Flack's Revenge

Online Privacy Fears: Does FOMO trump TMI?

The Journal had a big What They Know article series about the growing market for information about online personal info and activities; it cast the vendors that serve the market in a pretty dark light. Earlier this year, TIME magazine ran a similar piece. And, just yesterday, the NY Times had a story How to Fix (or Kill) Web Data about You.

What all of these stories have in common is that they send an alarm about online users' vulnerabilities regarding personal information and privacy. And, if in the process, the most influential of media knock the vendors who serve the industry down a few pegs - well, isn't that the point?

I am not saying it is not a valid issue, and that there aren't information providers who take things too far. But there are also those who play by all of the applicable online privacy and marketing information rules and regulations and offer a valuable service to the marketing and PR industries.

I can't help but thinking, too, that most people really do not concern themselves much with the issues raised.  An article in Sunday's Times discussed social networks and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) - basically, the angst one gets about missing out on fun while reading others' social media updates. Ironically, FOMO can compel us to share more, not less.

It must not just be FOMO bot other human impulses that compel us to tweet, blog, Facebook, etc. My point is, in a world where we wear our activities, thoughts and opinions on our online sleeves, do people seem to care much about guarding online privacy? Are the media's concerns overstated?

What's Wrong with Tech Marketing - and How to Fix it (Forrester Interview)

As I blogged last week, I spoke with Dr. Thomas Grant of Forrester about a new report: Tech Marketers Pursue Antiquated Marketing Strategies. Our wide-ranging discussion covered many topics that should be of interest to Flack's Revenge readers.

The report calls technology marketers out on the carpet for being too focused on lead generation and new business.  When compared with other industries, the techies simply do not spend the time or money that they should on market research or customer relations, and do not use social media or PR to full advantage - it is instead all about big bang events, product releases and other news, and talking rather than having thoughtful conversations.

No doubt, some will wince at its conclusions, however, the report does offer suggestions for improvement.  In Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Grant, I tried to zero in on these things, elicit examples and also find out more about ways in which tech marketers can more productively use PR and social media, and work with media and analysts.

Read on, and if this is a topic that interests you, I encourage you to visit the Forrester site as they have a selection of interesting reports that pertain to marketing.

Do companies ever make the transition (from being product-driven to market and customer-driven)?

it is wrenching... and sometimes takes disruption.

Discussion about SaaS as an example of disruption that is changing thinking

What really struck me about SaaS was that it kind knocked people for a loop... they started saying things like "Well, this isn't just a delivery model, this is a business model... we have to have a very different engagement model around our customers, we have to design our products differently."

In a way, what had happened was that they had been thrust into a very close relationship with customers that didn't exist necessarily in an on-premises world... with many layers of obfuscation between you and ultimately what people were doing with the technology... and suddenly people realized, well, damn, customers aren't just interested in things that are new, and they're not just interested in products, and they're not just interested in us as a vendor in delivering products that are new...

[This] has led people away from emphasizing too much what is new, and new leads and so forth... obviously from the statistics, not everyone is there yet.

Emphasis on the new, new thing

One of the things that companies have learned is that, [while] new is good... new is not always intrinsically and obviously valuable.   That is why the pace of innovation in the tech industry is a double-edged sword... on the one hand, it allows people to come up with things of value and deliver them to the market quickly, but often also lets them deliver things that are not of value, or not explain the value as effectively as they should because they're rushing to get it out and then they move onto the next thing.

On relatively small budgets for press and analyst relations (see chart)

The conceit that because we are developing new technology, we are defining the market, ergo there is no market research to be done is patently wrong.  Aside from the fact that not every technology [and] innovation is disruptive to that level, also, too, it is the case that you are addressing a human need; people do express their needs usually in a pretty clear fashion that you can then do market research about...

it is unfortunate that they don't tap available resources as much as they do, nor... other sources of influence... It is, especially in the B2B world, a pretty complex process... in the best of all possible worlds, you are trying to create some sort of a cascade of positive viewpoints on what you offer as a vendor that go, ultimately, into not just a press release or a piece of marketing collateral but ultimately go in a conversation between a CIO and a colleague when they sit down together... you're ultimately trying to reach that kind of conversation.

