March 9th, 2010 by Wadds

Ben Cotton on the benefits of blogging for comms students

Ben Cotton started a blog in his final year at Leeds Metropolitan University and recently landed an award from the European Public Relations Education and Research Association – and a job in the digital team at Edelman. Here’s his view on the benefits of blogging for communication students.
“I started blogging in 2007 during my final year at Leeds Met. However, in Oct 2009 I wanted to change tact and produce something more social media orientated, in order to try and land a social media agency role. I’m a firm believer that having a sound grasp and recorded opinion on industry issues is a great way to differentiate yourself when job hunting.”
“I also wanted a fresh start using WordPress and to get away from the student angst posts e.g. will I get a PR job and focus more on wider industry issues. It has proven to be a wonderful place to collect my thoughts as was initially hoped, however one of the unintended consequences is that it has been an absolutely brilliant networking and personal PR tool.”
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March 9th, 2010 by Wadds

University of Cardiff digital communication masterclass: media trends and PR skills

PR is the management of reputation. That used to exclusively mean using media relations to build trust between an organisation and its audiences.

But traditional media is in turmoil: ad revenue is at an all time low thanks to the recession and the internet has reduced the cost of publication and distribution to almost zero.

The rise of social networks has led consumers to fundamentally change their media consumption habits. Consumers are becoming contributors.

The impact on the PR profession has been dramatic. Command and control media relations no longer works and increasing brands are building direct relationships with their audiences using compelling content and story telling.

These changes formed the core of a guest lecture I gave on digital communication to the International PR MA course at the University of Cardiff yesterday.

The slidedeck cites five trends in the media and the rise of social media – and five areas where I believe PR professionals need to skill-up as a result.

University of Cardiff digital communication masterclass: media trends and PR skills
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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.

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January 15th, 2010 by Wadds

Political social media campaigning goes negative

The blogosphere is buzzing with about the Tory campaign poster hack launched by MyDavidCameron.com built by Clifford Singer, creative director at Sparkloop. He is the bloke behind the Other TaxPayer’s Alliance website and has no political affiliation whatsoever.

But that hasn’t stopped Labour’s campaign machine nabbing the concept and adopting it as part of its campaign. It’s become a social object. I’m sure Clifford is delighted with the attention.

But the Tories aren’t amused and have gone into overdrive criticising Labour’s negative campaigning. Instead they should focus their energy on developing an innovation social campaign.

I maintain that the forthcoming election is unlikely to see any breakthrough social media campaigning by any of the major parties.

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December 27th, 2009 by Wadds

Social spirit

This post is long overdue but a wanted to say a quick thank you to all the folk that have linked to my blog in recent months including: Adam Parker, Andy West, David Phillips, Ged Caroll, Headshift, James Cridland, Mark Pinsent, Michael Litman, Neville Hobson, PersonalizeMedia, Porter Novelli’s Digital Week, Seventy Seven and Tom Hume.

And thanks to you for stopping by and browsing. Your attention is very much appreciated.

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December 27th, 2009 by Wadds

Wikipedia annual fundraise shows free is flawed

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales is raising funds again from users. It’s an annual occurrence. Wikipedia’s free-to-access crowd-sourced encyclopaedia is a noble cause and extremely useful. I’ve chipped in again and would happily pay a subscription.

Wikipedia’s fundraising efforts demonstrate that however worthy a community or social project it needs assured finance if it isn’t to rely solely on volunteer effort. And even then there are basic costs that need to be met.

Yet we’ve entered a period of almost dot com-like exuberance where social projects are launched almost daily without a business model based on financial return or indeed any of the alternative economic metrics outlined in Chris Anderson’s book Free.

Ultimately I think that Wikipedia’s fundraise shows that there no such thing as free – just different ways financing a project.

Someone always has to pay.

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November 30th, 2009 by Wadds

Foursquare touts CRM model: my location based lunch

Location based marketing has been mooted for sometime as the panacea of customer relationship marketing (CRM). Foursquare may just have cracked it and monetised its income stream in the process.

