Open The Dialogue

Inspired by Joe Thornley's list of social media-themed books he keeps around I thought I'd do the same. Like Joe I find incredible value in books and the freedom books give their authors to go in-depth and provide context on subjects. As I said in my review of Now is Gone, I may not always agree with the arguments made in these books, but I don't always agree with stuff people post on their sites either. And I just love reading books. So there's that.

So here's what's in the bookshelf above my desk right now.

• The Age of Conversation (various): Where else are you going to get 100 bloggers to chime in in one place? Each piece on the current state and future of new marketing is a good read. Lots of familiar names and some new ones but a consistently good interesting book.
• Blogging for Business (Holtz/Demopoulos): While other books focus more on strategy and *why* you should start a blog for your business, BfB walks the reader through the process of actually doing it and throws in plenty of rational and strategy to remind the reader they've made the right decision.
• The Long Tail (Anderson): One of four books I've read that have just completely blown my mind in terms of changing how I think about all aspects of marketing, distribution and a list of related topics in a wired (heh) world.
• Grapevine (Balter/Butman): Dave Balter is the founder of word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent and the book, while interesting in spots, often reads like too much of a sales pamphlet for his own company than a general best-practices piece.
• What Sticks (Briggs/Stuart): Not really about "new" marketing so much as about making sure you're making well-informed decisions with your marketing strategies. What I most got out of this one was the idea that there needs to be set goals for success before starting a campaign, with everyone working toward that goal, no matter what it is.
• The Tipping Point (Gladwell): The second of the two books on this list that really changed my thinking quite a bit. I know it's become cliched to cite this one, but there's a reason why it's on everyone's list of books to read.
• BuzzMarketing (Hughes): Like Grapevine, the author spends a bit too much time talking about himself and how brilliant he himself is but there are some good stories in there. Not so much a thought-provoker as it is a series of self case studies.
• Life After the 30-Second Spot (Jaffe): The third game-changing book on my list. Not only is there some indispensable advice in here, but if you read it with Jaffe's voice in your head the book is 25% more engaging and 40% funnier.
• Beyond Buzz (Kelly): A collection of very convincing case studies on word-of-mouth generating efforts as well as how to leverage that buzz. To my mind a very good resource to have on hand if a C-suite exec asks for precedent before executing that idea you just had.
• Now is Gone (Livingston): Meant as a wake-up call for executives procrastinating on creating a social media strategy, Now is Gone doesn't so much show them how to do that but kicks them in the butt and points them in the right direction to figure out what will work for them lest they be left in the dust of their competitors.
• Citizen Marketers (McConnell/Huba): Ben and Jackie make a strong case for why companies need to embrace - or at least not squash - the enthusiasm of the everyday people that love their brand or their products. That's especially important with online tools that allow people to congregate in communities and share their stories at the press of a button. >li>
• Naked Conversations (Scoble/Israel): Open up and just be authentic is the gist of the book, though it goes a little deeper than that. Certainly dated in its reference points now but still a great place to start and get your feet wet before diving into weightier tomes.
• Word of Mouth Marketing (Sernovitz): I stand by my original statement that this is the book to throw down on your C-level exec's desk if he ever asks you why you would ever want anyone to talk about your company without marketing's approval.
• Can We Do That? (Shankman): This one isn't so much about changing your strategy as shaking up your thinking. Shankman spends a lot of time encouraging people to break free of the office and live lives that inspire more creativity, something that then has a positive impact on clients or your company.

Yes, the information and stats in some of these books is a bit dated, and was so approximately five minutes after it went to press. That's inevitable. But taking the time to read them is not just about reading their content. It's a way to get a deeper perspective on the issues we're seeing fly before us every day as well as the authors themselves. It's also valuable, I think, to slow down and pull out a book every now and again and not get caught up in the current of the social media world. Reading a book is a deliberate act, one that opens your mind a bit.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I got back into the office from a trip to The Garden State a couple weeks ago there on my desk was a package. Hmmm, I thought. I'd already gotten this month's Bloggers Gone Wild: Spring Break WOOOO!!! Edition VHS and everyone I know had already tried to assassinate me. So I was curious to see what was inside.

To my pleasant surprise I found it to be a copy of Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston with Brian Solis. The book purports to be a "primer" for executives to acclimate themselves to the new media world and figure out, if they already haven't, how to create effective marketing relationships in that world. Livingston places heavy emphasis on the idea of relationships, saying time and time again that they are what needs to be focused on and not traditional marketing. Not only because doing so allows you as a marketer to know what people are saying, but it gives the people formerly known as the audience the sense that they are participating in the success of a company or product that they feel an affinity for.

The strongest point Livingston makes in the book is that it's not enough to just take your existing marketing and put it on the web. It needs to be high-quality, appropriate for the people you're trying to reach and delivered on a platform that they are already using. The combination of those three things may not insure your marketing efforts will be successful, but it gives those efforts a better chance of not blowing up in your face.

If there's one thing that I took issue with in Now is Gone, it's Livingston's tendency to paint things as definitively right or wrong or to characterize the social media world as if it operated with a single collective conscious. At one point Livingston warns public relations practitioners that if they send out a heads-up to bloggers and that pitch does not result in the story being written up then it's a failure and they need to scrap the entire program since it's obviously not adding value to the larger community.

While I agree that PR people should approach bloggers carefully (that's why it helps to have someone who knows the community and that language) and that pitches need to be individually crafted to make the story as valuable to the blogger as possible I don't think failure to achieve pick-up is a sign of a bad program. I get pitches all the time that aren't that attractive to me, but sometimes that's just because I'm in a bad or just funky mood. Since blogging is so highly personal - even if I'm not blogging about personal matters - sometimes I just can't get excited about a story that would normally be right up my alley. Bloggers are moody, something that occasionally renders any hard and fast rules about engagement moot.

Considering that Livingston is aiming at the higher levels of the org chart with who he's trying to speak to the book does succeed more often than it doesn't at making its points. Marketing in the social media-powered world of 2007 is not like marketing as few as 10 years ago. The rules are different because the balance of power is shifting, the risks are higher and the demands even more demanding.

While there are points of view in Now is Gone I don't exactly agree with, it is worth picking up and reading. It's just like reading anything else. There are things I completely agree with and others I don't, but when it's all been tallied up it does add something to the conversation. I'd rather read something and disagree with the author than read something and have no opinion. I think that can be said of just about everything in my RSS list as well as my book shelf.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In downtown Wheaton, IL - not too far from where I both grew up and where I currently live - there's a little store called The Popcorn Shoppe. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's little. The store is deep from the sidewalk but across it's about five feet. Long, but narrow.

