Facttactic

Corporate and technical writers

PR tools

twitter – world famous in NZ

I have been a bit doubtful of Twitter as a viable business tool in NZ for the simple reason that the number of New Zealanders using it has, in my experience, not been large. More than 90 percent of the people choosing to follow my tweets are in the United States. Not useful when you are a firm that sources its business domestically.

But new figures show that my concerns may be misplaced: the percentage of Kiwis using Twitter apparently outstrips the percentage of Americans doing so. Even though the total numbers may not be huge yet,  market research company Perceptive says 6 percent of New Zealanders regularly tweet, compared with 5 percent of the US population.

So I’ll keep the Twitter experiment going, and as Kiwi Twitter numbers grow, see if I can encourage more Kiwis onboard.

honesty is the best PR policy, honestly

I often get asked, “how would you spin that?” Both by clients wanting advice and people simply having a conversation when they find out what I do for a living.

But, rather than being a spin doctor, any good PR person knows that the best results for clients lie in helping people to more clearly and transparently understand a client’s business. Knowledge = power, for everyone.  Spin simply confuses and obscures.

Below is a doctor of another kind, who definitely understands that honesty is the best marketing/PR policy. His marketing of his ‘Heart Attack Grill’ leaves no sacred cow – food-wise – untouched and he is pulling in the customers because of it.

You may find cynical the grill’s apparent mocking of obesity health issues, but it is simply a burger joint that makes no attempt to pass off its regular burger joint food as other than what it is … and, yes, warning: high-fat content!

Pay-per-view internet – a move out of step with the times?

Continuing our look at plans for pay-perview internet: New Zealand had its own version of a pay-per-view internet with the NZ Herald’s premium service a couple of years back.

It reached the level of silliness where even freelance columnists who wrote for the paper were not able to access their own work online unless they paid to see it. That premium service quickly died a death and the site is now totally open again.

But does the idea have legs: a global survey finds readers unlikely to pay for general news they can get elsewhere for free, and local columnist Bernard Hickey thinks not.

And, if you missed our earlier posts, we highlighted free tools for online media releases and PR announcements and discussed whether pay-per-view websites would hinder PR?

free tools for media release PR announcements

For many years New Zealand news website Scoop has provided a free service for anyone to post media releases online, now the National Business Review has started offering a similar service – the Horse’s Mouth – for corporate and political party releases.

The good thing about both services is that the media releases go online unedited letting your message reach the world as you intended it to. Both sites also have good search engine visibility, so your media release gets a good headstart for people searching online.

NBR publisher Barry Colman said the move would allow a free flow of information  from which readers could draw their own conclusions. “Some of these releases would otherwise head straight for the can in a newsroom, or be edited down,” he said.

After my earlier post this week about News Corporation deciding to restrict access to their news websites unless people pay to view them, it’s great to see initiatives in New Zealand that are promoting greater freedom of online information.

twitter – secure your spot in the goldrush

Should your business embrace Twitter and start tweeting? Not always!

It can offer good promotional and marketing opportuntities, but to be effective, you’ll need to set clear guidelines for how to use it. If your business has a PR team, you should be looking into using it. If you’re a small business without resources to do it well, give it a miss, no big deal. This story explains why and what not to do.

But, even if you do not intend using Twitter, you should definitely register Twitter accounts for your brands to stop other people using them for their own purposes. This is becoming a major problem on the Twitter service where anyone can register any name or brand word. Tons of firms are finding their names used in bogus Twitter accounts.

Registering on Twitter is free, quick and easy to do — and I would suggest you get in quick and register your important brand names before some one else does.

eskimo lollies leave them cold

It’s been interesting to read the media furore today over New Zealanders getting antsy with Canadians getting antsy with New Zealanders eating sweets called Eskimos, which are shaped as, well, Eskimos – er, make that Inuits.

Last year Kiwis ate nearly 19 million of them, making the Eskimo one of our most-loved lollies. Some Canadians have called the sweets offensive, saying Eskimo is no longer used as a term and, regardless, eating sweets shaped as Inuits is just not on and carries hints of cannabilism.

NZers have voiced their opinions in the hundreds on web and news sites, largely telling the Canadians to bog off. Email discussions at the client where I have been working this week were busy with with similar sentiment.

Pascalls, the makers of the Eskimo, has been reported saying they don’t plan to change anything.

Makes you wonder, though, what would happen if Canadians started eating lollies shaped as a person in a grass skirt called a Hori.