Aug262010

Growing The Total Media Social Media Team

By Farhan Rehman | 26, August 2010 | Posted in Announcements | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The time has come, to expand the Social Media team, here at Total Media, and so, I thought I’d try a slightly different approach to recruiting in for the role.
I’m looking to hire a Junior / Graduate Social Media Community Manager.

However, rather than just accepting CV’s directly, I’d like to see potential candidates for the role get creative in their responses.  Ideally, as a candidate, you may already have expressed through one of your existing social media presences why you want to work in Social Media, and what kind of role it is that you’re looking for.

But on the off chance that you haven’t already, here’s a few pointers to help you along the way:

In your responses, tell me;

What do you know about Social Media? Where and how did you learn it? and why did you go to all that effort?

Why do you want to work in Social Media?

What is it that appeals to you about this industry/profession?

Also, what do you have to offer?

What makes you special, unique, or different to every other candidate that’s out there?

Finally, I’d like to know a little something more about you.  What makes you tick? What are your hobbies, and interests?

What do you do when you’re not tweeting, or blogging?  Essentially, what makes you you?

Once you’ve prepared your responses, post a link to it in the comments below,  (and make sure to use your email address, when leaving a comment, so that I can get in touch with you!)  You’ll get extra points for being creative, or different.

The opportunity to work with me at Total Media, means that you’ll get a chance to show off your skills as a community moderator, get coached on being more effective online, as well as learn how to work with Social Media Monitoring tools to identify conversational trends, individuals of influence, and learn to think more strategically about Social Media.  The role is ideally suited to a Social Media Novice, who wishes to develop their skills further, get involved, hands on, with building out communities, and also over time, develop their own thought leadership within the Social Media world.

We shall not be changing the world overnight, but over the course of a few years, you will become an expert in the art of navigating all things Social, and be able to build powerful, engaging, immersive communities that build brand advocacy, and stimulate conversations online in your sleep.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then get responding, through any platform/medium of your choosing, and leave your response in the comments below.  I shall look forward to screening candidates, and choosing the brightest of the bunch to come visit, and talk more in person.

And just in case you’re interested starting salaries are going to be between £18-20k dependent on experience, and how effectively you demonstrate you know your stuff.

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Announcements | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
Aug242010

The Levels of Twitter Proficiency

By Farhan Rehman | 24, August 2010 | Posted in Twitter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got spurred on recently to publicly share my thinking around the typical evolution of a Twitter user (call them a tweeter, or twitterer, or whatever else you want to label them as). I’ll be interested to hear what other people’s take on this will be, seeing as I’ve come to these conclusions through watching my own evolutionary use of Twitter, but also in observing how people have adapted and learnt to use Twitter with the occasional prompting and guidance from me, where I’ve introduced them to Twitter in the first place. For each level of Twitter proficiency I’ve also suggested remedial actions and next steps to help get comfortable with that level of Twitter usage before attempting to progress to the next levels.

Level 1 – The Twitter Newbie
The Twitter newbie is generally the first stage when it comes to developing Twitter proficiency. At this stage the person has little or no clue as to why they would even be using Twitter, but nonetheless they’ve joined in, or signed up, to join the conversation, generally because someone they trust or respect has urged them to do so. Either that or they’ve decided that Twitter is important enough that they should be on it, but they’re not quite sure of what it does or how it works, and don’t really know what value it could possibly have for them. But everyone keeps harping on about it, or they’ve become curious enough to want to know more about it that they finally decided to sign upto the service.

Now that they’ve signed up, they don’t know what to do next? At this stage the most important thing to do is to find interesting people to follow, and start to see your Twitter stream filling up with tweets that are interesting to you. The tweets that interest you could be educational or informative or entertaining or be any kind of news that’s of interest to you. It could even just be people that you admire, respect, or look upto. Whoever it is that you choose to follow, it has to be of interest, and of use to you personally, otherwise it’s just going to be a waste of your time and attention.

I remember what Twitter was like without following anyone, and even though I first heard about the service and signed upto it in 2007, the fact that back then no-one in my address book was on Twitter meant that I never logged in again until about a year later, when I finally met people that were actively using Twitter. Until I was following people that I was interested in listening to, I just didn’t understand, or see what the point of Twitter was, and trust me an empty Twitter page, with no tweets on it, none of your real friends or anyone you even remotely know on it, and no way of figuring out where you might find anyone interesting or useful was a real wasteland of a Twitter. Fortunately Twitter have realised how important it is when you set up your account to have someone to follow, and so, they’re starting to create a bunch of suggested people you can follow based on your interests, etc; over time I’m sure that will improve and get better. But back in 2008 the only way I found myself getting any use from Twitter was after I had ‘real life’ friends that were all using it, and so I accomplished Level 1 of my Twitter training and had learnt enough to officially become a Twitter Newbie, and follow some cool/interesting people on Twitter.

