Secret Agent Marketing have teamed up with FutrSocial to offer a series of free workshops aims to give Wiltshire businesses and organisations a better understanding of social media.

The informal courses will be led by social media entrepreneur Marcus Lilley (that’s him above) whose Marlborough-based firm, FutrSocial, helps people across the UK get to grips with an ever-changing array of communications technology.

The sessions are aimed at people who are using the basics of social media, and want to improve their skills.

Each of the interactive workshops will include a practical Team Challenge element, during which Marcus will help attendees to try out platforms and create their own project.

During the first workshop, More Than Words, Marcus will explain how Twitter has broken from its 140-character boundaries to embrace pictures, video and sound.

He’ll also be looking at platforms that enable users to schedule and manage their tweets.

The Team Challenge will be to document and promote the event using the Twitter tools Hashtags, Mentions, and Lists, and to collate the tweets using the Storify app.

In Google – More Than a Search Engine, Marcus will explore Google+, and guide attendees through the concepts of Circles and Hangouts.

During the Team Challenge, he’ll be creating a hangout of the session, to demonstrate how the tool can be used to create a virtual networking event.

And in Your Mobile – A Studio in Your Hands, Marcus will be looking at some of the smartphone apps that can help tell a story through video, text, pictures and sound.

The Team Challenge will be to create a curated record of the 2013 Marlborough International Jazz Festival, and attendees will be encouraged to contribute their own pictures, videos, sound recordings and thoughts to the event.

The session will be of particular interest to organisations or businesses that run their own events, and want ways of recording and promoting their activities, both from their own content and that generated by others.

Marcus said: “These events will be a collaborative experience; a chance for people to come together, learn about new technology, and share ideas.”

The sessions will be held at The Food Gallery, High Street, Marlborough from 6pm to 7pm on Tuesday, May 28, Tuesday, June 25 and Tuesday, July 30.

The sessions are free, although attendees will be encouraged to purchase a hot or cold drink or cake from the host venue. Attendees will need to bring a laptop, tablet or smartphone to participate in the practical sessions.

For more information, or to book a place, log on to http://marlboroughsocialmediasession.eventbrite.co.uk

Marcus, who handles social media promotion for a range of businesses and events including Marlborough Jazz Festival and OxFest, will be a guest speaker at the prestigious Digital Shoreditch conference on May 23, alongside Eze Vidra of Google, Omid Ashtari of Foursquare, MTV’s editor in chief Melanie Hick, and Nikhil Shah, co-founder of Mixcloud.

Secret Agent Marketing is handling the press and PR for this event. We also came up with the seminar names (clever us!) and managed to persuade Marlborough’s best coffee house to host us.

Image courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

When I came into journalism in 1992, the local newspaper industry was just about dragging itself into the electronic age, with a clunky PC on most desks.

Back then, the line between journalists and audience was clear: we reported; you read, watched or listened.

But in the digital age, that line has become blurred.The web, and especially blogging platforms, gave everyone access to a broadcast medium, and the phrase ‘citizen journalism’ was coined.

And the advent of social media – Twitter, especially – means we’re all publishers now.

The trouble is, the majority of bloggers and tweeters haven’t had the extensive legal training that professional journalists enjoy (it made up about a third of the content of my journalism course) yet the law applies as equally to a social media poster as to a newspaper reporter.

And now lawyers are going after bloggers and tweeters.

Following the Lord McAlpine case, in which the former Conservative party treasurer was falsely accused of being a paedophile, his solicitors have ‘politely suggested’ to social media users who retweeted the libel to fewer than 500 followers that they make a donation to charity to avoid further action.

Twitter users with more than 500 followers will not escape so easily.

And this week the attorney general announced that Twitter users who posted photos claiming to show Jon Venables – one of the killers of James Bulger back in 1993 – will face Contempt of Court proceedings.

After Venables and his co-defendant Robert Thompson were convicted of murdering the toddler, a lifetime order to protect the new identities of the killers was imposed.

