Nike seem to have hit the jackpot with this recent video…
Video of the Week: Nike MVPuppets “Puppet Chalk”
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Monthly Archives: May 2009
Refugee Week
At the recent London Bloggers Meetup, Jaz Cummins spoke about Refugee Week which runs from June 15 to June 21, a project she is involved with.
The UK wide scheme will feature a week full of events which will range from activities in schools to bug music festivals, all to raise awareness and celebrate the contribution of refugees in our society. We are being encouraged to get involved by doing one simple act, to help change the way that we interact with refugees in the UK.
Here’s some ideas of what you could do:
Cook a dish from another country
Watch a movie about refugees
Read a book about exile
Share a song
Define the word “Refuge”
What does refuge mean to me?
A refuge is not where i’m from or where I want to be, but it’s where I can go to to get back to being who I want.
What does refuge mean to you?
You can keep up with the latest Refugee Week news by visiting their blog.
Twitter in Schools
There has recently been a growing discussion around Twitter’s use as a front channel, highlighted no better than at the recent Somesso social media conference in London.
Alongside the speaker’s stage was a big screen with a live twitter feed which pulled in tweets with the relevant #smo09 hashtag, which provided a real time commentary of what was being said.
So, why can something similar not be used in schools?
This week, a Scottish teacher has been investigated following her reported use of Twitter, which is prohibited by the school she works at. She is not facing disciplinary action, but her local council is ‘looking into the matter’.
The content of her tweets revolved around some of her classes, and weren’t particularly positive:
“Had S3 period 6 for last two years…don’t know who least wants to do anything, them or me.”
“The thought of having some of my S4 beyond exam time doesn’t bear thinking about – for them as well as me I suspect.”
Now, I am not condoning her use of Twitter as a vent – I think it was unprofessional and naive. However, I think this raises a valid question: How can Twitter be used in the classroom?
David Hopkins put together a deck which looked at exactly this, and he hit upon several idea:
Classes: Open discussion in timetables seminar/class, continue outside the classroom
Community: Create community feel through linked tweets
Instant feedback: Approval/disapproval of recent discussions, issues, etc
Public notepad: Share inspiration, reading, thought, ideas etc
Technology: Laptops, netbooks, iPhones / iTouch and other smartphones, any Internet enabled device
Messages: Use Twitter as personal message board
You could not use Twitter (yet) in a class full of 12 year olds, they would, I’d predict, abuse this and use it for purposes other than education. However, if you are in a class at University or 6th form and have access to the internet, these pupils should be self-constrained enough to use this as a platform to share ideas and questions with each other. This helps to stimulate discussion and to rationalise thoughts with your peers and to engage with the subject you are following.
To restrict use of Twitter will soon be seen as draconian and the first group to rebel against this will be those in education who should have acces to the latest technologies to help them learn and devlop ideas.
To follow innovative education related people, have a read of thisTop Ten Twitter Education Feeds post.
Video of the Week: Vodafone Busy Message
Weekly Round Up 23.05.09
It’s all gone a bit crazy over at Techcrunch after Michael Arrington’s blog ran a story questioning whether Last.FM’s parent company CBS had sold user’s data to the RIAA. There is a history to this, and i’ll let you read it here. The sharing of user data is a huge issue and of course has many legal implications, but are Techcrunch going above their station by offering legal counsel to the CBS employee who has subsequently been fired because he leaked an e-mail?
And to the CBS employee who was fired and threatened based on this story – we believe certain U.S. Whistle Blower laws may protect you from retaliation from CBS in this matter. We’d like to provide you with legal counsel at our cost.
Two small stories of epic Twitter fail this week. Firstly, @Astro_Mike was allegedly the first person to Tweet from space, he wasn’t . And secondly, there were widespread rumours on Twitter that Patrick Swayze had died. He hadn’t. This of course brings into question the reliability of Twitter as a source of information, and also shows how a subject can snowball and get out of hand very quickly, if no-one is there to fight the fire.
Not only is the Pope on Youtube, the Pontif has made his way onto Facebook and the iPhone. Good to see that even the most conservative of groups are mebracing the Internet, albeit slowly, and using it to communicate!
Bart Thomas – your questions please!
Next week I will be attending a seminar on Cloud Computing, given by Bart Thomas, Founder and CEO of Cloud Nine. There will be an opportunity for me to pick Bart’s brains in a 20 minute Q&A after the seminar, so I’d like to ask you guys if there’s any questions you’d like me to put to him.
I’ve already had some thought provoking topics to discuss from my fellow techie mischief maker Billy Burnett, what would you add to the following:
How green are the datacentres, wind powered?
How do they funnel bandwidth demand?
Typical SLA agreements?
