In looking back at my archives I found this post from 2007, sadly it still applies today:

Corporate Press Release/Statement Translation Tool

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Ah yes, April Fools. The day that everybody tries to do something humorous online. The two key words in that sentence are 'everybody' and 'tries'.

It's gotten to be a bit of an overload though. With everybody doing something how can you stand out? It's like releasing some insignificant tech news during CES...you'll get lost in the shuffle.

Granted, some brands really do some creative things, but it's getting harder and harder to get noticed. Then there is the general burnout and apathy about the entire day. We could get geeky and try to determine the ROI of a good stunt to determine if they're worth it.....nah.

If you really wanted to break the mold, why not do a prank on another day? The Funded tried this and it backfired though. I still think it might be a good strategy, if you weren't a public company and didn't run the risk of having your stock tank from people that didn't realize it was a joke.

Doug Haslam had a good thought. What happens when we stumble upon this 'old news' a few years from now.

For now I'll pass on any April Fools projects, too much time for too little of a return. However this one was fun to do back in 2006.

Of course not all jokes are online, the photo above was my desk this morning....and well that was kinda funny.

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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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Jackie Huba finally wrote about something that's been bothering me for the past few weeks. Somehow, my name/e-mail ended up on a list at Vocus, so now 90% of all the unsolicited e-mail pitches I get are from Vocus clients. How do I know this? Well at the bottom of these e-mails is the standard 'unsubscribe' link. That link takes me back to a site run by Vocus.

Jakie took the time to contact Vocus and asked them some questions when they never responded via e-mail.

Four times in four months I used the contact info on the Vocus website (info@vocus.com) to ask for full removal. No reply to any email. Finally, I called Vocus' main number and asked to speak with someone. Julie returned my call 30 minutes later and promised to remove my name from their system. It seemed like a good time to ask Julie about Vocus' practices:

How do bloggers get added to the database? Vocus monitors top blogs in certain categories then adds their contact information to the database. Without permission, I asked? Yes, she said. Most bloggers are OK with that, she said. How does she know if they don't ask first?

Why couldn't I opt out entirely? We're working on that, she said, and promised to investigate why no one responded to my four emails.
Julie also said a client could have copied my email address from the system and might continue to send me emails. Lovely.

What's sad is that Vocus is a sponsor of NewComm Forum. Hopefully a number of attendees will stop by their booth and ask them to stop this practice. While you're at it, Vocus, please remove me from your list :-)

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One of the questions I am now often asked is, "So how are you liking agency life?" So far, I love it. Sure, I enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of being on my own, but there was one big drawback, I can't scale. Or perhaps to use the trendy term, limited personal bandwidth. You have to make a decision, do I want to continue working on small-to-medium sized projects, or go bigger?

I'm fortunate that at Voce I get to work with companies like Sony, Yahoo, eBay and another big name soon to be announced. The simple fact of the matter is a single, sole-practioner can't help a major organization run a large social media program on a day-to-day basis, we're talking 20-30 hours a week minumum. I guess you could, but it would be your only client, or would limit what else you can do on your own.

You need to have a team. We're fortunate to have a number of smart people on staff that can all work together.

A colleague that operates on their own recently asked me about a growth plan for their services. One of their goals was to work with enterprise firms on internal collaboration. I said I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but I just didn't see a firm with 10,000+ employees turning to a 1-person shop for a project of that nature.

There is plenty of room/business for internal education though. I spent plenty of time under the 'Hyku' banner conducting workshops for firms, but those engagements are often limited in time/scope.

I wanted more.

Yes it was a tough decision, but I'm glad I made it.

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Some companies are loved, others are hated. That general perception carries over to media coverage and public discussions of their mistakes. At the recent PRSA International Conference panel on ethics in Philly my colleague Rick Murray pointed out this double-standard when it comes to Wal-Mart and Target. People generally hate Wal-Mart and love Target.

Granted, Wal-Mart has made a few social media mistakes and has been raked over the coals for it, but how about Target?

Recently Kaye Sweetser posted about a situation with Target's Rounders program and one of her students. You can read the entire post to get all the details.

In short, Target instructed their Rounders to keep their relationship with Target a secret. When one of her students questioned this on Target's Facebook wall the thread was removed.

Was there a mass outcry over this? Not really. A front page article on the New York Times? Nope. Why? A double standard? What do you think?

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This post has been simmering for a while, but I just can't take it anymore. I was driven over the edge by a few things:

1. Todd's post of the state of 'practices' by some firms.
2. David's follow-up to that
3. Recent conference statements/events

Rant start//

Many times recently I've been sitting in conferences listening to 'experts' talk about various subjects. I've always said my definition of expert, especially when it comes to social media, is loosely defined as 'a few years ahead of you on the learning curve'. It's funny though that these experts were asking 'what is social media?' just a short time ago.

I sit in these conference session and I try not to be a Dave Winer and call out all the bullshit and look like an ass, but it has to stop. Some of us have been using Twitter to make our snarky comments, but the rest of the audience just sits and soaks up this knowledge. They don't know any better.

The other day at Executing Social Media conference in Atlanta, Paull Young reports that a speaker advocated that corporations edit their Wikipedia entries and insert links. Nice.

At the same conference a speaker used most of their time to pitch their product and subscriptions to their newsletter. Classy.

I've joked about making up simple little 'Bullshit' signs that we can hold up as a silent protest. Perhaps the speakers would see these and change course.

What to do? Ask your next social media 'expert' for some recent client projects they've developed. They don't have any? They've just been 'consulting' Nice.

Yes, you can still provide clients with a baseline of education without having much of a project base to draw from, but until you've actually run a social media campaign/project you just don't know it all. I'm not saying I know it all, it's a relative scale. If I say something you think is BS in a speech, call me on it, question it. Let's talk about it.

In the end the level of 'expert' and 'conference speaker/keynote' needs to be examined.

Rant over//

So what do we do? Start to publicly name the folks spewing BS and blatantly pitching audiences under the veil of an 'expert speaking'?

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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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One of the things I'll be doing at the PRSA International Conference is looking at the various conversational monitoring services in the exhibit hall. There are a number of firms that all 'say' they can automate the monitoring of blogs (social media) and provide metrics, tonality, sentiment analysis, etc. It should be noted that a number of these services cost a pretty good amount of $$$.

What's interesting about the search is the I have long said (as have many of the colleagues in this industry that I know/trust/respect) that the free tools and a trained staffer can do the same thing. Plus there is that community context thing :-)

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From the South to the North. I'm now in Philadelphia for the PRSA International Conference till Tuesday. I'll be helping Kami and a few others with some conference blogging, but I'm mostly handling some photos (big surprise). I arrived late in the day, so I was able to catch the end of K.D. Paine's session and the Social Media panel with Rob, Peter, Lee and Nicco (below). My photoset will be here, the PRSA photo group is here.

Tonight is the blogger dinner. More to come. I plan to post a wrap-up from the UGA Connect conference soon.

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In my previous post I put forth an analogy to illustrate a point. I do that quite a bit in training sessions. I'm constantly comparing online/social media situations to things we see in everyday life. Analogies help those just learning about social media find a relationship to what they're used to. (Big Social Media Consultant Secret: Many of rules you use in personal interaction offline, apply online :-) pass that along.)

Conversational monitoring, blog monitoring, persistent keyword searches...whatever you call them are a standard item in any social media toolkit, but what do you do with the results? As in what is actionable? What is important and needs immediate response, and what can wait? None of the paid services offer this function (that I've seen). You need to be involved with the community to know the impact.

Here's another analogy:

Imagine you're at a coffee shop and you overhear somebody talking about a subject/client in a positive/negative way. What are your options?

A. If it's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years chances are you might know the person or the subject very well. You would know that person's standing in the community. Are they like E.F. Hutton? When they talk do others listen? Or are they the village idiot? In this case you could start up a conversation in a natural manner, or introduce yourself. Chances are the other person knows you, or at least has 'seen you around'.

Once you start that conversation the discussion is wide open. Maybe you state your case, perhaps you change their mind, or at least get them to see your side of the issue. The point is you know all the social intricacies of the situation. You know that talking to one person will take care of the issue, and that person will talk to you.

or...

B. You're on a trip far from home and the 'local' coffee shop is somewhere you've never been before. You're the 'stranger' sitting by themselves in the corner, the locals are asking, "Who's that?" How did you get here? Some search dropped you here.

When that person across the room talks, you have no idea who they are and what their standing in the community is. You have no idea what the impact of their statements are. How do you approach them and introduce yourself? We've been in situations like this before. Introductions like that can be awkward to say the least.

Talking to that person might actually make the situation worse. You just don't know.

Spend a week in the coffee shop though, and your situation changes.

If you've been doing your homework and have built a presence in a particular community, we can add an Option C:

C. It's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years. Somebody has a problem/comment. Rather than saying something to a group of folks, they come directly to you first. Perhaps it's a genuine issue, or it's a simple misperception. However, a few quick, private words between friends takes care of everything.

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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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Green is the new black, or at least the new way to get press. In my area, politicians are all jumping on the 'green' bandwagon. They're announcing 'green' summits and panels to study this new concept :-)

To take advantage of all the hype surrounding buzzwords I'm going to launch a new program, here's the pitch:

Buzzcorp is launching a one-of-a-kind green, Web 2.0-based campaign to feature consumer generated videos uploaded to their blog via YouTube and Facebook which will be judged via Twitter and Digg by MySpace users from around the globe using OLPCs provided to third world countries which are powered by ethanol and recycled carpet fibers. Supplemental judging will be completed by SMS via iPhone by Halo 3 players using SecondLife to organize an unconference about DRM in iTunes. Celebrity judges will be Britney Spears, OJ Simpson, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barry Bonds. The winner will receive a new Toyota Prius and be adopted by Angelina Jolie.

The natural evolution of this would be to look at Yahoo's top searches each day and then write a press release using all those words. Here are today's top searches:

Now, go write a pitch that uses all of them. I'm interested in seeing how you can connect Marcel Marceau, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the UAW.

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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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Recently Brian Oberkirch posted about the anonymous editing of corporate Wikipedia articles. There was some spirited discussion in the comments among some good friends. However, the major issue was anonymous edits. My general view is that if you're stupid enough to try something like that, then you're stupid enough not to cover your tracks...and will be caught.

But what about claimed edits? The Talk/Discussion channel is there for a reason, but what if there is no talk? Can a corporation start it?

There is of course a reason I am asking. I have a situation with a corporate client (who shall remain nameless for now). Their current entry has almost nothing on it. They want to edit it, but want to do it in the right way. But what is the right way?

Like I said before there is no discussion about this entry, so they can't really go to the 'community' and present their case.

Here is what I have proposed:

- I'll post something about the situation and see what some colleagues think (done)
- Post an item in the Discussion thread outlining who they are and the edits they propose
- Allow the discussion to take place for a set period of time, take in suggestions (if any)
- With community approval post their edit
- Welcome community edits of their entry

The sticking point is that third item...we don't expect their to be much discussion (might be wrong there). I want to be clear that during the entire process they'll be open about who they are and the edits they're making.

What are your thoughts?

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In my local area there was a certain PR person that would always e-mail me press releases for my hyperlocal site. You know, the standard mass e-mail to everybody with the release copy/pasted in the e-mail.

This person recently switched jobs. One problem.

The other day I received a release about a local bank but it had come from a medical firm. I thought...that's strange, I really don't see the connection between the two. Then I made the connection. This person was sending press releases for their new job while still working for the old one. Not really a good idea.

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Marijean has a good post-BlogHer item on blogger relations.

As BlogHer started I noted a marked increase in the number of PR folks in the audience. They were there no doubt to 'reach' this highly coveted 'segment'. However during many of the sessions the vibe was very clear, the majority of them resent PR/marketing folks and their intrusions. And they're just that, intrusions. Marijean talks about the relationship aspect necessary for anything to work.

I point back to my earlier post about my rule of blogger relations: Send Something of Interest to Somebody You Know. I also touched on this topic a bit in my 'jaded view' post.

The other thing is that a blogger relationship is based on more than a link or a basic piece of information. What I mean by this is sending a blogger a link to 'check out' or a press release is one of the worst things you can do. When I engage in blogger relations I rarely send anything, I ask. If the blogger has written about a subject or expressed interest in the topic I ask if there is anything else I can assist them with.

There is a big difference between saying, "Here is our latest press release." and "How can I help you?"

A number of other folks also blogged about the relationship with PR and the momosphere.

It's sad that so many PR people don't do things right. All we can hope is that more people in the profession realize that it's about relationships and not pitches or target audiences, etc.

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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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With today's celebrity obsessed culture/media I have a new sure-fire crisis communication plan for corporations, yell, "Hey look, there's Paris Hilton!"

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I've been working with social media for almost four years. The majority of the time my work involves either pr practitioners or journalists. While I enjoy what I do and the interactions I have, in this time I have become a bit jaded with certain aspects of PR and media's view of blogging.

Today, Steve Rubel talks about the era of PR as participation and not pitching. I agree with this. It's about relationships and interactions. It's about knowing the people you're talking to and knowing what you're talking about. Two commodities that seem to be lacking in many interactions online.

Now on to my jaded view. A few weeks ago when Phil Gomes and I were on a panel at Media Relations Summit, he made a statement that I've been repeating quite a bit recently:

If you're a PR professional and you complain about blogs being inaccurate or wrong...and you're not doing anything to fix it, then you don't have the right to complain.

This topic came up again at the Airports Council International-North America's marketing and communications conference I spoke at on Monday. A few communicators complained about blogs in general. I asked if they had made any attempt to correct the information. They hadn't.

The other issue is blogger relations, or building relationships with blogs. Many PR folks act like it's something completely foreign to them, they have no idea how to do it. I always say, it's the same tactics and strategies they've used with building relationships with reporters/media. Unfortunately, for too many folks the extent of their relationship is looking up a name in Bacons.

To drive home this point I use this anecdote:

What you're saying is that you can't find sources and build relationships with them? So if you moved to a new town and started work for a new company, would you go to your boss and say, "Wow, I don't know any of the media here or have any idea what trade publications cover our industry. It's going to be impossible for me to build relationships and get your information out there."

