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.

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

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.

What made my blood boil was the programme the Many Faces of June Whitfield, on BBC2 yesterday. I only caught a couple of minutes of it, and the bit I did see was about her starring in Absolutely Fabulous, which the narrator said was about the superficial and fickle world of PR. The tosser. (There, I swore in my own blog.)

Sometimes it can be a real bind working in PR when the industry is constantly dismissed as being worthless, yet pick up any newspaper, watch any news on television and most of the content is generated by PR people.

Sure there are plenty of people in the industry that join it for the wrong reasons (“because it’s glamorous”, is something I’ve heard said many times), and there are plenty that do give it a bad name usually by promising too much to the client and/or treating accounts as box ticking exercises, but I don’t think it’s any worse than other industries.

The marketing sector (of which PR is a part of) came under the microscope of the GeekUp LinkedIn group earlier this month with Mick Greer stating that the industry was made up of those who know what they are doing and those that don’t.

I last mentioned the PR industry being an easy target around a year ago and it seems nothing has changed and I doubt it ever will; may be 2010 is the year to run the charlatans out of town.

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.

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.

I’m not sure if the artwork was commissioned for A&W or not but, surely, a company that spends a hefty amount on marketing should have seen the glaring error.

I checked all the other place names on the cover, being particularly keen to see if Middlesbrough was included – it was, and thankfully was not spelt Middlesborough, another common mistake.

The artwork also appears on their website, and seeing as I was on their site I thought I’d look for an email address and let them know about the mistake – ‘though not in a smug way.

The reply I got back – to Rich, not Richard (very informal) – thanked me, and asked me where the mistake was (obviously not listening the first time). A second email came back (to Rich, again) once again thanking me.

A&W seems pretty keen on social media – though it does need working on – and if they’d engaged with their customers on the Teesside issue they could have made light of it. Instead they seem to have opted to completely ignore it.

If someone from Aubin & Wills is reading this, give me a call; I’m sure Blue Sky can help you with your social media strategy. Just don’t call me Rich.

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.

We explained that people (potential customers) would Google the business after reading about its products either in the press or online – quite often in blogs and forums as part of the PR campaign – or after seeing the merchandise on a supermarket shelf.

We added that we’d be able to get people (potential customers) to sign up to a newsletter or email alerts as a way of helping to boost brand loyalty, and that with compelling content they would return on a regular basis to keep up to date with what was happening at the company.

Importantly, these potential customers would also be able to buy directly from the new website, a great way of boosting his income.

Because the client didn’t understand the web (particularly the spending money bit), he ended up getting a grant from Business Link for a new site meaning he’d have to use one of their suppliers instead of us. We agreed to supply the copy, relevant images, style guide and, importantly, details of the pagination and a timetable for the eight-week project.

So while we got busy with the copywriting, the web company worked on the design. Or so we thought. After four weeks, we hadn’t seen anything. We nagged for two weeks, hearing an array of excuses such as staff being ill and, bizarrely, the design proving difficult. Finally a design was sent though that bore no relevance to the brand guidelines; in fact, it was an image of green field with a blue sky and lots of product logos stuck on – but more of that later.

We spoke to the client, then to the web company – to sack them, although they couldn’t see what the problem was. Web company number two; again via Business Link. They moved faster – although by now the timetable had become irrelevant.

The design was decent enough, but somehow the copy we had written got ripped to pieces. Fine, we’d raise that issue at the critique stage – but this never happened because the client decided to let them do it in their own time.

Soon after that the credit crunch struck and PR got the boot. The client is now left with a badly-written website with a variety of fonts, and an e-commerce section that only works if you telephone them; meaning it’s not an online shop.

It’s a real shame that the site was never finished; and I’m glad the Blue Sky name is not associated with it. It’s an even bigger shame that Business Link got involved; because neither of the web companies was really up to the job. It’s almost as though they treated it as money for old rope.

And the original web design? I knew I’d seen it somewhere before, eventually it clicked – it was the Windows XP wallpaper.

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.

Daily Telegraph assistant editor, Andrew Pierce, has referred to the investigation as “proper old fashioned journalism at its finest”, and defending it as being in the public interest, although defending is probably too strong a word here, because surely it’s the media’s duty to investigate and report on fraud – especially on such a widescale – and even more so when the public are paying for it.

But what prompted the investigation? The Daily Telegraph is notoriously right wing (which is why it’s affectionately known as the Torygraph – geddit?), but in fairness it ensured that no-one was left untouched. Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats; all were caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Traditional political lines have become increasingly blurred since the early 1990s, so was the Telegraph trying to shake things up in some way; after all it broke the story just ahead of the European elections?

