DWPub Sporadic

Charities - a tough PR job

I delivered a presentation on online PR yesterday at a Media Trust seminar.

The Media Trust exists to support charities in their use of media to promote what they do. Listening to the delegates it is clear that doing PR in the not-for-profit sector has its challenges - not least beacuse of the large number of stakeholders charity PR people need to keep happy. The other big challenge is budget. It seems many charities are happy to invest in 'chuggers' but not in PR, a real shame as often good comminications in charities can make a real difference - reaching out to victims and galvanising activity in addition to prompting donations.

Anyway, as I often do in my presentations I invited participation from my Twitter followers:
Many thanks @stuartbruce, @biggerpills, @lewiswebb , @justinhayward, @helenjbeckett and @ABridgewater (who tends to DM me). That link from @lewiswebb is http://bit.ly/1IMWn.

You can see my online PR presentation on Slideshare(for what it is worth, its pretty empty without me pacing around in front and adding some context).

The DWPub tractor

I can't believe it has been so long since my last post - a little embarrassing for an exponent of digital media. My excuse is I moved house about a month ago. Not any old move though - I've done the rural escape thing and swapped my central Brighton pad for a neglected Sussex smallholding. And of course what would a smallholding be without an old tractor.

Anyway, while I was learning to drive the tractor, DWPub was alive with lots of exciting projects (and we have many more in the pipeline). Despite working on all this good stuff we've not been particularly good at communicating it, so we've launched a new email newsletter that will be going out to PR customers monthly from now on. If you've not seen it already check out the first issue of DWPub Extra.

And I'll try to be a bit more prolific on this blog too.

Borkowski's flair, grabbing the online PR agenda and a Wired future for print media

Mark Borkowski's presentation at yesterday's Don't Panic Guide to Social Media event in London was exactly what the PR industry needs - an intoxicating mix of passion and showmanship.
However, the real power in Mark's gig was his message: let's embrace digital media and use it to push PR firmly to the top of the marketing agenda. Then we can all stand by and watch advertising take second place.
The rest of the day was a valuable mix of case studies, opinions and how-tos - there is clearly a great deal of good thinking going on in online PR. But I was suprised how little was made of the fall from grace of traditional media as a reason to focus on digital.
The copper from West Midlands Police, Mark Payne, made up for this by a giving one of the reasons for the force's ground-breeaking foray into online video (PCTV), podcasting (Plodcast) and other social media activities as the 'decline in local newspapers'. It's a powerful reason for a public sector organisation that has a mandate to connect with stakeholders and previously relied on regional media.
Which brings me on to this week's (re)launch of the UK edition of Wired. A print publication all about how new technology affects us? That's a contradiction, surely? Or is it. I think Wired may be a model of the future of print media. Elegant design, quality print production, outstanding photgraphy and copy that takes an analytical look at issues already discussed online.

Social media in my guest PR lecture at Leeds Met Uni - the best yet

I've just finnished my latest PR course guest lecture, this time to 80 or so third-year public relations students from Leeds Metropolitan University, possibly the top PR school in the country.

As before I Tweeted live in the lecture, see the responses below - special thanks go to Mark Pinsent and Becky Kiely who completely upstaged me by making the students laugh out loud (not a titter for my jokes)!

I don't normally use slides in my presentations, but this time for a bit of colour I used a Flikr to provide a pictoral presentation before putting Tweetdeck on the big screen.

Here are the live Twitter replies during the lecture (and slightly after, couldn't help but leave that last one in from Hatch Communications):

  

Al good stuff, but I might try using a different social media plaform next time, I mean it's not all about Twitter is it?

Social media in PR education - part 2

I did some live Tweeting again in my guest lecture to PR students at London Metropolitan University last Friday. It worked a treat as before.
My lecture was interrupted by the fire alarm going off, but I carried on outside, as the picture on the right shows!
 
Anyway, here's the responses to my Tweet during the lecture (I also had a couple of excellent direct messages from Adrian Bridgwater which the students saw):
Thanks very much to all those who replied. The next one is tomorrow at Leeds Metropolitan University, where I will be presenting to up to 90 third year PR students at 10-11am - listen out for my tweet!

