Categories
Analysis Cool Digital Social Media

Hello Digiphobe, 4 minutes of your time please..

Watch this.

Categories
Analysis Social Media

Is social media measurement really meaningless?

I’ve been reading and re-reading this article over the past few days and trying to fully understand Amy Kean of the IAB’s point of view who argues the ‘Yes’ side of the debate that social media measurement is indeed meaningless. I can understand her point of view but I’m of the ilk that believe in a different kind of measurement and that adopting the traditional ideologies of past successes is akin to putting a square peg in a round hole. I’ve said before that although ROI will always have its place (everyone will always wants to get the most bang from their buck), ROA (Return on Attention) will grow in importance in social media. You’re still getting a return on investment but in a different way.

Back to the article, the busker analogy doesn’t really work for me when comparing thumbs up to positive buzz and great reviews for a company. They aren’t directly comparable. For someone to go out of their way to generate positive buzz on a brands behalf or give a product a great review, there is value in that. Time spent plus insights provided, that’s definite value. Research also states that their message often has more impact than paid for marketing and communications.

It may not be in the traditional marketing sense of what ‘value’ is but for me, social media requires new metrics and benchmarks than to what has been tried and tested in years previous. Success now looks different. Instead of looking purely from a numbers perspective and at additional sales, is there value in increased levels of brand perception and awareness, along with the conversations and connections made because of the company activity? It’s intangible yet it’s still valuable.

Amy says that most senior management simply don’t understand it. While this may be a sweeping generalization across the board, there is some truth in it. This for me is where the paradigm of business control is changing. This won’t be for everyone, only the ones who are open to change, evolution and welcome new blood taking their company forward and in a new direction. The MD’s, the board members, all the ladies and gents high up who have been used to knowing everything they need to in order to take their business forward, are now bringing in new talent to change the culture, operations and future of the company. The MD will still be the MD but he/she has realised that a new set of skills is required for the ever changing business environment.  Edit – I had previously mentioned about Jean Wyllie leaving PN but as Kerry notes in the comments below this was out of context, my apologies.

Back to the article again, social media isn’t about directly increasing sales over a finite period. It’s more longer term than that, investing in and developing relationships. Potentially fruitful relationships that are seen to have a direct effect maybe not in sales but in other benchmarks like buzz / word of mouth. Let’s take the recent collaboration between BitchBuzz and Magners UK.

If you hadn’t heard about it, Magners UK decided to give away a case of its pear cider every day for a week on BitchBuzz. The target audience and the product was a perfect fit. The competition was cleverly integrated with Facebook Connect and as a result of the week long campaign, delivered approx 100 new fans to the Magners UK Facebook page every day for the duration of the campaign. They achieved over 8 times the fan conversion they had when supporting the giveaways based on engagement on Twitter and Facebook alone. Their objectives were simple, to build the community. The competition accounted for almost 40% of total Facebook fans.

Can you put a traditional value on that? No. What was the ROI on that? I don’t know. Is it important? Yes.

Amy also says that part of the role of the IAB’s social media council is to educate the industry about the opportunities in this space. Yet she’s declaring measurement meaningless? Sounds more like discounting a discipline rather than educating about it.

Will, Robin, Stephen, David and Drew what do you think? Is social media measurement meaningless? They are all much more knowledgable and experienced in this world than I am, so would be great to get their take on it all. Oh and feel free to disagree entirely if you think otherwise, interested to hear from other perspectives.

Categories
Digital Goodies Social Media

There is no such thing as a social media campaign..

Discuss.

Categories
Goodies Social Media

Is social media a fad? Nope.

It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

Great video full of interesting facts and well worth sharing.

A few tidbits:

  • It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users while Facebook achieved the same number within 9 months
  • 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
  • The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old women
  • Gen Y consider email passe. In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to new starters
  • YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
  • 78% of internet users trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertisements
  • 1 in 4 Americans in the past month have watched a short video… on their phone
  • More than 1.5m pieces of content are shared on Facebook, daily
  • Listen first, sell second

The most amusing I thought was: “What happens in Vegas now stays in Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Orkut, Digg, MySpace and YouTube”

Categories
PR Social Media

A Five Year View of PR and Social Media..

5 Year View

By Bastien Beauchamp

Where will we be when the grid is revisited to compare 2009 to 2014?

