Posts Tagged ‘Social media’

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My online CV? Just add me as a Friend.

January 17th, 2012 by David

There has always been talk of personal/professional social media profile consolidation – with no solution. Facebook is personal and LinkedIn is professional.

But will this always be the case?

Even if one network is theoretically easier, the challenge has always been how you prevent your not-so-employment-friendly Facebook persona from becoming a scary CV (even though bits of it could actually represent a decent example of where you sit within your working network).

A recent NY Times piece (http://nyti.ms/yv3aqx) brought a few new social media tools to my attention that I think solve that common question: How can you bring LinkedIn’s ethos of professionalism and career focus to Facebook? Can there be a common ground (as the article suggests) between the overused sentiments that Facebook is for fun and LinkedIn is for professional purposes?

BranchOut and Be Known essentially do what LinkedIn do, but display what you want perspective employers to see and filtering your profile from what you do not. So how do they shape up?

BranchOut (http://branchout.com/)

BranchOut is a professional network itself. When you visit a BranchOut profile page, it immediately doesn’t look anything like a Facebook profile. The clean display and simple layout make it easy to navigate, and it’s easy to find people who you have professional relationships with. By importing your details, it gives the impression of an independent outlet, without you having to worry about keeping different profiles updated.

However, networking is slightly stymied by having to ask to make a connection with someone in order to see their network, taking the discretion away from the viewer, and so in a way, defeating the purpose. None the less, it is still a useful tool, and since it is retained within the Facebook platform, makes it easy to maintain.

Be Known (https://apps.facebook.com/beknown/)

Sitting within the regular Facebook template, this app immediately feels like it’s just a tab on your profile. It is as much part of Facebook as your photos and notes. While you are expected to input a certain level of background information, it doesn’t feel that much different from adjusting the privacy setting on your profile page. (Which does in itself raise a question: Couldn’t this whole debate be settled by adjusting those privacy settings, and using some of your better judgment and remove those tags of those infamous photos from Ibiza?)

And just in case it’s not you looking to network on Facebook, there are a few useful Facebook recruitment apps for your friends.

Hire My Friend (https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=328891100642)

Promote your Friends who are job searching to your other Facebook Friends with the Hire My Friend Facebook App. You can include a brief description of their skills and a link to their LinkedIn Profile.

CareerFriend (https://apps.facebook.com/insidecareerinfo/)

CareerFriend uses your Facebook friends’ employment information to find potential job opportunities within your network. After connecting with your Facebook login information, CareerFriend creates a report that includes your friends’ employers, occupations, and reviews of related careers.

Of course it does raise the question, is the whole exercise even necessary? Maybe it’s better to keep your personal and your professional profiles separate? While the line between the two can often be blurred, how often do opportunities come up through a friend of a friend?

David Macnamara

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Posted in Onlinefire, Social media | No Comments »

When did social networking become our social life?

February 25th, 2011 by Elaine

It all started with ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’.  At first, it was all about the show itself, getting totally engrossed in the frankly astounding events in the lives of Josie and Swanley, Paddy and the dress designer Thelma (who surely has made enough to retire by now). But very quickly my obsession with the programme developed into something much more; the need to constantly tweet while watching it.  Every time the narrator let forth a gem of wisdom such as “her brother, John-boy, is attending the communion ceremony as an African Prince”, I felt the need to repeat this to my Twitter followers, many of whom were ignoring the television to write the very same sentence. I also missed huge chunks of each show by excitedly searching Twitter for the glorious reactions fellow gypsy-philes were having to the wonders unfolding on the show.

