I’d like to say I had amazing insight and realised then how important blogs and the rest of social media and social networks would become. However, the truth is rather more mundane. When I was first elected as a local councillor in May 1999 I was one of very few to set-up a website. However, as I’m not a developer or designer, it was quite hard work to keep it relevant and up to date. And as I was very busy as both a local councillor and running my own PR consultancy it was time I didn’t have. That’s why when I first started reading blogs I thought it looked much, much easier and faster than trying to run a website.

Only two UK politicians had blogs before me. The first was former Sheffield Hallam MP Richard Allan and the second was Tom Watson MP. Richard stepped down in 2005 (his successor is current deputy prime minister Nick Clegg MP) and he is now a member of the House of Lords and works as director of policy in Europe for Facebook. Shortly after I started my councillor blog The Guardian did an article about me ‘Blogging for better bins’.

My PR blog was one of the first in the world, although it is a bit harder to track the exact timelines here as some people have changed blogging platforms or domains and archives aren’t always available. I was in the first 10-2o to start a PR blog. Some of the few before me who are still blogging today are Phil Gomes, Tom Murphy and Neville Hobson. Those starting shortly after include Richard Bailey and Philippe Borremans. This highlights one of the benefits of blogging as I’m now friends and have met them all except Phil (who I’ve only met via Google Hangout).

Both my councillor blog and my PR blog were hosted on a now defunct blogging platform called 2osix.co.uk, which was the UK division of a German blog publishing platform. Some of the people at 20six that I came across back then are still active today. PeerIndex founder Azeem Azhar and Sunstone Capital partner Max Niederhofer were both involved, as was freelance  journalist Johanna Payton.

Unfortunately the 20six sites are now unavailable, but you can still see an archive at Wayback Machine. This was my first PR post which explains why I chose 20six rather than the more popular and well-known Blogger:

My second post was hopefully more interesting and was about Alastair Campbell, the BBC and Andrew Gilligan in which I managed to avoid using the word Iraq, but did use the word frisbee.

My first councillor blog post was on Blogger, but I then switched it to 20six as well:

I deliberately let my councillor blog lapse when I was no longer as a councillor as it was always meant to be about local council issues rather than a generic political blog. I do however occasionally update Bruce on the World, which is my political and personal blog for posts that aren’t relevant to my professional PR blog.

My PR blog has had three platforms –first 20six, then Typepad and now a self-hosted WordPress blog.

This post is to say a huge thank you to all my readers and subscribers (so thanks Dad!) for sticking with me over the 10 years and hopefully A PR Guy’s Musings will still be going strong another ten years.

I’ve got a few new corporate communications, PR and social media speaking engagements coming up over the next few months. I’ll also shortly be announcing dates for a series of two day online PR and corporate communications strategy master classes to be held in London in early July, Mumbai (India) in late July and Houston (Texas) in mid August. I’ve also got dates for social media master classes in Brussels in May and June. Contact me if you’re interested in attending any of these master classes and I can tell you how to register.

CIPR Thought Leaders | Can ‘corporate media’ support serious journalism. Can it win a Pulitzer?
Wednesday 8 May 2013, London

I’m speaking alongside Tom Foremski at a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Thought Leader expert briefing that asks (and tries to answer) provocative questions such as what’s the role of corporate media, will the the rise of corporate media serve society or hinder it, can corporate media become the new funding model for serious journalism and can corporate media win a Pulitzer?

Master class on Online PR
22 May 2013, Tbilisi, Georgia

In May I’m a guest of Marketing House Georgia and will deliver a one day Online PR master class in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. The course is designed for Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors and Heads of:

Corporate Communications, Public Relations, Corporate Affairs, External Communications, Public Affairs, Government Relations, Internal Communications, Stakeholder Relations, Investor and Analyst Relations

I’ll also be delivering a second one day online reputation management course for CEOs and senior government officials.

Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference
19-21 June 2013, London

The Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference is a three day conference and series of master class workshops featuring speakers from the BBC, Microsoft, Amazon, Edelman and Trans-Arabian Creative Communications (TRACCS). I’m delivering a keynote presentation about ‘Global online communications: how to tackle the global vs. local challenge’ on Friday, June 21.

