General

Love this from Matthew Rechs, a senior product leader, business and career coach for creative people. See more from Matthew at Business Letters. 1. We’ll have a weekly 1:1. I’ll never cancel this meeting, but you can cancel it whenever you like. It’s your time. 2. Our 1:1 agenda will be in the meeting invite…

You can subscribe to new content on this site by using a variety of available feeds. Feedreaders should be able to discover the main feed and responses feed on their own. But there are more feeds available than just those two. This is a WordPress site, so almost everything also has its own RSS feed.…

Despite years of people espousing the death of the “digital agency” the industry is thriving and confident. Amazing work continues to be produced by top digital agencies around the world, and clients continue to hire agencies to complement their internal teams, in particular when creative or technical innovation is required. And not only that, well…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam sodales maximus ipsum et aliquam. Donec efficitur ligula nec dui dignissim hendrerit. Aenean quis accumsan risus. Curabitur dui augue, pulvinar aliquet maximus in, lobortis in leo. In ultricies tempus mollis. Etiam laoreet, justo quis ultrices finibus, enim justo lacinia neque, eu ultrices dui ex eu lectus.…

Social Innovation Camp 2 (The Revenge!) was an amazing experience – tiring, draining, seemingly unending, but fun, fulfilling and infinitely rewarding. Around 60 people descended onto 7 different ideas trying to make positive social change to bring them from the glint of an idea into a project that could be taken on past the weekend. The key idea…

Over at Flawless Buzz, Adam Lewis has been kind enough to tag me in his very first meme. The meme has three questions to it, with the aim of helping people looking to get into PR: If you’re hoping to get a career in PR yourself, there’s plenty more advice and insight out there from the others…

Becoming a freelance consultant is a dream for many. I’ve been lucky enough to have a successful freelance career as a social media and digital PR consultant for the last few years. There’s been some bumps along the way, but advice and encouragement from a wide range of people enabled me to go it alone…

Ben Matthews, Experienced Digital Marketing & Social Media Consultant Freelance digital marketing social media consultant for hire in London, with over 10 years experience in the tech, mobile, government, charity and startup sectors. I started my social career in the financial sector, moving to technology, government and charity social media agencies, before finally working as…

Following on from my guide to being a freelance consultant, I’ve pulled together a list of essential freelance reads and top blogs so you can get up to speed on all the latest freelance thinking. These are presented in no particular order, but feel free to add your own suggestions by leaving a comment! Freelance…

As a freelancer, maintaining work life balance can be a hard task. As well as juggling lots of clients and projects at once, there is the added pressure of taking care of all the housekeeping that comes along with freelance life. From finances and new business, to updating your social media profiles and chasing client…

You might feel that you’re ready right now, but there is definitely a wrong time to go freelance and a right time to go freelance. Make the move at the wrong time and you could find yourself regretting your decision and wishing you’d thought through your decision more. Here are the reasons I think make it…

Japan was always a must-visit country in my travels. And my two weeks there was everything I’d dreamt of and more. But many people are put off from travelling to Japan because of the expense. Yes, it is expensive, but there are ways to visit Japan on a budget and still see a lot of…

So, it was December 2012 and I was travelling in South America (La Paz, Bolivia, to be exact). And I was on the interwebz, checking Twitter, as you do. And I saw a job post for a company called FutureGov. The job was for Head of Comms, which sounded good to me. The skills required…

I made a Visual CV for a job application a few years ago – scroll down to see the full infographic! When applying for the role of Head of Comms at FutureGov, I knew that the job posting would attract a lot of interest and high quality applications. Indeed, there ended up being several dozen…

Getting started as a freelance can be hard, but I’m here to help you. If you’re new here, this is what I believe in: Every year, thousands of people have the confidence to start their freelance career. You can do it too. You can have the flexibility and freedom that comes from running your own…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam sodales maximus ipsum et aliquam. Donec efficitur ligula nec dui dignissim hendrerit. Aenean quis accumsan risus. Curabitur dui augue, pulvinar aliquet maximus in, lobortis in leo. In ultricies tempus mollis. Etiam laoreet, justo quis ultrices finibus, enim justo lacinia neque, eu ultrices dui ex eu lectus.…

