Archive for September, 2007

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Runners’ Lounge – Social Networking For Runners

07.09.30

A new social network for runners, the Runners’ Lounge, launched this Friday.

Social networking sites are the perfect forum for runners – running is a social activity, it’s easily accessible, it has a large number of passionate participants, and its community thrives on exchanging resources.

As the site states:

Runners’ LoungeTM is a social running web site dedicated to three goals:

  1. Supporting runners, running communities, and running resources
  2. Running conversations, resources, and expressing the voice of ordinary runners.
  3. Focusing on increasing the enjoyment and success of running for all levels and partner with organizations interested in the development of running

Other running sites provide conventional functions. However, Runners’ LoungeTM provides a unique, comprehensive package of capabilities to create a special meet-up place for runners to hang out, talk about running, form “runnerships,” and join the running community to more fully enjoy running.

I’m always a little reluctant to say a something is ‘a first’ in a category and I’m asking for trouble here, but to my knowledge this is the first online running network of its kind.

Runners' Lounge logoThe Runners’ Lounge seems to be on its own as a networking-driven site for the running community, and already has 64 members at time of writing.

This is a site I can genuinely enthuse about – it merges running and social media, which are two topics about which I’m both passionate and still learning (hence my two blogs, which I’m cross-posting this on).

I like a lot of the lounge’s fundamental features:

  • A focus on connections, not news, and allowing users to form self-defined groups
  • A dependence on contributions from members in the form of tips, resources, articles and events
  • An embrace of multiple media, including podcasts (although at this point none have been posted)
  • A wonderful graphic design – just looking at it relaxes me

For now, the site is still effectively in its beta stage – phase two of development is on the way – so I’m happy to overlook small problems. However, for the site to compete with some of the above-mentioned goliaths, I think it needs to introduce several new features:

  • Users should arrive at a more useful page after logging in – an updates, a summary page or an inbox would work
  • More intuitive ways to contact people – the ‘My Comments’ profile section is too obscure and buried for a Facebook wall-type function that should be central to users, and there’s no private messaging
  • Greater use of ’social’ technology – RSS feeds for everything, widgets to push content out to other sites, support for other forms of media (e.g. YouTube video, Flickr photos), etc

If the site introduces features like these while tweaking the existing problems, the other key ingredient – people – should come over time. I’m excited about this site, and I’d love to see it catch on.

One last thing – please – never use the word “runnerships” again.

Posted in: social media, social networks

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Porsche Spins Its Wheels… Into Trouble?

07.09.26

Porsche got reasonable coverage of its recent announcement that it will cut its Canadian prices by 10 per cent over last year to compensate for the strong Canadian dollar.

“We cannot ignore our customers and dealers in Canada who can look to the U.S. and recognize a substantial price difference,” said Peter Schwarzenbauer, president and CEO of Porsche. “We listened to the market and did what is best for our customers in Canada.”

Update: Interestingly, the announcement doesn’t seem to be anywhere on Porsche’s website.

At first glance this seems to be good news (at least according to the traditional media). However, look under the skin and you’ll see this is more about good PR than good customer relations.

As numerous commenters on the Globe and Mail’s story noted, Canadian prices were 30 per cent higher than those in the US before this announcement. The 10 per cent drop therefore still leaves prices 20 per cent higher north of the border.

The Toronto Star confirms this, noting the Boxster S is still about $15,000 cheaper down south, at $55,700 (US) compared to $70,200 (CDN).

Porsche is in danger of alienating its customers here. As a high-end car manufacturer, its reputation is central to its brand.

I don’t think any reasonable person would have expected a 30 per cent cut – given the state of the automotive industry in North America, what manufacturer could afford that?

However, by trying to position its price cut as a response to the parity between the Canadian-US currencies, Porsche may have spun itself into trouble.

Sidenote: In related news, the Toronto Star reported today that several automakers are being hit by a class action lawsuit about their US/Canada price disparities.

Posted in: pr, public relations, spin

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How To Lose Your Credibility: Talk About "Hits"

07.09.24

I read a transcript of a media event at work the other day, and one exchange between a reporter and the event’s speaker caught my eye.

Reporter: You said there are 140,000 hits on the xxx website. Is there indication that xxx is kind of catching on with the public?

