Some interesting stuff

• Jason Horowitz at the New York Observer takes a cut at the recent PR awards in New York [Thanks to Eric Tatro and the folks at Media Orchard]
• One can always rely on Constantin Basturea to come up with the goods and he hasn’t disapointed on the recent New Comm Forum. If you want a great aggregation of content and views from the event visit his post. David Parmet adds the images.
• When I was writing my earlier post on charitable blogging I forgot to include related posts from Eric Tatro and John Wagner.
• Eric Schwartzman has a great podcast with the inimitable Dan Gillmor, Katie Delahaye Paine, while
  Shel and Neville get some of their own medicine.
• Aedhmar Hynes, CEO at one of my old stomping grounds is up and blogging.
• Steve Bryant over at EWeek believes that News 2.0 isn’t Journalism 2.0 [Via Renee Blodgett]
• Anyone for a hamburger?

There’s a lot of noise online. There’s a lot of opinions.

I’m very confident that over time people will discover who they trust, who they enjoy and who they want to read.

In the meantime, in the unlikely event you are confused by the volume of information, here’s an analogy I hope is useful when considering the validity of any online opinions.

I like the occasional hamburger. From time to time I purchase and consume the said hamburger.

But just because I purchase it and eat it doesn’t mean that I am an expert on:

• cattle farming
• agricultural logistics
• catering
• food marketing
• etc. etc.

It just means I eat them.

If this post has confused you, welcome to the world of blogs!

Following my post last week on charitable blogs (and the lack thereof) and specifically how we can help charitable organisations to get up and running with a tool that is perfect for charitable communications, Robert French was first out of the gate and working with Constantin he’s rapidly pulled together a page on the NewPRWiki and created a charitable blog link button.

This is a great start!

The purveyors of PR’s longest running PR podcast, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz have announced (in their podcast of course) that they’ve just signed a deal with McGraw-Hill to publish a book on podcasting.

The latest installment of course has tonnes of news and views from the blogfest at New Communications Forum.

PS:

• There’s loads of great content and posts coming out of New Comm Forum, I highly recommend you take the time to catch it. The podcast above is a great starting point.

• More from New Comm Forum here, here, here and here, and here.

• Finally, I’ve given you written and audio links to NewCommForum so what else is left than the photo record [courtesy of Phil Gomes].

• Although this isn’t at the show it’s a very interesting interview by Eric Schwartzman and Phil Gomes, I included the link previously – highly recommended.

A common theme in all the speaking events and workshops I’ve been involved in over the past couple of months is the growing interest in blogging by charitable organisations.

However, along with the interest there’s a lot of confusion. When I went searching for charity-related blogs I assumed there would be a huge number but it was actually quite difficult to find them. Thanks to some kind contributors I now have quite a few links (see below). There are also some blogs specifically focused on how charities and non-profits can use this technology (also below).

Why should charities be interested in blogs? Well there’s loads of reasons:

• Advocacy: Blogs are the perfect medium for creating platforms where passionate and articulate individuals and organizations can clearly communicate their views on issues and drive the debate.
• Accountability: When people give to charity, often the most powerful means of keeping them involved is to show them how their donation is being used. Blogs provide the perfect platform for demonstrating the results of fundraising.
• Show and Tell: Can you think of a more powerful tool for charities that using blogs to showcase the issues they’re facing or trying to solve on a daily basis? Whether it’s aid workers blogging in a foreign country or homeless people sharing accounts of their lives.
• Every other benefit of blogs: Blogs promise organizations many benefits, and alongside the first three points, they offer charities exactly the same benefits. Whether it’s about conversations, knowledge sharing, search engine optimization etc. blogs can help.

So the question for charities out there is how can we help? I’m in the planning stages of a small project here in Ireland where I’ll be working with Enable Ireland to possibly put together a free blogging workshop for charitable organisations. But I’m sure there’s stuff we can do online, and I’m sure the ever growing PR blog community won’t be found wanting…

Some Charitable Blogging Links

• Omidyar’s list of non-profit blogs

• Getting Attention Blog (for non-profits)

• Re-focus – Fundraising Technology

• Dr. Len’s Cancer Blog – American Cancer Society

• Blog for Hope [Archive only] Yahoo! & American Cancer Society

• Alabama Special Camp for Children and Adults

• Greenpeace

• Oceana

• American Lung Association of Minnesota

• The Diva Marketing Blog Profile on the American Cancer Society

Do you remember when you were a kid and for some reason (normally something mundane) your mother wouldn’t let you go out and play, and you’d sit in the house and hear lots of laughter from kids (probably not even your friends) playing outside.

That’s how I feel today, it seems that everyone is at the New Comm Forum… Thank god for computers.