The issue with blogger relations is finding the right blogs. Well if you're part of the community all you have to do is ask. If I was new to the triathlon scene, I would find somebody I knew that was a triathlete and say, "Hey what web sites, magazines, etc do you read?" Then I'd start from there.

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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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Wow, I write one thing about Star Wars and I'm already receiving unsolicited press releases for Star Wars related news.

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Ah yes the corporate press release (or statement). A document that is carefully worded to not offend anyone or put an organization at legal risk. In some cases a paragraph sees so many revisions and passes by so many lawyers that the price-per-word must be higher than the per-capita income of many third-world countries. One of the original 95 theses of the Cluetrain promised us that:

In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

In the case of a disagreement or debate on a sensitive topic:

They Write: We don't want to rush to judgement

We Read: We're not changing our minds.

They Write: We respect their opinion.

We Read: They're idiots.

They Write: The best course of action is to step back, let all parties have their say, and then build a consensus.

We Read: We're going to stall for time so we can continue to spin our position while dis-crediting our opposition under the false pretense that we care what they have to say.

They Write: It has been brought to our attention.

We Read: It's been all over the internet for weeks, but we just noticed it.

They Write: Our internal investigation has revealed.

We Read: We had a corporate-wide cover-your-ass session.

They Write: We're currently exploring all our options.

We Read: We have no idea what we're going to do.

They Write: We're re-stating our earnings.

We Read: We got caught.

They Write: We're preparing a statement

We Read: We have dozens of lawyers writing a paragraph that will hopefully deflect all blame and absolve us from any wrong-doing.

They Write: Our general counsel assures me...

We Read: The general counsel is pushing me to the wolves while he escapes to Brazil.

They Write: ...that we will prevail

We Read: We're screwed.

They Write: We're working with the proper regulatory agencies at this time.

We Read: We're really screwed and have tuned to bribes, blackmail, etc.

They Write: He has left to pursue other interests.

We Read: He was fired.

They Write: I'm genuinely excited about the opportunities available to me.

We Read: Wow, I have no job, what am I going to do?

They Write: We wish him the best.

We Read: Our lawyers are waiting to revoke his severance should he violate his NDA.

They Write: Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

We Read: We're so desperate that we overpaid.

or We Read: We got such a deal, but we don't want to crush the ego's of the previous owners once everybody realizes they left money on the table.

They Write: It will allow our best minds to work together.....

We Read: The best minds are already packing their bags and leaving to work together on a new startup.....

They Write: ....for the long-term health of the company

We Read: ....they'll end up buying/crushing us in a few years.

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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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B.L. Ochman blogs about receiving a Nikon D80 camera as part of a blogger relations program lead by MWW Group.

I had lunch with Tom Biro in New York last week and he clued me in on the program, very cool on Nikon's part. Quite a few friends and bloggers that I read will be getting a test-drive of the Nikon D80. Who? Gotta keep a secret :-)

Of course I am a Nikon fan for life since they helped me out in a pinch last year. I ended up purchasing a D80 last year and have loved the camera. It allows me to take shots like this:

Update: Gigglechick has also received a camera.

Update 2: Mike Manuel received one as well and has some photos of the packaging.

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A former client is now with the communications department at Virginia Tech. Obviously with the news today I went to check out the site. The school has wisely switched to a low-bandwidth version in this time of crisis.

Thoughts and prayers to all those involved.

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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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Here's a hypothetical situation based upon a recent experience I had with a client. Let's say you're the director of marketing or communications with a large organization. Each year you spend a considerable amount of money on your Advertising/PR efforts.

However, the number one issue you face daily is customer service. In other words, you know your advertising will bring them in, but customer service will push them out. In PR, the majority of your issues center on customer service problems. It might be a general workforce problem or a lack of proper training, but it's that customer experience thing that's killing you.

Now the big question. Would you be willing to give up 30-40% of your budget, and perhaps your staff, to fix the customer service problem? Are you willing to fix the problem, with your budget?

To many of us that work within the social media world the answer seems obvious, but when you start dealing with organizations and internal politics you sometimes get answers like: "That's their problem, my job is X." or "Then you'd be cutting my budget."

Unfortunately it's not your budget or their problem, it's everybody's problem. And if you don't help them fix their problem, then all of you will have much bigger things to worry about.

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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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Constantin posts that Paull Young has joined Converseon. As a student, Paull made a name for himself in the PR-blogging world and was a sought after hire. (Other students are you paying attention?)

Congrats to Paull and good catch on the part of Converseon.

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I'm a bit late to this discussion, but here are my two cents.

Dee Rambeau ended his blogging adventure with a well thought-out and well written missive about the cons of the blogging world. I won't debate Dee on this issue, Allan Jenkins has already done a great job of this.

One of Dee's comments on Allan's post says:

I think if you read some of the students' comments, you'll find that they were aching for a contrary opinion. The koolaid was getting a little too sweet!

If you want to find a true debate about the issue (or any issue) for that matter you need to talk with both sides. In the blogosphere though, it's usually one side doing most of the talking.

I agree with some of Dee's points and always whole-hearted say, blogging is not for everyone, and dealing with many corporate clients tells me it's not right for many corporations. Would it be a benefit, perhaps, but going back to a post a wrote before, it's more of a culture shift than a communication tool.

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In a great post, Mike Manuel provides the chronology of the 90-second news cycle we now live in:

+1 second to hit publish

+2 seconds for a blog to refresh

+3 seconds for feed readers to update

+4 seconds to email, link, tag, rank, or rate a blog post

+5 seconds for readers to form an opinion and/or leave a comment

+1 minute for Technorati to register a server ping, crawl and index a blog post

+8 seconds for alerts, watchlists and saved searches to propagate

+4 seconds for a blog post to plateau, amplify or disappear

+2 seconds for this cycle to repeat from the beginning

+1 second to realize the world's changing...

In a 24-hour news cycle there are total of 960 unique, 90-second news cycles.

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The St. Augustine Lighthouse in where else...St. Augustine, FL is now blogging. I've worked with them in laying the groundwork for this project. They're taking the first steps and have some interesting plans for the coming months. The blog allows them to cover a number of topics, from the historical to the ghostly to all things Fresnel.

The lighthouse gang is fortunate since they have an attraction that is frequently photographed and shared via Flickr. To join the party, they'll also be using Flickr.

One of the driving forces within the organization has been Rick Cain. If you're a lighthouse nut be sure to follow his blog and all the others.

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From Jeff Jarvis:

The newspaper industry is spending $75 million to argue that it’s not screwed. How much better it would be to spend $75 million on innovation so, indeed, it won’t be screwed.

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Where have we heard this story before.....run 'hip' new ad during the Super Bowl then let people 'discover' (then call-out) your fake blog that goes along with it. Remember the Lincoln Fry blog from McDonalds?

In this case the commercial hasn't even run yet, but AdPulp's David Burn has discovered a possible fake blog from GM for their Robot 2407. Below is the GOTO ROBOT blog written by ROBOT 2407. (Susan's comment below is correct....it was very late last night when I wrote this...so perhaps character blog would be a better description)

Comments are not enabled on the blog, and it seems funny that the 'ROBOT' posts at exactly 6:00 PM each day.

ROBOT 2407 even has a YouTube account. Looking at his profile you see he likes Kraftwerk.

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Toby Bloomberg wonders if social media is tipping in Atlanta? There are a number of events coming up in the next few weeks that deal with all things social. Is it tipping/growing? Toby, the majority of my time outside of Florida is spent in Atlanta :-)

Is it the mecca? Not sure. I think the folks from ConvergeSouth and Greensboro, NC might argue that. Or perhaps Rex Hammock and all the bloggers in Nashville.

One of the comments on Toby's post points out that Atlanta is 2-3 years late as usual. This isn't always a bad thing. It all depends on your audience. If I am a tech firm in Atlanta trying to reach a broader market then yes I might be late to the game, however for local audiences much of this is new. Should it surprise anybody that the biggest blogger in the area is the local media? At last count the Atlanta Journal Constitution has 59 blogs.

Still, social media has existed for some time in the area. I remember coming up for a Atlanta Media Bloggers meeting back in the summer of 2005. Who was the first blogger I knew from Atlanta? Toby, followed closely by Jeneane.

It has been interesting to watch the growth though.

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This is a tough call, because it depends on what you do for a living. The three best *paid* events I went to last year were:

- New Communications Forum
- Gnomedex
- BlogHer

I make the distinction of paid events since there is a bit more of an investment in going to a paid event rather than a local un-conference-type event.

For the past few months I have told anybody I work with in PR that they need to go to New Communications Forum this year. The event is being held March 7-9 in Las Vegas at the Venetian.

All the sessions are great and feature some of the most well-known folks in the PR/social media movement (including some guy named Josh). Like any conference though, the best interaction is during the breaks and dinners...with such a great line-up of folks on hand it's hard not to get something out of it.

The only downside? Deciding between some really great sessions that end up being scheduled opposite of each other.

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I just led a quick impromptu session on blog basics for some of the BlogSavannah attendees. Drew, the event organizer quickly got feedback that some of the attendees were here to start their blog learning and wanted a basic overview, i.e. definition of terms, the culture, etc.

It was a great, quick session. With many questions. I always get amped by a group wanting to learn.

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This is marketing 101 folks, but it seems that every so often somebody needs a reminder. Over the past few weeks I've talked with a few organizations that are developing web products. During the course of each of these conversations they say something like, "I'd love for you to help us get this in front of some of the leading tech/Web 2.0 bloggers." (Read: Mike, Richard or Om)

My response, "Are you sure about that?"

Why? Tech bloggers and bloggers in general can be somewhat critical (understatement of the year). I just see them reviewing the product and killing it. Here's why:

1. The product isn't that great, that doesn't mean that it's not a well executed plan, it's just nothing new and exciting. Much of this stems from location. Often when a company is based in the Southeast (i.e. outside the normal tech centers) they don't know what else is going on out there. What may seem like a revolutionary idea in Florida is old hat elsewhere. Sometimes isolation can be good for creative thinking, other times it can trick you into thinking you're the most ingenious person in the universe...a universe of one though.

2. Know your market! When I see a product I will usually ask, "How is this any different than...." and list about three other sites/products that do similar things. Often the answer I receive is a blank stare, they don't know about any of them. This is usually a very awkward moment since they take a look at the competing product and realize they don't have the most original idea in the world, and that somebody *gasp* might actually be doing it better.

With those two basic items, I can see the train wreck coming. A premature 'pitch' to a tech blogger will result in disaster. One of the first things they'll do is ask question #2 and when you don't have an answer it will tell them quite a bit about your product. Here is how the post might go:

This blogger was given a preview of the new Z service by X. Yawn! Nothing to see here folks, please move along. I mean no disrespect to the folks at X, but it's not really an original idea. A, B and C have had similar services for almost a year now and have a significant installed user base. Of course it's always possible to overcome that first-mover, but when your product doesn't offer any significant advantages over A, B or C it's a tough sell. In fact X hadn't even heard of A or B till we pointed them out to them.....

P.S. If you're trying to show something to Mike or Om make sure it works on a Mac, since that's what they use.

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Here are a few links of interest from some smart people:

- Brian Oberkirch gives the 411 to agencies about blogs.

- Nathan Gilliatt talks about employer brand and how blogs are causing a convergence of PR and HR.

- Shel Israel clues us in on the new way to pick talent.

- 37 Signals on the 'suit'.

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At the WOMMA DC Summit a number of the big analytical firms were there showing/talking about their social media tracking tools. Among the big corporations, the dashboard seems be de rigeur. A number of marketing honchos talked about the power of looking at their dashboard and knowing immediately how their product/service/brand is tracking on 'the blogs'.

While dashboards and other metrics for social media can be great tools, you're taking away the core focus of social media, people and their conversations. Knowing that X% of blog posts are negative about a product/service only scratches the surface.

Now when an executive says, "I monitor blogs." I respond, "Great, what's that last one you read? Who wrote it?"

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Yes blogs are great at doing certain things, but adding a blog to your communication's mix isn't a panacea, sometimes a blog can easily expose your lack of communication and customer relations skills.

Blogs and other social media tools need to be part of a culture shift within an organization. Perhaps to restate this in the form of a question, are you adding a blog to become more open in your communication, or because you are open in your communication?

Often with corporate blogs (or corporate associated blogs) it's one person making a difference. Yes it's great that a 'company' is 'listening' and 'joining the conversation' but it's not really the company it's a few people (if that). We all applaud when Dell or Southwest starts to blog, but how has that changed the other 99% of touch points we have with the company?

Shel Holtz really captures this with his recent post about Dominos Pizza.

Are companies that start to blog, but don't change their entire philosophy just setting themselves up for failure?

Hear me out on this. Company A (think cell phone company) has a really great, personable blogger that really connects with customers online. However Company A also has about 1000 call center reps and 20,000 associates in the field. The majority of them have the traditional corporate attitude, i.e. "Not my department" - "I can't help you, call customer support" etc...

Dealing with this great blogger has set my expectations high, dealing with anybody else in the corporation is just a nightmare. Inevitably the majority of the comments and issues the corporate blogger deals with are negative customer service experiences. Wow, sounds like a fund job...oh wait, that's not their department :-)

I can't tell you how many times I've had initial client meetings and told them there is now way they're ready to blog. Sometimes it's legal issues, but the majority of the time it's because they just don't have the right corporate culture.

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Back in August of this year FLAUSA launched a Florida-resident specific web site at floridians.flausa.com. When the site went live I posted a review. One of the concerns I had was how the site would handle negative comments (if they received any). Back in November I e-mailed some questions (you can read my original e-mail at the bottom of this post) to Vanessa Welter, Director Public Relations. I never received a response and followed-up with her this morning. Below is her response:

With all due respect, we address these issues and matters with our industry board and committees and the very trusted vendors we work with whom have been vetted by our industry. Our evolving web site development is in very capable and educated hands and is guided by our industry's philosophy at the current time. If you did not see negative comments on the site, it is because we either did not get any, or they are not being posted. The reasons why should be obvious.

