Murphy's Law

Further to my post on corporate blogging yesterday, Chris Thilk suggests some additional tips on corporate blogging.

Meanwhile, EDS have kicked off a new corporate blog called “EDS’ Next Big Thing Blog” where EDS Fellows discuss new technological developments. As part of the exercise they have also included a number of guidelines for readers outlining their approach to the blog. These include:

We will tell the truth.

We will review all comments for content before they are posted.

We will try to respond to comments as fast as possible.

We will link to all of our online resources directly.

We will respect your comments and disagree with them where appropriate.

[Thanks to BL Ochman for the link]

Morgan McLintic recently wrote about an enterprise software firm who were canning their corporate blog because they didn’t have time to publish stories every day. Morgan counselled him that:

“The point I made to him is that a corporate blog doesn’t need constant maintenance and daily posts. Just regular updates as and when the company has something new to announce or when there’s a specific topic it has a fresh opinion about. He felt that to be valid the blog had to be a destination news site which visitors would return to regularly. Instead, all it really needs to do is provide an additional channel of communication. If you haven’t got anything to say – don’t open your mouth.”

It’s an interesting point. As the number of corporate blogs grow there needs to be some clear planning in what you are hoping the blog will achieve – and part of that is some realism regarding how many readers you will attract and how long it will take.

Corporate blogs are about communication
There are a host of reasons why you (or your clients) should look at the possibility of publishing a corporate blog. But besides benefits like search engine optimization and becoming a reference for the media, the first objective of the corporate blog must be focused on building a new and often more effective communication channel with your audience(s).

To ignore this single primary objective will adversely effect your blogging efforts.

It takes time
Building an audience for a corporate blog takes time – and as more blog appear it will likely take longer. Build a realistic promotion plan around your corporate blog. Promote it via your website, promote the content via your newsletters and e-mail signatures and reach out to other blogs, journalists etc. where relevant. By all means measure the success of your blog but be realistic.

Measure it
Blogs provide a range of measurement tools, use them. Measure visitors, RSS traffic, in-bound links etc. These are great indicators into how well the blog is communicating and attracting an audience.

Content
The single most critical piece to a corporate blog is the content. Everyone has opinions, use those opinions to provide context to your market. You don’t have to be funny, witty or even controversial (though sometimes all three help), but you do have to provide honest first person perspectives. If visitors are getting value and information from the blog, they’ll keep coming back.

Regularity
The most common stress I see associated with corporate blogs is the perceived need for new posts every day. That is a misnomer. The important thing is that you establish a regular pattern of entries. For example, Richard Edelman posts just once a week. It works because people know he only posts once a week. Yet while the rest of the PR mice (me included) are scuttling around firing posts out, Edelman’s blog is probably the most widely read (with the exception of Mr. Rubel).

The key is establishing how often you won’t blog :-). Also with the growing adoption of RSS, people can subscribe and be alerted when you’ve posted an item making concerns about the volumes of posts less important.

Make it interactive
Corporate blogs provide a great opportunity to engage your audience in conversation. Too many blogs don’t solicit comments or feedback. Look at ways your blog can engage with visitors. Run competitions, propose new product functionality and ask for feedback. These are all useful interactive activities that will help build an audience.

The key point here is that corporate blogs are a fantastic resource when used in a realistic manner. Put together a plan for your blog. Establish realistics goals and resources both internally (number of posts etc.) and externally (number of readers etc.) and measure your progress.

If all you are doing is using your blog as a surrogate press release distribution mechanism, I wouldn’t bother.

• Keith Jackson points to a recent speech given by Professor James Post of Boston University to Australia’s Centre for Corporate Public Affairs on “Governance and the Stakeholder Corporation”. It’s a very very interesting talk with a whole range of themes that are relevant for any PR practitioners. Print it and read it…
• Mark Borkowski points to an interesting profile of Bernard Doherty, the PR practitioner behind Live 8.
• The world of PR podcasts is growing nicely. Hot on the heels of Steve Rubel‘s first podcast, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have released podcast #47.

Happy fourth of July!

Couple of interesting stories to report:

• Long time tech journalist and industry curmedgeon John Dvorak[blog] took time out at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco last week to fire a broadside at PR. In a generally critical interview about Sun, it transpired a pre-arranged meeting for Dvorak with Scott McNealy was cancelled by Sun’s PR folks and he was clearly not impressed. About 22 minutes into the interview he let’s rip with some of the usual stereotypes:
  

  “When the CEO gives up his manhood to some squirly PR person whose intimidating everyone and lording it over everyone like she’s the big expert because she worked for one of the agencies for two years, is a pathetic indictment.”

  [Fast connection required]

• Steve Rubel [blog] has launched his first podcast.
  It’s just over twelve minutes and provides some opinions on RSS and blogs as well as addressing some recent criticisms. A worthy download to get your week started.
• Piaras Kelly reports that the BBC have released editorial guidelines for its financial journalists. They have also published guidelines on conflicts of interest.
• John Cass and Backbone Media have released the findings of a recent blogging survey which included responses from over 800 people. The report includes both quantative results (59% of respondent bloggers had been contacted by the media and most of the bloggers were over 30) and qualitative results including interviews with a number of companies who are already blogging.
  It also includes some interesting results on why companies start blogs and what kind of return they are getting from the investment.

