Whilst I appreciate that people share content in a variety of different ways, I have focused my efforts solely on Twitter. I thought the site would give a good indication of how much content people are sharing without requiring the immense amount of time that would be needed to analyse several social networks and bookmarking sites.

The results of my three month study are interesting. On average, each of the IT trades are tweeted about 2,868 times a month. The Register is the most tweeted about IT Trade, racking up 21,719 tweets by its readers per month – more than 7.5 times as much as the average. And almost 37 times as much as the least tweeted publication.

By comparing the average number of tweets with the number of unique users that Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner says each each publication receives, I found that just 4.18 per cent of each publication’s readership is tweeting links to articles. Computer Weekly has the highest percentage, with a possible 9.06 per cent of users tweeting about articles on the site. However it’s likely that both figures are much lower in reality, as people may tweet more than one link each per month.

Interestingly, IT PRO has the most followers on Twitter, with 12,901 people following its account. The average IT trade has 3,748 followers. This suggests that the number of people following a publication’s Twitter account isn’t the only factor that impacts how much content people share on the social networking site.

A whole host of things can encourage people to share content – frequency of tweets, relevancy and newsworthiness of content on the site, whether or not social sharing buttons are available on the site, which buttons are on offer, where the buttons are positioned, the size and type of readership that each publications has, and of course, which social networks they use most.

What are your thoughts on this? What do you think makes people want to share content? And how can publications encourage more visitors to share links with their network.

As you’d expect, most people were poking fun at Morrisons for making such a silly mistake, and suggesting that the promotion is perfect for bargain-hunting adulterers. But was it really a mistake? Or had Morrisons planned the stunt very carefully to draw attention away from its competitors, who will no doubt be spending a fortune on promoting their Valentines Day cards and gifts at the moment.

Considering the amount of approvals that most press releases and adverts go through, I have to think it’s probably the latter. It’s a clever tactic and one that will help Morrisons to raise its brand awareness further and drive home the message that it offers really good value for money. Whilst also making people think of Morrisons when they go out to get a card for that special someone.

However, this kind of stunt is not without its risks. It could also make the supermarket look down-market, which could put some consumers off. That said, it’s a strategy that has proven to be particularly successful for Ryanair. The company’s CEO, Michael O’Learly, regularly makes outrageous claims to the press that serve to remind the public that the airline is one of the cheapest. Yet at the same time, it can impact how much people trust the brand, which is particularly important if your customers are putting their lives in your hands when they pay you to fly them across the world.

It’ll be interesting to see how and if Morrisons reacts to this online chatter. At the moment the company’s Twitter account hasn’t posted anything related to the offer and neither has its Facebook page. But as more and more people join in the conversation, perhaps this will change.

That’s not surprising. Building relationships with employers and gaining experience working in your chosen industry can go a long way in getting you the job that you want. This is now so important that many students and graduates are willing to work for free. But clearly not everyone can afford to work without getting paid. And they shouldn’t have to according to a new report by The Institute for Public Policy Research and the campaign group Internocracy.

The two groups have claimed that offering unpaid internships is against the law. Apparently interns have the same rights as staff members on the company’s payroll and therefore they should receive the minimum wage. It makes sense if you think about it. But with many firms and PR agencies offering unpaid internships or just offering to pay for expenses, it’s clear that few employers are aware that this is the case.

The Institute for Public Policy Research and Internocracy are doing a good job of raising awareness about this law, but I seriously doubt that things are going to change any time soon. Are interns really going to put their fledgling career in danger by taking legal action against a company? I don’t think so. Are employers going to be as willing to take on interns if they’ve got to add them to the payroll and offer them the minimum wage? Probably not.

Sadly unpaid internships instantly put students and graduates from low income families at a disadvantage against those with families that can afford to help them out financially. For employers this means that they could be missing out on the chance to meet and employ some bright young sparks, purely because of money.

I don’t know what the solution to this is. Employers have got it hard enough at the moment, without having to pay an intern £4.83 – £5.80 an hour, depending on their age. Equally new graduates and students are faced with the massive challenge of finding employment, whilst the UK is still recovering from the recession, so many will be willing to do anything to get a job.

What are your thoughts on this? Were you aware that interns have a legal right to be paid the minimum wage? Are you currently doing unpaid work experience?

Within seconds she highlighted half a dozen different things that needed sorting out – trays of food that were half-empty, veg that was clearly past its best, and signage that provided no real information. Not to mention the shop, which looked like it was stuck in the last century.

