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

16 things I learned at Blog Camp

I spent yesterday at my 3rd Blog Camp event. As ever it was full of insights, fun and cake. But we were also there to Learn Stuff. Stop learning and you stop living.

So here are 16 things I learned:

1. Even Google+ people know that Google+ isn't working as well as it should.
2. You can ask a question or give feedback about Google+ and it will be answered by a human being. This, apparently, is very unusual for Google, but I guess it's because they've realised that people talking to people is THE FUTURE.
3. Rich Snippets are an important thing for Google, though I'm buggered if I can understand why.
4. People react strongly to faces, so have lots of pics of them on your blog. I have a big moony face so I should be aces at this, but alas it also scares children so I might have to think on about that that one.
5. Cross pens are not cross at all but rather good and could well be my new stationery obsession.
6. If you meet a guy called Stuart don't congratulate him on his apps blog because that's the other Stuart.
7. We all need a StumbleUpon account, or at least to resurrect the one you opened three years ago.
8. Make sure your social media sharing buttons include a StumbleUpon sharing option - I had to add it to a couple of my Wordpress sites last night and I'm still looking for it here on Typepad.
9. StumbleUpon needs a 'Meh' button. I might send that in as feedback.
10. StumbleUpon can be a good alternative to Google if you're a journalist researching a topic. It hadn't occurred to me to use it as a research tool but I think that's a good tip.
11. This is resonating well with me is young Eurospeak for I like this, but they couldn't fit it on a StumbleUpon button.
12. Too much focus on brands and PRs can suck the fun out of blogging, even if not many people are ready to admit it.
13. Shut Up and Write (c) Keris. I liked that one.
14. Don't paparazzi the speaker via Instagram when he's minding his own business tweeting, not even if Actually Mummy eggs you on. It will be funny for a nanosecond and then you will feel like shit for the rest of the day.
15. Don't pap the speaker and then put the picture up on your blog
16. Oops! Too late!

A cautionary tale for freelancers

 

Now here's an odd one - I wonder what you make of this?

Towards the end of April I was contacted out of the blue by X. He said that he knew me from the Journalism.co.uk forum, and enquired about my availability to do some writing work.

As it happens I don't frequent that forum. I did have a freelance listing on the site, but I didn't renew it because it proved to be ineffectual. But perhaps this untrue detail should have been a red flag to me, in the light of what followed.

Over the following weeks I had a couple of emails from X (copied in to 3 other people), saying that the potential project was delayed but still in progress.

I didn't think too much about it - every freelancer gets approached about potential work that can sound terribly exciting at first but doesn't turn out to add up to a whole hill of beans. You soon learn not to get too excited until a definite contract or commission definitely appears.

Last week I was contacted by Y. 

Y is very angry with X. 

Y sent me a bunch of correspondence, including a lawyer's letter, to this effect. There's some kind of dispute going on about money owed, and work done, or not done.

So I asked Y: Why are you contacting me about this? I'm just a freelancer that X sounded out about possible work.

To which Y replied: "I thought you were working for that company and were perhaps a shareholder"

And when I looked at the attachment to Y's reply I could see why - for there in the pages of a marketing brochure were my photo and professional details. Neither of which I had directly supplied. The brochure starts: "We are a group of five journalists", which sort of implies, as they say in High School Musical, we're all in this together.

What I really didn't like was that part of the blurb boasted that "one of us writes the UK's only mother and daughter blog" - whilst it's true that I do that, and am very proud to do so, it's a non-commercial venture. I feel very uncomfortable that my 12 year old daughter's creative efforts are now part of some company's marketing blurb.

And as a pedantic writer I don't like being represented by a text that sees the need to capitalise 'Web sites' and 'Social Networking' - who does that?

There are repeated references to "we" and "our people", and some of the 'facts' about me make no sense at all.

Whilst it's not uncommon for freelancers to band together in order to win a bigger contract than they might do individually, for the love of God, surely you ask people's permission before you do a thing like that?

So I told Y, and then I emailed X pointing out that I hadn't given him my permission to do this, and that in any case I was no longer available to work with him. This is true, but even if I had nothing to fill my days, I don't think I'd ever be comfortable working for someone who thought that this was an OK way to behave.

When I emailed X, I cc'd in the 3 other people involved, who were also featured in the brochure. As it transpired, one of them is X's partner, but the other two, like me, are independent freelancers who had not supplied the information, didn't know that it had been used in this way and aren't happy about it.

So, what's a freelancer to do? I've been researching the legal situation but it seems unclear. Our names are our brands, and we need to get them out there in order to continue to attract work. But what can you do if someone uses your name, your brand, without your permission?

Well, if you've trademarked your name (which, unless you're a celebrity, you probably haven't) then you have a lot more rights if it looks like someone has breached your trademark, and you can sue. Luckily I have an expert in international law in the family so will get him to look at this.

X has said that my details were only in that one brochure, but then also says that my name will be removed "from all of our materials", which implies that there is more to it than that.

