I seem to have renewed interest in bad/good PR pitches these days, particularly regarding social media. Through the Scoble link factory I was pointed to Scott Monty's
Social Media Marketing. He received a video pitch for an ebook. The vid was devoid of hype. It simply had two people staring into a webcam saying what they had to say. Real people. Simple story. We need more of that.
I just got an unsolicited, old-fashioned email from a PR operative who I don't think I ever met. But he had heard me speak, was familiar with my blog and the topics I covered. In less than 250 words, he told me who he was and why he thought I might be interested.
I was.
His name is Ted Weismann. He works for the Lois Paul Agency and his client is Lionbridge. I want to speak to them for the SAP Global Survey. Stay tuned.
Ted did me a favor, bringing me a company that may solve part of the translation problem for social networks that I have written and spoken about. He has done me a favor and it is likely what I write will be helpful to his clients.
As the media trained cliche goes: "It's really that simple." If this happened more often, I would not kvetch about practitioners in my former profession so often.
Lately, I have been hit by a bevy of bad PR pitches. They have about the same effect n me as eating bad clams. I am a recovering publicist, so I try to be gentle and encouraging to PR folk, even though I rarely write about a pitched company or topic. But this week, I know I got grumpy. Enough is enough.
So many of my favorite bloggers are PR folk. There are probably too many to mention. But Phil Gomes, Mike Manuel, Kami Huyse, Joe Thornley, Shel Holtz, David Parmet, Josh Hallett, and Chris Heuer are the first to come to mind. There are others, but I'm feeling link-lazy.
Many started blogging before or at about the same time as I did and, as far as I can tell, few of them reached prominence in their field before they became so immersed in blogging and social media. They figured out that the fundamentals of PR had shifted. Instead of pitching influencers, they could be influencers. They realized that while a hit in the times or at Scobleizer was nice, a hit in their own posts could have its impact as well.
Each of these players gave me hope that enough PR practitioners would understand and embrace the fundamental change in the PR practice. That their was greater PR impact in talking with client customers than sending them messages through traditional tactics.
But the taper off seems to be sharpening. My experience is that an increasing number of PR folk are trying to treat bloggers as media. They want to find the 3-5 highest ranked topical bloggers and get hits that can be converted to clips.
They've learned smarmy little tricks like telling bloggers that they consider the blogger influential. It takes little time for a blogger to realize the pitcher has never read the blog they are pitching.
Here's the real trick. Don't pitch the conversational network. Join it. start your own blog. Get into the social networks like Facebook. Send your own tweets. Be part of the conversation so that we bloggers can see who you are and what yo do and what you have to say.
Then when you say something that is useful or interesting to my readers, chances are I will link to you. If I write something, and you can add value to the conversation--new insight, new data, a different perspective, I will scurry to your blog and read you for a while. Kami Huyse did this to me a while back and I became a fan of her blog and recommend it to all sorts of people. When Kami & Josh launched Sea World's Roller Coaster blog, they didn't have to pitch me. I saw they had news that was relevant and I wrote about it because my audience would be interested. Any of the other bloggers listed above also have sufficient transparency and authenticity. If they wrote about a client, I would not need a pitch from them to be motivated to find a post that would be relevant to my readers.
In the end, that is where my loyalty rests. I write for the people who come here.
My point is this. PR fiolk have a huge new opportunity. They can now have actual relationships with the public. They can bring back what they learn i conversations to clients. That's the real value in blogger relations. The conversation means a great deal, the blogger rankings, in most cases, means very little.
It's springtime! Flowers are blooming and birds are chirping. Time once again to clean out the garage a set the old blogosphere ablaze with the burning of a few publicists. The assault on PR practitioners has become a seasonal thing. I have been a part of it in the past and in Naked Conversations, we wrote an entire chapter called "Survival of the Publicists." In it, we talked about the fact that the image of the PR industry had more cracks in it than the portrait of Dorian Grat. We cited the Edelman Trust Barometer which said PR people were viewed in lower esteem than even lawyers.
Since then I have written several times about the deteriorating business model of traditional PR as well of its diminishing effectiveness. But, I was thinking enough had been said, when this new round of PR good/bad erupted. My friend Jeremiah wrote a post that I thought was intelligent and accurate and found himself the target of outrage by a bevy of PR folk whose nerve ends have become a bit too frayed. PR maven Mike Manuel who has the respect of anyone who see the way he works, had the best one liner of the week when he advised those who didn't like PR: "Go try advertising."
Guy Kawasaki, ran a column on the thoughts of Glenn Kelman, the CEO of real estate startup Redfin on why Kelman thinks he's better off dealing directly with the press without the tag along PR person who he argues, gets in the way of the conversation. In my opinion, it's the best piece yet written on the subject.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that PR folk need to stop bristling and start really thinking about the transformations going on. The term "public relations" is about relationships with the public. You have relationships, as I learned from my wife during 10 years of courting, through listening more than talking. PR as most people practice it today,is more about taking messages from clients to publics. PR people need to figure out how to be a facilitator not of messages but of two-way conversations.
This is not easy and the answer remains unclear. Social Media is obviously part of the solution.
The Internet is the Great Disintermediator. One by one, all institutions that stood between companies and customers are being rendered obsolete. Its true of PR, newspapers, book stores, ravel agents and a great deal more. If Kelman has his way, the list may include real estate agents.
A great number of professions need to adapt. If they cannot handle fundamental and significant environmental changes, they will find themselves in Jurassic Park with the other creatures who could not adapt as well.
Dear Amanda,
Writing to you is one way like writing to Santa Claus. Neither of you actually exists. But there, the similarities diverge. We think of Santa as a jovial elder, filled with goodwill and Amanda, that is just not you. If I write to Santa, I might expect to get gifts back. Amanda, when I write to you I fear that I may receive hostility and venom in return.
Don't get me wrong Amanda. You have been a good show. You are a talented writer and filled with the passion that the best bloggers seem to contain. The PR industry most certainly has its self-inflated members and poking holes in their bubbles can be fun to watch on occasion. In the beginning, Amanda, you were a surprise, even a shock, but not so much anymore.
