Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Blake Barbera has a good entry on his blog about knowing how to use Outlook properly and I followed it up with this post (Please check out Blake’s post on hyperlinking pitches as well - another gem). An article in this month’s Consumer Choice magazine got me thinking that knowing how to use search […]

I’m after subscribing to the RSS feed on Planet of the Blogs and I followed the feed to An t-Imeall, an Irish language blog. I happened to catch the Irish translation for blog in the top right hand corner of the page and it just rammed home all that’s wrong with the Irish language […]

I was browsing through a few Irish blogs the other day and came across the Sigla magazine blog. I thought it was quite interesting and signed up to the blog and their newsletter. The latest entry on the blog really caught my attention. It seems rather strange that the two articles pitched […]

There’s been lots of posts on the Net about why you should pursue a career in PR. Well here’s a reason why you shouldn’t - everybody gets their grubby paws on your mobile number. You might as well scrawl it on the toilets in every pub in the land and tell people to […]

So here I am thinking that Ireland is so far behind the times when it comes to Social Media and now I discover the following blogging:
Adrian Weckler
Rick O’Shea
Clare, Jonathon and Liam from Spin 103.8
Must do some more cyberstalking

Blogging is starting to become something of a buzzword in the Irish media these days. There was a big feature on it in the Sunday Business Post, then two articles in two days in the Irish Times (Friday & Saturday) and a couple of articles in today’s Icon supplement in the Sunday Business […]

It started when I went to the Today FM website…or what I thought was their site. I typed www.todayfm.ie into the address bar and got the ‘Failed to open page’ from Safari. I double checked my media guide and saw that it was meant to be todayfm.com.
Slightly shortsighted I thought and prepared […]

I was surprised to see the Sunday Tribune has had a bit of a facelift this week with a new layout for the paper. I’m not too keen on it - the business section is hidden in the property pages and Ross O’Carroll Kelly has been relegated to the second section.
The big winner though […]

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I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this over the last twenty four hours, but it sure isn’t helping the throbbing vein in my forehead!

According to RTE €8 million worth of tourist bookings were made in the first half of 2005, an increase of 30% on last year. It’s no surprise really considering the bargains that can be found, especially since Aer Lingus have vastly improved their online offering.
Everybody has had a family member, friend or acquaintance tell […]

You can listen to RTE online with Real Player. Real Player!? Thanks, but no thanks. Today was the one time when I actually wanted to listen to RTE and because they don’t have the common decency to use Windows Media player, I couldn’t be bothered. Anything the BBC can do, RTE […]

There’s been a bit of talk recently about the merits of podcasting, especially after the addition of a podcast directory to iTunes 4.9 resulting in one million downloads in two days. Some people are dampening the hype because they either can’t see what the fuss is about or reckon that the benefits are far […]

Conference calls are the thing I’ve found the hardest to get used to since I’ve started working in PR. Not being able to see the other person’s face means that it’s often hard to interrupt due to the lack of a visual interface.
Every conference call should have a leader, an agenda should be arranged […]

We live in crazy mixed up world. The terrorist attack in London is a horrible example, but it does show the impact the Internet has made on our lives. Here’s some samples:
The BBC reports an Internet chatroom keeps London’s financial markets open.
The BBC reports on how blogs responded to the attacks, according […]

Here I am singing the BBC’s praises once again. This time it’s because of their iCan website which has just been relaunched as Action Network.
Social media is all about empowering individuals and connecting people to form communities. It’s great to see the BBC do this on top of becoming more transparent in their […]

The BBC reports on the findings of research by the Hansard Society which showed that online activity doubled for the last UK general election since the 2001 polls. However, only 15% of the voting population went online for advice.
At first glance that sounds bad, but one of the report’s findings was ‘the Internet […]

After all that waiting the PRCA award winners were unveiled. There wasn’t much hullahballoh about it, I’m just glad to finally see the list. So much for the era of instant communication!

Every PR practitioner in Ireland should be subscribing to these:
The Irish Times
RTE
Breaking News

If there’s a growing trend these days, it’s to stick a .ie at the end of a popular domain and get some coverage out of it. Ebay got plenty of press for it and it’s no surprise that the Irish Times reports (subscription required) today that Microsoft has unveiled a search engine for Irish […]

Media Culpa has a good entry on how journalists’ blogs are trumping their regular articles on Google. The post argues that blogging will strengthen the journalist’s reputation beyond the medium that hires them.
To put this in an Irish context, I was compiling a media list recently and googled a couple of journalists to learn […]

The Irish Times reports (subscription required) that TG4 is going to broadcast in Northern Ireland. While some members of the Northern community might be tuning out, the majority stand to benefit from TG4’s strategy of offering cult programming. The Tour de France will be the most notable coverage at the moment that Northern […]

Michael Pollock reports that iTunes has made a huge difference to his podcast subscription rate. He’s got a listing of download rates in the entry and the stats are pretty impressive.
What I was wondering was what will happen when mobile phone manufacturers start offering functionality along the same lines of the iPod. iTunes […]

Viral marketing is on everyone’s lips these days. God knows how many funny clips, crazy ads and all types of other garbage I’ve watched over the last couples of years.
If you want to get your brand embedded in the world of online viral marketing then look no further than taking up a sponsorship with […]

Podcasting has gone completely mainstream as Apple announce that iTunes users subscribe to one million podcasts. There’s been numerous examples of some excellent podcasts this week that I meant to mention, but seeing as work was choc-a-bloc here’s a couple of links instead:
Purina starts podcasting about pet topics. What a great idea! […]

If any media organisation have excelled themselves in the digital age, BBC win hands down in my opinion. Today they posted the editorial guidelines (Word document) for their financial journalists on their website (guidelines page). In an age where people harp on about transparency, this is another step in the right direction.