A round-up of statistics, analysis and research that I spotted this week.

Considering how market segmentation and user personas can work together to improve the effectiveness of marketing activity.

E-consultancy reports a survey from Clearswift about staff use of web 2.0 sites presenting a potential security risk for businesses.

Ask.com and digital marketing agency Profero are behind a misguided offline and online campaign that’s aiming to encourage UK search users to stop using Google.

For the first time today I had more than 100 people downloading my RSS feed.

The American pet food poisoning scare shows that while brands must ensure they stay true to the values they demonstrate to consumers.

The Todd And list of top marketing blogs lists 17 UK-based marketing blogs, including this one. I’ve created an RSS feed that aggregates content from all these blogs.

Today marks the start of what’s called the purdah period for communications for the UK local authority where I head up marketing and public relations.

Trying to find out more about the people who read my blog and visit this website.

While marketing and public relations aren’t regulated professions, there are plenty of rules and codes to keep to.

I’ve finally got around to registering with Twitter. Have I just hit on the next big thing, or am I just wasting my time?

The Euroblog 2007 research project confirms that the world of communications is changing fast.

How important is the context of the people you’re aiming your marketing or public relations efforts at?

I might be missing something, but what’s a “portable bike”?

As a marketing and public relations professional, everything you do on behalf of your organisation needs to be consistent with its values.

Sir Martin Sorrell sees WPP growth being driven by his public relations businesses, and this is good news for public relations as a whole.

I’ve been reading Life’s a Pitch, a new book by Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity about how we can pitch more effectively every day of our lives.

Readers will know that I blog about marketing and public relations, but some events in life are just too significant not to be mentioned.

A core skill for marketing and public relations professionals has to be writing high quality copy. This is an area where I’ve had to work to improve my own skills.

I’ve just upgraded the blog to run the latest version of Wordpress – v2.1.2 – which was released yesterday.

Just finished leafing through this week’s PR Week magazine (UK) – the front page lead on McDonald’s and its move to use staff as brand ambassadors caught my eye.