Online reputation management

A lot of people in the Isle of Man are quite excited about the Government’s initiative to help get Island retailers online.
There’s been some negative publicity about the e-commerce platform that’s been selected and since I write about technology on these pages every week, I’ve been following the story with interest.

For someone in my line of work that means setting the necessary persistent searches to make sure I see any online mention of Venda, the e-commerce vendor in question, and what was quickly revealed to me is that no one outside the the Isle of Man is talking much about Venda.

The only recent mentions of the brand originate from here and are controversial at best and negative at worst. In this case, I’m not sure that Google Search’s first page for Venda gives an accurate reflection of the company and its services.

This experience offers an excellent insight into the importance of online reputation management.

Click here to see the rest of this Tech Talk column.

Social networks and hackers

A friend of mine opened her Hotmail account this week to find a bunch of bounce back messages that indicated her full address book had been spammed and all her contacts had been deleted.
What an embarrassment and a hassle.

She was quite sure that no one could have access; no one knew her password. So how did it happen then? Had someone used some sophisticated software to break the code to get in? Probably.

I asked her a few questions and the likely cause quickly revealed itself. She posts her email address on Facebook. Her date of birth is also posted on Facebook. She’d been on Twitter on her recent birthday discussing the celebrations. Her password was her date of birth. So you can see how the hacker got the information required to get into Hotmail.

It could have been worse when you think that people often use the same password on multiple sites, such as their bank, credit cards and shopping sites. Thankfully my friend did not use her date of birth on any other account. But her innocent participation in two of the most popular social networks left her, and her contacts, at risk.

It could happen to anybody really, and the ramifications to both an individual and the employing organisation can be profound. However, here are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself, your systems and your business.

Here are some tips on keeping your passwords safe:

-Pick a password that is meaningless. Not your address, your mother’s maiden name nor the name of your dog. A hacker can find this information almost effortlessly, especially if you’re on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.

-Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers. This complicates things for hackers.

-Choose long passwords. The longer, the better, because it’s more difficult to crack.

-Don’t use the same password forever. One good idea is to make a routine of changing it the first day of each month.

-Never use the same password on multiple accounts. Use a different password for each online account.

-Never write your passwords down and never give them out to anyone.

On the surface these last two points, combined, might make the task seem somewhat unmanageable when you consider that today it’s not uncommon to have 20-30 or more website accounts.

But you don’t have to commit to memory dozens of constantly-changing passwords. There are some very clever software products out there, many of them free, to help you generate random passwords and remember them.

I like Roboform. Developed by Siber Systems Inc. it’s available for many web browsers, but mainly supports Internet Explorer, Firefox and Netscape and there are versions for many hand held devices too. It does not yet support Apple Macintosh nor Linux system, but there are lots of products out there which do.

Thinking back, I wrote my first ever article on avoiding hack attacks way back in 1992, when I was producing a staff newsletter for a large corporation. The advice has changed little since then. You just need to use good common sense and avoid succumbing to human nature.

But if your Hotmail or other email account is compromised, the very first thing you should do is change your password to something stronger.

Then you should immediately run both virus and spyware scans to make sure the hacker hasn’t left anything nasty or malicious behind. Check that your auto responder and email signature have not been tampered with and no spam messages have been added. Then don’t forget to let your email providers support team know about the problem.

If yours is not an isolated incident, they might need to take steps at their end to plug a security hole. And, no matter how tempted you are to find out who has victimised you and your contacts, don’t click through to the site the spammer is flogging.

You already know it’s not legitimate; there is no need to risk further viruses or give spammers a good payday.

Social Media Club IoM: Third Thursday 18 June

TT Festival 2009 is in full swing here in the Isle of Man, but next week it will be back to work and normal life.  So hopefully everyone will have time to turn up at Paparazzi for the Social Media Club’s Third Thursday get together.

Each month, the Island’s bloggers, Twitterers, Facebookers and anyone who is interested in the social web get together to talk about what’s new and cool in the online world.

The idea behind the club is to bring together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers and people curious about online social interaction. We want to share our learning, spread media literacy, encourage the adoption of industry standards and promote ethical behaviour online.

There is not much involved in joining.  There are no fees, no forms to fill in, no commitments to be made.  Just show up on the third Thursday of each month. We all buy our own lunch and have a great discussion .

