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PR Squared

Since politics is all anyone is talking about, anyway…

As an avid political junky, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the antics of the mainstream news media.  The TV anchors, in particular, would rather debate the respective campaign’s talking-points and polls and personality clashes than help Americans to understand and digest the issues.  The issues which, by the way, polls keep telling us that voters want to hear more about.

What are the real differences between Obama and McCain on the Economy, on Healthcare, on Foreign Policy?  Too many Americans are too damned busy to dig for this info, but rather than investigate and report on those policies (their job, yes?), the TV guys take the easy way out, and report on how “we need to hear more details” from the candidates.

Dear CNN, FOX, MSNBC, et al.:  the details exist, gang.  Ever hear of Google?  Aren’t ya’ll specialists in turning complex issues into soundbites and whizzy graphics?

The good news is that the voters are mad as hell and aren’t gonna take it anymore.  And they own Macs, iMovie software and Flipcams. Some of the best political content of the year, so far, has been created without input or sanction by the campaigns.

For example, here’s my favorite Obama campaign commercial of the year.

And, because it’s his birthday, let’s remind Mr. McCain of how he’s celebrated this special day in the not-so-distant past?

He’s busy picking a VP today, but surely the GOP candidate will want to celebrate his b-day at some point soon.  I wonder where in the world he’d celebrate?  Let’s check this Google Earth tour of his 8 homes?

And it’s not just Obama fans who are willing to step-up to the plate.  Here’s a powerful ad meant to support McCain:

All of these videos are powerful – and they did not come from pundits, focus groups, advertising gurus or media professionals.  They came from the People.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that most of these efforts are buried, lost, hard to find.

I wonder if either campaign will do more to harness their followers’ enthusiasm?  Perhaps create “professional” versions of these brilliant, “amateur” efforts?

Last night Obama said that “change does not come from Washington, it comes to Washington.”  At some level, Social Media has been its deliveryman.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

As it nears its final stages, I guess I ought to talk about the PRWeek Blog Competition.  It’s been an honor to be included amongst some of the giants in the PR Blogosphere.  

But many have noted throughout the contest, rightfully so, that its premise and methodology are flawed.

From a premise standpoint, it presumably measures “popularity” vs. “quality of content” – though we should hope that this popularity was merited by the blood, sweat and tears of each of the contestant bloggers.

The “methodology” is clearly kinda mangled.  Too many times we’ve seen an outsized number of votes for “Big Agency” blogs, even while the other contests running simultaneously have a third the number of total votes.  Who shows up at the contest site and only votes in 1 of 4 contests???  Drones who mash a button ‘cuz The Boss told them to, is the obvious and sad suggestion.

(I should note at this point that Edelman’s top 2 bloggers, Steve Rubel and Richard Edelman himself, were clearly not guilty of such shenanigans.  With one email to “all staff” from Edelman, or with a single “vote for me!” blog post from Rubel, they could have ended the contest.  Good on ya, fellas.)

With all that said – and even though it would be a Pyrrhic victory to beat my good friend Kami – “winning” beats “losing,” even in a flawed match-up.

If you think PR-Squared deserves to win, please go vote for it with my sincere thanks.  If you aren’t quite sure, I guess my case is best made by pointing you to the “Jedi Training” section (a.k.a. “best of” posts).  Lotsa “Social Media & PR Goodness” ™ there! 

And if you couldn’t care less – forget about the contest! But, do yourself the favor of adding all of the original combatants to your RSS feeds:

Pit bulls and Labradors
Digital Influence Mapping Project
Livingston Buzz
PR Squared
Neville Hobson
The Daily Lark
Communication Overtones
6 a.m.
Drew Kerr's PR Rock and Roll
Micro Persuasion
What Do You Stand For?
A view on PR from Silicon Valley
Murphy's LawIntakeA shel of my former self
Pop PR jots
Beyond the Hype
Influential Marketing Blog
The Flack
THINKing
Phil's Blogservations
PR Measurement Blog
Measuring Up
Sage Circle
PR Blog News
Glass House
Bitemarks Down the Avenue
Voce Nation
Bad Pitch Blog
Your PR Guy

Thanks for your vote.  I won’t let ya down.

