We are inviting applications from consultants at senior and mid-weight levels to join our growing team of specialist social media practioners. We have one vacancy immediately, and possibly another soon. Please find out more here and apply.

The long version:

A while back I announced, in a blaze of glory*, our search for a PR Pirate - someone to come from the ‘traditional PR’ world and help our clients with their new digital communications strategies.

Unfortunately, no sooner had I launched the search than we won a couple of significant pieces of work which this new team member would’ve - in an ideal world - helped to deliver. Instead, Anna and I went into full-blown delivery mode, which meant that the hiring process went on ice. There was literally no time (OK, not literally).

Being upfront, there were also issues with the hiring process, which was no bed of roses**:

• the title I gave the role of Account Director didn’t meet the scope of the role, which my PR pals told me was more what you’d call a ‘Board Director’ - a naive mistake on my behalf
• the double-bubble challenge of finding someone this niche AND keen on living or already living in Brighton seemed to restrict the number of the most senior-level candidates

Something good has come out of all of this, though.

Having done the work ourselves so far, Anna and I have been able to evolve a much clearer of understanding of what the company does and DOESN’T need. My understanding of how we’re going to shape our teams in the future has evolved, and I’ve been refining these ideas with Jenni, Pete and Tom.

As a result we now have a clearer idea of our needs.

We were building here at NixonMcInnes is a hybrid consultancy offering clients a range of services focused not by the ‘what we do’ but by the ‘where we do it’.

The ‘what we do’ range of services now regularly spans Research, Strategy & Planning, Training, Digital PR and Design & Build. This range gets our clients from ‘don’t know a thing’ to ‘actively engaging’.

The ‘where we do it’ remains the same as we continue to grow and enhance our ability to help clients in the specialised and evolving sphere of social media.

So our needs are a little broader than when we kicked off the search before.

We would still love for a senior consultant from a PR background to be this next hire: that will be spiffing if it happens. But equally we are now more open-minded to the benefits that someone from a market research, online marketing, agency planning or other related discipline can bring. Because our clients need help in a range of areas.

So if you or someone you know is passionately online, and keen to participate in how the internet is changing the world we live in from an HQ here in Brighton, UK, please read the job description and get in touch.

Alternatively, if anything is unclear or you have some feedback, I’m almost all ears. Thank you.

(* and ** are Bon Jovi references. No idea why).

1. We’re looking for an excellent, nice, smart person to join the team!
2. The backstory can be found here
3. Everyone uses the terms ‘Consultant’ and ‘Social Media’ - in our case they both actually apply to the role and aren’t meaningless buzz words :)
   

Role:

Consultant
We are currently looking for mid-weight and senior-level consultants - packages will be negotiated based on skills and experience.

Purpose

The purpose of the role is to:
•    Profitably deliver measurable business value to clients by consistently solving their problems and helping them learn.
•    Nurture and grow our relationships with a small number of major brand clients.
•    Develop a unique and profitable practice area in the company.

Brief overview of responsibilities

Understanding client needs: At all levels from market and business needs to specific project and personal needs.

Build relationships: Build a strong and trusting relationship with the key sponsor, the day-to-day clients and as many additional client contacts as possible.

Creating a practice: With the team’s support to begin with, create a personal practice of topic and/or sector expertise and package this knowledge into services that profitably meet both client needs and the company’s mission.

Deliver to clients: Profitably deliver the projects and engagements that give the clients the results they seek.

Managing people: Lead, influence and manage team members working on projects, when they may not directly report to you.

Providing intelligence: Keep the internal NM team informed of the client’s strategic and tactical direction.

Developing NixonMcInnes: Contribute to the broader development and growth of NM.
Passions and interests: A passion for the web and social media, commitment to our highly open, transparent and democratic company culture.

If you are interested in applying (or know of someone who may be!) please download the full job description which includes details on how to apply.

Thank you.

Welcome back to the second in the series of the a-z of social media challenge, in which we try and find an alphabet of social media stuff that we think, is groovy.
Today I’m grabbing the baton from Anna, I’m continuing with B, and when I’m done, one of my esteemed colleagues will take the baton for C, get it?
Please do add other cool stuff that you can think for the B’s into the comments.

B

BBC backstage
BBC backstage is a developer network, it purpose is to encourage the use of BBC data in “mashups” and other online applications, at present it’s only for non-commercial use.

Their tag line is: “use our stuff to build your stuff”

Pretty straight forward really, a nice example of this is a “mashup” of BBC news with user generated content from Flickr (the photo sharing website) and you tube.

