Lanarkshire New Media Breakfast - Content Explored

CONTENT EXPLORED
Content creation is something people struggle with; knowing what to talk about, what tone to use or, what platforms are best are all questions we hear over and over again.

How do you make sure your content is engaging?
How often should you put out new content?
How do you get people to share your content?

These are all questions we will be exploring at the March New Media Breakfast in Lanarkshire.

We will provide content creation ideas for your business and we'll offer suggestions about how to get your content found and shared.

INDUSTRY/SECTOR SPECIFIC
We will also look at some industry specific examples and how different sectors can use specific events and dates to create interesting content. If you would like us to specifically feature your sector, please email us details in advance and we'll try to include it in the presentation. Please send your industry or sector details to gordon@fatbuzz.com

SPECIAL EVENTS
In addition, we will look at special events in the 2013 calendar and how you may be able to create relevant content around them.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
We hope you'll be able to make it along to the March New Media Breakfast, we will be using as many examples as possible across different industry sectors so we're sure there will be something for everyone on the day. Hopefully, the session will provide lots of inspiration to help you create great content throughout the rest of the year.

THE SPEAKER
Gordon White, Managing director of fatBuzz Ltd will present the January New Media Breakfast.

Venue: Lanarkshire Business & Conference Centre, Cumbernauld, G67 1HU
Date: Thursday 21st March 2013
Time: 7.30am for 8am
Cost: £10+ vat
Directions: Show in Google Maps

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 LANARKSHIRE HERE:

If you have found the content on this page interesting please share it with your online community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

Are you B2B or B2C when you should actually be P2P?

I watched a video the other day entitled "Social Media for Enterprise - A Business Case", it was created to help convince senior executives about the importance of social media and Jeremiah Owyang, Analyst at Altimeter made reference to P2P businesses - it was a real ‘light bulb’ moment for me.

By P2P he meant “People to People” and what a great reference it is. Those of you who have heard me speak will no doubt have heard me say ‘people buy people’ - I believe this is true for any business whether itʼs B2B or B2C. Furthermore, it applies to all organisations whether in the private sector, public sector or charity sector.


Social media is changing the rules; David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing & PR, was kind enough to record a video for our New Media Breakfast, and in that video, he talked about how things have changed. He explained that we are all publishers and we can get our message out via social media in such a way that earns us space rather than having to buy space. Itʼs about people connecting directly with people via social media.

Likewise, CC Chapman, author of Content Rules and Amazing Things Will Happen, was kind enough to do a video for us in which he said: ‘Be yourself, tell your story and create real content, whether itʼs to increase awareness, increase sales or to get kids to attend your school’. He encourages people to tell their own story and connect with relevant people using whatever social media tools allow them to be themselves. It could be blogging, podcasting, video, or status updates but regardless of the tools, the overriding message was: ‘Be yourself, as if you were there with the person you're talking to’.

So, should companies start to think differently? Are you a B2B or B2C business? Or should you become a P2P business?

Personally I like the idea; I have always believed in the notion that people buy people, even before social media arrived on the scene. Recently, I have noticed a tendency, particularly in the younger generation, for people to ʻhideʼ behind email and text messages - Iʼm constantly telling people to lift to phone and speak to people, or better still, meet them face to face. All too often people are reluctant to use the telephone to actually make a telephone call! Perhaps by promoting a P2P culture you will help to focus your people on connecting in a much more personal and meaningful manner.

Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, uses a very interesting sub-title or tagline for the book: ‘Everyone is connected. Connect your business to everyone’. In the book, Mitch highlights how social media enables everyone to publish content and connect one-to-one, and one-to-many.

The video I mentioned at the start of this blog post uses Virgin as a case study and explains how all Virgin staff are encouraged to be involved in the companyʼs social media content; this is a P2P culture.

Likewise, Zappos, the American shoe retailer, has empowered its staff to talk to all of its customers, and in doing so, has pretty much rewritten the rules of customer service. Telstra, the communications giant in Australia, has made social media training for its 40,000 employees compulsory in an effort to make sure they are connected and truly P2P.

When asked in a recent interview for my predictions for 2013, I said I thought there would be a marked increase in the number of businesses unblocking social media in the workplace. Furthermore, I predict they will not only unblock its use, but they will also empower their people to use it and become ambassadors for the organisation. I truly hope Iʼm right.

Perhaps if we redefine our businesses from B2B or B2C and aim to become P2P we will find it easier to make the inevitable leap into becoming truly social.

Are you B2B or B2C when you should actually be P2P?

If you have found this post interesting please use the share buttons below to tell your online community, there's a good chance they will too. Thank you.

Why are fatBuzz sponsoring the Entertainment Guide Awards 2013?

