Flack's Revenge

User Generated Content and PR via NY Times' Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman had a great column (The Whole World is Watching) in the NY Times yesterday that touched on some related themes I have been discussing in my recent posts about user generated content (UGC) and PR.

According to Friedman, UGC and Web tools have made us all into potential publishers, paparazzi and filmmakers.  The flip side of is that any and all of us can be instantly thrust onto the world's stage.  Digital fingerprints leave us up there forever.

The conclusion has important implications whether you are in PR, management, customer service - really, any job or station in life.  Since we are all potentially "naked" and up there on stage, and the Web offers easily accessible dossiers courtesy Google,  it is not the minor incidentals that count - what your product looks like today, or how tall you are - because these details can be captured, archived and in some cases easily imitated. 

No, it is how you act that forms a lasting impression, and is harder to imitate.  This can relate to individuals, and how they behave (or not) in public, as well as to a company's business processes.

Friedman refers to a book that influenced his thinking on this, simply called "How," by Dov Seidman, C.E.O. of  I.R.N., a business ethics company.  According to Friedman,  "Seidman's simple thesis is that in this transparent world 'how' you live your life and 'how' you conduct your business now matters more than ever,because so many people can now see into what you do and tell so many other people about it on their own without any editor. To win now, he argues, you have to turn these new conditions to your advantage."

The implications for PR?  Friedman says:"Companies that get their hows wrong won't be able to just hire a P.R. firm to clean up the mess by a taking a couple of reporters to lunch -- not when everyone is a reporter and can talk back and be heard globally."

Which offers a pretty bleak view for the profession, that is if you buy into the mistaken notion that our jobs consist of damage control and schmoozing reporters (see the Fusion blog's post about PR myths.)

If, on the other hand, you have a more expansive and accurate view of the profession, you will take away a lot from his advice in his closing statement  "whetheryou're selling cars or newspapers (or just buying one at the newsstand), get your hows right -- how you build trust, how you collaborate, how you lead and how you say you're sorry. More people than ever will know about it when you do -- or don't."

Apple iPhone: Steady as she Goes

You usually need to wait until a product actually ships until you hit the "Trough of Disillusionment" (see Wikipedia definition).

But some negative articles are (and have been) already starting to appear about the iPhone.

The EDN / Brian's Brain blog ran this post back in January: "The Apple iPhone: 10 Significant Shortcomings."   This SmartOffice article from just this week "Long Term the Apple iPhone May be a Dud, Price a Big Issue" quotes an IDC report that questions whether the masses will adopt the iPhone.  In terms of enterprise adoption issues, Network Computing had the following story last week: "Applications May be the iPhone's Shortcoming."

So far, though, I think most people would agree that Apple has played this pretty masterfully.  Since Steve Jobs delivered his pitch earlier this year, the iPhone has seemed to be a mythical, elusive creature as Apple has gradually unveiled features and teased us with fleeting glimpses showing flash, brilliance and innovation in its recent commercials.

This can be a dangerous game as expectations have been built sky high and buzz and speculation have reached a fever pitch.  It would be all too easy for this all to come crashing down if the promise eclipses reality when the phone finally become available next week.

On the other hand, introducing the iPhone in this way has also gradually let the air out of heightened expectations as people wake up to the reality that the phone might not be the Holy Grail people everyone expected.  It has also given Apple time to respond to some of the criticism, e.g. Steve Jobs addressed developers' concerns at WWDC show last week.

Although I had been skeptical (there are price issues, and anyway Verizon is the only carrier that has good reception in my town), I must say they have my attention and I am looking forward to checking it out.

I am User, Hear me Roar

As I discussed in my last post, there is a raucous new dinner guest at the media table and that guest is the consumer (AKA "user").

A fickle and sometimes cranky type, consumers are flexing their muscles and expressing themselves in myriad ways - causing us agency types (ad, PR, digital, whatever; see Blackshaw's ClikckZ article "Who Owns the Influencer?") - to tie ourselves up in knots as we:
1) realize that life is no longer so simple, safe and secure as we once understood; and
2) bemoan our loss of control over the brand messages - control that just yesterday seemed so firmly in our clutches.

