Technical PR, Industrial PR, Engineering PR, Manufacturing PR - From Stone Junction UK

Boris Sedacca joins Stone Junction

2012-02-02T09:08:00.000Z

Our most observant readers will now that we've been recruiting lately - we have been plastering it all over this blog and every social media platform known to man recently after all.

Well, we're delighted to say that we've made an appointment; Boris Sedacca, of Electrical Times, Television, Electrical Products & Applications, Panel Building and Drives & Controls fame has joined the company as editorial supervisor.

We're absolutely delighted about the move and completely confident that Boris is going to deliver some real improvements to the company and to our clients. He's a former journalist with well over three decades of experience in journalism and technical PR and will compliment our existing team brilliantly.

So, without further ado, here are a few facts about Boris to slip into conversation when you're down the pub and chatting about Stone Junction, as you do:

- He has contributed more than fifty articles to The Financial Times on computing and engineering
- He nearly joined Adam & the Ants. Well, kind of... It's a long story.
- He was once a regular on Computer Weekly
- He has a degree in electronic engineering
- He has run several marathons
- Born in Egypt, Boris speaks fluent French

Anyway, that's enough bragging for the day. Tomorrow normal service will resume and we'll go back to trying to make ourselves look clever by banging on marketing and stuff.

In the meantime, if you've worked with Boris in the past and want to resume that relationship as a client of Stone Junction, or even just want to know about the Adam & the Ants thing, give us a call on 01785 225416.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

So, thought leadership doesn’t exist. But it is the currency of the social network.

2012-02-01T09:00:00.003Z

Regular readers will know that yesterday we established beyond all doubt that thought leadership doesn’t exist in technical PR. (Well, kind of. We really said it’s a bit of an abused and overused term – Ed.)

So, logically, we are today pointing you towards a piece of research which suggests that thought leadership (which doesn’t exist) is the currency of the social network.

Confused? Don’t be.

The research, from SAP and Leader Networks, argues that professionals prefer to use a select number of social networks to interact deeply with their peers by sharing knowledge. And the content that we generally regard as being part of a thought leadership focussed campaign is the material that they access to make those connections valuable.

So, if you are blogging, writing opinion pieces, producing videos, drafting white papers or doing any of those other good things we should all do in order to change people’s minds, you are on the right track. It's even better if you are sharing them socially.

You can read the research in its entirety here. It’s well worth taking a look.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why thought leadership doesn’t really exist

2012-01-31T09:27:00.002Z

Technical PR agencies and marketing folk generally love to use to phrase thought leadership. I admit that I’m also guilty of this particular sin; mainly because there is no phrase that means the thing we actually want thought leadership to mean in a B2B environment.

But the reality is that the concept is such an intangible, old fashioned and difficult to pin down phrase that it’s mostly meaningless.

For instance, companies will say, ‘we want to be a thought leader in our space’. But can one really be a thought leader? Shouldn’t there only be one leader of any particular thought? Or at least just a few? Not everyone with a PR agency can be a thought leader surely?

OK, so maybe I’m being a bit flippant, but the fundamental point stands. If one can’t define what one means by thought leadership, then it may as well not exist. And if you can define it, then is ‘thought leadership’ really the correct term for the bundle of goals you have created?

One PR industry thinker who has done some work towards a valid definition is Julia Hood, over on PR Week US. She makes some very valid points about the way thought leadership PR tactics (There you go again – using a phrase which only has individual meaning, derived entirely from the values you attribute to it - Ed) can have value after the fact, to help reinforce a customer’s decision to buy from you.

The things we do to help achieve thought leadership are, by and large, valid tactics. However, I think we should be more aware of why we are doing them.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Another useful tool for finding guest posts

2012-01-30T08:56:00.001Z

Last week we wrote about a useful tool for finding guest blogging opportunities and also bloggers to produce guest posts on your behalf. And, just like London buses, it seems that you wait ages for just such a tool to come along and then two come at once.

The SEOMoz Daily today describes a way of automating the process of using Twitter to find these opportunities. It needs a little bit of Excel twiddling and a little bit of Twitter knowledge to make it work, but it is a really interesting way to using two tools that are either free or that you probably already own to provide a long term benefit.

And best of all, the Excel spreadsheet needed to make this work has already been created for you and is free – thanks to Ethan Lyon an SEO Consultant from Philadelphia.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Colour separations - the debate continues

2012-01-24T09:38:00.001Z


Some colour. Relevant see?

Following last week's guest Blog about colour separations, by Courtney Magg-Jones, the debate has continued over on the BMON blog, where Chris Rand has offered his views on the whole shebang.

Our own position, as technical PR consultants, is much closer to Chris'. That said, we feel that Courtney's argument was one of the best argued pro-colour-seps pieces we've come across in a long time.

For those of you who don't know, the debate started on the Stone Junction blog, way back in 2006, where we air an argument with many parallels to that of Mr Rand's.

But what we would really like to know is your view. If you are an advertiser, do colour separations work for you or not? If you're a publisher are they a positive revenue generator or something you would prefer to avoid but can't give up?

Over to you.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to find guest Blogging opportunities

2012-01-23T09:56:00.004Z


The word 'Blog'.

There are plenty of good reasons to write guest Blogs and encourage other Bloggers to write guest posts on your behalf. However, finding the opportunity to guest Blog as part of your technical PR campaign isn’t as easy as you might think.

As someone commissioning guest Blogs you are probably looking for interesting content and a source of posts for high days and holidays. You might think that it’s easy enough to convince your colleagues and associates to produce these, but speaking from experience, it isn’t!

If you are looking to write guest posts for publication on other people’s Blogs, then you’re objective is probably to generate links to your own site, to generate editorial coverage or to build a relationship with the Blogger him or herself. Again, given that for many Blogging is a hobby or a tertiary part of their job, this is also not as easy as it sounds.

One way of finding a good source of guest posts and a good source of potential blogs to write for, is BloggerLinkUp. You can request and offer guest posts, request sources for interviews and offer products for review.

So, if you want to spread the word or identify some good sources of content, get linked up.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Stone Junction is recruiting again!

2012-01-20T09:38:00.002Z


This man doesn't work here. Really.

Here at Stone Junction we are always on the lookout for bright and enthusiastic PR folk to add to our team (And convert into cynical, world weary flacks? – Ed)

However, just at the moment, we are especially keen to find some new victims, sorry professionals, to fill the following positions:

In house journalist/copywriter
This role would suit a relatively experienced professional copywriter with an understanding of the business to business sector or, ideally, technical writing. You might be an ex-journalist or specialist PR practitioner and you will certainly be no stranger to a keyboard or telephone. The job will be full time and in-house, based in Stafford.

The role will entail the production of press releases, case studies, opinion pieces, technical articles, Blog posts and e-mail marketing copy as well as a host of other kinds of writing. Cake will be provided on a need-to-eat basis.

And engineering or engineering PR/journalism background and/or European language skills are a bonus but not essential.
Salary: £22 to £30K plus benefits, depending on experience

Account manager
Are you a bossy so-and-so with experience of managing PR campaigns in the technical sector? If so, this role could be for you.

The perfect candidate will have at least three year’s experience in PR as well as an excellent grasp of PR tactics and strategy. The ability to manage clients, prioritise tasks against tight deadlines and work proactively in a fast paced environment are all essential. Outstanding attentoin to detial and well developed writing skills are also crucial. Engineering experience and/or European language skills are a bonus but not essential.
Salary: £28 to £30K plus benefits, depending on experience

Account executive
Tired of reading job ads that say you will spend the first year of your career making coffee, washing the MD’s car and collecting your colleague’s dry cleaning? Look no further, an account executive at Stone Junction is required to do none of those things. Often.

Instead we offer a friendly and relaxed, but committed, environment focussed on developing your professional skills and allowing you to deliver real projects for real clients as soon as possible.

The ideal candidate would be a graduate with the ability to write compelling copy, grasp technical arguments quickly and form a rapport with clients and journalists both face to face and over the phone. You will also require a keen understanding of the online landscape and strong communication and time management skills.

Engineering experience and/or European language skills are a bonus but not essential.
Salary: £15K to £22K plus benefits, depending on experience

The small print
We’re recruiting to help us cope with all the exciting new business we are winning, by the way. Not because our existing staff keep fleeing the building in terror. Oh no, definitely not because of that. That’s coincidence, if anything.

Mail richards@stonejunction.co.uk or ring Richard Stone on 01785 225416 to apply for any of the above jobs. Make sure you include your CV, current salary details and expectations.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Incredible research released on social media in manufacturing

2012-01-20T08:44:00.002Z

Amazing research!

Forrester, that font of cutting edge market knowledge has this week decreed that manufacturers actually do use social media as part of their marketing mix. What’s more, they think that more manufacturers will begin doing so as time goes on. Forrester, the world of technical PR salutes you!

Incredible. You can read the report here.

Anyway, the Forrester report has prompted an interesting Blog post over on The B2B Guide to Social Media, which is worth a read. It outlines the use of three key social media platforms for the engineering sector; YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging.

Readers of this Blog will know that we have been championing the use of all three for well over half a decade now. For us blogging in particular can be an incredibly powerful tool, quite apart from its function in PR.

So, if you feel like making a Friday enquiry, give us a call and we can explain how we can help you set up, run and create content for a Blog. Or, we can do the whole lot for you.

Call 01785 225416 or e-mail richards@stonejunction.co.uk.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

SOPA blackout a damp squib?

2012-01-18T10:48:00.002Z

Soap. Whoops, I think I've missed
the point of the post with this picture.

You might have heard that the Internet is blacking out today, to protest against SOPA (the United State’s Stop Online Piracy Act). Sites like Wikipedia and Reddit are returning a ‘blackout page’ instead of regular results until 3pm today.

They are protesting because they believe that the extent of the SOPA legislation could make their businesses unworkable in the US.

However, over the weekend, SOPA was dealt a major blow as the legislation was delayed until ‘outstanding concerns’ have been addressed. So the protest seems like a bit of a damp squib to me, something that might have been better saved until after the vote on the legislation was rescheduled.

Furthermore, the blackout isn’t going to bring the world to its knees. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ aren’t participating and they could all be affected. Maybe if they were, the world would take more notice.

In all seriousness, SOPA could fundamentally undermine the online activity of anyone who has links on their own website or other online property that lead to a third party website. My feeling is that SOPA could create all sorts of problems, even for those of us who aren’t based in the US.

Incidentally, if you want to participate in the blackout, you can do so here.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: africa / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A list of great social media gadgets

2012-01-17T09:00:00.004Z


A man pushing an imaginery button

There’s a gadget-lover in all of us, we wouldn’t be in technical PR and marketing if there weren’t.

There’s also a list-lover in all of us, especially the journalists that receive this Blog by e-mail. I often think that journalist sounds suspiciously like journo-list.

So what better way to start Tuesday than with a list of the best social media and Web 2.0 gadgets?

You can find it here.

And, if you end up doing nothing today apart from playing with gadgets, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are you too smart to work in PR?

2012-01-16T09:15:00.002Z

Education, education, education

There’s a really interesting post over on Green Banana this morning about the role that PR plays in industry and the role that academia plays in preparing PR consultants for their careers.

I think this is particularly pertinent for those of us involved in technical PR, where ‘on the job learning’ and ‘craft’ are both valued much more highly than PR theory. In fact, there’s a strong view in much of industry that you should just get a former trade press editor to do the job for you.

Now, I’m certainly not averse to journalists applying their skills in the PR sector. I would go as far as saying that my utopian small technical PR team contains a former journalist. But I can honestly say that the very best consultants combine many of the skills of a journalist with knowledge and abilities that simply can’t be picked up anywhere other than in the world of PR.

One of the questions that Green Banana asks very eloquently is, ‘where do these skills come from?’ What role should academia play in providing them? It’s well worth a read.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: koratmember / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Colour separations – a publishers view

2012-01-13T08:55:00.002Z

Courtney Maggs-Jones

This is a guest post from Courtney Maggs-Jones of publisher JLD Media. The views presented are his alone and not necessarily representative of the company he works for. Equally, they aren’t the views of Stone Junction; we just think they are very interesting. Courtney is responding to an article published on the Stone Junction blog in 2006 about colour separations.

As someone who entered the publishing industry much later than Stone Junction's original article on colour seps was written, I arrived into a sales seat in a world filled with colour separation sales. I was a sales executive on a trade magazine, and am now the account manager on the same title, as well as its sister title. When I arrived, the editor of the original magazine was selling colour separations herself, as part of brand guides to accompany relevant features.

The magazine was a glorified brochure with all of these colour separation sales and the front cover sold as advertising as well. Six months later, we re-launched that title, on the basis that the industry really required it, but also that we were forgetting who the reader was.

The re-launch was conditional; that we would NOT sell the front cover, but retain our own brand identity and thus a consistent rapport and identity with the reader. We would also heavily favour editorial over advertising to ensure that the reader was engaged and that the magazine had substance as well as style. Thus, the ratio was 2:7 ads to eds.

In an ideal world, I would rather not sell colour separations at all. So I suggested this to my MD. For the first few months, we tried simply selling display advertising as the sole source of income. (Note, we send the title out for free, thus subscriptions cannot be relied on in this case.)

However, despite our move to not sell the front cover, the other two titles in the sector continued to do so, which caused us two problems. Firstly, that they maintained THE prime position for the major advertising players in the sector, so maintained those relationships a lot better. Secondly, that in bringing in over 30% of their monthly budgets on the one sale of the cover alone, they could drive down the price of the remainder of the advertising in each edition, making it hard to compete.

As someone who I am sure has bought advertising before, you are aware that rate cards don’t mean anything, so we were selling at full capacity and still making a loss.

Of course, you can come up with new and different initiatives to sell, but you need capital to do this. So, whilst a consumer magazine/newspaper can sell copies, and advertising, on substance alone, those industry and trade titles even with real merit, don't seem to have the longevity to survive without selling their souls.

And the sad thing is, that if the product and brand owners don't endorse titles such as ours (whether through misinformation, or the assumption that the only good guys left out there are NPOs, or sheer unwillingness to invest in this sort of activity), we will unfortunately lose the real vehicles of calibre.

So what's the answer?

- A simple solution is to raise the rate card cost. But try telling someone, during a recession, that they need to pay a higher price for something that can't be measured.

- An alternative would be to go back to selling the front cover, which would result in us losing all credibility.

- Continue to write relevant features of genuine substance, with interesting quotes from industry experts (if it is interesting, it will get written about) providing as much benefit and information as we possibly can into the favourable handicap of space provided.

But allow those industry experts, or those who endorse and embody their thoughts, to illustrate those associations, key benefits and selling points by selling colour separations to them. Thus, the colour separation may just be the thing that allows the magazine and company to survive and come up with new and innovative ways in which to maximise exposure for our clients on a number of different platforms.

- The final answer would be what I did with the launch of our latest magazine. In this case, the magazine is the upmarket, luxury version of the original, sister title. We epitomised what we were about and completely carved a niche in the market. We are the epitome of tangible luxury, and no one is doing what we are doing with this title.

The new magazine is beautiful, informative, full of substance, and by being those things, it is profitable.

But we DON'T sell colour separations in it, just display advertising.

