Wired Town

Swindon, the home of Billie Piper, Melinda Messenger, and yours truly has the highest number of homes in the UK with a broadband connection, research revealed today.

Research group Point Topic said over 50% of homes in Swindon have a broadband connection reports the Guradian. It said the high take-up was because of the large number of young families in Swindon with children and that such households tend to opt for broadband.

We have wifi on our trains, and hope to have town wide wifi soon.

With Intel inside, it seems that there is a lot that can happen not least is a PR consultancy with new media expertise.......

Picture: Billy Piper

'Plot to blow up planes' disrupted - PR in the front line

Today in the UK we have both a plot foiled and an on going threat alert.

On a day like today, when a major criminal threat on lives on an unprecedented scale affects the police, airports, airlines, travel industries and many others, the Public Relations Industry has to work very hard.

The need for reliable information is at a premium. The range of publics desperate for news is enormous and those of us who are onlookers have interests too.

In the last six hours, the Public Relations industry has, for the most part, shown how good it really is.

At the heart of this is trust. People have gone to our professional communicators for information and have been able to trust companies and receive good, timely and accurate information.

We will all learn lessons but with PR now in the front line we have to both follow through with existing capabilities and adopt new ideas too.

Not only is this a matter of being able to trust the organisations but the means they have available for communication too.

Emergency plans have to be ready anyway but the need for a real person to be available to make live statements is important too. The real voice of organisations using as many channels for communication as possible is critical.

What is evident is the role digital media has played and continues to play.

There are places people trust. Online News 24 hours a day like News24 from the BBC, the news web sites and those of the airports and airlines are obvious stopping off places.

We have to consider what the essentials are. The first is a reliable pipe.

I live 70 miles from the most affected airport, London Heathrow. Where I live has the highest penetration of broadband in the country. My available BT bandwidth is down 30%. This is an issue. It has to be an issue for governments and the need for alternatives is now critical. In addition to broadcast, cable, copper, public wifi and cellular options have to be in place for all civilised countries. Without this capability all the other forms for communication at a disadvantage and public safety and security is at risk. On this occasion, the networks coped but BT, the primary provider of Broadband in the UK looked sick.

Given that the Internet is capable to deliver traffic, PR practitioners in both public and private organisations have a primary consideration be able to serve up web sites. Without this basic ability, they cannot communicate.

The bandwidth issues are critical and are a public relations responsibility. Can your servers cope South Roof Office Block? BAA, the primary airport operator in the UK failed at this first hurdle. It had a single page up and served up a 404 when I clicked on all the other links. BA, the Airline responded online effectively

Finally, the Internet is robust as a network. Being able open up channels from a range of locations is important too, with a capability to serve information from a number of locations is helpful.

The next big problem is an ability to deploy a range of outlets. Web sites can be overwhelmed as we found out during the 9/11 attack. Today, we have a wide range of alternatives and can lever the capacity of the biggest servers in the world. Trusted social media needs to be in place. Channels like blogs have a role to play because they can distribute information across the network fast and being networked is robust.

In addition, the use and application of mobile has to be a consideration. Mobile can now be both push and pull and can help reduce concerns over both the telco issues such as my BT problem and an ability to manage bandwidth problems more effectively.

Being in a position to share information fast is paramount. The chief communication manager in the organisation now needs to push ahead with collaborative media. Managers, even in relatively small organisations just have to come to terms with wiki style information sharing and knowing that some (designated) wiki pages can be used to serve up news to other sites as soon as approved and by a range of authorised employees.

There is a big role for trusted social media.

This crisis in the UK today has pointed up a need to explore the role of a wider range of communications channels.

Picture: Heathrow today

CIPR to Adopt Social Media

The Director General of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Colin Farrington, revealed a social media outreach programme and an online ethics policy review yesterday.

In an interview for the premier PR podcast 'For Immediate Release', he made it clear that the the Institute is taking the changes in communication very seriously, commenting:

"We absolutely recognise that the whole public relations and communication world is changing.

"We have to be part of that and have to understand it.”

Acknowledging information overload he said the CIPR has to 'provide information in every format we can', 'looking for a wide range of channels for outreach'. In the eight minute interview, he announced the following new initiatives:

• a re-vamp of the Institutes online magazine, Profile Extra,
  
• greater use of RSS for Institute online publications,
  
• more use of social media including
  
• more Webinars and
  
• use of the President's Blog, PRVoice,
  

This to offer a wider mix of communications channels used in 'outreach' to member professionals.

