Cheltenham’s social media conference, the #AddMe conference, will play host to some of the country’s most prominent social media speakers.

The conference has been set up by me as part of my role as CIPR Student Representative for the University of Gloucestershire. Open to students and businesses alike the #AddMe Conference aims to tackle the key questions of how to create, manage and utilise relationships online. To highlight the significance of creating relationships online keeps the #AddMe Conference open to a wide range of topics.

The conference will highlight the significance of creating relationships online and will explain the continually adapting communication landscape for industries. The evening will begin with a talk from David Phillips who is an active PR practitioner, has been involved in the communications landscape for 20 years and is the author of three books about online public relations. He will be followed by Alex Sass, named “Best of British: Entrepreneur” by Attitude Magazine and currently heading up the digital team at Renegade Media. He will cover methods of digital PR, social media marketing and a warning to the industry.

The keynote speaker of the evening will be Aren Grimshaw. His roles include lead organiser of the Cornwall Twestival events, founder of Cornwall Social Media Cafe, marketing director of Tonick Media, publisher of Business Cornwall and consultant to a range of clients. He is a regular speaker on the subject of social media and its role within business.

The event will take place at the University of Gloucestershire, Park Campus on Wednesday 10^th March at 7.00pm until 10:30pm. Normal tickets cost £5 and student tickets cost £3 (using promo code STUDENTDISC). Refreshments will be available on the evening.

Further information and ticket sales can be found at: http://www.addme.mikewhite.co.uk/

You can also follow the event on Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/Addmeconf

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This question is a cliché for anybody introduced to Public Relations and ethics. On a couple of occasions I have been asked but I have never had a defiant response. Let me explain why…

A couple of weeks ago for my birthday a friend of mine bought me the film, ‘Thank You for Smoking’. Originally a novel by Christopher Buckley which follows a lobbyist, called Nick Naylor, who works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies. If you haven’t watched the film then I definitely recommend it. As for me, I’m going to try and find the time to read the book.

Potentially this could be a very simple question to answer. It is the cognitive processes through which offers the difficulty. We have to understand that there will always be a demand for tobacco, people need to make their own choices but that smoking seriously damages your health. Perhaps the only people who can justify working for tobacco companies are smokers. Yet, I smoke (admittedly not nearly as much) but still find my conscience battling against my habit.

Do tobacco companies offer a positive service for society or are they fuelling a product which the majority would chose to abandon?

Currently I am undecided and this question is for you. Would you work for a tobacco company?

Will provide part 2 of this muse within the next few days.

On my Public Relations course whenever a campaign has been planned there is always one word which is used in abundance. The conception of a plan that will spread ‘awareness’. Perhaps defaulted by principle as awareness avoids connotations of unethical propositions. How wrong it would be to implement a campaign that would compel individuals into actually purchasing a product. Would that really be unethical?

Just because a scale of influence has been used to persuade an individual to purchase doesn’t make it wrong. They haven’t been told to purchase a particular product or support a cause; they have still made a choice. No matter the level of influence involved they made a subjective choice.

For the past couple of days most of my attention has been diverted to completing an essay for my Ethics module at University. The essay concerned determinism, freewill and the ethical outcome. Although there is no denying a similarity, if only academic in nature, that Public Relations should be concerned about. Determinism focuses on why we make the choices we do, how our choices are determined by prior causes.

David Hume, one of my favourite philosophers, divulged into how the whole scheme of nature works through necessity. Cause and effect is how every object is brought into the world, this simple principle explains the functionality of our bodies but also the decisions we make. I won’t spend this muse pondering upon the existence of determinism, compatabilism or indeterminism.

Instead I want you to take for granted, for this small fraction of time, these three principles:

1. We do indeed live in a world that can only be explained through the mechanics of determinism.

2. Freewill is necessary for liberty to exist.

3. But freewill is littered with impediments that personally limit our choices but does not keep our hands tied.

Quite a big proposal but if we are to take these three principles to heart then influence is not a question of ethics.(…)

Apparently there are 15,740 social media experts on Twitter of who take the forms of gurus, consultants, stars, experts and ninjas. I am not entirely surprised and as Mashable observed this self-accredited title is just hot air. Surely the only way somebody can be truly convinced of your worth is through the voice of another?

