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.
According to a piece on Brand Republic the Guardian is once again the UK’s most popular news website, although the Times online reported the greatest growth with 20.1% month to month. The research has been put together by ABCe and shows that the Guardian had a whopping 23.1 million unique visitors representing a 12% monthly increase.
The Times Online reported 19.6 million unique users, an increase of 92% since August 2007. Delving further into the stats it was interesting to note that of those users, only 6 million were based in the U.K.
Other UK websites that reported growth were, the Telegraph, with a year on year growth of 125%, putting it at 22 million unique users and The Independent’s website saw growth of 0.6%, taking it to 6.6 million unique users.
Not all good news for UK nationals though, as the MailOnline saw a 6.6% decline in unique users down to 17.4 million. Its UK users was also among the lowest at 5.2 million.
Congratulation to Berkeley PR clients Bluefish Communications, Digital Window, Reading Room and OCG on yet again being recognised for their continued success by being listed in today’s Sunday Times Tech Track 100 lists. All four of these companies are proving that even as the economy turns down, if you have a great service/product and the right team you can still record fantastic results.
Doug McLean, CEO at OCG even got his photo in the listing after a successful and funny photo shoot with the Berkeley team. Well done guys and gals.
A little longer than I care to admit I was sent a new presentation gadget Papershow to trial and blog about. Well after looking at the box under a massive pile of paper on my desk for a few weeks and a new business pitch on the horizon decided I would give it a go and boy, am I glad that I did. This gadget is very cool.
I had looked on the website which shows the demo above showing a chap drawing on a pad of paper with an actual pen and everything you see on the pad appears on the computer screen and ultimately beamed onto the wall. When I told some of my colleagues about this they couldn’t believe that it would actually work in this way as fast as shown on the clip. They were wrong.
It is incredibly easy to set up, you literally pop the dongle into your laptop/PC and away you go. You simply draw or write on the pad and as you do, it automatically appears on the screen. The pad of paper you receive has a series of symbols down the right hand side which if you tap the pen on, allows you to change the thickness of the pen, the colour of the ink, delete lines or create perfect shapes. All very impressive and easy to use.
The range is also excellent – you don’t have to be positioned right beside the dongle. In fact this is one of the nice features as it is possible to pass the pad around the room or even allow you to stroll around the room while you write. A feature my boss particularly likes as he doesn’t like to sit still during a presentation.
For those of you who have used flip charts will also be pleased to know that you can save each page directly onto the computer and it is easy to scroll back and forth through the pages should you choose.
An additional feature I have not had a chance yet to play with is the ability to print out PowerPoint presentations onto its paper and as you run through the slides you can then circle around or highlight points you are discussing.
As you may gather, I love this gadget and am quite upset that I have to send it back to them but will definitely be making sure Berkeley buy one when they are finally available. When it is available you will be able to get your hands on one for around £99.99 excluding VAT and Papershow expect it to be available from www.datamind.co.uk and www.paperiq.com from mid-October, then all leading office stationery suppliers from January.
At Berkeley, as at most technology PR agencies up and down the country, we provide media training for our clients. The main aim of this is to educate our clients as to what makes an interesting story, the importance of knowing your audience and the basic dos and don’ts of a press interview.
The part that clients don’t particularly like but is always the most beneficial part - when the camera comes out. We always like to film the interviews. This puts a little extra pressure on the client so they genuinely have to be on top of their game when answering questions, they also have proof of where they went wrong which can be played back to them. It also allows them to see the little things we all do which can be off putting during an interview. The sort of thing I mean is saying um a lot, playing with your hair or generally fidgeting.
I have done this as part of my own presentation training in the past and will put my hands up to say I find it an excruciating experience but always beneficial. So a big hat tip to Will sturgeon, formally of Silicon.com fame and now at Lewis for being brave enough to post this video on his blog.
It is well worth watching and had me laughing my head off, although be warned his language is probably worthy of a 15 certificate so don’t let the kids watch. I think I found it so amusing because I have worked on a couple of pitches recently and during the practice runs in our board room have heard myself saying similar things to Will such as “what am I talking about? that is absolute rubbish and damn it I have said that already!.”
That said, I usually find that when the old adrenaline gets pumping everything goes alright on the night.
After a nice long weekend with the wife I am just getting back up to speed with everything and have just seen that the Telegraph has launched a merger of its business and personal finance sections into one page. This is a continuation it would seem from its re-design work which has seen new looks for the news, sport and travel sections.
