Friday 25 November 2011

Response from BVE North freelancer seminar

The seminar was full!  Photo: Alex Beaton
The response was amazing, the seating area was full with folks standing round the edge to pick up some tips. At the end some people waiting over 20 minutes to talk to me as well as folk coming up to me throughout the two days to continue the discussion.

Apparently there were over 2400 visitors across the two days and the event organisers are already planning for BVE North 2012. Event director Charlotte Wheeler said: “Exhibitors have already begun taking options on stands for next year, and we will be revealing plans for BVE North 2012 very shortly.”

The union BECTU who hosted the seminar on How to be a successful Freelancer have also reported on the success of the event....

The Panel  - Photo: Alex Beaton
John Crumpton, BAFTA-awarding winning freelance and union official, delivered the session with excellent contributions from Christine Pyke, an experienced programme-maker who now runs her own company, Puma Training; Mike Thornton, Pro-Tools genius and award winning audiomeister (our words not his!) with a string of credits across genres, formats and platforms; and Faisal A Qureshi, established writer and editor, associate producer of the award-winning feature Four Lions, producer of Khalil the Great for FACT Liverpool and a visiting lecturer at the Northern Film School in Leeds.
Reviewing the seminar, John said: “These days being a freelance means considering oneself an ‘owner/manager’ who effectively is running their own small business. As such I felt that after the audience had learnt what the panelist did and why they worked freelance, they’d want to know about the practicalities of freelancing.

Key questions
"How frequently did they do their accounts to keep an eye on cash flow? How did they decide their rates for work? What did they feel were the benefits of social media and how much time did they spend on ‘cultivating’ their online presence?
John & Mike  Photo: Alex Beaton
"Mike Thornton told how in the space of two years and through training opportunities provided by the union, he’d learnt how to blog, and later delivered training to FEU members on uploading audio-podcasts. In the process he developed the skills to launch two successful blogs, one of which has just secured commercial sponsorship.
"These types of success stories were contrasted with accounts from all the panelists of having their fingers financially ‘burned’ by bad and non-paying clients early in their careers.
"Such tales of woe certainly hit a chord with the crowd. A number of new entrants told me later that when they’d been on the receiving end of similar bad treatment they’d felt foolish, humiliated and alone. They felt a bit better that it had also happened to others who’d learnt the lesson the hard way but gone on to create thriving careers."


I certainly felt we struck a chord with our honesty and openness and the genuine advise we gave.

Monday 21 November 2011

5 Live Children In Need special well received

The 5 Live special I blogged about last week has been well received in The Guardian by Elisabeth Mahoney.


Pudsey was everywhere on Friday. Away from the fundraising japes and fun, 5 Live once again ran a documentary (as part of Shelagh Fogarty's show) about a project helped by the charity and the work it did. Last year, it was work to prevent young women being lured into sex trafficking and abuse in Derby; this year, an organisation called Positive Futures (posfutures.org.uk) in Liverpool. If you need any further convincing to donate to Children in Need, do listen to the programme.
Even if you think you know about the sort of lives that lead children into gang culture, there were some gobsmacking details in Helen Skelton's report. Children as young as eight spoke casually about endemic violence in their areas. "I've actually seen someone getting battered," said one girl. "I was 10 or 11."
Ben, who left a gang with the charity's help, said: "You hear about stabbings and shootings every day". A youth worker recalled talking to a boy dealing drugs on the street to feed his younger siblings, when a man came up and begged. "That was my dad," the boy said, as the man walked away. The staff didn't gloss over the challenges or odds against them. But, as one said, in the next 20 years, if he changes just one child's life, "it'll be worth it".

As I said it is well worth a listen as it explores the youth culture in Liverpool and how two organisations are helping young people break the gang culture cycle. It includes some very powerful interviews with young people of Liverpool and the youth workers who are helping them change their way of life.

Thursday 17 November 2011

5 Live Children In Need Special I worked on

With Angela Robson at Pearlworks I edited and mixed a documentary feature presented by Blue Peter's Helen Skelton for BBC 5 Live's Children in Need coverage.  It is in the lunchtime show tomorrow....

Tony Livesey sits in for Shelagh Fogarty as Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton joins him live in the studio to present a special report on Children in Need day.
Helen has been in North Liverpool, spending time with 2 projects funded by money raised by Children in Need. The projects reach out to teenagers who may otherwise get caught up in the area's drugs and gang culture problems.


