This week's edition of PRWeek features a story about the Sony PlayStation program that I am proud to be a part of. Mike has posted some thoughts over at VoceNation.

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So PR Week is having this little competition........so go vote for Voce!

Hyku isn't nominated since I stopped PR blogging a while back :-)

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With the launch of the eBay Ink blog we (meaning Voce and cnp_studio) had a nice hat trick on the WordPress.org site. The screenshot below shows the 'Powered by WP' in the lower right. I'm proud to say that they're all ours :-)

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The full title should probably be, "In our own minds, we all think what we blog is relevant to other people." That's one of the major appeals of blogging, it's self publishing. We get to say what we want and then other people read and respond (hopefully). There is a scary truth though and that is the 'importance' of what we say may not be that important.

As an experiment, a few months ago I unsubscribed from a number of 'influential' blogs....some might call them the dreaded A-list term, or in today's political climate 'agents of change'. Would I miss their commentary, would I miss out on the latest trends or topics?

Well a funny thing happened. Many of the folks I unsubscribed from were not missed at all. In fact I also never heard their names mentioned on other related blogs, or were directed there via links. Maybe this is a function of the blogging they're doing, less conversation, more talking at. Perhaps the real conversation has moved to Twitter?

The people I did miss though were what I would call friends or colleagues. I found myself missing their blogs not because of what they wrote about, I just missed them.

I'm still chewing through what this means in the evolution of social interactions online, but it does point back to the relationship aspect of things.

How many of the blogs you follow religiously are from 'industry leaders' and how many are from friends? In my experience my top folder in NetNewsWire is my friends folder.

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Jake has some good points and there of course is interesting discussion going on in the commentary in his post about 'expertise'. There are those that talk and those that do.

I think some of it has to do with the work/blogging balance that many professionals have to face. When you're not busy with 'work' you have plenty of time to blog and participate in conversations. When work gets busy, the extra stuff tends to drop off. But then again that's not following our own advice, we always tell clients to make time for blogging, so we should as well :-)

I think it was last year that Tom Biro said something to like, "the reason I'm not blogging is because I"m busy doing actual client work." I chuckled at that statement and now with the full-time gig I understand what he means.

Should people follow the example one leads on a blog, or the example they provide via the work they do with their clients?

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There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Blog Council, some positive, some moderate. David's initial thoughts were that it might not be a good idea and Geoff took issue with the 'closed door' approach. Here are some follow-up thoughts:

1. Like I said in the previous post, some groups like to meet among their peers and talk shop without outside influence/distractions. That can sometimes be good, or perhaps bad. One similar organization I have worked with is the Insurers Public Relations Council. It's a gathering of the top PR pros at the top insurance firms in the US. The meetings they have are part business, part fun. But ultimately they can get down to business fast since they all work in the same industry, all face the same issues, and all speak the same language. They still seek outside council though....but they're very clear, if you're speaking you're there to educate, not pitch.

2. Following-up on that last thought.....if you remember my rant from a few weeks ago about the standard presentation-as-pitch issue. If I could join a comms/professional group that promised to deliver good quality content that was pitch-free...sign me up.

3. Give them time. Hell the group was just announced. Ultimately the members will be able to see if there is any value in the organization. If it's good it will survive, it not it will die a slow death :-)

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What is ANTB? That stands for Andy's Next Big Thing. Who is Andy? Andy Sernovitz, he used to run the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and now he's launched the Blog Council.

Back in early October, Andy shared his plans for me, and it's great to see this finally launch (and stay true to the original vision he set out):

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

Representing thought leaders from corporate departments as diverse as corporate communications, global communities, marketing and customer service, the Blog Council's advocacy role functions as a collective voice in support of responsible, ethics-based corporate blogs. Other issues the Council will address include:

- How do global brands manage blogs in more than one language?
- What do you do when 2000 employees have personal blogs?
- What is the role of the corporate brand in a media landscape increasingly geared toward consumer-generated media?
- What is the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about your company?

It's true that major brands have issues unique to them. They also like to interact/share with their peers, in confidence.

I was fortunate enough to present to the group earlier this week along with John Bell on the topic of blogger relations.

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If you are my age, then you know where the last part of that title comes from (inconceivable!). If not, ask around :-)

What does the word conversation mean to you and to your company?

We say the word conversation quite a bit in the social media world. But like some words, when you say it over and over, it sometimes loses all meaning.....sort of like social media. When I started my breakout session at the PRSA International Conference last week I joked with the audience was probably sick and tired of the term 'social media'. They had to be, they had been in sessions for three days hearing it over and over again.

Back to the word conversation though. I think when I say it and hopefully when some of the organizations I work with say it, they mean they want a two way dialogue. Both sides learn something from each other. There is a give and take.

Unfortunately conversation is also becoming a strategy, a marketing plan.

Politicians also use the word conversation. They say, "We need to sit down and have a conversation about that issue." I don't know about you, but when I hear that from a politician I usually think, "I am going to speak with you to give you the appearance that I actually care what you have to say, but in reality I am just going to use this opportunity to force my ideas upon you." Not my idea of conversation.

Are politicians and corporations giving conversation a bad name?

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Today at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum I moderated a panel on B2B blogging. When you get a room full of marketers the conversation will sometimes turn to SEO and of course ROI. Mix the two and you have a lively conversation.

