Risk management for PR and New Media

Public Relations is not publicity and is not propaganda and, to be effective it has to be planned.

Of course there are routines one can use in the development of PR planning and management but few of the standards include the need for risk analysis to be part of the process.

In social media, the need for proper risk analysis is greater than ever and it occurred to me that it would be fun share some thoughts on this with you.

Of course, first off you might like to see the lecture slides followed by a trial I am trying out.

The slide show below is not the full version but gets the point across.



Here is an experiment in providing a risk assessment matrix for new media. I have taken a standard template that has to be edited for the medium (e.g. Blogs, RSS, Games, Podcasts etc.) and for the organisation/campaign but it does give an idea as to how pretty standard risk management techniques can be applied to PR management.



Let me know what you think.

Jimmy offers wiki software and service

SMEs could stand to profit from a new service from Wikia, the for-profit offshoot of open-source encyclopaedia Wikipedia reports IT Wales.

Its founder, Jimmy Wales, is offering free tools including software, computing, storage and network access to businesses and communities who want to build interactive websites.

"We will be providing the computer hosting for free, and the publisher can keep the advertising revenue," Mr Wales told Reuters.

The offer aims to tempt special-interest groups hoping to set up sites as well as SMEs looking for the expertise and tools to expand their user base rapidly.

Nice offer. We have been using PB wwik for some time and its nice to know about different products and services out there.

Patent off to use wikis ?

The Gowers Review recommended that Wiki technology, as used in Wikipedia, could be used as part of the peer process to build a knowledge base of comments on the application's suitability. Previous inventions — prior art — are also taken into account, before the application is submitted to patent examiners. The use of a Wiki, which can be edited by multiple experts, allows links to prior art to be updated.

After being contacted by ZDNet UK on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the patent office confirmed it was considering measures laid down in the review. She said that the Patent Office was "looking at an implementation plan" for Gowers' recommendations.

There would seem to be many ways wikis can be used. The PR implications for having knowledge building and consultation with peer review sounds a spiffing idea for new product and service introduction as well.

Wow! Gosh! Internet retailing is up

More than 180 million pounds was spent online last Monday, the traditional start of the festive shopping season. This is double the amount of ago year ago.

Predictions of 40% growth seem to have been gazumped. Perhaps the prediction that 25 million people are expected to spend £7bn through the internet - up from £5bn last year and representing £4m every hour, day and night, is too modest.

The driver for the UK where 85 percent of British shoppers preferred clicks to bricks is that they could avoid the "too stressful" high street.

But new research by KPMG and the SPSL Retail Think Tank (RTT) says the internet retailing market "is not as large as many commentators would have us believe" and that traditional high-street retailing still accounts for 2% of the sector's 2.5% growth.

So it may be that the Internet is taking share of sales and is depressing price. I can believe that.

I think that the Internet is taking a big bite out of high street sales perhaps as much as 12%.

What makes me think there is something going on over and above last year is that Woolworths new online offering is making them smile and reach is up for this bellwether UK retailer page views are up 50 since mid November. With two weeks to go M&S is no so dusty either. The high volume low price end of the market is doing very well and top end Debenhams is holding its own. The demographic seems to have changed and that will be a powerful influence.

The bottom line for PR is that online sales are growing and so the Internet is becomming ever more important to organisations and their internet PR activities.



Meantime, French cyber shopping traffic jumped 79 percent in the past week.

Grown-ups need not apply

Children are increasingly swapping music via mobile phones, often without realising they can be breaking the law.

A survey of almost 1,500 eight to 13-year-olds found almost a third shared music via their mobiles.

And if they didn't how would they know which CD's to buy?

Doubt if the music industry undersatnds this idea but they haven't got it yet at all.

TV is going to be fine, thank you. But it will look nothing like it does today and it will be open to all of us.

