Media | Glenn Ward

Sometimes you dont know what you’d like to do but you know what you like doing

I write this post as a thought pops into my head. I often get asked for life advice, despite not feeling qualified in myself to give this kin of advise I always try and encourage a line of questioning of oneself, ones actions or things that could be considered, rather than handing out direct, do this do that advice.

I have embedded a video at the bottom of this post that is well worth a watch. It explains what is fundamentally broken and what holds back a good many of us from being great. Really! take the time to watch it.

Ok, my thought process begins with some early life choices. Deciding on my A-Levels, like many I had no idea what I wanted to do. I did know what I liked, what I was good at and the things that make me happy so I chose PE, Art and Business Studies… oh how they laughed! this is when I realized I had a bit of a what the f*/k do you know attitude, I wasn’t however massively qualified to argue with the gibes but stuck to my decision. In hindsight the ridicule came from those with a lack of knowledge in certain areas, they didn’t know the things I knew and they were those I considered well educated (the video below explains) A weaker man might have changed there mind and studied 3 coinciding subjects to meet societies pre conceptions of what would be the right thing to do.

Having finished my A-Levels I still didn’t know what I wanted to do however I knew what I liked doing. I first became a windsurf instructor, I knew I liked windsurfing, I knew I wanted to see a bit of the world, it made sense. In my off season I wrote an idea for a TV show, it got made by a href=http://www.rapido.co.uk/shows/shw.5.phpchannel 4/a and I shot off around the world filming. I then worked in TV, back to water sports, well yachting during which time I was teaching myself about websites and ecommerce as my brother and sister set up a www.innerwolf.co.uk. One more cheeky season in Egypt (windsurfing) then university to study a Media and Design for Digital Media during which time I helped take the watersports shop 2xs to being an online retailer. A quick stint as an website and marketing manager for a clothing company then up to the smoke to set up an in house video production service for a market research company. Now I am heading up the role out of our Website and Social media strategy.

My point here is that all of these things benefited very well from my choice of A-levels and more importantly what I do for a living now didn’t exist as a job when I started down this road. So, how can I take advice on my education when the people giving the advice have no concept of what the future might hold for me or the economy, you cant! and those who did take that advise, probably ended up in a job where they look at watch every day.

Sure, there are times you’ll take a knock. I got fired from the UKSA and it hugely dented my confidence. I thought questioning safety was a good thing but apparently not when you are questioning the decision of the MD. They attempted to throw me off the Isle of Wight as I influenced the other instuctors. So, draw the positives from any given situation, I’m an influencer! there’s a little take away, Ill put that in my toolbox and use that later.

Do what you like doing along the way, it might not fall into place straight away but you’re more likely to end up in the right place because if you are interested in something your learning is accelerated and people will notice, sure there will be politics along the way but stay focused on the bigger picture and let it wash over you.

Love this video!

An insight into why digital and viral marketing is sooooo important (in my opinion)

I continually come across people who are adverse to digital marketing! Or more the point, don’t understand the area so pretend its unimportant or not beneficial to business development or marketing strategy, this is especially the case when I mention social media or YouTube! Bit too childs play! but there is no point in putting your head in the sand when it comes to advances in technology, I know your CD collection did look good and you could see what your CD’s had at a glance blah blah blah! but now you own an iPod don’t you? All your music in your pocket, organised in any number of ways! and I bet you even tell your friends about how good it is! You know who you are! I like the feel and smell of a book as well but sorry! They’re next to go!

My point is that people consume mass media in many different ways, so the emphasis should be on content not the platform or device, although you should reach out to as many platforms and devices as possible. Whether it be your YouTube viewing or Facebook account most have an accompanying app on the phone, pad, games console, tv etc, this was just the beginning of the trend, even the most avid newspaper readers are beginning to obtain their news over an iPad, kindle, Samsung Galexy, Blackberry Playbook etc. In order to push marketing messages to our customers we need to be aware of major shifts in media consumption. Unfortunately for some of us this means learning about platforms we don’t yet understand. By identifying or creating good content that relates to our brand or product we start to see where our clients might be. All too often, the only thing someone hears when I talk on the subject is facebook or twitter and then immediately become disinterested, I am talking about a platform, it could be anything and will almost certainly be different for every industry. The major point in the social media arena is that the target has already profiled themselves, they have given you the vitals, there hobbies and interest, where they’ve been on holiday. Yes I did mention social media, sorry, I know a good portion of my readers are now thinking how does that fit into B2B? Linkedin is social media! You can can spend hours and pennies going to conferences, events networking but you also can quickly search a self generated database where employees have already stated who they work for, what their title is and what they do for the company. I agree there’s nothing better than a face to face and that’s where you make sales but in a world where we are continually improving efficiency to save time, we all manage to fill that void with something else and the fact remains that many of us don’t have the time to leave the office.

So lets make this as simple as possible and lets start at the beginning as so many people are attacking the wrong link in the chain. Here’s a short case study, not from an online store, that’s too easy! This is a case study from a job I did for a auto locksmith start up. Firstly ask yourself where are your customers? what are they doing at the time the need your product? what are their needs? A friend of mine had set up as an autolocksmith, his customers were identified as one off users of the service that often would be in an emergency situation, locked out of their car, away from home, lost keys etc. Having this information not only answered a lot of Digital Marketing questions but also design questions enabling them to channel the spend where it would be most effective. The service needed to be found quickly and on the platforms people would turn to when they needed this type of service. For the short term marketing strategy PPC campaigns were essential, the ad needed to be displayed on the first page of search engines, there was a high probability customers would be on a mobile device so the website need to load fast and display the information needed to make contact as well as the services offered. Directories would be important and test were made to see which, if any would produce a return on investment.

Ok, point made, a marketing strategy where I didn’t suggest a facebook page or any form of social media and I might add, one where offline marketing methods such as a yellow pages ad brought in no extra business.

Media Streaming, MacBook Pro, PS3, Xbox 360, MediaLink, iTunes Part 2

Ok, I didn’t manage to get this to work completely but as I think it might be down to the network I am going to post it anyway. I almost managed to stream the music from my MacBook Pro (iTunes) through the Xbox 360. The idea of this is to have all music in one central location to avoid duplication of songs and double handling when it comes to updates.

Also, if you don’t have your mac set up to run a Windows environment or need to improve your Bootcamp set up follow my blog post that talked about an easy installation of VM Fusion using your Bootcamp partitioned drive. I did need to import the Bootcamp Partition in order to mirror the music folder in OSX and Windows.

I didn’t use the medialink streaming server software, instead I opened up VMFusion and loaded Windows Media Player. In the VMFusion Setting found under Virtual Machine I then turned on folder sharing and mirrored the music folder where the iTunes Media folder resides. By doing this I was able to use the Add to Media Library under File In Windows media player in order list all my music without actually copying anything over into this environment.

Next, make sure all you media sharing is turned on in the windows environment (I’m using Vista) you can do this via Library > Media Sharing > Share my media to: in Windows Media Player, the Xbox 360 icon should appear in the box below, or choose Control Panel > Classic View > Networking and sharing > Media Sharing > Change.

With everything on, turn on your XBox 360. Go to My Xbox > Music Library and select your computer, you should see your playlists…. problem is, mine won’t play!!

If anyone can get ths working please expand in the comments area?

See how I got this to work on the PS3