PR In A Jar

Sculpture for switchover

by Gemma McNeilis

 

Sun, sea and sand…ok so maybe we didn’t have the first two yesterday and spent a typical May Day bank holiday huddled in raincoats around vats of tea and coffee.  But yesterday wasn’t a typical bank holiday.  Yesterday was six months to the day until the Granada TV region switches to digital and that meant building a five ton sandcastle for our client, Digital UK, the national organisation responsible for the switchover from analogue to digital TV.

When we make the switch to digital on 4 November 2009, the Granada TV region will be the largest area in the country to go.  It’s true that Wales, the West Country, Isle of Man and Cumbria will all have gone before then, but with almost seven million people no other area will have been as diverse or as populated.

Closing the door to medical endeavour?

by Gemma McNeilis

Britain’s international lead in stem cell research is being threatened because of a halt in funding, reveals Steve Connor, science editor at The Independent.   Funding bodies such as the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council are reported to be refusing to finance new research into the creation of human-animal “hybrid” clones and existing projects have been run down to the point of closure.  

It is only a year since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill became law.  It was supported by both Gordon Brown and David Cameron and a number of eminent scientists and scientific bodies, including the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society.   So why has there been such reluctance to give funding?  Steve Connor understands that grant applications may have been blocked by scientists on funding committees who are morally opposed to the creation of human-animal “hybrid” clones.  In the US such research is banned from receiving federal government funding.   

'Twitter Talk' Friday Fun.

If you're anything like us, then Friday is always a bit of a strange one. With the weekend drawing ever closer, everyone wants to have a bit of fun. It's not called the friday feeling for nothing, afterall.

With this very much at the forefront of our minds, today's Blog post is going to be all about the fun things on twitter. The things you can do to brighten up your day, and get a Friday feeling.

There are some people you follow on twitter for professional reasons, colleagues, clients and so on. There area also some people who you probably don't follow, but who can add a bit of fun to your day.

If, like Tom, you're a bit of a politics geek then Guido Fawkes is someone who you really need to follow. He's really hit the mainstream recently at the center of 'Smeargate' but he's still a great person to follow for all the latest updates on the dark corners of Westminster corridors.

Another tweeter who never fails to brighten up Tom's day is Sky Sports News. He thinks it's great being able to keep up to date with the latest from all over the sporting universe, and provides a nice distraction throughout the day.

Charlotte's day is always brightened up by Lancashire Tea. She's a bit of a tea geek, and loves finding out about what's going on in the world of tea. Even though she's not a true Lancastrian, she still appreciates proper tea!

Finally, how could we forget Follow Friday! The idea is that you recommend five people to follow and they repeat the favour. It's a really good way to get new followers, and to build relationships with people who you might not otherwise have thought of.

Thanks from both of us for reading this series of Blogs. We hope you've learnt something, and had your head turned by some of the people we've written about and some of the applications we've recommended!

We think that the key to all this is to go out into the twitterverse, have a look around, follow some people with similar interests, and, above all, have fun!!

Twitter Talk, Just Tweet It!

We've been through the best and worst of the Print, Broadcast and Trade media on Twitter, and now it's time to look at the applications that we think help you get the best out of it. In light of the recent news that 60% of people leave twitter after one month, never to be seen again, these applications should help you get the most out of your twitter experience.

At first, Twitter can be a bit daunting, knowing who to follow and where to look to find your friends, or people who you think might be interesting. It’s a bit like being the new kid at school, except with twitter there’s no one there to hold your hand, or pack your lunch. To help you make friends, and find some followers, one of the sites you need to look at is Twellow. Twellow is like a yellow pages for twitter, with people listed by what their interests are, and how many people follow them. We’ve found it a really useful leg up on the twitter ladder. It gives you a feel for what people tweet about, and whether or not you think they’re going to be useful.

 

Another ideal tool for twitter beginners to get started is Justtweetit.com. Not only does this great little website put a Michael Jackson song in your head every time you use it, it also allows you to find people who are just like you. You sign up for the service and it allows people with similar interests to find you. You already know you’ve got something in common, and it’s a great way to get some followers who might be entertaining and enlightening.

