Monthly Archives: February 2010

Why I’ve quit reading “social media blogs”

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I’ve spent the last year and a half reading and learning as much about social media as possible, going from a complete n00b with barely a Facebook profile to a recovering social media addict. I ravenously consumed blog posts about PR, communications and social media. But after awhile, a lot of the information begins to feel repetitive (and derivative). I get it at this point – it’s “about the conversation” and “engaging with people” and “being transparent.”

My reading habits have changed over the last month or so. I’m no longer looking for basic social media information or more social media Kool-Aid and so I’ve purged my Google Reader of feeds I haven’t been getting much value from. I’m reading fewer and fewer personal or individual PR bloggers and instead gleaning more insight from collaborative blogs or blogs at major media outlets. My goal is less about the nuts-and-bolts or “how to” of social media and PR 2.0 and more about understanding the big picture — trends and successes in media, social networking, and the Web, and looking at how all of it impacts the way we will continue to consume news and information.

Some blogs will always have a revered spot in my reader, because I’m always finding value and new ideas from them. However, a lot of what I’m reading now isn’t even necessarily PR-focused. I’m always open to discovering a post on someone’s blog that showcases great thinking or a new idea, and I still stumble across some of those via Twitter. But I’m being more discerning about which feeds make it into my RSS reader.

Here’s what’s been recently added to my reader or what I’ve refocused on lately:

Media Industry and Trends

Hyperlocal News

Social Media and PR 2.0 in Practice

Business and Technology Insight

It’s a lot of content, which wreaks havoc on my previous system of organizing Google Reader. I’m much better now about scanning headlines, using the “sort by magic” feature to see the best posts, and not agonizing anymore about trying to get to everything.

What sites are you finding value in these days? Share in the comments.

The social media release is not a PR panacea

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In the first few weeks of my new job at readMedia, I’ve been learning tons about the role press releases play in our clients’ local media relations strategies. Although many PR and media bloggers have decried the death of the press release in favor of new tactics like the social media release, from what I’ve seen so far those claims are quite premature.

All the discussion about social media releases seems to come from the perspective of big brands launching new products and trying to get feature coverage. It was no different when I was reading Putting the Public Back in Public Relations. From Chapter 8:

Most news releases are driven by product development, which can cause an inward and narrowly focused view from life inside the company.

But thousands of PR and communications professionals just don’t work in this kind of environment. Many of them work for organizations whose activities form the basis of bread-and-butter local news stories: non-profits, schools, governments, small businesses. (A recent Pew Research Center study found that three-quarters of local news is triggered by government and schools.) The PR strategy at these organizations isn’t focused on trying to get consumers or B2B customers to buy their product and thus aren’t putting out the kind of releases that PPBPR (rightfully) lambastes:

Company X Launches World’s First, Industry-Leading, Innovative Thingamabob That Will Change Our Lives for the Better

The news these organizations are making is the kind of news that likely used to be covered by a local newspaper or TV beat reporter: the results of a state agency investigation or the growth of a local college. But as newsroom resources dwindle, local journalists are relying more on well-crafted press releases to alert them to and help them tell stories. And we all know that often press releases are given a quick copy edit (or not) and reprinted, sometimes in their entirety, as news.

Where the SMR falls short

What the social media release encourages is “atomizing” content into bite-sized pieces so that bloggers and journalists can reassemble it. This may work for a journalist at Fortune or a blogger at Engadget who wants to dig into a trend or review a product, but a city desk reporter at a local daily or the publisher of a suburban weekly often just wants solid, relevant content they can quickly post or publish. They don’t want to have to piece together a story from bullet points, quotes, images and video.

I’m not knocking the concept of a social media release, entirely. I hold great respect for Todd Defren and Shel Holtz and others in the PR profession who’ve developed and worked to refine the concept. I absolutely think many components of SMRs are vital for PR pros to adopt: making sure releases are posted online for purposes of public viewing, search indexing and social network sharing; enhancing stories with multimedia content when appropriate and available; and providing links to additional resources are all important ways to augment a story.

But I just don’t think an SMR is the best approach for every organization – especially locally-focused ones. A lot of the hype about the SMR seems to be built around using it as a tool for news like product or campaign launches (like the Crayon/Coca-Cola example cited in PPBPR). That’s a very narrow slice of PR.

While the SMR isn’t necessarily supposed to be a replacement for traditional releases, there’s still a lot of argument about which is better and which will “win out.” The SMR may eventually become the superior choice for communicating certain types of news, but I still think it has a long way to go before unseating the traditional press release (enhanced for the digital age, of course) as a source of local news content.