It doesn’t always work amazingly, but a good example of what can be done.

Check it out here to see the latest news stories linked with the latest user generated content:
http://www.richardaskew.co.uk/infusednews/

Blip.tv
Blip is a video blogging / podcast service, I really like it.

It seems a lot more flexible than You tube with less of the rubbish.

The player is really nice and unfussy, which is often a big turn off with the You tube player which feels cramped.

Advertising is the great thing about Blip, if you happen to make a video series that loads of people are attracted to they’ll find a sponsor for the show and split the profits with you 50/50. Nice.

Checkout the A’s here:
http://www.nixonmcinnes.co.uk/category/a2z-of-social-media/

Anyone got any more cool B’s? Would be great to see them!

Update from Twitter:

ihowie: @willmcinnes - The marketing of The Secret? Again may be I’m confusing Brand Mobilisation with Brand Infiltration.

ihowie: @willmcinnes LIlly Allen was unsigned and used social to get a buzz going and that lead to a record contract.

ihowie: @willmcinnes Brand Infiltration - The Obama campaign - they registered 1.5 million volunteers using Social Media.

marceatsworld: @willmcinnes it’s great for travelling. Check in, post photos and notes at locations based on GPS.

rosiesherry: @willmcinnes B is for @BarackObama

ihowie: @willmcinnes More Bs… Bookmarking, Best Practices, Branding Strategies, Buy ads in Social Media…

ihowie: @willmcinnes Bs… Brand infiltration, Blogger (service), Blogroll, micro-Blogging, Biggest Mistakes Made in Social Media, B to B Blogs

james2m: @willmcinnes BarCamp

empika: @willmcinnes Boo Bees?

prycie: @willmcinnes Bebo. I am too old but I have heard its what the kids do

robin1966: @willmcinnes Bahu, Backlink,

marceatsworld: @willmcinnes Brightkite! One of my new favourite iPhone apps

We are really pleased to announce that we have been nominated for Best Blog by the Digital Media Awards: South.

Competition was really fierce – there were 144 entries from around 96 companies and the feedback from the judging panel was of the high quality of entries; however we haven’t won yet; the shortlists are now available, go take a look.

The award ceremony will take place on Thursday 27th November and winners will be announced on the night.

Wish us luck!

It’s important to recognise though that we’re not all perfect in real life, we all make slip ups, say what we don’t mean, lash out and react to unfair criticism and negativity.  We all need a ’sanity check’ now and again, something to remind us of what’s really important and what will help us stay on track and on this mission of creating stronger unions between our brands and our consumers.

So with this in mind, we have decided to put together a charter to help guide us in how we conduct ourselves on the social web when faced with negativity.

Here’s a starter for ten:

• Don’t be afraid of criticism. Be curious about it.  There is always a reason behind it.  By getting to the bottom of it, we are best equipped to deal with it. Make like a doctor who suppresses an emotional reaction to clear their minds to best understand and diagnose the problem.

• Criticism can come in many forms - fair, unfair, fairly put, snidely put, constructive, unconstructive, wrong, right, right but put in a ’school yard’ way and so on.  But if we stay consistent in our approach we can soon weed out the bad from the good, convince the sceptics and learn from the constructive critics, and our reputation for being decent and consistent will see others come to our support when we really are being unfairly attacked or misunderstood.

• Negativity presents opportunity.  An opportunity to learn and grow from constructive criticism, an opportunity to explore and understand unfair criticism to get to the point where you can give your side to the story that they may not be aware of, to turn around sceptics in the same way, or to not rise to ‘trolls’ and see them scuttle away (due to not getting the equally troll like reaction they were hoping for).

• Don’t be afraid of debate.  But be clear on the line between debate and argument.  Argument is unconstructive and alienating, debate is healthily challenging and exciting.  Debate is based on only after listening, understanding and acknowledging another’s viewpoint putting forth your own viewpoint, argument is based on emotional reaction and failing to look beyond your own rationale.

• Don’t be afraid of mistakes made – practice makes perfect as they say, and no truer than in finding the way of conducting yourself in the world and now the new online world.  If you make mistakes, if you react in a way you’re not proud of, hold your hands up, put them right - you will be respected for your honestly, braveness and awareness of your own failings.

• Get on with it, react fast - fresh and honest beats ‘too late and carefully contrived’.

