Frank Zappa called it the most important holiday of the year.
I usually enjoy Halloween but this year I think I will sit out the festivities and not drive myself crazy trying to decide what to do. This, despite the fact that my employer Fusion PR has a costume contest.
I think peaked a couple of years ago with this Ali G getup (won the Fusion contest) and people have been expecting great things from me since, when the holiday rolls around. Client priorities and other work have conspired to distract me from this. Oh well, I thought some might enjoy seeing this picture which shows a side of me most are not aware of.
Many of my PR clients want advice on launching and running
corporate blogs.
There are of course many technical and design considerations:
Choice of blogging platform
Blog design
Managing updates
Choice of host and domain
However, I will tackle first the larger question of defining
goals for a corporate blog. After all,
launching a successful blog takes quite a bit of effort, especially if one of
the goals is to create a popular destination.
There’s no sense in investing the time if the effort is ill
conceived and built upon a questionable foundation.
Blog Mission and
Aesthetics
Perhaps you are not sure what to expect from the effort; I
find that many set out without first having a good understanding of what works
well in blogging.
If the mission of your blog is to appeal to people who already have
some familiarity with your company, and if you are trying to attract those who don’t mind getting useful information
from a vendor, then by all means, slap on your logo, and make it look like just
another page of your website. Have your
support people liberally sprinkle the blog with product plugs, salesy advice
and happy talk about success stories.
Blogs can appeal to a wider audience if they achieve
some separation between the company brand and blog. In fact, the words “corporate” and “blog”
should not even go together. Most people
don’t want to go out of their way to read more “corporatese.”
One of the results of the explosion in online and social
media, and user generated content is that there’s so much information out there
and lots of competition for attention. Information
can come from recognized online media brands, from experts and from people –
disinterested third parties – who have first-hand experience with your product
or service.
With all these choices, why go to a vendor blog when you can
find out what experts and actual customers are saying?
So, unless you are after an extension of your corporate
website sales, marketing and support, one of my first pieces of advice is to
banish the word “corporate” from the whole affair.
Blogging ethos encourages transparency, and communicating in
distinct voices tied to individuals, not to the party line. In fact, you might want to (if you haven’t
already) instead consider focusing your efforts on individual blogs run by the
CEO, or other members of your team.
When I say “corporate blog” in this context, I am referring
to a blog run by multiple contributors, most (but not necessarily all) of who
are employed by your company.
The most effective blogs have an attitude, a mission; they
must be about something other than extending the lines of communication from a
company to its publics.
So it is helpful to first define a framing theme for your
blog. This theme should serve as a good
jumping off point for posts and discussion.
Any efforts to create some distance between the company and
blog brand should not go so far as to deceive or totally obscure the
linkage. I am simply recommending that you
don’t hit people over the head with marketing, and instead use the blog as a
forum for educating and discussing issues that are relevant to your customers.
If the contributors do a good job of this they will elevate
their online reputations, build credibility, and your company will benefit both by
association and directly, through better understanding of issues that relate to
your product or service in the marketplace.
In the coming weeks I will share examples of effective
company blogs, and encourage comments with links to blogs you have seen that
do a good job of it.
I'll tell you, I am starting to feel like I have a Second Life. What do I Techmeme? Every time I turn around someone Pownces on the need to inject more tech into the PR mix and I get all Atwitter that MySpace is being invaded by mindless Banter Bots. Digg, if I Stumble upon one more post that berates me to virally expand my network nodes I will quite literally barf. If this continues, I will need to Mashup someone real good.
It was social media releases (SMRs )that set me off, once I realized that I need to transcend mere SEO with SMO best practices and implementation.
Meanwhile, in my first life, I just want to go out there and do good PR.
I am no luddite, having studied electrical engineering way back when, and specialized throughout my career in tech PR, sales and marketing. Although I am encouraged that my fellow PR practitioners see that the world is changing, and we are adapting our tools appropriately, there is a danger in becoming too enamored with technology to the exclusion of the basics.
When it all just becomes technology we are one algorithm away from being obsolete.
Anyway, every time I get anxious that I am not spending enough time pushing the envelope and the latest tech gambits, I am heartened by a few simple realities of life that the social media explosion will not change. Remember to stick to
basics and you will always succeed in this profession:
The high tech, high touch principal
People can only absorb so much technology. There's much hype about the next latest and greatest technology (whether it be blogs, Wikis, social networks, or microblogs) to transform PR.
