As well as receiving a prize of 250€, the winners in each category will be invited to make a short presentation at the Symposium.

Be quick – the deadline for entries is Sunday, January 30, 2011

The three categories are:

1. Most effective social media presence established by a communications/public relations student studying on undergraduate or post-graduate programme at a European university.

Criteria:

• Focus/ vision
• Originality, creativity, style, insight etc
• Engagement with online community
• Appreciation of the opportunities offered by social media

2. Most innovative use of social media techniques in a communications research project or investigation

Criteria:

• Originality of insights, thought, theoretical understanding
• Creativity, style, insight etc
• Engagement with online community
• Appreciation of the opportunities offered by social media

3. Most valuable contribution to the academic understanding of the impact of social media on PR practice. This may be a university lecturer but could also be a thought leader, postgraduate researcher, author, or consultant. We welcome entries from individuals but also NOMINATIONS from others.

Criteria

• Originality of insights, thought, theoretical understanding
• Creativity in online engagement with students/ researchers/industry
• Contribution to evolution of PR practice

Entry

If you are interested in entering, send an email with your name and the URL of your web presence to Philip Young (philip.young@sunderland.ac.uk) and you will be added to the participants’ blogroll.

BledCom 2011: Bled, Slovenia, 1-2 July 2011

International History of PR Conference: Bournemouth, UK, 6-7 July 2011

Euprera Congress 2011: Leeds, UK, 8-10 September 2011 (abstract submission deadline 10 January)

This was the venue for Bright One’s Impress London event. Organised by Ben Matthews, its aim was to take an in-depth look at what’s really going on in the PR industry and advise how you can become a part of it.

Ali Gee, Head of Planning at Edelman was first to take to the front after the welcome refreshments. She emphasised the need to make sure that your clients loved you. We gained valuable advice about how she felt PR had changed since she started her career and explored the changing role of the media because of consumers becoming increasingly media savvy. And with a professional career that included working at 3 Monkeys, Bell Pottinger and now Edelman she was definitely one to listen to.

Round one: PR versus journalism

There was then a panel session based on ‘Working with Journalists’, the old PR v journalism debate.

Stefan Stern, a former Financial Times columnist, started proceedings. He made the transition from journalist to PR so was well qualified to advise us how to build relationships. He acknowledged that PR professionals and journalists co-created news and that real news was still ‘something that someone somewhere doesn’t want you to know about.’

Nicole Eisele of Hotwire PR emphasised the differences when working on a pan-European stage, noting differences in media channels and that you have to ensure you make your news relevant for each journalist.

Steve Ballinger from Amnesty International also focused on media relations and acknowledged that many people still got the basics wrong. He also made the point that being in the news kept you in the news therefore emphasising the role of a well structured, consistent PR plan.

Brainstorming and careers sessions

After filling our faces on pastries and fruit we were back into the Brightone break out session, which gave us a chance to work in groups and brainstorm ideas for real life case studies. It was brilliant to be able to interact with the other people who were there and get thrown into groups to produce some ideas.

Sarah Stimson from Unicornjobs.com was there to lend a helping hand and offer advice on CV’s and interviews, crucial for me as I will be applying for jobs in the near future. We were told that there are often 60 applicants for each graduate scheme so competition is fierce. The underlying theme however is to be polite, enthusiastic and to have a real passion for your subject.

Importance of social media

Social media was a phrase that was referred to all day, along with the importance of being au fait with it before we began our careers in PR.

Rob Dyson from Whizz Kids used real life examples from his work to show the importance of engaging with people on social platforms and not just broadcasting to them. He also shared with us that he integrates all the work he does on social networking sites to make sure he presents a cohesive image.

Chris Reed, managing partner at Brew told us of the difference when pitching to bloggers and gave us the ‘WIIIFM’ test – ‘What is in it for me?’, the test that people ask when given new information.

He left quoting the phrase ‘be excellent to each other’, something not just PR professionals could benefit from but society as a whole.

Stephen Davies then took to the floor and told us all to PR ourselves to make sure that we get the career we want. He then used the phrase that would be quickly become the quote of the day for me. ‘You have to have the eye of the tiger…’ Indeed yes, he did quote Rocky!

And community management

Community management is an emerging sector within communications, with more and more brands realising they have to engage with their relevant community all the time, not just when they want to sell them something.

Rob Hinchcliffe told us that community managers used to sit and referee the ‘unwashed masses posting comments on websites’. Now they sit at the middle of the business and integrate all the elements to make sure that the campaign suits their community.

Jaz Cummins from the Guardian used the phrase ‘mutualism’, which is when readers part own the paper and when their comments are classed as content.

Nicola Jones came up with a good analogy: ‘community managers are the host of the party, they invite the right people who all have something in common and make sure they are having a good time.’

Organiser and Founder of Bright One, Ben Matthews then took to the front holding his red Moleskine notepad. He emphasised the need to be passionate and align your values with that of the brands you are working for. You have to become your business in order to represent it effectively.