According to Paul Farrow, digital personal finance editor, Telegraph.co.uk: “Financial news has never mattered more. We wanted to strengthen our business coverage by looking at the reasons behind financial developments but also at how they directly affect the consumer.”
At first glance it seems to be easy to navigate and I like the breakdown of news into sectors.
I am terrible at logging my expenses every month and am quite sure that like a lot of other technology PR professionals I routinely diddle myself out of a few quid each month. I always seem to lose my receipts and I am sure I am not the only person to experience this problem.
This is why when I came accross SnapExpense I thought a few of you out there might be interested.
How does it work? You simply take a picture of your receipt with your phone as soon as you recieve it and e-mail it to your office with a note on what the expense was. This is then filed into what ever accounting system your office uses. The cool part of this is that you can then throw your receipts away as HMRC has stated: “Your company will not need to keep the original records if all the information they contain is kept in a legible and acceptable alternative such as on an optical imaging system”.
I have just decided enough was enough and it was about time that I reminded myself what my desk actually looks like so decided to plough through the forest of paperwork thrown all over it and file (in the bin) or bin everything. While doing this I remembered a picture on Will Self’s website which is pretty similar to what I look at most days.
Why was I on Will’s site? Well I saw this quote from him in The Independent last week on writers block and thought I would print it out and keep it on the wall in front of me so I can show it to the next exec who complains about having to do so much writing.
“I have never experienced writer’s block. Writing is a muscular action and, like any other, all you need to do is exercise the muscles. I don’t even think of it as writing – it’s typing.’ Will Self, novelist and columnist. Well said.
Surely this is one of the easiest parts of the job. Well that said, I am still shocked at how badly written some press releases are. When writing a press release I always think it is important to remember contrary to what most clients believe they are not the most important part of the story. When people want to read a story they want to know what is interesting, why they should care and what difference it will make to their life – not the company involved.
With this in mind I stumbled upon a potentially cool tool on Robin Wilson’s blog which could be useful to show junior members of your team or anyone else out there who is interested to understand the quality of their press writing skills. Robin explains that this handy online tool called ‘press release grader’ (how did they come up with such a name?) grades your press release. You paste your press release into various boxes and the software does its stuff and gives you a grade.
As a belated birthday present for the brother in law Jon, the wife and I arranged for the family to go on a tour of the Houses of Parliament which I have to say is a brilliant trip and well worth the money if you ever get the chance. The reason I mention this is because something struck me during the tour which was particularly true to my working week.
The tour guide explained that when votes are made within the house of commons this has to be done in person and manually rather than take advantage of technology. There are many reasons for this but one of the most important ones is the opportunity it presents to junior or members of the house who are lower down the food chain to actually meet and discuss their ideas with cabinet members. It offers the chance for a lesser known politician to raise the concerns of his constituents to the powers that be, in an attempt to get it on their radar as much as winning the respect of his own constituents by being able to say he has spoken to X politician and they will be looking into it.
In a week where I spent Tuesday on the road visiting a number of journalists, went for drinks in the evening with a new client to get to know the team better, took some journalists to the excellent Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House and attended a black tie dinner and party for an other client with some journalists I have again seen the value in face to face contact.
I have always been someone who prefers to pick up the phone rather than just send an email as it helps build that relationship. Unless you have spoken to a journalist on the phone or met them how can you answer your clients question of “what is X like then?” It would just be impossible to give a true and honest.
Some of the best journalists I deal with on occasions are particularly aggressive during interviews and take the stance of being argumentative. I always like this as it shows they are being professional, have done their research and are looking for a story which will be more interesting than just writing up the press release. But, this is the sort of thing I can only know from having met with them in the past, or have spoken to them on many occasions. I would not know this just from reading their work….well in most cases anyway.
But meeting face to face is not just important with journalists. Meeting clients to exchange ideas, show them the sort of person you are and to give them faith not only in your ability to generate coverage but also in your ability to represent their company as a whole.
A common moan I hear from PR professionals is X client doesn’t respect me. Well, respect has to be earned and if I was going to be paying a retainer fee I would want to feel comfortable in the abilities of said PR professional to represent my company and manage my relationships with the media in a way that won’t embarrass or hurt my company’s reputation.
Technology is vital when it comes to communicating, but in exactly the same way as at the Houses of Parliament, meeting face to face to exchange ideas, build relationships and win respect for your clients or yourself is also unbelievably important.
