Twitter: Surrey networking - a review

Last week, we organised the first Twitter networking event in Farnham, Surrey (aka a Tweet-up). On a busy week full of festive gatherings we were delighted with the interest and attendance.

We organised this gathering following encouragement from all sides, led by @emmafirth of the Daily Telegraph. It was great to see quorum of Twitter enthusiasts rocking-up, including: @jamesfirth, @andypiper, @guy1067, @toni_jane, @jeniferdav, @kwright5, @pascalw and rachel_adams88.

There were a good number of conversations including:

• Telegraph expenses story
• Paywalls / free content
• The rise and rise of Google
• The digital goldfish bowl
• Programming: Ruby, Adobe AIR, .NET
• The perils of marathon running (!? - @guy1067 is gearing up to his second Marathon and is tackling London in April 2010)

We will definitely have another evening Tweet-up in the New Year, so the conversations can continue.... currently thinking end of January, beginning of February. Do let us know if you would like to come: info at thebluedoor dot com, and when.

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Reboot Britain

Yesterday I went to Reboot Britain, an event organised by NESTA - the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

The idea of Reboot Britain was born from NESTA’s report "Attacking the Recession" which was published earlier this year and outlines measures to support a more dynamic and resilient economy.

In his foreword to the Reboot Britain publication Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of NESTA tells us that Reboot Britain asks an important question of us in this digital age: given the unprecedented challenges we face, how can we best overcome them by harnessing the unique tools now at our disposal?

With this in mind I sat down to listen to the impressive line up of speakers on stage in the lecture theatre, and what a treat it was. Here are the highlights for me:

Gillian Tett - (Assistant Editor, Financial Times), talking about the banking crisis:
Innovation occurred in such small silos that no-one outside the system understood it and no one inside the system had the big picture.

Tony Ageh - (Controller of Archive Development, BBC) – Mining the Archives, a new Age of Opportunity:The BBC archives are about to get sexy. The BBC has 5 ½ miles of shelved archives and over 400,000 complete programmes. It would take over 120 years to convert these programmes into a digital format. Tony Ageh says the answer is to let people “have” the content; making this content freely available will create entirely new businesses. The media sector will reinvent itself through its archives.

Martha Lane-Fox – (Digital Inclusion Champion, Digital Britain) – Ending the Digital Divide: People being left behind are left behind in every sphere of their life. Let’s focus on getting the 6 million people who are most socially disadvantaged online; if we can do this, we can increase their confidence / motivation / skills / inspiration.

Charles Leadbeater – The Mutual Media Manifesto: Media is something we do with people, not to and for people. Renegades and pirates will be the ones to create the innovations of the future.

Alan Moore – (co-author of Communities Dominate Brands) - Straightline Thinking stops here, the true promise of the networked society: There is no more online or offline, there is only blended reality. Don’t talk about digital, talk about technology as co-operation.

These are just some of the great soundbites from the excellent presentations and although some left me with more tangible ideas than others, all were thought provoking and inspiring.

You can take a look at the Reboot Britain slide show below or download or follow the latest news and views on #rebootbritain.

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Twitter: how can a business use it?

"Twitter - so what is the point?" Being involved in digital PR, this is a challenge I hear all the time, partly driven by articles appearing in newspapers written by armchair pundits who don't use it but certainly have a negative opinion.

At thebluedoor we use Twitter alot. Each of us have our own Twitter account and we also have a rather underused company account too. My Twitter name is @AbigailH - please do follow me and let me know if I can help with any Twitter questions that you have.

In order to understand Twitter and its benefits I would advise that you stop reading articles in papers and start using it. Here is some tips that might help you get started:

• Go to Twitter - it's free - and register your own name (or as close as possible) and your business and its brands. Even if you don't intend to use the latter, owning them means that you are protecting them from someone else who might have malicious intentions to spam your brand
• Watch the demonstration video, it is a great starting point
• Fill in your profile and don't forget to put a link to your website or blog
• Use a free application e.g.: TweetDeck / Twirl in order to see conversation
• Follow @hashtags and create business relevant hashtag e.g.: #Habitat (* see below). Hashtags help conversations to be visible
• Follow @MrTweet in order to ‘find’ followers / friends
• Live-Tweet events / news / general industry information, as well as key business information to gather more attention
• Perhaps add links into your Tweets that point into your business’s key online areas. Remember to use key words – there are SEO benefits in Twitter
• Track the ROI by looking at your website's analytics
• Refer to key opinion formers and include their Twitter handle e.g.: @stephenfry. If they are using TweetDeck they might see them and sometimes (if you are lucky!) respond / engage accordingly
• Twitter is great for testing ideas, gathering feedback, and asking questions
• Remember that this is Web 2.0 i.e.: it is talking and listening, not just pushing out company news! – otherwise people will not be interested

* = Habitat got into hot water earlier this week by using inappropriate hashtags such as #iranelection in order to piggy-back a topic that was being discussed (trending).

Twitter does not replace face-to-face communication, but is a very powerful digital networking and collaboration tool for businesses. And in the spirit of that final point, I'm attending tomorrow's TweetCamp in London and am very much looking forward to meeting up with people (many for the first time) who are active on Twitter. If you are going, I can't wait to meet you. And if you're not, there is sure to be lots of live Tweeting going on, so watch out for the #tweetcamp tagged Tweets.

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Digital Networking - Adapt or die?

Call me old fashioned, but I have always believed successful PR is all about building good relationships. Relationships with the client, relationships with the media and of course with the community.

It’s a recognised fact that one of the best ways to build relationships is to network, become part of a community and exchange information and ideas. The advancement of technology and the introduction of social networking have transformed the way we interact and share information. Online is now one of the fastest and most impactful ways to connect with people and build communities.

The tools that power the exchange of information and networking online are constantly evolving and this begs the question: Do the basic principles of relationship building still apply or have they, like the web and those that use it, had to adapt or die?

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr have been readily embraced and are fast becoming assimilated into our lives with more and more of us receiving information and networking via social media. Even the Mayor of London has been using phlogging social media technology to promote his trip to Seoul last week via ipadio.com!

Essentially networking, if done correctly, is about making connections with individuals, finding common interests, sharing information and ideas with the aim of establishing mutually beneficial relationships. If used correctly social media can be the driving force behind developing strong business communities and effectively promoting your organisation. The web is all about accessibility and the introduction of social media gives individuals, business and even products an active, immediate and responsive voice. We are also no longer just receiving news, we are making it. We’ve become independent distributers of news, as well as broadcasters, promoters and opinion leaders all in one.

So to answer the question, yes the basic principles of networking still apply; but in order to build lasting relationship we have to actively embrace all forms of networking. It’s no longer an activity we schedule in the diary it’s a way of life. In short: we as individuals and businesses have to adapt, innovate and contribute or risk disappearing all together.