Blog Archive

Blog Archive

Blog Archive

I started blogging back in 2009. It was only when I launched the Digital Download Podcast that my output started to slow. Below is the entire back catalogue of insight and opinion in over 500 posts written over a decade.

  •   Tomorrow, Thursday, Meta is launching Threads, a new “text based conversation app” to rival Twitter. The timing of the move, it has to be said, is perfect, with Twitter owner Elon Musk seemingly on a one man mission to destroy everything that was good...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 July, 2023

  •   Three years ago, almost to the day, I quit Instagram. Three weeks ago I set up a brand new account and started posting again. Today, I’ve closed that account down because, not to put too fine a point on it, I hated the very...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 November, 2021

  • A firestorm erupted last week when The Times business journalist Deirdre Hipwell tweeted her frustration at being constantly asked by PR and SEO consultants to include hyperlinks to their clients’ websites in her online articles. What hasn’t been reported, however, is how she has been...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 November, 2018

  • Before we get into this post, I need you to answer a quick question. What sort of work do you think I do? Whatever it is, we’ll come back to that in just a moment. _____________________________________ “Carve yourself a niche”, they said. “Focus on and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 October, 2018

  • The first blog post I ever wrote was some time in 2008. Though I can roughly pinpoint the date, I have no idea whatsoever what that post was about. At the time I was running an ecommerce company dedicated to luxury pet accessories. Yes, really....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 August, 2018

  • After the wonderful feedback from last year’s Digital Download regional workshops and June’s Digital Download Live, I’m excited to introduce to you The Autumn Sessions, a series of workshops and masterclasses focused on arming you with the very latest thinking in digital communications strategy. Thi

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 July, 2018

  • “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” On the #FuturePRoof podcast a couple of weeks back, Stephen Waddington lamented the state of the communications industry conference circuit in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 May, 2018

  • If you’ve spoken to a social media marketing consultant recently they’ll probably have said to you something along the lines of: “Live video is what counts in social media nowadays. To beat the algorithms you need to start producing live video for Facebook/Instagram Stories”. Well...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 May, 2018

  • This is just a guess, but when David Bowie wrote “turn and face the strange” in the lyrics to Changes in 1971, I don’t think he was referencing the communications industry some 47 years in the future. But let’s withhold disbelief for just a second...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 May, 2018

  •   The ‘social media is pointless for brands’ rhetoric has reached a crescendo over the last week or two. It’s nearly impossible to turn anywhere on the web at the moment without someone questioning the value of Facebook or Twitter or Instagram for brands. The...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 April, 2018

  • Amid a massive flurry of publicity, pub chain JD Wetherspoons announced today that it is closing all of its social media accounts with immediate effect. The specific reason was unclear, but could be one of trolling, data concerns or the addictive nature of social media...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 April, 2018

  • Automation was ranked a lowly 11th out of 11 in a list of the challenges facing the PR industry in this year’s CIPR State of the Profession report. And yet in the same report, in the list of activities most commonly undertaken, three of the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 April, 2018

  • Concerns around the Facebook data we voluntarily provide in return for the free use of the platform have been high in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. What this debacle has proven above anything else is that our personal data can be and is...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 March, 2018

  • “And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, silence covered the sky.” The Book of Revelation 8:1 Over the last year or two a perfect storm has been brewing around the public relations industry. It’s one that, if not managed very carefully by communications practitioners,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 March, 2018

  • When Facebook announced its news feed update a couple of weeks back, there was lots of talk about the demise of passive content. We mulled over how the network was trying to put an end to clickbait videos and fatuous articles that add nothing to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 February, 2018

  • In perhaps the most drawn out death since the infamous Bülent Kayabas scene from 1973 movie Karateci Kız, organic reach on Facebook appears to have finally met its inevitable doom. The announcement at the end of last week that there will be “major changes” to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 January, 2018

  • Just as we were all settling down with a glass of mulled wine to enjoy the festive season, budget retailer Poundland has thrown the cat among the partridges with one of the more controversial campaigns of the year. And the intentionally confrontational and arrogant stance...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 December, 2017

  • It’s high time those working in public relations stopped apologising for who they are and what they do. It’s high time they held their heads high, walked tall and stopped being pushed around. If You Want to Make the World a Better Place A few...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 December, 2017

  • Have you ever lamented the fact that you seem to spend your entire working life up to your neck in email threads, the majority of which you don’t really need to be in? What if I said that you could ditch this way of working...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 November, 2017

  • In March this year I was contacted by a company called The Tattoo Shop for assistance with its social media strategy. Six months later and the company’s revenue has increased by an impressive 23%. As a case study, it goes a long way towards proving...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 October, 2017

  • Everyone dreams of a better work life balance. We want to spend more time chasing our dreams and less time working without sacrificing the income we obtain from the latter. That’s the big conundrum of modern life and the premise behind Tim Ferris’ best-selling 2007...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 September, 2017

  • While the transfer window for football clubs to make summer signings slammed shut yesterday with the usual flurry of crazy stories and late moves, another deadline came and went in rather less sensational circumstances. The European Parliament closed the tender process for strategic social media...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 September, 2017

  • The concept of spending your time working to earn money that you spend on freeing up your time is an odd one. But it actually makes perfect sense.⠀ There was a wonderful article on the BBC website yesterday about how people who spend their money...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 July, 2017

  • This week one of the most iconic football stadiums in the country opened its turnstiles for the very last time. After 118 years as the home of Tottenham Hotspur, White Hart Lane will be demolished to make way for a new, modern stadium that will...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 May, 2017

  • Unless you live under a rock, you’ll be aware that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week. Put it this way, I hope you’re aware that it’s Mental Health Awareness Week. #MHAW17 is seven days when we’re encouraged to think about the mental well-being of not...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 May, 2017

  • When someone follows through on a bet that he will change his name to ‘Public Relations’ if a friend can get more Twitter followers than him, you know he’s either very passionate about the industry he works in or he’s a little, um, ‘unbalanced’. Or...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 May, 2017

  • On 27th April, world-leading public relations influencer and author Gini Dietrich is making her first ever appearance at a UK event. She’s been a regular on the US speaking circuit for years, and will be talking about digital communications strategy and the PESO model, which she introduced...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 April, 2017

  • A couple of weeks ago I published a post looking at topic areas you must have an understanding of if you want a future in PR. It covered things including online behaviour, link building and the intersection of different types of digital media. This post...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 April, 2017

  • In 2012, Google introduced the Penguin algorithm update. It was designed to catch websites that attempted to boost their search engine rankings by, among other things, buying backlinks or obtaining them through link networks. It placed the emphasis firmly on authentic, quality backlink profiles, and

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 April, 2017

  • With the ever-increasing importance of digital media for public relations and marketing communications professionals, a new set of knowledge and skills has arisen if you want to future proof your career. A few short years ago, these were ‘nice-to-haves’. Traditional media was chugging along and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 March, 2017

  • A few months ago I collated and wrote a blog post about the use of new top level domains (TLDs) entitled Does It Matter if You’re a .coffee Rather Than a .com? In it, I canvassed the opinions of seven SEO professionals in my network on the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 March, 2017

  • Barely a week passes when a company or brand doesn’t hit the news for all the wrong reasons. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick videod being a jerk to one of his drivers; the PwC Oscars’ Best Picture mis-announcement calamity; Samsung’s flammable Galaxy Note 7 smartphone…just a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 March, 2017

  • Print media circulation figures have been in decline for many years. Since the turn of the century, readership of the national print media has gone into freefall, and it’s now decreasing at a consistent rate of between 7% and 12% per year in the UK....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 March, 2017

  • Let’s play a little game. Imagine you’ve been friends with someone on Facebook for a number of years. Six years, let’s say. You’ve gotten to know them pretty well and are in contact on a regular basis. Although you’ve never met IRL as they live...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 February, 2017

  • The stigmatisation of those suffering with mental ill health has to stop. That’s all this post has to say, really. Enough is enough. Organised by MIND and Rethink Mental Illness, yesterday was #timetotalk day in the UK. It was a day when we were encouraged...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 February, 2017

  • When I first set up as an independent digital media consultant I had a grand vision. It was one of social and digital media training that was actually beneficial to those taking part! Training that was skill and knowledge-based. Training that was grounded in the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 January, 2017

  • Common sense dictates that any independent consultant should do their absolute best on each and every project. But there’s another way of looking at it in the wake of Brexit that leaves me feeling uneasy. Call me arrogant, but I believe I’m pretty damned good...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 November, 2016

  • New domains are everywhere. And yet nowhere. You can buy a .boutique for your beauty salon, a .llp for your law firm or a .rip for your undertakers. Or if you’re one of ‘those’ social media consultants, there’s always .guru 😉 I jest, but with...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 November, 2016

  • Last night I had the huge pleasure of speaking at a PRCA Ignite event about digital creativity. The brief for the event was, let’s say, ‘open’. “Come and speak about digital creativity”, they said. “What about it?”, I asked. “That’s entirely up t

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 November, 2016

  • A few weeks ago I launched two new training and consultancy services to assist communications teams with implementing a best practice approach to mental health. Since then I’ve heard from numerous PR and communications professionals about their own personal experiences and, unfortunately, it&#

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 October, 2016

  • Along with video and private messaging, the return of and explosion in podcasts is one of the major success stories of digital media in the last couple of years. About eight years ago, podcasts looked like they might take the marketing world by storm. The agency I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 October, 2016

  • The results of this year’s PRCA Digital Report make for confusing reading. There are several contradictions within it that perhaps highlight a lack of direction among public relations professionals when it comes to digital and social media. And after analysing the report, it would seem...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 October, 2016

  • Today is World Mental Health Day. And here are few pertinent facts for those working in the communications industry to consider: 34% of PR professionals have been diagnosed with or experienced some form of mental ill health (PRCA) 30% of PR professionals say they are...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 October, 2016

  • Last week the 2016 CIPR elections culminated with Sarah Hall being voted in as President-Elect. Having got to know Sarah quite well this year after working with her on a couple of projects for #FuturePRoof, I asked if she’d answer a few questions on her...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 October, 2016

  • The whole Sam Allardyce media entrapment episode has been bothering me this week. And not just because it overshadowed an excellent Tottenham away win in the Champions League. Were the tactics employed by The Telegraph really ‘in the public interest’ in this instance? I’m not so...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 September, 2016

  • Something about Sam Allardyce ‘leaving’ the job as manager of the England national football team this week has left me feeling rather uneasy. A little queasy, perhaps. It’s not that I’m a fan of Allardyce; I personally thought he was an uninspiring choice as England...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 September, 2016

  • Something occurred to me when I was recording this week’s Drive Time video. I was coasting down the M40 on the inside lane, as I tend to do when recording these things, with the setting sun shining in my eyes and making seeing very difficult, let alone...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 September, 2016

  • This week was Social Media Week London (or #SMWLDN for those who followed it on Twitter). I didn’t get to any events due to work commitments; my own trip to London was to Wembley Stadium to watch Tottenham v Monaco in the Champions League. A...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 September, 2016

  • I spend about an hour every single day reading up on the latest thinking in the social media, digital marketing and communications industry. My RSS feeder delivers me somewhere in the region of 3000 articles per week from some of the top blogs out there....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 September, 2016

  • When #FuturePRoof landed in the Autumn of last year, it heralded something new for the communications industry. It was the first (to my knowledge) crowdsourced book about public relations, incorporating 33 essays from leading practitioners focused on one common theme: the modern value of public...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 September, 2016

  • You know when you read something that makes your blood boil? That. At the back end of last week, PR Week named Brexit ‘Leave’ its public relations campaign of the month in an an article entitled “Leave Offers a Masterclass in Effective Comms Campaigning”. When...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 July, 2016

  • If you’re as confounded as me by the global interest in Pokemon Go, I have a safe haven for you. This week’s Digital Drive Time is a Pokemon free-zone. Not a single mention anywhere. You’re welcome. So other than mobile gaming, what’s been going on in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 July, 2016

  • Facebook’s most recent news feed update was met with dismay by many in social media marketing circles. Assessment of the announcement that the network will increasingly focus on content posted by friends rather than Pages has been decried, quite rightly, as another nail in the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 July, 2016

  • Shock. Fear. Anger. Dismay. Resentment. Shame. Anxiety. Rage. Revulsion. Apprehension. All words that I’ve read describing people’s feelings after the people of Britain voted for the UK to leave the European Union. I’ve used some of them myself. Within hours the Pound tumbled to its...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 June, 2016

  • I’m taking a break from the normal routine in this week’s episode of Digital Drive Time (which also means, to the relief of some, a break from singing…) to talk about this week’s FutureComms conference, organised superbly again by MyNewsDesk. #FC16 was held at BAFTA on Wednes

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 June, 2016

  • On the eve of England’s bid to win (*cough*) Euro2016 and after a week’s enforced break, I’m back with another episode of Digital Drive Time. Quite a lot has happened in the last 14 days, and I’ve picked out a few stories that I think...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 June, 2016

  • It’s been a bit quiet in the world of digital and social media marketing this week, so I’ve taken the opportunity to highlight a couple of things that I think will make you smile. In this week’s Digital Drive Time I ask three key questions: What...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 May, 2016

  • In this week’s episode of Digital Drive Time I’m talking about developments in Facebook video that affect marketers; long-awaiting Instagram analytics; a great strategic move from Twitter; and I may get a little hot under the collar about giant things floating down the Thames… I al