Categories
PR Social Media

Why personalisation is still key

Pitching to bloggers, it’s a necessary evil and probably loathed more than it’s loved. I find it fascinating being in the lucky (?) position to be able to experience both sides of the coin. I enjoy the therapeutic hobby of writing down my thoughts, yet at the same time, in my day job I also pitch to bloggers. I really quite enjoy receiving pitches myself because I’m always keen to see how others do it. At the same time, I always try to highlight the pitches that really took the time to research my blog, finding that little bit of information about me to show that it’s not just a blind email sent out to many others.

I thought starting off the email with Hello and their name was pretty much standard, common practice. It shows from the off that the email before them was specifically meant for them. If there was a mental tick box when I receive a pitch, that gets the first tick.

What riled me to write this post was receiving what I think is an awful attempt at ‘engagement’. That’s really what you’re looking for when pitching right? A reply gives you validation, maybe a celebratory fist punch in the air.

This isn’t however going to be a naming and shaming exercise. That’s not the point. We’re all still learning right? I’ve made mistakes along the way and will still continue to do so but seeing as we’re all in this together I’d like to address a few parts of the pitch that particularly bothered me. I also don’t wish to draw attention to the agency, client who they are contacting on behalf of or the individual making contact so I’ll use excerpts from the pitch but not explicit detail.

Here’s the first paragraph..

“I’m getting in touch with you on behalf of (removed) as I thought you would appreciate an advance look at its new UK advertising campaign. As Lit Man Live is influential within the Media sector, we’d like to take this opportunity to provide some insight into why (removed) is pursuing a new brand strategy, beginning with this (removed) (but it was a YouTube video)”

First thing: Address the recipient. Say hello and if their first name is on site somewhere, use that. Then there’s a chance that you’ll have me at hello.. It’s such a simple first step that really needs to be there, always. In this instance being addressed as Lit Man Live shows that categorically no research has been carried out, not a jot and I was actually a bit embarassed myself to receive it. I’ve been called a lot of things but that was the first time I’ve been called Lit Man Live. Personalisation is indeed key but when you get the basic fundamentals wrong, it’s shocking, not a great place to start.

Mack Collier writes:

Any pitch that doesn’t refer to me by my correct name is deleted immediately without being read.”

The whole debate about influence comes to fruition here also. Being perceived to be influential in the Media sector is complimentary but verging on laughable. Keep that in your internal notes but to me it’s signalling in the first paragraph what you want to get out of this before you’ve even asked.

Three overly long paragraphs about the history of the campaign, how it came about, who created it, who directed it and what they’ve directed before is not opt in. I didn’t read them, they’d lost me by that point. Instead of writing endless paragraphs of background info, make the email a bit more punchy and succinct and summarise the key messages in one short paragraph with an opt in at the end, something like would you like to find out more? It provides the recipient with the option and instead of metaphorically meeting them in the street and shouting your sales pitch at them, you’re going to talk with them on their level and see if they talk back.

Read the blog before you pitch to it. Show that extra level of research and mention a post that I’ve written and give me your opinion on it. Do you agree or disagree? What did you like about it and why do you think it’s relevant to what you’re pitching me with? Hint: It should be relevant.

You’ll probably be familiar with this, you can apply it to pitching too..

hugh

Final paragraph:

“The link enclosed is to an advance version of the video which we are specially making available to you. (If it was made available just to me, why does the video have 300 views?) We will be ‘killing’ this link at midnight GMT and making the video publicly available on (removed). If you would like to write about the ad and embed any video on your blog I would be grateful if you could link to the video on (removed’s) YouTube channel”.

I received the email at 4pm. They were giving me 8 hours to view the video before it was being ‘killed’. This pitch should have finished with the opt in, which requires more forward planning but may result in a more positive response. Asking me to write about it, embed the video on my blog and which link I should link to was too much. I wasn’t going to jump through hoops to write about a YouTube video.

Remember the cocktail party analogy here.

The next time you decide to solicit a blogger with the pitch of a client, imagine we are both meeting at a cocktail party. Imagine I don’t know you and we are meeting for the first time. What is the first thing you would say to me? I don’t think it would be the same words that you would have otherwise used when doing your “pray and spray” email solicitations about your client’s shiny new product or service. No, I think you would first introduce yourself and look for something in common between us. And then only if you were feeling comfortable would you try to pitch me on behalf of your client.

Finally, again, do your research. Tell me why you think what you’re pitching me is relevant. Customise each pitch. Why should I be interested? Seriously, all of the above, coupled together is the difference between talking favourably about it and highlighting it in more of a how not to pitch light.

