Ne James Hugh Calum Laurie, this English actor, comedian, writer and musician is a man of many talents. Although many people know of him for his role as the gravelly voiced Dr. House, Laurie first became famous for his comedic aptitude. Before he got into acting, he attended Cambridge, where he was awarded a Third-Class Honours degree in archaeology and anthropology. He was also an accomplished oarsmen, as was his father. He eventually joined the Cambridge Footlights, where he meant Emma Thompson and his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry. You can catch the best of Laurie’s work courtesy of your satellite TV subscription.
A Bit of Fry and Laurie: More commonly known by its acronym, ABOFAL, this British TV series starred Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. It was a sketch show featuring plenty of elaborate puns and word play, musical acts, and non-sequiturs. Often the characters would revert into their real life personalities or the camera would show the audience. It broke with tradition, and was considered a hit.
Jeeves and Wooster: You can catch this show on PBS or via the BBC on satellite TV. Based on the PG Wodehouse novels, the show starred Laurie as Bertie Wooster, alongside Stephen Fry’s Jeeves.
Black Adder: Another classic British comedy, this series starred Rowan Atkinson, of Bean fame, alongside Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Each series of the show was set in a different era, but followed character of Edmund Blackadder, a member of an English family dynasty present in many different periods in British history. Laurie was introduced in Blackadder the Third, as the Prince of Wales, an idiot and fop. Later in the fourth season, Laurie played Lt. George.
Sense and Sensibility: In this movie, adapted by and starring Emma Thompson, Laurie plays Mr. Palmer, son in law to Mrs. Jennings. The movie follows the trials and tribulations of three sisters who must go about trying to make a living and find suitable husbands. You can catch the movie on any number of channels on satellite TV.
Flight of the Phoenix: A plane crashes in the Gobi Desert. Laurie plays the character Ian, one of the stranded passengers of the plane. The film was shot on location in Namibia. Although it wasn’t a hit, it did prove to be an entertaining adventure movie.
Stuart Little: Hugh Laurie appears in three Stuart Little movies, playing the doting father of little Stuart, a mouse. It’s a fun family film with some impressive CGI action going on; it’s perfect for viewing the kids on your HD TV.
House: Laurie made his audition tape for this show while filming in Namibia. Bryan Singer, the show’s producer didn’t even know that Laurie was British, as his American accent was so spot on. This role is quite different from Laurie’s more comedic affairs. He places a grouchy American doctor with a limp and a somewhat gruff voice. Dr. House is something of a genius-he has a knack for diagnosing odd diseases. He also enjoys playing head tricks with his students and his patients. Laurie has received several awards and nominations for his role.
Posted in Arts And Entertainment tagged Bertie Wooster, Family Dynasty, Trials And Tribulations by Stephen with No comments
Do you Tweet? Thousands of businesses do, and for those who get it right it’s proving a very effective way of communicating with their clients and increasing their visibility on the net.
But with so many businesses now using Twitter, getting yourself heard amongst the dawn chorus of Tweets has become and art in itself.
This brief guide will give you some pointers to helping you make the most of this effective marketing tool.
What is Twitter?
Put simply, Twitter is a “micro-blog” – you post your thoughts in no more than 140 characters. People who have signed up to your Twitter feed (“followers”) will see your posts.
The brevity of the posts can be Twitter’s biggest strength. It allows you to quickly get a message across without taking up too much of your subscribers time – they’ll either be interested and follow it up, or not and dismiss it.
How do I make them interested?
This is the $64,000 question. Understanding what your clients/followers want to read is the key to using Twitter as an effective marketing tool.
A simple rule to follow for Tweeting is one that already applies to blogging – tell people something you know, that they don’t know and that they want to know.
Position yourself as an expert, a guru, an insider – best of all position yourself as a friend who always seems to know the juicy gossip.
Effectively that is what Twitter is at its best – it’s that person who always seems to know what’s going on. Let’s call her Susan.
“Have you heard about Amy and that bloke from accounts?” “Yeah, I heard bits but what’s the gossip?” “Dunno, wait till Susan gets here, she always knows about this stuff”.
So how do I turn my Twitter feed into Susan?
Know your audience. Here are four examples of recent Twitter feeds I received – see if you can work out which were Susan and which were just that annoying bloke from the car pool with the personal hygiene issues.
A: Is an e-reader revolution about to take off?
B: Lunch on day 2 of the W Indies Test. Enjoying myself hugely.
C: Just finishing a glass of wine then off for a bath – it’s a hard life
D: New contract to supply [Major Hotel Group] agreed!
Did you spot Susan?
Well, A was the BBC Technology Tweet – it did exactly what I wanted, told me something it knew that I didn’t and I wanted to know. I signed up because I want tip-offs on the world of gadgets and e-communication and it hits the spot every time.
B was Stephen Fry – a man who Tweets like a nightingale and consequently has more followers than any other UK twitterer. It’s mundane information but I want mundane information – Fry’s Tweeties want to be part of his circle of friends, to get an insight into his weird and wonderful life, and he delivers. Stephen Fry is definitely Susan.
Both these Tweets worked because they understood exactly what their followers wanted from them and why they are being followed.
