Contently Managed - Social Media in Scotland, strategy & digital engagement » Crisis PR

What Rangers’ boss Craig Whyte should have said…

Craig — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:32:59 +0000

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.

Whyte has issued a statement that hasn’t done anyone any favours and we’ll explain why in a moment. But let’s look at the statement (as seen on ScotZine):

“In the most lurid terms, the Record accuses the Club’s management and, specifically me, of using supporters’ money to help fund the buy-out of Rangers. Not true. The Club is accused of not paying £5million in VAT. Not true.

“I can categorically assure supporters that when I launched a takeover bid for the Club it was funded entirely from one of my companies and that was demonstrated clearly to the satisfaction of the previous owner, Lloyds Banking Group and professional advisers.

WHAT WHYTE SHOULD HAVE SAID #1

If the club has paid the £5million bill then show a piece of proof – a JPG of some kind with any sensitive details blacked out.

He should also have stated which company of his funded the purchase.

A statement from Lloyds would have been good too.

It goes on…

“What is true is that Rangers, like many other clubs, has a financing arrangement in place with a company called Ticketus which enables the Club to receive revenue from a portion of season ticket sales in advance.

WHAT WHYTE SHOULD HAVE SAID #2

He should have named the other clubs that do this. Would have given the scheme more credibility. After all, if Man Utd, Liverpool and others do it, it must be OK mustn’t it? Ticketus should also have been backing Rangers up with a statement of support.

And then…

“This is a perfectly straightforward way of raising working capital for the Club. Money from season ticket sales goes directly to the Club and is used for the Club’s operations and that remains the case. In effect, all this financing arrangement does is release the revenue to the Club earlier.”

WHAT WHYTE SHOULD HAVE SAID #3

He should explain exactly what the deal is. There’s no need to but he’s currently on the defensive. Giving all the detail gets him back on a better footing, it shows there is nothing to hide (and I’m not saying there is)but the more open he can be, the better.

WHY WHYTE NEEDS TO SAY & DO MORE

Some – including those close to Whyte – may be wondering why he has to give so much information. Why can’t they just put out a normal statement and leave it at that. Quite a few reasons:

He’s being accused of various things. By being transparent and offering factual information he’s showing that he’s completely above board and being open. Being open builds trust.

Providing everything you can will also build allies and experts can look at the material provided and go “he’s completely above board, this is all legit, the Daily Record is full of nonsense.” There are Rangers fans who are lawyers, accountants, heads of big businesses who would analyse this stuff and endorse it, giving Whyte even more credibility. What businesses must never forget is that in a 2.0 age, there are people out there cleverer than you and they can make you or break you in their analysis of what you put out.

Putting out more information also heads off the second set of questions – naming the businesses and sums involved.

It would also give him a platform from which to go on the offensive. Every time someone tweeted or blogged a negative comment, his team could fire back with “See what we said in this link. We answered your point.”

He should also have put this out as a video statement and audio. And then followed up every few hours with more video and audio updated.

BUT IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN THE PRESS RELEASE

That’s only the start. Giving all the information in one place – in this case the news site of Rangers FC – is just the start. There should be people out there hitting every tweet, every blog post, every Facebook update going “here are the facts” and setting the record straight.

THIS ISN’T JUST FOR FOOTBALL

Any firm that finds itself under scrutiny should adopt the above steps as part of their crisis PR plan and should be looking at some simple steps (and if your crisis team tell you that it’s a 9-5 job, sack them):

Be open, answer as much as you can as quick as you can
Anticipate all the questions that will come your way, answer them first
Provide proof of all statements
Get your key allies – in-house, online, press, supporters, stakeholders – on board
Have video and audio as well as text ready
Have a team ready to correct any negative comments that appear

(Disclaimer in the interests of fairness: I’m a Celtic FC fan but have never carried out any PR or social media work for the club however I have been paid by Rangers FC at one point for social media consultancy and advice in a one-off capacity in the past)

Should Liverpool Council dump local press and go online only after CIPR, PRCA row?