My take on ‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations’

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I’m not usually one to read business books. I got really burned out on them during grad school and would much rather spend my free time devouring a good novel. I paid little attention to the swath of social media tomes that hit the shelves in 2009. I felt like there were probably a few of those books I should be reading, but figuring out which were worth it and which were not seemed daunting. Especially when every review of each new social media book seemed rosy and glowing.

I happened to read Bill Sledzik’s less-than-glowing review of Brian Solis’ and Dierdre Breakenridge’s Putting the Public Back in Public Relations on his blog last fall. I left a brief comment thanking Bill for his honest assessment and for saving me time and money from buying the book. Within the day, Brian Solis sent me a DM on Twitter telling me he disagreed with Bill’s review and offered to send me a free copy of the book so I could decide for myself. He did, and I did.

My verdict? Honestly, it’s not too far off from Bill’s original review. I wouldn’t recommend PPBPR.

Why I can’t get behind PPBPR

I usually plow through books in one sitting, no matter the author or genre. Despite carrying PPBPR with me on planes, trains and automobiles throughout the holiday season and beyond, it took me forever to get through the book. PPBPR takes 300 pages to say what probably could have been conveyed in half that (length was also one of Bill’s complaints).

It’s repetitive. A lot of the passages are long and general and rehash discussions that have already happened on countless blogs over the past few years. The book reprints several blog posts in their entirety and I had a few déjà vu moments where I realized I had read those passages months (or even years) before when they had been originally published. For any PR practitioner who’s been even marginally keeping an eye on the changes to our profession or read blogs like Todd Defren’s or Dave Fleet’s or even Brian’s blog, PPBPR will feel a bit stale.

To be fair, Brian claimed in comments on Bill’s post that the book was written for PR professionals who haven’t been paying attention. But I don’t feel as though PPBPR would give those practitioners a strong sense of direction and tactics to walk away with; the book felt unfocused and lacked solid case studies to give professionals an idea of where to start, what’s been done, what’s worked, and what hasn’t. The few case studies it does mention are overdone: Comcast, Southwest, Zappos.

The tactics and tips that the book does offer are heavily focused on media relations for larger, consumer-facing companies. A lot of communicators simply don’t work in this kind of environment. I felt the book was light on actionable advice that could be implemented by someone running communications for a small nonprofit or a B2B manufacturing company or someone who works in employee communications. Part II, the tactical part of the book, is limited to blogger relations, social media releases (which I’ll expound upon in another post this week), video news releases and corporate blogging.

What to read instead

I’d much sooner recommend Groundswell to social media newbies than PPBPR. I think that book offers a more concrete approach to understanding the way people are using social media and how to begin to think about implementing (and integrating) social media into business operations. It also does so without relying on a lot of derivative content (like other people’s blog posts) and offers stronger examples and case studies.

I truly appreciate the that Brian was willing to reach out to me and send me the book –  it shows he is walking the walk by monitoring his brand and engaging with the people who are talking about him. I was really hoping that I’d find the book more useful, but ended up struggling to get through it and not finding a lot of value. It just didn’t work for me.

Writing a book on social media is a difficult undertaking since the tools and tactics are constantly changing. That’s the primary reason I’d rather rely on blogs and the Web for information and discussion on how these technologies are evolving and affecting communications. I’ll save the space on my bookshelf for Austen, Coelho and Chabon.

While I was skiing: The 10-day media lowdown

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I was on vacation last week and then had a quick family trip home, so I missed out on a whirlwind week of media news. Perhaps that’s why it’s been hard for me to get back into the swing of blogging this week: I feel as though everything has been discussed to death. I’ve also barely made a dent in my Google Reader (the “mark all as read” button is looking more tempting each day).

Here’s what the rest of the media-obsessed world was focused on while I was on the slopes, and what those conversations looked like to a relatively disengaged observer:

Super Bowl

More specifically, Super Bowl commercials. I still have only seen a handful of them. It seemed there was more news before the Super Bowl about who wasn’t advertising (Pepsi) and whether that was “risky” or not. From passively scanning my Twitter stream, the Google ad seemed to be a hit. The Tim Tebow ad generated controversy primarily for not being as controversial as many thought it would. I saw a lot of chatter about the lack of pants in a few ads (hmm…). Overall, it didn’t seem that people were too jazzed about the commercials this year, which this Huffington Post article seems to concur with.

Google Buzz

Goodness were people ever up in arms about Google Buzz! From a few brief checks of Twitter you’d think the Interwebs were under siege from Palo Alto. The main issues I saw people frustrated with were privacy issues, the lack of filtering/overabundance of information, and the muddling of GMail with other social outposts. So many people rained on the Google Buzz parade so heartily that by the time I got back home and had the option to check it out or “turn it on”, I didn’t even bother. I may revisit in a few weeks to see if I have any use for it (thought based on my comatose use of Google Wave so far, I’m not sure it’s the ticket for me).

