Author Archive

We are currently organising social media surgeries in Merthyr Tydfil and Ebbw Vale, Wales. Have a look at the following two events hosted by A465.com, an initiative for people living and working in the Heads of the Valleys.

Wednesday 22nd February 2012
Social media surgeries
Orbit Business Centre, Merthyr Tydfil
8:30AM – 10:30AM session for businesses
12:00 noon – 2:20PM session for community groups

Friday 24th February
Social media surgeries
The General Offices, Steelworks Road, Ebbw Vale
9:00AM – 11:00AM session for businesses
12:30PM – 2:50PM session for community groups

As you can see above there are two dates, each of which has two sessions. You can find a whole lot more event info on the A465 site or have a look at the flyer for business and the flyer for community groups/projects. Book your free place now.

Ar hyn o bryd rydyn ni wrthi’n trefnu cymorthfeydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol ym Merthyr Tudful a Glynebwy. Gweler y digwyddiadau isod sydd yn cael eu cynnal gan A465.com, menter i bobol sydd yn byw ac yn gweithio ym Mlaenau’r Cymoedd.

Dydd Mercher 22ain mis Chwefror 2012
Cymorthfeydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol
Canolfan Busnes Orbit, Merthyr Tudful
8:30AM – 10:30AM sesiwn i fusnesu
12:00 hanner dydd – 2:20PM sesiwn i grwpiau cymunedol

Dydd Gwener 24ain mis Chwefror 2012
Cymorthfeydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol
Swyddfeydd Cyffredinol, Heol Gwaith Dur, Glynebwy
9:00AM – 11:00AM sesiwn i fusnesu
12:30PM – 2:50PM sesiwn i grwpiau cymunedol

Mae dau ddyddiad o ddau sesiwn fel y dwedais uchod. Rwyt ti’n gallu ffeindio mwy ar y wefan A465 neu cer i’r daflen i fusnes a’r daflen i grwpiau cymunedol. Archeba dy le am ddim nawr.

Fantastic blog post by Kevin Marks, one of my favourite tech commentators, about the folly of encoding your URL into a QR code.

We are helping the Size of Wales with their environmental campaign. Check out the video to find out more. Our work is focused on using social media to raise awareness and money.

Please leave a comment on the YouTube vid which will help to boost its ranking. You can also like the Facebook page to follow the latest news. For each Like, Size of Wales’ partners will contribute £1 to the fund.

More info on this project to follow shortly.

We’ve just started a NativeHQ page on LinkedIn. We’re still testing the service as a business in order to figure out its value. Do subscribe if you want to follow our posts on the use social media in the real world.

Rydyn ni newydd dechrau tudalen NativeHQ ar LinkedIn. Rydyn ni’n wrthi’n profi’r gwasanaeth fel busnes er mwyn ymchwilio ei werth. Tanysgrifia os wyt ti eisiau dilyn ein cofnodion ynglyn a’r defnydd cyfryngau cymdeithasol yn y byd go iawn.

Here are my slides from my talk entitled Platforms & Practices at the first Think Digital Cardiff event.

This was a bit of a freeform talk about social media. There are no bullet points! Its purpose was to inspire people to think about creative use of digital media. Some quick notes follow.

Platforms & Practices: the general point was that it’s not enough to say you’re using tool X, a platform such as YouTube or Twitter or the web itself. I want to highlight the question of practices – what are you doing and how is it benefitting your work? If there is no practice then you are just playing with the platform, which is fine as long as you’re aware of that. The two need to be there together if you have a hope of any work-related strategy.

Collaboration: I deliberately began with Google Docs as a suggested improvement over email attachments for some situations. It’s an example of online collaboration with colleagues on documents, an easy thing that gives us a hint of what could be possible with bolder forms of collaboration. (At the bar afterwards someone mentioned that true collaboration is about working with people from different disciplines which was a good point. I could have added here that it’s about the practice as well as the platform of Google Docs. But we had to start somewhere.)

The cloud: it just means servers. I’m personally uncomfortable with the term ‘cloud computing‘. Beware of the buzz phrase.

Wikipedia: another glimpse of what is possible when people use social software to collaborate. Also available in Welsh, Spanish, German, Japanese, etc.

Ravelry: a social network for knitting enthusiasts. But we know that hobbies are big on the web.

Here Comes Everybody: recommended book by Clay Shirky, about easier group formation

giffgaff: just one example of a business which nurtures an online ‘community’ to fix problems and cut customer service and marketing costs. Some of the community members know more than the staff about aspects of real world use. I really wanted to emphasise that this is not merely Social Media Marketing. Mobile phone networks are an interesting area – they play to the network, including friends and family deals. The network effects keep people using the system and give value to people according to their connections/friends/etc.

National Theatre Wales Community: we worked on the strategy and trained the team. A very interesting project, with some unexpected outcomes in terms of how people participated.

1 / 9 / 90 guideline: there are wisdoms around online communities and participation. You can gather metrics on many things that are important to you, much more than just member count.

OnePeople documentary: commissioned to celebrate Jamaica’s 50th anniversary of independence. A superb example of remix and social video. Maybe the fact they’ve booked Kevin MacDonald to edit the DIY videos is the most conventional

Remix by Lawrence Lessig, another recommended book

YouTube: there is a culture of YouTube. It can be about you and your DIY video, made on a phone camera or Flipcam. It can be a mistake to hire an expensive crew with professional editing. It doesn’t have to be about broadcast quality or production values.

