Hovering Over The Back Button

It was recently reported in New Media Age, picked up by the Hubspot blog that Coca-Cola were moving their campaign sites from "traditional" websites to social media platforms and they are not alone, Pepsi recently created a stir as they announced a move from big budget Super Bowl ads to investing in their social media community. So what does this mean for "traditional" web content management? [ read more ]

I'm going to kick off 2010 with a blog post about Web Content Management, enough for now of my wittering on about my place in the social web or even web engagement. Content is still king and as I catch up with three weeks or so of my RSS reader, it seems that at the end of last year - the decade - that there was a new CMS blogging trend and it's for talking about trends, the CMS blogosphere was alive with predictions. All worthy of comment and I thought maybe I can chuck in some thoughts of my own. [ read more ]

Last week I attended the Gilbane Conference in Boston and have finally found a few minutes to blog about it, we exhibited and I was invited to speak in a couple of sessions and as I'd been contributing to the 'back channel' through Twitter (#gilbaneboston) I thought I'd expand on some of the those thoughts. First observation is a personal one - this was the first event  that I'd been to where there were a lot of people that know me through this blog or twitter - and initially it was slightly unnerving having people leap straight into conversation with me and thank you to everyone that did. [ read more ]

As part of preparation for a presentation he gave yesterday at Jboye '09 - a few days ago Jon Marks set a challenge to his Twitter community; to give him examples of where Web Content Management fails. I admit I am not at the JBoye event, so I have missed seeing Jon in action - but as a blogger on this sort of thing, let alone as a WCM vendor it would be rude to ignore the wealth of great points this process threw up. As Jon crowd sourced his presentation content, seemingly every element of a CMS procurement and project got a mention. [ read more ]

Today we embarked on an interesting social media challenge, a few folks that I've started to hang out with virtually (and more recently in the pub) agreed to meet at a designated time in a Google Wave and set about writing a blog post - in an hour. There was no pre-determined title, no prep, just a blank bit of virtual paper and half a dozen scribblers… [ read more ]

I admit I am a big Google advocate, I have spent a fair amount of time at their cool European HQ In London, at partner events and I even coded the first shipped iteration of our Google Search Appliance Connector (thankfully now looked after by proper developers!). Also, I admit I've only spent a few hours with Google's latest offerings, SideWiki and Wave, but I have the feeling of being in a privileged walled garden, rather than on the crest of a mainstream wave. Why does is it feel like that? [ read more ]

Recently I was fortunate enough to meet with David Pullinger from the UK governments Central Office of Information (COI), who are driving our government’s citizen engagement strategy  and mandating the policy around which government must adhere to. It was an incredibly absorbing meeting as we took a fast ride around all elements of where a citizen touches the government, (each of which I would love to have explored for longer than we had) and an interesting mix of mandatory policy, education and technical enablement that his department are driving. [ read more ]

I smiled at this the other day -"Software Developers: The New Rock Stars of Marketing" - it comes from the article  'Out of the Box' published a few weeks ago in the UK Financial Times, that talks about the role of technology in marketing in the new media age. The smile is because this is pinned up on the kitchen noticeboard in our Bristol office and that phrase is highlighted (can someone explain why developers always sit nearest the kitchen?). So has the geek inherited the earth? Well, marketing anyway... [ read more ]

When reading and talking about Social Media I see a lot of conversations about Personal Brand. Discussion about strategies, building and maintaining your 'PB', of who you should try to be, who defines your PB (is it you, your audience, your company?), when, in real life, whisper it quietly, the aspiration for most people I talk to is, "Not wanting to looking like a total c**k". [ read more ]

I'm still figuring out marketing, but what I have learned is that consent is the big word, the holy grail, the thing we crave of our audience. In this blog post originally posted on Engaging Times I have a bit of a think about it's value.. [ read more ]