This weekend saw the brilliant Turing Festival in Edinburgh; it was full of insight, great speakers, fascinating attendees and of course some free beer. Big thanks to the organisers for putting together a world-class line up here on our doorstep.

signet library

(photo: @cee)

What is the Turing Festival?

If you haven’t heard of it before (where have you been?), the Turing Festival is in its third year and is now firmly positioned as a highlight of the Edinburgh technology calendar. I missed the first two festivals as I was on holiday but I went along expecting lots of deep thinking seminars on technology, its role in society and its future direction, and that’s exactly what I got.

I’ve chatted in the past to one of the organisers and his stated aim is to make it the SXSW (South by South West) of Europe, emulating a technology festival that is perhaps best known as the event that first put Twitter on the map. Taking advantage of the fact that lots of people are here in Edinburgh anyway, attracting big name speakers is relatively easy. Even ‘technology gods’ like a jolly I’m told, and who wouldn’t want the opportunity to talk in the Signet Library (see photo)?

And it seems as if that aim might well be achieved judging by this tweet that appeared shortly after the conclusion of proceedings:

 

Having never been to SXSW I cannot say whether or not that aim is being achieved, but the important thing to me is the festival demonstrated the progress that Edinburgh is making in becoming a centre for tech entrepreneurship.

My duty: live blogging

As I left the office on Thursday evening nonchalantly saying “Have a good weekend, I’m off to the Turing Festival tomorrow” I was reminded that I have a moral obligation. It is the expectation (well OK, my expectation) that if the company pays to send you on a jolly (aka conference) then part of the deal is to live blog – I’m a great believer that a bit of typing promotes active listening you see.

I can hardly expect the team to do it if I’m not willing can I? So Friday and Saturday had me posting my notes furiously, but rather than blog I thought I’d see how Google+ fared.  Links to my notes from each talk I went to are below but first….

Some highlights

  • Nick D’Aloisio: I’m not sure what to say about the $30 million wonder boy Nick D’Aloisio talking about his life as a businessman given that he’s now nearly reached the ripe old age of 18 but it certainly punctuated a fairly breathless Entrepreneurship session on Friday morning.
  • Morning: The morning also included 7 great random  thoughts from Brian Cauldfield and my particular favourite of the morning: a wonderfully upbeat talk from John Peebles on just how good Scotland is as a place to start a tech-business (a talk that John himself sums up in his own recap of the festival as “The grass is always greener. Make sure you’re shipping something.”). Other talks focused on training the entrepreneur and there was also a little joyous controversy when Jim McKelvey (founder of Square and highly proven entrepreneur)  joined the panel discussion and started of by stating his belief that you should just get on with it rather than worry about learning to be an entrepreneur. This kicked off a fascinating discussion on the pros and cons of incubators and accelerators (which I judged to be a draw!).
  • Future of Money: Jim continued were he left off in the afternoon with his talk on the past of Square as part of the Future of Money session. His highly entertaining talk included describing the credit card processors as parasites despite the fact that Visa were next on stage. Visa though did a good job of explaining their roadmap for the immediate future giving me hope that it will not be too long before I can dump the credit cards in favour of my mobile.
  • If that talk was firmly in the immediate future then Mike Hearn from Bitcoin and Google took us well into the future with a vision of money 50 years down the line, imagining a lovely redhead called Jen, self-funding-self-driving cars, frictionless capitalism, quadracopters delivering water at the top of Munroes and taxation-killing crowd-funding. I can’t wait!
  • Digital distribution: The last session on Friday was on digital distribution and it was great to hear Edinburgh University indulging in some real search engine optimisation: their free Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are not only proving to be a real success but they are also driving rankings on Google. Great to see them at the front of the pack in the changes sweeping through higher education.

My notes from the Saturday sessions were rather less thorough after Friday’s free beer, but the quality of the speakers didn’t suffer.