UPDATE: PR-Squared lost to Kami Huyse’s Communications Overtones by TWO VOTES.  I knew I shoulda’ called my mom & dad!  Please vote for Kami in the Final Four; she is, imho, the best blogger of the bunch.  Go Kami!

Posted by Todd Defren at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Not even the most rascally of bloggers or journalists expect or even want the PR industry to die; really they just want better PR.  But while they writhe in pain at the volume of misdirected pitches, few bloggers take action beyond whining.  If anything, the PR and marketing pros themselves seem to be the only ones engaged in the slow-drip of Blogger Relations education.

If you are a successful blogger, part of the reward for your hard work is that you’re gonna get pitched. 

(That’s not a bad thing.  Not all pitches are bad.  A good pitch could help a blogger write their best-post-ever.  A good pitch could result in some cool toys to play with; a free trip; an interesting meeting; a job offer.)

But you have some control over this.  Why not take the time to inform marketers about HOW you’d like to be approached?

An attempt was made back in 2005 to standardize this mechanism.  I think it’s worth re-visiting.  I asked our in-house graphics whiz to bang-out “boring” and “fun” versions of the original badges. 

If you’re a blogger who wants NO PITCHES, the badge alone should suffice… 

If you’re a friendly type who wants to hear what everyone has to say, similarly the “PR OK!” icon says it all (though you might want to link the icon to your contact info)…

But if you are like MOST bloggers, you don’t mind a GOOD PITCH and tend to despise & discard crappy pitches.  This is where you need to Act Responsibly.  Educate!  Tell the PR pro “what makes a good pitch.” 

Link the “PR?” badge below to a separate section of your site in which you describe your personal preferences and gripes…

Sometime this week, I’m going to add the funny li’l “PR?” avatar to my sidebar nav.  It will link to a new page on PR-Squared on which I’ll inform would-be PR pitchmen that they are welcome to send me a note, but that I’ll be looking for:

“A brief pitch that demonstrates an understanding of my blog’s typical topics.”

I was planning to gin up a list of 5–or-so benchmarks but, on reflection, this is all I’m looking for from anyone.  I don’t necessarily care that the PR pro is a regular PR-Squared reader or participant (though that’d be nice).  I just don’t want them to waste my time with stuff I would never write about.  (That’s all any blogger wants, at a high level.) 

But it never hurts to be completely unambiguous.  If bloggers make the effort to be clear about their expectations, they have more justification to be enraged at bad pitches.  The blogger can take some responsibility for their in-box; if they don’t do something to educate would-be pitchmen, they’ll continue to be abused. 

These badges might help cut down on the bad stuff.  Know a cranky blogger?  Maybe you could share this idea with them?

UPDATE:  Embed code now available.  And my new, official “PR PITCH POLICY,” which will be linked from here on out to the cutesy avatar in the right-side nav.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

During this week’s 3^rd and final Radian 6 Twebinar, the theme was “Listening.”

As I prepared for my own role on the call with Chris Brogan, poring over some industry and agency examples of “good listening,” it occured to me that there are two types of listening.

There’s “Active Listening.”  That’s what most savvy brands are doing.  It’s mostly about Social Media Monitoring.  “Quick!  Somebody said something about us!  Say something back!”  I liken it to the excitement one might feel when toying around with an old ham radio.  This is a good thing to be doing, for all brands, regardless of size.

But you can take it further, into the realm of “Actionable Listening.”  The difference here is that the folks doing the listening/responding are empowered to effect change within their organization, on customers’ behalf. 

