In February’s Admap magazine, Molly Flatt writes about how social media is forcing marketers to change the way they work:

Businesses are used to time on their terms: time as a method of control – a clearly compartmentalised commodity measured out in the ping of Outlook meeting alerts.  They’re not used to other people’s timescales dictating their schedules, especially when these people refuse to confine their conversations to nine to five on weekdays.

For businesses, slowness means safety: time to plan; time to check legal red tape, facts and logistics; time to cover up the mistakes before they spread.  Social media demands qualities of flexibility, spontaneity and speed that are alien and risky to image-makers versed in composition, rather than conversation.

So slow equals safe, but social media insists on fast.  You can start to see why the traditional Monday-Friday for both clients and marketing agencies is fast becoming a thing of the past in a two-way society where dealing with the latest fallout on twitter just won’t wait ‘til Monday morning.  

The traditional crisis PR approach of taking home with you the ‘in the event of a client emergency dial…’ mobile phone isn’t really going to cut it anymore.  I can see a lot of shift working, two full time people covering one role and weekends in the office in the future for online PR professionals – and their clients.

posted by gemmaT

As reported in the Times Online, a Harvard law student is not only suing Google for breaching email privacy with its social network, Buzz, but is effectively damaging the online giant’s reputation in the process. Uh-oh Google!

Annoyed users of the email service have been posting (and ranting) on Google’s forum, so much so that Google employees are having to intervene, one of which stated ‘we welcome your feedback, but the tone of this thread has gotten completely out of line’ with angry threads popping up frequently, such as ‘Breach of trust and privacy. Get rid of it Google’.

I can imagine it’s been a tough call for Google on how to react to this – on one hand they can’t really boot people off for being annoyed about this issue when it was their fault in the first place. Looks like a bit of a catch 22 for them on how to respond and social media bloggers around the world (including me!) are keen to see how Google will bounce back from this.

However, it does seem that Google have moved quickly to rectify the problem with an apologetic blog post appearing by the product manager, Todd Jackson, for Gmail and Google Buzz, along with a promise to change one of the social network’s features. He said “We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback.” Good approach in my opinion. But, is this enough to restore our faith in Google once more? Time will tell.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

Social Media Week (#smw) is in full swing and some interesting and insightful blog posts have appeared on its site. One of these is by Dani Klein (@YeahThatsKosher) – a guest blogger who has taken snippets of information and video content from PR professionals in order to understand their role within social media, all of which is aggregated under the #SMPR tag (for those who want to follow the thread).

We all know that the opportunities for PR are wide reaching and the emergence of digital/online PR has made it even more so. It’s a very exciting time yet one quote particularly stood out for me from Keith Trivit, an AE at a NY PR agency who said “Social Media takes time, work, and effort to implement; Clients want to jump right into Social Media … important to slow things down”. I couldn’t agree more – you need to take a step back from the fast-paced nature of Social Media (initially!) and go back to the brand/campaign objectives.

The CIPR defines Social Media as ‘an evolving area of PR practice and its profile continues to grow’, which is very exciting and will mean that brands are interested in dipping their toe in Social Media – fantastic, but take it slow to start off with. It’s very much in a PR’s nature to approach things with caution, to always be one step ahead and thinking about how actions (posts, responses, tweets) can and will be perceived. This is something that’s drilled into us from day one, so although Social Media is very exciting, it’s worth getting a PR viewpoint before jumping head first into it. That way you can find out what we think is achievable, how it should be approached, and how to prepare for two-way engagement….then you can start. Need I remind you about what happened to Habitat or Neal’s Yard Remedies? I think you get the picture J.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

Social Media Starfish. Image courtesy of DBarefoot (Robert Scoble)

It might only be December 7th, but its not too early to start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions from an Online PR point of view.  May OnVisible suggest a few for you?

1) Ensure that how your brand presents itself, reacts and behaves online is in line with it’s offline persona – which means that you need a joined up strategy which embraces your brand’s blog, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and so on to deliver consistent messaging and tone of voice.

2) Because engagement in the online environment is about having conversations, not making speeches, make sure that you are listening as much (if not more) than you are talking online.

3) Embrace and celebrate your colleague’s take-up of social media – but implement and communicate clear guidelines about personal use of blogs, social networking and other third party websites where they identify the author as an employee of your organisation (the BBC’s guidelines are a great example).

4) Allocate online responsibilities (and preferably targets) within your organisation – whether this is liaising with your online PR agency or twittering and blogging directly, someone needs to have the-buck-stops-here responsibility for how your brand behaves online or its easy to push it to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list.

5) Think quality not quantity – better to have 50 engaged enthusiast followers on twitter than 500 eccentrics, better to produce two insightful, content rich, well linked to blog posts a week than five half hearted attempts.

posted by gemmaT

Econsultancy’s Social Media and Online PR report is out now and makes interesting reading.

