Ronnie's Blog

The humble press release has received a new lease of life with the advent of Online PR. Increasingly press releases, or perhaps more correctly termed, news releases are being written for the web, wire services, customers etc.

There are now exciting opportunities for your stories and news releases to be found on the web. The downside of this is that if your releases are badly written, sloppy and full of jargon you will turn off potential customers and investors.

With this in mind IrishDev.com has asked me to present a seminar on writing good technology press releases this Wednesday. Registration is at: http://irishdev.com/Home/Events/Article.html?id=401

As Facebook nears its one millionth Irish user (Irish Times today*) a timely warning from CareerBuilder that Social Media could severely damage your career prospects.

CIO Insight ** reports research from CareerBuilder*** which finds that inappropriate information posted on Social Media sites is increasingly being taken into account by potential employers.

So consider taking down those (at the time) hilarious photos of you slugging a flagon of cider by the neck. A bottle of 1984 Chateau Talbot will not do you much good either unless your interviewer is a wine snob who admires your taste in wine if not your means of imbibing it.

CareerBuilder interviewed 2,600 employers in the US. Almost half (46%) said they use Social Media sites to research job candidates – more than double last year. And IT was the sector most likely to review Social Media sites with 63% of hiring managers checking them out.

Over a third of potential employers discovered content that caused them to turn down a candidate. However, it’s not all bad news. Almost one in five surveyed said they found content which helped them hire a candidate, the most important being personality fit.

So when it comes to Social Media and business, the lesson seems to be plenty of worthy photos from your volunteering in Haiti and less from your bawdy hen/stag/divorce party in Amsterdam.

* http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0917/1224254727462.html
** http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Careers/Facebook-Activities-Haunting-Job-Seekers-832015/?kc=CIOQUICKNL09172009FEA1

***http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?id=pr519&sd=8%2f19%2f2009&ed=12%2f31%2f2009&siteid=cbpr&sc_cmp1=cb_pr519_
Ronnie Simpson BBS, FPRII is founder of Simpson Financial & Technology Public Relations which won the 2009 PR Excellence Award for New Media. He was one of the first Irish PR bloggers. (www.simpsonftpr.ie).

As a PR blogger I must stick to PR issues. But let me address one that makes me madder than Vincent Browne interviewing a pro or anti proponent of the Lisbon Treaty.

The (admittedly tenuous) PR link is to the image of soccer. When will FIFA insist that referees automatically book players who wave imaginary yellow cards after they have been tackled? Italian Camoranesi did it again last night after a powder puff Bulgarian tackle.

Surely it is ungentlemanly conduct of the highest order to try and get a fellow professional booked or sent off, apart from being intensely annoying to the viewer. Can you imagine Roy Keane limp wristedly gesturing to the referee after  being clattered?

The authorities finally and rightly moved against diving with the unprecedented suspension of Eduardo following his deep sea frogman impression against Celtic.

I live for the day when a player receives a red card for waving two imaginary yellows.

Apart from being a soccer nut and one of the first Irish PR bloggers, Ronnie Simpson is founder of Simpson Financial & Technology PR and may be contacted at: ronnie@simpsonftpr.ie or + 353 1 260 5300

Back from 34 degrees Algarve sunshine to find an encouraging number of new business opportunities – all in the technology sector. This upbeat atmosphere confirmed by press release which I write on first day back for the Irish Venture Capital Association on funding figures to be announced shortly. These find that VC funding has held up remarkably well for Irish tech firms in the first half of 2009 despite the global credit crunch and recession. Funding for the first half is ahead of 2008 which itself was the best year since 2002. The survey shows that there is an investor appetite for Irish tech firms not only from local VCs but international as well.

 During the great tech recession following the post dot com boom, we found that tech firms did not switch off PR (apart from the doomed dot comers who switched off everything).  PR represents value and even more so today if you can leverage global Online PR. Irish client StatCounter and ourselves won the 2009 PR Excellence Award for New Media in June. The programme, implemented out of Dublin, generated over 100,000 hits from over 100 countries in two weeks. The online campaign led to client interviews by New York Times, Newsweek, Reuters and others.

And a story in The Times confirms the signs of life in the technology sector. A number of Silicon Valley firms are planning IPOs. This continues a trend in which half of the 16 US IPOs in 2009 to date have been by software or technology companies.*

The good news on the Irish front is that investment in Irish technology firms is widely diversified and includes software, pharma/biotechnology, drug delivery and medical devices, telecoms, environment technology and other technology including nano technology, fibre optics, photonics and semiconductor chips.

Ronnie Simpson is founder of Simpson Financial & Technology PR
and may be contacted at: ronnie@simpsonftpr.ie or + 353 1 260 5300.

* “Smiles return to Silicon Valley as market rediscovers taste for technology” by Mike Harvey, The Times, Monday, August, 17^th, 2009
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6798340.ece