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In light of the economy, a lot of companies whether they be in digital marketing, web development, public relations or social media, pitch a wide range of services in order to secure clients. The only problem is, the range of services they offer, they can’t actually do all of them. Web developers are offering social media services and PR companies are offering SEO services, but are the clients actually getting burned?

One of the big questions in the public relations industry is whether companies should bring everything in-house or should they pick a specialty and stick to it. And how do consultancies that choose to specialise compete with one-stop-overpromising shops?

There is no doubt that the disciplines mentioned above overlap, but when you specialise you can offer your client a far better service than those that offer everything. I do understand, however, that very large companies that have the budget can offer all services with a dedicated team for each. The worry is that smaller companies competing for a piece of the pie offer ‘expert’ services and don’t have the resources.  For example, when PR agencies tout their social media expertise when in all actuality, it’s only one recent grad at a corner desk.

Companies should acknowledge their weaknesses in order to best service their client. We can execute an effective social media strategy and that overlaps into some SEO, but not all of it. By understanding the space the client is in, we learn what their audience wants. Using that information, ourselves with the client, can produce rich and relevant content aka organic SEO. But, I am quick to admit that there is lots of SEO that isn’t our specialty.

Which leads me to this—while it might be great for the short term to offer clients everything under the sun, eventually it will catch up to those companies who do. While companies continue to overpromise and win the pitches, their clients consistently get the short end of the stick. Clients will eventually realise that they aren’t getting their money’s worth and it’s client retention that proves worth.

All of us in the overlapping industries need to learn from each other and also accept when we’ve reached our boundaries. And when we do reach our boundaries, we need to be ethical enough to tell our client ‘that ain’t our bag’. By bringing  in specialists with skills we don’t have in-house, we can service our clients to a much higher standard.

This month has been a particularly successful one for the team at Wolfstar, as we have been nominated for three awards at two top awards ceremonies.

Firstly, our work with First Direct, the UK’s first social bank, has been recognised by the prestigious Communicate Digital Impact Awards, a new programme of awards which highlights excellence in digital stakeholder communications, with a nomination for the ‘Best Online Newsroom’. We’ve also got everything crossed for a double win at these awards as we have also been shortlisted the ‘Best Multimedia Press Release’ for our Jalou campaign with Sony Ericsson.

The CorpComms Digi Awards celebrates successful work in online and digital media and we’ve been shortlisted for ‘Best Social Media Press Release’ for our work with First Direct.

Stuart Bruce, MD of Wolfstar says, “We are very proud of our awards nominations and they come after a lot of hard work and effort from all members of the team with our clients.

The other agencies and in-house teams that have been nominated have also produced some fantastic work and we wish everyone the best of luck!”

Last night was the first ever Mashable meetup in Leeds; the event took place in the upstairs section of the swanky Living Room on Greek Street.

The format of the evening gave people the chance to rant, rave or both for 60 seconds on something to do with social media in Leeds and then the rest of the group would vote for the person they wanted to hear more of by clapping.

The speeches ranged from what people were doing in social media to business, event and blog plugging and even a recruitment drive!

The ‘clapo-meter’; controlled by Stuart Bruce decided on a tie between Karyn Fleeting of Tinderbox Media, and our very own Sam Oakley. Karyn talked on the upcoming Think Visibility conference taking place in Leeds in September and Sam spoke on the separation of human behaviour and how social media was fundamentally about people.

The speeches went on to provoke further discussion, and we sat around thrashing out debate on public relations and social media education (the failings of academia), the integration and separation of different marketing disciplines, the future of social media and how the Leeds social media scene could grow.

For someone fairly new to the industry, this was my first networking event and I think regular meetings just like last nights will not only help to add gravitas to the Leeds social media scene, but will also benefit us individually through sharing and collaborating with each other.

I think the event was a success and hope we can all do it again soon…maybe next time I’ll even pluck up the courage to speak!

Recently I hooked up with Trushar Barot, senior broadcast journalist within the BBC’s user generated content hub. I previously posted about the role he was playing in trying to utilise social media to enhance the BBC’s election coverage.

