Swimming around in the vast ocean of information that is social media, it's easy to feel lonely and wonder whether all the time and effort you put in is really worth it.
That's what makes all the little, real life triumphs, all the sweeter. The other night I was at a Glasgow Chamber of Commerce search engine optimisation seminar where the speaker was Brian Mathers of ICT Advisor.com - one of the world's genuine SEO gurus. Before the talk, I was chatting with a woman called Jacqueline Morrison who was looking at the list of attendees and asked if I know anyone on it. One or two, I replied.
"I only know one - Stephen Breen," she said. "That's me! How do you know me?" It turns out she has been reading my blogs on various of the Glasgow and Scottish entrepreneur groups on LinkedIn I've joined, and she said how much she enjoyed the last one Social Media - how much faster can it get?
It turns out Jacqueline runs a very interesting reusable nappy business called Nappy Makers. What on earth was someone in the nappy business doing reading my blog, which mainly concerns itself with public relations, social media and business? Well, first of all she found it interesting, which a relief, since there's no point posting any content on social media if it is poor quality and doesn't give any value to readers.
Secondly, she, like many other business people, is trying to get their heads around social media, which is why she is on LinkedIn.
This little episode has demonstrated nicely the value of putting in the time to blog, but also, the importance of being active on the social media sites where your potential clients and customers are also likely to be. By posting useful information on these influential digital platforms, not only have I raised the awareness of what Breen Media does, but I've gotten into a dialogue with people who may, at some point, want to use our services.
Later in the evening, I met another woman, Adriana Dunlay of Glasgow-based Trumpet Design, who picked my brains on how I use platforms such as Twitter.
The next morning, I received a Tweet from Adriana, her very first, saying 'Joining Twitter as a result of last night's Chamber meeting at the Corinthian. Now what do I do?'
I was able to give her a few simple steps to get started. I like it when that happens.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Friday 20 November 2009
Friday 13 November 2009
Social media - how much faster can it get?
I read recently that there are something like 11,000 apps for Twitter alone. I defy even the most the Twitter-addicted geek on the planet to be up to speed on all of these.
The Twitter app explosion in many ways symbolises the breakneck speed at which social media is growing. Those of us in public relations have had to pretty much start from scratch in the past year or so and completely relearn our trade to use these new digital tools. For most PR pro’s, I suspect the social media revolution has been bewildering, scary and exhilarating – all at the same time.
How much faster can this rollercoaster ride get? Moore’s law states that computer capacity doubles roughly every two years, so there is nothing to stop the internet growing at an exponential rate to carry much more digital data at even faster speeds.
New York University Professor Clay Shirky has stated: “The moment we are living right now, this generation, represents the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”
The question for media professionals is how can we possibly keep up if the flow of information becomes even more rapid?
I don’t have the precise answer – otherwise I’d be a billionaire – but I suspect we are going to see the emergence of some digital super-tools that will help us make sense of all this white noise that will gain market dominance. There are already lots of platforms out there like Google and Addictomatic that monitor multiple online platforms that allow us to track what’s being said about oursleves, our businesses and our clients in cyberspace.
Social media has matured from something used by kids to keep in touch with their mates to a more mainstream business tool. Right now, there are just way too many options for consumers to make a sensible choice about what digital platforms really work. (I known this runs counter to the whole self-publish, everyone can be a content creator, ethos of social media).
My sense is that in the next year or two, things are going to settle down a little and some really clever people are going to come up with solutions that will make life online a little bit easier for us all.
I could, of course, be completely wrong, but I’d welcome the thoughts of others on this.
The Twitter app explosion in many ways symbolises the breakneck speed at which social media is growing. Those of us in public relations have had to pretty much start from scratch in the past year or so and completely relearn our trade to use these new digital tools. For most PR pro’s, I suspect the social media revolution has been bewildering, scary and exhilarating – all at the same time.
How much faster can this rollercoaster ride get? Moore’s law states that computer capacity doubles roughly every two years, so there is nothing to stop the internet growing at an exponential rate to carry much more digital data at even faster speeds.
New York University Professor Clay Shirky has stated: “The moment we are living right now, this generation, represents the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”
The question for media professionals is how can we possibly keep up if the flow of information becomes even more rapid?
I don’t have the precise answer – otherwise I’d be a billionaire – but I suspect we are going to see the emergence of some digital super-tools that will help us make sense of all this white noise that will gain market dominance. There are already lots of platforms out there like Google and Addictomatic that monitor multiple online platforms that allow us to track what’s being said about oursleves, our businesses and our clients in cyberspace.
Social media has matured from something used by kids to keep in touch with their mates to a more mainstream business tool. Right now, there are just way too many options for consumers to make a sensible choice about what digital platforms really work. (I known this runs counter to the whole self-publish, everyone can be a content creator, ethos of social media).
My sense is that in the next year or two, things are going to settle down a little and some really clever people are going to come up with solutions that will make life online a little bit easier for us all.
I could, of course, be completely wrong, but I’d welcome the thoughts of others on this.
