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Do we really need Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:46:00 +0000

In the week when Twitter announces yet another overhaul - users or those on the fringes of becoming users will be asking themselves ‘do I really need to be part of the Twitter world?’

Aimed at aligning its formatting for mobile use and making itself more user-friendly (and more commercial, some may argue), Twitter is testing the patience of the millions of users who are still uncertain if this is the medium for them or not.

For anyone who might be doubting it, we did a little in-house research exercise for one of our clients today. Having helped them set up a Twitter account to start engaging with the world, our next objective was to set them a ‘following’ strategy and seek out the best tweeters in their sector.

The results were amazing. The scope to directly tap into your target audience is huge – it’s just a case of going about it smartly and having a planned strategy which you can maintain.

Out of interest, as of 10.00 GMT today, here are the volumes of followers currently engaging with some of the core national and local media. Interesting reading:

@FinancialTimes 505,732 followers

@SkyNewsBreak 412,994 followers

@BBC News 447,561 followers
@guardian 249,079 followers
@TelegraphNews 73,309 followers

@BBCRadio4 45,223 followers

@MailOnline 38,799 followers
@TheTimesLive 22,802 followers
@ITVAnglia 9,106 followers
@bbclincolnshire 4,125 followers

@peterboroughet 3,624 followers
@BBCCambs 2,013 followers
@TelegraphClub (for small business owners) 1,269 followers

@businessweekly (East of England business news) 1,375 followers
@Mercury1695 Stamford Mercury 1,183 followers
@PboroNet Community Website. 575 followers

Twitter currently has just short of seven million followers itself. If you’re one of those still sitting on the fence, we’d advise you to unruffle those feathers and get ready to take off and join the Twitter community. It might be a bumpy journey along the way but once you’ve landed, you’ll wonder why you left it so long!

Dawn Strange
Accounts director

Leveson Inquiry shines light into gutter journalism….

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:45:00 +0000

What a sad state of affairs when some tabloid journalists can’t distinguish between stories that are in the public interest and those which are not….

What is the public significance in a story about the lovelife of comedy star Steve Coogan or Charlotte Church? Or what Max Moseley is getting up to in the privacy of his own home? Or cropping a photo of Sienna Miller lying on the floor at a charity ball and claiming she was drunk, when in fact she had been playing with a disabled child?

As someone who worked as a regional newspaper journalist and editor for over 20 years I am both saddened and angered by such methodology.

It belongs in the gutter. There is no place for that in responsible British journalism. It certainly ignores the codes of conduct and ethics taught to trainee journalists about balance and fairness.

Press freedom in the UK is partly what makes this country so great. There is no censorship – but equally, it is what makes us in the media look so tawdry when irresponsible journalists go beyond what is both decent and sometimes legal to justify a steamy, sordid or shocking front page headline. Phone hacking is the worst personification of this practice.

Some editorial managers will weigh up the cost benefit of increased casual sales against the likely litigation costs – if it stacks, they publish and are happy to face the consequences.

And yet, some tabloid journalists have unearthed hugely important stories which are very much ‘in the public interest’ and which often bring our government and those in authority to account for their actions. We must protect that precious press freedom for all it is worth. It is the cornerstone of our democratic society.

I have no problem with journalists hiding in bushes or going undercover to unearth stories that are plainly ‘in the public interest’ – but let’s be absolutely clear on the meaning of that phrase.

The Leveson Inquiry is rightly shining the light into the darker corners of the British media and maybe this will provide the opportunity for all those in national newspaper journalism to review the meaning of the words ‘in the public interest’ – and if they need help, perhaps a more forceful Press Complaints Commission or similar body can assist. The alternative - a censored or heavily regulated British media - would be an erosion of our democratic freedom and a disaster for us all.

Peter Corder

Managing director

Thomas Cook scores well in reputation survey

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:57:00 +0000

Congratulations to Thomas Cook which scored a PR victory in a recent One Poll survey.

It’s a pleasing result for the travel giant which has its head office here in our home city of Peterborough.

Thomas Cook was viewed as the company with the ‘best overall reputation’ by the 2,000 people surveyed. It didn’t top the poll for best value for money or customer service, but it did score highest for reliability.

From a PR perspective, reputation and reliability are at the heart of all business strategies, particularly those in such a consumer-facing arena.

The poll stats were published in the same week as the company launched a brand new uniform

As the oldest travel agent in the world, re-invention and fresh ideas are also paramount.