At the Popcorn Shoppe you can get a variety of candy, as well as popcorn. Bins are set up along one wall with everything from pre-packaged candy like miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to open candy like gummy worms that's priced by the half-pound. So you go in, squeeze through the other customers, use the little shovels that are in each bin to grab a little of a whole bunch of stuff then do more squeezing to make it to the cash register and maybe pick up a bag of popcorn while you're there. It's a quaint, fun little place, but one of those places only the locals really know about.

The Popcorn Shoppe sprung to mind when a meme started yesterday about how many of us are, apparently, drunk on the Web 2.0 juice, a concoction stirred and served up on virtual street corners by many of those currently decrying the situation.

When I think about the variety of Web 2.0 applications, features and tools available in October of 2007 it can sometimes seem overwhelming, much like the wall of the store. I look at them and can't imagine using all of them but I know that there are a few that I definitely want to pick up and use. Others seem like a good idea at the time but when I try them out I'm disappointed and regret the time/money I spent on something that didn't live up to my expectations.

For those of us who work in online public relations it's important that we evaluate the tools that debut seemingly every day not only for ourselves but also for how they might benefit our clients. Not everything is going to be for everyone and we need to not be so enraptured by the shiny object the just flitted in front of our eyes that we lose all perspective. 'What does this do?" "What need does this meet?" "What gap does this fill?" "How does this increase connections/engagement?" These are just a sampling of questions we need to be asking ourselves whenever the latest thing debuts.

These questions can often only be answered by trying them out. TechCrunch's descriptions and write-ups only go so far. You have to dig in and see what sticks. Once you do that you gain perspective and then can rationally and more accurately opine on the topic to both the public and, for PR practitioners, your clients.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Following the Chris Thilk-inspired LOTD from earlier today, I'm taking that same tack.

I had forgotten to post a link to this key item from the Bad Pitch Blog from last month, when Kevin Dugan posted a short quiz for PR folk to take before pitching bloggers. Thankfully, the excuse to do so quite late showed up on my doorstep, er, in my office, this morning. When asked why they clearly hadn't taken the quiz, at least one firm told us to step aside, because we clearly underestimated their ability to get bloggers to "place [this] banner and Public Service Announcement pro bono," on their blogs.

Our own Allison Blass brought this "situation" to my attention a few minutes ago while having a brief meeting, and I've gotta say that I wouldn't exactly be happy with the outreach efforts so far if I were the PR people at LifeScan. Do PR people really think that just because a group of individuals happen to post on a health related topic that they would automatically post a "public service announcement" that isn't exactly a piece of video I'd run around sharing with bloggers, of all people, or put up banners on their blogs, "pro bono," that are promotional to a product or service? Sure, there's a contest involved, and I get that, but clearly people have too much confidence in their pitches if they think that something self-serving is going to get the same feel-good action that a firm reaching out to diabetics about a banner for World Diabetes Day - even on behalf of a for-profit corporation - is going to?

Sometimes I really wonder if public relations firms don't want to truly explain the dynamics of working with bloggers - that is, when they actually appear to know about them - for fear of "turning off" a client. Someone at the firm responsible for pitching this "PSA" should have known what kind of reaction it would get from the bloggers being reached, but instead it went ahead full bore.

Coming out and saying that your product has cool colors and that's an improvement over what might have previously been seen at boring is perfectly valid. Coming out and saying that since your product now has cool colors, that people with a medical need will use it more often isn't necessarily the case, especially if the tone of the commenters on Diabetes Mine can extrapolated across the masses. When I bought the Product RED iPod, it didn't make me use it more, it made me feel like I had a cool product. Color might add value to your feelings towards something such as a blood glucose monitor, but is it going to make you use it more? For an industry that's full of disclaimers and "oh, we didn't actually say THAT," this is a big jump off the wrong diving board, IMHO.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We PR bloggers are in a unique situation. On the one hand we feel it our responsibility to point out how some companies are failing to fully embrace the world of online media and such. Sometimes we do that in the form of blog posts, sometimes it's on things like Twitter where there's a conversation going on.

But on the other hand I think there's a certain amount of empathizing that needs to occur before we take a company to task publicly. Put yourself in someone else's shoes for 30 seconds (you might call that putting yourself in a 30-second spot, but then Jaffe would have to slap you) and think about how you would feel if your client were the one about to be trashed. Wouldn't you appreciate a quick email if someone was having a problem? I know I would - and have.

I think it's important that we remember, as our reliance on web-based services increases, that problems and hiccups are going to occur. Gmail will go down. Newsgator will occasionally eat some feeds. Twitter might not update immediately. We all throw out little comments - more like heads-up alerts than anything, and lately especially on Twitter - when something goes down. When these things happen we have three options:

1) Go get a cup of coffee and wait it out
2) If we think it's a serious problem we can use the contact form on the website
3) If we know they have a community evangelist out there in the...ummm...community we could contact them
4) Blog about every single outage like we're the only person to whom the company should be answerable

I usually choose #1. If I know a person who fits the #3 bill I might do that. But I try not to resort to #4 unless things have not gone well with the other options.

I wouldn't want my clients getting trashed over what are, essentially, growing pains (or stupid happenings - hey, it's software). I therefore try not to do that because I can imagine how lousy I would feel. Plus I wouldn't want to do that to the people I know. Jeremy and I seem to be in agreement on this point based on his comment. I just think it's more polite to everyone involved to handle this privately first before publicly embarrassing a company and its agents, but that's just me.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While the folks in this story on "The Big Shots of Blogdom" are great and absolutely need to be paid attention to, there are also dozens of other smaller ones that are - or, more to the point, could be - talking about your company that you also need to plug into. Not doing so could result in:
-You not knowing about a crisis until it's big enough to get the big guy's attention.
-You missing the opportunity to reach a small but passionate audience, outreach that could potentially percolate up to the bigshots.
Please keep that in mind when trying to do blog outreach and monitoring. It's not always about size - it's also largely about passion.

Regards,
--Chris Thilk

P.S. - Also make sure you're setting expectations correctly. A hit on TechCrunch is huge, but if you're a topsoil company it's probably not going to happen no matter how much your client/CEO might want it to.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought about leaving this as an additional comment but decided to post it here instead.

Steve,
If you're going to go around saying that social media is no mo' or that the phrase should be dropped from the lexicon, then first talk about what you're doing within Edelman as a thought leader. That would start with maybe addressing the irony of you saying that at the same time that your agency positions itself as being so savvy because it distributes press releases in both old media and "social media" formats.

--Chris

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I want expand here on something that I started over on AdJab. I end this post by reminding advertisers that small sites should not be overlooked when they're drawing up ad plans. But there's more than that which needs to go on. Don't just leave it at advertising. Find new and interesting ways to engage the people pounding away on those blogs, many of whom do it for no other reason than that they've found a topic they're passionate about. These people might not always pass on the exact messaging that's been approved by half the company - that's just a reality. But what they will do, if you've established a relationship with them, is listen to your side of a story and pay more attention to the stuff you might send them.

