Wolfstar to work for a superstar DJ

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I thought we better announce our latest bit of new business on the blog formally as I know not everyone needs to read our newsroom. We (Wolfstar) have won the contract to run a social media campaign for Chris Lake a world renowned DJ and dance music producer.

Chris has received critical acclaim and even managed to get into the UK charts last year with his track changes, in fact it reached number one in the dance charts in the US.

You can view our news release on this story here. Needless to say I and my colleague Seb can’t wait to get cracking on this because we both live and breathe dance music.

In the meantime, I have added a video of Chris in action at Space in Ibiza.

Have a good weekend.

Becky joins Wolfstar on work experience

Hello everyone! My name is Becky, and I have just started on work placement here at Wolfstar. I graduated last July from Leeds University with a degree in English and Philosophy, and I have spent the last ten months gaining work experience and trying to get the hang of this being-a-grown-up thing!

I have always had a keen interest in media, and since joining City Sound hospital radio at Leeds General Infirmary three years ago, I have specifically developed an interest in radio. I have my own weekly show at City Sound, and I really enjoy the creative freedom I have to write, produce and deliver my own show.

I have previously worked for the commercial radio station The Pulse as a weekend events assistant, helping to raise awareness and promote the brand image of the station. I have also been on work placement at Yorkshire Radio, BBC Radio Kent, and more recently Virgin Radio. During my time at these stations I developed an interest in PR, and hence I am exploring this interest here at Wolfstar.

Wolfstar has given me a fantastic opportunity to work alongside the team and gain knowledge and experience of PR and Social Media. All in all, I’m very excited to be here and have the opportunity to learn about the PR and Social Media industry and maybe they can learn a little something about radio from me!

PR tips for start-ups

Sparked by an article by Brain Solis on TechCrunch entitled “PR Secrets for Startups” there’s quite a healthy debate going on at the moment about if start-ups, more specifically web 2.0 start-ups, need professional public relations support. My personal answer to the question is …. it depends. Start-ups certainly do need professional PR and marketing advice, but how much and how it is delivered depends on each individual company.

I’ve helped really small start-ups, funded by the founders on a shoestring, by turning down the limited budget they’ve offered me and providing a one day workshop for a lot less so that they can do some things themselves. But for many this isn’t going to be a practical option, because the CEO and founders are never going to be experts and have a lot of other things to do and it’s impossible to do them all well yourself.

Ironically one of the best posts about why Web 2.0 start-ups need PR is by Loic Le Meur, in his post arguing that they don’t! Many of the PR tips that Loic offers are exactly what a professional PR person would do/say/advise.

Not a secret #1
who cares about stories, you can get traction and users if you have a good product

No **** Sherlock. Any competent PR person would tell you that it’s the product that matters - you can’t polish a turd. And of course the users/customers/community comes first, just as any good PR person would advise you.

Not a secret #2
Do not pick a PR person, be the spokesperson of the company

Loic thinks the best person to represent your company, is you - the CEO. And he’s right, which is why he cites Steve Jobs and Richard Branson as his best known examples. But guess what, behind both Jobs and Branson you have good PR people. Loic advises “Get training”, now who do you think should deliver PR training? Hint - see my reference to workshops at the start of this post.

Not a secret #3
Participation is NOT marketing

Well perhaps it’s not marketing, but participation in a community is exactly what public relations is and always has been. Don’t fall into the trap of equating PR with just doing media relations and targeting journalists, that is a tiny part of what your PR consultancy should be doing for you.

Not a secret #4
There are no “targets” either, we’re just people, not an audience!

“Just throw yourself and your product in the conversation and you will see who shows up, who is interested or not in what you are doing.”

But who’s going to do the throwing, and more importantly the listening and responding to the conversation? That’s just one area where your PR agency can help.

Not a secret #5
Who cares about the launch day and date.

Not entirely clear what Loic is on about here, other than perhaps trying to say that timing is everything. PR isn’t a science or an art, but both. This means that sometimes doing the wrong thing works and doing the right thing doesn’t. But that means experience, expertise and professionalism are even more important, just so you can increase your chances of things going right. You can lose battles, but still win the war (with the right support).

Not a secret #6
Do not see bloggers and journalists as target either, they will ignore you

“Take bloggers. Everybody tries to pitch Scoble and Arrington. They are tired of the same formatted boring pitches that come to them exactly the same.”

