The last two days I was lucky enough to get the chance to attend Meetdraw Presents: Silicon Beach – a great event in Bournemouth with a long list of fantastic and inspiring speakers, lovely tea, mini cupcakes, beachfront balcony lunches and networking opportunities with some charming like-minded digital fans. Oh, and not forgetting the added bonus of a free bar in Aruba on Wednesday evening!

A key thing was said towards the beginning that is important to remember – no one knows everything and no one ever will. Particularly with digital and things like social media, changes are constantly happening and everyone is constantly learning and different things will work for different brands all the time. Nicole Yershon of Ogilvy Digital Labs talked of the importance of building partnerships and good relationships. Admitting that you can’t do everything is key to then go on and form some great partnerships and deliver amazing work. The moment that an individual or company feels that they know everything, is the moment things can start to go downhill!

And that was great, because that’s why I was there – to learn. And I have definitely learnt a lot! The speakers all had wonderfully interesting and inspiring stories and examples to show, leaving my head buzzing with excitement, inspiration and ideas. It’s all still continuing to sink in and digest but I wanted to share some of the key things I have taken from this ‘digital innovation and storytelling’ themed conference and networking event.

Digital is becoming less of an ‘add-on’ – the campaign model has changed in marketing, advertising and public relations, needing to be fully immersed in digital from the very beginning. However another interesting point was made – those of us who live, breathe and work in digital are still in a ‘digital bubble’ (as put by Nicole Yershon) so it can be difficult to ‘convince’ people that digital really is, not just the way forward, but the now! Although having a Facebook page or a Twitter account might not be for every business, the technology is there to be utilised in many different ways that can work well for most organisations.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s Michael McClary highlighted that new technology is not equal to creative innovation. Just using new technology isn’t ‘innovative’, what makes it innovative is creatively making use of the technology that’s out there. Some facts and figures were given by Mike Malone of Grape Digital (in this great video) who made it clear how important it is for brands to be present on Facebook – because that’s where people are! And it’s also a good idea to keep as much as you can on your Facebook page rather than sending people elsewhere because people don’t want to leave their ‘chat’ conversations…. good thinking!

Some of what has been said and discussed over the past few days I was already aware of, or caused ‘of course that makes sense!’ moments, but it has definitely brought these things to the forefront of my attention. Light was also shed on some new great tools that I’m really looking forward to making use of! There are some exciting things to come, and who really knows how technology is going to evolve? But what’s important for the time being is creatively and innovatively using what is out there for us now.

Originally posted on the Cre8ive Wisdom blog.

ANYWAY. I just came across the following amusing infographic ‘A world without Twitter’ created a few months back by HubSpot and wanted to share it:

Dramatic as it may sound, but I often think of how different my life might be without Twitter…

It was on Twitter where Cre8ive Wisdom’s Neil and I first got in contact about me joining the team for a work experience placement last year. Through Cre8ive Wisdom, I met a man who got me in contact with a landlady looking for a tenant in her brand new flat – when we were looking for somewhere to live. And now, after finishing my university degree, I am back working for Cre8ive Wisdom full time… My career started from Twitter!

I’ve also ‘met’ some very lovely & helpful people on Twitter who I probably wouldn’t know existed if it wasn’t for my random following and tweeting! The very lovely followers of mine helped me get a huge number of respondents for my dissertation survey, which gave me a great, robust bed of research for the study, helping for me to gain a First! Also among these followers of mine are some lovely locals who helped out by coming along & participating to focus groups for this research.

It’s strange to think how different things could be if it wasn’t for this social media platform… that’s the (social) butterfly effect I guess!

I hope it’s not just me, anyway…! Is there anything in your life now that would be different without Twitter? What do you think a world without Twitter would be?

Today I found out I passed my degree in Communication and Media with a 2:1 – yay!

I’m so pleased with this achievement but I’m even more pleased with the FIRST I got for my dissertation.

All the time, stress, tears and sleepless nights were worth it, then! =D

Anyway… it’s time to celebrate!!

I’ll be honest, after the epic failure of Google Buzz, I didn’t have high hopes when I first heard about Google’s new attempt at a social networking site. However, Google have been working on the elements for Google+ for a long time – unlike the thoughtless rush to jump on the social media bandwagon which was Buzz. There are the sceptics who feel that ‘Plus’ won’t add anything new to the world of SNSs, who believe that the platforms they use are enough (or too much) already. Who needs another Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin and the rest…? Well, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it! Google+ has the potential to replace all of these social networks, pulling together the much-loved news feed of Facebook, the real-time updates of Twitter, the networking approach of LinkedIn and many snazzy new features! But can we really see people ditching Facebook, especially those who have only just been tempted there.

After hearing and reading more and more about Google’s new venture into the world of SNSs I became more and more interested and almost desperate for an invite. Luckily, it wasn’t long until one of my Twitter acquaintances (Twacquaintances?) managed to share a message with me from Google+ containing that golden ticket – a link to join the back of the growing Google+ train! The ‘by invitation only’ slow roll-out approach is perhaps a bit ‘old school’, and frustrating for those who want to get stuck in straight away – I feel that it might put people off joining if they are unable to straight away, which is disappointing. A social networking site only works if there are enough people active to network socially with each other!

