Cipr on Philip Sheldrake

Learning to measure and measuring to learn

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The CIPR is in the process of updating its research, measurement and evaluation guidelines (PDF) . The current edition is dated March 2011 and harks back to when I used to chair the CIPR’s measurement deliberations; the current initiative is being led by Matt McKay and Martin Turner .

Here’s a short but important extract from the current guidance:

Every organisation should have a mission (why we exist), values (guiding behaviour), a vision (what do we want to be), objectives (breaking down the vision) and strategy (how we intend to get there / achieve the objectives). Given that measurement isn’t just the detached collection, analysis and presentation of data but a powerful management tool in itself, a powerful way to align each employee’s day-to-day activities with the strategy, this cascade must continue robustly, transparently and visibly.

People perform as they are measured, so the measures must drive strategically important behaviour.

And as each marketplace is unique and as your organisation is unique, your strategy will be unique. And so, therefore, will be the suite of measures you design, deploy and manage by.

Share This Too

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since we started the CIPR Social Media Panel we’ve been a pro-active bunch. I haven’t got the stats to prove it, but I’d bet the panel is the most active CIPR group. We launched the successful “Social Summer ” sessions, developed Wikipedia guidance (subsequently adopted by equivalent organisations in Canada, Australia and South Africa), created CIPR TV , published the CIPR Social Media Guidance , updated the CIPR’s own social policy, published the CIPR Guide to Social Media Monitoring , and much more.

What is social business?

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

I’ve been writing Friday Roundups for five and a half years and this is my last one. The circulation has grown from eleven to nearly eleven thousand, we merged it into the CIPR three years ago, and I’m delighted it’s carrying on in their safe hands.

We have covered the full gamut of PR topics in this time, but a tag cloud of the 275 roundups would probably need to render “social media” in font size 100!

Increasingly however accomplished social media practitioners are asking a most pertinent question – now what? Well, it appears the answer to that is acquiring the name “social business”, and it’s increasingly been my focus of recent times. You might say social media are the eggs in the social business cake.

I’ve tried to design one question to both convey what social business might be exactly and to give the person attempting an answer real pause for thought in relation to their own organisation. I think I’m making progress with the following question, what do you think?…

How dare they!

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[Written originally for the CIPR Friday Roundup .]

You should not make edits to a Wikipedia entry when you have a conflict of interest, as any PR practitioner does in relation to their employer or client. Simple.

This Wikipedia rule is reflected precisely in the CIPR’s Wikipedia guidance , published by the social media panel last summer and supported by PR bodies in Canada, Australia and South Africa. (Although not yet in the US.)

Do you believe it?

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .]

The 2007 report from the Arthur W. Page Society, The Authentic Enterprise , identified four new leadership priorities and skills demanded of the Chief Communications Officer:

Leadership in defining and instilling company values
Leadership in building and managing multi-stakeholder relationships
Leadership in enabling the enterprise with ‘new media’ skills and tools; and
Leadership in building and managing trust, in all its dimensions.

The report marked the beginning of a rethink at the Society that culminated last year in Building Belief: A New Model .

Are you a professional or a user?

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never been fond of the word ‘user’? It lacks the caring qualities of a much more appropriate word, customer, and even evokes images of substance abuse.

On making this point, I’m asked what I’d call people benefitting from a service or application without handing over their hard-earned. Well, customers of course. In such situations they’re simply paying with a different currency, such as their personal data and/or attention, which the supplier of the service does its utmost to monetize.

But in one instance, I like that evocation of substance abuse. Of addiction. Of misuse.

Do allow me to explain and let’s see if I’ve just been critical of you or a colleague. Please go easy on me if I have, my intentions are honourable.

I had the privilege of speaking with 150 Masters students at Imperial College London yesterday, taking their Technology in Marketing module. All marketing activity in 2012 is underpinned or impacted by technology, and thousands of tech vendors tempt us with thousands of marketing and PR applications, tools and services. And we buy them. Lots of them. The question is, are you a professional or a user?

What’s the difference?

The CIPR Friday Roundup +/- 5 years

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written, obviously, for the CIPR Friday Roundup .]

The Kardashians first appeared in October 2007 just as it was becoming difficult to get a mortgage. I don’t believe the two were related. I also sent out the first Friday Roundup… to eleven recipients.

