I've produced a list of the world's top PR blogs according to the AdAge Power 150. It's by no means perfect since it only features blogs on AdAge with PR, Public Relations or Publicity in the title, and a few that were suggested to me last month. It's just a bit of fun but I think it's a decent indicator of the top PR blogs nonetheless.

If your PR blog is missing please comment and let me know. If you haven't added your blog to the AdAge Power 150 yet you can do so by clicking here.

PR Rank....AA Rank............ Blog Name........................Country ............AA Score

1. .............29.....................PR 2.0...................................US.........................93
2. .............36.....................PR Squared..........................US.........................89
3. .............54.....................A shel of my former self........US..........................84
4. .............83.....................POP! PR Jots.........................US.........................73
5. ............122....................Strategic PR..........................US.........................66
6. ............124...................PR Blogger.............................UK.........................66
7. ............126...................Young PR..............................AUSTRALIA................66
8. ............130...................Pro PR...................................CANADA................65
9. ...........193.....................PR Communications............US..........................58
10. ...........202....................PRNewser..............................US..........................57
11. ...........206....................A PR Guy's Musings................UK.........................56
12. ...........255....................PR meets the WWW..............US.........................53
13. ...........260....................Corporate PR........................US.........................52
14. ...........274....................PR Works................................CANADA..............51
15. ...........276....................Common Sense PR................CANADA.............51
16. ...........277...................Drew B's take on tech PR........UK.......................51
17. ...........290....................KDPaine's PR..........................US..........................50
18. ...........293...................Wadds' tech pr blog...............UK........................50
19. ...........308....................Hispanic Marketing & PR........US.........................49
20. ...........338...................Brendan Cooper.....................UK.......................46
21. ...........343...................Corporate Engagement.........AUSTRALIA..........46
22. ...........354...................Beyond PR...............................UK......................45
23. ...........357..................Simonsays................................UK......................45
24. ...........362...................Online PR Thoughts.....................US...................45
25. ...........374...................Into PR.....................................US.........................44
26. ...........380...................PRoactive...............................US......................44
27. ...........385...................Observations of PR................US........................43
28. ...........395...................Wired PR Works.......................US........................43
29. ...........407...................PR Disasters...............................AUSTRALIA.........42
30. ...........417...................This is herd.......................................UK....................41
31. ...........438...................Valley PR Blog..........................US......................40
32. ...........443...................Publicity Hound's.........................US....................40
33. ...........456...................The New PR.................................CANADA............39
34. ...........460...................Media Relations Blog................US......................39
35. ...........464...................Client Service Insights................US....................38
36. ...........475...................PR Meets Marketing..................US.......................38
37. ...........476...................Pudding Relations......................UK......................38
38. ...........501...................Student PR Blog........................CANADA..............36
39. ...........511...................Profitable Business Edge 2........US........................36
40. ...........513...................A view on PR..............................US......................36
41. ...........519...................PRos in Training............................US......................35
42. ...........537...................Tech PR Gems..........................US......................34
43. ...........542...................PR Talk........................................US......................34
44. ...........551...................Shiny Red.......................................UK......................33
45. ...........561...................Eyecube........................................US....................33
46. ...........567...................IndiaPRBlog!..............................INDIA..................33
47. ...........585...................All Things PR...............................UK.......................32
48. ...........588...................Engage in PR............................US........................32
49. ...........597...................Mutually Inclusive PR..................CANADA.............31
50. ...........609...................Morgan McLintic on PR...............US......................31
51. ...........620...................Alan Weinkrantz PR....................US......................30
52. ...........626...................Strive Notes...................................US....................30
53. ...........627...................PR Voice......................................UK......................30
54. ...........632...................New Millennium PR......................US....................30
55. ...........647...................Norton's Notes.............................UK.......................29
56. ...........661...................From PR to Eternity......................UK......................29
57. ...........679...................PR. Differently..............................US......................28
58. ...........686...................Mosnar Communications................US......................28
59. ...........688...................Youngblood PR & Marketing.........CANADA...........28
60. ...........691...................Launch PR.....................................US....................27
61. ...........716...................Online Publicity Journal..................US....................26
62. ...........739...................10 Yetis PR Blog..........................UK.......................24
63. ...........745...................Blinn PR Report...........................US.......................24
64. ...........752...................Minnesota PR blog.........................US....................24
65. ...........787...................First Person PR............................US........................21
66. ...........788...................Public Relations Matters...............US....................21
67. ...........802...................EducationPR.................................US......................20
68. ...........809...................HighVizPR....................................US.....................19
69. ...........816...................PowerUp......................................US....................18