We are delighted to announce we are sponsoring The Scottish Entertainment Guide Awards 2013. To be more specific, we are sponsoring the award for Scotland's Best In-House Marketing Initiative.

You may wonder why a marketing, design and social media agency has decided to sponsor a category that is specifically for in-house marketing; it's fairly simple, we see this as a great opportunity to highlight the fact that we work very closely with in-house marketing teams. 

We regularly assist in-house teams with special projects and we train in-house marketing teams on the use of social media marketing and content creation. Furthermore, we regularly work with in-house marketing teams to help them devise, develop and implement marketing initiatives. It was an easy decision for us to make; we meet lots of marketing teams doing great work with their organisations and we like to work with them whenever the opportunity arises. We are looking forward to seeing the entries and helping to judge the winners in this category.

We were also pleased when we saw the list of questions for the entrants, obviously they refer to social media, but they also include references to how it fits with the overall marketing strategy - a very important consideration for all businesses.  Here are the questions you need to answer in your submission:

• How did you plan and develop your social media strategy?
• How does it fit within your overall marketing strategy?
• How do you measure the success of your social media marketing?
• What makes your social media marketing stand out from the competition?
• What would you say is your most innovative and successful social media campaign to date and why?
• What additional in-house marketing do you do?

This award is open to any in-house marketing team in the entertainment industry, so if you have an in-house marketing team for your restaurant, hotel, pub, club, visitor attraction, or anything else related to the industry you are very welcome to enter for the award. And yes, you can enter even if you regularly work with external agencies!

To make it easy for you to enter, we have created an online entry form on our Facebook page so that you can complete and upload your entry.

Click Here to go to the entry form.  

PLEASE NOTE: Entries close on Friday 1st March. 

You can also vote for your favourite establishment using the online application form - there's more than 20 categories to choose from.  To vote now, Click Here.

The Award will be presented at The Scottish Entertainment Guide Awards dinner at the Thistle Hotel on the 21st April 2013.  Tables are still available for this special night when the entertainment industry lets its hair down to celebrate hard work and achievement. We look forward to a great night with all the finalists.  If you would like to book a table for the Awards Dinner, you can do so HERE. 

You can also keep up to date with all the news about the awards on the Facebook page for The Scottish Entertainment Guide Awards - HERE

If you have found the content on this page interesting please share it with your online community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

Discover recent Facebook Changes at Lanarkshire New Media Breakfast

While we have been preparing for our second ever Lanarkshire New Media Breakfast, Making The Most of Facebook Timeline Pages for Business, we realised that it has been almost a year since we last delivered a New Media Breakfast on Facebook!

The last time we focused solely on Facebook was back in April 2012 - and it is frightening how much has changed in that time!

Like last time, the breakfast will highlight the many features of Facebook Pages and explore the ways that you can take advantage of the timeline layout to promote your business and encourage people to join your community.

However, we will also take a look at lots of new features that Facebook has introduced in the past year, including Promoted Posts, Sponsored Stories and Targeted Videos.

On top of that, we will also discuss the Facebook Pages Manager which is now available for all devices, and the newly released Graph Search, which can make it easier for people to discover and learn more about your business.

Another important change is the ‘20% Text Rule’, which limits the amount of text that can be contained in graphics used for business page cover photos and ads.

Of course, we will also look at the following:

• Branding 
• Tabs and iFrame Pages 
• Using the timeline 
• Liking, Commenting, Sharing and Tagging 
• Photos and Video 
• Syndicating content to your page 
• Insights 
• SEO

The functionality within Facebook pages is often overlooked with many organisations missing the massive opportunities it presents to engage with their community and share the important facts about their business.

With all these changes over the past year, we think it would be extremely beneficial for you and your business to refresh your memory and find out how to promote your page and grow your community.

On top of that, it will also give you the opportunity to visit Lanarkshire Business and Conference Centre, which is a fantastic venue in the heart of Cumbernauld College.

YOUR QUESTIONS
We are also keen to answer any questions you may have about the new Facebook Pages or, Facebook in general so, please feel free to send us any questions in advance to gordon@fatbuzz.com or post them as a comment on the blog or on the New Media Breakfast Facebook page.

THE SPEAKER
The Facebook Timeline breakfast will be presented by Gordon White, Managing Director, fatBuzz Ltd

Venue: Lanarkshire Business & Conference Centre, Cumbernauld, G67 1HU
Date: Thursday 21st February 2013
Time: 7.30am for 8am
Cost: £10+ vat
Directions: Show in Google Maps
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 LANARKSHIRE HERE:

If you have found the content on this page interesting please share it with your online community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

Public, but not in the public domain...Digital Copyright explained in Social Media Podcast 50

It's been too long since the last podcast, that's something we're going to rectify in 2013.  Due to pressure of work, we've struggled to get the whole team together since the start of the year to record Social Media Podcast 50.