Here is my original e-mail/questions:

Vanessa:

When Visit Florida first launched the local resident themed site in August I posted a quick review online:

http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001231.html

One of the things I wondered about was the percentage of non-positive reviews and comments that might be generated by users and how Visit Florida would handle these. Looking over the site today it seems that almost all of the user submissions are positive. In my social media experience with consumer product companies and traditional media I know that there is always a percentage of negativity associated with any consumer-generated content. In the current state the site looks a bit sanitized since all the reviews are positive.

Has the site (and by extension the destinations/getaways listed) received any negative comments? If so what has been the policy in dealing with these comments?

I understand that the mission of Visit Florida is to promote the state and allowing negative comments might not be the most PC thing, but in CGM you need to take the good with the bad in order to have a trusted and valued resource.

Thanks in advance.

More thoughts on this later...but what do you think?

Update: Deleting or not posting comments that are negative has proven to be a very bad strategy for traditional corporations. Obviously corporations have the right to post what they want, but unless a comment contains profanity or libel you need to let it stand. When you open up things for user comment, attempting to jump on the user-generated-content bandwagon you need to take the good with the bad.

FLAUSA presents itself as a trusted source of tourism content about Florida, but if the commentary is sanitized the general reader will see thru this and turn to other sources like TripAdvisor or Tripmates to get the 'truth'.

Update 2: The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp has a blog: UWISHUNU that allows residents to post/comment about their favorite hang-outs/restaurants, etc. They don't delete negative comments...they only moderate if it contains profanity or libel.

Update 3: One friend IMs to say, "I guess they haven't heard the buzzword of 2006....transparency."

Update 4: Plenty of traffic to this post from Electronet.net the ISP in Tallahassee (home of FLA-USA/Visit Florida). Any response? Nope.

Update 5: I e-mailed Dale Brill from Visit Florida this morning about this issue and he has posted a great follow-up comment.

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My blog reading habits, my blogging and my blog readers are primarily a mix of a social media & public relations slant, so it was fun to cross the aisle so-to-speak into the marketing world at Mplanet 2006.

Overall the Mplanet speaker line-up was impressive. When you have the marketing leaders from Sony, Nintendo and Nokia sitting on a panel together you're in for a treat. End the day by hearing from IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and it doesn't get much better. Seeing Chris Anderson share the Long Tail vibe with the marketing audience was also something special. It's really hard to pick a favorite session.

Social media is what I do, and with many of the sessions focusing on the new medium it was a bit of, "seen it/heard it". However, it was seeing the attendee's reaction to the speakers which really intrigued me. The audience was a mix of corporate and agency, many of which are still trying to come to grips with a loss of control.

If anything, social media, like WOM is a common ground for advertising and public relations. There are aspects of relationships, trust, influence, viral and marketing all wrapped up in one. A refreshing trend is to see that things can't be faked anymore. Over and over a CMO would say that if they ever tried to force something it just wouldn't work.

As with any conference experience I was able to meet a great bunch of folks face-to-face like, Ann, Garrett, Rob, Peter, Eric and many more. I've added a number of new people to the 'Friends' folder in my RSS reader.

Next week I'll be back in some familiar/middle ground at the WOMMA Summit 2006.

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Last week I was called by a Florida Times-Union reporter about a 'Sucks' web site story. It's something we're used to seeing by now, person feels slighted, creates web site, generates negative publicity for organization. The article was published over the weekend.

Reading over the article you'll find that the target of one man's ire is the Shands Healthcare system. What does Shands have to say?

A Shands vice president, Steven Blumberg, declined to comment for the story.

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I just signed up for a webinar on blogging. When I saw this line in the 'promo' I just had to listen in:

What DRASTIC consequences could befall your business if you don't blog.

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I am pleased to announce that I am a new member of the Research Fellows & Advistory Board for the Society of New Communications Research. SNCR is a distinguished group of folks, many of which are my friends and colleagues, so it will be a great experience.

The big event for SNCR in 2007 will be New Communications Forum in Las Vegas on March 7-9th. I'll be there, will you?

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In his talk at Mplanet today Peter Kim from Forrester talked about the role of social computing in today's marketing world. He suggested adding a Fifth P to the famous Four P's of marketing.

The 5th P - Participation

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Eric Eggerston has announced that he'll be writing a PR blog for the b5 Media network. The new blog, Common Sense PR, has a great title, since so much of good PR is....common sense. The RSS feed has been added to my feed reader.

Eric will be channelling most of his PR-goodness towards the new blog and a new blog EricEggerston.com (to be launched soon) will be more personal in nature.

Congrats Eric.

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Jeremiah Owyang talks a bit about traditional corporations and media needing leadership in web strategy and social media. This is an interesting knowledge gap that I have seen as well. There are those that are savvy at social media and can counsel clients and then there are those that can build businesses/divisions around social media. However, there seem to be fewer of the latter.

I have been contacted by a few headhunters looking to fill some social media jobs at some large corporations. In each case they needed a person with a blend of social media know-how and corporate smarts. Specifically, they wanted people that could build an entire division or team and thus handle all the standard business stuff, i.e. budgets, personnel, etc.

In almost all the cases the headhunters said they were having a difficult time finding the right person. They were easily able to identify some strong players in the social media space, but none of them were interested (or qualified) in the corporate side of things. This really didn't surprise me. I told the headhunters that many of my peers are independents like myself, and we didn't really want to work full-time for a corporation. We enjoy our freedom too much.

It seems then that there might be a job market for a strong corporate types that understand social media. Perhaps I should build a job board, ala CrunchBoard :-)

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I had a great day today speaking to a number of students at the University of Georgia - Grady College. I made appearances in a number of classes for Kaye Trammell and Karen Russell. I think I probably spoke to over 400 students in all. As I have found in many of my college appearances there is a huge interest in the topic since many of the traditional classes/programs don't teach social media.

After one of the sessions one of the students asked Kaye, "Do you think we'll get to have an actual class on this subject before I graduate?" As luck would have it Kaye will be teaching a course on the subject of social media next semester.

At the end of one of the large sessions with the students I thanked them for their time and told them the real reason I was speaking to them today...."You are the next generation of PR practitioners, and in five to ten years you'll be my boss, so I just wanted to introduce myself."

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Earlier this year I visited Auburn University for part one of my 'Hyku College Tour'. Part two will begin this week with visits to the University of Georgia on Monday and the University of Florida on Thursday and Friday. It looks like I am the un-official social media speaker for the SEC :-)

As I have said before I always enjoy my time interacting with students, I'll be posting reports from my sessions during the week.

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Shel, I feel your pain. Shel Holtz posts about hearing an 'expert' speak, but realizing the person was no expert. Stuart Bruce shares his experiences as well. I've been in a few similar situations recently. I mostly keep my mouth shut since I know the truth will come out in the long run (I hope). However it seems to be getting worse lately.

Like Shel, I don't want to sound too snarky, but there are plenty of people jumping into the world of consulting with little understanding of the medium. A while ago I had one 'consultant' tell me:

"This consulting is great, I just have to stay a week ahead of my client on the learning curve and I can keep billing them."

There is a learning curve, but I think being a week ahead is a bit short :-) Jeremy Pepper once said that nobody is an expert in social media, they're just a year ahead of everybody else on the learning curve.

Illustration by Hugh MacLeod.

While this is not a definitive list, here are a few things to look for when somebody says they are an expert in the 'blog' thing.

1. What's the address of their blog? If they don't have one, run. As my friend Toby likes to say, this is something you can't fake. You need to have hands-on experience.

2. What's the quality of their blog? I know this can be a bit subjective, but are they demonstrating any thought leadership on the issue or are they just running in place?

3. How long have they been blogging? Similar to the previous question, it can go either way. I dealt with a corporate VP that received a call from a 'consultant' inquiring about their social media strategy. While on the phone the VP looked up the blog of the 'consultant'. It was a few weeks old with nothing substantial and according to Technorati had no links. The VP quickly formed an opinion based upon their research :-)

4. Do they suggest a course of action the violates some basic blogging guidelines like WOMMA's or my simple rules? Run. You should be smarter than this, but unfortunately as we've seen recently, this isn't always the case.

5. Did you check references? Or in other words do they have a proven track record. Granted it might not be years of experience since the field is relatively new, but do they have some examples of programs they have implemented for clients?

Anybody have any other suggestions?

Like I have said before the great thing about social media is the that the truth always comes out in the end. However, in this situation the people being duped aren't part of the blogosphere so there will always be this issue.

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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is releasing a series of guidelines for interacting with bloggers. The guidelines are not 'official rules' by any stretch; they are merely meant to provide guidance for firms just learning about social media.

Of course firms are free to ignore them (and some will) but hopefully many will follow the guidelines since WOMMA reminds us: Consumers come first, honesty isn't optional, and deception is always exposed. The guidelines are listed below:

1. I will always be truthful and will never knowingly relay false information. I will never ask someone else to deceive bloggers for me.
2. I will fully disclose who I am and who I work for (my identity and affiliations) from the very first encounter when communicating with bloggers or commenting on blogs.
3. I will never take action contrary to the boundaries set by bloggers. I will respect all community guidelines regarding posting messages and comments.
4. I will never ask bloggers to lie for me.
5. I will use extreme care when communicating with minors or blogs intended to be read by minors.
6. I will not manipulate advertising or affiliate programs to impact blogger income.
7. I will not use automated systems for posting comments or distributing information.
8. I understand that compensating bloggers may give the appearance of a conflict of interest, and I will therefore fully disclose any and all compensation or incentives.
9. I understand that if I send bloggers products for review, they are not obligated to comment on them. Bloggers can return products at their own discretion.
10. If bloggers write about products I send them, I will proactively ask them to disclose the products’ source.

I like what I see so far. You can read all the details on the initiative at: http://www.womma.org/blogger/

While some argue that the markets and community will decide what is successful, i.e. PayPerPost, there are ethical issues at hand for PR professionals. Many of the colleagues that I work with are members of either FPRA, PRSA or IABC. Each of those associations strive to represent an industry which often is dragged down by less than ethical or professional behavior. It's that type of behavior that the professional associations are trying to stop.

When you join a professional association such as FPRA you pledge to adhere to a set of ethical guidelines. Those same guidelines apply to the blogosphere. As we've seen recently, if you don't follow the guidelines, chances are you'll be caught....rather quickly.

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Bob points out this great example of how not-to launch a blog. A Florida candidate for Attorney General 'launched' his blog with a 'Coming Soon' post on July 20th. As of today, it's still 'coming soon'.

If you can't launch a blog with at least one substantial post, then don't even bother to turn it on. Following that basic advice will help you avoid embarrassing snafu's like Skip's non-blog.

I typically advise clients to have at least 1-2 weeks worth of posts in the system before you go live. When you do launch, you can post a 'We're here....' post and then talk about the subjects you'll be covering on the blog with links to previous entries that represent those subjects. This way the initial readers will get a good overview of the purpose of the blog with relevant examples of content.

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A college student sent me a series of questions for a project they're working on. I decided to post my answers online.

When a company comes to you with the idea of setting up a blog, what steps do you go through with them to get it set up?

First off I like to assess the level of knowledge within the organization. When they say they, 'want to blog' I want to know what they think that means. In a few cases I have had potential clients approach blogging from the wrong direction. They're thoughts were usually purely marketing driven, which isn't the best thing. I also need to know who will be the primary blogger(s). The best-case-scenarios are when an individual or small team within a company really wants to start blogging and they contact me to help out. In that situation there is an internal passion and drive to make the project succeed. This is a big contrast to a communications manager that calls and says, "Yeah, we need to get one of those blog things going." Real enthusiastic!

This also goes back to the overall mood of the company. Are we dealing with an organization that has an open live of communication with the outside world (customers, vendors, etc) or are they somewhat secretive. Obviously a blog is a natural extension for organizations with open communication channels.

The next step is defining the purpose and content. Often an initial idea for a corporate blog will be very narrow in scope. While the narrow scope helps define the content it often can't support itself beyond a few months. I usually advise them to take things up one level. Once we establish the based needs/purpose for the blog we then look at the technical issues.

There are a number of other steps that can get quite detailed depending on the project. A while back I posted some other tips and questions as well. Most of them are research oriented.

Continue reading "Answers for a College Project" »

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Yes that title is a bit over the top, since I am not an official 'rule' maker, I'm just one person offering my opinion.

Much has been written about the role of PR in blogs in the wake of the Edel-Wal story. Recenty, Robert posted his notes and Shel says enough (with some great comments). The entire affair has brought forth a discussion on ethics, disclosure, transparency (the new buzzword) and if PR can truly co-exist with blogs.

When working with a client here are some basic rules for developing a blog that PR wants to be involved in. If you can't adhere to all of these, then you shouldn't even start. It will sound a bit like a cliche, but remember blogs are about conversation and building relationships. Just like any relationship, whether it be with a significant other, friends, family or customers there needs to be openness and honesty.

1. Don't Lie. The truth always comes out. And when the truth does come out, you've got some explaining to do. You don't lie to your friends or your family, so why do it with blog readers.

2. Don't Hide Important Facts. Similar to number one, but some people say that there is a difference between a lie and hiding the truth. If you want to get technical, yes there is a difference, but in the end, the result will be the same. You will have broken the fundamental trust with the other person, and that's hard to get back.

3. Don't Pretend to be Something or Somebody You're Not. This also goes back to the first one, the truth will always come out. Just think about anytime you told a potential girlfriend/boyfriend a small fib to impress them. How did that turn out when they discovered you didn't really know Brad Pitt, or had never really run the New York Marathon?

4. Be Yourself. Perhaps another way of saying number three, but it's worth repeating. As with relationships in real life, you want people to like and respect you for who you are, not what you 'appear' to be. By putting on a front, you might achieve a short period of happiness/success but ultimately you'll be unhappy and you'll strain the relationship. Write in a style and tone that you're comfortable with...that will help with burnout as well.

