Live blogging the Guide to Social Media Conference

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

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.

Is investigative journalism dead?

As a broadcast journalism student, journalism is a topic close to my heart; however I feel the need to ask myself why I am looking to a career in PR instead. First and foremost, is the move away from muckraking journalism which brought governments to right; here I am obviously thinking of the infamous Watergate Scandal. I’m sure Woodward and Bernstein started a revolution among young journalists in the hope that they too would have the chance to change the world using a secret source named ‘Deep Throat’.

It was in this Golden Age that the media really lived up to its name as the fourth estate. But in the modern age investigative journalism can simply not survive within the press. Commercial pressures are forcing resources and cash to be stretched to the point that no, or at least very few, editors are willing to take a risk on expensive investigations. Phillip Knightley explains that it all began with the death of the print unions, and was subsequently made worse by the arrival of media law firms. I particularly like Knightley’s quote from Rupert Murdoch just after he ended the editorial budgets on the Times Newspapers, “Never give journalists a budget. The b******s will spend every penny of it." Just give them a news agenda instead, yeah?

Today, investigative journalism has moved over to television, with the technological age paving the way for the ‘undercover documentary’. Prime time spots are filled with reporters donning hidden cameras and mini-mics, in their quest for justice. I am not objecting to this kin d of journalism, don’t get me wrong I enjoy this type of programming as much as any other, yet I can’t help feeling like saying “Is this the best we can do?”

This is not the only problem. It is clear journalism is in decline across the spectrum – for one, Politics has been made into a melodramatic soap opera and ultimately caused the public to become more concerned with trivial rubbish. It was not long ago that Blair’s new haircut made the front pages and Cameron’s dabble with cannabis in his teens caused national uproar.

So with the Internet taking the world by storm and the emergence of social networking taking over could UGC (User Generated Content) become the new method of journalism? (In 2006 Ofcom’s communications market report revealed that 41 per cent of all UK Internet users aged 25 and over have a social website homepage. This is in addition to the 70 per cent of all 16-24 year olds signed-up to social networking sites.)

To this I would answer no, despite the lack of faith I have expressed in modern journalism, I still believe it plays a vital role in our democracy. There might be less catastrophic wrongdoings uncovered and more conformist reports in today’s news output, but there are still a lot of journalists risking their lives and fulfilling their role whole-heartedly to bring all of us, the news.

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

It’s certainly immoral and unethical, shame it’s not illegal

When I read Editor in Chief of Accountancy Age Damian Wild’s post on Alliance Boots’ payment terms I had to check the date to make sure it still wasn’t April Fool’s day. In fact Damian had posted a day earlier and it wasn’t a joke.

It’s bad enough that Boots bosses’ payment terms to small suppliers are a staggering 75 days. But it gets worse, the European Leaders in Procurement blog says that Boots will pay its suppliers up to 105 days after billing. And it gets even worse as “it will then charge a 2.5% “settlement fee”.’

You read that right. Boots CHARGES its small suppliers for paying its bills LATE.

It’s immoral, unethical and should be criminal.

As a small business owner I can know that the biggest problem we face is the length of time it takes clients to pay their bills. I probably don’t need to tell you how much more love and attention a client that pays on time gets.

Thanks to Dennis Howlett for the Twitter tip.

Are we seeing the fall of advertising?

For some time now I’ve firmly believed that word of mouth marketing and social media have been becoming much stronger as effective marketing tools for companies to use to promote their products. However, I have never really had any strong proof to back it up, other than the usual statistics from surveys and reading other people’s opinions.

I read an interesting article on CBC (Newspaper print ad revenue falls at record pace in 2007, online ads rise) that highlighted how, in New York, newspaper print advertising fell by a record percentage in 2007 whilst online newspaper advertisements increased but at a slower pace (the slowest pace from 2003), leaving quite a big gap in amounts spent.

Although the article does not mention word of mouth or any other forms of marketing it makes me think that surely these have been partly to blame.

I know there are threats of a global slowdown and a possible recession but I don’t believe that marketing teams will have just stopped spending money by reducing their advertising budgets. I think they will have just found much more tactical and effective ways of promoting their goods to their consumers.

Something must be filling the gap where advertisements used to be and in my opinion word of mouth marketing and social media will probably be somewhere in there eating up these big budgets.

