I am surprised that the launch of Microsofts Kinect, the long expected arrival of internet TVs by year end and the never ending expansion of cloud based services has not generated more debate about the potential impact on PR and social media.

In the not too distant future instead of the collection of different remote controls, DVD/VHS players, games consoles and related bits you will eventually have a very large screen with a built in sensor that can pick up and interpret your movements.  This will all be connect to a ultra fast broadband connection which pulls down the different services you are looking for from entertainment channels, social media platforms, your photos, home videos and music collection.  The lines we draw between different media, storage and internet access will become completely blurred.  Instead  of thinking PC for internet access, TV for news and programmes, stereo and radio for music we will consume it all through one screen.  For alot of people this is already a reality as they access TV via RTE’s iPlayer on their PCs or laptop.  We will probably spend more money on sound systems and bigger screens as ultra fast broadband via fibre becomes more of a commodity.

All of this sounds wonderful and not too futuristic but it has seriouly implications for the PR industry.

Picture this.  You will be sitting on your sofa, to change a channel, increase the volume you merely waving your hands.   You are watching the 9 O’Clock news or PrimeTime and see something about company.  You wave your hand another direction and your collection of social media appears along with a virtual key board.  As the piece is still running on split screens you visit the company website for more information.  You also decide to check out their facebook page and decide that what was reported is worthy of posting a comment or you just check what others are saying.  You go to the personal sites of the spokesperson via LinkedIn or another to see how credible they are.  You tweet your comments on what is being covered with your own personal networks and make judgement calls on it.  If it particularly irked you, you DM friends and organise for a coordinated response to the company.  DMs will naturally switch to video chatter where you see the people in your network and the debate leaves a less trackable footprint.  Parodies of the crisis/spokespeople performance will appear instantly as people create their own mocking content.  The phone number pops up in the company search and you call the organisation to register your view point – all from your couch.  Finally you organise a flash mob to appear at the company or outlet to register a protest, video record it and upload to keep the debate going.

A lot of this all happens at the moment.  Anyone checking out twitter at the weekend will see lots of comments by people about whats on TV and radio.  This ranges from mere obervational to wide ranging debates.  At the moment this is a trickle as you need to have a reasonable smart phone, be working on your PC or feel motivated enough to go online.  Once people have access to all of these on one ease to navigate screen its set to explode.

Most companies have a reasonable feel for the increased importance of social media and have started down the line of building a social media strategy.  This will move it from a nice to do to a must have.  Here are some of the changes I can see.

• Social media monitoring and responding becomes a 24 hour job.
• Debate will be swift and much more far reaching.
• After hours online chatter will have matured by the time most people get to the desk the following morning.
• Social media tombstones which have not been updated will be highly visible and reflect poorly.
• The expectation that there will be a company representative at all times will grow (via social media or phone lines).
• Big launches and crisis may need to have experienced teams working on them on a 24/7 basis.
• The weight attached to traditional media will continue to be extremely important but debate will take place else where.
• Local issues will get even more global exposure and debate.
• Messaging will morph and adapt as the temperature of debate rages.
• Expectation of an active presence on a broader range of channels.
• Ability to rapidly create content to match particular platforms will increase from Video – YouTube, Photography, Pix.ie, Facebook etc
• Traditional PR outreach will need to be integrated into social media outreach.
• Communications, marketing and online teams will need to be synched.
• Close community debate will be harder to track especially if video or DM orientated.
• Coordinated action will spill over into real life organised action.
• Nature and tone of online debate and chatter will change as it moves from early innovators to mass audience.

None of this is massively different from what PR companies are faced with every day but the scale, speed and timing are very different.  9-5 just wont work and ill thought comments will spread much faster and to wider communities.  At the moment this is contained due to technological barriers, once these disappear a regular tidal waves will appear.  Consider the difference between 20-30 tweets from a few influentials which can network out to a few thousand via retweets versus the 600,000 people who view PrimeTime.  How well resourced would an Irish or international company be to that larger figure but also a much broader profile.  Some Irish companies I have spoken to can be dismissive of what they view as a small Irish Twitter community while they are consignant of the impact of high profile programmes.  Merge the two with sufficent numbers and you enter a whole new arena.

Of course its not all bad and with all this come huge opportunities but the the reality is its not that far away.