A fiercer and more terrifying breed than the consumer is the consumer influencer.  These people can be of the old school, off line variety - Gladwell's Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen, or Godin's Sneezers - the hyper connected and opinionated savants that are knowledgeable, credible, passionate, and outspoken about their product choices.

Add a dash of tech savvy and production values and the figurative network nodes become literal nodes, as these same people realize that they can amplify their reach and influence through the miracles of social media and the new Web.  In short, they can become digital influencers.

So, back to Blackshaw's question: Who Owns the Influencer?  From my own, PR myopic viewpoint, I'd rather address the question: "What can PR do about users and digital influencers?"

I think the way forward becomes more clear once we understand a few simple rules:

1) It's a New World, Get Used to it (and that is not necessarily a bad thing)

In  the good old days - meaning less than 10 years ago - audiences that we wanted to connect with were passive readers, viewers and listeners.  Further, to connect with these audiences we needed to first persuade the media that our stories were newsworthy.

Today audiences are online and in everyones' faces in growing numbers.  They are talking back, telling us exactly how they feel (are we listening?)  They are joining online communities that match their interests, jobs and viewpoints.

The art of PR targeting and media list building has typically been a very top down, broad stroked affair, characterized by the mindset: "go where you think the readers and viewers are, and, when in doubt, high circulation trumps all."

These days it is possible to target with micro precision.

And, guess what: you no longer need the media to carry your message.  Sure, their coverage is still important and can earn precious credibility points.  But it is no longer the only way to communicate with your audiences (on the other hand, communicating directly carries with it a whole new set of risks and responsibilities - in short, a whole new set of rules).

2) There's a New Influencer in Town

We can also benefit by understanding that digital influencers might not look or act like the influencers of old.  This is the most obvious in the consumer products world, but also applies to B2B products and services.

Sure, it still works wonders to get Gartner's blessing (if you are in IT) and the vaunted Magic Quadrant ranking.  Yet certain bloggers are growing in importance and should not be ignored, for example if you are in rich media tools, conferencing, and collaboration (Robin Good of MasterNewMedia and Kolabora blogs), publishing and content technologies (John Blossom of ContentBlogger) and mobile technologies (Ajit Jakor's Open Gardens blog).

In addition to blogging, these people write books, speak at conferences, consult with and advise clients, and in some cases are also at the same time traditional analysts.

In the coming days and weeks I will be writing more about how to factor in digital influencers into your PR campaigns and strategies.

The User Generated Content Land Grab

Pete Blackshaw wrote a good article for ClickZ, Who owns the Influencer?

It echoes some of the broader points I have been making about the changing shape of PR.

He makes the point that consumer generated media has resulted in the rise of the consumer influencer (it would seem the same types of people that Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell venerates as Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen, and Seth Godin calls Sneezers, Blackshaw refers to here as “the loudmouths everyone hears and reacts to”), and poses the question “who owns the consumer influencer?”

He stacks up the various types of agencies and corporate units – external relations (ER), market research, PR, IR, advertising, digital –  in terms of their abilities to influence these new influencers.

Of PR agencies, he says "the PR community is laying claim with force and fury -- and occasionally some controversy -- to the expanded role of consumer influencers. Like ERs, PR firms historically owned traditional influencers, but now they have a unique opportunity to drive more business from other parts of the marketing mix."

In terms of where things are going, he says:

"PR, advertising, and digital firms start to morph. If consumer influencers are the new advertisers and message creators, does the division between advertising and PR really make sense? Communication is communication. Why should clients service silos when they can have one-stop shopping anchored to the consumer's voice?"

While it may be true that the traditional PR agency needs to adapt and change, I do not agree with this assessment, and that “communication is communication.”

Although the growing influence of and loudness of the voice of the consumer cannot be ignored, all is not anchored to the consumer voice. Let’s not so quickly and conveniently forget all the other media.

As I previously wrote on the Fusion Blog in The Web 2.0 Press Release: An Oxymoron?: "Ironically, as the message needs to be made simpler, the language more direct, compelling and informal, issues and online conversations need to be tracked and engaged, we as communications professionals are needed more than ever. But we need to wake up to the fact (just like traditional media) that the times and means of communicating have changed and adapt. We need to change our tactics and tools."

