My five PR resolutions for 2012
Resolution blog posts get plenty of bad press. Mainly because they often become a vain attempt to state the obvious or do the impossible by trying to predict what might or might not happen in the next 12 months.
But the 'resolution process' can be a cathartic one and, despite the fact that resolutions are often forgotten after 31 days, if nothing else it helps focus the mind on the task in hand.
So I thought I'd take a slightly different slant and, rather than predict or set industry-wide resolutions, I'll share with you the five things that, professionally, I'm going to try and focus on over the next 12 months.
PR's crisis of confidence as it looks to define itself (again)
There's nothing more predictable than the PR industry's constant urge to 'define itself'. So today, true to form, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has announced that it is to develop a new 'modern definition' of PR (again).
Your top ten multichannel marketing challenges
On October 12th, Econsultancy will be welcoming over 1,000 marketers to JUMP, our Joined-Up Marketing and PR conference.
As part of the run up to the event, now in its second year, we asked Twitter users to tell us about the problems they’ve faced when attempting to run multichannel campaigns, using the #CometoJUMP hashtag.
As an incentive, we assembled a great package of prizes for the most interesting or relevant tweet.
The results showed that marketers face a huge variety of challenges as they try to track and optimise for customers who routinely interact with multiple touchpoints both on and offline before purchasing. We also uncovered recurring themes that may be slowing progression towards fully integrated marcomms.
In addition to the winning tweet, I thought it would be enlightening to run through ten of the best entries here and check out some of the issues we’ll be covering at JUMP this year.
PR has a big role in joined up marketing, but can it step up?
Joined up marketing should be a reality for every type of business these days, and as more companies realise the benefits a joined up approach will bring, PR should be perfectly positioned to play a key part.
But this will only happen if the industry takes steps to revolutionise itself and portray its changing position and capability to the wider marketing industry.
Five steps to great community engagement
'Content is King' is an old phrase but still a true one when it comes to building a brand presence on social media.
As Facebook implements more and more ways for users to control exactly what appears in their News Feeds, brands need to be ready to meet the challenges that brings.
Community Management is the art and science of engaging your fans and it’s important to view it as a data-driven, long-term, iterative process. Here are a few of my top tips...
Q&A: The media flow's Nichola Stott on the future of search
Nichola Stott is founder and director of SEO and social media agency the media flow, and previously worked as head of UK commercial search partners at Yahoo!
We've been asking Nichola about the role of the PR in SEO, the merging of search and social media, and mobile and local search...
Nichola will also be looking into the future of search in her presentation at Econsultancy's Future of Digital Marketing event in London on June 15.
Social media lessons from Oman: Best Burger threatens legal action over bad review
Earlier this week, Best Burger in Oman almost did a "Benihana", by threatening to sue a blogger for writing a somewhat negative review of their restaurant.
But what Best Burger didn't know was that the blogger it was planning to sue is also a legal researcher by profession. Luckily for both parties in the end, the restaurant decided to do the right thing by withdrawing legal action, and thinking constructively about how the menu could be improved.
However, many companies in the Middle East still fail to recognise the tremendous opportunities borne out of negative feedback, and how it can be used to improve the business and build stronger long-term customer relationships.
Q&A: Steve Rubel on social media content 'decay'
Steve Rubel is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of the world’s largest PR firm.
He will be speaking at the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead at the end of May, at which Econsultancy is one of the sponsors.
I've been asking Steve about the issues around 'content decay' on social networks, and what he thinks are the most significant trends in PR and marketing...
Community management: are we all talking about the same thing?
Something interesting has started happening when we go and talk to prospective clients about online community management services.
There are various companies which specialise in community management and moderation, and have done for a number of years, but agencies (mostly PR and communications agencies, rather than digital ad agencies) are starting to claim expertise in community management, and to be honest, I don’t think they’re talking about the same thing as we are.
It’s causing real confusion client-side. While we both work with online communities, I think we need to be clear about the definitions of what we each do, so we can work together more effectively.
Can Alibaba restore trust after fraud scandal?
Rebuilding trust with your customers isn't easy following a major crisis. Sadly, relationships that take years to build can be harmed or destroyed entirely practically overnight.
Alibaba, the Chinese business-to-business marketplace that Yahoo owns a substantial chunk of, is the latest company to learn that lesson the hard way.
