New Year thoughts

As we head into 2009 a lot of the chat in the PR blogosphere of late has been looking at what the future holds for our industry. Yet what occurs to me is that there isn’t a lot of focus on where we are right now. Over the last year there have been some changes in the way in which we approach PR. Now, more than ever, our online personalities as agencies influence our customers, staff and competitors.

Steve Earl looked over the best of the PR websites earlier this year. And it was a surprise how many agencies still aren’t using their websites as an interactive facility to attract talent and custom. Many are not only static sites with the usual blurb about what makes them special (often the same as what makes everyone else special) but they are often out of date.

Wadds made his first Twitter hire – picking up our budding star Matt Watson via the social blogging site.

And I started my very first blog!

At its heart, PR is still about strong written and verbal communications. Making sure journalists in our key media have access to our clients when they are working on relevant stories and building these relationships is vital. However, the way in which we communicate has evolved.

It’s not enough now to know which day is press day and if your contact prefers phone or email contact. Now we have the ability to know so much more about these people. Do they have a blog, what do they blog about? Are they on Twitter, what are their interests?

I don’t think you could honestly say there has been any one significant change, and we certainly haven’t abandoned any form of communication in favour of a new one. Ok, you could argue that snail mail has lost out but I’d have to disagree, pointing out that many PR’s still use the post to send hard copy invitations and freebies out to the media.

We are in an industry which constantly evolving – and thank goodness or my two minute attention span might give up the ghost.

Heading into the New Year I’m looking forward to seeing what lies ahead and having grown into new tools like Twitter, I will be doing my best to get on board early with these things and make sure I can use them to better communicate for my clients, my agency and myself.

Happy New Year to you all.

Are we only happy complaining?

Wadds just pointed out that I've been a little quiet of late. I can't argue with that. The truth is I haven't really been inspired to rant about anything. Then I thought about that - I mean, a blog isn't just a forum to complain (unless it's specifically set up to be a whinging ground like Bad PR - which I love and get much inspiration from) but it just happens to be much easier to spout off about things that have ticked me off.

How very British I feel. I like to whinge and I dislike people who can't queue.

So I hereby declare myself back and not complaining - however hard that may be :-)

We made it!

Sophie and I completed the 10K at Hatfield House on Sunday in very respectbale times (Sophie much more respectable than me but it's the taking part that counts). Thanks to everyone who sponsored us, including Wadds and Steve and for the good wishes I got from everyone like Paul. It was all very much appreciated.

We had an amazing day and the 2000+ people who took part did their bit to raise over £100,000 for Cancer Research UK.

I just wish people would stop asking me to do the half marathon next!

The Media Show

Mr Waddington has written a note recommending us PR type folk tune in to the Media Show on Radio 4. I did indeed tune into this new weekly programme to hear its flagship show and I was pleasantly surprised. You can listen to it here.

It covered a good mix of current issues with the media:
- is the media fuelling the financial crisis?
- can blogging really influence public thought?
- how can David Cameron use the media to get people to really understand his campaign?


It's a bit ironic to have the media commenting on itself...but it certainly captured my imagination and I'm looking forward to the show next week.