Tuesday 15 May 2012

Twitter: Your own personal PR

Twitter is so important as your own personal form of PR. Many people use twitter in a way that doesn’t maximise its potential by tweeting about everyday mundane things rather than tweeting about interesting content and linking to different content so that followers gain things from following them. To end this social media blog I am going to put this to the test by seeing how many followers I can gain in 24 hours by using twitter in the right way; linking to content, linking to this blog etc and see if it effects my followers on the blog. It will begin at 12pm tomorrow and end at 12pm Thursday. So get following and thank you for reading my blog!

https://twitter.com/#!/media_vic

Sunday 13 May 2012

How important is gamification?

Gamification is a huge social media trend for brands right now. It’s definitely something that has been identified in recent issues of FIR. Gamification is basically applying gaming techniques to PR, therefore many brands are releasing games as a promotional tool
Gamification
Topshop
Topshop released a game called SCVNGR (scavenger). You had to download the game in the form of an app. Then there were different challenges to play for different prizes such a £50 to spend in store etc. there were also tasks inside the store to encourage footfall.
Lookbook.nu leaderboard
Lookbook
Lookbook is a site where people can upload pictures of their outfits. Lookbook hasn’t actually released a game for PR or promotion it’s used gaming techniques as part of the uniqueness of the website. The more that you like an outfit you are encouraged to ‘hype’ the look. The more hypes a look gets then the higher it gets featured on the homepage. The more hypes it receives then the average of ‘karma’ becomes higher which gives the user more exposure. So basically the reward of having a good outfit is social status.
Gamification is very important as it's a great PR tool simply because it's a really fun way of getting people involved in a brand.
Want to know more?
I recommend reading these articles:

Thursday 10 May 2012

For Immediate release

7th May & 9th May
For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report
For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report


Main Topics Discussed:
On the 7th May co-host Shel Holtz reviewed Jane McGonigal’s “Reality is Broken,” which argues that the principles of game play can lead to better results than the routine approaches we take to problem-solving in the real world.  The 9th May was an interview with Grantoo co-founder and CEO Dimitri Sillam where they discussed student loan debt and how it effected students giving to charities.

Things I found interesting:
One of the answers to the problem discussed was gamification, creating some sort of game to get students enticed to interact with the charity and therefore encourage them to give. Obviously the whole review about 'Reality is Broken' was about gaming techniques and it was interesting to see how they delved into the power of gaming and how game designers have discovered what stimulates us. It shows just how important gaming techniques are and if they are applied to PR tools this is something that can be a real winner for promotion brands. Gamification is definitely an interesting PR tool that I want to explore, see what brands are doing it, and doing it successfully!

Monday 7 May 2012

Companies using social media the RIGHT way

Listening to a recent FIR (03/05/12) about companies that have got social media wrong I decided look at the companies that managed to get it right!

Glamour – Pinterest
Glamour use Pinterest better than most companies that I’ve seen. They use their boards to show different elements of the magazine. Such as pinboards for inspiration for an up and coming photoshoot for the magazine. They also create pinboards for different trends. Doing this not only creates a personality for the magazine but it also invites the readers into the ‘behind-the-scenes’ inspiration that goes into the magazine and allows them to share these aspects with their readers.



Coca-Cola –Facebook
Coca-Cola’s facebook is so unique because they really maximise all the features of timeline. You can go right back to when Coke first began to find out information on the brand. They also interact with their fans through competitions, promotions and campaigns. Right now they are offering tickets to EURO 2012 if you get involved with their ‘Move to the beat’ campaign.

Uniqlo
Uniqlo is brand that is the king of social media for brands. Their social media history includes releasing a pinball game that allowed customers to win discounts and promotions as well as this it recently release a website called lucky counter that similar to groupon discounts the price the more that you tweet about it or share it. On top of all of this they were also one of the first retailers to release a mobile phone app in 2008. To find out more about their successes read this article and scroll to the bottom.

Overall, social media really is key to creating a good online personality and maximising the potential of a brand.

Want to know more?
I recommend to read these articles:

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Social Media and a Successful Blog

Many bloggers will agree that social networking and social media is a huge part of their success. Recently one blogger tweeted that since she had not been promoting her blog on facebook her blog hits had halved in just one week. So how vital is social media to the successfulness of your blog?

WishWishWish
WishWishWish began in 2007. As an avid reader of her blog I have seen it grow over the years. She never promoted her blog on facebook, and she was a late user of Twitter. The way that her blog has gained success is through old social networking sites such as Livejournal which she regularly posted in communities such as What I Wore Today and The High Street. By doing this she gained followers who once she moved to her own blog platform followed her and were a vital part in spreading the word about her blog.

Nicola Claire
Nicola Claire’s blog is only a year old, but in a year she has managed to gain over a 1000 followers. Most of her promotion and followers came from a site called LookBook.nu where she regularly posted pictures of her outfits. She gained a following from that and many users wanted to find out more and therefore began to follow her blog. She also had a lot of interaction with other bloggers who in turn promoted her blog. I think making friends with other bloggers is a vital part to success as they will link back and more followers will be gained that way.
Both these bloggers now use twitter and facebook to continually promote their blogs, but it definitely is not something that they used as single tool to gain followers. It is definitely an amalgamation of different social media tools, and not always the obvious ones that you think of like twitter and facebook. I think the most important thing is identifying what social networking and media sites do the people that you want to read your blog use, and then start promoting your blog from there.

Want to know more?
I recommend to read these articles: