Never mind the question, social media is the answer??

There is a danger of thinking that social media is the answer to all marketing problems in this day and age.

But it is always sloppy thinking to believe that the latest and greatest thing is the answer to all the issues you face.  Successful business depends on deep thinking and a rigorous approach to finding out what is going on in your industry, your market and your company.

Social media has fantastic potential for many companies and markets.  But this article from Mashable shows that many companies are doing very well without social media and that it is not appropriate for them to focus resources on it
   http://mashable.com/2013/01/01/social-media-not-required/

Whatever your company, industry and market, you need to understand your prospects and customers but if they are not on social media or you need to talk to them in ways that are not suited to social media (e.g. requiring confidentiality, in-depth discussions or sensitive conversations) then you need other methods - pick up the phone, incentivise partners to survey their contacts, send out white papers, present at conventions, ..

The one essential is to spend enough time keeping a track on your customers and those who could become your customers to understand their issues, what makes them tick and what might excite them or make their life easier.

How you then pull out the key messages and best communicate with them is where the hard thinking comes in.

Such a thing as a free lunch

They say that there is no such thing as a free lunch but I disagree.  I have more than once been invited to a briefing where the lunch was free, and remember an IBM seminar in particular where I gained useful information as well as enjoying free sandwiches and drinks.

But these are trivial examples.  The more important examples come in the availability of open source software.

This week I was sent a mail detailing all the great new features in Wordpress 3.4. I use Wordpress for a number of websites that I have created for myself and for my clients - for example, theaibs.tv for the Association for International Broadcasting and movingmarketing.biz for my own video marketing project.  I use it for free and take advantage of great features and they keep on delivering more.  Thank you very much Matt Mullenweg and others.

Since this post is created on blogger.com., I should also thank Google for their continual updates of this and their other properties, of which I take advantage.

Of course, most software companies do not offer the services out of the goodness of their hearts - they want to make money on the service somehow.  This is often by advertising or offering freemium services (entry level for free, pro versions that cost).  But many ask for subscriptions but leave it entirely up to the user to donate what they think is appropriate.   Lots of users, myself included, respond with voluntary payments.

Being offered a good product or service for free accompanied by a low-key request for donations, builds loyalty just as free lunches make you feel grateful.  We should all examine what we can offer for free that maybe just builds reputation and kudos.   If you have a passion and something to offer, it may be a healthy option to make it a giveaway - healthy for you and ultimately healthy for your business.

Social Media as a Part of Market Engagement

Social media tends to provoke one of two widely different reactions from business people - they either embrace it wholeheartedly and devote enormous amounts of time to it at the expense of other activities or they avoid it either out of fear or out of belief that it is just a fad which is a waste of time for them. This is particularly true of small businesses who do not have the luxury of appointing a person, still less a whole department, to manage their interactions with social media.

The reality is that social media can be valuable for all businesses but it is not a panacea to be pursued to the detriment of other tasks, and even other marketing. I have mentioned this before in a previous blog - http://rogerstonemarketing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/reality-behind-social-media-hype.html

Social media has tremendous potential as part, but not all, of your marketing engagement. To understand this, we must first understand what marketing engagement is.

For much of my marketing career, one major element of marketing was called marketing communication (marcom) but this was in the days when companies told customers and prospects what was on offer and the only communication back from most of them might be a negotiation on price, possibly a purchase and after that maybe one or two requests for service. Feedback on new ideas, new offers or even new marketing campaigns was done at best with a focus group or small survey.

But now customers and prospects not only expect more involvement and dialogue with companies but also are willing to be your advocates if they like your product or service and the way you treat them. So now one-way marketing communication has evolved to two-way communication with the aim of going beyond simple expressions of "Here's what we have to offer" and "Yes I'll take it / No, I do not want that" to engaging the attention of the market. Now it is about discussing how the offer and its message can be adapted to the needs of the prospects and how they can be enthused to tell others about their experience.

