Friday, September 22, 2006

Cross Channel communication

One of the issues Public Relations people face is being able to generate content for more than one communication channel. Bloglines has answered this issue with integrated Skweezer technology to optimise web pages for personal handheld mobile device's.

When you click on a link while reading a blog post in Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer will compress and reformat the content so you get it faster and better looking on your small screen. As you surf, the content will continue to be skweezed.




When disintermediated, disintermediate

Microsoft is planning free-web based versions of its word processing and spreadsheet programs reports the BBC.

The online versions of the programs will lack many of the features found in the full versions found in Microsoft's Office suite of applications.

Google recently bought Writely to do just this (I used it to write and share my XPRL paper last week). It is an online word processing package that includes a co-authoring and sharing capabilities.

Writely, offers a range of services that competes with Microsoft. Gamil, calendar, spread sheets etc.

These capabilities are useful in PR practice but are also a lesson for us all to learn about how the Internet disintermediates existing business models.

Bloggers, as citizen journalists, have undermined the role of newspapers in a big way and this means they have also undermined the press relations communication models that is the predominant practice of many PR agencies and in-house departments.


Bloggers 'Sad' or 'Brilliant'

There is the Athur Strain description of bloggers which is: ... - almost always unfair - that they are sad people sitting in their underwear rooted in front of a computer all day writing about how much worse their fungal nail infection is getting to an audience of three friends. - He does back off a lot when discussing political bloggers.

Why should a person of a 'certain' type, who may well not have used bulletin boards or usenet a decade (OK two decades ago) understand the idea of online social media?

Without that grounding and the time one really needs lurking in this space, Blogs are astonishing and bewildering. You see, I fall into the trap... lurk, space, 'social media' .... I use the jargon without a thought and, in the process widen the gap.

I get the impression that there is body of opinion that thinks that a blog is some form of rambling inconsequential chatter, no doubt this is true in many cases, but not true for most.

A serious blog such as 'CorporatePR' is a genre many middle and senior managers do not come across by chance, or have time to read because they are complex and most posts require time as with most worthwhile literature.

For many, understanding that a person, in the midst of their more serious occupation, might divert to an aside about an incident in their lives, is a difficult concept.

They see a comment, and without looking back at the blog topic, assumes every post is on topic, a serious, focused journal.

They forget that Gibbons, Chaucer, Lao Zi, Amis, Belloc, Eliot, Johnson in fact almost every philosopher and essayist also wrote asides even in the margins of their most serious works.

They cannot translate this into what we, with our jargon, would call an 'off-topic' 'rant'.

Thus, some seek to engage in conversation outside the prime interest (topic) of a blog, perhaps ignorant a wider and more profound contribution and the thrust of a blog.

What sort of 'sad' person would make comments like these on a blog:


Re:Symbiosis And Living Machines 2006-08-10
Re:Healthy Lurking 2006-05-01
Re:New study on altruistic punishment: people prefer groups that punish free-riders, if punishment increases profit to members 2006-04-13
Re:Computing 2020 - The Internet as Architecture of Cooperation 2006-03-23

Sort of kinky stuff for the average middle manager..... Untill of course you see who the author is and the read the posts (articles).

There are several things we can take out of this:

1 It is not well understood by a section of society that Blogs are a medium. Blogs have many applications. They are akin to the 'blank sheet of paper' upon which the author can write, originate, say, paint, videocast. There are other features (comment, trackback, RSS etc but these just complicate my argument).
2 That the marginal notes, the 'rants', add interest and a human voice, even insights into the character of the author. They have been included in literature since before Simonides. But in this new medium they tend to be visible as any other contribution.
3 Those of us who are involved have moved a long way from those who are not, we can no longer understand their (lack of) understanding. We can be offended when really we need to be sympathetic, understanding and educative.
4 Sometimes, our rants stir indignation and other emotions among our readers - but we know that and often we do it to achieve just such ends.
5 Our work is just beginning and we have to work hard at bridging the divide not least because our world, the digital world, is evolving at an ever growing rate.

Is 'Reputation Management' Hype?

Hack Anthony Hilton commenting on the HP debacle poses the question:

What is fascinating is that for all the yapping of the dogs the caravan moved serenely on ­ the Hewlett Packard share price which had been at a three-year high before the eruption, continued to test new high ground throughout.

The share price said that the damage to the company's reputation did not matter as long as it continued to do good business.

