2012 – Just do it.
In 2004, I started my first blog where I hoped that it would “last longer than other ‘ideas’ that i hav had…” and signed off all my posts with “xoxo“. It lasted for over a year and was my second big venture into social media (Neopets was my first).
After scoring a graduate job in 2009, I decided that until I started my role, I wanted to synthesise and discuss the information I was consuming and launched Cocktails and Crowdsourcing. I started talking about social media campaigns, privacy, and even World of Warcraft; but it wasn’t until I was academically referenced, presented at a conference, and has a heated discussion with a used car dealer in the UK, that I realised how important social media and it’s influence was to me.
However after starting at my new job, I got the graduate blues. I took five months off blogging and it wasn’t until I realised that I needed to HTFU and be awesome that I was able to be motivated to start blogging again. But even after I did start up again, my blogs were focused more on external content and things I am doing- such as the Telstra Social Review, Awesome Foundation, Deloitte, We Live Here Sydney, SXSW and Ignite - rather than thought leadership.
But this wasn’t a bad thing.
In 2011, my goal was that I wanted to become awesome, and I really was able to achieve most of the things I set out to do. I became a regional finalist for the Deloitte Business Woman of the Year (goal is to win it this year), gained so much visibility and amazing opportunities with senior people at Deloitte, joined Awesome and spoke at Ignite and Social Innovation Sydney, became a consultant, hugged my idol at SXSW on stage, became a mentor, met so many amazing people and generally became more confident in myself.
In the last year I have grown up a lot and looking back on my earlier blogs compared to the ones more recently, I have also grown up in the way I have been writing as well; which was one of my aims when I originally started this blog.
I feel it’s now the right time to start moving towards a new chapter and so I won’t be writing much new thought leadership content on this blog. 2012 is going to become the year I take awesomeness to the next level, and I want to be able to just do shit, rather than philosophise theoretically around the benefits. This isn’t the end of me blogging – I am still microblogging on different places, but my future blogs will be more of the story of stuff I’ve done and been involved with.
…although content around this will still remain extremely consistent.
Thanks for all of your support throughout the last year and have a totes awes 2012.
Guest Post for Deloitte Online: Social Media for Small Business Beginners Part 3
As a part of Deloitte’s Online Practice, we are encouraged to write up thought leadership to talk about our expertise. As a bit of a Social Media tragic, I wanted to specialise my blogs on Social Media. Here is the final of my three guest posts about how to implement Social Media for Small Business Beginners. You can check out the first post here and the second post here.
Social media is now an integral part of a brand’s online identity but it is not as simple as creating a Facebook page and expecting a community to form overnight. In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we discussed how to plan and launch your social media presence. Part 3 looks at how you continue to retain your community.
#ignitesydney presentation about @awesomefoundsyd
I presented at Ignite Sydney last night speaking about “Being Awesome” at The Awesome Foundation.
Presenting at Ignite is a bit of a challenge, they make the presenters stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, giving a guaranteed 5 minute presentation. It was a fantastic experience, and thankyou to everyone, especially Stephen Lead, for organising such a great event.
Video footage should be going up in the next few weeks (and I’ll update this post when they do) but in the meantime I’ve included my presentation (with speakers notes) and the video from the dress rehersal which was presented on the night after the jump.
$1000 in no strings attached cash… what are you doing that’s awesome?
SXSW 101
South by South West (SXSW) is probably the most awesome festival/conference in the world. After my amazing experience there this year, I have already purchased next year’s badge. What’s great is that more people are thinking of coming next year (p.s. join our Facebook group to connect with other Australians) and I thought I would do a quick Q&A on some of the questions I’ve been asked. Be prepared – this is an EPIC post.
Guest Post for Deloitte Online: Social Media for Small Business Beginners Part 2
As a part of Deloitte’s Online Practice, we are encouraged to write up thought leadership to talk about our expertise. As a bit of a Social Media tragic, I wanted to specialise my blogs on Social Media. Here is the second of my three guest posts about how to implement Social Media for Small Business Beginners. You can check out the first post here.
Find more about Deloitte Online here (p.s. we’re hiring!)
Part 2 – Launching Your Social Media Presence
Social media is now an integral part of a brand’s online identity, but establishing a presence is not as simple as creating a Facebook page and expecting a community to form overnight.
In part one we discussed the four key questions to planning your presence; we now look at how you launch social media and build an engaged community around your brand.
An @awesomefoundsyd annoucement
We have both a Trustee and Dean of Awesome position available. For more information about how to apply, check out Steve’s blog post here.
For more information about the Awesome Foundation check out my blog posts here and here.
Looking forward to checking out your applications!
Y U NO Multichannel?
The objective of multichannel marketing is to make it easy for a consumer to buy from a business in whatever way is most appropriate to the customer.
It’s really frustrated me with a few brands (and especially today with Vodafone) is the lack of a cohesive multichannel experience across their organisation. I’ve defined multichannel, but it means that during the customer lifecycle, your data is able to be cohesively transferred between channels – and you can perform all the same tasks, regardless of what you’re using e.g. if I wanted to buy a product, I would get the exact same experience in researching the product online; compared to going in store; compared to going over the phone.
What the hell is Awesome?
I’ve been a part of the Awesome Foundation Sydney for a few months now… and I always get asked two questions.
1) “What happens if you’re funding terrorism?”
2) “What exactly makes something awesome?”
Social Media – Are you eating your dog food?
It’s frustrated me since I started working online the exponentially high level of ‘experts’ around social media. I believe that there’s no such thing as an expert just in social media as it is a channel, so it’s always part of a broader digital or marketing strategy for an organisation.
People have begun to realise this, but it’s led to more marketers being responsible for social media; with some of these marketers branding themselves as social media experts just because they hold a marketing degree.
A big part of being able to consult on social media in an organisation is the understanding you get by having your own social media presence; but I’ve discovered that more and more of these marketers have zero presence. This led me to question – if part of your job is to manage social media should you eat your own dog food – i.e. should you be active on the platforms?
