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Whether or not you choose to put out a Social Media Release, I am quite sure that you want your news to rank well within Google. 

In today’s search-centric culture, if you don’t show up on the first or second page of results, it is almost like not being online at all.  As Kami Huyse and Geoff Livingston noted during their recent NewComm Forum session, “The 1^st page of results on Google may as well be your company’s homepage.”

That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) principles come into play.

While the SHIFT team has always tried to stay abreast of SEO techniques for publishing client news, like most agencies we wound up with a few in-house experts.  It was high time we shared the wealth more broadly internally – and more broadly still, with our fellows in the PR industry.

So here’s the latest PDF from SHIFT Communications, for your copyright-free use.  A handy guide to SEO for press releases. 

This knowledge was collected and collated from across our internal experts, with additional tips provided by both our friends at the wire services and an outside SEO consultant or two.  However, SEO is a complicated business, so, Your Mileage May Vary.

Like the brilliant David Armano of Logic + Emotion, and the inimitable Chris Brogan, I often wonder if I’m giving enough back to the community.  So I truly hope you find this stuff useful.  (And hey, before ya go, if you do get some value from PR-Squared, don’t forget to subscribe!)  Thanks!

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Last Monday (4/21), the inimitable Sam Whitmore of MediaSurvey published this handy list of Old- and New-School media types who are active on Twitter. 

I’ll re-publish a condensed version of Sam’s list below, but first want to pontificate on the shocking headline of this post: am I seriously suggesting that a PR person MUST become an active Twitter user if they want to have a meaningful career?  Even though Twitter is supposedly still a below-the-radar service?

Well, yea, kinda.  But for more – and more varied – reasons than you might think.

First: personal branding.  There is no question that the managers and HR reps at savvy PR agencies and corporations are in the twitterstream.  We have hired more than one new employee that we either recurited via Twitter, or, who had a leg-up in the process because we knew and respected the way they handled themselves online.

Next: knowledge.  If you’re “following” and interacting with a bunch of smart people, you will learn more stuff; you will be “in the know” before peers, competitors, and clients.  You’ll get first dibs on the coolest Web 2.0 applications.  While your friends wonder about “that tweety stuff” you’ll already be twhirling and utterzing: this isn’t just cool-for-cool’s sake – these are the apps that will be discussed in the History Books of this era.  Five years from now, you won’t be able to hold your head up in a newbiz meeting if you can’t claim to have been on-board from the get-go.

Also on the “knowledge” front: with your personal community established, I can’t emphasize enough how valuable Twitter can be when you need a hand – an idea – or, reactions to an idea.  Twitter is an instant focus group, on-call 24/7, and comprised of some of the most brilliant and thoughtful people you’d ever want to meet.

Last but not least: relationships.  Take a look at the list below.  Twitter may not be mainstream, yet, but it’s well-known to the influencers and fellow practitioners with whom most PR people interact.  Why wouldn’t you want to know what Marshall Kirkpatrick or Harry McCracken are up to today?  Thanks to Twitter, you might know anything from “what they had for breakfast” to “how PR pros screw up” to “what article they’re writing.”  With such knowledge, you will become a better PR pro, period.

Please note that I am NOT saying, “You can use Twitter to stalk the media!”  No, no, no!  I am saying you just might be able to forge a true relationship with these folks by interacting with them regularly, and in a purely social, “human” way. 

If you want to keep track of our own twitterati, we’ve consolidated SHIFT’s twitterfeed using Yahoo Pipes.  Check it out: over time you’d see that, yes, we interact with media contacts on Twitter – we’ll even throw out a “twitpitch” now and again – but, we also act like undercaffeinated goofballs a lot, too.  (Cuz we’re human, and that’s finally cool again.) 

Posted by Todd Defren at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

Today Phil Gomes of Edelman blogged about the misguided priorities of the attendees at last week’s NewComm Forum.  Phil suggested that the attendees were too focused on the tools, at the expense of time spent pondering Big Picture issues like Net Neutrality and the globalization of the Web.