• And finally, keep in mind all the time the ‘8 magical philosophies’ of conducting yourself generally online (and real life too!) that we like to hark on about at NM:

1. be authentic
2. be transparent
3. be helpful
4. be remarkable
5. pull, don’t push
6. be open
7. act fast
8. be brave

Can you think of anything else that should be included on this list?

Chris Orwig:
The Art and Craft of Photographic Impact

Bearing in mind that I’m an avid camera-weilder, let’s kick it off with my first stand-out session… and not just because it’s a talk on photography at a Flash conference!

One point that stood out for me was Chris’ notion of photography being very much like poetry, “what the novelist says in 10,000 words the poet says in 10.” That a photographer takes an idea then reduces and simplifies it. A process that easily translates to many creative endeavours, including design and development. We can use always less to communicate an idea. Less is very often more, reminding me of this very famous quote by writer Antoine de Saint Exupery:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

He ended his session with a series of projects (they’re online so you can play along at home) as well as some book and lens recommendations.

Talking of lenses, he also touched on the perceived need to get more kit to make you a better photographer which is, of course, not true. Get out there and take photos, carry your camera around and shoot.

Erik Natzke:
Beyond the Knowledge: The Art of Play

Erik took us through his creative process of sketching out his ideas through to the finished product. His latest work involves using particles to create a brush which then draws colours from an underlying photograph to generate “paint”. Incredibly difficult to explain (Erik did it so much better!) but the results speak for themselves.

Aral Balkan:
Grab the Low-Hanging Fruit (or 5 Rules for Hedonistic Creatives)

Create. Share. Profit. Play.

Is that five? Er, anyway…

Create. Make something that works and worry about evolving it later. Don’t be scared about bashing something out and architecture… crappy code is better than no code and you can always change things later. Get it working, out there, and go from there.

Share. If you share your idea before you’ve started to create anything you create a responsibility to move on get it done.

Profit. Earn money doing what you love. If you aren’t doing what you love in your day job, make a little money on side-projects.

Most importantly… Play. There are no mistakes. Make and use happy tools… simple things that are practical, hackable and delightful.

There was one little app that Aral demonstrated that I thought was rather cool. Scratch is a MIT-developed drag and drop programming language. Basically a really intuitive way to help “young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.”

Jeremy Thorp:
Emergence

Jeremy demonstrated a couple of his recent personal projects he’d developed in Processing. Firstly, The Colour Economy:

“What if pixels were free? What if they could trade their computer-given red, green, and blue values in pursuit of a profit?

Here, we see a clear example of what I call ‘bridging behaviour’. Though individual traders are limited as to how far they can ’see’, colour groups often form ‘trade routes’ allowing them to trade over much longer distances. This is not specifically programmed behaviour, and indeed was somewhat surprising to see.”

Secondly, Plumage grabs photos from Flickr based on a keyword search and creates feathers with the colours within that photo.

Carla Diana:
Robots! The Interface Designer’s Holy Grail

I’ve always been fascinated by robots and other miscellany automata so was naturally curious about this session. Carla was the lead industrial designer on S.A.M., an emotionally expressive robot. S.A.M. is the product of Andrea Thomaz and the Georgia Institute of Technology and, sadly, I don’t seem to find anything further on it online.

What was fascinating were the ways she tried to redesign it so it no longer scared children(!), how they overcame it not having any legs and so on.

James Paterson:
Modulating a lot

Now, I’m going to have to be perfectly honest here; I didn’t actually attend James’ talk! While his name seemed incredibly familiar at the time it wasn’t until I checked out his stuff online that I realised he was the co-founder of the online (and later offline) magazine Half Empty with age-old online friend Marty Spellerberg.

Anyway, before I start to ramble on about my Internet adventures circa 1996, I’m really disappointed I missed it. He’s doing some really fun stuff nowadays! Including this (not quite as disgusting as it sounds) blackhead squeezing simulator.

And this, the Sonic Wire Sculpture, an illustrative sound engine developed by Amit Pitaru:

Well that just about rounds up the first part of this two-part retrospective extravaganza. Watch out for part two shortly!

The idea behind Padware was a componentised software architecture, where a user could assemble their own user experience using simple visual building blocks called pads. Perhaps what we’d call widgets today.

“for example, you have a video of a ball falling on the video pad, you could overlay this with a transparent plotter pad that tracks the ball’s movements - so coloured dots would appear on top of the video picture. These movements can then be fed into a third pad on which a graph of the ball’s trajectory is being drawn.”

