PR Squared

About

Blogroll

PR 2.0 Tactics

PR Squared

Got a note from PRWeb's David McInnis about the news today that BusinessWire will use the PRWeb/Vocus platform for Social Media News Release distribution and Search Engine Optimization.

"Business Wire will use a private label version of Vocus's PRWeb press release distribution platform to provide a new search engine optimized (SEO) and social media distribution service. The partnership will utilize Vocus's proprietary PRWeb press release SEO methods and social media distribution channels to give Business Wire customers maximum visibility on the internet and in social media networks."

First off, kudos to David and his team. This feels like a coup for them. They get to tout BW's reach and leverage BW's reputation, while maintaining their distinct brand and cementing their reputation for innovation in the 2.0 era. BusinessWire can focus on other big-picture stuff that affects their business: the Social Media check-box has been checked-off, via this news. A win-win for both companies.

I was also glad to see BusinessWire get off the stick, not once but twice this week. This past Monday the wire service announced support for XHTML. That's a gobbledygooky way of saying that you can now (finally!) embed hyperlinks in your press release text, include sub-heads, and (hallelujah!) add basic formatting like bold, italics, etc. (I'd point you directly to that release, but BusinessWire's own newsroom unfortunately is set-up so that clicking on one of their press releases spawns a pop-up window, without a distinct URL.)

In other news, I was contacted today by the fella who runs "The Press Release News Network," or PRNN. Among the services and claims:

"We create a flash advertisement with your release. We provide an audio version of your press release with professional voice talent." And, "We will provide your business over 50 times the search engine exposure than any other service in the world."

I am curious if anyone's used these guys? I told the president, Kevin Dill, that I'd be happy to chat with him. I'll report back on that conversation. I admit to being intrigued, but don't know yet if this is a legit operation.

It wasn't that long ago that some Social Media advocates were rubbing their chins, pondering the long-term fate of the wire services (as was I). Seems to me that BusinessWire, PRNewswire, et al., can be as viable as ever, if they continue to push ahead in the Social Media arena. The fact that new entrepreneurs see opportunity in news distribution is a promising sign.

WEEKEND UPDATE (10/1): I asked Dave Armon, the big cheese at PRNewswire, about his reaction to the PRWeb/Businesswire pact, and he gave me permission to use his response here:

"The BW/Vocus deal was expected. Without an SEO solution, BW was at a competitive disadvantage. (PRN has) been enhancing all releases that move on PR Newswire's US1 Newsline with search engine optimization -- at no additional charge -- since 2004. If BW's offering works like ours, the news release issuers ought to be pleased with the longer shelf life and insight into what readers are saying about their news online. All good stuff for our industry."

Tags: prweb, vocus, businesswire, prnn, david+micinnis, xhtml, social+media, public+relations, pr+2.0, social+media+news+release, SEO

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Full disclosure: I wish I'd thought about "opening an agency in Second Life" (SL) before Text 100 did. It's hip. Because I have been an avid gamer since Pong, someday I hope to be a hardcore SL advocate. But, petty jealousies notwithstanding, I just ain't there yet.

I have been quiet about the blogosphere's love affair with SL because I've been waiting patiently for disillusionment to set in. I am not suggesting that disillusionment has set-in yet, mind you --- it is just on my mind because I've found that many clients are not yet ready to commit to Social Media (this week, anyway). A chit-chat about Social Bookmarking is hard enough; anytime I've brought up SL-style opportunities to clients, unfortunately the response has been negative. ("Who let that wild-eyed Social Media zealot into the room?")

Specific to SL, I think that for now the chat interface is too confusing and anarchic for most people to stay engaged. As Kami Huyse suggested in the follow-up post about her SL meetup of PR folks, "it is very difficult to follow along if 15-plus avatars are 'chatting' all at once." Perhaps live voice apps in SL, such as those offered by Vivox (a former SHIFT client) will help --- but as Kami also noted, 15 people talking at once can be just as confusing as 15 people typing.

