by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Female Social Media Guru – second round!

Thanks to some Obama-standard campaigning from J, and a lovely, loyal community I have come to know well, I seem to be through to the next round of the Female Social Media Guru Award.

This is, in a word, fab. I have a hilariously English attitude towards self-promotion sometimes, feeling like I just shouldn’t say when good things like this happen. Off course this is at odds with good social communication, which is all about telling people things and listening in return. So online (and on paper) I am quite a different personality from offline, where I tend to downplay my achievements. Perhaps the reason I feel so comfortable in the online world is because it allows the confident side of my personality to show through.

Anyway, I’m through and I’m happy about it. I have a presentation to do next, which I have yet to hear many more details about, but I will update when I do. It will be filmed and used as the basis for a second vote. Jamie, who’s running the hastily-put-together competition is already, in the true spirit of such things, thinking ahead of ways to improve the situation next year. I just say well done for highlighting the area. As I’ve said before, it’ll be nice when we can stop dividing things by gender, but where one sex is under-represented, it’s great to be recognised.

On a personal note, it turns out that Helen Aspell, who is also in the top five, has an excellent Twitter handle and represents the only other non-profit (the Equality and Human Rights Commission) knew my sister at university and is still friends with her. Small world, much?

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

First rule of baking: remember the camera!

And I forgot it! So I’ll have to ask you to please just picture to goodies I shall describe, and I will do my best to paint pretty little word pictures.

Today was Mother’s Day in the UK, and accordingly I had my mother and mother-in-law round to tea. Well, the fathers came along as well, of course. Apparently my father-in-law was talking about the cats all the way home; he adores them, but my mother-in-law is a little nervous after an unfortunate run in with some sharp claws as a child which has left lasting memories. To her credit, she did let Casper snooze alongside her, provided we promised not to let him climb on her lap.

Anyway, tea time. Ashley got his best old English butler impression out, and made delicate crustless sandwiches with home made tuna and egg mayo mixes and smoked salmon and cream cheese (well, he IS Jewish). I rolled up my sleeves, tried to ignore my burgeoning grim cold and stuck on my “Mrs Goldstein” apron (a hen do gift); this is what I made, all courtesy of recipes from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be a Domestic Goddess:

1. Scones

A sugar-free recipe was a must given that Dad and M-i-L are both diabetic. These are lovely, light, fluffy concoctions, made with cream of tartar. The dough was as perfect as I’ve ever managed it, which made it all the more irritating when I left them in two minutes too long. They were still very nice, but somewhat more golden than I’d planned. No added sugar jam – raspberry and mirabelle plum Dalfour – and clotted cream (not so diabetic friendly, but it is a treat day) were on hand too.

2. Cupcakes

Plain vanilla fairy cakes, these, with icing-sugar-and-water icing dyed yellow, green and blue or just left plain white. I had some sugared flowers left, plus I’d bought some hundreds and thousands, silver balls and chocolate stars so I got busily creative. They came out a little more lurid than I’d intended, but they tasted good. I had swapped butter for Trex as even though we weren’t having meat I’m experimenting with parev cake mix. They were springy, light, nicely golden and satisfying, with just a light slick of super sweet icing.

3. Rosewater Madeleines

These delicate, springy, pale cake-biscuits with their distinctive fan shape were surprisingly easy to make, though there was no chance of butter substitution here. My mother, who grew up in Egypt on Greek food and understands unusual flavours like rose, loved them. As did I. They were not so popular with the rest of the family because of the ‘weird’ floral fragrance and flavour, so I’ll try a substitute flavour like orange blossom water next time, I think. The texture was liked all round. Dusted with a little icing sugar they looked really beautiful, and with very little effort on my part.

I packed up the leftovers and sent them home with mum so that a family friend who’s staying with them can help himself. Just as well – my birthday Wii Fit was definitely none too encouraging about my fitness! Time to get back into the gym habit; I figure I can keep baking as long as I keep giving the results away.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Four websites in one month…

..lying in the depths of my imagination.

There’s an awful lot going on just around the corner. Some of it is public knowledge; we’ve been awaiting a new website from Reading Room for a while now, and it looks like that is mere weeks away, post proper usability testing.Then there’s the website I was talking about recreating the other day, which needs finishing touches, one more to rebuild and another to build – at least the creative’s in the bag on that one.

I find this all quite exciting. I admit I never used to be this ambitious and focussed, but then I hadn’t yet found The Job. You know, the thing you finally realise you could do for a good long time, and be passionate about. I always thought that would be writing, but I didn’t necessarily expect it to be online writing. This job fills me with confidence because I know there’s a large part of it I can already do, and that I have a genuine interest in learning what I don’t know. And interest is surely half the battle when it comes to learning? Things come easily to people who are enthusiastic, or at least working hard does. This job makes me want to work as hard as I possibly can because it’s interesting and often fun.

I also find it a bit scary and nerve-wracking. I mean, after all, there’s a lot to do, and J and I both have long holidays planned in the next month because when we booked them none of this was specifically on the cards. I can’t help feeling the tension is part of what makes it interesting, though; I suspect we do better work when we’re slightly under pressure because it forces a special sharpness of the mind. It’s impossible to get distracted when there simply isn’t the time.

