My friends down at Rising Digital have just published one of their artists latest videos which is worth a watch. Nastla’s crazy is much more mainstream than the usual dance music Seb and the guys distribute but the video is very interesting. It actually reminds me of a cross between Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Michael Jackson’s Leave me Alone – have a look and see what you think.
One of our social media clients www.Thebusinessdesk.com which started out as a regional business-to-business news portal a couple of years ago launched its new 
site for the Midlands yesterday. This is after the success of its North West version which launched last year and is still continuing to thrive. For me the reason Thebusinessdesk.com has been so successful is because it creates good business content (using quality journalists) and is moving with the times both socially and more traditionally.
This got me thinking, even though we all know that newspapers are dying a slow and painful death why don’t they see it and address it now as time is passing them all by quickly?
Why aren’t they focussing all of their efforts into creating better news sites which have everything to offer locally, so people don’t stray from the hard version to better more up-to-date local online news sites or blogs. It may sound obvious but it is still happening with regional after regional dropping down to weekly versions. If they just used a cleverly integrated social and traditional strategy they could keep their audience and make the switch easily but they all seem hell bent on sticking to their traditions and then they end up becoming weeklies having still not sorted the very issue which is beating them.
Only the other day I met the creator of a new local based social network which provides news to it’s local community and the owner told me even though he had contacted the local newspaper to give them free advertisements and access (because he valued their opinion) they refused because they sensed a threat. Let’s face it the local newspapers already have the upper hand on the competition, as they have a captive audience already reading their material and people buying into their material. Everyone else can see this is happening why can’t they and why don’t they address it today?
An article in The Economist last week claimed that public relations companies are feeling much better about things and doing far better financially. The article stated:
“According to data from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private-equity firm, spending on public relations in America grew by more than 4% in 2008 and nearly 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. That is remarkable when compared with other forms of marketing. Spending on advertising contracted by nearly 3% in 2008 and by 8% in the past year. PR’s position looks even rosier when word-of-mouth marketing, which includes services that PR firms often manage, such as outreach to bloggers, is included. Spending on such things increased by more than 10% in 2009.”
This is true I think a certain area of public relations is really starting to thrive and that is the digital PR sector. Three or four years ago when we started to speak to clients about social media it took me and my team about ten minutes to explain to them what a blog was and what it did – now everyone is looking for the next big social media tool to use. The tool of 2010 is without doubt Foursquare with people checking in and out all over the place leaving others who have never used it slightly bemused.
Every day we are seeing new digitial pr or social media specialists springing up, some with experience in public relations and a lot without. My good friend Jed Hallam mentioned it on his company’s blog today:
“I feel like social media is (in the UK, at least) in an odd state at the minute (maybe it’s just hit the trough of disillusionment or something) and I don’t think anyone quite knows what to do.
“Agencies don’t really seem to keep pace with audiences, some clients still see it as gimmicky, big traditional agencies like to hire ‘social media strategists’ to ‘sort out that internet stuff’… The list goes on.”
Jed’s right we are at a bit of cross roads now with social media because clients know what Facebook, Twitter, Xing and Linked-in are. I strongly believe these newcomers who have sprung up all over the place charging clients money to set up Facebook pages will drop off and we will be left with the good PR practitioners who know how to react properly in a crisis and how to use these tools to engage better with an audience and customers. I mean it’s all very well setting channels up when things are going smoothly and it’s all good fun but if something goes wrong and things spiral out of control it must be managed by a trained professional and that is a PR person.
The truth is PR people are often undervalued when compared with the big budgets of the advertising sector but now that the game has changed forever, I think that the perception of PR professionals will change too.
Do you think the game has changed?
I read an interesting post yesterday that made me sit up and scratch my head. The article was all about Manchester Utd placing a formal statement on its website which read as follows:
“The club wishes to make it clear that no Manchester United players maintain personal profiles on social networking websites.
Fans encountering any web pages purporting to be written by United players should treat them with extreme scepticism.
Any official news relating to Manchester United or its players will be communicated via ManUtd.com.”
Now for me this is an interesting development, we have all heard about senior directors in various corporates banning the use of social networks like Facebook in work hours but we have never seen a public statement from a Premier League football club banning all usage of them from their players.