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 May, 2016

  • Last night I spoke at an event organised by the CIPR in support of Mental Health Awareness Week. Entitled “Are workplace mental health initiatives good PR?”, it was devised to explore the issues inherent in the communications industry and how to address them. In the 2016...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 May, 2016

  • In this week’s episode of Digital Drive Time I’m talking about why Snapchat isn’t something the vast majority of brands should be considering; I address a gender issue in the public relations industry; and I talk about the developments at Instagram, the launch of Google Cardboard i

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 May, 2016

  • For a long time now I’ve been wanting to produce and publish some video content. But I’ve had one tiny problem. Well, technically I’ve had three tiny problems: my kids. With three children under seven years old, a demanding (but amazing!) wife and a busy job...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 May, 2016

  • I had the pleasure yesterday of speaking at a PRCA event on the topic of ‘a decade of digital communications’. The event was put together by Vice Chairman of the PRCA South East Group, Rhianon Williams, and was focused on looking at how digital has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 April, 2016

  • Maybe it’s because I’m a Tottenham Hotspur fan, but today’s social media gaffe from the official @Arsenal Twitter account had me chuckling into my morning coffee with unbridled mirth. It’s a brilliant example of completely failing to gauge the sentiment of your social media followers...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 April, 2016

  • 10,000 is the widely acknowledged goal for the number of steps we should take per day to stay fit. For some, that number is easily achievable. For others, not so much. According to the NHS, the average Brit walks just 3000 to 4000 steps per...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 March, 2016

  • This is a guest post from Jim Hawker, co-founder of Threepipe. In my last post, I posed the hypothesis that the communications agency/client relationship is broken due to a lack of respect on the client side and outdated organisational models on the agency side. Having...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 March, 2016

  • “She was practically shouting at me down the phone. I was in tears after the call ended.” That’s what I was told recently by someone employed by one of the agencies I work with about a conversation with a client. It refers to a piece...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 February, 2016

  • I’m asked regularly about my experiences setting up as an independent consultant. Now that I’ve been working in self-employment for just over a year, I thought it was high time I passed on some of the things I’ve learned in the last 13 months. If you...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 February, 2016

  • Conventional wisdom says that business strategy should focus on growth. Take what you achieved last year and increase it by x% next year. But what if the implications of growth are difficult to comprehend? Is sticking with what you’ve got a viable alternative, or is...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 January, 2016

  • The news of David Bowie’s passing today has left me feeling somewhat shocked and saddened. But, without wishing to sound like a complete arsehole, I can’t quite put my finger on why. Like everything else in my life, I came to Bowie’s music late. At...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 January, 2016

  • Two days before Christmas, my wife lost her wedding ring. She was distraught. In a desperate bid to find it, I turned to what I know best and asked my social media networks for help. And it provided compelling evidence of some of the things...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 January, 2016

  • The first album I ever bought was Graceland by Paul Simon. I was 14 at the time and, though I remember liking The Police and Adam And The Ants a few years earlier, until that point I’d never really been into music. (I was a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 December, 2015

  • There’s a very simple method of managing your post boosting on Facebook that significantly increases post engagement rates and the return on your post boosting budget. ‘Facebook Post Boost Optimisation’ is something I’ve been implementing for a long time to great effect. However, virtually all...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 November, 2015

  • Frustrating. That’s probably the best word to describe the chaos that is this year’s CIPR elections. Others I’ve heard used in the last week include shambolic, childish, embarrassing and pathetic. But I’m going with frustrating. For now. Ahead of Andy Green publicly withdrawing from the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 October, 2015

  • Over the last few months I’ve noticed a phrase being used in conjunction with social media marketing with increasing regularity. Indeed, in the last couple of weeks I’ve had no less than three clients or prospective clients say to me that they want to adopt...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 September, 2015

  • Reading the PRCA’s annual digital report you’d be forgiven for thinking that everything is rosy in the public relations garden. 47% of agencies now offer online advertising/PPC; 54% offer SEO services; and a whopping 91% provide content creation. Brilliant isn’t it? The PR industry is...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 September, 2015

  • When was the last time you felt really proud of something you’ve been working on? This week? Last week? Last month? Last year? Professional pride goes a very, very long way to doing great work. Do a good job; feel proud; feel more inspired and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 September, 2015

  • Facebook fans, or Page Likes to give them their correct terminology, have become a noose around the neck of many (most?) Facebook marketing efforts. So what if Facebook hid them? A few years back, measuring the growth in fan numbers was a viable, if somewhat...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 August, 2015

  • “I’m currently trying to save my business model from annihilation by SEO agencies.” That’s what an experienced communications professional told me in response to my recent posts on how SEO agencies have become a serious threat to PR. While, having written about them, I wasn’t...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 July, 2015

  • The internet can be a cruel place. Hidden behind their computer screens and mobile phones, people are quick to slate anything that doesn’t fit into their idea of the perfect world. Brands and organisations are big targets. Many are still scared of opening up to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 July, 2015

  • If it is to kick-start the evolution that is becoming increasingly urgent, the communications industry needs guidance. Agency bosses and senior communications executives both in-agency and in-house are generally aware of the need to adapt to technology and data. They’ve read the articles, they’ve be

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 July, 2015

  • Who fancies a game of Buzzword Bingo? Here are five words to get you started that I’ve noticed being used with increasing regularity inside communications agencies and at industry conferences… Content Content marketing is just about the most overused and overhyped phrase in the public...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 June, 2015

  • Thursday morning in London was rather joyous. As I arrived at The Crystal, the venue for this year’s FutureComms conference, it was a beautiful, warm day with the sun gleaming off the glass angles of the eye-catching, post-modern building. Everything seemed right with the world....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 June, 2015

  • If you work in PR and you do only one thing away from your to-do list this week, make it this: download and read the new ebook from SEO PR consultant Stella Bayles. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post laying out why...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 June, 2015

  • I have a confession to make. Although if you’re a regular visitor to this blog, it may not come as much of a surprise to you. The fact is, I’m an awful headline writer and I don’t have a clue what to do about it....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 May, 2015

  • Digital media has long been both an opportunity and a threat to the public relations industry. For a long time it was touted that digital marketers were going to steal PR’s lunch. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that it is, in fact, SEO agencies that are...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 May, 2015

  • I love Spotify. I’ve been a huge fan and a big user since it launched in the UK way back in 2009. I thought the updates the service made in late 2013 saw it take a big leap forward in terms of usability, and brought it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 May, 2015

  • Facebook post boosting is considered to be good value, but if you’re looking for tips on how best to utilise it from your peers, you might be out of luck. That seems to be the conclusion from recent research I carried out. A couple of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 May, 2015

  • Little-known company Protein World has become the brand that everyone loves to hate over the last couple of weeks. An extensive advertising campaign on the London Underground sparked a minor riot on social media when it went up in mid April, with the Twitterati up...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 May, 2015

  • There are two schools of thought starting to emerge around how best to implement social media marketing now that paid media has become pivotal to running a successful Facebook Page. And the increasing acceptance of promoted tweets and the advent of sponsored posts on Instagram are...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 April, 2015

  • When it all boils down to it, life is pretty simple. If you do good things, good things happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things happen to you. I know this is a generalisation and that very bad things do happen to very...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 April, 2015

  • The decision to set up as an independent consultant, no matter in what field, is a big one. Though it sounds a bit ridiculous, for me it was a decision that actually took years to make. I’d been drawn to the idea of working myself...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 March, 2015

  • Once upon a time, there were three friends named Fast, Cheap and Good. One day they decided to seek their fortune in the big City. They loaded their packs with bread and mead and set off from their small village home in the country. After...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 March, 2015

  • I’ve written a couple of times recently about why I believe the traditional model is failing communications agencies and why freelance digital media consultants are the future. As a result, Gini Dietrich from Arment Dietrich in the USA and I recently had a debate about the issue...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 March, 2015

  • A couple of months ago I posed the question: if Apple and Microsoft fell into a black hole, could your business survive? Chromebooks, running on Google’s Chrome OS, do away with Windows and iOS completely. They’re cheap, they’re fast, they’re portable and they’re highly functional....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 March, 2015

  • A few years back, I quit a senior role at a communications agency without having another job lined up before I did so. We needn’t go into the exact circumstances that led to me quitting, but suffice to say I’d had enough. The straw that...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 March, 2015

  • Pick the content strategy of a brand or a person you know. Could be a brand you work on or the company you work at. Could be your own blog. Could be Coke. Anything or anyone. Now imagine I’ve put a ten point linear scale...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 March, 2015

  • There’s no point in sugar-coating it, the CIPR’s State of the Profession report makes for depressing reading. Pick a subject it covers – gender balance, pay equality, diversity – and there is very little to smile about. Others have published their own summaries of the findings,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 February, 2015

  • Imagine, just for a moment, working in an environment where you are channelled into a role that solely concentrates on and celebrates your strengths. Your weaknesses don’t hold you back. Just think what you could achieve. Now think about your own role. Does it match...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 February, 2015

  • The claim that PR is dead has been doing the rounds again recently with the release of former Edelman EMEA CEO Robert Phillips’ new book. It’s an old argument. A quick Google search for ‘PR is dead’ returns no less than 204 MILLION results. With...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 February, 2015

  • I’ve now been working as a freelance social media marketing consultant for about five weeks. Which really isn’t long in the great scheme of things. But during that time I’ve spoken to lots of people, I’ve ‘won’ some fantastic work and I’ve missed out on...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 February, 2015

  • It never fails to stun me how naive brand marketers can be when it comes to hashtag fails. The point was brought home to me, yet again, on Tuesday by everyone’s favourite tissue brand (?) Kleenex. #KleenexKiss is, for me at least, a tad bizarre, consisting...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 February, 2015

  • I’ve recently been making a lot of noise in PR, social media and communications circles. ‘Noise’ as in ‘getting my name out there’. I wanted to make sure that potential clients heard about my new independent status. Maybe a couple of times. Or three. Or...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 January, 2015

  • A man walks into a bar. “Why don’t you try this ale?”, suggests the barman. “It’s new.” “Sure”, says the man, and the barman pours him a pint of what turns out to be a delicious, creamy brew, full of malty flavour. “Wow, ” says...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 January, 2015

  • There was a time not so long ago when you could hardly move on the internet without running into someone writing about the marketing communications industry. Social media, PR and digital marketing were all the rage. Everyone had an opinion and communications blogs were abundant....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 January, 2015

  • If Microsoft and Apple both fell into a black hole tomorrow, could you survive? And more to the point, could your business? With Windows and iOS dominating the operating systems of desktop PCs and laptop computers, my guess is that the answer to that question...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 January, 2015

  • If you work in social media marketing, you’ll probably have a content calendar. Whether produced with Excel or with professional planning tools like Hubspot or Scribble, content plans have formed the backbone of social communications for a long while. But the world has moved on....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 January, 2015

  • One of the questions I’m most commonly asked by communications professionals in social media training sessions is ‘how do you manage to keep up with all of the changes?’ Social media technology moves extremely fast, and there’s a real fear out there that if you’re...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 January, 2015

  • Before I stop bleating on about having gone solo in the big wide world of digital communications (I’ll be back to my normal, snarky self next week, I promise), I wanted to publicly say a quick thank you just a few of the people who’ve offered support,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 January, 2015

  • “Are you sure?!” “Yeah, I feel like it’s something I need to do.” “But what about the family? Can you afford to take the risk?” In my last post I announced that I’ve left the agency environment after many, many years and set up as...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 January, 2015

  • Back in July I spent a couple of weeks holidaying with my family. It was nothing special or flashy; a week in Devon with my parents and a week in Cornwall with my wife and kids. We spent quality time on the beach rescuing my...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 January, 2015

  • Social media is dead! announces Ofcom. PR is dead! proclaims Robert Phillips. SEO is dead! screams Business2Community. Man, what a crappy state of affairs. Three industries wiped out, just like that. 2015 looks like it’s going to be one hell of a shitty year, huh? Happy Christmas your...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 December, 2014

  • There have been books written on influencer marketing. Long and complex books. Books that talk about context, strategy, the buying cycle, monitoring, evaluation, ROI and much, much more. In this post, I’m going to save you the time of reading them* with one, powerful example....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 December, 2014

  • PR stunts are notoriously risky. By their very nature, as the risk increases, the potential reward increases. But so does the chance of something going wrong. At one end of the scale, the risk is simply that the stunt will flop and won’t generate any...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 December, 2014

  • “Is this actually real?!” That was my response when a friend of mine, Stephen Waddington, tweeted a screen grab of a promoted tweet that had appeared in his timeline on Sunday. And as promoted tweets go, it’s a gem. At the time, I laughed and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 November, 2014

  • Christmas TV advertising isn’t generally intended to be divisive. The aim is to make you feel all warm and fuzzy about a brand or a store so you go out and buy a shedload of festive stuff from them. But this year’s Sainsbury’s advert has seriously...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 November, 2014

  • Crowdsourcing is hardly a cutting edge concept anymore. The ability of organisations and even individuals to gain input into developing ideas has never been easier. So why on earth did the Samaritans have to pull the Radar app, which was intended to help those suffering...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 November, 2014

  • When it comes to measuring social media campaigns, there are 101 different social metrics we can use. Some, like fans and followers, mean very little outside of their place in whatever network you’re measuring. Others, like leads or conversion rates, matter an awful lot in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 November, 2014