5. Improve Yourself. Improve the product not the pitch. Many times people don't follow the previous four rules because they are ashamed of something, or trying to hide something. So rather than fixing their own problem they'll lie, hide it, etc. The original problem is still there and will continue to cause issues. If you're blogging and have to lie or pretend to be somebody else, what does that say about you and your position?

To use that other standard cliche, treat your blog readers the same way you would like to be treated. Think about it, if you had a friend which didn't follow the rules above, they wouldn't be your friend for long. With a blog, if you're not following the rules above, you won't have readers for long, and if the transgression are serious enough, you'll impact your reputation in a big way.

I have had corporations approach me to assist with blog projects, and for some reason or another they couldn't follow the rules above, so I don't take on the project. As an independent consultant I have that luxury. Things are different when you're working for a large agency or internally for a corporation. That's the billion dollar question with the Edel-Wal issue. Was is really some account group working on their own and not realizing they were breaking the rules? Or did Edelman say, 'We can't do this' and the client saying, 'Yes you will, otherwise we'll take our huge account somewhere else'?

People often say that blogs can be used to 'humanize' a corporation, and this is true to some degree. The corporation isn't really humanized, but a blog exposes the actual 'humans' within the corporation. This exposure allows two humans to actually have a conversation, which if done right can be a rewarding experience and build an actual relationship between the company (via the blogger) and the customer. However, if you don't follow the rules you're ultimately setting yourself (and your company) up for failure.

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It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. Be sure you monitor your web address in Technorati in addition to specific keywords. Sure, many PR firms will search for their client names and services but remember to look for the URL.

What do I mean by this? Well, enter the full URL of your site in the Technorati search, i.e. http://www.hyku.com/. When you do this Technorati will show you any blog link to that specific URL. This type of search will uncover some additional conversation around your company/client that never mentions the name or keywords you might normally be looking for.

For example, an unhappy shopper might write a blog post that says, "I hate this store!" and link the word 'store' to your site. If you're just monitoring the basics, i.e. company name, service name(s) and the variants then you would miss this link. By monitoring the URL of the site, Technorati would pick it up.

Of course you can always do the standard link:URL search on Google, but that's a traditional relevance search, but a real-time blog search.

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A local reporter called me and tipped me off to a blog from Bealls Florida Department Store. The blog, called FLA etc. (flaetc.blogspot.com) is interesting to say the least. From the description:

A blog dedicated to the Florida Lifestyle with updates on fashion, celebrity, gossip, advice, and Florida living. In conjunction with Bealls, we aim to stare into the fiery ball of light known as the Florida Lifestyle with daily postings and a continuing dialogue.

It's very informal and bloggy while at the same time being very commercial and trendy. I think the strangest thing for me is that this isn't really an image that I associate with Beall's

First off, can a blog attract and retain an audience that doesn't normally identify with a brand? Ultimately that question is answered by the quality and type of content posted. The gossip-style content on the Bealls blog is similar to you standard Us/People/Insert-Name-of-Fashion-Mag Here that many teens might read so it might work for them. There are very few comments on the blog, so there is not much interaction coming from the readership.

All the posts on the blog are from 'Preston' but we have no idea who Preston is. The heart of any blog should be a true conversation between the blogger(s) and readers. It's hard to have a conversation with somebody you know nothing about. The closest we get to learning about Beallls is a post about a soccer team they sponsor. However the Bealls blog is less about a conversation and more about reporting gossip and fashion news.

The second issue with segmentation is will this type of content alienate their core audience? Chances are the average customer is not going to become a regular blog reader so they're safe for now. But if the blog content gets too edgy will it become a bigger issue?

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Some companies get social media, others do not. The title of this post is a question I receive often while talking with corporations:

Do people actually get paid to monitor this stuff?

or on a similar thread

This is actually somebody's job to monitor this stuff?

There are two important things with that question that speak to corporations' thoughts on social media.

First is that fact that they're even asking it. Too often organizations see the world of social media as something that isn't worth their time. Or in this case paid time. Why would they pay somebody to do this? This speaks back to my 'Who are these people, and why should I care?' post. If they do have an interest in social media it's a viral thing. It's the, 'let's put out a crazy video and let the kids share it' thing that rarely works.

The second thing is a bit more subtle. It's the word 'monitor'. Using 'monitor' rather than 'participate' speaks volumes about their perception of the situation. It's hands-off. They recognize the fact that they have fans (or detractors) that are discussing their company, but they wouldn't dare talk to them (See: Corporations Visiting Blogs, but Not Commenting = Prank Calling?).

When I give corporations examples of other firms that are actually paying (GASP!) people to work as evangelists or community builders many still can't believe it. Perhaps it's the region of the country I work in, around here Community Relations is purely and offline thing.

One thing that Jackie Huba and other folks that deal with loyal customers will tell you is that a big fan can quickly become a big pain if they feel they aren't getting the attention they feel they deserve from the company. In many cases all they want is some basic acknowledgment for their loyalty. A simple e-mail or blog comment would work wonders in any situation.

Why aren't more companies climbing aboard the community express? Perhaps it's because many organizations neuter the social skills of the their employees via policies and legal barriers..."Don't ever talk to anybody about anything!"

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No need to go into too much detail on the recent Wal-Mart blog fiasco since Constantin does a great job recapping everything and giving advice. With Richard Edelman's recent apology post the issue will probably linger for a few more days. Of course what we'd all love to read is the backstory. How did it happen? Didn't somebody at some point internally say, "excuse me, I think we need to...." Perhaps one day that will come out.

For me the story was an interesting situation since I have a client that is considering a similar type of travel blog. From the start though we've always planned to disclose the relationship/sponsorship of the blog. In fact it's an integral part of the project. It would be hard to somebody to read the blog and not realize the relationship.

The question now is what would the blogosphere's reaction be in light of the recent Wal-Mart travel blog implosion? The other issue we might deal with post-Wal-Mart-blog-story is internal push-back.

From an external standpoint I think it all comes down to content and execution. An example I always point to is Vespaway. It's a blog that is sponsored by Vepsa, but the bloggers do a good job of not 'pitching' Vespa. Any corporate blog is going to be looked at very closely (and suspiciously) by the blogosphere, but if the content is good (and honest) it will work.

Internally it's about education. Showing and reassuring the client that this particular project will not be another 'Wal-Mart'.

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This morning Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog and I were talking about legal blogs and the blog development world. (LexBlog is one of the leaders in legal blog development) During our conversation Kevin said something worth repeating:

In the past it used to be the large law firms with the biggest PR budgets that would get the work. Now with blogs, it's the smart folks who really know their stuff getting all the attention.

Of course this doesn't just apply to legal blogs. Just about any knowledge-based industry is seeing the same power shifts. If you're an expert, where is your blog?

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The Florida Public Relations Association's blog has been born-again. Incoming VP of Communications, Bob O'Malley, APR, has begun posting frequently and has invited many of the other leaders of the association to join in. There is even a post from Jessica Rye, APR, state association president.

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Stowe Boyd is doing what I figured would happen eventually with PayPerPost. He signed up for an account and has outed an advertiser and a blogger. You can read Stowe's whole post, but in a nutshell he quickly found a blogger that wrote about a service for payment and never disclosed the relationship.

How long before the entire list of advertisers is out? I'd give it a few weeks. Figuring out who is blogging for payment is very easy as Stowe discovered. Just Google the suggested copy and bingo. Or as a colleague pointed out, just visit the PPP blog and look at the comments. The majority of the people commenting are PPP users. Just visit their blogs and read away.

Like Scoble, I think the primary impetus for advertisers doing this is not wholly product mentions. It's Google juice. Advertisers are paying for links. Get 100+ bloggers to link to your site with a specific word and watch your Google position sky-rocket.

I've written some opinions before about PayPerPost which you can read, but the basic issue I have always had has been the disclosure thing. If bloggers were required to disclose the compensation for a post then I'd be all for it. As of now it's up to the blogger to decide if they want to disclose the payment/sponsorship. Some are doing it, others are not. That will always be the catch, and cause many people to deride the service.

Would making disclosure mandatory really hurt their business though? Probably not in the long run. Both parties involved would still benefit. Bloggers receive compensation and advertisers get links (and mentions).

Brian weighs in with his opinion about the funding of the venture, but I am closer to the issue here in Florida. I recently met Dan Rua who is one of the VCs involved with the deal. Dan's a nice guy and is doing good work funding start-ups in the Florida market (Lord knows we need that). Dan like many VCs sees an opportunity. Yes there are some issues with PPP, but if they would just handle that disclosure thing I think many people would drop many of their complaints.

Update: Jason Calacanis has some strong words.

Update 2: Here is a blogger that was rejected by PPP because they used 'rel=nofollow' in their links. In other words Google won't follow the link. So what matters more to advertisers on PPP, the blogger mentioning their product or the link?

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CVB's or convention and visitors bureaus are getting into social media in a big way. A few weeks ago I took part in a PRSA teleseminar for CVBs that was very well attended. There is a great deal on interest in the topic, specifically because so many people turn to each other (or total strangers) online for travel tips.

As a CVB you could teach yourself all this new stuff or just hire somebody. That's what the City of Philadelphia has done. They just snagged Annie Heckenberger.

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Dan Greenfield has a thought provoking post talking about bloggers as journalists. The opening sentences set the stage:

We have all experienced it – a news story runs about your company, but the reporter never contacted your company for a comment. Makes us mad and clients mad. Journalists should know better we say.

But how about when bloggers post a comment about your company or pull comments from a company blog without contacting the PR department? Are we still as angry? My guess is probably not.

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When I speak, I often show the University of Florida newsroom as a great example of how to use blog software for non-blog-specific uses. The site, located at: news.ufl.edu, uses Wordpress for content management of a traditional media relations site.

In the past week UF has added videoblogs to the mix of content available online. So far there are two video segments available for download. One on Reading Readiness and the other on a Pesticide Breast Impact study.

The site is truly a one-stop shop. In addition to the new video segments it also offers: podcasts, photographs, press releases, e-mail distribution, rss and an events calendar. If you're looking for a great example of how to develop an online newsroom, check out UF.

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On Tuesday, September 26th I'll be moderating a panel at a joint meeting of Atlanta chapters of IABC and STC. The luncheon event will be held at Maggiano's in Buckhead from 11:30 am till 1:00 pm. It will be a discussion between corporate blogging pros from the Atlanta area.

On the panel are:

Toby Bloomberg - Bloomberg Marketing & Diva Marketing Blog
Dave Coustan - Earthlink's corporate blogger - blogs.earthlink.com
Mark Chernesky - Web Development Director for Turner Broadcasting

Click here for details or to register.

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Over the next few months I'll be visiting a few college campuses across the southeast. Three of them happen to be within the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and between them all, they have some great football rivalries.

The 'tour' starts later this month with a trip to Auburn University on Monday, Sept 25th. I'll have the pleasure of speaking with some of Robert French's students. Robert is well known within the PR/EDU blogging world and was the founder of Marcomblog.

The next trip is tentatively scheduled for Oct 9-10 at Florida State University. During my two-day stay in Tallahassee I'll be visiting some of Dr. Jay Rayburn's classes and some local PR firms.

In November I'll be at the University of Georgia on Monday the 13th for a day-long visit. While in Athens I'll be speaking to students in classes taught by Dr. Kaye Trammell and Dr. Karen Russell. We're also looking at doing something with the UGA PRSSA chapter.

Later that week I'll be in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida. I am speaking to the Gainesville chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association on November 16th. While in the area I am trying to schedule some other talks.

In most cases I'll be speaking to public relations students/groups about social media. I always enjoy the interaction with students and encourage others within the profession to reach out to your local schools.

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Update: If you've applied these tips to a conference blog, send me a link!

Having blogged a few conferences both on my own and with a team, I offer this quick 'how-to' for other groups looking to do the same. Feel free to use this to develop your conference blogging plan. Or you could just invite me to your conference :-)

At the most recent FPRA Annual Conference we had a team of four people blogging the event. Listed first are the tools we used. Following that, I'll talk some strategy.

The Tools

This is broken down into two major sections, hardware and software. As with everything, check to make sure all your tools are working ahead of time and that you know how to use them.

Hardware: Here is a list of the gear you'll need to lug around :-)

Laptop/PC/Mac - Obviously you'll need a way to post things online, laptops tend to work best at conferences :-) At this most recent event we had my PowerBook, two Dells and a ThinkPad.

Connectivity - You'll want some way to get online, either via wifi or a cellular technology such as Verizon EVDO. At the Ritz Carlton where the FPRA conference was held, there was not publicly available wifi in the conference rooms, but we had secured accounts in advance. As a back-up, one of the team had a Verizon EVDO card in his laptop.

Camera - Digital, point-and-shoot cameras work, but investing in a good DSLR will make a big difference. At FPRA I had a Nikon D70 and Chris had his Nikon D50. Make sure you have a way to easily transfer photos from the camera to your laptop.

Portable Audio Recorder - Some sort of device to record audio in digital format, MP3 is the best of course. I always carry an iRiver MP3 recorder. It features a built-in mic and a line-in jack to connect to external devices. A basic USB cable allows me to transfer the audio files.

Blog - Blogging a conference usually requires some sort of blog software :-) In some cases you can pick your platform, other times you'll need to work with the platform the conference is providing. For the FPRABlog we used MovableType.

Offline Blog Editor - Having an offline blog editor such as Ecto or Qumana can make a huge difference. Being able to compose your posts and then upload them in the proper format saves time. You might say, "I can use Word and then upload." Well sometimes that copy/paste from Word to the blog software can cause some formatting problems. An offline editor also helps when you have limited connectivity. At WOMMA this year we could not connect in the session rooms, but we could in the hallway. We would write our posts in Ecto, then step into the hallway to quickly post.

Flickr - If you're planning on taking more than a few pictures you'll want to use Flickr. The ability to upload, organize and include photos on your blog can't be beat.

Flickr Upload Tool - A dedicated Flickr upload tool can help speed things along. On the Mac I use the Flickr plugin for iPhoto from Connected Flow. I also have the standalone Flickr Uploadr tool installed. At the FPRA conference, our team installed the upload tool on their PCs as well.