We met up for coffee and chatted about what worked during the campaign. The most interesting development was the way the Beeb took RSS feeds into a feedreader from a multitude of political blogs. Two social media producers were then tasked to monitor for any angles, new stories or new facts on existing stories that were emerging from the likes of Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Political Scrapbook as well as the blogs of leading journalists such as Paul Waugh or Andrew Sparrow.

The team would discuss the nuggets that were emerging here and would then apply proper journalistic rigour; ringing sources, researching and fact-checking; and establish which of these would stand up before circulating the information throughout the network so that all TV, radio and online news teams can incorporate them into their output. This is mainstream media using the blogosphere to update the way it sources stories in a much more efficient manner. It also means that Nick Robinson, Andrew Neill, David Dimbleby et al or using stories taken straight from the blogosphere, directly or indirectly, creating a direct relationship between blogger and headline news.

This is a system the BBC is considering extending to other areas e.g. business, the environment and has direct implications for PR. It genuinely doesn’t matter about the audience size of the bogs in your sector if they’re being used as sources for those mainstream media outlets that you know you care deeply about. Even if you don’t get involved you at least need to listen.

Other interesting stuff:

- Tweets were being used as direct quotes from some of the leading players in the campaign, including David Dimbleby reading out immediate reactions from the likes of Alistair Campbell, Peter Mandelson et al, taken direct from Twitter. They weren’t quoted as being ‘from Twitter’ but it demonstrates the extent to which this has become formalised as a news source.

- I’ve posted before about journalists increasingly using forums as a way of taking the temperature on issues. The BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ function became their own in-house temperature gauge. Many of the issues raised either fed into the priority being given to particular issues in news agendas, or led to hyper-local stories that were circulated to the appropriate point in the network. It also provided a space where the BBC could allow its audience to engage with issues that weren’t getting much coverage in the campaign, such as immigration.

- In addition, the leaders’ debates were thrown open to viewers through a promotion on the election homepage asking viewers for their questions. Over 10,000 questions were received and were piped directly into the top table that plotted out the format for the BBC’s debate one week before polling day.

The cost of being first is higher than it's ever been... It's entirely possible that you're racing. Racing to the market with a new product or a news story or a decision or an innovation. The race keeps getting faster,... Seth Godin

The cost of being first is higher than it's ever been...

It's entirely possible that you're racing.

Racing to the market with a new product or a news story or a decision or an innovation. The race keeps getting faster, doesn't it?

If you're racing, you better figure out what to do about the times that you don't know for sure...because more and more of your inputs are going to be tenuous, speculative and possibly wrong. Day traders have always understood this--all they do is trade on uncertainty. But you, too, if you're racing, are going to have to make decisions on less than perfect information.

Given that fact, what are you going to do about it? I think it's worth a few cycles of your time.

Is it smart to blog on a rumor?

Worth dropping everything and panicking because of a news alert?

Should you hire someone based on information you're not sure of?

What about changing your website (your pricing, your layout...) based on analytics that might not be absolutely correct? How long are you willing to wait?

Given that you will never know everything for sure (unless you're opting out of the race), some of the issues are:

• What's the cost of waiting one more day?
• Are you waiting (or not waiting) because of the cost of being wrong, or because loud people are yelling at you?
• Is the risk of being wrong unreasonably amplified by part of the market or your team? What if you ignore them and focus on customers that matter?
• And have you thought about the costs of waiting too long? If you don't, you'll probably end up last.

Have you noticed how often stock analysts quoted in the news are wrong? Wrong about new products, wrong about management decisions, wrong about the future of a company? In fact, they're almost always first and almost always wrong.

Rule of thumb: being first helps in the short run. Being a little more right than the masses ultimately pays off in the long run. Being last is the worst of all three.

A few people care a lot about scoops. Most of us, though, care about alert people making insightful decisions. Decide who you're trying to please, then ship.

Lucia has been one of the key players in helping The Times think about its digital offering with the advent of the paywall. She works closely with journalists to build relationships with readers and create digital content which ultimately readers are prepared to pay for.

How would you describe your current role?

The main impact has been a re-think in how we serve our audience. Previously we had millions of readers but they were entering and leaving again through a revolving door and this wasn’t really sustainable.

