The Digital Mission is a fantastic opportunity for us to make vital business connections in the US, build our international profile and experience an amazing trip to New York. Our managing director, Stuart Bruce, will be attending the mission and will get to take part in a range of activities, conferences and master classes with industry professionals, which then culminates in the highly anticipated Web 2.0 Expo.

The companies that have been selected represent the top digital talent from across the UK’s vibrant sector, ranging from established firms to start ups, with a diverse range of industry sectors. Wolfstar and Sheffield-based Can Studios have both won a place on the event, which is the first time that Yorkshire companies have been represented on the Digital Mission – which we feel is quite an achievement!

Stuart will be sharing all the latest news from New York, so keep an eye on his blog and Twitter stream throughout the mission. The Digital Mission also has a Twitter account, @DigitalMission and a hash tag, #DigitalMission.

If you’ve read my profile on the Wolfstar website or follow me on Twitter, then you’ll know that even though I now live in Leeds, I’m still proud of the fact that I grew up in Scarborough. So, it’s not surprising that I follow @Scarborough_UK on Twitter, which seems to be the most popular and well used Twitter stream relating to the great little town.

The Twitter stream has 592 followers and actively engages in meaningful conversation with a large number of them on a daily basis. Therefore, in order to get a better understanding of how organisations within the tourism industry utilise Twitter, I contacted the people behind @Scarborough_UK.

I found that Mark Pickering, the manager of the marketing department for English Rose Hotels, was behind the Twitter stream and it was started as an “experiment” to see if a presence in this space would be well received by the social media community.

Mark explained that the biggest problem in entering this space is that some brands and organisations seem better suited than others:

“After a little research, it became apparent to me that, unless you are a huge established brand, you are always going to have an up hill struggle to make social media work for you.  Don’t get me wrong, some ‘small companies’ have had great success, but they tend to be ‘cool’ companies to start with and their demographics match social media perfectly – ours unfortunately don’t.”

This led the team to wonder how they could use Twitter without getting lost in the ether of little known brands. And, the solution? Scarborough:

“So we needed a bigger brand, but one that was still relevant to us – and what better than Scarborough?”

This idea worked well, many people have embraced the @Scarborough_UK Twitter stream as the official voice of the town, consulting it for the latest news and events as well as asking questions relating to the area. In turn, @Scarborough_UK can engage with users in order to build a sense of community and a social media presence for English Rose Hotels.

I’m sure that we’ll start to see other organisations within the tourist industry using Twitter in this way, utilising a well known area to enter the social media space.

*NB this post has been amended for data protection reasons.

The Guardian thinks it has the answer. Turning to citizen journalists, they are aiming to go back to the very traditional beat journalism method, only this time with bloggers. The new initiative, being trialled in Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, will be called Guardian Local.

The worry has been that a lack of local reporters and media outlets will mean local issues go unnoticed. Things like council issues and corruption in local politics may slip through the net without local journalists on hand to investigate.

Sarah Hartley, the Guardian Local launch editor, is setting up the new network of citizen journalists. An advert for the jobs has now gone online on the Guardian website so it looks like this new reporting network will be up and running by early next year as planned.

I think this is a great way to plug the gap that local newspapers will leave. By using bloggers and not just trained journalists we should get a good mix of reporting styles and input. Bloggers by nature tend to be passionate about their subject matter, so we should see some great stories and in-depth reporting of local issues.

I’m extremely interested to see how this news model works and how the beatblogging idea works in practice. I’ll keep you posted!

The content is exclusively available online and was conceived by the creative minds of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. This exclusivity is mirrored by the main promotional video, which sees beautiful models, wearing Dolce&Gabbana’s latest collection, coveting the alluring Jalou handset. It’s a beautifully shot video which is reminiscent of high fashion photography and TV advertising.

As well as the video, there is also behind the scenes footage, interviews with the Dolce&Gabbana team and downloadable images from the video.

The social media news release containing all of this exclusive content is now available at: www.wolfstarconsultancy.com/newsroom/jalou

Ryanair has dominated the media this week following an investigation by BBC1’s Panorama. Panorama had been in contact with the Ryanair press office regarding the production of their latest expose on the airline, “Why hate Ryanair”. The questions being asked were typical for a TV researcher, however they were quite difficult when it came to allowing Michael O’Leary to pre-record an unedited video response.