Institutions have staying power, years from now when many of the new companies driving the tech tools du jour are gone, the press release will still be around. So master the art of the press release, it might be a tired format but that does not mean there are not differences between well thought out press releases that do a great job of telling (and selling) the story and incoherent blather.
It still is a "contact sport"
For all the talk of SEO, SMO, and SMRs, the search engines already do a pretty good job of indexing content, let's not forget the role of actual people in the mix, and of crafting content that people want to read.
An Influencer is an influencer is an influencer
Whether you call them analysts, bloggers, columnists, or all of the above, learn who holds sway in you / your client's area of specialty, make sure you understand them, and then go back and read the above point.
True, there are more ways than ever to connect directly with people, but having the right intermediary - one who agrees your story has value and is willing to spend time writing about it, talking about it or otherwise advancing it - can make a big difference in your success.
Need to be able to communicate and tell a good story
Indeed, nothing else matters if you can't do this.
To reiterate, the Techmeme Leaderboard should be of great interest to tech PR professionals because it provides a list of the sources that have been the most consistent drivers of online discussion on Techmeme. These are ostensibly the digital influencers on tech topics.
In considering this further, a couple of thoughts came to mind.
First, it is interesting to note that the major press release distribution firms are represented on the list - namely PR Newswire and Businesswire - yet the "new age" services that purport to do a better job of SEO and distribution of press releases in general and social media releases (SMR) in particular are not.
It could be that the SMR format is too new, or perhaps these new services - for all their benefits - simply do not have the online reach of the major services. Of course the nature of the news matters, and it could just be that not enough companies are using these new services and formats to package and deliver their news yet.
Also, it has become fashionable to shout from the rooftops that the press release is dead. I have taken my share of shots, although I have not gone as far as Foremski and others and have simply said the press release will become less relevant over time.
Yet as we see from the Leaderboard and elsewhere, institutions have staying power and familiarity and force of habit are powerful influences.
It is not one of the more glamorous aspects of the job, but editing is a much and desired, little talked about and sometimes hard to find skill in PR.
This is especially true in light of the burgeoning need for written content caused by the explosion in online media and the corresponding downsizing of print publications. More and more outlets are looking for article contributions; and all those blogs need fresh and interesting content. Writing is a core skill, and editing rides one layer higher.
I was reminded of this while reading NY Times reporter Gretchen Morgenstern's ode to long time Forbes editor James Walker Michaels, who recently passed. She wrote about him in her article Fair Game; A Taskmaster Who Changed Business News.
She described his "tough love" and repeated some of the acid comments that stung at the time but were very much on target. I couldn't help thinking that some of these comments could easily apply to PR content, such as pitches and press releases I have reviewed and edited over the years.
After all, we are in the narrative business as well, and need to be able to tell a good story.
Here's an excerpt from her piece:
''...He was certainly the best
business editor that I've ever seen,'' Warren E. Buffett told me last
week. ''He knew the subject, he knew the writing, and you knew that
every story had been edited by Jim. He made them short, and he made
them sing.'...
And his reporters? He made them nervous ...
''This is badly written and badly edited. It would be an insult to foist it on the reader.''
''This is a real snoozer, lacking in specifics. Why not just send them a nice lacy valentine and forget the prose.''
'''A good story turned into oatmeal by bad organization.''
''Please fix this quickest. It lacks most of the ingredients of a Forbes story. The quotes are room emptiers.''
''This is the kind of sentence that drives readers to stop reading.''
''This is a paid advertisement. Did you forget to say he walks on water?''
''If I can't stay awake editing this, how can a
reader stay awake reading it? What's the point? If it has a point,
maybe we can make a story of it.''
''I can't make head nor tail of this. There's a story buried in all this confusion, but I can't find it. Fix it or kill it.''
'''Your initials are
on this so I suppose you understand it,'' he wrote to one of his
editors. ''I don't.'' Atop another article, he wrote: ''Replace or run
white space''...
He regularly banned words and phrases he
considered overused. ''Fast track,'' ''game plan,'' ''bottom line'' and
''superstar'' were some examples. ''Upscale'' was another: ''If I see
this word again I'll upthrow,'' he wrote.
Amidst my rants about press releases in general, and SMR (social media releases) in particular, I realize that I may have given the mistaken impression that I do not feel that press releases can be an important part of the communications mix.
