Last week I chaired a ‘Thought Leaders’ event at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) in London where I interviewed Tom Foremski who became the first major journalist to quit mainstream media to make a living from blogging when he left the Financial Times to found Silicon Valley Watcher.

The event did leave me with some optimism that corporate media – that is companies paying real journalists to do real reporting – might be one future for quality journalism. Where I wasn’t so optimistic was where the next generation of quality journalists will come from. The traditional training ground was local newspapers and their decline mean opportunities for that crucial early learning are becoming rare. Some see the plethora of blogs and websites covering every conceivable subject area as being the alternative. I’m not convinced as they don’t have the seasoned old hacks who can teach the tricks of the trade. And I don’t mean fiddling expenses or hacking phones, but the old journalistic craft of knowing how to sniff out the truth in a story. How to check and double check the sources and facts. How to write well (and it’s not being pedantic to say that means good grammar, doesn’t need perfect grammar).

We explored a wide range of topics including content, corporate media, ethics, reputation, SEO, ‘Every Company is a Media Company’ and ‘brand journalism’ (we both hate the term).

As I was chairing the event and interviewing Tom I didn’t take any notes or record the conversation. However, I’ve captured some of the best tweets in Storify. If the embed doesn’t work for you then you can see it on the Storify site here.

Flipboard is one of the new generation of news readers that provide a slick app to let you subscribe to news and topics on media websites, blogs and other social media and social networks.

The latest updates make it really easy to create your own magazine by curating interesting content that you find.

There are already more than half a million user generated magazines available, most probably read by the editor and her mum. However, it is still potentially a useful tool for PR and corporate communications professionals. One important thing to remember is that although Flipboard call it a magazine, all you are actually doing is curating existing content and not creating new articles.

I’ve created my own magazine called PR and Corporate Comms News. You can subscribe to it here.

These are some of my initial thoughts on how corporate communications and PR professionals can use it:

Select your Flipboard sources

The first step is selecting the right sources. The easiest way is to simply to browse the categories in Flipboard to add your favourite sources. For example mine include the FT, Harvard Business Review and The Guardian.

Then you use the search bar to search lots of social networks, but more importantly it also searches for RSS feeds which nearly every media site provides. This means you can add your favourite and more niche business and professional websites and blogs. Rather annoyingly Flipboard presents these (most useful) results last so you have to click more and then scroll right down past all of the social networks to get to the best results. So to add this blog you can simply search for “Stuart Bruce” or “A PR Guy’s Musings” and it will appear in the RSS feeds list.

The RSS search frequently fails to find feeds for sites that have them. If the search does fail to find the exact publication you want then you can manually type the full URL of the RSS feed into the search bar. An easier way to do it is to go to the site in your browser and then copy the RSS link so you can paste it into Flipboard.

Within Flipboard you can also connect your other social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, SoundCloud, Seino Weibo and Renren.

However, a big time saving tip is you don’t need to add every source as you can also easily add content to your magazine using a bookmark from your desktop browser. To install it go to the  Web Tools on the Flipboard website.

Create your Flipboard magazine and add content

Creating your magazine is as simple as finding the content you want to add in Flipboard and clicking on the + symbol and then choosing the magazine you want to add it to. They call this ‘+Flip It’.

At the moment it is still quite clunky and has a ‘beta’ fail to it and in the app the only way you can create your magazine is when you add your first piece of content.

You want to think carefully about the name. Remember you want it to be useful and interesting for readers so a descriptive title such as “PR and Corporate Comms News” is a better title for my Flipboard magazine than “Stuart’s PR Stuff”. You then want to write an interesting and compelling description. Mine is:

Public relations and corporate communications news and views for the digital and social era. Curated by international PR trainer and consultant Stuart Bruce.

Getting the title and the description right will make it easier for people to find you when they search and browse the user-generated magazines in Flipboard.

You will also want to go to the web tools page on the Flipboard website to add the browser bookmark tool that lets you “+Flip It” from sites you visit on your laptop.

