Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category
Help! Rescue me!
Oh what a comedy nightmare!
As you may know, I set up a social media charity experiment a little while ago. And, so as to raise funds (for Shelterbox) and awareness, I thought it might be an idea to offer up my 10,000th tweet to a business to sponsor. The idea is that for a nominal amount (thinking £100) a business can be part of a year long experiment to show the power of social media.
However, and here’s the big old flaw [thanks for correcting the spelling, Annie! 
] in the plan, I came up with the 10,000th tweet sponsorship idea when I was on about 9,980 – so I had only 20 tweets to publicise it.
As it is, I am now on 9,998! So, I have had to stop tweeting temporarily because if I accidentally tweet, that’s 10,000 gone – I have a one tweet buffer.
It’s been a couple of days now and it is the run up to #LikeMinds on Friday. I feel utterly out of the loop and slightly trapped.
So I need your help to rescue me!
Please could you tweet the following:
Want to know why @jamesmb hasn’t tweeted for a while? Go to http://bit.ly/axpqaz and see why he’s trapped! Pls RT!
Oh and if you know anyone who would like to rescue me from this self-inflicted trap, please pass them my way! :/
Hopefully I’ll be back on Twitter soon!
James x
The Socialholic Experiment – Not quite what I expected
OK, I’ll be honest. When I set this up a couple of days ago, I thought that, if all went well, the message would spread and over the course of a year, we’d get enough for a Shelterbox.
Two days in, and we’re a third of the way there. But who knows what will happen in the next 363 days? We could still not make it – so there is no room for complacency.
What is vital, if the Experiment is to work, is that we keep the message out there. This is about showing what social media can achieve.
So, please, please, please keep the retweets going. And also the Facebook status updates and LinkedIn messages and the rest.
This is your Experiment and what we achieve belongs to you.
Please point people towards the JustGiving site at http://www.justgiving.com/socialholic and also to the original article on here at http://www.socialholic.co.uk/?p=202.
Vote for the Kilt (or not!)
Last year, I was lucky enough to be asked to speak at LikeMinds. I wore a kilt. The rest is history.
If you are going to LikeMinds this year (or if you’re not!) and you want to see the kilt again, go to http://www.justgiving.com/socialholic and donate a pound or two. Say whether I should wear the kilt or not and I will.
Buy My 10,000th Tweet
If you’re a company or individual who wants to support the Experiment, make an offer for my 10,000th Tweet. You’ve not got long – I think I have about 40 left – but if you make an offer that I accept, I will tweet whatever you want for the 10,000th Tweet.
Spread the word
We know that within our social media circles, we have a number of writers, reporters, broadcasters and other media professionals. PLEASE, we need your help to spread this as widely as possible. Contact me via Twitter or this site.
Something else
If you’ve got something that you’d do to help spread the word and raise the money for this Experiment, get in touch and I’ll do what I can to help.
THANK YOU
Thank you to everyone who has done something to help this so far either by spreading the word, giving money or pledging to do those things in the coming days and weeks.
You are amazing!
James x
Socialholic
The Socialholic Experiment #charitysm
Over the past year, I’ve done a lot of work on social media and it already looks like I’ll be doing a lot more in 2010.
I like social media and the power that it puts into people’s hands. The potential to spread messages and promote causes and campaigns is huge. A lot of the work that I have done in social media has revolved around causes and campaigns – often charity ones.
We all put a lot in to our networks, adding value to our social group. It can come in the form of communications, stories, chat, photos, audio, shared links… anything really. We also share a lot of unspoken common values – it’s what brings us together.
Anyway, I got to thinking and I thought that it would be great if we could harness all this great energy for a good cause.
Although I’ve called the page The Socialholic Experiment, it belongs to you. You are the ones who can make this work – on my own, it will fail.
The Experiment is a simple one – let’s see how much we can raise for ShelterBox. We will use social media – Twitter, Facebook, Buzz and the rest – to spread the word. Between us, we know literally thousands of people. Each box costs £490. If we can harness our networks to give a pound and spread the word, we’ll easily be able to reach the goal.
If my theories of social networks and shared values are correct, we’ll get a box.
If not? Well, we’ll have done some good and had fun trying.
One year, one goal, one box.
Or maybe more.
Be part of it. Please spread the word!
www.justgiving.com/socialholic
Thank you!
James x
Socialholic
*That* Social Media Guru Vid NSFW
PLEASE NOTE – CONTAINS NAUGHTY LANGUAGE BUT NO SCENES OF MILD PERIL
I first saw this at Like Minds 2009 and… well, watch it – it’s genius!
All about #charitysm and Thank You!
Help! Am running a seminar & want to show how far a tweet can go. We’re in Devon, UK. Pls RT! Ta! #charitysm
As you may know, I was running a seminar for charities yesterday all about social media. As part of it, I wanted to show the power of social media and so I embarked on a little experiment. I sent a tweet at about 12.20pm. It read:
Help! Am running a seminar & want to show how far a tweet can go. We’re in Devon, UK. Pls RT! Ta! #charitysm
Within a minute, it was in Manchester thanks to my good friend @MoreHavoc but, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t quite prepared for what happened next!
Within 20 minutes, we heard from @kymriskadraken in Stockholm, Sweden! Then we went on a tour of the world taking in France, Florida (lots of Florida), Texas (lots of Texas), NYC, lots of the rest of the US, South Africa, Ethiopia, Romania and a number of other countries before hitting South West Australia. Big thanks go to @cybertext for retweeting us from Australia – you win (if only there was a prize!!).