Running ahead of members.

He revealed that the Institute was in 'Listening and learning mode' and noted that the UK was behind the USA in adopting Social media making it clear that it was important to "be careful not to run ahead of members."

Acknowledging that there was a need to inform and educate members, plans were revealed for the Institute to 'shortly' publish skills guides for:

• podcast
  
• blogging.

Ethical Issues

He said that he recognises an "Immaturity in blogging in the UK" and pointed out that there are ethical issues that need added consideration. Specifically he mentioned that anonymity online (not revealing identity or not revealing action on behalf of an employer or client) contravenes the Chartered Institutes's code of professional conduct.

He said "People in PR need to consider their relationship with clients; PR is largely about relationship building and that Blogging is an easy medium to run away with.

He highlighted the problem with Astroturfing, a form of passing-off to dupe decision makers, electors and consumers and noted that this was a problem to be dealt with both on and off-line and which mirrors growing concern among on-line PR practitioners.

Picture: Colin Farrington

Chartered Institute of Public Relations
Colin Farrinton
astroturfing
ethics
public relations

Don't frighten the client

I was very recently introduced to a Public Relations consultancy because the intermediary thought I knew something about the Internet and, in particular, social media. As we know the more you find out, the more you know you know nothing.

Anyway, we talked.

Now, they do use email, have used PRNewswire and have a web site. The son of one of the directors had introduced the idea of blogging to get a number of friends together to do things.

They had heard that blogs were the cool thing for PR these days.

Could I help?

Well, quoth I, some basic rules:

• All your clients should be monitoring Social Media and extracting strategic if not specific inferences about their sector, competitors and environments.

• 'Social Media' is not for every organisation and needs strategies behind application

• It makes organisation much more transparent.

• Once in, there is no going back

• It will change the client both internally and externally

• The consultant is just that and the only authentic voice is the voice of the client

“Oh!” said the consultant, “But you can't say that to our clients, it sounds expensive, technical and frightening.”

“Yes,” I said, “and if they are frightened by that, they will be even more frightened by the consequences of ignoring the new media.”

We parted.

Such a shame.

Nice people.

A local government authority suggested that, because it had award winning web sites and a couple of its councillors had blogs, they were doing well.

I suggested that, perhaps, they were failing their community.

They were missing the opportunities for democratisation, community decision making, attracting inward investment, tourists and a global reputation at a time when local councils were competing with both near neighbours and towns on the other side of the world. There was every need to get up to speed fast.

I offered them some thoughts on Social Media strategy along these lines.

They think the Chief Executive should have a blog - written by the PR department.

Such nice people. So earnest. So very good at PR1.0.

Pity, pity.

Where is the leadership in this profession? St Stephen’s Club perchance?

Picture: Pity Willliam Blake

SEOing just keywords

Ranked in order of search engine popularity ToolURL identifies the most searched for keywords including their search count. it is used for Search engine optimisation. A practice all PR people should be aware of.

I thought I should try 'Public Relations' in a blog post. I can then compare it to WordTracker on the My Internet Lectures Blog.
Next experiment is to put the same words in the same order in tags. Not today though - of course I'm playing!


