Category: Public Relations (page 10 of 17)

28 October 2010 / 2 Comments

Real-Time Marketing & PR

David Meerman Scott's new book is out, Real-Time Marketing & PR – How to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now.

I've been gearing a client up for real-time marketing and PR recently. I'm in the midst of helping them prepare for the launch of a gorgeous new app for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android in November. (Ping me if you're interested in social news readers and I'll make sure you get your hands on it as soon as.) And part of that preparation has focused on the active listening capabilities and the workflow management needed to keep on top of the conversation and in the conversation. Thanks to the team at Nielsen Buzzmetrics, we have prepared all the search terms and we've made use of existing infrastructure to make sure the team understands who needs to respond and by when, as efficiently as possible without headache!

GetSatisfaction is procured and configured to tempt the world to hang out in 'our place' to discuss things, but no organisation can insist the conversation takes place in one or two places of course... it's our responsibility to be listening and helping and sharing and working together with customers in defining the future roadmap wherever they want to do so. Facebook. Twitter. Blogs. Forums. Email.

I've only just got my copy of David's book but will be sure to post a book review as soon as I can (the manuscript for my book is due early November so I'm just slightly chocker!) But I can vouch for a cracking few pages in David's book on Social Web Analytics... 'cos he quotes me :-)

Here's a video of David presenting about real-time PR, and you can get the first chapter of his book here for free!

Real-Time Marketing & PR from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

28 October 2010 / 0 Comments

CIPR Presidents Debate

I enjoyed having the opportunity to grab a couple of minutes with the CIPR's new CEO, Jane Wilson, prior to putting members' questions to the two candidates for CIPR President-Elect 2011, President 2012. Thanks to Rob Brown and Sally Sykes for accepting the invitation, and thanks once again to the Markettiers4dc team for making it happen.

21 October 2010 / 3 Comments

In conversation with Robert Phillips, CEO Edelman UK

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to ask Robert Phillips (@citizenrobert), CEO Edelman UK, his opinion on the state of the PR profession. Robert believes that public relations is at a pivotal moment when, confronted by the brutal transparency of social media, the profession has the opportunity to embrace the public information and two-way symmetric models as the default rather than the exception, ditching the spin and persuasion attitudes and connotations. Resigning them to history, or at least to publicists.

Robert emphasises the re-emergent role of the citizen, an idea that appears to have played a distant second fiddle to the consumer in recent decades. And if this rings your bell you might be interested in Robert's Citizen Renaissance project.

I was particularly interested in Robert's assertion that social media is about behaviour; it is not a "channel", and PRs who regard it as one are getting it wrong.

And Robert capped this off by giving us his four outcomes for PR programmes (as opposed to outputs):

Increase trust – referring to Edelman's annual Trust Barometer
Deeper communities
Driving behavioural change; of citizens, consumers, business
And ultimately commercial success.

Lastly, Ben Matthews (@benrmatthews) gets a big thumbs up from Robert, and my co-host Stephen Waddington (@wadds). FYI, they're talking about Ben's Bright One initiative (@brightonecomms), a volunteer-run communications agency for the third sector.

15 October 2010 / 2 Comments

Friday Roundup – Goodbye AVEs

Following establishment of the Barcelona principles in June this year and the annihilation of any idea that AVEs (advertising value equivalents) represent the value of public relations, AMEC (the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) has moved on to ask two questions:

What are the “validated metrics” to replace AVEs?
How do you get started in measuring social media, and what are the definitions of relevant metrics?

This work is being led by the US Agency Research Leaders Group chaired by Ketchum’s David Rockland, and formed a significant chunk of the conversation at last week's IPR 8th Annual Measurement Summit.

If you're looking for one slidestack that walks you through the principles and explores the progress made to date in answering the questions above, check out this presentation: "Validated Metrics - Social Media Measurement", delivered during the summit by Mike Daniels (Director, Report International and Chair, AMEC) and Tim Marklein (Executive Vice President, Measurement & Strategy, Weber Shandwick), and moderated by Peter Wengryn, CEO, VMS.

IPR Measurement Summit -- Barcelona Principles Taskforce Recommendations

View more presentations from Institute for PR Measurement Commission.

I think the work to date is most definitely going the right way; seeking to identify the desired outcomes of a public relations programme and working backwards so to speak to establish metrics that belie the programme's success accordingly. And I was particularly pleased with slide 25 on influence rating / ranking which corroborates my recent contribution to the Monitoring Social Media conference, "the fallacy of the influentials".

This jigsaw is coming together. We will have some operationally sound frameworks available next year, and I'm hoping my own book, "The Influence Professional", might make some useful contribution when it emerges from the publishing process in Spring. Whatever the timeline, you should have begun winding down any remaining reliance you have on AVEs by now. It's not a case of waiting to transition from mediocity to good; AVEs don't even make the cut as mediocre, they are specious, misleading and unprofessional. Period. Read more

4 October 2010 / 16 Comments

The fallacy of the influentials

Life's complicated, so we better get used to it. That's my remote contribution to the Monitoring Social Media conference, Boston 2010. In other words, your marketing and PR campaign does not pivot around finding and persuading 10, 20 or 50 so-called influentials.

We should de-emphasise the application of social Web analytics (aka social media analytics, listening platforms, social monitoring) to finding the influentials. Rather, we should employ these amazing tools and services to actively listen, to learn from the conversation and to facilitate the workflow aspects of joining in the conversation.

