Uncaged PR

How dedicated are your Facebook and Twitter followers?

How dedicated are your followers?

So how dedicated are you Facebook and Twitter followers? If you were to ask them to unfollow one of your pages and follow another, how many would do so?

My question stems from a current dilemma caused by Facebook changing the 'groups' app and in doing so not carrying your existing followers over to the new format. This I imagine will cause a problem for many organisations that have an organisational Facebook group, leaving us all wondering how we get people to reconnect to our new Facebook page.

I’ll be the first to admit that our current Facebook group doesn’t have the largest amount of followers, but trying to get them all to follow our new page will be difficult. Did our current followers simply click the like button on Facebook after reading no more than five words? I often find myself clicking the like button on numerous comical groups base purely on their name, never to look at the content of the group I’ve liked. The Birmingham City relegation party 2011 been just one of many groups I’ve liked over the last six months.

Is it the case that ten out of every 100 followers are actually interested in our group or page, whilst the other 90 are committing the same offence as I commit on a weekly basis? I guess the only way to really judge this would be by monitoring the process of asking current group followers to start following our new page. I’d have to say that if you achieved just 10% moving over to the new page you’d have a small success. The 10% figure comes from our current success rate after just one week of informing members of the inevitable changes to our beloved Facebook group.

We are all aware of the limits that challenge us in social media use. Should it be trying not to bombard our followers with too many updates, trying to get them to ‘like’ our latest photo competition, or trying to get them to engage in conversation via our social media platforms. These are all complications we face in everyday use, with only small percentages of followers participating. Now what chance do we have in actually getting our followers to move with us as Facebook continues to develop and improve its services?

I’ve spent days thinking this over, trying to figure out how I achieve 100% success. In the end I’ve come to the conclusion that it just isn’t going to happen. Instead, I have decided that this should be a new start for our Facebook followers. A few messages to existing users will go out, but those that chose not to move with us will have to be left behind. Ideally we only want followers who are willing to engage with us as an organisation and help spread our messages further, so why should we aim for that 100% success rate? In my eyes we shouldn’t. It seems like an impossible task.

The issue with social media in healthcare has always been that the ones who follow our social media feeds are those that have a keen interest in health, and do not need healthcare messages forced down their necks. They are aware of the conditions and how to be tested, treated etc etc. Our issue is getting the attention of those that couldn’t care less about their health, and eat fatty foods and drink fizzy pop. Much like myself.

Does this mean all healthcare social media is hitting the wrong target audience, or do we merely hope that just a few of our followers spread the message further, with each retweet carrying a little extra weight behind it due to the retweeter. I also wonder if that makes someone who retweets and retweet and reretweeter?

Back to the point

My tactics to date have been to message our old followers once a week in a nice polite manner to inform them of the changes on the way. Let them know about what the new page has to offer. This I hope will be enough to encourage at least 25% of the current followers over to the new page, a figure we are close to hitting.

The point of starting up this blog was to engage with professionals and also students, to let people share and learn through scenarios such as this. It is for that reason I ask you all, how would you intend to do this? Have you ever had to do something similar? And, most of all, what do you think the large organisations will do to ensure they get a mass follower migration from old to new?

Andrew Davies

Social Media Census 2011

Really quick blog entry here to show you all some social media stats for 2011. Image provided by Lansons Communications.

Are there really 2.1 million people over the age of 70 using social media? I see this as an attempt to gain further business into a market known to have the most disposable income, but you can make your own mind up on this.

Andrew Davies

The story so far

I don’t like to start a blog by saying this but here I go again. I’m very sorry.

My apology stems from a good two months of solid university work. To break that down into more detail the work has consisted of Dissertation, Competitive Pitch, a 15 item portfolio of work and last but not least Corporate Relations. These few modules alone have led to a serious neglecting of my own blog, but more to the point the one and only Ptarmigan Academy blog. So let me fill you in with what’s been going on with the Ptarmigan Academy.

To do this properly let me take you back a month to the middle of February. Our work on Challenge66 continued and to ensure the campaign was a success our efforts to find celebrity endorsement had to be stepped up dramatically. Academy team captain Adam Burns – who takes on the role with the effort and determination only seen by Manchester United’s Nani trying to convince a referee he’s been fouled by faking an injury – had all the academy tweeting celebrities to hopefully raise the Challenge66 profile.