CIPR Annual Social Media Conference
11 July, London

The annual social media conference of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations will be based on the contents of the forthcoming Share This Too book. I’m chairing a Professional Practice Panel on ‘Putting the social into CSR’ and will be joined by two prominent experts on corporates social responsibility who will present short case studies and answer questions.

The Communications on Top World Communication Forum 2013 and (C4F) Communication for Future Awards in Davos take place this week.

There is great line-up of speakers including: Paul Holmes, founder and CEO of The Holmes Report and SABRE awards; Andre Manning, vice president corporate communications for Royal Philips Electronics; Anne Villemoes, head of communications for global meat producer Danish Crown; Dr Leandro Herrero, CEO of The Chalfont Project and Managing Partner of Viral Change Global; Rui Martins, corporate communications and public affairs director at Dianova Portugal; and Francis Ingham, director general of the UK Public Relations Consultants Association and executive director of the International Communications Consultancy Association.

I’m speaking on the first day on ‘Online and social media: Smart PR and communications solutions’. It will be a short presentation followed by an interactive question and answer session. WCF Davos is attended by senior communications and public relations professionals from all around the world.

I’m also one of the 2013 nominees for the C4F Communication for Future Awards are annual global excellence awards for communications professional. The official news release says:

Among the nominees for 2013 are: Dr. Leandro Herrero, CEO The Chalfont Project Ltd. & Managing Partner Viral Change Global LLP, (UK) Gianni Catalfamo, Founder at cc:catalfamo (Italy), Evgeny Kuznetsov, Director Development & Communications Department at Russian Venture Company, Alfred Koblinger, CEO of BBDO Holding, (Austria), Anne Villemoes, Director of Corporate Communications at Danish Crown company (Denmark), Andre Manning, Global Head Corporate Communications at Philips, Global HQ (Netherlands), Jason Ng, Blogger, Twitter activist, COO of geekpark.net, Founder of Twittalk.net, Start-Upper, (China), Yogesh Joshi, President of the Association of Business Communicators of India(ABCI), Nurul Ashiqin Shamsuri, CEO of Lubri Oil Corporation Malaysia SB, and Stuart Bruce, digital corporate communications and online PR blogger, trainer and consultant (UK).

C4F Davos Awards include 6 categories, two of which will be presented for the first time:

• Titan of the future  is given to people, who are creative in every aspect, available 24/7 and committed to the high business and ethical standards of true global leaders. Some call them multi-taskers, but we consider them to be the re-born Leonardo da Vinci-s.
• Image of the future‘s nominees are professionals who create stunning images and develop the visual communications of the future, just as Steve Jobs did.
• Media of the future is mobile, interactive and social. The award in this category is granted to those who foresee the next step in media development.
• Relations of the future category recognizes the masters in Reputation Management, Crisis Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility, who help building up competitive advantages.
• Idea of the future‘s nominees are representatives of the creative economy, where communicating what does not yet existhas become a key factor in the development of adequate communications for innovations.
• Grand Davos Award is to be granted to key figures and thought leaders for their whole contribution to the communications industry.

C4F Davos Awards are the first of their kind to express recognition of outstanding communicators with creative approach and innovative visions on the future of communications. They are given to individuals with huge influence on the improvement of communications and truly effective contribution in fostering new trends in the development of the communications industry worldwide. All C4F Award holders are visionaries, challenging the status quo with their perception about future and leaving their unique impact on the world.

Next week’s World Communications Forum in Davos has PR and corporate communications speakers and delegates from dozens of different countries so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where visitors to my public relations blog come from.

Not surprisingly for an English language blog most are from the UK and USA. However, there are also a healthy number of visitors from India, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. Some of the more unusual countries with a reasonable number of visitors are Mongolia, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine and the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Everywhere in the Middle East is represented except Yemen. South America has a few gaps with no visitors from Bolivia or Uruguay or indeed most countries in Central America and the Caribbean. There are also some gaps in Africa and Central Asia.

