BestJobBen.com was an opportunity for Ben to write his own, unfiltered blog whilst he was away on Hamilton Island, it is now also the vehicle for the Best Expedition in the World.

The site was built on a small budget, and Ben was savvy with the Social Media side, all we had to do was launch the customised WordPress platform and let him build the content.

www.bestjobben.com

They needed branding, literature a website and vehicle livery all in matching styles.

The website is a highly customised WordPress installation, with extensive Social Media integration and plenty of space for the business to grow.

www.boardsandbikes.co.uk

The client was already active on Facebook, with some tinkering to a fully customised WordPress theme and Social Media integration the site became a great example of a client using their web platform to its full potential.

www.agentlynch.com

WATBus has a legacy, hand-coded website that never got updated.

A new WordPress installation was the solution they needed to be able to post updates and news to the site.

www.watbus.org.uk

Aidan Talbot needed a website re-vamp in a hurry. The budget was very limited, but we worked with the client and gave them a functional, SEO ready, CMS driven WordPress website that is easy to update and add content to.

http://www.aidantalbot.com

Its not that easy is it?.

Ive been using Threadsy a bit, its quite handy, but very busy.

To be fair, I am probably what they call a heavy user, however, there are people who make me look part-time.

So, I watch 5 Gmail accounts, 4 twitter accounts, 1 Facebook, 1 Basecamp project, 6 WordPress Blogs, and now I have a Google Wave account to try and figure out how to work with.

Then there are the background sites you sometimes use, Flickr, Digg, Delicio.us, online banking, the list goes on.

Fun, but only for a while, then you might well go mad with overloading.

So whats all this Google Wave about then ?

Google Wave Fiction… funny stuff… but will it be helpful ?

I am genuinely hoping that Wave is a lot more than some over-hyped geek-babble..  but im being realistic… even if it is, my life will stay pretty complicated.

Since then a couple of things have popped onto the radar to further reinforce the fact that social media is a game changer.

In no particular order;

Brands in Public appeared late last week -  launched by Seth Godin,  a joint-founder of squidoo.com – and is well respected in the social media world. The site lets you take a look at how the online social media world views your brand via Tweets, blogs Youtube video and more. This is a more focused version of what Squidoo offers as a ‘lens’, but for brands.

Brands – big ones – are starting to care about how people talk about them online, and solutions and tools for addressing this are sprouting-up.

However, Lisa Barone, herself a well respected social media professional, doesn’t think its such a great idea as her blog-post – Seth Godin tries out brandjackin – sets-out.

Whichever side your on here, the fact is – there is a dialogue going on about how brands are managed in the social sphere.

Then, on friday, I was lucky to catch Owen Stevens, (via Altitude Recruitment – @lauramaddison), for a short talk about branding. Everything was going as it should untill he referenced the Erik Qualman Youtube video about social media (yes the one on the front of this site) in his presentation. It was great to hear someone standing in front of you say that ‘yes, you were doing the right thing’, and that it is worth persevering with trying to get clients and brands to adopt the platform/technology.

And then this morning, Dan Thornton of 140Char posted about Pistachio Consulting, and the Twitter ‘app’ guide they have produced. The thing here is that Pistachio consulting specialise in social media and micro-blogging platforms – good enough for me, that’s a bona-fide business…  and just to make sure, it has its own conferences – Social Media in Business Conference, London and Media140 – reaching right around the world.

So, just to clarify, brands are all over the social media web world, they have tools, are manged, businesses are run solely for this purpose, they have conferences – all around the world – and its gaining more and more momentum and exposure.

*nudge*

Time to talk to someone who knows about this sort of stuff ?

Another social media explanation video via Youtube.

Everyone will have their own take on this, but I see, Tv, internet and mobile as the three core platforms.
And in the last few years, we’ve seen the rise social media.

Social Media

I guess you could say that gaming presents a significant platform (XBox, Playstation Wii), but I wont, not today.

Its been happening for a while, Sky Tv will provide your internet, Orange will also give you a web connection, at home and mobile. Things have been converging for a while. Now it’s happening in the experience too – TV, web and mobile all share the same content, you decide what to consume and how.

Now, one of my current projects actively address’s the old ‘core’ three, mobile, tv and web, but im having issues convincing them that we need to place as much, if not more, focus on social media.

I wasnt sure myself, but ive found a couple of resources that have helped build a picture for me;

Socialnomics. This book was sent to me by one of my followers on twitter, there is a story and an idea, but thats another post. The book lays-bare the facts that we need to know to understand the power of social media. After-all if they can make someone President of the United States, it might have some power.

Next, I found this site. The slide and video below are from that site. They allude to this – we can measure the impact of social media, and therefore it is valid as a channel/platform.
(The slides are in-depth and not necessarily good for everyone, but they are correct. )

Social Media ROI by @brandbuilder from Kipp Bodnar on Vimeo.

Whats happening is new. Brands are communicating with customers in an entirely new way. And that’s all that matters.

The communication drives the change or solution that you need, be it greater revenues, smaller costs, better CRM or launching a new business.

The way you interact with customers through social media provides them with a personal service unlike anything they have had before.

And, importantly, the best thing about social media is – it finds the user/customer.

That’s why its as much of a channel as the long established TV, or the emerging mobile world. And to those who say social media and the internet are the same, let me make that assumption. They will be left behind.

Social media find its own users, by referral, by commenting, by subscribing, by becoming a fan, and much more. But you still have to get into the game, its not the same as having a website, or even a blog.

Video via the Socialnomics website.

Understand the power of social media before you write it off. It’s responsible the for USA having the first non-caucasian president. ever.

Working with Ben Southall on his new site has forced me to source answers to issues that I have left un-addressed on my own site.

With Ben leaving to Hamilton Island in 4 days, we had to get his whole new media platform up and running in advance allowing him to fly away, happy and content that he could post text blogs, audio blogs, video blogs and images all to his site and have them all aggregated and drawn together.

BestJobBen.com

So far we’ve been pretty successful, and have only a couple of small outstanding issues, but the run-down looks like this.

WordPress for publishing and standard blogging – you just cant beat it.

Twitter for micro-blogging – not really another alternative with the widespread usage and app development for all platforms.

Flickr for anything image based, utilising some handy hacks and plug-ins to get what we need.

Seesmic – for video-blogging and publishing via some more handy hacks and plug-ins.

Youtube for edited video content.

AudioBoo for audio-blogging and pod-casting.

With all this going on, we’ve had a lot to consider and its no surprise that Google and web searches are pretty intrinsic to the way things panned out. Also, of worthy mention are the rougish fellas I follow online who keep us all in the picture regarding Social Media and digital publishing, and they are (in no particular order…) Christian Payne (@Documentally) , Phil Campbell (@philcampbell) and Dan Thornton (@badgergravling).