pr-media-blog.co.uk

An interesting piece of research by broadband provider Talk Talk has revealed that due to high speed internet access, we’ve become a highly impatient nation with 70% of us “losing it” if we have to wait any longer than one minute for a page to load.

And this somewhat inflated level of impatience is also apparent in the offline world where in a restaurant, we’ll demand our meal after just eight minutes and 38 seconds, we’ll wait only 10 minutes and 43 seconds for a tradesman to show up and we’ll allow 10 minutes and 1 second for a friend before we burst with annoyance.

It’s clear that patience, once a Great British trait, is slowly wearing away as we embrace an era of high speed internet activity and that’s not just down to the advent of broadband. Twitter, for example, offers a unique feed of real-time conversation and sentiment with news being delivered faster than any other medium, providing us with an immediate global sense of events.

And gone are the days when journalists conducted a quick vox pop to gauge opinion, now they simply use the Twitter crowd as a source of immediate information and push out headlines and blogposts to Twitter via RSS and TwitterFeed.com.

A recent fault with Virgin Media which left many customers without TV and broadband, displayed not only consumer impatience (understandably) but infuriation at the fact that Virgin had not considered using Twitter to inform their customers of the problem, regardless of the fact that a number of people were tweeting about Virgin’s service issues which suggested a major outrage was brewing.

Clearly a massive oversight from Virgin and one which other service providers should take note of. Twitter is a critical vehicle for communicating information, instantly, and could quite easily have dampened the fire that was raging amongst its tweeting customers.

It’s clear we want speed. We thrive on being the first to know and unsurprisingly, it’s the 18-24 year olds who are least prepared to wait, which questions just how impatient future generations will be.

Public transport operators, call centre workers…. you have been warned.

The social media arena has been dominated by the growth of Twitter, Facebook and other networking sites this year. As we’re nearing 2010, there’s chatter about how networks will evolve going forward and one of the key points I’ve seen in almost every trend forecast is filtering out the clutter.

According to Pingdom, Twitter is already closing in on 30 million tweets a day and the latest figures from Facebook reveal that over 45 million status updates are uploaded on the site each day. It’s no surprise that some users are starting to tune out and some still think that Twitter is a waste of time.

David Armano predicts on the Harvard Business Conversation Starter blog that social media will begin to look less social next year - i.e. we will try to get more value out of our networks through filtering messages (hiding from hyperactive updaters etc).

Twitter has already started tackling this with Twitter Lists, but it raises an interesting question - do we actually want to connect with people we don’t know? The majority of people using social media connect almost exclusively with people they already know in the real world. Or is it simply information overload and we need to be able to administer the incoming messages better?

Either way, it emphasises yet again that successful online PR does not equate to a large number of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook. As people start to sift through the clutter (and some will probably do this early next year as everyone jumps on the New Year’s resolutions bandwagon and pledge to tidy up their lives in general), brands which aren’t offering something really valuable are likely to be the first ones to fall off the list. Relevant and trusted content has always been important but more aggressive filters will mean it’s paramount to digital PR success next year.

How do you see 2010 panning out? Will it become more difficult for brands to reach consumers through social networks as people are increasingly being bombarded with marketing messages?

Following on from my recent blog, Lily is Logging Off, in which I considered the rather cynical reasons why Lily Allen has had enough of the social networking space, I am now most intrigued about the recent goings-on of a certain Stephen Fry.

He quit Twitter, then changed his mind; blamed it on feeling very low and depressed, a symptom of his bipolar disorder.

It was a disagreement between Fry and another tweeter who described Fry’s tweets as “a bit…boring” which lead him to temporarily quit the site.

But for me it’s not the fact that Fry, rather impulsively it seems, announced he was retiring from Twitter, it’s the astonishing coverage it received and the unquestionable candour that Fry has displayed.

The Sunday Times (front page), Guardian, Telegraph, Sun… they’ve all harvested a good story out of it which in itself is quite incredible. Twitter is not a stand-alone community and any mildly contentious or salacious tweet, particularly by a celebrity, will make the national press.

Let’s face it, unless your tweets are protected they are open to everyone - and that goes for journalists looking for a good scoop.

Clearly, as one of the first celebrities to embrace Twitter - and now having a massive 945,000 followers - Fry’s announcement to retire was bound to cause a stir. But, in the grand scale of things, and particularly in light of his rather quick retraction, this really is a tornado in a teacup.