Starting out as perfection, and maintaining that standard is the only way of truly being able to demand a crucially required cost without too much negotiation. But if the magazine sets out as a commercial machine in an area of publishing solely focused on generating income, it is difficult to remove that notion and inject some substance without a bit of compromise. The colour separation is a compromise which provides positive, guaranteed coverage as a return.

Ours may be an isolated case, but I am sure we aren't the only good guys out there, who need to have just a fractional amount of budget shared with us in order to operate. In purchasing colour separations, you are guaranteeing the longevity of a magazine which you support and endorse.

My advice to those looking for coverage is to ensure that you do endorse magazines and platforms which can offer you what you need. But, make sure you are endorsing the right magazine, not the magazine using those profits to take you to the coolest brasserie to secure more business.

My advice to those setting up in publishing is to completely nail the niche in the market, to the point where you can hold the value of the advertising as a permanent, but at the same time, provide as much substance and benefit and never lose the reader.

Finally, my advice to anyone in my situation at present would be to meet their clients, listen to their clients, and make sure that what they are trying to achieve in terms of coverage can be a compromise of free coverage and paid for. Rather than making them wait for editorial following some advertising, don't test them, simply fully utilise what you have in front of you to support any budget spend so that you can maximise exposure. You'll find that those clients won't forget the value you have added to their campaigns.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Get ready for custom domain extensions

2012-01-12T06:50:00.002Z

Domains in a big pile. Like they often are.

As of today businesses around the globe can register nearly any word as their domain extension (the bit after the first dot in your web address).

So, we could now see www.pepsi.pepsi or www.siemens.siemens appearing in our Internet browsers - both examples of generic top level domains (gTLDs).

However, the snag is the $185,000 dollar registration cost, which will certainly be prohibitive.

Stone Junction certainly won't be going for a .technical PR any time soon!

We presume though that this would be a killer tactic for SEO. After all, what better way to tell a search engine that you're serious than spending nearly two hundred big ones on your chosen keyword?

But the fact remains, what's the point? I think the next decade is more likely to see a move away from domain extensions entirely than the process of them getting more complex beginning in earnest.

After all, what's easier to remember - ABB.co.uk or ABB.ABB?

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What do YouTube’s changes mean to you?

2012-01-11T09:04:00.002Z

YouTube: YouSeful!

Everybody hates the new version of YouTube don’t they? The received wisdom is that it’s not intuitive, it makes marketing harder and it’s much more difficult to find the videos of cats playing the piano that we all want to see.

Well, the received wisdom is nonsense. The new YouTube is every bit as beneficial to businesses and technical PR practitioners as the old one. In fact more so; and you can get the main points from this useful article by James Wedmore on Social Media Examiner.

To summarise, you will need to re-build and re-optimise your profile as most of the old content (excluding the videos) is likely to be gone.

Furthermore, the new YouTube home page is much more like a social feed, alerting you to what your friends and contacts have been doing, rather than simply pointing out the latest Rebecca Black video.

Finally, there is a new, and quite brilliant, analytics package in place.

However, there are a couple of really useful points that the Social Media Examiner article misses.

The first is that you can now add anything to your feed, in the same way that you could once issue bulletins to your subscribers. So, you can put your blog updates there, add your press releases; basically anything you want. This makes it much easier to get social if you don’t have lots of video content.

The second benefit is that it’s now much easier to link from your YouTube page to other locations. You can add as many links as you want from your profile to your other web properties, although I imagine that the more you add the less Google juice each one offers. You can also provide text for each link to create more valuable anchor text.

So, all in all, it might be harder to find funny videos of cats, but it’s much easier to market yourself. Well done YouTube.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Could a more complex PR message help the high speed rail link?

2012-01-10T09:12:00.001Z

High speed rail - Victorian style

This week's media has been full of discussion about the high speed rail link, set to run between Birmingham and London in the UK. The plans were approved by Government on Monday and this has caused something of a commotion, if not a kerfuffle or indeed brouhaha.

The pro-lobby has argued that the existing railway network will be overburdened and beyond capacity by the time this one is established. It has also vaguely mentioned that it will be good for jobs and business.

The anti-party has said that the rail link will be too expensive, will require the destruction of homes and farm land en route and will offer little benefit to the communities actually being disrupted.

However, the PR message hasn’t included much about the huge benefit the UK’s engineering economy will derive from the project. This is still true even if a non UK company such as SIEMENS, and not the British Bombardier, get the carriage contract for instance, as with the Thameslink order. The impact on second and third tier suppliers, and technical PR companies (Hoorah!- Ed), could be huge.

Equally, there hasn’t been much mention of the UK economy needing to become leaner to compensate for our size in relation to the other economic powers in Europe.

Us PR folk communicate similar messages constantly in industry and yet they are seen as too complex to communicate to the public. I wonder why and I wonder whether the project would have received more positive publicity had Government put more trust in the intelligence of the public.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How to overcome writer’s block – for bloggers

2012-01-09T09:23:00.003Z

"Typewriter's block"

I'm sure you've been there; staring at the keyboard, making your tenth cup of coffee of the day, wondering whether it’s time for a break yet. You've got blogger’s block.

It’s a common problem and not one restricted to bloggers. However, most people don’t really suffer from it when presented with a press release or other more traditional piece of technical PR material to write for instance. Perhaps the reason is that with a press release we always have a subject.

Media information specialist Vocus has just produced a list of tips for overcoming exactly this problem and posted the piece on its Blog. It's a great list in terms of ensuring you always have something to write about.

But one tip it doesn’t mention is putting an editorial calendar and features list in place. This technique has been working successfully for magazines for years and I can strongly recommend it - it's exactly what we do.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

A media moves catch up

2012-01-06T11:22:00.002Z

Someone writing, Maybe a journalist,
maybe not. Who cares?

A lot has changed in the technical media since our last round up of media moves. So here’s our round up, complete with Twitter style hash tags.

The Times has announced the appointment of Hannah Devlin as science editor and Tom Whipple as science correspondent #HighBrow

Justin Cunningham has re-joined Eureka magazine as a Deputy Editor after a year’s career break #WelcomeBack

Paul Wolfe has been appointed editor of IML Group’s Electrical Products, the trade magazine for the UK electrical industry. Paul will continue working as assistant editor at both Electronics Manufacture and Test and Electronic Product Design #HighVoltage

Dickon Ross of the IET has won two BSME awards, one for Engineering & Technology and one for Flipside #Congratulations

Bernhard Kuttkat, deputy editor in chief of the German magazine MM Maschinenmarkt is retiring. Editor Volker Unruh is also leaving the magazine, his successor is Robert Weber. Furthermore Annedore Munde is leaving the publication. #Manic

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

An unusual way to generate images for use in advertising, online or e-mail

2012-01-05T10:27:00.002Z

FiveSquids.co.uk: A very good place
to visit on the Inter-Super-Highway

It’s not easy finding an unusual way of representing a line of text in an interesting and eye catching way. There are only so many fonts around for us technical PR folk to take advantage of, after all.

One way of creating an attention grabbing image is to use FiveSquids.co.uk. The fundamental premise of the Web site is that users can post online the things they are willing to do for, well, five quid basically.

At this point, be warned, there are one of two things on the site that aren’t suitable for work. However, due to FiveSquids own terms and conditions, users can’t post offers based on any of the usual things we all like to avoid in polite society.

So, back to communicating your message in an unusual way; the offers on FiveSquids.co.uk include:

There are loads more. It’s fun and it’s throw away but it could easily work at very low cost in a piece of e-mail marketing.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Keeping things simple in technical PR

2012-01-04T09:00:00.007Z

KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid

Looking for a good way to pitch a journalist?

Keep it simple.

Looking for a good way to write a technical press release?

Keep it simple.

Looking for a good way to ensure your social media content sticks?

Keep it simple.

Looking for an expansive article on why simplicity can be one of the most powerful technical PR tactics you can apply? Look no further than Skip Mahaffey's Let’s KISS: Why the beauty of brevity makes the media swoon.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why your 2012 SEO resolution should be to be nicer to people!

2012-01-03T10:30:00.004Z

Nice as pie... See, 'nice' - geddit?

All links are good links right? Everyone knows that. Links are the currency of the internet; they’re its voting mechanism and ranking tool.

Well, it seems that maybe they aren’t. This post, from the SEOMoz Blog suggests that links from pages that express negative emotion, particularly negative emotion about your brand, can do your SEO campaign serious damage.

Google has always used context to analyse the relevance of the page from which you receive your link. Now it seems that it also uses contextual and semantic analysis to analyse the sentiment of the page.

This has clear implications for consumer businesses – especially restaurants, musicians and writers for instance; who are all likely to be reviewed and thus have positive and negative sentiments expressed about them.

But what about industrial businesses? Surely we don’t have negative reviews?

Well, the reality is we do. There are plenty of Blogs and forums out there on the net, specifically about your industry. You only have to open your eyes to find them.

So, if you want to make a list of 2012 SEO New Year’s resolutions, perhaps taking action to generative positive, and avoid negative, reviews should be on there.

Further proof that generally being nice helps in the world of technical and engineering marketing!

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Image: Robert Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Findlay Media launches Engineering Design Show

2011-12-23T09:59:00.004Z

Findlay Media, parent company of Eureka, New Electronics and Automotive Design, has announced the launch of the Engineering Design Show.

The inaugural event, due to take place at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry on the 10th and 11th October 2012, will focus on the needs of design engineers in the mechanical, electromechanical and electronic fields.

Here at Stone Junction Towers we are delighted to see some vibrant activity in design engineering publishing. There's so much doom and gloom around about the health of the print media (mainly perpetrated by folk with an interest in it failing) and sometimes people start to believe it.

Maybe the reality is that really strong brands, with really strong editorial products like Findlay's will actually thrive - especially if reader interaction can be built with events like this, social media activity and other online interaction.

There will be a conference, exhibition and a selection of free workshop programmes catering specifically for design engineers, regardless of the industry in which they work.

A number of companies have already signed up to exhibit at the event, including Schaeffler, igus, TDK Lambda, Brownell, TFC, Lee Spring and Henkel. The show has also been well received amongst trade bodies and institutions with many, including IMechE, UKEA, ETN, Intellect and Profibus, having pledged their support.

Speaking about the launch, Findlay Media's Executive Director, Ed Tranter, said: “I'm delighted with the initial response from industry suppliers, stakeholders and of course from design engineers themselves. After extensive research we are confident of providing a high quality event tailored specifically to the needs of design engineers."

In July 2011, both Eureka and New Electronics magazines carried out reader surveys to identify the potential for an engineering design-focused event.

Of 600 interviews carried out, 75% of Eureka readers and 68% of New Electronics readers said they would be interested in attending a design engineering-focused exhibition and conference.

The reader surveys also indicated that content addressing specific topics at the event was important. The Engineering Design Show will therefore feature two workshop theatres and a conference area covering up to 36 sessions across the two days, with content guided by the reader survey results and further research being undertaken.

Each workshop theatre will offer visitors practical and hands-on content in the form of case study presentations by leading technology experts. This area will be free for visitors to attend and each workshop session is to be promoted individually, with a full synopsis of the content and what visitors can expect to learn.

The conference theatre will carry a small delegate fee and tickets will need to be purchased in advance. The conference area and seminar theatres will be deliberately located within the exhibition hall to maximise the benefit to exhibitors.

"A good conference programme is one of the keys to a successful exhibition,” commented Tranter. “We realise that we need to offer visitors more than just an exhibition; we have to give them technical content that is tailored specifically to their professional needs.

“We are confident that, with its high level conference, comprehensive exhibition and selection of free workshops, the Engineering Design Show will be an event that design engineers can truly call their own.”

If you want to know more about the show, contact Luke Webster at Findlay on +44 (0)1322 221144 or e-mail lwebster@findlay.co.uk.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Breaking news: Journalists find PR people annoying - sometimes

2011-12-19T09:30:00.000Z

We conducted a survey in early December which revealed the PR consultancy habits that get under the skin of engineering journalists. The survey, entitled What Journalists Want, found that making pestering phone calls and sending irrelevant press releases were the two most annoying things that PR people commonly do.

Thirty three per cent of those sampled cited making pestering phone calls as the most annoying habit of PR consultants. “There are a few PR companies that send press releases over and then ring within one day to ask if you're going to use it; and when you say you haven't made a decision yet they keep calling until you have!” complained one engineering design journalist. “Most (bad PR habits) I can live with, but calling me up to ask if I received a press release and whether I'm likely to use it is a particular irritation,” agreed another industrial sector reporter.

Stone Junction advises clients that in the engineering sector, only very important stories and feature work should be pitched in advance and following up general press releases should be avoided.

A further 33% of the sample stated that being sent irrelevant news stories was the top grievance for them. A lack of time and a lack of patience in time wasting PRs were commonly reported themes throughout the survey.

Just over 10% of respondents rated PR people’s lack of understanding of the concept of newsworthiness as the top irritant. “We don't have story quotas and we don't have magazine pages to fill so we're much more interested in quality content,” explained one online engineering journalist.

It’s important to understand why a particular story should be relevant to a particular publication. Know your target and their reader and understand the focus of each magazine; keep it relevant. If you can do this it’s much harder to make the basic mistakes this survey highlights.

A lack of client contact information was another common irritation with 19% of recipients indicating that this was the habit they found most annoying. “An info@ e-mail address isn’t good enough because they never get answered,” warned a journalist from the security sector. “I received a good story from a PR company and wanted to ask a few questions on it - the contact details included an e-mail address, Facebook and Twitter pages, a blog and a website but no phone number!” another journalist commented.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

A beginner’s guide to link building

2011-12-05T12:59:00.000Z

Lots of people understand that the first rule of SEO is to generate high quality links pointing to your own website. Search engines think of each link as a vote in favour of your page, which they take into account when creating search engine results pages (SERPS). A large amount of links should ensure increased traffic and, as a result, more sales inquiries. So, here are three ways of getting inbound links:

1.   Link from properties you own like Facebook company pages, LinkedIn or other websites
2.   Links from directories
3.    Links from other places, like people’s blogs, websites and social media properties. This is the best way of getting highly ranked, valuable links.

Lots of SEO ‘consultants’ will tell you that reciprocal links are the answer to all of your search problems. The truth is they don’t really work as well as you would like them to and can even be frowned upon by search engines.

It is important to consider whether you are talking follow or no follow links. If they are no follow links, then search engines will not take them into account, but individuals might. So you might still see an increase in traffic.

The anchor text on which a link is based is another useful tool. Embedded links, like this one ‘SEO for technical companies’, are much more valuable than links that take the form of a URL, like this http://www.stonejunction.co.uk/technical-and-engineering-SEO.htm. You should also think relevance - a link from a page about cheap blue widgets to your cheap blue widgets page will be more valuable than a link to the same page from a general web directory!

Another method of getting links to your company website is finding and offering to replace links to defunct pages on other people’s websites. These pages are ‘dead’ because the URLs they were taking you to no longer exist. Finding these pages, contacting the page owner and offering to replace the dead link with a link to your page can be both helpful to them and useful for your own SEO efforts. Here is a free piece of software that will help you find dead links.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why your business is newsworthy

2011-12-05T10:00:00.000Z

~ Join Stone Junction on December 8, 2011 for a free PR seminar ~

As some of you may be aware, Stone Junction will be holding a free seminar entitled ‘Why your business is newsworthy’ on December 8, at the Beacon International Centre in Stafford. The seminar is open to all businesses in Staffordshire and is being organised in partnership with The Business Innovation Centre (BIC).

