Archive for August, 2009

The Power Of Video

09.08.30

Note: This post takes a slight tangent from my usual social media focus. Bear with me – normal service will resume shortly…

In our hyper-connected, always-on world, the vibrating of your phone can result in an almost pavlovian-like response. There’s almost a fear that if you don’t see emails the moment they come in then you’ll miss something.

Reality check: Most things can wait. Especially if you’re driving at the time.

A video I tweeted about (embedded below) recently really drove home the point for me. This video communicates the message clearly and memorably in a way that words or still images could not. It’s a great example of the power of video when used correctly.

Hopefully this will make you think twice before sending or reading emails/text messages while you’re driving. If you’re in Ontario, it will soon be illegal to do so anyway, but frankly the potential consequences are a more compelling reason not to do so than the rules.

Warning: The video below is explicit and very emotional. I suggest you don’t watch it with young kids around, and brace yourself. On the other hand it should be mandatory viewing for new drivers.

Posted in: miscellaneous

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14 Key Skills & Attributes For New Public Relations Professionals

09.08.25

Public relations has changed significantly over the last few years. Even if you don’t buy into the idea that online communities and relationships are part of the public relations function, it’s hard to deny the rising importance of blogs, the gradual decline of traditional media and the impact that online conversations can have on brands. If you do believe that public relations should include these new activities, then there’s a whole new board game to be played.

Along the same lines, the skills that new PR grads need have evolved too.

Here are my thoughts on 14 skills and attributes a new PR professional needs in today’s market.

Traditional Skills/Attributes

Yes, there’s a new game to play (in my opinion), but the old game is still there too. PR pros still need the basic attributes and skills that they’ve always needed.  Try launching something using social media alone and you’ll appreciate the gap that traditional media can leave if it’s lacking. So, entry-level PR professionals still need to be proficient at (among other things):

  • Writing – the cornerstone of a PR professional’s career. If you’re not confident about your writing skills, brush up. You’ll need them. Learn how to write a news release – study those produced by other organizations and practice for yourself.
  • Communications skills – I’m talking ‘small c’ communications here rather than the ‘big c.’ Learn to communicate more effectively with other people
  • Attention to detail – because nothing will drive your colleagues (and, if you’re unlucky enough for your work to make it there, your clients) mad like poorly-edited work. Proofread everything. Fact check everything. Hand things to your supervisor when you would be happy with them going to the client.
  • Media relations – you’ll probably be doing media relations throughout the majority of your career. You may not have had an opportunity to do it for yourself as a new graduate, but an understanding of the basics is certainly an advantage – what’s in a media list? What are the pitching best practices?
  • Proactiveness – if you don’t know an answer to a question, first try to research the answer. If you can’t find the answer, ask. Whatever you do, don’t just sit there until you approach the deadline for your work.
  • Work ethic – public relations isn’t a 9-to-5 job. It shouldn’t take over your life, but the nature of the work is that sometimes you’ll have last-minute deadlines and sometimes you’ll have to chip-in to help others. There’s nothing worse for more senior team members than watching the more junior ones walk out of the door at 5pm then having to stay there until 9pm themselves. Put in that little bit of extra effort. It won’t be every day, but people will notice.

New Skills/Attributes

Alongside the regular attributes that I think new PR pros should have, I would add a whole new list of attributes related to the online work. Among these I would include:

  • Blogging - you don’t necessarily need to have one (although it’s a big plus), but an understanding of the importance of blogs and an interest in their use, is essential in my view.
  • Microblogging - it’s still an emerging technology, but I would argue that an understanding of microblogging tools (the primary one currently being Twitter)  is essential for new grads.
  • Social networking tools – Facebook, MySpace LinkedIn, Plaxo and more – there’s a plethora of social networking tools out there. An understanding of the leading social networks is desirable.
  • SEO - some parts of search engine optimization are quite technical, but others are very simple and require little technical knowledge. An understanding of the basics is highly valuable. This leads to my next point…
  • Coding - basic HTML, PHP, VBScript and so on are not critical skills, but I find them useful on a daily basis.
  • RSS, RSS Readers – I consider an understanding of RSS to be central to people doing any work in social media. For one thing, RSS turns monitoring multiple searches and sites every day into a manageable task. For another, it helps when providing recommendations to clients.
  • Blogger relations – understand the nuances of blogger relations.
  • Social media ethics – everyone has their own lines when it comes to ethics. Know where yours lie and how you feel about topics like astroturfing, ghost blogging, sock puppets and other common ethical issues (I’ve given my on astroturfing and ghost blogging several times recently).

