A recent article published on Sky News Australia, releases the findings of a report by Ernst & Young Australia that time wasting at work costs Australian businesses $87bn per year. The findings suggest that “Unnecessary meetings, unimportant emails and the use of social media at work were the biggest time-killers, costing businesses big dollars in lost wages.”

While unnecessary meetings and unimportant emails can be huge problems within the workplace, and social media can lead to mass procrastination, there are more important things to look at when it comes to helping employees to “not waste time.” However, there are a few tips that can help with even these things…

The Unnecessary Meeting

Unnecessary meetings are the bane of my existence. Back in the days when I used to work in a large corporation, I was told within my first month that the best way to skive was to “just book a meeting with someone”. If you find yourself falling into this trap, there’s a simple way to get rid of the unnecessary meeting issue… Avoid them. If anyone invites you to or suggests a meeting that you feel isn’t worth having, or could be achieved in another way, then ask if a call or email conversation could fix it. More helpful, instead of sitting down for an hour to talk through options, suggest a solution to the problem instead. You’d be surprised at how much being ‘a little bit forward’ can cut out unnecessary face to face meetings.

However, sometimes you just can’t avoid meetings, especially within agency life. Another way to cut down how much they affect your work is to set aside one day of the week/fortnight to have as many of the meetings as possible in a week. This basically means that you have a day that is written off, and you know you’re not going to get much actual work done that day. It not only frees up your days, but also frees up your mind for your ‘meetings day’, allowing you to focus entirely on what’s being discussed, instead of thinking of that important deadline that you have to meet that afternoon.

The Unimportant Email

This one gets cited a lot as a massive time waster. There is definitely truth that you can end up spending a ridiculous amount of time in dealing with email in one day, but there is a balance to be struck. Again, there are a few easy tips that can help unclog your inbox… First, learn how to use Rules. Spend a few hours of analysing your inbox for the worst offenders, then set a rule for those emails to skip your inbox and be placed into a folder in the future. Then you can check those at your own leisure, instead of having your ‘new email’ constantly flash up. Another quick rules, courtesy of Drew, is to set up a rule for any email containing the word ‘Unsubscribe’. This automatically cuts down spam.

However, there is something to be said for the odd unimportant email floating around the office. Proscribing to every employee what is important and what isn’t is a sure fire way to achieve unhappy employees. At 33, we have a LOL alias set up, which everyone can choose to be on. This is where we share everything from interesting articles that we’ve found to LOLcat and animated gif extravaganzas. Instead of keeping it ‘underground’ and private between a few people, it makes for a much more open, trusting environment to encourage this behaviour instead of prohibiting it. It’s not like happy employees are less productive… in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

The Dreaded Social Media

Back in the days when I worked in-house, I almost got fired for appearing on the MD’s hit-list of ‘people wasting time at work on non-work websites.’ The culprit? Twitter. It turns out that back in 2008, having Tweetdeck open all day meant approximately 6,000 hits to the Twitter website within the average workday. The MD saw this and just about signed my execution order. However, what he failed to ask was what I was actually doing with Twitter in the background. Between 2007 and 2009, I worked as a designer, developer, web admin and digital marketing manager at this company. Twitter and forums were my lifeline to a vast sea of knowledge, just about teaching me everything I did for their company. It provided quick answers to problems, peer review on ideas and work and kept me up to speed with the industry.

One of the worst things we can do as employers is to sever this completely. Sure, social media is used to procrastinate. However, if someone really wants to procrastinate, they’re going to find a way to do it regardless of what you have banned. Again, training staff on social media, making it part of their job and encouraging it can lead to much happier, productive workers. Also, there is something to be said about forbidden fruit being much more appealing than something that is de rigeur.

The future of work

One of the things that we’ve been looking at quite a bit at 33 is ways of working, and what this will look like in the future. Pre-internet ways of working are no longer productive, especially when taking into account the general feeling of GenY towards work. What is generally lacking in old ways of working is an element of trust. If you trust your employees and let them figure out the ways they want to work, as well as the ways they want to productively procrastinate, it leads to much higher rates of productivity, a happier workplace and greater employee loyalty.

If you would like more tips on being efficient at work, I highly recommend Tim Ferriss’ blog (and book), or keep an eye on the relatively new WorkHacks blog. You might also want to check out Anywhere Working, a 33 client blog that focuses on the future of working.

A man turns to his friend at the pub and makes an obscene comment about a recent tragic incident. He gets a stern look from the regulars, but nothing more comes of it. What he’s done may have offended people, but he hasn’t broken any laws.

