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    WOMMA’s Influencer Marketing Handbook

    Brilliant stuff! WOMMA launched Influencer Marketing Handbook – extraordinary set of info about types of influencers, ways of engagement and useful resources on the topic (really good list of readings!!!).

    The whole document is a must read for all WOM marketers, obviously, I would like to quote two parts of it, however, two key issues of influencer engagement that – from my experience – companies and/or people, in general, do not comprehend:

    1.’Your best influencers may not always be positive about your product, company and/or services. In fact, your biggest fans may at times be your harshest critics. The fact they are sometimes negative will make them far more credible to their networks.’

    2.’Influencer programs are, by definition, long-term, multi-year commitments designed to build a relationship; they are not marketing campaigns. Campaigns can augment influencer efforts to help find, activate, or engage influencers in particular activities (like a product launch), but influencer programs need to level out the roller coaster of connections provided by campaigns.’

    All we are talking about it trust and loyalty – not to the brand, but loyalty to yourself. Any influential, serious blogger, twitter user, etc will always be expected to write truth and only truth – since this is exactly the reason why we all post online – in our fields ruled by freedom of speech:)

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    Global Voices in Polish

    What am I talking about? See yourself here. ‘Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining a light on places and people other media often ignore.’ If you know my blog, you have probably seen the post in September about Global Voices linking to their site and to my fellow blogger Jez Wegierski, who posted about Global Voices Summit in Budapest this summer. For those who see it for the first time, I strongly advise to check out their Advocacy site, where you can find info about issues international bloggers face when being deprived of freedom of speech. I have noticed that their translation program lacks Polish, so I have written to them. I received a great response and established very professional, pro-active and encouraging communication with cool people, as a result of which I hope to help them out to kick off the Polish site fairly soon.

    If you are a blogger and you’re interested in joining me or/and them, please let me know! I would love to share voluntarily work with anyone else caring for the cause.

    Freedom of speech is a sensitive topic, and the info there makes me realise how happy I am to live in the UK and be able to post whatever I want and access all the sites whenever I want to. At American Studies we had an American Constitution class one (‘Congress shall make no law…), where the teacher wanted to show us the true meaning of American concept of freedom of speech. It’s important actually. We were asked to take 10 post-its each and write one of our most important freedoms (freedom to, and freedom from) on each of those. Let’s say this way:

    1. Freedom to write my own opinions

    2. Freedom to travel

    3. Freedom from having to attend one religious gathering

    4. Freedom to choose friends

    5. Freedom to think and speak it.

    6.  Freedom to eat whatever and whenever I want.

    7. Freedom to access all books at the local library.

    8. Freedom from having to wear pink.

    9. Freedom to write letters to my family abroad.

    10. Freedom to leave the house.

    Now, with all this in front of our face, we had to imagine being deprived of one of those. Talk about it. As we got rid of 9 post-its we were terrified. And smarter, if you know what I mean.

    Freedom of speech is one of our basic human rights. We think it’s so obvious, but is it?

    Global Voices does a great job bringing the reality, the facts to the public and establishing a dialogue among those who ae involved in protecting it. They encourage blogging. You can find their link on Amnesty International site too.

    What is the freedom you would leave on the last post-it?

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    Blue Day 2008

    Blue Day 2008 is Australian initiative to raise awareness of anxiety and depression, but since it’s based around social media, it has potential to become global. I actually think depression is a huge issue, simply because it’s very often ignored and untreated can affect our choices. While living in Hungary, I had to face the reality of it quite often. Hungarians, for some reason, tend to be very depressive. On the other hand, their general level of knowledge about psychology is quite high, so treating depression simply by talking to your GP is not an issue, shame or a fault. It happens to all of us, but sadly we are used to ignoring it. I hope I will be able to post on the 10th and I encourage everyone to do so.

    You can find them on Twitter as well.

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    ‘Bringing Nothing to the Party’ – Paul Carr

    I like Paul Carr’s book. I like the fact he describes the community of people interested in social media from a business perspective. I honour his openness. I admire his almost cruel self-criticism.
    Book raised a few questions in my head:
    1. Why some of us want to be famous and/or make money from our projects/blogs?
    2. Why do capital cities tend to generate an open field for niche communities like the one described in the book, to the extent of becoming a prisoner of the place we live in (I experienced it myself while living in Budapest)?
    3. If we blog why do we start getting interested in social media in general?
    4. And finally: why do we blog?
    5. How does our social media involvement change our life?
    I have no answers to those questions, but the reality described in the book brings me closer to finding them out. It’s enough to look at Abby Lee’s example (nicely put in the context by Carr) to see how life changing our online behaviour can be.
    I strongly advise everyone involved or interested in PR, marketing and social media read this book. Its extracts were recently published here. Paul Carr is also on Twitter.

