Just seen that PC Pro has launched a blog. Good example of a “traditional” media outlet getting it right. The posts are short, to the point, and entertaining. I can’t say I’ve ever been a huge reader of the mag (I’m not really their target audience) but once I started scanning through the blog there were loads of posts which grabbed my attention.

Dennis are really pushing forward on the digital publishing side. This blog is impressive in that it’s the editorial team from the print side also doing a cracking job online, showing a good understanding of the different mediums. However, I don’t get the email magazine format of the iGizmo and Monkey offerings. When you’re used to consuming a lot of digital content they feel clunky to navigate and too much hassle for a smaller volume of content than I’d get from my RSS reader for example; the PC Pro blog was loads easier just to add to the other stuff I read online.

[During my time with ShinyRed we briefly consulted on Monkey at launch]

I went to yesterday’s Supplier Showcase event from e-consultancy on Behavioural Targeting.

I’ve just pulled out a few nuggets of interest to share here and downloads of their complete presentation will go up on the e-consultancy site soon.

Interwoven:

If you’re investing in SEO then you’ve got to maximise it. Advertising is targeted so when consumers click through to your website the content they see should adapt on entry to show the information most relevant to them e.g. in the case of an insurance provider if the user has come from a search engine query on “car insurance” show them a car insurance deal on the landing page.

Check out his presentation to see examples of brands they’ve done this for and success rates.

Wunderloop:

I was interested to hear about their Wunderloop Connect offering which enables publishers and advertisers to openly trade behavioural targeted ads. A lot of the big publishers are on board; Dennis, IPC, The Sun - anyone have feedback on how it’s working for them?

Omniture:

Building on Interwoven’s points on making websites more tailored to the user on entry, they gave examples of how this can be as simple as having exchangeable images based on user location or, if they’re a logged in user, age/gender/interests etc.

He gave a funny example of a dating website which achieved 9% higher registration when male users were presented with the image of an attractive female when landing at the site vs. the “happy couple” image they were using generically before.

Intellitracker:

A smart observation was made which was simple yet powerful - people are not PCs. By this they mean that a browser or IP address may be being used by more than one person. Statistically their research shows that 35% of site visitors are using more than one PC (e.g. one at home, one at work, maybe a laptop etc) and only 30% of PCs are used by only one person.

They have more to add on taking this challenge into account with your targeted ads.

–

I recommend the Supplier Showcase events. They’re free and informative even if you aren’t there strictly looking for a supplier.

I posted a few weeks back about Balance, an agency I work with, launching their new experiential agency Balance Live.

The group is growing fast and winning new business so have a few vacancies going. I said I’d chuck up on here. If you’re interested contact:

Lucy Finnegan or Vijay Anand

+44 207 426 0616

lucy[at]balancepr.com

vijay[at]balance-london.com

Account Director
(Consumer, Tech & Mobile Brands)

Senior Agency experience: Key skills in Advertising, SP, DM & Channel Marketing.
The ability to manage and motivate your team and your clients. Has experience in mobile and consumer tech sectors. We will consider candidates that don’t have direct experience but they must show a desire to work in the telecoms sector.

5+ years experience.

Account Manager
(Global Mobile Brand)
Integrated Agency experience: Key skills in Advertising, SP, DM & Channel Marketing.
Client side experience a bonus BUT must have worked at an Agency at some point. Has experience in the consumer electronics sector, ideally on a telecoms account. We will consider candidates that don’t have direct experience but they must show a desire to work in the telecoms sector.

3+ years experience.

Account Exec

Graduate with 1 year Advertising / Integrated Agency experience.

Creatives

Amazing creative talent required to join a rapidly expanding creative department.

Art Directors, Copywriters, Senior / Junior Designers, Experienced Artworkers

Balance PR Positions

• PR Junior Account Manager:Consumer lifestyle and fashion brands.2-3 years consumer PR experience working on lifestyle, fashion and youth brands
• PR Junior Account Manager:Drinks PR specialistworking on global spirit brand
• PR Account Exec:Graduate with 6 months Consumer PR Agency experience.

