In doing some research this afternoon on some interesting stuff I will be talking about in a few days, I came across New PR from Crispy News, which is a DIGG like service for the PR Professional. While I have lots to say about how cool it is to take such a great tool and make it available for a specific community to create better contextual filters, I really just wanted you to take a gander yourself (if you don’t already know about it)

Earlier this week I found the big PR Blog list being maintained by Constantin Basturea via a click through link when he added this blog to the list. In just a few minutes I have discovered lots of other really good PR Bloggers such as Stuart Bruce who had this to say in a recent blog entry:

We might have to have different conversations with different people using different channels but that is simply the evolution of our profession. It’s not PR 2.0.
A PR Guru’s Musings - Stuart Bruce: Big PR firm falls for the PR 2.0 hype

I had a bit more to say in the comments on Stuart’s Blog, so please contnue reading over there to get my thoughts on the evolution of PR in the era of social media. (it reads better in context of his post and the other comments there, but the bottom line is that I too hope PR 2.0 does not catch fire, despite how easy it might be to hang our hat on that meme)

Categories: New Media, PR Community, Social Media
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I remember sitting at my Guru Communications desk in Miami Beach seeing the Washington Post come online back in 1996. We were in the height of our frenzied growth and struggling against the five headed monster that was our management team. We had just finished launching Isle Bombardier a couple of months beforehand and we were all talking about how big Media doesn’t get it. But the Post did, and that was surprising and refreshing to see.

Reading the article Web Site Starts From a Memo, Gains Millions of Readers about the brief history of the Post online, I found a few gems that I wanted to share with you.

In particular, this quote from Warren Buffet is extremely relevant to the modern thinking of many of the Web 2.0 startups I know who don’t really have a business model or plan to revenue other than AdSense. I never really understood that form of business model in the early days (which is why I was not able to make Virtual Community Network a big success - I thought we were supposed to try to make money not light it on fire and burn it). While I disagree with the free spending strategy in principle because of the huge risks, I do now see how those risks can be mitigated to ensure some modicum of success.

And Kaiser recalls a conversation with Post board member Warren Buffett in which Buffett told Kaiser to stop worrying about the financial side: “There is no case in history of somebody assembling a huge audience and then failing to make money from it,” Kaiser recalls Buffett saying.
Web Site Starts From a Memo, Gains Millions of Readers

This was the beginning of the “eyeballs” movement - build an audience, make the site sticky and make it viral to grow the audience. I still find it very interesting that today people expect to get to the same “sticky eyeballs” outcome by being “open” and letting their customers easily migrate to competitors. At least today there are standards of quality and methods of understanding audience expectations that make it more possible to create a product/service that really satisfies the needs of the audience.

What really make sense to me in this debate is that it clearly drives competition and motivates organizations with thriving collaborative cultures to make the best possible product in order to prevent people from leaving. It is sort of like an unsatisfied customer relief valve - when the pressure from customers leaving for a competing service get too high, is the company more likely to shut the valve or respond with greater innovation to reverse the flow?

This is seemingly being played out in the Flickr v. Zooomr discussion - especially now since the Flickr Famous Thomas Hawk is going to work for Zooomr. While he says he will still continue to post to Flickr, that does not make sense - he has switched his life to a new photo sharing platform by joining the company, he should make the full commitment to it. While it may be a stab at a brilliant marketing move (keep talking on Flickr about how much better Zooomr is), I feel that such a move is not in the spirit of authenticity that is so prominent in this era of the Web 2.0 Social Contract.

Which brings me back to the brief history of WashingtonPost.com and some of the more recent strategic shifts. To embrace more of the many to many aspects of the covversational Web instead of the one to many model that has been so prevalent for so many years.