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    How much time to see the results of a social media campaign?

    Exactly… I think it’s the main challenge of all agencies working with social media: the fact that it takes quite a few weeks to establish your presence and engage with reasonable results. Beth is talking about it in a context of nonprofit organisations and I advise you to check out her post.

    I am not sure if I agree with this one:

    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3066/2906235414_d7dc2f15b1.jpg 

    I think this process should be less linear.

    What do you think?

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    Social Media Camp – London

    Where do I start? I heard about the event from Lolly and sadly I cannot attend this weekend the Social Media Camp organised by thatcanadiangirl (no time and most of all, no invitation:( but then again I did leave it to the last minute). Anyway…you can tell from the blog and their wiki that this will be a great day for all interested in social media in practice. I hope to join the next one, but I strongly advise everyone to keep an eye on those sites! It’s worth it, even if you do not attend!

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    Cementum – interview with Richard

    You cannot imagine how enjoy doing those interviews! I not only learn more about people I work with but more and more look up to them – their ideas are brilliant!

    Here’s one I did with Richard, author of Cementum, blog based around his project of writing a sci-fi novel. Here you go:

    Syl: Your blog, Cementum, is describing the process and your experiences during the writing of your book. What inspired you to start the blog? What is its aim?
    Rich: Well, I’ve been blogging for a number of years now about various subjects. Prior to starting to blog about my novel, I was blogging about technology, and as much as I enjoyed it I found I just didn’t have the time to do both, i.e. blog regularly and write a novel. So I decided to combine my two passions and blog about writing a novel, including some tips, try and join the aspiring novelist community online, get involved and have some fun with it, and it’s been great so far. Lots of feedback, always constructive, always interesting.
    The aim was to just talk about my novel writing experience, add some tips in there on the experience I have had and possibly get some feedback. Since I decided I am going to try and get it published, however, I’ve ‘upgraded’ the reason for doing it, to self-promotion as well, so as well as joining the conversation and community around novel writing, I wouldn’t mind a bit of traffic these days as well.

    Syl: What is your book about? When did you start thinking about writing it and what made you want to publish it too?
    Rich: The book revolves around my own personal fatalistic beliefs and tries to explore how they work, why I believe in them and how I can explain them. It’s done through the medium of science fiction and, at its basis, tries to show how you can believe in Fate, without having to believe in a Sky Wizard (read God), I know it’s a contradiction, but that’s what I enjoy doing, challenging myself. Taking two opposing views, smashing them together and seeing what comes out the other end.
    I hadn’t thought about publishing it until I got a few of my peers to read some of my first chapters, just to see if it made sense really. They came back with shining praise again and again so I thought, well why the hell not try to get it published. It’s a very personal book, very exploratory, raises some deep philosophical questions about the inner self and society as a whole, but it’s definitely readable, and after some revisions, I think could do pretty well.

    Syl: What was the main challenge while writing the book? What is your favourite part of it?
    Rich: Sometimes I sit down and have this stream of consciousness whilst writing, it’s called surrealist or automatic writing, where your brain just pumps out ideas and prose, without any real thought or structure. That’s the best part, just letting my imagination literally run free and turn ideas into words. It’s brilliant. The most challenging part is exploring my personal beliefs, my own belief system is complex and full of contradiction, arguing with myself about it and why I believe in it is very difficult. Putting the words on the paper isn’t a problem.

    Syl: How does a book writing differ from blogging? What are the similarities?
    Rich: Novel writing and blogging can be compared on one level I think; that you’re often putting yourself out there for others to read and praise or criticize, whether intentional or not. You’re bearing yourself to the world, so to speak.
    A novel will always give a real insight to the author, and similarly a blog will always give you an insight to the writer. But similarly, you can get authors that ‘write by the numbers’ like Danielle Steel, that just pumps out romance novels to a certain structure, in the same sense, blogs can be purely informational blogs that don’t really show what the writer is all about. However, given that the author, or blog writer, has chosen to write about romance, or tech, or whatever, you can always get a little bit of info on them by the subject they chose.