Hats off to Thomas Cook – not only because we like to see ‘local’ business doing well (that goes without saying!) but because this giant of a company hasn’t allowed size to compromise its PR focus.

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

Keeping in touch with your customers…

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:32:00 +0000

Newsletters are a simple way to keep in touch with your customers – to let them know you exist, that you care about them and that you want to share information with them.

But they should not be platforms for your own internal gossip. Customers are not interested in the fact that someone has had a baby; passed an exam or got promotion. What they want is news they can use.

And invariably that means useful information that re-inforces your professional image; news that shows you are abreast of the latest industry trends; snippets promoting your next seminar or networking opportunity; and some interesting and useful tips. It’s all about ‘added value’.

Nowadays, most people use e-newsletters – because they are cheaper to produce than printed versions; you can monitor whether they are opened and can ensure that they arrive at the desk of the person to whom they are addressed thanks to the accuracy of email. You can even monitor whether links to your website from specific articles have been activated – which is invaluable marketing information.

The other great advantage that an e-newsletter offers us as a medium is permission to “sell” – something that other online communications like blogs and online articles should never be used for. This is why you’ll often see them used effectively by retailers to promote new products, discounts and offers.

If you are not dealing with your customers/clients on a regular basis due to the nature of your work – contact can so easily be lost; and that could lose you business.

Newsletters are only one way to ‘keep in touch’ with customers – we have run training courses for some of our clients outlining all the others as all businesses strive to strengthen their grip on their existing customer database.

Peter Corder

Managing director

What does your font say about your business?

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:42:00 +0000

The BBC tweaked its website fonts last week - replacing Verdana font with Arial on PCs and Neue Helvetica on Macs.

Did anyone notice? Did anyone care?

Read the relating link and judge for yourself - click here.
Whatever your personal opinion, after all it is relatively subjective, there is one rule to abide by – choose a font and stick to it.

Every designer in the land will tell you that brand strength comes from brand exposure – the more times the brand is viewed the more chance it has of being retained in customers’ minds, being recognised and remembered, and eventually being accepted.

So don’t spend hours getting hung up over font styles and sizes – make use of a qualified designer to do the leg work for you and create a design and related wording (with fonts) that best suits your company and your service or product.

You certainly don’t need to spend the £80,000 that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office did (according to the Mail on Sunday) changing a typeface to one that was almost identical – but, in my opinion, it will definitely be worthwhile getting some professional advice.
Your brand and your logo will be judged by people; it’s one of their first impressions of your business, so perhaps checking out your fonts and what they say about you, isn’t such a bad thing to do after all.

Dawn Strange

Steve Jobs on the recipe for success

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:34:00 +0000

In the world of business we are always searching for the recipe to success. One guy who found that recipe was Steve Jobs, the Apple visionary who died recently of pancreatic cancer.

But his success wasn’t built simply on creative technological genius but his belief that customers should be at the heart of everything we do.

In the many Steve Jobs interviews I have seen and read he openly admits that the Apple technology was fundamentally no different to that of the many competitors in the market.

But what differentiated the Apple brand was the way it delivered that technology with ground-breaking design-led products that became iconic. A totally customer-centric business.

I wonder how often we actually listen to our customers or even ask them how we can improve our service to them? It’s an issue we have been exploring with a number of clients recently.

Blogs are normally places for sharing useful information, or commenting on a current issue but this one is simply to share with you one of the most inspirational addresses you will ever hear.

It is Steve Jobs’ celebrated address to the Stanford students at their graduation in 2005. It is particularly poignant and thought provoking and well worth spending 15 minutes listening to it.

View the video here.

Peter Corder
Managing director

Consumer power like never before……

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:41:00 +0000

It’s getting increasingly more difficult to manage the image of a brand in these days of instant digital and global news.

A poor experience of a product or service can now be all over the social networks like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube in no time and before you know where you are the brand is under siege and the PR/marketing teams are fighting to redress the balance.

There was a time when as consumers we were told what the brand was and what it delivered; now we are telling each other what brands are and what they deliver. And if it is bad, the whole world will know in minutes!

I had a very negative experience in a new hotel/restaurant locally recently and have found myself passing it on to all and sundry both verbally, by text, email, Facebook, Twitter…..et al. Thousands will have heard of my experience eventually. Will they visit that establishment? Probably not.

What damage has been done to that brand – without them necessarily even knowing it – unless of course they are tuned into the new social networks and the modern way of communicating messages to a consumer-driven world.