 

  • Startups: It was also great to see some really exciting local start-ups being given the opportunity throughout the festival to shine along side the international speakers including FanDuel, Stipso, Administrate and Distrify, all of whom are proving Scotland’s credentials.

My personal favourite talks were the two marketing related talks from Brian Doll of Github who succeeded in cementing a huge amount of my thinking that has gone into our forthcoming free marketing training. Some great quotes from his talks:

You are not Freddie Mercury

(in relation to choosing a small audience to target as part of his first talk on marketing being defined as the intentional communication of company culture)

Do things, tell people

(illustrated in his second talk as part of showing that marketing success is to actually do great things that people really want, and then to let them know.)

And of course it’s not all about the speakers; the informal chat did not let the side down either.

The full line-up

There was a lot I couldn’t get to throughout the two days (that’s the problem with so many goodies on at the same time). You can see the full program here, but here’s what I went to with links to my notes on Google+. Please bear in mind they are notes which means typos, mispellings and sometimes ill-thought-out rants and comments!

Friday

Saturday

The sessions were recorded so I hope that means I’ll get to watch those sessions I couldn’t get to (especially the UX ones). Looking forward to seeing what next year brings.

 

This month’s new breakfast, as ever in association with Fatbuzz and WeDo is on the topic of “Free” and how you can use it to transform your marketing both on and offline.  As usual we will be seeking to help business owners and marketers make sense of modern marketing.

The idea of giving away stuff for free is simple enough and not new but the internet has done two things to free that mean it deserves special attention in today’s world

  1. it’s made it possible to do many things for free; and

  2. it’s made “free” far more effective.

I’m going to look at how many of the the standout companies of the last decade have used these two facts to propel their growth.

But free is not just for “super hero” companies like Skype or Google. It is also totally applicable to “normal” businesses which is why I’ve teed-up a couple of interviews with regular local businesses who have successfully used “free” to stand out from the crowd and drive businesses.

My aim is not to give you a long list of tactics but to help you think differently about your business and marketing.  To give you context to many of your marketing activities, to highlight why some work and some don’t.

But shock horror, here’s the bad news. The breakfast on free is not free 🙁  … But it is almost 🙂   It’s only a few quid to cover the cost of venue and a bacon roll. Oh, there will be some free sweets.

The Edinburgh Breakfast is Thursday 13th June at Tigerlily on George Street.

The Glasgow Breakfast on the 28th at 29 in Royal Exchange Square.

Look forward to seeing you there.

 Media-Breakfast book now

 

 

Did you know that there are 22 people employed in St.Andrews to deal with the Freedom of Information act in Scotland? And a pile more throughout the UK? I certainly didn’t, but thanks to a great seminar last week organised by Edinburgh Coffee Morning regular Alex Robertson, I now do.

“What the flip does that have to do with online marketing?” you may ask, “Surely Freedom of Information is only relevant to journalists looking to hold MPs to account or activists looking for ammunition for their cause?”.

Hopefully the penny will drop when you remember that being a journalist and/or an activist is now part of the day to day life of being in marketing. As you understand that that content creation is now an essential cornerstone of marketing, you’ll be able to appreciate that Freedom of Information has a relevance.

Freedom of Information and Marketing

Still need persuading? The ability to be able to successfully make a Freedom of Information request may just be the route to creating a piece of content that attracts industry or even mainstream media attention.

It might lead to the piece of content that will solve problems for your customers and prospects and yes, it could be that piece of content that makes you trend on Twitter and rank sublimely on Google. Heck, it might even create a new business or service for you, especially if you seek out a dataset and do something unique and valuable with it.

I’d hazard a guess that any professional service firm should be able to dig out some publicly owned information with a marketing value. If you are an accountant there must be some information buried in the depths of HMRC that may be of interest to your clients. If you offer a dentist introduction service, there must be data about NHS and private patient numbers that could be turned into an infographic. If you are an architect, there will be no shortage of information about buildings to dig into. If you are in internet marketing there must be….well that’s one suggestion I am not going to make!

