Wadds' PR Blog

#tdcsocial (2 of 2): social business, curation and influence

Wadds — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:29:49 +0000

Katie Moffat (@katiemoffat) led a discussion yesterday afternoon as Thinking Digital as part of its its workshop series with Will McInnes (@willmcinnes), Christian Payne (@documentally), Jas Dhaliwal (@jas), and myself. Here’s a summary of the second half of the session.

#tdcsocial (1 of 2): Digital lifeboats, privacy and networks

Wadds — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:19:14 +0000

Here’s a summary of the first half of the session.

Here come the machines: the computers that tell stories on behalf of brands and media outlets

Wadds — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:11:44 +0000

The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 last week carried an item on Narrative Science, a spin-out from Northernwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism that is building technology to enable computers to automatically write news stories. Its part of a growing trend whereby computer software is being developed to tell stories on behalf of brands and media outlets.

Data journalism
This story starts with data journalism. In its crudest form databases of information are dumped onto the internet and interrogated by communities using crowdsourcing techniques. Wikileaks is the highest profile example of this genre. But it is only the beginning.

Computers are being used to interrogate massive data sets and identify trends that humans might never spot. I’d throughly recommend reading Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog if you are interested in exploring this area.

Automated research and editing
My Northumberland Social hackathon experiment used automatic techniques to gather and filter content. Human intervention is required solely to edit and publish content although with some further thought that too could almost certainly be automated.

Percolate, a New York based start-up, helps brands identify relevant conversations that are taking place across the social web. From here it is a short step to understanding how to engage as a brand on these new platforms rather than spamming press releases in Facebook groups as The Economist Lean Back 2.0 blog spotlighted yesterday.

Computers as storytellers
Narrative Science goes a stage beyond these techniques. It applies computer algorithms to report the facts of a story without human intervention. It’s applying its technology to stories that rely on lots of data such as finance and sport. Computers can’t yet convey emotion or pace in a story but they can do a good job of reporting facts.

Summaries of school and college sports events and financial market reports are reported by stitching together results and building a narrative around the data. There are only so many ways that you can comment on the progress of a game of cricket or the movement of a stock.

In a delightful twist of irony if you head to Narrative Science’s web site you’ll find a list of articles about the firm from the mainstream media. For now at least there are no machines involved in reporting developments about the firm.

Automated content generation is already happening in other corners of the web. The BBC is using semantic web technologies as part of its sports reporting and machines will form at least part of its reporting of the London 2012 Olympics stating that it enables journalists to focus on the craft of storytelling.

Web 3.0: the semantic web
Machined media is a topic that Philip Sheldrake has blogged about at length. He claims that as the web becomes a universal media for the exchange of data, the discovery and creation of content can become autonomous. If Web 1.0 was an interlinked documentation system, and Web 2.0 is the social web, then Web 3.0, known as the semantic web, will add context to data on the web so that the web itself, or at least the machines connected to it, can understand what it all means.

This blog post was written by a human.

Cross PR industry support for Wikipedia consultation

Wadds — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:06:21 +0000

The hostile relationship between the PR profession and Wikipedia is well documented. But this week the two parties have taken a step towards establishing common ground.

PR professionals Philip Sheldrake and Neville Hobson addressed the Wikimedia UK AGM at the Science Museum, London on Saturday. Wikimedia UK represents Wikipedia contributors in the UK.

“Wikipedia is a community and the PR profession respects the community’s right to set its own rules,” said Sheldrake.

“If anyone believes the rules should be changed, then the case has to be made in a public forum for open debate, and what better forum than the community’s own,” he added.

It’s in this spirit that Wikimedia this week agreed to host draft guidelines for the PR profession on using Wikipedia. The guidance which was written by the CIPR Social Media Panel, is now open for consultation before being finalised in June.

“We welcome this approach from the PR community in what is a very sensitive area,” said Jon Davies, chief executive, Wikimedia UK.

The move has support from across the UK PR industry.

“I’m delighted the PR industry was represented on Saturday. The mood in both camps is that strengthening the relationship between Wikipedia and the PR industry is beneficial for everyone,” said Francis Ingham, CEO, PRCA.

You can contribute to the consultation via the Wikipedia page.

Copyright Tribunal issues final decision on web licensing: joint statement from Meltwater Group, NLA, PRCA, and UKMMA

Wadds — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:00:47 +0000

Summary

The final judgement in the Copyright Tribunal involving Meltwater Group, NLA, PRCA, and UKMMA, was announced shortly after 2pm today. It brings a conclusion to the three-year industry wrangle over web copyright licensing.
The decision sees publishers rewarded for the third-party business-to-business web monitoring market for their content.
The Copyright Tribunal set the 2012 starting price for the Web End User Licence Fixed Fee tariff at £100 per annum for new licensees, or £67 per annum for those without a current NLA licence.
The average fee is approximately £450 per year, but the NLA expect this figure to fall as more small companies are licensed. See the final page of the judgement for the likely cost to your business (PDF).