He’s right, as usual, but in the Comments of his post I tried to leaven the frustration with some additional perspective.

I think that for many of the NewComm attendees, “Social Media” is, by itself, a Big Picture issue.  Although to the PRESENTERS at the Forum, Social Media is still exciting – but somewhat “old hat” – to the ATTENDEES it’s still all too scary, new, and just plain weird.

Thus I think that Maggie Fox and I were able to hold court to a full house in our heated debate on the Social Media Release (SMR) because it represents a tactical, tactile way for newbies to “get started” on the Social Media trail.

“Think about it: the SMR may be tactical (it is!), but it also forces marketers to think about new constituents, new ways to reach those constituents, and thus, forces a change in thinking all the way to the strategy level.

“(The SMR represents) a bottom-up approach (to getting started)... which, kinda-sorta, is what Social Media is all about?”

Not sure that I know the answer to Phil’s justifiable complaint, but this idea of “starting small” in order to “think big” may be part of it?

(NewComm Forum was great, by the way – as Phil also attested in his post.  In addition to having an all-too-rare chance to say hello to folks like Shel Israel, Shel Holtz, KD Paine, Mike Manuel, Geoff Livingston, Kami Huyse, Brian Solis and David Parmet – and his adorable daughter – I also got to meet some awesome folks for the first time, like Chris Brogan, NewMediaJim of NBC, Richard Binhammer of Dell, Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy, even the Queen of Spain! etc., etc.  That’s not intended as linkbait, by the way, but rather to encourage you to check out some awesome people.  High quality all around.)

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I didn’t think I would ever do this; the original Social Media Release (SMR) template took on a life of its own and I assumed that beyond evangelizing for the format, my “creative” work was done. 

But, as I’ve been awestruck by the adoption of the first template by some Big Brands, gratified by the response of the wire services, and energized by the many debates surrounding the SMR, I’ve learned some lessons that could inspire a fresh look at the original version.

Version 1.5 of the Social Media Release (download it here) has several purposes:

To further atomize the content: note that each of the substantive chunks of content (e.g., the core news, the different multimedia elements) are now shareable on an individual basis, empowering people to borrow liberally from its diverse content, for their own purposes.  You like the SMR’s embedded video; you want to embed it on your own blog, but feel no compunction to link to the SMR as the original source?  You want to cite the “core news” without the multimedia sizzle?  Now you can.  Slice & dice, splice & remix.  The newsmaker’s content becomes yours to play with however you like. 

To highlight the importance of engagement:  note that Version 1.5 includes a permalink to the newsmaker’s online newsroom, which should be powered by a blogging engine to enable moderated comments and trackbacks.  While a handful of wire services either already enable comments (or plan to), honestly the best place for folks to discuss the news is at the newsmaker’s own site, which is not only an “official” spot for conversation but also serves to aggregate any directly-related posts via the trackbacks/pingbacks (a.k.a. “blogs that link to this news”).

To emphasize flexibility:  perhaps the biggest complaint about Version 1.0 of the SMR was the suggested use of bulleted text, versus the traditional narrative format of traditional releases … while I still prefer bullets, it’s totally fine to stick with the narrative approach if you can incorporate the much-more-important components of interaction and shareable media.  Remember, this is merely a template: discard any elements that don’t work for you!

To account for technology changes:  the universal “Share This” widget (many variations exist) are great ways to allow end-users to post/share information in their preferred format.  In addition, since the publication of Version 1.0, we’ve seen services like Twitter and Facebook make a big impact on the social networking scene.  While such socnet stars are only beginning to achieve true mainstream adoption, it’s cool to envision a day when we could not only read an executive spokesperson’s official quote, but also have the option of following them via their twitterstream or personal blog. 

Additionally, the inclusion of an OPML feed allows the reader to instantly subscribe to all of a company’s official blogs.  (Per the Blog Council: “What do you do when hundreds or thousands of your employees have personal blogs?” – at least one answer is: make it easy to find & track them all!)

