honey communications blog

Futuresonic

There's no doubt that Manchester has come a long way in the last 50 years.  From post industrial run-of-the mill northern city, to a hugely influential, creative melting pot.  Everyone knows about the city's impressive musical heritage but more recently, events like the Manchester International Festival are helping to contribute to its growing sophistication.  A particularly interesting event is Futuresonic which bills itself as"5 days and nights of live music, art premieres, exhibitions, club nights and events".  Mixing digital culture with art and music, if you're over that way we reckon it's worth a look.

Man Cold...

The old ones are always the best.  Well it made us smile....

glumbert - The Man Cold

Social media - is it really making an impact on consumers?

While blogs, forums and social networks are becoming better known and understood by the business community there is still a sense from some business owners of, "well it's all very interesting but it's not really of value is it, I mean only a handful of the general population actually particpate".  In our opinion that's a very short sighted viewpoint and one that will ultimately stop your business from growing.  This post from online PR expert Kami Huyse explains perfectly why you don't have to actively take part in blogs or forums to be influenced by them.

Are the media fuelling the panic?

It's an age old question - in a situation like the one we are currently facing in relation to the strike at Grangemouth and the potential for petrol shortages, are the media partly responsible for whipping the general public into a frenzy of panic buying.  Is it just human nature that as soon as someone says "don't panic" we automatically panic! And does coverage like this fan the flames of that panic?  Of course the flip side of the argument is that it is a legitimate news story and should therefore be covered iby the media.  The BBC's  Editors blog has an interesting discussion of this very issue.

RSS awareness day, spread the word

RSS isn't that new in the web world but recently I was surprised to hear how few people use it (either to share content or consume it).  At its most simplest RSS is great for subscribing to favourite news sites or blogs but for PR/marketing professionals tools like NewsGator's FeedDemon should be obligatory since they can make the whole job of monitoring new content about clients or specific industry sectors much easier (of course there are lots of software that will help you aggregate RSS feeds, I only mention that one because it's a personal favourite) but interestingly, recent research suggests that only 5.4% of web users are using RSS applications.   Consequently Daily Blog Tips has come up with the idea of designating May  1st as  RSS awareness day.  We'll certainly be uploading their badge once it's available.

If you've never tried subscribing to a an RSS feed give it a go and we guarantee you'll see the benefits.

Trunk Monkey

One of the funniest advertising videos ever seen - Trunk Monkey - however, always hard to remember the name of the company.  Who says advertising always works?

Flickr to find great images you can use for free

The formidable Seth Godin has once again highlighted something really useful.  Namely how, if you have a presentation, brochure etc to produce and you need to find great free images, you can use the advanced search option on Flickr.  He explains all here. 

If you're new to blogs about marketing (or blogs in general), Seth's (which is the most popular marketing blog in the world) is a great one to start with.

Email marketing - its effectiveness

Questions are being asked about email marketing, how best to do it and when, and how it affects your web marketing as a whole.  As a result Blueleaf have written a report which answers many of these questions. 

Great Tips

We think the following "White Papers" from Daryl Wilcox Publishing are great.  Have a look, they cover the following categories;

- Getting mentioned in feature articles
- How to charm commissioning editors
- Doing tech PR in the UK
- Responding to email enquiries from journalists
- Getting results with press releases
- Public relations versus search marketing
- Press release writing and distribution
- Working with freelance journalists - a guide for PRs

How aware are you?

This is one of the best videos we've seen in a long time.  It's a fantastic example of how easy it can be to miss something that's right in front of your nose.