Once in a while we have hold a more structured event, Super ThirdThursday where we invite an expert speaker.  Last month, eDemocracy expert Simon Collister gave a fascinating talk on how the Internet and the new transparency are transforming modern democracy.  We hope to have a similar event in September.

In the meantime, please come out this Thursday to Paparazzi, 12.30 - 14.00.  Blogging Supremo Owen Cutajar is chairing.

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June 10: PR top 5

1. Steve Rubel and his colleagues at Edelman have put together a white paper on the role of search engine visability in reputation management. The main contention is that increasingly, search engines will have a critical impact on how brands are perceived. It’s well worth the read, especially the information regarding the importance of benevolence online.

2. Guy Clapperton takes on Harvard in Twitter Hyped? It seems that Harvard’s research revealed that a huge majority of people have created a Twitter profile and never use it after day.  Guy says that this is normal with new technologies, and predicts that Twitter will, indeed be pervasive.

3. It’s no secret that I’ve recently become fascinated with podcasts. So I was delighted to find Bryan Person’s  The Daily Boo, a short podcast about online communications and media.  This week he spoke to Donna Papacosta about the business of podcasting. She sees the use of podcasting on the rise among corporate clients who benefit from the long tail effect and the power of human voice.

4. I loved this post entitled Why I hate bloggers, not only because it’s a beautiful example of linkbait, but because Lisa Barone is just so wonderfully crabby.  She writes, “A blog won’t make you any less boring, it will just emphasise the fact that you are.”  Ouch! But the comments go on and on.

5. Doug Goldstein has written a funny post about why every marketer should take a journalism class.  Humour aside, he’s right in that marketers should be prepared to dig a little deeper when thinking about what strategies and tactics should be employed.

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Riding the Google Wave

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Image via CrunchBase
It’s true. Google is cool.  It’s still in development, but the world got a preview a few days ago with a developer preview and what we saw is ‘way cool’. I can’t wait to ride the Wave.

Google Wave co-creator Lars Rasmussen is also one of the people behind the development of Google Maps.  He wrote on the official Google blog: ‘A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

‘In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web.  ‘They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.’

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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June 4: PR top 5

There seems to be a theme about ‘giving it away’ in the PR blogosphere this week.  I guess it’s a sign of the times, but what about those green shoots we keep hearing about?  Either way, here’s my top 5 blog posts from the past week.

1. Lloyd Gofton has a go about ‘devaluing PR’.  He says, “PR, as an industry, needs to wake up to a whole host of challenges, and the last thing we need is to be destroyed from the inside. Have we really been demoted to scrabbling around fighting each other for an ever decreasing pool of clients?” I hope not Lloyd.

2. Emily McDaid also says we shouldn’t be giving our services away.  She’s recently had to pitch against some one whose price tag was zero.  Don’t worry Emily.  Remember: no cost equals no value.  This is not a sustainable strategy.  Your client will be back before long with hat in hands.

3. Mitch Joel seems  a bit more optimistic with his ‘Six steps towards a new economy’ post.  He says that digitisation, new business models, nomads, customer care, contact and analytics will become key PR drivers as we work our way out of the recession.  I agree that all these will play a role. But the single biggest change will be that the  ‘mass communication’ dream will finally become a thing of the past.  Recognition that each individual is part of community will be come clear, and this will impact everything we do.

4. The Bad Pitch Blog makes the top 5 again this week with Get the picture or get lost.  Kevin Dugan explains, “Visuals decrease our word count and increase our effectiveness. And in a Web 2.0 society it’s become cheaper and easier to make our efforts über visual. The evolution of news and search is making this visual leap essential.”

5.  Tom Reidt is running a series of posts on reputation measurement where he revisits the fundamentals. In part 5 he says, “If PR is to be considered a management function, it has to earn its right to it. The principal way it can do that is through measurement, by demonstrating its direct contribution to an organization’s goals and by using verifiable evidence to base its decisions upon.”  I couldn’t agree more.  So why do clients still insist on AVE as a measure of PR’s value?


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Getting quality PR on the cheap

I laughed until I cried when I watched this the first time.

Thanks to Steve Waddington for pointing it out.

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Is your company Web 2.0 secure?