Social media is a great tool for this because

• you can find and address communities with particular interests, and build your own communities
• conversations can be rich in structure and include short messages, links to detailed material, photos, videos, podcasts, slideshows and webinars
• feedback is quick and direct
• the means for passing on the message about your product is built into social media software

But social media is not the only way to engage with the market. Customers still appreciate face to face meetings, go to conferences and events, read newspapers, listen to the radio and watch TV. So your market engagement mix should include all types of communication that are relevant and affordable.

In thinking about the effort you should spend on social media, you should first decide on the amount of time. effort and money (and the number of people) to devote to market engagement as a whole. Then you must decide how to divide this up into five different activities that make up market engagement:

1. Building and maintaining a shopfront: for most people this is not physical but a website or set of Facebook pages where the market can see who you are and what you have to offer.
2. Meetings and events: face to face time where you have direct contact with prospects, customers, suppliers and partners. You might also include video conferences or even phone calls in this activity as long as you obtaining a rich feedback from people's expressions, manners and voices to help build personal relationships.
3. Listening and joining in relevant conversations: this is done on sites such LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+,Twitter, popular blogs, and discussion forums. To succeed you need to be interested in your customers, so it is vital to listen to them and comment on what they say rather than hogging the conversation with your own opinions. People are going to engage with you and Like/Follow/Link with you if you are interested in them as well as if you have something interesting of your own to say.
4. Starting conversations yourself: when you have something to say, or even better when you want market opinion on a particular subject, then you can start a conversation, be it a Tweet, a post on Facebook or a topic on a LinkedIn group.
5. Publishing detailed information that shows your expertise in a particular area (whitepaper, blog posts, slideshow, how-to video, etc) or that explains your product and service in detail.

Decide how much time you have to do all these tasks and then set realistic goals for how often you can do each of them and stick to it. Better to follow one or two of the most relevant groups and comment every few days than follow dozens but comment so infrequently that you do not leave a lasting impression.

Marketing engagement is a vital part of your business. Nowadays it can often perform the bulk, if not all, of the task of selling. Social media is a necessary and fantastically useful element of this engagement, but it is not the only element so you have to balance the time you spend on it.

Week of scams and unwanted calls

This has been a week for scams and unwanted calls. It started with the common annoyance of a phone call from a company which I did not know asking about my energy bills. I questioned why they were calling me, since I am on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) list and should not receive unsolicited calls, at which the caller just hung up. Short but disruptive.

Then there was a second caller saying they were from Car Claims and suggesting that I could claim compensation for a recent accident. I asked to speak to their supervisor to complain about the call, but was told that I could only call them on another number. The caller then coolly gave me an 0900 number which he said was free to call. I am pretty sure it would have cost me to try out. But it was the first time I have had this type of response.

The third episode involved a US company, Hamilton & Pricehouse, phoning me about some shares that I own They claimed to have an investor who wanted to make a hostile takeover and was willing to buy the shares at a price several times more than the quoted value. Although suspicious (if something sounds too good to be true, it nearly always is) I could not work out what the scam was and ended up discussing the offer for a while and giving out my email address to receive their information.

The information sent was just a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for me to sign and send back, together with a request that I send details of my share holdings e.g. copy of certificate. The NDA would bind me but placed no restrictions on them and the share details could be used to defraud me. I also checked the website of the company whose shares were involved and it highlighted that this practice of unsolicited calls was going on and recommended a call to the UK's ActionFraud. So I have not sent back the NDA despite two phone calls from Hamilton & Pricehouse to chase it up, and I am waiting a call back from ActionFraud, so I can report what has happened. Also I hope to understand if it is a scam and how it works, so that I can be even more on my guard in future.

For jobs be aware of social media rather than beware

For some time now there have been stories about people, particularly youngsters, being identified in embarrassing social media entries ( videos on YouTube, pictures on Facebook or Flickr, blog posts on WordPress or Blogger, tweets on Twitter) which causes problems with their employers or, if they are still teenagers, could cause problems when they come to look for their first job. My wife and I have been telling our children for a while that they need to careful what they publish even when they are young, since it might come to the surface and count against them in five or ten years time.

