How are you travelling? Great apps for digital nomads – article now live
Apps for digital nomads – a few of my preferences
Sometimes the writer’s journey can be a slow one. Not much fun if you’re writing articles with a tech focus, as was the case with this article I wrote over six months ago while I was travelling and working from various locations worldwide. There were quite a few delays with publication, but now it’s finally live. Hopefully the content isn’t too out of date by now!
How are you travelling? Apps for digital nomads
This article is pending publication. A link will be provided once it has been released by the publisher.
(c) Copyright 2014 Kaye Blum
New ACCC guidelines for online reviews
By Kaye Blum
As a 21 year old emerging writer, I was incredibly excited to land my first writing job reviewing gigs in a popular weekly street press magazine. I wouldn’t be paid for my work of course – the publication was free to readers and relied on advertising revenue to survive. But I would get a byline – my name would be in print – that was exciting! And that was over 20 years ago, well before the emergence of the internet. These days pretty much anyone can have a byline online.
I didn’t see myself as a critic, more of a reporter, providing punters with an insight to a particular performance or event as I’d experienced it. As a local music fan, I was thrilled to get my name on the door to see some of my favourite bands.
But I soon discovered it wasn’t all fun and games, I had to work. I needed to take a few notes (pre-smartphone-with-recorders era), which I preferred to do discretely (not easy in a dimly lit room with no tables). I had to stand where I could get the best quality sound, which was usually by the mixing desk. But I also needed a clear view of the stage and I’m not very tall. Needless to say, I had to be on the ball, so drinking wasn’t an option. And back then, I was fond of a bevvy or three at a gig.
Then came the actual writing process. And this didn’t come easily at first. I was a perfectionist and wanted my piece to sound as good as the music I’d heard. Well, close enough, anyway. I remember at times toiling away on a draft all night, sometimes until dawn, to file my review before deadline. Lead times were short – there was an editor and a pre-press process to go through before hitting that marvellously historic invention, the printing press.
When the weekly edition hit the streets, I’d race out to the nearest distribution point (usually a pub or record store) to grab a copy. I’d flick through the pages at lightning speed until I found my article. Week after week, my reviews were published verbatim.
One week, however, it was possibly my eighth or ninth review, I read my work in print and the colour drained from my face. It had been changed. A whole line had been removed and another added, which clearly altered the opinion I had articulated from my viewing experience of the gig. These were not my words, and they did not reflect what I had witnessed. But the review still had my name on it.
I raced home and rang the editor. Why did you change my piece? What was wrong with it? Well, she explained, the headline artist’s record company is a major advertiser in our magazine; and your review wasn’t very favourable of him. What? It wasn’t directly critical or blatantly negative. Why couldn’t you call me first to discuss it with me? If it really had to change to something I didn’t actually experience I’d have asked you to take my name off it altogether. I put down the phone.
I never wrote for them again. In fact, I never reviewed again, until the past year. After living in London for six years from the mid Nineties and witnessing how some critics, particularly theatre critics, would sit in the front row with their pen and pads practically waving about as if to say, look at me, I’m very important to your production. And unfortunately, they did have the power to make or break a production with their reviews, depending on the publication they wrote for.
But isn’t a review just an opinion? It might be an educated and informed opinion, it might not. The reviewer’s experience can be impacted by so many factors – an exhausted performer, dodgy equipment, a catastrophe in the kitchen. There are factors that might not be apparent. And how informed is the reviewer? Are they an expert in the field they’re critiquing? Or are they just another punter? It varies. Dramatically. Especially now with the internet, because pretty much anyone can publish a review on a wide range of platforms, from TripAdvisor to their own blog.
Some review platforms publish anonymous reviews, so there is little or no accountability. Anyone can say anything. And they do. Everyone’s a critic. When it comes to online comments, anonymity gives some cowards the opportunity to say things they wouldn’t dare put their name to.
But maybe not for much longer.
Late last year, YouTube changed the way comments are managed* and moderated by requiring a Google+ ID login to comment. In a recent SlideShare presentation from JWT Intelligence called 101 Things To Watch In 2014*, slide number 97 predicts verified reviewers as the way forward, citing platforms such as Amazon and Google Play as already utilising a form of verification.
