Facebook‘s celebrating a Milestone on Friday. That’s when the new Timeline for all Pages is coming, ready or not. Panicking about what this means for your business? It’s not too late to prepare – get your Page ready now, with Watershed PR‘s eleventh hour guide.
1 ) Find a fabulous landscape image to use as your cover photo – Emily‘s Hive Beach picture works well on her Totallydorset Facebook Page.
None of this is set in stone – in fact, you can change the cover photo every day if you want to. And thinking creatively, that would be a great way to boost engagement levels. Remember, this space is not meant for promos, coupons or adverts. Your cover photo should not be primarily text-based or infringe on anyone else’s copyright.
2 ) Choose a profile picture – if you’re a company, it’s best to use your logo. This helps you get round the strict rules on cover photos.
3 ) Customise your tabs – custom tab photos and names allow you to draw attention to your freebies or calls to action. You’re allowed to feature up to 12 apps at the top of your Timeline. However, the photos tab will always come first – so make sure it’s a good picture that grabs the attention.
4 ) Don’t forget stars and pins – research conducted on the big brands that have switched to Timeline confirms what we already know – people engage more with large pictures and videos. Use the star button to expand these so they fit the whole width of your timeline. (Note – this works much better for landscape, rather than portrait images). Use the pin to anchor it to the top of your page for 7 days, so it isn’t buried by other stories. This is perfect for highlighting special offers and events, such as the Giant Easter Egg Hunt at Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens.
5 ) Check out your new admin panel – this lets you manage everything from one dashboard, far easier than the unwieldy method of laboriously clicking through several pages to get at the data you need. From here, you can change the name of your page, create new ads, and keep an eye on messages, notifications, new likes, and of course your Insights. You can stop people posting on your timeline if you want to – not recommended by Watershed PR, as the holy grail of all social media marketing is upping your user engagement levels. Users can now message you, as the Page Admin. You can turn this off, but again, we wouldn’t recommend it, because this has the potential to become a very powerful tool for customer service and market research.
6 ) Social proof – people visiting your Page can see a list of their friends who like the Page, what their friends are saying about the Page, and recent posts to the Page made by others. This is very important for social media marketers, because if a visitor to your page sees that he/she has friends who have interacted with your page, they might be more enticed to stick around and become a fan themselves.
7 ) Mark your special occasions – click on Milestones in your status box to mark significant events in your brand’s history. Box clever by describing Milestones that will refer more traffic back to your other online content – such as the date your blog was born, for example.
8 ) Read all about it – Facebook has published an official guide to Timelines to keep you on the right track. Or you can brush up on your know-how with the interactive course. Be inspired by the way other brands such as Starbucks and Ben & Jerry’s use the new Page design. Check out Pam Moore on Social Media Today for a handy list of 22 Facebook resources.
Good luck, Timeliners, and here’s to Friday!
Facebook is rolling out new designs for business Pages. They land on March 30. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing for your brand?
Pros
Private conversations with your fans! Users can now send admins private messages, perfect for ironing out those tricky customer service issues.
The timeline format favours image-led brands. (Have a look at Stephen’s Cadmium page to see how he displays stunning pics to striking effect). Plus, you get to choose the cover photo or large banner image at the top, which is a great way to showcase your wares.
You can also anchor a specific story to the top of your timeline for a week at a time – handy for highlighting special events, or offers.
Each time you land on a Page, you’ll see which of your personal Friends have interacted with it, which is likely, in turn, to increase your engagement.
Cons
No winging it. If you throw any old content on your Facebook Page, the timeline format will make it look cluttered and random. Play around with the Star, Pin and Hide functions to edit your posts, and make the page look pretty.
RIP the custom-designed welcome page. We loved the ‘landing page’ or ‘splash page’, a great tool to get more ‘Likes’ and issue a call to action to new fans – ‘visit our website’, ‘buy our stuff with this exclusive discount’, etc. You can still feature the welcome page as a tab at the top of the new Page. But that’s it.
