AdWeekMedia put on a great event in New York this week.
The agenda yesterday covered topics rannging from social gaming, to Facebook, boosting social media results for small businesses, and successful tactics of the mega companies and brands.
I learned a lot that is directly applicable to the world of tech PR.
You can read my partial summary of the event at Scocial Fluency, I will be writing more on this – too much gorund was covered to do it justice with just one post.
In the movie business, they say a movie opens big when it is a hit and has a great first week at the box office.
So how do you get your news to open big? On Social Fluency today, I write about the enduring power of print media. It is a good follow up to my post about Crashing Servers.
The nice people at Wiley were kind enough to provide a review copy of the book Brains on Fire (click here to find it on Amazon), by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church and Spike Jones (no, not that Spike Jonze).
I get lots of requests to look at books, this one in particular intrigued me because of the title, and its subtitle/subject: "Igniting Powerful, Sustainable Word of Mouth Movements."
I have started to skim through it and it is very readable, and loaded with great information about ways to get people excited about products, ideas and brands.
Let me share an excerpt, the first paragraph, which sets the stage pretty well and made me want to read more:
Technology is a trap. A crutch. The shiny new object in the room. And while many people think it could be the answer to their prayers, we guarantee that it could also be your biggest detriment. A lot of companies that concentrate all their efforts in the area of technology seem to take the human element out of the equation. But the focus of business is not – and never should be – technology. Rather, it always has been, and always will be, about people. Living, breathing human beings with hopes and dreams, pet peeves, and a whole bunch of emotional baggage.
I read ahead a bit and found another great passage:
Movements Rely on Word of Mouth, where People are the Medium
Like it or not, your life is a marketing medium. Sure, it's the clothes you wear. The music you listen to. The car you drive. Your belief system. Even the words that come out of your mouth. But you yourself are a vessel. A vehicle that carries your hopes, thoughts, dreams and especially your experiences.
This is where word of mouth comes into play…
I will be reading and sharing more on this important topic.
When it comes to blogging, I enjoy it but my life does not revolve around it. I do have a day job and am not trying to build the next media power house. Getting 2-3 posts out each week means that I write when I want to write, period. I am not competing for that next big scoop.
This is a long winded way of explaining why I am writing about the AOL acquisition of TechCrunch now, when it was the big news last week (I did tweet about it a few times then).
Some wrote about the symbolism of it all, and what this means for tech blogging and PR. Some said that they thought the buyout spelled the end of an era (see Scoble’s piece), and expressed concern that a once independent voice will now change, as it becomes a captive of larger corporate interests. Others wondered how the acquisition could change the world of tech PR.
Sure, TechCrunch is an important outlet for tech news. And Arrington has been very outspoken about PR, so it is hard to argue that this is not important, as it raises a number of questions about the future of the franchise and his role in it. But I continue to believe that this will not change the daily routines at tech PR shops all that much, or have any great impact on the tech companies seeking coverage and visibility.
I was reminded of the power of really big media by an article I read in the NY Times Sunday business section, about how a brief mention in Oprah’s O magazine meant rapid growth for a young company (the resulting traffic to their website crashed their servers). I thought about all of the conversations I have with friends and family that start out as “did you see that article in the NY Times…?”
These are just a couple of examples pointing to the importance of distinctive and strong brands in the media landscape in terms of driving conversations and generating visibility and buzz for the people and companies mentioned in their stories.
So, what are the equivalents of Oprah and the NY Times in the tech media realm? Does TechCrunch fit the bill? Is it server-crashing big?
I would argue that the tech media landscape is cluttered and diffuse, overall.
TechMeme is a tech new aggregation site that features the big and rising stories in tech. Its Leaderboard shows the news outlets that have stories featured on the site the most often. Although TechCrunch is indeed at the top, it has a relatively small plurality of 11.27%.
I think TechCrunch will continue to be important, and hopefully AOL won’t mess with this successful tech news site too much. But I don’t think the deal will change the daily routines at most tech PR shops, nor will it make or break most tech startups.
I am not necessarily a big fan of low rent news and article blast services.
Particularly when it comes to article submission sites, I have found that the articles distributed in this manner often wind up on marginal websites. These may actually do more harm than good because context is everything, and I am not sure how it helps the brand or thought leadership efforts when an article gets posted on a spam blog (I am open to being convinced otherwise, and have tweeted requests for case studies, but so far there have been no takers).
However, I am sometimes asked by cash-contrained startups about these types of services, and have compiled a list of 41 (including pricing where applicable). The list can be found on the Social Fluency blog.
Today’s NY Times reported on a Pew Research study about trends in tech news coverage. The research shows that Apple dominates tech news, followed by Google and Microsoft. According to the article:
A yearlong look at technology news coverage by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 15.1 percent of tech articles were primarily about Apple; 11.4 percent were about Google; and a meager 3 percent were about Microsoft. The…study… assessed technology coverage by 52 newspapers, broadcast and Web sites from June 2009 through June 2010.
The article cited a source who attributed Apple’s domination to the way in which the company unveils products:
It’s not as if Microsoft lacks for public relations people. But Apple is especially effective at seizing journalists’ attention, said Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, citing the anticipation for new devices and Apple’s “very public way of releasing products.”