  • So you want to generate awareness, loyalty and conversions from social media, right? Here’s the big secret in a highly scientific mathematical formula: Reach = Followers x Engagement At its core, it’s that simple. And it always astounds me how many people don’t understand this...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 November, 2014

  • The #nomakeupselfie and #icebucketchallenge phenomena this year raised huge amounts of money for charity. But have they inadvertently made the charity social media environment much, much tougher? Such was the success of both trends that charities everywhere are investing time and effort into spottin

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 October, 2014

  • The PR industry doesn’t need to bother measuring business outcomes. After all, lead generation and sales are marketing’s job. So, you know…sod it. I paraphrase (heavily), but that’s the general gist of an article that caught my attention last week entitled ‘What PR Metrics You...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 September, 2014

  • Before the advent of the internet, broadcast media, newspapers and the printing press, business was done person to person. If I wanted to sell my latest hand-crafted spinning wheel or my daily baked bread, I’d do so face to face with the person who was...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 September, 2014

  • Yesterday evening, the PRCA launched a new report into digital trends in the PR industry. Put together after a YouGov study of 228 agency and in-house PR professionals across a wide range of sectors, the results are, for me, both encouraging and worrying. As a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 September, 2014

  • This is a guest post from Chris Owen, Tech Director at Grayling UK.  Late last week I saw a couple of tweets from Chris that kicked off a minor scuffle about the way the PR industry is perceived. It’s long been a major bugbear of mine and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 September, 2014

  • Robin Williams’ death on Tuesday came as a massive shock. The circumstances of his passing jars hugely with the cheerful, silly and hilarious character we knew and loved from the big screen, from television interviews and from the days when he did stand up comedy. His...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 August, 2014

  • About ten years ago I was diagnosed with clinical depression. How I came to be diagnosed is another story for another time, but suffice to say it was a pretty dark time in my life and, as so many who suffer from depression do, I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 July, 2014

  • Like most bloggers, I get approached pretty much daily from people interested in having their content featured on my blog. Sometimes the approaches are short and pleasant, with a few details of the potential guest blogger and maybe a couple of ideas for posts. It’s...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 June, 2014

  • It pains me a little to write this. I’m a bloke who works in an office with three other men and over 20 women. It’s not unusual in the PR industry for guys to be outnumbered five to one. Nor is it an issue. I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 June, 2014

  • Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking part in a live Google+ Hangout on the subject of the future of communications. Featuring no less than PR industry sage Deirdre Breakenridge, highly respected technologist Neville Hobson and PRCA Digital Group head Danny Whatmough, it was a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 May, 2014

  • This week, rock band Embrace’s eponymously-titled new album entered the UK chart at number five. Which is quite an accomplishment for a band that sunk without trace eight years ago and whose last album, ‘This New Day’ released in 2006, really wasn’t that great. So...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 May, 2014

  • It’s not often I get excited about industry events. So many comms events; so much duplication; so little forward-thinking. So it is with a great sense of anticipation and excitement that I can report that not one but two events have been announced in the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 May, 2014

  • “I walk a mile in your shoes. Now I’m a mile away. And I’ve got your shoes.”          Kings of Leon Last week, influential writer Danny Brown announced that he was changing tack on his hugely popular blog. He said that he’s...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 April, 2014

  • “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” Bertrand Russell In the last couple of weeks I’ve been interviewing graduate-level candidates for potential roles...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 April, 2014

  • Over the last couple of months there has been an increasing sense of frustration and, recently, desperation with Facebook as a marketing channel. It’s long been understood by Page administrators that they could expect to reach a maximum of only 16% of their fans with...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 April, 2014

  • Just in case you weren’t aware, yesterday was April Fool’s. A day for all manner of utterly hilarious japes and pranks (cling film over the toilet bowl, anyone?) when anarchy is not only allowed but actively encouraged. In such an environment, brands come out to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 April, 2014

  • With such an overt emphasis on digital, Spin Sucks is a book that will scare the living bejesus out of some in the PR industry. And believe me, that’s a very good thing. In the book’s opening salvo, Gini Dietrich says: “Officially, the PR industry has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    31 March, 2014

  • PR is changing. Gone (for the most part) are the days of endless media relations and measurement using AVEs. So far, so obvious. And so whether you’ve been in the industry for five years or you’re looking for your first role, you need to adapt your skill...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 March, 2014

  • This is a guest post by Rob Sutter. Just recently, Facebook rolled out its newest layout; something that I am sure most social media enthusiasts have grown accustomed to. After all, it seems like every other week there’s something different on a particular site where there’s...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 March, 2014

  • Only a couple of weeks ago I wrote about how Domino’s missed a great opportunity for some social media fun and kudos by failing to react with personality and humour to a troll. Today, I’m very happy to present the exact opposite; a wonderful example...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 March, 2014

  • This is a guest post by Jessica Oaks Are desktops dead? Not quite, but they’re certainly making their way into a hospice at a good clip thanks to the mega boost in tablet sales that defined the 2013 holiday season. It wasn’t just the change...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 March, 2014

  • I’m a huge fan of Paddy Power’s marketing strategy. Its must-follow Facebook and Twitter profiles are packed full of great examples of eye-catching, topical and irreverent humour that give it fantastic reach across social media, and it’s become well-known for attention-grabbing PR stunts. In the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 March, 2014

  • Pizza chain Domino’s has been all over the blogs and the news sites in the last few days for the way it handled a particularly insistent Twitter troll. And much of the commentary has pronounced how playing the troll with a very straight bat was...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 February, 2014

  • A couple of years ago, Boston University released the results of a study into the psychological aspects of why people use Facebook. It looked at how Facebook specifically, but in a wider sense social media in general, fits into the context of human needs. The...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 February, 2014

  • Rentokil Pest Control wanted to develop a strategic plan to position the brand as progressive and technologically innovative, and to be seen to be using social media effectively. From social media monitoring I knew that wasps were the most mentioned and emotive pest, and devised...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 February, 2014

  • During 2014, the not-for-profit sector went through big changes due to the viral success of the #nomakeupselfie and #icebucketchallenge initiatives and the huge amounts of money raised. These saw many charities investing time and resource into trying to develop ‘the next big thing’. Among thos

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 February, 2014

  • The PR industry has a problem. It’s in the business of building and maintaining beneficial relationships for clients, whether that be with journalists, bloggers or, increasingly, direct with the public. It’s a people business. So you’d think we’d be on top of our game when...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 January, 2014

  • If you’re a brand with a social media requirement and you’re looking to hire agency support, you have several options open to you. Pretty much every marketing agency now offers social communications as a service: you could go down the PR route, the advertising route...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 January, 2014

  • Over the Christmas holiday I had something of a social media-related epiphany. With space and time to observe Facebook from a distance, it hit me just how overrun my newsfeed had become with irrelevant nonsense, and how many of the people and Pages I really...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 January, 2014

  • As the new year gets under way, I thought it might be useful to take a look at some of the people and resources that have been positively impacting my working life over the last few months and which will give you a kick start...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 January, 2014

  • Jude wasn’t the only storm that trended on Twitter in the UK this weekend. Guinness launched its new marketing campaign during Saturday night peak TV viewing to a flood of criticism. The campaign hashtag, #roundupyourmates, garnered in the region of 2350 tweets inside 24 hours...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 October, 2013

  • Yeah OK, it’s a provocative title for a blog post. Linkbait, some would call it. But you know what, in my experience this is true for 99% of the brands and companies using Facebook and Twitter and whatever else out there and, quite probably, many...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 October, 2013

  • Twitter trolls. If you manage a brand’s Twitter profile you’ll have come across them. People who do nothing but snipe at a company for their activity and generally have nothing good to say. As a brand on Twitter, it’s part of the game. But do...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 September, 2013

  • Imagine the scenario. One of your brand’s most well-known customers, who happens to be Hollywood A-List, is suddenly trending on both Twitter and Google. As an agile marketer with your finger on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist, you spot a golden opportunity to authentically...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 August, 2013

  • Last week, house buying website Zoopla pulled a newsjacking stunt to capitalise on all of the talk around Wayne Rooney’s potential transfer from Manchester United to Chelsea. It’s been an ongoing saga over the summer, so it was probably only a matter of time before...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 August, 2013

  • How do you manage complaints on your social media channels? At the very least I’d hope you apologise and resist the temptation to get defensive. (If not, do not pass Go and do not collect £200.) But beyond that, what’s the key to diffusing situations...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 August, 2013

  • “PR agencies have to wake up to the fact that Google is now their competitor.” That’s what Tom Foremski wrote on ZDNet at the back end of last week, prompting much hysteria among PR and SEO professionals alike. The article, entitled ‘Did Google Just Kill...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 August, 2013

  • Love it or hate it, Marmite has been positioned as a product that divides opinion for many years. Built upon and embracing the fact that some people adore it and others, well, not so much, it’s always been great fun. Until now. A storm has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 August, 2013

  • This is a guest post by Emma Duke, a colleague of mine at BOTTLE. Yesterday, PR Daily published an article by a student at Leeds Metropolitan University entitled ’12 Things PR Women Can’t Live Without’. It has, rightly so to my mind, taken a hammering...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 August, 2013

  • The birth of Prince George on 22nd July generated huge global interest on social networks. On Twitter there were more than two million mentions of the news, starting immediately after Clarence House announced that the Duchess of Cambridge was in labour and peaking at more...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 August, 2013

  • We’ve all seen ‘five rules of this’ and ’ten things you must do’ for that lists, and most of it’s utter dross. But when I saw this on Facebook courtesy of my friends at Crowd Media, it made me sit up and take notice, so...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 July, 2013

  • Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of talking to some lovely PR and social media professionals about real-time marketing as part of the CIPR’s Social Summer series of events. After I cooled down from a rather hellish tube journey (I honestly don’t know how you...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 July, 2013

  • The latest research by search analytics provider Searchmetrics proves compelling evidence of what we’ve known for a while: search engine ranking positions are influenced as much if not more by social signals than by traditional forms of SEO. The gap between social media, content marketing...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 July, 2013

  • When the good people at Phones 4u gave me the opportunity to get my grubby mits on the new HTC One smartphone, I jumped at the opportunity. As an Android devotee and a loyal HTC customer who has an upgrade due imminently, I wanted to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 June, 2013

  • With Facebook becoming an increasingly pay-to-play platform for brands, Page administrators are often left with little choice but to use the promoted posts function in order to reach the very people who’ve signed up to get their news and updates. Promoted posts are widely rounded...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 June, 2013

  • The development of mobile devices is changing the face of online shopping. Over 85% of global internet users use the web to make purchases, resulting in a worldwide e-commerce economy worth in the region of $1 trillion. A new infographic from Dell highlights some of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 May, 2013

  • If you’re an admin of a Facebook page, you’ll more than likely be growing more and more pissed off with the way the site is developing. Advertising has gone from being an optional extra to being a front-and-centre, in-your-face necessity if you want to communicate...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 May, 2013

  • The postal service has been under threat for many years. Since the widespread adoption of forms of electronic messaging (primarily SMS and email) in the late 90s, the death knell has been touted as just around the corner for ‘snail mail’. In retaliation and, perhaps,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 May, 2013

  • It’s been given many names over the last few years, but whether you call it news-jacking, brand-jacking, piggybacking or its latest nomenclature agile marketing, when done well reacting to the news agenda can be one of the most powerful weapons in a PR or social...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 May, 2013

  • Brand-jacking. Agile marketing. It’s the latest and greatest thing in social media marketing. Coral bookmakers got it spot on last summer when Robin Van Persie left Arsenal with a fast response on-the-ground stunt, and Oreo nailed it when the lights went out at the Superbowl...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 May, 2013

  • Here’s a question for you: how many social networks are you a member of? Three? Five? Ten? If you’re anything like me, and if you’re honest with yourself, you probably have no idea how many networks and services you’ve signed up to in the last...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 March, 2013

  • Early in the 21st century text messaging became the latest, greatest thing in the communications industry. It exploded firmly onto the scene in 2001 when the number of SMS messages went from 17 billion to 250 billion globally in the space of 12 months. By...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 February, 2013

  • A couple of weeks back, blogger outreach platform InkyBee finally came out of private beta after two years in development. Having been party to the development process, I was keen to find out more about what looks like a promising UK-based start up. So I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 February, 2013

  • The monotonous ‘PR is dying’ meme has been covered to the point of tedium and is something I’ve been highly dismissive of/ranted about in the past. I’m not about to change my mind on that any time soon, but I read something last week that...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 February, 2013

  • In the last week or two I’ve been playing with different password protection services as I’ve been acutely aware for a while that, for someone who should know better, my web security has been pretty poor. I’ve now started using LastPass to manage my online...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 February, 2013

  • Social TV is where it’s at in 2013. It may be a bold statement, but it’s been threatening to go mainstream for a couple of years now. Back in October 2010 I made a prediction that social TV would be the big thing for the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 February, 2013

  • “You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision.” ~ Maxi Jazz, Faithless: ‘Reverence’ So often in my line of work as a social and digital communications consultant I encounter blinkered thinking. And that doesn’t just apply to big whackety-whack creative ideas that, in the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 February, 2013

  • I don’t like being a miserable, cantankerous old git, but social media’s latest new plaything, Vine from Twitter, is one of the worst developments I’ve seen in digital media for a long time. Yes, it’s very, very early days and, as an Android devotee, I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 January, 2013

