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This year’s general election, or as the cool kids on Twitter call it: #ge2010, was supposed to be the digital election.

Emulating the success of Obama’s campaign, the political parties were going to tap into the power of social media.

Pundits and bloggers were asking important questions: Would social media kill off the influence of Rupert Murdoch and his media machine? Would digital news signify an era of political openness and kick off one great big communication ruckus on Twitter? Would Dave Cameron sign up to Twitter and will his avatar be as heavily made up as he is on his posters?

Of course, real life is full of twists and turns; the reality is that the TV debates have been the surprise package. Some social media ‘commentators’ have been taken aback by the influence of the leaders’ debates, which have seen the emergence of Nick Clegg as a potentially genuine third choice.

So what has happened? Was the digital election hype, nothing more than a human construct? Is this the shift towards television going to burst the social media bubble?

The quick and easy answer is that things just aren’t that simple. Our view is that to take social media, TV, print or radio in isolation is overly simplistic. They feed off each other.

Most of the Citypress PR team watched the leaders’ debates on TV, but at the same time they were following a Twitter feed, helping them take on board the views of millions of users, blogs and news sources. We are sad like that.

At the end of the debates, the polls were published and the 24 hour news channels analysed who was up, who was down and who was Brown. Again, we were there, as were thousands of others, analysing Twitter and the blogs, which in turn were analysing what was happening elsewhere.

Then the print media rushed out hastily cobbled together front pages, which were then analysed by the same circle of TV pundits and internet information junkies.

Together these media channels come together to give us the biggest change of all. This is not the ‘digital election’; we are witnessing the real-time election.

Hardly a moment doesn’t go by when something, somewhere influences the electoral landscape. Unless your favourite media source is the Shopping Channel, it is hard to escape the constantly moving and changing cycle of British media.

Citypress take this cross platform approach and apply it to PR. We don’t believe in having a specialist ‘digital expert’ who is heads up our online campaigns, as we don’t believe in taking one media channel in isolation. This is because all our people are fully trained in online and digital communications. Digital sites like Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Facebook are as much as part of a PR campaign as old fashioned print news titles.

News has always been a social media, because we love to talk, discuss, debate and fight about the headlines. However now we experience news in real time, and we don’t wait to see what the papers say.

‘Tis the season to be jolly. Has been for a while if you count how many times you’ve heard Slade since October.

So let’s mock the world of social media similes, but in a festive way.

We can call it ‘Jingle Bell Jargon’.

There’s nothing wrong with a good simile, plenty of people use them very effectively in tweets, blogs, presentations and meetings. It’s just that the world of social media does seem to spawn some hilarious ones. You’ll have seen them promoted by people with 45,000 Twitter followers and user names such as @SocialMediaGuruSEOPRspecialist.

“Social media is like a slot machine” is a new favourite – unearthed when trawling Google recently. But, this isn’t going to be a list of the funniest similes already in existence, that’s way too subjective.

Instead, via the mini-crowdsourcing mechanic of texting a few Manchester PR colleagues, here is the Citypress Top 10 Totally Made Up Christmas Social Media Similes 2010:

1. Social media is like Santa’s sack. You have to be good to get the best presence (see what we did there?)

2. Twitter is like a massive turkey waiting to be carved. If you serve up too much on one plate, no-one will be interested when you offer any more.

3. A Facebook friend is like an eager child, waiting to check the tags on all the presents under its tree of followers.

4. YouTube is like an advent calendar. Every day you open a new moving window of fresh knowledge.

5. Bringing social media knowledge to the meeting table is like being the Wise Man who carried the myrrh. No-one quite knows what it is but it’s the talk of the stable.

6. Managing a good LinkedIn profile is like carol singing. Hit all the right notes and people will open the door to you.

7. Talking about social media is like hanging decorations – you have to get the right balance or your tree will fall over.

8. Twitter is like Quality Street – not everyone likes every tweet in the tin.

9. Google is like Father Christmas. It knows what you want and whether you’ve been bad or good.

10. Getting social media wrong is like smashing a snow globe. All the parts are there but you’ve ruined its charm.

Are you groaning yet? I hope so. The alternative is nodding sagely and cutting and pasting one of those into a presentation or Twitter update.

If you feel the need to add your own please use the hashtag #jinglebelljargon.

Season’s Greetings.

Apps are a hot topic for marketers, fuelled by the growth of the iPhone and Apple’s classically smug – and now banned – app-led advertising campaign.

As a result there is much debate about the worth of apps to brands and whether they should aim to entertain or actually provide some lasting value.

There’s now sufficient marketing budget being directed at apps to fund the emergence of specialist agencies (one US specialist grandly promises to help brands focus “on contextually-relevant targeted media and integrated sponsorship programs that encourage consumer engagement with brands” Mmm!)

However, beneath the hype there’s a genuine opportunity for brands. In a rapidly developing digital culture, apps that offer genuine value (whether that’s a useful tool or a short-lived prank for the office joker) are finding their way into people’s pockets.

With this much-prized goal up for grabs the battle of branded apps is likely to be fiercely contested. All it takes is the right idea.