We as a profession need to continue what we have historically been good at and find ways to extend these skills into the new  and evolving communications landscape.

PR has traditionally been the province of conversations, tracking issues and responding to trends. We are all about words and narrative. This should be a perfect opportunity to engage consumers and consumer influencers in conversations and respond to their wishes wants and desires.

The question is, how?

If consumer influencers are the new loud voice at the branding party (using Blackshaw's metaphor), who will be the dancing partner?  Do consumers want a chaperon, or have any desire listen to any of the above mentioned stakeholders, PR included?

Stay tuned for more on this.

Goodbye, Mr. Wizard

This post sadly notes the passing of that icon of propellerhead geekdom, Don Herbert, otherwise known as Mr. Wizard.

My baby boomer readers and friends who grew up in the 60's will fondly remember him.

Here is the Associated Press obit, by way of Livingston Daily: "'Mr Wizard' Dies at 89"

Sopran - huh?- s

Allow me to digress from my usual Tech, PR and Web 2.0 topics regarding something everyone is buzzing about: the last Sopranos episode.

No, I will not be the 500th person to talk about Chase whacking the viewers.

I was a hard core fan and am a bit more sanguine than people I know, who seem to find disappointment in every episode.

I guess it was a fitting finale, so many loose threads that no conceivable ending could have tied neatly together, and at least last night's ending lets Tony and the gang live on in our imaginations.

There is a tech tie in - about how tech and drama can conspire and blowback.

Ejected from the master bedroom because my wife turns in early, about 40 minutes into the show, I tore myself away for thirty seconds to turn on the TV in the living room.  Not wanting to miss even thirty seconds (even though this was a slow scene - the one in which Paulie and Tony were sitting outside Satriale's, discussing Paulie's lack of interest in taking over Carlo's crew) I engaged the DVR - which I had previously  set to record the show - to roll back to the  vital thirty seconds (just goes to show how much of an addict I am, or was).

Just like the rest of the country, I was fixated until the very end.  Knowing from the TV listings that this episode ran until 10:05, in the final minutes I played out numerous scenarios in my mind, calculating the possibilities with the growing awareness that whatever was going to happen, it needed to happen quickly.

Then - nothing!  My screen went blank.  I thought - dummy! - the DVR was programmed to record until 10:00, not 10:05, and it had shut off.  The last crucial minutes and I missed them!

I slammed down the remote, then picked it up and searched frantically for the "Live" button, which takes you from recorded to live mode.  By the time I found it and hit it, it was too late.

I stormed into the bedroom, wife was still up and in fact the TV was still on.

She confirmed my growing realization, that it was a sudden ending, and that in fact was all that there was.

Taking Yahoo! Pipes for a Spin

As I posted previously (in "PR and Web 2.0 Hacks, Mashups and Utilities"), Yahoo! Pipes seems like it has great potential for the intrepid Web 2.0 savvy PR professional.

It allows you to mix and match Web data sources from any source that offers a feed, process the data,  flexibly view the output, and publish the information via news syndication or HTML.   It taps into the immediacy of RSS, allowing you to leverage the growing number of online information sources for a range of uses.   One of the really cool (and Web 2.0-ish) aspects of Pipes is the social component.  It is possible to mix and repurpose Pipes from the greater Pipes community.

In short it promises to help you be the master of your online info domain.  For the information driven PR professional, it does not appear to get any better than this.

Robin Good, the original newsmastering evangelist had a detailed review in his post several months ago: "Beyond NewsMastering: Yahoo! Pipes Is The Internet RSS Remixer - Overview And Reports."

Also, the Marketing Studies blog has this good post on threats and opportunities for marketers: "Yahoo! Pipes a Dream Come True for RSS Marketers ... and a Huge Threat."

So it was with great hopes and excitement that I recently took Pipes for a spin.

I thought, what better way to get my arms around this then to start with some of the news aggregation and buzz tracking applications that are already out there?

My eyes were big from the possibilities, however they quickly glazed over with complexity.  While it may be true that you do not need to be a programmer, you do need to be comfortable with concepts like parsing text strings in URLs, and in general have a good understanding of how Web content, search syntax and news syndication works.

