Archive | April, 2010

Two years old but what have I learnt?

26 Apr

Paul Stallard's blog

Big thanks to my friend Phil who highlighted that my blog is now officially two years old. Wow, that crept up on me.

My blog has evolved and changed constantly over the past two years – as any good blog should. I have made mistakes and learnt what works and what doesn’t as the blog has grown. Every mistake has made me more confident to try again as each one has highlighted something I need to change which I take great heart from. How can I advise my clients on the pitfalls of blogging and how to approach it if I haven’t experimented myself?

When reviewing my visitor figures I saw that in the first month I started writing this I recorded a whopping six hits. I can almost guarantee that they were me on the work PC, my mum, my wife, my colleague Jo, my friend Josie and probably the brother-in-law. In March of this year, the same blog recorded 13,056 views. I’m secretly quite proud of this.

This blog has helped me share ideas, connect with people I have never met, build relationships with the media, share research and fun stuff I have found on the internet and help start conversations with my peers. That said, for all my best efforts to reach out to the UK PR community I have sadly found better interaction with our friends across the pond.

I have always monitored how many hits my blog records after I Tweet about a new post and realised a long time ago that I am more likely to see a rise in traffic, an increase in comments and emails from readers if I Tweet about posts in office hours in the US rather than UK office hours. This is odd because the vast majority of my followers are based in the UK. Unfortunately, I think this is because the US communications industry is more inclined to share ideas and acknowledge the work of others than us Brits. Whether this is because fewer Brits are seriously part of the blogging community or are still nervous about communicating with the competition is unclear to me.

I used to communicate with one of my peers via this blog, Twitter and email but after I approached one of his clients to take part in an interview about Buying PR was cut dead. I felt this was quite sad as I had no intention of trying to steal this client and told him so. In fact most of my questions to his client were written to highlight what a good job he had done and I know for a fact that he was forwarded the copy by his client to approve before I received the responses. Well, I never received the responses despite the client sending me a couple of emails to say that I was just about to receive them. What a shame.

Another series of interviews that I have been working on for the past year, my Meet the Media series has proved extremely popular. The idea was to find out how our industry can work better with the media and improve relationships between PR and journalists. I thought it might start debate and conversations but this has never really evolved.

After publishing each interview I often see a large rise in traffic including links from UK PR agency intranets and RSS readers but rarely receive any comments. One of my former colleagues even told me that my interviews have been emailed around his office at a large London agency with a note telling all execs to read it but I have never seen any comments from anyone at that company.

I have never written this blog to be part of a popularity contest and often spend a Sunday evening looking for new blogs to read or leave comments on and have always tried to acknowledge work and highlight other bloggers that I respect. One of the key things I have learnt in the past two years is that if you just take and don’t give anything back, blogging can be quite boring. It is the conversation that is interesting. Being told you are wrong can be as rewarding as being given a pat on the back becuase you are being noticed.

Why will the next batch of PR bloggers bother if they continually share ideas and don’t receive any feedback as to whether they are right or wrong? In much the same way that Drew, Andrew, Stephen, Phil and Stuart helped me by commenting on the odd post when I started or sending the odd message of support I would like to return the favour and help highlight any new PR blogs out there. Every time the guys above acknowledged my blog it spurred me on to continue to to keep trying to improve. So if you have just started a blog about PR and would like to have it highlighted here please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , ,

How much should I spend on PR?

22 Apr

Cash...


I was chatting to my dear friend and European PR managaer at Pegasystems a few months ago about how many companies should spend on PR as she was preparing a presentation for her management team. Remembering that I hadn’t spoken to her about her findings, but also thinking that it would be an interesting one to share, I asked her if she wouldn’t mind contributing to my blog.

Guest post by Jo Richardson, PR Manager, Europe, Pegasystems
Recently, I spoke to Paul and opened up the difficult debate of what a company should be spending on Marketing and then in turn on PR, it’s a subject that has kept us both very interested in the last couple of months and we have spoken about it a number of times since.