10791 public relations
4309 public relations agency
327 public relations consultant
276 public relations agency uk
236 london public relations
220 public relations uk
203 public relations firm
174 public relations photographer
144 public relations jobs in london
141 public relations consultancy
131 institute of public relations
110 consultant london public relations
106 public relations manchester
98 public relations jobs
93 public relations company uk
92 public relations kent
91 public relations services
82 effective public relations
77 crm public relations
74 public relations course
70 public relations specialist
69 public relations east sussex
63 north west public relations
60 public relations company
59 public relations definition
59 engineering public relations technical
56 brighton consultant public relations
53 public relations doncaster
49 handbook public relations
49 public relations south yorkshire
48 care health public relations
45 financial public relations
44 spotlight public relations
43 agency asian public relations
43 chartered institute public relations
41 company limited public relations
40 marketing and public relations
39 public relations strategy
37 public relations plan
35 public relations degree
34 effective public relations skill writing
34 fashion public relations
34 public relations tarantino
33 communication marketing public relations role sme
32 `internal public relations`
31 career in public relations
31 communication designing public questionnaire relations survey
30 agency colchester public relations
30 agency media public relations
30 consultant doncaster public relations
30 freelance in job public relations
30 ophthalmologists public relations
29 public relations job description
29 hair product public relations
28 pr public relations
27 gym public relations
27 physician public relations
27 plastic public relations surgeon
26 celebrity public relations
26 public relations fitness
25 firm public relations state united
25 public relations glasgow
25 public relations major
25 public relations recruitment
24 beauty product public relations
24 public relations book
24 exploring public relations
24 media public relations
24 public relations writing
23 public relations spa
22 care public relations skin
22 dermatologists public relations
22 dummy public relations
22 public relations salon
21 public relations association
21 beauty public relations
21 business course media public relations
21 cosmetic public relations
21 government local public relations
21 international public relations
21 public relations theory
20 brunswick public relations
20 public relations career
20 jobs in public relations
20 international ltd public relations
20 kelly public relations teri
19 the business public relations
19 competency framework public relations
19 public relations consultancy uk
19 consultant manchester public relations
19 public relations music
19 national public relations
18 public relations campaign
18 cheltenham public relations
18 creativity in public relations
18 framework public relations skill
18 studying public relations
17 corporate financial public relations
17 public relations education
17 public relations officer

Picture: A New Tool Kit

Where does relationship value come from?

Today I identified the McKinsey has begun to take relationships seriously as a corporate asset.

This theoretical framework has to resolve the issues associated with identifying relationships (Ledingham,& Bruning), description of an organisation (Coase/Sonsino) and the means by which organisational value can be described, valued and changed.

It is this that enables us to develop a Relationship Management model of public relations practice when defined as: “influencing behaviour to achieve objectives through the effective management of relationships and communications”

(Chartered Institute of Public Relation and the UK Department of Trade and industry “Unlocking the Potential of Public Relations: Developing Good Practice” 2003)

In essence, I posit that peoples' (actors') cognition is expressed explicitly as tokens in the formation and maintenance of relationships. The formation and maintenance of such relationships is through networks which allows these tokens to be recognised and through which the values actors' attribute to tokens can be understood. Such understanding, when they converge in a process of cognitive consistency, are the conditions under which a relationship is formed. As the array of convergent tokens becomes richer, the relationship deepens. As more people recognise these tokens and their values, they coalesce into social groups such as organisations.

Using this approach, one can identify the nature of an organisation and the nature of relationships between organisations, their members and social (often commercial) groups.

Organisation value need not be merely financial (Hall) or physical such that relationships, brand and corporate values (including Intellectual Properties, tacit, explicit and process knowledge) can be, and mostly are, of greater significance in valuing an organisation, government or even nation state than, for example, share price. John Kenneth Galbraith coined the concept of 'intellectual capital', the imbued, actualised and evolving 'know-what', 'know-how', 'do-what' and 'do-how' of social groups in the form of an organisation and its sphere of influence.

The significance of attributes inherent in relationships, brands, reputation, IP, process knowledge and capital is that they are the elements that describe the assets of an organisation. Such attributes are, in actuality, only held by individuals. Such descriptions are all metaphors (Lakoff 1993) even when apparently describing physical assets and their asset value. The values we ascribe to these token-values need not be financial. Value is to a greater or lesser extent unique to each actor. For example brand values can be explicit, implicit and or tacit and are 'My brand values' and may be different to everyone else. Another example may be a token as tangible as an office. For one person it can be an impersonal blot on the landscape and for another a place of social interaction, work and fulfilment. Such values can be held tacitly, implicitly, metaphorically, or explicitly. In seeking to identify value, we have to look, as nearly as we can, from the perspective of the actor.

The value of tokens can be described explicitly, implicitly or metaphorically but cannot be described when tacitly held.

There is an old soldier who, having fought throughout the Second World War, had a distinguished career in politics. In his garden is a lump of concrete with rusty bits of iron poking out of it. He shows it to all his visitors and tells them it is his most valued possession. It turns out to be part of the Berlin Wall that separated the Western democratic part of the City from its communist neighbours for four decades. The value of this lump of concretes is in its representation of subjugation and division and its iconic symbolism of demolished oppression and the resulting freedom it presaged across Europe. To the old soldier and all he show it to, it has many values – it represents the apogee of his life's work as soldier and politician. The lump of concrete sticks in the minds of his visitors and changes their opinion of the this old man. The tangible manifestation of all these values is nothing more than the rubble to be found on any urban building site in the world. Tangible assets seldom have any value except when they are associated with intangible values.

