Rangers Football Club is having a terrible time of it. It used to have a really easy time in the mainstream Scottish media but of late has been more and more under fire between a tax case and scrutiny of the new owner, Craig Whyte. And there’s crisis social media and PR lessons here for any businesses.

Read more…

There’s an interesting story over at The Drum about a row having broken out between Liverpool City Councillors and the local press. In short, the council is banning their press officers from speaking to the papers. As you would expect, the CIPR and PRCA have condemned this, calling it daft.

But when you look at circulation and online presence, the council could go online and reach more people than they can through the traditional press. They’d also be more in control of the message. And this is the shape of things to come.
Read more…

The UK press today is blaming social media for helping spread information and details about the riots in Tottenham and elsewhere and two platforms in particular are getting the coverage/blame – Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger.

Twitter’s getting attacked for the real-time nature of updates while BlackBerry Messenger is being attacked for being a private communications network (that’s free, hence the popularity).

And while some are asking if this is another kick in the downward spiralling BlackBerry, could it actually be the opposite and be seen as a defining moment in securing the teen marketplace ahead of iPhones and Android devices?

Read more…

I do a fair chunk of speaking and social media workshops and while I enjoy them, I’ve noticed lately that I’m relying too much on PowerPoint and Keynote and being a bit lazy. On top of that, in Scotland – a country where for many in the media ‘digital’ (never mind ‘customer engagement’) is still a dirty word – could do with raising its game a bit, so this is my efforts at trying to raise the baseline.

To that end, below there’s a link to a series of social media presentations I’ve done – free to you – over the last year or so, covering social media successes, social media in a crisis, social media basic advice and some semi-advanced (for Scotland) social media advice. There’s versions for iPods and computers as well as the plain PDFs. (And yes, some parts may be a little out of date, but the general material is sound.)

If you’ve ever been curious about social media, wondered about how authors, lawyers, accountant, hotels, bars, general businesses can make social media/digital engagement work, then these are the podcasts for you.

Read more…

Berwick Rangers – no relation to Glasgow Rangers – are a small club in the Borders of Scotland. As highlighted by G40 Celtic, Kieran Bowell, the captain of one of their teams sent out a tweet related to the death threats being made to Neil Lennon of Celtic FC and others. As a result, Berwick Rangers have sacked him and now he’s screwed any career he may have had (any team that picks him up and if he rises through the ranks to the big time, this will always get pulled up – and what senior club is going to pick someone when they know the first thing that will happen is a piece in a paper about him having been a bigot).

Was it a good thing he tweeted this? Can he come back from it? What’s the lesson for others?

Should people be this honest online?

Yes. People should be this honest. People are being honest – they aren’t being fakes – so they can defend their opinions. Digital lives and ‘real’ lives are now one and the same. So if you say something online – and you should only post what you believe anyway -then this lets people see what you are like.

If that opinion is one of hatred that gets them into trouble with the police, then hopefully the people involved would see that wishing ill on someone like this is wrong and change their behaviour accordingly.

How Kieran Bowell could come back from this

1. He’s said it, so he has to take it on the chin. He’s taken his Twitter stream down, which was the wrong move. He should have kept it up.
2. Assuming he is sorry he said it, he should have asked Berwick Rangers to include more of a statement by him.
3. If he’s wanting to be really proactive he could join or make a donation to an anti-bigotry/sectarian organisation.
4. When it comes up in future, just refer people back to what he’s said now, that’s sorry, it was immature and he wants to move on with his life

Lessons for everyone from this

It shouldn’t need said in 2011, but amazingly it still does. If you say something online, it’s going out to the whole world and it could be out there for a very long time. If you are going to say something, then either mean it or specify very clearly that it’s humour (which is a subjective thing). No one is saying you need to be a mindless drone with no opinion, but have the courage of your convictions.

Another points, especially if on Twitter. If using a hashtag accept that if you are flying contrary to the use of the hashtag – in this case hijacking the #neillennon hashtag – people will especially call you out on it.

A thought just occured to me after my previous post. Just as BP bought nearly $1million worth of Google ads over a variety of keywords at the Deepwater Horizon incident should the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council, Celtic, Rangers or some other organisation buy up domain names and keywords associated with the issue?

