The NewsML 1.2 XML Schema Working Group has prepared an updated
schema implementing all corrections proposed to date.
The final schema will be completed this week so that it may be distributed
along with the Autumn meeting document package.
More information is at http://www.iptc.org/pages/index.php
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Would you 'choose' the adds you want to see?
Ashley Friedlein of e-consultancy discusses the news that Bebo is overhauling its advertising model in order to let its users choose what types of ads they see.
His arguments are pretty good and his answers are relevant to the Public Relations Industry.
Its pretty obvious that the advertsing model is not going to work. Just live with the idea.
There is a model that shows that attention getting is important.
That is what this post has done. I have greated the opportunity for you to go and look at the story on the e-consultancy site.
And ... know what... not an advert in sight!
The Social Media model is different.
Here are the questions that Ashley tries to answer:
His arguments are pretty good and his answers are relevant to the Public Relations Industry.
Its pretty obvious that the advertsing model is not going to work. Just live with the idea.
There is a model that shows that attention getting is important.
That is what this post has done. I have greated the opportunity for you to go and look at the story on the e-consultancy site.
And ... know what... not an advert in sight!
The Social Media model is different.
Here are the questions that Ashley tries to answer:
Is this idea misguided? Or is this the future of advertising?
1. Do users really not mind advertising (as Justin Pearse claims)?
2. How many users will choose toilet roll ads and mortgage ads?
3. How many users will actually make the effort to tailor their ads?
4. Will users keep their profile / interests up to date?
5. Will the ads be better than search?
Time to shut down Google News in the UK
Shel Holtz alerted me to the news that a Belgian court could potentially block Google's news aggregation business.
The UK press through the Newspaper Licencing Agency, prevents copying of newspaper clippings unless you want to go through a process of licencing and paying fees for doing so.
There is a lot in common between these two ideas.
I use Google News a lot. It is how I get a lot of my news.
Yesterday 23 people went to news sites because of my posts about newspaper stories. It is not many, but there are millions of bloggers doing the same thing. The press would forego millions of hits.
Referencing web sites is why the web is successful and why so many blogs are popular.
Now, lets suppose we did not have Yahoo News or Google News services. Would I buy more newspapers. No. I would rely on other, online, sources.
However, it would reduce the on-line traffic to the press by a lot because so many of us do reference press articles online. In many cases denial of search services like Google News would make the newspaper web revenues shrink to the point where they would be meaningless.
The citations that did not go into the Google News Archive would mean that the media will, over time, also loose the 'long tail' benefit for their on-line content. A double whammy of nonsense by people who just do not understand the nature of the digital tsunami.
It would quickly kill off most newspapers and the survivors would have almost nowhere to go with their on-line plans.
Perhaps it is time to try the experiment.
Shut the service down for a day and see what happens.
Its rather like the press clips. All those opportunities newspapers used to have to put their brand in front of hundreds of people in companies that used to circulate clips has now been reduced to a handful. Who now knows what publications are relevant, interesting, part of their life? A handful at company HQ, who knew that anyway and, incidentally, no longer have time to read clippings.
Do you wonder why newspaper readership is declining.
Perhaps having a dog in the manger attitude to the brand in the name of copyright with a half life of cod 'n chips was not such a clever idea after all.
A complaint against the internet giant was launched by Copiepresse, an organisation that manages copyright for the French and German-speaking press in Belgium.
The court has ordered Google to stop reproducing articles from French-speaking newspapers in the news section of one of its Belgian websites.
The UK press through the Newspaper Licencing Agency, prevents copying of newspaper clippings unless you want to go through a process of licencing and paying fees for doing so.
There is a lot in common between these two ideas.
I use Google News a lot. It is how I get a lot of my news.
Yesterday 23 people went to news sites because of my posts about newspaper stories. It is not many, but there are millions of bloggers doing the same thing. The press would forego millions of hits.
Referencing web sites is why the web is successful and why so many blogs are popular.
Now, lets suppose we did not have Yahoo News or Google News services. Would I buy more newspapers. No. I would rely on other, online, sources.
However, it would reduce the on-line traffic to the press by a lot because so many of us do reference press articles online. In many cases denial of search services like Google News would make the newspaper web revenues shrink to the point where they would be meaningless.
The citations that did not go into the Google News Archive would mean that the media will, over time, also loose the 'long tail' benefit for their on-line content. A double whammy of nonsense by people who just do not understand the nature of the digital tsunami.
It would quickly kill off most newspapers and the survivors would have almost nowhere to go with their on-line plans.
Perhaps it is time to try the experiment.
Shut the service down for a day and see what happens.