To provide greater context:  it’s one thing to offer trackbacks, since those links clearly are relevant to the news release.  But to provide even more value to the reader – especially to writers who may want to draft a big article or blog post – why not offer a “Sphere It” link?  Sphere offers readers a chance to look at related news from the blogosphere and mainstream news sources.

To tighten things up:  another challenge for Version 1.0 was seeing some companies overdo it in terms of “relevant links” … Thus, in part in homage to the scalpel-sharp editing enforced by services like Twitter, I’m suggesting the optional inclusion of “3 Links That Matter” to give readers more info, context, etc.  If you only get 3 links, you’ll be forced to make ‘em good links, eh?

Note that part of the concept here is to show how a SMR might be displayed within a corporate newsroom.  But it’s a 1–page template, folks: for example, I am not suggesting that moderated comments scroll alongside the right-hand nav-bar: items like Comments and Trackbacks likely ought to be tucked under the main SMR content. 

As always, this template is offered for free to the community.  No copyright b.s.  “Hat-tips” are nice but not necessary.  Make it your own.

Hope ya’ll like Version 1.5 of the SMR.  I am submitting it to the IABC working group for their consideration.  Meanwhile, you can contact me directly, or via the comments below, with your feedback!  Or, grab me at NewComm Forum next week to discuss.  Meanwhile I’ll do my best to track any reactions on our del.icio.us page.

Learning something?  Like this post?  Great!  Are you subscribed?  Are you sharing, using that li’l universal widget below?  Thanks!!

Posted by Todd Defren at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (2)

Josh Bernoff, a Forrester analyst, gave some well-deserved linklove this week to my colleague Chris Lynn at SocialTNT; thought I’d return the favor to one of his own colleagues!

Bruce Temkin of Forrester blogs at Experience Matters.  Back in March, Bruce came up with a clever acronym to help gauge a company’s Customer Service responsiveness, called ACES.

Thus it wasn’t too surprising to find myself genuinely impressed when Bruce revisited the ACES theme with a specific example – American Airlines’ recent breakdown.  The elegance of the ACES method struck me as an ingenious approach to measuring any brand’s Crisis Communications response.

I’m not sure that Bruce knew about American’s “dark blog” effort at the time of his assessment (nor how it might have impacted his overall grade of D+ for American), but I do recommend you read his post to appreciate his methodology …

… And more importantly, consider it as a guide to how your own company will be judged, the next time the craphammer comes a’slamming.

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We just wrapped up our 3^rd outing at the RSA Conference, whom we serve as the PR agency-of-record.  The show is the largest IT Security gathering; it’s been going on for 17 years and regularly draws 17,000+ people.  It’s a grueling, exciting assignment.  We’ve rubbed elbows (or spotted & swooned over) folks like Al Gore, Malcolm Gladwell, Bono, etc. … and that was just this year!

With each passing year, Social Media has become a bigger component of our planning. 

For example, in 2006, there was nary a blogger in sight. 

In 2007, our RSA Conference client first wrestled with the issue of “What makes a blogger a blogger?  How should we think about their credentials versus the bona fides of a Wall Street Journal reporter?” 

In 2008, bloggers were embraced.  Because RSA Conference is a hot ticket, we worked with RSAC organizers to set strict but sensible guidelines regarding the assignment of blogger credentials: the focus and longevity of the blog, frequency of updates, Technorati rankings and number of page views were all taken into consideration.  Bloggers who made the cut were given full journalist privileges.

In addition, this year we offered RSA Conference bloggers an official online seal (pictured) to display on their blogs.  And, we warmly supported a Security Bloggers Meetup and twitterfeed. 

Our PR team also maintained their own twitterfeed, to guide “followers” at the show to important events.  (I don’t know if this represents the 1^st time that an official tweetstream was managed by a conference organizer, but anecdotally it was a well-received idea and I foresee more of this type of activity in the future.) 

All in all, a successful event, and I want to offer kudos to our RSA Conference client.  The IT Security field is filled with many brilliant, irascable, and understandably paranoid people; the decision to embrace the blogosphere was not taken lightly – but the right call was made, and I think it benefitted the show and its attendees.

