Friday 26 March 2010
We'v moved our blog - please come and find us
We've moved our blog to our website - please visit us at http://www.breenmedia.co.uk/blog/
Friday 19 February 2010
Is Facebook set to dominate the net?
Is Facebook set to dominate the net?
Every so often, a statistic comes along that is a real game changer for business. Here’s one of them – Facebook now drives more traffic to key sites than Google
Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital has pulled stats from compete.com showing that Facebook is becoming the major source of traffic on the web, overtaking the seemingly omniscient Google in driving people to sites like Yahoo and MSN.
Compete.com go on to say: “This shift is changing the way Web site operators approach online marketing, even as Google takes steps into the social media world. Some experts say social media could become the internet’s next search engine”.
The internet’s next search engine! That’s an earthquake on the business landscape. Ruben argues: “I see them (Facebook) becoming the number one website in the world in under three years. It could eat the web.”
That might be over-stating it, and I am always wary of evangelists who think social media will replace everything. It won’t, but it is an emphatic reminder that social media isn’t some fad for kids, but will be a fundamental part of doing business this decade.
If Facebook is driving more traffic to major sites than Google, it follows that social media platforms will be pushing more and more potential consumers to business websites as well.
It is no longer an option for worried companies to hide their heads in the sand and hope this stuff will go away. Consumers will be chatting about brands online whether businesses like it or not. The challenge for forward-thinking companies is how to get involved and help shape – forget about control as that’s not an option – these conversations.
At Breen Media, we have integrated social media into the heart of our business. The lessons we have learned are allowing us to help businesses combine digital platforms with their traditional public relations and marketing campaigns.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Every so often, a statistic comes along that is a real game changer for business. Here’s one of them – Facebook now drives more traffic to key sites than Google
Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital has pulled stats from compete.com showing that Facebook is becoming the major source of traffic on the web, overtaking the seemingly omniscient Google in driving people to sites like Yahoo and MSN.
Compete.com go on to say: “This shift is changing the way Web site operators approach online marketing, even as Google takes steps into the social media world. Some experts say social media could become the internet’s next search engine”.
The internet’s next search engine! That’s an earthquake on the business landscape. Ruben argues: “I see them (Facebook) becoming the number one website in the world in under three years. It could eat the web.”
That might be over-stating it, and I am always wary of evangelists who think social media will replace everything. It won’t, but it is an emphatic reminder that social media isn’t some fad for kids, but will be a fundamental part of doing business this decade.
If Facebook is driving more traffic to major sites than Google, it follows that social media platforms will be pushing more and more potential consumers to business websites as well.
It is no longer an option for worried companies to hide their heads in the sand and hope this stuff will go away. Consumers will be chatting about brands online whether businesses like it or not. The challenge for forward-thinking companies is how to get involved and help shape – forget about control as that’s not an option – these conversations.
At Breen Media, we have integrated social media into the heart of our business. The lessons we have learned are allowing us to help businesses combine digital platforms with their traditional public relations and marketing campaigns.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Thursday 11 February 2010
Is journalism doomed?
Are we, in the words of Dad’s Army’s Private Frazer “all doomed”? I’m talking, of course, of the future of Scottish journalism.
Talking to ex-colleagues still working in journalism these days, the atmosphere is funereal. It is timely that this week a new online community, The Scottish Future of News Group, has been set up by the Daily Record’s Iain Hepburn, to ponder this prickly question.
At Craig McGill’s recent Scottish Social Media dinner in Glasgow, Iain launched an impassioned defence of the value of journalism. His argument was essentially that unlike the legions of bloggers in their pyjamas whose contributions are little more than opinions, journalists do the hard work of checking out facts to make sure that stories actually stand up.
He’s right, of course. Proper journalism – good old-fashioned digging around, finding out things the authorities don’t want you to know, verifying the facts and then publishing – is a noble calling and serves a very important purpose in public life.
At the same dinner, Stewart Kirkpatrick, editor of Scotland’s latest newspaper, the Caledonian Mercury, claimed there has never been a better time to be a journalist and that we are entering a new golden age for journalism in Scotland. I worked with Stewart at The Scotsman and I glory in his spirit. I wish him all the success in the world with his new venture, but I cannot share his sunny outlook for journalists.
Journalism will evolve into new forms as the contours of the digital revolution become more apparent. Paper may become a thing of the past, people may even, if Rupert Murdoch is correct, be prepared to pay for some of the online stuff they have been used to getting for free for the past few years.
