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Weekly Media and Comms Round-Up – 28 Oct 2011

Sam C — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:25:03 +0000

Although this particular blog may be biased (for the first time ever, I hasten to add), perhaps the biggest story of this week has been the acquisition of Glide Technologies by Nasdaq OMX. You can read the full press release here, but essentially what this represents is the ‘first and only fully-integrated workflow solution for investor relations and public relations professionals’. It’s certainly an exciting time here.

In other news this week, PR Week reported on the changing role of PR based on the findings of the PR Census 2011, in conjunction with the PRSA. Topping the list for growth in importance over the last two years was online comms, along with reputation management, SEO and comms strategy development, all of which are also predicted to grow in importance over the next two years. Areas highlighted as having decreased in importance for PR were event planning and organisation, sales promotion and publishing and editing.

Evaluation-wise, the Green Book Blog has published an interview with analytics strategist Seth Grimes on sentiment analysis. Grimes is interested in using integrated analytics, such as linking content-sourced data with data from transactional and operational systems, to produce valuable Business Intelligence insight. The blog makes for an interesting read for anyone looking to take media monitoring to the next step.

One company looking into this is HP, who this week launched a study showing that data from social media can be merged with company data (ticket sales, customer demographics etc) to predict customer behavior with up to 90% accuracy. It highlights how critical it is for marketing to be integrated with IT to truly provide business value, allowing correlations to be drawn between conversations online and real-time transactions, for example.

Until next week.

Weekly Media and Comms Round-Up – 14 Oct 2011

Sam C — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:31:36 +0000

After Apple’s dominance of the news agenda last week, it was Blackberry’s turn this week. I’ll refrain from repeating any of the jokes circulating on Twitter, and mention what seems to have angered users the most, namely RIM’s handling of communications around the crisis. CorpComms Magazine provided an analysis of the damage to RIM and Blackberry’s reputations, including insight from Glide’s CEO, Sam Phillips.

PR Week this week reported of the sale of College Group to a private equity firm, suggesting it could pave the way for more PE deals in the PR industry. Danny Rogers believes that despite all the doom and gloom, the sector does have some strong growth areas, notably digital content solutions, and reputation management.

A new study from ISBA and Havas Media Social shows that seven out of 10 marketers believe their CEO understands the importance of social media, while nearly eight out of 10 view it as a long-term investment.

Another study of CMOs this week, however, from IBM showed that although 82% say they plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years, only a minority actually currently track brand conversations happening online. The research lead highlighted the benefits of real-time monitoring to companies: “CMOs who successfully harness this new source of insight will be in a strong position to increase revenues, reinvent their customer relationships and build new brand value.”

Whilst on the subject, here’s seven free tools to use to help measure your social media effectiveness. (Regular readers will be aware of my views on tool number 7…)

Until next week.

Hello, and welcome to the Glide blog

Glide Technologies — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:50:33 +0000

A bit of background on Glide

In January 2010 Glide will be seven years old. It’s been quite a journey since the days when three of us were squashed into a small office in Ladbroke Grove. We’re now a team of 30+ happily settled in our Shoreditch office.

Back when we started in 2003, my job was pretty evangelical. Talking about online media centres and PR software wasn’t exactly top of most Comms Directors’ agendas and I spent a lot of time selling the need as well as our nascent product.

Today of course things are very different. It’s rare to meet a PR now who doesn’t acknowledge the importance of online content creation, effective targeting and precision analytics. Blogs and social media have also changed the media landscape for good and the most exciting thing is that there is a lot more change to come.

Innovation is part of our ethos so this year we’ve launched a range of Glide features, including social media share tools, streaming video, B-Roll hosting and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practice tools. We’ve also just launched GlideInsight, our real-time market research tool.

2010 will also see us bring some pretty special tools to the market – but more about that another time!

On to the blog

We wanted our blog to be something everyone in the company owned, so you’ll notice posts from a number of contributors from all corners of the business, ranging from serious to conversational.

If you’re thinking of working for Glide or hiring us, you should be able to get a feel for what kind of people we are, which, in my opinion is vital for either decision.

Enjoy the blog and come back soon.

Sam