It’s all about your second video: just a thought that you should probably go through the process of making a short video (maybe just a conversation about your subject or industry, forget about overt marketing pitches) and uploading it. Then you have gone through the ‘initiation process’. It’s the beginning. You might get a comment, etc.

Platforms & Practices is also about play. You can experiment on a personal account. This informs your practices as a company.

There it is, there wasn’t much time to elaborate further but a lot of hints that people will have found useful – I hope.

Now and again we have a lunchtime video session at NativeHQ. Our choices of video tend to have a strong emphasis on technology, innovation and creativity. We love to absorb influences from all over the place, especially as what we do is not a ‘pure discipline’.

This video is a talk by Euan Semple at the Do Lectures in Aberteifi and is called Why social network mess can benefit your business. (Embedding doesn’t seem to be encouraged so you’ll have to visit the Do Lectures site instead.)

Semple only partly answers the title question, in my opinion, but well worth a watch for his anecdotes about getting humans communicating properly in a big organisation.

Here’s an interesting albeit teasingly brief set of examples of how arts and culture organisations used online collaboration tools and practices to be more efficient and save money.

Collaboration has been a good use of digital media for a number of years. But I suppose it’s inevitable that ‘feeling the squeeze’ is given as a key reason for looking at these collaboration opportunities, perhaps enough to bring what might have been perceived as a niche topic into the pages of the Guardian.

The emphasis in the article is mainly on collaboration beyond the walls of your company – with other organisations – although I’d argue that better collaboration can bring benefits within the team of an organisation too.

Next week I’m doing a talk about digital media.

I thought I’d put the emphasis on what I think of as ‘all the other important applications’ of digital media like collaboration, online communities, forming groups, user-generated content and so on. If you want an accessible introduction to some of these things then you should consider coming along.

It seems to me that sometimes people automatically associate digital media and social media with publicity, PR and marketing. I think marketing is a legitimate use of digital media, depending on how you do it, but it would be limiting to think of it exclusively as that wouldn’t it? What about all the other useful stuff people are doing online?

So hopefully the talk which I’m working on now will complement the talks by the other speakers. And I think I have a way to tie it all together.

The event is primarily aimed at business owners in south Wales who want to know more about online. It’s called Think Digital Cardiff and is organised by Big Eye Deers who specialise in creating ecommerce sites and web stores for people. Now, there are probably loads of companies who claim to offer these services. Big Eye Deers, while well established, are new to me and would be the Highest New Entry on my chart of favourite companies – if there were such a thing. What I like about them is their eye for detail and their use of open source software.

At the time of writing there are still spaces at Think Digital Cardiff for small business owners and all proceeds from the event go to charity.

Fersiwn Cymraeg o’r cofnod hwn

Cyfle have invited us to run our 2-day course, The Business of Social Media again in Caernarfon and Cardiff.

Who
Individuals working in marketing, promotion or development of small and large businesses and organisations.

When
Caernarfon (Welsh medium) 17/18 October
Cardiff (English medium) 20/21 October
Cardiff (Welsh medium) 14/15 November

Details
Many businesses are now using social media to create engaging relationships with people and markets, communicate about products, offer special deals, develop customer loyalty and respond to enquiries and conversations about their brand.

• How can you use digital media tools to achieve these business aims?
• How can digital media be used to bring out creativity, tackle problems, enable collaboration, develop audiences and tell stories?
• Which tools are appropriate for your work and what can they do?
• How do you go from registering an account with an online tool to using it well on a real project?

Participants will have an opportunity to explore these questions and gain practical experience on the platforms which have people’s attention.

Book a place
To book a place or ask questions please contact caernarfon@cyfle.co.uk or 01286 668003.

Blog post available in English

Mae Cyfle wedi ein gwahodd eto i redeg ein cwrs 2-diwrnod, Busnes y Cyfryngau Cymdeithasol eto yng Nghaernarfon a Chaerdydd.

Pwy
Unigolion sy’n gweithio mewn marchnata, hyrwyddo neu datblygu busnesau bychan a mawrion yn ogystal a sefydliadau.

Pryd
Caernarfon (Cymraeg) 17/18 Hydref
Caerdydd (Saesneg) 20/21 Hydref
Caerdydd (Cymraeg) 14/15 Tachwedd

Manylion

Mae nifer o fusnesau bellach yn defnyddio’r cyfryngau cymdeithasol er mwyn creu perthnasau ymglymol gyda pobl a marchnadoedd, cysylltu am gynnyrch, cynnig bargeinion arbennig, datblygu ffyddlondeb cwsmer ac i ymateb i gwestiynnau a thrafodaethau am eu brand.

• Sut mae modd i chi ddefnyddio teclynnau’r cyfryngau digidol er mwyn cyrraedd yr amcanion busnes yma?
• Sut gall y cyfryngau digidol gael ei ddefnyddio er mwyn annog creadigrwydd, taclo problemau, galluogi cydweithredu, datblygu cynulleidfaoedd ac adrodd straeon?
• Pa declynnau sy’n addas ar gyfer eich gwaith chi a beth mae’n nhw’n ei wneud?
• Sut wyt ti’n mynd o gofrestru i gael cyfri ar declyn arlein i’w ddefnyddio’n effeithol ar brosiect go iawn?

Bydd y cyfranogwyr yn cael y cyfle i archwilio’r cwestiynnau yma a chael profiad ymarferol ar lwyfannau sy’n boblogaidd ar hyn o bryd.

Archebu lle
I sicrhau lle ar gwrs neu i ofyn cwestiwn cysylltwch â caernarfon@cyfle.co.uk neu 01286 668003.