My belief was that it was around 10% – 15% of turnover on marketing.  In fact, I was right and wrong at the same time!  This seems to be a vast subject and each different marketer that you speak to has a different idea on what it should be.  I did some reading, tweeting, posting on Linked in and research and I had figures ranging from 1% – 17% of turnover – so pretty broad ranging!  One thing that I read and deemed to be from a pretty trustworthy source came from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), which conducts a bi-annual survey of marketing trends and they said,“spending on marketing is continuing to rise, accounting for an average of 7.7% of an organisation’s turnover, up from 6.6% in the last survey. Among small businesses the figure was 8.6% for those with a turnover under £1m, and 8.8% for those with turnover between £1m and £10m.”

Further research to find out what percentage of that marketing spend should be going on PR seems to point to around 40% if you are using agencies, and this does not include Ad-spend.  I would say that based on what I have seen in various companies, all of this sounds like a reasonable guideline.

I don’t know about everybody else, but I think a that gut instinct tells you what you should be spending each month, plus it is dependent on what you have available, or what you inherit as a budget – which isn’t really very scientific and this is exactly why I wanted to find out what it should be, so that I could best advise back into the business.

I’d be very interested in hearing what the rest of you think is reasonable, how you decide what to spend & if you have heard of any other ways of figuring out what the spend should be.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , ,

How do I identify a popular blog?

21 Apr


PR blogger Chris Norton has prepared an interesting list of tips to help determine how influential a blog is. Please check out his post which is backed up with years of having done this for clients but in essence they are:

1. How many comments does it get?
2. Check the site’s page rank
3. How many people are linking to it?
4. Check its Alexa ranking
5. Check its Technorati rating

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , ,

Have you checked your Twitter page rank?

21 Apr

Google page rank


I read a very interesting post on Andrew Bruce Smith‘s blog about how most people don’t realise that they have a home page with a high page rank. I have been working on this blog for almost two years now and have spent many hours writing and sharing some of my thoughts.

I also have a Twitter account which I also love but spend far less time populating. So it came as a bit of a surprise when Andrew highlighted that the page rank for your Twitter page could be higher than your blog. Surely not but upon investigation I found that this was actually true.

As he says in his blog, most people will have achieved this without even thinking about it. I certainly did.

Worth thinking about the next time a client asks you about the merits of starting a Twitter account. If you can build up a high page rank to your Twitter page you potentially have a powerful SEO tool for providing backlinks.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , ,

Paul Hiles – pictures of London

21 Apr

Paul Hiles


One of my clients has an office in Soho and has been using its reception area as a gallery space for artists. Upon my most recent visit I was blown away by how brilliant the pictures were on my last visit that I thought I would share a link to the artists website (Paul Hiles). If you like what you see, he does sell prints of some of his images, unless you have a spare couple of grand handing about.

This got me thinking. How many creative agencies are there in London? Hundreds…but how many give something back to the creative industry. I personally think that the client should be applauded for doing this and what a shame more don’t do it.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , ,

Meet the media: Peter Hay, PR Week

8 Apr

Peter Hay, PR Week


This week my meet the media interview has a slightly different spin as it is with Peter Hay, digital editor of PR Week. Peter has an interesting position in the media, where he writes about the subject that he gets to see real life examples of daily.

Every time I run these interviews the one major fact that comes out is that most journalist get I get a lot of untargeted emails. I thought that surely someone who works for the industry trade title wouldn’t suffer the same fate…..unfortunately this simply wasn’t true.

Name: Peter Hay
Title I work for: PRWeek

Paul Stallard: What is the best way to contact you?
Peter Hay: I think this depends on the urgency and timing. I work on the early morning news run so afternoons, in general, are better than mornings. I’m happy for it to be via email, Twitter or phone but if there is a lot to say, sometimes it’s better to email the general information and I can call you back if it’s something we would like to run. A link to a relevant web page can be quick and efficient, where appropriate.

PS: Do you think that most PR professionals read the title you write for before contacting you?
PH: We’re in a fortunate position at PRWeek in terms of working with PROs. In our case I think many PR professionals read our publication as it directly interests and relates to them and so understand it before contacting us.

