Thursday, 23 June 2011

Social Media Podcast No 37 The Facebook Edition...and other things!

Let me say from the outset that we made a cardinal error with this podcast - Gordon White, Kyle Murdoch and Iain Murray all gathered to record this episode at the appointed time, sat down to discuss (very roughly) what we would talk about then discovered no one had brought the recorder! Fear not, fatBuzz usually find a fix for such problems and we actually recorded it via one of our large Sony cameras.

The edition does tend to focus a lot of Facebook; largely because we had just completed three "Facebook for Business" New Media Breakfast in the preceding six days! In that period we had all attended the Entrepreneurial Exchange Conference at Gleneagles where much of the speaker's content was about the use of social media in their businesses.

We also discuss the relevancy of your community and the need to develop a following that is relevant to your business and, the usefulness of Twitter and Facebook Lists.

We talk about a couple of influential social media business people, Michelle Mone of Ultimo and Richard McKay of Richard McKay flooring.

Other subjects include:
Play the podcast here:



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You can also follow the Social Media Podcast on Facebook now - visit and "Like" the new Social Media Podcast Facebook Page HERE.

Sunday, 5 June 2011

Glasgow New Media Breakfast - Your Personal Branding Online


How you get your brand across online without the aid of your voice and body language
What do people say about you when you’re not in the room? Whatever it is, that’s your personal brand – and it’s the key to your success.

Because in a world where ‘people buy people’ your personal brand helps them decide whether or not they’re buying into you (and thanks to Google and all things online, that can happen before they’ve even met you). Spark’s Jennifer Holloway will be sharing her insights on personal brand – what it is, how it’s formed, how to define it and how to promote it – to help you tap into one of the most powerful career and business tools you have at your disposal.

ABOUT JENNIFER HOLLOWAY
With a career including 15 years in media relations and PR, Jennifer Holloway knows a thing or two about promoting a personal brand – she did it every time she picked up the phone to a journalist.  The result? She stood out from the ‘press office crowd’ and got her stories on the front page. Today, she is a personal brand expert, helping executives to define their personal brand before teaching them how to promote that in everything they say and do.  Known as ‘The Antidote to Yes-Men’ her honest, challenging and practical style has helped leaders discover how, by being themselves, they can be even more successful.

Take a look at Jennifer's Blog
Jennifer Holloway on Linked-In
Follow Jennifer on Twitter

WOULD YOU LIKE TO MEET JENNIFER?
Jennifer is travelling from the North of England and she has kindly offered to have private meetings on the day with any attendee who would like to discuss their personal brand and how she helps people to maximise ther online presence. If you are interested, we stronly recommend that you book a time as quickly as possible so that you are not dissapointed.  It will also enable Jennifer to organise her travel arrangements.  To arrange a time to have an informal chat with Jennifer please email fiona@fatbuzz.com stating your preferred time - times will be allocated strictly on a first come first serve basis.

NOTE FROM GORDON WHITE
We have covered many topics in the New Media Breakfast since it first began back in September 2009 and most of them have explored specific tools or platforms that you may choose for your online presence however, this month's topic is different; regardless of how you use the Web, your personal branding is critical. In all of our previous breakfast presentations we have highlighted the need for transparancy and building trust, that is why I believe Jennifer's presentation is a must for everyone who has attended any previous breakfast.  I would encourage you all to book early and come along to this important event.

Venue: 29 Member's Club, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow
Date: Friday 1st July 2011
Time: 7.30am for 8am


No.29 Members Go Free – If you are a 29 Member you can attend the breakfast free of charge. Please email malcolm@fatbuzz.com with you membership number and he will add you to the attendance list. We hope you can make it along to this event. If so, I look forward to seeing you on the day.
BOOK FOR NEW MEDIA BREAKFAST GLASGOW HERE:



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Friday, 27 May 2011

Facebook Send Buttons

Facebook "Send" Buttons provide a much more controlled way to share content from web pages and blogs.

The send button lets you insert a message and target exactly who you want to share the content with; you can specify names and groups from your Facebook Profile or email addresses.

This is one of the things we will be looking at at the forthcoming series of New Media Breakfasts in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

 You can find out the details of the nearest breakfast to you at the New Media Breakfast website www.newmediabreakfast.co.uk

If you want to try the Facebook "Send" Button you can do so below:




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You can also follow fatBuzz on Facebook - visit and "Like" the fatBuzz Page HERE.

Tuesday, 24 May 2011

New Media BBQ - What Scotland can learn from the Silicon Valley


Come and join us for our first informal networking BBQ hosted by fatBuzz.

DATE: Wednesday 8th June 2011
TIME:  6.00pm 
VENUE: The Golf Lounge, 221 West George Street, G2 2ND
COST: £10 +vat

Price includes a visit to the BBQ plus a welcome drink on arrival.

What Scotland can learn from the Silicon Valley

What do world leading companies like Apple, Facebook, Google or Twitter have in common? Apart from having an un-quenchable desire to build great products, they have all been established and are based in Silicon Valley. This 60 mile peninsula, running from San Francisco to San Jose has built a reputation for being home to the fastest growing and most impactful internet, and now mobile, businesses.

