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How are your teams structured, and how has this evolved over time? Tamara Bennett, head of media relations: In the UK we have five people in external relations; in the US we have three, plus one person in Australia for Asia-Pacific, so we're a small team. Each of the 60 Virgin companies has its own press team as well, and we work really closely with them. We also have a content and social team of nine people [led by Greg Rose]; we work side by side.
How has this evolved over time? Nick Fox, director of external relations (a USbased Brit): When I arrived [in 2007] we had a PR team of six, no content team, plus one colleague in Australia. Greg joined in 2009 and that was the moment that we really started to shift away from more traditional PR to content and building the Richard brand on social media.
Greg Rose, head of content: In the early days of content and social, it was about getting followers, getting views, putting a lot out there and seeing what stuck. Now we're a lot less about chasing clicks and more about making sure the content we make showcases the best of the brand and gets other interesting influencers joining in.
Is there a particular social platform that works best for you? GR: I would say the one that stands out for us is LinkedIn. A lot of brands and business leaders I think see it as a jobs platform, which it absolutely is, but from a content and PR point of view we get more traffic from LinkedIn than from any other source. It really taps into Virgin's and Richard's audiences nicely. As opposed to platforms like Facebook, where it's harder to get that traction, LinkedIn still works really nicely organically. TB: The great thing about having our own platform, Virgin.com, is we don't always go to the media first, we tend to use Virgin.com as our news site so we can make a big company announcement on there, and then develop it for the media.
What do you look for in staff? NF:...