I’ve been reading a book by one of the world gurus on social media – Engage! by Brian Solis.

As you might guess from the title, it’s about engaging with your audience – as opposed to pushing messages out as corporates often do through their marketing and advertising.

The first part is a recap of the principles of social media; the second part what he calls the new media university with his MBA modules of learning.  The final parts are about developing blueprints for new marketing.

There is a lot in here that is basic, common sense for anyone working in social media – yet I find it is still useful to read a lot of this in different language and from a different perspective.

I would recommend it for businesses who understand the basics of social media (this really is not a book for beginners).  Here is what I’ve taken from it that could help our clients

1. First step in engaging with social media

A lot of businesses struggle with the concept of social media to start with.  Here are some phrases I liked

-        The best communicators always start as the best listeners

-        (Engagement) starts with respect and an understanding of how you connect with and benefit those whom you’re hoping to help

-        Messages are not conversations

-        Conversations happen with or without you

-        Negative commentary already exists – in most cases you just aren’t encountering it

2. Social media is one component of a broader communications and marketing strategy

This is so important.  Social media is not something to do instead of – or to be cheaper than – other marketing activities.  It is just another ‘route to market’.

Brian Solis says ‘the best communications programs will reach out equally to traditional media; A-, B- and C-list bloggers and communities because while newsmakers reach the masses, peers and customers also reach other in the communities where they congregate.  This requires a new mindset and a new era of metrics’.

3. We are forever students of new media

I could not agree more.  ‘We should never strive to master something that evolves much faster than our ability to fully grasp its lessons, benefits, insights….’

It is reassuring that even the ‘gurus’ feel they have to keep up all the time!

4. Plaxo

Brian lists dozens of social media sites, some of which were new to me.  The one that particularly interested me is Plaxo, which he lists as the only other one alongside LinkedIn for business networking.

Bearing in mind that Brian is American and steeped in the American market, maybe we should watch out for this next in the UK?

5. How to make your blog credible

Solis refers to a report published by Forrester Research which ranked blogs lower in trustworthiness than every other form of corporate marketing and media tools – even below broadcast, print media, direct mail and e-mail.

This is because so many corporates have used blogs as another version of press releases or to ‘push promotion over value’.

This is an opportunity for your business – if competitors in your field are using blogs as poor quality advertising, you can take the field by making your blog useful and relevant.

The most popular blogs mentioned are Google, 37Signals, FreshBooks and Dell.

I am absolutely certain that blogs are the most useful social media for businesses – for giving value to customers, driving traffic to your website and making your online presence fresh and relevant.  This is particularly so for the business-to-business market.  Reassuringly Solis says the same thing.

6. Should you ghost write blogs?

This particularly interests me.  I’ve heard a number of social media experts say that corporate leaders should write their own blogs.  It’s important for everyone to hear their voice and thoughts.

I don’t see why a PR team can’t interpret their thoughts into blogs – just as we do for bylined articles in the press.

Solis says marketing professionals have been begging their senior influencers to blog as often as possible.  But his view is ‘it is not realistic to expect these busy and oft-preoccupied business leaders to assume the role of blogger’.  He does think it is important for leaders to share their vision and experiences in the ‘most prominent platform for sharing that company voice and persona – the blog’.

7. Blogging must be planned

Blogging for the sake of blogging is meaningless.

His tips are

-        You need an editor in chief for the blog and blog network

-        You may have sub-editors for different product or business divisions but they should report to the editor in chief to ‘marshal the brand and ensure integrity’

-        If your organisation has tens, hundreds or even thousands of corporate-run or endorsed blogs, there should be guidelines, best practices and standards – otherwise ‘social chaos ensues’

-        You have to promote your blog actively to find followers and people who comment.  ‘Just because we host a grand opening doesn’t necessarily assure or imply that we will host any guests’.  You must hand-deliver related information to relevant people through unobtrusive, empathetic and co-operative means

-        Use BackType or similar to see comments about your business/blog across the ‘entire blogosphere’ – the search engine checks keywords and names in the comments sections of blogs

-        ‘As you blog or contribute to blogging initiatives, make sure to link to  all channels of influence each and every time they share something of significance – even if it’s an older entry.  This will send trackbacks to any outside blog post that may have inspired your post (s) and so builds tunnels between blogs, allowing new readers to discover your content’

8. Social bookmarking

I confess we’ve not put a lot of effort into this in the past – but we need to do more.