Amanda, I don't know how to say this, but your act is getting stale, predictable... old. You no longer feel like a satirist, but more like a biting, angry hag, more like a divorcee angry about her settlement, than an observer of the foibles of an industry.
I must admit, I've always had my ambivalence about you. I have a love for blogging and feel pride for the PR industry of which I was a member for 25 years. You are both a blogger and purport to be part of the PR industry. You seem to hate both as much as I respect both. I am an advocate of honesty and humanity in business practice and and Amanda, you practice deception and are not a human at all, but rather a fictitious character, and a pretty bitchy one at that.
Who are you, really Amanda? Is this diatribe of vitriol some form of self purge or self loathing? How can you call others out for not being transparent, when you are so transparent as to not really be there? How can you call for more ethical practices in PR when in your very first post, you boasted about sleeping with clients?
You stand on a virtual soapbox calling for transparency. In fact, you are so transparent that you are but a shadow. You are not there. You are only a pigment of someone's imagination. You are a fantasy blogger, probably giving a strong voice to an essentially meek person.
Amanda, let's talk about truth for a minute, shall we? A few months back, your “webmaster” posted a phony AP wire release that claimed you were seriously injured in a car accident. This turned out to be a fictitious stunt. The AP Release was a phoney. Worse, a photo of a crashed out Porsche was embedded in the false release. This was not your car, but rather one in which people had actually been killed.
Amanda, why did you cheapen yorself with such a stunt? this was not your usual nastiness in the name of satire. This was something lower and I wondered why you had done this. My guess was that you thought we bloggers would pick it up a relay it, then you would jump in and point out what fools we were, but that is not what happened. Bloggers went to work and showed the factual errors. Within hours, the deception was revealed. You whined a couple of times that the accident really happened then, miraculously cured, you just went back to doing whatever it is you think you are doing.
I also wonder about your obsession with the Edelman agency. They certainly have been worth of criticism in recent times. But so have just about all the other major agencies, or for that matter most large organizations. I have come to suspect that it's something personal between you and them, something that makes them your Moby Dick, a great pale whale into which you obsessively wish to shove your harpoon.
I had to wonder about your response to my recent post on Edelman executive Phil Gomes, whom you recently addressed in what I thought was slanderous fashion. Now, I don’t know Phil very well. In fact, I've only met him briefly a couple of times before. The post I made was hardly lauditory, and in fact had a couple of gaffes that Phil saw fit to correct. But I thought he made a good point on the issue of captive and open online communities. I thoughtthat might interest some of my readers, so I posted a few paragraphs.
Thetwist was that I almost didn't write it, because the thought crossed my mind: “Shit, Amanda's going to come after me, if I say something neutral or favorable about Phil." But, Hell, we all have trolls, people who follow prominent bloggers around and say bad things about them wherever and whenever mentioned, and Amanda, you have become Phil's troll.
By the time my plane had landed in California, your Comment had been posted. You implied I had some secret agenda and that I lacked transparency. I do not, but the same back at you, Amanda. Why are you on an Edelman vendetta? Did something happen between you and them? C'mon you can tell us bloggers. And while we are at it, I don't seriously consider attacks on my transparency from people who hide anonymously behind fictional character masks.
Amanda, I suspect that you have multiple personalities because you are written by multiple people. At one time detecting who you are interested me. It no longer does. You are becoming predictable, too-often angry, too rarely funny. What you have to say is no longer fresh.
Amanda, I was 19 years between wives. I had many stormy relationships during those days. Like you, some of my partners were provocative as Hell, but over time, one of us would come to realize the relationship had died of atrophy. That is what is happening for you and the blogosphere Amanda. If we know what it is you have to say, then it is not all that interesting and fewer of us will read or talk about you.
Frankly, Amanda, I’m bored with our relationship. I refer the virtual company of real people. If you want to come back as whoever you are, you may find it liberating. But if you continue down the well worn path you are on, you may find yourself hollering when no one is listening.
Yours truly,
Shel
Phil Gomes the first PR Blogger, an Edelman VP is on the podium here at the Bulldog PR University in Chicago. Research shows that people trust people like themselves. He refers to Trust Barometer has for three years showed people trust peers more than doctors or academics. Entertainers and atheletes were dead last.
He divides social networking into two camps. One camp is a captive area. Sites that try to keep you. He names MySpace, Friendster and Bebo as examples. More compelling he says are the open social network spaces which denote relationships that form online.
He's talking about B to B PR and pointing out that a blogger can get precisely to the audiences that matter to a company, without touching anyone else. Moving to consumer, he notes that an average MySpace visitor spends an astounding 172 minutes per visit. Facebook is consider the safest of these closed consumer communities and Bebo dominates Europe. Over in South Korea, CyWorld as a community of 19 million users. Gather, one I don't persoanlly know is described as MySpace for grown ups. I think it will be interesting to see if MySpace will let users just leave when they reach a certain age.
Word of mouth is not new, it's been around since the beginning f time, an observation, I'll repeat when I speak later today. He gives a case study of how Edelman used MySpace via a "Forbidden, a popular, somewhat racy woman to promote their Game Killer client. It got word of mouth going and it was transparent in the effort.
He says that as an agency the idea is to find the right voice inside a captive online community. He found four message boards to promote Nissan G35 Coupe, prior t the auto show. The idea was to give something of real value as opposed to just do a promo inside the communities. They went to four message boards. The message board owners treated the video showing the new car was theirs. They then evangelized it into the blogosphere.
He advises PR pros to not to polish videos when they post and to not treat bloggers like lower tier media.
Nice job, Phil.
[NOTE: I tweaked this after posting it and have just changed the text from the original throughout the post.]
The following are my draft talking points for my talk Thursday in Chicago at the Bulldog reporter PR University. I am not entirely satisfied with the closing poiints and would welcome some more additions. If I use your comments I will credit them to you in my talk.
1. I am a “recovering publicist.” One day, early in 2001, I scrawled “Stop me before I pitch again” across a mirror. …been going to “Pitch-enders” ever since.
