Open The Dialogue

Above is the original notepad that inspired IBM’s storied ThinkPad laptop computer line (via Merlin Mann).  Being digital professionals and our worlds moving a mile a minute online – what are some things, as PR professionals and trusted communication counselors, that we can do to help focus ourselves?

Switching from e-mail and phone call and conference room to really helping keep the big picture in mind not just for your team but your clients as well can be helped by simple, daily exercises that will take less time than you think and – hopefully – reward you down the line.

• Talk to every person on your team – what is everyone working on?  Maybe it impacts some of your projects?  Or sharing what you’re doing can help someone think about their work differently or offer different perspective on your own.  This isn’t a formal meeting, this doesn’t have to be face-to-face but it’s important to look up from the grindstone and check-in with your team.

• Double-check a budget or goals/objectives for a program, campaign, etc. – what comes next?  Is what you’re working on the right thing that needs to be done?  Often, when projects are launched into, everyone focuses on the immediate next steps without managing the finish line – doing this will not just help deliver a great product to your client but help you think strategically about the program, campaign or project you’re working on.

• Take 5 minutes to think – as easy as this sounds, you’d be surprised about how few of us do it during the course of a day.  Focus on a new skill or a topic you want to know about, or try to connect ideas between clients and trends.  The small savoring of mental focus might just give you your next big idea!

Want more?  Check out The 99 Percent.  A think tank from the awesome folks at Behance (which inspired this post), it’s a great site that focuses on what happens after your team walks out of that brainstorm – when it’s time to put ideas into action and all the things to take you from point A to B.

Seth Godin is on the tip of everyone’s tongue’s today (as he probably planned to be).  Not only did he launch the Brands in Public project yesterday evening but I was able to be in attendance (thanks HarperStudio!) today while he gave a talk to the Digital Publishing Group addressing critical issues in today’s publishing landscape.  Before getting into the re-cap about the event, a bit more about Brands in Public:

Squidoo has built several hundred pages, each one about a major brand. (Here are some examples). More are on the way. We’ll keep going until we have thousands of important brands, each on its own page (and we’ll happily add one for you if you like). Each page collects tweets, blog posts, news stories, images, videos and comments about a brand. All of these feeds are algorithmic… the good and the bad show up, all collated and easy to find.

Of course, these comments and conversations are already going on, all over the web. What we’ve done is bring them together in one place. And then we’ve made it easy for the brand to chime in.

That last sentence is probably most important.  For this ease-of-use, Seth wants $400/month for a brand to use this page as a portal to interact with consumers on the web.  Is this the right thing to do?  Is it worth it?  Where is the value for consumers and the brand?  There has been significant debate surrounding this move and even Seth himself says “BIP” probably shouldn’t be the 1st option:

If you have the tools and wherewithal to build a page like this on your own site, you should consider that. The challenge is getting it done, regardless of where the page lives.

A big post from Jason Falls today debates this even further.  He wonders if BIPs are holding brands hostage:

At first glance, you just think, “So what? The brands can just participate in the conversations on the various social networks and they Brands in Public spider will pick up those conversations as well. Hopefully, Brands in Public isn’t doing anything shady by parsing out the brand participation and that theory will hold true. However, think for a moment of the power, reach and influence Godin has. If his idea takes hold (it probably will because on the surface it’s a good one) and he markets it the way he’s capable of, Brands in Public could be come THE place to go see the “unfiltered” conversation about brands everywhere.

If that scenario plays out, then the $400 or more fee Godin’s company plans to charge is, in a way, blackmail.

It’ll be important to watch how this develops over the coming weeks and months.  There is no denying that time time is now to engage with consumers, directly, online but is this the best way to do it?  How many “walls” should be between you and your audience?  Seth talked a lot about platforms and tribes in today’s #digpub event and a lot of what one sees in this BIP execution also was discussed today in regards to the publishing industry.

During today’s talk, Seth made strong analogies between the necessary innovation that must and is happening in the music industry to what has to happen in the publishing industry in 2009 (arguably, it should’ve started 10 years ago).

• Thinking less about the physical product.  Actual books as “dead trees” shouldn’t be the focus but more books should be the vehicle of great ideas which people will forever be attracted to.
• Applicable to marketing in all industries, he then ran though some solid strategy points -
  • Permission marketing – it’s about developing relationships, creating value and making marking (with permission) a two-way street
  • Scarcity – simply, if you have something of overwhelming value and cap access – it usually becomes more sought after
  • Selection related to risk – as a publisher, you want to be in a position to be finding writers for your readers instead of the other way around
  • Finally, it’s all about attention – if the tools and content you’re producing are creating overwhelming value for your audience, you’ll often hold their attention and, subsequently, their permission

Update:  Seth posted a change in direction for the Brands in Public project today.  In what I think is a smart move, if a brand wants to participate, it becomes opt-in and they must contact Squidoo directly.  All the pilot pages set-up for brands to adopt are now inactive.

