DigitalAgency

Burness LLP Future Forum:

 

Last Thursday evening, I had the very enjoyable experience of being invited by Burness LLP to give the inaugural, 'Future Forum' lecture, at the Burness HQ on Lothian Road.

The Future Forum initiative is a ground-breaking series of presentations, initiated by Burness, to help their clients explore emerging opportunities and trends unfolding in modern day business.

My 2 hour lecture/workshop, with Q&A, and of course, some very nice drinks and an exceptionally fine buffet, explored how business can benefit from engaging more actively in Social Media.

The main points covered were  i) Personal Online Branding & ii) Corporate use of Social Media. (With particular emphasis on ROI.)

So, based on these subjects, what did I talk about specifically?

Well, myself, a lot, obviously.

But after some frantic: 'move it along to the point' gestures from my chaperone for the evening the ever lovely and patient Christine LIddell of Burness, I got to the meat and tatties of my presentation which were, in approx order of roll-out:

1. When clients hire you, they also hire your network.
2. Why and how 'traditional media' is at best; under pressure, at worst; 'broken'.
3. Social Media usage stats for the UK.
4. 'Is social media a fad?' I showed Erik Qualman's terrific 'Socialnomics' short film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
5. Why ceo's should take social media seriously
6. Why using the web isn't about the web site.
7. Who is responsible for social media in your company? And can you bring in 'hired-hands'?
8. Community Managers, curation, CRM and 'Listening Posts'.
9. Trusted Sources.
10. Why Tom Peter's had it nailed in 1997, with A Brand Called You. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html
11. A bit on Barack Obama's campaign use of social media.
12. Search for yourself on Google. Whaddya see? And how you can change how people see you. http://www.google.com/profiles http://card.ly/, http://hi.im/ (cool domain address, love it.)
13. Twitter, of course. Went into a fair bit of detail. But ultimately cut to chase, suggested signing up, if only for Page One Google benefits.
14. Quick show and tell of 'unexpected seo' of my Moo Business Cards based on Tweets = 3rd party recommendations. http://bit.ly/7TYi67, http://bit.ly/7GIeWk
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15. The power of the ReTweet and 'Networks of networks.'
16. Brands embracing social media: who, how, where, why, what. Comcast to Dell IdeaStorm, to Ikea FaceBook tagging. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE2LSp-hjbQ
17. Bit about LinkedIn & FaceBook, reach, demographics, best practice, social self-discipline. Dell 'Social Media for Small Business.'
18. Wrapped up with 'How your Social Graph can = 'Micro-celebrity.' Is CRM the new Marketing? + Social Media is more than just a 'nice idea' it's now a necessity.
19. Suggested tools and apps. Social Media Starter Kit.
20. Homework! 5 things you can do tonight/tomorrow re social media and Personal Online Branding. 5 things your company can do in the next 3 months.

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21. Best practice. ROI is now ROT. Return on Time.
22. Close with @qualman's equally powerful ROI film on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypmfs3z8esI
23. Final slide: 'The best time to start using Social Media was 4 years ago. The second best time is now.'
24. I closed with my Jeremy Kyle bit: Q&A. Not surprisingly in a room with a fair proportion of lawyers, accountants, brand specialists & HR folk, conversation drifted towards online identity theft and protection, reputation management and damage limitation, plus of course corporate firewalls blocking a lot of social sites. And, 'Is there a place for business on FaceBook, including the potentially embarrassing: What to do if your boss tries to friend you'. ;- Maybe these subjects in themselves are worth Future Forums all of their own.

I'd like to close this blog post with my thanks.

To the audience, which consisted of many of the Capital's rising business stars and smart thinkers from a host of Blue chip companies. And speaking of rising stars, this is probably the right point to thank John Pope of Burness's IP & Tech team who gave me a warm, nay glowing and gracious introduction.

Finally, again, a big shout out to Christine Liddell of Burness for getting the whole show on the road. And looking after me beautifully.