Let me know what you’d like to know by leaving a comment or dropping me an e-mail at matt (at) seldomseenkid (dot) co (dot) uk.
BBC Question Time on Twitter
I felt compelled to turn on my TV and watch Question Time this week after seeing the vast number of twitter updates talking about the program, in which, the panel politicians were getting berated by the audience. This is indicative of an interesting behavioural change as the online world becomes more intwined with the offline.
It used to be the case that something would happen on TV and then you’d go and talk about it in a forum or leave a message on a board. Now we are being driven to engage with the offline event, because of the interest in it online.
According to a Forrester report from June last year,
“Now that broadband has reached 72% penetration among Internet users in Europe and is almost ubiquitous in some European countries, consumers are spending more time online engaged in dozens of new bandwidth-heavy activities.”
“A global survey from Accenture recently confirmed that consumers were rapidly adopting multiple viewing platforms for TV. There were 13-point increases in the number who would watch content on personal computers (74 per cent in 2009 against 61 per cent in 2008) and on mobile devices (45 per cent in 2009 versus 32 per cent in 2008).”
This, of course, demonstrates that watching TV over the internet is a) easier and b) more widespread (but we al know that anyway).
But is the Internet driving us back to watch TV we wouldn’t have otherwise? With iPlayer and 4oD for example, you can watch shows retrospectively. But what about that principle happening in real time?
bbcqt and Question Time were both in the top ten trending topics on Twitter – was I the only person on Twitter to be tempted to turn my tv on and find out what I was missing? Indeed will the same have occurred with Eurovision?
The key thing here, is to decipher whether this is happening because people want to become a part of something that they are missing out on to contribute to the discussion, or if they want to see what is happening just to be a part of it.
How to pitch to bloggers
Pitching, or selling in, a story to bloggers as a PR can be quite daunting. Just how to do it, if it’s your first tentative steps in to engaging with the blogosphere, can be difficult to fathom. Now, many bloggers will get ‘bad’ pitches from PRs who just haven’t done their homework, and this is inexcusable. But just what is a ‘bad’ pitch?
To me, there are two types of bad pitch:
1) Unresearched
2) Badly written
And it is the former of the two which usually gets most bloggers’ backs up, and rightly so. If, as a PR, you do not take the time to look at the blog you’re going to be sending your e-mail to, why should the blogger be at all bothered by your contact? Indeed, unresearched could also be identified as spam, depending on the tone of the e-mail.
So, let’s help out the PRs here – it might not necessarily be their (my/our) fault. The best way to correct a problem is to address it, work out where the errors are, change them, and try again. So let’s work through a practical example shall we?
I received an e-mail pitch a few weeks ago and it (and the subsequent pushy follow up e-mail) riled and amused me a little. I have for the sake of identification, removed all of the distinguishing features of the pitch. I do not intend to name and shame (this time), this is an exercise that I hope will stimulate a debate. I will not publish the PRs name, agency or contact details because I do not intend on harming the PR or the PR agency’s reputation. I want to help them and others like them to develop and become better. This is not saying that I have all the answers, this is putting forward how I would go about sending the same press release.
* * *
Hello,
Please find attached the xxx official press release which describes the results of research undertaken in xxx by xxx, a xxx at the xxx and the xxx in xxx.
The study concludes that adding xxx xxx or xxx (xxx xxx xxx) training to a xxx (weight loss) diet can help achieve a sustained long-term weight loss of xxx in adults. In that contention it appears that xxx et al have drawn the conclusion that xxx training on a xxx machine incorporating a range of exercises including squats , lunges, calf raises, push ups and abdominal crunches is as good as conventional exercise ( group cycling, swimming, running step aerobics and general muscle strengthening exercises) in helping initiate and maintain weight loss.
Importantly xxx exercise on a xxx machine appears to be better than conventional exercise in reducing xxx more than conventional exercise in xxx and in this regard could prove a viable alternative to weight lifting. Visceral adipose tissue is the fat tissue between the xxx. It is this fat that is a major health concern as there is a strong correlation between xxx and the xxx as heart disease, hypertension as well as diabetes.
xxx however does not want people to think that the xxx can do it all on its own. xxx is clear that a healthy diet together with appropriate aerobic exercise… (see the xxx regime used in the study ) is vital and that there are no short cuts available. “xxx generic quote xxx” xxx says.
This data is formal confirmation of anecdotes which surround the use of this xxx and adds another weapon to the armoury of those professionals and individuals seeking to manage obesity and so improve health outcomes.
Please do let me know if you need any further information or would like to see the full study.
Kind Regards,
xxx
* * *
So, first things first: ‘Hello’ just will not do. What is the blogger’s name? There is nothing lazier than not finding out the blogger’s name if it is available, especially if there’s a big fat about page at the top of the blog, or a description box near the top of the blog.
