Posts Tagged ‘social media’

Social media delivers incredible Tsunami coverage

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Two a bit years ago I remember having a conversation with a colleague about whether Twitter was going to become a significant news source. The debate was sparked by blogging guru Robert Scoble who had suggested that in the future people would go to the micro blogging site for news before they turned to mainstream media organisations.

I remember saying something suitably sniffy like ‘can’t see Twitter taking on the BBC just yet.’ However as time has gone by I can see that Scoble was right in his prediction. Like many other Twitter users I often first hear about breaking stories through the site. This might be through friends tipping their followers off about a story or simply by people linking to articles that have just been published in online media.

There are also times when social media in general, and Twitter in particular, move so quickly that media just can’t keep up and a really great example of this was Saturday’s Tsunami in Hawaii.

To begin with social media played a huge role in ensuring that people knew to move to higher ground. Then when they got there the barrage of information coming out of the islands was incredible.

Try as they might CBS News and CNN couldn’t match the content that was spewing out of the island from connected citizens with their webcams, camera phones and tweets. In particular Skype enabled webcams and video streaming services like Qik played a huge role in delivering footage from across Hawaii in places where mainstream media didn’t have cameras.

Twitter was electric too. Once the Tsunami reached Hawaii the islands were buzzing with tweets about which water on which beach was receding and progressing and how the locals were feeling about the impending arrival of walls of water. It was amazing to have all those eyewitness reports even if the actual event was (thank God) not quite the spectacle it could have been.

Ultimately if you wanted to find out what was happening first social media sites, not mainstream media, were the place to be.

Tags: Hawaii, robert Scoble, Skype, social media, tsunami, twitter
Posted in social media | No Comments »

Can social media save BBC 6 Music?

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Today Twitter and Facebook are buzzing with responses to the news that the BBC is rumoured to be closing down its 6 Music station. Although the corporation has said nothing to confirm the move, it was lead story in The Times this morning and apparently has already sparked a bidding war with Absolute Radio the frontrunner to buy the station.

The move to close 6 Music is part of a plan that has allegedly been proposed by the BBC hierarchy to rein in some of the corporation’s activities. Other potential changes include halving the size of the BBC website and introducing a cap on the amount of money the BBC can spend on sport. As The Times suggested this morning the BBC’s management is clearly hoping that buy making cuts now it can avoid what many media watchers are predicting will be much deeper cuts after the next general election.

It is however the possible mothballing of 6 Music that has sparked the greatest amount of online activity. Jon Morter, the man who masterminded the Rage Against the Machine Christmas #1 campaign, has now established a new Facebook campaign called “Save BBC 6 Music”. Inspired by recent pronouncements about the possible demise of the station it has already picked up over 56,000 vocal members. By mid afternoon another 7000 people had joined the group.

Meanwhile on Twitter #BBC6music has been trending all day with comments like these

#BBC6music threatens commercial radio?? It can only be a good thing! When has there ever been a decent commercial radio station? #save6music

BBC continue to pay Wogan, fund garbage like ‘Total Wipeout’, ‘Strictly’ & Webers free publicity shows, yet threaten to cut #bbc6music. Huh?

Some tweeters are already sporting save 6 Music badges on their profile pics

So will this new campaign have the same impact and be able to help save BBC 6 Music?

From this juncture it is very hard to tell, but with this amount of activity inspired by what really is little more than a rumour at the moment, it is clear that BBC 6 Music fans are going to fight very hard using social media tools to save their station.

From using Twitter to source opinions for Radio Five Live phone ins through to its Facebook pages and blogs the BBC has worked hard to incorporate social media into online output. It’ll be interesting to see how responsive it is to a very vocal campaign that uses the same tools it already harnesses so effectively.

Tags: bbc 6 music, facebook campaign, Jon Morter, radio, social media
Posted in Broadcast, Social Networking, facebook | 2 Comments »

5 pieces of advice for grads wanting to enter PR

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

This post was originally written at Adam’s personal blog, flawlessbuzz.