But C was a film writer for a UK media outlet. I want to know how good the new James Bond film, I don’t give a Tweet about what he’s up to in his personal life.
D was a company who provide network solutions to business – I want to know about developments that will affect my business, I don’t care how well they are doing, who their clients are – I don’t care if they have just won the Nobel Prize for Literature – all I want to know is how I can benefit from their knowledge. You can use case studies or testimonials or the news section of your website to get the marketing message across about how well your business is doing etc.
You’ll never guess what..
Let’s say you are a business selling cars. Your customers are likely to be interested in… cars!
Now let’s say you’ve just read a fascinating article on how Honda’s new coupe will include a version of F1’s kinetic energy recovery system.
So a man walks into your showroom and starts talking about how he’s thinking of buying a sporty two-seater. What do you say..? “You’ll never guess what..”
Although Twitter only allows 140 characters, you need to imagine that there are actually 160. It’s just that the first 20 are hidden and they always read: “You’ll never guess what”.
You are the person your followers turn to for the “never guess what” stuff, the insights, the gossip, the heads-up. You are Susan.
“You’ll never guess what – we met May’s sales targets two weeks ahead of schedule”. Um… no.
“You’ll never guess what – the new Honda coupe gets 5 stars in this month’s What Car http://tinyurl.com/yvdle”. Really? Thanks!
Little and not often
I’ve been away from my PC for a couple of hours and I come back to find the words “You have 75 Tweets” waiting for me.
In those 75 tweets there may well be some Wildean gems from Mr Fry, or news of a change to Google’s algorithm that will alter the way I do SEO forever.
I’ll never find out because I can’t be bothered, and don’t have the time, to trawl through 75 “I’m drinking a glass of chardonnay”s and “We’ve just won a big contract”s.
So 73 of the people I’m following are heading for the Remove button.
Only tweet when you really have something to say, when you’ve found something you just have to share – something you’d be interested in if you were one of your own followers.
Too many wasted Tweets and people will stop following you. Keep it relevant, keep it simple but most of all keep it interesting.
Will Tweeting help my SEO?
It depends how you view SEO. If you see it as simply Google (or other search engine) ranking, then the answer is yes and no.
Without getting too technical, Google doesn’t index twitter posts or pages the same way it indexes websites or web pages. But it does spot them, and sometimes it likes them.
Search for Stephen Fry (it’s that man again) and you’ll find his Twitter page right up there just under his own personal page in the first page of Google results.
But if you see SEO as something beyond just your position in Google- which you should – then it can have a major impact.
Importantly, Twitter’s own search tool is increasingly being used to find interesting and relevant information.
Your Tweets can also be re-tweeted to other people’s followers and spread virally through the Twitter network, or they can be shared and bookmarked through StumbleUpon, Sphin, or the many other online information and link sharing tools out there.
SEO is about being found on the web – the avenues for being discovered are growing by the day, and Twitter is a good way of helping you navigate many of them.
We all Tweet a different tune
How you use Twitter is very much down to your own business and your own client base. There are no hard and fast rules over and above keep it relevant and keep it interesting. What is relevant and interesting to your clients is something you are in the best position to know.
If you are a personality-based brand, or one that markets itself through the lifestyle it projects, then posting personal insights is the way to go – @innocentdrinks, for example, do this very well. A word of warning though – if you are taking this approach, you had better be good at it and have an engaging personality to sell, nothing has users reaching for the Remove button quicker than pointless personal insights.
If you are a specialist knowledge-based brand, giving unique and useful information to your followers might be the best approach – go with what works for your clients.
It’s called social media for a reason
Twitter – like all social media – is a two-way conversation. Well, actually a two, three four…ten thousand-way conversation if you want it to be.
Don’t just post your musings and sit back waiting for people to lap them up. Talk to people, engage – answer their questions, pose questions of your own, make friends.
Followers want to be able to interact with people they find interesting – and interacting is at the heart of Twitter.
Be creative, be pro-active
Creative use of Twitter can be really effective. Recently, on a sunny bank holiday weekend, I got a tweet from the National Trust linking to some amazing pictures of bluebells and spring flowers taken that day. There was also a link to find out where my nearest National Trust bluebell wood was. They knew a lot of their subscribers would be like me – at a loose end on an unexpectedly sunny Sunday, and looking for something to do. Result? I went to a National Trust property – exactly what they wanted, and they achieved it by being relevant, useful, timely and damn clever.
For other companies, the penny hasn’t quite dropped about how to use Twitter. I know of one major UK publishing company that banned writers on its magazines from Tweeting about reviews they were writing before the articles were published. They were afraid that people wouldn’t buy the magazines if they already knew what writers were going to say. Another, perhaps more sensible, view would be that if you know that writer X, for magazine company Y, is always first to let you know about new stuff, aren’t you going to be more likely to buy the magazine they write for?
Twitter can create an audience of its own for you, and that audience is one that is much more likely to come to the main show than one that doesn’t already know who you are.
Tweet wisely – and think of Susan.
Posted in Internet And Businesses Online tagged Brevity, Pointers, Twitter by Stephen with No comments