Steve Rubel has been pondering the fate of TV. I think he is right about some of it but has not factored in games and especially WII style interactive TV. To get some idea of how powerful games are in the market imagine selling 50,000 of any product in just one hour. WII did!

Interaction, especially physical interaction in a games style of Internet TV solution is well within his three year timescale.

Of course, he is speaking from an American not European perspective. Life is different on this side of the Atlantic.

Here we have the hotspots of the highest online retailing regions (not California, the UK), higher blog useage per head of population (not New York but Paris) and higest number of people with 100 meg broadband (Leicester - using cable).

In Europe, there are populations with very high uptake of broadband (2-8 meg) which is haveing a dramatic impact on Internet useage.

The PC has come out of the study/bedroom and into the living space in houses and that is where the real challenge lies.

Edelman 'New Media Release' is a PR exercise

PR spin, especially from 'Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm' (would it, could it be anything else - the marketing boiler plate from the marketing boiler just has to be added), has announced that it has a new template for press/social media story announcements - A sort of replacement for the old fashioned press release. Fantastic!

The concept of a social media news release, says Edelman, 'has been a key topic of discussion within the public relations profession during the past several months'.

Of course, had Edelman been awake, they would known that this has been a key topic of conversation for half a decade and that there is already a 'social media release' and it has been available for four years from Yellowhawk.


This would have saved Edelman’s me2revolution team (part of the world’s largest independent public relations firm) development of the StoryCrafter software (to help accelerate the industry’s adoption of the social media news release) years (okay - minutes) of revolutionary fervour.

One, of course cannot get a close look behind this revolution. In an open source aid to adoption of social media the command and control me2revolution (the technical brains behind the world’s largest independent public relations firm) did not acquire the ethos that goes with being a revolutionary (ahh for the good old days - where are the anarchists?).

Probably more important is that this has all the trappings of an underfunded, me-too, 'Public Relations Exercise' into the fashionable world of 'my new media is bigger than your new media releases' or Todd Defran 1.0. with (the world’s largest independent public relations firm) Edelman spin.

Here are some things one might expect in a NMR:

The Todd Defran layout
Content in format that can be re-purposed for print, web, blog, podcast, vcast, sms alert, mobile web, iTV. With full content for editorial mashup (including two-shots etc), deep briefing by way of searchable, editable wiki content.
It has to be XPRL compliant, NewsML compliant and must be able to have NITF tags the IPTC words need to be identified for the news agencies and for the business community there has to be an XBRL schema interface.

For authentication there is a need to have automated (duel key?) security and these days it is simple to include trace, tracking, monitoring and evaluation components.

Plug-ins might also include auto notifications to:
Backflip BlinkBits Blinklist blogmarks
Buddymarks CiteUlike del.icio.us digg
Diigo dzone FeedMarker Feed Me Links!
Furl Give a Link Gravee Hyperlinkomatic
igooi kinja Lilisto Linkagogo
Linkroll looklater Magnolia maple
Netscape netvouz Newsvine Raw Sugar
RecommendzIt.com reddit Rojo Scuttle
Segnalo Shadows Simpy Spurl
Squidoo tagtooga Tailrank Technorati
unalog Wink wists Yahoo My Web

I did not see the button to 'blog this release' , I did not see the 'vlog this' button or the podcasting buttons. There does not seem to be an 'email to a friend' capability or 'turn this into a PDF' for (the the dead tree paper) freaks in your office button.

I just have a feeling that this is another 'fire from the hip and to hell with the consequences' PR approach to an important issue.

Edeman (the world’s largest independent public relations firm) wanted to be seen to be the web 2.0 leader. Its WalMart problems show a lack of training in-house. Its pitching policies to bloggers show an even bigger training gap and now it is showing that it has only a shaky grasp of new media and its opportunities.

As far as I can see, this announcement is nothing more than a digital version of a 1970's backgrounder press brief with tags instead of tabs. Big Deal!

Some publishers don't get it

"I do think the internet is a problem, but it is also the solution," said Fabrice Rousselot, Libération's internet editor.