Here’s a few useful resources to refer back to:

This is how you pitch a blogger

How to pitch a blogger

How to pitch bloggers

How to pitch a blogger

So how DO you pitch a blogger?

How not to:

How NOT to pitch a blog

How not to pitch a blogger

How NOT to pitch a blogger

How Not To Pitch A Blogger

How (Not) to pitch a blogger

Categories
Funny Tech

Social media cushions (seriously)

I don’t know what’s worse. That they exist, or that I just bought the bottom 3.

You can buy them here if you think you’re as much of a nutter.

social-pillows

Categories
Case Studies Music Social Media

Glastonbury goes social.

The BBC have implemented some pretty cool stuff on site along with providing the usual brilliant Glastonbury coverage. It’s almost as if I’m there! Without getting muddy or wet. Last year they got 600,000 visitors in the week of Glastonbury to their page and I firmly believe with the harnessing of the social web they can double that.

Picture 36

Along with using wireless video cameras which overlook different parts of the festival site to give us, the people who aren’t there, a taste of the atmosphere, the site also includes an aggregation of Twitter feeds from various BBC presenters and journalists and will also be experimenting with Audioboo, the audio blogging service.

It looks to have everything you could possibly need to know about Glastonbury, all in one place and all integrated very nicely. You’ve got the weather forecast, BBC blogs, radio and TV listings, some stunning photography, videos of performances, webcams, a dedicated page for each artist and the ability for fans to comment on their performances on site. All relevant, useful and social.

They have a presence also on Flickr allowing you to comment on each individual image and share further. It will be interesting to see if it’s updated with the best of this years imagery as currently the images shown are from 2008.

Flickr

What I probably found most interesting was almost an active encouragement to share the site content on your site, blog or social networking profile so you can embed the content with ease by simply copying the embed code and adding it to a post. They have a page on site listing all the embeddable content available here. I only chose not embed in this instance because it’s fairly image heavy already.

Similarly you can add a widget to see some live webcam footage, the weather etc. The red button plays a much more prominent role this year also, providing the user the opportunity to watch exactly what they want to, personalised TV.

Another nice little feature I thought was seeing who were the most popular artist pages on site. In a sense this could be seen as a barometer of how successful their performances have been in the real world, at Glastonbury. I’ve watched some of the footage from Lady Gaga’s performance and am not surprised it’s the most viewed, such an eccentric and entertaining performer.

Artist Pages

Mobile also seems to be something that’s not been forgotten with the site being optimised to work on your iPhone’s and N97’s with a more limited service also on basic web enabled mobiles.

“We’re seeing a big difference in the number of people web browsing on phones this year. Call it the ‘iPhone effect’ or just cheap data tariffs, but there was no way we could let people have a poor experience on our festival sites,” Tim Clarke, a senior content producer for BBC Audio and Music online said.

To conclude, here are just a few ways the BBC have fully embraced old and new methods to reach out to a greater audience on a much more interactive level.

BBC Glastonbury

This is an example of how you can best capture the essence of what is typically a very real world physical event, online.

Categories
Analysis Digital Goodies Social Media

Interacting via social media isn’t the preserve of the young

Following on from my post previously from The Times here another interesting read was found in the 16th April issue of NMA where Rebecca Jennings, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research wrote a similar piece how an older age than expected is using social media. The following is a repost of that article.

Most interactive marketers know that young consumers are very engaged in social media, but many fail to appreciate that the same social tools can also be used to reach older users. Recent Forrester research shows there are a significant number of European baby boomers – adults aged 43-63 – who already read social media on a regular basis, and another, slightly smaller subset who are already uploading their own content, like videos, onto the web. Marketers can take advantage of this by offering them value with useful information and support provided in a social context.

Overall, 47% of younger boomers – those online adults aged 43 to 52 – now engage with social media on a regular basis, as well as the 41% of older boomers – those aged 53 to 63 – that also take part. In each of the groups, more than a third can be classified as spectators, or those who are reading social content such as blogs at least monthly.

While boomers are taking the plunge into consuming social content, they’ve been slower at joining social networks; just 10% of younger boomers and just 7% of older boomers participate in this type of activity. For example, one of the most popular social networks aimed at older consumers, SagaZone in the UK, has around 45,000 users, compared to Facebook’s estimated 18m+ users.

