danleach.co.uk

Today marks the 4th anniversary of BlogDay. To take part the rules are simple:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link:
   http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2008 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

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So without further ado, Happy BlogDay 2008:

1. Delightful Work: Coach Tom Volkar provides advice on achieving, as he puts it, “work life freedom”. Great blog that should be visited whenever those deadlines start mounting up!
2. PsyBlog: Psychology is little more to me than a fleeting interest however I find this blog incredibly useful for gaining small insights into the way our minds work. For marketers this RSS feed should be a staple
3. The Blog of Tim Ferriss: Any blog with the url fourhourworkweek.com is going to get my vote. Great advice on Tim on working smarter and not harder
4. Chris Brogan: The hardest working man online? Probably! Chris regularly rolls out insightful, in-depth advice and information regarding social media and networking
5. Getting Ink: Sally Whittle’s often funny insight into the world of journalism. PRs are often portrayed as the arch enemies of journalists, Sally often points out why

I get a little bit of stick in the office for being a self-confessed techy but more and more I am finding an array of software, websites, gadgets and tools that allow me to stay one step ahead in the fast-paced world of PR

I thought I would compile a selection of things I kit myself out with to make me a little more PR 2.0:

1. Firefox & add-ons: I took the plunge with Firefox earlier this year and have never looked back. Aside from the speed, stability and usability it provides it also allows you to install add-ons and plug-ins to tailor the software. Pertinent to this post include:

• LinkedIn Companion: Allows me to keep access and my business network at the click of a button (Disclaimer: LinkedIn is an H&K client)
• Foxmarks: Invaluable for working between the office and home. Synchronises your bookmarks across computers so you never have to find that obscure news article you saved during some late night surfing
• Googlepedia: Displays a Wikipedia article next to your Google searches. Excellent resource and time-saver when doing desk research
• Cooliris: Fantastic tool for some one-man creative thinking. Turn your PC into a mood-board in seconds
• TwitterFox: I can’t remember the last time I visited Twitter.com. Tweet and access your feeds from the comfort of your toolbar
• Brief RSS Reader: I know a lot of people like Google Reader but I actually prefer this reader. It’s quick, intuitive and allows me track my 70+ feeds easily

2. Google Alerts: An absolute must for any PR worth their salt. Say goodbye to emails from clients that start, “Did you not see this article?”

3. Factiva Alerts: If you do have access to Factiva you’ll know it provides a useful if not limited service. People tend to overlook its alert service though, which I have found very good. I have it setup to send me an overview email of relevant news articles every morning at 8am. A good indication of what’s on your clients’ agendas that day

4. Mobile Internet / TV: I check the news on a regular basis either through Orange’s WAP site or via Sky News through Orange’s 3G mobile TV service (£5 per month). Increasingly useful as the meetings tot up in my calendar.

5. SpinVox: We all know what it’s like. Leave a 2 hour meeting, turn your phone on…”you have 15 new voicemail messages”. Streamline your voicemail by using SpinVox, a service that turns your voicemails into SMS texts. You’ll no longer be fumbling around for a pen on the 12:05 from Weybridge

6. The Web: Couldn’t really leave it out. But, whilst 99% of it is useless there are some gems in there that every (tech/consumer) PR should have in his or hers bookmarks:

• BBC News Online
• Digg.com
• Mashable!
• Techmeme
• Getty Images
• Wikipedia
• TheWebList.net
• PR Week UK

Follow me, be a geek and amaze your colleagues and clients with your knowledge, speed and creativeness. Just don’t tell anyone that without the web we’d be nothing!

Have I missed any? Let me know!

We all hear of horror stories of journalists being incredibly rude to PRs and many of us have experienced, first hand, exasperation turn to frustration turn to rage after unwittingly selling-in the tenth survey of the afternoon.

But recently I’m beginning to understand how they feel and to be honest wonder how they manage not to slam the phone down after two minutes of stumbling over the first sentence of a pitch.

As we near the end of the year many industry bodies and magazines start planning their awards ceremonies and with that comes the invitation to “take a table” at the event to PRs and the clients they represent.

I have had two already today and the pitching has been so woeful it’s a wonder how they manage to fill the smallest of venues.

The first one:

Sales: “Hi is this Dan”
Me: “Yes”
S: “Yes…er…hi….um…I’m not sure what clients you look after but we’re holding the xxxx 2008 awards in December. Have you heard of them?”
M: “Yes”
S: “Would you like to book a table?”

Second one:

Sales: “Hi I’m xxxxx and I’m calling about the xxxx Awards 2008″
Me: “Hi”
S: “Yes, we would like to invite you to the awards ceremony as I understand you represent xxxx”
Me: “Oh okay, sounds interesting. Could you send me an email with some more details?”
S: “Sure. How do you spell your company name?”

Neither is good but the second is better than the first purely because the sales rep decided to invite me rather than expect me to open up my cheque book within 30 seconds of picking up the handset.

The first rule of selling whether it’s a product or a story is knowing and understanding the audience you are selling to. And I don’t mean knowing what journalists or PRs like, I mean actually knowing who the person on the end of the phone is, who they are, where they work, what they work on and any other insights that are readily available through the magic of Google!

