Punch

Holly Henstock

For all who forgot it was Valentine's Day this Sunday, this is aimed at you.

There is no need to go into a mad panic over finding the right gift for your loved one, this year PR Agency Punch has the perfect solution.

New Punch client Noted Forever (www.notedforever.com) is an everlasting message website which allows enables users to create and post a message or memory, offering an alternative to inscribing a tree or tattooing the body.  A message on Noted Forever provides the opportunity for romantics to declare their love or even submit a proposal of marriage in an entirely unique way.

Noted Forever offers a solution for those wanting to give a completely new and innovative Valentines gift, costing from as little as £1, meaning celebrating the occasion with a small romantic gesture needn't cost the earth.

You can thank me later!

Pete Goold

The first of three seqential articles presenting the information from our recently created whitepaper on how to get the most out of LinkedIn has just gone live at Reputation Online.

To see the whole LinkedIn Whitepaper, please do drop us a line.

Holly Henstock

Another week has passed at Punch Towers and what a week it has been.

A number of client meetings have taken place in the big smoke this week and it has been a busy one!

Although I cannot really complain as we are only a short 50 minute train's journey away, meaning hopping to and from London is no problem at all.

However here at Punch we are a PR Agency with a global client base, so I am looking forward to the client visits in the slightly warmer U.A.E and U.S.A.  Not so sure our finance manager will go for that though.

Anyway bring on another busy week, roll on Monday!  

Pete Goold

So, since my last post, the strategy on what do do with our LinkedIn whitepaper has crystalised a little - we eventually decided on a halfway house strategy, to hopefully deliver maximum benefit in terms of lead-generation, search and socialised content, without overcomplicating things yet whilst retaining some control.

This has been a really interesting exercise, as there was patenty no 'correct' answer from the outset. Moreover the array of new services, channels and communities that we now have access to means that there are numerous permutations and combinations that simply weren't there previously.

At first, the obvious approach seemed to be to use the whitepaper function within LinkedIn iteself, not least given the subject matter but also the audience. However I can't help but wondering whether simply posting to the web is falling short in terms of a whitepaper's potential (nb just to point out that it's nothing more than a streamlined document with hints and tips based on first person experience - brain surgery it most certainly is not).

So, we decide against simply posting it to one or more sites and linking to it from our own extnded network.

Given the SEO value of links, it seemed sensible to attempt to negotiate it's placement in a site with a decent page rank (and relevant audience, obviously).

So that's what we've done.

The end result is that the content will go on the third party site first (ie old school PR), containing links (to the benefit of our search efforts), which we will then link to from our network to proudly convey the 'coverage' (again PR) before finally extending the documents' reach through posting to our various social communities.

Moroever, by advertising it's availability directly from us on the Punch site, the thinking is that some - and perhaps many - might still ask for it directly, thereby assuring it's value as a lead-gen exercise too.

You can be sure that we'll be watching with interest to see if the above is anywhere close to what actually happens...

Pete Goold

I've just written three stand-alone but sequential articles on how to get the most out of LinkedIn and am deliberating over whether to publish these through the Punch site, within one of numerous sources, to post here, to use as a white paper, to create another vehicle (as we have a few urls in the bag and ready to go) around this general subject or pitch out to the press.

Just thought I'd mention this as it's an interesting conundrum, in terms of what represents the greatest reach, versus the greatest SEO benefit - and in fact which of those two (or which balance) will provide greatest commercial benefit in return for the time devoted to writing the pieces.

One to ponder - and I think very representative of the shifting PR landscape in terms of the best strategy for success not necessarily being the one that has traditionally been the best choice ...

Alex Smith

Interesting news from Mashable today that the social network Digg is set to receive an overhaul. Looking at the network now, it certainly seems to lack some of the life that it once had. Hopefully some of the real-time implementations from its development team will make the community a bit more lively. Could a Twitter partnership be on the horizon?