Not only that but if you consider the person that is Stephen Fry - a highly intelligent, slightly ungainly, old fashioned eccentric who will in no way appeal to everyone - he is bound to be described as boring from time to time!

Personally, I admire his honesty and thought his retrospective tweet which read: “l feel more sheepish than a sheep and more twattish than a twat” was exceptional and I’m sure his “twitter quitter” moment will only enhance his national treasure status.

So, I was hacked by a spammer…and social media saved me.

A fellow PR professional described the experience of having one’s Twitter account invaded in more technicolour (and unrepeatable) terms but it added up to the same thing: a mini, online crisis isn’t nice.

Why a crisis? I’m not a multinational brand with millions of customers who could, so easily, be turned off me and onto a competitor by a faux pas, I’m an individual, with nothing to lose, right?

Maybe. But when your Twitter followers are being bombarded - in your name - by the spammer’s bogus tweets that may put their own online security at risk, they could be forgiven for being a bit miffed. And if a migration of followers away from your account ensues, who could blame them?

But that’s where the power of social media comes into play: within minutes of the first illicit tweet leaving my Twitter account, people in the network were alerting me that something was wrong and sharing advice on what to do next. Nobody was offended and everyone was sympathetic to the downright inconvenience a hacker causes all round. After I’d apologised to those who’d been spammed, the messages back showed the patience and understanding of, well, a community rallying round.

Given that I’ve never actually met the majority of people in my online network and our mutual connection is by virtue of  social networking platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn, this is a reassuring example of human interaction at its best.

Now take that and apply it to a company faced with a crisis; but a company that has - through its people - built up a community through engagement, conversation, sharing of knowledge and being neighbourly. Just as my online network extended a helping hand to me, why shouldn’t the same loyalty be given to a brand in need?

Some say social media is being sold as “snake oil”. But trust me, it’s good to know you’ve got friends when you’ve been bitten.

So Lily Allen is officially a neo-Luddite.

She’s quit Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and email, ditched her Macbook and BlackBerry and apparently, according to numerous newspaper reports, her only means of communication with the outside world is a home phone and an old mobile.

Putting aside for a moment the underlying message that Lily Allen is to become a recluse, her reason behind such a decision could well be deeper than we’re led to believe.

We all know that the Internet made Lily Allen (in a very real sense) but as a notoriously outspoken and sometimes angry user of social networking sites, has she laid herself bare, torn down every personal barrier and let the world see her for exactly what she is and what she believes in?

In celebrity world this can surely be dangerous. We all love a sense of mystery but with Lily, we’ve seen it, heard it and she’s probably worn a T shirt with it emblazoned across it.

But it works both ways. She’s encouraged opinion and some of it will have undoubtedly been hard to swallow. Random strangers calling you fat, ugly, brattish, vulgar must surely instil a sense of fear… which is likely to lead to silence.

Reports suggest that her boyfriend asked her to choose between him or Twitter, but could this in fact be a shrewd move by her management: “Ditch Twitter, keep your opinions to yourself for a while, be seen to disappear into obscurity, oh and let’s get a press release out …”

As for the effects this may have on her personal life, she’s hardly going to become a recluse. With A-list friends like Kate Moss and Agyness Dean, whilst gigging at some of London’s coolest venues, I very much doubt that her decision to log off will leave her short of party invites.

Today’s PR Media Blog guest blog post is from Richard Baker, General Manager for Virgin Trains, and his take on Tw-etiquette (our terrible, made-up word, not his!) 

When Rob asked me if I wanted to write a bit about what I do on Twitter for this blog I was very flattered. These days I get a number of requests to write or speak about my approach to Twitter and customer service. It is always very humbling to be asked.

Then I normally have a little panic. I mean, there are a lot of good writers who do great stuff on Twitter; what on earth do I bring to the table that

a) hasn’t already been said, or

b) isn’t going to be boring?

With that in mind I did a bit of thinking and then decided to do an experiment. My experiments, (or ‘innovative approaches’ if you want it to sound well thought out) either do really well or bomb in a dramatic style. I will leave it to you to decide whether I achieved my objective!

