Who should be in charge of social media?

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One area where Wolfstar does a lot of strategic consultancy with UK companies and global brands is helping them to create social media strategies and answer questions such as "How should we organize our company for social media?" or "Which roles do we need", or "Which department is in charge".

The latest social media report by Jeremiah K Owyang from Forrester Research is designed to help companies answer those questions. It concludes that

“the most sophisticated and efficient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralised resources that can support business units. The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing. Social doesn’t impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint.”

This supports Wolfstar’s view and is the structure that we usually end up helping clients to implement with public relations and corporate communications taking the lead, supported by marketing, customer services, risk and control, R&D etc. At the recent Someso corporate social media conference Wolfstar’s work with Sony Ericsson was described as “a master class for companies to actually implement social media strategies.”

Why Wolfstar is a PR, social media and word of mouth marketing and communications consultancy

Last week I had a good article in PR Week questioning the benefit of using digital and online PR to combat the BNP. Today Richard Rawlins, MD, of Finn Communications has a letter supporting my view saying “a digital campaign could never be expected to connect with the communities targeted by the BNP.”

He mentions his work with the NHS and how he is working “to engage communities that are defined as hard to reach.” Wolfstar is also working with the NHS on social marketing projects using a fully integrated public relations strategy that combines elements of experiential, media relations, social media and sales promotion all within a strategic WOM (word of mouth) campaign.

That’s why Wolfstar is a public relations, social media and word of mouth marketing and communications consultancy. Public relations is the over-arching strategic discipline that enables us to deliver effective, media-neutral solutions. Yes, a huge part of our client portfolio is delivering UK, European and global social media consultancy, but we can only do this well because first and foremost we are public relations professionals.

That’s why I see our real competitors as the few public relations consultancies that actually ‘get’ online PR and social media. The digital, conversation and social media agencies are in a different space to us, as that’s ALL they can ever understand or do! Not even capable of half the job.

As Richard concludes: “In this age of digital everything, it’s easy to forget that social networks started in the real world and that, believe it or not, people who live next door to each other actually have conversations.”

Public relations and social media work experience

Students; I know what you’re thinking, ‘summer’s coming, uni’s finished and I have nothing to do but lie around in the sun and drink Pimms’.

Well fear not, Wolfstar is here to help. We’re starting a search for students looking to start a career in public relations and social media to do work experience with us during the summer and beyond.
 
Wolfstar work experience isn’t like the traditional tea-making and cutting-taking – it’s fun and interesting. Our clients range from outdoor adventure parks to television channels so there’s a definite variety which ensures you’ll never have the same day twice.

If you want to come and work with us you’ll need a public relations brain and a keen interest in everything; new media, the internet, pretentious literature.

You don’t have to be on a public relations course to apply, you just need to have an interest in what we do and be willing to work really, really hard. Previous work experience students have included Becca, Natalie and myself so there’s always the chance that a placement at Wolfstar could become permanent.

Email applications to interns@wolfstarconsultancy.com and good luck.

PR vs SEO…

We’ve been talking a lot recently in the Wolfstar office about the upcoming NMK debate regarding online PR and something interesting came up…

In the last few days one of the team has had both a really great and a really bad email approach, both for the same product. (This is the interesting bit.) One came from a marketing department and one came from an SEO agency.

We are not one for naming and shaming, so we’ve starred out anything that we thought could expose the agency or the client.

See if you can guess which is which;

Hi There

A British entrepeneur called ******* is launching his very own search engine next Tuesday April 14.  The search engine (*****) is set to rival market leaders Google and has a novel take on ’surfing the net’.  This search engine will pay those who use it anything from £10 to £1000! as you will know this has not been sucessfully achieved  by many British businessmen, making it ideal for your business or technology pages.

I have attached a past press release which was not sent out, with some more information to help, but if you do decide to use this PR, would like to have an interview with ***** or photos this is all possible.

Thanks again

And the second approach;

Hi ****,

 

Hope you’re well? I’ve been reading your ******* blog over the last couple of months so wanted to get in touch and tell you about the attached PR. We are a new search engine, allowing users to rate search results with a custom ranking system, and using social media technology to allow users to interact with each other (for example to send private messages, ask questions and help with finding relevant information or recommend sites). I know you do a lot of features on tips for using particular elements of social media so hope this is appropriate as a new concept.

