WeetPR » john weet

Just started getting spam comments on my blog…

John Weet — Sat, 30 May 2009 10:06:15 +0000

I’ve had a blog for a while now but have only just started getting spammed. Why is that? Does this mean that my blog is more visible now so should I be pleased? Or is there another reason for it? How do these people choose a blog to target? Is there any way I can block this from happening other than highlighting them as spam when I get them.

Social Media marketing can get you into a mess…..

John Weet — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:37:09 +0000

…. that PR has to dig you out of.

I was having a conversation with Heather Yaxley last night about companies using Social media. We were saying about how there are many companies out there who are purporting to be experts in Social media and who are offering to put together marketing plans that use these new tools for their clients. We were agreeing that for some companies this could prove to be very dangerous territory to enter.

Heather suggested that it is all too easy for marketeers to get their clients into a mess on social media and then they need PR professionals to dig themselves out of it.

Interesting then that I saw a tweet from Sam Shepherd at the Bournemouth daily Echo this morning pointing me to a URL on the Guardian web site about Neals Yard Remedies. Not strictly social media, but relevant to our discussions all the same. The whole point of the page was that people could ask questions of Neals Yard about their ethics and Neals Yard would then respond.

The result, hundreds of tricky questions and no response from Neals Yard, despite being chased by the page moderator who posted as follows:-

“have just had a chat with NYR.

Unfortunately, despite previous assurances that they would be participating in this blog post, I’ve now been told they ‘will not be taking part in the debate’.

So yes, as several people have pointed out, this has become something of ‘You Ask’, rather than a ‘You Ask, They Answer’. I’m still hoping NYR will reconsider.”

Some poor PR person has a lot of work on his hands to restore any sort of credibility to their name now. Neals Yard may just dismiss it and say “it’s only one web site it doesn’t matter” but the power of social media is that this story is now being tweeted and re tweeted and it will grow I am sure.

Debenhams… fail

John Weet — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:09:28 +0000

Now I wouldn’t normally use a blog post to criticise a company but I figured that as I had used one to praise EasyJet I was justified in using one to criticise Debenhams, and it is PR related in that they have damaged their reputation by the way that they behave.

Earlier this year we went to Debenhams to purchase wedding outfits for the boys. We got to the checkout and were offered a store card. I hate these tactics and I would normally have said no but they were giving an additional 20% discount, on top of the normal 10, so on purchases totalling over £100 it was worth having. Or so I thought.

I said yes which seemed to take them aback a little. I won’t go into details but it must have taken an hour to complete all the paperwork. Firstly they couldn’t find the forms, then they didn’t know how to fill them out. Fail #1.

All this form filling was going on at the checkout while a queue of people built up behind me, some put their goods down and walked out. Fail #2.

Next job was to register on line, pay the bill and then cancel the card. Now to register on line you need your account number. This would be the number on the front of the card right?… Wrong… this was the number that was printed in one place in faded purple writing on the agreement form. Fail #3.

Now this is a paperless account and all the communications is supposed to be via the web site, or via a premium rate phone line. There was no way I was going to use a premium rate phone line so when I was finally able to get into the account I sent a message through their system asking what I needed to do to cancel my account.

I received a response in my email inbox telling me to log into the account to see the answer to my message. I tried and got rejected “not able to log in at this time” I tried again later the same day, and the next. Still the same message. In the end I had to resort to the premium rate line. After what seemed like hundreds of security questions and having to change my password also I was told the reason I couldn’t get in was because the account had been closed.

So they sent me message telling me to go to the account to collect my response, knowing that they had closed the account and I couldn’t access that message. Is that just the stupidest thing you have ever heard? Fail #4.

If Debenhams want to compete in what is a very tough market at the moment they need to buck up their ideas I think.

WordPress is soooo easy….

John Weet — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:15:09 +0000

When I took the plunge yesterday and decided to get myself a WordPress site I never thought it would be so easy. after only a few hours I have the site up and running and all the content loaded. I just need to “prettify” it a bit more and then I’m done.

Easy Jet, Getting it right on Twitter

John Weet — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:16:00 +0000

I flew with Easy Jet for the first time a few weeks ago. I only had hand luggage so thought I would turn up and check in at one of those handy self check in machines that all the other airlines (the ones I tend to use anyway) have. I arrived about an hour before my flight to Basel only to find no self check in machines and a horrendous queue. Feeling quite grumpy I sent the following tweet while in the line.

When I next checked twitter I had the following message

We had a little bit of email correspondence and I felt that I had aired my grievances and that I had been listened to.

I travelled with Easy Jet again this week and on my return I had the following message waiting for me.

I’m not easily impressed but must admit that I am impressed with Easy Jet and with Paul. It’s not difficult for a company to monitor the twittersphere for their brands but it’s what you do with that information that matters. I admit that I did not have a big grievance and that part of it was of my own making but I felt the response I got was good.

I wouldn’t say I’m a convert to Easy Jet. I’m not a big fan of the scrum that takes place at boarding and also I am far closer to Southampton and Heathrow, so these are certainly my airports of choice. However what I will say is that I will not go to great lengths to avoid them as I have done before.

The Curse of the RSS feed

John Weet — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:27:00 +0000

RSS feeds are fantastic. There are so many people out there that have interesting things to say and who I can learn from. I have set up my reader (I use Google reader because I find it easy and I can access it from one of many PC’s that I use as well as from my phone) to bring in feeds from blogs, twitter searches, google searches and things that my “friends” have Dugg. I use the reader to gather information from my clients, from my clients markets, from the social media and PR world as well as for things that amuse and entertain me.

