Philip Sheldrake

Friday Roundup – social media is a total waste of time

// June 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Friday Roundup 11th June 2010

Seriously. Do I have to write anything today? There are so many great posts on MarCom Professional this week that I feel a tangible improvement in my personal development from just having read and thought about every single one.

But you only have to read the 22 I've selected for the Friday Roundup! :-)

Seriously. Maybe I should pick a short-shortlist? Or group them by theme... Yes, it appears this week was a good week for B2B social media.

On the one hand we have the Rolls Royce Comms Director saying "Social media is a waste of time", but, as if on cue, the MarCom Professional members pipe up with: (more...)

Friday Roundup – discontent content management

// May 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Content management has come a long way since the turn of the century. Back then, web design and content management systems (CMS) typically set anyone back five to seven figures of whatever currency they had to hand. And then some bright sparks developed the idea of blogging.

Blogging helped many non-technical web users start publishing for the first time by stripping CMS back to its bare bones, and I remember hosting a contingent from MIT in London in 2001 at the Work Foundation where we worked ourselves up into a frenzy about how big blogging was going to be! (more...)

Friday Roundup – social media training gets more useful

// May 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Fortunately, the last time I was asked "what's a blog?" whilst presenting at a social media conference was 2008. Thank gawd for that. But too many social media conferences continue to labour the basics whilst the majority of practitioners have moved themselves way up the learning curve.

So I thought I'd invest this Friday Roundup in identifying three initiatives in London that should tickle your advanced social fancy.

The first is the CIPR's Digital Impact conference. For an institute that didn't lead in the social media world back when I was being asked "what's a refback?", the CIPR has jumped three gears and is heading straight into the thick of things in 2010. The content looks fab. The speakers are great and the venue, for those who haven't yet been to the CIPR's new home, is lovely.

I'm going particularly for the First Direct and Vodafone sessions. (And don't worry about the CIPR's website, yes it is awful, and yes they do know it, and yes a new one will debut in just a couple of weeks!)

The second is Social Media Marketing 2010 from the same guys that brought us the successful Monitoring Social Media 2009 and Social Media Monitoring Bootcamp 2010 conferences. And with Chris Brogan and Brian Solis making rare appearances in the UK, it's shaping up to be another "I like" feather in the Luke Brynley-Jones' social hat.

Lastly, and another CIPR first, the CIPR Social Summer is the first event series organised by the CIPR's newly formed Social Media panel, and a series that's being developed openly on a wiki. Seriously, if you want to change it, you can. (more...)

Friday Roundup – the Internet of Things

// April 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Last week's Friday Roundup focused on the ramifications of the Semantic Web, so-called Web 3.0, on the marketing and PR professions. So perhaps you'll forgive me if I push my luck by talking tech two weeks running.

The Internet of Things changes many aspects of our lives, including the possibilities and practice of the influence professions; marketing and PR. What is it? Well, you can think of it as a network of objects beyond the usual computers and smartphones, for example:

• The device containing electronics in order to fulfil its primary function (eg, washing machine, car, aircon unit)
• The electrical device traditionally absent of sophisticated electronics (eg, lighting, heating, power distribution)
• Non-electrical objects (eg, food and drink packages, animals, clothing); and
• Environmental sensors (eg, for variables such as temperature, heat and moisture).

And just like the Semantic Web, the Internet of Things isn't just some futurologist's dreamscape. It is here, now. (more...)

Friday Roundup – all aboard Web 3.0

// April 23rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Do you recall the pre-Web days of PR and marketing? The time before The Cluetrain Manifesto signalled that everything had changed and that the social media train was about to leave the station whether you were on it or not.

If stretching out that train doesn't stretch the metaphor too much, you could say that a very long train left the station from 1999 to 2009 with people jumping on board as and when they and/or their organisation felt ready. But undoubtedly, those who "got it" earlier than later have been best positioned to reap the benefits for their organisation and for their personal career.

Well, marketing and PR is about to change. Again. It's 2010.

If Web 2.0 could be summed up as content and community, then Web 3.0 is about the Web itself understanding the meaning of that content and community. Web 3.0 is more accurately known as the Semantic Web, and as the name implies it gives us the opportunity to have software applications connect the dots and spot patterns and coalesce information and reach conclusions on our behalf. (more...)