Journalists knew they faced Contempt of Court proceedings if they broke that order, and they knew the consequences too: prison.

Are today’s users of Twitter as aware of the consequences? I doubt it. Is it tempting to repost a picture purporting to be Jon Venables, even if it’s not necessarily him? It seems so.

So, short of sitting the Bar exam, what can you do to keep yourself safe in the world of blogging and social media?

Employing a professional to help you with your communications content and strategy – from blog posts to press releases – can boost your business while ensuring you stay on the right side of the law.

Looking for a free marketing tip? Have this one:

If you can’t prove it, don’t post it.  

Charity by Damien Hirst.
Photo: Louisa Davison

Art text can often leave audiences scratching their heads and wondering what the blazes they mean.

The Independent ran an article (Why it’s time for galleries to drop the jargon) a couple of weeks ago about tongue-twisting but often repetitively impenetrable language used by galleries, from the exhibition-on-cafe-walls to the power houses of the Tate.

This is something I’ve been banging on about, well, since I started marketing for theatres and art centres. The worst offenders seem to be contemporary art and dance, probably because they are trying to put into words what is indescribable through verbal language – we are to be interpreted, enjoyed and challenged through the medium of art or movement.

And often because the copy is written before the exhibition or dance piece is even created…

“…And when you went to see the art, you might even wonder if the people who were using language you couldn’t really understand were trying to hide something: and that what they were trying to hide was the fact that the work, which they wanted you to think was clever and interesting and worth thinking quite a lot about, often wasn’t clever of interesting or worth thinking quite a lot about.” said The Independent’s Christina Patterson.

I can relate to Christina’s words: in 2010 on spec I viewed an exhibition by eminent photographer Wolfgang Tillmans at the Serpentine Galley – and was thoroughly unimpressed. There was an awful lot of ‘challenging methods of production’, ‘subverting traditional hierarchies’ and ‘deconstruction’ which appeared to be a fancy way of saying ‘Wolfgang couldn’t be bothered to spend money on decent reproduction so printed out his stuff on his desk top printer and stuck it on the wall with Sellotape’ and thought it would be fun to stick a cheap camera phone up his dressing gown and take a picture of his naked private parts. Yawn.But how to describe a piece of art which is abstract and at first glance appears to be a bunch of gloomy brush strokes but then one returns to it time and time again just to stare at it, sucked into its unsettling world?

At this point the marketeer (like myself) has to make a call. They have to either stick to talking interesting facts about the artist or give their own interpretation that caters to the average gallery punter (and not the art student or lecturer – they can buy the critical essay).

Here’s how I described Daimen Hirst’s Charity – a twenty foot bronze sculpture that lived on the balcony of the Royal West of England Academy’s balcony for a year – as reported by BBC news:

“The statue, called Charity, is of a collection box of a girl with teddy bear and her leg in callipers.  The RWA said Bristol-born Hirst has “scuffed her appearance and burgled her charity box to highlight the erosion of society’s values”.

That quoted sentence was used by local and national media alike, simply because it’s easy to read, doesn’t patronise its readership and has respect for the role of the word in describing a piece of visual art – ie great care has to go into the crafting of the words to do justice to a great piece of work.

It also ultimately understands that – for most people – seeing art is not about being on some higher plane of existence, but gives them and their brains something to do at a weekend or lunchtime.

There are two lessons that stand out for any business or organisation attempting to describe what they do to encourage people to participate or consume what they do: don’t bamboozle people with words and expect them to know nothing.

In a recent, possibly rigged, and probably fictitious survey over 90 percent of the world’s women said they’d rather spend Valentine’s Day with Secret Agent Marketing’s dashing PR executive Agent Pete than any other man on the planet.

That’s a tall order, but there is hope. Someone has had the forethought to book a conference suite in Swindon and put out a couple of hundred chairs, to give as many girls (and boys) as possible the opportunity to spend the official day of romance with the heartthrob.