Yes we all know that Google loves blogs, but if your only reason for blogging is SEO, then you're going to fail. Back in early 2006 I posted about a newspaper that wanted to start community blogging. I told them if the reasons were revenue or page views that things would fail. The primary purpose has to be conversation and community. If you do those two things right (and have your blog properly configured) then SEO and all the other benefits should follow.

During the panel today the analogy I used was this:

If your fiance asks you why you love him/her and want to spend the rest of your life with them you shouldn't say:

A. I'm looking for increased ROI thru shared living expenses.
B. You have a great network of (hot) friends, and partnering with you allows me to position myself favorably with them.

It should first and foremost be about love and compassion (with your fiance).

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This post wraps-up to my series on the individuals involved with corporate social media programs. In the first part I looked at the downsides of an organization becoming too reliant upon an individual with a social media/community initiatives. The second post looked at the same issue from the standpoint of the individual who may become overshadowed by the brand they serve. I wish this third post could come under better circumstances, but in business things don't always turn out the way you want them to. What happens when you layoff the staff that runs your corporate blog?

Earthlink corporation has been undergoing some tough times recently that culminated with a number of staff being laid off last month. One of those was their official corporate blogger, Dave Coustan. Dave was hired in 2005, to be the first 'blogmaster' for Earthlink. Longtime readers of this blog may remember that Toby Bloomberg first spotted Earthlnk's ad for this position back in 2005.

If you have a corporate blog and you take away the blogger, well you guessed it, the blog probably goes away too. Dave talked recently about the changes going on at Earthlink and what it will mean for Earthling, the corporate blog.

While many corporate blogs are indeed that, a 'corporate' blog, the people reading them often follow the personalities that write them. This is very similar to how people follow columnists in the print media. While I read SI.com, I usually seek out the work of Peter King. If Peter ever left SI, I'd probably visit SI.com less frequently.

One of Dave's major responsibilities was writing the blog, in his absence what can/will Earthlink do? I don't think turning the blog over to a group of people that can't give it their full attention would be wise. Also, Earthlink says one of their goals is to concentrate on doing a better job for their existing customers. It's a bit ironic then that they'd take away a communication vehicle between company and customer.

Tying back to my first two posts on this subject: 1. What could/should happen to the blog and 2. What should Dave, the individual, or in this case the Earthling do?

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I've recently started to blog over at MarketingProfs DailyFix. This is the first post and is cross-posted. I am going to try to avoid cross-posting in the future though.

Seth Godin recently talked about a SEO firm that promises to move negative reviews down the page on Google. Rather than spending money to fix the original problem, firms will spend money on making the criticism go away. (sarcasm) Smart (/sarcasm)

Earlier this year I asked, are you willing to take from your pr/marketing budget to fix a problem in another department? A great case in point was the recent Spirit Airlines dust-up. For a quick refresher:

- Alex has customer service issue with Spirit Airlines
- Alex blogs about it
- Other people comment, sharing their customer service horror stories
- Google ranks post #3 for "Spirit Airlines" search
- Even more people comment, sharing more horror stories
- Aviation Week blogs about it
- Traditional media picks up the story
- Rinse & repeat

If you read through the blogs posts, Alex's issue revolves around the customer support line. From his experience it just doesn't work. Many of the people who commented on his post shared the same view.

When I was interviewed by the media for the story about Spirit Airlines I was asked, "What would be your counsel? How can they make peace with the bloggers?" My response:

Well there is what I would tell them they should do, and then there is what they will do, which are two entirely different things.

What they should do.....It seems that the majority of their issues are related to their customer support line, they should fix that problem first. Fix the customer support lines and then go back to the bloggers and say, 'We're sorry for the issues you encountered. It seems that we had some problems with our customer support lines and we heard that from you and the other commenters. We've fixed those issues by increasing our staff at our major call centers. We'd love to have you fly with us again and if you ever need to call our customer service line again the level of service will be much better.'

Of course they won't do that. Each time something like this comes up again their communications depart will apologize. But we all know that it's a hollow apology since they really don't plan on fixing the problem.

I know budgets are really tight at a low-cost airlines, but at what point does the time and effort spent dealing with PR issues related to this (not to mention the lost sales) outweigh the cost to fix it?

I often hear old-school PR practitioners complaining that all this 'blog stuff' is negative. It depends on where you're sitting of course. Social media is great for shining a light on the broken parts of your business. You can take the exposure of faults as a negative, or as an opportunity to fix things and make your products/services better. Which will you do?

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In the previous post I talked about how corporations that are creating social media programs inherently need to rely upon the individuals involved with those initiatives. But what about the individuals? Quoting from the previous post:

On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they're not an individual, they're the company's blogger. I've seen it happen at conferences, "Oh hey, John....you're X's blogger?" They're always introduced as John, X's Blogger, never just John. It's like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn't be anybody.

What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own?

It's a double-edged sword. The major brand is what has put them in a position to possibly move on to other opportunities, but that brand can also obscure them.

Sometimes you also get lost in the crowd at large corporations. Would you want to hire the PR person that 'oversaw' the blog or the person that actually wrote the blog? Executives taking too much credit for their staff's work is nothing new.

