Archive for the ‘Social media’ Category

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Checking in? Think about it first

August 25th, 2010 by Melanie

Facebook Places

I’m going to come right out and say it: I have always thought Foursquare as kind of creepy, and with the introduction of Facebook Places in the States last week, I’m a tad worried LBS (or, Location-based Shouting, as I’m going to start to call it) is going to get out of hand.  It’s not that I don’t care if you’re at Kew Gardens or Polpo or All Star Lanes, it’s just that I’m sure everyone in the world doesn’t have to be privy to that information as well. I consider myself to be trustworthy – others… I’m not so sure.

You may remember the Please Rob Me campaign started earlier this year by Netherlands-based creatives Frank Groeneveld, Barry Borsboom and Boy van Amstel. It brought to the attention the fact that if you are checking in and announcing publically all the places in the world you are, it leaves wide open, the one place you aren’t…home, which could potentially leave you vulnerable to burglaries. The campaign gained moderate success, but I think it didn’t touch enough on one point – even telling people where you are currently can be dangerous.

I would hope those with stalkers and evil exes wouldn’t use the location-based services, but you never know.  If you’re posting your current whereabouts, is that not an invitation itself to be mugged?

While brands are using LBS to an advantage, I worry about consumers’ eagerness to share, and for what purpose?  Someone tweeting that they’re working late from the Starbucks on Tottenham Court Road may get a free coffee every once in a while, but they could also be leaving themselves open to having their laptop, Blackberry and iPad pinched on the way out.

Or perhaps, I’m over reacting?  What are your thoughts on ‘checking in’?

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Posted in Location Based Services, Onlinefire, Social media | 2 Comments »

Government tries crowdsourcing: gets burned

August 5th, 2010 by Andrew

You may have read this week about the Coalition Government’s failed attempts at crowdsourcing.

Through its various departments online, the Coalition Government had issued a call to action to the general public, to give its policy suggestions on areas such as the NHS, pensions and capital gains tax.

Following 9,500 responses, the Government decided to act on none of them, and issued their policy unchanged. On paper it doesn’t look good and, if we’re honest, a bit pointless.

Simon Burall, director of Involve, a group advising bodies on consultation, told The Guardian: “You have to give the government some credit for trying to do this, but badly designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all.

“They diminish trust and reduce the prospect that people will engage again.”

In many respects, he’s got a point. It’s both exciting and commendable that the Government is even considering crowdsourcing as a form of policy formation and surely takes the forays into social media for politics in the UK a step further. In addition to the participation and conversation online around politics, this is a clear sign that the Government is considering the Internet as a legitimate avenue for ideas.

However, as Simon says, it also seems hollow that the Government has failed to act on even just one of the 9,500 suggestions. I know we’re not well versed in the bureaucratic notions of policy making in Westminster, but surely one of 9,500, clearly politically-interested people (hell, if they’re participating in policy crowdsourcing, they must be) suggested a goodun’?!

I don’t believe though, like Simon says, that this episode will diminish trust in the Government, nor that it will reduce the prospect that people will engage again. Not significantly, anyway. Let’s face it – as it stands, the Government and indeed politics in general isn’t held in the highest esteem and considering we have a say effectively one every five years and see little change off the back of it, we’ve become quite accustomed to not being heard.

So let’s see the positives in this. The Government has not just acknowledged the presence of, but indulged in (albeit half-heartedly) crowdsourcing. Who’da thunk it? And not just indulged in it, but indulged in it as a prospective avenue for policy creation.

That, my friends, is progress. Not quite change, but progress nonetheless.

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Posted in Government, Social media | No Comments »

PRCA Digital: social media brief seeks PR agency for understanding, results and more…

June 18th, 2010 by Adrian

The PRCA held a breakfast briefing at Ketchum this morning: How SEO and PPC can support PR campaigns. Stephen Waddington – MD, Speed Communications – talked us through the tricks of SEO and Ketchum’s Fernando Rizo showed how to fast-track attention to online campaigns with effective PPC.

Both Stephen and Fernando demonstrated the beauty of the results that these techniques provide. PR agencies can produce definitive statistics with SEO and PPC campaigns – unequivocal results. Fantastic!

Stephen and Fernando also discussed the complexity of ownership with the group. Eulogy!’s well versed in SEO having completed a number of projects for clients, but Stephen confirmed our fears that the PR industry (and the marketing community at large) is yet to understand the practice.

