I had to do this, if only to use the image.

(Unfortunately I do not have the skills to airbrush myself – never mind).

The election will be almost upon us and as sure as summer used to herald the thwack of willow on hippy or crusty, the election will have that most weary of images: senior politicians pointing up at unconvincing posters, surrounded by photographers clicking away as though the public could not wait to read about it next day in the papers.

There are exceptions.  Saatchi and Saatchi’s Labour Isn’t Working had a touch of genius and was devastatingly effective.

But even I hoped this specimen might have dampened enthusiasm for the thrusting billboard campaign, I am disappointed:

I prefer:

Back to the serious point after these cheap jibes.  The conversations online are affecting the effectiveness of the traditional billboard.  This can be seen no more clearly than with my www.davidcameron.com

Within the time it takes to make a spoof, a campaign in “the real world” can be derided and scuppered, indeed work against the party in question.

Suddenly communications are more integrated and multi-channel than some imagined.

I expect when a political commentator asks will the election be fought online the answer from the “expert” should be it will be fought everywhere, and especially online.

Artisan will be giving a talk about blogging at Manchester Business Breakfast Club this Friday.

It’s just an introduction so businesses can understand what blogging is all about and judge if it will be of help to their enterprises.

Manchester Business Breakfast Club is all about networking, members helping members to grow their businesses through referrals, advice and sometimes direct supplier relationships.

The club has 35-40 members and about 25 attend at any one meeting.  The club is always looking for new members, including:

Architects

Recruitment professionals

Arts venues

Surveyors

Couriers

Hotels

Leisure (although we have a football club, none other than Wigan)

If you are interested in coming along please leave a message or e-mail.

I was just seeing what would come up for some keywords on Google and tried Manchester PR.

I was looking over the statistics this morning and there is no doubt the term is a much coveted, but how much would you pay for it?

The Manchester PR domain is up for the taking to the highest bidder (until the 17th August) with a reserve of £5,000.

Is that reasonable value, a bargain perhaps?  Strange how it has come to the market after all this time.

Heresy!

But there are a few points to back up search a wicked assertion. But it could be that I am being difficult.  And I am doing this without reverting to the boring “140 words is too short.”  Let’s see:

Intonation – Have you been misunderstood, got in trouble because the recipient of an e-mail could not detect the tone / irony / humour of a message?

Well Twitter can be just as bad – be careful!

Comments – a few months ago if you put my name or company name in a Google search you got lots of testimonials, references, blog posts, referrals to blog posts.  Wonderful!

Now I get comments, some blog, many Twitter.  So now every tweet I have to be careful in case it is a prospect researching me.

Just think a prospect looks for me on Google and I come up with some banter that makes me look rude without the context or a prattle on about Man City and it is a rag reading it, no offence.

And all that hard work building an online profile is being replaced by my inane prattling.

Mixing business and personal – If you have one account that tries to combine all facets of your personality and interests it might not really work all the time.

Of course I could make a business connection while talking cricket or football, but equally I might appear dull and irrelevant to followers (especially in the US for the above) that want to know what I am doing PR wise.  It’s hard to please more than one audience.

Multiple accounts might be the best way forward.

Tantrums - You are really annoyed and Twitter is there inviting you to lay the dirt on your employer / employee / shop you have been going for years / business associate and so on.  You update and calm down but its already there: time to back peddle / repair damage / hope no-one really noticed.

I was close today, glad I didn’t tweet in a moment of frustration.

Alcohol – I was at the Chorlton Beer Festival and had my iPhone and so Twitterfon was within easy reach.  Luckily only a misspelling resulted.

The BBC has published an interesting article about a company offering Twitter “followers.”

The “followers” can be bought in batches of 1,000, with 100,000 being the biggest amount available.

All have opted in to be a “follower,” so is it a problem?  All are profiled and those located closest can be prioritised, so it is targeted to some degree.

uSocial, which offers a paid service, estimates that everyone that follows is worth about 10 cents (Australian I believe) a month to a client.

I think even so big companies, indeed anyone that employs such as service, are missing the point of social networking: interaction.

Hard sell or just selling is not social media although there can be a place, from time to time, to sell.

