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…You find the fun and ‘snap’ the job’s a game.

So sang Mary Poppins when trying to entice the young Jane and Michael Banks in her care to get with her programme and now the same could inspire you to business success.

This article from US entrepreneur Natalie Peace, applies some of the most memorable phrases from Disney’s Mary Poppins to being an entrepreneur with some great success. It all makes sense and you will be surprised at how some of the concepts become instantly more memorable with quirky references like this. Well worth a read.

Now if I could only stopped humming the songs…..

We’d love to hear your own application of business tips to other films, let us know.

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The internet and especially the social media world is full of infographics, some of varying quality and most covering the same old topics.

Every now and then however, we come across one a little bit different and this is one of those. The Social Media High School Yearbook from FlowTown.com is a pretty good attempt at identifying the USPs and individual characteristics of the many social networks out there. Obviously it has a US-bias in the way it is written – it is supposed to be a High School Yearbook after all, but if  you are new to social media or simply not confident of stuff beyond Twitter and Facebook, then this is a great way to try and understand how the social media sphere works and interacts.

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

Have you seen any other infographics you think break the mould and deserve to be be shared with all?

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The events of unrest, rioting and looting across major cities in the UK have had plenty of media coverage both home and abroad. In an interesting role-swap, some of the most insightful commentary has come not from the UK online community but those in the Arab world, who just a few months themselves were leading and propounding the uprising in their own nations.

Yet, while revolutionary in their own homes, the majority of bloggers, tweeters and social commentators online in the Arab world appear to condemn the tactics and motives of those involved in the disturbances in the UK this week.

One of those Cairo-based blogger, Mosa’ab Elshamy whose Flickr images informed the world of uprising in Egypt less than six months ago. He tweeted this week:”Egyptians and Tunisians took revenge for Khaled Said and Bouazizi by peacefully toppling their murdering regimes, not stealing DVD players.”

Most of those who choose to blog, do so because they want their opinions to be heard. Via a blog you can suddenly have your own media empire at your fingertips. None are more vocal than the cyber-mummy community, the mummy bloggers, who make up once of the fastest-rising sectors of the blogging world. The Uk is no exception and the UK, blogging parents have also been quick to get their opinions out.

Me, The Man & The Baby was bunged up and bothered  by what she saw even from the comfort of her own home far from the troubles. “I knew my son was safe and the only noises we heard were owls. Elsewhere mothers close to the events caused by yobs and rebels were holding their children in fear, trying to explain to them why they could smell smoke or hear sirens.”

So while, many are blaming technology for escalating the troubles, many more are using technology and social media in particular to offer their opnions on it. Not everybody will always agree with what is written but as these bloggers are showing it is just as easy to be productive and add to the debate via a blog as it is to be destructive and join in the troubles.

What’s more. You are likely to get more attention, and publicity of the right sort via your own blog.

If you’ve not thought about a blog before, now may be the perfect time to get your thoughts in the global domain. Our Linux starter package comes with a free installation of WordPress, the leading blogging program and all for less than £1 per week.

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A blog today from the Harvard Business Review suggests that the art of brand building via social media was first mooted 50 years ago.

David Aaker the author of Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant reveals that Ernest Dichter, the father of motivation research, did a large study of word of mouth persuasion that was reported way back in a 1966 Harvard Business Review article.

It’s some interesting academic backing for the message we’ve been promoting for ages: Social media is just traditional marketing in digital clothes.

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We’ve discussed the possibility of Facebook becoming the hub for ecommerce in the future and now one leading blogger is experimenting with Facebook as the home for his blog.

Paul Bradshaw is a reader in online journalism at Birmingham City University, and a Visiting Professor at City University’s School of Journalism in London and is using Facebook’s underused notes tool as a platform for his journalism-related blogs.

After attending a recent social media summit at the BBC, Bradshaw decided to explore why professional writers don’t use Facebook more often.

Speaking to journalism website Hold the Front Page he said:
“My aim is to be more professional than Twitter but less personal than a Facebook profile. The posts are too long for Twitter and too short for a blog post.”