The top blogs by country:

Australia: Young PR
Canada: Pro PR
India: IndiaPRBlog!
UK: PR Blogger
US: PR 2.0

The top UK blogs:
1. PR Blogger
2. A PR Guy's Musings
3. Drew B's take on tech PR
4. Wadds' tech pr blog
5. Brendan Cooper, Your friendly PR Social Media Planner
6. Beyond PR
7. Simonsays.
8. This is herd
9. Pudding Relations
10. Shiny Red
11. All Things PR
12. PR Voice
13. Norton's Notes
14. From PR to Eternity
15. 10 Yetis PR Blog

I was tagged by Ben Matthews, in an Internet MeMe, that involves picking three innovative communicators, that have influenced me. This is the blurb:

"The idea’s simple. We’re asking you to list the three communicators living or dead who have most influenced your way of thinking professionally and perhaps personally too. Who do you think the real innovators are? Who’s been most responsible for kicking the industry forward? And just who are the communication PRunks?"

Rather than pick three innovative communicators that have influenced me, I've chosen to pick three innovative inventors that have truly transformed the way people communicate, and thereby influenced every person working in the public relations industry.

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
Bell invented the telephone in the late 19th century and changed the way we all communicate . The first successful phone call in 1876 started with this: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” I like that fact. I cannot imagine the PR industry without the telephone. Having to send press releases by post or telegram is unthinkable now in a world of 24/7 news. Without the telephone we'd have no fax machines, internet connections or e-mails either.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web.
Berner-Lee invented the web just seventeen years ago in 1991 and in that short time has changed the PR industry in ways that we still don't fully understand. Nowadays every business worth its salt has a company website and online coverage is often seen as more important than news in that very last century medium that is the printed press. Everyday PR's across the world do research online, read the news, make press lists, engage in Blogger outreach campaigns, network with others in the industry, and many other things thanks to the web.

Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of e-mail.
Tomlinson wasn't the first person to send an e-mail in 1971, but he was the first person to invent an e-mail system that let users send a message from one computer to another. Previously users could only send messages to other users who used the same computer. E-mail has thoroughly transformed the PR industry too. We use e-mail for everything from sending press releases to receiving information requests from journalists, and even brainstorming ideas with colleagues sat next to us. If only we didn't have to put up with all that pesky spam...

Now it's my turn to get tagging. I tag Richard Millington, Chris Norton, and Tom Harle.

Update: Freakily I've managed to pick the exact same three as Giles Shorthouse. I promise I didn't copy! Ugh, this blogging is more stress than it's worth.

According to the New York Times bloggers are living in a world of 24/7 stress. Berocca news jacked this by setting up a website offering a free blogger relief pack to rejuvenate stressed bloggers with much needed vitamins and free goodies. That's a great strategy to create some online buzz about your product, it which is why worked well with many bloggers picking up on the story and blogging about it.

That was in June. Two months passed and for many of us there was no sign of the relief pack. Not good news for blogger's stress levels, or the nice people at Berocca who must have been quite concerned by posts like this declaring the exercise a PR fail. Since commenting on that post, I received a relief pack in just a matter of days. Coincidence?

To avoid this Berocca should have carried out a weekly send out of relief packs so that bloggers weren't waiting too long to receive their goody bag. And, when they did send out the relief packs they should have taken a little time to address the nice letter inside with my name. Dear blogger doesn't exactly build up a personal relationship with the brand. That said I'm very impressed by the campaign. It's very brave for a non-techy brand to experiment with blogger outreach and I commend that. Also, it's especially important to try relationship building exercises like this during a recession when premium brands like Berocca are in danger of being abandoned by consumers in favour of cheaper supermarket versions.

Well done Berocca, this blogger is now full of vitamin goodness and will stay that way.

It occurred to me today that just one of the many blogs I subscribe to is written by a woman; the lovely Susannah Wyeth. In an industry were 62 per cent of people are female, it would appear that women are highly unrepresented in the PR blogosphere.

