The freewheeling, one-time social media transit van-turned juggernaut, the Social Media Cafe Manchester, was two years old last night.

Organised, yet endearingly chaotic, it has become the unostentatious hub for sharing social media savvy and collaboration in the city.

Though itinerant – moving between venues diverse as BBC North and MadLab – #smc_mcr has maintained the momentum initially fired up by people including Martin Bryant, Julian Tait and Sarah Hartley on a similarly inclement November night in 2008. For history buffs, PR Media Blog captured the spirit of that first happening here and here.

Social media activity springing from Manchester’s most creative communicators reached a new zenith recently: its city police force used a 24-hour Twitter-thon to simultaneously publish every police enquiry in that period, demonstrate the scope of police work that’s, in fact, social work and gain several thousand new and engaged Twitter followers in the process.

So, it was apt that Kevin Hoy and Amanda Coleman of Greater Manchester Police provided the main attraction for this milestone in Manchester’s social media evolution.

Equally, the Manchester Social Media Surgery – an off-shoot of the cafe designed to hand out free social media advice to organisations new to the medium – has gained traction in the past year, mainly due to the hard work of organiser, Chi-chi Ekweozor.

And so, two years on, what do the unconference-like organisers of #smc_mcr – past and present – think about it now?

Listen here to Martin Bryant and Josh, aka @technicalfault, summing up its impact.

About Jon Clements

Jon Clements is a Chartered PR consultant specialising in B2B PR, corporate and marketing communications and is the founder of Metamorphic PR. Connect at: JonClements 'Jon Clements'

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• LinkedIn
|
• More Posts (224)

The post Social media manchester turns two appeared first on pr-media-blog.co.uk.

The recent launch of Manchester’s Social Media Cafe (#smc_mcr) brought like-minded people together to debate social media’s present and future.

Two of the people instrumental in Manchester’s burgeoning social media scene, Chi-chi Ekweozor of Real Fresh TV and Sarah Hartley, Head of Online Editorial at the Manchester Evening News (MEN), spoke to Staniforth after the event and we’ve captured it for you here on film.

Chi-chi considers the value of the Social Media Cafe concept, the growth of podcasts and video along with comparisons and contrasts between UK and US social media activity.

Sarah looks at the origins of her interest in digital media, the development of the MEN web presence and how journalists are integrating with new media.

About Jon Clements

Jon Clements is a Chartered PR consultant specialising in B2B PR, corporate and marketing communications and is the founder of Metamorphic PR. Connect at: JonClements 'Jon Clements'

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• LinkedIn
|
• More Posts (224)

The post Manchester’s Social Media Cafe in film appeared first on pr-media-blog.co.uk.

Last night’s inaugural meeting of Manchester’s Social Media Cafe (#smc_mcr) suggested that the “death of the blog” has been greatly exaggerated.

And not only is blogging very much alive, it has graduated from the perceived image and PCs of young men whose bedrooms are adorned with model aircraft.

Craig McGinty, journalist, blogger on This French Life and panellist on the #smc_mcr’s first debate, described a blog as an online “base camp”: “It’s important that you have your own entity on the Internet,” he said. “You’ve got the opportunity to get an audience without going through the gatekeepers of newspaper editors and all it takes is time.” At a more fundamental level, McGinty feels that blogging is just the latest emodiment of a basic human need to communicate, which began with cave paintings. “The only difference is the tools,” he added.

Fellow panellist, Chi-chi Ekweozor, MD of real fresh tv, cited renowned blogger, Robert Scoble‘s use of blogging and social media to “meet one new person every day”. Clearly, a bigger task than is possible in the offline world, unless you have hours to kill and walk quickly.

But what about corporate blogging? Is there room for social media activity with professional funding and – potentially – an underlying agenda to sell? Chi-chi Ekweozor has been monitoring the FTSE100 for such activity, and while there are good examples of blogs at work  the UK’s major companies still lag behind the USA, where CEOs have readily taken up the blogging mantle.

But she sees a future for corporate blogging, “for communicating with staff and establishing credibility” with the wider world.

So, it’s agreed: both boardrooms and bedrooms will continue to hum with the creation of blogs and interaction with social media tools such as Twitter, but still leaving time to finish assembling that scale model of Concorde. 

P.S. Keep watching PR Media Blog for exclusive interviews from the Social Media Cafe event.

About Jon Clements

Jon Clements is a Chartered PR consultant specialising in B2B PR, corporate and marketing communications and is the founder of Metamorphic PR. Connect at: JonClements 'Jon Clements'

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• LinkedIn
|
• More Posts (224)

The post Social Media Cafe – a boost for blogging appeared first on pr-media-blog.co.uk.