Joanne Mallon's Opposable Thumbs

Free BBC training offered for female experts who want to be TV presenters

There's been a lot of discussion lately about getting girls more interested in science. Some would argue that a lack of visible role models isn't helping. A cool woman talking science on the box will probably do more to get our daughters excited about it than any number of dry educational initiatives.

Luckily, the BBC is attempting to do something about this. It's launching a free training day for female experts who want to be TV, radio and online presenters, especially women with professional expertise in science. They're also on the hunt for wannabe TV stars from the worlds of history, politics, business and engineering.

The training day takes place in London on 18th January 2013.

If you're interested in attending, email your cv and a couple of paragraphs stating your USP as a presenter to expertwomen@bbc.co.uk. Please also state if you have any media experience.

But don't be put off applying if you don't have much in the way of media experience. Practice in front of a camera, make a few Youtube videos. Sometimes the best presenters are the people who don't know how much charisma they really have. If you're interested in this opportunity, go for it. You'll only regret it if you don't.

The deadline for all submissions is Friday 16 November 2012 so get your application in by then.

Good luck!

 

image credit: Ramona.Forcella

BBC journalist trainee scheme open for business

Just wanted to give you a heads up that the BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme is now open for applications.

This really is the golden ticket of media training schemes - if you can get on to this then you're set for life, career-wise. Succesful applicants get a year's paid training placements in BBC newsrooms and, in all likelihood, a glittering career afterwards.

I only ever got as far as the interview stage for this scheme, and it was one of the toughest interviews I've ever undergone. It was like walking through hot coals set to premium scorchio levels.

During the day long interview, I went out for lunch with some of my fellow wannabes. One of them cheerfully admitted that he'd noticed (by reading upside down) that the interviewers had written the word 'Pillock' on his application form. Fair play to him, he went back to complete the rest of the day. I bet he went far.

The BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme attracts around 3,000 applications each year, and one of the good things about it is that you can apply even if you're not currently working in media.

But you will have to have had a substantial amount of relevant work experience and be an altogether keen media bean to stand a chance of being awarded a place. It's not for anyone who vaguely fancies a job in meeja and doesn't much care what.

The BBC has said that it hopes to make the scheme more accessible to attract people from diverse backgrounds. So it doesn't matter if you went to Oxford or Cambridge, either will do (joking)   (I hope).

There's more information about the BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme here, and a direct link to the online application form here. Applications close on 8th October 2012.

6 weird things brands do on Twitter

I now run 6 Twitter feeds, 2 of them professionally and the rest for shits and  giggles. 

In searching out new people to follow I must've looked at thousands of Twitter profiles.I find the profiles by brands particularly interesting, as they have to try harder in a space which is defined by the fact that it's social rather than commercial.

This is why you get a lot of profiles from guys which foreground their wunnerful wife, amazing kids and ...oh....the fact that I'm also CEO of Widgets Incorporated and plan on doing a lot of tweeting about widgets.

Lots of brands get it really right and manage to sit comfortably in the social media space. For examples of brands who give good tweets, check out this list from Simply Zesty

But it still begs the question, why are some brands, who presumably want to connect with people, so weird on Twitter?

1. Why have a business profile but lock it down as private?
   Unless you were a blood relation of the business owner, why would you apply to be in their private Twitter circle? There are lots of good reasons why an individual might want a private Twitter profile, but for a business it just doesn't make sense.  
2. Why/how do you amass thousands of followers without actually tweeting? Like this one I found this week:
   
   Nearly 20,000 followers and only one tweet to their name (which they should probably change to Do It With No Tweets). I'm guessing that these were amassed via an automatic program, or possibly bought. Either way it doesn't leave you with any kind of engaged network. Robots talking to robots is more like it. How is that a recipe for business success?
3. Why don't you follow people back, at least at the start?
   If you haven't got many followers you need to hold on to the ones you do have, and the best way to do that is by following them back. Some brands are incredibly miserly with their followbacks. You're not Stephen Fry mate, give a little.
4. Pump out links but never engage in any other sort of communication
   If you're BBC News you might be able to get away with this. Otherwise, it just looks really odd. As the oldest social media cliche in the book would have it: it's a conversation, not a broadcast.
5. Don't clean up their follower lists
   So it looks like you've got a marvellous heap of followers, but on closer examination lots of them are pornbots, spammers or simply don't exist. At a distance it looks like your company is popular and credible, but close up it just ain't so. Though to be fair it's only really the social media nerds like me who really notice this stuff so you can probably get away with that one if the size of your network is more important than how engaged it is.
6. Publish 5 tweets at once
   I can see what's happening here - either a bunch of stuff gets automatically tweeted at once, or the social media dude in the company is ticking off all their targets for the day at once. But in an attempt to swamp people's timelines, the danger is that they will take in none of your message and unfollow you for over-tweeting, even if those 5 tweets are the only ones you send all day. Use Hootsuite to schedule. Space 'em out a bit. It's not that hard to do. 

