Social PR 2011 – Some Observations

1 03 2011

Here’s the final session from Social PR 2011, attended by 160 plus the many followers on Twitter and on the live stream. I was there for the latter part but from what I saw it was a great conference with plenty of insight and useful information.



Video streaming by Ustream

Here are a few things that I learned.

  1. There are a lot of tools out there for measuring individual influence.  The much maligned Klout has competition now from mpact, ecairns and peekyou.
  2. Evaluation and measurement is ‘the’ hot topic.
  3. The most popular device of choice for the Social PR practitioner is a MacBook.  There was a sea of them out there.
  4. There was a pretty even split between Blackberries,  iPhones and HTC Desires.
  5. If you don’t want to share your slides don’t present at a conference.  People aren’t waiting for Slideshare they’re taking pictures of the slides.
  6. A conference of 160 Social PR devotees is still not enough to get a ‘Swarm’ badge on Foursquare.

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Categories : Uncategorized

Great Line-Up for Social PR 2011

24 02 2011


Social PR 2011 is a one day conference taking place at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London this coming Monday 28th February and there’s a great line-up of speakers.

The conference will include presentations, panel discussions and Q&A sessions with some of the world’s leading social PR experts.

It will tackle some of the most pressing questions for PR and Communications professionals working with social media such as the convergence of Social PR and Marketing, how to identify influencers and how to measure and evaluate PR on the web.

Measurement and evaluation is perhaps the hottest topic in PR at the moment with the industry finally taking a stand on Advertising Value Equivalents and promoting the seven ‘ Barcelona Principles’:

  1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.
  2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality – cuttings in themselves are not enough.
  3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity.
  4. Social media can and should be measured.
  5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.
  6. Business results can and should be measured where possible.
  7. Transparency and Replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

The line-up for Social PR 2011 includes three of the world’s leading experts in PR measurement online.  New York based Marshall Sponder is the founder of webmetricsguru.com, an industry blog about Web analytics, social media and search marketing.  He will be joined at the conference by Philip Sheldrake who co-founded Fuse PR (which was acquired by W2 Group in 2006) and is now a Partner of Meanwhile, the venture marketers and author of the soon to be published ‘The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age’.   Joining by live video link will be Katie Delahaye Paine who heads up KDPaine & Partners, a leading communications research consultancy, and is the author of ‘Measuring Public Relationships, the data-driven communicators guide to measuring success’.

There will also be an Exhibition Area and the ticket price includes lunch, refreshments and a handbook for the day.  The conference will be streamed online, so if you can’t make it buy an online ticket and sit back.


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Categories : Uncategorized

1001 Google Doodles

22 02 2011

The 2011 Valentines Day Google Doodle was the 1001st Google Doodle since the craze began when Google created its first Doodle in 1998 to mark the Burning man Festival.   This chart shows the staggering rise in the number of Doodles year on year.  At this rate their may soon be more Doodles than days in the year – though not all Doodles appear in every country.

So far the total for 2011 is just 22 so Google will need to step up the pace to match the 271 used last year.  You can see every Google Doodle, all 1001 of them here.


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Categories : Search

UberTwitter Re-Instated as UberSocial

21 02 2011

News has arrived of the reinstatement of UberTwitter following the Twitter ban imposed on Friday.

“We’ve given the developers of twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter) access to the Twitter API again.  Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications” said  the statement on Twitter Support.  In a statement they also said “We will review these applications on an ongoing basis for compliance”.

There has been speculation on this blog and elsewhere that the Twitter organisation sees UberMedia, the owner of both these applications as a commercial threat.  If so the suspension has done little to enhance the reputation of the official ‘Twitter for Blackberry’ app.   Thousands of users condemned the application over the weekend

On hearing the news about UberSocial, @ericvice tweeted; “Ahhh the sound of 2.5 million copies of Twitter for Blackberry being simultaneously deleted. The bird can sing!http://bit.ly/UberDL“.  It has been retweeted over 300 times in six hours.


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Categories : Uncategorized

UberTwitter Now UberSocial After Block

20 02 2011

Users of the popular Blackberry Twitter app UberTwitter found themselves locked out this weekend when the famously open social network decided to crack down.

Twitter has claimed that UberTwitter was in breach of policies and trademarks. Specifically they cited the use of the tweet-elongation service tmi.me which allows people to post  more than 140 characters, and significantly the use of the name UberTwitter.  The service has now been changed to UberSocial with immediate effect.  Tweetdeck which recently introduced Deck.ly to allow longer tweets must be watching with interest and concern. DestroyTwitter is also presumably on the radar.

Apart from the obvious inconvenience to users of the service Twitter has raised the suspicions of commentators by turning off the Blackberry application without notice and promoting their own Twitter for Blackberry service at the same time.

UberTwitter is owned by UberMedia which was recently bought by Bill Gross, who has raised $17.5m to build the Twitter platform.  Gross played a key role in building Google’s revenue mode and he’s applying a similar strategy with UberMedia and applying that to Twitter.  Potentially he has a  better way to make money out of Twitter than Twitter does and this is bound to cause concern for the micro-blogging service.

At the time of writing Twitter has not responded to the speedy changes and UberSocial remains unapproved ad offline.


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Categories : Twitter

Want Twitter Followers? Then Tweet More.

15 02 2011

When using Twittercounter recently I came across a great example showing that one of the most effective ways to build a following on Twitter is simply to provide content or put another way to tweet more.

I’d noticed in December that one of the people I follow, an inveterate tweeter had virtually stopped posting.