Craig — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:09:03 +0000

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.
According to Facebook, 433,260 people are on the site and live within 16km of Liverpool. On Twitter, there’s at least 15,000 accounts registered in the city. Now that’s before we look at traffic to the council website, YouTube or other platforms. But it’s fair to say that a lot of people in the area are online.

Let’s look at the sales of the main papers. The Liverpool Echo does around 85,000 copies and The Liverpool Daily Post does around 9,000 copies. So, on the one hand Twitter wallops The Post but The Echo trumps that – though Facebook thumps them all.

The lesson for businesses, councils and press

The day is coming when an organisation in the UK will decide ‘sod it’ and stop speaking to a paper because they are fed up with a perceived lack of balance in articles or not getting their own viewpoint across properly and they’ll look at their own web traffic and platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and go “We can get our message out there to people. If we write it well and share it well, we can reach more people in our target groups than through the press. We might even be in more control of the content.”

And once the regional press is seen as useless for content, it’s not long after that it will be seen as useless for advertising, impacting on paper revenues and hastening a downward spiral.

But the press aren’t going away…

“The local papers will never vanish” people say. And for the short-term (next ten years) they are probably right. But there will be more cuts, more reporters out of work, less reporting carried out. And again, circulations, will fall and readers will discover that they can get more news by going online and following certain channels.

The other argument is that of “By doing it digitally you don’t reach everyone.” True. But look at the figures above. By using the traditional press you reach a hell of a lot less people.

The other lesson in digital engagement here…

That doesn’t mean councils and organisations should just jump on and push out press releases. Using digital right – and getting the high viewing figures or hits – means being more open and sharing issues, being more involved with your community and stakeholders. It’s the organisations who do that who will be the real winners online.

Tottenham riots give Blackberry a PR boost & win in teen market

Craig — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:26:09 +0000

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?

BlackBerries have been growing in popularity of late with teens for a few reasons – many parents have been handing them down to their kids as the adult gets an iPhone or Android phone, the data tariffs have been coming down and many are taking advantage of BlackBerry Messenger being free to use (as opposed to SMS which incur a charge).

Now for teens, one of the most important things is being able to have private chats – a box which BBM ticks – but there’s also that part of teenagehood that wants to do the opposite or be different from parents. So if the parents are all about the iPhones/Androids and Twitter/Facebook where’s a teen to go for private chat or to rebel? BBM.

On top of that, the media reporting today will – even though it’s not directly meant – make BBM and BlackBerry seem quite cool to a lot of kids and teens. Its use in the riots will actually increase the desirability.

Let’s bear in mind that what’s cool to an adult – or what an adult thinks is cool for teens – is normally nowhere near what teens themselves consider cool.

The other question to be asked though is this: Does BlackBerry see this as a positive thing? Is this a Cristal/Burberry moment for the brand or will it put on an official face of “no comment” while working out how to maximise on this behind the scenes?

(Of course the real downside is that there’s now a bunch of free phones going about the area because of the looting, so there may not be any extra sales out of it.)

(And note, I’m not subscribing to the ‘any PR is good PR’ mentality – which I debate with Kate Matlock in this social media podcast (RSS link)- but the more the authoritarian press is seen to decry BBM, the more it will appeal to certain people as it will look edgy and something that gives private ways of chatting without snooping in.)

Free social media workshop downloads for PRs/marketeers/businesses

Craig — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:26:37 +0000

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.

Now, as I’m Scottish and miserable, there’s a limit to the number of downloads – probably around 500 – so if you are in a large organisation, please just download the once, put it on your intranet and tell your colleagues about it instead of sending everyone the link and saying “go get!”.
Here’s some details of what you’re getting – and the suggested listening/viewing order.

Why am I doing this? I’ve already said but feel free to consider it an Easter present – after all, I can’t give you all an egg can I?

Social Media Successes

A look at some social media success stories as well as ideas for numerous industries and what they can do to make social media work for them. 35 minutes long.

Social Media in a Crisis

A look at some relevant case studies (to which I would add this post from yesterday showing how teens shouldn’t use social media) ending with general points talking about what social media can do for anyone in a communications or customer relations crisis. 17 minutes long.

Social Media Basics

Moving on from the case studies and ideas and a look at each platform, what may work and what may not. 42 minutes long.