Friday 6 November 2009
Twitter – freedom of speech or a digital lynch mob?
The hounding of Jan Moir recently over her extremely tasteless attack on Stephen Gately’s lifestyle before he had even been buried has thrown cast a new a somewhat sinister light on Twitter.
Twitter has rightly been lauded as a censorship-busting tool which allowed the world to find out what was going on in the Iraq elections and exposed oil firm Trafigura’s outrageous attempts to gag the Guardian from reporting on parliamentary proceedings on the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.
Moir’s attack on Gately was a typical and nasty Daily Mail hatchet job, pandering to the worst type of Middle England bigotry. The Mail is used to orchestrating moral outrage towards whichever victim it chooses to pick on that day, and it didn’t like it one little bit when it was on the receiving end of a storm of public outcry. Thanks to a Twitter storm, the Press Complaints Commission received an unprecedented 21,000 complaints against Moir’s article and advertisers began pulling out.
Some saw this as a textbook case of digital people power and rejoiced at seeing the Mail get a hefty dose of its own moral medicine, but there’s a strong case to be made that this was nothing more than the crudest form of mob rule and censorship.
I’m sure many – perhaps most – of those who complained to the PCC – hadn’t even read the article, but were simply egged on by others on Twitter. And here’s part of the problem with Twitter: it encourages the re-tweeting of instant communication without time for careful thought.
British journalist Brendan O’Neill has coined the perfect phrase for this behaviour – a twitch-hunt. Rather than seeing the Moir Twitter storm as a triumph for people power, it is, in fact a crude example of a liberal lynch mob on the rampage in cyberspace.
It’s disturbing that a tool that is supposed to be about freedom of speech has been used by some to bludgeon those with whom they disagree. Homophobia is unpleasant, but so too is the hypocrisy of liberals who tell us they are all for freedom of speech, just as long you agree with me, otherwise I’ll shut you down.
Social media is a powerful and potentially liberating tool. Let’s hope the Moir affair isn’t a taster of things to come.
Breen Media
Twitter has rightly been lauded as a censorship-busting tool which allowed the world to find out what was going on in the Iraq elections and exposed oil firm Trafigura’s outrageous attempts to gag the Guardian from reporting on parliamentary proceedings on the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.
Moir’s attack on Gately was a typical and nasty Daily Mail hatchet job, pandering to the worst type of Middle England bigotry. The Mail is used to orchestrating moral outrage towards whichever victim it chooses to pick on that day, and it didn’t like it one little bit when it was on the receiving end of a storm of public outcry. Thanks to a Twitter storm, the Press Complaints Commission received an unprecedented 21,000 complaints against Moir’s article and advertisers began pulling out.
Some saw this as a textbook case of digital people power and rejoiced at seeing the Mail get a hefty dose of its own moral medicine, but there’s a strong case to be made that this was nothing more than the crudest form of mob rule and censorship.
I’m sure many – perhaps most – of those who complained to the PCC – hadn’t even read the article, but were simply egged on by others on Twitter. And here’s part of the problem with Twitter: it encourages the re-tweeting of instant communication without time for careful thought.
British journalist Brendan O’Neill has coined the perfect phrase for this behaviour – a twitch-hunt. Rather than seeing the Moir Twitter storm as a triumph for people power, it is, in fact a crude example of a liberal lynch mob on the rampage in cyberspace.
It’s disturbing that a tool that is supposed to be about freedom of speech has been used by some to bludgeon those with whom they disagree. Homophobia is unpleasant, but so too is the hypocrisy of liberals who tell us they are all for freedom of speech, just as long you agree with me, otherwise I’ll shut you down.
Social media is a powerful and potentially liberating tool. Let’s hope the Moir affair isn’t a taster of things to come.
Breen Media
Tuesday 13 October 2009
The recession is ending - is your business ready?
Britain is ‘on the brink of recovery’ according to a report this week from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), with the FTSE 100 share index on a 12 month high.
Businesses that have been weathering the storm need to get ready right now to take full advantage of the opportunities that will come with the upturn.
Smarter companies will have used the slowdown wisely to train their staff, improve customer service, recalibrate their products and services to suit the tough conditions, and market themselves while their competitors’ bunkered in.
For those who have been frozen in the headlights, now is a great time to get a strategy in place to be ready for the recovery.
Here are a few simple things forward-looking businesses should be doing now:
Get a robust marketing strategy: you need to be revising your services, products and pricing to meet the needs of your cusomers in the next few months. What will they be looking as the economy improves? Is it different from what you are offering now? What extra value can you give to persuade them to go with you rather than a competitor?
Lock in low advertising rates: there are some great advertising deals around at the moment as newspapers and TV and radio stations have been desperate to pull in business. Take advantage of this – book long-term while the rates are low.
Look for a new office: there is plenty of empty office space around which landlords are desperate to let. If you move now, you could get a long-term rent deal at a great price.
Take your message to market: now is the time to shout about what you are doing, grab market share, and be the recognised brand when the orders start coming in. Tie in a well-planned public relations blitz with your marketing campaign to take full advantage of the opportunities which will arise.
