Posts Tagged ‘Social media’

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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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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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It’s social media, stupid.

December 7th, 2009 by Andrew

Thousands of companies demand a social media presence in order to enhance their brand. There is one area they could learn from where the Internet is already having a huge impact – politics.

Since Barack Obama embraced social networking as one of the core foundations of his 2008 Presidential campaign, the medium has been championed as the great new form of political engagement. It’s not difficult to see why.

Social networks such as Twitter offer politicians a unique opportunity to interact with their electorate on a mutually fair platform on a regular basis. For example, UK politicians like Kerry McCarthy MP, Dan Hannan MEP and even John Prescott MP have seen the virtues of social media in creating a dialogue with their constituents.

Blogging, too, has become a growing political force. A brief look at services such as Social Media Affairs, which catalogues political blogs, demonstrates the growing list of increasingly influential voices online, such as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes.

Social media has also emphatically demonstrated how it can bring cohesion to a social movement. Whether it has been to tell a company that what it’s doing is wrong, to protest against someone’s actions, or even to protest against Governments, platforms such as Twitter have provided ‘average Joe’ with a phenomenal vehicle for uniting behind a common cause.

Obama has more than 2.7 million followers on Twitter, while the use of his website, MyBarackObama.com, to organise support is well documented. It helped to cement his placement as a grassroots candidate during his 2008 election, as well as encouraging individuals to become directly involved in Obama’s campaign.

It’s a point that brands should take note of. The level of engagement that enveloped Obama’s supporters provided them with an investment in the campaign and as such they went that extra mile, providing millions of fundraising dollars and eventually elevating Obama to the White House.

By engaging with their customers, brands could build a similarly loyal group of advocates who they can rely upon to champion their brand which, in the current competitive economic climate, could be vital to a company’s survival.

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Is there space for b2b in online PR?

November 17th, 2009 by Phil

Just as the internet has dramatically changed the way we communicate, source information, socialise and do business, it’s also having an impact on how we deliver PR.  But while consumer practitioners relish and embrace the wide range of new tactics and techniques digital offers, developments in the B2B arena are happening at a slightly different pace.

There are immediate digital opportunities which mirror those in print (especially when we consider most print titles have either an online version, or that so many have migrated online completely), but it would be underselling the potential to simply suggest that everything we do offline simply translates online.  Instead the scope of opportunity presents us with a much more dynamic and exciting B2B digital toolkit, offering not only specific digital techniques, but a new level of immediacy and interactivity which B2B PR may have lacked in the past.

At Eulogy! we’re marching forward with the development of our B2B digital approach.  Since embarking on this process we’ve discovered some of what works, some of what doesn’t, but also realised that the journey is one of constant evolution.  Specific techniques may be as simple as embracing social media-based opportunities, in order to manage a client’s reputation online and ensure that they’re part of pertinent discussions.  Others are more advanced; from blogger relations, using platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and investigating multimedia PR delivery.  Above all we’re recognising how dialogue and response work together in this new digital landscape, enabling us to manage reputation, promote brands and their products, services and values, and ultimately create more dynamic and exciting PR strategies.

Of course, not everything will work for everyone, and there’s still much more to develop and explore.  For us, the challenge comes not in identifying these exciting opportunities, but in convincing clients and prospects of the value of making an ongoing investment in digital PR.  Measurement is crucial, but delivering the right kind of measurement, especially when the tactics are so new and varied, isn’t easy; but we’re working on it!

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