August 6th, 2010 by Wadds

Getting ahead and getting hired in social media and digital PR

I ran a workshop last tonight as part of the CIPR Summer Social series on building your personal reputation online. It’s never been easier to manage your personal reputation by building networks and publishing your work.

Here’s the deck.

It kicks with an audit of your online reputation or web footprint and then describes how to create profiles on LinkedIn and Twitter, build networks and publish content. It includes case studies from people that have used social media to build their personal profile and secure jobs and concludes with a discussion about dealing with less favourable content.

I’ve pulled examples and case studies from around the social web and am grateful (pause for breath) to Ben Cotton, Carolyn Mendelsohn, Jed Hallam, Josh Halliday, Laura Tosney, Matt Watson, Mike Litman, Neville Hobson, Phil Sheldrake, Shel Holtz and Stephen Davies.

I’ll follow with a blog post next week with personal recommendations from some of this gang about how they’ve used social media to build their personal reputation.

If you’re interested in exploring this topic further I recommend you check out Antony Mayfield’s Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online.

Steve’s up next week at the CIPR Summer Social series on word of mouth.

Posted in Business, PR, Social media
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
6 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
August 4th, 2010 by Wadds

Escherman and Realwire on online PR reach versus engagement

Escherman’s Andrew Smith and Realwire’s Adam Parker have scrutinised the reach versus engagement for 50 online news sites ranging from Heat to The Economist.

“In the past, the notion of measuring engagement with editorial content was largely theoretical.  Circulation and readership figures were treated as proxies for engagement,” say Smith.

But for online PR, Google tools provide hard numbers. Parker and Smith define reach as the number of views that a page receives and engagement as the amount of time that a person spends on a page.

They find that visitors spend a widely varying amount of time on different news sites and predict how many words they are likely to have read per page.

“[…] as a general rule, specialist titles seem to have lower numbers of visitors and page views, but tend to have far higher engagement with content,” says Smith.

There is one exception. News sites such as Reuters that act as a syndication service have a high level of reach and engagement.

The lessons for online PR are clear.

  • Don’t chase sites with large circulation numbers as engagement is likely to be low
  • Plan your campaigns and target content at sites where your audience is engaged
  • The higher up a story you get your content the more likely it is to be read
Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted in Business, Media, PR, Social media
Tags: , , , ,
6 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
July 19th, 2010 by Wadds

Using AlertMe for domestic energy management via iPhone and web

If you’re a regular follower of this blog, my Flickr feed or Grumpy Environmentalist column you’ll know that my family is renovating a 300-year old farmhouse in Northumberland around eco-principals insofar as possible.

Here’s another Internet of Things project that we’ve recently incorporated into the building to monitor energy usage.

It uses kit supplied by AlertMe to deliver information about electricity usage in the house to a web app, an iPhone app and Google’s energy meter. It’s a neat solution that provides an impetus for changing your energy usage habits.

The ‘always-on’ reading has made us very disciplined about turning appliances off and has prompted a rethink of lighting and white goods.

Check out the graph for yourself. You can spot the load from devices on standby and when the washing machine and dishwasher are used.

In time we’ll use the Internet and home network to remotely control electrical appliances in the house.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted in Interesting
Tags: , , , , ,
8 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
March 28th, 2010 by Wadds

How do you make money from online news content?

We’ve seemingly spent the past six-months obsessing about online business models for traditional media. That was the view of Emily Bell, the Guardian’s director of digital content, speaking at The Guardian’s Changing Media Conference two weeks ago. She’s spot on.

But with Murdoch’s move to erect a paywall around Times Online from June we’ve now seen almost all of the broadsheet newspapers set out their stall for generating income from content online – and all are taking very different approaches.

Here’s a summary.

As the Financial Times has demonstrated success requires a mix of business model and distinctive editorial – particularly when the BBC and others provide so much news content for free.

The attitude of broadsheet publishers to aggregators and search is less clear. The Times recently started blocking clipping agency Meltwater and aggregator NewsNow, but for now at least it is allowing Google in.

Google aggressively counters the claim that it is a parasite feeding off traditional media.

Speaking at the Financial Times Media & Broadcast Conference at the beginning of the March, Google UK’s managing director Matt Brittin said that the search engine was a virtual newsagent that sent four billion clicks a month to online news web sites.