Some of these visitors come from search and Twitter, but I think a good number are also as a result of people that I’ve done digital corporate communications training or online PR training for. In the last 18 months alone I’ve done PR training or corporate communications consultancy for PR professionals from Bahrain, Belgium, France, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Netherlands, Poland, Qatar, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, UAE and UK and hopefully I’ve projects coming up with corporate communications professionals from Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Switzerland, Ukraine and USA. The PR training is a mix of work I do directly with clients, which include both in-house PR teams and PR agencies, and work I do through third party training and conference companies. The PR consultancy work is all direct with in-house corporate communications teams.

Today marketing automation software provider Eloqua released a UK edition of its ‘Blog Tree’ infographic of the most influential blogs in PR, social, SEO, marketing, tech, start-up and design. And this little, old blog of mine is right there near the top of the tree as one of the top three PR blogs and one of the top blogs overall. You can see the The Blog Tree: UK Edition below or download the PDF for a clickable version.

The Eloqua Experience Europe conference in May looks like it could be good as the keynote speaker is David Meerman Scott, author of Real Time Marketing & PR, the New Rules of Marketing & PR and most recently Newsjacking.

UPDATE

The news release announcing the release of the Blog Tree: UK Edition and blog post.

Related articles

• Top 50 business blogs 2011 by Strategist News(stuartbruce.biz)

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I’m delighted to be once again one of the speakers at the excellent SAScon Search – Analytics – Social Media conference. I’m going to be talking about ‘Social Commerce – Show Me the Money’.

It promises some great content with lots to learn and some excellent networking opportunities.

One of the keynote speakers is Bruce Daisley, UK sales director of Twitter and other speakers include:

Dom Burch, Head of Corporate Comms & Social Media, ASDA @dom_asdapr LinkedIn

Kristal Ireland, Head of Digital at Propaganda Agency @kristalsmile LinkedIn

Steve Kuncewicz, Head of Legal, BooHoo LinkedIn @stevekuncewicz

Simon Wharton, MD, PushON and Founder SAScon @psychobel LinkedIn

Ben McKay, Head of SEO at Moneysupermarket.com @yetanotherben LinkedIn

Martin Bryant, Managing editor, The Next Web @MartinSFP LinkedIn

Andy Betts, Digital & Marketing Strategist @andybetts1 LinkedIn

I’ve just highlighted those that I know personally or have heard speak before, so some of the other speakers might be good as well

In my personal reflections on 2011 blog post I promised/threatened to write a post about my professional plans and hopes for 2012. If 2011 was the year that I decided to pursue a portfolio career, then 2012 will have to be the year that brings it all together.

Client / PR agency online PR and social media doctor

One consistent message that I’m hearing from in-house corporate communications and public relations professionals is that they recognise the importance of online PR and social media, but are reluctant to add yet more consultancies and agencies to their existing roster. What they’d really like is that their existing corporate PR consultancy, marketing PR agency, public affairs consultancy or financial PR agency be able to properly integrate and deliver online PR and social media as well as the specialist social media and online PR agencies do it. Unfortunately, far too often their existing agencies and consultancies let them down. They all claim to offer the same things as the specialists, but in reality are still too short of real experience and expertise.

That is where there is an opportunity for me. I want to work closely with clients to act as a bridge and facilitator for their existing PR agencies to help them deliver the quality of social media and online PR strategy the clients need.

The benefit for the client is that they can continue to use their existing trusted partners, but can now ensure that online PR and social media is properly integrated into the overall  communications strategy at a quality that is up there with the best of the specialists.

The benefit for the agencies and consultancies is that they get to retain and possibly even increase their fees with an existing client that they already have a good working relationship with, while eliminating the threat of a new agency coming in.

Online PR training and social media training

I’ve already delivered a few online PR training and social media training courses since leaving Wolfstar, both directly and through third parties. I’m very keen to do more of this as it is very satisfying to be able to share knowledge and experience and see more people benefitting from it. It is also good to be able to puncture some of the hype and myths that still surround social media and online PR. It isn’t rocket science and should be a core part of every single public relations professional’s core skills. Unfortunately at the moment it isn’t. In 2012 I’d like to play my own small part in changing that.

