Archive for May, 2006
Wow! It seems this event has struck a chord with DC Communications Professionals. There have been over 500 registrations so far, which means we have had to close registration. Professionals from every sector will be participating, including those from some of the biggest organizations in Washington, DC.
If you did not register, but would still like to come to the event on Friday if a spot becomes available, please add your name in the comments to this post. While there is no official waiting list planned, we can use this as an informal way of getting a head count and communicating with you if something changes.
Update: You can still fill out the registration form to be placed on the mailing list. If space opens up before the event, you will be notified via email. Please note, the registration form may not yet say that the registration is closed, but it is and you will get an email after completing the form that will tell you so. By registering, you also will receive email notification of when the podcast complete webcast of the event goes live.
Categories: Events
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David Meerman Scott’s free eBook, The New Rules of PR, kicked off a wave of discussion in January about the future of the press release.
On of his points was that with the advent of popular news sites on Google and Yahoo, the primary readers of your “release” are now sometimes the business buyers or consumers searching for information about products and services you offer.
What about the press?
The press remains a critical audience for a number of reasons, but how many times does a traditional, national release get you the kind of attention you hope for? Most people get better results through one-on-one emails and phone calls with reporters. You know, a little human touch.
Now that we are in May, the long shelf life of that initial discussion is still evident and the “Rules” are now a point of reference (and debate). There have been articles about the “death” of the press release and continuing posts on blogs about what’s the next great thing.
For many it’s a tired topic, but the “New Rules” that I’ve seen work really boil down to a few key points:
1. Write directly to your audience - including all key micro-segments – when appropriate. With the new approach, write one release (or “releaselet” — mini-release) for each audience using words and concepts they personally relate to.
2. Take advantage of research resources like Yahoo and Google keywords tools or Wordtracker to find out what terms people are searching for and integrate them into your “release.” Ensure that the way you structure your release and the keywords it contains are in alignment with what people are actually searching for.
3. Incorporate links back to content on your site, or add multimedia and RSS features to add richness to and extend the reach and life of your release.
4. Publish more often, take advantage of cheaper distribution channels like your own site, blog or services like PR Web.
5. Deliver a clear call to action.
6. Be more familiar.
At the end of the day, these approaches can be hard for communicators to embrace. However, they should be easy for communicators to implement – we’ve been crafting the story behind “the story” for years.
As far the traditional “press release” goes, we should know enough about the media we are pitching to accommodate them however they prefer to receive information. So in the end, the truth is that the press release isn’t dead - it’s just that the concept of a “release” is no longer limited to the press. So we need to avoid the dilemma of the recording industry and adapt as it evolves rather than trying to fight the change we know is inevitable.
Categories: New Media, Media Relations
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OK, I know some of you are probably new to this, so the fact that we are getting a few hundred visitors a day to this blog is quite impressive, but the time for simply reading is over. We are just 96 hours or so from the big event on Friday morning and I really need your help. We need a little more conversation here. By this I mean, I need to hear from you - even if you feel the need to use a made up name of some sort, we would like your voice to be included.
Specifically, I am inviting you to share your thoughts with us on these two things.
1. What does Beyond Blogging mean to you?
2. What do you expect to learn on Friday? What burning questions do you have that you hope to have answered?
All the great stuff happens in the comments - that is where things get real. I know most of us have given up on comments ever working on most traditional media sites, but with Blogs, they are the keys to nirvana. Today is the day you find out why. Go ahead - try it, you might like it. Later today I will be posting my unique, non sanitized answer to question number one.
Categories: Comments
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Our Keynote for the event is being delivered by Ed Keller, author of the must read book “The Influentials.” His insights are truly exceptional and will set the tone from a very practical perspective in regards to Word of Mouth practices and understanding the systemic implications of advances in communications technology.
Ed Keller, CEO
Keller Fay Group
New Brunswick, NJ
www.kellerfay.com
Word of Mouth Research & Consulting
Q1 - What are the 5 Blogs you can’t live without?
There is no blog I “can’t live without.” There’s a lot of research that shows I’m not alone. Most Americans don’t read blogs regularly, and those who do rely on personal relationships and traditional media to a much greater extent than blogs.
But blogs are important, and increasingly so. They have democratized media, and allowed many new voices to be heard. Once heard, their power is magnified through personal communications and the mainstream media.
Some of the blogs I most like to read and are valuable to me in the area of word of mouth marketing are those published by the Church of the Customer, Pete Blackshaw, CRM Metrix, Dr. Walter Carl of Northeastern University, and Bazaarvoice.
Q2 - Tell us a little more about you and your company.