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Image via CrunchBase
Web 2.0, or the social web, is impacting in the workplace and is changing the way organisations conduct business as more of these interactive applications make their way into the corporate environment.  Though many Web 2.0 services were designed for consumer use rather than business use, organisations across all industries are already using them to increase collaboration and information exchange, streamline processes, engage key stakeholders and generate revenue.

This is the main finding of an independent, global study into the state of Web 2.0 use, policies and security conducted by security software vendor Websense.  The report is based on a global survey of 1,300 information technology managers across ten countries, asking about their perceptions of Web 2.0 in the workplace, testing their understanding of these technologies and assessing their organisations’ level of security preparedness.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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Top tips to get a job in PR

giant stack of resumes
Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr

‘Tis the season when all those bright young grads return from university looking to get on the first rung of the career ladder.  Based on some of the interviews I’ve been involved in lately, here’s some tips for young professionals who want to make a good first impression.

1. Don’t let your parents contact your prospective employer. That means not before the interview; not after the interview.  Never.  When your mummy or daddy rings to give the employer insight into your character or to make sure  we fully understand exactly how clever or accomplished you are, it doesn’t reflect well.

2.  When asked, “Why do you want to work in PR?”, never reply that you are ‘good with people’.  I get a sinking feeling when I hear this reply.  For me it’s often the end of any real interest in a candidate.  Instead, do some research into what is actually required for the job and focus on how your skills and talents fit.

3. Bring a hard copy of your CV to the interview, even if you’ve already emailed to the interviewer. You’ll look prepared and business like. Even better, bring in samples of your writing and other accolades you’d like to highlight in the discussion.

4.  When asked what newspapers you like, don’t reply, ‘I don’t read newspapers’ or  ‘Dunno, The Sun, I guess,  because  when I visit my Gran she  has it for the crossword’.  This is a complete turn-off.  Show some interest in the industry in which you are seeking employment.

5. When asked, did you check out our website?, don’t reply, ‘I meant to, but didn’t have a chance yet’, or ‘Ya, I had a quick look to find your address this morning’. Failing to do even the most basic research tells the interviewer a lot about you, and it doesn’t reflect well.

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Junior Chamber of Commerce economic outlook

The Isle of Man Junior Chamber of Commerce welcomed experts from the Island’s private and public sectors speaking on “The Economic Outlook” yesterday. Zahed Miah, member of the Junior Chamber’s executive council (centre) welcomed a large crowd of members and guests to the breakfast gathering.

Steve Carse, (left) economic advisor to the Isle of Man Government predicted that the Isle of Man’s economy will not be as badly impacted by the downturn as our neighbours and competitors. RBS International Director Conor Grant (right) discussed the seven steps necessary for global economic recovery. Both men predicted better times by 2011/12. JCC Economic Outlook

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My day at FutureSonic09

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I felt incredibly lucky to be able to attend the Social Technologies Summit, part of Futuresonic2009, in Manchester earlier this month.

It’s an international conference that brings together 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, researchers and technologist to explore digital culture and the concepts and ideas being bandied about were a bit mind blowing: the future in the digital economy, identity and trust in social networks, the pervasive mobile and environment 2.0 are just some of the themes explored in various conference sessions.

It was held over three days, and I was only able to attend for one.   But what a day it was. I sat in on some pretty lofty discussions ranging from Northern tech startups to the importance of skiving to the new cultural algorithms of the semantic webClick here to read this Tech Talk column.

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May 25: PR top 5

As it’s a bank holiday I’ve got some extra time to read up.  Here’s my list of what I liked.

1. Dave Fleet asks if your organisation has multiple personalities in this thoughtful post on customer service and social media.  Twitter, blogs or any online interaction can’t plug holes in your customer service provision.  Work on the essentials first, then worry about which communications channels you should use.

2. It’s a long one, but the  Shel Holtz post on the continuing need for professional journalism is well worth the time it takes to read.  In it Shel explains why ‘the crowd’ will never replace professional journalism. He says, “they will co-exist, complement one another, and ultimately produce a new ecosystem of news in which both forms of reporting play an integral part. “

3. In this excellent post Geoff Livingston revisits  the principles of  ‘How to win friends and influence people’ and explains how they can be applied in social media.

4. Leo Bottary has some good advice about bridging the gap between analysis and recommendations when formulating a communications strategy.  In this revved up world, sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of the fundamentals.

