The social media news release in a nutshell

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If you are scratching your head wondering what a social media news release is, our good friend Todd Defren on the other side of the pond has just shared a great video from CNW Group in Canada, which explains what they are really clearly. If you are also still wondering what a social media newsroom is check out ours or read my last post on them for a bit of an explanation and a few examples.

The truth about working for an agency

Have you ever thought about starting a career in marketing and wondered what it’s like to work in an agency? Well, here is a short and amusing video which gives you a flavour for what it’s really like.

Enjoy.

Junior designer wanted at Raw Creative

Our sister agency Raw Creative is looking for a fresh faced and talented designer to join their team and help their small agency grow even further.

They are looking for enthusiasm, so they want somebody who jumps out of bed on a morning and makes a good cup of tea - only kidding.

This person will work alongside the senior designer and on their own, so the ability to see a project through from concept to artwork would be ideal.

The candidate will need a degree or equivalent in graphic design, and experience using Quark Xpress, Illustrator and Photoshop is essential.

Raw has a broad range of clients and projects so no one day is the same.

If this opportunity sounds appealing just send an email with your CV to craig@rawcreativeleeds.com and he will be in touch shortly.

Cross posted: Norton’s Notes

Twitter Tool - Updating Twitter from Microsoft Outlook

If you are a regular Twitter user, you may well be interested to hear that there is a new tool available which means you can check and update your Twitter status directly from Microsoft Outlook - so no more switching from one site to another.

I have just tested it and it appears to work just fine and it’s actually really useful. Interestingly, it singles out messages to just you too, which is a really useful function - I had spotted most of my personal messages but there were a few in there that I didn’t know about.

Thanks, to Tom Murphy for flagging this one up to me - very useful. To download this tool click here - it takes about 30 secs.

Below is a screen grab of my outlook page and how it now looks.

Cross posted on: Norton’s Notes

Wolfstar to work for a superstar DJ

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.

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.

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

Facebook launches Lexicon a new service to analyse its trends

Ever wondered who is saying what and how often on Facebook? No, well neither have I really, but Facebook has launched a new service which now shows you anyway.

Lexicon is described as a tool to follow ‘language trends across Facebook’. It looks at the usage of words and phrases on profiles, groups and event walls.  

For example, you can enter "blog, PR" to compare the usage of these two words on its walls. Like I have done on the right here for an example.

Users can enter up to five terms with each being a word or two-word phrase.

How do you interpret its results?

It shows the number of users that posted that term per day on a profile, event or group wall. It doesn’t count repeated terms by a user on one particular day. You can even zoom in and out to analyse the data more closely if you want too.

I know what you’re thinking - is there a privacy issue here? Well apparently not as everything is kept anonymous and it doesn’t consider private data, such as messages, Chat (I will cover that at another time), invitations, or searches.

Marketer’s should give it a quick whirl as it could prove pretty useful for a quick reference to something but apart from that I think it’s pretty basic.

Now if I post this on my Facebook profile will it show on Lexicon - hmm who knows?

Cross posted on: Norton’s Notes

Are you looking for work experience in public relations or social media?

Calling all students - are you bored of getting up at 3pm? Are you tired of drinking and partying until mid-day? Has cold pepperoni pizza really lost its appeal at breakfast time?

Right then, listen up, social media specialist Wolfstar is again on the hunt for some enthusiastic recruits to join its team on a part-time work experience basis.

Are you interested in a career in public relations? Do you have an interest in social media and word of mouth marketing? Do you want to find out how this all fits within the marketing mix? Well, if the answer to all of these questions is yes, we have a great opportunity for you right here with us.

We are currently looking for a couple of professional but fun students to join in the action. If you would like to gain some fantastic experience with a young team of communications professionals, drop me an email with your CV at chrisn@wolfstarconsultancy.com.

If you have any fears about starting to work, have a look at this.

Time to get writing chaps……

Technorati Tags: Students,Wolfstar,Work experience

Finally a useful Facebook application for bloggers and networkers

Yes you did read the title of this post right. Just when you thought Facebook applications were pretty pointless, a new one has been created which could actually prove to be pretty useful.

Six Apart the creators of several blogging platforms including Typepad has created a new Facebook application which enables users to update their status and blogs all through the Facebook platform.

I have just tested it this morning and it seems pretty useful, you can update any of the following through Facebook:

1. Facebook Status
2. Twitter
3. Pownce
4. Vox
5. Wordpress
6. Moveable Type
7. Blogger
8. Tumblr 
9. Livejournal

Tech crunch says: "The idea is to allow Facebook users to very quickly share something they like on their blog, without leaving Facebook."

Tech Digest reports: "Blog It is one of the few applications that takes content created inside Facebook and makes it available for use outside Facebook," said David Recordon, Open Platforms Tech Lead at Six Apart. "Blog It users are able to update their personal blogs, business blogs, online journals, Facebook status, or Twitter or Pownce activity all from one central environment. This is a concrete step away from the silos and walled gardens of the past and toward the open web of the future."

I have posted this morning asking whether Facebook can keep its doors firmly closed to all the other social networks. This could be the first of many applications which finally let Facebook users share their information outside of the Facebook platform. Whether that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

Cross posted on: Norton’s Notes

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