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July 29th, 2010 by Wadds

PR agencies need to handle traditional, online and social media

The ABC Multi-Platform report plopped into my inbox yesterday. It continues the narrative of a decline in print and the shift to online.  Some web properties such as Mail Online are enjoying incredible growth (up 4 per cent month-on-month to 42 million).

The third IPA TouchPoints Survey reported last week that social media penetration in the UK was 37 per cent with Facebook the most popular platform. You’d be forgiven for thinking that it should be much higher.

This is the ongoing story of media fragmentation. We’re at an inflection point and for the moment at least PR agencies need to be able to help brands navigate traditional, online and social media.

At least that’s our view at Speed. Media planning tools are taking an increasingly important role helping us identify audiences and their media habits.

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July 28th, 2010 by Wadds

CIPR Social Summer: How to get ahead in social

At the CIPR Social Summer event next Thursday, 5 August, we’ll explore why it’s never been easier for PR professionals to build relationships or personal reputation.

Social media provides the opportunity for an individual to build a personal network liker never before. It used to take a graduate several years of lunching journalists and late night drinking sessions to build up a network of contacts.

But no longer: face-to-face meeting remain invaluable but now armed with Twitter anyone can build a network of journalists and over the course of a few weeks learn about their likes and dislikes. That’s one small step away from engagement and developing a relationship.

Social media is also enabling savvy individuals to build their personal reputation by showcasing their work whether that’s words, photos or video. It takes no more than 15 minutes to create a blog or an account on Flickr or YouTube to share with your network and peers.

Professional networks such as LinkedIn and personal web sites have become the modern portfolio. They’re almost certainly the first place that an employer, potential business partner or prospect will go to check you out.

Come along and share your ideas for building personal networks and reputation. Let us know you coming on Linkedin. You can check out my profile at the same time.

The CIPR Social Summer events take place each Thursday from 5pm to 7pm at CIPR, Russell Square.

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July 28th, 2010 by Wadds

Mail Online’s celeb-driven SEO bait delivers clicks for advertisers

The Daily Mail is set to become profitable online next year according to financial statements issued yesterday by its parent company.

Here’s Mark Sweney reporting for guardian.co.uk.

“Display advertising was up 15%, digital advertising up 46%, while classified decreased by 3%. Retail, the largest display category, grew by 19%. The company said that overall revenue from the division’s “pure play digital activities” rose by 16%.”

Don’t be surprised. The Mail Online is a very different product to its print counterpart. Have a look at the site. The content is celeb-driven SEO bait with the goal of driving clicks for advertisers.

Here’s Nick Clark’s analysis writing in the Independent.

“The public’s desire for the online coverage of stories from David Beckham’s wardrobe to Catherine Zeta-Jones’s dress disasters has seen advertisers flock to its site. The growth in online revenues is a welcome development for news services looking to make the internet pay, but some are questioning whether free sites can yet be self-sufficient.”

Its one online news model that is clearly working; the question is whether it’s repeatable.

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July 28th, 2010 by Wadds

Media is media, defamation is defamation

It didn’t need a High Court judgement to remind us that media law applies in social media as in any other aspect of the media.

But a judgement handed down by Mr Justice Tugendhat yesterday saw a plaintiff awarded £10,000 for being defamed on Facebook.

The case concerns Jeremiah Barber who, posted child porn on the Facebook page of Raymond Bryce, after falling out, along with a defamatory comment.

Inevitably we’ll see more of these types of judgements. Its a booming business for media lawyers.

Here’s a related article that I wrote in March for Reputation Online about copyright and privacy in social networks.

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July 26th, 2010 by Wadds

CIPR takes professional development online

At last an online Continuous Professional Development (CPD) scheme for the PR profession. It’s a neat feature that’s included within the spec of the CIPR’s new site.

The PR industry isn’t certified like some other professions but the CIPR CPD scheme requires professionals to collect a total of 60 points per year across four areas of professional expertise (I’ve nailed 30 so far this year).

Points are accumulated from attending breakfast briefings, conferences, training courses, participating in CIPR activities and online training.