In an effort to address the increase of fake positive reviews and potentially business-destroying defamatory ones, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) published new guidelines to online reviews* for both businesses and review platforms in November 2013. While honest reviews can be helpful for consumer decision-making, the increase in fake positive and contrived negative reviews has serious implications.
The ACCC publication provides guiding principles on transparency of commercial relationships, reviews presented as impartial that are not, and editing or omission of reviews that can be misleading.
Disclosure of any incentive given to review is vital. When I added a review section to Tweed Scene last year, I updated my About page to disclose my reviewing principles in an effort to maintain the integrity of the site. After completing MEAA’s Australian Media Law and Ethics training in December, I was glad I’d instinctively chosen transparency on Tweed Scene, but even more grateful to have a deeper knowledge of Australian defamation laws.
Personally, I’m all for transparency, integrity, and reviewer verification. So I hope JWT Intelligence’s prediction for 2014 comes true. Meanwhile, for all those reviewers and bloggers out there who aren’t accredited journalists, best you familiarise yourself with the ACCC’s guidelines, pronto 🙂
*Accessed 15/1/14
Journalist Code of Ethics and Australian Media Law – Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA)
MEAA – Freelance Pro Trustmark
By Kaye Blum
One of the great benefits of being a member of MEAA (apart from professional indemnity insurance and a media card) is the accredited training. Membership requires staying up-to-date with the Journalist Code of Ethics and Australian Media Law. So in early November, I spent a day in a training session and learned more than a thing or two.
Most relevant to a regular writer and blogger like myself was taking a closer look at defamation. Once upon a time it was known as slander or libel. But that’s seriously old-school. What’s important is knowing what actually constitutes defamation in Australia, how you can be sure what you’re writing is safe, and just how easy it is to publish something defamatory – even if you didn’t write it yourself.
Of course, social media channels are publishing platforms. But just because you didn’t write it doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Re-tweeting, re-posting and linking to a potentially defamatory article could have you in deep water.
Saying something defamatory about someone in public can also do the trick, even if it’s accidentally overheard instead of shouted from a soap-box.
Gaining a clear understanding of the risks and defences for defamation was highly valuable, particularly in relation to writing reviews (look out, TripAdvisor!). Anaylsing actual case studies and debunking some common defamation myths was pret-ty darn revealing.
The training also looked at news-gathering and ethics. Interestingly, there are different rules in each state relating to recording conversations. I’ve always stuck to the rule of asking if it’s ok before recording an interview or taking notes for an article. Recordings are a valuable resource in more ways than one.
Privacy was also covered and this provided some surprising insights. Privacy laws in Australia have been under review with the Australian Law Reform Commission since 2006, so it’s still a woolly area, covered loosely by a range of laws from defamation to trespassing.
The MEAA’s Journalist Code of Ethics provides some guidance on respecting privacy. But in a world of self-publishing and social media, the boundaries can be very blurry indeed.
Copyright – an issue I’m particularly interested in – was addressed in the training but it’s a rapidly evolving field, particularly in the ethereal spheres of cyberspace. A few key take-outs:
- Copyright can vary whether you’re an employee or freelancer, so reading agreements and contracts is imperative. The internet and digital distribution can make it more complicated.
- Linking to other websites and articles may need attention – how have you credited the source? What should you do to prevent breach of copyright? If you’re blogging, linking, Tumblring, retweeting, curating or republishing anything digitally, you need to know your stuff.
Overall, the MEAA training was intense and incredibly worthwhile, providing me with a big wad of notes to process and plenty to digest to ensure I’m writing and publishing within the law.
Next post: reports on the 2013 Storyology conference in Sydney.
Monetising video: commercialising content in a world of video overload
Retired content delivery devices find a new purpose as street art in Melbourne
By Kaye Blum
Held at the KPMG Auditorium (Sydney) in August, this panel session from the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) proposed to address the issue of how to make money from video and whether people will actually pay for content.
Presenting industry insights were Matt Moran from the Platform, Nick Love from Shine 360°, Angus Stevens from Southern Cross Austereo, Georgie Powell from YouTube, Sue Carter from Tigerspike, Will McKinnon from SBS, and event chair Scott Bradley Pearce from ArgentDigital. Following are my key highlights from the session.