So if you are interested in learning the fundamentals of PR and how it applies to your business, book a place now. Just call Sandra Butterworth on 0845 8458020 or e-mail Sandra.butterworth@thebic.co.uk.

The session will take attendees through the full process, from conceiving ideas and choosing media targets, to taking advantage of new technologies and measuring their success.

This is all serious stuff, but we are going to try and make the seminar fun as well. We believe that people absorb more when they are doing something memorable and the whole point of the day is to provide the delegates with something useful that will help them move their business forward.

The seminar commences at 12 o’clock and it will be followed by a lovely buffet lunch and loads of networking opportunities…and cake!

If you haven’t booked your free place at our seminar, just call Sandra Butterworth on 0845 8458020 or e-mail Sandra.butterworth@thebic.co.uk.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why we were right about QR codes

2011-11-30T12:47:00.001Z

In another blog post earlier this week we spoke about on-line evaluation techniques for measuring the efficiency of print advertising in trade magazines. QR codes were one of the methods discussed and we explained why we feel they don’t work. And now we have proof that we were right. Sort of.

A US based market research company conducted a survey amongst university students to find out how often they use QR codes. The study revealed that although 81.1% of students owned a smartphone, only 21.5% of those were able to scan a QR code when asked to.

58.1% said they are unlikely to scan QR codes in the future, either because they would need to download the app or because it takes too long to open the webpage.

Students are generally early adopters of new technologies and gadgets. They illustrate trends and are usually good indicators of what the next big thing is. So if not even youngsters are interested in scanning QR codes, than it is safe to assume that engineering professionals won’t be too keen on them either, even though they began in our sector as a compliment to RFID technology.

QR codes have been shoehorned into marketing campaigns, and not even the element of novelty has increased their popularity.

In conclusion, QR codes will not make a significant change in the way print advertising works. What’s more, they remain a poor indicator of traffic resulting from any print advertising, as many choose to ignore the little chequered box at the bottom of the page.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Nephew marketing… or how to shoot yourself in the foot

2011-11-29T10:17:00.001Z

'Nephew' marketing could seriously
damage your company's image

Technical PR consultants are very much like doctors; people often confess their marketing aches and pains to you and lay bare their company’s internal struggles. From the enquiry stage, all the way through actually working for a client, we are privy to the covert mechanisms that power a business. Just like doctors, we are sometimes asked to cure and strengthen the body of the business. However, sometimes our efforts are sabotaged by homemade remedies.

One of these remedies, almost always trusted by the business manager or owner consists of regular doses of nephew marketing, or nephew SEO or even nephew web design.

This means that in order to cut costs and keep it all in-house, some companies are guilty of subcontracting marketing services to close friends, relatives and housepets. Many believe that this is the perfect way of getting a good marketing strategy, with beautifully designed newsletters and a brilliant website for a fraction of the price. And the recently graduated nephew gets a job as well!

But this type of service doesn’t normally do the company any favours. Amateur e-mail marketing shots and poorly designed logos undermine a professional and corporate image.

Just as homemade remedies don’t have the same health benefits as prescription medicine, promotional activities diligently organised by the manager’s nephew, who in many cases is ‘ahead of his time and far too progressive’ to have ever worked for other companies, can work against the promotional process.

So what we suggest, for the sake of both SMEs and nephews, is that managers seek professional help. That’s not to say that your nephew isn’t the answer. If he’s a specialist PR adviser, qualified SEO expert or marketing consultant, he may well be ideal. In fact, like most people, we’ve come across plenty of family managed businesses that are run incredibly well, by people who are genuinely at the head of their fields.

But that’s not nephew marketing. You’ll know it when you see it and the best thing to do is call in the doctors.

Photo: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why applying on-line evaluation methods to print advertising is a bad idea

2011-11-28T09:54:00.001Z

After many calls and e-mails from an advertising sales person in your target trade media, you finally gave in. You bought the half page advertising space at a fraction of what the sales person initially quoted; it almost feels like a bargain, doesn't it? Now, you would like to track the return on investment for your company, so you decide to measure the number of visitors and inquiries generated by this advert.


How can companies measure the success of print advertising campaigns		?

All you really want to know is has the advert worked?

One way that many companies try to quantify the efficacy of their print advertising by creating a purpose built landing page on their website. This is supposed to count the number of visitors coming to your website after reading the advert. But does this really work?

Not really, because people will not take the time to type into their browser the address of your landing page: http://www.bluewidgets.com/trademags/visitors... Nobody has the time or patience to type all that in, so instead, they will go to Mr. Google and type in blue widgets manufacturer. Their inquiry will thus appear to come via a search engine and not through advertising.

Conclusion: Trying to get an accurate headcount of the leads generated by magazine adverts using a landing page is practically impossible.

And for the geeky ones amongst us: the mighty QR code. A well placed QR code will take the reader exactly where you want him and give him specific information, and that is the reason for a purpose build landing page, after all.

However, you must consider all these variables before giving your vote to the QR code:

- How many of those reading your adverts have a smartphone? All of them? 50%? Perhaps even less?

- Of that small minority, how many have a QR code reading app on their phone and know how to use it? 10% maybe?

- How many will actually take the time to turn on the app and then navigate to your landing page?

- And when they do, how can you ensure that the landing page will load quickly and display correctly on everybody’s phones?

Unfortunately QR codes will return very few visitors and thus the results you get will be inaccurate, to say the least. Most people will still just go via Google.

Finally, what about using specific telephone numbers in your print advert? Surely that would clearly show inquiries generated by your investment in promoting the company? In reality, these don’t work very well either, simply because people assume that they would get the most recent or direct company number by visiting the website and typing in bluewidgets company telephone. They are probably better than landing pages or QR codes though.

From what we have seen, applying these on-line evaluation methods to track the response of advertising in trade magazines does not work. And we can say this in an unbiased way as neither booking adverts nor building response mechanisms form part of Stone Junction’s core business.

Photo: Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Should your company Twitter account re-tweet individual staff members’ updates?

2011-11-18T08:57:00.008Z

Carefully select from employees'
tweets when re-tweeting

Twitter enables a two way conversation and allows companies to personalise their communications with their audience. For this reason, it is essential that the company understands its tone of voice and sends out a consistent message, both on Twitter and across all the social media channels it uses. If a customer or potential customer is engaging with the company on one platform, then they are likely to be involved with others too.

So, today's question is, should your company twitter account re-tweet the tweets of staff members? Well, that depends; before you tweet you should ask yourself these questions:

Why am I tweeting?
Who is my intended audience?
How can I make this more interesting
Would I enjoy reading this if someone else wrote it?

Your employees are likely to use their twitter accounts for both business and leisure. In contrast, all tweets you post on your corporate account, regardless of their origin act as the voice of the company. So, before re-tweeting a staff member's tweet, evaluate the significance of potential re-tweets and their effect on your company’s image.

Here at Stone Junction we don’t see anything wrong with re-tweeting employees’ tweets as long as it’s done responsibly and sensibly. Companies that do engage with twitter in this way are likely to be making the most of the service in building and maintaining online communities. And it's the online community you are building, the two-way conversation, that is the point of the exercise. It's that that is going to deliver ROI.

Find out more about social media for engineering companies here.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Google to overtake the social media scene?

2011-11-17T08:42:00.004Z

As you may already be aware, Google launched Google+ in July. Adding to the vast array of online services Google already offers, Google + is the search engine’s contribution to the social networking scene.

Google+ for companies is gaining
an increasing number of adopters

Google + integrates social networking with other internet activity in a seamless way. Users are able to create unique pages, add others to circles and selectively share information with specified groups. It also acts as popularity gauge, as people can also recommend websites using the +1 button integrated.

Google+ account can be set up with the ease of a click for existing Google account holders, with the information stored about members being automatically uploaded.

Taking things one step further, Google has now launched ‘Google+ company pages’. As expected from the original Google+ format, members will be able to add brands to their circles as well as recommend them using the sites +1 button. Behold…another marketing tool! However, brands will also be able to interact with customers via the ‘Hangouts’ video calling feature.

‘Google+ company pages’ will appear in the search engine listings and can also be directly connected to if the user conducts a search with the prefix ‘+’, which will automatically add the page to their network.

Earlier this month Burberry, Angry Birds and Save the Children launched their pages on Google+.

Although these pages are designed to optimise a brands communication for business on the social network, there is a drawback in the fact that the company has to compile their own profiles. Bearing this in mind, will the new company pages see the same unprecedented growth as the other profile pages on Google+? The success of this venture is likely to indicate the longevity of Google as an independent social network provider.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Bloggers that blag - a bit drab?

2011-11-11T10:45:00.003Z

Blogging - easy route to blagging freebees?

Advances in internet technology over recent years have facilitated the growth of countless online communities. As a result, many people no longer depend on corporate bodies to introduce their work to the market and there has been a splurge in online content as creators have naturally taken advantage of this unrestricted freedom. One realm that has seen unprecedented growth is that of the blogger.

Response Source is a company that acts as an conduit between journalists or Blogger and PR companies. The journalist posts an enquiry on the site and it’s distributed to PROs by e-mail, who then provide the information requested.

However, a recent blog post of theirs highlights the challenges they face from aimless requests by a band of people referred to as the blagging bloggers – people who want lots of nice things for free to review on their sites (and arguably misuse the service).

However, review bloggers that do behave in this way argue that they have the right to review whatever they want, everything and anything; and as such will put in request for many samples. It’s their Blog, they believe, they can write whatever they want.

In order to create a debate over this phenomenon Response Source allowed an amusing spoof request to be posted, which said; “We are thinking of setting up our "Owt For Nowt" blog and would like you to send us lots of lovely and expensive gifts which we might - or might not - write about…”

At Stone Junction we believe that a blogger who partakes in a business transaction by offering a service for a product is no longer blogging for themselves but blogging for their readers. They are, by definition, writing for the reader and not only themselves. A review by its very nature demands that there be a reader in the equation. As a result they need to recognise that they have a responsibility to that reader, which they must fulfill by publishing useful, relevant and engaging content.

We also argue that a blogger who consistently reviews products and services within a given category is in a strong position to build up a sustainable relationship with both reader and provider, and is more likely to establish themselves as a prominent blogging figure. It makes good business sense to act responsibly and ethically.

Also happening this week: People on the move in the engineering media
Emma Maier has been appointed Editor of Material Recylcing Week, replacing Andrea Lockerbie who will be leaving the title in December.

International Tug & Salvage has been renamed as International Tug & OSV incorporating Salvage News.

Following IIR Exhibitions' purchase of Quartz Publishing & Exhibitions, the magazines Storage Handling Distribution (ShD) and Solids & Bulk Handling (SBH) will change contact details on 17 October. The magazines will relocate to IIR Exhibitions' offices in Victoria, London. Email addresses and phone numbers will change.

Gas Matters Today has appointed Mark Selby as reporter. Selby, who will also be writing features for the monthly title Gas Matters, joins from Platts International Coal Report.

Emap has announced the launch of Broadcast TECH, the print and digital publication dedicated to broadcast technology.

Sophie Curtis will join Techworld as deputy editor on Monday 14 November. She was previously a staff journalist on eWeek Europe UK.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Selling skills to engage customers

2011-11-07T09:02:00.003Z

A guest post about selling skills from Len Foster of Reaching New Heights

When using selling skills to engage customers it’s important to make sure they don’t feel ‘told to’ or even worse ‘sold to’. Everybody likes to buy but nobody likes to be sold to. When an assistant approaches you as you enter a shop, your barriers are already on the way up to counter the inevitable ‘can I help you’, which we hear as ‘can I sell you something’.

Consider this, the next time you go to meet a prospect. Never, ever, ever present your product or service before you have built rapport. Learning selling skills to engage customers means thinking differently right from the first contact.

Most people tell you to build rapport but unfortunately they usually fail to tell you how to do it. The result is generally a swift (mostly one way) conversation about football, men, women, holidays, cars or the weather. Upon completion of this 20 second attempt at rapport building the product or service is, wrongly, offered.

How to create rapport
One of the first rules of creating rapport is to make yourself attractive to the other person. Not in a sexual way and it doesn’t matter if the other person is male or female either!

A very easy way of making yourself attractive is to simply ‘smile’. Smiling along with eye contact can have a profound effect on other people. So much so that it draws them to you, which makes the initial conversation much easier for you.

You will also create rapport much quicker and easier if you encourage others to talk about themselves. Then do something that 90% of people don’t do; ‘listen’.

Jumble the letters up of listen and you get the word ‘silent’ so listen silently. Avoid finding commonality with them and then taking over the conversation. For example, if you ask where they went on holiday last year and they say France, don’t proceed to tell them all about the time you went to France and what you saw and did. That’s how not to use selling skills to engage customers!

Talk about their interests not yours. If you do this you will very quickly be talking their language. You can easily find out what their interests or challenges are by just asking them. And when they tell you they are very busy and rushing to meet deadlines, talk about how you either are or have been in that position as well. The quicker you can establish you are like them the better, because people like people that are like them.

Dale Carnegie
As you can imagine there are many, many other ways to use selling skills to engage customers. However, this is a blog post not a book. I’ll just leave you with this:

“You’ll make more friends in a short time by being interested in others than you will in a lifetime by of trying to get them to be interested in you,” Dale Carnegie

Go out into the marketplace and make friends because people buy from people they like. Don’t set out to ‘sell on sight’, simply make friends first and you’ll get much better results.

About Len Foster
Len Foster is the regional director of Reaching New Heights. He runs a one day workshop that provides sales training for non sales people, business start-ups and franchise owners. Attendees learn the full six stages of the sales process. Reaching New Heights also provide in house sales training and business coaching for SMEs. Contact Len on 01782 580595 or email lfoster@reachingnewheights.co.uk or find out about his events here.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

The magic of language or the bizarreness of words

2011-11-04T10:00:00.012Z

Some words. Kind of relevant and a
nice photo. Credit: Michelle Meiklejohn

It takes 70 muscles and half-a-billion brain cells to merely form the word ‘hello’. In a series of documentaries that recently aired on the BBC, Stephen Fry explores the origins, complexities, misuses and general peculiarities of languages from all over the world. The first episode was broadcast on the September 27 and the final one aired on Sunday October 23.

Language has the amazing capacity of adapting and constantly changing in order to suit people’s needs to communicate and express themselves. Although there are about 7000 languages spoken around the globe, its uncanny how emotions like sadness, laughter and joy are expressed in a similar way in many languages.

Words are the foundation of marketing, without them we would literally have no way of telling our customers anything. In the PR industry we know precisely how nuances like context or intent can make or break a campaign depending on interpretation.

Technical PR is really just the precise use of words and pictures. The success of a campaign depends on the clarity and accuracy you apply to your message. Language should be an enabling tool for your reader, not a barrier in the buying process. So, we think Fry’s documentary is essential viewing. You can find the documentary on iPlayer here (providing you aren’t reading this in a year or so, after the BBC have take it down, of course.)

