Video Archive

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of appearing on King 5 TV’s New Day NW chat show and was quizzed by the fabulous Margaret Larson on what makes social media activity engaging and how to gain more followers.

The eight-and-a-half minutes went super-quickly but we got good feedback from people who saw it live and on Twitter & Facebook that I’d struck the right balance (didn’t get too techy) and got the authenticity message across well.

Take a peek at the recording by clicking here and let me know what you think.

Below are a few more pictures of the studio before we went on air, a Green Room shot of me and PNW gardening legend, Ciscoe Morris, and pics sent to me by friends!

I spent some time chatting with with Andy Beal when we both spoke at Digital East in DC a few weeks ago.

Andy is CEO and Founder of Trackur and I’ve known him for many years on the digital marketing and search conference circuit.

In this Delightful Conversation we talk about how Andy got into online reputation management and dig deeper into how CEOs and their PR handlers should be approaching personal branding in a digital age rife with social media and real-time feedback.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

I’ve also posted this video on the Delightful Blog where you read more insight into online reputation management and personal branding for businesses and executives.

Thanks for watching!

We had a great time at Digital East last week and were able to make new friends and catch up with old ones too.

OK, so he’s not old, but we’ve been following Michael King – @iPullRank – for a number of years now and grabbed him before he boarded a plane to San Diego to speak at Distilled’s #SearchLove conference to talk about Majestic, how he uses it for SEO and relationship building, and discuss the situation with link building now in 2014 given Google and Bing have been clamping down on dodgy practices.

In this interview, Michael guides us through some link building tips using Majestic, what he recommends marketers focus on when starting their link building efforts and how anyone new to SEO should think about how links fit into their overall marketing strategy.

Enjoy!

In November, I gave the keynote speech at a gathering of financial advisors in the UK.

The brief was to inspire the assembled into thinking more creatively about how to use digital to get their clients to save and invest more.

I was very honest and told them it’d taken me until my 40’s to actually take some advice on my financial future. Sure I had a few pensions I’d been paying into during my time at Microsoft and before, but I’d never taken the time to understand life insurance or really figure out what I needed to do in order to retire at 60 as I’m kidding myself I’d like to.

During the question and answer session after my speech I was asked what I’d do if I was marketing financial services, so I said I’d tell some stories through video and online that actually resonated with the target audience of twenty-something’s instead of trotting out boring forecasts of how little I was going to have to spend in 25 years time.

Enter www.FeedThePig.org who recently created The Chase ad that I just spotted on TV this weekend and others like this, just as brilliant, spot called The Game.

The website is excellent with sections with helpful advice on budgeting, goal setting, spending and taxes.

It uses simple and easy language to understand the issues and provides accessible solutions to get you on the right track.

There’s even a site dedicated to Tweens!

Created by the American Institute of CPAs and the Advertising Council here in the US, I think it is a fantastic campaign and something I’d wished I’d had access to all those years ago when I were but a wee lad!

Now smashing through the five million views barrier on YouTube in just a couple of weeks, is a spot from Richard Branson’s Virgin America that (successfully) hopes to entertain and make the whole safety video thing a little more lean forward than go on auto-snooze.

I’m always insisting that companies need to do a little marketing that’s unexpected, and although this is spot on for the kind of thing you might expect from Virgin, the fact that it’s about something as serious as aviation safety, just gives it that extra little edge.

I’ve never flown Virgin (and I’ve just got Gold MVP on Alaska Airlines so I might not get to try them in the short term), but this should keep their passengers happy and smiling for a while.

Wonder how long it will be before they gives us the next version?

I wrote about the great experience we had at TEDxSeattle the other day and now the videos are up on YouTube!

This was one of the entertainment highlights of the day for me that the assembled throng marveled at and gave the first standing ovation to.

Jarle Bernhoft  is from Norway and generates the most incredible “retro-soul” sound as a one-man-band through great playing and a clever sequencing of beats, notes and crisp, clear vocals.

Jarle Bernhoft  Lost in Music

Stop whatever you are doing and spend the next 12.32 minutes watching this incredible performance.