 

 Have you spotted any other tweet-weirds on your travels?

image credit: sidoscope

What did social media do for the Olympics?

So are you suffering gold medal sized withdrawal symtoms?  I started off feeling a bit cynical about the Olympics, not terribly interested in sport and a bit teeth-sucky about the amount of money being spent on it.

But by the end of the fantastic opening ceremony I was hooked, and by its close I was sad to see it go.

As a social media geek, it's been fascinating to see the first Olympic games to take place when social media is so embedded in our lives.

Over 150 million Tweets were sent about the Olympics. Wow. That's a big conversation. No wonder we'll miss it.

So what difference did it make?

My kids pointedly ignoring the empty seats at Wembley during the Olympics

Take the conversation about empty seats issue. Now, this was a repeated issue at previous Olympiads. But before, I guess we would have noticed those empty seats on TV and maybe tutted about it to the people in the room, but that's about as far as it goes.

Not so for London 2012. People noticed, then they tweeted and Facebooked, wrote blog posts and all the rest.

So then the issue gathered more steam, became a news story and action was taken. I didn't notice many empty seats by week 2.

So social media helped fill the empty seats.

In such a world of ongoing, endless public conversation, it's a wonder that details of the opening ceremony didn't escape - but then even this has a toehold in social media, as the hashtag #savethesurprise was used to urge people to keep schtum.

The great appeal of social media is that it takes you from being an outside spectator to being, in some small way, a participant. You're part of the energy, and as such, part of the Games.

So did social media contribute to the success of the London 2012 Olympics? I think perhaps it did. Kind of makes you wonder what it's going to do next. Good things, I hope.

 

Beard oil and mince pies - it's Christmas in July

So, it's July. And the Law of Media decrees that we must turn our thoughts to Christmas. At least, this is the law if you're writing for glossy monthly magazines, where they work so far ahead that Yuletide editions genuinely are being put together right now, in the (don't laugh) 'summer'.

This year is the first time that many Christmas in July shows have also invited bloggers.

This confuses the bloggers - I don't know what I'm having for tea tonight, why the frack have I been invited to this? they say.

Fear not lads - just take the highly sophisticated 'leave all the info in a bag under your desk until October' method. Works for me.

It has to be said, these events can be dull, even painful; with snooty PRs who visibly wither when they hear you're not from a glossy. And then there are the good ones, full of friendly people and lush products that make you wish it really was a bit closer to the festive season.

Being a bit pushed for time this year, I'm only planning to go to the good events. That is, the good ones I've been invited to. We don't talk about the rest.

So yesterday I oiled up my stompy boots and hopped on the 10:19 to Victoria.

First stop, Tesco, where I almost succeeded in overdosing on chocolate:

Yes, that is an entire chocolate cake posing as a Christmas cracker. What a work of art. Too good to eat, almost.

Almost, but not quite.

Tesco also had some terrific retro gifts and a Star Wars-themed XBox Kinect which is now ON MY LIST:

 

Then, to John Lewis, which always puts on a beautiful show, and a nice line in crazy Christmas trees:

I think John Lewis is going to be the best place for man-gifts this year

So here we have Beard Oil, for shining up your face fur; touchscreen gloves that you don't have to take off to operate your smartphone or iPad and the record sleeve frame you can open any time you feel like caressing The Stone Roses.

And here's a gift for everybody - the party wok. Yes those are actually six teeny little woks that you're meant to schloop around with at parties cooking your ass off. Do people actually do that? Man, but parties have changed. Get your woks on, people.

And for those of you who fundamentally disagree with thinking about matters festive when it's still nominally summer, Tesco have a message for you, in cake:

 

At weekends, I also juggle hoops

 

I have started two new jobs in social media.

Ironically, this has left me with very little time to blog or tweet.

Both of these jobs have fantastic titles: Social Media Community Manager and Online Content Editor. How grown up is that?

The only down side is that as a social media 'expert' (and I use the term very loosely), I'll need to have an incredibly boring Twitter feed. It's like it's the law or something. If I am to do these jobs properly, I'll have to start spouting lots of guff about branding and grow a beard for my profile pic. I think I can manage at least one of those.

