WalesCymru.com

Have you ever been wondered what it’s like to cross wild and open country on horseback? If you’ve answered yes, then you MUST try Trail Riding.

This three and a half minute YouTube video follows Equitrekking.com host and travel expert Darley Newman as she joins Charlie Pollack of Caeiago for an equestrian adventure in Wales’ Cambrian Mountains.

If this inspires you Equitrekking.com features other Welsh rides, and WalesCymru features a long list of equine holiday operators. Autumn is a great time to do this, while the weather is still mild. What’s holding you back?

Today e-Crime Wales announced a half-day Creative Industries Workshop in advance of the e-Crime Wales Summit, which this year takes place on 21 October 2009 in Llandudno.

This half day e-Security Workshop - Lock it down or give it away? - is a first in Wales and aims to open up a bigger discussion around the creation and protection of Digital Content by companies and individual creators working in Wales’ Creative Industries - an area that is very topically and generating a lot of media attention. In fact, only today Lilly Allen add her contribution to the debate on illegal music download, which up to now has been lead by the Featured Artists Coalition.

Speakers for the Creative Industries Workshop are drawn from the fields of Digital Security, Content Management, Broadcast commissioning and Independent Music and will offer their views on the ongoing evolution of Digital Content, tracking media assets, copyright and online sales and distribution. Key findings from a new report on Digitally Networked Businesses (one of the topics I’ve been featuring in this blog) will be shared during the Workshop.

Greg Cannon: 41 Days from e-Crime Wales on Vimeo.

If you’re involved in the Creative Industries this workshop is bound to offer some thought provoking views and hopefully encourage Welsh business to think seriously about their IP and how to maximise the value of their work. Let’s hope a similar event is also organised for South Wales, as I doubt few companies based in this part of the country will make the four hour trip north.

Twitter is gaining ground as a corporate communication tool, but is still a long way behind Facebook which has just past 300m users. Like every communication tool Twitter needs some knowledge of how it works and it’s own set of skills to be effective; but it is also just one of the many social media tools available to business. In fact, in my view, the choice of social media tools is already outside the skill set of most companies and now requires specialist marketing, creative, technical & customer facing skills to be used effectively.

The Social Media tools available today include: blogs, Twitter, social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.), photo and video sharing sites, rating and review sites, forums, User Generated Content (on your own site and elsewhere), File sharing (Slideshare, Scribd, etc.), Music sharing, Professional networks (Linkedin, etc.), Bespoke Online communities, Widgets / Applications, mobile Applications (for iPhone, Android), RSS, Social Bookmarks, etc.

Needless to say, few companies are using this full set and even fewer are using these effectively. This is because most marketing professionals, those assigned the job of implementing the company’s Social Media Strategy, lack some of the skills required.

The skills needed to be successful (i.e. professional) include:

• Creative skills - graphic design, photography / photoshop, video production, music, etc.
• Writing skills - a combination of journalism and creative writing for blogs, ad campaigns, status updates, etc.
• Customer skills - we have to know how to be nice and solve problems
• Networking skills - if you can’t build a network, then use this to achieve your goals you won’t succeed with Social Media
• Marketing skills - obviously, you have to target the right people with the right content and calls to actions
• Some Technical skills - after all it all has to work seamlessly
• Analysis & Reporting skills - Is it actually working?

I’m sure I’m missed some out; but you get the picture.

Conclusions

1. If you don’t have an objective you will waste a lot of time and you will struggle to see any real value from your efforts. My advice is ALWAYS start with the objective as this determines which tools and how you use them.
2. Some aspects of Social Media are still best done by professionals. Don’t be afraid to admit this and find those you can actually work with.

Hope this helps.

You’ve probably heard about this video already, if not the idea is simple. Take a young attractive Danish women who likes to drink, add a one night stand with a visiting tourist and the ‘inevitable’ result 9 moths later. The women of course is an actress and the video a hoax, but enough people believed it to be real to now feel very annoyed and cheated - OK they’re really pissed off with the Danish Tourist Board.

We know this sort of thing happens ‘all the time’, in-fact (in Wales) you don’t even need to be tourist to have a drunken one night stand; but should a country use free unprotected sex to market itself?

The two questions that come to mind: “How far would you go to market Wales?” and “Was there a Danish plan to deal with the fallout when this blew up in their faces?”

UPDATE: Between starting this blog entry and posting it the YouTube video was removed. The video link now goes to Mashable.com where I first saw this article. You can still see the original YouTube video here.