You can download the full transcript should you wish to here.

It includes great little quotes (which may or may not be his?) like:

Content is infinite but attention is finite.

He reveals four principles. The one I want to share with you distils and clarifies the increasingly fragmented and confusing world of media into four groups. Read it and your understanding of media will immediately be brought into sharp focus. And that can only be a good thing!?

Here goes:

Principle Three: Take Full Advantage of Democratized Media

In the digital era, news is everywhere. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans say they get news from as many as six media platforms on a typical day.

Content is infinite … but attention is finite. More than ever before, stories need to be repeated … available where people are spending their time reading, watching and participating.

Our greatest challenge today is deciding where to begin telling a story.
There are four distinct, but related, types of media today:

• mainstream
• hybrid
• social, and
• owned

Imagine them as a four-leaf clover.

In the first leaf, mainstream, we have the traditional delivery vehicles of print or broadcast.

In the second leaf, hybrid, are the dot.com versions of traditional media and media that is born digital like the Huffington Post.

The third leaf, social, includes Facebook, Twitter feeds and YouTube channels.
The fourth leaf, owned, includes a brand or company’s websites and apps—vitally important because every company should be a media company.

Sitting in the middle of the clover is search, the new on-ramp to all forms of media, as well as content which fuels ―search rank.

And there are also new influencers, such as the 25,000 people who provide half the world’s tweets. They’re passionate, fast, and prolific, which makes their expertise and personal experience resonate globally.

Two quick examples of the media clover in action:

Xbox Kinect engaged with tech bloggers six months before launch, received strong feedback that prompted product improvements, and then went to mainstream and social media to promote launch events across the globe.

Ben and Jerry’s ice cream relied on a Facebook app to crowd-source a new flavor, and only then promoted it to blogs and mainstream media.

Richard concludes this section with my favourite focus on storytelling. Liberating times for PR practitioners smart enough to bin the bad old days of churn and blast out.

We must work to stimulate storytelling that creates motion across all of the different types of media. We must ensure that personal stories and ideas are part of our output and that high-quality content … infographics and short-form video … can be easily found and shared to enhance search results.

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Good news. It’s not necessarily budget that will secure national coverage. Just a really good story. If you have one, or you and your PR advisor can conjure one up, then that’s part of the battle.

PR power and success is strongly linked to credibility and building up relationships over time too. So the more you do (and in this case spend) can increase your chances of national coverage.

Manage Expectations

If you restricted your budget to, say, one release you may well get national coverage. But you may not. No matter how compelling the story is. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. A PR advisor or agency should have a few tricks up their sleeve to increase the chances of coverage.

Is National Media Coverage the Holy Grail?

There is some good news. People often obsess about national coverage as the holy grail. And massive circulation media can make a difference. But in an increasingly fragmented media landscape, there might be smaller circulation magazines or online media and blogs that are read by people more likely to buy from you. Don’t dismiss them out of hand.

PR might not even be the smartest way to convert new customers! Most ethical PR people will be honest with you if this is the case.

Choosing PR Support

Draw up a shortlist of your favourite PR consultants. Offer each one a detailed brief (although the good PR guys will help to tease the key info from you) including what you want to achieve, budget, competitors, target audience. Most will give you a few creative responses, news angles, details of recent successes and a cost guide.

Pay on Results?

Some may offer you a pay-on-results service. It would never be my cup of tea but this might suit you. But make sure you cap it otherwise it can get out of hand. I have written press releases that generate one million pounds worth of coverage. And you wouldn’t want to be paying for that on results!!

Ultimately, you’ll probably need to go with your gut instinct. And enjoy the journey! Always remember, the PR process should be fun.

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For at least a couple of years, Zen Habits was one of the top productivity blogs, dispensing productivity crack for a nominal fee (your reading time).

I’d like to think I helped people move closer to their dreams, but today I have different advice:

Toss productivity advice out the window.

Most of it is well-meaning, but the advice is wrong for a simple reason: it’s meant to squeeze the most productivity out of every day, instead of making your days better.

Imagine instead of cranking out a lot of widgets, you made space for what’s important. Imagine that you worked slower instead of faster, and enjoyed your work. Imagine a world where people matter more than profits.

If any of that appeals to you, let’s look at some traditional productivity advice, and see why we should just toss them out.

via » Toss Productivity Out :zenhabits.

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If all I had to focus on was being an excellent cyclist it would completely kill it for me.

Throughout our lives we are encouraged to be excellent. Be the best that we can be. Work as hard as we can.