Solis says you should get people to bookmark the same thing (ie a blog) so that it gains momentum and makes top lists.

Just as you can ‘bookmark’ interesting websites, pages, media and clippings, so you can bookmark interesting blogs and comments.

These are sites such as del.iciou.us; Diigo and Stumbleupon.

We need to bookmark our clients’ blogs and comments and ask others to do the same for us.  Solis does warn – be selective, which sounds sensible.

9. Build networks

I’ve heard something on these lines several times recently.  You need to have a presence in all the key social media.

Liz Cable of Reach Further said she signs up to numerous sites but on many says something on the lines of ‘I do not keep an active presence on this site.  Find me on LinkedIn or Facebook’ – with links to her account on these sites.

Solis says he does not promote any brand spreading itself thin by applying an dedicating resources …. in each and every network.  It is typical to establish and promote presences in multiple, targeted networks.  So a Facebook update could trigger updates to Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca, Posterous and other networks.

10. Keep learning!

If all this is exhausting you, take heart (or not) from Brian’s comment ‘we are learning and sharing together – not about what we think we know, but mining for knowledge we don’t yet possess’!

by Mohammed Waheed, Intern at Northern Lights PR

Student with high expectations

When you attend university you think you are the “bee’s knees” and you will learn everything you need to know to be very successful in your future profession, however, not everything is what it seems.

University PR

At university I was taught all about marketing communications and how to do certain things, without actually being taught (if that makes sense). We are taught about all these wonderful things we could do, but what they fail to mention is that in reality this is not the case.

Some of things we were taught included:

1. Living in a fantasy land where you have endless amounts of money. So you can do whatever you like and you will be successful. However, this “lala-land” is not what happens in the real world and you have to adapt to your surroundings.
2. We are also not really told about how to attract the media, except it is more a case of if you do something the media will come. There is no mention of how you would get them to attend.
3. Networking is not seen as being key and not something that is even taught. We get told all about these wonderful things but fail to learn about how to effectively network.

Real life PR

Whilst on the PR programme I learned how the real world operates. That, it is not easy and involves a lot of hard work, however, it is very rewarding when you see the results. I was taught that creativity is a key aspect and you will generally work with small budgets as I did with the projects that were given to us.

Whilst at Northern Lights I have been taught many things including:

1. How to blog effectively
2. How to structure a press release
3. How to utilise social media
4. How to write for different audiences
5. Steps to take in a crisis, and finally;
6. That networking is essential.

The master classes were full of fresh insight and it was nice to get a worldly perspective of PR rather than the fantasy one created at university.

BAME community in PR

PR is not seen as an option within the BAME community, as there are not many success stories, or individuals who have pursued a career in PR. PR is not seen in the same light as other professions, however, with Northern Lights offering such a great programme they are aiming to change this. Northern Lights have already influenced 5 interns and from a personal point, it has made me actively seek others to pursue a PR career. Since being with Northern Lights I have been marketing PR through word of mouth, which I see as the best form of marketing. I have already interested a friend to apply for the Northern Lights programme next year and shared my experiences with him. I have also been quizzed by my sister about PR as she looks for a career. My sister has now accepted that PR is a possible career for her and is now actively researching the PR market to see if it is for her.

Do you agree with my views? Are there other steps that could be taken to attract more BAME graduates to take up PR?

My last blog covered the tips I took away from the CIPR Northern conference.

But I couldn’t cover all the gems I want to share with our clients in one blog.  So here are the follow on points on social media that every business certainly needs to be thinking about and most should be taking action.

1. The internet as it is now

Thomas Power picked up on an article that John Naughton of the Observer wrote last week about doing business in the world of social media, The internet:  Everything you ever need to know.  He referred to the scholar Manuel Castells who says that we are now at a stage he refers to as ‘informed bewilderment’.

John’s article is packed with thought provoking points.  The one that hit me is ‘our intellectual property regime is no longer fit for purpose’.  Challenge for the lawyers here.

2. The next big job in communications

Is the community manager going to be the next big job in communications?  I mentioned in the previous blog that Thomas Power said he reckons it takes a minimum of three years to build an online community, probably five.

Many businesses are seeing social media as the new cheap PR.  But I don’t think it’s about lower costs, but costs spent very differently and with quite different returns on investment – both in terms of timescales and the process.

Philip Kotler of the FT talks about social media being about sharing of minds, learning to love the company and then transacting when they feel comfortable.