It’s hard to find someone with all of these attributes. If you’re honest with yourself, you’re probably stronger in some of these areas than others. Figure out which areas are your weakest, and work on them.

I’ve probably missed a whole bunch of attributes here. PR pros, new and old – what would you add?

Update (8/25): Some great comments already. Additions to the list include:

(Hat tip to Dave Jones for sparking the idea for this post)

Posted in: pr, public relations

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251Comments

Astroturfing Online Reviews: 3 Reasons It’s A Bad Idea

09.08.23

TechCrunch reported yesterday that they had obtained evidence that a PR firm had “a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client’s applications.”

AstroturfAs a PR professional, this is extremely disheartening to me. I guess on some level we all know this happens, but this is a great reminder that this kind of activity just isn’t acceptable.

Here are three reasons you won’t find me practicing this kind of behaviour:

Risk to the client

Some people in the post’s comments suggested that it’s PR professionals’ job to position their clients in the best way possible through legal means. The implication was that this activity was legal, so it was ok.

I would agree with their definition of a PR pro’s role to an extent, but I add “ethical” to the list of qualifiers. For me, that rules astroturfing out.

I have had clients ask me to write reviews for them, and have refused (and explained the rationale): Because our refusing protects them from featuring in articles like the one on TechCrunch. As a PR professional, I consider exposing a client to the risk of being featured in an article like this to be completely unprofessional. I haven’t had a single person push back after explaining this.

Risk to the PR person/agency

In fact, the risk goes both ways. As the firm involved in this specific instance is no doubt discovering, getting outed for this kind of behaviour isn’t pleasant. I don’t plan on tarnishing my reputation with this kind of activity.

It’s unethical

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I want to go to sleep at night knowing that I’ve done the right thing. Despite some peoples’ perceptions, going into PR doesn’t mean giving up your own ethics. I want to look at my ugly mug in the mirror and feel good about my work.

Remember – not all agencies will do this. As Brits like me (and Aussies) would say, it’s just not cricket.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Posted in: communications, ethics, pr, public relations, social media

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A Quick Social Media Analysis Of The Toronto Storm

09.08.21

If you lived anywhere in Southern Ontario or were paying attention online last night, you’ll likely know that the Toronto area experienced a brief but violent storm early yesterday evening. What made Torontonians sit up and notice was the dozen or so tornado warnings issued for the area as the storm rolled in.

For a while, the words “Toronto” and “Tornado” trended on Twitter as people relayed news and their tales of the storms.

Here’s a video of the storm rolling-in across Toronto (you may want to turn your speakers down):

Jim Parsons also has several fantastic photos.

I pulled together a brief analysis of events as they unfolded during last night’s episode, using Radian6 and a couple of other tools. It’s quick and dirty but, well, that’s what you get for free :)

Timing

As weather stations forecast the storm earlier in the day, there was a brief spike in conversation in the morning. Conversation related to the tornadoes themselves began to erupt around 6pm – the first time that, had you been paying attention to conversation trends, you would have noticed a trend evolving.

Another noticeable feature is the second spike in conversation later in the evening. The storm was well away from Toronto by this point; this spike represented people discussing their experiences and posting photos and videos they had collected during the episode.

Volume trend for 'Tornado' and 'Storm'

Volume and velocity

Once the storm began, the velocity of the spike in conversations was significant. We saw an immediate 66% increase in the volume of conversations about Toronto; at the height of the conversation (once the storm had passed, funnily enough), the volume represented more than a 125% increase in the converastion about Toronto.

Meanwhile, from one or two posts an hour about Toronto and storms or tornadoes, we saw an increase to roughly one post per minute during the storm, and two posts per minute in the aftermath.

Trend of Toronto and storm-topic keywords

Media Types

Not surprisingly, with Twitter being the golden child of the moment, especially for time-sensitive updates, micromedia comprised almost three-quarters of the conversation relating to tornadoes. Blogs made up 13 per cent, while images captured by people comprised 10 per cent of the conversation.

This is a substantial departure from the day as a while, during which nearly 40 per cent of the conversation about Toronto occured on blogs and a similar amount occurred on Twitter. A useful reminder that while Twitter is high-profile, on a day-to-day basis much conversation happens elsewhere.

