Thanks to Claire Ridgway, check out this amazing use of YouTube, A hunter shoots a Bear.

Once you have seen it, i don’t think you need any further explanation.

See how long it takes you to get the video to show Error #404 Request not found.

Share and enjoy!

Aswell as having a nice cup of tea and some cake, Dominic was telling me how grateful he was for some insights and guidance i gave him about Twitter and how he may be able to get some benefits from using Social Media more, even for his business Suttongate Consulting!

Below is an extract from his blog, where he shares with us how he now uses Twitter for his Suttongate business and finding it very useful.

Here are 7 signs that you may be a Twaddict:

1. Tweeted while walking

2. Tweeted while on the toilet

3. Tweeted your spouse when they are in same house

4. Twitpiced what you are about to eat

5. Gone to the pub with your friends and spend more time tweeting rather than talking to them

6. Gone to the pub with your friends and you are all tweeting rather than talking

7. You tweet “Good morning” before you get out of bed

Have you done any of these? All of them?

Do you have any other Twaddict signs?

I must stress that this is a blog post on How I use Twitter, not How You should use Twitter. Why do i say this? Well, we are all different and what may work for me may not necessarily work for you.

That’s why on my Kickstart programme with clients, everyone is different depending on the organisation, staff, products etc etc.

My Twitter Accounts

Yes, i have more than one account!

@BostinBloke – My personal account

@BostinT – Bostin tee shirts tweets

@iBostin – Mainly notifications of blog posts from www.iBostin.com

@Twitprentice – Live tweeting during BBC TV program, The Apprentice

Why so many accounts?

These accounts and more, have evolved over time as more people are looking for more niche information, for example, a number of my followers are not interested in The Apprentice and may not appreciate a few hundred tweets in the hour and a half of TV coverage every Wednesday night.

Also, many people who are not interested in my personal tweets, but are keen Apprentice fans and want to hear my Apprentice views.

Which Apps/Programs do you use?

I mainly use Twitter.com on my laptop and Echofon on my iPhone.

Echofon is great on my iPhone as it allows me to track whole conversations, so if someone replies to one of my Tweets 12 hours after i posted it, i can see what the reply was about.

Do you have a Social Media and/or Twitter Policy?

For me personally, i try to treat my online presence as i am in real life.

Twitter and all Social Media is a reflection of real life, so why treat it any different? There are good people, companies, charities, cliques, clubs and more.

These are my online philosophies;

1. All people are good people, but some choose to be bad.

2. If i ask for feedback, i reply to all respondents directly either as a public tweet to them or a DM

3. I engage with everyone. If someone i have never met tweets me, i will always endeavour to reply back to them. Unless they are abusive or spamming me a link as their first tweet to me.

4. I do not send auto tweets based on what someone may say

5. I do not auto DM when people follow me

6. Twitter is a real-time chat room

Some observations

Having been actively using Twitter for many years, there have been a number of observation which you may find interesting.

1. Some people do not reply to your tweets or engage when you give them feedback

2. One Social Media leading light in US with over 1,000,000 followers had only 8 views on their YouTube channel

3. Some people with Digital Engagement job title, or “join the conversation” in their profile, do not engage with the general public

Summary

I eat, sleep and drink consulting, t-shirts, comics and socialising and keep and open mind to meeting new people. The beauty of Twitter and other Social Media platforms is that it accelerates connections.

In the past 18 months alone from directly using Twitter, i have made new friends, gained  many new customers for t-shirts including Beverley Knight (couldn’t resist the name drop!), won two media awards, requests for public speaking engagements, worked on Social Media strategies, been to No 10 Downing Street (yes i know, another name drop!), have raised the profile of Bostin Heroes and more!

As you may of guessed, i love this stuff, which maybe why one feedback from yesterdays Kickstart was “Highly stimulating and inspiring”

Hopefully, this has given enough of an insight of how i use Twitter and may help you in some way gain a more better experience while you use Twitter.

Happy Tweeting!

In a nutshell, its a Location based service (LBS) game that is played via smartphones like an iPhone or Blackberry.

How does the game work?

Once you have downloaded the Foursquare application to your smartphone, you can connect the account to your Twitter, Facebook and Email accounts. The privacy options allow you not to show these and if you don’t want to connect or you use Foursquare on a stand-alone basis .

As a Social Networking application it allows you a number of options similar to Facebook and Twitter, like connecting to people on Foursquare as friends.

As with most games you collect points. You collect points as you travel with your smartphone. Don’t panic, this doesn’t happen automatically allowing people to track your every movement. You have to “check-in” to a location to let Foursquare know you are there. The privacy options allow you to decide if you want to tell your friends on Foursquare where you are and also if you want to update your Twitter and Facebook feed.

Aswell as collecting points, you can collect badges, which is determined by the type and frequency of check-ins you do. For example, as soon as you check-in to your first location you get the Newbie Badge. Checkout a list of badges you can get here

One of the other features of this is that you can become the “Mayor” of a location. This is determined by the number of times you check-in to a location. One of the benefits of being a Mayor for some locations is that you can get some special offers.

Business Uses

Aswell as being a game, it has many business uses which includes;

1. Adding your location – People using Foursquare can find you when they are in the neighbourhood. One analogy would be it’s  like a Yellow pages map.

2. Offering specials – Companies like Domino’s offer some benefits to the mayor of Dominos outlets that have been added to Foursquare

3. Tips/Advice – You can add any tips or recommendations for locations, which can then be read by others considering on going to a location. One simple use is you may have a favourite dish at a particular restaurant you may want to share.

