The Rise and Rise of Social Media in the UK

Over at the We Are Social blog, Robin Grant points towards research from Hitwise showing that 10.09% of all UK internet visits over the Christmas period were to ‘Social Networking and Forums’:

"The successes of Facebook and YouTube, along with similar sites, meant that social networks accounted for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits during Christmas week. For the week ending 27/12/08, our Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums category accounted for 10.09% of all UK Internet visits, the first ever time it has passed the 10% threshold."

Robin Goad, Research Director at Hitwise UK

Here's the graph showing the rise in internet traffic to social networking sites over the past 12 months:

UK Social Media traffic Dec '07 - Dec '08

The trend also applies to Twitter:

UK Internet visits to Twitter Jul '07 - Jul '08

The post on We Are Social pulls out another quote from Robin Goad that highlights the key facts about the rise in visits to Twitter:

"UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there."

It all makes for positive reading for those operating in the space and I'm sure it won't be long before Twitter becomes one a 'mainstream' social network, as many are predicting.

The full set of in-depth data is available in Hitwise’s UK Social Networking Update. Thanks goes to Robin Grant for flagging the research to me.

The End of Embargoes?

Michael Arrington wrote a piece on TechCrunch today that proclaims the "Death of the Embargo":

"All this stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories... One annoying thing for us is when an embargo is broken. That means that a news site goes early with the news despite the fact that they’ve promised not to. The benefits are clear - sites like Google News and TechMeme prioritize them first as having broken the story. Traffic and links flow in to whoever breaks an embargo first."

But the digital world means that embargoes have long been dead in this PR specialism.

Bloggers don't work 9 til 5 - well, not on their blogs anyway. Most of them will have day jobs with all of the responsibility that entails and so will only get the chance to blog in their spare time. This means that they just don't have time to sit and wait on an embargo.

If they do get paid to write for a blog or online news site, they are getting paid to get the news first. In the world where a hit on Digg can increase traffic by ridiculous amounts, or - as Arrington points out - being the first to break a story to gets you on the front page of TechMeme and another substantial increase in traffic, it is against the journalist's best interests to wait on an embargo, especially if they know that another publication is getting the same story with the same embargo.

As anyone who has seen Will Ferrell's Talledega Nights will know, "If you're not first, you're last".

This isn't a solution, but if a PR agency wanted to get their clients on a wide range of blogs and online news sites, they wouldn't bother with an embargo - ever. Instead, they should spend time on actually making their announcements newsworthy and targeted at the right publications, time that would have otherwise been spent explaining to journalists and bloggers what the embargo was. This means that the journalist will want to break the story before anyone else and therefore you'll get a range of publications who are actually interested the news writing a piece on it.

But Arrington does give an exception for when embargoes will be honoured:

"We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively, so we know there won’t be any mistakes. There are also a handful of people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes."

So the solution is to build up a trusted relationship with the journalists and bloggers that you are conducting outreach to and give them a strong story so that they can guarantee that the news will be of interest to their readers. Isn't this the case with traditional journalism? When did the rules change for digital PR?

Newsworthy announcements given to journalists that you have built trusted relationships with. Just because embargoes may now be extinct, it doesn't mean that the basic rules of PR are.

There's more excellent discussion on this subject in the comments of the original post and over at Mahalo. Drew Benvie also covers the post here (complete with reference to grey hairs!) and Brian Solis gives an insider's perspective here.

Update: Jonathan Hopkins pointed out this delightful little site this morning, The Embargo Killer.

GoodGym's Social Innovation Camp Presentation

Those good people from the Good Gym have put up their good presentation that was presented to the good people at Social Innovation Camp.

Take a look through the presentation and if you fancy doing some, er, good yourself then get in touch with the guys at Good Gym - I'm sure they'll like to hear from any keen runners out there!

GoodGym's SICamp presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: sicamp goodgym)

Social Innovation Camp – 5-7 December 2008

Wow, what a weekend!

Social Innovation Camp 2 (The Revenge!) was an amazing experience – tiring, draining, seemingly unending, but fun, fulfilling and infinitely rewarding.

Around 60 people descended onto 7 different ideas trying to make positive social change to bring them from the glint of an idea into a project that could be taken on past the weekend. The key idea was to bring together those with the ideas for social change together with the people with the technical knowledge to bring those ideas to life using the web.

I was part of the Carbon Co-Op team, led by Jonathan Atkinson, a 32 year old environmentalist from Manchester. I think that our group had an excellent balance of ideas people, front end developers, back end developers, project managers, facilitators, designers, creatives, copy writers, and business strategists. That's quite a lot of roles between just 7 people, which shows how we all wore various hats over the weekend. The finished project was great, the presentation went well, and - despite technical difficulties meaning we weren't able to show what the guys built over the weekend - we were all really proud of what we had achieved.

The final presentations were played to a packed house on Sunday afternoon at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. The room wasn't filled just by those who gave up their time for the weekend but also a wide range of supporters, well-wishers and those curious to find out what the end results were.

The judges were assessing the projects on three criteria:

1.People power
2.Technology not just for geeks
3.Proof of potential

I won't go through how each presentation went, as most presentations had technical difficulties during the presentation which meant that some of the projects couldn't be shown in full. Instead, here's a list of the projects, a paragraph describing the idea behind each one, and where you can go to find out more:

Access City - www.accesscity.co.uk
Getting round London can be difficult for anyone, whatever your obstacle - mobility, buggies or heavy bags. Search AccessCity for the easiest routes and help build the real view by adding your own experiences.