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Twitpic Ad targetting:

I uploaded a shot yesterday on Twitpic of @carolcoulter dressing sensibly for an outdoor Scottish Wedding Reception.

In the accompanying Tweet I used the word 'wedding' which presumably Twitpic cross-refrenced with it's ad database and loaded an ad wedding related content.

Not rocket science, of course, but a useful observation no less perhaps for readers of this blog new to online marketing.

For all you old hands, throwing up those self same hands in mock indignation, please no "Mike's stating the bleedin' obvious again!" comments please ;-

Unbelievable service from BT Business Broadband:

 

I ordered a BT Broadband line in my new office on May 18th of this year.

We're now into August, and I'm still waiting for a reliable service to be established.

And for BT Broadband to professionally, efficiently, effectively and finally un-faux their pas.

Something they have failed to do yet.

BT Broadband: You have not covered yourselves in glory:

OK, so it's Saturday morning and I'm sat here in the office waiting for the 4th BT Broadband Engineer in as a many weeks to come and try and get me up and running with the web connection I need for my business.

I'm hoping they send someone more competent than the engineer who initially plumbed us in.

Or at least someone who knows a bit more about broadband than I do, but if previous experience is anything to go by, I doubt it.

I put the order for a BT Business Broadband line in the middle of May.

When placing the order I was told by the (disturbingly over-helpful) sales guy that they would 'fast track' it. And I could expect installation 'within 10 days'.

I was emailed the url for an online sign up process which I filled in and returned.

2 weeks later nothing had happened, so I rang the BT sales guy, but was diverted to the (disturbingly over-helpful) receptionist, who informed me that the sales guy was on another call and would "call me right back".

You know what's coming here don't you?

So, after a few days when he hadn't called me back, I rang again, and again, but still; Mr (disturbingly over-helpful) Sales Guy was 'on another call'. Same one I wondered.

And then success, one day, the planets must have been in alignment and I got through to a now: Mr Not Particularly Helpful Sales Guy. Who said, they hadn't received my order yet. (Luckily I'd done screen grabs of the original I'd sent in so resubmitting wasn't as onerous as it might of been. But I did bite my lip and hold my tongue, as I resubmitted the forms.)

This was in June sometime. Maybe 5 weeks later an Engineer actually came too and installed my line! Result!

How....Ev...er...

....when he's gone, I noticed the number he'd written on the broadband box he'd installed bore no relation to the number BT had given me on the emailed documentation.

I rang BT to check what and wtf? They said I had to speak to another dept about this, I asked could they transfer me? They said (disturbingly over-helpful) 'fraid not, and gave me a number to call.

In retrospect, this was a defining moment, and put my whole experience with BT Broadband in microcosm.

Why?

Because BT gave me the wrong number for their own support service. Yes the WRONG number for THEIR service

Genius.

I mumbled and muttered to myself and to anyone who'd listen on Twitter, but my luck was about to change:

Yay! In mid-July, about 8 weeks after I'd been 'fast-tracked' by BT Business for installation within 10 days, I get an email from BT.

It contains the words 'Congratulations' and 'Activation'.

I'm relieved, happy, in forgiving mood, even though my digital business hasn't had any office internet action for the first 2 months of it's life.

The fact that BT hadn't actually sent me their (disturbingly named) 'Welcome Pack' or a Router were mere trifles.

I had broadband, BT told me so.

Then more good news, I got another (disturbingly over-helpful) email not only telling me the Router and Welcome pack had been dispatched, but that there was a delivery tracking number, I could plot it's entire journey to make sure it had arrived safely.

Which of course it didn't.

When I checked it's delivery history, it had, of course, been delivered to the wrong address. (Luckily, I had a screen grab remember, of my submission details, and had given them the right address.)

With not a little trepidation I rang BT. who were their ever effusive, apologetic, we'll 'fast track' (I was beginning to hate that word),  a new router to the correct address asap selves. (i.e. disturbingly over-helpful)

Within a week a router and welcome pack arrived at the correct address.