Building relationships in the community that's already talking about your industry/company/product is the best way to harness the power of that community. Walk with them. Talk with them. Reach out and see what kind of feedback you can give to them and what they can give to you. I sometimes think there's a treasure trove of consumer pattern behavior just sitting there, barely tapped (if at all) in the blog and forum chatter online. Learn how to jump into that and I think marketers will have a great amount of success with future endeavors.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the past I've been hesitant on this blog to criticize the actions of other agencies and how they handle blog programs, even egregious examples like fake blogs being setup and other clear violations of the playground rules. It might be out of a sense of decorum - that it's simply bad form to lay into a rival - or because should I screw up in the future I wouldn't want to be dragged over the coals by those folks. I'm not sure what the reason is but it's not something I've been anxious to do.

I feel the need, though, to chime in on the current situation involving Edelman and Microsoft. Microsoft, through a program setup and executed by Edelman, sent free Acer Ferrari laptops pre-loaded with the new Vista operating system to various bloggers. While it seems that some bloggers were contacted in advance asking if they were interested in getting the mailing others were surprised to find a laptop on their front porch (scroll down to Update #2 for Scott's recounting of this). Whatever the case, it does not appear that either Edelman or Microsoft were requiring any positive coverage out of this. Certainly they were hoping for it but there doesnot appear to be any "If you don't love it we'll sue you" sort of language in any of the communications I've read.

Where we start to get murky is in the fate of the machines. To keep it, return it or do something else seems to have been the dilemma most bloggers were wrestling with and it's this point that I think caused some of the imagined outrage. The email that Michael Arrington reposted at CrunchNotes makes it clear that what the bloggers did with the laptops was completely up to them to decide. All Microsoft asked was that they be notified of that decision when it was made. I certainly applaud Scott Beale's decision to auction it off and donate the proceeds to the EFF but am disappointed that the guy was basically pressured by others into feeling bad about getting a gift. Scott did nothing wrong here. He disclosed that he got a machine, where he got it from and certainly didn't sugarcoat how he's not usually a Windows guy but thought this was still cool. He was open and honest and got hammered for it.

Some seem to think that it was Microsoft/Edelman's responsibility to hold a gun to the head of the recipient and force them to disclose everything about how they came to be in possession of a new Vista-loaded laptop but I disagree. Disclosure is always - ALWAYS - in the hands of the media. Some unscrupulous marketers (and I'm not accusing Edelman or Microsoft of this) will always try to buy a good review by wining and dining influencers, reviewers and other opinion makers. It's the ethical standard of those opinion makers that dictates to what extent they disclose any incentives they might have received.

Since I've been at MWW Group I have advised on many occasions that clients send products to bloggers to review, sample or otherwise check out. In fact we're working on a significant program along these lines right now. Doing so is no different, at a basic level, than handing out free cookies to commuters outside a train station. You're trying to influence that person's opinion and, if things go well, they'll share that opinion with others who will also be moved. This is just bigger because it's an expensive laptop and not a package of cookies. But it's the same motivation on the part of the marketer.

There were some mistakes made, or at least some glaring omissions in the planning and follow-up process that I think have contributed to the backlash. First, it's unclear whether this is coming from Microsoft or Edelman. That's a problem since, to my mind, there needs to be one person or group handling this. That prevents the confusion that will come from multiple figures thinking they're in charge, something that can lead to contradictory and confusing messaging. It's exactly that confusion that likely led to the second problem, which is this email to Marshall Kirkpatrick telling him the best thing he could do would be to return the laptop.

What strikes me most is the deafening silence from Steve Rubel. While I certainly don't expect Steve to chime in on everything Edelman does, he's in a unique position to clear up some of the misunderstanding and confusion that's come up. Instead, he's declaring this, that or the other thing "dead." I implore you, Steve, weigh in on this. You've shown a willingness in the past to cover Microsoft "as a blogger" so I don't think it would be out of bounds for you to take an opinion on this simply "as a blogger."

As I mentioned, MWW Group is working with a client on a similar program in the near future. So, to wrap this up, I'm asking for the community's input. Right now the program has three major points of initial contact with the bloggers we're reaching out to: 1) What's your address, cause X wants to send you something; 2) Here's what the program is, please opt-in/out and 3) The actual product being mailed. So in these communication points how much do we need to pressure the blogger to disclose what they're getting and why they got it? Right now there is some basic language there about how there's no requirement that they blog about any part of this, we just thought they'd be interested and please let us know how it works out. Do we need to go further in the interest of avoiding any appearance of impropriety?

I'm interested to hear what everyone thinks. Feel free to leave a comment, email me at chris-at-mww.com or IM me at mmmthilk. I'd love to put up a follow-up post with everyone's email or IM reactions but, of course, will be sure to get your permission before doing so.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry, but I disagree with the basic premise that Max Kalehoff is basing this MediaPost column on. He says that it's more important to think of how you're marketing to algorithms as opposed to people. Since searches, which compile their results via those algorithms, are how people find brands, products and companies, it's more important he thinks that you keep those in mind when drafting campaigns and online content.

This is exactly like the thinking that has led to the fall of traditional advertising and the rise of micro-targeted marketing. Agencies and others became so obsessed with how a commercial was going to look visually, what was going to look flashy and high-tech and what was funny and slowly become less concerned with what was actually connecting with the audience. If marketers start getting so obsessed with how metadata-friendly their content is they're eventually going to forget that the whole point of being found is to reach out to the audience.

This is exactly the wrong direction to be going in. We do not need more focus on tweaking things so they're found within searches. I don't mean to say that there's anything wrong with that being a goal - making the front page of Google results should be on every marketer's to do list. But that's something that we need to leave it to Google and other search engines to sort out.

Let me give you an example: Tom Biro is always sending me the Google searches he runs that contain phrases included in posts he's written. The latest one, just today, was a search for "i love netflix." The second result from that search is a post he wrote on his blog The Media Drop. Overlooking the fact that this is the kind of thing that just shouldn't happen, it did happen and it's not because Tom spends hours pouring over how meta-friendly his posts are. It's because Tom is a good writer who has developed a following by putting up important and relevant information. He's established himself to such as extent that his blog is ranked highly by Google and his traffic is representative of that.

That's what marketers need to be spending their time on, building relationships and their own reputations and not figuring out how to manipulate their content to come up higher in search engines. If it happens, it's because you deserve it, not because you gamed the system.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not quite sure what to do with the meme that's running rampant in certain neighborhoods of the online world regarding the short life expectancy the page view has been given. On the one hand it makes sense to me that, yes, some tools that are being used are going to render the page view obsolete as a measurement tool. RSS and Ajax aren't going to move the needle on page views and therefore it is not going to be an accurate measure of online activity.

