There are now a record 11 universities represented in the published top 20.

The stats are taken directly from our much larger UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex and are up-to-date at 9pm on 2 February 2012:

We introduced the #socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four, week five, week six, week seven, week eight, week nine, week ten and week eleven.

No longer do you have to wait several days to receive letters in the post; now you can send an email or log in to Facebook or Twitter and send messages instantly.

Long distance communication is as simple as popping next door. However in the wave of social media are traditional forms of communication being left behind before their time?

Lauren Symons: it's good to talk

We don’t talk anymore

Over the last ten years the mobile phone has developed from simply a portable phone into a portable computer. You can text, take pictures and videos, email, play games, download apps and post your exact location on Facebook for the world to see.

But alongside all that technology hidden under a variety of names, a mobile phone or a smart phone is still a phone designed to allow you to make calls wherever you are, as long as there is signal.

Surely this means that a telephone conversation is still considered important.

However this doesn’t seem to be the belief of certain businesses, my case in point is ASOS.

Call me

Recently I had a situation where an exchanged item was being delivered to the wrong address and it was impossible to speak to anyone about this. Instead of providing a customer service number which would give me a thousand options before being able to speak to a human being, I only had the option of email or Twitter.

I decided email would be considerably easier to explain my situation as I wasn’t restricted in word length. However I was restricted in the choice of subject line for my problem. I selected the most appropriate header listed and explained my problem fully in the body of my email. I received a very prompt yet generic reply which did not answer my question and helped me in no way.

I then resorted to Twitter, again I got a quick response which resulted in a handful of tweets back and forth as I tried to explain my dilemma and ultimately I was advised to email customer services.

I received the same generic reply.

As day three of this frustration continued the people handling the twitter account finally gave me some useful advice and a correct reference to quote in the subject header of my email and my problem was resolved. This however could have all been sorted out through a short telephone call.

Bouquets and brickbats for ASOS

I praise ASOS as a company for their use of social media and their desire to communicate with their consumers; they were the subject of my university dissertation. Having monitored their customer service Twitter feed and measured their response times, social media had appeared to be a simple and effective way to manage traditional customer issues. However when faced with a unique problem their use of social media proved to be a hindrance.

Despite social media having a massive impact on how we communicate, it is definitely not time to retire the traditional methods. The telephone is still a vital part of communications and is not something to be written off yet.

Organisations looking to embrace social media need to remember that limiting the way consumers communicate with them may in turn limit the number of consumers who look to do so.

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex and are up-to-date at 2pm on 26 January 2012:

We introduced the #socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four, week five, week six, week seven, week eight, week nine and week ten.

(We introduced the #socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four, week five, week six, week seven, week eight and week nine.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex and are up-to-date at 2pm on 19 January 2012:

If you’re a student, the chances are you can scarcely imagine a world without Google. You’ll have to ask your parents about fax machines, about when news was received in print and a time when phones were used only for voice conversations.

John Naughton’s new book is an attempt to relate ‘what you really need to know about the internet.’ So it should be useful for students who may lack perspective (‘the strange thing about living through a revolution is that it’s very difficult to see what’s going on’) – and for parents and employers who are bemused and wonder if it’s really such a big deal.

The author is a good guide to the subject: he’s a Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology and an Observer newspaper columnist. The book is written in a popular and non-academic style (though it’s brim-full of ideas and it cites many other thinkers).

Naughton the university lecturer makes good use of metaphors to explain key points. Using a railway analogy, he describes the internet as ‘the tracks and signalling technology of the system’ and web pages as just one of many kinds of traffic that can run on this infrastructure (some others being email, file downloads, instant messages and voice conversations).

Naughton the scientist challenges Naughton the journalist over the meaning of ‘media’. In biology, media are used to cultivate living organisms. So there’s something more essential to life here than just a means to transmit messages. This introduces us to one of the author’s favourite concepts, the media ecosystem.

This approach, borrowed from McLuhan, shows why bloggers can coexist alongside journalists – and why one does not mean the end of the other. ‘One of the laws of communications technology is that new media are generally additive rather than substitutive, which is a fancy way of saying that new technologies generally don’t wipe out older ones… New media don’t wipe out old media. But their arrival does change the ecosystem.’