Best examples to date?  Dell (I’m looking at you, @RichardatDELL) and Comcast Cares.  In both cases, customers who tweet or blog about these brands receive a timely response that includes an offer of assistance.  And that offer is no B.S.  These listeners have the juice in their organizations to ACT.  They are getting RESULTS for these customers. 

When I bitched on Twitter about my Comcast phone service, Comcast’s famous Frank Eliason contacted me immediately and had someone call my (befuddled) wife to check the line.  When I moaned about receiving a “blue screen of death” during the Twebinar, one of Richard Binhammer’s compatriots DM’d me to see if I was using a Dell, and if so, could he help?

To successfully engage in Actionable Listening, the corporation must make an investment not only in Monitoring tools but in providing infrastructure changes that back-up the lip-service with speedy and effective results. 

Reg’lar folks who willingly engage in a conversation with an official brand representative need to feel that the interchange is going to add real value, not apply a band-aid.

Are you listening?  Great.  But are you also empowered to act effectively on your customers’ behalf?

Posted by Todd Defren at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I’ve got some more interesting posts percolating but for now thought these might be worth sharing with ya’ll.  Two videos on Social Media Releases.  Interestingly, both of these (terrific) videos were produced outside the U.S.  Not sure what that means.

Here’s one from CNW Group in Canada (and here’s the announcement of their SMR in which the video was embedded):

And here’s an older one from webitpr in the U.K.:

Maybe PitchEngine or PRX Builder will do something similar at some point?  Which do you like better?

UPDATE:  Looks like PRX Builder does have its own video – sorry Shannon.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Posted by Todd Defren at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Yea, I was in a lather over the PR bashing meme from last week.  So I put out the call to a handful of happy clients re: “What value do you get from a PR agency?”

Fortuitously, Mike Volpe of Hubspot was in the SHIFT HQ as I was drafting my original “Why Hire a PR Firm?” post.  But several other clients offered to step-up in the PR industry’s defense – some via video, as in the example below, and some by offering to draft future guest posts for PR-Squared.

For what it’s worth, in all cases, you’ll be hearing from happy clients of our agency.  But, we specifically noted that we were not looking for an endorsement of SHIFT.  Rather, we asked our clients to talk in broad strokes about what value they get and/or expect from their big investments in outside PR agencies.

For as much as the bloggers like to vent (rightfully so) at bad PR practices, there’s plenty of great work going on, too.  More to the point: companies of all sizes continue to invest significant portions of their Marketing budget to PR agencies, and they expect a Return on that Investment.  These are the folks who deserve to demand excellence of PR.  Let’s hear from them.

Samantha Stone, VP Marketing, Dataupia - Value of a PR Firm.

Once I’ve exhausted the guest posts and videos, I’ll recap the most common themes re: the value of PR agencies, from the clients’ perspective, in a future entry.

Meanwhile, this post provides yet another rousing defense of the industry.  Press on!

Posted by Todd Defren at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

In this space I’ve talked about the Social Media Release (SMR) a fair bit.  I’ve talked (half-jokingly) about the “TwitRelease.”  I’ve talked (very seriously) about the need to atomize content.  I’ve made dramatic turnarounds in my thinking re: SMR distribution.

Now I wanna talk about the issue marketers care most about: results.

In my opinion there are two major benefits to the SMR approach.  The first is related to Conversation.  If your SMR is powered by a blogging engine, you can enable Comments and Trackbacks and thus allow for a.) direct dialog and, b.) aggregation of external, in-context conversations, respectively.  

The second major benefit is related to the propagation of content.  By atomizing the content elements (graphics, video, podcasts, etc.), you empower people to appropriate and re-use that content as they see fit.  Ideally this leads people to see your content in their own online hang-outs, “socialized” by the fact that their friends and/or favorite sites are making the introductions. 

But, they’re not always going to do that, folks: so it is entirely conceivable that you’ll spend a boatload of time and $$$ creating content that stalls out in your online newsroom.  (Which would suck.)

