I met with a journalist contact yesterday and he was saying that he thinks all journalists should blog and use Twitter. I agree and told him I would pick out some old presentations that I found on the subject matter. So, instead of sending them to him via email I thought I would share my post with you all.

There is some good stuff in this presentation too but some of it is a bit old hat now. It is still worth a scan though.

The demonstration yesterday in Trafalgar Square, London, against the ill-conceived anti-terrorism laws has resulted – ironically – in some really great images.

The law aims gives police powers to ban photographers from taking pictures in public, as they could supposedly present a terrorism threat.

Public relations and especially media relations are brought to life with great photography. I’ve already posted on this event and here is more excellent imagery, which will change over time depending on what is uploaded to Flickr.

I would add that although there are some excellent examples of photography here, the resulting press coverage wasn’t that impressive, especially as the media has a vested interest in stopping this law. Maybe these photographers should have enlisted a few public relations professionals to help out?

Newsswipe is a satirical look at the media, from angry, shouty Guardian journalist, Charlie Brooker. This video is from the last series, therefore it’s “old news” but still amusing in the extreme. The new series is funnier still because it benefits from greater topicality. It’s on BBC4 at 10pm every Thursday. Sky Plus it!

Por qué Obama es para más de 3 años y Michelle para más de 15?, originally uploaded by seretuaccidente.

Is Obama suffering from raising the expectations of a nation?

His campaign was heralded as an incredible success by the public relations industry, but were the American people expecting too much?

Without a successful strategy to follow through on ‘brand’ promises, be they ones of policy or business, a media relations or social media campaign can fall flat on its face.

The best campaigns of public relations are those which are so closely intertwined with its subject that communication messages and the client are inseparable.

This meant, in Obama’s case, he should have created a messaging framework which adapted to the changing narrative of the nation. As expectations shift so should the communications.

Of course all this falls down if a client can’t deliver against its promises.

Here are a few links to interesting articles which I found this week

Excellent Resources Help You Create Your Own Social Networking Site
This is very geeky reading but there are some excellent tools, tips and plugins here for the digital and web savvy social media professional

How To Rank Top In Google
Nice summary of SEO, should you need to explain it to a client or marketing contact

List of The Top Free Press Release Sites — Moola Days
Public Relations professionals can argue whether news agencies are useful or not for securing press coverage, but what you can’t deny is that this blog has the most definitive list

20 Real-World Uses for Google Wave
What I like about this post is that it doesn’t get carried away and gives real, tangible uses. Any PR professional who has read up on Google Wave will have come across these uses before. However too often Google Wave blogs talk about the platform like it is a cure for cancer, while this post reiterates the most useful functionality

Haiti earthquake

Watch the devastation in Haiti on Google Earth, declared one tweet. Another told the world that those suffering from the earthquake were ‘reaching out to the world through social media.’

Everyone seemed so upset to see the destruction and suffering on Sky News, as they went about their daily business, but 24/7 news coverage and social media can give one the false impression that the world gives two hoots.

I sometimes feel that because we are so much closer to the news these days, we think that we are somehow helping make the problem better just by following the story.

I’ve donated money this evening to UNICEF.org.uk and it would be great if you would do the same and show that we are more than just consumers of media.

Everyone will find this database of journalist ‘Twitterati’ useful.

Following journalists on Twitter is a great way to keep up with the news and I use Twitter as an RSS news feed. I’m so reliant on Twitter that I rarely go directly to news sites these days – as my news is fed to me in a stream of live updates.

So when I found this database of journalists I was pleasantly surprised. There have been attempts to capture the Twitter feeds of journalists, and indeed one organisation tried to sell my company a Gorkana style Twitter database for £10,000 annual fee. Luckily social media has the answer and this neat site looks like it will eventually become the definitive guide. http://www.mediaontwitter.com/

The curious point raised in my mind over the coverage of Stephen Fry’s decision to leave Twitter was concerning the level of coverage it received.

In old media decisions are made over whether a story is newsworthy or not – or they should be anyway. This is an intellectual decision based on the editorial values of the media outlet.