Adapting to storytelling across platforms
Shine 360° Managing Director Nick Love started out making content for TV but now focuses on storytelling for multiple screens. He presented a case study for The Voice, for which they managed the social media in-house last season. “We used it to tell stories, not just cross-sell,” he explained.
They scripted for three platforms: TV, Facebook and Twitter. Plotting story across the three screens, they used the right channel choices with the right voices. “It takes design,” he said, adding that they worked on it for six months before going to air to ensure it was an integrated part of production.
They had to re-design the production supply chain and publishing workflow. “Without metadata you are lost… We couldn’t find any tools so we built our own,” he claimed, “MDM, adding, adapting and building metadata from content creation to distribution.”
In terms of monetizing, Shine 360° are not in the ad selling business, so they partnered with M9. On top of pre-roll and mid-roll ads, they made money through sponsored integration, with Ford sponsoring the live stream. They also integrated e-commerce with music sales and episodes on iTunes.
Love emphasised the importance of social media and data, and noted that Season 1 had 67% desktop traffic, while Season 2 saw an increase in mobile traffic. “It’s just the beginning – our storytelling hasn’t changed, it’s just introducing different screens.”
Monetising with YouTube
Georgie Powell, Content Partner Manager at YouTube, highlighted some vital company stats:
- Youtube is the world’s largest video platform and the second biggest search engine in world.
- Content owners can take 100% if they sell above the rate card.
- 90% of views of Australian content is from outside Australia, impacting import/export and rights.
- One in three YouTube views are on mobile devices.
YouTube’s demographic is Gen C – the curators, creators, connectors and communities of content. They like to upload and share, 91% sleep with their smartphone by the bed, they have an active social media presence.
“We need to think differently about how we program and create content for this type of audience”, Powell said. “We need to engage WITH, rather than program AT them.”
She explained one of the ways for content creators to make money from YouTube content is with Content ID. This enables rights owners to upload content and turn it into a reference file that shows who has ripped your content by scanning for matching videos, which you can monetise. Freemantle Media have Content ID and saw 20x growth in monetisation.
She covered the YouTube business models: ad supported, paid channels and transactional. Paid channels are already available in Australia.
Multi channel networks (MCNs), she claimed, are the next generation of broadcasters. There has been a huge investment in this field in the last six months overseas, but we are behind here in Australia (about three years).
A new model for production houses
Angus Stevens, Creative Director at Southern Cross Austereo, was previously a film/TV director and provided some great insights to the changing industry for production houses.
“There’s still money to be made, but you have to use a different model than what you’d use for TV,” he said. Crews and producers need to think this way as well. It’s not about making pretty pictures, it’s about how it will reach the audience. And this means different budgets.
“You have to put the old [production] model away”, he claimed, “You’re judged on distribution and scale.” He talked about innovation in execution and the need to be nimble to be profitable. Consider how can you use the medium to engage. “You can’t shoe-horn TVC values into a small platform.”
Co-incidentally I had recently done some initial consulting for a start-up run by traditional TVC directors and producers and had made the recommendation that a different model was needed for their purely digital product, but they insisted on maintaining a traditional TVC production house model. I chose not to proceed with these clients. Hearing Stevens dispelled any doubts I may have had about my decision.
Stevens also discussed client needs versus audience wants, describing content marketing as those who want to hang out around the campfire. With branded content, those guys bring their own guitar, music, etc. to control the environment. The client wants their music to be played at the campfire. Be clear about the difference between the two, he advised.
For content marketing, fish where the fish are, he said. Find where your audience is and go to them. Be honest (“Gen Y can smell bullshit a mile away so don’t bullshit”, he later added). Consumers don’t have loyalty.
“Creativity is hard to make and hard to sell and hard to measure, so you need to be in it for the long haul,” Stevens claimed. The online environment is quick, fast. “Do you want high impact, fast turn-around or a genuine engagement with the content?”
He showed a quote from an ADMA Report June 2013 to emphasise the point: “Creative brand campaigns take longer to deliver business success – after 6 months – compared to short term… but ultimately creativity wins out.”