If you want another way to find people, and, perhaps more importantly allow them to find you, then we recommend that you sign up for wefollow.com. This site operates in a similar way to Justtweetit.com, granted, you won’t have a Michael Jackson song in your head everytime you visit their website, but you might get a fair few followers. Wefollow works in a similar way to twellow and justtweetit, the only major difference being that on this site you tell it what you add your three main interests are, and it lists you according to them. We think this is a really handy way to get your name noticed amongst people who share similar interests to you.

Now you’ve got your tags and your search sorted, and hopefully got some followers you’ve probably noticed that the twitter website isn’t the easiest way to keep tabs on your followers. Granted, it’s easy to see what they’re doing, but really difficult to see when they reply to your tweets.

We’ve found the best solution to this comes in the shape of tweetdeck. This handy application keeps all of your followers in the same place, allowing you to view their latest tweets, see all your replies, look at your friends profile and much more, without the inconvenience of using the twitter homepage.

What’s really great about tweetdeck are the applications that you can plug into it. One that we’ve found really indispensible is twitscoop. This is a really invaluable plugin that lets you see what’s hot and what’s not in the world of twitter. It’s refreshed really frequently too and is a really cool way of seeing what’s being tweeted about right now.

 

Finally,

 

It doesn’t matter who’d wrong or right, or just tweet it… (We told you justtweetit.com had that effect, didn’t we.)  

'Twitter Talk'

The interest for today's blog is a look at trade, B2B publications and service providers who have made the best of Twitter. Obvously, this is in no way intended to be a comprehensive list, we couldn't hope to cover the best and worst of every industry, besides, it'd probably get a little boring for you, the readers.

With this in mind, we're going to use a few examples to illustrate what we think are the great and not so great trade and business profiles on Twitter.

In our eyes, the best trade and business publications on Twitter are those that use it to interact with their readers, adding another dimension to their publication. A good example of this is Cardealered. CarDealerEd is the Twitter profile for James Baggot, editor of Car Dealer Magazine, who uses his Twitter profile to keep people up to date with breaking news as he recieves it.

James says, "I use it as a personal wire service - like the newspaper rooms of old with feeds from PA and Reuters. I follow mainly car people and sites so as soon as something big happens in the car world one of these guys will tweet about it. I've had a few stories like this from Twitter."

We think this approach really works, James' followers get the latest relevant breaking news, whilst James generates traffic to his site. Everyone benefits, and even gets to hear the odd bit of news about what's going on in James' life, adding a human element to his posts adding a human touch to his tweets. Which is, after all, what Twitter's all about.

Our second example of how we think Twitter can help in a B2B context comes from Simon Apps, a photographer who is the owner and twitter presence of a nationwide network of specialist PR photographers, Professional Images. Simon realised that most twitter followers are interested in the person, not the business.

By tweeting about what he's doing, potential clients get a feel for him and his business before they've met. According to Simon, "This strategy has meant the Professional Images website has has a plentiful stream of hits originating from Twitter and lots of positive comments about our portfolio and services, and one tweet might lead to thousands of pounds worth of new business." This just goes to show that when you get your
Twitter strategy right, it opens up opportunities that can generate business almost all by itself.

If we compare the approch taken by James and Simon, to the one taken by PRWeek, it soon becomes clear why we hold them in such high esteem. Instead of using Twitter as an interactive forum, where people can interact with the magazine and ask questions of the journalists involved, or build a more human relationship with potential clients, PR Week use Twitter to advertise their latest news stories.

Whilst there is some merit in this, allowing them to take the story to their readers without their readers having to find it, it's the manner of their updates that really infuriates us. PRWeek post new tweets 4 times a day, at the same time. If you miss these tweets then you have to search for them on the PR Week site, which does make us wonder why they've got the page to begin with.

In short, if, as a business, you're going to use Twitter, make sure you make the most of it. Don't be afraid to tweet occasionally about what's going on in the office, dont' be afraid to talk to client, and above all, enjoy it!

The Home Page is Dead

By Nathan Smith

Traffic + Conversions = Profit; sounds easy, looks easy, is it easy? 

