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.

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.

One website that serves to draw attention to bad PR practices is PRfail.tumblr.com. The site was setup nearly a year ago by Jonathan Hopkins to aggregate examples of bad PR highlighted on websites such as Twitter, which sees many users attach the #PRfail hashtag to their tweets.

The site now features plenty of PROs who have pointed our mistakes made by their peers or by the companies they represent, but is this wise?

If I were to criticise a company’s mistake on my blog or on Twitter, Google would automatically connect my name and the name of the company I work for to the name of the company I badmouthed. So if I or the company I work for were to then pitch for a PR brief by that company it would only take a quick search of those names, for example Nike and Speed Communications, to bring up my blog post or my tweets in the first few results. I’m pretty sure that digging up old mistakes that a potential client would rather forget, is probably not the best way to make a good impression.

That said, identifying a ‘PR fail’ and offering a solution as to how the company might have dealt with that crisis more effectively could demonstrate expertise. Though I’m not sure how much expertise you can demonstrate when you’ve already used up 7 characters of your 140 character tweet with a #PRfail hashtag!

My mind’s not totally made up on this. Do you think we should be more careful about what we say online or use our freedom of speech to highlight bad PR in an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Here are two easy steps to make your blog mobile friendly. This script should direct visitors who visit any of the pages on your blog to a main mobile blog site. It is possible to create a fully mobile blog site by creating a specific stylesheet for mobile users using CSS but this is more complex and I haven’t fully worked out how to do it yet. But will blog about it if and when I do.

Step one
Create a mobile blog using Mippin.

Step two
Add the following code inside the head tags. Remove the asterisks and add your mobile blog web address.

<*script type=”text/javascript”>
if (screen.width<=800) { window.location=”http://mippin.com/yourblog” } <*/script>

Hey presto you’ve got a mobile site. Grab your phone and check it out!

Here are my top 10 blog posts of 2008 ranked by number of hits. Although it’s really only since June as that’s when I started using Google Analytics. I’m impressed that my post about PR Bloggers on Twitter is so high up considering I only wrote it two weeks ago.

1. World’s top PR blogs 28 comments 1,400 hits
2. Top 75 PR blogs: September 2008 10 comments 527 hits
3. Top 50 PR blogs: August 2008 10 comments 458 hits
4. How long should a blog post be? 1 comment 410 hits
5. Top 75 PR blogs: October 2008 16 comments 399 hits
6. Technorati releases blog report 1 comment 294 hits
7. PR bloggers on Twitter 6 comments 229 hits
8. Does size matter for PR graduates? 1 comment 153 hits
9. Has Liverpool One put the city on the map? 5 comments 131 hits
10. Where are all the women? 10 comments 103 hits

1. PR 2.0 – @briansolis
2. What’s Next – @whatsnext
3. PR Squared – @TDefren
4. A shel of my former self – @shel
5. POP! PR Jots – @jspepper
6. Strategic PR – @prblog
7. Pro PR – @thornley
8. PR Blogger – @stedavies
9. Young PR – @paullyoung
10. Communication Overtones – @kamichat
11. PRNewser – @prnewser
12. A PR Guy’s Musings – @stuartbruce
13. KDPaine’s PR – @kdpaine
14. Dave Fleet – @davefleet
15. Flack – @PeterHimler
16. Wadds’ tech pr blog – @wadds
17. Faster Future – @davidcushman
18. Corporate PR – @ealbrycht
19. Canuck Flack – @Canuckflack
20. Simonsays – @simoncollister
21. Brendan Cooper – @BrendanCooper
22. PR Communications – @johncass
23. Drew B’s take on tech PR – @drewb
24. PR Works – DoctorJones
    