It raises the question of whether boards worry too much about reputation and its associated risks. It has become a cliche to say that reputation is the major risk to today's global corporation and this fear has fuelled a mighty expansion in spending on public relations to put a suitable gloss on corporate behaviour. Is it money which needed to be spent? The Hewlett Packard experience would suggest not.


Well, a simplistic view. But very close to home. Hilton, of course, has a shabby mind and can't grasp the role of Public Relations, imagining it as the sort of spin he puts into his stories and which he calls 'Journalism'.

We can start off with how to define an organisation is it the nexus of contracts (Coarse) or Nexus of conversations (Sonsino) or the nexus of relationships (Phillips)?

If of contracts, the contract between the board, shareholders and employees is all that is holding the company together when the simple contract of trust is brocken. If of conversations then for some stakeholders these must be trivial and irelevant to their needs now and trivial does not seem to matter to the shareholders or does it. But if of relationships then they are more powerful than the board might believe and the company can survive.

So this is more about relationship management that reputation management.

Among the values attributed to an organisation are elements of trust which are among many more. Some are brand values (owned by people not companies), some are about needs fulfilment, some are social and the most powerful are emotional. It is a treasure trove of many values.

The Relationship Value Model makes it clear that reputation is about what the organisation does not what it says.

A Blogging Cardinal -simple as ABC

Looking to marry the Roman Catholic Church's 2,000-year-history with the modern world's technological bent, Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley on Thursday became the first U.S. cardinal to launch a blog. This from Reuters.

Another case study in the making from 62 year old Sean.

How search disintermediates sales

From Phil Gomes

It just made me smile

This is one of my favorite tricks...

When SEO reps call me, I keep them on the phone long enough for me to
do a Google search on "search engine optimization."

Invariably, the company's name doesn't come up in the first 25 pages. I
tell the rep this.

"Well," the guy stammers. "It's a crowded space out there."

"Crowded?" I ask. "You want to talk about 'crowded.' One of our clients
sells BEANS!!!"

That usually gets the guy off the phone.
The thing here is that the person on the receiving end of the call can look up the company and check it out. The product performance can be evaluated during the sales presentation.

The salesman can create the link but the web site confines the sales script.

This also means that media comment, blog comment and a range of other reports about the company and product are part of the communication process initiated by the salesperson.

Sales and Public Relations are part of the same communication continuum.

Getting traffic from del.icio.us

From Sally Fallcow at New Media Release Discussion list:

the There was a great thread in the Search Engine Watch forums yesterday
about getting traffic from social media sites like del.icio.us

1. Write Good, Relevent, Useful Content.
I know its an obvious one, but it's the one to remember. People will
only bookmark what they find interesting. Watch what's popular on
del.icio.us for a couple of days to get an idea.

2. Get Popular On Another Site, Leap Frog to Del.icio.us
If you can make it to sites like Digg.com, BoingBoing, Kottke,
instructables.com - anything influential - chances are the cascading
effect of the web, will have your site be popular on del.icio.us too.

3. Use Del.icio.us Like a Directory
Find the best articles tutorials and bookmark them on del.icio.us with
the appropriate tags. People searching for similar content, matching
your tags, may find your site and (if they like it) bookmark it,
building your "capital" so to speak.

4. Make sure all your content has an "Add to Del.icio.us" link (along
with email to a friend etc) and as your content is found, it'll be
picked up by visitors and maybe even added to del.icio.us.

There are a few initiatives in progress to assist PR folk to take
advantage of these ideas. PRESSfeed, the content syndication service
that was built specifically for SEO-PR purposes, is one of them. All
enterprise level clients get social media bookmarking links, Technorati
tags and "easy subscribe" buttons for all the better known RSS
readers on their articles, news updates or press releases.

You can see it on the PRESSfeed site at
http://www.press-feed.com/results/news/index.php Put your cursor on
the RSS icon to see the drop down menu for subscribe buttons

http://www.press-feed.com/results/news/news.php?include=58189 At the
end of this article on the future of search and content syndication
you'll see the tags and the list of social bookmarking links.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Its nice - Yale agrees with Leverwealth about Marketing

I owe this to Jackie Danicki.

Yale School of Management is saying:

Effective leaders need to be able to own and frame problems and take real responsibility for solving those problems, and then work across organizational boundaries in order to solve those problems. The curriculum in the past was broken down by these disciplinary silos and because of that, got in the way of effective management and leadership…[W]e’re replacing the disciplinary courses that mapped onto the functional silos in organizations with new courses that are actually organized around the key constituencies that a manager needs to engage in order to be effective.