But this article in imedia made me think again. It talks about employers starting to look at Klout scores and favouring those who score highly. Those who are active and engaged on social media are demonstrating their ability to communicate and to influence others, which can be important characteristics for some jobs such as marketing. This leads to the conclusion that it might be useful to be active in social media to give yourself an edge when applying for jobs.

Also the fear of embarrassing incidents from the past being visible on social media and being a major disadvantage in finding employment may reduce over time. We have all had embarrassing episodes in our past, but until recently they have only been seen by a few people. Yet the younger generation are growing up with a more open idea of what can or should be shared. In a few years, those hiring may well think it as normal that the embarrassing incidents can be viewed online as we now think it is normal that they happened at all.

So instead of telling people to beware of their social media profile and to keep it low, we should be telling people to be aware of their profile and raise it in the right way

First step provides momentum

The idea for MovingMarketing (as described on this blog on Monday http://rogerstonemarketing.blogspot.com/2012/01/movingmarketing.html) has been pinging around in my brain for a few months now and I have even started an alpha test producing a video for a company I know. But the distractions of other projects and a Christmas break have slowed my progress.

On Monday I pushed other projects to the side and registered domain names, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Small steps but they helped make me much more focused on rolling out the service quickly and effectively.

It's amazing how commitments (money, public announcements, telling family and friends or even just writing down your intentions) however small can create momentum and a positive force to move forward

MovingMarketing

MovingMarketing is a new project I have been planning for a while. Its focus is to provide all businesses, but particularly small businesses (SMEs) with a simple method of producing and publishing videos (and also podcasts) that promote their brand, views, product and services.

What will set my service apart from the many existing video production services which nowadays are affordable for small businesses is combination of guidelines for how to produce messages which have impact together with tools for producing videos (and podcasts) as well as for promoting them.

And of course, the use of social media to engage and involve customers will be a key element, as will the ability to harness the power and connnectivity of mobile devices.

There will be great deal more detail in future posts

Reducing time spent drifting

It is easy to get carried away on emails, responding to unimportant mails, reading interesting articles and generally wasting time.

To help me reduce the time I spend on this and to free up more time for the important tasks, I have started to use the stopwatch feature on my phone to highlight how much time I am spending on different tasks.

Before I start a new task I intend to decide how long I should spend on it, though it is important to remain flexible if important tasks take longer than expected. Let them crowd out the unimportant (but often addictive tasks) rather than the other way round

(Image from www.freeimages.co.uk)

Bring out the FAB benefits

Reading a new business plan today reminded me of the importance of differentiating between Features, Advantages and Benefits (FAB) and putting far more weight on benefits than features or advantages.

So what is the difference between features, advantages and benefits?

· Features describe what a product or service does e.g. searches through a million pieces of data a second, sends a repair person within 4 hours, utilises 25 years of industry experience

· Advantages tell you why the offering is better than other solutions e.g. speeds up your data processing, offers a quick response in case of breakdown, provides advice taking into account knowledge of what works

· Benefits are the ways that the product solves real customer problems e.g. “We now save time and money finding the right information quickly”, “The cost of downtime is reduced”, “We are beating our targets by adopting tested solutions”

Features of your own product or services are dear to your heart and seem fantastic and really cool , because you have usually spent months or years developing them and working out ways to do more, more quickly, more efficiently than has ever been done before. But they can be just dry facts to customers who have their own perspective.

You are only going to sell your offering if it solves some of the needs of the customer – or ideally, if it reduces or eliminates some pain they are suffering. So you need to set out, in your marketing material and in your sales pitches, the benefits that will come from buying from you.

The best way to show this is to use the words of actual customers. You should constantly be checking what customers like most about your product. Sometimes you will be amazed that some simple feature (for example a simple prompt to remind them of the next action) has far more value than some sophisticated capability. But if you are trying to in more customers in the same market, what your existing customers find most attractive is likely to be what will convince prospects to become new customers.

