Oct 042009
 

Social media ROI return on investment is a popular topic but what about cost of inaction, COI? What cost to your company NOT to be involved in social media – not to be monitoring, creating content, interacting, responding and measuring impact of people creating stuff online around your brand or organisation?

I’ve been speaking for a couple of years now on “The COI – Cost of Inaction”…it’s always a good fallback when companies won’t accept the ROI – Return on Investment. Even when it’s clear that acquisition of customer costs drop through word of mouth, that support costs drop due to peer to peer support, that customer engage with your brand for longer and more often and brand recall goes through the roof, it’s still “too dangerous”. Here’s a video of me at a Tweetup in Singapore in March 2009 talking about COI.

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Aug 062009
 

Journalists are starting to receive grants to learn social media technologies like SEO. Should we hold a Media and Career Expo where bloggers donate knowledge and expertise to help Journalists adjust?

Jul 012009
 

John Hartigan, chief of News Corp Australian office went on the attack today. It might be just me, but the whole thing reeks of the newspaper ship sinking and an angry captain not making any sense. From Duncan Riley’s The Inquisitr: Almost anyone can start one of these sites, with very little capital, no training or qualifications. Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance. JOHN HARTIGAN It’s an interesting rant and quite the Continue Reading…

Feb 032009
 

Just a quick note on the previous post. Gemma Thoms died from an ectasy overdose at Big Day Out in Perth on the weekend. Her friends and extended social network have created a Facebook RIP page for her. The first I heard of this was on the Channel Ten evening TV news program. BDO 09 Tragedy – R.I.P Gemma Thoms This group has nearly 500 members already and a couple of hundred wall posts. The sudden death of a 17 year old will spur large numbers of people to commiserate together.  Note that they are gathering news articles and posting Continue Reading…

Dec 092008
 

WotNews wanted to put together stories of significance – not just reporting the main news from 2008 but asking a bunch of us what was most relevant to us personally. The list of people are:• David Liddy CEO, Bank of Queensland• Nicola Roxon, MP Federal Health Minister Ministerial page• Laurel Papworth, Social Network Strategist, World Communities• Stephen Mayne, Journalist, shareholder activist, crikey.com.au founder. The Mayne Report• Simon Bond, Partner, Newport Office, New South Wales, ABN AMRO Morgans• Christine Christian, CEO, Dun & Bradstreet• Peter Lewis, Executive Producer Landline, ABC TV• Renai LeMay, News Editor, ZDNet Australia – published by CBS Continue Reading…

Nov 262008
 

… but not on Heritage Media.TweetGrid video (click HIGH DEFINITION on YouTube site if you want to read words clearly) First. The bombings in Mumbai are shocking. Loss of life, fear, a tragedy being played out live is not Entertainment. CNN seems to be covering the hotel damage more than the people lost but to be fair, it’s a visual medium and buildings burning show more than statistics in a broadcast medium. Twitterers are all over it. People are videoing in the streets, taking photos, reporting back to their social networks. CNN coverage is simply not up to scratch, nor Continue Reading…

Sep 252008
 

This week’s Media Report (Radio National) is on ensuring civility on blogs and social networks. The page Listen Now Download The question we were asked to address was this: how do you encourage civility between commenters on your blog? Margaret Simons starts with a Taxonomy of Blog types. 1. Pamphleteering2. Digest3. Advocacy4. Speciality, niche5. Exhibition6. Gatewatcher – media watchers7. Diary8. Advertisement9. News blog – sourcing real news. I think she missed a couple. The Event based blog (short term, for a specific event or ritual, such as a wedding). Education or course blogs with an index and activities, such as Continue Reading…

Sep 032008
 

Brilliant article from Mark Day today: I’ve just grabbed a few paragraphs, read the whole thing yourself ) Fairfax media puts future of newspapers under spotlight There are three kinds of news: happening, manufactured and revealed. Happening news is a jumbo jet explosion at 10,000m or a car crash at peak hour. It can be of great consequence, affecting the lives of many, or it can be inconsequential by dint of it being far away, on another continent. (more) Manufactured news is, at its most important, the outcome of, say, a prime ministerial press conference to announce a tax cut Continue Reading…

