Posted on May 10, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
About eight years ago I found out I was going to start my first senior job role, as an account director in a global PR agency. I had just read a 'self help' book (as my wife calls them) called Getting Things Done. The now cult text gave me inspiration to work more efficiently by applying life hacks (or rules to get more out of yourself) such as the three inbox rule, one list rule, two minute action rule, and so on and so on. I still live by those same rules now.
Since then I have read endless books of a similar nature, I devour blogs and twitter feeds about lifehacking, I have more recently been using phone apps to track my running performance, sleep patterns and I scrutinise any data I can find about myself so that I can improve how I do things. Think Nike Fuelband.
My colleague Stephen Davies this week pointed out to me that this behaviour has a name, and its own movement. It's called Quantified Self (also known as #selftracking). He sent me some articles that, when I read them, seemed to describe my life over recent years. I discovered there are even London Meetups around the Quantified Self movement.
If this all makes sense to you too but you're also new to the term, here is some background reading in The Economist, The Guardian, TechCrunch & Fastcompany.
And if you're in the UK, go join the London Meetup group for Quantified Self.
There's no shortage of gadgetry or apps that are nudging this along. What I think we'll begin to see a lot more of is the application of this big data in marketing and consumer insights.
Posted on April 27, 2012 in Quantified Self UK, Self Tracking UK | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I got sent a lovely, surprising pressie in the post this week. The nice people at Firebox.com have given me a sneak peak of their new product, Polargrams.
Polargrams are Polaroids of your Instagram pics. Here's my collection!:
It was cool to see what pics I'd taken recently (my Instagram feed is open, like a curated version of my Facebook pics) and they make a lovely addition to my desk. Thanks Firebox for the pressie. Really niceidea!
[obvious disclaimer: these were given to me as a promo item, I didn't ask for them but love them and think they'r ace]
Posted on April 26, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Last week at an event I spoke at I was asked a fascinating question by a member of the audience: "where are all these new Foursquare users coming from? I thought it had died a death?"
My answer was what I thought was the reality - I said that recording and publishing info about your life is becoming more socially acceptible. But then I realised I was just a statistic. After being an early proponent of location based social media services, I had recently dropped off the radar myself. Not new or shiny any more.
But in the last few weeks something changed. Don't know why, but I started gaming things more. I started playing more Foursquare not for the networking, but to get points, go up the leaderboard, earn badges, level-ups and mayorships. This side of things hadn't mattered to much to me previously but recently that changed.
Why? (I think this is why but I'm not too sure...) Life streaming tech in genral has been interesting me more, from the much-hyped Nike Fuelband to my Runkeeper app to the Quantified Self movement. The way our agency business is at the moment too, we're doing a lot of playing, building and gaming. I'm just practicing what we preach really.
So excuse my social stream at the moment, especially Twitter and Foursquare. I'm trying to game everything I can lay my hands on, just to see how it makes a difference to things in general. (and as always, I'll update this blog as I learn new tricks along the way).
So here goes what I hope will at the very leas be a fun little project of play!!!1
Posted on April 25, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
If you are someone who does battle with multiple inboxes, feeds, flashing lights on your unread messages and buzzing phones in meetings because someone has checked in near you, here are a couple of high profile blog posts you may want to read.
I've taken the topic of email's general unsuitability to the modern business as something of a crusade over recent years (perhaps it's why I embrace everything else so much?). Here are a couple of my posts from 2008, 2009 and 2010. Every time I step away from my inbox for a meeting I return to hundreds of emails. I get thousands every day and use a heavy dose of rules and filters to try to deal with it all. Thankfully I'm not alone.
Foursquare's Tristan Walker's post 'I hate email' is all about taking email off your phone and the impact of that on your focus at work and home.
TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler's post 'Email. Archive it all. Immediately' is about emptying your inbox to see the wood from the trees. 'Best thing I've ever done' says Siegler.
Some great insights and I'll be trying both myself.
Posted on April 18, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Yesterday I spoke at Board 2020 - an event hosted at the UWE Conference Centre in Bristol. The theme was how social media will shape the business of the future.
Some great talks by speakers including Professor Malcolm Lewis who spoke about social media influencing organisational change, Steve Andreson Dixon from Trinity Mirror on the impact of social media on the media, and Burges Salmon's Roger Bull and Andrew Tibber spoke about the impact of social on intellectual property and employment law.