5. I found this post about returning calls on the Bad Pitch blog interesting.  It implores us PR people to have the courtesy to return a phone call when a message is left.  Is this really a trend? Do PR people deliberately not return calls? I can’t imagine that professional communicators would be that rude.

cmypitch.com community for entrepreneurs

cmypitch_logoCmypitch.com is an online community site and marketplace for entrepreneurs.  It’s  divided into seven key channels: start-ups, SMEs, businesses For sale, franchises, business opportunities, Entrepreneur TV and the business directory with 60,000 listings of professional advisors, licensed from Thomson Directories.

The site also features blogs by subject experts which aim to provide advice, tips and guidance to help entrepreneurs succeed, and I’m delighted to have been invited to be a regular contributor.  Working with start-ups has always been some of the best fun I’ve had at work, so I’m really looking forward to being part of the cmypitch.com community.  My first story ran earlier this week.  I hope to contribute weekly stories from here on in.

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Best of the tech blogs

I’m not one to blow my own horn (erm…well maybe I am guilty of that on occasion), but I have to admit I’m pretty darned pleased that Strive Notes has again made the PR Week’s Best of the Tech Blogs listing this week.  I’m especially pleased to be in such great company. Two bloggers who I read regularly and follow on Twitter also made the cut.

Dirk Singer’s post about circling the wagons certainly rings true; I think we might just be starting to see those ‘green shoots’ that people keep going on about though.  Paul Stallard’s comment about ‘rich media’ clips reflects Strive PR’s experience too. We’ll definitely check out the Radiomonitor service that Paul suggests.

It’s no secret that I love PR Week; I’ve written about it before. Editor Danny Rogers and his team crank out excellent coverage of the profession and the UK industry week in, week out.  Keep up the good work folks.

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Isle of Man Social Media Club: eDemocracy

Sandra Roberston, CEO Charterhouse Group International; Simon Collister, eDemocracy expert; Sherrilynne Starkie, member IoM SMC.

We had a capacity crowd come out this week to the Isle of Man Social Media Club’s Super Third Thursday get together.  The focus was on eDemocracy and how the interactive web is changing politics and democracy. Simon Collister, who hails from Ramsey, was our speaker and he gave us a fascinating insight into how the participatory web is rapidly overcoming barriers which made full participatory democracy, as opposed to the representative democracy we have currently, more viable as a political system.

Thirty-eight people attended (a record crowd!) and they had a lot of questions for Simon especially about how Obama’s Internet campaign delivered him to the White House.  The need for more transparency in UK politics drew a lot of comments from the floor; not surprising in light of the recent expenses scandal.

The Isle of Man Social Media Club, with the motto, ‘If you get it, share it’ aims to expand media literacy, share lessons learnt, encourage adoption of industry standards and promote ethical online practices.

Thanks to Simon for taking the time to join us and share his insights. Thanks also to sponsor Charterhouse Group International who made the event possible.  And thanks especially to everyone who came out.

UPDATE:  Simon has kindly published his slides for us.  See them by clicking here.

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BCS: project managment in uncertain times

The BCS  Isle of Man Section meets this week for a short AGM.  Once business is completed, Chris Davies, chief operating officer of Intelligence Limited will discuss the ‘implications for project management in an uncertain Island economy’.

Chris has more than 25 years experience of the IT industry in a variety of roles including hardware and software development, sales, marketing and project and corporate management. He has worked for both public and private companies and has a wealth of experience of projects of all sizes. Chris is currently working with the Isle of Man Government and other clients providing strategy, programme and project management consultancy.

He will consider how project management disciplines operate in an Isle of Man environment and how these translate from global governance models. Chris will also look at how  Island’s IT industry and project management is affected by the current economic situation.

Claremont Hotel on Thursday 21st May 2009. Doors open at 17:45. Everyone is welcome.

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How to find a job with LinkedIn

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Down on your luck? When looking for a job, the old adage ‘it’s who you know’ has never been more true because online social networks are rife with opportunity for job seekers.

And for professional people in the Isle of Man that means LinkedIn.  I’ve been on LinkedIn since early 2006, but it wasn’t until late last year when I noticed an active Isle of Man community developing.

A business-orientated social networking site, LinkedIn was originally launched in May 2003 and now has more than 39 million registered users spanning 170 industries.

Much like Facebook allows you to collect ‘friends’, this site allows users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business, referred to as ‘connections’.

