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

REVIEW: Scotsman iPad App

Craig — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:06:59 +0000

I’ve moaned often enough that the Scottish press doesn’t seem to do enough to try and grasp digital opportunities so it would be churlish not to mention the new Scotsman iPad app that’s been released today. But does it beat buying the paper or getting it via the likes of PressReader (where you can get all the papers you want – from across the globe for £19 a month)? Let’s have a look…

Scotsman iPad App review

What is it?

It’s The Scotsman newspaper in an iPad friendly format (the old iPhone app wasn’t that great as I said in this Scotsman iPhone app review). You get a bunch of stories from the paper/website and the digital edition claims it will update during the day. You also get the option to view the traditional paper format. It’s £7.99 a month – which is a good deal – and the first month is free. You may even get the Evening News for free (more of that in a minute).

Is this a good thing?

Hell yes. More and more news is being consumed this way – on tablets and phones, so it most certainly is. This is the future. And even though The Scotsman isn’t what it was – it went through a period of being hellbent on losing the traditional audience – and the website it (slowly) rebuilding its way to former glories that Stewart Kirkpatrick made of it – this is a good thing. It’s still an influential paper, especially on the East Coast.

Is it a good app? A good read?

Umm… let’s split this up…

The Good

The fact The Scotsman has done this is good. We need more Scottish press embracing possibilities.

What’s utterly brilliant is the setting for ‘Read the paper from the back’ (it’s buried in the settings options) – that’s great for those who start with the sports section and whoever came up with it should get a gold star. Great consideration of audience.

It’s very stable and quite quick. There’s some nice options with each story to share via email, Facebook or Twitter and it takes your settings from what is already on your machine – no need to input your details again. There’s also a nice ‘related stories’ link at the end of each.

It’s genuinely free for a month. It doesn’t ask for your card or PayPal details up front, hoping you’ll forget to cancel (like so many sites do)

You can get Jobs, Announcements and so on – it takes you to The Scotsman site so this is always the fresh material that it should be.

You can archive stories and editions.

The Not-so-good

(in no particular order)

The video could do with better mics. Quite a bit of background hiss.

There’s no back button on any of the pages so you always have to click the Home button to leave a section.

The first few attempts at downloading the edition of the day are horrifically slow – three minutes on a 50MB wifi connection (for comparison, PressReader pulled today’s edition down in 26 seconds – the whole thing) – and I can’t tell if the Scotsman pulls down the whole edition or streams pages at a time as there’s a 2-3 second lag when you flick through pages.

The stories at the top – seven stories in the ‘cycle’ but only two are from today. Five are from yesterday.

While there’s options to share, it doesn’t tell me if any my friends have read/liked/tweeted the stories. Similarly, there’s no ‘what are my friends reading’ option which could have boosted engagement.

When you go to Jobs, Announcements and so on, the UI changes and you are suddenly in the territory of The Scotsman website. This is bad. The UI experience should be consistent so that if someone is accessing these pages from the app that they still have all the options at the bottom (in fairness, they do have it at the top but it’s just a button saying ‘done’ which takes you back to the app.)

WTF is the ‘Remember the Children’ thing all about? Make a virtual star in the night sky to remember a baby or child no longer with us? I mean really, what the fuck? Crass, insensitive. Just what was the thinking behind this one? Cheap and manipulative in my opinion – and seems to be something a bunch of papers are doing. Nice idea but to me, just… no. And yes, I think the same about the poppy field for soldiers and the daffodils for cancer victims. At least those are a bit more relevant than stars in the night sky.

The Questions

What times of the day does this update? Will it inform me by email? How will I know? Do I need to just click and hope?

What about the Evening News stream at the bottom – is that the full paper? Just the highlights? Will the Evening News be getting an app? What about the Scotland on Sunday? A standalone app or will it appear on Sunday in this one?

Why isn’t there a one-touch button for sending comments (to appear on the website) or Letters to the Editor? Is there an option to read web comments?

What time does it update in the morning? Does it come out the same time as the streets edition or is it 9am?

Over time, will it remember what I have read or shared and put those sort of stories first?

Conclusions – is it worth buying?

This is a very decent app and deserves to make The Scotsman money. It’s probably the best Scottish newspaper app out there at the moment and hopefully sparks others into getting out there. £7.99 for a monthly subscription isn’t bad – if it includes the Evening News and S0S then it’s even better.

