Becky joins Wolfstar on work experience

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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!

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.

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.

An unfriendly Facebook user gives the thumbs down to Facebook Chat

There I was, checking my friend requests and reading my private messages when all of a sudden I was bombarded with several instant messages from my ‘Facebook-friends’. I’m not sure I am a fan of the social networking sites new upgrade. Facebook have just launched a new instant messaging facility, where you can chat to your online friends. For a week or so now I have been quickly exiting Facebook as soon as one of my ‘foreign-friends’ (who I have never met but still, for some reason unbeknown to me, wanted to add me) starts talking to me. Luckily Beth has informed me that there is the option to set myself ‘offline’ if I am feeling un-friendly. Although my Facebook account has become more essential to me than my mobile phone, I can’t help but feel that my privacy is slowly slipping further and further away…

In hindsight though, I guess the new facility is another useful communication tool, which most people (me included) have for many years now, looked to MSN Messenger for. Personally I think the visuals of the Facebook Chat facility leave a lot to be desired and it’s really annoying that if you leave Facebook, your chat automatically ends. I still much prefer MSN’s version of instant messenger, but as so many young people nowadays spend hours a day on Facebook, perhaps MSN will see a decline in the usage?

Recently, the BBC’s technology program ‘Click’ found a potential flaw in Facebook’s security. After creating a malicious program, masquerading as a harmless application, they were able to steal personal data, without the users knowing. I am constantly receiving applications which is a huge down side to the site in my opinion. ‘How Barbie are you?” and “Which Hollyoaks  character are you?” are just two which have been sent to me today and which I have automatically deleted, as I always do. However, it is obvious that some people actually enjoy downloading these applications and it is now apparent that they need to take caution. These applications are run on third-party servers, not Facebook but maybe it’s time Facebook took back control and started to decrease them?

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Facebook chat, social networks, msn, bbc, bbc click, facebook applications

Should the term social media be killed?

This was the proposition expressed by Steve Rubel on his Micro Persuasion blog. The basis for his argument being that the evolvement of media which has created terms such as social media and user generated content should all be encompassed under the single heading of ‘media’. Rubel writes, “It’s like we’re a separate entity from the rest of the so-called "mainstream" journalists, filmmakers, photographers, etc. who do what we do and get paid more for it. We sit in a special dish like leftover meatloaf so we need a special name.”

I can see where Rubel is coming from in that bloggers and mavens alike want to be given equal credit for their reporting of news, information and opinion. However, I do not agree with him. These categories exist for very good reasons. Take the term ‘user generated content’ which envelops all manner of material from photos to articles, much of which can be extremely entertaining. However journalists, filmmakers and photographers earn their money for a reason. This reason being their knowledge. As a broadcast journalism student I have spent three long years training in a specific field, which could be stretched further by a masters, or an internship, or experience in working for a news network. Therefore I would hope that after three years of training and possibly, twenty years in the industry (if I were to enter into a career in journalism) I would know more than the average Joe. This is why terms such as ‘user generated content’ exist and similarly I feel my colleagues would hope their skills were honed, and perhaps even superior, to professionals working in other fields. I’m sure there are a number of photographers out there who couldn’t navigate their way around the blogosphere to the same effect as an accomplished blogger.

For another view see Helena Makhotlova’s blog.

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.

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.

Get Paid for Social Networking?

When I got an email inviting me to sign up to Yuwie I couldn’t help but be curious, I usually screen out these invites but the possibility of getting paid for social networking really caught my attention. Yuwie is apparently like Myspace, You tube, Facebook, Bebo and Hi5 with one big difference- you get paid to do everything!

I was surprised when I read that Facebook makes over $8million a month from  advertising alone and Myspace makes almost $25million! It makes sense that the users- the people who are making the pages, writing the blogs and creating this advertising space should somehow benefit from this. That is Yuwie’s message.

I’ve been doing some research and am convinced it’s not a scam, it doesn’t promise to be a get rich quick scheme but just pays its users small amounts that build up over time. You get paid for uploading pictures, videos, blog posts, inviting friends, starting clubs and basically everything you normally would do whilst social networking. The minimum payout is £50 and payments are handled by Paypal, a trusted and well known site. Even though I still love Facebook and I’m not entirely sure how long it takes to earn the minimum payout, I’ve decided to give Yuwie the benefit of the doubt and sign up, after all even if it takes months its still £50 for spending time on the internet, which I would be doing anyway.

Save Scrabulous!

I have never been a big fan of board games, Scrabble in particular was definitely my least favourite, I could never understand how the slow pace and debates over if a word was real or not could be called fun.

After turning down numerous invites to an application called Scrabulous on Facebook I finally gave it a try the other week. This game looks almost like Scrabble, it has the same board, numbered letters and the same set of rules. I presumed that it had been made by the same people as an attempt to reach new markets. I ended up spending most of my evening on it and now can’t help playing every time I’m near my computer, its more addictive than Facebook.

Over the weekend I read an article in The New York Times about how this new phenomena was actually made by two brothers who had nothing to do with the creation of the original game. Hasbro and Mattel (the joint owners of the Scrabble trademark) have denounced Scrabulous as piracy and threatened legal action against its creators hoping to have it shut down.

I’m finding myself torn between who I agree more with. On one hand I can understand the anger and frustration of Hasbro and Mattel and why they want it to be shut down. But, at the same time, this new development has shown them a great market opportunity that they might not have realised. Scrabulous currently has 658,461 daily active users, that’s 22% of the total users of Facebook. Tens of thousands of users have joined ‘Save Scrabulous’ groups, threatening to boycott Hasbro and Mattel products if this application is removed. As an addict myself I am hoping that they will somehow find some common ground, realise that this is a fantastic piece of new software that has attracted a lot of users and try to use it to their advantage. perhaps using it to advertise their other products or learning from Scrabulous’ success, reinvent some more of their games? Social networking has made this game popular to thousands of new users that might have never found it entertaining before.

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

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