2. Was in PR more than 25 years. Worked with tech startups. Loved it. Loved the creativity and integrity of most PR people I knew.
3. I left for many reasons. A few I recall:
4. Environmental changes
5. The generation now emerging, the one who will inherit my desktop and my generation in the workplace is now 25 or younger. They are the Online Generation –“Onliners” for short.
6. The overriding question that you need to ask yourselves is what happens when the Onliners come of age, replacing we 60s kids and boomers as we drive off to Jurassic Park to join the other fossils who could not adapt to change? What tools to reach the Online Generation?
6. So once again: How does PR adapt? What is the practitioner’s role moving forward? Does PR even have a role? Is this change a threat or an opportunity?
7. I'll answer that last question first. It’s the easiest and the most ambiguous: Social media is both threat and opportunity for PR. … a threat because there is a fundamental change in the way people are influenced on what they buy, watch, read and listen to. Change is disruptive. When there is disruption some companies rise and others fall. Rarely do they ever rise again.
Social Media is simultaneously an opportunity because PR people are generally great conversationalists and we are entering the Conversational Era. In it, we are transitioning from monologue into dialog. Through conversations you can find out what customers want simply by asking them. You can deliver more popular products just by doing what they tell you to do.
PR also has an opportunity also because advertising is more broken than PR and will take longer to fix. Companies will be turning to PR sooner for more immediate answers. It will be a wise agency who is ready with answers.
8. This Conversational Era has just now begun. PR in 5, 10 & 20 years will have a far more value than it does today—not just for your clients, but for the communities those clients wish to be part of. What's also relevant about the next 20 years is a fundamental shift in the habits of the people leaving the marketplace and those who are preschoolers and young adults today.
9. Two cautions:
10. As you take a look at social media consider this phenomenon: Power is moving from the large organization into communities. People who are most generous in these communities are the most influential.
11. Consider also: The online community is nt confined to any single URL. You won’t succeed by marketing to MySpace and more than you would by sending the same messages to the ruling class and shantytowns of Sao Paolo and MySpace is many times larger.
12. Here’s what’s actually happening. People with shared interests from all over the world are bopping from one place to another. The same people are meeting up with the same people at blogs and photo sites. They are downloading the same music and videos. In these virtual spaces, real and lasting trusted social networks are forming. Often people meet online first, then encounter each other face-to-face later. It's like meeting old friends for the first time.
13. I call these groups who are defined by neither geography nor URL Global neighborhoods. They are smaller and more intimate than the huge online communities. They are comprised of people who share diverse passions, on almost any subject: hummingbirds or Hummers, Global warming or urban terrorism, Religious fundamentalism or fundamental paganism. I'm writing a book called Global Neighborhoods, which is about just their relevance to business. The challenge is to be brief.
14. Global neighborhoods work very much like the tangible ones where you live in. You get to know some of your neighbors. The more time you spend there the more familiar you become. Trust builds on neighborhood issues. You know to ask about recommend movies or where to get your car fixed. You know how to avoid commuter snarls and where it's safe to walk alone or not.
Over time, each neighborhood resident earns a personal brand.
Transition:Now, Bulldog folk don’t let you up onto the dais without specific tactical advice. That’s hard for me because I’m more concerned with where you are going than how you are going to get there. But I’ll try to give you a few tips. I blogged about this and got a few tips from people in my own Global neighborhood, which includes a good number of PR bloggers.
My closing thought: those of you in this room, are part of a profession filled with brilliant conversationalists, people with knowledge and passion. You are more generous than your current image would have people believe. We are entering ‘’The Conversational Era.’
This is your time. Join the conversation. Enjoy.
I'm the after-lunch keynoter Friday at the Bulldog Reporter PR University in Chicago. I'm speaking, of course, about blogs and social media.
But I want to give some fresh advice to PR folk, both on a tactical and on a strategic level. Do you have any advice I should convey? If I use it, I'll credit you.
Amanda Chapel calls herself a satirist, but I've never been so sure. The great satirists I've known--Jonathan Swift and Mad Magazine, have used humor as a weapon to reveal truth. Amanda, all too often, seems to me to be using harshness and even cruelty. She often seems to me more like she's talking trash then serving up satire.
Last week, she apologized to Jeff Jarvis in a post after being admonished by blog fountainhead David Weinberger. Well sort of. After calling Jarvis all sorts of nasty names, she wrote that Jeff should realize her insulting him on a well-read, and often-quoted blog is nothing personal. Most of us think that being held up to public ridicule and scorn is quite personal.
The very next day Amanda fired a volley of very cheap shots at Edelman blogger Phil Gomes.
Then, to continue her bipolar behavior, she graciously turned over her blog space over to Shel Holtz, perhaps the highest road, social media player in the PR industry.. Shel did a devastating job on her by calmly, rationally dissecting Amanda for the savage and inaccurate shots she took at Gomes for the crime of moving from LA to Chicago, supposedly to be closer to a particular woman.
Amanda is someone who lives at or near the top, which makes her often go over it. She reminds me of my favorite quote from TS Eliot: "Only those who risk going to far can possibly know how far one can go."
Amanda goes too far.
Personally, I think it's a shame. She's a Hell of a writer and seems to me to be extremely knowledgeable about the innards of the PR industry. My experience as a recovering publicist is that it is too self congratulatory while knowing very little about relationships with the public. I think it can use someone to poke it in the eye and Amanda has gleefully volunteered for the task.
To that degree Amanda provides a great service and her blog is one of the most provocative reads on my RSS list. She tells me she likes being called provocative.
It seems to me, she could serve everyone better if she lay down her broadaxe and learn to use a scalpel. She would score more points if she attacked issues and the abundant lame practices in the PR industry and singled out individuals a whole lot less.
As I've written and said too many times, I am a recovering publicist. One day, I scrawled on a restroom mirror, "stop me before I pitch again." I've joined Hypers Anonymous, and attend meetings once weekly. I have not pitched in over five years.
Well none of that is not exactly true. In 2001, I sold SIPR, my PR agency to employees and went home. The main reason was not a disaffection with the profession but that a bubble popped in my face. My choices were to lay everyone off and start all over again, or to turn the keys over to everyone else and go home.
