October 14, 2012 By 4 Comments

Performance Enhancing scandal touches Darwin: OBM keynote admits usage and vows to name names of other NT users

Steve Davis apology over performance enhancers

Steve Davis, “I used performance enhancers”

Dear reader, it is with a heavy heart that I must go on the record here and admit that I have been using performance enhancers while running theRITEseries.com.au.

I have also been using them in my work with the Business Enterprise Centre, Darwin, and my clients at Baker Marketing in Adelaide.

Today, I held a media conference in Darwin to publicly reveal the extent of my usage of these tools and you can watch that, below.

In my public statement, I vowed to name names of other Northern Territory organisations also using these performance enhancers and to reveal how I used them, in my keynote address this Wednesday night at the Darwin Entertainment Centre.

You can still book in to attend the event at 6pm, Wednesday, October 17, on my October Business Month speakers page.

The full media conference recording is below.

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Filed Under: Lights Camera Blog, The RITE Series Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
April 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Please don’t be THAT guy on social media – and I don’t mean the Chief Minister!

Twit Cleaner

Twit Cleaner report summary for @theriteseries

Brett Walker, who runs the @DarwinorthOZ Twitter account, shared a non-Top End link last night that caught my eye, it read:

Good post ~ Please don’t be that guy: some advice for using social media

It contained a link to an article by Anne Chaconas, entitled, Please: Don’t be “that guy.”

In short, the article was a call for being ‘social’ in social media, a common theme throughout The RITE Series and a core part of my Two Commandments of Social Media Marketing.

What prompted Anne to write the piece was a rogue member in one of her social networks, a writer who shared some of the following atrocious tweets.

Anne’s piece also prompted me to run a tool that checks people in your Twitter account to see who should be deleted. That’s where the Chief Minister account comes into it.

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Filed Under: Social Media, Social Networks, The RITE Series Tagged With: , ,
October 28, 2011 By 7 Comments

The two commandments of social media marketing

The Two Commandments of Social Media Marketing Steve DavisHave you started using social media tools for your marketing? Are you having success?

If you are zipping along nicely this article is not for you.

If, however, like many businesses you don’t have anything positive to answer, then you likely fall into one of two categories:

  • I don’t know how to start, it all seems so foreign to me
  • I’ve been using social media for a while now but it’s not paying off and I think I am wasting my time

In my work with thousands of small businesses over the past decade, I have witnessed a phenomenon that might give us some insights into why you are struggling with your social media marketing.

This phenomenon involves motivation, perception of customers and the place your work takes in your life.

Let me unpack these thoughts for you and give context to the two commandments of social media marketing. I created (or adapted) these commandments from the records of Jesus the Marketer (that is how I think of the historical Jesus of Nazareth these days because I have been struck by how much his life and actions seem to embody the purest of contemporary marketing theory. It is astonishing and I will share some of those qualities in a blog post to come).

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Filed Under: Marketing, slider, Social Media, The RITE Series Tagged With: ,
October 19, 2011 By 7 Comments

The magic of broadcast media – don’t discount it yet

Steve Davis, bottom left, in the QandA audience in Darwin

Some earnest guy, bottom left in the QandA audience in Darwin. Who could he be, I wonder?

It is tempting for those of us who are close to the constantly-surprising range of Social Media tools, to write off mass media as a fading, clumsy, wasteful medium, at least from a marketing perspective.

We read reports on flagging circulations and viewer numbers and are bombarded by predictions like:

  • Newspapers will be dead within three years
  • TV has been killed by pirates
  • 62% of media content consumed by people born after 1980, has been made by people they know

But a few things this month have reminded me of the buzz, the magic, that mass media can create when it does things right.

And these three events have covered radio, print and television.

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Filed Under: Marketing, Social Media, The RITE Series Tagged With: , , , ,
October 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

Real artists ship: In memory of Steve Jobs

One of the most useful phrases I have ever read was in Seth Godin’s book, Linchpins.

He tells the story of Steve Jobs at the time that Apple was getting close to launching one of its computers.

Everyone was working around the clock to get it to launch and some engineers wanted to keep delaying to make improvements.

According to the story, Steve Jobs said, “Real artists ship”.

Godin interprets this as a call to action, to having the courage of getting your ideas and your work ‘out there’ in the market place.

It has stuck with me and always reverberates around my head whenever I am tempted to review a blog entry (again) or go back over my presentation (again).

As Godin argues in the book, this saying calls the bluff of our fear that people will ridicule what we present, that it won’t be perfect.

While it is NOT a call to producing junk, it is a life-embracing challenge to getting your ideas and products out in the open where they can inspire and help others, spark new ideas and keep the human adventure of new discovery and experimentation alive.

What project or dream or innovation have you been sitting on? Is it time to push it out the door?

 

Filed Under: Blogging, The RITE Series Tagged With: ,
September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What writing blogs does to you

Steve Davis in the early days of blog writing

Steve Davis in the early days of blog writing

Friends, thank you for following my daily updates via The RITE Series blog since August 1.

I had set myself the goal of blogging an article every day for 60 days and today is the last one under that regime.

