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Archive for November, 2007

Talk Is Cheap – A Stunning Success

07.11.16

Last night I attended the Talk Is Cheap social media unconference hosted by Gary Schlee and his students at Centennial College in Toronto (I presented too, but more on that in a later post).

In my view, the event was a rousing success. Over 200 people registered (about 25% more than the organizers expected) and most of the 15 sessions were packed. As Gary said to me at the end, the event "went viral" in the last week, and attracted a lot of people.

A couple of highlights for me:

Joseph Thornley - Blogger Relations

Blogger relations is a hot topic right now, so this session was an easy choice for me to attend. As can be expected, Joseph gave a very engaging, well-informed presentation on the topic.

Of particular note – his six tips for blogger relations:

Live in multiple channels
It’s about relationships, not pitches
It’s what the other party wants that counts
Be part of the conversation
Respect the culture
Make it real

Donna Papacosta – Podcasting Inside The Organization

A great presentation from Donna on a use for podcasting that most people wouldn’t think of (she also handed out a cheat sheet which I’m shamelessly using for this write-up!). I have a thousand ideas bouncing around inside my head right now.

Donna suggests using podcasts within your organization, for any of the following:

Training and development
Leadership messages
Conference podcasts
Employee news
Replacing one-to-many conference calls

Why?

Cut through the communications clutter
Engage employees
Low cost
Measurable
Portable/time shift-able

At the same time, a few notes of caution:

Use natural language; no tight scripts
Plan
Make friends with your IT folks

She also recommended Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson‘s book How to Do Everything with Podcasting, which I can second – I just finished it and it’s a great read.

My Regrets

I only really have one regret, and that’s not being able to check out more of the great sessions that were put on yesterday. I would have particularly liked to take in:

Telling the story through social media: A WWF-Canada Case Study by Tara Wood, WWF-Canada
Why students and new practitioners should be wading into the social media pool by Chris Clarke, Sarah de Bruyn and Scott MacDonald
Social media with social causes: How corporate communications and PR can leverage trends in social media to build brand equality by Sachin Ghelani, Ogrant
Using social media to build an audience and drive demand for a novel before it’s even published by Terry Fallis – The Best Laid Plans (seriously Terry, could you pick a longer title next time please?)
Social media monitoring – what are you missing? by Chris Ramsey, Radian6

So to Gary and his students, congratulations on a job well done… but could you perhaps get a few less fantastic presenters next time? Thanks very much

Technorati Tags: Joseph Thornley,Terry Fallis,Donna Papacosta,Chris Clarke,Sarah de Bruyn,blogger relations,podcasting,Talk Is Cheap,unconference,public relations,social media

Posted in: pr, public relations, social media, unconference, web 2.0

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Using Social Media To Create Social Media Training

07.11.12

Communications training courses on traditional strategies and tactics just don’t cut it any more. The ever-increasing rate of change on the Internet, and its emerging impact on media consumption, means organizations need to seriously consider offering social media training to their employees.

This environment, along with a few well-documented faux-pas by PR practitioners, has had me thinking about this topic a lot recently.

I got to thinking, "What should a social media 101 course offer?" I work with a lot of people who have no knowledge of social media. If I had one day to teach people a few key basics, what would they be?

Then I thought, "Why not use social media to create that program?" So, I’m trying something different here.

I’ve established the Social Media Training Wiki at http://socialtraining.wetpaint.com and given it some basic structure.

I’m throwing out a challenge to the online PR community: As a community, let’s develop a best-practice social media 101 training program.

Let’s create a one-day, scratch-the-surface program that will help employees who are new to this social media thing to find their feet.

Let’s put it out there for the good of the community.

Let’s encourage people to adapt it and adopt it.

Let’s see if we can raise the bar for social media knowledge in our organizations.

Check out the wiki. Participate. Input. Discuss.

A wider understanding of social media benefits us all.

Posted in: blogger relations, blogging, news release, pitching, pr, public relations, smnr, social media, social networks, training, web 2.0

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Wetpaint: Merging Wikis With Discussion Forums

07.11.11

I just discovered Wetpaint – a free wiki-hosting site that fully integrates a discussion forum into every wiki.

This site is very cool – it produces great-looking sites and has already attracted big names like CSI: NY, Food & Wine magazine, fuse.tv and Mythbusters as clients. According to a recent release, Wetpaint currently hosts almost 600,000 wikis.

The company announced last week that discussion forums are now integrated into every page of each wiki. As Techcrunch put it:

Posts can be tagged, the view expanded/contracted, there are email notifications of new messages, and the search feature works well. Any forum thread can also be turned into a wiki with a couple of clicks.

On top of that, all of each site’s posts (from every page) are also pulled together in one central forum, where you can view them by keyword tag.

Alongside the simple, easy-to-use interface and neat discussion forums, Wetpaint has a few other cool features:

Facebook Application: Lets users create wikis on their Facebook page
OpenID: Users can use their OpenID to sign in to any Wetpaint site
Google Analytics: Wetpaint helps users understand how their site is performing by tracking use through Google Analytics.

Ad-free wikis for educators are another nice touch. Wetpaint supports most of its wikis through ads on each site. However, they’ve introduced ad-free sites for teachers to let them use wikis in the classroom.