Its rather like the press clips. All those opportunities newspapers used to have to put their brand in front of hundreds of people in companies that used to circulate clips has now been reduced to a handful. Who now knows what publications are relevant, interesting, part of their life? A handful at company HQ, who knew that anyway and, incidentally, no longer have time to read clippings.
Do you wonder why newspaper readership is declining.
Perhaps having a dog in the manger attitude to the brand in the name of copyright with a half life of cod 'n chips was not such a clever idea after all.
Varnish PR?
Toni has a great post about PR as the 'varnish'.
He quotes Sir Martin Sorrell's view of responsible corporate behaviour as a coat public relations varnish.
Toni says
What does WPP really own?
He quotes Sir Martin Sorrell's view of responsible corporate behaviour as a coat public relations varnish.
Toni says
Hear Hear!
Maybe it would be useful if the CEO’s of the many H&K’s and B-M’s which form the roster of the conglomerate’s pr firms and contribute to his personal well-being, demanded a public apology.
What does WPP really own?
The Long Tail listed for Award
I think this book is just fantastic.
Great news. The Long Tail has been shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award.
Great news. The Long Tail has been shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award.
The mission is: "To identify the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics."
The Long Tail is a must read for Public Relations practitioners. It shows that in building relationships throughout the organisation's constituency has a pay back more significant than all the scream marketing in the world.
Die Marketing Die! Die! Die!
From CNN Money comes a report about the demise of scream marketing.
Ideas about achieving brand strength, that elusive alchemy of awareness and trust, have changed in the past decade. "It's no longer, What can we blast out there about ourselves?" says Michelle Roehm, associate professor of marketing at Wake Forest University. "Brand theory now asks, How can we connect with the community in a really meaningful way?"
Hooray! Some other comments:
Ideas about achieving brand strength, that elusive alchemy of awareness and trust, have changed in the past decade. "It's no longer, What can we blast out there about ourselves?" says Michelle Roehm, associate professor of marketing at Wake Forest University. "Brand theory now asks, How can we connect with the community in a really meaningful way?"
Hooray! Some other comments:
"Today it's all about trust, community, and creating a dialogue with your customer that shares real knowledge," says Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer for Landor.
Perhaps no name on the list has attempted a deeper conversation with its customers than Dove. Its reliable but stodgy brand hit an emotional nerve-and pay dirt-with the "Campaign for real beauty," launched in September 2004.I have more reasons posted here.
The moble audience - kids in the UK
The Mobile Life Survey, commissioned by Carphone Warehouse, quizzed 1,250 people aged 11 to 17 shows that nine out of 10 12-year-olds in the UK now have a mobile phone.
The biggest use is for Texting.
The biggest use is for Texting.
Another video channel
Microsoft is launching an online service to compete with YouTube, Google and Yahoo reports the BBC.
Soapbox starts testing on Tuesday and will launch within six months as part of current service, MSN Video.
So there will be another channel for communication. The video media list for PR professionals is getting bigger by the day.
Publicity, Propaganda or PR -the Cliveden set don't know
About a dozen propaganda and psyops specialists met at Cliveden, Berkshire, last week to discuss how America and its allies can use strategic communications more effectively in the War on Terror reports The Times.
Its a big bucks business.
Its a big bucks business.
The United States Government is thought to have earmarked at least $400 million (£213 million) since September 11, 2001, to enlist private companies to supply skills and ideas for an information war, covering propaganda and psychological operations (psyops).
These advisers are bringing corporate ideas to the military. Rebranding is one example.
Call a dog a different name because its mission has changed seems to be the BIG idea (wow1).
This is propaganda. In an age of social media it is simple an AK47 aimed at a delicate part of the anatomy.
Another corporate idea is the use of the chief executive as the voice of persuasion during a crisis (wow2).
Nancy Snow, of the University of Southern California, who is a former propagandist for the US State Department, said: “There has been too much emphasis on having the President as persuader-in-chief and it isn’t working because he lacks credibility, especially abroad.” (wow3)
The information war experts also pointed out that private companies were motivated by the need to win short-term contracts, while military goals were long term (wow4).
This is publicity. It stems from scream marketing, a practice well known to command and control freaks.Well what a surprise! What I am trying to find in all this is Public Relations. The critical thing here is that there is a need for grown up public relations. This requires a clear understanding of the goals and ambitions of the governement (s) involved followed by research, planning strategy development, testing, monitoring and tactical application that is constantly monitored in the creation and flowering of relationships among many stakeholder groups all of which are interconnected.
The reason that the government cannot get a public relations person to prepare and execute a plan is that the client is awash with ego and bumbling about with sound bites delivered with 'personality'.
Lloyd-Webber would be a better option than a PR consultant. At least we would have tunes instead of the noise of a washing machine behind the spin.
Good employee relations critical - if poor - dangerous
Sacked spy Richard Tomlinson has defied the UK's secret services by posting the first chapter of his spy novel online. Says The Register.
