Money Money Money; it’s a Twitter world

March 31st, 2009

People are following me on Twitter. This in itself seems rather odd to me, even odder that it’s usually American evangelical Christians.

Today though upon checking my emails I discovered that one of my new followers is Trafford Centre Shop which is quite possibly the first viable business use of Twitter I’ve seen.

It’s a simple concept: if you follow them they will send you updates on what’s on offer in what shops in the Trafford Centre. Today HMV’s Easter Sale has started.

To my mind this is the perfect way for Twitter to make someone some money. If I live in Manchester knowing what’s on sale at the Trafford Centre might make me pop out and buy it.

Following Apple and The Guardian is interesting but it’s not about to make me head out for today’s paper and another mac.

Perhaps teaming up is the way forward. If all the sandwich shops in Manchester were telling me their daily special in one feed I’d be truly realising the potential of Twitter.

Agency steps into bat for Lancs star

March 31st, 2009

Taken from the Manchester Evening News, March 31, 2009

ONE of Manchester’s newest PR agencies has knocked the opposition for six with a prestigious new cricketing account.

Democracy will step up to the crease to support Lancashire’s Gary Keedy as he celebrates his benefit year.

The 34-year-old was voted the `best county player never to have played for England’ and has hired Democracy to manage public relations for a series of benefit events.

The team will kick off with a VIP media and celebrity launch in Hale this week.

Highlights from his benefit year will include an Ashes preview and review with Andrew Flintoff, a day of golf with Sir Ian Botham and a summer ball.

Democracy PR is tasked with bringing together Keedy and fellow sporting heroes with the corporate world to raise money for him and his nominated charities.

Keedy is currently studying for a physiotherapy degree at Salford University while also training for the start of the new cricket season.

He said: “We’ve built a great team to help promote the benefit year and Democracy demonstrated great contacts and creative ideas.”

Jennifer O’Grady, founder of Democracy PR, said: “The next 12 months promise to be a lot of fun for Gary and the rest of the team.”

The Chorlton agency’s other clients include Baxter’s Licensed Brands, Duerr’s jams and marmalades, The Gentry Grooming Company and Psycuity.

Have I got news for you

March 26th, 2009

Figures out today show that Sun Online has stolen the top spot from Guardian.co.uk to become the most popular news website in the UK.

Telegraph.co.uk comes in second,  Guardian.co.uk falls to third and Times Online is fourth.

The whole report published by ABCe is full of stats and figures which you can read in a slightly more friendly form on the Guardian’s Media section.

Although all except Telegraph.co.uk saw a fall in unique users from January’s figures every site saw massive increases since this time last year. Guardian.co.uk is up 30%, with the Times Online up 52% and Sun Online up a massive 118%.

Facebook bows to community pressure

March 26th, 2009

Since Facebook launched its new home page design they’ve been battered by community comments objecting to the redesign and the new ‘Twitter’ like updates.
In a blog comment from Facebook Product Director Chris Cox, he states:

“Whenever we build something new or tweak something old, our motivation is the same: to help you share with the people you care about and find out what’s happening with them. Before we launch any new product, it first must pass a process of design, development and testing with a more limited user audience. If those results are satisfactory, we then release it for all of you to use. We know that no amount of testing is as valuable as what you have to say. For this reason, we will always look to you, our users, to tell us what is working and what isn’t so we can continually make improvements.”

So what are those improvements and when should we expect to see them?

Over the next couple of weeks, Facebook are pledging to add more control and relevance in the stream – which specifically means

  • Live updating: so no need to refresh
  • Photo tags: adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream
  • More choices for applications: the chance for you to stop seeing how many of your friends have ‘taken a quiz’

The facebook chaps are also planning to help us find things more easily by.

  • Moving requests to the top of the right column
  • Easier way to create a Friends List filter

This is the second time in as many months that Facebook users have pushed the social network to modify changes – and this, more than anything is likely to be the reason that the ‘book continues to do thrive in the ever more competitive social environment – they remember why they’re in business and respond to what there customers tell them.