I am not surprised by the research, and think it illustrates the power of the brand, to the extent that in rare cases like Apple, this can make the usual PR tactics seem almost irrelevant – see my earlier stories about how Apple manages to stay in the limelight without following the conventional PR play book (Too Light / Too Heavy in PR and Fear, Loasthing and How to Keep a Secret at Apple)
It is not easy, keeping all those social media outposts populated with fresh content. Well, the job just got a little easier with CIThread, which offers Content Curation on Steroids, as Paul Gillin called it.
CIThread makes it easy to trick out your various social media outposts – Twitter, your blog(s), Facebook, etc. – with related content from around the Web. It is an excellent way to build thought leadership or news digest types of sites, and keep your social media forums fresh with related content.
I took a look at CIThread this week and posted a review on Social Fluency. Please see below for an excerpt, and visit the link to read the full review.
In concept CIThread is rather simple and straightforward, yet for someone who knows how challenging what they are doing is, it is actually extremely impressive. My eyes got wider as {I saw how] you set up CIThread to monitor topics from various Web repositories, train the system to understand which topics you like, and assign discovered content into various buckets – either for exclusion, publishing, etc.
The system apparently gets smarter over time about what types of content are appropriate and interesting for your social media outposts.
For every need I could conceive and question I had, Tom and Mike had ready responses:
Moreover, all this comes at a very reasonable price – the service is hosted, and users pay a monthly fee based on the number of topic threads.
I read a WSJ article yesterday (Zookeeper Courted Danger to Attract Press and Visitors), about a zoo publicity guy who got bit by a Cobra, and also lost two fingers to a chimpanzee, all in the name of his craft.
It made me reflect on my career, and also consider the experiences of my colleagues regarding the following question: what is PR’s most dangerous game? How far have you gone in practicing PR – did you ever put yourself in harm’s way?
I am in tech, and the question brought to mind an article I had read, about the most dangerous gigs in the technology field – it seemed like a ridiculous question as you don’t normally relate high tech to high risk (at least in terms of physical safety, anyway). Sure enough, the article cited jobs that involved fixing undersea cables and climbing communication towers.
I am almost embarrassed to ask the question, as it is hard to even talk about danger in our field when you consider the risks that some of our counterparts on the media side take – e.g. the journalists that work in war zones and repressive countries, and the lives that have been endangered and lost as a result.
Looking back on my career in tech marketing and PR, it has been relatively safe – apart from the threat of being trampled at some publicity event, or suffering ill effects from too much (or bad) food and drink at industry mixers and trade shows, there really is not anything that interesting to report (and even that is not so interesting). But I am sure there must be some good stories out there! So please share if you have one.
Time magazine has a celebrity interview feature called “10 Questions.” A month or so ago, Time readers posed the questions to James Ellroy, author of great noirish fiction – a number of his books hit the best seller lists and became movies, like L.A. confidential and The Black Dahlia.
One question in particular caught my attention (please see following excerpt):
Q: Are people born good writers?
James Ellroy: No. You have to read, read, read, read, read, read read, read and read. And as you read for enjoyment and edification, unconsciously you assimilate the rudiments of style and technique, and when it comes time for a person to begin to seriously write they either have it or they don’t. The level of artistry can be enhanced, chiefly through hard work – but you read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read. It’s an informal education that is oddly formal by dint of the very fact of reading.
I had remembered reading the passage but could not track it down. Time makes it almost impossible to get content through their Web archive, even if you are a subscriber to the print magazine and have their smartphone app (I am and I do). I did find this YouTube clip which, features the Q and A session with Ellroy. He is a pretty intense dude, check it out, you will see what I mean.
Ellroy offers sound advice. Folks who work in PR agencies are constantly looking to up the writing games of their teams – this is one way to get them to try to do it.
It also reminded me of my long career, and how I almost flunked my first writing course in my freshman year of college. I was a constant irritant to the professor, and just could not seem to get my arms around the writing assignments. Then, I transferred from Brandeis University and entered the college of engineering at BU. Engineers are not known to be great writers. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but twenty plus years later I work in PR, enjoy writing, and many people say I am good at it. I would have to say that reading has contributed to helping me improve as a writer – and that connection only really hit home after reading Ellroy’s interview.
It really is like a collective subconscious (or Greek chorus), consisting of all of the voices of the writers you have read – sitting in the back of the mind and guiding your work.
For those who were withering under the late summer heat, and ready for a breath of cool and refreshing
near Autumn air, it came in the form of a series of news developments that injected some drama and excitement into the normally more even-keeled IT world.
The news has been part of the continuing saga around HP’s decision to send CEO Mark Hurd packing in the wake of alleged expense report improprieties (not to mention sexual harassment charges that were settled). I had written about this in my post How NOT to Have a Crisis.
No sooner was Hurd out at HP then Oracle’s Larry Ellison was famously quoted as saying: “The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago” (Kapow!!)
And then, HP decided to sue Oracle as a result (Pow!!)
NY Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote about this earlier this week (H.P.’s Blundering Board), and said: …the H.P. board can now lay claim, officially, to the title of the Most Inept Board in America. It’s going to take a yeoman effort to dethrone these guys.
The Wall Street Journal had a front page story yesterday (IBM’s Chief Thumps H.P.) that was about Palmisano piling on. (Thump!!!)
For a tech PR guy, it is a little like watching a highway pileup. You stand and stare in morbid fascination, yet can’t help feeling bad for those involved because there, but for the grace of god, can go your clients – yet, like a guilty pleasure, it is hard not find all of this at least a little entertaining and interesting