1. Traditional Media – Press release

The first step is to build up a list of the appropriate media that cover your area of expertise or product. This should include the media publications but also the specific journalists that have covered the topic in the past. Searching in the publications website or using the news search function in a search engine will give a good starting point. From this build the email and contact list that you will send the release and other information through to.

The key to getting a story covered in national media is to have a strong interesting story. Think about what your product or story from a reader point of view rather than your own. How does it fit in with other things that are being covered in the media and research a strong hook. This could be anything from a record breaking attempt to a stunt based hook but needs to add to the relevancy of the product.

• Take time to script a press release detailing all the key facts and details.
• Make sure the essence of the story is clear in the opening paragraph and keep the release short and snappy avoiding cliché, superlatives or hyperbole.
• Media moments can be very short with a 5-10 second piece on radio deemed enough to tell your story so brevity is essential especially for broadcast media.
• Utilise any interest facts or figures to support why the product is interesting. This will also help journalists who would otherwise have to do this research.
• Only use quotes if they add to the strength of the release.

Once you are ready to issue the release you need to decide if its strong enough to send to numerous different publications or to give to one as an exclusive. Currently there are many freelance journalists who supply copy to a range of publications and this might be a better route depending on the interest level in the story. If you have a list of media you are sending the release to, try to include personal notes rather than blind cc (bcc) people on email. Only call the journalist if you have something else valuable to add to the release.

Make sure you are ready to respond to any queries quickly as the media move extremely fast. This includes having someone available to do radio or television interviews. Do all the preparation for this in advance by drawing up all the questions you think you will be asked and jotting down answers to them. Record yourself and get someone else to interview you – ideally using a video recorder.

All media outlets are busy places and journalists time is limited. Unless your product is truly ground breaking or innovative avoid press conferences as you may be faced with a costly empty room. Media will only attend if there is something else or true value that they could only get by attending rather than from the release.

Some things to avoid are contact journalist close to the publication time. Get you story in early and don’t expect a positive response from a Sunday paper journalist on a Friday afternoon or a broadcast news journalist just before an hourly bulletin.

2. Traditional Media – photography

Quite often a photo (with a well worded caption) can tell the story as effectively as a news article. In addition space in newspapers is limited for articles but visually arresting images work if they tell the story in a visually arresting way telling what they product or service will do.

Some hints

• Use a professional photographer who will take the photos, caption them and send to the correct people in the media.
• Use props to help tell the story.
• Avoid use of people in suits only shots.
• Use children and models if appropriate.
• Think of the backdrop and location – blank office wall is rarely attractive – think outside locations.
• Avoid overly branded photos such as logos.
• Make sure the photo is of sufficient size/quality for the newspaper.

Famous people or celebrities are always attractive to the media. You might know someone through personal contacts who will help you. Be careful here as the celebrity might become the story rather than you product or service.

3. Think Social Media.

Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and a variety of other social media tools can be used to help promote the message especially after you have taken the time to distil it all down into a press release. In addition they facilitate multimedia content (video, audio) that print media cannot handle.

Post the release on some of the well trafficked news sites such as IrishPressReleases.com.

If you have a twitter profile set up use it to point to the release or some interesting aspect of the launch. Social media is all about conversations with people so do not view it as purely broadcast and aim to try genuinely engage people. If your tweets are interesting enough and you have built up a reasonable following people may retweet your posts which further increases your reach. Facebook allows you the opportunity to also upload photography and video so think beyond the initial launch and plan some additional follow on content.

Make sure the launch is well covered on your website. Put into your news section and if you have a blog section, talk about the launch and related areas and link to the press release. Avoid thinking about the release as wallpaper and pasting in every outlet. Quite often there are very interesting angles that are not in the release itself.

YouTube also offers great potential to help promote the service. Think about it as adding extra value rather than purely promotional. This could be using humour (always difficult) or simple how to video guides.

For the more advanced social media users you could also use live broadcasting services such as UStream. This could be particularly useful if a product demonstration is being given. If it is a web based product you could also try Screen Toaster  which allows you to give a walk through the service accompanied by an audio talk through.

Social media is heavily relationship driven and follower/Likes will only be grown over time by sharing more interesting content with people over time and focusing on having conversations. This means not treating the launch as the end point but rather the beginning.