I’ve always been a Luddite when it comes to SEO, and it’s for that reason I attended the TIE event yesterday evening with great anticipation to hear entrepreneur, SEO expert and all round web guru Mark Attwood speak on the subject. 

 Now great anticipation is an overused term and is invariably followed with great disappointment a la Manchester City.  It therefore makes the experience all the more sweet when a speaker genuinely delivers against their billing.  I was delighted to find that Mark not only delivered, but gave a road to Damascus performance so inspiring that only the most cynical would not have been moved to look at their own website and cry with shame at what should be!

I’ve attached a photo from the event – Richard Hudson (left) from Vanilla Storm is pictured with Mark.  Interestingly Vanilla Storm was actually used as an example of how to ‘optimise your website’ correctly, so well done guys.

Of course I’m a complete convert now, and I’m spending the full bank holiday weekend studying deep linking.  However, there is one area that concerns me about the SEO market and it’s the fact that it’s so thoroughly undemocratic.  Will Google ever develop an algorithm that just rewards on merit of content?  I would suggest that at present Google rewards merit of web knowhow and knowledge you have.  I suggest that this is a symptom of the newness of the web and that we will probably move to a more even playing field in the future as ‘search’ tries to reflect our wants!

'Twitter Talk' - Print Media

As with broadcast, all the big names can be found on Twitter in some shape or form. Apart from a noticeable lack of tabloid presence, we very much believe that this speedy delivery of news challenges the good old-fashioned print and trawling around on the web. However, it did come as quite a surprise to us that a large number of magazines aren’t using this social media tool (Marie Claire is an exception to the rule) and out of the broadsheets, only The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent have a general or what some would call an official news page.

Again, it may be our slightly ‘old-school’ view to prefer one general Twitter news feed for each newspaper or publication but although the Times Money, Guardian Tech and The Daily Telegraph Fashion profiles provide an informative and more targeted alternative, the number of followers of these supplement profiles still do not match the staggering number their parent accounts have such as @TelegraphMG or @guardiannews.

On the other hand, with the ever-growing importance of technology in today’s society, it is a great comfort to have technology specific profiles such as @guardiantech to keep us up to date with the forever-changing technological world, however in or out of touch we really are.

The idea that Twitter reflects real life is certainly proved here as the prevalent anti-Daily Mail following that exists in the world of print media, has already struck on Twitter with the creation of the Daily Wail account. This shows a negative, tongue in cheek biography and profile hitting out against the @mailonline and its slant on the world.

Much to our surprise, The Sun does not support our previous view that this social network reflects life as we know it. As the UK’s former number one online newspaper http://www.thesun.co.uk, it is incredibly surprising that it does not have an official main profile on Twitter. The broadsheets’ domination of online media is strengthened once again; not least by the news from the @mediaguardian, that the Daily Telegraph has just been awarded the accolade of the UK’s most popular newspaper website, knocking The Sun of the top spot. Perhaps, lack of Twitter presence is due to the demographic of the readership and the not the fault of the paper. But, we asked ourselves, is this not the beauty of Twitter? Reaching out to and attracting an audience you wouldn’t or couldn’t normally?

However, from Friday’s article in The Sun online, we found that it’s probably more of a case of choosing not be a part of Twitter.

Local presence on the social media tool came up trumps, with hidden and informative gems of media such as the Birmingham Post, Sutton Guardian, Lancashire Evening Post, Liverpool Daily Post and of course Manchester’s fine business publications thebusinessdesk.com and Crain’s Manchester Business. This is a great opportunity for local media to get national coverage especially at a time when the future for local papers looks bleak and their profiles enable the whole of the UK to broaden their horizons in terms of geography and local knowledge.

As many journalists fight the friction of truth versus speed, Twitter appears to really have conquered all, enabling print media to also have its place online and interactively, whilst spreading news faster than anyone ever thought was possible. However, our only concern is that if the phenomenon continues along its amazingly successful path, Twitter could add to the scaremongering and have the potential to knock print media out for good – something we certainly wouldn’t want. Twitter you are good....but we would certainly much prefer to sit down with a cup of tea and the paper on a Sunday morning rather than in front of our laptop trying to think of something more exciting and informative to update with than “Sitting here with a cup of tea”.