I guess it brings home to me the freelancers' curse - we must continually put ourselves out there in order to continue to attract work. It's something I often talk about with coaching clients - freelance journalism is a business, and all businesses must market themselves on an ongoing basis. But in putting ourselves out there we make ourselves vulnerable that our names and experience will be harnessed to something we did not intend.

And what to do differently next time? I think I need to research prospective clients a bit more, and set my red flag alert higher. I did google X, and found a somewhat home-made looking website, but that's hardly the crime of the century. Deep down I think I always knew that this wasn't an opportunity that would amount to much, but again that's not unusual. What is unusual is the element of having your details used without your knowledge or permission. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At least now I know who not to work with.

If you were me, what (if anything) would you do now?

 

image credit: Flickr user, twicepix

Mistakes I made when I started blogging

I have now been writing this blog for 5 years. The done thing at times like this seems to be to slap the ugly word 'blogaversary' on it and use it as an excuse to party on down.

Ever the belligerent fool, I'm using it as an excuse to look at where it all went wrong.

So these are the mistakes I made when I started blogging. I'm still making some of them. I hope this is useful to anyone who is also starting to blog and wants to know what not to do:

• Buggered up the site address
  I mean look at it:   http://joannemallon.typepad.com/joanne_the_coach/ it's an utter, unmemorable mess. Later on I bought JoannetheCoach.com so I have something a bit more elegant to put in my email signature, but it's all a bit half-assed and still makes for a crap hyperlink. When I started our new blog, I made sure to use the easy, simple address Eljae.com - it cost under £20 to do, and it's not even difficult to do the mapping across business that covers up the wordpress part of the address.
• Terrible name
  Joanne the Coach, WTF is that all about? Actually, there was a point to this way back when, in that I used to to write a lot more about my life coaching business. I'm still doing the coaching, it's just that I found out it was more fun to blog about movies and Doctor Who instead. So now I think it's better to have a flexible name that will grow with you. Bloggers who blog under Mummy2cutesypie.com say they also find this issue to be a problem, usually around the time Cutesypie starts shoplifting and growing a beard.
• Didn't reply to comments
  I never used to appreciate comments at all. I totally took them for granted. Now I feel very embarrassed about being so arrogant and am much more respectful of people who take the time to comment. I aim to reply to them all, even the spammers. Interestingly, some bloggers are now turning off their comment facility. Next thing you know they'll be turning off the blog altogether and going back to shouting in the corner of a field.
• No theme, niche or planning
  I still don't do any of that stuff. If there is a theme, it's "stuff I am interested in", and if I can shoehorn in a Doctor Who reference, all the better. I post when I have something to say, so that might mean nothing for a week, then four posts the next week. Apparently that stuff's important if you are serious about your blogging. Luckily I am just in it for shits and giggles, so that's OK then.
• Images? What are they?
  For about the first couple of years, none of the posts had images, mainly because I didn't know how to create, find or upload them. But the trouble with that is that big wodges of unillustrated text can be hard on the eye and lacking in personality. A big help for me has been using the Instagram app which makes it easy for anybody to create nice looking original images. So I didn't really raise my skill levels, it's just that the technology lowered itself to my level. Rejoice, technodunces, our time is now.
• No community involvement
  Whilst I am basically a  loner at heart, I like online communities and hanging around with people I've never met, so I can pretend to be more confident than I really am. I was flailing around by myself for the first few years until there seemed to be more blogging communities springing up and supporting each other. This is why I started doing more parenting content, so I could hang out with the parenting bloggers. They are always either laying golden eggs or having fights so it's kind of like hanging out with a bunch of magic chickens. I like that. Blogging is a lot easier and more fun when you find your own magic chickens to hang out with.
• Too many categories
  Cast a glance down the left sidebar (actually, don't) and you'll see masses of the buggers. Nobody ever clicks on them, not even my personal favourite Bizarre Celebrity Encounters. When we started Eljae, the categories were: Rants; Fiction; Random Wisdoms; Stuff We Love; Reviews; Top Tips and Funnies. What else is there to say in a blog?

I don't believe in regrets - I believe that making mistakes is what makes us human, and learning from mistakes is what makes us intelligent. So, Happy Birthday to you, Blog of Mine. Here's to the next regeneration.

How to piss off a parent blogger

 

I was chuckling all day today at the tale of the blogger who got sent one shoe out of a pair to review.

So much so that by the end of the day I was wondering if it was some sort of reverse psychology PR stunt to make the shoes seem more interesting and desirable. Why didn't I get one shoe to review? I can hop. I can balance. I can do basic Irish dancing.

