Another case of walk the talk
Posted by John Weet in Marketing communications on August 23, 2010
I received an unsolicited email this morning from somebody offering to undertake email marketing for me. The email did not have an opt-out and they had included all the names in the “to” list so I could see who else had received it. Why on earth would I want to trust these people with an email marketing campaign? I am sure you all see examples of this sort of thing on a daily basis. What’s the worst you have ever seen?
Would you take this business on-line?
A friend of mine works for a travel company which I will not name. The MD has made the decision to take their business on-line so that they can reduce the number of staff and also stop producing their costly catalogues. Depending on your target age range this strategy may be OK. The problem is that these are luxury high end holidays targeted at those aged 50 plus.
I plugged the data into the Forrester research Social technographics profile tool and came up with these results.
I won’t describe each group in detail but if you are interested you can see a slideshow here. What this does show though is that 64% of internet users in the UK aged 55+ are not engaged in any form of social media at all.
I know that this does not directly relate to whether they would purchase a holiday on-line or not but I do think that these figures are indicative of how comfortable people feel with the internet. I certainly know people who fall within this age group who would not consider purchasing anything at all on-line let alone an expensive holiday.
I also appreciate that although the business is going on-line it does not mean that travel agents will stop selling their holidays. However how many people still go in travel agents and pick up a handful of brochures to take away and peruse at their leisure.
This conversation with my friend reminded me of a recent theme in Scott Adam’s “Dilbert” cartoons. Dilbert tells his mum that his company is going to a web based model and his mum says “What’s phase 3? Does it involve operating only in your own imagination.” Very perceptive Dilbert’s mum.
What do you think? Would you take this holiday company on-line only?
When do we get downtime?
Posted by John Weet in Social media on August 5, 2010
People under the age of 30 or so may not remember a time when we were not permanently connected. Connected to friends and family, connected to the office, connected to clients and colleagues alike. I remember times when i could go on holiday and remain totally out of touch for a week or more.
These were the days before mobile phones, before mobile web surfing, before wifi zones, times were simpler then, but were they better.
I’m writing this blog post on my Nokia mobile phone from a beach in the South West of the UK.
The Red "crocs" are not mine!
I’m on holiday but i’ve been writing blog posts, checking emails, both work and personal, updating twitter, viewing my RSS feeds and generally just keeping up to date.
Do i feel put out about this? Am i upset that i’m doing this while on holiday when i’m supposed to be relaxing? No I don’t, it’s my choice, nobody’s making me do it, nobody’s going to complain if i don’t.
PR and social media are a major part of my life, it’s what makes me get up in the morning, it’s what i enjoy. Is that sad? Should i take the opportunity to totally switch off? I don,t think i could.
What about you? Do you ever shut off totally or do you stay connected wherever you are?
Walk the talk
Posted by John Weet in Social media on May 25, 2010
I would have thought that it was a pre-requisite for a company that positions themselves as social media experts that they should walk the talk. I received a “Hi, John Weet. xxxxx is now following your tweets on twitter” email this morning.
I clicked through to their twitter account and saw nothing to tell me who they were. It was a company account and there was no clue in the name. The profile wasn’t filled in and the last tweet was made via facebook 7 weeks previously. I also scanned down at the tweets they had made to see if they were saying anything that I wanted to listen to. There wasn’t much of value to me.
Normally I would have exited at this stag but I was intrigued. They have 4,839 followers so a lot of people are following them. They had no easy link on their profile so I had to type in the link that appeared on their background.
The link took me straight to their blog, the latest blog entry was dated 8months previously. None of the blog entries were categorised or tagged.
In the head of their home page they have a graphic that says.
“does your brand need a voice online? What is a social network? I want to start a blog? Are you looking for a way to connect with your consumers in this digitally connected world? We can help”
Looking at the “About” page you can see that they are positioning themselves as an online communications agency.
So let’s say that i stumble upon their web presence and decide that I want this company who have a relatively inactive twitter account, and who have a very inactive blog to help me out with social media. Ideally I would like to meet up with them for a chat so let’s go to their contact page and see where they are based. Oh… all I get is an email address. I have no clue where they are.
So what lessons can we learn from this. Some lessons will apply to all and others to those trying to set themselves up as social media experts.
1) Write a profile on your twitter page. If people don’t know who you are and where you are coming from why would they follow you (I could be wrong on this one as the company in question has almost ten times the followers I do)
2) If you want people to go to your space on the web once they have been to your twitter page, then make it easy for them. Put your blog URL in your profile and not just on your background.
3) If you have a blog and you are offering your services to others to help set theirs up then keep yours current
4) If you are offering your services to people then make sure they know where you are based. I know it’s not essential in our modern connected world but some people do like face-to-face meetings and they look for local companies.
Please comment if you think there are any more lessons to be learned.
LinkedIn Spam
Posted by John Weet in Public Relations, Social media on April 29, 2010
I am a PR professional and as such I like to keep any eye on what’s going on in my clients industries.
To do that I read magazines, subscribe to RSS feeds and email newsletters, set up google alerts and also become a member of relevant LinkedIn groups.
What I find with some groups is that the discussion pages get filled with spam. One group that I am a member of had more spam discussions on their first page than they did discussions that were relevant to the group.
To my mind the value of belonging to a group is to monitor and participate in discussion, having loads of spam on the page prevents you seeing the meaningful stuff and limits the value of belonging to the group.
Group owners could adopt a prevention policy by limiting who can join the group but then that could also limit membership and so limit the discussion.
A far better policy to my mind is for the owners to monitor the discussions and delete those that are not relevant. That is what I do with the groups that I manage.
I don’t know if there is a better way to prevent spam comments, does anybody know of one?