Notice how on my Twitter profile I have avoided cliché terminology. There is nothing worse than those who big themselves up on Twitter without any experience or content to prove their worth. Just because you Re-Tweet social media posts doesn’t make you an expert; it makes you a regurgitator.

I am not an expert but instead a ‘web 2.0 enthusiast’. Even though I am only a student I have been surfing the internet since the age of five and have built similar social media websites which have received  so much hype today. I am an enthusiast, passionate about the subject and can see potential as well as flaws.

So forgive me as I walk the controversial path into what could be considered short sighted and simply wrong. Social media is experiencing a frenzy of attention at the moment. Rather than personal attributes people are being viewed by how many followers they have on Twitter and the amount of websites they have heard of. I am getting fed up with this hype.

In one breath I can name over a dozen different websites which will help share content from your website. Methods to spread a company’s word into the different sections of the heterogeneous audience in which social networking has created. I did a presentation to a client at the beginning of this month and they were more interested in a social media strategy surrounding Facebook than considering ‘old fashioned pr’.

It is in my opinion that the world has gone crazy. Of course there is value to using social media but let’s all calm down about this. Just because a PR firm has offered social media in their pitch doesn’t(…)

Only a few minutes ago I decided to set up a PR Student Wiki. I have absolutely no idea if this project will work but since it hasn’t really cost me anything I haven’t lost financially if it flops. It just occurred to me that if this PR Student Wiki works it would be a very potent resource for students and professionals alike.

http://www.prstudents.co.uk/

Feel free to share your blog posts on it. Perhaps create useful lists of resources which others may find useful. This Wiki is for you.

Although this Wiki is a secondary project of mine over this blog please don’t consider it property of my own. This blog is mine and is only full of my content. This Wiki is for you and only if you get involved by providing content and opinion will it work. Later on today I shall start adding some materials which I have found useful on my PR course. Your support would be greatly appreciated.

Last week I was fortunate enough to have been invited by one of my friends to meet Mark Coote, Conservative Candidate for Cheltenham, at a pub in Cheltenham. As I suspected by reading much of his material he was a delightful person to be with. Quite personable and I can see how he would be a successful candidate.

With the seesaw of British politics in motion once again we can expect for David Cameron to be Prime Minister next general election. In which case having Mark Coote elected for Cheltenham would be of great advantage to Cheltenham. With David Cameron only being a phone call away how could Mark Coote be a bad thing?

The evening was spent discussing personal views, campaigning ideas and attempting to achieve a firm grip of Conservative politics. Lots of free beers were involved and by the end of the evening I was ready to sign up to the Conservatives. I know it sounds cheesy, almost manipulative with free beers being offered but I believed in Mark Coote.

I don’t mean to sound that I now no longer believe in Mark. He is a fantastic candidate but the question of helping with their campaign is really a personal one. Much of my experience within the PR sector has been related to social media for individuals and companies that want to ultimately sell.

Politics is different. Very different. Listening to why a political party is better compared to another uses a lot of language commonly associated with religious evangelism. What I witnessed at that table last Friday was political evangelism. In the same way I would resist the values preached by a Christian, Muslim, Jew or even Pagan… I felt the need to resist the Conservatives.

It does sound peculiar. Of course I have an interest in politics but my reasons for not joining the Conservatives could be regarded as theological in nature. For the same reason I have remained an Atheist almost.

As an Atheist it is possible to clearly observe(…)

Very recently, as those of you may have noticed on my Twitter feed, a lot of my time has been spent down at my local pub. Work obligations, work experience, lectures, seminars and essays are still being achieved. Just that any time I regard as spare is spent around the corner in a pub called St Paul’s Tavern.

