Life Dorkage
Just when you thought my unbearable rants on using social media for marketing couldn’t get any dorkier …then along comes Katie Lee of Miramus, publisher of Dork Adore, and recent Cosmo Blog Awards Nominee (please vote!) inviting me to contribute some posts to the Life Dorkage section of this much beloved tech site.
Yes it’s true, it’s not just marketing, I synch my life with the web.
Here’s some excerpts from my latest posts:
Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt I: Work
When it comes to Getting Things Done, Darika Ahrens is the woman you turn to. Not only is she the High Priestess of Social Media in the UK, she’s also a great big lifehack nerd. If there’s a tool out there for making life easier, Darika has already signed up, logged in, and taken the “Darika” username.
We asked her to teach us how to be better humans. She kindly obliged.
BEST TOOLS FOR GETTING THINGS DONE….AT WORK:
- Dropbox for filesharing
- Mindmeister for planning
- Milestone Planner for project management
Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt II: Life
So, the social media marvel that is Darika Ahrens already shared her tools for Getting Things Done in her Work. Now, it’s time for her to tell us how to run our private lives more effectively as well.
BEST TOOLS FOR GETTING THINGS DONE…IN MY LIFE:
When old media does new media
The Telegraph annoys users
While I’m not a prolific blog commentor I really like commenting on friends’ posts. So, it was with great excitement that I clicked over to the Telegraph to start reading Katie Lee’s new blog.
Unlike many of my peers I actually rate The Telegraph. It’s informative, has good coverage of global events and let’s be honest now, does a decent weekend magazine which is the only time I really buy a newspaper.
But it’s so frustrating when “old media” do their version of “new media” features and generally balls it up.
To leave a comment you have to register. It’s a pain, but I can cope. But the registration process is EPIC. It forces you to create a MyTelegraph profile and this process is more time consuming than any sane person could be bothered with.
To add to my despair, there was some weird glitch where typing in my email address I couldn’t see all of what I was typing. After trying to double-check I hadn’t made a mistake (it’s quite long) I’ve of course made a boo boo somewhere, ensuring I’ll never be able to access my profile. Create another one? Forget about it.
Sorry Katie, I’m loving your column, but will be enjoying in silence.
Lights on but nobody home
Tiaras and Tears: The problem with the Female Social Media Guru UK Award
You may have caught my previous thoughts on women being under-represented at industry events. So while it’s fantastic to see Social Glue initiate a Female Social Media Guru UK Award it caused a few rumblings and raised some questions for me…
Couldn’t we just recognise these women amongst their peers [male & female]. I think this is the heart of the problem the award is attempting to address.
Jamie has justified thus:
This is a debate we have had over the last few weeks. You are right there should be no division on gender but if you look at speaker panels there clearly is. Hopefully this combats the problem.
The “you missed off so-and-so” outcry was almost certainly due to lack of criteria [it seems to be just something to do with the internet and having a vagina being female] and probably a misconception there’s only a small number of fantastic women in Social Media.
I also found the later ranking of all nominees, with number of votes displayed, in poor taste.
I don’t want to get too down on Jamie. It was intended to address a very real issue and was well intentioned but comparing these women across their diverse areas is bit like like apples and oranges.
Here’s some of my faves and the areas where I think they are Social Media gurus. I’m pleased some of them made the list.
Meeting Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfzD25qDXZM&hl=en]
I was lucky enough to meet up with Tim Ferriss the author of The 4-Hour Workweek while he was here on a flying visit to launch the book in the UK. I loved the book and would recommend reading it.
Katie Lee from Shiny Media was my partner in crime stalking Tim round London and put some of the tough questions to him in this exclusive interview. (I take no responsibility for the slightly blurry camera work…)
[Thanks to London Girl Geek Dinners for the intro]
About:
I'm Darika Ahrens and I help brands develop marketing strategies for Social Media. My background is in Public Relations for companies like Orange, Microsoft, Philips, HTC, Yell.com, and Estee Lauder. I've worked with and trained some of the UK's top agencies.