Despite their resistance to joining social networks, both young and old boomers are contributing their own opinions online – known as being a critic. These critics do things like participate in forums or post their own reviews online. Encouragingly for marketers, around a tenth of both age groups fall in to this category and a slightly smaller percentage, 9% of younger boomers and 7% of older ones, are creators: those who upload their own content or write their own blogs.

Marketers should also take note that just as participation in social media varies between age groups, it also varies between European countries. Dutch boomers lead the pack as the most engaged older audience overall, with 69% of 43-52 year olds and 60% of 53-63 year olds using social media on a regular basis.Of these other Europeans, Italian boomers are the keenest creators, with around 17% of younger boomers and 14% of older boomers involved. Younger boomers in the UK are considerably more engaged than older ones, with around 52% of 43-52 year olds engaged in social media, but just 38% of 53-63 year olds. About 40% of boomers in both France and Spain are keen spectators but just a third of the German boomer audience are engaged in social media.

Categories
Social Media Twitter

Twitter Parody – Worth a watch.

Something starts to get really big when the spammers wade in and the jokers make fun. The below video is freakin’ hilarious.

So everyone’s going tweet this, tweet that, what on twearth is this all about and how are they ever going to make any twoney? Ok maybe with less of the tw’s but there you tw-go. Let’s forget about the money part for a moment, in a recent interview Biz Stone said that they are currently working on value, the more value they can provide through Twitter, the more it will be worth. I think they’ll be alright for some reason.

This has probably done the rounds already in the tech circles but it’s still pretty fantastic.

Categories
Social Media Twitter

Top 25 Twartoons..

Categories
Goodies Social Media

Justifying Social Media in a Recession.

The presentation below was given by all round friendly chap and serial tweeter Dirk ‘The Cow’ Singer at the Social Network World Forum in London on 9th March 2009. They are now incidentally advertising for the 2010 event which isn’t until March 15th 2010 but that’s forward planning for you! The presentation deck is all about Justifying Social Media spend in a recession to ‘internal clients’. Well recommended to anyone working in any way shape or form in that thing we know and love called Social Media.

Categories
Goodies Social Media

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

This is a brilliant presentation on how networks and sociology combine together. According to David Armano, though technology doesn’t change human nature, it changes human behaviour. It gives us the capacity to communicate effortlessly and instantly. This gives rise to networks, and networks have increasingly taken more of an important role in society.

What I mean by that is you can go to Twitter, to Facebook, to message boards when asking questions. Human search engines, far more powerful than any search engine algorithms. For breadth of content, Google still wins, that’s for sure. Social networks are populated by human people, the answers they provide to questions have influence and their own currency.

One not to miss – It explains detailed concepts with thought provoking illustrations and in an understandable way. I’ve started a ‘Goodies’ category on the blog for slideshow’s like this to go under so from here on in, any content that I find of use can be found within ‘Goodies’.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks
View more presentations from David Armano. (tags: behavior human)

Categories
Goodies Social Media

The Periodic Table of Social Media Elements

In Rick Liebling’s own words –

“Social Media really is a lot like chemistry. There is a huge pool of elements you can choose from and an infinite variety of combinations you can create. Twitter + sharing + commenting will give you a different result than blogging + LinkedIn + Flickr. Then of course there are the active ingredients – the people. A dash of Chris Brogan plus a big helping of David Armano and the whole thing changes again.

Well, this got me to thinking. It would be handy to have a Periodic Table of the Social Media Elements. So, I created one: (click for larger version)

A lot of this is going to be old news to Social Media practitioners, but if you have friends, colleagues, parents, students or bosses who are having trouble keeping all the elements of Social Media straight, you may want to download/print this chart out for them.”

Periodic Table of Social Media Elements

What do all the abbreviations stand for?

Here’s the key:

Social Media Behaviours: (These are the positive things you choose to do)

Sh = Share

Mt = Monitor

Fr = Friend

Cv = Converse

Cu = Customize

Li = Listen

En = Engage

Di = Dialogue

Social Media All-Rounders: (These are the people you can find all over the Social Media landscape)

Mc = Mack Collier (The Viral Garden)

To = Todd Defren (PR Squared)

Lo = Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog)

Dr = Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)

Mj = Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation)

Ds = David Meerman Scott (Web Ink Now)

Pe = Peter Kim (Being Peter Kim)

Bs = Brian Solis (PR 2.0)

Sz = Shel Holtz (A Shel of my Former Self)

Rb = Rohit Bhargava (Influential Markeitng Blog)

Gl = Geoff Livingston (The Buzz Bin)

As = Andy Sernovitz (Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That!)