The problem is one of overload. I have been a little busy of late and have also been travelling on business. In all I have probably not made a conscious effort to read my feeds for a week or more. Now I have 357 items to look at. I need to make a choice now. Do I just go through and mark all as read or do I skim read them, star those that I want to go back to and mark the rest as read. This could take two or three hours.

Information, both a curse and a blessing.

Playing catch up on social media

John Weet — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:24:00 +0000

I am playing catch up on social media. Having come into PR later in life than many (after a succesful career in engineering) I have spent the last seven years trying to get to grips with traditional PR tools and techniques let alone trying to get up to speed on social media.

I did begin to see the writing on the wall though several years ago and realised that if I am to survive in this industry I need to get engaged. I created an entry on Face book, much to the dismay of my kids. I signed up for a FlickR account and dabbled with a blog, although this was really just a means for me to rant and get things off my chest. I joined LinkedIn and also signed up for Plaxo. But that was it. I couldn’t find the time to make sense of them and to understand what they could do for me and what they could do for my clients.

I have found the time now and I understand them better, I am becoming an evangelist and spout about social media to anyone who will listen, but I do recognise that I am not an early adopter, I know I am behind the curve. As Heather Yaxley points out in her Greenbanana blog some PR people have been around this arena for years. I haven’t, I am a new boy and am certainly a long way from being an expert, but then again, who could be an expert in this field when it is constantly changing and when there is so much more out there to learn.

As an example, I came across YouAre the other day, I haven’t found the time to review it fully yet but it looks like another Micro Blogging site like Twitter, and more besides. From what I can see this started up last year and has yet to hit the mainstream (I stand to be corrected on this). As a PR professional I do owe it to myself to keep on top of sites like this, and all the others that get lumped together under the social media umbrella. If I don’t keep current then in these changing times I will get left behind.

Even though I am playing catch up I will still act as an evangelist. I am enthusiastic about the subject and I hope that my enthusiasm will rub off on my peers because what I do recognise is that, even though I am behind the curve there are many more PR professionals behind me. I will encourage them at every opportunity to get engaged and if in the process I can share what I am learning, and learn from them also, then this will in the end benefit us all.

Is it acceptable to take a press release written for a North American audience and issue it in Europe without any changes?

John Weet — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:59:00 +0000

I work for an agency that regularly receives press releases in from an American Multi National. What we do with these is to “Europeanise” them. We put them into Queens English and take out any American Phraseology.

The releases are sent to English language trade journals that cover Europe and the UK.

What is your view? Is this something we should be doing or are we wasting our time, will the editors use our material regardless, if they deem the story to be newsworthy enough?

Is Twitter a numbers game?

John Weet — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:50:00 +0000

I have seen other blog posts on a similar vein to this one but I don’t care. I’m going to talk about it because it intrigues me.

Whenever I get an email saying that somebody is following me I go and look at their profile.

I also use Social Too to give me, on a daily basis, a list of people who have begun to follow me or stopped following me (a very useful tool). Again, when i see that somebody has started following me I go and look at their profile.

The reason I look at profiles is to a) ask myself what it is that I have said that makes this person want to follow me and b) to consider whether they are worth following back.

I fail to understand sometimes why some people who decide to follow me want to. I had one the other week who was a beer drinking Newcastle united supporter who works as a labourer. I looked through her tweets and could not see any shared interests at all. Why on earth would she want to follow me unless she is working a numbers game, trying to build up her followers by following more. What is the point in that?

I also sometimes get nothing from the profile that makes me want to follow them. I had one the other day that said his name was ploton and he was from the planet zog, or some such similar inanity. This gives me nothing at all on which to base a judgement as to why I woudl want to follow them.

Another useful tool for determining people to follow, people that can add value, is Mr Tweet. Mr Tweet looks at the subjects you tend to Twitter on and then suggests others that you may like to follow. One of my first steps is to look at the number of tweets these people make a day. Too many and I don’t bother. I don’t want them clogging things up so that I miss something I really do want to see.

I had one the other day that against my better judgement, based on the number of tweets per day, I did decide to follow him. he was obviously reading the telegraph on line yesterday because he tweeted about every single story he read. If I want to read the telegraph I will read the telegraph I don’t need somebody to give me a link to each individual story. Again, is this also a numbers game. Seeing if you can get in the record books for the greatest number of tweets per day.

I saw an interesting blog the other day where somebody (and forgive me that i can’t remember who) introduced me to the 90:10 rule where 90% of your tweets should add value and the remaining 10% can be for other stuff. A good rule I think.

So for me its not a numbers game. I don’t have hundreds of followers and I don’t follow hundreds of people. The people I do follow I can either learn from or they provide me with amusement. For those that follow me I hope I can add something to the discussion.

Social Media ROI

John Weet — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:53:00 +0000

Saw an interesting blog post from Axel Schultze today on Social Media ROI. ROI is of course an important conversation to have when working for an agency or as a consultant. How else, particularly in these difficult times can you prove your worth.

The formula that Axel comes up with is

Contribution Margin in currency generated from externally referred customers over cost in currency for human interaction and other cost to manage and engage in the ecosystem= Social Media ROI.

Now I started thinking about this. For some businesses this may work. I can see for instance how it might work for a client in a B2C environment where people can purchase on-line. You can see where people are referred from and input the amount of any resulting order into the equation.

But what about when you are working in a B2B environment and where you may also sell through distributors. Your goal with social media may be to raise awareness or to establish yourself as experts in the field. How do you measure contribution margin then?

I don’t think there is a single answer. It depends on the goals of your social media strategy and the type of business you are in.

For the full blog post go to socialmediatoday.com