Announcing my new role: Analyst with Forrester Research

I always had this fantasy about one day writing a post and saying I AM NO LONGER A PR and flouncing off out of the industry once and for all (probably with some choice words attacking the PR industry and making me look very clever and controversial for about 5 seconds). Even though I haven’t really done PR for any clients for over 2 years, I still worked with PROs and PR agencies, and never wanted to burn my bridges there or forget my PR roots. An understanding of influence, content, editorial, and earning media has given me marketing knowledge which is infinitely valuable in the modern media world.

But now it’s time for me to say that I have really jumped a fence and landed somewhere else which was a bit of an industry fantasy for me – Forrester Research.

This January I joined Forrester Research as an Analyst serving Interactive Marketing Professionals (that’s anyone doing Digital Marketing to you and me). You can read more about my role and how to work with me.

I’m crazy excited about the new role and can’t believe I survived the notoriously gruesome interview process (think The Hunger Games but with a presentation to a group of analysts and researchers as The Reaping.)

In the mean time what of Grapevine Consulting? Well apart from my resolution that I WILL update my hideously outdated site, Grapevine will go on the back burner for now apart from the few related products & services kept in the pipeline.

I just wanted to highlight that it’s been 4 years since I struck out on my own. Thank you to all the wonderful people and clients who have and continue to support me. I still *love* the marketing and media industries and I’m really looking forward to stretching my legs at a company which attracted the likes of Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Nate Elliott, Shar VanBoskirk and many other smart folk I am meeting every day.

[Image Credit: colours and colours]

West End musical meets Disqus

3 years ago I despaired of ENO‘s facility to submit reviews for a performance of Candide.

So last week, after being invited to see a performance of film-turned-musical Legally Blonde, I checked out their website to see if the West End was doing anything different.

To my surprise, the News & Reviews section of the site has a Your Reviews section powered by the brilliant plug-in Disqus. I’m a bigger fan of Disqus than most musicals and think this is a great way to easily integrate some audience reviews into a show website.

With over 400 comments/reviews on the site this is also a relatively well used feature. In fact the comments left there seemed bordering on fanatical with many repeat visitors and what seemed to be people posting multiple reviews.

Anyway, if I had any further thoughts around nurturing the fan community around this popular show it would be why doesn’t the Disqus plug-in also use the Twitter and Facebook etc features of Disqus to enable people to publicise their ‘Likes’ and reviews across their social profiles? The Facebook fan page for London has over 50k members alone (which was also muddled with multiple other Legally Blonde pages both official in other countries and unofficially set up by fans. Urgh, I hate multiple Facebook presences like these) – but I couldn’t see what was happening on that page as I couldn’t get it to load for some reason.

Anyways, all in all, gave me some simple ideas for when I’m next asked by anyone in the event/entertainment space how to quickly bring a bit of interactivity to their web presence.

Just a reminder, and I’m not saying this is the case here as the LB reviews seem to be 100% fanatical fan written, but it is ‘unfair commercial practice’ and regulated by the Office of Fair Trading if you moderate and remove negative feedback without a clear disclaimer letting readers know you’ve removed the bad stuff and will only feature the positive stuff.

But in the words of Elle Woods, snaps for Legally Blonde!

Social Media training courses

For years I’ve been running bespoke in-house training courses on Social Media with everyone from The NEC Group to St Austell Brewery and Porter Novelli.

I’ve trained Marketers and Sales Teams, as well as Board Members and CEOs, and out of working with these different groups I’ve created two unique Social Media courses covering the biggest problems I get asked to help out with.

August is usually known as a quiet month so it’s a great time to take a day out of the office and brush up on some skills. Details on the courses are below. If you know me, or have trained with me in the past, please pass on the details to anyone you know who might be interested.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CEOS & BUSINESS OWNERS

Tuesday August 23^rd 9am – 4.30pm

Central London

 Your marketing department is asking for extra budget for Social Media, and every week the Sunday Times has an article saying how important it will be for business. Your Customer Services team are worrying about complaints on your company’s Facebook page – which is being run by some 18 year old in West Wales  – and your employees are tweeting every day and probably wasting valuable time (saying goodness knows what).

Social Media for CEOs & Business Owners is a one-day event exploring the four areas of:

• Why Social Media?
• Social Media Basics (what exactly is Twitter & Google+?)
• How to measure and find the ROI of Social Media
• Managing Social Media in your organisation: Best Practice

This event is for CEOs & Business Owners of both B2C and B2B businesses. They can be at the stage where they’re questioning whether they even need to be using Social Media, and how, or are already using Social Media but uncertain they’re getting results.

For more information and to book a place visit http://social4ceos.eventbrite.com/

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: How to Do It

Thursday August 25^th 9am – 5.30pm

Central London

You’re under pressure to be using Social Media but don’t have the time or resources to do it. You’re sick of hearing case studies about Social Media but often they’re not relevant to what you do. Even worse, there’s no guidance on how to do it. The agency that works for you (or competes against you) seems to control the digital strategy but you’re not sure it’s right.

