2010 was a year I started with mixed emotions having adapting to life as a Music graduate back in London after four years away at University. Armed with nothing but enthusiasm and a wrath of ideas, I knew that 2010 was going to be a year where I would make an impact one way or another.

January I created version one of iAmLuca.co.uk with the vision of using it to document my ventures, my networks and connections within New Media and Music. I have discussed topics focused around Digital Marketing and Personal Development, with my knowledge being largely based on my current experiences in my personal journey rather than on professional practise.

As the year progressed I found opportunities would open the more I wrote articles. The more original content I distributed across the social space, the more people who didn’t know about me would get in touch wanting to connect. Literally writing about social communication to expand on my social connections.

After interning at the start of 2010 at various establishments, I gained some significant freelance work that allowed me to begin taking my academic knowledge and personal experiences into the workplace.

I had to learn very quickly to pick and choose which projects I was to devote my time to as it was evident the social space opened the door for anybody and everybody to become an expert at one thing or another. I also had to pick and choose which people I could afford to spend my time talking with openly, as everything we say and everyone we talk to, is seen by those around us.
This is where I began understanding my audience.

Amidst the professional growth I also used the social space to meet a certain individual who helped me understand much more about who I was, who I was becoming and what I could achieve. Her belief in me has allowed me to take a well needed break when needed, as previously I had been known for burning the candle at both ends and being consistently run down both mentally and physically.

Progression and growth

By Mid 2010 I knew things were beginning to piece together and carve a path that would allow me to understand what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats would affect my future, and ultimately which direction I would take in my career.

I’m not sure where along my journey of school, college, Music Academy and University I would realise that it wasn’t my creativity that would allow me to achieve, but more my ability to recognise opportunities.

Oooh... nice lifestream Mr. Luca... Love that blue!

The problem is that we live in a selfish world and the social space has created a platform for egos to manifest based on meaningless statistics and business to grow for both individuals and companies purely built on the manipulation of how we communicate. A new form of guerilla marketing so to speak.

Where the opportunity is in the above statement is to become part of the machine and to market to the majority of people who are searching for answers and a definitive return of investment in their quest. However, the opportunity for me is NOT to join the machine (well you guessed that already), but to pick up on my strengths, and my philosophy taken from The Layer Cake..

‘The art to good business is being a good middle man.’

Doesn't my new Twitter profile look grand!

Evolution not revolution

It’s now 2011 (wow do I feel old), more companies than ever are going to emerge offering new solutions to problems that are not even problems and more individuals are going to claim to be experts. The creative space is far more competitive than ever before and with so many people too focused on getting their numbers up (not money by the way) and being noticed, there are gaps for opportunities.

Rather than a) Joining the machine or b) Fighting against it like some kind anti-Zuckerberg; I am going to be that guy in the middle. Documenting the good and the bad of the space but most evidently, making a full effort to shed light on those individuals that are doing the good AND the bad in the space.

People don’t care about other people like they used to. The 2011 online professional person cares far too much about themself, their small life and how their reputation looks online that they all lose track of how important it is to be transparent and selfless in social media. To network in and out of local communities, assist others who need a boost and also give praise to not just the elite, but also to grass roots and the foundation players who are the future of this crazy place.

Quotable: Everyone is so focused on chatting pointless shit, regurgitating recycled information with the idea that their network will pinpoint them as a visionary and a thought leader. It’s all buzzword bullshit from egocentric sales people.

For me, my life is still within Entertainment. Not Music or Art where I have resided previously; but in Sports Marketing. I see a wealth of opportunity ahead of me, I work in Football, for one of the World’s best known clubs and I know that it is only a matter of time before I make my mark in the entertainment industry.

One to think about:
Have you become online the person you ARE in real life or have you become in real life the person you CREATED online?

In the past few months i’ve changed a lot and my outlook on both projects i am/was involved in has also changed. This is due to a flip in career direction and also meeting someone who has made a large impact on my life. Now im feeling good about things, but im questioning my reasoning for all this in the first place.

I’ve written on Urban Music on my previous Music Blog and transferred the learnings to this site where my career is in football as a Digital Analyst (It’s ironic that my job is to be the guy that thinks too much and explains the what, where, why and how).

My other persona lives on a gaming site named The Urban Gamer, again created to use influences from Urban Music merged with Video Games. There isn’t really a huge business model here, just playing games and writing about them. My team are brilliant though! Big up the UG crew!

As for this site, i’m currently brainstorming to figure out a niche area to focus on. Im buggered if im gonna continue on this path scouring the net for Digital recycled content to put my own thoughts on like a bootleg version of Mashable.

Thinking back, one of the first posts i wrote for this site was about the benefits of a Performance Appraisal.

This is a key exert from that post:

The 4 main reasons for Appraisal are:

Motivation and Satisfaction – Performance appraisal can have a profound effect on levels of employee motivation and satisfaction – for better as well as for worse.

Training and Development – Performance appraisal offers an excellent opportunity – perhaps the best that will ever occur – for a supervisor and subordinate to recognize and agree upon individual training and development needs.

Recruitment and Induction – Appraisal data can be used to monitor the success of the organization’s recruitment and induction practices.

Evaluation – At its most basic level, performance appraisal is the process of examining and evaluating the performance of an individual.

So within these four values, i was set a specific set of questions on how to construct this task.

- What is my Ultimate Vision?
- Why am I Doing This?
- 3 areas to strive for?
- Define a set of goals that i want to achieve.