Stephens took us through some great case studies, including The Friskies awards for best cat video of 2013; Vice (“the content is so good on Vice that brands want to be associated with it); and TAC Victoria’s roadtripforever.com campaign integrating social media.
Great stuff.
X Media Lab & KR8V masterclasses – Sydney, June 2013
By Kaye Blum
View from the Harbourview Terrace, MCA
For the past five years I’ve been trying to attend a X Media Lab (the “X” in X Media Lab stands for cross-platform, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural) conference, but for various reasons, missed out. This year it was back on home turf to celebrate its tenth anniversary after holding events in over a dozen countries.
Founded by Brendan Harken, X Media Lab events have covered as much ground in digital topics as it has geographical locations. Themes have included global media cultures and ideas; the future of journalism; animation and games; location based services; storytelling in the digital age; digital music; cross-platform and immersive media; and, in Switzerland this month, transmedia (wish I could be there).
This year’s event comprised a highlights day conference designed for “time-poor” creative industries executives, held at the stunning Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MCA’s) Harbourview Terrace; plus two days of KR8V masterclasses, held at the University of NSW College of Fine Arts (COFA).
The highlights day featured over a dozen national and international academics, digital professionals and artists; each limited to a snappy 20 minute presentation (the full list of keynote speakers can be found here). Here are my picks:
Kristen Taylor, Digital Community Strategist for Al Jazeera (previously at The Huffington Post, FourSquare and the BBC New York) shared some poignant insights to why a digital community needs narratives. She talked about context and curating an archive that accrues value over time, such as tumblrs by The New York Times and National Geographic’s ‘Found’. Tumblr and Instagram are her preferred social media channels.
Key take-out from Kristen: “The internet continues to run on kindness… networks have self-healing properties – they heal themselves through kindness.”
Kate McQuillen from Mememe Productions had just won an interactive Emmy award for dirtgirlworld, an “organically designed transmedia project” including an animated kids TV series, merchandise, website, live events, garbage trucks, seeds, and more. There are only eight Emmys in Australia so it’s a fantastic achievement. It was fascinating to hear her journey from having the seed of an idea based on core values such as love and sustainability, and meeting future colleagues in the loo at X Media Lab ten years ago.
Key take-out from Kate: “We wear our hearts on our sleeves and don’t apologise for being ‘out there’.”
Author and presenter Dominic Knight talked about story and structure; the hero’s journey (Robert McKee, Joseph Conran) and the importance of knowing the rules, but where you can innovate.
Key take-out from Dom: “Stories are the conceptual framework that help us understand the world.”
Alvin Wang Graylin, CEO of minfo (China’s leading mobile search service), and founder of Guanxi Inc (a location-based social discovery platform), provided an overview of what it takes to be a tech entrepreneur. And judging by the long list of criteria he shared, there’s obviously a lot more required than just having the idea.
Executing the idea is only the beginning, he explained. A strong work ethic is critical, and being prepared to do the stuff that no one wants to do. Self-esteem, focus, creativity, patience, selling acumen, passion, in-depth industry knowledge, and having a strong team around you were just some of the points he covered. Having savings in the bank and being in a position to take risks were other crucial points – ones that often get ignored, usually to the detriment of the start-up.
To help get investors on board, Alvin provided a list of critical questions that need to be clearly and confidently answerable.
Key take-out from Alvin: “Be healthy – it gets tiring.”
I attended Alvin’s Masterclass on Saturday to hear him share a generous amount of detail on creating integrated mobile marketing campaigns. He also provided some terrific insights to the mobile market in China.
As a digital producer, Galvin Scott Davis has developed top lifestyle apps, business apps and kids games. He is the founder of Protein One, a boutique digital design and development agency in Sydney. His presentation opened with the question: are you a “why” or a “why not”? Creatives realise early on that they are “whys” – they’re always asking questions even as young children, he explained, then they realise it’s more fun to be a “why not”.
It was asking “why not” that pushed him through the challenges of creating a children’s app that required a technology that hadn’t yet been developed. (This process was explained in his masterclass.)
