Blogger’s fav iFoods.tv are on the Dragon’s Den tonight. The very best of luck to them. Great to see Irish talent on the show. I may even break out the telly from the attic and plug in the skybox and watch it.
Here’s a Dragon. Well it could be a cow too:
Photo owned by SouthbankSteve (cc)
John has a very long rant about his bad experiences with O2 Experience Stores and their staff. Just a quick piece from the rant:
they did tell me to try the most difficult number in Ireland to get through on the O2 experience store on Grafton Street.
After an hour and a half of the phone either being engaged, sounding like it does not exist and occasionally ringing off I got through, only for the phone to be put on the counter and left there for 8 minutes, without a hello or any sort of chat. I was able to hear the staff talk between themselves talk to the occasional customer, but not one word was uttered to me!
After as I said 8 minutes of me saying hello, hello, hello I gave up and hung up the phone only to retry and hear the engaged tone
Previous my issues with O2 in Patrick Street and Alexia’s experiences.
PR agencies are needed. PR people are needed. There I said it. I know. * shock *
I’m one of many that participate in the sport of PR people bashing. But then I bash politicians, dull gits, businesses, SEO folks and everything. There are many faults with some PR people who got into the job for whatever reason and don’t want to do the hard graft and also don’t want to tell a client they’re being stupid and to cop the feck on. Instead they’ll fling out press releases to anyone and everyone (I got one about a fridge last week!) even when the release is not newsworthy but the client dictated word should be spread. Good PR people are not part of the story if they’re good. Bad PR people turn into a story.
Now we see loads of mostly tech bloggers and blogs saying PR is dead, dying or not needed.
PR people and companies are needed in my view to be the filters and the polishers of rough communications, to find something interesting in the pile of bland a company offers up, to teach companies how to make their lips move and tell their story in a meaningful way. That’s just one aspect of PR.
Photo owned by Hryckowian (cc)
Having a tech blogger find out about your product and talk it up without you the tech company doing any work whatsoever is not how it works even if you build a great product. Newsflash. Geniuses are plentiful. Great products are plentiful. Throw a stone in Silicon Valley and you’ll find a great product. Scoble’s post where he found a great company is that company winning the lottery. Same odds I should think. Scoble is a natural force, he’s a hurricane of wonder and evangelism. For every great product Scoble finds there are dozens he won’t find or maybe 100s. And there are not a lot of Scobles in the world.
A good PR person sends information to a journalist or blogger they know, knowing that what they send is valuable and knowing the journalist will be happy with the information. Spray and pray never comes into it.
A good PR person takes what their client is mumbling and not communicating and turns it into something that’s polished enough for the general public to understand and that PR person has said client communicate it via networking or doing it for them in terms of press releases.
A good PR person also makes their client realise what they need to change about their product, service and the way they communicate it to the public.
Remember we’re now in information deluge time. More information from everyone going to everyone. Journalists are swamped and have less time for a story these days too. Even Mike Arrington from TechCrunch talks about 23,000 unread emails in his mailbox. That’s a lot of companies trying to get found that don’t get found in Arrington’s mailbox. We’re not all one degree apart from Scoble so a friend can introduce him to your beta.
PR is hard, it’s soul sapping. Despite me saying I don’t do PR for people, I did four press releases in the past week and it’s draining writing something good and interesting even when you have great material to work with. Imagine doing this day in and day out? No thanks. It also takes time and effort for those not used to it.
I think there’s a bigger opportunity then ever for PR people as it becomes cheaper to build businesses and cheaper for people to distribute information online. Who’ll be there to direct the information and show how to direct it? Of course companies need to realise they need to do PR (and have good sales skills) but that’s another whiney post to come.
Tom probably thinks I’m a muppet since I too am an outsider looking in and so I don’t understand his industry and have used the term PR instead of the term media relations. So is it a PR or marketing issue that people are calling this PR? 🙂
Read what Kerry has to say too.
