When I’m not writing press releases, speaking with the media or putting together coverage boards, I can be found playing jazz guitar.  As everyone in the office says, I am far too old for my actual age. 

Anyway, I recently bought a book called Jazz Insights to teach me a bit of theory.  What separates this from all the other music books I’ve got is how well it takes advantage of a plethora of web 2.0 tools to add value to the book itself.  Firstly, I got the book for half price because I bought the eBook version, letting me do much more with it than if I’d just bought the printed version.  The author of the book, John Elliot, has created a series of podcasts explaining the theory in the book, a Google Group allowing people to discuss the topics of the book, and he is also on Twitter, allowing people to questions him directly.  All of this is available on his website, and while it could do with some SEO around its main keywords, it is regularly updated.

What I think this shows it is possible to provide additional value to any product, even a simple book, through the use of freely available web tools.  Around the launch of any product or service, you can use things like Google Groups or podcasts to create a buzz.  Anything that allows people to discuss a launch in greater depth, and which provides them with something over and above the standard product, is always going to improve the public’s perception of a product.  For a technology PR campaign, this can be a great way to get closer to the end-audience, and provide an incentive to them for visiting the website and buying the product.

 Luke Davies

Looking out of the window, I’m jolly glad I picked last week to take some annual leave, rather than this one: near gale-force winds and heavy showers are not conducive to a camping trip in the New Forest. As it was, I enjoyed an idyllic week away in the sunshine, with nothing more pressing to worry about that what to put on the next barbeque and how to keep the resident squirrels’ paws off my peanut butter. (It turns out the pesky little blighters can get through fabric bags and plastic jars).

I barely turned on my mobile, and didn’t open an email the whole time I was away.

As the summer holidays approach, I imagine many a family vacation will be interrupted by the sound of a bleeping Blackberry. And I’m the first to admit that it can be difficult to switch off in the highly “connected” world that we live in, both physically and metaphorically.

But personal downtime is good. It allows the individual to recharge the batteries and gain some perspective, rediscover enthusiasm and come up with one or two ideas for solving problems that seemed impossible before you went away.

When I returned on Monday, everything was ticking along nicely with no big dramas. The team ensured that there was no need for me to be in touch when I was chasing squirrels. Though I hope that the little sign on my computer that read "Welcome back Jo, x" meant they missed me a tiny little bit.

Now, I wonder if I can convince the boss to let me take off one week in every four, so I can work on my squirrel-proof peanut butter jar invention for Dragons’ Den…?

Jo Jamieson

As some of you may know I head up Berkeley PR’s in-house team. As we would for any client, we plan campaigns around key business objectives, use the most appropriate PR tools to target our key media and generate results in top tier publications – we even have quarterly coverage KPIs to hit.

To demonstrate what a great job we have done we decided to pull together a coverage board in much the same way that we do for our clients. As you can see from the picture, it included a vast array of national, regional, trade and business coverage. 

I think that coverage boards work for a few reasons. From a PR perspective, a coverage board can be a great way to highlight the work and resulting coverage which you have generated for a client. We obviously send coverage over email as and when it comes through, but it can look very different when you see it all in one place. For a client, coverage boards can be used to demonstrate to their own board how the PR campaign is going to ensure their continued buy-in. They can also be positioned in staff areas to motivate them that the time and effort they put into support PR is paying off.

In a digital age when everything revolves around the internet, you still can’t beat the humble coverage board. Sometimes it still pays to go old-school.

Hannah Humphreys

We’re currently recruiting for a range of positions at Berkeley PR.   We’ve been holding interviews this week to try and find new PR talent to help support our ongoing drive for excellent results for our clients. 

I asked a potential new recruit how she liked to work.  She answered that she liked to plan ahead for her whole week.  She liked structure, clear deadlines, a routine.  I agreed with her at the time.  I always classified myself as a creature of routine.  Then I realised that since returning to work at Berkeley PR my ‘routine’ has become far from planned.

We plan quarterly PR objectives for all our clients of course.  We report our weekly activity without fail.  We have career objectives agreed with our managers.  Sometimes we even plan a drink after work.

But, by nature, an element of the job is reactive.  By default, as an agency we are responsive to our key audiences; the media, our clients and our teams.  Then of course there’s national and industry news.  Unplanned.  Occasionally we have to cover for colleagues who are either held up or unwell.  Also unplanned.

I realised that actually, if I had to work in a job or industry that was the same every day I would feel frustrated and stifled that I couldn’t think creatively.  Part of the challenge of the role is managing the unpredictability into a format that can be productive, if not predicted.

If I viewed a diary for the month that had fixed appointments it would fill me with a sense of dread rather than relief.  I relish the challenge and unpredictability that technology PR brings. 

Routine is for wimps.