Key take-out from Galvin: “Creatives have imagination, innovation, and talent. We forget to have bravery, stubbornness, and persistence. We need all of the above.”
And one more: “if you’ve got stories, don’t let other people saying ‘no’ get in the way…. Embrace your hurdles – it can be dangerous but rewarding.”
Galvin also delivered an information-packed Masterclass on Saturday, called Reversing The Publishing Model – How To Reinvent Your Story Across Digital Media To Getting A Book Deal. Using the creation of his Dandelion e-book app as a case study, he generously shared the process from concept development through to reaching the Number 1 downloaded app in the Australian AppStore, then scoring a 3-book print publishing deal with Random House. It was fascinating, informative and inspiring stuff.
Adam Good, director of digital media and content at Telstra Media, also had plenty to share in his presentation. He explained his concern with creative leadership in business and the two areas where he believes more training is needed. Strong leadership is one mandatory skillset; creativity is the other. “You need to flex both of those muscles to succeed” he said, naming Steve Jobs as an example.
Adam believes there are not enough CEOs in Australia that have both of these attributes, with many coming up through financial management but lacking the sales/marketing/artistic side. He said he sees a lot of businesses failing due to this; there are not enough of these type of leaders here. I wanted to ask him why – is it because our culture places less value on creativity? If you’ve grown up enduring more than an occasional ribbing for being creative like I have, then it’s easy to assume so. But that’s a debate for another time…
The MCA illuminated for Vivid Festival
Back to Adam’s presentation, which moved on to Telstra’s future vision. There were many informative stats but 20 minutes wasn’t nearly enough time and the presentation ended prematurely, with the promise of providing the rest via a Twitter link (which I followed up on).
Key take-out from Adam: “We need to change the mindset of people who don’t pay for content.”
Michael Naimark, media artist and part of the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory; and Horst Hörtner, founding member and Director of the Ars Electronica Futurelab, a world leading interdisciplinary research project uniting art, technology and society in Austria, both shared some valuable insights in their presentations.
Key take-out from Michael: “Wearable tech is inevitable.”
Key take-out from Horst: “The next revolution: key technology that has the potential to change fundamental paradigms of our society…. 3D printing, we believe, is the next revolution.”
Vivid Festival and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) were held in Sydney at the same time as X Media Lab and the city was literally bursting with creative energy. By night, Vivid’s stunning light projections transformed the Opera House, the MCA and other city buildings into dazzling palettes of colour and light. The post-conference networking event on the MCA’s balcony provided a spectacular view and an impressive end to an information-intense day.
SXSW final wrap-up: transmedia, mobile & making it through crowdfunding
By Kaye Blum
My final wrap-up of SXSW Interactive and Film sessions below. SXSW Music reports will soon be published on my music blog eyeswideclosed.com (in production).
SXSW13 Hipster warning: If only they read the signs…
My main areas of interest at SXSW Interactive (and Film) 2013 were social media, transmedia and mobile. There was a huge range of sessions and workshops on social (of which I attended as many as was physically possible), hence it gleaned the majority of my report coverage.
The queue for a session on mobile at SXSW13
SXSW13 queue blues cured by getting mobile in a Corvette
As mentioned in my first post from SXSW, there weren’t a lot of mobile themed sessions. Of the few they did have, most were held in a small venue called Wanderlust, which was a yoga studio with around 100 seats (if that). With the huge growth of mobile it was a surprising choice of venue. Consequently there were queues stretching around the block for these sessions and I missed out on both (one just after the opening night party which I’d forfeited to ensure I could get up early enough the next morning to attend). I consoled myself by taking a test-drive of the latest Corvette around the block (what a great branding exercise from Chevy).
I was also keen to attend any SXSW Film sessions featuring transmedia, interactive or cross-platform projects. Given the Film sessions overlapped between Interactive and Music, it was a challenge making the five or six I’d highlighted in the schedule. I managed to make it to two. The first, Exploring place with cross-platform storytelling, included some excellent speakers providing insights to their projects (Michel Reilhac, Liz Nord, Danny Harris and Mike Knowlton).
The second, 10 things I learned fro Kim Jong IL to make an interactive doc, featured Ann Shin and Hannah Donegan from Fathom Film Group; plus Media Ridha and Adrian Bellna from Toronto-based Jam3 (who made the award-winning Bear71).