So which model will work? There’s no way of telling. If I knew the answer I’d be seeking out an opportunity to invest behind one of these emerging business models.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business, Media
Tags: , , , , , ,
8 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
March 26th, 2010 by Wadds

Jeff Jarvis on “Rupert Murdoch’s pathetic paywall”

Writing in The Guardian Jeff Jarvis is predictably damning on Murdoch’s decision to put up a paywall around Times Online.

“By building his paywall around Times Newspapers, he has said that he has no new ideas to build advertising. He has no new ideas to build deeper and more valuable relationships with readers and will send them away if they do not pay. Even he has no new ideas to find the efficiencies the internet can bring in content creation, marketing, and delivery.”

[...]

“According to his biographer Michael Wolff, Murdoch has not used the internet, let alone Google (he only recently discovered email) and so he cannot possibly understand the dynamics, demands and opportunities of our post-industrial, now-digital media economy. I use the internet and teach it and write about it and I still can’t grasp the complete implication of the change. I don’t think even Google can.”

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business, Media
Tags: , , , ,
1 Comment »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
March 2nd, 2010 by Wadds

Google knows more about you than your friends and family

Consumers are no longer characterised by demographic thanks to search marketing. Instead they are defined by their personal motivation and interests.

This was the view of Colin Petrie-Norris, Managing Director, International Specific Media, speaking at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting conference this morning.

Petrie-Norris shared a list of items that he’d searched for in the last few days with the audience. These included a number of innocent products intended as gifts that he said that he would rather not share with his wife to make the point that Google knows more about a user than their friends and family.

A similar point was raised by Sir Martin Sorrell in the Q&A session after his keynote speech. Google now has thousands of data point on an individuals search habits. Why is it then, a member of the audience asked, that Google isn’t using this data to better target customers in real time search.

Sorrell said that when Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at WPP’s strategy meeting last year he said that Google planned to start targeting ads based on using algorithms based on your historical searches.

But for now the technology simply isn’t there yet to analyse data and serve a result within a screen refresh according to Petrie-Norris.

The issue of personal privacy was raised several times during the morning’s sessions at the conference. The conclusion was that absolute transparency and opt-in is critical to the success.

“Why wouldn’t you want better targeting advertising?” said Stephen Nuttall, Commercial Director, BSkyB.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Media, Social media
Tags: , , , ,
3 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
February 11th, 2010 by Wadds

Angry Paperchase customers vent fury on Amazon and Twitter

Paperchase customers are using Twitter and Customer Reviews on Amazon (the product page has since been pulled) to vent their fury at the alleged copyright theft of work by independent artist HiddenEloise.

On Twitter #paperchase is trending and the @paperchaseuk Twitter account has been grabbed by someone offering to help the company respond to its audience. There has been no activity on an official looking Paperchase Facebook page since 2008.

Econsultancy’s Aliya Zaidi has written an excellent summary and analysis of the story making the point that social media has become an incredibly effective tool to expose corporate misdemeanors.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Social media
Tags: , , , , , ,
3 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
February 9th, 2010 by Wadds

Ten things you need to know about Google Buzz

Google Buzz started to roll out to Gmail users this evening in a move said to challenge Facebook and Twitter.

  1. It’s available immediately to all Gmail users; unlike Google Wave it isn’t restricted to beta users. According to Google it will appear in your inbox in the next day or so
  2. Google Buzz is a realtime social network like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. You can use it to share links, photos, videos, and status updates with your network
  3. Updates from people in your network will automatically be posted your Gmail inbox
  4. The network will prioritise messages from people in your network that the Google Buzz algorithms determine are most relevant to you
  5. Google Buzz incorporates a function similar to Twitter’s retweet. Users can recommend posts that might be of interest to other people in their network
  6. You don’t need to build another network as you’ve done before with networks such as Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. Google Buzz will use your email history to build out your network. If Gmail isn’t your primary email client consider importing your address book from other email clients
  7. Using the Google Buzz application on your mobile phone (iPhone and Android) will enable you to include a GPS-generated location with your updates
  8. Updates will be made available to everyone in your network and indexed by Google as a default. Privacy settings and user-defined groups will enable information to be locked down
  9. An enterprise version is in the works for companies that want to use it as a social communication platform
  10. Is a competitive threat to other social networks? Potentially, but it depends on uptake. Gmail has 175 million potential users. Facebook has 400 million users. Twitter has an estimated 25 million users
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Social media
Tags: , , , , ,
11 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
February 8th, 2010 by Wadds

Google’s Super Bowl ad is a multi-channel marketing experiment

Google has flexed its muscles on the advertising stage, abandoning all talk of accountability and ROI, by running a 52-second commercial during the Super Bowl yesterday.