Level 2 – The Twitter Novice
Once you’ve been listening to other people on Twitter for a while you start to get a flavour of what Twitter is like. Through being a spectator, you’ll have started to figure out some of the Twitter conventions like @TwitterName is one person talking to another, you may see the occasional ‘old school’ RT ( the retweeting convention that was used by most folks on Twitter before ‘retweets’ were built into the system). You may also have started to develop a ‘listening’ habit, clocking onto Twitter just often enough that you can see what everyone said since the last time you logged on. You may however still be a little wet behind the ears and whilst it’s all well and good everyone else sharing and listening, you’re kinda unsure, possibly even a little afraid of tweeting out anything, just in case you say the wrong thing or you say it in the wrong way. My suggestion to you, just start tweeting. Get you’re first tweet out the way, whatever that might be, and just get comfortable with ‘broadcasting’ yourself. Start out by sharing things that you are comfortable with sharing. Be it links to articles you found interesting, what you’re upto, where you are, what you’re thinking. At this point anything you say or share doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you get comfortable expressing yourself, and publishing tweets out into the Twittersphere. Inevitably, you may get prompts of support, encouragement from your friends, and perhaps even the occasional retweet from others. But whilst you’re a Twitter novice, the only thing you need to focus on is tweeting something out regularly, on a consistent basis. Part of this is to help you to practice expressing yourself in 140 characters, and part of it is to help you start to find your ‘twitter voice’. As generally we’re not used to expressing ourselves in 140 characters and it does take a bit of time, and some practice to start to be able to condense our thoughts and distill them down to bite sized expressions. With practice and regular usage you’ll start to get an intuitive feel for what’s right for you, and that’s something that will only develop the more you practice and use it, so continue to listen to the people you follow, but also start to throw your own tweets into the conversation, regardless of how self conscious you are.

Level 3 – The ‘Twitterer’
Once you’ve gotten used to absorbing bite sized chunks of information on a regular basis, and you’ve developed the skill and ability to condense your thoughts, ideas, and generally what you’re upto into cogent expressions of 140 characters, then comes an ‘evolutionary’ leap in your Twitter proficiency. It’s not something that happens overnight, but it is a transition that gradually occurs over time, in such a way that you don’t even realise it’s happened. Suddenly Twitter has become part of your regular ritual. It’s become ‘conversational’. You’re flowing effortlessly between reading tweets, and tweeting out yourself. When you come to Twitter it’s almost like the place where you find your ‘chums’ and buddies all hanging out. There is no longer, in your mind any distinction between the tweets you’re reading from others, and your own tweets, as they’re all part of the same organic fluid conversation and banter that’s flowing between you and your Twitter community. You may even start to know and recognize certain ‘characters’ within your community and their individualistic and unique traits, that in your mind make them who they are for you.

At this stage, you have ‘arrived’ so to speak to the basic competency level of Twitter where people get that personal satisfaction out of using Twitter and perceive immense value in their Twitter community as a whole. The experience is now intrinsically a personal experience to you as you begin to feel yourself becoming a member of your community. You may or may not have met the people you tweet with in person, but you will definitely feel like there are some folks you would just love to meet in person. If you have started to meet some of the people you tweet with in person, then you’ll have had a really really good time, discovering even more of the many awesome things you have in common, beyond your conversations online through Twitter. A kinship starts to develop with other people who tweet, and when you say you use Twitter, it’s usually with pride and a confidence that you share that information. This is where most people aspire to get to, and once they get here, it all starts to make sense, and Twitter just becomes so much more important and valuable than it seemed back when they first started their sceptical first steps into the world of Twitter.

The only way to get to this stage is through practice, and regular use. The more time you can put into this, the quicker you’ll see the rewards. But like with developing any other skill, or learning a language, if you just keep on practicing it, you will eventually become proficient in it.

