Review of the reviews

Hello again.

After sifting through review after review of the year (I’ve been really busy working and being Christmassy) for the last five minutes or so, I have come to the conclusion that they are all pretty much the same.

If you want a fairly representative example, I recommend Simon Mainwaring’s.  A lot of it is pretty general, common sensical stuff, but ‘measuring engagement’ is something we all need to take notice of and begin to think about seriously.  The other day I wrote a tender and I think I put the word ‘engagement’ in every other paragraph, without really stopping to think about what it means – other than that there doesn’t seem to be a good alternative word for it.  I’ll definitely be giving this some thought as part of the planning toolkit I’m currently working on.

If you want to see a top 12 that is both entertaining, insightful, and quite different, have a look at Iain Tait’s.  I’m particularly looking forward to Collablogs (and the total confusion and awesome massive costly mistakes.)

Happy New Year

Coming soon… My review of things to look out for in the new year: the review of the reviews. However, snow and socialising has come between us. I’ll try and get there soon!

The simplest ideas are the best

A big thank you to Iain Tait for bringing this genius but simple Facebook promotion to my attention.

So simple, so clever.  I am jealous.  That’s all I have to say.

More about Twitter and customer service

An interesting post from RMM this week – they had a similar, but even better, experience to mine regarding making a complaint about a brand on Twitter…

They raise an interesting point though – if people think that they will get something for nothing if they complain publically on Twitter, then will people start making bogus complaints?  Will companies only do nice things for Tweeters with lots of followers?  How powerful is a complaint on Twitter?  Pretty powerful if you are Stephen Fry, but what about those with modest followings?

I don’t have the answers, but it will be something I’ll be keeping an eye on and perhaps arguing about in the pub.

My favourite part of the planning process

Most planning projects are the same. You spend days, weeks, sometimes months, collecting information and insight, until your head is full of what you’re working on and your friends get bored with you talking about it all the time.

There is a blissful moment when everything seems perfectly clear. Then you spend a few days or weeks panicking about how big it all is, and how you will ever possibly make any sense of it.

Then you bite the bullet and remember that it was once pretty straightforward, and despite the fact that it’s very big, you know you can get it all down on paper.

The fun begins… Post-Its and slides covered in thoughts. Things to remember. A forget-it pile. Embryonic diagrams and models.  There’s still more research to do but you’re confident that you’re testing hypotheses rather than educated guesswork.

I reached this point today. I love my job.

The cat isn’t impressed.

Travels

It’s been a while since I wrote – must do better!  I do have a good excuse though – I have been very busy working on a digital research project for Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which has taken me all over Scotland.  Last week I was even in Orkney for the first time – it’s somewhere I would definitely like to go back when it’s a bit warmer and lighter.

This is the largest audience scoping project I have ever worked on, and it’s a steep learning curve.  I’ve really enjoyed getting my head around what the organisation does and I’m really looking forward to working on developing a clear set of personas.

It’s also meant that I’ve seen a lot of beautiful countryside in autumn (Glencoe yesterday was gorgeous) and got to know Inverness pretty well too (if you need a B&B recommendation, I’m your girl.)

Here’s a picture of clouds I took on my phone on the way back from Thurso a couple of weeks ago.  The clouds were phenomenal.

October blog of the month

It’s ‘blog of the month’ time…  I’ve come across Information is Beautiful several times but neglected to bookmark it – but no longer – it’s in my Google Reader now!

It’s a really inspiring place with lots of very interesting diagrams.  It simply demonstrates that illustration of data and statistical information doesn’t have to be boring bar charts.  It’s too easy to stick a load of these into Powerpoint, when we could be bringing numbers and facts to life more fascinatingly.

Some of my favourites:

Left vs Right – lovely to look at…  If only life/politics were so simple!

Twitter Truths – the best days to self-promote are Tuesday and Wednesday, and it tells you how much content is worth anything at all…

And these Four Infographic Morsels demonstrate the range of what’s available on the site.  Key learning = don’t say ’sexy’ or ‘beautiful’ in an email to a potential date.  It puts them off.

I quite fancy the book too – it would make an excellent gift for any of your geeky friends.

What’s in a name?

I’ve been catching up on the events of last week’s Planningness conference.  I wish I’d been there – sounds like lots of interesting discussions were had.  There’s been a lot of discussion before, after and since, about the planner’s ‘toolkit’, and previously I’d never really thought about naming any of the things I do or presenting them to clients as particular ‘products’, ‘packages’ or ‘formulas’. In fact, I’d always been a little bit anti- because it seemed to me that it’s our job as planners to recommend the best methodology for the job, start from basic principles and adapt our skills and expertise to suit their needs.  Every project is different, after all.

However, I can definitely see the benefit of being able to neatly and coherently describe some of the tools and methods I use, especially since collaborating with other agency staff who are not planners, and clients, is extremely useful, so I am going to spend a bit of time putting some of these techniques into words and pictures and I might share some of them on here.

The other thing I thought was interesting was a presentation on ‘Connections Planning’ – with the remit of planning getting so broad and not about just being able to turn insights into single-minded propositions, do we need to re-define or re-label it?  I don’t think so.  We probably just (especially we planners who live and work in the provinces) just have to get better at telling people what we do and how it can benefit their business.

Take a look at the presentation and let me know what you think…

Connections Planningness

View more documents from Jason Oke.

iMapFlickr

A big up to the boys at Frame Digital, who recently launched iMapFlickr, which allows you to create a map our of your geotagged Flickr photo sets which you can share in lots of different ways.

Rather than try and explain it, I had a go, and created a mini-tour of London.

Have a go yourself – it’s cool.

Dare to dismiss Twitter

I am often asked what the value of Twitter is. Many people think it is flippant and throwaway but it is a very valuable tool for brands, even if they merely want to monitor what people are saying about them for research purposes.

Other brands are much smarter, and offer Tweeters customer service via the site.  I had heard about this happening, but recently experienced it for myself when I was waiting for BT broadband to get started at my home.

I wrote:

And within an hour, @BTCare had replied, asking what the problem was and asking me to reply with my telephone number for a chat.  I was very impressed.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media channels and its potentialities are only beginning to be realised by brands.  It’s not something anyone can afford to dismiss.