That means it’s up to the Marketers to spread the word by spreading the content.

Some principles and ideas to consider:

Make sure the “Summary” section of your SMR is 140–characters or less. 

That way, you can get the full news out in a Twitter-friendly mode.  Since you are hoping for “re-tweets” of the news, keeping that summary to well-under 140–characters is advisable.  Including a link to the SMR is also a must-have. 

When you tweet: “XYZ Corp announced that it was acquiring ABC Inc. for $10 million. This makes XZY Corp the largest swizzle-stick maker. http://is.gd/bzi.” (137–characters) you leave no room for re-tweeters, whose aid invariably takes the form of, “RT XYZ_Corp:” – they’ll “waste” several character spaces in order to delineate their tweet as a re-tweet of your news… and with so few characters to spare, the essence could get lost.

Keeping the Summary this tight is also an exquisitely painful editing exercise.  The process of forcing press release writers to distill “what’s important” in roughly 125 characters (leaving room for the RT & @sender) compels them to re-evaluate the original package of news!  The “twitpitch” produces clarity through brevity.

<Make sure your content is not solely posted in your Newsroom. 

• If you are including photos or short videos in your SMR, why not post them to Flickr, as well, with tags that may make the content readily discoverable? 
• If the videos are longer-form, how about posting them to your corporate YouTube channel? 
• Might some of the photos also be worthy of sharing with your Twitter followers? – Twitpic ‘em! 
• Is your podcast series syndicated via iTunes? 
• Have you saved the SMR itself – along with each of the content elements shared across other social networks – to del.icio.us?
• Did you “stumble” and digg the SMR, and describe why it’s of interest to these communities’ members? 
• Don’t forget the Creative Commons licensing: you don’t want to inadvertently block someone from sharing the content on their own blog (and likewise it’s nice to be able to guarantee a li’l credit for the source material).
• If the news relayed in the SMR is super important, maybe consider using NewsAds to drive relevant traffic?  A little SEM never hurts.

Your content may be lively, but it’s not alive.  Help it along.  Evangelize.

Unless your company/client already possesses a base of rabid, highly-networked and vociferous fans, then simply publishing the SMR to the website and/or via the newswires is just not enough to get any attention, just as issuing a traditional press release over the wire doesn’t cinch press coverage. Your fabulous content will lie fallow.  A corporate RSS feed with paltry subscriber numbers ain’t gonna bring the fame. 

As in anything, actively sharing content through the cultivation of relationships is instrumental for SMRs and social objects, through very different and unique processes of dialog.  Despite the misplaced howls of protest from tech bloggers, PR can help ensure that the news – including the carefully crafted content that attends the news – is seen and shared.  Outreach through the PR pro’s network of relationships can (at least) spur just-enough discussion and sharing of the content to allow the news to gain traction. 

Produce. Propagate. Promote. (Party.)

Special thanks to Doug Haslam and Brian Solis for their help on this post.

Posted by Todd Defren at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

One of the more popular posts at PR-Squared this year was the “Got Some Personal Branding I Can Borrow?” article, which talked about the respective responsibilities of the Company and of the Social Media Rockstars employed by the company.

But I left something out.

What happens when the Social Media Rockstar moves on?  How does the Company analyze the potential impact?  How should the Rockstar evaluate potential career moves, and how should they make their exit on the inevitable day?

After all, the brand of the company and the personal brand of the employee have been intermingled and mutually beneficial.  These questions – fairly simple when dealing with behind-the-scenes employees – are made more complex by the public nature of the Employer/Employee relationship.

I should know.  Cuz one of our rockstars recently informed me that he’s moving on.

Chris Lynn of SocialTNT made tremendous strides while at SHIFT.  He went from “no-blog-at-all” to top-notch blogger in a matter of months.  He wrote insightful posts on his own, and more impressively snared interviews with esteemed West Coast media/web personalities like Kara Swisher (WSJ), Sarah Lacy (BusinessWeek), Jon Swartz (USA TODAY), Marshall Kirkpatrick (RWW) and Loic Lemeur (Seesmic CEO), etc.