I decided to ask the Twitterverse what they wanted me to write about. I asked one question online using a simple custom form and then asked my followers to answer and RT to their followers to answer. I have had some experience of this a few years ago when I developed a web-based service feedback system for Virgin Trains. Then I had to do some dodgy (I am no ubergeek) coding using different platforms.

Today it takes ten minutes with a Google Docs account;

I let this run for around four or five days.

One of the great things about trying something new is that you never know how it will turn out. You aren’t really in control of where it will go - particularly if it involves other people.

Incidentally, that’s how I describe what do on Twitter.

Which brings me to the responses to my question, and what this blog post is ultimately about. I have included a few of the responses and paraphrased them as they went into some detail. A huge thank-you to all those who responded; it was fascinating!

A few of the Responses

a)      Use of Twitter as a marketing tool and any barriers I face internally (Two questions)

b)      How I balance ‘corporate’ with ‘personal’ (Two questions)

c)      How I monitor and evaluate Social Media and the benefits I have seen (Two questions)

d)      Human Interest Stories ‘like someone losing a parrot on board a train’

Now, I don’t have the space to list and answer all the responses here, so instead I will make a few important points and if you want to read my answers to all responses  you can at my blog at Rich Baker over the coming weeks.

1. People want (and get) very different things from you and I on Twitter
2. Until we ask our followers what they get from our tweets we can only guess at the answer. Of course, sometimes it may not matter to you or I what our followers think..
3. ‘Fail to plan and you plan to fail’ goes the old adage. However, if you didn’t have a plan in the first place then it can’t fail; don’t be afraid to let things grow organically. There is always an element of risk when doing something new
4. I make mistakes quite often. I apologise when I do.
5. Most people are smart enough to understand that I am a person who works for a company. I am not the company. So please don’t quote me without checking what I meant. Or even worse, misquote me.
6. If you walked up to me at work, swore at me and then launched a shouty tirade about how crap I/we/Virgin am/are it might affect our relationship. I would probably wait until you calmed down and then ask if I could help. However, it would be nicer for both of us (and everyone listening) if you didn’t do a shouty rude tirade in the first place. The same applies on Twitter.

And finally

And forgive me for getting all ‘fluffy’ on this one; we have a great opportunity to create the rules on how we use Twitter and other social media; we can use all this amazing technology, enthusiasm, generosity, creativity and innovation to do great things for each other. I don’t intent to waste that opportunity, what about you?

@richard_baker    @VirginTrains

Update: Talking of super-injunctions, The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger takes us through the Trafigura document, clause by press-gagging clause…

Trying to talk about about super-injunctions, press freedom and PR this week feels like walking into an overcrowded lift and attempting to make yourself heard above a dozen, City hedge fund traders who’ve just made a few million quid.

You can’t move for the acres of copy filling paper and digital pages about super-injunctions - the meaning of which, just over a week ago, was unknown outside the offices of lawyers, Carter-Ruck, and remains unclarified today on Wikipedia.

The background, in short - and with the help of the New Law Journal - is: ”Law firm Carter-Ruck, representing oil trading firm Trafigura, had insisted that an injunction obtained against the Guardian prevented it from reporting a question tabled by Paul Farrelly MP. However, details of the question were posted on the social networking site Twitter, leading Carter-Ruck to withdraw its gagging attempt.”

Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, celebrated the victory for free speech in his editorial late last week, with no faint praise for the role of Twitter and the blogosphere in helping the reversal of the court order, which threatened to trounce the media’s unassailable privilege of reporting what’s said in the UK Parliament.

Unsurprisingly, the Guardian is working overtime on this story, with pieces from Emily Bell, Index on Censorship boss, John Kampfner, and acerbic wit from Charlie Brooker, who describes Trafigura’s corporate PR as “about as effective as appearing on the GMTV sofa to carve your brand name on the face of a live baby”. The Daily Mash is also revelling in the absurdity of it all.

But one of the more serious issues emerging is the one highlighted by Kampfner, who notes the powers of the Human Rights Act being abused by companies to achieve privacy (for that, read secrecy) originally intended for members of the public.

Learning the laws of libel and slander is a mainstay of journalism courses (I did it myself - the law paper we dubbed the “Mother of all exams”). But Kampfner’s point is that the legal imbalance between investigative journalism and the right not to be defamed has made English law “the enemy of free expression”.