Kate Jones

Working for a PR agency isn’t always about the quick gains and fast responses. Sometimes there can be a lot of planning, background research and preparation to achieve coverage for a client.

Take my recent jaunt into the world of women’s lifestyle magazines for example for one of our B2C clients. This is a rare excursion for someone working in technology PR, but after weeks of arranging interviews and liaising with the journalists I was able to achieve a great piece of coverage in Take a Break, one of the leading women’s lifestyle magazines.

Dealing with a title such as this is obviously different in approach to a B2B title, but when you package the opportunity to a journalist the basics are the same. You still have to build bad news, topicality and human interest into the story.

Knowing that these publications are notoriously a tough nut to crack I am particularly proud of the result as it took a lot of organization, tenacity, determination and crossing fingers to achieve the coverage. When you see the fruits of your labour it always helps make life in a busy PR agency that bit sweeter.

Liam Sherry

I saw an interesting article on The Guardian website recently, looking at the most popular websites in the world.  It was based on analysis by Royal Pingdom of Google's list of the top 1000 websites according to the number of monthly unique users (the number of individual people that have visited the site that month) that the websites get.  One of the interesting things about the results was the massive difference in visitor numbers between the top 100 sites and the other 900.  To put it into perspective:

"the top 100 together get as many visitors as the following 900 websites counted together"

Its no surprise which site has managed to get the top spot – Facebook, with 540 million monthly unique users.  This is followed by Yahoo.com (490 million) and live.com (370 million) and Wikipedia (340 million) (it's worth pointing out that Google doesn't include its own sites, like Google.com and YouTube on the list).

For me at least, I find these to be absolutely staggering figures, and it goes someway to explain the power of Facebook, and why some people consider it to be such a powerful technology PR tool.  At 14 on the list, Twitter has 97,000,000 monthly unique users.  While this is just over a quarter of Facebook's total, it is still an incredibly big figure, and shows why news and trends can travel so quickly though Twitter.  I think all these figures show the power of the internet, and for any businesses doubting the power of social media, they should definitely take a look at the number of people using Twitter and Facebook, especially in comparison to other sites.

Luke Davies

Every quarter all of our staff come together to meet, exchange ideas and take part in a company update. They are invaluable, as it offers you the chance to come out of your bubble and hear how the other business units are doing, how they are doing it and what they have in the pipeline. It is also great fun.

We all met this week and once the formalities were out of the way we took part in a team building treasure hunt. Sounds a bit rubbish doesn’t it…until you hear that the transport between each of the destinations dotted around the Solent was a high powered Rib (Rigid Inflatable Boat).

With safety talks out of the way and life jackets donned the Berkeley PR teams were split into three and took to their ribs. Unbelievable. On several occasions my colleague Jo Jamieson asked if I was OK because for once I was pretty quiet but to be honest I was so busy having fun, laughing and holding on for dear life that chatting was pushed to the back of my agenda.

Starting at Lymington we bombed off in formation to Hamble for the first phase of the treasure hunt. Each phase was against the clock so who knows what the locals thought when they looked up and saw three teams of PR professionals running around looking for clues, taking photos and collecting prizes.

Next stop was Cowes for more of the same. It also conveniently gave the team a chance to venue check a private room it was thinking of hiring for a forthcoming press event being held during Cowes Week. Our final destination was Yarmouth before we headed back to Lymington screaming and whooping as we bounced off waves at high speed.

Who ever said that working in PR was dull, obviously hasn’t worked at Berkeley PR!

Paul Stallard

I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I read about the Daily Mail’s latest faux pas. Having noticed a tweet from “ceoSteveJobs” stating, “We may have to recall the new iPhone. This, I did not expect”, the tabloid ran a story on Sunday morning. The article was certainly a good read, but not for the right reasons.

This Twitter handle is a fake – and its biography does not hide this fact, plainly stating, "I don't care what you think of me. You care what I think of you. Of course this is a parody account." Sadly, this detail was missed and the publication went on to face national embarrassment by publishing an online story based on inaccurate facts. Of course the story was taken down (eventually), but it was too late, the damage had been done.

To me, two things come out of this…

1)     Twitter is a massively powerful tool (especially as part of Online PR), but there are a few trip wires to look out for. The fake Steve Jobs account is one of many of its kind – other new additions include a feed called “AT&T Wireless PR”. Its biography states, “Trying to counter the impression that AT&T Wireless sucks, especially our service with the iPhone. We don't suck. Really. We're doing the best we can. Xo”. Say no more.

2)     My heart genuinely goes out to the Daily Mail journalist and I’m not writing this to have a dig, however it acts as a sweat-inducing reminder to make sure you do your research. This too needs to be applied in technology PR – whether it’s from planning campaigns to media relations, research is undoubtedly the key to getting it right.

Lauren Wood