Hopefully this is enough to get you going?

Some people have told me they will never use this application as it stores so much information about where you are and where you have been. But then i had people tell me they would never use Facebook and have now joined and its adding another dimension to their business and social life.

I will do a future post on how you can use this application or maybe even build your own LBS to help develop your business and maybe have some fun at the same time!

We are all connected in some way to many people around the world, some of whom we may never meet, but we have a relationship of sorts via all the Social Media tools at our disposal now. My guess now, with all the tools available, that we may have 4(ish) degrees of seperation, meaning that we are all more connected.

Let me give you a recent example that i had while using Twitter.

The other night my bedroom was a bit too humid, so got up at around 2am to open the window to get some fresh air in the room. To my amazement, about 1/2 mile away, i saw a huge fire. At first i thought it was me dreaming as the flames were so big. I phoned 999 and asked for Fire Brigade and was told that they were aware of the fire and Firefighters were on the scene.

As this was such a sight that i could hardly believe, i thought i would take a picture on my iPhone and tweeted it.

Within a minute, two people replied to my tweet, both who are local to me, one in Halesowen and one is Selly Oak, both whom i have never met.

I wasn’t expecting any replies at 2am and certainly not one to say he saw a number of Fire Engines on their way to the scene at Rubery.

Before i went back to bed, i took a few pictures on my Nikon P6000

To my surprise, the following morning i then got a tweet from B31Blog asking for pictures, which in turn they used on their local blog here.

So, from a random picture taken at 2am resulted in many connections and a Blog post, without any sign of a Marketing plan, Strategy or PR.

How is that?

There are all sorts of software and applications out there that can give you a myriad of facts and figures related to your online presence.

One of them is Klout, which uses algortithms to come up with a rating for you based on your Twitter account. You can check mine here.

So i guess, from these figures, i’m well connected, but more importantly, is it not about how influential you are?

Rory Cellan-Jones made some interesting points in his post here, Facebook – back to the kids? in 2008, that for people over 25 might aswell not bother with the likes of Facebook as they are too old.

So can anyone be too old or too young to be teaching, coaching, consulting in Social Media?

What about the phrase “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?

Well, in my work i have seen a shift of change in attitudes about employing my skills. Why is this?

From my observations, a number of companies and agencies have been employing Social Media “Gurus” with little commercial experience.

Building Social Media platforms, blogging and using YouTube, Facebook and Twitter makes you no more a social media specialist as building cars does not make you a Formula 1 champion racing driver.

This may sound obvious and common sense, but so many people miss the point or avoid it.

Now in your business, you may be happy dabbling and playing with Social Media as you may not think there is any value in employing a specialist. That’s fine. However, if you want to take Social Media seriously and are seriously looking at ways at making best and effective use of it, read on.

The have been a number of commercial examples where the company has employed someone based on cost only for them to contact me after a few weeks with the statement of “we need your help”. My response is why, as they have Facebook fan pages, Twitter, Youtube etc etc.

Creating these is one thing, but linking them all and having most effective use is another. The Facebook fan page for one client was very quiet with a couple of 100 members. Within one week of my work it went into the thousands and became a great success engaging with many individuals and organisations.

Here are some of the scenarios that have been adopted by some over the past 12 to 18 months with Social Media;

- Tried using it themselves and teaching themselves as they go along, maybe read a book or two on the topic

- Brought in a “whizz-kid” in on a student placement

- Asked their friend/family/colleague to teach them

Sadly most of these result in a lot of frustration, wasted money and time and some organisations with disastrous effects

As i now approach my 50th year – yes i know, i don’t look my age, but then who does? – i was thinking of running some seminars to teach some of the basic skills for Social Media that will save people time, money and avoid disasters!

Which neatly comes to my concluding statement, which is what my blog post title is, you can now call me “An old dog teaching new tricks!”

What do you think?

Below is great video going through the facts, pains and results of their journey for the first 6 months. WARNING: I do wave a lot while talking on part of the interview!

Video Link

If you would like me to see if i can help you on your Digitial journey, irrespective of level of knowledge you currently have, get in touch here >>

Those of you that know me, will know that although i am up to date with most technologies, i like to keep it real and prefer to deal with people on a more personal basis and keep things simple. So it was quite refreshing to read on Tim Saunders blog, while on a recent trip to South Africa, that the Chairman of Coca Cola Nairobi doesn’t have a Social Media Strategy, but looks at the whole picture.

So often, businesses go running into Twitter and Facebook with all guns blazing and a “viral video” campaign and come out with nothing apart from “oh that was a waste of time”. Why try something that has already been done and didn’t work?

So rather than trying to keep up with technologies, why not start looking at how Social Media can be used to complement what you are already doing?

Exhibit This is a showcase event hosted by final year Media and Communication students from Birmingham City University to display their creative work to industry professionals and the general public while celebrating their achievements throughout their degree.

What impressed me was the excellent work that had been produced by everyone i met. If i had the time and resource, i could see a number of them becoming full time businesses and there is certainly some great future talent to look out for.

Below are some of the projects and individuals i met in no particular order, all worth a look at!

Inform Asian

Birmingham Recycled

Carly Jane Photography

Andres Vaquera

Isabel Fernandes

Tubecast

Kryptonite

Project Negative

Whatmedia Uni

Hidden Voice

Remedy News