What I wanted to illustrate was that for little or no financial outlay, charities can use social media techniques to get their message out to audiences that may otherwise never hear from them. As I took the group through the list of places that the tweet had travelled, they were genuinely amazed by what had happened in such a short time. To be honest, so was I.
Personally, I think that social media is an incredible opportunity for charities because they rely on real human interaction more than any other sector. And I think what you did in getting my message out was fabulous.
So, how do I go about thanking everyone that has been part of this little project? Well, social media is all about real human interaction – so I am going to make sure that you all get a thank you tweet and a link to this so that you can see what you did!
The Roll of Honour is the list between 12.21pm GMT on Wednesday 18 November (when it started) and 9am Thursday 19 November (as I am typing this). If you have found this blog post because you RTd the #charitysm tweet and wondered what it was about and for some reason you are not on the list, please accept my apologies and feel free to add your Twitter name through the comments. I hope you will forgive me for not making each of you a clickable link but there are just too many of you!
Can I also say, I would welcome it if any of you would like to follow me at @jamesmb but please don’t assume that my tweets are normally anything like this or in any way ‘high brow’- normally it’s just the standard cheery chat of a socialholic!
Thank you, genuinely, one and all.
Socialholic x
ROLL OF HONOUR!
@benhamilton @pjvanes @sophiaology @mattguthrie @nanarcr @davidwees @southernbelle85 @GLComputing @nadinebonner @savingourselves @dpeter @treypennington @curtwalker @kristensousa @alpenwest @i_legal @jonnymcclane @fleurily @kate_garratt @philhellene @nigelwnw @nailaj @matijs @foamcow @aheartofstars @spongeproject @danifinch @elizkane @ipdave @glenm @pixeldeath @kichigal @iamkreative @marcusbryan @peninsular_judy @russellbishop @lilula @iwibbly @robhwakes @jeweliek @lizzyrobins @skyegiggles @kennysarmy @nwyatt @weimlady @jon_read @newsmediarepub @mattyoungdj @davidgrim @williamsmummy @incapete @wshaffer74 @pauljwarwickvo @ronlevinevo @claire_sloane @volcensderbys @hgholt @futpaul @dgdreamin @candy_l @steffick @YouGenUk @bkenny13 @wellthen24 @scottmliddell @aigwilson @annegentle @cybertext @mikefeimster @viewfromengland @sue_sd @dancingdivala @freshties @sarknight @ecmodshow @mkcol @michlan @usablelearning @seanb_us @stefsvoice @roiben @sarahokeefe @llamakevin @jules_lewis @pablo472 @robertz @dotdotdotdash @walkerdl @hd41117 @more4mums @fabphotogifts @360spin @amylane @camilla_wnw @britt_w @efnetwork @atlanta7 @pjsphotography @mariloutheclerk @barbaranelson @liamdempsey @kate_wooding @eetempleton @theredwitch @lookingred @kateweb @jen_connelly @sixdegreespgh @crossgov @briancroxall @angela_hunter @candace_nast @lenorev @garethhondaeu @cashel @jtheibault @davidcushman @shoshanak @tway_kris @mayman @slagreca @billwolff @headphonaught @mydogateart @stephendl @heathh @saraburson @masenkablast @sabotek @shawndearn @weblearning @martinrothwell @pablovich @farsighted99 @lblanken @mjmclean @budgieuk @seamuswalsh @shanegriffiths @anghelides @claudinho @ktrayb @mnthomas @james_christie @besttourguide @chris_m_ward @rebyaakov @cindyoyo @8helen8 @kevinmacdonell @decastan @carly_whyborn @zombiesheep @louisehector @eblouise @isekhmet @st0ckym4c @finiteattention @teedp @lovisatalk @shonali @amiafad @fishinguk @owenbarder @greywing @anjali28 @Chris_M_Ward @tsdgsports @Amaranta123 @N_A_B @FamousRob @kativettel @markmcguinness @andrewkneale @motorsportprint @i_legal @al_robertson @badhedgehog @f1photos @kymriskadraken @jamesbeston @alpenwest @sophynorris @morehavoc … and me @jamesmb who started the whole thing off!
>Like Minds – Controversy and Misunderstanding
>
>Well, this is a scary development!
>I’ve just found BlogPress for iPhone. Your only hope of avoiding a deluge of short blogposts is if it doesn’t work (and it’s only a two star app in the App Store!) – so keep your fingers crossed!
If it does work, I’ll post a review. If it goes quiet, it didn’t work!!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
>Oh the Excitement!
>After years of blogging on other people’s sites, ghosting articles and the like, I have decided to ‘come out’ (in the blogging sense) and so, henceforth, reviews, comment and the rest of it will be here and on Twitter.
And, I’ll be guesting, as me, on Darren Hector’s excellent Wildlife Photographer podcast talking about legal things (and anything else he wants me to talk about). That’s going to be fab and I am very much looking forward to it.
And (you lucky people), I’m also trying to get together a merry band to do some sort of live blog or nearly live podcast from the Social Networking World Forum.
That live blog will happen in some form of another on here and on Twitter on Tuesday 10 March – so check back here or subscribe to my Twitter feed.
It is difficult to fully express the excitement that this is generating but imagine Christmas when you were about 5 and realised that you might be getting the garage set that you really wanted!
