Tag: Social Media

Happy New year to you all, last night was a bit stranger than normal, not just because my whole family are currently struggling with one of those nasty winter viruses but because we experienced an earthquake sat at home. It was just after 9pm and I was sat up watching something on TV when the whole house began to shake, the cupboards started to make rattling noises. It lasted for a about five seconds and felt like a huge train was driving past right under our house. As soon as we felt it we knew it was a tremor but ... Read more

I was presenting at the Wealth Enhancement Forum last week on social media and the business opportunity it presents. I was asked several months back if I would do it and I said I would be happy to share my thoughts with the group. I managed to get about five slides into a presentation before the quick fire round started and the questions started to come thick and fast. I found it extremely interesting to hear this group of wealthy business owners talking about social networks and the varying ways in which they or their staff use them. I will ... Read more

I have been really busy recently, with this launch and that, but in my spare time I have been reading quite a lot on the ROI of social media and scratching my head. As more and more of these amazing buzz monitoring tools spring up out of the woodwork providing us with this set of data and that, it seems the big question is still what is the return on investment from social media? Sure data is all good and well but unless you have someone with half a brain who can process that data and tell you why this ... Read more

This weekend I really witnessed the power of Twitter and social media and it surprised me for the first time in a long time. On Saturday I was busy at home cutting the grass and doing my fatherly duties, when my mother turned up at our house with two beautiful and friendly dogs. She found them roaming the streets on one of Harrogate’s busiest roads. My mum had a good look around for the owners but couldn’t find anyone who knew who they belonged too and sadly they didn’t have any collars on either. So she brought them to our ... Read more

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

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

If like most PR practitioners you are mildly interested in measuring ROI for a social media campaign. I would recommend you have a read of this presentation from Oliver Blanchard, in case you didn’t know, he is the principal at BrandBuilder Marketing in the US. In the presentation he looks at the various questions being asked by clients and agencies about measuring ROI for social media campaigns. I have recommended this as I particularly liked the tongue-in-cheek manner in which he has written it and the amusing speech bubbles he uses to get his point across. He examines the elements ... Read more

Those of you who read my blog regularly will know that I like to share information and sites which could be of interest. So if you are even remotely interested in the medical profession or have just always wondered what paramedics and doctors get up to on a day-to-day basis then this list of blogs that I have pulled together might be the one for you. To be honest I have been reading lots of medical based sites recently for a number of reasons and to save you some time trawling the internet I thought I would share some of ... Read more

I read an article in the Guardian that claims that the New York Times has named its first social media editor. When I first read the title I wondered what the job would actually entail. The article quotes a memo from Jonathan Landman, which describes her role in a practical sense as: “Working closely with editors, reporters, bloggers and others to use social tools to find sources, track trends, and break news as well as to gather it. She will help us get comfortable with the techniques, share best practices and guide us on how to more effectively engage a ... Read more

I have been reading lots of posts about the recent SEO and PR debate which has been raging on Twitter and Mr Hallam’s blog. For once, I have to agree with Stuart Bruce that public relations is about reputation and the management of reputation. This debate got me thinking about another battle which is taking place out there in the various boardrooms across the globe and that is the battle for the emerging budgets for social media campaigns. Digital agencies are well prepared for the battle as they already have SEO experts, CSS designers, web developers and digital marketers on ... Read more