  • And meaning it. That’s the thing here; not just to say thanks but to actually mean it. Because us Brits aren’t very good at praising people and expressing gratitude. We tend to sound either like we’ve been on some kind of motivational course, or like...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 January, 2013

  • I recently read about the launch of UK 4G mobile provider EE’s new ambassador programme, and was immediately intrigued. Advocacy and the power of online influencers is one of the (continuing) hot themes for the next few months, and this particular programme could be one...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 January, 2013

  • This is an experimental post. I’ve been thinking recently that I read so much great stuff around the web by truly insightful people that inspires me to do better things in my professional life and to work in a more mindful manner that I’d like...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 January, 2013

  • Horse meat in food meant for human consumption isn’t a laughing matter. But try telling Twitter that. After revelations about burgers on sale in Tesco containing 29% horse meat hit the news on Wednesday, the hashtag #TescoProducts went ballistic, with hundreds of jokes and humorous...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 January, 2013

  • What’s the first thing you do if you want to know more about an individual? You Google them. And so online reputation management has become extremely important for anyone who wants to get ahead in their career or their business. Social media is a fantastic and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 January, 2013

  • Over the last few days I’ve started to feel a bit dirty whenever I login to Facebook. It started on Sunday when Facebook asked me “What’s going on, Paul?”. On Monday, it asked me “What’s happening, Paul?”. By Tuesday, our burgeoning relationship had moved to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 January, 2013

  • So off we go again. New year, new ideas, new intentions. And I’ve noticed a minor ‘trend’ rippling through my networks over the last week or so. A ‘mini-meme’, if you will. It’s one of being more considered in the use of social networks in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 January, 2013

  • A couple of weeks back I put out a call for the social communications industry to start sharing and celebrating best practice and success. And this morning I hit upon a fantastic example of engaging social media use from an unlikely source: the Surrey Police....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 December, 2012

  • <rant> Pitching for a PR account via Twitter. Good idea? Bad idea? Would you do it? Personally, I can think of little more degrading than being asked to parade myself along with dozens of other suitors in a public competition of who’s got the most...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 December, 2012

  • In the last week or two I’ve been managing a social media crisis on a client’s Facebook Page. Things kicked off around a specific political issue after a post on a forum, and suddenly the Page was swamped with new ‘fans’ sounding off and being...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 December, 2012

  • It’s not exactly ground-breaking for me to say that public relations is evolving, and that PR pros have to adapt with it in order to stay relevant. Nor should it come as a surprise to anyone reading this that, as a result, chaos is rife...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 November, 2012

  • In the social media bubble, we love to slate brands that don’t do things according to best practice. Hardly a week passes without another company being hauled over the coals by bloggers who seem to revel in the opportunity to out a brand for poor...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 November, 2012

  • “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”    Benjamin Franklin It’s very easy not to do the things that matter to you and your business. It’s very easy not to spend the necessary time developing effective social media platforms...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 November, 2012

  • There’s been a lot of talk over the last month or so about how Facebook’s new Edgerank tweak is hitting organic reach on brand Pages, and how unhappy Page owners are at the prospect of having to use the Promoted Posts function to pay for...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 November, 2012

  • A week or two back I was accused on Twitter of having ‘confirmation bias’. In response to a comment I left on a blog post, Judy Gombita contacted me by private message to say that “it’s very discouraging when you only engage/listen to/agree with the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 September, 2012

  • This weekend I sat down to draft a couple of blog posts. I’ve had a few topics floating around my head for a while, and with a newborn baby stealing most of my writing time (and sleep) these days, the opportunity of a precious hour...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 September, 2012

  • The guys at Bite Communications have a theory. They say that, after a huge year of national events, there’s nothing on the agenda for 2013. It’s set to be an empty year. And that this is either a huge challenge or a creative opportunity for...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    31 August, 2012

  • For quite a while I’ve had the opinion that social sharing buttons on blogs and websites don’t actually achieve anything and are largely a waste of space. Personally, I very rarely click a Like button or a +1 button and never, ever use the Tweet...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 August, 2012

  • “Greater transparency! More actions will contribute to your score! Real-world influence signals to enrich our data! New look to help you understand, shape and earn recognition!” So screamed everyone’s love-to-hate influencer scoring tool Klout last week. And then reality sunk it. A few months ago,..

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 August, 2012

  • If there’s one thing I dislike about the blogosphere, it’s the posturing that goes on within certain communities. It seems as though we (bloggers) have lost the ability to be authentic and to write about real human emotion and with genuine depth. Or more likely,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 August, 2012

  • ‘Being social’ is often quoted as one of the core tenets of social media marketing. It loosely describes an approach where the marketer (or customer service professional or HR representative) adopts a more casual and familiar tone of conversation on social networks in order to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 August, 2012

  • There are three very good reasons you won’t like Marketing in the Round. First, it’s too easy to read, and we all know business books should be hard going and stuffed full of jargon to be valuable. Second, it doesn’t back up conventional thinking. So...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 August, 2012

  • When blogging, why write 400 words if you can make your point in 14? Like this post? Subscribe to FutureComms and get it straight to your inbox.

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 July, 2012

  • The visual web has exploded this year, and with it the number of infographics. You can hardly visit a website nowadays without being exposed to an infographic of one kind or another and it’s starting to feel like we’ve reached saturation point. Whereas only six...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 July, 2012

  • Last week, I was asked the rather pointed question: “So Paul, what do you think is wrong with PR?” The context and inference was that the PR industry is on its knees, desperately clinging on to the last vestiges of respectability, profit and hope. Then...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 July, 2012

  • It’d be fair to say that O2 hasn’t had a particularly enjoyable last two days. Blanket network failure saw social media channels overrun with annoyed and sometimes irate customers yesterday. In fact, social monitoring dashboard Synthesio shows over 11,000 mentions of O2’s network problems, with...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 July, 2012

  • Be original. Be unique. Be conspicuous. These are the mantras that surround blogging and social communications. But I want to throw something out there: what if deviating from group opinions simply does not work? Finding something original to write about was identified by one in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 July, 2012

  • It should be no secret to anyone reading this that social media is all powerful when it comes to connecting brands and organisations to customers. Or, in fact, that customer service has changed radically and for good thanks to the social web. But despite the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 July, 2012

  • So the power of social media has been proven again. Femfresh has ditched a Facebook page of well over 5000 fans after a backlash from the online community for the use of “infantile” terms for the word vagina that included the likes of vajayjay, froo...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 June, 2012

  • So there’s a new social media kid on the block today: Menshn. The genius *cough* lovechild of MP Louise Mensch and digital adviser (whatever one of those is) Luke Bozier, Menshn has been launched “to rival Twitter” according to the BBC News website. Apparently Mensch...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 June, 2012

  • The first time I ever took part in a video conference was some time during 1994. As part of my business and marketing degree, I was on a work placement at ICL, the British computer hardware and software company that was later acquired by Fujitsu....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 June, 2012

  • It’s no great secret that blog subscriptions and comments  are, as a general rule, on the decline. It’s a trend that started a year or two back and has shown no sign of slowing down. But I was extremely surprised by the results of a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 June, 2012

  • I see quite a lot of companies and individuals bashing away at social communications with what can only be scant reward, if anything. Repetitive and dull Facebook pages with little engagement; blogs with no traffic; Twitter profiles with no conversation whatsoever. And yet they keep...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 June, 2012

  • It’s human nature to worry about all sorts of stuff. Some of it’s big stuff that warrants worrying about. But a lot of it’s small stuff that’s really not worth shortening your life expectancy over. We worry about how we should deal with a negative...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 June, 2012

  • This is a guest post by Geoff Livingston. A couple of weeks back, I spotted a status update by Geoff on Facebook aluding to how he’d “lost the fire” for his highly regarded blog, geofflivingston.com and had planned on killing it, but that the fire was...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 June, 2012

  • Back in April 2010 when Facebook launched the Like button for websites, much blog commentary focused on how the company was trying to take over the internet. Some comment was positive, although the majority painted a bleak future where Facebook controlled online life as we know...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 June, 2012

  • “Twitter is the new social media ghost town.” That’s what Robert Scoble says in a post on Google+. “Follower growth has not kept up there with the other services”, he goes on to explain, citing his own gargantuan follower numbers as firm evidence of this....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 May, 2012

  • So after weeks of anticipation, Facebook’s finally gone public. And it’s fallen more than a little short of expectations. ‘Facebook’s IPO Sputters’ reported the Wall Street Journal, as bankers struggled to prevent the stock from ending its first day with a loss. ‘More Whimper than...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 May, 2012

  • I recently received the following email: That’s the full email in its entirety. And there is so much wrong with this approach that it’s hard to know where to start. This is why: The message title is misleading. Upon receiving the email, my initial reaction...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 May, 2012

  • Last week hugely respected marketers Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston formally launched their new book, Marketing in the Round, in Chicago. I have never seen so much fuss over a book launch in my entire life. If you’re friends with them on Facebook or follow...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 May, 2012

  • There was a huge internet furore at the back end of last week over the fact that Mark Zuckerberg dared to wear a hoodie to presentations to talk up Facebook’s upcoming IPO. Parts of the media labelled him as arrogant, disrespectful and immature. And it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 May, 2012

  • There’s been lots of rhetoric recently about whether blogging is dying and why, or why not, this might be happening. Gini Dietrich recently looked at the benefits of business blogging on SpinSucks and asked, very openly, whether companies are just being lazy. Geoff Livingston wrote...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 May, 2012

  • Warning: the following blog post may contain sarcasm Poor old Klout. It does come in for a bashing from the digital communications community from time to time. So much so that some notable people have opted out, frustrated with the way in which it attempts...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 March, 2012

  • 1972. Iconic movies The Godfather, Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange were released to critical and public acclaim. David Bowie dominated the music scene in his new guise as Ziggy Stardust, with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars proving...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 March, 2012

  • When the PRSA announced back in November that it was going to attempt to redefine public relations, I remember going on a bit of a Twitter rant (I know, not like me right?) about what a pointless and misguided exercise it was that was unlikely...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 March, 2012

  • An article in the New York Times this week firmly suggests that blogging is dying. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before, right? Well maybe, but this article says that ‘the younger generation’ is losing interest in favour of spending more time on social networking sites....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 March, 2012

  • Last week I was on the panel of a debate about the Future of Communications as part of Social Media Week alongside the deputy editor of The New Statesman. I was the sole PR industry representative speaking at Internet World, the UK’s top digital event,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 February, 2012

  • Public relations is in real trouble. At least, according to some areas of the content marketing industry it is. And they may have a point. I’ve heard awful stories from bloggers of impersonal approaches to them that a child would make a better job of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 February, 2012

  • Do you ever catch yourself thinking ‘I can’t keep up with technological change’ or ‘I’ll catch up on the latest communications developments when the dust settles’ or, perhaps in less considered moments, ‘aaaaarrrrrrggghhhh!’? Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last five years, you’ll...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 February, 2012

  • Yesterday I had the honour of taking part in The Great Debate as part of Social Media Week in London. Organised by MyNewsDesk, the panel event was focused on cutting through the hysteria and the hyperbole (a lesser man might say ‘the bullshit’) to raise...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 February, 2012

  • A rather incredible example of poor communications practice was pushed my way last week from a friend of mine, Jan Minihane. To cut a long story short, she was stuck in gridlock in a Tesco car park for four long hours after heavy snow and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 February, 2012

  • Did you know that there are 1.4 billion people in the world who still have no access to electricity? Or that 2.5 billion people have to rely on collecting firewood for cooking and heating? Or that smoke from cooking in the home on open fires...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 February, 2012

  • A new study from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and reported in the Daily Telegraph has looked at the often-reported addictive nature of social media. And it says that, wait for it, Twitter and Facebook are more addictive than both cigarettes and alcohol. Which has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 February, 2012

  • I contributed to a piece on Adam Vincenzini’s blog today on the topic of how to get more interaction from bloggers. I responded to Adam’s question with advice on making relevant content easy to find online so that, after you carry out the initial outreach,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 February, 2012

  • The whole concept of automated sharing makes my skin crawl, it really does. The social web is built around the sharing of thoughts, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, information and pictures of cats. And that’s fine; I love a good LOLcat as much as the next man....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 January, 2012

  • In the first of what I hope will become a regular feature on FutureComms, the inimitable Gini Dietrich and I discuss the hot new thing in the world of social media, Pinterest. Gini feels it has significant potential for marketers; I disagree. Read both of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 January, 2012

  • So Research in Motion (RIM), the developer of the BlackBerry set of devices, has finally replaced its CEOs after a tumultuous 12 months, which included a three day service black out and being named as an enabler in the UK riots. But if early signs...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 January, 2012

  • Last week I posted a picture of the scan of my new baby on this blog. Aside from being extremely proud and wanting to tell the world after three months of bottling up this (for me) amazing news, it was a bit of an experiment...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 January, 2012

  • To kick off FutureComms in earnest, I asked a dozen thought leaders in my network, six from each side of the Atlantic, what they feel the future holds for the communications industry; how the field will develop and what the implications are for those working...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 January, 2012

  • A new study from Boston University has looked at why people use Facebook. But not in the conventional ‘to keep in touch with friends’ or ‘to share photos’ sense. Oh no, this is FAR more interesting. The study looks at human needs (think Maslow) and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 January, 2012

