What is this?

This is the work blog of Pete Ashton in his capacity as an online communications consultant, though it's often about more than that. If it's to do with people talking online and it interests me it'll be covered here.

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Life on other planets

You’d be forgiven for thinking Birmingham was the centre of the Social Media world but it turns out there are people in other cities who are also doing interesting things with this stuff. On Thursday a bunch of us are heading down to that London for Amplified08, a gathering of the tribes sort of event [...]

No more surgeries this year

The Social Media Surgeries I’ve been running at Rooty’s Cafe in the Custard Factory have been great. Despite minimal promotion (here and on Twitter) I’ve had a really good response and sorted out a load of problems. The surgery concept has also started to spread in Birmingham and across the country, which is very pleasing. [...]

WordPress.com new blog checklist

The free blog hosting service on WordPress.com is great but it does do a few mildly annoying things by default. Thankfully you can make it behave pretty quickly by ticking a few boxes.
I’d been meaning to write a guide to what to do immediately after you set up a WordPress.com blog but now I [...]

Out of the office

I’m off on a residential course from Tuesday to Friday. Some details are on my personal blog but the short story is I’ll be back Friday evening. I’ll be checking email on my phone but expect to be rather busy so unless it’s urgent I probably won’t get back to you until Saturday. Same goes [...]

Short posts are where it’s at

Here’s a tip for anyone wanting to develop theories about blogging and social media. Adopt a friendly, forward thinking journalist and get them blogging.
Last year I persuaded Birmingham Post journalist Joanna Geary to start her own blog. She took to it like a duck to water and continually surprises me with the ways she’s [...]