DWPub Sporadic

DWPubHub - the informal networking series for PR professionals

We've launched our new series of networking events for public relations professionals - the DWPubHub.

The first event will be in Leeds on 18 March 2010 and all local PR professionals and marketing people with an interest in PR are invited.

We used to run short seminars in London some years ago, but our business is very much a national one (well, international in fact) so we felt simple networking events around the country would be a better way for us to meet and greet the PR community.

So, if you're based in or around Leeds on the 18th or happen to be in the area, come along between 6pm and 9pm at the Malmaison Hotel - please register first though so we get a good idea of numbers. Drinks and canapes will be provided. No presentations, no selling. Just a chance to talk to others in the industry. But we will be on hand to answer any questions you have about what we do at DWPub, if that takes your fancy.

Why Leeds? Well, we have strong links with the PR degree course at Leeds Metropolitan University and Leeds is an important centre for digital marketing too, so it seemed a good place to kick off the DWPubHub.

If you'd like a DWPubHub event in your area, let me know.

The Jackenhacks - the fallout

Last's week's Jackenhacks event, a light-hearted networking evening for technology PR professionals, was yet another cheeky success.

Some may have made comments about the limited capacity at the venue (a symptom of the success of the event really) and the poor sound system (always tricky in venues normally geared for music only), but that misses the point a bit - it's a bit of informal fun and being rough around the edges is all part of it.

During the evening I discovered that some people had taken my last post rather literally. It was, of course, a spoof. I suspect everyone who read to the final paragraph would have realised as much. But as I know from my journalism days, people don't often read all the way to the end of a story! It was good for the blog though - most hits I've ever had in a day. Comedy can be very effective in social media - but you have to get the tone right.

On the subject of tone, you may or may not find the video below by Andrew Smith from escherman of a suitable tone for office or familiy viewing, but it shows what can be done with a very cheap pocket video camera and some quick editing. (By the way, I don't know who that Tim Hoang is talking to.)

Clarification on DWPub and the 'Jackenhacks'

It has come to my attention that the organisers of a dubious event have been using the Daryl Willcox Publishing name in some sort of attempt to gain credibility.

The 'Jackenhacks' event for the technology PR community, occuring this Wednesday in an insalubrious part of London, has been giving the impression that Daryl Willcox Publishing is an official sponsor.

I'd like to place it on record that Daryl Willcox Publishing has no connections whatsoever with the Jackenhacks and wouldn't for one minute consider tarnishing our brand by association with such a clearly tasteless event. I am considering our next steps with the assistance of a firm of well-known libel lawyers.

I've been here before, only last year we were hoodwinked into sponsoring something called the 'Flackenhacks' which seemed to have the gloss of a professionally run networking event but turned out to be a wilful abandon of booze and cheap jokes, not to mention the rubbish PA system.

Anyway, quite how the very respectable Mr Waddington and Mr Earl from Speed Communications got mixed up with this latest 'Jackenhacks' malarkey is beyond me, though they suggest their involvement was an attempt at protection - which of course backfired.

If you take the questionable decision to attend this shady event and by chance notice my presence then I just want to make it clear my attendance will be purely for research purposes and does not imply any kind of endorsement.

Do our branding survey - and win prizes!

I've put together a very quick - just three questions - survey about DWPub's branding, partly as an experiment in surveying our community and partly as a genuine examination of our brand recognition.
Anyway, having just mentioned it on my Twitter feed (@darylwillcox) we've already had quite a few people complete it and initial results are fascinating.
So, if you've not done so already, please take our branding survey before it closes on 25 September. If you give your email address at the end you'll be in for a chance to win a case of wine and I'm adding two runners-up prizes worth £19.99 each of the new revised edition of Online Public Relations by David Phillips and Philip Young, supplied by our sister site The Media Bookshop.
I'll share the results here after the survey closes, at least the stuff I think would be interesting to our community.

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.

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.