Agent Pete will be one of the keynote speakers at Swindon Chamber of Commerce’s first Sales & Marketing Forum. He’ll be sharing his thoughts on PR, and telling delegates: “Don’t Look a Gift Horse Burger in the Mouth.”

He will be looking at the importance of a PR campaign, identifying newsworthy stories within your organisation as well as taking advantage of national news stories – such as the recent horse burger scandal – locally.

Sharing the stage will be the equally dashing sales coach Phil M Jones, talking on the subject of Magic Words, and how your choice of words is essential whether communicating with colleagues, customers, prospects or suppliers, and Simon Hurrell of the 3SEVEN9 Agency, who will be exploring the subject of content marketing.

The forum will be held at the DeVere Village, Shaw Ridge Leisure Park, Swindon from 8am to 10.30am on Thursday, February 14.

Attendance costs £16+VAT for Chamber members and £26+VAT for non-members. Book yourself on here: www.thamesvalleychamber.co.uk/event/44763

The end of the year is a good time to celebrate your achievements, and plan ahead for success in the following year.

To get your business off to a flying start in 2013, we have three great (but time-limited) offers.

Your bargains must be bagged by December 21, and and they come with an expiry date too, so book today!

Single press campaign (with photography)

40% off

Brand journalist Agent Pete will work with you to identify the best news story in your organisation. He’ll then turn your story into a catchy press release, which journalists will love.

The press release will be distributed to our media contacts and the deal even includes photography.

You can also use the press release and photograph as part of your own marketing: your website, customer / client emails, mail shots, social media.

The single press campaign must be booked by December 21 and the work carried out at a mutually-convenient time between December 15 and January 15.

See some of our recent success stories here and read some testimonials from happy clients here.

Was £400. Now £240.

Beginners’ Guide to Social Media

50% off

Think your business should be using social media, but have no idea how to start or what to do? Let Agent Pete guide you through the social media minefield in a half-day workshop.

His one-to-one session will explain the strategy and methods behind social media campaigning, and he’ll even set you up on some of the platforms.

The Beginners’ Guide to Social Media must be booked by December 21 and the session conducted at a mutually-convenient time between December 15 and January 15.

Come and find us on Facebook or Twitter, and take a look at one of our successful recent Facebook campaigns here.

Was £400. Now £200.

The Listening Device

25% off

Launching a new product, a new service, or even a new business? Take advantage of the marketing expertise of Agent Pete and Agent Louisa.

During this intensive marketing planning session, we’ll work with you to nail your marketing strategy first time. Includes a bespoke, easy-to-follow (and easy-to-stick to) marketing plan.

Your Listening Device session must be booked by December 21 will be held at a mutually-convenient time between December 15 and January 31. Happy clients are talking about how The Listening Device helped their business here.

Was £800. Now £600

Please note: We won’t be working from December 24 to 26 or between December 31 to January 1. We might be mad enough to hold a New Year sale, but we’re not completely daft.

To take advantage of one of our great offers, please email us, or give us a buzz on 01672 811515.

I had a conversation today with a friend who was organising a flash mob to inspire people to be more proactive about climate change.

She wants to use the event to engage with people on a one-to-one basis (or: ‘go out and talk to people’) on what more they could do to have a positive effect on the environment because, she said ‘it’s fixable.’

This kind of positivity is so important. Not just for climate change, but for any form of communication.

If the message was ‘do your bit or else’ or ‘the world will end if we don’t recycle’ then we just feel deflated, demotivated and despondent.

But tell people they can make a difference – and how – and they feel empowered and that it’s worth their while getting involved. Even better, say that the majority of people are doing what ever it is they should be doing and your intended audience will feel they will be the odd one out if they don’t get involved.

Here’s two examples. Take a pair of slippers. Which ad was the most successful? The one that said ‘don’t let your feet get cold, wear our slippers’ or ‘keep your feet warm and cosy with our slippers’?