Social Media Semi-advanced

Taking the ideas from the basics further and developing them, offering some fresh ideas and insight. 38 minutes long.

Now that runs to around just under three hours in terms of content. Listening and reading to it all won’t make you a social media guru or social media braveheart – a tag you should avoid at all costs – but it will give you a grounding for the basics and how to carry activities out.

And of course if anyone has any queries, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment below.

Download free social media presentations here.

(Note, that takes you to a list of files – please only download the ones you need so everyone gets a chance to get something from the giveaway. For example, if you only want the PDFs, please don’t download the iPod or Quicktime versions.)

And of course, if anyone has anything to add, I’d love to see/hear it!

Footballer casualty of social media as he’s sacked over tweet

Craig — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:31:54 +0000

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

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.
Assuming he is sorry he said it, he should have asked Berwick Rangers to include more of a statement by him.
If he’s wanting to be really proactive he could join or make a donation to an anti-bigotry/sectarian organisation.
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.

Should the Scottish Government buy sectarian keywords in PPC effort to minimise negative PR after bomb threats?

Craig — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:51:53 +0000

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)

17 PR & marketing tips for Kindle, iBook and ebook authors

Craig — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:05:34 +0000

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…

Jacqueline Howett brought out a book recently – The Greek Seaman – and it garnered some OK reviews (I haven’t read it – it doesn’t look like my kind of thing), but a review on Big Al’s site pointed out that while the story was decent, the editing of the book was awful. Typos and grammar issues made it really hard to stick with the flow of the story.

Jacqueline goes on the defensive and before attacking back. Then she becomes the attacked as people go after her and it leads to a bunch of negative reviews on the book’s Amazon site. The short version of all of this is here on the site of Douglas Jackson but the original review and comments are here.

In short, it’s car crash viewing for authors and wannabe’s. There’s also been a suggestion that this is all a stunt for attention, which is possible but I don’t think so.

I can see where Jacqueline is coming from – she’s hurt by the negative comment – and I can sympathise (one of my four books – Football Inc – once had the tagline at the end of the review in The Independent “This is a market and a place for a book like this, sadly this is not that book.”) but she was in the wrong to lash out like she did. Ridiculously so. She’s made herself look unprofessional and this has impacted on her work now with the negative reviews.

Anyway, mixing my author and PR hats, here are some tips for authors who want to put their books online…

Don’t forget a good cover – yes, it’s all digital but in the online stores people can still see a cover and a good cover can sum up a book. It’s an opening picture worth 1000 words. Look at this for example by Brian Frey…

What does that tell you? It’s a book about cars and spaceships. And you’d be right. (It’s also not the final image that will be getting used, but you get the point.)

If you’re writing purely to make money, stop here. The world doesn’t need what you’re writing. It needs writing with passion.

Build up an audience in advance. Have a blog and a Twitter presence and develop your personal Facebook page to be appropriate too. Seek out people who may be interested in what you are writing about and build relationships – that way you are starting to be build brand ambassadors for yourself.

Write in a language you can master the basics of. If English is not your first language, make sure you know it well enough to write a book. If you worry that you can’t, write the book in a short, sharp style – don’t try for flowery prose as that is where you will trip up.

Proof, proof and proof your books. Get someone else to do it as well – don’t rely on computers – because once that book goes out there and is live, that is what you’ll be judged by. Write up a press release too and send that to interested parties. Or hire someone to do that for you.

Send out advance review copies to sites who review copies of ebooks – and ebooks in the same category as yours. Go the extra mile and do something special for them – interviews, audio and so on.

Have a couple of press pics handy that you can host on your site. As always, try and look attractive. Failing that, try and look human.

Remember this: the book is not you. An attack on the book is not an attack on you personally. So don’t take it that way. Walk away from the keyboard and take deep breaths before posting any replies to people who are negative about your book.

Similarly, don’t believe your own press either. If yet get good reviews, brilliant, but don’t start thinking you’re the next Rowling, King, Morrison or whoever.

Handle it all with good grace and humour.

Use Google Alerts to make sure that every time the book is mentioned/reviewed you can pop up and thank the reviewer/take some questions for their readership.