Carbon Co-Op - carbonco-op.sicamp.org
The Carbon Co-Op is a social network that connects people who want to buy low carbon technologies together. The project aims to help cut carbon emissions and energy use from people's homes by bringing people from local communities together to bulk buy the renewable energy resources that they need.

Post Post - postal.felixcohen.co.uk
This site makes it easier to stop junk mail. Users enter their name, address and a password, and when they enter they state which company has been spamming them. The site does the rest, sending a polite letter to the firm asking them to remove your details.

Useful Visitors - www.uvisitors.org
How many of us went abroad this year and had some spare time? This site aims to connect travellers with a spare hour or two while travelling to volunteer for local projects that need their skills. The site isn't live yet, but it should be soon as it was one of the most developed projects over the weekend.

Own Grown - owngrown.sicamp.org
An online community for people who want to eat and grow ultra local, real food. It's an alternative to the ethical black hole of supermarkets and the worthy but overpriced farmers' markets.

We-Need.org - http://metade.org/code/weneed/
This is an assessment system for people who need social support and care, where results from user generated data could be plotted on a national map that will give a localised picture of regional need across the country.

And the winners...

Good Gym - www.sicamp.org/?page_id=270
The idea is for runners to visit hosuse bound disabled people during their runs. Athletes run useful errands instead of pounding a useless treadmill in the gym, and the disabled people act as 'coaches', getting the benefit of human interaction and a newspaper, or fruit or their National Lottery numbers done.

The Guardian have written two articles about the weekend here and here, which make for interesting reading even if you weren't able to make it along.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend with some truly amazing projects taking shape over the weekend. Congratulations to everyone involved, the eventual winners, Good Gym, and a big thanks to those good folks who organised the whole event. I'm looking forward to following the progress of the projects after the weekend and look forward to going to Social Innovation Camp 3!

Tweeple at Social Innovation Camp

This weekend, I'm down at Social Innovation Camp, an experiment in using social technology for social change, where lots of geeks and social entrepreneurs are coming together to try and bring 7 ideas to life, all with the aim making real social change.

At 2gether08, I found it useful to create a list of all the twitterers attending to try connect people, help meet new people and keep track of all the chatter on the Twittersphere about the event. Lots of other people found it useful too as I got lots of request fro people who wanted to be added to the list.

So here (with the help of our friend Twitter Search) is a list of tweeple at Social Innovation Camp. Hopefully people will start following each other, join in the conversation,and ultimately add to the event.

You can follow the event on Twitter Search here and the main Twitter stream for the event is at www.twitter.com/sicamp.

Here's the list, but if I've missed anyone out, let me know and I'll add them on!

@benrmatthews
@greenman
@chrishuer
@dominiccampbell
@kalv
@ferrero_rocher
@louisecampbell
@chris_d_adams
@mrperplexed
@sicross
@lowwintersun
@accesscity

My Mental Health Five-a-Day

If eating five fruit and veg a day is good for your body, then what's the equivalent for your mind?

That's the question that Andy Gibson asks, the guy behind Mindapples, a social movement to promote individual self-management of mental wellbeing:

"The original “5-a-day” campaign encouraged people to take care of their physical health through simple daily activities, and we want to do the same thing for mental health. We aim to create a stigma-free public debate about mental wellbeing, simply by asking everybody the question: “What’s your five-a-day?”

Dominic Campbell was kind enough to tag me in this meme of sorts, so I scratched my noggin' for a wee bit and plucked out the following five:

• Excercise - Nothing clears my mind like exercise, whether it's going for a run on a crisp, clear winter's morning, getting down and dirty on a muddy football pitch, or pushing iron in a weights session to sculpt those guns. 

• Reading - I like to break a mental sweat too and find reading a wide range of books, news sites, blogs and the occassional weekend newspaper helps keep up with the ideas of the day, helps form my own perspectives on the world, and helps me relax at the same time.

• Writing - As the survey suggests, a brain dump onto a clean white sheet of paper is a great way of making my mind feel like, er, a clean white sheet of paper. My colleague Drew says I'm good at keeping a mental checklist, but I always feel better when it's down on paper and not running through my mind.

• Playing - I honestly really like playing computer games. Not only does it help me destress after a long day, but I think it helps with my reflexes, coordination (thank you Nintendo Wii) and keeps my brain active. I like to think that computer games are like chess, but with more headshots.

• Switching Off - Perhaps the biggest way to keep mentally healthy for me is simply to push that power button and switch off all of the various gadgets and technology that's become an intrinsic part of our modern lives. Taking a walk with no electronic beeps, noises, or whirring to disturb you is perhaps the most refreshing way to cleanse the mind.
  

That's the mental health floss that keeps my mind fresh, so I'm going to tag Jeddy Jeddison, Drewbie, Tommy Tomson, Dommy Domson, and Jazzy J to hear their thoughts.

But why not take the survey yourself here? After all, it will get your mind going just thinking about what keeps your mind going!

Peter Schiff was right...

...and was laughed at:

Wii are shaking it up

Normally I get annoyed if for some reason I'm not able to take content from one site and share it with my friends through whatever channel I choose. Whether it's via email, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious or embedded content on a blog, it makes sense to make your content as shareable as possible.

However, this YouTube video for the new Wario Land Shake It! game on the Nintendo Wii is the exception to the rule.

What appears as a normal YouTube video actually descends into an engaging experience that plays on our normal experience of social media, yet actually mimics the gameplay mechanics of the real-world product. This experience is also replicated on the game's minisite, which requires you to shake the menu items before you can move on to the next page.

