The second battle of who’s-responsible-for-the-website

When I first started working in web agency world in the Jurassic era of 1999, we had a battle on our hands. Because the web was ‘to do with computers’ and a bit new, more often than not it fell to the I.T. folk in our client’s organisations to lead on web strategy, design and development. Read more…

Tom wrote this on 08.05.08 – what do you think?
It's filed in the Social media, Strategy box

Monetising niche social networks

Will, Anna and I are at the Mad.co.uk Social Networking & Media for Business conference today in drizzly London Victoria. I get extremely fidgety if I am made to sit and watch presentations so I’ve ducked out for a bit to write this. Hope Will doesn’t take offence as I think he’s speaking right now. I’m sure he’s entertaining everyone :)

It’s not about viewer numbers

Twitter has been awash with buzz about at article on the front page of Friday’s Guardian about how Downing Street is using Twitter as a communication channel.

Using social media to engage employees?

I stumbled across this article from the Management Issues website which discusses a report from the consultancy Watson Wyatt, which argues that employers are missing a trick by trying to clamp down on the use of social media in the workplace. Michael Rudnick, global intranet and portal leader at Watson Wyatt who writes the report, suggests

“..employers that avoid social media altogether are missing an important opportunity and running the risk of alienating Generation X-ers and Millennials. Embracing the technology with proper planning, guidelines and change management for its use are effective approaches to ensuring success”

Instead of restricting Generation X employees from using tools they are familiar with, engaged in and enjoy using, it discusses how social media can be used to fulfil the important internal communication objective of engaging employees.

The article touches upon ways that employers can use social media to communicate information & memos to employees, and also encouraging them to participate in company-wide discussion through the use of blogs, blog feedback, wikis, podcasts and so on.

Great idea. Read more…

Anna wrote this on 19.03.08 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Business, Employee engagement, Social media, Strategy box

Time for a change - why you need to update your Google Analytics tracking code

Google Analytics Dashboard

The analytics tool we use most often in NixonMcInnes websites is Google Analytics. Analytics tools help you gain detailed insight into how your customers are interacting with your website.

Google launched a new version of their free Google Analytics package a few weeks ago.

Benefits of the new implementation include:

More reliable tracking capabilities
Lighter code
Advanced features and sophisticated reporting
New Multi-line Graph (beta feature) that graphs two different metrics against each other over time
Reports available in six additional languages, bringing the total number of supported languages to 25

What is social media for?

‘War…[boom boom, bam bam, donk], what is it good for?’

Yeah brother. Well what about social media? [boom boom, dank dank, dom] Haaaaaa-bsolutely nuthin’...

(Or is it?)

This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. You see, I’m a bit crazy, a bit driven and I need to achieve. But I’ve been a bit like a rocket-jet without a steering wheel. I’ve achieved bits and pieces but at the highest and most important level, I’ve lacked PURPOSE.

Which has led me to question how I use my skills and especially those of the wonderful team we’ve assembled at Nixon McInnes. When such great people come together and gel, is it reasonable to allow them to work bloody hard in an interesting, fast-moving and fun area without occasionally stepping back and asking ‘are we really giving the world our very best here?’.

Isn’t that a responsibility I have to myself and my team, to check the reason why we’re doing what we do?

Another way to frame the same question is to look at our team, our skills, our knowledge and our passions and ask: what is social media *for*?

One thing social media can be harnessed for is improving how organisations conduct their marketing. This is our line of work, and we are building a good name and reputation for ourselves here. These days we tend to work with larger organisations and so our efforts can genuinely help our client’s consumers. So in a very very small way, we’re making a positive difference one project at a time.

But that’s not enough for me, and I don’t think it’s enough for our team.

I know you, dear reader, know this and don’t wish for me to patronise or come over all sandalwood and tie-dye (duuuuude), but this world that we live in has far greater problems than how to sell handbags. And so whilst as anyone who has worked with me knows I do have genuine passion for improving how big brands communicate with their consumers, I reckon I can recruit a whole new level of passion and energy for using social media to work on the world’s biggest and most real issues.

Here’s a few of the biggies off the top o’ me head in no particular order:

Health
Poverty
Education
The environment
Politics & access to democracy
Human rights
Equality

You get the idea.

If it’s big, important, worthy and you (or I, more accurately) immediately pretend it isn’t there and wish it’d go away and stop interrupting your (my) thoughts about whether to buy the prawn or the roast beef sandwich, it’s probably on the list.

So this is pretty much where we’re up to, at the very start of this thinking and talking process as a team.

We’re absolutely not about to stop doing what we do, that’d a damn good plan B to tease us away from a Plan A that is currently fun and rewarding. But what we do is ever-evolving and adaptive and that is why we have survived and thrived over the years - and so we are about to start thinking about other things we can do in addition to our work harnessing social media for marketing. It’s another iteration of Project Nixon McInnes.

And please allow me to be very clear: this ain’t about Corporate Social Tickboxing either. This is about real differences made by harnessing our team’s unique blend of skills and experiences. And it’s not about not-for-profit necessarily. I guess the vision is of a blend of things: online communities, websites, applications & tools, channels, campaigns, resources, events (real world, even!) - whatever we feel can make a difference.

So here’s some questions for you, and I’d love to hear what you think.

What do you personally think social media are for?
Can social media be employed effectively to make even a tiny difference to these issues?
What is it about social media that might help address these causes?
Which projects or causes inspire, grip or otherwise distract you personally?

I look forward to the conversation now :)

Will McInnes wrote this on 08.02.08 – 12 comments
It's filed in the Business, Internet, Marketing, NixonMcInnes, Off topic, Social media, Strategy box

Thoughts on the beta of the BBC’s site redesign

The BBC have published a beta release of their newly redesigned homepage.

The new design has clearly been influenced by personal start pages like NetVibes, iGoogle and PageFlakes. You can select from a pre-defined list of BBC widgets to include on your homepage - the stuff you’d expect: News, Sport, Weather etc. Read more…

Tom wrote this on 16.12.07 – 5 comments
It's filed in the Design, Strategy, Widgets box