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

April 15 – “Tax Day” – evokes mixed feelings.  Five years ago today, following a soul-searching huddle around a tiny table in an empty hotel bar, my partners and I formed SHIFT Communications.  Although I’m not a big fan of the taxman, generally the good feelings win out.  I love this agency – as you’ll learn if you can stomach the schmaltzy post that follows.

We started SHIFT by buying-out the assets of the agency we’d previously worked at, where each of us had been a senior exec.  Given that this was at the absolute nadir of the Dot-Com Crash, there weren’t many assets left: the former firm had gone from approximately $14M to less than $3M, in the span of 18 months, and the problems weren’t over yet.  This was one helluva gamble.

But we had about 30 happy clients left in the portfolio, serviced by 30 anxious but kick-ass PR pros (down from 150–odd during the hey-day).  My partners and I simply loved “what was left” and gambled our homes, our savings, and the funds of several munificent friends & family members, to launch the new venture from within the shell of the old firm.

As a direct result of launching in a horrific recession, we set one major ground rule for ourselves:  No single client could be allowed to account for more than 10% of annual revenues. 

We never wanted to face the prospect of firing a beloved, loyal staffer just because we’d lost an account.  We didn’t want to live in fear anymore, nor ever again.

A happy side-benefit to this reckless decision: our staffers felt more free to tell clients what they needed to hear, instead of what they wanted to hear.  You can be more bold when you don’t have a mortgage payment riding on whether or not a client likes your counsel.  Best of all, this approach led to extended client relationships; we could act like partners rather than vendors.

Anyway, the economy recovered, and we did okay.  We’ve gone from 30 people to 100, from under $3M to over $10M.  We’re debt-free.  We’ve worked (or still work!) with companies like Novartis, RealNetworks, Oakley Sunglasses, Shimano, Akamai, Travelocity, Quantum, RSA Conference and Yelp.  We launched a groundbreaking approach to re-thinking the humble Press Release.  I’ve spoken before groups as diverse as Emerson College undergrads to The Conference Board. 

It’s been a wild, incredibly fulfilling ride.  Knock-wood, it’ll continue to be as exciting and fruitful over the next 5 years. 

If we do continue to find success, it will only be because of the kind-hearted, hard-working, whip-smart people of SHIFT.  This post is really for them.  Thank you, all, for your continued support and good humor.  As we continue to assail the mountaintop, it’s nice to know we can do it while laughing!

Posted by Todd Defren at 06:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently wrote about “Finding a Work/Life/Tweet Balance” in which I sussed out issues related to tweeting at work. 

But Twitter has another peril: “living out loud” can have toxic side effects to those you may be tweeting about! 

When I see other folks tweet caustically or blog about people who bug them (even if reasonably and anonymously), I can’t help but consider what would happen if their posts or tweets were being tracked during (or after) the encounter. 

Would the discovery of these tweets lead to more fighting, more pettiness?  Or, to more genuine conversations?

I know I’ve let loose with a “regrettable tweet” here and there.  So far it’s led to more genuine conversations (and more than one apology).

I often wonder, “What if Abraham Lincoln had been on Twitter?  He was often frustrated with his generals and advisors and he was always quick with a quip: in Twitter that could be a lethally funny combination.  Would he be so open online?  Would we think more, or less, of him if we were privy to his Presidential twitterstream?”

I suspect we’d think less of him: there’s such a thing as “too much info.” 

Some things are better left untweeted.

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

You write a blog post.  You tweet about it.  It gets posted to your FriendFeed profile.  You share it via Facebook.  You save it to del.icio.us.  

Your friends, followers and colleagues comment on the blog. 

Or they say something nice via Twitter (where a conversation related to your post ensues). 

Or, they comment directly via your FriendFeed profile.  Or they comment on your Facebook post. 

Or they save the post to their own del.icio.us account and add a comment there.