Co-incidentally, the latest changes to the Press Complaints Commission’s Editors’ Code of Practice are said to swing power in favour of the PR profession at the expense of journalists. But Porter Novelli director of media Laurence Lee is quoted in PR Week’s piece as saying: ”There will be plenty of PR people who would welcome greater restrictions on journalistic practices…PR people rely on a free press as much as anyone else so it’s no good saying journalists are the enemy.”

Ironically, this is nothing new. Describing his trips to London’s law courts while editor of The Sunday Times, the great Harold Evans, writes in his book “Good Times, Bad Times” - now 26 years old: ”I went before the judges because Government or corporations or individuals tried to find reasons in law for preventing The Sunday Times printing what it knew to be true…it was not abstract or remote power, but the power that is capable of building an airliner knowing it will fall out of the skies, or of cheating small savers…or selling a deforming drug and refusing to compensate reasonably for the shattered lives…”

Evans’ words should remain humbling, today, for anyone setting out to trample on the truth. The Guardian’s victory in the Trafigura case - with the help of ”the people” empowered by social media - suggests there is a still a premium placed on that abstract noun, truth.
 

I recently came across Jezebel, a blog which, as the raunchy name suggests, is aimed at women and focuses on celebrity, sex and fashion, ‘without airbrushing’. 

My first thought was – hmm, another feminist website. Turns out it’s much more than that. Churned out by Gawker Media since 2007, it’s clocking up on average nearly 1 million visits per day and has an impressive following on social networking sites and other blogs. Yesterday I noticed a twitter conversation about an intern position at the site, which went something like this, “Dear Jezebel, I will sell you my soul for an internship.” 

Why all the hype? I decided to monitor the blog to find out and have to say I’ve been very impressed. Most blogs aimed specifically at women have never appealed to me as they seem to focus on recipes or similar, not particularly exciting subjects. Jezebel, on the other hand, with a fiercely direct and analytical attitude, takes on not only women’s mags, but also newspapers (Daily Fail, as they call it, being one of the most favourite whipping boys) and offers tens of witty articles every day on pretty much every subject a modern woman might be interested in. How about: Daily Mail Finds Rare Childless Woman Who Is Not Miserable? 

The blog positions itself as the rebel, sick of the lies perpetuated by the women’s media, from airbrushing and shallow predictable celebrity interviews, to must-have products that journalist’s themselves don’t believe in.  

For this reason, from a PR perspective, however, Jezebel is almost an impossible win – they simply won’t read PR pitches and seem to have a grudge against the PR industry as such. Having said that, if you come up with a spectacular idea, perfect for the audience, I think you can chance it. Also, their FAQ section offers a very interesting insight into how a professional blog is run. 

A more general realisation though is that in today’s world where citizen journalism is on the rise, getting your news story printed is not the end of the story. Increasingly, it is then taken apart and analysed by ever more powerful and media savvy groups and blogs all over the world.  

All in all, Jezebel is a much-needed breath of fresh air in the tired space of women’s websites and magazines, which at the moment still follow the same traditional format – Wednesday’s launch of the Stylist is a prime example.  

“Black goes with everything and you probably don’t need any more assistance going broke!” shout Jezebel’s editors in unison. And the reason Jezebel is on the rise with an army of active commentators, whilst many women’s magazines are dying out – passion and edginess!   

As the Conservative Party prepares to complete the conference season in Manchester on Monday and launches the online campaigning tool, myconservatives.com, (seen here in Beta form), PR Media Blog put questions to Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport and Spokesman for Online Campaigning. The questions and answers were supplied in written form and have been reproduced as such.

PR Media Blog: The Tories are way ahead in the polls. Does it matter what the party does online between now and election day?

Jeremy Hunt: While the Party is currently ahead in the opinion polls, the only poll that matters is on General Election day and we’re taking absolutely nothing for granted.

In terms of our online efforts, we’re the only party that has committed consistent time, effort and resource into online communications since the last General Election, and you can be sure that digital will continue to play a massive part of our engagement with voters.

PRMB: David Cameron has been dismissive of Twitter where people in the other parties have embraced it as a communications tool. Is he worried that encouraging Tory MPs to use it would be too uncontrollable and risk re-toxifying the Conservative brand?

