I happened to be talking to a contact over at a media buying agency today about Facebook from the PR side of the fence and starting using a phrase that I’ve been toying with for a few weeks now – your Facebook page is your own personal TV show. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand, a society, a person or whatever – people are interested in your story.  That’s not to say everyone, for most people it’s their friends, if your a celeb it’s your fan base and if you’re a brand – it’s your buyers and potential buyers. But in just the same way that someone that doesn’t like Sci-Fi won’t suddenly start watching Star Trek, people that are interested in you won’t suddenly take an interest in you – and that is especially important if you’re a brand looking to engage people through Facebook.

So what does this mean. Well, if you are a brand that’s looking to engage with people via Facebook it’s not enough to just get them to your page, you need to keep them there and keep them coming back. This is where the TV show analogy comes back in – you’ve got to give them a reason to keep coming back, you have to entertain them and tell them a story that builds day-to-day and week-to-week. It’s also important to remember that you won’t be talking to your entire fan base at one time, so you need to keep a theme to your story so that returning fans don’t feel cut out.

Remember – it’s your show and while your fans might not catch every episode, they’ll watch enough to know what’s going on

Martin O’Neill recently commented that Premier league managers are only every two games away from a crisis, well I think it’s even worse if you’re a Macquarie Bank analyst – you’re just a live broadcast away from one. Check out the video below:

As you can imagine, this has spread through every video sharing website known to man, appeared on countless news sites, blogs and has been shared through various social networks. Macquarie bank has since commented on the issue, stating that they have strict policies in place to safe guard against these type of incidents. This is a great example of a true viral effect and should be noted by brands around the world – you might be talking to traditional media, but social media is listening and is a hell of a gossip.

My last thoughts on this. I was getting on a plane from Helsinki yesterday and was sitting next to an Aussie living in London and I showed him the story in the Metro, to which he replied – “See. here (in the UK) they’d fire him, but in Australia he’s just become a national legend – they’ll probably promote him and give him he’s own office”. Genius

New research from Rutgers suggestions that people that use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can be broken down into two groups of people – “Meformers” and “Informers”. What this essentially means is “Meformers” are all about letting the wider word and their circle of friends now what’s going on with them, while the “Informers” are more focused on sharing interesting information.

Now, I am going to position myself in the “Informer” box (of course you are, I hear you say) because I don’t lead a very interesting life to be honest, in fact my 3 year-old daughter gets up to more interesting things than me – the other day she made a Ginger bread man mask at pre-school and got a sticker for doing something good…….I want a sticker as well. Back to the topic, most people actually fit into the “Meformer” section, representing around 80 per cent of the survey, leaving on 20 per cent of us representing the “Informers” camp.

From a communications point of view, we should be gearing our approach towards helping “meformers” with their own personal news feed – providing them with material, content and news to share. In addition, brands should also try (as much as possible) to fit into the “Informers” camp, but again focus on providing information that the “Meformers” can reshape and make personal. 

A few other interesting stats from the report

• Informers have more friends and followers on Twitter than meformers (Informers had a median 131 friends and 112 followers compare to meformers median figures of 61 friends and 43 followers.)
• Females were more likely to post “me now” messages than males. (Forty-five percent of females’ messages were “me now” compared to 37 percent of males’.)
• Posts from mobile devices were more likely to be “me now” messages than posts from non-mobile applications. (Fifty-one percent of mobile-posted messages were “me now” compared to 37 percent of non-mobile messages.)
• Informers mention others in their messages more often

There was a day, a long, long time ago when the existence of your average PR person was much more simpler, but it was also a lot more boring… Today PR people have a lot on their plate and are often required to understand several other areas of expertise in order to be good at one they do. One of these is SEO.

Now, I’m not saying that we all need to to go out become SEO experts overnight, but getting a good understanding of it will help you and your clients.

So, here are a few simple tips for PRs venturing into the SEO space

• Go and talk to the SEO team for your client and find out what they are doing, what they are focusing on and get their Keyword glossary from them
• Review the areas that your working on and select the most relevant keywords from the keyword glossary that the SEO team shared with you – telling them which words you’ve selected
• Integrate these words in to as much of your online communications as possible – headers and body text for SMPRs, descriptions and tags for other content like video and pictures
• Incorporate your keywords throughout any social media profiles you might have
• Be sure to include your client’s name along with a link through to further information along side your keywords in all activity
• When spokespeople are commenting on blogs posts, forums or community sites make sure you include relevant keywords along with the company name and links through to further information 

The important thing here is to remember that we’re communications experts and when we use SEO, it must not overtake the conversations, so don’t try and shoe-horn keywords in where they don’t fit. Remember to provide links through to further information from your client, this will help with tracking and measurement.

There’s loads more to this debate and these are just a few thought starters, if you’ve got more, add them below.

Pure genius from the team over at CNET. I salute you my good sirs….

This did the rounds earlier in the week, but I wanted to add my thoughts to the debate as well. New figures out from Social Media God, Brain Solis show that women are dominating the social web, with the exception of Linkedin, YouTube, deviantART, Delicious and Digg.

From my own experience, I’d say that this is spot on. Take Facebook for example, from my experience not only do there tend to be more women engaging with brands through sponsored pages, they are also the most active fans on the page and contribute much more to the conversation.

What could this mean for brands? I think it represents an opportunity to further diversify the way they talk to their audiences, providing the opportunity for near 360 degree engagement, but more importantly a continuous and collaborative conversation. The result – a carefully crafted brand built by people that care the most. 

In the land of social media there’s practically an idea a minute, some good, some bad, some crazy and some that are genius. The genius ideas usually speak to our personal and cultural situations, which is why Tweet a London Cab is genius.