My company, the Keller Fay Group, is the “fly on the wall” of the American consumer conversation. We provide marketers with a systematic means for tracking marketing-relevant conversations in America through an innovative diary-based survey methodology that allows us to measure not only the topics of conversation, but also the brands, companies, and news stories that Americans are talking about and writing about. This service, which we call TalkTrack™, allows marketers to understand the word of mouth momentum for their brands and others in their category, the effectiveness of their marketing in creating word of mouth, the conversational context for their brand, and their brands share of talk today and over time.
Before starting the Keller Fay group, I was the CEO of the well know research firm, RoperASW.
I am also an author, of The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy (Free Press: 2003). In the lead up to and since the publication of The Influentials, I have become quite engaged in the emerging discipline of word of mouth marketing, and am proud that the publication of my book has been called a “seminal moment in word of mouth.”
Q3 - What does Beyond Blogging mean to you? What does it look like?
Beyond Blogging is a great conference title because it has meaning on multiple levels. It means that ‘blogging’ has matured to the point of being a key subdiscipline for marketing professionals, and that virtually every significant organization needs to have a strategy to address the impact of blogs. It means that understanding the impact and potential of blogging requires that we get beyond the blog medium itself — we need to look at the interaction between blogs and mainstream media, and between blogs and our customer and prospect relationships. Finally, we need to look beyond blogging as we know it today, and understand its implications for all our relationships. No longer do we live in a top-down communications environment, but one in which listening skills are as important as our ability to articulate and broadcast messages to our organizations’ key stakeholders.
Beyond Blogging is a terrific opportunity for marketers and communicators to come to come together to discuss (and, I suspect, debate) the new dynamics of communications – where the consumer is very much in charge. What are the opportunities, as well as the challenges, and how can we as marketers become a part of the consumer conversation. All the old rules are up for reconsideration, and the new rules have not been written. So it should be lively and provocative.
Q4 - Do you have any sage advice for a communications professional trying to work with a client that wants to Blog? What are the 3 most important things they need to look out for?
You need to know who the expected audience that will read the blog is. While the number of blogs is enormous, there is still a small percentage of the public that reads them. Knowing who you are communicating with via a blog, and why, is critical before your client starts blogging. In addition, any word of mouth – including blogging – should not be thought of as a silo, divorced from your brand’s other consumer touch points. Blogging is one of many ways to reach out to consumers, and it should fit with, not fight with, your other communications.
Q5 - What’s the one trend in communications that isn’t being picked up on, or understood, by mainstream communicators?
There is a great deal of focus today on the new communications technologies and how they can be harnessed to maximum effect. But if we think back to John Naisbitt’s best selling book, Megatrends, we should not forget the powerful trend he called “High Tech/High Touch.” The more technologically advanced we become as a society and as individuals, he said, the more people crave “high touch” solutions at the same time. The trend to remember in communications is that word of mouth primarily takes place in person with people we know personally. Technology is an enabler, but it doesn’t replace the consumer’s need for a personal touch. Communicators, too, need to keep the right balance.
Q6 - Discuss briefly what you’ll be sharing with our audience at the Beyond Blogging event.
I’ll be talking about the underlying dynamics that have created a word of mouth revolution, whereby word of mouth is now far more important to consumers than it has ever been, and considerably more important to them than other forms of information. I’ll share new research coming from our TalkTrack™ study – research that is being released for the first time the week of the symposium – that will give new insight into the ways word of mouth really works, and implications for how communicators can become part of America’s word of mouth conversations.
Categories: Word of Mouth, Speakers
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 Starting today we are going to begin to move the conversation into focus for next week. We begin with an email interview with our moderator for the event, Shel Holtz (who I am really looking forward to meeting after hearing such great things about him). I think you will find this very informative. If you don’t already read his top five Blogs, you should rectify that problem today.
Shel Holtz, ABC
Accredited Business Communicator
Holtz Communication + Technology
Concord, California, USA
Website | Blog | Podcast
Q1 - What are the 5 Blogs you can’t live without?
- MicroPersuasion
- Media Guerrilla
- Scobleizer
- Church of the Customer
- John Battelle’s Searchblog
Q2 - Tell us a little more about you and your company.
I’m a sole practitioner working with companies to help them communicate effectively online. My background is in corporate communications — internal and external. I’ve been online since 1985 and on the Net since 1990, and I make it my business to stay on top of the trends that will have an effect on business. I help companies strategize ways to use these new tools as well as how to address the “dark side” of the online world. I’ve been independent since 1996, when I left a communications practice leader job at a global consulting firm.