It is well worth a listen as it explores the youth culture in Liverpool and how two organisations are helping young people break the gang culture cycle. It includes some very powerful interviews with young people of Liverpool and the youth workers who are heling them change their way of life.

Monday 14 November 2011

A personal view of Socialnomics by Erik Qualman



Following on from by previous post about a social media and connectedness case study from the Socialnomics web site, here are my thoughts having read this book...


Listen or connect? - Following blogs is likely to form connections, it is largely a "listen" form of communication closer on Marshall McCullan's 'broadcast' culture that the 'digital' culture that we are moving into now, especially with social media. Social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Linked In are much more likely to create conversations and connections. From a business perspective these are much more likely to generate interest and new leads. 

Its all very well for Qualman to show how large companies like Starbucks can tweet about a free coffee and afford to give loads of small value items away, but smaller companies and charities have finite resources, especially time which is expensive to give away.

Qualman says on page 133 "Middlemen are becoming less important than they have been in the past, and the rise in power is shifting rapidly to the social graph". With peer review and recommendation together with the trust of people in your network there will be less need of middlemen. Or to putting it subtly, not, bypass the middleman and go to the horses mouth?

On page 130 he says "Often our customers will market the product better than we can". In a social media world this can be really powerful". We have always had personal recommendation but it has always been a one to one word of mouth. How we have what Qualman describes as a 'world of mouth', or a 'many to many' digital culture to use McCullan speak, our clients can tell the world how good we are and it will have much more respect than saying it ourselves. So we need to encourage our clients to share their experiences of our services. But we have to make sure that we maintain the correct balance in our conversations so that the marketing doesn't stand out as 'selling'.

Qualman dedicates chapter 6 "Death of Social Schizophrenia" to the need for everyone to have one persona or identity in this connected world. Where as before we could have a work, social, and family peronas and maintain them because we could keep each segment of our lives separate. Now in a connected world we can't get away with it. Our work colleagues see what we are doing at home, our friends see what we do at work and so on. 

Play to your strengths, on page 135 Qualman says "Being well rounded as a company, or an individual is less beneficial. Its more productive to play to your core strength. This differentiates you from the competition. You need to stand out in order to be outstanding" He then goes onto to refer to a book called Strengths Finder which I have read and been through the programme to identify my strengths a while a go. If you haven't done it, I can strongly recommend this programme above other similar ones. A number of times I have considered some possible diversification routes, like becoming a video editor and rejected them. I am an audio editor and producer, sound is what I do, so I am much better to play to my strengths than invest a lot of time and money trying to improve weak spots, only to end up making them less weak. 

Embed the sponspor - Qualman does an in depth study of an American series called Football Fantasy and how the presenters decided to set up a podcast in their own time. One of the reasons they did this is there were TV presenters one day a week as it was a weekly show, where as they have made the podcast a daily show and so are able to react to changing stories and audience responses so much quicker. Also because it was a podcast they didn't stick to a standard programme slot. They made the podcast as long as it needed to be to cover the content that day, rather than make the content fit the slot. They also developed techniques for embedding the sponsor and the sponsors content into the programme. They didn't use standard ad format straps and spots. Rather they worked the sponsors message into the programme content which provided variety so they weren't using the same spot every time. Qualman says on page 142 "Consumers today in particular Millennial's and Generation Zer's don't want adverts to shout; they'd rather have conversations and ongoing relationships with companies". If the ads top and tail a podcast they can easily be stripped off when the content is spread virally. However if the sponsorship references are embedded in the programme and become an integral part of it, then they travel virally too!

On page 148, Qualman talks about CNN anchor Rick Sanchez who started tweeting and realised that it was more important to talk less about himself and more about the interviewees. I need to balance my posts and tweets about my work with other material so I don't just end up shouting about myself.

On page 175 Qualman outlines how social media gives you so much more data about your audience and their habits. We need to use that data to determine our marketing decisions, 'The audience has spoken'. Remember if we create conversations, that will lead to a trusting relationship which is so much more valuable. So shouldn't PR folk be asking what we can do to create these conversations.

With our experience surely we can help clients develop these conversations, also look at the complete web presence. On page 221 Qualman outlines the Skittles experiment with their web site in 2009.


They turned their static web site into a simple landing page with some links took you off their site to social media.

