Year: 2011

Now I have been a fan for Tweetdeck for a number of years, I have recommended it at events I have spoken at and even given one on one training courses to people as I thought it was a great tool. The product has always previously been created in Adobe Air making it a pretty slick package to use and it usually updated quickly. Today I have downloaded the latest version and I am not a fan at all. I should point out that I use Tweetdeck to manage around 15 different profiles and I have done it pretty easily ... Read more

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 ... Read more

I was reading an article the other day that claimed a positive review on Trip Advisor was now worth £10,000 and hotel owners are now being blackmailed for discounts and threatened with negative reviews if they don’t give them. The article stated: Dozens of customers are using the website’s increasing power to try and get free upgrades or refunds despite nothing wrong with their accommodation. Industry experts have said that a bad rating or review on the popular ratings site can be costly, sometimes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds in lost bookings. To be honest I ... Read more

I have noticed quite a number of corporate blogs recently that have been updated regularly but they don’t seem to be acting socially. It’s called social media for a reason because it is two way – so pushing corporate content in one direction is just one element of the process. I have been working in online PR for a number of years now and I have definitely noticed that a lot more marketers accept that blogging does have major SEO benefits. Halleluiah – our work is now done then and we can all relax. Hang on a minute… In this ... Read more

So the big news is finally here, Facebook has bought location based game Gowalla. The competitor to Foursquare didn’t quite keep up and more recently tried to reposition itself but now the social media juggernaut that is Facebook has gone and bought it. According to the BBC: In September it refocused its efforts on becoming a travel service, offering “social guides” to 60 cities, including London, Paris and Chicago, based on its members’ postings. At the end of last week CNN reported that Facebook had bought the firm for an undisclosed sum and would move Gowalla’s development team onto its ... Read more

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 stories come from the journalists when they run ... Read more

Another rant I am afraid. I am sick of coming across extremely poor blogs that are being used as dumping grounds by SEO people to leave links and point them towards their client’s main websites. I really don’t see the longevity in this process – it’s wrong and Google and Bing will get wise to it and stop you in the end anyway. Yes blogging can be used to help SEO but please god don’t write terrible, dull content just because it includes your client’s brand name all of the time. Surely, you want these new links to mean something ... Read more

As always in the Prohibition offices we have been doing some blogger research recently. We have been looking at some of the best written blogs in the world of gardening, so I thought I would share the UK’s top 20 gardening blogs. I hope you find them useful – one thing is for sure I could do with the gardening tips as I am pretty useless in that department. If I have missed a great blog off this list, please feel free to add in the comments as always. Thanks 1. Shirl’s Garden Watch – Packed full of pictures, videos and information, ... Read more

As you know in our day job at Prohibition we are constantly running campaigns for clients that are targeting different audiences, sometimes these can be pretty dry and other times they can be very interesting. We are currently running a blogger outreach campaign for our client Storage Options as they have just launched a new product for cyclists and mountain bikers. It’s called BikeCam and it films from the helmet or handlebars – it’s a great little product and so we wanted to get the gadget into the actual enthusiasts hands and hear what they personally thought of it. As ... Read more

I have just been listening to BBC News and it is talking about the toughest job market ever for graduates. As most people know one of my clients is Lucre Social (where I work as a director running social campaigns) and together we have been looking for a graduate to join our team in west London for a few weeks and we have been suprised at the lack of good quality people coming forward. I have shared this role on Twitter for the last few days and although we have a few good candidates that have come forward, we really ... Read more