Making an FOI request

The good news is the whole seminar was videod (see below). Here are a few of my notes that I feel may be particularly relevant:

  • Over 80 countries have FOI legislation, Scotland was one of the most recent. Believe it or not Zimababwe was before us (but the law may not be quite so extensive!)
  • You don’t need to justify your request and public bodies have a duty to assist you in making requests, so phone the department before you put your request in.
  • See http://www.itspublicknowledge.info for help.
  • Try to think about what information will have been recorded and in what format to help your request go through.  (Great quote from one of the speakers, journalist Rob Edwards: “You need to have an idea where the bodies are buried before asking for exhumations”)
  • Request info in electronic format if that is how you want it (provided it falls under “practical”)

If you are considering making a FOI request, I really urge you to watch the video – there were three great speakers all with good stories that they generously shared.

The team behind the talk are planning more events (on different, but likely interesting topics that may or may not be relevant to online marketing) so I’d also recommend you follow them on Facebook.

And one further note, the general consensus at the event was that Scottish FOI law is tough (in favour of those looking for information) – “we have something to boast about”.  In my mind we should therefore make (responsible) use of it.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a battle between social media and SEO? After all search engine optimisation (SEO), according to some, is dead and social media is still seen by many as pretty sexy even if it is becoming a bit more Cindy Crawford than Cheryl Cole?

Well actually no, there is no battle.

(Social Media: Weathering Nicely?)

(Image Credit)

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that is the premise behind the New Media Breakfast “SEO vs Social Media: The Face-off” (held in Glasgow last week with the Edinburgh leg coming up on Thursday 12th July).

The event is not about SEO vs Social. It’s actually a friendly competition between Gordon White and myself; both of us online marketers but one with a background more in SEO than social and the other more social media than SEO.

But this post is not about the breakfast, it is just inspired by my preparation for the event.  The aim of this post is to highlight some of the different areas where SEO and social media overlap, where they need each other, and even, how at times, they are one and the same thing.

social media’s impact on google ranking

It’s no secret that Google et al are experimenting all the time with different ways to use tweets etc to help determine rankings. Indeed, as we have discussed many times on this blog, social is being increasingly integrated into search ranks.

However social has been impacting search ranking for much longer than the relatively recent Twitter/Facebook ranking chat. Arguably blogs, which many will see as a social media tool, have been one of the key focuses of SEO link building over the past 8 years or more.

Even now though, I suspect we are still at the very beginning of the true ranking impact of things like tweets, shares and likes.

The bottom line is if you expect to rank in search engines you need a social strategy. Simples.

SEO strength for social

But what about the other way round? Do you need a search strategy for social?

Of course. Code up your site wrongly, put your content in the wrong place, don’t think about your keywords, don’t seek out good quality long term links from other sites etc and you’re bound to see less social success. Indeed your much nurtured fans and followers will find other people’s content if they search and you are not there.

algorithms in Social Media

Some see SEO as trying to beat the algorithm that determines your search engine ranking. But algorithms also play a part in social media too. Savvy social guys will be very familiar with EdgeRank. It is Facebook’s algorithm for determining if you appear in someone’s news feed or not. And EdgeRank is something you need to “optimise” for.

social media tools for SEO

We regularly make use of social media tools such as Twitter for what might be defined as the traditional SEO activity of link building.  At the heart of both social and link building is a simple shared concept: relationships.

optimising sharing and social

SEOs often get very engrossed in the fine details of the technology behind sites to get the greatest search engine benefit from a site. This is why all SEOs will tell you that the time to start SEO is when your website is just a twinkle in your eye. Unsurprisingly it turns out the same is true for social media. I even find that there a lot of parallels within the nitty gritty of what the two specialists do. For example we now consider how to concentrate sharing activity in much the same way as we have always consider how to concentrate links to a page.

content marketing – the true area of overlap

In the above examples, the SEO and the SM practitioner will tackle the same problem but probably from slightly different angles. In my mind the area where there is greatest harmony is likely to be in the concept of content marketing.