Gave my first “Prezi” presentation last night
Posted by John Weet in Social media on April 15, 2010
It seemed to go OK. If I was doing it again there were a couple of things I would have changed, on the whole though I was pleased with the outcome.
The subject matter was social media and crisis communications. I am no expert in the subject so the purpose of the presentation was just to get people up to speed on a couple of case studies so that everybody was starting off from a minimum level of knowledge.
I was a little nervous using Prezi for the first time so I created a duplicate presentation on PowerPoint too, just in case. I downloaded the Prezi files and then presented from the Flash file saved to the desktop. That seemed to work OK.
Northumbria police PRide award
Posted by John Weet in Public Relations on March 29, 2010
I read a couple of blog posts this morning railing against the decision to award the Northumbria Police a PRide award for their handling of the communications following a fatal accident caused by one of their drivers. One of the posts (which i will not link to) went so far as to name the PRide awards judges suggesting they should be ashamed of themselves.
I totally agree that it was wrong of Northumbria Police to nominate themselves for the award. I also agree that the award should never have been given. What I do not agree with is trying to name and shame the judges. At the end of the day the judges are just like you and I, giving up their time free of charge, to undertake the onerous task of judging these awards. They are given a set of papers and asked to judge them against a set of criteria. They are not asked to decide the rights and wrongs about whether a particular campaign should have been entered. This decision should have been made before the papers reached them.
Leave press releases to the professionals
Posted by John Weet in Public Relations on March 12, 2010
I was reading a local business magazine last night and was amazed at the quality (or should I say lack of quality) of the editorial. One article that particularly caught my eye was a one paragraph story in a sidebar announcing that a particular company was doing very well. I read the story through twice and still did not understand what sort of services the company was offering.
I am making a big assumption here that the person who wrote the press release was not a professional PR person. If they were then shame on them. If a writer fails to get across, in words that a layman can understand, what the message is then they should not be writing press releases.
I suspect that what happened in this case was that the person who wrote it is internal to the company and is used to the way they talk about themselves. To them I am sure it made perfect sense. What they failed to do was to put themselves in their audiences place and ask whether they would understand it. A very common error and one that should not happen if they were to employ a professional writer.
Meet the Professionals
Posted by John Weet in Public Relations on March 3, 2010
I was at a meet the professionals evening last night at Bournemouth university. It was just like speed dating (not that I would know of course). Picture if you will a group of PR Professionals sitting at various tables around a room. A whistle blows and a group of students descend on each professional. The professional has just ten minutes to explain the type of PR work that they do and then to answer as many questions as they can.
The students use the event to gain an insight into agency and in-house life as well as understanding what it is like to work in the industry. They also use it to make connections so that when they are looking for placements or their first jobs they have a stack of business cards as a starting point.
This is the third or fourth time I have done this and I always find them great fun. It is good to meet so many enthusiastic people just starting out on their careers. They were all, without exception, keen and eager for knowledge. As a professional in the industry I feel it is part of my duty to attend these events but you do generally see the same professionals there. A shame, if some of the others in the area attended they just might get to enjoy themselves too.
Why did I enter the PR profession
Posted by John Weet in Public Relations on January 16, 2010
I have been asked many times why I entered the PR profession after having spent so many years in Engineering. I was asked again this week when I was lecturing at Bournemouth University to a group of MA students. My rather Flippant answer was “mid life crisis, bought a motorbike and changed career”.
Me at aged 16
I thought about this later and started thinking about my career to date. At 16, after taking my exams, I was all set to go on to sixth form college and then on to Uni. Despite getting good exams results I decided that I wanted to leave full time education and earn money. I opted for an engineering apprenticeship and eventually progressed to being a “fitter turner”. A 5 year, part-time college course also gave me the mechanical Engineering theory to support my practical experience.
It was at the age of 21 that I moved into an office based Engineering role. The next ten years saw me change roles every two years, gaining experience and responsibility as I went. I moved through product engineering, quality engineering, service centre management, project management and then into sales. After some time in sales I moved into a customer support role, acting as a consultant to some of the major processing plants in the south of the UK. These included Exxon, BP, Dow, Elf, Mobil, National Power to name but a few. I also gained an MBA along the way.
This takes me up to my mid-life-crisis. I knew that I wanted to do something different but wasn’t sure what. My sales role had moved me away from the main hub’s of the business, moving wasn’t an option so continuing my career with my existing employer was out of the question. I managed to negotiate a leaving package without having anything else lined up to go to. It was at this point that I was approached by the marketing communications agency I work for now. Following a couple of interviews I found myself working in PR without really understanding what it was all about.
The transition was easy because our agencies main client is my ex employer. It was easy to write about products and technologies that I knew intimately. A CIPR diploma in Public Relations added to my knowledge and enabled me to understand more about the public relations role other than just writing press releases.
Now I get to the point of this long ramble. I did stumble in to PR – the same as I stumbled into every position I held. I didn’t have a career plan in mind when I left school, however if somebody had written out a plan for me all those years ago that followed the route I had taken it would have all made sense. I can see that each role I have had has built on the one I held previously and made me the person I am today.
I believe I am fairly unique in our industry, I can go talk to the engineers and understand what they are talking about, I can go talk to management and understand what their goals are, how they link to the overall business goals and what affect they have on the bottom line. I can then take that information and structure a press release or an article that is relevant to the readership. I can put together a campaign plan that truly addresses the needs of the business. I am comfortable and confident in what I do with our technology clients.
Other PR professionals may choose a different route to get to the end destination. Coming back to the PR students I was talking to this week, they are choosing to start their career in public relations, and who would blame them I think it is an excellent career choice. What they will have to remember though is that in order to be comfortable and confident with their clients they will need to invest considerable amounts of time and energy in understanding their clients businesses. After all, I spent 30 years understanding mine.