Joint statement issued by Meltwater Group, NLA, PRCA, and UKMMA

The Copyright Tribunal has today delivered its Final Decision in respect of the Newspaper Licensing Agency’s (NLA) Web End User Licensing scheme (WEUL). It draws to a close proceedings in the Copyright Tribunal where Meltwater Group, supported by the PRCA, challenged the NLA on the legality and reasonableness of its proposed licensing and associated fees for online news content.

Since the Interim Decision, published on 14 February 2012, Meltwater and the NLA have worked together in close consultation to reach agreement on the finer details of the licensing payment model. Their joint proposals were agreed by UKMMA (representing other MMOs) and submitted to the Copyright Tribunal.

The NLA first introduced web licences on 1 January 2010, giving media monitoring organisations (MMOs), such as Meltwater News, and their clients the right to make commercial use of content published on newspaper websites. Licensing affects those businesses who supply and receive headlines, text extracts and links to newspaper websites as a part of a paid for media monitoring service.

This decision by the Copyright Tribunal means that licensing can now begin, on terms accepted by all parties. The NLA will commence invoicing for these fees from next month, backdated to 1 January 2010.

In response to the final decision David Pugh, Managing Director of the NLA, explained that the “NLA suspended fees pending the Copyright Tribunal conclusion. I am pleased we now have clarity and more importantly certainty for clients.”

Jens-Petter Glittenberg, co-founder at Meltwater Group, confirmed that “the NLA and Meltwater are now committed to ensuring that UK end users of such monitoring services are licensed quickly, fairly and efficiently. We are happy with the Copyright Tribunal decision. Our aim from the outset was to seek clarification of UK copyright law for both rights-holders and end users, particularly for content freely available online.”

Adding to the statement Francis Ingham, PRCA Chief Executive said ‘The PRCA is proud to have been the voice for the public relations industry at the Copyright Tribunal. We are pleased with the Copyright Tribunal’s verdict and the industry can be satisfied with the fairness and clarity of the outcome of the final ruling’.

Finally, speaking on behalf of media monitoring organisations (MMOs), the chairman of UKMMA Steve White added ‘The Copyright Tribunal’s decision has established the terrain for rights management for the foreseeable future and given UKMMA members security to serve their clients effectively with the NLA’s web repertoire’.

In the interest of their mutual clients, the NLA and licensed MMOs, including Meltwater, have agreed to co-ordinate client communications. This will ensure that the licensing process is comprehensive, efficient and straightforward.

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Twitter reaches 10 million UK users; launches weekly edition

Wadds — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:22:14 +0000

Twitter has launched a weekly edition as it crosses the threshold of 10 million UK users. The weekly edition consists of the most engaging content shared by your network and will land in your email inbox once a week.

Watch out for the monthly print edition that will surely follow. It’s an ironic nod to a traditional publishing model by the real time network as it graduates into a fully blown media company and makes a bid to increase its relevancy to users.

The Twitter safety value
Twitter has an in built safety value. You’ve almost certainly used it.

It works like this: as the number of people you follow increases and time spent on the network increases the value shuts down and you naturally start to cull your network or use the network less frequently.

Too much Twitter is not a good thing. It gets too noisy and engagement levels fall rapidly.

My hunch is that Twitter has recognised that users don’t want to be plugged into their network round the clock. But they don’t want to miss out either.

Editors required
Curated content, served neatly once a week in an email will do just fine for most people. Therein lies a truism of social media. Only very tight networks provide a sufficient editorial function.

The lack of editorial rigor is apparent from trending topics. Mat Morrison tweeted last night that Justin Bieber was trending on Google+. No corner of the Internet it seems is free from Bieber-fever.

Bieber trends because lots of social media users want to share content about the young musician. But that doesn’t mean that he appeals to everyone.

Networks aren’t a form of mass media. They’re made up of tiny niches and they aren’t necessarily that smart which is why we need curators and editors. A one-size fits all trending topic simply doesn’t work.

Twitter’s solution is mechanical. It’ll work up to a point but only manual editing will find the really good stuff.

An experiment in content curation and hyper local media

Wadds — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:48:00 +0000

The discussion around the future of local media is a story of reduced advertising budgets, a declining audience, and a move to single weekly editions. Who knows how the story will end? One thing is for sure: local media organisations in the future will be much smaller and leaner compared with yesteryear.