Exactly, which is why 99.9% of the time they would be the wrong people to pitch, even if they are “friends”. You simply need to have conversations with people who are interested in what you’re talking about. That means far more listening than talking. That’s what a good PR consultancy will do.

Not a secret #7
Do not measure success and traffic from PR

“Do not be obsessed by numbers and results, it is long term relationships that matter.”

No s**t Sherlock. There’s a hint in the name that public relations is about relationships.

Others weighing in on the debate are Shel Holtz (who explains PR is so much more than just pitching stories), and Stowe Boyd (who half agrees with Loic, but still thinks most start-ups need PR).

UPDATE: Tom Murphy talks sense (as usual), Robert Scoble jumps in to show he still doesn’t know what PR is (why is it that when Scoble talks sense, he talks a lot of sense, when he doesn’t - well you go figure, maybe we should all stick to what we’re good at), Todd Defren looks at targeting.

 

Wolfstar formally welcomes Beth Jones to its team

For those of you who regularly read the blog, you will know we have had a friendly final year journalism student called Beth Jones working with us on a part-time work experience basis.

We have been so impressed with Beth’s writing ability, friendly nature and interest levels in social media and public relations that we have offered her an account executive position here at Wolfstar until she goes on her travels across America.

Beth starts formally from today and will be helping with anything and everything - so expect quite a few more blog posts and comments in the near future.

This of course does mean we now have two Beths in the office which could become confusing but don’t worry I am sure the team here can handle it if you can.

All joking aside, congratulations Beth well done and welcome to our team.

Word of mouth is not created, it is co-created

“Word of mouth is not created, it is co-created. People will only spread your virus if there’s something in it for them.” - Hugh MacLeod.

Excellent words of wisdom from Hugh MacLeod, via Hugh MacLeod, via John Moore of Brand Autopsy.

Miro Magic

I first came across Miro when watching Channel 5’s ‘The Gadget Show’ a couple of weeks ago. It’s a free application for channels of internet video (podcasts and video rss). The website says, “Miro is designed to be easy to use and gives you an elegant full screen viewing experience.” Unlike YouTube the videos are usually very high quality and download completely before you start watching, lessening the chance of skipping and stuttering. (It works on the same principle as the BBC iplayer.)

The way Miro stores and manages videos is very neat, creating a library (similar to itunes) which holds your videos for five days unless you specify for it to be held for longer. The automatic deleting stops the library from clogging up with too many videos - this is particularly useful when using the automatic grab function which saves all of the videos from your favourite channels.

It was developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, a non-profit organisation. Their mission is to "enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement." The software was previously known as Democracy Player but as Steve O’Hear, editor of last100, explains “the feedback received was that the name evoked different, yet equally negative responses. For many Americans it conjured up an image of yet another left wing media project, and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration. In contrast, the new name is purposely abstract.” Take a look at Steve’s blog for some useful tips on using Miro.

With over 1,500 channels and a slick, easy to use layout, it’s hard to see why Miro won’t become the new choice for downloading videos. My favourite video so far is the world record for xylo throwing (a frisbee type toy designed by NASA).

For an easy step by step video guide on how to use Miro follow the link to watch it now.

Live blogging the Guide to Social Media Conference

If you visit A PR Guy’s Musings then I’m live blogging the Don’t Panic Guide to Social Media Conference using CoverItLive.

Measurement Camp - How to measure social media. My take on the event…

I was in the big smoke yesterday at the second instalment of the social media measurement camp organised by Will McInnes. Both Seb and Stuart attended the Chinwag event on measuring social media that inspired Will to set up the camp and have posted about it previously but I thought I would give you my thoughts on this one, especially as it’s one of the first events I’ve been to whilst working in the PR industry.

I really enjoyed the set up of the meeting. It was really informal so and we were split up into groups to discuss issues therefore allowing everyone to make contributions to the discussion.

The key thing I came away thinking was that nobody really had any definitive answers about the best way to measure social media. Nielsen had some good examples of the tools that they use to analyse social media campaigns, however it was clear that these are not necessarily always effective for all the types of social media. Some useful insights into benchmarking by creating snapshots were also shared.

The questions were plentiful and really got me thinking about social media and the practicalities of measuring it. Here are some of the questions that we came up with to get your brains around:

· Should the different types of social media platform be considered as separate media forms? For example should a Twitter campaign be measured in a completely different way to a blogger outreach campaign? My initial thoughts were of course, but then this led to me questioning how you measure a campaign that translates across the different platforms, for example if a YouTube video is uploaded and is then posted on a blog, then added to a group on Facebook?