They presented some great insights to the making of their interactive doco The Defector including spreading the word, doing your research, finance options, pushing boundaries, and the importance of testing.
I also attended a session on crowdfunding called Hacking the crowd – artists as entrepreneurs featuring musician Kim Boekbinder (The Impossible Girl) and
Molly Crabapple, Founder of Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. Both have built careers through crowdfunding and on their own, no management or labels or galleries involved.
They provided informal yet detailed accounts of their lives, creative drives, and how crowdfunding provided a powerful platform to launch their careers. Key take-out was a comment from Kim: “What we used to call art, photography, writing and music is now just called content. I make my living as a creator – it’s not about the content I’m putting out… I’m really really lucky, and I’d like a world where everybody’s that lucky.” Hell yeah.
Overall, SXSW Interactive was a full-on, intensive and pretty exhausting experience – but I still got a lot out of the sessions I attended and found it an enriching – albeit information-overloading – experience.
Being a first-timer, I learned some valuable lessons on how to make it a better experience next time. These include getting to Austin a few days before the conference actually starts to get your bearings on the many conference locations spread across town and to get over the jet-lag. I flew in from Australia via LA the day before it started which was almost two days in transit – I think it took me the whole first week to recover.
Quicker than the bus? Smart SXSW transport alternatives.
I also recommend securing central accommodation at any cost (if budget is not an issue as it was for me this time) to avoid time-consuming bus rides or relying on the virtually non-existent cabs. City hotels start booking out in August, so be quick.
Plus, make an effort to go to as many of the social events that your liver can handle: it’s a great way to meet peers (I spent too much time running from panel session to workshops to more sessions, not wanting to miss out!).
Most importantly: accept that you can’t do everything on offer (and there were over 1,000 interactive sessions to choose from this year). Try to choose a few sessions that are completely unrelated to your chosen topics – these are the sessions that can provide the most inspiration.
Would I go back? To be honest, I’m not exactly sure it provided enough bang for buck, with the cost of travel thrown in. It seemed to be over-subscribed, too much going on at once and too many people (there were 30,621 Interactive participants, plus 16,297 for Film and 25,119 for Music, although some of these numbers could have attended all three – the stats provided don’t specify).
However I fell in love with cowboy boots, duck tacos and the city of Austin itself; so I’d like to return one day and see it in its usual state without the 70,000 or so SXSW punters jammed into the city. For now, Austin, it’s over ‘n’ out.
Community Managers, data and storytelling – the key themes of social media sessions at SXSW Interactive 2013
By Kaye Blum
It has taken me months to get around to publishing the remainder of my SXSW posts…that’s down to bouncing from Austin to LA to San Fran to Melbourne then driving 1,800km to where I am now; plus three trips to Sydney and one to Brisbane since the drive. Excuses done; now on with the posts!
The Austin Motel – embracing the Austin weirdness for SXSW2013
Unsurprisingly, this year’s SXSW Interactive had a heavy focus on social media, in the form of both panels and workshops. Community Management was one of the buzzwords – or should I say phrases – and it’s a rapidly growing occupational title in the States. I attended three workshops and several panel sessions to get the low-down.
Social media panel sessions
The first panel session I caught was presented by OMMA (Online Marketing Media Advertising), titled What marketers should ask themselves about social.
CEO, Chairman & Founder of the Dachis Group, Jeffrey Dachis was also the founder of Razorfish, an innovative digital agency that created the first banner ad and first web animation (the infamous blue dot) 18 years ago (my how time flies).
Dachis couldn’t initially figure out how social media would matter to marketing. Then it dawned on him: DATA. Social could be huge if we could capture all the data.
“The democratisation of the tools of self expression have enabled us to express our ideas in a way we’ve never seen before,” he said.
“It’s a huge shift in the way we communicate our ideas… the largest shift in communications in the history of mankind. We are going to re-boot the way companies market.”
He stated that there is a shift from mass communications to massive communicators.
“With digital and social we have the power to engage audiences… we are shifting from advertising to engagement,” he added.