It's an example of traditional advertising making forays into social media and will leave you hesitating over whether to play that next YouTube video or not. Then again, I might not want that happening to my Twitter stream...

(Hat Tip - Outside Line)

Magpie: How to lose followers and alienate tweeple

There's a lot of chatter on Twitter this morning about Be-A-Magpie,  a service that will pay you to insert advertisements into your Twitter stream.

According to TechCrunch, advertisers pay on a cost-per-thousand-impression basis, and the ads are promised to be delivered to relevant audiences based on keywords. That means Be-A-Magpie will analyze the content of your Twitter messages to see if there is a match to particular advertisers. The service auto-determines the number of ads to insert per legitimate Twitter message - the default is one ad for every five tweets. The service inserts the ads automatically by storing your Twitter credentials.

The TechCrunch Twitter account, with 31,000 followers, can earn a whopping €14,410.51 per month. By comparison, my Twitter account can earn a paltry €149.11  per month.

However, there has been a lot backlash against the service. One of the main reasons seems to be that Be-A-Magpie is aginast the ethos that the twitter community has created, namely to share what's interesting to you at that moment, not what someone has paid you to share with others.

As for disclosure, a #magpie hashtag is added to each Tweet. You can also see who has signed up for the service already as Be-A-Magpie are seeding messages through Twitter to get more people signed up, as this photo from TechCrunch shows:

Scobleiser has started an interesting disucssion over on FriendFeed which discusses whether Be-A-Magpie should be banned from Twitter. A lot of people are saying that they will unfollow anyone who starts using the service as it is considered spam.

My favourite comment comes from Enrique Gutierrez:

"Social Media is about sharing interesting things with people who find those things interesting, not about soapboxing crap and spamming others with random junk. Magpie is a service that doesn't understand that, and though it attempts (poorly) at doing some level of justice to spamming, it's still spam/ads and unwelcomed in my book"

Jeremiah Owyang gives his take on the service here. Neville Hobson also gives his take on what Twitter with ads might look like, which explores some of the issues around advertising on Twitter, although the post doesn't look specifically at Be-A-Magpie.

No doubt @Ev and the others from Twitter will be taking a close look at the service and whether it should be allowed on Twitter. Their terms and conditons don't prohibit this kind of service, but if the backlash continues, it may well be worth their time to amend its terms.

I won't be using the service, but it will be interesting to see who does from those I follow. Although, if they do subscribe to Be-A-Magpie, I for one won't be following them for much longer.

Is a public relations degree worth it?

Over at Rock Star PR , Jed Hallam ponders the value of a university degree in public relations:

"I didn’t study public relations at university, I studied English Literature and, typical for the industry, I fell into PR. But what if I would’ve always have wanted to work in PR and would’ve studied it at university? Would that make me a better PR professional? Or would it have simply prepared me for the technical aspects of public relations; the format of the press release, the communications audit, the strategy, the three month plan, the research, the analysis and on and on… Can this be learnt on the job or must it be taught?"

John Burg left a comment on the post that points out that even the best degrees are useless uinless you can convert theory into practise:

"You cannot learn to ride a bike until you get on it. But if you first study physics, balance and riding on a stationary cycle, you will be better prepared once you hit the ground. However, just because you don’t have that piece of paper doesn’t mean that you are any less qualified than the next guy. All it means is that you don’t have the perspective of a trained “practitioner”. PR and Communications are a human sciences. We invented them, we drive them, we are them. If you intuitively “get it” you can do it. But a little background, some perspective, some experience goes a long way."

I feel personally that a degree in PR is the same as any other degree in the arts and humanities - unless there is a strong vocational element (as Richard Millington points out) then the degree won’t prepare you that well for working in ‘the real world’. History, Philosophy, English Literature, Sociology, etc. - all very good degrees with no clear career path at the end.

As such, it is the experience gained outside of these degrees that is more likely to prepare you for working life, whether its playing sports, joining a society, or taking up work experience as part of the degree.

It’s only when students/graduates get into a real working situation with real clients that their skills are put into practise. As Vikki Chowney tweeted just yesterday:

"Graduates; there’s nothing like real industry experience - now you really start learning"

This is an element that Bright One is trying to help with, offering students real life clients as part of their degrees - even if they’re not studying PR - so that they can learn on the job and do something for the social good at the same time. It's an opportunity to gain real world experience with real clients that will translate into a higher level of professionalism in years to come, using skills learned from studying in real world situations, benefiting both current studies and future employment.

Those who study for a public relations degree will benefit by gaining a better understanding of the communications industry and the everyday workings of a PR agency. There is a gap here that posts like Jed's highlight, a gap that Bright One hopes to help fill.

What inspires you to blog?

I've been tagged in a meme by Tom Malcolm, who was in turn tagged by Stephen Waddington to continue a meme that he was tagged on to by Ged Carroll on what inspires him to keep up his blog posts.

(See all that tagging by the people on the meme who already have a working relationship with each other? That's today's top tip on "How to start a meme").

So, what inspires me to keep up with my blog posts?

• Twitter - Probably first and foremost, this is where most of my inspiration for things to write about comes from, either through conversation, observation or procrastination (e.g. clicking on a URL when you have nothing better to do).
  
• News - Looking for stuff to blog about always makes me keep up with the latest news and issues in the big wide world.
  
• Writing - I think learning how to jot down thoughts in a clear and cohesive manner is an essential skills in the workplace in general. Plus I enjoy writing.
  