We now offer a course on the customer rather than a course in marketing, a course on the investor rather than a course in finance.

Marketing is slipping further away as a managment discipline.

Manchester WiMax

There is a rumour going round that English conerbation round Manchester (2.2 million people) is to get high Speed wireles Internet access. It looks like this could be a competitors to existing services both in terms of speed and reach.

Compared to the feint hearted Wimax offerings eleswhere (slow, patchy and tentative Milton Keynes is an example - where whole villages are still on dial up - Nash being an example) , The manchester service could compete on comparable terms with the likes of BT.

Blog ethic

Fact: Bloggers are becoming as influential as reporters. So when do they cross the threshold of citizen journalist and become de facto journalists? From what I can tell, many bloggers would be insulted to be called reporters.

Are we entering a journalistic/PR no man's land? What ethical considerations apply to bloggers?

Should Bloggers check facts?

My experience is that PR departments do not respond to Blogger requests.

Bloggers have to find another way.

Should bloggers seek a second source. Yes.

Should Bloggers only use reliable sources e.g. BBC, CNN Company bloggers? No. But it helps and then second and third sources are even more important.

Dan Geenfield asks about

...a news story run about your company, but the reporter never contacted your company for a comment. Makes us mad and clients mad. Journalists should know better we say.

But how about when bloggers post a comment about your company or pull comments from a company blog without contacting the PR department? Are we still as angry? My guess is probably not.

Would we still be as mad if the blogger was also a mainstream reporter or represented a mainstream publication? Madder yes, but as mad as a “pure reporter?”

So, this is a two ways street but having PR capacity and capability to respond is hard. There is a need to read past posts from the blogger and each one needs on-on-one handling.

I posted this story which has stock market implications with only two sources (BBC and Reuters) and was the first blogger to do so within an hour of the first report. It was tempting to go live without a second source.

I did not even try Yahoo and Facebook... but it was an option and I would hold out little hope of a response.

Bloggers are different - they are also easy to ignore - todate.
>


Electronic Roll-up - newspaper?

Roll-up laptop screens a step closer, according to scientists.

A Cambridge team have developed metal structures that can morph from flat screens into tubes and other shapes reports the BBC.

They say in the future the structures could form the basis for electronic displays that could be rolled-up and placed in a bag or pocket.

This is an area of rapid development with a number of developments in the news.

This thinking offers a next generation of flexible, thin materials for a range of applications.

E-books, Electronic Newspapers, laptops, posters, mobile phones, meeting rooms are transformed.

Yahoo 'to buy Facebook for $1bn

The BBC reports:

Internet search firm Yahoo is reported to be in talks to buy social networking website Facebook for $1bn (£527m).

US-based Facebook, popular with students, has also held separate discussions with Microsoft and Viacom, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Facebook, which allows users to put up profiles of themselves, recently signed an advertising deal with Microsoft.

A similar such website, MySpace, was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m last year.

Washington Post reports Leverwealth

Well, I supose that after so many times the other way round it was inevitable that one day The Washington Post would reference a Leverwealth blog post!... :).

CIPR course has IBM speaker

CIPR has a conference which is going to cover stuff like writing a press release and how to shout at Journalists a and then at 13:55 - New media – how the web has changed PR -

Ian McNairn, Program Director Web Technology & Innovation, IBM who is also a keen photographer but does not have a blog). The important thing here is that IBM has a lot of both internal and external blogs.

This session will discuss the changes in PR using tools such as Podcasts, VideoCasts, Blogs, Wikis and RSS. You will also discover the impact that social computing has had on the reputation, visibility and reach of content. Topics include:

  • Looking outside the traditional media scope
  • The use of new media in a PR practitioners day
  • How to best use 'new media' to your advantage
  • 14:35 - Case study into the power of sound as a PR tool

    Jude Habib, Media Consultant and ex BBC person who is an advocate of the use of sound.

    This case study will open your mind to new media techniques such as podcasting which allows you to control your content and message. Hear how using audio sound as a communication tool has benefited many campaigns from the BBC to Unicef. Is the use of sound in an imaginative way the future for media?

