Have you heard about the Linked In group for London members? It’s getting a lot of attention from members and plenty of discussions have been springing up daily, so it’s well worth a look.

The group is an online addition to the popular Meet with Drinks networking events that take place every month across the capital. So now, you can keep in touch between events and start topical discussions with like-minded marketers.

When you arrive on the Linked In website, you’ll need to search for the group called Meet with Drinks – Network for London Marketers and request to join. It’s that simple and you’ll be in touch with a whole host of opportunities to make good connections within your industry. What are you waiting for!

Zoe Gell

Hello again from sunny Brisbane. It’s been all go here – dust storms for starters!! It was like the Sahara here for a while….

I have to say I am actually missing the cooler London weather, the heat here is starting to really drive me crazy and my husband has been consulting numerous air conditioning companies to sort some out for our house – but as of yet can’t decide which to go for, so in the mean time I am frying like a proper English breakfast!

So last time I was telling you how I had packed up, left my lovely marcomms job and moved my life down under to Brisbane. I thought it would be so easy to breeze into a new marketing job but as I soon discovered I couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.

The recruitment consultancy I registered with at the time said had I arrived six months earlier I would have been fighting off employers with a stick! But I had arrived in the middle of what was described as the worst economic crisis in a very long time!! I did manage to get work but it wasn’t that easy. I was so used to the plethora of marketing recruiters in London that I suddenly found that it is a lot smaller and personal here in Brisbane, with the general rule being that you stick to one recruitment agency and not register with several like everyone does in London.

What doesn’t kill you…

It got quite depressing at one point as I was applying for job after job and not even getting a ‘no’ letter let alone an interview. I started to think something was wrong with me and that maybe I had imagined all the things I had done and the skills that I had. I changed my attitude and decided I needed to see what was out there and to do some more investigating into how people get jobs in Brisbane.

I did get a job and am enjoying the contracting scene, seeing what is out there. I have started to do some volunteer work for charities when not working on a contract which I have found rewarding and also a good way to network and find out about jobs that aren’t advertised.

Building a network

It seems to be a lot about networking here in Brisbane at the moment. Who you know counts for a lot. There are a lot of networking groups in Brisbane which I have duly noted and promised myself I will attend at some point such as Babes in Business, Network Marketing and Brisbane Women – (sorry for the guys out there!) there are other non single gender networking groups too such as the Meet-up groups… and I have heard from a lot of colleagues that they find networking the best way to get new contracts and to move up in business.

Bye for now

From Zoe Gell

I’m in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. How on earth did that happen?

I was very happy living and and working in London. Then I met my blonde-haired blue-eyed, sweep-me-off-my feet guy! He just happened to be Australian and he took me to Norway and proposed with a nice sparkly ring. We’ve been married for nearly three years!

I left my nice job as Head of Marketing for a property company and travelled all the way to Brisbane where my husband assured me that we were going to paradise and it would be really easy to fit in, find a new marketing job and live a fabulous life down under! He even agreed to travel for six months on the way as a sweetener – so I got to see most of south east Asia, Russia and Europe!

OK so now I am here. Is it the same as the UK? No. It’s actually very different.

Just subtle things really like having to pay to see the doctor, not being able to buy alcohol in the supermarket(!!) – in Queensland – I think you can in other states, having to show ID to send a parcel overseas – going to the local hotel which is not a traditional hotel here, they are hotels i.e. a place with a bar but no bedrooms! (Confused? Yes I was too!)

And trying to find a job in Australia has had its ups and downs. The marketing industry is quite similar yet very different. More on that in my next post.

I’ll be back in touch soon.

Facebook. LinkedIn. Flickr, Twitter, blogs. The list goes on. Sometimes, it seems like social networks are taking over the world. And, let’s face it, people enjoy using them. Facebook has 200 million users – more members than some countries have people. Social networks give people a chance to communicate, share ideas, state preference and also do a lot of silly things like find out what great dictator they most resemble. But all joking aside, social networks are growing – and they’re clearly important.

We can agree that people use them. But they generally use them to connect with other people. Not look for products. When you’re sitting down for a drink and a chat with friends, the last thing you want is to be advertised to. Maybe a social network just isn’t the right place to get customers interested in your latest offering. Maybe they’ll too busy talking among themselves to listen to you.

On the other hand, people use blogs, Facebook pages and twitter to talk about products – whether they have negative things to say or positive. So there are important conversations happening. Customers and potential customers could be talking about your business and its products or services without you actually knowing. So, it’s probably a good idea to see if an I-hate-XYZ-widgets page exists on Facebook. And if it does, you might want to find out why, especially if you’re the Marketing Director at XYZ Widgets.

But running a campaign on social networks takes time and money – both of which are in short supply. After all, finding out what’s going on in your industry takes time and research. And blogs don’t just write themselves. When all is said and done, how can you prove your social networking strategy is successful? By the number of hits on your blogs? By the number of fans on your Facebook page. Or, is it the number of people who arrive at your e-tail site from a comment you dropped on your favourite forum? And how do you add all that up? Is one appearance on a popular blog equal to the same amount of space in a magazine?

So, the problem with social networking isn’t just how do we use it, but deciding how we measure its value.

Any successful social campaigns you’d like to discuss?

Philip Preston

Six months ago I left my job in publishing to become The Institute’s new Regional Director for Greater London and the East of England.

It’s a great job with the added advantage that I now work from home. I have everything I need in my home office including a Dilbert desk calendar, a state-of-the-art staple remover and a record player so that I can play my old LPs as I work.

There are only two slight drawbacks to working from home. One is that I get to hang the washing out every morning and the other is that sometimes I can go all day without seeing anyone apart from the postman. Fortunately this has turned out to be the exception rather than the rule.

One of the plus sides of this job, and it’s a big plus, is that I get to attend all of the “Meet with drinks” networking events that take place across London organised by our fantastic team of volunteers.

For example on Monday I was at the Old Nick in Holborn chatting happily to marketing folk from the Central London branch, all enjoying a bowl of chips, a glass of wine and good company.

Then on Wednesday I had the pleasure of doing exactly the same at the Hop Poles Bar and Pub in Hammersmith, demonstrating my support for the West London team of volunteers. It’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it.

Now call me old fashioned if you like but I think it’s much more fun to meet people in the flesh than spend several hours a week in front of a screen glued to Facebook, Twitter or any other online social network.

Don’t get me wrong, they have their place and even I’m on Facebook, but for anyone who really wants to exchange ideas, network and make friends with other marketers at all stages of their career then “Meet with drinks” is the answer.

So let’s start a new social networking revolution, one that doesn’t end in dot com. You never know it might catch on. You can find out more here on the GLR website