Podcasting has the potential to add a whole new dimension to corporate communication at a low cost. Delivering relevant interesting content via MP3 which visitors can listen to at their desk or download onto their MP3 players for consumption at a later point. It’s a development that you should be trying to find out about today. I was delighted to discover that two of the more prolific PR bloggers have come together to kick off a PR podcasting effort. Beginning in January, Shel Holtz (with a nice new blog format!) and Neville Hobson will be providing a weekly podcast on all matters PR. They’ve created a new blog for the podcast and you can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here. Kudos.
Media Insider has some great quotes on crisis communication.
“The three virtues of an effective crisis communicator are responsiveness, accuracy and honesty. When folks fade away from these qualities, they’re setting up both their clients and themselves for a huge fall — one much greater than if they had done the ‘right thing’ in the first place. Nobody — not even reporters — can anticipate a company to be perfect and crisis-free, but they do have every right and reason to expect the highest level of responsiveness, accuracy and honesty.”
Mike Manuel points to a very interesting article in Wired written by Adam Penenberg, assistant professor at New York University which argues that the media embargo has outlived it’s usefulness and is now hampering effective, timely reporting.
“Until they (Editors) refuse to abide by them, however, embargoes will continue to hold sway, to the joy of publicists everywhere. And that’s a shame, because it makes no sense to sit on life-altering news when we have the web at our disposal.”
Tom Foremski has an insightful post from Mark Coker of Dovetail Public Relations who mulls over the dilemma facing PR agencies who do a great job with small clients only for the client’s success to lead to an acquisition and therefore a lost client…
Kevin Dugan has published the second part of his interview with Richard Laermer and he has some fresh thoughts on blogs…
“I like the myriad of PR blogs, I admit, because they unlike toothless political ones from the last harsh election tend to be a nice news source on the hype businesses and the media itself. I tend to spend a lot of my time reading about the media and how much they love their antics. Whew, boy. It�s a party every day in that clique!….. Rant over. However, since powerful and decision-making folks use blogs as a way to become informed � yes, unfortunately � I think PR folks have a whole new slew of publishing sources they can go to with their own correspondence and angles/hooks/story lines/what have you.”
Fortune magazine has an interesting story on blogging.
“The blog�short for weblog�can indeed be, as Scoble and Gates say, fabulous for relationships. But it can also be much more: a company’s worst PR nightmare, its best chance to talk with new and old customers, an ideal way to send out information, and the hardest way to control it. Blogs are challenging the media and changing how people in advertising, marketing, and public relations do their jobs. A few companies like Microsoft are finding ways to work with the blogging world�even as they’re getting hammered by it. So far, most others are simply ignoring it.”
If you’re interested on doing some blog-related reading over the next week here are some lists of recent blog stories. The Corporate Blogging blog has five stories and Amy Gahran has five others.
Shel Holtz points to some research from WordBiz Report that found that while 68% of e-mail marketers are worried about the declining effectiveness of e-mail only 23% have even used RSS. This is no surprise but hopefully RSS will continue to grow in 2005.
David Davis undertook some ad hoc research on the training plans for 25 PR agencies in the US and the UK. Among the findings was that 90% of respondents said training is the first line item to be cut, 68% of training will be carried out in house and only 5% of senior management will be expected to undertake training…
Kevin Dugan has some advice over at WebProNews for PR people looking to pitch bloggers.
MotorTrend reprints an article from Public Relations Tactics that evaluates whether GM’s infamous Oprah giveaway is marketing or Public Relations.. it seems to me that any successful PR campaign is tightly aligned to marketing therefore is this discussion academic? At the least it provides some interesting stats on the outcome.
Murphy's Law 