  • We started 2011 walking an economic tightrope and we’re ending it balancing precariously on the precipice of a double-dip recession. On the face of it, it would seem that not a lot has changed over the last twelve months. And yet this year has seen...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 December, 2011

  • Much as I love my daily fix of thoughts, opinions and news from across the blogosphere, there are times when you can’t beat spending time sitting down and reading a book to get the brain cells working. But what are the most informative and challenging...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 December, 2011

  • Lots has been written about how PR is evolving over the last couple of years. As an industry, we’ve been incredibly slow to react to changes in the media landscape, and for every progressive consultant who’s spending time getting to grips with changing consumer behaviour,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 November, 2011

  • Online privacy is a massive issue. If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to rile up a whole bunch of people, it’s to what degree their personal data is being scraped, acquired, harvested, analysed, utilised and sold. Facebook and Google have both come under huge fire...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 November, 2011

  • This morning I should have taken my place among the good and the great of the UK social media scene for a presentation by Adobe on its new analytics tool. Instead, I’ve been sat at my PC in the office hammering out a credentials document...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 November, 2011

  • There are currently two significant social media/tech events happening in the UK: Like Minds and LiveTech. Several of the people I’m friends with or follow closely are in attendance at one or other, some speaking and some listening. But they’re all tweeting from them using...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 October, 2011

  • Let’s say you have a client who’s not taken your advice. At least, not properly. They’ve commenced PR or marketing activity that is, at best, a half-hearted attempt at what you originally recommended and the reality is a shadow of the grand idea that you...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 October, 2011

  • If I say the word ‘smartphone’, what’s the first thing that comes into your head? What about ‘tablet’? Apple is ubiquitous. iThis, iThat, iEverything. And with the sad death of Steve Jobs a couple of weeks ago, never has it been so in the limelight....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 October, 2011

  • This morning, I ‘hung out’ with two of the world’s most awesome individuals on Google+. And I’m not talking Chris Brogan or Brian Solis or any of those other social media ‘gurus’, I’m talking two of the planet’s real life, bona fide truly great men....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 October, 2011

  • Renowned thought leader Edward De Bono was reported on an Australian news site this week as stating that “social networks are making people lazy and stupid”. My immediate reaction was the knee-jerk ‘what an ignorant, generalising idiot’ of most of my contemporaries in social media...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 October, 2011

  • I’ve noticed an extremely disturbing affect of the new Facebook newsfeed timeline on scheduled posts, and one that page administrators have no choice but to take extremely seriously. Across the dozen or so Facebook pages on which I’m an administrator, Impressions (the number of times...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 October, 2011

  • The role of the social web in changing not only how we view the world and the people around us, but also in changing society itself has been well-documented and debated. An interesting study by AXA to launch its Ambition Awards seems to add fuel...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 September, 2011

  • I’ve not hidden the fact that I really dislike QR codes in the past. I don’t have an issue with the concept: directing people from an offline ad straight to a website or app with one swipe of a smartphone is great marketing. But what...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 September, 2011

  • Brands and organisations are all clamouring to create an effective Facebook presence. 750 million users, 2.6 million minutes spent on the site every day, 2/3 of brands have acquired a new customer through the site – you’ve heard all the compelling statistics. So what’s the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 September, 2011

  • The social web’s a bit like a wedding reception. You get all sorts of people on the dance floor, from those who love it and to whom it’s a second home, to those who are clearly not enjoying themselves and are only dancing because everyone...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 September, 2011

  • This is a guest post by Julie Howell In the aftermath of the recent UK riots, fingers of blame pointed in various directions. Some clearly feel that ‘rioter-enabling technologies’ (social networks, SmartPhones, etc.) are in some way responsible for facilitating the rioting and believe that...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 September, 2011

  • I’m writing this perched on the floor of a hospital room. Just across from me, my beautiful wife is dozing peacefully in a post- operative slumber. As procedures go, it was what the surgeon referred to as “routine”, but as with all operations there were...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 August, 2011

  • This post is the third in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine. Search engines have great power over how we perceive the world. Friends, contacts, me, you – we...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 August, 2011

  • This post is the second in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine. Social networks enable us to share and find information like never before. We can research, ask friends...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 August, 2011

  • This post is the first in a series reporting the key learnings from my recent #NoSearch project, where I went two months without using an internet search engine. Do you think internet friendship and being hyper-connected is all it’s cracked up to be?There have been...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 August, 2011

  • I’ve recently had conversations with a couple of clients and potential clients about the viability of creative ideas. And it’s been playing on my mind that there are PR and marketing agencies out there who sell on their ability to come up with fantastically creative...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 July, 2011

  • There’s been an incredible amount of online commentary about Google+, the latest and greatest social platform, over the last few weeks. The vast majority has focused on comparisons to Facebook or Twitter or both, how Circles compares to lists, why it won’t work or why...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 July, 2011

  • There’s been a noticeable shift in the blogosphere over the last few weeks, and I’m really not sure I like it. We (and I use the term loosely) seem to be reversing up our own bottoms at a rate of knots. Whether it’s the MD...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 July, 2011

  • What a load of rubbish, right? Like you wouldn’t know if you were part of a cult. Well I’m telling you now that every single day of your life you display behavioural traits that put you firmly in the land of Heaven’s Gate, the Order...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 July, 2011

  • One of the major criticisms of Facebook over the last twelve months has been the lack of privacy. Or, more accurately, the fact that the platform insists on an opt-out policy rather than an opt-in policy. Facebook is built around the assumption that you want...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 July, 2011

  • So the behemoth that is Google is having another stab at the social web. Despite the abject failures that have been Wave and the ‘bull in a china shop’ noise of Buzz, Google+ seems to be, at first glance at least, a genuinely interesting and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 June, 2011

  • There’s one thing I absolutely love about social media: you can’t CC people. Tweet someone, or even two or three people, and you’re communicating direct with them because it’s relevant to that person/those people. Send someone a Facebook message and you’re in the land of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 June, 2011

  • Over the last few weeks I’ve been undergoing something of a personal social media revolution. Or revelation. Not sure. But either way, I’m starting to see and to use the social web in a different way. It’s an iterative process, but I’m starting to filter...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 June, 2011

  • Yesterday, I screwed up. Not in a major, life-changing way, but I chose to ignore a doubt and it could have come back to bite me on the butt. Is it just me that finds it so difficult to follow my instinct, or is it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 June, 2011

  • Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had something nagging at me: is the ever-increasing number of social platforms becoming too much? Every week there seems to be a new tool, or a new button, or a new method of connecting being launched. And I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 June, 2011

  • I carried out my first ever QR code download yesterday. And it was a totally underwhelming experience that bordered on the humiliating. Prior to this event I’ve suspected that QR codes are technology for the sake of technology. You know, the ‘why do it? Because...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 June, 2011

  • Ask yourself a question: how long could you go without using an internet search engine? It occurred to me a few weeks back that the internet has become such an integral and vital part of everyday life that we no longer consider how much, why...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 June, 2011

  • Instagram has been creating a fair bit of buzz since it launched back in October. I’ve seen it popping up more and more in my Twitter and Facebook streams recently, and just over the last week or two it seems to have reached a point...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    31 May, 2011

  • A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post entitled “One in Three PR Agency Heads is an Idiot”. The much-too-honest Catriona Oldershaw accused me of link baiting (in a nice way, if there is a nice way of doing so). Link baiting, for those...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 May, 2011

  • So a ‘mystery’ top class UK footballer is suing Twitter. How utterly ludicrous. Having been granted a privacy injunction that gags the print and broadcast media from stating his name in accordance with an alleged adulterous affair with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas, said player...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 May, 2011

  • Us creative types, whether we’re in PR, marketing, advertising or social communications, are always on the hunt for insight and stimulation. I love nothing better than feeling that ‘eureka’ moment, when all the fuzz falls away from a client brief and clarity strikes me square...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 May, 2011

  • On Tuesday I had the honour of taking part in the judging panel for the CorpComms magazine Digi Awards. During a well-earned break I had a chat to James Poulter, Adam Vincenzini and Chris Reed about how things were going in their respective agencies and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 May, 2011

  • This is a guest post by Brian Carter. I was intrigued by his assertion that paid Facebook fan growth trumps organic fan growth, so asked him to sum his approach up in a blog post for TheSocialWeb.If you want Facebook traffic or a Facebook fan...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 May, 2011

  • I was somewhat downhearted this week to read that the UK PR industry is coming under question yet again for its backward approach to digital and social media. Maybe it’s because I work for an agency that’s forward-thinking when it comes to online PR, or...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 April, 2011

  • Guru. Ninja. Expert. They’re all the kings of their own social domain. I stumbled across another one the other day; an almighty, self-proclaimed “Twitter expert” who goes by the name of @[username withheld] and who introduced himself to a new client as the man who...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 April, 2011

  • We’ve all had discussions about the benefits of social media marketing; what it can do for brand awareness, for word of mouth and brand perception, and for driving traffic to websites via direct routes, referrals and through search engines. But here’s a question for you:...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 April, 2011

  • We’ve all had discussions about the benefits of social media marketing; what it can do for brand awareness, for word of mouth and brand perception, and for driving traffic to websites via direct routes, referrals and through search engines. But here’s a question for you:...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 April, 2011

  • Ever tried to come up with a creative strategy only to stare at a blank computer screen for hours or even days on end? Ever sat down to write a blog post and come up with absolutely nothing…nada…zilch…? You’re not alone. Trying to step away...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 April, 2011

  • I have a confession to make: I prefer Facebook to Twitter. There, I said it. A couple of days back, amidst the stream of dross that has invaded my Facebook newsfeed as everyone and his dog jumps on the Facebook Questions bandwagon and gives it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 March, 2011

  • Two things happened to me last week that have given me further belief were it needed (it wasn’t, by the way) that social communications is the way forward for marketers. First, I read a fascinating study by Webtrends which revealed that 68% of the websites...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 March, 2011

  • This is a guest post by Adam Parker, Chief exec of RealWire in response to my last post, ‘Is the Social Media News Release a Waste of Time?‘First off, a disclosure. RealWire has a vested interest in this debate given that we provide a Social...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 March, 2011

  • The Social Media News Release (SMNR) has significant benefits over the standard press release format. For companies there’s the SEO factor, the ease of distribution, the ability to embed high resolution images and video, and the potential for sharing across the social web. And for...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 March, 2011

  • Naming a blog is more important than naming a child. Believe me, I’ve done both and only one is any good at driving web traffic and business my way. Isobel’s hopeless at SEO and can’t even say SERP let alone explain to me how to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 March, 2011

  • Last week I published a post entitled ‘Why Tuesdays Suck for Social Marketers’. It seemed to catch the imagination of the people who read The Social Web and has since gained a lot of traction on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There have been a lot...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 March, 2011

  • In 1979, long before I was born (not true), Bob Geldof’s Boomtown Rats sang about not liking Mondays. In 2005 I had the huge pleasure of listening to Sir Bob speak about entrepreneurship at an event, and the even greater pleasure of interviewing him afterwards....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 March, 2011

  • The word on the street is that Stella Artois is about to launch a big offensive on social media next week along the lines of a huge ‘casting call’. I’ve heard that my favourite beer brand is going to audition men via webcams to play...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 February, 2011

  • A couple of weeks back I had the great pleasure of being invited to take part in a round table event hosted by leading web hosting business UKFast. The event, held during social media week, was focused on drawing out advice from six ‘experts’ (well,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 February, 2011

  • Following the success of a similar initiative in New York, TV channel HISTORY today launched a partnership with Foursquare that gives users of the geo-tagging service access to over 600 unique and quirky location tips, discounted deals across London and a brand new HISTORY ♥...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 February, 2011

  • It’s no great secret that the social web is impacting the PR industry. You’d have had to have lived on the moon not to know that (although I suspect that given astronauts can now tweet from the International Space Station, even the moon may not...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 February, 2011

  • It’s no great secret that the social web is impacting the PR industry. You’d have had to have lived on the moon not to know that (although I suspect that given astronauts can now tweet from the International Space Station, even the moon may not...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 February, 2011

  • This is the second part of a three-part series on social media evaluation tools and techniques. You can read the first part here. Social media is about branding: it builds awareness, it builds profile and it’s a brilliant positioning tool. What it is not, at...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 February, 2011

  • This is the second part of a three-part series on social media evaluation tools and techniques. You can read the first part here. Social media is about branding: it builds awareness, it builds profile and it’s a brilliant positioning tool. What it is not, at...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 February, 2011

  • This weekend saw numerous organised demonstrations across the UK in response to plans to close around 450 public libraries due to spending cuts caused by the recession. In my own quiet, leafy Oxfordshire village, where the most exciting thing to happen all year is when...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 February, 2011

  • This is the first part of a three-part series on social media evaluation tools and techniques.There’s a lot of talk around social media and return on investment; how do we measure it, what are the most relevant metrics, what counts as good ROI, and on...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 January, 2011

  • This is the first part of a three-part series on social media evaluation tools and techniques.There’s a lot of talk around social media and return on investment; how do we measure it, what are the most relevant metrics, what counts as good ROI, and on...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 January, 2011

  • Facebook is increasingly becoming the centre of the known universe. Fact. It’s getting so big it’s developing its own gravitational field, and the entire planet could soon be turned inside out and swallowed inside a black hole (multi-dimensional physics permitting). With well over half a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 January, 2011

