social media marketing – Martin Percival

I’ll bring you an earnings update tomorrow along with theis week’s keyword of the week, but I wanted to put out some more personal stuff today and just see what you think (about how I think).

If you go back far enough in the blog, you’ll find a lot of my early thoughts on how I have ended up where I am and who I was before etc. etc. Suffice it to say, that I was a corporate spokesman on all things relating to internet technology, from Java programming all the way to cloud computing via application servers and social networking. I was the archetypal technical evangelist, speaking at conferences and talking to the press.

And now, I don’t.

So what does that mean in terms of career advancement? Well, I guess it just depends on your perspective. I never set out on this path to ” make a million” on the internet, although heaven knows, I’ve helped to build enough of it that I feel a bit deserving!

So, after a time of being on my own, building a business of my own, what would I be doing having interviews back in the old corporate world. Well, every now and again, one of them comes along and says “we think you might fit”…and every now and again I agree and we go through the interview dance. And then……and then….they say “no we don’t think you’d work” and I’ve had enough of it!!

The latest bunch started out wanting a person who could run their EMEA press and analyst gigs, do conferences for them and generally evangelise about social media. “I can do that”, I thought. In fact, I’d be bloody brilliant at that! Ah, no. Half way through the process they decide they want someone whol knows every nuance of social media “from experience” and who can grow to be a good speaker…

Well, all I can say is: GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

All it’s done is to rile me up to the point that I will be setting up an industry-leading guide to both the social media and cloud computing spaces and generally building myself a name. Maybe it’s taken this final little kick for me to get passionate enough to want to kick sand back in the corporate world’s face a bit. Maybe this is the passion that drives all other Internet Marketer’s.

Who’s to say, I will be updating you with results of this venture. Tell me I’m talking crap in the comments or let me know what your turning point was.

Tomorrow. Keyword of the Week.

After a few weeks of silence, it feels like I have a whole load of stuff that I need to get out for you to read. The delay is purely down to me taking a vacation in Spain, in a house where the owners claimed they had been asked to never install wi-fi by previous clients! (Does anyone else ever get that feeling of having had something vital cut off when you don’t have internet access?)

One of the things that a network-free holiday provides is a chance to go back to more traditional ways of learning stuff. I always pack loads of books for just such occasions and I like to think that I was doing it before Bill Gates claimed he always took new stuff to learn on holiday with him! So, this time, in amongst all the novels, I had a few techy items. I’ll cover the others at a later date, but I wanted to point you in the direction of “Six Pixels Of Separation” by Mitch Joel.

Mitch writes a blog about the use of social media in marketing and it seemed like a good thing to be reading about – given all the recent product launches in this space. I spent a couple of years at Oracle talking about this stuff from a product vendor viewpoint, so it was good to get the low-down on really using all the tools available to drive business from the user’s perspective. (Disclaimer….I’m not at Oracle now, so I’m happy to look at other tools too 🙂 )

Mitch has run a blog with the same name at http://www.twistimage.com/blog/ for some time and uses the techniques he preaches in the book to drive his own presence in the market.

There’s never enough space to really got into detail in a book review without giving away all of the content but I’ll say up front that this is a book that I heartily recommend if you want to build what Seth Godin has been calling a “Tribe” of your own. The content is aimed at giving you all the things you need to get started in a more connected world than ever before, without any of the attendant fears of getting lost in a twisty little maze of social media updating. (Geek reference to text adventures there, how cool is that?). This is a book that will help any traditional business or individual looking to expand their presence online.

Of all the books I’ve read recently (and in fact over the last year or so) this rates in my mind as highly as “The four hour work week”. The reason in both cases – sheer practicality. Many of the chapters move swiftly from subject introduction and description straight to implementaion and a list of steps to take.

Mitch covers all of the absolute necessities – admittedly more than once in some cases – but this helps to cement their importance in your mind and he also talks about things you must absolutely avoid at all costs.

Overall it gets an 8 out of 10 from me – a solid A in old-school marking schemes in the UK (yes, that leaves A+ and A++). The only thing pulling it down from the 9 (and A+) is that little bit of repetition which sometimes feels like padding, but again that may just help with the learning process.

I think there are 2 points that I want to add on the end of the review itself, one good, one not so good.

First, if you are struggling with seeing how this stuff works (as indeed many are), you’ll appreciate my discovery on the seat pocket of the plane on the way back from Spain. The airline (Vueling) magazine documents the rise and rise of a Tailor from Granada who was watching his traditional clients getting older and quite literally dying away.

A short jump to YouTube later and he now runs a business based on a concept he calls Elegancia 2.0 (fashion sense for for trendy gents….hmm I should copyright that phrase!). He uses YouTube for short how-to videos and has accounts on Twitter, Facebook and another network called Tuenti where, in less than a year, he has sold 450 suits. His name is Bere Casillas if you are in the market for some new threads!

My second point is that Mitch seems to have completely left behind all traditional internet marketing techniques. Jumping to sixpixelsofseparation.com takes you to a dentistry site…..surely not a natural name for a dentists and the domain was obviously wide open (pun-geddit?) for snatching. So a couple of minus points for that uncoolness!