Quite the opposite. Despite their drawbacks - it is a tired format that is increasingly looking like an anachronism in this social media-driven age of direct engagement and marketing allergic bloggers - let's take a look at the press release bright side:
Press releases are a well-understood and accepted construct for packaging and conveying news.
There is an ecosystem that supports press releases, ranging from the traditional media that still likes to see news packaged this way, to distribution services, to the search engines that might give extra weight to time sensitive, press release-driven info, to the sites that automatically post these.
The format is evolving, and some say improving
Putting your press release on the wire can offer a way for you to connect with your customers as well as the media, and can optimize your website for the search engines by virtue of the links pointing to back to your website.
I have simply tried to get people to look past the press release as the defining metaphor for PR.
The fact that press releases remain relevant - and can be important even in this social media driven age - was demonstrated by the Techmeme Leaderboard, which I read about in the PR 2.0 Blog post: Techmeme Launches top 100 Leaderboard.
Techmeme tracks online conversations and filters these to present the most buzzed about tech stories. Their Leaderboard purports to track online influence in the tech arena by providing a list of the sources that have the greatest share of "headline presence" on Techmeme.
And, surprise, surprise, not only are traditional journalism brands well represented on the Leaderboard, but press release distribution services show up there as well. As Brian Solis writes:
"...New York Times is at
number three, the BBC is at number eight, Infoworld at nine, and The
Wall Street Journal rounds out the number ten position. In fact of the
top 100 online authorities, 26 are traditional journals, magazines and
newspapers with online branches. And, are you ready for this? Two
of the top 100 sources for news are traditional wire services!
BusinessWire, number 29, and PR Newswire, number 38, have been sourced
more for news than ZDNet, PC World, Wired, Washington Post, Forbes,
Bloomberg, and many others."
What is not obvious is the quality of buzz generated by press releases sent over newswires and tracked by Techmeme E.g., are many of the conversations negative? I would not be suprised. However, a quick search for topics initiated by these sources on Techmeme showed this not to be the case, at least not at first glance.
It related how the growth in 3rd pary applications has gone from sublime to ridiculous. Apparently, a company is marketing an application called Dramatic Whitespace.
"As the name suggests, Dramatic Whitespace inserts a block of empty space on your page. You can change the size and color of your space, and add a dotted-line border, but its interactivity is severly limited."
Its purpose is to offer Facebook users an antidote to all the clutter created by, guess what, third party applicions.
Seriously, though, this led me to conisder whether the growth in applications like social networking , and Web 2.0 driven rich and customizable user interfaces might lead to the growth in a kind of Feng Shui (Wikipedia definition) for computing, in which people can tailor their environemts to achieve balance and peace (does sound kind of Zen, doesn't it?).
My inspiration for this post was Dave Chappelle's hilarious series of "When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong" sketches, and a number of recent posts, thoughts and observations about communicating in this new age of social media (how's that for a juxtaposition?)
If the growth in PR blogs is any indication, and judging by recent chatter about SMRs (social media releases), most in the PR business have finally woken up to the fact that social media won't simply go away and leave us to the tidy and orderly lives we once new. It has never been easy to grab and keep the attention of the media, but at least it was fairly predictable and the lines were drawn and rules of engagement well established.
Now, in this many-to-many, any-to-any communications world of democratized media and user driven content, all bets are off.
One topic that is front and center for PR folks is: how do we communicate? Do we treat blogs as just another form of media and add them to our segmented lists? Do we trick out press releases with Web 2.0 bells and whistles, optimize them for search engines and call it a day? Do we all launch our own blogs, or blog for our clients?
Further, what are the related ethics, that govern, for example, blogging under an assumed name?
So many questions. While this post does not claim to to answer all questions or be the final word, I will try to tie some of these loose thread neatly together under a general philosophy called "keeping it real."
First, and I have said this before, I don't think it is as simple as rolling forward old metaphors. Strategies that aim to treat social media as just another media segment miss the fact that new times call for new communications tools, and that social media is affecting many attributes of how we communicate - not just the wrapper for our stories, that is most obvious, but also tone and style of our words and the mechanics of how information is dispersed and accessed.
When clients ask: how do we deal with the blogs, my answer is BLOG! The media megaphone is available to all, you can comment, start your own blog, you don't need to be A list but you do need to be out there, make sure your voice is heard, and even more important, listen first.