Yes, you’re highly connected with your audience.  Yes, it’s cool that each of your readers can view and respond in the social media outlet of their choice.

But as a result, the conversation is broken.  It’s not threaded.  It’s discontinuous:  lacking sequence and coherence.

Is this a problem?  I dunno.  But I do think it’s problem for the “ideal” of social media: in a fractured commentsphere, individual voices can be too easily discounted or simply lost. 

(Further, the need to spread out far & wide to find and respond to these farflung voices leads to the ever-looming Attention Crash!)

It gets worse when you consider that there are Social Media Monitoring vendors like Radian6, Buzzmetrics, etc. who may judge a bloggers’ level of importance & engagement by evaluating the comment threads that follow each post.  If those comment streams are happening in Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc., I doubt it’s being captured and evaluated by the measurement gurus – thus undervaluing many bloggers’ influence (and certainly discounting their level of “engagement”).

I don’t have an answer; it’s for greater minds than mine.  Do you have the answer?  Maybe Dave Winer has the answer?

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

“How many accounts do you work on?”

This question comes up in virtually every newbiz meeting.  In an agency environment, the “answer” is variable and sometimes hard to explain.

First of all, it varies by level.  For example, the junior person in the room might have three accounts, the senior person on the team might serve six accounts (3 of which probably overlap with the junior person).  How many is too many? 

See?  Already you’re confused.

The thing is – “How many accounts do you work on?” is actually not the question we’re being asked.  

The prospective client is actually asking, “We are going to be spending a lot of budget dollars with you: are you absolutely sure that you have enough bandwidth to kick ass with us?”

There’s a good reason this comes up. 

Historically, many agencies have indeed taken on a bit more business than they can handle.  They count on backfilling with newly-hired staff, once the new revenues are secured. 

This creates a bit of a vicious cycle, though: the current staff feels overburdened not only by the new client workload, but by the additional cycles expended on interviewing and training brand-new staffers.  Thus, the newbies are rarely trained adequately – giving rise to the oft-cited perception that PR people are poorly-trained flacks.

The answer to The Question, then, is two-fold. 

#1 – We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have the bandwidth to kick ass.

#2 – We’ve developed a rigorous training schedule to ensure that all of our employees are well prepared to handle their respective assignments.

Of course, as an agency leader, in order to give these answers you ought to a) have the bandwidth, and b) create a gold-star training program.  The truth will out.

And if you’re a prospective client, be sure to meet the entire team and ask questions not just about their workloads, but also about how they’ve been prepared to handle those daily tasks.  They ought to be eager to discuss it … if not, look closely to see if there’s any fear in their eyes!

Posted by Todd Defren at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I am in San Francisco this week, in a series of meetings that will make blogging difficult.

Until I can gin up some heady thoughts, and also find the time to write ‘em down, I thought I’d leave the blog in the hands of the master, Seth Godin.  The slot from the 1:30 to the 2–minute mark should sound familiar to long-time readers.

I’ve had this video on my hard drive for a while now; I view it now and then for a quick charge of inspiration.  Hope it does the same for you.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

I like to bust Doug Haslam of Topaz for his hyperactivity on Twitter (@DougH).  “How can a fella with almost 12,000 updates, #16 on the TweeterBoard Top 100, possibly find time to do justice to his clients?” 

Being the outrageously good-natured and justifiably confident man that he is, Doug laughs this off with quips such as, “Hold on… I’ll answer you after I finish clipping this latest hit I got for my client in U.S. News & World Report.”  Touche, Mr. Haslam! 

Clearly, Doug has found a “work/life/tweet balance” that works for him, his employer and his clients.  In the process, he’s absolutely augmented his personal brand in the Social Media realm, and that’s to everyone’s benefit.

Still, it’s a question that comes up: “How much tweeting (or other Social Media interaction) is ‘too much’ while on the clock?”

For me the answer comes down to prioritization and respect.  Your priority while on-the-job is to work through your client assignments in an efficient manner: quite simply, that’s what you’re paid to do. 