Level 4 – The ‘Twitterati’
Once someone has become a ‘Twitterer’, they may comfortably stay at that stage of Twitter usage, and feel content, and complete and get all the value they need from Twitter and never know any different. They may not need to grow beyond that level of competence consciously, and they may not realise or be able to understand just how ingrained Twitter has become to them. However, there is, I believe, a subtle distinction and difference that develops over time, between someone who’s comfortably using Twitter on a day to day basis ‘conversationally’ with their community and someone who uses Twitter for more than just the ‘community’ conversations. These are the people that use Twitter in all of the previous ways mentioned before, but also now start to use Twitter as a filter. They turn to their community before turning to Google if they want any help, or suggestions, or want to find something or some information. They spend less time reading RSS feeds directly, and more time reading what people are sharing or talking about. They dip in and out of Twitter as they need to, and can afford to, time permitting. They genuinely value and appreciate the people in their community. They consciously use Twitter, selectively ignoring and filtering out people that no longer interest them. They’re comfortable enough with themselves that they no longer care about who follows them and who doesn’t. They’re only focussed on the value they’re receiving from their community on Twitter and the value that they can share with their community on Twitter. There will naturally be more people following them than they can or care to follow back, but not because it’s a numbers game, but because people genuinely find them useful, and interesting. These people are relatively respected for the topics they regularly share their thoughts on. And most importantly they’re some of the humblest, most down to earth people you could ever meet. They don’t consider themselves authorities, but their peers and community do. They don’t profess to be or try to be anything but themselves and in doing so their natural talents and gifts just shine through effortlessly. The ‘Twitterati’ is not something you join, but it is the natural evolution of any ‘Twitterer’ who through a process of time and experience naturally emerges from the shell of their ‘Twitter’ self, into themselves online. They tend only to emerge when the person is working where their passions and talents are, and they are naturally ‘joyously content’ with their lives personally, as that then filters through into their Tweets). The stage of ‘Twitterati’ is perceptibly different from the ‘Twitterer’ because you’ve become as comfortable being on Twitter as being off it, and have the confidence to dip in and dip out as you need to.

Level 5 – The Twitter ‘Pro’
Whilst becoming a Twitterati is ultimately the highest stage of Twitter, that I can comment on, through my personal observations, there is one more ‘stage’ or level of Twitter competency that I could only really place, independently of the ‘Twitterati’, but clearly is more complex and evolved.

That is the stage of the Twitter ‘Pro’.

This is the stage at which you have started to manage multiple Twitter accounts, to manage multiple conversations. At this stage, you’ve saturated your personal twitter account, with all the conversations that you’re interested in being a part of, and following, and you’ve decided to create a separate twitter account for a dedicated topic of discussion, or a specific product/brand/identity or persona that you represent, or that represents you.

This stage or usage of twitter is generally only reached or arrived at by people that are intensively interested in very distinct or different conversational contexts. Alternatively it’s a skill level that agencies, corporates or brand spokespeople need to develop in order to competently represent their finders and to genuinely be of value to the community.

In conclusion, I just want to be really clear, there’s no short cuts to jumping from one level of proficiency to the other.  the only sure fire way is to practice, practice, practice.  Unfortunately, anything less, and you will be sussed out by more learned members of the community.  The good news is that once you’ve skilled yourself up, you’ll start to discover these subtle differences between different levels of Twitter usage experientially, and you’ll appreciate just how much progress you’ve made yourself.

I’ll be interested to hear what you all think? Where are you in your twitter proficiency?  Do you think it’s all a bunch of hocus, and that there aren’t clear, defined levels or stages of twitter expertise, or skill?  Thoughts, comments, suggestsions, feedback, all welcome in the comments below ;)  I look forward to further refining these thoughts and ideas, with your input.

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Twitter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
Aug132010

Auto DM on Twitter – Just Don’t!

By Farhan Rehman | 13, August 2010 | Posted in Twitter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

If you’re new to Twitter, and have recently found out about one of the many services that let you send an Auto DM on Twitter, then a word of advice – DON’T!

Twitter is about personal relationships. Auto DM is like Spam email, cold, impersonal, and ultimately pointless. I say this from personal experience of Auto DM’s, having tried it out, when it first appeared in the Twitter eco-system, received much feedback from people, and also experienced DM Spam myself, from following others, so when I say don’t Auto DM on twitter, I’m not just saying it because I don’t like it, I’m saying it because it just doesn’t work, and the general consensus in at least my Twitter community is to not do it, ever.

A Bit of Background on Auto DM’s
Some of you reading this might be wondering what I’m going on about, so let me just explain how Auto DM’s work.

With Twitter, you can only send someone a DM (a Direct Message), if they are following you. You don’t have to follow back anyone that follows you, in order to be able to send a DM, but you can only receive DM’s from people that you are following yourself.

When twitter first started out, we all experimented with different ways of using Twitter. I remember when services first surfaced that let you Auto DM, and many of us tried them out. What happens is that when someone new follows you, these Auto DM services will recognise that someone new is following you, and automatically send a pre-set message from you to the person that has just started following you.

Why Auto DM’s are Pointless and Spam
If someone has made the decision to follow you, when we were first starting out on Twitter, we all thought it was nice, and polite etiquette to thank the people for following us. In fact, we were all kinda new to it, so we would take the time to watch the individuals following us, and acknowledge new followers as they trickled in, in their two’s and fours.