The new Times site has given us an opportunity to focus on our core readers – this allows us to form a greater connection with them and means that we can focus on delivering the world class journalism The Times is known for. As a news provider, if your main aim is to attract higher and higher ‘traffic’, you end up having to create content that attracts search traffic. Chasing those stories didn’t feel like a good fit with what our core audience wants and values of our brand.

We’ve also been really clear that there are certain things we are known for and we need to be digging much deeper into how we offer added values in those areas. This includes business, sport, arts and culture, fashion, food and travel, property, personal finance and science.

How did you dig deeper into what your customers wanted?

We’ve been working with focus groups, and one of the big advantages of being a paid for site is that you have much greater possibilities to better serve readers: for instance we’re able to look much more closely at our own analytics and decide what kinds of content our readers are gravitating around. But there are several new initiatives we have introduced.

The Times+ Advisory Board is an online discussion group, made up a cross-section of readers who give us regular feedback on stories and the service we provide. The panel is very active and we’re recruiting new readers all the time.

We have also introduced a 24 hour customer service facility that enables readers to raise issues, live, at any time of day. This may be a technical or usability issue, which the help team can remedy directly or, if it relates to news coverage, it is passed to the relevant journalist who will respond directly.

These initiatives have worked well and readers seem to value the ability to shape our offering and also get access to the decision makers in the organisation.

What kind of innovations are you introducing in terms of content?

We look at ways of extending print stories online, where we can offer greater depth and to connect to our audience. We want to help readers get more from The Times and its journalists and guide them to content that is relevant to them. We’re always looking for ways to encourage debate and connect readers to journalists via live debate and Q&As and through encouraging feedback. A great example was an op-ed from Antonia Senior on the abortion issue. It generated a huge response from our readership and we were able to direct people to a follow-up video with Antonia sat in The Times post room answering those comments and letters direct to camera.

We’ve done a lot of work thinking about how we can take readers deeper into stories via galleries, video and high-quality info-graphics (Jonathan Richards and Julian Burgess are doing some really interesting work in this area – such as around the World Cup and general election).

OK, now for the big question, how can PR and comms people respond better in this new environment?

The main thing is to imagine how you might turn a traditional pitch into one that is 3-D or truly multi-faceted. Think of ways that you can use the full interactive wonder of the web to open up new possibilities to tell the story – can you make an expert or spokesperson available for a live chat or to do a video clip? Try to think about images, video and infographics that help tell your story, rather than sending a generic press release.

Your first port of call would almost always be one of the journalists. Talk to them about what you can offer that’s not just a press release – not just a story for the daily paper – offer up ideas for how you might create something more interactive, more ‘live’ and maybe help with some of the content e.g. providing high-quality infographics.

If you work out on a weight machine that has a limit--where you have to push the bar until it stops--you're far more likely to to hit that limit than if you had left it to your own initiative to... Seth Godin

If you work out on a weight machine that has a limit--where you have to push the bar until it stops--you're far more likely to to hit that limit than if you had left it to your own initiative to figure out how far is far enough.

People enjoy going to the max (or in the case of Spinal Tap, a little farther than max, to 11). But if there is no max, no limit, it's much easier to satisfy yourself and declare that you've done enough.

If you want your best users to do more, one way to do it is to announce the most they can do. While this may dissuade a few people from pushing ever farther, it will in fact motivate a large number of people to up their game.

"The maximum number of times a week you can dine here is three."

"The maximum bonus paid is $100k."

"The maximum number of tweets per day is 30."

The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you've solved them already. It's the perfect problems that keep us stuck. Perfect because they... Seth Godin

The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you've solved them already.

It's the perfect problems that keep us stuck.

Perfect because they have constraints, unbendable constraints, constraints that keep us trapped. I hate my job, I need this job, there's no way to quit, to get a promotion or to get a new boss, no way to move, my family is in town, etc.

We're human, that's what we do--we erect boundaries, constraints we can't ease, and we get trapped.

Or perhaps it's your product or service or brand. Our factory is only organized to make X, but the market doesn't want X as much, or there is regulation, or a new competitor is now offering X at half the price and the board won't do anything, etc.

There's no way to solve the perfect problem because every solution involves breaking an unbreakable constraint.

And there's your solution.

The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don't just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.

If the only alternative is slow and painful failure, the way to get unstuck is to blow up a constraint, deal with the pain and then run forward. Fast.