• Ideas - Whether it's an idea I've been thinking about and wanted to test to my blog readers, or an idea that I came across somewhere else but wanted to share, the blog is the place for it to go.
  
• People - At the end of the day, this is what it all comes back to. My inspiration to keep up with my blog posts comes from the people, whether to share something with them, hear what they have to say about something, or help me to connect with them.

If you want to read what other people have said inspires them to keep on blogging, then here's a selection of responses to the meme (See? More tagging!):

• Ged Carroll - Looking for inspiration
• Tom Malcolm - Shoestring inspiration
• Drew Benvie - Inpiration to blog
• JonnyRosemont - Looking for inspiration
• Matthew Watson - What inspires your blog posts?

To continue the meme, I'm going to tag Dommy W, Philly S, Timmy B, Jazzy C and by special request, Jeddy H (yet more tagging!).

What inspires you to blog? Let me know in the comments below or even carry on the meme yourself - just don't forget to tag me!

Can I have my spider back please?

A little bit of Friday fun to round the week off, courtesy of Miss Annie Woodhead:

Enabled by Innovation

Our friends over at Enabled by Design (EbD) have been very busy indeed as they have just been accepted onto Innovation Exchange's Next Practice programme, which aims to tackle the problem of innovative ideas that struggle for the resources to sustain or scale by bringing people together to grow help grow third sector innovations.

For those of you who don't know, EbD supports anyone looking to make adjustments to their lives through the use of assistive equipment be it as a result of disability, injury or personal identified need. They aim to make independent living more accessible through the use of clever and stylish modern design.

The Innovation Exchange programme that EbD have been accepted for also includes seed funding through NESTA’s Innovation Fund, which the EbD team will be using to build an innovation pipeline website, where users can share their frustrations (or loves) of different gadgets, gizmos and equipment and work with others to suggest solutions and how improvements can be made.

For a better idea of what EbD are working towards, you can find their offical post here and below is a selection of photos of what a kitchen designed by EbD might look like:

Congratulations to everyone at EbD and we're looking forward to seeing what you get up to next!

(Cross posted to the Bright One blog)

Hotwire heads up 'preeple' table

Following on from yesterday's post on Stephen Davies' list of preeple on Twitter, Michael Litman has produced a table listing agencies' presence on Twitter, which is aimed as a compliment to Stephen’s alphabetically ordered list.

I'm sure the list will get updated as more people add themselves to the list through comments so the table may change, but at the time of writing Hotwire heads up the table with a total of 16 preeple without including any twitterers from it's sister agency, Skywrite Communications. Axicom comes next and it's good to see the Rainier team with 11 Twitter users.

Although the table might not mean that much as the agencies listed vary in size and as such will have differing levels of people on Twitter, it is nice to see that Hotwire has a lot of active people on Twitter and how we recognise it as a useful tool throughout the agency, not just in our digital media practise.

Here's the list as it appears on Michael's blog:

1. Hotwire (16)
2. Axicom (12)
3. Rainier (11)
4. Edelman (9)
5. Lewis (9)
6. Ruder Finn (9)
7. Cow (8)
8. Berkeley (6)
9. Freelance (6)
10. Wolfstar (6)
11. Hill & Knowlton (5)
12. Porter Novelli (5)
13. Six Degrees (5)
14. Text 100 (5)
15. ITV (4)
16. Liberate Media (4)
17. Mantra (4)
18. Microsoft (4)
19. Waggener Edstrom (4)
20. Weber Shandwick (4)
21. Diffusion (3)
22. Kaizo (3)
23. O2 (3)
24. Shiny Red (3)
25. Wildfire PR (3)
26. Fishburn Hedges (2)
27. Nelson Bostock (2)
28. Punch Communications (2)
29. Racepoint Group (2)
30. Splendid Communications (2)
31. Staniforth (2)
32. University of Warwick (2)

Jeeple and Preeple

Stephen Davies of 3W PR has produced two blog posts of note recently (not that is other posts are rubbish, just these ones have garnered more attention than normal...).

The first post lists journalists in the UK who are on Twitter. The second does much the same, listing PR people in the UK who have a profile on Twitter.

So far, there are 85 journalists on the list compared to 137 PR people by the last count. That's almost twice as many 'preeple' on Twitter as there are 'jeeple' (using Stephen's terms), and the list of PR professionals is growing as people leave comments below the post to be added on to the list.

What does this actually mean anything though (apart from the fact that journalists are now going to get contacted more often by PROs on Twitter, PROs will get contacted by recruiters through Twitter, and Stephen will get a lot more hits to his blog)?

It has been documented that there are currently around three times more PR professionals than there are journalists in the UK, so it might come as no surprise that the list of hacks is longer. 

It might also be an indication of the varying levels of usefulness of Twitter as a tool for both professions:

Journalists can source stories and potential snippits of information on Twitter much quicker than most other tools, tweet stories they've recently published, and use it for sourcing information for articles. There's a much longer list of uses and some good discussion on the subject here.

PRs can use Twitter to have a conversation with their cleint's market and make and mange connections with customers, bloggers and other stakeholders, keep in touch and build relationships with the  media and influential bloggers, monitor mentions of their company or client brands, announce special deals,  post live updates on events or conferences and promote blog posts, webinars, interesting client news and more.

I'm sure that journalists will argue with me on this one, but it may just be that PR professionals have a wider range of users for Twitter than journalists and these uses are more valuable to their work (BTW, this isn't me trying to get journalists to leave comments on this post so we can find out more clearly how they use Twitter...).

