Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
The general election is an interesting case study for PR professionals and this post which I wrote for the Citypress blog illustrates how many people involved in public relations consider digital and ‘old media’ separately. As a result they work with each media channel (e.g. print or online) in silos of isolation.
There are many negative issues related to splitting digital and traditional campaigns. The two channels aren’t mutually exclusive because the media is one single ‘entity’, and as a result I think all PR people should be fully trained in traditional and digital communications.
Digital sites like Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Facebook are as much as part of a PR campaign as old fashioned print news titles.
I hate the term ‘social media’ and I think we should kill it off once and for all.
It is meaningless, confusing and doesn’t convey the real concept.
Here are a few thoughts on the matter:
1. What we are really talking about is how we share information, not social media, whatever that meant.
2. Most of the ‘old’ media has incorporated elements of ‘sharing’ via the Internet, so splitting the media by old and social is inaccurate.
3. In fact, media has always been ‘social’. Talking, gossiping, letter writing and even watching TV can be a social experience where we share.
4. No media exists in isolation, each channel – TV, newspapers, Reddit or whatever – influences the other
5. Why lump blogs, forums, wikis, bookmarking, microblogging, geolocation and innovations like Stickybits together? They are all so different and some have more in common with ‘old’ media than we think.
6. If we kill social media we can get rid of annoying social media gurus.
As you can see, a compelling argument. I know I have used the term social media in the past too, but as of late it has started to annoy me.
Does anyone think it is ironic that the Colbert Report interview with director of Wikileaks Julian Assange is “not available in the UK”? (see image above) After all, Wikileaks main specialism is leaking content to the world…. Surely their ‘people’ can pull a few strings?
Wikileaks is a revelation in investigative journalism and open information. It’s a controversial organisation which has split opinion, as some people are unsure whether to trust it as a news source.
I quite like Wikileaks and its approach; I wanted to watch this video. I am assuming someone somewhere has uploaded the video clip to share with those outside the US. I’ve clearly not looked hard enough… Send me a link please.
It seems only yesterday since I was writing about news curation tools….
In fact it was yesterday when I wrote this post, but thanks to a helpful comment on the blog I have now found Newscred, a curation tool which allows users to build fairly bespoke news pages to read and share with the world.
My Newscred page is available here. The content selected can be tailored towards geographical areas and while the search parameters are a little strange, it would be picky to say that this isn’t a great new addition to the curation repertoire.
Newser has recently come to my attention and is a news curation tool – or in other words, a user generated or edited take on what’s happening in the world.
I have been banging on about curation to my colleagues and anyone who would care to listen for a long time and some people agree with me that curation is the future, while others doubt why it’s so important.
For me, with so much content out there on the internet, curation sites and to a lesser extent aggregators are a great way to get a different take on things.
From a PR perspective, curation offers real opportunities. For example, brands should be curating content too, to show that they are experts in a given field, or aligning themselves to a given specialism, topic, person or campaign.
As I have said before, my favourite curation tool is The Twitter Times because it pulls together content based on your Twitter feed – a real time newspaper. As it is aggregated from your Twitter feed there isn’t a feeling of the content being biased towards sources from the USA.
Alltop.com is great because the user can edit the content and have more control by creating their own page. Popurls also remains a great place to start the day and find out what is happening in the world, while the Daily Perfect brings your Facebook friends into play too, curating what they are interested in.
What is really disappointing is that there is no British curation tool. All the curation tools I have just talked about are American so have a biase in some way to US sources. Whoever launches a British aggregator, will make a lot of money.
American (broadcast) media is often cricisised in the UK for its low quality analysis, but when it comes to digital news, the Americans have a far more sophisticated choice of content. Please can some clever website developed create a British aggregator to rival these others!
So, back to Newser, my latest favourite place to find news. Yes, it is American, yes some of the content is low on quality, but every now and then the site pulls up a real gem of a story to keep you hooked.
To close this post, here are some video clips to give you more insight. The clip here is an interview with Michal Wolf, creator of Newser. For some reason the clip won’t embed in this post. Michael is a little bit OTT (Over The Top) when he talks about the end of journalism as we know it, but he does raise some interesting points.
Wikileaks today went live with a video which appears to show the US military shooting two innocent journalists from Reuters and two chidren, along with many more civilians. The whole case has, according to Wikileaks, been covered up. (in fact it, was reported in 2007, but without – until now – little evidence).
Since the video went live there has, at time of writing, been very little coverage in the mainstream media with many wondering why. (Is it a cover-up by the mainstream media? – Internet users love a good conspiracy)
Apart from the shocking content which I’m not linking too (but is very easy to find via Google), this news story is interesting because it is breaking from a none mainstream media source.
As a result, because mainstream media like to verify their sources, there is very little coverage apart from on Reddit. I particularly like this post which examines how a story of this magnitude can not be reported:
http://www.reddit.com/comments/bmq8j/why_isnt_the_msm_covering_the_video_of_the/
“Why isn’t the MSM covering the video of the civilian massacre that wikileaks released?”
there’s also a discussion going on here:
http://reddit.com/comments/bmq8j
Where as the media darling Twitter usually breaks stories, the micro blogging platform has been quiet on this topic for some reason. However, Reddit has been aflame with this story all day and Reddit’s unique forum and voting system allows for intelligent debate.
I’d love to hear from any journalists on why they think the mainstream media is not reporting this story yet?
(excuse any typos etc this was bashed off on my iPhone)
I work in public relations and until recently used a Blackberry, however for the PR professional, there is no better device than the iPhone for bringing together Web 2.0 technology. Here is my list of killer apps. I’m hoping by writing this that others will recommend apps that I’ve missed. Please suggest others by way of comments.