I will share some of my experiences with you in my Keynote presentation on October 19 and in the resource I must now turn my attention to creating but here are two highlights:

1. My network among Top End business people and thinkers on the topic of social media as a marketing tool has grown dramatically through this time. In having people respond to my posts via the comments section and/or Twitter, has brought me onto the radar for people I might never have met. Likewise, whenever I mentioned people in blogs or interacted with them via Twitter, I got to know and respect some very interesting and passionate people. I won’t name names for that age old reason that I do not want to offend anyone I might overlook (I have always thought that was such a lame excuse but now that I am faced by the prospect of hurting someone through omission, I fully understand the source of that cliché).

2. My stream of blog ideas has grown from what had been a gentle and reliable creek into a gushing, pounding river with Wet Season showers billowing from above as well. I will be making a very strong case now to anyone who wants to blog, to set themselves a target of daily blogging for at least 3-4 weeks. It not only forces new habits but your internal awareness that you have something to write afresh again tomorrow harnesses your brain’s natural gift of looking for patterns in things. I can now hardly breathe without being assaulted by possible blog topics. Even though I have written professionally since 1985, first as a journalist then from 2004 in my role as marketer helping clients find and define their ‘voices’, it has not been until this gruelling 60-day challenge that I have experienced the ‘abundance of angles’ that my brain presents to me for future blog posts. Please try it for yourself and let me know how you fare.

What will happen now?

I have so many blog ideas (even a three part series in my head) that I will continue sharing posts on this site throughout October. It might not be a daily occurrence but I am now more truly addicted to this process than ever before so I wouldn’t be surprised if I keep these thoughts trickling here for those of you who want something else to read after finishing your copy of the NT News each day!

Thanks again for your feedback, discussion and ideas and I look forward to meeting you physically or virtually in October and beyond.

Steve Davis

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing, slider, Social Media, Social Networks, The RITE Series Tagged With: , ,
September 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Top End Tuesday wrap up

Top End Tuesday reflections on the series

My daughter reflecting on her Top End experience in April

We are nearing the end of my 60 days of blogging daily in the lead up to my October Business Month keynote on using Social Media the RITE way, on October 19, 2011.

Each Tuesday I highlighted a Social Media or Social Networking application, through the filter of a Top End business.

In case you only caught up with us recently, I thought it might be useful to create the Top End Tuesday digest for you.

Here are the six Top End Tuesday instalments, as they appeared since the first week of August.

They include a range of businesses from car dealers to chiropractors.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, The RITE Series, Top End Tuesday, Video Tagged With: , , , ,
September 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

Cloud Computing goes local

Area9's Cloud Services inner sanctum

Steve Davis in geek heaven, getting up close and personal with the Area9 servers (and air conditioning)

The Wet season is upon us which means more clouds.

But today’s post is about virtual clouds where more and more of us are storing our data and software these days so that we can be more mobile, use cheaper, dumber computers and devices (because all the thinking and computer ‘grunt’ is done in the ether) and keep IT costs and maintenance tasks to a minimum (when your software is in the cloud, somebody else keeps it up to date).

Some practical uses of cloud computing, as it is known when you have data or software stored on the web instead of on your physical computers on site, in the Top End include:

  • A small retailer using an online version of their accounting software so their Point Of Sale and accounting tasks are all bundled together and accessed via a web browser
  • Tradies using online calendars so they can rearrange jobs and schedules via their phones on building sites
  • Government departments or private firms using pay-as-you-go software licensing so that as staff numbers fluctuate throughout the year, they only need to pay for the software ‘seats’ they need on a month-by-month basis

However, there is one element of cloud computing that can take us by surprise: Have you ever stopped to wonder where you data is being stored?

That’s what makes these new, local clouds so interesting, and why NT Business minister, Rob Knight, launched a local offering yesterday.

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Filed Under: Social Media, The RITE Series Tagged With:
September 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Computer games meet philharmonic orchestras: Explain again how this online world ain’t real?

Angry Birds and the reality of social media (Picture: Yaniv Golan via Flickr)Even though I am not a gamer these days (I feel like an adult now), gaming is big business and the lingo, characters and culture within games is becoming as pervasive as the culture thrust down our throats on the telly every night.

What has this got to do with Northern Territory businesses exploring Social Media as a marketing tool? A lot.

Let’s imagine you are a fair dinkum, busy business owner slaving away at your work and exhausted at the end of each day.

The last thing you want to hear is that you now need to be paying attention to that internet thing because that’s where ‘the future is’.

The trouble is, I think that last night’s concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring some Angry Birds, just proclaimed that the future is NOW.

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Filed Under: Social Media, The RITE Series Tagged With: ,
September 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Website marketing: It is easier to learn French

Is online marketing harder than learning French? (Picture: Marianal_ via Flickr)At an advanced online marketing workshop I was running on Monday, one participant put up her hand and said, ‘it is easier to learn French than to understand webiste marketing’.

It was an excellent question or comment because it gave me a chance to distil a few key points for those few participants who had snuck into an advanced class a little prematurely.

Here are the five things to keep in mind when thinking about online or website marketing:

  • Be clear who your ideal customer is
  • Think deeply about what questions they might research online at all stages along the pathway to your product or service
  • Create content written (or produced) directly for them
  • Publish material on your website/blog and promote it with interesting links from online spaces where your ideal customer frequents
  • Filter every decision about online tools through the eyes and habits of your ideal customer

Here are a couple of thoughts on each of these points.

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Filed Under: Marketing, The RITE Series Tagged With: ,
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