Tumblr takes Social Media Spotlight

Given that Tumblr has been all over the news recently (after being bought by Yahoo for a whopping $1.1 billion), I figured what better time to get into the nitty-gritty of what Tumblr is and whether your brand should be using it. Tumblr defines itself as a platform that “lets you effortlessly share anything” including “texts, photos, quotes, links, music and videos”. However not many brands or PR agencies know how the six year old content platform fits into their overall social strategy. With over 107.5 million blogs and 50.5 billion posts created, including 70 million new posts that appear every day, it’s about time we started to take notice.

Tumblr has a large user base and acts as a great platform for brands to engage with their fans. It offers something a little different to other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Twitter is primarily text based, and while Facebook does support text and images, it does not organize it quite as well. Tumblr is very flexible in the types of content it can publish which has allowed it to occupy a niche market within the crowded space of social media.

Because it is a very visual medium, users can express their creativity a lot more freely and often times use the platform to share their love for particular brands or TV shows. While not all brands have caught on, some like Coca Cola, Target and Disney have grabbed the opportunity to establish a Tumblr presence before their competitors do.

While joining Tumblr may not be ideal for every brand, it is definitely worth researching. If all else fails, you will have at least seen some pretty cool user-generated content.

Are bloggers killing off parenting magazines?

Last week two key parenting magazines, Practical Parenting and Pregnancy, and Junior announced they were shutting shop. Made For Mums, the website run by their publisher will remain, but the magazines will close after the next issue.

Naturally, this got me wondering about the future of other parenting magazines, and if ultimately, bloggers are killing them off? While I appreciate this is a bold suggestion, it does feel like for every parenting magazine that shuts, 20-30 new parenting bloggers appear from the unknown.

Look at any toy PR or marketing plan and you’ll find an inevitable blogger outreach programme. Whether its providing products for review, exclusive preview trips or including blogger feedback into product development; the impact of this group of online writers is undeniable.

I would normally say that there is a place for everyone within a toy PR campaign. Magazines provide more of an objective overview, whilst parent bloggers are more likely to report on what works for their family. Magazine articles are by professional journalists, who adhere to strict editorial guidelines, so you’re arguably getting a higher quality of writing. Also, some parents like having everything in one place instead of having to scour different blogs for different topics.

This is all well and good in theory, but in practice it does feel like you get more from bloggers. When a parent blogger writes about a toy brand, it’s not just a piece of coverage, it’s feedback from a potential customer. They go the extra mile by initiating conversations on social media about the topic and publicise the post to their fans and followers.

With more and more groups working to support bloggers to improve the quality of their content and monetise their blogs, there’s now an emergence of the ‘professional parent blogger’, who writes as well as some journalists and is so well established, they could influence thousands of UK parents.

We’ve worked with thriving parent blogger communities including Brit Mums, Tots 100, Izziwizzi Kids and seen results comparable to that of media relations campaigns. From a reader’s perspective, the appeal of parent blogs is clear: it’s peer to peer advice from someone you’ve come to know and trust. With something as personal as family life, a professional or expert’s advice doesn’t cut it because there is no right or wrong. Parents want to know what other parents think.

So, in answer to the question – are bloggers killing off parenting magazines? I think the answer is no. Bloggers are offering a wider variety of information to parents and more opportunities for PRs. They add a further dimension to the marketing mix and most importantly are read by parents. Parenting magazines need to adapt in order to continue being valuable and relevant to both readers and PRs.

The Times they are a-changin’

The news that The Times was starting a ‘Technology Review’ supplement got everyone at onechocolate HQ buzzing at the very thought. Living in a world gone digital, there’s no shying away from the fact that people want to read more about this rapidly changing area. The Times is responding to the public’s needs by now offering a neatly packaged fix of all the latest trends cropping up on the technology landscape.

It opens up with an interview on Ellie Goulding’s so-called ‘digital life’, giving an insight into the singer’s penchant for Instagram and her technology pet hates. Nothing too technical here and very much accessible to a wide audience, many of whom might have nothing more than a passing awareness of tech jargon.

The key focus for the issue is on wearable technology. Very much the phrase of the moment, with Google Glass hitting the headlines on a regular basis. Not necessarily something that is open to most of us unfortunately, unless you have a spare $1,500 and are one of the lucky few to get their hands on a pair of ‘Explorer’ glasses. It seems like we have a better shot with a Pebble Watch. Carrying a much more reasonable £100 price tag, it allows you to sync your phone with your watch and gets a fairly respectable three star review. A handy piece for the gadget obsessed and definitely an area we need to keep an eye on.