Actually, this is similar to the way we do business through networking.  We meet people, get to understand their business, offer them help, introduce them to useful people, share our ‘gold’ – and eventually others want to do business with us.  That process can take months or more likely years.

The process for social media is very similar.  It’s just the contacts you make are far wider, and the information and help that you share goes everywhere.

So coming back to the ‘community manager’, businesses probably need to

-        Restructure their marketing and communications teams and the weight of who does what

-        Reallocate budgets

-        Change their ROI criteria and timescales

-        Ensure their community manager really understands relationships – and from my experience these skills come more naturally from a PR background than a marketing one

3. Blogs are the heartland of social media

This confirmed my own thoughts.  Thomas sees blogs as the core of social media, the others such as Twitter and Foursquare are connecting to and adding value to blogs – not really the medium on their own.

Blogs contain the meat of what makes social media so helpful and interesting to companies.

4. Journalists love Twitter

Rory Cellan Jones neatly demonstrated how he uses Twitter as part of his everyday journalist research.  It is almost a ‘living version’ of Google.

Rory has two Twitter accounts, with (thousand) on each.  So his reach is pretty phenomenal.

Have a look at the sort of questions he asks.

5. Create community champions

Most clients still think that if you want to blog, you write down some thoughts, press Publish and sit back, waiting for the comments to ping in.

It takes them time to understand the time and budget needed to get those blogs being noticed and even harder, generating responses.

Murray Newlands gave a number of tips for this process of getting a blog noticed

6. Linkedin and Facebook merging – just a matter of time

I can’t now remember who gave this prediction – and I guess it’s no rocket science.  I just hadn’t thought about it, but it seems highly likely that these two will merge some time – apparently there are links between them at board level.

What would a merger mean?  Facebook is already hugely powerful in terms of its databases of contacts and information.

Source: www.clickymedia.co.uk

Tied up with Linkedin – will this become a monopoly over our identities, more powerful than any one nation’s database of its inhabitants ?

I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with accountants and accountancy firms that stretches back over 10 years.

I’ve worked in software companies with products we marketed to accountants – Hyperion Solutions, Coda Group and IRIS Software – so of course I loved accountants in those days.

As a freelance consultant, I’ve had to search the market to find an accountant for myself – and my wife’s start up business.

And I’m still left stunned at how bad accountants are at marketing themselves.  And content management on websites is making it even worse.

I started my search for an accountant with the governing body (in this case the ICAEW) to find out who I should be talking to. They had dozens of pages of free listings of their members in Yorkshire, so I started sifting through them. Believe it or not, of about 12 pages of accountancy businesses listed in West Yorkshire, nine or so pages had membership details only and absolutely no information on the business.  The businesses concerned simply hadn’t bothered to fill them in. What’s the matter with them?  It’s free!

So having figured that I was only interested in accountants that were interested in talking to customers, I then started to pick out those with a website – approximately 50% of the remainder. After a couple of other ‘filters’ my list for the whole of Yorkshire came to 58.

Then I started looking at the websites themselves, and, being a PR person, I wanted to know what the ‘news’ was about my prospective new accountants. So I looked on the news pages.  I was STUNNED.

58 accounting companies (well, 57 really as two were branches of the same national company) had bothered to invest time, effort and money in a website. And after thumbing through ‘The Bluffers Guide to Marketing’ they had decided to ‘differentiate’ their website from their competitors by ‘adding value’. And the method that 50% of them chose was to add a ‘News Feed’. Not only that but these feeds were universally buried away in the back of beyond (or at least several tabs back on the website). And not only THAT, but they were almost ALL using exactly the same news feeds from the same news aggregators.

AND THESE ARE PEOPLE YOU AND I GO TO FOR BUSINESS ADVICE?

I can hear them; ‘Oh yes Mr. Webb. You are in a highly creative industry, so I recommend you do exactly the same thing with your website as all your competitors. Innovation is purely there for people who want to take risks and you don’t want to be doing that now, do you?’

Of the remainder, five made no attempt whatsoever to engage in or acknowledge the news agenda.  A few made attempts to create value-added commentary and analysis on legislation and regulation. And a very few recognised that they have something to say to the world.  They are creating proper, usable news stories and case studies that can be read by clients and also sent out into the world to spread the word about how good they are.

Now maybe I’m a bit critical over such things. I’m a PR person and therefore I’m probably more plugged into news and current affairs than the average person.  But I don’t think this is about that. I think this is common sense. After all, if I want news I’d go to the BBC, not to my accountant.