After a few days of solid tweeting celebs the girls efforts were rewarded by retweets from Coleen Rooney, Lorraine Kelley, Dame Kelley Holmes and a number of Sky Sports New presenters. The celeb tweeting also managed to bag one academy member Claire Thomas a twitter following subscription from Boy George. Lucky girl!

So a month down the line and the start date was in sight. On Wednesday 9 March Andy, Claire, Aimee and I (Andrew) attended a GNS radio day, in which Andy did a number of live and pre-recorded interviews with around 20 local BBC radio stations and also interviews with the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS). Whilst Andy tried to mention all of the sponsors of Challenge66 along with his all time favourite joke ‘not Yeti’ (this is a reference to Skoda donating two cars and Andy excited to reply ‘Not Yeti’ to anyone who asked him if they were near their next location) we all got a chance to listen in a record the number of mentions for each of the sponsors. This was a great day which revealed good sight into how these days run. I believe it was the first GNS day that any of the academy had ever attended.

Today the Challenge66 campaign finally got under way with an incredible launch day in Leeds. A number of students from the Leeds Metropolitan Events Management course played a huge part in arranging the event which saw ABF The Soliders’ Charity out in force and the Challenge66 tour bus parked on Leeds’ busiest shopping street Briggate. The event launch was also attended by Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, who lost both his legs and suffered other horrific injuries during an explosion in Helmand Province in 2006.

It really was amazing to see the campaign come to life after all the hard work put in by the guys at Ptarmigan, ABF and Andy McMenemy and the whole Challenge66 team. All the local press were at the event including Yorkshire Evening Post, BBC Look North and ITV Calendar News as Andy started the first of 66 ultra marathons. Please click on the links below to catch some of the coverage achieved.

Link one

Link two

Link three

Now the campaign has got underway the work for the academy really starts. A media list for each of the 65 remaining cities has been drawn up and the tireless task of ring rounds begins.

I’d love to continue and fill you in with even more Challenge66 news but unfortunately I cannot see into the future. I do ask you all to keep up-to-date with this truly amazing campaign by visiting www.challenge66.org and also searching Twitter and Facebook for Challenge66.

No longer just a game of cat and mouse

It’s amazing where you can find the inspiration to write a blog. This one came off the back of my new kitten refusing to let me close my laptop and then refusing to let me open it again.

After sitting there for ten minute trying to come up with a humorous joke involving a cat and a mouse to go with my picture, my thoughts moved to a lecture the Ptarmigan Academy and I received last Friday with Nathan Lane of Ptarmigan.

Our one-to-four lecture was around social media and how to successfully reach your target audience and deliver your message. As the lecture went on it was clear to me that PR/communications teams can no longer just use Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to pump out their message to anyone who ‘likes’ their page. To have a successful social media strategy as part of your overall campaign, now requires you to know the current trends your target audience are engaging with and even make judgement on what the trend may be in six months time.

It seems fair to say that we can no longer depend on our publics to just ‘like’ or ‘follow’ our campaign pages online. We must now instead engage with our public and evolve our campaign into something they will greet with open arms.233333333 (For the sake of this blog and to once again show how much of a menace my new kitten is, I’ll leave her contribution to this blog in there. She must like the number three.)

Not only must we engage with the current trends but also consider how our audience can interact with us. With more people now logging onto Facebook and Twitter via mobile phones than on a laptop of PC, we must ensure our campaign tactics or strategy for interaction are accessible through any of the latest technological gadgets.

The old days of waiting for people to ‘like’ your page have gone. We must know engage with the mouse (by this I mean our target audience) and find out what cheese (product/promotion or trend) they like, and use this to lure our mouse in.

Although this seems simple enough, this is not the end. Once we successfully have our followers and audience we can’t just overload them with messages and promotions. We must ensure that every new message, tweet or status update is relevant. Each post must further engage with the public and ensure that they remain interested.

So what constitutes as a good social media campaign; one that makes us laugh, or one that has a consistency in its message. Maybe it can be something as simple as a free giveaway every month. Whatever it is that makes you keep following an online or social media campaign, make sure you consider these before you try to launch your own campaign. 

 

Right here, right now!