To gain cognitive consistency and in resolving dissonance, there is a need for shared understanding of the token and its values in order that it can be identified as relevant in creating convergence.

There is a need for the other major ingredient in the Relationship Value Model. The old soldier, needs visitors so they can enjoy is values.

The rose, valued in terms of a coin's monetary value can be worth £1 to a florist and yet valued by the wife as a token of a loving relationship after the husband has been out for a night with the boys. This needs a structure for the token to be exchanged. Some form of network that allows the husband to present the rose and its associated values of romantic attachment. In other words the actors, tokens and values need a mechanism to ensure material relationship values are available to the parties and achieve convergence in terms of value exchanged at a cost acceptable to the parties. In management speak, a cost effective relationship.

Picture: Perfect Rose

CIPR purchasing guide

The CIPR will launch a Government backed procurement guide for the PR industry. it vwas due out on 13th July but I have not seen it yet. There is a guide available from the PRCA (PDF) so it will be interesting to see what it looks like by comparison when it arrives.

The press release covers off the main points.

The purchasing guide is co-authored by Tom Wells, managing partner of Gyroscope, and is designed for use by anyone involved in the buying or providing of PR services.

Following the recommendations of the 2003 CIPR/DTI study, which identified the lack of a purchasing common standard as a major problem affecting the competitiveness and future success of the PR industry, the guide provides an overview of what PR is and is not.

The Guide is said to look at the workings of PR and how it can be used to greater effect. The practicalities of buying-in PR expertise 'a step-by-step account' sounds just like the PRCA model and i hope it is covered as well.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is the professional body for PR practitioners in the UK. With possibly 8,000 members involved in most aspects of the public relations industry, it is said to be the largest body of its type in Europe. The CIPR boasts that it advances the PR industry in the UK by developing policies for the PR industry, representing its members, and raising standards through education and training.




Chartered Institute of Public Relations
Public Relations
Colin Farrinton

McKinsey finds the value of Public Relations

In a paper that is, to some, mundane, there are some interesting comments in the latest McKinsey paper published today.

The paper “When social issues become strategic - Executives ignore sociopolitical debates at their own peril” shows why the role of Public Relations is the core management discipline.

Written by Sheila M. J. Bonini, Lenny T. Mendonca, and Jeremy M. Oppenheim, the most significant part is this sentence:

“Increasingly, a company's sources of long-term value (for example, its brand, talent, and relationships) are affected by a rising tide of expectations among stakeholders about the social role of business.”

Can I extract from this that the Relationship Value Model has entered into the McKensey lexicon? Of course it has. It is inevitable and is the basis of my paper “Towards relationship management: Public relations at the core of organisational development”.

Personally, I would put relationships first because without relationships it is impossible to create a brand or secure talent. Relationships are at the heart of wealth creation. There is no other asset as valueable.

The other out-takes are familiar to anyone who has seen the influence of Social Media at close quarters.

The corporate social contract (now) 'embraces not just direct stakeholders (such as consumers, employees, regulators, and shareholders) but also, and increasingly, a broader set of stakeholders (such as the communities where companies operate, the media, academics, and the nonprofit sector).'

To my mind, this why the Clarity Concept is so important. It is also why stakeholder relationship management and mapping is so important.

The report notes that 'More challenging are the "frontier" issues that have not yet entered the formal or semiformal contracts but could, over time, become social expectations—something that business might not even realize. Take obesity. It had always been widely believed that the responsibility for avoiding it lay with individuals, who choose what they eat, not with the companies that make or sell fattening products. But the blame is shifting, much as the debate around tobacco shifted the responsibility from individuals to an industry perceived to be aggressively marketing addictive products.'

What is so important here is that it puts values are at the heart of relationships?

The report continues: Two forces are colliding: an emerging set of sociopolitical megatrends that are upending the lives of people, communities, and societies, as well as ever-more-powerful stakeholders wielding wide influence.

