it or commenting on others is exactly the same. If you don’t know where to start ask those you know to introduce or recommend others. Seek out those who look and sound interesting. Ask questions. Make statements. Get involved.

Does this make sense?

What other things wouldn’t you do in a big room / using social media?

Full day of social media goodness

(WAL) Today we’re spending the day at the fantastic Wales Millennium Centre.

The morning will be spent delivering a session to the senior management team (to lay the groundwork and context), then sharing ideas with the programming and artistic team. The rest of the day will be working directly with the communications and marketing team, exchanging platform and operational ideas plus critiquing their current social media use.

All in a days work really…

I and my colleagues from Wales Millennium Centre spent a stimulating day with MediaSnackers – one of the best investments in time we could have made.

Not only have we all become braver about trying out new and different tools and thinking of new applications for them, but the injection of inspiration these sessions gave us shows no signs of abating. Three weeks on, and every single team member’s engagement in, and adoption of, new media continues to rise at an expediential rate and we’re already beginning to see identifiable results in our ticket sales.

It is fair to say we are only too aware that the only limitations are those of our imaginations – and lucky for me I work with an imaginative bunch.

Jo Taylor, Head of Marketing & Communications

MediaSnackers Consulting

Every cloud has a silver lining

[Update] WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT

Out of the twenty-four applicants for this we whittled it down to a shortlist of nine, then two…

Listen below to hear how we did this and who actually won in the end:

As announced above, ALL those who applied will receive a 30mins phone consulting offer from us to assist in their social media operations/strategies plus a copy of Zen And The Heart Of Social Media.

Thanks again to Visit Cardiff, Selwood Housing, LSN Learning, YMCA Fit, Black Development Agency, UWE Ventures Bristol, White Hot and Blue, Dance & Theatre Cornwall, Bristol Disability Equality Forum, Roy Sheppard, The Mighty Creatives, Think Ark, Creative Industries Trafford, Edinburgh Festivals, Connexions Northumberland, Bright Space, Ice Cream Architecture, First Light, Sherman Cymru, John Cairns and Sarah-Jayne Miskelly.

ORIGINAL BLOG POST

With sadness, our planned pro-bono project for 2010 has fallen through, but we still want to do something before the year is up. Therefore we’ve decided to open up the offer for anyone to seize this opportunity.

We are looking to deliver a full days training, consisting of beginners, intermediate or advanced courses, consulting time, or whatever you feel you need to explore. For more information about what we provide, please check out our services page.

If you are interested, please answer the following question:

You can either leave a comment below, send us an email to [email removed] or create a video, audio clip or slideshow to demonstrate your point.

This offer is open to UK based commercial, non-profits, volunteers, charities, educational bodies or a group of interested individuals. The closing date for interested parties must be received by the end of 21st July 2010. Once they are all in, we will pick a winner and let you all know.

That’s it. No catches, you’ve got a week. Please send this blog post out to lots of people you know that would like help with their social media endeavours.

Check out our past pro-bono projects with Pacific Youth and TWMMF

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