Living with complexity

‘My hunch’ writes Naughton ‘is that over the next decade, the Internet will move to become the dominant ‘species’ in our ecosystem.’

It’s an increasingly complex ecosystem, in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts (a process described as ‘emergence’). ‘Anyone who seeks to understand the Net has to realize that disruption is a feature of the system, not a bug, so we need to accept that complexity is something we have to live with. It’s not a temporary aberration, but the new reality. And it’s likely to increase.’

The author then suggests what this means for public relations practitioners and business managers:

‘Organizations which seek stable equilibrium relationships with an environment which is inherently unpredictable are heading for failure’. Success will require ‘openness to change, accidence, coincidence, serendipity.’

In another important section, Naughton deals with the tension between of copyright law and creativity. ‘[Common sense] should revolt at the idea that doctrines about copyright that were shaped in a pre-Internet age should apply to a post-Internet one’.

In general, it’s an enlightening and positive read. ‘We need to rise above the optimist-pessimist, Utopian-dystopian dichotomies that characterize our current discussions about the Internet,’ he argues. ‘Like electricity, the networked information environment is here to stay.’

I’m struggling to find fault with this brilliant and readable book, but noticed that US academic Yochai Benckler was variously introduced as a ‘legal scholar’ and a ‘network scholar’. I also question the capitalising of internet and web in such an accessible book. Surely the use of lower case better proves the point that they are now established fixtures in our lives and our vocabulary?

(We introduced the socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four, week five, week six, week seven and week eight.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex and are up-to-date at 9pm on 12 January 2012:

(We introduced the socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four, week five, week six and week seven.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex and are up-to-date at 9pm on 5 January 2012:

Shoppers were invited to send their requests to the Bagel Nash Twitter and Facebook pages for the gospel singers to serenade them as they took a break from the hustle and bustle on Briggate and other areas of the city centre.

The choir were joined by members of staff from Bagel Nash who were re-fuelling shoppers with fresh salmon and cream cheese or turkey, stuffing and cranberry bagels. The vocalists visited four of the five Bagel Nash outlets in Leeds city centre including The Light, The Train Station, The Victoria Quarter and Thornton’s Arcade.

In addition to performing ‘White Christmas’, the Bagel Nash Christmas choir entertained crowds of shoppers on Saturday and Sunday with songs including ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ and even pop classics like ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ by Steve Wonder and ‘Rolling in the Deep’ by Adele.

Sara Hildreth, retail operations director, said: “The Jukebox Choir proved to be a fantastic hit and really gave the Christmas shoppers in Leeds a weekend of fun! The public really got behind the event and we had hundreds of tweets and Facebook messages from people with their winter wishlist.”

Danielle McCarthy, a student from Leeds University, said: “I was doing my Christmas shopping with my boyfriend and he tweeted my favourite Christmas song, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, to the Bagel Nash page and to my surprise they sung it to us in The Light Shopping Centre. It was amazing! The Christmas bagel was the perfect complement too!”

Bagel Nash works with Two Birds One Stone, a youth marketing agency founded by two Leeds University graduates and a Leeds Metropolitan University undergraduate.

Creative billboards, TV ads, making our own reality show- maybe? The more I thought about it, the more I found it ironic that in an industry where we know everything there is to know about brand, image and reputation management, the reputation of its workforce is false.

In any case, I was reading a post by Stuart Elliot in The New York Times called Redefining Public Relations in the Age of Social Media and thought this very much linked to what I had to say.

First of all, we all know that there are tons of definitions of Public Relations, all leading up pretty much the same thing: creating mutual relationships between an organization and its publics. Basics. Anyways, Stuart Elliot and The New York Times suggest that the way in which this has been done is now changing. And I agree.

In ancient times (before social media) PR was a one-way communication monologue. Fast forward to 2011 (almost 2012) and this conversation now goes two ways. In present time, PR practitioners are worshiping hashtags, eager to learn everything there is to know about creating relationships online.

I’d say by now we are pretty skilled Facebook and Twitter users, don’t you agree? And I am sure almost all of you aspiring PR professionals have a tumblr (I was trying to get a new title on my tumblr the other week and was hoping for ‘Morning Coffee’. Hopeless. I’m telling you, it’s a crowded tumblr world out there!)