Life is complicated. Influence is complex. And it appears that we're influenced more by our respective 150 nearest and dearest family and friends more often than the other 6 billion combined! I discuss the evidence for this assertion in my video here:

1 October 2010 / 0 Comments

Friday Roundup: Thanks for your permission

Thanks for your permission to email you with the Friday Roundup today.

It's been over a decade since Seth Godin published Permission Marketing and as the Wikipedia entry for the book and the term says, the undesirable opposite of permission marketing is interruption marketing. In short, if you have to interrupt me without my permission in order to attract my attention, then all you've done is distracted me from what I was otherwise interested in. And if you do that, you simply risk putting your brand on the back foot as a result.

I've been interrupted a lot this week.

Firstly there was the first episode of this season's must-watch period TV drama on British TV (I know, but what can I say, I like them!) Downton Abbey has the perfect stoneware pudding bowl full of characters and plot lines, but it also had something else in abundance, and to a saturation uncommon for Britain, adverts. The Guardian was none too pleased either.

Second, how many of you enjoy those ads that take up your entire browser when all you want is the content? I've been counting... 9 this week.

Third, I followed a link to a video a friend said I'd like. Unfortunately, I don't know if I do because I had no intention waiting for a 60 second car advert to show, particularly as I've just bought a car and I wasn't interested in the marque interrupting me anyway.

Surely there must be better ways to connect marketers and content. I know the adverts pay for the dramas we love, but I won't be watching any of the ads now; I'll 'time-shift' episode 2. Better four classy, memorable one-minute adds in the hour than seven bundles of hectic 30-second rubbish. I'd watch it live then.

And this all goes to show that I can empathise just a little with those poor journalists on the receiving end of so-called PR spam. Non-relevant interruptions to their day caused by the spray-and-pray practices of the lesser practitioner. If this matter concerns you, if you don't want to be annoying the very people you hope to influence, do check out the Media Spamming Charter published this week by the CIPR, PRCA and IRS. If you know what's good for business, do make sure your PR team subscribes to it and has the discipline to stick to it.

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team. Read more

29 September 2010 / 1 Comment

CIPR TV featuring the High Priest of Publicity, Mark Borkowski

Wadds and I benefited once again from the excellent work of the team at Markettiers4dc and another great guest this show, Mark Borkowski, MD of the eponymous Borkowski. Not exactly renowned for being a wallflower, Mark tells it how he sees it. We had some great questions submitted live via Twitter, and to be honest we could have chatted for twice the time!

My favourite comment relates to the attentiveness of advertising account managers to their clients needs. The quote won't pass you by :-)

17 September 2010 / 1 Comment

Friday Roundup: Are you an Influence Professional?

Public relations isn't just media relations. Marketing isn't just promotion. Promotion isn't just advertising. PR isn't just one-way. Digital isn't just Web.

I'm writing a book, provisionally titled Influence Professional. It's about influence and a new role in the marketing and PR mix. It's also about taking a good look at where marketing and public relations got to in the 20th Century, what happened in the last ten years, and what will happen in the coming decade that will make the last ten look like we were just taking it easy.

Most intriguingly, on talking to as many people as I can, not only have I found little useful understanding amongst those looking in on our professions, but I've found inconsistent definitions and misunderstandings between our respective disciplines. Read more

16 September 2010 / 4 Comments

Contribute to the Influence Professional book

I'm writing a book, provisionally titled Influence Professional. And the reading, the planning, the structuring and first few chunks of copy have been enjoyable in a hard work kinda way.

It's 27 months since I was engrossed in writing the Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, and I'd forgotten how intense writing more than 140 characters or a blog post at a go can be. It's cathartic to structure your thoughts tightly. And whereas one can say things off the cuff in conversation, when you're committing to the page you find yourself having to source liberal references to support your assertions, which is thoroughly rewarding as you can't help but learn more as you do it.

I need you...

But now it's time to collaborate. I need your input, insights, experiences and assessment of the current state of affairs in marketing and PR. I'd love you to complete my research questionnaire before the end of September; it shouldn't take more than 10-12 minutes. I'm delighted that fellow Wiley author Brian Solis (@briansolis) has just retweeted the link this evening, and thanks also to @behindthespin, @markpinsent, @RussGoldsmith, @stuartbruce. Stars.

The ebook still attracts over a thousand downloads every month, and it's just about to break through 90,000. Whilst the second half, focused on vendor information, is now out of date, I'm pleased to say the first half still makes sense. Here's hoping I can match its success this time round, with your help!

Thanks. #inflpro

8 September 2010 / 5 Comments

The 1st CIPR TV show

CIPR TV is underway!

I co-presented the first show this afternoon at 5pm with Stephen Waddington (@wadds) and, despite the novice presenters, two aspects worked really well. First up, Paul Mylrea was a fantastic guest. The BBC's Head of Press and Media Communications, and the CIPR's 2011 President, Paul was never stuck for an interesting and articulate response to a wide range of questions spanning public sector PR, reputation washing, graduate recruitment and internships, diversity, the CIPR's response to the ASA's misguided stance towards social media, and his plans for the CIPR next year.

And our second advantage was simply working with the highly professional markettiers4dc team. Thanks guys for making us feel like we were in safe hands!

Bookmark www.cipr.tv and track #ciprtv too.

And join us again at 5pm on the 29th when we'll be quizzing Mark Borkowski on all aspects of publicity, how his work best integrates into the marketing mix, and his comments on the latest news, roaring campaign successes and, perhaps, analysis of when things don't quite go to plan. But I'm most looking forward to grilling Mark on the repositioning of his firm:

Borkowski has evolved into something new for the digital age - an agency dealing with brand truths and the empowerment of the individual, changing Public Relations into Public Conversations.