In case you missed it, I wrapped up the news for last week over on the Wolfstar Blog, with everything from Reddit to E3 and the Daily Mail… Give it a read over here
clare siobhan
gaming, tech & social
Category Archives: Wolfstar
Gamescom, Köln – what a week!
Last month I was lucky enough to attend Gamescom 2011 along with the rest of the Sony Ericsson XperiaTM PLAY team, to help out on the XperiaTM PLAY booth (which looked awesome!).
Being the resident Wolfstar geek (every company needs one!) means I’ve had the chance to work on the PLAY account from the start. It’s more then I ever could have hoped for on my internship year, with it being an amazingly fast paced and exciting account and totally focused around one of my own interests; the video games industry.
Still a man’s world?
Whenever the topic arises in conversation, I usually get a funny look when I say I’m into gaming, People assume I must mean on the Wii playing fitness games (which admittedly I do) or on a more female orientated game like The Sims (again, guilty), so they are yet again surprised when I explain it’s more the action and shooter games that I put my hours into.
Videos from Gamescom
Doing onsite videoing and editing for Sony Ericsson at Gamescom meant I got the chance to meet some really nice people and see some cool stuff! The indie developers were all really awesome and we’ll no doubt being seeing more amazing stuff from them in years to come! Here’s some of the best bits in chronological order 
Pics from @Gamescom
I spent most of last week in Köln for Gamescom with Sony Ericsson, working with the Xperia PLAY team – and had an amazing time!
I’ll have a longer post soon, but I’m crazy busy with uploading and creating post-Gamescom content for the client, so enjoy these pics for now
Big highlights were working with the amazing PLAY team on the awesome looking Sony Ericsson booth, the HUGE EA stand and meeting some really great people!
Social media and CSR
Below I’ve embedded a report we put together at Wolfstar Consultancy, with lots of lovely stats and graphs on how the FTSE Global 500 are performing in terms of social media in their CSR campaigns. There’s some interesting results and a few unexpected anomolies too, well worth a read
…
PeerIndex: The new ‘Standard for Influence’?
Over the past few days the ‘Twitter-verse’ has been going crazy for PeerIndex, a social profile ranking tool which looks at authority, activity and audience, after it introduced the most requested feature – groups.
The previous go-to tool for this kind of measurement was Klout, though there has always been debate on its effectiveness and usefulness.
When I first checked by PeerIndex profile yestersday, I had a score of 29. However, this morning it had reached 30. If I keep up at this rate by the end of the year I will be ‘god of influence’*.
I’m also very excited to be included on some fairly important lists filled with people much more experienced and influential than I am. It’s always fun to be regarded amongst those you admire. Below is Andrew Smith‘s ‘PR Week Power Players of Social Media UK‘ list.
Everyone knows number 89 is where it's at
Below is Adrian Johnson‘s ‘Top PR & Social Media Agency Players: Yorkshire‘
27 is a much healthier number
Stuart has also put together a Wolfstar Consultancy list, where I’m exactly halfway up the pack at 6/12.
No need to copy and paste my listing on this one
So, how does my PeerIndex and Klout Score compare?
My Klout score is higher and gives me some funky looking badges with my Twitter achievements (they must know I’m an XBOX Live fan).
Klout also gives me much more information in terms of reach, audience, retweet and amplifications. However, the information is all in pretty dull line graphs, which lose their shine fairly quickly and don’t really provide me with that much use.
PeerIndex gives me much more interesting and useful data. For example, I now want to grow my fingerprint in the tech and science areas after seeing that I’m already talking about these topics, as well as start talking more about business to start making an impact in this section.
I’m looking forward to trying to grow my score, but at the same time I know not to read to much into these things. It’s the work you do and the people you do it for that really count!**
*This is a lie
**This isn’t a lie
The Leeds Social Media Scene
Last night, Wolfstar hosted the Leeds Mashable Meetup, which Phylecia and I organised.
The event was a great way to meet and discuss the current issues and topics affecting both social media worldwide, specifically in the UK and most specific of all, those affecting Leeds.
The event brought together a range of people involved in the social media circuit, from the ‘techies’ like web designers, SEO specialists and so on, to those from a PR or business background, to event organisers around Leeds. Everyone had a chance to talk about what role they played in the Leeds social scene and in their companies, as well as put forward ideas as to how to keep Leeds on the map as being a important place for both internet services and business alike.
The topics discussed sparked discussion and debate, and I took the opportunity to bring up my debate about the lack of social media teaching on PR courses. From the look on the faces of those in the room, it was clear many people had no idea that the PR course was started to look so dated and many were a little shocked that there is next to no web and social media training included.
After the debate and presentation side of the evening, when we all began to talk in groups and networks, I was approached a lot about the topic from people on other courses who also felt strongly about their dated teaching, and from PR professionals who think something should be done about it.
In fact two blog posts that have stemmed from my discussion last night have already appeared this morning, Matt Murray’s post and sum up of the evening here, Matt Saunders’ post on Digital Fusion Magazine here and on Illiya Vjestica’s Smartdog Blog here. My blog post was also mentioned on the Guardian Leeds, so I’m thrilled with the amount of coverage this issue is generating, hopefully it will be a push for Leeds Met to think about changing the course!
After the success of last night’s meet up, there has been a lot of talk on Twitter about organising one in the future, which I hope will become a reality as the people I met, things I learnt and discussions I took part in last night were all invaluable.
I also found this video on Mashable this morning, which should be useful to everyone at the event and in the UK social media scene, though I was a little surprised with some of the stats, such as 33% of people still trusting banner advertising (I’m yet to find one!).
