You're doing Facebook Wrong

According to this neat little article there are some key trends you can use to better engage when using Facebook posts. It's clear that if you're using Facebook it should be as part of a joined up campaign across many channels. Facebook simply is one way of expressing the narrative that you've developed which answers direct business objectives. Facebook is a way of promoting that story, so if you're going to do it, do it right!

Know you're customer and how they interact with Facebook to help you craft a more effective campaign. The 'Buddy Media' article over at Mashable shows some key and easy to follow guidelines, namely:

- Don't forget the weekends
- Out of office hours see more interaction
- Want to take a day off? Wednesday might be best
- 1 to 2 posts are day see more interaction than 3+
- Use recognisable links.

Check it out here: http://mashable.com/2012/09/28/marketers-facebook-wrong/

Intangible Value Creation: Hunter Summerville and Shreddies

Quite a fun video from TED by Ogilvy veteran Rory Sutherland.

He talks a lot of sense about how we perceive products and services and about the 'intangible value creation'. For an example of this see Hunter Somerville's ad campaign for Shreddies (to which he makes reference)...
http://cargocollective.com/huntersomerville/SHREDDIES

Your Company has a mission statement so why don't you?

Fed up with your job? Going nowhere? Ok, but how can you tell if you don't really know where you're going?

Check out the following article about the value of having a personal mission statement. Don't like the jargon? Call it personal objective or goal, but call it something. It's worth a read.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3030038/bottom-line/why-your-life-needs-a-mission-statement

Minority Report User Interface available for homes

I've already written about this sort of futuristic gestural interface before and I love it! I can't wait until this sort of thing is available for home use.

Wait…! What did you say? It is!

More accurately, it will be. Currently dizmo is at kickstarter phase so no idea about how much it'll cost but suffice to say there are boffins working on it now. Dizmo is a software that can make the apparently flaky 'Leap Motion' work on a realistic level.

Science Fiction eh? It really does help push us to make our fantasies reality.
(I'm still waiting for my hoversuit though…)

The television ident

Here's a nice little BBC video article about the history of the ident, highlighting the designer of the first BBC ident, Abram Games.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25181754

It's interesting to see in the following clip how the ident went from its original abstract whackiness, through boring globe spinning and then came out at the other end even stranger than the very first.



(If you want the animations of these idents then follow this link to the BBC site. It also features some voiceovers)

Before working on this 3D medium for the BBC, Games was a well-known advertising and poster artist. Of note are some of his wartime pieces such as this one.

Read more about Games at Wikipedia, here.

Continuous personal development and growth

Often it's hard to give yourself time to work on skills you'd like to develop. Time is precious and sometimes the courses that you want to go on to improve are just too expensive! Ok, so your company *should* give you a budget for personal development but between what companies should do and actually do there is sometimes a gulf..

So you should think about MOOC.

Sounds strange but MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Courses and the best part of this is…they're free. Learn what you want, when you want to and at no cost.

The only downside is that often you have to dig a little to find something that:

• Is of a certain quality (ahem)...
• Is aimed at your level of learning
• Doesn't advertise the author's products or services too heavily.

If you are interested then try googling for MOOCs or visit this link to check out what's available in your field of interest.

Network with confidence: you have nothing to lose! Networking with Jerome Jarre

What do kids these days know, huh? Nothing! We're more experienced, been there, done that. On top of it all young people simply don't have the get up and go of we more seasoned business folk. They just laze around all day checking facebook, playing video games and producing monosyllabic grunts when in need of food, right?

If you think like this then you should check out the following video about networking and challenging yourself to achieve your goals. Jerome Jarre is a young guy but with a lot of energy who (among other things) has made crazy videos which other young twenty somethings love. Funny, daft, irreverent.

He's also, in my opinion, an astute entrepreneur from whom we can learn. Check out this video. Give it time and you'll see (3minutes).


Conclusions: dare to do it, be bold and be creative about it. There's no point waiting for these people to come to you. You need to take the 'game' to them.

As my karate teacher (read my martial arts blog here) used to say the strength of effort is the measure of the results (he paraphrased James Allen) . Ok there's a side discussion here about effort, efficiency and results: my point is if you do NOTHING then NOTHING will happen. It's pointless sitting around all day waiting for emails to come to you if you haven't reached out in the first place. You have to be targeted, focused and smart with your efforts but this process of focusing your efforts on a goals and objectives means you're getting it done.


Focus your efforts.
Get creative.
Dare to do it...