Speaking of distractions – positive ones – I’m reading a garbled mixture of Howard Jacobson’s The Making of Henry, Frank Skinner’s autobiography, rubbish free daily papers and a peppering of technology blogs, pet columns and, of course, Disney stuff. Jacobson is almost cruelly observant – it’s unsettling. I warm to his character only to realise I’m empathising with an object of ridicule; affectionate ridicule but ridicule nonetheless. I suspect that’s Jacobson’s point – that we’re all faintly ludicrous. Alarming, but undoubtedly true. Frank Skinner is honest to the point of discomfort, but I am fascinated by his discourses on Catholicism, and some of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny (funnier than any of his acts, in fact!). The rest you can read for yourselves.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Birthday: Mini vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate topping

Mum's Birthday Cupcakes

My mother is notoriously bad about accepting or asking for birthday presents, so I thought I’d make her a batch of mini birthday cakes instead. We both actually celebrate tomorrow – I love sharing a birthday with my mother but she probably didn’t feel so happy struggling through labour on her birthday! – but were spending time together this weekend. The mini cakes, a format I seem obsessed with at the moment – are just plain vanilla. I made them with shortening instead of butter as I’m experimenting with parev cake offerings for Jewish family; it seemed to work just as well. Perhaps it was a tad less rich, but given the form of ‘icing’ I used, that was all for the best.

Cupcakes - The Aftermath

The topping was a dollop of melted white chocolate, divided into three bowls with one left plain and the other two dyed pink and green respectively with food colouring. Next time

I’d decorate with something more but I didn’t have anything left in my baking drawer. I’ve now stocked up on silver balls, green angelica, chocolate stars and some brilliant sugar numbers. Dr. Oetker is my best friend.

Next up is possibly dark chocolate vegan cupcakes, or maybe I’ll go into savoury mode and whip up a batch of bagels. I say ‘whip up’; I’ve never tried it before and it might be disastrous, but a little doughy experimentation never hurt anyone. If the bagels go well, I have a recipe for pretzels I’d like to try.

goldfish-artCasper (the shadowy black kitten at the back of my current header) is curled up asleep on the sofa beside me like a teeny witch’s cat. I must go and gently scratch his nose the way he likes it best. We’re both sitting under a beautiful canvas of goldfish which I’ve been lusting after in the window of a local art shop for months. It was my birthday present from my lovely husband. I’m one spoiled lady.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Media Trust – Managing Social Media

I’ve been a wee bit cheeky and broken a rule of social media – being topical and timely – by only blogging about this even three days after it happened, but in my defence I did tweet throughout! We were unable to attend the whole event, which featured the following line-up:

Chair – Daren Forsyth, former Director of Innovation and New Media, Media Trust / BBC

Michael Waugaman (Consultant) – Seeding, growing and managing a community

Jasmine McGarr (Tempero) – Voice of moderation: safety and reputation management

Dean Russell (Precedent) – An overview of third sector social networking

As well as a case study from us, and the chance to be in the second Q&A session. J presented, overcoming her nerves, and I piped up in the Q&A since many of the questions were from people wanting to know about the everyday nuts and bolts. We were lucky enough to see Dean Russell’s presentation; lucky because he speaks an awful lot of common sense about how to start, which websites to consider, how to gain internal buy in and the ‘voice’ you should be trying to project. Luckily, he likes Dogs Trust – I beamed when he said he really enjoyed following us on Twitter because of our good professional / personal balance of tweets.

As is often the case with these events, the Q&A gets to the heart of the issues much more than the presentations, no matter how good they are. It is where the meat of the problem is finally chewed on, and I was asked one of the best questions I had been so far: “If you had to choose only two sites to focus on, which would they be?”. The woman in question had very little time or resource. I said Twitter and Facebook because you can achieve the most on these two with the least amount of time; we’ve just rehomed a second dog thanks to Twitter conversations, and in a year 40,000 people have amassed on Facebook, which makes it easy to send out updates to a lot of people quickly. But it was definitely an interesting question, and one that I hadn’t been asked before.

Then I was asked the other question – “do you think your job will be the same in 3-6 months time?”. The way it was asked, it was very clear that what was meant was “isn’t your job just a bit made up and a fad?”. Perhaps it would be if all I did was specialise in very specific community moderation, but I am involved in all aspects of digital marketing. Right now we’re looking into integrated online and offline campaigns, for example. I replied “probably not, but I’m alright with that,” and went on to explain how to me, social media is just another form of traditional, good old-fashioned customer service and marketing. I have found that my particular skills lend themselves to the online world more than the offline, but the end result is still the same.

I’m just a writer who has a knack for online customer service, and forming relationships. Nothing strange, shortlived or particularly new about that, is there?

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Building a new website the cheap & easy way….

If you don’t mind a few limitations, it really is preferably to let someone else take the strain. I can’t link to it yet because it’s not public, but I’ve been rebuilding a simple website using WordPress. That’s .com not .org. I was surprised how much I was able to improve on a custom website (made using Joomla! which I’m now not very keen on due to its general unfriendliness).

