Category: insights

Why Develop An Online Speaker Training Programme | The Purpose, The Why, The What

The above is fun and real.

Am spending my spare time developing out ‘The Best Damn Speaking Course On The Internet (Even The Planet)‘.

My current focus (apart from pooling together some fab speakers to share their knowledge) is on the experience and value the customer / member receives plus the why and what truth this project essentially serves.

This is what I’ve come up with:

This is for the project manager who needs to delight and astonish their bosses / colleagues in that important meeting.

This is for the conference organiser who has realised that titles and positions of authority does not equate to being a good public speaker.

This is for lecturers who want to engage the whole room, from the front-seat-swots to the back-of-the-room-hall-dwellers.

This is for the sales rep who is hungry to explore the power of telling stories and is craves some inspiration.

This is for the tired executive whose career needs new energy and vitality to project them forward in the looming performance review.

This is for those who can’t ever imagine speaking to a room of people (no matter how big or small) and have a positive impact.

This is for you.

It will exist to aid, challenge, enable, add, energise, delight, empower, sharpen, equip all newbies and old hands to be able to speak better.

To present with clarity and purpose.

To become a kick ass communicator.

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Learning@School 2012 | Tracking Twitter Infographic

lats12 twitter report

Another infographic for my fab employers regarding the recent Learning@School 2012 conference.

Approximately 1,300 teachers for two days of educational musings, wonderings, provocations, challenges, solutions etc

Some takeaways:

  • the increase in all numbers from Ulearn11 (our last big conference back in October—wonder if the 5 Step Twitter Newbie Start Plan video I did helped?)
  • the expanded use of links within tweets plus conversations which followed (probably a little due to the fact I set up open Google Docs so the audience could collaboratively take notes during the four main keynotes—can be found on the Learning@School blog)
  • the potential reach of the conversations (calculated by the TweetReach reports)

What did you take away from the infographic? Am I asking the wrong questions? What do you think of the results? Were you at the conference and tweeting out and if so how did it add to your experience of the event?

Related post: Ulearn11 | How Twitter Makes An Event Global and Infographics | The New Social Media Snack / Crack
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Infographics | The New Social Media Snack / Crack

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=infographics

Lick the screens and spread the linklove for infographics—they are like blue smarties for your eyes and brain.

The search rate for Infographic-related content has been steadily rising over the years (see above) as this wonderful way of visually presenting information and data has really taken hold (see my humble attempt with Ulearn11 | How Twitter Makes An Event Global and Learning@School 2012 | Tracking Twitter Infographic).

I’ve been talking to clients about them probably for about 4/5 years now as an opportunity to present statistical related material in a much more engaging and ultimately shareable way. Think annual/quarterly reports, market/customer research, sector analysis etc

Whether you’re in the education, marketing, shoes etc game, there’s a growing Infographic and Data Visualization library for you.

Their variety is a testament to their versatility, ones like:

—you get the idea… even the Whitehouse is doing it and here’s a blog aggregating the cool ones.

UPS is even using it in their Fast Company ads:

fast company ups infographic

Still not convinced?

Go away…

Still here?

Watch this:

Now get the research/numbers peeps in your organisation to talk to your design team so together they can create some gorgeous infographic offerings. Failing that, take the initiative and impress your boss by doing one yourself—there’s quite a few how-to’s on the web like this, that, and thus (don’t forget to come back and leave a comment sharing what you’ve done).

Have I made you a fan of infographics? What ones have you seen which you want to share? Leave a comment you lovely readers you.

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Ideabombing | Spreading Ideas Internally

ideabombing

Ideabombing is one way I’m trying to communicate and share stuff which inspires, invigorates and melts peoples minds:

Idea | noun
a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action

Bombing | verb
the art of doing any forms of graffiti visual activity.

Twice a week new content is shared through the internal CORE Education community site to digest and react to (as I never forget to pose a question or two to contextualise thinking).

Imagine this in schools but instead of shoes the texts relating to subjects plus all the different supporting content… it’s not way in the future, it’s here, nearly…

How can you see this being applied in educational settings or in the work place?

Get the idea…?

Let me know how you’re ideabombing in your organisations / companies. Does the above distribution example help?

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Creating More Media Than Media | A Research Project

utterly confused stats

How much media there is the world?

For the past couple of years I’ve been saying in my social media presentations that:

“…we [as individuals] are creating more media than Media [print / tv / film / radio etc]…”

I have no facts or figures to back this claim up.

It’s an inkling.

A feeling.

A judgement call.

As someone who does numbers like this, how do I find this out or rebuke it? Has someone already explored this? Do you know the answer?

Help please…

Image credit
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Ulearn11 | How Twitter Makes An Event Global

ulearn11-twitter-infographic

Above is a quick and dirty infographic created as a mini Ulearn conference evaluation (a superb educational annual event organised and run by CORE Education).