At Breen Media, we recognise that businesses are still struggling and counting the pennies and may see PR as a luxury they can’t afford. We don’t want them to miss out on the chance to steal a march on their rivals. That’s why we’ve launched a special half-price deal for all new clients. We’re halfing our monthly retainer for the first three months, or for the first project we do for you.
To find out more, click here
Businesses that have been weathering the storm need to get ready right now to take full advantage of the opportunities that will come with the upturn.
Smarter companies will have used the slowdown wisely to train their staff, improve customer service, recalibrate their products and services to suit the tough conditions, and market themselves while their competitors’ bunkered in.
For those who have been frozen in the headlights, now is a great time to get a strategy in place to be ready for the recovery.
Here are a few simple things forward-looking businesses should be doing now:
Get a robust marketing strategy: you need to be revising your services, products and pricing to meet the needs of your cusomers in the next few months. What will they be looking as the economy improves? Is it different from what you are offering now? What extra value can you give to persuade them to go with you rather than a competitor?
Lock in low advertising rates: there are some great advertising deals around at the moment as newspapers and TV and radio stations have been desperate to pull in business. Take advantage of this – book long-term while the rates are low.
Look for a new office: there is plenty of empty office space around which landlords are desperate to let. If you move now, you could get a long-term rent deal at a great price.
Take your message to market: now is the time to shout about what you are doing, grab market share, and be the recognised brand when the orders start coming in. Tie in a well-planned public relations blitz with your marketing campaign to take full advantage of the opportunities which will arise.
At Breen Media, we recognise that businesses are still struggling and counting the pennies and may see PR as a luxury they can’t afford. We don’t want them to miss out on the chance to steal a march on their rivals. That’s why we’ve launched a special half-price deal for all new clients. We’re halfing our monthly retainer for the first three months, or for the first project we do for you.
To find out more, click here
Friday 2 October 2009
Sun setting on hypocritical politicians
Watching Labour politicians working themselves into a froth this week about the Sun after it switched allegiance to the Tories has been hilarious.
Harriet Harman told conference she was speaking about something the Sun knew nothing about - women’s rights. Union leader Tony Woodley tore up a copy of the paper, saying it had never supported Labour values.
Newsflash to Harriet and Tony - this didn’t start on Wednesday morning! The Sun has never given a damn about women (unless they’ve got their tops off) or supported worker’s rights. It’s always been the shrill voice of selfish Thatcherism.
But you didn’t hear the Labour leadership dare point out this obvious truth all the time Tony Blair’s sleazy pact with Rupert Murdoch to win the tabloid’s support held firm. The Labour movement has had to hold its nose very tight indeed for the past decade or so to curry favour with Britain’s best-selling paper. Blair, Alastair Campbell and the rest of the New Labour leadership knew this was the equivalent of entering a pact with the devil and they were prepared to do it to win and maintain power.
Anyone doing deals with with tabloid newspapers - whether it’s opportunistic politicians or grubby individuals selling kiss-and-tell stories - is swimming in shark-infested waters. At some point or other, the shark is likely to turn round and devour them. So why make a fuss when it happens? As Neil Kinnock put it, finding out the Sun was backing the Tories was the equivalent of discovering the pope was a Catholic.
That’s why all the huffing and puffing from Harman and others just reeks of hypocrisy. What it says is that it’s OK for the Sun to be sexist and anti-union - just as long as it keeps telling its readers to vote Labour. At least Gordon Brown had the good sense - from a PR point of view - to try to play down the body blow, claiming feebly that it’s voters not newspapers than decide elections.
Murdoch is cold blooded, utterly ruthless, and he only backs winners who will look out for his business interests. It will be interesting to see what price he has extracted from David Cameron in return for backing the Tories.
Cast your mind back to when the Dirty Digger switched support to New Labour in 1997. There were strong calls for newspaper reform and privacy laws to curb the worst tabloid excesses. Blair rode into power with the Sun’s blessing and - hey presto! - it’s business as usual for the papers.
James Murdoch was recently laying into the BBC at the Edinburgh Television Festival, railing about the unfair advantage the state-funded broadcaster has over commerical operations. He makes some good points. The BBC is a bloated bureaucracy, spending money like a drunken sailor - who can forgot that it sent more than 400 people to cover the Glastonbury festival and more than 300 for T in the Park? Any private sector company that sloshed the cash around like that would quickly go out of business.
Has Murdoch senior pressurised Cameron to review the licence fee for the BBC as the price of his support? It will be interesting to see.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Harriet Harman told conference she was speaking about something the Sun knew nothing about - women’s rights. Union leader Tony Woodley tore up a copy of the paper, saying it had never supported Labour values.
Newsflash to Harriet and Tony - this didn’t start on Wednesday morning! The Sun has never given a damn about women (unless they’ve got their tops off) or supported worker’s rights. It’s always been the shrill voice of selfish Thatcherism.