Right in the middle sees a double page spread on one the hottest topics in B2B PR right now: fibre tapping. It provides an informative overview of the latest trend in international sabotage and a useful timeline giving us a brief history of underwater cabling.

A new games review section is sure to be a hit and coupled with a column on the issues around free to play games provides an interesting angle and gives this feature a higher level theme.

A personal favourite though was the double page spread on Digital Etiquette, or ‘techiquette’ as Janice Turner coined on Twitter. Would the Internet be a far happier place if a number of people gave these rules a quick read before they start to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/email…?Also a quick note to all you pub quiz cheats, as per rule seven, Googling the answers is a major no no.

So far, so good – we’re hoping it’s a regular occurrence and when we asked editor, Murad Ahmed, he mentioned they’d ‘not decided yet. It’s a bit of a beta test. There will be another issue, but timings are yet to be decided…’ Looking forward to seeing what the next issue brings!

IT PR – know your (news hijacking) limits just like Fergie

The news that Sir Alex Ferguson has retired swept Twitter (and new channels) by storm yesterday with everyone declaring they got the news out first (ITV’s claim). Hashtags are also floating around like #thankyousiralex – which funnily enough, Man Utd started on their fan page.

Despite all of this noise… it was this particular tweet from @dannyjpalmer at Computing magazine that got me thinking about IT PR news hijacking and knowing your limits.

I haven’t yet seen PR from tech companies off the back of Fergie’s retirement but it’s more the thought of a tech journalist at one of the top UK IT magazines expecting PRs to send an IT PR pitch about sports related news?!

An initial thought from my tech PR brain is: I’m waiting for an Internet infrastructure company to talk about the unusually high amounts of web traffic to the Man U site and how their technology can help eradicate downtime.

In light of this we’d always stick to a few simple rules –

• Ensure you have a good strategy in place for news hijacking – make sure you agree core topics upfront – what you discuss should always match your business objectives and key messages
• Sometimes there really is too much noise around a story (I’m thinking of the Chancellor’s budget and Maggie Thatcher here) so unless you’re the Queen it doesn’t make sense to comment as it’ll just get lost in the ether which is a waste of time and PR budget
• Jumping on the bandwagon when it’s a very tenuous link to your technology offering, customers etc. just makes the media tear their hair out which could alienate your business and even mean pitch emails that are relevant and interesting get stuck in spam filters (= barred for life)
• If you’re an IT expert, stick to IT issues – and if you want to issues hijack look at wider trends like European regulations

All-in-all on this occasion, we think it should just be left for avid sports fans, sports PR, sports reporters and footballers to comment. Let’s keep our IT PR more focused and not scattergun. And we’re looking at you… Nando’s… who even jumped on the bandwagon and PR-ed the fact that in Manchester they were going to open a mere five minutes later last night out of respect. *Sigh*

Smartphone launches: High demand or impressive IT PR?

In the last 12 months, we have seen the launch of numerous smartphones – the BlackBerry Q10, Samsung Galaxy S3, iPhone 5, Sony Xperia Z and more! In a quick-fire succession, phone companies are announcing product after product, battling to be the very best, and to sell the most handsets.

Fighting for attention has become integral to any phone launch, with IT PR playing a vital role. And if you look closely there’s one very popular tactic regularly used by vendors.

Turn your minds back to last September when The Guardian reported over 1,200 people were found queuing outside the doors of London’s flagship Apple store, excitedly waiting for the doors to open at 8.01am. And that was only London – for a phone that had been widely criticised prior to its launch! However only three days after the phone hit the shelves, reports claimed that stores were running low on stock.

Wind forward to this week and it was said that  the BlackBerry Q10 sold out at Selfridges in just two hours.

This begs the question, was this due to exceptionally high demand, or was this a clever PR stunt by Apple, BlackBerry and the numerous other handset providers? By creating an artificial shortage, having not actually put enough of the product into stores in the first place, the likes of Apple and Samsung encourage headlines along the lines of ‘iPhone sells out in X hours,’ ‘BlackBerry Q10 Sells Out In London Store’ or ‘Samsung Galaxy S3 flies off the shelves’.

Reading that they may miss out on the number one digital accessory of the season due to lack of stock, consumers rush to stores to snatch up devices whilst they have the chance, which naturally increases the hype. A very clever PR trick.

With increasing competition between Apple, Samsung, Nokia, BlackBerry, etc., it’s getting progressively more difficult to predict which phone will be the most popular. Are enormous marketing, advertising and PR campaigns to build hype before a launch still necessary? By ‘selling out’ of pre- and post-launch stock within hours, mobile phone providers are creating what seems like a growing demand and therefore encouraging more and more sales.