Here's my quickie analysis on the short-term opportunities for using Second Life for PR purposes:

• 1:1 interviews between geographically-dispersed people. An "emote" via avatar is far better at conveying tone than email (or even conference calls).
• Machinima product demos. Imagine creating a mini-movie to demonstrate your clients' products, using SL avatars as the actors. This wouldn't work for all clients, but if you stretch your mind, it could work more often than you might suppose.
• Virtual collaboration. I don't think it's possible yet, but certainly we can expect a day when SL avatars can share and edit RL (that's RL for "Real Life") documents and files, online and "in front of each other."
• Concept testing. Imagine SL avatars signing non-disclosure agreements in order to access a top-secret "lab" where representatives from consumer brand giants preview their ideas for upcoming products and campaigns, to get the first-time reactions of a highly-educated, tech-savvy audience.
• Word-of-Mouth Marketing. If avatars are talkin' about it, it must be cool. I wonder if Linden Labs could (or would) monitor avatar chatter and allow marketers to mine it for buzzwords, trends, etc. I wonder if this could take a dark turn, i.e., when will the first avatar be outed as a stealth marketer? Is it okay to burn avatars in effigy?

There are a lot of reasons to be intrigued by the virtual world of Second Life. Now all we need are real-world clients to forge ahead with budgets & balls.

Tags: second+life, linden+labs, vivox, wom, kami+huyse, text+100, social+media, pr+2.0, public+relations, marketing

Posted by Todd Defren at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The "Paradox of Excellence" smacked me upside the head this morning.

A client who has repeatedly told us that "SHIFT is the best agency I've ever worked with" called up to voice their concern about a missed editorial opportunity.  (Anyone in the PR realm has felt that sting.  I won't belabor the details.)

You'd think that after 15 years in the business it would be hard to surprise me, but I confess that I was indeed flustered by how quickly a heretofore blissful client became so disgruntled.  And that's when I remembered the Paradox of Excellence:

"Many companies discover their improved performance doesn't translate into higher perceived value.  In fact, it simply shifts the customer's expectations upward, causing the customer to take the new, improved performance for granted. 

"High-performance companies unwittingly create unrealistic customer expectations that become impossible to meet.  [... This is] the paradox of excellence: 'the better you perform, the more invisible you become --- to everything but bad news.'"

Think that's malarkey?  How often do you think about your electric utility?  Only when the bill shows up and when the power is out, right?  Your power company is invisible to you except when these two bad things happen.

It's all about "expectation management."  One of the expectations that I'm going to add to my repertoire for clients is, "It's rare, but, sometimes, shit happens."

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is a day in history that ought to be remembered as "Do The Right Thing Day."

On this day in 1776, Nathan Hale was executed for espionage by the British. General Washington had asked his troops for a volunteer to infiltrate the enemy territory, and only 21-year old Hale stepped forward. Today was the day he uttered his famous phrase, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." How many men's names do we remember from among the hundreds whom Washington implored to take on this task? Only one man; the man who did the right thing.

On this day in 1862, President Lincoln gave his watershed Emancipation Proclamation: the speech that freed America's slaves and gave new momentum and vibrancy to the strife between the States. What had been a war about "the right of secession" became a battle to do the right thing.

On this day in 1961, President Kennedy signed the executive order that gave birth to the Peace Corps. He envisioned 100,000 young American volunteers spreading out each year to do the right thing for the rest of the world. While the service never reached such lofty subscription numbers, it is still an important (if under-appreciated) part of America's international goodwill efforts. It's the better face, the truer face, of the American people.

What are you going to do today?

Hat-tip to NPR.

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:24 AM | Permalink

From David Armano, a hysterical graphic that explains a day-in-the-life of a blogger.