Similar to traditional media relations there may be many blogger, twitters or websites that cover your area of interest. Get to know these people in advance and form relationships with them from telephone contact to posting on their sites, following and answering them on twitter.. Find out their interests and how they wish to be approached (if at all) and find some common ground. Avoid sending unsolicited and untargeted emails.

Final Comment.

Media relations and social media can achieve a lot in terms of profile but they can soak up a lot of time which you need to factor in advance. The launch should be seen as phase one and follow up stories and an editorial calendar of follow on announcements are extremely important. Keep note of who have covered the story in the past and if appropriate contact the journalists after the story. You may also notice them covering related areas of interest and if you have something of value to add contact them for future stories.

Combine it with the right hash tag and you can always check against other tweets to remind yourself on the bits you could not type fast enough to capture or to correct inaccuracies.

I have, like lots of people, found my blogging has suffered as my twitter activity has grown.  This is a pity as pithy, snappy tweets only give a fragmented, pieces missing view of a someones presentation or discussion.

I have decided to try use the tweets from the last few events I attended to piece together an overview, mainly as there were some resources I wish to test out and use again

The first was Audio Video Culture – Behind the scenes of video and audio.  The event was organized by the IIA Social Media Working Group, of which I am a member.  The idea behind the event was to show how different organizations are using video and also to give some practical advice on equipment and software.  This is the part that I was particularly looking forward to.

RTE kicked off the first session with some interesting stats on their iPlayer usage.  35% of people watch entire shows with an average stream of 18 minutes.  This is impressive when your consider that most people will be viewing it on a poor quality computer screen at a desk which is a completely different experience to that of slouching on a couch.  The speaker did point out that a large screen interface and faster streaming are in the pipeline which fits in with the general consensus that we will be replacing watching downloaded movies on our laptops to the plasma screen stuck to the wall.

Apparently 30 to 50% of their streams are from the international player, something that presents lots of licensing challenges especially as RTE get popular show such as Desperate House Wives before other countries.  Their solution is to remove certain shows.

Next up was Rabo Bank who play a good deal of attention to online video, audio and social media as they have to compete with bricks and mortar banks to build relationships with customers. Aoife Mahon & Gina McCrudden gave some nice examples of video testimonials, webinars and podcasts that they use.  Their podcasts alone have generated a listenership of over 35K while webinars have waiting lists of 300 people at times.  They also integrate other marketing activities into their plans, an example being the Fix Its competition with George Hook on Newstalk being used on the site.

Fred Caballero from Channelship set the scene for his presentation by talking about YouTube being the second search spot after YouTube, which was surprising considering the Google/Facebook supremacy stories but it could be for specific searches.  He also detailed YouTube’s 6.6 billion streams and 75% market share.   In particular I wanted to hear about what tools Fred used.  Below is a list of the particular good ones.

• Tube Mogul for distributing video.
• ScreenToaster and Camtasia Studio for screen recording and talking through presentations.  Especially good for the camera shy.
• Gotowebinar and Onlinemeetingrooom.com for hosting online conferences/chats.  The later is a really nice cost effective solution when you have people scattered geographically and want to share presentations as well as teleconferencing people in.
• Ustream.tv for live streaming of events.  Laptop, video camera and an internet connection was all that was used to broadcast the event and quality look pretty ok.  More powerful than QIK from what I have seen and it also incorporates twitter streams once they are correctly has tagged.  Justin.tv was also mentioned as a good alternative.

Finally the last presentation was from Donal Rice from the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.  I have seen Donal present a number of time over a few years and usability has moved from a nice to do to a more structured need to do for some organizations.  His message has also become more commercial from opening points about grey surfers being the fastest growing market to level of normal diversity and disability in the marketplace.

Usability can tend to be associated with disability but some of his points on closed captioning and audio descriptors for YouTube videos related to people whose first language may not be English, working in noisy environment or who need to work in a quiet/silent environment rather than just people who are hard at hearing.

The pitch of increased usability being good for SEO made relative sense (kind of similar to advance tagging) and was creative in trying to enhance the level of usability investment.