In America (I can’t remember the details) an environmental campaign wanted to reduce littering in a river. So they had an animated advert showing what would happen if people kept littering – the river became a stream of rubbish. The result? Littering increased. Why? Because people subconciously felt that if everyone was littering, then what was the point of making an effort.

So when you are writing your advert, web or newsletter copy, encouraging people to get involved in a good cause or to change their habits, then write positive.

*What inspired me? See http://www.transitionmarlborough.org/*

Agents Pete and Louisa from Secret Agent Marketing

The secrets of the marketing world will be blown as industry experts and Wiltshire Business Support Service join forces to help small businesses get to grips with their own marketing.

Marketing for Beginners will explain how marketing is more than just newspaper ads and glossy brochures; and how marketing should be a business investment, not an expense

Peter and Louisa Davison from Secret Agent Marketing will help attendees to work out who their customers are, how to speak their language, and how to give them what they need.

Louisa said: “The workshop will be super-practical, and each delegate will leave with a basic realistic, workable marketing plan, while peer-to-peer learning will allow attendees to try out their ideas on other workshop delegates.”

Peter said: “We´re delighted to have been invited to join forces with Wiltshire Business Support Service. Together, we can offer the wealth of our experience and an incredibly low cost to small businesses and start-ups.

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, September 18, from 10am to 4pm at Wessex Chambers of Commerce, Pentagon House, 52 Castle Street, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, BA14 8AU.

Attendance costs £80 and each business will leave with a basic marketing plan.

Wiltshire Business Support Service exists to provide business owners with real, practical help and support. Funded by Wiltshire Council, the service is the ultimate advice and networking resource for anyone starting up or running a small business. All advice is free, confidential and impartial.

For more information, or to book a place, log on to www.wessexchambers.org.uk/events

As we’re both community-minded companies, Secret Agent Marketing persuaded the convenience store to give £6,000 to organisations and good causes in the town. They’ve had heaps of media coverage as a result and started to build quite a following on Facebook.

Log on to their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BudgensMarlborough before Monday (September 10^th) and you can vote for your favourite community organisation or good cause.

The grand finale of the Community Giveaway will be held at The Theatre on the Hill on Thursday, September 27, and tickets will be available through the Facebook page from Saturday.

The convenience store, subway outlet and forecourt are on schedule to open on Thursday, October 18.

It’s Boys vs Girls at http://www.ParkShare.net

In client news, ParkShare.net is a brilliant new way of connecting people with empty driveways or garages and people who need to park a car, and would rather not use an expensive Pay and Display car park.

Homeowners can advertise their parking space, which can be rented by a commuter. Registration at www.ParkShare.net is free for both homeowners and drivers – and ParkShare only takes its commission when a financial deal is struck.

And the firm behind the website hopes many people will come to reciprocal arrangements. “I’d like to see a commuter cutting the grass or clearing the gutters of an elderly homeowner in exchange for a parking space, even if it means I don’t earn commission from the deal,” says community-minded founder Martin Houlden.

Well, community-minded he may be, but he’s not adverse to a good old-fashioned ‘who’s best at driving – boys or girls?’ argument. So anyone logging on to ParkShare’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Parkshare can take part in an online parking competition.

Warning: it’s highly addictive, and not as easy at it looks! And for the record, Agent Louisa is a far better real-life car parker than Agent Pete, especially when reversing into a gap.

Cub reporter Peter Davison, on the beat with Marlborough Police

Our press and PR expert Agent Pete celebrated 20 years in newspaper journalism this week.

Although he doesn’t look old enough to have been doing anything for 20 years, we can assure you that he started poking his nose into other people’s business with the Marlborough Times way back in 1992. The paper has since folded, but that was not his fault.

He is now a co-proprietor of www.MarlboroughNewsOnline.co.uk, England’s only co-operatively owned and managed local newspaper.