Introducing Annabel Brusasco, work experience person extraordinaire and general, all-round awesome gal. When she’d finished compiling a LOLspeak dictionary for Dialogix I asked her to write a guest post on her experience and thoughts on social media. I would have given her an ‘A’, but she teased me for being old (I’m 29 and still, technically, part of GenY). In your face Brusasco.

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging/Twitter front lately because there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes at work. De Pasquale, the creative agency which is linked arm-in-arm to DP Dialogue, has merged with Gallery to create Gallery De Pasquale (or GDP as I guess it will be known colloquially). DP Dialogue isn’t really affected by the merger, we’re still technically independent of it all and are still Queensland’s premier social media marketing agency, but we do gain a couple of staff members and do get to move offices. I think GDP is now Brisbane’s largest independent agency, in fact it’s probably one of Australia’s largest independent agencies, so that’s a little bit newsworthy.

Anyway, we’re working on some big, cool social media projects at the moment which are about ready to launch so I’d better get back to it. Was nice to see the Gruen Transfer give a hat-tip to social media last night too.

BBS.

Five hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety six things happened to other people last week that had absolutely no impact on this blog. Luckily, four things happened to me that did.

1. I was unpacking in my new apartment and found my old ‘little black book’ from back in my journalist days. It was full of lots of interesting and important phone numbers from 2001, none of which are relevant anymore because all the people would have moved on, but it was a fascinating collection nonetheless. The fact that most of them had fax numbers and very few of them had email addresses says it all really.
2. I was in a business meeting and, describing my background to someone, Gino (the other half of DP Dialogue) referred to me as a ‘journalist with a lot of digital experience’.
3. Al Jazeera called and wanted an interview with me for a current affairs program on their English news channel. They’d read a piece I’d written on the Israeli military’s use of YouTube and the Palestinian response. I researched them, threw out my ill-informed assumptions and said yes.
4. Kate from Marketing mag called an wanted an interview on social media marketing. The last question she asked was about my opinions on the future of ’social media’. I responded by saying that my opinion doesn’t really count for much, but if you look at what Rupert Murdoch has been doing and saying on the subject you can learn a lot.

I started this blog seven months ago to write a lot and ideally learn a lot more. I think I’ve achieved both and the feedback from people around the world has been amazing. I’ve had arguments with English football fans about sports sponsorship, caused heated debate in America about the future of wine journalism and been interview on Arabic television. All in all, it’s been a great seven months and a fun 20,000-odd words.

Enough then, from me. At least for a little while. If you want my opinion on something marketing-related it’s almost certainly here in Zakazukha Zoo, there’s a table of contents organised by category on the right and search box up there at the top will guide you if you get lost. I don’t think I need to write much more about social media for the moment, but I’m hardly going to put this baby to sleep.

In fact, to the contrary, I’m dusting off the notepad and starting a new little black book. Stand by for a series of interviews with people I think can contribute something more important than I can to these pages. Screw what I think, let’s see what people smarter than me have to say. I think it will be a fun ride and you’re cordially invited.

‘Six Questions with…’ will be the title. First cab off the rank is Seth Godin. Queue the opening credits, launch title sequence, lights down, and we’re on in five. Four. Three…

1. To learn more than I did in 2008
2. To write more, much more than I did in 2008
3. To have good ideas and take responsibility for them
4. To balance work, love, music and life on four equal, gigantic pillars and spin them until they blur into one harmonious symphony
5. This

Thanks to Craig Wilson at Media Hunter and those who nominated and judged for awarding my piece on ‘How to Get The World’s Attention Without Being Remarkable‘ as the second-best media and marketing blog post of 2008. It was a big year for marketing blogs and I’m proud to be among some great company. Make sure you read the other posts too, they’re darn fine.

I’ve never won much. I got a trophy for playing in the St George’s Basin Under 7’s soccer team, but everyone else on the team got one too, so it wasn’t particularly special. I remember receiving plenty of certificates throughout high school for being good at being good, but the only subject I actually topped was Grade 11 Practical Computing Methods; not much of a bragging right. I always used to sit back and laugh at the regularity and hilarity with which advertising people threw dos to award themselves. But now, under a shadow of irony I now find myself working at/with/for/beside/other “Queensland’s Most Awarded Agency” as declared by the Brisbane Advertising and Design Club. I’ve also been personally nominated for a ‘Moggie‘ Award for blogging and not so long ago was recognised by Jule’s algorithm as being one of the top 50 marketing bloggers in Australia.

The accolades are great and don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to site back and get a little pat on the head for putting some effort into something, but at the end of the day, I’m far more interested in writing an entertaining blog, not to mention helping clients turn their business around with amazing bits of strategy than I am with peer awards. dp dialogue, the social media marketing agency I run, is still a relatively new venture but already we’re starting to put some ideas into practice that are making clients sit up and take notice. The list of companies who have brought us on board is growing by the week and after summer we’ll have some pretty cool case studies with, gasp, financial returns.

So I’d like to flank the academy for now and get back to work - but thanks for reading

Regular readers of this blog will know I’m a reasonably prolific writer and it’s pretty rare that I go more than a day or two without posting something, so if you fit into that category you might have been wondering where I’ve been for the last couple of weeks. If you blinked, or were partying for the Melbourne Cup you would have missed the launch of dp dialogue, which has taken up most of my time lately, I was also lucky enough to have six days ‘off’ to complete the WA leg of my band’s national tour (although I still somehow managed to clock up 43 hours of work that week!). It’s been rather hectic and I’m a little weary, but I’m back in the saddle now. A six day jaunt in a band van and a couple of plane trips across the country also gave me plenty of time to diminish the stack of titles sitting on my bookshelf, so I feel like I’m chock full of  ammunition and looking forward to writing some interesting stuff in the coming weeks…

Don’t think outside the square.

Think outside the circle.

…you’ll make more money.