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)
Pretty city
Posted Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 7:48pm in Blogging, Off topic | 4 Comments
Back from a great week in New York yesterday. Think I’m suffering from holiday blues as I’m quite sad to be back on British soil actually. Thanks to Youngie and his flatmates, Chase, Mike and Pesey for putting me up in their Upper East Side apartment for the last seven days. Very, very cool people and impeccable hosts.
Thanks also to my personal New York tour guide, Melanie Seasons, for showing me around the city and putting up with my general dumbness. We walked 80 blocks in one day; climbed (took the lift) to the top of the Empire States Building; strolled around Central Park; ate at the place which was voted ‘Best Pancakes in New York‘ and spent a little time shopping. The exchange rate is awesome (if you’re British) at the moment so I had to take advantage of that a little.
I also got to meet some of Paull’s Converseon colleagues including, Constantin (the man, the legend) Basturea and Christi (best darn accent) Eubanks. I owe Constantin dinner as he bought mine not once but twice while I was there. One of those dinners was with social media consultant, Josh Hallett, who I’ve been reading since he was interviewed on FIR over two years ago so obviously great to meet him also.
I met up with one of my old colleagues from Edelman London who’s now “living the dream” at the New York office and even managed to pop into Edelman’s New York EIS office for 10 minutes too.
I get around don’t I?!
My impressions of New York is exactly how I expected. Fantastic. The people are really friendly; the air is surprisingly clean for such a busy city and there are a million things to do there. Awesome. I plan on going back as soon as I can.
Here’s a funny clip Youngie showed me which cracked me up.
Cheap christmas shopping
Posted Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 10:02pm in Blogging, Off topic, PR General | 3 Comments
One last post before I head of to New York. Expect the same volume of posts in the coming week as I’ve shown in the previous - probably none. No big industry news to report but here are a few links.
I want to ride my bicycle
Do you ride a bike? Do you like biking? Are you more eco-friendly than the rest of use petrol guzzling motor vehicle drivers? Then maybe you’ll enjoy spending time with like-minded people over at Me and My Bicycle - a new social network for bike enthusiasts launched by my pal, Ben Ayers - a keen cyclist himself. Ben says: “I bang on enough about the importance of niche social nets so I thought I may as well build one. If you are a cyclist check it out.”
70 percent of communication is done non-verbally
Don’t think that statement is entirely factual to be honest. I’ve heard something similar before but that, I’m afraid, I’ve just made up. Body language is important though. As are a number of other factors when you’re doing a presentation. With that in mind, my mate Andy Wake from Don’t Panic Event Management has produced a pdf ebook with tips and guidance on how to create and deliver a Power Point presentation.
Go and grab it. Check out my post on creating a successful presentation also.
I’ve written nearly two novels
Well, not really, but by my guestimation this blog has at least the same number of words (probably more) than what is required to write a novel. When I was in London, a girl I knew who was actually writing a novel herself told me that 80,000 words are the required minimum. So…
I’ve published 456 blog posts in all the time I’ve been writing this blog - and say I’ve written 300 words, as a rough estimate, for each blog post gives a grand total of 136800 words. Almost two novels! Personally, I think it’s more than but I’ve been generous in allowing for when I’ve simply copied and pasted people’s quotes or when a blog post I wrote contained less than 300 words.
Getting your Wireds crossed
Personally, I thought this didn’t achieve anything. Not something I would have expected from a thought leader, pioneer and Editor in Chief of a respected publication. Disclosure: I know one of the people on the list who I personally think is a good chap and, although I never worked alongside him, is very good at what he does by all accounts.
The Corrs - Toss the Feathers
Remember The Corrs? How good and pretty (except Jim) were/are they? Great piece of Irish folk music.
Link-o-licious
Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 9:31am in Blogging, Media, Off topic, PR General | 8 Comments
Some ideas I have for a post often aren’t long enough for a blog post themselves so it’s probably best to provide you with links. So here they are:
WHERE ARE ALL THE STUDENT PR BLOGGERS?
