Pain no gain

Pain
Originally uploaded by kevin ferry

Just returned from the Balmoral Burn - that is such a hard run - 420m straight up sprint on a very very steep hill on Awaba Street in Balmoral.

Got second again got nailed by the same guy last year - we both were way ahead of the field, but I had nothing in the tank when I needed to kick.

The fittest guy won on the day, well done today but we will return for other encounter.

Chin chin

Consumer engagement - love it

Busy tweeting for your business

There's an on going debate about how much businesses should be using social media channels like Twitter to promote themselves, well if your thinking like this, then stop! You're already in the wrong mindset- the fact you want to 'promote' your company is the wrong tack, instead think of your company sharing knowledge and advice around your profession and that might not all involve around your company on that I picked this up early this morning via Chris Brogan this is all your business needs to know about using social media in particular Twitter, my personal opinion on using Twitter for business is it's vital, without it you can't reach out to your customers in an engaging manner, it's also a valuable channel as a source of research, so here's the first steps in building your business further:

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the others, too.

BBC you have my vote

As most of you will know there was a general election in the UK, now with me all the way over in the 'lucky country' tracking and seeing the votes unfold where else would you go apart from the BBC? As someone who loves data and is very visual this site was a organismic visual and data trip.Just by tapping in your district you get detail from a interactive map, with live streams of the results, with comments from in and out going MP's and all the results in real time with the colour map changing just as fast as the results were coming in. I spent an age pouring over the results, here's my area I lived when I was in the UK of Romford in Essex

This site had everything, the debates,and I particular liked the section called 'make it clear' so for instance when it was announced that it was heading for a hung parliament they had a full chart explaining what will happen and the next steps that will follow, wonderful.

But it was the BBC TV Channel that made the whole experience informative and entertaining the live stream was fast without buffering and they kept changing from one programme to the other without a single judder, for one moment I could be sitting in front of the TV with a beer in hand in sunny old Romford instead of cold wintery Sydney Australia. (It's winter here).

So I thank you the BBC and that's why you'll always get my vote.

Share the love of music

Came across this, a music site called We Are Hunted a online music chart.

They listen to what people are saying about artists and their music on blogs, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, message boards and forums, Twitter and P2P networks to chart the top songs online everyday, neat idea pop pickers almost
a new Top of the Pops.
In the physical world, charts are built on shipped albums. Online charts have been a simple count of digital downloads. This New Model Army is different. They discover new music from around the web and detect sentiment, expression and advocacy to understand what people like and dislike. They also have the ability to buy the track you've played from the site, good business model.

Mix business with pleasure

Social media is a wonderful thing you can keep in contact with family and friends from afar, make some new ones, make friends you never knew you had and some you'd wish you never came across usually this is through Facebook with a dusting of YouTube, on the other side of the social media ladder we have the more business side which usually involves Linkedin and Twitter the same can be said of your business connections, some are worthwhile and good for your network, many are not like headhunters who use you and tap into your network (this is one of the reasons why I booted off most headhunters from my network as it was all one way).

But the question I wanted to ask and something that has happened to me over the last couple of months is that these social media channels are started to merge into one were family now sit happily along side a work colleague or do they? Is my sister in Ireland does she really give an arse if most Twitter users average age is 39 and are media influencers? The same can be said that a CEO of GSK is he really that interested that my sister in Ireland has had another baby and posted them up on Facebook?

I'm confused as to weather to keep the two channels separate or not but with Facebook especially it has become more business savvy in it's approach and took Twitter by its word and 'followed' them, what do you think? Do you keep the two channels separate? or as my sister in Ireland would say; Feck who gives an arse!

For me business social media is:
>Twitter
>LinkedIn
>Slideshare
>Delicious
>YouTube
>Blogger
>Tumblr

For pleasure
>Skype - Keep in contact with family in Ireland
>Mobile -SMS - ditto
>Private email/MSN Messenger

Business with Pleasure:
>Facebook
>Flickr

It depends how you look at

I saw this picture which reminded me when I was a junior art director, I remember I was sitting on a couch in the creative department and a brief came in were the project manager said there's a brief for Woolworths, the problem was, it was a small space ad and even smaller budget.

I remember the look of horror on one of the 'star award winning' creative’s who responded: 'You have to be F'king joking I can't do anything with that, the budget's crap and anyway they'll be doing a TV spot soon, so I'll work on that'

Now this was a turning point for me as I could have thought the same way, but at that stage of my career it wasn't really an option so I put my hand up and said I'll work on it, lots of glares from all the other creative’s followed. (I think I broke the creative code at that time which was don't be too keen. So hear I was, this eager grinning kid with his hand up offering to work on it.

I wasn't trying to impress, I just looked at it in a completely different way than the 'pros' at the time. To me this was a challenge, like a test to see if I could work in a more constrained environment.

The ad was produced and the following year I got my first creative circle award for a print ad for ‘best use of small space’ The idea was for blank cassette tapes(yes it was that long ago) and the idea? The ad was completely blank with a tiny headline that read: Blank tapes at Woolworths only 4.99.

Some things that I learned from this:
1: Always treat every job as an opportunity.
2: Never become complacent and keep the creative fire in your belly.
3: Learn the rules and then break them.
4: You can win awards with bugger all time and budget.