    Syl: If you were to choose, which one would you prefer?:)
    Rich: VERY difficult question. What if I take, blogging a novel? Like each post is another chapter or paragraph or something like that, I’ve seen them around. I’ll go with that, it’s cheating a little I guess but I get to embrace both of my passions then!

    Syl: Going back to your blog – you have a very strong presence online. Does this presence influence your life and/or vice versa?
    Rich: My presence online has influenced my life for a number of years now, since I went to my first ‘geek meet’ about seven years ago now. I remember it well, a bunch of us hired out an internet café for 24 hours, and generally drank and geeked out for that period. Since then, my online life and real life have been a blur, just the other day I went to a stag do of a friend who I’ve known for 8 years, we first crossed paths in a gaming forum, now we’re good pals, crazy really.
    Now everyone is jumping online with the explosion in social networking, which isn’t a bad thing, but I generally like to keep ahead of the curve. I like to get involved in all the latest technologies to get to know new and interesting people.

    Syl: There is a lot of discussions recently about blogging dying out. Do you agree?
    Rich: I don’t see blogging dying out, I see it getting diluted as more and more people get involved, and I see it getting rubbished as more and more companies/money grabbers try to take advantage of it. Blogging is here to stay, just how much people trust it and the people who blog, is the real question. 4 years ago if you saw a blogger, you’d instantly trust that was a person without an alternate agenda, now you have to take your time when hitting a new blog to see who the person is, what they’re trying to sell, what ideas they’re trying to get you to read etc.

    Syl: What about more traditional genres – novels, traditional letter writing, printed books (as opposed to e-books), do you think we will gradually move away from those?
    Rich: They’ll always be around, just in more limited forms. I occasionally like writing letters to people I’ve not spoken to in a long time. With the advent of E-Ink, e-readers are becoming a lot more popular and easy on the eyes, books will always be around though unless the green lobby gets its way of course~!

    Syl: You live in Oxford now – what is your favourite place in Oxford for writing?
    Rich: definitely http://gdcafe.com/FrontPage/frontPage.htm G&D’s cafe on Cowley road. It’s nicely lit, it’s got a good atmosphere, they do great bagels and brownies, it’s independently owned, it has free wifi and loads of power sockets and the ice cream is awesome. I’d say I’ve written at least 50k words in there in the last 8 months. The staff are really nice as well!

    Syl: You have seen our new project, Bar Mleczny, and already gave us few tips. Do you think one day you would like to sit down in our Milk Bar and meet few Polish readers of your book?:)
    Rich: Yeah absolutely, I’d love to go to a milk bar, I adore milk always have, so writing with a big glass of fresh milk sounds like a great idea to me. The polish contingent wouldn’t be too bad either! Hehe.

    Syl: Have you ever been to Poland? If so, what was your best and worst memory of it?
    Rich: I haven’t, although I’ve planned on going a number of times! I’ve had a lot of polish friends whilst working in the states over summer months of old and I get along with the polish very well. I think it’s the hard working attitude, the love of drink and a good time, their impassioned nature and consummate humility that I see in a lot of the Polish people I meet that I enjoy about them. They’re very much like the Scottish, and being half Scottish myself I can see why we get along. I’ll get to Poland one day, when, I’m not sure, but some day!

    Syl: Bar Mleczny is all about culture and food. What is your favourite dish? Do you cook yourself?
    Rich: I try to cook every night, I love it, I find the process very cathartic and love having produced a tasty meal at the end of it. I really enjoy cooking a nice curry, Indian or Thai, my spice and sauce cupboard is always full of hot and tasty things!

    Syl: When I say ‘Polish food/drink’ what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
    Rich: Vodka and erm, Vodka! The polish guys and girls I’ve hung around with in the past have always enjoyed introducing me to very nice native vodka’s, which I’ve always encouraged. In terms of food, I’m not sure, I think I’ve had a polish dish cooked for me once or twice when working with the Pols, but I can’t remember what it was, it was a good few years ago now and I’m fairly sure I would have been drunk at the time of eating as well!