On the other hand, though, I think that proclaiming the coming end of page views is a bit like declaring the coming end of, I don't know, the office. Yes, maintaining an actual office will eventually be an unneeded expense as home internet connections become faster and cheaper. And it will be easier to attract the right worker if you aren't going to force them to uproot their family and make them move to wherever someone 40 years ago decided to take out a lease. Is there a legitimate point to be discussed? Yes. But let's spend more time figuring out how to work this problem then just trying to get linked to for asking a difficult question.

The first thing to remember is that, regardless of page views, visitors are still going to be an important number that will need to be measured. Even if you've AJAXed the page, put all sorts of windows and widgets on it and made it so that the visitor never really needs to leave it, you still need to count the people how load that site. This should be a given but I'm afraid some have overlooked this reality. And this number added to the number of email or RSS subscriptions should give you a good number of people whose eyeballs you can count and report.

After that it comes down to...wait for it...engagement. Yes, that favorite topic that everyone talks about and no one can define. Much like the internet has proven a powerful tool for actually drawing a line between advertising and potential/actual sales (previously nebulous at best), the internet can provide numbers that actually measure engagement. But each company will have to define what that looks like and what sort of visitor behaviors actually count as engagement. Some might value comments left over number of links. Some the other way around. Some might not put much value on either but find something that is important to them and use that as a measure of success.

So yes, the page view is going to eventually be not as important as it once was. But there's an awful lot of assumptions of corporate behavior and public education behind claiming that it will be gone by 2010. You might as well state that all blogs will be part of an organized social network by 2010. It's rooted partly in recent precedent but it also discount any future innovations that might trump it.

This is just the latest in a series of changes that the corporate world will have to adjust to, a series that extends back to the invention of the printing press. As always it will be up to a few forward-thinking individuals to plot the course and lead others.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While it's not really my thing to criticize former clients of my employer, I've got to say that this video of an employee at Bank of America / MBNA singing a re-done version of U2's "One" featuring lyrics about the merger of those two banks is not something I'd ever want to see on the Internet were I working for that company. There are a lot of times where "any buzz is good buzz" when it comes to people talking about your company, its products, or its executives on the 'net is a good thing, but I'm not sure this is one of them. It's obviously unclear at this point whether this was put out on purpose by someone who was in attendance at the event featured, or if someone "leaked" it to be mean. What is important is that it's out there, and in a big way. In fact, it was the closing item on the episode of E!'s The Soup that I watched on Sunday afternoon.

Whether you like or dislike the song and this rendition, what's important to note here is that this is the sort of stuff that companies are up against in today's new media revolution. Hell, on the E! show, it looked like they had a high res version of the video, not something they pulled off YouTube or Vimeo. Where'd they get that one?

There are plenty of consumer generated things out there that draw attention to brands and should be left alone because they work, for the most part. In this case, if you follow any of the comment threads which you can find starting here at Jaffe Juice or over at Technorati [here is the Technorati search for "Jim Dubois," the singer involved], the general consensus is not so good. Additionally, keep in mind that just because something seems like a good idea, doesn't mean it is. It might be relevant and special and important to those of you in a particular space, but it might not be, let's just say in a base sort of way, "YouTube-ready." Put it this way - there are a lot of things said at company events that you wouldn't want to be posted on the Internet - keep your eye on the fact that what you say, do, and show on film (or audio) can (and may) show up on the Internet.

[update: 11/15/06 11:51am] A co-worker just let me know that the Vimeo link above - the one that was the original, as far as I can tell, place where the Bank of America spot was located - is now dead, and there are no video copies on that service of the version of "One." I've contacted Vimeo for comment and will post if I hear anything back about this.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While all of us in this new/social media world talk a lot about how companies are no longer fully in control of their brand messaging, I wonder sometimes just how many actual people get that. Take these two examples:

Chicago Tribune columnist/blogger Eric Zorn recently converted his family's home computing from Windows machines to Macs. This past Halloween, his son Ben expressed his approval of that decision in a seasonally appropriate way.

Josh Hallett points out that there's a sudden spike in Flickr pictures tagged "shuffle" as Apple's new iPod Shuffle starts arriving on doorsteps. As Josh says, expect more once they're available in stores.

So ask yourself this afternoon: What have you done that's going to generate this sort of spontaneous celebration of your brand? Is the product worth talking about even absent any advertising? Have you made it easy for people to express their fondness for the product?

Some food for thought.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Unfortunately, neither Tom or I were able to make it, due to prior commitments, to the Second Life launch of crayon, the new agency founded by Joe Jaffe, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson and CC Chapman. But that doesn't mean others weren't there. From the reports that Neville and Joe have put up it was quite an event.

Thankfully these guys are as good at promoting themselves through new media as they will be at promoting their clients through new media. They've setup an agency blog and a Flickr set documenting the launch event. They even announced the creation of crayon in a very new media friendly press release that's complete with links, pictures to download and other goodies that make blogging the release that much easier.

The emphasis of crayon is on conversation, the reality that marketing is no longer a one way street.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Joseph Jaffe never lacks for audacity. Truly one of the more innovative thinkers around in this day and age, I’m convinced Jaffe never stops thinking new media, even when cutting grass, playing with his kids or staring out the window on a rainy day. So to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the dynamic duo behind the For Immediate Release podcast as well as their own blogs. And let’s not forget CC Chapman, an outstanding podcast and blogger himself.

The level of talent possessed by these four gentleman is what makes Crayon so exciting. Jaffe, Holtz, Hobson and Chapman have decided to go into business together, forming a sort of un-agency that, well, from what I’ve read it’s hard to describe. See, most agencies have a purpose, or at least a focus on one thing that they do and do well. Companies then hire that agency based on their doing that one thing well. Crayon, though, seems to be more malleable. Instead of a product being produced by the group, Crayon exists to:

• Help facilitate the conversation.
• Provide companies with a true partner, someone who will work with them to guide them in the right new media direction
• Do whatever else needs doing

The agency’s debut will actually take place in Second Life, where they will maintain a permanent island-based office, this Thursday. You can count on me being there for that and many visits afterward.

While you're waiting for that, go read the announcement posts from the principals involved.

• Jaffe


• Holtz


• Hobson


• Chapman

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Palmer at ANA Marketing Maestros is calling out Steve Rubel over his assertion that "engagement," an ill-defined and illusive beast, is a "myth." Rubel says true engagement is something that comes about after marketers cede power to the audience. The only actions by a marketing team should be, Steve says, to create the tools for customer evangelists to spread the word and then the monitoring and measuring of how they're doing so. It seems to me Steve has the same view of marketing as those who believe in the "clockmaker" version of God, one who set the world in motion and is now detached from the day to day goings-on.

