Posts Tagged ‘Business’
Over the summer the media140 team have been busy creating four complementary Social Business workshops designed to take your organisation from a standing start with social media right through to business transformation and cultural change.
In a previous post, freelance copywriter and editor Rachel Pictor explored the relationship between individuals and the Internet, with an emphasis on social media in the context of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. She concluded that social media performs a lot of functions which fulfil the needs of individuals, enabling them to interact, do business and act creatively and spontaneously.
What does it mean to be a social organisation versus one that uses social media? Too many Managing Directors think of social media as online tools that sit well and truly in the Communications Department. More often than not, those tools are handled by digital natives on their behalf, those people who have a familiarity with social media that senior management do not. This leaves a significant deficit of understanding at the heart of many management teams and at the core of brand and businesses strategies about how to really adapt to, and make the most of, social media.
The first in a series of UK regional events kicked off on the 12th May in Oxford at the Jam Factory to a warm welcome from local Oxfordshire residents and businesses.
These regional events will focus on journalism, brands, advertising, media, technology, politics, the third sector and education. They are aimed at bringing together local communities, individuals and business to share their experiences, meet industry professionals and learn from case studies.
Our man Ande Gregson was there to find out what stood out at the first media140 Oxford event and managed to bag a couple of excellent interviews with the speakers.
Arriving at the Jam Factory took me longer than I had anticipated, and so it seemed for a lot of other local residents traveling to Oxford struggling through the horrendous morning traffic.
Paul Squires, the event organiser, had asked me to deliver a keynote to an intimate gathering of twenty delegates, so delivering the story of media140, from it’s inception only 12 months ago to the audience, felt very different from the previous events I had opened or hosted in Sydney, Perth, Italy or London.
Image courtesy of Ande Gregson
I have sometimes found at the larger global events that I have produced that you are sometimes inundated with the need to ‘speed network’ seeking to make as many connections as possible across as many of the delegates as you can. Meaning the conversation can sometimes be short and brief.
Whereas the Oxford event had much more of a local community feel to it, you could talk to everyone, get to know them by name, share local experiences and really focus on the practical aspects of social media in the context of running a small business.
So the intimacy of the day was a real highlight for me personally and to understand at a much more personal level what people are trying to achieve with social media and how it is driving their business goals.
Speaker highlights
Eddie Lambert presented a great case study entitled ‘Doing good through serious mischief’ illustrating how Oxfam harnessed consumer-led social media activism around the Robin Hood tax. I managed to interview Eddie about some of his thoughts around this, particularly on how social media can enable activism and how they go about engaging with bloggers.
Slide presentation (PDF 4mb)
Molly Flatt from 1000heads delivered a very animated piece on Brand Anthropomorphism offering ways to build relationships with consumers as a personal, but efficient and consistent company.
However, this did raise the an interesting question as to whether a large organisation can actually transform itself to become ‘social’ given the significant political and organisational hurdles many corporates face. A question I put to Molly during this interview:
Slide presentation (PDF 4mb)
Kristian Carter from IF Communications with ‘the changing base of reputation‘ put forward an interesting viewpoint that any brand no matter how small have the ability to create ‘culture and content’ around their products or services to support a social approach to marketing.
Although I didn’t get a chance to interview Kristian here are couple of examples he cited Amnesty International Tyranny Book, a parody of Facebook except it featured global tyrants and the Harry Potter Alliance.
Slide presentation (PDF 400k)
Paul Beadle from Brazil PR gave a more traditional approach to reputation management focusing on the technology, tools and process.
Image courtesy of Ande Gregson
And finally after a very enjoyable day we all received a very special pot of media140 marmalade given that we had been hosted in the old Frank Cooper Marmalade factory.
A huge thank you goes to all that attended, Paul Squires, Molly Flatt, Edward Lambert, Kristan Carter, Paul Beadle and Richer Sounds.
Ande, media140
This is the first of many regional events that are being produced by media140 across the UK. For more information or if you would like to run your own media140 please get in touch at info@media140.com
Image courtesy of When Harry Met Sally, 1989 (Courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment)
Business is scared of social media, and mostly limits its involvement to faux-engagement aimed only at ‘keeping up with the kids’. That was the conclusion Dr Mark K Smith drew from speaking at the Melcrum Social Media for Internal Communications conference last month.
Mark is a newbie to the Media140 blog, but he is an old hand in Internet innovation. He is currently CEO of a phone blogging service called ipadio, which allows users to broadcast audio online by simply making a phone call. Last year, ipadio was named eConsultancy’s Most Innovative New Technology, beating IBM.
TESTIMONIALS
"The media140 seminars inspired us to move beyond the clutter and hype to engage with practical concepts that help businesses leverage the power of social communities. media140 is out in front of the new frontier"
Stephen Broadbant, President ESADE Media Club
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