(One other thing – it looks like Wetpoint has a top-notch support team – a few people noted concerns through the comments on Techcruch’s coverage, and Wetpoint responded to each of them within a couple of hours.)

Why is this useful for marketers? Because it further reduces the barriers to consumer participation. By introducing a user-friendly, attractive interface and multiple ways to get involved, Wetpaint makes it easier to encourage contributions and start conversations.

Posted in: facebook, Google, social media, web 2.0, wikis

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Public Relations Professionals Need To Get The Basics Right

07.11.09

In the wake of the ongoing bad PR pitches storm, I had a *slap forehead* moment this week when I (finally) realized the problem isn’t just about public relations professionals not ‘getting’ blogger relations. It’s not about people upgrading their skills to deal with this new media environment. This is about public relations professionals getting the public relations fundamentals right.

I love Todd’s blogger relations bookmark – it’s a great primer for people getting involved with blogger relations. We should also remember, though, that the people pitching Chris Anderson were pitching him as the Editor In Chief of Wired magazine, not as a blogger.

The principles remain the same, though: Know your market. Research who to pitch. Find out what they write about. Tailor your approach. Don’t spam people. It’s not rocket science!

Terry Fallis and David Jones discussed on Inside PR a little while back that fall into PR rather than choose it. This is by no means unique to PR. Still, I wonder if a lack of training for those who enter PR without a formal education contributes to the problems we hear about hear about daily.

A large part of my job involves managing about 30 training courses in our own internal communications program. We provide a place where government communicators can upgrade their skills or fill the gaps in their knowledge.

Obviously small agencies don’t have the resources to offer a full program like this. How does they go about training new staff?

I wonder: Do PR agencies offer training (whether internally or contracted-out) to their staff or are people expected to just know how to go about it? Are people thrown into the deep end and expected to float?

As we’ve all seen recently, that seems to be a recipe for disaster.

Posted in: blogger relations, pitching, pr, public relations, training

4Comments

Fan-sumers, or MyFace? Facebook’s Social Ads

07.11.07

Jeremiah Owyang, through twitter, drew my attention to Facebook’s announcement today of its latest advertising product – social ads.

Essentially, brands can now get their own profiles just like individuals. Users can sign up as ‘fans’ of those brands (update: hence Jeremiah’s coining of the term “Fan-sumer”), and can then share information about those brands in their newsfeed.

This is an interesting way for marketers to leverage the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Studies consistently show that word-of-mouth is the most influential tool available to marketers. By getting users to distribute information for them, brands can now tap into the trust established between Facebook friends. This adds a whole new layer of potential.

As Mark Zuckerberg put in today’s (traditional) press release:

“For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

Of course, it’s not all roses for the companies – they will have to deal with the same challenges that face any company working in the social media space. On Facebook, that means wall postings, photos or anything else that a company wants to enable.

For companies that aren’t already genuinely engaged, these features could backfire (ask Wal-mart – their last Facebook experiment was met with hostility, and doesn’t seem to be there any more).

Still, for those who go about it the right way, there’s significant potential from a marketing perspective.

Here’s the problem: as was pointed out on a recent episode of For Immediate Release (before this announcement), Facebook is falling into the same trap that MySpace did.

People migrated from MySpace to Facebook to get away from the bombardment of advertising and clutter on that site. These new ads will add even more content to pages already cluttered with Facebook apps.

Of course, there is an element of user choice in this. If people don’t want to ~~befriend~~ become fans of a brand ~~profiles~~, they don’t have to. If they don’t want to share information on those brands, no-one will force them to.

The same can be said, though, for Facebook’s recent ‘searchable profiles’ kerfuffle. People could opt to not have their profile indexed by search engines, but the default was to share them. My bet is that most people didn’t know they needed to un-share. The same goes here.

I worry that Facebook is moving away from what made it successful, and forgetting its core users. They need to remember that there’s user choice in which social network to use, too.

If Facebook continues down this path, just wait and watch as users choose to look for a more friendly, open, uncluttered experience once again.

Posted in: facebook, marketing, social networks

1Comments

PR Squared’s Blogger Relations Bookmark

07.11.01

Todd Defren posted a great Blogger Relations Bookmark on his PR Squared blog today.

The bookmark is, in part, a response to the storm that Chris Anderson kicked-off this week with his "Sorry PR People: You’re Blocked" post, where he named and shamed people he felt had emailed him inappropriately.

I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that [...] Everything else gets banned on first abuse.

Lots of people have written much more eloquently about this than I could, so I’ll just say that I sympathize with Chris but disagree with his listing of email addresses.

Unfortunately, the resulting discussion seem to have lowered the tone of online discussion between PR pros and journalists to a new low.

I find the vitriolic comments flying back and forth distasteful and saddening. I don’t want to be involved in discussions like those, so I’ve stayed away from commenting on other sites on this issue.

One positive thing that has come out of this is an explosion of posts detailing how to effectively pitch bloggers. None have impressed me more than Todd’s.

Why is Todd’s post useful? First up, it links to a bunch of useful resources on best practices. It also shares Todd’s own best practices in a format that PR pros can print out and refer to when they delve into the blogosphere.

(I just realized I mention Todd’s blog quite frequently. You know why? Because it rocks. If you don’t read it, you should. Seriously. Why are you still here? Go there now)

Posted in: blogger relations, pitching, pr, public relations

1Comments