Posts Tagged ‘liberate media’
Three years in social media/PR - where next?
September 11th, 2009
This week marks the third anniversary of the launch of Liberate Media’s blog, which naturally got me thinking and reminiscing about the launch of our company and how the environment around PR, social media, and everything in-between, has changed over the years.
Casting my mind back to 2006, I know it’s really not that long ago but play along, social media as an opportunity for brand communications and an opportunity for the communications industry at a whole was still at a very early phase of development. Sure, we’d experienced the now infamous and much discussed Dell Hell case study, so the evidence was mounting on the effect and power of online communities, but only a small percentage of agencies and brands were experimenting, let alone embracing social media.
From personal experience I’d discussed the effect of social media on PR with my then boss, who assured me that it was just another fad and ‘nobody cares what I’m doing every minute of the day’. That kind of summed up the traditional PR agency approach at the time, which is why my co-founder and I decided to get out fast and set up our own consultancy that would embrace social media and any other medium that helped us to embrace a more community driven and conversational approach to PR, rather than the hard sell and ‘who cares what a few nutters think’ approach that had done so much damage to PR over the preceding years.
Admittedly, over the first year or so it was trial and error with social media, but wasn’t it, and in fact isn’t it still, the same for everyone? Clients were not as willing to invest in social media and generally experiments with projects were as far as we were allowed to take it with many brands. The main issue was education and evidence, the move from traditional marketing to understanding a social environment was a huge leap and the good old ROI question became an excuse not to engage in some quarters, rather than a real search for measurement as it is in many others, even though the ROI of traditional PR was questionable at best.
As brands became more comfortable, saw more success stories and understood the benefits of engaging with their communities the debate moved beyond making a case to prove social media, at least for the pioneers, and leaned more towards experimentation and development to find the best way of building campaigns. In reality there was and is no handbook, no real experts or gurus who have it nailed, although some like to label themselves as such, what we have is development and learning, those with more experience and those with less.
What has changed is the belief in social media and the hunger to get involved. Now the cynical may say that the explosion of those people offering social media services, from web developers to PRs, to social media specialists to SEOs to digital agencies, advertising agencies, and their mothers, over the last year or two is because there is money to be made, and the simple economics of the situation would back that up. However, in too many of these cases each person/agency/company that has a rightful claim to be involved in developing a relevant element of social media is in fact trying to stake a claim for ownership, even though they know in their heart of hearts they can’t do it all. Social Media should belong to PRs/digital agencies/SEOs/ (delete as appropriate) well it shouldn’t, it doesn’t and it won’t.
The one thing that social media has proved to me over the years is you can’t fake it, at least not for long and those that are trying to own social media are missing the point. To understand social media and therefore operate with in the spectrum of skills required to run relevant campaigns you need multiple skills, not just marketing/PR/digital/search/content but all of it.
That’s where I believe the evolution will take place over the next three years. Not in one sector taking ownership, but a new sector developing, not just of people who ‘get it’ but of those that forget ownership and build skill sets not just departmentally but as individuals, who understand PR/content development/search/digital as a whole and those that can become actual social media consultants not just pushing budgets towards their slice of the social media pie.
So, I said at the beginning that this post will be a look back at the development of social media and PR over the last three years, and I’ve banged on about social media in the main, mostly because I feel that is a large part of the future of PR. Traditional PR, in my opinion, will still be relevant, just as search and the many other digital disciplines will remain relevant, but as a part of the wider offering. The confusion begins when we refer to social media as the online aspect of the campaigns we run, the conversations we have and the development of community only online. At its heart the social aspect doesn’t have to be online. One of the most natural parts of human behaviour is the need to be social and communicate, and not just online, the theories are relevant to communications as a whole.
This is where I believe we are heading, to a new space outside of petty bickering about who is right and who started it and who owns it and blah, blah - who cares? It’s really not a hard concept: we listen, we understand we get involved by being useful and develop relationships and reputation. I think that’s a pretty relevant description of social media online or offline. Although it probably will become redefined, relabelled and rewired, that’s where we need to be heading as communications professionals, be that online, offline and everything in between.
Will we get there in the next three years? Probably not, but we’ll keep experimenting and improving.