Regardless of how the review turns out, when it appears, thank the reviewer for taking the time to review it. If they liked it, suggest similar works they may like. If they didn’t like it, find out why. Do you have something else you could send them?

You can also ignore the reviewers if you want – Charlie Stross does – but you don’t have an audience so you should look to engage IMO.

Resist the urge to snap at negative reviewers. The reviewer and his followers hold all the power here. At best you’ll come off looking daft but the worst-case scenario could have your writing career sabotaged by people if you piss them off.

Let your local bookstores know about you, so that if they do nights around digital authors they know to invite you.

Similarly, get in touch with your local press, pointing out how many people are doing this now and why you are doing it, what the book is about and so on.

Remember that you are wanting to make a career out of this, not just a one-off, so it’s long-term relationship building.

I know there’s a strange combo of authors and PRs who read this blog, so what advice would you offer to wannabee digital authors?

Edinburgh & Glasgow HR industries gets their own wikileaks scandal

Craig — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:46:31 +0000

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?

According to the leak of details for Change Recruitment (and it didn’t take long for all online leaks to be dubbed wikileaks did it? I suppose it’s better than ‘-gate’ at the end of everything)…

Turnover decreased by 15.7% to £9,600,000.
Losses increased to £1,635,547 (2009 losses of £1,049,841, 2008 losses of £282,892).
Gross Profit down to £4,801,506 (2009 £6,717,359, 2008 £9,482,035) 50.60% reduction since 2008.
Employee numbers decreased to 85 from 138 in 2008
Profit and loss account – negative £3.1m.
Current obligations to private equity owners and bank debt to be paid by 2016 = £19,039,000. or 8.5x its debtor book value. No impairment of the value of the business has been made
Current trading is profitable at only Ebitda level. When interest is taken into account the business continues to run at a loss.

Now, I spoke to financial experts who said that on the face of it, without any other information and if the accounts are real, those figures aren’t good for a company at all and it looks hard to see how they’re going to repay or refinance the debt (note, the company name wasn’t revealed to the accountants, just the figures).

As with all great crises, this one broke on late Friday afternoon and it’s been the private chat of Linkedin’ers ever since. You can see why, especially when HR recruitment is a very cut-throat and competitive business.

They could get out of this though. Their site already has some handy stuff – news, tips and testimonial – but it could be so much more…

PR and social media steps to recover when the P’n'L has been leaked

Don’t try to get it pulled because people will have made copies. Acknowledge it, move on. Statement to press if you feel the need, but the priority should be to bury it with fresher content. Respond to where this is placed but don’t go being proactive and advertising it. Unless it’s fake, then shout out to the world that these are fake.

Get a social media presence up and running – Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, YouTube/Vimeo in this case. Google Alerts too (especially if you have articles on your site about the importance of social media).

If you want to be really skilled, get a presence up for each sector you work in.

Pull together a quick statement so you have something to issue to all and anyone speaking about it. Do a quick video too. If feeling skilled, get a SlideShare presentation together too.

Any mention anywhere – get the response out there. Offer the person who covers it all sorts of access to turn this round (making sure your teams are PR briefed in the first place).

Turn this round from being a leak to an agenda setter. Point out your figures – but also highlight any strengths that you have – and place it in the context of the recession. Bring other HR firms into it – don’t name them, but if everyone’s finding it tough, point that out. Then get this out everywhere – a State of the Industry report – and have it in every relevant place online (and don’t forget traditional press too).

Find something positive

Say what you’re going to do in 2011 that’s going to make it better than 2010.

Get case studies – video, slides, quotes – from people you’ve helped find work and get them up on the web. Play to that positive. Use the network you’ve already created. And use some decent SEO to help.

Be all over HR advice on LinkedIn and Quora.

From a HR point of view, turn this round to a mentality of “we’re all in this together and we’re going for it” instead of “we’re doomed.” Use that outlook to tint everything you do. Be Avis.

(Behind the scenes of course, find out who the leaker is and deal with them)

Moving past the crisis

Have a HR policy in place for using social media. Be really smart and make it free to others.

Offer SM policy advice as a freemium product.