Then again, it might also be an indication that PR professionals have more time to waste scouring t'internet and posting up to Twitter ;)

What do you think? Do you feel that there is an imbalance in the number of journalists on Twitter compared to PR people? Is this a bad thing? What does it mean for both journalists and PR professionals?

Geek + Heart = Social Innovation Camp

Here's a video from the guys at Social Innovation Camp, which takes a rather special take on what the event is all about is all about.

The video is a great way of illustrating how Social Innovation Camp encourages the use of social technology for social change - just make sure you watch with the sound turned on!

I caught the end of the first event this year and everyone seemed to come out buzzing from the event, especially our friends at Enabled by Design who picked up first prize.

The next Social Innovation Camp takes place on 5th-7th December, with ideas for submission closing on Friday 7th November 2008. So make sure that you find out more and enter your ideas by checking out the entry page here.

Getting Hitched and Getting Ditched in Gaming

I've spotted two little romantic tidbits from the gaming community that go hand in hand to show just how much gaming is becoming a part of our every day lives.

Firstly, this video from Little Big Planet shows how someone created a level in order to propose to his girlfriend. According to Jed05, "My (now) Fiancee was playing the level. She was so shocked she kept playing and knew I was filming. Afterwords we hugged, she cried, and I gave her an engagement ring":

(I like the little gasp of surprise at 0:23)

Secondly, news that a woman has been arrested in Japan after she allegedly killed her virtual husband in a popular video game. The 43-year-old was reportedly "furious at finding herself suddenly divorced in the online game Maplestory."

Here's what the BBC article had to say:

"Police say she illegally accessed log-in details of the man playing her husband, and killed off his character. The woman, a piano teacher, is in jail in Sapporo waiting to learn if she faces charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating data. If charged with the offences, and convicted, she faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000."

So one couple getting married and one couple getting 'divorced', all through the power of gaming. After all, as The Magic Numbers said, love is just a game.

How to write a "great blogger pitch"

My colleague Drew Benvie was sent an "interesting" pitch from a PR firm, which you can read about more on his blog here.

The pitch has received a lot of criticism, not from Drew (as he left the post fairly neutral) but from the comments below the post. These include: "it just seems like a load of waffle"; "what strikes me is that there is no sense of personality in the pitch"; "the overuse of the word aggressive is, well, aggressive"; and - my favourite from Luis Levy - "it's almost as if Word wrote that pitch by itself based on crappy Microsoft algorithms."

Perhaps a bit harsh, but these criticisms could have been easily avoided.

One of the things that I have found most appealing about people involved in social media is the ethos of sharing. Sharing is a good thing, especially when trying to pitch a blogger, as there are plenty of examples and tips on how to pitch a blogger. Now, I'm not going to dive into a long, long list of all sorts of tips on how best to pitch to a blogger. Instead, I'm going to show what the PR professional from 5WPR might have done better, even as some first steps.

In the interests of research, I simply googled the term "great blogger pitch" and came up with the following results:

How to Pitch to Bloggers - 21 Tips
www.problogger.net/archives/2007/10/30/how-to-pitch-to-bloggers-21-tips/

The Jeff Pulver Blog: PR 203: How to Pitch a Blogger
pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/008349.html

Will Video for Food » Best Blogger Pitch Letter Ever
willvideoforfood.com/2008/06/06/best-blogger-pitch-letter-ever/

How to Pitch a Blogger » BloggerDesign.com
www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/blogger-relations-101/

Attention marketers: do you know how to pitch a blogger or podcaster?
www.krishnade.com/blog/2007/how-to-pitch-a-blogger-or-podcaster/

How not to pitch a blogger: Church of the Customer Blog
www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2007/04/8_bad_pr_pitche.html

Micro Persuasion: How Not to Pitch a Blogger
www.micropersuasion.com/2005/02/how_not_to_pitc.html


I hope I'm not being too unfair here, but surely it wouldn't have been too much effort to find out what other people have said on the subject? After all, every one of the bloggers on this list would have had to have started somewhere. If it took those bloggers a while to get the pitch just right, then they've done the hard work for you by repeating the exercise until they have found a way that gives them a good chance of being well received when/if they pitch to a blogger.

This situation can be repeated over and over - if you're not sure on how to go about something in the social media sphere, google it and there is sure to be a helpful article from Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Seth Godin or other brilliant social media strategists to at least help get you started on whatever you're thinking of doing.

While I don't think that there's such a thing as the perfect blog pitch - after all, I believe that every pitch should be tailored for every situation - if all I have to do to pick those social media guru's brains is to google a certain phrase, then I count myself lucky that they have been willing to share their expertise with the rest of us. When we believe our expertise to be of use to someone else, we should be sharing that knowledge too.

So how do you write a great blogger pitch?

Google it. The answer's out there somewhere.

Three For Three

That Rockstar PR, Jed Hallam, has started his very first meme and such as this online community is all about sharing and collaborating on all sorts of wonderful things on the interwebz, I thought I'd pick up on the meme.

That, and Adam Lewis picked me as one of his three to pass the meme on to...

The title is "three for three" involving websites, cocktails and karaoke songs , and according to Mr Hallam it "must be fun". So here goes...

Top three non-work websites:

1. TED.com - Subtitled as "Ideas Worth Spreading", an hour watching videos on this site isa hundred times more inspirational/educational/fun then time watching any normal TV programme.
2. Drawn.ca - Spend an hour browsing through this Canada-based,  worldwide-appealling, illustration and cartooning blog to get those creative juices flowing
3. Postsecret.com - Updated every Sunday, this site is a gallery of postcard-sized images posted anonymously to unveil a secret. This is shared confessions in art form, and one site that is most revealing about the secret sides of human nature.

