Internet Mediated Public Relations - the building of strategies

Introduction

This is a story about two puppies. They are siblings and cute. They inspired this article.



It is also about social media and Royal Canin. Royal Canin is a dog food.

Yesterday, there was a blog post about Royal Canin in the 'Hotdog blog ' it said: "Well I have tried Blue (puppy formula) none of my 2 puppies even touched it. They put one in their mouth, spit it out and that was it.. it stayed there untouched. No matter how I try, they just won't eat it. So I stick with Royal Canin (puppy, small) since the vet was recommending that one anyways."

This citizen endorsement will be available for anyone seeking information about this dog food for years.

There is another post which references a press release which says: Royal Canin is a world leader in Pet Nutrition (www.royalcanin.ca) specializing in high quality foods for dogs and cats including breed specific foods for …

This is another post that will be available for anyone seeking information about this dog food for years.

There is little doubt about which is the more powerful statement.

The statements that endorse the product are very evident in post after post.

"Royal Canin has done a lot of research in the development of their pet food," said Vicky Jones, who co-owns Petland in Murfreesboro with her husband, Bob Hyde. The couple, both veterinarians, re-opened the store in March, and sales have exceeded their expectations. "Geared to be breed-specific, there are foods for Chihuahuas, (Yorkshire terriers), shih tzus and others. Royal Canin is really giving Science Diet a run for its money."

"So, on Derek's suggestion (Derek is my gay boyfriend/dog trainer buddy, if you don't recall) I'm giving Royal Canin a shot. He swears by it."

"Royal Canin is really giving Science Diet a run for its money.”

Different aproaches to advertising

If you compare these statements with, for example, an advertisement or a sponsorship programme there are many differences.

The blog posts

• The first is the authenticity of the voices. There are people endorsing and recommending the product.
• Second is how inexpensive this promotion was (free).
• Third, and this is key, they will remain available to people seeking information about the product for years to come. Its half life goes on and on and on.
• People seek this information in their time, when they want it and in a form that they want.
  

An advertisement

• The language of the company
• Expensive
• A life of a few days at most.
• Interferes with people's interests and lives when they don't really want it, have little current need and is disruptive.
  

Technically, we are talking about the value of 'the long tail' and the value of user generated content.

There is a need to build a strategy (see below) but we learn from the above that, with sympathetic engagement with ambassadors such as those above, we can lever the value of this endorsement a lot.

It has the advantage that it will be online for a long time and because we can engage such people, if only by offering a 'thank you' comment to their posts, we increase the google juice of their posts and our own web site. ROI is high and is measurable (links are assets ).

Optimising a blog (or wiki) post by adding empathetic comment, linking it to other blog and wiki posts and effective search engine optimisation, tagging, trackback and RSS implementation can increase the value of comment considerably. The investment in time and effort has a long 'half life'. The difference between issuing a release to the press and a blog post is that press comment has little by way of longevity but blogs (and press comment online) has a long life . What is important to know is that if its on-line it is cumulative.

Organisations that are not building a significant presence online now will have to race to catch up or they will be swamped by the sheer size of the presence of competitors.

There is one other issue. People who do not see (search for, don't have access to the web etc) are not excluded from these conversations. A person who offers a post and gets a comment, will talk about it to friends and family - even total strangers - and a greater affinity is developed. Of course, they might even spread the word by email, IM or other means as well.

Compared to an advertisement (seen today and forgotten tomorrow) online relationship building (always there, personal and human) online interaction is very powerful and is much less costly.

Building the strategy

Let's suppose our aim is to provide presence that aids development of market share for the product (I can't keep on promoting a dog food - even if our puppies do like it a lot and it keeps them fit).


How, then would we build a public relations strategy ?

Working with a team (that could be a in a range of locations) using project management software a range of interactive tools and knowledge management facilities (that need not cost a great deal).

• We need to articulate our vision

• What do we do best. What do we like to do, what do we want to achieve. (remember, it has to be authentic. It is the building block for the whole approach). Perhaps we are best at creating the right formula product, we like to manufacture and distribute it so that everyone can enjoy its benefits.

• We need to develop a knowledge base.

• Our company, its people, products, processes, stakeholders , users and their interests.
• The events and activities we endorse, sponsor and why.
  
• The third parties we work with and are involved with and why.
• The content of the conversations about our organisation, products and service (what do people like to talk about)
  
• The empathetic and mutual interest between constituents and the company (what do we like to talk about that our constituency also like to talk about.
• Identify dissonance
  
• We need to articulate our objectives
  • Articulate the benefits
  • Create presence
  • Build credibility through broad engagement of our stakeholders
    
  • Involve our active, aware and latent publics
  • Resolve dissonance
    
  • Deliver ROI in the short, say, three months, and long term over a period of, say, 12 months through consumer involvement
    
    • Mobilise our stakeholders in support of the company, its products and partners
      
    • Directly and indirectly involve our consumer audience which is a broad constituency (age, sex, income, location etc).
    • Encourage our consumer audience to consider us when they think about or are discussing dogs
      
    • Address dissonant issues for that proportion of our consumer audience and stakeholders that are expose to them
      

• We need to articulate our strategy
  • Timescale
  • Platforms and channels
  • Methods for optimising empathy
• We now have to undertake risk analysis
  • Cost, time opportunity threat of platforms and channels
  • Opportunity/threat in change in importance, influence and attitudes of stakeholder
    
• Analise cost benefits (advertising v PR; sponsorship v Social Media etc)
  • Corporate and product brand risk/benefitRelative effectiveness
  • Time to be effective
  • Cost
  • Investment
  • Key performance indicators (time cost effect)
• Create tactical campaign brief
  • Key (SMART) objectives
    
  • Milestones
  • Actions
    
  • Responsibilities
• Approvals and reporting
• Implement.
  

Online PR is not as easy as it sounds, it is definitely not something to be done lightly.

On the other hand using corporate speak and scream marketing is dangerous, even fatal.

The rewards for PR are enough to make a puppy wag its tail

A week in cyberspace is a very long time

It seems incredible that the PR institutions are so slow when their members' interests are obviously at stake.

It seems like negligence.

Why are they not involved in this debate:

I think that PR-firms editing in a community space is deeply unethical, and that clients should put very firm pressure on their PR firms to not embarrass them in this way.

It is part of a very important post in Constantin Basturea’s weblog. This is much bigger than a spat between the PR industry and Wikipedia. It is about the ability of a PR practitioner to represent an organisation. It is not about in-house/agency differences it is about practitioners.

I realise that organisations like PRSA, CIPR, IABC and the rest are big lumbering giants of bebureaucracynd that it takes time to formulate policy and get consensus.

In the new world order for PR that is not good enough. There is a need to use social media to get concensus and for fleet footed responses otherwise events will overtake us.