Author, commentator, and advertising and marketing analyst Bob Garfield concurred: “If you’re using blanket advertising to get your message across, you’re doing it all wrong. The world has changed.” The industrial revolution increased scale; the digital revolution has decimated scale.
I completely agree with Garfield: I believe the traditional model for marketing and advertising has been flipped on its head. We are now operating in an entirely different media landscape – one that keeps shifting and evolving. Social media is still in its infancy and we are slowly feeling our way through, trying what works and what doesn’t.
After doing the rounds of the SXSW trade show, I dropped in on Sustainable storytelling from disposable content to hear how creative people are “experimenting with storytelling across digital and interactive platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, to tell stories that sustain engagement and evolve as their audiences grow.” It was a great insight to some fascinating work by the likes of Kenyatta Cheese, Paul Octavious and Sarah Kramer.
A cleverly titled session – How to measure social media – pulled in plenty of punters keen for a solution. It was presented by Nicole Kelly who recently published a book on the subject. She raised some valid points:
- CEOs think marketers don’t have influence, can’t measure ROI
- We need to redefine ROI – from return on investment to return on influence, or return on engagement
- While there are currently no tools for measuring social media data available online, the fact that it’s online means it’s measurable.
Using the Sales Funnel diagram, she showed where social media aligns with brand awareness, lead generation, retention; suggesting that it should align with just one of these values rather than all three. She had additional tips on the path to sales conversion, but I wonder if her book will become quickly outdated as tech companies and the major social media players plug away at providing more direct metrics and tools.
Social media workshops
I attended three workshops on social media, including The Community Manager: enter the C-suite, with Lead Social Strategist at LiveFyre Nick Cicero, BrokenOpenMedia Founder & Lead Strategist Natalie Rodic Marsan, and The Huffington Post Community Manager Tim McDonald. The promo blurb claimed there is little support or understanding of the Community Manager’s role; so this session aimed to present a brief overview of the role, then focussed on participants collaborating to create a Community Manager Manifesto. The final manifesto can be found here and below. It was useful to hear how other Community Managers from a range of industries defined their roles, given there is often limited support or understanding of the role across organisations. In Australia, times that by 100(000).
The workshop titled How to get fans to spread your message proposed to walk attendees through step-by-step instructions on how to create, customize, execute and measure a social media program. However when a substantial amount of time (but probably not that long – I’m relatively impatient) had been spent on asking the audience to define an advocate, I took my cue to head off to another session.
The workshop I found most significant was called Storytelling – the next wave of social media marketing.
Panelists included Principal of Big Deal PR Inc. Carri Bugbee and Director of Social Strategy and Content Programming at LiveWorld Mark Williams. LiveWorld is an expert storytelling company for brands. Mark calls himself the “forest gump” of social media because he has been around since 1999, developing online communities and social media campaigns and strategies for Fortune 500 brands.
He explained that storytelling has always been the core of smart marketing. People remember stories, not messages. “The stories customers tell about your product are not necessarily the same stories that the brand is telling.”
Think of a telco or cellphone company – they’re selling their coverage, but customers might not agree that coverage is the benefit (or even that great, especially in regional parts of Australia). What the telcos should be telling is what their service is good for, what the phone or service can do.
He noted that Facebook had recently acquired Storylane, a storytelling platform. This shows the direction that Facebook is heading.
Social storytelling puts your customers’ stories as part of the brand story, he explained. There are solid business reasons for doing this, including raising ROI.
Carri, whose flight to Austin had been delayed and had Skyped into the packed auditorium on the big screen, raised the Old Spice campaign. There were no tracking tools, so the creative team were using basic excel spreadsheets, she explained. They didn’t know what they were going to do with the data when they started collecting it, just thought it might be important.
They continued the workshop with their top 10 tips for social storytelling, with a couple of key points I highlighted:
- Use each social media platform to its best advantage
- Create stand-alone platform experiences that are enhanced by cross-platform participation
- Ensure you have team members who really know your platforms – tech and community expertise
- Tell your story in pictures (including video) as well as words
- If you don’t have storytelling talent on your team, get outside help and develop an internal team (may take a while) or hire experienced writers/storytellers for project work.