Cheshire Cheese Xmas press party - SourceWire's duty

It seems SourceWire now has an unshakable duty to maintain the annual tech journalists' Xmas press party at the Cheshire Cheese.

Yesterday's event was a huge success and we've had lots of kind words today from people who attended. Check out the pics on Flickr.

For the last two or three years we've been doing the event in collaboration with a PR whose idea it was to ressurect the annual fixture since the retirement of its creator, tech PR legend Bill Moores. This year SourceWire was left alone to organise it, and actually I think that's the best way. We'll keep it going.

In fact, I've just booked the Cheshire Cheese for next year - 16 December 2009.

One of the older hacks told me yesterday that the event dates back to 1976. Can anyone corroborate that?

50 journalists for every job

Yesterday I sent an email to journalists about our SourceThatJob media jobsite. I guess on reflection it was a bit silly to send a message that said ‘advertise your jobs here’ as much as it said ‘look for jobs here’, given the tranche of editorial redundancies we’ve had in the last few weeks.

So it wasn’t surprising that a few recipients vented their disapproval of my poor judgement – a few Guardian journalists made the point most poignantly on Twitter.

Interestingly, I sent an email to more or less the same people two weeks ago that was purely a ‘recruit here’ message, yet there was no such response. Clearly the world changed in this short space of time.

Anyway – it was a fair cop, I shouldn’t have been soliciting recruitment advertising on such a broad scale so soon after so much bad news in the media.

However – and here’s the big ‘but’ – the whole experience was very educational.

The incident was an excellent example of how Twitter works as a brilliant customer feedback tool. And it was also an example of how stats often only show part of the picture.

On the face of it, the stats show it was a very successful email. Out of about 20,000 emails sent approximately 27 per cent viewed the email, better than the previous email which had a 23 per cent view rate. The click-through rate was even more dramatic – out of those who viewed the email 28 per cent clicked through – compared with 9 per cent on the previous.

But of course these stats did not tell me I’d misjudged the tone of the email – the Twitter media community did that for me. This is the power of Twitter as a customer feedback tool. Thanks tweeps. (Are you on Twitter? Follow me.)

Sadly though, the click-through stats did appear to reflect the real world in one sense. The ‘advertise jobs’ link generated 26 click-throughs, whereas the ‘look for jobs’ link generated 1,275.

So, to stretch the stats a bit (I know I shouldn’t…) for every editorial job there are nearly 50 jobseekers. That’s a crude extrapolation, but it probably isn’t far wrong in the current climate.

Note: These stats are correct at 16:00 on 3 December 2008, people are still clicking on the email

Filtering journalist enquires by media type

This was inspired by feedback from Response Source subscribers and enables you to get a better idea of the type of media outlet each journalist is working on, or - if you prefer - filter enquiries by media type.

For example, if you want ‘trade press’ but not ‘consumer press’ you can choose not to receive the latter.

The full list of Response Source media types is:

• National Newspaper / Current Affairs
• Regional Newspaper
• Trade Press / Professional Journal
• Consumer Press
• Radio and Television
• Website, Blog, Online
• Event, Trade Show, Exhibition
• Unspecified, or none of the above

This filtering option is in addition to filtering by ‘enquiry type’ which we introduced earlier in the year.
The full list of Response Source enquiry types is:

• request for information for an article
• request for review products
• request for spokesperson or expert
• request for competition prize or reader offer
• request for personal case study
• request for information from a PR

Here’s an example of how both filtering options can work for you:

If you only deal with trade and national press and are only interested in enquiries relating to information for articles or requests for spokespeople, you could opt to only receive ‘National Newspaper / Current Affairs’ and ‘Trade Press / Professional Journal’ from the media types list and ‘request for information for an article’ and ‘request for spokesperson or expert’ from the enquiry types list. This would improve the overall relevancy of enquiries landing in your inbox.

To filter the Response Source enquiries you receive by any of the options above please call us on 0845 370 7777 or email admin@dwpub.com.

Click here for more information on subscribing to Response Source.