Well after a lot of hard work, Internet searches and tweaking, I’ve finally managed to migrate the PR Opinions blog to Moveable Type.

I’ve left all the old blog entries online for two reasons. Firstly to ensure I don’t break any incoming links and secondly because the import process from Radio Userland meant that many of the imported posts are formatted incorrectly.

I have a full index of all the old Radio Userland posts here. I’m still working through some teething issues, if you spot anything let me know!

Another day, another month and happy Canada day!

• Ladies and gentlemen, another gentle reminder of the importance of search engine optimization in the realm of PR. Netimperative reports that two of the UK’s top five grocery brands have negative commentary in the top search results for their brands.
• Shel Holtz [blog] is kicking off a list of business podcasts, meanwhile issue 46 of Shel and Neville Hobson’s [blog] PR podcast For Immediate Release is now available.
• As widely reported elsewhere PR Week UK have a feature on blogging.
• Here’s an interesting post that we’ve probably all felt like writing at one stage or another from the Peking Duck blog.

• Jeremy Pepper continues his series of interviews with PR notables. The latest installment is an interesting chat with long-time technology PR mover Sabrina Horn, President of the Horn Group

  “Our business will always be high-touch. The second we forget about that, is the second we have lost a part of the secret sauce of our profession. Clients want to be “touched,” and some of the best media relations come s from personal connections and human interaction. If you are very uncomfortable in a social situation, PR won’t be the right fit for you.

  Because of the Internet, our business is evolving from a more traditional publicity-oriented, media centric field, to a more well-rounded communications field. We help clients communicate to the press, as well as their business partners, employees, investors, and customers using new forms available for communications.

  Technology has given us great platforms to communicate; email, blogs, extranet, Web sites but it should absolutely not replace the personal touch.”

• Catherine Helzerman has an interesting post on the “tomorrow’s media” session from the Gnomedex conference. JD Lasica‘s non-profit site for grassroots media which is called ‘Our Media’ looks very interesting. It has accumulated 12,000 pieces in only three months.

• Andrew Smith addresses some of the pitfalls of trying to apply homogenous PR campaigns and tactics across different regions. This is something I’ll be writing about in the near future, it’s a complex issue and one that is often ignored at the expense of success.
  If you want some light diversion today, why not have a giggle reading Intel‘s famous leaked European media guidelines from back in 1999

• Stacey Cohen of PR firm Co-Communications has written an op-ed on how best to reach the online audience. While the article has some useful tips, I would strongly recommend caution on implementing some of the tactics. Look at the newsgroup advice for a start…

• Elizabeth Albrycht has kicked off a new online venture as part of the Corante stable. Future Tense is a collaborative blog which looks at the future of our working lives, now that’s something we’re all interested in.

• Ryan May over at the Minnesota PR blog has put togethera very simple guide to setting up a blog, including detailed step-by-step instructions.

Ok, so you’ll note that the two previous posts have swopped order as Radio Userland has decided to start eating posts once again.

I have been trying to put this off, but it’s time to start looking a blog publishing alternatives.

If anyone has any guidance on migrating Radio content to Moveable Type or similar let me know 🙂

I’ve had enough…

I have to say I’ve been delighted with the response to my post on the need for blogs to be kept in perspective.

From the comments section on this blog and the huge number of personal e-mails I’ve received, my faith in the common sense of practitioners has been restored.

Believe me when I tell you that I am as bored as anyone reading the same rebuttals to the ‘visionary’ nonsense that I read about blogs. However, from a communications perspective this drivel does need to be addressed in an (vain) attempt to ensure that people don’t get the idea that just because it’s on a blog it’s true!

I’m thinking of some ways to save you, my kind reader, from having to read my constant rebuttals and will deliver something in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we should continue to counter the posts from all those lonely ivory blog towers that have been erected across the Internet.

I also believe that if we re-invested the time spent in ‘blog navel gazing’ into actually looking at how blogs can contribute, rather than decimate PR, we’d be much better off.

With that thought in mind, some recent research from Euro RSCG Magnet [website] and Columbia University found that more than half of journalists use Weblogs regularly, though only 1% believe that blogs are credible.

Other findings included that 70% of journalists who use blogs use them for work, with the most popular uses including finding story ideas (53%), research (43%) and discovering story sources (36%).

68% of them believe that blogs will become a more popular tool for corporations seeking to inform consumers, while 56% agree that blogs will remain an independent and unorthodox means of disseminating information. Finally 93% of journalists said they are being “excruciatingly careful” in fact-checking their stories in 2005 — a huge increase from 59% in 2003.

Elswhere the PRWeek/Weber Shandwick Corporate Survey 2005, which included 228 in-house corporate communications professionals, found that more than 40% said they expect their budgets to rise in the coming year, and another 54% believe that their budgets will remain unchanged.