The highlights for me:
My talk was the keynote, and focused on the coming trends in social media that current and future boards should be aware of. And yes I also mentioned the role of the interest graph and Pinterest.
Thanks to the organisers at Moon and UWE. It was a really great event.
Posted on March 24, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A lot of attention has been coming through in the mainstream media this week about Pinterest. The Guardian featured the hot social network on the weekend, and Metro gave Pinterest a double page spread today. Lots of user stats are being bandied about, so I thought I would share some UK stats for Pinterest that were shown to me earlier in the month by my colleague @stedavies.
The key stat is about the user demographic. Pinterest's users are NOT 97% female as reported in the Guardian today (that's an old number). In the UK the users are 60/40 MALE and in the US it's a more skewed 80/20 FEMALE. Those are just the elevator pitch numbers... here is a full breakdown. And there will be more to come. All these stats are over two months old so expect a refresh to your planning deck soon.
Posted on February 27, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Over recent years I've enjoyed testing out new social networks while they're still shiny. The last few weeks I've been looking at how to get the most out of another new thing: Pinterest.com.
For those that haven't tried it, Pinterest is a pinboard-themed image sharing social network. It is popular with forum users, more women than men, and with a pretty mainstream demographic (I know colleagues who have mentioned it to their wives only to find they have been using Pinterest for some time). Much different to Twitter for example which was very male and techy for its early years.
On Pinterest there are some users with over a quarter of a million followers. Pinboards can be collaborative. It's all very Facebook and Twitter friendly, and content is discoverable nicely as a live stream or in themes. To a digital Comms person like me, it's all very exciting.
This week I'm going to step away from Twitter, which I've been using heavily for six years now. I feel like an addict! Instead whenever I feel the urge to tweet, I will pin. I hope to find some novel uses for it.
You can find my updates and my pinboards at http://pinterest.com/drewbenvie . Feel free to comment there, or here, with any thoughts of feedback.
I will update this post with anything interesting I find along the way.
=========================
Update #1. 24hrs in:
Update #2. 2 days in:
Update #3: wow that week went quick:
Posted on February 12, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
This week was one of the busier weeks for a while now. To kick off was the beginning of a new movement: many breakfasts. A team breakfast was organised to welcome a new member of the 33 Digital team - one of the UK's most well-respected and experienced social media practitioners in PR joined the family this week in the shape of Stephen Davies, aka PRblogger.com. Stephen is someone I had the pleasure of working with six years ago and all of Hotwire group is excited to have him on board. Fun times for all indeed!
The many breakfasts movement continued on Tuesday with Hotwire, 33 Digital and Skywrite’s third annual social media trends briefing [see coverage on Econsultancy, Corp Comms and Propel London]. A presentation of a report written by the 33 Digital team, this event saw 33 Digital clients the Financial Times and eBay co-present the 2012 trends alongside 33 Digital director Pete Sigrist and myself to a rammed Soho Hotel screening room. Almost 200 people attended and the session was without doubt the most fun I think we’ve had in running such an event. They are normally much smaller (last year it was 30 people) so you can understand why this contributed to a week we call ‘full of WIN’.
Pic: our 2012 social media trends briefing
Wednesday’s instalment of many breakfasts took a delegation of the 33 Digital and Hotwire team to The Hoxton, to help with the FT’s first Tweetup of 2011. A fantastic venue and great event which made us all want to go back to the Hoxton again for similar events but also just to work from their lovely luxurious / industrial set-up. Sadly, I couldn’t make it to any of the industry socials that were taking place Wednesday evening, which included the NMA social, PRCA drinks, and the Foursquare London Meetup. Waking up the next morning to the news of a thousand social media millionaires having been created was certainly a watershed moment. Sadly not one I was able to have been directly involved with (shame).
This brings me to Thursday which was busy and full of win in many ways, and looking forward to a more normal breakfast tomorrow and doing some typing in front of a computer screen maybe.
Here’s looking forward to what’s shaping up to be a great 2012.
Posted on February 02, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Happy new year to all you list makers and resolution setters. Here are 7 New Year's resolutions that I'm going to be following and which may help you get more out of social media in January and beyond.