What do you do if you're the company blogger and want to establish your own identity? In smaller circles this is easy since the majority of the people you interact with via the blog will hopefully know you. It's a natural effect of the blog and the interaction between individuals. In many cases that might be all you need. If you're looking to move on, often it's the folks in the small circle that are your best resources.

Recently Jeremiah talked about his career blog, or a blog that moved with him from job to job. It's part personal, it's part professional. Striking the balance is the challenge though.

In my case, I'm fortunate because my name and brand, Hyku, are somewhat synonymous. But then again I work for myself :-)

A number of 'corporate blogging' friends I know also have personal blogs. Some are open about this, as in it's easy to find them and the connection. A few others like to keep thing separate and on the DL. It's only their friends that know the address. However, we all know that keeping something hidden in plain sight doesn't always work.

One little issue is the simple Google search of their name. Many times the corporate blog will be the first result. The only way to gain control of that is to get out there and start blogging/linking, etc. Taking on too much of a personal presence could cause tension at work though.

Facebook might be the solution. A number of corporate bloggers I know are my friends on Facebook, it's a great way to network.

Getting back to the question, what should/can a corporate blogger do to establish their identity?

First off, own your name, create a basic site/blog that is your personal brand. What you do there is open for debate, but it's important that friends know how to locate/interact with you outside the corporation you work for.

What else should one do? Comments?

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One of the elements crucial to corporate social media initiatives are the individuals who blog for organizations. Often these individuals become somewhat official spokespersons for the organization, but that's what they're supposed to be correct? It's the humanization thing. What are the downsides though?

Recently I was on a teleconference panel with a few organizations. One of the panelists talked about all the major social media initiatives that were handled by a member of their staff, let's call them John. John had become their spokesperson. Previously they never had one. The relationships that John built within communities online (and offline) were invaluable to the organization. During the Q&A, the questions mostly focussed on technology issues and we ran out of time before I could ask, "What happens when John leaves?" From the earlier discussion it would seem that if they left their entire community outreach efforts would vanish and so would a portion of sales.

Another issue related to business blogging is ego and internal politics. In some cases a junior staffer suddenly becomes an invaluable asset, sometimes that goes to your head. However, most of the corporate bloggers I know firmly have their egos in check, but it could be an issue. When Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft one of the questions that often came up was what do others in the company think of his profile? Here was a person that recently joined the company and suddenly is mentioned in the same breath as Gates and Ballmer. There were probably quite a few folks that said to themselves, who is this guy? I've been here a decade....etc.

Then of course Robert left Redmond and some folks foolishly asked, "What will Microsoft do?" I think Microsoft is doing just fine. Along the same lines, does anybody remember Cooper/Katz? (if you do, you somewhat date yourself in the PR blogging world.)

In Scoble's case, PodTech knew one of the things they were getting with Robert was his celebrity/followers. There is attention/publicity that comes with that, and to some degree that can be of value. You could compare this to pro sports before free agency. Often the star player would remain with one team for their entire careers, today that's a rarity. In the gadget blogging world the editors/writers seem to change teams quite a bit.

It will be interesting to see how situations like this play out in the coming years. Could you imagine a Ford press release: "Ford hires former GM Chairman Bob Lutz to launch new F-150 Fanatics blog!"

But let's go back to my initial example, if/when that person at a small operation leaves there would be huge consequences. That person is a communication channel and that suddenly disappears. It is possible to move on, but since much of the community is built upon relationships with an individual, you can't easily swap people out. That's been standard operating procedure for companies though. If it's a faceless corporation, then you can swap out the 'faces' as much as you want :-)

On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they're not an individual, they're the company's blogger. I've seen it happen at conferences, "Oh hey, John....you're X's blogger?" They're always introduced as John, X's Blogger, never just John. It's like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn't be anybody.

What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own? Part two coming soon.

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This is a neat milestone. Marcomblog is a collaborative blog written by 'industry' folks for students at Auburn University. Yesterday one of the former students has joined the contributor list. Auburn professor Robert French introduces a post from Mary Metcalf, a recent Auburn grad who now works for Edelman in Chicago:

The first post in Marcomblog happened on Saturday, November 13, 2004. We’ll celebrate our third anniversary in just a few months. That’s a long time ago. Many students have passed through my classes and participated in our social media activities. So, I had this funny idea. Hundreds of those students have graduated and gone on to careers in public relations and marketing communications. Why not hear from one of them? I asked Mary Kneeland (MK) if she would write a post reflecting on the transition from student to practitioner. Here it is.

Yes it's been a bit too long since I posted something to Marcomblog, need to get back in that habit.

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We've heard this story before....blogger has bad experience with company, blogs about it, then Google works its magic. In this case it's Alex Rudloff who had a problem with Spirit Airlines.

Alex's post is now #2 on Google for 'Spirit Airlines'. It's even ranked higher than Wikipedia. That has attracted a number of comments and e-mail from folks with the same experiences with Spirit. It's sort of a mini Dell-Hell.

The latest twist in the story involves Spirit CEO, Ben Baldanza who had a slight e-mail snafu. Fun stuff.

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My blogging-partner-in-crime Chris Gent has a wrap-up post for our conference blogging at the 2007 Florida Public Relations Association Annual Conference. We posted a total of 84 entries, 7 podcasts and almost 700 photos.

