Social Media for Social Media's sake...

First of all, apologies for the huge delay since my last post... there are no plausible excuses, yet I promise (pinky promise) to post more regularly from now on.

I have recently got my first marketing role (thanks for the applause) with a creative agency in Manchester (Emerald). One of the main aspects of my new role has to been to give the agency a presence within the realms of social media.

As social media is now THE 'buzz' word, it seems every man and his dog is trying to climb aboard but many have no clue why, how or what they need it for. I have recently attended various business workshops/networking sessions and have had the same outcome in most. For those who haven't already embraced social media in a logical and practical way for them and their business, there is a surge of people adopting any type of social network medium they can get their hands on, without any thought into suitability or what they want it to achieve.

Based on what I have seen at these workshops/ networking sessions, the general consensus among the people eager to incorporate social media into their business model without any knowledge of the uses of each medium seems to be that EVERY company needs a Facebook page. It is becoming increasingly frustrating listening to people putting the emphasis on purely creating a Facebook page for their business in order to successfully integrate social media into their business model.

It is no wonder that a huge amount of people do not understand why or even how to use mediums such as Twitter etc. because they have not been taught that the content they provide (and the relevance of that content) is king!

There are now a few workshops dealing with this problem and actually providing people new to SM with a very helpful beginners guide. Instead of just jumping onto the confused bandwagon, they give people a chance to really understand SM and therefore be able to tailor it and use it to its full potential for their own area and objectives.

A few cropping to mind are:

Manchester Social Media Surgery - #mansms - Free (Free tea/coffee & biscuits too!!)

Intro to social media - £150 per person but seems a lot more practical based stuff

Social Media Masterclass - £45 + VAT - This was actually recommended by my Dad who attended recently and found it extremely helpful

For any more people know of you can just post below.

Rant over :)

Google Wave

So, I got my Google Wave invitation + invites on Saturday. Although it is only a beta, and there aren't vast amounts of people connected to Google Wave yet, the potential of it can be seen clearly.

Firstly, as a combination of email and instant messaging, it seems pretty impressive, however, it is not the easiest of systems to use. Me and two other contacts shared a wave, and used it for real time updates as a substitute from MSN Messenger or Facebook Chat etc. Though we did enjoy being able to see each other type in real time, we did find it difficult to keep any consistency. Instead of a new blip each time we typed, we found that we were accidentally commenting inside each others blips or typing further up the message.

A tool I think that will be extremely useful when the rest of the world is able to sign up to Google Wave is the array of applications one can intergrate into a wave. For example if I was arranging a party, I could use the Poll application as a guest list, post the location using the Google Maps app and after the party I could add all the pictures of the party just by dragging and dropping into the wave from my desktop.

Finally,another impressive addition are the robots. 'Tweety the Twitbot' and 'Bloggy' are just two of the many robots available to into waves. The ease of using a robot on GW is incredible and there is no end to the potential of this addition with it being open to developers.

It is very early days for GW (not even released yet!) and though it is not completely sleek enough for everyone to understand it or get to grips with it, it shows true potential and could live up to the hype that is surrounding it.

Kids & Social Media

When I was a kid, the only IT education offered to the younger generation was a basic IT class once a week that was used to train people's MS office skills. However, in this day and age so much more needs to be done! With so many aspects of digital and social media, surely it is essential that kids should be taught how to use each aspect safely and to its full potential in order instil some interest early on life.

I was pleased to see Mashable's (Mashable.com) attempt at trying to fund just that! Mashable is helping to raise funds in order to help schools buy the correct tools to educate the importance of social media. From digital cameras to video cameras to netbooks, kids on the east coast of America will benefit from being media-literate from an early age.

I can't help but hope that a fund-raiser of this kind will soon hit the UK. This will not only improve the talent coming through to the Social Media/ Digital industry, but nearly every industry. There would be less and less badly designed websites, communication techniques would grow hugely and the amount of independent material for the entertainment and art industries would again go through the roof.

I am a huge fan of what Mashable and anybody else involved with the scheme is doing and with any hope the idea will catch on in the UK.

Mashable: Help kids get into social media - http://mashable.com/2009/09/30/donors-choose-start/#disqus_thread

Apple to open the iPhone revolution to Orange & Vodafone [Updated]

So, it seems O2's exclusivity with the iPhone is due to end. Rumours surrounding the end of O2's exclusivity have been running constantly over the past 12 months and it has at last been confirmed by not only Orange but Vodafone too. Both networks announced they will be selling the revolutionary device in the build up to Christmas.

As the upcoming merging of Orange and T-Mobile draws nearer, in addition to the other new iPhone provider Vodafone, sales of the iPhone will surely rocket as Brand Republic predicts this will make the iPhone open to three quarters of the UK mobile phone market.

This competition will, hopefully (from an iPhone owners' opinion), create a price war, or at least add a bit of price competitiveness.

One can see why Apple are now opening up the iPhone to more networks as their biggest income from now will surely come from the App Store and iTunes.

Now the iPhone will become widely available, however, will this affect the iPhone's biggest competitor; the Blackberry? Blackberry seem to have dominated in recent years in any network other than O2, yet this may strike some healthy competition over the Christmas period.