If you are a start up with no customers or are entering a new market, then you may not have relevant quotes from existing customers but you should test out your offering on some friendly potential customers and you can gain their reaction. In the very early stages of developing a new offering or addressing a new market, you can even put yourself in the shoes of the customers you are trying to help and think what they would most like.

I have talked about features then about benefits but jumped over advantages. Advantages can be a good stepping stone to working out the benefits, helping you think about what useful work your product or service can do for a customer.

You may want to list the features somewhere in your marketing material, especially for any technical readers, and setting out the advantages may help you tell the story of what you are offering. But talking about the benefits using the actual words of customers is the most important part of your description. The prospect must believe that it will solve their problems, make them work better and make them feel better.

Building your community

One of today's greatest marketing challenges is building the community around the company, brand or product that you are marketing. It no longer works to keep your company distant from your customers and expect them to be loyal because of they have purchased from you in the past or because today's products lead the market. Tomorrow's customers will be looking for something else and will want their supplier to listen to their changing requirements and to adapt their products and services accordingly. Good marketers will always have been listening to customers and asking for feedback as they test new ideas. But there is less and less room to hide for companies that do not connect with the market.

Social media provides us with the tools to connect and discuss. But how do we get the enough of our customers and prospects to engage in conversations and to comment on our website, blog, Facebook page or YouTube channel?

The good news is that a small core of followers can make for a lively debate. Ning's recent POV research showed that 20 people engaged in conversation with your company and with each other brings a reasonable level of activity and encourages others to participate more. If you take the rule of thumb that 1% of visitors become engaged advocates, you are looking for 2000 to visit your sites. Of these, 20 will then become excited enough to share regularly their enthusiasm, concerns and suggestions and form the foundations of a lively community.

Of course, you have to demonstrate that you are willing to listen to them and take notice of their views as well as producing content to interest them. But engaging the community feels like an achievable goal for all companies on this basis.

Remarkable or reliable?

Yesterday I attended a webinar run by myPRGenie and given by Deb McAlister-Holland of Distribion. The topic was "Get heard and get your content to go viral" and Deb gave us some really useful advice to publish content and promote it so that your audience will pass it on.

Much of the advice was around using the right tools, planning what you are going to say as well as when and how, preparing the content and delivering it in the right way. She had lots of tips on topics such as the tools to use and the timing of messages - I suggest you follow Deb's Distributed Marketing blog where you can learn from her experience.

Then today I watched one of Seth Godin's TED presentations about standing out and being remarkable. For a while I wondered what Deb McAlister-Holland was doing that was outstanding since her output is certainly being remarked upon. Eventually I realised that through her hard work and dedication, she was consistently producing really interesting topics and making sure it was always presented in a way that drew people in. There is no one gimmick or element that on its own makes her stand out, but putting all her good ideas into practice makes her stand out.

First Impressions - be a Receptionist

We form impressions of people in the first few seconds that we meet them and it takes a lot to overturn first impressions. The same is true of our impressions of companies - the first few seconds are very important. This is why the receptionist has such an important role in a company. Very often she or he is the first person in the company that a visitor will meet face to face and the friendliness and professionalism displayed will form a major part of the visitor's impression of the company.

Yesterday I was reminded that everyone has the role of receptionist from time to time - the first person seen by a visitor - and so we all need to make sure we are giving a good impression of the organisation we are representing. In my case yesterday I was manning the barriers where the road was closed for the carnival street market in our local village, Mayfield. So I was the first person many visitors to our village met.

It rained heavily for a while so I was wet and I was at the barrier for over three hours, often with periods where no-one new needed help or directions. So at times it was difficult to stay as helpful as possible to people asking about parking or how to get round the closed portion of the road. My respect increased for receptionists who have greet visitors all day every day however they are feeling.

In any organisation we need to work out how we can support those who are meeting and greeting visitors (as their regular job or just from time to time), remind them of their critical role and structure their work to help them make that vital great first impression.