The alternative of course, is to get the product right first time, every time – and encourage happy customers to tell the world about it. Simple really………

To listen to just how powerful consumers can ultimately be have a look at this social media video.

Peter Corder
Managing director

Domino’s teaches us all a lesson about honest social media

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:08:00 +0000

Domino’s pizza has taken social media to another level with one of the most ambitious and transparent campaigns ever.

It is a far cry from two years ago when Domino’s staff loaded video of staff abusing company food that went viral.

This sparked the company’s Turnaround campaign which has since seen it leading the way in customer feedback and engagement.
Its latest initiative is the boldest so far and hats off to the pizza giant which recognised the only way to kill off negativity in its brand was to address it head on, put its hands up and own up to the problem, and do something meaningful about it.

The Times Square exercise carries messages from customers – good, bad and indifferent. Providing they’re not defamatory or downright rude, they are posted up for all to see.
We can’t all afford daily messaging on a Time Square moving billboard but we can present feedback, good and bad, when it’s relevant and will help customers build up trust in the brand.

This is the essence of social media and although Domino’s had a rocky period with it, it has certainly made amends since.

Dawn Strange
Account Director

Power to the free speech of blogging as Mr Sencier takes on Cumberland trust

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:11:00 +0000

Blogging is a personal diary and one of the best illustrations ever of free speech. While there may be plenty of quirky and many crank blogs we choose to avoid, there are still plenty of blogs providing interesting and insightful content and opinions.

Daniel Sencier decided to use his blog to raise awareness of his poor experience at local hospital, Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary, and before long found himself hitting the national headlines after the hospital trust threatened legal action over his Blog

The father-of-five from Penrith who was waiting for surgery for prostrate cancer was so worried about delays and damaging administrative procedures at his local hospital that he arranged to have surgery in another part of the country, Addenbrookes, here in Cambridgeshire.

Following his successful operation Mr Sencier campaigned for improvements at the Cumberland hospital to prevent other patients having the same experience. He listed the failings as part of a Blog

But instead of receiving an apology from the hospital, the 59-year-old man was sent a letter from the trust’s lawyers warning it would consider legal action over the blog if it was factually incorrect.

Mr Sencier has received messages of support from across the UK including his own MP who accuses the trust of acting ‘heavy handed’; and a local legal firm pledging free legal advice. Even staff at the trust are backing him.

The blogger who says his issue is with the system, not the medics at the hospital, will be heading a public protest outside the hospital on Monday (July 4).

Although many of us obviously can’t be there in person, we will be supporting him spiritually – in the name of free speech and also in this case, pure commonsense!

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

SEO is vital – don’t undersell your website

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Wed, 25 May 2011 10:01:00 +0000

We took a call earlier this week from an ad agency trying to sell us ad space on behalf of one of our clients – Easyjet. While we have a number of national clients – including two or three market leaders in their sector – we can’t yet count Easyjet as one of them!

The reason the agency came to us, we were top of Google when they keyed in our company name.

While we couldn’t help the agency, we did feel pretty pleased with ourselves for beating our rivals to the top of the rankings.

It was a good lesson for us. And on a serious note, proves you shouldn’t sell your company short. Having a decent website isn’t enough – it needs to be performing for you consistently. That means keyword rich copy, added content, and optimisation.

Sorry if I’m stating the obvious but examples like this just go to prove it’s not a lot of marketing speak and theory – it actually does work when you put it into practise.

Lesson over!

Dawn Strange

Account director

Social media comes under ASA's scrutiny spotlight

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Tue, 24 May 2011 08:45:00 +0000

Online advertising now comes under the scrutiny of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

In case you weren’t aware, the extended remit began in March and follows 4,500 complaints that say companies act differently on their own sites than they do in other marketing spaces.  

Social media is one of the key aspects ASA will be keeping a keen eye on including Twitter, Facebook and blogging.  

Whereas previously it was paid-for digital activity that companies needed to be aware of, now it’s the entire digital gamut which opens up a whole new world of online communication.

Social networking is synonymous with free speech and companies being creative about how they reach their target audience. The last thing we want to see is creativity being driven out by fear of prosecution.   Perhaps it will serve to weed out the worst rogues who blatantly put out misleading and false marketing messages but to be honest, how effective can it be?

ASA has taken on a 10% bigger workforce but it’s still impossible to comprehend how it will monitor every single piece of social media put out by companies and we have to assume much will rely upon referrals and complaints.  

