Archive for the 'social media strategy' Category

De Lille Tries to Shut Down Our Conversation

Published
by
Dave
on May 21, 2007
in Case Studies, Conversation, Culture Jamming, Leadership, South Africa, Web PR, blogging and social media strategy
. 21 Comments

Patricia De Lille blogPatricia De Lille has denounced the freedom of bloggers, asking government to crack down on bloggers. This follows a bout blog of criticism targeted at ID colleague, Simon Grindrod.

IOL reports that she’s even applying to use tax-payer’s money for a National Intelligence Service investigation to track the blogger down.

Fortunately, we live in a free and democratic country where this will not get very far. Perhaps, as Angus points out, MP De Lille will find a more sympathic government in communist China or North Korea?

The point of citizen journalism, as opposed to regulated mainstream media is free and natural expression of ideas by ordinary people (i.e. voting constituents). If these issues with Grindrod are being raised online, people are probably talking about them in natural conversation too. She could gain alot more benefit by paying attention to what is being said, and possibly responding in a public forum to the issues that have been raised. This is the meaning of “join the conversation”.

This is why your fellow parliamentarians Helen Zille and Ebrahim Rasool from the DA and ANC respectively have social-media profiles… And I congratulate them for that.

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Grabbing the Bullard by the Horns

Published
by
Dave
on May 7, 2007
in Attention, blogging and social media strategy
. 8 Comments

There’s been a real uproar in the blogosphere recently after David Bullard, a very popular journalist, slated bloggers in his weekly Sunday Times column.

In classic Bullard style, it’s over-the-top, opinionated, and tongue-in-cheek arrogant. The man is a master of fuelling debate and controversy…. typically selecting prominent public targets who will make lots of noise. Hence bloggers were ripe and ready to be picked…. And boy were they juicy! (This incident has been dubbed BullardGate)

I’ve often echoed P.T. Barnums assertion that “No Attention is bad attention” (if you channel it well). Colin Daniels, Sunday Times’ New Media strategist, would probably agree… Bullardgate has attracted a massive influx of traffic and inbound-hyperlinks to SundayTimes.co.za.

Kudos to the Sunday Times multimedia team for making the most of this (they grabbed the bullard by the horns) and immediately recording a follow video-cast series and dedicated page on their site.

Best of all, this gives me a good reason to point out that Mike and I were quoted in the same newspaper on the same day in another article about blogging: Business Times: Business Missing Out on Blogging.

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On the Shoulders of Giants – CCsalon Video

Published
by
Dave
on May 4, 2007
in Collaboration, Digital UBuntu, Events, adaptation, communities and social media strategy
. 5 Comments

I often drop the following two quotes into talks, to emphasise the fact that what I speak on is borrowed and built from the work of others:

Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal – Picasso

Interesting, considering the source of that one. And:

A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton

I mention them to emphasise the importance in business of sharing and collaboration in order to increase speed, productivity, and (ironically) creativity. This is a big reason why we should support Creative Commons.

Check out this vid of the recent iCommons Salon (entitled “Bring and Braai”) held in Cape Town, where Lawrence Lessig (CEO of Creative Commons) emphasises the point that digital borrowing and remixing is being criminalized… and what we need to do to make sure that we have the digital freedom to create freely. Jimmy Wales also appears with a call for more African Language contributors on Wikipedia. Heather Ford and I had fun MCing the event :-) :

By the way, Missing Link sponsored and produced this video… They rock!

p.s. 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 :-p

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Are You Only As Good As Your Last Blog Post?

Published
by
Dave
on April 5, 2007
in RSS, The Lazy Blogger, blogging and social media strategy
. 2 Comments

There’s generally a loyal core of readers that most of us bloggers have, but feed subscribers in general seem to be quite a fickle bunch.

So, assuming that you’re only as good as your last blog post (cos we all have popularity peaks and troughs), here’s two simple ideas on being a successful (yet lazy) blogger:

  1. When you’ve got something really interesting to write about – an event, a product launch, or a public squabble – then don’t limit your views to one post a day. Strive to be the main source of info for that topic for as long as it’s hot and you’re still passionate about it.
  2. Don’t feel obliged to maintain this frenetic pace of publishing when you’re not feeling passionate, or aren’t intimately involved in the subject matter.

Mind you though, I’m not considering the search traffic (and spam!) which legacy posts bring in… only direct referral traffic and RSS subscribership.

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