my name is eric whelan.
I do digital stuff, encourage community engagement, plan user experiences, run long distances and speak bad Swedish.
About- Blog
- Audio Work
- Tweets
-
Info
- Digital communications and media specialistMedia Production | London, United Kingdom, GBSummary
I am communications, digital marketing and media professional based in London, overseeing online campaigns that encourage community engagement and get people talking. I specialise in developing content that sparks conversation, increases sharing and excites followers across the web and offline.
I have over five years of digital marketing and communications experience including successful campaigns for high-profile clients including Borough Market, BBC One, PBS America, Vue Cinemas and The Guardian and have trained over 200 organisations in the effective use of social media, audio and video.
Specialties: Social media development, communication strategies, digital marketing, community engagement, audio editing, audio mastering, content development, podcast production, online content development, content management, branding.
Experience- Dec 2012 - PresentCommunity Manager and Content Producer / Independents United
- Nov 2011 - Dec 2012Digital Marketing Executive / Mind Unit
Mind Unit is a full-service digital agency focusing on the arts and entertainment sectors, working with organisations such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Borough Market, Photographers' Gallery, Chichester Festival Theatre and PBS America.
My work there included wide mix of social media development and marketing, mixed communications, content creation, website management and client training.
During my time at Mind Unit, I developed full and wide reaching social media and communication campaigns for clients with huge success. One extremely successful campaign brought a client's social impressions from nothing up to 2.5 million per week in just 10 months while achieving an enewsletter open rate that was 95% above industry average.
- Aug 2008 - Nov 2011Producer & Trainer / sounddelivery
SoundDelivery is a multi award-winning digital media agency that focuses on media development, communication strategies, social media campaigns, podcast and video creation and audio, visual and social media training for the third sector.
My work there was mainly focused around community and audience engagement. I developed and managed several high-profile media campaigns, during which I led the social media and brand development which included building an online presence for clients and interacting with their target audience to increase brand awareness. I was a key trainer within the company, teaching charities and other organisations how to improve their communications and increase awareness about their work.
My time at SoundDelivery gave me a full understanding of how social media can be used as a marketing tool and to connect an organisation to their users. It also allowed me to develop my skills in community engagement and content production for websites and online presences, including graphic design and online audio.
- Apr 2009 - Jun 2010Media Manager & Editor / Global Soundtracks
Global Soundtracks was a weekly electronic, experimental and underground music podcast.
I led the podcast’s branding and social media presence, interacting with our audience and engaging bloggers to encourage discussion on our features, which was key to reaching a larger audience. This work eventually led to coverage in the national press, heavy coverage online and an international Podcast Awards nomination.
While there, I increased my knowledge of the importance of good branding and online personality, as well as how best to encourage your audience to spread the word of your organisation for you through the use of their own social networks.
- Sept 2007 - Jun 2009Presenter & Producer / Smoke Radio
Smoke Radio is the resident radio station of the University of Westminster, and has won numerous awards including silver for Best Station at the 2007 and 2008 Student Radio Awards.
As part of Smoke Radio, I co-produced and presented a weekly entertainment show, Razzle Dazzle and self produced, researched and presented a weekly specialist music programme, The Body Electric. Work on these programmes included branding, developing content for the shows, working to a very specific time table and creating podcasts and online content.
I also co-produced a series of episodes for the RAG Week podcast and help to keep the Smoke Radio website up to date through both graphic design and content editing.
- Jun 2008 - Dec 2008Researcher / Academy Films
While working for Academy, I was a researcher on several projects, including the development of a series of Nike adverts and a large scale project for Talk Talk.
Education-
2007 - 2009University of WestminsterBA (Hons) in Radio Production
-
2004 - 2007Coláiste DhúlaighHigher National Diploma in Communication and Media Studies
Additional Information-
Websites:
-
Posts
I know this too well.
WHEN I SIGN ON IN THE MORNING AND FIND OUT A SOCIAL CRISIS BLEW UP OVERNIGHT.
…which means no more country-specific brand pages. Managers can now provide a localised experience to followers while only having to maintain one Page.
When they were (jokingly) attacked on their Facebook page about how their representation of women in their adverts wasn’t realistic, you’d expect a company like Bodyform to give a straightforward response. Bodyform haven’t exactly been held up as a shining example of great social media use, but their response this time was pretty impressive.
