About

Hi there. My name is David Prior, and I run Prior Communications. Thanks for getting this far on the site.

So who am I?

I hail from south Manchester but currently live on the Wirral. I’ve lived in a few other cities in England and travelled the world a bit, but the north west is my home.

And your company?

If I was to sum up Prior Communications in one phrase, it would be this: Content is king. The old rules of marketing and PR have changed; in fact, they’ve been utterly transformed by the development and profileration of the internet. Marketing used to mean advertising and selling, while PR used to mean attempting to convince a journalist to cover your story.

Now, marketing and PR is so much more than advertising and media persuasion. These days, companies can reach their customers directly through content - through blogs, microblogging, news releases, search engine-friendly website design, podcasts, e-books and other forms of online content. Great content convinces people to buy a company’s products or services.

Prior Communications advises companies how to use the internet to reach more customers, sell more products or services, and so generate more income.

A bit about me

My interest in online content comes stems, ironically, from my experience in offline content.

Back in the 90s, after a History degree at York, I did a post-graduate degree in newspaper journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, achieving my NCTJ certificate. From there, I followed my dream and became a sports journalist, first as a writer and sub-editor for the Press Association, and then as assistant sports editor and designer on the Liverpool Daily Post, before a brief stint as sports editor on the North West Enquirer. I also freelanced for The Sunday Times, www.teamtalk.com and the Manchester Evening News, and even managed to be nominated for a couple of national writing awards by the Sports Journalists’ Association. As well as sport, I was at various times news reporter, columnist, restaurant and TV critic, gig reviewer and travel writer.

Frustrated however by the decline afflicting the newspaper industry, I moved into PR for one of the country’s largest agencies, playing a leading role in winning a Gold Award in Crisis Communications at the CIPR North West Awards. I’d always had an interest in online marketing and the internet in general, and I couldn’t quite believe the degree to which online marketing methods were ignored in a traditional PR agency. So I jumped ship and decided to go it alone. I’m completely passionate about online marketing and PR, and am currently researching a dissertation on the uses of social media in a business context for my part-time MBA, due for completion in March 2009.