A piece on a campaign to promote Guinness World Records Day caught my eye in the latest edition of PR Week and instantly took me back to childhood Xmases in the Seventies. The Guinness Book of Records was always a mainstay of my annual stocking fillers and although little more than the cover seemed to change each year we’d always have fun finding the most ridiculous record holders.

Way back then we even had a televised equivalent in the Roy Castle hosted Record Breakers and a week never seemed to go by without a screen full of starry eyed hopefuls attempting to mass tap dance their way into the book. Personally I was always far more impressed by the mindlessly entertaining efforts to see how many people you could cram into a Mini or a telephone box…

Sadly no one from Guinness was on hand to verify the record crowd numbers at our joint CIPR / Manchester Digital Online PR event last week but we’re maintaining that we could have filled MDDA’s venue twice over due to the great speaker line up and the hotness of the topic.

Thanks go out to newly elected CIPR North West Chair Dave Sanders and Manchester Digital Committee Member Simon Wharton for providing the welcome and hosting the event and also to our sponsors Lexis Nexis who came bearing gifts of chocolate and sheep shaped stress relievers!

The evening opened with an overview of the value of social media tools from Jane Smith of Smith & Smith PR who blogs at pr in a jar. Jane provided a great introduction to the subject and primed our audience for the presentations which followed.

Our second speaker was renowned Leeds based public relations and social media blogger Stuart Bruce who examined the broad spectrum of organisations who are already benefiting from an online PR presence and why everyone should be extending the reach of their traditional PR and marketing with social media tools.

Stuart is currently assisting Alan Johnson’s bid to become Deputy PM as Communications Director of the MP’s campaign. It should be interesting to see how he brings his obvious passion and love of innovation to the way the Secretary of State for Education and Skills engages with voters through traditional and emerging communications channels.

You can read more about Stuart’s take on PR and Social media at his blog A PR Guy’s Musings.

Our final presentation was delivered by Jonathan Bowers, Communications Manager of award winning Manchester based internet service provider UKFast.

Jonathan focussed on the use of podcasts as an effective method to broadcast your message and often entertain your target audience. Our delegate’s ears were treated to a wide and varied selection of audio clips including the South Yorkshire Police 'plodcast' and the cult natural gardening and worm fancier’s Wiggly podcast.

Jonathan also blogs on all things technical at the UKFast blog and, in a nice example of serendipity, UKFast also sponsor Sale Sharks rugby club who are the current Guinness Premiership League Champions.

Despite being dragged around the Dublin brewery as a youngster I never developed a taste for the dark stuff but I’m sure everyone will have a particular soft spot for the company’s iconic advertising.