Category: Digital Media Relations (page 4 of 8)

18 February 2010 / 3 Comments

PR and Web 3.0… a call to action

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Four things struck me in 2009. They are part of a bigger picture that means that public relations practice is about to undergo another change that will be as great this coming decade as it experienced during the last decade...

1. Web 2.0 participation

I dislike the 90:9:1 ratio of passives:occasionals:enthusiasts with respect to the "write" part of readwriteweb. In other words, 90% of people online don't contribute anything, they remain passive consumers. 9% contibute content and interact now and then, and 1% are passionate bloggers, video makers, photo takers, wiki updaters etc. Read more

3 July 2009 / 0 Comments

The first Influence Scorecard meeting

Thanks to all you lovely social Web analytics people who've emailed me about your excitement and concerns regarding the Influence Scorecard. I'm also delighted that Katie Delahaye Paine and Charlene Li have expressed their desire to be part of this (although to be fair I haven't checked back with Charlene since February... are you around next week Charlene?)

I do appreciate your enthusiasm, but of course I wanted to post here about your concerns too. Once we have these concerns out of the way, it would be great to get these conversations into the public domain so I don't have to write long blog posts keeping everyone up to date!

Given that I've been asked, let me start by saying why I love this space. Quite simply, it combines several passions of mine: organisational efficiency and effectiveness; the Internet and information technology; social media, democracy, consumer empowerment and community invigoration; mathematics and data visualisation.

But that's me. What about the analytics industry? Why should competitors get in a room and tease this out collaboratively? That's the concern some of you have raised, and there are two responses to this question. Read more

30 June 2009 / 11 Comments

The increasingly crowded market of Social Web Analytics

In Brian Solis' latest post, Unveiling the New Influencers, he reviews the reasons for listening to the marketplace for clues about how your organisation is doing, how it is perceived, and how the same stakeholders might regard your competition.

If you like his post, then you may like my free ebook on the topic, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008. Of course I recognise we've reached the first anniversary of the ebook this week (and over 35,000 downloads to date!), and it was time for me to post an update on the list of vendors I'm tracking. And wow is this market exploding.

(Brian lists some of these services in the section of his post titled "Listening + Conversation Management Systems".)

If you are looking to procure such a service, then my ebook will tell you what you might want to look out for, and the list of potential partners below is pretty comprehensive. If you would like my help sourcing the right tool at the right price, then do just get in touch. Being based in London, I cover Western Europe, so for those of you in the US the man you need is Nathan Gilliatt. Read more

26 June 2009 / 0 Comments

An outline of the Influence Scorecard

It has been a busy year for me with my departure from Racepoint Group following my so-called "transition period" and my setting up a new consultancy. So apologies for the delay in getting back on the topic of the Influence Scorecard.

It hasn't been far from my mind, particularly following the oodles of positive feedback in January and February, and believe you me, I'm intent on taking up your expressions of interest to meet before the year is out to take this forward. I want to collaborate with you. I want to find the most forward thinking social Web analytics vendors and forward thinking CMOs to put this into action, and commence the empirical fine tuning of the approach.

Most encouragingly, I have had fourteen companies in the social Web analytics space express their intent to get involved.

So I'm leaping back into it with a SlideShare presentation. It's concise. It's an outline, and focuses on the what rather than the how. Read more

10 June 2009 / 2 Comments

Your website and how it would change if it had an "About You" section rather than "About Us"

"Nobody cares about your products and services (except you)." I believe this deliberately polemic assertion from David Meerman Scott is spot on. OK, you could possibly exempt shareholders and fellow employees too, but the implication stands. Moreover, saying "Nobody cares about your products and services (except you and the shareholders and fellow employees)" isn't quite so catchy!

Think about it. When you bought that Philips TV, did you really care about Philips and its product range? No, you cared about the aesthetics of your living room, the sound and picture quality you'd experience, the screen size that would work with your space and furniture, and the hit to your bank balance.

When you were tendering your PR contract, you didn't care about agency X or consultancy Y per se, you were focused on your personal and organisational objectives. How could your organisation communicate and come across better than it did? How could you exert influence in your noisy marketplace? How could you get that promotion or pay rise, or both? In fact, I bet the agency you hired talked more about you in the pitch than they did about themselves.

So, on that basis, why does your website have an "About us" section, or equivalent, but not an "About you"? Not only is the latter missing entirely from most websites, it should actually take priority over the former if you think the last three paragraphs rang true. Read more

14 April 2009 / 0 Comments

There is no such thing as a Twitter Strategy – supporting perspective in Ad Age post

A few days after I posted the succinctly titled "There is no such thing as a Twitter Strategy but you should have clear expectations for your corporate Twitter profile", B.L. Ochman posted "Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn't Tweet" on the Ad Age DigitalNext blog.

