Philip Sheldrake

Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide

// January 7th, 2013 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Social business, Technology

We kicked off our New Year speaking with the eConsultancy team about the upcoming update to their successful Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide 2011. Here's a rundown of the questions Amy Rodgers put to us and our responses.

1) What are the most important trends occurring in this market?

Maintaining one system for external social media management and workflow, and another system for "buzz monitoring", and another system for enterprise social networking looks increasingly disjointed. We have media to communicate, and we communicate to influence, and influence flows are the lifeblood of mutual understanding, knowledge building and decision-making. Maintaining technological islands for influence flows with one group of stakeholders (eg, customers) distinct from another island for influence flows with another group of stakeholders (eg, employees) effectively 'misses the trick'. It fails to recognise that today's organisations must strive to be more than the sum of the payroll. Continue Reading

Destroying the web

// December 14th, 2012 // No Comments » // Technology, Website/New Media

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

The Internet is the most powerful, flexible and critical infrastructure ever invented. Every aspect of our daily lives is supported by this wondrous invention.

But here's the important thing.

We've passed the point where the fabric of our societies is supported by the Internet – the all pervasive Internet increasingly defines that fabric. Its architecture is becoming our architecture, and that is why any motion to challenge or change the way in which the Internet is governed must be subject to the most critical eye.

I've been on tenterhooks the past fortnight watching the deliberations of WCIT play out – the World Conference on International Telecommunications. WCIT is a UN body that has played a vital role over nearly one and a half centuries coordinating telecoms standards and interoperability and radio spectrum and satellite orbits, and it has tried once again to wrestle Internet governance from the hands of the open community that has shepherded it so beautifully to date. Continue Reading

CIPR TV on journalism, PR and the Leveson Inquiry

// December 6th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations

I hosted the CIPR TV show on the Leveson Inquiry on Monday. As you may have seen, I wrote about the inquiry for last week's CIPR Friday Roundup, a day after the publication of the inquiry's report – Public relations and the 'ethical vacuum'.

Our guests were Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, and Jane Wilson, CIPR CEO.

Social business webinar with Jay Krall, Cision’s Media Research Supremo

// December 6th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations, Social business, Technology

The Cision webinar on 8th November was dedicated to social business, and I was delighted to be the guest in the hot seat. It was great to be able to chat with Jay Krall and answer questions from listeners about the impact of social web and related technologies on organizational structure, culture, process and performance measurement this decade.

I've known Jay since we started following each other online several years ago now, and he took part in an Influence Scorecard workshop I ran in New York in 2010. His contributions were invaluable then, and London is better off for having persuaded Jay to upsticks from Chicago. And if ever there was a guy with the most fabulous radio voice...

The webinar is now available on Soundcloud.

Public Relations and the “ethical vacuum”

// November 30th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

"Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people, with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility." Newspapers have often demonstrated "a significant and reckless disregard for accuracy" and "misrepresentation and embellishment takes place to a degree far greater than could ever be thought of as legitimate or fair comment."

I've just read the Leveson Inquiry, published yesterday and running to nearly two thousand pages. These quotes come from the forty page executive summary. For those of you beyond the UK's shores, the Inquiry is about the freedom of the press in both the positive and negative manifestations of that expression, with a focus on how we can attenuate the negative.

The UK enjoys a pluralistic media of which other countries are rightly envious, and a free press is central to our national identity. The report quotes Sir Winston Churchill: "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny ... Under dictatorship the press is bound to languish ... But where free institutions are indigenous to the soil and men have the habit of liberty, the press will continue to be the Fourth Estate, the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen."

Content Marketing Show 2012

// November 20th, 2012 // 4 Comments » // Content

I've just kicked off Content Marketing Show 2012 here in London. Thanks to Kelvin Newman and his team for the opportunity. Here's my stack.

The Illustrated History of Content

Banking your reputation

// November 2nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Technology

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

Matt Ambrose posts this week about Red Hot Openers that Get Readers Eager for More. So here goes...

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized and reliable environment.

How am I doing so far Matt? :-)

Seriously, SWIFT matters to you this week. This member owned co-operative is actually at the cutting edge of dealing with your 21st Century currency – your data. And as I posted a month ago, data is this decade's number one revolution.

If you accept that your data is your reputation (credit scoring is over 40 years old), and that your data has value to those who want to understand and serve your needs, then it's a bit of a shocker that in 2012 you don't have much control over it.

Are you a professional or a user?

// October 24th, 2012 // 2 Comments » // Measurement & Analysis, Technology

I've never been fond of the word 'user'? It lacks the caring qualities of a much more appropriate word, customer, and even evokes images of substance abuse.

On making this point, I'm asked what I'd call people benefitting from a service or application without handing over their hard-earned. Well, customers of course. In such situations they're simply paying with a different currency, such as their personal data and/or attention, which the supplier of the service does its utmost to monetize.

But in one instance, I like that evocation of substance abuse. Of addiction. Of misuse.

Do allow me to explain and let's see if I've just been critical of you or a colleague. Please go easy on me if I have, my intentions are honourable.

I had the privilege of speaking with 150 Masters students at Imperial College London yesterday, taking their Technology in Marketing module. All marketing activity in 2012 is underpinned or impacted by technology, and thousands of tech vendors tempt us with thousands of marketing and PR applications, tools and services. And we buy them. Lots of them. The question is, are you a professional or a user?

What's the difference?

The CIPR Friday Roundup +/- 5 years

// October 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations, Website/New Media

[Originally written, obviously, for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

The Kardashians first appeared in October 2007 just as it was becoming difficult to get a mortgage. I don't believe the two were related. I also sent out the first Friday Roundup... to eleven recipients.

Five years and 250 editions later (missing out the festive seasons), it's gone out to 9345 of you, which is fantastic. But let's look at some more interesting October 2007 facts, spanning the full gamut of topics we've covered here for PR professionals.

Facebook had just passed the thirty million user mark, approaching half that reported by MySpace. There were 350,000 of us on Twitter and ten million odd on LinkedIn – now half a billion and 175 million respectively.

There was no Kindle, no Android, no tablets, and no Justin Bieber. Nokia was number one in mobile phones, bigger than numbers 2, 3 and 4 combined. The Blackberry 8800 and the very first iPhone were the executive must-haves.

There was no FourSquare, Groupon, Pinterest, Instagram, Angry Birds, Prezi, Quora, Spotify, Mendeley, Blippar, Dropbox, Tweetdeck or Google+. And these were pre-Chatroulette days too, and pre-Barcelona principles come to that.

Who are you?

// October 5th, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Digital Media Relations, Technology, Website/New Media

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

Identity is not a black and white thing. Sure, at one end of the spectrum anonymity reigns. This is the world of 4chan, the popular image-based bulletin board from which famous memes such as lolcats and Rickrolling emerged. At the other end of the spectrum we have passport border control.

And in between we have many shades of identity.

Nightclub handstamps for example are needed only to ascertain who has already paid. Many a website cookie serves just to determine if you've dropped by before. A supermarket loyalty card serves just to build up an understanding of your shopping habits, and may be associated with a bank card proffered for payment.

OK, so what has this got to do with marketing and public relations?