It reports:
The ex-MI6 officer was fired in 1995 after four years in the foreign arm of British secret intelligence and spent a year in a maximum security prison for publishing a book about his time in the organisation. But he has fought back against what he claims is intimidation by his old employees with the publication of chapter one of The Golden Chain on his blog.
Imagine if this was to happen to your organisation. It is almost impossible to prevent ex-employees blowing whistles and making mayhem online.
Email is chaotic
Over a third (38%) of large organisations across the UK admit their email management system is in ‘complete chaos’, according to the findings of a survey released by AIIM, reports Retail Bulletin.
I have pulled out the key points. But waht this report says to me is that it is about time the Public Relations department got control of email and managed it properly and as a communications medium.
I have pulled out the key points. But waht this report says to me is that it is about time the Public Relations department got control of email and managed it properly and as a communications medium.
- The survey also found that the same number of end users admitted that their company either had no policy or they didn’t know their company’s policy when it came to email archiving.
- A third of UK organisations do not have any clear plans and procedures for dealing with compliance issues, especially concerning historical records, which poses a number of compliance related risks.
- Only 16% understand that the broader concept relates to information within enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems.
- Half of the users surveyed admitted that employees do not fully understand how to access current versions of policies and procedures or other critical corporate information.
- Over two thirds (70%) of organisations admit that content created by employees who have then left, is not actively reviewed or archived appropriately.
South Bank Show podcast
If you have a client who would be good material for the ITV1 South Bank Show you will be interested to know that from today, you’ll be able to download a special podcast version of the show, carrying extended interviews with the week’s guests.
This is important for two reasons. The people who want to see the show can do so at a time to suit themselves which mean that the extended audience will be focused and relevant and, of course the podcast will remain available for years, extending the life of the broadcast.
Of course you will also be able to use the link to the show in additional and further promotional work too.
The same benefits also apply to Nigel Godrich's show
The Radiohead producer will head up 'From The Basement', which is expected to feature appearances from the likes of The White Stripes, Thom Yorke and Beck. The first series has already been recorded.
The show will have no studio audience, and will be available as a video podcast.
So it will get the extra bonus podcasts offer Public Relations practitioners.
Radiohead Official Site
This is important for two reasons. The people who want to see the show can do so at a time to suit themselves which mean that the extended audience will be focused and relevant and, of course the podcast will remain available for years, extending the life of the broadcast.
Of course you will also be able to use the link to the show in additional and further promotional work too.
The same benefits also apply to Nigel Godrich's show
The Radiohead producer will head up 'From The Basement', which is expected to feature appearances from the likes of The White Stripes, Thom Yorke and Beck. The first series has already been recorded.
The show will have no studio audience, and will be available as a video podcast.
So it will get the extra bonus podcasts offer Public Relations practitioners.
Radiohead Official Site
Guradian reports on the power of the blog for corporates
Andrew Clarke tells how Dell learned recently about the growing power of the blogosphere when it recalled 4.1m laptop batteries after a video that showed one of its computers bursting into flames was posted on the internet. The brief clip zig-zagged through cyberspace and went from cult viewing to national television.
"It's a new culture, a new world," says Nielsen BuzzMetrics' marketing vice-president, Max Kalehoff. "For every company there's a huge, long tail of blogs with many, many niches."
He maintains that although blogs can be a thorn in the side of carefully nurtured brands, they can also be useful in alerting executives to hazards ahead.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Space for blogging
From Neville Hobson's eagle eye:
Ms Ansari says she will write the first blog from space. She says that her ultimate goal is to bring her experience and “the ability to fly to space to more and more people and to inspire young woman and men to go into the fields related to space.”
Is it OK to ghostwrite a CEO blog?
Debbie Weil says: This is one of the questions I get asked most often. What I want to know, dear reader, is what you think?
This is a silly question.
What are the corporate aims, where is the social media strategy and how can you lever most corporate benefit.
Most CEO's have a half life of 3 years so when they go... what is best for the organisation?
I am not a great fan of CEO blogs. Imaging the relative power among a wide range of stakeholders should they have a monthly podcast, an interview on sector wide issues by John Humphrys.
This is a silly question.
What are the corporate aims, where is the social media strategy and how can you lever most corporate benefit.
Most CEO's have a half life of 3 years so when they go... what is best for the organisation?
I am not a great fan of CEO blogs. Imaging the relative power among a wide range of stakeholders should they have a monthly podcast, an interview on sector wide issues by John Humphrys.