In other words, Chris lived up to the responsibility I described in my “Personal Branding” post:

While their brand is on-loan to the Company, it is the responsibility of the Personality to ensure that the Company derives substantial and long-lasting business benefits from the affiliation.

There’s no question that Chris was an asset for the time he was with us.  And I’d like to think that SHIFT lived up to its part of the bargain, too: in addition to providing a supportive work environment where “Chris could be Chris,” I also linked to or tweeted about Chris’s posts frequently, alerting my own audience to the presence of a bright star.

Now, our collaboration is coming to an end.  A monolithic PR agency with offices across the freakin’ planet made Chris an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Speaking as SHIFT’s “brand manager,” of course I was upset.  Chris wasn’t even allowed to blog at his last gig; we encouraged and (literally) promoted his passions.  Yes, this served his needs as well as ours – but in the end, it is the Personality who gets to decide where to put their personal brand to use.  It doesn’t matter how much TLC the Company invested in helping to build that Rockstar’s brand.  You’re still dealing with people.  People who have desires & ambitions that very likely extend beyond what the Company can offer them.

If that TLC matters at all, I guess it’s shown in how the Company and the Rockstar part ways.  If each side’s done their part; grappled honestly with the decisions and ramifications and angst; then, at the very end, you sever those final ties with fortitude and grace and a sincere benediction.

Good luck, Chris.

Posted by Todd Defren at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The perennial “bash on PR” meme started up again this week.

First Scoble knocked us.  Then Arrington took aim.  Even Steve Rubel, “one of our own,” took a potshot.  Thankfully, both Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Mark Hopkins at Mashable stood up for PR pros (thanks guys! – much appreciated, believe me) …

Scoble, Rubel and Arrington basically made the point that PR firms are unnecessary if you have a great product and are willing to spend a lot of time engaging in the blogosphere.

I started drafting a lengthy rebuttal … but was gladly interrupted by a client meeting.  It was a get-together with Mike Volpe, the marketing chief at Hubspot – and arguably one of the most Social Media-savvy marketers I’ve ever met, period.  And, in fact, Mike is the first to wonder aloud about the themes espoused by Scoble, et al.: he definitely understands the merits of their arguments.  After all, Mike is one of many Hubspot bloggers; he is active on Twitter; he’s a prolific content creator; he’s a guy with strong media relationships in his own right.

Yet in the course of our chat, without prompting, Mike started promoting the value of PR agencies!  I was verklempt, as my Gramma used to say. 

Mike was kind enough to sit down for a few minutes after our meeting, in front of a video camera, to capture his Pro-Agency feelings for posterity. 

Mike Volpe, VP Marketing HubSpot - Value of PR Firms.

What better rebuttal to The Media’s PR gripes than to hear from an Actual Customer?

Posted by Todd Defren at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (1)

As noted in the Washington Post last week, the presidential campaign of John McCain has rolled out a new program designed to reward supporters for placing the campaign’s official “Talking Points” in the Comments sections of various blogs.

I don’t have a problem with the concept of spurring supporters to be active in the blogosphere.  The more the merrier! 

I don’t have a problem with a campaign pointing subscribers to some of the most influential blogs, either.  That’s just PR 101, and, it’s being done in the open.

I don’t even have a problem with the McCain campaign’s willingness to offer “reward points” for active blog participants.  I think it’s kind of sad and lame, and treads a fine ethical line – but okay, try it.

But I do think that we should all be concerned by a campaign that actively supplies its supporters with official “Talking Points” and cynically disregards any talk of disclosure. 

When you add-up the lack of disclosure + reward points + proactive targeting, it doesn’t take long to wonder where this is headed, and to be troubled by the trends.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of Astroturfing:

“…Formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous ‘grassroots’ behavior … The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity — a politician, political group, product, service or event.  Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (‘outreach’, ‘awareness’, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means.”