The trouble is footballers have been causing trouble left, right and centre with their usage of Twitter and Facebook and the clubs haven’t really got to grips with how to deal with them. Some players have used their networks to engineer moves to other clubs, some have vented their disgust at being dropped from their teams and others have just not thought about what they are doing when they have updated their statuses.
Here are my top five footballer social networking faux pars:
If you are interested in footballers on Twitter here is Sport Blog’s Top Ten Footballers on Twitter.
Personally I don’t think Manchester Utd should have banned the players from using all social networks. I think they should have provided some type of formal training and explained the parameters of what they can and can’t do. For instance, we all know that the footballers are properly media trained before they go in front of a camera. They know how to answer interview questions, so why can’t they update their own social networks it doesn’t make sense? The players just need to use common sense before pressing update. In other words, don’t talk about transfers, don’t slate the manager and don’t criticise the club in public. There are three straight away – I could probably write 30 or so if I tried.
The fans love following their favourite players because it gives them some insight into their lives and this has to be good for the clubs. The truth is there is a lot of money involved in this industry and footballers are a completely different animal to the corporate world but I would always recommend training first and foremost rather than outright banning all usage. We will have to watch and see if the other clubs follow suit to finally put a lid on this but somehow I don’t think they will.
What do you think is Manchester Utd using the right approach?
If you work in marketing or public relations, the chances are you are now regularly being asked to use social media to spread your client’s messages. I have met lots of marketers and business owners who are surprisingly still trying to figure out how to get the most out of these channels with many trying something small but not measuring the results effectively.
In light of that fact, I thought it would be good to share some useful Twitter tools with you – so you can measure that and see how you are doing.
The truth is Twitter is all about conversation, not just marketing offers, although that said they do help to a certain point. To my clients I always recommend no more than 10% marketing messages on any of your social channels, the rest should be useful, fun and engaging otherwise people will simply unfollow you or your client.
So if you want to measure how successful your communications campaign has been online what do you do? I always recommend using a decent analytics package as a starting point there are loads available but the one I use for this blog is Google Analytics because it is free. I mean what’s the point of creating more web traffic if you don’t know where it came from or why?
There are hundreds of twitter tools that measure different statistics out there but many can be a bit of a waste of time. I have been through most of them in the last few years and given them some kind of test, so I thought I would share my top 10 with you – so you can use them to measure how effective your Twitter campaigns are.
However, it gets a rank because it was supposed to be a good tool. If you have a good tool to recommend, please feel free to share it. For instance, I know Hootsuite and Bit.ly are also great stats tools to measure your link popularity but if you have more please just add a comment and let me know.
Unless you have been hidden under a rock recently (or an avalanche) you can’t have failed to have heard that the UK has ground to a practical standstill following an attack of bad weather.
I live in Harrogate in the north of England and work in Leeds regularly and we have had the worst snow in 30 years. I was particularly proud to see our home town as the focus of the national news as the chaos continued last night. Yesterday, we were one of the places worst hit. I have included a couple of images to show you just how bad it is in my area. I have decided to work from home again today as my car is even more covered today despite me trying to dig it out yesterday.
Anyway, where there is a problem, there is a clever Twitter app. So here is a Twitter mashup by Ben Marsh which shows you where people are tweeting about UK snow and how bad it is coming down. Due to the fact that the snow is going to be around for some days yet – I thought it was worth posting about to stay abreast of things that are going on. It’s actually quite fun too to follow what is happening and where. The media in the UK has covered the snow well and kept us informed but i have been particularly interested in reading my Twitter friends tweets from around the country.
All you do to use the Twitter app is tweet the hashtag #uksnow and the first half of your postcode, and rate the snow that is falling out of ten and your tweet arrives on the map. Even better this is also available on the iPhone. This is a very useful app especially at this time of year but I doubt people will be using it in July – maybe we will have UK/US sun.
This is the first guest post I have had on my blog and it’s from Nick Hill, a director at Binary Vision. I have known Nick for a while now and seen him speak several times, his knowledge and expertise in behaviour and interpersonal skills are extremely impressive and I thought it would be interesting to hear his take on client management in the PR industry. He works with quite a few marketing and public relations firms and the feedback I have heard from his clients has been astounding as he really knows his stuff.