This PR relates to our first daily draw, which gives registered users a chance to win up to £1000 every day. Each time an account holder uses ***** to find information online, they go into a draw with one person per day winning a cash prize. The first winner was yesterday.

If this isn’t relevant, please accept my apologies.

Kind regards,

*******

We bet you can guess which one is SEO and which is marketing! The first is from an SEO agency and was sent out to ‘undisclosed recipients’ (BCC’d), the second is from a marketing agency and was completely tailored to a single recipient.

Now obviously bad marketing agencies send out bad releases and good SEO agencies send out good releases, but these two approaches certainly had some resonance when we were discussing the online PR debate…

Written by Chris and Jed.

You know you’ve got to Tweet

As Twitter’s the current flavour of the month it’s amusing (or scary!) to see lots of communications agencies (be they PR, advertising or digital) jumping on the band wagon and hastily recommending to clients that they’ve got to be on Twitter. Watch this video (featured on our home page) and think it about it folks and remember my business partner Tim Sinclair’s old consultancy motto “On strategy, on budget, on time” – on strategy, get it?

Thanks to Tom Murphy for finding the video.

Soap and Glory Days

I am a huge fan of Soap and Glory cosmetics as are a couple of the other girls here at Wolfstar, and was delighted to see their products on 1/3 off at Boots at the moment. After splurging a ridiculous amount of money on goodies, I began thinking about the brand from a PR and social media point of view.

The brand has a bit of cult following and in my eyes is a more affordable version of Benefit (who coincidentally have just joined forces with GHD for a new combo package supported by a national ad campaign).

Soap and Glory’s presence online and in traditional consumer media is quite small - after looking on Google I found a very limited amount of information online.

I would absolutely love the chance to work for a brand like this and think there is so much potential to develop their presence online using social media tools in a quirky way that fit alongside their brand personality.

For the full blog post, visit Amy’s blog PR Gossip.

Help us celebrate our good fortune

On Wednesday Wolfstar is throwing a little reception with our local MP – the Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We’ve invited friends, colleagues, clients, journalists, bloggers, politicians and even our favourite competitors to the Cinnamon Club in Westminster. It’s to celebrate Wolfstar winning the UK’s Outstanding Small Consultancy 2009 award from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. Sincere apologies if you think you should be on the guest list and we’ve not invited you (if you email us with a convincing plea we might be able to squeeze just one or two more in.)

If you can’t attend in person then we’ve created a Twitter hash tag of #wolfstarparty and we’ll also be streaming live video via Qik from a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 (disclosure, Sony Ericsson is a client).

As we couldn’t find anything more memorable on that day we’ve also decided to honour Cassius Clay, who on 25 February 1964 was crowned heavy weight champion of the world. As Muhammed Ali is one of the world’s most prominent Parkinson’s Disease sufferers we also want to help raise some money for the Parkinson’s Disease Society.

Everyone who makes a donation and Twitters or blogs using the #wolfstarparty hash tag will be entered into a draw to win a week in a luxury apartment at the exclusive La Manga Club (dates open, subject to availability). You don’t need to attend the party to donate and participate in the draw.

So please visit our Justgiving Wolfstar’s Cinnamon Club party page and donate now!

#wolfstarparty

Should big companies ditch small PR agencies for global groups?

Tim Dyson, CEO of NextFifteen (parent company of Text 100 and Bite Communications), has an interesting post on a trend he has indentified for some big companies to put their public relations out for review in order to switch from small and mid-size PR consultancies to big global PR agency groups.

Tim is critical of the trend saying:

“Their selection criteria would not appear to be based on which ideas will make the biggest difference to the business, or who has the best consultants available to work on their business. Instead their criteria would be appear to be blunt scale and apparent price. Of course this is something of an oxymoron as large agencies typically charge higher hourly rates and typically over charge. In terms of programs these firms tend to offer fairly bland campaigns that are big on planning and short on delivery. Interestingly it is at times like this that firms need the opposite. They need PR people that are creative and who love to get their hands dirty. In short they need results.”