What can Scotland learn from these institutions?

This New Media BBQ will focus on the cultural learnings from Silicon Valley and what Scottish Business can learn from the 'Innovation Ecosystem' (McKinsey & Co. 2009). The Presentation will be led by Andrew McCalister (Heyzap, Mino Monsters) who will discuss:

- What markets are exploding…..and imploding

- How to raise the required funding

- What to do with it once you get it

- Building a killer culture

- Learning points from social gaming

Andrew McCalister, originally from Glasgow now lives and works in Silicon Valley. He charges ahead with Business Development for Heyzap, the largest social discovery platform for games in the world, and is a Board advisor at Mino Monsters, one of the hottest start-ups in Silicon Valley aiming to be the next Pokemon.

He is the youngest ever awardee of the prestigious Global Research Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering for his work on high-growth companies in Silicon valley. Prior to making the jump to California, Andrew graduated with Distinction from Cambridge University in Engineering and Business and Glasgow University with Engineering.

For his sins he went to school with Kyle Murdoch, fatBuzz.

Below you can view a short introduction video from Andrew about the New Media BBQ.




BOOK FOR THE NEW MEDIA BBQ HERE 


Price includes a visit to the BBQ plus a welcome drink on arrival. We also plan to run a few fun competitions on the golf simulators before and after the talk.

FatBuzz Ltd hosts the monthly New Media Breakfast series of seminars in Glasgow and Edinburgh with bi-monthly events in Aberdeen and Inverness. These events have attracted over 100 attendees and are growing every month in reputation and popularity.

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Hashtag for the event - #NmBBQ


Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Social Media Podcast 36 now available...Sallie Goetsch the boxing referee




Social Media Podcast No.36 is slightly longer than the usual podcast but, well worth listening to.  Following Social Media Podcast No.34 (The boxing edition), Sallie Goetsch contacted us about the stats Iain and I were using to argue the case about Android vs iOS, she was concerned that we were not comparing like for like so, we invited her to explain.  In Social Media Podcast we enjoy some light hearted banter about the argument and Sallie explains the difficulty with statistics and why we should beware who is presenting them.


We also took the opportunity to have a conversation with Sallie about her work and some social media related issues, during the chat we discussed the following:
  • The power of podcasting as a communication tool
  • Sallie's forthcoming podcast workshop
  • Audioboo and other "simple" ways to podcast
  • The deterioration of the English language, bad grammar and people's fear of writing
I'm sure you'll find the conversation extremely interesting with a suitable balance of fun and serious commentary.  Following the interview I also comment on something that Sallie does very well and others do very badly; deciding when something should be said off-line as opposed to on-line.

The usual team of Kyle Murdoch, Iain Murray and myself (Gordon White) then go on to discuss a range of topics from the world of social media including the following:
  • Telstra's social media training progress
  • Social Media Policies - Link to examples on www.socialmediagovernance.com
  • The rising popularity of QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) and how fatBuzz use Kimtag as a single QR Code linked to all of our on-line places
  • Personal branding and the importance of your reputation online - Link to www.reputation.com
  • The forthcoming New Media Breakfast on Personal Branding with Jennifer Holloway
  • EBay Shops - Does a 100% positive feedback rating add to the sales value of your EBay store?
These are some of the main things we chat about during the podcast.  In addition, we mention Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Cloud, LoveFilm, Audible.com and, Silverlight.

We also refer to a very useful piece of research conducted by Buddy Media which is available as a pdf download on Mashable - Facebook Engagement Data

Finally, we leave the podcast with an invitation to take a look at the latest marketing campaign from Range Rover for the new Range Rover Evoque.  We intend to discuss this on the next podcast so, please take a moment to have a look and make a comment about it before we record Social Media Podcast 37.

Play the podcast here:



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You can also follow the Social Media Podcast on Facebook now - visit and "Like" the new Social Media Podcast Facebook Page HERE.

Thursday, 5 May 2011

Social Media Podcast No.35 is now available - The Legal Edition with Valerie Surgenor

Firstly, our congratulations to Valerie Surgenor who, since we recorded this podcast, has become a Partner with MacRoberts, we wish her all the very best as she takes up her new role from the 1st May 2011.  The podcast was recorded at the Capella Building, MacRoberts office in Glasgow and the picture below s taken from the room during the recording.


In Social Media Podcast No.35 Gordon White and Valerie Surgenor discuss various topical issues around the law and social media, these include the following:

  • The progress (or non-progress) of the Digital Economy Act
  • The Bribery Act and potential web connotations
  • Where does responsibility lie with social media mistakes
  • Ownership of an employees online community
  • Cloud Computing - security and ownership of data stored in the cloud
  • European Union laws on notification of cookies on your web site
  • New rules about disclosure of data breaches

We would also like to thank Tim Barlow of Attacat and Derek Lally for the questions the sent in via Twitter for this podcast.

