Paul Stallard is a PR professional at Berkeley PR, a technology PR agency based in Reading, where he also contributes to its technology PR blog. Please note that this blog is written in a personal capacity and does not necessarily reflect the views of Berkeley PR….although they all read it.
Thankfully we are going great guns at the moment at Berkeley PR and have signed a raft of exciting new clients. With this has brought the need to expand our team so we are looking for an experienced PR account manager. If up to 26 days holiday plus the whole of Christmas and New Year, extra day off for your holiday, pension, private health care scheme and one month’s paid sabbatical after four years sounds interesting then please don’t hesitate to contact either Jo Jamieson (jo.jamieson@berkeleypr.co.uk) or myself (paul.stallard@berkeleypr.co.uk).
Finding the right person is always tough but an exciting process. I love sitting opposite someone during an interview and wondering whether this is someone that I am going to end up working with and ultimately bouncing ideas off. I am always interested to see what other companies do to attract staff so was quite amused to recieve a press release the other day from Midlands PR agency Smarts who is running a apPRentice search for talent.
The agency is offering up for grabs a six month contract and wants candidates of all ages, backgrounds and experience to apply.
The Midlands ApPRentice is a fantastic opportunity for the right person to get a step onto the PR ladder. Smarts is keen to tap into the multitude of talents that people in the Midlands have. With many people out of work at the moment, through no fault of their own, we want to do something positive and give someone the chance to start a career in PR.
The winning candidate could be of any age or background. For example, they might have previously worked in manufacturing or the automotive sector. They will have strong skills which can be used in the PR industry. This position would be perfect for someone who has always wanted to retrain – we really are looking for that uncut diamond.
Quite a funny stunt and I wish them all the luck in the world finding a candidate this way. To get a Smarts application form email them on talent@smarts.co.uk )
I wonder how many from the automotive industry will be applying for the a role at a PR agency?
I was looking at where my traffic had come from this afternoon on the blog and saw that quite a few had been directed from the WIRED blog.
Intrigued I followed the link back to see that it was written by David BakerS who had participated in one of my meet the media interviews.
Apparently one of the questions I asked him about whether he had changed his writing style at all to incorporate SEO struck a cord. At the time he asked what is SEO but has subsequently been looking into the power of this practice and how it can help businesses and more importantly journalists. As David says:
It’s easy for Silicon Roundabout types to be snooty about the SEO business. It somehow challenges the purity of what they are trying to do. But then you go home and casually find a plumber by typing not much more than “plumber” in the little box in Firefox, and you see there’s something in it after all.
The world is changing. A lot of PR professionals are having to change the way that they work and deal with the online world but let’s not forget that we are not the only cog in the mechanism that are going through this evolution. So are journalists.
This week I was invited to take part in a PR Week video interview about the recent Apple iPad launch. An interesting experience and one that has given me added sympathy for clients who participate in interviews.
What is the biggest secret that you have failed to keep? Considering that I am terrible with secrets this has the potential to be a long post. Rest assured. It won’t be. My nature is to shout about the positive things that happen around me so I find it very hard not to tell everyone about new client wins at Berkeley PR or pitches we are working on because I love the work we do.
However, the first thing I always tell a client on a press briefing day is to remember to only tell a journalist something that you want to see in the press. I always admire clients who are working on an incredibly exciting piece of technology or a groundbreaking solution but have to keep it under their belt until the official launch. I know a number of them struggle, especially when the journalist is pushing for more information about future plans for company. With that in mind, imagine what the Apple team must have felt like trying to keep the iPad details secret?
That said, most people are not Apple. The reality is that the media just are not interested in what you have to say so you have to be clever about how you create a story and distribute it.
In recent years savvy pr and marketing teams have also seen the value of not keeping a secret. Companies that understand the power of online have started to drip feed announcements to a few select journalists and bloggers to feed the buzz around a product. If you choose the right bloggers or influential journalists companies have realised that these contacts can tell many and spread the word fast. You only have to see how fast a trending story on Twitter spreads to understand how quickly a news story can be distributed if it is of interest and someone with the level of influence you respect recommends you read the story.
Does this mean that we are in an age where embragos are dead and relationships with influencers rule? I personally think that unless you are a company where you know that the media can’t afford to follow you then this certainly is the case.
Similar to most people I was very lucky to get a load of books for Christmas and am slowly working my way through them. Two of them –Bit of a blur by Alex James and Gonzo the life of Hunter S Thompson by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour – have been writen in a style that reminds me of blog writing. Instead of chapters there are a series of posts based around subjects or by different contributors.
The result is that the books were both engageing and easy to read. Mainly because they got straight to the point and there is no filling just to hit word counts. I found it particularly interesting that this style of writing is becoming more prevelant at a time when so many PR bloggers are abandoning their blogs in favour of Twitter.
