As we posted previously, five members of the Wildfire team will take to the streets of London next Friday to sleep rough and raise money for Action for Children as part of the annual Byte Night event.
We have been busy bullying friends, family and clients to give generously and they have supported us in their droves. We’ve now passed the £2,000 mark which is fantastic!
A special thanks to Cowplain School in Hampshire who raised £27.46 for our cause at their weekly cake sale. And also to Louise, who will be braving it early on Sunday morning at a local car boot sale. Louise plans to live-Twitter her experiences so keep an eye out for that.
This week’s round-up of interesting blog posts, articles, announcements and more:
What do journalists want from your website? – When writing a story about your company, the first place a journalist goes is your website. E-consultancy gives some good, practical tips and advice
CNN Heavily Promoting Twitter On Air – The US network is now promoting its Twitter feeds on air. Twitter still has some way to go to replicate that level of public take-up in the UK. [You can now follow Wildfire PR on twitter: @wildfirepr]
Gordon Brown’s move today to invest £300m to offer free computers and internet access for more than a million children from low income families has to be welcomed. As does Boris Johnson’s vision of London as a ‘wi-fi’ city, also unveiled today.
With more and more of us spending more and more time online, doing more and more things from communicating to searching for jobs etc. etc., countries that invest in the proper infrastructure will surely find themselves in a very strong position in the future. Britain is in danger of lagging behind.
Jeff Jarvis even questions whether the $700bn that the US government is pledging to bail-out the US economy could be better spent in other ways, including rolling out public Wi-max for a fraction of the price.
Google’s latest endeavor, the Android mobile platform, was revealed to the world today. The first phone to use Android is HTC’s Dream on the T-Mobile network, available later this year and nicknamed G1 (horrid microsite!).
The features are certainly impressive – drag and drop functionality in particular looks great. Gizmodo has comprehensive coverage.
Because of the touch interface, the media has been quick to tag this as the iPhone killer. However, I think the real target probably lies elsewhere: Microsoft (and everything it traditionally stands for). [Not to mention the fact that the phone looks very ugly compared to the iPhone's curves!]
G1 is clearly geared towards the consumer rather than the business user and there is no way (currently) so sync to Microsoft Exchange, for example. If all your information and data is in the ‘cloud’ then this will be the phone/platform for you – GMail syncing for example with ‘Push‘ technology inbuilt. However, if you still rely on a (Microsoft) server then you may have some difficulties finding the range of features you require.
My suspicion is that the phone will have less impact on iPhone sales which have been very impressive since the 3G launch. This is however another very significant move towards cloud computing and if anyone is primed to capture this space, it’s Google.
This week’s round-up of interesting blog posts, articles, announcements and more:
US Elections – As the countdown continues, the Guardian reports on the influence of satirist John Stewart and Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! Mail account gets hacked.
Twitter – Twitter Grader is a great way to measure the words you use most frequently on Twitter and the rumours are circulating that Cisco, following its capture of Jabber, has Twitter in its sights.
Google – US retailer Dan Savage reveals the real power of Google and takes the search engine to court over the new ‘landing page quality’ scoring. Elsewhere, the first phone to use Google’s Android platform will feature the Google branding alongside the handset manufacturer and Google founder Sergey Brin launches a personal blog.
With the credit crunch really making waves this week, FT.com must be hoping that the bad news continues to roll in after revealing that page views on Thursday were up a staggering 300% on this time last year, and unique users up 250%.
FT.com’s MD, Rob Grimshaw was careful in his response:
“It’s very, very gratifying to us that although a lot of things going on in the financial market are very worrying, people turn to the FT brand when they really need to know what’s happening in the global economy.”
Going through my feedreader looking at posts I had missed whilst away on holiday for the last few weeks, I came across a post by Techcrunch UK’s Mike Butcher in which he reveals the top 15 ways to get covered by him on TCUK. It’s important reading for anyone involved in the startup space and for PRs.
Mike freely admits that the inspiration for his post was Jason Calacanis and a recent scribe on his (now infamous) email list. Following Mike’s original post, French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur also posted a follow-up, which too is worth reading.
Mike, Jason and Loïc are all obviously approaching this theme from a certain standpoint. But, despite this, there are some really interesting issues raised in the three posts that I wanted to pull out and discuss.
Journalists are “self-serving” – an obvious point from Mike but one that is often neglected by PRs and clients/vendors/startups. Journalists are part of a business like everyone else (a business that is getting more competitive every day). Give them something that makes them look good and gives them competitive advantage.