But what neither Palmer nor Rubel talk about is the squishy middle that exists between "creating the right programs" and "measuring the results." That's an important omission since that's where the possibility for true engagement lies.

Let me use an example. If I want to write about a new marketing campaign on my blog I would be thrilled to have available to me a set of tools such as embeddable video, high quality graphics and detailed product information which I could use and link to. That's the first step a company could take. Monitoring is the second and involves marketers needing to know how to use the tools available to them to most effectively do so. But the next step is not measurement and evaluation. That next step is where engagement comes into play.

Engagement to me means when a company or marketer reaches out to the participants of the conversation and gives them a pat on the back, follows up with more information or updates, writes in to correct something that's wrong or otherwise makes themselves available as a resource. There's very little that gets me more excited than getting contacted by someone I've written about. That shows me they're monitoring and want to engage in a dialogue. Building those relationships is beneficial to everyone since the company can be more certain of an accurate message being communicated and the writer gets a whole new stream of good information to draw from.

I don't know how many companies are doing that but I suspect it's not nearly as many as should be. But it's the most important step in engaging with the audience and one that turns the ephemeral engagement beast into something tangible. Monitoring and evaluation then can show points of contact can highlight the affect those contacts had, something that is important for any marketing team to be able to show.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Kami Huyse is letting everyone know that there will be another meetup of communications people in Second Life on Oct. 12. This one is being hosted by Text 100. Last month's gathering, moderated by Kami and led by Jeremy Pepper, was a lot of fun and I had an opportunity to "meet" some cool people. Hope to attend this one as well.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Hall at AdRants is, well, ranting. Seems he got a pitch from a major telecom company who had identified his site as one that covers sports.

I don't need to go into the dangers, illustrated in Steve's post on the matter, of blind pitching of blogs. You shouldn't do it, end of discussion. But the thing is this pitch probably could have been saved if the person sending the email had done just one additional thing.

They could have found a previous post Steve had put up that touched on sports or athletes being used in commercials and referenced that post in the pitch. That creates a sense on the part of the recipient that the PR person did at least a little bit of research in an effort to create a connection.

If Steve is anything like me, doing that would have garnered one of two results. Best case scenario, Steve decides that while it might be a tad off his normal beat, that it is interesting enough to post on and the pitch is successful. Worst case scenario, Steve decided that it's too far off his normal beat and just ignores it.

Instead we have what appears to be another example of someone who got ahold of a list that had some, well, let's just call them “categorization issues” when it came to identifying blog topics. And, as has happened so often, the company behind the pitch has been brought out to the town square for every one to see.

When I talk to people about pitching bloggers I try to emphasize that the processes hasn't actually changed from those in place before with traditional media. But the stakes are much higher. All those steps you learned when studying media relations need to be followed to the letter. The problem was that pitching traditional media had devolved into a process with so many shortcuts that, I think, the industry was getting lazy.

One company, in the form of being called out by Steve Hall, has now gotten a wake-up call that hopefully will result in better practices being followed in the future.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I find an fun symmetry between this post by Josh Hallett, where he calls companies who visit blogs but don't contact the bloggers "prank callers" and Robert Scoble's taking Google to task for going to the New York Times to announce their Google Apps project.

Josh expresses the frustration (something I've had myself) of bloggers who are writing about a specific company or industry but who aren't being contacted by people at the company or in that industry. The frustration doubles when you see visitor traffic from a company you've talked about in your stats. And he (and I) is not just talking about the occasional accidental Google search that brings someone around your place. We're talking about concentrated hits, all coming from one company. It's great that they're monitoring, but now is the time for engagement. Bloggers have the potential to do a great deal of good and a great deal of harm. But having dropped someone a line every now and again can do wonders. Damage can be mitigated - or at least you can get your point of view across - if you, as a company representative, have made yourself available as a resource for a blogger.

Then there's the story of Google Apps, which was announced in the New York Times and other mainstream, old-media outlets. Scoble lists the number of search industry and tech bloggers that would seem like no-brainers to include on a media list for a launch like this by Google. Almost none of them were given any sort of heads-up or asked to take part in the announcement. The sole exception was Om Malik, who passed on the offer because of the embargo requirement.

So why did Google go to the MSM over bloggers? There's lots of speculation and I'm not going to engage in that. But those bloggers are the "influentials" that a company - in this case Google - needs to be keeping tabs on and accommodating. Eric Eggerton is even outright asking if it's better to leak to bloggers and let an announcement build until it penetrates the MSM instead of going big and then seeing if a conversation follows.

If you work for a major company have you identified your base of influentials?

BONUS READING: PR people love them some blogs but don't know quite how to use them for their benefit just yet. Most companies, though, still have no idea what RSS is.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, a co-worker of mine pinged me with a link to this column by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek about companies pulling a pay for play ... err, write ... in the blogosphere. While the first reaction that this type of article / item typically creates is one of complete and utter shock on the faces of those who believe our world is altruistic, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, really.

The Bad News

Let's start with the ugliness. Blogs, while they play check-and-balance for each other, don't necessarily have the internal controls that the "big media" we're all used to getting our daily dirt from have. When that kind of situation exists (not that any big mediafolk haven't written tit-for-tat in reality), you're bound to have some apples leaning towards the "bad" variety as far as journalism goes. But herein lies the argument of "is blogging journalism?" To which the response is, as it should be, "it all depends." Some bloggers may be journalists, some blogs may contain journalism, some journalists may partake in non-journalism on blogs, and whatever other combinations you can come up with, but you can't take everything you see on any blog as truth, just as we've learned that not everything we see in our newspapers or on the television as complete and utter fact. It's that some of our other media have a much higher "success" rate when it comes to reality.

So, we're faced with a loophole of sorts on the 'net, one with about 40 million sites that may or may not be on the take. Are they all on the take? Nope. Are some. Sure. What's most important is the title that Fine's item came with, that he (or his editor) added - "Polluting the Blogosphere." Which is where we get to move to the good part.

The Good News

As the title says, what was going on in this particular case is "pollution." Sure, pollution has been known to cause larger problems than just some trash on the corner, but it's not "annihiliation" by any means. The reason these business models exist is because people have seen that blog postings - especially permanent ones - have a much better long-term effect than advertising probably does, even effective text ads, at being a part of overall conversation and getting influentials to pay attention. Is this going to potentially have a negative effect on what bloggers are thinking when they read blogs where people are overly glowing of a product or service? Probably. What we should be worrying more about, probably, are the *negative* blog postings that people could potentially create to do a similar thing. Don't think a company would be slick enough to trash a competitor, because negative comments wouldn't necessarily appear as blatant?

