pr is the engine of content marketing

As the idea of content marketing grows so must understanding. Never come across it? You will and here's a starting point.

by Bill Penn

Everybody is talking about content marketing.

According to a new survey by Econsultancy, 90 per cent of B2B marketing professionals say they are aware of it. But how many really understand what it’s all about?

Another quick look at the statistics tells you that only around a quarter of them are actually implementing content marketing programmes. Draw your own conclusions. The blaggers still rule OK would be mine. 

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putting your ear in

by Phil Jewitt

One of my early posts suggested that to be truly influential, you need to be effective, in both word and deed. I suggested that merely being popular doesn’t necessarily mean you are effective or influential.

I’d also suggest that to be constructively influential you need to have the respect of and respect for others and be trusted to say and do the right thing. On occasions, and as recently highlighted, this also means to not do or say things that don’t help. And we‘ve all done that and regretted it to some extent, haven’t we?

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from Norwich with love

by Darren Caveney

When you turn up at a local authority headquarters and you're greeted with the sight of a Jaguar jet fighter perched on display in the grounds, then you know that something a little bit special awaits.

That place was Norfolk County Council's offices on the outskirts of beautiful Norwich. The reason for the visit was for an innovative 'ideas exchange'.

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learning, learning, always learning

By Darren Caveney

I was lucky enough to be asked to talk to a group of final year PR students at Manchester Metropolitan University recently about PR careers in the public sector.

I was invited by Sarah Williams, senior PR lecturer at the University, and it was great to see the excellent work she and her colleagues are delivering to prepare the next batch of comms and PR folk for the world of paid employment.

Of course, it took me straight back to starting out in my own career, full of that heady, excited anticipation of where a sparkly new career may take me – somewhere glamorous, working for an exciting brand and maybe travelling around the world and back in the process.

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charging to pitch...

by Sarah Williams

We may have gone back into recession but I was shocked to read last week that BAA was charging PR agencies to pitch for its business.  It is most certainly exploitation, as Francis Ingham noted in his statement to PR Week, but it is also arrogant behaviour.  

They may well incur overheads as a result of the pitching process but so do agencies. 

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once upon a time...

by Phil Jewitt

About 18 months ago I was invited to a meeting (and I have a history with meeting invites!) Just a little project to replace Leeds City Council’s intranet and website! There were over 20 people sat round a conference table. We all gave our names and roles and then I thought I heard someone say “and I’m the Scrum master”

“Course you are pal” I thought, “and I’m the Gate Keeper and this is Ghostbusters 4, now let’s crack on cos I’m a busy man”.

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film is often the forgotten medium

by Hannah Rees & Matt Bond

Film can often be the forgotten tool. Considered by many as too expensive, too technical and too time consuming.

At Cornwall Council, we started to embrace the medium around five years ago and put some communications resource behind it.  We were right to do so and it continues to be an integral part of our communications mix.

My role as Communications Specialist now deals with film as part of a total social media and digital communications toolset, and works in tangent with our design team.

Film is a proven medium and has seen a surge in popularity in recent times for both internal and external communications.

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little words mean a lot

by Sharon Telfer

Hands up, who knew what a jerrycan was?

If you’re like me – and possibly Francis Maude – you probably thought it was just a container for petrol.

If you’re like my partner, who happily spent the glorious March sunshine in the garage doing up a moped, you already knew it’s a large piece of military kit holding around 20 litres.
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measure twice, cut once

by Darren Caveney

I’ve always had a fascination for stats, and a sadly photographic memory for stat-related trivia.   This problem surfaced as a youngster.  As a 10-year old I could reel off the brake horse power and top speed of pretty well any car in my Top Trumps sports cars pack.

I even began to memorise chunks of the more interesting sections of my 1977 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

When it came to football I could bore with the best of them on stats and figures. It partly came from spending too much time staring at Ceefax on a Saturday evening following the day’s results (pages 312 through to 324, for those in the know).

And I could probably tell you the attendance, to within a couple of a hundred, at most of Birmingham City’s key home games in the past 20-odd years.  

 

So, no surprise then, that one of my favourite quotes ever comes from Vic Reeves who once said that “88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.”

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communications: WD40 for organisations.

by Darren Caveney

So, spring well and truly sprang over this weekend.

Temperatures soared to a balmy 17 degrees in my back garden, inspiring me to dig out the trusty old lawnmower from the back of the garden shed.

An old petrol model, battered and bruised from some less than gentle handling, it’s now rusty with age.  But it can still be relied upon to tame my urban jungle of a lawn.

With the sun out, it was time for the first cut of the year.  Four hours preparation, clipping hedges and edges and weeding borders then the main event.  The glory job.  Can you imagine the sense of anti-climax when the thing wouldn’t start?

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in defence of communication ethics

by Sarah Williams

In a report in PR Week this week, Lord Bell, chairman of Chime Communications, the group that owns Bell Pottinger, claimed that questions about the conduct of the company’s PR division have had no effect on trading.

Bell Pottinger were last year subject to a sting operation, carried out by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and published by the Independent, in which senior members of the firm were alleged to have boasted about their influence in Westminster.
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