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Media Matters Q2 2011
Welcome!
 Thank goodness - another Spring here, and we hope you all enjoyed the long Easter/Royal wedding break. As we have thankfully put yet another harsh winter behind us, the havoc snow caused for businesses across the country (and how Twitter and #uksnow came to the rescue), the admin headache caused by the rise in VAT to 20%, we are now prey to the continuing upward direction of petrol prices. Times are still going to be hard into 2011, but the good news is that at CBC we are celebrating our 15 years in business, and continue to forge partnerships with long-standing clients - some of whom are also celebrating milestone anniversaries this year.
By the way, we have all sorts of plans to celebrate with our friends and clients this summer for us all to look forward to...
More good news is that we were recently reassessed by Investors in People for the 3rd time, achieving a 100% success record across all the Evidence requirements and were rewarded with some outstanding feedback from our assessor...
Social Media is still of course leading the field. And at CBC we have become experts ourselves. Not only have we been investing time and resources into research and attending carefully chosen external training courses to up-skill ourselves, we have also been engaged by clients to give them Social Media Training on the likes of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and business blog etiquette. This is in addition to delivering Social Media campaigns alongside Traditional PR campaigns. In this newsletter, we would like to share some Top-Tips for using Social Media Tools with you as a taster, for those of you who are learning the ropes in this area!
Indeed, we can't remember the amount of times we excelled the virtues of Twitter in particular for us in the PR business to friends down the pub, or over dinner, generally to muted non-plussed responses, when it first came on the scene. Of course, Twitter is so much more than a promotional tool - Twitter is a like an interactive 24-hour news cycle. It's where people go to gather news, resources and discuss issues in real time, and yes it's here to stay with all the other ever expanding array of tools in Social networking scene. So, just to say, that we are here for those of you who need help in any area of Social Media, and are happy to share our knowledge and tips with you, whatever your level...
We do hope that you will enjoy reading our latest newsletter. And of course we would like to wish you all a great Spring and look forward to inviting you to celebrate with us in our anniversary year. Watch this space.
Celebrating 15 Years in the PR Business
 Chaz Brooks Communications (aka CBC) started like many small businesses do, in Chaz and Mandy's dining room, sparked by a passion for PR and Marketing and a clear strategy to make a difference to the standing of up and coming businesses wanting to break into technology markets. Those were the days of printing out Press releases, faxing approvals, inserting photographs and stuffing envelopes (the ones without the peel off adhesive). It's hard to remember exactly when that all stopped and when the Internet and email became the norm and we thankfully embraced a paper free policy and have since gone on to formulate policies on recycling and minimising waste.
15 years in the business has meant 15 years of building and nurturing relationships with the Media across a wide range of industry sectors; priceless contacts we use for the benefit of our clients. So, although many magazines may have been and gone, and a lot of them moved to digital formats or online only (e.g. Computer Weekly now moving to online only after 45 years of print!), the business blogs and other online resources that have sprung up more than make up for it.
Now, the Social Media phenomenon has opened its floodgates, with millions of messages of all sorts all vying for the attention of millions of potential users. However, we know that the concepts that were true yesterday in PR are still valid today - the key is building trust and transparency about you and your products/services in the eyes of your users (both customers, potential customers and media), building networks and bridges so as to reach these audiences and delivering relevant professionally written news, viewpoints and messages to your readers in an appropriate manner. Whether your communication lines are set up with face to face, VOIP (i.e. Skype), SMS, Email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter or even smoke signals, and despatch riders in mind, the choice is yours as long as your customer does the same and you agree how/ where to meet...
15 years on and the passion for our profession remains stronger than ever... and we are proud to be celebrating the fact that we have supported all manner of clients over these years across diverse business sectors, and through different economic climates to reach their aims. What delights us is that a large number of our clients, in fact 1/3 of them have been with us for 7 years or more - pretty impressive even if we do say so ourselves!
So here's to the next 15 years!
Investors in People reassessment success news -
a beacon of good practice
 "Chazbrooks is an organisation that truly cares for its people. Significant efforts are put in to develop people to their full potential. The commitment to meeting people's work-life balance needs is truly impressive. Not surprisingly many employees have worked for Chazbrooks for a long time...Chazbrooks has a work-life balance culture that is a beacon of good practice"
2011 Assessor Report...
Three years have flown since our reassessment in 2008, and it was suddenly time to invite our assessor to come back in and review our Business for Investors in People (IiP) by March 2011.
IiP is very much so part of our daily business, and we always really look forward to this exercise. Firstly as Jim, our assessor, is such a nice chap, and secondly that it's a wonderful opportunity to see as a business how far we have come on; and how committed we are to supporting each other to reach our training and development targets, in itself is a motivating exercise.
We have sung the praises of IiP over the years and also indeed helped clients of ours with their accreditation processes, and we were thrilled again to have achieved a 100% mark. As well as continuing to meet all the requirements of the Investors in People (IiP) standard, we were commended again for our culture of sharing and involving our staff in all aspects of business planning, training needs and our impressive work/life balance policy. On hearing the news, it was with great pleasure that we promptly went out the next day and celebrated in the excellent Guildford Thai restaurant, Sir and Madam. (But don't just take our word for it, Tripadvisor ranks it #2 out of 68 restaurants listed in #Guildford)
This year we were particularly chuffed to hear how many areas of best practice we have achieved and the extent to which we are exceptional in our business planning processes and training; areas benchmarked were...
- The involvement of people in all areas of the business, notably the development of the business plan and brainstorming of ideas.