But what journalism will not do, if current trends continue, is pay journalists – certainly new recruits – a decent living wage. Journalism must be one of the few occupations in the world where people entering the profession are paid less in actual terms now than they were 20 years ago. Journalism was once a reasonably well-paid profession. For the past two decades or so, greedy newspaper proprietors have squeezed more and more profits out of the business while wages for new recruits have gone down and down and down.
Newspaper owners have systematically destroyed newsrooms up and down the country. Experienced reporters – with contacts, a nose for a story and proper grammar – have been forced out the door and replaced by cheaper weans willing to work on a shoestring. Today, journalism is a low paid profession with no sign things will get better.
While in the past, the bosses bled the business dry, today, thanks to the advertising slump and declining circulations, they genuinely don’t have the money to pay good salaries. If one of my kids asked about getting into journalism I’d advise them they’d be better off stacking shelves in Tesco – at least there they might eventually earn a decent wage.
Unless media groups can find new and innovative ways of making money from the net, the outlook for journalists is looking grim on the financial side. Good quality journalism that holds a mirror to authority and entertains and informs us is worth paying for. I’d certainly fork out for high calibre information from the likes of the FT and The Economist, and my hunch is that amid the oceans of junk on the internet, there may be a flight towards quality paid-for journalism. That way lies hope. I haven’t worked out what Stewart’s model is for the Caledonian Mercury but I hope he’s cracked the conundrum of how to make money out of online news.
Most journalists are feeling unappreciated, under-paid and unloved – but they still have much to offer. I believe that in the near future, smart businesses and organisations that want to stand out from the rest of the digital dross will realise they need to produce high quality content.
Journalists are excellent communicators with much to offer. The challenge in the future is how to position themselves as providers of top quality content.
We’re not all doomed – we’re just not quite sure where we are going.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Talking to ex-colleagues still working in journalism these days, the atmosphere is funereal. It is timely that this week a new online community, The Scottish Future of News Group, has been set up by the Daily Record’s Iain Hepburn, to ponder this prickly question.
At Craig McGill’s recent Scottish Social Media dinner in Glasgow, Iain launched an impassioned defence of the value of journalism. His argument was essentially that unlike the legions of bloggers in their pyjamas whose contributions are little more than opinions, journalists do the hard work of checking out facts to make sure that stories actually stand up.
He’s right, of course. Proper journalism – good old-fashioned digging around, finding out things the authorities don’t want you to know, verifying the facts and then publishing – is a noble calling and serves a very important purpose in public life.
At the same dinner, Stewart Kirkpatrick, editor of Scotland’s latest newspaper, the Caledonian Mercury, claimed there has never been a better time to be a journalist and that we are entering a new golden age for journalism in Scotland. I worked with Stewart at The Scotsman and I glory in his spirit. I wish him all the success in the world with his new venture, but I cannot share his sunny outlook for journalists.
Journalism will evolve into new forms as the contours of the digital revolution become more apparent. Paper may become a thing of the past, people may even, if Rupert Murdoch is correct, be prepared to pay for some of the online stuff they have been used to getting for free for the past few years.
But what journalism will not do, if current trends continue, is pay journalists – certainly new recruits – a decent living wage. Journalism must be one of the few occupations in the world where people entering the profession are paid less in actual terms now than they were 20 years ago. Journalism was once a reasonably well-paid profession. For the past two decades or so, greedy newspaper proprietors have squeezed more and more profits out of the business while wages for new recruits have gone down and down and down.
Newspaper owners have systematically destroyed newsrooms up and down the country. Experienced reporters – with contacts, a nose for a story and proper grammar – have been forced out the door and replaced by cheaper weans willing to work on a shoestring. Today, journalism is a low paid profession with no sign things will get better.
While in the past, the bosses bled the business dry, today, thanks to the advertising slump and declining circulations, they genuinely don’t have the money to pay good salaries. If one of my kids asked about getting into journalism I’d advise them they’d be better off stacking shelves in Tesco – at least there they might eventually earn a decent wage.
Unless media groups can find new and innovative ways of making money from the net, the outlook for journalists is looking grim on the financial side. Good quality journalism that holds a mirror to authority and entertains and informs us is worth paying for. I’d certainly fork out for high calibre information from the likes of the FT and The Economist, and my hunch is that amid the oceans of junk on the internet, there may be a flight towards quality paid-for journalism. That way lies hope. I haven’t worked out what Stewart’s model is for the Caledonian Mercury but I hope he’s cracked the conundrum of how to make money out of online news.