It’s early days but I think it’s a case of watch this space….

Dawn Strange 

Account director

McIlroy loses golf title but wins PR battle

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:16:00 +0000

IF EVER you wanted to see the right and wrong way to handle the media while under pressure – look no further than the very different approaches adopted in the recent US Masters Golf tournament in America.

First we have the sour-faced Tiger Woods who has just finished ten under par with a half chance of winning the title. He must now wait to see if his score can be beaten.

His sullen responses to a friendly television reporter trying to make conversation with him simply re-inforced the widely held view that he is a troubled man. He treated the reporter with contempt and ridicule.

Compare with 21-year-old Northern Ireland golfer Rory McIlroy, who having been leading the tournament until the last round, crumpled under the pressure and ended up way off the lead – having been a hotly tipped favourite to wear the winner’s green jacket. He was disappointed yet philosophical, magnanimous and offered heartfelt congratulations to the eventual winner Charl Schwartzel. He said he was a great golfer and an even better person.

McIlroy said: “I have just played one bad round of golf and missed out on winning a competition. That’s all. There are much worse things going on in the world just now.”

McIlroy became a hero in defeat, cheered off the course for the way he conducted himself. Tiger was nowhere to be seen!

Who won the PR battle? You decide.

Peter Corder

Managing director

Quakebook harnesses the good will of social media

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:14:00 +0000

For those who still think Twitter is for teenagers and geeks, Quakebook is a lesson in its potential global value.
A Brit in Japan – known online as ‘our man in Abiko’ - came up with the idea of creating ‘Quakebook’ – a collection of contributions from anyone who had been involved in any way in the earthquake in Japan, subsequent tsunami and the aftermath. It started with a tweet which was fleshed out with a blog post.
His aim was to self publish a biographical book of the event – with all proceeds going to Japan Red Cross – in days.
His Quakebook hashtag was quickly adopted, his tweet retweeted and links to his blog tweeted round the globe. He was inundated with responses. And not just from those submitting accounts, but with offers of help.
Sub editors, designers, bloggers and publishers were keen to get involved in the process.
‘Our man’ kept everyone updated via the Twitter hashtag. Yoko Ono endorsed the book and other celebrities with a high Twitter profile were lobbied to promote it. A Facebook page and a YouTube channel were also created enabling Quakebook to be promoted exclusively through social media.
A week after the idea was launched, a digital version of the book was set to be produced with Amazon approached to sell it. The hope of ‘Our man’ was to also publish a hard copy version – for those who still like to see and feel what they’re reading!
Twitter is no longer just about sharing 140 characters of meaningless personal ‘news’. It’s about engaging with a global audience - a rallying cry that can be heard worldwide. And a call to action which it is difficult to ignore.

Suzanne Ostler
Account executive

Google won't buy link buying strategies

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:18:00 +0000

If you’re one of the sensible companies that realises the value of digital marketing in helping grow your business, then you will possibly have embarked on some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) work for your website. If you have, here’s a word of warning.

The New York Times recently uncovered a huge operation involving American retail giant JCPenney. It found that someone paid to have thousands of links placed on hundreds of sites scattered around the web, all of which led directly to JCPenney.com.

JCPenney denied responsibility for the activity. However, Google immediately dropped its site way down the search engine listings, and the company subsequently sacked its SEO team. In 2006, BMW Germany were penalised for a similar exercise.   But it’s not just the high profile super companies - or their SEO agencies - which are using these tactics. In the past six months we have identified two examples of this practice among our own unsuspecting clients.

Commissioning SEO work is like handing over the keys of your company car to a complete stranger for a weekend – you have absolutely no idea what they’re going to get up to with it and what state your pride and joy will return in.   While your car is a commodity and can be replaced, your website is the public face of your business and if it’s an e-commerce site, it’s the lifeblood of your business.

Paying for links is deemed illegal in Google’s eyes. Basically it’s a cheat’s way of moving up the rankings. Google doesn’t like it and won’t allow it – your site is likely to be relegated or even removed completely – which actually equates to a company shut down if you’re an online business!  

So before you put all of your faith into an SEO agency (don’t panic, there are plenty of good ones around) we urge you to please ask the questions – ‘will a linking strategy be used in my SEO campaign?’ and ‘If so, how will this strategy be achieved?’.  