PS: Have you ever done any PR work and if yes what was the experience like?
PH: I worked in a couple of in-house roles, after I graduated, in the fashion and book publishing industries. It was enjoyable and in both cases my place there allowed me to develop skills I still use now – especially in terms of writing and understanding how the PR industry operates.

PS: What is your top tip for PR professionals?
PH: Please don’t send enormous files via email, it’s a little frustrating.

PS: How many emails / calls do you get a day?
PH: I’m sure more than is necessary. I get a lot of untargeted emails and several irrelevant calls a day but that is all par for the course I guess.

PS: How has the increase of social media affected traditional journalism?
PH: I think it has had a huge impact on the way journalists report and operate.

Firstly, you have to be much quicker in getting your story out there, which increases the need for online as a conduit to facilitate this.

Secondly, as a news stream, platforms such as Twitter can be great for picking up on what’s going on in the world before it has broken in the mainstream media. This democratises the way in which journalists obtain stories.

Thirdly, you can really broaden your own audience if you’re active within social media. The more you put into it, the more interest you’ll generate and the more you’ll engage with your audience. It can take some effort but I feel it’s worth it.

PS: Have you had to change your writing style for online copy to incorporate SEO?
PH: Before the BBC started talking about the length of their headlines, we at PRWeek had already established the form of extending ours to allow more SEO keywords where they mattered. This has proved successful for us over the past several months in terms of growing traffic.

In terms of style, short, punchy copy has always been the way we write for online when producing morning web news.

PS: Is there a future long term for hard copy publications or will online rule?
PH: I think there is always a future for the physical. I spend a lot of my time online but I still like to go home and pick up a book or a magazine with a cup of tea.

Life online can be convenient and technology can really assist in making processes of assimilating large quantities of information faster but there always needs to be something in the three-dimensional world to occupy and entertain.

PS: Bar your own, which news titles do you read?
PH: Not surprisingly a lot of my reading is done online so I have a RSS stream of news –based information coming through to me.

Generally I dip into areas of the Independent, the Guardian and the Times that I find interesting. As a guilty pleasure, I read the Daily Mail online for its celeb gossip – they really are the best at reporting these stories in my view.

Blogs also feature highly in my reading, not least because I need to source good tech PR blogs for the technology page, which I co-write for the magazine.

My reading is quite organic and time-dependent, so I take recommendations from friends/followers on various social media platforms via links.

PS: What is your favourite restaurant/coffee house for briefings?
PH: I really like afternoon tea, one of my favourite things, so Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street suits me well for less formal meetings – it can become a smidge loud in there! For a quieter setting, the Charlotte Street Hotel is perfect.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , , , , ,

How do consumers use Facebook fan pages?

6 Apr

Facebook election page: Democracy UK

I wrote a letter today for PR Week about an article I read by Peter Hay looking at how the Conservatives were using Facebook the most out of the three top parties. In it, I tried to make the point that I believe Facebook is a great tool for trying to engage with the general public, especially with its 33 million plus users in the UK, as it clearly represents an ideal platform to communicate and canvas the voting population.

Then this evening, I saw a piece of research by Morpace which states that not only are consumers joining Facebook fan pages that are managed by businesses, but they use Facebook as a means to offer and receive product recommendations.

Among the primary reasons consumers join a Facebook fan page are: “To let my friends know what products I support,” (41 percent) and “To receive coupons and discount offers,” (37 percent). More than 36 percent of consumers consider Facebook to be a useful tool for researching products.

Nearly 68 percent of consumers say that a “positive referral from a Facebook friend makes them more likely to buy a specific product or visit a certain retailer.”

These findings interested me as rather than list how many people are on Facebook it actually gives some insight into how a consumer may use the platform. For those of us who work in PR who need to communicate with potential customers to drive sales or interest in our clients the ability to understand consumers Facebook is essential. There is no point just being on facebook for the sake of it. You need to be clear about what you are communicating and why it would be of interest to prospects otherwise you are simply wasting your clients time and money.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , , ,

Digital PR is like word of mouth on steroids

6 Apr

Simon Clift


I read a really interesting article by Tim Bradshaw on the FT’s website today. Tim had interviewed the outgoing marketing chief of Unilever, Simon Clift, who believes that PR agencies are best placed to profit from the rise of Facebook and Twitter.