Proving Samantha Jones wrong

So why don’t we use these to prove Samantha Jones and her no-nonsense and ignorant attitude wrong? In other words, let’s look at how PR practitioners are using these social media platforms to govern their behaviour.

An area of PR embracing social media is Fashion PR. Think Fashion Week for example. Twitter and Tumblr are tools that fashion brands are using to bring the audience behind the scenes of what the brand is doing – all the time. Works just like a backstage pass, trust me. This is a great way of creating a brand personality and brand awareness for that matter. Hence, this is not done on one day. It’s an ongoing process and it is important to have a strategic plan.

For example, who is going to be the face of the brand? How can the brand best listen and reply to its consumers? How much should you reveal about the brand? How does your share of voice compare to competitors and even more importantly: are you allowed to talk about competitors? What are the needs of the target audience and how can your brand help to address these? What excites them? The list goes on. If you excel at this, the next person calling you a Kelly Cutrune must have missed reading your tumblr – or simply missed his morning coffee.

Ubersocial PR girl

I am a fan of DKNY PR GIRL as you might have noticed if you have read my previous posts. I read her posts daily and I’m amazed by how this brand has succeeded in creating a brand personality – always ongoing conversations, constantly updating and re-tweeting with relevant pictures of both DKNY and NYC. After following her, I now know what they mean by ‘the city that never sleeps.’

There are plenty of other fashion brands out there that are pretty awesome tumblr and twitter users. Yet, not everyone are as ubersocial as DKNY.

Oscar de la Renta for example, posts a little less, writes a little less and tweets a little less. Although, by following Erika Bearman, the PR girl behind this luxury brand, you definitely get a sense of what type of woman the brand wants to portray: an elegant woman who is sophisticated, international and very intellectual. She is friendly and calm, social and considerate.

In sum: Stop watching (or at least stop believing in) reality shows. As much as I dislike (hate is a strong word) how the Internet – quite frankly – has become a sneaky little time-stealer, it is important to know how to manage social media platforms. Stuart Elliot is right; PR is changing! And I see this as a great advantage when it comes to improving the reputation of its workforce.

So, if you are thinking about a career in Fashion PR or any PR industry for that matter, get a tumblr and twitter account and learn how to manage these really well! We don’t need any billboards or TV ads to prove Samantha Jones wrong. Social media is the way to go!

And for the next person telling you that people in fashion PR have a bad attitude, you should ask them: why on earth would big international brands like Oscar de la Renta then pick a PR girl to manage the image of their brand? I mean, this powerful man has been in the fashion industry for decades and would surely know a bad promotion when he saw one.

We’re taking a three week break, returning with our first table of 2012 on 6 January. That means that you can take some time off with friends and family without worrying obsessively about your tweets or blog posts.

(We introduced the socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four, week five and week six.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex.

PR students: tell us who you are and we’ll add you to the lists. Please note: this list is exclusive to PR students currently on full-time undergraduate or postgraduate courses in the UK.

Stats are up-to-date at 9am on 16 December 2011:

(We introduced the socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three, week four and week five.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex.

PR students: tell us who you are and we’ll add you to the lists. Please note: this list is exclusive to PR students currently on full-time undergraduate or postgraduate courses in the UK.

Stats are up-to-date at 8pm on 8 December 2011:

(We introduced the socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two, week three and week four.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex.

PR students: tell us who you are and we’ll add you to the lists. Please note: this list is exclusive to PR students currently on full-time undergraduate or postgraduate courses in the UK.

Stats are up-to-date at 9pm on 1 December 2011:

Alex King

In a TV advertisement, Cheryl Cole will tell you she’s “found an answer to our hair prayers” and that L’Oréal products are the solution to all of our dull, lifeless hair problems.

She obviously fails to mention that she is being paid to say all of this.

Using celebrities as spokespeople for products is hardly a new concept.

Enlisting an A-Lister as an ambassador for a brand has now become a mainstream promotional tactic.

With the rise of the web and social media, more and more people are researching products online before they buy. And when your favourite celebrity endorses something, does it influence you?