Top three Karaoke Songs:

1. Beat It - Michael Jackson - No one can 'beat' the King of Pop, especially at karaoke
2. Baywatch Theme - Best performed in a karaoke bar full of drunk students for the full effect
3. Mr Brightside - The Killers - Just a great, great song that everyone knows the words to

Top three cocktails:

1. Cubra Libre - One of the only good uses for Coca Cola (the other being the exploding mentos experiment) is to mix it with a double of dark rum and a wedge of lime for a smooth cocktail with an edge of vanilla
2. Strawberry Daiquiri - So sweet that you can't taste the alcohol. In fact, you will probably  get more of a buzz from the amount of sugar it contains rather than the alcohol in it
3. Bailey's Coffee - Not strictly a cocktail but more of a nightcap, this is one cup of coffee that is more likely to send you to sleep than keep you up at night

I'm going to pass it this meme-tastic bundle of fun on to:

Dommy W

Big Tim Bond

Miss Melanie Seasons

And in case you dind't know where the photo comes form, it's of The Three Amigos - a classic Steve Martin film.

Fry off to a flying start on Twitter

Mass excitement around the Twittersphere yesterday as national treasure Stephen Fry joined Twitter. Within 2 hours, Stephen had over 2,500 followers - with more being added constantly - in what must have been a record number of followers in such a short space of time.

To see the full scale of commotion, take a look at the Twitter Search on Mr Fry.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this was the fact that he was following a lot of people back, meaning that there were numerous squeals of delight when people received the "Stephen Fry is now following you on Twitter" email. When I received mine, I did actually let out a girly squeak and have since printed off said email, framed it, and it now hangs over my desk...

The thing that most interested me about Stephen joining Twitter is that he instantly has a mass of people talking to him (or about him) meaning that he won't have time to 'dip his toes in the water' as it were and find his feet with the service. Unless he has help behind the scenes - as some have commented - then he's been thrown in feet first, will be overwhelmed by the noise and may not see the value in Twitter.

In fact, Stephen has already sensed this himself as a few tweets have shown:

Most people I've spoken to on this subject feel that they gain the most out of Twitter when used to follow a select group of contacts and see how their conversations develop - "a manageable group of people to follow" as Kate Bevan put it.

If Stephen doesn't continue using Twitter then it will be a massive shame as we're all no doubt looking forward to such 140 character gems as "Golly, crumbs, heckamighty and all the powerful legal swears and cusses Twitter will allow."

Then again, Stephen has said that he will tweeting his travels around the world, all of which will be on his soon-to-be-overhauled website, www.stephenfry.com. So even if all of his 2,926 followers (at the last count) won't be able to strike up a conversation on Twitter with him, we'll at least have our days brightened by his occassional tweets.

Free Media Relations Campaign Up For Grabs

Shout! Communications, a London-based specialist broadcast PR consultancy, is inviting any registered charities to take part in a competition they are running as part of their pro bono initiative.

In previous years, they have chosen a charity to support put forward by a member of their team. In the past this has included Breast Cancer Campaign, the Victoria Cross and George Cross Associations and Hearing Dogs for the Deaf. This year Shout! have decided to widen the net and are inviting interested charities to take part in a competition.

First prize is a media relations campaign (radio, TV or online) worth up to £2,500. All you have to do is tell Shout!, in 300 words or fewer, why you'd like your nominated charity to win.

A panel of judges, including CIPR President Lis Lewis-Jones and PRCA Director General Francis Ingham, will decide the winner. The judges will base their decision on how good the campaign is, in terms of creativity and originality. They’ll also be looking at how suitable the campaign is for broadcast – that means having engaging and available spokespeople, good case studies where appropriate, possibly a news hook for the story and good picture and sound opportunities.    

All charities that enter will also be eligable for a 25% reduction off Shout!'s rate card for a period of 6 months. The deadline is  eop on Friday 7th November. For more information, take a look at the news section of Shout! Communication's website here.

He's So Hot(wire) Right Now

Just a quick note to welcome our newest recruit to the Hotwire family here at 33 Dallington Street.

Phil Sheard will be joining us from Plusnet where he has been for the past 7 years, more of which you can find out about at his blog here. Lately he's barely been off Twitter , so he's obviously got the hunger for the digital media mastery that we prize over here.

Phil has also assured me that he's been practising his milk warming skills in order to get in my good books straight away, so I'm looking forward to him joining Hotwire later this month!

Pixelated Poo

Tired of losing your blog audience due to toilet breaks?

Well now you can combat that by putting the online toilet on your blog so that your readers never have to be distracted when nature calls!

The advert is for ING, the Dutch financial institution. Given the recent financial turomil, perhaps this is a desperate attempt to stop their company from going "down the toilet"?

I'm not sure if pixelated poos will ever replace real ones, but this is a fun viral advert to play with. You can find out more about the online toilet at the mini site here where there are more goodies to find.

(Tip 'o the hat to Dom for flagging the site to me!)

Coffee Art

Right, I'm definitely going to perfect my coffee art skills so I can draw a picture of a dragon in my latte:

A Bright Idea with A Bright Future

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about Bright One, an intiative that I've been spearheading over the last few months and that launched last week.

Bright One is a communications agency aimed at charities, non-profits and social enterprises, run by volunteers from the industry who want to broaden their communication’s experience and use their expertise for social good. It aims to deliver high quality communications for charities, non-profit organisations and social enterprises, and in turn help them to reach those they are trying to help. You can find out more about Bright One's aims by going to the website here.