WordPress – I’m writing this post via the WordPress app from my bed while my three week old baby sleeps on top of me. You can write, tag, upload photos and approve comments. It’s pretty damn fine actually.
Google Analytics – this is on here by default as I actually hate Google Analytics, but I can’t find a better tool for measuring traffic while out and about.
Delicious, Instapaper and Evernote – Delicious for archiving and retriving useful stuff and Instapaper for filing stuff to read later. Evernote allows you to archive anything and tag it so it can be found later. Useful!
Sky+ – for recording Man Utd. Obviously. Or perhaps client coverage.
Guardian, Telegraph, Sky News, The MEN, Thomson Reuters, Digg, Reddit – for keeping up to date.
Foursquare – I disagreed on Twitter with Robert Scoble on the potential for Foursquare. I just don’t see it as a B2B tool. However it is not to say that I don’t find it useful, especially the tips section which helps me gain insights about local restaurants etc.
Dropbox – storage in the cloud. You can keep anything here. This app is so useful that I might pay and upgrade so I have 100gb storage.
Stickybits – one day someone will use this app for the purposes of brandalism and you PR people will be glad that you know about it. At the moment though Stickybits is a not much more than untapped potential and a social media curiousity. Fun though!
Polarize and Quadcam – so you are blogging on the go and want a photo for your post. An iPhone photo can be pretty poor quality but you can spruce them up no end with these little beauties.
Ustream – I have 3gs envy. With
The 3gs device and Ustream you can broadcast directly from your iPhone.
Tweetie 2 – again, pretty much the definitive Twitter app. There are lots of blogs on this app, so I’ll move on.
Facebook, Google, Flickr, Youtube etc – again standard but essential stuff.
Two sites came to my attention this week, which gives power to the social media mob, helping build and destroy reputations.
The first site is Brandkarma.com, which allows users to rate and comment on brands. I can see this taking off given the ability to link to Twitter and Facebook. Campaigning groups will love this tool as a way of retaliating on companies and brands.
The other website is called Unvarnished and is currently in a private beta.
Both e-consultancy and Techcrunch think that sites like this might be the end of privacy as we know it and (perversely) the start of us caring less about our personal reputation.
I can’t see the latter happening. OK, we might all become desensitised to revelations of our personal lives being splashed around the internet, and some people are more thick-skinned than others, but there will be times when comments on Unvarnished or other sites will impact upon an individual’s life, employment opportunities or god knows what.
My ‘other half’ is a headhunter and one service she offers is referencing. In other words, her company is paid handsomely to undertake referencing on candidates for jobs or investment. With Unvarnished, people can start to do their own referencing, albeit in a much cruder way.
Below is the response to my letter to John Leech MP about the Digital Economy Bill.
In my letter I made it clear that he should be looking to protect the creative industries and I didn’t like how the bill was being pushed too quickly through parliament.
I am guessing this might be a template response. Did anyone else get an email back?
Dear Mr Crawford,
Thank you for your email.
As you will know, the Liberal Democrats have consistently demanded that the Bill be debated thoroughly. I do believe there are parts of the Bill which have the potential to support the creative industries well. However, as it stands, the Bill has been drafted very much according to a narrow agenda within industry, which lacks any consideration for other stakeholders.
Labour’s obsession with surveillance and controlling every aspect of life from Whitehall has meant that, since 1997, they have flooded the statute books with nearly 4,300 new ways of making us criminals. I do not think that simply criminalising average people will prevent copyright infringement.
There has been limited time for consultation and even less time before final decisions are made. I therefore do not believe that measures to address site blocking can reasonably be included in the Bill and will not support any such measures. Liberal Democrats have taken action and written in amendments to the Bill to ensure that temporary account suspension or bandwidth throttling can not be introduced without proper consultation.
While the Bill passed through the Lords, my party entered into an open and frank internal debate on the core issues in which a number of concerns were raised. I feel that the Bill focuses on preventing illegal file-sharing rather than on nurturing creativity.
Overall, it is an opportunity to deal with areas such as improving our radio infrastructure, preventing copyright infringement and implementing unified regulation of video games, to name but a few. These issues are unlikely to be a priority for a new government so it is extremely important that the Bill is given adequate debate and deliberation for it to fulfil its potential, and not be rushed through as the Government seems intent on doing.
However, the lack of consideration for highly important parts of the Bill such as the orphan-works and site-blocking issues, means we will not support the Bill as a whole. When it comes to it, I will not vote for Labour’s attempts to further criminalise people randomly as there is nothing constructive in this.
Paul Burstow MP, the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, told The Guardian that although the party’s opposition might not be enough on its own to prevent the Bill from passing, he hoped that the arguments being put forward – that the issues needed more debate than has been possible – might sway one of the other parties into delaying its passage.
He said: “During the negotiation and discussion in the wash-up we will make it clear that we think that it isn’t a suitable way to deal with the issues remaining such as site blocking. We will put amendments down and make the case and hope that the government and the Conservatives will agree that it shouldn’t proceed at this stage.”
Our goal is to support the creative industries while at the same time fully acknowledging the issues of rights and freedoms for the individual that arise as internet technology advances. In other words action should only be taken if it is appropriate, proportionate and necessary in a democratic society.
I have been receiving a very large number of emails and letters from constituents who are very concerned about this Bill and so I will be attending a flash mob in Manchester City Centre later today, to join in a protest against the draconian Bill.
Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
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