In case you missed it, here’s my article that appeared in the 5th February issue of the Bookseller, entitled ‘The Long Game’

This week will go down as another milestone in the development of social media, with a major news story being shaped by hundreds of thousands of web users across popular networking sites

As I have grown more accustomed to Twitter I have created a way of managing what I am doing to maximise what I can get out of this short-messaging system and this blog post is intended to share that with you... and to throw in a few handy tips on best practice too!

Notes from a marketing / business development perspective of this week's internal Chameleon Net seminar on developing Facebook applications.

How to digitally attract, engage with and recruit international students, while mobilising your existing students to help with language translation, to overcome cultural barriers and give them valuable online marketing work experience.

Following on from the introductory post about Twitter by Ross, in this article I'll be looking at how big business can harness Twitter to present a more 'human' face online. Our case study is property consultants Drivers Jonas, who we have just hired Chameleon Net to consult on and launch their Twitter account.

Chameleon Net held a seminar on Digital Student Recruitment for the higher education sector yesterday, Tuesday 24th February 2009. "Stimulating & Exciting"; "Very well organised & professional"

Social Media is a fast-growing and rapidly evolving beast, and the latest website to be the darling of the Google Generation is micro-blogging site Twitter. The idea is simple, you have 140 characters, including spaces, to answer the question- What are you doing now?

My Dimbleby mission continues. Seriously, David, look over your shoulder and you will see me there…albeit with the need of the Hubble telescope.

Organisations can no longer hide from the fact that the web now has the power to make or break them. The ‘blogosphere’ should be ignored at their peril.

When Alumni, Communications, Development and Marketing professionals get together to talk about the Higher Education sector, some interesting common issues begin to emerge.

In August, Vicky (our MD) and I spent an afternoon at the CASE Europe Annual Conference in Brighton. The sessions I had the opportunity to attend centred around the topic of reputation management.

In my ongoing mission to become the David Dimbleby of the Web Industry (and beyond?) I recently spent an afternoon chairing a “Question Time” style event for movers and shakers in the UK publishing industry: “Digitise or Die” was the inaugural annual event run by The Bookseller, the leading trade publication for the book industry, with the sole intention of focusing on the issues facing the book business in the digital age.

Last week I attended the annual Digital Marketing Conference in Cambridge to hear what those with a vested interest in the rise and rise of the Internet had to say about the digital future for all of us.

When Chameleon Net asked me if I’d like a regular ‘blog spot’ on their site, I was chuffed but a little nervous. Surrounded by the creative and technical insight provided by the blindingly bright Chameleon Net team, how would my PR perspective of the company and their work fare?

Having just got back from my round the world, (well, Vietnam and Cambodia) charity travels. I arrived back at work and like any good employee, headed straight for Facebook. I am really excited about Facebook this year (especially now I’ve posted the video blogs from my trip.) Actually it’s the advertising on Facebook that’s really caught my eye. I’ve been checking out Facebook’s advertising interface and the list of targeting parameters is endless,

2007 showed phenomenal growth for “Facebook”, by the end of the year it had 7.6M active UK users, that’s 12.5% of the population. With so many active users participating on the social networking site some form of advertising system to target these users was inevitable.

Does anyone recall those childhood Christmassy charity drives? You know, those ‘Sponsor me to eat 10 mince pies’ type of things. You were cajoled into walking around in the bleak mid winter weather, knocking door to door with a soggy piece of paper asking for sponsorship – only to have to go through the same dreary saga after the event itself just to collect the money? – All that, and I don’t even like mince pies!! Well, what with the latest in internet trends, social networking and fancy applications, fundraising has never been so easy – or fun for that matter! You no longer have to brave the extremes (until the event itself that is!) You can do all your fundraising and collecting online from the comfort of which ever festive environment you prefer.

I thought it'd be worth outlining three particular areas discussed in conversations at breaks and during the Q&A slots at the end of each session at the recent seminar.

In short: Creating a corporate Facebook; AdSense - useful or not; Allowing and handling negative UGC.

Just a quick thank you to all who attended the latest in our series of free educational seminars on Thursday 11th October at The Groucho Club in Soho.

The event was titled: Debunking New Web Myths - The Realities of Commercial Success with Web 2.0

Apparently they can. But what about the old tricks?

At a dinner out on Friday with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years, the conversation got around to Facebook. One of the questions we considered was whether it serves to reconnect you with friends you should’ve kept in touch with, or whether we are all in touch with the people we want to be and that Facebook is a good tool to help manage those relationships.