That does NOT mean “no tweeting til every box is checked-off” … If, in the course of those workaday duties, you can find time to throw off a few quips, questions, etc., go for it.  Just make sure your priorities are straight.  

No doubt it’s fun to tweet, scrabulize, and superpoke; it’s a good way to let off some quick steam.  And, strengthening your personal brand is great (and helpful to clients, in the long run), but, it simply cannot come at the expense of augmenting your client’s brand during the average day. 

On the “respect” side, I simply ask our in-house twitterati to be cognizant of the fact that many of their colleagues and clients are online, too.  They may not be active on Twitter, but often they have accounts; they’re “following” you. 

If your manager is waiting on a document from you before they can head home, or your client is anxious about the state of a pending editorial opportunity, they won’t be too pleased to see a spurt of carefree tweets flying through the twittersphere.  It shows a lack of awareness for a colleague’s priorities, thus, a lack of respect.  Ya need to find that fine line.  

Agree?  Disagree?  Do you struggle with the work/life/tweet balance?  I’m curious to hear your reactions!

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Just when you think that most agencies are starting to “get” Blogger Relations, a wave of bad examples pop-up. 

Luckily, many conscientious PR bloggers have had the patience to explain best practices, and as an industry we can only hope for positive change (and/or some forbearance from justifiably cranky bloggers).

Meanwhile, we all cry out for case studies, eh?  I can only point to great examples that I’ve seen published by others, and occasionally post one of our own.  Here’s one more in that vein.

Our client, NEAT Receipts (previously covered in the “Turning Lemons into Lemonade” post), makes a handy portable scanner.  Most of our work on the account, as you might expect, had been focused on businesspeople and, specifically, road warriors.  “Go to a business lunch, then scan the receipt on the front seat of your rental car before you leave the parking lot; build your expense report as-you-go.”  We get tons of ink for this straightforward pitch.

But one reporter whom we’d been talking to happened to leave her post at a techie outlet to join Martha Stewart Omnimedia.  Wonder of wonders, NEAT Receipts received a high-profile hit with Martha Stewart: which promptly caused the NEAT Receipts scanner to hit #1 on Amazon.com, swamping the company’s e-commerce system for a day. 

Between the Martha Stewart coup and a few subsequent “lifestyle” hits, we quickly figured out that this sleek li’l scanner was a hit with stay-at-home mothers who needed an easy way to capture their kids’ drawings, their household receipts, family recipes, etc.  Lo!  A new market was born.

SHIFT set its sights on mommybloggers.  The problem was that everyone and their mother (pun intended) seemed to have discovered the breadth and power of this blogging niche.  As a result, many of the mombloggers were being swamped with inane spam from lackluster PR folk.  We needed to be especially careful and conscientious in our outreach.

After several weeks of research, we identified a niche-within-the-niche.  Whereas most mommy blogs are, appropriately, about “being a mom,” there is a narrow slice of sites written by some seriously geeky, gadget-loving moms.  Rather than hit-up all mombloggers widely, we narrowcasted our approach to a handful.

Stage One – “listening” – was a core component to the research.  Our list of 10+ “gadget-lovin’ mommas” was whittled down to 3, once we realized that 7 out of our top-ten didn’t seem likely to appreciate our type of gadget or approach.

Stage Two incorporated respectful outreach, either via email or via the Comments section of the mombloggers’ sites.  In the end, each of the three bloggers drafted nice reviews of the NEAT Receipts scanner.

But Stage Three was what differentiated this campaign from most other programs. 

Most PR agencies would have been justifiably happy with these initial successes, marking it as a successful Blogger Relations effort.  We decided to push the envelope.

We re-approached the three mommybloggers with a proposition:  we’d give each of them 10 scanners to give away to their readers in a contest.  To qualify, their readers would need to either:

a) leave a comment about “why I’d love to win a NEAT Receipts scanner” at the mombloggers’ sites, or,

b) write a post on a blog of their own, with a trackback to the mommyblogger’s post which had inspired their entry.  (This was generally preferred, as it contributed to the mommybloggers’ own Technorati ranking and overall search engine rankings.)

