Within a week I’d been lemonpartied (I’m not linking to that), told I’d never ‘make it’ at the agency due to being an Arsenal fan (thanks Nick) and got pissed with the CEO who warned me about the then marketing manager scaring new recruits with requests to ‘nosh him off’ (anyone who worked at LEWIS pre-2007 will know who I mean). Thanks Chris.

I knew then I’d have lots of fun and learn a lot about the industry. And that’s exactly what happened. From the infamous LMC parties to countless nights at the Muppet, the last six years have been a blast. I’ve also managed to learn one to two things about this thing the kids are calling social media, work with some brilliant characters and on some great (not too mention challenging) clients.

However as they say all good things come to an end and from next week I’ll be joining Ogilvy’s 360 digital influence team. For some time, I’ve admired Ogilvy’s approach to social marketing; from creating a blogger outreach code of ethics to some very smart thinking around influencer marketing. So at a time when there’s a lot of talk about how social media is bringing a convergence of marketing disciplines (my own thoughts on the matter here) the opportunity to work right at the heart of this was just too good to pass up.

I’m told the ethos for my new team is fun, fame and fortune so looks like I’m going to be doing a lot more schmoozing, helping the agency pick up more of these and making a ton of cash in the process. I just hope they also feed my Mac addiction.

You can view my ppt from the day here.

The highlights of the day though were the other brilliant speakers. Maz Nadjm kicked things off with an insightful view on social commerce. It is fascinating to see some of things companies are doing to harness the power of social.

Joanne Jacobs (who you should definitely follow if you work in PR) gave a ‘pull no punches’ talk on the art of linking in the context of influencer tools (like Klout and PeerIndex). This was based on an experiment she conducting on whether the scores could be games (spoiler alert – they can). You can view her presentation here.

Last but certainly not least was Kate Day from the Telegraph who gave an overview of how modern newsrooms use social networks. The fact that her desk was plonked right in the middle of the newsroom where the editor used to sit says a lot about the value the Telegraph places on uses social media to report and tell stories.

All in all it was a very informative day. A special mention to Glenn Le Santo, Celia Lacy, Andy Clayton and Tim Downing (who I promised a beer but shamelessly forgot to get it) for organising a top day.

Looking forward to the next one already.

But how much of a role does diversity play when it comes to really understanding the different communities marketers seek to engage with? And what how much should search marketers get to know or exploit colloquiums when optimising keywords?

Search is a particularly hot topic for PR professionals now. Perhaps not quite as sexy as social media but many in the industry are starting to realise that search is very much interlinked (excuse the pun) with its more glamourous cousin in helping a marketing campaign meet its objectives.  They might be late to the party but PR pros are starting to wake to the importance search engines play in communicating a message. While they might not have the technical skills of SEO marketers, PR brings a certain advantage when it comes to relationship building but also in the form of keyword research and understanding what audiences are actually looking for when they ‘Google’ something.

Added to this is the rise in social search. This is where recommendations from your friends show up in your search results. You type ‘football boots’ into Google and within the search results that come back you’re alerted to the fact that your brother-in-law who had a trial at the Emirates recently ‘liked’ the latest Nike boots on Facebook. As a consumer, you want to know personal recommendations before making buying decisions. And as a marketer, you can finally get some of the coveted ROI that your finance director has been hounding you for.

As a web evolves to fit around our lives having a social elements to marketing campaigns will become the rule rather than the exception. Having a diverse campaign team that is not only able to tap into local lingo and jargon but is also astute enough to spot and capitalise on opportunities in the mainstream media that drive search trends is worth its weight in gold.

For those whom social media is very much part of their day job, measuring influence from an analytical standpoint is, has been and will continue to be a challenge. And that’s because it’s inherently not something that can be measured. Influence on someone else comes down to the sum of a person’s right and left-brained take on things. Of course, we can track specific metrics on campaigns (and this is where PR professionals need to embrace analytics) but it’s important to place as much weight on the irrational, fuzzy, element in campaigns as well.

My approach on how PR and social media people can report on or track influence for clients comes down to balance. Companies and brands should have a pretty good idea of what influence they wield offline and then seek to replicate this online. The two should exist in tandem otherwise you end up with a well-known brand name that gets exploited online or more commonly an online sensation that gets forgotten about when next week’s hype comes along.

And what happens? The broadcasting channel erroneously cuts the end of the add off and your brand gets no mention whatsoever.

Last night, we held another of one of our digital dinners. Sessions in which we invite clients and journalists for a bite to eat, a few glasses of wine and an informal discussion on the some of the latest trends within the social media and digital PR fields. Understandably given the adoption and amount of press coverage received by Facebook, Twitter and more recently Foursquare, many in the room were well versed in the potential such networks can offer marketing and comms programs.

Personally for me, it was interesting to hear the views around the table about the different approaches being taken to integrating social media within crisis communications. After picking apart the bones of crises suffered by Eurostar and Toyota, the question arose about how much of a lasting impact do social media crisis really have on the customer psyche.

This is an interesting point for any PRs in charge of managing a client’s online reputation. In the days of print, the old adage was, ‘today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper’. So what if a client has a barrage of negative comments on twitter one day? With the sheer overload of information that customers face, the chances are someone else’s crisis will come along tomorrow and your clients will be forgotten right? Well not quite. Unfortunately, the internet is very much like stag parties. What goes on there, stays there.

As far as online reputations are concerned, this means having to put out more of the good things your client does to outweigh the negatives. The bigger the crisis, the harder it is to foster a positive image over the long term.

That said, we all agreed sometimes an online crisis isn’t always the end of the world as when handled well, they can be transformed into trust building opportunities. The key however is handling them well in the first place.

For those of you unlucky enough to be one of my friends on Foursquare, you’ll know that I’ve just spent the last three weeks traipsing around Thailand and Vietnam. You’ll know this from the number of times I ‘checked-in’ to various restaurants, hotels and cafes that I visited along the way.

Aside from being a geek with such things, my main reason for doing so was to gauge the level of location-based networking that goes on in various parts of the world. Based on my very small, unscientific experiment and the fact that I was able to become the mayor of some very popular places with only a couple of checkins, shows there’s a still some way to go.
The potential that sites such as Foursquare can bring to the travel industry is huge both in terms of extra revenue but also in helping boost the ‘word of mouth’ recommendations that the industry relies heavily upon. While there are some that appear to understand what social media channels can do (hat tip to Four Seasons Bangkok in providing updates on the red shirt protests mixed in with reasons to visit the hotel), I found that many of the main local attractions and venues had virtually no social media presence whatsoever. This is merely an observation rather than a criticism as local-based social networking sites like Foursquare are still in their infancy. However amongst the smaller (and very often one-man band) tour and excursion operators, the spirit if not the tools of social media was rife. Everyone who approached me, ranging from those offering day city tours to week long excursions, had a notebook with hand written ‘references’ from other Brits (weirdly all from Manchester) saying how wonderful they found their trips, how safe they were etc. Now I’m pretty sure not all the ‘references’ were genuine and certainly not all filled me with enough confidence to go on them but it’s kind of world of mouth marketing that consumers are increasingly responding to.

Looking through PR eyes, the travel sector is blessed in terms of the visually appealing content it has at its disposal. And on the back of the economic hits the travel industry has taken from incidents such as the volanic ash cloud, many within the sector perhaps have no choice but to look at how social media can offer a fresh approach to attracting and servicing customers. Who knows, it might be that in a few years, online check ins won’t just be the preserve of the airlines