However Mary’s comments weren’t designed to upset the three scouse sisters that run the shop in Merseyside. She was simply flagging what their customers, or rather potential customers, were thinking. Mary worked closely with the Liverpudlian ladies to demonstrate that their consumer’s tastes had evolved and that it was time that their business did too.

She taught the three shopkeepers to think outside the box, which ironically led to the greengrocer’s launching a locally-sourced fruit and veg box delivery service. This offered their customers the convenience that they craved and the local produce that they were looking for, while at the same time helping the women to boost their revenue by reaching new customers.

Once Mary had worked her magic, the store looked absolutely terrific. The shop was packed full of customers and you could tell that the shopkeepers had fire in their bellies, ready and waiting to take on the supermarkets that had gobbled up so much of their trade.

The comparison with PR is crystal clear. Consultancies that haven’t recognised that the media landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years or don’t see why they should stop doing what they’ve always done and integrate online PR into their client work, will be left behind, struggling to provide what their customers require.

The same is true for the clients that we as PR professionals represent. Companies that don’t start engaging with online audiences soon, alongside their traditional targets, may find that their competitors do. Allowing the businesses that you compete with to get a head start online is quite simply a recipe for disaster. But unfortunately, it’s a recipe that many organisations in the UK seem to be following.

At the end of the day you don’t have to be retail royalty, like Mary, to manage a successful business long-term. You’ve just got to have faith in what you’re doing and never ever stop reviewing and improving your company. To put it bluntly, you shouldn’t be afraid of change, you should be afraid of not changing. When you sit back and rest on your laurels, that’s when the really scary stuff starts to happen.

The list is by no means perfect since it only features blogs on the AdAge Power 150 with PR, Public Relations, Publicity or Flack in the title, and a few others that have been suggested to me by commenter’s. Although it’s just a bit of fun I think it’s still a fairly decent indicator of the world’s top PR blogs.

If your blog is missing please comment and let me know. I will add any missing blogs to my next list. If you haven’t added your blog to the AdAge Power 150 yet you can do so by clicking here.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has read my posts, commented, linked to me or subscribed to my RSS feed in the past couple of years. I really appreciate it and hope that you have found my ramblings and tweets of interest.

And now for a shameless plea… If I am lucky enough to have a place on your blog roll I’d be extremely grateful if you could take two minutes to update it with my new web address.

For the past few months we have used Twitterfeed to herald new blog posts by Speed staff using the @speedcomms Twitter feed, but recently we have experienced problems with Twitterfeed’s service going down quite regularly. So we are now experimenting with Google’s service.

The ‘socialize’ feature uses Google’s new URL shortening service named goo.gl to push blog posts out on Twitter almost instantly. If also offers a couple of interesting options that are above and beyond what Twitterfeed currently offers. It allows users to turn the keywords that they have tagged their blog post with into hashtags, which can help more people to discover your tweets and blog posts by using Twitter Search. The service can also reduce the size of your tweet, making it small enough for other users to retweet and share with their followers.

But there do seem to be a few teething problems at the moment. As not all blog posts are tagged with keywords, some blogging platforms such as WordPress tag them with ‘uncategorized’. Currently Google classes this as a proper keyword and has been tagging tweets with the #uncategorized hashtag.

Will scores of users now migrate from Twitterfeed to Google? Only time will tell, but I suspect that many users will give the new service a try the next time that Twitterfeed goes down.

(Cross posted on the Speed Tech Blog)

The social network had made the decision to pair advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. This is supposed to make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. But the service is opt-out, not opt-in, which some may see as an infringement on their privacy.

To stop your photos from being used in the way click here to update your privacy settings.

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(Cross posted on the Speed Tech Blog)

Twitter users are invited to add themselves to the map by tweeting the #ukhols hash tag followed by their age, gender, post code and their holiday destination.

Using social media like this can be a great way to build a brand’s profile online and generate lots of quality coverage in both the traditional media and the blogosphere. Vodafone’s map has already gained coverage in the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, and Brand Republic.

The mashup comes a month to the day since I launched my National Work From Home Day map, which was based on the #uksnow map developed by Ben Marsh, who is behind this map too!

And with that I’m off on my hols! See you in a week or two…

To support the day, I have developed a Google Maps mashup for Speed that uses Twitter to allow home workers to display their location. To take part you have to send a tweet containing #NWFHD and the first half of your postcode ie: “#NWFHD WC2H”. The site will then automatically update every 30 seconds throughout the day, displaying the location of Twitter users working from home.