I checked into China Town when I nipped out of the office for lunch and discreetly in the corner of the screen was a link to nearby Hummus Bros. The link had a two-for-one offer for the local Mayor.

wadds

I get to visit a new place for lunch. Hummus Bros get a customer. Foursquare receives ad revenue. Everyone’s happy. If I visit regular and grab the Mayor’s title I’ll be rewarded with discount.

Drew Benvie has posted some ideas for how Foursquare could develop if its builds a critical mass of users and opens up its API.

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November 25th, 2009 by Wadds

Econsultancy social media and online PR report finds industry grappling with issues of engagement, monitoring and measurement

The econsultancy Social Media and Online PR Report, sponsored by bigmouthmedia, published today, is the most exhaustive review of the industry undertaken in 2009. I received an early copy and contributed to the commentary.

The 70-page report lifts the lid on client-side and agency digital programmes. It tells a story of an industry experimenting with social media programmes (typically with no dedicated budget or a small budget) and grappling with the issues of engagement, monitoring and measurement.

The report is a must-read for anyone in the PR industry who aspires to remain in the PR industry. Here are some highlights:

  • 46 per cent of companies and 45 per cent of agencies are using tools to monitor their brand online. Without exception, all businesses should be tracking the conversations around their brand online. There really is no excuse as the results of the research show such tools needn’t cost a thing.
  • 47 per cent of companies are responding to negative comments online. Negative comment is often the start of a conversation that can ultimately transform a vocal critic into a loyal supporter, able to offer support and understanding for your business. Yet all too often, brands are on mute.
  • The report is in no doubt that Twitter is the PR tool of 2009. However we’re still in the early stages of experimentation and there are very few examples of real innovation. It’s easy to get hung up on follower numbers and use Twitter as a simple one-sided broadcast channel for corporate messages.
  • Metrics to define social media success remain a work in progress. Measurement has been an ongoing issue for the PR industry during the last 50 years. A series of cross- industry initiatives such as Social Measurement Camp are focussing their efforts specifically on what success looks like for a brand in a social network. In the meantime direct traffic and the tone of conversations around a brand are good proxies.
  • While the measurement of social media remains an issue, businesses are very clear about the desired benefits of investing in social media programmes, namely brand reputation and customer engagement.
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November 18th, 2009 by Wadds

Why are there so few daddy bloggers?

Mums’ blogs and communities are one of the strongest social media verticals but Dads’ blogs are few and far between and good ones are extremely hard to find.

Parenting isn’t equitable between the sexes of course. But Dads are more involved than any other previous generation in the upbringing for their children and Dads as the primary career are increasingly common. At least that’s what our work for Tesco Baby tells us.

Yet this level of involvement isn’t spilling over into online conversations. Why is that? I polled my Twitter network on the topic last week and received a variety of answers.

daddybloggers

Thanks to @markpinsent, @mynameisearl, @dannyWhatmough, @rhoughton, @andismit and @katiemoffat.

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October 19th, 2009 by Wadds

Free speech doesn’t exist on the Internet in the UK

iStock_000003455183XSmallWe like to think that the Internet is re-writing the rules of business and the media. And it is, but not as fast as you might think.

Clay Shirky first showed us how crowds can be mobilised online for positive effect. But Ged Carroll sounds a note of caution:

“The door that we have walked through to allow justice and freedom-of-speech through the wisdom of crowds can also easily succumb to the wisdom of mobs. Society hasn’t really thought through how to deal with all the ramifications.”

And so social media watchers got very excited last week when huge number of conversations on Twitter about the Trafigura injunction against The Guardian seemingly forced its lawyers Carter-Ruck to back down.

I thought we’d observed a game changing moment. Not a chance. There are currently more than 300 so-called super injunctions holding tight in the UK according to Joshua Rozenberg on Sky News on Saturday morning (via @rfenwick).

Was the Trafigura incident a one off? I doubt it. But don’t let the Trafigura case fool you. Legal process is alive and well on the Internet.