This brings us to the proper role of the communications professional. And, finally, the Topic Du Jour, Keeping it Real.
The one rule in the blogosphere that we ignore at our peril is to approach blogging as an exercise in artificial rhetoric.
You need to keep it real, keep it genuine, know what you stand for and blog in your own voice. The blogosphere does not suffer shills gladly and quickly outs posers. The hive mind and its corporeal blogging nodes quickly regurgitate hucksterism, hype, gobbledygook puke and other swill.
As Ajit Jaokar said in his recent post on the OpenGardens blog (Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Blogging But Were Afraid to Ask) "almost no one asks … What do you stand for?And long term .. it may well be the most important question you have asked yourselves." He further writes that one of the top three characteristics of good bloggers is to have "A sense of humanity and individuality – being an individual – even if you work in a large company." I would add "or a PR agency."
That is why I think strategies that seek to use PR people as ghost bloggers are doomed to failure. I also feel that we need to take care to disclose client ties, should not blog under fake names, and that (except in rare circumstances) we should not blog, comment or otherwise post anonymously.
So what does that leave us with? Plenty. What better role than the communications professional to track conversations, figure out which ones count and help clients craft compelling stories? And to help clients find the best words and messages to tell the story? Last time I checked there was nothing unethical about this, and perhaps brings PR into a more trusted light by in fact shining light, leaving the mystique behind and working in the spirit of transparency that the blogosphere gave us.
Nothing wrong at all with blogging under our own names for clients, advising clients how to best use these technologies and help them work on their stories. Note the line I am drawing: working with a client on their story is not the same as writing their story and "speaking" for them.
We need to be real and teach our clients to establish their digital identities and find their blogging voices, much the same as when we media train them to be effective in interviews but applied to the written word.
I can hear people reacting: isn't a PR professional blogging about a client a shill if not by any other name, not to be trusted and quickly "regurgitated?" This gets back to the "keeping it real" part, and the need to be sincere and genuine.
As an example, I point to the NY Times article from a week ago: At State Dept., Blog Team Joins the Muslim debate. It mentions that the U.S. government has hired bloggers to appeal to "swing voters" on key Islamic websites.
"The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as
chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al Jazeera or charismatic Muslim
figures like Amr Khaled, as well as Arab news sites like Elaph.com.
They choose them based on high traffic and a focus on United States
policy, and they always identify themselves as being from the State
Department.
They avoid radical sites, although team members said that jihadis scoured everywhere.
The
State Department team members themselves said they thought they would
be immediately flamed, or insulted and blocked from posting. But so far
only the webmaster at the Islamic Falluja Forums (www.al-faloja.info)
has revoked their password and told them to get lost, they said."
The relevance here is that they are engaging on the issues. Negative reactions have focused on the bloggers' positions, and who they represent; not the fact that they are "shilling." The bloggers are Arabic speaking, in fact Arab-Americans, and are blogging, at least apparently, from the heart.
We can build "credibility equity" by knowing who we are and keeping it real. We overdraw on that equity by posting too frequently and too loudly on behalf of one issue and one client, especially if the views seem to be artificial, hypey, and at odds with who we are.
"Cred. Eq." will be the one single asset that will become increasingly important as we move ahead. It will increasingly define our digital identities, and be available for all to see at the touch of the Google search button.
Back in June I blogged about how trends in social media and user generated content are changing how companies are portrayed in the media, and implications for the future (see User Generated Content and PR).
In brief - and based on the referenced NYT Thomas Friedman column (which in turn was heavily influenced by Dov Seidman's book "How") quite literally, the hows - how we behave, how we turn out products, how we comport ourselves in our markets and on our local, national and international stages - are becoming more important than the incidental details that are easy to imitate, like product specs, height, weight, eye color, etc.
Then I ran across this article from Sunday NY Times business section, The Unsung Heroes who Move Product Forward, which describes the role of the uncelebrated art of business process innovation in high profile successes like Google, Apple and Intel.
It seems to me that, since the "Hows" are becoming more important (it is hard to argue with Seidman's and Friedman's logic), and the spotlight shines more on the "hows" over the "whats," BPI will become increasingly important, and should spell good things for vendors that deliver related technologies and consulting services, e.g. business process reengineering, and business process and rules management suites.
