New ePR book

This week David Meerman Scott released the second edition of "The New Rules of PR: How to Create a Press Release Strategy for Reaching Buyers Directly,". The second edition of the eBook features a foreword by David McInnis, CEO & Founder of PRWeb and social media expert.

Scott's new eBook provides communications and marketing people with tactics and techniques to take advantage of the new media landscape. It include:

* Optimizing your news release to achieve primary placement in search engines and news portals (SEO)
* Using online news distribution services to reach thousands of Web sites and blogs throughout the Web, and connect directly to your key audiences
* Leveraging interactive features including TrackBacks and tagging to encourage circulation in the social media space
* Developing content to attract key audiences and drive Web site traffic.

I like David's thinking and look forward to a good read.

Business leaders underestimate the web

The IMRG figures for online sales in the run up to Christmas show that forecasts underestimated demand. Forecasts of £7.5 billion compared to the actual outcome of £7.66 billion and that is only part of the story. Sales were limited because online retailers could not deliver.

Last year online sales were £30.2 billion with an increase during 10 weeks to Christmas up 54% on 2005.

Well this is not much of a surprise to some of us. What is disturbing is that so many people are still in denial. Online PR is still a fringe activity. Online advertising is inyerface. Web sites are horrid and lack interactivity and response to the power of social media lacks imagination to a degree that makes users cringe and rage.

As an industry the PR business just has to get stuck in.

Poncing around in the hope it will all go away led from behind by the PR institutions is no way to run an economy, industry sector or business.

The response to the power of the Internet in the UK is akin to the response to the realities of manufacturing in the 1960's, R&D and education in the '70's, the global economy in the run up to the millennium and show lack of foresight and fuddy duddy thinking.

The lack of knowledge about online interactivity across UK management and the creative services is appalling.

There is a need for leadership.

Print and digital advertising converge

The Guardian group is merging its print and digital divisions for business operations. The Guardian Unlimited ad sales’ digital and print teams will be merged into one unit, GNM Commercial.

Many newspaper publishers are currently trying (Telegraph Media Group already does) to form cross-platform advertising teams, in order to slow the ad revenue migration to online ( Source: Brand Republic )

"There's no question that the internet represents an enormous challenge to our business models,” said Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror chief executive.

Yet she also insisted that current problems are cyclical in nature

"We expect the cycle to move back into more positive territory. And we remain convinced that newspapers, as printed products, will remain a powerful medium for many years to come," she said.

She also commented that: "there's little doubt that some of the 'old media' companies will eventually be swept away" said Bailey (Source: Media Guardian).

Meantime, to stem the tide, the FT is going Mobile.

The FT Mobile News reader is free, and gives users access to news, comments and analysis, stock valuations and a 30-day search function.

Online BOOMS!

In the ten weeks up to Christmas the forecasts for online retailing were wildly out. A twenty percent miss-match between forecast and actual is just awful. The Mad Hatter could do better.

Tesco.com broke all records with 1.3m shoppers buying food and presents on the site in the four weeks before Christmas - up 30% on 2005.

Wetherby-based ecommerce firm NetConstruct, working with Hemingway of Ripon, has provided internet sales sites for many High Street names including Argos, Harvey Nichols, John Lewis and BhS and according to Hemingway's managing director, Andrew Johnson, online sales show an above average increase of 56 per cent over the same period last year.

The number of parcels delivered is also thought to have increased to 200m from the 180m initially predicted.

Online sales over the Christmas trading period - the 10 weeks to December 24 - are expected to be up 50% to £7.5bn. James Roper, IMRG chief executive, who had projected sales of £7bn for the period, revised the figure upward. He said: "This has definitely been an online Christmas."

These numbers are telling us there are more people are spending more online. Twentyfive million people are shopping online in the UK. For those who have got a taste for it, online is now a real option and 80% of white goods are now sold online anyway.


And the influential and Internet savvy e-commerce said of the IMRG lift: Our gut reaction is that it could, if anything, be higher than that. This year was a real coming of age for internet shopping, and practically everybody I know bought some of their Christmas presents online.

I am with e-commerce and in two weeks we will know.

Now, is the PR industry ready to contribute? Are we working on Web 2.0 solutions. Well, it looks like its PR skills that are needed.

