Month: January 2010
Public relations companies finally winning the social media turf war
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, ... Read more
Manchester Utd say no to social networking
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 ... Read more
The top ten Twitter statistics and analytics tools
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 ... Read more
A twitter mash up that shows you where and how hard it is snowing
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 ... Read more