I read a piece recently by Clay Shirky, who in a blog post entitled ‘Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,’ reflected on the nature of revolutions. Periods of time when old ‘stuff’ was no longer relevant to us and new ‘stuff’ couldn’t come along fast enough to replace it. That feels like now doesn’t it?

The edges of our media space are expanding faster than our ability to make sense of them, of new technologies, of how people use them and of the shake out, that will mean some old media will fall by the wayside.

But this is an unravelling story seen from two very different perspectives. The user, swept along by the rush of the crowd to try new media, to make that media fit their lifestyle and the marketer, trying to position a brand where its’ target customer is. (more…)

Is social media a flash in the pan?
Is it relevant to your business and should it be at the heart of your marketing strategy?
Or should we get a (second) life and stop the twitter?

As a marketing practitioner, you may feel that you need to be using social media, or simply want to keep abreast of developments in this area. This presentation will explain the explosion of social media; exploring winning case studies, when it goes wrong and outlining implementation strategies you can begin to adopt today.

You will leave inspired and armed with the knowledge to begin applying social media principles to your own business.

(more…)

Phew, it’s getting crowded in here!…New ways of connecting people are coming hard and fast with a handful of cool APIs a day being launched to connect to big social media networks and mobile devices as well as pure bred micro blogging tools (Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, Jaiku, My Say, Hictu) and the new rash of ‘Gauge your happiness tools’ (Moodmill, I Rate My Day and Emotionr). In fact tools are being developed to help us manage all our social media tools more efficiently! The buzz is tangible, in fact it’s overpowering.

I was at a social media master class a couple of weeks ago that was hosted by Stowe Boyd, the guy who coined the term ‘Social Tools’. It was a warm up session for attendees to the outstanding Thinking Digital Conference (Book for 2010 now!). As the session went on it was clear the focus in the room, with the exception of JP Rangaswami (Confused of Calcutta) who spoke passionately about people engaging with people, was on the relative merits of tools and new social media platforms being developed.

This left me pondering, ‘Are we too focused on tools?’… (more…)

University of Teesside has selected Better to provide social media consultancy for the corporate communication team to help develop and deliver a social media strategy for the University and its departments.

Better has worked alongside the marketing, web, alumni and student recruitment teams at the University to help them understand how social media integrates with their communication strategy and bring their various audience groups closer to them on a daily basis, while supporting them in building and integrating and number of social media tools around their main corporate website.

The University of Teesside is a vibrant, innovative University dedicated to pursuing excellence and enabling individuals and organisations to achieve their potential through high quality learning, research and knowledge transfer. For more information please visit http://www.tees.ac.uk.

mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) has partnered with Better to help develop and deliver a social media strategy for the landmark arts venue. Better primarily helped the marketing team at mima understand how social media integrates with their communication strategy and bring it’s audience closer to them on a daily basis before being asked to build and integrate and number of social media tools around their destination website. (more…)

I’ve seen lots of social media maps, some good some not so good.

The problem is they sit there in lofty isolation, a sea of mostly unfamiliar names and quirky identities.  They are a secret cypher known only to social media cool kids it seems. These maps are not connected to the real world (The one in which hard pressed marketing professionals are fighting hard for their budgets and their jobs) in any recognisable way. We’re missing an opportunity here and, if we’re honest, being a little bit condescending to boot. Another thing, social media buzz words are such a crock! Real people don’t talk like that!

(more…)

Growing your Digital Footprint

We find ourselves drawing this diagram all the time for clients when we’re talking about social media so we thought we’d reproduce it here and get some feedback.

Conversations tend to go something like, “Why social media?”.

After introducing them to the idea that engaging with audiences, listening and harvesting feedback, gaining insights into audience thinking and breaking down corporate barriers is the most rewarding business change event they’ll ever implement it’s much much simpler to draw it.

(more…)

TECH NOTES by Declan Metcalfe. Featured in the The Newcastle Journal and nebusiness.co.uk (view article online)

WHAT’S all the buzz around social media?

The explosion that is social media came about due to the convergence of three forces: people, technology and economics. People wanted to talk, and technology caught up to the extent that it became possible to connect to friends in real time using a multitude of devices. These are made affordable because the infrastructure is now in place making it easily accessible to the vast majority.

The easiest way to think of social media, I believe, is as a conversation that millions of people are having, one that’s growing louder as more and more voices join in. And guess what the topics are: they are talking about you, your brand, your product and your services.
(more…)

So, we’re all fired up about social media.
We’ve gotten involved personally, learned a little, played a little and seen the benefits now we want to sell it to our company. It’s important to drop the buzz words, think strategically and get ready to answer questions from doubters and decision makers.

(more…)

We’re all excited. There’s a Twestival coming to the North East and we couldn’t resist getting involved to support the event. The TyneTwestival is taking place at 7.30pm on 12th February at The Other Rooms in Newcastle City Centre.

We have been working on some graphics and web buttons to help spread the word, and these will be online very soon. For more information the TyneTwestival please visit http://newcastle.twestival.com where you can buy tickets online, or follow @tynetwestival on Twitter.

Better Brand Agency is a brand agency offering brand, graphic design, marketing, social media and social networking, web and digital services based in Tees Valley, North East and North Yorkshire.