And from Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion, a terrific graphic from Stephanie Quilao that explains RSS to the "Oprah crowd." I love the new acronym for RSS --- "Ready for Some Stories." Brilliant.

Tags: stephanie+quilao, steve+rubel, micropersuasion, david+armano, digitas, rss, blogs, bloggers

Posted by Todd Defren at 01:39 PM | Permalink

Thanks to "the other Todd" (which is what he probably calls me), PR-Squared is going mobile.

If you frequently access the site via your cool new PDA or smart-phone, feel free to point your mini-browser to http://www.pr-squared.com/mobile. 

Unhooked, unlocked, unhinged!

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tom Foremski of SiliconValleyWatcher shot to even-greater prominence when he (and his son) outed YouTube star LonelyGirl15 as a fraud.  As he has continued to ponder "what it all means," Tom has identified the issue of "trust" as one of the core concepts with which the mediasphere must grapple.

"Free access to distribution systems means exposure to lies, frauds and creative license. We need a better system to verify the origins and authenticity of information."

The NY TIMES covered this concept, from a marketing perspective, this week:

"'Advertisers who want to generate interest in a product with a mysterious teaser campaign may tread lightly around consumers who feel increasingly duped by fake videos and covert viral marketing efforts,' said Andy Sernovitz, the chief executive of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, a trade group in Chicago."

The public response (pro & con) to LonelyGirl15 and other viral campaigns will adjust the campaign plans of marketers.  But, Tom rightly points out in his post that this issue of trust also applies to the Social Media News Release, and to "news" in general. 

It's all well and good for the corporation to offer-up official content, which bloggers and other media mavens can mix-up, mash-up, etc., but by the same token the original source of that content ought to be identifiable and verifiable.  This is an especially pressing issue as the Social Media era dawns.

You can trace this need for authenticity-of-authorship back to the original invention of the printing press.  According to Wikipedia:

"Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, 'One Author, one work (title), one piece of information...'"

Thinking specifically about the Social Media News Release, I wonder if it is possible to make it standard for any piece of content that's copied from the news release to automatically link back to the originating URL?  In other words, if you were to cut&paste an executive's quote from a Coca-Cola press release, could some sort of Digital Rights Management system be used to automatically verify to all readers that that quote links back to the official Coca-Cola website?  Perhaps the microformat standard being worked on at the Social Media Club will incorporate some of the capability.  Perhaps the XPRL movement will be our salvation.

Let's hope someone figures this out soon.  It's a brainiac-level problem.  Content without trust = anarchy.

Tags: tom+foremski, siliconvalleywatcher, lonelygirl15, public+relations, hrelease, marketing, social+media, pr+2.0, social+media+news+release

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

As an increasing amount of information is created and shared globally, it boggles my mind when I hear about big-time censorship in major-league countries. In case it escaped your notice (as it did mine), last week:

"China tightened its grip on the media ... and banned all reports distributed within the country by foreign agencies, until they had been cleared by the State."

As the inimitable Sam Whitmore of MediaSurvey puts it:

"[...] newswires such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, (etc.) no longer can sell news or photos directly to Chinese media, banks or other subscribers. Instead, they must filter it through Xinhua, China's official news agency. Xinhua will decide whether China's 'national security, reputation and interests' are at risk. If Xinhua approves, the news can be disseminated --- once the foreign newswire pays Xinhua a fee, which the newswires must negotiate individually... Imagine if American newspapers paid the U.S. government to censor their articles, while the government competes with these same newspapers in the marketplace. That's basically what's unfolding in China."

Behavior like this --- in combination with institutional corruption; a lack of respect for global commercial rules; and a lack of transparency --- leads me to think that China's bullet-train trajectory will ultimately be derailed. Its cluelessness about the Internet compounds matters. I am sure that much of the Chinese population bends to the State's rules of information engagement (and indeed, many Chinese citizens are complicit), but I also have a hunch that thousands-upon-thousands have found ways to skirt those rules. Just as the invention of the printing press granted unheralded access to information to the masses back in Gutenberg's day, we are now at the very beginning of the process by which the Internet revolutionizes societies everywhere.