Much has been said about the inevitable impact that Twitter and Facebook have had on our social lives (including this interesting piece from Gord Hotchkiss), but it really is incredible how strong the urge is to reach for the nearest mobile device when consuming media which once upon a time, used to be enough all on its own.  Take Masterchef, for example. I love Masterchef, as my colleagues and family will tell you, proven by my bookshelves groaning with cookbooks and my constant droning about how much I love Dhruv Baker, last year’s winner. However, when the long-awaited new series started last week, I spent so much time tweeting about how much I disliked the new format and finding out through Twitter / Facebook what everyone else thought, that I actually missed over half the programme.  When I tuned in again the next night, I forced myself to put the Blackberry down (well, actually, I was forced to because the rollerball broke), I realised that I actually loved the new format and I’d missed some cracking dishes the night before.

It’s not just about television, either.  As Hotchkiss rightly points out, we’ve now got to a point where social networking is starting to overshadow social interaction.  And I mean basic conversations with our friends and families.  I heard a client talking the other day about her two teenage children, who will sit on the sofa chatting to their friends for hours.  ‘How perfectly normal’, I hear you cry.  But these teenagers were not chatting in the verbal sense.  They were writing on each other’s Facebook walls. How sad that something so full of potential and innovation has turned into something which actually starts to negate all that it stood for in the first place: the ability to communicate.

So the moral of the story is that although it’s fantastic that we now have a medium, literally at our fingertips, with which to share and express opinions and pure joy about the programmes we love and the world around us, maybe it’s time we all gave in to the broken rollerball once in a while?  As my husband loves to tell me, maybe we all need to “stop talking about it and flipping watch it!!” And maybe even talk to each other once in a while?  Verbally?  Now there’s a thought…

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Posted in Social media, TV, Trends | 1 Comment »

The Goal-den Appeal of Twitter

February 1st, 2011 by Ben Gold

The last 20 years have seen a monumental change in the game of football. Whilst there has always been a big divide between the traditional fan and highly paid footballer, the last decade in particular has seen this completely change. Whilst it wasn’t rare to see the Arsenal players in the local pub on a Tuesday in the late 80s, the closest you’d get to a Premiership footballer these days is likely to be if you were serving on a jury, or in the shoe section of Harvey Nicholls. It had become almost impossible for the everyday football fan to relate to any Premiership footballer as they cheated and roasted their way to millions and millions of pounds at ages lower than the squad numbers on the backs of their shirts.

But then the phenomenon of twitter quickly came into the consciousness of footballers, and suddenly put a little dent into this vast gulf. Players could no longer fall asleep on the coach to a game without the picture being posted up by a cheeky teammate. Pictures of players relaxing and chilling out together doing things that the regular football fan does, helped to show the human side of these highly paid celebrities for the first time in years.

We all envy their lifestyle; get up late, pop along for training in the morning, and then go home and play their team-mates online at FIFA11. But twitter has helped create a more attainable and attractive personality for certain Premiership footballers. They seem, on the whole, to be relatively normal people who just happen to be famous and well paid footballers at the same time. Of course there are some players who write a load of absolute codswallop, but many players, particularly some of your high profile candidates, seem to engage with their fans in a way that is not controlled by their agents. It has even become a medium for some to apologise to their fans for a poor performance, something unheard of over the last few years as egos and salaries grew out of control.

Finally, football fans who shell out vast amounts of money to follow their team have started to feel in touch with their heroes again. And that can’t be a bad thing, unless you’re the suits at the archaic Football Association who got a little uptight at a Liverpool player mocking a referee through a tweet.

So what’s the conclusion for us? It harks back to the old social media notion of tangibility. Twitter, in particular, is an ideal platform for brands to create a personality and identity for themselves, and truly engage with their customers. And footballers are doing just that; for so long untouchable and unreachable, fans can now see the human side of their heroes.

If brands use and manage Twitter in the right way, they can create a brand personality and connect with their target consumer audiences, just as footballers are. Some brands are doing this well – Gatwick Airport for example, during the snow. Regular updates, prompt and quick personal responses and a wealth of information helped travellers stay in touch with developments as the snow took over.  They bridged the gap by showing real personality.. , engaging with consumers in a human way. Do Goliath brands need to transform themselves into many different Davids?  We can’t all have the appeal of Beckham, but we can learn a few tricks from his fellow team-mates.

