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PR Business is reporting on a great example of how The Times and Sony Ericsson are using moblogging to help raise awareness and generate interest of S/Erricsons range of cameraphones. PR Business says: “The mobile phone manufacturer is running the first ever Cameraphone News Photographer of the Year competition. The event was launched last Saturday with a collection of images in The Times, all of which have been captured on Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot phones by a Times photographer.

“It offers members of the public a chance to get their cameraphone images in the pages of the newspaper.”

Entrants can send their cameraphone snaps via MMS to 07834 885058 and the best shots will be featured on The Times’ website. Every week for six months the winning photographer will receive a k800i cameraphone and a monthly winner will be chosen with with his/her entrant appearing in The Times newspaper.

But that is not all. After the competition has finished, the weekly winning photographs will be displayed in a top London gallery and a panel of judges will vote for the ‘Cameraphone News Photographer of the Year’.

In February I made a post on eight moblogging hacks (because I couldn’t think of ten) and listed a few examples of how using a moblog can work in PR. Well this, in my opinion, is a great example. We’re (supposedly) in the dawning of user generated content and I believe so far we haven’t latched onto the possibilities of moblogs in PR campaigns. Think about it – millions of people around the world armed and equipped with cameras. That’s got to have its use surely?

Personally, I’d have loved to see them in use around this year’s World Cup. Imagine the shots from fans from each country posting to their own individual country moblogs.

Sidenote:
Yes this blog has its own moblog and it hasn’t been used for a while. Simple answer: Phone’s knackered.

Sidenote two:
Have you noticed in PR Business that certain words are a different colour to the article’s text? I think it’s because when the website is (finally) up and running, those different coloured words will be hyperlinks. Much the same way Antony’s article is in correspondence with his blog.

I think (and this is just a hunch, I have been known to be wrong before) that PR Business’ website will be based on Web2.0. We could possibly see a comment section on articles and maybe even a podcast or two.

Let’s hope so.

Technorati tags:
moblog, moblogging, the+times, sony+ericcson, user+generated+content