Start a podcast talking about the latest trends in HR, also set up a podcast or video for tips on how to get the perfect job, CV advice, LinkedIn pointers, interview tips and so on. Take what they do just now and 2.0 it. Add in a mailing list too, build up that database.

Set up some kind of Twitter chat around the same. HR is a busy hastag on Twitter so you could set up something along those lines - #hrchat – or localise it so you only get UK/Scots/Edinburghers.

Review HR books – using affiliate links you could make money out of it but again it also shows confidence and expertise.

Do a piece on a week on clients you’ve placed – where are they now sort of thing.

For fun, run twitter commentary alongside a show that features HR issues or has a HR person in it.

Do fictional HR articles – what would it be like being the HR guy in Star Trek? the HR guy for Hogwarts? (What’s the point of these last two? It shows confidence and expertise. It’s also quirky and can bring in new viewers/readers – after all, no one would blend a phone in the real world but it worked for one company).

Set up events for bloggers.

Retweet your competitors job postings and info. Appear on their blog posts. Not only is this great for SEO, but it also really throws people (in this case, the competition) as they really don’t know who to react. Meanwhile to job hunting people they see that you are THE link to follow as you are posting all the job details out there, not just your own.

Could you use Foursquare to set up alerts to jobs as people walk past a building?

Be creative.

The HR sector isn’t one that I’ve spent a lot of time in, so if anyone out there can suggest other tips or great sites/podcasts to follow in the sector I’m sure it would be gratefully appreciated by the other readers.

UPDATE: It appears that the original post has been pulled from LinkedIn, which means it was spotted quick, but I hear copies have been getting made and spread round HR circles like wildfire.

UPDATE 2: Change have been in touch and, while not disputing the figures, have asked me to point out this article which states 58% fee income growth in the first eight months of their latest financial year while permanent recruitment is up 40% and the oil and gas unit has trebled in size so well done to Change and I assume that as we speak they’re spreading that good news out to all the avenues which were hit by the original leak. (Actually, reading that data and how it’s presented, that would make for an awesome social media news release.)

How did we do in our 2010 social media & PR predictions?

Craig — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:06:28 +0000

Last December, we did the obligatory predictions for 2010 in social media and PR – but how did we do?
We’ll keep this fairly simple with the prediction as the headline and then our thoughts under. Feel free to agree/disagree…

We’ll be doing a lot more gaming

Oh I nailed this about as well as Jesus at Easter. Social gaming continued to go through the roof, with Farmville now selling more tractors per day than the physical world sells in a year. But it wasn’t just on Facebook we gamed – the iPlatform and Android also played their part. So that’s 1-0 to me.

ARG will be overhyped for at least six months of the year

I thought this would have done better as the chips and processors in mobiles picked up but it seems to have stalled quite a bit and I don’t know if we’ll see it much more next year – perhaps 2012 or later. 1-1

Companies will merge PR/Marketing/customer relations depts

Outside of Scotland, this has started – and you’ll see it biting more in the next 12 months due to the financial dire straights we are in. Social Media will also be part of this – not everyone will have Scott from Ford type. But as it hasn’t really kicked off yet, we’ll call it 1-2 against me.

Many social media “experts” will go to the wall

2010 definitely saw companies get rid of people who weren’t up to scratch or their vision for social media wasn’t in alignment with the company – Mark Jennings of D8 Digital was the most high profile casualty of this in Scotland where, despite spending an incredible amount of time networking at events and tweeting about what he was up to, it didn’t work out at the firm and ways were parted. Fortunately Mark was able to find new employment in London and the family are now down there with him and his style should work well there.

Podcast Matters and Design Matters also went away, but that was under a rebranding exercise, coming back as Fatbuzz and their popular Glasgow and Edinburgh breakfast events have continued strong despite the name change.

There’s still a lot of chancers out there though. 2011 will see more companies dabble, some will make it work, some will dump it, but let’s save that for the predictions of 2011. 2-2 for the scoreline though.

Social media/digital PR gaffes will be big for one week only

Oh everyone’s got their own favourite for this, but we’ve all seen them. Most of them only live on in presentations now. 3-2 to me.