As always, Facebook has strict rules about promoting brands, so be careful not to use price or purchase information in your cover photo. You can’t even include basic marketing, such as urls, email addresses, ‘Buy Me Now’ or ‘Like this Page’, which some (HubSpot included) consider a little harsh.
The Timeline function is exciting in that it allows you to chronicle the life of your brand by creating a series of ‘milestones’ or special events throughout its history. However, it doesn’t go back far enough for some of Watershed PR’s clients, like the 1,000-year-old Abbotsbury Swannery or Palmers Brewery, which has been brewing finest ales since 1794.
We’ve all got until March 30 to play around with the new design. Have fun, and let us know how you get on!
It’s dizzying. With social media transforming at light speed, smartphone apps updating round the clock and platforms rolling out new features 24/7, it seems a new social media network is born every minute.
How on earth can we possibly keep up? The answer is: we can’t, not completely. (It would be impossible to assimilate everything, analyse it and communicate it, all in real time). Luckily, at Watershed PR, we’re expert at sharing social media savvy, with each other and our clients. We love learning new things every day, and sharing them here on our blog. Here are our top tips on staying up-to-date with the most important changes.
Cupcakes and cutesy interiors have made multi-millionaires of three blokes in California. Welcome to Pinterest, Palo Alto’s newest and shiniest social media success story.
It’s used mostly by young(ish) women as a sort of style scrapbook to collect or ‘pin’ pictures of stuff they like onto a load of ‘boards’. (The same concept of communal noticeboards is used by the Guardian Media Group‘s social start-up, N0tice – why not have a look at our Bridport N0ticeboard?)
Pinterest is overwhelmingly in touch with its feminine side. It’s packed with images of shoes, recipes and photos of men with their tops off. The branding is vintage-y, and the waiting list fosters a sense of exclusivity.
Yes, you have to be invited to join. If you try to invite yourself, you’ll be left high and dry for a couple of days until one of the admins lets you in (via email). In this sense, Pinterest has echoes of sorority clubs, and it’s yet to rid itself of its distinctly American accent.
So why is it one to watch? Three reasons:
1) It reached 10 million unique monthly visitors faster than any other US website
2) It drives more traffic than Google+, according to Shareaholic
3) It makes money already via SkimLinks automatically giving them a cut for every retail sale Pinterest generates
We’re on it.
Beagles wearing hand-crocheted suits, an army of pugs being led by a corgi, and a snake on a plane. These are the top stories on BuzzFeed, the latest web offering from US technocrat, Jonah Peretti.
Too trashy for you? Well, maybe it’s time to dumb down, because the people running websites with ‘LOL feeds’ and ‘OMG feeds’ could be laughing all the way to the bank. Peretti knows this only too well, from his days as SEO architect for the Huffington Post. So…what’s the most shared link on BuzzFeed right now? The 25 Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions.
Watershed PR‘s been looking at this article in the New York Times about how BuzzFeed doubled its number of unique visitors in one year to 10.8 million. What’s the killer formula? Combining content that’s contagious or silly – that people want to share – with the more highbrow stuff that people need to know, like breaking news.
We can back up these findings with our own piece of micro-research. Emily’s been checking the real-time stats on her bit.ly info pages. What gets the most clicks? Why, animal pictures of course – specifically, these wonderful photos of man meets beast at last year’s Dorset County Show.
So, the lesson for today is: ‘sticky’ or ‘clicky’ content is not as important as something that’s easily spreadable. Like butter. Like Lurpack!
We’re finding that asking questions and talking about topical things like the weather (don’t groan) are key to starting and maintaining conversations with fans of the Facebook Pages we manage for our clients.
Read this piece on how ‘humorous’ photos can also up your engagement levels. Luckily, we’re never short of saucy pics here at Watershed PR…and the biggest spike on our own Facebook Page (measuring engaged users, talking about this and virality) was the photo of Emily’s latest literary purchase, Gay Lord Robert by Jean Plaidy, bought for 50p on a charity bookstall.