If you have any questions you would like us to discuss on the next Social Media Podcast please forward them to gordon@fatbuzz.com and we will be pleased to include them in our discussion.  The next podcast recording is scheduled for the morning of Monday 9th May so, please send any questions or comments prior to this.

The information on this podcast is for discussion purposes only, it does not constitute legal advice; for advice on a specific issue please contact valerie.surgenor@macroberts.com

Play the podcast here:



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Friday, 29 April 2011

May New Media Breakfast is in June! - FACEBOOK FOR BUSINESS


FACEBOOK FOR BUSINESS

DATE: Friday 3rd June 2011

VENUE: 29 Member's Club, 29 Royal Exchange Square,Glasgow

Time: 7.30am for 8 am - 9.15am

 

Facebook is by far the single biggest social media platform and is heading towards 600 million users world wide with over 30 million of them in the UK.  With over half the population using the platform it has become a very important platform for personal and business use.  Furthermore, the recent changes to Facebook now make it an ideal platform for companies to engage and communicate with their customers; many of the world's leading brands now use Facebook as their main point of contact with the public.

This New Media Breakfast will focus on Facebook and look at the various ways that businesses can use the platform to promote themselves and create meaningful engagement with their target audience.  Using live examples we will demonstrate what others are doing to achieve positive results on Facebook.  The presentation will be conducted by Gordon White (fatBuzz Ltd) and Tim Barlow (Attacat Ltd) who will explore the following topics:

• Facebook Pages

• Facebook Questions

• Facebook Buttons - Send, Share, Comment and Like

• Facebook Advertising

• Facebook Insights (Analytics)

• Pictures and Tagging

• Building a Facebook community

• How to engage with your audience

• Dealing with negative comments

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Business owners, decision makers, entrepreneurs, marketing and business development personnel.  The breakfast is designed to give you an overview of the platform and help you establish a strategy for using Facebook effectively for your business.  

THE SPEAKERS

GORDON WHITE

Gordon White started Design Matters in 1986 offering traditional design and marketing services to a wide range of public and private sector organisations throughout the UK. The arrival of the internet saw Design Matters move into web design, web strategy and online marketing then, with the arrival of Web 2.0 Design Matters became involved in social media and assisting their portfolio of clients to engage and communicate using new media.

In 2006, in response to the growing demand for new and social media production, Gordon founded Podcastmatters Ltd, a new media production company specialising in audio and video podcast production, niche networking and social media consulting.  

In June 2010 Podcastmatters and Design Matters merged and rebranded as fatBuzz Ltd.

FatBuzz Ltd hosts the monthly New Media Breakfast series of seminars in Glasgow and Edinburgh with bi-monthly events in Aberdeen and Inverness. These events have attracted over 100 attendees and are growing every month in reputation and popularity.  Gordon regularly delivers seminars, presentations and workshops to organisations throughout the UK such as recent engagements with the Institute of Directors, The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the Institute of Investor Relations, Business Gateway and The Grampian Food Forum.

Gordon is a past Chairman of Links of Scotland, a consortium of 26 golf related businesses formed to market their goods and services in the USA and the Far East. Gordon acquired John Letters of Scotland in 1999 and was Chairman of the company until he sold it to Direct Golf in 2005.

Gordon also hosts a twice-monthly podcast called “Social Media Podcast” with commentary about social media and interviews from World leaders in the field; 3 times in 2010 the Social Media Podcast has been the No.1 audio podcast in the iTunes Podcasting category.

Gordon is married with three children and enjoys drawing, painting and golf.  He is an accomplished golf artist selling prints of his work via the Internet all around the world.  

TIM BARLOW

Tim Barlow is the managing director of Attacat, the Edinburgh-based search engine and internet marketing firm. Tim has been involved in search engine promotion since 1999 when he managed the first Innogy website for National Power. In 2001, Tim launched Pastures-New, one of the UK's leading rental portals, gaining similar levels of traffic with a marketing budget of £100 a month as Rightmove were then achieving with a multi million pound TV campaign. Attacat was set up in 1994 to take advantage of Tim's knowledge.

Self-taught in the art of search engine optimisation and internet marketing (there simply weren't formal courses in those days), Tim passionately believes that good SEO is not rocket science or a black art but simply the result of effective online marketing and web design. This approach has been proven time and again by Tim and his team achieving long lasting high ranks on competitive one and two word phrases for clients in a variety of fields.

Pay per click (such as Google AdWords) has been a long time specialism of Tim and Attacat. Indeed Tim was one of the very first Qualified Google Advertising Professionals in the world and Attacat has held the company version of the qualification since its inception. Attacat use pay per click (PPC) to drive £10s of millions of business for a variety of clients from classic e-commerce sites to B2B businesses in niches you probably never knew existed.

No.29 Members Go Free – If you are a 29 Member you can attend the breakfast free of charge. Please email malcolm@fatbuzz.com with you membership number and he will add you to the attendance list.

We hope you can make it along to this event. If so, I look forward to seeing you on the day.
BOOK FOR NEW MEDIA BREAKFAST GLASGOW HERE:



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