Click Here if you can’t play the video above.

Was asked to speak at Microsoft Research a few weeks ago and they’ve uploaded it to their site – Pioneers of Digital Microsoft Research

I’ve also been posting other stuff to the Delightful Blog, like this interview with Kristy Bolsinger who gives some really smart advice on how brands should be thinking about social media strategy versus tactics and what to measure.

Embedded the video below too:

There’s an awesome interview from Cannes Lions with Jack Black to watch, and a piece I wrote on Michael Dubin and One Wipe Charlies from Dollar Shave Club – one of my go-to places for digital thought leadership.

Lots going on with the business to. Personal Branding, speech writing, social media etc etc

Oh and the sun has been shining in Seattle for over a week!

What’s new with you?

Finally got around to watching this TED Talk that had been passed to me a few months ago.

“People don’t buy what you do, people buy why you do it.”

Author of the smash hit – Start With Why – I love the way Sinek delivers this talk with a flip chart and handheld mike. Low-tech delivery of a highly charged talk on how too many businesses concentrate on what they do it rather than why they do it.

It jives nicely with a recent post of mine for the Delightful blog on what I call the So What? Factor, where I call out companies for content marketing that cries why? In a similar vein to Sinek’s mantra, I suggest content needs to reflect something useful or that resonates with the reader in themselves. They’re not that interested in what the company has to offer unless it matters to them, so providing some call to action or at least some reason to believe and empathize with what they are saying, means they have the opportunity to stop consumers simply drifting away and the content will not have been a useless effort.

If you can’t see the video, watch it here.

Just 2 weeks until our book launch reception in London. Thrilled JWT have agreed to host it. I remember reading up on their graduate training scheme way back in 1994 and not having a clue where to start filling out the application form.

How things change with the passage of time and a little experience?!

I’m looking forward to spending time with friends and family, as well as shoehorning in a few pints of 6X and other English bitters that I miss quite a bit.

More 5 star reviews keep coming in for the book on Amazon (links here) and we’ve published some more excerpts on Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land, Gurbaksh Chahal from RadiumOne, Jaron Lanier from Microsoft who is the “Father of Virtual Reality” and Vanessa Fox, formerly from Google, she set up their webmaster tools community and now runs her own consultancy and marketing intelligence software called Nine By Blue from offices in Seattle.

Yesterday I spoke about the book at the Microsoft Trends Council in Redmond. A few senior folks showed up to hear me talk about the lessons learned from the book. Feedback was great. I think they find it valuable to hear what others are saying and doing in digital-land, and I think the historical nature of the book lends itself very well to understanding what might work for businesses in the future.

One potential other lesson they raised was practice. The notion that many of the Pioneers have honed their technical and business expertise over many years through experience. More on that on the Delightful Communications Blog by the end of the week.

Lastly, here’s a “cute” video we shot of Maggie just before Christmas of her dance moves:

Enjoy and you’ll here more from me next week!

It’s been a little over a week since I picked up the new Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone from AT&T and I’ve been putting it through its paces. Whenever I get it out people ask me what I think, so I’ve consolidated those thoughts in this post that I hope you find useful when thinking about buying one.

The major selling point for the Lumia 920 is the camera. I was given the Lumia 900 when I worked at Microsoft so I could evangelise about it and I found the camera to be lacking.

18 months ago I’d  picked up the original Samsung Focus and the camera was faultless. It did me proud through the birth (not the ACTUAL birth) of my daughter and her first year on the planet. When I got the Lumia 900, it took so long to take the picture the adorable thing Maggie was doing was over and she’d invariably left the room!

I can happily report that the Lumia 920 has got its camera act together and it takes good photos. I have a Panasonic Lumix G2 with pancake lens that takes amazing photos. So it should, it’s an expensive camera. The 920 is a phone with a camera, so don’t expect Leica quality.

Let me take you through a few photos I’ve taken. The coffee cup above was the first photo I took and it’s not bad. Notice the slight blurring of the background. Nice!

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