Drew B's take on tech PR

Citizen journalism first hand: my experiences from yesterday's train crash

Citizen journalism first hand

My experiences from the front carriage of the May 9th CrossCountry train crash where our train hit 12 cattle at high speed near Oxford. These are the tweets that got used by a lot of the mainstream media to cover this incident, with me as the 'citizen journalist'. My name also trended on Twitter

Storified by Drew Benvie · Thu, May 10 2012 07:54:06

Passengers 'in tears' after train hits herd of cows - Telegraph"Everyone including driver is ok. People saw a vehicle and a lot of blood... We're being assured it was a herd of cattle. Felt like we'd ...

That was the outcome... here's how it unfolded. I was on a train home, not a train or route I normally take. I was sat near the front of the front carriage. 5mins after passing Oxford there was a loud crash, debris and blood outside flying everywhere, and what felt like our train crashing. We were all safe, apart from what we hit, poor things. And we mostly all got home in the early hours of the morning the next day. 

In the front carriage of a hi speed train that just hit something (something big and alive...) life passing before eyes momentDrew Benvie

Our virgin train just outside Oxford has hit a herd of animals at hi speed and we think a vehicle. People in tears. train is on the tracksDrew Benvie

Note I got the brand / name of the train wrong. I later corrected this tweet as did Virgin Trains over Twitter

Everyone incl driver is ok. People saw a vehicle and a lot of blood... We're being assured it was a herd of cattle. Felt like we'd derailedDrew Benvie

Everyone feels shaken but train staff great, have done two laps of the train telling us what they know. Engine taken out by the crashDrew Benvie

@drewb Hi Drew, are you sure this was on a Virgin Train? We don't go via Oxford, could possible be @CrossCountryUk ? ^ABVirgin Trains

@drewb Hi Drew, I have spoken to our Control team and is is definitely not a Virgin Train service involved in this incident ^ABVirgin Trains

We're on a cross country train (I thought it was virgin cross country, but thinks it's just cross country!). 1hr, still strandedDrew Benvie

Some facts: CrossCountry train 5mins past Oxford heading to Banbury. We hit a herd of cattle and we think a vehicle 1hr ago. Not moved sinceDrew Benvie

Drew Benvie, @drewb is now trending in United Kingdom http://trendsmap.com/gbTrendsmap UK

Reports: Passengers 'in tears' as train hits cattle on track near Oxford | ITV NewsTwitter user Drew Benvie says a train he was travelling on 'hit a heard of animals' near Oxford. "Our Virgin train just outside Oxford ha...

1.5hrs no change. I've spoken to the driver & asked if he's ok (I was in the front car). Seems fine but I can't imagine what he experiencesDrew Benvie

Correction I spoke to manager, not driver. Driver is very shaken. New update: Waiting for a 'fitter' to see if train can move. Hit 12 cattleDrew Benvie

#CrossCountry train lucky to be on the rails by the sounds of it after hitting a large herd of cattle near #Oxford / #Tackley #ukrail #oxonSimon

@BBCNews pls follow me so I can DM you also... Have just followed you. Thanks!Drew Benvie

The view http://pic.twitter.com/kKolko9xDrew Benvie

Passengers Stranded After Train Hits Herd Of Cattle At High SpeedA packed passenger train has crashed into an escaped herd of cows causing chaos on a train travelling through Oxfordshire The 2.45pm Cros...

Passengers 'in tears' after train hits herd of cows http://tgr.ph/K2UF17The Telegraph

2hrs 45mins still no movement. Train managers are now collecting all passengers' personal details / home addresses on paper so we get homeDrew Benvie

We just moved 1cm! Then stopped. Seems the engine is fixed, the poor cows now being removedDrew Benvie

Horrible journey home. 3hr 40min since this train hit a herd of 12 cows at full speed. We haven't moved since and we're all still on boardDrew Benvie

Poor driver, poor farmer and poor poor cows. The train staff have been great. But we're still very much strandedDrew Benvie

And we're moving!! Lots of cheers from the passengers. We're heading back to OxfordDrew Benvie

Thanks everyone for you support! And for all the texts and phone calls :) almost back... Back where we started 5hrs ago.Drew Benvie

Stirling work today from this chap: @drewb, never mind the operator confusion, excellent reporting #betterthanthequeensspeechJack Harty

Train company have taken our details - all passengers. We're hoping they'll pay for cars to take us home but not sure. 6hrs since I got onDrew Benvie