From the day we begin our spelling tests at school before chasing A-grades in exams, or perhaps a hallowed first team spot in the school football team – we pursue and applaud excellent achievements.

The problem is that we often pursue excellence without ever quite achieving it. Or, the respect from peers, family and friends that our obsession with excellence craves.

We can be tough on ourselves too.

Especially if we don’t meet with our personal expectations on excellence. ‘Everyone else appears to be excellent at whatever-it-might-be.’ ‘Am I the only person who isn’t?’!’

Indirectly, the perceived trappings of excellence can be an issue too. How many people do you know who are miserable because people they know have a bigger car? Better job?

The problem with excellence is that all too often it delivers indifference. We can give up the ghost if we still aren’t excellent despite working as hard as we can for years. People achieving excellence burn out. Or, perhaps, when we are intimidated by others who already appear to have achieved it. ‘We’ll never be as good as them!’

It’s an obsession. And I don’t think it’s a healthy one.

We need an alternative to excellence. A shift of focus. We need to drive ourselves in a way that retains all the best elements of our obsession with excellence. We need to retain the healthy competition it encourages. And still enjoy the personal challenges it leads us on.

But, the solution needs to tolerate the plain fact that we can’t all be excellent at everything. And that it’s OK not to be excellent.

So what’s the solution?

A simple shift of focus. For me, just like my new-found love of cycling, the focus should be on passion and enthusiasm.

A focus on passion and enthusiasm will see us naturally seek out the areas of our lives we love. Why stick in a job we dislike, desperately trying to be excellent at it, when our passions lie elsewhere?

The irony is that by seeking out our life passions we have more chance of delivering results – sometimes even excellent results – too. I completed my first coast to coast cycle ride in two days earlier this year. Far from excellent I know. But a result. Passion and enthusiasm tolerates it when we don’t achieve excellence. Loving what you do justifies the achievement.

My passion drove me to compete too. I hated the idea of being the slowest rider on the coast to coast. But I tolerated not being the fastest. And delivered an outstanding personal achievement. Even if I do say so myself.

Passion is charismatic. Because it is a very human trait. Just like ‘not being excellent’ is a human trait too. And I find humans significantly more engaging than excellent automatons.

Don’t forget shared passions too.

Shared passions deliver relationships of real value. I initiate and maintain some of my best business contacts through my shared passion for football. I am not an excellent footballer! In my experience shared excellence can, at worst, breed mistrust.

Excellence is black or white. You’ve either got it or you haven’t. You can never be a little bit excellent. Or even very excellent. Passion and enthusiasm comes in degrees. Making it easier for it to develop and evolve as it becomes stronger.

And passion and enthusiasm are as far removed from indifference as you can get. Whilst even excellent people can burn out after all the effort their achievement has taken.

So let’s bin excellence.

And let passion and enthusiasm drive us. What will you be passionate about today?

All the best, Richard .. an excellent PR Guy!

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For businesses in the UK, http://www.mediauk.com and www.journalisted.com are the best places to start and revisit regularly. However Google has a portfolio of search services which can all be used to build up – and monitor – a targeted list of media contacts.

1. Use the Google Blog search (http://www.google.co.uk/blogsearch) and search for competitors and sector key words to uncover bloggers currently writing about your sector.
2. Don’t underestimate the power of Google’s general search either. Search: ‘<insert your keyword> magazine’ or ‘<insert your keyword> news’ and see what you get.
3. Set up a Google Bookmark list www.google.com/bookmarks When you find a useful online media outlet add it to your list. There are some great browser add ons that will do this for you in a matter of clicks.
4. Use Google reader http://www.google.com/reader/view/ to monitor RSS feeds from the magazines/blogs you track down. Organise them by subject / competitor etc.
5. If you prefer (or as well) set up Google news search alerts http://www.google.com/alerts for competitors and keywords. If the blog / magzines / news are writing about them they should be writing about you too!!
6. Here’s a clever trick. Include the names of, say, three publications you do know, in Google sets: http://labs.google.com/sets then search to reveal all the similar publications that Google can find. Mixed bag of results here – but occasionally very valuable.

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A helpful way to begin an appreciation for the potential of well-executed public relations activity is by making a comparison with its marketing stable mate: advertising.

We all understand how advertising works – right? You agree a price for space or airtime and see or hear your advertisement exactly when and how you want it to appear.

PR works differently!

With PR you give up some of the control over how, when or – sometimes even – if your information appears.