Barely 10 minutes down the road, a student makes a similarly offensive comment about the same situation – but he chooses Twitter, not the pub as his platform. The next morning he’s awoken by a summons to the local police station where he learns he’s going to be charged with a criminal offence.  

So what’s the difference? Why is it ok for the man to say offensive things in a pub, but a criminal offence for the student to tweet them?

The answer lies in Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which states:

“A person is guilty of an offence if he sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.”

Crucially, nowhere does it say that the message must have been sent to the individual or organisation it is offensive or menacing to. This has been highlighted in two contrasting cases. First the Robin Hood airport case – where a joke tweet about wanting to blow an airport up if the weather meant the individual missed his flight, led to a case going all the way to the high court and a debate about freedom of speech. This case was eventually thrown out; with the Court of Appeal concluding that the tweet was clearly a joke and could not be considered to be a message of ‘menacing character’.

The second case – that of Liam Stacey highlights the danger of tweeting something offensive to your own followers, only for it to be widely shared and the reach multiplied thousands of times. . It’s doubtful that Stacey ever intended or dreamed that his tweet would gain such publicity or that he genuinely meant the message to reach Muamba. But the public and media outcry about his undeniably offensive comments led to him being jailed for a comment that would have been shouted down or ignored in a pub setting. Stacey has since expressed remorse and will have this hanging over him at every job interview or meeting he ever attends – surely the public shame is sufficient without the need to jail him for one idiotic decision?

A new development, and one with potentially far-reaching consequences is the comment made by Keir Starmer during a talk at the London School of Economics that retweeting a tweet found to be in breach of the act was an offence in its own right – something prominent legal bloggers and journalists are still digesting. But this raises a further question – last week many people retweeted and commented on Nick Griffin’s ‘threatening tweet’ towards a couple involved in a landmark gay rights case. Does their clear disagreement with Griffin’s actions make them safe from prosecution should the Police believe he has a case to answer?

What is clear is that much more needs to be done to examine how the existing laws can be used regulate social media sensibly and in a way that means the courts are not having to make kneejerk reactions to public outrage.

For a more detailed examination of the relationship between Twitter and the law the Guardian have put together a list of the 10 legal risks you need to consider.

Three years ago we launched our social media agency 33 Digital. The last year of that journey has been amazing. We’ve doubled in size and we launched our first dedicated international office in Sydney. 

We’ve gone from this: 

To this (half of our London office): 

Now the next phase of 33 Digital’s growth is ready to kick off: we’re hiring in New York, Munich and Paris for imminent office openings. 

We’re looking for people with experience of social media and PR, at all levels. Ideally you’ll be a local and you will have agency experience. If you’re a boss who is used to going out and making things happen, winning clients and running teams, we’d love to hear from you. If you’re an account manager, account executive or something similar, have a passion for social media in communications consultancy, you should get in touch too. An entrepreneurial spirit is a must, as is a passion for social media (did we mention that?). 

We work for some awesome clients who we love to bits. They keep us busy with all kinds of awesome, like social media marketing and PR, analytics and listening, community management, design and build. 

Check out our site and you’ll see how we like to work, some of the brands we work with and who we are. And the things we do like 33 Labs and 33 For Good. 

Then if you’re interested, email us something interesting to youre.hired@33-digital.com and we’ll get right back. Or stalk @drewb on Twitter as he’s the one you’ll meet. We look forward to hearing from you!

UPDATE: Would you believe it? Total Politics read this piece below and then got in touch. They invited us to contribute an opinion piece alongside none other than Nadine Dorries of jungle mania fame. The piece, “Does social media do more harm than good to politicians?” can be read over here, right now. Take a look and let us know what you think.

——

This morning, the issue of David Cameron’s new Twitter account divided the 33 office right down the middle. A useful tool for a Prime Minister, or an empty-shirt exercise destined for failure? Here, Peter Sigrist and Sam Philips battle it out:

The case FOR David Cameron’s Twitter feed – Peter Sigrist

At the time of writing this, Team Dave isn’t off to the most auspicious start on Twitter.  Follower numbers are looking strong, but content is lacking spirit.  ‘I promise there won’t be “too many tweets…”’ was slightly funny for Team Dave insiders but suggests a man who sees this as a hobby.  And yet…

Twitter shouldn’t be a hobby for a politician.  It’s the real deal.  The chance to shape the debate, unfiltered access to the electorate.  You may get roughed up for your undiluted views but you have the chance immediately to respond to objections, painting your reasons in colours of your choosing.  Twitter’s never going to be a place for quick consensus, but it has the potential to give Team Cameron an unprecedented sense of the spread of opinions in the country.