This kerfuffle is two weeks old and there seems to be no visible stiring among the great and the good. This is going to cost PR practitioners a lot of money, not to mention angst. It will have legal consequences and provide precedentor many other PR activities including the ability to issue statements and news.

It is time that there was a rapid deployment force in the institutions to look at such matters.

Are these institutions monitoring the web and social media? Are they considering the implication for their members? Have they realised that the pace of change in communication is quite rapid. Do they know that a week in cyberspace is a very long time.

Six months is an eternity.

The Social Media bubble

Robb Hecht explores the question "When will the social media bubble burst?" in his blog today.

It is well argued and has contributions from a range of sources.

But, for those of us who lived (painfully) through the collapse of the last 'bubble' - the web bubble, the hardest thing to do was to tell people the facts about what had happened. The expansion, explosion of the web and web applications did not 'burst'. It kept growing and growing and growing.

Sure the get rich quick merchants go burned.

Just like the 'lets put advertising online' brigade will get burned.
Just like the 'it is all paid for by advertising' brigade will get burned but social media will continue.

For fun, you can bet on the outcomes at BizPredict.

What will make sense is the model that builds relationships of value and we are prepared to pay for that.

More of which later.

Resistance is futile

One of my heros is BL Ochman and her comment about acceptance of new media at corporate HQ is right (later today I will post further on this) . She goes back to a post by Jerry Bowles, "Why CEOs Are Afraid of Social Media" and extends the fact that most leaders do not want to operate their organizations as experiments in democracy or collective intelligence.

Resistance also is futile. Look at Dell. They ignored the great hue and cry about their customer service for years. Meanwhile, the online commentary grew to a tsunami. When Dell finally launched a blog, they still tried to play by the old rules and push their message out while ignoring the elephant in the room.

A week or so later, when the Dell battery recall was mounted, the company already had a way to communicate with customers, and that forum made it clear that they were trying. Looking back, I'm sure they're wondering why they were so afraid of customers.

PR transparency

Perhaps what we are seeing at last is the enforced transparency that comes from the semantic web.

This was a conclusion we came to in 1999 at the CIPR Internet Commission. (It would be soooo useful if the papers were published by the CIPR - its site needs an archive capability. Perhaps we should introduce them to Google which is said to be building a global archive) .

Andrew Lark has a post on the subject of trasnparency and 'green policies and notes: What is going on here is interesting. Recognizing the very tangible commercial advantage of messaging green, companies like Sun, GE and Dell are moving beyond messaging as hyperbole and into making the message very real. The stand to gain from the mantra of "live the message and prosper".

Chime does well

Chime Communications PLC said its first half year pretax profit rose 62 % to £5.4 million from £3.3 million a year ago.

Operating profit increased 65% to £6.1 million and margins continued to improve to 15.8% from 13.3%.

Chime chairman Lord Bell said the results were 'very encouraging' adding that the company is 'positive about the outcome for the full year'.


The Chime companies are:

Bell Pottinger (which includes several Bell Pottinger and Good Relations companies, Harvard, Insight, Resonate, Ozone, De Facto,The SMART Company, MMK, Rare and Traffic); the UK's leading research and consultation group (Opinion Leader Research and Ledbury Research) and now with VCCP, one of the fastest growing advertising and marketing services groups in the UK, including specialist agencies in financial services (Teamspirit) and property marketing (TTA).

Intelectual Property advice - and podcast

Own It offers free intellectual property advice for London's creative people.

It offers a range of services, from basic to specialist support, through online and face-to face seminars, workshops and, where appropriate, surgeries with intellectual property lawyers. They work with a network of IP advisors including lawyers and specialists at various trade associations associated with the creative industries in the UK.

Own It likes to keep with the times, and so that everyone, no matter of location, can benefit from Own It’s free intellectual property advice, they’ve created podcasts from some of our free events.

Cancer Research benefit from podcast

We are seeing many PR applications for new media. It is an area of practice that grows by the minute.

N-E-Life reported another such event.

Number one breakfast presenter of North East radio station Metro Radio, Tony Horne, is tuning into the i-pod generation with the launch of a unique series of podcasts dedicated to a selection of real-life topics and high-profile sporting events.

Launched on 7 September the podcast kicked off with exclusive coverage of Cancer Research pioneer Findlay Young’s Great World Run.

Corporate assets need PR maintenance

I have argued elsewhere that hyperlinks are corporate assets (and should be on the ballance sheet).

Working from the Steve Rubel test, "Wikipedia articles on the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. are consistently among the most highly ranked pages in Google on direct searches." would suggest that keeping you organisations' Wikipedia entry up todate is a pretty good idea.

I know, you do that every month anyway - don't you.

Broadband via satellite

While is seems good for rail passengers that they will be able to access broadband connections via satellite under plans published today by media watchdog Ofcom, it is not the big application.

The regulator is making a new type of spectrum licence available that will allow train operating companies to install "satellite earth stations" on trains.

Some operating companies already offer wireless broadband access through trackside terminals, but this is not always reliable.

So what about ships, ferries, coaches, buses, cars and events? In fact any location that wants access on a moving platform or at a temporary location could benefit.

For people in PR who organise days out and events this could be useful.

Getting with it - are we competent?

Robbin Goodman, Executive Vice President and Partner, Makovsky and Company. Goodman argues a strong case for corporate blogging as an emerging public relations and business tool in a paper at the Institute for Public Relations.

But the case that she makes stands in stark contrast with the other thrust of her paper - which provides the most complete published review of findings from the Makovsky 2006 State of Corporate Blogging Survey. That study - a nationwide telephone survey of 150 senior executives (directors and above) of Fortune 1000 companies - was conducted for Makovsky by Harris Interactive.

"Who will admit that in 1996 they questioned - even doubted - the power of the Internet to transform the way business everywhere would be conducted?" Goodman writes. "Despite evidence of another major shift taking place, many senior executives seem determined to doubt the Internet's power to alter business communications."

Oh... yes and what about the communications sectors like Public Relations. Did they see the web coming? This time it is dimensions bigger. The PR job is to show corporate leaders how big, pervasive and structurally different and to point up the dangers and opportunities of disintermediation.

This is, of course consultancy. are we good enough at it yet?

Scream Marketers on-line screeching about reach

In terms of ad network reach, according to comScore data, the re-launched vcmedia network is now second only to Advertising.com in the UK but ahead of players including 24/7 Real Media and Burst Media.

The report in e-consultancy says:

ValueClick announced today that it has completed the integration of its vcmedia and Fastclick online advertising networks, creating a network with 59% reach among UK internet users.

The announcement, which follows the purchase of the US network Fastclick a year ago, is significant because it demonstrates the increasing competition in the ad networks space and the importance of reach as a selling point for the major players.

