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.

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If you’ve read more than 140 characters on social media, you’ll know that many people like myself, Chris Brogan and others advocate a blog as being a main part of your social media strategy. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other sites, what’s on your site (like your blog) is yours and all yours alone with the benefits – SEO and otherwise – that it brings. Another great thing about a blog is that you can write as much as you want – useful in a crisis and you want to get your words across. After all, there’s no guarantee that the local press will pick up your release or use a lot of it.

Which brings us to BrewDog, a young brewing and pub company from Scotland (disclaimer: I’ve done work for them in the past but not at the moment). There’s been grumblings of late from some customers about problems with deliveries from their mail order.
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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.
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The whole phone hacking issue been covered elsewhere and better in-depth than I can give time to, but this one item did impress me.

While it’s fair to say that until Edelman PR got on board the phone hacking tale was a PR disaster for News International (and has since been turned round really well) there’s been one nice PR touch by the likes of Trinity Mirror and so on… they’ve kept the text specific to ‘phone hacking’ so they can talk about that – and deny it – without talking about the other tricks known to have been used at papers where reporters would receive lists of outgoing calls made by people at certain addresses from insiders at friendly phone companies. Said reporter would then go through the phone numbers and dial away to try and find a story.

It’s not hacking but it’s in the same area – invasion of privacy by accessing data people would expect to be kept confidential.

And again, like phone hacking to be honest, that’s an OK tactic if you’re chasing dodgy types – criminals, corrupt politicians and so on – but not authors, footballers and other ‘celebrities’.

I am utterly delighted to be announcing ex-Digital Editor of the Daily Record and STV Local Editor Iain Hepburn has joined Contently Managed as the country’s first Director of Brand Journalism allowing us to add to our social media package to businesses in Scotland.

This, as they say, is exciting times folks…

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Now this is what I call digital democracy. There’s tons that could be said about the Scottish Elections last week (or you can read this post, this post, this post and listen to this Audioboo and that pretty much covers it) but here’s something that’s popped up that gives all online types a chance to be involved (even if just a wee bit)…

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The BBC seems to be in a bit of a muddle regarding social media use for staff, according to politics site Guido Fawkes. Business Editor Robert Peston cracked a sexual joke about the Royal Wedding and was asked to remove the joke, which he did (you can see what the gag was here). And it’s not the first time the BBC has had problems with Twitter.

Now you can read Guido’s article as BBC bashing but it does have a fair point – are the feeds the staff post on personal or private? Apparently, they are private. In which case, does the BBC have a right to censor it?

What’s the lesson here for businesses in Scotland and elsewhere thinking of social media?

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For years, business types have been told – time and time again – to make sure they have their own domain names and professional looking email addresses. It’s a basic thing. It inspires confidence in who you are dealing with and you’re going to feel better dealing with a pro than someome with a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account as their primary work address.

Which begs the question: why are so many politicians not being professional? Don’t they see how bad it makes them look when they hand out tacky-named Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail addresses?

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I used to crack the joke that you know you’ve arrived when your work appears on the major BitTorrent piracy sites and I’ve seeded things (legally) in the past myself but I had a chuckle this morning to note that a book by one of Scotland’s best journalists, the Daily Record’s Gary Ralston – a book about the founding of Rangers Football Club (link to book’s official, content-rich site) – has turned up on one of them.

I’m not going to name the link for obvious reasons (here’s the legal Amazon link) but you know that digital is becoming more and more a part of everyday life when this happens to Scottish sports authors! And I think – think – Gary is the first Scottish reporter to be torrented/pirated this way! (Don’t know if he’ll see it as a compliment though).

Having said that, how should authors handle their books appearing on piracy sites? Read on for some tips for authors dealing with piracy and some surprising case studies.

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A slight chance of pace from the usual social media stuff (unless you consider this old post about how Twitter can make social media types feel like Superman) but if you’re interested in good stories – or codes for that matter – read on.

(Normally we do blog posts as audio, but not this one – no reason to not subscribe though!)

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