“Produce great content” is the rallying cry of both sets of professionals and the sort of content that both parties are likely to produce are likely to be very similar. Be this a blog post, infographic, guide, software, videos, data, podcast or even a great business model, both parties intrinsically understand the importance and will put content at the heart of their strategies.

Both parties would likely agree that the rise of content marketing and the concepts behind it has been the fundamental marketing change of the last 20 years. Content powers both search rankings and social media dominance.

Work with one or both practitioners and you can (or should!) expect much time to be dedicated to developing high quality content for your brand. If the majority of your SEO time is just being spent on activities such as putting keywords on pages or your Social Media time is being spent chatting about the weather or telling people you’ve just won an award, it’s time to think again.

over to you

Where do you see harmony or conflict? Have your SEO campaigns bought you social success or the other way round? Please share your experiences in the comments below.

And perhaps more importantly I hope to see you at the breakfast. Not least because I need your votes (having had to reluctantly concede victory to Gordon in the Glasgow leg, the Edinburgh rematch is vital ;)) .

Continuing the tradition of the @attacats presenting at the ever popular New Media Breakfasts, I am pleased to say that @attacat_kiril and @attacat_david will be presenting in Glasgow on the 25th of November and in Edinburgh on the 12th January.

You can book now for Glasgow. Edinburgh tickets will be on sale soon (sales are designed to simply cover costs and there are various ways of going free too).

David and Kiril will be discussing the ins and outs of email marketing with particular focus on improving how you are using the medium.  If you would like your campaigns to be reviewed live during the seminars, then please get in touch.

As usual the breakfasts are organised by fatBuzz and in Edinburgh in association with WeDo Scotland, the rebranded Winning Entrepreneurs.

(A reminder – the QR codes New Media Breakfast comes to Edinburgh this Thursday morning (10th November).  Book here by 4pm this afternoon.)

Hope to see you there!

Edinburgh - 22:27 [July 07th]

Self promotion is very uncomfortable however you look at it, but equally it’s nice to bathe in a glowing feeling sometimes too, especially after a hiccup.

There’s no show without Punch

Gordon White and I have been presenting a good number of the monthly New Media Breakfasts recently. (Too many probably as it has been 3 out of the last 4, which is partly why we are inviting more guest speakers for next year).

The first of the three, “Facebook for Business” was very well received so we are repeating it in Fife this Thursday and are also using it as the base for next week’s webinar as well as taking it to Renfrewshire.

The Hiccup

Last month however, we tried something a bit different for the “Social Media – Back to Basics” breakfast and it received mixed feedback. Whilst many first timers enjoyed it, some of our more experienced regular attendees were disappointed and, however hard you try, you can’t help but dwell on the negative comments.

This was why, after presenting the “Content is King” breakfast in Glasgow, Gordon and I were so pleased to see a sea of positive comments appearing on Twitter.  So much so in fact I screenshoted them to show Mrs Barlow (reproduced below). Sad but true.

Back on Track

So we definitely won’t be repeating the “Back to Basics” one (at least in the same format!) but the “Content is King” breakfast will come, in association with WinningEntrepreneurs, to Edinburgh as planned next week.  Hopefully the feedback from Glasgow will convince you to come.

Thanks again to all those who tweeted and made my day!

30+ tweets

Feedback tweets new media breakfast

Book “Content is King” in Edinburgh >>

I’m just working with @gordonwhite on finalising our presentation for tomorrow morning’s Glasgow New Media Breakfast (repeats in Edinburgh on Thursday 15th September).

The topic is “Content is King” of which the core content is “35 versatile content ideas to power up your business’ social media”.