Nick uses the latest psychology tools to transform team members into high performers that in turn create more business. His programmes focus on enhancing key interpersonal skills that improve personal focus, confidence and overcoming challenges faced by modern executives by developing language and body language skills that give you an edge. 
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Hi my name is Nick Hill and this is my first post on Chris’ blog so nice to meet you all and hope you enjoy the post.
I believe the success of any PR consultancy is strongly reliant on the skills of its account management teams as they are its life blood.
Convincing someone to ‘try your agency’ from a pitch situation can and should be relatively easy, retaining their loyalty as a customer for a number of years is the real challenge, but this is what creates long-term sustainability for any PR company. If you or your account team don’t develop your interpersonal skills to cope with all those different client ‘types’, you may run the risk of forward thinking competitors keeping their clients and eventually taking yours as well.
Without getting too intricate, every one of your clients has a series of very different and unique patterns of behaviour. In very basic terms, some will communicate with their hands more than others, some have differing voice ranges, they move and ‘behave differently’ and some even look at you in the eye, then look away, then back, then away…..it’s sometimes bizarre! They’re all different and that’s what makes client handling so interesting.
Each client has different traits, preferences and language styles. The trick which will really give you an edge in the boardroom is being able to identify and respond to the different types of communication and behaviour when dealing with your clients. People buy from people and there are techniques for identifying how people ‘prefer’ to be communicated to and how you can respond to them as they want you to.
I’d like to share a couple of examples with you. As well as maintaining the client relationship, account managers or directors typically have a remit to keep that client and increase spend with your agency.
When meeting with directors and particularly when dealing with sales situations, you want to find out if a person is ‘motivated towards’ achieving objectives or, ‘motivated away’ from consequences of not attainment of those goals. In language terms, people often concentrate on talking about what they will avoid, rather than gain. That’s OK, it’s their ‘preferred way’ of dealing with the situation. When dealing with these types of people you don’t want to be focussing on communicating the benefits of the solution you are providing if your potential client is motivated by the avoidance of the consequences of not having it. You’ve got to communicate to them on their level! By doing that you are satisfying an underlying behavioural preference of that person and that’s a good thing I’m sure you’ll agree.
Another ‘pattern’ to look out for is which ‘representational system’ a person is using. It sounds complicated but what this means is the senses (Visual – sight, Auditory – sound, Kinaesthetic – touch) a person uses when communicating. For example, a client might say “Oh right I see what you mean”. That would indicate your client is using their visual system to process their communication.
If they use the terms “I like the sound of that” or “get a grip of the situation” they tell you that your client is using auditory (sound) and kinaesthetic (touch) senses to describe their communication. OK I am sure you are thinking about your own clients, maybe what you do and say, right now in your head, but thinking ‘why is this important?‘
Well if you know how your client likes to be spoken to, it increases the levels of ‘rapport’ you can have with him or her, you can do this by ‘matching’ the client’s representational system.
For instance:
Client: “You see what I mean?”
You: “Yeah, that looks alright to me too!”
Rather than,
Client: “You see what I mean?”
You: “Yeah, that sounds alright to me too!”
It’s this type of detail that can and will give you the edge when you are dealing with existing or potential clients. If you are a member or a leader of an account team I am sure you already know the basics of growing an account, that’s not in doubt here. But what really increases your client loyalty is not growing the account, but knowing the account, inside and out. So my advice would be improve your communication skills using a few simple techniques, before your competitors picks up the phone to your client and does it instead.
It’s all about rapport and communicating to a person on their level….
Hope you enjoyed that and find it interesting on some level. Who knows, I might get invited back here again!
I write regularly about improving communication techniques and interpersonal skills on my blog, so feel free to add me to your subscribers or follow me on Twitter.
This is quite a timely post really, you may have noticed I haven’t been quite as active as I normally am recently, well that is because I have been busy working on several exciting online projects and I thought it was about time I shared one of them with you. During the last couple of months I have been providing some strategic consultancy to an exciting new internet venture which caught my eye a while ago.
TheFashionPixie.com aims to reduce the amount of time, hassle and emails that people have to contend with when they are looking for the latest fashion sales, bargains and offers whether it’s online or on the high street.
