Murphy's Law

Hello. Well later today I’ll be jumping on a plane to Sunderland to participate in the University of Sunderland’s seminar “Making the News – Blogging, Really Simple Syndication and the New PR” – which is of course being organized by Philip Young.

There are a number of other PR bloggers participating at the conference including Elizabeth, Neville and Stuart (and of course Philip) so it should be a great day. Unfortunately the vagaries of the Dublin-Sunderland flight schedule means that I’ll miss this evening’s speakers dinner.

PR Opinions posts continue to be light, but then as my mother used to say, a little is better than nothing 🙂 (RSS is a very useful tool for the lazier blogger). I’ll post some thoughts from the conference tomorrow.

Some interesting snippets and views…

• The first ever large scale survey of European PR bloggers is underway. EUROBLOG 2006 aims to “provide a comprehensive overview of who is using blogs and for what purpose.” More from Fredrik Wacka and Philip Young.

• John Cass believes that blog relations is not a responsibility of PR – well not traditional PR. While he has a point that the majority of PR people aren’t thinking about blogs, I think blog relations IS a key discipline for PR, it does require a little bit of brain power to adapt to a different engagement model, but let’s be honest it’s not rocket science. (Thanks to Topaz Partners)

• Brendan Hodgson has an interesting post that suggests how PR may look in the future. (Thanks to Richard Bailey)

• Shel Holtz takes a very interesting look at the issues and opportunities of attracting good PR talent – and not surprisingly Shel reckons we’re behind.

• Neville Hobson points to a interesting story on blogging from PR Week.

• Meanwhile, Alice Marshall links to a prominent blogging story in the Financial Times.

• Alice also discusses the use of XML in PR. For anyone interested in the subject, there is a PR industry body already working on building PR-specific XML formats. You can find our more about XPRL.org here.

• Long time PR blogger Elizabeth Abrycht has a number of new initiatives underway including the Society for New Communications Research, see the press release here.

• Robin Stavinsky has an interesting post on online press rooms and another on RSS.

• Ben Wilson, one of the PR handlers on the Lions tour to New Zealand earlier this year, recounts his experiences. (Thanks to Richard)

• Duncan Chapple extends his post on how to manage an analyst crisis.

• Trevor Cook has some interesting findings from David Davis on what are the most pressing problems for PR people. Fears over job security and mistrust of management promises come in at the top.

For the most part blogging is a solitary online activity (no sniggering down the back), but it’s (for me in any case) made worthwhile through feedback, both positive and negative, from the poor souls who wander innocently onto the HTML pages you see before you.

Recently the comments have been overwhelmingly positive, phrases such as “awesome”, “humourous”, “witty”, “intelligent”, “insightful” etc etc. There’s too many to cover here and I’m simply too modest to share some of them. The funny thing is, all these fan comments and e-mails come from a community I hadn’t originally envisaged as a core audience for a blog on Public Relations and marketing… namely the pr0n industry, spammers and other peddlers of useful rubbish on the Internet. Unfortunately as my IQ does (sometimes) reach double digits, I’ve had to delete these wonderful comments before I could share them with you dear reader. But I just thought you should know there’s millions of spammers out there who love this blog….

On another topic, I’m a big fan of dog food. Not in the culinary sense obviously, though my dog seems to enjoy it, I mean in the sense of using the products and services of your employer, and so you’ll notice there’s a new primary e-mail address for all correspondence and it’s also my MSN IM ID. tpemurphy AT hotmail DOT com. I’ll continue to check the other account for a while but then I’ll get lazy…. and will probably miss all those opportunities to win millions of dollars online…

Well as expected the usual hysterical blog backlash greeted the recent Forbes piece on the risks of blogging.

While I was reading much of the commentary a couple of thoughts came to mind, and as usual I thought I’d bore you to tears with my own little opinion.

First and foremost everyone needs to chill-out a little.

• Was the article a little sensationalist? Yes

• Was much of the advice it provided on managing a blog-related issue ill advised? Yes

• Was it an interesting read? Yes

• And did it raise a potential major issue? Yes

Do we think it is a good thing that we only highlight the positive aspects of blogging? Surely there is a carrot and a stick approach to blogging. Organizations should be keenly aware that while blogs help build conversations, promote understanding and help with promotion and SEO, there is a much darker side to the democratization of opinion. There are dangers and risks.

In addition, I believe it’s good, right and true that consumers should become more educated on blogging and that they question the source, agenda and bias of blog authors.

People’s reputations are being legitimately and illegitimately attacked through blogs each and every day. To ignore that aspect of blogging – and I personally haven’t seen a lot of people writing about it – is unwise.

It appears that for many of the blogging community the only acceptable editiorial on the subject is the same sugary puff pieces, that in another sphere, they would mercilessly attack as proof that “the traditional media is dead”.

The sky isn’t falling down here. The fact that Forbes covered the subject means that blogging is maturing, this is a standard phase for any new tool, technology or channel. Debate of these issues is healthy and to be welcomed.

I would point out that it is good professional practice to provide clients with a holistic view of blogging. It’s clear that the Forbes piece was scare mongering but it’s no harm adding a bit of balance to the blogging utopia available on millions of sites around the Internet.

P.S. I’m sure you’ve already read it, but Richard Edelman has an interesting take on the Forbes article. I don’t necessarily agree with his recomendation that we should (only) put forward the positive view of blogging, but it’s well written.

• Man I am getting older. When I read Stephen Davies’ question about what PR was like before the Internet arrived I realize I am getting long in the tooth. I was there in the stone ages. Discussing PR before the Internet deserves a post in its own right. All I’ll say right now is that we were still busy, but busy on different things. And don’t get me started on research before the Internet….
• Here’s one I missed, PR Week have published a celebration of twenty one years of publication (in the UK). It’s a free download. While we’re at it, they also had a recent in-depth feature on RSS. Thanks to Richard Bailey for the directions.