(Thanks to Neil Grayshon for the image!) Building an excellent communications team requires lots of equally-excellent strategy, hiring, people management and culture building – and more. I knew when I started at FutureGov that I didn’t have experience in this area, so reached out to the good and the great of the UK PR industry…

David Foster Wallace is one of my all time favourite authors. From the hilarious and varied essays of  

It’s happened to lots of us at one point and is becoming increasingly more common. You’re working on a project or come up with a fantastic web project to get started on, so naturally the first thing you do is run to your favourite domain registrar or Twitter itself to see if the domain name…

  I’ve always been interested in Japanese culture – both traditional and modern – and my recent trip to Japan has furthered my interest. But living in London means I am lucky enough to be exposed to Japanese culture and traditions on a regular basis, whether it’s through visiting the Japan Centre on Regent Street,…

(Photo via Sean MacEntee) I’ve decided to come up with a privacy plan for myself. After hearing about the NSA’s surveillance scandals and now the details about Edward Snowden, the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations, I’ve been kicked into action. These events has got me (and several million other people) spooked by who is…

Glamping at Leeds Castle is a little luxury in stunning surroundings. Set in the beautiful grounds of Leeds Castle in Kent, UK, the Knight’s Glamping was a Bank Holiday escape from the city for us – and it worked out wonderfully. We’ve never been glamping before (have been camping) so weren’t sure what to expect,…

(Note: I get the irony of writing about a digital diet on a blog, which you will undoubtedly read on some kind of digital device.) It’s a fact of modern life that we spend most of our days looking at digital screens. From checking tweets on your mobile, to doing email on your laptop, to…

Crowdfunding is a well-known concept for most people, thanks to sites such as Kickstarter. Headlines of consumer products, such as the Pebble, to films, apps and games getting funded – with no apparent downsides – are everywhere. So when I was asked to write a piece on the "negative" side of crowdfunding, which would be…

My previous post on personal privacy following Prismgate, "My Privacy Plan", sparked a fantastic discussion over on Hacker News. The comment that most resonated with me – and had the most upvotes – questioned what the political aspect of a privacy plan would look like: "My privacy plan will involve learning more about politics. Who…

(This is a full version of an article I wrote for The Guardian’s Local Leaders Network on how councils can measure the success of social media. You can read the edited version on the Guardian’s site.) According to the 2013 BDO Local Government Social Media Survey, 98% of UK councils are using some form of digital or…

(This is a full version of an article I wrote for The Guardian’s Local Leaders Network on digital innovation in local government. You can read the edited version on the Guardian’s site.) When working in digital innovation and local government, it’s helpful to stick your head above the parapet and see what others are up to. There is…

I’m starting up a blog series where I profile different people who’ve gone freelance, how they made the jump to becoming a freelancer and how they have found the realities of freelance life. I get loads (well, quite a lot) of people asking how I went freelance and my recent how-to guide on how to…

(This is the first in a series of interviews with freelancers, telling us their stories on how they went freelance. The aim is to help others who are thinking of becoming freelance learn more about what it takes, as well as get advice and inspiration so they can get the confidence and understanding to find…

(This is the second in a series of interviews with freelancers, telling us their stories on how they went freelance. The aim is to help others who are thinking of becoming freelance learn more about what it takes, as well as get advice and inspiration so they can get the confidence and understanding to find…

(This is the third in a series of interviews with freelancers, telling us their stories on how they went freelance. The aim is to help others who are thinking of becoming freelance learn more about what it takes, as well as get advice and inspiration so they can get the confidence and understanding to find…

(This is the fifth in a series of interviews with freelancers, telling us their stories on how they went freelance. The aim is to help others who are thinking of becoming freelance learn more about what it takes, as well as get advice and inspiration so they can get the confidence and understanding to find…

