Year: 2011

In recent weeks, I have been receiving an increasing amount of Linked-in connection requests and it has got me thinking. Now firstly I should point out I have a love hate relationship with Linked-in, some things I love about it and some things I hate. Also you don’t need to tell me about the benefits of connecting to people you have done business with or have met out a events. Linked-in is a brilliant platform for connecting to these people and sharing knowledge. The more connections you have on the platform the wider your search results go and in that ... Read more

Last Thursday, I spent the evening presenting on social media in the finance sector to a room of delegates at Grant Thornton. When I present I prefer to use real life case studies of work that I have completed myself with my teams. However, when I came to the Q&A section I was asked a question which I found quite difficult to answer. They said: “I can see all of the benefits of running integrated campaigns in social media but what are the downsides to using social media?” I really struggled with this (granted I was stood up in front ... Read more

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 to try and raise some money for the charities that helped him in his final ... Read more

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 ... Read more

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 the amount of tickets from 100–180 people and the quiz master will be  James Wilson ... Read more

With all the hype during the last six or seven years around the explosion of social networking you could be led to believe that social media influencers drive everything and are going to take over the world now. You may also have been convinced that the day of the traditional media sources and good quality investigative journalism are over. Not so – it’s true social media is important and that we all tend to use different channels to share different things. For instance, hands up who hasn’t logged into Quora or Google+ in the last few days? Yes I can ... Read more

So I have been  out of the country for a few days in Berlin with one of my clients that manufactures headphones. We were attending IFA2011 which is the biggest consumer electronics show in the world, and as a massive tech/gadget geek I was in my element and felt like a kid at Christmas. I am also a huge dance music fan and used to professionally DJ in clubs when I worked in London and I did manage to become a semi-finalist at the British DJ championships in 2002. Recently I have got back into it and have started playing ... Read more

If you are like me I imagine you have read quite a few posts before that give the usual advice about writing interesting and engaging content. Well I didn’t want to write something completely about the theory because I am always covering that type of stuff on here. As most of you know I manage a lot of social media communities for companies and brands of all sizes some regional, some national and others on a global basis. One thing I have noticed is that things have changed significantly in social media and online PR over the last 2-3 years. ... Read more

I don’t normally post about day’s out but I thought this was worth a quick mention. Yesterday, my wife and I wanted to take my little boy for a day out and we decided on the York Maze. I don’t know what I expected but I was pleasantly surprised. The York Maze is only really open during the summer months as it is growing the crop for the maze the rest of the year.  It is based on a farm on the outskirts of york. It was big but not too big and perfect for kids of any ages but ... Read more

Are you busy tomorrow? If not, you might want to make your way over to the Adelphi on Hunslet Road as I am speaking at a free seminar on the benefits of using social media for business. It’s the second of four seminars to be held by the organisers of this year’s Leeds Digital Festival. I attended the launch of the Festival’s new identity last week that I wrote about on Prohibition’s blog. The Yorkshire Evening Post covered the event the other day. It is kind of a Q&A session with some of the leading lights on social media in ... Read more