My second post for OxonDigital:

…If you don’t know the answer to this question then you’re doing it wrong!

At the last OxonDigital meetup I was happy to be on the first Q&A panel to talk about social media. There were some excellent questions including one about monitoring that I thought deserved further attention. I must begin with an apology because I don’t remember who actually asked the question on the night. If it was you let me know in the comments 😉 You asked what options were available for a small operator to monitor for mentions of your business or yourself online.

The first question – Why?

Before I get too deep into the tools I think it’s important to take a step back. First you must answer the question ‘why?’ Why do you want to monitor online communication about you or your brand? I hope no one is thinking ‘because so-and-so told me to!’ There is no absolute right answer but there are few wrong answers.

My first post for OxonDigital:

As this is my first post for Oxon Digital (Hi, *wave*) I’ve decided to keep it light and simple, showcasing some of the things that have caught my eye recently in the world of social media. These range from social campaigns being run by global companies to the smallest spark of a great idea.

For today, we will stick to things on Facebook. In future posts I will move out into the scary world beyond Facebook and look at some of the up and coming networks out there and maybe some of the dying ones.

We’re all packed up and we’re off to Wemberrrllleeeee…

What to do if there are two sporting events on the TV at the same time?

This is easily the biggest physical challenge of my life, Trailwalker, walking 100km non-stop from Petersfield to Brighton. What a stupid idea I hear you say, well yes I guess it is, but all in a good cause. The good cause being Oxfam and the Gurkha Welfare Trust.

As a team, the four of us are taking on this challenge, backed up by our awesome support crew. Who it turns out we wouldn’t have got close to completing it without.

After months of training, aka the odd walk here and there, the odd diversion to a cricket match and the odd rain out, the day came. The night before the start we camped in Petersfield with most of the other peple with early start times. The Gurkha’s put on a BBQ and cultural show, there was an air of nerves, excitement and rain!

Alarms set for 5am, to give time to get up and get some carbs in before the 6am start time. We went off in the first group to give ourselves the most light to walk in. When picking the start time this seemed like a great plan, what we didn’t know then was that the weather was going to be abysmal! Driving sideways rain for the first 8 hours of the walk to be exact. This hit even the most experienced walkers hard, the Gurkha’s talked about how this is the worst conditions they’d seen at a Trailwalker event and their times went down from 8 hours to 11 hours.

Once it stopped raining things got a bit better. Eventhough everything was beyond wet the sun was shining and you could see further than a few meters again. This lifted spirits, spirits were lifted even higher when our support crew returned from the dry cleaners with warm dry clothes for us!

I don’t want to go into too much detail about the experience during the walk, the pain, the emotions, the commitment. If you want to know more about it, ask me, I love talking about it 😉

We finished in around 27 and a half hours, in the top 20 or so percent. Very impressed considering the longest walk we’d ever done in the past was around the 25 miles mark. And most importantly, we raised nearly £2000!

Coming up the finishing straight.

For some reason Che and I are holding Jeff’s walking sticks?!