The Brinkwire blog

Manchester United is not China (via @Tim)

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by Andrew.

Tim Bradshaw of the FT has just tweeted to say the Manchester United press office is refuting claims in today’s blogs that players have been banned from Twitter. Tim quotes the Man U press office sa saying; “Entirely up to them.”

Paid Content has a good write up which asks “Is Manchester United the next China?” as it discusses the news the club was believed to be unilaterally banning its players from maintaining any form of social media presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

It may sound odd – but real time social is a huge problem for sports in the States. Matches tend to be scheduled to air on US TV, across multiple time zones, in a waterfall like chain of appearances. In other words; a match can be viewed live in New York in the morning but then air on TV on West coast some hours later.

The challenge that Twitter et al brings to this is that the fans can get an almost real-time stream of the play-by-play events without paying the extra subscription costs to a pay-for-view or waiting for the network running the match a few hours later.

The English premiership doesn’t have to battle with time zones but does have very lucrative pay-for-view franchises to protect.

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The PR opportunities behind a tweet: @CoryBooker and @BigSixxRaven

Posted on 04. Jan, 2010 by Andrew.

This story has made it all the way across the globe to a snowy Scotland.

Seems the local residents in Jersey are also suffering from some unwelcome snowfall too. Local radio DJ (with the rather awesome name of Ravie Rave) noticed the authorities hadn’t shoved her 65-year-old father’s pavement she did something about it.

What did she do? Call the authorities? Nope. Shovel the snow herself? Use the radio to summon up help? No.

Rave used her Twitter account, @BigSixxRaven, to tweet the Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Mr Booker, you see, is also on Twitter as @CoryBooker.

Now Cory Booker already has a good reputation as a no-nonsense type of politician. I suspect he’s a savvy one too.  The major turned up at the snow covered walkway himself to do the labour. Not bad, huh?

This beats weeks of election spin. It’s an unexpected act that’s quirky enough to broadcast around the blogs. Both Rave and Booker will benefit from this.

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Does @iaintait have Google Wave invites? No! #iaintait

Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by Andrew.

Take a minute to think about the fate of poor Iain Tait. Ian’s author of the rather good Crackunit blog and is currently unable to use Twitter due to a swarm of users who thinks he can get them a Google Wave invite. He can’t.

It started off well. A friend wanted to commend Iain and his influence in new media. That single tweet created the hashtag.

Then, tweet by tweet, the good natured banter led to the infamous tweet from Mark Earls which said; “RT @eskimon RT @iaintait 1,000 Google Wave invites2give away RT w/the hash tag #iaintait to get one.

As Iain says – that’s how it all started.

It shows that people will click that retweet button quickly and certainly before they investigate what they’re retweeting.

Iain’s now suffering an #iaintait mention every 10 seconds. As he says; “It is IMPOSSIBLE to put the genie back in the bottle”.

Ah. The power of social media.

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Staniforth MD walks the BBC through Sarah Brown’s Twitter success

Posted on 28. Sep, 2009 by Andrew.

Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister is doing very well on Twitter. She has the highest number of followers for any British “well known” and has sent more than a thousand tweets.

This perked the interest of the BBC News. Rob Brown, the MD of PR agency Staniforth, was lucky enough to land the chance to have a go at explaining why Mrs Brown has been so successful. He was also able to bat aside the usual incredulous comments about Twitter’s own success.

Rob, who can also find writing for the PR Media Blog, cited Sarah Brown’s natural charisma and her experience from PR land as two key elements to her success.

(Hat tip to Jon Clements, who also works at Staninform, for surfacing this).

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Reuters adds Twitter widget

Posted on 26. Aug, 2009 by Andrew.

The Reuters UK blog has added a Twitter widget to their sidebar.

A few months ago we might have presented this news as evidence of the impact Twitter is having on the media. Not today. Today my first thought was that this was a good move as it helps convince readers that the @reuters_co_uk Twitter account and its suspicious pigeon are real and valid.