Acer customer support 1, PC World 0

Yesterday I attended WOM UK’s first ‘How To’ workshop event. Very interesting day, with impressive presentations from Fiona at MESH, Andy from Ramp, Dave at Bzz Agent and Ivan at Wildfire. After even just a day out of the office it always seems to take a little longer than you’d like to get your inbox in shape, and your to-do list back on track.

For example - I’ve only just picked up on a post written this afternoon by a colleague that sits no more than 1.5m away from me. And… thinking back on the busy day, I do suddenly recollect a fair amount of agro coming out of his ‘moody’ corner. It seems the level of customer service he received from PC World regarding a fairly serious IT issue, was dealt with in a somewhat poor manner….

On the flip side of Wolfstar’s IT scenario, I myself sent my Acer Travel Mate off for repair (that only took two short conversations, one with Acer and one with DHL) last Friday - today it was sat back on my desk, fully fit and raring to go… so hat’s off to the Acer crew down in Plympton - thanks very much!

CIPR Yorkshire & Lincolnshire launch Facebook Group

In my new role as social media coordinator for CIPR Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, I have advised that initially it creates an open Facebook group to share more information with its members and non-members.

To be honest, it’s not the most exciting item of social media/group to look at just yet (we only have 12 members as I write) as we still need some good official CIPR content to be added but it’s a start and it’s an organic thing, which means we can all begin to post items and provide updates to each other.

The group is open to anyone interested in PR in the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire regions, they don’t need to be members of the CIPR, just interested in communications.

The group will enable the CIPR to share knowledge, news, events, media coverage, blog posts and interesting videos.

It also has a notice board so its members can use it as a forum and ask questions of other members.

I am hoping this will mean that more younger non-members get to hear about the many events the CIPR is organising across the region this year.

Other interesting CIPR and PR Facebook groups include:

1. Wolfstar’s
2. Leeds Met PR Graduates
3. Young PRpros
4. Green Communications
5. PR Networking Group London

Cross posted: Norton’s Notes

It’s official - a third of all blogs are actually Spam

I have just read an interesting article on WebProNews reporting that the blogging platform Wordpress has announced it has to get rid of 30% of its blogs because they are splogs.

A quick definition of a splog: "A splog (spam blog) is a fake blog created solely to promote affiliated websites, with the intent of skewing search results and artificially boosting traffic. Some splogs are written like long-winded ads for the websites they promote; others have no original content, featuring either nonsense or content stolen from authentic websites."

We have had our social media newsroom releases used on splogs before and unfortunately we immediately discount them. The splog which stole one of our stories recently didn’t even manage to link to the story very well, but to the un-trained eye they can look like genuine news blogs. I am sure there are companies out there who wouldn’t know any different and claim these posts as genuine online coverage but splogs are just a means of making money by stealing content and then using blatant advertising. 

Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress said that his company powers a whopping 2,523,000 blogs. WebProNews states that: "WordPress has had to delete more than 800,000 splogs" which equates to almost a third of all of its blogs.

I am not sure if this is representative across all of the blogging platforms as some have to be paid for and some don’t. I would hazard a guess that the paid for platforms have a lower percentage of splogs clogging up their systems - I can’t see these pirates wanting to actually pay for a splog.

Google announced as world’s number one brand

Yesterday Google was announced by ‘Superbrands‘, as the UK’s number one  business brand beating off giants such as the BBC. This has made me appreciate just how big this company really is. I myself use the search engine ‘Yahoo’, simply because that was the first engine my Dad introduced me to years ago. Interestingly, all my friends find it bizarre that I don’t use Google, as if the organisation owns a monopoly over searching on the internet. But of course they don’t and there are probably thousands of other search engines on the net, so why has Google gone on to rule the net, winning the crown for the brand with the best reputation?

Speaking of Yahoo, the business recently rejected a bid made by Microsoft for a ‘friendly takeover’. According to The Lang Report, Yahoo has just announced 1000 job cuts, its largest ever amount since the dot-com crash. Perhaps this due to the effects of Google’s growth in this sector. I believe in forthcoming years, the fate of companies such as Yahoo will be unsure, as Google continues to reign.

My university tutor suggested that the popularity of Google could be thanks to the idea of WOMM (word of mouth marketing). This is an interesting thought and I think he is right, especially when you think of the phrase ‘Google-it’.  It has become synonymous with internet searching and it is very common to hear people in work, the press and even teachers at school using the phrase to their pupils. I am told it actually makes an appearance in the dictionary now too!

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