While many of us are now more media aware and have caught on that what celebrities say about certain products might not be sincere and genuine, celebrity endorsement has now become more devious with the social media boom.

What are the benefits of using a celebrity to endorse your products?

Beauty and glamour

The world of celebrity goes hand in hand with beauty and glamour, and your customers will start to associate this with your brand. Celebrities attract attention and this helps build recognition and trust with an audience. Many will be guided by their favourite celebrities and try and model themselves after them, making it easier to persuade them to buy your product purely by using Cheryl Cole in your ad.

Sex and drugs

While it can be beneficial for a brand, it can also be disastrous, particularly when a scandal is involved.  After all, we all remember what happened with Tiger Woods (sex) and Kate Moss (drugs). Numerous brands will soon cut ties with celebrities who can damage their reputations, particularly those brands seeking a family-friendly image.

These days, companies are starting to recognise Twitter as a powerful PR tool. If you want Kim Kardashian to tweet about loving your brand or products, her over 11 million followers will see it. While some of those will recognise the tweet as a marketing ploy and ignore it, many others will research the product, and a fair few will go on to buy it. While Twitter has been dubbed as ‘Free PR’ certain celebrities can charge you over $10,000 per tweet about your brand. So this option is immediately ruled out for small brands with limited budgets.

So is this fair?

Legal, decent, honest, truthful – and disclosed

This has led to calls for independent watchdogs and tighter regulation. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has started cracking down on Twitter users and bloggers. They recently reached a decision following an investigation into social media firm Handpicked Media which operates a commercial blogging network – insisting that it must clearly state its relationship with the brand, including whether or not promotional comments have been paid for. Perhaps this will put an end to some of the dishonesty but it can never be completely stopped.

In the culture we live in, celebrities are always in demand and celebrity endorsements will always be big business. While it can be a very effective tactic, many of us media cynics see it as a way of deceiving the naïve and misleading the public. While it can’t be stopped, perhaps more regulation and control is in order as the lines can often be somewhat hazy.

What are your thoughts? Is it acceptable for PR professionals to consider celebrities to endorse their products, particularly via Twitter? Or do you think there should be more regulation by independent watchdogs?

The free breakfast event is at Northern Ballet in Leeds on 7 December, from 8 to 10am. It is being offered by Northern Lights PR and Walker Morris solicitors to provide guidance on managing risks and the legal issues of employees on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Northern Lights PR has also produced a free guide on how to create an employee social media policy in response to increasing concern amongst employers.

It addresses issues such as whether people recruiting should look at Facebook accounts and take drunken photos into account.  It has tips on where to draw the line between work and personal lives and defining what people should put on LinkedIn profiles – and if it is OK to tick a box accepting job approaches.

Northern Lights chief executive Victoria Tomlinson says:

“With growing use of social media, crises are much more difficult to manage. If an employee slates your best customer on Facebook, the media and outside world can pick these up within minutes of them happening. Employee policies and crisis management plans need to take this into account and be specific about the protocol for use of social media.”

John Harrison

The latest trend for advertisers seems to be the use of QR codes in their promotional materials. But what about the PR industry? How can we make us of QR codes? Do they have a place in the PR toolkit?  I interview John Harrison, co-founder of ScanMe.com, to find out.

Would you please briefly explain what a QR code is and where they came from?

The QR (or Quick Response) barcode is a two-dimensional code originally developed by a Toyota subsidiary – Denso Wave – back in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process.

A conventional, linear barcode typically holds a simple 12 digit numeric code that identifies what product it is. A QR code can hold up to around 4,000 alphanumeric characters which can be used to do a multitude of things. It can also be scanned no matter which way up you are holding it.

Why have QR codes become so popular in the communications industry?

Smartphones have all the ingredients for being an effective information and marketing tool: it’s always with it’s owner; it can be instantly communicated with via email or phone; it has the ability to show things effectively via web link or video stream. The only issue is engaging with the consumer and showing them what you want them to see. QR codes offer this opportunity.

There has been a 600% growth in Smartphone sales in the UK since June 2010, and this has enabled consumers to carry around their own barcode scanner in their pocket! In fact, 24% of owners have used their phone to scan barcodes – and this number is growing at over 1,000% year on year.

Is the industry making the most of QR codes? What should we be expecting next?

