Social media gets more psychological.

Sam Mitchell of Chinwag ran Social Media Week London for five years. He talks to us about moving on and the development of the conference Chinwag Psych covering psychology, neuroscience, behavioural economics and more.

The necessity to make our messages stand out and get noticed combined with our ever increasing ability to filter out what we’re not interested in is leading to the use of a complex mix of disciplines. Sam gives a fascinating overview of how these knit together and explains why small businesses have the edge in this fast moving sphere.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:20 — 18.9MB)

These are some of the resources that Sam mentions in the interview:

• Pack A Powerful Punch – How To Write A Killer Headline By Nathalie Nahai
• Neuromarketing Is Bulls**t By Craig Sullivan - amazing collection of tools to ue
• Crowd Emotion - company tracking emotions via webcam
• The Neuroscience of Telling Stories by Sarah Walker
• The Size of the Planning and the Size of the Problem by Benjamin Ellis (his take on planning and the 45-day planning for a corporate tweet)
• Conscious Business - Tomorrow’s Company Today - meetup for creating new, open organisations
• Call to Action by Bryan Eisenberg (an oldie, but a goodie) - the one I mentioned that features micro-persuasion
• Robotics Mission to California (23-27 June) - still a few spaces left, if any robotics or autonomous systems companies are interested
• Idea Management Platform, I mentioned - Spigit, also a UK-competition Wazoku who spoke at Chinwag Psych in 2013.
• For more on applying psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics sign-up to the PsychMatters newsletter or follow on Twitter.

Multi-purpose and multi-tasking social media for social change.

Any business wondering how to tackle social media and integrate a diverse organisation, empower employees with different skill levels and provide real value for clients on both a local and national level will find lots of inspiration and ideas in this interview.

Athar Abidi is Age UK‘s Social Media Manager. He creates huge value for 150 brand partners, supports and advises local volunteers, markets campaigns and events and produces shareable content for Age UKs main beneficiaries - old people. 

Through the use of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Athar manages multiple streams of activity. He talks to us about the tools he uses and the techniques that gently challenge preconceptions.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:23 — 20.8MB)

Athar mentions a poem in the campaign for Love Later Life that can be found here:

http://lll.ageuk.org.uk/

Follow Age UK on Twitter

Think your business doesn’t have a visual story? Think again.

Some businesses shy away from using Pinterest because they think they don’t have a strong visual presence.

Ekaterina Walter talks to us about the ways businesses of all types are using Pinterest to drive 25% more traffic to their websites and why Pinterest users spend 15% more than Facebook users.

An expert in visual story telling, Ekaterina shares invaluable insights into how any business can use images to their advantage, why we are attracted to images, especially cartoons, and why this is her favourite story told in one simple image:

 

During the interview Ekaterina mentions a mobile phone company that uses very powerful storytelling in this three minute video.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:33 — 18.6MB)

Ekaterina Walter led strategic and marketing innovation for brands such as Intel and Accenture, and is currently a CMO of Branderati. She is an international speaker and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg” and co-author of “The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand.” Ekaterina sits on a Board of Directors of Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). Her thought leadership has been featured on CNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, Forbes, TechCrunch, CNN, WSJ, Inc., Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, and more.

You can find her on Twitter: . Blog: http://www.ekaterinawalter.com/

Is it possible to design a business that is good for society AND makes a profit?

Allan Szymczyk and Jan Verwijs met during an MBA programme in a class on Corporate Social Responsibility and decided to see if they could design a profit making business that benefits society and not just shareholders.
They have created Agora which is a democratic company, community led, where anyone who joins can take part in the decision making process and benefit from the profits that are created.

So far the community has decided on a constitution  and a product - a flavoured water branded “99% Guiltless”. When the beverage is in production, community members who nominate independent retailers who agree to stock the product will benefit from the profits from those sales.

Listen as Allan and Jan explain their vision and how it is working so far;

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:55 — 18.7MB)

My Agora has a Facebook Page  a Linkedin Page   a Twitter Account   and its own YouTube Channel where some of the decision making processes are demonstrated.

While this is a big experiment in business, Allan and Jan are using social channels to connect with people who are interested in joining in the experiment and bringing them into the forum where they can help to make the decisions.

It’s a fascinating story and one I’m sure we’ll revisit but in the meantime, we hope you’ll join the experiment and tell us your experiences!

 

Mat Morrison “World’s Oldest Living Social Media Guru™” gives us insights gained from over 20 years in the world of advertising 

Social Media Strategy Director at Starcom MediaVest Group, Mat talks about paid and earned content, native advertising, Twitter cards, tagging content for different platforms and much, much more.

Beginning his career nearly two decades ago at creative hotshop AKQA he went on to help set up Tribal DDB London as Commercial Manager in which role he helped launch the first website for Number 10 Downing Street.

He was one of the founders of the social media agency RMM where among other clients he worked for the Queen (whom he never got to meet). Prior to joining SMV Group, he was Global Head of Digital for the US-owned communications agency network, Porter Novelli.

He has held regional and global board director roles, or been a director of his own companies, since 1999.

You can follow Mat’s excellent blog The Magic Bean Laboratory find him on Twitter as , on Google+ and on LinkedIn

In his interview Mat mentions Yoast SEO Plugin JM Twitter Cards and exciting distribution companies Outbrain and Taboola

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:45 — 16.4MB)