I opted for the latter.
What is true however, is that PR as I had learned it Regis McKenna, Inc. the legendary tech PR agency had changed significantly during my tenure and I did not think it was for the better. At Regis we were taught to be trusted sources of information for the press and analysts who could most influence our clients relationships with customers and prospects. The press loved speaking to us, because were industry insiders. We knew what was going on in this new place called Silicon Valley. We were active particpants in conversations. We were facilitators for our clients. We knew which editor wanted what story and we helped them get it, sometimes pointing them to companies that were not agency clients.
As an aside, the press release was considered an almost superflous document in the Regis process. He used to say that he didn't care if it was just a series of bullet points. After all, we were not in the news writing business. We were more relationship facilitators than anything else. While many were cute, Regis hired people because they were smart. many of us were aggressive, perhaps overly so, but some of us did quitre well by being slow, methodical and thoughtful.
Much has passed from then to now, but I am not the only observer who believes the early 80s were a Golden Age in tech PR. It was a respected profession then. Editors, for th most part, valued us. We were translators of the complex into terms that people could understand. We had special knowledge worth sharing. Our clients were often engineers who wanted to tell you how hard it was to accomplish something. We simplified the story. Simplified it and facilitated its distribtution to people who made a difference.
It seems to me we have come full circle because of several factors, particularly the rise of the internet and the reduced relevance of traditional media. Back in the Regis days, we played active roles in the conversation--not as client boosting hypesters, but as knowledgeable resources. We eroded into roles as smilers and dialers. Now because all that smiling and dialing has become increasingly ineffectual, there is a great opportunity for the PR professional to once again join the conversation.
PR people have a future as the same kind of trusted resources we were back in the days of Regis McKenna. except now we can use blogging and social media. We get to establish our own credibility over time and when we discuss our own clients on our blogs, we are trusted sources of information relevant to our audiences.
There are all sorts of people doing this today. They may get hung up n small matters such as the social media press release, but that is not relevant. What's relevant is that we know them from an ongoing series of conversations held on the Internet. I may disagree with Shel Holtz about the social media release and whether we are in a new phase of a PR continuum as he believes or at the beginning of a social revolution as I believe. In the large sense such issues are no great matter.
What is a great matter, if you are in the PR proffesion is that you will not succeed if you focus on smiling and dialing a media list of strangers, if you are intent in inject hubris into what you have to say or write. If you think you can succeed by being just cute or clever, you are living in the wrong Era.
Today, you need to join the conversation. You are part of the news distribution system, not just for your clients, but for the community where your clients would like to flourish.
This to me is very liberating. The PR people I know and respect are all interesting people and great story teller. They often know so much more than their clients allow them to express. We are now in a Conversational Era. It looks like we will be in this Era for some time to come, and the best and brightest of the PR professionals will join in that conversation, while others will just be left behind.
David Parmet, Brian Oberkirch and I have a few things in common. We are all recovering publicists, having spent significant portions of our professional lives practicing traditional PR for agencies both large and small. All three of us are also completely immersed in social media and all three of us try to consult for food mortgage and other sustenance.
David and Brian have begun to consult PR agencies on why they need to adopt social media and how they should go about doing it. I have agreed to join in this endeavor on an as needed basis. All three of us have done a fair amount of this sort of work over the past year. I have been in talking with companies like CNET, Wells Fargo and Hitachi data Systems to discuss blog strategy and I am eager to do more of this sort of work.
By focusing on PR and advertising agencies, I think David and Brian are choosing a prime market. The role of the PR practitioner is changing on a fundamental level and the ad agencies already know they are being challenged to find new strategies appropriate for the interactive world. I look forward to working with them and their clients.
One additional note--this is a non-monogomous relationship. I have previously announced that I will be available for clients of Hubbub, a next generation agency formed by Giovanni Rodriquez, yet another recovering publicist. Likewise, Joseph Jaffe and Shel Holtz, two more social media savvy communications professionals have formed Crayon offering similar next-generation services.
We all know and respect each other. We all see huge opportunities and expect to be joined by many other quality consultants.
While some are these days declaring an end to blogging and social media, others see new beginnings as the new, improved ways for business communications swim into the mainstream.
It was just a few months ago, when I first discovered Kami Wilson Huyse. She started dropping comments onto my blog when I wrote on marketing and PR-related subjects. Sometimes she agreed with me and other times not. But each time, she added something of value to the conversation.
Now and then, she took the conversation over to her own blog where she took it in new directions. That started me reading her other posts and I was impressed. When I thought she had something useful or interesting, I started pointing my readers to it as a service to them.
Kami seems to me to be a glowing example of how a latecomer gains topical prominence in a short time in the blogosphere. She may never rival Scoble in mass audience headcounts, but if you read blogs and care about PR chances are more likely than not that you will find Kami and continue to read her.
That's why she's the third of five interviews I'm conducting as I revisit the issue of PR and blogging in preparation for my Ottawa speaking tour. Here is what she has to say:
1. Can you tell me something about your background and career before you got active in social media?
I spent most of my 12-plus year career on the client-side of public relations, working for America’s Charities and then the Manufactured Housing Institute. Both are large national organizations, where I served in many functions, from media spokesperson, to running major national public relations campaigns and performing issues management. I opened My PR Pro in 2002 to serve both local and national clients, including the Red Cross pro bono, MHI, SeaWorld San Antonio and Time Warner Cable.
2. How and when did you get into social media and blogging?
I started Communication Overtones in early November last year as a sandbox to build on my skill in social media and to transfer this knowledge to my clients. In music, an overtone is higher acoustical frequency than the fundamental note. I felt social media was becoming the overtone to communication and felt that I needed become proficient in using the tools and in understanding the culture around it.
3. Your blog seems to have very rapidly risen to prominence. What did you do to make this happen?
"Prominence" is a big word. My goal is just to share the things I learn as I go along, and to record them for myself as well. I am glad that it resonates with a few people out there and that people come to read and comment. My goal was to build relationships with other PR professionals around the world, and I have found the blog an ideal place to do this.