Writing is a skill that requires exercising and blog writing allows someone to share ideas and find their voice which is why I think it is such a shame that so many people are abandoning their blogs. I recently reviewed Matthew Watson’s top PR blog list and realised that most don’t write about PR or blog so infrequently it is hardly worth visiting from month to month.
Some of the top thinkers in our industry first tested their ideas on blogs to get input or formalise ideas before they unleashed them in fantastically successful books. Robert Scoble, David Meerman Scott and Seth Godin are just three faboulous examples of authors and thinkers who trialed ideas on their blogs before going on to release best selling books.
If these guys recognise the power of blogs and mainstream books are now copying this style of writing, why are so many UK PR professionals not bothering with this medium?
This is one of the funniest blog posts I have read for some time. The five signs that you are a social media douchebag is well worth a read. My colleague Jo Jamieson and I were chatting yesterday about the language that is used in marketing circles these days and how it is fast becoming on a par with or worse than the acronym hell that is the telecom space.
Hey man, what do you do?
I leverage insights.
No, seriously. What’s your day job?
I put brands at the forefront of social media revolution.
Come on people, we all know you are clever but why do you have to sound like a douchebag?
It has been a busy start to the week with a number of new business pitches and review meetings. One question I have heard a couple of times is what should we be doing with social media?
We have seen our competitors have a Facebook page so should we have one also?
I’m sure a number of PR agencies would see the dollar signs and start drafting their proposals. However, I don’t believe digital campaigns should never be measured by spikes in traffic or sales however nice these are, but should be seen as a part of the service the company offers.
If by having an extra channel to potential customers clients can provide a customer service that is superior to competitors it will make them stand out from the crowd. By generating customer delight or by providing a service that is second to none online, companies can make digital a success regardless of what sector they are in or the demographic they are targeting. This is a point I made recently on the Berkeley blog after seeing that Umbro had started using Twitter.
I was on holiday last week and recieved an email from one of the journalists who had taken part in my meet the media series. The journalist in question explained that one of their colleagues was conducting an interview with a software company and was subsequently contacted by the PR who arranged the call to complain about them typing during the call.
What a shame. Surely the journalist was just taking notes so I can’t understand what the problem is. Having sat on a call this afternoon and having had to take down two pages of written notes understand how hard it is. My arm felt like it was about to fall off and I was begging for a keyboard.
I personally think that the PR who complained was a total pratt. Why complain? The publication is never going to want to deal with your agency again and if they lose their “massive” client they have just lost an important contact for all their other clients. In addition they have made our industry look foolish and not helped the cause.
You only need to follow a series of journalist and PR people on Twitter to see that the relationship between both parties can be a love hate relationship. Most PR and journalists understand the need for each other but once every two weeks there seems to be a new spat with one or the other trying to bad mouth the other. More often than not I find the whole thing a little embarrassing especially when the shouts of “name and shame” start coming from the masses.
Why do both sides continue to antagonise each other? Having interviewed some of the most influential journalists in our industry I believe that I understand their pet hates and don’t think it is that hard to avoid them. We all make the odd honest mistake but this culture of naming and shaming or complaining to bosses to get people in trouble is just sad to observe. What is the point?
There was a groan of disbelief in the BerkeleyPR office this afternoon as someone read out that more snow is expected in our part of the world on Wednesday. Now last week while the wife, Mae and I were on holiday, it was brilliant. I built a snowman, made many silly video clips using my flip camera and strolled around and enjoyed the scenery…brilliant fun.
What a contrast from the previous week where I couldn’t get my car out of its parking space and definitely couldn’t get it to good ol Reading. as a result I had no option but to work from home for a few days.
This is nothing new and I often do so when I have some writing to do and need some peace and quiet. At Berkeley PR we have all of the tools needed to enable us to work from home…..I just don’t like it.
Yes, I probably saved a great deal of time by working in the morning while I would have been in my car battling through the blizzard but I found the experience quite off putting. I love the noise of the office and the convenience of shouting across the office to a colleague when I have a question rather than going through the process of trying to get them to answer their phone. The wife wasn’t as willing to make a cup of coffee as Luke in the office and Mae certainly couldn’t tell me who the features editor at Marketing Week was when I had a memory failure like Hannah could.
I also missed the library available in the office. When ever we write any copy at Berkeley we like to produce it in the style of the publication we are targeting. This is always harder when you can’t put a couple of recent issues in front of you.
So in conclusion, although I can and often do I just don’t enjoy working from home and have all of my fingers crossed that the promised snow for Wednesday doesn’t appear. What about you?
Social media guru is a term that if I see I generally think…hmm really. So this week when an interview with yours truly was published calling me a social media guru I wasn’t too comfortable with it. Addict maybe but not a guru.
That said the interview was great fun and outlines what one of my typical working days is like. It is part of a series of interviews with some personalities in the PR industry so I am chuffed to be included alongside them. You can see it here on the PR Moment site, the wife has, and it looks like I might not get away with pretending to be asleep any more.
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