There is evidence that more and more companies are using QR codes to convey information to their audience. You will see them on TV ads, at the back of books, or on magazine adverts, to name a few. However, without knowing what’s going to happen when you scan the QR code, the experience from scanning one code to another can be mixed and often the barcodes are not used to their potential.

As barcodes become more popular and the consumer awareness of the technology increases it will become vital to be seen to be using the right tool. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right! Developments and new creative ideas for the application of QR technology are always just around the corner. As with any new technology, it evolves at an astonishing rate.

How do QR codes fit into the social media PR toolkit?

There are plenty of websites that enable you to create QR barcodes that can link to a website you specify. If you link that website to Google Analytics, this can provide you information such as when and approximately where your barcode was scanned.

At ScanMe.com, we have developed sophisticated back-end technology that not only tells you when and where, but also ‘who’ scanned you and on what material! By knowing who scanned what product – be it a brochure, press release or business card, for example – it provides you with a hugely powerful consumer engagement tool. For example, providing barcodes to media to add to coverage can help track which best attracts reader attention and lets you profile the category of readers that are most commonly interested in the brand you are promoting. This in turn can help you make more informed decisions on which media to target in the future and provides excellent, in depth reporting material for clients or the boardroom.

Barcodes also work really well on merchandise so are a great tool for tracking consumer interaction at publicity events. It’s real world engagement, and offers something more than any of the top-tier social media sites can do. The great thing is that through a ScanMe scan page, you can link back to these social sites, therefore gaining the benefit of all this information before you are ‘liked’ or ‘followed’.

How can PR students become skilled in the use and creation of QR codes?

There are plenty of QR creation sites on the internet where you can gain some first hand experience. Our’s is a free service that creates a unique QR barcode for you via login with Facebook – so it’s very simple to try out. The barcode links to a unique ScanMe URL which you control. You can then manage the content without having to generate a new barcode, allowing you to connect with people instantly when out and about while providing scan history so that you can review later.

See how many barcodes you now spot after having read this and scan as many as you possibly you can. You will soon get a good feel of how they are used, how they work best, and experience the good and bad examples for consumer engagement. Happy scanning!

(We introduced the socialstudent list here, and updated and extended it in week two and week three.)

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex. (PR students: tell us who you are and we’ll add you to the lists. Please note: this list is exclusive to PR students currently on full-time undergraduate or postgraduate courses in the UK. A simple definition of a PR student is someone who has PR in their degree award eg BA Advertising and Public Relations is OK for our purposes, but not BA Media Studies. We might make an exception to this for someone who has done a year’s placement in public relations during their course, or for someone studying a public relations topic for their dissertation.)

Stats are up-to-date at 10pm on 24 November 2011:

The paper, available as a free download, outlines the emerging technology trends to watch in 2012.

The authors – who include Behind the Spin’s social media editor David Clare – have identified ten trends to watch. Here’s how they describe the first of their trends, ‘The Interest Graph’:

“We’re going to see multiple exploitations of the interest graph in 2012, but you should keep your eyes on three key areas, as they will affect you, whether you’re a brand, business, advertiser or publisher.”

These areas are identified as influence rankings and perks; tailored information and interest networks.

“If you’re a brand or organisation, you need to make it easy for people to show their interest in you via your website, Facebook page or location based presence such as Foursquare. If nobody’s into you in 2012, you’ll begin to fade from view.”

Celebrities on social media

The paper calls for less celebrity publicity and more human interaction.

“Surely 2012 will see the rise of the ‘social media celebrity’, those who are experts in their field, influencers, keen communicators, people who will provide us with feedback and by their serendipitous retweets, project us into viral stardom within their personal niche.”

Socialising of TV

Twitter gives new interest to TV broadcasts and in turn brings even greater excitement to ‘event TV’.

“Once upon a time people would talk about last night’s TV at the water cooler. Now we talk about TV as it happens, with our very own running commentary grouped together by a handy little hashtag.”

Alex Neale

Facebook, Twitter, WordPress; not sites I would have typically associated with working life before embarking on my career in PR. As someone who has always had to keep my personal and professional lives separate, I found it a little exciting that I was allowed, encouraged even, to explore and maintain my presence on these platforms for ‘work purposes’ (I still smugly tell my friends).

