• #PRdebate: Can PR step up to the digital challenge? – If by ‘the PR industry’ you mean traditional agencies or ‘the dinosaurs that run PR who don’t get the significance of digital’, as James Warren put it, then i agree PR has already lost. But if we’re talking about the growing band of smart new agencies and the intelligent approach of the larger agencies of which a few were represented last night, then no. These sorts of comms professionals know they still have a lot to learn, but they are building digital skill sets by hiring in experienced individuals or looking beyond the boundaries of what would traditionally be PR. Yes, the social media specific agencies and digital agencies have a lead in understanding the environment, but they also need to skill up in terms of comms strategy and delivery.
• The Great Online PR Debate (#PRdebate): PR Agencies are Losing the Right to Learn – The skills required in the Online world are very different to those practised in Media Relations. What clients need in the Online domain is a set of direct service offerings. They need direct management of reputations amongst communities and forums. They care for direct, bottom line events like sales and bookings conversions, and other direct, tangible outcomes like traffic acquisition. This involves a specific set of direct Online skills: Online people talking directly to lots of other Online people (customers, partners, influencers, stakeholders, etc), not people talking through people (the media). These aren’t Media Relations activities and I don’t think that a traditional Media Relations agency can carry them with any level of assurance. More to the point, most traditional PR firms aren’t comfortable with this kind of work.
• Ignore Twitter? Major brands learn they’d better respond — and quick – Los Angeles Times – “Our social media marketing approach is that we want to be everywhere our consumers are,” said Michael Donnelly, Coke’s director of global interactive marketing. “There’s significant risk in being perceived the wrong way.”
• Difference between PR and publicity – Regis McKenna was great at PR. Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).
• How to Demo Twitter – One of the great challenges for anyone who loves Twitter is to show other people why they should love it too. You can start off by showing how businesses use Twitter. For example, AmazonDeals increases Amazon’s revenue, and ComcastCares provides support to Comcast customers. Zappos promotes the caring brand image of the company because its CEO, Tony Hsieh, is doing the tweeting.
• How to create a hosted Wordpress blog – a step by step guide from booking the domain to getting your blog seen – Everything you need to know to create a blog, seo it, and promote it well. This has a step-by-step guide and dozens of resource links.

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