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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Great post by Edinburgh City Council PR supremo Stewart Argo over on the social media business networking site LinkedIn that raises an interesting question about the upcoming Scottish elections – but also elections in general: who decides what the official hashtag is? Not just for the main event, but at a more local constituency level?

(Don’t have time to read this? Get this social media blog delivered as audio via iTunes or RSS)

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It might sound like a daft question but social media can be very time intensive, even in a passive, consuming form – reading Twitter lists, checking up on accounts, reading blogs, checking RSS feeds, commenting, Facebooking, listening/watching podcasts – and that’s just for clients before you actually consider your own social media footprint/activities.

So the question is this: how long per day do you spend consuming social media and how to do you manage it round your other activites? We’ll put our details in the comments below later on but we were wondering how/what others do after a tweet chat involving Allan Barr, Dan Frydman, Mike McGrail and Michelle Rodger.

Thanks to Stephen Penman, who has agreed to come along and speak about how North Lanarkshire Council has used Twitter, the next Scottish Social Media Dinner on Thursday, Feb 17, 6.30pm at Urban Pind in Glasgow, but before we kick off the event, there’s probably a few changes to the dinners that need to be addressed:

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Those of you who follow domain names – and any decent social media/PR operator should at least have a cursory knowledge of the field – will be aware of ICANN’s plan to release more top level domain (TLD) names to sit alongside .co.uk, .com, .net and so on.

And amongst the earliest proposals (full list of new gTLDs here) are two for .scot (dotscot and dot-scot) but canny businesses should be looking beyond that.
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The independent PR scene in Scotland has just had a welcome addition with the set up of CranComms, a bespoke agency set up by ex-Shelter PR supremo Christina Cran.

Now Christina has always worn her heart on her sleeve, making her not only one of Scotland’s most ethical PRs but one of the most honest and trustworthy and she’s taken that ethos to heart with her new venture, offering a freemium service to third-sector parties.

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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?

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Ever-talented Jon Clements has written a good piece over on the PR Media Blog about banks and social media that’s well worth a read given the recent fury over banking bonuses but it got me thinking too – should banks use social media? (Niall Harbison has also written a good piece along the same lines here.)

Now, there’s a case for it – and we’ll come to that – but overall? Oh hell no, as Will Smith would say (or your bank manager if you’re asking for a loan).

Why? Because most bankers don’t think they’ve done anything wrong.
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The Sunday Herald in Scotland revamped at the weekend and for the most part was very, very good – some nice articles, good insight but one thing struck me as incredibly odd when looking through the arts section: book and film reviews were there, some pages on fashion and music.

Nothing on computer games.
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