2009 September

Social Media for Young Elite Athletes and Performers

September 15, 2009 By Des Walsh

When I first met Michael Jeh, former top cricketer and now staff member at Griffith University on Australia’s Gold Coast, back in June, I was impressed by the story he told me of his Skool Project and was very pleased to sign up. Today I had the privilege of participating.

I did a 90 minute session with the students about social media and social networking, with an emphasis on developing and protecting their personal/career brand. More of that in a separate post.

Right now, here is a short interview I did with Michael just before the next lot of presenters kicked off with the final sessions of the project’s second day. The Gold Coast City Council gets an appreciative mention and there is a challenge to other levels of government and the business sector to get behind this terrific project to support and develop our young leaders.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: elite athletes, elite performers, Gold Coast, Griffith University, Queensland, SEQ, Skool Poject 2009, young leaders, youth

Telstra Shuts Down Corporate Blogging Experiment

September 8, 2009 By Des Walsh

nwat490

Telstra, Australia’s still-dominant telco, yesterday shut down its corporate blogging site nowwearetalking.com.au

CEO David Thodey’s letter announcing the shutdown promised “Telstra will launch a new corporate blogging website later this year”.

In keeping with the expressions of opinion from the opinionati when nowwearetalking launched back in 2005, from congratulatory/welcoming through curious/cautious to dismissive, blogosphere commentary on the shutdown, for example the comment stream on the mUmBRELLA post on the story, covers a spectrum of views from the “maybe it was a good thing” school to the unapologetically “good riddancers”. My impression is that there are significantly fewer voices saying it was or might have been a good thing than there are those of people glad, indeed very glad, to see the site gone.

Long time commentator on telecoms, the always well-informed and, in my observation over a number of years, always straight-talking Stuart Corner is in the good riddance camp.

Liam Tung at ZDNet provides a fairly non-judgemental synopsis of the nowwearetalking story and quotes mUmBRELLA’s Tim Burrows as being disappointed that the site is gone.

I believe it was a good thing that the experiment was tried. If nothing else, it showed up what can happen with a corporate blogging site when a corporation is battling not only its competitors but the nation’s government.

The general impression I have from zipping through the headlines on this topic in my online searching is that Tim Burrows was probably on the money when he opined yesterday to ZDNet that the site was just too much associated with former Telstra mouthpiece, the larger than life Phil Burgess and the Trujillo headed regime, and had to go.

No doubt the bones of this experiment in corporate blogging will be picked over, with lessons drawn and theories propounded, for some time to come.

Media students, start your keyboards! I’m betting your lecturer will be setting nowwearetalking as an assignment before the week is out.

Image info: screenshot of nowwearetalking.com from Dec 2005, from The Wayback Machine at Archive.org

Filed Under: Blogging, Enterprise 2.0 Tagged With: Australia, corporate blogging, nowwearetalking, Phil Burgess, telcos, Telstra, Tim Burrows, Trujillo

David Meerman Scott at Social Media Club Sydney

September 4, 2009 By Des Walsh

This has been for me a week of social media highs, attending Social Media Club Sydney and the Future of Influence Summit, also in Sydney (with a linked event in San Francisco). So many new ideas and fresh perspectives to consider!

One of several particularly memorable experiences of the week was hearing David Meerman Scott, at Social Media Club Sydney. The presentation was, for me, an excellent blend of insights and illustrations, delivered with a nice blend of seriousness and humor. A couple of items that stood out:

The amazing achievement of Cindy Gordon at Universal Orlando Resort in translating a briefing for 7 bloggers into a viral outreach to an estimated 350,000,000 people around the world, for the launch of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – you can read about it at page 6 ofextract David’s downloadable “The New Rules of Viral Marketing”.

The four ways of getting attention, three old, one new, which in my notes I summarized as Buy (advertising), Beg (PR), Bug (selling), or Earn (publishing free content with blogs etc) – the reference to PR as begging got under the skins of some people in the crowd but the speaker was well up to the challenge.

There is an interview by Valeria Maltoni with David Meerman Scott, in which he explains those four attention-getting approaches.

Having been on the receiving end of ill-considered, basically inept pitches from PR agencies (no, whatever you might think or hope for, dear pitching pr person, I am not a mommy blogger), and at the same time recognizing that there are some very switched-on PR people who are very considered and thoroughly ept, I had no problem with David’s explanations.

Now I really must order David’s book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, subtitled How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly.

Filed Under: Business, PR 2.0, Social Media Tagged With: David Meerman Scott, smcsyd, social media club Sydney