4. What has this blog done for your business?
It has had an immediate impact. My business has already expanded by 30 percent this year alone as a direct result of the blog, and I have contracts in hand that show at least a 50 percent increase next year. I have also been able to sufficiently grow my network to implement the virtual agency concept that I envisioned when I launched My PR Pro. I am now working with a number of talented independent practitioners and agencies across the U.S. and the world. The Internet and social media tools have made possible a distributed workgroup of specialists that stretches across geographic boundaries.
5. What advice do you have for PR practitioners?
I have three thoughts about what make someone great at public relations:
(1) a willingness to learn;
(2) the heart of a public advocate; and
(3) trusted and perceptive counselor to top management.
6. What is you vision for the future of PR?
I see the role of the PR practitioner as a facilitator, making sure that access is granted to those who need it and that the public gets what it wants from the organization. My vision is that public relations will live up to its definition as a two-way exchange of information between a company and its stakeholders. Arthur Page was the first VP of public relations for AT&T, and I see PR through his lens. Somewhere in the 1930s, he wrote, "So we, like all other companies, live by public approval and roughly speaking, the more approval you have the better you live. This is the fundamental reason for seeking public approval. The fundamental way of getting it is to deserve it.” Amen to that!
7. How has blogging changed your perspective on business? On life in general?
I feel like I have been in an aggressive graduate-level study program for the last year, I have learned so much. One of the biggest challenges I faced was the notion that I would have to be up-front and center about my opinions. Being able to learn how to do that effectively has helped me to have more confidence.
8. Do you have some useful do’s and don’t for getting started on a business blog?
Yes, I have a three-step social media process that I advocate to my clients: Active Listening, Outreach, and Engage. In the first phase, I recommend they spend a lot of time monitoring, listening, reading and learning. Then they formulate a strategy to reach out to other bloggers in the segment in which they hope to build a presence. Last, they can engage by launching their own blog.
9. Do you feel social media is an extension of a corporate PR program or something entirely new?
I want to emphasize that I think social media strategies aren’t for every company. However, I do think that an active listening program is essential, so I guess I fall in the “extension of PR” crowd with one important caveat. At least for now, social media is the way that some influential consumers have chosen to voice their opinions. It pays to keep your eye on what is being said about you and your company. If we subscribe to the two-way version of communication, we have to listen. You can ask a number of companies and individuals that have been involved in what I have dubbed a “firememe” if social media is a force to be reckoned with: Kryptonite, Dan Rather, Dell, McDonalds, the New York Times and the list goes on. Like it or not, social media and its effects have become a part of our job
.
10. What sage advice you can add to what you’ve said above?
Get some sleep. Don’t let this stuff keep you up at night. Social media is time consuming and the immediate feedback aspect can be addictive, make sure to keep it in perspective and set limits. Your comments will wait until tomorrow.
It should be noted that Kami's written responses to my questions came in at 10:45, her time, once again indicating that none of us always follow our own advice.
When I first met Brian Oberkirch, I had no idea how much we shared in common. He was sitting on a panel between executives from the Washingtonpost.com and the Austin Statesman and he just took the show away from them as he discussed his experience as a citizen-journalist with his Slidell Hurricane Damage blog. I've since come to know him well and respect both his vision and professionalism.
He's the second of at least four people I'll interview on the issue the changing role of PR in the social media age. I am working this issue in part, because in Naked Conversations, our chapter on PR depicted the profession in a change or die situation, which was perhaps just a bit harsh I'm preparing for a series of talks at the end of this month in Ottawa and Toronto where I'll be speaking to PR, marketing and government communications officers. I'm using that talk as a chance to revisit the issue, asking people who I think have changed and are flourishing as they figure out how to stitch new businesses with their traditional training.
So, in that light and toward those goals, heeere's Brian:
1. Brian, for the benefit of our studio audience can you give us a little professional background on yourself.
Sure. I've done a number of things that revolve around my main passions: coming up with ideas & writing.
I've been a reporter and radio news guy, literature professor, ad agency strategist and creative, PR guy and marketing consultant. I've worked for international brands like Pergo, Nokia and Samsung, sexy tech startups and staid, successful mid-sized companies. I started an agency devoted to social media last year, and now consult companies on marketing, social media and web application development.
2. You have described yourself to me as a fellow “recovering publicist.” What made you decide to get out?
I never had a 'Road to Damascus' moment, nor was I ever really a publicist, per se. I started incorporating blogs and other forms of social media into my marketing program recommendations in late 2000 (spurred on by the success 37 Signals was having with their company blog, Signal v. Noise). By 2003 or so, people were actually saying yes to such projects and, gradually, I started to de-emphasize traditional forms of PR. Stepping back, I think as PR pros, we've put way too much emphasis on media relations. I understand the economics of that practice, but with the new tools available I wonder how long the old models will be attractive for either client or agency.
3. Can you describe your current business?
I work in three areas:
(1) Unmarketing--growing a tribe of passionate users by making remarkable things that speak to real user issues
(2) Social media programs--using blogs, wikis, podcasting, feeds and other tools to have better conversations with those who matter to your business, and
(3) Consulting on the development of Web applications (user needs, features, marketing, etc.)
4. Can you tell me how and when you got into social media?
I've been on the Web since there was a Web. (Remember how cool Gopher was at the time?) As far as getting into blogs, like most people, I started reading a ton of them. Camworld and Signal v. Noise were probably the first that I read routinely. I started blogging in 2003, got serious about using a feed reader to track things, and started podcasting and video casting just this year. To my surprise, podcasting has much more impact than I would have thought. Seems like I hear more back from people about pod casts than blog posts.
5. What’s your take on the future of traditional PR?
Well, I have a skewed view of traditional PR (since I spent most of my time at bigger agencies like Public is), but I would say that we'll see diminishing returns. Just as traditional advertising packs less wallop, it makes sense that mass media relations will start to be less central. At the same time, I expect the PR function to increase in importance as analysis, interpretation and timely response to the market will be more needed. I think PR people have a golden opportunity to take a more central role if they don't cling to old-fashioned publicity/gate keeping/messaging models.
