Buzz and Excitement...

Do you want some BUZZ?

Are you awaiting EXCITEMENT?!?

Well!

There's something coming on this blog, in the near future.

Something new!

It'll be great, I promise. Or not - maybe.

But anyway, look out for it, next weekend.

In fact, there's a (tiny) chance for you to be involved in some way. In the comments, tell me something. It could be a name, an event, a character you like, an anecdote about yourself or someone you know, a facial expression, a totally made up thing.. anything. It doesn't matter. Tell me in the comments (or email me at mike.raven@gmail.com) and maybe something that you tell me will appear in a thing that's going to kick off next weekend.

I might be giving more detail before the weekend, I haven't decided yet. Or I might just drop it on the internet. Perhaps I need to discuss with the other interested party (spoiler alert - there's someone else involved) what they think.

In the meantime - it's the weekend, so cheers!

Not sure what drink I've got here. I do know though that my hair isn't as dark as this photo indicates!

Choosing which Social Media platform

Prelude: The concept for this post was provided by ReputationManagement.com, a leading provider of premier relationship services.

Branding isn't just for businesses.  It's also for bloggers , YouTubers, podcasters, and all those internet creators.

And when it comes to promoting your creations, the choice of social media platform is key.

It's critical to understand how the different platforms work, and where your audience is.  It's very easy to stick to the largest networks (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and then getting disappointed that you aren't building your audience.

Two examples - firstly, my own blog.  Whilst not being the largest blog in the world, over the years I have been fortunate enough to build up a number of regular viewers, making me feel that my work is read.

Facebook is great for friends and family, and when I first started blogging Facebook was my go-to social media platform.

But the trouble with Facebook is that it is for friends and family.  My friends and family may love/like me, but they don't necessarily want to read my ramblings about my various hobbies.  So not every blog post - in fact, few of them nowadays - get promoted on Facebook.

Twitter always attracts a few readers, but to make Twitter work, you need ideally to have content that is trending.  A blog post about Valentines Day on Valentines Day, with a cute GIF of a heart, and the right wording in the tweet, will (hopefully) drag the readers over.  Otherwise it's only going to be your followers that ever see it.

Or a GIF like this works.

So which social media platform do I personally find best?

Well, I actually find Google+ is the best social media platform for me, in that its communities allow me to find like-minded people and places where I can share my content, and discover other content.  Blogging is very much a quid-pro-quo world, where you need to read and work with other bloggers to build your own audience.  And it makes it more fun, too.

So despite various rumours that Google+ is about to vanish, I desperately hope that it carries on, because for the likes of me, it is the best way to find and attract new readers.

The second example I have is my wife.  She loves to cross stitch.  And she's found YouTube to be hugely successful, as there is a large YouTube community of what are called "flosstubers", people who cross stitch, and vlog about their cross stitching.  In a very short space of time, she's taken her YouTube channel and attracted over a thousand subscribers.  And she's been able to leverage this into starting her own cross stitch-related enterprise on Etsy, for me she's a real success story on how to use social media to promote your product.

So for me, it's about learning where your audience is, and how to engage with them.  It is extremely rare that someone can release a piece of content, and have it simply go viral, instead your must build those networks, find those people that love your work, and offer it to them.  It may take time, but it will pay dividends.

LinkedIn is full of bad news #FixThePlus

Oh no! My rank for profile views moved down by 12% in the past 12 days!

Well, I had great fun with the little April Fools "Travelling Tablet Project" for my 500th post - it seems hard to believe that I've managed to churn out 500 of these over the years, but still I'm very happy.  I've also had the great news that I'm in line to become an adult education tutor, teaching social media on an evening and/or weekend, I had an interview on Thursday which I enjoyed immensely so being offered the job is wonderful!

Finally, you might note the #FixThePlus in the tagline - I've picked this up from Jeremy Crow and his blog about Google+, like Jeremy I use Google+ a huge amount, especially for my blogs and videos, and the Plus feature (where you click +1 on posts) hasn't been working for some time now, and it's one of the main ways that I identify which of my posts are more popular - blogging is something that I hope that I'm improving over time, and one of the ways I do this is by looking at my more popular posts to see what people liked about them.  So being without the +1s from people is really awkward.  So do read Jeremy's post, but in short I ask that any creators add #FixThePlus to their posts, and let's see if we can make a trend that will make Google notice.