Big Brother is watching you

March 25th, 2009

Having just got 5 minutes to check my RSS reader I’ve been catching up on the events of the day and the Guardian Media feed has informed me that my social networking contacts could be being watched.

A Home Office spokesman this morning announced that the government will be looking at monitoring all internet sites that allow users to communicate. That means Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, even Skype.

Apparently there are already plans to store every phonecall, email and internet hit made in the UK on a database and these social networking observations would be added to that plan.

In a quote I find probably inappropriately funny the spokesman points out “We have no way of knowing whether Osama bin Laden is chatting to Abu Hamza on Facebook. Or terrorists could be having a four-way chat on Skype”.

Oh dear. I suppose there’s no reason that this couldn’t be true (apart from the lack of wireless signal in caves) but it does seem a little OTT.

I agree that it makes sense to consider communication on social networking sites as on a par with more traditional forms but it does strike me as more than a little hysterical to suggest an ‘axis of evil’ Facebook group.

Happy 2030

March 24th, 2009

One of the wonders of the internet is that you can pretty much search for anything that has been before.

A new service created by friend of the agency Tom Scott called Tweleted allows you to retrieve deleted tweets, for as Tom puts it, ‘good or evil’.

Another nice little service I recently stumbled upon was FutureMe. This service allows you to send an email to yourself in the future.

The ‘public, but anonymous’ option makes the site an interesting read. Letters include – birthday congratulations for 30 years in advance, children’s career and life ambitions and self pep talks from people in unhappy relationships. The best of the entries are even available for viewing in their book ‘Dear Future Me’

With the dissertation in the bag, I’m planning on writing something to my 40 year old self – along with a few predictions . . . if you’ve got any ideas what should be on there send me a tweet.

Twitter: officially better than Jennifer Aniston

March 24th, 2009

Hollywood stunner Jennifer Aniston has reportedly split with boyfriend John Mayer, having realised he had more time for Twitter than her.

Jennifer was expecting contact from John whilst away promoting her new film. Although John told Jen he was too busy to get in touch, Mayer, 32, found the time to update his page every few hours, sometimes minutes.

An infuriated Jen decided enough was enough, and ditched her twitter addicted boyf this week. The relationship had been a hot twitter topic just months ago when John’s updates created speculation that he was considering proposing.

Despite it’s many critics, Twitter proves once again that it has the potential to fuel the news agenda. Come on folks – sign up.

By Jade Singleton

An experience

March 23rd, 2009

Being a keen second year student studying Marketing at Lancaster University, I decided to get some hands-on experience and after checking out websites and arranging meetings with the careers advisor (plus cashing in on all my personal contacts), I opted to try and get into Democracy PR for some work experience over the Easter break. One telephone interview, a personal recommendation and i got the nod a couple of months ago.

Today I woke up, excited, terrified and ready to get stuck in. After a read through the papers, I received the first challenge – have a go a blogging. First attempt coming up shortly . . .

Jade Singleton is a 19 year old student studying Marketing at Lancaster University. She joins Democracy PR on their work experience program. Anyone wanting to register for the program should email their CV to j.ogrady@democracypr.com.

MEN Makes Manchester Proud

March 20th, 2009

For those of you who haven’t seen the M.E.N. yet today here’s the charming Shay Given wearing one of our lovingly crafted hats:

You can see the rest of the coverage at www.makemanchesterproud.com

The Daily Twitter

March 19th, 2009

Having such a hectic lifestyle, I rarely have time to sit down and read a whole newspaper. Instead I prefer my news to come in a concise 140 characters beamed to me as it happens. It seems I’m not the only one:

Last week Hitwise recorded that Twitter received more homepage visits than the Guardian, Times, Sun, Telegraph and Google News UK. (figures didn’t include hits via applications such as Tweetdeck or Twitterrific.)

It’s not that we’re getting the full story in those 140 characters; Twitter is becoming the place to go for the very latest news.

During February, Hitwise reported that 9.6% of Twitter’s downstream traffic went to News and Media websites, and 41% of that went to the News and Media – Print sub-category, which is dominated by the newspaper sites.

If the consumer is getting it’s news from Twitter – then PR needs to ‘get’ the power of Twitter very quickly.