Rough and ready video can work

I do quite a lot of work with video, often overseeing video productions that cost upwards of four figure sums, resulting in beautifully crafted polished results. But we all know that there is a real thirst online for rough and ready video, generally speaking unedited or only roughly edited, and shot on someone's camcorder. YouTube has proven the point over and over again.

With this in mind, and for no other reason than the fact that I like to have a new techy toy to play with every so often, I bought a flipvideo handheld camcorder the other day. It cost about £90 or so, and is pocket sized so I can take it out and about with me. It'll record up to about an hour's worth of footage, and runs on bog standard batteries. The beauty of it though is that it's so quick to use. You whip it out of your bag, press the button on the side and in 2-3 seconds you're ready to record - fantastic for catching something that needs to be caught quick (though still not quick enough to catch footage of my snoozing rabbit laying stretched out on his side this other day, but then that's more testiment to my speed at grabbing the camera than the camera itself).

So, I'll be carrying this around with me from now on, grabbing the odd bit of footage here and there, and hopefully picking up some interesting interviews and think pieces. I'll start posting some examples soon - need to find some interesting people to speak with first - and keep reporting back on how I'm getting on.

Listening in

While catching up on Twitter this morning I felt the sudden urge to jump on a plane straight to New York City after reading Stephen Fry's tweet about how it is snowing on Fifth Avenue. I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be at the moment than standing wrapped up warm on fifth avenue with snow flakes falling around me. Heavenly. So, I tweeted something along those lines. Within four minutes Dee of the New York Tours twitter account was following me.

There are many instances now of people tweeting a brand name or term and immediately receiving a follow from those companies, or other folks that have something to do with that (I had a similar experience just before my holiday to Mexico a few months back when I tweeted about going scuba diving, and suddenly the Scuba Society were following me).

These are the smart companies. They know what terms to look out for, they listen to the chatter and then they spot opportunities to respond. Dee of New York Tours is now listening in on my tweets to see if I will indeed visit NYC and therefore if they will be able to sell me a tour, or perhaps make a recommendation that will then make her company 'useful' to me. Other companies (Comcast being a great example of this), listen in to see if their customers are experiencing difficulties and complaining about their products/brand on Twitter so that they can quickly step in, provide customer service, and ultimately receive a big thumbs up from the tweeter for their responsiveness thus boosting the brand's reputation and averting a crisis (Comcast are well experienced at the crisis potential of new media after the video posted on YouTube of their technician asleep on a customer's sofa).

So, I asked the Twittersphere this morning if there is an application yet available that automatically sets your Twitter account to start following people who tweet a particular term that you specify. It seems there is (I suspected as much). I've been pointed in the direction of Twollow (many thanks @equaliser), a very simple service that allows you (on their free account) to specify up to five terms that, when tweeted by someone, will spark an immediate follow from your account. I'm going to give this a go and will report back on just how useful I think it is.

Adopt a word - genius or pure lunacy?

I've just picked up the news of a website called Adopt a Word through rumblings on Twitter. The idea is that you pay £20 to adopt a word for one year. In return for your £20 you receive an adoption pack to confirm that you have purchased that word. Sound crazy? Okay, now chuck in the fact that the £20 you pay goes towards the charity I CAN, helping children with communication difficulties in the UK develop skills to help overcome what can be at times some very challenging problems. Still sound crazy?

Of course it still sounds crazy. I mean, why would anybody in their right mind want to adopt a word? It's meaningless.

It's for that very reason that this site is pure genius. It's so ludicrous, that it gets everyone talking - plenty of buzz on my Twitter feed about it as everyone discusses whether it's crazy or not, which of course has an exponential effect as more and more people pick up on it through other networks on Twitter. And then there's people like me blogging about it too, and probably others tagging and bookmarking the site with digg, del.i.cious, stumble upon etc etc.

Reminds me a bit of the million pound gallery site developed a few years ago. At least this one's for charity though.

Now, what word to buy for my other half for Christmas ...

Social Media for Business - one day training programmes

We're launching two one-day training programmes to help businesses understand how they can use social media tools to enhance their marketing and PR activities online for free or very little cost. Both will be held at Warwick HRI's conference centre in Wellesbourne, Warwickshire. The first is on 5 December, and the next on 16 January.

