Murphy's Law

Tom Foremski over at Silicon Valley Watcher touches on how PR companies are beginning to notice bloggers.

PR companies know how to work with traditional media, but they are not sure how to work with bloggers. That indecision has led to no action at all. But now, Christina says that things are changing. �Some PR companies, and also their clients, are beginning to ask, ‘which are the most influential blogs?’�

This can be a tough one to judge. It is difficult to audit the readership of blogs. RSS feeds and the re-posting of stories and entries across the web is difficult to track. Yes, there is �trackback,� which is integrated into blogging software and can track links to a specific blog entry. But spammers have forced many blogs to turn-off this feature.

[Via Jeremy Pepper]

Footnote:

• CMO Magazine is running an online poll asking if marketers are using blogs in their marketing efforts.  You can vote here. Interestingly the result is currently running in favor of blogs (42/48). I think that’s a little high and is probably influenced by the fact it’s an online poll and referrals are coming from blogs.  I would estimate the actual figure is way lower than that. [Via Robb Hecht]

Jim Horton has penned an interesting article on reputation systems. 

It looks at how the Internet is impacting reputation and the bad news is that reputation management isn’t getting any easier online…

I am fairly old fashioned, don’t let the blog fool you.

I believe that as a PR person your job is to build relationships, offer sound advice and communicate effectively. I believe that as a human being you should treat people as you’d like to be treated.

Now when I’m at PR social events, I always find ‘people watching’ incredibly interesting. You see the amazing variety of people who participate in Public Relations. It is truly a profession that celebrates diverse personalities – which is one of its strengths in my very humble opinion.

But some things never fail to amaze me.  Take the incident at the UK’s PR Week awards where the head of a Tech PR Agency  proceeded to insult a participant’s dress sense in front of his agency folks only to discover the target was in fact a journalist for ZDNET.

Can someone tell me, what this guy was thinking? I’d really like to know.

[Via Stuart Bruce]

Update:

It’s very strange. I have managed to access SpinBunny via Bloglines but not through the usual URL. Very odd.

Footnote:

• A new satirical PR blog, SpinBunny, has emerged in the UK. However while it’s increasingly being written about, I can’t seem to access the website.  Is anyone else having problems with it? Have I been banned? I am confused. Is that link working?
• Matthew Podboy’s post on the importance of not burning your bridges is well timed…

Kevin Dugan asks the question whether CEO blogs can really contribute to better communication with your audience or are they too risky to be of value – particularly for public companies?

He argues that other public facing blogs such as product blogs or event-related blogs might be a more effective means of outreach.

It’s an interesting question.

I think for the majority of organizations, ‘CEO blogs’ are probably out of reach.

Many CEO’s are simply too busy or have legal concerns.  However, there are probably opportunities for executive blogs.  For example Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz has been creating a lot of noise and controversy around his blog.

As with most things it’s a question for each organization. Some like Macromedia will have a network of bloggers, some will focus on one product or industry specific blog and some will force the poor executive into online writing.

Whatever the format and whoever the author(s), blogs do offer the ability to build conversations.

How you put your blog(s) together depends on your own organization and your objectives.

You certainly can’t criticize PR Week for not covering new emerging technologies. 

They’ve widely covered blogs and RSS in both the US and UK editions and Keith O’Brien has just written a piece on Wikis.

The flux of new technologies entering the market is enough to give the average PR pro a migraine. Just when one understands blogs, early adopter colleagues point out real simple syndication (RSS). Now water-cooler talk revolves around wikis, which can provide PR firms with internal communications enhancements; make writing press releases and communiques more of a team effort; and provide new opportunities for soft launches, tipping off journalists, and communicating with clients.

PR blogger and Global PR Blog Week co-founder Constantin Basturea is quoted in the story:

Constantin Basturea, PR blogger curator of The New PR wiki, www.thenewpr.com, says deploying wikis now can give firms a competitive edge. “A wiki is putting everyone on the same page, literally, and it allows people ‘to share’ the wiki’s space, plans, documents, ideas, comments, which is, in fact, the meaning of ‘communication,'” Basturea says via e-mail. His wiki is geared toward new media edification for his PR comrades.

If you’ve worked in media relations for a couple of years, you’ll be very aware that there really isn’t such a thing as “off-the-record”. While some journalists will adhere to it, just as many won’t and in truth you should only be sharing “off-the-record” comments should you wish to see it in print at a future date. At least that’s my experience and I know many PR pros who use off-the-record for just that purpose.

The next step up the command and control line is the Non disclosure agreement (NDA), where you get journalists to sign an onerous legal document that lays out when and what the journalist can write following a briefing.  It’s widely used when briefing the media on unannounced products or initiatives.

Well Andy Lark over at Sun has discovered a new media-centric TLA (three letter acronym), NFB or Not for Blogging. Seemingly a journalist invited to one of their briefings asked was the event NFB.

It’s going to be a real challenge for PR to define a NFB policy. OK, we can just say it. But doesn’t that undermine the value of blogs in the first place? Why hold an event and not allow blogging? In fact, as I discovered a year or so ago, you’d better have a WiFi network in place to enable it. Wouldn’t a ABP (Always Blog Please) be better for transparency?