    Syl: Just last question about your book (2 q’s:): when can we expect the book in stores? Will you continue blogging to promote it then?
    Rich: In stores?! Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here! But seeing as you asked, I’ll go with the ‘dream’ scenario, which is basically; Finished in the next few weeks, revisions up until Christmas, submissions in the new year, get a publisher by the end of the first quarter, sign contract, marketing, printing and release late 2009. Though like I said, that’s the ‘dream’ scenario and is highly unlikely. And yeah, I plan on building Cementum as a platform for discussion and exploration on all the novels I write in the future, and as a place, aspiring novelists can use as a resource for tips and advice. So you’ll see it around for a good while yet!

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    Colin Mercer on the Inter-Web – interview with Colin

    Here’s the second of my blogger interviews. Check Colin’s site before you read it:)

    Sylwia: How did you start your adventure with blogging? When? Why?
    Colin: A multi thread question, a lovely place to start, at the beginning. My first experience of blogging came from being called into my boss’s office and being told that I had to start blogging and that was that. This was a corporate blog which I was the sole person contributing on for around 6-8 months. I probably shouldn’t say much more about it, a quick Google search for “colinm blog” should make it pretty obvious though.That’s the boring, accurate answer out the way, onto why I started blogging at colinmercer.co.uk. I honestly don’t remember, I have had the domain for a little while, then the opportunity of hosting came up so I thought why not give it a go again. Being back involved in the industry after uni meant that I had some time on my hands to experiment and get involved so I did and Colin Mercer on the inter-web is the outcome.Syl: Does your blog reflect your private life? Does your blog affect it?
    Colin: Almost entirely, everything I blog about is private life-related. I am a keen life blogger, which means that when something happens I like to blog about it instantly. Whether this is a picture of me in the pub with some mates, or whatever, I like to throw it straight up. Until very recently I have kept my blog based entirely on my personal/private life, now I have started to add in some more things about work and other topics.

    The only effect the blog has had on my private life is positive, opening the door to meeting a wealth of new and wonderful people who previously I would not have had any contact with.

    Syl: You post a lot about your company’s projects/events. Am I right you are a fan of full transparency when it comes to marketing?
    Colin: This is something which has changed a fair amount in the recent weeks until now I have stayed away from posting about what I do with work. Previously I would post about work situations, or happenings at work, or places I was going to work without a reference to who I work for. This I suspect will continue as I want to keep up some separation from my blog and my work.

    Full transparency in marketing is something I am 100% behind, as you know, I spend a good whack of my time at work striving to achieve this. I feel that this does not affect my decision not to post about work on the blog as I am far from running a marketing blog.

    Syl: You have several presences online. What is their role in relation to your blog? Which one is your favorite and why?
    Colin: I do indeed have several presences, my latest challenge is to tick all the boxes on usernamecheck.org, and undoubtedly I will get bored very quickly. Their role I guess is to try and increase the awareness people have of my blog, the overall aim would be to get my opinions in front of as many people as I can. However, in practice, the blog merely acts as a tag to link all the presences together and gives people I encounter on individual sites the opportunity to find out a bit more about me.

    My favorite site is clearly Twitter, I find it very easy to update and keep up with the people I want to keep up to date with. I also love the Jaiku, but find this much harder to follow than Twitter is.

    Syl: How about your friends, do they blog? Do they use Twitter?
    Colin: I have a few friends who blog, this number is ever growing as I slowly but surely convince my existing friends to start blogging and make friends with people who are already blogging. I would say a higher percentage of my existing friends use Twitter than a blog, coincidentally, in the last few days, I have had a number of people ask me to explain “this Twitter thing” to them, which is encouraging.

    Syl: What does the blogging mean to you (in three key words)?
    Colin: Meaningful, empowering, brain-splat

    Syl: I want to publish part of this interview on bar mleczny (www.barmleczny.blogspot.com) if that’s OK, hence my next question:
    Colin: What is your favorite dish? Do you cook?
    Being an English male, Steak, Chips, Peas, Green Beans and English Mustard wins the day. Yes, I love to cook, I wouldn’t say I’m great but I like to experiment and find great satisfaction in accomplishing an edible meal.

    Syl: What is your favorite foreign cuisine?
    Colin: Curry, however, I’m pretty sure that the curry I like isn’t actually foreign cuisine, just our version of foreign cuisine. So I will also say Mexican, things like Fajitas, Tacos, etc.