Not knowing who my clients are is annoying but forgivable. There is not central database for PRs however if you don’t know then why not ask. In fact that would be a good way of opening up some kind of dialogue. Not knowing how to spell the name of the company I work for is inexcusable. I know I’m one on a list of hundreds to receive a phone call that day but it doesn’t mean I want to feel like one.

When you’re asking for £3k+ to attend an event, a little bit of desk research is the absolute minimum I expect.

It’s the same for journalists – by doing some simple searches and gathering a little background knowledge I have found the levels of receptiveness and conversion increase vastly. It’s all to easy, when faced with a media list of hundreds, to try and rattle through as many as possible as quickly as possible (gotta get in before they go to conference) but a client would be much happier you called 10 and secured five pieces of coverage than called 100 and got nothing.

Note: I have not included the names of people or specifics about the events as I have used the experiences to make a point and don’t think it is necessary to publicly bash them.

A good friend of mine who follows this blog yesterday gave me a call asking me why the blog went a bit downhill yesterday. He called it “constructive criticism” and at first I was a little taken aback. Plenty of posts, some useful content, what was the problem?

Well apparently, two things lack of comment and lack of humour.

Fair enough I thought. I was busy, didn’t have a chance to construct Shakespearean prose, but he did raise an interesting point.

The advice did make me take a look back on my recent blog posts and he was right, not my best work. But it took him to say it for me to realise that I was substituting quantity for quality.

Self-critique is something we rarely do in PR. Key learnings are one thing but often these are watered down points intended to shift the blame rather than expose our own failings.

We need more people, on the inside, to question the way we do business for our clients. It’s all very well having clients question our approach but we too often dismiss that as in-house paranoia, they don’t have the wisdom to see what we are trying to achieve. Every now and again we should take a step back and look at what we are doing from the perspective of our harshest critic – what could we have done better, what didn’t we achieve, why didn’t we achieve it?

Fortunately, in my friend I have my harshest critic but we should make an effort to be our own on a more regular basis.

I have just created a new group on LinkedIn for UK PR professionals. The idea behind it is to connect with others working in PR and share relevant content.

You’re all welcome to join.

Disclaimer: LinkedIn is a client of Hill & Knowlton

Further to my post on client adoption of Twitter, Jeremiah has posted a great article on the evolution of brands using the service.

TechCrunch has published an article by Ashley Norris on why blog publishing has failed in the UK.

Just read the latest post in Influential Marketing in amazement! Part of Visa’s sponsorship at the Olympics includes payment exclusivity at the games’ venues.

I have recently seen an increase in business decisions being made without any consideration for how it affects the customer experience.

This is by no means a new trend! National Rail introducing voice recognition to its train information hotline a couple of years ago is another example of how businesses forgo the experience of their customers and lose focus on the bigger picture. In this case, they may save some money on phone operators but won’t make anything if people stop calling!

Twitter is fast going down the same path. First stopping the SMS service to UK customers and the limiting the number of people you can follow. Sure, Twitter may stop haemorrhaging money for a week or so but it means nothing if people stop using it all together.

No matter how short-term a business decision is, if it affects customers then the ill-will created will last a lifetime.

In his latest post, Steve Rubel has asked whether PR is obsolete and I generally agree with the sentiment.

Traditional PR is, to a degree, dead. Distributing press releases far and wide in the hope of getting a hit (the machine gun effect) is time consuming and delivers little if anything. The same goes for press-conference style events – they no longer pull in the numbers.

Conversation has changed forever but as PRs we have been slow to adapt our approach and tap into “the new way”.

One of the problems is moving out of our comfort zone. Clients have to report upstairs and have numbers to hit, numbers that are measured by circulations, OTS and AVE – it’s hard to measure conversation. So why put ourselves out by trying to encourage the use of new media and communications tools such as Twitter.

Well if we don’t then one of two things will happen. Either our competitors will demonstrate how new media can be more effective and clients will walk out the door; or our clients will realise the power of new media on there own and guess what, they will walk out the door.

Our clients demand to be where their audiences are and it is our responsibility to take them there, whether they like (or understand) the journey or not.

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Tech PR blogger Paul Stallard has tagged me to list three communicators, living or dead, who have most influenced my way of thinking professionally and personally.

So here goes…

First one I’ll choose is Eugen Beer. Eugen was the founder of my first agency Beer Davies who were responsible for some fantastically extravagant PR stunts and campaigns such as Mattel’s Pink Street and the Cup-a-Soup comedy challenge. Eugen, more than anyone, has shaped my creative approach and taught me to stand by my convictions even when client’s raise eyebrows at our thinking.

Secondly, Oasis. These guys are a dying breed, a band that played music for the love of it and wouldn’t be sugar-coated by any producer, manager or record label. They said what they wanted, what they believed in and didn’t care who disagreed (or agreed for that matter). Oasis taught me one thing, consumers and the media will always forgive true talent.

My final selection is two-for-one: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Over the past few decades these two have become masters at using the media to achieve business success. And one couldn’t have done it without the other. The media love rivals and these two recognised that and have been playing the PR game ever since.

I tend not to invest too heavily in inspirational figures, which is why my selection was quite tough to reach however it’s quite fun to reflect from time to time and think about who has made me the PR I am today!

Who’s next? Well I’m going to tag Joel Cere, Candace Cuss and Will Sturgeon.