Speaker: …The website is growing everyday. I know the last four days there have been over ten thousand hits.

Sorry, you’ve lost me. Hits? Seriously, did you really just use the number of hits on your website as evidence of popularity?

If you ever have to talk about website statistics, here’s a pointer: never talk about hits.

Let me explain.

In layman’s terms, a hit represents a request for a file from your web server.

Sure, that file could be a web page, but it’s equally likely to be an image, a script file, a stylesheet or any one of a myriad of potential targets.

Each page on your website can call on multiple other files. My personal website’s homepage, for example, currently requests 27 other files whenever someone visits it. That means when someone visits my homepage, my website gets 28 hits (the page itself plus 27 other files).

A hit doesn’t represent a person.

To put the earlier "ten thousand hits" statistic into context, that would represent 357 visits to my homepage. The speaker said that was over four days. That’s 89 visits to the page per day.

I’m not saying there were only 89 people visiting the website in question. Still, there certainly weren’t 10,000.

Hits mean nothing.

If you want to talk about the popularity of your website, refer to unique visitors, or even visits.

Don’t lose credibility through using the wrong terms.

Posted in: web statistics

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Privacy Commissioner of Canada Launches Blog

07.09.23

Canada’s government has gone 2.0.

Ok, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration. Federal government websites – of which there are many – are still stuck firmly in 1.0-land (and even that is generous).

However, in what I see as a highly significant move, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently launched its own blog.

Why is this significant? Because, of all government departments, the Privacy Commissioner is perhaps the one that I would think to be the least likely to embrace technologies like this.

Thanks to the efforts of fellow Canadian blogger Colin Mckay and his team, the blog launched earlier this month, and so far the signs are good. The postings are interesting, well written, and surprisingly un-bureaucratic.

I particularly like that they’ve enabled comments from the get-go, and that Colin seems to be allowed to post relatively frank replies to comments. It’s refreshing to see a government communicator write about "boring news release announcements."

I’m curious as to whether the blog writers will be able to post on controversial issues as they arise. This may have a large impact on the blog’s long-term credibility.

In the meantime, I think this is a great first step as the federal government takes its first teetering steps into the big wide world of web 2.0.

Posted in: blogging

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The Importance Of Grammar In PR Blogs

07.09.19

How important is grammar on blogs?

I listened to the latest episode of Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation while out on my run the other day. One thing that Mitch said about spell-checking your blog caught my ear:

"…there was this spirit of blogging that was sort of just ‘visceral and get it out there and put it out there,’ and it still seems to be, I guess, par for the course and acceptable now… we accept the fact there’s spelling mistakes and that it’s sort of this person’s brain dump, and how it’s going through, but think long term – this content will reside for years and years…"

I’m still relatively new to the blogging scene, but I’m amazed that poor spelling and grammar is still considered acceptable, even in an informal setting like a blog.

I think attention to detail is important for blogs in general, but especially important for PR practitioners.

Mitch is right on the money (as usual) – we have to consider the ‘long tail’ of our online content. The standard we publish with now can come back to haunt us later.

As communicators, words are our tools. A great deal of our credibility rests on how we use those tools.

(Pointer: Terry Fallis and David Jones do a segment called "Inside Proper English" (newly dubbed "Inside Hair-Splitting") each week on their podcast. They have no shortage of common mistakes to highlight – they’re like my online Lynne Truss)

As a communications professional, the last thing I want a potential client (or employer) to see is a blog posting from me, filled with typos.

My blog is an extension of me and my work. What would a sloppy posting say about my personal standards?

Posted in: blogging, public relations

1Comments

Twitter: More Than Just An Online Water Cooler

07.09.16

Where does Twitter go from here?

Having resisted for some time I just signed up this week. I’m already hooked.

As great a social networking tool as it is, though, I think Twitter’s potential business spin-offs will be even better.

I recall Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, on For Immediate Release, describing Twitter as an “online watercooler.” Right now, they’re absolutely right.

The value of water cooler talk is well established. Twitter lets us expand that beyond our ‘bricks and mortar’ environment. It allows us to take it from the office and out into our own communities. It It really is a fantastic, time-efficient, way to network.

I can’t stop thinking, though, of the potential uses of twitter-like applications outside the social networking world.