Click here for more information.

When you start thinking in 'tweets' is it time to worry?

When I was 14 years old I took part in a fairly typical school exchange trip, staying with Carola Herman and her lovely family in a small town just outside Frankfurt, Germany. I was three years into learning to speak German at the time, but a couple of hours a week at school and no previous exposure to native German-speakers meant that my language skills weren't up to much. I stumbled my way through the week able to understand much of what they said to me, but struggling to communicate back. So focussed on trying to speak the lingo, a few days into the trip I found myself unable to think in English. If I couldn't think what I wanted to think in German, I couldn't think at all. A very frustrating and bizarre experience.

There's something about immersing yourself in a culture with such vigor that means you inevitably end up thinking in terms of that culture too. And so, as I was driving along this morning and thinking about the day ahead, I realised that I was thinking in 'tweets' - that is to say, every one of my thoughts had to be 140 characters or less, or I would be thinking about how I would communicate this or that on Twitter. At regular Friday afternoon pub sessions with friends we've also giggled to ourselves about how you stop thinking about people with their real names and start thinking about them and referring to them as their Twitter alias instead. Even my fiance is at times no longer Nathan, but instead @NZMorris. I think there should be a medical name for this condition - twitteritis?

An apology to my blog (look what I've been up to!)

I'm afraid I've been ignoring you, my beloved blog. It isn't that I've fallen out of love with you, it's just I've been a little distracted lately. I'm afraid, dear blog, that I have been playing away a little. At the beginning of this week I created a new social network on Ning for communications and marketing professionals working in the Higher Education sector. HE Comms has been so much more popular in its first week that I ever dreamt it would be, so I've been spending time building on it and further developing it in a bid to spread and retain that initial interest. And, yes, I have also been blogging on HE Comms. It's not the end of our relationship, my dearest lovely blog, but I just need to share my time equally and work out what I post here and what I post directly to HE Comms. You're part of HE Comms too, and feature on the 'other blogs' feed, so don't feel too left out. Who knows, perhaps even some of our new friends on HE Comms might come and spend some time with you my little blog. Keep heart, I haven't lost interest.

Letter to PR Week

Week before last PR Week published an article suggesting that PROs could learn a lot about social media from the US presidential election campaign. Sure, I agree that the candidates are using social media extensively in their campaigns, but I'm not convinced that they're using it particularly well in some cases - Twitter being one such example. So, I wrote a letter to PR Week to say as much, extracts from which were published in Friday's edition. I thought it would be good to post the unedited (albeit restricted to 200 words anyway!) version of my letter here:

Watch but don’t learn from Obama and McCain

Observing the use of digital media in the US election campaign is indeed fascinating. However, I would warn against PROs ‘learning’ from Obama and McCain’s online efforts (News, 10 October). Both campaigns use online media as a one-way communication tool. Their use of Twitter is one example. Obama’s ‘tweets’ tell us nothing more than what rally he is at and where to watch the video. Of the nine tweets made by McCain so far in October, seven of them merely provide links to the latest ads.

Both camps are failing to maximise the true value of social media: community and conversation. They can use social media as a listening tool, and certainly are using it to enable Joe Public to endorse their campaign, but they should also be using it for real conversation that they participate in. Through platforms like Twitter you want to know that it is the man himself busily tweeting on his blackberry between speeches and meetings, not someone hired in to churn out impersonal announcements. PROs could learn far more from the latest celebrity ‘tweeter’ @stephenfry.

International PR - focus on India

Some of my readers may recall that back in February I chaired a CIPR Education & Skills sector group panel discussion on international PR. Following that event I blogged about the ethics of engaging with PR 'norms' in particular countries (specifically in China) and how easily this sits with a UK perspective of PR conduct. This blog post was also converted into a shorter article for ConnectEd, the newsletter of the CIPR Education & Skills Sector group.

Today the headline 'Why do PR people pamper the media?' posted by @IndiaPRBlog on Twitter grabbed my attention. This blog post, written by Vikas Kumar provides an interesting insight into the practice of gifting journalists to get them to cover your story or event. I thought my readers might be interested to read this too, particularly in light of earlier posts.