Drew B's take on tech PR

Five new places online a PR person should get to know better

I've been meaning to share some examples of new social and digital apps that I've been using recently in day to day PR. If you're in digital PR you might find it useful to try some of them out. If you're using some of them already, I'd love to hear the ways you use them.

Feedly - This service has completely changed the way I read news online. I've used RSS readers to track the news, all the blogs that I read, and clusters of client feeds (here's exactly how I structure my feeds). Well, in the age of microblogging my RSS reader has started to gather dust. Feedly has changed that. It presents your news, buzz, blogs and everything else you need to digest in a format that's much more captivating, creative and useful. It's also social, and also plugs into all other websites you use, showing buzz from the social web on them. For example, I read this story just now, and Feedly's little app in my browser tells me how many times it's been added to FriendFeed, Digg an Twitter, including highlights of online buzz. The other thing FriendFeed does is, when you Google something, it shows you, embedded in the search results, social media buzz on that topic, in the white space that Google leaves empty. You'd almost miss this, as it's very nicely integrated. All-round a fantastic buzz tracking tool.

FriendFeed - The best new startup of 2008 according to TechCrunch has been changing the web habits of the early adopters for over a year. Now it's a matter of time before a community big-enough moves the rest of us over (or enough for it to be a proper destination). It's not only a destination site - you can post things on it in a similar way you do on Facebook or Twitter - it's also a funnel. In other words, plug all your other social sites, like Flickr, YouTube, your blog, Twitter, almost anything, into your friend stream. It can then pipe it out to somewhere else, like Twitter. 

FourSquare - This one is new new. FourSquare is a service that asks you, through an iPhone app, the mobile web or a text message, to check in, so that people know where you are. Here's Cnet's review of it from earlier this month. It's one of the hotter and more talked about versions of location-based mobile friend services that help you keep in touch with your community based on your location, but in the simplest way possible. When Twitter came along, it was a massively stripped down and basic version of Facebook. Twitter is to Facebook what FourSquare is to Google Latitude, Brightkite and the other hugely useful but complex location-based mobile apps.

Evernote - Whopping disclaimer, because we work with Evernote, but as you might remember I've been just a little bit fanatical about this service for about a year now. With the social web stretching us thin and far, this technology is your digital brain. Use it for note taking, snapping flipcharts at workshops, group projects or coverage saving. One to watch. Evenote, like FriendFeed, hot with the cool kids.

4chan - It's a picture-based message forum that brings users together in a way that goes against the grain for those that 'get' old social media. You don't have an identity, so no username, and anything goes (ie, really not safe for work in a lot of places. Just to be clear, I don't approve of it's content, I'm simply saying the kind of way topics spread on 4chan is something relatively new to the blog/twitter/facebook way of thinking). There's no archives, so no way of showing off about how long you've been on it or what your most popular post was. Very un-Technorati. This creates swarm like behaviour that turns things viral. In its own words, 4chan's collaborative-community format is copied from one of the most popular forums in Japan, Futaba Channel. Check out some examples on just how its different community approach changes the ways things happen on the web.

Some feedback I've received on Twitter about this post is questioning whether 4chan is mainstream enough to warrant people needing to know anything about it at all. My gut feel is that this style of forum will be the next wave online, with anonymity, speed and currency changing the way people share content and swarm on issues.

- update - I have re-edited this post to ensure it's clear that I'm neither ranking these by importance or sanctioning content on the sites.

From this week's NMK PR Debate - the innovation land grab

This week I and the team here at number 33 went to NMK's Online PR debate event. Hats off to the organiser Ian Delaney. It was a great mix of people. Never before have I seen such a broad set of the digital PR industry in one place. I think it's fair to say every agency was represented. It was like the people whose blogs we read, whose Twitter channels we follow and people who, even though you've only seen their photo on a social network, you'd actually want to go over and chat to them. The journalists who cover the  industry were there too, and the speakers, James, Anthony, Stuart and Roger, were on top form.

One theme that stood out during the event was the talk of the budget and innovation land grab, and its effect on the kind of digital PR work taking place. Evidence seems to be that, when digital PR is a relatively small bolt-on, it's never going to create stand-out results. But when it's funded properly, it does. Not rocket science really. And this happens in PR increasingly often (such is the good fortune that's keeping us busy). But compared to recent similar events, there was a much larger contingent of online PR people in the room working in above the line environments, with 'much bigger' budgets to make use of, they said.

