Once again, we said this at the head of the previous post, but in case you’re coming in afresh… We’ve just finished a series of three social media training or awareness-raising sessions for the good people at BBC Scotland, in the wonderful studios on Pacific Quay. These sessions were to some extent a remix of the sessions we did in London during the winter and spring earlier this year (which we blogged) but of course, times move on so there a whole load of new stuff in there too. So we’re going to our notes and resources up here both as follow up to the attendees and as – just possibly – a useful bit of “stuff” for the casual reader (with the obvious caveat that this is NOT an essay, but the basis of a presentation and workshop. The Boss, NIN and a new relationship with your consumers We kicked off by discussing the different strategies employed in the business of conversing with their audience taken by two very different rock musicians, Bruce Springsteen and Nine Inch nails’ Trent Reznor. You certainly can't rely on the old ways of doing things, that's for sure. Having already run foul of the blogosphere by releasing his new album Working on a Dream as a Walmart exclusive, it seems that in the week after playing the Superbowl, watched on TV by 90 million Americans, Bruce Springsteen managed to flog just 100,000 units of the album. (And it’s not just poor old Bruce. Remember, U2 opened up the Grammys with their new single Get on Yer Boots without managing to get it into the top 100 songs on the iTMS. And all this against a background of 2008's most talked about about album - G'n'R's 17-year-hiatus-ending Chinese Democracy charting only at No 3 on its US release.) As for Reznor, well, this presentation at the MidemNet conference earlier this year by business associate Michael Masnick tells the story better than we can. The really essential thing here, though, is the different tone and approach used by each of these rock musicians when talking to the public - their fans. This brief slide show walks through some of the points made above but crucially ends with an email newsletter to his fans from Reznor and an "open letter" to the New York Times, apparently from Springsteen, addressing his Walmart error. Justin then talked everyone through two sets of slides: Losing Control illustrates the development of conversational approaches by broadcasters, from one to many, through one to many with a small back channel, through the viral approach and ending with the uncontrollable and difficult to scale up conversational approach. Who are you and what are you selling? illustrates Double Shot’s views of different “families” of brands. We stress that these are our observations; there's no science in this and some of our attendees disagreed with some of our conclusions, not least about the brand structure of the Beeb. We then briefly looked at how the advent of digital communications technology had seriously confused this already confusing relationship between customers/audience and brands, looking at some specific examples of BBC brands in new relationships to the audience. Specifically, we asked about the ways in which multi-platform, on demand, and "additional" or user-generated content had changed this relationship. The examples we used included... The Wire. Yes, "those in the know" know it as an HBO show... but what about an audience who knows it only through the BBC's broadcasting of it? What about the people who write letters to the BBC to complain about it, or to praise it? Mock the Week. Do you know what BBC channel it's on? Out attendees, between them, watch it on the iPlayer, on Virgin or Sky+, on Dave, over Torrents (naming no names). Some people even watched, well, on BBC2. You get the picture. (And if you need to "the picture" out - just look at that website; who's behind that?!) Or here's 1Double Shot favourite, Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, who, earlier this year, did a special for her Radio 1 show about the emerging electronic music scene in Los Angeles and San Francisco: West Coast Rocks. Here's the tracklisting on the Radio 1 site. Here's a video she made while there, now on the BBC's Introducing site. But where's the show, dammit? Well of course it's not there - thanks to the 7-day only window catch up. This is what we call the Seashell: when the evidence of a broadcast outlives the show itself. Of course, it's even more fiendishly complex than that, because you but know where to look, you can download the show, from such sites as Core News - which you have to know, was just one among many. And what about Stephen Fry's famous twitter feed? Let alone mash-ups like this University Challenge-meets-South Parl pro-Cannabis video: Or even straightforward user-uploaded BBC material like this classic Youg Ones University Challenge sketch: Unpick this lot then. What is the BBC brand? Channel? Talent? Strand? Show? Genre? The BBC itself? We have no definitive answers here; we're just convinced that it's immeasurably more complex than many are prepared to admit... and only going to get more so. Enjoy! Simon Yes, we said this at the head of the previous post, but in case you’re coming in afresh… We’ve just finished a series of three social media training or awareness-raising sessions for the good people at BBC Scotland, in the wonderful studios on Pacific Quay. These sessions were to some extent a remix of the sessions we did in London during the winter and spring earlier this year (which