25. Catching Flack – @jongreer
26. Hispanic Marketing & PR
27. Online PR Thoughts
28. Fake Plastic Noodles – @mseasons
29. PR meets the WWW - @cbasturea
30. PRoactive – @sallyfalkow
31. Common Sense PR – @shannoncherry
32. This is herd – @thisiscow
33. Flack Life – @bobledrew
34. Beyond PR
35. A view on PR
36. Pudding Relations – @benrmatthews
37. Denver PR Blog – @denverprblog
38. Engage in PR – @KyleFlaherty
39. Observations of PR – @LukeArmour
40. Valley PR Blog – @danwool
41. PR Disasters
42. PR Meets Marketing – @csalomonlee
43. Potomac Flacks – @MattMackowiak
44. Into PR – @owen_lystrup
45. The New PR – @ryananderson
46. Wired PR Works – @wiredprworks
47. Publicity Hound’s – @PublicityHound
48. From PR to Eternity – @mpwatson
49. Middledigit – @middledigit
50. Profitable Business Edge 2 – @JosephRatliff
51. Scatterbox
52. Pierce Mattie PR – @piercemattiepr
53. Client Service Insights – @leobottary
    
54. Corporate Engagement
55. Shiny Red – @shiny_red
56. Mutually Inclusive PR
57. Media Relations Blog
58. PR Voice
59. Eyecube – @eyecube
60. PR Talk
61. Student PR Blog – @clarkey
    
62. PRos in Training – @kmatthews
63. Lubetkin’s Other Blog – @podcaststeve
64. 10 Yetis PR Blog – @10Yetis
65. Alan Weinkrantz PR – @alanweinkrantz
66. Norton’s Notes – @chris_norton
67. Strive Notes – @Sherrilynne
68. PR. Differently – @skydiver
69. Morgan McLintic on PR – @morganm
70. PR Thoughts From Ronn Torrossian – @Ronn_Torossian
71. All Things PR – @samoakley
72. Social Media for PR Class
73. Tech PR Gems – @timallik
74. IndiaPRBlog! – @IndiaPRblog
75. Youngblood PR & Marketing – @michaelallison
    
76. Launch PR – @LaunchPR
77. My PR Palette – @martinwaxman
78. EducationPR – @pabaker55
79. Tech for PR
80. Public Relations Matters – @barbaranixon
81. Mosnar Communications
82. Flacker – @evanspatrick
83. Minnesota PR blog – @mnpr
84. Blinn PR Report – @BlinnPR
85. Online Publicity Journal
86. First Person PR – @karihanson
87. HighVizPR – @abbebuck
88. PowerUp

If any usernames are missing or incorrect please let me know and I will make changes to this list. Have a Merry Christmas!

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Blogs
Reading other blogs can be a great source of inspiration and has inspired a great many of my posts. Plus occasionally I get tagged in MeMe’s! Example.

Twitter
Links that have been shared by people I follow on Twitter have inspired a few of my blog posts and have even helped me at work. Example.

Newspapers / Magazines
Articles that attract my attention sometimes inspire my blog posts. They don’t even happen to be about social media or PR, often it’s just a case of commenting on an article from a PR point of view. Example.

Out of nowhere
I find that many of my best ideas come to me when I least expect them. A lot of my ideas have come to me when I’ve been lying in bed, trying to get to sleep and have had to get up to scrawl them down on a piece of paper. Example.

PR people
At least one of my posts has been inspired through creative blogger outreach. Example.

I tag Chris Norton, Richard Millington and Stephen Davies.

Prior to the meetup I was sent a personalised email, containing the ingredients to make a cocktail reflecting my blog, or at least my initals. Apparently Mint, Pineapple and Watermelon are all you need! I thought this was a great idea, and by providing an image of my cocktail they made it very easy for me to blog about it.

I was invited to join Smirnoff’s facebook group, and even sent a video on YouTube showing how to make a Moscow Mule.

If I happened to have any questions I was invited to contact Smirnoff via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, e-mail, phone or even by post. Not by carrier pigeon though!

All this before the event even took place.

Following the meetup, photographs were added to the London meetup group, for attendees to check out. And those like me who regret not going!

Cheers to you, Smirnoff.