If you’re going to bother with a website and news feeds, do it right.  Invest properly or don’t do it at all.

When I was at Coda, we set up a comedy website www.extreme-accounting.com for accountants to take the mick out of themselves. You know what, the online marketing efforts of some of the accountants I’ve looked at over the last few days are an even bigger joke – and for small businesses looking for vital advice and guidance, that’s not funny at all.

Christopher Webb

PR Consultant

Hargreaves & Webb Ltd for Northern Lights PR

BT has today been portrayed as a spy because they are ‘listening in’ to conversations about them on the internet.

According to the Mail, ‘BT is using software, Debatescape which trawls social networking sites for keywords to identify anyone making negative comments about the company.  Angry customers are then contacted by email suggesting ways BT can help to solve the problem.’

It seems there are three elements to this issue

1. Monitoring the internet for negative comments

This is surely just plain good business sense?  If you care about your customers, the internet is a fantastic way to pick up problems, get involved and get it sorted in minutes or a few hours.  Rather than the hours, days or months that most large corporate customer service centres work at.

The internet puts pressure on corporates to get the problem solved swiftly, because otherwise these things take on a life of their own – blogs, tweets, Facebook comments all round the world before you can make a cup of tea.

Done well, this is giving ‘people power’ to consumers.

2.Trawling social networking sites

Further on in the above article, an un-named customer explains that he’d been making angry comments on his personal Facebook page – and suddenly got an email from ‘BT Sarah’ asking if she could help.

This sounds like the software is managing to get beyond the privacy protection on Facebook sites.

That is an issue for Facebook – and doesn’t sound great for BT.

3. Emailing the angry customers

This is the bit that sounds all wrong for social media.  First is the nub of this – how did they get hold of the personal email address if they were not a ‘friend’ of the angry customer?

And most of all, social media is not about taking these sort of issues offline, but they should be in there engaging publicly on the internet.

Apparently The Information Commissioner’s Office and the European Commission both voiced legal concerns about this system.

BT defends this.  According to Warren Buckley of BT:  “The key is we are only looking at what people are talking about in public spaces.”  He says it is like overhearing someone in a pub saying something negative.  And that a lot of people are wowed when they contact them to put things right.

Both Easyjet and Carphone Warehouse support this view – ‘people are blown away that Carphone Warehouse is listening and overwhelmingly positive about it’.

Cyber-Rights, the privacy group, says this could be breaking data protection laws – just because someone is on Facebook or Twitter does not give other companies the right to contact people unsolicited.

I have just this morning been writing a factsheet for a client about social media for businesses just looking to get into it.  There were a number of key themes, including

-        You must monitor the internet for negative comments and respond swiftly to put right any problems

-        Social media is about engaging with customers, not forcing yourself on other people uninvited

Having sophisticated software to monitor the internet is inevitable.  And individuals are foolish if they think there is any such thing as a private conversation on the internet.

And when you stop to think for a minute, aren’t these corporates actually delivering the dream for us all?  You’ve got a major problem contacting a business – BT or Carphone Warehouse.  You post a comment on Facebook or Twitter and seconds later they pop up to help you.  I can think of many times when I’d have loved that kind of service!

But the biggest problem here is surely how they follow up?  How can corporates find ways to engage with these angry customers, without intruding on their privacy?

What do you think?  Big Brother or fantastic customer service?!

With Facebook receiving increased criticism for putting users’ privacy at risk, could new kid on the block Foursquare steal the social networking crown?

Foursquare allows friends to track each other when they are out and about and is predicted to be the next big thing in social networking.  It is already hugely popular in cities across the States with around one million users and a recent article in the Observer looked at how Foursquare is taking off in the UK.

Using the same GPS technology as a sat nav, users ‘check in’ to venues in a geographical location and share the fact with their friends.  Foursquare brings a sense of adventure to social networking by rewarding users with virtual badges.  You can even become the Mayor of a venue.

I decided to join the early adopters over here and give Foursquare a go.   So I downloaded the Foursquare app for my iphone and launched myself into it – with rather too much enthusiasm, as it turns out.

The problem with Foursquare is that it doesn’t come with an instruction manual.  So, it was case of trial and error.  In the space of 15 minutes I had ‘checked into’ Harrogate Theatre, a well known town centre bar, a restaurant, Harlow Carr Gardens and the Cath Kidston shop.  Marvellous – I’d earned a ‘newbie’ badge in no time at all.   I could boast about my badge on my Facebook page at the click of a button.