‘Your career starts before your first job’ was the other phrase of the day that really rang true with me.

Ben was pleased with how the event went when I caught up with him afterwards. ”It was fantastic to see around 100 people from a mixture of PR backgrounds attend and speaking to them after the event it was clear that they all got something out of the day. At Bright One, we’re always keen to give something back to students and help them transition into the PR industry – after all it wasn’t that long ago that I was in the same position as you. I’d like to thank all of the speakers who gave up their time to come down to the event, as well as Edelman and Unicorn Jobs for all their support and helping us get the event off the ground. Here’s to next year!”

Ben is to me a real inspiration - a shining example of what you can achieve if you put your mind to it. The fact that he set up Bright One to give something back is truly selfless and I wish him every success. The event offered a chance to interact with people who are working within the sector and who are enjoying it as much as I hope to. The final six months for me at university will be extremely busy but now I have even more of a focus and my dream job is within touching distance.

If you want to follow the speakers on Twitter, these are their details:

@stefanstern @chris_reed @stedavies @robmdyson @jazcummins @navigatornic @hinchcliffe @gooorooo @benrmatthews @impresslondon

Photographs of the event from Bright One’s Impress London photostream on Flickr, used with permission.

Over the past three years I tried to cover each of the above and have found that the last of the tactics – the events – was the best way to meet professionals, learn from them and also show them that a degree in PR makes a 20 year old more aware of the world of work and its challenges than they would have expected.

However, the financial issue becomes a problem many times as PR conferences that we dream of (like the ones in the weekly notices we get) are completely out of reach for the regular student, with prices going up to four figures.

Communicate Magazine thought about this last summer and joined an event you all might have heard of (The Super Intern competition) to offer the winners free entry to some of their conferences in 2010.

Luckily, I was among them and this Tuesday I had the chance to attend the #smcc10 or Social Media in a Corporate Context 2010 in Manchester’s elegant Palace Hotel.

Overall, the conference was fascinating as although many of the case studies are already iconic, the inside information and the strategies behind them were astonishing. I’ll guide you through a few of the key points we covered and hopefully the information will be as valuable to you as it was to me. As a tip, do click on the hyperlinks as they will explain a lot… it was after all a social media conference.

Social media newsrooms

The day started with an X Factor style presentation of different social media newsrooms and online press centres. The concept is not new but not many dare to use it yet which made the examples of First Direct, Visit Britain and Sony Europe quite interesting and unique (for instance the number of languages; Visit Britain is available in 35 countries and 25 languages).

It is very important that the platforms contain all sorts of content and formats, from text, pictures, videos and also comments and opinions. The conclusion of the judges was that online newsrooms are extremely effective but for them to be successful among journalists they have to be simple and very easy to use as deadlines don’t allow them to search for the information with hundreds of mouse clicks.

Social media goes mobile

We went on to social media on mobile platforms presented by Chi-chi Ekweozor from Real Fresh TV, who once again underlined the major increase in users of mobile internet with 310% more people accessing Twitter on their phone in less than a year and 200% more for Facebook.

Communication specialists can’t ignore the change anymore and have to take into account that most of times the content they put out through social media will be received on the public’s mobile phones, generally meaning small touch screens and pre-paid internet connection.

Social media ROI

Just before the coffee break we had one last talk referring to a hot topic in today’s PR: social media return on investment (ROI). Peter Granat from Cision presented a few examples on how his company follows brand activity and online communication in order to associate it with sales and show the outcomes of a good or bad social media strategy.

Crowd sourcing

The day went on with two amazing talks on crowd sourcing by Martin Bryant from The Next Web and Martin Thomas, co-author of “Crowd Surfing”. Marketing Manchester was one of the case studies as every Friday online visitors are asked to suggest the highlights of the weekend in the city for the tourists that come by. Citizens end up promoting their own city in a community effort based on collective behaviour and the need for self-expression.

Oana Jinga

These two presentations went hand in hand with the one that followed as Kathleen Goh, the corporate communications manager of DHL and Cara Jenkins, senior account manager at theblueballroom, told us about an internal campaign for the company’s 40^th anniversary. A photography competition engaged employees of DHL from all the countries it operates in, managing to create the perfect online community for so many different cultures, all brought together by one company.

As “community” was the word of the day, Lloyds TSB told us why and how the bank’s website went through a series of transformations in order to reply to consumer needs and create a place where they can share opinions and access easily all the company’s services. What Keith Bennett, online channel marketing officer at Lloyds, advised us once again was to build link equity in the social sphere and use all sorts of platforms in order to engage with the publics in different ways.

Word of mouth

From here, the talks started to be more and more interactive as we heard “a very personal word of mouth case study” from James Whately who was approached by Nokia after talking about their products online and asked to be part of their communications team. We then went to a very unique recruitment campaign by Reckitt Benckiser (the producers of Vanish, Calgon, Nurofen and many more brands) who used Facebook to attract what they call “generation Y” (more about them here).