Let's consider that the power-in-numbers situation is more than in effect here. Bloggers who appear to be on the take regularly won't be taken seriously in the long haul by "serious" bloggers and blog readers. Disclosing that you were paid to write about something (which is completely different from saying you were reached out to by the company that thought you might be interested in the product / service) purely makes it look like a textual advertisement written by the blogger in question. People *not* disclosing what they are doing are obviously "free" to do so (that whole capitalism thing and all), but it doesn't mean we will believe everything they say. The value here is more of the mention of the product / service, not necessarily what the review says. Think of what you read on most blogs as how you should consider Wikipedia - a good starting point, not necessarily THE definitive answer-giver.

Most of the bigger blogging groups / companies / teams have decent policies against such things happening, and just making sure your writers - many of whom may have never had a professional writing gig in their lives - know what the "rules" are, ethically and internally, is what makes the difference. On any given day, I'm not one to think that TechCrunch's Mike Arrington or Marshall Kirkpatrick are "on the take" and are being paid to blog about things because they've earned my trust, just as my local newspaper has. Can I say the same thing about some random blog that just appeared on the scene and is randomly writing about some restaurant chain, glowingly, here and there? Probably not, because I don't know much about who's behind it.

This is probably more of a search engine issue than it is anything else as far as ethics goes, which also leads back to the "pollution" concept. A commenter, "Jim Durbin," in the BW item seems to agree, saying that "These companies are paying for link traffic..."

In my eyes, three important things are in play here. The companies involved in this pay-for-write situation are described as "Advertisers," without the quotes, by Fine, and presumably Ted Murphy's PayPerPost.com. When the money quote in an article is "it's up to [bloggers] to be their own morality police," that tells me that everyone involved probably knows that what's going on is wrong. Or at least shady. Most importantly - this isn't just that cash is actually changing hands for people to write "about" a product or service, it's much more specific, seemingly looking for positive only (or close) or you don't get paid. If all of a sudden 50 blogs are going "You've got to do XYZ with ABC" and there's no apparent rhyme or reason for it, someone *will* start looking for answers.

This is a tough situation for public relations professionals, especially those in the "2.0" world, to be forced to contend with. A popular, and for the most part, effective, way of doing things is to reach out to a number of blog writers that you believe to have some interest or relevance regarding a product or service a client offers, and let those in the marketplace sample or have access to said product or service. Should this be considered close to the same situation? It all depends. Some bloggers who consider themselves close to the world of journalism would decline any offering of this type, but others would welcome the opportunity, similar to how those participating in a focus group or test kitchen might have access to a product, service, or activity months before others have, and they are giving their feedback in a closed situation. Here, companies are spinning the wheel, and allowing those individuals to have their say - or say nothing - on their blogs and in their circles of influence. I would argue that this will more closely reach a point of consignment, such as what much of the tech industry does with review journalists, with key members of the blogosphere. This is absolutely happening today, especially in the tech space, but there is a good chance it will widen as the need for different types of feedback or an interest in getting "buzz" out there in a timely and effective manner grows.

At the end of the day, Murphy's "per post" payola situation is one of a number of similar concepts that have been floating around the blogosphere for some time now. Whether or not they have made any headway is probably more subjective than anything. If they measure success by 1,000 more visitors to an advertiser's site, then fine. If they define success by actual sales or conversions, then that's another. In either case, we know that spam works, and we all hate that, right? This is the scheme of the moment, and while it might "pollute" some of our spaces, it's not going to be responsible for the downfall of a good thing.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Late last week, I went out to dinner with two other people to a pretty well-known restaurant chain that has locations across the U.S., and had a kind of curious experience. Now, first off, I've got to say that I go out to eat quite a bit, to a variety of places. In doing so, you come across quite a bit of various dishes being out of stock, or quirky things happening in a restaurant. That's all well and good, but this experience kind of opened my eyes to the new world we live in when it comes to potential public relations and customer service nightmares.

So, after one of our dishes was 86'd only moments before we were to receive dinner, the three of us had something to eat, with the 86'd dinner landing a free appetizer for diner #3. The staff was super super polite, and the manager was the one who came out to apologize for the vanishing dish. This is actually very important when it came to what would happen next. A few minutes later, as we're all well into our meals, a strange object was seen atop one of the plates - not mine. Looking from my seat, I wasn't sure what it was, but shiny, squared-off objects aren't usually part of a chicken-filled salad, so I had to take a closer look. As it turned out, it was a few inch long razor blade.

Thankfully, no bites of a metallic nature had been taken, and the blade was hidden underneath the sprouts. (Aren't they always!?) After retrieving the manager (she must have been happy to see us again), we were treated very well and with a lot of respect as a customer. She did everything she should have to ask us if there was anything else she could get us, assured us that we would not be paying for our meal, and pretty much offered us the run of the place. That was great. When we re-ordered the same dish (but without razor blades), it was quickly delivered within five minutes by the chef of the restaurant, who had done a little digging in the kitchen and determined just what the problem was. As it turned out, the blade was part of a device used to slice tomatoes and other vegetables into long, thin strands, and do multiple slices at once - it was one of about eight blades on the piece. One apparently dropped loose, and fell into the dish, and was unseen by those doing the preparation. Quality control aside, I can totally see how something quirky like this could happen. That doesn't mean it *should* have happened, just that it's not outside of the realm of possibilities.

While sitting there in the moments before the manager arrived, I was torn as to whether to use one of the two cameraphones I was carrying in my pockets (we had four at the table total), and what to do with it if I did. Now there was no injury here, so I wasn't as concerned about that sort of thing, but something struck me at that exact moment - that any of us can hold a lot of cards in situations like that, these days, if we're into the tools of the trade. That doesn't mean you have to be a professional blogger or photographer or anything like that. Let's just say I had shot a photo, sent it to Flickr from my phone, and then texted a few of my friends to check it out. They'd not only know where I was, but they would see the plate. Surely, someone could have blogged it or at the least sent it out to friends on instant messaging platforms, or hell, posted it to a MySpace account. It's a quick and dirty nightmare for the restaurant, a potential lawsuit coming back my way (even if it had no merit), and a bunch of ugliness as people everywhere who might have been heading to this restaurant hear about what is going on. And hey, what about the manufacturer of the kitchen tool?

Not to harp on this forever, but what I wanted to make clear that these kinds of things happen every day, and have for years. The difference today is that everyone - not just the multimillion dollar companies who buy ad time - has a voice, potentially a large one, and probably one that isn't fast forwarded through, either. People listen to each other a lot more often than they do a spokesperson or talking head on the news. Let's just say I was part of a table of teenagers (hey, I was one once) - would I have thought twice about taking the photo and emailing it across the planet from my cellphone? Probably not. That's what we're all up against, all the time.