Technorati - You'll want to use Technorati or some other blog search tool to track any conversation surrounding the conference.

Audio Editing Software - If you plan on doing any audio work you might need some tools to edit your audio files. In recent cases I have just posted the audio interviews as is without any editing. You learn to structure/format your interview in such a way that you can minimize or eliminate the need to edit your files.

FTP Software - Many blog tools have upload capabilities, but if you need to upload a large audio or video files FTP will work best. Like the Flickr Upload tools you can start a process and then move on to something else. Of course you'll need to have the proper username/password for FTP.

The Team:
Not every organization has the luxury of having a large blogging staff (whether paid or volunteers). You might be all on your own, but having some helpers makes a big difference. If you plan to cover everything, your lowest common denominator is the maximum number of breakout sessions. For example if at some point there are four concurrent breakout sessions you'll need at least four bloggers to get the job done. For a standard 2-3 day conference here is my dream team of 3-4 folks:

Blog/Tech Guru - This person is ultimately responsible for everything that gets posted. They also provide tech support to the other bloggers. In addition they can take photos/upload them and do audio interviews as needed. In a pinch they will also write-up sessions.

Bloggers (2-3) - These are folks that can write good reviews of sessions as well as recaps of other events. It's a bonus if they can do some outreach and find other blogs or references that pertain to the conference/topic.

Photographer (Optional) - If you can swing it I would suggest having a dedicated person to handle photography. Their job is to take photos and more photos then upload them. If only we could clone Scott Beale.

Continue reading "How to Blog a Conference" »

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Rob Safuto picked up on my post yesterday about corporations visiting blogs but not commenting. He disagreed with some of my points, which I addressed in his comments, but I wanted to play-off his final statement:

I do think that smart companies will monitor and get involved in blogs where their brand or products are mentioned. But I don’t think that those companies have a responsibility to respond to a channel created and maintained by someone else.

If offered the choice of dealing with a company that limits/restricts communication options to only those that they control or dealing with a company that is willing to communicate with you on your terms which one would you choose?

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A year ago today, in the wake of Katrina, I posted the following item: PIOs - Add Bloggers to Your Media Distribution List for Disasters & Emergencies

The same thing applies today. Why anybody would not want to use any and every available source to distribute their information in time of a crisis is a mystery to me.

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Over at the Earthling blog Dave asks just how much a corporation should blog. Specifically Dave was talking about employees blogging on behalf of the company. There are some great thoughts in the comments, but I wanted to expand on things a bit more.

Earthlink's issue is how they should roll out blogging to the staff. We're not talking form a technical standpoint (that's another post). What we're talking about is from a strategic perspective. The desired result is to have a number of employees blogging in their areas of expertise, ultimately joining the conversation that's going on out there and dare we say humanizing the company.

One issue is that some of the employees already have active blogs elsewhere and you can't really say to them, "Hey why don't you move your blog to our new corporate blog network". Think about Scoble, he had Scobeizer before, during and after his Microsoft tenure. It's his brand. Compare that to the Microsoft employees that blog under the MSDN Blogs domain. Also, when you write for a number of similar blogs you're constantly battling with, 'which blog should I post this on?'

Getting back to the main question though, how much blogging? What's a good mix? Fifteen percent of the workforce? Five percent? Who decides which employees get to blog? Can anybody sign up or do you have to present a business case? How much time is allowed for blogging? Do we use Google's 20% rule?

Within a traditional corporation you could easily have bloggers writing about subjects such as:

Public Relations/Marketing
Human Resources
Logistics
Finance
Technology/IT
Community Involvement
Customer Relations

If a corporation the size of Earthlink had say 25 bloggers all blogging in specific content areas I think they could easily represent the company on the blogosphere. Could they have more? Sure, but what happens when you get crossover? I think it would be a waste of resources for a corporation to have say 10 people all blogging about public relations.

We might be talking about a whole other level of corporate politics. "Sorry Steve, we just don't need another blog about gadgets, why don't you blog about parenting?"

Talking with Dave Coustan of Earthlink he says one of their goals would be to allow employees to have a number of blogs if that's what they want. One corporate, under the Earthlink banner, and any other personal blogs they might also write. This allows a degree of separation, between work and personal life. However I think that the separation is a bit of a fallacy. This is nothing against Earthlink, but I think that it's hard for somebody to say, 'That's my work blog and this is my personal blog and they don't cross over'. If all the blog posts are public, any blogger or journalist is able to connect the dots if they want.

There is no absolute number/answer for the question, "How much corporate blogging?" I think the answer is unique to each situation. Perhaps the percentage rule is a good baseline, but ultimately it needs to relate back to your corporate culture. Have you always been a company that 'talks' to outsiders? if so, then go for it. If you're not the talking type take it slow to start with.

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If you may remember I had a camera dilemma a few weeks ago. I wanted to buy a nice digital SLR to cover the FPRA conference these past few days. Sure my Nikon CoolPix is a great camera, but point-and-shoot doesn't always fit the bill. I was just about ready to buy the Nikon D70s when I heard that the D80 was coming soon, as in a week or two. Looking over the initial specs of the D80 it seemed worth the wait, but I didn't have time to wait.

To the rescue comes Nikon's PR team. They had read my blog and provided an amazing gesture. They sent me a loaner Nikon D70s to use at the event, on the condition that it be returned afterward (of course). This would get me over the hump so-to-speak and allow me to buy the D80 once it was announced.

The D70s worked perfectly at the event. I took over 1000 photos without a hitch. Of course, out of those 1000 I had to narrow it down to 400 or so to post online :-) The conference turned out to be an all-Nikon affair since one of my blogging partners had a D50 and the official event photographer was using a Nikon D1X.

Now that the Nikon D80 is officially out, I need to figure out how to get my hands on one.

Big thanks again to Nikon's PR team.

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Over the past few days I have been busy blogging the Florida Public Relations Association's 68th Annual Conference in Amelia Island, FL. The blog team attempted to cover all aspects of the conference for those that could not attend.

There was however one thing I couldn't cover. During the Golden Image Awards Banquet on Tuesday night I was surprised to be honored with the 2006 FPRA Member of the Year Award.

In my brief remarks on stage, I thanked FPRA and all the friends I have met through this wonderful organization. I have been a member of FPRA for almost 10 years and it has provided an amazing amount of professional, business and personal development.

To put things in perspective though, during his session the next day, Mark Ziegler said something like, "Awards are great, but when you get one, enjoy the moment and then move on. It's time to work harder."

Thanks FPRA.

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Visit Florida, the Florida tourism agency, recently launched a new tourism web site aimed at Florida residents: http://floridians.visitflorida.com/. It's your standard destination marketing site with one exception. The site allows users to submit their destination/getaway ideas and comment on other user submissions.

Currently the content submission system is tied to a contest, and is limited to a 300 word write-up and two photos. The terms/rules for the submissions are:

GETAWAY SUBMISSIONS: 1. All submissions are the property of VISIT FLORIDA. 2. All submissions are subject to editorial review to correct grammar and spelling, delete expletives and eliminate content not related to travel in Florida. 3. Submissions that are known to be untrue or that are promotional in nature will not be posted. If a questionable submission is made, the site editor will contact the user to provide an opportunity to clarify the submission. 4. The site editor may provide additional commentary to a user’s submission for clarification purposes.

It's a great move by the state, especially since more and more travelers are looking to each other for suggestions. The true test will be if they allow negative comments to be posted. With this I am not talking about some biased rant, but a legitimate customer service related issue.

I plan to post some comments about my current trip.

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I'll be blogging from the Florida Public Relations Association's 68th Annual Conference for the next few days. Stop on by the FPRA Blog to follow-along.

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Next week I'll be traveling to Amelia Island, FL to attend/blog the Florida Public Relation Associations' annual conference. The conference takes place from Sunday, August 6th till Wednesday, August 9th. I'll be joined by a few other folks in covering the event over at the FPRABlog.

You may remember that we launched the FPRABlog with FPRA Blog Week back in March of this year. For the past few months it has mostly been used to cover FPRA events around the state. In the next few days I'll be posting some lead-up items in advance of the conference. We invite the PR blogging community to follow along and provide commentary.

From a technical standpoint, we ask that you tag any posts: FPRA.

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Back in May, on another blog I lamented that Cypress Gardens Adventure Park continued sending me e-mails even though I requested to be removed. To recap the story:

As a previous annual pass holder at Cypress Gardens I receive the standard e-mail 'updates' from Adventure Parks (the parent company). I don't hold a pass anymore but the rest of my family does, so my wife also receives the same updates. On January 12, 2006 I received a bulk e-mail message from Cypress Gardens. I followed the instructions at the bottom of the message and asked to be removed by e-mailing mailer@adventureparksgroup.com.

Since the passage of the CAN-SPAM act all commercial bulk-email must offer the ability to opt-out as well as some other provisions. According to just one portion of the CAN-SPAM Act:

It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.

Violating this will bring:

Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.

On March 24, 2006 I received another bulk e-mail message. I once again asked to be removed and also e-mailed pr@cypressgardens.com to let them know that they had not honored my previous (Jan 12, 2006) request.

You know where this is going right? Well yesterday, May 4, 2006 I received yet another bulk e-mail from Adventure Parks. On the surface it's a violation of the CAN-SPAM act. So what should I do?

In early July I still continued to get the e-mails. I attempted to contact Lynn Wright, the new PR person and had to follow-up with her to finally get a callback. She assured me that I would be removed at once.

Guess what? Since the phone call I have received two more updates. The most recent arrived today.

Is this petty? Perhaps, but what do I have to do to get off this list? I've asked 6 times via their 'opt-out system' and then finally had to call their PR person, but nothing has worked.

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How many times have you heard the phrase 'Just Act Natural'? Usually the phrase is associated with you entering a situation that you:

a) aren't prepared for
b) aren't supposed to be in.

Now think about how this term applies to corporations and blogs. Many times, those of us in the social media space just say to a corporation; have a conversation with your customers, open up, or "just act natural". Easier said than done though.

The majority of social media gurus are independent and usually don't deal with the structure (read: restrictions) of the corporate world. We attempt to understand what it's like inside the crystal palaces but sometimes it's difficult. The thought of openly talking to their customers is as foreign to them as working 40 hours per week at a 9-to-5 job in an office is to me.

Some corporations have an established relationship with their loyal customers, take Southwest Airlines for example. Southwest blogging makes sense. Halliburton blogging does not.

I've had the opportunity to speak to a number of corporations recently and they're struggling with this topic. Can they act natural? Some just can't. The alternative is faking it, which never works out well in the blogosphere.

Where is this going? We'll see, I'm going to use a series of post to further flesh out this topic....

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Announcing BlogOrlando, an un-conference to be held in Orlando, Florida on Friday, September 22nd through Sunday, September 24th, 2006. What started off as an informal gathering of friends might just turn into something bigger.

Hyku, in partnership with Rollins College will host this FREE event that is open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike from Florida and anywhere else (so far we have one international attendee). We hope to bring together a good cross-section of folks to discuss blogging, podcasting, public relations, social media, citizen's journalism and other related topics. In addition to the Friday event we are planning some outings at the local theme parks over the weekend. This event is as much a social/family gathering as it is a 'work' gathering, so bring the family (kids included).

Shown below is a tentative schedule for the weekend:

Thursday (9/21): Travel day for most, perhaps an informal dinner that night
Friday - day (9/22): BlogOrlando un-conference at Rollins College
Friday - evening (9/22): Full-on geek dinner somewhere in Orlando
Saturday (9/23): Blogger day at one of the Disney parks
Sunday (9/24): Travel day, or stay an extra day at the Disney parks

As you can see the weekend will feature time at the Disney theme parks. We'll finalize what park we're going to do on which day. If we have a large contingent of families/kids coming in we can look to organize a Friday activity for those folks.

The original concept/title for this event was: Josh is Tired of Traveling Outside of Orlando so Everybody Come Here Con or JTTOOECH-Con. I wanted to get some friends to the area to meet, but more importantly spend some down-time at the theme parks with their families. Thinking about it more I also wanted to bring together some folks from the growing blog community in Florida that normally couldn't afford to travel out of state (and pay) for other events. I hope to achieve the best of both with this event. Of course having a draw like the Disney parks isn't a bad thing :-)

What will it cost? Nothing, well almost nothing. The un-coference will be free, but of course you need to get here and cover your hotel and theme park tickets. If you're from the area and only plan to attend on Friday, then all you're paying is gas and your lunch.

If you want to get a hotel reservation you can contact the EO Inn or the Embassy Suites in Downtown Orlando. Since this is an un-conference we don't have room blocks or special rates.

As more details become available I will post them here and over at BlogOrlando.com. I'll also have a registration form up shortly. For now if you intend on coming leave a comment below. Online registration is now available.

Update: upcoming.org link.

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This morning I was a keynote speaker at a local FPRA event in Port Canaveral, Florida. During the media roundtable portion after my session I moved from table to table (along with other media reps) speaking to local PR practitioners. The group is mostly comprised of local agencies and in-house communicators. To my surprise I arrive at a table with Sara Zavala from Edelman. They're everywhere!

To put things in perspective Port Canaveral is close to Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center) and a bevy of technology firms.

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The Las Vegas chapter of PRSA is kicking off their PR Blog week today. Similar to Global PR Blog Week and FPRA Blog Week, the event will discuss issues within PR from local Las Vegas practitioners.

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Last Friday as part of the Treasure Coast Media Breakfast event I listened to a presentation about the new Shuttle Launch Experience at Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex. Lisa Malone of NASA and Daniel LeBlanc of the Delaware North Companies discussed the new attraction and the marketing campaign building up to a May 2007 opening. From the NASA site:

When the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex opens the 44,000-square-foot Shuttle Launch Experience in early 2007, guests won't have to battle silly looking aliens or perform virtual-reality stunts they've seen many times before. Instead, this simulator will take guests on an incredible journey only astronauts have experienced -- launching into orbit aboard a Space Shuttle.