PRs, this will not do. What are bloggers supposed to moan about on their secret parent blogger forums if you're making us laugh instead of annoying us? So here is my definitive cut out and keep guide for PRs on how to piss off a parent blogger:

• Start your email Dear Mummy Blogger - parent bloggers LOVE that, particularly if they are men.
• Follow up by getting the name of the blog wrong. Mail merge is your friend here.
• Then say I love your blog, I've just spent all morning reading it followed by a sentence which shows that you have never actually clapped eyes on it in your life.
• Offer products for review which have no discernible relevance to the blogger in question. Quite a rich seam of parent bloggers will go apopleptic if you offer them nappies when their youngest is 24.
• Offer content for their blog including four links to your client's site, and make a big deal about how you're not going to charge them for this service. This saves the blogger from having to write their own posts which they hate doing really.
• Play Blogger Beauty Parade - ask too many bloggers to an event, then ditch the ones you don't want or simply go silent as the grave when they get in touch.
• Alternatively, offer something really cool to do or review, and when it looks like your blogger has got super excited and told their kids about it, just disappear and never mention it again. It's not like they'll bear a grudge or remember your name.
• Send an invitation at 4pm on a Friday for an event at 10am on the Monday. Tell your blogger they can only bring one of their children to your event. It's OK, they've all got a favourite.

Stay lovely!

 

PS Anybody got a single shoe they need reviewing? Will consider one sock or some chocolate covered nuts that you've licked the chocolate off instead. #prrequest

Social media for journalists: Part three - Getting work, getting paid and wasting time

And now the end of my presentation is near. How did I ever hope to cram this lot into 30 minutes and take questions as well? Daftoid. At least you know when you book me you get your money's worth.

Anyway, make sure you read part one of social media for journalists, which is an introduction to Twitter. And part two is all about LinkedIn and Facebook and some cool forums that'll help you get writing work.

Here in part three we're looking at what kind of social media work is available for journalists, what you might expect to get paid and how not to let all this stuff suck up more time than it's worth.

Social media work for journalists

• This could be tweeting or blogging on behalf of a client
  Essentially, it's the new copywriting, and much more dynamic than the old stuff. Could be worth suggesting to clients you've already written web copy for.
• Charge for time rather than per word
  Per word, the rates start to look pretty poor, so when quoting think in terms of what the client wants and how long that'll take you. Also take into consideration how much regular work can be guaranteed - £50 per 350 word blog post isn't great, but if you can finish it in under an hour and do 10 a week, it all adds up.
• An hour a day can add up to a lot more
  Typically, you might be asked to look after a Twitter feed for an hour a day, but any job which extends across the week will inevitably take up more mental space than that. Be realistic about what you commit to, and how that fits in with the other work you're doing.
• Other journos are charging from £300/day, or from £25/hour for social media work
  I did a mini survey and these figures were mentioned most commonly. So as a guide, you're thinking in terms of your copywriting daily rate.
• Clients may wish to pay a lot less!
  This is a brand new area of work, so the 'going rate' is still under negotiation. There will be clients who do not recognise that this is a skilled job for a writer and will expect to pay you in buttons. Whether or not you take those buttons is up to you, but remember that part of progressing as a writer is, on occasion, turning work down.

 

Social media for journalists: Part two - using LinkedIn, Facebook and forums to get work

Following on from the post about how journalists can start using Twitter for work, this is part two of my presentation to the Guild of Health Writers - here we're looking at other forms of social media including LinkedIn and Facebook.

(It was at this point in the presentation that I realised I had far too much to say.)

Using LinkedIn to get work as a journalist

• Fill in your profile to get your name at the top in Google searches
  LinkedIn ranks incredibly highly in search engines, so if somebody Googles your name (and editors will), your profile will pop up at the top. Particularly useful if you don't have a website for your journalism work (though frankly, you should). 
• Link your profile to your Twitter feed
  If you're using Twitter to circulate case study or other requests, link the two so both networks will see it.
• Ask for recommendations
  Get people you've worked with to fill in a LinkedIn recommendation to add to your credibility.
• Include keywords in your profile relating to services you can offer
  Recruiters are searching, so make it easier for them to find you. Nobody can offer you work if they don't know what you've got to offer.
• Join groups relevant to your specialism
  There're thousands of professional groups on LinkedIn, so there's bound to be a special little haven for you.
• Check out potential clients
  If you've got a meeting coming up with an editor, check out their LinkedIn profile to get the cut of their gib. *stalker alert*

 

Social media for journalists: Part one - Twitter for beginners

These notes are extracted from a talk given to the Guild of Health Journalists on 14th September 2011. If you're interested in this subject then you might want to also have a read of the post about 10 things Twitter can do for journalists.

We started with some general points about using social media:

• It's a conversation, not a broadcast
  Don't just pump out updates -  talk to people, jump into conversations, retweet their messages and see it as a two way flow.
• Look for personal connections and work will find you
  If you go in explicitly and solely looking for work, you'll probably be disappointed. See it as a source of new contacts and ideas and the opportunities will occur.
• Use your own name – that's your brand
  As a journalist, your byline is your brand, so don't tweet as your dog or your porn star name. The exception to this would be if you have a blog with an established name, in which case you might want to create a specific Twitter account just for that.
• Keep your photo consistent
  It's all about establishing you as a human being that other human beings will want to connect to and work with, so use the same photo across all social media and don't change it more than twice a year. Using the Hipstamatic App will produce the most flattering photo you've ever had.
• Klout.com will track your progress
  If you like statistics, Klout will track how your social media network and influence is growing - useful if you're worried that you're wasting your time.