Police data test 1

Happy Christmas from the Web Team

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

The new rules of Marketing and PR

I have been reading this book by David Meerman Scott a lot recently.  It explains how marketing and public relations used to be quite separate concepts but have blurred into a new set of rules which combine marketing and PR together in a new online world of communication.

Marketing - old rules

• Marketing simply means advertising (and branding)
• Advertising needed to appeal to the masses
• Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message
• Advertising was one-way: company to consumer.
• Advertising was exclusively about selling products
• Advertising was based on campaigns that has a limited life
• Creativity was deemed the most important component of advertising
• It was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for the client to win new customers
• Advertising and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies and measurement criteria

Public Relations - old rules

• The only way to get ink and airtime was through the media
• Companies communicated to journalists via press releases
• Nobody saw the actual press release except a handful of reporters and editors
• Companies had to have significant news before they were allowed to write a press release
• Jargon was okay because the journalists all understood it
• You weren't supposed to send a release unless it included quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysts and experts
• The only way buyers would learn about the press release's content was if the media wrote a story about it
• The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through 'clip books' which noted each time the media deigned to pick up a company's release
• PR and marketing were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies and measurement techniques.

The new rules of marketing and PR

• Marketing is more than just advertising
• PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience
• You are what you publish
• People want authenticity, not spin
• People want participation, not propaganda
• Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
• Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web
• PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. Its about your buyers seeing your company on the web
• Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. Its about your organisation winning business
• The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media
• Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content
• Blogs, online video, e-books, news releases and other forms of online content let organisations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate
• On the web, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred

Tweather - an idea

I mentioned in my previous entry an idea for how standard data could be published via twitter enabling tweets on a common theme to be combined from multiple sources, databased and republished.

Maybe the best potential use for this idea is to produce a live or near-live weather site based on people's tweets from all over the UK about what the weather is doing NOW.

Using a standard set of data in a specific order, people could publish what the weather is like where they are.  If all the data is gathered and brought together using a mapping service, a weather map could be produced that changes dynamically with the tweets.  Not so much a 'weather forecast' but a 'Tweather forecast'.

This has the potential to give accurate, minute-by-minute data on moving weather fronts and could be a useful source of information.  A belt of rain moving across an area would be tracked and mapped and it may even be possible to predict where that rain will fall next - a true tweather forecast!

Tweets could be vastly simplified using applications that simply require the user to tap a weather icon on their screen - the time, date and location would be automatically added.

~23:58 ~05/11/10 ~Essex ~Chelmsford ~Light Rain

A quick note about police helicopter tweets

QH99 Essex Police Helicopter

I noticed this evening that there are now four UK Police Air Support Unit consortiums on Twitter.  I am certain that there will be more soon, maybe all of them before too long.
http://twitter.com/#!/list/beaker9/police-air-support

For the most part, these channels exist to tweet regular updates on flights undertaken and I thought how great it would be for all these to conform to a common schema.  It would allow these and any future ASU twitter channels to be combined from their respective RSS feeds into a UK composite.  Here are the four examples of typical fight reports:

@Cheshirecopter
5 Nov 20:25 - Search for 2 people who had run from the scene of a burglary in Lymm. Open areas were confirmed to be clear.


@SEASU_Copters
S1465 22:45hrs 03/11/10 - Durrington - missing person search. Areas checked with no trace, enquiries to continue.


@EMASUhelicopter
Heli activity Leics - http://helicopter.leics.police.uk/where/


@helicops
01:00 01/11/10 Search area near Manor Way, Cardiff, for male wanted in relation to a robbery.


EMASUhelicopters doesn't seem to routinely tweet individual flight operations and when it does, it links to a website.  The other three do and they follow virtually the same pattern with only subtle differences which I think could easily be standarised.


We have the date, time, location and operation details as 4 distinct aspects.  I would suggest as potential standard format to follow could be:


1. Time: 22:45
2. Date: 03/11/10
3. Location1: Cheshire (represents the force area)
4. Location2: Lymm (more localised within that force area; suggest the main town or village)
5. Details1: Search (operation type from a standard list of agreed types)
6. Details2: Rest of the details of the flight
7. Link: optional - could be website, twitpics etc.


So a typical post could be:


~22:45 ~03/11/10 ~Cheshire ~Lymm ~Search Missing person. Areas checked with no trace, enquiries to continue. http://bit.ly/flightdatalink


By carefully formatting the tweets, they could be interpreted via the RSS feed and re-combined with other similar feeds.


This concept could be an interesting development of Twitter in its own right.  The publication of 'Twitter Schemas' that people can use for specific types of posts could allow a more sophisticated opportunity to combine data together, moving things on from the rather basic hashtag method. Maybe a hashtag at the end to denote the 'schema type' could be used? #ASU


As usual - all views welcomed! :¬)


Added - November 5th 2010
Just remembered a fifth police ASU channel which is no longer operating. @suspol_heli

Pubs near the canals

Napton
The Bridge
Southam Road
CV47 8NQ
01926 812466

The Kings Head
Southam Road
CV47 8NG
01926 812202

The Old Olive Bush
Flecknoe
CV23 8AT
01788 891134

Braunston
The Wheatsheaf Inn
10 The Green
NN11 7HW
01788 890748

The Admiral Nelson
Dark Lane
NN11 7HJ
01788 890075

The New Inn
Long Buckby
NN6 7PW
01327 844 747

Crick
The Red Lion Inn
52 Main Road
NN6 7TX
01788 822342

Husbands Bosworth
The Bell Inn
2 Kilworth Road
LE17 6JZ
01858 880246

Foxton
The Bell
Main Street
Gumley
Market Harborough
LE16 7RU
0116 279 2476

Shoulder of Mutton
60 Main Street
Foxton
LE16 7RB
01858 545 964

Sugar Loaf (JD Wetherspoons)
18 High Street
LE16 7NJ
01858 469231

NPWMG 1st Unconference

Updated with another hotel.  Hope to have confirmation of a few more people tomorrow.  Adding to Ning group on Monday - spread the word.

OK this is likely to change and develop but here are a few notes to kick off the debate and get some firm arrangements for this 'do'.

Location: Nottingham - Robin Hood Beer Festival
Dates: Friday October 15th, 2010 - Sunday October 17th, 2010
Invited: National Police Web Managers and partners pus anyone else who wants to join in!
Purpose: It's a beer festival + friendship + chat + (we may get some work done too).
Map: http://goo.gl/aB70
People:
David W (Friday through to Sunday morning)
Sasha (Friday through to Sunday morning)
David N (Friday night only)
John (tbc)
Rachel (tbc)
Gregg (tbc)
Stuart (can't make it)
Vanisha (can't make it)
Anyone else???

Accommodation:

Travelodge Nottingham Central Hotel

New City House
Maid Marian Way
Nottingham
NG1 6DD

Tel: 0871 984 6280*
Fax: 01159 414610

Nottingham City (Goldsmith St)

Goldsmith Street, Nottingham,
NG1 5LT

T: 0871 527 8846* 

F: 0871 527 8847

Nottingham Arena (London Rd)

Island Site, London Road,
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire NG1 5LT

T: 0871 527 8848* 

F: 0871 527 8849

Rutland Square Hotel
St James' Street
Nottingham
NG1 6FJ
UNITED KINGDOM
Phone: +44 115 9411114

£85 for 2 nights incl. breakfast




More to follow . . Chip in with comments.