Friday Roundup – social 'in real life' and online

// April 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

It's just coming up to ten years since I participated in the first UK workshop on this new thing called blogging. During the ensuing decade I have formed a number of social media tenets that have so far stood the tests of time.

One of these is simply that social networks work best when they span the on- and off-line worlds; when face-to-face leads to 'linking-in', and when 'friending' leads to meet and greet.

Of course, another tenet was that at some juncture we'd stop differentiating between on- and off-line in the same way we don't feel the need to qualify whether a conversation was held in person or over the phone, but what's a contradiction between friends?

And the combination of on- and off- has worked in my favour recently. I had the benefit of a highly receptive audience at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp 2010 who went on to view and tweet and my presentation about influence on slideshare.net, which then helped catapult it to slideshare's homepage as their most discussed document of the day.

So how can you start making the combination of on- and off- work to your advantage?

Lots of great posts for you this week. Enjoy! (more...)

Friday Roundup – Influence Influence Influence

// March 26th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Uncategorized

What's influence? How is it achieved? Who's got it?

Regular readers of my posts will know that I have a penchant for labelling all the combined disciplines of marketing and PR as simply "Influence". (Hey, the word even appears in the name of my consultancy.) And the combination or convergence of these skills under one unifying term helps erode the noun orientation of our profession and assists in constructing a verb oriented approach. What are we really trying to do?

I've been pulling my thoughts together for a presentation about influence for this coming week's Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp in London (about half a dozen tickets remaining I believe), and I'll be posting my presentation to my blog on the day. But perhaps I can leave you with something to think about until then, particularly as I'm hoping that this will spark violent disagreement all the better for getting the matter resolved as soon as possible.

Here it is. Influence scoring services like Klout and Social Mention are utterly useless. At best such services are harmless fun, and at worst they are a costly and wasteful distraction from doing the right thing the right way for yourselves or your client. (more...)

Friday Roundup – marketing convergence and social all over

// March 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I've had the pleasure in the last two weeks of working with a dozen of the finest Brits in PR, branding, digital / Web, public affairs and news distribution. We've joined up to work voluntarily on an apolitical campaign in the run up to the UK general election (invincecable.org.uk if you're interested).

I'm telling you this because, having blogged about the convergence of marketing disciplines over the years (as distinct from "integrated"), this campaign of ours has revealed just how far the best practitioners' expertise is now "converged". Sure, there's still the need to pause to explain the occasional aspect or define a particular piece of jargon or inevitable acronym, but generally the group just understands what we're trying to achieve and how we can all work together to make it happen.

There is no bewilderment, misconception or diffidence.

And this is despite the fact that we haven't actually all met each other. That doesn't stop us. We're Skype'ing, IM'ing, emailing, wiki'ing, posterous'ing, tweeting, and quickly assembling the resources, ideas and timetable for a cracking campaign. And all in the open. And all whilst earning a living. Awesome. (more...)

Friday Roundup – the converging profession

// February 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We have a super mix of posts for you this week. In fact the reason we send this weekly roundup on a Friday is because we think more people make some time to read about their industry towards the end of the week.

And in a converging profession, that awareness can prove critical in securing that new business opportunity, and in maintaining the business you have.

PR consultants should have a good grasp of search engine optimisation. SEOs should get the heads round mobile apps. Mobile digital pros may well do better stuff with training in advertising. And advertisers should be looking to learn PR skills.

(more...)

Friday Roundup – the Semantic Web

// February 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

So-called "Web 2.0" dominated the last decade. This decade be prepared for "Web 3.0". Why the quotes?... well these terms are loosely defined at best, but remain useful as signposts of major change.

Most pundits associate 3.0 with something called the Semantic Web. Effectively, if Web 2.0 was about community and content, then Web 3.0 / the Semantic Web is about understanding the meaning of those social contributions and content.

Importantly, Web 3.0 is going to have as big an impact on what it means to practice marketing and public relations as Web 2.0. The implications are widespread and interlinked, which is not surprising when something called LinkedData is a sub-set of the Semantic Web. (more...)