The pub until a few months ago was notoriously regarded as one of the rougher pubs in Cheltenham. Better described as a brothel, drug den and sprinkled with all the vice heavy drinking can lead to. Even being near to the pub at night would bring great distress to passing residents. Eventually the pub was closed down after having received countless shiny warnings and ASBOs.

Since then the pub has taken over new ownership.  Any chavs (a word which is thought to have derived from Cheltenham’s Ladies College/Cheltenham College to mean ‘Cheltenham average’) have been bailed out and to this very day are still being arrested for being disorderly around the pub.

So where am I going with this article? Quite simply this is a local story about how one pub has built up new business, thus changed its image and beginning to thrive. It all began when one of my friends moved into his house opposite the pub. Clearly he had to try the pub and as I only live around the corner this was opportune for me as well.

We liked the pub. As a big fan of real ales the pub instantly took my fancy with their offerings of Fire Fly and Yellow Hammer. The bar staff are extremely friendly, personable and one girl is even doing the same Philosophy module as me. These pleasant impressions caused us to invite two more of our friends.

For the following two weeks a network of our friends visited the pub. One evening, by pure chance really, we all arrived at the pub at the same time. The pub on the Saturday evening is usually quiet. However(…)

I have always been perplexed to why people insert the term ‘viral communication’ into a marketing mix. To label a form of communication as viral seems negative. After all, viral shares its base from Latin virulentus which means ‘poisoned wound’. Linguistically what sort of connotations could we derive from this? A communication plan that spreads as a virus on the internet which could be likened to a wound.

Unfortunately some companies, individuals and “so called” entrepreneurs on the internet feel it is necessary to use this term as their flag ship. A term which has a rotten core and has somehow come to mean an effective PR strategy. A viral means of communication could be better described as the junk mail which visits our email inboxes every day. Some fail to realise that communicating on the internet is very different from communication in the digital realm.

The way PR is practised will change depending on the medium of communication you are dealing with. In the real world it is necessary to send out press releases to various newspapers and publications. On the internet the simple act of sending and then receiving feedback does not apply in the same way. We are in the age of Web 2.0, the era of social networking and as PR practitioners/professionals we need to follow by a community’s rule. I say ‘a’ community’s rule because unlike the real world, the internet is full of different communities.

If you were to send a press release out to a publication then you would make sure that your press release suits the audience of that particular publication. In the same way the internet is full of different communities, mostly with interests in one particular subject. One should never look at a network such as Twitter and believe that there are no particular focuses. Any social network is simply a collection of people, like you and I, who do have personal interests. Using various search methods it is possible to(…)

Having digressed into an article within ‘Books Quarterly’ magazine into the Orwellian opinion of CCTV cameras I have just noticed that it was placed there by Public Relations means with a cheeky veiled liberty-human-rights.org.uk. The subject of CCTV, perhaps better named SS (Surveillance Systems) is seen as a sly activity, even underhand, with the way our movements are recorded without recollection. So how is this different to the way Public Relations operates?

I know Public Relations doesn’t store our DNA into a database, keep a record of our finger prints, watch our every move on a monitor or demand us to walk around with an ID card. You would even be hard pushed to call Public Relations parasitical with the way it operates, but it is viral. Make no mistake; a parasitical entity doesn’t come coupled with viral methods.

The main downfall with Public Relation is how to actually explain the industry without your sentence becoming superfluous or tedious. Even more frustrating when I am asked by people, “So… which degree have you chosen to study?” Gah! There is no way for it. I only can explain the industry through examples. There is no point quoting the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) or IPRA (International Public Relations Association) as their definitions change every few years. To be quite honest, without wanting to be so vulgar to force the sick from your mouth, Public Relations is about relationships.

I am afraid these relationships don’t love. Hardly agape in nature, I have yet to find a communication model where a company or organisation confers with publics on an unconditional level. Let’s face it, I probably won’t ever find a model. May sound cynical to say so but a company needs your money and so does a charity. Relationships between PR and the public is like marrying a girl for her cooking skills.

The only way I can illustrate my point is by reverting back to ePR. If we consider that Public Relations, in the real(…)