Swift talks about how he has seen traditional marketing techniques revolutionised by the web and warns about a lost generation of marketers.

If you are 25 or 20, you know this stuff – you are brought up with Facebook and YouTube. If you are 50, you see your kids do it. Most of our brands are managed by people who have had to learn it.

The people who have most needed it are the people aged between 30 and 45, running global brands because they grew up after it and haven’t seen their kids doing it.

We are all learning. Unilever is ahead of much of the competition but behind consumers, which for marketers is not a comfortable place to be.

A great observation and one which my colleague Jo Jamieson has made on numerous occasions. When we interview graduates I am always amased at the amount who talk about how little experience they have of social media when the reality is that they have been living and breathing them for the past few years. They just need to realise that the experience they have gained using Facebook can be packaged to demonstrate a knowledge of social media in interview scenarios.
Swift also discusses why he believes PR is best placed to help brands:

PR used to be considered the poor relation of advertising. I think you could argue that word of mouth has always been the most effective form of communication. Digital PR is like word of mouth on steroids.

What a great quote. If you get a chance read the full article here.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Meet the media: Gareth Morgan, technology editor of New Scientist

1 Apr

Gareth Morgan (he's the one not in a hat!)



I am delighted to announce that my meet the media interview this week is with the technology editor of New Scientist magazine, Gareth Morgan. Rather sadly, he explains that he doesn’t think that most PR professionals read his title before pitching to him and infact, the amount of irrelevant calls he receives each day far out weight the good ones.

Gareth also makes an interesting point about the use of social media within journalism “as with any tool, results depend on the skill of the person wielding it.” Enjoy.

Paul Stallard: What is the best way to contact you?
Gareth Morgan: Email, phone, Twitter, carrier pigeon – I really don’t mind. But when deadlines are looming, I may not respond or have time to natter.

PS: Do you think that most PR professionals read the title you write for before contacting you?
GM: By and large, no. I think mostly the PR reps out there do know the sort of stories we’re looking for, and don’t pitch inappropriate stuff. But then there’s a few that see a name of a list and just want to be able to say they called. That means the irrelevant calls outweigh the good ones.

PS: Have you ever done any PR work and if yes what was the experience like?
GM: I’ve done a bit of copy writing, but none of the really hard stuff, like pitching to journalists or placating mean clients.

PS: How has the increase of social media affected traditional journalism?
GM: On the positive side, there are some social media tools which can enhance the things we might have considered as traditional journalistic skills enormously. Things like contact building, lead generation, tapping into reader feedback can all become easier. And in theory that should mean journalists are able to produce more insightful, engaging and relevant material. But as with any tool, results depend on the skill of the person wielding it.

PS: Have you had to change your writing style for online copy to incorporate SEO?
GM: There are some obvious changes – such as changing print headlines for online copy – that make sense. But SEO should be part of the mechanics of online publishing, not part of writing. You want your website and content management system to make sure good stories get as wide an audience as possible, so they need to be SEO aware. But what constitutes a well written story is a matter of readers’ tastes not search engine preferences.

PS: Is there a future long term for hard copy publications or will online rule?
GM: Of course online will rule – eventually. But I don’t think it’s yet clear how the industry gets to that point, nor even what “online” will mean, by the time it does. I think improvements in display technology are going to alter the landscape pretty radically. For the sake of my weary eyes, I still prefer dead tree and ink, and to be honest, there are precious few examples of really good design online. And for lovers of print, I think there are probably some titles where the print version will thrive.

PS: Are there any PR agencies you have black listed because of bad practices?
GM: No. There are probably a few that send emails which I routinely ignore on the assumption that if past history is any guide, they’ll be spam.

PS: Do you believe journalists are rude to PR professionals?
GM: A friend in PR once told me that she’d overheard a couple of her colleagues discussing how much I hated PRs – which isn’t true, but it did make me think there have been occasions where I should have been a bit more polite. On the whole, most of the people I’ve worked wouldn’t deliberately be rude, but we all have moments where we’re under pressure.

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 3,299 other followers