 Social Media Strategy is a practical ‘How to Do It’ day for Senior Marketers exploring:

• Social Media Fundamentals: What works (and what doesn’t)
• Creating Content
• Measurement & ROI
• How to do it: Best Practice & Practical Steps

 This event is for in-house marketers or agency staff who need to develop and lead Social Media strategy. The course finishes with a working session where attendees will begin to flesh out their own Social Media strategy to take back to their organisations.

For more information and to book a place visit http://socialmarketingstrategy.eventbrite.com/

How to get leads from Social Media or why bother at all

A few weeks back I published ‘How to get leads from Social Media‘ over on the Tempero blog. It listed 5 ways to turn your online communities into actual business.

It was a really satisfying post to write because it challenged me to turn all we’ve learned with the online marketing at Tempero into tried and tested practical steps you can take.

Why is this important? Well, I have a worry at the moment that with all the mistakes and old fashioned, badly executed ‘hard selling’ that’s happening on Social Media we’ve gone too far towards the idea that you can’t sell with social media. Of course you can.

I think we need to get more realistic about why we are doing Social Marketing. I too often see briefs that say company X wants to invest Y dollars to’ grow community’ and ‘brand fans’. That’s fantastic. But why? Surely the reason anyone invests money into marketing is to make money in return - the elusive ROI.

ROI can be elusive in Social Media because the reasons for investing are often not stated in advance.

For example, having brand fans isn’t a bad thing of course but it couldn’t hurt to get a little more realistic and say that we want brand fans because they:

• Buy more product, more often
• Promote products and services to other potential customers

Once you break it down like this you realise what metrics you need to put in place to measure success and value in dollars and cents.

The bigger challenge? Working across the business to get the data you need. Lead Generation isn’t just a sales & marketing function anymore. It might take the help of Retail Staff, Customer Service and Product Managers to establish just how the selling part of Social Media is going.

[Image Credit: Images_of_Money]

Are PR agencies ruining Facebook?

Last week I picked up on Daniel Stein‘s original article on DigiDay to write  a response on Tempero to the question ‘Are PR Agencies ruining Facebook‘.

My thoughts? Stein was bang on the money that advertising agencies create content and then try to work out  how to socialise it afterwards, while many PRs are boring fans to death with branded small talk.

Why? My belief is that most PRs are so used to talking to 3rd party media (newspapers, magazines, TV producers) who are in charge of creating the final content read by the audience, that PR has forgotten how to talk to directly to consumers*.

Paul Armstrong amplified the debate over on PR Week by re-posting both articles and conversation kicked off.

“To me, this is a rather dim and short-sighted view of what public relations has been doing for decades. The fact remains that at the heart of our jobs, we are storytellers. And good storytellers are able to speak with, empathize and understand a variety of audiences, whether that’s customers, stakeholders, clients or the media.” Keith Trivitt

“This question is a bit like asking if technology-inept parents are ruining Facebook. Think about it: they’re perpetually confused, they clog up our News Feeds with pictures of cats, and are not quite sure why they’re on Facebook besides the fact that someone told them they should be. In short, it’s not that they are particularly bad at communicating, but they’re not using the platform the right way.” Faith Chihil

“I’m going to say no. Some PR agencies have got a bad rap for attempting to jump on the social media bandwagon without understanding the platforms or establishing objectives and a strategy. But some are also doing a spectacular job, having dedicated specific resources to recruiting expertise and leading best practice.”  Beth Carroll

“I wonder if:
Agencies are having to do far more with less. Less visibility to big plans, less money, less time, less resources. Less gusto and passion for their work after one too many knock backs. Or are they doing less because they run an agency more like a factory than a consultancy“. Shannon Boudjema

“Can’t we all just get along? People speak of the media like it’s this great machine that you need to know how to communicate with. The person reading the news is a person, the editor is a person, the journalist is a person. And they are all consumers.” Samson Adepoju **

So, a mix of opinion then. Despite the fact that I think PR does a lot of good work and is too easily attacked for failing it still surprises me when a debate like this crops up how many people are prepared to say the majority of agencies are doing it well when evidence (or lack of) suggests the contrary.

For example I hear PR agencies talk a lot about how they are ‘masters of storytelling’ but the reality is that in many cases that supposed storytelling is just putting the audience to sleep.

Overall I don’t really care if people agree with my opinion or not. The fact so many people are happy to debate the ins and outs of this only serves to drive the industry forward – or keep it in it’s top spot, based on how well you think PR is performing in Social Media

*PS Just because I think it’s broken doesn’t mean I think it can’t be fixed. Often with only the smallest amount of education.

** This was the most confusing response to me. Samson – you’re a PR Manager. If there’s no skill in communications is there no such thing as a communications professional then? i.e. Anyone can hold the PR role?

[Image credit: markhillary]