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to enable the company status feature on LinkedIn

2011-11-03T09:19:00.001Z

LinkedIn recently announced a new feature that would allow companies to update their profile status. This functionality enables businesses to share their news and introduce new products and services and announce recruitment opportunities.

Although status updates have always been available to individuals, this new move demonstrates a fresh focus on businesses, as opposed to business, by LinkedIn.

Now organisations can communicate their sales message and do a bit of networking by posting information on their profile that their followers might be interested in. Micro blogging basically, just like you have been able to do on your personal LinkedIn profile for well over a year.

The new status tool could be very handy for sharing PR material or as a marketing tool; because the updates will show up directly on your followers’ homepages as news feeds.

However, updates can only be shared from within LinkedIn, unlike Twitter or your own LinkedIn profile to which you can post via Tweetdeck and Ping.fm. This particular constraint will is likely to be lifted in the near future as the status update feature becomes more popular.

The big limitation is that the feature is not automatically enabled and has to be activated on your company profile. Activation is simple enough though; just go the admin section, add a designated person or people as your profile administrator or administrators and hey presto, you’ve enabled the updates function.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Chinese whispers: Steps towards ensuring effective crisis and reputation management

2011-10-31T12:24:00.008Z

There are many technical PR disciplines that are misunderstood, none more so than crisis and reputation management, which is all too often brought into play after the fact – when it’s too late. However, by this time it could already be too late; the corporate boat is heading steadily down the creek and peoples’ perception will unquestionably be tainted by the Chinese whispers they’ve already been exposed to. Disaster has struck and an emergency rescue procedure prompts people into action.

Not all Chinese whispers are as
harmless and adorable as these ones

When done effectively crisis and reputation management is consistent and in advance and is an integrated part of the business model. A proactive approach allows for the identification of opportunities for possible negative coverage and ensures a protection strategy can be put in place. No nasty surprises there.

A few tips:

- Monitor your business for likely negative stories that could appear in the media. When you find them, prepare to handle them.

- Establish a relationship with a group of journalists. Not only are they more likely to source the information straight from the horse’s mouth but that information could prove influential in encouraging positive reporting.

- Monitor your social media activity. This will give you a real time indication of the perception people hold of your brand. Do they understand your products? How do they rate them? Are they publically critical? This will also allow you to identify emerging problems and nip them in the bud before an outbreak occurs.

- Don’t ignore social media at the weekend. This is the most likely time for an attack to occur.

What if a trip down the creek is inevitable?
It is often the case that inaccurate and bias information is obtained from unreliable sources when the company in question is unresponsive. This will almost defiantly lead to a negative coverage.

To overcome this:

- Make accurate information available. People, especially journalists, like responsible, transparent companies.

- Have a spokesperson within the company who is able to issue an instant response. Don’t keep the public deliberating over a message; remove the drama, clear up misunderstandings and share your strategy.

- Communicate the message in a clear, concise way that the public are going to understand. Leave the technical jargon for the boardroom and focus on enabling a clear two way conversation.

A rapid, relevant and useful response targeting potentially interested journalists and opinion formers will smooth the trip, keep your paddles intact and play a key role in safeguarding your corporate reputation. No more Chinese whispers.

Photo courtesy of Phaitoon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

McMummies with flies: PR stunt or archaeological gold?

2011-10-25T13:19:00.000+01:00

Need.... burgers

Credit: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Two Mummies have been found buried under a McDonald’s restaurant in the Staffordshire town of Tamworth. The hullabaloo that has ensued has made me wonder whether this is a ploy by the infamous restaurant to attract even more publicity and not just a lucky coincidence.

But how did the mummies get there in the first place?

The story goes that reverend William Macgregor brought this pair of mummies from Egypt to the UK in the 1920’s. The reverend exhibited them in a private museum, but when they started to deteriorate was forced to find a permanent resting place. He buried them under the foundations of the Tamworth Palace cinema which is now a McDonald’s.

Large restaurant chains are not above exploiting ancient artefacts, historical events, the bizarre or even the after-life as PR stunts. Is it possible that McDonald’s is doing the same, especially as Halloween is so close? Dr Zahi Hawass, director of the Pyramids region in Cairo, has asked for the mummies to be dug up and returned to Egypt. In response, McDonalds has politely declined, stating that retrieving the fossils is not a ‘viable’ option. But how did he find out in the first place? Could it be that McDonald’s PR team rang him up and asked him whether the mummies needed to be moved?

The actual mummies are buried under the fast-food’s Tamworth outlet. But was their discovery staged by McDonald’s or is the company just an innocent victim of a bad real estate choice?

I think the answers may lie in this quote from the company’s spokesperson in reply to Dr. Hawass, "It is something we were completely unaware of, but it is fascinating. We understand they are well within the foundations so an excavation is out of the question, unfortunately."

Will the next stage of the story be that McDonalds relents and excavates the foundations of its building? From a civil engineering point of view this isn't difficult and it would win the company Egyptian points. I can see the BBC2 documentary even now.
Possibly presented by Tony Robinson. Possibly not.

This has been done before, of course. Taco Bell caused public out-cry when it took out an advertisement in the New York Times, on April Fool’s day, saying it had bought the Liberty Bell. Wetherspoons regularly puts out news stories about its allegedly haunted pubs. At one point, you could actually follow the story up and down the UK, tracking it in different pubs and different local newspapers.

So, McMummies with flies; a great PR stunt or just a serendipitous coincidence? You decide.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to do your own SEO - courtesy of BMON

2011-10-18T10:34:00.001+01:00

I've recently come across a series of interesting blog posts on SEO that I thought might interest the technical PR fans amongst you. They come courtesy of BMON, a UK-based consultancy that specialises in providing Google AdWords management for industrial and scientific companies.

SEO, or search engine optimisation, probably sounds like a very complicated task which should be left to the ‘experts’, but BMON has come up with simplified DIY SEO tips which are summarised below.

To read the full posts on BMON’s blog simply click on the titles.

- DIY SEO Part 1: Understanding what you've got on your website
Get good analytics tools, a tool that allows you to comprehensively edit your website and develop a good overview of your site information and page lists. There are various free tools that can help you achieve this, to read further click here.

- DIY SEO Part 2: Assigning search terms to pages
Next is to get your website to perform successfully in Google for specific searches by doing a ‘keyword research’ and allocating a search term to a page on your site. The full post can be found here.

- DIY SEO Part 3: Focusing pages on specific search terms
According to BMON, linking search terms to page titles and their description, is a great first step towards on page optimisation. To find out more click here.

- DIY SEO Part 4: Proving the relevance of your page to Google
Setting up links from other reliable sites to your own and a comprehensive internal link structure within your site would make your website more relevant to Google and therefore more likely to do well in search results. The concluding part of this series can be found here.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Want to do something really cool today? Buy a book.

2011-10-17T21:00:00.004+01:00

Books can also be bought from
shops. Apparently. Credit: renjith krishnan

Remember the quote, “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” Well I did something for the first time yesterday; I bought a book, not online but from an actual bookshop.

Granted, it wasn’t really my first time, but in this age of online-everything I can barely remember the last time I actually walked into a bookshop. They have rows of real books, not the one-dimensional sort that is measured in dpi.

Let me walk you through my experience. I strolled out of my home, down the street and into the store. I browsed the shelves and flipped through several tomes till I settled on the one I wanted. I then picked it up, went to pay for it and chatted with the cashier as she processed my order. All very radical, especially when you include the bit about the human contact.

What this made me think is that sometimes using an old fashioned method to achieve something can be an effective way of doing it.

In technical PR, for instance, journalists are constantly bombarded with emails from us PR folk. Most messages are more likely to be deleted than read. So sometimes it might help if we tried something different; like sending a letter through the post.

Think of what it feels like to receive a hand-written or personalised letter. You’d open that one before you even looked at the brown envelope with boring, official stuff inside. That’s exactly how you should aim to communicate your message; with personality and warmth.

It doesn’t really have to be via the post, although it could be – sometimes. The key is to make the communication method as varied as the message. To speak to journalists in a different voice each time, so that yours is heard above the melee.

If all this sounds a little odd and unconventional then do what I did, start by buying a book from a bookshop, and see how things go from there.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

...Still on the subject of Steve Jobs and why there is much more to say

2011-10-14T16:18:00.002+01:00

The IT and communications world is still reeling over the death of Steve Jobs, last week. Not because he was successful, popular or gave us the iEverything, but because despite his achievements he didn’t ever become the archetypal faceless corporate head honcho.

He lived exactly the way millions would have wanted. He loved his job, did it brilliantly and built a huge global brand in the process.

As CEO of Apple he asked to be paid $1 a year, showing that he measured his success not by what he had but by how much people liked what he made.

Dozens of quotes have been credited to him but I have chosen three which I personally identify with and think best describe his appeal.

What it means to be a creative person
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people”, [via Wired, February 1996].

Small business owners
“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” [via Fortune, November 1998]

Conformity
“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy” [from Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple 1987]

And now, onto the Friday media moves for us technical PR folk:

John Osborne, freelance industrial journalist, has a new website at www.johnosbornejournalist.co.uk. Osborne writes on topics including the automotive industry, building, construction, engineering, car parking, and civil enforcement.

Emma Maier has been appointed editor of Material Recycling Week, replacing Andrea Lockerbie who will be leaving the title in December.

International Tug & Salvage has been renamed as International Tug & OSV incorporating Salvage News.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Is Blackberry in crisis or is it just a storm in tea cup?

2011-10-13T10:02:00.002+01:00

Not a storm in a tea cup but a
puppy in a tea cup.

Like many of you I've been delighted to find that my Blackberry isn’t working this week. I’ve not been bothered by pesky e-mails whilst relaxing in the evening and I haven’t had to delete mountains of messages from people organising riots via Blackberry Messenger. It’s been wonderful.

Inexplicably though, quite a few people are seeing Blackberry’s Internet access outage is a problem. On GMTV this morning, floppy haired consumer PR guru Mark Borkowski claimed that he has thrown his phone against the wall in frustration. Alan Sugar is said to be very irritated on Twitter indeed.

Meanwhile, Rory Cellan-Jones is livid on the BBC and everyone is blaming the PR folk at RIM, the manufacturers of the Blackberry handset, for putting out a confusing press release with long words to do with telecoms in it. Apparently they had the nerve, the nerve I tell you, the attribute the problem to ‘core switch failure’.

“What a bunch of PR losers,” shouts everyone that the BBC will give air time to. “We don’t want to know the actual reason for the problem! We want you to explain to us in itty-bitty-ickle words, that we can understand, that the shiny phone is boken! Don’t pollute our ears with news of ‘infrastructure’, ‘failover’ and ‘back-up switches’. We just do not care!”

The lesson for us folk involved in technology and technical PR is that non-technical audiences need entirely non-technical language. Just being a bit non-technical isn’t quite good enough. Even the lawyers, who are probably in charge of what Blackberry is saying at the moment, can appreciate that.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Photo credit: Timeless Photography

Do you want some free chocolate? Stone Junction wants to know

2011-10-11T12:27:00.002+01:00

Mmmm... Chocolate. Credit: Suat Eman

What do journalists really want? No, that is not a rhetorical question; we at Stone Junction would really like to know. So we’ve prepared a very short survey with questions which we believe focus on how to improve our working relationship with trade press editors.

We've asked everything from how journalists prefer to receive images to what they think ‘exclusive’ means. We've also given members of the press the opportunity to tell us what really annoys them about PR agencies – it doesn't get better than that.

If that’s not enough to motivate you to fill out the survey, we have included a prize that we know you’ll enjoy: our eternal gratitude. Just kidding... we also have champagne and chocolates for one randomly selected winner!

So if you are a journalist in dire need of alcohol and chocolaty treats, please take five minutes out of your break and answer our questions by following this link.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Steve Jobs: Stay hungry, stay foolish

2011-10-06T11:00:00.004+01:00

"I don't think there is a human being on the planet who has been as influential in the last 30 years in the way culture developed and has proved quite so conclusively that passion and taste and belief are more important than a hard business head," Stephen Fry

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Using social media on your mobile phone – How to post yourself into significance

2011-10-05T16:20:00.000+01:00

Credit: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Far too many people see social media as an excuse to schive off at work or something to do when the boss isn’t watching. However, many small businesses can barely survive without it. One of the biggest factors in the social media revolution has been the widespread adoption of social media apps on smart phones.

In the UK we spend an average of 5.8 hours a month on social media sites; illustrating the sheer number of people you can have access to while on-the-go.

Clearly you need a smartphone and you need to download the various free apps from each social media platform provider. Social media apps are now embedded in popular culture so using them to promote your business is a very smart way (Keep of the puns – Ed) of improving visibility and brand awareness.

The most popular apps are Facebook, Twitter, Tweetdeck, Flipboard and LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn for smartphones is incredibly slow, at least when compared to the others which have great interfaces and near full-functionality.

Social media can be used to stay up-to-date as well as interact with your customers, employees or clients. You can tweet or retweet and crucially it doesn’t have to be particularly special or planned in advance. You can also post information that isn’t about your business but just relevant to your community. That way more people will feel engaged and willing to respond, thus helping achieve your branding objective.

All of this can be done during your break or down time before you have to get back to your hard hitting tasks.

Smartphones usually come preloaded with some social media apps as standard and they become easier to utilize as the phone becomes smarter. For example Apple has just launched the iPhone 4S, featuring ‘Siri’ its voice activated intelligent assistant. With voice activation that interfaces with your device’s apps, all you need to do is say the word, literally, and the message gets posted on the social media site of your choice.

So whenever you’re next on a coffee break or having a little ‘me’ time in-between meetings don’t wait till you’re at your desk, reach for your phone and type, or speak, away.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Calling engineering bloggers – entries needed for Best Engineering Blogs 2012

2011-10-04T11:16:00.005+01:00

Instant blog hits.
Credit: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Earlier this year we published a list of the Ten Best Engineering Blogs on the net. If yours didn’t make the cut don’t despair, because it’s that time of the year again and we are calling on the best engineering bloggers on the web to submit their sites for consideration.

All you need to do to enter is leave a comment on this post containing the name of your blog, why you think you deserve to be listed and your URL.

The act of submitting in itself will be an SEO benefit as last year’s call for entries was one of the most popular posts of 2010. So, just the link from this post to your site will be both credible for search engines and a good source of traffic.

Furthermore, we will publish another post announcing the top ten in January 2012, with a short profile of each Blog. If that wasn’t enough, you will also get badge which you can put on your site that will give you bragging rights. Who needs other competitions!

Finally, we will also issue a press release based on our best blogs post which will be covered in key trade and technical media.

So if you think you have the winning words get writing and start blogging.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How I almost read through an entire e-mail marketing sales pitch (and how you can get others to do the same)

2011-10-03T11:58:00.005+01:00

If you live in the 21st century, as most people in England, though not all, do, you are probably constantly inundated with too-good-to-miss sales offers by e-mail. Unsolicited email is normally not very well received and, even as I savagely delete it, I curse the sender, wondering why they see fit to torment me so. However last week I reacted differently to a marketing email; I opened it and read through about 75% of its content before deleting it, without even swearing.