The case they cite three reasons for adopting a wholeheartedly strategic approach to the sociopolitical agenda.

First, these forces can alter an industry's landscape in fundamental ways.

Second, the immediate financial and longer-term reputational impact of social issues that backfire can be enormous.

Finally, new product or market strategies can emerge from changing social and political forces.

The conclusion is pretty predictable:

Sociopolitical trends will increasingly affect the strategic freedom of companies, which just can't ignore the rising tide of expectations resulting from these trends and the power and influence of the stakeholders who mobilize around them. For stakeholders, companies are, in many ways, already agents of social change and must become much more deliberate in understanding the way they affect society. Businesses that follow the approach we outline and proactively understand and engage with social issues will benefit most. They will be better able to shape the social contract and to identify ways of creating value from the opportunities and risks arising from sociopolitical issues.

All this sounds to me like basic Public Relations which suggests that Public Relations is a core management function.

Picture: Asger Jorn In the beginning was the image 1965

Public Relations is a core management function.

Changing values

The significance of values in the Relationship Value Model can be approached in many ways.
One is to examine the values that consumers bring together in online environments. From Joel Cere I see another example showing how the can be seen at work.

The Long Tail explained in video

What this attempts to show is that people in relationships identify common values. The more such values chime between the parties involved, the more potent is the relationship. Organisations are the nexus of relationships and the more values in common, the more powerful the organisation.

PRBusiness a missed opportunity

PR Business has fired its Editorial Team. It looks like curtains for the competitor to PRWeek in the UK.

Its web site still proclaims “The company publishes a lively and analytical weekly magazine, PR Business, and offers an associated website designed as a practical tool for all those working in PR.”

According to its correspondent Antony Mayfield, the former editor of PR Business, Eirwen Oxley Green, along with the rest of the editorial team at PR Business have been made redundant following the magazine's decision to go monthly. The conference it was sponsoring London PR Business Week, co sponsored by The International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) now looks a bit thin.

Geoff Lace, the publisher, has been around the industry for a long time. He set up in PR Week in 1984 when he was Marketing's executive editor and it was bought by Haymarket in 1988 .

He has missed an opportunity for want of New Media (or old fashioned Web 1.0) experience and understanding. By example, we still find the PRBusiness web site up and running with no mention of these recent changes.

This is not the only Online issue. Ex-Editor Eirwen Oxley-Green said that she “agreed with everyone's comments about the website: there were all sorts of grand discussions and promises made at the start, then everything stalled. I repeatedly asked our publisher to sort it out, to no avail.”

This is ironic after Geoff's comments that: “Emerging markets will offer the greatest and most exciting opportunities for PR operators over the next few years." Of all the emerging markets for PR, Social Media is the most significant for all practitioners. Lets take Estonia as an example. It is wired. It is the home of Skpe and would find PR 1.0 out of date.

To follow this idea through....

The combination of a publication built round a wiki ( without the troubles of the Ragan communications site) with a number of blogs, podcasts, vlogs plus contributions through YouTube video, with del.icio.us bookmarks Flickr, photo records and presence in a virtual community like Second Life was ready and waiting and a number of us would have been happy to help. We would have ensured that all stories and comments were tagged and had RSS feeds. The print version would have been all the richer. With the combined authority of its contributors and constituency, subject specific syndication of its content would have been sought after and transported across the world – this is an era of global communication after all.

Such an approach would have given PR Business, its journalists and contributors huge Google Juice (global online presence) and advertising opportunities and would have made the paper version a sought after commentary on the interactive contributions of staff, contributors and practitioners.

The opportunity to be associated with New Media would have been an outstanding USP. There would have been wonderful initiatives for example being a platform for exploring new communications opportunities such as the application of cellular text, voice and video; Virtual conferencing; the NewMediaRelease (http://groups.google.com/group/newmediarelease ); XPRL, and many other areas of necessary PR development. It would have been quite exciting.

That is not to say such a publications would eschew traditional practice. Far from it. It had the opportunity to expose such practice in its proper setting as part of the broad acres of communication and media relations beyond print, radio and television. It had the opportunity to explore the on-line effects of offline practice and the converse effects as well.