FIR (via Gridskipper) recently talked about the new Orbitz Traveler Update – a Twitter-like application that allows travelers to post updates on the latest situation at US airports. This great mash-up of difference services combines FAA data, traffic updates, weather information and more with the traveler updates to provide a great way to check up on your local airport situation before you fly.

On the PR side, Twitter is another potential channel for corporate announcements. BBC Business already uses it for updates… Barack Obama and John Edwards use it for campaigning (no sign of candidates from Ontario’s election though)… why not companies? If you’re announcing a new product launch, talk about it on your Twitter feed and link to your website.

Twitter also provides another way for organizations to dip their toes into social media without going fully-fledged into blogging, podcasting or other ‘2.0′ technologies.

Twitter-like applications could be used to mobilize a crisis management team in an emergency, or to alert the general population of an emerging situation (bringing to mind the tragic Virginia shootings in April 2007 – would something like this have helped?).

Internally, Twitter would be another great tool in the virtual teams toolkit. While instant messaging may be a better way for a one-on-one exchange, Twitter allows users to quickly share information and questions with their entire team.

Twitter has enormous potential, and I’m already addicted. Right now, though, it still has a bit of the ’so what?’ factor for a lot of people. As my mother recently noted:

Twittering sounded intriguing, so I had to investigate, but it seemed a bit beyond me. Who is it for? Do you get response from complete strangers, or do you just like talking to nobody in particular, or is it aimed at your circle of friends, & if so, why don’t you just talk to each other? Oh dear, I think I’ve missed something somewhere.

Well put.

For Twitter to leapfrog from the “fad-with-potential” group to the forefront of social media, more of these business uses need to emerge. Without these, Twitter risks becoming a “fad-that-had-potential.”

Posted in: Twitter, public relations

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Twitter With Me

07.09.14

My social media education continues; I’ve signed-up for Twitter. If you’re interested in my musings, feel free to add me (davefleet).

I’m curious about how this will work. I’ve often thought that Twitter works well for interactive ad agency-types, but might not work so well for those of us in less cutting-edge environments where the concept may not be received as well by those higher up.

My solution to this: I’ve set myself up to ‘Twitter on the go.’

I already fit my RSS-reading into set slots in the day (before work, at lunch and at the end of the day) so as to not eat into my work time. I plan on doing the same with Twitter.

My Twitter-saver: Google Talk on the Blackberry (update: and m.twitter.com). I plan on doing my Twittering while I’m unproductive anyway, i.e. when I’m on my way to and from meetings, and from home. That way I’m not sacrificing my current work in the name of progress.

Oh, and be prepared. I run two blogs – this one and The Toronto Runner. My Twitter feed is on both, so I’ll be posting with both subjects in mind.

Wish me luck!

Posted in: Twitter, blogging, social media

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Finding The Middle Ground With Social Media News Releases

07.09.11

Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications posted last week about "The End Of The Social Media Release." He’s tired of the format being ’special’ and wants to see it become the norm.

I’m not sure this is an ideal goal.

social_media_template I love the social media release format. In our technology-driven world, pumping out release after old-fashioned release onto the wire just doesn’t meet the needs of the media. The media aren’t our audience, but more often than not they’re our conduit. For our messages to be heard we need to work with the media, not against it.

The idea of the social media news release has been around for over a year now, and people are catching-on. For the uninitiated, here are the basic ideas behind it, courtesy of Edelman:

The social media news release is a next-generation news release that combines traditional and emerging forms of communications. By incorporating social media features such as hyperlinks, social bookmarking, multimedia, comment and trackback, among others, the social media news release serves as a bridge between traditional and emerging communications tools.

This format helps the reader by breaking down the release into well defined sections. This is critical – it doesn’t force people to work to deconstruct the release to find the key message.

However, I respectfully disagree with Todd that the social media release should be the ’standard operating procedure’ for communicators.

My issue is that, even with the remarkable flexibility of the new format, it still keeps to the one-size-fits-all approach to communications.

First and foremost, communicators need to think about their audience. However, we also need to think about how we’re going to get the message to that audience, and that means segmenting the media.

There’s a big difference between the larger media outlets and smaller, community-based media.