Life is a little busy right now. With university, the Ptarmigan Academy, trying to earn enough money to survive and finally trying to launch the UncagedPR website, some things are starting to fall behind.

After what feels like three weeks, but in reality has been four years, Monday will see my return to university for my final semester. We have some really great modules in our final semester including the Competitive Pitch module, which will see students split into groups and battle against each other to win some well deserved cash!

It seems a shame that the final semester of anyone’s degree ends with a battle against time to complete a dissertation, but I guess you wouldn’t take away the full uni experience without it. The challenge for my fellow classmates and I will be to ensure we complete out dissertation to an excellent standard, whilst also applying for jobs and ensuring we produce an excellent final year portfolio.

I have a few things in the pipeline for this blog and fully intend to have them completed within the next week. But for now, to ensure you keep up to date with all the latest goings on in my world, please check out the new Ptarmigan Academy blog at www.ptarmiganbpacademy.wordpress.com

Hope you enjoy!

Andrew Davies

P.S. I couldn't leave you without showing you a picture of my new kitten. She seems to love the spotlight and also my keyboard. Anyone seen my Cat Top?

Sorry

For all those concerned at the lack of blogging in recent weeks, I am still alive.

The last few weeks have been extremely busy for Leeds Met PR students. For all those who have successfully completed their Communications Audit you all need a huge pat on the back for all your hard work.

I leave you with two links to further explain the 2010/2011 Ptarmigan Academy I mentioned a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

Link one

Link two

Andrew Davies

Who's behind the Facebook cartoon character campaign?

This is extraordinary. Within a week of first seeing this campaign go viral on Facebook, around a third of my online friends now have a profile picture of a cartoon character from the past. I myself have been tempted to change my profile picture to my look-alike Snufkin from the Moomins.

 

But who has created this campaign?

The original message that Facebook's users were publishing as a status update reads: ‘Change your FB picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal is not to see a human face on FB until Monday (Dec 6th) Join the fight against child abuse & copy and paste to your status!'

It was thought that the NSPCC were behind the campaign until a statement published on their Twitter page denied any involvement: ‘Although the NSPCC did not originate the childhood cartoon Facebook campaign, we welcome the attention it has brought to the work we do.’

Within the last 24 hours new viral status updates have circulated Facebook stating that the campaign could be used as a smokescreen for paedophiles to easily target children online. This must have alarm bells ringing at the NSPCC press office, or would it?

It appears the NSPCC has already received large amounts of exposure through a campaign they did not even create. The statement published on Twitter is evidence to suggest they are happy with the coverage via Facebook alone and I'm sure this story will be picked up by many national and regional media outlets.

Regardless of who created the campaign should it be for a best of intentions, or heaven forbid anything sinister, this is proof that viral campaigns should you have a clever idea, can go way beyond anyone’s expectations.

For more information on the work carried out by the NSPCC, please visit www.nspcc.org.uk

Google AdWords vs SEO - Part three

After a long wait for part three in this series of blog posts, we are finally here. I have managed to find time in the day to actually write up and review search engine optimisation (SEO) and Google AdWords.

I have to say that over the last few weeks since part one in this mini series, many people have taken their time to help write the blog entries and share their views. Thank you to all of those involved and to those who have taken time to read each post.

SEO

My first a major concern regarding SEO is that Google are changing their algorithm almost daily. The changes in Google's algorithm are making it harder for those keen on SEO to ensure you are at the top of a natural search on Google.

The benefit for any SEO business would be that when Google changes its algorithm they can yet again charge their client for more work. The issue is that I just can't see how young PR professionals can afford this kind of service.

Now you could argue that it should be the responsibility of that certain PR professional to study SEO for themselves and ensure they are high up the ladder in Google's natural search. However this requires a certain amount of expertise and can be very time consuming.

Without any real help for specialist SEO businesses, the maintained dedicated the editing your website, adding keywords and hiding words within your HTML, I can only see a limited benefit to SEO. It would be my advice that the best way to increase your online presence would be to ensure you have good content on your website or blog, but mainly to get interactive with other bloggers. By getting interactive, leaving comments and feedback on other websites or blogs, you could find that you are making quite a name for yourself. The more clicks your site gets, the better your SEO. I also think it is also vital to remember that you need to make regular updates on your site and blog, and key it relevant.