This is a graph that combines the number of daily tweets (orange bars) with follower numbers (red line).  The individual in question posts an average of around 20 tweets a day peaking at a hefty 75.  Look what happened when he stopped.  His net followers started dropping away immediately, then when his micro-blogging mojo returned in January follower numbers started growing again.

It goes to show that what’s true for blogging is true for its micro-me; if you want traffic then you’ve got to have content.


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Categories : Twitter

Google Android’s Honeycomb and Other Sweets Things

3 02 2011

Google has just launched its “iPad killing” version of Android for the tablet market.

The mega powerful Motorola Xoom will be the first device to use the new platform – Android 3.0 or Honeycomb as it will be known.

So why ‘Honeycomb’?  Well all of the Android platforms have been given names that refer to desserts or sweet treats.  They are also in alphabetical order – Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6), Eclair (2.0/2.1), Fro-yo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3) and now Honeycomb (3.0).  Presumably they started with a ‘C’ because there were two previous versions of Android on the market.  The next iteration of the platform is rumoured to be called ‘Ice-Cream’ and is slated for release in the middle of this year.

So why the names.  Well it’s quite simple.  According to Mike Chan ex-Android Systems Team & Power Management Lead  ”Desserts make for a tasty team treat when the release ships. Seriously.”


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Categories : Media evolution

New Deals for Facebook Places

31 01 2011

Today sees the UK launch of an incentive package for Facebook Places that will be a blow to Foursquare and Gowalla and pits Facebook against the growing might of Groupon in the consumer offer sector.    Facebook Deals rewards users who check-in to participating shops, restaurants, coffee bars and visitor attraction using the recently launched Facebook Places, location-based application.

Launch partners include Starbucks, Yo! Sushi, Argos, Debenhams, and Mazda.  Alton Towers is rumoured to be offering free tickets to users checking in via Facebook places on February 18th.  Facebook will use a golden ticket icon to identify locations where there are deals in place.  Joanna Shields from Facebook said: “Facebook Deals represents the power of word of mouth marketing …over 200 million people use Facebook on their mobile phone. We are now offering businesses the opportunity to connect with people in an entirely new way.”

 


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Categories : Uncategorized

5 Reasons Why Quora Will Miss the Mainstream

25 01 2011

Robert Scoble; American blogger at Scobleizer, technical evangelist, and author, wrote on Boxing Day a post entitled ‘Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years?’

PC Magazine, Techcrunch, TNW and FastCompany echoed the sentiment and the UK’s conservative ‘Daily Telegraph’ brought in the new year with an article entitled ‘Quora will be Bigger than Twitter’.  I think they may be wide of the mark and here are 5 reasons why:

1.  It lacks ‘new-ness’ There isn’t anything in the content that is radically new.  Yahoo Answers provides a Q&A format with voting up and down.  Twitter provides interaction and Wikipedia provides information.

2. It’s Not a Network You don’t really have a community around Quora.  The Follower/Following numbers on your profile lack any real relevance.  Because usually they are built around pre-existing networks on Facebook or Twitter the follower totals aren’t evidence of an authentic Quora based network.

3. There Aren’t Many Girls In fact the demographic so far is very, very narrow.  It’s skews male, 25-34 and educated to graduate level.  It’s also high income and exceptionally white.  You can’t be mainstream if you don’t appeal to everyone.  At the moment it is geeky and the audience is pretty much the same as Slashdot.

4.  It lacks Serendipity With Twitter and Facebook you see a lot of things that you don’t expect to.  The structure whereby you follow topics means that you see on Quora pretty much what you expect to see and it’s a bit dull. There I’ve said it.

5. It’s Really, Really Hard to be Mainstream How many mainstream social networks are there versus the number that tried and failed?  If Google struggles then it’s clearly a tough task.


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Categories : Social Networks, Social Web

Don’t Let Blue Monday Get You Down

17 01 2011

I’ve been left in no doubt that today is the blue-est of the calendar year.  It’s in the papers, on the radio, I’ve been told on email and twitter is awash with tales of woe.

So where did this notion come from?  It’s medically proven, there is even a formula.  Well no, the truth is it was a PR stunt for a now defunct travel company that has in just a few short years seeped into our national consciousness.   The idea, I imagine was to stimulate holiday bookings just when we have the post-Christmas blues.

As PR stunts go it has been pretty effective in gaining media attention, although the brand it set out to promote has fared less well.  This evidence for the date being the most depressing day of the year was first published in 2005 in a press release for the Sky Travel Channel under the name of Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University.  Well sort of… Cliff was at the time a part-time tutor at  a Further Education centre attached to the University.  There is even a scientific formula:  ([W + (D-d)] x TQ) ÷ (M x Na)  where weather is W, D is the ability to pay, debt=d, time since Christmas=T, time since failing our new year’s resolutions is Q, motivational levels are defined as M and the feeling of a need to take action is Na.   Clearly cod science.

Over the years commentators like Petra Boynton and Dr Ben Goldacre have got hot under the collar about Blue Monday and have given a red flag to the daft mathematical formula.  It has however has morphed into a bit of media fun that we needn’t get down about.  The fact that the formula predicted that the saddest day of the year was a Monday was claimed as a coincidence by Cliff Arnall in 2005 but the Blue Monday moniker it too tempting to resist and a Monday it has been for seven consecutive years.

The appetite for the story is apparent enough; January is a gloomy month and we all want confirmation that we’ve passed the nadir and are back on the way up.  Moreover with the demise of Sky Travel it has been used on successive occasions to promote awareness of mental health issues.  That’s not such a bad thing.  So chin up, it might never happen.


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Categories : Journalism, Newspapers, Radio

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