This isn't about fixing business practices at all - mistakes and errors happen - it's about knowing how to pay attention and be aware of things like this as they happen, or at least within a reasonable time afterwards. This restaurant hearing about this four or five days later (when I'm writing this blog post) wouldn't have cut it. There could have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people talking about this, forwarding it along, blogging on it, or whatever. Just as companies are prepared for crisis communications in a traditional sense, this isn't about waiting until the story is "mainstream" enough to make the evening news and get a formal press conference. Showing that you're on top of this stuff and can incorporate a response from a disaster that may not have begun because someone called the police or their local news station is what is going to separate firms from the pack. Not that we want to see these crises happen, but we know that they are out there and can come about very quickly, perhaps faster than they ever have, even in our 24-hours television news world.

Some people talking about the blogosphere being like the "Wild, Wild West." Typically I disagree, but when comparing instances like this to that concept, it fits right in. You never know where the next gunshot is going to come from.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week, Keith O'Brien's "What goes online" column in PRWeek discusses how the expectations that public relations firms would die off at the same rate that media outlets did (or somewhere therabouts) is off base, and that adaptation and re-focusing would keep many firms is on point. I won't comment too much, as this piece stands alone, but to say that the ship has definitely sailed when you have an executive of a Fortune 500 company say to O'Brien that agencies "don't have to maintain their own blog, but if I say, 'Technorati,' and they don't know what I'm talking about, the interview is over." Wow. In a way, I'm not surprised, and pleased to hear that at least one person out there has this kind of knowledge and knows how to utilize it to his or her company's benefit when assessing the abilities of a public relations firm.

Earlier in the piece, O'Brien says:

First of all, the PR spend is miniscule compared to ad buys. True, public relations has traditionally experienced difficulties with measurement, but technology is changing that. CEOs have begun moving communications professionals to the C-suite at such a rate that PRWeek have the words "newly-created position" as a keyboard shortcut. And yet, communications expertise is still currently undervalued. Marketing budget-conscious Fortune 500 would be foolish to slash PR budgets in half (from high seven-figures to low seven-figures) while keeping a $40 million ad spend. The marketing shave, if any, will come from traditional advertising.

This definitely echoes some of the sentiments I had heard while attending an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) event last summer. Ad spend is down for some companies, or at least is shifting from traditional (read: broadcast and print) to interactive / online / mobile opportunities. It was stated by more than one executive speaking at the event that outreach and relationships were a necessity in today's world, which is where, for the most part, public relators (actually a word!) and corporate communicators will come in.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First off, let me say that I've been sitting on this for a bit now, and have been trying to come up with the best way to discuss this subject, as it's awful touchy - and chose to do so tonight. Something that I think frustrates the blogging community about public relations is how bloggers are approached and treated by agencies and staffers. While I think that most firms talk a good game, not too many of them have executed so successfully on "pitching" bloggers on a regular basis. Additionally, one of the things that bloggers enjoy doing most is fact checking, to the extent that "fact check your ass" became a phrase that got pretty popular with many of them. That's why I thought it wise to comment on this item from sometime in Q1/Q2 of 2005 by Weber Shandwick's Mike Spataro. [Also of interest - this article was, at least as of a week or two ago, found here - or at least that's the URL I had bookmarked to finalize this blog entry.]

I'm sure you're already rolling your eyes at this, but part of the reason I'm doing this is that some of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to how PRfolk are perceived by the world of bloggers. And I was a blogger before I was working in public relations. Now I don't know Mike personally, but I have had occasion to speak with him last fall, and this is by no means personal. Plus, Weber Shandwick is another firm within the IPG family, just like MWW Group.

So without further ado....

Blogs (let's go with blogs here, not weblogs, Web logs, or any other form) are not exclusively ""websites written by one person," nor do they have "no advertisers to please," across the board. In fact, I'd venture a guess that while "pleasing" Google for its AdSense product is about as easy as a) not setting up a spam blog and b) not telling people to click on your links, it's still something to think about. Many a blog is probably carrying some form of advertising, contextual or otherwise. And just because some bloggers (even a majority of those in that survey) have said that they blog "as a form of self-therapy" doesn't mean that the concept of making money - even a little bit - doesn't cross their minds, or the minds of many others who ramble and comment on everything under the sun on their personal blogs. The mere fact that Google's Blogger product allows for easy monetization of a blog*spot hosted (Blogger's free hosting site) blog tells me that there is demand for some form of advertising. To clarify, the hitch here is that advertisers, most likely, need the blogger's real estate far more than the blogger needs the revenues from the advertiser in order to survive. But that doesn't mean that bloggers don't worry about their content when it comes to whether or not advertisers will drop some coin in their pockets.

Also, what hits me the hardest here is when I read the "rules of the road" that are included in the piece. Now don't get me wrong - they're all spot on. Knowing what bloggers write about on a regular basis, figuring out whether or not they are receptive to hearing about you, following protocols that make sense and provide the blogger with something they actually want, not something you want them to have (there IS a difference) are all excellent suggestions. However, I can say with absolute sincerity that saying that you have "a comprehensive database of the most popular blogs broken down by industry category and contact and how they like to interact with PR professionals" and having one that is used properly by your staff are, in fact, two different things.

In mid-December, the folks at Gawker made an example of a PR staffer from Weber Shandwick who had been persistent at pitching that blog about the "Ultimate KFC Fan Contest," something that was, to be honest, totally irrelevant to the readers of Gawker. But as Jeremy Pepper noted over at Media Orchard about two months ago, "he likely was told to go with the list and pitched." Now obviously none of us knows *for sure* what happened inside W/S in this case, but does this seem like something where a seriously vetted database was used to pick blogs to reach out to? Not in my eyes. Sure, Gawker is an extremely popular blog, and even a snarky, obnoxious mention of your client or event would probably have good results should you get "chosen" to have something show up there, but who actually thought that Gawker (or its readers) really needed to be getting information about a contest about being KFC's biggest fan? For me, this is a big strike one as to saying one thing and doing another.

The second one, and this is where I have personal experience in the situation, is with regard to another pitch that was received at a blog I do some writing for, AdJab, that covers advertising and marketing. On September 22 of 2005, we landed a tip from someone at this same firm, who was working on this same client, letting us know all about KFC's new "Choose Your Sauce" interactive site. While I will give the pitch about a 5/10 for its overall creativity, the fact of the matter was that AdJab had already covered the story. 15 days earlier. A cursory search of the site for "choose your sauce" would have shown this. In my opinion, I wouldn't consider that "knowledgeable outreach." It felt to me like "AdJab is a blog. It covers advertising and marketing. This is an advertising and marketing story, I'll send it to them." and not much more than that. Am I going out on a limb for saying that? Perhaps. But when my polite response to the firm stating that we had covered it two weeks earlier, with a link to the coverage, was responded to with nothing that seemed like what I had said had sunk in, I didn't have a good impression as someone trying to assess whether a firm was trying to provide the blog's readers with good content rather than just blasting off semi-rewritten press releases that were made to look playful. If anything, I really took home the fact that the way this account was being monitored across the blogosphere was incomplete.