"It's not a thrill ride," said Dan LeBlanc, chief operating officer of the Visitor Complex. "You won't be dodging asteroids or battling any aliens. We have worked hard to ensure that it is as close as you can be to simulating the reality of a Space Shuttle launch within the confines of Earth's gravity."

I think that no matter how hard they try, the new attraction is always going to be compared to Mission Space. With the filing of a lawsuit over a recent death at the ride, the 'Mission Space' story is once again in the papers. (Jennifer Wakefield has done a good job of documenting the media coverage related to the Mission Space accidents: Part 1, Part 2)

It will be interesting to see if/how the Visitors Center modifies their campaign and if they can ever distance themselves from Mission Space.

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I'm at the Florida Public Relations Association - Treasure Coast Chapter Media Breakfast today. I'll be blogging over at FPRAblog.

Up first is a session about the new Shuttle Launch Experience at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex.

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Tim Elliott from Winecast.net and I are grabbing a quick bite to eat at the Pellston Regional Airport in Michigan. Our waiter is stressing since we both have laptops on the table and are working away. What do you expect when you have two bloggers that haven't had time alone with their feeds/e-mail in a few hours :-)

This morning we took part in a panel on new media for the Society of America Travel Writers at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. I covered blogs and Tim did podcasts. We were joined by Janna Graber of GoWorldTravel.com who spoke about online publishing.

The group was comprised mostly of freelance travel writers, CVB folks and public relations firms associated with travel. Many of them rely upon traditional media to purchase/publish their content. The shifting media landscape is of course impacting them. However they may be well-suited to transition to a web/blog-based world. Many of the writers are extremely knowledgeable about their topic and can write, both pluses for blogs. Much of the apprehension is with the technology, but as any blogger will tell you the tools are simple to use.

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I'll be flying to Mackinac Island, MI this Tuesday for a conference at the Grand Hotel. It's the first time I've ever been to this picturesque island and everybody I talk to that has been there says it's amazing. Needless to say I am looking forward to it. As soon as I get back I am presenting a session for the Treasure Coast chapter of FPRA on Friday.

I also finalized my travel plans for Gnomedex at the end of the month. Looks like I'll be flying in Thursday afternoon (6/29) and then leaving late Sunday night (7/2). I'll be staying with Buzz Bruggeman while I am in Seattle. Right now our plans are open for Sunday, so if you'll be in the area, drop me an e-mail.

In other conference news, the IABC International Conference is going on in Vancouver. I look forward to Joe Thornley's blog-coverage of the event. Joe does a great job of blogging conferences.

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Jeremy Harrington and I collaborated on a new blog template design for Jeremy Pepper's POP-PR Jots!. Jeremy (Pepper that is) has been on Blogger since day one, in fact almost three years.

He and I have had 'discussions' about Blogger as a platform, but in the end it does what he needs it to do. The one think lacking though was a unique design, there are only so many Blogger templates to go around :-)

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A little over a week ago I spoke at PRSA Counselors Academy in Savannah, GA. I am just now getting around to reading the wrap-ups from the sessions. Unfortunately I was busy with other work and was unable to attend many of the sessions and had to leave on Monday night. Luckily, uber-conference blogger Joe Thornley seemed to be everywhere:

PRSA Counselors Academy: Watts Wacker

PRSA Counselors Academy: Deb Radman

PRSA Counselors Academy: Future of PR/Newspapers Panel

PRSA Counselors Academy: Josh Hallett

PRSA Counselors Academy: Julia Hood

PRSA Counselors Academy: Dick Martin

PRSA Counselors Academy: Steve Cody

PRSA Counselors Academy: Tom Hoog

Also checking in from the conference: KD Paine, Steve Cody and Kerry McClenehan.

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Brian has posted the latest installment of what we're calling the PR 2.0 Gang podcast series. This latest conversation was recorded in New York during the Syndicate Conference. On the 'panel' are myself, David Parmet, Brian Oberkirch, Mike Manuel and Joel Richman.

You can catch up on previous editions here:

Episode 1: Live from New Communications Forum

Episode 2: The Social Media Services Gap

We plan to change the name a bit, develop a stand-along blog and launch this series as a regular thing in the next few weeks. More details as they come online.

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Look at what just popped up on eBay! It's a one-of-a-kind PepperRubel T-shirt signed by Steve Rubel and Jeremy Pepper.

From the description:

This is an amazing, one-of-a-kind item: it's the only t-shirt in the world that has been personally autographed by PepperRubel PR co-founders, Jeremy Pepper and Steve Rubel. This rare piece of apparel, with its 50-thread count and comfort contour cut, bears the beautiful PepperRubel insignia on the chest which is adorned on both sides with the co-founders’ loving signatures. On the back, running shoulder-length, reads the company’s popular slogan “We put the PR back in PR.” This is truly a collectors item, suitable for a range of PR industry professionals, like the aspiring blogger, the big agency sell-out or the disaffected vet. All the proceeds from this auction will go toward improving the alcoholic wellness of PepperRubel supporters around the world.

Bidding starts at $20, so get over there and start bidding.

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Checking in to the PRSA Counselors Academy I received the standard 'bag of goodies'. One of the items caught my attention though, a can of Wolfgang Puck Coffee. You know the hi-tech self-heating can? The same one that has been recalled because they explode?

Joe said he'll make sure not to put it in his luggage when he flies back to Canada.

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Just got into Savannah, GA for the PRSA Counselors Academy Spring Conference. I'm speaking at one of the breakout sessions on Monday. I plan to attend a few of the sessions and will try to blog them.

If you happen to be here as well leave a comment.

Update: Just ran into Katie Paine (not literally)....I first met her at New Communications Forum in March.

Update 2: Joe Thornley is here.

Update 3: I must have spaced out earlier when I was reading the program because I totally missed the panel on Monday afternoon featuring: Giovanni Rodriquez, Tom Foremski and Robert French. It's right after my breakout session.

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I'm in Gainesville, Florida today attending the professional development seminar hosted by the Florida Public Relations Association. I'll be blogging from the event over at FPRABlog. I'm on a panel with a few media folks. I'll post a wrap-up of my session later.

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When asked to give a broad definition of social media in layman's terms to those involved in public relations/communication I say:

Social media encompasses everything that is written, spoken and shown about your organization that you have no control over.

Perhaps this analogy will help draw more firms into the landscape to rectify the social media services gap that Mike originally talked about.

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I'm standing in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel during Syndicate wearing my PepperRubel T-shirt. Somebody approaches me from behind and reads the back of the shirt out loud "We put the PR in PR....that's great!" He proceeds to introduce himself, while looking at the front of my shirt, "PepperRubel, cool....Hi, I'm X from Y we do Z, let me know if we can ever help you out."

Sure, no problem.

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Saw this at Syndicate in New York City today. More details to come....

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I have uploaded two MP3 files from this morning's Syndicate keynotes. Both of them were simple recordings with my iRiver. Luckily I was right next to the speak the the sound quality is pretty good. There are some jumps as the microphones turned on and off. I think the most interesting one is the conversation with Richard Edelman:

Syndicate-Edelman.mp3
Syndicate-Jarvis.mp3

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Some quick notes from Richard Edelman's conversation at Syndicate.

Brian has more on this session. I am recording it.

Over-training leads to a lack of credibility, PR people act like robots, that's not natural. PR also has to learn that it's now more words, audio and video is now part of the common culture. Blog readers and youth expect this.

Here is the audio from Richard's interview:

Syndicate-Edelman.mp3

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The past few times I have spoken as part of a panel or a program at a PR or media event a similar thing happens. Somebody speaking before me that represents what we can loosely term the 'old guard' complains about the current trends related to blogs, new media, citizen's journalism, etc.. The issues are (choose all that apply)

- The youth don't read/watch newspapers/traditional media
- Paid subscriptions are down
- Blog aren't credible
- There is no fact-checking
- We can't make money
- Only a few people read blogs
- (insert your own choice here)

Media worries about revenue, page views - PR worries that they can't just deal with the same contacts/journos they've always dealt with, plus how do they bill for this stuff?

What is my response to the 'old guard'? Depending on the audience I am speaking to it's either: a) Deal with it or b) Like it or not they're not going away. Of course that's not all I say. What I begin with is something like this:

As we've just heard from X, these are the major issues that face your industry. But guess what, these problems, (problem, being your word, not mine) are not going away. You need to learn to work in this new reality. I understand that identifying the problem and acknowledging it is the first step, but consistent complaining about how things are changing (for the worse in your minds) isn't solving anything. Let's start by learning about this new world and how you can live in it.

Will corporate media be able to adapt? Should they? When talking to groups here is an anecdote I always use:

In the early 1900's I used to make a ton of money delivering ice to homes in the city. People needed it for their ice boxes. Then one day some jerk invented the refrigerator and I'm out of business. What do I do?

Let me think. I have all these trucks driving all around the city. Maybe there is something else I can deliver? Like refrigerators!

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Brian Oberkirch uploaded a pair of podcasts that I participated in over the past few days over at Weblogswork.

First up is a design discussion that Jeremy Harrington and I had with Brian: Weblogs Worknotes: Blog Design.

The next podcast is a continuation of the PR-Gang we assembled at New Communications Forum in March of this year: Weblogs Worknotes: PR 2.0 Group on the Social Media Services Gap

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Over at FPRAblog I've posted a list of upcoming Florida public relations workshops hosted by chapters of the Florida Public Relations Association. Go check them out.

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Jeneane blogs about her 'issue' with America West.

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Southwest Airlines has launched a corporate blog called Nuts About Southwest at http://blogsouthwest.com/. I was tipped to this by a reporter that called me to comment on the fact they have launched a blog.

According to the site their blog mission is:

Nuts about Southwest is all about our Employees, Customers, airplanes, and airports. We really are Nuts about Southwest and we hope that our Readers will share that passion by posting their own comments.

There is also a lengthy Blog Guide. The guide addresses comment policy (it's moderated) and a few other issues. In typical Southwest fashion they tone-down the legal-speak and attempt to add some humor.

This is the point where we insert the “fine print” and discuss the guidelines for posting. The Southwest Blog is starting out as a moderated site because we want to ensure that everyone stays on topic. We would LUV for you to post your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions, but when you post, make sure that they are of general interest to most readers.

One note is that the blog is not for customer service issues. I can understand their reluctance to open up that pandora's box, but it will be interesting to see how customers react to that (this one's is taking a 'wait and see approach'):

One final disclaimer — the Southwest Blog is not the forum to address personal Customer Service issues. All of us have “day jobs,” and we simply don’t have the resources through this blog to resolve individual concerns. Even though this is not the forum, Southwest is eager to resolve your concerns.

So far it's been a very quiet launch. The first post: LUV and the Blogosphere is dated April 21, 2006. As of this post there are three posts on the blog and only two comments.

Update: Looking over the RD2 site (they did the work on SWA's blog) I found a link to Southwest's other blog: Adopt-A-Pilot.

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Morgan McLintic asks: Where are all the in-house PR bloggers?

Is it because agency-types, freelancers and students all have a commercial imperative to raise their profile and to demonstrate their understanding to the market, whereas there isn't that same dynamic for client-side PR pros?

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I just posted my article, Blogs: The Birth of "Public" Relations, over at FPRA Blog Week. It also happens to be the final article for the event.

This is FPRA Blog Week, so we should probably have one article about blogs, right? As we said earlier, our focus for this event was always going to be traditional public relations topics to provide more benefit to our members. Perhaps it is fitting then that the last article posted would be about a new—and to some, a non-traditional—tool. However, some may argue that blogs are no longer non-traditional—they are the future and need to be integrated with your current practice of public relations. Perhaps we could say that blogs are the true birth of public relations?

We've been extremely happy with the response the event has received. Over the next few days I expect Bob and I will post some wrap-up comments and then begin to think about next year's event.

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Richard Edelman blogs about some trends he's seeing with mainstream media's evolution/adoption of digital media. As always with Richard's stuff is good reading. At the end he writes what he feels this means for PR:

1) Reporters expect PR folks to send ready to use digitized content or to arrange for CEOs to make the time for a sit-down video interview. Pictures matter more than ever.

2) Don't count on getting thrust of story amended so easily just because it is on-line--we have to work with reporters to get it right from the start

3) MSM on line reporters are ambivalent about bloggers as a news source. Don't count on the bloggers being the on-ramp to stories in MSM on line. Most of the MSM on line reporters are not bloggers and are operating in walled gardens.

4) Don't be disappointed with a placement in the MSM on line version and persuade your client that in fact you may get more traction with this approach as first choice.

Here in Florida we're a bit behind the times, but some of the local media is adapting. With that, the issues above are somewhat less relevant for the smaller organizations that only focus on local Florida media.

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During a sleepless night Karen Russell of the University of Georgia - Grady College had a Jerry Maguire moment. She thought about how they were teaching PR and what could be done to improve it....then she wrote up a manifesto and e-mailed all the faculty. When looking at the PR curriculum Karen said:

It's virtually the same as it was 10 years ago, with the exception of an additional requirement for a research class.

Of course, individually we've changed the way we teach. Adding blogging, for instance, to the PR writing class is something I did for the first time last semester. But who says a PR writing class is necessary, or sufficient?

So I e-mailed a manifesto to my colleagues suggesting that we toss everything out and build a new curriculum from scratch.

I encourage you to visit Karen's Teaching PR blog and leave a comment. What do you think the PR curriculum of today and tomorrow should cover?

Earlier I blogged about how students were asking why they weren't learning about some of the new tools and trends.

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Over at FPRA Blog Week Bob O'Malley posted a great comment on Doreen's article: The Benefits of Volunteering. Bob said:

Every year, I tell graduating college seniors to take notice of which PR firms are represented at FPRA luncheons, events and committees, and which ones are not. I tell them that the ones that are not represented are not good places to work.

Take that quote and insert just about any industry/professional association. I also pay attention to things like this. When a new member joins a professional group and they are paying out of their own pocket (because their firm won't pay) I watch to see how long before they change employers.

