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I still don’t take meetings. I make tweetings. @clarocada

“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot masturbate” – Dave Barry

I don’t do meetings any more. I used to do a lot of meetings. But not any more.

The change from meeting to tweeting – where a series of brief exchanges (each a maximum of 140 characters) can make up the content – has been brought about by a variety of factors over the past 15 years or so – but here are the ten factors that I think are critical.

IN GOOGLE TIME
I no longer have a phone book, business directories or yellow pages. Those were essential when I started my first corporation in 1993. But now, I use Google. On my Nokia N86, as I move. As a result, I have less patience for slow ways of doing things – I am impatient. I demand speed, efficiency, and immediate results.

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Do marketers smell the social media coffee yet?

This article was originally published at Digital Biographer, also written by David Petherick, in January 2008. That’s Eight. A year ago. I think it still is very relevant a year later…

The significance of social networks is now starting to become obvious to the marketing departments of larger companies, largely due to two factors – 1) Traditional advertising channels are proving less and less effective and 2) Marketing and advertising agencies have started to realise where people are spending their time.

They have seen the writing on the wall – with one particular statistic likely to be a challenge for many a marketing manager: “Social networks will become the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns – email has been the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns since the mid 90s, but social networks will overtake it in 2008.”

Another fact that’s staring marketers in the face – a tipping point that only has one further hurdle to clear: “In October 2007, Social Networks accounted for 7.7% of upstream Internet traffic to all other websites, making the category the second most important source of traffic after Search Engines.”

The next hurdle of course is for social networks to become a more important source of traffic than search engines. That’s a whole blog of its own, however.

An article in this morning’s Financial Times is entitled “Business urged to woo social network figures“, and uses language very firmly couched in the tradition of ‘moving product’ and the pages of publications such as ‘Campaign‘. This all suggests to me that although businesses may have woken up, they have not actually smelt the coffee – they still have the urge to sell cereals.
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Cyber-Biographer makes it to Russia.

I am a ‘Keeber-biograph‘, meaning Cyber-Biographer.
This is a term I came across when searching through Yandex, the Russian search engine that’s been in the news recently, and which is rightly proud of the fact that, thanks to them, Russia is one of only four countries where Google is not the significantly dominant search engine.

The term was coined in a blog by Maya Kim, in the context of an article by Steve Rubel entitled ‘Three Emerging Digital Careers to Watch‘ and I was interested to see that only one of the three terms Steve had used had been expanded and given further clarification using English terms in the context of a Russian blog.

Steve’s term of Super Cruncher was unchanged, and Chief Customer Experience Officer was simply translated into Russian as ‘Head of the Department of Quality Service for Clients’. But his term ‘Digital Storytellers’ was translated into Russian as ‘Cyber-Biographer’, and also expanded to include the English terms ‘digital storyteller, cyberspace concierge, blog butler, ghost blogger, digital biographer‘.

I recall the terms ‘Cyber Concierge’, ‘Blog Butler’ and ‘Ghost Blogger’ were used when BBC News 24 wrote about my work as a Digital Biographer over a year ago, but I was surprised, and quite delighted, to find this reference being made. (For those of you who may not be aware of the fact, I speak fairly good Russian and am also known as ‘The Digial Biographer‘.)

I like the term Digital Storyteller – it’s a good description of some elements of my work. But I still think that ‘biographer’ is closer to describing things accurately:

biography

noun ( pl. -phies)
an account of someone’s life written by someone else.
• writing of such a type as a branch of literature.
• a human life in its course : although their individual biographies are different, both are motivated by a similar ambition.

David Petherick (Digital Biographer) interviewed on BBC Radio Wales

David Petherick is the Founder and CEO of Clarocada – but he’s also “The Digital Biographer” according to the BBC…

“I’ve no idea how the 25 minutes or so I spent talking with Adam Walton of BBC Radio Wales yesterday will sound when it’s edited down to perhaps 5, but we had a good old chat.” said David.

All of this follows on from the BBC article which appeared on 16th July “Meet the Digital Biographer“, which detailed how David had been working for some months as the “ghost blogger” for Thomas Power, Chairman of business networking site Ecademy.

“There were of course questions related to online identity and the corporate / personal persona. I had to clarify that I don’t handle email and messages or blog comments for my customers, but do write blog content. It’s a fascinating area, and Adam said he’d like more time to talk about this – one great question was — what do I do if my work for someone results in them being offered a column or guest blog? The answer… well, you’ll have to listen in.”

The programme goes out at 17:03, Sunday 12th August, repeated Wednesday, 15th August, and is online in the archive for a week from Sunday. You can listen in online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/sites/mousemat/

David would like to thank several Ecademy Members for demonstrating social networking in action, by providing some great soundbites for him to consider on the morning prior to the interview here in the Blogs Section at Ecademy: Why has social networking become so important?.