Their response was this fantastic video which has now been viewed by over 1 million people in the two days it’s been online and will no doubt go down as one of the best uses of social media by a big organisation this year. And it’s easy to see why.It’s always annoyed me that Tumblr haven’t released a native iPad app. It seems like a massively missed opportunity for a platform that prides itself on being so focused on mobile and while there are some great Tumblr clients for the iPad, like Tumblita, they don’t make it as easy as they could to flick through the blogs you follow.
So I took to Paper by FiftyThree to sketch out some ideas I have for how a native app might work. It takes its browsing style from Flipboard (easily one of the best iPad apps) and uses the swipe-out menu which is popular at the moment since it’s very user friendly.
There’s still work to be done; more detail is needed on the compose pages, for instance, but I think the changing features in the permanent nav bar at the top of the page, the swipe-out menu and the Flipboard-style display of posts would allow users to seamlessly jump between writing, reading, liking and reblogging posts.
Four apparent Windows 8 adverts have leaked and, if they’re real, it looks absolutely incredible. I’m an iPad user, but I’ll gladly say that the features and navigation of Windows 8 on a touch device put iOS to shame. iOS has seen so little change since it’s first iteration so it’s incredible to see a touch OS that’s been completely designed from the ground up. It’s massively exciting.
This could easily place Microsoft as a serious competitor in the tablet market.
CHAIRS ARE LIKE FACEBOOK.
At least, that’s what Facebook would have you believe in their celebration of reaching 1 billion users.The gaps between my posts here are getting longer and longer but it’s not because I’ve lost interest. I’ve spent the best part of the last year building up the MU blog which I write for work so when I do have blogging time, it tends to go there.
While this blog has mostly been digital media and communications focused, the MU blog also touches on design and technology as well as social and marketing. There’ll always be more here, I promise, but the MU Blog is worth a big fat follow too.
- Why Facebook won't give you the results you're expecting
A new report from Constant Contact claims that 37% of small organisations who said they were using Facebook as a marketing tool don’t think it has helped them at all. No sales, no exposure, no extra traffic through the doors. And it’s not really surprising.
As a digital media trainer, the look of shock on trainees’ faces whenever I mention that I don’t think Facebook is that helpful in engaging new audiences never ceases to amuse me. Amongst the gasps and confused stares, someone always blurts out “then what are we here for?!” which is an understandable question. We constantly hear about how Facebook should be your number one tool for capturing new audiences, how it is a place to showcase the brilliant work you’re doing.
But that’s simply not true.
Recently I led a session training some very big-name organisations in using digital tools for corporate responsibility and this point came up again. While I’m sure some people in the room disagreed with me, I put forward that Facebook doesn’t offer you the tools to find and engage new audiences. You can’t search for topics that people are talking about. You can’t message people as an organisation. You definitely can’t drop in on interesting conversations to encourage users to talk about you or your services. You can’t even see the details of people that have Liked your page on Facebook anymore.
But you can with Twitter. The simple fact is that Twitter is a far superior tool for engaging audiences which is why it is seeing ever-growing engagement while engagement on Facebook seems to be stalling. You can search for topics that people are talking about. You can drop in on conversations and engage people that didn’t know you existed.
Facebook seems to finally have worked out what it’s trying to do. Early users will remember when it was a requirement that status updates began with “Joe Blogs is…”. Since the verb was removed in late 2007, we’ve seen Facebook focus more and more on what Joe Bloggs was doing. It’s no longer about what’s happening now; all Facebook cares about is what has already happened. We only need to look at Timeline – which was introduced earlier this year with an invitation to “tell your life story” – to see that Facebook is becoming somewhere to reminisce rather than reveal. The death of Facebook Places, which allowed users to tell their friends where they were at any given moment, is another sign of a shift in focus.
Digital marketing and community engagement is all about the here and now which is why Facebook marketing just isn’t working for the smaller businesses in Constant Contact’s report. It’s a great tool for talking to people who have chosen to connect with you but again, this goes back to something that has already happened. Chances are, these users are established customers so it’s no wonder these organisations aren’t seeing jumps in revenue; they’re preaching to the choir.
If they really want to grab the attention of new audiences, these companies will have to look elsewhere. Twitter is where people are talking about what’s happening now, what they’re interested and what they’re going to do in the future. These are the people that can be engaged and these are the people that you can entice through your doors.
We need to stop selling Facebook as the be-all and end-all of digital marketing. It’s a great tool - especially for established, high-profile brands - but it’s not going to give you the amazing results so many organisations are expecting.
- What can we learn from Bloc's social disaster?