Like many conference blogging experiences, it was fun, but exhausting. We had a team of bloggers and we tried to closely follow the conference blogging guidelines I set out last year.

Chris and I handled most of the photography. You can find the FPRA Flickr stream here.

One of the highlights for me was Cynthia Gordon's session on how Universal has been using digital and social media. Many of her examples revolved around the recent announcement that Universal Studios Theme Park would be home to Harry Potter.

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Savannah's Creative Coast Initiative have relaunched their blog. The Savannah area is an amazing place. I've been able to make a number of trips to the area for work and pleasure in the past few years. If I was single and wasn't tied to Florida I would seriously consider Savannah as a place to live.

Here is a bit about the Creative Coast Initiative:

The Creative Coast Initiative (TCCi) is a non-profit organization that attracts, nurtures, and promotes brain-based business in Savannah. Our job is to make it easy for you to get in, get setup, get connected and be successful in this cool coastal city. We’re all about relationships. We’re a public/private partnership created by city, county and technology leaders in 2003. We are chartered by the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA), the City of Savannah, the Chatham County Commission and closely allied with a whole host of other organizations.

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Related to my previous post on the Boeing 787 rollout....when I need 787 news I turn to Flightblogger. It's one of the best resources for news on the new Boeing plane.

Earlier this week Jon Ostrower posted that he had been granted media credentials to the rollout by Boeing. One problem though, getting there, as in cost. He needed to raise $900 in less than a day. Jon posted a donation link and asked his readers to help out.

As it turns out the readers of his blog did it. They raised the funds. As Jon writes:

I am sitting here with my jaw on the floor.

I owe you all a debt of gratitude. From those who gave a dollar or some who cleverly gave $7.87 and to those who gave larger contributions, I am eternally grateful for your support. I am awed at your generosity and your words of encouragement.

I have raised the money to be present with Boeing this weekend in Seattle to cover the roll out of the Boeing 787.

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On June 11th, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) launched the official PlayStation.Blog. I'm proud to say we had a little bit of a hand in the development of this new corporate blog.

The blog is based upon the WordPress platform and features a number of modifications. I handled the design and some of the project management while the team (Nick, Pete, Sean and Mike) from cnp_studio handled CSS, WordPress customization and other tweaks.

Response to the blog was been somewhat amazing with over 500 comments coming in the first 24 hours. Technorati rank went from non-existent to 8,364 in less than two weeks. Not bad.

As with any project of this nature, it's only the beginning. Look for more to come.

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I'm still working on part two of my CVB post, but for now here is a tidbit I've been sharing with CVBs and other travel and tourism folks. In fact I talked about it on Monday to a group of airport communicators. Benet Wilson from Aviation Week also blogged about it.

Every day is a FAM Tour

For some background, many convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs), attractions, airports, etc. rely upon familiarization tours or FAM tours to promote their locations. FAM tours are designed for journalists. CVBs bring in travel journalists/writers and then wine and dine them while showing off the best that their location has to offer. Their hope of course is that the journalists will then write positive stories about their destinations.

There is one problem with that.

Today every visitor can be a journalist in some way. People are constantly blogging about their travel experiences. The good and the bad. Those posts might only be read by a few friends and relatives at first, but eventually they begin to appear in the all-important Google results. That's when the fun begins. Benet talks about a recent example:

In the past, complaints like this were either never seen, or if they were, they were tossed aside, with the thought that one person's opinion didn't make much of a difference. But TravelGolf.com specifically targets this community, and I suspect it's a large one.

Golf is an important tourism tool for the Miami region. And if Tim McDonald says MIA is "hell," some of his readers may read that and decide to move their golf outing to somewhere like Tucson, which also happens to have an airport that's easier to navigate.

The question then is: Why don't you treat every visitor like you treat a journalist on a FAM tour?

The long-term impact of a positive/negative blog post is probably greater than a one-time column in a local paper talking about a 'Weekend Trip to X'.

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Last week I was conducting a training session for a group of journalists from across the U.S. During the course of the session we talked about how blogs allow journalists to create their own brand and build loyalty among their readership.

One of the blogs we looked at as an example was Pop Candy by Whitney Matheson from USAToday. Whitney's blog is a great mixture of her personality and reporting.

I threw the question out there to the audience, "Do you think that Whitney needs USAToday anymore?" Most of the journalists in the audience didn't think so.

What do you think?

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Via John Moore, I learn that Andy Sernovitz, former CEO of WOMMA, now has a blog: Damn, I Wish I'd Though of That!

Subscribed.

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Shel Holtz furthers the discussion on ghost-blogging, or the act of writing blog posts for somebody else. I agree with Shel that for the most part it's not a good idea.

My problem is simple: Blogs aren’t just another business communication channel. In fact, blogs were created and popularized by people who were fed up with traditional business communication channels. They had had enough of fabricated quotes in press releases and speeches read by executives but written by professional speech writers. These people wanted authentic conversations with real human beings.

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"This is a cool way to do the news"

That's what Billy Townsend, a reporter with the Tampa Tribune told me a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon. We were in the middle of piecing together an interesting local story that would lead to bigger things. The news story would eventually unfold on the newspaper's web site and a number of local blogs. It was also an interesting exercise in how news is transforming, specifically the relationship between newspapers and local bloggers.