We are also showcasing a couple of tools .  One of which, the “linkbait generator”, I will recommend with  tongue in cheek.

Linkbait Generator

The link bait generator is a simple tool that will generate ideas for headlines for blog posts etc. You simply put a subject into the tool e.g “new media breakfast” and it kicks out ideas.

I don’t really use it to generate headlines but every now and then it can help alleviate creative block.

Why don’t I really use it?  Because it throws up ideas like the headline of this post. Still, if you’ve read this far, may be there is some real power in the Linkbait Generator. Head over and have a look.

About the Breakfasts

The New Media Breakfasts are good old fashioned offline presentations.  They run monthly in Glasgow and Edinburgh and periodically elsewhere (Aberdeen, Renfrewshire and Fife currently). They frequently attract audiences in excess of 100.

Each presentation focuses on an internet marketing related topic (invariably with a close connection to social media) and are aimed at businesses and organisations wanting to increase their understanding of what online marketing can do for them – a category all Attacat clients fall into!

Recent topics have included Personal Branding, Facebook for Business (if you missed this we will be covering the same ground in our next webinar) and Converting you to Conversion Rate Optimisation.

Regular speakers at the events include Gordon White of fatBuzz (who is the main force behind the breakfasts and the host) and myself.  Approximately every other presentation will be delivered by guest speakers who have included the likes of Gordon Macintyre-Kemp and Jennifer Holloway.

 

Diversion: Me showing off my iPhone skills by timelapsing the arrival of guests at a recent Glasgow breakfast

What’s Attacat’s connection to the breakfasts?

Over the past 18 months we have become increasingly involved in the breakfasts.  My initial one-off appearance at the breakfast has evolved into regular appearances.  Attacats have frequently filled the guest speaker slots (Ben, Joel and Kiril have all lead a presentation) and fatBuzz are kind enough to make us feel like we are joint venture partners in the Breakfasts, so much so that we now view it as part of the Attacat offering.

A value-add for our clients

Given this evolution we have decided that it is appropriate to cover the cost of any of our retained clients wishing to attend the breakfast. If you would like to come simply, let your account manager know instead of going through the regular booking channels.

Is this not Attacat giving away knowledge that clients would otherwise pay for?

Sure these breakfasts contain a lot of knowledge we do transfer to our clients as part of our day to day business. However knowledge is only a small part of developing a strong online presence for your business.  It’s the implementation that is key for most clients.

Another major challenge that many of our clients face is getting others in their organisation to “see the light” and therefore prioritise what needs doing.  The breakfasts, like our webinars, represent an opportunity for our clients to give these individuals a background knowledge.

Next Breakfasts

  • Social Media: Back to Basics – Edinburgh (11th August 2011)
  • Content is King – Glasgow (2nd September 2011), Edinburgh (15th September 2011)
  • Facebook for Business  – Fife (8th September 2011), In webinar format on 14th September 2011)

(full details on www.newmediabreakfast.co.uk)

Keep informed

Dates etc are always included in our monthly newsletter or you can add yourself to the New Media Breakfast mailing list.

A note of thanks

The New Media Breakfasts would not have been the success that they have become without the support of the partner organisations who do the promotion, organise the venues and tickets etc.  They are fatBuzz (Glasgow), Winning Entrepreneurs (Edinburgh), Empire (Aberdeen) and the Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce.  Thank you.

The new media breakfast is, for one night only, becoming an evening event: The New Media BBQ on Wednesday 8th of June.

We are making a team night out of it and all heading over from Edinburgh on the 4.15 train out of Waverley.  The good news is that this is officially “training” for tax purposes as the fatBuzz team have lined up a really great speaker to talk about “What Scotland can learn from Silicon Valley”.  Rumour has it there may be some food and beer and it’s pretty likely we will be on the last train on the way back.

You of course would be very welcome to join us and make it an Edinburgh delegation.  Book your tickets here and we will see you there (feel free to let us know you are coming in the comments below)