The big takeaways:

  • #Ulearn11 was trending in New Zealand the two main days of the conference
  • the massive reach the 300 active tweeterers accumulative follower network has (TweetReach indicated it at nearly 750,000 impressions and a reach of about 70,000 people)
  • how easy you can measure the ‘popular kids in the playground’ (those who tweeted and were tweeted about)

Couple this with twitter conversations not using the hashtag, the connections made through the tweeted ideas plus the retweets, then you’ve got an indication of how Twitter can enable an event to go global.

How do you measure the social media elements of your events? Do you display them graphically or in a different way than above? Drop some knowledge in the comments below.

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Defining Social Spaces

definition of define

How do you decipher and explain the different social spaces / platforms?

Well, a while ago I wrote a blog post describing the Golden Rule of Social Media—it’s really simple and is summed up as:

IT”™S JUST LIKE BEING IN A BIG ROOM, FULL OF REAL PEOPLE

This morning a colleague emailed me with her own definitions of the social spaces and how they relate to real world scenarios (like cocktails and offices etc). Here’s my response:

  • Website—your online ‘shop front’ and everything inside from the products, customer service, to what you discuss related to your industry etc.
  • Blog—same as above (if you don’t have a blog then you don’t have a space to inspire people to be awesome)
  • Twitter—(mainly) public conversation party, giving you an opportunity to connect with people you would never usually get a chance to (great for just listening in and gleaming amazing ideas and information)
  • Facebook—private members club with exclusive insights and offers others can’t get elsewhere (rewards based model. Why? Most people are on Stalkbook not to buy but to connect with people they know.)
  • LinkedIn—old school drinking mens establishment where not much happens. It’s great for getting introduced to interesting folks although you then try to get them into other spaces as the current place (LinkedIn) sucks and smells of old people
  • YouTube—your Tivo (another words what you want to show to other people relating to your passions, your ideas and maybe your products)

What do you think? How would you define the above?

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Working Yourself Out Of A Job (And Other Bold Public Statements)

Do Something That Matters

In two years time I will no longer be the Social Media Manager for CORE Education.

It’s not due to a limited budget or a time-specific contract but making a public statement like the one above focusses intent. Creates an end. A cut off point. A window to get things done.

Of course there’s danger in this. The idea that in two years time my approach would have succeeded, all the tasks will be completed and the organisation will be social media superheros, one and all (especially in this fluid space), is a bold forecast.

The reason for this strategy can be summed up in one word: sustainability.

Some of you will be old enough to remember working in places which had ‘typing pools’. A group of (usually) women whose soul task all day was to type unending letters and transcribe recordings of meetings from others.

With the advent of cheaper technology/software, the distribution of these new tools plus the burgeoning rise of professional development in the workplace, meant typing became a skill which quickly dissolved into expectation and one which now isn’t even questioned.

Social media managers are typists. A function which will soon become obsolete as the understanding of tools/platforms, adoption of practises and their execution become commonplace.

Any approach has to have a sustainable core and a comprehension that the measure of success is not how awesome my job is but how awesome I make other peoples jobs (through their elevated appreciation and use of social media).

This is what matters.

And I have two years to do it.

How much time have you given yourself?

Wisdom from Hugh MacLeod.
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What Does A Social Media Manager Do…?

“The best leaders… almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.”
Tom Peters

The above just got sent out to the 100 or so employees of CORE Education as an attempt to introduce their new social media manager and my approach to the role (YouTube version).

Like any newbie I’ve been busy for the past month acting like a sponge, taking it all in, finding out who’s who, where are the opportunities, the needs, the toilets, and stuff like that. Now it’s time to earn my wage.

This morning I presented the above to the exec team along with other initial ideas of social media adoption, exploration and management. One of the things they agreed was allowing me to share on this blog the whole development and implementation phases of what I’m doing here, the likes of which will include :

  • baselining—creating a clear benchmark plus track and review process of social media activity and its impact relative to the overall aims and goals (quantifiably and qualitatively plus some other big words)
  • gamified training—skilling up the employees in a funky, systematic way (using game theory as a model)
  • ambassadorial networks—finding and establishing champions and creating hubs of knowledge around them (especially relevant as our colleagues work nationally across nearly 30 different geographical locations)
  • creating a social permaculture—basically working myself out of a job in the next two years whilst ensuring sustainability
  • productising our approach—hoping to transfer the learning and successes across to MediaSnackers at some point to package and sell on further

Over the coming months this is what will appear here and would love to hear from you, especially if you’re a new or established social media manager, head of digital content, director of educational technologies, online communication leads, chief bloggers etc. on your approach, pitfalls, mistakes and successes. Does the above sound like a good ‘start’?

Big thanks to the picture takers : plindberg, cousinali, vatobob, jb-london, x-ray_delta_one, kurtxio, azrainman, andrewmorrell, simonehudson, melissaadret, redroom, rosauraochoa, neilrickards, olpc, dantaylor, torley, birgerking, _fabrizio_, booleansplit, 40006794@N02, 94801434@N00, findyoursearch, markwalker, pip_r_lagenta, ref, gareth1953, jaako, 25023895@N02, ryanr, bossco, chrisdlugosz.
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