Bright One launched officially on Thursday 25 September with an appearance in PR Week, which you can read by clicking on the photo below.


I hope you agree that this is a great idea - everyone we've spoken to has said so and we know there are plenty of people out there who need our help, which is why an idea has become a working organisation.

You can follow us in Twitter, join our Facebook page, flag useful things to us using Delicious, and find out about the other social entrepreneurs we are working with over at Unltd World.

To get a better idea of what I'm up to over at Bright One, read the introduction post here.

Thoughts on the first ever Twestival

Wow.

For something that started from a conversation in the pub just two short months ago to an event that captured the interest of tweeple around the world, Twestival was a bigger success than any of us could have imagined.

The original idea for Twestival came about when Tom Malcolm (@tommalcolm), Tim Hoang (@timhoang) and I sat down over a few beers and decided that we wanted to organise a tweetup that raises money for a good cause at the same time.

But Twestival wouldn't have been anywhere near what it was without the amazing work from Amanda Rose (@amandita) and Renate Nyborg (@renatenyborg and Madhouse Collective), who gave up a lot of time to organise the event and really pushed to make Twestival so much bigger and better than originally planned. Amanda and Renate – if I haven't said it enough already, thank you so much.

Some of the reasons for the event's success that people have suggested are that it wasn't just a tech and early adopter event – tweeple from all walks of life came down to Doon to share a common love for Twitter. There was also a fairly even split of guys and gals, which we thought was a nice change from the normal sausage fests that tech events tend to be.

The charity aspect also appealed to a lot of people and charity that we donated all the profits to - The Connection – were so appreciative of all the donations they received, whether it was in money of food. The charity aspect will always be part of whatever we do next with Twestival.

I also managed to talk about a project I've launched. It's called Bright One - a communications agency aimed at charities, non-profits and social enterprises, run by volunteers from the industry who want to broaden their communication’s experience and use their expertise for social good. If you've got a moment please take a look at the site and get in touch with me if you want to find out more.

Of course you could say that the best part about the night was the nature of the tweeple. Every time I meet a fellow twitterer in real life they have always been the friendliest of people. Those I got to meet at Twestival and the friends I caught up are too many to name (and I'm sure I'll forget plenty), but it was a pleasure to see everyone who I follow on Twitter and meet those who I didn't follow (but now do!)

Lots of people have written their own thoughts on Twestival. Here are the blog posts that I've come across so far:

• TechCrunch UK
• Current TV
• Diffusion PR
• Huddle
• Londonist
• Sizemore
• Benjamin Ellis
• Social PRobiotic
• One Size Fits One
• Jazamatazz
• Richard
• This Is Now
• Fake Plastic Noodles
• The A to E
• Toodlepip
• Girl About Web
  

I'm sure there are a few more so let me know in the comments if I've missed any out and I'll update the list.

There's also a whole load of photos on Flickr, for which we'll start a group and collate everything, but in the meantime please tag any photos with #twestival so everyone can find them easily.

But my favourite part of the Twestival buzz comes from Twitter itself. Not only did Twitter blog about Twestival as a 'hot trend', but I've spent a good few hours looking over the vast amount of tweets that people have written about Twestival. Simply type 'Twestival' into Twitter Search and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks also need to go to the sponsors of Twestival – UnLtd World, Huddle, Diffusion PR, Tactile CRM, Winston & Strawn LLP, and Just Giving. Also a big shout out to the various people who donated prizes towards the raffle – Firebox.com, Wubud, Harper Collins, ITV, Forbidden Planet, Moo, WineLibrary.tv, Raffle.it, Reuters, Six Degrees PR and a small company called Twitter.

The organisers of this first ever Twestival are meeting up in the near future to discuss where we take it from here. With so much positive feedback and an obvious desire to do it again, we've got a few ideas of how we can make Twestival bigger and better.

In the meantime, if you have any ideas/feedback/money to give us for the next Twestival, or even just to let us know if you enjoyed the night and give us some love, then please leave a comment below.

See you at the next Twestival!

May Those Who Help The Most Win

Google has launched a number of new sites as part of its 10-year anniversary celebrations and one of the websites that caught my eye (well, a site that a friend flagged to me) is Project 10^100, which has been described as "a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."

Google explain more about their thinking behind the project:

"Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big. In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the simple wisdom that beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people. In other words, helping helps everybody, helper and helped alike."

The project is called Project 10^100 because 10100 is another way of expressing the number "googol," a one followed by one hundred zeroes. This expresses Google's goal of achieving great results through smart technology that starts small and scales dramatically over time to have a tremendous long-term impact. Project 10100 is a similar attempt to produce those kinds of scalable results by harnessing Google's users' insights and creativity.

It's a great idea as no one knows what ideas would help the most people. Google's project has the premise that maybe its hundreds of millions of users might. 

Google said that it would post a selection of the 100 best ideas and ask the public to choose 20 semi-finalists. Following this selection process an advisory board will select up to five final ideas.

I've got an idea that I'm thinking of submitting (more on this very soon), but in the meantime here is the official promo video:

Anyone who thinks they're too cool to use Twitter can leave

(Tip 'o the hat to Tim Masih!)

"Rapping" up the week

There's nothing I like better on a sunny Friday afternoon than a good old Search Engine Rap Battle:

"You're new system hasn't gotten many users,

They only use Vista because it came on their computers!"

The video below is of the battle between Google and MSN, but check out the official website for more!

Update!