Train hits herd of cows on tracks: A passenger train with about 200 people on board crashes into a herd of cows ... http://bbc.in/JVLDkxBBC Oxford

Here's what happened... http://pic.twitter.com/4TZtMfxwDrew Benvie

I really don't want to sit at the front of a train ever again. Harrowing awful experience these last 7hrs.Drew Benvie

Reading a news piece on twitter referencing @drewb's tweets that I was reading live at the time. It is weird this real time stuff really...Mazher Abidi

IT WAS ONE OF THE SCARIEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFELittle Lady

@drewb you got a mention (not twitter handle sadly) in the sun today, page 23 - go get 'em!Kevin Dixie

My tweets from yesterday's crash are in The Sun, BBC, ITV, Telegraph, Guardian, HuffPo and on the wires. Citizen journalism first handDrew Benvie

Quantified Self UK - gadgets, geeks and the next frontier for marketers

About eight years ago I found out I was going to start my first senior job role, as an account director in a global PR agency. I had just read a 'self help' book (as my wife calls them) called Getting Things Done. The now cult text gave me inspiration to work more efficiently by applying life hacks (or rules to get more out of yourself) such as the three inbox rule, one list rule, two minute action rule, and so on and so on. I still live by those same rules now. 

Since then I have read endless books of a similar nature, I devour blogs and twitter feeds about lifehacking, I have more recently been using phone apps to track my running performance, sleep patterns and I scrutinise any data I can find about myself so that I can improve how I do things. Think Nike Fuelband. 

My colleague Stephen Davies this week pointed out to me that this behaviour has a name, and its own movement. It's called Quantified Self (also known as #selftracking). He sent me some articles that, when I read them, seemed to describe my life over recent years. I discovered there are even London Meetups around the Quantified Self movement. 

If this all makes sense to you too but you're also new to the term, here is some background reading in The Economist, The Guardian, TechCrunch & Fastcompany.

And if you're in the UK, go join the London Meetup group for Quantified Self.

There's no shortage of gadgetry or apps that are nudging this along. What I think we'll begin to see a lot more of is the application of this big data in marketing and consumer insights. 

Instagram + Polaroids = Polargrams (from Firebox.com)

I got sent a lovely, surprising pressie in the post this week. The nice people at Firebox.com have given me a sneak peak of their new product, Polargrams. 

Polargrams are Polaroids of your Instagram pics. Here's my collection!:

It was cool to see what pics I'd taken recently (my Instagram feed is open, like a curated version of my Facebook pics) and they make a lovely addition to my desk. Thanks Firebox for the pressie. Really niceidea!

[obvious disclaimer: these were given to me as a promo item, I didn't ask for them but love them and think they'r ace]

Project Play: I am now going to game everything

Last week at an event I spoke at I was asked a fascinating question by a member of the audience: "where are all these new Foursquare users coming from? I thought it had died a death?"

My answer was what I thought was the reality - I said that recording and publishing info about your life is becoming more socially acceptible. But then I realised I was just a statistic. After being an early proponent of location based social media services, I had recently dropped off the radar myself. Not new or shiny any more. 

But in the last few weeks something changed. Don't know why, but I started gaming things more. I started playing more Foursquare not for the networking, but to get points, go up the leaderboard, earn badges, level-ups and mayorships. This side of things hadn't mattered to much to me previously but recently that changed. 

Why? (I think this is why but I'm not too sure...) Life streaming tech in genral has been interesting me more, from the much-hyped Nike Fuelband to my Runkeeper app to the Quantified Self movement. The way our agency business is at the moment too, we're doing a lot of playing, building and gaming. I'm just practicing what we preach really.

So excuse my social stream at the moment, especially Twitter and Foursquare. I'm trying to game everything I can lay my hands on, just to see how it makes a difference to things in general. (and as always, I'll update this blog as I learn new tricks along the way).

So here goes what I hope will at the very leas be a fun little project of play!!!1

Insights from digital mavens on the future of email: put it away

If you are someone who does battle with multiple inboxes, feeds, flashing lights on your unread messages and buzzing phones in meetings because someone has checked in near you, here are a couple of high profile blog posts you may want to read. 

I've taken the topic of email's general unsuitability to the modern business as something of a crusade over recent years (perhaps it's why I embrace everything else so much?). Here are a couple of my posts from 2008, 2009 and 2010. Every time I step away from my inbox for a meeting I return to hundreds of emails. I get thousands every day and use a heavy dose of rules and filters to try to deal with it all. Thankfully I'm not alone. 

