…Romeo and Juliet, tweeted line by line. By kittens.
Speechless.
Creative fits and starts
As is often the way, the project you’re initially more excited about stalls under the pressure of your expectation (and the person you’re working with not having time to work on it with you), and the project you barely talk about for fear of Writer’s Block sneaking up and battering you with a large stick quietly gets underway.
The Collaboration has not halted, it’s merely ticking along far more slowly than at first expected. Ashley has the harder job, from my perspective; getting the words right is a slog but one I feel sure of achieving, but the vision is something else altogether. Of course from his point of view my work is equally unfathomably hard. So we wait on each other for inspiration to strike and the next burst of development to take place. I suspect it might require me cracking the whip (at myself, apart from anything) to get it back on course.
The Grown Up Monster Book, on the other hand, having been left to ferment, is coming up bubbling. Two evenings on the trot of just getting things out on paper have been as productive as any I could have hoped for. Not least in the revelation of a new character who walked her way onto the page I would swear without the slightest prompting on my part. She owns the book right now – let’s see where we go together.
Hopefully the long hike we’ve got planned for this weekend will give everything a chance to churn up (I find that as I walk I clear my head and sort of narrate descriptions to myself mentally. It’s a very good writing-without-the-writing practice for me). Also the extra stone I’m carrying might even start to shift.
Twitter: my two cents (again)
I’m not going to apologise for writing more about Twitter because I use it every day for work and pleasure. So why wouldn’t I write about it? Rest assured this is not another “slebs on Twitter” or “is Twitter full of twits?” tired and hackneyed ‘article’. It’s just one persons thoughts on things that would improve and, conversely, destroy Twitter.
Things That Would Improve Twitter:
- A built in ability to group tweets, TweetDeck style.
- A small html box under the profile on which to put a donation button, picture link etc. I stress small again.
- If @replying to two people at once was delivered to both of them. And following on from that:
- Having replies that don’t include your @name first delivered to you (including RTs, so you can thank them).
Things That Definitely Wouldn’t:
- Any kind of ‘friending’: the virtue of following is that you don’t need permission.
- Paid-for features you used to get for free (I’m open to new ones that are only useful to pro users).
Very small, non-earthshattering things, these, but they’d make my life easier (or more difficult, depending on which list you’re reading). I plan to come back and add to this as things occur to me.
My Favourite Social Media Blog that I’m Thinking of Right Now
Is Michael Brito’s Britopian.
He advocates common sense, decent metric and being allowed to mess up and apologise occasionally. And he’s all about brands on Twitter.
How it took me so long to stumble across this, I’ve no idea.
If you’re not interested in Twitter… it doesn’t matter!
Oh, Twitter. I love you, I really do. I enjoy the mixture of information deployment, news gathering, casual conversation, like-minded connection and, yes, ego-stroking you offer. I do not hold you up as the answer to all things social media, and I know that like everything else online you have a shelf life. I use you for work, and I use you personally. You’re great.
I do understand that when people everywhere are talking about you, that’s going to attract a few reluctant cynics. Some are converted, some aren’t. But it’s the arrogant attitude of some of the new people joining (many of them tech folk who obviously feel they’ve turned up embarrassingly late and underdressed to the party) that’s driving me mad. Yes, it’s annoying when people over-evangelise Twitter, but most of us – even those of us who demonstrate our use of it as advice to others – really aren’t that much of a scary Twitter Hive Mind.
So, and I’m switching ‘you’ from Twitter to the newcomers now, why join with the attitude that “you’re not sure you have time for this” (that person’s now gone in a cloud of hissy fit) or “what’s the point of this?”. The first tweet used to be “trying to work out Twitter”. Now it’s more commonly something knowingly marketing speak from those who haven’t understood that marketing on Twitter has to be honest and authentic – no worry, they’ll learn – or “so, everyone’s doing it and I think it’s all just egotistical nonsense”.