The app even checked my Facebook and Twitter accounts and sent friend requests to contacts also using Foursquare.   I added a new place – a favourite restaurant in Harrogate – and earned myself a second badge!

All this achieved late on a Friday evening.  It was only in the cold light of day that I realised I might have missed the point about Foursquare – worse still, broken the rules.  In my enthusiasm to test drive Foursquare I thought you ‘checked in’ to places you liked and had visited.  In fact, you only check in if you are on the premises.  Anyone tracking my movements would have thought it very odd that I was checking in to a High Street shop and an RHS garden at 11pm on a Friday!

I’d also managed to move my favourite restaurant to my own street – about one mile from its real town centre location.  I still haven’t managed to find a way of allocating it the right address.

Despite my first, hamfisted attempts I can see how businesses could use Foursquare to reach customers.  Several major companies in America, including Starbucks, are looking at Foursquare to engage directly with customers and are offering promotions and deals to encourage loyalty.  Last month designer shoe label Jimmy Choo used Foursquare to run a real time treasure hunt around London to launch a new trainer range.

The penny really clicked for me when I was at the Holiday Inn Barnsley running a social media workshop for the UKTI.  Over lunch I was explaining Foursquare to a couple of delegates.  My iphone automatically found my location and I ‘checked in’ to the hotel – this time I really was there.  I earned some more points for another badge but here was an opportunity for Holiday Inn to speak to me directly and offer me a special promotional offer or a discount.

At the moment brands can only reach very small UK audiences but Debenhams flagship Oxford Street store is offering free coffee to anyone who ‘checks in’.  If Foursquare does take off here then it will present tourism, leisure, retail and hospitality sectors with great opportunities to reach their customers in a very targeted way.  In fact, the store loyalty card could well be a thing of the past.

We have been commissioned to run a number of workshops for smaller businesses and have been looking for case studies about the benefits of social media and how it is being used.  Camilla Barnard at Rude Health talked to us about how they are using Twitter and Facebook for their business.

Rude Health’s experience and tips back up our own recommendations about social media for businesses

-        Social media is just part of the communications mix – it is one route to communicate with some audiences

-        For most businesses it is unlikely to drive sales traffic on its own

-        It is an excellent way to talk to your customers and understand them in more depth

-        You can use social media for informal and immediate market research

Camilla has kindly allowed us to share Rude Health’s story here.

Social media at Rude Health

Rude Health was established in 2005 by four friends with young children who liked wholesome and nutritious food and focused on healthy breakfasts.

Camilla Barnard was one of the founders and started using various social media – Twitter, Facebook and a ‘teeny bit of Linkedin’ – from early 2009.

They did not have a formal social media strategy but saw it as part of the whole PR and marketing mix:  “We saw this as a great way to speak up for good health, stand out in the health cereals market and demonstrate that we have a serious point of view.”

1. What kind of Tweets?

From the start, Camilla has tweeted (ie written or ‘posted’ comments on her Twitter feed) about their cereals and the wider organic foods market and issues.  Taking a day’s snapshot of tweets, these include (*see below for a glossary of terms used in here)

-        Retweeting the Soil Association’s comments about a report showing that the use of pesticides on genetically modified crops has risen dramatically – with a link to the report

-        Replied to @saladclub who had tweeted ‘wondering what to do for pre-work daily breakfast. that’s the hard part! proving v challenging’.  Of course Camilla sent a tweet saying ‘Porridge made with water or non-dairy milk stuff, topped with stewed fruits. Beat that’

-        ‘Tweet conversations’ with @porridgelady who has become a big fan of Rude Health’s products and mentions that Rude Health will be at the Real Food Festival

-        Retweeting the post from @brockhallfarm which said  ‘The Granola by @rudehealth is gorgeous; not too sweet, fab ingredients incl spelt & amaranth,result in a mellow lightness’

-        Retweeted a number of posts from fellow good food suppliers such as Breckland and Real Bread

2. Use Twitter to drive interest ahead of an exhibition

There are also a number of posts about ‘rants’.  Nick Barnard, another director, was always ranting in the office about everything from ‘marketing people make you think milk is full of fat’ to ‘cloudy apple juice has to be so much better than the clear stuff’.

Eventually the office told him to go and rant on the website – which he now does regularly under Nick’s rants.  This has since become a feature of Rude Health’s stands at food fairs.  They invite well known food personalities, other exhibitors and the public to come and have a rant, which then goes up on the website.