Whilst that behaviour is fun and quirky for the first few people that you follow, once you start to engage with a few hundred people, that can start to get just a little overwhelming, for one, and also somewhat annoying to the people following you, if all you’re doing is thanking people for following you, and cluttering up other people’s twitter stream with lots and lots of thank yous.

Most people who follow you on twitter have already decided that you’re of interest to them, or will decide as much depending on the quality and content of your tweets, and the most respectful thing that you can do to your audience is to be yourself. The fact that by following you someone has given you a direct line of private communication with them is a fact that should not be taken lightly. It’s as good as having someone’s ear, whenever you need it, and should consequently be used as sparingly as possible. Abuse of this privileged position means that the value of the recipients private channel of communication, i.e. their DM’s, drops the more it gets cluttered with messages that aren’t direct communications, or conversations from the person sending the message, as is the case with Auto DM’s. It’s like having a red phone that goes direct to the White House, and if that phone line gets filled with advertisers and marketers promoting themselves then there’s little point in the President needing to answer those calls directly himself. If on the other hand it was only used by other Political officials such as the Prime Minister or President of another country, and they only used it in the most urgent of situations, then that channel of communication would have infinitely more value both to the President of the US as well as the officials in other countries.

So the next time someone starts to even suggest using Auto DM’s, tell them no. Your followers will then respect you that much more, and be ever more receptive to what you have to say, when it really matters the most.

EAVB_DPLZVFXXJM

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Twitter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
Jul092010

Becoming a Social Media Planner/Strategist at Total Media

By Farhan Rehman | 9, July 2010 | Posted in Announcements | Comments (0)

Just wanted to publicly announce, that I’ve recently joined Total Media, as their Social Media Planner/Strategist.

I realised that my strengths really are in Social Media Strategy and Planning, and so made the tough decision of leaving my previous role as an Insights Manager, where I was reporting on Social Media Activity and monitoring conversations to identify trends and patterns, and insights.  As much as I enjoyed the challenges of working at the frontier of Social Media Engagement, and Activation, I soon realised that my true passion is in the planning of and the strategy around Social Media.

So continuing on the  mission to find the perfect Social Media role for my skills, background and experience, I’ve joined Total Media, where I will get the opportunity to potentially work with clients as diverse as Penguin, the Bahamas Tourist Office all the way through to the British Library, and the Tate.  (You can also take a look at the full list of Total Media clients).

Total Media excel at traditional Media Buying and Planning, across press, radio, television, outdoor, cinema and digital formats for a range of both B2B and B2C clients.  I’ll be helping integrate Social Media into existing campaigns, where the opportunities exist, and also working directly with clients to help develop, and refine their social media strategies where needed.

I’ll be working out of our offices in High Street Kensington, and if you’re ever in the area, then feel free to drop by for a chat, and a coffee. (Though it’s probably best to plan it in advance!)

As I work with Total Media, and start to push the boundaries of Social Media further, I’ll also be calling upon friends in the community to come by, and share some of their experiences, and show my colleagues that Twitter isn’t the only thing we talk about, when it comes to Social Media, as cool and as fun as it is ;)

If you’d be interested in learning more about the most cost-effective way of getting more exposure through Social Media, or are keen to see if we can stretch your Marketing budgets further (like Total Media did with the Renault Retail Group), be sure to get in touch. Likewise, let me know if you’d like to come and share you’re expertise and who knows, perhaps we might be able to share some knowledge back ;)

In the meantime, watch this space!

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Announcements | Comments (0)
May172010

How Powerful is Social Media?

By Farhan Rehman | 17, May 2010 | Posted in Conferences | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The recent Festival of Media, in Valencia (on the 18th – 20th April 2010), had an interesting poll for the audience, asked by someone online. The question was :

How many times more powerful than traditional marketing channels do you consider Social Media to be?

The result? 37% of the audience considered Social Media to be more than 4 times more powerful than traditional marketing channels:
The Vote - Results

Now just to set some context here, the Festival of Media, in Valencia is billed as a “global festival of media creativity“, and “brings together the international media and marketing industry to celebrate the best in media thinking and creative communications strategy and to explore the media developments that are transforming the industry“.

In 2009, “45% of delegates were directly responsible for advertising budgets and strategy“.

Just glancing through the Delegate List, you can see that the advertising and traditional media channels are all heavily represented, and at fairly senior levels.

This result isn’t from a bunch of Social Media Evangelists, all getting together to have a Social Media Love in, but really from people currently dominating the current Media Landscapes, and really in touch with where things are at, from both an operational, and a direct line of accountability perspective.