Meantime, Burst Media this week shook the stock market because it did not think it would hit its financial targets.

I just have a feeling that this form of on-line advertising is getting less effective. It is based on the 'scream marketing' model and is a turn off.

The growth of user generated content

User-generated content (UGC) has increased dramatically in the UK over the last year, according to research by comScore and reported in e-consultancy.

The firm found Wikipedia to be the top UGC property, and the sixteenth most popular site overall with 6.5m visitors in July 2006, up 253% from a year earlier.

Other UGC sites that have moved into the top 50 in the UK include MySpace.com (up 467% to 5.2m visitors), Piczo.com (up 393% to 4m), YouTube.com (3.9m visitors), and Bebo.com (up 328% to 3.9m).

"Web 2.0 is clearly architected for participation, as it attempts to harness the collective intelligence of Web users," commented Bob Ivins, MD of comScore Europe.

I am not sure about collective inteligence but that is a lot of extra eyeballs and shows how much PR has to do to stay with the media that is really beginning to count and be part of user generated content.

IBM in SecondLife

Philippe Borremans has posted about an IBM meeting in SecondLife

IBM has an island on SecondLife - the 3D online virtual world - and will use it to foster collaboration between employees, ex-employees and industry colleagues.

As he says: "Good attitude when it comes down to testing new ways to collaborate and communicate."

Cool idea huh!

PR accused of mass human rights violation cover-up

According to Kolawole Olaniyan, Amnesty International's Africa Programme Director, a cover up of mass human rights violations among the poorest people in Zimbabwe is a public relations practice.

I take offense.

His comments, published in ZimbabweJournalist.com and Reuters are a direct attack on the work of Sarah Green, Eulette Ewart, Neil Durkin and Steve Ballinger who are all practicing public relations employees of Amnesty International and whose profession, this statement infers, can be directed towards human rights violations.

A sad state of affairs that Amnesty should employ such people unless Kolawole Olaniyan mistakes public relations for state propaganda. If so one might expect a public apology to his colleagues and my profession.

Financial Dynamics acquired by a consulting company

The FT reports "Financial Dynamics, one of the top financial public relations companies, is being bought for an initial $260m in cash and shares by FTI Consulting, a US consulting and investigations company."

The FT says: "It is also the first time a financial PR firm has been acquired by a consulting company, rather than a media or marketing group."

This does not say a great deal for the media groups who own "Public Relations Consultancies".

It does reflect conversations with CEO's of PR firms owned by advertising dominated groups who are frustrated at the 'in yer face' publicity pitches they are routinely asked to provide.

New Media Conference in Edinburgh

Blogs, podcasts and RSS newsfeeds create both opportunities and threats that communications professionals simply cannot ignore. The University of Sunderland is bringing a groundbreaking conference to Edinburgh which will give you the knowledge and skills to react, respond and participate in these fast emerging social media technologies.

This conference will consider how practitioners can adapt to ensure they continue to communicate with target audiences who are becoming increasingly selective. Presentations will be given by a roster of highly renowned international speakers who are experts in their fields and are at the cutting edge of these new communications practices.

The event is being supported by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Scotland offering a discount to CIPR members. Delegate tickets are £145 + Vat for CIPR Members and £185 + Vat for non-members.

For further information or to book your tickets please contact Nicky Wake at Don’t Panic on 01706 828855 or by e-mail nicky@dontpanicprojects.com

Tickets can also be booked on line at -

www.dontpanicprojects.com/booking.htm

Podcasting, a PR tool

THE City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has become the first major ensemble in the world to launch a regular podcast.

The free 30-minute monthly download includes the latest CBSO news, interviews and discussions with musicians and conductors as well as music clips.

The report in the Manchester Evening News shows how podcasting can be used in public relations to help promote and build communities online. Well done City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Soccer podcast launched

The Times has announced that kicking off from next Monday, TheGame will make its first appearance as an online show in the shape of The Game Podcast – presented by Danny Kelly.

Each week, the show will bring news, chat, debates and interviews with top football players and managers, starting with an exclusive interview with Michael Owen, the England and Newcastle star.

No doubt a target for some PR interaction, this is also an example of how podcasts (and associated blogs) offer a channel for communicators.

RSS a PR technique

Offering content to web masters and social media editors has always been a useful tactic for PR practice. Vasrue.com is launching a directory for articles with free RSS news feeds, travel portal design refresh, a travel blog and a newsletter. It is an example of how technologies like RSS can be used to deploy PR services and is reported in Internet Travel News.

In an effort to support other webmasters, Vasrue.com is offering its original articles through RSS news feed free of charge. Now newspapers, ezines, magazines and independent websites can effortlessly integrate fresh, captivating content from the Internet portal in no time. Each article is available for PDF download, RSS feed or browser printing.

The mobile platform for PR communication

The increasing functionality of cell phones is an area of interest to Public Relations as this platform for communication increases the range of communications channels available for adoption for public relations practice.

A study reported in Cellular News has found that location aware services will prove increasingly popular with 3G phone users. This interest in global positioning technology was one of the findings in the 2005/2006 National Technology Readiness Survey (NTRS) released last week. The annual survey also found that besides voice calls, the current most commonly used features on cell phones include text messaging, web surfing, email and picture messaging.

Survey respondents also reported an interest in Bluetooth technology that allows users to connect their cell phones to other devices without wires. Broadband internet access and MP3 uploading were high on the list of most desired features.

News coverage has changed - it never becomes history

Chris Anderson makes the obvious obvious. Your news release can be news for years. Your news release becomes more influential over time.... here is how he describes it:

Online, everything is equally available and relevance is not determined by where something is on a page but by what other people think of it. When you look at it from that perspective, you see that stuff that is deemed ‘good' builds its incoming links over time — that is, the longer it is out there, the more people link to it and the more people discover it.

Google and other search engines measure relevance on the basis of incoming links which will rank it higher and higher, and as a result it will appear higher and higher in search results and therefore get even more traffic. In a weird way, it completely inverts the calculus of news, which is that the new stuff is what matters and the old stuff doesn't matter — because the good old stuff gets more relevant over time as more people flag it and link to it.

I think it was a surprise to many people that search would be such a powerful driver of demand for news, especially when you consider that canonical search — the regular search rather than news search — doesn't even find stuff until a week or so after the fact because the spiders just take that long to find things. What you're realising is that people care much more about what's relevant than what's new.

Conversation more powerful than a press release

Dan Greenfield commented today: "No longer is a PR person’s reporter Rolodex the gateway to successful corporate communications. Instead, that Rolodex is as big as every customer, vendor, partner and competitor who interacts with your company."

What Dan discovered is that converastion is more powerful than the press release.