Intelligent Pads weren’t the first software component architecture, and object oriented programming was already well established at the time. The article talks about Microsoft’s OLE (Object Linking and Embedding,) however the key difference is that pads were designed to be distributed on the Internet, and also assembled by ordinary users without specific programming knowledge.

This all sounds very familiar to how we envisage the web evolving, with widgets providing the building blocks, and the semantic web creating a means for inter-communication.

It’s a shame that this project didn’t seem to get any traction. I think it was way ahead of its time.

Hello there, we would like to announce the NixonMcInnes Social Media Surgery at The Future of Social Media show and invite you to come to our stand to have a free social media health check.

Are you a marketing or PR professional who needs help with your online strategy? Have you asked yourself or your team lately; are the arteries of your website clogged up? Does your communications plan need a detox?
If the answer is yes to either of these questions then we have the perfect prescription to soothe your troubled brow.

Our renowned social media consultants and founder directors Will and Tom will be available to speak to delegates who feel their organisation may benefit from a digital check up.

Contact me now at ruth@nixonmcinnes.co.uk to register in advance and pre-book a highly coveted appointment slot.

Let us know what your objective is in attending the show and the sort of things you would like to speak to a consultant about.

Do you need help understanding this new space? What are your symptoms? What are you trying to achieve by implementing social media into your marketing strategy?

Are you suffering from any of the following?

- Concerns about blogging?
- Stagnant social media strategy?
- eCommerce migraines?
- Qualms with your website?
- Campaign question marks?

We can assist you by suggesting alternative ways of getting closer to your customers using social media to promote your products and services to your audience.

Delegates will receive a hand written prescription tailored to your individual specification with suggestions and ideas on how to embark on or improve your company’s social media tactics; oh and you can help yourself to a nice bottle of water and piece of fruit whist your there.

We are known for being lovely so please feel free to come and say hello.

Also Will is speaking at 10.05 - social media goodness in abundance.

See you on the day – we look forward to meeting you!

We would like to say a special ‘thank you’ to the lovely people at Fruit for the Office and Posture People who have kindly donated items for our stand.

Tom is speaking at FOWA this Friday the 10 October just after lunch at 13:50 - 14:25 in the Business Track. He’ll be at the event on both days, so if you would like to hook up with him there then please email him in advance at tom@nixoncminnes.co.uk or call us to arrange a meet up on 01273 648301.

The subject of his session is: “Work/life balance or blood, sweat and tears - which is the start-up way?”; he will be sharing the session with internet celebrity Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo, the world’s first human-powered search engine. He will be talking about NixonMcInnes’ democratic company culture.

For those of you who aren’t aware we have adopted a unique culture and a range of diverse internal working practices. At NixonMcInnes we believe in employing a range of unusually open and empowering policies to attract and retain the very best talent in order to deliver to our clients the very best quality work.

Our culture is based on a number of democratic principles:

- FREEDOM: To work the hours that suit you (very flexible working policy - way more than flexitime and duvet days); wear what you want; change and improve things.
- TRANSPARENCY: Open book accounting so everyone knows what everyone else earns and how much profit is made; open communication and distaste for secrets.
- PARTICIPATION: Flat company hierarchy; voting on key company decisions; guest seats at company board meetings.
- PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: Regular one-to-one catch-ups with a manager; a training budget; books and subscriptions; conferences; personal development planning; a chance to shape your career within a successful, growing company with a wide range of promotion opportunities.
- REWARDS: excellent salary; company profit-related bonuses; 24 days holiday per year plus bank holidays and a company vote on additional holiday at Christmas. We like a nice team lunch on the company regularly too.
- FUN: Life’s too short to focus only on money. The directors are clear that the company exists to do enjoyable work with interesting clients. We’re not aiming for a sell-out or a NASDAQ listing, but we are ambitious in our desire to build a world-class team producing the best work.

Another difference about NixonMcInnes is how the people in the team explain technology. The team believe that the principles and ideas behind the very latest online technologies and trends can always be explained in a simple and enjoyable way, free of extravagant buzzwords and difficult terminology.

In short, part of the thing we call social media goodness is the realisation that our clients are human and so are we. So we aim to keep things as simple as possible for them and for ourselves and be as helpful as we can at the same time.

If you like these ideas and have a feeling that you’d like to come and work with us, then keep an eye out on our blog for announcements like this (we realise the closing date of this particular position has passed, however if you strongly feel you are the person we are looking for then please do still get in touch).

Oh and it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t take this time to invite you to sign up to our series of free eBooks, or have a look at some of our clients and projects here.