These carrot items came just before the stick in terms of quotes from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability and the Irish Disability Act 2005/Equal Status Act.  These are currently loose but further European legislation is expected where having an accessible website will be similar to buildings needing wheel chair access.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 are fairly detailed in terms of different levels of grading from A to AA but I cannot ever recall a web designer bringing it up with me on client projects.

8 groups presented their findings and the calibre was extremely high for students who have very little marketing training.  In addition there was a strong balance of overseas students for whom English was not their first language.  Some of the big takeaways were:

• All groups came back with videos ranging from themed Captain Repak style to very well thought out versions using hands with writing on them as the medium.
• Social media platforms were a strong distribution medium (Facebook primarily) but none really rated Twitter.
• Traditional media was limited to free sheets and posters primarily in addition to bin stickers. 
• Reasons for returning was an observation by all.  Content was useful but not compelling enough to revisit the Repak sites.
• Most groups were happy to test something out before commiting to them.  i.e. pull it together, upload, see how it goes and if successful then invest later on.
• All the groups were happy to use their existing networks pointing to the importance of investing in building a wide community rather than just having the content uploaded and visible to search engines and then putting in marketing spent.
• iPhone.  One of the groups went as far as designing an iPhone application and also how it would be funded.  Full screen shots were provided.
• Games and quizzes were mentioned highly with some having researched rebranding existing games.
• One group built a properly functioning website with branded games reflecting how they would like to communicated with and entertained.
• Most groups were happy to take the tools that existed and  to reuse existing content.

Overall there was a real sence of ease and familarlity with digital content especially video and how they are linked to social media.  This is the space they all use on a daily basis and generating content for them was not seen as a major jump.  They were all very comfortable with the background technical areas like hosting, editing etc and production was fairly seamless.

Here is one of the videos one of the groups produced, based on how you recycle – i.e. with your hands.

The presentations themselves were very well delivered with some groups really going a stage further in terms of the hadn out materials. Below is one folder that one group did up which had a very ecofriendly feels to it and took time to prepare.

Handouts by DBS students for Repak Presentation

Anyway, the deeper I delve into social media the more I see the gaps between traditional PR operations and how people are trying to integrate it into social media. 

Social media poses lots of challenges for PR people, some of which I covered in previous posts.  One I see increasing in importance is the start stop nature of PR.

Start Stop

In media relations a lot of time is in planning, reporting, researching and writing and outside of dealing reactively with media queries and keeping relationships alive the actual contact and engagement time with media can sometimes be a relatively small part (the reliance on email has made this even worse).  Sometimes you can be touch with the same journalists a number of times in a day and then not speak to them for months.  This is not really an issue in traditional media.  The press machinery moves on and contact with a news, sports or business desks have little or no crossover and not being part of the daily debate and process of pulling newspapers together does have a disproportionate bearing on your standing. 

This is somewhat different in the online work.  If you have not blogged or tweeted for a while, people do notice and its up there for all to see.  Try tracking the last time someone has contacted a newsdesk versus the last time someone has responded to a tweet or posted on boards.ie.  This has other implications than the obvious staleness and relevance issues.  A lot of PR people see social media as extension of the media process and only update it when they have a press release or other national newsworthy announcements to make.  This start stop is relatively acceptable for national media but in social media jumping head long into conversations after months of absence can appear odd or worse rude.  Trends, topics, influencers all move at lightning speed online and an absence of a couple of days can make one almost irrelevant.

The obvious answer is that PR people should spend more time online and engage more but social media could suck all the time available as there is a endless source of relevant distractions.  However there are some simple things that people can do to overcome the start stop including:

• Plan social media activity beyond the traditional PR milestones – dont allow weeks to build up with no input.
• Build an extensive editorial calendar of proactive content.
• Decide on a daily or other social media routine.  Post at a certain time, check for replies at a certain time, response at a certain time.  This sets expectations and enforces a schedule.
• Create thematic days – one day could be photos from the archive for example.
• Set aside time for reading and engaging in other peoples posts, tweets and online conversations.
• Most importantly – be programmatic and stick to it.

People naturally go through peaks and troughs of activity but when you leave a community for too long you loose: relevance with others in the network, touch of what is really happening, links and connections with others.  I am always amazed by how quickly online communities innovate and change.  One thing for certain is that being an expert in a platform now does not mean you will be any better than an enthusiastic beginner in a few months time.  The secret lies in managing the time input and building it as a central part of PR programmes.

