blending the mix

Dontcha just love a sensationalist headline? But this is the prediction made by Gartner in their 2011 predicitons article.

Brian does a fantastic job of nailing why this is - it is down to planning, which goes back precisely to my post earlier in the week about why the social media industry needs a lesson in analytics, and why Geoff’s post is so timely too - so many social media campaigns are done by practitioners who can USE social media, but do not define: Read the rest of this entry »

This post is in response to a “call to arms” post from Geoff Livingston, in which he suggests that PR agencies are, largely, responsible for the bubble that is currently social media. That is to some extent, totally true, but at the same time also needs some level of guilt lain at the door of seo agencies and digital agencies who build tools because their fixed costs dictate they need to. Read the rest of this entry »

Cool stuff I was readingJuly 8th toJuly 15th:

• Case Study: Dooce’s Nintendo Wii giveaway - The Viral Garden - Mack demonstrates the fantastic ROI of the Wii Fit promotion done through blogs (Dooce)
• Only Dead Fish: Twitter User Numbers - Insight from hitwise into the number of users on Twitter
• Andy Sernovitz’s Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!: Give people something to talk about - A great case for word of mouth marketing, just like Innocent Drinks.
• Why the Social Media World NEEDS to Understand SEO - Search Engine Guide Blog - Why the Social Media World NEEDS to Understand SEO - from Mack.
• Pr 2.0 Technology Blogging 2 - My presentation about blogging from the KMP Marketing and PR 2.0 seminars currently enjoying a spot of time on the slideshare home page!

Wowsers, I have just been notified that a presentation I made for my part of the Marketing and PR 2.0 seminar last week has been featured on Slideshare’s homepage.

Ok, so we are only at 99 views (so far) and the exporting from Keynote to Powerpoint has buggered some of the slides up, it’s nice to be able to get the message out to lots of you peeps! Hopefully this will give the PR world some insight into the tools they COULD be using and realise that they, more than anyone, have the communications skills that mean they can begin making a difference to their clients’ messages.

Here it is:

It’s been a while since I contributed something of significance to the blog (many of you would argue that I have rarely done that, but that’s another story ) - I have been mad busy with client projects, client presentations, seminars and finally the launch of our Social Media release tool, PressRoom - all of which have made me realise that PR and communications, not technology are at the heart of what I actually do - and maybe this is what PR types need to realise too.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still a Client Services slave with commercial objectives, but the tools and projects I work on and conversations I have with clients are not about tech solutions, or marketing ones, but PR ones. Social media (I know, I know - whatever that means!) blogs, community management and blogger outreach for example, are not about the technology - they are nothing more than tools with which to build relationships. And who is best placed and most experienced to do this? PR people.

However, when presenting my now well-versed seminar on blogging and social media for business, it is very apparent that many PR types are struggling to come to terms with the fact that they already have the core skills to make a dramatic impact on the the “social media” space. The overriding observation is that the industry is scared to death of what they see as technological barriers to letting their skills go.

As a commentator said at the launch of our PressRoom tool (which was full of PR people) “As a PR person, I look at tools like the Social Media Press Release and marvel at the opportunity this presents. As a client looking for a PR agency, I am sat here wondering why on earth you are asking such basic questions (such as “What is Twitter”)”.

In the US, people like Brian Solis and Geoff Livingston are trying to de-mistify the whole technology thing for PR people, whilst in the UK well-respected names like Stuart Bruce, Stephen Waddington and Becky McMichael are just a few names following suit -showing that practicing what you preach is a perfect way to prove that Social Media is not about technology, it is about developing relationships - which is exactly what PR people do.