Bloc 2012 has been an unmitigated disaster. The outrage from festival goers on the web is impossible to avoid and it definitely looks like there are serious questions to be answered about the competence of the management and security. I’m not here to complain about the festival (I didn’t attend), but there are lessons to be learned from Bloc’s very public disaster which we witnessed as the festival went into meltdown late last night.
Bloc has over 8k followers on Twitter and over 37k Likes on Facebook. As the festival site apparently descended into chaos, social media was the one place that Bloc could have at tried to communicate with those at the festival about the problems that were being faced. But instead, they decided to continue as if everything was going brilliantly. It’s more important, it seems, to save face than to listen to what your audience were screaming at you.
As attendees pleaded for information about why they were queuing for up to three hours to enter the venue before being faced with more queues for the stages, Bloc thought it would be better to put out photos of the “fantastic” performances; performances that their audiences were unable to access. As the issues on site got serious and the police were called in, Bloc took a silent stance, not releasing any information at all to festival goers. A day later, their Twitter still hasn’t been updated despite the scathing words coming from attendees who felt hard done by. #bloc2012 makes for some really interesting, if sweary, reading.
Six hours after the site was shut down, Bloc finally released a statement of sorts. But it’s a case of too little too late; Bloc ignored their audience when they were needed the most. They had a hugely powerful communication tool at their fingertips but instead decided try and protect their reputation by not admitting to their failings.
So what can we learn from Bloc’s complete social failure? These points might seem obvious but I see orgs failing their audience all the time by ignoring some simple steps.
Listen to your audience:
When your audience are screaming at you that there is something wrong, listen. Tweets about huge queues appeared on Twitter from about 6.30pm yet there is no mention of it in any of Bloc’s tweets from the day. Bloc should have tweeted about long waiting times and advised festival goers to arrive early to ensure they saw the acts they wanted to.Don’t pretend everything’s ok:
This was one of Bloc’s biggest mistakes. As thousands of tweets came in expressing frustration about the festival, they continued to tweet about great performances and retweeted the few happy tweets they received. It’s likely that this infuriated those who were having a bad time since it basically undermines their complaints. Saying “everything is great!” when it clearly isn’t is simply not a good idea. Listen, respond and try to fix the problem.Admit when you’ve messed up:
Easily the most glaring mess up that Bloc made was their silence. A day later, there’s still no admittance from them that they made a huge mistake and lost control of the event. Festival goers are obviously angry about what happened, but much of the flak Bloc are receiving from them could have been avoided if they had of simply accepted it and apologised. I’m not saying they needed to put out a full statement at 1am, but a tweet and Facebook update with any kind of information would have gone a long way.Still nothing from Bloc a whole day later.
Make it right:
Even at this late stage, Bloc can still save themselves from the social disaster they’ve created. There’s still time to communicate with their audience, explain what happened and say sorry but considering their silence last night, I wouldn’t be confident this will happen.I understand that things were tricky last night – there was a real risk to festival goers and obviously fixing this and getting people out of the venue safely was top priority. But that doesn’t mean Bloc should have ignored their entire social audience. The complete silence was disastrous and in some ways, chilling. It could easily have made attendees feel as though the festival had abandoned them. It takes all of 30 seconds to write a short update. Why didn’t Bloc do this? Why did they decide to completely ignore the thousands of people who were turning to social media for guidance?
The only people that were willing to offer any advice to festival goers last night was the venue, The Pleasure Gardens. This is a simple tweet that Bloc could have copied: hell, they could have retweeted it.
But instead they stood silent and let thousands of people who were their responsibility fend for themselves. Let’s compare The Pleasure Gardens’ most recent tweets to Bloc’s. It says a lot, doesn’t it?
Canadian band Metric played in London last night and used Instagram to give away five pairs of tickets to their show. Tweeting that they’d be posting pairs of tickets near the venue, the band put the passes in envelopes which were then stuck in easy to recognise locations around Shepherd’s Bush. They posted these photos on Instagram and Twitter, allowing their fans to race to win for the passes.
Really simple but effective way to use Instagram to grab your followers attention!
- How not to engage an audience on Twitter… yes, again.
In the third of what appears to be an ongoing series, yet another organisations has proved how oblivious it is of what Twitter is used for. A few months ago, I wrote about how a Twitter account for an in-production BBC 3 TV show was spamming anyone and everyone on Twitter to try and find people to take part. Not surprisingly, it ended up that The Year of Making Love was a disaster, with only 300 out of 1000 contestants turning up for recording and a good number of those that did eventually walking out.