You build up a network of direct connections, creating larger collections of second and third degree contacts.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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May 17 PR top 5

Here’s some cool stuff  I saw in the PR blogosphere this week.

1. These two ladies have put together an excellent list of UK-based Mommy bloggers.

2. Bernard Lunn analyses journalism 2.0 and offers some insight into how keep quality high and monetise content.

3. Steve Rubel asks if Twitter could replace email as the way to pitch journalists.  I think the answer is yes, in part.  I’ve been doing a bit of it lately, but it’s challenging to fit a complicated tech story into 140 characters. You can use Twitter to whet the reporter’s appetite though.

4. Susan Getgood offers us a long and detailed explanation of what blogger relations really is.

5.  Paul Stallard has published a great interview with Guy Clapperton, a UK freelance reporter.  One gem that is so true:  “…if you’re going to write succinctly about a subject and make it clear what you’re writing about you’re probably going to be SEO’d up to the eyeballs without realising it.”

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Affordable ecommerce websites for IoM retailers

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Where are those green shoots that people keep mentioning? Certainly they are not on the High Street.  Retail sales continue to decline, thanks to the recession and many traditional, independent shopkeepers are struggling.

That said, internet sales have grown by 25% year on year in the last quarter, so there is something to be said for getting online, in tough times. The problem is that most independent retailers lack the time, resources and know-how when it comes to getting an ecommerce website set up.

In the Isle of Man there are some examples of success.   Moore’s Traditional Curers continue to do well with manxkippers.com and Croft Island Sea Fare and Post A Rose both have great ecommerce sites.  TheBestOf and isleofman.com both offer excellent services to help small companies to at least have a web presence, but for the most part, it’s pretty difficult to ’shop local’ online.

But now help is at hand thanks to a partnership between the Isle of Man Department of Trade and Industry and a leading European provider of ecommerce systems, Venda.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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Are you thinking of joining the Twitteri?

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With A-list celebrities like Oprah, Ashton and Britney piling on to Twitter with followers numbering in the hundreds of thousands, millions even, interest in the micro blogging service has never been more acute.

Organisations are looking at the social network platform seriously as a channel for marketing and other mass market communications.  And of course they’d be crazy not to when you consider how it’s free, easy and effective, right?

Well, not really.  These are common misconceptions about social media.  It has the appearance of being free, but takes considerable time if you are going to do it well. Most social networking platforms are easy to use, but leveraging them to achieve organisational goals takes skill and experience. And as for being effective? They can be, but the effect is not easy to measure.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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Facebook and hate in the Isle of Man

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This morning I was dismayed, if not surprised, to see that C/net had picked up on the story about the Isle of Man’s KKK Facebook site.

The story had come to my attention a few days ago via the Island grapevine and then I saw news accounts of it from both the Isle of Man and the UK national media.

From Isle of Man Newspapers:

The 95 members of the group, entitled ‘Keep the Isle of Man White & Free from Foreigners’, included students from every Manx secondary school, but 33 appeared to be currently enrolled at Ballakermeen.

And,

A description of the group by its creator reads: ‘There are too many comovers (sic) (non-british) on the Island. They are taking all of the jobs, houses and most of all they are taking advantage of our ****ing Island….. join us and help clense (sic) the Isle of Man.’

Teachers at the school claim that the kids are not racist and were trying to be ironic.  Now I don’t know any of the kids involved, but can see this as a plausible explanation.

The launch of the KKK site had followed quickly on the heels of another Facebook site which had caused a stir the previous week.  This site was focused on the issue of allowing a new mosque to be built in the Isle of Man,  and it was quickly populated with many hateful and racists comments.  But watching the ‘crowd effect’ on the mosque site was fascinating.

In the space of a couple of days, the racist hate-mongers were drowned out by reasoned, informed and intelligent comment.  People from all over the Island and further afield all chimed in with very reasonable discussion of the issue and what started as a something very negative turned into a profile that illustrates our enlightened and tolerant society.

I can’t help but think that this KKK site might have been a misguided attempt to lampoon the creators of the mosque site.   But, as kids tend to do, they pushed it too far. The site was closed down and the rest, as they say,  is history.

Still, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the site had been allowed to run a few days longer?  Would the wisdom of the crowd have prevailed, once again? I think, that without a doubt, if the conversation had been left to flow naturally, our community would have displayed itself for what it truly is: tolerant and respectful.