PR week has recently posted an article on the prospects for recent graduates hoping to enter the PR industry. Unsurprisingly, most graduates are finding it difficult to get their big break with considerably more applicants applying for considerably less places shown by the Association of Graduate Recruiter’s survey which found that there are 48 applicants for every graduate vacancy. This figure is likely to be far higher in the PR industry, one of the most sought after industries for recently graduated students.

Personally, I found that this mark was closer to the 100 mark. This added to the fact that there are usually significant barriers for students applying like degree class, certain GCSEs gained, and only allowing graduates from a top class university which means that a graduate must be pretty clued up when applying to go into PR.

After applying for various grad schemes and experiencing various internships, here’s some advice which should help you get one step ahead of other graduates applying.

1. Get into social media

Should go without saying but even if you don’t want to get into digital pr or social media, having a decent amount of knowledge about it will do you. Start a blog, start tweeting, post some flickr photos, upload a youtube video, start chatting on facebook. If you’re not doing any of these, you’re seriously lacking behind a lot of your competition.

2. Get some knowledge

Read anything you can get your hands on. Papers, blogs, web magazines, newsletters, practically anything which someone in PR might have had a hand in creating. The more you read, the more opinions (with substance) you should have on subjects. Learn about campaigns you like/don’t like, read about what’s the latest social media tool/fad and have a look at what every PR person should know.

3. Get some experience

Why do you want to work in PR? Is it the allure of fast cars, exotic women and high-flying celebs? Well, it shouldn’t be because it really isn’t like that. The best way of finding this out is to go get some experience. You’ll find out if PR is right for you, which sector of PR is right for you and if the company you’re working for is good for you. There’s no point in starting at a low-level at a PR agency to find out you hate the industry and/or sector (found out after experiencing an internship in a sector I didn’t enjoy). And it can’t harm that CV can it?

4. Get some research done

How do you know which companies to apply to? By doing a lot of research. PR Week lists the top companies for different sectors, some companies actively advertise internships up for grabs, and if you go to a company’s website they usually have some information on their clients, recent work and personnel. These often give you a decent idea on whether that company is right or wrong for you.

5. Ask

Because of the nature of the job (or maybe just a coincidence?), nearly everyone I’ve met in PR is incredibly nice and extremely helpful. I had no idea what I was doing when I started out in the social media world. So I asked. And people answered. This isn’t just lowly people at the bottom of the PR pile who work for some terrible company. This is everyone who I asked, from MDs of start-ups to CEOs of some of the biggest agencies in the country. If you’re really scared, just ask me! There are enough people out there who got into PR in some part to other people helping them and who are more than happy to pass their wisdom on (I hope).

These 5 steps should help any budding PR enthusiast have a head-start on other graduates, check the shinyred blog throughout the year for details of internships or graduate vacancies.

Tags: graduate internships, social media, social media jobs
Posted in General | No Comments »

Social media and second chances

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but the emergence of social media, and brands and consumers engaging in online dialogue is challenging this turn of phrase for a number of simple reasons.

1. People want to engage with brands online

In a recent story by eMarketer, over half of social networking users have become a fan or follower of a brand online. In addition, it seems that on average, users are more to show the love towards brands rather than unleash streams of negativity. “52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social networking Website—double the percentage who had said something negative (23%).” Users are looking for and connecting with their favourite brands, and will interact with them through the same sites as the ones they use to chat with friends and family members. I follow my brother on Twitter, but I also follow LoveFilm; the relationship is very different, but the medium and the way the conversation takes place is the same. Extending this comparison, we’re far more likely to give a second chance to a brand that’s engaging with social media than a silent faceless corporation

2. Social media is always evolving

Every week, a new online community or platform is launched which may provide a channel for brands and consumers to interact. While the universal principles of new marketing (transparency, dialogue) will always apply, some of the more nuanced rules and practices come over a period of time as users get to grips with what’s the right and wrong way to use a given site or community. Even taking one particular medium – like message boards or forums – you’ll find a whole subset of practices for any given group of users. This disparity of rules has prompted some to go even further and assert that “there are no rules”