Will I be buying it? Probably not. I may subscribe for a month just to give it some cash, but that’s it (unless you get the full Evening News/SoS). Why? I use PressReader on my iPad and here’s why I’ll be sticking with that…

What’s so good about PressReader

£19 a month gets me all-I-can-eat press from more than 2000 newspapers from more than 100 countries. Every day I turn on the app and I get downloaded at 7am the print editions of The Scotsman, The Courier, The Press & Journal, The Herald, The Guardian, and The Indepdendent. Every evening I get The Evening Times, Evening Telegraph and the Evening Express. Now on top of that, for no extra cost I can get the Daily Mail, Daily Express (English editions), access to the likes of The Engineer, Marketing Week, Sunday Herald and many other weekly publications. I can also get plenty of other regional UK titles if I’m doing a PR search for local press – or foreign press.

Basically, it’s a steal and even at £7.99 The Scotsman app can’t compete with it. I can forego the likes of the odd video interview and save my £7.99 – but in fairness that may change. If there’s enough new fresh content that is non-paper and appeals to me, I’ll be there, waving my credit card.

And what they put up today is an optimistic start.

Why Apple upset men with a Siri mistake in iPhone4s voice choice

Craig — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:15:32 +0000

Anyone who’s picked up an iPhone 4s will know that the voice recognition software Siri is part of the phone. Now if you get it in the UK, it comes with a man’s voice, in other countries you get the male or female voice.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why Apple has limited the voices for now – you can bet extra voices will come, just like they have for Sat Navs and Tom Toms (like this Scottish Sat Nav voice by Whyte & Mackay Master Blender Richard Paterson), and some will be charged for.

But in the meantime that means there’s going to be a lot of angry men with their iPhone 4s…

Psychology tests on SatNavs and other units with speech have shown that at a subconscious level people react differently to different voices with one of the most common findings being that men cannot stand being told what to do by other men and are more likely to argue with what they say (or dismiss it) while many females prefer to have a male voice speak to them instead of a female voice.

(I thought this was piffle until I did a random survey of my friends and it turned out that – to a person – where they had the choice, they had changed their SatNav voice to that of the opposite sex. Most did so without knowing why, just that they preferred to hear the opposite sex voice.)

If I can find the link to the research, I’ll post it up (and I just found this post which argues the opposite) but in the meantime, if you see someone getting grumpy with their phone, now you know why.

*And before anyone asks, yes it is possible to change the voice to female but only if you chance the country that the phone is in. Go into Settings/General/International/Voice Control – the Aus version is female.

**General thoughts on the phone (upgrading from a 3GS) – It’s OK. I like the white front and FaceTime. It’s definitely louder in ringtone than the 3GS. It’s buggy for connecting to home networks with passwords. Was it worth all the fuss? Probably not. Is Siri? Definitely not, especially in countries with poor wifi and 3G availability, like Scotland. But it shows how well Apple nailed it with the 3GS onwards that the OS has evolved and not been overhauled.

***And it would be rude not to include this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Will Foursquare & social media fall foul of Scottish booze ban?

Craig — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:44:41 +0000

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…On one level, that means anyone advertising a promo deal on Foursquare could fall foul – as could any tweet. After all both are updates of the moment “At Tesco, spotted BrewDog on sale – three multipacks of Punk IPA for a tenner” is the sort of thing you could expect. But that post wouldn’t be the fault of Tesco or BrewDog.

What about people who broadcast tips on Foursquare? “In ASDA, head down to the booze aisle as yo can get three bottles of Whyte & Mackay for £20″. Again, if that’s left by an individual, who does the law go after?

There’s also the issue of QR codes or NFC chips. NFC chips in particular are about broadcasting data. Would this mean labels couldn’t have chips in them? What about QR codes which people can scan to go onto websites or YouTube?

It’s going to be interesting to watch to see how it plays out…

Free Social Media training for Scottish police, fire and other emergency services

Craig — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:54:17 +0000

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.

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.)

Announcing Iain Hepburn as first Director of Brand Journalism in Scotland

Craig — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:25:14 +0000

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…

I’ve known Iain as a journalist since his early days at the Press and Journal, kept in touch as he headed south to show them how digital was done at SFX and the Daily Mirror before he returned home to take the Daily Record website to award-winning levels – and even having CNN nick some of his videos. And despite throwing in long hours at his work, he still found time to get involved in digital aspects for hobbies like MMA and launch Scotland’s second-best (but most swearing laden) movie and TV podcast The Thumbcast.

But that’s not the question you’re asking

Why Iain?

A couple of reasons – the man is a grafter, through and through. For those starting out in any aspect of comms who think doing digital is easy, ask the likes of Iain and Allan Barr – it isn’t. It’s long hours to do it right. Iain has never shirked in the long hours, doing what it takes to make something perfect.

