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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Interesting little comment from the founders of the smash hit Angry Birds game that shows one possible way PR will be evolving for the smarter, more connected social media and PR operators….
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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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Been a bit of buzz – mostly people calling me a Scottish humbug (my daughter read the blog and said “you will now be known as Papa Scrooge”) over my post on Why Social Media Staff Should be Working Christmas Day – so to help people out so that they can spend more time with their toys or loved ones (or both), here’s 18 tips to minimise having to be online during Christmas Day:

20 tips for firms doing Social Media on Christmas Day

1. You do have Google Alerts set up for all relevant brand names and topics, yes?
2. Let people know you’ll be available online
3. Your site does work on the most popular mobiles and tablets, yes?
4. Have your FAQ updated and revised with most common/popular questions from this time of year at the top
5. In everything you put online, think like a consumer. What will they be asking?
6. Is your online store up and running OK? Do you have emergency contact phone numbers for any technical or PR issues that arise?
7. Schedule tweets across the day with links to the most commonly asked questions regarding your brands
8. Are there any relevant online links you can link to? Again, feel free to schedule them
9. If scheduling Facebook posts via Hootsuite or other tool, remember that it will impact on your Edgerank
10. Think about the times people will go online – for example, 3pm in the UK is a bad time as most are having dinner – and when your customers are like to be online
11. Is there anything you have – app for example – that you can encourage people to go to to download with their new tablets/phones/etc? Bonus points if it’s a free download (for example, a client of mine – Whyte & Mackay have a SatNav voice from a Scotsman that they make available as a free download for TomTom users)
12. Schedule some tweets wishing a Merry Xmas to the people who have been key helps or influencers to you over the year
13. Have a reply policy in place covering the most expected comments from consumers
14. Let people know in your biogs for Twitter and your latest Facebook updates – that you might not reply as promptly as normal but that you will reply (give them an ETA if you want.)
15. Check a few times throughout the day when you get a quiet moment. Having a properly set-up smartphone can be a gift for this as you can check things in the car (as long as you aren’t driving)
16. Remember, the odds are that if people are mentioning you for help or to moan about an issue, they just want you to resolve it quickly so they can get back to the fun stuff
17. Try not to post if you’ve had too much of the Christmas spirit (or any other kind of spirit) – a drunken tweet could cause the issues you are trying to avoid
18. As it’s Christmas, why not wish your competitors a Merry Xmas? After all, the British and Germans could do it during war. Also, the odds are they’ve taken Xmas off, so why not monitor their timelines/mentions and help people out if you can. It may get you customers in the long run…
19. Remember, many people will be watching TV with their laptop/mobile as their second screen for tweeting. Feel free to join in the chat if you have time
20. Have fun. Yes, it’s work but you can enjoy work you know

Social media, we are told, is 24/7 – and surely that extends to 365 days of the year. After all, it’s not Christmas for everyone and in a global setting Christmas (for those who celebrate it) comes at different hours .

There’s two main reasons for why any consumer label or brand worth its salt will have people monitoring social media channels though: happy customers and new customers.

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Interesting piece in The Drum about Red Ant moving all of Varsity Bars digital and social media content to the Facebook page and has closed down its website as it pursues a younger audience.

I’ll say one thing for them: it’s a ballsy move.
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Scotland sees new alcohol sales rules coming into place this weekend with the aim or curbing cheap multi-buy discounts being one of the primary goals.

But, as The Drum and The Law Society of Scotland point out, there are always unintneded consquences. In this case, it’s to do with the part of the law that states you cannot advertise alcohol within 200m of the actual alcohol.

That’s going to hit social media, especially the use of mobile…
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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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There’s been a few instances recently (including one where I was giving a quick Twitter masterclass to some police at 2am but that’s a story for another day) where it’s been clear that for many in the Scottish emergency services – regardless of it being the police, ambulance service, coastguard or fire and rescue services – social media is still something that’s viewed with a range of emotions from suspicion to hostility or ignorance. Recent events down south have done nothing to help get rid of that viewpoint either.

Now I believe social media could be a fantastic tool for the 999 services – from building grassroots community relations to helping prevent crime and get results on crime – and I’d like to do my bit to help.

I’m willing to offer free one-day training course/presentation on social media which will be backed up by the courses being made available as podcasts – video and audio – for others in the forces to view/listen to at their leisure.

The courses will cover:

• Why people use social media
• How the service could use social media/ideas for engagement
• A look at the most popular platforms – Twitter, Facebook, blogging, LinkedIn, GeoLocation services, online video, podcasts
• What costs are involved – financial and time and how to minimise them
• IT and HR issues around social media and how to overcome them
• How to engage
• Crowdsourcing
• How to measure effectiveness

As stated above, there’s no charge for the course (though travelling expenses may be incurred depending on location). If anyone is interested all they have do is get in touch via the email address or phone number at the top right of the page.

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?

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