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Posted in Social media, Trends | 2 Comments »

Government tries crowdsourcing: gets burned

August 5th, 2010 by Andrew

You may have read this week about the Coalition Government’s failed attempts at crowdsourcing.

Through its various departments online, the Coalition Government had issued a call to action to the general public, to give its policy suggestions on areas such as the NHS, pensions and capital gains tax.

Following 9,500 responses, the Government decided to act on none of them, and issued their policy unchanged. On paper it doesn’t look good and, if we’re honest, a bit pointless.

Simon Burall, director of Involve, a group advising bodies on consultation, told The Guardian: “You have to give the government some credit for trying to do this, but badly designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all.

“They diminish trust and reduce the prospect that people will engage again.”

In many respects, he’s got a point. It’s both exciting and commendable that the Government is even considering crowdsourcing as a form of policy formation and surely takes the forays into social media for politics in the UK a step further. In addition to the participation and conversation online around politics, this is a clear sign that the Government is considering the Internet as a legitimate avenue for ideas.

However, as Simon says, it also seems hollow that the Government has failed to act on even just one of the 9,500 suggestions. I know we’re not well versed in the bureaucratic notions of policy making in Westminster, but surely one of 9,500, clearly politically-interested people (hell, if they’re participating in policy crowdsourcing, they must be) suggested a goodun’?!

I don’t believe though, like Simon says, that this episode will diminish trust in the Government, nor that it will reduce the prospect that people will engage again. Not significantly, anyway. Let’s face it – as it stands, the Government and indeed politics in general isn’t held in the highest esteem and considering we have a say effectively one every five years and see little change off the back of it, we’ve become quite accustomed to not being heard.

So let’s see the positives in this. The Government has not just acknowledged the presence of, but indulged in (albeit half-heartedly) crowdsourcing. Who’da thunk it? And not just indulged in it, but indulged in it as a prospective avenue for policy creation.

That, my friends, is progress. Not quite change, but progress nonetheless.

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Posted in Government, Social media | No Comments »

PRCA Digital: social media brief seeks PR agency for understanding, results and more…

June 18th, 2010 by Adrian

The PRCA held a breakfast briefing at Ketchum this morning: How SEO and PPC can support PR campaigns. Stephen Waddington – MD, Speed Communications – talked us through the tricks of SEO and Ketchum’s Fernando Rizo showed how to fast-track attention to online campaigns with effective PPC.

Both Stephen and Fernando demonstrated the beauty of the results that these techniques provide. PR agencies can produce definitive statistics with SEO and PPC campaigns – unequivocal results. Fantastic!

Stephen and Fernando also discussed the complexity of ownership with the group. Eulogy!’s well versed in SEO having completed a number of projects for clients, but Stephen confirmed our fears that the PR industry (and the marketing community at large) is yet to understand the practice.

Five years ago, SEO firmly belonged in the hands of search agencies. Then ad and digital agencies took a bite. And now PR agencies, too? Well, yes of course! It’s editorial. Who else is better placed to write authoritative copy, rich with brand messaging and keywords? SEO sits firmly within the online PR gambit. It amplifies what other marketing channels churn out. It seeds your content all over the shop to encourage people to click, to engage and to talk!

I am committed to working with bodies like the PRCA to carve out a fair share of ownership of online and social media budgets. We’ve seen a big move towards this in the industry. Sure it’s a struggle sometimes, like when clients refuse to acknowledge PR as anything but proof in a paper, but our digital revolution is increasingly inevitable.

We’re working hard to this speed along. As chief exec, it’s my job to drive the agency forward not only in terms of new business but also skills and professional development.We believe PR’s love affair with social media will be a hot and steamy one, and it’s only just begun.

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Posted in Digital PR, Eulogy!, PR industry, Social media | 1 Comment »

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