Online conflict – the plastic bag of reputation management

October 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

From my very own ‘online conflict’ case study, 4 tips to safeguard your reputation

A search on my name ‘Sam Deeks’ brings up a result from something that happened a year or so ago. I wrote a post on our blog about my experience of business networking and the kinds of characters, approaches and shenanigans we’d experienced. Although I mentioned no names – or organisations for that matter – someone felt I was referring to them, and posted a personal dig at me on their online forum.

Their online networking site and forum is very busy – hence that reference to me is on 1st page in Google. It’s a great reminder that when people try to pull you into conflict online your response is going to be around for a long, long time.

Luckily, I’m happy with how I responded then – and now.

Here are 4 tips that might help you if / when you find yourself under attack:

1) Don’t react. Reaction is usually a way of not feeling something. What was it I wanted to avoid feeling? Anger, fear. Sadness.  I hate conflict. I hate being not liked.  Add to that, I was a bit ashamed because the guy was right. I was referring to him, among others. That’s a hard pile of feelings to sit with. The reason we fight so quickly is to avoid facing feeling those things. Sit with them because they’ll teach you something.

2) Respond. Once. After you’ve sat with whatever feelings are there (if you’re not covering them up by fighting in the forum thread), reply. Those feelings will soften you up more than fighting will. When you reply from that place, you’ll be more human, more empathetic and you won’t escalate conflict. Say your piece, own your part in it if you can and leave.

3) Don’t take it personally. When people get angry with each other they’re just dumping undealt-with feelings on each other. Deal with yours (see points 1 and 2) and you won’t make your upset other peoples’ business. Similarly, you won’t interpret their upset as your business either.

4) Leave it. The desire to return to conflict is an addiction. Resist it, there’s nothing good about it, it will only keep you addicted and reactive.

Make no mistake, these 4 points aren’t easy – which is why the world is fuelled by conflict on- and offline.  Learning how not to react takes time and effort but most of all it takes us getting to a point where we’re sick and tired of being drawn helplessly into cycles of fighting – and where we want something different

Filed Under: business insight, ORM Tagged With: , ,

PayPal customer service gets dripped on in The Mu Show

October 19, 2008 By 1 Comment

The Mu Show turns the dripping tap of social media on PayPal for being so bad at listening to its customers.

Welcome to The Mu Show #1 – Sam and Clare’s return to the mics after a few months without podcasting. Every week on the show, we’ll bring you:

a Mu marketing tip

The Dripping Tap – social media water torture for big companies who just don’t listen to their customers

a bit of what we’ve been doing in the Mu News.

Talk to us on our voicemail line 01752 548771. Just leave a message and we’ll put you on next week’s show! Know a business that’s not listening? Let’s see if we can get through.

The mukaumedia rules of podcasting: 1) Have fun 2) Don’t take it too seriously 3) Do it sooner rather than later

.Listen to the show

Filed Under: podcasts Tagged With: , , , ,

The Mu Show #1

October 19, 2008 By Leave a Comment

. listen now

Welcome to The Mu Show #1. This week Mobatalk is the marketing tip. The Dripping Tap starts dripping on PayPal for poor customer service (and making it easy for scammers to do their work) and we check in from Business SouthWest Show 2008.

Filed Under: The Mu Show

How to podcast a conference: our simple setup

October 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Podcasting conferences made easy with our reliable, low-cost setup

Podcasting the speakers at a conference is a great way of capitalising their knowledge and experience and turning it into useful content. You might as well – after all, they’re doing the presentation anyway.

If you’re looking to audio podcast conference speakers, here’s our top ten tips.

1) Most voice, least background noise. That means putting a mic as close to the speaker’s mouth as possible. We always use a wireless ‘tie-pin’ (lavalier) mic to capture our speakers.

2) Buy Sennheiser Freeport wireless mics. The best wireless mics for the least money from the company that also makes the best wireless mics for the most money.

3) Capture the audience questions. Use a hand-held Sennheiser wireless Freeport mic (set to a different channel to the tie-pin mic). If the questions are planned, get the people to sit in the front row and wait for you to bring the mic to them. If not, be prepared to simply pass the mic along the line – whatever it takes to get the questions recorded.

4) Keep channels separate. Run your speaker mic into one channel on your recorder (we use the mAudio Microtrack) and the hand-held into the other. This means you can cut questions into the audio when you edit, omitting any extra mic noise when it’s not in use.

5) Do whatever you can to reduce background noise. Turn things off; move things, relocate if you can. Definitely turn your mobiles off – and ask your speaker to turn his/hers off too.

6) Monitor your levels visually. Set your levels visually first with the headphone volume off. Headphone gain can fool you into thinking you’re recording a strong signal when you aren’t. When you know you’ve got a strong signal, then bring up the headphones’ level.

7) Stop the recording after each talk is in the can and save. If your recorder’s going to crash, it’s better to lose one presentation rather than all of them.

8) Keep a spare set of batteries for everything charging. In our case, that’s 2 x 9V for the wireless mics and 4 x AA for a power-charger pack for the mAudio. Nothing is worse for your professional reputation than blowing a conference with dead batteries.

9) Carry your own extension reel and gaffer tape. Never assume there are enough sockets for what you need, where you need. The gaffer tape will make your snaking cable safe – and stop someone pulling your kit off the table.

10) Take your time mic-ing up your speaker. They’re nervous, you’re nervous (because you’re holding up the whole proceedings) – but just take your time and be calm and focused. Minimise loose wire and friction noise.

That’s it. It’s all about getting a strong, clean recording on the best equipment you can afford. The Sennheisers are about £115 each; the mAudio mp3 recorder about £200, batteries and cables etc about £50.

