Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I’ve just been introduced to VoxSwap, a great way for those who are wanting to learn a language and connect with people who can teach you.

It doesn’t matter if you are a student needing help to get better language grades, a former student who doesn’t want to let their language skills go rusty or a business person needing to speak another language for work. VoxSwap’s premise is to ensure you can talk to real people and offer one another pointers on how to excel in a language.

This is another example of the beneficial uses of social networking, an alternative to Facebook! Whereby you can actually do something useful and stimulating whilst socialising. 

To have a look and register go to http://www.voxswap.com/

The article posted by FT.com columnist Michael Skapinker has been a hot topic within Digital lately.

He asks the question, “How will consumers respond if they sense the companies’ hand – or that of their PR advisers – behind future campaigns?”

As a company, we work with many brands and look at innovative and creative ways of engaging with their audience. In the past our services have predominantly focused on traditional media. However, with the change in our social behaviour, which seems to rely more and more on the internet, no wonder as communications agencies we are looking at other avenues of conversation. If we weren’t, we would be out of business in the very near future.

However, I do feel that it’s more a question of where is the world of marketing leading.  How are brands adapting to this phenomenon of social media and how are we as a society communicate and influence each other? That is the real question, from there it leads us to a world of opportunity of creativity and conversation!

What I do find interesting about his article, is that here he is working within a Web 2.0 world, blogging about his opinions expressing them openly, which is great. He speaks about how brands want to control this medium, however should his readers want to send comments one needs to email them through. What happened to user-generated content and open forum of discussion?

My colleague Guy sent him an article which has not been published as yet and took it upon himself to blog about it…He is definitely a more eloquent writer than myself. Have a read…and let me know what how you feel social media is affecting the PR industry or perhaps how PR is influencing social media…

We’ve had some interesting discussions covering various topics today.  We began around 8:30am introducing everyone. It’s great to meet more of our European counterparts who are active Digital consultants.  Below is a list of some topics, both Niall and Guy have been blogging about them.

1. David Muir, CEO of The Channel (WPP) – The New Marketing Environment
2. Paul Gillin, Author and Consultant – Coping with a World Where Messages Don’t Matter
3. David M Scott, Author and Consultant – The New Rules of PR
4. Paul Taaffe, CEO H&K Worldwide – The Importance of H&K Digital
5. Peter Imbres, James Gregson and Niall Cook – Social Media 101
6. Claudia Husemann, Director  H&K New York Technology Practice – What Clients Want Now!
7. Melissa Robinson, H&K SVP Marketing Communications – Marcomms & Digital
8. Brendan HOdgson, H&K VP Digital Canada – Digital Crisis Issues Management

Then dinner and I’m sure some party!:-)

We’re in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, USA discussing the importance of Digital at Hill & Knowlton and showcasing our work globally. CEO, Paul Taffe has just spoken about the role of Digital for H&K, Niall blogged about this, to view click here. Right now Niall Cook, Peter Imbres and James Gregson are presenting Social Media Principles.

Why do we need it? There are no rules when engaging with Social Media, until someone makes a mistake, someone broken the rules that is when clients recognise it.  It’s about how we respond to these mistakes which is the important part and keeping ahead of the trends to ensure crisis management.

Guidelines for personal and offical blogs and social media engagement including a code of conduct. Mainly to protect Hill & Knowlton and its clients’ reputations.

We need to focus on encouraging clients to be transparent, authentic and encourage participation. As Niall says, “Yes it’s about listening and about understanding, but it’s about participation if we encourage dialogue.”

Peter discusses the difference between Social Media and traditional media. Social media describes online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media themselves and cannot be measured the same as traditional media. Social media is about trust and a vehicle for word-of-mouth.

James discusses blogger outreach, our approach with both the client and bloggers. How it should fit in the greater marketing campaign, fully integrated in the mix. He finishes off with some facts:
1. All major social networking sites have developed a mobile functionality to access your network – 61% were in the femail / maile 16-24 range.
2. According to MMA, 22% of mobile phone users were open to receiving and engaging with products via their mobile phone.

I think Digital, is no longer about the Internet only online and it’s no longer about pushing editorial / information to users and consumers. It’s about engaging with communities, changing the perception of traditional branding and how our PR function fits or even drives that…