The last couple of years may have been a struggle, but I am delighted that today my meagre blogging efforts on the world of Public Relations have been polluting the Internet for exactly 6 years.
[To put that in context statistically, if you were a "wife" convicted of killing your spouse in a large urban area in the US, you’d be free now 🙂 ]
As someone who has been dipping their (lurking) toe into Twitter recently (and to extend the metaphor needlessly: pulling it out rather regularly), I’ve been interested to read some opinions on this, our latest source of information overload…
Allan Jenkins points to a very interesting story on Ragan: "How to use Twitter (and whether to bother)" [There’s an interesting video vignette from Shel Holtz as a sidebar to the article as well as a lot of commentary at the end of the post]
Allan also provides some of his own thoughts on using Twitter.
PS: If you are kicking Twitter’s tyres you might also be interested in Darren Rowse’s post: "How I Use Twitter to Promote my Blog".
PPS: TechCrunch has called out an interesting new Twitter service: Quotably. Quotably turns the Twitter stream into a threaded conversation. [Disclosure I haven’t had time to test it, but for an old fart like me it sounds like a great idea 🙂 .]
This mightn’t be news to you, but it was news to me.
APCO Worldwide has been working on a project for the US Council of PR Firms to understand the perspectives of PR firms and bloggers.
The findings make interesting reading.
The finding below in particular amazed me.
25% of bloggers surveyed agreed with the statement: “Our firm (sic) does a good job identifying the specific interests of individual bloggers and sending them relevant information.”
Wow! That’s not my experience….
Have a read of the study.
I found the report via Susan Getgood’s post: "PR People: Do your homework before you reach out to bloggers".
Also a recommended read…
UPDATE: I tell you this Interweb is fantastic. No sooner had I pushed the publish button, than Paull Young was in touch to point me to Robert French’s take on the survey…
Well, to me this story is a placement for a bit of publicity … and a sad one, at that. Come on, APCO and CPRF … what were you thinking? It is one thing to be transparent … another to be able to see right through you!
Is this really what you folks call survey research? You really want to hang your hat on this? If so, we’re all in deep trouble. The About page tells more, yet raises more questions than it provides answers.
The report is still interesting reading, just don’t build your business plan on it! 🙂
Scanning my RSS feeds today, I came across a story titled: "CSR Pioneer of the Year: Communicator".
Now given I have a dual interest in PR and CSR I clicked on the link only to find:
I’d like to read about Dr. Oberkofler’s achievements, but I need another log-in like a hole in the head.
Sigh..
I’m a sucker for archives.
There’s something about learning about the past that really interests me.
Two posts caught my eye today:
Disclaimer: This is Tom Murphy’s personal weblog. The opinions I express on this blog and the associated web pages represent my own personal views and not those of my current, prior or future employers.
Comments on any of these blogs are moderated. Any comments I deem inappropriate for this blog will be not be posted – I will however flag that decision with the person who submitted the post.
Comments on the PR Opinions blog are closed.
My name is Tom Murphy and I live and work in Dublin, Ireland where I look after PR and Corporate Social Responsibility for Microsoft Ireland. I’ve been working in PR around Europe and North America for the past fifteen years or so.
You may notice a category on the blog called “He would say that” – anything that falls in that category may cover a Microsoft product or service – that’s my formal disclosure category!
I’m married to the long-suffering Sorcha and we have the world’s best son, Cillian. When I’m not working or spending time with the family you can find me out in the garden cleaning up after a Golden Retriever that sometimes answers to the name: Holly.
If you want to get in contact:
E-mail: tpemurphy -AT- hotmail.com
Mobile: +353-87-121-55-56
MSN IM: tpemurphy -AT- hotmail.com
I’ve been trying to catch up on loads of orphaned RSS feeds and stuff I filed to read later and most of it I’ve just deleted but some things I did enjoy…
I attended my 20 year school reunion last week. A really fantastic night meeting a lot of people I hadn’t seen over the intervening period and whom, bar more weight and less hair, had not changed in the intervening period.
Late in the evening I was talking to a young man attending the event and he asked me what year I had left the school. I replied and he asked me if I wanted to be depressed. Due to the effects of alchohol I nodded and he told me that that was the year he was born and that this was his second year at the reunion.
Sigh.
This getting older stuff is hard.
I also gave a talk to a group of Masters students this week.
It was very interesting. They all view social networking (and their pages) as something they use a lot right now, but also something that’s transient. They don’t see their pages on these sites as something they’ll always have. They believe they’ll move on.
I was talking to the group about the concept of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.
Interestingly they don’t see themselves as digital natives, but believe that the next wave of new students, just coming to college now, will be.
My favourite Digital Native cartoon – from the Cincinnati Enquirer, courtesy of Kevin Dugan
Of course the students of today are the mainstream audience of tomorrow, so understanding how they share, find, and use information is important to anyone interested in communicating with them.
The University of Melbourne has published a paper titled: "First year students’ experience with technology: Are they really digital natives?" . It’s an interesting look at the changes in how students are using all types of technology.
Expect more changes.
Interesting post from Neville in the relationship between PR and Journalism.
Nearly two years on and I see little to change my core view, which is that if PR and journalism are nothing more than channels or conduits which distort and manipulate the original message, they will become irrelevant to the people out there – the so-called audiences or publics.
He points to a really interesting post written by the BBC’s Jeremy Hillman on Journalists and PR.
If you’re in PR you now have the opportunity to take your message direct to the public in a hundred new ways, at least if you understand the technology well enough. Blogs, vodcasts, podcasts, Twitter streams and social networking are all there to exploit and there’s more every day. And you’ve got to be brave enough to let your content be shared and messed around with. With all this happening, we ‘traditional media’ are still too important to ignore, though, as Nick Davies points out in his book, we’re often too busy to take the call or read the e-mail.
Following on from my post last week on cleansing your reputation, last Sunday’s UK Times has a follow up written by Rosie Millard on her personal travails with someone hijacking her online reputation.
Rosie goes and talks to some "online reputation management" experts.
Seriously folks, this shouldn’t be a standalone business.
Online reputation management (clear, above board, no shady practices) should be a standard service offered by Public Relations consultants everywhere. If you’re not convinced… according to the article the daily rate for these services is £900.
I rarely hear PR folks talking about this issue and we should be.
“Sometimes this happens to reasonably high-profile people because there are those out there who will buy the domain, put up a site and then snag any casual traffic associated with your name to get ad revenue,” says Michael Fertik, 29, who runs Reputation Defender in California. “And this one looks like a strong site. More than 30,000 people have already visited it, and the longer it stays up, the stronger it gets, because Google prefers legacy over immediacy. We see cases like yours all the time.”
The article references some interesting resources:
Murphy's Law 