Drew B's take on tech PR

Durrants: not much relevant content on blogs

Media monitoring firm Durrants has waded into an argument on, um, media monitoring, that's brewing. The PRs are ganging up on the monitoring firms, saying they don't 'get' blogging, and that we need a service that monitors the media for everything - print, online, broadcast and blog mentions.

Durrants' stance is a strange one. Although it says it 'gets' blogs, it says it's staying out of blog monitoring. A person from Durrants commented: "there just isn't that much relevant content [on blogs] right now for our client base". They said the yield from blogs is extremely low, and that although they think this will change, they'll just "continue to monitor it" for now.

Here's my two cents worth. ALL my clients are being mentioned on blogs. Some more so than in the print media. And ALL my clients sell to industries that are actively discussed on blogs, and have a core group of bloggers chatting about industry trends. Does that mean my media monitoring firm should work with me, or should I be trawling the blogosphere for coverage myself? I'm thinking in the future it'll be the former rather than today's latter.

Life online / PR Week's next generation feature

Chris Green is blogging - howdidimissthat! Not only is he blogging, but he's on Myspace, Frappr, Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, he has a moblog. If you ever need to offer him a story, product or client, there's no excuse for not knowing where he is, what he's into, or whether or not he still uses a BlackBerry. His life is online. Nice blog Chris.

And more cool stuff in PR Week - their '29 under 29, the next generation' feature is out tomorrow. It's up online now - I'll send mum and dad a copy :-)

Media to buy content off bloggers

 

PR podcasts

Here's the PR podcasts I listen to - any more for any more?

• Pocket Planet Radio
• For Immediate Release
• Earshot
• Inside PR
• Across the Sound
• Stakeholder Asia
• Spinfluencer

What MySpace means

Thanks David Tebbutt for an update on this week's other good social media conference, the one on MySpace. Sounds like it was a good one to have been at. Speakers at "What MySpace Means: Lessons for every brand" included The Guardian's Vic Keegan, Fox News' Scott Norvell and Big Blog Co.'s Adriana Lucas. Reading the overview, my favourite anecdote was this, on youth interaction on MySpace vs real life:

The Guardian's Victor Keegan talked about the university whose students wouldn't go to union meetings because they were so busy communicating in MySpace. The Union discovered that a lot of potential members were fans of a particular film series. So the Union screened an episode. The MySpace folk turned up en masse but then didn't speak to each other.

Originally posted at LEWIS 360

PR Week on blog monitoring

Go for it PR Week! After much delving into how technology is changing what we PRs do on a daily basis, this week it's the turn of blog monitoring to get the once over. I'm listed as a dedicated blogging expert (wowee) in tomorrow's edition of the magazine, in a feature on how PRs should monitor blogs. Hi to old pal Dalj who's in there too (no blogs though from the Hotwire lot yet I don't think), as is Nick from Bite, then a bunch of evaluation firms are quoted too.

What PR Week might not realise, but which some PR people working on blogging projects might, is that the major media monitoring firms don't have a clue about how blogs are impacting their industry. One firm I use for press cuttings emailed my colleague Anna not too long ago, when she started spotting more coverage in blogs than they did, and said: "please could you send me a list of the blogs that are on your target media list and we'll read them for possible coverage." The List?!?! What, the like 40 million blogs that might mention my client? That list? You think that's in one list?! Heard of search engines maybe?!

They just don't get it!

And then there's the feeback from yesterday's audience at the PR Week conference on New Media. Now, I wasn't there, so this sin't first hand, but one of the speakers said to me that in his feedback session a media monitoring firm asked him how blogs are impacting to the media-monitoring industry. They didn't know. Great. Nice to know our money is being well spent.

...Cue Romeike, Durrants, Press Index and everyone else telling me I'm wrong... please do! Us PRs need to know who can help us out and who to steer clear of.

Mentions in the media

- Update - what was here in this post was something that looked a bit too me me me on reflection - a list of where me and my blog had been mentioned in the press. I was going to update it when new stuff came in, as I wanted to save it all online, but I didn't want it to be RSSd to everyone, or be so in yer face. So I've moved it! But in the interest of openness and all that, I'm leaving the comments I received up - and I'll respond :-) Cheers Nick, Simon and George.

Another good blog

Just added the blog of James Cridland, digital media director at Virgin Radio, to my blogroll. He spoke (well, I hear) at the PR Week conference yesterday. Sorry I missed it, James! Nice blog.

PR Week new media conference blogged live today

The PR Week new media conference is happening today in London. A load of big names will be speaking, both media organisations and brands. Emily Bell of The Guardian, The Telegraph's podcast editor Guy Ruttle, Peter Bale of Times Online, then PR bosses from McDonalds, ITV, NS&I... the PR Week site has a run-down. It's being hosted in LEWIS PR's Media Centre. (disclaimer - I work there) I was meant to be going but have a client keeping me busy. But my colleague Jon 'Clogger' Silk will be there, and blogging live on the LEWIS 360 blog.

New UK PR blogs

Two new UK PR blogs have launched this week that are worth subscribing to. Simon Collister of Cicada PR has launched his second blog - eDemocracy Update, a Public Affairs blog. And James Warren of Weber Shandwick has come out with PR 2.0 after some coaxing.

* Update - Rainer PR's MD has just started blogging. His blog is called Wadds' PR Blog. Looks like he's been blogging since last week.