6. If you ran a traditional PR agency, what would you do to adjust course because of the social media?
I think the best agencies have always been open to incorporating new stuff and cross-pollinating their work with great ideas from other disciplines. One thing I'd do is have my team become much more net Native to use Fred Wilson's term. Having an Internet Guy (and they are usually guys) is all well & good, but is the whole shop reading relevant blogs? Are they watching feeds for their clients? Are they up on how wikis are becoming a real alternative for internal communication? Take it beyond the brown bag lunch stage and make sure everyone is getting cozy with these new tools.
7. How should PR people deal with bloggers and blogging?
By soaking in it. When I say 'don't pitch bloggers,' what I mean is don't pull 100 blogger emails from your Bacon's list, spam them and think you're doing outreach to those folks. Of course they want relevant information. But they don't want to feel like you're selling them. And don't waste their time. The nice thing is, it's a corrective medium. Your bad pitches will be posted and mocked immediately, so you'll learn quickly. If you spend anytime in the medium, you'll get the ground rules. Be open. Add value to the conversation. Give it away. Talk back when people comment and ask you something. Link. Link. Link. I think PR people mess up most when they just pop in to a blog neighborhood to see what they can get out of it, with no sense of setting up shop and sticking around. People don't blog in their spare time to give your client more coverage.
8. Do you see a future for traditional PR and marketing folk who continue to practice PR as they always have?
I know we talk a lot about dinosaurs and how everything is changing, etc., but I think it will be gradual. If you don't eat well, keep smoking, never exercise, eventually that will catch up to you. Same thing will apply. You'll be able to get away with it for a while, but there will be a tremendous opportunity cost.
9. How does traditional marketing move from monologue to dialog?
Simple: listen.
Then incorporate cues into your product development and your marketing communications that show you're listening. If your products are worth talking about, people will tell you most of what you need to know. In a way, I don't think any of this is new. But now, word of mouth is much more visible, to marketers and to other people who might want your products or services. Your community is much smarter about what they want than you are. Humble yourself enough to pay attention and respond.
10. Say something else that is pithy, witty or brilliant, that would look good on a powerpoint slide.
Social media is about connection, not content.
Social media is about them, not you.
Social media may be cheaper initially, but it takes far more homework.
Get small fast. (Niche is nice. Think smaller feature sets, more targeted audiences, less chatter from you, and so on.)
As I've mentioned, I am going to be doing a series of talks to PR and marketing executives as well as government communications officers in Ottawa and Toronto at the end of this month as the guest of Joe Thornley.
I'm going to ask PR people who seem to me to have made the transition from strictly traditional to social media, to give some advice that my audiences may find useful. David Parmet was among the first who came to mind.
If you think you have something to add to this conversation, please join in--or email me here.
1. David, for the benefit of our studio audience can you give us a little professional background on yourself.
After casting about for a career I discovered a talent for media relations while working on NY Mayor David Dinkins's re-election campaign in 1993. Since then I've worked in the public and private sector - mainly in agencies and mainly for technology clients.
Completely apart from this - I've been on the Internet since the days of BBSs and dial up with 300 baud modems. My wife and I were members of Mindvox - one of the first ISPs and Internet communities in New York in the early 1990s. I've had an email address since 1993 and been blogging since about the turn of the century. But it wasn't until a few years ago that the convergence between social media and marketing became apparent to me.
2. Who do you currently represent?
A handful of small start-ups with a focus on social media. Currently, I'm working with Coco Myles, BackBeat Media and BlogTalkRadio. I'm also doing some work with a firm involved in book and author promotions to bring them into the social media world. I also consult with agencies on specific projects and provide general advice on developing social media programs for their clients.
3. How do you get new business?
A combination of word-of-mouth, my blog and aggressive networking.
4. Your blog got you the legendary EnglishCut account. Can you briefly tell the story of what happened and what you did for them?
Hugh MacLeod and I know each other through our respective blogs. Hugh was working with Thomas Mahon, a bespoke tailor who began blogging about the culture and history of Savile Row in early 2005. Hugh suggested I could take advantage of Thomas's blog and see if any of the NY area fashion and style press would be interested in speaking with him.
We got hits for the blog in Boing Boing and Fast Company as well as an interview on the BusinessWeek blog. What was even more interesting was coverage in places like the NY Times Style Magazine and Men's Health that had nothing at all to do with the blog - but the fact that a Savile Row tailor was so open and willing to talk about his business made Thomas a natural source for these publications. The Men's Health article was very interesting - the writer was doing a piece on 'how to spot a cheap suit and since Thomas was unavailable at the time to talk, quotes were pulled out of the blog and run in the final piece.
5. Exactly what happened to make you give up on traditional agencies?
I faced a combination of not being able to work with the kind of clients I wanted to and not being able to develop and execute social media plans for any clients. Unfortunately, these sort of clients and programs can't work in agencies since they don't pay very well - the companies are too small and the programs too ill-defined (at least in ways traditional PR would define and invoice them).
When I jumped, in February 2005 I had a fairly well-read blog about my family life and I was very interested in blogging about PR and ways PR and social media could work together. However I was working with an agency that viewed blogging as no more than a fad. So after a heart to heart with my wife, a gut check and a long argument with my boss - I took the plunge. I've never looked back.
In retrospect, leaving agency life was the best thing for my career.
6. If you ran a traditional PR agency, what would you do to adjust
course because of blogging and social media?
I would encourage everyone in the agency to blog, podcast, whatever..
about anything at all that occurred to them. By immersing everyone in the agency into social media it will become a natural way of doing business, not something they add on at the end of the program.
I would also make sure that social media is integrated into every plan - and not viewed as a separate practice. I would also reward employees for social media hits as they would be rewarded for mainstream hits.
7. What should traditional marketers do to adjust course?
Understand that social media is not something some strange tribe of kids or hipsters is doing but that it's now something so common to so many people that it's no longer 'new' or different. Many people go to Google before going to the Yellow Pages. In a few years that will be most people.