(I have plenty of angst about our current State of the Union, but, really, God Bless America.)

Unrelated p.s. - Happy Birthday to Mike Driehorst! A day late but he's such a good guy, I know I'll be forgiven.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've written before (here and here) about how PR pros could use a combination of del.icio.us and RSS to keep reporters in-the-loop, in a highly contextual way, about clients' news and views on industry events.

But sometimes, once you've got a reporter's interest, you really want to guide them down a trail. You want to sculpt their research. You can see the final story, fully-realized, in your own head: you just know that if you could get the reporter to see things the way you do, they would get really jazzed.

But to do so today is next-to-impossible: your toadying help is just not that welcome; the reporter can do their own research, thank-you-very-much.

But what if you could make it really, really easy? What if you could simply point the reporter down a trail, knowing that your efforts to construct a story for them will be fully understood (and maybe even appreciated)?

That day is dawning, thanks to new 2.0 services like Trailfire. Check out this trail, a demo I put together for this blog post, that explains how the Social Media News Release came to be. After you've checked it out, extrapolate how you might use this kind of service to communicate with the media on behalf of your own clients.

Pretty cool, eh?

NOTE: the Trailfire service is still in beta, so please be patient if you discover any glitches.

HAT-TIP: to Scott Monty of the Social Media Marketing Blog.

Tags: trailfire, social+media+news+release, public+relations, pr, pr+2.0

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Here's a "PR 2.0" idea that I dig, yet which is doomed to never launch. It surely would not work today, anyway, except for perhaps the most web-savvy of journalists.

Concept:

• Imagine if each PR agency (or PR person) maintained a "Pitch Blog."
• Rather than blasting pitches to a wide swath of reporters, the PR pro would post their story idea to the blog.
  • (Primarily trend pitches, not time-sensitive news.)
• The blog post containing the story idea is (Technorati) "tagged" with the names of the reporters who the PR pro would want to approach.
  • I'd guess no more than 3 reporters would be tagged, or else it would be too sploggy.
  • The 3 reporters would ideally not work for competing publications (though that might make things interesting: "whoever responds first gets the most material").
• The post would assure the 3 reporters that they'd each be given additional story angles, spokespeople, i.e., anyone who responded would get unique content of some sort.
• The reporter would "find" the pitch via a Technorati search on their own name (or blog, etc.).
  • This could be an automated RSS "ego search" --- in which case, the reporter would basically have an "alternate in-box" (RSS-based) solely devoted to receiving PR pitches via these Pitch Blogs.
  • You could similarly tag a Social Media News Release with some top reporters' names.

Benefits:

• This idea would inject ever-greater transparency into the PR process.
• It would be interesting to track which reporters were being pitched (the most, the least, the worst!)
• Other reporters could check their peers' and competitors' "pitch tags" to get ideas.
• Other PR pros could get a sense for how busy the reporter is, based on the ### of pitches being tagged; as well as get a better sense of what types of pitches seem to get that journalist's attention.
• Other PR pros could also mock and/or critique their peers' pitches --- which would ultimately make us all better writers, story-tellers, PR professionals.
• Less PR spam for reporters: only real news goes into their main in-box, and when they are looking for some good trend ideas, they could just tap into their "alternate in-box" full of the pitches in their RSS reader.

Why It Would Never Work:

• Journalism thrives on exclusivity. The media does not want their story ideas available for all to see.
  • Similarly, the media does not want the rest of the world to know how many of their story ideas originate in the PR realm.
• Bloggers would use the Pitch Blogs to jack-up some memes that the PR firm's clients don't want or expect.
• PR people wince at the idea of posting their pitches in public.
• PR agency principals don't always want their client lists (or employee names) exposed, for fear of competitive poaching. Additionally, at some point, a bone-headed move would occur, out in the open. Yikes!