Credit: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Furthermore, I was so inspired by the piece that I had to write about it.

What was it about this run-of-the-mill, annoying marketing spiel that grabbed my attention? Well for starters it was none of those things. I was tricked into reading an entire email marketing pitch precisely because I didn’t know it was an email marketing pitch, at least not before getting to the marketing bit, which was 75% through the email.

The email was from Guy Ullman from Process Industry Informer, who insisted that he not be called Gary. That personal touch struck a chord with me because my name, Nkoyo, is frequently mispronounced and misspelled.

First of all he addressed the email to me and me alone. He used my first name and then proceeded to tell me in detail about an upcoming vacation. I didn’t recognise the sender of the email before I opened it, but in my line of work I do look forward to receiving emails from people I don’t know well and I thought Guy was someone I had met at a seminar, business gathering or even a subscriber to this Blog.

I wasn’t expecting to read about someone’s holiday so I was intrigued. On progressing through the story found it engaging and funny. Even when I got to the marketing bit I carried on reading because at that point I had really come to like Guy and thought he had something important to say - especially to me. Professionally, I appreciate the tactic that Guy employed so I decided I could share a few tips with you.

Establishing the connection was important in getting my attention, using my first name created intimacy and finding a common ground between the both of us (i.e. the challenge of people getting our names right) made me think he not only knew me but ‘got’ me.

Telling a story was a good idea because it ensured that I wouldn’t find the e-mail annoying. Instead, I was willing to read through an entire email from a total stranger.

Finally ensuring his marketing email contained virtually no appeals to buy anything, at least not until the end, engaged my attention fully and left me feeling both amused and slightly sheepish.

So thanks for the e-mail Gary. Sorry, Guy.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

One day, publishers will give tablet computers away for free

2011-09-30T08:26:00.001+01:00

Wheee...I'm free.
Credit: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Earlier this week, we attended a fascinating CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) seminar entitled 'The Power of the Press'. Delivered by Plant & Works Engineering's own Aaron Blutstein, the session covered the needs of journalists and us technical PR folk can best meet the.

Aaron said a fair few interesting things, one of which was that the time will come soon enough when trade publishers will give their readership free tablet computers on which to read their magazines because it will be cheaper than printing.

Nonsense, cried some of the less illuminated members of the audience.

But do the math, as our cousins across the pond would say.

Tablets will be as cheap as laptops soon. You can buy one laptop for about £200 these days and I would be willing to bet that fleets would come for three quarters of that. So, let's presume tablets will be that cheap inside three years.

Let's also presume you are a publisher like Blutstein's DFA. One reader might well receive both Aaron's magazine and one of Drives & Controls or Hydraulics & Pneumatics (or even all three).

So, given that DFA has an ABC audited circulation on all its magazines, you are probably printing, packaging and sending 24 magazines a year to many of your readers.

Let's say a typical subscriber stays on the list for three years - longer if they don't change jobs as frequently as the average senior engineer.

That 72 magazines printed, packaged and posted to our mythical reader. The postage and packaging alone isn't far off half the future cost of a tablet PC when bought as part of a fleet.

So, I'm looking forward to my free tablet. I'll have an iPad please!

On to the media moves:

National media
The Economist has appointed James Astill as energy and environment editor, based in London. Astill was previously based in Delhi as the South Asia correspondent, writing on countries of the Indian sub-continent.

Andrew Parker has been appointed Aerospace Correspondent for the Financial Times. Prior to this role Andrew was the Telecoms Editor for paper.

Roger Highfield is leaving his role as Editor of New Scientist to join the National Museum of Science and Industry as a Director of External Affairs. Sumit Paul-Choudhury, currently Online Editor, will become Editor of New Scientist on 21st November, responsible for print, web and tablet editions.

Trade and technical press
New Electronics has launched a digital edition, including links to company websites, videos, whitepapers and relevant news and technology articles on the New Electronics website.

Peebles Media has appointed Graham Mann as editor of Packaging Scotland, replacing the firm's group editor Mike Travers. He's eager to establish new contacts with any organisations/companies involved in the packaging industry particularly those operating or with an interest in the Scottish industry.

The website for Dream Creative Solution's Talk Business magazine is now live at www.talkbusinessmagazine.co.uk. The magazine's online presence continues on twitter at @talkbusinessmag and on its Facebook page.

British Baker, a magazine covering all aspects of the baking and snack food industry in the UK, has appointed Martyn Leek as Editor.

New Media Knowledge has moved offices. The new address is 35 Marylebone Road, room M103, London, NW1 5LS.

John Gale has left his role as Editor of IML Group's Electrical Products, HazardEx and Hazardous Area International. Managing Editor Russell Goater is currently looking after the editorial content of all magazines, until a new Editor is appointed.

International press
Hugo Leroux's position as journalist has been confirmed by Industrie et Technologies. He covers the Energy and Environment sections. Hugo Leroux was already working for the magazine on a fixed-term contract. Industrie et Technologies is a monthly magazine focusing on the use of technology in industry.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

What should I do with my clippings?

2011-09-27T09:14:00.001+01:00

Credit: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I thought I would point you towards an article on the BMON Blog that I think everyone involved in technical PR or marketing their own company could learn a little bit from. Entitled, Make that magazine coverage get you some results it advocates re-using coverage from magazines in your company newsletter.

Re-using press coverage in other marketing channels is something we advocate constantly with our clients, especially in those cases where we don’t handle that process for them. In brief, here are our top five suggestions:

• Draft a piece for the company Blog, pointing to the clipping
• Make a series clippings books for your sales teams (these can be virtual clippings books they can open on their iPads of course)
• Re-use the piece in the company newsletter as a link or PDF (as BMON suggest)
• Post links to the clippings on your social media streams
• Put the clippings on your Web site either as a series of links to the original article on the publishers site, or as a .PDF, providing you have the correct permissions

What's stopping you?

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

A PR win for the National Grid but a #fail for the reporting world

2011-09-26T09:52:00.005+01:00

Pylons: Cool or not?

You might have heard that the National Grid has been running a competition to find a new design for the classic electricity pylon. The finalists have been chosen and scale models of the design are going on show as part of The London Design Festival next month.

For me, this is a great example of the engineering industry communicating effectively. Apart from anything else, one of the key messages that have appeared in nearly all of the coverage has been increased renewable energy production.

So hats of to the National Grid for a PR job well done.

However, you may have heard about the competition on the BBC’s One Show. If so, you will have also heard renowned electrical engineer (as they say in Wayne’s World – not) and former England Cricket Captain Phil Tuffnell drop a bit of a clanger. He claimed that we need new electricity pylons because the energy produced from renewable sources is somehow ‘bigger’. Poor show BBC.

There were some similarly confused views expressed over the weekend after a neutrino appeared to beat the speed of light when travelling between the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), home of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy.

Thank goodness we have Professor Brian Cox to sort it all out for us.

Both are illustrations of confused Scientific and engineering reporting in the mass media. Both we PR folk and journalists have a role to play in putting this right. Maybe the key is simply ensuring accuracy in our communications.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to optimise images in e-mail newsletters

2011-09-22T10:11:00.005+01:00

E-mail newsletters can be a very effective part of your technical PR and marketing strategy – there’s no news there. That said most of us neglect the images in our newsletters to an even greater extent than we ignore them on our Web site.

Make mine crisp and clear.
Credit: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We don’t forget to put them in of course; we just forget to optimise them.

The first thing to consider is how the image will be viewed by the recipient. Images in HTML emails don’t display automatically in most email clients, so adding an ALT attribute is crucial. In this context, alternative text or alt text gives the recipient a quick overview of what to expect, either before their email client loads the images or before the reader downloads them. In addition, it also alleviates the suspicion of SPAM mail.

If the e-mail is hosted independently on your site as a HTML page, which we highly recommend, then the ALT tags will improve the search-ability of the newsletter page itself. You could also go the extra step and buy a domain where you could host all of your newsletters. This will help with SEO, as it provides more relevant content and inbound links leading visitors to your company website from a discrete domain.

Another benefit of including ALT text on your images is that it helps improve your text to image ratio on your email. Having an even text to image ratio is something that increases your email’s chances of getting through SPAM filters and landing in your customers’ inbox. After all, your main goal is to get a decent response rate and you can’t do this if you don’t get your message across.

If an image is worth a thousand words in print, when it comes to web and e-mail communications, the figure increases exponentially. So it’s worth making sure your pictures are optimised properly before they go out.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Should you kiss in business? And what do the Roman’s do anyway?

2011-09-20T09:27:00.000+01:00

Shake hands or kiss?

Following our recent, very serious and heavily commented on, debate over the wearing of ties; we thought we would address another of the pressing technical PR and business issues of the day.

Should you hug and kiss people when you meet them in business?

For instance, in Russia it’s quite common to kiss your business colleagues on the mouth. This is demonstrated famously by some legendary photographs of Gorbachev.

Of course, the French kiss three times when they meet and very often replicate this practice in business.

I’m reliably informed by Oana Baetica, Stone Junction’s resident Romanian, that in her country of origin men don’t shake hands with women. Doing so would be a failure to acknowledge the woman in question as a lady. Furthermore, although women have now started to shake hands in the higher echelons of Romanian business culture, the country’s attitude to kissing is much like the English one.

But what is the English one?

I recently attended a meeting with some journalists, one of whom I had met many times before over the course of more than twelve years and hold in very high regard. I shook hands with everyone else but when I went to shake hands with the editor in question I discovered that our relationship had evolved into a hug and light kiss on the cheek.

So when does that happen? Do you have to have known someone for a long time? Do you have to have to have not seen them for a while and known them for a long time? And what do you do in other cultures? Do you retain your Englishness, Russianness, Frenchness or Romanianness and kiss accordingly? Or do you adopt the style of the country you are in – doing in Rome as the Romans do?

And what do the Roman’s do anyway?

Let us know your thoughts.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

In a world where everyone is afraid of spiders, the man who isn't afraid of spiders is king*

2011-09-19T08:10:00.010+01:00

Spiders. Scary? Nah.
Credit: SweetCrisis

"What makes you guys so good at this technical PR lark anyway," said the potential client.

"We're not afraid of spiders," I explained.

And that's the bottom line really.

Everyone who isn't afraid of spiders will have experienced the strange feeling of being the only one in the room who is completely unworried by something that terrifies everyone else. You can pick up the timid, little arachnid and put it safely outside, out of harm's way and out of the way of the arachnophobes.

It's like having a superpower; you can do easily something that is impossible to others.

It's a feeling that will also be familiar to salesmen everywhere. When your less brave colleagues are patting you on the back for making a sale and you are thinking, "All I did was tell them we wanted the business, explain why we deserved it and ask them to give it to us! It's not rocket science!"

And it isn't; salesmanship isn't a dark art and neither is technical PR. Sure, there are complex minutae associated with each industry, but when it comes down to it they are simple.

In both you have to be brave enough to ask for the thing you want. And you have to be brave enough to deserve it as well - which is most of the battle. You just can't afford to be afraid of spiders.

* Or words to that effect, according to Erasmus' Adagia.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why your business is newsworthy – free seminar

2011-09-15T09:15:00.003+01:00

Our PR seminar won't be anyway near as
corporate and cheesy as this one. And we
are going to have free sandwiches.
Credit: Ambro

Stone Junction will be holding a free seminar entitled ‘Why your business is newsworthy’ on December 8, at the Beacon International Centre in Stafford. The seminar is open to all businesses in Staffordshire. (But if you are a reader of this Blog who's not from Staffordshire and you want to come along, just let me know. We will find a way to sneak you in – even if we have to hide you in someone’s handbag – Ed).

The networking event will help you understand how PR has changed and how you can use it to promote your business. We will take you through the full process, from conceiving ideas and choosing media targets to taking advantage of new technologies and measuring your success. And we will try and make it fun as well – which will be nice.

But why are we doing a seminar? Well, most business owners and SME business managers think that their own businesses aren’t newsworthy. But my experience is different. My experience tells me that small, agile and dynamic companies often make the most exciting news. They can innovate, they can express opinion and they can take advantage of media opportunities that larger companies can’t.

If that sounds like you, it might be worth attending.

So, come along to this session and leave with a clear understanding of what PR can do for your business and how it can help promote your innovation.

To book a place contact Sandra Butterworth on 0845 8458020 or e-mail Sandra.butterworth@thebic.co.uk.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to protect your organization from corporate social vandalism

2011-09-14T10:29:00.004+01:00

Cyber crime: Not as cool as being
in the mafia. Credit: Boaz Yiftach

The advent of social media and easy online web site creation has seen quite a few PR campaigns gone wrong as the result of corporate cyber vandalism. Nestlé for instance had a fair bit of damage control to do after Greenpeace posted spoof videos on the company’s Facebook page. A simple Facebook setting would have stopped the negative campaign being uploaded. However, the videos depicting destroyed forests and endangered orang-utans, were left for everyone to see from Friday afternoon until Monday, when Nestlé employees came back to work.
Although your technical or engineering company is unlikely to be criticised for killing orang-utans and destroying their habitats, malicious attacks can still taint your organization’s reputation. In order to protect from such image spoilers, a good understanding of how social media outlets and content management systems work is a must:

To begin with, all passwords and user names need to be kept safe. They must be distinct from one another and – if you find yourself using ‘password’ as key term – just use a password generator instead.
Make sure you reject spam comments on Blogs and Facebook pages
Do not click and follow spam links on Twitter and Facebook - they often allow hackers to take over the account
Ensure that the posting and privacy settings on the company Facebook Wall are restricted so that only admins and preferred users can post new content (everyone should be allowed to comment)
Finally, moderate and keep a close eye on your company social media, so that you can counteract any sort of negative publicity your company may be faced with

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Print advertising and QR codes

2011-09-13T09:55:00.000+01:00

The future of advertising?

In one of our previous blogs we were enthusing about QR codes in technical PR and marketing and how fun they are to use (Not to mention useful for B2B marketing - Ed). We have just received a letter inviting Stone Junction to add our clients to the Industrial Technology QR code directory. Although we don’t normally promote advertising offers from magazines on our Blog, we think this one is worth a minute’s applause.

To our knowledge this is the first time a trade magazine has put QR codes to good use, especially in print. Because the number of smart phones used for business has increased constantly in the last few years, we believe that this could be part of the future of print advertising. Basically, QR codes offer, in a limited amount of space, all the information potential clients need in order to contact and access an organisation’s website. That said, they don’t have to – you can pretty much include any kind of information you want, although space is limited.

The rise of QR represents another move towards the advertising audience receiving marketing and advertising material only when actively opting to do so. After all, taking your mobile phone out of your bag or pocket and scanning a squiggly code to find out what hides behind it, is proof enough that you want to learn more about a certain company and its products.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Do you think the engineering and technical media is becoming more responsive?

2011-09-09T09:00:00.000+01:00

Take a closer look at technical and engineering media

Those of you who haven’t been living under rocks for the last few years will know that creating amazing and vibrant web sites with forums, social media interaction and commenting functions is now relatively easy and cheap.

And, of course, it’s basically free to set up Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.

So, do you think the technical media in the engineering sector is responding to this and taking advantage of the opportunity to engage with its readers? Personally, I think some sectors are doing this really well – like the electronics industry for instance.