Five years ago, SEO firmly belonged in the hands of search agencies. Then ad and digital agencies took a bite. And now PR agencies, too? Well, yes of course! It’s editorial. Who else is better placed to write authoritative copy, rich with brand messaging and keywords? SEO sits firmly within the online PR gambit. It amplifies what other marketing channels churn out. It seeds your content all over the shop to encourage people to click, to engage and to talk!

I am committed to working with bodies like the PRCA to carve out a fair share of ownership of online and social media budgets. We’ve seen a big move towards this in the industry. Sure it’s a struggle sometimes, like when clients refuse to acknowledge PR as anything but proof in a paper, but our digital revolution is increasingly inevitable.

We’re working hard to this speed along. As chief exec, it’s my job to drive the agency forward not only in terms of new business but also skills and professional development.We believe PR’s love affair with social media will be a hot and steamy one, and it’s only just begun.

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Posted in Digital PR, Eulogy!, PR industry, Social media | 1 Comment »

The Leaders’ Debate as seen on Twitter

April 16th, 2010 by Andrew

Leaders' Debate

Unless you were under a cloud of volcanic ash (oh, wait…), you’ll have known that last night saw the UK’s first ever leaders’ debate on ITV. The event, despite an Icelandic volcano’s best efforts, has dominated the news agenda across all media platforms for the last week.

Online opinion tracker Tweetminster provided consistently interesting facts throughout proceedings and in the aftermath with regards to interest in the debate on Twitter. Throughout the debate, a staggering 35,483 people tweeted 184,396 times, with an average frequency of 29.06 tweets per second.

To put that into some form of context, that’s fifteen times more tweets than were seen for #askthechancellors and almost triple the volume of tweets posted during BNP leader Nick Griffin’s infamous appearance on Question Time – both of which saw significant surges in interest themselves.

Admittedly, in the context of the entire UK population those figures seem less impressive. However, they still do add to the belief that – in social media circles – the appetite for political consumption is there.

What these debates and the interest around them have demonstrated, is that while social media isn’t a direct replacement for other media, it’s a hugely engaging complement to other platforms.

The observations provided on Twitter, even though much of it was superficially commenting on the state of the leaders’ make up or what they were scribbling on their notes, made the leaders’ debates incredibly exciting.

The TV debate on its own may have made for relentlessly dull viewing (BBC Parliament, anyone?), but Twitter added a whole new dimension, providing an outlet for discussion and amusing insight not just from your average Joe, but from people in power, too. Throughout the debate I was enlightened of the real-time thoughts of Alistair Campbell, the Evening Standard’s deputy political editor Paul Waugh and MPs John Prescott and William Hague.

What other aspect of the media could offer such close insight?

The leaders’ debate was part of a continuing acceptance that engagement in politics means more than simply voting at a ballot box. People are interested and engaged, but just in increasingly complex ways, including social media.

This interest in the leaders’ debates, be it superficial or not, can only be seen as a positive. Millions of people tuned in to the debate on TV and thousands of those cared enough to express some form of opinion. In the world of low voter-turnouts and sentiment for politicians being at its lowest ebb, that can only be a good thing.

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Posted in Social media | No Comments »

Location Matters

January 7th, 2010 by Charley

Location matters

In 2009 we saw the rise of user-friendly location-based services (LBS), but in 2010 location-sharing is set to come into its own.

This year, PRs who are in the know will be actively exploring the opportunities that GPS-aware services can offer, devising new and creative ways to capture consumer attention in a far more tailored and targeted way than ever before.

Last year saw the emergence of LBS and social community integration. South African social network The Grid launched Mobikasi, a 24-episode, location-based documentary about youth culture in Soweto.  Content was geo-tagged to the location where it was shot, enabling viewers to explore Sowetan culture by travelling through a mobile street map and watching video clips. This marriage of LBS and crowd-sourcing was hailed as the next generation of mobile social media.

In fact, the recent explosion of mobile applications has brought the advent of location-based app integration. Layar is a great example of this new trend. Winner of the Vodafone Mobile Startup Challenge in September 2009, the Layar browsing application is a mix of location-based technology and augmented reality. Combining a handset’s camera and GPS functionality, the mobile application overlays information relevant to digitally tagged real-world locations or items – from coffee shops to museums.

The advancement of LBS can be seen with the growing popularity of companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable consumers to tag and share content quickly and easily within social communities. The technology not only enriches existing core services, but also creates a more dynamic and compelling consumer offering.

The delivery of highly personalised brand messages, in the most relevant and creative way possible is the keystone of social media PR and the development of LBS looks set to raise the bar in 2010.

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Posted in Digital PR, Digital media, Onlinefire, Social media | No Comments »

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