Non-executive director

I’ve have a couple of discussions with people about joining their boards as a non-executive director. Neither opportunity was quite right for me, but it has sparked me into thinking about it and I’m keen to do a couple of different non-exec positions.

The first is to join the board of a small and/or regional PR agency that is looking to grow and perhaps needs to bolster its online PR and social media capabilities.

The second is to join the board of a start-up, possibly in the tech or Web 2.0 space, but not necessarily.

Strategic communications consultancy and digital public affairs

I’m already talking to some corporate communications consultancies and digital agencies about providing some specialist support to their existing teams. Mostly this will be on the corporate communications and public affairs side as its far more interesting and challenging than simple marketing related public relations. I believe that digital public affairs is woefully underexploited at the moment and am keen to develop and implement some new ideas for how social media can be used to influence and shape public policy development.

University lecturing

While it is great to deliver training and share knowledge with existing practitioners looking to learn new skills, it would be even better to help students who are just starting out in the world of public relations.

So those are the paying gigs that I’m looking forward to doing more of this year (any opportunities gratefully received ), but I’m also keen to continue doing more voluntary, community, professional development and political work.

Public relations conference speaking

Last year I spoke at a number of great conferences including the United Nations Global Social Media and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Forum, the Future Digital Strategies Summit, Social Media in a Corporate Context in London and Amsterdam, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Social Media Conference, Reputation in Oil, Gas and Mining and Social Media Week.

This year I’ve already got tentative dates fixed up to speak at conferences in Dubai and London, but I’m keen to get some more conference speaking dates in the diary soon.

Politics

I’ve already found time to do more work for the Labour Party and am keen to expand on this in 2012. This will include continuing to do some work nationally and helping my wife locally.

Don’t be shy – get in touch

If you’d like to talk to me about any of the areas I’ve outlined then please get in touch by calling + 44 20 3239 1093, Skype stuartbrucepr, Twitter, email to stuart at stuartbruce dot biz or visiting my PR consultancy website.

The year started with several discussions with companies that were interested in acquiring or investing in Wolfstar. For a variety of reasons – some on their side, some on ours – none of these actually came to anything in the end. But what these discussions did do was make me start thinking far more about the future.

Since starting Wolfstar in June 2007 it had been a bit like a roller coaster ride. It was always going to be a challenge starting a new business in what soon turned out to be one of the most turbulent and pessimistic economic periods this century.

Despite this in less than four years we succeeded in growing Wolfstar into a PRWeek Top 150 Consultancy, a Top 40 Digital Consultancy (top of the table of specialist consultancies for the percentage of income derived from online PR) and Top 40 Technology Consultancy (the largest outside London).

We pitched for and won some fantastic clients including Sony Ericsson, First Direct, HSBC Unilever, PayPal, Discovery Channel, Philips, Carlsberg, GlaxoSmithKline, Smith & Nephew and the NHS.

We worked with the United Nations to produce the world’s first international research report into how FT Global 500 companies use social media to support their CSR (corporate social responsibility) strategies.

For a small PR consultancy headquartered outside London to provide international public relations counsel to such prestigious clients was quite an achievement. Especially considering that to win most of them we pitched against big, global PR agencies.

But then in March tragedy struck. Mark Hanson, my very good friend and the deputy managing director of Wolfstar, took his own life. It was a traumatic experience – for his family, his incredibly wide network of friends, his colleagues at Wolfstar and for me personally.

Life would, could, never be the same again. Hard as it was life had to go on.

Inevitably this also had a negative effect on the business. Mark was an exceptional individual who it would be impossible to replace.

It also made me start questioning what I really wanted out of life. The start of Wolfstar had coincided with the birth of my daughter Esme and for me there is nothing more important than family.

Although family is my first priority, work is inevitably important. Simply to keep a roof over your head and food in the cupboard it is where you will spend much of your time. But the most important thing for me about work is actually enjoying what I do and feeling like I’m contributing and achieving. One of the issues with starting a business is that the day to day realities of growing it and running it prevent you from doing many of the things that made it possible for you to be successful in the first place.