"Connect = Skittles Facebook page
Video = Skittles YouTube channel
Photos = Skittles Flickr account
Info = Skittles Wikipedia entry
News = Skittles blog.

Skittles were acting as an integration point or hub to great authentic content that existed elsewhere about them".

This shows that we need to be prepared to experiment and that will mean we fail sometimes but Qualman has a phrase he repeats through the book about failing - Fail forward, fail fast, fail better.

Thursday 10 November 2011

Business to Business – a case study of how to use social media

This example of what using social media in a B2B content has been posted on the Socialnomics blog...


Some  B2B marketers are slow to invest in social media because they believe that the ROI should be based on an increase in sales. Wrong. The focus should be on engaging conversation with influencers who matter. It’s the first step toward social business.

A year ago at Cisco, we launched the  The Connected Life Exchange blog and invited industry experts to be the authors, along with only a few company employees. We do not blog about our company or products, but discuss the industry issues that are relevant to our customers: the telecom service provider. It has proven to be a powerful approach in engaging analysts, bloggers and customers in a welcomed way — through storytelling.

We just finished production of a web documentary series, “The Network Effect,” again with no mention of our company, but focusing on entertaining stories about the inventors who built the network and the impact it has on economic growth, particularly in developing counties.  Here’s  the first episode of six:




If you haven't heard of Socialnomics I would throughly recommend reading the book.

Following blogs is likely to form connections, it is largely a "listen" form of communication closer on Marshall McCullan's 'broadcast' culture that the 'digital' culture that we are moving into now, especially with social media. Social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Linked In are much more likely to create conversations and connections. From a business perspective these are much more likely to generate interest and new leads.



I will be posting a more detailed view having read the book, look out for it.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Mike on the panel at BVE North on 16th Nov


BECTU are kicking off the seminar programme at BVE North on 16th Nov and I will be on the panel. The session is entitled "How to be a Successful Freelance".


If you work in the North and you have registered for BVE North (16-17 November at Manchester Central) don't miss BECTU's seminar How to be a Successful Freelance.
Our learning organiser John Crumpton has devised the session with the great help of panellists Christine Pyke, Mike Thornton and Faisal A Quereshi.
The seminar helps to kick off the first ever BVE North; join the discussion at 10.00 am on Wednesday 16 November. If you have yet to take advantage of free registration, here's the link.

For more info on this seminar go to the BECTU web site.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

'One Stop Digital' kick start new 'Radio Wizards' partnership



Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production… except radio! “It’s taken over a year to get to this point,” says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, “but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this venture while our new partners worked out their pitches for every kind of business from visitor attraction guided-tours to management ‘webinars’ delivering audio-guides and podcasts to the highest production standards."

Says wizard Peter Everett, a veteran Radio 4 producer (and former editor) “We have been competitors until now, but we have a lot of respect for each other and between us we have an unbeatable range of skills, contacts and experience. The spoken word is the most important medium of communication, but it has to be used to maximum effect, and we know how to do that.”

One of the Wizards’ first customers is Sir Richard FitzHerbert of Tissington Hall in Derbyshire, who will feature a ‘favourite objects’ guide to this Jacobean mansion on his website.



The team is keen to design tours using a range of state-of-the-art technology. ‘For every visitor attraction, coach trip or travelling holiday there’s a perfect way to deliver an audio-tour,’ says Peter Everett. ‘For example in Australia, car hire companies are now offering a system where each point on the journey triggers a GPS signal and plays the appropriate audio on your stereo. Another way to do it is through QR coding, which will link the visitor’s own phone to an Internet audio source. A third approach might be to use an individual MP3-player that is so cheap to supply that it can be branded with a logo and sold as a ‘buy-it, use-it, take-it-home’ souvenir.’

What brought the Wizards together was an initiative by Vision and Media North-West, who had spotted that there’s a much bigger market for audio production skills than just radio broadcasting. V+M hosted a series of seminars with successful entrepreneurs in the advertising, games, digital and PR industries. After a dozen sessions it was clear that the commercial sector currently finds it hard to achieve top-class audio production, so the Wizards agreed it was time to sell their radio skills in a whole new marketplace.

Janet Graves of Pennine Productions adds: “We’ve all done bits and pieces in the commercial sector – for example, I’ve made oral history projects, Peter has produced coach-tour commentaries, and Mike has done infotainment podcasts for the drug company Pfizer. Combining our efforts will let us offer a one-stop shop for any kind of commercial audio production.”