However, the good news – in fact it’s great news – is that the equivalent value of the coverage achieved by just one well-crafted news release, media competition, reader offer or feature can comfortably run into thousands of pounds.

Especially if, in the case of a news release,  the same news is published by several different media titles, covered on radio or even on TV!

Not a bad return if you choose The Buzz Factory to send your next news release for just £275!

Consider this simple equation:

£275 advert = £275-worth of advertising space / airtime

£275 News Release = £0 – £1,000, £2,000, £3,000-worth of EDITORIAL space and – who knows – maybe more (A half page article appearing in just one 40,000 circulation regional paper is typically valued at more than £1500!)

Then there’s TV and radio, the web etc.

Make Word of Mouth Work Even Harder for your Business

The power of editorial information to influence your customers can often be greater because the information is perceived to have an impartial editorial endorsement.

It’s no secret that – in the marketing bag of tricks – PR is the closest weapon we’ve got to word of mouth.

And word of mouth is widely acknowledged as the most powerful sales tool at your disposal.

This is an explanation I wrote over 5 years ago. DO you think it still holds true?

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http://www.slideshare.net/cmi42/2011-cmi-content-marketing-playbook

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I’m on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, YouTube. I also contribute to various online forums including UK Business Forums and a football forum. Will the added benefit I receive from this new community be worth the time and effort?

I’d love to think so. I can see the valuable contribution the new interface offers. But, even with that in mind, I’m not sure.

Chris Brogan Writes:

One of the biggest pushbacks I hear from people when I talk about how wonderful I think Google+ will be for business professionals is that they’re tired. They’re tired of joining a new social network. They’re tired of going through the dance of re-adding their friends and connections on yet another platform. They’re tired of having to think up even more content for yet another platform, after having finally committed to Facebook or Twitter or wherever else.

via Social Media Fatigue.

The big selling point for any business to be involved in theses massive established social media sites is the sheer numbers involved.  You can ‘in theory’ reach billions of people with just one tweet right?  Of course not.

The reason this isn’t true is the finite amount of attention people have available in any given day. We prioritise our attention according to personal interests as opposed to  sucking in as many tweets, for example, as possible.

So, as a business do I master Google + and the thousands of new opportunities it may represent? Or do I seek out niche communties already available as groups on LinkedIn? Using hashtags on Twitter? And on Facebook pages?  Do I, perhaps set up my own content hub to generate information, curate content and engage in online dicsussions with a clearly defined actively-listening target group?

Several banks have chosen to focus their social media strategy on one section of their customer target base. Royal Bank of Scotland, one of our clients, has developed a niche on-line community called Keep Britain Biking to appeal to  motorcyclists in order to encourage customer interaction with their Devitt insurance brand. Barclays bank is using a niche community called 100 voices to appeal directly to students with the promise of a community that contains information “written by students, for students”.

via Niche communities and the future of social media in financial services |Social media agency London | FreshNetworks blog.

Google + is a massively relevant and significant opportunity for everyone online. But increasingly, I want communities that obviously reflect my passions and interests and those of my customers.  And I’ll sacrfice the big number in favour of a group of like-minded people who are actively listening to what we all say.  And an active community of people who introduce content that adds value to our conversation.

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You don’t need me to tell you how important your public profile can be when it comes to acquiring new sponsors and keeping current ones happy.

This is your chance to take a lead. Build a community of people (friends, family, fans, sponsors,media) who care about your career and achievements. And make it as easy as possible for them to discover and share your news, opinions and achievements.

1. Claim Your Social Media Profiles.

Maximise your online social media presence by claiming profiles on key social media platforms. As a minimum that means Twitter, FourSquare, YouTube, and Facebook.

2. Set up Your Blog

Your blog should be the hub of your online profile-building activity.

The two highest profile and most integrated blogging platforms are Blogger and WordPress. (This blog is powered by WordPress). We recommend using them. A blog will give you a customisable web presence with the ability to upload photos, news, videos instantly.

Also consider downloading Windows Live Writer to your PC for blog-posting heaven.

And don’t forget there are hundreds of free extensions for your web browser, especially if you use Chrome and Firefox, which add social media and blogging functionality to make your life easier.

There are plenty of apps for your smartphone too. Speaking of which ..

3. Get a Smart Phone.

If you don’t already have a smart phone, get one. Download the corresponding applications to give you access to the social media channels you are listed on. Listen to relevant online conversations. And update regularly. Share your news, passion, and enthusiasm. Use your common sense when posting. You have common sense don’t you?! Engage with followers. Promote and thank sponsors.