Check out my favourite hotel. I got a discount when I booked a room for the Media Training because it’s Summer (you wouldn’t think it with the weather) so I thought I’d let you know about their Summer rates too* because they might be useful for meetings and it’s nice to reciprocate after Carmel and Caroline were very helpful organising the rooms for the Blog Awards and the Train the Trainer events and Dave in head office Yo bro! (who asked for a shout out on this blog since his Mum reads it)
Summer prices to the end of August
€275.00 full day or €137.50 half day for Delta/Echo/Oscar or Tango
€200.00 full day or €100.00 for half day for Alpha/Bravo or Lima
*They didn’t ask me to blog this and I get nothing in return. I can be nice at times. Even to companies. No. Really.
Photo owned by hiddedevries (cc)
Looks like these guys are legit, even if the ad is over-the-top, it’s an SEO/marketing dream:
Nominations open for the Moviestar.ie Irish Web Awards. For now only the creators/builders/owners of websites can nominate their own creations but this will probably changed given the feedback we’ve gotten already.
12 days to go to get nominations in.
Finally got the press release out the door earlier this morning for the Moviestar.ie Web Awards on October 11th. Nominations open very soon. Like the Blog Awards it’s a two stage affair. Stage 1 will see every nominated (and nominations are free) website get judged using a scorecard. Specific scorecards for each category will then be used in Stage 2 by the judges. An awful lot of work went into making sure that the scorecard was good enough to keep the staunch standardistas and the pragmatists happy and I hope that concentrating on these important areas will help push for better websites in Ireland.
The category list is here and interest in category sponsorship is already strong. Wahey! Not everyone will be happy with the list and will want their own niche included but for year one, we’re content with going with that list. Changes as always will happen the next year. Sponsors cannot be nominated either to ensure transparency. We hope the 11th of October will be a fun night. Leave the tux at home folks, it’s more fun without it.
I’d very much appreciate if people would spread the word about the Awards and encourage their web development friends and colleagues who have become cynical about award ceremonies to have a look at this.
PuddleDucks have launched their new blog. I like it. They were one of the companies I gave a free blogging course to way back when. Every time someone I’ve trained starts a blog I’m chuffed. Good time to launch too, there’s a dude with a big white beard and lots of animals building a big boat contraption outside my window at the moment.
PuddleDucks did a wise thing, they started blogging in private, getting feedback from other Irish bloggers first before they went public. I’ve mentioned this technique before. It gets you great feedback before you jump in and it also gets the bloggers proud to be involved in helping you out and doing what I find myself doing and telling the rest of the blogging world that they’re good sort. A kind of “I can vouch for these kids, they’re cool.”
I must say that I think Aedan and Suzanne are naturals too at blogging and it’s cute and awwtastic to learn they started their business because of their son who liked the outdoors no matter the weather.
Update: Looks like this is now full up. 12 is max class size. Add your name and we might do a second one.
Finally got a date for the Cork version. This course has a bias towards tech/business media but most of the details will work for any area you want coverage for.
Wednesday August 27th in the Cork Airport International Hotel.
10am to 1ish.
Programme:
How a journalist in Ireland works
How to make contact with the media
How to build a relationship with the media
How to write a press release
Practical – Press Releases
Coat tailing – Surveys, news items, expertise, briefing documents
Media Campaigns
Interview preparation for print + radio + TV
Being Interviewed on Radio
Leave a comment if you’re interested and I’ll send prices etc.
From the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Mailing list:
Blogging is a way of building the inbound links.
How?
You blog, about interesting topics (link bait). Then you put comments on
related and relevant blogs with a link to your blog / articles. You submit
your RSS feed to wherever you see fit, and you submit your blog to the blog
search engines.
Was any lesson learned from that Irish Greeting card blogger spamming incident?
Photo owned by greg westfall (cc)
I already have one Irish SEO expert in my sights to get a severe fucking kicking for selling a list with my details on it and telling the moronic victim to send me an email to try and get links from me and leave non-relevant comments on other blogs to build inbound links. If I see more lists being sent around or more bullshit comments from cluetards thinking it’ll help their SEO then I’ll make sure to flip the nuclear switch.
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