Social media has always been associated with the consumer and it has been utilised by business to consumer (B2C) brands in several highly successful campaigns – Starbucks, Coca Cola and Skittles to name but a few. Not only does it offer a quick, easy and often painless channel through which to communicate with their consumers directly (thanks to fan pages and opt-in groups), but the increasing amount of personal preferences – like and dislikes, favourite films, books, foods – that its users are revealing about themselves mean that brands are able to get to know their customers better than ever.

It’s clear to see the benefits of investing in social media for B2C clients, but what good can it do for business to business (B2B) clients? Can it provide any value at all?

B2B social media: tried and tested

Social media is considered by many – typically the older generation – to be the downfall of society. They call us lazy, anti-social; they even blame the riots on our obsession with social media. We ‘Generation Y’, tech-savvy, forward thinking PROs are currently facing a never-ending battle in persuading our B2B clients that they would benefit from a little social media to spice up their campaigns.

Many of them are still of the opinion that social media is ‘fluffy’ and far too informal, and above all they believe that they won’t reach their potential customers via a Facebook fan page or a blog.

However, several B2B brands who have taken the risk beg to differ, such as IBM:

Earlier this year, IBM implemented social media elements within their B2B ‘Watson’ campaign fantastically, achieving international coverage.

IBM’s Watson is an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. Earlier this year, Watson competed on the quiz show Jeopardy!, in the show’s only human-versus-machine match-up to date. Over two games, Watson beat Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak of 75 days.

In the lead up to the event, IBM posted around 30 short videos on YouTube, racking up more than 1 million views. It chose to feature the researchers and engineers who built the computer rather than the corporate suits, offering interesting content to both Jeopardy! fans and potential customers. Since the event, Watson’s Facebook page now has more than 17,000 ‘likes’ and its Twitter stream has more than 6,000 followers.

IBM also involved IBM bloggers who have attracted their own followings over the years and researchers used Reddit, a social news site, to answer the top 10 questions about Watson and the contest.

The results of the IBM Watson campaign were phenomenal and this case can help illustrate that the use of social media in PR campaigns is not just a fad but offers a very real and exciting prospect for the future of PR, particularly to B2B companies.

The future of B2B social media

So, what is the future of social media for B2B clients? Do PROs continue in their battle to persuade their clients of its value or The results of a PricewaterhouseCoopers study released last month revealed that almost half of B2B companies are not measuring return on investment or using only basic qualitative measures when it comes to social media.

Despite showing that B2B some of those polled had invested up to £1.18m on social media, the majority appeared to have “limited strategies” that fail to exploit sales opportunities.

It also found that less than 12% of organisations surveyed have full time social media teams in place.

Of course a B2B social media campaign must be taken with a different approach to that of a consumer campaign – your targets are businesses which will undoubtedly interact with a social media platform in the same way as a consumer.

However, ultimately all business people are consumers and, now more than ever, those lines are constantly being blurred. Perhaps the solution is to take away the concept of B2B and consumer campaigns being polar opposites and use elements of both to create a campaign that appeals to a potential customer’s business objectives and consumer preferences to maximise the impact.

Remember, a social media campaign is always going to be noticed by a real person, not a computer, no matter whether it’s a consumer or B2B campaign. Social media, including blogs and business profiles on Twitter and Facebook, can communicate the values, philosophy and personality of a business far more effectively than simply listing it on a website homepage. It allows customers – those people who represent the target businesses – to understand your client’s messaging a little better and feel a little more acquainted with those who run the business.

Discuss this article with Alex on Twitter here.

(Disclosure: Alex works for the Hotwire Group, where our social media editor also works)

Two weeks ago, we introduced our #socialstudent ranking. This week, Hanif Leylabi has increased his lead and Sarah Moffat is the highest new entrant into the top 10.

The stats are taken directly from our UK PR student lists on Klout and PeerIndex. (PR students: tell us who you are and we’ll add you to the lists.)

Stats are up-to-date at 7am on 18 November 2011:

I describe myself as a social media addict because I can’t live without my daily internet infusion of blogs and social networking. Among those you can find Tumblr. Even though I don’t always post, I usually check it whenever I check my e-mail.

