Monday 19 April 2010

PR expert Panel and Networking event

Canapé Craig Fergusson pulled off a great evening on Thursday and I would like to thank him for all the effort he put in to ensuring the night was a huge success!

The purpose of this blog is to talk about Craig McGill’s presentation on Digital Media and Brand Development. Craig delivered his presentation from a Scottish perspective which I found quite refreshing as most of our course text book examples focus on the role of social media from a broader U.K or American scope.

Loads of the stuff Craig covered is very relevant to our up-coming report for PREP 67...here’s a link to the slide show for those who missed it

The presentation delivered some astounding statistics that really drove home the fact that Scotland is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to being digitally ‘savvy.’ For example did you know that out of the 13 newspapers in Scotland only 4 have dedicated online staff? AND none of Scotland’s six radio stations have any online staff!

This news is quite frightening when Mashable-the world’s most visited social media news site was actually created in Scotland! As the next generation of PR professionals we can play a part in shaping the digital future of the industry...

As Craig quite rightly said ‘You can’t think Scottish because you serve the globe’. The internet is most peoples first point of call when they want to find out about something new, when searching for your brand/company they don’t want to find ‘we can’t ship there’ or ‘we don’t do online’ as they will simply go elsewhere. Today companies are more than bricks and mortar and a decent corporate site should represent an investment similar to the impact on reputation that a good headquarters has.

I think Craig’s company, Contently Managed has a great website and some of the stuff on their could definitely be of benefit come report-writing time! Check it out and let me know what you think...

I’m keen to get some more feedback about Thursday''s event, who was your favourite speaker? How did you enjoy the networking event? Was there enough wine....? :)

2 comments:

  1. I wanted to question the statement made by Craig that...."You can’t think Scottish because you serve the globe"… To some extend I agree with him but in reality do social media channels really serve the globe?? Only 26% of the people the world’s population use the internet, this immediately excludes 74%...quite a lot of people! I realize I am playing devil’s advocate but companies need to remember that not everyone is connected.

    P.S I’m gutted I study the MSC on-line....with the promise of wine....I would have been there next week! :-)

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  2. I am sorry I missed this evening as it sounds like it was really interesting. I am also suprised at the lack of online staff on Scottish newspapers, with all the potential we having been learning about over the last few months it seems odd people are still missing out. Hopefully our 'expert' knowledge will help drag Scotland into the digital world. Thanks for the tips on the report as well! :)

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