Five years and 250 editions later (missing out the festive seasons), it’s gone out to 9345 of you, which is fantastic. But let’s look at some more interesting October 2007 facts, spanning the full gamut of topics we’ve covered here for PR professionals.

Facebook had just passed the thirty million user mark, approaching half that reported by MySpace. There were 350,000 of us on Twitter and ten million odd on LinkedIn – now half a billion and 175 million respectively.

There was no Kindle, no Android, no tablets, and no Justin Bieber. Nokia was number one in mobile phones, bigger than numbers 2, 3 and 4 combined. The Blackberry 8800 and the very first iPhone were the executive must-haves.

There was no FourSquare, Groupon, Pinterest, Instagram, Angry Birds, Prezi, Quora, Spotify, Mendeley, Blippar, Dropbox, Tweetdeck or Google+. And these were pre-Chatroulette days too, and pre-Barcelona principles come to that.

Internal communications discussed on CIPR TV

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The latest episode of CIPR TV went out live yesterday afternoon, with plenty of interaction from the audience. The programme’s guests are Jenni Wheller (@jenniwheller ), Internal Communications Manager at SSP UK, and Mike Grafham (@mgrafham ), Head of Customer Engagement at Yammer .

I think you’ll agree the audience’s questions and the guests’ responses make for an interesting show. Rather than repeat anything covered in the show, I’ll just take a few paragraphs here to make another observation.

FIR Interview: Neville Hobson interviews Stephen Waddington and me about Share This

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Share This , the new book from the CIPR Social Media panel and friends, is selling rather well indeed. Having shot straight in at number 1 on Amazon UK’s best new business book releases, it now resides at number 13 in the Sales & Marketing category.

Wiley, the publisher, has taken more than a handful of bulk orders directly from PR agencies, which of course don’t then register on the Amazon charts else I’m sure the book would be Amazon’s number 1 of course!

Version 1 of Wikipedia guidance for PR practitioners

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Update: Version 2 of the Wikipedia guidance was published May 2014 .]

I’m delighted that the first comprehensive guidance to public relations practitioners on engaging with the Wikipedia community is published today by the CIPR. Here’s the process we’ve gone through:

> Early January 2012 – The CIPR Social Media panel meets and recognises that current guidance is lacking (see my post of 6th January )

> Mid-January 2012 – PR Week’s Editor in Chief, Danny Rogers, calls on the CIPR to clarify its guidance to members, and the profession more widely ("CIPR must set bar high on Wikipedia code ")

> January - April 2012 – The Social Media panel’s Gemma Griffiths leads the development of a first draft of guidance; “something to shoot at”

> 12th May 2012 – Neville Hobson and I take part in the Wikimedia UK AGM to call for their help in working up the guidance (see my post of 14th May )

> 14th May 2012 – The first draft is uploaded to Wikimedia UK’s wiki

> To 24th June 2012 – We collaborate with Wikimedians on more than 160 edits on the back of a discussion page running to more than twelve thousand words.

CIPR TV: Wikipedia guidance to PR practitioners to be published next week

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I swapped sofas on CIPR TV yesterday, seeing the studio from the guests’ perspective for a change. Gemma Griffiths presented the show and David Gerrard and I were the guests.

David is Wikimedia UK’s volunteer spokesperson. As you may know, I’ve been helping to lead a dialogue between Wikimedia UK and the CIPR to build mutual understanding, and specifically to co-develop definitive guidance to PR practitioners on how to engage with the Wikipedia community.

Reputation and Wikipedia, part II

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The public relations profession and Wikipedia community have not enjoyed a productive relationship to date; antagonistic may be a more accurate adjective. For a quick overview of this situation, do take a look at my January 6th post, Reputation and Wikipedia .

For my part, I think I understand both parties’ points of view and see no reason why good public relations practice (the planned and sustained effort to influence opinion and behaviour, and to be influenced similarly, in order to build mutual understanding and goodwill) shouldn’t be employed to build bridges here.

CREWE

The Facebook group, Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement , has quite rightly stirred the pot, raising the profile of the issues involved. For those who practice public relations according to the definition in brackets above, Wikipedia can appear a frustrating community to work with. One asks: “Why, if I know facts on Wikipedia entries relating to my organisation / client are incorrect, can’t I jump in and correct them?” There are two answers to that, but firstly an update on that process of building bridges.