Specifically, David’s thanks go to Dan Field, Samantha Cannell, Robert Greig, Mark Lee, Iain Wilson and Philip Calvert.

Inside Ecademy BlackStar: Belonging, Sharing, Winning (25 days of Attitude)

Why do people stop reading your Ecademy Profile? | Complete Certainty: Reliable Business Hosting | Do you Speaka Plain English? | Seats at David Petherick’s Barcelona Masterclass: 12-Feb-07

My Testimonials | My MarketPlace Adverts

1: Act 1 Scene 1

On the 28th of January 2006, I joined Ecademy, having come across it as part of my ongoing research and investigation into blogging, social networks, and ‘web 2.0′ in general. Within ten minutes, I knew that PowerNetworker status was the only sensible starting point, and I also recognised that Ecademy had something that an Israeli company I’d been working with needed – and vice versa. I wrote to, and had a response from, Thomas and Penny Power, the very next day.

By February, Ecademy had a deal on the table with Conduit to create the Ecademy Toolbar, and I was beginning to recognise that by sharing ideas and contacts, I might not be getting paid for “the deal” in cash, but I was earning goodwill from all the parties I brought together. Goodwill, in my years of building businesses, I consider is more valuable than money – because you can’t buy it – you have to earn it – and when you need to spend it – it’s inflation-proof.

I started to recognise that my skills could be used in Ecademy in a very specific way: to rewrite profiles, and market place adverts. After all I am a journalist, copy writer, photographer, designer, can code HTML and tell a story. So the “profile makeover” service was created. After honing my talents on a few willing friends and volunteers at Ecademy, I finally managed to persuade Thomas Power that I should rewrite his profile in July 2006. When he published the result and posted a blog about it, I soon realised that I had just invented an industry. By October of 2006, I had a constant three week waiting list of customers, and they were almost half referrals from existing customers.

I decided that I should investigate joining BlackStar: for two reasons. 1) Some of the best networkers in Ecademy were Blackstars; 2) Many of my customers were Blackstars; and 3) The energy and focus these people all seemed to have intrigued me, as did the idea of a wealth profile – something that I kept seeing and hearing about.

In correspondence and meetings with Thomas and other Black Stars, I saw that being “a member” somehow helped other Blackstars to get to the point quickly, establish a level of intimicy and trust that seemed almost automatic, intuitive. I also read up on wealth profiles and the work of Roger Hamilton. I decided to apply in December, filled out an application form, and had an interview of about an hour and a half, at the end of which, I was accepted as a member.

I made my payment, and within two hours, was astonished to see that I had an inbox message welcoming me to BlackStar. What? How did that colleague know so soon? I looked at my profile summary, and it suddenly dawned on me: my little membership icon had changed from orange to black. I was a BlackStar.

It was the 29th of December, 2006. I did not quite know it then, but I had the most stimulating, fulfilling and rewarding three weeks of my life ahead of me, which were beautifully crystallised on Monday 22nd January, at my first ever (and I hear the biggest ever) BlackStar Monthly Meeting in London.

(Free MP3 Recorded version of this story will be available shortly – just send an email to blackstar25@searchsuccess.net and you’ll get to grab it when it’s edited.)

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Business Blogs still make sense…

I originally posted this message in June 2005, but it still holds true…

A survey carried out by Backbonemedia on business blogging has some amazing conclusions…

“…build trust, collect valuable feedback and foster strengthened relationships while and at the same time benefiting in ways that are tangible.”

Just like in other aspects of life, success breeds success. What we see with successful blogs is a chain reaction that starts with a sincere interest on the part of the bloggers to provide their audience with great value in terms of useful and engaging content in the form of information, help, discussion and ideas. If a company can harness their customers’ knowledge and ideas, a company will find better ways to satisfy their customers needs and wants.

Look at the executive summary or read the full report (70 page PDF file). Thanks to Radiant Marketing Group for highlighting this report.

Certain Host: Reliable, affordable Web Hosting is here…

Certain Host from Clarocada is launched to the general public in the UK today, 1st of July 2006 – offering reliable, affordable and certain web and email services, and features Speaka! in its identity…

You have not one, but TWO domains hosted with CertainHost. Host 2 domains.
You also get to Register a new Domain name for FREE – .COM .NET .ORG .INFO .BIZ or .US. Yes, free. A free Domain name.
99.9% Server Uptime Guarantee
24/7 Technical Support with a UK non-0870 number! (020-7993-2768
1 Hour Support Response Guarantee 9am-2am GMT. Seven days a week.
Instant Account Activation – sign up, and you’re in business. No waiting around.
2 Hosted Domains – yes, two. One of them is a free, new registration
20 Hosted Subdomains – so you can have, for example, http://ecademy.mydomain.com as well as http://www.mydomain.com, http://usa.mydomain.com, http://news.mydomain.com etc, to offer your customers customised content and additional ‘doorways’ into your web site.
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