In new media (e.g social) it is very easy to see appealing trends, and along with trends come traffic. Therefore media outlets want a piece of the traffic and can decide to divert eyeballs to their own media space by running a trending story, such as Frygate.

This is what happened yesterday. The ‘Stephen Fry exit’ saga started to trend and other media outlets wanted to take this traffic. The story really was a none story, e.g man decides not to use website, then changes his mind shock.

Of course this sort of populism has been happening for a long time in old media too. It is just more transparent now that, through Tweetdeck, users get a live feed for the most talked about stories of the day. It goes back to the old argument of whether media has a mission to deliver news or provide eye balls to advertisers.

So, the Stephen Fry story is not a story, but perhaps an indication of how social media is changing editorial decisions.

From a PR point of view – I think my clients can learn a thing or to from this episode. Beg, steel and borrow your audience* from where ever you can (without doing a Habitat!!), but do it in a plausible, subtle and tasteful way. Do it well and your online profile will be boosted. Do it badly and you are toast (so hire professionals to advise).

For example, by writing this post I too am joining in on the feeding frenzy and getting a share of the Stephen Fry traffic. The only difference is that I am not a news channel set up to provide our nation with news.

Some might say, it’s not appropriate for brands to do divert traffic in this way, especially in the corporate or business to business marketplace. Well, they’d be wrong. Yes Frygate is not the right topic to use but corporate brands can borrow traffic from other places. Simply by identifying industry trends and then tapping into the online communities in which they operate or want to target. Yes the traffic will be lower, but much more targeted and a better match. For example a technology client should tap into the hot topics on Techcrunch and then into the billions of technology blogs that are in the blogosphere.

*sorry Fernando, I’ve stolen your concept

(Excuse any typos. I wrote this on my Blackberry. It was only meant to be a short post but I got carried away)

The Football Association needs a PR campaign to show that hooliganism is no longer a big problem in England.

The reason for my post is that this story of the Italian FA telling Capello that “Hooligan is an English word” annoyed me today.

England has an issue with its reputation abroad, one that is no longer based on fact, but rather folklore.

With such strong, negative and ingrained perceptions of British fans there is a clear task for the Public Relations Industry. This is because unbalanced reporting leads to disproportionate levels of coverage, that then informs international football fans and organisations worldwide. It becomes a vicious circle.

The facts need communicating:

- England is the safest place to watch football (there is lots of evidence to back this claim up)
- France, Italy and Spain is a far more dangerous place to watch football
- France has ancient stadia with hooligans aplenty, as does Italy
- Spain has the added joy of racism to throw into the mix, click here

OK, here is my caveat, this season there has been more trouble than usual in the UK, e.g. Man Utd v Barnsley, West Ham vs Millwall, and England can’t take its eye off the ball, but look at this more severe example which happened this week in France at a match between Marseille and Paris SG. In my view it was under-reported, see here:

Events such as what happened in Marseille are a regular occurrence in France, but just aren’t reported worldwide, compared to when we Brits get involved. This lack of balance needs addressing. I just want to see us all up to necks in the same problem without other countries missing out on the criticism.

35 Italians died in a horrific incident involving Liverpool FC hooligans, yet during the war millions of human beings died. However we can forgive the nations involved in those war-crimes, so why not the same with sport?

Could the Football Association create a crisis management strategy which kicks into action every time there is trouble in the UK or the rest of Europe? Maybe it already has a crisis PR team but clearly more needs investing in improving our reputation. When trouble is severe then the FA will rightfully hold its hands up! However robust efforts must be made to put hooliganism into perspective when compared to what happens in mainland Europe. OK, we need to stamp the problem out here, but reporting of events in Spain, England, and Italy must be proportional on a global level.

We, on behalf of The Carphone Warehouse, are beginning to undertake a project to encourage journalists to blog. I’ve only been blogging for the past five months but have found the whole process very rewarding. Hopefully a few journalists will start blogging who never thought they would!

They are better placed than me to come up with compelling content!

This presentation starts off slowly but by slide seven there is some good content. I should also say it is not my presentation, but lifted from Slideshare.

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