Now a production company, again producing a show for BBC 3, have taken the same approach to finding subjects, spamming accounts looking for retweets to help find people to take part. The only difference this time is that the company seemed to be approaching other companies as opposed to going directly to potential subjects, but that’s a very minor difference.
While @YearofMakingLuv got away with it, Twitter were having none of it from @BoomTownTVShow, whose account was quickly suspended. What’s the lesson? Twitter’s a place for conversation, not for spamming. It’s good to see that Twitter themselves have started to crack down on accounts that don’t understand that.
- Facebook Timeline for Brands
A few weeks back, I tweeted about Timeline coming to brand pages on Facebook. A friend who works for a digital agency had just come from a meeting at Facebook during which they were told that Timeline would roll out to brand pages in late February or early March.
Exciting info directly from FB on #Timeline for brands - They’ll roll out soon, announcement from FB at end of Feb. Won’t name source! #sm
— Eric Whelan (@ericwhelan) February 2, 2012Mashable are now reporting the same story so with the roll out looking more likely, I wanted to point out why Timeline will make such a big difference to marketers.
The most obvious addition to Timeline is the large cover photo which can be added to the top of the profile. This is one of the features that has been heavily reported since Timeline was originally unveiled in September and its merits are fairly obvious; Heavy branding and a more personalised feel to the page.
But there are two other additions to the Timeline that have generally been overlooked. It’s these tools that got me interested in what was displayed on my Facebook page again as I was finally able to paint a proper picture of myself on the social network. For brands, they offer a way to highlight important stories and events in addition to their day-to-day updates. The first one of these additions is the event adder.
This option allows you to add significant events or dates to your Timeline. It’s a way of displaying important stories that otherwise may not make their way onto Facebook - for brands, this can be awards, major product launches etc. One brand that I work with was recently awarded a Blue Plaque, and an award like this is a perfect example of one that could be highlighted using the event adder. These events are highlighted differently than standard updates or statuses, with their own icon depending on what kind of event it is (the above event was sports-related, hence the trophy) and are mentioned in your followers’ news feed. They are also highlighted when visitors scroll backwards through your timeline, grabbing much more attention than, say, a status update.
Secondly, there is the Feature function. Whereas before on Facebook, stories were all given the same priority regardless of their importance and there has been no way of curating what stories are highlighted on your page, this new function allows you to pick and choose which stories get the most screen real estate.
Using this feature allows you to create a hierarchy of stories and ensures that your followers will find the stories you want them to. When used, the story you have chosen to highlight spreads across the page. In the case of an image or video, this is displayed in full size which not only breaks up the page well but gives the Timeline a much more interactive, media-rich feel.
For marketers, these tools are going to be invaluable. Up until now, we have been forced to adopt the reverse chronological display that Facebook has given us. But now, for the first time in Facebook’s 8 year history, we are being given the opportunity to curate how our content is displayed. They’re such simple tools that it’s surprising that they’re only being integrated now. But I guarantee that anyone who uses Facebook professionally will start to rethink what content they’re putting out based on these new tools.
In January, an Israeli anti drug group used the Timeline to brilliantly highlight the difference a year on or off drugs can make. This page may have since disappeared (deleted for breaking Facebook’s ToS, most likely) but it’s a perfect example of what’s possible using the Timeline and I believe that this is just the beginning of a fantastically creative time for brands on Facebook.
*I’ve used images from my personal Facebook to illustrate this story since there are obviously no brand pages to screengrab just yet.
How to lose your job as an intern; hijack your boss’ (who happens to be Labour MP Tom Watson) twitter account, use the word “rape” and then grovel, all within 20 mins, to 65,000 followers.
Seems odd to me that the intern would come back with “my boss is in a meeting”, so I’m not entirely sure who is really involved in this, but I’m sure whoever it is is in for a really bad day.
- How not to engage an audience on Twitter... again
Some organisations just don’t get how Twitter works. It’s a place for conversation, not a place for spamming and this is why it has grown to level that it has. A few months back, I wrote a very short post on how not to engage your new followers on Twitter, but it’s not just new followers that you will alienate by spamming; it’s any potential followers too.
An account being used to find people to take part in a new BBC 3 dating programme, set up by Fever Media, is a perfect example of how not to engage an audience.
And so it goes on. In the time it’s taken me to write this post (less than 10 minutes) they’ve posted another 13 updates. Spam, spam, spam.