The day after yet another router and welcome pack arrived. Which was nice, and because I 'didn't want to outstay My Welcome Packs, I' did consider setting up an online business called 'BT Routers R Us.' With my growing stocks on BT Broadband routers. (Of course I'd need to actually be online BT to run an online business. But you had other plans.)

I followed the router  & software install instructions and it has to be said, I was online and rocking in no time.

How....Ev...er...

On the floor above my office, is a totally unconnected business to mine called Par Equity. (However, our broadband inputs share the same  communal Comms room, see photo of comms room setup below.)

Since I  moved in we've got on really well and I was eager to be a good neighbour. But BT Broadband had other plans:

And soon Par Equity were to become literally an 'unconnected business'.

As soon as I was nicely, sweetly and robustly online, my neighbours upstairs broadband falls over. (Yes they are with BT too.)

I investigated, and lo and behold, when I unplug my broadband, upstairs broadband kicks in again.

Mmm, something wrong here.

I'll spare you dear reader the pantomime of trying to get another BT engineer out, but it did include following 2 classic experiences:

i) So I call BT on my iPhone, the online lifeline I have to run my business, and say, I can't use my landline here or get broadband, when the company upstairs are using their broadband connection.

I tell them, (just want to emphasis this, that quote: "My phone line is not working'"); BT ask me what my number is and then ask: "Are you calling from that number now?" Er, Hello? Did you actually listen to my previous sentence?

ii) They also tell me that the telephone number THEY gave me on the original correspondence is a NOT BT number? wtf?wtf?

Yes they gave me a number that they now say isn't a BT number. (Large ones all round. Double the Director bonuses this year!)

Anyhow, Engineer number 2 comes a couple of Saturdays ago, and genuinely tried to be helpful, he checks my line, says it's fine but 'possibly' the previous engineer mis-wired i.e. screwed up my neighbours Par Equity's broadband in the process. (No shit Sherlock.)

So I ask him can he fix this he says no, as he only has my tel number on his Docket, Par Equity will have to call out another engineer themselves as fault affects their number.

At this, I'm horrified and concerned that the following Monday, my neighbours upstairs, to whom broadband web access is critical, won't have any comms out

I ask the engineer, (it's more of a pleading really)," please, please screw my broadband back up, putting thin gs back to just as they were, and get my neighbour upstairs back online."

Response: "No-Can-Do."  Computer and docket say No.

But in a moment of actual helpfulness and rare cognitive effort:

"If we plug upstairs router into your (my) broadband pipe, until upstairs can get a BT engineer called out to fix the problem BT originally caused, they'll have an online service of sorts, and so will you."

Bingo. I'll take it.

And we do indeed share my broadband as a short-term workaround.

Later that week as recommended Par Equity called out engineer to take a look.

But I can't see that anything has actually changed.

Their router is connected to my broadband box and we're still sharing the same line in.

So I'm now paying, presumably, for a line that now has a much higher shared contention rate i.e. slower internet access/speeds for me. And the business upstairs is paying for broadband it isn't actually getting.

It's nuts.

BT Broadband's telephone support people have been, polite, concerned and (disturbingly over-helpful) whenever I've called. In fact I've spent so much time with BT Broadband over the last 3 months I suspect they're going to invite me to the staff Christmas Party.

And in fairness, as this problem has got worse, and continues to be unresolved, they have been pro-active in calling me too,.

I can't fault that, (as were on the subject of faults.)

I'm also genuinely impressed that they have ported customer support in part to Twitter, where their community managers are energetic and diligent.

But all that great customer support, or depending on your viewpoint or mood; 'happy-clappy 'we care' online brand building' means bugger all, if, when it comes to the hands on, foot to the metal, put-up-or-shut -up,  solution-focused reality of giving customers a reliable broadband service, then for me BT have failed.

And failed and failed again.

Of course, it's not just me. A cursory search of the #BTFail hashtag on twitter will show I am not alone in my disappointment, frustration and exasperation with BT Broadband's front line service.

