How to speak to Gen Y, 5 steps to building a digital team & the Alpen/Amanda Holden campaign

How to speak to Generation Y

Generation Y are a ‘headstrong lot’ according to Greg Dybec of “Elite Daily” – a platform which has built an audience of 43m in less than two years!  Millennials consume content primarily from YouTube and other online channels and care about being inspired or emotionally touched by what they consume.  Pinterest and Tumblr are the platforms to watch and every brand should have in-house video and mobile teams, he says.  “I think brands and businesses will be successful in the future if they can finally begin to understand not just what digital consumers want, but why they share what they are interested in."

http://www.independent.ie/business/media/how-to-speak-to-generation-y-31163679.html

Campaign content wouldn’t brighten my morning

I only became aware of this Alpen campaign today as I saw a piece with Amanda Holden in The Guardian entitled “How I get ready” and this ‘Brighter Mornings’ campaign was mentioned.  Unless there is more to come and/or there are greater depths to this than I’ve found in search, this is a very weak concept.  There’s a lot of good activity around it such as using Amanda Holden to front it (because of her work on “This Morning”), and that it’s an integrated campaign which includes various initiatives with retailers and so on – but the premise – a ‘challenge’ whereby the consumer keeps a 7 day record to see if they feel better after eating Alpen 7 mornings in a row?  Weak.  But it will most likely be very successful because of Amanda as she features prominently on-pack and she is very well-liked, recent silly tweets aside.

http://www.alpenmornings.co.uk/index.php

5 steps to build a digital team

This is a good common sense guide from Ian Dodson of the Digital Marketing Institute on building a digital team with limited resources.  My only query would be that he quotes Facebook as the way to reach a young audience – but a lot of that age group have left – or never joined – that platform.  Ian suggests that the first thing you need to do is identify the objectives you want the team to achieve.  Then choose your online channels carefully – and focus on just a few.  It’s important to make the most of the talent you have in-house and he recommends a 15 minute test - www.TestYourDigital.com - as a way to find that out.  See here for the rest of Ian’s tips…..

http://bit.ly/1NalipK

www.linkedin.com/company/diy-pr

www.twitter.com/diyPRireland

Become a YouTube star, 8 new social media apps & Rob Kearney on that extra 1%

7 Tips on how to become a YouTube star

Spanish vlogger, Luzu has 1.6m subscribers to his YouTube channel and here in The Guardian, he offers 7 tips on how you can do likewise. These include: Don’t follow trends (ask instead, “What am I missing?” or “What would I like to see?”); Be patient in the early days; invest in equipment when you can afford it; invest in social media – for the remaining 3 and for details, read on…..

http://bit.ly/1Og7hlJ

8 new social media apps

Move over Facebook, Twitter & Co and make way for these 8 new apps including: Meerkat – live streaming video over Twitter; Shots – a selfie platform; two anonymous ones – Secrets & Yik Yak.  Secrets lets you post and share anonymously with friends while Yik Yak lets you do likewise but with fellow users nearby (potential for bullying?); FireChat allows you to chat with people around you even if there’s no internet connection or phone signal.  Check out further details on these and on the other 3 here…….

http://bit.ly/1Gd3Ehl

Rob Kearney on being his best

 “The margins at the moment between people at high levels in sport or high levels in business are just getting smaller and smaller and smaller. If I can improve myself even by that 1 per cent then I will improve my own performance . . . and then you are adding more to the team, which is the primary goal when you go out to play at the weekend.”  In this article Rob Kearney also talks about mindfulness and worrying about the future.  He’s taking part in the “Be Your Best” programme which is a joint initiative between The Irish Times and Potential Life aims to bring out the best in people both inside and outside of the workplace.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/rob-kearney-leadership-meditation-and-family-1.2179513

www.linkedin.com/company/diy-pr

www.twitter.com/diyPRireland

Measuring influence of bloggers, McElroy/Woods Nike ad & UK politicians blocking media & public

Measuring influence of bloggers

This is a very good article from PR Daily on how to measure success with important bloggers and social media users.  It’s more than just building one-to-one relationships with people who have a big online follower base.  You must align your efforts with specific business goals.  Importantly, you can’t manage what you don’t measure so the author recommends defining goals including suggested KPIs (key performance indicators), benchmarking, measurement and tracking. Well worth a read.

http://bit.ly/1FFDMF9

Nike’s McElroy/Woods ad

I hadn’t seen the latest Nike ad when I read TV3’s sports reporter, Sinead Kissane’s impassioned article in the Irish Independent which was titled, “Soulless Mad Men-style advertising lines no match for real sports stories.”   She doesn’t like Nike ads mentioning their use of German athlete Katrin Krabbe until she tested positive for anabolic steroids and now featuring Tiger Woods’ earlier career and the ‘ripple’ effect it had on the young Rory McElroy. She asks if this is how Nike is handling Tiger post his ‘transgressions’ and suggests that they tell rather than sell real stories.  But – and this is my opinion, I’m not quoting Sinead any more - every time a company partners with a celebrity or high achieving sportsperson, it rolls the dice.  And certain types of ‘transgressions’ are more easily forgiven by fans than others – witness the reception Tiger got from the crowd during the Masters at the weekend.  Personally, I like the Nike ad because it rings true.

Here’s the Nike ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdhWhgA8Y0A

……..and here is Sinead Kissane’s article:

http://bit.ly/1CDqoPH

No media or public allowed

This is a really interesting insight from the Irish Times into how UK politicians are trying to control their messaging by excluding the media and the general public from their electioneering events. In particular, the pictures showing illusion and reality for David Cameron’s speech in a hangar are very telling.  I predict this will backfire spectacularly as the media will make it their business - and have done so already - to get into the events and will ask the politicians what they’re so afraid of? This then becomes the story – not the policies!  Also, nature abhors a vacuum and the media have to write a large number of election stories – so wouldn’t it be better if they were reporting on the actual events?

http://bit.ly/1O6ee8I

www.linkedin.com/company/diy-pr

www.twitter.com/diyPRireland

Pic: Huffington Post

What will be the digital medium for 2016 US election & don't brand your business as 'ethical'

What will the digital medium of the 2016 US election be?

In this q&a with former White House special adviser and ‘digital guru’, Dan Pfeiffer he says that livestreaming video from mobile phones using apps like Meerkat will be the digital trend for the 2016 US election. In 2012 it was Twitter, in 2008 it was Facebook.  He says that the Democrats have invested more in befriending Silicon Valley than the Republicans and that Hillary Clinton can recapture good relationships with the media as these relationships are ‘cyclical’.  Interesting read.

http://www.prweek.com/article/1340977/10-questions-former-white-house-digital-guru-dan-pfeiffer

Don’t brand your business “ethical”

“No-one likes the person or business who bangs on about their moral good conduct” – well that’s certainly true but more to the point a business who claims to be ethical can be setting themselves up for a fall.  However, I don’t agree with the guy in this article who says that brands should just focus on being a good business and get the benefits of that.  You still have to tell people what you are about, what you believe in and the efforts you make to be as ethical as possible.   As the president of the UK PR Institute says, “it’s all about being transparent.”

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/mar/26/brand-business-ethical-lush

Now you can add comment before you retweet

Kind of odd this took so long but Twitter has announced that we will be able (some can do this already) to include comments in a retweet that won’t affect the 140 character allowance.  Good news obviously and the expectation is that the person who wrote the original post should get more credit for their writing/musing.

http://ind.pn/1NQEyng

www.linkedin.com/company/diy-pr

www.twitter.com/diyPRireland