Here’s early analysis from Hitwise on the impact of the News International firewall on thetimes.co.uk (see dark blue line). According to analysis by Robin Goard the title’s market share has dropped from 4.37% during the week ending 22 May (pre-firewall) to 2.67% (post-firewall) during the week ending 19 June.
Last week’s emergency budget spells doom and gloom for agencies wedded to the public sector. At least that’s the headline from a PRCA survey of 52 PR industry leaders published this morning.
Almost two-thirds of PRCA PR Leaders’ Panel welcomed the budget, despite only just over one in ten thinking it would have a positive impact on their business in the short-term.
All respondents predict the public sector will lose communicators over the next year, with over 90 per cent predicting that the public sector will also use agencies less. In contrast, PR Leaders expect private sector use of agencies to increase over the next twelve months.
The majority of respondents (86 per cent) foresee no cuts in staff numbers as a result of the budget. But longer term, more than half of respondents, said that they expected to see a reduction in the number of PR and communication professionals over the next three years.
The results are supported by news yesterday from communications group Creston. It reported a revenue fall of 4 per cent up until March 2010.
Here’s an event that you might want to check-out on Thursday evening.
Its a debate hosted by Phil Sheldrake and myself as part of the CIPR’s Social Summer 2010 series of workshop that will ask has the PR industry missed the boat on the optimisation of web content to attract the attention of Google, more commonly known as search engine optimisation?
The emergence of the multi-million pound search industry during the last decade suggests that this may be the case.
Search agencies are increasingly packaging planning, content development and analytics, into a payment-by-results model. It’s a compelling proposition for a marketing director that is seeking guaranteed outcomes.
Now search agencies are starting to use PR tactics such as press releases, bylined content and wire distribution to drive their campaigns prompting the scrutiny of the role of PR versus SEO.
Join participants from the PR and SEO industries including Sourcewire’s Daryl Willcox, Nixon McInnes’ Will McInnes and SiteVisibility’s Kelvin Newman to debate the issue on Thursday evening. The two-hour session will kick-off at the CIPR’s headquarters in Russell Square, London at 5pm. The cost is £10 on the door to cover beers and nibbles.
Creating alternative definitions for acronyms is a tactic that I was taught as a trainee hack as a means of livening up copy. The crisis in the Gulf of Mexico provides the opportunity to explore alternative definition for the initials BP.
Here’s a few I used (with thanks to the subbing skills of Steve Earl) in an article for Reputation Online on BP’s communication response.
Brutal Predicament
Battered Perception
Buying Pilloried
Becoming Plain?
The decline in newsprint is no longer a media story – its fixture of the industry.
The ABC Multi-Platform Report for May 2010 published today continues the sorry tale of the declining circulation of both daily and Sunday national newspapers in the UK.
Here’s a summary of the data.
Table: Circulation of daily UK newspapers
Table: Circulation of Sunday UK newspapers
Another month and another set of results from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) that show a seemingly insatiable appetite for online news in the UK.
The ABC Multi-Platform Report for May 2010 has MailOnline leading the pack with the largest online audience of 2.39 million. I’ve written before about the MailOnline’s pursuit of a Google-baiting-celeb agenda.
The Sun and The Times dropped out of the audit in May as News International readies itself to move to paid for access. Likewise FT.com isn’t included.
But where data is available traffic to all other newspaper sites grew month-on-month and year-on-year.
When are these numbers likely to peak? There’s no sign yet.
Next time you’re in central London on a hot day, seek out Gelupo a new Italian-style gelateria on Archer Street, in Soho, that opened on Friday. Its an offshoot of the Italian restaurant across the road called Bocca di Lupo and serves a selection of home made gelati, sorbets and granitas.
Google Maps on my iPad or PC can typically find my location to within 50m.
Neither has in-built GPS or any form of mobile connectivity other than wi-fi. But your geographic location can be detected with a high level accuracy from your internet connection alone.
It’s a hotly debated issue by privacy and data protection experts.
According to the BBC, Google’s StreetView project is subject to a police investigation for allegedly capturing data from domestic wi-fi networks at the same time as recording street level images.
Human rights group Privacy International has lodged a complaint with the Metropolitan Police.
But if Privacy International is concerned about the ability to make a connection and record the relationship between a computer network and a physical location they are almost certainly too late.
Each device connected to internet is assigned a unique number called an IP address. By comparing this number with the known locations of other nearby servers and routers it possible to pin point your location.
Numerous free services such as IP2Location and Infosniper provide this information via the web and increasingly applications such as FourSquare and Google Maps are using the data as a way of determining mobile location.
It is possible to keep your location secret any longer?
Here’s a presentation that I gave last night to the PRCA’s Frontline group in the West Midlands. It describes the changing media landscape, the rise of digital, the changing role of the PR professional and the importance of building your own personal network.
The PRCA hosted a breakfast at Ketchum Pleon this morning where myself and Fernando Rizo (@fernandorizo) ran attendees through the basics of organic and pay per click (PPC) search.
My presentation covered organic SEO as part of the PR process. Fernando spoke about using paid search to kick start PR campaigns and conversations. Its a neat tactic that he calls contextual marketing “so as not to threaten the ad guys.”
Here’s my slide deck.