As I've struggled, shrieked, and shaken with rage over the last few months, I couldn't help think of how Dell turned their fortunes around after the Dell Hell debacle with brilliant online responses to adversity like ideastorm.com

Or how comcast, after losing market share and respect, following the infamous Sleeping Engineer video took it as a wake-up call and now set the standard in online customer service.

They both chuffed up big time and put it right with powerful online community building, not least their effective and timely use of Twitter for customer support.

BT have flipped the strategy. Or more accurately got it the wrong way round, cart before horse arse about face.

They've set up a presence on twitter and are getting their act together online, and now it appears are paradoxically going balls out, hell for leather in screwing and pissing off customers like me, by their woeful performance where it matters.

Face to face with customers.

ps. At time of writing this, Engineer number 4 still hasn't arrived yet.

Update: Guess what? Engineer number 4 has just arrived. But he's actually Engineer number 2.(Don't ask.)

Update, update: BT man says computer says we have robust broadband both downstairs and up. Yippppeeeee! Will monitor closely, but for now, thanks BT.

Business hours are dead. 24/7 is the new 9 to 5.

Or so says, Leonard Speiser, founder of Twitter application platform, Twables, who is a guest writer on Techcrunch today.

"Business hours are dead. 24/7 is the new 9 to 5. Real-time messaging means that anyone can start talking about your product at any time and that talk can snowball before you know it."

I think he's right. And I also think a lot of less switched on companies aren't getting the implications, benefits, and it has to be said, potential problems inherent in the real time, or 'live' web.

He also comments, in something of a wake-up call article for many individuals, organisations and brands:

"The pace at which things spread is now so close to real-time that it almost erases the line between past and present. Real-time communication invites the world to experience your life with you, as it happens."

It an interesting and timely read, which you can find in it's entirety here on Techcrunch.

Edinburgh Coffee Morn. April 03 2009:

There's that old saying, I'd have written a shorter letter if I'd have had more time. No blog post as such about ECM this week, but a short audioboo here:

AudioBoo#01

I think AudioBoo is pretty cool, and is worth keeping an eye, (or rather ear? on.)

Pre BarCamp Scotland.

I'm just out the door, albeit a bit late, for today's barcampscotland.

Afore I do, final check of mail inbox.

Lo and Behold a message from MeetUp re Barcamp Scotland, asking me what I thought of it.

How was BarCamp Scotland?

Give us a chance, I haven't even got there yet, and it's on until 6.00pm (and the pub networking beyond.)!

ps. There's a clue, I think, that it's an all-day, into night thing, in that it's called 'Bar' camp.

My First tweet:

This is fun.

MyFirstTweet, is a searchable archive of your own, and your pals first tweets.

I see that I missed my second TweetDay last month. Had no idea.

Historic moments in time ;-

@weblivz, when I did a search for your first tweet, I got the above error. (Think the same thing happened to Scoble.)

Maybe you were/are obviously so far ahead of the game, and are such a Twitter power user, that you broke the damn thing ;-

A brief encounter with @vodafoneliveguy :

@vodafoneliveguy kicked off his UK-wide tour today in a rainy, but welcoming Edinburgh.

I set up a meeting via Twitter, and had coffee with him in that centre of the Edinburgh Social Media universe, Centotre, to see what I could wheedle, wangle and, (something else that starts with 'w' but I can't think of right now), out of him.

First things first; he looks just like he does in the photos.

He wasn't in disguise, as I'd earlier thought.

And he was in turns; polite, evasive, charming, secretive, funny and mysterious. (At first he'd only give me his name, rank and Netbook serial number!)

But as we chatted he eagerly fired up and demo'ed the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook, which I have to admit was very cool.

It's got the technology of one of those usb mobile broadband dongles built in, so you don't need an, er, usb mobile broadband dongle plugged in.

It genuinely is a classy bit of kit, and with the demise of the 12" Mac PowerBook, attractively portable to this wrinkly old Apple die-hard.

He also showed me the gps gizmo which automatically talks to his Vodafone handset and plots his location on GoogleMaps. ('Beam me up Scotty': Appropriate enough as we are in Edinburgh.)