Go figure!
A labour of love, four months in the making. I moved to Bridport just over a year ago and immediately fell in love with the place. What better way to show my affection for such a place than to make a movie about it?
Shot on a Nikon D7000 camera, producing 16MP stills for a 25fps video. Some shots in this were 30 second exposures, meaning I had to stay with the camera for an hour and a half just to get six seconds of footage.
I see far too many touristy video features about the West Dorset coastline. Too many quaint holiday cottages and clichéd shots of people eating ice cream on the beach. This video was shot in the winter and, for a growing number of people interested in stargazing, shows that Bridport is a fantastic location for seeing the night sky. It is also beautiful at night.
I started experimenting with time lapse photography back in October 2011, producing promising results. Since then, my videos have come on in leaps and bounds and I am consistently producing my best work yet. By no means is this a finished work. Consider it Bridport by Night version 1. I will be getting a car soon, so this work may evolve to become the whole of Dorset by Night.
Follow me on Twitter: @DorsetScouser or visit my website: http://www.scousebysouthwest.com
Music is ‘Arrival of the Birds’ by the Cinematic Orchestra. I purchased the track on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/ie/album/arrival-of-the-birds/id297787201?i=297787336) and edited the sequence in iMovie.
Tonight’s #CommsChat on Twitter is about Google+ for brands and businesses.
Topics to be talked about include:
CommsChat is basically just a hashtag used on Twitter to talk about a number of topics within digital communications, PR and social networking. Conversations take place on Mondays at 8pm and Wednesdays at 2pm.
We’re sharing the secrets of their success by holding free clinics for Weymouth firms to find out how social media boosts business.
As Emily Pykett, our Social Media Executive, says: ‘Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or YouTube videos, social media gets the right people talking. It improves your reputation, boosts your website and Google ranking, and sells products and services. That’s why all growing and successful businesses use social media to get results.
‘It can seem like a jungle out there, but Watershed PR can help you make sense of social media.’
The clinics are both being held on Thursday November 24, at the Granby Diner from 8am to 3pm, and at the Marquis of Granby from 5pm to 6.30pm.
This informal chat includes a free social media ‘healthcheck’ for each business. Plus, there’s the opportunity to get free advice on any HR issue from Rosemary Martin, director of Resolve Human Resources. Please RSVP to emily@watershedpr.co.uk by 23 November 2011.
About Rosemary Martin: Rosemary Martin is director of Resolve Human Resources, a leading Dorset human resources consultancy. She’s an Investors in People specialist and provides professional, cost effective, common sense HR solutions to employment issues such as coaching, training, performance, tribunals, redundancies, disciplinary and grievance and recruitment. You can find out more on her website www.evolveleadership.co.uk and www.resolvehr.co.uk
A NEW digital edition of The Waste Land, by the UK’s favourite poet TS Eliot, is to be shown in public for the first time in Bridport.
The Waste Land app for iPad will kick-start a debate – sponsored by Bridport-based Watershed PR – about The Future of the Word.
The event on Saturday, November 19 is a coup for the new Bridport Open Book Festival, set up by Bridport Arts Centre to tie in with the famous Bridport Prize and celebrate reading and writing.
Faber’s Head of Digital Henry Volans, who published the app with Touch Press, said: ‘Though it has been presented at industry conferences in New York, London and Frankfurt, The Waste Land for iPad has never been shown at a public event.
‘So this is an exciting opportunity. Publishers spend much of their lives discussing the digital future of books but they rarely ask readers what they want.
‘Here’s a rare chance to bridge that gap, to bring a pioneering digital book to a book festival and provoke debate around new ways of presenting literature. Sceptics welcome!’
Mr Volans will be on a panel at Bridport Arts Centre alongside Watershed PR director Jonathan Hudston, The Bridport News’ news editor James Tourgout, Bridport writer Katherine Locke and Exeter-based poet and IT specialist Damian Furniss.