Wow! Gosh! Internet retailing is up

More than 180 million pounds was spent online last Monday, the traditional start of the festive shopping season. This is double the amount of ago year ago.

Predictions of 40% growth seem to have been gazumped. Perhaps the prediction that 25 million people are expected to spend £7bn through the internet - up from £5bn last year and representing £4m every hour, day and night, is too modest.

The driver for the UK where 85 percent of British shoppers preferred clicks to bricks is that they could avoid the "too stressful" high street.

But new research by KPMG and the SPSL Retail Think Tank (RTT) says the internet retailing market "is not as large as many commentators would have us believe" and that traditional high-street retailing still accounts for 2% of the sector's 2.5% growth.

So it may be that the Internet is taking share of sales and is depressing price. I can believe that.

I think that the Internet is taking a big bite out of high street sales perhaps as much as 12%.

What makes me think there is something going on over and above last year is that Woolworths new online offering is making them smile and reach is up for this bellwether UK retailer page views are up 50 since mid November. With two weeks to go M&S is no so dusty either. The high volume low price end of the market is doing very well and top end Debenhams is holding its own. The demographic seems to have changed and that will be a powerful influence.

The bottom line for PR is that online sales are growing and so the Internet is becomming ever more important to organisations and their internet PR activities.



Meantime, French cyber shopping traffic jumped 79 percent in the past week.

TV is going to be fine, thank you. But it will look nothing like it does today and it will be open to all of us.

Steve Rubel has been pondering the fate of TV. I think he is right about some of it but has not factored in games and especially WII style interactive TV. To get some idea of how powerful games are in the market imagine selling 50,000 of any product in just one hour. WII did!

Interaction, especially physical interaction in a games style of Internet TV solution is well within his three year timescale.

Of course, he is speaking from an American not European perspective. Life is different on this side of the Atlantic.

Here we have the hotspots of the highest online retailing regions (not California, the UK), higher blog useage per head of population (not New York but Paris) and higest number of people with 100 meg broadband (Leicester - using cable).

In Europe, there are populations with very high uptake of broadband (2-8 meg) which is haveing a dramatic impact on Internet useage.

The PC has come out of the study/bedroom and into the living space in houses and that is where the real challenge lies.

UK Two Years ahead of US for online advertsing

In an interesting review and projection for next year Alan Patrick notes that the UK is almost two years ahead of the US in terms of online advertising. At least, that's the conclusion of Terry S. Semel, chief executive of Yahoo!, in a recent New York Times interview. The situation has arisen mainly through the underlying growth of broadband in the UK.

During 2006 broadband penetration increased from about 40 per cent to 50 per cent. In addition, the time people spend online has risen to 23 hours a week and online spending has risen from about £800 per head to £1,100 per head.

As companies have followed customers online, internet advertising has grown rapidly. By the end of June 2006 it was up from 8 per cent to 10 per cent of all UK ad spend and is expected to be nearer 14 per cent by December 2006 - the highest ad spend per head in the world.

BBC get its licence fee payers to create its content

Oliver Luft reports that the BBC News 24 has launched a news programme based entirely on user-generated material.

Your News, which began a pilot run on Saturday, will feature stories, features and video proving most popular with viewers on TV and the internet.

Of course, I expect some PR type will get in there with something worth watching.

How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Howard Rheingold says this about don Tapscott's new book: "The copy on the website is a little hype-y, but the research behind the book is very solid, and their thinking about intellectual property, collaboration, innovation is deeper than their promotional copy indicates."
This is going to be a great Christmas!

Making millions in virtual worlds - a PR opportunity?

Still think Second Life is just a game asks B L Ochman. Rob Hof's Businessweek blog, The Tech Beat, reports that Anshe Chung, Second Life's virtual land baroness, has become the first millionaire in Second Life - in real US dollars - from profits entirely earned inside a virtual world. She parlayed her fortune from a $9.95 investment in a Second Life account two years ago.
No we may even see a PR firm act as agent in virtual worlds to make thier fortune - that would be fun.

Important news

Cricket fans will be able to watch video highlights of the Ashes tests at the end of play every day on the internet.

BBC Sport will show 10 minutes of the best moments of every day of each Ashes test.