I feel pity for those whose happiness appears to be wrapped up in wealth and material things. Family and job satisfaction will always be far more important to me than a big house, a fast car, the villa in the sun or that holiday resort that is frequented by those who have lost touch with reality.

In May my heart was filled with joy and pride as my wife Karen defeated a Liberal Democrat councillor to become the first Labour councillor elected in Rothwell in the 21st century. She’s got off to a cracking start and I’m looking forward to her being joined by a second Labour councillor in May next year.

By June, after numerous discussions with my business partner, I finally took the decision to relinquish my 50% stake in Wolfstar to him so that I could focus on my family and actually doing work that I enjoy. The deal was finally complete in August.

Since then I’ve been able to enjoy my daughter’s first term at school, contribute chapters to a forthcoming book, increase my level of political activity for the Labour Party, start some new strategic communications consultancy and online PR training work, resume writing this PR blog more frequently and meet some fantastic people to discuss opportunities for 2012 and beyond.

That is why as we enter 2012 I am far happier that I’ve ‘gone plural’ and decided to pursue a portfolio career. That will be the subject of a second blog post, early in the New Year.

Seasons greetings and all the best for 2012 to all my readers, with apologies for this rather personal ramble. A normal service of posts about international public relations, corporate communications, public affairs and social media will be resumed soon.

PR people and bloggers love lists and A PR Guy’s Musings is listed on a good few public relations and business blog rankings. But, I’m actually quite pleased to be on this new ‘Best Business Blogs 2011 list from Strategist News.

Pleased because it has helped me to discover some interesting new business and corporate strategy blogs. And pleased also to be one of only two PR blogs in the 50 best business blogs listed – the other is Brian Solis. It’s also humbling to be listed alongside some amazing global business leaders such as Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

This week’s PRWeek Public Affairs: Soap Box is a short op-ed by me on the importance of social media to public affairs professionals. This is the original piece, before I edited it down to fit PRWeek’s word count.

As party conference season ends we’ve seen how all of the political parties have enthusiastically adopted social media from Labour’s ‘Back the Apple‘ campaign to corporate sponsored tweetups at all three party conferences. Similarly governments – European, central, local and devolved – have all started to embrace social media. The public affairs profession perhaps hasn’t been as fast to adapt.

Every aspect of public affairs has been changed by the social web. If you benefit from this change, or are disadvantaged, depends on how you respond. It starts with counselling clients on strategy where you need to be aware of the changed nature of society and realise that transparency, trust and openness are not just buzz words, but reality. It goes on to relationships. We all know that lobbying and influencing public policy is about far more than just contacts and cosy drinks in a bar. However, although contacts may only play a small part in what we do they still matter and social media and social networks provide a third way to establish and maintain that vital network of contacts.

Conversations and discussion on the social web can also provide a great insight into the topics and issues that matter now. You can track trends over time to see what is being talked about, by who and when. You can find out what subjects people are searching for, what they are finding and how that’s changing. You can use that data to build search optimised social media platforms such as blogs and social media newsrooms that can rank highly on specific search terms and ensure that you’re one of the first places that hard-pressed journalists, civil service researchers and parliamentary assistants look for more information.

The social web not only gives an insight into the zeitgeist of the nation, but also provides potent potential for changing it. If pressure groups are using the social web for campaigning and lobbying for their agendas then the corporate world must understand what they are doing and how business can respond without unleashing a negative backlash from disgruntled citizens, consumers and campaigners. Strategically planned and professionally implemented online advocacy campaigns can create real world public policy changes.

The world has changed. It’s not just the Arab spring where Twitter, Facebook and YouTube made a difference. It’s happening right here, right now in Westminster, Brussels and town halls up and down the devolved nations. The public affairs profession must be ready now.

If you’re interested in learning more about how public affairs professionals can use social media then register for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations webcast on public affairs and social media that I’m doing on Friday, October 21. It’s cost effective training and you don’t even need to leave your desk. Or if you want to know more about social media and public relations overall and you want a day out of the office you could always attend the CIPR Social Media Conference: The conversation never stops on November 14.