This is a guest post written by good friend and colleague Zubair, you can follow him on Twitter @souljaof4tune and read his blog here. After a rather interesting discussion with Chris about some really good PR and social media blogs out there and the realisation that no one has a made a list of the very best (we all love a good list – don’t we?) in a long time. I decided to create this, the top 25 UK PR and social media blogs. Using the Ad Age Power 150, a list of the top English language marketing blogs. I pulled together all the UK PR and social media blogs I could find and decided to see what they ...

I had to share this video as I spotted this campaign on the news this morning and I think it is a brilliant campaign from the British Heart Foundation that has combined humour with a serious issue. Many people in the UK don’t know how to give CPR when someone is in cardiac arrest and the idea of doing it to the music of Staying Alive is just genius as it makes memorable. If it saves one person's life it will be a campaign worth doing and I think it has been executed beautifully. ...

Here is an interesting video that has been created for/by the airline KLM on its social media strategy which I got from one of my local friends David Turner – so hat tip to him. I have to admit when I opened it and saw it was nine and a half minutes long, I thought there is no way am I watching this, but I actually stuck it out for once and it was fairly impressive. I have worked for a couple of airlines before and I like to follow what they get up to in the social world as you never know when you will be asked to take part in ...

The Leveson Inquiry has once again brought the spotlight onto the world of Journalism. However, the fantasic journalism shouldn’t be tainted with one bad group of nasty journalists. There are still really good journalists out there that need to be backed. We all love a good story and that is what sells papers. I am personally proud to work in the media and am proud of our free press – it could be worse we could have boring newspapers that are censored by our governments and mean nothing. Some of the best ...

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have no doubt been seeing my recent tweets about the charity pub quiz I organise for the regional committee of the CIPR. I hate plugging things too much but the pub quiz was to raise money for a charitable cause that was deeply close to my heart. A journalist friend of mine called Nigel Scott sadly died of cancer in 2009 and so collectively we decided to hold a fun event last year to honour him and ...

Sorry about this but I need to have a quick rant. I have been working in PR for more than a decade and using social media for around five years and the shift I have seen in the understanding levels of social media marketing has been great as the industry develops. I saw a piece the other day about Sony hiring one agency to do everything and thought, brilliant, people are finally getting it. However, one of my big bug bears now is that people seem to want to use social media on a purely tactical basis rather than actually thinking things through properly. They look for the easy quick win. If I hear another question like this “can you just ...

Last year, you might remember I started a charity pub quiz in the name of a former journalist and friend of mine called Nigel Scott who died a while back. The event thankfully was a huge success and great fun. In fact, it was so popular it sold out in just under five days, so this year the CIPR Committee and I have brought it back bigger and better. We have moved it to a new venue in Alea Casino, which means we have increased ...

I think I speak for most people when I say we have all been saddened by the recent events in Tottenham.  A young man called Mark Duggan was shot dead recently by the police and this has cause some unrest in the northern borough of London. It has been widely reported that social media but more importantly Twitter was responsible for gathering these individuals together. However, this isn’t true. Social media is just a means of modern day communication. I gave my initial thoughts about this in a ...

I have worked in PR for more than 13 years and I must have pitched more than a hundred times, it’s one of the best bits of the job. Ask anyone who works in PR it’s tiring but brilliant. The thrill of coming up with new and interesting ideas and then trying to capture the marketers’ imagination.  Then there is the all important client phone call afterwards and you are told you have won the project! You all do the victory dance (maybe even a few whoop whoops) and the team is buzzing excitedly and then you suddenly realise that the client has chosen the one idea you put in, for creativity purposes, and now you have to ...

Please excuse me if this is a bit of a rant but I felt the need to get it out of my system once and for all. You would have to have been hidden under an extremely large rock this week to miss the story about a twitter user revealing the details of celebrity super injunctions on Twitter. In fact, it even made the 10’o clock news last night and my first thought was why? Various people confirmed on Twitter last week the details of the married footballer – in ...