The rest of the workshop delved into some of the principles of storytelling, with a valid reminder that social networks by their very nature are storytelling mediums, invented for people to tell their stories. The end. (Almost…)
Personal observations
What I found most surprising after attending these social media sessions was that no-one made a direct reference to social media as the digital evolution of old-school direct marketing – or relationship marketing, as it was often defined. Coming from a background as a DM copywriter, I see distinct parallels. Amongst other things, it’s about fostering relationships with brand advocates – and that’s one of the most powerful tools any marketer can utilise.
It’s all systems go for SXSW
So much for my wild notions of blogging every day from SXSW Interactive – it’s Day 4 and I’ve hardly had a chance to catch my breath. No matter how many tips you read or advice you get on preparing for this mammoth conference, you just don’t realise the scale of it until you’re actually right here in the thick of it!
Highlights so far:
Lean forward, lean back: tablet news experiences (Friday March 8, 2013)
Sara Quinn from the Poynter Institute generously shared their research and statistics on tablet reading behaviours and presented other relevant factoids. Maria Garcia from Garcia Media and Dave Stanton from Smart Media also shared their well-researched and relevant insights on tablet design for news. Notable takeaways: every study they did shows that eyes first go to photos on a tablet page; and no-one wants a tablet news app that looks like a newspaper.
Show and Smell 2: marketing experiences beyond visual (Saturday March 9, 2013)
These happy science boffs gave a great presentation of the latest tech developments in gadgets and devices that enhance the senses. From ‘the scent of your city’ to projected sound beams, it was a fascinating and entertaining presentation. Notable takeaway: non-visual brand cues are often stronger than we realise…Plus, a demo of a tiny wee Instagram image projector that works like an old-school slide projector but is small enough to hide in the palm of your hand. Their presentation can be reviewed at http://www.tmsw.com/sxsw2013.
Exploring place with cross-platform storytelling (Saturday March 9, 2013)
This panel session showcased transmedia and cross-platform film projects that explore place using technologies such as geo-tagging, augmented reality and interactive video. Michel Reilhac’s transmedia project combines scenes from Paris locations in classic films with actual locations in an app with themed walks around the city. It allows you to re-make the film scene and upload it, access information about the film and the location, and more. It is scheduled for release in June 2013 and will be syndicated to cities such as Rome, Berlin and New York. Mike Knowlton from storycode.org MC’d the panel and provided his own valuable insights. Favourite takeaway from this event (a quote from Mike): “All the technology in the world doesn’t mean anything if the story stinks.”
On both Saturday and Sunday I missed several sessions (mostly with mobile themes) due to queues stretching around three quarters of the venue’s block, which was hugely disappointing. There is so much to choose from with so much going on simultaneously – and just so many people – organisers and locals encourage ‘going with the flow’. I’ll give it a shot… But right now I’m off to a panel called How to Measure Social Media, then to my next workshop called Storytelling – the Next Wave of Engagement.
On the road again: heading to South by South West
By Kaye Blum
After a year’s hiatus, ewritersjourney.com will soon be back on the road (by air, natch) to Austin, Texas for this year’s SXSW conference with Platinum Badge access to Interactive, Film and Music sessions.
Scouring the schedule has been no easy task – there are over 5,000 sessions. I’ve already spent several days trawling through and I’m still not even half-way! Choosing what to attend is presenting quite a dilemma, with as many as 40 sessions listed in the same time-slots.
Naturally, as part of the ewritersjourney.com research, my focus is on mobile, tablets, convergent media, transmedia, locative media and social media. There are not many sessions on interactive film, however there is one Australian group (Epic Films) presenting a case study of their interactive project http://www.wasterlanderpanda.com which I’ll try to catch.
As well as doing my own research, I’ll also be reporting for several industry publications (soon to be announced).
The music line-up is going to be spectacular with over 40 Australian bands attending this year, including a couple of my favourite Melbourne bands – Alpine and Hiatus Kaiyote – along with Sydney folksters Georgia Fair and stalwarts The Audreys. I’ve just read on http://www.noise11.com that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will be showcasing so if that’s true, exhausting myself for 10 days of back-to-back workshops, panel sessions and gigs will be well worth it 🙂
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