(This is the fourth in a series of interviews with freelancers, telling us their stories on how they went freelance. The aim is to help others who are thinking of becoming freelance learn more about what it takes, as well as get advice and inspiration so they can get the confidence and understanding to find…

Online privacy issues are currently difficult to understand. Amid media headlines about NSA, Prism and Snowden, terms such as encryption, Tor and HTTPS are used extensively with the average person expected to keep up  with what they mean and understand how the issues affect them. For people who aren’t technically adept, the message about why online…

A friend recently asked if I knew of any upcoming London tech events, so I sent them back a list of the sites I use to keep updated with the latest Tech, Startup and Hack Day events in London. Some of these events listings are for membership-based organisations, such as TechHub and Campus London. Please…

Two years on from producing the first Social Charity Study, the team at Visceral Business have produced the Social Charity Index 2013, a report looking into how phenomenal and substantial the growth of social and digital media has become among charities in the UK. A few headlines from the report: The average rate of growth in…

Before you make the leap, there are some freelance essentials that you should have before you launch your new freelance career. While sometimes boring and time-consuming to set up, the more work you put into getting these essentials set up now, the easier your life will be once you get into the more important aspects…

Social Media Week 2013 has kicked off in London this week. The team at Chinwag have put together a fantastic schedule of events for Social Media Week. The companies and attendees they’ve attracted are world class. They’ve done a brilliant job once again. But already there’s been a Tumblr set up calling people out on their mundane,…

This article originally appeared in The Carrier, a monthly newspaper founded in 2012 as a way to send news to the people in our lives.  I love living London with all it’s hustle and bustle. It can feel like the centre of the world and that all the world’s important moments are happening, just minutes away, in…

Zoe Amar and Matt Collins invited me to write a chapter for their guide, "Social Media for Charity Leaders", as part of their project revealing the top 30 charity CEOs on social media. I wrote a chapter on The Best Social Platforms for CEOs", which you can find below. If you’re interested in finding out…

Twitter has been speeding up the experiments they run on their platform recently. From a recent blogpost: "A common thread across recent releases has been experimentation. We’ve tested various features with small groups of our 200 million users before determining what we’ll release. These tests are essential to delivering the best possible user experience. It’s rare…

How to Get a Job in PR is Sarah Stimson’s fantastic book on how to break into the PR industry. The book is a comprehensive guide to finding and keeping the PR job you dream of, answering all sorts of questions you may have about the PR industry and helping with many more that might not have…

Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder, ended his famous commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 with the words "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish." This advice came from the back cover of the Whole Foods Catalogue final issue in 1974. Accompanying a photograph of an early morning country road, it was the farewell message of the…

Stock photos that are actually good and free (including those that require attribution) are well worth finding. And once found, keeping track of. This post is more of a personal reminder for whenever I need stock photos, but feel free to check out these sites for yourself" Superfamous (requires attribution) Picjumbo The Pattern Library Gratisography…

  Jelly is the new iPhone and Android app from Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone. The basic premise is of "loosely distributed networks of people coordinating via Jelly to help each other." Here’s their video to explain more: I’ve been playing around with the app this morning and found the experience a mix of Instagram and…

I love being productive and the feeling that comes from getting the right work done at the right time. A recent productivity hack I’ve been following is to save all reading – including articles, newsletter and books – to outside of work hours, when I have downtime and can concentrate on the material. There have…

I’ve written about my reading habits before, using apps like Tweetbot and Pocket as a system for saving interesting content to read later. So when the Cronycle team got in touch to offer me a test drive of their beta product, I was interested enough to take a look and see if it could be…

Growing up in the seaside town of Brighton, I never thought I would meet and mingle with "famous" people (famous in the form of well respected icons – not the here today, gone tomorrow celebrity variety). When I was small, just going to the local park or the walk to school seemed like a big trip.…

(This is the sixth in a series of interviews with freelancers, telling us their stories on how they went freelance. The aim is to help others who are thinking of becoming freelance learn more about what it takes, as well as get advice and inspiration so they can get the confidence and understanding to find…