Reuters UK still have a long way to go in collecting even a fraction of either the BBC and CNN’s followers. The reason they’re so far behind is nothing to do with the quality of news from Reuters and everything to do with them being more of a business-to-business brand rather than a more widely known business-to-consumer brand.

Expansion into Twitter makes sense for Reuters as it is a great way to strength the brand and get closer to the “consumer”, in other words, get closer to people. Reuters often breaks some great stories and a strong Twitter presence will help credit the news agency with these successes.

What do you think about the widget itself, though? Too stark a contrast to the rest of the blog design? Does it load swiftly enough for you?

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Full disclosure is international and not fair

Posted on 27. Jul, 2009 by Andrew.

Industry leader Brian Solis has published a write up of points raised by a virtual conference of thought leaders on the thorny issue of sponsored conversations of twitter.

Here’s the first paragraph;

In light of the FTC’s recent scrutiny of Social Media practices and the activity that connects brands to influencers and ultimately consumers, we will soon see guidelines and corresponding penalties to serve as governance for future engagement.

So we’re already off to a bad start. I know that’s controversial but it’s true. The internet is not American. It’s international. If moves by the FTC to investigate disclosure then that’s a good thing. The online PR, industry, however needs to raise its game and be aware of other possible laws.

In the UK, for example, the Protection fro Unfair Trading act is clear. Companies – or agencies in their employ – can do nothing that gives a positive review for their product or service without also making it clear there was a financial arrangement to do so (or, indeed, a negative one).

For example, if an employee of the online PR agency for Xoopit was to tweet “I recommend Xoopit! It’s ace!” and doesn’t also say they’re a client then, technically, UK law is broken. It may not be a good law but it’s there.

Xoopit may not care. Countries tend to say laws apply if their citizens are effected while in their country. America is especially keen on this point of view – as anyone in the online gambling and betting community a few years ago will tell you! So even if Xoopit had no offices in the UK it may still find itself in hot waters (as well as a UK brand issue).

Let’s stick with Xoopit for an example; they’ve just been bought by Yahoo. So sometimes growing companies need to be as careful as large companies. I can imagine if Yahoo’s due diligence had found Xoopit breaking UK law then that would have allowed them to knock down the sale price.

I know I’m being harsh here. This is the point of view of a Brit. It’s in my interest to point out that this discussion should be international and not national.

There are just a few other concerns. As I wrote on Solis’ blog I’ve no sympathy with IZEA’s Ted Murphy worrying that some solutions put the platforms at risk.

He said;

If a tweet from a platform needs to be in different color but a tweet from a tweeter that just got a free trip or video game doesn’t it puts the platforms at a disadvantage.

I don’t think that matters because we need to work out what best practise is and then lift our game to meet it. We shouldn’t work out what seems to be easiest and fairest for all the players now and do that. It’s tough but some of the current solutions we’re using today to raise a buzz or interest simply will be neither acceptable nor successful next month.

In his write up Brian Solis notes;

But the reality is, whether you agree with them or not, sponsored conversations and paid tweets work when used in the correct situations as a complementary program in addition to other traditional and socially-focused engagement initiatives.

Once again the temptation is to say “so what”. Just because something works doesn’t mean we should do it. You can take performance enhancing drugs to win a sprint but you shouldn’t do it. You may win the race but the danger to your career is there. In this analogy it’s worse; we’re not even the sprinter, we are her coach who has persuaded her to take the risk because we know we’ll look good when she does well and we can probably go elsewhere should she get caught.

The problem Brian has brought upon himself by leading this charge and stepping forward as the thought leaders’ scribe is that he provides a focus for the rest of us to channel our thoughts and reactions.

It’s certainly worth reading every word of the large post. It’s an extremely useful addition to the social media thought sphere. Brian’s problem is an asset to the rest of us.