$3million dollars for 30 seconds is all but out of reach for most advertisers but its loose change for Google.

So why is Google backing an ad campaign on a platform that its CEO Eric Schmidt famously called a “bastion of unaccountability.”

Martin McNulty, director of online agency Forward3D (disclosure: Speed client), says that this is a bid by Google to understand how marketing channels interact and that Google analysts will be closely watching how the ad impacts search traffic.

“Google is nothing if not experimental. It’s a mistake to view this latest campaign as rearguard,” said McNulty.

“Google wants to control (and integrate) every platform and every possible media and what better way to learn the true potential of the world’s most expensive slot than to buy it,” he said.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business, Media
Tags: , , , ,
7 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
January 24th, 2010 by Wadds

Google adds face recognition to Picasa photo editing app

The face recognition and tagging feature on the most recent version of Picasa, Google’s free photo editing app, is astonishing.

The application which has been available since September 2009 scans all the photos on your PC and asks for the name of each of the different people it finds. It then filters and tags each photo where it finds that person. Where it’s unsure it asks for confirmation.

It could almost be magic.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Interesting
Tags: , ,
5 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
November 11th, 2009 by Wadds

How do you measure the authority of a blog?

The challenge of identifying the authority of a blog was raised yesterday at econsultancy’s Online PR roundtable.

Technorati recently changed its blog authority ranking to reflect the real time potency of a blog rather than influence over time. Consequently only very high profile blogs are being rated.

The number of inbound links combined with Google PageRank was proposed as a solution at yesterday’s roundtable.

AdAge uses an algorithm based on PostRank, Yahoo InLinks, Alexa Points and Collective Intellect to generate it Top 150 league table. Author Todd Andrik also adds a subjective measure based on frequency, relevance and creativity.

Edelman’s Jonny Bentwood proposes a ranking methodology based on a broader range of variables. These are Google PageRank, inbound links (via Google and Yahoo!), RSS subscriptions (via Google Reader), frequency of postings and most recent post, comments and inbound Twitter links.

How do you measure the authority of a blog?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in PR, Social media
Tags: , , , , , , ,
6 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
October 7th, 2009 by Wadds

Google doodle barcode decoded: Googleg

Today’s Google homepage doodle celebrates the 57th anniversary of the Barcode patent. The barcode contains the tag Googleg, the name of Google’s incoming mail servers. (Via Den of Geek).

barcode

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,
1 Comment »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
September 29th, 2009 by Wadds

Google Sidewiki removes control of web pages from brands

BrandsGoogle quietly rolled out Sidewiki last week via its blog. Its the Google way.

It allows anyone with Google account to annotate web pages in a sidebar enabled via the Google Toolbar. It also appears to pull in content related to blog page from Google blogs.

Comments are ordered using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries.

Here’s the irony: Google launched this tool to take control away from brands in the same week that Squidoo launched Brands in Public in a bid to bring control back to brands.

I think I know which of the two products will fly.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,
No Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
September 15th, 2009 by Wadds

Google in bid to bring physical magazine experience online

fastflipGoogle made another bid yesterday to stake out a role in the future of the newspaper industry with the introduction of Fast Flip.

This new innovation from Google Labs repurposes digital content from newspaper web sites and enables readers to browse articles much like if they were browsing through a physical magazine or newspaper. Articles are organised by popularity or personal preference.

Google is baiting publishers with the promise of revenue of a significant revenue share from ads on Fast Flip’s pages.


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
3 Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
September 14th, 2009 by Wadds

Could Google recover revenue for the newspaper industry online?

According to Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab, Google is developing a micropayment platform that would provide a number of mechanisms for newspaper publishers to charge for content online.

Google’s proposals come in response to a request for information to technology firms from the Newspaper Association of America’s for revenue-content proposals.

In the document […] Google outlines its “vision of a premium content ecosystem” that includes subscriptions across multiple news sites, syndication on third-party sites, accessibility to search, and various payment options, including small fees for access to individual pieces of content.

Technology is one thing. But what the newspaper industry needs is new models. I’m surprised that the proposals aren’t braver. If Google’s ad network was overlaid wholesale on a newspaper web site would it generate sufficient revenue to make it a viable commercial proposition?


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,
No Comments »
emailAdd to del.icio.usDigg This!Share on FacebookStumble It!
« Older Entries