Instead, the long tail legacy of this incident will forever leave the Isle of Man’s reputation tarnished.

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Super Third Thursday to focus on eDemocracy

smc-tee

Manx-born Simon Collister, a recognised UK expert on eDemocracy, is speaking to  the Isle of Man Social Media Club’s Third Thursday breakfast meeting at the Claremont hotel in Douglas, 21 May, 2009, 7.30 a.m.

Thanks to sponsorship from Charterhouse Group International the event is free and everyone is welcome.

The Isle of Man Social Media Club, with the motto, ‘If you get it, share it’ aims to expand media literacy, share lessons learnt, encourage adoption of industry standards and promote ethical online practices.

Simon Collister grew up in Ramsey, and has held leadership roles in digital and social media in world-leading public relations.

The Isle of Man Social Media Club (SMC) meets on the third Thursday of each month for an informal discussion on the developments in the world of social media. On occasion they hold Super ThirdThursday meetings, more structured events usually involving a guest speaker. Everyone is welcome and there is no cost to attend.

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From PR cynic to convert in four weeks

My social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter...
Image by luc legay via Flickr

Over the past four weeks we’ve had a student from the London Film School working in our offices.  John Craine is pursuing a MA  film making, but wanted to get an understanding of the PR profession.  We tried to give him a chance to experience a broad range of PR tasks and activities.  Here’s what he thinks about  our profession after working four weeks in PR:

I‘d come to the world of PR with a fairly open idea about what it might involve, and I was slightly skeptical when I was told that PR has really embraced ’social media’. Once I signed up to the various services I was surprised just how widely used social media are. My only previous experience of it was using Facebook to keep in touch with friends from uni, a long forgotten invitation to join Linked In from someone I barely knew, and I’d only heard fleeting mentions of Twitter. But now that I’m signed up, I’m noticing social media everywhere I look. I would stop short of a blanket seal of approval of its use (as with Facebook it is often used to broadcast the banalities of the user’s life), but for the world of PR and the media, it’s a great information sharing tool.

I’ve also learned from my month in PR that PR is everywhere! It’s made me realise that behind everything that I read in a newspaper, from an article about a famous person to a product review, there is a PR professional pushing for publicity. As opposed to a technology journalist reviewing gadgets,  which I had presumed he had just come across, I now realise that he would have been bombarded with suggestions from various PR firms competing to get their client’s product reviewed.

At first I found this revelation quite alarming, but the more I thought about it I realised that the journalist has no obligation to be kind about a product or subject that a PR firm has presented. Developments in social media mean that negative coverage can spread like wildfire and disastrously boomerang on the PR firm and their client. A humorous example of this occurred recently when a PR representative cited a hypothetical URL in an email pitch to a journalist, which, in fact, redirected the journalist to a pornographic website! News of the incident spread like wildfire across Twitter and then across blogs as enduring memorials to a quite genuine mistake.

Although I was initially worried that information was being filtered by a conspiracy of journalists and PR agencies, I have been reassured that the balance of power is not so complicit nor threatening. Although the rise of social media and its egalitarian nature often serve as a platform for self interest, they are also a forum for public regulation and corporate accountability.

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BCS event on Windows 7

British Computer Society
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The British Computer Society Isle of Man section continues to offer up great events for Island residents who work in IT and anyone who just likes to use computers. Last week, the group held one of the most popular events so far this year: Microsoft’s Huw Turvey’s preview of Windows 7.

More than 50 people were on hand to learn about the new operating system, that is being heralded as faster, more reliable and easier to use than its predecessors.

The BCS Isle of Man section’s chairman is Mike Coleman.  He said: ‘We’ve had a successful year so far and continue to be in great shape. We run many more events than most BCS branches; we often attract 50 to 60 people, so it’s clear that people are interested in what we offer.’

Click here to read this Tech Talk column.

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Webmail to the fore

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Image via CrunchBase
There was a time, not so long ago, that people would have refrained from using Hotmail or Gmail as their email domain for business. Now, according to Gartner, the research company, that’s all set to change as the software as a service (SaaS) model for email is leading the way to the large-scale adoption of cloud computing.

According to Gartner analysts, SaaS email is already proving attractive for many companies and will represent 20% of the commercial email ma