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I guess you thought that the PepperRubel thing was an April Fool's Joke right? Guess again.

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Reading Steve's recent post about the future of newswire services such as PR Newswire and BusinessWire I can't help but think of Bob Wyman's recent post about edgeio and structured blogging. In his post Bob talks about how edgeio is differentiating itself from 'walled garden' services such as Craigslist by collecting public data and aggregating it.

This is very similar to what Steve was referring to, a new PR wire service that collects data from corporations and other sources and then aggregates/pushes it to end users. If users started tagging each release and pinging the appropriate server it could easily be done. But how is that different or any more difficult than what we can do now with Technorati or PubSub and a few good watchlists? It's not, that's the thing. If somebody would just focus some resources to made it dead-easy to use then they'd have something.

The big issue is trusting the source, we can't just have everybody issuing a corporate press release can we :-) Just ask Emulex about that. That technical issue should be a small hurdle though. The big hurdle is getting more journalists and newsrooms to use RSS.

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FPRA Blog Week kicked off yesterday with four articles from Florida PR professionals. Day 1 highlights include:

Roger Pynn's article relating Physics and Public Relations:

It seems more than a little humorous for me to write about any law of physics since I never took a course in it, but Newton’s 3rd Law of Physics is an important lesson for public relations practitioners. The law states simply: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Made a law of public relations, it would read: “For every action an organization takes, there will be an equal and opposite reaction.”

Some constituent, some public, some competitor, some one will react to what you do … and the responsibility of the public relations professional is to counsel and guide the organization to take those reactions into account before action is taken so the reactions to the eventual course of action will evoke the organization’s desired response.

Passion for customers. Integrity, innovation, commitment. Accountability to shareholders, partners, and employees for commitments, results and quality.

Statements like those are typical of the values U.S. businesses cite in their eclectic mix of mass communication vehicles, from annual reports to Internet sites to new employee orientation video presentations. The values companies espouse tend to have common themes such as integrity, adherence to honest practices, and respectful treatment of employees and external target publics.

Nevertheless, living up to those noble attributes in today’s global marketplace often is easier said than done to the point that ethical challenges emerge frequently.

Understanding the Millennial generation is key to educating them. At Rollins we have expended considerable effort to create a technologically rich, yet personally focused learning environment conducive to the needs of this “next great generation.” With their orientation toward achievement and the support of their elders, the Millennials have a tremendous future ahead. It’s our job to prepare them for it, and in our post-9/11 world, never has the breadth and focus of a liberal-arts education been so in need.

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Kaye Trammell mentions that she has completed a survey of public relations practitioners which included blogs and other new communication tools. She'll be presenting a number of studies and journal articles based upon this work, but she does provide us these initial highlights:

- Communication industry folks use blogs at a similar level to the nation overall (comparing our data with Pew numbers)

- Professional blog use is low across the board

- Journalists use blogs more frequently for day-to-day work than PR practititioners

- PR practitioners use blogs for strategic planning/tasks more often than jouranlists

- Both sets of professionals think a professional use of blogs should be taught to students

- All groups believe that blogging will increase over the next 5 years

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Just a quick reminder that FPRA Blog Week starts next Monday (April 10, 2006). We have a number of great posts written by members of the Orlando Area Chapter for the Florida Public Relations Association. I encourage all my PR focussed readers to check in at least once a day or subscribe to the FPRA Blog RSS feed. Of course if you just read the posts via RSS then you'll miss any commentary :-)

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While recently talking with a company I pointed out that when you did a Google search for their name that the 2nd/3rd/4th result (depending on the week) was a negative blog post about their organization. It's been there for almost a year. My showing them was the first time they had seen it. I didn't want to sound to dumbfounded but I really was shocked. How could they not see this for almost a year?

Everybody has done some level of ego-surfing, i.e. Googling your own name. But I see a Google 'self-lookup' to be even more crucial for organizations. If you've done a halfway decent job of constructing a web site your official site should come up as the first result, but what's second, third or fourth? It could be a newspaper article, blog post or a customer review. Is it positive or negative?

Perhaps as techies we're a bit too close to the issue and in our hyper-connected states we just assume people will Google their organizations. In meat space this would be like me putting up a negative billboard right next to your location and you not noticing it for months.

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Update: Looks like the partnership was over before it started. The site is gone :-(

In a move that has shocked just about everyone in the PR industry, long-time PR bloggers Steve Rubel and Jeremy Pepper have joined forces to form PepperRubel PR. Perhaps in a testament to their blogging roots, it was another blogger, me, that discovered their new venture.

It started this morning when I was looking over my blog stats (yes that's #4 on the list) when I noticed an inbound referral from the domain name PepperRubel.com. That of course caught my attention.

I checked out the web site and found nothing, just a blank page. Using an old web developer's trick I tried a few other addresses such as http://PepperRubel.com/default2.htm and http://PepperRubel.com/default2.asp. It was http://PepperRubel.com/index2.html that worked! On that page I found the logo and their tagline: We put the PR in PR.

I immediately contacted Steve and Jeremy to confirm what I saw. It seems that their longtime blog feud was a carefully crafted pr campaign that we all fell for.

Jeremy and Steve secretly met over a year and a half ago. From that meeting they hatched their plan to independently build their blogging reputations for the next 18 months. Taking a cue from professional wrestling, the two PR dynamos created an elaborate storyline to build the perception that they were arch-enemies. Steve played the hero while Jeremy assumed the role of the villian. The illusion of a bitter PR blog war would only heighten the buzz when they would eventually join forces.

Steve and Jeremy had planned to formally announce their new venture on Monday, April 3rd, but my discovery has forced them to move it to today.

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On Tuesday I attended the monthly luncheon meeting of IABC Atlanta featuring a presentation about the recent Brand Atlanta Campaign. Being an Orlando area boy, and with tourism such a major focus of the Central Florida area I was curious to see how Atlanta was coming together to market themselves.

Atlanta sees Orlando as one of their major competitors when it comes to conferences and basic tourism. With that each of the respective cities has their own image problem: Atlanta is seen as more business and less destination, while Orlando is more destination and less business. In Orlando organizations such as the OrlandoEDC and Florida High Tech Corridor Council are working to help change that perception. In Atlanta there is now Brand Atlanta.

Presenting were Bill Rheil and Hala Moddelmog. They reviewed the initial research they used to shape the campaign and discussed how they built a core group of stakeholders within the Metro Atlanta area. The stakeholders included local governments, chambers, CVBs and some of the larger corporations that are based in Atlanta. The eventual goal is to make Atlanta a premier destination city, not only for business, but travel.

As part of a phased roll-out the intial campaign targeted the residents of the area. They realized they needed to get the locals excited about the campaign, otherwise they were doomed. One of the major issues facing Atlanta is the separation between the ITP and OTP. The Interstate 285 beltway that surrounds Atlanta has created somewhat of a cultural barrier. You are either Inside the Perimeter (ITP) or Outside the Perimeter (OTP). It's amazing how many local residents don't venture across those bounds. The first step was to educate residents about the numerous activities, attractions and events that are available throughout the city. New attractions such as the Georgia Aquarium and shopping destinations such as Atlantic Station have helped pave the way, but there is so much more. And that's what they want to spread the word about.

One idea from the crowd was a 'Be a tourist in your home town' concept. Encourage local residents to get out and explore some areas that they may not normally visit. An additional $30 in spending at local attractions from residents would represent millions of dollars in additional revenue.

The next step in the campaign is to expand the marketing effort to cities within a three hour drive of Atlanta. Once again they want to educate people that a weekend trip to Atlanta is worth the drive. From there the campaign will expand nationally.

One research slide showed a dramatic perception gap between people that had visited Atlanta and those that had not. The was specifically evident for a general query about 'Things to do in Atlanta'. Once a person had visited Atlanta they realized that there were many 'Things to do'. During the question and answer period I asked a question about this stat. I asked what the campaign was doing to encourage those one-time visitors to help spread the word about Atlanta, especially since word of mouth and consumer generated content is such a powerful force in travel. As of this point they are not doing anything, which seems like they're missing a huge opportunity.

When I get back to Orlando I plan to talk more with some of my local contacts at the CVBs and EDCs to see how they perceive the ATL campaign. It will also be interesting to see if/how Brand Atlanta will begin to market themselves in the Central Florida area.

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We had our little blogger get together in Atlanta this evening. Good times, good people. The fine staff at The Grape didn't know what to make of our rowdy group, but it was a great venue. I took some photos but I now realize that I was always taking from one angle and thus missing half the crowd.

At our max we had 12 folks there, some bloggers, others interested in blogging. As is always said at functions like this, 'It's good to put a face with a blog.' Yes, some of the talk was blogs, but not to bring up a cliche....it was mostly conversation. It was people from different walks of life getting together and sharing a common interest. A major element though is people who realize that they can learn from others and in some ways try to instill that belief in the organizations they work with.

A big thanx to Toby, Teresa, Polly, Justin, Carol, Justin, Abigail (+ Tim), Dave, Scott and Julie for coming out 2nite.

We're already planning the next meetup.

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I often e-mail friends when I see something of interest about their company out on the web. The majority of the time it's either a positive/negative blog post or more recently a video on YouTube. The problem is that they are usually blocked from seeing this content by their corporate internet police.

I can understand some of the reasoning behind the filtering. Corporations don't want their staff hanging out on YouTube, LiveJournal or MySpace all day. However, in some cases those places are where customers are hanging out and talking. Blocking the staff from accessing this content just further builds up the walls around the corporate office, keeping them out of touch with the customer base. Nothing worse than hearing about that hilarious video that mocks your company, but not being able to view it.

In most cases my friends/clients will send a request to IT asking that the blocking be removed for this person or that office. Most of the time it's PR/marketing that needs access, but how about public/legislative affairs as well?

Shel Holtz has been a longtime critic of blocking or monitoring employee internet use. I agree with him. Hopefully more corporations will stop the practice or ease up on the filtering, there's a whole world out there that they're missing.

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As somewhat of a joke (although I do get serious at the very end) I've put together this PR Blogger Lifecycle, or the steps that new PR bloggers go thru. This isn't an original idea by any stretch of the imagination. If you haven't read Min Jung Kim's Lifecycle of Bloggers you might want to start there.

I look over some of them and say, "yep, in May of 2005, I was at step 4." Where are you on the scale? The true PR blog masters just start at Step 7.

1. What's a Blog? You don't know what a blog is, but everybody you know has one. Your initiative is part peer pressure, part curiosity. But you're cheap and even though everybody says don't go with Blogger you can't see yourself paying a few bucks a month for TypePad. After all you sent your resume out on loose-leaf paper and that got you a job in PR.

2. First Post: The first foray is awkward at first, but you soon get the hang of it. You realize that this blog thing can be a great self-promotional tool and hey you're in PR so you can do this. However your blog content is more meta than meat since you think that there is no way you can truly add to the deep discussions going on (joking here). Your style is point-to and agree with.

3. You Love Steve: Steve Rubel get's knocked a bit, but he is one of the most recognized bloggers in the PR/Marketing space. As such he's one of the first people you add to your RSS reader. The RSS reader, as you've just learned, is the must-have piece of software. In order to get recognized by Steve you comment and link away. Steve's a genius, he can do no wrong....oh look, he just linked to me, I've made it!

4. Stats Watching: How many people are reading my blog?...Look at all the traffic from Steve's link. You make your blog stats your default homepage. You worry about post-volume. Look, if I mention other bloggers they'll link to me! It goes on and on. You create blog posts that specifically appeal to the ego of other bloggers.

5. Rank Matters: Stats obsession turns to rank obsession. Dammit Technorati hasn't updated my link count in a week! You check the PubSub PR list ever day to monitor your progress, but you just can't get past that MicroPersuasion blog. Hey look, posting photos of my cute kids got me to the top of the list!!!! Your blog becomes more about building links and rank than it does providing content to your readers.

6. You Hate Steve: You say to yourself, I know more about X than this Rubel guy, how come he gets all the links/interviews/traffic/etc...So instead of commenting and praising Steve you snark and challenge. Soon you find that criticism also builds traffic.

7. Finding the Zone: An inner peace soon settles upon your blog. You say to hell with everybody else and write what you want to write. You don't follow memes and you don't post to get traffic. You post what you want to post. Readers appreciate this, in many cases it's why they started to read you in the first place. You were a fresh voice, but the previous steps marginalized this.

8. You Accept Steve (and everybody else): Sometime you agree with Mr. Rubel, other times you disagree, but that's what's great about the blogosphere, you can have a debate and sometimes we all learn something in the process.

9. Relationships: You continue to build relationships with other bloggers and they become some of your best friends and colleagues. If you have a question or a client issue they can help solve it. When you attend conferences and finally meet them in person it's like you've known each other for years, because you have.

10. Starting Over (Goodbye Blogger/TypePad): In the ultimate act of penance for your earlier Rank-Chasing misdeeds you start all over again. Many times it's because you've outgrown Blogger or TypePad, or you've changed jobs, or you just want a fresh start.

With a new blog you start from scratch. No links, no rank, but it doesn't matter because all your friends help you move. In the end you'd much rather have those relationships with friends than links or visitors or PageRank.

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So did anything exciting happen in the PR blogosphere this weekend?

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Is there anybody that cares more about their rank in the blogosphere than Scott? Step away from the keyboard and go outside, there is more to life than rank. Scott's at Step 5 in the life cycle of a PR blogger. What's the life cycle of a PR blogger? Working on that post right now....it will be up by Monday :-)

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I'm a little late in posting this (sorry Erin) but a group of college students that are showing way more drive and initiative than I had at their age have created a new blog/resource called Forward-Moving. The site bills itself as:

the online springboard for new and upcoming PR professionals.

Our goal is to provide insight, answers and information to sharpen your perspective and help you go Forward in your career.

Perhaps as a side project we can track the career paths of the contributors, since they are all sure to be moving-up in the world.

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I've recently been talking with a potential client about blogs. It's an amazing place with a deep, rich history (before any of use were born). The people who work there do so because they love it and feel connected to it. When talking with one individual about blogging this was a comment:

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a techie, propeller head, etc. But I do have a passion for this place and a desire for as many people as possible to visit it.

