Tag Archives: rhythm

useful and interesting

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hello, so i’ve been thinking about some things beyond swine flu this week . . . but i’m only going to post about one – data, i love it, we all love it, we are all going to talk about it a little more over the coming weeks and months . . . looking forward to it

1) so, question one i ask you – are you the algorithm?

http://tinyurl.com/db79vo

2) The Guardian came to see me the other day, and we ended up talking about data not about media, so it was actually a meeting i enjoyed . . . they are doing some frankly fascinating stuff . . .

Guardian Open Platform Launch Event

Now, I’ve never massively been into the Guardian as a paper but as a brand i find it interestingly plays into john grant’s bubbles thing - from the long term deep investment in festivals through this move into open source and all the way to their linked datablog  . . .  http://tinyurl.com/qgo8j3 . . . some people (including themselves) are already doing some ace stuff with this including this mash-up of google maps and mp travel expense claims

http://tinyurl.com/dcu3ng

and this for the footie fans amongst you  http://tinyurl.com/d94mjy

for me, the thing this raises is about what story you tell with the data (and in a nod to team zen, how), because the data itself is neither useful nor interesting, its what you do with it that counts (as they say)

which takes me to where i will start with those of you in planning teams as we go on this whole data + deniro = success tip . . .  we tell stories for a living, those stories are the stories of how to change consumer behaviour for sure, but to steal from 1964 “the medium is the message” (maybe we’ll post next week on 60′s and 70′s cultural theorists, a lot things are coming full circle/into our line of sight now) – treat data as a spreadsheet or a bar chart and we’re all in trouble, treat it as one of the narrative voices in your story and we are getting interesting . . .

3) it seems the emeritus mr hollis has posted about something similar overnight -

http://tinyurl.com/o6mj5k

oh, and just because i quite like razorfish (always have done) an added extra

4) Razorfish’s annual client summit http://tinyurl.com/c5v5b7

there is some really interesting stuff in here (props walshy) – i like the reinvention of consumer research as community and influence research thought, but there is loads of other stuff hidden under a wealth of twitter nonsense

much like the rhythm,  data is gonna get you . . . watch out

Social media – ten top tips for success

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Here’s a quick guide if you’re talking to clients about social media. It really isn’t rocket science – it’s the most commonsensical type of marketing. If you want to know more, give me a shout with a comment below and we can chat. Ta. Jerry…

  1. Use Ivan (our head of data in dotcom)- comScore tells us quite a bit about audiences in social media, especially the high traffic sites. He can pinpoint the right sites to talk to your audience, whatever it might be. Sounds obvious but there are plenty who seem to get blinded by social media. First and foremost, it’s media.
  2. Spot the currency – if you study the site you’ll soon spot the type of content people like, share and comment on. This research should reassure you of your research findings from Ivan, and tell you how to present your content once you decide to engage with the community.
  3. Learn the lingo – chat on established social media sites comes with its own argot, vocabulary and rhythm. If you don’t want to stand out, get up to speed. Of course, you don’t have to be down-wiv-da-kids, as long as you’re useful and respectful.
  4. Make friends – the most influential people on a site are pretty easy to spot. Take a look at Digg and you can easily see the top 100 contributors. To become friends, you need to add value to their threads and discussions by being polite, useful and engaging. Make sure you comment on their stuff, link to it from your site or blog and suggest stuff for them to look at that’s not yours too. You really must join the community you’re getting involved with as well. If you don’t you’re not really part of it and not really contributing. In fact, you’re not being very social, are you?
  5. Avoid self promotion – if you can’t see why, don’t get involved in social marketing. Period.
  6. Be precise – if you provide crap stuff, links that don’t work or inaccurate/false/phony info, you’ll annoy people and, rightly, attract their scorn.
  7. Announce your interest – in the UK especially, if you don’t say who you are or who you’re working for, you’re probably breaking the law. Take a look at what Big Mouth Media has to say on the subject.
  8. Take your time – you won’t get results immediately and you certainly won’t become part of the community over night. This means you need to resource plan too. Insights will come pretty quickly, though, which can help your engagement strategy and inform your content selection and development. You need to ensure you’ve got the time, people and money to invest (before you start) in order to get anything useful back.
  9. Don’t be precious – if you’ve put content into the community, you can’t expect people to simply let it alone. They’ll want to develop it for themselves, redefine it and play around with it. That’s what you want them to do because it’s this behaviour that shows your content is useful to the community. If you don’t want your content changed by others, don’t put it into the hands of a social community.
  10. Avoid spam – you find it annoying and invasive, so why wouldn’t other people?