Now, I know that there are female bloggers, very good ones at that such as Katya Trubilova and Eleanor Lovell, but what I'm saying is that there don't seem to be that many. I'm not really sure why this is, but I don't seem to be the only one that thinks it. Alena blogged about it last year in her excellent blog about PR women. But, unfortunately it would appear she stopped blogging after just three months.

Perhaps there aren't many female bloggers because there are fewer women in senior roles in PR agencies, and I find many PR blogs are written by senior staff. Or to be a bit stereotypical, are there fewer female bloggers because women are less geeky than us menfolk. Or perhaps I'm just completely wrong and there are a lot of ladies blogging about PR. But in my recent post, I found there wan't one female blogger in my list of the UK's top ten PR blogs.

Earlier this year, Stephen Davies did a great post looking for student PR bloggers. This is my version:

Where are all the female PR bloggers?

Please recommend some fantastic female bloggers for me to follow or identify your own blog so I can balance out my blog intake a little. Thanks.

Female bloggers you've recommended:
Balancing Act
Strive Notes
Casey Leaver
Tracy Playle
Heather Yaxley
Elle
Emily Wearmouth
Emma

Please note: In the spirit of true transparency, Susannah Wyeth, works at Lighthouse PR, which is one of Rainier PR's sister companies. I helped develop her blog and wrote about it here.

Cow revealed some great research in PR Week recently about how 7 out of 10 of the FTSE 100 companies have not registered their company name on Twitter and therefore risk imposters damaging their reputations by brand jacking their name.

There's been a bit of a stir in the PR blogosphere since then, as Wadds registered @CowPR on Twitter. Since then things have escalated with a blog post here, and a blog post there, here a post, there a post, everywhere a blog post. Old MacDonald had a farm ee i ee i o...

Cow PR have however registered @Dirkthecow but not @CowPR. They apparently dropped the PR part of their name a while ago, but it still lives on and even PR Week referenced them as Cow PR.

Last Summer I worked at Concept Communications, but it was known as Concept PR by clients. The reason being as you build up a good relationship with your publics it's only natural that they will rename you with a sort of corporate nickname. For example Marks and Spencer became M&S, Apple Computer became Apple, Woolworths became Woolies, and McDonalds became Maccies. The list goes on.

So registering your brand name online can become a bit of a hassle as there's so many variations of your name in use. Nelson Mandela aka Richard Millington rightly points out it is impossible to register every conceivable variation of your brand name online. Registering a few is always a good idea though. If Cow had registered Cow, Cow PR, and Cow Communications they could have avoided being brand jacked. It's fortunate for them that Wadds didn't try to damage or imitate their brand - instead he did some PR for cows before deleting the account.

Cow aren't the only ones that haven't registered a few possible variations though, despite reporting the story, I noticed that @PRWeek hadn't registered their own name on Twitter. So obviously I nabbed it. If I was a little more mischievous I could wreak havoc and damage the PR Week brand, but fortunately I'm quite nice and will probably delete the account next week as I don't really want it. If PR Week do though, please feel free to ping me an e-mail and I'll send you the details.

UPDATE: I have now deleted my @PRWeek account. I've also noticed that I've been brand jacked too. @Mattwatson and @Matthewwatson have both been registered! Name jacking? And, hats off to Dirk at Cow PR who fessed up here.

This week, Rainier PR conducted a mid-summer media consumption study. We surveyed 1,000 Londoners to find out which silly season stories they find least interesting. It turned out that nearly half (48%) are tired of hearing about Amy Winehouse.

Setting up a poll on Facebook was incredibly simple, whereas coming up with the right question and answers was a little trickier.

Here are three ways to get the best out of facebook polls:

Pose an interesting question.
Facebook users don't have to fill in your survey, so attracting their attention with an interesting question is a key factor in generating as many responses as possible.

Be concise.
Your question can be a maximum of 100 characters long, and your answers can only be half that length. So it's crucial that you keep the word count down. Also, a lengthy question and answers could be offputting to some users.

Keep it simple.
Terms like Web 2.0 and mobile applications may make perfect sense to you but they could appear like gobbledygook to some users who might not know their RSS from their elbow.

Do you have any more tips for improving Facebook polls? Or have you conducted any interesting surveys recently? Please let me know!