I am delighted. It is evidence of values driving public relations. His public is now defined by a convergence of values. The values of his constituency and his and his organisation's values.

In combination this is more powerful.

It is levering value from relationships instead of shouting at market segments.

I hope that thi is a virus that is attacking every PR department in the world and it seems that it is.

Now lets see if we can understand this better. It will inform PR practice and is applicable at the coal face too.

BeebSpace - an acquisition plan at the BBC

e-consultancy were sharp eyed with this one: BBC Worldwide, the broadcaster’s commercial arm, is apparently looking for an acquisition to compete with Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace, according to the Mail on Sunday.

The paper says the BBC has £350m to spend on acquisitions and wants to target the youth market through a social networking site.

I guess they are impressed with Rupert's claim of 30 BILLION clicks in June.

can I spot PR practitioners are rushing to Bebo to get some idea of what the new domian will look like.

9/11 London

The 67 Britons killed in the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago were remembered today at a memorial garden near the U.S. Embassy.

Before an early afternoon ceremony led by U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle, bouquets of white roses and yellow carnations were piled beneath the oak pergola where the names of the victims are inscribed on three bronze plaques.

Herald Tribune

Free newspapers - the case for

Today Richard Addis argues the case for making newspapers free.

It is well argued and makes a lot of sense for a web 1.0 mind.

Of course he did not factor in the revenue stream from mobile, or interactive posters or other forms of digital signage. There are opportunities to provide content for other media and then there is the podcast ( vidcasts where there is a ton of money to be made.

With a bit more imagination, the day of the free newspaper, a 'marketing device' to get 'digital eyeballs' is not far away.

What then, will be the role of press agentry? Will it be as an aid to driving eyeballs to digital properties?

Creating a print mag to drive web traffic - but sell it online

ASOS.com, the online fashion retailer that sells cheaper versions of celebrity outfits, is to launch a monthly glossy magazine to attract more customers to its website. The Aim-quoted group is to charge £1 for ASOS, which will be sold on its website. Am I sure that I follow this Guardian story?

Long Tail - a reading challenge

Chris Anderson has presented us with a list of papers that are a must read.
They deal with the issue of the 'long tail'.

This is important to PR practice for a range of reasons.

There are the traditional reasons. The long tail is how organisations can generate revenues that are denyied to them when they have to limit their offering because of contraints like warehouse or showroom space (but can offer/display such products online at marginal cost and thereby offer a wider range). Another argument is that the long tail allows small organisations to compete in markets where mass marketing and product bundling is common.

Also the long tail is importnat in areas like the knowledge that an organisation might make available to, for example, journalists and, on the darker side, the long tail is where people will find criticism that could be half a dozen years old.

The Bog Standard Press Release died last week

The 'bog standard' press release is now dead.

What journalist given the choice between a New Media Release and releases currently in use would opt for the old one?

There is no choice. Press releases as we know it will continue for several years but will progressively become less effective, less used and less relevant as the media builds its new publishing model on a combination of on-line and print.

This week the NMR podcast introduced some applications of New Media Release.

The gene is out of the bottle.

Links to the top topics on NMR podcast covered can be followed here:

• Todd Defren’s post, “Top 5 Principles of the Social Media News Release”
• New media release principles applied to Chevy Super Bowl College Ad Challenge
• SpiralFrog new media release #1
• SpiralFrog new media release #2
• Shift Communications new media release on winning the Novell AOR business
• Shift Communications’ social media release for Novell
• New Media Release wiki
• Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)

Here is a practical example of how a newspaper generates, re-purposed copy from a NMR. we have to be able to offer content like this as well as the 1000 word backgrounder or knowldege resourse generated via this technology and posed to del.icio.us for added depth.

Enterprise tagging - managing corporate knowledge

From Shel Holtz I find that Cogenz, Niall Cook’s startup that aims to bring social book marking to the enterprise level, is looking for corporate beta testers.

What Cogenz does is offer a capability whereby people can create a knowledge base that links people, departments, places, expertise and knowledge resources in a way that makes it easy to find and re purpose.

It is worth following the whole story from Niall's site to see how useful such a resource can be now and in the future.

To be able to create a New Media Release with such a competence will be easy and will make the whole process much more manageable for the Media Relations specialist.

Of course there are many other applications and some of them will make some organisations fundamentally more competitive.

Beyond the New Media Release

What must we do to our media releases to serve the publishing industry.

First of all we need to be able to offer formats that are helpful. Just as a paper press release is unhelpful to a journalist these days, so too is a format that forgets the media need to use SMS.

There is another consideration which is described byAdrian Holovaty who gives a good idea of what 'repurpose' means and says: "I don't mean "Display a newspaper story on a cell phone." I don't mean "Display a newspaper story in RSS." I don't mean "Display a newspaper story on my PDA." Those are fine goals, but they're examples of changing the format, not the information itself. Repurposing and aggregating information is a different story, and it requires the information to be stored atomically -- and in machine-readable format.

This is important for public relations on a number of counts.

Would we have to provide the wider and broader content? Does this mean that the New Media Release is inevitable? Yes it does in order that we can offer the formats that are realistic for todays' media.

But we have to go further.

For example, suggests Adrian "say a newspaper has written a story about a local fire. Being able to read that story on a cell phone is fine and dandy. Hooray, technology! But what I really want to be able to do is explore the raw facts of that story, one by one, with layers of attribution, and an infrastructure for comparing the details of the fire -- date, time, place, victims, fire station number, distance from fire department, names and years experience of firemen on the scene, time it took for firemen to arrive -- with the details of previous fires. And subsequent fires, whenever they happen."

This goes some way beyond a New Media Release because it uses will use the NMR tags to mix and match news stories.

This is how XPRL and NewsML will be helpful to the media and to readers who want to go beyond the news story to offer more facts.

IPTC G2 Family of Standards (which is the new NewsML) will allow news agencies to smoothly exchange news -- text, photos or other media -- while using standard XML modules and tools. The result will be lower costs and shorter development for news agencies and news system vendors who facing the challenges of presenting the news on the web and personal electronic devices.

The PR industry has to work on this to stay with it.

To offer PR services do you need a licence?

Toni Musi Falconi, as always with his finger on the button. He has entered the debate about whether PR practitioners should be licenced.

He makes this comment: Pressed by increasing social and media criticism of our profession and a recent comment by Richard Edelman on the potential merit of licensing, PRSA the other day asked its ethics committee to discuss the issue and make recommendations to the Board.
Criticisms emerged when the Committee decided to keep contents of the meeting confidential and subsequently a brief summary of that discussion was published on the PRSA website.
Interestingly, the debate on licensing of the profession is open also in many other countries. Some have already proceeded (Nigeria, Brazil, Panama, Peru amongst others), others are in the process (Russia for one, but also Puerto Rico…and one may also argue that the 2005 decision of the UK’s CIPR to be the first European Union country to be formally recognized by the national Government could well lead to this result, and this would inevitably influence the ongoing discussion in other EU countries).