- The strong links developed between training and development and targets in the business plan.
- The efforts made to ensure knowledge and information is shared.
- Asking people to coach others on lessons learned from external training events.
- The carefully thought out and deployed induction process.
- Work-life balance. Much has been said about this is previous reports. Other organisations could learn from Chazbrooks on the business and people benefits of effectively deploying work-life balance principles. Chazbrooks has a work-life balance culture that is a beacon of good practice. Everyone in the organisation understands the benefits to people and the business of deploying work-life balance strategies.
- The openness of managers to feedback offered from employees.
- Chazbrooks ensures that managers receive feedback against the defined people management capabilities. This is considered to be best practice.
- People's achievements being recognised in front of others. This is a really strong way of raising people's motivation levels even further.
Investors in People is an effective tool and a National Benchmark for Best Practice that has improved our business performance thorough the development our people, which has in turn put us in the driving seat when delivering business performance to our clients. We would be happy to provide any further details or help to any of you who are considering an internal communications campaign or using IiP as a planning and measurement tool for your business.
CBC Client News...
CBC is delighted to have strengthened links with Communications partners across the globe in order to meet the demands of clients wishing to impact the UK, Europe arenas and beyond. See our International Pages for details.
Two of our long standing clients are also celebrating big anniversaries this year.
 Consult Hyperion, the Guildford-based independent consultancy that specialises in the field of secure transactions in contactless smart cards and mobile devices, is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
Founded in 1986 by Neil McEvoy, Stuart Fiske and Dave Birch, the company's other executive director, Gloria Benson, joined soon afterwards. At first the company was based in Neil McEvoy's dining room, but in 1987 moved to the Surrey Research Park in Guildford. It is now in its own premises in a fantastic building at The Mount, in central Guildford.
Its first project was a joint venture that involved the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange, to automate the settlement of trades in gilts (British Government bonds). Later, the company specified and procured a series of secure networks in the City that protect over one trillion pounds of transactions every business day.
Consult Hyperion deploys this same expertise to enable millions of secure transactions every day, from worldwide credit and debit card payments, through millions of bus and tube journeys taken by London's Oyster Card users, to the hugely successful mobile phone-based money transfer service in Kenya.
In addition, the Surrey Research Park is also celebrating 25 years.
Dr Malcolm Parry says "It's hard to believe that it has been 25 years since the senior management at the University of Surrey first made the visionary decision to develop The Surrey Research Park. It is impossible to measure how many technological breakthroughs, innovative designs and groundbreaking research studies have been formed as a result of this decision, and as a result of the ongoing support of the University's management since then."
From the moment that The Surrey Research Park accepted its first commercial tenants, one of the key drivers behind the foundation of the Park was to create wealth: for the companies on the Park, of course, but also for the University and support local economy too, providing 1000's of jobs. Now, 25 years later, there is no doubt that this objective has been met, and that The Surrey Research Park has been transformed into a 'brand' that is highly regarded by investors, academics and the entire commercial sector.
We are delighted to have been involved in working for these two outstanding Guildford companies for many years now and wish them both all the best for the next 25 years!
Industry News...
Are your websites and social networking sites ready for the ASA regulations?
Today sees the Advertising Standards Agency's (ASA) remit extended to cover web sites and social media.
The changes are intended to plug the regulatory grey area between a company's efforts to proactively promote its products or services via editorial and paid-for advertising.
The ASA regulates advertising across all forms of media from TV to the internet and from sales promotion to marketing. Its role is to protect consumers and ensure that marketing communication materials under its remit are "legal, decent and honest", in line with its Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP).
The ASA's new remit is broad. It covers marketing communication on a company's own web site and in other non-paid-for space as blogs, communities or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Read the full article here
PR Clinic - Spotlight on Social Media etiquette -
Some initial Dos and Don'ts
DO
 Build Your Community. Try to involve people in a conversation. Search for brand related keywords and send personalized messages.- Freshen up your profiles. Try to update your profile on a regular basis to keep it fresh and add pics and videos as they can say more than 1000 words.
- Make it interesting. Don't just publish one product release after the other. Try to engage and make your post interesting by asking people's opinions and getting them to interact.
- Integrate Social Media across your communications. Ensure branding and consistency across all communication platforms.
DON'T
- Use offensive or inappropriate language. If you are not sure, think how you would feel if the whole world read your text- if you are ok with it and you are sure nobody will feel insulted, it's ok.
- Become irresponsive. A regular flow of information should be ensured.
- Forget your ethics or etiquette. Many people are doing things on the Internet they would never even consider doing in the real world - before every action, check that is actually what you would do in traditional offline PR.
- Pretend to be somebody you are not. To keep your online personality authentic you have to stay human and be yourself as you can't pretend all the time, but make sure your post will still fit with your brand/client even in a couple of weeks.
We hope that you have found our newsletter to be of interest. Of course, do not hesitate to contact us on 01483 537890 with any questions or for any assistance you may need. You can also email me at chazb@chazb.com
In the meantime, we wish you all the best for 2011.
With kind regards,
Chaz Brooks
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For further information:
Chaz Brooks
NEW Address!
4 Eastgate Court, High Street, Guildford, Surrey
GU1 3DE, UK
T: +44 (0) 1483 537890
E: chazb@chazb.com
Free PR advice - access our PRêt à Porter Help SheetsChazbrooks offers a range of free specialised PR Help Sheets that aim to help companies who choose to do their own PR in-house.
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