Consider this. The Euro elections, as with the local elections, don’t experience a large voter turnout and, therefore, are not considered to carry much weight and are often use by the public as a way of protesting about something.

So by unsettling the main three parties, was the Telegraph hoping that a certain other right wing party might come to the fore (the BNP), as a result of a public protest? After all, the BNP has started to get its act together in recent years and has been in a prime position to blame immigration on the UK’s woes, and judging by their results it’s an argument that many voters believed.

Of course, no-one can truly think that the BNP can gain headway in Parliament, but a voter protest (especially a right wing one) could be enough for the Tories to realise they’ve moved away from what they traditional stand for and, therefore, if the people want right wing, then who better to provide it? All they need to do is unfurl their traditional colours and nail them to the mast.

Or was the Telegraph simply doing what the media should do; reporting in an impartial manner? With newspaper sales flagging across every title, such a high-profile, long-running story would give the Telegraph’s sales a real boost and also increase traffic to the website; and it is sales figures that help sell advertising space which keeps the media afloat.

Being the owner of such a high-profile story, the Telegraph might have even gained readers from their rivals; a nice bit of business.

In the words of Private Eye, trebles all round!

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.

Over the past few years newspapers have lost huge chunks of ad revenue thanks to job ads going online, along with the emergence of estate agencies operating on the web.

Ah, estate agencies; that brings me to the recession. With no-one moving house, the bulky home supplements that contributed heavily to keeping the papers buoyant have shrunk – and what job ads there were have also diminished, meaning that newspaper management have been looking at ways to cut costs and that inevitably means axing staff.

All my colleagues – while still employed – are fearful of their jobs though, but as newsrooms get smaller it means there will be fewer reporters on the ground, leading to less stories and a cut in pagination. This means that there’s less of a product for the public to buy; but then again news comes through so many other sources nowadays: 24-hour TV channels, mobile phones, plasma screens in shopping malls and railway stations, and even through social media sites such as Twitter (as a citizen journalist, and anyone can get involved in this.)

All my old colleagues are currently going through review processes and those scoring low are the ones likely to be made redundant.

Through our client Fluid, I now know about “engagement”, which is about happiness, morale and motivation.

Therefore, those getting a low score are more likely to have been there for a long time, and due in part to bad management have lost interest in the company. “X” may once have been enthusiastic, but for numerous reasons now just turns up, does the job, then goes home without putting in much effort.

In the current climate, bosses that are switched on to engagement are able to give positive messages about the future, balanced by the difficult challenges that have to be faced and overcome in the short-term.

Essential facts which are crucial to engaging employees include recognising them as key stakeholders and as individuals who have made their own personal investment in its success, while the plans for the business are clearly communicated.

Some of the techniques of engagement include turning responsibility into a reward such as getting an employee to train a new colleague, and explain what qualifies the mentor for this important assignment.

When employees must work at the weekend, provide a catered lunch and when it comes to recognition, knowledge is power so set a goal to find out one new thing about each of your employees today.

A really nice touch is to bring something back from a business trip for each employee as a thank you. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just thoughtful. You’ll be surprised how far this goes!

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.

Then there are those that have a “sort of” connection. These are the interesting ones as you never know who they are contacted to, and where it may lead. However, what I found was that after accepting a vast numbers of these I just couldn’t keep up with the Tweets.

After having a spring clean I now follow around 50 people, although this is by no means fixed, whereas there are about 60 people that I allow to follow me.

And all this brings me nicely round to how relevant Twitter can be. Yesterday morning (25 February) I sent the following Tweet: “Anyone know if Xing.com is useful?” No-one actually got back to me (slackers!), but approximately 12 hours later Pelin Ayan, the marketing manager of Xing Turkey, put me down as a contact. She’s didn’t answer my question, but I’m now taking a bit more interest in Xing.

On the other hand, last week the editor of an online business site (I’m not going to name him) decided he was no longer going to take emails or phone calls from PR people pitching stories. He’ll only do it via Twitter. This means I’m now following him, but he’s not following me. I can’t even direct message him, therefore how do I pitch to him?

He now has around 500 people following him which, surely, is counter-productive?

And because he sends so many inane Tweets, and seems to thinks he’s being a revolutionary when all he’s doing is fuelling the journalist:PR “rivalry”, he’s going to be deleted.