I don't think that is something the tech industry has effectively mastered... again, not just press and analysts, but other people might be important influencers... they don't get that picture too clearly.

There's an unfortunately standard model for doing analyst relations...  what analysts don't enjoy is talking to a vendor only when there's a huge announcement, and there's this carefully stage-managed conversation... frankly, the analysts have a hard time getting a word in edge-wise, because there's this gushing fire hose of information about this big new thing... that's not as effective as being in a more conversational mode with analysts....

Are tech companies under-investing in PR relative to other industries?

I think they are under-investing where PR is going... PR doesn't have to be just about announcements about new products.

One of the areas that is often misunderstood is the value of a new success story... what people look for in a success story is not necessarily what vendors think they are looking for... which is usually just validation that the vendor is wonderful.

If you are looking at PR as a conduit for information that will have an effect on a potential buyer or will help keep a customer loyal, having a story about how someone addressed a problem - even if the vendor is a minor character or not even mentioned - is still going to get my attention... 

What about tuning into vendors content on blogs and Twitter, assuming it is interesting and an area you cover you'd want to tune into that, right?

Yes... and I do, for example since I do write a lot about social media as an input into the development process, I'll follow a blog like, the social product development blog that PTC has... I've gotten to know one of the persons who posts there a lot and I have a lot of respect for what she has to say.  We're willing to follow what a social media outlet has to say regardless of whether it is a vendor or somebody else. 

We asked Cisco how has social media effected their launch process... they said, well what happens is that the spike of activity flattens out a bit, there's more conversation they have to engage in leading up to a launch event and there's actually, on the trailing side,more going on afterward... not just a "show up and throw up" event, then they rush off to the next big launch, but they have to engage over a longer time.

Chasing the Viral Holy Grail

As I said in my post Rethinking the PR Pitch and Campaign:

What this boils down to is that the objective for your next campaign might not be to snag that briefing, series or briefings, or exclusive...

I also posed several questions, one of which related to the types of content you have or that can be generated to support the campaign.

Here, many people go down a rat hole that I call the viral trap.   Everyone wants to chase the holy grail of the You Tube video or viral Web site that catches on and spreads like wildfire.   Of course, precious few do go viral and become wildly popular.

Here it helps to remember some basic laws of marketing, business and also some cold realities that dictate how ideas catch on and spread.

First, as I have blogged previously, it is well near impossible to predict in advance what will become a hit.  Research has proved this.  There are complex systems involved, people are unpredictable, etc. etc.  That does not mean that you cannot boost the odds of going viral, and that there aren't common elements to popular content.  It just means that, all things being equal, it is still hard to predict what will rise to the top.

Second, your content probably does not need to go viral to call the campaign a success.   Assuming you are interested in some business result and not just trying to entertain a lot of people, the laws of ROI say that the return - in terms of increased traffic, name recognition, Web site registrations, sales, however you measure it -  has to be greater than the investment.

What you do need to do is consider the audience you are targetting.  You hopefully will have some kind of mechanism to monitor the progress and success of the campaign.  And you do need to consider what types of content or Web destination will be interesting enough to become popular amonst your target audience and help you achieve your business results even without any viral explosion.

Welcome to the Machine

I delivered a seminar to the Fusion PR staff last week, and re-played at this session the by-now-famous video by KSU Professor Michael Wesch, the Machine is Us (above), as part of a crash course in the power of Web 2.0 for some of our newer staff.   The video is both a beautiful and hypnotic work, and within a few short minutes helps viewers understand what all the excitement is about.

Take a look at this if you haven't seen it already, trust me,  you will enjoy it as have countless others (it rises to the top of the search results when you plug the phrase "Web 2.0" into YouTube).

And, as reports emerged earlier this week (see ValleyWag) of how Wikipedia scooped NBC in getting key details of Tim Russert's death online hours before the network, I am reminded of how eerily efficient a communications mechanism this new Web has become.  Sure, this has implications for PR, as I often blog about, but goes well beyond this field and other communications fields to have a dramatic effect on society at large.