A great initiative from Koodos.com the online fashion retailer of discounted designer goods. After recognising that a major barrier for online consumers was concern over authenticity of discount goods, the company decided to lead the way by launching Authenticity Week to educate consumers on how to spot a wrong ‘un.

With their recent survey show showing 1 in 3 Brits own a fake designer item they are probably doing many of us a favour as police start to crack down on copyright infringements on online sites like eBay and brand owners take legal action against sellers and selling-sites alike.

Nice social media element to it too with the formation of a Facebook group and video with the style gurus over at Catwalk Queen.

Watch the video after the jump:

When i lived in Italy I visited the Benedictine monastery in Subiaco. It’s built around a cave where St Benedict supposedly lived in solitude for three years fed by a shepherd or monk (I’ve heard both versions) who lowered a basket of food down at intervals. The cave is surprisingly peacefully and, depending on your temperament, kind of appealing.

My positive response to the environment demonstrated that people feel different degrees of being intro- or extroverted and it’s something that crops up in questions when I run social media training sessions: who are ‘these people’ ie bloggers, tweeters, social networkers et al and why do *they* feel so comfortable broadcasting their lives?

I’m not sure I know the answer. At a basic level, once you and your friends start using something like Facebook it becomes more standardised and natural, you find yourself adding more personal updates, posting photos etc.

But honestly I still feel a bit like a social media “observer” using tools like this blog and Twitter to engage with my community from professional more than personal desires. As a pretty private person being publicly online makes me feel exposed and I contemplate deleting my accounts to run away to my Benedict’s cave. (Although I wonder if after 30 mins there I’d discover a compulsion to tweet “sitting in cave waiting for @Romanus to stop by with the food basket”).

I suspect that your level of comfort with publicly sharing is based on your confidence to allow people to make judgements about you. After all people can be nasty (See: Max’s Guardian blog or when Katie took on Fark)

There must be social anthropologists studying and categorising social media engagement types. But it’s intrinsic for humans to share at some level whether it’s online via blogging etc or offline via updating the people in your office with details of your love life. Only the mediums have diverged.

1000s of years ago when humans were creating cave drawings I wonder if they ever imagined their works would be seen outside of their small tribes.

How do you feel? Are you too shy to share?

Ever been out of work and had the old stat 6 of 10 jobs are not advertised quoted at you? It used to not feel  true but social media is starting to show that stat in action.

Over the past few months I’ve seen:

• BIMA recruiting for a PR via Twitter
• ShinyRed recruited a grad placement via The Official Facebook Public Relations Group
• Jobs sent out via my contacts on LinkedIn
• PRBlogger advertising a digital AE via his blog

Those are just the ones I can think of right now. Ignoring the obvious “what if they see my drunken pics on Facebook/MySpace”  hype which hopefully everyone has a handle on now, I’m wondering if social media communities are going to replace the recruitment agency?

Social media just provides the tools to tap into your own or others’ networks which were harder to mass broadcast to before Web 2.0 technologies.

Working your community:

Is it really only relevant to those in the digital or markcomms industry? I mean only a tiny fraction of my real world community uses Twitter and Facebook interest is dwindling. But more and more sectors could be tapping into online media to find and share work opportunities. The key is the community element.

I was chatting to a contact at InStylewho said that through her Facebook fashion friends she finds out about events, such as up-and-coming designer shows, that previously it would’ve been harder to track down.

Looking at my old life as a nanny and early childhood teacher my first reaction was social media may not be a good fit, after all who wants someone who’s paid to look after their children sitting on a computer all day? (not in a dodgy way)

But then I thought about how something like Twitter for a nursery school/caregivers could be a lovely way for parents to get updates throughout the day e.g.  ”This afternoon we’re face painting” instead of the slightly disturbing live webcams which are emerging. I can imagine parents swapping tips (they’re word of mouth champions) and tapping into their communities for support e.g. “can anyone recommend a good babysitter for tomorrow night?”. Community sites like Mumsnet and Gurgle are great but not immediate enough for these types of everyday conversations.

When I was a student I paid my way via private nannying and babysitting gigs. It got to the point where word of mouth was keeping me in the style I wanted to become accustomed to. In fact, people called me first because of my community; when I wasn’t available, I knew a childcare professional who was.