However, there are other sectors where it’s not really taking off. There are still plenty of engineering magazine Web sites without any Web 2.0 (or Web 2.5 or Web 10.0 or whatever we are on now) technology in place.

I see this as a great opportunity for publishers to encourage brand allegiance to the magazine, which will increase readership and thus advertising. The trouble is I think publishers (not journalists) have a tendency to seek to increase advertising opportunities first, putting the cart before the horse.

What do you think?

And, because it’s Friday; on to the media moves...

Opus Business Media is launching an online magazine called Tomorrow’s Health & Safety, initially going out to 42,000 professionals. It will be edited by Charlotte Taylor.

Louise Kittle is now group editor at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, working across several titles including Materials World, Packaging Professional, Clay Technology and Wood Focus.

David Gray is the new editor of EPPM magazine. He’s been working in the plastics industry for 18 months as the assistant editor for EPPM, MEP, BP&R and MPN, as well as contributing to the new conferences at Interplas 2011.

As of the start of October, Mark McGettigan will become editor of Installer magazine, succeeding Eoin McManus. Mark moves on from his role as news editor for the publication and Eoin McManus will become managing editor. In this new role, Eoin will be responsible for the wider development of the Installer brand, incorporating Installer magazine, Installer online, Installer Connect, EcoInstaller and InstallerEXTRA.

And finally, Dawinderpal Sahota has joined Telecoms.com as senior staff writer. Sahota previously worked as a senior reporter at Computing.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Was Phones 4U’s Jesus ad an immaculate conception?

2011-09-08T09:49:00.001+01:00

The original advert in full

If you listen to the news or watch television, you may well be aware that Staffordshire based mobile phone company Phones 4U has had an advert banned because it was disrespectful to the Christian faith.

My question is not whether the advert should or should not have banned but why Phones 4U chose to run it in the first place?

The company isn’t new to advertising. It won "Best National Advertising and Marketing Campaign" at the 2007 and 2008 Mobile News Awards. An old press announcing a £9.5M advertising budget comes with this in the editor’s notes:

“Leading the way in the mobile industry through its excellent customer service, innovative advertising and differentiated in-store experience, Phones 4u has 428 stores and is still rapidly growing.”

So, why make a mistake like this? Why run an advert on Maundy Thursday (21 April this year), just before Easter, featuring a cartoon depiction of Christ and the Sacred Heart, using of the term "miraculous" to describe a mobile phone deal? Surely you know you are going to get complaints, right?

Well, yes, you must. And I suspect that this is the very reason for running the advert. It generated a huge amount of publicity at the time and this week it’s been covered everywhere from The Guardian, BBC.co.uk and The Independent to The Christian Post and Web site God Discussion.

Phones 4U said that as soon as it received complaints, it apologised and withdrew the advertisement. It also sent individual apologies to everyone who complained. Not a bad response for a contrite phone business, seeking to avoid offence. One might even say well advised, from a PR point of view. One might almost say very well advised. Even immaculately conceived (forgive the pun) from the very start.

And, of course, the Advertising Standards Authority ban really makes no difference at all. Phones4u hasn’t had to pay a fine and the ASA can only ask the company not to use the image again. Given that the adverts ran before Easter 2011, and it has already been taken down, one might be tempted to respond the ASA with a quick note saying simply, ‘bothered’.

PS - The image of Christ appears to have been inspired by the Buddy Christ from Kevin Smith’s film Dogma, by the way. #JustSaying

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Making the most of Blogger

2011-09-05T09:32:00.001+01:00

Blogger, Google’s Blogging platform, has changed massively over the last year. We believe that for some time it has been, at the very least, on a par with its biggest competitor; WordPress. However, there are a few little tips and tricks that you should be applying in order to get the best from the medium as part of your technical PR campaign. Most of them are literally a case of ticking a box or putting a line of text into a field in your template. So here goes:

• Make sure you have mobile version function turned on; this will ensure your blog can be received and read on handsets (as many of us catch up on social media on commuter trains and taxis). This will take about 30 seconds!

• Use the post template function to add some standard text to the bottom of each post, inviting people to subscribe, follow you on twitter or even visit the company website! This will take about two or three minutes.

• Make sure you have added a ‘subscribe by e-mail’ RSS feed (probably using the free and Google owned Feedburner). This is now available as a widget in Blogger, so there’s no excuse. It takes about 30 seconds.

• If you are using an RSS feed you should have a message in your post feed footer, communicating whatever is appropriate to the type of blog you run (‘get in touch’ or ‘tell us what you think’ are always useful). This will cost you another two or three minutes!

• Ensure your blog is made public, so that anybody can access it by clicking the appropriate box in the permissions section. There’s no point hiding your light under a bushel!

• Check the box that makes your Blog open to search engines. These last two points will take a minute at the most – between them!

That all adds up to about eight minutes of your time that could hugely improve the efficacy of your Blogging activities. So don’t hesitate.

If you would like to learn more about blogging, or even have one built for you, give us a call.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Podcasting – the forgotten medium (and Friday’s media moves)

2011-09-03T11:45:00.000+01:00

Reaching your audience the old-fashioned way - podcasting

Today is…Friday! And, while we rejoice about the upcoming weekend, we thought we would also bring you some editorial-moves news. So here we go with a totally non-engineering related piece of media intelligence… which is, at the same time, food for thought if you do work in technical communications.

Stafford FM, the county’s favourite digital radio station is to be re-launched on September 5. Former Signal Radio presenters Stu Haycock and Ray Crowther will head the station as programme controller and station manager respectively. Stafford FM will air music, local news and sport and information.

So, what’s the relevance to engineering and technical PR?

Well, it made me think about the rise and fall of podcasting, and how it could and should still be used in PR campaigns in 2011. Although hugely popular until the mid noughties, podcasting has fallen out of favour with most marketing managers.

The podcasts’ decrease in popularity started back in June 2005, when Apple released iTunes 4.9 with native support for podcasts. While this made receiving podcasts more convenient, it effectively ended advancement of the podcast medium by independent developers. To add to the cooling factor, Apple issued Cease and Desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the term "iPod" or "Pod" in the name of their product.

Irrespective of new technology and media trends, podcasting remains a very effective tool for reaching an audience, even though it isn’t as fashionable as other social media outlets. They are incredibly easy to produce and, in order to listen to a podcast, users have to sign up and download them to their iPods or mobile handsets. This means that unlike some other channels for PR and marketing campaigns, podcasts are actually welcomed by individuals who have chosen to receive the respective communication. They are entirely non-interruptive. Podcasting audiences are receptive because they have a keen interest in the subject.

Furthermore, while marketing managers have lost interest in podcasting, listeners haven’t. Audiences have been slowly growing in the last five years. There are plenty of B2B Podcasts out there with audiences as high as most trade magazines. So, why ignore them?

So, if you are interested in exploring podcasting in your campaign, get in touch and find out how Stone Junction can help.

PS - In other news, Jonathan Morris, formerly Editor of What Mobile, has been appointed as senior editor for Steel Media. Morris will be working across a number of titles including Pocket Gamer and PocketPicks, as well as reviewing mobile phones, tablets, accessories and other gadgets.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why engineering Web sites need to start telling the truth

2011-09-01T09:43:00.002+01:00

Sales material should always say the truth

Earlier this year, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority extended its remit to cover "marketing communications on organisations’ own websites and in other non-paid-for space under their control". Up until then, only advertisements needed to be "legal, decent, honest and truthful" – you could say whatever you wanted to on Web sites! However, recent legislation says that online sales material needs to adhere to the same standards as advertising.

So, how does this apply to engineering companies managing an e-shop or Web site? Firstly, you should ensure that everything that is labeled and sold benefits from a clear description and stays away from implying anything that is factually incorrect. For instance, an automation company legally selling products that are a like for like replacement for, say, SIEMENS, ABB or Schneider should specify that they do not have any affiliation with the imitated manufacturer and that the products are only replacements.

Similarly, trading under the logo of a company that you are not part of could be questioned. So, let’s say you were set up by a large company from another country to exclusively supply their products in the UK; you would have to be very careful to establish on your site that you are a separate business and clearly explain the actual relationship.

Greenwash, or presenting equipment as ‘green’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ when it isn’t, is another hazard that I could imagine industrial companies falling foul off on their Web sites.

Basically, you now have to be honest online.

So the lesson is, don’t assume that these new fangled rules only apply to consumer markets - they include the B2B environment as well. And don’t think that it’s only your customers who will complain. Here’s an example that proves that your competitors might be looking out for your mistakes as well.
If you have seen any examples of companies being affected by this we would love to hear from you.

Photo courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

The humble tie - to wear or not to wear?

2011-08-31T09:34:00.000+01:00

While meeting one of our clients, a large software company, a few days ago I got caught up in conversation with the managing director about… fashion. His belief that in today’s business scene ties are no longer a must, made me think. The argument was that ties have been devalued. Once an elegant essential for important folk they are now merely an accessory worn in the service industry: by bus drivers, cabbies and waiting staff.

As I’m interested in any sort of historical trivia this discussion prompted me to look up the evolution of ties. As it turns out, they have been around ever since the 17th century; and Croat mercenaries who fought in the Thirty Years' War are apparently responsible for the introduction of ties to the Western world. This is where we get the modern word ‘Cravat’, although the original Croat mercenaries wore something closer to the modern tie.

In many high-profile IT companies such as Apple, E-bay and Google casual clothing is preferred to suits and ties. Equally, IKEA has banned its staff from wearing ties. I wonder whether this California culture of relaxed working, developed by IT companies founded in the owner’s garage might be the foundation for our more relaxed modern approach to workplace outfits.

Because I have never worn one, I would love to hear you opinion on neckties: do you wear them on a day to day basis? Are ties an essential accessory to one’s formalwear or have they become a symbol of obstruction and submission?

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Google Related and how we think you can influence it

2011-08-30T15:52:00.000+01:00

Google Related - still a puzzle for many

Google has launched a new tool called Google Related. This feature is a browser Extension that aims to suggest useful and interesting content while you browse the web. You can download it here.

When you're surfing with Related, you'll often see a thin bar along the bottom of your screen that offers videos, maps, reviews and other content that's relevant to that page.

Needless to say, this new feature is going to influence the response visitors have to your Web site, as it is likely to appear at the bottom of the page when they are visiting it. The downside is that a visitor to your website may have a list of your competitors appearing at the bottom, suggested by Google related – and find their way from your site to the competitor’s site.

Google Related seems to suggest results based on your Google Maps, shopping, news, YouTube and Google Search results. Here at Stone Junction Towers, we wouldn’t be surprised to find more content appearing in the Google Related bar going forwards, particularly Blogger hosted Blogs and Google+ results.

Although the tool is relatively new, here is what we think you should do in order to influence it:

• The first step should be to create Google maps for all of your businesses’ locations and optimise their content – if you haven’t done so already. For instance, if you have three different offices for you company and they are all listed, then you may be able to have the Google Map listing for your secondary and tertiary offices appear in the Google Related results that appear on your page. Optimisation in this context is about adding extra images and descriptive content and encouraging customers and other stakeholders to add reviews.

• Another way in which you could get Google Related to pay more attention to your company is by uploading some YouTube videos. Apart from their unchallenged marketing benefits, videos also act as additional unique content with SEO benefits. I would suggest that these videos should be very clearly tagged using your URL and company name, so that Google Related will associate them with your Web site.

• There is only really one thing you can do to improve the news and search results Google shows for your business and that’s increase the emphasis you place on technical PR and SEO. The former will improve your news listings and the latter, providing you have multiple Web properties may improve the search listings.

• To generate results in the ‘shopping’ section of your site’s Google Related bar, you would need to provide goods for sale via the Google shopping channel, which means listing those goods on an optimised and submitted e-commerce page.

Because it is in its early stages, one can only speculate the true impact of Google Related and the algorithms behind it. However, making sure you add new and original content about your organization on sites other than your own (as well as your own, of course! - Ed) seems to be a constant in the continually changing world of SEO.

Photo courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

What’s the impact of Source the Engineer?

2011-08-26T11:01:00.002+01:00

The impact of trade press changes

As you are probably aware four of the remaining Pro-Talk sites closed their doors recently and were replaced with Source the Engineer. This means that EngineeringTalk, ManufacturingTalk, ProcessingTalk and ElectronicsTalk have been absorbed into the new site. They are a kind of marketplace for the The Engineer. Confusingly, the TheEngineer.co.uk still exists as a separate entity.

So what impact does this have on us engineering PR folk?

In order to decide this, we need to take a peek into history. Back in 1998, EngineeringTalk revolutionised online publishing in the engineering sector. Before it launched, there were a few sites half heartedly trying to take advantage of this ‘Internet’ that the crazy kids were talking about. Afterwards, the game changed.

EngineeringTalk, and the other Talk sites that followed, were incredibly well optimised for search. So much so that news stories appearing on them would often appear ahead of the Web site of the company launching the story.

This was great for us engineering PR folk as it naturally meant mountains of sales leads for our clients, which were clearly traceable to PR activity.

Then, Google changed the game and it became much harder for a news site, publishing every press release that graced its doors to do well in Google. At around about this point the independent company running the sites sold its stable of online publications to Centaur.

This was soon followed by a rationalisation of content, with sites like CIM-Talk shutting completely while others, such as PrintingTalk and BuildingTalk still survive today.

However, the key change was that the sites no longer performed as well in Google, through no fault of Centaur. Google had simply changed the game. They also stopped publishing every story they received, instead focussing on a limited number of pieces.

From the outside looking in, we have to think that Source the Engineer is a move towards re-establishing a position of dominance. There are alternative views of course, suggesting that it may be part of a reaction to the economic downturn, as expressed very eloquently by Russ Swan here.

So far, the new site is searching well. Today’s top story comes up top of both Google News and the regular Google search, providing you search using keywords from the title (which is probably also the H1 tag).

Whether Source can achieve anything like the dominance that EngineeringTalk had is a real question. I hope either it, or someone else, can. Because we’ve missed you EngineeringTalk ;-)

More news from technical publishing
The IMarEST, publisher of Maritime IT & Electronics, MER (Marine Engineers Review), Offshore Technology, Shipping World & Shipbuilder, The Marine Professional and The Marine Scientist has changed address. Its new address is Aldgate House, 33 Aldgate High Street, London, EC3N 1EN.

German company DVV Media Group has acquired Air Cargo Media, publisher of Air Cargo News, and Freighters’ World.

The Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) has appointed Guy Goodwin as communications manager of Qualityworld, he will also fill the role of former editor Helen Stokes.

Energy Live News has got a new Web site, which covers news from the UK and international business energy sector as well as domestic power stories.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Ten magazine ads that could inspire changes in technical advertising

2011-08-25T09:18:00.001+01:00

This is what advertising
people look like. Well
known fact. Credit:
Photostock.

Here at Stone Junction we have always recognised the importance of advertising, both as a way of supporting a vibrant trade press and generating business for the advertiser. So when we stumbled upon these very creative magazine adverts, we felt that they must be shared!

Each of these adverts uses a different interactive and often metatextual way of creating a strong response. For instance one of the adverts uses a QR code that allows the print advert to audibly speak to the reader.