In fact, it was this post which persuaded us to prefix the Twitterfeed tweets from Brinkwire’s news hub with [PR]. Clicking the link takes visitors to what’s clearly a professional press release service. We wanted to put a pre-click disclosure on the message too.

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It happens – @duncanriley puts bounty on Twitter spammers

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Andrew.

Fancy some easy money? If you’ve the inside scoop on who’s been sharing Twitter passwords around then the Inquisitr’s Duncan Riley is the man for you.

At the start of the week the former TechCrunch writer threw together an odd but understandable blog post – Twitter needs to act urgently on direct message spam. What was odd about this post was that Duncan was annoyed that we was getting DMs from people he didn’t know. Except you can’t get DMs from people you don’t know. Twitter only lets you get DMs from people you follow.

After an email from Biz Stone, Duncan Riley’s blogged to say he didn’t know this (we might see shades of Ketchum here http://blog.brinkwire.com/en/143/first-impressions-and-ketchum-insights-from-cheeky_geeky-and-rachelakay/). That’s understandable. You often don’t know what you can’t miss.

There is a twist. Riley is sure he hadn’t followed any of these people. As the type of blogger who has to test the myriad of sites that hook into the Twitter platform Duncan Riley has no doubt given his password to various services (Twitter’s Oauth isn’t that old). It seems scarily possible that one of those services has been abusing their access to username & password data and may have been following accounts on @duncanriley’s behalf.

There’s certainly evidence that odd things happen with Twitter followers. Just today David Cushman of Brando Social had to ask “Where did those 5000 people come from?” when his follower account nearly tripled over night. These mysterious followers vanished as quickly as they appeared.

Riley’s opened the bounty at just $100 for information on who’s leaking Twitter details (there’s an irony here after Twittergate; if you care to look for it) but we suspect that bounty will climb.

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It’s Muck Rack’s Tweet PR service but different. An alternative.

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Andrew.

Muck Rack are going great guns today with news of the Tweet PR service. You pay $1 a character and have to pay at least $50. They’re followed by about 3,500 people and many of those are journalists.

The concept is that busy journalists want to scan quickly for a story and get on with writing about it.

The delightful Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable writes;

Muck Rack is hoping to capitalize on the short attention span of journalists and the anxious PR people who want to reach them quickly and in short-form.

Steve Rubel speaks highly of CEO Greg Galant. He adds;

PepsiCo, one of our clients, is the first major brand to use the service in support of their Blogher presence.

Neville Hobson admits he hadn’t heard of Muck Rack  before Mashable’s post (that’s okay; he’s still not heard of us yet) but goes on to say;

I’m not sure I see a viable market for this. If you’re a PR with a Twitter account, you could do exactly the same and save yourself the fee. Of course, your followers won’t be the same as Muck Rack’s, but you’d likely have a clearer more focused sense of who you’re pitching.

This is the bit where we can climb up on our soap box and pitch ourselves.

Brinkwire offers PR tweets too – and you can buy an unlimited subscription. Simply put every single press release that we accept gets tweeted out about 30 minutes later care of Mario Menti’s brilliant Twitterfeed.

If you’re on our “as much as you can eat” monthly service this means you can have as many tweets as you can write press releases for each month. We’re bias but we think this is the best of both words; you get your headline tweet that busy journalists can scan but it also points directly to the full press release that contains important elements like contact details.

We wish Muck Rack all the best and are glad they’ve managed to get the spotlight on this type of service. We might take a learning or two from them too – right now our blog posts and press release tweets appear side by side; should we highlight the press releases with a tag or prefix? What do you think?

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First impressions and Ketchum; insights from @cheeky_geeky and @rachelakay

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by Andrew.

Just in time for the weekend Mark Drapeau (@cheeky_geeky) was able to serve up a classic case of a successful PR agency suffering the public embarrassment of some public miss steps in the social media field.

As is often the case we found the comments in posts like this to be riveting. In particular Rachel Kay (that’s @rachelakay) had some wisdom to bring to the conversion.