Onwards and upwards!

Dressing Up

Road barrier pretending to be a shark.  Perhaps it's off to a fancy dress party.

For those interested (and even if you're not), I have two bits of news:

Firstly, I've got an interview tomorrow for teaching social media - fingers crossed!

Secondly, this is my 499th blog post - it's taken me a long time, but finally I'm nearly at that 500 post landmark.  To celebrate, expect a special post from me in a day or two.  Suggestions on how to celebrate are welcomed.

Finally, I got a new video out the other day for the first time in far too long - so, if you'd like to see a documentary about the plight of Easter bunnies, here you go!

Wine vs paperwork

I keep trying to do paperwork but this pint of wine keeps getting in the way.

I've been away for a couple of days, and for once it hasn't really given me anything to blog about - sure, there was the accidental two hour walk in London (don't worry, it was offset with fish, chips, and beer), plus the obligatory dash across Doncaster rail station on the way home to get my connecting train before it cleared off, but otherwise it was a fairly quiet and productive couple of days.

But, I did have an idea for something.  I'm not going to talk about it now, but suffice to say that it involves social media.  And I'd love for you to help!

What do you think of social media?  How do you use it?  What websites/apps do you use?  What is good and bad?

Let me know in the comments below.  And I might do something with it! Thanks :)

Now - back to the wine!

Trying something new

Let's be honest, part of the reason for blogging is the audience. I started blogging because I wanted to essentially force myself to regularly write something, and I need an audience to keep me going.

And I wouldn't be surprised if, at least a portion of us bloggers, do dream about going viral and suddenly rolling around in advertising income and power.  And offers of free cruises in return for giving a review on our blog.

(For the sake of clarity - to any cruise lines reading - I will be happy to review your cruise ships on my blog in return for a cruise)

Anyway, one blog that I read - although not as often as I should - is the Hootsuite Social Blog.  Hootsuite, if you're not familiar, offer a service for social media folk to schedule tweets, manage social media searches, and lots of other stuff.  I've used Hootsuite for scheduling tweets for absolutely years, and it's a handy tool, mainly let down by my erratic tweet scheduling.

But on their blog they give great advice in the form of interesting blogs for anyone wanting to boost their social media presence.

One of their blogs which I recently read talked about lessons from 15 of their best performing tweets, which gives some examples of good tweets they've done.  And one of the key things is including photos in tweets, so that they stand out better in Twitter timelines.

So with the latest set of scheduled tweets I've included photos, and it'll be interesting to see how (if) it makes any difference to how much the tweets are noticed.

And of course, you need a good photo on any blog.

So here's one.

It's a pig with the ability to vibrate lurking within the pyramid of mystery. Let the memes begin.

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget the transatlantic debate on Saturday - US vs UK, which has the better political system?  Stay tuned!

The launch of "The Worlds Funniest Status Updates In The World - Ever!"

Pic courtesy of Geralt at pixabay.com via a CC 0 Public Domain License

I was on a train today, and as usual when I'm on a train I did a little bit of thinking.

It was actually sparked off by a meeting I went to a few weeks back, where we were talking about Gamification.  Gamification is the art of using gaming techniques to improve performance in business - as an example, in a computer game you may get a reward of some sort (for example an achievement, or better equipment) for completing a particular objective.  Whilst the objective may be difficult to achieve, or even boring, the player is spurred on by the game.  And gamification looks to apply this theory to work.

One of the people at the meeting mentioned about how essentially we have "gamified" our social media channels - when we put things on Facebook, or Twitter, why have we done it?  In many cases, because we want those Likes or Favourites or Retweets or whatever to show that we are popular/funny aka successful.

Of course, the difficulty that occurs all too often is that you can't think of anything interesting to put on Facebook!

So, I had an idea for a book of funny, weird, interesting etc status updates that people could read to enjoy and maybe even to give them ideas for their own status updates.