Now, having lived in Australia for 4 years and also experienced the taxis in countries around the world, I can tell you that the black cabs of London are second to none. So, when you add a layer of social media over the top of that impeccable service, you’re bringing a British institution bang up to date. 

Essentially, the team at Tweet a London Cab offer a service for people to DM their feed with their location, destination and time of pick-up so that drivers in the area can arrange to pick you up via Twitter.  Sure, there is a novelty factor to it, but it’s also quite cleverly shifting engagement to more popular, modern means – in this case Twitter

I’m not entirely sure of the business model behind it, but it is still early days for them so I guess it’s watch this space for now….Who knows, it could all be an elaborate publicity hoax. If only then operated in Hertfordshire…..

Once the darling of social media, Facebook now has to battle Twitter to be the first word on excited communicators lips when talking about social media. But in my opinion, it’s between Facebook and YouTube as to who’s done more to attract brands to invest in their platform. If pushed, I’d have to say that it’s Facebook, if for nothing else that the self-serve advertising and awesome analytics it offers.

But still, getting it right on Facebook requires a bit more that setting up a sponsored page. I’ve worked on several Facebook campaigns to date and the one thing that I would say is this – getting it right takes time, effort and commitment, here’s a few tips:

1 – take a look at what’s going on elsewhere on Facebook that relates to what your doing – what are the type of things that your competitors are doing that makes them successful, what kind of pages are your audience interacting with and the big question – is someone already running a page under your brand name and do you want to work with them rather than set-up your own?

2 – talk to people. Ask your audience what they think. Ask them on Facebook, via your website, your blog and other social profiles and get their opinions.

3 – have a content plan. You need to have a steady flow of content in order to keep your audience interested, don’t just launch then twiddle your thumbs

4 – promote your page through all means available to you. Internally, customer emails, traditional advertising, PR, blogger relations and even packaging – check out what Pepsi Raw did 

5 – engage with your fans as much as you can, as often as you can. Keep the conversation flowing from both sides.

6 – give them the autonomy to help shape the page by submitting photos, videos and even regulating negative comments

7 – Invest in some social advertising from Facebook. Using this blended results yields some awesome results.

Finally, remember that Facebook is most effective as a long-term marketing tool. As such invest and plan to be active with your page for the long term and you get some superb results

Football fans are a passionate bunch at the best of times and when it comes to the national team, that’s something you really don’t mess with.  What I am I talking about? Why is there yet another football post on my social media PR blog? We’ll, if you’re an England fan you’re probably aware by no that you won’t be able to see the England Vs Ukraine World Cup qualifier on TV, instead it’s being streamed live at www.ukrainevengland.com

Now, it may surprise some that I am not going to defend this move, because I actually think it’s bad for everyone.  Here is my argument:

Why it’s bad for the fans - Football is a game of the people and when I say that, I mean everyone. Me, my kids, my parents, my grandparents and so on. Everyone should have the right to watch their national side play, but we all know that just isn’t the case in England. If you want to watch England in action, you’ll be able to catch some games on free-to-air channels, but  you also have to pay either Sky and until recently the spectacularly useless Setanta.

So, we already have a situation where not everyone can see the national side play and now we’re about to exclude more people – can  you honestly tell me your grandparents are going to watch a games streamed live over the web? But,  Andrew Croker, executive chairman of Perform who are streaming the game gave this quote to the BBC for its article, ”I think consumers are pretty sophisticated now, particularly in the UK, where we have been in the vanguard of adopting new technology.” So, unless you happen to be at the vanguard of technology, we don’t care…

Why it’s bad for football – I have already tried the online streaming service offered by Sky and it was bloody painful. I’m sure it’s improved in the time since I last tried it, but why on earth am I going to bother when I can watch the game in glorious HD on Sky Sports? The experience I get from Sky is second to none, these guys really do know how to serve up some top-notch sports coverage, but the net experience pales in comparison. I guess what I am saying is all that this is going to do is put people off watching football on the web, we should be adding to the experience. By going ahead with this, we’re probably putting the public appetite for sports streaming back a few years.

Final thoughts – the web isn’t about holding you to ransom, it’s about connecting you with who or what you’re looking for when you want it. From a PR perspective, we should be using online tools to enhance the football experience whilst also expanding our audience.

Twitter is a wonderful place, sure there are a load of mundane and mindless comments, but you also get to hear about the cool new things happening in your industry and the resulting conversation this causes. Last week, I saw the news break that Squidoo would be launching a programme called Brand in public, which is essentially brand hubpages or “lenses” that aggregate conversations taking place around that brand. Now, in addition to that (and the bit that is causing all the conversation) is the fact that they will be looking to charge brands $400 a month for the right to add to them and ultimately develop them. 

I have to admit, at first I was one of those people that reacted less than favourably to this – you’re effectively charging a brand for the right to reply, aren’t you? Then, after I thought it through I actually think it could be a good thing for the PR industry. This essentially offers a snap shot of the type of conversations taking place around a brand, ultimately allowing us to better do our job. 

We already have monitoring tools like Radian6 that help us identify the conversations we want to influence and they can also alert us to potential issues before they develop. Squidoo could actually become both a reason and a proof point for Digital PR. For example, it’s one thing aggregating conversations using third party tools, but if it’s right there in one place on the web for a brand to see, the decision to act becomes a bit of a no-brainer. So, what does PR do? We  help brands engage with these conversations in order to shape the Squidoo page – not pay to control it. So, if PR is doing it’s job, that Squidoo page should look pretty good. For more on this, TechCrunch posted a pretty good overview that you can find here