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There are plenty of social media monitoring tools out there, some free, others can be quite expensive. And,
although many are very clever, tests have shown that none can be trusted to accurately reflect and report on the sentiment of conversations online.  That’s because they lack one important feature that is absolutely necessary to do the job well…a human brain! That’s why I’m introducing Sherrilynne’s social media analysis.
Order now to find out who is saying what about your brand on the social Internet!

Is sentiment positive?
Is social …

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This is a question that many organisations are grappling with.  And, after working with many organisations in various different ways my own answer to this question is that no, you can’t fully outsource social media.
The traditional agency/client relationship will not work when it comes to social media.  I know this because I’ve tried it and found the arrangement to be impossible.
The first casualty of such an arrangement is authenticity.  The individuals in social media communities have an expectation that they are conversing directly with an organisation, not with an agent.
The …

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Today at our social media workshop we announced that Strive PR is forming a strategic alliance with PDMS Limited to create the Isle of Man‘s premiere social media consulting service. We’ll be serving UK clients and those from further afield too!
It’s become glaringly obvious over the past several months that those professional communicators who have a solid web development team behind them are making great strides in PR 2.0.  I’m confident that together with the excellent web team at PDMS, we’ll continue to provide our clients with the smartest communication …

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There seems to be a theme about ‘giving it away’ in the PR blogosphere this week.  I guess it’s a sign of the times, but what about those green shoots we keep hearing about?  Either way, here’s my top 5 blog posts from the past week.
1. Lloyd Gofton has a go about ‘devaluing PR’.  He says, “PR, as an industry, needs to wake up to a whole host of challenges, and the last thing we need is to be destroyed from the inside. Have we really been demoted to scrabbling …

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I laughed until I cried when I watched this the first time.

Thanks to Steve Waddington for pointing it out.

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Image by dbking via Flickr
I was just reading Sally Whittle’s post about how ‘clients suck’ and was reminded of an incident this week. Sally’s premise is that it’s hard to deal with some client’s egos. My response is client ego becomes less of an issue as you become more experienced and skilled in PR consulting.  Here’s my anecdote:
A young writer on our team was tasked to write an appointment release for a new guy at a client company.  I sat down with her and went through the questions she was …

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In PR consulting, getting a new client is like taking a new lover.  When the consultant and the client first become aware of each other they feel a strong attraction. They may spend some time together getting to know each other or they may jump right in.  Then when they first get together there is lots of excitement and fervent activity.  It’s fun! 
photo credit: ♥ franzi
But after the initial intensity, you soon settle into a nice relationship, each player meeting the others’ needs. They enjoy being together and …

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Here’s a little explanation about why I wrote the dos & don’ts post earlier this week.
At the end of each month, those of us in the PR consulting business go through a self-flagellation exercised called ‘compiling activity reports’.  It’s a tortuous affair where we take a look back over the past four weeks and draw each and every thing we’ve done for each client.  Depending on the size of contract, this can range from a couple of dozen transactions to a couple of hundred.
Most of us would rather be spared …

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About  a month a go I’d made the decision to change a few things to see what happens.  I’d cut back on my volunteer and charity work, outsourced some admin, taken a breather on business development activity and refocused my attention on core services.
I could not possibly have predicted the quick and profound effect these changes would have on Strive PR. We’ve done some of our best work in a year.  Unprofitable accounts have been kicked to the curb.  Unproductive team members have self selected.  New business is flowing in.
But …

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I think it’s about time I came clean about something. Strive Public Relations is no longer a virtual consultancy.  We moved to a mixed virtual/traditional model about six weeks ago. Let me explain.
The business was growing to a point where it was impossible to maintain the virtual status.  We needed to hire some support staff, account assistants and managers, and it didn’t seem feasible to let these younger professionals work from their homes. So we’ve taken offices in the Isle of Man.  Now our happy team of four (plus a …