PR

Travelling in your own back yard (and getting a social buzz for your event)

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This time seven years ago I was sitting at an airport with no job, no responsibilities and a round the world flight ticket burning a hole in my pocket.

The only thought on my mind was which fruit would be going into my Daiquiri and how many countries I could fit into my carefully planned flight schedule.

How times have changed and although I wasn’t getting on a flight this week, my thoughts have been closely focused on tourism and how we use social media to inspire our locals to live like a tourist in their own backyard.
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Power to the people

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‘People power’ is probably an overused phrase but in this increasingly crowd sourced, community-led, two way street online world it’s one that’s at the very top of the PR agenda.

There’s seemingly a new example every month and this week it was the turn of 17-year-old Paris Brown to act as a case study on the shifting sands of modern news, PR and social media.

So now would seem as good a time as any to help push an excellent event taking place for communications professionals that will look to try and make sense of this rapidly changing environment. Continue reading →

Change. Adapt. Evolve.

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“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him,” Charles Darwin 1871.

Change. Adapt. Evolve. That’s been the mantra for the past few years – certainly since the financial markets shook everything in 2008 – and that was the key message I took from the CIPR’s state of the profession survey. Continue reading →

I never make predictions………and I never will (looking back at 2012)

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“I never make predictions………and I never will” – One of the most famous utterances of footballer Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne which has passed into commentary legend, but actually makes more sense than we all think.

If experience teaches us anything (and it doesn’t) predicting anything is utter folly. To stay with the North East footballing analogy, last season Newcastle United were flying high in the league and ended up qualifying for Europe.

The darlings of TV and regular scorer of inspiring goals (Chelsea away) the owner rewarded the manager with an unprecedented 8 year contract. Last night they conceded seven goals and dropped to within three points of the relegation zone.

Fate and time make a mockery of all predictions so instead I thought I’d look back over the last year – only to find that makes a mockery of expectations too.

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Ten tips for freelancers

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A guest post this week from Anna-Clare O’Neill who is a freelance PR consultant based in North East England. You can follow Anna on twitter @AnnaClareONeill

As it’s National Freelancers Day this week (21 November 2012), I thought I’d share my freelance story with you…

It’s five years since I first fell into freelancing. That’s right. I didn’t choose to be a freelancer, it just happened. You could say it chose me.

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CIPR Northern conference

Thanks to everyone who came to see me speaking on the social media panel at the Northern conference in Leeds last week.

It was a larger audience than I’m used to but it seemed to go OK and people had lots of comments and questions.

Thanks also to the other speakers Jo Newbould from Asda and Alex Abbotts at Bromford who I really enjoyed listening to, as well as the excellent Helen Standing who chaired. Continue reading →

Ten thoughts on getting social

In advance of my session at the CIPR North conference in Leeds tomorrow, I thought now would be a good time to repost my top ten tips for social media.

This first appeared in corpcomms magazine. Hope it’s useful.

Ross Wigham, service manager for communications at Northumberland County Council, offers up some advice on using social media to promote local, public services.

1. Try to think customer not corporate. This sounds pretty obvious doesn’t it but for too long we were focusing on what the council wanted to tell people, rather than thinking about the conversations that we should be having. Social media for councils and the whole public sector is a real game changer when it comes to engagement and that starting point should be thinking about the stuff residents want to talk to us about. It’s meant to be a conversation, so make sure you’re listening as well as talking. From a population of 300,000 we’ve now got more than 26,000 people signed up to our networks, despite being a predominantly rural area. Continue reading →

How a hashtag helped our summer

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What summer?

Up here in Northumberland (and like most of the UK this year) our summer was restricted to about two weeks, giving us just enough time to construct an arc or drain away the flood water (see here for photographic evidence).

But in between all that we did want to do something to online to help publicise the best events, attractions and locations for fun days out in the summer holidays.

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The business of weddings

It’s funny what you find yourself working on. I never once imagined that as a local government head of comms that I’d be punting weddings and getting excited about soft focus pictures and ivory dresses.

But that’s exactly what we’ve been doing over the last few months.

Why, you may ask? Well as Bill Clinton famously once said ‘it’s the economy stupid’

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