Q3 - What does Beyond Blogging mean to you? What does it look like?
First of all, blogging is just a tool. In addition to the blogs that get all the attention, there are blogs about knitting, cats, books, cartography, you name it. Blogs are also being used to build non-blog websites because they have inherently powerful content management capabilities. What blogs represent, though, is the power of individuals to wield influence that was previously inaccessible to them…and to form communities that have even more power. Blogs were merely the first social computing tool to resonate with an audience because of their ease of use and low barriers to entry. What they’ll look like in two years is anybody’s guess, but they’ll certainly have merged with other technologies that achieve the same result. Look at blogs that now incorporate the ability to tag each article or let users bookmark the article in del.icio.us. Look at how tools that tap into the wisdom of crowds (like Digg and Memeorandum) are pointing to blog entries as much as content produced by mainstream media. This is really about citizen-generated content, not a single tool. As these become more pervasive and easier to use, we’ll see a tectonic shifting of power from institutions to communities, and institutions will have to figure out how to thrive in this environment. They’ll have to give up any hope they had of controlling their messages and opt instead to participate in the conversation.
Q4 - Do you have any sage advice for a communications professional trying to work with a client that wants to Blog? What are the 3 most important things they need to look out for?
My sage advice is to read a lot of blogs, comment on blogs, and start blogging. It doesn’t have to be a corporate blog at first; try one from home that focuses on a hobby instead of the job. But the worst examples of business blogs are usually those launched by companies that figure they need a blog but have made no effort to understand the culture of the blogosphere. They should also align the focus of the blog with their business issues. To start a business blog without a strategy is no different than the horrible outcomes we saw 10 years ago from companies who said, “We need a website” without any idea why they needed one and what it should communicate. As for three things to look out for…
- Anybody who suggests a blog should or could be ghost-authored. Blogging is personal. If you’re not going to write it, don’t blog.
- Anybody who suggests a blog should be written in a corporate style. Write conversationally. Write with passion. Write with authority.
- Anybody who suggests you moderate comments in order to remove any negative contributions. Nobody is stupid enough to believe everybody reading your blog will agree with everything you say. Your credibility suffers if you don’t let the negative comments appear. Your credibility soars if you do.
Q5 - What’s the one trend in communications that isn’t being picked up on, or understood, by mainstream communicators?
Citizen-generated content.
Q6 - What are some of your past Blog posts you would like to highlight for our audience? Why?
Smart Corporate Blogging
“I’m Sorry” Getting Easier to Say
– Institutions resist admitting they are fallible. People have no such problem.
Companies Blocking Employees from Reading RSS Feeds
– Companies need to let employees access information without restriction.
Q7 - Discuss briefly what you’ll be sharing with our audience at the Beyond Blogging event.
Nothing, really. I’m the emcee and panel moderator! I hope to be able to ask some salient and pointed questions, but only if the audience questions start off slowly.
Categories: Blogging, User Generated Content, Speakers
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As mentioned in a prior post today, one of our panelists, Todd Tweedy from Boldmouth has just released a Research Report entitled Perceptions, Practices & Ethics In Word-of-Mouth Marketing. It contains a great wealth of insights on the subject matter that should be useful to all communications professionals. In this podcast interview which was conducted using a free voice over Internet service from GizmoProject, I dig a bit deeper beyond the numbers into the practical aspects of WOM (word of mouth) as they relate to the communications industry. This is a really good conversation that should be of real benefit.
Please note that despite what I say on the podcast, the total time was only fiftenn minutes.
Download MP3
Categories: Podcasts, Word of Mouth
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One of our panelists for the event, Todd Tweedy of Boldmouth, has just released an excellent Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing Research Study with Osterman Research entitled Perceptions, Practices & Ethics In Word-of-Mouth Marketing. One of the most important elements he addresses in the report is how you can never co-opt authenticity and get away with it.
I will be doing a phone interview with him later today which we will release as a podcast from here. If you have any questions you think I should ask him, please post them here in the comments. I think this is an important practice area for communications professionals to understand - it certainly goes way Beyond Blogging in many real ways.
Categories: Blogger Relations, Word of Mouth
2 Comments »
I have been thinking about how to share these stories with you for some time now. My friend David Wickenden over at Fleishman Hillard sent this to our attention shortly after this series of articles was published in The Economist on April 20th, 2006.
It is quite simply one of the best pieces of reporting I have found on the bigger picture we are referencing with Beyond Blogging. I still don’t know how to boil it down for you, so let me first say that I highly recommend you find the time to sit down and read each of them all the way through. I could probably write 2,000 words on each of the articles, so it is best if I let them mostly speak for themselves. The articles provide an excellent, non-alarmist perspective as to what all this stuff means and an understanding of how it affects your profession.
