So I receive an invite to the Retail Week Awards.
Black tie, the colleagues say.
“No problem”, I think. “I have my black suit, white shirt, black tie combo, that should do the trick.”
Turns out that black tie means bowtie, silly shirt, cumberbund optional.
So off I go to Moss Bros and rent the full get-up.
I’m assured I look dashing and very 007, but really, could this whole get-up be any more anachronistic?
Fantastic bit of footage shot with a Canon 5D Mark II. There is no slow-mo applied to the take and the clip features the original sound.
stunning bass-string shot from urbanscreen on Vimeo.
I’ve used the Runners World 16 week, 4h Marathon training plan to put the plan below together. I was able to download the entire plan to my Garmin Forerunner 405cx using the target training paces as a guide. So all I need to do to stick to the plan is check what’s on the agenda for the day, pick the training setting on the watch and off I go. The watch will then track my distance, tell me when to switch from slower warm up sessions to speed sessions, and make sure I run in at the proper pace. The beeping noises take a bit to get used to, but after a while you don’t even need to look at the watch anymore.
Continue reading “My Edinburgh Marathon 2011 sub 4:00 training plan”
A great flowchart on how the US Air Force reacts to comments on the Web. Surely something that many businesses and corporations can (and should!) adapt for their area.
Make sure to also check out WebInkNow’s more detailed look at the Air Force’s approach to social media.
This week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Media Results Conference in London about how to incorporate Twitter into your digital communication plan. Below you’ll see the presentation (and as you can see, its built with Prezi, which is just much more fun that Powerpoint and also went down well with the audience on the day), but I also wanted to share a bit more of my thinking with you regarding PR in the social media space, specifically on Twitter.
Listen, measure & engage
Communicating on Twitter is based on listening and engaging. This holds true if you communicate via the phone, email, Facebook, SMS, or Twitter. You listen and you respond. Now, I use the word “engage” because it has two meanings: it means that you respond to a question, to a trend or issue that you have identified by listening. It also means that what you say on a proactive level needs to be engaging – you want it to inspire the other person to act. On Twitter, than can be a retweet, a fave or a reply. If you’re Twitter stream is full of @ responses and mentions then you know you are listening to and engaging with your audience in a way that they find interesting.
Measurement is the third important element of communicating via Twitter: Tools such as Twitalyzer, Tweetreach, Klout and Bit.ly will produce a number of different reports and key performance indicators that will help you track your own Twitter performance, how far you message has travelled, how much influence you really have – right down to how many people have actually clicked on the link you’ve just shared (the trick is to add a + to the end of bit.ly links and you’ll see what I mean).
So why should PRs be on Twitter?
Because your target audience – journalists and bloggers – are already there and using it to connect to other hacks. They ask questions about products and companies, announce they are writing an article about an issue that you might have some information on and some even prefer to be contacted exclusively through Twitter.
Another important audience is also on Twitter: customers. They will be talking about your brand, commenting on things you have done, sharing news about your company and often times provide the first source of information in times of crisis.
And finally, the value of Twitter as a constant stream of “what’s happening in the world right now” – is a huge asset if you use Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and/or Twitter lists to keep an eye on tweeps relevant to your industry.
Twitter is a PRs best friend in times of crisis
By monitoring customer sentiment and trends on Twitter as well as a few key words combined with your brand name(s) will provide you with an effective early warning system. Once Twitter alerts you to a possible situation, you’ll be ahead of the game because you’ll know what to look for and where to look for it. Depending on the nature of the issue you can then chose to update followers through Twitter about the situation or decide to respond on a reactive basis only. Either way, you’ll have a better chance to control the flow of news.
A simple and free way to set up Twitter monitoring for keywords is to set up a Google Alert for status updates on Twitter mentioning certain keywords. You can then set up a rule in your email program of choice to highlight the alert when it comes through so that you don’t overlook it. Simple, free and instantaneous – providing you are there to check your email!
Defining PR in 140 characters in 140 characters
PR on Twitter: live and instantaneous tool to listen for brand mentions, measure customer sentiment and trends; and engage target audiences
So my question to other flacks out there: how do you use Twitter in your everyday PR work?
The new job with Sainsbury’s is now three weeks old (and I am still loving it!), which also explains the relative quiet here in my personal blog. There are a ton of things that the amazing team in the press office deals with on a day in, day out basis. On top of that, we’ve had the President of South Africa visit our eco store in Greenwich, London; our CEO Justin King ran 32 miles around the UK for Sport Relief, and we’ve opened more than a dozen new stores around the UK.
Continue reading “3 weeks in and loving it, training for a half marathon and back to photography”
Today was my second day at Sainsbury’s. After 2 1/2 exciting and incredibly rewarding years at AOL it was time for a new challenge and the Digital Media Manager position at Sainsbury’s perfectly combines two of my passions: all things digital and public relations. I will be supporting the Corporate Affairs team led by Mark Rigby to help communicate the Sainsbury’s story through digital media channels such as blogs, Twitter, Foursquare and many more.
It’s still early days but here are some amazing facts about Sainsbury’s to give you an idea about why I am so excited about starting this new job:
You can learn more about Sainsbury’s in the 2009 Corporate Responsibility Report.
So from having mail I’m now going to try something new – and if my first two days is anything to go by, I’m going to love it!
Bits and Bytes 