 

'Twitter Talk' - Broadcast

Broadcast

 

From the more serious conversation topics of BBC Radio Four, the sporting genius of Radio Five Live, fantastic current affairs discussions (or very public arguments) from LBC radio and BBC’s breaking news feed, Twitter really does have broadcast covered. But which do we think are the best to follow to keep us in touch with the world?

In our opinion, although it falls under the generic category of social media, Twitter avoids any of the usual social media stigma that say facebook is currently facing and has a good shot at challenging traditional ways of obtaining news and information. In fact, we feel this innovative form of media and communication is far more responsive and brings news to life.

The BBC is a perfect example of this phenomenon working successfully. As the country’s most influential broadcast organisation, it unsurprisingly also has the most dominant presence on Twitter. With BBC Radio Two, BBC World, BBC Radio One, BBC Tech, BBC Health and local presence, these profiles really do offer all of us and the rest of the ‘Twitterati’ a huge amount of information at the tweet of a click, especially as all the BBC’s twitter accounts seem to be updated at an incredibly efficient speed.

ITV on the other hand, although it has also has multiple profiles, fails to impress as much with news-worthy updates and feeds. However, as a commercial company with a different target audience and very different programme styles to the BBC, we follow ITV Insider and ITV2 to satisfy our Katie and Peter fix and to catch up with Susan Boyle’s next singing adventure, not the latest breaking news on the parliament, so perhaps our harsh initial view isn’t quite justified.

Our other amusing finding in the case of radio broadcast, is the various presenters’ Twitter accounts appearing to disguise themselves (or maybe this is the idea) as the official radio station’s Twitter profile. Chris Moyles (@chrismoylesshow and ChrisMoyles09) is a fine example, along with Richard Bacon and the XFM presenters. Perhaps our view is rather dated and this is the way to be noticed in our celeb-crazed world, giving the old-fashioned, patriarchal ‘radio voice’ a celebrity face. Personally, I think I’d much rather follow a radio station such as BBC Radio Four or LBC knowing all the general information and news updates I desire can be sent to me from just one profile with no big egos getting in the way. I’m sure that says a lot about me and my Twitter preferences though!

Despite the ramblings of this ‘Twitter Talk’ blog (and there are more come), Twitter really does offer a fantastic, competitive and up to the minute range of broadcast service options. Enabling us to customise our own live news feeds and gossip whilst it directs itself effortlessly straight to our fingertips. The beauty of Twitter, we believe, is that all this can be done at the tweet of a click without a blaring radio or TV in sight – bliss...

'Twitter Talk'

Twitter has been described as many things: the tech watercooler, the future of news, the path to enlightenment and infuriatingly “where PRs go to die”, but although everyone seems in a hurry to define this technological phenomenon – does anyone really know what its purpose is and do we really need to try and find out?

Whether you’re a tech-head or flinch at the sight of a Twitter or Yammer sign-in page, it’s impossible not to know that twitter has taken over the world. Having transformed itself, with the help of Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross from a bizarre, clandestine online network to a social media tool dominating the world, where even former Liberty X star Michelle Heaton and  Snack a Jacks have a profile and fan club.

As two PR account executives at Smith & Smith PR, a young and vibrant agency in the centre of Manchester, twitter has become an enormous part of our daily working lives, for clients, ourselves and our company, intertwining the professional and personal online.

Both myself and my colleague Tom, decided to put our heads together and write a series of five blogs covering what we think is useful and beneficial on Twitter in terms of broadcast, print media, trade publications, applications and a final blog to go out on the infamous followfriday to honour what is fun, diverse and interesting about this social media tool.

These blogs are by no means a definitive list, but something that can and will be added to and tweaked as we continue to learn more about Twitter...enjoy!

 

Re-cycling Todd Defren's funniest post

Don't finish your day without visiting Todd Defren's blog.  Pure comedy that's obviously appreciated on both sides of the 'pond'.