More to the point, Iain shares the Contently vision – that Scotland still needs a lot of help in embracing digital (go read this blog post he did at the weekend about broadband take up in Scotland) and no-one will be served by digital chancers thinking that because social media is new then they can charge £3,000 a month to blog and tweet. Iain’s ethos has always been that digital should be inclusive and by being affordable Contently wants to bring more people to the digital table (so to speak), so we share a worldview there.

Even more to the point, Iain talks as it is. If you know the big man you know he doesn’t hide behind waffle. He’s always helpful – perhaps bluntly sometimes but he’s always trying to be helpful – but can’t stand bullshit. At Contently we like plain talk – again, if you’re hiding behind jargon then you’re probably up to something.

But if Why Iain wasn’t the question you were asking, it was probably…

What the hell is brand journalism?

That’s quite simple. If you were at Napier University’s journalism course, it’s the style of journalism advocated by course leader Diana Brand.

Actually it’s not, but it does have something in common with what that course taught – it’s all about content. So let’s have a quick FAQ on Brand Journalism.

What the hell is brand journalism?

Brand Journalism is where companies – or their representatives – are doing the journalism. They are creating the content and publishing it. Some companies go as far as to hire reporters who then file back to papers, others just publish the information themselves and let media pick it up. Sports have been doing it since 2008.

Who’s doing it?

Cisco is the biggest name doing it at the moment. And if it’s good enough for Cisco, it’s good enough for businesses in Scotland. Also, if David Meerman Scott thinks it’s important, then it probably is.

Why do brands need to do this?

A couple of reasons – people no longer go direct to newspapers for information, they go to Google/Bing/Facebook/Twitter so companies need to have their sites (and Apps if they have them) up to date with relevant information – that’s information that can be used by staff, potential staff, investors, customers.

In days gone by, if the traditional media didn’t use your stuff, you were screwed. Now, you are the publisher.

Also, most websites now get better traffic than the majority of newspapers in Scotland.

Surely this isn’t that important?

Yes, you’re right – fresh content isn’t that important. People want to read what your company was like in 1999 when you set up your web page. Think about it – people go online for nothing but fresh content – fresh discounts, fresh information from their friends, fresh things to play. People want new and engaging content. If you don’t provide it, your competitors will – and guess where people/investors will spend their money.

Surely it’s just PR?

No, it can be issued by the PR team in a firm if they want but the role of the brand journalist is to make a package that can be picked up and used by media without the need for editing. The brand journalist creates, the PR distributes to their network – both equally important jobs.

It’s just PR

Really? When was the last time you saw a press release also give you options for the full video and audio that you could use/embed? Yes, there are Social Media Newsrooms and releases but so far, the take up of them in Scotland has been poor.

So is brand journalism part of PR or marketing or something else?

Depending on the organisation, it can be all of these, some of them or none of them.

So what comes with brand journalism?

Anything you want. It can be news that goes on your site as text or video/audio, it can be a podcast. It’s however you choose to deliver news to your audience. What it has to be though is strong, engaging content. Not fluff.

The key words here are good and content.

Can we do this in-house?

Yes, it doesn’t need to be carried out outhouse.

We aren’t the size of Cisco. In fact I’m a cornershop with four staff. Is this for me?

Yes. Good content scales to every business.

Why can’t PRs do this?

Last time I checked most PRs were up to their eyes in existing workloads without taking on more. Besides, you wouldn’t ask a PR to clean your toilet would you? If you’re serious, you get the right tools for the right job. Journalists can spot and tell a story in a sharper way than most PRs. They can also execute quicker. This isn’t a dig at PRs – many of whom are hard working and have great news skills – but in 2011 the role of the average PR is way past that of just spotting a story.

Besides, do you have time to learn the new Final Cut Pro?

How would this work for our business?

Get in touch – our details are at the top – and we’ll tell you…

Scottish journalist’s Rangers football book ends up on popular piracy site

Craig — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:03:04 +0000

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.

Tips for authors dealing with piracy

If you want, get in touch with the people who run the site(s) and ask them to take it down – most will as they comply when people get in touch. But before you do that, have a think about this – is this costing you sales or taking your work to another market?

For example, I buy books digitally. I’ve read free (legal) stuff online by the likes of Charlie Stross, Peter Watts and others. And very often I’ve then gone and bought other items by these authors – for myself or family/friends. Some authors even report a spike in sales after seeing their material pirated.

Steve Lieber saw sales go up – and he started to give the book away after it had been pirated (and sales still rose) while Paulo Coelho thinks BitTorrent has had a huge positive effect on his 100million sales too.

So why not engage with the pirates?