On an Android phone or tablet you can also use the Share function to “Flip It” into your Flipboard magazine. You can also add a bookmarklet to your iPhone or iPad to do the same thing (although I haven’t tested this).

Curating the right content – including your own

The key to making your Flipboard magazine interesting is to curate useful and relevant content from lots of different sources. If you limit yourself to too few sources then your readers might as well read those publications rather than your curated one. Why listen to the monkey when you can hear the organ grinder?

The clever bit is to include some, but not too much, of your own content into your magazine. This should include:

• Blog posts – contrary to what the fashion-concious social media gurus will tell you blogs are still a very important channel for publishing your own content. They are one of the best ways to demonstrate expertise, in-depth knowledge and that old PR stand-by ‘thought leadership’.
• Mentions in news articles and features – in the good old days getting editorial coverage was only part of the equation. The bit that too many PR people missed was ensuring that relevant people actually saw these ‘press cuttings’. A Flipboard magazine is a great way of collating and distributing your online ‘clippings’. The fastest way to add them is simply using the ‘+Flip It’ bookmark in your browser.
• News – news releases, white papers and articles from your corporate website and social media news room. Remember that this isn’t always your most compelling content so be selective and only include the best content.
• Multimedia – you can include videos from your YouTube channel, photos from Flickr or Instagram, or even podcasts from SoundCloud.

Editing your magazine

You still can’t edit your magazine properly within the app, but Flipboard has now added a basic web editor tool. It lets you change the order of the stories and choose an alternative cover story. It also provides you with basic analytics showing how many readers and ‘page flips’ you’ve had, as well as how many articles you’ve curated. The web editor also enables you to create a new magazine.

Promoting your magazine

If you’ve given your magazine a good title and description then you should start to pick up some subscribers who find you directly via Flipboard. However, you can also help the process along by sharing the magazine directly with your contacts via any of the social networks you’ve connected to Flipboard. The short URL that Flipboard generates prompts people to download Flipboard and subscribe to your magazine. As with all automated services don’t just use the copy it generates, but write your own that says something relevant to your contacts.

If you are logged into Facebook the short URL it generates for you to share also shows some of your Facebook friends who already use Flipboard (or at least those who have connected it to Facebook). This means you can selectively send private messages to those people you think would be interested in subscribing. In the hurly burly of social network updates it is easy to miss what people have shared. As you know these people you should be able to judge if it is appropriate to send them the link via email, Twitter DM, LinkedIn message etc. But be sensible and don’t spam all your contacts with private messages.

And finally don’t forget the most important way to share content is still email. Simply email your relevant contacts and remember to include an explanation of what Flipboard is and why they should subscribe to your magazine.

Who uses Flipboard?

One downside is that Flipboard is only currently available for Android and iPhone so despite the fact it is a free app your magazine won’t be available to the millions of Windows Phone and Blackberry users. It’s also not the only news reader so lots of your potential audience might be using alternative readers such as Google Currents or Feedly.

Flipboard claims it has 56 million users with particularly strong markets being the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and Spain.

Please subscribe to PR and Corporate Comms News and let me know if you create your own magazine.

Today is Europe Day. The anniversary of the 1950 ‘Schuman Declaration’ that started the process that created what is now the European Union. The declaration was made by the then French foreign minister Robert Schuman in the aftermath of World War 2.

This year it is more important than ever for patriotic Britons to celebrate Europe Day. The future of the United Kingdom is under threat from those who seek to destroy all the benefits that membership of the European Union has given the people of Britain. We have a prime minister that risks forcing us out of the European Union. Not for practical reasons that it will benefit the UK. Not because he believes it is ideologically right. But because he is weak and hopes to make short-term political gain by jeopardising our nation’s future.

The UK’s membership of the European Union has benefited businesses and workers alike. Men, women and children enjoy greater freedoms and are safer than they have ever been before.