CIPR Guidance

PR Week’s Editor in Chief, Danny Rogers, called on the CIPR to clarify its guidance to members, and the profession more widely, on 18th January 2012 ("CIPR must set bar high on Wikipedia code "). Fortunately, the CIPR Social Media panel had already got its heads together to review the situation.

CIPR TV – Mobile trends, tools and practices

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re in marketing or public relations you need to ‘get’ mobile. Period. So I was chuffed to be able to host a conversation on CIPR TV yesterday with Simon Liss , Managing Director of We Love Mobile , and David Murphy , Editor of Mobile Marketing Magazine .

Thanks Simon. Thanks David.

For information about upcoming CIPR TV shows, simply skip on over to www.cipr.tv .

The PR agency is dead. Long live the PR consultancy.

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .]

I delivered the inaugural CIPR Strategic Management Series presentation this week on the Influence Scorecard . We explored the future developments of social media, related information technologies and business strategy development and execution, all three of which are massively transformed in the past decade and a half, and continue to change rapidly.

And we discussed what’s encompassed exactly by the increasingly heard phrase, “socializing the enterprise”.

The following question, asked during the Q&A part of the evening, is perfectly formed to offer up a slice through the future as I see it: “What does all this mean for PR agencies?”. Let’s set the scene…

Reputation and Wikipedia

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup ]

What does the Wikipedia entry for your organisation / client / brand say? What about brand references in other entries? All cosy on the Wikipedia front? And recognising that a neutral point of view (NPOV) is one of Wikipedia’s “five pillars” , you have resisted editing anything where your neutrality is questionable. Right?

Let’s face it, Wikipedia is amazing. I had the pleasure of attending the Wikipedia 10th birthday party in London last year and I wasn’t the only one there who admitted to not appreciating Wikipedia’s potential back in the day. Seriously? A website anyone can edit?! Yeah right, that’ll work. Not.

And yet today Alexa ranks Wikipedia the sixth most popular site on the web. Search for a company or brand in Google or Bing and there’s the Wikipedia entry tempting you with its neutrality, familiarity and ease of use. The Wikipedia community plays a significant role in brand reputation.

This week, one of my favourite Conversation contributors, Stuart Bruce, spotted Member of Parliament Tom Watson’s interest in Wikipedia and PR practice . He found Watson’s contribution, Wednesday, to a Wikipedia talk page:

CIPR TV with Howard Kosky on Broadcast PR and with Dr. Jon White on PR 2020, the future of PR

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

CIPR TV goes from strength to strength. As part of the hosting team, I had the pleasure this week to host an extended show – sort of a two-for-one.

CIPR TV is only possible courtesy of the team at Markettiers4dc , and it was about time we invited Howard Kosky, Markettiers4dc founder and chairman, on the show. Howard walks us through how the broadcast landscape has transformed over the past decade and a half, and gives viewers some tips for the top and pitfalls to avoid. In fact, when you consider the role broadcast plays in the public relations mix, I can’t believe we haven’t addressed the topic before!

Public Relations, today and by 2020

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’m typing this post sitting on the front row at the CIPR’s PR 2020 event at Russell Square HQ. To my left, Stephen Waddington . To my right, Julio Romo . On stage we have CIPR CEO, Jane Wilson , Dr. Jon White , and ComRes Marketing Manager, Simon Thwaites.

ComRes annual survey

ComRes conducts an annual review of key market stats for the UK PR industry, and Simon is running through that right now. Interestingly, in light of the PRSA’s current Defining PR initiative, which the CIPR supports, only 44% of ComRes poll respondents agreed with the statement “My friends and family understand what I do for a living.”

Public Relations Defined – the anatomy of a candidate definition, ver 0.2

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup]

Following the momentum the PRSA’s #prdefined initiative is achieving, and the CIPR’s statement of support , I thought I’d take a deeper dive into current definitions, and throw one in the mix myself.

I reproduced the section of my book that addresses the definitions of marketing and PR in my last post , and since then I’ve been able to have some insightful conversations, on- and off-line, with Jay O’Connor, Jon White, David Phillips and Terry Flynn.

Is it worth it?

There has been some valid criticism of the PRSA initiative pivoting around the question: shouldn’t we invest time and energy in improving practice to live up to current definitions than review those definitions we already have? The counter to this argument is apparent for those tracking the thousands of comments on line; it appears that more than a few practitioners indirectly criticised by those holding this point of view are actually questioning their own appreciation of public relations, if not actively revising it.