It’s been over six months since that post and somewhere along the journey of being an unemployed depressed bum to an entrepreneurial freelancing mastermind to an employed Digital Whiz Kid, i have let go of the fundamentals.

I’m going back to basics and back to the drawing board to figure out where i went wrong/right.

I’ll be back soon chappies! In the mean time, you can follow me on twitter.com/iamluca if you aren’t already.

Love!

As it has expanded in size, recruiting more and more writers from different journalistic backgrounds, it has made a transition into wider areas of Digital Technology where the competition is greater and the audience is larger.

Formally known as ‘The Social Media Guide’… Now that the slogan is no longer present on the site, what kind of site are Mashable now?

The Opportunity

Cashmore can see the opportunity with the amount of press and traffic his site receives daily. Therefore, maybe it should be leaping into reporting on all things digital/technical.
But could this transition be more of an innovative move by Cashmore; knowing that Social Media is losing the ‘what is social media’ factor that made his baby ever so popular in the first place?

Facebook recently achieved a landmark milestone in digital history, by reaching 500 million users. Funny, considering it was only a year ago that we were still trying to prove that Social Media wasn’t a fad.

The Transition

Mashable’s new 2010 re-design has dropped the tagline ‘The Social Media Guide’ and opened up it’s news wings to expand into all areas of digital technology.
It had been reporting on most new technology news since launch but had always put a social media spin on it.
Only recently, has it decided to devote a large portion of it’s articles to technology without the social fluff.

With all businesses, as you expand into other areas, you face more and more competition. Where you may dominate your specific niche (in this case Social Media); if you decide to focus on multiple areas, such as Web Technology, Mobile and Business for example, you will find yourself not only taking away the USP of your site, but also confusing your core market (which in this case im not too sure what that is for Mashable).

The Stats Never Lie

I tweeted about this exact topic recently and the response i received was interesting. A few replies highlighted that while the engagement on Mashable is low in comparison with their ‘share factor’, the point was raised that most people would rather share an article and discuss with their own network than comment directly within the article itself.

I guess that makes sense, and no-one can argue with their analytics, as it’s plain to see that Mashable receive some pretty dominating numbers.

However, as the place to visit for all new media information, wouldn’t you expect at least 0.01% of their 3 million daily page views to translate into more than their average of 16 comments per post?

Each of Mashable’s articles receive the best part of 1000 Twitter Retweets and the Facebook share’s are somewhat lower. For every 1000+ shares, we see an average of 16 comments, which to me indicates, that while we love to recycle content and share knowledge with our networks (for whatever ego boosting illusion of intelligence we want to create), as ‘Social Medium’s', we chose to not pay much attention to the source.

Sharing Doesn’t Always Mean Caring

I’d love to investigate into this further and really challenge the concept of sharing articles and how does it really coincide with the definitive definitions of Social Media (if there is a definitive) or at least acknowledge that sharing doesn’t always go hand in hand with ‘engagement and interaction’.

If the King Kong site of Social Media is happy to knock out relentless articles daily and keep it’s followers sharing the content, but not directly engaging; in my opinion (and that’s all this is) Mashable is losing a severe amount of brand equity, as the amount of time their average reader actually spends on the site would be minimal.

The Reality

Mashable is a force, that is obvious. It’s writers know their stuff and while some of their articles are completely pointless the majority are informative and relevant.

But ask yourself this; when you visit Mashable what do you expect to find?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but do we really want to visit Mashable and see the same iPhone article that can be found on Tech Crunch, Engadget or Gizmodo?

Do we want to find Money and Finance information that we could see more comprehensively on Money Saving Expert? Do we want to watch the latest movie trailers in their Entertainment section?

Mashable is the site that made Social Media easy for people to understand and keep track of as it grew and grew.

Personally, while it’s great to be ‘that one site’ that tries to report on EVERYTHING going on in new media, at the same time, there is a huge area of confusion for the consumer.

Pete Cashmore explains in his interviews that Mashable started as a ‘mash-up’ of content on the Internet. Yet it’s tagline was Social Media and it became famous for being the Social Media Guide, not for being a source of all things digital.

I doubt Mashable will care whether it’s network interact on their website or share the content without thinking. As a business they are successful and no doubt their traffic brings ridiculous revenue; but it’s only a matter of time before the masses realise Mashable’s content isn’t as revolutionary as it used to be and people will get bored of retweeting the same recycled content.

Note:

If you are one of the thousands of people that Retweet Mashable’s article’s but don’t have an opinion.
Please stop. The whole world of Twitter is following Mashable and we all see their feed.
At least be creative and voice an opinion for sharing.

Engagement and Interaction… Engagement and Interaction… Engagement and Interaction! It’s all i keep hearing from Mashable content recyclers.

“Social Media is Engagement and Interaction and by utilising Web 2.0 in accordance to your audience you can build a reputable network and substantial ROI.”

The old boring word known as ‘Communication’ is dead. Revitalizing buzz words such as Engagement and Interaction are leading the way and a whole universe of confused brands and businesses are throwing money at rogue ‘Digital Marketers’ to explain to them what these words actually mean.

Want to know what it all really means? Here’s a simple tip that i won’t charge you a ridiculous day rate for:

It means you have to LISTEN to your audience when they speak, REPLY when comments are posted and RESEARCH available tools that are relevant to your campaigns.

I understand that not everybody is savvy with the online media world, so if you still want to pay me to teach you the fundamentals of new age words that you don’t understand; then drop me an email and i’ll be more than happy to assist. Ca-ching!