Porous to Pitch

Yesterday I attended a very interesting workshop run by Business Link South East - "Your Games, Your Business" about business opportunities (and concerns) arising from the London Olympic Games in 2012. It showed how many opportunities there were for business and how the games, although based in London, would have an effect that spread widely across the UK, particularly with games venues outside London, training camps for competitors, visitors not all staying in London and the torch relay round the country.

As well as food for thought on business opportunities, I also picked up one phrase I really liked, from Rob Lewtas of UKTI (UK Trade and Investment) when he talked about making people "porous to pitch".

It highlights the fact that whenever you are pitching to people, trying to sell products, services or your own talents, you need to do your best to ensure that they are in a receptive mood. If your audience is distracted or bored, then even the best arguments and most convincing benefits will have difficulty persuading them.

To make people "porous to pitch" you need to use timing, tone and listening

• timing: if someone is hurried, give them brief details, explain that you would like to speak to them at some more convenient time and book a better time when they will be more relaxed and you can do your message justice. Similarly if the location is making someone uncomfortable, find a better place and time
• tone: when meeting someone in an informally, such as a networking meeting, do not go into a hard sell but explain briefly but enthusiastically your offering. You can even talk business in a purely social setting if it fits well into the conversation, but do not push it or you will turn people off (make them 'impermeable to message'). Also some conversation on a shared interest or some light-hearted talk can make your audience more receptive
  
• listening: ask what their needs are in the areas where you have products or services to offer. What they say will help you make your pitch relevant to them and so make them more receptive to it. How they say it will help you work out the first two points: whether the timing is right and what tone to adopt

We all ought to practice our techniques for making our audience "porous to pitch" since this is as important as the message itself in marketing and selling

Look for the communicators, not the geeks

I have just read an article by Melonie Gallegos in iMedia Connection on "9 social media questions you're afraid to ask". There are lots of good points in it, but one thing that I disagree with in the "What if I don't have the resources to do it?" section. Melonie talks about what to do if there is not enough resource in the marketing department to undertake social media. She suggests seeking out geeks in the organisation and recruiting them to help, while I say - don't search out the geeks to help you, search out the communicators!

Geeks love technology but they are often some of the worst people at communicating. On the other hand there are lots of people in most organisations who are already great communicators. They may be anyone from receptionists to project managers to HR specialists but they will stand out because you can see how well they engage people offline. It is far easier to train them in social media than it is to train most geeks to engage the people with whom they have online discussions.

Natural communicators can be given some brief instructions on the use of social media if necessary, but they are probably Facebook savvy anyway. Also they will need some guidance on brand guidelines of what to say and what not to say about the company. Then you can give them the opportunity to engage with customers, prospects, suppliers and anyone else who is communicating with the company on social media.

One other thing that they will need, as will anyone who uses social media on behalf of an organisation - the channel to be able to pass on key feedback, suggestions,questions and complaints to the appropriate department and the authority to ensure they receive answers which they can pass on. Social media is worse that useless, it is counter-productive, if input from received is not acknowledged and answered in a reasonable and timely manner.

Organisations have untapped talent in different departments that can be channeled to provide great resources for effective social media.

Reality behind the "Social Media" hype

A friend of mine has recently retired from his full-time sales job but wants to do some part-time consultancy work helping companies with specific sales projects or sales training. "I am talking to my contacts" he told me, "I hear that this is called networking". For him networking was jargon that described what he would do naturally, including nowadays using email and some online tools like Linkedin to help.

The term "Social Media" is in much the same position - jargon that is only vaguely understood by the majority but which describes an activity that everyone knows how to do (converse) although using some powerful new tools to hold conversations more widely, quicker and more easily.

It is the marketer's job to explain this to businesses who are interested in finding out more. There are four important points that should always be made:

1. Social media is about engaging with others: prospects, customers, suppliers, influencers, affiliates and others. Engagement involves a two-way conversation. If an organisation is not prepared to listen and respond, then it should not expect to gain much from participating.
   
