Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Ofcom research shows kids don’t care about age restrictions

Posted on by
Reply

Nothing new there I suppose, but the actual figures are quite interesting. For instance, a quarter of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home say they have a profile on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, all of which have an age restriction of 13.  Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that 83 per cent of these children have their profile set so that it can only be seen by friends, and 4 per cent have a profile that can’t be seen – is this the generation that’s going to show the rest of us how it’s done?

Another very encouraging figure is that nine in ten parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93 per cent) also say that they check what their child is doing on these types of sites. It wasn’t that long ago that most parents were fairly clueless in this space. In terms of usage, Blogs or sites like Wikipedia where people can add or change information are visited by one in five (18 per cent) of 8-11s and half of 12-15s (48 per cent) who use the internet at home.

For more info, you can see the press release here and download the report here

Blippy – let’s take a look in your shopping bag

Posted on by
Reply

Blippy, if you haven’t experienced it yet, it a social network entirely based on your shopping habits. Sounds like a shopaholics dream, doesn’t it. It’s part of an explosion of social networks that track, catalogue and share different aspects of your day-to-day life. Blippy links your online shopping with a social networking back-end so that you can share information about the things you’ve bought online.

From memory, you can link iTunes, eBay, PayPal and a host of other options. I wasn’t too sure at first, but once I started using it I started to see the benefits. For example, I rented a movie from iTunes on Saturday and this transaction appeared on my Blippy feed and also on my Facebook and Twitter feed (which I’d linked) and within a few minutes a number of friends had commented on it. Now, I enjoyed the movie, so I can actually go back and rate it – letting my friends know what I thought and thus creating user-generated reviews based on my own shopping habits within a network of friends. Powerful stuff

Landmark bill signed…watch it all on Facebook

Posted on by
Reply

I just saw the Health care reform bill signed by Obama live on….Facebook. That’s right, not Fox, Sky, the BBC, the ABC, but Facebook. While live streaming through facebook isn’t brand new, it’s extremely interesting to see that the White House is using it as a major means of communicating, but then again, why not? Health care reform in the US effects millions, so it’s important that people are offered the news through as many different channels as possible, which is going to include the countries biggest social network.

Health care pic

As you can see from the screen grab – it’s a very simple and straight forward application, but another nice touch is the use of Facebook Connect next to it, letting you see the reactions of others. The most interesting thing about this is the history behind it. Countless US politicians have fought for this over the years, but it wasn’t until Obama that the job got done. What else would we expect from an administration that has utilised social media so effectively in today’s media landscape?  That’s right, you heard it first…..through Facebook.

Of, about and around – brand stories

Posted on by
Reply

In a kind of celestial collision of heavyweights, the different disciplines that currently operate in the digital space regularly collide with each other when it comes about the best way for brands to operate in the digital space. Many people will tell you that there is one way to get it right and it’s usually the discipline that they work in. I firmly believe that this just isn’t the case, anyone that tells you there’s only one way to do things either doesn’t have the big picture, or doesn’t want you to see the big picture.

There is a difference between the way that the disciplines operate in this space and it’s usually in the way the story is told and that’s not to say that one tells it better than the other, i.e. advertising gets better cut through, PR is more believible. I remember working closely with some advertising cousins on a combined brief and the lead creative was somewhat struggling to come to grips with the social media space and said “I’ve always been taught that if you make something so f**king beautiful, so f**king interesting, funny or whatever…not only with they watch it and enjoy it, they’ll thank for your it”. I think that’s absolutely right and it actually applies to us all when working in the digital space.

The point of difference is the way we tell our stories, but fundamentally, shouldn’t what we all be doing  “something so f**king beautiful, so f**king interesting, funny or whatever…not only with they watch it and enjoy it, they’ll thank for your it”? The answer is yes and the true tick of marketing that uses all disciplines in harmony is that you end up with conversations that are: “Of” the brand, for example owned presences such as websites and so on, “about” the brand, which is where I feel truly great advertising and PR should operate, then finally “around” the brand which is where PR and WOM drive further user-generated conversation around a brand. The point is, if just one works in isolation, how can they possibly be effective?

FourSquared away

Posted on by
Reply

I saw a very interesting stat the other day that FourSquare had added 100,oo0 users in a couple of weeks – phenomenal. I’ve been using FourSquare for a while ow, but on and off. What I have noticed over the past few weeks is that the type of people joining has moved past the social media mob to my more mainstream friends. Added to this, I recently approached FourSquare to see what the brand opportunities were with the them and to my great surprise, a marketing pack was promoting sent back detailing a number of different opportunities. So, I started to think – is FourSquare actually going to be the next big thing and will it be able to do what Twitter hasn’t done so far, partner with brands.

This has made me get more involved with FourSquare as a user and I have to say, I am now addicted. The combination of geo-location, updates and more importantly points and rewards make it a killer network. If these guys add pictures and video it’s a game changer. On the back of that, you can easily see how something like FourSquare could branch out into the fabled augmented reality network we’re all dying to see. In the meantime – be there, or be FourSquare.

Your Facebook page is your own personal TV show

Posted on by
Reply

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

MacBank and the man watching the wrong assets….

Posted on by
Reply

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

Is it all about you, or me?

Posted on by
Reply

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

SEO for PRs

Posted on by
3

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.