Recently, I had lunch with the editor of a marketing publication for a discussion about the state of public relations. After exchanging some pleasantries, I asked whether she felt public relations and marketing professionals were comfortable with social media, or at least getting comfortable.

Her response took me by surprise: not even close. Read More »

So now we all officially know what we already knew. Whatever one might think about the importance of alleged affairs by alleged footballers with alleged models though, the past few weeks has dramatically demonstrated how the rules of engagement have changed for anyone wishing to fully control the flow of information about themselves.

In short, you can’t. A whole new set of social skills needs to be employed if you don’t want to end up with 75,000 people tweeting about you for all the wrong reasons. Read More »

Let’s face it: most PRs probably don’t have a grasp on search engine optimisation. They might have heard of the term and may know a little bit about Google’s Keyword Tool and on-page optimisation, but how many PR firms could actually hold their hand up and say that they could offer a full SEO programme beyond just content creation?

By this I mean website re-architecture, link building, keyword position tracking and all those other things that help organisations compete effectively on search engines? Read More »

As the Facebook and Burston-Marstellar Google smear story continues to rumble the social network has come out and said that while it is true it didn’t want its name used it argues that its intentions were never to smear Google anonymously.

It said it wanted to see if people thought the this Google Social Circles tool was more of an issue than just a competitive one between Facebook and Google. That is why, it says, it didn’t want its name used – not because we are scared of the issue or don’t think it’s legitimate. Read More »

Want to find a way to get some traction for your latest marketing initiative or press release? If that’s what you need then it’s time to embrace social media – and there are some great tools out there to help you find journalists and sources and identify the people you want to connect with. Read More »

We’re always reading about how the big battle online is and will be between Google and Twitter.  Earlier this week we had Esther Dyson predicting that in the long run Facebook will be bigger than its rival and prior to that we learnt what a threat Google sees in Facebook with its new focus on social

So it is always interesting to learn if these companies see it the same as the pundits. And with the story breaking that Facebook hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google we know they do. Read More »

OK, so we had had the idea and found a name but how were we actually going to execute this grand master plan? As I have mentioned, I had a background in IT but not actually using it, just flogging the idea of it to other people. Luckily, I had a plan.     Read More »

If like me, you enjoy social media AND cookies, last week’s Oreo story can’t have escaped your attention.  Oreo, the world’s ‘favourite’ cookie attempted a world record on its Facebook page.

The premise was simple: amass the most number of ‘likes’ for a Facebook post within 24 hours, creating a huge raft of PR and thousands of new ‘fans’ in the process. Read More »

Along with Kate Warwick, the founder of PR Savvy, we are developing a social media public relations plan, and workshops, to help a number of the agency’s B2B clients prepare for how they will approach this emerging medium.

While social media for B2C companies is better defined, with terrific case studies to look at such as what Comcast, Skittles and JetBlue have achieved, we are finding that it is harder to find a lot of examples of many relevant and successful B2B social media PR campaigns. Read More »

After a year that saw some serious milestones tip in social media, such as Facebook reaching the 500 million member mark, you might be wondering what’s in store for 2011 trends in this lively medium.

Maz Nadjm

I met up with Maz Nadjm, Ogilvy Group UK’s now Head of Social Media, who formerly headed Sky’s online social media strategy,  to pick his brains about what he thinks is in store for the new year in social media. Read More »