The debate about whether the programme makers were being deliberately difficult, or rather it was a case of Ryanair trying to avoid the “hatchetjob” as they put it, could go on for ever… I suppose it depends which camp you sit in and how much O’Leary has previously pushed your buttons!

Ryanair reacted by boldly publishing all of the email correspondence on the website the day the show was to air, allowing everyone to see the communication and make their own mind up. This is a risky PR strategy and really pushes the power of transparency online. But was it a clever PR trick or simply Ryanair sticking two fingers up at the BBC?

Following the show being aired last night (Monday 12th October), Ryanair has announced 1.1 million free seats to a variety of destinations throughout November and December. O’Leary said this was to “celebrate the total failure of BBC Panorama’s hatchet job -100,000 for each of the 11 above lies or false claims made by Panorama last night.”

Strong words and a strong message. I can’t help thinking O’Leary had this planned for a long time. The way the emails to Panorama are so carefully crafted suggests someone knew they may be published, plus, to be able to release so many free seats must have been scheduled into the strategy somewhere. On closer inspection it looks like many of the seats are far from free when you add on taxes and baggage (ironically the point Panorama were originally making.) It will be interesting to see if the BBC responds.

I still think my love of cheap city breaks overcomes my feelings for O’Leary, so can’t say I’ll be boycotting Ryanair anytime soon. However, I do think this is an interesting case study in aggressive online PR.. or simply taking the bull by the horns.

I am a technology geek at heart not a PR, and I think it is a sign that Wolfstar is maturing as an organisation when it takes on technical specialists such as myself. As Head of Technology & Research, I will be overseeing all our technology developments as well as creating what we believe will be a suite of powerful and unique tools that will benefit our clients. Exciting times.

Being a non–PR type, I know I have much to learn in the area and I hope to share some of the insights I have on this blog.

I’ve known Stuart for a long time and it feels great to be here. There are not many consultancies or agencies, in public relations or in any of the traditional disciplines that have such a specialism in social media. All the team ‘get it’, not just one or two who’ve spotted it’s the next big thing. We’ve got a whole spread of clients totally immersed in this, which means lots of stored knowledge on what works, where influence lies and how to measure success.

Every day I come into the office I think ‘’we’re really going to achieve something today!’’

As it turns out, we weren’t suddenly popular by instant mass acclaim, we were popular by the acclaim of one person who had posted a list. Valeria Maltoni, over at the conversation agent blog has posted her Twitter list of 100 PR people worth following and, pleasingly, three of the Wolfstar folks (Jed Hallam and Stuart Bruce being the other two)are on it.

The post is a perfect example of two of social media’s greatest truths, 1: great content is the key – a quick scan on tweet meme shows that 336 people have tweeted about how useful the post was (far more people than were actually included on the list, so it’s not all self aggrandisement,) 2: altruism reaps rewards, the post does nothing but help people, it links people looking for content with people looking for followers, a win-win scenario.

Neville Hobson has created a TweepML list of the 100 PR people so you can follow the whole list, or as many as you wish to follow from this list.

I have to go clear more notifications now, 13 have come in whilst drafting this…

Personally I’m more shocked by the 16% of fools who are deluding themselves that they are measuring ROI in any meaningful way. It’s apparent that many of those commenting don’t actually understand ROI and simply equate into with measurement and evaluation. It’s quite easy to measure social media and you can evaluate that data. But the idea that most organisations can use this information to give anything more than a slight insight into ROI is farcical.

One of the few commentators Google Analytics only gives you a tiny slither of information and tells you absolutely nothing about changes in awareness, understanding, behaviour or reputation. For a pure play e-commerce operation you do get some far more meaningful information, but not it all.

It’s a bit of a pointless question that could just as easily be asked about other corporate communications disciplines. It is possible to measure the ROI on specific marketing communications campaigns, but that’s totally different to measuring the ROI on an entire public relations or social media strategy or programme.

This research would have had far more value if it had asked meaningful questions around how organisations measure social media activity and how this data is reported and used.

Tuesday, October 6: Chartered Institute of Public Relations conference (PDF) – the headline speaker is Alistair Campbell and I’m delivering a presentation on the business benefits of Twitter.

Thursday, October 22: Lancashire and Blackpool Tourist Board – another presentation on the business benefits of Twitter and a case study on Wolfstar’s work with Go Ape.