I’ve blogged about this topic a few times before.

But, I came across a post recently which made me want to write a little more…

Smart Blog cites some research by Unity Marketing which claims that affluent people don’t use social networks very much:

6% of affluent users use social tools to look for coupons or go shopping, while 7% were interested in using social networks to research purchases or seek out special offers.

The study goes on to say that while at least half of affluent users view company social-media accounts, just a quarter will follow them.

The post then goes on to ask why luxury brands are online?

I think there are a lot of reasons…

Firstly, I can’t find the exact research but would suggest it’s a little flawed from the start – what does affluent even mean? And, most fashion conscious people tend to buy one or two key designer pieces and team them up with high street brands – these people certainly wouldn’t be described as particularly “affluent” and are probably the ones which luxury brands need to communicate with the most.

The post made a good point that one of the reasons to “get online” is to  “feed the brand’s aspirational quality” and I think this is certainly the case.

Another point made was that if competitors are in the space then your brand has to be – even if it isn’t quite right. There’s certainly the attitude right now that if a brand isn’t engaging online it’s criticised – but is it better to be there and for it not to be quite right or not be there at all? I think a lot of brands and organisations are forcing themselves into different spaces at the moment when really they just. don’t. fit. – we’ll start to see this more and more – it’ll be cringeworthy.

I also still have an issue with the fact that luxury brands are fuelled by exclusivity and the fact they are secretive and (to a certain extent) the fact they are often so unobtainable makes them so appealing. So, should they be online? I think the answer is yes but, they need to tread carefully.

I think it’s interesting that luxury brands are already amazing at social media (in a weird way) after all, they never talk about themselves, they let everyone else do the talking and build upon this exclusivity.

I know very very little about politics.

I’m not stupid, I know the basic differentiators between the left and the right but that’s about as far as it goes.

It’s always irritated me that people used political knowledge throughout my time at university to assert their intelligence, and, like their posh accents, this caused me to rebel.

I knew nothing about politics, liked the fact I didn’t and enhanced my Yorkshire accent.

But now those days are behind me I want to “grow up” a little and actually make a well informed decision about who I want to vote for.

I’ve always thought it was pointless to vote if I didn’t know enough about the different (but probably very similar) agendas, but I registered to vote this morning so from now, midday on Monday 8th March, I’m going to figure out who I want to vote for.

I think I’m pretty unbiased, mainly due to the fact that the three people that influence me the most will all be voting for different parties (my mum, Labour, my dad, Conservative, Jed, last time I checked it was Libertarian?)

I know that a lot of my beliefs and views of life are pretty left wing already but this is only from limited reading and an online political compass.

So, I think it’ll be an interesting experiment, teach me a lot and force me to think about something I’ve never really given much thought to before.

I’m a good candidate (nice pun) as I’m not going to be taken in by some (or all) of the bullshit that others might fall for – well I’d hope I’d see through some of the “propaganda” because of my profession but only time will tell.

It’s also going to be interesting who I end up voting for, from someone who hasn’t listened to all the crap from the past – I’m going to be voting with a “fresh pair of eyes”.

Picture borrowed from: http://originalspin.posterous.com/?page=6

No, not another “FourSquare is going to be amazing” post. Just a general observation that social networking – something that has never really been defined by location – is becoming just that.

The most recent I’ve seen was  on Springwise – BlockChalk is a site that provides a kind of “bulletin board” for communities to leave location based messages.

This is an interesting development, not just reviews and games to be a “mayor” – I still don’t get it. But, using online communities to actually make a change offline.

And these communities are already using existing social networks to talk about where they live even more. @Scarborough_UK tweets about local events but also brings people together to talk about developments and proposed plans. Those following the stream on Twitter are then made aware of this news much earlier, giving them more opportunity to act on anything they may not agree with. In this way Twitter has become a much more convenient and accessible replacement for village hall meetings.

And, as an after thought…

The move into more location based social networks for me proves that online interaction is becoming much more “real". People seem to be more defined by their lives offline rather than creating false online personalities to hide behind, which I always thought was the case a few years ago?

Jed and I had a perfect weekend by Ullswater in the Lake District. 

We visited a pretty impressive waterfall, walked round Ullswater, got stuck in the snow and ate a lot of cake.

All was made better by the lovely new camera we bought, a fancy, red Lumix one – so expect a lot more photographs on here from now on.

Here are a few photos from the weekend, tried to make them look a little more fairy tale-esque…

Again, while perfecting my feeds tonight I came across a beautiful set of portraits by Petra Cortright.

Quite simply distorted yet rather ethereal and disturbing.

Two of my favourites:

Courtesy of today and tomorrow and Petra Cortright.

A few months down the line and I was right, the iPhone has made me more social.

With facebook, tweetdeck, yammer, wordpress and all my feeds right at my fingertips why wouldn’t I become more social?

And although other phones can offer this kind of accessibility, there’s something amazing about the iPhone.

It just seems to know how you think.

My 4 year old sister loves nothing more than playing with my phone and looking at videos. And, weirdly knew exactly how to zoom and use the iPhone functionality even though she’s never seen one before – as if they were made to sync directly to how we instinctively think and want to access things.

How do you do that apple, you bright little buttons.

So, Jed bought me a random present the other day, Information is Beautiful.

Probably one of the best presents anyone has bought me. We’ve spent a LONG time looking through it and it’s a coffee table classic.

One of my favourites from the website:

I really want to try and use these kind of infographics in the future, they’ll make people pay so much more attention than a couple of paragraphs or a boring bar chart.

Hello train journey, hello some feed reading.

Just came across some really unusual typography from design studio feed.

I love it, especially the S.

I travelled down to London today to attend a CIPR event. And, as I don’t go to that many events I find it interesting listening to what others in the industry are saying, thinking and doing.

I was asked whether I’d heard of social media (I work in a social media consultancy and have for a year) whether I’d heard of a new thing called yammer (we’ve been using it internally in the office the whole time i’ve been there) and whether I’d ever been retweeted on Twitter (I’m not really amazing at Twitter but I think one or two people may have retweeted me before).

This is in no way meant to be insulting to people who aren’t exposed to social media. My point is that those of us working within social media probably forget how much we actually learn on a daily basis. What may be considered a normal daily task could come across as really groundbreaking to those who have little knowledge of the space.

For now this is great. We can wow people. But, it’s clear that among those who know very little there’s a strong thirst for knowledge of this space and the power to occupy it.

Those that are leaders now need to be making waves and starting to look for even more innovative ways to keep wowing people in the future.

Go look inside Jed’s head, he’s got a lot of ideas to make sure we always “stay ahead of the curve”.

Ok, so the post isn’t really whether networking is fake or fundamental because I know it’s both.

But, I can’t help but think how fake it is, which makes me reluctant to don my social butterfly wings.

As I’ve only been in PR around a year it’s understandable I find the whole thing a bit odd. Until now I talk to people and build friendships with people because essentially I choose to. I want people in my life who I genuinely like and get on with.

So now, to find myself in a situation in which I need to talk to people to, let’s cut to the chase, get something from them… I. Feel. Strange.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I genuinely want to talk to people because their company is interesting and I feel I could really learn something from them. But, when the whole act seems a bit too forced and their cheap looking business card comes out a little too early, that’s when it’s gone too far.

It kind of reminds me of that scene in American Psyho in which they’re all going one better with their business cards. It’s all a bit too much of a parody for me.