An = Andy Beal Marketing Pilgrim

Ad = Andy Beard (Niche Marketing)

Al = Alan Wolk (The Toad Stool)

Cc = C.C. Chapman (The Advance Guard)

Nb = Noah Brier (Noah Brier)

Cr = Connie Reece (Every Dot Connects)

Kp = Katja Presnal (Skimbaco Lifestyle)

Da = David Armano (Logic + Emotion)

Jc = Joel Comm (Joel Comm)

Ls = Liz Strauss (Successful Blog)

Jh = Jackie Huba (Church of the Customer)

Vm = Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent)

Cg = Chris Garrett (Chrisg)

Ah = Ann Handley (Annarchy & Marketing Profs)

Jj = Joseph Jaffe (Jaffe Juice)

Ju = Joe Pulizzi (Junta42)

Ng = Nigel Hollis (Straight Talk)

Nh = Neville Hobson (Neville Hobson)

Bl = B.L. Ochman (What’s Next)

Si = Shel Israel (Global Neighbourhoods)

Ni = Nick Burcher (Nick Burcher)

Social Media Tools: (These are the applications and tools essential to Social Media)

De = Delicious

Su = StumbleUpon

Td = TweetDeck

Fe = FeedBurner

Dp = Dopplr

Tu = TinyURL

Tb = Tumblr

Fb = Facebook

Lk = LinkedIn

Te = Technorati

Fk = Flickr

Ms = MySpace

Go = Google

Dg = Digg

Social Media Practices: (Do these to maximize your Social Media experience)

Fl = Follow

Ht = Hashtag

Po = Post

St = Status Update

Sp = Spread

Se = Search

Hp = Hat tip

Fd = Feed

Rt = Retweet

Ud = Update

Cm = Comment

Jn = Join

Up = Upload

Tg = Tag

Tc = Tag clouds

Dm = Direct Message

Rx = Remix

Ln = Link

Mu = Mashup

Sb = Subscribe

Rf = Refer

Sr = Stream

Re = Reply

Rc = Recommend

Sn = Syndicate

Pk = Poke

Pm = Promote

Ib = Imbed

Social Media Live: (Bringing the Social Media experience to the real world)

Pf = Piers Fawkes (Likemind)

Rd = Russell Davies (Interesting)

Cb = Chris Brogan (PodCamp)

Sg = Seth Godin (Seth Live)

Ha = Peter Shankman (Help a Reporter Out)

Facebook People: (Power users of the Social Media Networking platform)

Jp = Jeff Pulver

Zf = Ze Frank

Twitter People: (Masters of leveraging microblogging)

Gk = Guy Kawasaki @guykawasaki

Wl = Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee

Aa = Aloha Arleen @AlohaArleen

Sm = Scott Monty @scottmonty

Jo = Jeremiah Owyang @jowyang

Sa = Sarah Evans @PRSarahEvans

Sc = Robert Scoble @scobleizer

Zp = Zappos @zappos

Sq = The Real Shaq @THE_REAL_SHAQ

Bo= Barack Obama @barackobama

Pc = Laura Fitton @pistachio

Tm = Warren Sukernek @warrenss

YouTube People: (Pioneers in developing content for social media video)

Ij = iJustine

Jl = Judson Laipply

Blog People: (Consistently intellingent, thought-provoking & educational)

Sy = Shoe Money

Ar = Ad Rants

Mp = Micro Persuasion

Aw = Ads of the World

Sj = Search Engine Journal

Cf = Common Craft

Cp = CopyBlogger

Ba = Brand Autopsy

Sd = Search Engine Land

Dd = Dosh Dosh

Gv = Gaping Void

Ma = Mashable


Categories
Social Media Twitter

Why I Love Twitter by Tim O’Reilly

In Brief –

Twitter is simple.

Twitter works like people do.

Twitter cooperates well with others.

Twitter transcends the web.

Twitter is user-extensible.

Twitter evolves quickly.

In Full – Read the excellent article here

Categories
PR Social Media Twitter

[update] UK ‘Preeple’ on Twitter

UPDATE – The below is now outdated.. I’ve created a landing page of sorts for it here but to go straight to the Wiki Wiki Wikid then click here

Stephen Davies of Prblogger is a list machine. Following on from his brilliant list of ‘Jeeple’ (Journalists) where he categorised all known UK journalists on Twitter, he brings another list flavoured installment to the Twittersphere this time following up with ‘Preeple’ (PR People)

It’s been a rampant success thus far with it surely being hard to keep up with the deluge of comments, 36 to date, from users who have been missed off the list to be added. For the purpose of the new category page and the need for it to be abbreviated I’ve now added Tweeple to the mix!