Tim understands the rationale that procurement departments think that centralisation will help them to cut costs, but also argues that it doesn’t necessarily help them to get better value:

“In practice any cost saving tends to translate into worse results. At the same time, the hiring of a large agency tends to result in a more detached agency relationship. Smaller, more agile agencies are full of practitioners that love the craft of PR and will give their all to the task, not just the hours they are obliged to provide within the contract.”

Tim predicts that small and mid-size agencies are likely to suffer during the next 12 months. I have to admit it is something that has worried me. As niche public relations consultancy specialising in social media and word of mouth I’d like to think we’re insulated from some of these pressures. There’s not much as a consultancy owner I can do about it other than continue to ensure that we provide clients with good strategic thinking, coupled with creativity, good service and value for money.

Media relations: the Wolfstar way

Every couple of months or so some reasonably high profile blogging journalist (frequently from the tech space) has a moan about the dire quality of pitches they receive from public relations companies. This time it’s The Guardian’s Charles Arthur (actually it often is) who says “PR treats journalists not as resources, but like car companies treat parts suppliers (updated)”.

It reminded me of a post by Chris Norton on his personal blog where he mused on “Who do you think should make the call?”, asking if it should be an account director, manager or executive that should phone to pitch a story to a journalist. My opinion is quite straight forward:

1. Quite often you shouldn’t be making the call at all. It’s seldom the right thing to do. One of the reasons that PR companies put an account executive onto doing to these calls is that they are time consuming and not very productive, therefore you use a cheaper resource. In fact with proper research and planning most of the calls shouldn’t even be made.
2. It’s not WHO makes the call that matters, but how much they know. Unless they are living and breathing the client and know a lot about the issue and industry then they shouldn’t be wasting their and journalist’s time. An executive can make the call, but only once they know the client and industry.
3. Most news releases are spammed to far too many outlets, making the follow-up call even more pointless. What’s more productive for the client and helpful to journalists is taking the time to edit and tailor the story to the specific outlet you’re sending it to. But that means reading them, not just pulling a list of a media database (which always makes me think of chimpanzees writing Shakespeare).
4. Match what you do to what you think (from research and experience) needs. A national or major title trade journalist has different wants to a smaller trade title or regional publication. But if you target your audience correctly then the ‘less sexy’ title might actually be the better place to be (although too frequently you’ve got to explain why to the client). If you’re sending a news release to more than half a dozen outlets, then you’ve probably not targeted it enough. Edit the release to give journalists the angle that’s going to be relevant to their industry or title and if you are successful in seceding coverage that it contains the most relevant messages for the client.

Now I’m not going to be foolish enough to claim that Wolfstar gets it right like that every time. One of the challenges of running a growing company is that as new people join you have to instil in them what are often new ways of doing things and they have to ‘unlearn’ bad habits from elsewhere.

The other challenge, also identified by Andrew Bruce Smith, is fees. To do media relations properly is time consuming. Time is money. Therefore it gets done badly. But there is a self-defeating circle for the PR industry here. One reason fees are low is that clients don’t perceive the service as being worth more, but the reason the service is poor is there isn’t enough money to invest in more resource and better training.

Another key factor is competition. Simple media relations has now become a commodity service that is priced low. The real value to both clients and consultancies is in higher level strategic thinking and specialist services that add real value to the bottom line.

It’s worth reading some of the comments on the original post, especially the one by Guy Clapperton.

Wolfstar MD to speak at social media conference

Wolfstar MD Stuart Bruce will be one of the speakers at this year’s Don’t Panic Guide to Social Media conference that will take place at The Barbican Centre, London, in April.

Other speakers include: Stephen Davies; Graham Goodkind of Frank PR; Edelman’s Marshall Manson; Chief Inspector Mark Payne, head of press and public relation at West Midlands Police; Simon Wakeman, head of marketing at Medway Council; and Robin Wilson of McCann Erickson.

Stuart will be wrapping the conference up and reflecting on what’s been happening during the day, both in the hall, on the blogs and on Twitter. The last conference had a truly global audience with questions and comments coming from around the world.

The Don’t Panic website has a PDF containing full details of the conference. If you book early you can get an early bird rate of £245 + VAT.

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