Foursquare's Tristan Walker's post 'I hate email' is all about taking email off your phone and the impact of that on your focus at work and home.

TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler's post 'Email. Archive it all. Immediately' is about emptying your inbox to see the wood from the trees. 'Best thing I've ever done' says Siegler. 

Some great insights and I'll be trying both myself. 

Board 2020 write-up: how social media will shape the future business

Yesterday I spoke at Board 2020 - an event hosted at the UWE Conference Centre in Bristol. The theme was how social media will shape the business of the future. 

Some great talks by speakers including Professor Malcolm Lewis who spoke about social media influencing organisational change, Steve Andreson Dixon from Trinity Mirror on the impact of social media on the media, and Burges Salmon's Roger Bull and Andrew Tibber spoke about the impact of social on intellectual property and employment law. 

The highlights for me: 

• Delegates to a social media conference were all senior execs, board members, finance directors, entrepreneurs and researchers. A refreshing change 
• Discussions developed around how 'being good' can build a better business - all arising from the impact of social media
• There was as much if not more interest from B2B organisations as there was from consumer brands
• Three separate presenters talked about the impact of Pinterest!

My talk was the keynote, and focused on the coming trends in social media that current and future boards should be aware of. And yes I also mentioned the role of the interest graph and Pinterest.

Thanks to the organisers at Moon and UWE. It was a really great event. 

Pinterest UK stats

A lot of attention has been coming through in the mainstream media this week about Pinterest. The Guardian featured the hot social network on the weekend, and Metro gave Pinterest a double page spread today. Lots of user stats are being bandied about, so I thought I would share some UK stats for Pinterest that were shown to me earlier in the month by my colleague @stedavies. 

The key stat is about the user demographic. Pinterest's users are NOT 97% female as reported in the Guardian today (that's an old number). In the UK the users are 60/40 MALE and in the US it's a more skewed 80/20 FEMALE. Those are just the elevator pitch numbers... here is a full breakdown. And there will be more to come. All these stats are over two months old so expect a refresh to your planning deck soon. 

A week without Twitter: an experiment in Pinterest

Over recent years I've enjoyed testing out new social networks while they're still shiny. The last few weeks I've been looking at how to get the most out of another new thing: Pinterest.com.

For those that haven't tried it, Pinterest is a pinboard-themed image sharing social network. It is popular with forum users, more women than men, and with a pretty mainstream demographic (I know colleagues who have mentioned it to their wives only to find they have been using Pinterest for some time). Much different to Twitter for example which was very male and techy for its early years.

On Pinterest there are some users with over a quarter of a million followers. Pinboards can be collaborative. It's all very Facebook and Twitter friendly, and content is discoverable nicely as a live stream or in themes. To a digital Comms person like me, it's all very exciting.

This week I'm going to step away from Twitter, which I've been using heavily for six years now. I feel like an addict! Instead whenever I feel the urge to tweet, I will pin. I hope to find some novel uses for it.

You can find my updates and my pinboards at http://pinterest.com/drewbenvie . Feel free to comment there, or here, with any thoughts of feedback.

I will update this post with anything interesting I find along the way.

=========================

Update #1. 24hrs in: 

• I would love to see stats on how many people view your pics / pins
• Pinning is difficult from mobiles and tablets. Some functions don't work on the ipad for example
• It would be great to click on people who follow your pinboards the same as you can with people who follow you. I can't seem to do this, but have more followers of my PR Stunts pinboard than I do for my generic profile and would like to follow them back. Any tips? 
• You can't pin content from Twitter easily! 
• I'm thinking more visually now.
• I've found there are some people on Pinterest with a LOT of followers! Maia Macdonald, below, for example, has over 700,000 followers at the time of writing this blog post

Update #2. 2 days in: 

• Pinterest is the Anti-Twitter. People I know who don't get or don't like Twitter LOVE Pinterest
• 'Recent Activity' on the right hand side of your home page is not a live ticker, like Facebook or Twitter. So make sure you refresh (see below image)
• I'm missing the way Twitter allows you to chat to friends independently from an image upload. 
• Pinterest is FUN (corny but true)

Update #3: wow that week went quick: 