Leading up to the fairs, there is plenty of material for conversations on Twitter and Facebook, such as ‘31 Ranters ready to let rip on all things foodie @RealFoodFest already’.  A number who have signed up to rant have started tweeting about it ‘Looking forward to ranting away! http://bit.ly/9xocMB …….clear lemonade, who needs it!’

3. Twitter for market research

Camilla has found Twitter an excellent way to carry out market research.  She admits it is casual rather than rigorous – she could not use it to gauge a market accurately – but it is immediate and costs nothing.

She gives as an example, finding out what people think of new ingredients:  “We might be sourcing a new type of berry but it is very expensive.  So we might tweet ‘Anyone heard of this berry?  Is it any good?’  Yes, responses will probably be biased but you can save a lot of time and money when you get a few replies either saying ‘this is gorgeous and worth every penny’ or ‘we used this in our breads last year and it was a real flop’.”

Camilla says that you cannot expect good responses from just one tweet – she will try and ask a question in a number of different ways over a day or so to catch a reasonable number of people.

Some of the tweets have led to new products being developed.  A few foods such as bananas, hazelnuts and raisins are very divisive – people love them or hate them.  This led to No Flamin’ Raisins – a muesli without the raisins.

Camilla adds other ways she uses Twitter for general research:  “By following people who are specialised in particular things, whether it’s restaurant awards, nutrition or supermarkets, you find out what they are interested in by seeing what they are tweeting about.  It’s a good way of keeping up with what’s new or cool. Especially if like me you never manage to read a paper or magazine.”

4. Twitter as a route to journalists and specialist bloggers

Rude Health has recognised that the new route to journalists and ranked bloggers is to tweet interesting information.

Camilla has found that journalists rarely follow the tweets or blogs from branded food businesses.  However, they do follow food bloggers, such as the ones listed here, and find out about popular new foods from these:

Porridge Lady – cooks with oats

Scandilicious – cooking and feasting with Scandinavian flair

Meemalee – restaurants, reviews, rants

Youngandfoodish – restaurants, tasting reviews

Realbread – real bread campaign

Mathildecuisine – cooking around the world

Eatlikeagirl – cooking inspired by travels

The Porridge Lady has become a good friend of Rude Health’s and often joins up with them at food exhibitions to cook some of her  winning recipes – and of course writing and tweeting about the experience.

Camilla was recently interviewed by Sheila Dillon for the BBC’s Food Programme and then featured with a weblink on the web page about the interview.

5. Making friends on Facebook

Setting up a page on Facebook was the first step that Rude Health took into social media at the end of 2008 and now have around 150 friends who follow what the company is doing.

Rude Health puts videos and photos on the site and has had three discussions:

• Raisins – LOVE them or HATE them?
• Win your Wednesday Breakfast – ‘tell us when you feel in rude health and we might put the best on our cereal packet’
• Say NO to ‘Ban the Flapjack’ campaign – former chief of Food Standards Agency was calling for a ban on flapjacks to curb obesity

Camilla points out that different social media can help in different ways:  “Twitter is ideal if you can dip in and out of it throughout the day or evening.  You can get iphone apps for it as well so it works well if you are often out.  Facebook needs less regular attention, in my opinion.”

6. Does social media bring in new customers?

Camilla is absolutely certain that social media is worth doing – but, she emphasises that it should only ever be one part of marketing and communications for any business.  She would be surprised if most businesses could rely on social media alone to generate customers.

She says it is very difficult to measure specific new customers from Twitter or Facebook:  “I think the biggest benefits have come from developing relationships with loyal customers and influencers – in our case the food bloggers.  It is a good way to tell our customers when we will be at an event, good to generate pre-event interest and it is a very cost effective way of carrying out some market research.

“Because we have been using social media for a while, Sheila Dillon interviewed us on the BBC Food Programme.  The following week our website hits went from a typical 100 a day to 700 a day.  And our direct sales from the website rose from around 2 orders a day to about 10 or 12 a day.”

But she points out that appearing on a national radio programme was really ‘traditional PR’ – the social media was just a new route to engaging with the journalist rather than through a press release.  And website sales account for less than one per cent of their total sales.

“Our core business is about selling to independent retailers and supermarkets and in all honesty, social media has little direct impact on that process.  However, I see it as an important part of the communications and PR process with our direct customers and journalists and I’m sure that is going to increase significantly over the next year or so.”

