My last post for this digital media and PR class will reflect on my use of Twitter and its use in a recent public relations campaign.

Upon logging onto Twitter today, I learned that today is official Star Wars day, so for all you Jedi’s out there I take great pleasure in saying May the fourth be with you!

Last year I set up a Twitter account under the name lifeofPRstudent, initially I used it to keep abreast of the latest developments with the CIPR Scotland board elections and since then my main use of Twitter has been to publicise my blog. This has been successful to a certain extent, as I mentioned in my Google analytics post that a few Twitter followers visited my blog.

One feature of Twitter that I really like is the ability it gives to share information, I created various ‘lists’ on my account which allowed me to group followers into PR people, classmates, and other friends. This has been great for keeping up to date with what the rest of the PREP 67 class are blogging about. However my overall my use of Twitter has been fairly minimal, since creating my account I haven’t had the urge to tell my followers (the vast majority of whom I don’t actually know) what I’m up to every hour of the day. Maybe if I had one of these ‘Smartphone’s’ that allow users to access mobile internet at a far greater speed than my rusty Sony Ericsson I’d be more inclined to tweet on a regular basis.

Twitter is an excellent way of keeping up to date with the latest news in different topics, I’ve followed a lot of the election coverage on Twitter- I can go to the Labour, Conservative or Lib Dems page and find out where each of the candidates are going to be on that day.

A recent example that highlights the use of Twitter in PR campaigns is the ‘shoe hunter’ campaign which has recently been launched by designer Jimmy Choo. The campaign will see a pair of trainers from the new Jimmy Choo range 'check in' online at fashionable hot spots around London by sending real-time updates via Twitter.

Brand enthusiasts will then have several minutes to track them down and get to the location in order to win the shoes in their size. As I mentioned in my social network fever blog, it is becoming increasingly popular for companies to use sites like Twitter to create a buzz around a product and generate word of mouth.

The concept was created in conjunction with social media agency FreshNetworks and is the first time Jimmy Choo has employed social media to engage with its audience online and offline simultaneously.

Well guys, as this is my last post as part of the digital PR module, I’d like to thank all my followers for their comments over the last ten weeks. I hope you found my posts interesting and relevant.

One love.

Google Analytics

During the last few weeks I’ve been using Goggle analytics in an attempt to learn more about how people are using my blog. To be honest I had great difficulty installing Google analytics, so my findings are considerably lower than they would have been if I had gotten to grips with it earlier.

Did anyone else find installing Google analytics a challenge? I had to resort to following some YouTube tutorial videos to help me get the programme running successfully. As you can see from my hit counter (which stands as 267 at the point of publishing) my blog hasn’t been hugely popular.

I enjoyed limited success from promoting my blog on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, my blog received 36 and 18 visits from these websites respectively. It is not surprising that most of my visits came from PREP 67 classmates, with more than 80% of hits from the U.K. However Google analytics did inform me that I had some views from further afield, in countries like Bahrain, America and Canada.

So, what did I learn from Google analytics? I would say the main lesson is that it’s pretty tough to set up properly! However, I can definitely see why it would be beneficial for organizations to have, it allows then to see where their internet traffic is coming from which allows for easy distinction of publics. Google analytics tells us much more about the use of our blogs than a typical hit counter and the fact that Google analytics is free is also a major benefit.

I came across an article in Mashable that reveals Googles plans to open a full application gallery for its Google Analytics services. This will also users to analyse their internet traffic for specific elements of their campaign such as SEO, site auditing, content management and email martketing.

Obama Chats to the PR wire