So let’s start there. Let’s start with Rachel’s insight.

Rachel said;

Interesting post Mark. I know Ketchum is a great agency. You don’t grow to that size and boast that kind of client roster without knowing what you are doing. I’ll also give them credit for hiring someone to lead social media efforts – it sounds like they may need some extra instruction there and they see that.

I agree with you that she should ask for DMs if she isn’t following anyone – doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’d suggest she be more liberal with who she follows back. While I’m just a small shop – I make new business connections on Twitter all the time. I doubt if I closed myself off to intimate conversation I’d experience that. You can find value in some expected and unexpected places.

Mark’s reply was good too. He said;

Thanks Rachel. This isn’t really a question of how good a PR agency Ketchum is. It’s about the perhaps growing perception that their employees regularly bungle the art of relating to people using social tools.

As for them creating a position that deals with social media and digital strategy, as an outsider I feel this should have been an obvious thing to do about a year ago (at least). So, big whoop in my humble opinion. (And their job description could be summarized as – Do everything digital!)

So what was all the fuss about?

You can tell from the comments that we’re talking about PR giant Ketchum here. Ketchum wanted to hire a VP of Social Media. Perhaps the first thing to note – not something discussed in Mark’s post – is that Ketchum thought they needed to look externally for this post and couldn’t full it internally.

What really caught Mark’s attention was the way Pamela Rocco Von Lehmden, a Senior VP at Ketchum, went about recruiting the role via Twitter. She wanted people to DM her if they where interested in the role. Pamela only follows 120 or so people on Twitter and so only those 120 or so people could DM here.

Mark lists this – and other wiggles in Pamela’s approach – as fails. It wasn’t that much of a job ad as hardly anyone could respond.

That’s why Mark’s response to Rachel is interesting. He’s not calling into question Ketchum’s PR ability. He’s suggesting that the people at Ketchum might not be the best at coping with social media tools. Vital looks like Twitter.

That’s a fair point to raise but it does also assume a lot. It assumes, for example, that Pamela’s tweet was intended to be a wide call to action. She may well have intended it only for the 120 or so people she follows.

Interestingly, Pamela’s intentions may not matter. Mark called it as clumsy and a scan of Twitter Search throws up more than a fair few retweets on the matter.

Just as Sasha Cohen’s Bruno movie seems to be living or dying by the first wave of Twitter responses it seems likely that the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ may pass sentence and judgement on a myriad of other issues.

What do you think? Does this illustrate that traditional PR agencies like Ketchum are staffed up with people who’ll struggle with online? Does Mark have an axe to grind or is this just a storm in a tea cup?

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TechCrunch caught in Twitter Exposé fire storm

Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by Andrew.

Last night Michael Arrington of TechCrunch glory announced they had been sent 301 confidential documents from Twitter via a contact known as Hacker Croll.

They had Twitter’s security code for the building. They had details of failed interviews. Right from the outset Arrington made it clear he wouldn’t publish any of that stuff. He would, however, publish the rest; financial projections, product plans and even strategy notes.

What do you think? Are you excited? Do you care? Why would Hacker Croll do this? Why would TechCrunch do this? Should they do this?

A few hours later, some trending topics on Twitter and 235 fiery hot comments later and Arrington’s had to post again to revisit the situation.

A lot of comments said that TechCrunch shouldn’t do this. They disagree. Many users have described these documents as stolen and therefore TechCrunch shouldn’t publish. They disagree.

Arrington’s come up with a great quote supposedly from Lord Northcliffe; “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising”.

Another key stroke in Arrington’s argument is “it’s not our fault that…” In short, stuff happens and TechCrunch reports on it and they’re not about hanging around waiting for a press release to republish.

He concludes by saying he feels bad for Twitter and wishes this had never happened. It did happen, however, and the documents will be published. Google should improve their security policies.

What’s your take?

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