PRW, having gone behind its firewall and withdrawn its distribution to CIPR members (and then re-instated after pressure from PRBusiness – but selectively as I have not yet received my copy yet) has shown that its reality remains command, control, niche and elite, a platform for advertisers to scream at each other (behind firewalls and subscription only distribution, of course). It will take a long time for it to gain trust and reputation for transparency or participation among the 'got it' practitioners.

One day, a publisher will come along and I hope in the PR sector, with enough vision to provide a vehicle with vision.

Geoff?

PRbusiness
PR Week
social media

Has the Ragan Communications Wiki been hacked?

I have been looking at Ragan's new Wiki.

It came as a surprise to find that its 'Community Portal' is loaded with 'adult' content.

According to the site, this wiki is: 'Launched in conjunction with our 10th Annual Strategic Public Relations Conference, PR Rehab is a place for the PR community to have a frank conversation about what ails PR'.

This site says 'there are many wonderful things happening in the world of public relations. But there are also areas that need work, a bit of rehabilitation. And we’d like your help in defining those areas and, together, trying to fix them.'

Yup!

Nice idea but the crisis communication post will need a bit of an update.

PR Rehab
Ragan communications
public relations

Virtual environments for communication - is this a PR function?

One of the core disciplines in public relations practice is an ability to communicate.

This means that a number of capabilities are really requires. The spoken word, the written word and an knowledge of visual communication is essential.

In an era when SMS is more important than television and instant messaging has deeper reach that newspapers, this means that effective communication skills have to branch out into mobile and Internet communication.

I have discussed the range of communications channels before but have not dealt with forms of communication that can be described as virtual environments in any great depth and want to put this right in this post.

Betchtel, the UK Government's Department of Transport, Microsoft, BP, Royal Bank of Scotland, the auctions house Christies and my grand-nephew are companies that have one form of communication in common. They all use virtual environments for communication and yet none use Second Life. I noted last week, there are more forms of virtual environments than Second Life. They are in commercial use and many companies depend on them.

A very quick Google search shows how project management environments now are modeled against time, costs and available resources and 'What-If Modeling'” These facilities too are virtual environments.

Through tasks, documents, issues, calendars, threaded discussions, news postings, polls and dynamic applications, a wide range of interactive tools are commonly made available in workplace communities.

My 10 year old great-nephew was here today. He and his school use Digital Brain. It is a closed virtual environment and class environment. They can link to other schools. Within this environment they have capabilities for doing most otheirer school work on-line and have can maintain their school relationships with discussion, IM, email video conferencing etc. He has his own photos online, a biographical note and types like a demon. This made me think about some other similar educations communities such as WebCT and Blackboard.

Let us not forget the other close cousin. From Joel Cere we learn 'More than 100 million people worldwide log on every month to play interactive computer games (source: NYT, December 2005)'. Here again we see virtual communities at work. Some interesting stats are here.

In other words, virtual communities not dissimilar to Second Life, are already in daily use in business education and leisure.

Most, if not all of them, are audience specific but they are very powerful and used throughout Industry and commerce.

These capabilities are interactive communications channels. Most enterprises that use such facilities have a significant investment tied up in these channels for communication.

The question one asks is: among its range of capabilities and practices, are public relations practitioners communication experts? If they are, should they have an understanding of the range of virtual communities that may exist in their organisations and should they have a capability to be involved?

Furthermore, for practitioners in-house one can ask who are these communications channels are available to, are they enterprise specific or do they involve external constituents (consultants, vendors, contractors) are they open to porosity and Internet Agency in a Public Relations context and can they be used for other stakeholders and constituents. Additionally, it is clear that an assessment of transparency issues is needed.

Picture: Franz Fischnaller

virtual environments for communication

One in 15 UK newspaper readers has a blog?

This news, which comes to me via Neville Hobson, about the extent of blogging in the UK deserves meme status in the UK public relations industry.

I quote the Guardian:

'One in four British internet users keeps a blog and more than half of that number share their online musings with the public, according to a report released today.

The research suggests that, with 27 million internet users across the UK, the country now holds nearly 7 million bloggers - equivalent to nearly one in nine of the population.'

This is exciting news. It confirms a valuable channel for communication has become mainstream for the Public Relations Industry.

The article notes Tim Worstall, whose blog at timworstall.typepad.com attracts around 3,000 clicks a day, questioned whether the number of active bloggers was really as high as the report suggested.