They were amazed by the success of Farmville or Mafia Wars and decided to build a special game called poweRBrands in which players would go to the office daily, work and earn points which they could use to decorate their offices. According to their stats, there are around 89 000 games on FB and theirs is currently in the top 800. Also, in just a few months the game has over 21000 fans and people play it madly. Considering that the target they set was 7000 by the end of the year, I would say this is a brilliant case of over-achieving objectives.

Social media crises

Slowly but surely we left the entertainment area to move towards a critical aspect of today’s communication strategies: crisis management. Nothing seemed new here but the fact that we were dealing with social media crisis which the speaker called “tsunamis”.

Robin Grant, the managing director of We Are Social talked us through two well-known case studies: the bad – the Nestle versus Greenpeace battle (after posting videos with Nestle’s bad behaviour on Youtube, Greenpeace was asked to take them down in a very aggressive way and consumer comments were treated with disrespect) and the apparently good - Eurostar’s Christmas crisis when the trains got stuck for hours inside the tunnel (passengers were kept up-to-date online using Twitter).

As luxury often face with crisis too, Leesa Fogarty from Augure (a French based company that deals with brand reputation) gave us a few tips which she herself learned after working for a high-end brand: “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it” (Warren Buffet) so always scan the environment and be prepared to re-act either to correct something or take advantage of it and open new doors.

Reputation management

The last two presentations dealt with social media reputation management. Marc Campman, managing director of Webjam gave us 10 tips which he put together by relating them to the well-known book “The Cluetrain Manifesto”.

To sum them up: markets today are conversations; everything is about open, interactive communication; companies that don’t belong to a community will die and the most important of all: small talk is cheap but silence is deadly!

Following the conference on Twitter

Following him was Manchester Airport’s press office manager, John Greenway. He referred to a very recent issue, the volcano chaos, and showed us how the airport’s twitter account helped many stranded passengers.

For an organisation that feared social media in the beginning, their Twitter stream actually won an award for its efficiency.

Unfortunately I missed the last part of the conference, the much awaited live debate with five speakers, as I had to catch my train at Manchester Piccadilly.

However, I kept following the live stream on Twitter and was able to keep up with everything that went on in the room.

If you are interested in more information feel free to search #smcc10 on Twitter or check a few other blog posts: @matthewhorwood and @HayleyJacquelin.

Conference theme: “Social Media Goes Mainstream: New challenges for internal communication, reputation, education and the public sector”

More information; call for papers (pdf)

Conference themes include: “Public relations in history before it became a named or defined discipline”

More information and call for papers

As part of its EuroBlog investigation into the impact of social media on public relations practice, Euprera will make three awards at its February Symposium at Ghent, in Belgium, February 2010. Each winner will receive a prize of 250€.

The awards are open to anyone connected to a European University or University College – you may be studying now, or have recently graduated.

Candidates must have maintained an online presence equivalent to at least ten weblog posts before the deadline for entries, Friday  January 8, 2010, and the core topic of their content must be connected to communications/ public relations.

One award will be made to a student studying for a first degree (perhaps a BA or BSc), one will be made to a postgraduate and the third will be made at the discretion of the judges and may be the result of a nomination from a person other than the author of the blog. The awards panel is chaired by one of the world’s leading PR bloggers, Neville Hobson (www.neville-hobson.com).

The winning entrants will be invited to make a short presentation on their work at the Euprera Spring Symposium, at Arteveldehogeschool, Ghent, Belgium, February 25-27, 2010. Agreed travel and accommodation expenses will be paid for by the Award organisers (details in the rules).

See How to Enter: The Rules. EUPRERA Spring Symposium: call for papers (pdf).

Stirling 21: The public relations professional project
An academic conference to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Stirling MSc in Public Relations In association with the UK Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)
10–11 September 2009, Stirling Media Research Institute Department of Film, Media and Journalism University of Stirling – Scotland
http://stirling21.wordpress.com/

From a small unitary authority to a large police force, speakers told how they had fought and won battles to gain acceptance for their new approach to communication and consultation.

Edelman’s Marhsall Manson said we shouldn’t focus on technology, but on helping groups to form around shared interests.

The Guardian’s Meg Pickard showed a photograph of her usual south London bus stop. There were three people queuing, standing apart from each other. Are they a community, she asked? Potentially, yes, since they share a common purpose and a means of communication.

The message was clear: practitioners should become community builders, but not treat bloggers as another media channel to be targeted with news releases. Stephen Davies related the 100 year history of the news release, and updated it for the new century in the form of the social media news release (SMNR).

Frank PR’s Graham Goodkind said the door is open for PR to own viral marketing, because it’s all about the idea (‘PR = ideas = content’). Ideas with the potential to go viral involve sex, celebrities, humour and human interest. Nothing new there.

The conference was organised by Don’t Panic with the support of the CIPR North West regional group.

September 11-12 2008, Plymouth
Beyond the Spin (the sequel to Behind the Spin 2006)
How to make Public Relations Work for your Organisation
Further information is available from Alison Theaker at University College Marjon