Largest survey in our industry

VMA Group, the specialist corporate communications, PR and investor relations executive recruiter, today revealed the results of the largest ever survey of financial services communications professionals. Quite a good read, with lots of valuable data. The result that strikes me most: only 14% of respondents concluded that communications and marketing functions should be merged. Read the full report here.

Use twitter for business. Yes, 140 characters is enough

You can use Twitter for business. Yes, most people just report they're out for a drink or a meeting, but it is possible to land projects, enhance your network and get the buzz on your company or product going by using Twitter. Sometimes 140 characters is enough. This article offers quite some inspiration.

The Age Of Spin Is Dead – Ogilvy PR Australia concludes

An overwhelming majority of Australian PR professionals think that the term "PR" will be dropped in the next decade as the role and nature of agencies and the discipline itself changes, a survey by Ogilvy PR, Australia's leading PR firm, has found.

The overall theme of the study was PR communications in 2021, and the responses showed that the biggest threat to the industry was the need to quantify and redefine the way PR outcomes are measured, while the "socialisation of brands" - the ability of companies to be seen as an integral part of a target audience's lives - was highlighted as the main role for PR in the future.

Ogilvy PR themselves have responded to their survey by announcing that they will stop measuring communications effectiveness by the 'Advertising Equivalient Value' in 2012.

The survey's infographics are well worth a look.

There is no excuse for bad seplling

A recent article on the BBC website argues that poor spelling can cost businesses millions of pounds.

A single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half. With so many Nigerian e-mail scams and phishing mails around, spelling is incredibly important to the credibility of a website. Social media may have relaxed the attitude to spelling mistakes in other areas of the Internet, a single error on your company's homepage or in an electronic newsletter can be a killer issue.

Getting the basics right is therefore very important. This blogger has three useful tips:

• Slow down
  
• Get some help
  
• Know your Kryptonite
  

To which we would like to add: never trust your spell checker. It can't tell you if you have misused a word, like using the wrong homonym (flare vs. flair), or inadvertently type the wrong word (like fry instead of try). There is no substitute for having documents read by a real person who has strong comprehension of grammar, usage and syntax in addition to spelling.

PS - This author is well aware of the existence of Muphry's Law, and is therefore sure that despite all his efforts, this blog post is sure to contain an error of its own.