Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

Youth Parliament Elections campaign – a social media case study

Monday, July 12th, 2010
Make Your Vote Count! Scottish Youth Parliament Elections

Campaign graphic

Later this week I’ll be attending a national awards ceremony, at which one of our campaigns has been nominated for an award. ** UPDATE – we won! **

Edinburgh’s 2009 Scottish Youth Parliament election campaign has already won a Bronze award in the Marketing Society’s Star Awards – the only local authority campaign to win in any category. It was also a finalist in the CIPR national awards, in the category of best campaign under £10k.

It has now been shortlisted for the “Government to Citizen Communications” category of the Good Communication Awards, and I’ll be representing my organisation at the ceremony on Thursday.

The tremendous reception that the campaign has received is thanks to the enthusiasm, innovation and hard work not only of my colleagues, but also of the young people involved in the elections, and I’m proud to represent such a campaign as just one of the many people who worked to make it happen.

The following gives a flavour of the efforts, and hopefully offers some inspiration to others, especially those involved in e-participation and youth engagement.

More about the campaign and our use of social media

Hard lessons in social media: political suicide

Friday, April 9th, 2010

I’ve just updated my list of social media lessons learned the hard way with details of a Labour candidate who appears to have committed political suicide on Twitter.

Read more about Stuart MacLennan’s costly social media gaffe

Creating a dynamite campaign

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Today I found myself in the opulent surroundings of Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel for a breakfast seminar, run by Precedent, on creating dynamite campaigns. The following are some of my notes.

The seminar was lead by John Campbell and Mark Baillie, and John began by considering the good, the bad and the ugly. Examples of good campaigns included:

  • Coca-Cola’s 80s/90s “Can’t Beat the Feeling” adverts – a tune that many of us still recognise today and an excellent example of strong branding.
  • The University of Birmingham’s Circle of Influence campaign to raise £60 million. Astonishingly, they’ve already reached the £50m mark, combining online strategies with a more traditional print campaign.
  • Drinkaware’s drink diary, which allows you to monitor your drinking and compare with friends, adding a social element to the mix. You can even download a phone app. I couldn’t help thinking this could backfire though – imagine people using the diary to compare how much they could drink in a week and actually trying to beat each other!
  • Volkswagen’s Fun Theory website, featuring various viral videos aimed at making people change their behaviour for the better:

John notes that common factors to all of these successes were creativity and innovation.

More on creating dynamite content

2009 on the web – some retrospectives

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

As we glide gracefully out of the noughties, here are some of the best retrospectives of the past year on the web.

2009 on the web – some retrospectives

Working in a Wired World – a talk by Euan Semple

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Euan Semple (image from BCS website)

Euan Semple (image via BCS)

Tonight I went along to the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh to listen to an inspiring talk by Euan Semple on how social media can make organisations more effective. I furiously scribbled reams of notes on a few scraps of paper and have reconstructed them here as best I could. Apologies to Euan if I have misquoted or misinterpreted any of his points. The talk was organised by the Edinburgh branch of the British Computer Society.

During Euan’s time at the BBC, he pioneered the use of weblogs, wikis and online forums to enable staff to work more collaboratively. Now an independent advisor on social computing, his insights help bring a clarity of thought to what is, for many, a brave new world.

My summary of Euan’s talk

Accessibility and social media – my presentation

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Those of you who read my overview of accessibility and social media back in June know that I spoke about the subject at the ScotWeb2 unconference. Liz Ayzan, from LGEO Research, has kindly posted a section of my talk to YouTube (also available via Liz’s blog post about the event). I thought (in keeping with the very theme of the talk) that I should offer a text alternative of that video. A full summary of the talk can still be found on my original overview (as linked above).

View the video and read the transcript of my presentation

My WordPress plugins

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Inspired by Jack Pickard’s own list, here’s a list of the WordPress plugins I currently use.

See my list of WordPress plugins

Accessibility and Social Media – an overview

Thursday, June 18th, 2009
My talk at Scotweb2

My presentation at ScotWeb2 - photo courtesy of Jadu

This post explores some of the issues that I plan to discuss with attendees at tomorrow’s ScotWeb2 event in Edinburgh, regarding the current state of accessibility on Social Media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. I hope to have some interesting feedback to post here after tomorrow, so for now here’s an overview of the subject. I’ve also thrown in a few open questions to kick-start the discussion.

[Edit: see a summary of the event on the ScotWeb2 blog]

Read the rest of my introduction to Social Media accessibility

Cybersquatting 2.0 – protecting your name in Social Media

Monday, June 8th, 2009

The rise and rise of Social Networking Sites has brought about new risks to an organisation’s online brand, but whilst my last post explored Web 2.0 mistakes which organisation could make themselves, another type of risk is what others may do with your brand if you don’t get there first, through Social Media Cybersquatting. The risks of cybersquatters in a Web 2.0 world

Social Media lessons learned the hard way

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Barely a week goes past without another news story about some hapless individual getting into trouble as a result of Social Media. Accordingly I’ve decided to keep a record of some of these tales of woe. See the list of Social Media gaffes