Imagine the scenario: a McCain supporter reads an independent blog post about the candidates’ plans for the U.S. Economy.  They then zip over to the McCain site to copy & paste the “official talking points” into the independent blog’s Comment section.  But they don’t disclose that they are a McCain supporter (though it’s probably obvious).  They don’t use their real name; they’re using their online “handle,” and for all anyone else knows they’re an active campaign worker. 

Most egregiously, of course, they don’t disclose that their words are direct quotations from the McCain website.  They are parroting the words: they are “disguising the efforts of a political entity as an independent (and ‘apparently diverse and geographically distributed’) public reaction.”

It could get worse.  Imagine further that some sloppy mainstream reporter is on deadline for yet-another of their never-ending articles about the 2008 election.  Harried by their managing editor, they pluck the McCain supporter’s online comments to add color to their article, implying that these are “direct quotes” from blog readers.  Doing the McCain campaign’s rallying job for them. 

Meanwhile, the McCain supporter wins McPoints for their deception.  Yay!  A free bumper sticker!

What fun would it be if the Comments section of the nation’s most popular political blogs merely became dueling versions of each campaign’s official talking points?

Mashable’s Mark Hopkins totally mangled this story when he suggested that the left-wing of the blogosphere would be disingenuous to object to these tactics.  Hopkins believes that the Democrats are upset because “McCain is providing a rewards system for those interested in promoting his message, whereas the Obama campaign tries to (get) folks involved in spreading the message based on idealism … Sure, none of (the Democratic social media) campaigns explicitly incentivized their campaign messages, but they encouraged users to go forth into the blogosphere and spread the word.  What is the McCain campaign really doing here?”

What the McCain campaign is really doing here is asking people to lie.  What they are doing is trying to dupe us.  What they are doing is using innocent pawns to covertly spread their official talking points.

Let the McCainiacs rack-up as many points as they want.  If that’s the motivation that Republican supporters need to get involved, they can have their free schwag.  (After all, Obama’s campaign is not above offering incentives, either: they often reward active supporters with “lunch with the candidate,” etc.)  The issue is the lack of disclosure, plain and simple. 

When a campaign that’s running for the highest elected public office in the U.S.A. says, “Go to these blogs, use these messages, and don’t bother telling anyone where the messages came from,” then we have reason to wonder how these same campaigners will operate once they’re in power.

Update: A Twitter debate with @MelWebster raised this important distinction: Mel noted that when he was a reporter, he and his colleagues saw similar tactics employed in faux Letters to the Editor, i.e., the letters were written by the campaigns for their supporters to sign and mail.  As Mel noted, these tactics were pretty transparent to the experienced reporters (“We would toss them”)… 

And that’s a perfect opportunity to expand my point.  Reporters glean the plot but typical blog readers more often will not: that's the big lie. The blogs’ readers become victims of the astroturf campaign.  Instead of listening to “Someone like me,” the blog readers are being fooled by someone like them, using someone else’s words.

Disclosure:  I am for Obama in this year’s election.  But if the Obama campaign’s own Social Media efforts devolve into astroturfing, I’ll actively denounce it here.  (Also, on most days I “heart” Mashable.)

UPDATE 2:  All’s fair I guess?

Posted by Todd Defren at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (1)

If there is a “negative” about blogging, it’s the fact that we all fall prey to the relentless march of content. 

Some of our best posts from yesteryear – brilliant stuff! still relevant! – start to languish in a musty online archive.  Only a pinpoint Google search will ever pour sunlight on some of our best stuff.

For my part, even though I have an Archive, I do try to salvage my best stuff in the “Jedi Training” section.  Some past favorites of mine, that I think new readers might like, would include:

What I Wish My New Employee Knew (Jan 2008) – because we run a “talent agency” and this post sums up a lot about what we expect & hope regarding new employees. 