So if we're to add anything to the list of "do's and don'ts," it's that the last thing you should do before firing off that "pitchy" email to a blog is making a last-minute check of whether or not the bloggers have already covered the story - because the one thing that's ultimately telling when people say "we've been reading your blog and thought you might be interested in xyz" is when you've already covered xyz. If our firm's executives are out doing one thing while our staff is never being trained or at the very least given some realistic "direction" to follow when clients and firms are trying out how to contact bloggers, then all we're doing is talking in front of the class (and to our clients) about how 2 + 2 = 4, meanwhile we're just yelling "It's 4, 4 I tell you" when no one is looking, without knowing how to get there.

This is why I was definitely happy to see that Weber Shandwick had hired Jeremy Pepper, who most would recognize for his POP! PR Jots blog and his ability to stay on top of what's going on in the PR / blog world. Sure, it means some fun, "internal" competition between Interpublic firms when it comes to the world of online media, but at the end of the day it's an improvement to PR as a whole. As our "new" world continues embracing "new" media, it's important that there are people who bring a blend of common sense, PR-ability, and knowledge of how today's opinionated souls think and work to the table on a daily basis. It's something we try and incorporate into our everything here at MWW, and I would expect that other PR agencies who haven't reached this conclusion yet are probably in for a rude awakening.

[update 2/13] Also, check out Jeremy Pepper's post on ethics and PR blogging, which mentions this post. Jeremy makes some excellent following points to my own, and poses a sort of "call to action" that the rest of us should probably pay attention to. No wiki necessary.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

A few weeks ago, I spoke with PR Week's Keith O'Brien about tagging and social search for an article that showed up in the January 23 edition of the magazine, "Marketers: Start your search engines." During our conversation, we spoke about a variety of topics, and a few quotes of mine ended up in the piece (believe me, this isn't an ego-driven post). However, one of the things we discussed more that wasn't included was what the inclusion of tagging in the enterprise would be. One example cropped up a bit ago, with the use of the Outlook Tasks feature in the popular email software by way of tagging.

This afternoon, a little birdie dropped something else I hadn't seen before in my inbox, and it's something pretty cool when it comes to tagging and social bookmarking. Take a look at this press release from PR Newswire, and see if you notice anything new and interesting. Then, see what's after the jump.

Continue reading "I got your enterprise application for tagging right here" »

Posted by Tom Biro at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Back on the 19th, I wrote about Keith O'Brien's new column at PRWeek, "What goes online," and suggested it would be semi-required reading for PR folk, and I definitely agree after article two. This week, Keith (I'm going first name this week, sue me) tackles how public relations pros can't (and shouldn't) try to put out every single fire (read: blog posting) when it comes to people trashing a product or service. Of course, the example he provides, one that I've discussed here, in Kryptonite locks, is one that shows when it is (obviously) necessary to make an attempt to staunch the flow - though you're never going to make it all disappear. The only thing you can do in a case like that is mitigate, not dissipate. It's still going to be ringing true in the ears of those customers and persons who were around for it. And Keith is right - "all the blogging in the world would not have prevented it happening" - and yes, the product was the issue. But that doesn't mean that we can't disagree with the way the situation was handled. I mean, the fact that pretty much everyone was convinced (some still are) that the company was sitting on its hands for a few days means either every single blogger (A-list or not) is super gullible, or there is a public relations miscue at hand.

[cue Michael Hutchence cue cards / "Mediate" here]

[/cue]

My open question for the day here is whether or not PRWeek should do a little bit of open-door relationship building, sorta like what the Wall Street Journal started a bit back (I think it was just a year ago) when they began mailing out "free features" every night to bloggers and other influencers. Obviously it didn't cure the ail they had - no links from blogs (some might say that was a blessing) - but it did get people talking about the Journal's articles a bit more, since they were now linkable and not hidden behind a paid wall or sitting in your physical inbox. Ultimately, the WSJ set up an RSS feed (found here) for its free features that anyone could now snag.

Many of us who are in this sort of business would suggest that there is a whole generation of people who are going to have a serious lack of actual newspaper / print reading experience (of course, these are the lucky ones who wouldn't get ink on their hands all along) - especially with papers that aren't online for free. A way to attract those people to you, perhaps making them realize the value of a subscription (gasp!), is to show them what you've got. So let's say once a week we get to see Keith's column, and one or two other things, that are linkable and there for the reading - would that get PRWeek a bit more buzz and maybe a subscription or two?

That's my open question for you this week.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things people ask about when talking about starting a blog is whether or not journalists read blogs or search them for information. The answer is that not *all* of them do, but quite a few keep an eye on what's happening in blogs and new media and utilize it either as a starting point for a story idea, a place to get quotes, or a reference area for readers of the finished piece. Another benefit of having a blog or Web presence is the possibility of getting quoted elsewhere. Sometimes a news site, such as News.com, will pick up on what bloggers are saying about a particular topic and quote / link to them right from the article, and sometimes they follow up directly to get some answers. On occasion, it leads to an interview or chat, giving you just a tad bit more publicity than you could drive yourself through blogs and new media outlets.

As a for instance, I'll throw out the example of my pal David Singer, who runs the hockeyfights.com site. Hockeyfights has quite a few members who are excited about hockey and the fighting aspect, but are true enthusiasts of the game as a whole. If you want to find a fight video in the last few years, this is a site to go check out. This morning, 1380 ESPN Radio in St. Louis had David on for a few minutes to talk about the site and what his opinions were on who the best fighters are right now, which teams are the toughest, and more. Right before he made it on the air, there was a great promo for him and the site done by the host, Andy Strickland, who handles the Blues Brunch show on that station. (The St. Louis Blues are the hockey team in the market, if you're not familiar with the NHL) You can listen to the clips on David's site.

So let alone the exposure of anyone listening to the promo during an interview with player Doug Weight heading over to the site, David got to be on the air and share his knowledge about the game and the fight within the game. He has, over quite a few years of working this project together, positioned himself as a great (if not THE) place to go for chat about last night's brawl and to see what it's all about. His site has attracted advertising from HDNet, which is running NHL games in HD this season on television, and has a loyal membership. We don't even need to discuss the bump in traffic that he might get from this appearance, it's the fact that the media is looking for content like this - and by going out and creating a community around a particular topic, David can effectively "own" a significant portion of the fan base for this particular aspect of the game - which is huge. What are you doing right now that you'd like to "own" a part of the market of, or be able to influence the discussion about?

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)