Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: new media

  • The company you keep

    It’s an old but true saying that you’re judged by the company you keep and this applies online as much anywhere else in personal and professional life. Last week I was reminded of this three times.

    Early in the week I was asked if connecting with someone on LinkedIn was an endorsement. I thought that was an odd question as LinkedIn has a separate function for recommendations and so I didn’t pay it much attention.

    A few days later an industry group leader told me she’d assumed an individual was legitimate because I was a member of their LinkedIn group. While it was a compliment to think my opinion meant that much, it worried me as I didn’t really know the group’s founder and I certainly wasn’t endorsing his business.

    Finally, at the Media140 Conference in Perth last Thursday, employment branding specialist Jared Woods gave an interesting overview of how an Engineering firm deals with social media issues in the workplace.

    Jared described the company’s  basic rule was if you state that you work for the organisation then you have to act professionally and in a way that doesn’t discredit yourself or the company. Which means no more drunken photos posted on Facebook or joining bad taste causes and online groups. By all means post silly pictures, but forget mentioning who you work for.

    The killer line from Jared was social media gaffes can not only damage a business but they can also damage employee’s professional reputations. Just as the employee is part of the brand, staff have their own personal brands.

    This isn’t new, there’s dozens of true stories of how people have lost jobs through inappropriate blog or Facebook postings and ten years ago the infamous Claire Swire incident nearly cost a group of young London lawyers their jobs .

    All of these examples show just how important it is take care with everything you do online. You are not anonymous and most things you say and do on the Internet will be stored somewhere.

    So play nice and remember not to post anything you wouldn’t like to see next to your name on the six o’clock news.

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  • The value of communities

    Sydney’s Growthtown evenings are an irregular gathering of entrepreneurs discussing challenges facing fast growth businesses, and always a stimulating night with founders telling how they dealt with issues as diverse as setting up US operations, finding investors and exiting a successful venture.

    Last week’s event featured Marketing Angels’ Michelle Gamble explaining how she uses the brand pyramid to help her clients and Kylie Little, founder of Essential Baby, describing the journey from a business idea to exiting from a big business buy out.

    Kylie’s story of Essential Baby’s early days resonates with anyone who has started a business after the arrival of a baby. It’s always a relief to find you’re not the only one who thought it’s possible to run a business while your blissful cherub sleeps contently for most of the day.

    In many ways, Essential Baby’s story describes the dream exit for many entrepreneurs, or at least most venture capital funders, with the website being bought out by Fairfax.

    Interestingly, Kylie’s tale about what happened after a big organisation bought her business has some similarities to Lars Rassumussen’s experience of Where 2 Technologies’ absorption into Google.

    The cultural shock of moving from an independent start-up to being part of a bigger organisation is huge and the problems can’t be underestimated. So there’s a lesson on being careful what you wish for.

    One part that shone through both Kylie and Michelle’s presentations was how important communities are to a business. It’s often easy to think businesses are stand-alone entities, proudly independent of the world around them.

    In reality every successful businesses relies on groups of supporters, be they customers, suppliers, financiers or just simply fans. Businesses need communities just as the community needs them.

    Communities aren’t just generated by Twitter followers, witty blog entries or clever search engine optimisation, it takes credibility, honesty and doing the right thing by those around you.

    So who are your communities and what are you putting into them? You may find those groups are your business’s most important assets.

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  • Growing your business with Tweetups

    Growing your business with Tweetups

    It’s hard to resist the offer of a free sandwich in Sydney’s Hyde Park on a beautiful spring day, so a“tweet up” offering was always going to be successful.

    Like most social media meetings in any big town these days, people from all walks of life gathered to meet and become more than just a Twitter handle or obscure forum name.

    Any idea that your average internet user is a pasty, overweight, underemployed 20-something is quickly dispelled as you meet all sorts of interesting people who are doing interesting things.

    The hundreds of “tweet ups”, coffee mornings and social media dinners across the land are creating new networks which are changing business and society.

    This is opposite of the stereotype being used to reinforce the mindset that blames the internet and social networking sites for everything from schoolyard bullying through to street riots and arrested brain development.

