Freeconomics Chinwag talk: via Twitter

At the risk of posting nothing due to total lack of time in the busy life of a digital PR, the blog below is my tweeted reporting of yesterday’s ‘Freeconomics’ talk up in London yesterday evening. Overview: nothing dramatically new from Chris Anderson's article from last year, however the following is an overview of the discussion (I have reordered it so it doesn't have to be read back-to-front!):

• Money is being paid just have to find our who / where/how
  
• Panel's fav free sites: Google, YouTube, Spotify, YouTube, Twitter
  
• Democratisation of content is what Google wants to persist When free goes wrong there's no throat to choke
  
• Questions for monetizing YouTube: 10% of broadband's bandwidth. User experience most imp thing therefore respectful ad balance
  
• Free takes away the value. V imp to understand what the free part fits in and where people would want to start paying. Right ads to the right people is so imp - YouTube
  
• Web was born without a micropayment system
  
• Got to understand where free fits into your online business
  
• Free has allowed innovation - opensource is perhaps the most powerful example of this. Huge benefits.
  
• Act of contribution is an increase in their utility curve
  
• Flickr works better because more and more people use it. Twitter being monetized would automatically loose its value
  
• Could the newspaper providers manufacture the hardware? Business models need completely reconsidering
  
• Aggregators of users will make the money
  
• Quality/security/no other choice then people would pay
  
• Value for content is in sharing
  
• 'Any new innovation is a good thing' - really?
  
• BH - the connection here is awful grrrr
  
• Ad will go after the most attractive eyeballs
  
• Creative industries will have to do more differential models - offsets - and work harder at it.
  
• People don't trust advertising anymore - 'grownup digital'. How do u make use of trusting friends opinions not ads Reinvention needed
  
• Free can't get any cheaper. The ultimate biz model. Does it carry its own destruction? (What a fab question Mr Ellis!)
  
• Wired launch mentioned - amusing/ironic that a magazine all about online. *check out Tottenham Court Rd tube station for the ad spend* Companies must find innovative ways for people to pay + consume
  

PS: at the end I met an extremely bright chap - Nick Garner - from Betfair however his top tip of the evening was for us all was to read ‘Scientific Advertising’ – perfect fodder for those wanting to develop the future of ‘influence’.

Content over The Wire

Political corruption and conspiracies always make good headlines, but there is one story this week that is an interesting mix of fact and fiction. And it’s one that is of real interest to those of us involved in digital PR.

So who are the players in this particular plot? Well, the conspiracy is the predicted downfall of the print press. And, the corruption is the chaos that could ensue in a world without a structured newspaper industry. Its ‘death’ brought on by the growth of free online news while citizen journalism takes a hold (rapid response vs. considered comment).

Recent headlines on this have been generated by the creator of the US programme, The Wire, which gets its first UK airing on BBC2 tonight.

David Simon, the show’s creator worked for more than a decade in the newspaper industry. In The Guardian this weekend he shares his belief that news outlets must impose charges for online content, stating “if you don’t have a product you’re charging for, you don’t have a product”.

But is he right? Having online content available free of charge means most of us working in an office or connected via Blackberry or PDA can have easy access to important news throughout the day. We can get our news from a number of sources, rather than being restricted to one publisher – allowing us to develop our own opinions from this overview.

Advances in technology bring improved communication and global barriers are certainly breaking down – surely all positive steps. But if costs are brought in for this online content, won’t that mean the public loses access to vital news updates that could affect our daily lives and decisions?

It seems this is a debate that’s likely to continue for some time.

In the meantime, anyone paying their TV licence fee can watch The Wire on the BBC starting tonight. And if you happen to be out tonight, maybe you can catch it later in the week online via the wonderful iPlayer…

Google Street View – another tool for digital pr?

The Twitter conversation around Google Street View seems to fall into two groups. Divisions occur between the “how dare they do this to me, it’s just another nail in the coffin for personal freedom” and the “I love it and can’t stop using it” crowd.

Now, we work in the digital pr industry, so it could be said that we’re not representative of everyday web users, but we LOVE Google Street View and think everyone else should too. What is surprising is that conversation on Twitter is so divided, surely Twitter users are early adopters of new technology and happy to share information, disseminating it to a large audience? Well, seemingly not all of them. Happy to share what they are wearing, where they are going and what car they will be driving, some Twitter users don’t want us to see what their final destination might have been!

That rant out of the way, I have been thinking about the potential uses of Google Street View for digital pr and have come to the conclusion that there probably aren’t too many. Perhaps the tourism/leisure industry might be able to use images of cities to tempt holidaymakers? Or the property market to enable customers to explore potential areas? But, in digital pr, we’ll probably just use it to explore and have some fun. What do you think?

With all the other Google products out there that help us do our day job, we’ll stick to the analytics, keyword and search sites and just say thank you Google for yet another toy to play with.

Ditch the jargon: communicating clearly through PR

Last week I presented to the Surrey Economic Partnership, focusing on digital PR and the importance of good web content. One of the key messages was that all too often online experts daze potential clients with their snake-oil knowledge using words that are meaningless to the outside ‘real life’ world. So, I was pleased to see today’s Daily Mail ‘examining’ the need for clear communication. (We love pouring over the Mail’s colourful contents: one recent headline intimated that Facebook gives you cancer which had us all in hysterics for at least ten minutes!)

But today’s article – ‘Mind your language’ – reports that the Local Government Association has produced an updated list of 200 phrases that it wants its members to stop using. Phrases such as ‘Interface’, ‘Blue sky thinking’, ‘Toolkit’ and ‘Empowerment’ are now out, with the support from the Pain English Campaign.

This perceived jargon issue is not only found in England’s councils: as the much admired BBC and Radio 4 journalist Lucy Kellaway highlighted last year, it is endemic. In any business anywhere a language, a framework of acronyms, an in-joke slang is adopted as a mantel of belonging. And this is quite natural

However, as experts in digital PR and PR, our ongoing challenge is to tell stories clearly and credibly to a business’s external audiences. So whether it’s ‘leverage’, ‘solution’, ‘end-to-end’ or ‘blue-sky-thinking’ don’t ask us to communicate using your in-jargon. People don’t understand it and nor should they.

Please let us know what your favourite jargon words or phrases are.

Surrey Economic Partnership: a call for clarity in online communications

Yesterday I presented to a group of SME’s at Surrey Economic Partnership’s regular business breakfast seminar. 110 people registered to hear more about the importance of good website content – both from a search and an audience perspective.

One of the main problems I highlighted is that as web-savvy people, we often use a language that is full of assumed knowledge and in-words. With just over half of the people in the room being comfortable with the term Web 2.0, I was interested to see their reaction with the definition I’d heard the other day “permissioned meta data interacting with similarly permissioned meta data”. Not surprising there was a wall of blank faces mirroring mine when I first heard this.

People are naturally alienated. All too often those who want to learn are put off, and stay in familiar places and spaces. SME’s wanting to get involved with online decide to ‘tackle’ it another day, month or even year.

I think that we – PR people - as communicators should see our role as clearly championing the online cause in words that are meaningful, exciting and that prompt action. We shouldn’t be concerned that by sharing knowledge we will write ourselves out of a job – instead it will ensure that what we do is normalised, integrated and just part of a normal brief. Not only that, the knowledge will help ensure that the brief is clear, with appropriate measures and expectations, and takes account that online is just one way – albeit an important way – of engaging with (listening and talking!) target audiences.