The challenge quickly becomes clear when you are working with a more sophisticated application, e.g. one which accepts user input and submits the information to a variety of search engines, each which can have different rules for how searches are constructed.   Aggregated News Alerts is one such application.

One of the claims is that Yahoo! Pipes offers a visual programming environment that allows you to drag and drop components and interconnect these to your heart's content.  You can in fact do this, however with the aforementioned application it was a quite a bit to take in. (See View Source).  The graph paper palette and all the components make it look akin to a diagram for rewiring a house.

Luckily, there is helpful documentation and support via Yahoo discussion groups.   And there are no shortage of people who have boldly gone before me.  In searching around a bit, I found this post from Ian Kennedy's Flahspoint blog: "Yahoo! Pipes: a Giant Erector set for the Web", and an application for searching for luxury European cars on top auto blogs, which he helpfully published and provided a link to: European Performance Car news.

You can see how this works by clicking on the View Source tab.  Much less intimidating! In very little time I was able to modify this application to one that I can put to work for one of my clients.

The client is in the enhanced water business, and we are interested in tracking mentions of some of the top brands on the celebrity blogs.

So I tweaked the original application a bit, changing the search terms from car brands to water brands, and plugged in celebrity blogs like TMZ, Gawker and Perez Hilton.

I saved it and published it, and here is the result: Enhanced Water on Celebrity Blogs.

Admittedly, not momentous in terms of functionality or title, but definitely a start.  Now that I have gotten my feet wet I will explore Pipes further, and continue to feature interesting related posts and applications.

Meanwhile, I have updated my Buzzword Du Jour to Yahoo! Pipes and feature the latest news, which I did in about five minutes courtesy MySyndicaat (proving that Pipes and MySyndicaat are not mutually exclusive - there is a place for an information mashup platform like Pipes and a newsmatering solution like MySyndicaat).

Managing Reputations online: Ease of Use = Room for Mistakes

Not long ago I was discussing with my friend Lisa Langsdorf  (communications manager for About.com / NY Times and a real PR pro) the challenges of factoring online media into the PR equation, and she brought up an interesting perspective.  I thought it would make an excellent topic for this forum, and am pleased to present Lisa as my first guest blogger and the following post that she wrote:

"As PR executives, we’re often under pressure from clients to deliver results, quickly. From a client’s perspective, results are one of the few components of PR that can be measured and attached to a dollar value. The result is that often times we rush to adopt the next big thing without thoroughly evaluating how to effectively use it. 

The Internet, followed by blogs is a good example of a platform and a medium that have the potential to work against a PR professional if not approached strategically. The challenge is that, for the most part, what you put on the Internet stays on the Internet. And sometimes, things that aren’t intended to be put on the Internet make it there anyway. 

There are many examples of good corporate and personal reputations that have been marred by poor use of the Internet by public relations professionals. Wal-Mart and the company’s fake blog, or flog, is a good example. It certainly didn’t help Wal-Mart’s reputation as a trusted company, especially within the investor and media communities. But hiccups don’t have to be monumental to impact your company’s reputation. Even small mistakes such as misspellings and typos in an announcement can chip away at your client’s, and even your, reputation. 

A few months ago a former colleague, who is a freelance publicist, worked with an agency that had an online document storage software client in need of some quick coverage. One of the agency’s senior executives was also actively pitching the client and, in poor taste, pitched a reporter on why Anna Nicole Smith should have had online document storage. The pitcher went on to assert that, if Anna had online document storage, some of her posthumous legal issues would have been quickly and easily resolved. 

I’m not sure how they would have been solved and neither did the reporter who received the pitch because the full text of the email landed on a bad pitch blog shortly after. The blog posted the name of the publicist complete with a diatribe dissecting the pitch. While negative publicity such as this probably didn’t have enormous impact on the agency or the client, it sure couldn’t have helped the client / agency relationship and probably ended up making them both look and feel foolish. The lesson: don’t send out anything electronically unless you’re 100% comfortable with the possibility that millions of eyes may see it too. 