Here's the backstory.

CSX, a major rail/transport company is considering building a intermodal facility in Winter Haven, Florida. CSX and the City of Winter Haven are promoting the project as an economic boom for the area that will create jobs and increased tax revenue. With any development of this nature there are concerns over: growth, traffic, environment, etc. For the record, I believe the project will be a benefit to the area, but the proper steps need to be taken.

From CSX's standpoint the project/permitting process was moving along nicely. The surrounding communities in Polk County paid little attention to the project, it was perceived as being a 'Winter Haven' thing. At first, the local newspapers did very little reporting, mostly discussing some of the economic benefits.

I run a hyperlocal blog in our community called Empirical Polk. The first post about the CSX project appeared on EP on February 1, 2006. For the most part, with EP I can only comment on issues or share insights I've found from other news sources. In the case of CSX project, my blog along with other local blogs have all contributed to the ongoing story.

The first newspaper to do any sort of digging into the story was not really a local paper. The Tampa Tribune does not distribute their paper in the area and just recently hired Billy Townsend to cover the region. While Billy does file stories about Polk County for the print edition, his primary publishing tool is the Polk County News Blog. Billy is a reporter that has truly embraced blogging. He posts often, links to the competition and interacts with bloggers in the community.

On his blog, Billy began to look into the CSX numbers and how the development would impact the rest of the county. One of the issues was the increase in rail traffic. In Florida, CSX operates two main freight lines, a North/South and East/West. As part of the Central Florida commuter rail deal CSX will be shifting much of their traffic off of the E/W line to the N/S line. This can also be combined with a general increase in freight traffic related to the intermodal. How much of an increase is still up for debate. Freight traffic on the N/S line will mostly likely double, and might even triple.

On March 28th Billy blogged about Polk County's central location within the CSX freight system. The N/S and E/W lines cross in Polk County. The question was where? At first CSX didn't even know where. For any geek/blogger, of course Google Maps can help with a question like that. The problem was that we were looking for a natural crossing, as in X marks the spot.

On a Friday afternoon, I think I had figured it out. The lines didn't cross in a perfect X, instead they joined and ran along the same corridor for a few miles. In other words, all the N/S traffic would run on the E/W line for a short stretch. The problem though, was that the short, joint stretch runs through downtown Lakeland, FL. Like many towns in the south, the main rail line bisects the downtown Lakeland region. This causes traffic and noises issues downtown. With this discovery, it seems that those problems will double or triple as a result of the increased freight traffic from the Winter Haven intermodal facility.

Billy and I exchanged e-mails discussing my find and we eventually met up at a local coffee shop in Lakeland to go over things. The evolving story was spelled out on Empirical Polk and the Polk County News Blog. Being the reporter that he is, Billy followed-up with CSX to confirm the crossing and then he began talking to Lakeland civic leaders. While they had heard about the CSX project, the increase in rail traffic in downtown Lakeland was news to them.

Suddenly, the 'Winter Haven' project was having a major impact on Lakeland. Lakeland community/business leaders requested a meeting with CSX and the local media finally woke up. Lakeland-specific blogger Chuck Welch began following the story at LakelandLocal.com and has even created a content archive of all things CSX.

To this point the CSX project had avoided a DRI or Development of Regional Impact classification. A DRI brings with it a process to study and approve any development. That process takes time and money. With the increased media attention, the county and surrounding cities began requesting DRI status for the project.

What will happen next remains to be seen.

It was during our coffee break on that Friday afternoon that Billy said, "This is a cool way to do the news." I imagine it was like any group of reporters working on a story, except that I wasn't on the paid staff of the paper.

I have said before that what I do on my hyperlocal blog is in some sense lazy journalism. I don't have the resources to investigate or the contacts to get the interviews I want, but Billy (and the traditional media) does. I can pose a question on my blog and a reporter can follow-up on it. One local news-pro once joked that Empirical Polk was a great tip-sheet for their newspaper staff. The funny thing is that he was only joking halfway.

What can be learned from this?

Obviously we know that the business and reporting of news is changing, and fast. The tracking and reaction to news is just as fast, if not faster. From a PR standpoint the traditionalists might not like this, but there is a some benefit. All of this is happening out in the open. As more reporters blog (and blog more frequently), and hyperlocal blogs become more prevalent, the stories are now out in the open for all to see.

Reporters and bloggers are asking questions first on their blogs and the writing the stories later. Savvy PR practitioners can answer those questions if they're following along. Imagine knowing the question before the reporter calls, of better yet calling them first. Can't get to the reporter? Contact the local blogger, or leave a blog comment. The good local reporters are reading the local blogs.

The media and blog coverage of the CSX project will only increase and leave a detailed digital-paper trail for anybody to read.

So what is a PR person to do? Later this week in Part 2 I'll talk about what CSX and the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce have been doing with blogs.

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Kevin Dugan posted some thoughts about the unusual design of the Urban Outfitters blog and asked David Armano and I what we thought. What's unusual about it? It features a horizontal scroll.

Well I have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for horizontal scrolls. After all, my photography blog uses a horizontal scroll. That said though, you need to consider the audience, the type of content and how you want people to interact with the content.