Now admittedly, I wasn’t at the festival, I don’t know how many people were in the room at the time that poll occurred, and if you watch the full video below, you can see that Jack Klues, Managing Partner, at VivaKi has just finished up his talk, on Coca Cola, before they move into the poll led by Patience Wheatcroft. However, if we work on the assumption that most of the delegates in the audience were present, and that this session was a part of the main conference, then

I think it’s safe to assume that Social Media is considered to be significantly more powerful than traditional media, by the larger majority of delegates.

So how many times more powerful do you think Social Media is compared to traditional media? (and yes I appreciate there will be some bias, given the audience and general thinking of my community at large, but still, I’d be interested to know what the general opinion out there is)..

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Conferences | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
Feb022010

Social Media Week Launch Party

By Farhan Rehman | 2, February 2010 | Posted in Social Media Week | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Yesterday was the first day of Social Media Week, and it seems like things in London are off to a great start… Many events are already sold out, filled to capacity, and with waiting lists, which is always a good thing – clearly there’s a significant amount of interest in London when it comes to Social Media, and by the make up of attendees, it isn’t all just one big echo chamber of the same people talking about the same thing with each other, fortunately.

Unfortunately, I missed out on the lunchtime session on Social Graph Optimization, hosted at the IAB, sponsored by Meebo. Fortunately, Benjamin Ellis did a great writeup of the event, you can read it here.

Speaking to a few friends at the Social Media Week Launch event last night though, it seems people weren’t too impressed with the conversations around the Social Graph, and so I guess I didn’t miss out too much. Apparently it was more geared towards a corporate style audience. (If anyone happens to have any video of the talk though, I would love to see it. ;)

The other two events, I was particularly interested in yesterday were the Social Media Monday meetup, and the launch party for Social Media Week.

Social Media Monday is a meetup, organised by Barry Furby, the man behind Fresh Resources, a recruitment company, that works heavily in the Social Media Space. It started out from a LinkedIn Group, and then a Meetup Group was formed for Social Media Monday, with events starting shortly after. It’s grown into quite a strong, solid community of very diverse players in the Social Media space, and there seems to be some great presentations and speakers at these events, which makes for a good mix of learning, and socialising. I stopped in briefly at Social Media Monday, just as Todd Chaffee was setting up, and getting his laptop ready for the presentation later that evening.. (But as Barry had his HD Recorder, and was going to record the whole talk, I figured I wouldn’t miss too much, by not watching the presentation live, and promptly changed my RSVP for the meetup to a No, hoping it would make a bit of extra room for someone on the waiting list.)

As I tweeted out At Social Media Monday for a bit, then heading across to Social Media Week Launch event at Adam St. from Social Media Monday, I thought nothing of it. Later, I found out, that because of it, @champney who was at the Social Media Monday event, saw my tweet cascade down the Twitter Wall, and realised that the familiar faces he was expecting to see were probably also already at the other event. Like him I too had RSVP’d for both events, but ended up spending more time at the Social Media Launch event.

I love that about twitter. Sometimes you can never predict, or anticipate what might be useful to who, or when.. but just by being yourself, you naturally end up helping folk out. It’s that unpredictable, undefinable nature of Social Media, which can mean a single short message, somewhere can create a new context or help someone in a way that you could never imagine or think of when broadcasting.

Anyways, the feedback via twitter, is all really positive and praising of Social Media Monday, and Todd’s presentation, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the video from it ;)

As for the Social Media Launch Party, at Adam Street, it was also a great success. The room was packed to the hilt, at one point in the evening, and the noise from so many people talking, in a relatively small room meant there was a real buzz about the night. There were many familiar faces, and also many new faces, which is always good.

Of the many great conversations I had last night one that really stood out was about the change in blogging behaviour since the arrival of Twitter. Steve Lamb aka @actionlamb was talking about how a few years back, he would blog daily, and since using twitter, his level of blogging has dropped dramatically. This seems to have been a pattern that I noticed both myself, and also have seen with others. Even the great Robert Scoble admitted to a drop in his blogging as he spent more time on Twitter and FriendFeed, back in 2008. Since then, he’s clearly made the conscious choice to return to blogging. He did go change that around, and has since picked up his blog, though to be fair, the amount of content, and sharing that Robert Scoble does, generally dwarfs the efforts of most regular people.

But it did get us talking about what we get out of tweeting. I suggested that perhaps the amount of time that might have been spent in creating and sharing a single blog post, is now spread out across an entire day, in the many tweets being shared, and responded to. Though, the more I think about it, I’d probably say more time gets eaten up tweeting, than would have been the case if just blogging, as before, at least for me. I’d be curious to see if anyone else has noticed a change in their blogging behaviour since they’ve taken up twitter.. In theory being able to share through Twitter means you get to connect with more people, and also means it takes less effort, as a tweet is barely a minute’s worth of attention whilst a solid researched blog post of any decent quality can usually cost from an hour to as much as two or three hours of time. I’d be interested in hearing other people’s take on how their tweeting has changed their blogging behaviour if at all?