I am sure that if up to 100,000 “followers” can be bought at a reasonably low price then a Twitter campaign could generate good returns on the investment.

E-mail was used in a similar way and I remember a claim in one magazine that as many as 10% of recipients became clients in its early days (mid 90s).  I am not sure I believe that ever really happened unless it was one heck of an offer to a really well researched target group.

Gone are the days when e-mail was ever thought of so highly.  Yet the humble telephone can be highly productive for sales and it is about interaction and conversation.

Yes buying “followers” will work for some, but it is going to become a jaded way to communicate if you only talk and don’t listen.

It never fails to surprise when a big concern like Habitat makes a mess of their social media.

Well maybe a story like this probably was bound to happen at some point soon – somehow some big corporates don’t have a feel for it -  but I am still shocked at how blatantly deceptive and poorly thought out this was.

Habitat are facing the ire of many Twitter folk at the moment after using hash tags inappropriately to drive traffic to a sales offer.  The fact that some hash tags were about the recent events in Iran did not help.

The thing about social media is that is gives the small guy a voice.  And many users see themselves as social media Robin Hoods: you cannot throw your corporate weight around or throw a big budget to get a result – you play by the same rules as everyone else.

Really, social media follows many of the same etiquette as face to face networking and other human interactions, so common sense, manners and a bit of thinking come in handy.  Three simple rules to start:

No hard sales – nothing turns people off you as being sold to, especially if they did not ask to be the centre of a sales talk

Be honest – try to fool people on social media sites and you set yourself up for a backlash

Listen and contribute as much as you speak and take, if not more – giver’s gain

Habitat say they are “sorry” and that this particular use of hash tags was “absolutely not authorised.“  Good so far, but as Habitat declined to name those responsible – in-house or agency – means that this will go on for a little longer than necessary.

Let’s be honest though, how many people enjoy something as big as Habitat messing up?

I don’t need to say how important bloggers are in modern communications, but if you have any doubts I picked up the following stats from the Future Buzz blog:

• 133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
• 346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)
• 900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period (seems a bit low)
• 77% – percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

This naturally presents a golden opportunity to convey your message.  And if you have a very sector specific target audience there is bound to be a multitude of blogs that will cover the topic.

Yet, I still hear of companies and agencies that go about pitching the wrong way.

It is certainly harder to pitch to a blogger than a journalist (although there can be a correlation).

The media needs stories.  The media relies on PRs to supply those stories / interviewees on a regular basis, it has a continuous appetite.   A relationship with a journalist is very helpful but not essential for getting your release or article published.

A blogger does not need a PRs’ stories, of course they need material but that can come from a number of sources.  A blogger might post every day, week, month – there is not the same pressure generally to deliver content.  Gaining coverage with a blogger relies far more on relationships.

It is a different dynamic: a journalist is paid to generate content for an organisation, a blogger tends to be working for him or herself, often for nothing, and they can relate to their blog in a very personal way.

(With way over 100 million blogs these observations can be nothing but generalisations, there are bound to be exceptions but I think they are rough guidelines nevertheless).

For me the key difference is that I can pitch to a media channel whether I have or not in the past worked with them, it is not too important if I have a good idea or subject – I would not do the same with a blogger.

The key, I believe, to taping into the blogosphere is spending the time to develop relationships, learn about individual blogs.

Use Twitter to initiate a conversation.  Better still if your client has a blog leave (relevant insightful) comments on the target blog.  It will help show you have some knowledge of social media, which will help gain acceptance, it will show interest and it might make the blogger feel that they are obliged to reciprocate.  It is a first step in the pitching process.

So, for me, it is the conversation before that really counts.  Of course you might contact them directly and succeed with a brazen salesy press release, but you might be deleted as spam more likely.

And remember, if you have developed a reputation though social media or indeed traditional media then you might find that you are pulling in interest from bloggers.

This all takes time and that is where it goes wrong: PRs and clients don’t often have the luxury of time.

Please note

I have just upgraded my blog and there were a few issues with plug-ins, so I have (hopefully) reset the comments, which had requested a Wordpress account to leave a message.

I would be appreciate if you did leave a comment to see if it is working and if not please drop me an e-mail rob@artisanmc.co.uk

I think we all have a strategy when it comes to Twitter, well to some measure.

