New Handy Guide Published: Get Tweeting

We have just published a new 'handy guide' to the Pickle Jar Communications website. Get Tweeting looks at the marketing communications opportunities for organisations interested in using Twitter.

Twitter drives traffic to the PJC website

I keep saying this and I will say it again - I love Twitter. I am a big fan. This week as I was updating the Pickle Jar Communications website, I was twittering about my progress. This was simply done as an update to what we have been upto at PJC - not with the pure intention of driving traffic to the site because I think you have to be very cautious about this kind of approach to micro-blogging. However, I was delighted to take a look at the web stats and see that by simply tweeting about this, I saw the highest ever peak so far in unique visitors to the site. Interesting how something as simple as 140 characters that took 30 seconds at most to publish can make a difference to site traffic.

'Best Answer' on LinkedIn

I'm delighted. I'm chuffed to bits. I'm estatic ... I'm now an 'expert' on PR on LinkedIn!

If you've been following my blog this week, you might have spotted my post earlier this week pondering just how many questions one should actually answer on LinkedIn. This is because I've began answering questions on LinkedIn in the subject areas that I know best. It's part of my own committment to a) establishing myself and my company as an 'expert' in communications and PR and b) sharing best practice and ideas with other communications and PR professionals, and those engaging with PR, comms and marketing.

So, after answering just a few questions on LinkedIn, I'm somewhat delighted to have had my answer selected as the 'best answer' in a recent question. Then when looking at the question page to see what others had said, I spotted against that this answer gets ranked as 'best answer' in the Change Management category too. Bonus!

I guess what I'm trying to do in this blog post, therefore, is share with you my own journey of how using a service like LinkedIn can help to raise one's profile. In itself, it is a PR/marketing tactic with an altruistic edge.

The outcome of my answer to the PR question is that the person answering the question, Justin Foster of The Tricycle, has also now included my answer in his blog post about the question with a link through to the PJC website (the shiny new PJC website I might add!). It's a great blog post in its own right, so go ahead and take a look.

New Pickle Jar Communications Website Launched

We're delighted to announce that we launched our new website this week. As with any successful website, we aim for it to be an ever evolving project, but we're happy with the results so far. New features include a Twitter feed (anyone reading this blog for a while will know what a big fan I am!), a feed directly from this blog and a 'handy guides' section where we will be providing guides and resources for communications projects. Our guide to preparing for a broadcast media interview is aready there, as is our video project planning sheet. Do visit the website, take a look around and let us know what you thing. www.picklejarcommunications.com

Just how many questions should you answer on LinkedIn?

I use LinkedIn fairly regularly as a means of maintaining and extending my professional network. I've also more recently stepped up my activity on there by answering questions that other members of the community post. I've already had one person tell me that they would like to include my answer in their blog along with a link to my blog and my website, so it clearly does have some merit from a marketing point of view, although I'm as much as interested in just sharing best practice where I can.

However, I thought I was pushing it a bit when I answered three questions on there yesterday afternoon. I thought I ought to calm it otherwise I would be viewed as a serial question-answerer!! Then I checked out the rankings for the number of answers other members of the community had given and one guy had answered 144 questions this week alone (it was only Monday!). So, this begs the question as to whether one can overdo it on this. Surely answering that volume of questions (even though many of his answers were short) means you can be spending more time perusing questions on LinkedIn that actually doing any work or following up new, real leads. Is it possible to become addicted?

Spaceman Steve Loves Pickle Jar Communications

There's no harm in a little bit of silliness on a Monday morning, now, is there?

A good friend of mine has developed his own little 'friend' - Spaceman Steve (don't ask). Spaceman Steve keeps popping up all over the place and this morning, look where he popped up.

It's a novel approach to marketing the business but my friend clearly wanted to show his support for PJC!

Winners of the Fast Forward Challenge

I recently received the photographs from the Fast Forward challenge final that I managed on behalf of Ideas for Life TV. Just because I'm proud of the teams that took part and proud of pulling this series together, I thought I'd share the picture of the winning team from Woodway Park School along with the judges.

New Challenges, New Opportunities: the role of new media in crisis communications

In my role as Events Officer for the CIPR Education and Skills Sector Group, I have been organising a conference on the role that new media plays in crisis communications. I am very excited about this conference because we have such a great line up:

- Peter Reader, University of Portsmouth (and all-round crisis comms guru for the HE sector!)
- Michael Dame, Virginia Tech (yes, we're flying him all the way from the States to talk about their horrendous experience in April 2007)
- Tom Abbott, University of Warwick (new media guru and my personal sounding board!)
- Emma Leech, Manchester Metropolitan University (Chair of CIPR Education and Skills Sector Group and boss of a very very new media savvy team!)
- Alison Arnott, Glasgow Caledonian University (the first BAA media officer on the ground at Glasgow Airport when the flaming jeep crashed into the building)

This is going to be a really exciting event, with a good long session for groups of delegates to plan how to deal with crisis situations that we'll be throwing at them - with an added element of surprise!

Further details are available online here.

If anyone would like a booking form, they can email me to request one: tracy@picklejarcommunications.com

A Right Royal Mess

I had a wry smile to myself today as I read Tariq Tahir's article in the THES, 'The Queen for a Day'.

Reading others' experiences of hosting a royal visit took me back a few years to a former role at the University of Warwick. It's not quite to the scale of Joan Concannon's experience at the University of Dundee, but I'll share my experience anyway ...