Go for the niche – This is one of Jason’s comments: “embrace small media outlets”. Too many PRs and clients get caught up chasing that elusive double page in the FT that is 99.9% of the time never going to happen. Often this is a waste of time, money and effort on all parts. Much better to target smaller publications or outlets that have a smaller but dedicated and targeted readership.
Start a conversation – This is a theme that is picked up on each post. Try and have meaningful conversations with journalists and influencers (bloggers included). This is easier said than done and I would also point out that a two-way conversation is just that. If some ‘influencers’ put more effort into communicating rather than moaning about PRs, both industries would possibly work better as a result. But as Mike states, the reverse is also true – companies (and PRs) that don’t read, listen or communicate (i.e. only ’send’) will have a hard time being heard: “Yes, Kevin Rose lives for Digg and Loic Le Meur goes on and on about Seesmic. But they also put real content into the marketplace as well. They are active commentators.” PRs that do not read and understand what individual writers or publications are interested in/focused on, cannot complain when journalists or bloggers get fed up or annoyed by their poorly targeted pitching.
The Purple Cow – Having just read Seth Godin’s book (I will blog on it soon), this is a fundamental point. The best PR in the world is only ever going to be as good as the story he/she has to work with. Having something interesting and ‘news-worthy’ to say to your target audience is vital. [The bit in italics is important as a story that is news-worthy to one journalist or outlet or blog will not be to another.]
So what does all this mean for the PR industry? For me, Mike hits the nail on the head:
“The best PRs behave like the best contacts – they keep in contact, float ideas, check if something is of interest before bothering to send you a full-blown release, etc etc.”
This week’s round-up of interesting blog posts, articles, announcements and more:
You’ve heard of Twitter, well now we have Twitter for the enterprise – Yammer. (thanks to Neville for the heads-up). Yammer also won the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco this week.
A report out from analyst house Forrester reveals that marketers are increasingly turning to new media (including social networks, online video and UGC) and yet there is still concern about how these forms of marketing can or should be measured.
This article is a bit old but I’ve only just come across it. Jeff Jarvis, writing in the Guardian, puts forward the notion that ‘Editors’ are actually a luxury that media organisations could do without.
Another Steve Jobs keynote comes to an end and already the Twittersphere isupinarms. iPod Nanos and iTunes 8? Is that all? Where were the surprises? How can I give Apple more of my hard-earned cash without a new must-have gadget?
This is the problem that Apple now faces. Having achieved so much innovation in the last few years and managing to create a huge buzz before and after every new announcement (not to mention a very loyal, dedicated (and vocal) following), the bar has been well and truly raised.
At every event, fans (and increasingly the public in general) are hoping, expecting, demanding something ‘remarkable’. If its not as groundbreaking as the (first) iPod, the iPhone or the Macbook Air, then it fails to resonate (to a certain degree obviously).
Apple knows how to launch a product and it is pretty damn good at continually refreshing and innovating existing products ad infinitum. BUT, as every marketer and PR (especially in the agency world) knows, the more successful your campaign, the harder it will be to beat next time round.
Apple is in the fortunate position of not being able to get new products out quickly enough to satisfy the demand! As long as Steve Jobs survives, I am sure we will all have something to cheer about again soon…
So, the company with the motto “don’t be evil” that we all love to love, celebrates its 10th birthday today and the media are certainly making sure that weallknowabout it!
Amongst the various soliloquies all marveling at the company’s rapid growth and increasing dominance, there is a great piece by Guardian tech-supremo Charles Arthur who speculates on what the next 10 years holds for the company.
However, the aspect of all this that interests me most is the way Google structures itself.
In his article, Charles mentions that “companies develop a lot less in their second decade than their first”. This might be true, but with Google the underlying development ethos suggests it may buck the trend.
As clever as the algorithm is, Google knows that the skills of its employees are paramount. They are supported by unbeatable working environments and employee benefits. Google nurtures these skill for the betterment of the company and its products through the ‘innovation time off’ scheme. This allows developers and engineers to spend 20% of their time (i.e. one day a week) working on their own projects (see some of them here). Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense are examples of Google services that originated through this developmental process. It is not the first (or last) company to implement this working ethos but this has played a huge part in the company’s success to date.
For me this is the true, underlying symbol of Google’s greatness: their commitment to innovation.
Can they keep it going? We will have to see. Chrome is a massive development and I agree with Charles that Android will dominate and could be the cornerstone of their future (I still believe that ‘mobile’ is the new digital frontier and no-one is dominating…yet).
Google is a company that excites and as long as it keeps innovation and skillful employees at its heart, the future is surely rosy…