But you didn’t hear the Labour leadership dare point out this obvious truth all the time Tony Blair’s sleazy pact with Rupert Murdoch to win the tabloid’s support held firm. The Labour movement has had to hold its nose very tight indeed for the past decade or so to curry favour with Britain’s best-selling paper. Blair, Alastair Campbell and the rest of the New Labour leadership knew this was the equivalent of entering a pact with the devil and they were prepared to do it to win and maintain power.
Anyone doing deals with with tabloid newspapers - whether it’s opportunistic politicians or grubby individuals selling kiss-and-tell stories - is swimming in shark-infested waters. At some point or other, the shark is likely to turn round and devour them. So why make a fuss when it happens? As Neil Kinnock put it, finding out the Sun was backing the Tories was the equivalent of discovering the pope was a Catholic.
That’s why all the huffing and puffing from Harman and others just reeks of hypocrisy. What it says is that it’s OK for the Sun to be sexist and anti-union - just as long as it keeps telling its readers to vote Labour. At least Gordon Brown had the good sense - from a PR point of view - to try to play down the body blow, claiming feebly that it’s voters not newspapers than decide elections.
Murdoch is cold blooded, utterly ruthless, and he only backs winners who will look out for his business interests. It will be interesting to see what price he has extracted from David Cameron in return for backing the Tories.
Cast your mind back to when the Dirty Digger switched support to New Labour in 1997. There were strong calls for newspaper reform and privacy laws to curb the worst tabloid excesses. Blair rode into power with the Sun’s blessing and - hey presto! - it’s business as usual for the papers.
James Murdoch was recently laying into the BBC at the Edinburgh Television Festival, railing about the unfair advantage the state-funded broadcaster has over commerical operations. He makes some good points. The BBC is a bloated bureaucracy, spending money like a drunken sailor - who can forgot that it sent more than 400 people to cover the Glastonbury festival and more than 300 for T in the Park? Any private sector company that sloshed the cash around like that would quickly go out of business.
Has Murdoch senior pressurised Cameron to review the licence fee for the BBC as the price of his support? It will be interesting to see.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Friday 14 August 2009
Can Rupert Murdoch save journalism?
Rupert Murdoch has thrown a huge rock into the media pool by announcing he is planning to start charging for some online News International information.
How to make cash from internet news sites is the biggest conundrum newspapers face in the 21st century and no one has cracked it yet. Having given the shop away years ago by providing print news online for free, most commentators believe there is no way back. Why on earth would consumers used to getting their news free from any number of web sites suddenly start paying for the privilege?
I don't have a clear answer, but I do have a growing sense that as people start getting to grips with explosion of 2.0 information, there will be a marked shift towards quality. The reason for this is that amidst the diarrhoea of digital information out there, there is actually a lot of really good stuff that is worth accessing - and maybe even paying for.
Take Twitter. At first, many people simply couldn't fathom the point in receiving instant messages from thousands of complete strangers every day, much of it mind-numbing trivia. There's no doubt that none of us has the time to read all of this stuff, but used properly, Twitter can be an extraordinarily effective tool. The trick is to follow people or organisations who post information that has real value - whether it is a tech nerd keeping you up to date with the latest digital developments, someone who supports your football team who roots around the net for articles, an airport tweeting about flight delays, or your favourite restaurant alerting you if tables become available at the last minute. All of this is good stuff.
In turn, if you post useful information on Twitter, on blogs, or on social media sites, you can establish yourself as an expert, build relationships and win business.
This flight to quality that I sense is happening, could persuade some of us to pay the likes of the New York Times, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph or the FT for our news. It's a big ask, but my old boss at The Scotsman, Tim Luckhurst, who now plies his trade at the Centre for Journalism, believes that if newspapers can charge for content, then they can reinvested it in high quality journalism. He notes, quote correctly, that the legions of citizen journalists who micro-blog from the streets of Tehran about the Iranian elections are good for democracy because they defying attempts at censorship. However, amateur journalists are highly opinionated and are not trained to be critical, objective and accurate. If you want information you can trust, you need professional journalists - and charging for online content might allow struggling newspapers to continue supporting great journalism.
Love him or loathe him, Murdoch has an uncanny knack of spotting where the media market is going and jumping into that space early. If he's right, and others follow, the Dirty Digger just might turn out to be the unlikely saviour of journalism.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
How to make cash from internet news sites is the biggest conundrum newspapers face in the 21st century and no one has cracked it yet. Having given the shop away years ago by providing print news online for free, most commentators believe there is no way back. Why on earth would consumers used to getting their news free from any number of web sites suddenly start paying for the privilege?
I don't have a clear answer, but I do have a growing sense that as people start getting to grips with explosion of 2.0 information, there will be a marked shift towards quality. The reason for this is that amidst the diarrhoea of digital information out there, there is actually a lot of really good stuff that is worth accessing - and maybe even paying for.