To make sure we get more podcasts released in future we're going to vary the format; we will still have the team together whenever we can but we'll add some interview editions and, we'll add in some solo podcasts on specific topics.

For those of you expecting the 'big 50' edition our apologies, we haven't been able to get together to do it but we need to move on so we'll celebrate when we get to 100 and, if things go to plane, that will be sooner rather than later!

DIGITAL COPYRIGHT

In this edition Gordon White, Managing Director at fatBuzz Ltd, has a really interesting discussion with Austin Flynn, Partner at Morton Fraser and Sam Price, Associate at Morton Fraser.  I caught up with them in their Edinburgh office to discuss the use of images online and to find out a bit about Creative Commons Licenses.

Many people wrongly assume that if an image, video or music file is made public on the Internet it's in the public domain, Austin and Sam explain why this is not the case.  The discussion explores some of the myths and mistakes that people make when using images found on-line.  They also clarify the different types of Creative Commons Licenses and the restrictions that can apply even when you're buying images from photo libraries.

This is a very informative podcast well worth listening to if you every use images in your content.

We hope you enjoy the podcast, if you have any comments to make or topics you would like us to discuss please leave them here on the blog or on our Facebook Page.

Play the podcast here:

Subscribe/Download Social Media Podcast on iTunes

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE US TO TALK ABOUT?
If there is a specific topic you would like us to cover in a future podcast please let us know.  You can email gordon@fatbuzz.com or send us a message on Twitter @MediaPodcast or, you can post it as a comment on the Social Media Podcast Facebook page.

If you have found this post interesting please share it with your on-line community using either the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank You.

Educating Children about Social Media - What's The Point?

On Safer Internet Day 2013, Derek Howie tackles the increasing prevalence of underage social media use.

‘You’re not allowed to use Facebook until you’re 13 anyway - what’s the point in discussing it?’

Unbelievably, that was the response I got when I told someone I was going to write about underage use of social media for Safer Internet Day.

What’s the point? While we're on the subject, what’s the point in talking to under-16s about sex? And what’s the point in talking to under-18s about alcohol and drugs?

The point, in case he still hasn’t realised, is to impart knowledge and, hopefully, help children make more informed decisions. 

Hoping something will go away, or in this case asking ‘what’s the point?’, is precisely the sort of mentality that has seen British teenage pregnancy rates consistently remain among the highest in western Europe.

Unsurprisingly, one of the main ways to reduce teenage pregnancies is through education - and the same goes for social media.

Now, let’s not pretend there aren’t risks associated with social media. Of course there are.

But we can’t ignore the fact that underage children are increasingly joining social network websites like Facebook and Twitter - often without adult supervision.

Talking of facts, an expert at the London School of Economics recently estimated one million nine to 12-year-olds already use Facebook, despite the fact they are meant to be 13 before becoming members.

Do we ignore those one million children? Ask ‘what’s the point?’.

Of course we don’t. We confront the issue. We listen to the children (god forbid) and find out why they are using social media.

Most importantly though, we educate them.

We discuss the risks and the dangers associated with social media, we explain the legalities surrounding it, and we advise the children on how to stay safe online.

And we don’t stop with social media. We talk about Internet safety, personal data and even sexual exploitation online.

Late last year, I saw for myself just how important, and divisive, this issue is.

fatBuzz welcomed a primary 7 pupil in to the office for a day’s work experience, and while he was here, he asked our Facebook community whether or not he should be allowed to use social media.

The response was fascinating.

Unsurprisingly, there were a wide range of views. Some suggested that children should definitely be allowed to use Facebook, but only with parental supervision.

Others said that social media should be taught in schools, while some even suggested he should get off a computer and play more football.

I didn’t agree with all the comments, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it, does it?

In England, the 'dangers' of social media are currently being taught to schoolchildren as part of a pilot project launched by the Information Commissioner's Office.

If the pilot proves a success, it will be rolled out in schools nationwide.

There is already a growing consensus that the way children are being taught information technology in schools is in need of a radical overhaul.

Could social media be taught alongside coding in the new curriculum? I don’t see why not.

Regardless of our opinions on social media, there is one undeniable fact - we all have a role to play in ensuring that every child is safe online.

Do you think children under 13 should be allowed to use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? If so, what age do you think is appropriate? How do you think we can teach children about Internet safety?

Join the discussion on fatBuzz’s Facebook and Twitter pages and join the Safer Internet Day conversation using the hashtag #SID2013.

If you have found the content on this page interesting please share it with your online community using the Twitter, Facebook and Share buttons below. Thank you.