Event management was a fairly significant part of my job back then when the Communications Office started receiving calls from the West Midlands High Sheriff's office telling us that the Duke of York would be visiting the University in a few weeks time. Initial reaction seemed to be that this was a hoax. Several calls later everyone began to accept that this was for real and that His Highness would be dropping by for a visit to the University's Science Park. I was quickly drafted onto the organising committee for what was perhaps the most surreal event that I had been involved in organising. Firstly there was the security and deciding where on earth his helicopter should land. Then there was the route, working out which doors to take and timing the visit down to every last second. Then there was the brash academic who needed to be involved in the programme but steadfastly refused to alter his schedule to suit the visit (firm words from the powers-that-be put paid to that). Then, of course, crucially there was the catering (he was stopping in for lunch): a specific brand of bottled water with the caps unopened, and nothing smelly in the sandwiches - strictly no onions or garlic.

Peter, the University's press manager, rightly assumed that the visit wouldn't really attract any press attention but went ahead and invited members of the press anyway as instructed. A few photographers and, if memory serves, Sky News turned up. However, the Duke arrived in the foulest of foul moods, stomped straight past the press and straight into the building. No good coverage that day then!

I spent the initial stages of the visit (while the Duke was being escorted around and presented to by anyone that we had 'guessed' would be of interest to him) dashing around making sure everything was set for lunch and trying to keep the men with the curly wires behind their ears happy! Lunch was hosted in a building with some well-meaning, but over-excited women eager to catch a glimpse of the Prince. The lunch itself felt a little like a wake: very sombre and controlled, with everyone politely munching on quartered sandwiches and sipping tea. By careful manoeuvring I managed to be one of the few people in the room to avoid having to exchange pleasantries with the Prince by pretending to be just too busy making sure everything was running smoothly. That, and hiding behind columns. The thought of having to remember the rules of address, and worse still having to actually do that curtsy for real that I had practised so many times (and that I had had to instruct so many others on) filled me with horror. The suddenly, he was gone. All over. Event disbanded. Not even a celebratory glass of wine and pat on the back as we were acustomed to do at Warwick after a successful event. As I say, it was a surreal day but I understand no where near as surreal as the Presidential visit that Warwick hosted back in 2000. My former colleagues have anecdotes galore from that event - but that's their story to tell (although my personal favorite is the colleague who responded to someone lightly tapping on their shoulder only to turn around face-to-face with Sir Trevor McDonald politely saying that he had lost his ticket and would it still be okay for him to go into the main hall - bless!).

PS Okay, so my title of this blog post is a little unfair - it wasn't really a 'mess' - but I wanted something snappy and it seemed like fun!

Creating good podcasts

I love reading updates from Mashable - the social networking blog - and their posts often provide content for my own blog posts for all the right reasons. Sadly, though, today they're forming a blog post for all the wrong reasons. I decided while grabbing a quick bite to eat this lunchtime to delve into their post 'For the Love of Podcasting' and listen to a few of their podcasts. I was really disappointed. I can see they're aiming for a certain style and tone to these podcasts, but the attention to the quality of production is poor. The introduction is rushed, the sound quality is very bad, they don't tell you (from what I can see) how long each podcast is, and the presenter doesn't sound particularly well prepared. This is such a pity because the content should actually be quite good, and is certainly appealing, but the quality really put me off of listening beyond the first 30 seconds or so of each one that I launched.

So, while podcasts are a form of communications that you can produce yourselves, there are a few basic tricks really worth following in order to make them just that little bit more friendly on your listeners' ears:

• be prepared for your podcast. Have a plan (this doesn't have to be a script - in fact, it's sometimes better if it isn't scripted) of what you are going to say and what you might ask the person you are interviewing
• check correct pronounciations of names, and check job titles of the interviewee before you begin recording
• always log the length of the podcast for your listeners to know just how much time they need to put aside to listening to this
• slow down your speech just a little so that what you are saying is clear
• wherever possible, conduct interviews face-to-face. Using a telephone line isn't ideal but it can be okay if face-to-face or ISDN interviews just aren't possible
• invest in decent recording equipment
• edit your podcast. It's well worth spending just a little time cutting out some of those ums and ahs or even full questions and answers that just haven't quite worked to make the podcast flow better
• CIPR members should also check out Karen Ainley's guide to podcasting for PR in the member area of the CIPR website (under PR guides).
  

Blocking PR 'spam'

It's funny that as a PR professional I rarely see any pitch that I deliver to a journalist or blogger for that matter as 'spam'. This is because I always do my homework and would only send a release to a journalist or blogger who are writing about the same subject area that the release is in. However, this blog post today shows just how annoying some PR agencies are potentially being in their approach to bloggers. So much so that people are beginning to develop spam filters to specifically block emails from particular PR agencies. Ouch! You really wouldn't want to be on that blacklist.

Interestingly, I also received an alleged 'press release' into my own inbox today. Slightly bizarre given that I'm a PR professional. I'm used to sending them, not receiving them. I don't quite know how I received this one or why I was on their mailing list. Maybe they found me through my blog and thought I might give them a mention. Basically, it's for a new website about eco-living, from what I can see. However, the press release is just so bad for the following reasons that I just don't think they deserve a mention:

1. It was sent as a pdf attachment (strong rule of good PR - don't send unsolicited attachments!)
2. The covering email was not personalised - pure laziness (or sign of bulk emails)
3. The alleged 'press release' provided me with hardly any information
4. It felt and looked far more like an advert than a press release.