Well, coming from you it is. Because you’ve come on there to see how many people are interested in you not to see what you’re interested in coming from other people.
Look, it’s okay to think Twitter is rubbish – more than okay, it’s your right. And it’s your right to waste your time on something you think is pointless, and your right to say so. But it’s also my right to wonder why on Earth you’d want to bother, and to think you’re quite irksome and patronising.
So, we all have our rights.
(The difference is, I’m the one who’s right).
Amnesty International: Brainstorming social media
Last night I was privileged to be invited to pay a visit to Amnesty International UK alongside a small crew of social media bods (from the strategy consultants to the community managers like me). The topic was Amnesty’s use of social media and, in particular, their network, ProtectTheHuman.com.
Clearly the details of the discussion will, for now, remain inside Amnesty’s walls. But for me it was hugely interesting to see how a different – and very much international – organisation operates online. Dogs Trust and Amnesty are, at heart, very different kinds of organisations. Dogs Trust is a collection of centres in the UK doing the front line work, all managed from and supported by an HQ hub, working in one country with one over-arching goal which is the good welfare and treatment of dogs. The International reach is there, but limited, and mostly advice-based.
Amnesty is an attempt to marshall the collective power of driven individuals to further a common goal – the good welfare and treatment of people – but on thousands of fronts: stopping violence against women, pressuring restrictive governments to allow greater civil liberty, condemning torture… the list is brutal and endless. The International reach is phenomenal.
But what’s interesting is how little of this matters to the basic principles of social marketing and speaking to people online. Because, although there are individual difference (what approach you take with Twitter, for example, when you’re trying to discuss a million topics at once), the overall approach is the same no matter which website you use, what language you speak and what subject you’re talking about. People all over the world use the Internet pretty much the same way, and although the individual approach can be tweaked for the organisation depending on the desired end result, the ideas that came up in discussion were all pretty much universal.
And almost all of them were basic, old-fashioned common sense.
I was heartened to meet a group of people who all think of the web in the most clear, logical, common-sense terms. They all work hard and have brilliant ideas. I can only hope they thought my contributions were as useful, and that I’ll be invited back to find out more in the future.
NFPTweetup: Tweeting for social change
Last night I pottered along to the second NFPTweetup. This event, masterminded by The Charity Place‘s Rachel Beer and given a firm shove along by social media “Buzz Director” Steve Bridger among others, was the successor to a small meetngreet that took place in Soho late last year. That gathering saw many of the people I now think of as the “usual suspects” – a group of us in the UK working hard to make digital marketing through social media succeed – all of whom I respect and admire in droves: Jonathan Waddingham of JustGiving (who sponsored the event), Howard Lake of UK Fundraising, Paul Henderson and Amy Sample Ward among others.
If the last event had been a quiet chat with a collaborative presentation that sort of quietly tailed off, this event had definitely learned from its predecessor. NFPTweetup is shaping up to be a considerably useful resource for UK charities, and I was really glad to be there. Aside from coming away with a list of web tools to check out, I also got the chance to shake a few hands and exchange a few words with the people behind the feed I follow, like Jo of Diabetes UK and Citizensheep Michael. That personal connection is invaluable for a number of reasons:
1. It’s just nice to know there’s someone else out there doing what you do.
2. When it’s time to ask for advice or an idea, it’s great to have properly introduced yourself.
3. There’s no chance of any of that isolationist Bad Science crap happening!
This time, the collaborative presentation was done first, which got people thinking. I blushed as I realised just how many of the people in the room are watching what Jacqui and I are doing at Dogs Trust and think we’re good at it! A warm glow of job satisfaction is no bad thing to have once in a while, especially when the feedback is external to the organisation.
Thereafter we formed groups covering topics such as Fundraising, Integration, Reputation Management and things like that. I joined the Fundraising and Integration topics as they’re the most difficult for most of us: raising money in one big swoop like Twestival or Beth Kanter have done is possible, but how do you keep the goodwill going over the long time? And is it really okay to ask for money over a social medium (so far, I think no and I’m strict about that, although there are ways to kinda sorta break that rule which I’ll go into another time)? Ben Matthews, who was behind Twestival in the UK, was very helpful in suggesting some donation tools – if we integrate them I’ll talk about these some more.