Free whitepaper to help PR professionals implement online PR campaigns

We’ve just published our latest whitepaper for PR professionals, which seeks to give a grounding for all PR people in how to plan, execute and measure an online PR programme.
It was written by digital PR veteran Andrew Bruce Smith, founder of online PR specialist consultancy escherman. In the whitepaper, entitled “Online PR in action – an introduction to implementing and measuring a digital PR programme”, Andrew pulls together many of the basic skills and processes required for a successful online PR campaign.
The whitepaper was born out of an apparent lack of guidance for PRs about the online PR process. Many digital media experts have been urging PRs to focus on digital media, bt actual advice tends to centre on individual components of an online PR campaign such as press release distribution.
Check out the press release. The whitepaper can be downloaded at www.dwpub.com/whitepapers.

Finding forward features and editorial contacts more quickly

We’ve been doing a great deal of work to boost the speed of the FeaturesExec Media Database and make it more useful, thanks to feedback from customers.
Having just implemented a new search technology, complex searches on the FeaturesExec Plus forward features table generator are now taking less than a couple of seconds. This is a great improvement as this sophisticated system was beginning to slow down a bit now there are over 60,000 forward features listed.
Other developments on FeaturesExec include:

• Improved FeaturesExec Plus results layout, including specific writer details where available
• A more flexible advanced search
• A new RSS feed listing the outlets that have recently updated forward features
• Tweaks to the Press List Express system for ease of use

If you're a subscriber you may want a bit of free training, contact us on 0845 370 7777 or email training@dwpub.com.
If you don't already subscribe to the FeaturesExec Media Database then try our our 24 hour trial or call 0845 370 7777 for more info.

Get your releases online - or miss out on coverage and traffic

There is increasing evidence of a shift in journalist behaviour towards finding information through searching online, rather than relying on material being sent to them direct.
When you think about it, it isn’t that surprising that journalists, most of whom suffer information overload, will be tempted to ignore the swathes of potentially irrelevant information sent to them and resort to a simple Google search to seek out specifically what they need.
This means it is even more essential that PR content is available online and it is easy to find.
One way to do this is to ensure your releases are on the Response Source/SourceWire Press Release Wire. We've made releases even more visible by adding the ability to attach keywords to each release. This improves the 'searchability' of each release, see our full explanation on using keywords to improve press release visibility. This comes hot on the heels of other recent enhancements, such as links to PDF versions on every release and the ability to embed 'soundbites'. The latter helps highlight a particular message in your release and can also improve search engine optimisation.
Check out our online press release distribution service.

Twitter for journalists - a starting point

I've just been answering some questions from a journalist about how to use Twitter. It prompted me to jot down a few basics that could help to any reporter, feature writer or broadcaster who is new to Twitter.

1. Don't worry if you don't understand Twitter, just create your Twitter account and follow the steps below
   
2. Make sure your Twitter biography includes your media outlet name and keywords relating to the subjects you cover
3. One of your first Tweets should be 'I'm a journalist for [name if outlet] magazine/newspaper/website and I'm looking for info from PR people on [keywords relating to your specialist areas or 'patch']
4. Consider following PR people in your sector. A good place to find out PR people on Twitter is the ukmediatweeple wiki

Then sit back and wait for relevant public relations professionals to start following you (smart PRs should be tracking Twitter using alert services like TweetBeep and Twilert). You can then Tweet things like "who does the PR for XYZ" of "I need quotes about the XYZ story" and get responses from PRs.

If you have a more sophisticated request or one you don't want to plaster on a very public website like Twitter, then you can use my Response Source journalist enquiries service, which many thousands of PRs follow.

Oh, and you could also follow me!

Using social media to teach next generation PR people

I had a bit of a brainwave moments before I was due to guest lecture a group of second-year PR degree students last week.

I was planning to mention Twitter in my lecture at the University of Gloucestershire but then it dawned on me - why not actually use it as a teaching tool? So I Tweeted 'Anyone got anything to say to 14 young and enthusiastic PR students?''

Here's the result:

Now, the comments themselves were very educational in their own right, but the real elegance in this excercise was not only how it brought some highly respected journalists and PR people in the room together with the students, but how it demonstrated social media working in a professional context.

Many thanks for all those who replied (Mark Pinsent, Colonel Crocket, Louise Doherty, Luke Regan, Alan Burkitt-Gray, Toby Johnson, Peter Houston, Stephen Davies, Guy Clapperton and Adrian Bridgwater) - you've helped educate PR's next generation.

And a nod should also go to the PR course leader at the University of Gloucestershire, Averill Gordon, for making digital media a big part of her students' studies. It was great to meet David Phillips,  head of digital at Publicasity and author of books on online PR, who was also at the university to speak to the students.

[Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/darylwillcox]