• What I liked: Pinterest is a whole 'nother world of image based social sharing. It appeals to people to share what they're reading in different ways
• What I missed: I will continue to use Pinterest instead of other image sharing services, but not instead of Twitter or Facebook. Twitter is my social IM. Facebook my network of close friends
• What surprised me: our agency won some cool new client work this week. Two of these clients cited my / our work on Pinterest as a factor in that. And of course I think that's awesome. It's so exciting to be able to try out something personally / socially and then get to do it for work. Did Pinterest get me a new job this week? Yes, it kind of got me two!
• Now back to using a bit of everything, including, very much, Pinterest :)

A week of breakfasts, newbies and WIN

This week was one of the busier weeks for a while now. To kick off was the beginning of a new movement: many breakfasts. A team breakfast was organised to welcome a new member of the 33 Digital team - one of the UK's most well-respected and experienced social media practitioners in PR joined the family this week in the shape of Stephen Davies, aka PRblogger.com. Stephen is someone I had the pleasure of working with six years ago and all of Hotwire group is excited to have him on board. Fun times for all indeed!

The many breakfasts movement continued on Tuesday with Hotwire, 33 Digital and Skywrite’s third annual social media trends briefing [see coverage on Econsultancy, Corp Comms and Propel London]. A presentation of a report written by the 33 Digital team, this event saw 33 Digital clients the Financial Times and eBay co-present the 2012 trends alongside 33 Digital director Pete Sigrist and myself to a rammed Soho Hotel screening room. Almost 200 people attended and the session was without doubt the most fun I think we’ve had in running such an event. They are normally much smaller (last year it was 30 people) so you can understand why this contributed to a week we call ‘full of WIN’.

Pic: our 2012 social media trends briefing

Wednesday’s instalment of many breakfasts took a delegation of the 33 Digital and Hotwire team to The Hoxton, to help with the FT’s first Tweetup of 2011. A fantastic venue and great event which made us all want to go back to the Hoxton again for similar events but also just to work from their lovely luxurious / industrial set-up. Sadly, I couldn’t make it to any of the industry socials that were taking place Wednesday evening, which included the NMA social, PRCA drinks, and the Foursquare London Meetup. Waking up the next morning to the news of a thousand social media millionaires having been created was certainly a watershed moment. Sadly not one I was able to have been directly involved with (shame).

This brings me to Thursday which was busy and full of win in many ways, and looking forward to a more normal breakfast tomorrow and doing some typing in front of a computer screen maybe.

Here’s looking forward to what’s shaping up to be a great 2012.

7 social media New Year's resolutions

Happy new year to all you list makers and resolution setters. Here are 7 New Year's resolutions that I'm going to be following and which may help you get more out of social media in January and beyond. 

1. Try something new: Pinterest is one of the new social networks to try out. Hitwise says it has now broken into the top 10 social networks. I'm liking it aready.
2. Batch it up to avoid information overload: tweets, emails, alerts... I find all the information pouring in can create a constant feeling of information overload. Be brave and batch your time on each social network by, gulp, REMOVING ALERTS. In other words, don't let yourself be plugged in all the time. Turn alerts on when you're in, then off when you're not. Even if for no other reason that the removal of buzzing and bleeping around the office and in meetings will be welcomed by others. 
3. Don't update right away: when Facebook, Twitter and other major social networks update their look and feel online and on their mobile and web apps, they ask you first, do you want to switch over to the new look. Try not doing it right away next time - either have a test account to try it out with, or look at the feedback from others before diving straight in.
4. Short and sweet: whether you're trying to blog more, or just use more, new social networks, keep the content short and sweet and you may find writer's block disappear. 
5. Prune and cull: go through your reading list, followers and apps, and delete a batch now, then do it every month. You'll be surprised, if you don't do this regularly, how much clutter you accumulated.
6. Share more: when I run training classes, for newcomers to some of the more open sharing social networks like Instagram, Path, Foursquare and even Twitter, the main concern is over-sharing. I'm going to use them a bit more this year, Instagram and Foursquare in particular, as with all new things, they get used slightly less when they move from innovative to mature technologies.
7. Carry less: this one's quite personal to me, but I find that even though more and more can be done on mobiles and tablets, we still carry the laptop everywhere we go. App yourself up with productivity services like ensuring all your inboxes are in one place, Twitter, Skype, Facebook, Office (disclaimer: client), Evernote (client) and whatever else you need, then try stepping away from the big screen more often. I know I will. 

Three Wikipedia instruction manuals all PR people should look at

With the news agenda for the PR industry this week being dominated by The Independent's 'sting' on Bell Pottinger, it might be of use to some comms practitioners to brush up on the user manuals - in particular for Wikipedia. 