A profile of the PR person worldwide

Public relations professionals worldwide are being profiled by the Global Alliance. Toni Musi Falconi reports on preliminary findings.

They are more or less equally divided in three main categories (30%): private industry, public sector, consultancy and services, while the non profit sector is close to 10%.
79% are either directly heads of their organization or report directly to top management, while a solid 79% indicate that the main part of their job consists in developing and implementing communication and relationship strategies and programs.
71% travel intensely in their home country while 36% travel frequently international.
67% earns a minimum of net 40 thousand US dollars per annum, but 12% more than 100 thousand, while 61% also benefit from free health insurance and 47% from a supplementary annual bonus.
58% is in the 25-44 age range, while 34% in the 45-60 one.
68% are women, 80% has a university degree and 98% speaks the English language.

Jamelia and the sun opportunity

Jamelia reveals how she can't wait to get married on Victoria Newton's Bizarre podcast offered by the Sun's web site.

Two things are important here. The first is that the Sun is working hard to get its readers to go on line and is providing simple and easy to follow instruction. second is that the Sun's podcast is another vehicle for communication.

Picture: Hometown AOL

Footbal podcasting

Every self respecting Association Football Club should have a podcast and Sunderland AFC is no exception.

The use of new media by football clubs and their technology uptake makes many businesses in Britain look neanderthal.

Second Life compromised

Second Life, the fast-growing online virtual community has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users.

Linden Lab, the company behind the Second Life site, said in a letter to its 650,000 users this weekend its customer database - including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data - had been compromised.

Old fashioned hacking has not gone away. Linden labs now has an issue management job to do because so many companies have begun to take space in their virtual world to gain commercial advantage.

Why blogging is becomming maintream in corporate communication

With companies increasingly using blogging to communicate both internally to staff and externally to clients and customers, 10 of silicon.com's 12-strong CIO Jury IT user panel said corporate blogs are more than just another technology fad that has found favour among senior managers.

Silicon.com have asked for examples.

Christopher Linfoot, IT director at LDV Vans, said: "Like all new technologies corporate blogs are often misapplied but there are valid applications, usually employee communication and not external. We do have a couple in use here in the former category."

New media platforms - old corporate wars

The Enquirer has this take on a YouGov pol. A survey of British directors, carried out by YouGov, has discovered that 29 per cent of them are prepared to steal corporate data when they change employers. But the hidden danger is from the mobile phone.

The chief devices fingered for enabling such data to be stolen are primarily memory sticks (obviously) and also digital music players – like the Apple iPOD. But what the experts appear to have forgotten is that a standard feature of any Nokia Series 60 3rd edition handset is its ability to appear to be a memory stick.

There is no doubt that many platforms offer communication capabilities to steal information from an employer.

Manginging porosity is a public relations issue as this post points out.

A lesson learned

Government minister David Miliband has vowed to continue experimenting with online engagement after his department's first move into wiki-policy ended in disarray, reports c|net.

Miliband commented on his blog: "Since writing this I gather that we have demonstrated the extreme openness of the wiki by playing host to some practical jokes... Strange how some people get their kicks. But the experiment will continue."


This was a brave idea and is an excellent case study. Using Social Media is not just a question of starting a blog or setting up a wiki. It is a serious undertaking offering great benefits but with its own management needs.

Just like starting a press relations campaign, a wiki or blog needs a strategy behind it.

It was not for nothing that I have campaigned for the PR profession to develop a strategy capability and gave an example of how strategy might be developed.

No we can learn the lessons from David Miliband's brave attempt and move on.

More comments from Tech Digest here.

Doctors don't like spin - pubs dont like quacks

A report suggesting Oxford has the biggest binge-drinking problem in the South-East and the highest death rates from liver disease should be treated with caution, health chiefs and pub landlords according to the Oxford Mail.

North West Public Health Observatory use of statistics need a health check and so too should all surveys used in PR. T

According to National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NWPHO provides a resource for Public Health information and intelligence in the North West of England.

I expect the reputation of both organisation is what they deserve. One for rigging results and the other for endorsing quacks.

YouTube vid not fun anymore

The short video blog postings by lonelygirl15 on the YouTube website have attracted millions of viewers since they started appearing in May says Dan Glaister the Guradian's man in Los Angeles. But the postings' polished nature and the intriguing inconsistencies in the stories led many to suspect that lonelygirl15 was fake.

Exposed this week, the responce from Alissa Brooke, a blogger who has hosted a forum on the lonelygirl15 phenomenon wrote: "Well, that's no fun any more."

So fake blogs damage brands - We can take from this that sstroturfing is bad news for PR practitioners.

Frenchmen are better bloggers

Eurosoc tell us that Charles Bremner had a good post in the Times (Sept 6th) on how the blogging phenomenon has taken off in France. Apparently the country has more bloggers per capita, and more internet users who read blogs, than anywhere else in the world.

Bremmer reports that the blog epidemic has resilted in schools punishing pupils who ridicule teachers with text and video and the police have prosecuted bloggers for inciting violence on the city-edge housing projects. Psychologists are warning parents that blogs can cut kids off in a narcissistic bubble. The government says that internet should be kept out of children's rooms.

It would seem that when 7% of the population is blogging all sorts of mayhem ensues.

Does this mean a third of clients want to use Social Media.

Over a third (37 per cent) of respondents to a silicon.com reader poll think business blogs are not a good way for companies to communicate with customers. But just under a third (32 per cent) disagree - saying corporate blogs can be a good way for corporations to reach out to the people who ultimately pay their wages.


Does this mean that a third of all clients are potential bloggers?

If so what wouold you advise them?

Have you honed your social media strategy skills?

This is getting quite exciting.

Blogs and wiki's for corporate branding

David Meerman Scot has a case study of a company punching above its weight by using Blogs and Wikis.

The Social Software Debate

I don't know how he does it but JP Rangaswami but manages to find the most interesting items online .

His lates offering in which he states: "If the CIA, or for that matter any major grouping of intelligence services, can truly grasp the value of social software, then there is hope for all of us." is a must to read and floow through.

Gota good image idea - make it viral for your brand

Via CEO's Bloggers club comes Street stunts captured by citizens with camera phones and posted online to become viral campaigns are a new, engaging form of brand advertising, writes BusinessWeek, calling the tactic "the Golden Age of the street corner gimmick."

Teens in MySpace

What do MySpace users do and what motivates them comes from a new book reported in a CBS aricle.
If you want to eneter this space to build relationships for your organisation, check out the story.

