Trevor Cook on public relations, social media and politics

Monthly Archives: November 2008

The horror of media releases

November 25, 2008 – 10:13 am

They are formulaic, template-driven, often lack an actual story idea, lack substantiation for their claims, use ludicrous descriptors (exciting, best, first, fun etc) and yet the industry (and those horrible academics that train these people) keep at it. All of which and more Mark Ragan rails about in this piece:
PR writing is so horribly consistent [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Public Relations | Tagged , | Comments (0)

We’re all ‘experts’ online

November 25, 2008 – 9:55 am

Perhaps, we need a government agency to vet these claims and prosecute a few for false and misleading advertising:
While looking at bios on Twitter and on several blogs, I’ve noticed one common theme: everyone is an expert. (link)

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Session notes: Online social networking and business collaboration conference

November 25, 2008 – 9:47 am

This conference is being held yesterday and today in Sydney with many of the hardy little band of Australian web 2.0 promoters on the panels. You can follow it on twitter at #osnbc or spy and read Ross Dawson’s handy session notes.

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

How to fix the music industry (video)

November 24, 2008 – 5:49 pm

Corny, but stick with it; it’s interesting

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Music | Tagged | Comments (0)

Why you should learn to love the GFC

November 24, 2008 – 5:08 pm

The GFC (global financial crisis) is a vital part of this great system of capitalism that we all seem to love, love in spite of ourselves or accept because we are simply at a loss to think of a workable alternative. Way back when this was a little downturn, George Bush said: “In a market [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Politics, Social issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

News.com.au bringing the news on delay

November 22, 2008 – 9:23 pm

I’ve noticed this happening a few times on Australia’s major media sites in recent times. In this case, it’s the Palin turkey video that has been circulating on the internet for a couple of days before it ‘finally’ popped up on the Australian news site, Including on MSNBC and on the Huffington Post. It was posted [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (3)

Financial planners use social media to recruit young people

November 22, 2008 – 9:22 am

I think we will see more of this stuff; it’s a fun and pretty cheap way of promoting careers to young people.
From the FPA release:
The Financial Planning Association (FPA) today announced that Kane Piper is the winner of the student BLOG STAR competition with the wonderful job of promoting financial planning as a career of choice.

Kane said that he [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Business & economics, Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Time and content are the two factors determining blog success

November 22, 2008 – 9:06 am

A fascinating analysis of what grows blog traffic, turns out post frequency, social bookmarking and traffic spikes count for very little, you have to persevere, persevere, persevere:
I tested page views against time. I found that time since starting the blog does correlate to an increase in page views. At first I had trouble substantiating this [...]

By Trevor Cook | Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

ROI on social media (video)

November 21, 2008 – 5:10 pm
By Trevor Cook | Posted in How-to do social media, Social Media | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The best viral ad ever, Cadburys?

November 21, 2008 – 4:12 pm
By Trevor Cook | Posted in Advertising & marketing | Tagged , | Comments (0)