"A good 70% of blogs are things where there's one or two posts and then the writer loses interest," he said.

What is key here is not that the blogs have only three posts but that more people are involved in Social Media.

The most heavily read print media in the UK is the local newspaper. According to the Newspaper Society:

83.6% of all British adults (40 million people) read a regional newspaper, compared with 69.6% who read a national newspaper. Regional press has a high solus readership; 33.3% of those who read a regional newspaper do not read a national daily.

Allowing for the age issue (some bloggers are not adult) it would not be unreasonable to imagine that ten percent of local Newspaper readers have experience of social media to the extent that they have participated.

If the numbers are to be believed, of national newspaper readers the ratio is nearly 1:15.

With careful monitoring and evaluation, a PR campaign can identify its target constituents very closely and can achieve considerable participation and awareness with this new media - does this mean we get higher ROI?

To get an even more rounded view of Social Media, it is worth looking at the Times report about Kenneth Lay, the disgraced Enron chief who died suddenly this month. Wikipedia is so fast that it also tends to be sloppy, partial and inaccurate, sometimes wildly so. however, argue that the death of Lay shows the resilience of the system. True, there were initial inaccuracies, but these were edited out over time. The system worked precisely as intended. It is the kind of capability that allows Public Relations practitioners to get a group of people to contribute to building a good brief for their campaigns.

To get the skills to be part of this revolution talk to Ralph Tench. He has a plan.

Picture: Cox and Fortum

Commercial application of New Media

The ability to create virtual environments as Auction House Christies is doing or to offer real time video footage and the UK Highways Agency is attempting gives us a peek into the future of communication.

Lets go beyond RSS, SEO, blogging and wiki's and Second Life and look at some other initiatives.

These give us insights into what we can achieve for clients. These are examples of public relations tools that are both available now and are being used commercially.

It does not require creative genius to imagine adaptation of these examples into everyday PR practice.

The Annual Report, product launch, celebrity event, product application story and many more public relations techniques can all use these kinds of communications tools.

In the UK, if you want to find out more about new media courses for practitioners, try Dr Ralph Tench at Leeds Metropolitan University. He is working on how you can discover more.

Picture: From Christies demo of an online auction

Get it deficiency

There are some organisations which are almost getting it and others where new forms of communication are regarded with ambivalence.

Whereas the Chief Constable of North Wales Police has a blog (well really a newsletter), that is a diary area on his site without an RSS feed or the means for comment (but does include the W3C Accessibility rules) , others see this medium as being “first jottings and half thought through” but uses the medium to make a point.

What we see in both these stories is that there is a 'Get it deficiency'. Social Media is just that, it is the means by which people choose to engage in conversations. It is not a megaphone (North Wales Police) or an optional engagement with stakeholders (CIPR).

What we are seeing in both these cases is an absence of corporate strategic thinking.

We are now beyond the experimental stage. Social Media is now a core part of communication. What we now need is professionals who can look across all the social media and apply the most relevant channels to achieve convergence between organisations and their communities.

Words - Wars

Christopher Allen, Founder, Alacrity Ventures examines one of the issues we face with social media. In particular he examines the nature of text in online communications and how it can escalate into torrid flames. He says

“Since text is lacking tonal and visual context, we have a tendency to over-interpret any emotional content that does exist (link to paper). In fact, we may have no better than a random chance of correctly interpreting the emotional tone of ironic vs sincere text in a message (link to Epley/Kruger paper).

“In addition, we tend to respond to someone's emotional state by expressions of similar intensity (this phenomenon is known as Emotional Contagion). And the higher the level of intensity of our emotions, the less our ability to be empathetic (link to paper).

“These tendencies lead into a vicious feedback cycle.

• One person starts with a very trivial or subtle emotional context, say irony.

• This is interpreted at a higher level of emotions, such as sarcasm.

• A reply is made at a similar level of emotion, for example being sarcastic.

• This, in turn, is interpreted at an even higher level of emotion, maybe a mild insult.

• In turn this is replied to at a similarly intense level.

• A flame is born!”

When one translates this into the 'Relationship Value Model' and subsequent thought on the subject, it becomes clear that the the values inherent in relationships are extensive and there is a limitation using just text. A picture being worth a thousand words adds more values to a person or organisation and other values help explicate the token. Were that pictures (including icons like smileys) could resolve the multi layered values that we need to say something.