“Now that it’s online, membership of the CPD scheme is growing fast. The key now is to link this to professional development programmes and performance objectives with outcomes […] at all stages of a career. What’s important is the commitment to continued development,” said CIPR President Jay O’Connor.

The PR industry has just taken a step closer to growing up and truly becoming a profession.

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July 26th, 2010 by Wadds

Review: Dan Ilett’s Get Quoted media training audio book

I had the pleasure of sharing a car journey with Dan Ilet this morning. At least I was joined by his dulcet tones on my iPod in the form of his new audio book called Get Quoted.

Get Quoted is available via iTunes priced £7.99 and is a 45-minute media training guide to mastering press interviews.

Ilet has a great pedigree. He’s the founder of Greenbang.com an online environmental technology and CSR publication. I should disclose at this point that I occasionally write a column for Greenbang called the Grumpy Environmentalist.

During his career as a journalist Ilett has written for The Economist, The Financial Times and numerous technology publications and is regularly called on by PR firms and their clients to media train executives.

In Get Quoted Ilet covers the basics of the media in 2010, preparing for interviews and how to give a good interview, all in an incredibly upbeat, accessible format.

I had three key takeaways:

  • always test your story – use the mantra of the news editor, “so what”, “so what”, “so what”
  • prepare for interviews – develop key messages and learn the basics of managing an interview
  • always get back a journalist before deadline – very basic stuff but very few people do

Ilet is critical of the role of the PR industry as the gatekeeper to stories. But in Get Quoted he’s produced an excellent product to help the industry do it job properly.

It’s a must have for anyone that works in PR or speaks regularly to the press. You can quote me on that.

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July 25th, 2010 by Wadds

Engaging with Mad Men’s Don Draper ahead of Series 4 launch; but UK fans will need to wait

Series 4, the new season of Mad Men, the cult drama about life in a 1960s New York ad agency, premiers on US TV broadcast networks tonight.

There’s not a lot that a 50-year old creative agency could teach about social media you’d have thought. But you’d be wrong.

Characters from the show have been tweeting in the run up to the launch of the new series. Its a delightful social media execution that is completely on-message for Mad Men.

Here are a couple of tweets that I’ve exchanged with the show’s Don Draper and Peggy Olson.

Unfortunately the show’s promotional strategy doesn’t extend to its digital rights management. Anyone outside the US is blocked from viewing trailers for the new show via the Mad Men web site.

In the UK, Mad Men which won a BAFTA for best international show this year, is broadcast on BBC3, but there’s no news yet of when the new series will air.

Update: Thanks to CorpComm’s Helen Dunne for straightening me out this story. The Mad Men Twitter feeds are independent of the TV show and have been in existence for a couple of years. Peggy Olsen’s tweets won their author a Shorty award last year.

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July 23rd, 2010 by Wadds

BBC iPlayer, news and sport iPhone apps back on track; expect launch “later today”

The BBC Trust has given the BBC the go ahead to develop apps. It had previously blocked the development following concerns over public value and competition.

Press Gazette is reporting that “the first of the new apps is expected to be made available today.”

The free BBC apps were set to be launched last April after being shown at Mobile World Congress but were blocked by the BBC’s governing body after complaints from media owners that they would distort the market.

In a statement issued this morning BBC Trustee Diane Coyle said.

“The Apps market is rapidly taking off as more people choose to get their news, sport and other online content while they’re on the move. […]we have concluded that while the Apps market is developing quickly and we will monitor the launch of BBC Apps, a public value test is not required.”

Update: Here’s the BBC News app for the iPhone and iPad.

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July 23rd, 2010 by Wadds

Facebook: ‘Get back in touch with your wife’

There’s a flaw it would seem in Facebook’s network algorithms. Yesterday it urged me to get back in touch with my wife.

I know that I spend a lot of time away from home but I am fairly confident that there isn’t much that Facebook could bring to our relationship of 16 or so years.

Its not uncommon it seems for people to be prompted to connect with their nearest and dearest. Here’s comment from my Twitter networks.

Facebook clearly hasn’t realised that the people with whom you interact least online can be those closest to you.

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July 20th, 2010 by Wadds

Julian Assange speaking at TEDGlobal 2010: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

Excerpt from the TED web site:

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

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