Drew B's take on tech PR

UK tech PR contracts and features

Today's PR Week has a fair bit of tech related news and features

• O2 has appointed Cohn & Wolfe for consumer PR - an extension of the tech & B2B campaign it runs for O2
• Telewest hjas appointed Ptarmigan for regional PR up north
• BPM firm Global360 has appointed Spreckley Partners
• Website nethouseprices.com has appointed Brazil PR
• There are also two features on tech PR - one explaining how the big three weeklies work, and the other is an analysis of the tech PR sector.

Posting for profit, from The Guardian's blogger, Bobbie Johnson

The Observer has launched softly launched a blog. It's live, and looking good! Nice to see more newspapers writing blogs, and employing writers to manage them.

From the same stable, this morning's Guardian has a feature on blogging for money.

"Posting for profit
As weblogs soar in number and influence, their business potential lands many in the money. Bobbie Johnson investigates. "

Two more UK tech PR blogs

I have just spotted another two new UK tech PR blogs: Cygnet Swan, written by a London-based tech PR bloke who's about to set off for a sabbatical in Peru, and Retrospective Futurologist, the blog of tech PR man Justin Hayward.  Great to see them cropping up at a steady pace.

FT explains enterprise blogging

There's an opinion piece in this morning's FT IT by editor of Silicon Valley Watcher, and ex FT correspondent, Tom Foremski. It's a good intro to how blogs work for enterprise users, a question batting around the UK Press and UK Netmarketing email forums at the moment. And I noticed Silicon Valley Watcher has just picked up a big name tech sponsor - Tibco. Well done Tom.

Link: Blogging technology opens doors for enterprises, Financial Times (subscription required)

UK Institute of PR gets awarded chartered status

In a Uni lecture gave not that long ago I was asked to discuss the issue of the Institute of PR (IPR) should be given chartered status, like with the Marketing profession. I didn't know too much about it back then, but I have been brushing up on it ever since. It pleased me to learn last week that the IPR has been awarded chartered status and now called CIPR. You can read the press release here. This was front page news on last week's PR Week, unsurprisingly. More news coverage is also covered in The Observer (spin doctors' union goes legit) and The Times (taking a kick at PRs has become a traditional sport).

On a separate matter, tomorrow is going to be "Free Mojtaba and Arash day". This about the two Iranians who have been imprisoned for publishing their beliefs online. From what I have read on the BBC, "The Iranian government has not said explicitly that it is blogging that got Mr Sigarchi and Mr Saminejad into trouble." But I lend my support to The Association of Iranian Blogwriters, which is demanding that the Iranian judiciary either formally charge or release the pair. 

Two more new PR blogs

Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen (ie Bite, Text 100 & AugustOne) has a newish blog called Technology PR.

Also, Porter Novelli has started a off a blog called The Thicket

Thanks to Tom Murphy at PR Opinions for the details.

Financial Times tech coverage on RSS

The Financial Times is making its technology coverage available through RSS. It's available here. Just subscribed. Seems a bit wierd though - a tech story from yesterday's paper is not on the RSS feed. Maybe the FT is being selective about what it sends out on RSS. Looks like I wont be able to ditch the paper yet.

The FT also has UK news, Business Life (its daily features page), Markets and a load of other RSS channels to subscribe to here.

I found a UK PR blog

This week I discovered another UK PR blog - Interactive PR. Some good stuff on there, and the author is running some other related blogs which are worth looking at.

And I did some exploring of Simon Bisson's del.icio.us links, which are on his blog, finding some great new sites, including Blackberry Cool (a blog about Blackberry gossip and hacks), some more nanotech stuff, and I've started my own del.icio.us page. So far there's only a few sites listed on there for me to share, but I'm working on it.

I notice there hasn't been much UK tech PR gossip this week. But it's been entertaining watching the Alistair Campbell / Blackberry story develop, culminating with Thursday's blanket coverage in all the broadsheets and online outlets. Then I picked up first on Guy Fawkes' UK politics conspiracy blog that Blackberrys got banned from parliament. What a lot of publicity in one week!

And finally, from the brilliant LifeHacker (part of Gawker Media) comes the review of the most brilliant product for dirty bastards, the straw that lets you drink out of puddles and canals with 93% less bacteria!??? (?)

How to get broadsheet coverage according to Charles Arthur

Charles Arthur has started a discussion on his blog about how best to secure broadsheet coverage, as well as giving us an idea of how much information he is 'spammed' by PRs (and how much he hates Romeike - join the club Charles!). He says one of the ways forward, in addition to building relationships with target journalists, is to use RSS in PR.

Carly Fiorina quits

Firstly, Carly Fiorina has quit HP, according to The Register. (Thanks to Object Marketing's blog for the heads up on the story).

Secondly, I'm adding FeedBurner RSS feeds to my blog. It seems Bloglet isn't working, so if you want to keep up to date with the stuff on this blog (in addition to PR stuff I seem to get a lot of random traffic about Cillit Bang, Most Haunted, Gmail and CHAVs!) then my Fupdated feeds are up on the left of this page.