Both J (my manager) and I can write a little code, use FTP, stitch together simple websites from scratch and all that malarkey. So after three days of fighting with Joomla! (admission: we only had editing rights, not admin, which might have been a factor), we gave up and just recreated the site in WordPress, sorting out some URLs and simplifying the navigation as we went.

It took about five hours, which included finding and customising an appropriate theme, resizing some images, uploading various media snippets etc. I’ve never been more grateful for the speed at which ease of use has developed online. My eyes might be a little screen-sore, but I feel thoroughly accomplished, which is no bad feeling.

Have you done anything that made you feel properly useful recently? It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?

Talking of productivity, I was going to write about a whole Media Trust social media thing, but I didn’t. So I’ll do that later.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Disney is the model non-profits can learn from

Guru nominations aside, I make no secret of the fact that I think much of social media marketing resolves down to good old fashioned common sense plus good communication skills. Writing online is different to writing for print, but both are forms of storytelling. If you’re creative, polite and honest with a decent grasp of spelling and grammar, you’ll probably find the seeds of a good blogger inside yourself.

Of course, that’s breaking it down to its most simplistic form, but I do think that’s a useful thing to do. This is because when you look at the bare bones of how and what you’re communicating, you find inspiration and ideas come from rather unexpected sources.

I’m a huge Disney fan. Massive. Lifelong. Since my first visit as a four-year-old to my last visit as a twenty-four-year old. I’m going again in a month’s time, to spend two blissful weeks in the vicinity of what is undoubtedly one of the Happiest Places on Earth. But until recently I hadn’t joined up my love of the Mouse with what I do on a day-to-day business. After all, I work for a charity, not a commercial organisation. Sure, charities can (and should) learn from businesses, but what we do online is quite different, right?

In the case of Disney – wrong.

The main difference between the average charity and the average business is one of product. We’re selling the gift of a better existence to a person or animal, and in a way that is our online advantage, because it naturally lends itself to storytelling. Updates about dogs needing homes, Sponsor Dog information, guest blogs from dog owners, animal-related news… for us there’s a veritable fount of stories to be delivered and many ways to deliver them. We blog, Tweet and find a winning combination of inspiration, storytellers and audience online. Many companies would salivate over that kind of access to close interaction; we delight in the ability to be able to talk and – more crucially – listen to our supporters.

We’re not selling a product; we’re describing an ideal, and inviting people to become part of making it a reality, thanking them as we go.

But Disney has lots of products, right? It even has a paid for social media product. So what on Earth does it have in common with a charity that can help non-profits learn the rules of the game?

Stories.

Disney, unusually among commercial conglomerates, sells an experience as much as it sells actual products. It sells being part of the Disney dream. It has an army of dedicated advocates and fans, who take their evangelical love of the company and instill it in their children. It absolutely revels in stories from visitors – the Disney Moms Panel is sheer genius – and gives a platform to everyone it can to talk, talk, talk, interrupting as little as possible.

Human nature has not changed thanks to the Internet. People still, at heart, just want a voice. Charities have the privileged chance to give it to them, and they might not have Disney’s budget but they can share its passion. I will be watching carefully, and taking notes.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

UK’s Top Female Social Media Guru & Speaker 2009?

Well, goodness me, my manager must love me. She’s just nominated me for the above accolade here. What’s even lovelier is that there were people I don’t directly work with nominating me as well, and agreeing with the choice, which is really rather touching.

We’ve done a lot of talking in the past 12 months at various conferences and gatherings (just see the other posts under this category), and it’s really great to think that some of that has lead to people being impressed with what we do. Of course, we don’t do it to get people impressed with us as individuals, but I’d be lying if I said it isn’t very nice to be thought of in this way.

Just today, we heard that because of a retweet from a loyal and lovely follower, a second dog is on course to find a home through our Twitter feed (see right!). This is why we do what we do; that’s our ultimate professional validation. Appearing on a list like this just adds to that, and also has a personal dimension in that we the individuals are going about it the right way.

It’s also really great to see women in this line of work being singled out; I’m not usually one for gender-specific competition (it’s much better to just be good than to be good for a girl) but I know from experience that technology is an area in which women still have to fight their corner. It’s very pleasing to see BitchBuzz colleague Vikki Chowney on there as well.

I’m smiling brightly and in the mood for more cupcakes.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Mini plain cupcakes with almond buttercream icing

Easter Mini CupcakesMy unofficial motto is “when in doubt, bake”. If any other form of creativity is stifled, if there’s nothing on telly, if there’s any sort of mental unrest, baking is the answer. It’s a science, and the results taste good and give you a sugar rush; what could be wrong about that?

A combination of stress over a family illness, creative frustration and the excuse of friends round for dinner sent me packing to the kitchen. Plain mini cupcakes from a recipe in Cupcake Heaven (with the slight alteration of a sprinkling of orange zest) and buttercream icing with almond substituted for vanilla, dyed pistachio green and sunshine yellow with food colouring. Ready made sugar flowers completed the look, which I subsequently realised looked quite Easter-themed.

Next plan is a more striking flavour of cake or plain cakes again with white chocolate bejewelled icing, I reckon.