Jul 05
In my last blog here I talked about the anti-social (and ridiculous) nature of using an automated system like Truetwit to validate whether Twitter followers were human. That may have given the impression that I’m totally against automation tools, but not a bit of it. As with all such things, it’s not the tool, …
Jun 09
An increasing number of people on Twitter seem to be using services like Truetwit in the belief that this will stop them being inundated with spam. But is this anti-spam or anti-social? Try to follow one of these users and you will get an automatic message back requiring you to visit a website and take …
May 17
In my last blog post I talked about the challenge of building a community of engaged users who would contribute to and support the relaunch of the Woking News and Mail. Called in to help with the relaunch, I had just under 5 weeks to get a buzz going on Twitter and Facebook, build a …
Dec 22
Continuing my musical theme of the last two days, today I want to bring your attention to one of the most exciting bands I ever saw live, in a small club in Birmingham in the mid 1970s: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. SAHB, as they were usually abbreviated, were a gritty band with great theatrical …
Dec 21
In yesterday’s blog I wrote about a great piece of music by King Crimson to illustrate a point about Social Media. Continuing that theme I want to use the title of another favourite track, this time by the jazz-rock fusion band Soft Machine, to answer the questions “How often should I tweet?”, “When should I …
Dec 06
If I lived just one mile further south than my home in Guildford my MP would be Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, until today famous only for looking like a cross between a nodding dog and a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights. That all changed just before 8:00 AM this morning, and within an hour …
Dec 02
The respected research organisation Gartner Group has been publishing its top predictions for IT users and organisations over the next few years. One that I found particularly concerning is this: By 2015, 10 percent of your online “friends” will be nonhuman. Social media strategy involves several steps: establishing a presence, listening to the conversation, speaking …
Nov 29
In the last few days we’ve seen two contrasting examples of public figures using social media, one of them effectively and the other extremely badly. Firstly we had the Bishop of Willesden – a man who would certainly have benefitted from the services of a social media manager. Commenting on his Facebook page about the …
Nov 26
In a fascinating piece in Guardian Media this week, Alan Rusbridger discusses the importance of Twitter and why journalists should take note. Twitter is just one piece of the whole Social Media framework that is democratising news in a way that would have been unthinkable even five years ago. What do you think? Is the …
Nov 25
One of the hottest topics in the world of Social Media right now goes under the unlovely title of Geosocial Networking – defined by Wikipedia as “a type of social networking in which geographic services and capabilities such as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics”. Don’t you just love that type …