Traditional marketing is not going to just go away, but it's now part of a larger field. There are more options open to marketers than ever before, so look at this as an opportunity and not a threat.
8. Do you see a future for traditional PR and marketing folk who continue to practice PR as they always have?
Yes. There will always be a market for traditional big-brand PR as practiced by the big agencies. Fortune 500 companies with big ad and PR budgets aren't going away.
I would however see a great deal of money coming from those Fortune 500 companies now spent on social media campaigns in addition to traditional marketing. If the big agencies are smart, they will see this as an opportunity and develop plans to incorporate social media into what they do - otherwise folks like you and I are going to get very rich.
9. What's your perception of how blogging impacts media relations?
As I mentioned, I will be Joe Thornley's guest at the end of this month in a series of presentations to PR, marketing and government communications officers. I'm asking a few of the PR practitioners I think have done a superior job of integrating social media with PR.
David Parmet was among the very first to come to mind and I will use some of what he has to say in my talks. If you think you can add to this conversation, please email me at shel@itseemstome.net.
They are now so intertwined that to see them as separate or different is missing the point entirely. If you are in tech PR how would you define Mike Arrington, Charlene Li or Om Malik? If you are pitching celebrity news, would you put Gawker or Jossip on the 'b' list because they are just blogs? (FYI, I know agency folks who do exactly this.. but I digress)
For smart PR people, this just means many more targets to pitch our clients. For the rest it means a lot of missed opportunities to get their clients some ink.
Joseph Thornley, CEO of Thornley-Fallis PR is bringing me up to Ottawa and Toronto in the last week of September for no less than six talks in three days. Yes, he gets a volume discount. I know he'd like me to list each one, but I have a hunch most of my readers would prefer I didn't.
But I need some help in what I say in a couple of areas:
1. Public Relations--In Naked Conversations, we said this was a "change or die area" and I think the 18 months since we wrote those words have strengthened the argument, which at the time was called overstated.
I'd like two things: (1) Case studies of PR practitioners who have gained by incorporating social media for themselves or their clients, and (2) horror stories of bad practice caused by PR people who did not understand the power and opportunity of blogging and social media.
I will of course give full credit to any of you who give me cases I can use and your additional thoughts on this subject are welcome.
2. Government and blogging--thanks to Joseph, I am addressing a group of Ontario government communications officers. These are professionals in government who are weighing the pro and cons of blogs. There are two parts to this:
(1) People influencing government through blogging and social media and (2) government people who are getting interactive with constituencies by blogging.
I am looking for case studies on this one as well. I am particularly interested in these cases, because this is an area that I plan to cover in Global Neighborhoods as well. If you know of any cases in this area, please post them here.
If you wish, you can email me your thoughts or cases as well.
David Meerman Scott announces on one blog that he will be writing a book on the new marketing and PR on his personal blog. He says his publisher will be Wiley, who was our publisher, and the first publisher to ever allow and encourage authors to write a book by blogging it.
This is a subject that needs a book on it. So many marketers have lost there way, and can be helped by a new guide. While Naked Conversations had a chapter on PR and the problems it faced, we left lots of room for consructive advice n how to be effective and credible in the new Conversational Era.
For Scoble and I, the experience was terrific. With the blogosphere as our collaborator, we wrote a much better book than we would have done without it.
Good luck, David.
Giovanni Rodriquez, a principal at Eastwick PR, a Silicon Valley mid-size just announced he's leaving to form a new kind of consultancy with a partner in September. His eloquent and personal blog post raises more questions than they answer.
It makes me want to know more. Smart marketer, that Giovanni.
This is the season of self congratulations in the PR industry, where agencies rush to nominate themselves for awards they can boast about receiving for the next few decades.
My pal KD Paine at KD Paine's Measurement Blog has just doled out a series of awards that I consider more apt for the the acts of public smarminess that most hurts the image industry's image. There were lots of possibilities t choose from, but I think KD has chosen wisely in her picks.
The only thing left to do is name these awards. After all, nothing in PR can survive without a catchy name. Any ideas?
Abigail Roeder Johnson and I cut our PR teeth together at the University of Regis McKenna in the early 1980s. We both went on to start our own practices at about the same time. She was occasionally my competitor, but I have always admired the quality of her work and her thinking.
I had my annual lunch with her and she hammered me with a whole bunch of blogging questions. I didn't think much about it.
Abigail just started a blog and it isn't half bad. She has a fine style and she brings more than a little wisdom with her into the game. Welcome, Abigail.
Way down under, Strumpette Amanada Chapel is debating ethics with Australian PR maestro Trevor Cook . Scroll through the comments to get the full sense of the conversation.
There is a temptation to write about this from a humor perspective. First off, I am not all that certain Amanda actually exists an arguing ethics with a fictitious character sounds a bit delusional to me. Worse, Amanda's has an apparent racy ethics set. She seems to believe that PR is best practiced from the vertical position. The photos on her site imply a different kind of naked conversation then the one we had in mind when we named our book.
Trevor and I have had our disagreements. We published his dissenting opinion in our survival of the publicists chapter. I like Trevor and read his blog, but he finds much more granularity in things than I do. I try to bring things down to simple, self-evident points when I can.
But ethics in journalism and PR is a granular issue. Amanda takes a strict constructionist view: Something is true or it is not. Trevor and feel ethics and truth are more complex. On first take, I tend to go along with Amanda on this issue.
But I think both parties have wandered off topic. The words "truth" and "ethics" are related but they are not interchangeable. I think it was George Bernard Shaw (I could not find it on the usual quote sites) who said: "Ethics is what you do when no one is looking." We all have our personal ethic sets. They come from inside of us, and the fact that we have individualized ethical credos is why the world is universally both fascinating and violent.
Where Trevor's beloved granularity comes in to play is not when PR folk and journalists speak the truth, which is usually the case. It comes in more when they withhold certain parts of it, or so it seems to me.
Even the most ardent advocates for transparency have to argue that companies should not speak the whole truth all of the time. On one hand, the whole truth becomes tedious, providing people with too much information. If I write about a dinner with an interesting person, you probably don't care what we ate--unless I'm writing in a gourmet magazine.
