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.
While catching up on my reading after a month out of the loop playing happy families I came across a link on Brendan Cooper’s blog to a piece on Mashable about ROI with social media. An excellent read and Christina Warren the author has hit the nail on the head in my eyes. As she points out at the start according to a survey they ran 84 per cent of social media programs don’t measure ROI and companies don’t know where to start.
All too often you hear people talk about social media tools as a time waster or a client has heard Stephen Fry talk about Twitter and wants to know how they can use it. Christina’s article has been designed to outline how users of social media can determine ROI.
In the meantime, Oliver Blanchard’s Social Media ROI Presentation above which also came from the same piece is well worth flicking through. It is a little long but good use of comedy pictures help give an introduction as to why ROI with social media is essential.
I found a cool idea for a site while mucking about this afternoon catching up on some reading. The site is called Your Pitch Sucks (don’t beat about the bush!) which has been designed by someone who had hit a brick wall a few times when sending out pitches to the media.
He figured out eventually that it wasn’t his ideas, products or service but in fact his pitch. As a result of this, Your Pitch Sucks was born.
The idea behind the service is simple. You join the free member’s community, submit a pitch designed for the media and sit back and wait for feedback from the network. The plan being that by having a few more eyes check your work they will help give you some pointers to ensure your pitch is perfect before you send it out.
I like the sound of the service but I suppose the strength of it will depend on how good the feedback is you receive from the community. As a result I am going to ask one of our execs at the day job to try the service out this week and I am sure they will write up their findings on the Berkeley blog before the end of the week. Follow me on Twitter to find out when.
After a few days away in Cornwall visiting my brother I was checking my emails this afternoon. This blog has managed to get my email address on some press release distribution lists and I routinely receive announcements.
One that caught my attention was a press release announcing that The Co-operative Bank has decided to thank its customers for the recent Which? Award for being Best Financial Services Provider by singing them a ‘thank you’ song. At the end of the release it explains that the viral is available on You Tube and it’s own blog.
Firstly. This is a blog about PR so I’m not really sure why I received this release and secondly the “viral” is dreadful. It also got me thinking about what makes a good viral video?
Visitors to this blog will also know that I love well executed viral videos. Recently Evian’s “Roller Babies” commercial yielded millions of hits in less than a month in line with its Live Young campaign. This is a great example of a campaign which has been executed in line with proper planning, marketing and development to create a viral sensation.
My colleague Jo Jamieson also pointed out a viral video the other week which is proof that they can have a devastating affect to a brand. Dave Carroll had his guitar broken by United Airlines and wrote a song which he performed on a video. Apparently within four days he had over a million views on You Tube and many thousands of blog mentions.
These two are good examples of what makes a viral video and the different effects they can have on a brand. How do you make a good viral video? Ben Terrett has written a great post about what makes a good viral and is worth checking out. Please note that it is quite old but still relevant today.
Personally, the thing which made the Co-operative Bank’s effort so bad was the fact that just because they had created a video they presumed it would be viral. I understand it was just a bit of fun but when a press release was distributed promoting the viral it also opened itself up for ridicule.
I was catching up on some blog reading this evening and saw this brilliant post that made me laugh out loud. The SEO Company has listed five ‘Yo mama’ jokes about social media.
At number one was “Yo mama so stupid that when I told her I was on digg, she asked if I needed a shovel.”
You may have noticed the badge on the left hand side of this blog stating that I am PR friendly. Something I was very proud to be listed in, as I respect the work that Brendan Cooper, the creator of this index very much.
The index took an interesting twist this week. He decided to investigate which of the 100 blogs listed actually still wrote about PR. Surely they all talk about PR I hear you cry, but as Brendan says: hardly anyone writes about PR any more.
He found when he evaluated the blogs listed that they almost entirely wrote solely about social media and few discussed good old PR topics such as outreach, the media, organising events, talking to journalists and all that good stuff. Since Brendan decided to review the list it has dropped from 100 to just 37 (which still includes yours truly).
This made me think about the blog Dirk wrote the other day about how during these difficult times, are clients actually more willing to experiment with social media marketing or are they more likely to stick with what they know? Read the rest of this entry »
On 20 May the Media 140 microblogging event is taking place in London and includes an agenda with an impressive line up. The first panel session will look at the future of microblogging technology, given we have seen Twitter take centre stage and asks how much will twitter and microblogging change the way breaking news is sourced globally by news organisations?
In the afternoon there will be a session looking at frontline journalism with Twitter – success and failure in social media. This will include a A series of quick fire presentations by industry professionals looking at particular examples of news gathering using micro blogging and social media – emphasis being placed on the successes and failures.
If you are attending then I have my ticket so drop me a line. It would be great to come along and say hello.
I met with Richard Abbott the deputy editor of Marketing last week for a lunch briefing with one of my clients. During the course of the conversation I brought up Twitter and in particular how the publication was using it.
To set the scene, the Marketing identity currently has over 5,500 followers and the individual journalists also manage their own individual profiles.
Richard explained that they have experimented to see how to get the best out of this medium and found that the greatest successes have come from simply asking questions. Rather than just putting links to headlines to drive traffic to the site, the magazine is using it as a journalistic tool.
According to Richard, for every question they post, the magazine currently gets over 100 responses. It get so much information from each question that the journalists have almost all the leads that they require to pull a story together. Not bad a bad return from just 140 characters.
Twitter is obviously a great source of traffic for sites, as Alan Burkitt-Gray said when I interviewed him, but it is also interesting to see a publication using it as a journalistic tool with such success.
As a result of writing about the Media140 Microblogging event earlier this week the organisers contacted me to offer the readers of this blog a 15 per cent discount when buying their tickets. The event takes place at the Southbank, London on 20 May 2009 and if you are thinking about attending, then simply use the following discount code to get your money off. See you there.
Media 140 is scheduled to host a microblogging event in London which is is claiming will bring together journalists, bloggers and publishers to share and discuss the use and impact of Twitter and other social media tools in their industry.
To date, The Times, Guardian, Reuters have been confirmed to attend where they will discuss topics such as:
Some of the topics for the event will include:
- how to persuade journalists to take and use twitter seriously.
- what is news worthy, how do you recognise it?
- breaking the news, how you can potentially undermine your own news room
- will local community create local news through microblog technologies?
- tools of the trade, what works and what doesn’t?
- is microblogging and twitter really a game changer?
Could be interesting. Especially when you consider the interview I just blogged about.
At my technology PR agency, Twitter is a trusted and constant tool which we use to share ideas, look for inspiration and communicate with the media. Today, however it took on another dimension when one of my clients used Twitter to conduct an interview with a journalist.
Female entrepreneur of the year, Margaret Manning CEO at Reading Room offered some comment on the use of Twitter within the work place to Real Business magazine. Having reviewed the comment the journalists decided they wanted to find out more but instead of requesting some written comment or speaking to Margaret on the phone, the journalists wanted to conduct the interview over 140 characters.
This is the first time I have arranged an interview to take place on Twitter and I have to say I am excited about seeing the results. Watch this space to see how it went.