It's always the way, isn't it?

You wait around for ages for a rap video viral to come along and then two appear at once!

This one is from Yell and after you've watched it you'll probably want a hip hop horse too:

And while we're here, what about an absolute classic from Flight of the Conchords, featuring the Hiphopopotamus and the Rhymenoceros:

Mobile Monday London - “Mobile Platforms”

After a summer break, MoMo London returned this week with a great event discussing the future of mobile platforms. Held at the usual venue,  CBI Conference Center in Centre Point Tower, the evening was sponsored by Yahoo! and facilitated by EMCC Software.

After the evening it was good to catch up with Andrew Grill - who showed me a cool mobile service that is sure to launch over here soon - and to meet Simon Maddox in the flesh after exchanging tweets.

Blog posts on the evening have already appeared from Simon Judge and Kai Hendry. Below are the notes I took on the evening, which I'm sure are far from comprehensive and may not make sense unless you were there, but I hope they prove useful in some shape or form:

Chair:

Annie Turner, TelecomsEurope.net

Panel Members:

Simon Rockman – Sony Ericsson

Nick Allot – CTO, OMTP

Msrko Balabanovc – LastMinute.com

Ben Last – EMCC

Ricardo Varela – Yahoo!

Platform fragmentation

• OMTP looking for consensus on key issues.
  

What do we mean by platforms?

• A cheap way to build an application
  
• OR What developers develops their applications for
  

Different platforms at both ends of the scale

• All pervasive, e.g. Text
  
• Other end of line – Symbian application, deeper user experience but not much penetration

In between user experience and market penetration is ideal, but doesn't give you a good return/monetisation

Web is fantastic for broad applications. For mobile applications, need access to things that classically present a security problem, e.g. access to contacts and location.

It's difficult to write apps for a sustainable business model. Only success story (apart from porn) is mobile ringtones.

How can we get consistency in what the web can gave to native mobile platforms so that it doesn't threaten security and viability of mobile applications/platforms?

Trying to find application environment that is ubiquitous, is quick to develop with, and quick to deploy to the end user.

It is the integration with the web that really adds to the richness of the user experience.

Computer games developers optimise for certain platforms, e.g. Brain Training for the Nintendo DS.

• Fragmentation of mobile platforms doesn't make this possible for mobile developers, unless you target a niche with a large audience, such as Blackberry users.
  
• Also made more complex by different languages and societies with different grades of mobile handsets around the world.

1 billion mobile phones sold around the world per year. 40% of those are Nokia handsets.

App stores could be tailored to who the consumer is, e.g. only present them with apps relevant to their handset.

Develop apps for Nokia Series 60 and Blackberry and you can capture the majority of the mobile app audience.

Apps that already exist on the web aren't interesting to mobile users. Those that are enhanced and unique to th mobile are a lot more interesting.

iPhone app store works because it is such a seamless experience. It is easy to connect to the internet, easy to connect to the app store, and easy to pay for items as it is billed to your iPhone account. If operators see this model working, they will replicate it and incorporate it into their own business model.

Writing apps for the web gives you 10s of millions of users, but for the mobile space only gives you a few million at most. The business model doesn't scale well.

Consumers who don't download apps are not averse to spending money, but disappointed with apps and games that they have downloaded. Web still gives a much richer user experience.

Lots of phones will not get more powerful, but they will get a lot cheaper. Phones will become to be priced 12-15 pounds. But for the next 2 billion people to enter the market by buying these phones this is still very expensive, e.g. a weeks wages.

Two ways of stopping fragmentation:

• 1 or 2 companies monopolise the market
  
• Operators and developers collaborate on a single platform

One of the biggest applications in India is having a torch on your phone – extremely useful to a large base of users, but no sustainable business model given their economic demographic

OMTP trying to construct a system which properly constructs trust in the system and completely removes the unneeded questions that users have to deal with. E.g. taking an application from one operator/mobile platform to another without having to re register of fill out more security certificates

Ben Whitaker: Users shouldn't ever have to deal with different languages for different phones or have to set up their own internet connections. The technology for a standardised WAP system is available but very few operators install it automatically.

Yahoo! Blueprint

• How are they going to make money out of this?
  
• The way they make money is to make their own applications. Yahoo's motivation behind releasing Yahoo Blueprint is to gain the audience and then monetise once the audience is there.
  
• Yahoo wants to get the reach so they only have one system for each different type of platform, e.g. Symbian, Java, etc

LastMinute.com aren't looking to see applications, but rather get people to buy stuff from LastMinute.com through using free applications on their phone.

• Using as a trial to see what the user uptake is in this space, e.g. what do users find useful?
  
• But only concentrated on Western European users and find mobile secondary to what users have on web at home or work.

Trying to resolve the fragmentation issue by bringing out your own solution will just result in ore fighting over the issue. The reason Firefox become so successful was that it started to do the same things as IE but make it better and with added features.

If a user doesn't have an internet connection on the phone, the app automatically detects this and completes the registration process through encrypted SMS texts.

Ladbrokes reported 250% uplift in users when they introduced full registration on mobile rather than on the web.

As with the web, we will see some standardisation at some point, but this has to come from something higher than a company or organisation. When this will happen is determined when it comes to the point when users say that this isn’t working

Customers didn't buy the Wii for the Wii, but they bought the Wii when they saw someone else playing Wii sports and bought the Wii so that they too could play Wii sports. It's a dot com phrase, but that 'killer app' which is easy to use, offers a rich experience and is easily shareable among users will make a lot of money even if it is on one platform.