Likewise, a company doesn't need to reveal it's corporate secrets. You don't need to discuss products in the planning stages, acquisition strategies, the reduction of cost of goods sold because you moved manufacturing to Malaysia, etc. While companies are expected to be truthful in whatever they say publicly, they do have an inherent right to be silent in a great many areas.
The ethics come in when you are the PR guy and there is a relevant truth that your client wants you to withhold. For example, what does the PR practitioner do when he or she discovers that the side effect for the new miracle pill is that it causes some people's eyes to bleed. Or that the cute new, low fuel consumption car explodes when it's in a rear end collision, or that the bottom line was enhanced because the company is using child slave labor?
You can represent any of these three companies and never tell a lie. But it seems to me you would be collaborating in a deception. You could succeed wildly for a client and never break the law.
But from my perspective you would be an ethical dwarf.
Should someone write down a bunch of these examples and create a code of ethics for PR and journalists to practice? No. People should simply know better, or so it seems to me.
No sooner do I wake up this morning and give David Parmet at Marketing Begins at Home a little link love, then I turn to the Pubub PR blog rankings at PubSub and discover the guy has snaked right past me to become the highest ranked PR blogger.
I wonder if my last link to him is what drove him to the top. I wonder what this link will do for him tomorrow. I think David has a fine blog and I read it all the time.
Eastwikker Giovanni has a great piece on five new roles for PR in this Conversational Era. He finds humorous and accurate examples from history and contemporary times. One testimony to how enlightened some PR folk are becoming is that Giovanni names PR practitioners who are not from his own agency and who from time-to-time might compete directly with Eastwick.
Personally, I think Giovanni would fit into 2 or 3 of the categories he picks. I'd also add a 6th category--Connectors. It's something PR folk have always done but it works differently now. A lot differently.
Susan Getgood is wrong about being the only PR blogger not to discuss the Edelman/Wal-Mart/NY Times thing, and I've also stayed out of the fracas for the same reason as she has. It's been a busy week.
But in my hectic week, I've talked with a great number of people in both PR and business and it is clear that this is an escalating issue. I'm also getting an increasing number of invites to speak with PR organizations and firms. To me, this is a good thing, because it confirms the rapidly evolving influence of bloggers.
But there are no rules for how to pitch us. And if you ask ten of us, you might get ten different answers. I'm most influenced by someone I meet and start talking with. I'm immediately turned off by people who give me a canned elevator pitch. I consistently tell PR folk that I rarely do product blogs. Many then appear to be completely befuddled and ask me then what do I write about. I politely suggest they read my blogs as I turn away. I don't bother even to mention that my co-author is a product zealot, and I sort of focus on the rest. That's because pitching me, without reading me, indicates that you are really clueless whether I am influential or not regarding a particular company.
I have no problem with brief email notes to me at shel@itseemstome.net. I also pay attention to posted comments when they are on topic and there is no duplicity that you are trying to get me to look at your client.
I don't want to take calls, unless I know you. I'm much more of an email person.
But the smartest thing you can do, which other bloggers have been advising all week is to join the conversation. read blogs that are on topic for what you represent. Start your own blog. Use it to link to bloggers who you'd like to know or have know you.
One PR guy, whom I never heard of, Alan Weinkrantz, caught my attention big time, by offering a money-back guarantee for anyone not satisfied with Naked Conversations. This caught my attention and I started reading his blog. He writes briefly in conversational fashion about his clients with frequency. One of these days, he'll mention a client who interests me and when he does, I'll jump into his conversation.
I like this system of PR people posting interesting, pithy, apparently honest stuff and letting me subscribe. You don't need to know if I was there.
The last time I posted here about Richard Edelman, I wrote,(perhaps with excessive harshness) his failure to link to other bloggers and to join the conversation. So it would be easy for me to pick up on that note here by pointing out that the only link in his recent post about the "Me2 Revolution" is to his own Edelman Trust Barometer . But, in fact, the Trust Barometer is relevant and important, and I link to it here, because I hope you will read what Edelman, head of the world's largest PR agency has to say on who the most powerful influencers in an organization are.
And yes, I could also complain, that his recent post reads a lot like brochure copy, except that it indeed is brochure copy and as such it is pretty good brochure copy, which you to get to see very often these days.
But what is important and bears note is that in his organization's annual examination of who and what people trust, he reports the increasing trend of people trusting people like themselves, or as he put it, "a person like me." Edelman asserts that the corporate employee, is a more credible source than assorted and sundry official spokespeople, outside celebrities, the PR representative or even the CEO.
I think the best example I know is the remarkable phenomenon of Robert Scoble's popularity. He's just a guy doing his job and he talks about it to other people doing their jobs. He often makes mistakes, but most people recognize his passion and authority. There is an expanding number of mid-level bloggers like Scoble in other organizations. None have boardroom insights, few have been media trained and none have committees filtering and polishing what the write. the result is that collectively and indivisually these "people like me" bloggers have enormous credibility. That credibility seems to be growing at precisely the time when other communicators and communication mechanisms are diminishing in trust.
Lots of bloggers can shrug and say they alreadyknew that. But Edelman's Barometer is not aimed at bloggers. It's taget audience is decision makers and it reflects the views of people in general all ver the world.
I am not personally in love with Edelman's "Me2 Revolution" label. To me it's just a bit PR-ish. On the other hand, it makes the point fast and well. And if it carries the message forward, then I applaud its use.
Mike Manuel said my recent post stings a bit and he serves up a lengthy response. I know Mike slightly and read his blog on a regular basis, giving me a sense that I know him better than I really do. I respect him and have no desire to sting him at all.
What may sting is that after reading what he had to say a couple of times, I find he has no essential disagreement with what I had to say.
I wrote what I wrote with no glee in my heart. My hope is to motivate PR practitioners to change and change now. I is a noble profession that has served a useful purpose. But like newspapers, it will take more than a new shade of lipstick to restore PR's real value. Blogging it seems to me is part of the solution, not the problem, and the quality of Mike's blog tells me he already knows this.