For a politician of Cameron’s stature, this should have him salivating.  No one ever became great except through many and great mistakes, and Twitter could and should be the perfect proving ground for bold ideas, gently floated, some to prosper and many to die.  Anyone with the confidence and deftness to engage in that sort of debate will possess stronger opinions and better ideas at the far end, with ambiguity and vagueness forced out through honest argument.

A politician of Cameron’s stature should relish the opportunity to dip his cup right into the middle of the fast-flowing stream of Twitter, with all its head and heart, emotion and ideas, inspiration and stupidity.  From Cameron’s point of view, as we all knew when we started using Twitter, it’s about who he follows.  Reward those making valid arguments with your attention, ignore the idiots.  Sometimes, perhaps regularly, he will face opprobrium and abuse.  But what walkabout on a street in Middle England does not come with its fair share?  Most of all, Cameron the tweeter should gain from closeness to the British populace; gain from the authenticity of the imperfect argument; gain from the ability to tell the people he Governs – “this is what I believe”.

Twitter should be the perfect place for a man of the stature of the Prime Minister to tread carefully, get some things right and some things wrong, and gain respect.  But in order to get anywhere at all, he needs to tread.  It’s fine if the drumbeat of the Official David Cameron Twitter feed is prosaic: ‘About to appear on @MarrShow‘.  But the real value to him as a politician and a leader, and to us as the British people, will be realised when he’s himself, for better or worse.

People and the media these days are more accepting of gaffes if you are honest about them and deal with them in a human way.  You need the stomach for the odd mistake, but which politician hasn’t always known that?

Let’s see if David Cameron takes this opportunity to have his voice heard.

The case AGAINST David Cameron’s Twitter feed – Sam Philips

Why shouldn’t David Cameron have a bash at Twitter? No reason at all, he absolutely should give it a go if he’s genuinely interested in it.

He probably shouldn’t do it, just because the other kids are doing it though. It’s much harder to establish and maintain an interesting, informative Twitter feed, than it is a blog for example. Twitter is live 24/7, there’s the expectation to be reactive and responsive, to show the real version of the world you live in, while a blog allows the user to be more considered and less ‘on’.

And so if this new way of sharing doesn’t come naturally, then it could become a problem. You might appear as disingenuous or perhaps worse still for a leader, disconnected.

For a Prime Minister, image and character perception is everything. Every step a leader takes has been well considered and he or she knows a slight error could seriously affect public perception and opinion ratings.

Twitter places notable people under a lens for inspection. It’s a curious and wonderful thing, this new access to that human side to those who were previously presented to the world with an airbrushed finish. It’s a new world, and with it there is a new order to be understood and respected…

Stephen Fry used this brilliantly, to raise awareness of mental health issues. And he exposed his personal mental health challenges in front of an enormous audience – that news travelled across Twitter, on to blogs, and then ended up in national papers and across broadcast. That’s quite some impact. But what can David Cameron do with this space, if he uses it effectively?

Can David Cameron, as leader of this country, present himself on Twitter in such a way as to inspire and encourage a nation, to fill us with confidence? Can he smash down the old order of formality, help to disassociate people from the sense that politicians are disconnected and dishonest?

An interesting debate broke earlier at 33 Digital – some people felt disappointed that celebrities they had previously liked had betrayed themselves with tweets that exposed their true selves. When it comes to a politician, that kind of exposure could cause serious problems. Especially during a time of political apathy, the populous vote may be easily swayed.

The alternative to diving in to Twitter is to take on a safe approach. Employ a team to manage that feed for you, keep it factual, and avoid the crowd where you can. Especially if they’re a bit bitey.  And for now, at least, that seems to be what we have over @David_Cameron.

The tweets with twitpics are like micro press releases, the tone of voice is slightly off. I’ll be watching eagerly for the first question Mr Cameron asks his 94.6K following, and the first time he engages directly with a follower. For now I’m not convinced David Cameron knows how to make the most of this medium, or indeed has the inclination. And for me, having the inclination to, is essential for truly getting involved with the Twitter community.

So, there you have it folks – what do you think? Fodder for The Thick of It? Or savvy PR move?

Operation Growth continues here at 33 Digital. After three years establishing a kick-ass team and client base in the UK, we’re excited to be able to begin talking publicly about the opening of our first overseas office with the appointment of Phil Sheard at Country Manager, 33 Digital Australia. 

Phil was part of the team that launched 33 Digital in London back in 2009, most recently acting as a Director in the UK team. He leaves this week to take on his new position as employee number one of the new 33 Digital office in Sydney.

