I’m sure like many people, it seems that every time you turn around someone is talking about word-of-mouth, some articles even make it sound like it was just invented a few years ago. But the reality is the WOM has been around, well, since as long as humans could talk. I mean, seriously, is there much difference from one of our very early ancestors saying, “I found some good berries down by the stream?” to people today showing off their latest cell phone?

Studies show that even with the Internet boom a significant percentage of WOM still happens face to face.
One of the areas that grassroots and word-of-mouth communication always played a critical role was in politics. Successful campaigns never forgot the impact that personal communication played when it came to election day. For the past several years, we’ve been applying this same model to marketing campaigns.

And we will be discussing this approach, “From Politics to Potato Chips” with our colleagues and clients at the Clorox Company at the Word of Mouth Basic Training 2 Conference scheduled for June 20-21 in San Francisco. There will more than 60 other speakers presenting case studies and “how to” sessions. We’ve arranged for a special $125 discount code for colleagues and associates.

Here are the details

WORD OF MOUTH BASIC TRAINING 2
June 20-21 — Hilton San Francisco
Register at http://womma.org/wombat2
Use discount code “beyondbloggingsentme” for $125 off

Categories: New Media, Events, Word of Mouth, PR Community
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It seems that most everyone came away from the Beyond Blogging 2006 event with something positive to say, though a few of the more seasoned veterans of the Blogosphere were perhaps hoping for a deeper dive into the topic.  Personally, I think it was just what the doctor ordered - a great discussion on the important philosophical shift at the foundation of this new media, a wide ranging discussion on the strategies that work and practical advice for what to go out and do today.

Check out what Bloggers are saying yourself by seeing who is linking to this Blog from Technorati.

The really good news in this is that it seems the event was a catalyst to form a community around this topic for ongoing discussion and the occasional face to face gathering.  We are going to be thinking about how this might look over the next week or two and would love to hear your thoughts on what’s next and what specifically you would like to see.  Personally, it seemed that many people wanted to get away from the panel format and engage in direct conversation with one another.  In my world, this calls for an Unconference - while very, very preliminary discussions have barely begun in this regards, I am hopeful that we will be able to put something together in the near future.

And now a brief, personal pause.

My iBook died on the plane out of DC on Saturday evening, which has caused me all sorts of pains and a real feeling of loss.  In addition to losing all of the photographs I took at the event, there were a couple of Blog posts I had written and not posted, a presentation I was finishing for the NetSquared Conference next week and all sorts of other stuff that I had put together while in DC. Thankfully, I think the podcasts I recorded with Greg and Mitch during the event are stll on the MP3 Recorder, so those should be posted in the next 24-48 hours.

Hopefully, the Genius Bar at Apple will be able to recover most of the data tomorrow, and this pause will be short.  Though I really want and could use a MacBook Pro, I had wanted to wait for another generation of them to get the kinks worked out first.

On a separate, but important note, I wanted to let you know that the comments are being moderated on this Blog, but all legitimate comments are approved, including the non-flattering ones.  I have already had to delete a few inappropriate comments (one blatantly promotional and one patently offensive).  Thankfully Akismet seems to catch all the Splog that comes this way, so not much to do on that front.  I mention this now so that you will know why a comment might not appear very quickly over the next couple of days as I deal with my laptop troubles.  We are discussing having unmoderated comments as the dialogue begins to pick up, but no decisions have been made yet.  If  more people are talking here beyond myself and a few key Fleishman Hillard employees, it may just make more sense to have it open and free flowing.

OK, so it is time for bed now - I have a 7am tee time with my 90 year old grandfather and I am going to need a good night’s rest if I have any hopes of keeping up with him tomorrow morning.  Should be done and at the Apple store before it opens at 10am… 

Categories: Events, PR Community
1 Comment »

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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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
1 Comment »

Micah Sifry (one of our panelists) just gave me the heads up on this event his organization is putting on called Personal Democracy Forum 2006 in New York on Monday May 15 - a few days before our event. The current list of speakers looks fantastic, with some of the most prominent thought leaders from the world of business, politics and technology - in addition to some of the more well known bloggers such as Markos Moulitsas, Jason Calcanis and David Sifry. It should be quite the conversation - so if you have any hope of remaining relevant as the nature of communications technology evolves in the political arena, you should plan on heading to NYC that day.

According to their Web site, the focus for the day will be on:

• The maturing of blogs as powerbrokers and media-makers.
• Promising new experiments in tuning social networking tools for political communities.
• New tools for political communication, including podcasting, videoblogging, mobile phones and word-of-mouth.
• Why increasing traffic to your own website is not enough; taking advantage of the Internet as a platform.

Registration costs just $295, so go ahead and check out the program topics and register today. If I was not supposed to be in Miami that day for my grandfather’s belated 90th birthday dinner the weekend before, I would definitely be seeing you there - in fact, I still might see you there if I can rework the travel schedule.

Categories: Democracy, Events
1 Comment »