"The mistake I think for any kind of media today would be to think they could do anything without the internet.

"You have to integrate the internet as part of your business model."

So far so good.

But then both the editor of the mass selling french newspaper and David Reid, the journalist on the BBC's Click programme fall off their perch.

Reid says:


"There is not much point, for example, putting exactly the same stuff on the website as they put in the paper."

Followed by this quote from Mr Rousselot.

"If you offer on your website the exact same content as in your newspaper, why would people buy the newspaper? It makes no sense economically"

But, Mr Rousselot, you miss the point. People read newspapers and people read web sites. Is a web site the same as a newspaper?

Of course not. They are different. People read newspapers because they are newspapers. They enjoy a sensation. People read articles on-line because it is news and offers them an instant of information.

Why sacrifice half of the users of an article by not having your content online?

UK Two Years ahead of US for online advertsing

In an interesting review and projection for next year Alan Patrick notes that the UK is almost two years ahead of the US in terms of online advertising. At least, that's the conclusion of Terry S. Semel, chief executive of Yahoo!, in a recent New York Times interview. The situation has arisen mainly through the underlying growth of broadband in the UK.

During 2006 broadband penetration increased from about 40 per cent to 50 per cent. In addition, the time people spend online has risen to 23 hours a week and online spending has risen from about £800 per head to £1,100 per head.

As companies have followed customers online, internet advertising has grown rapidly. By the end of June 2006 it was up from 8 per cent to 10 per cent of all UK ad spend and is expected to be nearer 14 per cent by December 2006 - the highest ad spend per head in the world.

Would you believe it of - Marketers!

Dubious Internet marketers are planting stories, paying people to promote items, and otherwise trying to manipulate rankings on Digg and other so-called social media sites like Reddit and Delicious to drum up more links to their Web sites and thus more business, experts say.

Oh! Thats OJK then its not a 'PR excercise'.
It is a PR issue and I hope that the PR Managers are giving the marketers a real ear bashing or worse.

Finding your people

Stuart Bruce pointed to this 'mashup'.

The numbers of applications for this kind of thing goes on for ever and ever.
IN PR just being able to show whwre shops, representatives, spokespeople etc are located, is one such application..

Thanks Stuart.

Thanks PR. - you did good

This is, for once, a positive story on the public relations professional community. It is able to get its act together and to make an effective impact on the public sphere while promoting a sustainable view of the profession.

What broadband did

Internet usage across western Europe is being driven by cheap broadband deals and social-networking websites, the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) has revealed.

Countries such as the UK and France are now experiencing broadband penetration rates of over 84 per cent, while the average time spent online each week has risen by over ten per cent in the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, social media websites are now visited by almost one quarter of all European internet users every month, with that figure rising to 32 per cent among 16 to 24-year-olds.

Being relevant - PR does not need to be

On Friday I will be involved in a CIPR Senior practitioners round table breakfast. Of course it is going to be fun meeting up with Hugh Birley, Justin Hayward, Larry Webber, and Michael Blowers among others.

What can one say in such highly respected company.

I suppose a lot of what I want to (say is summed up in David Dunkley Gyimah's video and web site. The video is the winning International Jury independent video journalist award held in Berlin called 8 Days.

Against a backdrop of:

Declining (media ad) sales figures; increasing pressure from multimedia news deliveries; citizen journalism; Philip Meyer's assertion that newspapers are heading towards redundancy; and the BBC's plans to introduce a more localised form of news in the regions, what do you do if you're a newspaper publisher?

The story is of how eight local newspaper journalists learned to create video news stories.

What I find compelling about this is the speed and extent to which local newspaper journalists can bring television style reporting to their 'newspaper' 'readerships'.