Go-anywhere professional quality podcasting for interviews, outside location, seminar presentations, conferences.. you name it – all under £500.

Filed Under: how to, podcasting technique Tagged With: , , , ,

London’s rubbish

October 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

This just made me smile.

For some reason, this looks absurd to someone who lives in Devon.

Neatly swept up leaves in clear plastic sacks.  Or perhaps freshly bought from a seasonal style shop, waiting to be scattered across the pavement to create an autumnal motif?

Who can say?

All I know is that I’ve never seen it in my life before, and that the passers-by thought the weird thing was me taking the picture of it.

Filed Under: smile Tagged With: , ,

A great business and personal development tool

October 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Apply this tool to your business and/or your personal life and you’ll be surprised.

POV cycleThis cycle just works.

What I mean by that is it works whether your point of view about something is positive or negative.

What we tell ourselves about something dictates the way we act.  The way we act creates results that affirm the point of view we hold about that thing or situation.

Take a look at any situation in your life with this little model and you’ll see it applies.

The real power of this tool, however, is when you start at the results end.  If you list how things really are; track backwards and list the things you actually did to create those results, you’ll then be able to work out what your real point of view about that thing is.

Not the point of view you think you should have, or the point of view you tell people when they ask you.

No, the real underlying one that creates the world you actually live in.

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: , , , ,

What’s the best wireless mic system for podcasting?

October 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Sennheiser FreeportA Sennheiser Freeport wireless tie pin or hand-held mic system is hard to beat

If you’re looking for a mic system that’s good enough quality to use in video and audio podcasting and seriously affordable at the same time, I can’t fault the Sennheiser.

We’ve been using the tie-pin version for over a year now and it’s never failed us yet.

It’s ideal for capturing seminars and keynote speeches. You can sit way off from the stage and monitor your recording and the rotary gain on the back of the base unit makes a nice ‘analogue’ control for those who like to adjust their levels on the fly.

I just ordered the hand-held unit to give us the possibility of capturing audience questions since we’re podcasting from an academic event at the University of Plymouth in a couple of weeks time.

On the day, I’ll be running the tie pin from the keynote speaker into one channel of the mAudio microtrack and the hand-held into the other channel. That will keep the signals separate, allowing me to create a final mono mix with the audience questions mixed in only when they occur, doing away with any additional background noise.

The Freeport is fantastic value for money – but be warned; take it to a busy conference at your peril as the unit only has 4 preset frequencies to choose from. The chance of someone else’s system interfering with your is high – and unlike the really expensive versions, your system won’t retune itself to a free frequency.

Filed Under: podcasting technique Tagged With: , , ,

Home staging service in Devon [promotion]

October 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Lounge B&A

Could home staging help you sell your Devon home?

Do you have a property on the market, and are starting to despair that it will ever sell?

Well, help is at hand in the form of Jackie Sears of Present2Sell - an interior designer on a mission. Jackie uses her interior design skills to improve a property’s visual presentation and radically enhance its desirability to buyers.

She says ” The market is sticky now, prices are falling so lost time is lost money. This makes it even more important to get the presentation, as well as the price, spot on.

If they want to succeed, sellers have to make their their house so distinctive and attractive that buyers won’t risk waiting for a price drop.

That’s where we at Present2Sell come in. Our record for an offer being made once we’ve finished our presentation work is 4 days!

To see more examples of our work and to read testimonials from our very satisified clients please visit our website .

For more information, call Jackie now on 01392 670485.

Filed Under: Get Found Easy promotion Tagged With: , , ,

Q: Do lemmings commit suicide?

October 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A: Yes.  No.  Ah, who cares?

Lemmings

According to some, Wikipedia is regulated by ‘the wisdom of the crowd’ – a group’s innate tendency to avoid error and smooth out the distortion of knowledge.

Nancy Williams said in her podcast that Wikipedia defined ‘truth’ as ‘knowledge about which there is no serious dispute’.  Wow.  So something can be true because nobody can be bothered to contest it?  A quick look at Wikipedia and I couldn’t find that definition.  Ah.  Did she say it?  Did I make it up?

All I found was a mass of clever academic stuff I personally couldn’t be bothered to read, let alone dispute.  Clearly someone was bovvered and truth itself was on hold while some clever people disputed it.  Whew.

It’s a worrying world… isn’t it?  I don’t know what to believe.  Most of us will believe anything.  We’re all lemmings!  Except lemmings don’t commit suicide, they never have and never will.  It’s just that not many people can be bothered to point that fact out.

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: , ,

Video meets Twitter – Mobatalk

October 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Mobatalk logoMobatalk is a quick and easy way to video blog using Twitter

Mobatalk developer Michael Bailey was the man behind ‘MyChingo’ – a neat little audio comment / message recorder. I remember trying that out last year and being impressed with the quality of the audio it recorded.

‘MyChingo’ used whatever microphone you had on-board your Mac or PC (webcam, plugin, built-in) to record and store audio messages on the MyChingo server. What was especially nice was the widget you could put on your blog to let your visitors leave you messages.

What went wrong? I’m not sure – we didn’t really ever get into using it properly possibly because as fast as we’d found it, Michael put a price tag on it.

Now, there’s Mobatalk. I gave it a quick go and was impressed by how easy it was to record a video clip and get it out as a tweet. And I was also impressed with the quality of the video, too. Go there and click the ‘alpha testing underway’ link and try it out. I had a problem with the Java (the record button didn’t show up in Firefox on Mac) but I switched to Safari and it worked fine there.

Mobatalk is one of those little applications that has great potential – and the link up with Twitter makes good sense. All I can say is that I hope Michael keeps it free. ;-)

Filed Under: blogging technique, news Tagged With: , ,
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