My week in media

Posted Friday, December 28, 2007 at 4:19pm in Blogging, Media, PR General | 8 Comments

Ged’s tagged me with a new meme - My Week in Media - taken from Seventy Seven PR’s Media Watch blog where, now and again, the company’s staff detail what they’ve read, watched, listened to or surfed over the past week. Or, in some instances, over the past month. Ged’s already noted down his week in media and asked me, along with a others, to detail our past week’s media consumption.

It’s a bit tricky differentiating what I’ve ‘read’ from what I’ve ’surfed’ because I generally read 90 percent of content online. So for the purpose of this exercise I’m going to class everything hardcopy as what I’ve ‘read’ and the media I’ve read online as what I’ve ’surfed’.

What I’ve read

I’m currently reading Michael Palin’s New Europe which was given as a Christmas present. The book is taken from the BBC series of the same name where Palin, of Monty Python fame, travels around 20 countries in Eastern Europe. Something that wasn’t possible prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

A few months ago I signed up for a free trial of financial magazine, Money Week. Thing is, the free trial expired long ago and I now pay for it because I added my bank details upon sign up. Why anyone in my position reads an investor magazine is beyond me but the content’s pretty good and I consider it one of the de facto publications that has an understanding what’s going on in the credit markets. And for a previously-wannabe-homeowner like myself I generally take their advice on the housing market as gospel and what they have to say about the current financial/housing markets isn’t pretty. Recession anyone?

What I’ve watched

I’m not a massive TV watcher so this section is a little light but I have been finding the Austin Stevens Snakemaster programmes on Channel 5 good. I’d never heard of Stevens prior but the man is fearless of snakes. Any kind of snake. His Wikipedia entry is here and here’s a video on YouTube of him being bitten by a cobra.

What I’ve listened to

For entertainment purposes I like listening to the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show in the morning. The man is funny. You can’t beat a bit of northern wit.

I’ve also rediscovered podcasts and in the past week have just subscribed to a number of them (generally from mainstream media publications) via iTunes. These are The Economist, The Future of Business from the Times Online, Media Talk from the Media Guardian, Forbes.com’s Notes on the News and Reuters’ Breaking News: Europe.

What I’ve surfed

Phew! Where do I start? Excluding the 150+ blogs I read, the new RSS feeds I’ve recently subscribed to and have read are: The Moscow Times, CNN Europe, Time Top World Stories, New York Times homepage and The Japan Times. My New Year’s resolution is to try to have an awareness of what’s going on globally. How long they stay in my RSS reader remains to be seen but I’m enjoying reading them so far. Particularly the Moscow Times.

No, seriously, I am.

Don’t Panic Guide to Crisis Comms

Posted Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 8:23pm in Business, Media, PR General | 6 Comments

THE MARRIOTT HOTEL, REGENTS PARK, LONDON (MAP)

FRIDAY 25 JANUARY 2008

Link: The Don’t Panic Guide to Crisis Communications is a one day conference which will explore the skills needed to successfully respond, manage and survive a crisis and protect the reputation of your company or organisation. Following on from the success of this year’s Manchester event, the conference will now visit London and brings together an unmissable line up of communications professionals including:

Michael Bland, Michael Bland Communication Consultancy

Kevin Bocquet, former BBC journalist

Stephen Davies, webitpr

Heather Edwards, Head of Communications, Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust

Sarah Dean Forrester, Trimedia Harrison Cowley

Andy Green, Green Communications

Phil Hall, Phil Hall Associates

Paul Kelly, CEO, Trimedia Harrison Cowley

Lucy Laville, Leeds Metropolitan University

Louise Oughton, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Dacorum Borough Council

Rob Skinner, Chief Press Officer, First Direct

Sally Sykes, Head of Communications, AstraZeneca

Tickets for the conference are priced at £295 + VAT or £250 + VAT for charities and early booking before 31.12.07.

For event booking and further information please contact Nicky or Andrew at Don’t Panic on 01706 828855 or alternatively places can be securely booked online at www.dontpanicprojects.com/booking.htm

Analyse your FeedBurner feeds better

Posted Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 10:05pm in Blogging, Media, PR General, Technology | 2 Comments

Blog Perfume has came up with a nifty new tool called Feed Analysis (currently in version 1.1) that allows you to analyse the data from your FeedBurner feed more comprehensively than your FeedBurner account currently allows. Built using the FeedBurner API, it’s a simple case of adding your FeedBurner URL and Feed Analysis will do the rest.

Included in the analysis is the estimated worth of your blog and a guide on how much you can charge for a banner ad. Not sure how this is worked out?

Further down in the analysis it also shows the number of subscribers per month your blog’s received. As well as this it details how many additional subscribers you’ve gained (or lost) per month. It also gives the monthly increase range along with the average increase.

My worst month over the last year was July where I gained only nine new subscribers.

The second chart gives you the number of daily subscribers, hits, views and clicks. If you scroll your mouse over the graph it gives you stats for each date also. Although, as you can see, mine isn’t showing any clicks or views. Either there’s a bug in the software or this blog isn’t very engaging.

Below this graph it gives you stats on the growth rate of your subscriber base and even predicts how many subscribers you’ll have after three, six and twelve months. As you can see it says I’ll have 1,634 after 12 months. Personally, I reckon I’ll have more but that may just be me being a little cocky.

The final chart which takes shape of a pie chart gives you the number of subscribers per day in a seven day week and then details which day is the best and worst for RSS performance. My best day is Wednesday and worst is Saturday which, from my own experience, is certainly true.

It states on Blog Perfume that “Feed Analysis may not be complete and perfect at the moment because it is in an early stage. We need your opinions and suggestions so that Feed Analysis can evolve to provide more accurate stats and prediction. Any suggestions and opinions are welcome.”

It’s still pretty useful even though it’s early days and I wouldn’t be surprised if Google/FeedBurner snapped this up. Or at least integrated their own version into FeedBurner. Metrics are becoming increasingly important in the PR/marketing game and Feed Analysis provides a much more detailed look at your RSS subscribers than previously possible. Well, you could have done it all manually but it would be a pain in the ass.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Couple-o-things

Posted Wednesday, December 5, 2007 at 9:03pm in Media, Off topic, PR General | Leave a Comment

Here are a few bits and pieces that’s been going on in my professional life of late.

ITV SMNR

As mentioned in Mad.co.uk and BrandRepublic, ITV has begun issuing SMNRs (using webitpr) to the online audience. The first one went out last week which detailed the ITV2 winter schedule. It includes an introduction from Michelle Ryan, formerly of Eastenders and now star of American show, Bionic Woman, which is also part of the winter line up. As far as I know, ITV is the first broadcaster to be using such releases. More to come too. And of course we’re chuffed.

Ben wrote his thoughts about it over on his blog also.

SMS TEXT NEWS UNLIMITED DRINKS

Attended my first SMS Text News Unlimited Drinks event the other night while I was in London. Really good to meet Ewan again and also some other movers and shakers in the mobile space. In a word ‘wow’ - chatting to a few mobile industry insiders about the mobile products they’re involved with and there’s no doubt that the mobile space will be bursting with life changing applications in the near future. Like the internet, mobile phones are in their infancy and the possibilities are endless, quite literally. A few years from now we’ll all be laughing about how we were in awe of the iPhone and its touch screen, wi-fi and easy access to YouTube.

And, yes, Unlimited Drinks does what it says on the tin and, yes, I did have more than one. Thanks Ewan! Full write up here.

The Verve - Lucky Man (turn it up, turn it up loud)