Wednesday 5 November 2008

Sorry i've been away on a bloody Cruise

No internet.. just sea. Honest. Missed ya. enjoy the mask :)

For Bonfire Night Fawks

Monday 11 August 2008

Hitlers Twitter is down again!

Thanks http://twitter.com/dominiccampbell for this, i laughed my ass off... ENJOY!



Sunday 10 August 2008

Breakfast dogfighting on Brighton beach with T4

Tom Fletcher of McFly at T4 on the Beach 2006 ...Image via Wikipedia
The first thing I thought of upon rolling out of bed this morning, after bumping into a few choice items, was "I really fancy breakfast on the beach today". Being that I live a proverbial hop, skip and a jump - 'be it a rather stifled one' away from the sea front, this is something I regularly consider but very rarely do.
So after pushing my flat mate Lois towards the shower, feeding my fish, washing away the previous day with Tuscan honey extracts and making sure the Chihuahua that rules my life is feeling adequately nurtured, we all headed off for a nice quiet breakfast. We; being me, Lady Uma Darcy and my long suffering ex Lois. So sunnies on and change jingling in our pockets we three strode forth for the and peace and calm that 'Louis Beach Cafe' brings with its giant slabs of toast and wireless access ..... BUT calm was not to be.

The morning was sunny and blissfully windy, making the sea alive with white foam and adventurous kite surfers. I had noticed some odd looking lights whilst approaching the meeting place cafe and snarled at the thought of some tacky fairground attraction with flip flop and sock wearing Brits and toddlers peeing on pebbles, Lois how ever cooed in childish wonder of what lay ahead and Uma, well she could have cared less but LIGHTS there were and we were perambulating towards them.

Seconds later we were embroiled in conflict with a anal retentive woman and her brow beaten husband whose "obese wire haired terrier' had attacked Uma, much to my little angels surprise, even though she had rather grandly launched herself at him like a mountain lion crossed with a demented squirrel.
Anyway, the woman has been extremely upset that my tiny toothless counterpart had attacked her precious fat alphie and demanded rather too seriously that we tell her "why, our dog had attacked hers". Now I’ve know Uma for 9 years and I have to say that in all that time, we haven’t really talked all that much about her 'issues'. "erm.... she's insecure" I tried and then Lois added "is your dog ok?', I was thinking "not with you as an owner you pompous prick, I hope your baby turns out to be gay"... then we parted ways with the husband holding onto little alphie so the dog looked like he was taking part in a lamas class and irked after cruela devil and his offspring.

We then bumped into my work colleague from Leapfrogg Christos who told us that 'The Streets' were playing in the T4 on the beach concert thingy today just past the old pier. "Well that explains the lights".


The stage looked all very impressive and as we passed by, the T4 presenters Steve Jones, June Sarpong and Miquita Oliver were prepping for their show from a big painted BUS. Some guys were shouting "were gunna pan a camera over all you guys and you start screaming ok" the screams started in seconds, the crowd of about "200" going mad.

Then two old ladies on a day trip were trying to coax a pretty looking African girl to give them a couple of passes to the gig, she was smiling sweetly but you could tell she was thinking "OAP's on T4. No way".



Anyway, we arrived at 'Louis Beach Cafe' and had a Tea and coffee, I was going to have one of the huge doorstep cinnamon toasts but the wind was pretty unforgiving so I decided that a liquid breakfast would suffice, and so settled back to bitch about the woman with the demon dog and down trodden husband. Lois informed me that she had been a theorist, there for had to be right at the expense of everything else, she's so wise.





We then wandered back towards home to head for a scrummy veggie lunch at "revitalise" as we had a hankering for a 'breakfast in a glass' smoothie and tofu burger with all the trimmings. I got a few shots of the 'streets' on stage, which was interesting, and guys in tabards kept hassling us to go join the crowd to make up the numbers, BUT tofu called so we soldiered on.



Uma met up with a couple of her mates out side the Grand hotel. Curtis it seams is a political activist and was midway through scratching out a protest message when we caught up with them. Fee fee it seamed was set to star in an up and coming episode of Dexter as a victims cushion of all things, but like I said to her "your young darling and you’ve got to start somewhere".




 We were extremely luckily to catch the "hove lawns hot wheels" team race, only three OAPs were involved, it was between Arnold with his manual walker and Betty and Alma on the electric wheelchairs, it was rather tense for a second when Alma disappears off for a wee, but I think by the end Betty had it in the bag!

 

Going to settle down to watch the last few episodes of desperate housewife’s and try and shake this incredible crush on bree Vander camp that has enslaved me (can't resist a woman that loves cleaning and violence) and maybe I’ll grab some chips 'those kids look good. Might nick them'.



Have a great start to the week and watch out for theorists they bite ... bye. "Lois hang on, wheres the dog?"



PS: Bloggers new format and tools SUCK - no more spell check or image placement, thus the dodgy postioning of these ones. Wordpress i am yours very soon my funny plug in happy friend.



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Friday 8 August 2008

The benefits of slideshare to social media campaigns



This week i have been mostly planning 12 month social media strategy's for clients. Some, are well suited to fresh and exciting challenges such as widgets, link bait and optimised video streaming. BUT... some, are less so, this could be due to the products and services they offer OR just purely from a monetary or time perspective. I these cases, traditional link building is usually then a prerequisite. But - "traditional link building and anal glands or similar and neither i particularly like" as per my post.

So with these particular clients, i sit upright in my ergonomic chair, take a few deep breaths, pour a cup of lady grey and begin. I firstly study their site, any new additions, check if they have any bid cash stored away, have they decided to move into the 20th century with video etc etc and is it hidden away on youtube?, and in the midst of staring at an empty February slot in the strategy document i think "i wish i had a huge cardboard box to break out of" and then i started doing some research into the influencers behind trends etc, i typed in things like the 1%, finding the creators and then creators or influencers and i start off my search. I trawled through a few results; a post on searchengineland, interesting post by clickz on 'who owns the influencer', a guy called Will Hintons LinkedIN profile and then... my slide on slideshare presentation;




"odd.." i muttered. I wondered how it had appeared under that search and then on checking out all the embed functions etc on the slideshare page i noticed that underneath it was a transcript of the whole thing.

This got me thinking (and sorry if this is a really old idea that i have just stumbled over), i thought, why not give great advice on slideshare from my clients and the transcript will give them some nice exposure to the article or page of their website.

It was also a slightly more entertaining prospect then simply revisiting thankless link building or handing anymore articles over to our amazing copywriter who is seriously overworked as it is.


So in a nutshell -"The benefits of slideshare for social media purposes:



  • You can embed keyword rich links (not sure if they are no follow - still it points them in the right direction
  • You can tag up your information to point them through to the full article on the site (incase they want to use this)

  • Its so easy to share and copy to social spaces
  • It includes a complete transcript of the slide text, meaning that key phrases can be used to ensure it is found in the SERPS
  • It sets your business up as an authority on a particular subject
  • It associates your business with other authority content
  • You can join other groups within your area 
  • When people embed a group badge to their site / blog they also add yours if you are part of it (cool)

  • It has mini stats thats shows you were viewers have come from and how many times it has been embedded, it doesnt tell you where it is embedded which would be really helpful.

  • And lastly in the spirit of API lovers everywhere, Slide show has been mashed to create slide share toys - the first of which being "slide share karaoke". basically its a slide randomiser and to be honest it doesnt work either on my mac or in firefox, but it looks impressive ... and here it is.


  • You can also create Slidecasts - This is very cool indeed - its like i-tunes and keynote have had sex and produced this little bundle of audio visual joy:



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