CIPR definition

PR is the discipline that looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.

My favourite definition, no word of a lie! I obviously love the reference to influence, but also the apparently unique and skilful avoidance (intended or otherwise) of communication, thereby emphasising the objective not the means. But when ‘reality is perception’, as is increasingly the case with the radical transparency lent by social media, reputation is built by everything an organisation does (or indeed does not do), not just what the PR team does; every one must be involved in “looking after” reputation.

Public Relations Defined – The PRSA invites you to help set a new definition of PR

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s how the corresponding blog post by the PRSA describes its “Public Relations Defined” initiative:

As part of its mission to advance the public relations profession and professional, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has introduced a new initiative to modernize the definition of public relations and increase its value. As the digital age has caused significant shifts in how organizations communicate internally and externally, a question frequently asked by the public, media and practitioners is, “What is public relations?”

The PRSA explains the initiative in these simple terms:

Recent discussions, blog posts , tweets and mainstream articles have suggested that (1) public relations professionals (and, thus, the audiences we serve) continue to struggle with the question: “What is PR?”; (2) many industry professionals are unhappy with the current definitions; and (3) no one definition is considered “the” de facto industry definition.

What more justification do we need?

While my book The Business of Influence sets out to be a rethink of the ‘influence disciplines’, it starts by reviewing current definitions of marketing and PR. “Well, this book wants to map out a journey from A to B, and navigating to B is so much easier if we’re all at A to begin with.”

In hoping to contribute to the renewed debate, I’ve reproduced the book’s definitions section here. Now all I need to do is work out if the PRSA will be open to a definition leaning on the Influence Scorecard and the role of Chief Influence Officer. What do you think?

Your vital role in the economic recovery

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup]

There will be an economic recovery and best practice public relations will play its part.

Economists may not agree on the how, but they are agreed on the what – we need economic growth. And economic growth comes from organisations that are more productive, and productivity is partly driven by improving mutual understanding between the organisation and its stakeholders – ie, the excellence model of PR.

An organisation that better understands all stakeholders will be more sensitive to its market and more agile and appropriate in its response.

Last week, the UK government announced an initiative with twenty six major organisations “working together to deliver a new era of consumer empowerment”. The programme, midata, “will give consumers increasing access to their personal data in a portable, electronic format.”

This is a world first as far as I know, although the prospect has been discussed for several years. It’s often referred to as vendor relationship management (VRM), the other side of the CRM coin if you like.

Will your organisation join this revolution in customer data? Will you play your part in the economic recovery?

Best regards, Philip and The Conversation team.

The CIPR Presidential Debate

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I had the honour and pleasure of hosting the Presidential Debate on CIPR TV yesterday – the annual show giving the Presidential candidates the opportunity to set out their stall, and for members to ask them questions live via Twitter and the CIPR web form.

You can watch the video here and you’ll find the candidates’ election statements on the CIPR website .

Voting for the President-Elect 2012 / President 2013 closes midday Friday 18th November.

Measuring Online – CIPR Freshly Squeezed training session

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

An interesting start to the day today… over to CIPR HQ in Russell Square to deliver a training course on social measurement in the Freshly Squeezed series.

I had just 45 minutes with 15 minutes Q&A, and this time constraint combined with the state of best practice in the profession meant I was aiming simply to leave attendees knowing the right questions if not the right answers per se. After all, as the slidestack below teases out, if your organisation, marketplace, stakeholders, marketing and PR objectives, marketing and PR strategy and execution are unique, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that your metrics will be unique too.

Social analytics on CIPR TV – with Connie Bensen, Emily Dent and Marcel LeBrun

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Regular readers know that social analytics is a subject close to my heart. And would you believe it, my ebook on the matter, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, still gets downloaded a thousand times a month. I also made sure to include a section on social analytics in my book of course (out this month in the UK and shortly in the US), listing twelve primary characteristics of the services to assist in your organisation’s tool selection and procurement.

The CIPR Conversation – a 1st

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The CIPR has just announced that it will be launching The Conversation this coming Monday, during its social media conference . The Conversation provides the facility to aggregate the best PR related blogs from members and non-members, in the UK and further afield. And it goes live under a full head of steam because The Conversation is the new face of MarCom Professional, the network I’ve been running for the past four years. Here’s what the CIPR has to say:

CIPR social media measurement guidance

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The AVE (advertising value equivalence) approach to PR measurement and evaluation was simple. And utterly wrong.

