Comment... | 16.02.12
Last week was Social Media Week, an annual event which takes place in nine global cities including London, where people come together at (usually free) events to talk about emerging trends in social and mobile media.
This year, Onlinefire helped to kick-start SocialMediaWeek LDN with a bang when we hosted a saucy session on sexy social, or to be more specific, ‘Making Social Sexy: Getting consumers excited about a ‘not-so-exciting’ product’.
Our wonderful Royal Mail colleague joined us at One Alfred Street to discuss how brands that might not usually be perceived as cool can compete in the world of social media.
Speaking at the event was Melanie Seasons, from Onlinefire, Natasha Ayivor, Royal Mail PR Manager, and me, Charley Hayes.
Our session focussed on how to create brand desirability, no matter what the product, and how to convey that allure through different styles and language.
We gave a nod to Marketing Week for a great piece of research covered recently which identified the 6 Codes which reveal brand personality – well worth a read if you get the chance.
Melanie and I ran through some cracking case studies from Onlinefire (even if I do say so myself!), including Royal Mail Stamps, Elastoplast, Direct Ferries, Brother and a campaign from last year that we both love from Pedigree in NZ, called Doggleganger.
If you didn’t make it to Social Media Week this year, then make sure you put it in your diary for 2013 and we look forward to your company then.
admin
Comment... | 20.01.12
Further to my post on using social networks to help in your job search and network, this is an interesting infographic that looks at just who these job seekers are and how they’re utilizing social networks to land jobs.
What is remarkable, given my points the other day, just how many people who had found their current job through social networks, did so through Facebook (85%) over LinkedIn (56%) and Twitter (45%). And given the facilities of the Facebook apps profiled, just how many of those described as Super Social Job Seekers “modified their Facebook privacy settings with work in mind (32%).”
admin
2 comments | 17.01.12
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
admin
Comment... | 25.02.11
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…
Elaine Birch
