Humbled
Posted Sunday, April 30, 2006 at 3:47pm in Blogging | 9 Comments
If you are currently studying one of the many UK PR courses accredited by the CIPR I must warn you that there’s a high chance I might be popping through your letter box in the coming weeks. What do I mean? Well, the next edition of Behind the Spin magazine is featuring yours truly’s mug on the front cover.
I’m really sorry about that, and I do apologise, but hey, you can always draw a funny moustache on me, or rip it off and use it as a dart board, and still read the great content inside.
< sarcasm >“So why are you on the front cover?” I hear you all ask in anticipation and excitement < /sarcasm >. Well this edition is about…you guessed it, PR and technology, and senior PR and journalism lecturer at the University of Sunderland, Philip Young, has written an excellent piece on the new skills students may need and how they can use them to their advantage - using myself as an example.
I’m humbled. Really, I am. Especially when I read who is quoted in the feature: Tom Murphy, Stuart Bruce, CIPR president, Tony Bradley (who I work part-time for), Neville Hobson and global HR director at LEWIS, Carol-Ann White.
Sorry, if this is a self-complimenting post, but it’s **my** blog and I graduate soon so I’ve got to do all the shameless self-promoting as possible. (Am I a stogger Jon? 
)
But I’m looking at it from the bigger picture. Think about it. This publication goes out to the majority (if not, all) PR students in the UK. Many of these will be trying to raise their profile just like the great work Alex and Chloe are doing at the moment. We’re bound to see an influx of new PR student blogs…well, I hope so, and I’d be willing to help out in any way I can. Even just pointing people to a few helpful websites like prblogs.org and Forward could help.
Anyway, you can read the piece online on Philip’s blog and also read Richard Bailey’s great contribution, titled PR graduate 2.0.
Have a nice May Day.
Technorati tags:
pr, public+relations, behind+the+spin, stephen+davies
The UK needs a Spinfluencer
Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 11:59am in Blogging, Media | 7 Comments
Do you get tired of listening to podcasters interviewing bloggers? Or podcasters interviewing podcasters? Or bloggers interviewing social media experts? Or bloggers interviewing (so called) A-listers? Or…it goes on and on.
I know I do. Why? Because it becomes a tad monotonous. Why interview a blogger when you pretty much know what they think about social media if you already read their blog? It’s quite similar to evangelising social media only online. It’s preaching to the already converted. It’s probably why I’m increasingly enjoying the On the Record…Online podcast by Spinfluencer, Eric Schwartzman.
For those that don’t know, Schwartzman interviews a number of high-profile media types who aren’t usually associated with blogging, podcasting or any other social media. People like web usability guru, Jakob Nielson to CNN news anchor, Renay San Miguel. There’s even an interview with the “nightlife guru of Hollywood’ in there. The interesting part of the interviews is Schwartzman tends to slip the social media angle in - which is always good for the already ‘converted’.
Now, for any UK readers, wouldn’t it be good if the UK had its own Spinfluencer? I think so. There’s a load of people working in the UK media that would be great interviewees, and no doubt it would benefit to hear their take on this ‘change that is taking place.’
Do they believe the hype? Do they feel threatened by it? Are they accommodating for the change? What’s their opinion on it all?
So who’s up for it? Anyone?
Sidenote: Yes, LEWIS is going great. I’m working with some really, really smart people. Makes me realise how much I have to learn!
Sidenote 2: No, I haven’t got an Internet connection at the place I’m staying, so I’m writing this at work. But it’s okay, as Jon told me to.
Off to London
Posted Friday, April 7, 2006 at 10:11pm in Blogging, Off topic, PR General | 10 Comments
Depending on my accommodation being internet connected, things will get a little quiet around here for three weeks as I’m off to London, or LEWIS PR to be exact, for my internship.
Flight leaves tomorrow lunch time, and like always, I’ve packed far too many items. I just know the guy/gal at the check-in desk is going to slap a fine on me. Sometimes you can get away without paying if you tell them you’re never ever coming back. Honest, sometimes they believe you and let your luggage straight through.
Really looking forward to it. Meeting up with some Cyprus buddies too, so that should be good. I’m also planning to be a weekend tourist and see the sights… well, it would be rude not to. I just know the Tube and I won’t see eye-to-eye. I’ve got the Sting song, Englishman in New York playing in my head, but my version is ‘Geordie in London’. Heh!
Coincidentally, this is my 300th post and it will be my blog’s first birthday on April 20. Aaah, hasn’t it grown? They grow up so fast these days don’t they?
Anyway, enough of my self-absorbedness and on to give you, dear reader (hi mam), something of value.
As mentioned last week, the new communications magazine, CorpComms asked me if I would like to receive some back issues to which I replied yes. Never being one to turn down a freebie, I received them today and have to say the content looks impressive. The design looks great too. A lot different from PR Week and PR Business.
But if I’m totally honest, I haven’t had a chance to read them (I will on the plane tomorrow) but I believe Simon Collister will be reviewing it soon.
It would be great if poor students (ahem) did receive future copies (ahem) so he/they could get a good grasp of the magazine (ahem) and its content. No doubt it would help with his/their studies and beyond? 
Like Baby Shambles? Killamangiro?
AllPeers beta released - invites available
Posted Tuesday, April 4, 2006 at 6:56pm in Technology | Leave a Comment
I’ve just received an email invite to try the beta version of the new Firefox extension, AllPeers. For anyone that doesn’t know, AllPeers uses P2P (bittorent) technology that allows you to share movies, pictures, documents, music etc with anyone in your buddy network and likewise they can do the same with you.
What’s more, even if your friend(s) is offline, you can still access the files they’ve allowed you see. Being a bittorent client means you can instantly share large files without the hassle of waiting for them to download. It’s been reported that they’re introducing a chat and voip function in the near future too. Sounds good.
After receiving the invite I tried to sign up pretty much straight away but the registration page said this: “AllPeers is all about sharing, so it isn’t much fun using it by yourself. To get activation keys for some of your friends, please provide their email address below. These email addresses will be used only to generate the appropriate activation keys. We will never send unsollicited mail to any of these addresses or provide them to any other company.”
Makes sense, so if you want to test it out, use the contact form below or leave a comment in the usual place. Ideally, I need three people to share with and preferably I’d like to be familiar with the people/bloggers I’m testing it with.
Maybe organisations that have a network of bloggers could find this extension handy to quickly relay files and information to one another? Or you work for a company that has offices in different locations? Or you’re working with a client based in a different location to yourself. Or you’re working on a group research project? Any other ideas?
TechCrunch has a pretty good review on it or you can check out the AllPeers website.
Technorati tags:
allpeers
UK online advertising “explosion”
Posted at 8:11am in Media | 1 Comment
eMarketer is reporting that the total UK online advertising expenditure in 2005 shot up by 65% from 2004. It says: “(online advertising) surpassed all initial expectations in 2005, reaching £1.4 billion ($2.5 billion), a 65.6% increase on 2004. This represents close to 8% of all UK advertising spending in 2005.”
It goes as far as to say that with a 7.8% market share, the Internet is now just as much a part of UK mainstream advertising as the newspapers. Not sure about that one? Anyone?
“In fact, if online advertising in the UK stays on track, the UK Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimates that it will overtake national press advertising by the end of this year.
“A recent article in The Times quoted Paul Pilkington, a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, as saying that, far from slowing down, online advertising is likely to surpass £2 billion ($3.6 billion) in 2006.”
Although advertising across all platforms fell by nearly £200 million in 2005, this large increase online pushed total advertising spend up 2.5% from 2004.
Search advertising saw the highest increase:
I wonder what the stats show for this year?