Mobile Moguls Mashup

What happens if you bolt on services and charge for it.
Customers leave in droves.
3G technology was seen as just such an opportunity by the cell phone companies . No one played. It cost a fortune.

Now

At last

Beeb tells us 3 says it is going to make the mobile internet more interesting.

It is launching a partnership with internet firms including Skype, Google and eBay.

The promise is that users will be able to make free internet phone calls, watch their home television on their phone and tap into their home computers on the move.

The price for all these services will be a flat-rate monthly fee.

What took so long guys?

Now we can run some serious integrated (mashup) PR campiagns.

Number 10

Number 10 launched the scheme to allow people to petition Prime Minister Tony Blair online, saying it encourages more campaigners than "ever before".

The most popular "e-petition" so far is one calling for the repeal of the 2004 Hunting Act reports the BBC.

Citizen web - an issue for PR

IT Pro had this story this week.

Home-made videos, songs, blogs and other user-generated content will eventually exceed the amount of professionally produced web-based content, claims a senior Google executive.

Asked if the volume of home-produced entertainment and information could overtake the amount of professional content, Nikesh Arora, European head of the internet search engine said: "Of course. Definitely."

This will mean that PR people will have to be 'involved' with the creators of such content.

Is there a pint in it?

Will Sturgeon reports on what we really think about personal authentication and security issues - is there a pint in it.

Although opposition to biometrics - the authentication of the individual based on factors such as iris or fingerprint recognition - remains strong, support appears to be growing as long as there is a tangible benefit for the average man and woman on the street.

And perhaps the most average activity of all - going into the local pub for a pint – is one area where biometrics could find a more welcoming constituency, according to the results of a silicon.com poll.

For PR's in events management, this is an opportunity... no more checking people in at events - just look into thier eyes.

UK sans-zunes

Some corporate speak is just not believable.

Microsoft says it has no firm plans to launch the 'iPod killer' Zune digital media player anywhere outside of the US following its official release later this month.

Zune will go head-to-head with Apple's iPod when it goes on sale in the US from 14 November, and comments from the darkside this week claimed the device would not hit the UK until late 2007 or early 2008.

With half the US population ready to trade in their iPods for Zunes I can't imagine Microsoft waiting for another competitor to grab the action.

Meantime PR should be gearing up to offer stuff on the new platform.

PayPal have 33% UK market penetration

One-third of all UK adults now have a PayPal account, according to the online payment company.

Not only does this open opportunities for e-commerce, it means there is a currency out there for more on-line PR as well. As direct PR generated relationships mature, the buying proposition can be as a direct result of PR activity.

Currently, around 15 million people in the UK use the system to make and receive online payments.

PayPal CEO Geoff Iddison said advances in technology and the demands of a "time-poor" society are transforming the way we shop and transfer money.

More about heads in the oven

Second Life - the corporate invasion

Besides Crayon and Text100, lots of real-world businesses that have set up outposts in Second Life.

Adidas
Nissan
Sun Microsystems
Reebok
Penguin
American Apparel
Reuters
CNET Networks
PA Consulting
Yankee Stadium
Bartle Bogle Hegarty

On line more secure than you think

e-commerce is far safer than it is perceived to be. And yet the message appears not to be getting through.

Sure there are problems - where there is money there is crime - but statistics from PayPal (which has a very obvious reason to want to address these concerns) suggest the majority of UK adults still think the internet poses a considerable risk.

And, according to Silicon.com

A credit card number has never - to our knowledge - been intercepted in flight. This is because, to use an analogy, it is like trying to shoot down the smallest, fastest moving bird through a thicket of trees.

To further the analogy, it's far easier for the criminals to wait therefore until all these birds are sat in one big coop with all the other birds and then try to find a way to take them all rather than wrestling with the complexity of taking them one by one.

As such, the database is more commonly the target than the transaction. And databases are at risk whether it is an ecommerce site or a high street shop processing the transaction.

e-media spend - £36 per year per person

Nielsen/NetRatings reported that UK consumers are starting to embrace the idea of paying for their e-media.

On average people are spending £36 per year. Video content is closing the gap on audio, accounting for 43 per cent of spending.

The biggest spenders are unsurprisingly the 18 to 24 age group, which spends an average of £5.34 per month on online content. Men shell out around 40 per cent more than women per month.

Does this mean that men need more entertaining.