hello!
Had coffee with the lovely Neville Hobson today, with one of my many hats on. He gently pointed out that I really have to get blogging here.
I’ve been spending so much time doing things for other people that my own ’stuff’ is being left to one side. So rather than the carefully crafted blog on each subject that I had planned, this first post is a bit of a brain dump.
I have come so far in the past six weeks that I feel like I’ve been caught in a whirlwind. A beautiful, multicoloured, noisy whirwind, but a whirlwind just the same.
I’ve been doing some IT analyst work with a company called Cereno . They offer an amazing collaboration tool, nuVa, developed by Thales, which is really at the very top end of the market and could make a huge difference to communications in big projects – serious stuff, saving money, saving lives. It’s not about technology, it’s about people working at distance and being able share information, projects plans etc and see each other face to face simultaneously. That way you can spot that someone’s not happy, doesn’t understand, feels like hanging themselves…. really important visual clues for collaborative communication.
At the other end of the scale, I’ve been helping the team at ipadio who have a terrific (free) tool for phonecasting – phone blogging, otherwise known as phlogging. Again it’s a great communications tool, both at the social level (we all recorded happy birthday phlogs when three of my family had birthdays within five days of each other) and at a more serious level for fundraising, teaching.
I guess the thing is that, like facebook or Twitter, it’s whatever you want it to be, however you choose to use it. I love it, and was enthusiastic about it even before I began working with them officially when they launched at the end of April. I think it’s a great social media tool, easy to share, and it’s going great places.
Since then they’ve been in numerous publications and even on ITV when Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, had a go!
I’ve got myself up to speed with Twitter in just a few short weeks. I had visited when it first started but after a week of ‘what I had for breakfast’ I moved on. And so did Twitter. I don’t believe anyone can ever claim to be a true expert in this space, because it changes so much on a daily basis. (I’m @Claireatwaves – drop by and say hi!) – although I’ve been watching loads of the media sites and commentators and learning very, very fast.
I was a bit clumsy to begin with, and a client’s competitor got a bit rattled because we were makin’ some noise and went for the kill – all a bit unpleasant and unecessary. He challenged that it wasn’t right for me to suggest clients’ products to people on Twitter. I don’t think that’s right – I am a person, the same as anyone else, and I have a naturally helpful streak so if I can help someone out I try to. I’ve been, perhaps, a little too open about my identity and job. Had I called myself Tom Jones and put up an avatar, the battle might not have commenced.
Anyway, lesson learned and point taken on board, and I have made a big effort to separate out my client stuff from the stuff that I Tweet just because I find it interesting. It won’t stop me putting out stuff from clients because I find it interesting on a personal level (and in 140 characters disclaimers are a little hard), but where I am helping people out as an extra resource, I’m separating stuff out.
If you’re interested, take a look at ipadiomediahub. It’s got a long way to go, and is pretty experimental, so if you drop by, do let us have some feedback. (I think we may need to change the name – ipadiomediahub is 14 characters and is perhaps a little old media?)
I did take on board some of what was said (by Mr Competitor) and arranged to say hi at Media140 where I thought we’d buried the hatchet. Obviously not as he’s been trying to stir up some angst since (and in this he’s had some success, but I don’t think being nasty reflects particularly well on him. It was in a little backwater blog, where he’s bound to knock his competition, so I’m trying not to feel aggrieved! I just regret rising to it as he’s misrepresented something I did months ago… I guess that’s his prerogative, but I’d rather play nice.)
I don’t want to give him all the credit for the media hub though. Media140 , and Somesso before it, had set me thinking: journalists now have a very ready and available source of information in Twitter, FriendFeed and the like. This changes news cycles and information dissemination. Not everyone is using it, but as an example, when I had wind that Steve Coppell, one of the people I most admire, was leaving Reading FC, I turned to my TweetDeck to get the low down (and was saddened to find it was true).
The point is that news now becomes findable before it’s hit the mainstream news, and one of the things that PR people are going to have to do is deliver more raw, unprocessed stuff – point and be helpful rather than tell. Sign off cycles on press releases need soon be defunct.
There is still be room for well planned, well orchestrated eye catching stuff, but we’re all going to have our wits about us. As journalism changes, so must PR. and I hope to look more at this on this blog.
So how am I doing on my social media adventure? I have moved from simply watching to starting to engage with people. For a while I simply lurked (horrid word) and learned.
But I am reminded of an expression my parents used to use when I was little: “Never trust an expert, experts built the Titanic”. Never was this truer than in the social media space, where the adventure is only just beginning.
Twitter followers: 259
Words on this blog post 1028 (500 too many!)
Phlogs created – none (but I did manage and share some from the other day!)
Claire Thompson, Waves PR
PR practise | claireatwaves | 
June 1, 2009 8:20 pm
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