3. The Internet is the natural habitat for second chances

What do the following have in common: Dell, Wispa, MC Hammer, Woolworths? They’ve all made a comeback using the web. Most notably Dell’s transformation from the brand that could do no right, into one of the most switched on and consumer friendly companies is constantly held up as an example for social media marketers worldwide. Initiatives like Ideastorm say to the user “We’re not perfect, we make mistakes, but we’re listening to you”. The same could be said for Starbucks and its recent My Starbucks Idea community, “We know you’ve got ideas” says the site, so let us know what you think.

With this in mind, today, we’re excited to be working with Habitat to relaunch the @HabitatUK twitter feed. The team there are keen to listen and learn more from the engaging with the community in the future, so we’re sharing our experience of what works well on Twitter, as well as responding to the thoughts and questions of followers. We believe it’s better to go for a second chance than to simply avoid social media altogether, so it would be great to hear your comments.

Tags: dell, habitat, second chances, social media, twitter, wispa, woolworths
Posted in Client News | 1 Comment »

How much promotion is OK in social media?

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Spambots are all the rage on twitter at the moment, with people accumulating hundreds of followers posing as naked ladies who are actually just trying to promote their product. This isn’t appreciated among the twittersphere (and nor should it!) but the question is when is the line crossed when it comes to promotion of a product or person on Twitter?

One example was a competition Moonfruit posted on twitter. This campaign gave away a MacBook pro every day for 7 days to people who twittered the hashtag #moonfruit, which resulted in the brand name Moonfruit being one of the most talked about brands in the twittersphere at the time. This technique wasn’t appreciated by all and was eventually removed by twitter with some marketers seeing this as spam.

Another equally contentious use of promotion was the publicity that Voltz drinks gained recently about a blog post promotion. The blog post talks about the blogger meeting a celebrity whereupon she told him that he should be drinking Voltz to help him keep a ’slinky waistline’. The endorsement of the brand in a blog post by someone who didn’t visibly represent Voltz drinks in a blatant use of promotion wasn’t welcomed by all.

However, the brand has been talked about online, which is ultimately what Voltz will have been aiming for. They have their name out there and people who have read the article will remember this brand name over another drinks brand which will have been their primary aim I should imagine. This doesn’t mean that people who recognise the brand name will necessarily buy the drink over another brand because of it but (some) people will now recognise it and might even buy it should they see it in the shops. And this is the same with Moonfruit too, they wanted to promote the brand name ‘Moonfruit’ and it was ultimately talked about in the social media world.

The question is where the line is drawn between promotion and spam on twitter, and who gets to decide this. Ultimately, in the two examples above, the decision lay with the twittersphere.

Tags: Blogging, brand, promotion, social media, twitter
Posted in Microblogging | 1 Comment »

Twitter – surviving the backlash

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

The last few weeks have seen naysayers becoming increasingly vocal in denying the usefulness of Twitter and asking whether it will ever become a viable revenue generator. For example recent articles in the Guardian and the Telegraph deny the impact of Twitter on building real communities and providing a useful tool for businesses.

Proving that strong communities can be formed online, and that Twitter does indeed mobilise the masses, one loyal Twitter user comedy writer Graham Linehan, responded to these accusations by asking his 26,973 followers what Twitter has done for them. The community responded in force with stories of how Twitter has impacted on their lives, both in business and by creating a network. A selection of these are:

…I saved time on research, hassle-free customer services, connection to interesting people, and a free book. All last week (via @somerandomnerd)

… I now write for a film news website. I’ve attended premieres and press conferences also I’ve had the opportunity to interact with a huge range of people whose work I enjoy, and thank them for it. (via @montimer)

Twitter…gave me a direct line to my local council, who got planners to review the traffic sitch outside my kid’s school (@sladey66)

On Twitter, I ask and answer questions related to my work – saving me having to read up on things not central to my job (@brenstrong)

I have been housebound thru illness for ages. Twitter has made me feel part of the world and not so isolated (via @Ita99)

Developments at Twitter are also putting to rest the fear that it will not be able to make money. The company has announced plans to start rolling out commercial accounts by the end of this year. This added service is expected to offer methods of measuring impact of Twitter feeds for businesses, such as detailed analytics of activity that is generated by tweets. (Before Twitter users panic, the service will remain as normal for all users but a ‘commercial layer’ will be added for those who wish to subscribe.)