I'm going to work on writing some up, but there's also an opportunity for you to get involved - maybe you have an idea for a status update to go in the book!

If you would like to submit an update to go in the book, head over to http://thoggy.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-worlds-funniest-social-updates-in.html and fill in the form.  Please read the terms & conditions.  If you're not happy with the Ts & Cs, don't submit anything!  But what I'd like to do is for everyone that gets a status update in the final book (or whatever it is - maybe an eBook, maybe it'll just be a blog post if I can't make enough of them) is put their name in the book, and a link to their blog/website/Twitter.

I'm sure as the days go on the idea will get refined/improved/binned so also feel free to comment or get in touch with your thoughts and ideas!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Being appropriate with social media

When I was at college studying IT far too many years ago (fourteen perhaps?) one of the things we learned about was "netiquette", or basically the practice of being polite whilst on the Internet and using email.

This has evolved as social media has taken off and we are ever more connected to the world (and more importantly, our contacts) 24/7.

However, this can cause issues.  I personally feel for those people in their teenage years who may make one or two mistakes in their time, acting silly or making bad judgement choices.  We are all human and none of us are perfect.  However, the new generation is under more and more scrutiny, everyone has a camera attached to their phone (and everyone has a phone in their pocket) so anything occurring can be photographed and shared with groups of people within seconds of it happening.  This is a great freedom but also means that people need to be careful how they behave and with who.

For example, I have my blog, my twitter account, my LinkedIn account, my Facebook, and several email addresses - professional, personal and mainly spam ones.  And I have to make decisions on what gets posted to which account, as what may be suitable material to appear on one I may not want to show on another.  Some people have more than one twitter account, one for work and one for personal use - I've not taken that option (yet) but as a result I am aware of what is going up on my twitter feed and try to ensure that it remains acceptable.

Also taking seemingly safe options such as "liking" something on Facebook - I may like the thing I've clicked on, but if friends of mine (who may also be work colleagues) see me liking something that they find offensive, does that cause an issue?

Possibly.  Do be aware that everyone has slightly different senses of humour and can take offense at different things, and something that you find absolutely fine can be anathema to another.

Very important for anyone in work is to be aware of your organisations social media policy and guidance (if available).  I've certainly read my organisations details several times and do strive to ensure that I stay on the right side of the guidance.

To hear from someone who is far more of an expert on these things than myself, check out Paul Wilkinson's website, pwcom.co.uk - Paul is a specialist in social media and is a fantastic speaker about the subject too.

I'll finish off just to give an update about the G4C event I've been arranging - the event we've been doing on Employability is taking place tomorrow at Sheffield Hallam University.  Everything is looking extremely good for the event and I'm very much looking forward to it.  We have now sold out of tickets for the ticket which is great (although I feel bad for anyone who wants to attend but now can't) so fingers crossed for a great evening and everything running smoothly!  We are filming the event and hopefully we'll get the video up at the weekend.

Social Media in Construction - the revolution begins...

I attended the first meeting of the new Constructing Excellence Social Media Task Group today in London, at CE's offices on Buckingham Palace Road.  The group was co-ordinated by Paul Wilkinson, a veritable guru on all things social media, and had a good representation from construction professionals at different levels in all types of different organisations.

Paul ran through a presentation of his (I think I've found the right one on the net - you can view it here) giving us all a good session on social media, running through examples of good usage of the new technology, and new ideas.

What if instead of using email we used Twitter or instant messaging to get information out?  I use Twitter, but I never considered it as a replacement for email, merely as an alternate communication channel.  What if instead of having meetings we had video conferences, which can be set up easily and for free with software such as Google Hangout, and we could even record the conference for future reference.  No more problems six months after a meeting trying to work out if a certain point was mentioned from the minutes taken, simply play back the recorded conference.

For G4C in the Yorkshire & Humber region I'm very interested in social media because of the distributed nature of the population.  I'm well aware that I need to run events in Leeds to attract the majority of the Yorkshire population.  I'm also aware that this automatically reduces the chance of people attending from Sheffield, York and Hull (not to mention the many other towns and settlements in the county).