Obviously, these adverts are intended for the consumer markets and they aim to dazzle the reader through the imaginative use of technology. But do you think these marketing techniques could find an application in technical advertising? We often see interactive advertising in page turning or online magazines, but is there the opportunity to replicate these consumer tactics in the engineering print media?

We would love to hear your thoughts.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to generate ideas for your engineering Blog

2011-08-24T08:50:00.001+01:00

Generating ideas for your Blog
doesn't have to be difficult
Image credit: Idea Go

At Stone Junction we believe that blogging can be one of the best ways to generate thought leadership in your industry. However, we understand that many technical companies struggle to generate blog content.

This isn't necessarily because those companies lack something to say. Sometimes it's not even because they lack the writing skills or time to express themselves. Of course, if this is the case you can always get Stone Junction to help - give us a call on 01785 225413 to talk it over.

The most common reason why engineering companies don’t produce enough Blog content is that the company doesn't know what questions to ask in order to create a list of topics.

So, here's a few we prepared earlier:

• What questions do your customers ask? Answer one per post.

• What niche markets do you serve? How about a series of posts addressing the problems you solve in each sector?

• Do you know your ABC? Could you draft a series of Blog posts in which you explain your products or services using each letter as a way into the post?

• Do you need character? How about adopting a pseudonym with an entirely different personality for your Blog posts? The new character could be anyone from a young engineer learning his trade and explaining the results to your readers to a grumpy old man complaining about the industry.

• Do acronyms confuse you? They probably confuse your customers as well. A series of Blog posts differentiating ATEX from WEEE (or whatever the relevant subjects are in your industry) could be just what your customers are looking for.

Of course, if you are still stuck for ideas, just get in touch.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Social unrest + social media =?

2011-08-22T09:41:00.001+01:00

Social media + social unrest =?
Credit: Tom Curtis

The last few weeks have been dominated by news about riots countrywide. Images of broken window shops and masked youths setting fire to cars and buildings will stay with us for quite some time. Social unrest is by no means strange to British society. However, this time, the novelty was the use of social media throughout the events.

To begin with, the looting was organized and managed through the covert social network - BlackBerry Messenger. The simultaneity of the riots in cities all over England was achieved through Twitter and Facebook communications as well. For instance, police were prepared for trouble in Birmingham after campaigns on Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and Twitter warned of violence and instigated others to get involved.

As a response to the dangerous situation, a few enterprising internet users decided to collate location information on where the riots took place and plotted them on the map. Their objective was warning citizens to avoid riot areas and stay safe. The London Riots Map for example is collating user tweets that have the #londonriots hashtag as well as a mention of a UK postcode.

In the aftermath of the disturbances, communities countrywide were left dealing with the destruction left behind by thugs. Cleanup plans were quickly put in place and individuals were mobilized via Twitter by using #cleanup. People whose livelihoods were burned and looted were joined by those willing to help and restore neighbourhoods to a sense of normality.

Later in the week, after fires were put out and streets were cleaned of the riot debris, the police had the difficult task of identifying the culprits and bringing them to justice. Social media was going to play a key role yet again, as UK Metropolitan Police opened up their stream on photo storage site Flickr and uploaded CCTV images of suspected criminals and alleged looters, calling on the public to provide them with information about individuals in the photos.

In unprecedented circumstances, the latest social unrest was planned and organized via social media. But just as Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger were the vehicles of choice for looters’ messages and communications, they have also played in important role in bringing communities together for the cleanup. At the moment, as police investigations are on their way, social media will be used yet again in order to identify and prosecute the offenders. The recent uprisings mark a new era in social communications and re-establish the media outlets' penetration in every aspect of our existence.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Learn about how to get your message across in the B2B world

2011-08-18T09:04:00.000+01:00

Aaron Blutstein

Here at Stone Junction we don’t usually promote products, courses or qualifications…if anything, so far we’ve only promoted good natured PR and biscuit consumption! But recently we found a course truly worth attending, and as we think it would be very useful for our readership, here are the details below:

The Charted Institute of Marketing is offering a 1,5 hour course on how to get your message across. It is aimed at B2B marketers and PR people and the best thing about it is that you get an editor's view of the ideal press release.

Aaron Blutstein, editor of Plant and Works Engineering, will share practical thoughts on writing and issuing releases, making contact with journalists and what editors want from marketing and PR professionals to ensure regular editorial coverage.
This will be your opportunity to check out all the things you've ever wanted to know about PR from an editor's standpoint - including:

How journalists think and operate.
Who does what on a trade magazine?
The relationship between advertising and editorial.
The value to the reader of colour separations and editorial 'spotlights'.
What makes an editor decide to use or ditch a release?
Whether B2B readers are switching from print to online magazines. Whether online press coverage now surpasses print for value. Who puts the stories up - are they scrutinised in the same way as print. In addition, what makes editors more likely to publish embedded links online.
Where journalists and editors look for stories online - and what editors would like marketers to do for them, company websites, blogs, and twitter.

Learn tips on writing the ideal press release:

What stories make a good release?
Crucial facts that should be in every release.
Why it matters what your release looks like.
How to tailor releases for print - local, national, consumer and trade - radio / TV and online media.
How it should be sent - by hand, post or e-mail?
How often you should issue releases?
The best time to issue it - and if there is ever a really good or bad time.
The follow it up - to phone or not to phone?
Photographs - whether they should go with the release.

In addition:

Trade shows: What you should put in your press pack. What editors want at a show.
How to get on to an editor's request list.
Can you bribe an editor - even if it is only a lunch?
Press conferences - old hat or still useful?
Is there more to PR than just press releases?
Why editors love marketing people.

For dates, prices and other logistic issues, log on to the Charted Institute of Marketing!

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why we believe in character

2011-08-15T12:19:00.004+01:00

Why we believe in character

At Stone Junction we believe that one thing is more important than anything else in business; character. We recruit for character, we appraise on the ability to demonstrate character and we believe in expressing character as part of your job.

So, it’s nice to see other companies thinking the same way.

Heimat, a German advertising agency based in Berlin and known for clients such as Burger King, Audi and CNN, also seem to believe in character.

The word Heimat, very loosely translated means ‘place that symbolises home’. As a result, every employee of the company has to choose a visual depiction of his personal definition of home to appear on the reverse of his business card.

One employee has recently had a picture of Liverpool FC’s Bill Shankly on his card. A representative of the company said, “We also have people with Dortmund's Westfalenstadion on their business cards as well as Bayern Munich motives and so on. It's a great way to start a conversation when you are on a business trip.”

So our message is, find ways of expressing character in your marketing methods. After all, people buy people.

By the way, this is what we mean by ‘character’:

char•ac•ter [kar-ik-ter] noun:
1. The aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing
2. One such feature or trait; characteristic
3. Moral or ethical quality: a man of fine, honourable character
4. Qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity: It takes character to face up to a bully
5. Reputation: a stain on one's character

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Media moves for August

2011-08-05T12:48:00.001+01:00

Reading the media
Credit: Ambro

The international media has been busy this week, and an African publication took centre stage for all the wrong reasons. The Rwandan tabloid Ishema published a defamatory article about the country’s president calling him a ‘sociopath’. The public outrage led to the editor claiming he knew nothing about the last edition (?! - Ed) and later on resigned. The story was about to get more interesting, as the following edition was an entirely apologetic one, featuring a picture of the paper’s managing director bowing to the president on the first page. The entire issue contained positive articles about the current president and his government. The case is baffling because it illustrates the relationship between journalists and politicians in a country striving for freedom of speech and of the press.

Closer to home, we have seen some interesting media moves, so let’s start with appointment news:

• Holly Else has been appointed as assistant editor for Caspian Media's Professional Engineering, while Alistair Winning becomes editor of Electronic Product Design.

• Former deputy editor of New Civil Engineer, Jackie Whitelaw replaces Jon Masters as editor of Transportation Professional.

Centaur Media has announced closing the print editions of Design Week and New Age Media, but fear not, both will continue as online publications. However, New Media Age will be used as a monthly digital marketing supplement for Marketing Week. Centaur Media has recently launched in association with The Engineer a comprehensive website called Source which contains Engineeringtalk, Processingtalk, Electronicstalk and Manufacturingtalk.

Although for many of you the month of August is holiday season, we have seen magazine launches as well. MEPCA – Maintenance Engineering Process Control Affiliates is a newly launched journal, providing advice and solutions for management and technical challenges encountered by managers and engineers in the process, control and plant industries. The magazine is expected to have a circulation of 12,000 printed copies and 32,000 digital copies e-mailed out internationally. The journal aims to be reader focused, with relevant and interesting editorial to inform on the latest management techniques, products, solutions and services.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

The Stone Junction guide to social media, part one - Twitter

2011-08-03T09:01:00.003+01:00

Credit: DigitalArt

In today's online landscape, there is a plethora of social media outlets available to industrial and technology companies. The most difficult decision one has to make is which ones to use. To help our faithful readers find their way through this online jungle, in this, the first section of a multiple part post, we begin by addressing the benefits and drawbacks of Twitter.

Twitter
- This is probably the one we would recommend most wholeheartedly for technical businesses. Twitter can help you find new clients and be the medium for a meaningful and witty dialogue with business partners and collaborators, journalists and anyone working in your sector If used effectively, Twitter can be a successful marketing tool in its own right. It takes time and effort to build up an audience, but once you’ve got them following you, it can be very effective.

- Your engagement on Twitter can, broadly speaking, be broken into two tactics - broadcast Tweets and ineraction with other users. The latter is by far the most important. On Twitter, you should seek to listen first, then engage, then help and finally promote. If you just promte yourself noone will listen. Who wants to be the show-off at the party who is standing in the middle of the room bragging?

- In a broadcast context, Twitter focuses more on the linking out of information by directing followers to other separate websites. Thus, it tends to be more of a quick stop for finding interesting information than a place to linger and sip a cup of coffee.

- However, Twitter has its limitations; a character limit only allows updates - or Tweets, for the tragically hip among you - to be 140 characters in length. Whilst this can lead to a certain ingenuity when it comes to composing your update, it can be very restrictive and can prevent extended public exchanges.

Tomorrow we shall take an in-depth look at Facebook. Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more to follow in future posts. We will also be addressing industry specific social neworks in a seperate post.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Volkswagen is feeling the force of a good viral marketing campaign

2011-08-02T09:03:00.003+01:00

Greenpeace has recently launched a campaign against car manufacturer Volkswagen's advert titled VW Dark Side. It is meant to be a protest against the German corporation’s self-touted - but rather unfounded - green credentials. Yet as far as we can tell, the campaign itself is pretty much flawless.

The viral advertisement works by showing a film that takes its inspiration from the recent VW advert titled The Force.

The idea is that in order to gain access to further films from the Dark Side site, users have to sign up and earn points. The clever thing about this game is it actually functions as a method of self promotion; points can be earned by sharing the video with other users. Further points are earned by people following the link you have shared and signing up themselves. The Rebel Manifesto’s potential is a great one, as its influence as a viral can increase exponentially.

The campaign is in our opinion, almost perfect in its execution. The references to the Star Wars subject matter and the advert itself are the icing on the cake. The Star Wars storyline is so well known, that the goal of stopping “our planet going the way of Alderaan,” needs no explanation. (For the uninitiated reading this post, Alderaan was destroyed in A New Hope.)

The crossover between the mass of people that enjoy alternative cinema - though Star Wars is probably a classic by now - and those involved in environmental protection campaigns is massive.

With 249,613 Jedi signed up to the manifesto so far, and counting, this is a great example of social media oriented viral.

Here at Stone Junction we love to hear about things like this, so if you have any other examples of similar campaigns please leave a link in the comments. The more they reference Star Wars the better – yes, we’re geeky like that!

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Is Google’s new social network a positive choice for your company?

2011-08-01T09:50:00.009+01:00

Is it thumbs up from you for Google+1?

Google has recently made a foray into the world of social networking in the form of Google+. But from a technical business' point of view, the big question is, should we adopt it?

Stone Junction has long advocated social media integration as a fundamental part of the marketing mix. With the vast number of social media outlets available, deciding which to use and how can be daunting.

At the time of writing, Google+ is a bit of a disappointment. It’s currently operating on an invitation-only basis and in essence, it appears to be a combination of Facebook and Twitter with added privacy options.

The first seemingly new addition to the well established social network formula is Google Circles. This allows you to place contacts into subgroups based on your relationship with them - so you could have all the contacts from one company or industry in one Circle and another one with contacts from another company.

The real game changer though is Sparks, which is really a recommendation engine in all but name. Users choose their interests - sports, music and so on - and it recommends the highest rated results.

You may have have also noticed some colorful Google+1 buttons next to search results; these are the mechanism by which pages are recommended. If this gains momentum, it could become a serious force in almost every industry and will provide a tangible use for the +1 buttons.

The last few years have seen the services offered by Google increase greatly; however they do come at a cost. They have turned into disparate entities, difficult to consolidate. If Google can tie all their features together effectively through Google+ then the story might be different. We’re not saying it’s going to be a Facebook killer but it could be a serious contender.

So, is it worth the trouble of setting up an account for your business, or indeed your personal life? On the off-chance this turns out to be the next big thing, yes. If it doesn’t then, well, its not a huge amount of work to sign up for it.

If any of you have recieved an invitation for Google+, please do share your experiences. And, if you haven't, feel free to share your experience of being a bitter, friendless and lonely cyber networker ;-)

Photo courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why Social Media PR is the kung fu of the marketing mix.

2011-07-29T12:59:00.003+01:00

Kickstart your marketing campaign by using social media

“You can call it the art of fighting without fighting,” is how Bruce Lee described Kung Fu in the seminal 1973 martial arts film Enter the Dragon. To butcher a brilliant quote in the name of making a point, we believe that social media marketing is the art of marketing without marketing.

Traditional strategic marketing methods tend to be slow, unwieldy beasts resistant to change and requiring huge amounts of planning to succeed. This can lead to difficulties when a corporate behemoth attempts to integrate social media into the marketing mix.

The trouble is, social media seems to conflict with the effort that goes into planning, planning and planning.

Listening, sharing, speaking and responding all take precedence over the broadcasting of news on social media, a technique which can seem counter-intuitive to an old style marketing expert.

Using social media requires a shift in mindset. The priority is to build an audience and interact with them first. Simply announcing a new product through a social network is a futile task if there is no-one to announce it to.
So, our tips on using social media successfully:

• Firstly, listen. We cannot stress this enough. You are not building a database of potential clients. Think of it more as a group of people you are trying to help. Respond to them as much as you can.

• For example, in the case of Twitter login and start tweeting. Talk about what your company is doing. Follow others with similar interests. Re-tweet things if you find them interesting, or if you think your followers will find them interesting. Reply to people if they talk to you. This is what we mean when we say help people. Listen to what someone is asking and respond to it.

• Finally, marketing. Only once your audience is there can you think about self-promotion. Ideally this should be interactive marketing anyway, ask your audience what they think about a new product, or if improvements can be made on current ones. Ask them what they think about your customer service. Ask them how they think you can do more to improve your customer community.

• And finally, when you’ve done all this, you can mention that you’ve got a new red widget. But, this isn’t the objective – the rest of the stuff is.

So, don’t delay – start practicing your kung fu.