Posted on January 06, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
With the news agenda for the PR industry this week being dominated by The Independent's 'sting' on Bell Pottinger, it might be of use to some comms practitioners to brush up on the user manuals - in particular for Wikipedia.
Whilst a great deal of best practice in social media is common sense to those that live and breathe it, the following essential reading I'm sure will come in useful to many. Here are the best practice guidelines developed for social media and Wikipedia from the CIPR, ASA and Wikipedia itself.
1. CIPR Social Media Best Practice Guide
2. ASA's CAP Code document on extending the digital remit
3. Wikipedia's own policies and guidelines
If anyone else finds other sources of guidance useful, do let me know and I'll post up here.
Posted on December 09, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Posted on December 08, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The time of year has come around again to look ahead and plan for the coming 12 months. Plan for our clients, for our own business and - the most exciting bit as a consultant - for how we think the media landscape will change.
This is the third year that we at 33 Digital, and this year more broadly across Hotwire, have written down our thoughts on the major trends of social media and dgital marketing for PR and comms (here is last year's report).
The report is based on our team's experiences and based on social media as a day job, where we see things going and how we think the trends can be harnessed. The full report is free to download here and you can read it in full below.
Posted on December 06, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
In the middle of busy season, this week appears to be busy week. I travelled to Manchester to present at the SomeComms awards, just one of the digital industry awards taking place. A full house, plenty of consumer brands and hot agencies were there, but the most striking observation was that the innovation came from a different place in the comms field – almost entirely it came from the public sector.
Monmouthshire Council won awards for best use of YouTube and most innovative campaign (which I had the pleasure of presenting). Manchester Police won best in-house social media team and best use of Twitter. University of Sheffield won best business blog. Best social media for R&D was Leeds Council. And City of Edinburgh Council won the Grand Prix.
In the acceptance speech of Edinburgh Council’s team, they referenced how the whole campaign had a budget of just £2,500 and overachieved on results by 104%. That kind of approach in these times of austerity, as we like to put it, got everybody in the hall nodding and clapping that little bit more.
Well done to all those taking part in awards at this time of year.
Posted on October 21, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
There are a bunch of little social media shortcuts I use on a daily basis to make the most of the time I have available to do everything. They aren't really trade secrets, but writing this helps me answer properly the question: "how do you find time for it." This is a run-down of some of the newer things I'm using, and some of the shortcuts and ways I use some of the older social media systems.
Twitter as your feed reader: Use Twitter between things from your phone to follow the news and buzz. Load Twitter on to your phone and ask your followers the best app to use. I almost always use the official Twitter app, but no reason why Tweetdeck or something different shouldnt be better. Subscribe to news channels and blogs then use Twitter as your news reader. You'll find you can keep track of the media agenda even when you have 'no time'.
Email is good: Email-enable your blog, Flickr for photos, Tumblr and Posterous for groups and so on. Most social networks have email as an input option, so think about how you can send a quick email of something you have on your phone for example when you're waiting for something else to play nicely. I tend to use time in the tube or waiting for a meeting to start / computer to boot up so send some content to my socialnets.
Twitter for your story bookmarks: Use Twitter's starring / favouriting function to 'read it later'. When you're on the move, you might not have time to read full articles, so star them then work through your starred items when you're in front of your computer later.
Evernote for lists: Use Evernote for list keeping and screen grabs. If you ever need to scribble something down, then doing so in Evernote means you always have that list on you, whether you're on your phone, tablet or computer. If you ever need to take a screen grab of an image, such as for presentations, if you have Evernote turned on then Evernote will automatically keep the image. I use this and have a three year long archive of images I use in presentations. It's invaluable.
Turn off alerts: It might sound counter-intuitive, but turning off alerts - whether it's the beep of your Tweetdeck, ping on your smartphone or something else. You'll find batching up your social media work allows you to feel more able to turn on and off when you want, and you'll feel less like you need a ton of time to devote to doing social properly.
Posted on October 10, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Drew named #1 most respected in the 2011 Reputation Online survey in New Media Age
Drew named #4 digital big guy in the PR Week Powerbook 2011
Drew in the BR200 top 50 of "the Web's most influential bloggers"
Old school! Finalist:
Best PR Blog at the Business Blogging Awards 2005

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