  • Towards the back end of last year I was following too many blogs. Getting 300 posts in your RSS reader every day is daunting, trust me. I found myself skimming titles and deleting most posts without even considering them, regardless of how useful they may...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 January, 2011

  • Towards the back end of last year I was following too many blogs. Getting 300 posts in your RSS reader every day is daunting, trust me. I found myself skimming titles and deleting most posts without even considering them, regardless of how useful they may...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 January, 2011

  • PR is essentially about reputation management. Which makes us all, ever-so-slightly, control freaks. We like to be in charge of our brands and what people say about them. We like to steer the conversation. And we like to be able to positively influence what people...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 January, 2011

  • PR is essentially about reputation management. Which makes us all, ever-so-slightly, control freaks. We like to be in charge of our brands and what people say about them. We like to steer the conversation. And we like to be able to positively influence what people...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 January, 2011

  • You may think I’m a little late on this, given that we’re now two weeks into the new year. But I’ve been waiting. And watching. And listening. And reading. And as a result of that process, I’m now in a position to publish what I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 January, 2011

  • You may think I’m a little late on this, given that we’re now two weeks into the new year. But I’ve been waiting. And watching. And listening. And reading. And as a result of that process, I’m now in a position to publish what I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 January, 2011

  • We, my friends, are in the midst of a social media boom. (Just in case you hadn’t noticed.) New technologies, new platforms, new users…it’s all just bloody marvellous, isn’t it? But how long can this boom be sustained? When will we hit saturation? And what...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 January, 2011

  • We, my friends, are in the midst of a social media boom. (Just in case you hadn’t noticed.) New technologies, new platforms, new users…it’s all just bloody marvellous, isn’t it? But how long can this boom be sustained? When will we hit saturation? And what...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 January, 2011

  • This year’s been an important one for me. At the back end of 2009 I was in a job that was going nowhere and I was getting little opportunity to put my knowledge of the web, online marketing and social media into practice. So I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    31 December, 2010

  • This year’s been an important one for me. At the back end of 2009 I was in a job that was going nowhere and I was getting little opportunity to put my knowledge of the web, online marketing and social media into practice. So I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    31 December, 2010

  • I’ve been thinking. Which, for a start, is never a good thing. What if Father Christmas worked in digital media? What if, across from me in BOTTLE PR Towers, sat an ageing dude with a fluffy white beard in a red suit who spent all...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 December, 2010

  • Social media is seriously screwing with modern society. It’s making us lazy, depressed and, ironically, antisocial. And it’s even damaging the IQs of our children. Don’t believe me? Join the queue. But although (admittedly) I may be overstating the case a tad in that opening...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 December, 2010

  • Social media is seriously screwing with modern society. It’s making us lazy, depressed and, ironically, antisocial. And it’s even damaging the IQs of our children. Don’t believe me? Join the queue. But although (admittedly) I may be overstating the case a tad in that opening...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 December, 2010

  • I’ve read a couple of fantastic blog posts this week that cover the perpetual PRs v bloggers issue from different perspectives. Danny Brown wrote a post titled ‘When PR Has Its Head Up It’s Ass’ that, in typical Danny Brown fashion, slated a shameful post...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 December, 2010

  • This is a guest post by Gini Dietrich I met Paul on Twitter. He’s a PR ‘bloke’ in the U.K. I’m a communication pro in the U.S. We never would have met if not for social media. So when he asked me, “Why social media?”,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 December, 2010

  • This is a guest post by Gini Dietrich I met Paul on Twitter. He’s a PR ‘bloke’ in the U.K. I’m a communication pro in the U.S. We never would have met if not for social media. So when he asked me, “Why social media?”,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 December, 2010

  • Social media is a fantastic enabling technology, allowing us to communicate and share like never before. But as we (the human race) become more and more used to communicating in 140 characters and skim-reading blogs, and as our children spend more and more time online,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 December, 2010

  • Social media is a fantastic enabling technology, allowing us to communicate and share like never before. But as we (the human race) become more and more used to communicating in 140 characters and skim-reading blogs, and as our children spend more and more time online,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 December, 2010

  • I have, in the past, accused Facebook of ‘tinkering’, toying with minor changes to the way the platform operates so that we don’t know from one week to the next quite how it’ll work or look. It’s just made another one. But at the risk...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 November, 2010

  • In the 1960s the world was in the middle of a cultural shift. The years of austerity caused by the second world war had come to an end and spawned a society that put great value on fashion, wealth and ambition. But towards the end...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 November, 2010

  • In the 1960s the world was in the middle of a cultural shift. The years of austerity caused by the second world war had come to an end and spawned a society that put great value on fashion, wealth and ambition. But towards the end...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 November, 2010

  • Dear Google Chrome We’ve been together for the best part of 18 months and they’ve undoubtedly been the best of my (internet) life. When I met you I was disillusioned with my (browser) relationships and you brought sunshine to my world (of search). You lifted...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 November, 2010

  • I blogged recently that page administrators must invest time into understanding the psychology of Facebook users, and that virtually all page interaction happens in the users own newsfeed unless there is a good reason to revisit a page. And with this specifically in mind, the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 November, 2010

  • I blogged recently that page administrators must invest time into understanding the psychology of Facebook users, and that virtually all page interaction happens in the users own newsfeed unless there is a good reason to revisit a page. And with this specifically in mind, the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 November, 2010

  • This is a guest post by Gemma Went Many evangelise about social media, but at times there’s a blinkered approach to this thing we call social. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan. It’s opened many a door for me both personally and professionally...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 November, 2010

  • OK, so two things. First, Zuckerberg and co seem to be on a one way mission to annoy people. There are seemingly endless tweaks being made to Facebook at present and it feels like every time I login there’s something different or something new. Now...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 November, 2010

  • OK, so two things. First, Zuckerberg and co seem to be on a one way mission to annoy people. There are seemingly endless tweaks being made to Facebook at present and it feels like every time I login there’s something different or something new. Now...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 November, 2010

  • In the last few weeks I’ve had two clients who have experienced criticism and/or negative comments on Twitter. They’re very different brands (one’s a high street retailer, one’s a service business) and it goes to show that any organisation can encounter a minor (or major)...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 November, 2010

  • In the last few weeks I’ve had two clients who have experienced criticism and/or negative comments on Twitter. They’re very different brands (one’s a high street retailer, one’s a service business) and it goes to show that any organisation can encounter a minor (or major)...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 November, 2010

  • Yesterday saw the first ever Big Tweet Off on Twitter, with Foursquare coming under heavy scrutiny from numerous social media pros. And after an hour of debating the pros and cons followed by a vote, the majority opinion was that Foursquare is yet to convince...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 November, 2010

  • I read a blog post last week that stated something along the lines of “show me a Twitter user who says he doesn’t care about follower numbers and I’ll show you a liar”. It struck a chord – as much as any of us harp...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 November, 2010

  • I read a blog post last week that stated something along the lines of “show me a Twitter user who says he doesn’t care about follower numbers and I’ll show you a liar”. It struck a chord – as much as any of us harp...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 November, 2010

  • Anyone who’s been around Twitter for a while will undoubtedly have encountered a live debate occurring between two, three or multiple people. The platform is a breeding ground for conversations around sensitive issues and a stage for people to voice their concerns, their feelings and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 October, 2010

  • Anyone who’s been around Twitter for a while will undoubtedly have encountered a live debate occurring between two, three or multiple people. The platform is a breeding ground for conversations around sensitive issues and a stage for people to voice their concerns, their feelings and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 October, 2010

  • Despite publishing intimate details of their life, most people view Facebook as a very personal network; as a platform for pleasure not for business. But if you’re anything like me, your Facebook friends consist of people from a cross section of your life; some personal...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 October, 2010

  • Despite publishing intimate details of their life, most people view Facebook as a very personal network; as a platform for pleasure not for business. But if you’re anything like me, your Facebook friends consist of people from a cross section of your life; some personal...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 October, 2010

  • Facebook has changed radically over the last 18 months. A minor tweak here, a minor tweak there and before long you have a platform that, though it looks much the same to the user, operates in a vastly different manner. What has changed most about...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 October, 2010

  • Facebook has changed radically over the last 18 months. A minor tweak here, a minor tweak there and before long you have a platform that, though it looks much the same to the user, operates in a vastly different manner. What has changed most about...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 October, 2010

  • Social media and television have thus far been uncomfortable bedfellows. Mr Social Web has been doing his best to encourage Miss TV into a union, but she’s always seemed to have a headache. As we’re fast coming to the time of the year when predictions...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 October, 2010

  • Prompted by an article in PRMoment that posed the question as to whether PRs with loads of Twitter followers are better at their jobs, I had an interesting conversation with Matt Anderson last week around the value of Twitter in a professional capacity. Matt asserted...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 October, 2010

  • Prompted by an article in PRMoment that posed the question as to whether PRs with loads of Twitter followers are better at their jobs, I had an interesting conversation with Matt Anderson last week around the value of Twitter in a professional capacity. Matt asserted...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 October, 2010

  • It’s the next big thing in social media, right? 2011 is going to be all about geo-location, right? Well yeah, maybe, but haven’t we been saying that for 12 months already? Wasn’t 2010 supposed to be the year when location-based networking took the social web...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 October, 2010

  • It’s the next big thing in social media, right? 2011 is going to be all about geo-location, right? Well yeah, maybe, but haven’t we been saying that for 12 months already? Wasn’t 2010 supposed to be the year when location-based networking took the social web...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 October, 2010

  • On Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural Social Collective conference in London, a social media event that was devised to bring together thoughts and insights into how the social web works and what the future holds. More than the bog standard ‘this...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 October, 2010

  • On Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural Social Collective conference in London, a social media event that was devised to bring together thoughts and insights into how the social web works and what the future holds. More than the bog standard ‘this...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 October, 2010

  • This is a guest post by Kate Spiers When you work with social media, use social technologies every day and think and act socially as a matter of course, it’s easy to forget that we’re actually in a minority of super-users right now. There’s nothing...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 October, 2010

  • With Facebook increasingly evolving into a social marketing hub for brands and organisations, the need to differentiate your page from others in order to gain that valuable click of the ‘like’ button is becoming ever-greater. And one of the best, easiest and quickest ways of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 September, 2010

  • When I announced TheSocialWeb last week, I said that I’d be challenging the status quo and asking the question ‘why’ a lot. And I’m starting off with a something that’s been on my mind for several weeks now: from a marketing perspective, why do we...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 September, 2010

  • This is a brand new incarnation of my blog with a new name, a new look and feel, and a new focus. Its previous embodiment, Tribal Boogie, was about the evolution of communications; how the way we communicate has changed over the last few years...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 September, 2010

  • The social web can be taxing. It’s an always-on, demanding, beast of a child that needs constant attention, effort and thought. It can take up evenings, weekends and, even though I don’t like to admit it, the occasional dream time. There’s no doubt that it’s...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 September, 2010

  • The social web can be taxing. It’s an always-on, demanding, beast of a child that needs constant attention, effort and thought. It can take up evenings, weekends and, even though I don’t like to admit it, the occasional dream time. There’s no doubt that it’s...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 September, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 August, 2010

  • I really want to be able to claim this piece of work as my own. That’s how much I love it. But alas, I can’t. What I can do, however, is point you towards it. Sit back for five minutes, watch, learn and be left...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 August, 2010

  • Since this time last year, geo-location has been touted by those in the know as the next big thing in social media. But while Foursquare says it receives one million check-ins per day and has 2.7 million registered users worldwide, neither it or major rival...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 August, 2010

  • At home I have not one cat, not two cats, but three cats. I’m a self-confessed cat man, which goes against the run of things when blokes are supposed to like dogs. But I’ve always preferred cats to dogs because of their character; the aloof...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 August, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 August, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 August, 2010

  • So the HOPA Dry Erase girl is a hoax. I’m sure I’m not the only one to be ever-so-slightly gutted by this. I’m sure we’ve all had a boss at some time who we’ve wanted to publicly ridicule as we tell them exactly where to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    11 August, 2010

  • Those new to Twitter tend to have unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved on the micro-blogging platform from a marketing perspective. Until they come to fully understand Twitter, some believe that it will result in hundreds or thousands of people hanging on their every...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 August, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 August, 2010

  • In my last post, I cited the case of a client that is suffering from a nasty case of ‘bullying’ on Twitter, and I asked whether the social web is a breeding ground for negativity. There is, after all, no real code of conduct when...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 August, 2010

  • I have a client at present that is coming under ‘cyber-attack’. It’s a new company that launched a consumer-facing service business only a couple of months ago and has been suffering from some scathing online reviews from bloggers and online magazines alike. The strange thing,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 August, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 July, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 July, 2010

  • Back in the 1960s, San Francisco was the hub of a libertarianism counter-culture whose ideologies included the rejection of materialism, free love and experimentation with drugs. The hippie sub-culture spawned some truly historic events, including the Summer of Love and Woodstock. And the internet.

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 July, 2010

  • Back in the 1960s, San Francisco was the hub of a libertarianism counter-culture whose ideologies included the rejection of materialism, free love and experimentation with drugs. The hippie sub-culture spawned some truly historic events, including the Summer of Love and Woodstock. And the internet.