2. It is not a panacea for all your problems. You have to spend time and effort listening and then you may hear about issues and views that are difficult or embarrassing. But it is always better to confront these than have them simmering in the background. If a dissatisfied customer does not get a good response from you then she or he will almost always tells others about your poor service (on average nine other people). But research shows a customer whose complaint is handled well will become more satisfied and a greater advocate of your brand
3. Social media is important for businesses - Comscore's latest report shows that social media accounts for one out of every six minutes spent online in US and other countries are catching up fast. Key sites include Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo! & Tumblr (with Google+ likely to join them once it is on full release).
4. Because it takes time to participate properly on each site, organisations should choose the sites on which they participate carefully to ensure that they have the resources to contribute and respond. It is better to be only on one social media site but post your news and thoughts there regularly, responding quickly to comments and commenting on other people's interesting posts, rather than trying to cover all the major sites and not keeping up on any of them.

Social media strategy is an important part of any marketing strategy and needs to set out clear goals for using social media as well as a good understanding of the tools to use to participate and to measure results.

Why is the Network Effect overlooked in the Mobile World?

The rise of the social network has seen rapid changes with first one networking software becoming dominant and then another. MySpace was once the leader, then YouTube and now Facebook seems all powerful. With the benefit of perspective we can expect something else to come and replace Facebook sooner or later.

All of the leaders have benefited from the "network effect" which makes a network become more and more attractive as its numbers grow. Metcalfe's Law states that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of members. So the first software that implements a "must have" new feature and by good execution builds up a reasonable number of members benefits from the bandwagon effect - everyone wants to join that particular network, because of the number of connections they can make as soon as they join, and it is very difficult for a competitor to build their own network to usurp the number one position. The bigger the number one, the more it dominates and weakens the competitors.

But in the mobile world, operators are regularly categorised as just "dumb pipes" despite the fact that they have the benefits of large networks - the millions of subscribers with whom they have not just a relationship, but a billing relationship They may not have exploited the relationship fully in the past. But as social networking becomes mobile with more and more people using their mobile phones to share information, news, likes, photos and videos with their friends, they are in a position to exploit their connections.

In our increasingly globalised communities we also have to remember not just the hype about the latest smartphone and what it can do on fast networks, but also the billions of users, particularly in Asia and Africa, who are still on featurephones and just starting to have the capability to do simple mobile networking. The network effect of those billions will dwarf the existing networks and this gives mobile operators have a huge advantage they can exploit.

Vodafone's interview in GSMA's Mobile Business Briefing, published today, shows they understand this potential.

It is also something well understood by FlyTXT, the mobile marketing and advertising company in which I am an investor, whose software allows operators to manage targeted communications to different user groups with pinpoint accuracy.

How Coca-Cola's example can help end poverty

Today Melinda Gates was a key presenter at the TEDxChange event, "The Future We Make" and spent much of her presentation talking about how the campaign to achieve the Millenium Development Goals can learn from Coca-Cola. She had travelled around the world looking at development needs and visiting some of the poorest and most needy areas of the world - and everywhere she found Coca-Cola.

How had Coca-Cola managed to reach these areas and establish sales? Melinda identified three key activities

1. They ensured they had real time data and acted on it to adapt to local needs and what was happening on the ground. In contrast, too often development projects are only assessed at the end when it is too late to adjust course or even fine tune
   
2. They used local entrepreneurial talent, getting enthusiastic local people to act as distributors for them. Exactly the same point was made by Mechai Viravaidya later on when he described a campaign to make condoms available everywhere in Thailand, which shows that the same approach is sometimes applied in the field of development, although there is work to do to make it the norm.
   
3. They market Coke as an aspirational drink, whereas too often development goals and activities are presented in terms of things to be avoided or as necessities. This should be so easy to change, since people do aspire to be healthy, to be well-educated, to have jobs and to live in a safe, sustainable environment. We marketing people just have to do a better job of promoting the goals and putting them in terms that people are enthusiastic about.