4. Claim Your Splash Page.

No, not just for swimmers. A splash page is a one-page website which includes links to all your social media contact points. Consider this your personally-branded portal. A bit like an online calling card. The two best known splash page hosts are www.about.me and www.flavours.me. Whichever one is best is down to personal taste.

I set up these splash pages in minutes. You may prefer to take a little more time. They are free.

• www.flavors.me/richardglynn
• www.about.me/richardglynn

I even dedicated a athletics themed background picture (at the time of posting – I will be changing it ) just for you! I am sure you can do better!!

If you’re wondering which one is right for you there’s a useful comparison of Flavors and About here. http://techzulu.com/flavors-me-vs-about-me/

5. Claim your own dedicated URL (website name)

Ideally www.yourname.co.uk or www.yourname.com to make it as easy as possible for people to find you on Google, or intuitively for that matter. Perhaps consider www.yournameyourevent.com There are hundreds of web hosts that will register your website address.

• www.1and1.com
• www.123-reg.co.uk

Once you have a website URL you then have a choice.

You can commission a website designer to design you a bespoke website. Employ SEO teams to optimise your site for keywords and initiate a backlink campaign. Expect to pay anything from £200 to £5000 for a decent website. (If you already have that kind of money to spend you probably don’t need to worry too much about sponsorship or your online profile!)

OR, this is what I recommend:

Simply re-direct your website URL to your splash page (above). Redirections can be set up virtually instantaneously via your web hosts account settings page.

The advantages here are:

1. You will be in complete control of the content on your online presence. And you’ll be updating your news on social media websites where millions of people search, communicate, share and discuss daily.

2. The plan is that people will look for you, find you, then take their pick of the social media presences they wish to consult – and hopefully connect with you.

Share your website address widely in social media profiles and email signatures. And use the email name@yourwebsite.co.uk instead of the hotmail / gmail account you normally use.

If you become an international sporting megastar, then perhaps seek out a website developer at this stage.

6. Use consistent imagery.

We’re not talking about anything potentially expensive like brand-identity here. Simply a consistent quality image that prevails across all sites. We want to make you look professional and focussed.

Perhaps you have an action shot or a photo of you on the podium? Perfect!

Social media and splash pages allow degrees of personalisation with your own background and header images. Keep background, header images and avatars (small head and shoulders shots) CONSISTENT across all the website and platforms where you control the content.

7. Content.

So you’ve set everything up. What do you tweet and post about?

That’s a whole new guide I’m afraid. But, for now, go with what you are passionate about and care about.

You have a fascinating story to tell. Only a tiny percentage of people in the world will ever experience what you are about to go through. Share your emotions. Share the inside story behind highs especially. Write blogs; tweet updates; and shoot quick exclusive videos. Congratulate and engage with fans, fellow athletes. Listen first then comment. Be nice people online and good things will happen.

Further Reading

http://www.prguy.co.uk/2011/01/i-just-dont-get-twitter/

http://www.prguy.co.uk/2010/07/twitter-and-social-media-where-to-start/

http://www.prguy.co.uk/2010/09/top-5-ways-to-engage-with-journalists/

Good luck in 2012. If you have personal branding queries drop me line at richardATthebuzzfactory.co.uk. Or tweet me.

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This is a typical example. James Murdoch’s evidence in questioned and one of the first responses is for an MP to try and shoe-horn his name into the spotlight on the back of the story.

Labour MP Tom Watson says he will ask the police to investigate evidence given by News International chairman James Murdoch after it was called into question by two former executives.

Mr Murdoch told the culture committee he had not been “aware” of an email suggesting the practice went wider than a “rogue” News of the World reporter.

But ex-NoW editor Colin Myler and legal manager Tom Crone said they told him.

via BBC News – Labour MP to ask police to investigate James Murdoch.

Tom is undoubtedly as unimpressed as the rest of us with Murdoch’s perceived weaselling around the facts. Time will hopefully reveal the truth.

But, my perception – right or wrong – is that Tom spotted an opportunity for a bit of self publicity on the back of  this ongoing massive media story. Probably becasue he hasn’t got much of interest to say for himself at the moment?

It’s this desperate clamouring for attention that underpins so much of what is wrong with politics. Perhaps the media?

It’s standard tactics to promote clients on the back of other news stories. It’s ‘good’ PR. I’ve done it myself. Maybe I’m doing it now?!! But the more audiences realise the mechanics of  it all, there’s a real risk that we’ll see through – and tire – of those who persist in doing it.

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