Mulley Communications — Blog

Update May 9th 2012. Dublin workshop is now full.

I’m going to do a Modern PR Workshop in Dublin and Cork in May. If interested, click on the link to the form and fill it in. You could however read this media guide I put together as this is kind of what I’ll be covering too. And that’s free.

What it is:
It’ll be a workshop on how to compose press releases both for the “traditional” media and online media. How to write good stories and create good content to send to media outlets. What will get attention, what will not. How to work with the media and build long-term relationships with them. (This is the most important thing in my view) We will also do a little bit of Online PR to enable media stories to help boost your profile online too. And it’s good for SEO!

Run time:
It’ll be a half day event, from around 0930 to 1300

Date:
I’m looking at Monday May 21st for Cork and Monday May 28th for Dublin.

Cost:
Costs now locked in. €75 for the half day workshop.

Location:
Clarion Hotel Cork for May 21st. Temple Bar Hotel for Dublin May 28th.

Booking:
Fill in the form, first come first something. If you put your name down, you can’t get out of it

Dell Social Media Toolkit for SMEs. Damned handy.

Facebook Timeline for Business Pages, no change on engagement after changing to it.

Would like to see how they do it but BBC News on Facebook can send you personalised news updates.

Finally some details on Twitter advertising.

Book from Dachis on Social Business. Out in May.

A guide to using Twitter in University Research.

Triggering Twitter engagement. Four forms.

An inside look at how Google works on changes to their search engines. Quite a bland video but the change management procedures are interesting.

Mobile websites slightly gain on apps for phones.

Faster pageloads will make you more money. Why milliseconds matter for Amazon. I love the url on the story too.

How Angry Birds finally did well. Keep trying is one part of the story.

Content creation online is very very important and there are hardly any good practitioners in Ireland for this. Lots of tips here.

SEO cheatsheet.

Book on social media failures. Yeah, dunno about an idea like this. Be nice to show good and bad.

Follow-up to the Katie Price and Snickers ad. Complaints about it were knocked down.

Changing your Facebook Page name. A proper process exists now.

Measuring Social Media Effectiveness.

Social Media Awards winner case studies.

… it might stick.

Some things to look at:
Enterprise Ireland on their LinkedIn use.

Interesting idea. Clever in my view. Communicorp do an app for McDonald’s integrating their radio stations while helping to sell burgers. Integration, clever.

Boom. People spend more time on mobile apps than the web.

European Advertising Certificate. Interesting idea. Written exam though…

Doing SEO for Google Plus.

There is no Insight button.

Want to sponsor an Irish iPad game/story?

Katie Price on Twitter started tweeting about politics and economics and got a reaction (naturally) from her 1.5M followers and then a few tweets later she tweeted that when you’re hungry you’re not yourself with a picture of a Snickers bar.

What a clever idea but I’m sure some will react badly to it. This is already happening without it being as obvious and blatant. Irish sports stars are encouraged/pushed to join Twitter so they can tweet about their sponsors/promotions. One wonders what guidelines are needed for this though.

Re-reading Ogilvy on Advertising at the moment. While new at the time, Avis’s use of positioning helped them make millions. And they took a mix of honesty and good copywriting.

Their agency was Doyle, Dane and Bernbach and their line was:
Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.

The first bit is obviously true. The second bit, perhaps over time it became so. What it does though is make people assume that someone that’s not first won’t be resting on their laurels but maybe the top brand would. We like to support the underdog.

Apple in the early 80s saw the giant threat that IBM was/others say it was conformity was the threat and created the iconic 1984 ad when they launched the Macintosh with the line:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”

Apple were saying they are your tool to smash conformity. A good position. Ironic given their dislike of consumers customising their Apple gear.

I’ve been trying to find a link to it and failed but there was a t-shirt company who when they launched also started creating knock-off versions of their own gear and selling them at markets. The idea was that the fake versions tell people the brand must be big enough/famous enough that they’re now having their stuff faked. Their brand is now positioned with Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike etc. and that feeds in to the “real” brand obviously being on the same ladder as all these other brands. Clever yes, sneaky yes.

Unfortunately in Ireland there’s not a lot of clever positioning. It seems to be about copying someone else and laying in the same arse dent on the sofa as everyone rather than doing your own thing. Still, this means massive opportunities for anyone that wants to take on the status quo.

I did a mini-survey on Twitter earlier today. 350 people answered two questions. It asked what phone type they had and if they had a QR scanner on their phone. The results:

Do you have a QR code reader on your phone?

Yes 229 - 65%
No 93 - 27%
A what now? (Don’t know) 28 - 8%

What type of phone did they have?
iPhone (any type) 188 - 54%
Android based smartphone 114 - 33%
Nokia 26 - 7%
Windows Phone 6 - 2%
Blackberry 7 - 2%
Other 9 - 3%

Which platform likes QR codes more?
74.5% of Android owners had QR readers, 69.6% of iPhone owners had QR readers.

The results to me were surprising, the small marketing and tech industry drenched network would not represent the general masses but I still would not have thought the amount of people with QR code readers on their smartphones were so high.

Hard Working Class Heroes is on again next month. 6th to 8th of October. If you’ve not heard about it then this opportunity is not for you.

We’re looking for an Irish music fan (or a team) to check out unsigned Irish bands that are playing this event and write about them. We especially want your views on Irish bands that could be worth discovering. We will pay your reasonable expenses for the weekend if you need to travel to Dublin for it and we’ll pay for your ticket(s) too.

We’d prefer you too to write on your own website/blog about these bands/artists. The content is yours, we will not own it, you can do what you want with it but we will have the right to use it on one of our own websites now or in the future. Fuck copyright or something.

If you’re interested in this, send an email with exact subjectline: Hardworkingmusic to damien@mulley.ie State your name, your location. You then have one paragraph of four or less sentences (of average length) to say why you want to do this. You must additionally link to writing about bands already, Irish ones are a bonus. We are not looking for any particular style of writing. Loving every band ever just because you went to free gigs won’t cut it however.

Of note:
Exact subjectline as we have a filter set up. Any more than four sentences, we delete your email without reading it properly. Any attachments like Word docs or PDFs, we delete your email without reading it fully. A pattern is emerging isn’t it?

Good blog post from the PSNI, not backing away from social media despite people trying to target the police on Facebook and elsewhere.

Journalists and engaging in social media.

Sentiment Analysis is shite.

In the same breath, 11 ways to measure the value of social media.

Email marketing tips. Useful enough.

Social Media Art.