If I were to take over this account, I’d approach the audience in a completely different way. A quick search for “date” or “dating” on twitter comes back with a huge list of people who’re talking about dating. Directly getting in touch with these people means that you’re much more likely to find people interested in taking part in the show, rather than throwing out a really large net in the hope of catching a single fish.
Twitter users don’t react very well to this kind of “conversation”. They’re also well skilled in the art of clicking the Block button, which I’d guess many people have done to @YearofMakingLuv. And that’s before even mentioning their awful username, generic stock photo avatar and horrendous grammar.
- Direct Marketing Failure from Rosetta Stone
As a digital marketer, there’s one thing that you have to always remember; the difference between marketing and spam. It’s not difficult. Simply think “if I was receiving this many updates to my personal account, would I be annoyed by it? Would I feel as though I was getting the hard-sell?” If the answer is yes, then you’re spamming your audience.
If this is the conclusion you come to, then it’s easy to stop huge numbers of people unsubscribing to your updates. You simply don’t send as many updates! Specifically here, I’m talking about direct marketing - emails, newsletters, digital updates. Social media is an entirely other ball game.
Since the start of December, I’ve received no less than eight emails from language organisation Rosetta Stone. On Dec 13th, I received two emails, and on Dec 19th, three.
I wasn’t the only one that noticed either. Callum Raines had made a complaint about it on Twitter. Our comments got the attention of Rosetta Stone who pledged to reduce the number of mails they were sending out.
But for myself, and I’m sure a lot of other people on their mailing list, it’s too late. I have unsubscribed despite being interested in what the company have to offer. Their messages were complete overkill and while I’m sure their direct mail outs got them some good Christmas business, I’d bet that it is negated by the number of unsubscribes.
The lesson? Keep your updates regular but don’t over do it. Fortnightly or monthly is plenty and only update when you have a story to tell. Otherwise, your audience will feel like you’re only interested in their money rather than their support.
- Give Us A Break
Changes are afoot. After over three years I’ve made the decision to move on from the lovely SoundDelivery and have joined the team at Mind Unit. From now on, I’ll be working with arts organisations and helping them get heard and get noticed online through various mediums. It’s an exciting change.
But I couldn’t leave SoundDelivery without a swan song. I created this audio slideshow for SoundInnovation, SoundDelivery’s charitable arm which, who in June of this year, brought 25 carers on an all expense paid, two night trip to London to give them a break from their caring roles. It’s been four months since the trip and at a recent reunion it was obvious just how much the break helped the carers.
The project was a work of passion from Jude, who had begun planning the project several years ago. I hope this slideshow does it some type of justice.
-
Tracks
-
Tweets
- Wow, I really, really hope @instagram doesn't include video. We have @Vineapp. Why would we need another version? http://t.co/Lv1DwgiEX8 #sm
- Whoop! #OutInTheDark is getting a UK cinema release on July 5th. Watch the trailer: http://t.co/mYI6fBZ9W3
- I'm going to attempt a very short #run. Lets see how much damage this holiday did to me.
- @jcarroza For good reason! They're not really eaten in Ireland so they were a revelation when I visited Portugal for the first time.
- I spent an hour this morning hanging upside down in a chair getting stage one of a root canal. It wasn't the ideal way to start a Friday.
- .@Foursquare have introduced the Time Machine, a visual representation of where you've been. Here's mine: http://t.co/YwNxI66UTB
- Facebook have offered some advice to brands on integrating hashtags to their campaigns now that they're in use. http://t.co/oL34FFPIpi #sm
- It took a while, but it's finally happened. Hashtags are definitely coming to Facebook. http://t.co/rXD8SL4P97 #sm
- RT @mrjamesfoley: Lots of women out without their husbands tonight. #teganandsara
- I'm at @VueCinemaS (London, Greater London) http://t.co/QCFHlRxJhb
- I've traveled over 2161 miles today - #Beirut > #London http://t.co/1FuLjNizvK http://t.co/iYT5630jvN
- Yest included walk through Armenian district, best falafel ever & an open bar at a rooftop club over looking the city. #Beirut, I love you.
- Fave thing about #Beirut so far: the Corniche is beautiful and the people are lovely. Least fave: lots of begging Syrian refugees. So sad.
- Well done #Beirut. Well done. @ The Corniche http://t.co/cdr2fHVDeG
- Loving #Beirut. Old woman on plane told me not to sleep & party til Mon, taxi drvr stopped & bought me RedBull ("it make you BOOM BOOM")...