While this is not major news it does bring up an intresting area.  For most people when they register on a new social media platform there tends to be a variance on the user names that they use.  Sometimes this is as a result of the name not being available, the name being too long or you want to experiment so you pick a unrelated user name.

This now has a number of implications in that to properly track you need to search under your different user names.  For example my Twitter user name is @eoink as @eoinkennedy was too long.  Search results for eoin kennedy are now unlikley to bring up twitter posts and now that I spend more time twittering than blogging means that there is a split between the results so it appears like two different people.  This is more important for brands who need uniformity on names.

Lessons

1. Make sure you register your user names accross different platforms.
2. Ideally unique pick one that you have a realistic chance of getting across different platforms.
3. User a uniform user name.
4. Only commit to ones that have longevity as changing probably means rebuilding your network form scratch and losing your ranking (on the likes of www.klout.com) which may become more important in future.

 This will undoubtably bring more attention to people squatting on brand names.  I have heard multiple stories of people approaching Twitter directly (over phone and mail) to get names back with limited success and contacting the person directly, which can have financial implications.  Some people I spoke to who have registered multiple twitter user names have experienced multiple pass word reset requests, indicating a lot of people are now chasing down names they wish to register.  This is tricky if the person has invested time in building a community around that username as they may not be willing to transfer it and also tricky if there is no activity on it as it can be hard to track the owner. 

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Media Twitter Chart

Initially I thought most would fall into the climber category with low influence but high following as most started using their breaking news or equivalent and did not follow many people.  However a good proportion of them scored high in the persona category showing that they are interacting more with the community and that it appears they are being actively managed.

Another interesting observation was that even as I was plotting people their scores where changing rapidly.   Marie Boran from Silicon Republic moved from the connector category to the persona category over the course of a few days.  The list is not a complete list but Rick O’Shea scored highest on the ones I had.  Klout could not find quite a few of the profiles.

Media Twitter Rankings

Newstalk Twitter Profile

Looking at the Newstalk profile alone you get a sense of how active they are.  2,156 tweets, 1,896 followers and following 564 people.  The tweets are a variety of ones from the show and some regular observation/news tweets.  They also respond to other peoples tweets and have a reasonable engagement level.

Overall this picture shows that most Irish media have moved from using Twitter as a purely broadcast tool and are engaging more than ever.  This has a lot of implications for the PR industry and is a very positive trend.  I imagine a lot of stories that end up on the clipplings floor might make their way on to the Twitter streams, something that a lot of companies could be missing out on.  The rule for engaging via Twitter are still evolving but a good starting point is to make sure you are following them.  A sudden influx of DMs and @ comments pointing to press releases would be pretty unwelcome.  I also imagine that the media publications are watching each others activity and that it could get pretty competitive.

Broadcast
 The Holiday Show: @theholidayshow

 RTE News @RTENEWS
 The Last Word: @lstwrd

 RTE Morning Ireland: @morning_ireland

 Newstalk Breakfast Show: @breakfastnt

 Phantom 105.2: @phantom1052

 Dublin’s Q102: @dublinsq102

 RTE Drivetime @drivetimerte
 RTE The Business @thebusinessrte/
 RTE Business @RTEbusiness
 RTE Updates @RTERad1Updates
 RTE Saturday View @Saturdayviewrte
 RTE Sport @rtesport
 RTE Arts @rtearts
 RTE @rte

Radio Personalities
 Ray Foley – Today FM: @rayfoleyshow

 George Hook – Newstalk: @ghook

 Sean Moncrieff – Newstalk: @SeanMoncrieff

 Rick O’Shea – 2fm: @rickoshea

 Ryan Tubridy @tubridyradio1

Publications (Print & Online):
 Analogue Magazine: @analoguemag

 Irish Times: @the_irish_times

 Irish Times Business @IrishTimesBiz

 Irish Independent @IrishIndo

 Irish Examiner @IrishExaminer

 Sunday Business Post @ sundaybusinesspost
 Sunday Independent @SundayIndo
 Sunday Tribune @sundaytribune_
 Sunday World @SundayWorld
 Irish Sentinel – Satirical site: @irishsentinel