Research and evaluation
Heather Hopkins is Director of Research for Hitwise UK. In this role, Heather analyses the trends affecting businesses online and works with Hitwise clients to identify opportunities and threats to online business growth. She was looking at clickstream traffic from MySpace and Bebo this morning for a reporter and noticed HMV.co.uk among the downstream sites from MySpace. In fact, the site ranked as the third highest downstream Shopping & Classifieds site from MySpace Music last week, after eBay UK and eBay.
If The PR industry was to use this information, imagine its power for PR planning, strategy development and evaluation.
Sorta makes the usual charts look a bit ... unreal?
If The PR industry was to use this information, imagine its power for PR planning, strategy development and evaluation.
Sorta makes the usual charts look a bit ... unreal?
If you don't RSS you ain't in PR
Its simple. Without RSS a practitioner cannot keep up with the news, is unable to follow important discussion and debate about thier client, is swamped by email and is really a waste of salary.
The best advice about RSS today is from Elizabeth Albrycht. Her blog is worth adding to your RSS feed as well.
Then have a play after your workout in the gym and with a glass of Château Ausone and practice.
Its just so cool.
The best advice about RSS today is from Elizabeth Albrycht. Her blog is worth adding to your RSS feed as well.
Then have a play after your workout in the gym and with a glass of Château Ausone and practice.
Its just so cool.
Celeb PR opportunity
YouTube has signed a deal with media giant Warner Music to allow its material to be used legally.
It means interviews and videos by Warner's artists can be used in return for a slice of advertising revenue.
The agreement also covers the use of material in homemade videos, which form a large part of YouTube's content.
Well there is some reality creeping in. The Warner long tail could be very valuable.
For Celebrity PR... get your client into the Warner library.
There is added news from Business2Day:
YouTube is getting ready to launch a "content identification system" by the end of the year that supposedly will let copyright holders automatically find when their content is being used and either charge royalties for it or share in advertising dollars associated with that content.
It means interviews and videos by Warner's artists can be used in return for a slice of advertising revenue.
The agreement also covers the use of material in homemade videos, which form a large part of YouTube's content.
Well there is some reality creeping in. The Warner long tail could be very valuable.
For Celebrity PR... get your client into the Warner library.
There is added news from Business2Day:
YouTube is getting ready to launch a "content identification system" by the end of the year that supposedly will let copyright holders automatically find when their content is being used and either charge royalties for it or share in advertising dollars associated with that content.
Eyespot - an vidcast experiment
It works!
I have experimented with Eyespot for the first time.
Just my cellphone (on a pile of books) and the free, simple and easy software works very well.
Now I have to get the camera out, prepare better content and get the sound, lighting, mixing etc better. But for 90 minutes from start to finish, this is not hard.
Show notes, are, of course, the blog comments I made this week.
The next think to do is to send it to YouTube, Live Journal, Veoh, BlipTV etc.
There is one issue which is that it is supposed to load to this blog (Blogger Beta) automatically and that does not work yet. I had to cut and past the code.
I have experimented with Eyespot for the first time.
Just my cellphone (on a pile of books) and the free, simple and easy software works very well.
Now I have to get the camera out, prepare better content and get the sound, lighting, mixing etc better. But for 90 minutes from start to finish, this is not hard.
Show notes, are, of course, the blog comments I made this week.
The next think to do is to send it to YouTube, Live Journal, Veoh, BlipTV etc.
There is one issue which is that it is supposed to load to this blog (Blogger Beta) automatically and that does not work yet. I had to cut and past the code.
Brand Monitoring
Mike Manuel has picked up a Forester Research report about Brand Monitoring and identifying
Nielsen Buzzmetrics
CymfonyBiz360
Umbria
Brandimensions
MotiveQuest
Factiva
on the way.
I am getting more and more uneasy about many metrics. My concern is that they can lead one down the route of market segmentation in a misleading way.
I now tend towards a view that, for many application, there is a need to identify with the content values offered by constituents within contextual frames which can be as granular as one because of their influence on the long tail asset.
For a lot of organisations their long tail asset may be greater than the annual marketing budget which would lead one to imagine how much more effective it might be for closer attention.
Levering up one blog post by a factor of three by just responding would seem to be a valuable investment.
There are not many brand monitoring capabilities that identify the long tail asset.
Nielsen Buzzmetrics
CymfonyBiz360
Umbria
Brandimensions
MotiveQuest
Factiva
on the way.
I am getting more and more uneasy about many metrics. My concern is that they can lead one down the route of market segmentation in a misleading way.
I now tend towards a view that, for many application, there is a need to identify with the content values offered by constituents within contextual frames which can be as granular as one because of their influence on the long tail asset.
For a lot of organisations their long tail asset may be greater than the annual marketing budget which would lead one to imagine how much more effective it might be for closer attention.
Levering up one blog post by a factor of three by just responding would seem to be a valuable investment.
There are not many brand monitoring capabilities that identify the long tail asset.
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