In the case of our clients, we managed to highlight the activity before it was too late and both were saved from the Google axe but you might not be so lucky.   Ask the questions and check out the credentials of your SEO suppliers – digital marketing is a minefield, and it’s very easy to be taken in by unscrupulous ‘experts’.

Don’t let your company become the next victim, otherwise you could find yourself on Google’s blacklist.

Roberto Rodriguez
Online Marketing Consultant

The restaurant review that went global…

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:19:00 +0000

When a customer wrote a review of a restaurant in Kuwait and posted it on Facebook, little could he have imagined the furore it would create.

The restaurant in question took issue with the customer’s views and decided to instigate legal proceedings against him – claiming his review was in some way malicious.

The irony is – that even though the case does not appear in the Kuwaiti courts until later this month – the restaurant chain’s actions have been pilloried on a range of social networks.

Other customers/consumers have lambasted the restaurant for taking this action against one of it’s clients for expressing a personal opinion about the food and service delivered.

More damage has been done to the restaurant’s image by their reaction to the initial review than if they had just let it lie or tried to engage the customer and ‘make it right’ with him. If they had done that successfully, they could have turned a negative into a positive. And just look how that would have changed the perception of the restaurant on the social networks.

Peter Corder
Managing Director

Teacher rant on Facebook goes down a storm

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:09:00 +0000

Thank you to the two unsuspecting teachers at Northborough Primary School in Peterborough whose Facebook rantings provided a textbook example of how not to use this social media tool.

Facebook is the undeniable global leader when it comes to Internet communication - it has more than 500 million active users with people spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

But the growth of this powerful phenomenon isn’t a green light to the world and his daughter to set up a page and start chatting away – particularly not if you value your professional career. At the time of writing, 132 comments on the teachers’ Facebook misdemeanour had been posted. Ironically, the online news item also made page 11 lead in the evening paper’s off-line print version!

Teachers, like many other professions, have to tread a very careful line when it comes to communication with the wider public. Other than parents’ evenings and school events, wider conversations through other channels are kept to a minimum.

And that has to apply to the staffroom too – by all means, have a moan about a pupil at morning break in the privacy of the staffroom – but that’s where it has to stay. And that applies to many workplaces and many working scenarios.

Trying to blame a lack of social media training (as the NUT has in this case) is a poor excuse. We are all responsible adults, we work, we interact with people, we understand how our communication is received and generally we know how public relations work and we put this into practice every single working day.

Facebook and other social media tools provide vital lines of communication for us all - both professionally and socially - it’s a case of learning the right tool for the job and not abusing the privileges each one provides us with – otherwise, it could prove costly.

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

Google and Twitter launch speak-to-tweet service for Egyptian protesters

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:26:00 +0000

The amazing events in Egypt have just shown us all the power of modern communication.

Twitter, Facebook and other social networks were alive – lobbying the Egyptian people to take to the streets to protest at the Mubarak regime. So what was the first thing that President Mubarak did first? He cut off access to the internet and therefore disabled social networks.

But such is the power of the new cyber world that a group of engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow (which Google acquired last week) worked hard to build a speak-to-tweet service for the Egyptian protesters to circumnavigate the clampdown.

The service enables users to send tweets using a voice connection rather than the internet. Anyone can tweet by leaving a voicemail on one of three international phone numbers: +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855. Tweets sent using the service will automatically include the hashtag #egypt. People can also listen to the messages by dialing the above numbers, and by clicking on the links posted to @speak2tweet.

How the world has changed...

Peter Corder
Managing Director

Choose the right ‘expert’ support for your website

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:04:00 +0000

Any good at window dressing? So, what makes you think you’ll be any good at designing your own website?   Regarded as the prime selling tool for most businesses, the website just has to do the business for your business.  

So while we would always suggest you seek out professional help please, please ensure you do your homework first and strike up a relationship with a reputable and trusted supplier.

Website stings - from tales of woe with ineffective search engine optimisation (SEO), bad design experiences, rip off pay per click campaigns and downright poor back-up service reports are unfortunately becoming more and more commonplace. Website cloning and SEO services touted at $3 an hr are among this week’s web horror stories.

And this morning we had our own experience – our Online Marketing Consultant discovered one of our newest clients was being ripped off by a website hosting company which was charging him five times over the real cost for a year’s domain hosting.   Earlier in the month, a review of another new clients’ Google Pay Per Click campaign, uncovered areas of unnecessary spend, which added up to approximately £68,000 in wasted ad costs over the course of the year.  