    Syl: If we were to have a Polish cuisine evening once based around cooking and eating and possibly drinking Polish shizzle, would you join us?
    Colin: YES – you bring the vodka, I’ll get the cucumber!

    Thank you, Colin!

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    Blog Till You Drop! – interview with Lolly

    You will probably think I am crazy – I am interviewing people I know! Yes, but I have a reason to do so, even more than one:
    1. I look up to them.
    2. I want to know what they think.
    3. I want to know if an interview can help me to know them better.
    4. I want to share this with my other friends:) and readers:)I am including in interviews questions I do not know the answer for in our private lives. I am genuinely interested in their reasons to blog, exist online and in their everyday life. I am interested, so I ask:)For the first one, I have asked Lolly, author of two blogs – Blog Till You Drop and Cosmopolitan.
    Here it is:

    Sylwia: First of all, thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask you few questions, Lolly. Your blog was celebrating the second anniversary recently. Tell me, how did it all start? The blogging I mean?

    Lolly: I started my career in medical marketing, and I was desperate to do something more exciting but kept hitting a brick wall. A friend of mine who worked for an Internet start-up suggested I start blogging… I was hooked within months and started experimenting with a variety of social media tools. I seem to live and breathe social media these days!

    Syl: Did your approach to writing the blog changed since the first few posts? How does it affect your private life?

    Lolly: My writing has definitely changed over time – I used to blog a lot about traditional marketing and advertising but I seem to write about anything that’s Social Media related at the moment. When I read some of my old posts, I feel like an inexperienced schoolgirl!

    I write whatever tickles my fancy and I do not have a set agenda. Some people have joked that I am glue 24/7 to my computer screen but I do have a life offline, so no blogging does not affect my private life at all.

     

    Syl: Did you have an on-line presence before starting a blog? You are active on Twitter, Facebook etc – how and when did those processes join the blog one?

    Lolly: I used to spend a lot of time on MSN Messenger and Skype. I also had a MySpace account for a while (we’re talking late 2005) but I quickly got bored of it… Pink glittery GIFS aren’t my thing!

    Blogging is the foundation of everything I do online – I have a social presence on a number of other sites (LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, FriendFeed, Twitter but to name a few) but they all relate and add value to my blog. Facebook used to be purely for my real-life friends but I have now added a couple of bloggers I get on really well with.

     

    Syl: More about your private life, I guess:) As French blogger in London, what can you say about the local blogosphere? You attend the geek meet-ups, so what do you think about people you meet there?

    Lolly: The local blogosphere is awesome as there is always a party / meet up going on! Everyone knows everyone! The French blogosphere in London is buoyant – you would be amazed to see how many French bloggers who work in the digital/social media industry live in London

     

    Syl: What is the French blogosphere like? Where do the bloggers meet, geographically I mean?

    Lolly: That’s a tough question! I read a few French blogs but I am not part of the French blogosphere – I write in English after all. The Social Media scene in France is also very exciting – there are dozens of Meet Ups in Paris but also in my hometown, Lyon.

     

    Syl: Do you miss France? Do you think about living in other parts of the world?

    Lolly: I am not French, so I don’t really miss France. I would love to live in NYC – who knows; someone might read my blog and offer me a job 😉 I also love Italy so that’s definitely another option!

     

    Syl: I’m an expat myself and I am asked that question very often (well, maybe not so often in the UK, still) how do you decide upon a country you want to live in? Is it just a job or personal project?

    Lolly: I originally studied modern languages and I used to travel quite a lot in my student years. I simply fell in love with the UK. As far as I am concerned, I must be in love with a language to move a country. Job and happiness are of course also very important

     

    Syl: I see you like traveling and run a traveling blog aside from your main one. What is your best and worst memory from Poland?

    Lolly: I loved Poland! Nice country, nice people, nice food! My worst memory is not being able to speak the language and the roads! I really thought I was going to die in Lodz at times!

     

    Syl: If you could choose a country to live in, where would that be? Why?

    Lolly: NYC career-wise (wait a minute, that’s a city!) or Italy as the lifestyle, language and people are simply amazing!

     

    Syl: And a last very general one: what is the best and the worst aspect of living in a different country?

    Lolly: The best aspect is that you learn a lot from other people culture-wise. The worst aspect is that however hard you try, people will always see you as a foreigner.

    Syl: thank you!

    (If you have any other questions, let me know, I’ll ask;))

    Part of this interview is also available here.