When a newspaper loses 15% of its readers or 15% of its advertisers, it goes out of business. There are still people who want to read it, still people who want to advertise, but it's gone. When a technology company... Seth Godin

When a newspaper loses 15% of its readers or 15% of its advertisers, it goes out of business. There are still people who want to read it, still people who want to advertise, but it's gone.

When a technology company increases its sales by 15%, profits will double. The sales line doesn't have to increase that much for profits to soar.

It's so tempting to head for green fields with a new thing, a new market, a new business. But in fact, 15% right here and right now might be exactly what you need.

Every brand, every organization and every individual is either running away from something or running toward something (or working hard to stand still). Are you chasing or being chased? Are you leading or following? Are you fleeing or climbing? Seth Godin

Every brand, every organization and every individual is either running away from something or running toward something (or working hard to stand still).

Are you chasing or being chased? Are you leading or following? Are you fleeing or climbing?

Carole Mallory was Norman Mailer's mistress. Seducing him probably wasn't that difficult, though, as he was already on his sixth wife at the time.

Marketers seek to seduce. So do painters, authors and job seekers. The most important thing to understand about seduction is this: it only works when the other person cooperates, contributes and is at some level interested in being seduced.

In short: it's a lot easier to seduce someone whose worldview and attitude makes them open to it. If you want to be successful at whatever form of seduction you have in mind, seek out the right people.

Some people were seduced by the iPad. Many ignored it. It wasn't that the iPad changed from person to person, what changed was the audience's worldview and openness.

And yet...

And yet as marketers we seem to want to treat everyone the same, want to please everyone, want to come up with the magic words that open every heart.

Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout. All three industries are doomed (if doomed means that they will be... Seth Godin

Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout.

All three industries are doomed (if doomed means that they will be unrecognizable in ten--probably three--years). And yet...

And yet there's no shortage of writing, or things to read. No shortage of news, either. And there doesn't appear to be one on the horizon. In fact, there's more news, more images and more writing available to more people more often than ever before in history.

No, just about all of the whining is about protecting paper, the stuff the ideas are printed on, not the ideas themselves.

It's paper that makes the economics of the newspaper industry work (or not work). It's paper that creates cost and slows things down and generates scarcity. And scarcity is what they sell.

It's paper that makes the book industry what it is. As soon as you remove paper from the equation, the costs change, the timing changes, the barriers to entry change, the risk changes. And defenders of the status quo don't like change.

Is there not enough paper in your life? Why are we wringing our hands about the demise of paper as the economic gating factor for ideas? In fact, some of the trees I know are delighted that we've found a better, faster, cheaper way to spread ideas.

If the demise of paper means that good people doing good work in important industries will have to find faster and better ways to do their jobs, I don't think that's a bad thing.

Debenhams is one of the shining examples of a high street retailer that really get social media. The company has always had a good online offering, but recently its website and social profiles have reached a new level.

The company really seem to get it. The site offers so much choice and so many ways to engage, bringing something relevant and interesting to the party. Almost so much so that the online brand and presence is better than the actual in-store offering!

The site now has three blogs; the original Debenhams blog, a specific beauty blog and a blog authored by designer Henry Holland.

Debenhams doesn’t just blog for the sake of it. It has really interesting content, and more importantly, exclusive stuff! Take this post about the new Ultimo “real women” photoshoot. There’s copy about the photoshoot, images to accompany and add to the story, links to the Fabulous magazine article, and a behind the scenes video. Everything you could possibly want!

The beauty blog is very focused and varied. It has regular beauty videos, showing you how to achieve certain looks and styles. The blog uses people who work in the industry and are experts in their field, adding to the authenticity of the blog.

Debenhams has steered away from simply opening a Twitter and Facebook (although this is integrated too) but has actually thought about what its consumers want. The information it gives is interesting, timely and relevant.

This has been packaged up well in terms of visual appeal, but also variation of content. The variety of topics covered, selection of content formats and range of authors ensures there is something for everyone.

Hopefully we’ll see other retailers following suit soon!

Carole Mallory was Norman Mailer's mistress. Seducing him probably wasn't that difficult, though, as he was already on his sixth wife at the time. Marketers seek to seduce. So do painters, authors and job seekers. The most important thing to... Seth Godin