The social media release is a great idea for the larger outlets where the reporter is always going to break down the story and look at it from all angles. However, smaller community papers simply don’t have the resources needed to do this. We frequently see releases published almost verbatim by these outlets.

If we were to stop issuing traditional releases for community-based stories, I’m willing to bet we’d see a drop in coverage in local media.

I think we need a middle ground – one that Cisco, who Todd mentions in his piece, seem to have found. They provide a traditional release in addition to the new format.

Now, a (misplaced) concern I’ve heard about the new format is the time it takes to pull all the resources together – worry that we’d have to start producing video for each release, or do a photo shoot for each release. This isn’t true – the beauty of this format is its flexibility, which allows any appropriate content to slot in on a case-by-case basis. However, if we were to start producing both release formats, it would be excessive.

We need to start looking at the social media release as another tool in our toolbox, not as a panacea.

We should replace the traditional release in some cases – the mainstream stories where you expect major outlets to pay attention. For those cases, the old way is outdated and obstructive. For purely local announcements, however, I think the traditional release still has value.

Bottom line: one-size-fits-all doesn’t work.

Posted in: media, news release, public relations, social media

3Comments

iSorry – Apple’s Handling Of The iPhone Price Issue

07.09.08

Steve Jobs stirred up a storm this week when he announced a $200 price reduction for the iPhone just two months after its release (see the video here)

Not surprisingly, Apple’s early adopters, who paid full price for the iPhone not long ago, weren’t too happy. Importantly for Apple, early adopters also tend to be influencers – the people who can drive word of mouth for new products, so alienating them would be a disaster.

Apple’s responded quickly to the criticism by announcing a $100 rebate for everyone who paid the original price for the iPhone. They also announced that anyone who had bought an iPhone in the past two weeks would get a full $200 rebate.

Now, Apple could have ignored the criticism – as ABC News pointed out, anyone buying a product so soon after its launch should know they’re paying a premium. It wouldn’t have been the best tactic, but let’s face it – it wouldn’t have been a surprise. However, as Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim pointed out, they did a decent job:

  • They acted quickly – the next day, in fact. Apple didn’t let the criticism fester before acting

  • They used a credible spokesperson – the CEO himself

  • They issued more than just an apology – they offered something tangible in the form of the rebate

The response to this has been pretty good, but I think Apple probably could have done more:

  • Given that Apple chose to make the rebate announcement online, why through a static webpage? Why not a blog or some other interactive format? By using a static page, they’ve pushed all of the discussion out here into the blogosphere rather than hosting some of it themselves.

  • The letter itself seemed stilted and scripted. Mattel, through all its problems, did one thing right when it posted a video of CEO Bob Eckert’s apology following their latest product recall. Where’s the video of Steve Jobs?

Posted in: issues management, public relations

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Has Online News Killed The Friday Afternoon Announcement?

07.09.06

Last Friday, Google announced that it would start hosting material from several large news agencies, including Associated Press, Canadian Press, the UK Press Association and more, through Google News.

Not surprisingly, this has been a little controversial – the announcement raised concerns that this change will take traffic and revenue away from other online news sources (amusingly, these concerns were also raised in a frequently-used AP story – is that the definition of irony?).

The SearchEngineWatch blog posted an interesting piece titled, “Was Google’s AP announcement a PR disaster?“

The posting makes one interesting point about the age-old tactic of using Fridays and the days before long weekends to ‘bury’ controversial announcements (the ‘dark side’ of PR, if you will). The author, Greg Jarboe, notes that this tactic may no longer work:

Everything in the PR playbook changed five years ago this month when Google launched Google News. And over this year’s long Labor Day weekend, I was able to use Google News to find more than 275 articles about Google’s AP announcement.

This is a great observation. I agree with Greg that this tactic’s effectiveness is greatly reduced given today’s shortened news cycle, democratized media and citizen journalists. Still, I don’t think this spells the end of Friday afternoon announcements. Let’s face it, the stories may be out there but how many people are reading them at the weekend?

Then again, perhaps this change is a good thing. If the standard tactics don’t work any more, perhaps organizations will be forced to actually engage with their stakeholders. Rather than hide controversial news, perhaps they’ll be forced to reach out and work with affected groups.

Then again, perhaps there will always be ways to bury bad news.

Posted in: Google, issues management, pr, public relations

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