The Waste Land app is much more than just an electronic book. It includes a specially-commissioned film of actor Fiona Shaw performing the poem, archive recordings by Alec Guinness, Ted Hughes and Eliot himself that are otherwise hard to find, a new reading by actor Viggo Mortenson, and numerous interviews with such luminaries as Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, many of these filmed by the BBC.
Jonathan Hudston said: ‘You have to admit it’s a great itinerary – London, Frankfurt, New York, Bridport. We just want to make sure that West Dorset doesn’t miss out on the latest digital developments, because we know from our own experience that it’s possible to do extraordinary things these days.’
The Waste Land app has just been shortlisted for a 2012 Interaction Award by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) for Disrupting – Re-imagining completely an existing product or service by creating new behaviors, usages or markets. The app is up against products including the Ford SmartGauge, Nike+ GPS and the Morgan Stanley Matrix.
TS Eliot (1888-1965) is buried not far from Bridport at East Coker in Somerset. He was voted the nation’s favourite poet in a BBC poll in 2009. The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is commonly regarded as the 20th century’s greatest poem.
Tickets (£5 / £6) are available from Bridport Arts Centre (01308 424204).
PHOTO CAPTIONS:
DIGITAL PIONEER: Henry Volans, head of digital at publishers Faber & Faber.
Screenshot from the Waste Land App for iPad showing Seamus Heaney and an historic Florentine portrait of Dante
A selection of photographs of The Waste Land app for iPad can be downloaded from touchpress.com/press
NOTE TO EDITORS:
For more information, or to arrange interviews, please contact Jonathan Hudston at Watershed PR. Tel: 01308 420 785. Email: jonathan@watershedpr.co.uk
The Waste Land for iPad is available for £7.99 from the App Store on iPad or at http://www.itunes.com/appstore/
Quotes about The Waste Land for iPad:
- ‘The future face of literature’ – Brian Appleyard, Sunday Times
- ‘TS Eliot replaces Angry Birds as greatest modernist app’ – Gizmodo
- ‘It’s always hard to say what a dead poet would have liked… But the guarantee of electronic posterity should be hard for even Eliot to resist’ – The New York Times
ENDS
Is your business in serious trouble? Need to be told what to do? If you say yes, then a mentor is not for you.
I think mentors work best with successful businesses that want to grow, do more of the right things and explore new opportunities. These are firms who are interested in learning why they are doing well and how they can do even better.
When I started Watershed PR more than six years ago the company was only me in a converted stable in the grounds of an old watermill (literally a ‘water shed’). We’ve long since moved to much larger, more modern offices in Bridport with a staff of seven and looking to recruit again. Mentoring has played a big part in our development.
My original mentor created a string of highly profitable ventures, but was known best for founding the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. Gerard was a maverick who was always asking ‘why’. He was a great sounding board for ideas. He’d listen intently, question and challenge. He didn’t give advice as such, though it was part of his style to express vehement views. Sometimes we disagreed, and that was an accepted part of the debate. He never told me what to do with the business, but was very good at focusing my thoughts, recommending strategies and encouraging me to raise my sights.
My work with Gerard came to an end due to his poor health and as a result I didn’t have a mentor for a few years. In the meantime, Watershed grew, won awards and new clients, but the better we did, the more I missed having a mentor. I wanted someone with real, practical experience of business success and the time to spend with us who could help us push on to the next level.
Finding that person wasn’t easy. I wrote to various people and while they all sent back nice replies, no one made any concrete suggestions.
Finally, I heard of Dormen (Dorset Business Mentoring Programme) through a client who was already part of the scheme. Their business had really changed and grown and I was impressed with what they had achieved.
I contacted Dormen and was lucky enough to be accepted. I’ve been working with my new mentor, Phil, since March 2011 and the results have been great. Turnover has risen despite the tough economic conditions and it’s helped me develop a clearer vision of how to attain our goals.
