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
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Friday, 19 February 2010
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.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Social media - it's great when it works
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
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, 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
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
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
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.
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