This week Mashable reviewed a new mobile app that enables you to create and send real postcards direct from your mobile phone. Postcard on the Run is a free app. When you launch it it gives you the option to create a postcard from existing photos in your phone’s photo library, to take a new [...]
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Postcard on the run – useful for engaging after events?
Posted on September 11, 2011 by tracyplayle in UncategorizedIntroducing Tracy’s Friday Favorites: Wordle
Posted on September 9, 2011 by tracyplayle in Friday FavoritesOne of the most popular conference presentations that I’ve ever given in terms of the audience reaction at the end of the session was a session entitled ‘A toybox of tools to enhance your online communications’. It was an indulgent session that threw strategy out of the window for a while and just looked at [...]
Do you have a social media problem or an organisational problem?
Posted on September 9, 2011 by tracyplayle in UncategorizedWhy is it that when someone says something negative about our organisation online we think we have a social media problem or a social media crisis? And yet if someone says something positive about us we pat ourselves on the back and remind ourselves what a great organisation we are. The action is the same, [...]
Reflections on being a ‘consultant’ (aka what exactly do I do?)
Posted on September 7, 2011 by tracyplayle in HE Comms, Pickle Jar Communications' Projects, PR PracticeI wasn’t always a ‘consultant’. And even to this day it’s a word that sits uneasy with me. At last week’s CASE Europe Annual Conference I found myself sat in the main opening session next to a young lady who had never met or heard of me before. And the usual opening question came fast: [...]
Can universities get in on the group-purchasing act?
Posted on September 7, 2011 by tracyplayle in UncategorizedFor a while now I’ve been flippantly pondering whether the group purchasing phenomenon led by GroupOn and the like could make its way into the education world as a means of attracting students. Not so much prompted by GroupOn, but inspired by a session I attended at SXSW that looked at trends in the use [...]
No place for content errors. They’ll haunt you.
Posted on September 6, 2011 by tracyplayle in UncategorizedI was sitting in a pub enjoying a few drinks with my fella on Saturday afternoon. We’re both a tad geeky, so we’re sat there with our iPads scrolling various things, catching up on what delights Twitter has to share, laughing out loud as we scroll through awkwardfamilyphotos.com … as you do… Then he waves [...]
Getting senior management to understand and support social media activities
Posted on September 1, 2011 by tracyplayle in social mediaThis week I delivered a session at the CASE Europe Annual conference. With a different workshop title advertised on the website from that printed and promised to delegates in the programme, I ended up squeezing two themes into one hour-long session, but I think I may have got away with it (feedback suggests I did), [...]
Taking another look at online tools used for education PR
Posted on August 12, 2011 by tracyplayle in UncategorizedA couple of years back I conducted a study for the CIPR Education and Skills sector group on the use of online tools for education PR. You can view the report here (pdf). I’m now re-running the survey element of that study to see how the sector has moved on in the past two years. [...]
Should you RT every positive comment about your organisation?
Posted on August 5, 2011 by tracyplayle in Monitoring, social media, Student Marketing, Student Recruitment, TwitterNO! Please stop it! Okay, I should expand on that a little I guess. Here’s the thing… for months now I’ve been noticing a growing trend of some university and college ‘corporate’ Twitter accounts (ugh!) retweeting positive comments that people say about them. This can be anything from someone enjoying an open day to a [...]
How can a university best use social media for internal communications?
Posted on June 1, 2011 by tracyplayle in UncategorizedPlease do shoot me down for self-ego massaging with this, but The Guardian have this morning published my blog post about using social media strategically for internal communications. I’m not going to re-publish the whole thing here as out of courtesy to the nice folk at The Guardian, it would be great for you to [...]