It’s a specious sum based on false assumptions using an unfounded multiplier and only addressing a fraction of the PR domain – a greater waste of time and effort you couldn’t hope to find.

Measurement and evaluation is essential, but requires real strategic understanding, diligence and perseverance. For me, it represents yet another distinction between the 21st Century PR professional and the 20th Century practitioner.

The new governance of lobbying – in conversation with Elizabeth France and Keith Johnston

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s CIPR TV focused on the formation of the Public Affairs Council in response to the Public Administration Select Committee’s recommendations in its December 2008 report, Lobbying: Access and influence in Whitehall . We’re delighted that Elizabeth France, UKPAC’s chair, and Keith Johnston, CIPR and UKPAC board member, could join us to explain what’s going on, who it affects and how.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlL4w1i _4WA

CIPR Presidents Debate

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

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.

In conversation with Robert Phillips, CEO Edelman UK

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Friday Roundup: Thanks for your permission

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

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.

The 1st CIPR TV show

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

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.

The Friday Roundup: The ASA's misstep

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Some things aren’t quite as simple as first they seem. And when this is the case, it’s good practice to consult widely. And on this count, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA ) has failed.

On 1st September, the ASA announced: “Landmark agreement extends ASA’s digital remit ”. The scope of its Committee of Advertising Practice, the body responsible for the CAP Code governing UK advertising, will extend to “apply in full to marketing communications online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children. The remit will apply to all sectors and all businesses and organisations regardless of size.”

Now who could possibly argue with that?

Intro to Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things at the CIPR Social Summer session

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Intro to Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things

View more presentations from Philip Sheldrake .

@dewilded summed up one of the key conclusions we reached at the CIPR this evening in his tweet:

Companies thought they were laid bare by Web 2.0, they’ll feel positively naked w/out reputation mgt set for RDF & the semantic web #CIPRSM [link ]

My role was to act as tour guide and polemicist; to introduce the Semantic Web and the Internet of Things in just 90 minutes; and to leave the session attendees with considerable food for thought.

Ethics in PR Measurement

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I took part in the #measurepr Twitter chat today on ethics in measurement. These chats are organised by Shonali Burke and her blog post “Influence: From BS to Best Practice ” set the scene nicely.

At the most fundamental level, we were asking whether some of the techniques being deployed for PR measurement are compatible with the aspiration of public relations professionals to be transparent and authentic, and, more precisely, whether they are compatible with codes of conduct as published by the likes of the CIPR , PRSA and CPRS .

In one of my tweets I suggested a more straight forward test, what one might describe as a layman’s test for those of us uneducated in the matters of ethics:

RT @kseniacoffman : Q2: Where do you go for best practices? <– Ask your mum, siblings, neighbours what’s acceptable to them!? #measurepr

At Shonali’s invitation, I contributed the three questions posed today…

An interview with Seth Godin - PR not publicity

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_27421” align=“alignright” width=“250” caption=“Seth Godin - www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4035933108/" ] [/caption]

Seth Godin is a perceptive individual. He spots things the rest of us are too busy to see, and then lets us know about them in an easily-digestible format. Sounds like a cracking formula for a best-selling author if you ask me… and of course he is.

With a dozen titles to his name, including Tribes, Meatball Sundae, perhaps most famously Permission Marketing, and most recently Linchpin, interviewing Seth was always going to be both entertaining and insightful.

Interview with Seth Godin

TweetDeck's Iain Dodsworth at CIPR Social Summer

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Last night the CIPR Social Summer series hosted a session on all things TweetDeck . If you haven’t tried TweetDeck, try it now. It’s free!

According to Twitstat.com today, after simply tweeting at twitter.com, Tweetdeck is the most popular Twitter client globally. Here’s the stats I just grabbed from Twitstat:

Rank		Client	% of users	Tweets/user
1	(1)	web	16.80 %	2.90
2	(2)	TweetDeck	9.50 %	3.17
3	(6)	twitterfeed	5.90 %	5.58
4	(3)	foursquare	5.85 %	1.49
5	(4)	Twitter for iPhone	5.85 %	2.38
6	(5)	HootSuite	5.39 %	2.68
7	(8)	Echofon	3.22 %	3.25
8	(25)	API	2.76 %	6.66
9	(7)	Tweetie for Mac	2.55 %	2.38
10	(9)	Seesmic	2.16 %	3.02

But TweetDeck is more than a nice way to shepherd incoming tweets and craft your own. TweetDeck is rapidly becoming the most powerful way to manage your social networking without ever having to log onto each and every social network yourself. It aggregates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz and Foursquare, and it even lets you watch YouTube videos brought to your attention by your social network in situ.