All in all, there were drinks, food, and even some food for thought.. a great night which definitely ended far later than I was intending to.

My night ended with me talking to Misae Richwoods on our train home, about Social Media and Spiral Dynamics, and using the different modalities and some basic premises of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), to use dramatically different language to create discernably different results.. but I’ll be talking a whole lot more about that this year, so I shan’t bore with too much of that just yet ;)

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Social Media Week | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Feb012010

Social Media Week Kicks Off!

By Farhan Rehman | 1, February 2010 | Posted in Conferences | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

So this week, is the beginning of Social Media Week, which is happening simultaneously in Toronto, Sao Paulo, San Francisco, New York, Berlin and London.

The aim of Social Media Week is to “advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors”, and before I say too much about it, I just want to add that I am slightly biased, as I’m part of the London Advisory Board, so naturally, I’m going to tell you all about it! (Though to be fair, the principles and idea behind it are so in line behind the ethos of Social Media, I’d be supporting and advocating it, even if I wasn’t on the advisory board ;))

The week is going to be filled with a series of great talks, sessions, discussions, and a general conversation about social media wherever you turn, and in turn I’ll be joining in, and contributing when and where I can, through tweeting, blogging, and possibly even live streaming, (facilities/battery depending). Though just in case you’re all worried I’m about to go and saturate my personal twitter stream with tweets galore, rest assured I’ll be doing all that I can to use my @conffar and @londontech accounts more than my personal one.

You can find the full schedule of events at http://smw-london.sched.org/ and if you’re interested in seeing what events I’ve put myself down for so far, find my schedule for the week here.

For more upto the minute updates during the week, follow @smwldn on Twitter, and be sure to talk to someone about Social Media this week. That is when you can stop being so busy creating content ;)

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Conferences | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Dec072009

Tweeting from Conferences

By Farhan Rehman | 7, December 2009 | Posted in Conferences | Comments (0)

I’m often at a conference, and usually when there’s a wireless or network connection of some sort, and I have my laptop available, I’ll start to tweet ferociously, in an attempt to provide a ‘tweet by tweet’ update of the proceedings of an event, or the content of a talk.

It’s not as detailed, or as comprehensive as if the person were there listening to everything, and it definitely isn’t a substitute to a live stream, such as UStream.tv, from an event.  However, I’ve managed to have found a happy medium where I am able to successfully capture much of what’s being discussed by the speaker, and also share it fast enough, to give a real detailed flavour of the proceedings, whilst at the same time, not losing track of the conversation, whilst on Twitter.

Primarily, I use TweetChat, as my interface of choice, primarily because it updates so rapidly.. However in the moments that it fails, I’ll soon dive into a different client, or use a notepad, and make notes instead.. Relying on my abillity to capture a conversation in short snippets in a text editor, and then feeding those out into twitter, as and when the desktop or web based clients respond accordingly.

I’m going to see if I can create a financially sustainable way of conference tweeting.  Not least by raising sponsorship for my background, to highlight my current set of sponsors, during the conference I’m at.. But also, to see if demand for such a service might exist at all?  It’s entirely novel, and completely different to the traditional ways in which conferences are covered.  However at the same time, it’s just a matter of time before more and more people desire to have the ‘channel’ into the conference, without having to necessarily hear every word that was spoken.

If you are organising your own conference, and would like some advice, or have me come and live tweet from your event for you, I can be reached at farhan [at] consciouscomms [dot] co [dot] uk.

Equally if you see me tweeting at a conference, and you’d be interested to know about sponsorship opportunities for particular upcoming events, again, drop me an email.

Right now, the Twitter ecosystem is providing ample opportunities for innovators, and early adopters to shape new behaviours in the world, using these tools.. Only time will tell if our ideas and uses of these tools were truly brilliant, or sheer folly!  You can follow my Conference Tweeting Account @ConfFar

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Conferences | Comments (0)
Feb182009

Why Share the Banal Stuff on Twitter?

By Farhan Rehman | 18, February 2009 | Posted in Twitter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Twitter has many many uses.  It’s evolved out of a simple response to the question “What are you doing?” to encompass a whole plethora of responses, and answers captured in 140 characters.

From people sharing what they’ve eaten for breakfast, to ideas being debated, insights being shared and even breaking news being reported live, twitter has become almost a thought stream, that feeds you the thoughts, actions, ideas, and events that are happening in the lives of everyone that you’re actively following on twitter.