Good think for PR people and how to 'get it'

The 'Change this' site is a mine of good white papers about social media and why it is so important.

Chris Anderson's paper (an extract from his book) 'The Rise and Fall of the Hit' should be smuggled into the CEO's overnight reading tonight.

While it highlights the downside for the recording empires it shows that the markets are still there.

The upside is that all those products and services that are not big sellers can be put on the digital shelf (web site) at a marginal cost and the development cost is no longer a write off but an opportunity sale, promoted in a passing post in the company blog, it can become an added revenue stream with good effects on cash flow and the balance sheet.

The same thinking applies to those press stories that did not quite make it.

They can be re-purposed and made available (in the media wiki for example) and are available for minority publishers (bloggers?) which gets value from them.

Comming to an employer near you too

Take note all you PR students. You will need your e-credentials to get a job in PR any day now.

Here is the experience of a US graduate this year (the UK is about 18 months behind).

During my recent job search, I came across many employers who are interested in public relations students, but the students must possess technological skills that were not necessary in the past. Students must be familair with building Web sites, contacting the media and knowing how to operate every computer application currently being used and proofreading everything from a one-page flyer to html text. The field is growing so rapidly that the requirements are blurry and students are becoming frustrated with the lack of opportunities with those who miss specific qualities.

Channels such as podcasts, white papers, blogs, webinars and RSS feeds are popping up everywhere and without question, if you are not "in the know" about these outlets, you will be left behind.

Perhaps there is the other side of the coin too. Would you want to work for an employer who did not want these skills?

Publishing the podcast of the interview that went into an article

It is not uncommon for people to record conversations and telephone calls. With modern mobiles it is easy. It sometimes can include video recordings to. This is relevant to public relations.

Such recordings, including recordings of press interviews can then be made available in the public domain as happened and is highlighted by Stuart Bruce.

This form of dual reporting from your conference presentation being blogged to having your conversation turned into a podcast is something PR has to manage. It has to go into the issues management mix and has good legitimate relationship management applications too.

Wiki's for Public Relations pitches

One of the advantages of the so called web 2.0 is that there are a lot of tools that help identify what is interesting people.

I wanted to know how social media was fairing and so used Google trends where you can compare interest in up to five topics. The results show, bu countries, how often they've been searched for on Google over time.

This is how social media is shaping up: I chose the following keywords:

If we take a closer look we see the emergence of wiki's as of special interest.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk to clients about the use and application of wikis.

The difference between Haymarket and Guardian Newspapers

The UK Association of Online Publishers has appointed Simon Waldman, the group director of digital strategy and development for Guardian Media Group, as its new chairman.
Mr Waldman takes over from Bill Murray, the managing director of group business information strategy for Haymarket Publishing, who has chaired AOP since its creation in July 2002.

Guardian makes real money online. Haymarket lock up PR Week behind online subscritions.

Have you noticed, I don't reference PRWeek very often.

If you hide content, no one comments about you. You loose the audience and Google Juice. In developing PR strategies, these issues need to be considered.

The growth and growth of the BBC

The BBC is among the top three for on the spot orriginal global reporting.

It is big in radio, TV, digital, online, blog, podcast and now BBC Worldwide is planning to roll out five global channels says the Guardian. The corporation's commercial arm wants to set up locally produced versions of CBeebies, BBC Lifestyle, BBC Entertainment, BBC Knowledge and a high definition channel in key countries around the world.

More channels for PR to pursue.

People like to download

If you make it easy to download from a radio stations people like it.
Mobile phone users are prepared to spend £9 a week downloading songs from the radio, the Guardian notes. On average the participants in the trial bought seven songs a week, costing £1.25 each, from pop station Heart.
This could also give extra life to radio programes, interviews and other radio content.
Note also this is convergent technologies. radio to iPod.

Rules for using music in Podcasts

I am grateful to Chris Heuer for this links to Voices.com and the notes on the use of musivc in podcasts.

They start with this comments:

A musical underscore performs three basic functions:
1. Sets the theme of the podcast
2. Prepares the listener for individual segments or features within the podcast
3. Entertains the listener by introducing and promoting new music, i.e. Indie Podsafe music

Can you keep up the Blog pressure

Dan Greenfield offers sympathy with Shel Holtz, whose daughter is not well. A sentiment shared by us all especially to his daughter who gave such a stunning interview on the use of IM some months back and, as a result, we all have a special relationship.

Dan then goes on to comment about Elizabeth Holmes comment in the Wall Street Journal about bloggers who debate about whether to post when taking a vacation -- much to the dismay of family members. The article pointed out that several bloggers suffered a decline in readership from not blogging or using guest bloggers.

The point being that using blogs as as a PR vehicle may mean that managing social media in times when people are away is a management consideration.

Fire ban laptops

The BBC has reported Korean Air has barred all Dell laptops and some Apple models being used after they were subject to a battery recall.

This is a long running issue for the PC manufacturers and Soney who makes the batteries.

It makes an interesting issues management case study for PR students.

Safety watchdog the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said it was the biggest recall of electrical products in its history.

Petaflop

No, not worn out PR executive in the bar on Friday. Its equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

Quite sparky then!

Email abuse

For Immediate Release and BL Ochman have both highlighted the Radio Shack abuse of people ans email.

Radio Shack sacked 400 employees by email at its Texas headquarters last week. The company apparerently didn't think taking the rug out from under employees, many of whom had been with the company for years, was worth any investment of executive face time.

As PR practice this is as abd as it gets.

Yahoo suspends email accounts

BL Ochman reports ....... So I was pretty surprised when I logged into my Yahoo Mail account today. My hundred or so saved mail messages and all of my contacts had been deleted - and my account suspended - because I hadn't logged in for a while. If I don't want that to happen again, they said, I can pay them for a premium account.

Why photos are important to online PR

Pocket-Lint offers us information from an Opodo survey. It suggests that 54 percent of respondents agree that digital technology has improved their photography skills because they’re not worried about wastage.


I can relate to that!

Over 40 percent upload their images to online albums to share. which is a significant behaviour and over half of those survey invite friends to view their images, while just over thirty percent are happy to share them with joe public.

We see here another form of social networking and, as many of the Photogrphic companies offer on-line album services, there is an opportunity here for a creative PR mind.

Survey tool

Mrweb offers this news: Kinesis Survey Technologies, a software firm based in Austin, TX, has announced the release of Version 4.0 of its online survey creation package. New features include multilingual support, and more advanced options for tabulation, validation and invitation management.The solution promises researchers the ability to easily design, launch, and analyze a web or wireless survey. Key new features include:

Movie from the mato grosso

Digital movie business debuts are publiciesd by cnet which says Amazon's service, which was expected to launch last month will deliver full-length feature films and TV shows to customers over the Web in two ways, sources said. One is through a subscription service, where customers pay a flat fee to view movies over a certain time period. The other will be either a pay-per-view or a pay-per-movie service, according to sources.
Meanwhile, Apple also appears to have Hollywood on its mind given the theme of its press event scheduled for 12 September, 'It's Showtime'.