we blogged) but of course, times move on so there a whole load of new stuff in there too. So we’re going to our notes and resources up here both as follow up to the attendees and as – just possibly – a useful bit of “stuff” for the casual reader (with the obvious caveat that this is NOT an essay, but the basis of presentations punctuated with some great Q&A interventions from some brilliant guests)… Tracking the conversations The first thing to do if you want to start talking… is to start listening. That’s all very well, but how can you pick out apposite, useful conversation amongst the chattering Babel that is the web? Well let’s have a look at some specific tools. Capture Google Alerts Google Blog Search Twoogle Technorati Blogpulse Icerocket Twitter specific stuff Twitter Search Twitterfall Trendistic Feed Readers You really only need one of these – and Google is great, but in case you don’t want to put all your eggs in the Mountain View basket, we’ll include a couple of others: Google Reader Bloglines The cryptically-named Feedreader Another approach: Handy homepage aggregators Netvibes Page flakes iGoogle OK… that’s a lot of stuff… NOBODY uses all of ‘em (with the exception of social media consultants who HAVE TO!)… You do need to play with them and create your own “ecosystem”… Breakout – the art of listening We then asked the attendees to break into 3-5 groups. Each group was given a different news story from that day (or previous couple) and asked to use one or two (at most) of the tools listed above in order to find posts/threads/conversations related to the story. These questions might be useful to you when looking for conversations “out there”: •What new aspects of the story emerged – if any? •Did you manage to find interesting voices? •How did the tools compare to each other? •How easy were stories to find? •How did the tools compare to standard new gathering sources – the wires, cuts etc? Best practice in action 1 John Connell then gave a presentation and answered questions from us and the audience. John is a former teacher and head teacher and an educationalist who works full time for Cisco. Somehow he also finds time to maintain not one but two blogs and has – with the aid of the fabulous Tweetdeck – properly mastered the art of Twitter. John Connell: The Blog John Connell's Travel Blog Best practice in action 2: Bringing the Conversation Back into the Broadcast Ros Atkins is the main presenter of World Have Your Say, our favourite show on the radio, a 5-day-a-week, hour-long show which involves callers from around the world debating a hot topic. However, to call WHYS a call-in show would be to grievously underestimate it. Rather, it’s a forum in which participants talk to each other, with Ros (or one of his colleagues) “simply” wrangling the conversation. This wrangling, of course, is all in the preparation and the preparation is all about the adroit use of social media. Simon After the Crunch 05/05/2009
The financial crisis: what does it mean for the creative industries, the arts, the cultural sector in the UK? Our friends John Kieffer and Shelagh Wright, along with John Newbigin and John Holden have put together a rather fabulous little collection of essays looking at this very question. Running to a 100 pages, After the Crunch features essays by a whole bunch of luminaries - artists, entrepreneurs, thought leaders and the like - including Clay Shirky, Tony Hall, Charles Leadbeater, Richard Florida and Chris Smith. Quick round up from SH, Dec 19 12/19/2008
A former colleague of ours, Tristan Ferne in the BBC's Audio & Music Interactive department was interviewed by the Guardian this week. We're particularly intrigued by Moose 6... looks like yet another cognitive surplus moment... That Scorpions story 12/14/2008
We won't add our voice to the Scorpions/Virgin Killer/Wikipedia noise here. But we will point out this typically insightful piece by The Observer's John Naughton in which Naughton points to the fact that the web, far from being the libertarian free-for-all so breathlessly anticipated a decade back has turned out to be rather easy to control by special interest groups and self-appointed moral guardians... and there's plenty of them waiting in the wings. We announced a while back that we were pleased to be working with BBC Training & Development on delivering a series of workshops about social media and its relevance to BBC production staff. So... yesterday we kicked the series off with a little 3 hour session entitled "Right Tools for the Right Job".     Ouch (2)... The Simpsons on (M)Apple 12/01/2008
Ouch... The Reg on Gladwell 12/01/2008
The Register's Andrew Orlowski takes an especially sarky, scabrous look at Malcolm Gladwell's work this morning, using it as a platform to take a pop at the whole Web 2.0 & marketing consultancy world. Weekend round-up 11/30/2008
iPhone musique conrete: Simon's been enjoying the iPhone RjDj app, which records the sounds around you and makes real time electronic/sampladelic pieces from them. At times, quite ravishing. Wayne Wang on You Tube 11/21/2008
The rise and rise of IP-delivered video continues with the YouTube Screening Room premiere of Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska. Wang is almost certainly the highest-profile film maker to premiere a feature-length film on the web, so that's a marker, of some sort. | ArchivesFebruary 2010 Blogs we learn from CategoriesAll |
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