Unlike many online and web 2.0 companies, Mozilla are great at providing customer service. Rather than calling an expensive phone line to get transfered twenty times before you finally receive help in broken English, or joining an online forum to talk to other disgruntled customers, FireFox users can simply use twitter to tweet about their problems. By monitoring mentions of FireFox on twitter, @firefox_answers can find out who needs help and offer it to them.

What a great way to use twitter and create brand ambassadors out of your customers! But despite this I wouldn't recommend following @firefox_answers. I imagine it's a bit like eavesdropping in a call centre. Instead just check your replies once you've asked a question.

Here are three other great ways for companies to use Twitter:

1. To speak to your customers
@pbloco uses Twitter well by entering into conversations with followers. The peanut butter manufacturer poses questions, replies to followers and occasionally hosts little competitions to win jars of P.B.Loco. If I won something over Twitter I know I'd certainly tweet and blog about it as well as tell my friends.

2. To provide news about your brand
@BarackObama uses Twitter well to keep followers up-to-date about where the presidential candidate is and what he's doing, as well as how his campaign is progressing. What a great way to keep potential voters informed and position the candidate as a proactive change maker.
@innocentAGM2008 on the other hand used twitter badly by updating followers with little titbits about the company's AGM. In theory it was a good idea, but chatty marketing doesn't really work on Twitter. I don't really care if the cake at the AGM tastes good or if there are 44 coats in the cloakroom.

3. To inform your readers
@guardiantech and @prweektech are great at using Twitter to keep their followers up to speed with technology news and generate hits to their websites. Though it can be annoying when @prweektech goes over 140 characters and you don't receive the full message. If you are going to use twitter as a newsfeed you must be committed to doing it and not stop after 6 updates like
@bbctechfeatures who will have left their 250+ followers quite disappointed.

Less than two months since astroturfing became illegal, the Carphone Warehouse has been accused of doing just that by Ian Delaney, the editor of New Media Knowledge, who recently noticed some very suspicious posts on his blog. Ian spotted three comments made in seven minutes on an old post, all coming from the same IP address and waxing lyrical about Carphone Warehouse. One even went so far to say: "if cpw was that bad they would not be the market leader."

The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which were put into force on 28th May, were meant to prevent companies from misleading consumers with things like fake blogs and fake comments. But how many people are actually aware of the act and know that leaving fake comments is illegal? Companies need to train their employees and webmasters need to make their visitors aware that writing false comments is against the law.

With many review sites becoming popular online, astroturfing could be a lot more widespread than we realise. If you read a review of a TV or a restaurant (gastroturfing if you will) how do you know they weren't made by a company to improve its image or damage that of its competitors. Then again as Stuart Bruce points out they could have been made by a nutty fan.

According to PR Week 9 out of 10 of the UK's largest PR agencies have hired more graduates this year despite the credit crunch. This apparently shows that the PR industry looks set to buck the recession. But there's a major flaw. The majority of PR graduates will not go straight into jobs working for the UK's ten largest agencies, many will begin their careers at small consultancies that might be less well equipped to ride out a recession.

As the only person on my course to have got a PR job since graduating, I would be surprised if small consultancies were mirroring large agencies and hiring more graduates than in 2007. But perhaps I'm wrong - what do you think?

Earlier this month my boss, Stephen Waddington, blogged to say that 'From PR To Eternity' had made it into a list of the UK's top marketing blogs. The list had been produced by Spinning Around using data from the AdAge Power 150. Yesterday Nick Burcher produced a list of the top European blogs according to the AdAge Power 150.

This got me thinking. What are the world's top PR blogs? So jumping on the band wagon slightly I've produced a list of the top PR blogs according to the AdAge Power 150. It's by no means perfect since it only features blogs on AdAge with PR, Public Relations or Relations in the title, but I think it's a decent indicator nonetheless.

If your PR blog is missing please comment and let me know. If you haven't added your blog to the AdAge Power 150 yet you can do so by clicking here.