Take Twitter. At first, many people simply couldn't fathom the point in receiving instant messages from thousands of complete strangers every day, much of it mind-numbing trivia. There's no doubt that none of us has the time to read all of this stuff, but used properly, Twitter can be an extraordinarily effective tool. The trick is to follow people or organisations who post information that has real value - whether it is a tech nerd keeping you up to date with the latest digital developments, someone who supports your football team who roots around the net for articles, an airport tweeting about flight delays, or your favourite restaurant alerting you if tables become available at the last minute. All of this is good stuff.
In turn, if you post useful information on Twitter, on blogs, or on social media sites, you can establish yourself as an expert, build relationships and win business.
This flight to quality that I sense is happening, could persuade some of us to pay the likes of the New York Times, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph or the FT for our news. It's a big ask, but my old boss at The Scotsman, Tim Luckhurst, who now plies his trade at the Centre for Journalism, believes that if newspapers can charge for content, then they can reinvested it in high quality journalism. He notes, quote correctly, that the legions of citizen journalists who micro-blog from the streets of Tehran about the Iranian elections are good for democracy because they defying attempts at censorship. However, amateur journalists are highly opinionated and are not trained to be critical, objective and accurate. If you want information you can trust, you need professional journalists - and charging for online content might allow struggling newspapers to continue supporting great journalism.
Love him or loathe him, Murdoch has an uncanny knack of spotting where the media market is going and jumping into that space early. If he's right, and others follow, the Dirty Digger just might turn out to be the unlikely saviour of journalism.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Monday 10 August 2009
Social Media is all grown up
If anyone working in public relations still has any doubts that social media is going to be a massive part of their job then the latest report from Marta Kagan on Digital Buzz should put them right.
It’s packed full of extraordinary figures about the remarkable growth of social networking sites on the web.
For example:
* three out of four Americans use social technology
* two thirds of the global internet population use social networks
* social sites are the fourth most popular area of online activity - ahead of personal email
* time spent on social networks is growing three times faster than overall internet growth, accounting for 10% of all internet time
* 100 million YouTube videos are viewed each day
* Twitter grew by 1382% between January and February this year
It’s bursting with compelling reasons why every PR practitioner has to include social media as part of their arsenal of communication tools. The swear words might not be to everyone’s taste, but the message is clear.
But enough from me. Why not view the slideshow here yourself.
It’s packed full of extraordinary figures about the remarkable growth of social networking sites on the web.
For example:
* three out of four Americans use social technology
* two thirds of the global internet population use social networks
* social sites are the fourth most popular area of online activity - ahead of personal email
* time spent on social networks is growing three times faster than overall internet growth, accounting for 10% of all internet time
* 100 million YouTube videos are viewed each day
* Twitter grew by 1382% between January and February this year
It’s bursting with compelling reasons why every PR practitioner has to include social media as part of their arsenal of communication tools. The swear words might not be to everyone’s taste, but the message is clear.
But enough from me. Why not view the slideshow here yourself.
Friday 31 July 2009
Why content is still king in good PR - part 2
Thanks to social media, I often get that quesy feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information in my inbox.
2.0 allows anyone to post whatever they like on blogs, Twitter and discussion boards with no quality control whatsoever. Twitter is the classic example. The advice from Twitter pioneers to the uninitiated who couldn’t understand why they would want to be bombarded with hundreds of messages every day from random strangers they had decided to follow, was essentially that you have to jump and experience it before you will get any value from it.
No one can possibly read all of these messages so why would you want to receive them? The answer, ultimately, is content. Amid the avalanche of dross from the morons who will follow anyone on Twitter and post meaningless trivia about their lives and their pets, there are real nuggets of extremely valuable information. The reason it is valuable is because the sender has put some thought into and decided it would be of interest to like-minded people.
Some examples. Mashable, the Social Media Guide, tweets like crazy all day. The last time I checked this afternoon they had posted 17,243 tweets and they have 1,187,803 followers –it will no doubt be more by the time you read this. The reason so many people follow them is because they are delivering a really valuable service sharing with the world everything they are finding out that might interest those of us into social media.
Andrew Ballenthin is another social networking guru who is worth reading. He has more than 500 LinkedIn connections and his blog attracts between 4,000 and 7,000 pages views every week because what he writes is worth reading.
Dublin Airport has started Tweeting as well. What a fantastic idea to send instant messages to those who are interested about flight delays. I follow BBC Scotland because it gives me regular news updates all day. A restaurant in New York tweets table cancellations. That way, regular customers might get a last minute reservation, and chances are the place is full every night. That’s a sensible business use of Twitter and those who follow that eatery value the information they receive.
Bit of a conflict of interest here, but my partner in Breen Media’s specialist insurance and reinsurance public relations firm rein4ce, Mairi Mallon, tweets as reinsurance girl. In just over two and half months of tweeting, she has attracted 99 followers (and it would be many more if she didn’t delete many of the nutters who follow her at random). It’s not an astronomical amount, but she is very successful. Why, because in her tweets she regularly shares information that is of genuine value to those in the industry and rein4ce is communicating regularly with influential people in our market.