Through the new Sydney operation, 33 Digital will be working with its global clients helping them to extend their social media campaigns into the Asia Pacific region, in addition to setting up a new, local client base. Phil will also be building a new team and working closely with 33 Digital’s parent company Hotwire, and with the existing 33 Digital UK team. 

The last 12 months in the UK have been transformative to our business. We’ve doubled in size and worked on some of the most innovative and the most mainstream client briefs. Social media has come a long way. It’s now time to expand our horizons and we can see huge potential in establishing a new team for us in Australia. It’s also part of the wider global strategy for Hotwire group, of which 33 Digital is an essential part, to be at the forefront of digital.

Please do get in touch if we can help you down under. Our details are on this site or drop Phil a line on @philsheard. 

(TL;DR version ↓)

Forget the flurry of September phone announcements, this was the news I’ve been waiting for. Yesterday Twitter announced the details of version 1.1 of their API.

These changes represent the “stricter guidelines about how the Twitter API is used” that Michael Sippy notified us of back in June.

Twitter’s own overview calls out a few of the major changes:

• They’ve qualified that the limit of 10k ‘tokens’ (roughly equivalent to number of users or connected devices per app) is only for end-user clients (eg Tweetbot). Apps in the analytics or influence areas shouldn’t worry. For now
• Developers can only use the JSON format to retrieve data. In practice, this won’t cause a problem for any serious developer but I’m sentimentally sad to see RSS being totally removed and we may see another rash of ‘RSS is dead‘ posts
• All interactions with the APIs need to be authenticated. This only affects some types of request that don’t currently need authentication (particularly search) but could affect any apps which are scraping large amounts of data out Twitter but which aren’t linked to a user account.

I think a lot of people with existing apps will be relieved that the changes could have been worse based on the early warnings from Twitter. That said, for many the damage has already been done.

→ My takeaway: the new API effectively means there will be no future developer-led innovations in the user experience of Twitter, only those that come out of the business itself. This won’t worry the mainstream audience the platform now enjoys, but those innovations instead will find a home on new, emerging platforms. App.net anyone?

The 2008 US presidential election was hailed by many as the first digital election – but in truth, it was more of an online massacre than a competition. Where Obama and the democrats innovated and engaged with a new generation, McCain and the republicans looked and acted like they had no idea how to engage with new media.

With a huge amount of excitement, we’re officially launching 33 For Good, the social good arm of 33 Digital.

Simply put, we have a piggy bank where we stash some of our free time and then collectively dedicate it to a mixture of projects, offering free consultancy to the third sector.

33 Digital is a digital and social media PR agency, and we’re made up of community managers, designers, developers, creatives, planners and strategists. All this means that we should be able to have a good chat to you whatever the challenge! Or maybe you just fancy coming and saying hi, which we’d like very much too.

We’re kicking this initiative off with a series of #33CoffeeHouse Meetups here at the 33 Digital offices on Farringdon Road, complete with tasty edible things, fresh coffee and iced beers.

The first will be on Wednesday 12th September between 5-7pm so come by and meet the team.

You can RSVP here: http://33forgood.eventbrite.com/

Don’t forget to check in to our #33CoffeeHouse on Foursquare when you arrive, there might just be a surprise to unlock…

And check out our @33ForGood feed, you’ll be able to find the latest info and updates on our #33CoffeeHouse meetups, plans and other digital and social media focussed charity projects we like!

The physicist Niels Bohr once claimed an expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. If this is true, then we may be about to see the social web purged of errors as a new class of expert takes shape.

The reason for my optimism is an emerging category of social networks that is springing up to bring together people with specialist knowledge or interests. These places have been built for small numbers of enthusiasts to join conversations, while larger numbers can witness what unfolds. Three such networks have been announced or come out of their private beta all within the past month and these are each noteworthy in their own way: Menshn, Branch and Medium.

These networks all perform a similar task: they try and make it easy for people to start a conversation on a specific subject and they make it easy for people to find that conversation (Menshn), they allow participants to invite others into the conversation (Branch) or they make it easy to contribute at a level to suit your time and interest in the subject (Medium).

Getting specialist on the social web

Since the days of bulletin boards and newsgroups, the web has always had a tendency to coalesce around subject matters. More recently, this has proven to be one of the strengths of Quora, a place where topics as arcane as starfish limb regeneration, the thermodynamic characteristics of absolute zero and who is really the Lord of the Rings are unpacked with minute precision by passionate wonks, ensuring that normal people remain on the sidelines. The best upvoted conclusions then become part of the social web and pop up in search results should you ever find yourself needing the answer to such a niche question.