Tags: micro blogging, social media, twitter
Posted in Microblogging | No Comments »

The web on your tellybox – an update.

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Adapted by the author from an original post at social Probiotic

A few months ago I wrote a piece on my own blog about internet content making its way to the TV screen. Not in a Media Center box kind of way, but a way that is done from the point of view of the television industry. It’s now time for the other big event of the braodcasting calendar, NAB in Las Vegas, which unfortunately, I’ll not be attending. There was however, a chance to see some of the things that will be on display there at the IPTV World Forum in London last month. Once again, for a show that is about using internet technology, there was disappointingly little about internet content to see. But here’s a run down of what some of the TV tech companies are doing with social media.

Accedo: This is more of an update from what they showed me at IBC, essentially, they’ve taken on the ‘app’ model for Facebook and Twitter so that you can view a cutdown version of these applications as a sidebar during your normal TV watching. In the same way that online applications such as thwirl and digsby recognise that some things need to be kept in the background while you’re focusing on your main task, Accedo will sit completely unassumingly until you want to share what you’re doing with your network. It also integrates with your EPG, so that just using the coloured remote buttons, you can update what you’re watching. Neat, look:

SeaChange: as a company I’ve done some work with before, I was curious to know what this middleware provider was up to in the world of web content. They’re showing off Affinity, a social networking engine for video-on-demand, essentially a tool that allows you to make and take recommendations for stuff in a VOD library, the idea being that people will discover pay-per-view content that they might not normally find (= extra revenue for operator). The problem I have with this is that it seems that the recommendations are done via collaborative filtering (i.e. you share what you like with your friends and vice versa), which means that the solution is only good when your friends like the same stuff as you AND they happen to have an Affinity enabled TV service. If it was linked to a social network’s API, there would be a lot more value from this and it wouldn’t necessitate the latter point.

Ericcson: Yes they do TV, in fact, they were showing last.fm on TV – not the actual videos, but essentially, it’s an ‘app’ built for playing music through your TV when you get very bored of adverts for ringtones on VH1. I’m not entirely sure where it sits in the network because they don’t seem to be talking about it in any of their literature or website, which is a shame. I liked the demo though, it looks pretty slick and my TV has better sound quality than my PC, so I’m all for taking this particular service to the living room in another way (I currently use the last.fm app on my iPod quite frequently for that type of thing. Pic below:

CompleteTV: Now I have to say I’m more than a little disappointed with these guys. Despite having a fairly nice booth at IPTVWF, and splashing the YouTube Logo across it a couple of times, looking at their site, I fail to see how that was any more than lip service to online media making its way to the TV in any genuine form. Fear of content producers… perhaps. Now, that might sound harsh, but here’s the thing… CompleteTV makes boxes – not a great start… boxes for the consumer (even worse, since most of this stuff will migrate to the network in 3-4 years), which, with the whole wealth of social media goodness out there can do all this: “browse the internet and act as an email/instant messaging client”. Wow. I’m hugely underwhelmed.

Finally I wanted to quote a great article from the March/April issue of Future Media, in which Jonathan Webdale has interviewed Anthony Rose, one of the big cheeses behind the iPlayer, who said that “2007 was the year the BBC chose what you watched, 2008 was the year viewers chose what they watched and 2009 would be the year your friends choose what you watch.” As long as it’s not the rest of the Shiny Red team choosing, I’m keen to see how it goes.

Tags: future media, nab, social media, tv
Posted in Social Networking, Video, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

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