In a recent all-company meeting, Caroline Little, WPNI’s chief executive officer and publisher, spoke of recent online innovations. “We set out, very purposefully, about two years ago, to leverage the medium of the Internet, to create more possibilities of conversation and to drive people to come and stay on the site: With blogs, comments on blogs, Technorati [links], comments on articles, a broader and deeper opinion section,” she said.
Web Site Starts From a Memo, Gains Millions of Readers

I refer to this shift as moving from being the “Town Crier” to becoming the “Town Hall” - moving from the idea of media as voice to the idea of media as place - a venue where the conversation happens. From trying to control the conversation to facilitating it amongst peers. The Post does understand this better than most big media companies, but not completely. They still think the game is about driving people to the site and keeping them there, which is an ad revenue model rather than being a social one. This was further evidenced by their position looking out at the world from inside the organization.

Washingtonpost.com, they realized, wasn’t a completely separate product; it could also help market the larger Washington Post brand. Audience spikes around big news events sent a strong message: Readers yearned for the authority of The Washington Post’s reporting.
Web Site Starts From a Memo, Gains Millions of Readers

Internet usage always spikes around big news stories - email volume, IM volume, hits to the big authoritative news sites and now so does the amount of stuff people contribute to the conversation through their Blogs, Podcasts and Vlogs. Yes, people need to have a trusted, authoritative voice to turn to, but this is no longer the Post by default. In all fairness, the strategies that the Post has taken are in the right direction. They are willing to experiment a little, they are embracing conversational methods and they have a really bright team of folks working for them.

But the jury on relevance and authoritative voice is still out and probably won’t render its final judgment for another 10 years. Personally, while a track record and brand loyalty is important, I now judge news sources on the merits of each piece they publish. I am just as likely to stumble on a Washington Post story as I am one from the New York Times. What matters most to me now are the filters like TechMeme, TailRank and Digg. Then it comes down to the people I trust and then the organizations. Until I can build a more personal relationship with Post reporters (neither myself or them have the time to do so), I will only have a limited amount of trust that I can give the organization.

This fundamentally misses the most important point, that Greg Narain paraphrases nicely

Is anyone really dealing with the relationship that’s held and the realities of maintaining that connection and loyalty over an extended period of time? Socialtwister 2.0

That is the problem with social media - and that is the opportunity.

technorati tags:beyondblogging, washingtonpost, zooomr, flickr, web2.0, socialmedia, conversation, newmedia

Categories: Conversation, New Media
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I hope we will have some good news for everyone soon about what is going on here. I have been working behind the scenes on some very exciting plans, but can not talk about them just yet.

A couple of other important news items to share with you briefly:

1. In case you were not on planet earth earlier this week, Microsoft’s face to the Blogosphere, Robert Scoble has left Microsoft to join a Silicon Valley podcast network called Podtech. I heard the news at Vloggercon before the story broke - but out of respect for Rober’ts wishes to hold off on the story until Tuesday, said nothing about it.
2. Just over a week ago Tom Foremski announced plans to work on establishing some standards around a new press release format. My conversations with him around this seemingly played a role in this new development as we have talked about it several times since our podcast. Last night I agreed to help manage this process with him while at the Society for New Communications Research dinner.
3. In the company news front, Google has announced that it will begin to sell Adwords by Dayparts. MediaWeek has some basic coverage and Search Engine Watch had a few more details. Personally, I thought this should have been happening several years ago, but am very happy since it should create higher efficiency in marketing campaigns, but it will also drive the per click prices up for any product/service that gets sold into the working world. If it also drives down the number of wasted clicks, everyone should come out ahead.
4. Bloggercon is sold out, but people are still adding their names, so if you can make it to San Francisco next week, it would be great to see you there.

Well, there is lots more to talk about, but that is all for now. Have a great weekend - it looks like most of the US should be pretty nice outside. While you all are enjoying your Saturday, I will be participating in Rails Day 2006…

Categories: Blogging, New Media, PR Community
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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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This afternoon, with thoughts of the Beyond Blogging 2006 Symposium experience sitll fresh in our minds, I sat down with David Wickenden, Dan Horowitz, Coleman Hutchins and Peter Klaus to discuss the event, the takeaways, the impressions and the next steps.

Since I woke up this morning at 545am EST (which is usually when I go to bed out in San Francisco) I am in need of sleep before writing much more. The good news is that since this resonated with everyone so strongly, that the conversation will continue into the forseeable future. More to share on Monday on the event itself, photos to come over the weekend and the Webcast of the entire event will be posted by the middle of next week.

