Category Archives: PR

A bit of writing elsewhere and a change in focus for the blog

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A slight change of direction will be coming up on this blog, I suspect, certainly regarding the social media posts. Anything social-related will probably go on the Ruder Finn Dot Comms blog. Anything else will probably be here (yes, the dregs. Sorry about that).

And here’s the first post: an analysis of when brands should and shouldn’t piggyback on an internet meme, with specific reference to the Harlem Shake.

And I’m still doing the football writing, when time allows. Here’s me at The Two Unfortunates imagining what if Exeter City manager Paul Tisdale had landed the Swansea City job.

Permanent link to this post (100 words, estimated 24 secs reading time)

Who owns social media?

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Social media’s pretty well established now but the question of who should take ownership for activity is no closer to being answered. PR Week have recently been attempting to answer this, making an argument for a host of different disciplines, while Econsultancy have argued that social media shouldn’t be owned by a PR or ad agency. I tend to agree with them.

Social media is a multi-faceted beast. It can be used to break stories, promote campaigns and brands, deal with reputation management, drive sales, and nurture and develop an enthusiastic community of fans and followers.

This is a preview of Who owns social media?. Read the full post (630 words, estimated 2:31 mins reading time)

London Bloggers’ Meetup: Blogger and PR relations – no change

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What happens when you put a load of bloggers and PRs in the same room and get them to discuss their industry? Fight? Or consensus? Or both?

The most recent London Bloggers Meetup didn’t quite reach either of those stages but the panel / open floor debate was interesting, partly because it showed how little the debate, and indeed industry, has moved on.

The panel lined up with Cate Sevilla from Bitch Buzz, Chris Osburn aka Tiki Chris, and Pete Stean from The Londoneer, with Stephen Waddington (Wadds) from Speed Communications, Matt Churchill from Edelman and Laurence Borel (Lolly) from Mindshare on the PR side.

This is a preview of London Bloggers’ Meetup: Blogger and PR relations – no change. Read the full post (1179 words, estimated 4:43 mins reading time)

It’s good to talk: A quick lesson for bloggers and PR

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If anonymous commenting on the internet had a users guide, then one of the more sensible pieces of advice would be “Don’t do it from your work PC.”

It’s advice a commenter on the previous post would have been good to consider. I don’t make a habit of running Whois searches on the IP address of every commenter but, given that this place doesn’t get that many trolls or sockpuppets, and given the subject matter, I was a bit curious. Turns out the IP address was from one of the (many) PR agencies who’ve pitched me this World Cup.

This is a preview of It’s good to talk: A quick lesson for bloggers and PR. Read the full post (1031 words, estimated 4:07 mins reading time)

PR’s own goal: Or why blogger pitching has been worse than the French national team this World Cup

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Ding! Another day, another poorly worded and conceived pitch arrives in my personal inbox, and my heart sinks a little further towards despair. If it weren’t for the Germans, and Portugal’s goal fest against the North Koreans, I’d have received more useless pitches than goals this World Cup.

Quite simply, judging by the majority of pitches than have landed in my inbox, general PR from companies looking to take advantage of the World Cup has ranged from poor to truly shocking. Most have made no attempt to remotely engage.

This is a preview of PR’s own goal: Or why blogger pitching has been worse than the French national team this World Cup. Read the full post (1110 words, estimated 4:26 mins reading time)

The Sun: how not to win friends or influence bloggers

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EDIT: Since posting this last night, The Sun have since dropped the World Cup blogger sweepstake after Who Ate All The Pies and other blogs complained.

The Sun's World Cup Sweepstake page

Look at the screenshot of The Sun’s World Cup Blogger Sweepstake above. If you were a PR who’s been pitching football bloggers recently you might skim the blogs and think “Wow, that is a pretty impressive line up of bloggers. They’ve even managed to get some notoriously hard-to-reach, popular and high-class well respected blogs on board. I wonder how they managed that?”

Short answer: They didn’t.

This is a preview of The Sun: how not to win friends or influence bloggers. Read the full post (1302 words, 1 image, estimated 5:12 mins reading time)

People on the internet may also have diseases shocker

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Rather glad that Ben Goldacre chose to write about the “Facebook can give you syphilis” non-story from last week. It seems everybody’s got it in for Facebook at the moment and while there’s a lot you can complain about, some of the ridiculous stories written about the site take bad reporting to a whole new level.

When somebody who struggles with most forms of maths and science at the best of times (ie me) can spot huge flaws in the science and maths and correlations, then chances are the facts behind said story are pretty poor.

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Fix PR: Why PR is losing the social media battle

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All last week, the excellent Darika Ahrens at Grapevine Consulting posted a series of pieces on why PR was losing the social media battle. They were an excellent analysis of why PR could be owning the social media space, yet continued to make basic mistakes.

Darika also asked me if I’d be able to contribute and, er, well last week didn’t happen mainly because I was excessively busy and also because it’s so hard to add anything to her excellent pieces.

This is a preview of Fix PR: Why PR is losing the social media battle. Read the full post (524 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)