On the other hand, it seems to be working pretty well at creating a buzz (no pun intended) for them. People were and are asking around existing social networks in order to receive invites to join – myself included. When the tables turned and I held the key for others to join, my @mention stream & DMs were going crazy with people after a way in! As long as it isn’t too long until the doors are opened to everyone, this could work well with keeping people excited as waves of new members become active.

Because of the limitations to signing up, the word that sticks out to me is ‘potential’. Google+ has the potential to be huge. The features on it are great, and there are loads. If there’s one thing that separates this platform to anything else, it’s the ability and ease to choose which circles you share different things with different people. This means that you can easily keep your work and play separate on the same site.

The +1 button which is beginning to appear all over the web works much like an external Facebook ‘like’ button and is great for recommending webpages and articles with Google+ as a hub. By clicking the +1 next to search results, for example, it creates a list of pages you recommend on your Google+ profile (demonstrated here). This is probably the key feature that I have picked up as having potential for usefulness for brands and marketers, for the time being, anyway.

While my overall initial opinion of Google+ is positive, it’s difficult to enjoy it to its full advantage until a decent amount of people in my social circles join it…. so I can add them to my virtual Google circles and start sharing links, photos, videos – sharing the experience  with them. When Google opens the floodgates for all, I hope that many people will join and make Google+ the great network it has the potential to be!

You can add me to your circles & start sharing things with me at: gplus.to/lilyjay

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It is commonly agreed that the attention span of Generation M, or the Internet Generation, is generally pretty short. The Internet and digital technology is blamed for this – the move away from getting stuck into a good book to flicking between browser tabs, windows and mobile apps. This is known as ‘hyper attention’, which Hayles describes in relation to ‘deep attention’. A generation that has been brought up with digital technology and online media tends to prefer receiving information through multiple streams, becoming easily bored and distracted by long pieces of writing and less able to focus on single tasks.

Most new marketing, advertising and PR campaigns focus on short, sharp bursts in order to capture audiences’ attention enough to quickly blurt out all the information before attention is lost once again. When it comes to text, short, snappy copy is far more preferable than lengthy articles – no matter how well it’s written, people don’t want, or don’t have time, to read. This is particularly the case with the rise in popularity and use of mobile digital technology and smaller screens. As described on Mashable: “If web copy is skimming the cream off the top of the milk, mobile copy is skimming cream off of the cream”.

Mobile smartphones in particular have very small screens and it is important that marketing copy is optimised for this. 300 words on a computer screen or an A4 page may not look like much – but on a phone that can be a lot of tedious scrolling! People tend not to ‘get stuck in’ to reading, or watching, things on their mobile phones. A lot of the time that people spend using their mobile phone is while they are doing something else, where there are even more distractions. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I find it second nature to pick up my phone and have a browse while standing in a queue, waiting for a friend or walking to a shop, for example. At any minute it’ll be my turn to order, my friend will turn up or I’ll get to the shop and my phone will be locked and put away in a pocket or handbag. Mobile marketing copy needs to be shorter and sweeter to suit our distractive and hyper-attentioned lifestyles.
So keeping someone’s attention for 5 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour is out of the question, right? Not when there’s a free burger involved, apparently.

Burger King has turned the tables with their new marketing strategy which, instead of trying to satisfy our hyper attention spans, encourages people to stare at a TV screen for ‘long’ periods of time. TV – where an advert lasts seconds and we’re used to watching soaps with their snappy, attention-keeping, interwoven scenes. Subscribers of the US satellite service DirecTV can flick over to channel 111, watching a spinning Whopper burger for 5 minutes to be told which button on their remote control to press in order to be sent a voucher for a free Whopper. A further 10 minutes and the patient person can get two burgers… A full half an hour wins the ‘lucky’ (and probably very bored/hungry) person deservedly (?) gets three free Whopper vouchers.

While I’m not sure I could sit and watch a burger for five minutes – let alone half an hour – without feeling tortured through hunger or just incredibly bored, the campaign is doing very well. And while long, tedious, adverts or articles requiring time and attention often don’t work, innovative does work and Burger King are #winning on this occasion!

[continue reading my 'words of wisdom' here]

So what is it about Facebook, and other social networks, that make them so popular? And in some cases, addictive?

Well, the siren is now all that it is. Apparently this new logo is “expressive and energetic“

But is the siren really the most iconic part of the previous logo? Not to me. To be honest I’ve never really taken much notice of her before today. To me, the iconic part of the Starbucks logo was always the simple, circular block border… and now it’s gone (*sob*).

Apparently, they have removed the word ‘COFFEE’ from their logo to allow them to open a new chapter. To venture into new areas of the food and drink market. Which I’m pretty sure they have already been doing successfully while marketing ‘STARBUCKS COFFEE’, no?