JH: Twitter is the fashionable tool of choice at the moment, but as Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital said: “Services like Twitter are scattershot and dizzying. They burn political capital. Besides, they don’t talk to the people you want to talk to.”

It’s OK using Twitter if, like Grant Shapps, you already have an email list of over 10,000 local residents with whom you can communicate directly. But many Labour and LibDem MPs have a totally disproportionate attitude to it - how many of Kerry McCarthy’s constituents are on Twitter? I’d be amazed if it was over 10%.

It’s not fear of Twitter by any stretch of the imagination - our Party account has more followers than Labour and the LibDems combined, and several public facing staffers are on there too and constantly engaging with people - it’s rather that our MPs and Candidates focus on the digital activities on channels that matter in their local campaigns - websites, email, Facebook and supporter mobilisation.

PRMB: Do you see so-called “right wing” bloggers such as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes as the Tories’ natural allies online in the run up to the election?

JH: The dominance of the centre-right in British political blogging is a testament to their quality and independence, and though we have a relationship with almost all of the big beasts in this world, it is up to them to decide on their editorial line.

The top centre-right bloggers are, however, part of a broader Conservative movement that is looking to challenge the wastefulness, incompetence and lack of vision in this current Labour Government.

PRMB: Does having a social media presence conflict with the Conservatives’ need to control the message very tightly in the coming months?

It’s important for any political party to have a clear, distinctive message so the voters know exactly what we stand for. However, it’s equally important to be reaching out to voters so they can ask us questions and figure out if they want us to be the next government. Social media offers us an excellent opportunity to have that conversation and open ourselves up to public scrutiny, but so do other channels.

Email is still the most accessible engagement tool out there and public meetings provide a great way to engage directly. David Cameron has also held almost fifty ‘Cameron Direct’ events over the past year, engaging with over 10,000 people face-to-face and answering their questions on a range of subjects.

PRMB: Is the party afraid that social media will become the source of damaging stories or allegations that will turn the polls against it? How well prepared is the party to deal with a scandal erupting online?

JH: We saw from the Draper-McBride scandal what happens when a central Party tries to take control of independent, online media - it ended in the kind of fiasco and disgrace that will come to define Labour’s approach to the internet in the minds of most people for many years to come.

The Conservative Party inherently understands that online communications comes with risks, but that the opportunities are too great to ignore.

PRMB: I’ve read that the party is going to advertise on Spotify. In what way is this the right medium for a political party to engage with the electorate? Is this just trying to piggy-back on the latest “hot thing”?

JH: Your advertising strategy has to be about reaching out to people who would never ordinarily engage with your content - or even be that interested in politics and platforms like Spotify (or Google AdWords, which we’ve also used with significant results) are a great way of reaching new audiences.

We’re absolutely not about going for the latest “hot thing” - if a platform wasn’t going to be effective for us or offer value for money then we wouldn’t use it.

PRMB: Does the party think it will harness online communities in the way Barack Obama did ahead of his presidential win?

JH: Can we emulate Obama? US elections are very different in tone, size and scale to ours in the UK but we are the Party that has best understood and adopted the lessons they learnt last year. Obama’s achievements in terms of organising activists and raising money have certainly raised the bar in terms of what a political party can achieve online and we’re obviously looking to do something similar in Britain.

To that end, we’re launching something very exciting at Party Conference - the most advanced political campaigning tool outside the USA, and the endpoint of our content and supporter recruitment strategies.

While out shopping on the high street the other day, I couldn’t help raise a smile when overhearing a group of 40-something mums, shout to each other “I’ll facebook ya!”

It suddenly occurred to me that social networking, which I’ve always considered the preserve of educated professionals, students and office workers has gone mainstream. Even Coronation St has its own Facebook group, how long will it be before Emily, Rita and Norris swapping a gin ‘n’ tonic down the Rovers for a game of FarmVille on Facebook?       

What started out as a way of keeping in touch with friends - and getting back in contact with old ones - has taken on a whole new remit. In my Facebook experience, I’ve started noticing whole generations of families ‘facebooking’ each other, kids, parents, grandparents and I’m sure I’m not alone in the sudden influx of friend requests from cousins, aunties and uncles. Maybe this is family values re-invented?      

As Twitter celebrates its first entry into the Collins English Dictionary this month, I wonder if the social networking site will ever end up with such a mixed audience as Facebook?