A bit of history of Tumblr

Tumblr was launched in 2007 and since then it has accumulated over 34 million users. This is a low number in comparison to other social network platforms, but when it comes to blogging, Tumblr has managed to surpass its main rival WordPress this last year.

However Tumblr’s popularity has yet to really infect the entire world. At the moment, more than 35% of visitors and users are from the US, the next country being a far second UK with 5% of visits.

Under the motto of “Post anything. Customise everything” Tumblr appeals to its audiences because of its way of combining sharing (mostly) pictures and other content with blogging and social networking.

Fresh and creative, Tumblr’s is the “easiest way to blog”; the platform is easy, accessible and very customizable.

The Tumblr social network isn’t always created of people you know or converse with but those whose opinion and taste you like and trust.

The connections are created through the love of similar things – whether pictures, quotes, music or ideas,

User engagement

Tumblr’s driving force is the “Reblog” button. This feature which is pretty much a novelty when it comes to blogging, but it is one of the main engagement tools on social networks (you might recognize here the Facebook “Share” button and its Twitter equivalent “Retweet”). The reblog feature creates connections among users giving it an impression that it’s a close network of friends sharing their favourite content although the posts could have thousands and thousands of reblogs.

Brian Solis, the US consultant and author, described Tumblr in an recent interview as a “hybrid network and microblog community rich with its own culture” and added that according to recent statistics by Nielsen, Tumblr is third on the list of minutes spent in social networks and blogs behind Facebook and Blogger.

Because of its social aspect  user engage much more with the content, pay more attention to what is being posted and that is why Tumblr is continually growing, surpassing its competitor blogging platforms.

Personality

When it comes to image if we were to say that WordPress is the Microsoft of blogging, then Tumblr would definitely be Apple.

The blogging platform has created its own personality described by a fresh view, creativity and a young, quirky attitude. I would even go as far as calling it the hipster of social media. Tumblr can be tweaked and designed to appear more serious but in the end it will still have that innovative design opportunities, accessibility and the user friendly interface which makes blogs look more like websites.

The creatives

Tumblr has managed to create a niche where there wasn’t one left. After the appearance of so many social networks, the blogging platform quickly managed to attract artists, photographers and writers on to its pages. Due to its features, Tumblr has the ability to launch and popularize memes and “viral-ize” videos much more easily than other blogging platforms.

Magazines and publishing brands were among the first businesses to notice the potential in user engagement on Tumblr and have started taking advantage of its novelty and creative flair. Most major publications (especially the American ones) already have Tumblr pages.

Some of the best examples of publications using Tumblr are The Economist that mostly share covers, cartoons, pictures and headlines rather than articles, The Huffington Post, also known as the Internet’s Newspaper is present on Tumblr using the blogging platform to offer headlines and links to other content, and Vogue, one of the world’s most famous fashion and lifestyle magazines which uses Tumblr mostly for sharing pictures.

The fashion industry is very well represented on Tumblr through blogs such as OscarPRGirl, which is a PR account used to share fashion trends and pictures from inside the Oscar De La Renta brand or designer Kate Spade’s blog. Fashion brands’ orientation towards Tumblr is easy to understand seeing as in May 2011, Nielsen statistics showed that over 53% of Tumblr users are females and over 44% are between 18 and 34 years of age, which is what most fashion brands and magazines are aiming for – a young, internet savvy demographic.

While media outlets are more likely to use it for sharing headlines and recent pictures, businesses such as IBM use it to create engagement with other projects or ideas. Universal Music is another business with its own ‘Tumblelog’ with news and updates.

To conclude…

I would have to say I believe that Tumblr, if used correctly, can be a great communication tool for any company especially if you’re seeking a younger audience. Because of its stunning simplicity and social potential Tumblr can easily popularise a message, which is what happened this year when the Tumblr blog “We are 99%” went viral.

However, Tumblr, on its own cannot take the role of a website or be the only social media tool used. I would rather think of Tumblr as a supporting blog for your company’s website, Facebook page and Twitter feed, just in the way IBM, Universal and EMI have used it because each of these tools address its publics in different ways.

Daniela Pietrosanu is a third year Public Relations and Communication student at Southampton Solent University. You can find her blog here or connect with her on Twitter here.