Photo courtesy of Lavoview / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

What if the devil himself were in technical PR?

2011-07-27T14:05:00.002+01:00

PR people - we aren't the devil incarnate

“Frankly I think if the Devil himself were to walk this earth, he'd need representation.”
“If the Devil himself walked this earth, he'd surely be working in PR.”

This quote from the second episode of Torchwood series four; Miracle Day is an amusing but worrying indication of the longstanding view of PR in the media. More worrying is that this isn’t a recent trend; films such as the 2003’s What Woman Want and 2000’s Phonebooth also portray PR people in a less than favourable light.

So, the question is, why?

A survey we conducted earlier this year found that public recognition of prominent PR figures is extremely low. Two of the most recognized figures were Samantha Jones from Sex and the City and Patsy Stone of Absolutely Fabulous fame. With the most prominent PR figures in media being caricatures at best, is it any wonder the industry as a whole has a bad image?

These media representations couldn’t be further from the truth with Truth here being the operative word; it should be at the heart of every PR campaign. Generally speaking honesty is the best policy and the one that gets you decent press coverage. Being a Machiavellian, amoral villain won’t help your clients get in ink on paper. Which is why most of us folk in technical PR are actually pretty decent.

Credit for the picture goes to:
Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why your online footprint will mean you get fewer sales leads, but better ones

2011-07-26T11:24:00.007+01:00

In our last two blog posts we have looked at the changing landscape of industrial buying. This trend means that a company’s audience will expect to receive the necessary information via a well optimised website, which leads to an equally interesting blog and interactive social media presence. They will look towards online media as well as print media, RSS feeds, e-mail and other content and, by the time they have finished, they will have enough information to know whether its worth enquiring.

Although we have mentioned it time and time again, social media, Blogging and good content on your own Web site are key elements in taking advantage of this change in buying trends. As Twitter has just turned five, graduates who started using the channel in 2006, are now in their mid to late twenties and are rapidly turning into your target audience. The 'young folk who grew up on social media', that we've been talking about for a while now, represent an increasingly powerful buying force.

For this section of the public, if your business does not have a LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook profile, or at the very least a well developed Web site with a Blog, it does not exist. This development has occurred quite rapidly and it marks a sea change in business to business relationships. For instance, take a look at this funny – yet true – video on the subject.

Managing your corporate reputation online is now a hugely important market challenge. Making sure your website is up to scratch will not only help you in Google social search or Panda, but it will also increase traffic and subsequent inquiries. In an age when the medium is the message, organizations can no longer afford to exist without these online channels.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Re arming for the PR battle in 2011

2011-07-22T12:35:00.001+01:00


New bullets for doing new PR

Today we continue our series of useful advice about how to do PR in 2011. In this post we look at the ability of PR strategies to reach directly to the end customer. Once PR material only reached customers through the medium of the press, which acted as a gatekeeper, filtering out the least useful information.

Given that consumer buying habits have changed massively, companies no longer get 30 sales inquiries out of which only few materialise with purchases. Instead they receive only a few leads, which are already qualified, because the potential customer already knows everything they need to know about the provider. They have found the information on the provider’s Web site in press material published about the company or on its Blog, via its social media outlets or via any of the other marketing footprints we leave behind. They don’t need to ring you for a datasheet anymore.

So the question is, ‘how can we provide the information that customers need to pre-qualify themselves?’ Yesterday we discussed using media relations to help achieve this. But we can also introduce elements of sales promotion into a PR campaigns to achieve the same effect.

For instance, material such as white papers and sales collateral can be good ways of implementing these tactics. White papers are used to educate readers and help them make decisions, by arguing that the benefits of a particular technology, product or service are superior for solving a specific problem. These papers will highlight information favorable to the company authoring or sponsoring the paper. Such white papers are often used to generate sales leads, establish thought leadership or make a business case. Equally downloadable, free and easy to use, guides, calculators or jargon busters can make good content.

But this has always been the case, the thing that has changed is that we now have more channels that we can use to pass this content on to customers. Social media outlets, including vertical ones such as NMI.net as well as the usual suspects, online and print media, a well optimised Web site, your Blog and other people’s Blogs can all be excellent vehicles for presenting your collateral to your customer base.

The takeaway from this is that sales collateral represents another method of taking advantage of the fundamentally changed buying habits in the engineering sector. And as the audience expectations evolve, so must our communication channels, we have to re-arm for the PR battle ahead. The old bullets might not be enough anymore.

Photo courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How technical media relations has changed - in print and online

2011-07-21T11:14:00.006+01:00

Media relations at a crossroad. Pic from digitalart

As explained in our last blog post, we believe that technical PR has changed fundamentally in the last few years and has been changing rapidly for the last decade. We mentioned yesterday how the division of sales enquiries from technical marketing activity has changed and today we plan to look at one of the ways of influencing this transformation; taking advantage of the development in online and offline media relations.

To begin with, the relationship between PR consultants and the print media has metamorphosed over the years into a more targeted one; issuing the odd press release to 147 journalists at the same time is no longer the best technique for communicating your message across. (If it ever really was! – Ed.)

Comprehensive print media relations
These days, PROs should target every section of every magazine: letters for the letter’s section, relevant information for Q&A pieces, snippets for the News in Brief, opinion content for the soap box columns… and much more.

The point is that if you want to let the world know about your new line of tiny blue widgets, the message has to be sent out in various formats and to various magazines in a highly targeted way.

However, in order to help generated interest in the reams of copy you are producing a few rules need to be observed:

Targeting: Be specific in terms of what /magazine/journalist/sub-section you want to target
Openness: Leave all communication channels open (provide e-mail, telephone, social media addresses, blog URL etc) and use them proactively when pitching
Concise: Keep to the point, try to keep the message simple and concise
Originality: Use original and distinct content

Up until now we have focused on traditional print media; which means the trade press for most engineering companies.

Comprehensive online media relations
Until not so long ago online publications were regarded as second class citizens. The online press used to be fed leftover copy from print PR campaigns, or even copy rejected by print editors. Now, online publications have become more selective in terms of what they are willing to post.

Furthermore, the online press performs a different function to the print media and needs to be treated differently by technical companies and their PR representatives.

As a rule of thumb, remember that writing for these newer outlets has its distinct characteristics:

Uniqueness: Thanks to Panda and countless other Google updates, virtual magazines will only accept good quality, unique content – after all, nobody wants to see their website penalised and falling down the SERPs (Search Engine Page Results)
Openness: As with traditional magazines, make sure you keep all communication channels open (provide e-mail, telephone, social media addresses, blog URL, etc).
Hyperlinks: Include in your copy deep, embedded links that are useful to the journalist and reader. If the publication includes the hyperlinks, that may translate to more traffic to your website.
Clarity: Try to keep sentences short and clear. Imagine how the article would look on your computer: does it entice you to click ‘read more’ or it is hard to decipher and you can’t be bothered to struggle with it? For online readers, you should also write short paragraphs and use bullet points and sub headings.

The relationship between PR and the media has undergone a revolution thanks the Internet, broadband, social media, citizen journalism and online publishing.

The balance of power between print and online has shifted, and the dominance of the latter means that you need to adopt more targeted PR strategies if you want your campaign to be a success.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

How to do technical and engineering PR in 2011

2011-07-20T10:20:00.001+01:00

PR for 2011! Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The world of technical and engineering PR has changed beyond recognition in the last decade. With every year that’s passed, return on investment in the form of print clippings has decreased as a result of the number of trade magazines falling and the number of pages in most titles diminishing. However, this change has brought about some good news as well: online opportunities have become much greater and are only likely to increase.

Traditionally, print clippings in trade magazines resulted in lots of inquiries about a company’s products or services. However, only a small portion of those leads actually translated into sales. In 2011, the situation has changed; where once you got thirty clippings as the result of a single good article, now you might get one or two. However, although the overall number of sales leads may have decreased, a much larger percentage of them actually turn into profitable relationships.

The fundamental difference is that there should now be a plethora of information sources available to a potential customer that means they don’t need to enquire. They can look on your Web site, read your datasheets online or follow your Twitter feed. They can read about you in online, e-mail or offline publications, read your Blog or subscribe to your RSS feed. They don’t need to ring you or send you an e-mail unless they are actually interested.

The trouble is if you don’t have a Blog, online or offline articles published about you, social media outlets, RSS feeds or well populated Web sites then they can’t find the information they need.

If you are still only doing PR the old way, potential customers will find it a lot harder to enquire.

So, in a series of upcoming blog posts we are going to look at how you can make PR work in this massively changed landscape. Because we really do think PR has changed fundamentally and we really do think you need to change what you are doing as well.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Why your teachers were right: always check your spelling

2011-07-19T08:05:00.001+01:00

Photo courthesy of vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Reading and writing are some of the first skills we learn in school and, in most office based jobs, we are expected to get better at them over time. But what happens when you allow your company to be represented on-line by someone who doesn’t have a strong grasp of more than the basic skills? The short answer is, it costs millions!

A recent BBC article discusses the ways in which poor spelling is costing on-line UK businesses millions of pounds in lost revenue. Although people tend to be more tolerant towards typos and misspellings on Twitter or Facebook, when it comes to web-sites, things are different. According to the BBC, e-commerce sites stand to lose traffic and see a decrease in the number of transactions if visitors see poor use of grammar.

William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute says that this happens because, “a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts (and) a misspelled word could be a killer issue”.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

A guide to the social media landscape

2011-07-13T17:09:00.003+01:00

Social media? Like! Credit: tungphoto

We all know by now what social media is and what it can do for one’s business. However, figuring out exactly what benefits various social media outlets offer from a communication, brand exposure, traffic or SEO point of view is harder to do.

CMO.com has released their bi-annual Guide to the social media landscape. This comprehensive comparison between Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, LinkedIn, Youtube, Digg, Tumblr, Reddit and Stumbleupon reveals some interesting stats.

For instance, Digg is the only social media site getting 3 out of 4 brownie points; it is rated as being very good for brand exposure, traffic and SEO… but not so great when it comes to communicating your organisation’s message to customers.

For more fascinating media facts, click here and download a copy of the guide.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

What next for News International?

2011-07-12T14:36:00.000+01:00

After days of saturating the airwaves, the News of the World scandal seems to have come to a natural break in what will no doubt become even more of a saga. The last edition has been printed, sold and framed (it marks, after all the end of an era for journalism). But one might rightfully ask what next? What lies ahead for the Murdoch Empire, The Sun, The Times and Sunday Times, and the key figures involved in the charade?

To begin with, I wonder whether the hacking story is going to impact the other papers under the News International umbrella: The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun. Will advertisers pull out of these publications for fear of being associated with a controversial brand? If that happens, can these papers survive such a blow?

One solution New International might be considering at this stage is to print The Sun on Sundays as well. This would fill the gap left by the axing of News of the World. However, the much needed advertising money coming from huge international companies might not be there to support the new venture.

With regard to the lead actors involved in the drama, Andy Coulson has suffered the most so far. After being incarcerated and questioned by the police, some of his PR agency’s high profile clients have already decided to desert the firm, according to PR Week.

Rebekah Brooks, who was at the helm of the newspaper when the scandal broke, emerged untouched, even when Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said Brooks should "consider her position" after the Milly Dowler allegations. Prime Minister David Cameron said that if Brooks had offered her resignation to him, he would have accepted it. Yet she kept her job when hundreds lost theirs.

David Cameroon’s image, as well as that of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown also suffered. Cameron had previously employed Coulson as Head of Communications, whereas Brown was allegedly involved in a questionable real-estate deal, which has been thrown back into the public glare this week.

And what about the Murdochs, you ask? Well, they’ll be just fine. After the public outrage cools down, Rupert will probably continue with his plans to acquire the rest of BSkyB, making him one of the most powerful media men who ever lived.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Mirror, mirror, on the wall…

2011-07-11T12:01:00.004+01:00


What news of the world? Credits:digitalart

In the past few days the focus of any media outlet you’ve turned into was… well, the media. In an unprecedented introspective mood, TV and radio stations alongside newspapers have been relentless in debating the News of the World scandal. Phone and computer hacking, bribery, intrusive detectives and celebrity gossip were the ingredients of a media circus like no other. And yet all of these have been instruments of the consumer media since the invention of the printing press. What is striking perhaps is the length to which numbers of journalists have gone to in order to ‘create news’. The question is now what are the traits broadsheets have lost and should aim for?

The fact that the Murdoch clan has decided to axe their fattest cow comes as a shock for anyone who’s ever picked up a newspaper. After a century and half of spilling the beans and spicing up British lives with controversy, it’s the end of an era for News of the World. One can’t help but to wonder why are the Murdochs fearlessly protecting Rebekah Brooks, when her sacking could have been the blood sacrifice needed to wash the broadsheet’s shame.

What I also found incredibly interesting out of this whole [messy] tale, is the media’s fascination with itself, the need for reflecting what it is and what it aspires to be, with and without make-up.

To be honest, I am grateful that as a PR agency specializing in technical and engineering clients we rarely cross paths with the relentless but otherwise fascinating mainstream media. And probabaly the differences between trade and consumer media are even more evident every time a situation like this occurs.

Trade magazines should perhaps be the rolemodel for all other news publications: in search of newsworthy people, products and companies and relatively unbiased. Most importantly, trade press has kept a key feature broadsheets have lost: the intention of informing rather than shocking, outraging and distressing the audience.

In my view, the news of the World scandal brings out nothing new; it only re-iterates the vices of a historical trade. But when consumer broadsheets look in the mirror and are unhappy with what they see, perhaps they should follow into the footsteps of their less glamorous relatives – the trade magazines. This would perhaps reduce the need for sensational and bring journalism back to informing the people.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing

Dear Gemma…Johana? Ahh, sorry, Oana

2011-07-06T13:01:00.002+01:00

50% off Applogies at FunkyPigeon

Last night I got a piece of e-mail marketing from a well known card and gifts online shop, FunkyPigeon.com. As every day I get loads of spam and newsletters advertising everything from credit cards to hotel deals, I only read the subject and then delete them. Funny enough, this time the e-mail was addressed to a ‘Dear Gemma’, which made me sigh and think to myself: “their marketing people must be so bad at what they do…trying to sell me stuff when they can’t even get may name right. Pff!”

Yet later that day, FunkyPigeon e-mailed again, apologising for mistaking my name! And in addition, they were offering 50% off on their cards and gifts to say sorry for getting it wrong.

Most people might see that as a lovely apologetic gesture, but I have grown over the years into quite a sceptic when it comes to corporate communications. That, and the fact that my mother’s birthday was in three days' time, led me to suspect the Pigeon of some shrewd marketing ploy. I think that in order to encourage sales, the company deliberately mistakes people’s names in their e-mail newsletters; then, as an apology, they offer a sizeable reduction. The timing also has to be right – sometime around a spouse’s or a friend’s birthday! There is no secret that retailers keep records on where and what you buy, and what times of the year you are most vulnerable to cards and chocolate hamper purchases!

You are probably wondering whether this intelligent marketing tactic worked on yours truly…I am ashamed to say that it did! Mom got a lovely card and gift (50% off)! But shhh…don’t tell anyone! I still want to keep my PR and marketing watchdog reputation intact.

Subscribe to Insights into PR and online marketing