• Amanda Barry at Behind the Spin examines the three factors you need to succeed in PR: Attitude, Persistence and Enthusiasm.

• Richard Bailey makes the case for the preservation of the news release – hurrah! Stuart Bruce has more..
• KD Paine ponders the subject of blog measurement.
• Duncan Chapple provides some good old fashioned common sense on what to do “When analysts attack”.
• Amy Gahan has released the audio from a PRSA talk she gave on the subject of The Future of Technology: What PR Pros need to know.
• The ultimate in vanity posting. My blog is currently worth over $95,000, I’m happy to open the bidding at $80,0000. Thanks to Alice Marshall..

• Mason Cole points to two very interesting articles. One is written by Shel Israel on what PR must do and the second is from Steve Rubel on what PR needs to do online.

• Matthew Podboy shares some knowledge and tips on the press tour.

• The Edelman/Technorati blogging survey has generated (as expected) LOADS of comment – too much to track here. As always we can rely on Constantin Basturea to keep us up-to-date. Constantin also has some in-depth and thoughtful analysis on blog surveys…

• Tim Dyson bemoans the bait-and-switch that often takes place in PR new business pitches. The lesson here is that you should always demand that the proposed account team does the talking greeting and meeting.

• Fair play to PR Week who have launched a new monthly column by the ever excellent Dan Gillmor. The first missive talks about the growing importance of conversation over control. Amen.

• Elizabeth Reid over at Voce gives a first person account on her first year in PR.

• While Blake Barbera shares some tips on coping with your first media pitch.

• Andy Lark aggregates some useful PR advice.

• Robb Hecht points to a very interesting post over at ZDNet written by Dana Gardner (ex-Infoworld, Aberdeen and Yankee Group) on how PR people are finally figuring out blogs.

• Deborah Branscum writes about the recent H&M snafu over paying for journalists to attend a media event in New York.

A few more PR blogs…

• David Rossiter has kicked off a second blog dealing with IT PR
• Anthony Mayfield has started a new blog called Open…

• Caroline Wilson at UCE Birmingham has started a blog called Public Relations for students on the BA Media and Communications (Public Relaltions) degree.

There’s been some heated discussion recently among the PR blogging community following Stephen Baker’s description of Steve Rubel in the BusinessWeek blog as the ‘doyen’ of PR bloggers.

It appears the comment has raised the ire of some. I think it’s no more than a storm in a teacup, a nitpick on language, and it’s possibly a good time for a reality check.

Why has the comment caused so much angst? Mr. Rubel is without doubt the most widely read, quoted and heard speaker on the intersection of PR and blogging. He has attained this position through a lot of hard work, networking and spotting a need for a specific focus on PR and blogging. Fair play to him.

That’s not to say from time to time I don’t have issues with the often incestuous relationship between the A-list bloggers, I do, but the idea of dedicating myself to the sole subject of PR blogging fills me with dread, PR is a diverse subject with many facets and I prefer the diversity. Furthermore, I’m not sure I’d match Steve’s passion or commitment!

So let’s not begrudge Steve’s success, he is after all a positive evangelist for the profession.

Now let’s get back to work!

The job of managing reputations has definitely got more interesting. While there was a lot of fear uncertainty and doubt when the Internet first emerged and people got very worried about rogue web sites (acmesucks.com) and a couple of people posting items in newsgroups, the Internet has matured very quickly meaning the threats to an individual’s or organization’s reputation has become far more sophisticated.

With search engines indexing every piece of information they can find on the Internet and millions of people using those tools every day, there’s more transparency now than ever before.

This is particularly true for individuals. We all know (and probably do it ourselves) the practice of checking someone out on a search engine before meeting or talking with them. Do you know what people find out about you before they meet you?

This online reputation ecosystem was brought home to me recently in a personal way. My parents, God bless them, weren’t the most imaginative when deciding on my name. It’s a proud family name, but Tom Murphy isn’t exactly exotic. Indeed a quick search finds a playwright, the mayor of Pittsburgh and thousands of other similarly named individuals. We all have the same problem. There was an analyst at Meta Group (R.I.P.) called Tom Murphy and for years we used to receive each other’s media queries. It’s funny we now both work at Microsoft and the confusion has continued unabated.

But in the past week or so, the media in Ireland and the UK have been focussing in on an unsavoury Tom Murphy or to give him his full title, Tom “Slab” Murphy (no relation). He is the alleged chief of staff of the IRA and has been linked with some dodgy property dealings in the UK amongst other things. The story has been on every TV news bulletin, radio bulletin, broadsheet, tabloid and online news service over here. A friend of mine joked that soon I’d be getting a lot more “respect”. Although there’s little likelihood that we’d be mistaken for each other, and of course he could take major offence at being mistaken for a PR practitioner, it illustrates the vagaries of online reputation.

So here’s the question for this morning. Are you managing yours?

I’ve had a few e-mail and comments wondering if I’m still alive – this message should clear that up 🙂

Thanks for everyone who has been in touch. As you can imagine I’ve been a little busy lately getting my feet under a shiny new desk, hence posting has been slower than I’d like.

I’ll hopefully be back posting more regularly in the coming weeks. Also a big thanks for everyone who took some time to comment on the PR Hype Cycle, I’m planning to make some changes to the diagram based on that feedback and will hopefully re-publish it in the near future.

I’ve also had some correspondence discussing whether I’ll be talking about life at Microsoft and the answer is yes and no. In my previous existence I only wrote about Cape Clear when I thought there was something relevant to discuss for the PR world. I am planning to take a similar line now.

Thanks again to everyone who has been in touch. Hopefully the power of RSS will let you know I’m alive an kicking!