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen-in on a webinar being presented by WOMMA about Ethics and Endorsements on today’s web.  Specifically, discussion surrounding best practices for disclosure (summary of reactions).  With the FTC’s regulations pending, the panel kicked-off WOMMA’s efforts to create an industry-wide set of standards and defenitions for marketers and communication professionals when it comes to disclosing brand involvement, affiliation, compensation, etc.

It was a solid panel and discussion presented by several big voices – John Bell, Jory Des Jardin, Sean Corcoran, Tom Collinger and Anthony DiResta.  Most of the discussion surrounded how different parties would approach disclosure – mainly marketers & brands vs. publishers.  Each panelist was able to offer unique perspective in relation to their background – especially POV from Mr. Collinger & DiResta, who spoke about the actual definitions and legal fortitude of disclosure.  Building legal language standards and definite explicit points of view for disclosure can help clarify confusion – especially for the consumer who, often, don’t have the history and background about a relationship a marketer or publisher has when they first click on that link.

John Bell was able to kick-off the panel with several practical points of advice for brands and influencers to work with whenever entering into a relationship where editorial opinion could be affected:

• Create terms of engagement for both parties – being clear and explicit about the terms of the program, make them public as well.
• Official agreement promising true opinion – to protect both the publisher, brand and most importantly, the reader.
• Disclosure execution – explicit explanations per post and on the greater property (i.e. blog, Twitter, etc.)
• Stick to your guns – show your readers that these set of ethics permeate throughout by adding notes in bio sections and aligning with organizations like Blog With Integrity or WOMMA

Jory and BlogHer’s standards for disclosure represented the best tactical examples on the panel but I think the true publisher voice was missing.  What about the people writing these posts and running these blogs?  Their perspective would’ve added valuable context to this discussion.  Certainly, how an author wants to and does handle affiliation on their property is a necessary piece to include when discussing relationships between brands and those whom they’re trying to influence (both the publisher and the publisher’s audience).

Since the webinar and sitting down to write this post I’ve had several healthy discussions with people who are both close and far from this subject.  With signs pointing towards sponsored conversations, how does that affect the value of engagement?  My colleague Laura and I would argue that outright sponsorship, even with proper disclosure, devalues a brand’s participation ROI.  In theory, an influencer’s audience is engaged for reasons that a sponsored conversation can’t support.  I’m most likely reading someone else’s blog because I value their opinion or perspective.  When I find out that they’re being paid to express such – credibility is lost (regardless of negative or positive opinion).

A full summary will eventually be live on WOMMA’s Ethics Review blog but, in the meantime, how do you feel about disclosure?  What are your standards?

Here are some “back-to-school” links of note from Twitter & FriendFeed.  Later this week we’ll be publishing a handy guide for things you can do to start the “school year” off right.

• Facebook Adding Stream Clicks to Page Insights – no individual clicks just yet, but we’re getting there.  This is certainly an important metric to have.

• SEO lessons from Google News – insight from Google themselves on how items for Google News are ranked.  Important from a PR POV when helping clients craft news and announcements.

• MSNBC acquires EveryBlock – first Newsvine, now EB (a major player in the hyperlocal news/aggregation world).  Some pretty interesting moves.

• Google and their systems – Domestic Trends gives us a cool way to analyze economic data and now PageRank helps scientists study ecosystems.

• WordPress.com becomes real-time – RSS muscles back on to the scene and now millions of blogs can push their updates into the social web.  Pretty big step in terms of tech with a lot more, I’m sure, to come.

As much as constant software updates are a pain, they’re essential in today’s digital world.  If you have a blog on the web and unless you use WordPress.com, TypePad, Tumblr, Posterous or the like – odds are you might have the nagging “update me!” notice hanging around every couple of weeks or months.

Earlier this week, WordPress announced a new security release of their popular publishing software that plugged a pretty serious hole:  one that would’ve allowed someone to gain administrator access pretty easily.  While minor software updates usually sit on the bottom of to-do lists around the web, a few of the more prominent voices were targets of attacks trying to gain access before they upgraded their blogs.

Paul Stamatiou was saved by some extra security plug-ins he has in place (ed note:  What were they?) while Robert Scoble’s blog was actually comprimised.  Robert’s logic for not updating right away is fair but “1/8th” is a risk I’ll take to make sure all of my public publishing systems are secure.

So, if you have some downtime this weekend, take a look around your web and make sure everything is up-to-date.  WordPress has automatic updating features and even if your server isn’t configured to handle that, the regular update process is easy as well.  If you’re in the agency world, the same goes for any client projects you work on as well.

Photo credit: CarbonNYC