Aside from that, we have just started campaigns for new clients voxclever and batterychargerstore.co.uk, you can check them out here:

www.bevoxclever.com

www.batterychargerstore.co.uk

Holly Henstock

Something which caught my attention this week was the government data site.  The creation of the free national data website saw intense competition from a number of the country's most impressive software developers.

Aiming to make the government more transparent to the public, http://data.gov.uk/ reveals everything from where the nearest post box is, accident black spots, crime levels, to hospital statistics. 

All in aid of creating better communication between the public and the government, Tim Burners-Lee has revealed that all the data collated just needed a platform/ mouthpiece for the public to access.

The government has revealed the site will give more power to the citizen of Britain, not only providing them with new data, but also the ability to hold discussion around this information through a number of online social communities such as forums.

Valuable for the whole country, Burners-Lee has said that creating the site will allow us to compare our data to that of neighbouring authorities, such as the Americans who also launched a similar site in May.  The site which is still in its early days is already looking to add and develop new functions such as its Wiki.

Pete Goold

I took a double take earlier this week whilst passing a local supermarket to see a sign up outside offering a twist on the classic 'buy one get one free' promotion - which was effectively: 'buy one now and then get a duplicate this time next week, to take home as part of the next weekly shop'.

I must admit that this seems like a stroke of marketing genius on several counts. Firstly, this plays into the hands of those amongst us that don't want to take home more every week, not purely for financal reasons but actually as we simply don't want to consume two units of whatever it is - particularly when they are perishable goods to be consumed within a finite period. So, in other words, this will surey resonate with dieters and those households looking to scale back on volume for waistlines as much as for financial reasons.

Moreover, I can't imagine that the take up on such an offer is going to be more than 50% of those that qualify - and presumably significantly less. Therefore the promotion is actually arguably the illusion of a promotion in that sense, whilst still being completely fair and above board (at least in a legal, if not necessarily a moral sense).

Holly Henstock

With a few of the Punch team in Sweden this week visiting one of our European clients CTEK, Abbie and I have been focusing on the www.sendmybag.com campaign.

SendMyBag.com is a service which enables students to send suitcases and luggage anywhere in the UK, fighting back against costly excess baggage charges which many airline and rail companies have in place.  SendMyBag.com has also recently partnered with UCAS, so student card holders can get a great discount.

SendMyBag.com is definitely a service I will be recommending to my brother, a student at the University of Edinburgh.  However as I recall form my University days, the bag will not contain the Christmas present he still owes me, but will be full of dirty washing instead.

Pete Goold

So, first week back and we've won a couple of new clients - a great start to 2010.

Indeed it's been a good week for new business enquiries with an average of two or three per day all week, many of which won't materialise of course but nevertheless the signs are encouraging.

Also this week, I've really enjoyed using LinkedIn, for the first time ever. Firstly having sync'd the account with Twitter and others, it was genuinely useful when we were looking to find a conference service with a specific feature-set on Wednesday.

Given LinkedIn's more commercially focused user-base, it was interesting to compare the responses we received from my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn communities, all from a single tweet, in terms of both quality and volume. Those received from LinkedIn were by far the most useful and relevant.

I've also discovered the LinkedIn iPhone app, which seems to offer a far better, more concise and streamlined yet useful interface than the site itself. Although I've maintained a Linkedin account for years, I may finally be able to start using it for something commercially beneficial, particularly as the community is now of a fairly decent size, at least in terms of the context of Linkedin, if not Twitter.Here's another post on a very similar subject - understanding the distinctions between social communities - from my personal blog.

Finally, I see that Google's latest algorithm update has thrown a few results this week too - as ever we find the best approach to be not to get too concerned but to stick to plan A, albeit whilst ensuring that plan A evolves to encompass the latest thinking and developments.

For example we noticed that someone had posted a tweet from Delicious earlier this week, which may well have been possible for sometime - but was news to me.