Introducing Pressitt, social media news release (SMNR) creation service
March 2nd, 2009
At Liberate Media we always try to stand out from the crowd and push the boundaries of communications, and today marks a special day for us, as we introduce Pressitt, a social media news release service based on the social media news release template by Todd Defren.
The Pressitt project has been in development for the last year, and during that time we’ve used our own research to develop the service while trying to accommodate feedback from the social media news release community.
This is the first public stage of the project, but we won’t stop here. We intend to continue developing and adding more functionality and more social media elements, so please tell us what you think and be part of the Pressitt smnr evolution.
Pressitt is currently in private beta and is a collaboration between Liberate Media and Best Served Cold. Please register your interest and we will try our very best to accommodate you.
More about Pressitt:
This is how it breaks down:
Title: Title of your SMNR
Overview: Brief overview of the release
Core facts: Nuggets of information, expanding on the overview with facts and figures
Contact information: Names, email, and tel of the contacts, we have also included links to social profiles
Relevant links: Links with thumbs shots to relevant sites
Videos: Ability to easily add YouTube videos, more sites to follow.
Image: Add up to 8 images
Files: Add up to 4 files to support your release, including ppt, pptx, pdf, doc, dox, and excel
Quotes: Ability to add quotes from company spokespeople that add value to the release
Boilerplate: All essential trading information
Social bookmarking: All the usual bookmarking sites available
Comments: Register to add quotes
I hope that gives you a flavour of Pressitt.
The current version offers us a platform that we will build on, first with new levels of functionality and secondly with a new premium version.
Here are some other Pressitt SMNR examples currently on the site:
Kerb develops game campaign with user-generated content for online creative publisher Zoo Qoo
iBAHN Posts Record Sales in January
Liberate Media make it on to the SEO BIGLIST
August 26th, 2008
The guys at Liberate Media always strive to give are community of readers something back in the form of honest and thought provoking commentary, the latest social media news and lots of others features from our writers Wendy McAuliffe, Lloyd Gofton, Tim Greenhalgh and Andy Merchant.
So it was nice to see somebody had recognised are hard work, in the form of the - BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 082508
This is what Lee Odden from the online marketing blog had to say:
Liberate Media Blog - This UK based agency blog with Andy Merchant, Tim Greenhalgh and founders Lloyd Gofton and Wendy McAuliffe covers emerging trends, industry observations, social media and digital PR topics.
As part of the list we get a big shiny badge to add to our site:
Thanks for reading the blog so far, we hope you enjoy it.
Watch this space for more exiting posts.
Introducing a new(ish) member of the team
August 8th, 2008
At Liberate Media we’re always on the look out for consultants that can add a new dimension to our team, and Tim Greenhalgh has been a breath of fresh air since he joined last year. It may seem like an odd time to introduce him, but as we’ve taken the decision to divide our blogging power into separate focuses, now seemed like the right time to put Tim firmly in the spotlight.
Personally, I’ve known Tim for many years, having first introduced him to my clients when he was working for The Times. Tim has gathered a vast amount of experience in various roles, including 20 years as a national journalist, specialising in technology and education for The Times and Observer, and also launching several technology start-ups, including a VC-backed virtual world company.
As you can imagine, Tim’s experience has been invaluable to us not only in terms of his journalist instinct and contacts, but with the real world business knowledge that comes from running your own company. Something that our clients appreciate.
We hope you’ll enjoy Tim’s blog, which is focused on virtual worlds, mobile’s move into social media and digital education as well. You may have already seen a few of Tim’s posts on the central blog, and I’m sure he will build up a following of his own pretty quickly.
Best of luck Tim.
Follow the new Liberate Media Twitter account
August 7th, 2008
As you are all well aware Liberate is very much up to speed with all the latest happenings in the jolly old world of social media. The Liberate team have decided it’s about time to create a Liberate Media Twitter account.
You can follow Liberate Media updates here.
The Liberate Twitter account is kind of like Top Gear’s Stig your never quite sure who’s behind the mask or Twitter account in this case! - Look out for the latest company news, ideas and views from the Liberate Media updates.
Other people to follow within team Liberate already on Twitter are:
Directors, Wendy Mcauliffe, Lloyd Gofton
Social Media consultant, Andy Merchant
and Tim has a go sometimes too! (if you read this Tim only joking…lol)