I am not involved in marketing development activities but I am involved in the debate on climate change, through my work for the AIB (Association for International Broadcasting). The presentation made me realise how actions to limit climate change need to be marketed to those of us in developed countries in the same way - highlighting the ways we can create a healthy, sustainable, good environment for ourselves and more especially for our children and grandchildren, rather than thinking of the things we should give up.

Climate Change and Human Rights

This is a period when I am focusing a great deal on the interlinked subjects of Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and climate change. The two are interlinked because climate change has a disproportionate effect on the poorest and those who have least resources to enable them to adapt (see a previous blog I wrote here) and so makes the achievement of the MDGs increasingly more difficult.

My previous post on this blog was about the MDGs arising out of my personal involvement with Save the Children but I am also heavily involved in climate change because of the professional work I am doing for the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB). They run annual awards for the best in international media. This year for the first time there is a People's Choice award, which I am running, where online viewers will vote for their favourite programme. The subject is "Best Coverage of Climate Change" and the short list has entries from the BBC, CNN International, Phoenix Satellite TV, Sky, the UN and VRT.

If like me, you are interested in climate change, you can be one of the first to see the short listed entries, vote for your favourite and share your choice with your friends and colleagues by signing up here.

You can also read my latest blog on theaibs.tv site on the subject of climate change and human rights here

Millenium Development Goals: Involving Different Constituencies

I attended a dinner hosted by Save the Children Fund UK on Thursday to discuss the Millenium Development Goals ahead of the UN summit later this month. I should note that the dinner was offered by a supporter of SCF and so did not cost the charity.

Attendees included those involved with SCF, politicians & journalists and the discussion covered progress to date on the MDG and what needs to be done to achieve the goals by 2015. Ten years since they were adopted, there has been signficant progress on the goals, more than most people expected, but on current trends most of the goals will be missed. What can be done to increase the momentum?

Different speakers talked of the challenge of involving more people who had not been touched or empowered by the process to date:

• business people investing in developing countries had an interest in educated, healthy workforces but did not relate to large government or inter-governmental programmes
• women could be a huge force for driving some of the required changes, but were too often seen as victims of underdevelopment rather than resources for change
• the faith communities, with their mixed record of sometimes providing enormous help but sometimes putting up barriers due to entrenched beliefs, had not been engaged enough in the underlining moral imperatives of the goals
• the younger generation, often idealistic and passionate about creating a fairer world and more sustainable lifestyles, were another group who felt little involvement with inter-governmental initiatives

At the same time, there were currently few charismatic leaders on the world stage who could drive through further change at governmental levels and the current economic climate made it seem unlikely that developed countries would substantially raise their actual giving (as opposed to their commitments) over the next few years. While a number of governments in developing nations had become committed to the MDGs, none of them seemed to have the position and authority to act as role models who would galvanise their neighbours.

It struck me that the slowing impetus at the governmental level together with the untapped potential of different non-governmental constituencies (businesses, youth, women, faith) calls for the MDGs to be pursued in different ways. They need to be made relevant to these constituencies and resources directed to empowering them to make changes. It is not changing the goals, but marketing them differently.

I make no apology for using the term marketing, since it is vital that the messages are put in terms that will galvanise each group and that all the different talents contribute in their own way to the overall aims.

IT as aid to being Carbon Neutral

Because of the work I am doing on promoting the AIB's People's Choice vote for the "Best Coverage of Climate Change" award, I have been looking at many articles and videos on the Internet that cover green and environmental issues.

I have just watched Mike Yourwerth from Meet The Boss TV being interviewed on Tesco's Green IT initiatives. He made two points I found particularly interesting for those of us involved in IT :

• green IT is not just about reducing the carbon impact of the IT itself but how IT can help the whole business to operate in an environmentally better way
• never forget the "I" in "IT". The technology is there as a tool to provide the information for whatever organisation it is serving, turning the raw data into usable, accessible, rapid answers to questions and information for decisions