Drew B's take on tech PR

PR Week top 40 technology agencies

[Please excuse the gushing employer-loving post that's coming up]

The Hotwire London lot were treated to a little gift this morning, a nice-looking bottle of Champagne was left on everyone's desk overnight, as a thank you from our boss Kristin for everyone's work. Because PR Week published its list of the biggest tech PR agencies in the UK this week, and Hotwire's now at number 2. I've not been back here long so I can unashamedly say that's great going by the team that's build Hotwire up over the last year and since it was founded. Mine's now in the freezer cooling down for later :)

Link to PR Week top 40 tech PR agencies by fee income

Monitoring your brand online with some easy to use pipes

I've been fiddling with ways to more efficiently manage the online monitoring of brand buzz, and I went back to a tool that's been around for about a year but which has become more useful since it was first launched with some easy(ish) to use new features.

Yahoo Pipes lets you put a load of web feeds, like Google searches, Twitter scans, site feeds, whatever you want to feed into it, and it then produces one stream of information at the other end. And it does this with a cartoon look and feel set of pipes that you drag around the page that connect your searches up.

This is what Yahoo Pipes look like. It's a really easy to use service I think, and if you are one of those people who doesn't have the time or the patience to suscribe to mentions of company names, spokesperson names, cmpaign names, competitor names, etc etc, then this is quicker and lets you have one feed at the end instead of hundreds.

And if Yahoo Pipes looks a bit too complicated still let me know. Keen to hear what other people think.

PRowling around campus

I just got an email from the bloggers at PRowl Public Relations which got me wondering what on earth I was doing when I was meandering through university.

Jessica, the blogger there, said to me that PRowl Public Relations is Temple University's first and only student-run PR firm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "We have a blog that we update daily with PR tips, commentary on PR in the news, and announcements about our firm."

That's not bad going running a PR firm whilst still a student. I'll make sure I keep up to date with how things pan out from their blog.

My thoughts on Gordon's YouTubing

Here are my thoughts in this week's PR Week magazine on Gordon Brown's new YouTube channel. Not meaning to sound overly critical, but in the bit of my quote that they didn't use, I did say this was an essential move in the right direction of Downing Street's press office.

Yesterday's online PR roundtable at E-consultancy

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to have been invited to speak at a roundtable discussion on the topic of Online PR, hosted by E-consultancy. It was a packed event, the biggest roundtable I've seen, that's for sure, and some quality attendees. About 30 in total.

I met marketing and PR managers from some big corporate FMCG, pharmaceutical, technology, and finance brands. The discussion began by focusing on areas such as ROI from online PR, the hot social media used in PR campaigns, tips and tricks to use in practice, the importance of Twitter (and it wasn't me that brought that one up!!), campaign measurement, planning and case studies.

One key issue many companies are saying, and this was the one key issue that the event focused on the most, is that brands want their online PR to be better measured than it is now. More ROI please PR peeps! There seems to be too much focus on the 'press clippings' mentality and not enough sophisticated online PR measurement.

My client Will McInnes suggested to the organisers that I went along, so thanks for that Will, I found it a really high quality discussion.

Going to LGComms

I'm off in a second to speak to a group of local government comms professionals at the annual LGComms Conference which is taking place this week. My topic is on the use of social media in comms. I'll make sure I blog about how it goes... tomorrow I'll be speaking at the E-consultancy Online PR roundtable. I'll feed back on how that goes too and on what we talk about.

PR moves, news and some new blogs

Congratulations to Robin Wilson who's moved from Bite, on Apple and Facebook, to Cheshire-based McCann Erickson Communications House, where he will be PR director, which I saw in PR Week when I got back from hols. I hope to catch Robin before he leaves London.

And to Phil Szomszor who's moved to Citigate to be their director and tech PR consultant and social media person. I've not seen his blog before, so one to add to the RSS.

Lastly the grandaddy blogger and Retrospective Futureologist Justin Hayward has gone in-house from MS&L. I saw on his LinkedIn a while back that he'd moved to Telnic and PR Week confirmed it. Good luck with it Justin.

Reuters on Twitter as a news gathering tool

Here's a fairly good article from Reuters on the use of Twitter as a news gathering tool. Gives a (fairly mundane but works ok) example of how Twitter users share news when something major happens, and how the traditional media picks up in comparison.

Interesting bit for me near the end though, is when someone's quoted as saying they see the use of Twitter not for chit chat, but having one "at the ready" for discussion around major news events.

Google PR boss Elliot Schrage moves to Facebook

"Facebook nets Google exec to fix poor PR" is one of the headlines that a blogger used when referring to this announcement that I just saw on Techmeme.com's Twitter feed. Google has just lost a PR person to Facebook.

Update from this morning's FT is that Google UK's Rachel Whetstone could be taking Schrage's place on Google's core 14-person senior management group.

How do late adopters learn about social media

Here's Robert Scoble's take on how latecomers learn about social media. All starts with Google it seems.