There are probably another 20 reasons why this idea would never fly. But sometimes it's worth exploring the lame ideas, because new, cool ideas just might leap from that Pandora's Box o' Lameness.

UPDATE: Although she finds the core concept "inspired," Teresa Valdez Klein of the Blog Business Summit wisely points out that this practice, if it were ever instituted, would require that "the practice would need to be explained to bystanders ... many readers and searchers might be truly confused" to see reporters' names displayed willy-nilly.

In other words, if Suzy Consumer does a search on her favorite NYTimes writer, looking for an article that that journalist had written months ago, Suzy might be understandably confused if the search results pulled up a score of pitches intended for that writer. Interesting feedback, Teresa, thanks --- you've pointed out another good reason why this idea is flawed!

Tags: social+media, public+relations, pr, marketing, pr+2.0

Posted by Todd Defren at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For folks who despise the "PR 2.0" phrase, I must highlight a comment that came through on my recent post about "Top 5 Principles of the Social Media News Release."

The comment came courtesy of Philip Wolff, the editor in chief of Skype Journal. It was so thoughtful and compelling that it deserved to be re-published as a full blog post...

If Phil's thoughts don't qualify as deserving of the "PR 2.0" moniker, I give up on trying to convince yaz!

I don't know if you find this a little techie but part of the new media release is sharing structured data. Either as a document or database query, or as a stream of structured data.

Examples:

For structured data in document form, imagine an airline's site generating a spreadsheet or xml file of statistics about each aircraft in its fleet, on demand, with the number of miles flown, number of passenger-miles carried, hours since last oil change, on-time record. All data automatically updated by maintenance and other internal databases. So when you're writing about the interview you had on the plane, or the plane crash, or are analyzing safety data across craft of the same type, you've put the latest and best data at the reporter's fingertips. The same data PR people would ordinarily spend days or weeks coaxing from internal line and IT staff. Instead, the reporter asks your web form for data, and is promptly served with hard, fresh numbers.

For a stream, look at Skype.com with its RSS feed of data points updated every few minutes, showing the latest number of user accounts, cumulative downloads, and online Skype users as of each post. Various folks subscribed to that feed, turned it into web charts, set alerts for when critical milestones were approaching (like the 100 millionth download), and used the latest, publicly available stats in narrative stories ("7,031,314 people were online as Skype announced a new partership with...") without waiting 48 hours for PR people to cycle the questions.

Imagine if Skype had a form which said "email me when the number of simultaneous users crosses this number for the first time: (insert your own number here)" or, "email me with stats as of 7am, Eastern, on Monday."

I don't know if you call this multimedia, but they're really not "media assets" in the "media asset management" sense. They are windows into an enterprise's data pulse. And part of the publicity toolkit.

"Windows into an enterprise's data pulse"?!

How very, very "2.0."

Tags: pr+2.0, public+relations, pr, marketing, social+media, social+media+news+release, hrelease, skype, skype+journal, philip+wolff

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

During the recent NewMediaRelease podcast (#7), conducted by Shel Holtz, Chris Heuer, Brian Solis and Tom Foremski, an interesting debate came up regarding the use of del.icio.us.

As fans of the Social Media News Release (SMNR) know, our template (pdf) included a field for a "purpose-built del.icio.us page," the intent of which --- to provide journalists with both time-sensitive and on-going context for their research and stories --- is well-covered in more detail here.

However, when Shel put out his own SMNR for his client, SpiralFrog, he envisioned a del.icio.us tagging strategy based on "crowdsourcing." In other words, if I understand it rightly, his hope was that people who read the release and/or saw related content would tag their own del.icio.us entries with the "spiralfrog" tag, as seen here.

Fascinating. According to Shel, many of those "spiralfrog" del.icio.us tags were motivated by Shel's release and follow-on coverage in the Financial Times. Congrats to Shel, Neville, et al.! This bears watching: in the future it could become a metric for the success of a PR campaign.

