Tag: Twitter

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

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

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

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 PR Week interview this morning as did my friend Stephen Waddington who ... Read more

Err yes actually. I have been playing with Google+ as have most of the more techies I know and I have read a few interesting articles. However, if I see another Google+ post telling me how to use it I think I am going to scream. However, if that’s what you are actually looking for I would recommend having a read of this Guide from Mashable one as it is pretty useful at getting you started. The latest news is basically Google+ is growing very quickly as people invite their friends with beta invites and it is growing quicker than ... Read more

If you are like me I am sure you get messages all the time about clever ways to spread your messages out on the World Wide Web. You will also sadly probably receive lots of spammy messages that ask you do this that to get the most out of twitter and the occasional one on Linked-in. However, a good idea for spreading awareness across a social network is “Pay with a tweet” which is basically an idea that you get something free if you tweet about it on your own account. It sounds a bit spammy I grant you but ... Read more

So last week I attended a meeting down in Kent with a very senior SEO expert (who shall remain nameless) but who runs a large digital team. He called me and my colleagues in to discuss the possibility of helping them create some interesting and engaging online campaigns. I am always interested when I meet senior people from the SEO world as they often have a different take on things to us public relations types and I find it kind of refreshing to talk about the more geeky side of digital. I asked him how important he now felt social ... Read more

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 ... Read more

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 fact he was even trending on Twitter. So it wasn’t ... Read more

So Tweetdeck is reportedly selling its platform to Twitter for $50million. I think this is a really positive sign for both Twitter, and UK entrepreneurs in general, as too often it is the US Silicon Valley-based businesses that manage to secure all of the large backing. We have some truly brilliant minds in this country and this proves it. Tweetdeck, is a brilliant platform which has been developed by people in this country. It is a great tool that allows heavy Twitter users like me to update more than 20 different Twitter accounts regularly. As I have developed my own ... Read more