This is going to unravel into the biggest social networking rip off of all time.

Podcasting Plod

West Yorkshire Police has taken an innovative approach to ensuring the county’s new students stay safe and secure.

The Force has broken with its traditional methods of delivering crime prevention messages and for the first time is using a series of special Podcasts featuring basic safety advice from the Force’s Crime Reduction, Detective Inspector John Minary.

The podcasts are for students to download and play back at a convenient time The Force’s Website Manager Patrick Brooke said: “More and more people are joining the “podcast revolution” downloading mp3 audio files, similar to radio, to listen to via their computer or on a portable mp3 device, such as an iPod. “They are especially popular with students and we hope they will download our latest topical safety messages along with their favourite tunes and radio programmes.

Facebook faces revolt

Kevin Allison the FT's man in San Francisco says that Facebook, the social networking web site is facing revolt from its 9 million users.

Th problem is the introduction of new features that have raised privacy concerns which allow other users to keep tabs on changes to their friends’ profiles, photographs and other personal information.

Yadee Yardy Ya - the PR phone-round - and celeb journalist

Yes, I know, it should not happen. There are all the reasons why a PR company should not blast out a hundred copies of a release and then follow each one up with a phone call...

'Hi my name is Samantha from Best in the World PR, we sent you a press release about The Greatest Company on Earth and I wanted to see if you would be using it ...... I will email you a another copy now .... let me get back to you about that .....'

It does happen... But will it be relevant in the new era as the newspapers move from 1665 to 2006.

Lets first consider the New Media Release first.

• Its technical
• You loose control because technology can pick up the content and mash it.
• It might not be interpreted by a journalist
• It could find its way into blogs.
• Why adopt a process that is going to put people out of a job and reduce billable hours?

Lets stay where we are.

OK.

But, over the last few years, the number of journalists both staff and freelance has been dropping like a stone. They are very busy, they get a zillion emails and even printed press releases, there are a host of phone calls and they are expected to output story after story like a sausage machine.

Having time to garner the stories the editor needs, checking back on facts and sources and writing is one thing, using, even trusting, feeds arriving from some on-line aggregator is suspect, time consuming and a pain. But... hang on, there is some merit in being able to get past the marketing speak to the story and having lots of available background to give journalistic depth and their own spin. Perhaps for the Journalist there is some advantage.

Disrupting their day is hard and tiresome for both parties when its human. When it is computer driven, it has all the attributes of a punch bag.

There has to be a better way.

Yes there is but, at face value, neither party is going to like it much.

The machines can do a lot more. There is a computer programme that can combine past editorial, current press releases, blogs and wikis and create mashed up content that is founded in historic reportage and current PR outputs leavened with academic research and papers and flavoured with social (blogs etc) content. The amount of content such programmes can review and include into relatively short articles is stunning. The resulting texts are very readable, germane and comprehensive. Unlike present content, the computer can be limited in the amount of content it will use from a single writer, title, publisher or genre of information. Yes, its plagiarism but of significantly lesser degree than current reporting and much less circular and worrying than the current model exposed by shown by Chris Patern earlier this year.

The output might need editing ( I have seen it and, yes, it needs editing into good grammar), but that is a heap better that all the work involved in researching and writing most stories.

I can envisage a day when news outlets deploy such programmes (very soon too).

What then happens to the PR agency and the journalist?

The PR agency is OK. It has to find more copy, more angles, deeper background briefing and content (sounds, pictures, video and even avatars in some cases), and interference in social media leavened with facilitating face to face (Oh! all right - Skype to Skype) conversations with key opinion formers. Its role gets bigger even if the skill sets change.

The Publisher get a big bonus. They have access to much more content, a wider range of content and can fill the new on-line pipeline 24 hours a day using automation. They never run out of news. It is current and cheap.

In addition journalists are relieved of the mundane. They can have more rewarding jobs in part because they do not have to be a sausage machine and in part they have access to the mashup of historic and current comment from which to take a new different and interesting perspectives.

If one takes the topic of the day in the UK, the 'orderly transition of the Leadership of the Labour Party', the new and news content was available electronically. It came as historic media and on-line news and comment and new blog posts and press releases. That kind of content can be automated. The added value was in private briefing and commentary, which once published, goes into the common pool of news.

One can see the difference between automated 'news' and journalist input.

The key here is that the real and actual voice of the journalist is present at his/her outlet and is 'mashed' for all other outlets.

What I see coming from these developments is celebrity journalism. Hugely valuable, hard working, very well connected and expert journalists.

There is an element of win win here.

And for us, the news consumer?

We can 'pull' the information we need, when we need it and then can indulge in that relationship that the media always brought to its readers, as Guy Consterdine put it, reading a favourite magazine is like talking with a friend. We can get the popular 'mash up' news and as a treat a personality journalist take on it.

Of course, these organisations that still want to hide behind firewalls will be fine. Just marginalised.

In the 17^th through 19^th Centuries all of the papers practiced an "advocacy" journalism, it is genre that can adapt and perhaps be more honest than the "objective journalism" of the 20^th Century.


How brave the publishers can be is evident from the Daily Telegraph which is investing heavily in its on-line future but who will be next and who will really adopt the semantic web as the backbone of media.



Picture: The Telegraph Hub published by the Press Gazette today: "The Daily Telegraph is promising to revolutionise the production process of its journalism with what it believes will be the UK’s first truly integrated multi-media newsroom at its new offices at London Victoria."

Clips go Mobile - PRNewswire

This week, PRNewswire is canvassing opinion as to whether practitioners would like their clips on their mobile phones.

This is a text only service. Some of these texts could be quite long.

As most readers know, I have summarisation software that can reduce a press clip to 50 words. A trial can be downloaded from c|net here.

In addition, with a bunch of friends, we have worked out how we can deliver press clip summaries text in spoken words (text to voice).

This means we could deliver clips (aggregate and de-duped RSS feeds or hyperlink to article):

Most relevant first
Any or selected times/intervals of the day
In summary linking to full text
Text email, web, SMS (RSS udate as well)
Voice to mobile phone, iPod, PC.
XML for internal interoperability (you can use the output in other software really easily and integration is dead cheap)
All sorts of metrics because the computer 'reads' every article.

So far no one has said they want it (well ... some want it free, of course).

New Blogging Software

The booming blogging market finds a surprise newcomer from the UK as Terapad.com (wwww.terapad.com) goes out of private beta and launches on September 6th says WebHost Directory.