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October 5th, 2009 by Wadds

Economist correspondent on changing media habits

Economist US West Coast Correspondent Andreas Kluth observes how his media habits have changed during the last three years in a post on his Hanibal blog. He wrote the post as an evaluation of an Economist special report on the Future of the Media that he wrote in 2006.

Kluth identifies three “layers” of media that he consumes:

  • Professional media
    The Altantic and New York Times on a Kindle for “global headlines and mass market news.” Various “publications and blogs including sources not traditionally considered news” via an RSS reader
  • Social curation
    Online and offline friends have become media editors pointing out interesting content via email, blog comments and Facebook
  • Intimate media
    Content produced by family and intimate friends that by its nature is intended for a tiny audience

It’s a neat summary of how our appetite for media is increasing and how technology is providing the means to edit and filter. In his post Kluth concludes that there is no crisis in media – and that as “one media era of media ends, another [is] starting.”

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September 29th, 2009 by Wadds

Brands should participate in conversations where they are taking place not via Squidoo

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There’s a new sport in social media land: Seth bashing.

Seth Godin announced last week that Squidoo was launching a new service called Brands in Public.

The new service collates the conversations online around a brand onto a Squidoo “lens” (web page) and charges $400 per month to allow the brand to respond.

The service initially launched with pre-baked pages for major brands. Accusations of brandjacking followed and Squidoo backed down.

At best Brands in Public is a crude reputational tool. Time poor brands can comment on content from the blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter in a single place.

But instead best practice dictates that brands should be participating in conversations wherever they are taking place as part of a social media strategy. A direct response from a brand carries authority and remains a permanent contextualised record for search engines to find.

And as econsultancy said $400 per month buys a lot of social media monitoring tools.

Anyone else and this launch would almost certainly have been ignored. But Godin’s profile has driven attention.

Curiously Squidoo’s Brands in Public page hasn’t tracked all the negative conversations during the last week and I doubt that it will pick up this blog post.

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September 9th, 2009 by Wadds

Mobsessed @ Media Week: Death of the embargo

Admob’s Russell Buckley (disclosure: Speed client) kindly included a quote from me in a post on Media Week on the death of the embargo as a news management tactic.

As a PR tactic embargos are broken and has been for the last 12 months. Publications from Techcrunch to the Wall Street Journal no longer respect the tactic as a means of managing the release of news.

Social media channels such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter has led to PR stories frequently leaking out before their intended release.

“[…] one of the major causes of problems has been some PR agencies’ tendency to spam everyone they can think of with a story, rather than relying on more traditional skills of developing relationships with key, relevant journalists on a one-on-one basis.”

“The PR industry is moving wholesale to the discipline of the financial markets whereby news is managed by a small team and kept under strict wraps until the break date and then distributed to all audiences at the same time.”

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June 18th, 2009 by Wadds

Social media succession planning

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We’ve been just completed a piece of planning work for a prospect and spotted the issue that Econsultancy calls social media succession planning in its Online PR and Social Media Trends briefing.

It’s an issue for any organisation where an individual is the face of the company in social networks. The risk to the business is the individual building up relationships with customers and then choosing to leave the organisation.

In the sector that we’ve been researching brands are represented on Twitter either by a corporate account or an individual, or in a few instances both.

Econsultancy recommends that a branded Twitter account combined with individual Twitter representatives is best way to mitigate risk.



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June 18th, 2009 by Wadds

Econsultancy publishes online PR and social media trends report

Social media is growing up. Econsultancy’s latest Online PR and Social Media Trends briefing outlines how the marketing community is engaging his with new channel.

Celebrities may have popularised social media sites such as Twitter but marketing folk have been quick to follow.

The report cites instances of how social media is being applied for qualitative research, track conversation around a brand, develop brand, drive sales, build relationships with journalists and manage customer relationships.

Econsultancy’s documents are always succinct but packed with insight. This report, like others before it, is a must read for anyone in a PR or marketing role.

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