That way, if someone was going by words like ‘bomb threat’, ‘sectarian’ and so on, they would see links to pages showing that Scotland isn’t as bad as it was (or whatever the person who bought the ads wanted them to see – they could easily portray the opposite if they wanted).

Or would buying the domains/adwords be seen as an admittance of a problem instead of a proactive PR approach using SEO and PPC? (Though with news of the bombs now all over the UK-wide press, it’s not really time for putting heads in the sand.)

(Thanks to Clarke Duncan and Attacat Ben for a clarification)

Thanks to the latest Kindle (great piece of kit IMO) – app and hardware – and iBooks, eBooks are finally starting to take off in the same was as MP3s did a few years ago and we’re seeing great stories come out – of the likes of Amanda Hocking and Gordon Ferris, doing great sales digitally. You’ve got newcomers like Mike Howell and his technothrillers – and then there’s the early converts like Charlie Stross and Peter Watts who have been talking about the benefits of digital for years.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all plain sailing – far from it. One area this is more notable than any other is in digital marketing and PR. And a recent online spat shows how dangerous it can get…
Read more…

Last week was great interesting for the professional services in terms of social media – we were asking if banks should use social media, then there was Twittergate with the legal profession (this is the comprehensive must-read on that) and late Friday pm, an Edinburgh/Glasgow HR company saw financial details – which weren’t flattering – thrown up on LinkedIn.

And given the state of the accounts, it’s a bit of a PR disaster. So how do they get out of this?

Read more…

Last December, we did the obligatory predictions for 2010 in social media and PR – but how did we do?

Read more…

The reason for the post comes after the tips, but it’s partly in answer to the age-old question of ‘well, what use is social media and digital communications for councils’.

Social media outlets like Twitter are great when there’s a problem. It’s a simple, time and cost-effective way of sending out information that the majority of your electorate can see. They may not be able to get a newspaper, the TV may be part of a powercut but a laptop might have some charge and the mobile phone may be able to access the services. Failing that, they may have a friend who spotted the timely information (the time aspect normally being the most important of this).

Tips for councils using social media to inform the public

1) If setting up your Twitter stream as broadcast only (and you don’t want to engage) state so in the bio and occassionally put out a tweet telling people that. Otherwise – because it is seen as a two-way medium – there is an expectation of engagement and people will ask you questions. And people will criticise you for not responding. Would you pick up a phone and not say hello?

1b) Also, if you don’t give people enough information, don’t moan when they don’t use your resource and go get the info from elsewhere.

2) Make sure the advice going out is timely. Parents need to know early in the morning if schools are open/closed, not at 10am. (In fairness, North Lanarkshire Council say that Tuesday’s announcements will be made at 7am – but Edinburgh City Council made the decision on Monday afternoon to give people more planning time.)

3) If sending out info by SMS, make sure it’s timely. Don’t send a SMS at 1pm to tell me the school is open and then send another at 2.05pm to say the school is closed.

4) You are THE trusted source for news. It shouldn’t come via local radio stations or elsewhere. You are the primary source.

5) If you have gritters out, why not liveupdate? As one area is gritted, put an update out on Twitter saying that it was done. Similarly, if people are asking when they will be gritted, let them know if they are a route for gritting or not. (note, this doesn’t mean the gritter guys should be tweeting – they’re busy enough)

5b) Show on maps where the gritters are going in a day

6) Use the likes of Hootsuite and Twellowhood to find the most prominent local tweeters and make sure they see your tweets because then they will RT for you, spreading the message.

7) You can’t just operate it Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm like normal business hours comms.

Having said all of this, you do have a digital comms usage policy in place don’t you?

9) Make sure the press know of your streams and set up a Twitter list/links list of all the local media and useful agencies so people can get all the info they need.

10) If you want, add CoverIt Live to your site so that people off-Twitter (but with web access) can get all the data too.

11) Are you set up on other digital comms channels for people to find you? Do you need to be.

The beauty of all of this is that if it is set up prior to an emergency/disruption then it’s not a lot of work. If you leave it to the last minute then it makes life a little harder.

Read more…