Content, data, digital, marketing, mobile, PR and social media… The industry changes so fast and to stay on your game you need to be tuning into great resources like The Wall (yay for you, you’re already ticking that box), the ever decreasing number of trade magazines and of course events.

There are a handful of big, agenda-setting conferences in the UK that everyone knows about and many will attempt to go along to one or more during the year.  But, there are a number of other events that may fly under the radar, and many niche (social media for the military, pharmaceutical or utility industries for example)  or focused conferences (if you’re looking for an event solely about content or data – 2013 is your year) that are worth considering. Read More »

For years, large organisations have employed press officers or PR agencies to protect their brand against incorrect or damaging allegations and stories. Such activity was reasonably straightforward when there were just a handful of different media channels to police.

However, with the explosion in the use of social media sites and also the number of people with access to an online audience, brand reputation management has become much more complicated and problematic. Read More »

The debate over who ‘owns’ social media is one that will no doubt rage on for some time. In many ways the argument is arbitrary – does it really matter?  Nonetheless it is a battle that I occasionally get drawn into so let’s grasp the nettle.

PRs think that social media should fall under their remit, because they’ve been managing their clients’ conversations and reputations for decades. That’s all well and good, but what is the point of talking for conversation’s sake? Can PRs really measure the impact of social media? I’d argue, ‘no.’  Read More »

The belief of WPP’s chief executive Martin Sorrell that Twitter is more a PR medium for brands, rather than an advertising opportunity, has been widely shot down by rival agencies and social media practitioners.

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For many years the worlds of public relations (PR) and search engine optimisation (SEO) have existed separately, providing companies with their benefits in a very disparate manner.  However, the time has arrived for the two strands to work together in order to offer the best possible online result, particularly in light of the changes brought in by Google Penguin.

This is where SEO PR comes in.  It focuses on the ‘credible’, places for brands to be seen online, and the ‘genuine’, organic activity such positive online conversations about the company. Read More »

Two tools of all public relations professionals is the phone and email, but in recent times PRs are turning more and more to using Twitter. At a party, I met Kate Russell (@katerussell), a journalist for BBC Click’s Webscape show, and we got to talking about how she is using Twitter. She told me that many of her stories are sourced from tweets, and she often asks people to send her story ideas in 140 characters, or less. She told me that Twitter is the best thing that has happened to journalism in many years.

Following meeting her, I tweeted her with an idea for a story about a client I am working with (on behalf of the agency PR Savvy) called Blue Badge Style. In one tweet, I explained to her how it is an app offering a disability access guide to stylish venues. It caught her attention and she asked me further questions via Twitter, and let me know it would be proposed to the editorial planning team. Read More »

For perhaps as long as there has been the profession of public relations, there has been tension from the journalists served by this industry. I often see journalists complaining, frequently on Twitter, about poor approaches from PRs.

While there are hundreds of guides out there for how to handle media relations, I’m still surprised that the profession continues to fail on two universal “don’ts” that every PR should know enough to avoid.

Here are a few tips I’ve learned, and a bit of insight below from a few of the UK’s top tech journalists.

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Mobile Monday is offering The Mobile Academy at the University College London

I’m going to be a guest lecturer for The Mobile Academy, teaching a DIY course for public relations, and social media, for mobile industry entrepreneurs.  The course is sold out now, with about 60 participants joining the 36-hour masterclass, being offered at the University College London, through the folks who run Mobile Monday. Read More »

While many PR clients have opened up their website performance data to their agencies, many PRs still struggle to gain access to data which they overwhelmingly agree would help them create more effective campaigns.

The agency-client dynamic has always fascinated me. They always work best when the external PR agency is seen as part of the same team rather than purely an outside contractor. Trust is a key element to a healthy agency-client relationship – and that extends to sharing company data which may be perceived by some as sensitive, such as website performance data. Read More »

Which agency discipline – PR, digital or advertising – is best placed to control and lead a brand’s social media strategy?

In a constantly-evolving area, it’s a pertinent question – and one that clients must find particularly challenging when, in the financial land grab for scarcer and scarcer marketing budgets, seemingly every agency in town is saying ‘We can do it’. So where does the truth lie? Read More »