This new Web is equal parts crystal ball (see my post on crowd sourcing news and prediction markets) and the collective subconscious (Wikipedia definition) that Jung said unite's Mankind - the subconscious made real in software code, routers communications networks, driven by the people who use it, reflecting their thoughts, predictions and obsessions.

A $588B Hole in My Day

Can't we all just get along?

Well, according to CIO Insight - which reported the results of a study by Basex - just getting along, or collaborating by email, IM, and blogging is creating  a great big sucking sound of lost American worker productivity to the tune of $588B.

I alluded to this dilemma a bit in my post Blogging's a Big Time Sink, so Why Blog?

It's hard to argue with the numbers and it would seem to make sense that all these ostensible improvements enabled by better (and more) forms of collaboration come with a big down side.

On the other hand, perhaps there are productivity gains that offset the losses - see my post The Google and Web 2.o Productivity Dividends.

Finally, and as the report acknowledges, this all ties back to information explosion and attention diffusion.  As I said in my end of year post: "The companies that can figure out how to help people make sense out of info - to gather info, sift and separate the good from the bad - and do this well - will be successful."

Some thoughts on 2007 and what lies ahead

As the year comes to an end I thought I would share some fairly random (but hopefully coherent and interesting) observations and ramblings that have been on my mind.

The fractionalization of media and information continued unabated in 2007.

It would be great to believe that the bounty of social media threw off more light than heat, and resulted in a truly efficient and rational marketplace of ideas - one in which the worthy stories received sufficient attention and benefited from crowdsourced reportage, and in which stories that might not have previously had a chance were aired.

Some of that may have happened, but there was an awful lot of "heat" thrown off as well.  We have a reality in which it is hard to find the winners.

With democratization of media, the vaunted fourth estate is eroding as a separate and esteemed institution.

It is true that more people than ever can have their voices heard, but the flip side and unavoidable reality it that there is so much din; who is really listening and can they hear you above the noise?

Thus, people and companies who seek to make news and promote issues, products and services have a hard time figuring out the impact of their messages when attention is so divided.

What, really, is the value of a minor mention these days even if it is in a major traditional media property or blog? 

 

It seems that in this attention driven economy, the attention rich got richer and vice versa.  The "big" stories received outsized coverage and attention while everyone else fought over the remaining crumbs.

 

Perhaps then, the winners were information consumers?  In some ways yes, although it is arguably getting harder rather than easier to find the right information and vet sources.

 

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this Petri dish in the coming months and years.

 

The companies that can figure out how to help people make sense out of info - to gather info, sift and separate the good from the bad - and do this well - will be successful.  Indeed, we have seen the rise of meta sites like Digg, TechMeme, StumbeUpon and PopURLS, among others.

 

I also feel that we are in the early years of the rise of social networks as the killer application - a space that which will continue to grow, eventually subsuming other areas like media, search, marketing and even make headway in the enterprise, giving rise to social applications.

Three New Tools to Build Blog Moxie

There are a couple of tools I have started working with that seem to have lots of potential.

One is a sharing widget from MadKast.  Seems to be an easy way to add viral and social components to your blog - via the nifty the green icon that you now see at the top of my posts, which enables easy sharing via email or social bookmarking / meta news sites.

Please, I encourage you to feel free to Share Away! (and let me know how you like it and if it is not working for any reason).

Another is BlogCatalog. Originally just another directory of blogs, they have recently added social networking features that make it easy to connect with other bloggers and build site traffic.

They're doing some interesting things in the area of blogging for causes, see the  Bloggers Unite in Acts of Kindness video.

I have signed up, am exploring functionality, and will likely be writing more about it.

One other thing, with all the buzz over social media releases and meatball sundaes, I have (admittedly belatedly) updated my news radar, which you see to the left.

I produce my news radar using MySyndicaat, which makes the process of adding news to your site extremely easy.

Social Media Impact on Tech Journalism Report, SMR Revisited

The full details of the recent survey are now available at the Fusion Forum blog.

It includes a write-up on the results, methods, survey questions, and a link to the actual survey data on Survey Monkey.