That, at the end of the day, is what separates those public relations practitioners who are using social media innovatively from the pests. Those who perform a real service to their online community by trying to help out by posting high quality content are worth reading and following. Their reputation as experts among their peers grows, traffic to their websites increases, and the long-term effect is more contacts and more business.
So the lesson for PR people remains the same: even in the fog of social media, content is still king.
2.0 allows anyone to post whatever they like on blogs, Twitter and discussion boards with no quality control whatsoever. Twitter is the classic example. The advice from Twitter pioneers to the uninitiated who couldn’t understand why they would want to be bombarded with hundreds of messages every day from random strangers they had decided to follow, was essentially that you have to jump and experience it before you will get any value from it.
No one can possibly read all of these messages so why would you want to receive them? The answer, ultimately, is content. Amid the avalanche of dross from the morons who will follow anyone on Twitter and post meaningless trivia about their lives and their pets, there are real nuggets of extremely valuable information. The reason it is valuable is because the sender has put some thought into and decided it would be of interest to like-minded people.
Some examples. Mashable, the Social Media Guide, tweets like crazy all day. The last time I checked this afternoon they had posted 17,243 tweets and they have 1,187,803 followers –it will no doubt be more by the time you read this. The reason so many people follow them is because they are delivering a really valuable service sharing with the world everything they are finding out that might interest those of us into social media.
Andrew Ballenthin is another social networking guru who is worth reading. He has more than 500 LinkedIn connections and his blog attracts between 4,000 and 7,000 pages views every week because what he writes is worth reading.
Dublin Airport has started Tweeting as well. What a fantastic idea to send instant messages to those who are interested about flight delays. I follow BBC Scotland because it gives me regular news updates all day. A restaurant in New York tweets table cancellations. That way, regular customers might get a last minute reservation, and chances are the place is full every night. That’s a sensible business use of Twitter and those who follow that eatery value the information they receive.
Bit of a conflict of interest here, but my partner in Breen Media’s specialist insurance and reinsurance public relations firm rein4ce, Mairi Mallon, tweets as reinsurance girl. In just over two and half months of tweeting, she has attracted 99 followers (and it would be many more if she didn’t delete many of the nutters who follow her at random). It’s not an astronomical amount, but she is very successful. Why, because in her tweets she regularly shares information that is of genuine value to those in the industry and rein4ce is communicating regularly with influential people in our market.
That, at the end of the day, is what separates those public relations practitioners who are using social media innovatively from the pests. Those who perform a real service to their online community by trying to help out by posting high quality content are worth reading and following. Their reputation as experts among their peers grows, traffic to their websites increases, and the long-term effect is more contacts and more business.
So the lesson for PR people remains the same: even in the fog of social media, content is still king.
Friday 24 July 2009
Why content is still king in good PR
As a former journalist , I’ve come across my fair share of pointless press releases that would never in a million years make it into the paper. You know the type. A blatant piece of self-promotion or a tedious release that has absolutely no news value whatsoever.
It really makes you wonder what on earth that company’s PR team were thinking about sending this stuff out. Or, what is probably the case, the public relations department doesn’t know what it is doing. There is one school of PR practitioners that journalists really hate – the type who think their job is simply to keep saying nice things about their clients. Wrong. While there is undoubtedly a place for good news stories – especially these days – the basic point remains that if you want to get publicity for your client, you have to have a story to tell in the first place.
The best PR people are those who think like journalists. Newsrooms in Scotland and across the UK are under more pressure than ever to produce more content with less staff. The advent of social media and the need to upload quickly onto the internet means reporters are drowning under a tsunami of information and are having to churn out stories at breakneck speed.
This means that intelligent PR operatives have the chance to be a real friend and resource to reporters. Rather than wasting their time firing out the sort of self-serving guff that has spike written all over it, good public relations consultants can make life easier for overworked hacks by giving them proper stories – preferably backed up with a decent picture.
That means good PR people need to manage the expectations of clients and have the courage to tell them that some of their ideas are simply too boring to get any coverage.
News and information is being distributed through a bewildering array of digital and traditional platforms, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that content is still king. It’s surprising how many PR professionals haven’t got that.
To see more of my blogs, go to the Breen Media website
It really makes you wonder what on earth that company’s PR team were thinking about sending this stuff out. Or, what is probably the case, the public relations department doesn’t know what it is doing. There is one school of PR practitioners that journalists really hate – the type who think their job is simply to keep saying nice things about their clients. Wrong. While there is undoubtedly a place for good news stories – especially these days – the basic point remains that if you want to get publicity for your client, you have to have a story to tell in the first place.
The best PR people are those who think like journalists. Newsrooms in Scotland and across the UK are under more pressure than ever to produce more content with less staff. The advent of social media and the need to upload quickly onto the internet means reporters are drowning under a tsunami of information and are having to churn out stories at breakneck speed.
This means that intelligent PR operatives have the chance to be a real friend and resource to reporters. Rather than wasting their time firing out the sort of self-serving guff that has spike written all over it, good public relations consultants can make life easier for overworked hacks by giving them proper stories – preferably backed up with a decent picture.