  • An interactive session using powerpoint embedded with audio
  • The importance of audio in making social programming sexy, the power of celebrity and the importance of good content
  • Explore the applications of audio (audio press releases, audio direct mail etc)

  • Conference venue:

    Chartered Institute of Public Relations
    CIPR Public Relations Centre
    32 St James’s Square
    London SW1Y 4JR
    Tel +44 (0)20 7766 3333
    http://www.cipr.co.uk/prcentre

    Conference fees

    • CIPR Members - £300 + VAT (£352.50 inc VAT)
    • Non - CIPR members - £400 + VAT (£470.00 inc VAT)
    Chunky London prices for just two session about PR today and several about the dieing art of cutting down and re-purposing trees. This is, afterall, the CIPR.
    >

    Daily Mail is now an Online Beast in the middle market

    The Daily Mail, which for years gave only token resources to its website, has seen massive online readership growth this year since it started taking the internet seriously.

    Web traffic on DailyMail.co.uk has grown from 1.3 million unique users in January to the current 6.6 million, according to Associated New Media sources, quoting data from Hitwise.


    This means that if you pitch a story to the Daily mail, you may want to be sure you are also pitching it to the online version as well.

    It also means that in media evaluation, clips from the Mail have an on-line counterpart - a further redership of 1.3 million.

    This conversion to the Internet comes not a moment to soon.The Guardian reports:

    Daily Mail & General Trust today reported declines in advertising revenues at its national and regional divisions.

    At national group Associated Newspapers, home to the Daily Mail and London Evening Standard, ad revenues were down 6% excluding the effect of acquisitions in the 11 months to the end of August.

    Including acquisitions, advertising was down just 2%, a performance DMGT described as "robust", while circulation revenues were up 1.6%.

    Classified advertising was down 9%, with display advertising suffering less at 5% down and the market showing some signs of improvement.

    The guardian, of course makes profits from its online properties.

    Online Video Sharing Explosion

    Hitwise data shows that Market share of UK internet visits to the top 10 video sharing websites has increased 13-fold since the start of the year and has doubled in the past three months. YouTube is the dominant video sharing site, capturing 1 in every 400 UK internet visits and 2 in 3 of visits to the top 10 video sharing sites (week to 16th September 2006).

    This from Heather Hopkins of Hitwise. Her analysis of the use of uptake (available on her blog) shows YouTube a tad of 60% market share.

    Building teams located at many locations

    Research by occupational psychologists has shown that 'virtual' teams spread out across the world need to use a variety of technologies to communicate if they are to be effective.

    The researchers at Pearn Kandola found numerous problems in getting dispersed teams to work effectively and estimate that if different cultures are in the team it can take 17 weeks for its effectiveness to match a team working in the same location. The team recommend that managers use a variety of communications methods to combat the problem.



    This applies to consultancies with many locations, clients with consultants in many locations and any other combination. It also applies to building communities for almost any activity.

    This research is important for all people with a communications management roll.

    But you read all this here before.....

    Campiagn for your job or be prepared to move off-shore

    A lot of UK Public Relations activity will have to move off-shore if a new EU directive is passed.

    The AVMS directive, due to be implemented next year, would expand current EU broadcasting regulations to all audio-visual services, including content delivered to internet and mobile phone users.

    Currently being debated by the European Council and Parliament, it would aim to ensure the protection of minors and prevent other abuses. Ofcom's view is that this is a bad thing. I agree.

    However, concerns have been aired that the move would extend regulations to user-generated content such as video blogs. Britain has campaigned against the move, saying new media services should not be included (More here and more here).


    To make your voice heard you need to email your MEP and email the Secretary General of the CIPR. It is the eyes and ears of the UK Public Relations Industry and, hopefully its voice.

    In Yer Face Doc Martens

    One of the worst advertising sites I have come across was shown to me by e-consultancy. It is the silly, all flash, Doc Martens site.

    Saatchi’s MD, Neil Hughston, said to Ashley Friedlein “we’re not looking to sell products right now, we’re looking to engage likeminded people. Over time we’ll look at measuring how brand perception has changed…”
    Try it for yourself... engage if you can.

    Its a poster. A nice poster but a poster and belongs on a wall in Slough not on the Internet.

    Engage means engage mind to mind not poster to eyeball.

    Google win

    Phillipe Borremans has a great post about the Google News and its dust up with the Belgium Media.

    I commented yesterday.

    The outcome, it seems is that Google reacted quite drastically and simply "deleted" all search results that could lead to the sites of the newspapers in question.

    The Belgium media is now, in effect, cut off from the mainstream online audience.

    Google hit them where it hurts most. A blunt but effective weapon for publications that need to drive traffic to their sites to create value from their online presence.

    In PR, we gain from online exposre of our stories and for Belgian Public Relations practitioners, this is now an issue and a new strategy is needed.

    May be its is a case of creating online newspapers like this one.