Totally surprise them by going online and chatting with them. Ask if they enjoyed the book, could they buy a copy for a non-digital savvy relative. Ask people what they would have liked to have seen more of (giving you the chance to do a sequel later). Be nice about it.

Don’t think of it as a sale lost, think of it as a way of getting in front of a new reader, perhaps then following up with a chat or discussion via Facebook/Twitter/blogs. You may lose one sale but you may gain a fan for life who buys the rest of your books.

And if you’re an author, make sure people can reach you digitally – it works for the likes of Charlie Stross, Mark Millar and Warren Ellis as I mentioned recently in my free social media workshop downloads for authors and others. (So Gary, get the Record to fix the RSS stream and update your Twitter account while at it big man!)

And as it’s a book about Rangers, is it to crass to suggest a cry of “We arra Torrents?” (Sorry, football joke)

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!

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?

How to get a job in Social Media

Craig — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:11:45 +0000

UPDATE 2 (27 APRIL): Weber Shandwick Scotland are looking for a digital/social media ace. I’ve worked with them and they are a good bunch – and well known digitally in the rest of the UK – so it’s a great opportunity.

Having said that – and this is a question I get asked a lot – how do you get a job in social media?
(Don’t have time to read this? Get this social media blog delivered as audio via iTunes or RSS)

The BIG Partnership are looking for someone to join their digital and social media team and given the size of BIG and the fact that out of the large PR agencies in Scotland they are leaps ahead of most, if you are based in Scotland (Glasgow ideally) and interested in the future of PR communications – or want a career in said industry, you’d be nuts not to go for it.

UPDATE: Ketchum and the very talented Kate Matlock are looking for someone similar in London.

What follows are purely pointers and advice on how I would go for such a job. Your mileage may vary. You may just want to send in a traditional CV and point to your traditional press ROI, your crisis and events comms experience and say “I want to learn about digital” and if you are good enough, that might get you a peek in the door. But really, that’s deathly dull and PR is, in part, about excitement and creativity, taking old ideas and putting a fresh spin on them. You want to impress. So…

Make sure you are on the right platforms

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter accounts? These would all be handy – be even better if they are up to date and 100% filled in. Be even better again if you use them and update them on a regular basis.

Got a blog?

Not essential but again, if you are going into the digital arena, you would think there was something that interested you enough to write about it – doesn’t necessarily have to be about the dayjob. And in an age of WordPress and Posterous there’s no excuse for not setting one up easily – or even just a photoblog on something like Flickr, even if Flickr is in decline against Facebook.

Can you shoot some video?

It’s nice to be a wordsmith but it’s handy to be able to do more than just that – or at least ask for some training in it (Anyone looking for a video training/editing course – the Macmillan course is the one I suggest. Great training for PRs). And remember that there’s more to video than just visuals, make sure it sounds decent too.

Have a CV, just not in paper

What about the online CV via YouTube?

Be creative

Remember The Impossible Pitch? Could you use Google Ads to stand out? What about personalised videos like the Old Spice Guy? What about sending in croissants and Vimto with a note saying ‘Where I come from CV means croissants and Vimto so here you go. In case it means something else to you, here’s a link to my CV…” What about a bunch of online testimonials from people who have worked with you? Make them videos. Buy some relevant URLs… the point is that PR is more than ever about being that little bit different.

The Point

“But this is all hard work”; “I bet no-one else does it”; “What’s up with just a CV”; “Scotland’s not into these tricks”. I’ve heard all of these lines when I tell people they should try and stand out and you know what? There’s probably a hint of truth in all of them, but good PR is not about doing what everyone else does – even less so in the digital field. If it’s going to be “just a job” then save everyone time and don’t apply. You also have to be thinking about what people are doing in the US, in New Zealand, in China – you can impress and inspire globally now.

Just don’t expect it to be happening Monday-Friday 9-6.

Working in social media – the truth

That might sound harsh but the truth is this: social media can be one of the most demanding outlets for PR at the moment. You are dealing not only with press and reporters, but investors, the general public, various interest groups and casual bystanders – on a global 24/7 platform. There’s a lot of nuances in the interactions, a lot of time invested outside of 9-6 Mon-Fri. It’s a lot of hard work – and a lot of it can be under-appreciated because people think there’s nothing to posting a tweet or a blog post or a Facebook update.

And that’s not including the time keeping up to date, writing pitches, making pitches and so on.

But you know what, it’s damn brilliant and there’s nowhere else I’d rather work. But that’s a post for another day.

So for those of you reading this from outside the UK and aren’t applying for the job, what tip would you give to show off that you deserve to play with the big boys in social media?

Feel free to discuss the article in the comments section below or drop Craig McGill an email about social media.