Thanks to everyone for coming out, and to my friends at Fleishman Hillard for this great opportunity to be a part of the discussion.

Download as MP3 (11MB)

Categories: New Media, Podcasts, Media Relations, Blogger Relations, From Event
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So what does Beyond Blogging actually mean? I have asked a lot of people that and received some very interesting answers. But I think to really get Beyond Blogging is a matter for the framing question. I.e., is the question really about what is Beyond Blogging, as in what does the future hold? Or Is it about going beyond blogging today, to imply that there is much more to this whole phenomenon. From my perspective, Beyond Blogging is about creating a deeper understanding of the best practices that work today while setting a path towards what we need from technology to do a better job for our clients in the future.

As Howard Rheingold says, “What it is -> is up to us”, so let’s get involved in the conversation and start trying things out, seeing what works and sharing what we learn with one another. It’s a about letting go of what you know and how things have been done in the past and looking for better ways to serve our clients - to create the most impact for their organizations, to tell their stories in ways that reach their intended audience. Now more than ever, the people who build these Web tools are open to the process of co-creation - my friends at BuzzLogic have been working very closely with a few key communications firms ever since they began development on their soon to be released software and will likely continue to do so forever. [Disclousure: I am an advisory board member for BuzzLogic]

So why now? What’s really different? Everything - and nothing. As Joe Kraus says, “It is easier than ever to launch a company, but just as hard as ever to build a business.” For me, what is really different is that we are finally in the throws of the Knowledge Economy and on our way to the next evolution, the Wisdom Economy.

In the knowledge economy, the value is no longer based on what you know, it is created from the unique way in which you apply what you know. It is found in the unique value of your relationships, the richness of your experience and your ability to adapt the insights you have gleaned from past failures and success in new ways for new situations. While we learn much from the patterns and protocols that have worked for us in the past, we need to think like Edwards Demming and Tony Robbins - we need to strive for Constant and Never Ending Improvement - finding better ways to accomplish our client’s goals as Tom Foremski suggests in The New Media Release.

Beyond Blogging is also an understanding that this new era of “social media” and Web 2.0 is about more than a technological revolution - it is about a fundamentally different way of viewing the world. It is a Chaordic world, not one in which the old world “Command and Control” hierarchies will work much longer. It is not a world of lies and cover ups - it is a world of authenticity and impeccable honesty. It is about filling the funnel instead of cllimbing the ladder - it is about helping one another by sharing what we know and being LoveCats. As I have written with The Noble Pursuit, it is also a time when fear and power are losing their grip on much of the modern world, but runs rampant in the unintegrated gap. It is whole brain thinking. It is about love winning out over fear. It is about the abundant capital of knowledge driving the economy forward instead of the scarcity of resources. It is about respecting the “Z-list” Bloggers as much as the A-List ones.

It is about people first and technology second. It is about you and me, in conversation with one another, asking the big questions or the silly one’s - at a conference table, in the hallway or over beer - enjoying the world around us and doing our bit to help make things right in our own unique way, using our own special gifts.

Yep - I know - all that idealism is fine and dandy, but what is Beyond Blogging for the communications industry specifically? What should we be concerned with as professionals? First you must understand how to work with consumer generated media to further your goals. Word of Mouth is a great practice area, but it can not be bought and sold for its full value. Monetizing it in units is just simply wrong from my perspctive - though it may be what the media buyers of the world want to do, it does not make it right. Its real value comes from the hearts of raving fans and the real troubles come from those that are really pissed off.

The trend I have been watching most closely over the past few years since getting into conversational intelligence and word of mouth has been the use of knowledge to further the goals of marketing. As consumers have access to more and more information, they rely on being able to find out what they need to know - they strive to make meaning out of the noise. So why not help make the meaning for them by replacing some of the advertising and communications mix with messages that teach people the important bits instead of always tugging on the emotional heart strings. While it probably won’t work for Coca-Cola, it might for Diet Coke - in a real sense, a nutrional label is a form of knowledge marketing in itself.