The survey also looked at the effect of blogs. While the majority of respondents were keeping an eye on blogs, only 8% were maintaining a corporate blog at their company, 22% said that they monitor the blogosphere “a great deal”, but close to 50% admitted that they don’t monitor blogs at all.

Now there are some facts about PR and blogging.

You can find some more common sense opinions on the intersection of PR and blogging here:

• Alice Marshall
  In praise of the humble press release
• Elizabeth Albrycht
  Enough Already
• Eric Eggertson
  A Modest Proposal for PR Blogs
• Jeremy Pepper
  Blogging at IABC
• Josh Hallett
  Bursting the Blog Hype Bubble
• Shel Holtz
  Another call to replace PR with blogs

OK so I have been travelling a lot recently and when you combine that with a recent bout of illness and a heavy workload it probably directly contributes to a general bad mood, however Steve Rubel‘s recent post on ‘blogs are the new press releases’ has annoyed me sufficiently to pen a response.

Why is it that proponents of blogging believe that blogs must rape and pillage everything that has gone before?

Why is that?

Why does the press release continue to get a good kicking?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to question the status quo but let’s keep a sense of realism here.

Blogs are a tool. They are a tool that enable you to communicate in a more personal, conversant and interactive manner with your audience. [Technically they’re a set of HTML pages with RSS feeds formatted in a manner similar to a diary].

Press Releases are a tool. They are how organizations communicate news in a format that is widely understood and used. [Technically they are a set of words set out in a logical manner].

All PR practitioners understand that the most effective campaigns use the appropriate tools, in the appropriate manner to reach, educate and inform a specific audience. These audiences vary from staff, to customers, prospects, analysts, journalists, the local community etc. etc.

Why in God’s name would the blog replace the press release?

It won’t. The two will live in perfect happiness together. And here’s why.

If you climb out from behind your personal crusade and look at this question from the perspective of a real-world practitioner, you’ll see that successful PR is all about pragmatism not evangelism.

If the most effective way to reach my audience is posting a blog entry, I’ll do it. If the most effective way is a press release I’ll do that. If the most effective way is to use both tools together… guess what, I’ll do both.

To quote a post from April 2005:

“.. press releases provide a well understood means of official communication for an individual or organization. If you are looking for the latest news you will seek the press release. Furthermore for statutory reasons press releases are an essential record of a company’s performance and history.

There is nothing to stop you using blogs to supplement the press release. In fact we now have a wide array of tools for targeting our audiences including webcasts, web pages, telephones, face-to-face briefings, blogs, bloggers, RSS, e-mail, instant messaging, bulletin boards, mailing lists and intranets. But that doesn’t negate the need for a press release.

A competent PR professional will use the best tools at their disposal to successfully communicate with an audience.”

The sooner we acknowledge that we are in the business of effective communications the better. Putting forward the notion that blogs will destroy all that’s gone before might create fantastic ‘link juice’ among the blogeratti but in my opinion it’s not credible.

Blogs will not perform a slash-and-burn on the PR toolkit. Instead blogs are an important additional element.

Do we think that blogs will turn an unnewsworthy press release into something that’s newsworthy? No. Will blogs turn badly written content into well written content? No.

Will RSS replace wire feeds? Not in the near future. That’s the 1990’s equivalent of putting press releases on your web site and assuming everyone that matters to your organization will read it. Is that what you really think?

RSS will become increasingly important, but you can be sure that the wire services will adopt RSS and companies like Nooked will innovate around the syndication of RSS feeds, and just in case you think RSS is the sole domain of the blog, we’ve been publishing RSS feeds of our press releases for three years with not a blog in sight (Though our press room is now built and maintained with Moveable Type).

All I ask is that we take a pragmatic look at how blogs intersect with our existing tools, let’s get realistic.

You can find some more views on this subject here:

• Piaras Kelly:
  

  “Too many bloggers are overhyping the phenomenon. They describe the benefits of blogging as the would describe the features of a microphone. Sure it’ll make your voice that bit louder, but what are you going to say? If you’re still talking the same rubbish that you may have issued before through a press release then blogging isn’t going to help you. Just like press releases, you have to know and understand when and how to use blogging.”

• Stuart Bruce
  

  “Blogs and RSS won’t replace news releases because they do a different job. They are pull media, where as the benefit of a news release is that it is push. You target it directly at who you think it is going to be relevant to. It not only varies from company to company, but also from release to release.”

• Andy Lark
  

  “It is for this reason that I believe the technologies and features of the blog will start appearing as a key component of press releases. Maybe the wire services will propel this forward. Maybe the companies will do it themselves. Either way, the sooner we get to press releases with comments, trackbacks, permalinks, lotsa links and tags – the better off we all will be. Press releases become more blog like. But they won’t go away.”m release to release.”

• The press release isn’t even pining for the fjords (PR Opinions)
• Will blogs replace press releases (Shel Hotz)
• Blog relations… three chords and the truth (PR Opinions)