David Meerman Scott Archives - Philip Sheldrake

28 February 2011 / 8 Comments

Real-time PR demands rigorous strategic alignment

Real-time PR is a hot topic.

This is nothing to do with fashion, but the unavoidable pressures of modern PR. David Meerman Scott's November 2010 book, "Real-time Marketing and PR" is already a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and with Twitter responses frequently meaningless after an hour's delay, if not minutes, and many conversations requiring a response within the hour or two, awaiting the Monday meeting to debate possible responses is now simply unrealistic.

I presented at Social PR 2011 today on just this topic. The main take home... it isn't easy.

How to plan & execute real-time PR that delivers for your organisation

View more presentations from Philip Sheldrake

Being the eyes, ears and mouth of an organisation to the drumbeat of the daily news was never easy. Being the eyes, ears and mouth, with heightened sensitivity to influence and be influenced in real-time, requires enhanced levels of strategic diligence, meticulous planning, training, constant attention to detail and rigorous measurement.

Reality is perception.

It’s impossible to fake it.

Real-time PR must, by nature, be authentic.

Real-time PR marks the death of the persuasion / ‘spin’ school.

Long live two-way, symmetric PR fostering mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and its publics.

19 December 2010 / 2 Comments

Book reviews, or what to give a marketing and PR professional for Christmas

In a fast changing marketplace with fast changing technologies and consumer behaviours we have no option but to work hard keeping ourselves up to speed, week in week out. Time and money constraints rule out keeping abreast simply via course and event attendance, and the only real option is books.

Reading. Lots. Lots of books. Here's a couple to make the Christmas List of any marketing and PR professional.

Real-Time Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott

Subtitle: How to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now.

I got my copy of Real-Time Marketing & PR end-October and I just read it yesterday. Mmmm, not exactly a real-time book review then. My only excuse is that I've had to focus on completing my own book (the manuscript is now submitted and it's due out in April with Wiley, the same publisher of David's latest books).

Let's cut to the chase. Should every marketing and PR professional read this book? Yes; even those who consider themselves or are considered to be at the leading edge of this sort of thing. And I make that assertion simply on the basis that David peppers the book with many case studies and examples that will prove useful when attempting to convince the less savvy amongst your colleagues and clients of your point of view. Read more

28 October 2010 / 2 Comments

Real-Time Marketing & PR

David Meerman Scott's new book is out, Real-Time Marketing & PR – How to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now.

I've been gearing a client up for real-time marketing and PR recently. I'm in the midst of helping them prepare for the launch of a gorgeous new app for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android in November. (Ping me if you're interested in social news readers and I'll make sure you get your hands on it as soon as.) And part of that preparation has focused on the active listening capabilities and the workflow management needed to keep on top of the conversation and in the conversation. Thanks to the team at Nielsen Buzzmetrics, we have prepared all the search terms and we've made use of existing infrastructure to make sure the team understands who needs to respond and by when, as efficiently as possible without headache!

GetSatisfaction is procured and configured to tempt the world to hang out in 'our place' to discuss things, but no organisation can insist the conversation takes place in one or two places of course... it's our responsibility to be listening and helping and sharing and working together with customers in defining the future roadmap wherever they want to do so. Facebook. Twitter. Blogs. Forums. Email.

I've only just got my copy of David's book but will be sure to post a book review as soon as I can (the manuscript for my book is due early November so I'm just slightly chocker!) But I can vouch for a cracking few pages in David's book on Social Web Analytics... 'cos he quotes me :-)

Here's a video of David presenting about real-time PR, and you can get the first chapter of his book here for free!

Real-Time Marketing & PR from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

2 August 2010 / 14 Comments

My browser history is my own, so back off with your unethical social media metrics

Privacy is a personal thing. Some people want to be as "off grid" as they can get. And then there are those who actually bolt a camcorder to their heads and stream their life 24/7. Irrespective, I believe there are some things that everyone expects to be private by default; even Marc Zuckerberg! And one of these is your browser history... the log that lists every webpage you visit.

It's this list that enables modern browsers to suggest auto-completions for URLs as you enter them in the address bar. It's this list you might visit when you're trying to find that something or other you stumbled across the other day. It's this list that allows your browser to try to render unvisited links one way, underlined blue by default, and previously visited links another way, underlined purple by default (even though individual webpages and associated styling information may actually override these defaults).

My browser history is mine. My wife's browser history is hers. Your browser history is yours.

But whilst the Internet turned 40 last year, the World Wide Web is still a teenager, and that relative immaturity places irresistible temptations in the path of the less ethical. And being able to read your browser history is just one of those.

Has your browser history been "sniffed" recently

You wouldn't know. Read more

23 July 2010 / 0 Comments

Friday Roundup – Twitter, the Human Seismograph

Ever considered Twitter in terms of it being a "Human Seismograph"?

Brian Solis won't mind me pointing out that he likes to invent memorable turns of phrase. It's a common trait amongst communicators working on any cutting edge because sometimes existing phraseology doesn't quite do justice to the point being made. So here we are, discussing human seismography.

And two posts this week portray the seismograpic needle waggling wildly.

Firstly, Brian's post "Oil Spill Report: BP and White House Sentiment Spills onto Twitter" reviews the sentiment towards BP as expressed on Twitter. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this detailed analysis is the deleterious knock-on impact the disaster has had on sentiment towards President Obama. Of course, correlations offer no evidence of cause-and-effect unless individual exclamations of feeling explicitly express such a connection, and this is something social web analytics can examine. Read more