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 July, 2010

  • Last week, global social giant Facebook passed the 500 million active member mark. That’s a lot of people. Stop and put it in context for a moment; there are now half a BILLION active Facebook profiles. There are only six billion people on the planet....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 July, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 July, 2010

  • Much is written about the evolution of marketing communications from one-way broadcasting to two-way conversation. You’d have to have lived on the moon for the last 18 months not to have encountered some discussion on this topic. But as aware of the issues surrounding this...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 July, 2010

  • Much is written about the evolution of marketing communications from one-way broadcasting to two-way conversation. You’d have to have lived on the moon for the last 18 months not to have encountered some discussion on this topic. But as aware of the issues surrounding this...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 July, 2010

  • Twitter thrives on the relationship between you and your followers. And yet many small businesses struggle to gain a following and end up abandoning their profiles due to fundamental errors in the way they manage them. This often boils down to a lack of understanding...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 July, 2010

  • Today’s probably not the best day for me to be writing a blog post. It’s greyer than an elephant’s butt outside and, after sleeping like an insomniac bat on amphetamines, I woke up at 4am thinking about clients. My year old daughter chose this morning...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 July, 2010

  • Conventional wisdom states that there are two types of followers in social media. There are those who share your content, ‘like’, retweet or comment on your posts, and interact or converse with you…and those who don’t. Or, in social media speak, those that are engaged...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 June, 2010

  • Conventional wisdom states that there are two types of followers in social media. There are those who share your content, ‘like’, retweet or comment on your posts, and interact or converse with you…and those who don’t. Or, in social media speak, those that are engaged...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 June, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 June, 2010

  • #FlockFriday: an ongoing series of weekly interviews with progressive, intelligent, knowledgeable and insightful communications professionals who want to address the issues in the industry and make a real difference to its reputation and its future. 1 topic, 6 questions, a number

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 June, 2010

  • I’ve been blogging at Tribal Boogie for about six months now. Not very long in the great scheme of things, but I’ve been pleased with that first spell and I hope you’ve found the blog both useful and interesting. The time has now come, I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 June, 2010

  • I’ve been blogging at Tribal Boogie for about six months now. Not very long in the great scheme of things, but I’ve been pleased with that first spell and I hope you’ve found the blog both useful and interesting. The time has now come, I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 June, 2010

  • Over the last 12 months I’ve become more and more personally engaged in a variety of social media channels, from Twitter to LinkedIn to Spotify. And when I say ‘personally’, what I really mean is ‘professionally’. I use social media not to post status updates...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 June, 2010

  • Over the last 12 months I’ve become more and more personally engaged in a variety of social media channels, from Twitter to LinkedIn to Spotify. And when I say ‘personally’, what I really mean is ‘professionally’. I use social media not to post status updates...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 June, 2010

  • This is the first in a series of guest posts from those who are new to the communications industry; final year undergraduates, recent graduates or those a year or two into their careers. As digital natives and being the future of our industry, I want...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 June, 2010

  • This is the first in a series of guest posts from those who are new to the communications industry; final year undergraduates, recent graduates or those a year or two into their careers. As digital natives and being the future of our industry, I want...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 June, 2010

  • The communications industry is in a state of flux. Social media is changing the way the industry operates; digital immigrant senior managers are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position where digital native account juniors have more knowledge about many of the new techniques than they...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 June, 2010

  • The communications industry is in a state of flux. Social media is changing the way the industry operates; digital immigrant senior managers are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position where digital native account juniors have more knowledge about many of the new techniques than they...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 June, 2010

  • I’ve just returned from a week’s holiday with my wife and ten month old daughter. I did my best to forget all about the social web for nine days but alas it wasn’t to be, and it was while playing a game of ‘take everything...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 June, 2010

  • A recurring theme throughout this blog since I started it about six months ago has been my worry and at times frustration with the way that the PR industry is progressing. Or not progressing, as the case may be. On more than one occasion I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 June, 2010

  • A recurring theme throughout this blog since I started it about six months ago has been my worry and at times frustration with the way that the PR industry is progressing. Or not progressing, as the case may be. On more than one occasion I...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 June, 2010

  • A year and half ago, Twitter was the big new thing in social media. Driven by heavy publicity around celebrity take up, microblogging exploded onto the social scene. Nine months ago it was geo-location’s turn to become the pin-up of digital geeks, and it has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 June, 2010

  • A year and half ago, Twitter was the big new thing in social media. Driven by heavy publicity around celebrity take up, microblogging exploded onto the social scene. Nine months ago it was geo-location’s turn to become the pin-up of digital geeks, and it has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 June, 2010

  • Whether you’re looking for a pair of shoes, advice on health or a PR agency, there is now massive choice on the web. The original concept of the internet was as a tool to empower ordinary people to gain access to knowledge and share it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 May, 2010

  • Whether you’re looking for a pair of shoes, advice on health or a PR agency, there is now massive choice on the web. The original concept of the internet was as a tool to empower ordinary people to gain access to knowledge and share it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    28 May, 2010

  • Before I start this post in earnest, let me be very clear that this is all about shameless Paul Sutton self-promotion. Fact. I want to boost my own search engine optimisation via social media channels, so I decided to write a post about one of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 May, 2010

  • Before I start this post in earnest, let me be very clear that this is all about shameless Paul Sutton self-promotion. Fact. I want to boost my own search engine optimisation via social media channels, so I decided to write a post about one of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 May, 2010

  • Facebook is under fire over privacy concerns. The fail whale seems to be making more appearances on Twitter. The entire social networking space is full of inane noise from this person who “needs a holiday” and that person who’s “just become mayor of Bill’s Cafe”....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 May, 2010

  • Facebook is under fire over privacy concerns. The fail whale seems to be making more appearances on Twitter. The entire social networking space is full of inane noise from this person who “needs a holiday” and that person who’s “just become mayor of Bill’s Cafe”....

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 May, 2010

  • If you listen very carefully you can hear a rumble. It’s a guttural noise far off in the distance that you’re probably not even aware of. Like the stampede of a hundred elephants across the savannah. But it’s there. And it’s ever-so-slowly getting closer, becoming...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 May, 2010

  • If you listen very carefully you can hear a rumble. It’s a guttural noise far off in the distance that you’re probably not even aware of. Like the stampede of a hundred elephants across the savannah. But it’s there. And it’s ever-so-slowly getting closer, becoming...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 May, 2010

  • In my last post I took a look at how the social web and the advancement of mobile technology is impacting our lives in a beneficial manner. I diarised a typical work day for myself to demonstrate just how often I use mobile applications and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 May, 2010

  • With the advent of the social web and the advancement of mobile technology, the world of work has changed beyond recognition over the last few years. Sit on a train and you’ll be surrounded by people eagerly tapping into their iPhone; take a break in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 May, 2010

  • With the advent of the social web and the advancement of mobile technology, the world of work has changed beyond recognition over the last few years. Sit on a train and you’ll be surrounded by people eagerly tapping into their iPhone; take a break in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 May, 2010

  • Last week I wrote a post that posed the question as to whether the act of following someone on Twitter becomes meaningless once you cross a threshold of following, for example, 500 people. My thought process was that you simply can’t track and interact with...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 May, 2010

  • Last week I wrote a post that posed the question as to whether the act of following someone on Twitter becomes meaningless once you cross a threshold of following, for example, 500 people. My thought process was that you simply can’t track and interact with...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 May, 2010

  • This article first appeared on the CorpComms magazine website Regardless of the result of Thursday’s vote, the 2010 General Election has been one of the most remarkable in living memory. The way that Nick Clegg has emerged from nowhere to completely transform the fortunes of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 May, 2010

  • This article first appeared on the CorpComms magazine website Regardless of the result of Thursday’s vote, the 2010 General Election has been one of the most remarkable in living memory. The way that Nick Clegg has emerged from nowhere to completely transform the fortunes of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    06 May, 2010

  • Twitter, as has been said many, many times, is all about the conversation. It’s about engagement and it’s about human relationships. Hundreds of tools have been developed to facilitate ‘the conversation’, from platforms such as Seesmic and Hootsuite to help manage followers to analytical tools...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 April, 2010

  • Following makes the world go round. At least, on Twitter it does. But as much as we talk about engaging and connecting and conversing, and as much as we repeat the mantra that ‘numbers don’t matter on Twitter’ to our clients, over the last few...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    27 April, 2010

  • On the eve of the second live TV election debate, I wrote a blog post for Uncorked, the BOTTLE PR blog, about the media’s impact on the 2010 election and about how the TV debates and digital campaigning are having an unprecedented affect on public...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 April, 2010

  • On the eve of the second live TV election debate, I wrote a blog post for Uncorked, the BOTTLE PR blog, about the media’s impact on the 2010 election and about how the TV debates and digital campaigning are having an unprecedented affect on public...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 April, 2010

  • Yesterday was a good day in social media circles. Three thought-provoking blog posts were published that challenged common-held beliefs about PR and digital media – posts that I loved reading by people who aren’t afraid to constructively question the status quo. So I figured I’d...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 April, 2010

  • Yesterday was a good day in social media circles. Three thought-provoking blog posts were published that challenged common-held beliefs about PR and digital media – posts that I loved reading by people who aren’t afraid to constructively question the status quo. So I figured I’d...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    21 April, 2010

  • This article first appeared on Willoughby PR’s blog as part of #BeMyGuest month One of the biggest objections to social media raised by the managers of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) is that it isn’t relevant to their business. This crops up time and time again whether the.

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 April, 2010

  • This article first appeared on Willoughby PR’s blog as part of #BeMyGuest month One of the biggest objections to social media raised by the managers of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) is that it isn’t relevant to their business. This crops up time and time again whether the.

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 April, 2010

  • Back on March 14th, my birthday, I deactivated my Facebook account. I’d found that over the preceding couple of months I’d been spending an increasing amount of time on the site, either via PC or my smartphone. I posted a lot of links, wrote a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 April, 2010

  • As many people who follow me on Twitter will be aware, I’ve been looking for a new role in digital media marketing over the last couple of months since I resigned from my last position early in the new year. ‘Very brave move’, said many...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 April, 2010

  • For a while now there’s been a word in the PR lexicon that has been driving me ever-so-slightly mental. It’s a word that a former boss used to the point of tedium whereby it lost any sort of impact, and it cropped up again this...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 April, 2010

  • So you’ve started reading this blog post. Why? Ask yourself that question – what drew you to want to read it? Was it the implication that you’ll learn something about social media? Are you a Labour party nut? Or are you anti-Brown? Your motivation may...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 April, 2010

  • As the whole of England awaits nervously the results of the scan on Wayne Rooney’s ankle, it has emerged that Facebook is responsible for the star striker’s injury. Following my blog post about the way the web is influencing society titled ‘Is Social Media Killing...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 April, 2010

  • This article first appeared on Kerry Gaffney’s blog as part of #BeMyGuest month Social media, mobile internet and the pervasion of the web in general is getting a bad name in some quarters. There’s a sense of unease among some parties that web 3.0, or the semantic web,

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 March, 2010

  • Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. It’s all about the sex, isn’t it? Pick up most magazines and newspapers and you’ll find a reference within the first three pages. And some titles seem to be founded on it (yes, Country Home, I’ve got your number…).  Take...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 March, 2010

  • Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. It’s all about the sex, isn’t it? Pick up most magazines and newspapers and you’ll find a reference within the first three pages. And some titles seem to be founded on it (yes, Country Home, I’ve got your number…).  Take...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 March, 2010

  • When it comes to social media in comms agencies, clients, directors and staff alike seem to be increasingly looking to the resident expert, the person in the agency who has the knowledge and makes it tick. As a result of this, the agency digital ‘guru’...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 March, 2010

  • When it comes to social media in comms agencies, clients, directors and staff alike seem to be increasingly looking to the resident expert, the person in the agency who has the knowledge and makes it tick. As a result of this, the agency digital ‘guru’...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 March, 2010

  • This article first appeared on Lucy Thorpe’s blog as part of #BeMyGuest month Stefani Germanotta’s “real skill lies in the creation of brand Gaga”. So said Lucy Thorpe of Lady Gaga on her blog recently, and never has a truer word been written. A year...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 March, 2010

  • This article first appeared on Lucy Thorpe’s blog as part of #BeMyGuest month Stefani Germanotta’s “real skill lies in the creation of brand Gaga”. So said Lucy Thorpe of Lady Gaga on her blog recently, and never has a truer word been written. A year...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 March, 2010

  • The second of my guest posts for #BeMyGuest this month comes from Kerry Gaffney, head of the digital team at PR behemoth Porter Novelli. The online privacy debate is one that is set to run and run, but here Kerry presents a unique and rather...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 March, 2010

  • The second of my guest posts for #BeMyGuest this month comes from Kerry Gaffney, head of the digital team at PR behemoth Porter Novelli. The online privacy debate is one that is set to run and run, but here Kerry presents a unique and rather...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 March, 2010

  • For anyone who missed it, Steve Earl’s blog series last week on the Generation X v Generation Y issue in PR and communications agencies was one of the most interesting, revealing and thought-provoking things I’ve come across on the web in a long time.In the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    17 March, 2010

  • With search algorithms advancing almost weekly and real-time search providing instant online updates, marketers are at least starting to understand the impact that their activities can have on both their clients and their own online reputations. Failure to manage this process can be pretty catastrop

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 March, 2010

  • With search algorithms advancing almost weekly and real-time search providing instant online updates, marketers are at least starting to understand the impact that their activities can have on both their clients and their own online reputations. Failure to manage this process can be pretty catastrop

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 March, 2010

  • I’m delighted to introduce the first of my guest posts for #BeMyGuest this month by @LucyThorpe. A BBC radio journalist, Lucy has written a great analysis of the current ‘should the web be free?’ debate – enjoy! I know a man who spends his days...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 March, 2010

  • Anyone who reads blogs or monitors news on the web will attest to the value of RSS feeds, and I’m no different. I currently monitor around 50 blogs, something that would be an impossible task were it not for RSS delivering new posts to me...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 March, 2010

  • Social media in all its forms (blogs, status updates, forums, file sharing…) is essentially media that is designed to disseminate information through social interaction. It has evolved through the basic human need for nurturing relationships and reflects a cultural shift, enabled by advances in web.