I would really like to sit and spend some time with the authors of this piece to dig even deeper. The inclusion of the broader historical perspective adds a tremendous level of understanding the current media ‘revolution’ in context. For instance, I have been watching as the old guard of Mainstream Media has responded to the Blogging phenomenon with scorn and disdain, portraying Bloggers as not only unskilled amateurs, but as hacks with a score to settle against others.
My experience has been completely the opposite - most Bloggers I know are more concerned with conveying the truth and are quick to correct themselves when shown to be wrong. Personally, I am not much of a researcher, but I know not to quote someone improperly as has happened to Todd Tweedy recently in his dealings with Tom Wasserman from Brandweek. In the end, professional ethics come down to the individual’s interpretation - so my point is that both amateurs and professionals are human, we all make mistakes.
Some of the more important elements of the lead article tie in directly with some of my previous posts for this Blog:
“Instead of a few large capital-rich media giants competing with one another for these audiences, it will be small firms and individuals competing or, more often, collaborating. Some will be making money from the content they create; others will not and will not mind, because they have other motives.”
“As with the media revolution of 1448, the wider implications for society will become visible gradually over a period of decades.”
“David Weinberger says that Mainstream Media ‘don’t get how subversive it is to take institutions and turn them into conversations’. That is because institutions are closed, assume a hierarchy and have trouble admitting fallibility, he says, whereas conversations are open-ended, assume equality and eagerly concede fallibility.”
“[Barry] Diller is confident that participation can never be a proper basis for the media industry. ‘Self-publishing by someone of average talent is not very interesting,’ he says. ‘Talent is the new limited resource.’ […] ‘What an ignoramus!’ says Jerry Michalski.”
What is lost on Barry is how much of a training ground this is for the next Spielberg, the next Jennings, the next Crichton. What you don’t get in the ranks of most media organizations is the chance to really practice the craft and experiment with media - there is little tolerance for risk or failure. This is exactly what the Blogging revolution is providing - free training for the media stars of tomorrow as well as a new distribution channel for the stars of today.
Quality of production is a discriminating factor for many consumers, but the quality of the content can come from a poorly delivered. The fact that the story is being told somewhere rather than not being toldd at all is what really matters. With the proper tools for creation and discovery, every story that matters will find its audience, no matter how small that audience might be.
This is the real power of going Beyond Blogging.
What is new is that young people today, and most people in future, will be happy to decide for themselves what is credible or worthwhile and what is not. They will have plenty of help. Sometimes they will rely on human editors of their choosing; at other times they will rely on collective intelligence in the form of new filtering and collaboration technologies that are now being developed.
Categories: Blogging, Conversation, New Media
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As you may know, I have been down in New Orleans for the last few days for an event we held last Thursday and also to attend this year’s New Orleans JazzFest which just wrapped up yesterday. While on the festival fairgrounds on Saturday, I took the opportunity to seek out the “Media Relations Tent” to perhaps see what was going on there and which of my old friends I might meet again. Instead, I came away with a simple story, some lessons, and some practical advice I would like to share with you.
I was fortunate enough to have a few minutes to speak with Matthew Goldman, the Press & Advertising Director for New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and ask him what, if anything they were doing to deal with Bloggers as citizen journalists. I was very clear that I was not asking this because I was hoping to get some special privileges, but because I wanted to get an understanding of their view on “how to handle bloggers“. His simple answer, “Nothing. We already have to turn down too many photojournalists and others who want access as it is.”
I understand his perspective. Which of the attendees would not want special access privileges to one of the biggest music festivals in the country. I can imagine there would be lots of people trying to take advantage of their ability to publish to their Blog in order to get ‘on the inside’. This is seemingly a constant battle for media relations people. It is certainly a known problem with traditional events such as shareholders meetings and conferences. There is always too much to be done and too little time so we must choose where to spend our scarce resources. With everything going on post-Katrina, it was hard enough to deal with all of the ‘real’ influentials out there with platforms like the Times and the Post - Bloggers are simply not the highest priority when you need to worry about where your favorite volunteers are now living.
Mr. Goldman said they had received hundreds of requests from Bloggers who wanted to get special access. Since he was busy taking care of his responsibilities for the day, I did not get a response as to what they did with those inquiries our of respect for his time. I did, however, ask him if they had even considered doing something special for Bloggers to make them feel more welcome or to improve their experience at JazzFest. His answer was simply “No.” While he was very cordial and responsive and respectful to me given how busy he was, you could tell that Bloggers did not really matter to him. It seemed he did not give Bloggers a second thought, except perhaps to be annoyed by how often they kept contacting him.
