Berkeley PR exhibited at Business North West this week and the one thing I was really interested to see was the way new media has infiltrated entrepreneurs and small businesses. My very crude research, conducted purely through conversation, proved that it is still all a bit new and scary for most.  Four out of the eleven either provided an insight into the use of new media for visitors or were from new media companies (Facebook, bigmouthmedia, I-COM and NewZapp).

Following one of the seminars, a husband and wife team who import Blue Mountain coffee from Jamaica and sell it online in the UK, came over to the stand and hoped we could help them better understand what they had just heard. They asked lots of questions and were really keen to learn, which was simply great. We talked about traditional PR and optimising PR for the web and using social networking to their advantage (with help from teenage daughter!) They left the stand buzzing with enthusiasm and with more understanding, which made me very happy.

When you live and breathe something, it is strange to think that others don’t understand it. Explaining blogs, newswires, hyperlinks, online and offline PR for the last two days has made me remember one thing above all else – there will never be a better way of influencing or communicating than meeting in person. This is what I like doing most of all and one day I hope we will have a global day of human contact where you make more of an effort to meet people in person and not through technology.

Steph Marshall