That means good PR people need to manage the expectations of clients and have the courage to tell them that some of their ideas are simply too boring to get any coverage.
News and information is being distributed through a bewildering array of digital and traditional platforms, but one thing that hasn’t changed is that content is still king. It’s surprising how many PR professionals haven’t got that.
To see more of my blogs, go to the Breen Media website
Monday 20 July 2009
I'm digitally distinct!
I've just done a fantastic online quiz at www.onlineidcalculator.com to find out how distinct my profile is on the web. Found out I'm digitally distinct 'the nirvana of online identity'. Looks like all the time spent on social media is paying off!
Thursday 2 July 2009
Public Relations - a vital tool to beat the recession
In tough economic times, it is tempting for businesses to cut back on the things they believe are dispensable - like training, advertising and public relations.
This is a big mistake. During recessions, businesses in Scotland and throughout the UK need PR and advertising more, not less. Too often, with revenue declining businesses can slip into panic mode, paralysed by fear like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. If your business is thinking this way, chances are, so are your competitors.
With your rivals distracted and their confidence shot to bits, now is the perfect time to move in and steal a bigger share of the market. By hiring a public relations specialist, you can start to dominate media space by spelling out why you are doing so well, thus stealing a significant march on the competition.
Think of the message it sends out. Your business appears like a confident player in the marketplace so you stand out from the crowd - and confident businesses attract customers. Remember the story of Kellogg's? During the Great Depression of the 1930's when his rivals were slashing back their advertising spend, the visionary WK Kellogg doubled his advertising budget. As a result, by the time the good times had returned, Kellogg's totally dominated the market, as they still do today.
The phenomenal growth of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace where millions of consumers are talking about brands in real time means businesses simply cannot afford the option of not having a PR strategy to keep abreast of these conversations and trying to shape the discussions.
Finally, the conditions for raising the profile of successful businesses are good right now, because the media is desperate for good news stories amid all the doom and gloom.
At Breen Media, we recognise that many businesses are struggling and counting every penny, but now is also a time of great opportunity for those companies that are innovative and forward-thinking. These are the types of businesses that need to have a well thought-out PR strategy offered at a competitive price.
For that reason, Breen Media will soon be unveiling a cost-effective public relations offer that can get them started.
Stay tuned for more details.
This is a big mistake. During recessions, businesses in Scotland and throughout the UK need PR and advertising more, not less. Too often, with revenue declining businesses can slip into panic mode, paralysed by fear like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. If your business is thinking this way, chances are, so are your competitors.
With your rivals distracted and their confidence shot to bits, now is the perfect time to move in and steal a bigger share of the market. By hiring a public relations specialist, you can start to dominate media space by spelling out why you are doing so well, thus stealing a significant march on the competition.
Think of the message it sends out. Your business appears like a confident player in the marketplace so you stand out from the crowd - and confident businesses attract customers. Remember the story of Kellogg's? During the Great Depression of the 1930's when his rivals were slashing back their advertising spend, the visionary WK Kellogg doubled his advertising budget. As a result, by the time the good times had returned, Kellogg's totally dominated the market, as they still do today.
The phenomenal growth of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace where millions of consumers are talking about brands in real time means businesses simply cannot afford the option of not having a PR strategy to keep abreast of these conversations and trying to shape the discussions.
Finally, the conditions for raising the profile of successful businesses are good right now, because the media is desperate for good news stories amid all the doom and gloom.
At Breen Media, we recognise that many businesses are struggling and counting every penny, but now is also a time of great opportunity for those companies that are innovative and forward-thinking. These are the types of businesses that need to have a well thought-out PR strategy offered at a competitive price.
For that reason, Breen Media will soon be unveiling a cost-effective public relations offer that can get them started.
Stay tuned for more details.
Friday 26 June 2009
You can have your cake in Dundee - a recipe for PR disaster
I stumbled across this gem this week: Dundee City Council has banned home baking at school fairs on the grounds of - you guessed it - health and safety. But the jobs-worths in whatever over-staffed department deals with health and safety have backed down after angry parents stated the blindingly obvious: home baking is a great way to raise money and poses very little risk. In fact, can anyone recall the last time anyone was killed or injured eating a scone at the school fair?
From a public relations point of view, what does this silly story tell us? Far too many organisations have no grasp whatsoever of commonsense. The crackpot decision from Dundee follows on the heels of other equally absurd nanny state diktats like banning kids from running in the playground in case they hurt themselves.
Health and safety is now a bloated industry whose tentacles reach into every aspect of life. The bossy types who are attracted to this kind of work feel the only way they can justify their very well-paid jobs is by dreaming up more and more annoying ways to tell us how to run our lives.
There is a very simple PR lesson in this that can be applied to all organisations. Every major decision that has an impact on the public has to be thought out in advance to assess the impact it will have on the reputation of that body. I’m not for a moment suggesting some kind of cynical PR spin is put on everything that is communicated to the public – that’s a sure-fire recipe for losing trust with the public because you are not being honest and transparent.