Seems like there aren’t any these days. Unless, of course, they’re aren’t on my radar? Admittedly I’ve been deleting a lot of my feeds of late so not up to speed on everything. The only new student PR blog I’ve come across lately is by Leeds Met’s Paddy Doyle. What a great name btw. So, here’s the deal again: Point me in the direction of your student PR blog and I’ll gladly link to you and subscribe to it like I’ve just done with Paddy’s.
You get the impression everyone’s too busy blogging with £ signs (Ching ching!) in their eyes to care about the educational side of the medium these days. 
Excluding the few of course.
YOU JUST WOULDN’T GET THIS IN UK POLITICS
No way. Can you imagine anyone taking the time, effort, resources and money to produce a video like this for Gordon Brown or David Cameron? Look at how many views it’s had too. Almost 4 million.
WOM UK ASSOCIATION LAUNCHES
My pal, Stuart Bruce, has been involved with the launch of WOM UK which is the UK’s answer to the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) in the US. Already there are a number of well-known and well-respected PR agency members including Edelman and Frank PR.
If you want to join you can do so by going here. Prices vary. I won’t be joining however. As I noted on Richard Bailey’s blog, the £350 required of me is a bit pricey. And I could be wrong, but the membership fee stucture seems to insinuate that the more money you’re willing to throw at it, the more ‘control’ you have.
Or am I being naive? I could be.
GUARDIAN TURNS ITS 212 YEARS OF NEWSPAPER CONTENT INTO A DIGITAL ARCHIVE
From journalism.co.uk: “Guardian News and Media (GNM) is turning its entire 212 years of newspaper content into an online digital archive. This first phase - available on guardian.co.uk/archive from November 3rd - will consist of content from The Guardian from 1821-1975 and The Observer from 1900-1975.
“Users will have access to exact replicas of the original newspapers, choosing between full page or individual article displays.
“The timespan of the archive will be expanded in early 2008 to cover the whole 212 years of the group’s publishing history, dating back to editions of The Observer from 1791.”
Social media ‘friendly’ releases
Posted Tuesday, October 9, 2007 at 2:55pm in Blogging, Off topic, PR General, Technology | Leave a Comment
It’s all about the Kaizen. That’s why we’ve been working on a few tweaks here and there on our ‘traditional’ ‘bread and butter’ press release distribution. Can you call online press release distribution ‘traditional’? Anyway, traditional or not, what is becoming apparent is that the old style of press release (You know? With a narrative and stuff?) is certainly becoming more social media friendly. And so they should be.
Why? Well, for one thing, we don’t have the blinkers on when it comes to the Social Media News Release. We don’t believe every news announcement is going to be delivered exclusively via SMNR-stylee for the foreseeable future, that’s for sure. When you work on the front lines (joke), you come up against a host of obstacles. Mainly agency and corporate clients saying: “Yeah this is great but it’s not quite for us just yet.” And that’s fine. We’re a distribution company not a Web2.0 company.
However, that’s not to say you can’t add a few social media bells and whistles to a normal online press release. Already there’s the ability to include hyperlinks, video, social bookmarking, Technorati tags and a company RSS feed. Here’s a few more I’ve been involved in implementing over last week:
Social networking video
The ability to add video has always been available on webitpr’s sendit service. However, until now, it was only downloadable video in the form of a wmv, mpeg, avi, mov etc etc. Now, as well as the downloadable video, there’s the ability to add YouTube, Blinkx, Google Video, Vimeo etc video too.
Facebook bookmarking
Probably because I’m living on Facebook I get a kick out of this one the most. Although quite a simple one really. In short, a user lands on a release distributed by us, see’s the Facebook icon, clicks it and boom! It lands directly into that person’s Facebook Mini Feed.
Two more additons to making a ‘traditional’ online press release more social media friendly. Some might argue that our normal press release is indeed a SMNR. I don’t think it is. Sure, it’s got the feeds, hyperlinks, social bookmarks, social network videos etc but it hasn’t got the ability to post a comment (or a comment moderator for that matter), inbound blog links, links to relevant coverage and the branded experience.
But, case in point. This ‘traditonal’ release here has 21 inbound blog reactions and 12 saves in delicious.
It’s all about being social media friendly. As Antony Mayfield once said: “Make your content better, more attractive, findable and shareable.”
Right on.