Murphy's Law

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Five years ago this week, discussion on the question of blogger ethics was all the rage across the Interweb, following Rebecca Blood’s widely read post on Weblog Ethics.

This was about a year after the "Blogger’s Manifesto"* was published, though to be honest I’ve always preferred this version.

Oh we were all so innocent then….

Speaking of innocent, here’s an idea I posted this week five years ago that (unsurprisingly) never caught on….

 

 

When is a weblog an inlog?

Friday, March 28th, 2003

I am writing a short opinion piece on weblogs and PR.  An ‘inlog’ is a term I am using for weblogs inside your organization.  I’ll post the article in the next while..

 

 

Jeez….

 

Footnote:

*Funny you can only get the manifesto on the waybackmachine – I wonder why that is, at least I left my bloopers online  🙂

Imagine returning to your house to find much of your belongings gone and an army of strangers rummaging through your house and packing their cars and vans with your possessions.

When you try to stop them they wave a print-out of an advert from Craigslist that says everything in your home is available free gratis.

It happened in Oregon (via TechCrunch) From the AP Report:

The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.

But Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave. The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.

On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.

"I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back," Salisbury said. "They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did."

The driver sped away after rebuking Salisbury. On his way home he spotted other cars filled with his belongings.

Once home he was greeted by close to 30 people rummaging through his barn and front porch.

The trespassers, armed with printouts of the ad, tried to brush him off. "They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true," Salisbury said. "It boggles the mind."

 

It’s not the first time either, a similar episode took place in Washington state last year.

I’d agree with TechCrunch that the Internet mirrors society and there’s always good and bad.

But the interesting thing, from a communications perspective, is that people consistently take the validity of content they find on the Internet at face value.

Now that’s scary.

Damien Mulley has published his tips for successful media interviews.

 

The most important thing about any interview is that you are prepared for it. If you put out a press release then you should already know your topic inside out. You should be expecting and be prepared for interviews well before the send button is pressed on that press release.

 

One thing I’d add to his list, is passion. You cannot replicate passion about the subject matter – it’s infectious.

From a blog relations perspective there’s a very interesting discussion taking place around a bloggers event that was organized by Johnson & Johnson (and their PR firm).

For the sake of brevity you can read Susan Getgood’s post for more detail here.

In effect, the event was for "mommy bloggers"* and two attendees, Julie Marsh and Stefania Pomponi Butler, had their invitations revoked for pretty spurious reasons – one because she could only attend part of the event, and one because she had to bring her nine week old son.

Not very clever.

I should point out that according to Susan’s post, J&J are open to getting the feedback and will learn from the experience.

Jeremy Pepper also wrote a post using this issue as the catalyst on how agencies need to train their staff or face the consequences.

He makes a lot of sense.  PR people need to wake up and understand that if they wish to help their clients participate, and communicate online, then they need a better grasp of how it works.

I have to say in defence of our profession (and I use the term advisedly 🙂 ) I’ve seen a lot of interest and commitment from PR practitioners in learning more about how online communication is changing. 

There’s a lot of people who recognize the need for a new approach.

But let’s talk turkey.

Traditional PR practice isn’t exactly a beacon of professional excellence is it? If you take traditional media relations as the lowest common denominator, journalists still receive irrelevant pitches, with no strong news or story element.

Why would we expect the online world to be any different?

If you have a blog you’ll get the opportunity to see the other side of the fence. Yes there are people who take the time and target you with a story, but the vast majority is pure spam and not even entertaining spam at that. {Furthermore if they’re pitching me, they obviously haven’t researched which blogs are read by more than a couple a people a month!]

The beauty of the online world is that bloggers call people out on poor pitches. Rather than "throw the release in the trash" they blog about silly people making silly pitches. [You even have an online blog you can use to point the finger at bad practice].

The reality is that the bar to "doing" Public Relations is sufficiently low that "everyone" can attempt it.