This goes back to last year's debate, where the discussion was a little less advanced, but strangely similar. It was about how PR firms would be gobbled up by the elephant in the room - the above the line agencies with the bigger budgets who are starting to do PR. It now seems online PR is moving further into various other parts of marketing for a lot of agencies.

What we might find next time around, when the debate continues, could go both ways. Will the digital PR types have completed the transition into digital in a broader sense, becoming part of the full service offering? Or will the chasm have widened between budget sizes and real innovation?

US vs UK: observations from a valley dweller, and me

I have just read a fascinating post from Silicon Valley digital PR expert Shanee Ben-Zur, someone who I worked with up until recently, on her impressions of the media traditions in the UK. She has just arrived and observed (amongst other things football and pork scratchings related) that it's particularly strange that we read newspapers still. My reaction to this reaction, if you get me, is that of surprise.

Straight from Shanee's blog post:

In London for some business meetings. What I want to talk to you are some observations about sights, smells and sounds... Reading the newspaper. This somewhat foreign concept to me makes a lot of sense here. Public transit is stellar, and there are very catchy quick-read newspapers that fit easily on your lap while you’re on the train or tube. Stories are short, and you don’t have to shimmy and shake the paper just to see article you’re reading. There’s a morning paper for the way to work and an evening paper for the commute home - always fresh news. I prefer newspapers to pork scratchings, but that’s just me.

The 'stories are short' point has always been a big difference between US and UK media (but I'll bring a copy of the Daily Mail to show Shanee when I meet her later, to show that it's not all the same as the freesheets). I'm fascinated though how foreign a concept reading a paper is to a Silicon Valley dweller.

A socially networked business is a happy business, they say

I'm seeing an increasing amount of buzz around the concept of Enterprise 2.0 - or in other words the social media / web 2.0 environment manifested in the workplace.

The most recent of which is a new study from AT&T that shows how European businesses that harness social media in their communications become happier businesses.

The AT&T survey is a hefty one. It has looked at 2,500 people across five countries showing how they use social media in everyday working life. Most respondents said social media makes them more efficient and able to achieve new things. And almost half say it brings new creativity. It's worth taking a look in depth at the findings, but here's a snapshot:

The Top 5 social networking tools being used as part of everyday working life are:
1. Companies' own collaboration sites on intranets (39%)
2. Internal forums within the company (20%)
3. Company-produced video material shared on intranets (16%)
4. Online social networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook (15%)
5. External collaboration sites on the web and internal blogging sites (both 11%)

Twitter-focused marketing agency launches

This morning I read in the FT (courtesy of @FTtechnews) that a new marketing agency has launched to offer Twitter marketing services to brands, and it's backed by some of the UK's biggest dotcom entrepreneurs. The FT story says:

Peter Read, [Twitter Partners'] founder, has been an angel investor and adviser to a range of digital-media start-ups such as Skype, Metacafe and Babelgum. Mr Read has brought together a “brains trust” of advisers to Twitter Partners, including Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, founders of Lastminute.com; Saul Klein, a partner at Index Ventures, the London venture capitalists; and Toby Coppel, the former European vice-president at Yahoo.

That's quite a bunch of advisors.

They'll be giving all us PR agancies that advise our clients on similar stuff a good run for our money I'm sure.

What I found when I switched Google for Twitter

A few weeks ago I started an experiment in how I use Google and Twitter. I decided that every time I went to use Google, I'd ask my Twitter followers the question instead. I got the idea after getting some great results when I was looking for a place to eat a Sunday lunch in Berkshire.

So I did this for one week, and learned a hell of a lot from it. If you're considering how to make use of the Twitter community, this might be useful in some way.

• Firstly, if you ask people at the right time and in the right way, Twitter's community is very giving. I got all sorts of help in explaining technical terms, finding free WiFi in London, hiring staff, finding TV aerial boosters... all sorts. The best time of day to get results is during office hours. And the best way to ask is directly and simpley. ie: Where can i find good, free wifi in London?
• Secondly, I found that Googling for *everything* is just lazy. Twitter isn't always the best alternative (finding contact details or directions for example isn't easy on Twitter!) but always going to Google first isn't necessary. It took this experiment to force me to find things other ways.
• Thirdly, I found I use Google less than I thought. I had it in my head that I'm on it all the time, but in the end it was just a handful of times in the week.
• Lastly, the Twitter community isn't much help if it's small. I have about 2,500 followers, and if that number was more like 25, I don't think Twitter would hold the same value for me.

Here's a summary of the questions I asked and the answers I got. Saved in my Twitter favourites of course :)