I have joined forces with a group of clever individuals to develop a new online community in which people (or this case Pixies) can share the latest deals and offers they find and get them posted on one site.
TheFashionPixie.com is still in Beta but basically it is a free online alert service for price-conscious fashionistas and I am sure it is going to prove hugely popular in January when the sales begin. We launched this last week and we have been very impressed by how the service has been received by people.
What I particularly like about this idea, is it uses the power of like minded bargain hunters to search out the best offers and this helps to create crowdsourced content. All in all I think this is a good example of a clever idea and a good execution. Too many times I have come across some great people with good ideas but with a dodgy execution.
As I say it’s just a start-up venture at the moment but we will be working together during the coming months to create and bring out new developments/improvements to the site and its functionality, so if you have any recommendations, please feel free to leave a comment. I have included the video we have created which helps to bring it to life a bit better than I can on here.
If you want to follow the latest deals on Twitter you can and if you want to subscribe to the Pixie blog you can do that here.
I have been talking about Twitter quite a bit recently on a number of blogs that I have the pleasure to write on. I don’t share everything on my own blog but I think this tool is worth sharing if you like using free tools for monitoring purposes.
Tweet Cloud is a well produced free tool which lets you see a topic cloud of the most used words on Twitter around one particular term or phrase. As a vanity exercise 
I tested it out on my own name and you can see the results below. I was quite amused that coffee and Yorkshire were topics I refer to quite a bit. I would be interested to see some of my friends own clouds.
I think this could be pretty useful, when brand managers or business owners, want to see what is being said about their company nice and quickly. As with all category or tag clouds you can click on the relevant term and actually see the individual tweets themselves. So if a company has a disgruntled customer who has vented their fury on Twitter and made a bit of a splash for instance this could be pretty useful. The cloud function is pretty similar to other more advanced social media monitoring tools that I use such as Radian6 which creates clouds from most types of social media.
The best approach should always be to monitor your Twitter channel closely, so you or your company can deal with any customer questions or feedback nice and swiftly.
Finally, the best bit (as a bit of a geek) is that you can actually turn your own topic Tweet Cloud into a bespoke widget and share it on your blog or website, so your customers or employees can see the latest top topics associated with you or your brand. I think that is a very nice little function indeed and I am sure quite a few people would want to use it.
I meet lots of entrepreneurs and business leaders who are all interested in using Twitter and the other social channels to grow their business and communicate their marketing 
messages. I tell them that Twitter is about relationships, and growing those relationships, which in-turn should help grow their business. I have made quite a few real-life friends and contacts through Twitter and often the relationships started online and then one of us picked up the phone, or Skyped each other, or simply had a good old fashioned meet up.
Twitter has without doubt become the golden boy of the media in the last 12 months, although some of the more upcoming applications like Foursquare and Google Wave are starting to turn heads. The really exciting one for me will actually be Google Social Search, which I think will have quite a substantial impact on the communications industry, similar to the (pardon the pun) waves Google side-wiki has been making.
The question many business owners struggle with is how do they make money out of Twitter and I tell them it doesn’t always work like that, it isn’t an instant process. However, there are many brands which are using Twitter as just a broadcasting platform, to share their offers with their followers and to be honest that can work well for some.
The big Twitter news this week is that Linked-in has partnered with Twitter so users are now able to update their statuses from either platform. I think this is a good idea, although there were quite a few ways around it anyway by using tools like Ping.
The Linked-in Blog comments:
The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.
To be honest, I have always found Linked-in to be a little too static and dry but I know it can be a very useful resource. Most decent recruitment companies have been using it for years to track people down with certain specialisms.
My advice to get the most out of Linked-in would be to add everyone you know and everyone you meet and keep your profile up to date. The extra links you put into this network can prove very useful indeed, especially if you want to get the lowdown on a potential new client etc. For a really good list of ways to get the most from Linked-in try this.
It seems Linked-in is starting to make adjustments to make itself less static and more instant and if this new partnership helps that process then it should be seen as a good thing. I think it’s time for Linked-in to step up and show why it is such a widely used network – it certainly cannot rest on it’s laurels anymore.
What do you think of Linked-in?
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