All of these experiences not only give the industry a bad name, they also cost innocent businesses an awful lot of money and an end product that probably doesn’t deliver. It is disappointing and frustrating to say the least when we come across poor examples – the worrying fact is, these are prevalent.

Anyone considering a new website, a new digital service for their website, anything basically linked to their website – please seek as much ‘expert’ opinion as possible and don’t go for the first or cheapest option – it could cost you a fortune in the long-run.

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

Charity Green Paper is welcome but can’t we sort out Gift Aid too?

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:09:00 +0000

Charity begins at home, as the saying goes, but that could be set to change with charity beginning at the cash machine, at the checkout, even when you fill in your tax return! The Government wants to make giving to charity a ‘social norm’ and has launched a Green Paper specifically detailing how this could happen.

It is asking banks to look at replicating a system used in Colombia that allows customers to make a donation each time they withdraw cash and is suggesting a ‘round up the pound’ scheme, allowing people to donate change when paying by debit or credit card.

As individuals we will be asked to be more giving, but what about businesses?   We support a local charity (NSPCC Peterborough Business Support Group) in giving our time and skills a day every month; we also gave a weekend and our limited energy levels to a 32-mile walk/climb to boost funds this year.   It isn’t necessarily hard work (well, perhaps the 30th mile onwards was!?); it’s actually very rewarding as an organisation to take action collectively to help a local good cause. How the Government wants businesses to join this charity push is not quite as clear just yet.

But while it’s thinking how companies could be putting an even bigger tick in their corporate social responsibility box perhaps it could review some of the existing charity/business initiatives, particularly those relating directly to tax incentives and tax relief which many businesses may not be clear on or even aware of.

And at the same time, revelations that £750million is lost in unclaimed Gift Aid every year because the UK public aren’t aware of how tax relief works on personal charity donations is unacceptable.

Totally, totally agree with the principles of the ‘giving’ Green Paper but while we’re all digging deeper into our pockets perhaps a PR campaign to raise awareness of just how simple Gift Aid is wouldn’t go amiss.

Do you know any good PR companies Mr Cameron?

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

Google: The fourth emergency service?

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:25:00 +0000

When you’re facing an emergency or crisis - there’s only one place to find a solution these days – Google!

Some poor chap in the south west ended up delivering his wife’s baby using instructions he found on Google when it became obvious the emergency services wouldn’t arrive in time to get her to hospital.

Apart from it being a lovely, happy, festive story it simply re-iterates the point - as if we needed to – that the internet is nearly always the first place people look for things nowadays.

That is why it is critical that whatever business or service you are supplying, your website represents your offering in the most appropriate way and is easily found with targeted search engine optimisation.

The expectant Cornish father clearly put in his Google search terms and found exactly what he needed. It’s pointless having a website that nobody can find because it is not optimised for the terms people generally use to look for your service.

Most of us never look passed the first page of results on the internet anyway – so the message is simple – optimise to get the business!!!

Peter Corder
Managing Director

Driving up the cost of news

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:29:00 +0000

The media seems to be in a muddle about paid content on their websites. Should they or shouldn’t they?
News International introduced subscriptions for access to The Times, Sunday Times and News of the World in a bid to generate more cash. They claim to have around 100,000 subscribers, each paying £1 a time.
It seems ironic that the company that started cover price wars in the national media to drive down the cost of national newspapers is now trying to drive the price of online news content back up.
Surely, all it means is that providers of free online news content will simply be able to generate higher traffic numbers and consequently more advertising opportunities. It’s a fascinating subject.
Whatever the ultimate outcome – a competitive environment for the consumption of news is good for everyone and produces a healthy and vibrant market.

PS: Congratulations to The Independent’s editorial team for the launch of their new bite-sized newspaper – it’s designed to lure back lapsed Independent readers. It’s definitely worth a look.

Peter Corder

Managing director

Queen Elizabeth II joins Facebook social networking site

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:01:00 +0000

If ever we needed to demonstrate the importance of social networking – it was handed to us on a royal plate this week – with the Queen launching a Facebook page.

OK, so it is unlikely she will be making herself available for Facebook chats, or posting her family holiday snaps - but this latest move to embrace social networking by the Monarchy just shows how mainstream this form of communication has become.

Facebook and other social networks opens up the opportunity for two-way interactive communication and we all know how important it is to listen to what people are saying about us or about the businesses we work in. They also give us the chance to demonstrate our expert knowledge in our business sectors – which is important to existing and potential customers.