People that don’t I would assume become bored with the concept and fade away – you have to have a reason and an approach.  Without the first you have no motivation and without the second you are not as likely to have satisfaction in meeting your aims.

Of course there are not many users that plan with careful meticulous thought, perhaps write it down, and then incisively and determinedly follow through their objectives.

You could say, and this is probably my approach to networking, that I am more tactical than strategic.

I do think about my networking as thoroughly as possible (face to face and social media) and develop my activity almost organically.  There is a logic behind my tweets, not all the time granted but in general yes.

I come across from time to time the comment that I do not want to hear about “what someone has had for breakfast or what they are watching on TV.”  But even here there could be some logic.  Let me explain:

I go networking at Manchester Business Breakfast Club most Fridays.  One of the members, Nigel Moore of branding agency Flag Digital, delivers his pitch / presentation / 60 seconds in quite an offbeat manner.  He can be funny, obtuse, a little surreal at times.  But if you speak to Nigel when he is at work you know he is very serious and focused about his design work.

One day I asked him why his 60 seconds are apparently haphazard.  The answer was that the members know that he is good at what he does and that he is focused.

Nigel explained that the key for him is that they know that he is approachable, sociable and that they will be able to form a working relationship.  Strategies are not always apparent.

And what is my Twitter strategy?

Well my Twitter objectives are (but not limited) to:

• Follow journalists – spot editorial opportunities and understand their personalities and professional needs and concerns
• Find interesting material about PR and social media
• Improve my knowledge of social media so I can help clients with this aspect of their communications
• Raise awareness of Artisan Marketing Communications
• Not, at present, to find clients even though the last point seems to contradict that
• Be sociable

And from that follows my tweets, my use of Mr Tweet, who I follow derives.

This will develop over time and will change, but somewhere there is some sort of planning, however chaotic.

Simon Wharton of PushON has declared war on BD Recruitment.

A litany of sins committed against Simon when he clearly directed the agency on his wishes has provoked his wrath.  There are only so many unsolicited and irrelevant CVs any man can take.

Within a short time his irate blog post was only a few positions below BD’s site on Google.

The lessons are straightforward: managing reputation online is a constant 24/7 occupation.  It is one where just one voice can have a detrimental impact.

I placed a piece for Simon in What’s New In Marketing, an online magazine that was run by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, on organic search marketing some time ago.

One of the respondents was an electronics company that had read the piece and was clearly interested in Simon’s ideas.

When Simon brought up the URL there was a whole page of disastrous economic news following it.  The company had had a bad year but had recovered – their online reputation had clearly not and they were totally unaware of it.

I believe many businesses neglect their online reputation, not realising the round the clock damage their brand is suffering.

What is perhaps most surprising about this first story is that I came across it through Twitter today, a full year after the blog post about BD Recruitment.  And do you know BD Recruitment has not stopped bothering Simon and his angry post is still a few places below their website on Google.

I have been thinking about precedents to the wave of Internet marketing / SEOs that will down PR professionals if we don’t look out.

Consider the following:

Did TV destroy the cinemas?  They did suffer for years (for a number of reasons) but when they were re-branded and marketed they gained a whole new audience.  Cinema has become a vital industry again.

Another example.  Did mail order catalogues destroy shops?  I am sure it was muted when they started to make an impact, but how much do we use catalogues now?

Clicks and mortars doing the same thing to shops once again in the tech boom?  Yes these all have an impact, after broadband arrived in force.  My camera shop is now the base for a Internet based camera business and Jessops across the road won’t be there much longer based on how it is doing.  But look at rent hikes and supermarkets and their impact on many retailers.  Nevertheless shops remain, of course.

I have been watching The Money Programme about changes in the media.

Television has been under pressure from the Internet and drops in advertising spending, some transferring budgets online.  But it is seeing new models emerge.  TV is not only being forced to live with the Internet, it is also learning to use the Internet – one example being to generate interest in new markets abroad as it rolls out franchises of its hits and also to sell in programmes.

I am sure you can argue with some of my examples.  After all it is a big subject and I am making gneralisations, but surely the best PRs will adapt, create new business modeals if necessary and learn to profit from the Internet.