I am proud to be a citizen of Europe. I am proud to be a citizen of the United Kingdom. I have grown up in a Europe that is peaceful and prosperous (read Smile if you’re European by Simon Kuper in the Financial Times magazine). I want our five-year daughter to enjoy the same European peace and prosperity that her parents have.

That’s why the best way to display your British patriotism is to celebrate Europe Day today.

EU and Union Jack flag picture courtesy of LSE British Influence blog.

European Commission building in Brussels taken by me on May 7, 2013.

The election for the 2014 president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has sparked several fascinating debates on both public relations and the future and relevance of the CIPR. What is without question is that this time, in Dr Jon White and Stephen Waddington, we have two absolutely outstanding candidates for president. I would be delighted with either.

That said this is an election and that means a decision. I am voting for Stephen Waddington.

One criticism that some have levelled at Stephen (or Wadds as he is more commonly known) is that he is too focused on the social media and digital aspects of public relations. I do not believe this to be the case. I spent the first half to date (indeed most of my career) so far doing ‘traditional’ public relations. As has Wadds. What we have in common is an understanding of the deeper social, political and economic impact of the internet and social media, as well as the ability to translate this into successful public relations practice.

His statements on public affairs, corporate communications and internal communications all demonstrate that he is capable of leading the CIPR across the full range of public relations disciplines and practice. What’s more he understands that these old silos and specialism are not the future of the profession.

Stephen Waddington or ‘Wadds’ in his own words:

This video from UNICEF Sweden is a powerful reminder that Facebook Likes don’t really mean much, despite the obsession by some in the advertising and marketing business. In UNICEF’s case it quite literally tells us that Facebook Likes don’t save lives.

Picture from UNICEF Sverige Flickr.

Even in 2013 you find sceptics who don’t appreciate how the internet and the social web is disrupting traditional media consumption. Experian Hitwise has just published research that shows in 2012 the UK spent 37 billion hours online, but as that is far too big a number to comprehend it has helpfully distilled it into how it would look in a single hour:

Social is the biggest single element taking up 13 minutes of our time. News takes up just three minutes, which is depressingly below the time spent on shopping and alarmingly is the same as ‘adult’!

Since the launch a lot of the initial hype about Twitter’s six second Vine videos has thankfully died down. The latest to use Vine is the White House which has used it for the first time to promote the annual White House Science Fair.

I was a sceptic at launch and remain so, but am reserving final judgment until I’ve had an opportunity to use it properly myself. Which won’t happen until an Android version is available.

The issue that I’ve got is that compared to a tweet six seconds is just too long, I could read lots of tweets in that time. As I use HootSuite and rarely visit the Twitter website I’d never see it as embedded media. Therefore I’d only click on the link if I knew it was worth clicking first. The flip side of it being too long is that six seconds is also too short to do much worthwhile.

After three months there are still a lack of good examples, although there are a lot of examples of people talking about good examples which turn out not to be! If you think you’ve seen good examples that I’ve missed then please let me know in the comments.

Bill Nye @thescienceguy & @levarburton welcome you to the #WHScienceFair! vine.co/v/bP7JIZtYxrK

— The White House (@whitehouse) April 22, 2013

I’d like to say I had amazing insight and realised then how important blogs and the rest of social media and social networks would become. However, the truth is rather more mundane. When I was first elected as a local councillor in May 1999 I was one of very few to set-up a website. However, as I’m not a developer or designer, it was quite hard work to keep it relevant and up to date. And as I was very busy as both a local councillor and running my own PR consultancy it was time I didn’t have. That’s why when I first started reading blogs I thought it looked much, much easier and faster than trying to run a website.

Only two UK politicians had blogs before me. The first was former Sheffield Hallam MP Richard Allan and the second was Tom Watson MP. Richard stepped down in 2005 (his successor is current deputy prime minister Nick Clegg MP) and he is now a member of the House of Lords and works as director of policy in Europe for Facebook. Shortly after I started my councillor blog The Guardian did an article about me ‘Blogging for better bins’.