Some people, however, think it’s important to respect the attention, and time of everyone and anyone that might be listening, and selectively only share meaningful, insightful carefully considered thoughts, ideas, or links of interest, avoiding sharing the more banal day to day stuff from their everyday lives.

Others get really self conscious about sharing such personal details, and wonder why anyone could possibly want to know what they just ate, or that they’re meeting someone over coffee.

Well, I’d like to explain why all that banal, everyday, “regular” stuff is not just useful, but actually really important.  I’d even go so far as to say that it’s the stuff that holds the fabric of our society together.

Think about it for a second.

How interesting do you find people that just “talk” about the same topic, all the time?? Say a friend who’s an avid enthusiast of something, and just won’t stop talking about it, over and over and over again. Sooner or later, unless you happen to share that same enthusiasm, you’re going to get bored, and tired of listening to them.   You’re going to want them to change topic, or run away from them, instead of having to listen to that same conversation, or those same thoughts and ideas, over and over and over again.

Ironically, it’s the things we have in common with people, that actually create connections between us.  Think for a moment of all the people in your life.  Your family, your friends, the people you studied with, the people you work with.  To some extent or another, you all have some basic things in common.  It could be you both have the same employer, that you both grew up in the same area, that you both have the same parents, or grandparents.  But these common threads are all that we have to allow us to be able to engage in any real way.  The moment someone talks about something that you just simply can’t relate to, or connect with, you disengage.  You get bored.  You switch off.

Well, believe it or not, we spend a significant amount of our daily lives doing “boring”, mundane, everyday things.  We eat, we sleep, we write, we check emails, we go to the gym.. The list goes on and on..

But what get’s interesting is when we see something that we might be able to connect with.. Twitter gives us an opportunity to connect with the “normal” everyday part of each other’s lives.  The stuff that ordinarily you could only really know if you were there, living with the other person.. And sometimes people connect with things you would never think were relevant, or of any real importance.

I’m reminded of my dear friend Ryan, Founder of Picnet, who was telling me about how the most response he gets from his status updates on Facebook, is when he talks about Burritos.  It seems people connected with him frequently, when he would update his status, regarding the Burrito’s he’d be having, and if there’s one thing about Ryan, once you get to know him, you’ll understand just how much he loves his Burritos ;)

But joking at the triviality of it aside, for a moment, it’s actually really insightful, and eye opening to see that pre-twitter, even on Facebook, people were sometimes connecting more on the “regular” stuff, rather than the necessarily deep, meaningful, or profound stuff.  Why? Because there was a common interest.  It was an opportunity to engage that didn’t require any real significant commitment, or engagement from the other parties.  In that regard, it may have been a fairly shallow, and superficial connection, but it’s this very banter, and joking that helps us get to know each other a little better.

It’s almost like an ambient awareness we start to build up of the people in our community, who we connect and engage with.  People like @stephenfry might be unable to keep up with the torrential stream of people’s updates, as the thousands of people he follows share their lives. Yet even he attracts and draws such a following, because he’s more “human”, more “normal” more “regular” and shares his life so publicly.  If you look at what makes a useful, or interesting twitterer, it tends to be someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously.  Someone who shares of their life, as well as their work, and their thoughts and ideas.

Consider for a moment, when you first greet someone.  Even though there’s little or no real conversation, it’s almost always the norm to exchange some semblance of greetings, or appropriate platitudes, to start some conversation off.  Then generally, conversation will fumble along, until a common point of interest is touched upon.

By having this “social ambience” through twitter, it means that we know that much more about each other, and whilst in the past, we might have had these sort of banal, mundane conversations over the water cooler, or in the kitchen, we can now start to have them virtually.  The side benefit being we never know what little tidbits might be useful, or not, but we have all those little things to potentially connect with, and relate with the other person on.  Who knows, perhaps we share the same taste in spread on toast, perhaps we enjoy the same flavour burritos?  Perhaps we enjoy watching similar tv shows, or hanging out in similar coffee houses.

The fact is, the mundane, and everyday tweets, make life more “normal” for everyone.  It gives us a chance to connect as “humans”, outside of our work, and “perfect” facades that we might put on.  It’s the ability to see behind the polished exterior, and see each other as we really are.  To connect with one another, on a human level.

Of course, if you’re only interest in using Twitter, is to “get ahead” in your professional life, or to serve your customers, or find potential clients, you may find yourself connecting more easily with someone you share a similar interest in wines with, than you would necessarily with someone who might need, or be able to benefit from your services.

At the end of the day, I personally feel more comfortable working with, and partnering with people who are willing to “let it all hang out”, and reveal themselves as they are.  I’m always weary of the ones that try to have too polished an image on any social networking platform.  After all – you have to ask yourself that question, what is is that they’re trying to hide?