What does knowledge marketing mean? What does it look like? AdSense is one example - simple short text blurbs that must avoid hyperbole. It is Campbell’s Soup offering a series of alternative recipes for using its soup in other dishes. It is AdSense sending an email newsletter that helps advertisers better optimize their campaigns, helping them get the most from the service offering. It is American Express offering small business expertise as part of their Open program. It is a hundred other uses of producing media and applications that help people move from being a potential customer to being a loyal one who is selling your products for you and teaching their peers all the tips and tricks that they learned along the way. This approach creates natural word of mouth amongst your most highly valued customers and may take the form of an advertisement, a web site, a brochure, an email newsletter, a non-profit tie-in or any other form.

In short, it is about a fundamental shift in the framework and focus of the traditional communications agency from handling the public relations, Web site content and crisis communications to one that helps companies in all aspects of their outbound communications. It is about helping clients organize their knowledge assetts and figuring out how to best communicate them to the appropriate audiences in the most appropriate manner. It is about working to ensure the congruency of communications across all customer touchpoints - from press relations, to blogger relations, to internal communications, to sales scripts, to advertisements, to customer service centers and everything in between. Most importantly, it is about really listening to your customers and your markets, being engaged in the conversation and just keeping it real.

If you want to know more about this, come talk to me at the event tomorrow morning over at the Mayflower hotel - would be glad to hear your feedback and see what we might figure out together…

Categories: Blogging, Conversation, New Media, User Generated Content, Media Relations, Blogger Relations, Word of Mouth
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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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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.

• Among the Audience
• It’s the links, Stupid
• Compose Yourself
• The Wiki Principle
• Heard on the Street
• Wonders of the Metaverse
• The Gazillion Dollar Question
• What Sort of Revolution

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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I have been a part of ‘new media’ since it was barely even new back in 1994. In all that time I have only met a few Mainstream Media ‘oldtiimers’ who really understood the impact that the technology was having - more so lately of course, but I am still in awe at those who vehemently resist change. The good news is that many of those who get it have all been working for the BBC over the past year on a blueprint for their strategic vision called ‘Creative Future‘. I highly recommend that you follow that link and read it in its entirety, so I won’t be including much of it here except…

Some key points from BBC Director General Mark Thompson

“The second wave of digital will be far more disruptive than the first and the foundations of traditional media will be swept away, taking us beyond broadcasting.”

“We can deliver much more public value when we think across all platforms and consider how audiences can find our best content, content that’s more relevant, more useful and more valuable to them.”

According to a report from Mark Sweeney of Media Guardian, the BBC’s plan for going “Beyond Broadcast” calls for a “a three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts - ’share’, ‘find’ and ‘play’.” It would seem that share is really at the heart of these efforts as they hope their audience will be using the BBC site for customizing their news experience, writing blogs and posting video content. “User generated content” has often been of late a key element of business models designed to keep costs of operation down, it is a pleasure to finally see someone use the concept in its proper context. Apparently, the BBC is taking the idea one step further, asking their audience to submit their redesigns for the BBC home page.

Ben McConnell over at the Church of the Customer Blog makes a great point, which is one of the reason this story interested me so much:

“The world is changing for advertisers who hope to insert themselves among the networked community masses, too. They must also cede traditional expectations of control not only to be heard by the community, but to be relevant.”

As I have been telling all my friends and associates for the last year, the key aspect of remaining relevant in the era of social media and user generated content - as a media company or as a brand - is to understand you can’t control what people do or say, but you can participate in the conversation. Or at least, you can participate as long as you are honest, helpful and authentic. So rather than thinking like someone who controls all aspects of the situation, think about media as being a facilitator instead of a dictator. What sort of conversations do you, as a human being, want to have with people you trust? with companies you trust? with companies you don’t trust?
It would seem this sort of understanding will go a long way towards ensuring your, and your client’s relevancy in the future - Beyond Blogging and Beyond Broadcast.

Categories: Conversation, New Media, User Generated Content
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