Whilst a great deal of best practice in social media is common sense to those that live and breathe it, the following essential reading I'm sure will come in useful to many. Here are the best practice guidelines developed for social media and Wikipedia from the CIPR, ASA and Wikipedia itself.

1. CIPR Social Media Best Practice Guide

2. ASA's CAP Code document on extending the digital remit

3. Wikipedia's own policies and guidelines

If anyone else finds other sources of guidance useful, do let me know and I'll post up here. 

How to activate the new Twitter and key changes for brands

Twitter this evening rolled out a new look, which you can access and activate for yourself by going to this URL: fly.twitter.com. Whilst all serious users of Twitter, people and brands alike, will quickly try out the new service, it's more than just a facelift. The new Twitter is a big step towards making the service more intuitive and modern, whilst allowing brand pages to present a more enticing attractive shop window. What's new? The new Twitter puts navigation on the left, and the stream on the right - just like email and like Facebook. Twitter has always been the other way around. The new look also is much more visual, and focuses on trends. And there's heaps more. It's definitely worth taking some time to try it out and see how you can get some additional benefit out of it.

Social media trends for 2012

The time of year has come around again to look ahead and plan for the coming 12 months. Plan for our clients, for our own business and - the most exciting bit as a consultant - for how we think the media landscape will change. 

This is the third year that we at 33 Digital, and this year more broadly across Hotwire, have written down our thoughts on the major trends of social media and dgital marketing for PR and comms (here is last year's report). 

The report is based on our team's experiences and based on social media as a day job, where we see things going and how we think the trends can be harnessed. The full report is free to download here and you can read it in full below. 

10 Social Media Trends for 2012 - 33 Digital and Hotwire

Public sector social media continues to turn some heads at #SoMeComms

In the middle of busy season, this week appears to be busy week. I travelled to Manchester to present at the SomeComms awards, just one of the digital industry awards taking place. A full house, plenty of consumer brands and hot agencies were there, but the most striking observation was that the innovation came from a different place in the comms field – almost entirely it came from the public sector.

Monmouthshire Council won awards for best use of YouTube and most innovative campaign (which I had the pleasure of presenting). Manchester Police won best in-house social media team and best use of Twitter.  University of Sheffield won best business blog. Best social media for R&D was Leeds Council. And City of Edinburgh Council won the Grand Prix.

In the acceptance speech of Edinburgh Council’s team, they referenced how the whole campaign had a budget of just £2,500 and overachieved on results by 104%. That kind of approach in these times of austerity, as we like to put it, got everybody in the hall nodding and clapping that little bit more.

Well done to all those taking part in awards at this time of year. 

 

Five PR shortcuts: my social media toolkit

There are a bunch of little social media shortcuts I use on a daily basis to make the most of the time I have available to do everything. They aren't really trade secrets, but writing this helps me answer properly the question: "how do you find time for it." This is a run-down of some of the newer things I'm using, and some of the shortcuts and ways I use some of the older social media systems. 

Twitter as your feed reader: Use Twitter between things from your phone to follow the news and buzz. Load Twitter on to your phone and ask your followers the best app to use. I almost always use the official Twitter app, but no reason why Tweetdeck or something different shouldnt be better. Subscribe to news channels and blogs then use Twitter as your news reader. You'll find you can keep track of the media agenda even when you have 'no time'.

Email is good: Email-enable your blog, Flickr for photos, Tumblr and Posterous for groups and so on. Most social networks have email as an input option, so think about how you can send a quick email of something you have on your phone for example when you're waiting for something else to play nicely. I tend to use time in the tube or waiting for a meeting to start / computer to boot up so send some content to my socialnets.

Twitter for your story bookmarks: Use Twitter's starring / favouriting function to 'read it later'. When you're on the move, you might not have time to read full articles, so star them then work through your starred items when you're in front of your computer later. 

Evernote for lists: Use Evernote for list keeping and screen grabs. If you ever need to scribble something down, then doing so in Evernote means you always have that list on you, whether you're on your phone, tablet or computer. If you ever need to take a screen grab of an image, such as for presentations, if you have Evernote turned on then Evernote will automatically keep the image. I use this and have a three year long archive of images I use in presentations. It's invaluable. 

Turn off alerts: It might sound counter-intuitive, but turning off alerts - whether it's the beep of your Tweetdeck, ping on your smartphone or something else. You'll find batching up your social media work allows you to feel more able to turn on and off when you want, and you'll feel less like you need a ton of time to devote to doing social properly.