So this is the state of my portfolio career at present

• Author - promotion of my toddlers book is ongoing, and the book about fear of driving is currently being given the once-over by the publisher. So currently this job consists of checking my Amazon ranking 7 times a day. And also thinking about what my third book might be. Fiction maybe, Goats in Space (c) ?
• Media career coach - I have some really cool clients in various parts of the world, but I'm not taking on new clients until September. Unless I do. I'm not sure. I'm a bit of a crap Boss of Me in that respect. I'm never quite clear where I stand with myself (unless it's at the bar).
• Freelance journalist - I'm not really pitching much but I'm open to offers and am writing some parenting stuff for an ace new website. Am also talking poop in this month's Practical Parenting and have squeezed my big toe into the September issue of Psychologies.
  
• Online Content Editor - This involves developing and maintaining a Twitter feed and other social media doo dahs for an international company. Very interesting work, but you have to leave your ego at the door as there are no bylines to be had and it's all about representing the company rather than yourself. My ego can take it, it's had worse.
• Social Media Community Manager - Similar to the above, but with a few added dances to do, and a bunch of dirty words to avoid. LOVE a job that sends you home with a list of dirty words. My advice, if you're going for a job in social media like this, is just to put I KNOW WHICH WORDS TO AVOID in big letters on your CV. Trust me, it's a marketable skill.

Which brings me round full circle to the foreword I wrote to Linda Jones' new book about freelance writing. To be honest, I dashed this off in a hurry one night last August when Linda told me she had space for a foreword that needed filling quick-smart. I wrote that "a writer can find themselves doing jobs that didn’t even exist ten years ago, such as writing a blog for a client or getting hired to tweet" And here we are, the best part of a year later and that's what I'm doing. Funny how the world turns. As long as it keeps on turning, I think we'll be alright.

image credit: Flickr user Helico

Working mother confessions - A mother's work meme

 

A meme! I never get tagged in memes, and I have so much to meme about. So thank you very much to The Daily Mum for inviting me to join in this one. A Mother’s Work Meme started with mother.wife.me and is currently winging its way through the blogosphere .

Here are the rules:

   1. Post the rules. OK, I've done that, now what?
   2. Answer the questions in as much or as little detail as suits you
   3. Leave a comment on mother.wife.me so we can keep track of the meme
   4. Tag 3 people and link to them on your blog
   5. Let them know you tagged them
   6. Tweet that you're taking part using #amothersworkmeme

Questions:

   1. Did you work before becoming a mum?

  2. What is your current situation?

  3. Freestyle – got your own point you’d like to get across on this issue? Here’s your chance…

And, most importantly…. here are my taggees:

Sarah Ebner - Schoolgate at The Times

Mme Lindor - Salt & Caramel

Janice - A Working Mum

(don't worry guys I won't be offended if you haven't got time to do this 'cos you're working 'n stuff)

 

Aaaaanyway....

   1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
Yes I have always worked, mainly in a self employed capacity and mainly in media. Before I had my children I worked in TV as a producer on many chat shows. Probably the most well known were GMTV and This Morning. After I had my daughter I carried on doing sporadic shifts, but TV is very much a long working hours business and anyway what I really wanted to do was write. So I trained as a life coach and started building up work I could do from home and combine better with family life.

Being self employed means you are entitled to Maternity Benefit but little else. I deliberately timed having my second child for just after the benefit was due to go up. I don't think I ever totally stopped thinking about work for any length of time - being self employed means you are always on the lookout for the next thing and have to keep visible. So even if I was technically on maternity leave I would still be doing things like media interviews which didn't earn me any money but kept my profile as a coach up.

 

  2. What is your current situation?
I work flexibly, mainly from home. Over the last few years I have built up my writing more and more, but I still coach as well. I coach people from all around the world via phone. I also do consulting, broadcasting and a bit of public speaking - whatever comes along and pays the bills really. Currently I am finishing off my second book which is about fear of driving. Once that's been sent off to the publisher then I plan to do more feature writing.

Right now I work throughout the school day, stopping for the school run to pick up my 8 year old, then carry on in the evening and at weekends if I need to. I never mind working at odd hours because this is what means I can be there for my children when they need me. The big challenge is during school holidays - I've found it's unrealistic to expect to put a full day in and leave the children to go feral. They moan a bit about me working from home, but I point out that they would like the alternatives even less.

 

  3. A rant about working mums in TV

I always found that the TV industry was utterly crap in terms of the value of 'presenteeism' and a long hours working culture which rarely gets questioned. This is why women in television seem to disappear - you don't get many women with children in senior jobs in TV, certainly not outside the BBC. When you consider that many programmes are made for a family audience, it's ironic that the people making those programmes often have very little family time for themselves.

The world has moved on considerably in terms of working from home and other flexible options, but from what I can see the TV production industry has not embraced this, leading to many experienced people to leave. And then they go off and do creative things elsewhere, leaving the TV industry poorer for it.

 

Writing job: Think you can be a sex columnist? There's a catch...