In his SpiralFrog release, Shel also included a purpose-built page, at http://del.icio.us/spiralfrog. Now, I am a devout Holtz-worshipper, but I kinda think Shel & Neville may have missed an opportunity here.

At the http://del.icio.us/spiralfrog site, they could have saved a host of links related to online-music (both historical and contemporary articles re: piracy issues, blog posts & news articles about iTunes' Fair Use policies, Digital Rights Management, online advertising growth, etc.), with a few sentences attached to each bookmark that explained WHY each link might be of-value to the curious journalist or blogger.

It's not too late to do that, for future story pitches, but by keeping the current http://del.icio.us/spiralfrog site so sparse at launch, the initial burst of interest created by the SpiralFrog SMNR was probably not fully exploited. (Having said that, though, it seems like this was a monster PR project in its own right, and heaven knows it takes a lot of work to research, tag, and annotate even a single page worth of bookmarks in del.icio.us!)

That said, I think the SpiralFrog release was spot-on, and from what I heard during the NMRCast, it was not only easy to create but was very well received by the media. Hallelujah!

More good news: additional entries to the SNMR universe by Lee Jeans and Chevrolet!

Tags: shel+holtz, neville+hobson, spiralfrog, social+media+news+release, public+relations, pr, social+media

Posted by Todd Defren at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is the email I sent to our staff on Friday:

"Hi all – As you know, this Monday marks the 5^th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Obviously this was a day that not only changed the course of world history, but also impacted many of us personally, on many different levels.

The agency's principals wrestled with how to best deal with this event. Should we ask for a moment of silence, agency-wide? Should we make it a floating holiday? Allow people to come in an hour late?

The fact is, the importance of September 11 rightfully resists any attempts at 'mandated' observances. So, this Monday, commemorate the day in whatever way feels appropriate to you.

If there is an event going on in downtown Boston or San Francisco on Monday that you’d like to attend, at any hour – please feel free to attend. If you can’t face the day – please, stay home. If you’d like to watch some sort of commemoration or documentary on TV that morning – come in late. If you would prefer that Monday be business-as-usual – come on in and make it a business-as-usual day. All we’d ask is that you inform your manager in advance..."

Writing that email was harder than I thought. I went through a handful of drafts. The terrorist attacks were both unifying and polarizing; the experience changed the way we act internally and the way we've been perceived externally. All of which was in my head as I wrote that note to our staff. Being a blogger, my inclination was to spew my personal thoughts and opinions on terrorism, democracy, politics, etc. But in the end I was humbled, made nearly speechless, by remembering both the viciousness of the attacks and the stupendous loss of life on 9/11/01.

Here's my advice for today, in case you were looking for any advice: keep the day simple.

UPDATE: a better idea for how-to spend the day can be found here.

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've continued to think about the Social Media News Release, and I think I've pinpointed 5 core principles required for these new media versions of the 100-year old document.

• Democratize "Access" - The content (words, multimedia, links) need to be available to all comers. We cannot set up artificial barriers (i.e., "thou shalt present journalist credentials in order to download official jpegs of our logo").

• Ensure "Accuracy" - First off, given the electronic (and thus easily transfigured) nature of the Social Media News Release, we need to be thinking about some sort of "trustmark" scheme. Just as importantly, corporations need to see the benefit of providing "official" versions of their logos, graphics, and other multimedia, for use and re-use by all media types.

• Embrace "Context" - In the old days, you'd never clue a reporter to the assorted articles that had already been written about a client. Nowadays, you're a clod if you think they won't find these articles via a quick Google search, so, why not make the reporter's job easier by proactively providing links to industry-related research and yes, even to "competitive" articles (via del.icio.us, for example, where you can also append your own notes about each article)?

