What is it just now with Scotland and social media? You wait ages for a Scottish media podcast and three come along at once and it’s the same with social media events – they’re all over the shop just now, but the one held in Glasgow last night is the top trump for the moment.
Nation1 put on a social media chat at No. 29 – the same place Podcast Matters hold their New Media Breakfasts – and even though the event was billed as a bit of a ‘beginner’s guide’ I thought I’d wander along, show some support, see what was being said (from a competition point of view if nothing else) and compare it to the NMB.

There wasn’t any competition. This didn’t just blow everything else away, this was an aircraft carrier being dropped on the White House – with the competition being the White House. In less than 45 minutes Nation1 didn’t just set out a stall for digital media in Scotland, they pretty much took the ball, put it up their jumper, got on a plane and then hitched a lift on the space shuttle saying ‘come and get it’. This presentation was that good.

It started off horrifically though – 30 minutes past the actual start date. Unlike the NMB though, the audience of about 45 (tops) was treated to comfy seats and couches, but Nation1 boss Andrew Grant came out and started chatting, saying that the event was going to be aimed at people who knew what Twitter, Facebook and blogging were – they may not know what to do with them, but they knew the buzzwords.

Andrew said they were going to use a case study -one that’s actually live at the moment so people can follow their success in the coming days and weeks (ballsy move – but also a cute way of getting traffic and potential sales to the site in question) and it was for a candle making company Shearer Candles.

Andrew pointed out Shearer had thrown in with Nation1 to increase sales through online. Now at this point I was expecting some minor details – “we gave them a website, a twitter account, aimed it at women, yadda yadda” – but he went off explaining why Nation1 decided to target males instead – guys who would want to buy candles but not be seen dead in a candle shop or if they were in there, they wanted in and out quickly. Ditto with the web site. Going for guys was the way to increase sales as much as the company hoped for, not women.

He then talked through the customer experience of the site, what was positioned where (and why) and then went off in a slight tangent about the use of microsites for specific parts of the year instead of constantly changing the front page. That was interesting, but then he went into details of how most websites are built on CMS these days and what the pro’s and con’s were of using open source via an agency solution (as he put it: if the agency leaves then your site is hosed), namedropping the likes of Drupal on the way.

By now my ears had pricked well up. It wasn’t overly geeky, but there was meat in these bones. Ten minutes in and we’d had customer psychology, web user habits, an overview of open source and CMS systems. This was getting interesting.

Andrew then went on to point out that a lot of people still think ecommerce is all about the website but it isn’t – there’s still the practical issues of who’s boxing the items, who’s taking them to the post office, who’s looking after stock levels and so on.

From there Andrew went into SEO pointing out that there’s no point in trying to be no.1 for ‘candle’ as there’s millions out there chasing that one but ‘candle in glasgow’ or similar may yield better results in getting a company on the front page of Google.

He also explained a bit about using blogs – one on the site and other people’s blogs – to help build linkbacks and how you should never try and act like a normal person when representing a company. Just be honest about it, the link is still as valuable and you can engage in more open dialogue with people on the sites.

Then, quite casually, he revealed all their FaceBook plans which were a really good combination of old-fashioned marketing nous and digital savvy. I’m not going to reveal them here as they are still in the process of rolling these out, but the four creative ideas that they put up were all gamewinners. He also took a few questions and answered them with data from other clients they work with.

Email also got a mention as being highly useful – and again a few tips were put out, like avoid Outlook for mass mail sendouts (he also gave the name of some good software to use) but I was left slighly disappointed by the lack of mention for the traditional press. I still believe that the traditional press has a strong role to play in awareness raising – particularly for something Glasgow-based – and for Shearers they could be very handing in scoring some more customers.

It may not sound like much, but Andrew’s presentation – apart from the slides being out of order and a few howler typos – was fantastic. Not only did he have the balls to show off a live client, he presented their technical strategy and also their full creative strategy, complete with the ideas. I’ve seen pitches made to clients with less content.

What made it stand out though were three things: the lack of hype around the digital platforms, everything was geared to showing how online can help boost income and also why certain decisions or choices were made. It was a stark contrast to other presentations which threw up a topic and explained a little about it, but no real business case. Or they went “LOOK! ONLINE! SHINY AND COOL” without justifying the cost.

The one bit that may have given some people a fright was when Andrew was pointing out that to do this right isn’t cheap (I slightly disagree, I think there’s a digital campaign for all budgets) with the implication being that it was expensive to get the right results.

From Nation1’s point of view, it was a winner: it showed off that they put thought into this arena, weren’t afraid to disagree with the client and that they could be creative in reaching the new customer base.

From a business point of view – ie being in competition with these guys – it was brilliant as well because having seen what they are thinking, it pushes you to raise your game. (at the same time that’s a nightmare too) It’s good to see there being creativity applied – and all for a wee candle shop (I don’t mean that patronisingly, but who would have expected a wee candle shop to be going and getting facebook applications made up?)

After Andrew, there was a chat about online legal issues from Brodies LLP (I never caught his name) which was equally candid and informative and the event then wrapped up with one question.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of note taking at the event – which was attended mostly by Nation1 clients I’m told – which was a shame because there was some really good gems put out there. Now I’m told that a) there’s a director’s cut of this as well (with more material from their SEO top man Colin Boyd) and b) it may be released for all to see before Xmas.

Grab it. It’s well worth a read, especially for the comedy typo…