Doing some quick blog searches reveals that the majority of the bloggers that post about it share that passion. It's almost a dream client.

We'll see what develops and I'll post updates on our progress. When we get to the right point I'll tell you all about them and will be asking for some input on what you think are some good ideas and concepts for them to implement.

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The blog world is full of businesses that have jumped in with both feet, without knowing how deep the pool is. The majority of the time the mistakes are etiquette issues or just a general lack of knowledge in the space. Before you start to write a blog to promote your business here are just a few questions you need to answer/know. (perhaps these are a corollary to Jeremiah's list)

1. How long have you been reading blogs?

I don't know how many times I've said this, if you want to start a blog, start by reading other blogs first. The best answer for this question is 2-3 weeks at least. Reading blogs gives you an understanding of the tone and nature of the blogosphere. You'll also quickly learn what blogs are the authorities on certain subjects, which leads to...

2. Name the top five blogs in your industry/vertical?

I posed this question to a client today, they didn't have an answer, not good. Blogs are a conversation (getting tired of that line yet?), interaction with your readers and with other blogs is part of that dynamic. Knowing who are the key influencers and bloggers is absolutely necessary, which leads to...

3. Who writes them?

Relationships are key. You can't establish a relationship with a blog though. It's great that you know that blog X is the most influential blog in your segment but you need to know who writes it. Establish a dialog with that person. A good first start is via blog comments. But don't comment for the sake of commenting (that one's for Jeremy). Add something substantial to the conversation. By participating in the conversation you establish a relationship with the blogger, which leads to...

4. Do those five people know who you are?

If you need to communicate directly with a blogger will they immediately recognize your name on an incoming e-mail? You know how it works, in the mass of e-mail you receive you'll look at things from friends or contacts first. Having an established relationship helps with this. When you finally launch your blog and you want to 'get the word out' being able to reach out to your friends is very helpful. Case in point, the recent FPRA Blog Week event. Once we launched the blog I e-mailed a few friends and asked them to take a look and blog about it if they could. Quite a few of them have, traffic and awareness is building.

From here we can get into some of the planning and best practices for developing a blog, but that's for another day.

Update: Over at Talkshop Alexandra has some more thoughts about the planning of a business blog.

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The Orlando Area Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association will be holding FPRA Blog Week from April 10-14, 2006 over at FPRAblog.com.

The online event is similar in concept to Global PR Blog week, but with the 'Florida' edition all the authors are members of the Florida Public Relations Association. In addition the majority of the content will focus on traditional public relations rather than blogs. You can review the full schedule at the blog.

We are encouraging members of the PR blogosphere to subscribe to the FPRAblog RSS feed and come to the blog between April 10-14 to participate in the online conversation.

We're also asking that you tag any relevant posts: fprabw or fpra. Then you can follow all the blog discussions here.

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Salespeople everywhere, do you want to have happy, loyal customers? Find out what your customer needs and then give them a solution that fits that need - not one that offers you the greatest commission.

Sounds simple doesn't it? Sadly it's never that easy though. Case in point, my in-laws recent cellphone shopping experiences.

They rarely use their mobiles. Their usage over the past few months have been a total of 7 minutes. Paying a monthly contract with X number of minutes is a waste of money. In advance we did some online shopping and figured that one of the pre-paid plans offered by a major carrier would probably work best. Next they visited two of the bigger carriers to compare deals and equipment.

Store 1: Pre-paid, no problem - phones cost $40 each and then you prepay $20 for airtime and that would cover them for a year. Total cost approx, $120/year (including the cost of the phones) for both of them.

Store 2: Pre-paid, you don't want that - suggestion is the base monthly contract ($70/month with taxes for both phones). Total cost approx. $840/year (not including the cost of the phones).

Which salesperson listened to their needs and gave them a solution that fit their needs? First correct answer gets a cookie.

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Tomorrow I'll be speaking to a joint meeting of the local AdFed and Florida Public Relations Association clubs. The overall focus of the session will be conversation and interaction with your customers (not just blogs).

Another one of the topics will be the blurring line between advertising and public relations. One case in point is Word of Mouth (WOM). What are your thoughts? Are some advertising campaigns becoming PR campaigns?

The session is being held at the Lakeland Center from 11:30 a.m. till 1 p.m. Come on by if you're in the Central Florida area, but you don't need to make a special trip :-)

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Yep I used the word...transparency. During last week's NewComm Forum I brought up this point to the journalism panel of J.D. Lasica, Tom Foremski, Dan Farber and Tom Abate. The questions was when will we ever see 'true' transparency among journalists?

In the wake of the Wal-Mart/Blog scandal Mike Krempasky posted something along these same lines (Mike works for Edelman and handles the Wal-Mart account). In response to the call for bloggers to be more transparent Mike said this:

Sounds great. Can’t wait to see the following:

• Traditional news publications and outlets launching websites to document all the “background conversations” they have with sources with a perspective or agenda.
• Same traditional news publications and outlets posting telephone logs involving stories they print
• PR firms posting times, dates, locations, even transcripts of ed board meetings or salon dinners.

Too many people use the word transparency when it only serves their interests and are only transparent to a degree.

You can read my previous thoughts about this topic: Transparency, How Far Do We Go?

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Last night I turned on a new blog design for Going Social, a blog written by Chris Perry of Weber Shandwick. It was a simple re-skin of a SquareSpace blog.

I have a few other things in the works now, some are simple design updates, others are full-fledged blog development projects. One upcoming project is a design update for the China Law Blog.

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For those of you that want to ignore my earlier advice about how to pitch bloggers, I've created a quick and easy way to submit your pitch. Click on the button below and your pitch will be instantly sent to me. Why the button? Well during a panel at NewComm Fourm DL Byron mentioned that some PR people had asked him, "Where is the submit to this blog button?" Seeing this obvious need I created one.

Other bloggers, feel free to include this handy button on your site. It will make all of our lives much easier.

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One of the discussions during a panel at last week's NewComm Forum was standard "How to Pitch Bloggers?". Here is my answer:

Send Something of Interest to Somebody You Know

What's the most important part of that statement? It's Somebody You Know. Pitching bloggers is all about established relationships. In the rare times that I have e-mailed or IM'd a fellow blogger in hopes that something would be picked up I always dealt with somebody I knew. The depth of the relationship varied, but ultimately the person at the other end of the 'pitch' knew who I was. How is that? I read their blog, I commented on their blog...at some point we had exchanged comments/ideas about something they were interested in.

The most effective form of communication is instant messaging. Using IM goes back to relationships, how did I get on that person's IM list? I built a relationship with them.

In the rare case that you're going to send something to a blogger you've never talked to, make sure to make the contact as personal as possible (read: not a form letter) otherwise you'll end up here. Rule #1 is to read the blog and check to see if they've mentioned anything similar in the past.

If you expect bloggers to take the time to read/review/blog about your product you should also spend time to learn about them.

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If you are involved with public relations and either blog or work within the social media space I urge you to seek out your local colleges and universities and offer to work with students. This can be as simple as providing a guest lecture or working closely with a professor to develop a curriculum.

I recently posted about my experiences with students at the University of Florida, specifically how many of them are not learning about the new social media landscape. During New Communications Forum I talked with a few other PR bloggers about their involvement with students at colleges and universities in their area. Some had made the effort, others wished they could.

I find my time with students to be tremendously rewarding, it helps connect you with a different perspective and at 33 that's sometimes scary. The best solution is to spend at least a day or two on campus. Speak to the PR/Marcom students and then spend some time with the journalism classes.

Any college or university in the Southeast give me a call or e-mail.

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Big congratulations to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson the great guys behind the For Immediate Release podcast. It was announced yesterday that they have signed a deal with McGraw-Hill to write a book about podcasting. In one of those small-world moments I found out that their agent was Yvonne Divita, who I met earlier this year at WOMBAT. Below is a photo of Shel and Neville recording FIR #116 at New Communications Forum (photo is from Jeremiah Owyang's photostream).

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Blogging is about loving what you do and sharing that. It's not about making money or lists or rank.

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CMO's, marketing people....your job is to find out what people want.

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"Building a successful social network requires ceding control."

"Social computing puts the power in the communities and not the institutions. The focus is not the technology it's the community. Everybody is excited about the technology since we're geeks, but it's the community."

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I'm sitting at a table this morning with David Parmet, Mike Manuel, Shel Israel, Jeremy Pepper and Brian Oberkirch recording a podcast/conversation about public relations and social media. Interesting discussion.

Update The podcast is up!

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Over at Daily Blog there is an interesting review of the AFL-CIO blog, the comments are interesting as well.

The space the AFL-CIO created that it labels "blog" appears to me to be no different than the rest of the site: it's simply offering information (which is fine) but it prevents debate--a long-time hallmark of the AFL-CIO's culture that pre-dates the Sweeney Administration. No one can post comments. You're simply asked to absorb more propoganda and be interested in a one-way conversation.

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New Communications Forum kicks off today in Palo Alto, CA. As a Florida boy, I made sure that everybody was drinking orange juice during breakfast. I'll be posting photos over a Flickr when I get the chance. This highlight below is Neville Hobson, notice the hand flip.

Phil Gomes also has a photoset over at Flickr.

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I always enjoy speaking to students at universities. Wednesday night I spoke to the PRSSA chapter at the University of Florida (you can watch the webcast here). The number one comment/question when speaking one-on-one afterwards with the students was, "How come they don't teach us any of this?" There are a few programs that do (Auburn and Robert French come to mind), but the overwhelming majority don't.

That's something that we need to work on.

Over the past year I have been able to speak to students at: Auburn, Florida State University, LSU and the University of Florida. This spring semester will see return trips to FSU and Auburn and now that the University of Georgia has hired Kaye Trammell I'll be making frequent stops there.

I encourage other PR bloggers to make an effort to speak at universities and colleges in your area, spreading the word needs to be done offline as well.

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Next week I will be in Gainesville, FL for three days (Feb 21-23). It will be the first extended stay I've had in the area since I attended the University of Florida. The main purpose of my trip is a presentation to the Public Relations Student Society of America - University of Florida Alpha Chapter on Wednesday night.

The rest of the trip features some meetings with UF and a few other groups. If you're in G-ville and want to meet-up send me an e-mail.

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Steve Rubel is moving over to Edelman, Jeremy Pepper was hired by Weber Shandwick...all kinds of interesting changes over the past few weeks.

Now who will hire Josh Hallett? :-)

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Whole Foods, the supermarket chain that seems to do no wrong has some stale food on the shelf. Last September Whole Foods CEO John Mackey launched a blog with an initial post about corporate responsibility. The first post was a reprint of an article in Reason magazine, so it wasn't very original. John then gave it another shot in October with yet another reprint, this time an interview with Sunni's Salon magazine. And then that's it, no other posts.

Time to rotate stock.

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"Do you speak blog?" That's a statement I often make when speaking about blogs. To preface it, I'll do a quick blog search for a topic about a particular industry. I point out the list of blogs and bloggers that are talking about that subject (sometimes it's hundreds or thousands). Next I turn back to the audience and say here are people talking about you or your shared interests, they'd love to talk to you, but, "Do you speak blog?"

One of the few ways you can communicate with bloggers is via blogs. Sending an e-mail out of the blue can sometimes backfire. I realize there is no 'official' blog language and it can sound slightly elitist, but there is blog etiquette. For corporations, speaking blog is a difficult thing. It's especially difficult for organizations that have never really talked to their customers.

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Last week I was at a client meeting, during my presentation I asked, "So when are you planning to launch X?" I received a quick response from a few members of the audience, "How do you know about X?" How do you think?

I pulled up a few blog posts that were talking about the launch of this new product. This of course shocked the client, but it happens all the time. In preparation for my meeting I had been monitoring the company name via watchlists in: PubSub, Technorati and Google News.

One new element that is appearing in my watchlists are job listings from Monster.com. Now I know what new markets they are expanding into..."Why are you hiring an account rep in X city?"

Need any more reasons to start using RSS to monitor your company/brand/client/competitor names? Many moons ago I wrote up this guide to media monitoring via RSS. It's badly in need up an update (on the to-do list), but the general information holds true.

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Andrea Weckerle recently hit 99 posts on her blog. Congrats.

With this post I am at 992, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that when I look back at those first 99 posts I think, "Boy I didn't know what I was doing." Andrea's blog is good at 99, just imagine what it will be like at 999?

You learn by doing.

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"Who are these people and why should I care?"

I've heard this exact statement a few times and slight variations on a number of other occasions. Who said it? I'm not going to name any specifics but the ranks include public relations practitioners, news media, corporate officials, etc. It's the off-hand response to blogs and bloggers and it infuriates me. It's so elitist and anti-social. In meatspace it would be the equivalent of your staff telling a customer to piss-off. People, by nature fear or dismiss what they don't understand and blogs are something that many folks don't understand.

The common perception is based upon how the media portrays blogs. To many, blogs are: hard-left or hard-right politicos screaming, pajama-wearing character assassination or disgruntled customer looking to destroy a brand. Yes that does go on, but it's unfair to characterize the entire blogosphere as such.

These 'people' might have criticism of your company, but what can you learn from it? Is it an operational issue? Is it a perception issue? If yes, then go fix it. Or are you just wrong and don't want to admit it? In many cases these 'people' might have some great ideas.

You might not care what these 'people' have to say, but other people do. Namely your customers. Do a Google search for your company name. Of course you should be first, but what else is on that page? What's the second, third, or perhaps the ninth link? I don't want to get all 'Cluetrain' here, but people have been conditioned to think that anything your company writes about itself is marketing spin. They'll pass right over it and move on to the word from real people.

Growing up in a smaller town you soon learn that somebody is always related to/is friends/knows/works with somebody you know. Blogs expand that to a global scale. Your local blogging initiative just might involve exchanging comments with somebody 3000 miles away.

Who are these people? In the end these people are - you, me, your mom, your friend from elementary school you haven't seen in 30 years, or the old guy you see every morning on the way to work.

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