Charlie Westberg , Cleveland Police's veteran media manager was deeply involved (and notes that Cleveland Police now knows it will have to alter the press conference room to accommodate this new breed of print journos with cameras). It was a learning experience for him too and he also found out that the new breed of 'print' journalists could also use CCTV footage because now they are videojournalists.

You see, my view is that the PR professional does not have to change. The 'press release by post or email... phone call... I will get back to you...' model still exists.

It does not have to change.

The journalists and publications will change but PR's don't have to.

They may become less relevant when their unchanging ways are set against Alan Yentob's programme on BBC1 last night. Yentob met Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web - and explored how TBL's creativity has fuelled the creativity of millions of others.

He showed Dandy blogger Dickon Edwards and sex blogger Abby Lee; the hardcore members of the Arctic Monkeys message board; masked animator David Firth - whose cartoons have been watched by millions on the web - and Ewan Macdonald, the young Scot who wrote the millionth entry in Wikipedia - all feature alongside figures such as veteran director Ken Russell - currently making a film to upload to YouTube.

I know there are those in PR who still want to use paper; who believe that this online craze is a fad or marketing or just not for them. So be it.

How will they respond to the video journalist? How will they be relevant to the Arctic Monekey, David Firth and Ken Russell generation? Is it by being relevant to the Daily Telegraph generation housed as it is in a new multi media press centre?

Valerie Grove of The Times puts this point of view:

Like Paxo sneering at Newsnight’s podcast, I recoil at infinite choice/infinite accessibility. If “too much information” is now a conversational mantra, why unleash more of it? Who wants a Christmas round-robin from everyone on the planet? Yentob gave us a glimpse of the website someone has created in his name (Darth Yentob) and countered with his own online version of his virtual self — tall, skinny, smooth-suited, able to dance and fly: “the possibilities are infinite”. What fresh hell is this? He left me baffled, and happy to flee back to my finite world.

It's an understandable argument but its flaw is that she wrote it on The Times web site a long day before the print version hits London's Gentleman's Clubs. Her argument failed in its delivery.

For the publisher it is print, web, sound, video, blog, wiki, virtual space as well as conference, exhibition and bound keepsake annual. Mix and match at will to get eyeballs and those elusive advertising shillings, groats, pounds or euros.

The internet will account for a fifth of all UK advertising revenue by 2009, and will almost match the amount spent on TV advertising, according to figures from ZenithOptimedia. The group's Advertising Expenditure Forecast reveals that the UK has the world’s highest proportion of online ad revenues, at 13.5%. The need for publishers to be online is compelling. It is where to advertise and is a place where tempting people to your web site or other internet medium is critical. More on-line editorial vehicles means more opportunities to sell advertising. Its quite simple.

“Every pound withdrawn from traditional media either to be saved or spent online, where supply is in handsome surplus, exerts more deflationary pressure on the total market,” said Group M in a recent report on the British ad market. “And if online proves more productive, advertisers have the option of investing less.”

These media bucks that are powering the move online is aimed at a very active audience. On average, Britons spend 23 hours a week on the Internet, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, says the New York Times. The Internet accounts for about a quarter of Britons’ time spent with all media, according to Citigroup, nearly double the percentage in the United States. Americans use their computers an average of 14 hours a week, reported by Nielsen Media Research.

Does this mean that the PR industry can afford not to respond. Yes absolutely.

Does this mean that it will be relevant?

Oh yes, perhaps I can suggest that there are compelling reasons for the adoption of social media without the PR industry having to get involved as bloggers or podcasters or vloggers. They have to get involved because their primary journalistic publics have to be online and have to be able to use social media tools. Commercially the driver is too big not to. We just have to create the tools that will make life easier for journalists.

It is just that normal PR practice 20 century style is changing. The press release, for example is being updated and in a variety of forms.

The further opportunity of using social media for direct interactions with our constituencies is just a bonus. A big one, but a bonus.