Depending on which way you look at it, there is the possibility of a negative viewpoint being attributed to lists like this, so there’s two sides to the story. For example, case in point, it’s merely providing people with a prospective list of influential journo’s / PROs to use for their own advantage or commercial gain. It has caused Stephen problems before, for example, have a look here.

However, It depends how cynical you are but for me it’s a fantastic resource of the who’s who of the PR & Journalism world’s on Twitter. It’s great to think that these lists might become a bit of a competition for agencies to establish more of a presence online, proving the power of their own internal community.

Building on the brilliant usage of the list I thought it would be just as useful to get an instant snapshot of a listed agencies presence on Twitter in numerical order complimenting Stephen’s alphabetically ordered list.. So here goes!

At the time of writing (approx 12am 11th Nov having lost the entire post and redone!) :- I’ve created a bit of a league table of ‘Preeple’ below..

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)

The greatest number being in the ‘Other’ section, either unaffiliated or possibly being their company’s Twitter champion.

Something to think about, perhaps Stephen’s list and this subsequent league table will encourage them to join their colleagues in making their company more visible in the Tworld (yeah, I just made that up..)

Categories
Social Media Twitter

More about that thing called Social Media..

The results of a new survey have been released recently on media relations practices, specifically how journalists use social media to stay on top of the game. Original Source.

A few key messages to take home..

YOY more blogs are being read, only 25% of journalists don’t read one or more.. what are they doing, living in a cave with no access to the world wide web?

Who said blogging was dead?! It would appear it’s only just beginning!

Over half are using tools like Twitter to seek out new business opportunities, story leads and to connect with peers in similar work.

Similarly, over half scan Google News to follow world events, a sign that there’s much more to Google than just search.. How to monetize news stories though? (New fan of Google reader here by the way) Speaking of which 1/5th have 5 more or RSS feeds delivered to their readers each work.

The users surveyed and indeed the general public alike appear to becoming more tech savvy, where the online world is more intertwined with their every day working life. As a result they’re better connected.. social media you could say has played a part in all of the above.

Let’s take Twitter as an example of a tool at the very heart of the social media world. So much so that I’ve been noticing a few job specifications for social media related roles noting within the requirements ‘If you don’t know what Twitter is, don’t bother applying’

I have connected with extraordinary individuals whom I’d never have had any contact with in every day life nor would possibly be able to, without jumping through a few hundred hoops. Twitter itself single handedly breaks down the barriers of communication and allows me to communicate and engage with CEOs, Directors, and inspirational visionaries whom I can learn greatly from.

What are your thoughts on the explosion in interest in Social Media over the last few months and years. Do you use Twitter? Is it something you have integrated in to your daily life or is it something you just don’t ‘get’ ?

Results in full below.

  • 75% of journalists read one blog or more (compared to 70% last year) and 29% read 5 or more blogs to keep up with their beat (compared to 25% a year ago).
  • More than three-fourths of journalists surveyed use social media to research stories (compared to 67% last year).
  • More than half (56%) use NewsStreams and micro-blogs like Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku to identify new leads.
  • Almost 38% of journalists now say they visit a social media site at least once a week as part of their reporting, compared to only 28% last year.
  • More than half (53%) of journalists say they visit Facebook, YouTube and Social Bookmarks at least once as month as part of their research – up from 44% last year.
  • Nearly 19% receive five or more RSS feeds of news services, blogs, podcasts or videocasts every week, compared with only 16% a year ago and 44% receive at least one regular RSS feed.
  • The majority (76.4%) of journalists said that they use local newspapers to follow news, while 63% check the New York Times, 51% scan Google News and 32% visit Yahoo! News to stay informed.
  • 34% of journalists use Wikis as a living media kit for the companies and beats they cover.
Categories
PR Social Media

Getting a job in Social Media.

For anyone who is interested in the world of PR & Social Media then I’d definitely recommend checking out Jed’s article over at his blog Rock Star PR.

He’s been a brilliant mentor figure for me so far in offering useful tips and advice in my own quest to get in to Social Media.

Check it out.

M.