A few years ago I started working at a PR agency that encouraged us to send our online media clients' articles to bloggers in the hope that the blogger would mention the article and link back to our client’s site. Makes sense, right? Well, while it may have benefited the client (and the agency with some coverage to put on the report), I quickly realized that the bloggers were assuming that I agreed with the content in the articles.  One of my clients was FOX News. I’m a Democrat, and, to this day, when people Google my name, they gather from the results that I have some far right leaning tendencies. I often wonder how this will impact future job offers. This serves as a reminder that publicists need to be as considerate of their own reputations as they are of those of their clients. 

So why does this happen? Why do we sometimes risk our reputations, and those of our clients, through poor use of the Internet as a PR tool, platform and medium? Part of the problem is that it’s too easy. The results are almost instantaneous—you could potentially start a PR campaign on the Web in a matter of minutes where, in an off line world, the results are much slower. 

The speed of the net also leaves a lot of room for error. If a reporter wants the story yesterday, we may not have enough time to develop talking points for our clients or to prep them properly. This takes control of the message from our hands and puts it into the hands of the reporter. 

PR professionals aren’t the only offenders online. Some reporters are too. I’ve come across many an online reporter who, when rushing to file a story, didn’t check their facts or didn’t grasp the story. This makes our lives much harder and preparation beforehand even more essential. If the reporter doesn’t make the correction, misinformation has the potential to linger indefinitely. 

So what are the keys to successful online campaigns? Success lies in ceasing to look at the Internet as a medium for instant coverage and instead thinking seriously and strategically about the consequences of every move we conduct online. It means rethinking every pitch, re-editing every release and thoroughly outlining messages for our spokespeople. It means thinking seriously about whether the message we’re sending out today will be one that positively sustains itself for the long haul. And it means constant vigilance and attention, and the nurturing of your online reputation, as the image you would like to convey and what turns up in a Google search about you, your company, client or brand may be two very different things. Because, while we had almost a century to perfect print PR, the pace of the Internet and technology generally leaves us little room for catch up but definitely no room for error."

Lisa Langsdorf

PR and Web 2.0 Hacks, Mashups and Utilities

As I have made pretty clear in this blog, I strongly feel  that the Web 2.0 world (including blogging tech, the blogosphere and Wikis) presents challenges for the PR profession, but also opens up important new opportunities.

Keeping with this theme, and focusing on the opportunities, I thought that I'd launch a new section of this blog called "Web 2.0 Hacks, Mashups and Utilities" for PR.

It will serve as a resource, pointing people to free online utilities for the PR profession.  I will also take the more promising ones for a test drive, report on my experiences and describe news ones that I come up with.  Hopefully, people will chime in with some of their own hacks that they devise or learn about.

Why should you care?  Because these resources can help you be more effective and do a better job.  Another reason is that, in putting these tools to work you will also at the same time improve your Web 2.0 literacy.  Also, did I mention "Free?"

I start out with a review of Yahoo! Pipes, and will cover some of the PR applications that are out there for Pipes.

Yahoo! Pipes was announced with great fanfare several months ago, and received rave reviews.  Its purpose is to give non-programmers a way to build their own information mashups, mixing and matching inputs and flexibly producing outputs from user definable Web resources.  In this vein, it can be seen as providing some of the same benefits as a newsmastering solution such as MySyndicaat (see my post Tracking Buzzwords in the Wild ), however appears to be positioned to be more of a platform than a solution.

Here is Tim O'Reilly's post from February,  Yahoo!'s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet, and an excerpt:

"It's a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output. Yahoo! describes it as "an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator" that allows you to "create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant." While it's still a bit rough around the edges, it has enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone."

And here is what Nick Bradbury had so say at around the same time in Yahoo! Pipes is a Platform Play:

"Pipes enables the creation of custom RSS feeds tailored to specific interests. Here's a very simple example: you could create a "pipe" which asks for a zip code, then generates a single feed containing information taken from a collection of weather feeds, news feeds, events feeds and sports feeds pertaining to that zip code. Or you could create a pipe which mixes news about a big event with Flickr photos of the same event. Or how about one that combines comments from the same person across multiple blogs?"

However, in the time since the noise about Yahoo! Pipes has died down somewhat  So, does Yahoo! Pipes hold up to its promise for PR?  What are the good applications that are out there?  Stay tuned, and you will find out more out shortly.