PR Rank....AA Rank............ Blog Name........................Country ............AA Score

1. .............38.....................PR 2.0...................................US.........................91
2. .............43.....................PR Squared..........................US.........................89
3. .............57.....................A shel of my former self........US..........................83
   
4. .............89.....................POP! PR Jots.........................US.........................72
5. ............111....................Strategic PR..........................US.........................68
6. ............113...................PR Blogger.............................UK.........................68
7. ............126...................Pro PR...................................CANADA................66
8. ............201...................Young PR..............................AUSTRALIA................58
9. ...........204....................PRNewser..............................US..........................58
10. ...........211.....................PR Communications............US..........................57
11. ...........222....................A PR Guy's Musings................UK.........................55
12. ...........236....................PR meets the WWW..............US.........................55
13. ...........253....................Common Sense PR................CANADA.............53
14. ...........260....................Corporate PR........................US.........................52
15. ...........263....................PR Works................................CANADA..............52
16. ...........268....................Naked PR...............................US.........................52
17. ...........296....................KDPaine's PR..........................US..........................49
18. ...........313....................Hispanic Marketing & PR........US.........................48
19. ...........324...................Wadds' tech pr blog...............UK........................47
20. ...........331...................Drew B's take on tech PR........UK.......................46
21. ...........345...................Corporate Engagement.........AUSTRALIA..........45
    
22. .,.........346...................Brendan Cooper.....................UK.......................45
23. ...........350...................Tech PR Gems..........................US......................45
24. ...........352...................PRoactive...............................US......................45
25. ...........355..................Simonsays................................UK......................44
    
26. ...........357...................Beyond PR...............................UK......................44
27. ...........366...................Observations of PR................US........................43
28. ...........375...................Online PR Thoughts.....................US...................43
29. ...........376...................Valley PR Blog..........................US......................43
30. ...........405...................Media Relations Blog................US......................41
31. ...........424...................PR Disasters...............................AUSTRALIA.........39
32. ...........428...................PR Meets Marketing..................US.......................39
33. ...........450...................Into PR.....................................US.........................37
34. ...........468...................Wired PR Works.......................US........................36
35. ...........478...................Student PR Blog........................CANADA..............35
36. ...........486...................PRos in Training............................US......................35
37. ...........490...................IndiaPRBlog!..............................INDIA..................35
38. ...........492...................Profitable Business Edge 2........US........................35
39. ...........498...................The New PR.................................CANADA............34
40. ...........500...................Shiny Red.......................................UK......................34
41. ...........507...................A view on PR..............................US......................34
42. ...........515...................Alan Weinkrantz PR....................US......................33
43. ...........529...................PR Talk........................................US......................33
44. ...........530...................Engage in PR............................US........................33
45. ...........539...................New Millennium PR......................US....................32
46. ...........544...................Pudding Relations......................UK......................32
47. ...........545...................Morgan McLintic on PR...............US......................32
48. ...........556...................Mutually Inclusive PR..................CANADA.............31
49. ...........575...................All Things PR...............................UK.......................30
50. ...........594...................Youngblood PR & Marketing......CANADA...........29
51. ...........602...................PR Voice......................................UK......................28
52. ...........624...................PR. Differently..............................US......................27
53. ...........630...................Launch PR.....................................US....................26
54. ...........631...................Tech for PR...................................US......................26
55. ...........661...................10 Yetis PR Blog..........................UK.......................23
56. ...........666...................Blinn PR Report...........................US.......................23
57. ...........684...................Mosnar Communications............US......................22
58. ...........693...................First Person PR............................US........................21
59. ...........697...................PRwordSmith................................UK.....................21
60. ...........699...................EducationPR.................................US......................21
61. ...........713...................From PR to Eternity......................UK......................19
62. ...........715...................HighVizPR......................................US.....................19
63. ...........718...................PowerUp........................................US....................19
    

The top blogs by country:

Australia: Young PR
Canada: Pro PR
India: IndiaPRBlog!
UK: PR Blogger
US: PR 2.0

The top UK blogs:
1. PR Blogger
2. A PR Guy's Musings
3. Wadds' tech pr blog
4. Drew B's take on tech PR
5. Brendan Cooper, Your friendly PR Social Media Planner
6. Simonsays
7. Beyond PR
8. Shiny Red
9. Pudding Relations
10. All Things PR
11. PR Voice
12. 10 Yetis PR Blog
13. PRwordSmith
14. From PR to Eternity

Class of 2008: Public Relations with Media BA (Hons), The University of Huddersfield.

If you're looking for gadget and gizmo gossip then please visit the Digital Lushes blog, which is written by Custard PR and was recently redesigned by me.

In Saturday's Guardian there is an article detailing how Princes William and Harry have shaken off their image of drunken heir heads to become right royal role models. All it took was a cocaine bust here and a spot of helping the poor there. Hey presto, you're a national treasure and the tabloids love you.