The Cloud

The Cloud

The Internet, as we know is huge. It shifts masses of data via a network. This three dimensional space with millions of nodes using a range of pipes (wires, radio, cable, cellular, even sound signals) is huge at the core. Most of that data is of no interest or value and is well beyond the understanding of more than a few dozen people. Who knows, cares or even has an interest in the TQM data transfer about the real time ware characteristics of a bit drilling holes in an engine for a manufacturer three thousand miles away for a customer two thousand miles further on and a designer in another location altogether. But it is that sort of information that makes up the big juicy heart of the Internet.

On top is the rich, thick, heaving and growing relationship cloud. It feeds off email, instant messaging, web, VOIP, and other stuff that gives these billions of people the sort of Internet they want and need. This is the Internet of relationships. The social Internet. Here are billions of relationships - the Relationship Cloud.

This is the stuff of social communities. Groups of, now, billions of people who, in the context of the time, environment, and interaction and with values held in common express themselves using a raft of different technologies in even more billions of relationships. The daily billions of e-Mail, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube or eBay social interactions are essentially small group in nature. They are each first and foremost of a culture, of social standards, of language, of place.

The groups of people, the social interactions are dynamic, pervasive and permissive. they reach deep into the Internet core and flirt and flame with the marketing veneer of actors on the fringe of the The Cloud.

Some 70% of all email is considered spam by people in the Relationships Cloud. By extrapolation, is 70% of all the other commercial interceptions in the social Internet also regarded as spam?

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is more than a grain of truth here. Do we want the flashing advertisement, the pop-ups, the click throughs? Can we mechanically mentally block them out. How does The Cloud flirt and flame with marketers?

The Relationships Cloud believes it has rights. It believes it has rights to availability of the Internet, it claims rights over copyright, it believes it has rights over the views of others, it believes it has rights to service. It accepts some responsibilities. It is prepared to tolerate some advertising and cost for delivery service. It will, in some cases pay 'fair' prices but the line is finely drawn.

It does not matter what the accountants and economists say. The Relationships Cloud is valuable. Some parts of it like MySpace and YouTuble are represented on balance sheets, are worth billions in the 'real' world. But theses parts of the Relationships Cloud but a few ant hills in a world infested by ants.

It does not matter what the sociologists like to think, the online groups are a real phenomena that uses games to build whole new communities as real as Trumpton to a five year old.

In the management of nation states the boundaries have changed. Politics has changed. It is not that boundaries have been abolished. It is that a different type of boundary now also exists.

This is not a matter of haves or have nots, Internet users and non users. All mankind is sucked into the mediation of the Internet. They are affected by the social groups that form and make up the Relationships Cloud.

Right now, people in marketing and advertising and PR are trying to stand close to the Relationships Cloud. Their web sites gain traffic, sell goods and services and offer information with thousands of interactions but into a mart of social groups aggregating relationship transactions counted by the stars in the sky.

But, one gets the impression that the relationship cloud radiates powerfully and can burn and sicken the corporation that stands too close or offend to greatly.

The waspish nature of The Cloud is quite capable of wreaking vengeance. Too much spam and spam blockers become common and email addresses are just abandoned. Popups are blocked, adverts are just avoided (RSS still scores well here). Blocking and flaming becomes common, viruses are created or The Cloud simply flows round the obstacles.

The Cloud is quite happy to shrug its shoulders over command and copyright and work round control. More sights and sounds are being downloaded than forever and an even smaller proportion is being paid for now. The Cloud has spoken.

The Cloud can also attack. It will attack companies. Ask Dell, Wal-Mart/Edelman.

We have not yet seen a major confrontation between The Cloud and other institutions but the skirmishes have been pretty bloody.

It attacks individuals too.

The Cloud has no Parliament. It is and is not a democracy. It has a currencies of relationship values. It has no grand rules and yet tends to self policing.

The Cloud can be wrong by any measure and yet The Cloud can avoid the justice of our traditions.

Love the social interaction and beware The Cloud.

Photo: Photoshop talent.