One of the issues with a horizontal scroll is that you want to keep the content height short, so you don't introduce a vertical scroll as well. Now you're limiting the content you can display based upon a design limitation. The beauty of a vertical scrolling blog is that each post can have a different height. Sometimes you might post a single sentence, other times a long article.

With a horizontal scroll, every post needs to fit in an imaginary box. With my photography blog that's not an issue since all I show are photos with a brief caption. With Urban Outfitters it's similar. They have a photo and then some brief text, but they can't expand upon this.

However, most blog and web site readers are used to a vertical scroll format. While a horizontal is a unique design twist, will it annoy people in the long term? I don't know of any sites that I visit frequently that use this format. My thoughts are that the initial 'hey look at that' functionality of the Urban Outfitters blog will give way to usability issues.

But you might say, why diss that format if you use it? Well I do use it, but my photo blog is not meant to be something you look at often and it isn't a major content piece. It's more of a gallery format. I would venture to say that Urban Outfitters intent is to constantly engage the readers with new content.

Of course if the majority of your blog readers are RSS subscribers, then your design is a moot point :-)

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We launched a new site/blog today for SeaWorld San Antonio and the Journey to Atlantis thrill ride. The site is half traditional content / half-blog built on WordPress and incorporates a number of social media elements. The videos are from Veoh and YouTube while the photos are from Flickr.

We're encouraging folks to 'Share their Stuff' and upload photos and videos from their ride experiences once the ride launches on May 12, 2007. Fan content will be highlighted on the blog in the coming weeks.

Kami Huyse is the lead on the project and has been working with the SeaWorld San Antonio gang on strategy and content. Kami is also building a blogger relations program to reach out to the numerous coaster/thrill ride blogs.

Kami contacted me a few weeks ago to help build the site. Total development time from start to finish was a little over two weeks.

The design was done by Jeremy Lazanowski from LazCreative and the gang from cnp_studio (Pete, Nick & Mike) assisted with some of the WordPress modifications.

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Being behind on feed reading I see Todd Defren's Twitter about Mike Manuel's blog birthday for Media Guerrilla. Mike has been blogging for three years. Congrats.

I start to think about a new business developing blog birthday cards, cakes and other 'celebratory/party' items for your favorite blogger. It turns out that Apple has a great birthday iCard to fit the bill. Here is the one I sent to Mike. The headline says, "Seriously, Go Outside."

Being in the birthday mood, I think, when is the blog birthday for Hyku, I really don't know? I do a quick look and it turns out to be today, that's kinda freaky. Yep, the first post went up on May 3, 2003. To be fair though the posting was rather sporadic at first and I did take some long breaks in there.

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Coming out of New Comm Forum there was a roaring debate over live-blogging. Since I do quite a bit of live-blogging for conferences, I figured I'd put in my two-cents (Another great live-blogger is Joe Thornley). For the background you can read the following posts:

- Steve Crescenzo's original post
- Shel Holtz responds to Steve
- Shel Israel responds to the response

From my perspective, Steve didn't like what Shel Israel wrote so he questions the validity of live-blogging. Is this one of those shoot the messenger not the message situations, or perhaps in Steve's case shoot the message, the messenger and the medium?

One way to get called out on the blogosphere is to make a broad generalization like 'live-blogging is useless' or 'all women who blog are mommy-bloggers'. Do you agree with either of those statements? Didn't think so.

Much of the debate seems to hinge on the word live-blogging, or as I define it, writing real-time notes of an event and posting them during the event. It's an interesting phenomena. Last year at Mplanet, Ann Handley commented on this real-time process:

Josh -- I think I'm having a meta experience. I'm in the back of the room while you are live-blogging this...seeing these guys on the stage at the same time I'm seeing the photo here. Cool...and only a little scary....

If you're questioning why somebody is doing something than the Cluetrain hasn't taught you anything. Bloggers and individuals do things for a number of reasons. Questioning their reasoning or saying it's not worth their time is very short-sighted and selfish. It's my time and energy, I'll do with it what I want thank you.

I recently spent quite a bit of time live-blogging the WOMBAT event and Forrester's Marketing Forum, was that useless and a waste of time or was the quality of the coverage lacking because I live-blogged it? I don't think so.

There are new wrinkles to the discussion. Jeremiah talks about people using his concepts/content in sessions and not crediting him. Chip Griffin also talks about live-blogging and about video blogging and conferences.

One of the benefits I see about conference blogging is that it's forcing organizers to get good speakers. If you have lousy speakers or people that use the time to pitch their own products/services the word gets out rather quickly and kills the vibe about your conference. The long term relevance of blog content via Google is becoming key to conferences. Google the name of a conference, the first result should be the official conference web site. More and more though the other results are blog posts from attendees.

I choose to attend conferences not based upon marketing materials I receive but the comments and feedback I get from friends that have attended the conference or blog posts from attendees. In other words, conference blogging is becoming an important part of the 'marketing' of conferences.

There are now organizations like WOMMA, FPRA and PRSA that actively seek out and support conference bloggers. This is a smart move since they have a hand in the blog coverage of their events. This is where thing can sometimes get sticky though.

I am often asked and compensated to live-blog a conference. This usually includes free conference registration and sometimes partial (or full) travel costs and in some rare cases I am paid for the service. In this role I disclose what I have been given. I am also there to document the sessions and not necessarily critique them. If you read through my live-blogs of events you will see they are more of a play-by-play than an analysis.