But is it really that easy to change your image? A short burst of positive PR with a few days charity work, a well staged photo shoot and some well timed news releases. Or does it demand a more sustained effort to make a difference. I'd opt for the latter. If Harry and William went out next weekend and had one too many bottles of champagne, before getting photographed stumbling out of some posh club in a sick stained shirt all that hard work will have been for nothing. At least in terms of improving their image.

The princes aren't the only 'royals' who have been working on their reputation recently. The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, has been in the background working hard on his. The pop star who Max Clifford once described as "the hardest job in PR after Saddam Hussein" is now working on a new album, and collaborating with some of the biggest names in the music industry. I'm not sure how Wacko Jacko has improved his image, but whatever he's done it certainly seems to have been successful. After all I can't imagine the likes of Kanye West, Akon, and Black Eyed Peas star, Will.i.am, were falling over themselves to work with a singer recovering from a second set of peadophilia allegations.

What other public figures have turned their reputation around?

Here are my top 5:

1. David Beckham. Following kicking Diego Simeone during the 1998 World Cup, Beckham went on to become one of the country's favourite footballers and captain of the England team.
   
2. Nelson Mandela. Once regarded as a terrorist, Mandella is now thought of as a key freedom fighter and in 1993 was presented with a Nobel Peace Prize after becoming the11th President of South Africa. However he was only taken off the US list of terrorists twelve days ago.
3. Kylie Minogue. Sometimes all it takes to change your image is a decent pair of hot pants. However this might not work for all.
4. David Hasselhoff. Embracing his online persona as the Hoff with some good humour was all it took for the aging actor to breathe some new life into his celebrity status.
5. Take That. Once in a while doing nothing can revive your image. There's a reason they say what goes around comes around...
   

Please check out another blog I've been helping to develop - Earlin' Abuse: Steve Earl's IT PR Agency Blog.

I've been developing this blog for Susannah Wyeth at Lighthouse PR. Please check it out!

Seven days after moving to the capital, here I am sat in a dark corner of a small Internet café, sipping a latte, updating my blog and trying out the frustrated writer look. The odd socks and un-ironed t-shirt probably weren’t necessary but I think they add a certain something.

My first week at Rainier PR has been great. I’ve attended lots of meetings and training sessions, and even had a chance to do a bit of proper PR – phoning journalists. Prior to this week I’d never sold a story in to a journalist and truthfully I’d been dreading it a little. However I found it was actually okay and by the time I’d reached the end of my list I was quite enjoying it.

On the first day I was introduced to the staff and given a laptop and smart phone. One of my clients sells mobile advertising so I’ve been trying out the mobile internet since then. I think it’s important I practice what I preach. Also I haven’t had broadband installed yet and a life without facebook isn’t worth living. Some of my other clients include Ntl:Telewest, Dante and Seniqua. As well as this I’ll also be working with one of Rainier’s sister companies, Lighthouse PR, developing their new blog.

I received my exam results and degree classification on the second day. I got a 2:1! I’m very pleased with that and thrilled that I got a 1^st on my dissertation, which asked is blogging the future of PR, as well as a 1^st for the Opus project. I think I averaged about 67% but every time I try to work it out I get a different figure so it’s lucky I didn’t study mathematics.

Thursday was the 5^th birthday of this blog. I started it at 16 as a sort of online diary documenting nights out and silly stuff from school for my friends to read, without the ability to comment. The blog was part of my website, which hosted photos, videos and displayed some information about myself. If only I had known a bit more about web design and thought to make my website into an interactive network I could have had the next Facebook or YouTube on my hands. Alas I was more interested in writing Biggish Sibling, my series of blog posts about a fruit bowl where the fruit got evicted and a mango died from using hoof paste instead of tooth paste. What was I thinking? It seems mad to think I’ve passed my GSCE’s, A-Levels, and driving test, and even gotten a degree since then. Here’s to the next five years!

Friday kicked off with a celebratory champagne breakfast and movie premiere to celebrate some of the team completing the three peaks challenge last weekend. Rather them than me. See the video here.

This weekend I had a look around a few of the sights; Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, China Town and the Topman store on Oxford Street. I remember a few of the places from a school trip to London when I was in primary school. Having never really holidayed in London since then it’s very strange living there now as it half feels like I’m on holiday or doing work experience and going home soon.