For me, one of the most valuable aspects of having a mentor is that it compels you to spend time working on the business as well as in the business. We all know how important that is, but the day-to-day realities of running a business often mean that the strategic stuff gets pushed aside. There’s always a client to talk to or a project that needs extra support. You can lose sight of the big picture.
My sessions with Phil are demanding and require commitment and preparation. I certainly couldn’t just waltz in for an easy, five-minute chat. Phil is particularly good at discussing the central paradoxes of entrepreneurship, such as the balance between vision (doing something new) and commitment (sticking with what you are already doing). Finding this balance poses a conundrum for creative businesses like mine, especially in the current environment.
Apart from the all-important bottom line, our sessions have also improved HR and team working. It’s important to me that Watershed is a good place to work and that good people want to work with us.
I find it amazing that more successful businesses with growth potential don’t use mentors. Dormen is a fantastic scheme and I recommend it.
Sara Hudston
Video is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google searches. YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine after Google. With this in mind, shouldn’t your brand be making online video?
Watershed has put together a fact sheet to help you make great online video. Click on the link below to see more:
View the PDF sheet accompanying the session
Here are some relevant links to videos we will be discussing in our Like Minds immersive session:
Would you buy a used car from this man? Yes, because it’s Bill from Bridport Bandits. We gave the Bandits an old car, which they have done up and is now for sale at £750 – all profits going to the Bandits’ youth autograss racing club. Let us know if you are interested, it won’t be around for long.
Watershed PR is running an immersive session in online video production at this year’s Like Minds Exeter event in October.
Our session will combine theory, hands-on, face-to-face practice, stories, analysis and discussion. It will range widely over many subjects, probably including the ancient arts of rhetoric, the uses of beer, boxing, blinks, sex, death, violence, framing, gorillas, curiosity, multi-modal literacy, shopping, the effects of memorising, and wheels.
All these things are – we promise you – relevant. You’ll learn why you should bother with online video in the first place and how it will help your PR, marketing and SEO. The main thrust of the session will be practical, with many useful tips to help you produce videos that people will want to watch and share.
We will look creating a better understanding of your brand’s identity so that you know what messages and characteristics you should aim to express. We will discuss ways of finding the stories and the people best placed to bring a product or a company to life on screen.
A series of enjoyably simple exercises will show what genuine engagement looks like and sounds like. How long should you hold shots for when filming? Should you move the camera? How should you move the camera? If people are talking, where they should look? How should their voices be recorded? When editing, how long should shots be? How do you know when to cut from shot to shot?
We will look particularly at the director Alexander Mackendrick’s idea of the Invisible Imaginary Ubiquitous Winged Witness. The Witness is ‘a strange disembodied and mythic creature… oblivious to real space and time’ but we’ll discuss what lessons this inquisitive beast has for modern businesses, particularly in relation to the Like Minds 2011 Exeter conference themes of Innovation and Opportunity.
Detailed analysis and comparison of videos will suggest what works, what doesn’t and why. Throughout this whole session, we will want to call upon people’s own experiences and views. Some of our own videos will be critiqued, and we will reveal some of the motivations and techniques that went into making them.
Bring a smartphone, and, if possible, a small object that doesn’t have much monetary value but holds some personal significance for you. We’re also planning to set up a YouTube channel just for this session. If you know you’re going to attend, email jonathan@watershedpr.co.uk or stephen@watershedpr.co.uk for more details of how we can all prepare for a memorable afternoon.
Like Minds Exeter is being held 19-21 October, see http://wearelikeminds.com/events/exeter for further details.
Jonathan Hudston
A CAR bought for £150 on eBay and customised by Bridport’s youth Autograss racing team, the Bridport Bandits, has become their star vehicle.
‘Hattie’, a Peugeot 106, has taken juniors and seniors first past the finish line in seven out of 10 races. Painted tractor blue, Hattie is an approved experimental car the Bandits are racing this season and is being evaluated as a suitable next generation car by The National Autograss Association.