• Build "Community" - We need to make it easy for anyone who views the Social Media News Release to: comment on its content; re-mix its multimedia elements for use in blogs, on YouTube, and in the online versions of traditional print publications; bookmark it using Social Media tools, etc. We also need to track this response (T'rati tags, Sphere, etc.) and show a willingness to respond --- openly, and, as appropriate.

• Be "Findable" - Borrowing from Bhargava's ideas for Social Media Optimization and with a hat-tip to the wire services' increasing understanding of the importance of "search optimized" news, all I need to add here is the reminder that even the NY TIMES has considered how to run headlines that would make their content more readily "found" by the search engines. If the Gray Lady worries about Google, so should we all.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Anything I've forgotten? Anything else I ought to incorporate into my thinking about the "core principles" of the next-gen news release?

Tags: social+media+press+release, social+media, public+relations, pr, marketing, hrelease

Posted by Todd Defren at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Shel Holtz was nice enough to write-up our Novell win, including his analysis of the benefits of corporate transparency. I loved this line, in particular:

"A closed approach caused analysts to wonder what the heck Novell was thinking, leading to a lowered valuation and the CEO's departure. Now striving for transparency, the company sees opportunities for 'engagement with the market --- both media and the broader universe of Novell watchers...'"

I am absolutely convinced that "transparency" is the #1 most positive ideal to rise from the Social Media era. Not because I believe in any "absurd notion that transparency means something like 'no secrets of any kind, ever, under any circumstances.'" (Shel's well-chosen words), but because "transparency" speaks to a belief in fairness, and to the wisdom of crowds.

For example, if a blogger complains about how XO Communications and Verizon completely screwed up Internet connectivity for an entire suburb of Boston, it's incumbent on those vendors to decide whether to monitor for these voices, and to respond if they feel it is in their best interest.

In an ideal world, these vendors would see the blogger's post and draft a quick, apologetic, explanatory note that they could post on their own site; in the Comments section of this blogger's site; and that of any other online complainants. If they did that, they might earn kudos and credit for their transparency.

If they didn't do that (and they didn't), the "crowds" of the blogosphere might pick up the cause and create a messy hubbub. Or, not. That's up to the crowd: in its wisdom, it might decide other matters were more important (and they are).

The point is: companies that commit themselves to listening intently and responding honestly will win the hearts of their stakeholders. And when they do screw up, if they keep true to their principles of transparency (don't clam up!), there will be enough brownie-points in the blogosphere to help them coast through it more quickly.

Tags: shel+holtz, blogging, transparency, social+media, pr, public+relations, novell, shift+communications

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

If you are reading this, then that means that we finally have Internet access again, but as of this writing, we're well into Day 2 Without The Internet.  No Web, no email, nada.  Something to do with a malfunctioning switch at our teleco's site.  Some baloney like that.  We lost thousands of dollars' worth of productivity.  Lots of people simply went home, to salvage a few leads and send out client reports using their Gmail and Yahoo accounts.  It was sucky.  Needless to say, we're re-thinking our telecom options.  (Suggestions welcome.)

The Internet.  It's important.

When I got started in PR back in 1991, there was no World Wide Web.  Most people were not even using e-mail.  Few of the execs at my first "real" job even had PCs on their desks.  And it was a tech company!

When you wanted to reach out to a reporter, you relied on the phone, a letter or a fax.  I even resorted to a telegram, once.

When it came time to develop a database of editorial opportunities and reporters' contact info, you had to pore over huge books (anyone remember those big, fat Bacons Media Directories?), and then manually transcribe the data using FileMaker software.  Good lord, it was primitive.  I won't even mention the hours wasted stuffing press kits.  Ugh. 

Nowadays, most of those processes are automated, searchable, etc.  Email and IM and social networking rule the day.  In our profession, these tools have proven to be invaluable in terms of both workaday productivity and media effectiveness.

The Internet.  I love the Internet.  The Internet is important.

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)