Looking for a job in social media:

If you want to look for a new job through social media it’s probably slightly harder if your current friends and communities aren’t online, but there’s also an opportunity for you to find new contacts and also stand out for doing something innovative.

Happy job hunting!

A little knowledge… makes this a funny thing.

[Check out more funny cartoons at Geek And Poke]

The Blackberry Women and Technology Awards were last night and I wondered how I totally missed this tech event. I didn’t even spot a random Tweet about it this morning.

A quick scan of the official site revealed, disappointingly, that perhaps this wasn’t the techiest event of the year. The nominees and winners hadn’t even been posted 18 hours after the event began (an age in online news terms).

This got me thinking about the benefits of this type of brand association with an event. It’s not a bad idea at all. If you caught the Saatchi & Saatchi ‘Lady Geek’ research last year you’ll have seen there’s a huge missed opportunity to market technology to women (around £600m worth).

So I did a rudimentary Trendpedia search to see who might be “owning conversations” around women and technology. First off I scanned through a quick Google search to see if there were any stand out brands in this space. There weren’t so I just used:

• Blackberry: A product like the Pearl was squarely aimed at women. I also wondered how an event like this was giving them ownership of ”women and technology” conversations
• Philips: Last year I was lucky enough to work on their Aurea campaign which, via fashion partnerships with the likes of Lanvin and media spend in Vogue, should’ve brought them into the female tech consumer conversation
• Saatchi & Saatchi: With their research I wondered if the brand had gained a presence in these types of discussions. I also thought it would provide a realistic contrast against the other two brands.

The search terms I used were [brand] AND women AND technology.

The results:

As expected nothing major came up. Low number of results and of those mainly irrelevant data. (I double-checked on a couple of other tools as well)

Blackberry was sort of ahead of the others. I wonder whether the female Blackberry consumer developed organically (most of the conversations are personal anecdotal mentions) and Blackberry capitalised on it or whether it was something the brand had consciously driven. I’d suspect the former and although awards like the Women And Technology event show they are driving the association, the lack of conversational spike this past week suggests there may be a disconnect between aims and results.

Philips’ conversations were much more news driven with direct commentary on their “female approach” and the products aimed towards women.

Saatchi’s ‘Lady Geek’ research still gets intermittent mentions in women and tech conversation. They weren’t actually that far behind these two big players in the space when you think about it. I wondered if they wanted an ongoing association with this area or had mainly created the research as a PR activity.

I’d love to do a deep dive with the Attentio tracking tool and find out just who are the leading brands in conversations around women and technology, I bet it would throw up a few surprises and a few obvious opportunities. I’d also love to work with a brand who wants to use word-of-mouth marketing and social media to position their brand towards this neglected, but potentially lucrative, tech consumer.

I don’t think I’ve put podcasting high enough on my radar. Part of the problem is that I’m not someone who listens to the radio, but I realise I’m in the minority with 51% of people identifying themselves as regular listeners. So, are podcasts just a fad? Will voice just be surpassed by video or vodcasting?

On the video front, while growth in the digital space is rapid I reckon the desire for audio only will always remain. It’s a similar behaviour to choosing to put on a CD or watching music videos. Sometimes you just want to listen to something. 

There’s great growth potential for podcasting. Radio has been an enduring medium, even with the advent of digital technologies, and I see the podcast as simply providing a form of “on-demand radio”. Uptake may be slow, but awareness is growing, suggesting that podcasting suffers from the same challenges as on-demand TV services; if good content exists, it’ll just take time to ensure the delivery model is in place and help the consumer adapt.

I didn’t attend the ‘New TV Insights from Thinkbox’ event the other week but they dropped me a note to point out they have a load of useful downlaodable content on their site. I’m getting particularly engrossed in their Generation Whatever section which has research and presentations on how marketers can target the “yoof” audience.

Also visit the beautifully titled ‘Nickable Charts’ section which has all the facts and figures on TV audiences you could ever wish for; your next powerpoint presentation will thank you for it.

Thinkbox resources