Secondly, do not start your first paragraph with ‘Please find attached’; a) I don’t want an attachment unless I ask for one b) what story are you trying to get me to engage with OR introduce yourself before trying to sell me something.
And thirdly, don’t copy and paste or even paraphrase the study (which you’ve already attached) into 5 paragraphs. You’re putting something in front of me and telling me to read it, not asking if it’s of interest and if i’d like to know more.
So, with this example I would have structured the initial e-mail something like this:
Hi Matt,
My name is Matt Churchill, I work for Suchandsuch PR on behalf of Suchandsuch Client.
{Include a link to both your agency and the client so that if the blogger wants to know more, they can find out. This eliminates the need for a full explanation in to what you and your client are about}
After reading your blog, I thought that a new piece of research from Suchandsuch would be of interest.
{Include why you think it’s relevant; ask yourself how it’s relevant and what the blogger’s readers will get from it}
The key themes from the study say that…
{Pick three key findings, and fit them into no more than two sentences}
If you’d like to know more, we can send you the study in full, or you can find out a bit more on xxx website.
{DO NOT ATTACH THE STUDY. Clear? Cracking. If you can point the blogger in a direction where there’s more info or the study in full, complete with pictures, audio or video, ace}
Best wishes / kind regards,
Matt
This keeps the content of the e-mail down to a minimum so it is as unobtrusive as possible. Hopefully the tone that you take will make the blogger want to know a little bit more and pick up their interest.
This can be a hell of a culture shock for PRs who are used to the full bodied press release, but, as with any PR approach, it needs to be tailored specifically. You wouldn’t target a top tech journalist without at least including their name would you?
Approaching a blogger is in a way, the ‘perfect’ form of communication. Perfect as in perfect anarchy, not perfect as in Watford’s defence. It is communication at the most basic level, but the hardest to do well. If we work together, instead of picking fights, Journalists, bloggers and PRs might be able to break down the current barriers which stand in the way of providing quality news and features for our respective audiences.
Social Networking Annoys Employers (depending on who you believe)
A new Deloitte LLP study claims that 60% of executives have a right to know what their employees get up to on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, especially at work.
Indeed in October last year, ‘an online survey of 1000 Australian employees found 55 per cent said their boss had banned sites such as Facebook and MySpace’. Some bosses go further and fire their employees after monitoring their online activity – a practice I deem highly unethical.
However, a TUC briefing document from 2007, ‘Facing up to Facebook‘, says: “A number of employers have moved to ban use of Facebook at work… In some cases this may be an over-reaction.
Handled properly, personal access to the Internet during lunch breaks could be a valued benefit for staff, and also help employees develop useful IT skills.”
Indeed, another survey found that ‘both salaried and hourly workers are finding ways to use Web 2.0 (social) media at work, for work purposes’, something which, in the 21st Century should be a right, not a luxury.
If of course Facebook is banned at work, there are ways around it…
Where I find the contradiction, is other studies which say that, for example, ‘one in five employers use social networks to find employees‘.
Which is right?
I think it depends on the Industry you’re in. Likelihood is that if you are in the media, the majority of bosses will encourage their employees to use social networks to interact and engage, whereas if you are in retail and on the shop floor, tweeting will indeed be a distraction.
JournalistTweets
Cision, a media monitoring company, have launched JournalistTweets, a Twitter index of Journalists from the UK and the US.
With multiple feeds delivering real-time tweets from reporters, freelancers, bloggers and broadcasters, JournalistTweets (www.journalisttweets.com) is the first service to offer journalists’ Twitter content sorted by areas of interest.
Building on Cision’s award-winning expertise in creating platforms to connect media and communications professionals, JournalistTweets has been developed as a networking tool. The site allows journalists to discover new connections in their own industry and provides PR professionals with an extra level of intelligence – journalists’ interests in real-time.
“Journalists are increasingly using Twitter as a communications tool for finding sources, connecting with each other, and sharing interesting and useful links,” said Peter Granat, CEO of Cision Europe. “By identifying top journalists and organising their tweets by topic, Cision’s JournalistTweets offers real-time monitoring of news research and reporting – and an instant snapshot of top-of-mind issues.”
The service initially offers six feeds of journalist tweets: five from North America including an overall feed and topic-specific feeds for journalists covering technology, business and finance, lifestyle and entertainment and health subject areas, as well as UK content. Feeds from other regions, as well as new ways of organising them, will be added as the platform develops.
Users can currently choose to view content from “top tweeters,” and search all journalist names and content of Twitter streams to quickly identify key individuals and issues. JournalistTweets also allows users to respond to tweets directly from the site.
Twitter is becoming an invaluable resource and today’s launch is demonstrative of the evolution of the PR/Journalist relationship.
