There is a great digital PR conference lined up at the CIPR in London next week which I’m thrilled to be taking part in. It takes place next Monday 24th May at the CIPR HQ in Russell Square, WC1.
Understanding and using digital channels should be part of what all of in public relations do, every day. This one-day conference provides an opportunity to discuss ideas, hear the thoughts of some of the industry’s leading practitioners in digital PR and will show practical examples of how companies have successfully embraced social media.
The eminent list of speakers is as follows:
Paul Armstrong – Director of Social Media, Kindred
Drew Benvie – Managing Director, 33 Digital
Daljit Bhurji – Managing Director, Diffusion
Amanda Brown – Head of PR, First Direct
Rob Brown – Managing Director, Staniforth
Steve Earl – Managing Director, Speed Communications
Russell Goldsmith – Digital Media Director, markettiers4dc
Katy Howell – Managing Director, Immediate Future
Marshall Manson – Director of Digital Strategy, Edelman
Kieron Matthews – Director of Marketing, Internet Advertising, Bureau
Julio Romo – Communications and Social Media Consultant, twofourseven
Philip Sheldrake – Chartered Engineer, Founder and Partner of Influence Crowd.
There are still a few places so if you think you might be interested don’t hesitate and book now.
You might have noticed the 
The bulk of the PR profession needs a wake up call and fast. We have seen what is happening to print media at a regional level in the UK and US and the UK national newspaper heartland will be the next sector to feel the squeeze. Never mind the quality of the Sunday papers, feel the width. Not as bulky as they used to be are they?
This blog is a companion to 
For twenty years or more the marketing industry has been obsessed with the idea of integration. The nature of the internet is such that if we don’t integrate our online communications may for ever languish in some digital backwater. 
Derek Draper has recently returned to the Labour fold to champion their social media offensive after many years of absence. He is a spin doctor of the old school who seems incapable of ditching the smoke and mirrors. He has been building a following on twitter but his account was suspended yesterday as a result of unusual activity, which usually means you have been breaking twitter rules in terms of the number of people that you are trying to follow. In effect spamming.
A fierce debate is playing out as to what skills are best suited to the conditions created by a digital world to which everybody has access. The era of single message mass marketing is coming to an end. In a presentation to 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York in late 2007, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “for the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation and they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”