Aug 202008
 

Quick and easy Moderating tips, for some people who have been asking lately. 1. ETIQUETTE STATEMENTneeds a whole lot of behavioural statements (play nicely) but the most important ones are: The Moderators word is final, do not discuss bans or penalties on the forum. If you have a question regarding a penalty, please email the head honcho (usually called the Admin, so they know it’s serious) If you have an issue with another member, please contact a moderator. Do NOT attempt to resolve issues in the public spaces, keep them to Private Messaging or notify a moderator. DO NOT publish Continue Reading…

Jul 162008
 

How strange! I was reading Stilgherrian‘s rant – or, open letter – to traditional journalists: Dear Journalists, how can you spout all that stuff about “standards” and then go back to your mucky business? Oh, that’s right. You’re a proper journalist. It’s all the others… Actually, I know why you’re so bitter about “those bloggers”. You worked hard on that student newspaper or street rag while living in uni-student poverty, put up with the abuse of grumpy old chain-smoking subs who bawled you out over trivial spelling mistakes, put up with the unpredictable patronage of editors who promoted everyone else Continue Reading…

Jun 182008
 

| View | Upload your own My presentation slides to Freelance Journalists Group (80 or so) last night – you can flick through the slides by clicking. As I mentioned earlier, I was invited to talk to The Sydney Freelance Journalists Group (MEAA)Basically the slides focus on blogs as content, facebook/digg as distribution, twitter as sources of stories and widgets/rss as advertising. Plus the need to blog to develop protection – from having ideas stolen and from editors wanting a writer/journo/blogger with an inbuilt readership/profile/acclaim. blogs being like Citizen Journalist articles. Depth of content, one to many, open distribution, ripple Continue Reading…

May 252008
 

YouTube have started a News Channel – called Citizen News: Hey, YouTube! My name is Olivia, and I’m the new News Manager here at YouTube. Thanks to better, cheaper, and easier access to video equipment, there’s an amazing amount of news being reported on YouTube every single day by citizens in all corners of the globe. You’re conducting interviews with local community leaders, doing weekly reports on the latest campus news for your school television station, and investigating untold stories you think the world should know about. This stuff is fantastic, but we want to see more from you all Continue Reading…

May 112008
 

MOBLOGIC.TV reporter Lindsay Campbell gets arrested (deliberately) at a protest because she wants to put her two cents in.Thank god, I’m so tired of “objective” reporting that we all know… isn’t. So much more interesting. And emotional. And involving. Bugger Orf, Andrew Keene (Cult of the Amateur). She looked pretty professional to me. Journalists no longer masquerade as ‘undercover’ activities ‘just for the story’, and do it because they believe in it. Yay! You might like Objective Journalists vs Passionate Blogging. The gloves are now off, when it comes to chasing a good story… or at least acknowledged openly as Continue Reading…

Mar 092008
 

South by South West have never heard of embedding, so you have to clicketty click and then rush back here to see the rest ….…. …. *taps foot* …… HURRY UP! :pLacy’s rsponse to the ‘disaster’As online Video Watch said: When the collective geekdom of the United States shows up in one place and spends half their time in line they have a lot of extra time to bitch on their mobile devices. That said, it’s probably still fair to label Sarah Lacy’s interview of Mark Zuckerberg (watch here) at SXSW an unmitigated disaster.You could almost feel bad for Sarah, Continue Reading…

Mar 052008
 

If you read an article about curing cancer by a journalist do you assume the journalist is the expert in curing cancer? If you see a blog, or a group blog, dedicated to writing, creating and discussion cancer cures, would you think the blogger had more indepth knowledge and life experience in assessing cancer cures than the journalist that was assigned to the article? Which one is more objective? Is it objectivity you are looking for? Which one is more passionate and committed to promoting cancer cures? (Specifically. In general we all do). Do you want objectivity or passion engaged Continue Reading…