Yes there have been cases where I am sitting in a session saying to myself, "Boy this person is useless, or this is a pure sales-pitch." While I might not come out and say this directly, I usually find myself writing less about that session than others. On the flip side if I am at a conference on my own dime I might call out a speaker, but I usually don't.

Looping back to the recent New Comm Forum which started this whole debate, I can say that there were a few sessions I would probably call out, but I didn't blog much from NewComm....why? Sometimes it's good to step away from the laptop and enjoy the sessions rather than covering them. Plus I'm having more fun with photography at conferences anyway :-)

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Over at Marketing Profs, Lewis Green talks about the benefits of chamber memberships for business development. I agree with many of the points Lewis puts forth, with the caveat that your business fits a local model to some degree.

While I am a member of my local chamber, I know that I won't be getting many clients from my local market. It's just the nature of my current business. My major clients are based in: Florida, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Silicon Valley. I joined my chamber to support the local business environment and community.

However, many years ago (1996-2002) when I owned a locally-focussed web design firm, the local chambers were indeed a huge part of my marketing mix.

So how does this relate to social media? When I talk to pr/marcom folks I often use the analogy of a chamber with social media. Here are a few highlights:

- Starting a blog, like joining a chamber is the first step, but it's only an entry. You need to put something in to your blog/membership to get something out. Bob Gernert of the Winter Haven Chamber says membership is like a health club. Joining is easy, but you need to actually go and exercise to see any benefit.

- Build relationships first before pitching/advertising. Imagine if you joined a chamber, went to the first social function and grabbed the microphone and shouted, "Hey my name is Stan and I sell car insurance, everybody needs to talk to me now!" I think the majority of the membership would look at you and say, "Who is that jerk?" That initial faux-pas will be hard to overcome, everybody will always remember you as being that jerk who sells insurance.

- At chamber social events introduce yourself to other folks, make the purpose of the conversation to learn about others, not to pitch your product. At some point in the conversation the other person will say, "What do you do?" Use that opportunity to say a little about yourself. If they're interested in your product/service they'll ask a bit more. Now you'll know who they are, what they do and how your product/service could benefit them.

- Learning about who you are talking to will avoid a number of embarrassing situations. Back when I had my web firm I can remember a few instances when a new over-zealous web firm would appear in the local market. At a chamber event one of their salespeople would come up and start talking to me, they wouldn't ask what I did, they just wanted to tell me about what they did and how my business could benefit from a new web site. I would let them talk for a few minutes before mentioning that I actually had a web site and was pretty sure it was built by somebody that knew what they were doing.

- It's conversation and relationships not advertising. When you think back to a recent event you attended what do you remember, the sponsor of the event or the conversations you had? For me it's mostly the conversations. At too many 'sponsored' events there is usually that awkward moment when the sponsor gets up on stage and gives a hurried, in-effective pitch to people who just had their conversation/lunch/dinner interrupted. That's not really the impression you want to leave with people.

- It's a long-term play. Sure there will be times you'll walk away from a chamber event with a solid lead, but it's the long-term relationships that pay off. I can't tell you how many times I would meet somebody and they would say, "Yeah we just had our web site built by X." No problem, in 2-3 years they'll need an update and guess who they always turned to? :-)

In the end, when I look at my years of chamber memberships I don't think about the business value, but more the relationships built and friends I have gained.

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Want to learn about how to use blogs for buzz? Chances are Anil Dash from SixApart and David Jacobs from Apperceptive can help.

Anil kicked things off with a question, "What can you do with a book?" For the most part people think of books as things you can consume/read. You never think about writing a book, at first. Today with the web there is an entire generation of kids growing up that know they can write, they can take part in the process.

Persistence and awareness are two major things associated with blogs.

Content does not need to be thrown away, persistence can be important, and is increasingly so. Google can find you. Almost half the visits to many blogs are from content that is over a month old. Now think about your e-mail newsletters, can I find the content from last month's e-mail newsletter?

Does the home page matter? So many people are finding content from search results, links from friends.

By putting our names and dates on content, we are creating a social contract. There is a promise of "I will stay in touch." But a promise is more than words, it takes work. It's about relationships, with friends, customers, etc.

It's about making the tools on the web as meaningful as other mediums. It doesn't have to be disposable.

Awareness is another key issue. So much of the e-mail traffic that Anil receives is not relevant at the time he receives it.

The devices you want to use are the one that give you control. Think Tivo or the iPod. Each of these devices gives you control over the experience. RSS is similar, it gives you control. RSS delivers awareness without interruption.

Awareness keeps the lines of communication open without the rudeness. Blogs are about maintaining a relationship with the people you care about. Blogs allow you to scale a conversation beyond the traditional one-on-one you have in person.

Next up, David Jacobs reviewed some examples of how blogs are used in the real world. The first example was Serious Eats. The conversation about food now takes place online. The other thing is the site opens up the conversation to the community. There are experts, but isn't everybody and expert in something? The site features profiles. Users can tell a bit about themselves, web sites, their favorite foods, etc.

How is this different than a forum where the person with the most free time wins? There is control from a post/editorial standpoint.

