17/07/2008

allmediascotland.com is about to change, in terms of design, functionality and style of editorial. That may lead to some disruption of normal services over the next few weeks, not least because there are holidays to be had. It does mean also the prospect of new voices, from a galaxy of bloggers. So far, Nick Clayton, David Calder, Chris Bell, Paul Hineman Shaun Milne and Mark Gorman. Here, CRAIG MCGILL writes for a second time. You’ll see his biog below. Feel free to become an AMS blogger yourself, by emailing us, here.

T in the Park took on an extra ‘T’ at the weekend, as it counted for Tweeting in the Park, as well as all the usual T’s, and in a proper use of new technology, it showed how the event and media, including PR companies, could in future increase their coverage and readerships.

But first, a quick two-par explanation of what Tweeting is.

Tweeting is what you do with Twitter, a quick messaging system, through a web browser.

Unlike instant messaging systems such as AIM, MSN or Googletalk, Twitter is about sending a message out to an unlimited number of people, not just one-on-one chat. And you only have 140 characters to write your message.

And now The Real World…

As with all things, the majority of uses for it are just texting little details to each other (“Had coffee, tasted yuck, thinking about jam tart.”), but it can be so much more than that.

Many newspapers – except in Scotland (as is the norm with technology these days) – and other media outlets, like BBC Scotland, are using Tweets to spread their stories.

Now that’s handy but there’s other ways to use it that should be of interest to the modern news outlet, and that includes PR agencies – so let’s look at the theoretical before moving on to the practical.

Where could newspapers use this? Well, in a day and age where more people are reading papers/media online than in print, there’s a number of applications:
 
1) Live texts from a press conference – Gordon Strachan/Walter Smith say something interesting – it can be on the web within seconds. News about a football team – online in seconds again.

2) Live updates from an event – a disaster site, a football game, a music concert.

3) A call for contacts/information from people at or going to an event.

4) A call for an expert to get in touch.

5) Announcing a press event or sending out a press release.

6) Realtime travel/traffic updates.
 
Yes, there are some other ways of doing this – Liveblogging springs to mind – but what Twitter makes easy is the ability to just read relevant information on a small screen (handy for those accessing via mobile, which is the current growth market).

And unlike a lot of technology, all it needs is a mobile phone and you are filing.

But how does one Twitter and tweet? Well, like any online enterprise you have to sign up for it – via www.twitter.com – and create an identity. If you are looking for some starting points, how about the following organisations which use it to send out news stories:
 
http://twitter.com/bbcnews

http://twitter.com/bbcscotland

http://twitter.com/googlenews

http://twitter.com/nytimes

http://twitter.com/ITN_NEWS

http://twitter.com/SkyNewsUK

http://twitter.com/SkyNews

http://twitter.com/radio1
 
Even allmediascotland could use it – basically use the tweet as its headline and then provide a link people can access.
 
What’s the benefit? It’s a quick way to keep in touch, to receive information or get information out to people, and, as this link here shows, the BBC is one of the top users/broadcasters on it.
 
I used it at this year’s Scottish Press Awards, but found that trying to text on a Nokia N95, eat dinner and clap while also speaking to my host – the talented Lynn Hunter at Macdonald Hotels – it was a bit tricky (results can be found here - if you go back a page or two).

But at T in the Park, both Shaun Milne (who also writes for this website) and myself thought it would be worth a try.

And I think it more than proved its worth for reviews, band updates and so on.

My Tweets can be found here or here, while Shaun’s can be found here.
 
But where’s the benefit? Well, it allowed people who weren’t at the event – and T in the Park has a worldwide following these days – to get a flavour of the acts, past the more dry material that traditionally appears in print.

It also allowed people to get realtime information on what was happening. I had a couple of people from the US get in touch to tell me that they loved the idea of what I was doing but couldn’t believe the bands I had picked to see.

I was also asked by a few people to write up what I had seen and having tweets to refer back to made it a lot easier.

Shaun Milne certainly found it useful as a communications tool.

As he put it to me: "Twitter is now very much the jungle drum for our web age. For instance, imagine you want the latest through the night on the Glasgow East by-election next week but have no access to a computer or TV.

"Tweets could provide a great blow-by-blow timeline, if only some media outlet would use it. Because it is its immediacy of information that provides it with an audience.

"The Chinese Earthquakes, for instance, was allegedly broken on Twitter before even the AP or Reuters news wires.

"Then updates came in from across the region, place by place, hour by hour. Citizen journalist - normal people - had on-the-spot info while hacks were still boarding their planes.

"Adapted for a conventional, professional context here in Scotland it easily could be adopted to help newspaper websites to trail stories or breaking news for the next day.

"By offering a choice of subject that allows the end user to control the content - or Tweets - then they choose what they want to 'follow' for free; for example, latest on a football club, showbiz, politics and so on.

"That adds value to what is being exchanged - and in return, should give the marketing execs an open goal while growing the audience."

"Those people, including myself, who Twittered at T in the Park haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities that could come with it."

Of course, not everyone got what Shaun and I were doing.

One print journalist asked what was the point of me posting information up early that all the newspapers could lift for their first editions, to which the answer is nothing. But that was missing the point: it might make their first edition, but they weren’t first with the news, which is what matters as we move forward.

What I would do if I was thinking of Tweeting at T – as a member of the media – next year?

1) Get a reporter in every tent, tweeting as they cover bands.

2) Get the fans to Tweet in as well (and use some of that in the print content too).

3) See if the ad team can sell ads to match the tweets.
 
Ultimately, what Twitter does is allow for another method of communication and that’s what journalists and PR people are in: the communication business.


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Craig McGill has spent more years than any mortal should in media, having worked for most UK newspapers, ending up as deputy news editor on the Scottish Daily Mirror before becoming a PR consultant for the like of Lloyds TSB Scotland, Tesco, Visionware and head of PR for music festival, Retrofest.

He’s currently the head of PR and media manager for Denvir Marketing and in his free time writes books. To date, his non-fiction has been translated into Spanish, Swedish, Russian and Dutch and he’s working on a biography of writer, Grant Morrison.

You can find him at www.craig-mcgill.com or http://twitter.com/craigmcgill.

And he failed miserably to get the sentences in this posting to be under 140 characters.

* Send your Scottish media news and gossip, in the strictest confidence, to  info@allmediascotland.com