Somewhat towards this end, several nice reports have come out recently on the influence of bloggers and company social media. Brodeur, Arketi and Bulldog Reporter/TEK Group.

However, I would love to see some direct feedback from the media (traditional and non-traditional journalists) as to their preferences in how they receive company news. I put together this survey rather than waiting for my agency, or another to ask some straight forward questions.

Please help me by forwarding the survey link to you media contacts. Of course, I will share the data and report with all those who help out. Why not present the data right then online? One, I do not want to skew the results. More because I am running this on the cheap and not using something like SurveyMonkey that automatically tabulates and presents results.

Here we go….

[survey_fly]

Help me reach my goal!

Amnesty International appears to have taken another appraoch.  They are partnering with  a Working Assests to provide co-branded service — Amnesty Wireless.  Amnesty International then recives 10% of charges without addtional overhead.  This is certainly a more creative model.  It will be interesting to see how many people actually sign up for the service powered by the Nationwide Sprint PCS Network. 

In any case, this is probably the start of a trend in this saturated commodity market for cell phone services to enable affinity programs similar to those we find with credit cards.

Gizmodo Article

Gizmodo Article 

Moderator:

• John Cass, Society for New Communications Research, PR Communications,

Panelists:

• Todd Defren, Shift Communications, PR Squared

• Paul Gillin, Social Media and the Open Enterprise

• Todd van Hoosear, Topaz Partners, Tech PR Gems

The focus of this evening’s event was how social media may be utilized or addressed by the PR field.  It certainly became clear right away that this group of attendees was highly interested in the entire subject because social media is already seen not as becoming a legitimate practice but is already an established requirement for public relations.  The issue is then not one of acceptance, but is instead an issue of PR training and practices.  PR training and experience have been focused on communications with a limited pool of contacts.  The mainstay of these communications has been the press release and its distribution to journalists and the secondary access to the release by the public.  Now, the public relations field is being faced with the fact that they must take the lead in two-way communications with a much larger set of participants.  Social media is really putting “public relations” back into PR.  Customer service, marketing, product design is all being packaged into social media and PR is at the forefront of this change.  It is now a matter of how quickly the PR industry can adapt. As Paul Gillin pointed out, the mechanics of influence of personal publishing have existed since we have had BBS’s and the start of the Web.  The difference now with social media and blogging is that it is so simple.  As Paul is sure to delve into greater depth in his soon to released book, PR once had 50 journalists that mattered, and then with the first onset of the Web maybe another 100.  This was still a manageable number of one-on-one conversations.  Now in the Web 2.0 world it is nearly impossible to maintain as close relationships with the hundreds if not thousands of influencers who matter.  Since we cannot talk one-on-one with each these “New Influencers” (Paul’s title) it is important that we enable their conversations with easy access to clear and transparent information straight from the source. An interesting point in breaking out of the traditional PR mindset was raised by Todd Van Hoosear.  Todd point out it is not about “audiences” anymore. He defined audiences are a Web 1.0 term to enable us to classify people into buckets.  Instead we should be talking about engaging people and stop the PR command and control model where we do everything we can along the chain to manage the message.  Instead the new PR emphasis should be to start the message and then participate in the conversations.  It is this involvement, rather than control, to lead to influence.  

Make Your Site More Effective for Social Media and Bloggers 

Beginning to get your readers involved can be straightforward but begins with the hardest step of all – your acceptance of a view that encourages reuse of your message and materials. Rather, than trying to control every person who uses your imagery, releases, audio and video, make it easy for them to spread the word on your behalf.  No doubt, some of the uses of this material may disturb you.  Think instead of these as opportunities to participate in a conversation and to integrate feedback throughout your organization. Get started with:  

1. Optimize for search engines (Google and Yahoo)
2. Move from a strictly informational model to one where you provide useful content/materialsa.      And the traditional press release does not fit the mold for the new model. Instead choose a vehicle where all the assets you want to provide are available immediately to all parties. 

SMPR

There has been a lot of online discussion on the social media press release. It was interesting that this evening’s audience was very acceptant almost as fact that the traditional press release is inadequate to the task for media relations in the Web 2.0 world.   

Even without the format of the SMPR the suggestion was made to “spice up” and improve the releases by simply reading the releases and turning them into podcasts. Such simple audio file provides materials for podcasters and other uses.  Why do this now? Because according to a recent PEW Internet study 12% of internet users state they listen to podcasts.  This means that podcasts are being adopted quickly.  This is especially true for the consumer electronics, entertainment and other high tech fields. The social media press release was presented to fulfill the following points to compliment traditional media efforts with the ability to provide the content and materials to those thousands of new journalists who you could never directly contact yet who are going to talk about you no matter what you do.   This format aims to:

• Ensure accuracy
• Democratize access
• Embrace context
• Build community
• Be findable

For more information on the SMPR just go to Technorati and search on ”social media press release” and I will post related links shortly. 

Conversation Progression 

As the event moved to questions, the topic of control was reopened. Todd van Hooser reinforced that you can never control a conversation, but you can enable people to be more likely to use your information if it is readily available.  If not, then they will create their own messages.  Todd outlined a nice progression for these conversations:

1. Listen (monitor) – read what is being said but do not respond.
2. Join conversations – Simply state you are here as a resource should someone desire to have your opinion.  Do not hide who you are and NEVER lie. (Nothing new here – this is what PR folks have always done).
3. Start or create conversations and communities – This can be on another site or your own and do not have to be formal.  Often the informal conversations are the best.
4. Optimize visibility – Now that you have a willing group of participants ask them to spread the word for you while you continue to make it easy for others to participate. 

Blog Entries

As the evening ended, some of the last questions focused on blog content.  It was interesting that all the panelists agreed that a company staff member should author all of its own blog posts.  This was stressed so that transparency is maintained while providing details and authenticity available only from a staff member.  I and others found this extremely interesting for a PR audience.  PR is founded on partnerships to assist in the authoring of message and conversations.  I have found myself and my colleagues to at times be more transparent, knowledgeable and tied to a client’s mission than those who hire me. I think that indeed when properly integrated PR professionals can in fact represent the company and provide blogging services.  Yes, transparency must be maintained.  Then not only can we adapt to the needs of social media and blogging, but we must as PR professionals grow into this model to support our clients who will otherwise never participate in conversations – let alone start them. 

Further links:

• Check out another attendee’s take on this event on Over the River.

So, a few months back I picked up some no name brand Trac II cartridges. At less than $0.25 per cartidge this works out to be a deal. Of course, when I looked I found I had thrown out those three or four Trac II handles I had been holding onto. Then no matter what store I went to I could not find a handle. They are not even for sale on the P&G store. They are clearly off the market to prevent what I am attempting to do.

Finally, I found a handle now marketed under specialty packaging for “African-amercan sensitive skin.” The blades are some strange design, but the handle matches that for the Trac II blade.

End result — the Trac II actually provdes a closer and smooter shave than the three balde Sensor Excel. Not only am I getting a better shave, but I am saving some $50 a year. Not much you say, but it is enough to pay for my Web hosting.

Source Article from CNET