Google AdWords

During the last few weeks those who have taken time out to talk to me regarding have all shared the same views of Google AdWords.

This factor in Google AdWords seems to be the one thing that is putting people off using Google AdWords. That factor, is nothing more than the coloured outline that surrounds your advert, as seen below.

It is my opinion and quite a few others that this outline alone would be the reason why people wouldn't click on your ad. The general view is that this outline just makes the advert look unreliable and untrustworthy. It is important to state that after further discussion around this factor that we all concluded that we are all big users of the internet and very sceptical of ads online. For those who are not regular users of the internet this ad may look more appealing, but the users at that time would have to be the judge.

Once again money is the main downfall to this tool. It seems the more money you have, the more you can pay for the certain keywords you want. For those who have a bottomless pit of money, they can easily rule Google AdWords without worrying about the threat from small businesses.

Conculsion

The major factor that dominates both of these tools is the one thing that makes the world go round. I wish that factor was love, but its money.

There is no doubt that Google AdWords could easily be dominated by the big players in the world. It's good when you have a friend at Google who sets you up a free account, but should BBC writer Andrew Davies decide he wants to get into PR, he could easily pay Google more money for the keywords that I currently "pay" for.

The same needs to be said for SEO. SEO is only as good as the company running your SEO activity or as long as you are constantly updating your content and refining your SEO tactics. The organisations with large sums of money will once again be able to dominate in this area.

Money aside, it is my view that young PR professionals should be looking more towards SEO as a way to get further up in a Google natural search. I believe we should all take a little time to study SEO and find some quick and easy tactics to improve your Google ranking. However, I truly believe it is more important to keep updating your blog with relevant and interesting content and use social media to improve your ranking and visits to your site/blog.

Comments and feedback

Please feel free to provide any comments and feedback. I'd like to encourage a debate on this subject and that is only possible with your help. Any sensible comments will be published on this blog.

 

 

Three Free SEO Tips

 As a little thank you to you all for reading, and courtesy of Friend B, I am giving you three top SEO tips for free!

Tip one

Content is the king of search engine optimisation, so fill your site with relevant information with what your site has to offer.  Ever wonder why websites have an 'About Us' page?  The about us pages are purely for SEO. Include news items and articles in your content as they are not only good for SEO but also useful to the customers. 

Tip two

Make your page titles clear and unique for each page on your website.  When searching in Google for plumber and Doncaster, the title of each organic result is usually the page title of your page.  This is a key factor in how Google understands what the page is about.  The description beneath the titles is usually a snippet of the content or the meta description (code), so it is also important to make your page titles relevant to your content and also your meta description.

Tip three

Make sure your site has plenty of internal and external links.  Internal and external links makes it easier for the user to navigate around your site and surf the web.  Google like websites that have good usability.  Internal links are usually considered more useful as they are short cuts to different pages on the same website.  External links are links to other websites that have relevant content to your website; this can be good for SEO although there is much debate over this.

I hope these tips will g a little way to helping you improve your SEO. I have added the details of Friend B's company below just incase you want to improve your SEO further.

Andrew Davies

WSI providing Website Design and Development, Search Engine Marketing (SEO and PPC), Email Marketing, Internet Strategy, Bespoke Web Based Applications, Domain Name Acquisition and Ecommerce solutions.

Web: wsipowerontheweb.com
Telephone:                               01302 867949                

Ptarmigan Academy 2010/2011

Just a quick blog to say thank you to Nathan Lane and Adam Burns of Ptarmigan Leeds and Louise Smith of the Leeds Corn Exchange.

On Tuesday 16 November Claire Thomas, Aimee Clark, Natalie Torbett and I took part in a competitive pitch to become the new Ptarmigan Academy for 2010/2011. The girls and I presented a proposed three months campaign for the Leeds Corn Exchange using a £10,000 budget.

Each member of the team worked extremely hard on this pitch and we are all delighted to have been given the opportunity to work with Ptarmigan over the next academic year.

We will begin working with Ptarmigan on Monday 29 November and look forward to working on our first campaign Challenge 66. Please click here for more details on Challenge 66.

Once again a massive thank you for all of the team involved, Nathan and Adam for giving us a great opportunity and also Louise Smith for returning the Leeds Corn Exchange back to its former glory.

Andrew Davies