Tomorrow he'll be over in Glasgow, and will then continue his journey south. His full itinerary is here:

While I think on, I must stress that I have no official connection with this concept, but in the interests of full disclosure I do know, have met and like enormously the digital agency that came up with the idea.

A few weeks ago on one of my regular trips to 'swinging' London, (to buy some new flares, tank-tops and cuban-heeled boots), I met up with a lovely bloke called Flo Heiss, Creative Director of the digital agency Dare. And although we didn't discuss LiveGuy during our chat about social media, I did consequently email a (hair-brained) suggestion or two, unbidden, to Flo about the project.

However, the ideas weren't used, mainly because of technical reasons; i.e. they were rubbish.

But as I knew @vodafoneliveguy was in Edinburgh today I sent him a direct tweet offering to buy him coffee and have a chat, as I wanted to blog about the idea. This being the case, I felt it would then be a bit spivvy to try and get a Netbook out of it, and so kept my hat firmly out of the freebie ring.

You can follow @vodafoneliveguy on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and Picassa.

I hope it goes really well, and I wish everyone who joins in the search for him best of luck.

But I would suggest you try something other than the inviting him for coffee route.

Been there, done that, didn't get the Netbook ;-

Creationism:

I've been having a conversation on another site recently about user participation on/in social networks.

Discussing how many people actively contribute or passively observe, with a particular interest in the proportion/percentage who upload original content, or mainly contribute via comments/uploading existing work, or are happy to simply lurk/read only?

And why, you may ask, do I ask?.

Well, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities, (and I hasten to add, this isn’t a rant or finger-pointing exercise). Rather, it's a genuine inquiry into user involvement here.

In the early days of most SN's, there seemed to be a surge of enthusiasm to create, contribute and upload here. (Early adopter syndrome?)

However the traffic seems to ultimately degenerate into the; ‘Member A is friends with Member B’, or Member A joins Group C,' or 'here's another mindless music/lookylike/cute cat picture widget that I have figured out how to embed', variety.

All well and good, if that's what floats your boat, but it does seem to confirm the 1/9/90 principle I've been reading about recently. (Also known as the 1% rule.)

It postulates, (oh dear, dipping into the new meeja, stripey Paul Smith shirt, lexicon again), that 1/9/90 % of social media users split into create/contribute/lurk camps.

Much of the theory comes from research covering social spaces like YouTube and the much-respected Jakob Nielsen.

(I’ve personally always taken JN’s pronouncements with a large pinch of salt, but amongst the sodium you can often find a few gems.)

And more importantly, he does adopt a killer look. See below. One which I am sincerely considering emulating:

But I digress, again, and steer myself back to the question, 'Do enough people contribute enough original content on social networks?

Or is the majority happy to let a small, often unpaid percentage, carry most of the creative weight? 

 

Footnote,

Perhaps it’s ROT thing for some?

In addition to Return On Investment, we now live in the era of ROT, Return On Time.

With a whole bunch of social 'outlets' to express ourselves in words, pictures, films and bookmarks: Writing a comment here and there, or cutting together a little movie, posting a tweet, embedding stuff in Google Maps etc, not only takes time to generate for the benefit of others social spaces, but it also consumes/steals time and content from some of our other, perhaps more ‘mainstream’ social channels.

For example, I’m posting less on my business blog, and it’s suffering because I now divert time in my day to a new, business-focussed social network in my neck of the woods. (Willing, and happily of course.)

And where I fall along the 1/9/90 continiuum could be to do with the fact that I’ve got far too much time on my hands, (but my diary, wife and local publican says otherwise), it maybe that most people on social networks are too busy earning a living to contribute more.

I’d be interested in your reaction, your views, and opinions in how we can encourage more creationists.

And if indeed we need to.

Or if we're content to recycle and repackage existing content. (Which in itself is no bad thing, if it’s work unseen by the community before.)

My guess is it’s a combo of both new and old.

With a bit more of an emphasis and boost to the new.