London Calling social business

Moving from an influencer to an advocate – the Peter Shankman way

I am a big fan of Peter Shankman, I count him as a friend. He was part of the Kred leader’s program in 2012 and continues to be a great sounding board for us at Kred.

I also love his Facebook updates – you never quite know what he is going to do next.

Today’s update looked like this.

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Now I know Peter flies a lot with United – he would probably be played by George Clooney in a movie about frequent fliers…er that’s already been done.

What Peter’s update shows is that United really do have a strong influencer program.

They know that not only do they have a loyal customer, they have one who is really influential in the areas where the decision about which airline to fly is made.

Amazingly, even though Peter pays a great deal of money every year to fly with United, they have actually got him to “work” for them for a day for free.

Smartly, they understand that for a frequent flyer like Peter, more flights isn’t always what he is after. Also what is the “shrareability” of a free flight?

What IS sharable though is exclusive access to behind the scenes of an airline.

What United is also doing is ensuring guaranteed coverage by a key influencer.

Well played United, well played!

Below are just some of the shots Peter has been sharing on his Facebook page about his experience.

You can’t buy publicity like this, and United haven’t had to. They just asked Peter to tag along with them for the day.

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Will we start to see the rise of the social business guru?

This post has been a few days in the making.

The impetus was an event I attended in London on Wednesday sponsored by Microsoft “Social Media – one tool amongst many”.

There was naturally a stellar line-up including Catriona Oldershaw, Alan Patrick, Abigail Harrison and Philip Sheldrake.

The title of the event was somewhat obscure, as the event was really about social business. Read more…

Attenzi – a social business story – new book review

I have just finished reading a new book by Philip Sheldrake that looks at social business. I’ve been a fan of Philip’s writing since his first book, The business of Influence, and this book does not disappoint.

The book was released on Wednesday May 15th, and I was lucky enough to secure an advance review copy which I read in one sitting over the weekend.

It is fair to say that Philip’s book is like no other book on social I have read – in a good way.  Read more…

Social Business Patterns – looking at how social adds value to any business

IBM seems to be on a roll at the moment, and almost weekly I am seeing new marketing material from them to do with social business.

One recent report that caught my eye is titled “Patterns in achieving social business success by leading and pioneering organizations”.

You can download the report, and I have provided a brief summary below. Read more…

Social Business explained in 2 minutes – from socialbakers Engage 2013

On Tuesday 23rd April, I attended the socialbakers Engage conference in London as the guest of their CEO Jan Rezab.

No sooner had I arrived, I met up with fellow blogger and friend Neville Hobson who was organising the composition of the afternoon expert panel on “the next stage of social media”.

Unfortunately three of the panellists had pulled out, so Neville asked me if I would be happy to join, and of course I said yes. Read more…

Can you spot a social media faker? Fact checking on social media is now becoming even more important

You’ve probably never heard of Santiago Swallow, Expert on Inauthentic Identity, Author of “Self’”.

I had not heard of him either until last week when I came across an article in Quartz titled “How to become internet famous for $68” by Kevin Ashton, known for inventing the term “The Internet of Things“. Read more…

Real Time Marketing – planning for something spontaneous on social media

Most people who work in or around social media will have heard about the “Oreo moment” at this year’s Superbowl.

To recap, the game was plunged into darkness for a full 33 minutes due to a power failure at the stadium, and the one brand that everyone remembers from this is Oreo thanks to the tweet below

Read more…

How one tweet could cost you your job

I had a fascinating discussion with Helen Kennedy from Leeds University this week.

She approached me about an interview to support her research and book about social media monitoring.

During our interview, she was particularly interested on my view, and the view of the industry on the status of “public” social media posts.

In particular, she wanted to know if I felt the industry would (or could) be regulated so that consumers had the right to decide if their social media posts could be monitored or captured by social media monitoring firms.

It raises a very interesting question – how private are our public posts?

Also where do we draw the line?

Read more…

Mobile operators in the UK actually put the Australian ones to shame

Back in 2009, after a trip to Sydney (at the time my first in 3 years after having moved to London), I wrote a post looking at the Australian mobile market.

checkout-abctvSome 4 years on from that post, I was reminded of it when I came across a very funny, and well produced Australian Comedy show called simply “The Checkout”.

It has been put together by the team behind The Chaser - a very smart group of Australian Comedians who are not afraid of telling it like it is. Read more…

EE doubling 4G network speeds to 80MB/s, ups capacity, plans for 1M 4G customers

ee-logoNews from EE that they are ramping up for even faster 4G speeds, hoping to leapfrong the competition ahead of other 4G launches later this year – the press release announcing the changes is below.

Can’t wait to feel the 4GEEEE’s soon in London. Read more…

My campaign to stop the rise of “The Householder” direct mail spam

I am starting a campaign to expose the simply lazy, and sometimes downright sneaky tricks that companies are playing to get their direct marketing material through your letterbox.

Frankly, in 2013, and the age of big data and social media, to have a clean, window faced envelope dropped through my letterbox (with a big sign on it that says “no junk mail”) addressed to “The Householder” smacks of lazy and desperate marketing. Read more…

Using Big Data to fight crime and predict what products consumers might purchase in the future

Big data is everywhere – literally.

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The other evening I watched a very interesting BBC Panorama program titled “The Age of Big Data” (note the program can only be viewed in the UK). Read more…

EE is the exclusive UK launch partner for the new Facebook Home app

ee-logoHot off the press from EE

  • EE is the exclusive UK launch partner for the first smartphone with an entirely new Facebook experience, called Home, on the ‘HTC First’
  • The HTC First will be exclusively available this summer on EE’s superfast 4GEE service, with details on pricing and availability to be announced in due course Read more…

Defining a social business strategy – Altimeter report review part 2

So impressed was I with a recent report from Altimeter group on Social Business titled

“The evolution of social business – six stages of social business transformation”

that I decided to do a multi-part blog post. The first post can be viewed at lc.tl/asb1

In this second post, I am looking at the section of the report that looks at defining a social business strategy. Read more…

Tonya Hall Radio Show replay – talking about social business

tonyahallI was a guest on the Tonya Hall Radio Show on Monday talking about social business.  You can listen to a replay of the show below.

I first came across Tonya and her show at last year’s South by Southwest (SXSW), when she topped our Kred real-time leaderboard for the event on a daily basis. She wanted to know more about Kred and I wanted to know more about her and her daily radio show on the Bloomberg Radio Network. Read more…

Smart brands such as Virgin are using their own branded URL shortener

As someone who has been using a customised URL shortener for around 3 years, I take a keen interest in brands and bloggers that set up their own short domain for sharing content on social media sites. In fact you probably arrived at this post by clicking on the link lc.tl/virgin from my tweet, or a variant of this from another platform.

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My original post from 2010 explained how I was using the open source YOURLS platform (Your Own URL Shortener) to power my custom, branded URL shortener at lc.tl.

Read more…

Giving back – helping to educate the digital CEOs of the future one lecture at a time

Recently I have been speaking with University and College students about influence, social media, social business and how to get hired using social.

In each case I have been extremely humbled that they would want to have me into their class to present either in person, or via Skype.

My recent string of lectures started in New York, when I met Lindsey Fair and her 3rd year marketing students from St. Lawrence College, Ontario at the Pivot conference in New York in October 2012.

Read more…

Announcing the London Calling android app – now in the Google play app store

I am pleased to announce that London Calling now has its own Android app – available in the app store!

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Read more…

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