It’s only the fourth working day of the New Year and already we’ve received several CVs from people looking for work.

All came via email, which is fine, but only one person had actually bothered to carry out some research to find out who to get in touch with. I’m awfully sorry, but anything addressed to “Dear sir/madam” gets instantly deleted.

A large part of what public relations is all about is carrying out research, and having said that, a great part of all of our everyday lives involves some kind of investigation.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of finding our email address then why not look at the rest of the website while you’re at it? There’s only six sections, and what’s more it all free.

Here’s a great blog entry from Mark Reeve, former editor of the Birmingham Post on why he’s leaving the newspaper industry after 25 years.

He brings up some very interesting points all of which, as a former journalist myself, I agree with.

A couple of days ago I asked the blogosphere if I could I swear in my own blog, which came about after hearing something on television that really got my goat.

If could have been so easy to have gone off on one and had a good old rant – with lots of swearing for an effective punch – but I thought it’d be wiser to step back, compose myself and chose my words wisely but to not let the moment pass.

Design and brand guru Brian Minards told me via LinkedIn: “You want to swear; then effing well swear.” So here goes, and blame him. Read the rest of this entry »

Can I swear in my own blog? If so I will in my next entry. (And I really will swear, like Gordon Ramsay.)

I’ve been Tweeting since May 2008, but over the past few months I’ve slowed down. I’m fed up with the spammers, the self-appointed experts, the irrelevancies and the bores. And Stephen Fry; not that I follow him.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still relevant to so many businesses, although it’s more effective in certain sectors than other; and it’s certainly not THE answer.

However, it’s just one of many social media tools all of which are growing in importance but to be effective need to be, not only, managed correctly but used in conjunction with the rest of the marketing mix; and by that I mean online and offline because they both feed off each other.

I’d really have liked to have written this article, Twitter faux pas: 20 dreadful types of tweet, but the Daily Telegraph did it first. Enjoy it.

Aubin & Wills is a high-end clothing company with five stores in upmarket places, as well as an impressive e-commerce site.

Their latest catalogue landed on my doorstep a couple of weeks’ back, complete with a black and white arty cover showing a variety of place names in an assortment of font styles and sizes, none of which seemed to be linked to each other in any way (or A&W, come to that), or be themed other than they were northern.

But standing out like a crocodile at an alligator conference was the name Teeside. And for those that haven’t noticed, or think I’ve made a spelling mistake, it should, of course, be spelt Teesside. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of years ago a, now former, client finally agreed that his business needed a new website.

We’d been nagging him from the outset – as website development is one of the services we offer – because the one he had was a very basic static site built in-house many years ago. It also had 36 pages – not bad for a business with only seven products.

As a consumer brand it made sense that the business should have a content rich site that mirrored the messages being sent via the PR campaign – along with professionally taken pictures not ones taken on a very old phone camera. Read the rest of this entry »

The dust finally seems to be settling on the MP’s expenses saga, though I think it’s safe to say it won’t be too long before the issue pops up again in some way or other.

Since the Daily Telegraph newspaper first broke the story on the 8th of May it surely must be the most covered item of the year, although Michael Jackson’s death cannot be far behind.

The Telegraph really did open a can of worms, and one that seemed to be getting deeper by the day. They really put their collective rivals’ noses out of joint but within hours their competitors, from the broadsheets through to the weekly local papers, were all vying for a piece of the action and getting in one the act. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago I met up with some former colleagues from my days as an online journalist which is where we all got to know each other, and have remained friends ever since. We originally met back in 1999, and had all arrived there after lengthy careers working for newspapers in all corners of the UK.

The company we worked for moved away from delivering self-generated news, which saw us all having to leave over about a 12 month period. I opted to go into public relations, while everyone else returned to newspaper world, and being more settled, they stayed in Yorkshire taking jobs with regional newspapers.

Even back in 1999 it was evident that the newspaper world was going to have come to terms with the emerging digital world, meaning it would have to adapt or die. Ten years on and it’s looking very much like many papers could go to the wall as they’ve largely ignored the warning signs. Read the rest of this entry »

Seeing as the whole world has gone Twitter mad, with blogs abound about how it’s revolutionised everyone’s lives; national newspapers frothing over it and selling it to the masses, as well as long-term users now proclaiming patronisingly “I told you so”, I thought I’d put my oar in.

As with any social network there are those that just blatantly want to collect as many contacts as possible (just who does have the most contacts? Answers on a postcard please, whoops, sorry answers via @wearebluesky).

These über-contact collectors are best ignored. Delete their requests to join them and make sure they aren’t following you. Read the rest of this entry »