 

Yes this is a real, bona fide writing job from a proper publishing company who will pay you in actual money and not just vague whiffly promises of "promotional value".

Easy Living magazine are advertising for a sex columnist. The column can be anonymous, so your mother doesn't have to read about your penchant for nipple tassles. It's planned to run in the magazine for at least a year. Journalists in their thirties and forties may apply.

 

So what's the catch?

 

You need to be married /in a relationship for at least five years and have "at least two" small children.

 

So, parent of small children with enough of a sex life to write about. For a year.

 

*drums fingers*

 

No, I don't know anybody, do you?

Actually I can think of a few bloggers who could go for it, but they might object to the anonymous bit. Bloggers like to do it, tweet it, then display the evidence on Instagram.

Anyway, if you think you are that elusive parent of small children with an active enough sex life to fill twelve columns, and the ability to write well about it, here are the details - you'll have to  scroll down a bit, but it's there. At least it would make being on deadline a lot more fun.

Free activities for kids: grafitti The Guardian

Previously we looked at free activities to fob the kids off with, but it's hard to play Hunt the Pixie in winter, so here's an indoor activity to try with your children - it's called grafitti The Guardian.

We did this yesterday and the sports section turned out particularly well:

Admittedly I did pay £2.10 for the paper, so it's not a total freebie but I read it as well, and it kept the juniors quiet for ages. So as budget activities go it's a winner. 

Other newspapers may also be used for this activity. Magazines can work well too:

 

PRs, bloggers and blaggers - the journalist's perspective



You would have to be either asleep or off on a bloggers' press trip to miss the debate  that's been rumbling throughout this weekend.

It all started on Geek is the New Chic, when Sian told of the increasing number of bloggers using Response Source to blag free stuff. There are well over 100 comments on there now but it's worth taking the time to read them. The debate continued on Mummy From the Heart and I suspect has quite a while to go before it runs out of steam. 

I found it really interesting to get the PR's perspective on this, since journalists have been complaining about PRs clogging up their inboxes with irrelevant stuff for years. Ask any journo who's used Response Source and most will have a story along the lines of "I asked for news of new toothbrushes and the PR sent me a dildo" variety. In general the service is regarded by journalists as very useful, as long as you're prepared to sift out the irrelevant crap. Over the last year several journalists have also noted on Journobiz that they're getting less of a response to RS requests. Could the PRs be busy elsewhere?

Looks like it. And now the PRs are complaining that they're getting irrelevant requests from bloggers, with some sending out requests multiple times a day.

How could this have happened? Well, I do recall that over a year ago a blogger was asking on BritMums (or British Mummy Bloggers as it was then called) about how they could contact more PRs, and I sent her in the direction of RS. Another journalist/blogger privately said to me Are you sure you should be letting her loose on the PRs like that?, but I reckoned the PRs could handle it, it's not like they're shy of sending emails themselves.

Did I unwittingly start off the blog/blag rush by pointing that blogger in the direction of RS? I don't know, but it's possible.

One thing's for sure - it would never have continued if the PRs didn't respond. Just as the brazen graspiness you can see under the #prrequest hashtag on Twitter would not have continued if it didn't work at least some of the time. It's a two way thing.

Whilst I have occasionally used RS as a journalist, I've never used it as a blogger. There's no need. I get upwards of 50 emailed press releases a day, so if I want to review things they're not that hard to find. And I don't want to do a lot of reviews. Out of 380 posts on this blog, only around 25 are product reviews, and I'm happy with that ratio. I like writing about products, but not *that* much.

Many of the press releases I receive are irrelevant to me - for example, I seem to be on a list targeting the grey market, so I get a lot of releases relevant to older people. And bizarrely, lots of press releases about cheese.

I don't know why this is. I've never written about the elderly, or cheese, and don't plan to. I might be over 40 and enjoy a round of cheddar and pickle for lunch, but that's about as far as it goes. So I just delete those emails and don't give them a second thought. Perhaps this is what the PRs should do with the blogger/blagger requests.

I have noticed that a lot of bloggers get very incensed when PRs send them irrelevant information: They sent me an email about baby stuff and my child is 5 - how can they dooooo this? Don't take it so personally guys. Again, the delete button's not that hard to find.

Aside from this, the other issue at hand is the rise of review-led parenting blogs, and the increasing appetite of bloggers for freebies, even when their blog is still at embryo stage. I've already outlined my attitude to blogging and reviews here. All in all I think this debate is great for anyone involved in blogging. Bloggers - think hard about what you put on your blog - value your space and don't give it away lightly. PRs - how have you contributed to this and what do you intend to do differently?

And if I did start the influx of bloggers to RS, well, oops, sorry about that. I was only trying to help.

Image credit: Lulu Hoeller