Most journalists are feeling unappreciated, under-paid and unloved – but they still have much to offer. I believe that in the near future, smart businesses and organisations that want to stand out from the rest of the digital dross will realise they need to produce high quality content.
Journalists are excellent communicators with much to offer. The challenge in the future is how to position themselves as providers of top quality content.
We’re not all doomed – we’re just not quite sure where we are going.
www.breenmedia.co.uk
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Social media fatigue sets in
“I get overloaded. Who has time to look at all this, even in one venue (ie. Facebook?). Can’t explain the ROI to traditional old school print ad clients. I want a model of measurement for each if there is such a thing. I need to take more time to understand it…but think much of it is too time consuming — Twitter is … useless.”
You can just feel the frustration pouring out of the person who posted this message on a LinkedIn group asking people for their biggest challenges using social media.
Other responses included: “Sifting through the noise to find the gems”; and “Time AND cutting through the garbage AND making it 2-way. And, lots a people just selling/hawking.”
I think we are seeing a new phase in social media that is becoming more prevalent – fatigue. For our generation, first there was the bewilderment. Then the fear about how to use it. Most of us followed that up with jumping in enthusiastically to learn how to use it. Now, a growing number of people are so frustrated by the amount of time they are committing to this for very little obvious return that they are simply giving up.
While in some ways this is understandable, it also demonstrates one of the pitfalls of social media – too many people just use these tools for the sake of it without having a clear strategy and goals.
You could easily spend several lifetimes lurking around on these sites clicking through billions of links. You can’t be on every social media site, so for businesses, the trick is to find the sites where you can have meaningful interactions with people who might, some day, become customers.
While it is relatively easy to build up a huge following on Twitter by randomly following thousands of people and attracting a large number of automatic follow-backs, the vast majority, I would bet, are of no use whatsoever. It makes much more strategic sense to build a smaller community of high quality contacts who are contributing useful information – and, of course, contributing yourself.
As a public relations business based in Scotland, we target sites where we can reach out to potential clients, so naturally, we are members of a number of business networking groups. As a graduate of Strathclyde University, I also post my blog on the Strathclyde alumni site and this has proved to be extremely useful.
As a result of posting regularly on this site, I was asked to give a presentation on social media to the MBA class there last week, which was extremely enjoyable. To get the opportunity to speak to a group of people who either are – or will go on to be – very influential business figures, was another great result from our social media activity.
This is exactly the kind of relationship-building that can be achieved if you use social media properly – and it’s why, despite some of the headaches, it is worth sticking with.
You can just feel the frustration pouring out of the person who posted this message on a LinkedIn group asking people for their biggest challenges using social media.
Other responses included: “Sifting through the noise to find the gems”; and “Time AND cutting through the garbage AND making it 2-way. And, lots a people just selling/hawking.”
I think we are seeing a new phase in social media that is becoming more prevalent – fatigue. For our generation, first there was the bewilderment. Then the fear about how to use it. Most of us followed that up with jumping in enthusiastically to learn how to use it. Now, a growing number of people are so frustrated by the amount of time they are committing to this for very little obvious return that they are simply giving up.
While in some ways this is understandable, it also demonstrates one of the pitfalls of social media – too many people just use these tools for the sake of it without having a clear strategy and goals.
You could easily spend several lifetimes lurking around on these sites clicking through billions of links. You can’t be on every social media site, so for businesses, the trick is to find the sites where you can have meaningful interactions with people who might, some day, become customers.
While it is relatively easy to build up a huge following on Twitter by randomly following thousands of people and attracting a large number of automatic follow-backs, the vast majority, I would bet, are of no use whatsoever. It makes much more strategic sense to build a smaller community of high quality contacts who are contributing useful information – and, of course, contributing yourself.
As a public relations business based in Scotland, we target sites where we can reach out to potential clients, so naturally, we are members of a number of business networking groups. As a graduate of Strathclyde University, I also post my blog on the Strathclyde alumni site and this has proved to be extremely useful.
As a result of posting regularly on this site, I was asked to give a presentation on social media to the MBA class there last week, which was extremely enjoyable. To get the opportunity to speak to a group of people who either are – or will go on to be – very influential business figures, was another great result from our social media activity.
This is exactly the kind of relationship-building that can be achieved if you use social media properly – and it’s why, despite some of the headaches, it is worth sticking with.
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