But it shouldn’t take a genius to work out that banning mums and dads from baking cakes for the local primary school is going to do anything other than drive them mad with frustration. The council’s mealy-mouthed statement said the climbdown was due to ‘further consideration of available risk mitigation measures’. Translated from cooncil-speak, I think that means they’ve realised what a fool they’ve made of themselves.
Watch this space for further PR disasters from council bureaucrats.
From a public relations point of view, what does this silly story tell us? Far too many organisations have no grasp whatsoever of commonsense. The crackpot decision from Dundee follows on the heels of other equally absurd nanny state diktats like banning kids from running in the playground in case they hurt themselves.
Health and safety is now a bloated industry whose tentacles reach into every aspect of life. The bossy types who are attracted to this kind of work feel the only way they can justify their very well-paid jobs is by dreaming up more and more annoying ways to tell us how to run our lives.
There is a very simple PR lesson in this that can be applied to all organisations. Every major decision that has an impact on the public has to be thought out in advance to assess the impact it will have on the reputation of that body. I’m not for a moment suggesting some kind of cynical PR spin is put on everything that is communicated to the public – that’s a sure-fire recipe for losing trust with the public because you are not being honest and transparent.
But it shouldn’t take a genius to work out that banning mums and dads from baking cakes for the local primary school is going to do anything other than drive them mad with frustration. The council’s mealy-mouthed statement said the climbdown was due to ‘further consideration of available risk mitigation measures’. Translated from cooncil-speak, I think that means they’ve realised what a fool they’ve made of themselves.
Watch this space for further PR disasters from council bureaucrats.
Friday 19 June 2009
Social networking - here's how it works
If we’re honest, most of us working in PR are still feeling our way through social networking, trying to get a handle on how to get the most from it. Most people seem to be diving into this just because everyone else is and they don’t want to miss the bandwagon, but I’m always on the look-out for practical examples of how it is actually benefitting people and delivering real results to businesses.
I thought I’d share with you the experience I had this month when we launched the new Breen Media website. I’m a big fan of LinkedIn, which I think is the best social networking site for business by miles. I’ve gleaned tons of valuable information from the discussions on the groups I’ve joined and decided to tap into this vast pool of free expert knowledge.
No matter how much work you put into a website there is always room for improvement, so when our site went live earlier this month I posted an appeal on various group sites such as Network of PR Professionals, ThoseinMedia, Public Relations and Communications Professionals, Innovative Marketing, University of Strathclyde and Glasgow Entrepreneurs, asking for feedback - good and bad.
Thankfully, the response was overwhelmingly positive and most people really liked the site. However, and this was where the real value lies, there were many highly constructive comments and insights to make the site even better, which I’ve passed to our web designers, Silkstream, who also did the site for our niche insurance and reinsurance pr company rein4ce. As we speak, the site is being tweaked based on some of the terrific very thoughtful feedback I received from LinkedIn.
This simple exercise delivered so much value to Breen Media. Firstly, a large number of extremely talented professionals worldwide read the website, raising the profile of the business. Secondly, they were kind enough to offer for the free the kind of professional assessment that I would have had to pay a fortune for had I hired a consultant. Thirdly, I’ve connected with many of these people. Finally, and most importantly, I received a number of extremely promising leads from people who looked at the site.
Social networking, when used properly, can be an extremely powerful weapon for PR professionals. From a simple post, I’ve gained invaluable contacts, business leads, driven a huge surge in traffic to our website, and the website is the better for it.
That’s the beauty of social networking.
Tags: Breen Media, rein4ce, Silkstream, Linkedin
Monday 8 June 2009
Hello from Breen Media
I hope you enjoy browsing through the redesigned Breen Media website www.breenmedia.co.uk.
The new site reflects the way our business has fundamentally changed since we set up four years ago. Then, Mairi Mallon and I we were dipping our toes in the waters of freelance journalism in Britain after decades working as staff reporters, offering public relations as a sideline. Now, due to growing demand, all our energies are focussed on using our experience of how the media works to offer PR services that get results.
With who knows how many gazillions of unread words and pixels floating across the internet, I think it’s more important now than ever for businesses to get their message clear – and seen by the right people. Or as jazz legend Charlie Mingus put it: “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
We’ve re-branded the company and have a new logo and a slogan - ‘to the point’- which sums up what we think public relations should be all about.
Thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations from existing clients and people who know and have worked with us in Scotland, the UK and internationally, we’ve continued to win new business - despite the current recession.
We’ve also recently set up rein4ce, a specialist company offering PR and corporate communications to the insurance and reinsurance industries, and have picked up clients in London, Bermuda, the Middle East and Latin America.
I’ll be updating the blog regularly with news about the company, as well as offering any thoughts on media and business issues I think will interest clients - or people simply browsing through - that might help everyone struggle through the recession. And I’ll post any interesting stuff I come across that has cheered me up or made me stop and think.
In the meantime, we’re always looking for ways to improve what we do, so we’d welcome any thoughts you have – good or bad – on the website and the services we offer.
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