W. Swanenburg’s 1610 engraving showing the Leiden anatomical theatre

The idea of the specialist-yet-public online conversation has also gained currency recently with the introduction of Google Hangouts. Up to ten people can join a Google Hangout as contributors, but an infinite number can watch and listen as the experts (or simply those who arrived first) conduct a public dissection of a topic.  The process bears a strange resemblance to those public autopsies conducted in the lecture theatres of seventeenth century medical institutions.

Experts with shared interests

What Menshn, Branch and Medium all have in common is that they are designed to bring together smaller groups of people with a requisite interest in a subject. So this is a new generation of social media, built around the idea that people who share deep interests can contribute more valuably to a conversation on those subjects, but that the conversation itself is most valuable if it is transparently available for consumption by anyone else who may be interested in the subject.

It’s a recognition that there’s a limit to how much people are prepared to engage fully in public conversations on subjects that are either so nuanced that they are prone to attract participation by people who have only a loose grasp of the facts, or so truly geeky that you’d think twice before committing your views to the public sphere of Twitter or Facebook.

I am so loving the 2nd law of thermodynamics this morning. I mean, people, who else *isn’t* glad time goes forwards not backwards? #woohoo

— Peter Sigrist (@psigrist) August 15, 2012

These new approaches are also a recognition that complex topics are sometimes best tackled collaboratively. Rather than big-brained individuals sitting alone in dorm rooms or office cubicles getting to the bottom of difficult issues, conversations between groups of interested people can go deeper, over a longer period of time.  And this is where there’s a chance that these interest networks may have something powerful and valuable to add to the social media mix.

Other takes on the emergence of the specialist network include Svbtle, which invites experts to its panel of bloggers and The Browser, which curates what its editors believe is the best writing on the web.  Look around the web and the interest graph is becoming a fundamental element of the structure of the web and the way content is channelled, whether you think about browsing at a desktop or conducting local searches on a mobile device.

And as with all emerging trends, the impact on companies and brands using social media to listen to and communicate with audiences is likely to be far reaching.  For now, we’d say just sign up for the new services and try them for yourselves.

When producing content for publishing on or at least distribution via your brand’s social channels it is vital to consider the wants and needs of the audience. This seems obvious enough but when you have a plethora of marketing messages, ROIs, tone of voice guidelines and sales targets to achieve – a little thing like creating content that contains some or all of these elements and is still of high value to the recipient can sometimes fall by the way side.

For most brands that earn a subscription from a person, be it in the form of a like, a follow or other means – you are yet to prove you deserved it. They’ve given you a chance, not a promise, to share some of their precious time with you. This is an awesome opportunity, the internet is a busy, noisy place and in this digital age – a person’s attention is more in demand than ever before.

How do you retain and grow your audience’s attention and begin developing an emotional connection?

Give them high value, relevant content that’ll improve their day. Surely, that’s what we all desire? Luckily, this is a wide reaching opportunity with many approaches for success. You can inspire them, amuse them, excite them, help them to solve a problem or simply give them something great to share with their friends. This makes them and you look good and could be the start of a winning partnership.

One interesting example is the recent social campaign around the intrepid explorations of Mars by the Curiosity rover. Engagement was notable with Curiosity’s Twitter feed currently at over 970k followers, and its Facebook page has over 250k fans. Their talking about this figures are still exceeding their Facebook likes; this is very impressive.  What made these pages so engaging? One reason is they’re written in the first person. It turns out that Curiosity has a bold attitude and a relevant , likeable personality. She even peppers her updates with pop culture references, further humanizing this real life WALL-E.

Of course you can still tell your story whether it’s about a product, event or simply raising awareness of brand values. Just do it in a way that feels natural and honest. It can be a big multimedia undertaking like NASA’s or small and personal like the artist @GregBurney who vowed to sketch his first 3,000 new followers. Although vastly different, these both led to engaged, amused people (or “an engaged audience”) with great content and the kind of stories they’ll actually want to share through their own networks.

Tell your story with pictures, wonderful multimedia and straight talking, powerful copy. Your target audience, your followers, your fans – they’re open to a conversation; just don’t shoehorn in the same tired all messaging by hiding the bitter pill in syrupy pseudo-content. This is nothing but a vacuous turnoff to potential customers.

No one likes to be tricked into a sales pitch, you aren’t offering a free weekend in Barbados, if only the lucky holiday makers will spend a few hours at a seminar on affordable time-share opportunities, and if you are, then the social web will eat you alive, or worse still; completely ignore you.

The sentiment of John Reith, the BBC’s founding father, and his ethos – to inform, educate and entertain – still endures to this very day.