With the continued development of mobile communication via iPhones and Blackberries we can be ‘online’ every minute of every day – so keeping in touch with what is going on in the world has never been easier.

…and now we can even see what Her Majesty is up to on a daily basis – if we are so inclined!

Peter Corder
Managing Director

Social media continues to become mainstream language

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:10:00 +0000

If ever you needed evidence of a brand’s success, here you go – Simples has made it into the English Dictionary! Yes, the signature phrase of the Meerkat campaign ‘Simples’ has officially been endorsed as part of our English language.

Love or hate the campaign, you can’t knock the unparalleled success of comparethemarket.com’s winning marketing strategy.   In terms of measurement and ROI, securing a spot on the pages of our hallowed English Dictionary takes some beating and the company’s creative team deserve every plaudit for not only dreaming up this campaign in the first place, but giving it the legs to run and run. Who knows where Aleksandr Orlov will end up next!

While we’re on the subject of words, other gems to work their way into our English language this week include fauxmance – a fake romance between actors. Social media also continues to become mainstream language with tweetheart – meaning a person admired by others on Twitter – making it into the dictionary.

It’s so easy to become tired and cynical of it all and berate these ever-changing nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc, etc, etc……and yearn for the days of ‘proper’ English. But what determines ‘proper’? I can’t think of anything worse than trying to speak/write Chaucer-style or even Shakespeare for that matter.   Surely it’s a case of being topical, current and relevant – that’s at the essence of all language and communication in general.

And while I might not be using fauxmance or tweetheart many times in my copy I will be embracing the changes that these words represent. If you want your business to be relevant and heard I’d suggest you do the same – it’s Simples really!

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

The Times paywall doesn’t appear to be paying off!

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 11:28:00 +0000

Latest figures from research group Nielsen suggest the audience figures have declined by a huge 88% with only one in five readers prepared to cough up a £1 to subscribe to the news.

And on Tuesday the paywall was suddenly taken down for the day. Was this nothing more than a technical blip by News International or would the more cynical among us read more into this – could it possibly have been a publicity stunt? Or even an experiment to see if visitor numbers would rise with the barricade down?

Whatever the reason I have to say nothing has happened to change my opinion that the paywall route isn’t the right route.

Purely from a PR perspective, it’s not customer friendly, it doesn’t encourage engagement with the title, and that’s so contrary to how the Internet and online information is designed to work and be used.

Open, accessible, immediate and comment-driven is the ethos of the worldwide web and consistently updated news is at the hub of this. With our PR hats on, we use the Internet daily for research and reaction – the Times has scored an own goal with our industry in particular as we can no longer use it for reference or incorporate links to it in our own material.

Missed out on one today for instance on the Nick Clegg closet smoking story (sorry, I can’t put the link in as you won’t be able to open it, unless you’re prepared to pay!). Needed to use this item to support a client angle on celebrity non-smokers but couldn’t access it. Went elsewhere instead so no valuable back links to the Times piece. That’s just one example – countless online PR people will be looking to carry similar links every hour, ever day. What a missed opportunity.

Who knows where Mr Murdoch’s head is – will he decide enough is enough and revert to free once more or will he continue on his stubborn way with the paywall? We wait with interest for the next set of Nielsen figures.

Dawn Strange
Accounts Director

Are you protecting your privacy online?

noreply@blogger.com (mediamatterspr) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:30:00 +0000

Social networking is transforming our every day lives – and so often in a positive way – but it comes with a major health warning.

Whatever personal information we either knowingly or unwittingly post online can be collected to build up a frighteningly accurate picture of who we are, what we do, where we live, how old we are, where and when we go on holiday, who our friends are and what we are saying to them.

Managing your online profile and image is now becoming so crucial that there are now specialist consultants who trawl the Internet managing your image for you, deleting, adding, amending information where appropriate.

Just to see what we mean – visit www.webmii.com and tap in your name – the system will collect mentions/information about you (or people with similar names) from all over the Internet and give you a 0-10 rating on your own or your business profile. To give you some perspective, President Obama is in the low nines.

It is also a reminder that our chat history; Facebook comments; blogs etc, are always there. We may think they are private – but there are lots of clever people who can retrieve that information.

Your image or that of your business is now more public than you can imagine – so it is critically important that it is managed by people who know the implications of what is written or spoken.

Peter Corder
Managing Director