The user profiles builds a history of the users contribution to the site. It's their reputation. You respect those that contribute to the site. If you have a community like this for your customers it lets you learn who the real influencers are.

Once you begin to host the conversation, it's like having a dinner party at your house. You learn a lot in a civil environment.

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I think I've said this before :-) When you launch a corporate blog make sure you own your domain and the long-term control of your content.

Shel points out that Kryptonite is blogging. Great, but they're using Blogger and a URL they don't control: http://unbreakable-bonds.blogspot.com/

Spend a little bit of time and money to use/configure a service that allows you to have your own domain name. How about blog.kryptonitelocks.com? Or if you want to stick with the 'unbreakable' theme the domain unbreakablebonds.com is available (as of this post).

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The topic of sending bad pitches to bloggers is not new. There is a blog about it and even and handy-dandy button for it. However, Steven Noble brings up something I never thought of. If you're 'working' the blogs then you are probably monitoring and pitching them. This might cause an interesting situation:

That's right. You're own bad pitch will appear in the social media monitoring report that you will have to prepare for and deliver to your client. And then you have to explain it. Ouch.

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If you need to be reminded, April Fools Day is this Sunday. Last year I created the short-lived merger of Steve Rubel and Jeremy Pepper via PepperRubel PR. The pressure was on for this year though...what could I do as a follow-up?

Well I have had a number of ideas and was beaten to the punch on another....but ultimately I don't have the time to get something done by Sunday. With that said, here are some of the ideas I've been mulling over. Most of them are based upon available domains.

TNN: Twitter News Network (twitternewsnetwork.com)
Create a news site that gets all its news from Twitter. I don't mean real news though....the standard banal stuff that Twitter is famous for. We would also create a video news show with a real anchor reading Twitter headlines, i.e. "We're receiving breaking news out of San Francisco......Chris Messina is back from 45 minutes at the gym......Shocking news out of New York, Steve Rubel is considering not blogging for a day....emergency crews are responding now." The crawl at the bottom of the news show would be a continuous Twitter feed.

Caveman PR (cavemanpr.com)
Mashing up the Geico Cavemen and Un-Frozen Caveman Lawyer from SNL, we would create a PR firm by cavemen, for cavemen. If Phil Hartman were still alive I could see him saying, "You're attempts at controlling the message frighten me. Then these strange blogs and RSS....how do these messages arrive on my computer? Do tiny demons carry them?"

NoLifePR (nolifepr.com)
Forget Second Life and their few million residents, how about the after-life. Name a bigger target audience than the dead? They are also a somewhat captive audience :-) Better yet, every major city in the U.S. has a Bacon's for the dead, they're called obituaries. Seeing the opportunity, we'll create a PR/marketing firm for reaching that huge audience. I see product placements at graves as a huge opportunity.

PayPerMule (paypermule.com)
Building upon the controversy around PayPerPost, I am going to create PayPerMule. Need somebody to transport your drugs across the country or the world? Pay one of our mules as little as $5 and they'll transport it for you. Disclosure is not required and is not suggested.

PayPerPoop (payperpoop.com)
Extending the PPP theme once again. Medical research firms want to know what you're eating and what it's doing to your body, with PayPerPoop you get paid to do what you do every day...poop!

Yesterday afternoon in Orlando Alex Rudloff, Ryan Price and I brainstormed a few other ideas around the PayPer-X format. PayPerDate (aka prostitution), PayPerTweet (paying folks to Twitter), PayPerFriend (I think that exists already). You get the point.

Oh well, I think I have staked my claim to a few ideas. If you want to take any of these and run with them, feel free.

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The latest issue of Wired has a cover story by Clive Thompson about the See-Through CEO, or how blogs are transforming how CEOs and businesses work. The one pull-quote that speaks volumes is this one:

Google is not a search engine. It's a reputation management system. By enhancing transparency, companies can manage their images as never before.

While a newspaper story or crisis might make a slight blip on the radar, it's the long-term search results that will always stay.

Recently a friend had some bad news written about his company in the newspaper. I suggested that they blog about the situation, provide their version of the story. Why? Because a few months or years from now somebody will say, "Hey you remember when X did Y back in Z?"

A quick Google search will help refresh everyone's memory. What will turn up? The original newspaper article? With many newspapers putting content behind pay walls it will probably be a blog talking about the story. If the company blogs the story, what will most likely show up first a few months/years from now will be their post.

In many ways you're writing your own history. Yes this can be abused, but the blogosphere has a great system of checks and balances. They're called comments and links. If you try to BS or 'cover' a story you'll be outed. Stick with the truth.

In the end, who is telling your story? Is it the media or a blogger. Why not tell it yourself?

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Lee Hopkins asks if it's too lake to join the conversation. Never, but it also depends on your objectives. If you are just wanting to write a personal blog for friends and family it's never too late. If you're looking to use a blog for marketing purposes in a saturated market, it might be a long road ahead. I think this is what Lee is referring to.

When people say, "I'm too late" or "How can I build an audience..." I always point to Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah's been blogging a short time (relatively speaking) and has made quite a name for himself.

It seems like every week there is a new blogger that I add to my RSS list. Recently I've been getting some great nuggets from Dan Blank. It's not only the content a blogger creates, it's what they find. In the case of Dan, he recently pointed to a list of journalistic uses for blogs. Good stuff.

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