"Blogging has been technologically very active recently, but feature-wise it's been completely stagnant. We've capitalized on this and added all the features of major corporate websites to the blogging equation." said Stephan Tual, CEO, as he inaugurated the site.

Why all PR students should blog and be in Second Life

Seth Godin passes this on:

Juggler Interview

Circus Manager: How long have you been juggling?
Candidate: Oh, about six years.

Manager: Can you handle three balls, four balls, and five balls?
Candidate: Yes, yes, and yes.

Manager: Do you work with flaming objects?
Candidate: Sure.

Manager: ...knives, axes, open cigar boxes, floppy hats?
Candidate: I can juggle anything.

Manager: Do you have a line of funny patter that goes with your juggling?
Candidate: It's hilarious.

Manager: Well, that sounds fine. I guess you're hired.
Candidate: Umm...Don't you want to see me juggle?

PR account exec candidate: "Have you read my blog?"

SMS applications

There’s a lot of talk about the use of SMS messaging as a communications tool recently. Textually.org has some interesting commentary on the matter, says Piaras Kelly.

This time it is about Text Messaging (SMS).

He says:
It’s obvious that a message is able to be spread much more rapidly than ever before, but can organisations take advantage of this and harness that power. In some cases I believe it can, but we have some way to go before we’ve mastered its use as a communications tool. An example of this would be BA’s decision to send 20,000 SMS messages during the recent terror scare in the UK.

Has your PR consultancy a capability as powerful as this?

It may be an idea to look into this form of communication.

MySpace in iTunes space

Website MySpace is to allow unsigned bands featured on the social networking site to sell their music as downloads reports the BBC.

The suggestion is that the site - which has 106 million users - is currently testing the idea, and hopes to rival market leader iTunes.

If you want to market your podcast (who said that its just music in the podscene), there would seem to be yet another place to offer it.

Pitching to the 24 Hour Telegraph

The Telegraph is to offer between 10 and 12 pages of news for download from about 5pm each day. The Guardian offers an online download service, G24, which is updated throughout the day, reports Guardian Online.

The working day will change as part of the "24-hour news operation", with the first editorial meeting at 7am.

Editorial meetings will continue throught the day in a rolling process.

You could pitch a story at 11 am and have it published by noon.

Can the clipping companies cope?

Mobile PR

Media Guardian notes that Advertising on mobile phones is expected to boom over the next five years, creating a market worth more than $11.3bn (£6bn) annually, with consumers persuaded to accept adverts on their handsets by the offer of free content such as TV channels, games and music.

I don't want to pour cold water on the hopes and aspirations of the aadvertisingindustry (all those advertising bucks and no where to spend them) but, it you want a serious turn off for mobile, advertising is it. They could get a lot of mud on their face.

This can only be good news for VoIP and the vendors of services that are not driven by 'in yer face' scream marketing.

Offering the means by which we can seek interesting things, including entertainment, when we want it, how we want it and in the way we want it is very different.

This means that PR has to understand the breadth of communications platforms that are available (print, radio TV, Mobile, PC etc) and the channels that can be levered on such platforms (pamphlets, newspapers, broadcast, interactive, blogs, podcasts etc).

It has to then consider values of the client and those with akin values and strike up a relationship (conversation) that is transparent, honest, open and inclusive and the social group will form round the subject values. They will, of course want their say, they may want to change the offering and they might even be critical.

It PR.

But advertising is a nonsense


The offer of free content such as TV channels, games and music as part of a conversation both before and after the event such that these freebies are integral to the organisation's value proposition will be a great way to engage key publics and the organisation's constituency.

Its PR and its not cheap, but there again when was advertising cheap and how often engaging?

Picture: a scene on a soap here called 'Emmerdale' a candidate for mobile TV

What do we want? Sex Google and Rock 'n Roll

The Hitwise report lists the categories receiving the highest volume of web site visits from 18-34 year olds in the UK.

The only thing I take out of this is that people like searching for content that they want to know about and don't much like stuff that is shoved at them.

The idea that marketing can somehow meet the value needs and interests of individuals in groups, target markets, stakeholder groups or other 'demographics' is showing its age.

Bundling up and delivering such groups as market segments can only work in very broad applications. In this case (18-34 year olds) it may not come as a surprise that sex, weddings, social events (where else to find a partner) and testosterone (Tennis and Wrestling?) figure highly.

Not much there for a detailed conversation until there is a closer understanding of individual drivers and where better to find them than in a conversation.

What is happening to Magazine circulation

I Read in Media Guardian that the once dominant title in the weekly women's market, Woman's Own's circulation has been hit by the rise of the new breed of women's titles such as Emap's Closer.

The IPC title had a circulation of 367,729 in the first half of this year, down 13.3% year on year and 150,000 down on 2002, when it sold 518,861 copies.

Market fragmentation in consumer publications has taken hold in a big way as consumers seek values in their reading closer to the values they espouse.

The principle of 'The Long Tail' extends well beyond the Internet and applies to print as much as to blogs.

In public relations we have benefited from the 'The Long Tail' forever. Now it is a force that has to be taken very seriously in all walks of life.

Using Google News Archive for research

I have been looking at Google News Archive as a research tool.

It has limitations but also many advantages.

One area where it is going to be valuable is in creating a representative corpus for content analysis which will be a boon for those of us who want to use it in development of a theoretical base for relationship value.

An old friend - turning print digital

Its easy to make a printed document from a digital computer essay. Its harder to make a digital version of a printed document.

Google has re-released an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine into open source (software anyone can used and change). It says: You might wonder why Google is interested in OCR? In a nutshell, we are all about making information available to users, and when this information is in a paper document, OCR is the process by which we can convert the pages of this document into text that can then be used for indexing.

The temptation to digitise copyright material will be even greater for many people and PR practitioners need to be aware of the limitations.

In addition, we need to be alert to the potential for such technologies to play in adding to corporate porosity. Just becaus its on paper, does not mean it cannot be on the web.

A leech in the media swamp

e-Consultancy reports research group comScore says 37.4 million US users visited the top consumer-to-consumer ad sites in July, a rise of 47% over the same month in 2005.

Craigslist.org was the most popular, doubling its unique visitors to almost 14 million during the month. Trader Publishing, the leader in July 2005, ranked second with 10.2 million visitors (up 15%), while AutoTrader ranked third with 6.4 million visitors (up 14%).

“While online classifieds are not new, it appears that internet users are really beginning to catch on to this phenomenon,” said Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst at comScore.

>What this menas in English is that small adds are moving from your local newspaper to your local PC.

Where does your local newspaper make most of its money?

Craigslist is just the job for students looking for a flat in Leeds right now.

This development has major implications for the PR.

How long will the media be able to afford to continue in its 20th Century format?