· From this we started to consider whether the true value of social media is in the story/content rather than where it appears?

· What is the definition of a successful Facebook/MySpace/Twitter campaign?

· How do you identify appropriate mavens and how do you value them (e.g is more people talking more important than influential people talking?)

· How do you measure the effects of your online campaign offline?

One of the key conclusions that I came to after the event is that one of the biggest challenges in measuring social media is defining what makes a campaign successful, especially as this can be specific to each client and to each individual campaign that is created.

I think I definitely have to agree with Stuart and Will again that “understanding is more important than measuring” and that to measure we must understand.

File sharing public relations - download now for free!

I’ve recently been talking to a good friend of mine who works in the music industry. A conversation that crops up more than any other is that of file-sharing. A term most people believe to be synonymous with ‘free-music’. At the somewhat naive age of sixteen, I myself downloaded Napster onto my parents computer, pulled off a few tracks before I accidentally added a nasty virus to their play-list. I forget the name of it, but needless to say, the PC was out of action for a long time!Based on this experience I swore never to indulge in ‘file-sharing’ again.

My friends main point was this; "if you see a car that you like the look of do you think you can just take it?" An ideal thieving opportunity presents itself - the key’s in the ignition, the door’s open, nobody around… Granted, this situation physically doesn’t compare to a few clicks on a mouse, but surely it becomes a question of morals…

When a CD cost £15-£20, 15 years ago, you did feel that it was a tad expensive, but it was a luxury good, so you paid it. You bought music when you could afford it, and it was special. Now the music industry is saturated. As a result you can by a whole album for next to nothing, be it on download or in the shops - this is one product that’s price hasn’t increased with inflation…. shhh… don’t tell Gordon B!

I’m aware there are several more debates to be had here, but I’m trying to drill down… So, how does this all relate back into public relations?

Well after having the afore mentioned conversation, I then brought the topic up with a couple of mates, who also work in public relations. At first they disagreed wholeheartedly… they believed artists to be "well paid", and "what was the problem?" … "It’s like lending a CD to your mate for a week." The obvious problem I had with this was that allowing several thousand people to share your files is a hell of a lot different to lending a CD. Then I found an analogy that had them both questioning their long-standing views:

How many times had they researched a brief at work, put together a high quality presentation and/or worked on a detailed proposal document? The answer was obviously lots! They immediately knew where this was going. I asked how many times, despite failing to win the new business, they’d seen their ideas, their concepts and sometimes even their very own time-plan and strategy, used and abused by an in-house team or competing agency post-pitch…

It makes me feel nauseous. If you want to hire an outside agency to do some work for you - then honour the process. If you decide to make your sourcing process competitive, fine, by all means do so, but don’t sit through a bunch of presentations and then rip off all their ideas. Word of mouth is a powerful thing, and before long you’ll earn yourself a reputation, and bad rep’s tend to stick….

Plus I’m a big believer in karma - and - what goes around comes around… try and do something on the cheap, and at some point or another it will go wrong… such is the way of the world.

Myspace starts a trend by being the first to bring down its walls

This morning it’s being reported by BBC News that MySpace is set to allow users to make their information available to other websites. That includes items such as photos, video, public profile information, friends’ lists and text.

It will soon let its members share the information with Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and Photobucket. Traditionally social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo have locked users into their own site and made sure the content was properly guarded to ensure people kept coming back which to a certain extent has worked.

Interestingly, MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe has confirmed he is happy to work with Facebook - which would be a huge leap forward. MySpace has stressed that users will have control over what information they share and who they share it with. 

Many of us now have social network profiles with lots of our contacts and connections hidden within them and I have spoken to quite a few people who think sharing these would be a great idea. I believe this is going to be an ongoing trend with the others quickly following suit because quite frankly they will have to or they will be quickly ditched for newer sites and tools.

Consumers will ultimately decide which tools help them go about their daily duties and if these tools can be used across several platforms similar to Twitter then more people will obviously start to use them, just to save time.

If these social networks genuinely want to survive they must bring down their guarding walls. One thing is for sure, if this information is secure this will be great news for all of us.

The changes are reported to be rolled out on the site across the coming weeks.

Cross posted: Norton’s Notes

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