 Day and Night Magazine (Irish Independent): @dayandnightmag

 Life and Fitness Magazine: @derryo

 Media Contact: @Mediaflash
Journalists
 Marie Boran – SiliconRepublic: @PixieVonDust

 John Collins – Irish Times: @jaycee001

 Mark Coughlan: @Mark_Coughlan

 Richard Delevan – Guardian: @rdelevan

 Kilian Doyle – Irish Times: @kilian_doyle

 Tadhg Enright – RTE: @tadhgenright

 Shane Hegarty – Irish Times: @shanehegarty

 Harry McGee – Irish Times: @harrymcgee

 Hugh Linehan – Irish Times: @hlinehan

 Mark Little – RTE: @marklittlenews

 Adam Maguire: @adammaguire

 Dick O’Brien – Sunday Business Post: @dickobrien

 Chas Taylor – Irish Times: @ChasTaylor

 Adrian Weckler – Sunday Business Post: @adrianweckler

 Joe Drumgoogle @jdrumgoole

 Ronan Price Independent @ronanprice
 Kathy Foley Sunday Times @kathyfoley

New additions

 Niall Kitson PC Live @niallkitson

 Silicon Republic @siliconrepublic

 Paul Hearns, ComputerScope @Paul_Hearns

 Karlin Lillington, Irish Times @klillington

 Conor Pope, Irish Times @conor_pope

 Ciara O’Brien, Irish Times @ciaraobrien

 John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, @MrJohnFKennedy

• Electric News
• Vincent Browne, Journalist and TV Presenter
• Business & Leadership, online business portal
• PCLive, home personal computing magazine 
• Dick O’Brien, Sunday Business Post
• Rosemary McCabe, Journalist
• Paul Cunningham, RTE
• Cian McCormack, RTE

I use Klout for this exercise but another new tool on the block is the TweetLevel from Edelman.  Some scores differ but give some useful insights.  Both are good for setting bench marks against others and provide a useful roadmap for increasing influence.

Klout -Twitter Influence Tool

How you compare with others on twitter has normally been a manual task of looking at their followers, following, number of tweets, number of @ and general level of engagement.  I did an analysis of some public sector organisations for a presentation to some press offices organised by Public Affairs Ireland and trying to decipher who was more influential was pretty time consuming and manual.  This tool really helps giving a helpful snap shot.  Unfortunately it does not find all twitter users but assume this will improve over time.  When you search under your twitter user name it positions you on an x/y axis looking at influence and audience with the four quadrants covering Casual, Connector, Climber and Personal.  The personal quatrant containing the most active twitter users.

Klout Quadrants

Interestingly I was in the bottom corner and much as I would like to protest its probably a fair reflection on my personal twitter usage and out reach.  I don’t follow everyone who follows me and I do engage with a relatively small pool of people on a regular occasion and I have a moderate rate of tweets.

It also give a text interpretation of the graph.  Mine is below and although I dont agree with it all – ahem! – its indicative.  Interesting to see youself reflected lower than you would expect as in theory everyone would like to be the utimate category but why and how people use twitter is a personal choice on time availability, how much engagement you want and can handle and how wide you wish to be spread among others. 

“You don’t take this Twitter stuff too seriously. People towards the lower left corner are probably very new to social media. Most people in this quadrant tend to engage with a small group of friends that they know in real life. If you’re in the upper right corner, you have succeeded in building a strong audience, but need to engage and be more active to jump to the next level.”

I would like to see all the variables they use but its a useful snap shot when you are looking at improving your twitter profile or trying to get a handle on someone elses influence.

Add on to this the heavy investment into the printing presses which compounds the problem for media owners.  The Irish Times spent approx 50 million euro on its printing press while the impressive Independent plant was possibly similar.

Most articles on this topic focus on ploughing investment into the online product.  Most media owners are doing this to some degree but not everyone is online and the investments in the printed press needs to be realised.  Print is not dead and the popularity of freesheet and glossy magazines show they still have a good following even among the more digital native.  The tactile physical and instantly portable nature of print means its still has great following and plenty to offer if it embraces real innovation.

Last weekend I was part of a panel at a creativity conference called ‘Creativity Rising’ in Fitzpatrick Hotel organised by MultiTalent.  The 20 participants came from Spain, Austria and Ireland.  Over the weekend people presented a ‘Work in Progress’ of some initiative they were undertaking in the realm of creativity.  The group then peer reviewed each one and delivered feedback and suggestions.