So keep an eye on our company blog and feel free to contribute a post or two.

We look forward to meeting you.

The premise of the survey was ‘what would 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketing professionals describe as their Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future?’.

I would add that given that it was sponsored by Sapient and was such a small sample size, the findings whilst useful and interesting aren’t conclusive in any way!

So here they are:

1. Greater knowledge of the digital space. With more than a third of marketers surveyed revealing that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising, it‘s clear that agencies need to have a greater knowledge of the digital space in order to thrive. In fact, nearly half (45 percent) of the respondents have switched agencies (or plan to switch in the next 12 months) for one with greater digital knowledge or have hired an additional digital specialist to handle their interactive campaigns. Further, when it comes to an agency‘s area of expertise, 79% of respondents rated “interactive/digital“ functions as ‘important/very important.‘

2. More use of “pull interactions.“ When trying to engage consumers with their brand, 90 percent of respondents agree that it is becoming increasingly important that their agency uses ‘pull interactions‘ such as social media and online communities rather than traditional ‘push‘ campaigns.

3. Leverage virtual communities. An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents expressed interest in leveraging virtual communities (public and private) to understand more about their target audience.

4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending. Ninety-two percent of respondents said it was ‘somewhat‘ or ‘very‘ important that agency employees use the technologies that they are recommending. For example, it is important that agency executives regularly use Facebook, Flickr, wikis, blogs, etc. in their personal social media mix.

5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing. Forty-three percent of marketers surveyed said that agencies with chief digital officers are more appealing than those without.

6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy. Sixty three percent of marketers surveyed said that an agency‘s Web 2.0 and social media capabilities are ‘important/very important‘ when it comes to agency selection.

7. Agencies that understand consumer behavior. Seventy-six percent of respondents deemed this as an ‘important/very important‘ aspect of their agency‘s online digital marketing and interactive advertising area of expertise.

8. Demonstrate strategic thinking. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed ranked strategy/brain trust capabilities at the top of their agency wish list.

9. Branding and creative capabilities. Sixty-seven percent of respondents ranked branding at the top of their agency wish list while seventy-six percent ranked creative capabilities as ‘important/very important.‘

10. Ability to measure success. It‘s no surprise that marketers want an agency that can report on where campaigns succeeded, fell short and where they should be fine-tuned. Sixty-five percent ranked analytics at the top of their agency wish list.

My lightweight conclusions:

Well it’s awfully comforting for us digital agencies isn’t, as you’d expect from a survey commissioned by a digital business.

And doubly-triply-super comforting for those of us digital agencies that already specialise in the social media aspects of digital, given that this neatly ticks off points 1,2,3,6 and 7. (And for us at NixonMcInnes, where we hire on the basis of ‘Agency executives using the technology they are recommending’ too, so that’s nice).

But where does it really leave us? What are the gaps?

I think point 10, the measuring success piece, remains a yawning and tricky chasm between what we as marketers would like and what’s acceptably and reasonably achieveable right now. I hope that initiatives like MeasurementCamp are helping us take steps towards a better grasp of the measurement thing, but it’s a hugely complex task.

I reckon the other stuff on the list is very achieveable.

In fact, in the email I sent around to the team here at NM HQ, what I moved the conversation (or was it a monologue?) onto was instead the building blocks of professional services success that these wishlist items need to sit on top of.

Not the cherry-on-the-cake digital specialisms and cutting edge ‘Web 2.0′ expertise that clients also rightly demand, but actually the basics, the bread and butter. As I suggested in my email to the guys:

“However, I would add that this is built on top of a list of ‘What clients expect from all agencies’ which always includes things like:

- Delivery: they do what they say they’re going to, by when they said they would
- Communication: They keep me informed
- Honesty: tell me when they can’t do something
- Proactive: bring ideas to us, suggest things, don’t wait to be told or asked
- Responsive: can turn things around quickly, nothing is too much

And it’s here, in these much more mundane pragmatic areas, that we at NixonMcInnes are working hard.

The top list is well under control: that stuff is what we do, and we’re increasingly recognised by our clients and the client community for it.

But the bottom list, the agency-underpinnings, that’s where we need to do much much better…

As a small agency, our limited resources can be easily stretched.

And as a specialist in a new, complex and rapidly evolving area, how we actually deliver work can change on every single assignment. So these practical delivery bits are the pieces we’re now working on.

What do you think of these suggested client wish list items? Ring true, or sound a bit wonky to you?