It's easy for Liverpudlians to get excited about the £1bn new shopping centre that is bringing 42 acres of shops and 5,000 jobs to the city, but what about the rest of the country? At the risk of sounding like Bob Geldof: Do they know it's shopping time at all?

Intrigued by this, I posed a question on Twitter asking if any non-scousers had heard of Liverpool One to see if it had gained national coverage. I didn't get much of a response although amusingly @jedhallam thought I'd been doing some freelance PR for the shopping centre. I haven't!

I'm really impressed by the Liverpool One website. It's not particularly innovative or exciting, but it works very well. It's packed full of information about the shopping centre, and news and photos about the building work. There's even a few webcams and a competition to find the most stylish worker in the city, which they've named the Liverpool One.

Displaying Press Releases as part of the website isn't unusual. However I think displaying the Media Coverage gained is, as I've never seen it before. The list of coverage hasn't been updated since mid-March but it still gives quite an interesting look into what coverage has been gained. Mostly it's been in local newspapers such as the Liverpool Echo and the Liverpool Daily Post, and trade magazines such as Retail Week and Property Week.

Some national coverage has been gained though.

There's been an interesting interview in the Independent with Joanne Jennings talking about her life as a Regeneration Expert. This is a clever angle for getting coverage and allows Joanne to wax lyrical about the shopping centre.

Another interesting angle that got some coverage in the Financial Times was to defend the building of a shopping centre when there is currently so much talk of a recession.

They also got coverage in the Daily Express' Property section by showing how the shopping centre was bringing new flats and housing to the city.

This is all the national coverage gained up until mid-March. I'm sure there has been a lot more since then as the grand opening will have generated a lot of media coverage. A clever move was to invite the Queen, and broadcast and print journalists, to visit the shopping centre a week or so before it opened to the public. This guaranteed that video footage and images of Liverpool One would make it into the news. Plus I got to see her and Prince Phillip arrive at the train station!


Whether or not all of this has actually put Liverpool on the map I'm not sure. However I like that they've split the development into two phases, therefore creating two occasions for grand openings and anniversaries in the future.

It will be interesting to see if they are able to gain as much attention when the second phase of the shopping centre opens in 117 days on the 30th September - my birthday! Repeating the same competitions and inviting the Queen back again probably wouldn't work. Perhaps they could invite a few WAGs from Liverpool and Everton football clubs as well as journalists to do some shopping before it officially opens. Or get a few up-and-coming Liverpudlian bands to give a performance on the opening day, such as the Zutons and the Wombats, as well as wheeling Sir Paul McCartney out again.

There have been many negative news reports predicting a recession recently. There's a reason for this: bad news is good news. The same applies to social media. People are more willing to pass on and take in bad news than good news. For example a tweet that says, "My car got me to work without any problems again today." is a lot less interesting than "My car broke down on the motorway today. I'll never buy a Ford again!"

This is why monitoring what people are saying about your brand or product is so imperative. This is particularly important in an age of social media where that negative message could quickly go global. Fortunately by reacting to negative messages and using blogger outreach you can use bad news like the recession to your advantage.

Reactions to negative messages:

• If a blogger has been made redundant offer them a free trial of your recruitment service.
• If a Facebook group has been started to complain that your product is now more expensive, apologise and explain why the price change has been made. Maybe even offer a one-off discount to members of the group.
• If someone isn't happy with their mobile phone. Offer them a free trial of your company's phone. Chances are they will want to keep the phone at the end of the trial so offer them the option to buy it.
• If a blogger can't find any holidays in their price range, suggest some cheap options.
• If someone tweets to say their taxi is late, offer your services instead. (See feverbee)

Managed correctly bad news can really be good news for your company.

UPDATE: Stephen Davies of Prblogger.com gives a good example of the Carphone Warehouse reacting to a negative blog post here.

We got the prints back from the family photo shoot that I organised with Alex Petricca of AP Photo for my mum's 50th birthday last month.

Three weeks ago I started using Twitter to link to my blog posts and news stories that I found of interest. I didn't really see the point of it, but I thought I'd give it ago afterall it only took up a few minutes of my time.

Gradually I immersed myself into the 'Twittersphere' and started following other PR people and entering into conversations. I thought it was interesting but I certainly had no idea that it would further my career.

After just ten days of twittering I was contacted by Stephen Waddington of