    Over the last few days we’ve been treated to stream of stories about the views of professors and researchers detailing how the world and our minds are being destroyed by the internet.

    My favourite is an English professor currently visiting Australia who claims computer game addled 20-something market traders may be responsible for the global financial crisis.

    Perish the thought that good old-fashioned greed and hubris, the cause of every market crash since the Bronze Age, may have had something to do with the GFC.

    The weekend press mentioned the professor applying for a study grant from an American university to prove her theory.

    If that is true, it’s a shame the she didn’t take the time to check out the Twitter hashtag to join us for a sandwich in Hyde Park.

    Had she done that she’d have had a nice sandwich, caught some sun and seen her theory disproved.

    She would have met a far more diverse group than a bunch of stuffed shirts huddling in a cosy lunch club, desperately trying to validate their deliberate ignorance of the changing world outside.

    It’s those stuffed shirts, along with their newspaper columnist friends, who are isolated. By choosing to demonise the internet and ignore the opportunities social media tools present, they are being left behind in a fast changing world.

    The options for entrepreneurs and business owners are clear – you can lock yourself up with the stuffed shirts and rage about your dying business or you can use the net to help your business grow. The choice is yours.

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  • Cannes Lions: Day Two

    Cannes Lions entryDay two of Cannes Lions continued the theme of  dealing with new channels with a big focus on digital and Internet possiblilites.

    One old channel using new technologies is the movies.

    The future of Cinema with SAWA was an entertaining session that showed how movie theatres are going to bring together various technologies to enhance the audience’s experience.

    These new experiences offer great opportunities for producers, studios and marketers and while naturally the audience were more interested in the marketing angles, it’s clear that everyone involved in movies will be focussed on how they can make these features work for them.

    Jimmy Mayman from Go Viral showed some of the successes in viral marketing, including T-Mobile’s Dance and Sing clips.

    I have to admit I was left cold by these examples. I’m not contrived flash mobbing events are even truly viral marketing as such.

    Monday’s highlight was one of Twitter’s founders, Biz Stone, discussing the future of Twitter to a full auditorium.

    The big news from the session was how Biz hopes to have a revenue based on advanced API functions for commercial users.

    This is an innovative twist on the “freemium” business model. Where individual users are subsidised by the sale of aggregated data to businesses.

    It will be interesting to see how Biz and his team deal with the inevitable privacy concerns that will be raised.

    While the session was promoted as a tweet-up, it was limited by the lousy Wi-Fi access in the venue. In fact it’s surprising how little a role Twitter’s playing in the event given how it’s being used at Australian events like the Future Summit and CeBIT.

    Wi-Fi problems illustrate just how event organisers are struggling with the demands of a modern market. It’s a theme we’re going to see continue.

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  • Cannes Lions: Day One

    Day one of what’s going to be an extremely busy week at Cannes showed how digital technologies and the Internet are changing not just the advertising industry but all sectors of industry.

    Schematic’s Dale Herigstad showed, among other things, where Microsoft’s Project Natal is pointing the direction of where computer controls are going.

    Being able to remotely control equipment with body movements and facial expressions is going to be a massive change for entertainment, communications and many other sectors.

    This theme was expanded upon by Andy Pimental of Razorfish who demonstrated his vision of where television is going.

    In Andy’s future, the game controller and console are doomed. Movement recognition like Project Natal coupled with games being on the cloud means the game industry is going to be very different in a few years time.

    An interesting aspect with Andy’s presentation is that most of the technology is already available to achieve his vision, as he put it “it’s the business constraints, not technology, that limits us”.

    From a presenter’s point of view, the use of mock Tweets to illustrate points was a nice touch, too.

    Kevin Eyres of LinkedIn probably had the most impact. While much of the presentation focused on how LinkedIn can be used as a marketing tool, Kevin’s comments at the beginning about every individual is now  entreprenuer thanks to reduced job tenure and security really illustrated the challenges businesses and governments are going to face in the connected world.

    There’s some interesting challenges for all businesses ahead, not just the advertising industry. There’s a lot more to come.

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