As long as you’re sharing things that you would happen to mention in conversation to someone, or you share stuff when you genuinely feel like sharing what you’re upto, then those banal, mundane comments are actually quite enriching.  They weave a fabric between the thoughts, and ideas on twitter, to create ever more stickyness between people.  After all, it’s a whole lot easier to feel comfortable with someone you’ve shared a “drunk” or “silly”, or “personal” moment with, than someone who’s only every seen the polished, groomed you.

So go ahead, and share yourself openly on Twitter, warts, farts and all ;)

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Twitter | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)
Jan072009

Beginning to Blog or Twitter

By Farhan Rehman | 7, January 2009 | Posted in Learning | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

l_plateIf you are beginning to Blog or Twitter, one of the first things you want to bear in mind, is that there’s a learning process involved.

A good place to start is by listening to people who already blog, or twitter about the things you’re interested in. You start by getting comfortable not just listening to them, but replying to what they say, and what they share.  When you start blogging, or tweeting (as in using twitter), it’s often easier responding to something that someone else has written than starting with a blank slate, and feeling like you are talking into a void.

Of course, if you already have things to share, this won’t be your challenge, but for those of you who know you should be using Twitter, or writing a blog, or possibly both, but don’t have the first clue on how to start, let me give you some advice.

talklesslistenmoreStart by listening.  Talk less, and listen more.  Better yet, listen for at least twice as long as you might spend writing and responding.  Pay attention to people that are already blogging, or twittering, and listen to what they have to say.  It helps if you find people who you either already know, or are already established authorities in their field, since clearly, you’ll get some great examples to learn from, and you’ll be able to learn much quicker, than if you were trying to understand and make sense of it all by yourself.

So where do you find these interesting people to listen to?  If you’re on twitter – the easiest thing to do, would be to search the conversations (which you can do by going to http://search.twitter.com – or following the link at the very bottom of the main Twitter page, that says “Search“) – that are already happening on twitter.  If you pick up some words, or phrases that would be used when talking about a topic, or subject relating to your field or topic of interest, you should be able to find a whole bunch of people interested at least to some extent to similar things as yourself.

As an example, I recently was looking for people interested in “meditation“, and “relaxation“, so I went to search Twitter, and from the conversations, I discovered people who were talking about meditation, or relaxation.  (Of course, as well as the main words of meditation, and relaxation, I also used the terms meditate, meditating, and meditator and also relax, relaxing, relaxed, as well as a few appropriate, and similar terms, such as peace, tranquil, calm, serene).

There are also some great websites that bring together “groups” of people on twitter, who are interested in similar things.  I’ll find those websites, and include them at the end of this article in the near future.

If you’re looking to find interesting people to follow, in the blogosphere, there’s a couple of different options.  The first would be to seek out people who you already know to be experts in something, and find out if they have any blogs, by finding their main websites, and looking for links.  The other option is to use Google’s Blog Search to look for blogs that make use of keywords relating to your topic(s) of interest.  Personally, I look for content that looks interesting, and useful, and then decide to follow the authors blog, afterwards, simply because I found their blog useful :)

A good habit to get into, is to make sure you’ve already set up your blog before you start reading other people’s blogs, and then when you read something useful or interesting, make sure you leave a comment, and include a link back to your own blog.  Of course, there’s little point in just senselessly linking back from any old blog, but if you found something particularly interesting or useful, chances are, one day, you might right something that could be of interest the author of the blog you visit – and they only way they can decide if they would be interested in listening to what you have to say, is if you leave them a trail, that leads back to you.

rss_iconTo keep track of all the interesting blogs you find, it’s best to use a newsreader also known as a feed reader, and some great examples are Bloglines, NewsGator, or Google Reader, which let you collect the blogs your interested in, in one place, and they let you read the news on each of the blogs, from one place – saving you the time it would take to go visiting each website, to get the latest news.  You use the RSS Feed (sometimes also called XML, or Atom), and register the address for the feed in your feed reader, to make sure the most recent content from the blog is retrieved in a single place, for you to read at your leisure.

I personally recommend NewsGator, as then you can also have your online account, mirrored onto your local machine, be it a Mac or a PC, and your account remains synchronised with your online account.

If you need any help with finding relevant people on Twitter, or appropriate blogs to read, based on your industry, or topic of interest, feel free to leave a comment below, and I’ll be happy to help you find a few good sources to start from ;)

Happy hunting – and be sure to share any other great tips, or suggestions you have for finding great and interesting people to follow on twitter, or ways you have for choosing which blogs to read.

By Farhan Rehman | Posted in Learning | Tagged , , | Comments (0)