The experiment has been running since 3rd June under the title “Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog on FB for 1 month” and Bradshaw reports traffic being higher than his previous stand-alone blog – although the novelty factor could be distorting this. If it continues to prove popular Bradshaw has pledged to continue the experiment which he initially set at one month. That could prove interesting as Bradshaw revealed on the blog one interesting finding already from his experiment. “you can get a custom URL after 30 likes – and you can’t edit your page name after 100 likes, so I’m now stuck with “for 1 month” forever ”

It’s an interesting project that we will be following and if you want to have a bit more of an insight into how it works and what Bradshaw aims to get out of it, this interview on the Facebook and Journalists group on Facebook is well worth a read.

Have you tried blogging via Facebook?

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With setting up a blog via 123-apps so easy nowadays we thought this article we found on the Guardian website this week may offer some inspiration.

It appears that cookery and food publishers are turning to food bloggers and making them the next wave of published cooks. It makes sense too. Via a blog you can show your ability to write, your ability to structure and order your thoughts and ideas. A regularly updated blog also shows that you are committed to what you do and capable of focusing on the task in hand. Consider your blog as a kind of continuous job interview.

And the world of food is not the only sector pulling on the blogging community.  Singer songwriter Lotte Mullan is set to launch her first album later this month after years of online promotion and blogging in the hunt for a recording contract. She has that now, as well as the possibility of  a large bonus for the film rights to her life, all based on what one screen-writer read on Lotte’s blog.

While writing your own blog is not a certainty to fame, it is a challenge and skill that can pay dividends in the future, whatever line of work you want to head into. So whether it is a personal thoughts blog or one promoting your business creating a structured approach and regular routine, your blog may be your springboard to future success.

Do you blog? What topics? Do you have a routine?

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Yesterday, was one of those days when you can hear those Eureka moments happen in your head at regular intervals.

I was at BlogCamp London run by Tots100 in connection with Talk Talk and hosted at the very comfortable and impressive Talk Talk Customer Experience Centre in Soho, London. Now I’ve been to loads of these things before and learnt a lot through them but this one was different.

It wasn’t full of geek-speak. In fact in wasn’t full of geeks at all. The Tots100  is a selection of the bext UK Parenting blogs, so almost everybody there had more than just blogging in common, they were parents too. It made for an interesting but highly uplifting atmosphere. There was an excitement of the day ahead but also the excitement of networking in person, sharing, airing and comparing. It worked and there were gems to be had.

Those privileged to be there, heard about the good and (some) bad experiences of two of the UK’s most successful and influential blogers of their ilk Muireann Carey Campbell of Bangs and a Bun and Sian Meades from Domestic Sluttery. TalkTalk’s own Matt Bird gave some practical tips and advice on keeping families safe online and Dafydd Prichard of web design agency Cite came along with some simple to understand tips and tricks on improving your online look. That even included random surprise picks on some of the sites run by those bloggers before him, offering advice on what works and what they could change to improve their visitor experience. There were plenty of gems of wisdom to be had. Wrapping it all up SEO consultant Lee Smallwood helped make sense of longtail keywords, this hat, that hat and why Google can be your friend.

It was one of the best of the events that I have been too, but what made it was the people there too. Each and every attendee had a blog of some sort or other. Many have 1,000s of daily readers, 1,000s followers on Twitter and many already knew each other from that social media world, but few had met before. Many had interacted online on a regular basis but busy parents spread far and wide across the country, they are not well placed for weekly drinks meets. Yet, however good you are in the virtual world, we are all human and it was clear from the reactions throughout the day that while social media is key and boosting your online traffic is important, every now and then you need to jump into the real world. It is amazing how that fresh look, different environment and having others around you can have a positive impact.

Now if you are of the parenting blog ilk Tots100 are planning more events, but events like this take place every week, probably every day in most big towns and cities. Some a full day, some just an hour but they usually offer a talk from an ‘expert’ and more importantly the chance to network with like-minded people. That is invaluable. The forum communities, twittersphere and even Faceboook groups are a great place to swap ideas and gain encouragement, but there really is nothing better than having  a face-to-face chat. You learn more and get a chance to grab lots of opinions on a topic all at the same time while they are focused on it.

The point I am making is that while social networking is great both personally and business-wise, meeting real people of a similar ilk is as important, in helping your business grow and you grow as a person. If you’ve not tried it,check out sites like Eventbrite and try one out.