*Twitter Glossary – Common Terms

Taken from a variety of sources including About.com’s website – with thanks.  These are some of the terms that are part of the everyday jargon used on Twitter

Hashtag The community-driven practice of tagging an individual tweet by using a hash in front of the tag. Example: Putting #dallascowboys in a tweet about the Dallas Cowboys. Hashtags allow the community to easily stream a particular subject

Microblog Twitter is often referred to as a microblog because it allows people to update their status using only 140 characters

Mistweet Accidentally sending a tweet to the wrong person or wishing you didn’t send a particular tweet

Retweet (RT) A Retweet is a repeated tweet. It is sometimes used in a reply to allow everyone to see the original tweet. It is also used to forward a message onto one’s own followers

Tweet A message sent via Twitter

Tweet Back Bringing an older tweet back into the converstation

Tweeter A person who tweets

Unfollow A common social networking term referring to the act of taking someone off of your friends list

A lot of our clients don’t ‘get’ Linkedin.  They are great networkers, have a far larger contact book than they will ever put onto Linkedin and are regularly in touch with their contacts.

What could they get from Linkedin?

One of the answers is interesting research.  Let’s look at two examples

1. Joining Linkedin groups

For me, Linkedin started to come to life when I joined a number of groups.  At the moment I belong to

• Creating Results from Cultural Diversity
• ThoseinMedia
• Social Media
• The Diversity and Inclusion Group
• Luxury Brand Executives Diversity Marketing
• CIPR – Chartered Institute of Public Relations
• Business Link Networking Groups
• Open Innovation at Yorkshire Water
• Financial Leeds

These have been chosen for a variety of reasons:  professional interests; supporting our clients; markets we want to be known and established in; and responding to invitations from contacts.

Different groups have different levels of debate and activity.  Those inMedia have a number of interesting discussions running at the moment.  Scanning down the most recent list, there are a few I have been learning a lot from

• Is social media all hype? 200 comments
• Are the good old days at Linkedin over? 25 comments
• Cloud computing – what’s your take on it? 18 comments

Of the 200 comments in the social media question, the contributions are far and wide.  An MBA from Boston University; director of marketing in a New York life insurance company; a web developer; a social media specialist in Nevada; ceo in San Diego; and a software developer.

OK, a lot from the States – in fact, it might all be from the States! – but the UK is probably a few years behind America in adopting social media, so this makes the comments all the more thought provoking.

In this case, I am just watching the debate – occasionally I offer comment but mostly I am learning.

But you can also post your own questions, as in the next case

2.  Online market research

A client of ours, Arena group, is developing services for the legal sector.  On the one hand it should be a no-brainer that law firms bring in electronic document management systems.  They are paying a fortune in archive storage (one law firm said their storage bill is 7% of their annual operating costs).  But the reality is they are very reluctant.

So they posted a question on EDM group – what are lawyers’ biggest concerns?  They had 15 really top quality replies.  A number from the States and Canada, several from the UK and also a few from the Far East.  This was clearly an international problem.

The comments came from EDM consultants, people working in law firms and those who had left the profession – giving a wide range of perspectives.

What Arena got from this was an understanding of the issues as law firms see them, the realities of what is happening and insights into the areas that law firms want to address, but are not doing – and those they are unlikely to tackle in the near future.

Arena may one day get business from this, but it is unlikely.  What they have got is a quick and inexpensive way to understand a market.

Our own view is that Linkedin has considerable mileage for most clients and is worth exploring.

What’s your best experience of using Linkedin?

What do you do on a miserable, cold Bank Holiday weekend?  Too wet to garden, I went self-indulgent and rented out the films I never got to see in the cinema.

Settling down to Julie and Julia, I realised a key theme of the film was that of blogger Julie Powell.  I’ve been thinking what lessons there are from her blog that could be useful for other bloggers.

1.    Clarity of blog

Julie decided to give herself 365 days to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  There was a clear focus on the recipes, the problems and the joys of cooking them and the enjoyment of eating them.

Julia Child was in her day the Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay of America all rolled into one – and the first celebrity TV chef in the 1960s.

2.    Good and useful information

The blog covers the difficulties she has in each recipe, what goes wrong and how she eventually triumphs.  Reassuring and helpful for any cook trying the recipe.

To give readers some background on Julia Child’s life, Julie Powell uses letters that Julia and her husband Paul wrote, as well as information from Julia Child’s biography, Appetite for Life, by Noel Riley Fitch.  This adds to the readers’ knowledge about Julia.