It suggests that in-house PR teams in particular are guilty of ignoring the importance of online reputation monitoring.  Nearly half of respondents to the survey (of 1,100 client-side marketers, PR professionals and digital agencies) said they did not use reputation or buzz monitoring tools to understand what was being said about their brand on the web – and only 17 per cent were using technology to analyse sentiment.

At OnVisible we are big fans of reputation monitoring, utilising a mix of free tools, bought in technology and bespoke solutions.  After all, online reputation building and engagement is all about conversations – and it gets a bit one sided if you aren’t listening to what everyone else is saying.

posted by gemmaT

The online world is one big global community, right?  Not always.  Online PR is about getting your brand talked about by the right people, in the right places – and if these people are very culturally and geographically specific, you might be well advised to look for online PR experts that really know and understand the same.

Its not about geographical proximity to your target audience – its about having an innate understanding of a particular online neighbourhood and the cultural norms associated with it.  So if you only want to talk to Mums in the North of England, hiring an online PR agency in San Francisco might not be the best place to start (although as an office full of Northern Mummies, OnVisible would love to help!).  Likewise if you are specifically targeting new Moms in Washington USA and come to see us, we’re likely to recommend you use an online PR specialist with on the ground Mommy Blogger contacts in the DC area.

In a virtual world where brands are without borders, the ability to act virtually, work globally and think strategically online is crucial and in the majority of cases, its not about where you are based, its about how you engage.  But sometimes nothing beats a little local knowledge.

posted by gemmaT

We’ve been working with Visit York to promote an exciting annual event – Illuminating York. This is our fourth consecutive year working with Visit York on this project, which is great, because we love it.

It’s a digital art festival which runs each October for ten days and lights up some of the city’s oldest buildings with projections, with the help of a number of international artists.

The media relations campaign was launched last Friday (23 October) and we’ve generated some fantastic coverage so far including regional press, blogs, BBC News (Look North) and The Guardian Guide.

Plus, today Illuminating York has been featured as this weekend’s ‘Culture Minute’ on the Telegraph’s website.

So, if you’re a culture vulture, make sure you head to York over the weekend for your last chance to experience the sights and sounds of York after dark.

Illuminating York runs until Sunday, 1 November www.illuminatingyork.org.

Posted by Sally

One of the most important differences between traditional and online PR is found in blogger relations.  The crux of it is that unlike journalists, the majority of bloggers don’t get paid to blog. 

At a recent meeting between food bloggers and PRs reported on and co-organised by The Guardian, Anthony from Silverbrow on Food said “I blog because I like doing it.  I write about what I feel…writing’s not my job, but it’s also not my job to make it easier [for PRs] to sell in to a chef.”

Jim from Biggest Jim’s Food Blogs put it even more succinctly: “PR people have a specific aim, the clients have a remit.  I don’t.  How do you join that together?  You’re paid to represent a client.  I’m not.”

So how can online PR specialists persuade bloggers that what they have to offer is of real value?  By creating relevant, adaptable content and cool stuff that bloggers really want to talk about and engage with.

posted by gemmaT

There have been quite a few negative comments online following the BlogHer annual blogging conference (for women who blog) last month.

The comments didn’t concern the breath and depth of the conference itself, the brilliant opportunities to meet fellow bloggers in real life or the great parties.

It was all about the swag.

It seems that a combination of enthusiastic online PR types keen to reach out to influential Mommy Bloggers and Blogher delegates equally enthusiastic to get their hands on Free Stuff resulted in a 1,500 strong, 95% female, rugby scrum.

A lot of BlogHer delegates are sharing the resulting swag with their readers (with lots of attendant exposure for the brands concerned), but with many bloggers also questioning whether Free Stuff really creates a relationship between brands and bloggers, maybe its time that events like this had some kind of ‘rules of engagement’ for swag distribution?

posted by gemmaT

Just read a really interesting post on the Swamp blog about the recent BMW augmented reality
campaign for the new Z4.   Apart from being a really clever way to get people to interact with the car I was really impressed with BMW for pushing the boundaries yet again.

Obviously technology and design will appeal to BMWs target market and by using an emerging technology like AR, it has helped to extend the buzz beyond the motor press and into the technology, design and creative clusters.  The web is buzzing about the campaign, across everything from news to blogs and video.  This campaign is a classic example that demonstrates how the means of communication can say as much about a brand or product as what you’re saying.

By creating an impressive application of AR they’ve position the brand and the car as innovative, technologically advanced, stylish, aspirational and fun as well as given people plenty to talk about.  BMW is particularly good at innovating in its marketing, one of my favourite campaigns was the short film series it did, especially this from 2002 - ‘Beat the Devil’…Brilliant!

Posted by Deborah Copeland