Putting the storm into perspective over the course of the day gives an interesting slant to things. While it’s headline news today and was during the night, mentions of the storm and of tornadoes comprise a small segment of the conversations regarding Toronto yesterday. Despite the storm, discussion around the Jays/Sox game garnered almost as much overall discussion.

What are your memories of the storm?

Posted in: monitoring, social media

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31Comments

Why Spam PR Pitches Won’t Go Away

09.08.20

Yesterday morning I received an email pitch. Nothing particularly exciting about that; it wasn’t the first pitch I received yesterday and it certainly wasn’t the last. It wasn’t tailored and it wasn’t addressed to me but it was on topic. I noted that it was for an ebook on social media marketing and set it aside to read properly later.

Spam

Very quickly, though, I began to see replies to that pitch. And then more replies. They kept coming. As it turns out, the sender of the pitch had created a mailing list and had emailed that list using the ‘To’ field in the address bar.

Over the next eight hours, I received 27 replies to the original email from people on the list. People who, apparently, like the ‘Reply All’ button (which, I think, should have an “are you sure” prompt when you use it). Emails getting increasingly irate at the original sender. Emails from well-known social media types like Mike Driehorst, Jennifer Leggio, Om Malik and Francine Hardaway.  Emails from reporters at the WSJ, at AdAge, at AP and Newsweek. To make matters worse, everyone began getting copied on support tickets about the removal requests.

Emails after a spam pitch

All told, we received 45 emails over an 8-hour period.

Spray and pray worked

One telling point, however? The first reply in the email chain was from someone who wanted to review the book. So was the fourth, which raised the possibility of a Blog Herald review.

Sadly, spray and pray was getting results. From a short-term perspective, the spammy pitch may have actually worked. It got two responses. Perhaps, were it not for the mailing list disaster, it might have received a few more.

In the long-term, however, the pitch did nothing to impress those of us on the list who viewed it as spam. It built no relationships and it certainly destroyed plenty (numerous people noted they have blacklisted the sender).

This is part of the volume/customization trade-off that PR people face. Some agencies will continue along this path – despite the people they alienate, they will land coverage for their client.

Other agencies (ours included) will choose to take a more targeted approach. We’ll pitch less people, choose our targets and personalize our approaches. We’ll aim for a high return from a smaller number of pitches.

Like it or not, both tailored and spray-and-pray approaches can work. However, one of them builds relationships in the process while the other damages them. I choose the former.

What do you think?

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

Tags: , , , ,

27Comments

Does Social Media Make PR Agencies Obsolete?

09.08.18

A fascinating discussion arose during Journchat Live in Toronto last night:

Does social media let everyone act as their own PR agency?

No. It doesn’t.

More than publicity

Is it always right to do it yourself?Public relations is much more than just pitching reporters. It’s event organization; it’s issues management; it’s media training; it’s strategic planning; it’s internal communications. In our company we broaden it further to include web property design and development, relationship building, community building, online issues management and more.

Social media does let people conduct some aspects of public relations themselves, such as building relationships with journalists and online influencers, and outreach to those people.

However, public relations isn’t as simple as drafting a release and pitching it. It requires skill and experience. I could become a butcher; a baker; a builder if I wanted to – however it would require years of training for me to do it well. Similarly, you can’t just pick up the reins of public relations and undertake the full suite of functions that the PR department does.

Desktop publishing software let anyone design documents but few people could do it well. Online tools let anyone be a journalist, but only a few sites do that well.

What’s more, anyone can undertake rudimentary public relations efforts through social media, but few people will do them well. Public relations is the outward face of your organization – do you want someone without a thorough knowledge of the nuances and skills of the discipline representing you publicly?

However, that doesn’t mean the status quo remains.

Public relations needs to evolve

Mainstream media dismissed the emergence of online media only to realize later that they had missed a seismic change in their industry. PR also needs to evolve.

As an industry, public relations need to embrace social media tools in order to stay on top of the changes underfoot. As more and more research shows that public relations is a natural fit for social media, we need to make this case to our clients.

We need to blog; to create podcasts; to experiment on Twitter; to produce videos; to build social media sites; to foster online communities. We need to do this so we don’t lose relevancy during these changes; so we can provide integrated solutions to our clients; and so we don’t lose the game to other disciplines and other business functions.

That’s my take. Social media doesn’t mean everyone can do public relations; however, it does mean that we need to up our game to get the best results for our clients, and to separate ourselves from the also-rans.

What do you think?