Print will survive while the iSlate won’t be the digital Jesus

Nailed this. Got the name wrong mind you. Journalism is still learning to adjust and many are now having hassles with Apple over the data issue. Also, many companies are baulking at the extra costs involved for all-singing, all-dancing digital editions (I’d settle for PDFs of the newspaper myself). 4-2 to me.

Many won’t see the benefits of digital/social media PR

Got this one too. Allan Barr of The BIG Partnership has more of a theory that more people get it, but that the ‘experts’ are actually quite poor at getting cross the value and benefit of it, taking away the idea of being afraid of it. Either way, there’s still a lot of people out there wondering how to do it, what they should do and who they should do it with. 5-2 to me.

Twitter and Facebook will keep growing

Oh yes. 6-2.

More will be free (and there will be lots more rubbish)

Yup. Having said that, the Freemium model has really done well this year, particularly in games. 7-2

Companies will want far more global offerings

Seen this as well. UK/US-based companies especially are realising that it’s a global medium out there and are trying to reach out to everyone. 8-2.

tl;dr may go mainstream

Couldn’t have been more wrong on this one if I had tried. Whoops! 8-3.

The digital divide will grow,especially in Scotland

Sadly, this continues to be the case. Scotland is a country where even the geography is against you for decent digital services and this will continue next year as everyone pleads poverty to helping schools, businesses and individuals into the modern ages. 9-3.

HR will be kept busy

They certainly were. While many just jumped into social media, companies were pointing out that to do so was against staff policy. In some cases, lawyers had a field day too as management learned they couldn’t just sack someone for a tweet which badmouthed the firm. 10-3.

Talking about social media stunts may get more coverage than the social media stunt

This one actually toned down from the hysteria of last year where stunts with a few thousands hits were hammered into the millions after appearing on the likes of Mashable. 10-4 to be fair.

In video, people will realise audio is as important as visual

Slowly but surely people are realising this with the Flip/Kodak Zi8 style of cameras now coming with better audio. The Zoom Q3HD from SamsonTech seems to be one of the next generation for this. It was a late comeback for audio though so 10-5 in the interests of fairness.

There’s more to comms than just the social media and digital PR

This ties in with what I said above so yup and it’s good to see – people should realise that social media and digital engagement is just another part of the overall comms package. Have a standalone person for it if you want – have them inhouse or outhouse – but it should work closely with what you are planning in PR, marketing and so on. Having said that, it’s also very much customer service and happy customers is the best PR you can get. 11-6 to me, making me an uber-Guru ninja type!

What about you, did you make any predictions for how SM would turn out this year? How did you get on?

11 tips for councils in using digital comms in snow blizzards

Craig — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:21:56 +0000

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.

Even though it comes fairly annually now to Scotland, snow can still disrupt things and I feel sorry for councils in these situations because if they spent a lot on snow/winter treatment tactics and there was none, they would be hammered. If they spend little, and there’s snow, they also get hammered.

However, while it’s impressive that North Lanarkshire Council has embraced some digital comms, the way it was used shows that there’s a lot to learn.

When the snow started falling, like many others I headed over to my local council site to see what was being done in the area. I was quite delighted to see that North Lanarkshire Council was updating the website and also set up a Twitter stream called NLCwinter. Even better, both were being updated. But then, looking further, they weren’t being updated too quickly – in fact it was more or less normal business hours.

Then a tweet appears saying that the schools are open – where did this come from? Not NLC but Radio Clyde News. NLC merely retweeted it.

Now, NLCWinter is being hit by questions by people – asking if routes are open, buses are running, areas are safe – and there’s no replies going out. Now, I can accept that Twitter isn’t a high comms priority – there seems to be around 3000 people in the council area who use Twitter – but these are people highly likely to spread info about.

(Before anyone thinks this is a needless anti-council bash, hold off: I pay money for this area and on top of that, the points being made are suggestions for improvement. Criticism for the sake of criticism helps non-one. And lastly, some information is better than none. It’s just frustrating to see when it could do so much more)

(and, as the Lanarkshires straddle each other, fair play to South Lanarkshire Council for getting a Twitter stream up and running too and pointing out gritter routes and some other info)