Still, it is my perspective that this was a golden opportunity lost on their part, and a lesson for all communications professionals who handle events on behalf of your clients.
The fact that hundreds of Bloggers contact you about an event is a big clue that you should do something about it - to come up with a publicly stated policy on the matter other than a traditional press policy. Any time an organization gets more than a handful of requests for conversation about a given topic, it is worthy of attention. When the requesters have a platform to speak to others about you and your handling of that request, even more so - regardless of their potentially limited impact. From my perspective, it is simply a matter of respect. How much you respect that person can vastly influence the amount of respect and tolerance they give you, your event and your organization.
I suggested to Mr. Goldman that they could have perhaps just done something a little extra, to make the Bloggers feel like they belonged, that they had some value and deserved that respect. While he was well within his rights to be dismissive given the situation, I think this is something that needs to be corrected in the future. Blogger Relations should be as much of a required communications channel as a press release or press conference. Either invite the Bloggers into the tent to hold the conversations alongside traditional journalists and really dig deep into the story or handle them differently using separate but equal methods.
Jazzfest could have had a BloggerFest each weekend. This town knows how to party - I am sure it would not have been that hard to setup. As we know from personal experience, all it takes is a location and an invitation - the Bloggers would have ended up practically organizing themselves from there. The feeling of inclusion and value that would be derived from belonging to a special community would be invaluable for the Bloggers and for the event coordinators in terms of the positive experiences that would be had and the petty little problems that would be solved by access to information. This could also have been accomplished with a simple extension of what they were already offering traditional journalists in terms of power outlets, desks and Internet access. They could have even gotten a few donated/sponsored terminals so that Bloggers could do some live blogging from the event and upload photos for their friends to be remote voyeurs on the event via Flickr. It is all about word of mouth and they could have gotten numerous additional positive mentions, which would bring in even more people next year and ensure that many others would come back again.
You don’t need to give them full access to backstage areas and all those other reporter perks. But to give them a special badge that would allow them to bring their high end digital cameras legitimately into the festival would be a huge step in the right direction. As part of the Blogger pass, they could have required each registered photographer and/or Blogger to use a Creative Commons license and/or allow the JazzFest Foundation to repurpose their photographs and articles for promoting next year’s festival. This alone would be one reason to embrace Bloggers - the extra content they create and the permission to reuse it by forming a relationship with them.
I can personally assure you that this sense of ‘inclusion in something special’ makes a huge impact on the quality of the experience. My friends and I were fortunate enough to have passes to the W Hotels hospitality tent and on more then one occasion someone remarked to me how being able to stop into the tent to sit down, grab a FREE beer and use clean restrooms made the day so much better. So much so that he lead off our recent phone call this afternoon by thanking me for getting everyone passes (we stayed at the W French Quarter this trip).
People are already saying good things and bad things about you - the fact that they are doing it in the Blogosphere may not matter to you at all since you are too busy to manage what you already must do, but that does not diminish the need to do something. The point is that this is an opportunity that could potentially become a problem when it need not be. I have not had time to go through all the JazzFest posts as they keep pouring in, but I suspect they will be pretty positive all around - who wants to talk badly about New Orleans these days anyway? So given the situation, I understand Mr. Goldman’s decision to ignore the Bloggers - I just wish he could have seized upon the opportunity to turn some of the happy Bloggers/Customers into RAVING FANS by doing a little something extra for them.
To the question of “How to handle Bloggers?” I respond simply “With respect.” They may not have the reach of a Washington Post reporter, but they do have the potential to make an impact on someone who does. So next time you are planning an event or a project, take a few moments and come up with a strategy for handling Bloggers in a way that respects them as people who publish - regardless of their reach. You need not give away the farm to them, but at least figure out a way to embrace them as someone who cares enough about what you do to invest time into telling others about it.
Queue out to Aretha Franklin “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me…”
We gathered quite a few stories and several personal experiences that have provided some real insights into what is going on down there and what may be needed to rebuild not just the houses, but the community.
Categories: Blogging, User Generated Content, Events, Media Relations, Blogger Relations
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 On Thursday May 4, 2006 I sat down with Earthlink Blogger Dave Coustan to talk about his experiences as a corporate Blogger. This follows up on the Blog post entitled “Reflections on Blogging for Someone Else.” There are some really interesting insights from his experience working at Earthlink as well as some more simple details on certain aspects of the work. You can reach Dave through his Earthling Blog.
Categories: Blogging, Podcasts
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