Furthermore, you have junior staff now undertaking the modern equivalent of what many of us had to do in the days before the Internet:

 

"Hello, Ms. Journalist did you get the release?.. would you like a photo…."

 

PR firms serious about helping their clients online, need to get their act together.

There is a huge learning opportunity from the hundreds of PR blogs already online.

There are online events like this and this as well as thousands of "Web 2.0" events in every city, country and continent.

But this isn’t just about training.  This is about a clear commitment to understanding online communications, understanding the tools, the channels, and most importantly of all understanding how to participate as a full value member rather than a flack.

It’s pretty easy to spot the difference.

PS:

Regarding the J&J issue, at least they have gone through the exercise of understanding that the online audience is important. Some elements of the execution was less than stellar but they’re open to learning.  No one has all the answers.

PPS:

Just an overall observation and not one specific to this post.  Bloggers are inclined to pull the trigger and examine the corpse afterwards.  Sometimes contemplation, perspective, and deep breathing are useful tools.

*I think this is the correct term 🙂

The last couple of years may have been a struggle, but I am delighted that today my meagre blogging efforts on the world of Public Relations have been polluting the Internet for exactly 6 years.

[To put that in context statistically, if you were a "wife" convicted of killing your spouse in a large urban area in the US, you’d be free now 🙂 ]

As someone who has been dipping their (lurking) toe into Twitter recently (and to extend the metaphor needlessly: pulling it out rather regularly), I’ve been interested to read some opinions on this, our latest source of information overload…

Allan Jenkins points to a very interesting story on Ragan: "How to use Twitter (and whether to bother)" [There’s an interesting video vignette from Shel Holtz as a sidebar to the article as well as a lot of commentary at the end of the post]

Allan also provides some of his own thoughts on using Twitter.

 

PS: If you are kicking Twitter’s tyres you might also be interested in Darren Rowse’s post: "How I Use Twitter to Promote my Blog".

PPS: TechCrunch has called out an interesting new Twitter service: Quotably. Quotably turns the Twitter stream into a threaded conversation. [Disclosure I haven’t had time to test it, but for an old fart like me it sounds like a great idea 🙂 .]

This mightn’t be news to you, but it was news to me.

APCO Worldwide has been working on a project for the US Council of PR Firms to understand the perspectives of PR firms and bloggers.

The findings make interesting reading.

The finding below in particular amazed me.

25% of bloggers surveyed agreed with the statement: “Our firm (sic) does a good job identifying the specific interests of individual bloggers and sending them relevant information.”

Wow! That’s not my experience….

Have a read of the study.

I found the report via Susan Getgood’s post: "PR People: Do your homework before you reach out to bloggers".

Also a recommended read…

 

UPDATE: I tell you this Interweb is fantastic.  No sooner had I pushed the publish button, than Paull Young was in touch to point me to Robert French’s take on the survey…

 

Well, to me this story is a placement for a bit of publicity … and a sad one, at that. Come on, APCO and CPRF … what were you thinking? It is one thing to be transparent … another to be able to see right through you!

Is this really what you folks call survey research? You really want to hang your hat on this? If so, we’re all in deep trouble. The About page tells more, yet raises more questions than it provides answers.

The report is still interesting reading, just don’t build your business plan on it! 🙂

 

Scanning my RSS feeds today, I came across a story titled: "CSR Pioneer of the Year: Communicator".

Now given I have a dual interest in PR and CSR I clicked on the link only to find:

I’d like to read about Dr. Oberkofler’s achievements, but I need another log-in like a hole in the head.

Sigh..

I’m a sucker for archives.

There’s something about learning about the past that really interests me.

Two posts caught my eye today:

• Philip Young points to a fantastic documentary on journalistm you can find on YouTube. It looks like the 1950s. [If you’re interested in gender equality 5:19 will probably make your toes curl]

 

• Eric Eggertson points to a letter written by  Bill Bernbach to his colleagues in the Ad agency business, sixty years ago.  It’s funny how the environment might change but the challenges don’t…