Uba Kontrovasie

The power of tagging

A seasonal post from me today…

People often ask me why the hell they should bother tagging content? Lot’s of reasons for this and I could sit here and yammer on about tagging, taxonomies and folksonomies etc etc.

Instead of me giving you guys a drawn out explanation I’ll let you do the reading into the theories in your own time, instead I will lend you my real life example of the benefits of tagging in effect.

I’m celebrating Diwali with my family at the moment, Diwali is the festival of light and the celebration of the Hindu new year.

Most of my friends know I love taking pictures or “freezing time” as I call it, anything to sound cool don’t you know :p Anyway Diwali has provided a whole host of Kodak moments and I have been busy snapping away in between meals, eating + snapping! It’s a great way to live, “try it you might like it”.

Yesterday (if I’m not mistaken) I uploaded some photo’s of tea lights on to my flickr account. Tea lights are lit in the morning and in the evening as part of the rituals/celebrations.

I tagged my photos on flickr with a single tag “Diwali”, this was me being lazy as I am appalling at tagging my pics. Today I got an email from a content editor/journo asking if my pics could be used in an article about Diwali along with other pics from around the world.

Naturally I was happy to let them use my snaps and the article can be found here

The website is called Now Public “crowd powered media”, Now Public pulls together public generated content around topics and asks asset owners to add their own commentary.

The comments all work together to form a nice collaborative article, whilst the assets (video & photo) are all mashed together using some kind of ajax thingamabob to form a really slick slide show.

I’m really liking the concept of Now Public, it is a good example of a website that is utilising public collaboration, social media and UGC. Rock on!

Now where did I leave those spring rolls and the rest of those Indian sweets

Tags: collaboration, diwali, flickr, folksonomies, now public, photography, social media, tagging, taxonomies, UGC

Bring on the trumpets!

God I love this ad! Stupid, pointless and just plain funny! I hope these guys play on the characters throughout the rest of their offline/online comms. Possibilities are endless and I expect to see more of the same humour in other channels and formats.

Genius!

Tags: Advertising, Digital Planning, funny tv ad, offline advertising, Offline Media, tv ad

My iPhone

I’ve had it for a few months now, yes I was one of those sad people queuing outside the O2 store during the first month they came out.

This little gadget has seriously changed the way I work these days, here’s why:

- It syncs with my calendar at the office
- It syncs with with my work e-mail in real-time via the exchange
- The internet is fast enough for me to read my RSS feeds on it each morning en route to the office
- I have a better back because I do not need to a lug a laptop with me everywhere I go mon-fri

I haven’t massively got into all the fun applications just yet, however, here’s my run down of the ones that I’ve found the most useful:

Shozu - lets you upload pics from your iPhone to Flickr
Evernote - my “cloud” notepad of choice
Facebook for iPhone, need I explain any further
Twittereffic - All things twitter
Wordpress - Blogging on the fly
Google.co.uk/reader/i - access to my feeds
Light Saber - Yes a Light Saber on your iPhone (hours of fun)

Another app I also recommend is EventSync for the Mac, not an iPhone App as such but it lets you sync all Facebook events to iCal and iTunes does the rest by syncing everything to your handset. I’ve given up on the Upcoming + Facebook app working, it just keeps dying and not syncing both ways.

My criticisms? bad battery life, I’ve had to drop the screen brightness right down to make the battery last a full busy day. Also the camera could be better, they could have quite easily incorporated an LED flash like they did on the Sony K750 a few years ago.

Rant and praise over, hope you guys find the tips useful.

Tags: 3G, Apple, eventsync, evernote, facebook, flickr, ical, iphone, phone application, phone applications, shozu, twitteriffic, upcoming, wordpress

Getting it right on Facebook

I received an invite today on Facebook asking me to join a group for a company, my first reactions? Who and what the hell is this? I pretty much rejected it straight away.

There are lot’s of different types of groups on Facebook, fan based groups, interest groups and yes even brand groups.

Brand groups are often just set-up by normal people who are fans of brands or people who work for brands (brand evangelists).

There is a real need for social media marketers to understand how to use Facebook properly, there is no reason to spam people by sending invites to your brand group.

Social Media is all about permission marketing, if people like what you have to offer they will become a member of your Facebook group without any spammy requests.

LG have done good job of plugging their Facebook group on their social media hub (blog).

This allows people to join their group if they want to, in many respects a Facebook group should be seen as a brands own micro-social network.

Wake up people! Stop knocking on doors, provide people what they want by means of content and information, in time you will find people join your brand group automatically.

Tags: facebook, groups, permission marketing, social network

Twedit Twunch

I’ve just been messing about with some of the twitter analytics tools available on the web in order to gain an idea of how people are reacting towards the credit crunch. All the tools show a recent uplift in tweets during this month and twitter spectrum shows associative phrases around the term.

Twist:

Twitter Spectrum:

TwitStat:

Sorry about the doom and gloom but each of tools provide interesting findings and different ways to analyse the “twitosphere” (sorry I had to get that one in).

Here comes another buzz word “Halo effect”, it is clear in the tables above that over the last few months tweets have increased as result of heightened media coverage (and banks collapsing).

The main point to take away from my experiment is that these tools should be used as part of social media measurement tool kits, overlaying trend lines from other tools and charts could help to paint more complete and comprehensive picture of social media activity as a whole.

Tags: analysis, analytics, Measurement, social media, social media measurement, Twitter

Get involved - “Pass it on”

I’ve been watching Jamie’s Ministry of Food for a couple of weeks and I think it’s brilliant! A real life example of a social experiment that encourages people to cook, eat well and pass on their learnings.

In the show Jamie drives around Rotherham, knocking on peoples doors, holding cooking classes and getting people to “pass it on” that’s real WOM in effect!

The show covers all the ups and downs of his campaign and the effects it had on the community he had been working with.

Not many people in Rotherham cared about cooking or eating healthily, Jamie (probably without knowing it) has followed some of the best practice recommendations we pass onto clients in order to make their social initiatives work effectively:

> Create a value exchange - Jamie got involved himself and passed on his knowledge

> Encourage advocacy and WOM - His slogan and concept “pass it on” was designed to get people to teach each other how to cook and take part in the greater initiative

> Aggregation - He organised branded events and set up a Ministry of Food, both were tools or hubs, which bought his communities and advocates together along with new followers

> Taking a personal approach to managing negative commentary and PR - He addressed any cynicism or criticism about his concept personally by converting skeptics through providing examples of proven successes

We often tell clients that utilising social media is graft, it’s hard work and this is especially true if your brand or offering has no equity with your prospective audience.

Jamie really grafted in order to get his concept to work and as a result of his efforts the followers and advocates he gained became loyal, helping him to make his concept a success.

This show is a must see for any Brand Evangelist or Social Media Practitioner.

Tags: advocacy, Brand Evangelist, community aggregation, jamie oliver, ministry of food, social experiment, social media, social media hub, Social Media Practitioner