A challenge to set myself! A defined weekly blog post. But the question I ask myself, is it about progress, the job, my life, or is it about things I’ve found you may enjoy. The latter inspired in particular by James Whatley’s Five Things on Friday series of posts which I’ve really enjoyed reading over the year. But as he says in the last post, the series evolved, so I’ll start with something and see where it goes!
- First up, a great round up from Grégory Pouy of what he sees as the best digital campaigns of 2012. A series of case studies to be borrowed across the following year! But don’t just read the examples, think about the why. Do you agree with Grégory’s reasons why they are good? Do you think there are other reasons?
- Looking forward, Deep Focus have produced as excellent piece of work about trends in 2013. Everything is bang on in that list, things I’ve been talking about internally for years. What’s most relevant in my agency is point 9: “The changing demands of demographics and devices will make experiential a key part of digital marketing“. That’s exactly why I joined Momentum in 2010, because of the opportunity about social around experiential and events, because it’s not just engaging with people with Facebook, but INVOLVING them through experiences. And this leads to Henriette’s constant refrain about Return on INVOLVEMENT being a key metric, which made it onto Mashable’s list of 2013 buzzwords. I’m looking forward to being able to read Henriette’s book in English 🙂
- Finally, a connected piece about the type of thinking that you need to do around planning for an brand event – this time when a brand is sponsoring something. Great piece from Leo Ryan about sponsorship social planning, the process and the tactics that you can use. There are other things that you need to think about when the sponsorship runs over a series of events – what’s the connecting story and how do you keep things fresh without feeling repetitive, but that’s another post!
That’s what I’ve been reading..what else has been happening?
- came back to work to find out we’d won a nice little pitch, international, but with plenty of London involvement. Another sport we’re going to be involved in
- started the year supporting a pitch, straight back into thinking.
- Moved my gym membership closer to work, so less excuses not to go. Got a gym buddy. Will be working hard at the measuring and monitoring and taking advantage of the trend of apps for the quantified self!
- finally, had a quiet Old Year’s Night, then a long walk on New Year’s day to take advantage of what felt like the first dry day for ages!
What are you using for quantified self? I read an intro piece on this from a link through on, I think, Adriana Lukas blog. I thought the concept was superb and would like to get into this a little myself.
I’ll do a better write up once I’ve had a little bit more time to smooth things out, but at the heart is Fitbit, through the pedometer/tracker and then the website/mobile app. I’ve tied in MyFitnessPal for food counting, as it’s probably the best for British food – Fitbit has one but it’s too American focused. I’m still using Runkeeper, but the tie-in is not as controllable as I want. I want things to only go INTO Fitbit, but it pulls stuff from Fitbit as well which clutter the timeline on that. That’s my starter.
Everything is based around the phone app, but with more info available if needed on website.
I’m going to be looking for more, and trying more throughout the year. One of the things to get a real handle on, especially given the amount of stuff that came out of Le Web I found this article by Dan Hon interesting as well http://danhon.com/2012/04/28/myself-quantified/
Ok, that’s a cool article. Thanks for that. Without knowing the label I think I’m part way there as a quantified self participant. I own a withings scale, a Zeo sleep monitor and as you already know use runkeeper to track my running, albeit I haven’t actually run for about 3 months! I like the idea of one of those nike fuelbands too
That Dan Hon post is excellent.
(from someone who is just starting out in this Quantified Self malarky (or ‘running’, as I call it), Sports Tracker is my weapon of choice. For now.)
RC: corrected James’ errant non-closure of brackets 🙂
Errant non-closure of brackets. Grr.
James: I’ve corrected it for you 🙂 It is a great post, one of the main ones that got me thinking about the other things that you can do beyond what I was already looking at.
Mark: You reminded me about sleep tracking. I’ve been using Sleep Cycle on the phone for over 2 years – it tells me it has tracked 895 nights! The Fitbit also has a sleep tracker but it needs to go on wrist and I can’t sleep like that, so will stick to the phone for now. Unfortunately Sleep Cycle does not yet play with Fitbit (or not that I can find). The Nike Fuelband is the same kind of thing to Fitbit – I think it’ll be a matter of which one you like the most.
Thank you for the mention Rachel – How awesome! – The english version of return on involvement is top priority now =) it will be out soon (promise).. Oh and for quantified self i use shape up club + runkeeper + fitbit. Shape up club is the best ! especially since they have a barcode scanner in there (which I love =)