Vocus on "Optimizing your Public Relations with Social Media"

Vocus has recently released a white paper on the need for embracing social media to enhance PR strategies.


Optimizing Your Public Relations with Social Media
A Guide to Blogs, Wikis, and Social Networks for PR Professionals

Introduction— The Emergence of Social Media

In September 2006, Hitwise, an online marketing research firm, reported that the majority of traffic to online music retailer, HMV.co.uk, was referred from MySpace, a social networking Web site. This traffic surpassed searches from two of the most popular search engines, MSN UK and Yahoo! UK. While connecting users with information and content was once defined by complicated search algorithms, MySpace’s impact indicated a profound shift in the structure of the Internet was on the horizon.

Today’s communication’s environment increasingly relies on content generated and distributed by users like you and me. This is the world of social media.

Evidence of the growth of social media is everywhere:

- In 2006, the Blogosphere had grown 100 times in three years, and accounted for 50 million blogs (Technorati, 2006).
- 57% of teens who use the Internet can be considered content producers in some way or another (Fox & Lenhart, 2006).
- More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use social networking sites (Lenhart & Madden, 2007).
- In April 2006, 35,000 new videos were being posted daily to YouTube and in February 2006, YouTube attracted 9 million visitors who viewed 176 million pages (Liedtke, 2006).
- Wikipedia consistently places in the top-10 results for Google searches on fortune-500 brand names (Fadner, 2006).


Download the complete report here. Enjoy the read.

With the increasing influence of social media, we should make a conscious effort to further integrate our brands' communications and PR strategies in the virtual world which has few boundaries.

Rents Eating into our salaries!

Bayt.com survey reveals that housing costs account for a third of personal expenses in the UAE and Qatar.

Over 8,500 respondents from across the region participated in the online survey, which was conducted by market research leader YouGovSiraj in association with Bayt.com, throughout September. The survey also examined the financial implications of utilities, car financing and company benefits. Across the region the research findings consistently show that housing expenses continue to make the largest dent in regional salaries.

If you would like to read the entire report, download it here.

Facebook attracts more women than men

This interesting piece of statistics on the breakdown of Facebook users shows that there are more women on the social network than men.

Have you noticed that too? Why aren't the guys rushing to sign-up then? Are they concerned about their privacy because there are too many women they know on the network?

What do you think?

Thanks to Ahmad Abbas from TBWA\ Egypt for sharing this link.

Strong PR and the weak dollar

Strong public relations makes a company; it defines the business, educates the media and the public at large about the positive aspects of the company and creates an awareness that builds business opportunities as well.

So what happens when business goes bad? Traditionally, business goes bad and then advertising and then public relations goes. The media industry is always the first to feel the effects of recession. And apparently we should be in a recession; why? The almighty dollar; the greenback is at its lowest against the Euro and Sterling and apparently a precursor to a recession.

Fuelled by credit crunches and stretched debt markets, are we in trouble?

Business is still good: a weak dollar means we are more attractive for selling our services in comparison to other regions, such as Europe and the Gulf states are still pegged to the dollar.

It's time to realise the benefits of the weak dollar in terms of our market potential, but also be aware of what it can mean by comparison - other goods from other countries are more expensive.

In the long term the dollar will balance out - the perception is that things are bad but this ain't necessarily the case. Especially since we're in the business of perception.

thanks

Jonathan

The Web's Cultural Impact

Over the last decade the internet has had a tremendous impact on my life. It has given me the opportunity to lead multiple lives with multiple logins and email ids. You may consider this behaviour deceptive or dishonest, but I don't see it that way. Every virtual life that I lead is simply a reflection of one of my personal qualities and these virtual lives, all together, represent me. Hence, the anonymous login!

Well, anyway, my point is that the internet is changing the way we see and do things.

This chart on the timeline of the web's cultural impact for Yahoo!, prepared by Sixth Finger, highlights the rapid developments in internet technologies and applications in less than 2 decades.
How many web 2.0 applications have you used? Do you have any favorites? Have you found any new ones that are not mentioned here? How have they changed your life?
Click below and tell me how.