So I was particularly delighted when TweetDeck MD Iain Dodsworth (@iaindodsworth ) accepted our invitation to join us for one of our sessions to share his insights and answer our questions.

Where's your brain at? Where's your consultancy at?

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Do you ‘do’ search engine optimisation? If so, it seems you are most probably a SEO consultant because public relations consultants who ‘get’ SEO appear to be very thin on the ground. Not only that, but some argue that’s how it should be.

Nixon McInnes’ managing director Will McInnes, ever the polemicist perhaps, asserted during yesterday evening’s conversation on SEO that to fuse the two disciplines would have to entail some kind of genetic engineering along the lines of a pig-monkey hybrid.

CIPR Social Summer on mobile marketing

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not a fan of the iPhone, or iPad come to that (more later). But it wasn’t until yesterday evening at the CIPR that I learned quite how manic some marketers have become. The following conversation won’t be verbatim as I wasn’t party to it, but it’s a good representation of the story as I heard it last night from those who are having these conversations too regularly:

_________

Marketer: We need an iPhone app?

Mobile marketing expert: Righteo. Why’s that?

Marketer: Because they’re really cool and cool’s where it’s at for our target demographic.

Mobile marketing expert: Cool, yes, and who’s the target?

Marketer: Teenagers.

Mobile marketing expert: Do you know that iPhone penetration is just 4% in the UK, and that’s only 0.5% amongst UK teenagers?

Marketer: Oh :-(

_________

The bring all sorts of people together under one roof for a beer and a chat about specific interesting issues. On conducting a quick straw poll of the super collection of people last night, we had roughly an equal split of Blackberrys, iPhones, Android (mostly HTC) and ‘other’, making for an unrepresentatively high proportion of smartphones.

Social analytics, Katie Delahaye Paine and the CIPR Social Summer

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a bit of a ‘first’ going on at the CIPR… yesterday we had the first CIPR Social Summer meeting at CIPR HQ, which is the first of a series designed openly on a wiki by members for members and non-members. The sessions run most Thursdays, 5pm-7pm, over the summer months.

So I was in nirvana!.. Central London, the coolest city in the world, in a lovely building with a cold beer in hand discussing one of my favourite topics, social analytics, with some very nice and equally excited people. Ah, life’s hard.

CIPR Digital Impact Conference

Wed, 26 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The CIPR hosted a smashing event on Monday focusing on the impact of digital and attracting delegates from all sectors as well as a mix of in-house and agency.

I was given a half hour slot to throw my perspectives into the mix, and I decided I’d focus in on the following assertion:

It’s my opinion that the things people think have change haven’t, but some things have changed that aren’t yet widely understood.

Best practice guidance and policy for social media measurement from the CIPR

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations announced this week one of the first actions to come out of its newly formed Social Media Panel … the Social Media Measurement Group.

Some time back in the early days of media relations some bright spark came up with the idea of using a ruler to measure ‘column inches’, a considerably less than perfect approach to assessing PR campaign success only compounded in its inability to drive performance and measure success appropriately by advertising value equivalence (AVE).

My disgust for column inches and AVE has nearly lost me business on more than one occasion, but being prepared to work with prospects on improved approaches can end up contributing to the reasons for going on to convert their business.

Without a doubt, the simplest and shortest response to someone’s defense of such amateur approaches is to ask how they would measure a campaign’s success if a primary objective of a campaign was to keep brand X out of the press? “Oh, errr, well, I mean, that would be, ermm….”.

CIPR social media group and the Semantic Web

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The CIPR has assembled a social media group, information about which I’ve appended here for your convenience. I’m delighted to have been invited and look forward to working with the group, half of whom I know and half I look forward to meeting.

One of the first things I’m going to do is to invite the group to a meeting Wednesday 21st April 2010 to present the work to date on the Ontology For Feelings About Things and the PR Ontology, both pieces of work critical to the PR industries contribution to something referred to as the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is most often what people mean when they talk about Web 3.0.