My PR blog was one of the first in the world, although it is a bit harder to track the exact timelines here as some people have changed blogging platforms or domains and archives aren’t always available. I was in the first 10-2o to start a PR blog. Some of the few before me who are still blogging today are Phil Gomes, Tom Murphy and Neville Hobson. Those starting shortly after include Richard Bailey and Philippe Borremans. This highlights one of the benefits of blogging as I’m now friends and have met them all except Phil (who I’ve only met via Google Hangout).

Both my councillor blog and my PR blog were hosted on a now defunct blogging platform called 2osix.co.uk, which was the UK division of a German blog publishing platform. Some of the people at 20six that I came across back then are still active today. PeerIndex founder Azeem Azhar and Sunstone Capital partner Max Niederhofer were both involved, as was freelance  journalist Johanna Payton.

Unfortunately the 20six sites are now unavailable, but you can still see an archive at Wayback Machine. This was my first PR post which explains why I chose 20six rather than the more popular and well-known Blogger:

My second post was hopefully more interesting and was about Alastair Campbell, the BBC and Andrew Gilligan in which I managed to avoid using the word Iraq, but did use the word frisbee.

My first councillor blog post was on Blogger, but I then switched it to 20six as well:

I deliberately let my councillor blog lapse when I was no longer as a councillor as it was always meant to be about local council issues rather than a generic political blog. I do however occasionally update Bruce on the World, which is my political and personal blog for posts that aren’t relevant to my professional PR blog.

My PR blog has had three platforms –first 20six, then Typepad and now a self-hosted WordPress blog.

This post is to say a huge thank you to all my readers and subscribers (so thanks Dad!) for sticking with me over the 10 years and hopefully A PR Guy’s Musings will still be going strong another ten years.

Infographics can be fantastic, awful or simply work. This example from Philips is the latter. It simply presents the quarter one earnings for Philips in an alternative format. It’s good to see a genuine corporate communications, rather than marketing communications example. At a time when infographics are being exploited by PR, marketing and digital people this is a what I’d like to see more of in the future – not brilliant, not awful, just good.

I’ve got a few new corporate communications, PR and social media speaking engagements coming up over the next few months. I’ll also shortly be announcing dates for a series of two day online PR and corporate communications strategy master classes to be held in London in early July, Mumbai (India) in late July and Houston (Texas) in mid August. I’ve also got dates for social media master classes in Brussels in May and June. Contact me if you’re interested in attending any of these master classes and I can tell you how to register.

CIPR Thought Leaders | Can ‘corporate media’ support serious journalism. Can it win a Pulitzer?
Wednesday 8 May 2013, London

I’m speaking alongside Tom Foremski at a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Thought Leader expert briefing that asks (and tries to answer) provocative questions such as what’s the role of corporate media, will the the rise of corporate media serve society or hinder it, can corporate media become the new funding model for serious journalism and can corporate media win a Pulitzer?

Master class on Online PR
22 May 2013, Tbilisi, Georgia

In May I’m a guest of Marketing House Georgia and will deliver a one day Online PR master class in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. The course is designed for Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors and Heads of:

Corporate Communications, Public Relations, Corporate Affairs, External Communications, Public Affairs, Government Relations, Internal Communications, Stakeholder Relations, Investor and Analyst Relations

I’ll also be delivering a second one day online reputation management course for CEOs and senior government officials.

Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference
19-21 June 2013, London

The Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference is a three day conference and series of master class workshops featuring speakers from the BBC, Microsoft, Amazon, Edelman and Trans-Arabian Creative Communications (TRACCS). I’m delivering a keynote presentation about ‘Global online communications: how to tackle the global vs. local challenge’ on Friday, June 21.

CIPR Annual Social Media Conference
11 July, London

The annual social media conference of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations will be based on the contents of the forthcoming Share This Too book. I’m chairing a Professional Practice Panel on ‘Putting the social into CSR’ and will be joined by two prominent experts on corporates social responsibility who will present short case studies and answer questions.