Paul also recommended that organisations set up Google Alerts so that they can be informed of when new content about their organisation is put up on the Internet.  This can be done here.  And again, it's free to do.

There was a lot of concern in the room about control of social media, which is a fair point.  Social media for work has to be focussed, and some control available.  It's all too easy for social media use to become people going on Facebook and playing games all morning.  But provided that it is controlled, there are some huge benefits.  And people should be able to take responsibility for what they post with social media - if people are trusted to send letters, telephone clients, and email out information, is social media that much different?

One point that was made was about how social media can allow a persons personality to come through, helping relationships to be built.  If every tweet from a person is purely another sales pitch or press release, I tend to switch off.  But if I see something of that person, what they are like, it allows them to become a real person in my view.  And then I'm more likely to read their press release when they do send it.

New technology has massive benefits that over the next few years people will think of ways to use.  We're currently able to use GPS to position people and items on the world.  What if some kind of positioning system was made so that it could be installed on utilities pipes and cables?  Rather than relying on statutory undertakers drawings, we could have some kind of RFID tag that when you dig close to it the tag is activated, and the excavator can tell that there is a pipe there and that they have to swap to hand digging.  Rather than using GPR kit and cable detectors, we could do it by walking over the site with a mobile phone or tablet.

Another example of the use of technology was one organisation who was able to take a BIM model of a building out on site on their mobile phone, hold the phone up to where the building was due to be built, and the software showed the built structure on the screen, allowing the viewer to see how it would interact with the adjacent buildings, how sunlight would shine once the building was constructed.  An excellent way to show clients a representation of the completed building prior to construction.

I'm very much looking forward to the next social media task group (despite it being in London!).  If anyone else is interested in getting involved, let me know and I can pass your details on.

Paul's site, including his blog, is at http://pwcom.co.uk/ and he also has a huge amount of presentations viewable at http://www.slideshare.net/EEPaul

Is anybody on Twitter real...

Following on from the virus last week, it's now hit my other half pretty hard, plus my son seems to be coming down with it this morning as well which is worrying. It also seems to have given my system a kicking in general so I'm waiting for advice from my consultant and being very careful what I eat (translation - not much) so altogether I'll be happy when we're all better.  On the plus side losing a pound or two wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I keep getting followers on Twitter, which is really cool.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a "microblogging service" - basically you can write tweets, which must be a maximum of 140 characters, which then everyone who is following you can see.  You can follow people yourself, to see what they are tweeting.  Popular celebrity twitterers (twitterati?) include Stephen Fry and Lady Gaga - the latter has almost 30 million people following her, which is just insane if you think about it (or not for the matter).  Personally I recommend The Guild, Geek & Sundry, Felicia Day, and Wil Wheaton.

My twitter account is at RavenswingThog if you want to follow me.

But how many (I presume) fake Twitter accounts are there?  I have, at the moment in time, a huge 68 followers.

Of the 68, about 44 are work related in some manner.  A few more are friends, but there's a few which are clearly fake accounts.  When I say fake accounts (lets call em zombies), its usually a female with a random name that includes "xxx" in it and all their tweets are random garbage like "once I went outside but it rained".  Quickly scrolling through I can see at least nine zombie followers.

It just seems odd to me to have zombies trailling after me, listening to my tweets. I guess the reason why is that they follow real people in the hope that they follow them back, they then have a long list of followers and sell tweets to businesses (for $100 we could tweet to all of our followers about your urinal cake business!)

More worrying, I did a quick search on the net for "fake twitter followers", which led me quickly to a website that would check how many of these you had following you.  But to do this, the website would have permission to post tweets on my behalf.  I wonder how many people sign up to something like this, and then the app happily goes along tweeting about whatever it wants on their account.

Facebook apps do the same.  If you're not careful all types of Facebook games and the like take the ability to post on your timeline about themselves.  Generally I try to be fairly careful and reject those apps that want too much access, or if there's an option of "who sees the posts from this app" I set it so that only I can see the posts, and it doesn't bother my friends.  After all, I generate enough noise without apps helping!