Club treasurer Stuart McKenzie said: ‘Hattie got us thinking that Peugeots could be a better car for us in future. The club has traditionally raced Minis, which are no longer a viable option, and we needed to look for something more up-to-date. Apart from winning races, our real objective is to give the Bandits useful skills and experience with modern car engines, to help them achieve good careers in related industries. Our lads become very employable because they learn such a broad range of skills, including plumbing and electrics, as well as car mechanics.’
The Bandits race with junior specials and 1000cc classic Minis, although the Minis are currently being phased out and replaced with Peugeot 106s. Three Peugeots are parked at Bandit HQ in Gundry Lane and over the coming months they will be brought up to racing standard by the Bandits. All the club members, who are aged 12-18, are fully involved in preparing the cars under the expert eye of trained mechanics and senior members.
The Bridport Bandits team of Junior Specials and Minis are now placed 2nd and 4th respectively in the Southern league of the National Autograss Sports Association.
Success stories include Ryan Bennett who achieved an apprenticeship with Lanehouse Vauxhall and went on to win their coveted Gold Star apprentice award. James Dowding is a new apprentice mechanic at Marque 21, a Porsche specialist in Bridport, having impressed the management with his skills and attitude after just one week’s voluntary work. Younger Bandits members hope to start careers in aero engineering.
Stuart added: ‘Autograss racing is a safe and very disciplined sport. Not to be confused with banger racing, Autograss teams must abide by strict rules or risk disqualification. The sport encourages responsible driving, teamwork and great attention to detail in preparing the cars.
‘We’re very proud of what the Bandits have achieved so far and we’ve got big plans for the future. The team works hard both on and off the racetrack and we’re always on the look-out for new Bandits – boys or girls – to roll up their sleeves and get under a car bonnet.’
Watershed is helping the Bandits in their search for new members and to gain more support from local businesses.
Bridport Bandits at their HQ with Hattie, the car they bought on eBay for £150 and converted.
Want to upshift to a small agency with big attitude and live in the loveliest part of the country?
Hey you big agency people – remember what it was like when you weren’t encased in a silo dealing with the same one or two massive corporates every day? When there was a direct and immediate link between your hard work and bright ideas and the results the client saw? When the clients knew you personally and you worked with them as part of a tight-knit team? When you worked in an agency nimble enough to experiment and try new things, one that had a sense of energy and possibility?
It can happen again!
Or maybe you’re already working in Dorset and want to continue your career success without leaving for London?
We’re looking for another experienced PR manager to join the team. Based in Bridport, Dorset, you will be working with a range of exciting clients. Sectors include tourism, fashion, food and drink, education, arts, manufacturing and business services.
This is a full-time role for someone who enjoys breaking new ground and doing a bit of everything – we all take turns on the tea run, but we promise you won’t have to clean the loos.
Salary range from £30-35k plus profit share. If you’re interested, please contact me at Watershed.
Sara Hudston
PRIZE-winning PR agency Watershed has been awarded government funding to develop its HR programme.
The grant from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is to help organisations with growth potential and this can be used to develop leadership and management skills.
Watershed Principal Sara Hudston said: ‘People really are our greatest asset. I want to make sure that as we grow, we remain a fantastic place to work, one of the best in Dorset.’
Watershed is using the money to part-fund work with an external HR consultant. Rosemary Martin of Resolve Human Resources and Evolve Leadership from Christchurch is working with the consultancy on a six-month programme.
‘My approach is based on the Investors in People standard, which helps firms transform their business performance. It’s very exciting to be working with such a committed and go-ahead firm as Watershed.’
Watershed has expanded over the last year and has clients across the South West. It employs seven people at its Bridport base and will be looking to recruit further.
‘We are extending our new media capacities, including social media and online video,’ said Sara.