Starting full time at Wolfstar
Today is the start of my first week of being a full-time employee at Wolfstar!
The Leeds Met PR course I’m on includes an optional full year of placement and though it is not essential to complete the course, it is strongly recommended. The best way to really learn PR is to practice it and with so much competition in the industry it is those with good experience that stand the best chance of getting employment at the end.
As I have enjoyed my one day a week short-term placement throughout my second year at Wolfstar, I asked my managers Stuart Bruce and Tim Sinclair if it would be possible for me to do a full year’s placement here. Thankfully they also wanted me on the team, so today I join Amy Johnston, Sam Oakley, Phylecia Sutherland, Jed Hallam, Mark Hanson and another new recruit, Anthony Devenish.
I’m really looking forward to getting a full year work experience and if all goes well I’ll actually be here until August next year. I really enjoy working as part of the Wolfstar pack and the experience and advice I will gain from my colleagues here will be invaluable when I return to university next year. I’m also excited to be starting work on my own clients and accounts, which I’m being briefed on today!
I think that working full-time after ‘university hours’ for the last two years will come as a bit of a shock, but the continuity of work is something I’m looking forward to as seeing a project from start to finish is something you never really get to experience just doing one day a week.
So thankyou Stuart and Tim for giving me this opportunity and to anyone that reads my blog it will now become less ‘PR student’ and more ‘PR intern’ for the next year or so!
Social Media Revolution 2: How it affects PR, advertising and brands
This video popped up on YouTube on May 5th, and if you haven’t given it a watch yet click above and give it a run through.
Working for Wolfstar I already knew many of the social media statistics in the video, but seeing them all together and learning new ones really hit home just how influential (and huge) social media is, and particularly how important it is for brands. Below are some of the most important messages for brands thinking social media is just a ‘fad’:
- 25% of search results for the World’s top 20 brands are links to user generated content
So for every four potential customers searching for your brand online, one of them will reach someone’s blog or social media page – meaning that what they say about you will have a huge impact on how they view your brand. Which is pretty influential when you see that…
- 78% of customers trust peer recommendations
So what bloggers, reviewers and other online resources say about your product really does matter. I don’t know many people now who don’t check online reviews before they buy and the more expensive the products, the more we research it. Big supermarket chains like Tesco have even teamed up with Reevo for impartial reviews on their products – a brave decision but most likely useful in the long term.
But what does the video say about the 200,000,000 bloggers?
- 34% of bloggers post opinion about products and brands
This harks back to the point above about peer recommendation and user generated content. What bloggers say is hugely important to your brand and companies that ignore bloggers or choose not to get involved in or respond to what they say risk starting a new ‘Dell Hell‘. This is why blogger outreach is so important – befriending and making the most of bloggers can really help give your brand a positive reputation online, so why would any brand not do this?
- Word of Mouth = World of Mouth
Word of mouth is already known as the best way to influence customers as we are more likely to trust and believe what a friend of family member says than what a company is trying to tell us. Bloggers are now seen as a trustworthy online source, so customers not only believe what the blog says but will active search for reviews and opinion from bloggers. When you put this together with just how many bloggers are out there, word of mouth really does become world of mouth.
So what does this mean for advertisers?
- Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
I found this statistic most staggering, that less then 20% of the TV ad campaigns we see every day will ever generate a positive return on investment. The message has never been clearer that social media and PR are not only better value for money but also get better results. PR budgets may have be the first to get cut during the recession, but as the economic climate begins to improve companies should be looking towards using PR as money well spent to generate coverage and improve reputation where advertising fails, especially when you consider…
- 90% of people skip TV ads via TiVo/DVR
Now in the UK it might not be TiVo, but anyone that has Sky or Virgin Media and has access to ‘TV on Demand’ or records their programs for later knows how easy it is to just flick through ads and get straight to their show. For advertisers the bad news does stop there either, as…
- 24 of the largest 25 news papers in the world are experiencing record declines in circulation
Many UK newspapers have disappeared completely in the last few years and they won’t be the last. The fall in advertising and increase in readers going online for their news fix means traditional newspapers have taken a real hit. Advertisers have stopped using newspapers to target consumers because we just ignore the adverts unless they really jump out as us. It’s the editorial we concentrate on, the area PR targets. Which means PR also won’t be the one losing out on the increase in online news, as editorial is just as important here too.
But how does social media affect students?
- 80% of companies use social media for recruitment
This is something I point out time and time again in day to day life with my peers – companies ARE watching what you do online and it WILL affect your future employment. This means don’t ever post offensive status updates, don’t swear non-stop in your tweets and look at what pictures are being posted of your on Facebook. Pretend you are a future employer, would you hire you after looking at your Facebook page with the profile picture of you passed out on a pavement in Leeds? The answer is no, no you wouldn’t. Your social media pages have become an extra arm of your CV, if you put that much effort into ensuring you have the perfect CV, vet your profile page just as aggressively.
- Percentage of companies using LinkedIn for recruitment = 95%
LinkedIn may not be as flash or fun to use as Facebook, but the statistics couldn’t be clear enough – almost 100% of your future employers are using it and if your not on their your only putting yourself at a disadvantage from the start. LinkedIn shows your employers where you have worked before, what skills you have and how many people you are connected too – something which is very important in PR. Further to this, past employers and business colleagues can post recommendations for you online, so instead of a future employers phoning for one or two references, they can read ten or twenty online. Reaching out to a company on LinkedIn could give you an advantage over the competition before you even step through the interview room door.
Things to remember:
We no longer find the news, the news finds us…
We will no longer search for products or services,
they will find us via social media.
We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it…
Erik Qualman