It’s nice to see NFPTweetup grow from a chat to a masterclass, and I’m keen to see how it develops in the future. To see a blow-by-blow account of the discussion, check out tweets hashtagged #nfptweetup.
Identity Crisis
Husband, whose name also begins with A: For some reason, I’m MRS. A. Goldstein on this label, but oh well…
Me: That would be me.
Husband: Oh.
When inspiration hits perspiration
I wish I could say it’s because I’ve spent my time busily squirrelling away on the project I was talking about in the last post. But actually, my ‘day job’ was just really busy this week. There was a heady mix of Scary Brilliant New Stuff and Really Dull Admin which is the way of most jobs. Sometimes the dull admin can be quite useful; it clears your head and allows the creativity room to ferment and produce cool bubbly stuff. It didn’t help with matters, however, that I was sick most of the week, culminating in a spectacular loss of voice over the last two days. Talk about frustrating.
Still, in the midst of all that frustration came some good. I have been having very early ideas for a social media based campaign. The metric – financial or awareness – will really depend on the ultimate message, which is something I can’t decide on my own. I’ve run some early ideas past my manager and she sees it differently from the way I do, but we all know how little the final product actually resembles the early brainstorming. I suspect in the end it’ll be a healthy marriage between my initial ideas and her 10-year knowledge of the charity. A winning combination, hopefully.
I had three main reasons for wanting to plan, carry out and evaluate a big, organised social media / interactive marketing push.
1. Because it’s time; I’ve built up with the smaller-scale, important everyday relationship building. People have now found us; it’s time to really find them, and the people who didn’t know they wanted to find us.
2. Because it’s healthy for internal buy-in into social media marketing. People are still a little confused by it, and a clear result based on a universally-acceptable metric is good for driving acceptance and understanding. Not to mention job satisfaction for us, of course.
3. To push myself; it’s easy to be good at our current level given my skills set and experience, but I always hold myself up to higher standards than I need to, because how else can you learn, grow and progress? Stagnation = bad, especially when you’re working in a world that will chew you up and spit you out as old news faster than ever. I love what I do because of the variety and freshness. I have to look for that in myself, too.
This is going to take time and careful planning because I know exactly what I would do if I were in a commercial enterprise with a big budget. I’m not, and that’s where the creative approach comes in. It makes it all the greater an achievement if you can get the results you want (or more than you dream of) with a shoestring and the joint innovation of a couple of minds with different but complementary skill sets.
I promise next time I’ll write about something I can give details of publicly…
New project for 2009: The Collaboration
I’ve had an idea! It’s been long enough since I’ve had an idea for a fictional piece that I’m really happy with and have pondered muchly, so I’m pretty happy about this. Actually, I’m more than “pretty happy” as it turns out I have two ideas! At once! I know, bring on the trumpets.
One idea needs more time to ferment and develop, although I’m stabbing at it erratically when I feel the urge. It’s a grown up monster book and hopefully will take some more shape in my mind than the nebulous ideas I’ve jotted down. The other idea is for a children’s picture book and has nothing to do with monsters (although the two do tend to go together). It’s basically a protracted, repetitive series of gags told in rhyme, which I’ve started to draft. Ashley has felt his creative fingers itching and is going to provide the illustrations as the gags have a strongly visual element. It’s all very exciting as this is the first writing I’ve done collaboratively, and the first idea I’ve felt really excited about and that I think has genuine marketable potential.
There’s still a lot of work to go, of course – the first draft is always a tad shonky, but there are one or two elements I see making the final cut. It seems like all this blogging has finally had a knock-on effect and inspired a different type of writing creativity. Fingers crossed.
MOKUSKA 