A couple of months ago I built Northumberland Social, a curated local media web site as part of a weekend hackathon. The goal was to explore the future of local media and see whether it was possible to generate an engaging hyperlocal site based on content sourced from media sites and social networks.

Social media as a source of local media content
Content from social media platforms such as blogs, Flickr and YouTube, networks such as Twitter and traditional local media sites such as The Northumberland Gazette and The Morpeth Herald was neatly summarised and republished.

It’s the model that The Week has successful developed to curate content from the national media and packaged in a weekly magazine, but applied online to an individual county using social content. Have a look for yourself.

The issue of copyright remains a work in progress for curated web sites. But I took the view that sharing small excerpts of content and linking back to the original source would help drive traffic for the original content owners.

I needn’t have worried. The response was incredibly positive. In fact several commercial photographers were more than happy to provide their original content with attribution.

An engaged community but what about the money?
I ran the experiment in anger for two-weeks in March. It very quickly generated a strong and loyal Twitter network of 450 people that was highly engaged and willing to share content. Traffic steadily climbed from a standing start to around 100 unique visitors a day with high levels of engagement.

The technology could not be simpler. A ‘news room’ built on Google Reader sucks in social content that is manually reviewed once a day and edited excerpts published to a Tumblr blog using a personal URL. New posts are pinged to search engines and shared via a Twitter feed using Hootsuite.

It’s a long way from being a viable commercial proposition but therein lies the challenge for hyper local media: developing a large enough community to be able to generate revenue streams to fund content development, whether that be a form of curation or original journalism.

The most successful sites combine ads with other forms of revenue generation such as affiliate sales, clubs and events.

No one has cracked the commercial model. It’s likely that in order to be sustainable in the future local media whether online or print, like other forms of niche online community, will require commercial sponsorship or public funding.

Moving the project on
Here’s the issue. I’ve proved a concept as a means of building a solid community but haven’t got the time to continue running the site. Social media is not only about sharing content; it’s about relationships. It needs to be nurtured and developed, and that takes time, in this case at least 30 to 45 minutes per day.

At the moment Northumberland Social is set to join the graveyard of social media sites that start with a flurry of excitement but die after a month or so. I would be delighted to hand over the site to anyone that has the vision and the time to take it forward. If you think that might be you please get in touch or maybe this project will inspire you build a curated media site of your own either around a location or a niche.

A brief history of public relations in a Facebook Timeline

Wadds — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:40:40 +0000

Print media is in decline. The internet enables communication with publics directly as digital media allows brands to participate within online communities. It would seem like it is all change for the PR industry.

But as we attempt to modernise ourselves it seems like we are not so much reinventing ourselves as we are heading back to the public relations of yesteryear, although with vastly different media.

Public engagement via two way engagement is more similar than the PR of the 1950s than the 1990s and surely there are some lessons in the past that could be relevant today.

Speed’s Dan Howe has plotted a brief history of public relations back to 1000 on Speed’s Facebook Timeline.

You can browse the events by clicking on the dates on our page’s right hand column. We’ll keep the Timeline updated with more historical PR events as they catch our eyes.

Hit Like to follow along. You know how it works.

Crowdsourced job hunting tips

Wadds — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:28:31 +0000

Useful job hunting and career support links for PR graduates

Wadds — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:21:45 +0000

I’m taking part in the Twitter discussion at 7pm tonight as part of Anne-Marie Bailey’s Raising the Profile project.

Ahead of the session I asked my Twitter network this morning for useful stuff to help PR graduate job hunters. Here’s what came back.

If you have any other recommendations please leave a comment. And if you want to take part in the conversation tonight we’ll be using the #raisingtheprofile hashtag on Twitter. You’ll be very welcome.

Recommended reading

Seven tips: getting a job using social media by Elisabeth Gjosund
The CV, one of PR’s biggest lies, may be dead. Honest by Steve Earl

Professional Development

CIPR Continuous Professional Development scheme

Internships

Enternships

Job opportunities

Ben Cotton maintains a list of PR graduate opportunities
CIPR job board
MIPAA job search
PRmoment job board
PR Week jobs
PRCA job board
@ukyoungpr Twitter feed

Mentors

CIPR mentoring scheme

Example online portfolios

Useful social media groups

Books

Me and my web shadow by Antony Mayfield
And of course Brand Anarchy – Chapter 10 deals with PR skills

Presentations

How to Stand Out by Samantha Glazer

Getting a job via Social Media by Elisabeth Gjosund