Do you attend ‘real’ social events regularly? Do agree?

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If ever glance at those job ads you see down the side of many webpages you will have noticed an increased number of positions with ‘social media’ in the title. The fact is social media is – or should be – an integral part of every business but too often, even those advertising for ‘social media executives’ and the like are getting it wrong.

This blog by Shane O’Byrne, Social Media Director at agency MEC seems to sum it up perfectly. The thing about social media is that it is not just and add-on and it is not even a separate department. Of course you need experts in social media within your business but to be successful your social media needs to be driven throughout the business. That way by getting more people within your firm or project thinking about social media you will become much more innovative in your use of it and therefore in more successful all round.

Have a read and have a think. Do you agree with Shane?

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Thinking of launching a hate campaign against a rival? Or illegally downloading copyright-protected films via the internet? If you believe Hollywood or even some quasi-government spin then you’d think that the police can reliably trace suspects via their IP addresses. Well apparently they can, but not necessarily with any accuracy.

We obviously don’t want to promote criminal activity but we are all about educating the population mis-informed about cyber-issues by PR puff and propaganda.

Over on PC Pro an interesting article by Davey Winder uncovers just why IP tracking is flawed as a crime detection method. Whilst it has become a key tool in anti-piracy and criminal investigations, the English courts recently cast some doubt over the ‘tried and tested validity’ of the method after the tactic was employed by copyright-protection chasing law firm ACS Law.

What is an IP address?

Before you understand why your IP address can’t actually personally identify you  need first to understand what an IP address is. Every connection to the internet has an internet protocol (IP) address – a numerical identity that enables the correct delivery of  data. Every domain name is basically a literary translation of an IP address. It is what makes the system work.

Your public IP address is allocated by your ISP (internet service provider) and may be permanent (static) or temporary (dynamic), the latter meaning each time you login you will be allocated an IP for that session from a pool of available addresses owned by the ISP. Behind that public IP address within your own network you will have a private IP address, that further complicates matters.

The problem is that IP tracing assumes that every address is traceable back to an individual, but it quite often isn’t.  In fact if you know what you are doing you can quite easily hide your IP address. The more hops and connections made to reach the internet backbone using proxies and the like, the more difficult it becomes to track or resolve the original IP, meaning a super-cyber criminal needs only to know how to bounce around the internet a few times to cloud the water behind them.

The police and other agencies now have the right to demand ISPs reveal who’s behind an IP address and IP logs under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Yet in practice most ISPs delete these after a few days anyway. Therefore even if an IP can be traced back to an ISP by then the logs are normally destroyed by then. So, other than catching careless cyber-criminals caught in a matter of hours, the tracing of IP addresses is pretty hit and miss. More Hollywood illusions shattered.

Read Davey Winder’s post for a more detailed account.

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If you still needed convincing that the way marketeers are using social media is ever changing then check Jennifer Whitehead’s blog on Revolution’s The Wall blogosphere.

She writes “after recommending to a friend via Twitter that she read David Mitchell’s latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, I was tweeted at by the Twitter stream that is part of the digital campaign running ahead of its official launch in paperback”.

It obviously had an impact as Jennifer blogged about it and we’ve then name-checked the same. So is shown an example of Twitter management that is not just about placating the disillussioned customer. Twitter is definitely ‘the new word of mouth’. If you follow any celebrities on Twitter you will probably see daily re-tweets of brands / events and the like seeking informal endorsement via the Twittersphere. There’s no better recommendation either than a satisfied customer that you can show off, so this latest move by the publisher of Mitchell’s book, twitter stalking those who have apparently already read the book and liked it – is just an attempt to make the most of those already on side and encourage them to promote that enjoyment.

A little incentive helps too. A signed-book giveaway is there to entice in those supporting the drive and writing a short review of the book for its Facebook page. The need to ‘like’ the page ahead of a review being allowed also grabs the campaign, some useful metrics about happy readers.

With just over 1,000 likes at the time of this blog, it has not set the world alight in terms of Facebook marketing but it is an interesting insight into how some established names like Hodder & Stoughton are looking beyond the obvious.

Have you come across any off-the-wall social media campaigns that you think break the mould and that really work well?

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