3.    Passion and integrity

Julie goes into the project as something to enjoy after long days in a job she hated.

She loves Julia Child and her recipes and that sings through in the blog.

4.    Personality

Julie had a clear and consistent ‘voice’.  She wrote openly and clearly and readers felt they were getting her whole story.

5.    Search engine optimisation

Since Julia Child was a best-selling cookery writer, the blog would start coming up on a number of different Google searches:  Julia Child, cookery writers, cookery books, French cooking and so on.

Cooking and cookery books are both widely searched on the internet generally.  Writing blogs on topics that people are searching for gives your blog a good chance of being spotted.

6.    Deadlines

Julie’s blog was unusual because she created a deadline – could she cook all recipes in 365 days?

This is probably unrealistic for most corporate blogs but it could be an interesting focus – a sense of tension, will you achieve it?

7.    Creating debate

Not everyone liked this blog.  She attracted criticism and debate.  You may not like it but this makes for a more widely read and engaging blog

8.    Humour

Julie’s humour is widely commented on.  People will have logged on to be entertained and become a part of Julie’s ‘hysteria’ as one critic described it

9.    Debate

The first blog comment left by a complete stranger is an exciting day for a blogger!  Someone has spotted you, read you and engaged.  Julie reckoned that for every comment posted, there were 100 followers not posting comments.

Her engaging style encouraged people to give encouragement, feedback on their own recipe attempts and disagreements with some of her more opinionated comments.  These are all good blogging techniques.

And as for the film itself?  I don’t remember the last time a film made me smile and laugh outright so much.  I wanted to get on a plane to Paris and eat in every restaurant, cook lobsters and bone my own duck.  And as for the pelting rain – completely forgotten!

This is the question that I have been asked today by a PR student.  She sent me the questions below to get my views for her dissertation.

The questions reflect the confusion of many of our clients as to what is social media and where does it fit in the overall marketing mix.  How does it change what we do?

PR is fundamentally about understanding your audiences – usually the people who you want to buy your product or service, but it could also be MPs, your local community or potential employees.

And this hasn’t changed with the onslaught of social media.

All that blogging, tweeting and Facebook have done is to give us new and more direct ways to communicate with these audiences.

Do you agree with the answers I’ve given her?

1 Since the birth of blogging do you feel that your role as a PR practitioner has changed?

The role of the PR practitioner has stayed the same – the way we achieve the end goal is changing.

Our role is still to help our clients or employers to understand how to achieve strategic business goals by communicating with their key audiences.  Blogging is just an additional way of doing this.

2 Can you explain to me how you use blogging and new social media during a campaign?

We are running a social media campaign for Business Link to encourage people to go to this year’s Enterprise Shows.   We have a Facebook fan page – keeping the content fresh and engaging with different case studies each day – as well as tips and comment from entrepreneurs who are talking at the events.

We’ve used Twitter at a conference with a special hash tag just for that event so that delegates could share views about the conference and arrange to meet people with similar interests/discussions.

3 People read blogs to get an unbiased and unregulated view point on an array of different subjects. Do you think it is ethical for PR practitioners and Marketers to use blogging as a tool when promoting a product or brand?

A fundamental principle of good PR is honesty and the same rules apply for social media as in traditional PR.  We spend a lot of time with our clients explaining that social media needs to be treated as another medium.  You say ‘unregulated’ but a lawyer or financial adviser is still subject to their industry regulation, regardless of whether they are advising a client by letter, commenting in the media – or writing a blog.

I do think it is ethical to use a blog as a tool to promote a product or brand.  If you make it too ‘salesy’ or advertising, no-one will be interested or read it.  Just as if you do a promotional press release, journalists will bin it.  So you have to be as helpful, interesting and engaging as you would be when writing a press release or feature.

4 Through research I have found that most people only see blogs as credible if they have been written by an expert or a journalist, do you think this put pressure on the PR profession to seek out bloggers as the new opinion leaders?

The danger here is to look at blogging as a new discipline, not another tool in the PR toolkit.  A common PR strategy is to position leaders as the ‘voice of the industry’ or as the ‘expert commentator’.  Traditional ways to do this have been to get your expert to respond to relevant, topical issues in the media, to brief the media on technical issues ‘behind the scenes’ and get journalists to start calling your expert for their opinions.

Blogging can be a quicker and more open route to doing this.  We have set up an expert panel at Bradford University School of Management and their blogs are just one element in our total campaign of positioning them as experts.