The Olympics

Consensus: NBC totally sucks at covering them. NBC is refusing to broadcast events live in hopes of forcing people to watch taped segments during primetime to please advertisers. That leaves Twitter, blogs, and countless other Web sites to act as spoilers during the afternoon. Not only is the coverage bad, it’s late and it’s old news when it airs. ComputerWorld had one of the better pieces on why NBC is “against the Internet” in terms of Olympic coverage.  I’ve missed almost all the coverage so far.

I did see a lot of disgust and surprise from those I follow on Twitter that networks would (repeatedly) show graphic footage of the Georgian luge athlete’s fatal crash. I share the disgust, but not the surprise. Sensationalism rules TV news these days, and just as we saw graphic and tragic images from the Haiti earthquake, it was inevitable that news channels would broadcast this video. I don’t think they needed to do it as frequently or callously (apparently CBS showed the crash in slow motion), however. Other Olympic story lines I passively observed: Whales (but not fail whales?) were the highlight of the Opening Ceremonies. The weather in Vancouver is abysmal. Shaun White needs a haircut.

Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines

I watched the initial Twitter outrage against Southwest Airlines for how they grievously wronged director/actor Kevin Smith, and then saw the negative sentiment gradually shift toward Smith himself as he continued to berate the airline after they had pretty openly addressed the issue and made apologies via their blog and other channels. Some, like Sonny Gill, even seemed to think that Smith was bullying or antagonizing Southwest.

It would have been very interesting to see how this would have played out differently had it been Delta (the airline that lost my luggage twice on my vacation and caused me to spend a less-than-glamorous evening in a Romulus, Mich. Best Western instead of a Utah ski house) or American or United. Those airlines certainly don’t have the customer loyalty or goodwill that Southwest has built up. I think much of the reason SWA will be able to weather this is that they’ve taken the time to build a positive reputation among customers who are perhaps going to be a little more forgiving of this incident. I liked Adam Kmiec’s dissection of the situation and Southwest’s response.

So, that’s what the Web world looked like to me over the last 10 days as I scanned Twitter and Facebook and blogs here and there to try and remain somewhat connected. What else did I miss?

Beyond the Facebook Status Update: SMBTV #5

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If you’re a brand trying to market to customers on Facebook, how do you cut through all the noise and reach your audience? What can you do to engage people through the medium, beyond just having them fan your page? Atlanta-based social media strategist Brad Ruffkess tackled these questions this morning at the fifth Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley.

Brad shared some interesting data points about Facebook:

  • Brad Ruffkess SMBTV The average user fans two pages a month on Facebook
  • Facebook approximates 30 billion page views per month
  • Gaming in social media is huge. Farmville has more users than Twitter
  • Facebook’s self-service ads drive $200 million in revenue

He shared some interesting ways brands are using Facebook: Adidas’ Star Wars campaign that integrates Google Maps and a Facebook user’s location to “blow up” their city with a blast from the Death Star. Canada’s CTV broadcast network integrated the Olympic Torch Relay live video stream with Facebook Connect to allow viewers to post status updates about watching the relay live.

Brad left plenty of time for Q&A that covered everything from the benefits and differences of profiles vs. groups vs. pages to the intricacies of FBML and ways to measure effectiveness of Facebook engagement.

Some of the key takeaways:

  • The value in Facebook is not necessarily the “share” but the “re-share” – what can you do to get your network to post content on your behalf? People like and trust information they see from their friends more than they do from brands.
  • Don’t forget to take your Facebook engagement off of Facebook. It’s very easy to use widgets and simple lines of code to add Facebook functionality to your Web site. Add a fan page box, allow users to comment on content on your site (video, e.g.) via Facebook status updates, use Facebook Connect for people to comment.
  • Quantity does not always (or sometimes ever) trump quality. A small number of passionate fans is more valuable than mountains of people who don’t really care.
  • Paid media is critical to success on Facebook and one way to cut through the noise. Advertising on Facebook is extremely targeted and affordable. At the very least, you can use the self-service ad tool to look at data surrounding the particular group you want to target.
  • There are rules of the road to Facebook and if you violate them, your page and community can be removed. Know the restrictions around things like contests and protocol for contacting fans and asking for their personal info. If you abuse the rules, Facebook can and will remove you – and then you’ve lost all the time and effort you’ve spent building up your page and following.

You can watch the video of the entire presentation via UStream, courtesy of MZA Multimedia. You can also view the Twitter transcript of the event.

What’s the most creative marketing use of Facebook that you’ve seen?