Our humble scanner lit up the mommysphere.  Due to this single contest running on 3 sites, we generated over 80 follow-on blog posts about NEAT Receipts, and almost 1,200 reader comments about “what I’d do with a NEAT Receipts scanner.” 

This information was pure gold to our client, who had not only recently discovered a new market opportunity, but now also had access to hundreds of pages’ worth of free, user-generated market research which they could use to inspire future product development and messaging ideas.

From my perspective, this type of success – and the passion created for the NEAT Receipts brand – is even better than a Walt Mossberg hit!  (Not that we wouldn’t love it if Walt took a look, too!) 

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

In an earlier post, some Twitter pals asked Rohit Bhargava of the Influential Interactive Marketing Blog some questions that anticipated his book launch, PERSONALITY NOT INCLUDED (PNI).

His answers are now here, in bold below, for your edification.  Rohit’s a smart fellow, worth listening to here (and following, on Twitter @rohitbhargava, and at his blog).

In addition, be sure to read all the other PNI-related interviews (55 in all!), which are linked to the picture that accompanies this post (or just click here, lazybones).  I haven’t had a chance to look at them all yet, but knowing Rohit he gave each interview its due.

briguyblock @TDefren Ask how a company bests selects leaders and idea people to define a company's archetype?

There are really two ways this happens, intentionally and accidentally.  The intentional way is to either select someone based on their role and seniority or their ability within the team. 

The other way is through what I call in the book "accidental spokespeople" - who are individuals that are standing for a brand and start to take on an official capacity even though that is not what they were (originally asked to do).

Ronna @TDefren Q for Rohit: Multiple personalities are a fact of corporate life - how do you balance them for the sake of corps & customers?

I think the vast majority of these multiple personalities come from getting into the details of what a company does. To a degree, a marketing person will always share a different point of view to a global manufacturing coordinator.  Many of the internal disagreements that happen in a business are the result of these tensions between different groups. 

Still the idea of personality is that it is a way to consistently demonstrate what your brand believes, no matter what particular subject you are talking about.

KyleFlaherty @TDefren What signs should an established brand look for to signal they need to shift in order to 'rediscover their soul'?

The greatest sign to pay attention to is a lack of customer loyalty.  The other reason would be if employees no longer have the same belief in the brand as they once may have.

cbensen @TDefren What is the single most important thing you can do to give your brand personality?

I feel like I've put this into a lot of the interviews today, I but I would have to say the single most powerful thing is removing their "employee silencing policy."  This is what it sounds like, the requirement within many companies that employees not talk publicly about anything.  Unfortunately, this is a big factor in a company becoming faceless and the best way around it is to allow these employees to share their voices.

These are good questions.  Kyle Flaherty, in particular, raises an interesting quandary:  what signals should a C-suite executive look for, internally, as evidence that the culture is ready to shift towards a new openness?

And, Rohit, here’s question #5: How the heck did you manage to write a book, grow your family, serve as a lecturer at a zillion conferences, deal with clients, blog (of course), and generate almost 500 tweets in just the last few months alone?  What suffers the most, in such flurries of activity?

The only real answer I can come up with to this is to sleep less ... a long night of sleep for me is 5 hours.  Probably not healthy, but as a former colleague of mine often said - I have plenty of time for sleep when I'm dead.   Oh, that and learning how to write and type real fast.

Good luck with the book launch, Rohit!

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Social media maven Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology and MarketingProfs has a day job, too, at BearingPoint – “one of the world's largest providers of management and technology consulting services to Global 2000 companies and government organizations in 60 countries worldwide.”

Although we haven’t gotten around to issuing a release about it, yet, Paul recently hired SHIFT to help out with Social Media assignments at BearingPoint.

While we’re psyched about the assignment, the fun part for me will no doubt be the Social Media geekery with Paul.  The first taste of that came when Paul interviewed me last week about the Social Media Release…  Enjoy!

Posted by Todd Defren at 11:03 AM | Permalink