The Real Reason Why Agencies Fire Clients (Feb 2006) – because it had to be said, and is worth a reminder (both to clients and to PR agency owners & staff).

Edgework with Social Bookmarking (Sept 2007) – because it’s so darned “Out There” and risky and just-plain-hard to pull-off or scale.  But still kinda neat.

Participation is Marketing (May 2007) – because it was one of my least-remarked-upon posts, yet marked a personal turning point in how I think about the future of our industry.

But enough about me.  I asked some of my Twitter buddies what age-old posts of their own they’d want to resurrect.  The answers ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime.

(In the ridiculous AND sublime category) and “because it still makes me laugh” is @AmyTheCopywriter’s “$20 post.”

My colleague Amanda Gravel raised her hand for “A PR Girl Gets Inked,” in which she relays the tale behind her most interesting tattoo.  It’s actually pretty inspiring.

Adrian Chan asked me to share his springtime thoughts about the power of words, and PR.

Canuckflack Colin McKay is fond of his “Santa Posts.”

Harry Hoover of MyCreativeTeam apparently already had this idea.

Brad Grier pointed to his very interesting post on Content Management (very good stuff for PR types here, too, especially if you liked my own most recent post on Content Marketing).

Joe Boughner is clearly a man after my own heart.  He reminds us to mind the P’s and Q’s.  Always relevant.

Mike Valentine of RealitySEO asked me to remind folks, as he did back in 2006, of Advertising agencies’ cluelessness around SEO principles. He notes that Google’s sale of Performics make the post relevant all over again.

Paul Roetzer of PR 20/20 wrote about 8 PR Trends to Watch in 2008.  The year is more than halfway gone now: how’s he doing?

If you’re a blogger but missed my original shout-out for old-time favorites, feel free to leave the link in the Comments section below.  I’ll happily revisit this idea and promise to check out your links in the Comments, first and foremost.

Posted by Todd Defren at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

You work at a PR firm.  Among your tasks is netting a few juicy speaking opportunities for your client’s top executive.

You fill out the forms.  Follow-up.  Nail the gig.  A keynote, no less!  Yay!

Prior to the event, you draft a Media Advisory about the CEO’s upcoming speech.  You ping members of the media who will be in attendance: “want to hook up with the CEO for lunch after his speech?”

You attend the keynote with the CEO.  You take notes on his speaking points: these could be the crumbs of a new trend pitch…

Immediately after his speech, you scurry about the auditorium, scanning for green press badges.  Maybe you can drum up an extra briefing or two – or three!

After it’s all done, you have a drink and rub your aching feet in the airport lounge.  Job well done, mission accomplished.

Sure: yesterday that woulda been enough.  Yesterday that would have netted you an “atta boy” from the CEO. 

Tomorrow, though, that plan of action will not be enough.  “Tomorrow” you will do ALL OF THE ABOVE, plus, you’ll want to:

• Interview the CEO in the car on the way to the event, with your Flipcam.
• Hustle the CEO into a quiet conference room for an impromptu podcast.
• Document hallway chatter and interview the conference attendees before/after the CEO’s keynote speech (“What are you hoping to hear today?  Did the speech meet expectations?”).
• Film or livestream and/or liveblog/tweet the speech itself… while monitoring and responding to other tweets by fellow conference attendees.
• Share this content all along the way, and monitor responses; interacting directly with users; answering questions, etc.

Note that these “tactics from tomorrow” are not necessarily targeted to “the media.”  They are aimed at sharing fresh content, using it to empower “passalong sharing” and spur conversation and reactions across all sorts of interested stakeholders.

Creating such a “content engine” creates ongoing opportunities-for-attention and dialogue, plus, the constantly-updated content stream aids in SEO.

When you consider a scenario like this one, do you really think PR will continue to be about “press releases?”

Tomorrow’s coming.

Posted by Todd Defren at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)