Right up there at number 1:

You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy. It's a tactic, a tool, not a strategy.

Now my post elicited some responses via Twitter (@sheldrake) questioning my definition of the word "strategy". So for clarity... your social Web strategy is the long-term "how" that follows the "what" of your social Web objectives.

I also agree with number 2 on the Ad Age post... if "every tweet has to be approved by legal" then your organisation is not ready for the social Web let alone little old Twitter. (I'd also argue that your business most likely isn't ready to do business in 2009!) Read more

3 April 2009 / 2 Comments

There is no such thing as a Twitter Strategy but you should have clear expectations for your corporate Twitter profile

I'm amazed at the frequency with which I come across people discussing their Twitter Strategy, or their Facebook Strategy. Contrast this with offline terminology... we never talk about a Press Release Strategy or a Features Tracking Strategy.

Twitter and Facebook et al are one of many channels or platforms through which we wish to engage stakeholders in conversation. The strategy, then, is the plan we set ourselves for our use of social media to achieve our business objectives.

The strategy is constructed to meet our objectives and is informed by deep insight into best practice application of social media.

The strategy sets out the framework for our current and future adoption of social Web channels, platforms, services and gizmos. It helps us work out which of these to adopt and how they might work together. It describes the over-arching ethos and policies for social media use, organisation-wide, and clearly articulates how success is to be gauged, month in and month out.

There is no such thing as Twitter Strategy, and if you think there is then you are Twittering for Twitter's sake and not for business success. Read more

27 March 2009 / 0 Comments

Friday fun with "The Garden of Tweetdom"

This slideshow made me laugh.

View more presentations from The Kaiser.

I've been a Twitter user now for two years, and I'm intrigued by its success.

You can attribute its success to its incredible simplicity, leaving the wider community to develop applications and 'clients' that anyone can chose to adopt or ignore.

You could attribute it to the character limit, meaning that no-one has to worry that they have to put much work into Tweeting (something that holds blogging back to this day), yet also short enough that clever-clogs can innovate and play games with the limitation.

You could attribute it to the ingenious (and incredibly obvious... with the advantage of hindsight) tweak to instant messaging. Take something that is already incredibly popular, but make it more public, more 'many-to-many'. Read more

26 February 2009 / 0 Comments

Dear PR Week, it's not about Twitter per se

In an unstunningly simple article in PR Week today ("Twitter has suddenly exploded") we learn amongst other things that Edelman has 17 twittering staff and Racepoint 8, whilst Drew Benvie has twittered 3779 times.

I'd write here things like "AWESOME" and "WOW, HOW ENLIGHTENING", but I understand sarcasm is the lowest form of wit so I'll refrain.

What's with all the numbers? Why on Earth are they the story? But before I explain myself, I will just dwell on the numbers for a minute.

...I don't know a Racepoint consultant who isn't on Twitter, and there's a lot more of us than eight people! How can Porter Novelli global digital director Mat Morrison feel so confident in his data? He should have at least added the caveat that one can only determine when a Twitter user is a consultant from a specific PR consultancy should the individual chose to promote the fact in their personal profile. Read more

23 February 2009 / 0 Comments

Conversations start with something interesting to say delivered in an interesting way

To recap, this is where marketing communications has got to...

Interruption marketing (stop right there for 30 seconds while I hit you with this message even if this message is totally irrelevant to you) is dead.

Your brand and reputation is defined by everyone's experiences with your organisation and their compulsion to share those experiences with others.

You simply have no choice, you have to converse. Dialogue is where it's at. If you're into monologue, then it really is the same thing as staying at home and still thinking you'll get the girl.

So I thought I'd focus here on how to present your conversation starter rather than the content per se.

Multimedia engagement is one of the most compelling and interesting ways to start a conversation about something interesting. Just think what's grabbed your attention online recently. The 30-second TV ad may be as relevant today as monetary policy, but the 300-second roll on the Web is perfect for the niche audience out there with whom you really want to engage and who really wants to know more about what you've got.

So what kind of multimedia are we talking? How can we spark the conversation by communicating the really interesting thing we have to say in an interesting way? There's no formula (that I know of!), but here's a couple of my favourites to stimulate your "PR 2.0" synapses, one film and one animation. I'll follow up this post some time soon with my favourite interactive-game-with-a-point-to-make and call-to-action-social-microsite. Read more