One thing we regrettably did not query journalists on was their views on social media releases (having said that, respondents had ample opportunity to mention this in the free form comments sections and none did).

Indeed, an article in CNN Money just yesterday (Web 2.0 Reinvents the Press Release) seems to breathe new life into the concept of a Web 2.0 press release.  It cites the success of PRWeb in getting the word out online over larger rivals like PR Newswire and Businesswire, and attributes this to their use of SEO techniques and a Web 2.0 friendly / integrated approach.

I have in general been skeptical on the concept of a social media release (see my post Web 2.0 Press Release: An Oxymoron?)

However, perhaps it merits further consideration.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  I'll be blogging more about this in the coming days and weeks.

Enterprise 2.0 and ROI

The Presto Vivace blog called out the 7/27 Information Week article Business Value Of Web 2.0 Tools Hard To Measure yesterday.   The post and article cited a Forrester Group survey of enterprise IT managers that showed lack of hard ROI for Web 2.0 technologies.

I expand a bit here on my comment on the Presto Vivace blog.

I am not surprised by the study. First off, Web 2.0 itself is an amorphous concept - many could and do debate what it is and which technologies it encompasses. Second, it is just technology while it is the application of technology that is important and can lead to quantifiable benefits. I bet if they were to look into specific areas where Web 2.o technologies are well-integrated into applications that support lines of business, they would see a return. Finally, it is true that many of the benefits that Web 2.0 delivers - improved collaboration, organization and discoverability of info - are soft and hard to measure.

This reminded me of my days selling Lotus Notes groupware solutions in the 90's, and sales force automation systems before that.  Although most of the benefits were considered to be soft, many studies documented improvements and ROI over the long term for organizations that did better jobs of implementing these systems, and managing knowledge and info.

When it comes to blogging, it would seem on the face that it is a big time sink and thus a productivity drain, at least for the short term.  Looking outside the sphere of IT and technology projects, there are some hard returns that come with communicating more effectively and openly as some forward looking executives and organizations are starting to do using blogging and related technologies.  See my post From Madmen to PR's Holy Grail, and of course Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's popular book Naked Conversations.

(I am of course not saying that blogging in and of itself is a panacea or recipe for effective PR, just that it is increasingly a tool that can be part of the communications mix).

Also, I touched upon some related areas in my January post Google and Web 2.0 Productivity Dividends.

Memes Gone Wild: What's YOUR Media Appetite?

From a PR person’s standpoint, it just doesn’t get any better.

I have long held a fascination with memetics, the science that purports to study how ideas and culture propagate.  According to the Wikipedia definition: "In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the ethologist Richard Dawkins coined the ... term "meme" to describe a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture." 

After all, if one can truly understand how memes work, isn’t that one step closer to understanding how buzz happens, and to making buzz happen? 

Since digging into this and reading books by Seth Godin (Unleashing the Ideavirus), Richard Brodie (Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme) and Susan Blackmore (The Meme Machine), all great reads, I have since come to believe that memetics is more of a pseudoscience than a real science.  There's lots of reasons for this, some of which were explained in my post: Welcome to the New, User Generated Non stop Media Whipsaw.

At any rate, while perusing my daily does of RSS feeds I happened on this “meme” that was started by Jeremiah Owyang, in his post My Media consumption Diet:  "I’m hoping to start this meme, that others will join in and share their media consumption diet, in hopes, that we’ll start to learn how they get information or be entertained. I’ve sort of mixed up mediums, and media types, but after some thought, that’s the best way to organize it."

He goes on to list his media preferences in the following categories: Web, Music, TV, Communication, Movies, Magazines, Books, Newspapers and tagged others to do the same. 

From a myopic PR perspective it does not get any better – to start a trend that might wind up with everyone wearing their media consumption habits on their blog sleeves. 

It is Pay it Forward meets chain letters meets self absorbed blogging culture.  From another perspective, it shows some of the benefits and implications of user generated content. 

I checked on Technorati and over 1000 people have responded. You can sort by authority to see what the high authority influentials are reading, and how they like to get information.

 

 

 

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