‘The changing digital landscape offers great opportunities for businesses to connect with customers and Watershed is at the forefront of this. But technology is nothing without people, which is why we put such emphasis on making sure we are a good place to work.’
The Leadership and Management Advisory Service in the South offers a free service which includes a training needs analysis to help the Business Leader identify the training and development requirements. Grants are available to eligible companies in the South West and South East regions with two to 250 full-time equivalent employees. Up to £1,000 matched funding can be put towards training activities. For further information see www.skillsoutheast.co.uk
Businesses need less passion.
Now that’s a statement you don’t see very often. Practically every company claims to produce its goods with ‘passion’. They all seem to think that jamming the word in their company slogans adds that extra marketing magic. No, it doesn’t. Do you really want ‘cheese made with passion’?
The oddest claim I’ve seen was painted on the side of a delivery van. The van was the plainest, most boring grey imaginable and belonged to Innserve. It promised ‘dispense solutions passionately delivered’.
As a copywriting junkie I was thrilled. Not only did it make very little sense, it managed to combine ‘passion’ with ‘solutions’. In the days before ‘passion’ became so popular, businesses loved to say they offered ‘solutions’. I was a big fan of the Solutions column in Private Eye listing particularly nonsensical slogans. So it was a real treat to see my old fave ‘solutions’ linked with ‘passion’.
However, I suspect my reaction was not quite the one that Innserve envisaged. As ‘the largest national independent drinks dispense service company in the UK’ they seem a really good outfit. But is ‘passion’ really one of their top brand attributes? If I ran a bar, I might be keener on reliability, speed of service, knowledge and price. Why not promise me something relevant?
Similar thoughts apply to other brands cluttering up their packaging with random sprinklings of ‘passion’. Dorset biscuit maker Fudges decorate their packs with the pledge ‘made with passion, the Fudges way’. Thankfully, their fellow local biscuit makers, Moores, haven’t succumbed to passionate temptation and don’t run a similar slogan on their packs of Dorset Knobs.
When it comes to copywriting, you need to know what you are selling. Be clear, be persuasive and be yourself.
Sara Hudston
Tin of Moores' Dorset Knobs
I’m sometimes asked ‘what is PR? What do you do at Watershed?’ Sometimes I reply that we help businesses protect and build their reputations. Or I say that we help them sell products and spread ideas. If I’m feeling particularly grandiose I might claim that we put them in touch with the world (that last one works best with an echo effect. Helloooo world!)
And all those answers are true of all good PR agencies, large or small, city-based or regional.
But what does Watershed do? In summary, Watershed’s job is making good things happen. For our clients, for us as a company, for our local area, for the wider world.
Facts first. We’re a regional agency, based in Dorset with clients across the South West. We’re proud to be what Seth Godin calls a ‘small giant’, succeeding because we are good, not because we are big. In fact I’d go further and say that, for us, being good, being small and being outside London all work together to give us our characteristic attitude, expertise and spirit.
We create stuff – much of it digital. We make things happen, work with us and things change – why else would we be called Watershed? And, crucially in this age of mass consumption, we make good things happen. Only smaller agencies can really claim this role. Some of the big ones want to, but however expert, they are just too corporate, cumbersome and often compromised by the type of work they do. It doesn’t help anyone in PR when agencies work with despotic regimes, try to restrict free speech, or engage in negative briefings against competitors.
Here at Watershed we’re particularly interested in local communities and networks. Every year the team chooses a very local cause or event to support with a free PR campaign – this year it’s Bridport Hat Festival, last year it was the From Page to Screen Film Festival, before that it was Bridport Food Festival. (Bridport likes its festivals, one of many reasons why we like Bridport).
But our definition of making good things happen goes wider and deeper than an annual bit of community work. It’s good to provide interesting careers and proper salaries outside the cities. It’s good to work long-term with businesses and organisations and help them grow. And it’s good to explore new ideas and contribute to the knowledge economy.
Sara Hudston