You see here’s the thing. When you write something in an e-mail, you need to realize that you are putting something in the public domain. When I give talks on the “new” PR tools, I always remind people that e-mail is part of the disclosure process for litigation. I also remind them that once you compose and send an e-mail you don’t have any control. It’s time we all started understanding that.

Want an example? OK.

Phil Harvey, news editor at the widely read Telecoms outlet Light Reading has a fantastic example for you. Click on it, read it, understand it and alter your behaviour…. Thanks to Phil for the public service.

Many strange phrases have entered into the Interweb consciousness, think of “jump the shark”, “the long tail”, “markets are conversations”, so I have a new one: “Kicking the dead dog”**.

“Kicking the dead dog” describes the preponderance of people online to continually talk about the same thing over and over and over again. Given this is my phrase I’m giving it two meanings. It also describes the continual wave of posts that declare something is now “dead”.

In the world of PR there are two topics that have people kicking the dead dog. The death of PR and the death of the press release. I struggle to generate the energy to read these posts and whenever I do I need strong coffee and painkillers.

The latest person kicking the dead dog is declaring that the press release is… sorry I’m too bored to go into any more detail, I’ve added some links below, the first link is the offending post, the subsequent posts I’m glad to say have some common sense.

Let’s just post a single phrase from the original post:
“I have a disruptive role to play in mainstream PR”

Okey dokey… I … errr have a … emm.. narky, angry role to play in dealing with silly blog posts.

Follow the first link at your peril, read it, then forget it. The press release is alive and well folks, in fact it’s “walking the live dog” so to speak. I’m swimming in press releases, you can have them anyway you want them, in e-mail, on a website, in RSS, by fax, by post, by courier, I’ll even read it to you. But it ain’t dead…

• Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!
• Tom Foremski is Wrong [Thank you Kevin Dugan]
• Deconstructing News [Richard Bailey]

• Dying for some recognition [Hacking Cough]
• Is Tom Foremski Talking About XPRL? [Stuart Bruce]

• He Wants Us to tag our e-mail? [Alice Marshall]
• Do press release deserve to die? [Trevor Jonas]

**Long-time readers (hello mum) will remember that I’ve tried in vain to create a massive Internet groundswell around new terms in the past. I think I’m missing the money element. Most of the others promise loads of cash. Mine doesn’t. That explains it then.

In the latest of my vain attempts at keeping up to date with all the interesting content appearing online, here’s the latest miscellany of links…

• The folks at Media Orchard point to an interesting story in the latest edition of the PRSA Strategist Newsletter looking at the growing trend of journalists moving to the dark art.
• Uber-blogger Neville Hobson has moved to a new dedicated web presence at http://www.nevillehobson.com/ [Of course I should also mention that Nicky Wake the organisational brains behind our recent UK new media seminars has also joined the online cloud.]

• On a related topic, Gary Goldhammer looks at the new rules for journalism.
• Philip Young, Colin McKay and Andrew Smith both report on Julian Henry’s piece in the UK Guardian which suggests that PR is overrun with “strategists” and that “publicists” should be talking to journalists regularly or should go take a job in advertising. Publicists mmmmm… [Addendum: Simon Collister also covered it.]
• The RSS Pundit picks the ten most interesting PR blogs – and in case you think I’m being a self-“publicist”, no I don’t make the cut 🙂
• Paul Holmes looks at how GlaxoSmithKline are turning to PR.
• Trevor Cook points to an interesting post on The Flack looking at the question of exclusives.
• Trevor has been busy, here’s an interesting transcript from a recent radio discussion he was involved in.
• PR is about more than media relations and communication, it’s about the customer, it’s about the audience. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there are great examples of good and bad PR everywhere. John Wagner has a great common day example.
• New York magazine has a feature on those new fangled blog things.
• Tara Smith at the MarcomBlog reports that Gartner estimates that 70% of leads are wasted. Probably not a surprise for most marketers who have tried to follow leads through the hopper..
• I see that WordPress are now offering a free blog hosting service.
• Richard Bailey ponders whether the centre of gravity for PR is moving in-house.

Podcastic

Well the world of PR podcasting is following in the footsteps of “boring” old blogs with a whole range of new blogs to kill time on your commute…

• The grandpappy of PR podcasting is of course the ever excellent “For Immediate Release” from Shel and Neville which is now on it’s 115th episode and remains a must listen.
• Eric Schwartzman has kicked off an impressive list of podcast interviews with the Edelman wunderkindren, Elizabeth Albrycht, BL Ochman, and Walt Mossberg.
• Of course, Phil Gomes at Edelman has the earSHOT podcast – and they’ve added a new Edelman team blog called Talkshop.