I could get quite upset at the idea that a brand or company should be reduced to a single word because for a single word to work so many other values have to be in place. It is the role of Public Relations to offer the context by which brand values can be apreciated and this is a tall order. It is not achieved in a moment and it has to relate to context.

What we are seeing is a big divide between traditional brand management and a culture of community building. The brand manager wants a simple word or phrase to sum up the world and everything - 'Go _ _ _ Ogle' - but it is the conversations, and interactions that translates the word into what we can appreciate, the values we associated with Google.

One understands flaming. It is the ultimate in relationship failure and is how wars begin.
No more anger... just cold reason. No poetry? How dull.

Just because the medium has many communications deficencies ( and we have to do all we can to add the extra values to make the message clear) does not mean that social media has to exclude passion.

What this really tels us is that we have to be careful and empathetic. But we knew that already and can listen to this part of the lecture now.

Picture: Empathy (Oil on Canvass)

A Thief is a Thief

There is an inevitability about Neville Hobson's actions to prevent his work being plagiarised. Internet Agency is still largely a human activity. Of course, most people in the PR profession (those who belong to the Association like PRSA, CIPR and the majority of other such organisations worldwide) are forbidden from using such practices.

Regardless of the fact that anyone would want to be thought to have such a little brain that they need to copy others work the there is a question of reputation and trust to be considered. Who is going to trust someone who blatantly and in public steals. A thief is a thief whether its Neville's IP or an Enron excecutive

Picture: Kenneth Lay

God is Disintermediating

The cartoon comes from B L Ochman's blog. He says: “The cartoon from the gapingvoid widget that you're looking at is a sea change in online marketing and advertising.”

I juxtapose it with my comment Marketing RIP and what do we get?

I still hold out hope for branding and (some) advertising. The rest is disintermediated.

Does this mean God is disintermediating?

PR Newswire is auctioning off some national news releases...

The old model is no longer what it seemed.

I am grateful to Adventures in Business for alerting me to this news. This is another case of disintermediation. PR Newswire has disconnected the relationship between the product and its price. Through eBay, It has invited people to look at the value of its service instead.

The consequence of its action is that the 'Marketing' inside PR Newsire is now dependant on relationships and not the value chain.

The extension of this idea is that PR consultancies will offer ideas and programmes to clients who can bid a price for the work in advance.

Equally, one can imagine a news agency bidding to distribute stories generated by PR departments which would mean that news stories would really have to be newsy but would also mean that there would be advanced notice of a story that everyone will be waiting for.

Auctioning off your service may have been and interesting idea as a promotion but now the genie is out of the bottle. News release distribution costs are no longer what they seem - they are negotiable.

Picture: Fire is Feminine

Press Release - You are on the wane

Starting in August, Logitech will include a link within its Webcam software that will enable people to record video directly to the Internet, according to sources close to the deal.

One of my favourite web sites is run by The Royal Marsden Hospital. It is an online cartoon for children facing Chemotherapy. Then there is the peek into the future and Epic. Not many in PR have taken virtual communities very far and few will have seen how good they are.

For professor Edward Castronova in his Business Week interview, games are quite real. There are other academics even better known like Howard Reingold, with such ideas.

But I have some more prosaic examples.

Imagine creating an auction house online. There is a fantasy for you. Could you imagine bringing together hundreds of academics into a modern Library of Alexandria with whole nations visiting this temple every day. What about a classroom only inches across? Were these ideas born out of a PR communicators brain?

There have been some attempts by PR people such a putting an email address in a news story.

Already there are a host of environments waiting for an imaginative PR person to use.

But, Convergent applications have a long way to go. There have been some attempts such a putting an email address in a news story. So why not a 100 contractors in Second Life on television as part of an integrated Olympic PR programme?

Who has yet to put podcasts on Internet kiosks at the railway station. Have passers by been invited to blog in Oxford Street about their brand experience with comments projected onto an electronic billboard above Eros? Nice thought.

Highly targeted, engaged publics are at the heart of what I am saying. A massive population of people who want to spread your messages for 'free'.

As soon as we break the bonds of the last 40 years, there is so much that can be done. Imagine asking the question, instead of a press release what will engage our publics?

A cold winter has set in and the press release wanes.

Picture: Luxorian