During one of the breakout session I had a good chat with Humberto Matas from DNX in Madrid.  We spoke abouts some of the challenges facing the print media industry in Spain and Ireland.

Two interesting things emerged from the conversation on how the print industry can translate younger readers into older buyers and not canibalise the entire print industry.  The two areas were

1. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is a hot topic at the moment with interesting experiments in Amsterdam with mobile technology.  Check here for an earlier piece I did on AR.  In simple terms augmented reality pulls together multiple layers of data to help present different version of the real world and allow new ways of interacting with it.  One possible use for the print industry is that along side an article there is a symbol/bar code that could be scanned by mobile phone, web camera or event an interactive kiosk.  Once scanned this would pull up a 3D interactive version of the story that younger viewers could manipulate or use to find more information or buy services.  Rather than having all of this originate from online and stay online,  this type iniative would anchor it to the physical newspaper with multiple modes for online interaction. 

2. Embedded Video Screens

 Very similar to the moving photos in Harry Potters Daily Prophet US publishers are experimenting with inserting tiny video screen in to magazines and newspapers.  Entertainment Weekly will be distributing 2.7mm thick video screens that are integrated into the magazine.  These rechargable screens can play up to 40 minutes of video.  As video is the choice of younger demographics it has a good chance of attracting younger readers but also offers advertisers much more choice in advertising.  Hopefully it does not become advertising platform alone but rather another editorial outlet.  As the technology evolves and gets thinner it could in theory replace all the colour photos.  Hopefully the recycling industry would catch up so it was unlikely to produce  a waste nightmare but I imagine that short life easily recycled screens and batteries would emerge.

This shows the how the entire media industry is converging.  Print publications becoming web portals becoming social media outlets becoming twitter channels becoming virtual radio and tv stations (with podcasting and YouTube).  In theory the Irish Times would compete with RTE and YouTube only stations.

The next few years will see alot of media changes and its obvious that online will be the key driver.  However there is still life in the print edition but only innovation will save the day.

- new post scripted information -

Just noticed this great video from TED India.  Lots of interesting stuff but fast forward to 8 minutes to see how Six Sence technology can interact with newspapers.

Everyone agreed that that they are wonderful platforms but how can organisations take a meaningful role in them was an enigma.  As time passes the fog has lifted here partially as a result of experimentation, new applications emerging and platforms like Facebook taking a deliberate stance by establishing pages for companies and leaving profiles for individuals.  Some of the rules of engagement have come from the community themselves.  Essentially most of these communities jarred with the idea of companies engaging with the fear of over commercialisation.  Now these is an acceptance that if an organisation can deliver value and entertainment then people will give them eyeballs in a pseudo transaction way.

IGO People

is different.  It was established with the very purpose of creating a medium whereby companies could interact with consumers and indeed a platform where people could group together to create change with an organisation.  For example you have a problem with a mobile provider and getting no where with the company itself, then you can use IGO people to group people together to structure a more cohesive approach.

Like all social media the more you put in, the more you engage, the more you build your network base the better the result.

Below is a lits of some of the ways you could use and enhance your IGO People presence.

Beginner  

• Set up your organisation page with a vanity URL.
• Add a map to your profile.
• Add keywords to your ‘conversations of interest’ in order to monitor conversations that are relevant to your business. 
• Upload a profile photo, brand information and relevant collateral to your profile.
• Create your first post by introducing yourself to the community and also describe the activities of your business.  

 
Intermediate 

• Build Community – Invite your customers to your organisation page via the Go Connect features.
• Join Groups of interest and add value to these groups.
• Add organisations to your network.  
• Comment on other conversations where appropriate.  
• Post regularly on information that is relevant and of value to your customers. 
• Import your blog via RSS.   

 
Advanced 

• Integrate the IGOpeople connect button with website. 
• Connect your twitter account to your IGOpeople account.
• Assign multiple representatives to manage your twitter customer service on IGOpeople.
• Use IGOpeople to manage your customer service, promote and market your products and services , collect feedback and to build social capital.  

Any other experience or more ideas please let me know.  Its worth browsing the site for some nice examples by FBD and Vodafone.

Eoin