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 March, 2010

  • As in most walks of life, the simplest ideas are the best. The sorts of ideas that take little time, little effort and yet leave you scratching your head saying: “Why didn’t I think of that?” I’m fortunate enough to know someone who seems to...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 March, 2010

  • A few weeks ago I published a post on the subject of how not to manage your online reputation, citing the case of recruitment agency BD Recruitment which has spectacularly failed to do just that. The result is two of the top ten results in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 March, 2010

  • A few weeks ago I published a post on the subject of how not to manage your online reputation, citing the case of recruitment agency BD Recruitment which has spectacularly failed to do just that. The result is two of the top ten results in...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 March, 2010

  • Anyone who pays more than a passing interest in Twitter will have discovered the need for something that works better than the Twitter website itself, and will probably have tried one of the three main Twitter clients to have emerged as serious contenders. The most...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    26 February, 2010

  • Industry bible PR Week ran a story last week which stated that the majority of PR professionals don’t view the industry they work in as fundamentally honest. This shocked me. It’s one thing for people outside the industry to think that we’re all a bunch...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 February, 2010

  • From a marketing perspective, Twitter is all about metrics, right? Number of followers, retweets and brand mentions are the goals of PR and marketing companies operating Twitter accounts – they have to have something to report back to the client, after all. And taking things...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    22 February, 2010

  • Public Relations has been called PR ever since I can remember, certainly during the duration of my 14 year career. But things have changed more in the PR industry in the last 12 months than, arguably, in the previous 12 years. And this leads me...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 February, 2010

  • It’s no good. I’ve so far resisted the urge to blog about Google Buzz, choosing instead to read the deluge of posts and tweets from the big players that have inundated the web since the latest hot thing entered the digital media fray a couple...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 February, 2010

  • It’s no good. I’ve so far resisted the urge to blog about Google Buzz, choosing instead to read the deluge of posts and tweets from the big players that have inundated the web since the latest hot thing entered the digital media fray a couple...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 February, 2010

  • Is it just me, or was Google’s logo on Saturday in very bad taste? When I logged on at about 9am Saturday morning (UK time) I was, I have to say, astounded to see the illustrated logo featuring a luge athlete, given the shocking death...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    15 February, 2010

  • I had an interesting discussion this week with the MD of a very successful PR agency about the significant differences in either interest in or approach to social media from PR consultants. It was both refreshing and inspiring to speak to someone with an obviously...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    12 February, 2010

  • PR and the web are converging at an ever-increasing rate, with social media evolving into the face of online public relations. But a large part of what’s driving this convergence is search engine optimisation, or SEO – the optimisation of information that appears on the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 February, 2010

  • There’s often debate about the use of Twitter as a sales tool – whether it’s possible to glean a definitive ROI from a Twitter campaign in terms of actual sales. While Dell states that it makes $6.5million from microblogging, many brands are sceptical and most...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 February, 2010

  • It’s no secret that digital media is changing the face of the communications industry. Nor, therefore, is it a surprise that the skill set of PRs is evolving. Yes, we need to know the media, be able to pitch a story and be creative. But...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    05 February, 2010

  • I woke up this morning to the news that heavy internet usage has been linked to depression, with social media as the prime cause. Which is depressing in itself, given that my entire career revolves around the web. But can it really be true that...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 February, 2010

  • I woke up this morning to the news that heavy internet usage has been linked to depression, with social media as the prime cause. Which is depressing in itself, given that my entire career revolves around the web. But can it really be true that...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 February, 2010

  • I’m sure that most communications professionals will agree with me when I say that, despite how much benefit you know that social media and online PR can bring to a client, convincing some of them of that value can be like pulling teeth. I’ve stated...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 February, 2010

  • I recently wrote an article for the PRCA website (Public Relations Consultants Association) that talks about the rapidly increasing requirement for PR consultants to actively manage online reputations. It’s an area that any PR agency worth its salt is taking very seriously, but isn’t limited...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 January, 2010

  • I recently wrote an article for the PRCA website (Public Relations Consultants Association) that talks about the rapidly increasing requirement for PR consultants to actively manage online reputations. It’s an area that any PR agency worth its salt is taking very seriously, but isn’t limited...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 January, 2010

  • Two things have caught my eye in social media circles over the last couple of days. The first is a journalist who wrote a blog slating PR agencies and consultants. The second is boobs. Or more specifically, bras. On Tuesday, a freelance journalist called Kevin...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 January, 2010

  • Micro-blogging was undoubtedly the hot social media trend of 2009, with Twitter achieving phenomenal growth of nearly 1400% year-on-year at one point. Such was the impact of the ubiquitous Twitter that other micro-blogging platforms such as Jaiku and Tumblr hardly got a mention. So where...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    04 January, 2010

  • As the year draws to a close, every man and his dog seems to be publishing summaries of 2009 and predictions for 2010. So, though I don’t have a pooch sat by me, I thought I’d take the opportunity of my last blog post of...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 December, 2009

  • The battle between media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and search engine behemoth Google took a new twist yesterday with the announcement by the company that newspaper publishers will now be able to limit the number of free news articles people can read. Until now, Google has...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    03 December, 2009

  • It’s not exactly a secret that digital media is changing the face of marketing and PR at an incredible pace. But perhaps more surprising is the way that the two leading social media platforms are now impacting not just on our communication habits, but also...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 November, 2009

  • It’s not exactly a secret that digital media is changing the face of marketing and PR at an incredible pace. But perhaps more surprising is the way that the two leading social media platforms are now impacting not just on our communication habits, but also...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    30 November, 2009

  • In the world of mobile digital media, there’s a war going on. Usage of smartphones is predicted to rocket over the next six months as mobile social media comes more and more to the fore, and that means there’s a huge market just ripe for...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 November, 2009

  • In the world of mobile digital media, there’s a war going on. Usage of smartphones is predicted to rocket over the next six months as mobile social media comes more and more to the fore, and that means there’s a huge market just ripe for...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 November, 2009

  • There’s an almighty storm brewing between some football clubs and their supporters at present, sparked by perhaps one of the biggest PR disasters in recent sporting memory. In October, the much-maligned owner of Newcastle United FC, Mike Ashley, announced that he wanted to sell naming...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    19 November, 2009

  • Much has been made this year about the competitive rivalry between the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s X Factor. The latter is edging the ratings war at present, and Sunday’s show when Cheryl Cole made her solo debut and Whitney Houston returned to a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 October, 2009

  • Much has been made this year about the competitive rivalry between the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and ITV’s X Factor. The latter is edging the ratings war at present, and Sunday’s show when Cheryl Cole made her solo debut and Whitney Houston returned to a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 October, 2009

  • So Royal Mail workers have voted in favour of strike action in the lead up to Christmas for the second time in three years. The company says that the number of letters and parcels its core business delivers is falling by 10% each year, losing...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 October, 2009

  • So Royal Mail workers have voted in favour of strike action in the lead up to Christmas for the second time in three years. The company says that the number of letters and parcels its core business delivers is falling by 10% each year, losing...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 October, 2009

  • When a case of a council going PC mad was revealed recently, everyone from The Daily Mail to The Telegraph wanted a piece of the pudding, with blanket coverage across both print and online media. The story that prompted the reaction? Traditional suet dessert Spotted...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 September, 2009

  • When a case of a council going PC mad was revealed recently, everyone from The Daily Mail to The Telegraph wanted a piece of the pudding, with blanket coverage across both print and online media. The story that prompted the reaction? Traditional suet dessert Spotted...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    29 September, 2009

  • It may have a cult following, but 25-year-old Channel 4 show Countdown can hardly be viewed as particularly relevant to 2009. But over the last couple of days there’s been a surge of interest in the long-running quiz programme in the press. And it’s not...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 September, 2009

  • It may have a cult following, but 25-year-old Channel 4 show Countdown can hardly be viewed as particularly relevant to 2009. But over the last couple of days there’s been a surge of interest in the long-running quiz programme in the press. And it’s not...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    24 September, 2009

  • At our recent biannual company conference, I presented a rundown of some of the top creative ideas that we should aspire to. Among these were some great uses of social media, including a fantastic clip from YouTube where someone has used an Eddie Izzard skit...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    08 September, 2009

  • I’m fortunate enough not to know anyone affected by prostate or testicular cancer. But when I heard from Remington about Tacheback, visited the website and read the facts and figures from Everyman, it shocked me. Prostate cancer kills one man an hour and has overtaken...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 September, 2009

  • I’m fortunate enough not to know anyone affected by prostate or testicular cancer. But when I heard from Remington about Tacheback, visited the website and read the facts and figures from Everyman, it shocked me. Prostate cancer kills one man an hour and has overtaken...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    01 September, 2009

  • Two of the things I bang on about when it comes to marketing are creativity and memorability. It goes something like: if your PR, advertising and marketing aren’t creative, then they won’t be memorable. We applaud those companies who are prepared to be a little...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    20 August, 2009

  • Heart-breaking I know, but supermarket chain Iceland has axed Kerry Katona from fronting its advertising campaigns following allegations that she is taking class A drugs. The News of the World published photos at the weekend that showed Katona allegedly snorting cocaine, and this follows a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 August, 2009

  • Heart-breaking I know, but supermarket chain Iceland has axed Kerry Katona from fronting its advertising campaigns following allegations that she is taking class A drugs. The News of the World published photos at the weekend that showed Katona allegedly snorting cocaine, and this follows a...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 August, 2009

  • A fly-posting campaign dubbed as a ‘social experiment’ by its creators is causing mayhem in the town of Maidstone. The campaign features an image of a drugged-up, Donnie Darko-esque cartoon rabbit with no words or explanation, which has been appearing all over the walls and...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    13 August, 2009

  • Last week, something pretty big happened in the world of social media: Twitter was offline for two hours. “So what?”, you ask. “Doesn’t every website go down at some stage?” Well, generally yes. But they don’t make headline news! Within an hour of Twitter being...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    10 August, 2009

  • The news of Michael Jackson’s death three weeks ago was met with disbelief and shock the world over. Fans mourned, other artists paid tribute and the story dominated the front pages for days. And yet, as our own Kate pointed out on this blog, it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 July, 2009

  • The news of Michael Jackson’s death three weeks ago was met with disbelief and shock the world over. Fans mourned, other artists paid tribute and the story dominated the front pages for days. And yet, as our own Kate pointed out on this blog, it...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    14 July, 2009

  • Maybe it’s because it’s summer and people are getting a bit hot and bothered, but the world of news seems to have gone a little bonkers just recently. While the front pages are dominated by Michael Jackson’s death and the swine flu epidemic, and the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 July, 2009

  • Maybe it’s because it’s summer and people are getting a bit hot and bothered, but the world of news seems to have gone a little bonkers just recently. While the front pages are dominated by Michael Jackson’s death and the swine flu epidemic, and the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    09 July, 2009

  • It’s one of the most well-recognised advertising campaigns of the last decade, but the Evian babies have never really done it for me. Until now.The babies are back for a new campaign, and the latest creative is perhaps one of the most well-executed ads I’ve...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    07 July, 2009

  • It’s no secret that the UK is fast turning into a nation of fatties. Research suggests that by 2012, ironically when the Olympics arrive on our shores for the first time in 64 years, one in three UK adults will be grossly overweight. The problem...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 July, 2009

  • It’s no secret that the UK is fast turning into a nation of fatties. Research suggests that by 2012, ironically when the Olympics arrive on our shores for the first time in 64 years, one in three UK adults will be grossly overweight. The problem...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    02 July, 2009

  • Swine flu has been the big story in the media over the last couple of months. As the H1N1 virus spreads throughout the world it continues to touch more and more people’s lives, and there are grave predictions about how cases will increase in the...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    25 June, 2009

  • So, it’s that time of year again. Yesterday was the opening day of Wimbledon, Roger Federer steam-rollered his way to his normal 3-0 win and, with last year’s champion Rafael Nadal not fit, it looks like he’ll probably win his sixth title (Andy Murray permitting)...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 June, 2009

  • So, it’s that time of year again. Yesterday was the opening day of Wimbledon, Roger Federer steam-rollered his way to his normal 3-0 win and, with last year’s champion Rafael Nadal not fit, it looks like he’ll probably win his sixth title (Andy Murray permitting)...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    23 June, 2009

  • Meet Aleksandr Orlov. I absolutely love this little fella. Aleksandr is a meerkat, and is fast becoming an icon. Unless you’ve been on the moon for the last few months, you’ll probably have seen his TV advertising to try and stop the confusion between his...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    18 June, 2009

  • Even in the over-inflated world of super-rich football clubs, £80 million is a lot of cash. So when it emerged last week that Spanish giants Real Madrid were prepared to pay Manchester United such a huge sum to secure the services of one Cristiano Ronaldo,...

    Author ImagePaul Sutton
    16 June, 2009
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