I think this is a troublesome one.  If you’re briefing bloggers I’m not sure they’ll be willing to agree to that one. I think this all comes back to PR’s control issue. Rather than trying to restrict the messenger maybe we should be thinking about the best time and way to communicate.

There’s an awful lot of content being generated on how blogs are changing the very world we live in.

But what’s the reality for PR people? Are PR people using blogs? Are they pitching blogs?

I’m interested in hearing from anyone who is willing to share their positive or negative experiences from pitching blogs as part of a PR campaign.

I’m happy to shield identities to protect the innocent, but I think it would be a really interesting excercise to showcase the pros and cons of blog relations.

Any blog-related stories are relevant such as…

• Have you pitched blogs?
• How did you find the blogger?
• Was the blogger receptive or hostile?
• How did you deal with a negative response?
• What was the result?
• Were you able to track any measure of success?
• Have you started a corporate blog?
• What advice to you have?

I’d be delighted to hear from anyone willing to share their war stories, I think it would be a useful excercise in understanding how blogs are impacting PR right now.

Rest assured I’m happy to keep identities private if that’s your wish.

If you’ve experiences to share, why not get in touch with me.

 Just in time for Halloween, Mike Manuel provides his ten scariest PR questions..

5). Colleague: wait, you pitched an exclusive, too?

 Two new (to me anyway) PR-related blogs from the fountain of all blog knowledge, namely Steve Rubel!

David Krane PR director at Google and Andy Lark, VP Global Communications and Marketing at Sun both are live and blogging.

 Alice Marshall’s company has been a victim of phishing – effectively spammers’ hijacking your e-mail address to send viruses and advertising. This is a growing problem, I get a couple of e-mails a month from people who think I either have a virus/worm or I am actually sending them this junk. The reality is that I don’t have viruses or worms and I’m certainly not sending them viagra offers. One of the drawbacks of Internet e-mail is that you can send e-mail from anyone’s address.  That’s what phising does… and as far as I know there is no answer.

 Colin McKay has found an interesting article that takes a balanced view on the potential of blogs in the pharmaceutical industry.

As a medium for pharma marketers, blogging’s potential may be limited. Done badly, it can compromise your broader communications objectives, but in the right hands and for the right targeted brand, blogging can be useful.

 Robb Hecht provides some pointers on how you can turn your blog in a media monilith… should that be your desire.

 PR blogger, John Cass is moderating a session in Waltham, MA on November 11, 2004 on ï¿½Blogging: How companies are using blogs to engage their audiences and build brand�. Panelists include representatives from Macromedia and fellow PR blogger Greg Brooks.

 Michael O’Connor Clarke gives his views on the role PR can play in the creation of corporate blog content. (Amended)

 Neville Hobson is looking for a new PR challenge.

 Dan Forbush over at PR Newswire has announced that their popular Media Insider site will now be available exclusively as a blog [via Trevor Cook]

 Dan Gillmor scooped the 2004 World Technology Award for Media & Journalism. [via Mike Manuel]

 A new blog, SiliconBeat, written by Matt Marshall and Michael Bazeley, will cover technology innvoation in Silicon Valley and the money that drives it. [via Giovanni Rodriguez]

 The latest issue of Bacon’s Expert PR news letter is out with articles on persuasive pitching, photographers’ pet peeves, blogs, speech making, client retention and traditional media and new technology.

 Blog Navigator is a new RSS feed reader worth a look – I love the way it searches for previous reader installations and offers to migrate those feeds.

The Internet boom was a period of excess that we’ll probably never see at the same scale again… hopefully.

If you worked in PR during that time, and in particular technology PR, it was at once both amazing and scary.

Technology companies (and PR) moved center stage, money was no object, fees went through the roof and although I’ve no data to prove it, I imagine the number of people employed in Public Relations swelled to unknown levels.

The aftershock of the bubble was severe. All of a sudden, to quote my CEO, someone found the gravity switch and turned it on.

Layoffs, agency closures, salary reductions and changed expectations were the order of the day and in 2004 we’re still in recovery mode.

As Jim Horton observes:

“It was a pity society misled so many into thinking they were going to do well from the beginning and rise to riches. What happened in California was a Gold Rush and like the original Gold Rush of 1849, it lasted five years until most went bust. I suspect the class of 1999 has a hard-earned conservatism about money and lifestyle. It was and is much needed and not so bad. How many SUVs do we need on the road anyway?”

One of the major trends of this has been the advent of a new generation of sole PR practitioners and small firms who are building successful careers and businesses offering targeted services.  But what about the graduates who emerged during the boom and accepted it as the normal business environment?

The Associated Press has a sobering article that looks at how graduates of the boom have been managing in a tough economy.

The Boston public relations firm where she interned during her senior year promoted Erk to a full-time employee. It was 1999, the economy was booming, and Erk’s higher-ups told her she’d be a vice president in a few years.

But the past five years haven’t brought slick suits or a corner office. By 2001, Erk found herself unemployed and struggling to make her rent, pay her utilities and feed her cats.