(Image: Shutterstock)

Posted in: communications, pr, public relations, social media

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Five Communications Implications As Twitter Enters The Trough Of Disillusionment

09.08.13

gartner_hype_cycle09Earlier this week, Gartner released its latest Hype Cycle report showing the state of various technology trends.

Some of the trends on the rise at various stages of the cycle include augmented reality, Internet TV, Web 2.0 and corporate blogging.

One noticeable point, however: microblogging is about to cross into the trough of disillusionment. Of course, the dominant player in this field is Twitter.

Twitter is social media’s golden child right now. Recently, Twitter has sat at what Gartner calls the “peak of inflated expectations”:

“…a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations”

It’s hard to argue that Twitter hasn’t been over-hyped recently. We’re about to see that change. The next phase is characterised as:

“Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.”

What does thais mean from a communicator’s perspective? Here are five potential effects of Twitter’s transition into the trough of disillusionment:

  • Less breathless media coverage: corporate Twitter use won’t be enough to generate media coverage
  • Less snake oil: the field will thin as the opportunistic snake-oil salesmen move on to the next shiny tool
  • Maturing use by companies: smart communicators already know that Twitter isn’t a social media strategy unto itself. Twitter will become less of a focus of campaigns and more of an integrated tactic. In more cases we’ll see companies decide that this isn’t the right tactic for them
  • Maturing expectations of users: we’ve seen the growth of somewhat unrealistic expectations in terms of response levels and times by organizations. This should lessen, making issues management more… manageable
  • Increased focus on measurement: as Twitter moves into the trough, it will become all the more important to measure effectively and for communicators to tie Twitter use to business results and metrics

Make sense to you? What do you think?

Posted in: trends, Twitter

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Make Their Lives Easier

09.08.12

“It doesn’t matter. People are lazy.”

Offer your customers an easy way, not the hard wayA friend of mine informed me of this last night when I tried to sell her on (what I think is) a cool new online tool. It was a powerful reminder that it doesn’t matter how cool something is – if it isn’t simple and easy then people just won’t use it.

I’m a busy guy. You’re probably in the same boat – you have 28 hours-worth of things to do in any 24-hour period.

In this context, the things that we’re likely to pay attention to – the things that we will try or buy – are the things that make our lives easier. For example:

  • I read a large number of websites every day; too many to keep track of them all manually. Google Reader (or any RSS reader) pulls them all into one place and streamlines my reading.
  • I’m always on the move. My BlackBerry, along with apps like UberTwitter and Facebook, let me stay connected and in-the-loop when I’m out and about.

Given this context, providers of online applications need to make them easy to use if they want our attention:

  • Give us a simple registration process and we’ll try it. Give us a difficult multi-stage process and we’ll drop off mid-way through.
  • Craft simple, plain-language communications and we’ll pay attention. Craft impenetrable corporate bureaubabble and we’ll ignore it.
  • Offer great customer service and we’ll rave about it. Silo your customer service along internal lines instead of customer needs and we’ll go elsewhere.

Make life easy for people, or you won’t have any people to deal with.
(Image: Shutterstock)

Posted in: miscellaneous

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The Importance of Downtime

09.08.11

If you didn’t notice, my site has been quiet for the last week. That’s because, for the last nine days, I was on vacation in Cape Breton on Canada’s east coast (yes, the picture below is me a few days ago).

Dave Fleet relaxing, looking out at the sunsetWhile I was away, I unplugged completely – no Internet; no BlackBerry; not even a phone signal for most of the trip. In the past I’ve stayed in the loop while I’ve been away, but not this time.

It felt great. This surprised me a little – I expected to get a little twitchy after a while – but it never happened, and I feel all the better for having disconnected.

What did I miss?

From what I can tell, a few things happened while I was away:

My thoughts on this were perfectly summed-up by Matt Singley:

“I wonder what non-geeks are talking about today? Not Friendfeed.”

It’s easy to get caught-up in the daily excitement over developments in social media. I do it all the time. It’s easy to feel like the minutiae within this world are all that’s important. That’s part of the reason I needed to disconnect for a while. There’s much more going on in the world outside the social media field and it’s easy to miss out on that if you aren’t careful.

I’ve been extremely busy over the last year or so and will continue to be that way. To keep this pace up, I’m going to make a concerted effort to balance work and social media (which overlap somewhat for me) with other activities. That will mean more running (which has been non-existent recently), more time with friends (ditto) and more downtime… and slightly less blogging (you may have already noticed that change) and online time.

How about you – how do you keep things manageable? How do you unplug?

Posted in: personal, social media

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