Force For Good Communications

Media relations is a relationship business; how to keep it real with the 'new media'

The rise of new media is both a blessing and a curse to the corporate communicator.

A blessing in providing a direct channel, unfiltered by cynical (or even antagonistic) journalists; a curse in the proliferation of so many diffuse channels to the market.

Media relations is a relationship business. Successful PR people know the handful of journalists most important to their companies and industries. They know what the key journalists' interests are, what their pet peeves are and they have forged at least some level of rapport with them. It's relatively easy to identify your VIP media, those with the biggest circulation numbers among your target audiences plus those who have an out-sized influence on the thinking of other media.

Bloggers, those using Twitter or Facebook, etc. will likely have much, much smaller numbers. But scoring a hit among an influential inside a social media conversation that's spot on to your product or service can be more important than a positive mention in a large-circulation newspaper. It's not just how many people you reach, it's who you reach and in what context.

It also depends if you are trying to create awareness for a new brand (go for the highest number of potential customers) or are trying to advance favorable consideration or address a concern about your company or product (look to help shape the most in-depth conversations relevant to your objective).

So how do you find your most important social media influentials? And how do you cultivate a relationship with them?

More on my next post.

- Jon Harmon

Hope for reform in Iran rests on social media

Repressive official forces in Iran, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei put a stop to wide-spread protests of disputed official results of the country's presidential election. It appears a 10-day cooling off period is being enforced, after which reform-minded protesters may have sufficiently lost momentum to prevent substantial opposition being voiced to the clerical regime.

In the meantime, officials in Iran have shut down Facebook use and cell phone texting transmission, and confiscated cell phones protesters have used to capture and post video of the protests and police brutality in suppressing them.

Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has long used social media himself, as noted in my post here in 2007. Ahmadinejad came to power as a populist who at the same time made it clear to the ruling clerics that he was their man. For a time, Ahmadinejad breathed new life into the clerical regime's sagging popularity. But his hardline ways have been rejected by increasing numbers of citizens, particularly women and young people.

For his part, opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi has quite limited credentials as a reformer. A hard-liner himself, Moussavi was included among the four candidates the ruling clerics allowed to be placed on the ballot from 200 initial candidates. But only when he began to modify his rhetoric to express some support for reform did his "green" campaign catch on, with women and students his most vocal supporters.

Photo: AFP

It seems unlikely that the entrenched powers in Iran will allow any real scrutiny of the highly suspect election, The bigger question is whether large numbers of reform-minded citizens will continue to openly push for truly Democratic change in Iran. Hopes rests firmly on the power of social media to connect Iran's citizenry to each other and to supporters around the world. Call them citizen journalists or the Facebook generation -- they are the best hope for lasting change in a repressive nation.

Are we about to witness a historic moment in Iran, similar to the popular unrest in Eastern Europe in 1989 that led to fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc? Or, more likely, is Tehran similar to Tiananmen Square the same year, where student protests captured the world's attention but did little to erode the repressive hold of the Chinese government?

- Jon Harmon

Twitter grows up, just like blogs did way back in 2006

Do you Tweet? Or are you annoyed by the gushing attention paid to faddish Twitter?

Don't be too quick to dismiss Twitter and the legions of Twits as passing silliness. Just like blogging before it, Twitter is quickly morphing from the exceedingly banal to the (sometimes) indispensable.

Twitter poses the question "What are you doing now?" and asks for an extremely brief response to be beamed to your "followers." At first, this prompted Twits to provide frequent updates of their participation in boring activities. Just like the first bloggers who famously (or apocryphally?) posted about what they had eaten for breakfast.

But (some) Twitter use has grown up -- providing eyewitness accounts from the scenes of breaking news stories or allowing a smart business executive to Tweet substantive yet casual updates of true interest to followers. And to spark debate among a virtual community on some topic of interest to them.

Like the Blackberry and the cell phone text message, Twitter is also forcing prolific note writers to get quickly to the point. And for that we can be thankful. Brevity rules.

- Jon Harmon

Own up to your company identity when joining in an on-line conversation

For public relations people looking to stick your toes in the ocean of consumer-generated media: remember that participating in the blogosphere requires full disclosure.

An active chatboard, blog or Twitter discussion centered around your product or company, or at least your industry, might benefit from the perspective of someone knowledgeable. Chances are good you have something meaningful to add to the conversation. But tread lightly, introducing yourself candidly as a spokesperson for your company. Don't get argumentative and certainly don't belittle those who you don't agree with.

In other words, don't follow the example of Raymond Ridder, PR Director for the Golden State Warriors, who anonymously posted pro-management comments on a chatboard that had gone negative on those running the Warriors.

Ridder follows in the disgraced footsteps on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and the "Wal-Marting Across America" floggers. Being outed as an insider posing as an outsider leads to instant vilification -- as identity transparency is a crucial expectation of ethical behavior in an on-line community.

Ridder threw ethics out the window when he noticed Warriors fan site WarriorWorld.net going starkly negative after a management conference call. So he logged onto the site as "FlunksterDude" and tried to steer things to the positive. Check out this story on CNET to understand why that didn't work.

Ridder is taking full responsibility for his actions. But he doesn't yet understand that he did anything wrong. This well-stated excerpt from fansite SportsRubbish makes clear what was wrong -- and what the implications are for the PR community:

There unfortunately are plenty of P.R. “professionals” who think it is perfectly acceptable to pose as a regular fan to get their message out. Keep this in mind any time you read, well, anything online. If something is too positive or too negative, it quite possibly could either be that company or a rival making that post.

There is nothing wrong with team executives interacting with fans and taking the pulse of fan sentiment. If they do want to post on a team message board like Warriors World, they should just be up front about it, rather then attempting to hide behind anonymity.

- Jon Harmon

 

Future of journalism? With newsrooms shedding jobs, where are j-school grads going to work?

The lasting effects of the credit crisis-fueled recession are widely over-stated. Too often pundits and others with a microphone (or mouse-pad) extrapolate conditions from the past quarter or two into the infinite future. In most cases, they will be proven wrong when they say that changes in behavior are permanent.

Time magazine's cover story, "the New Frugality," argues that tough times are changing forever the way Americans spend and save. We'll see. It's a little too early to say just yet. Remember in early March when we were told by every financial authority that stock-market dynamics had changed for good and that we should get used to lower annual returns when the bull market returns -- and don't expect to recover losses for 10-12 years? Six weeks later the S&P 500 is up 25% from the March 9 low. (But don't take that as a sign that big returns are back for good, either. This morning, a big selloff is sweeping the market. That could change by this afternoon ... or signal the Bear is back, maybe even for a whole week or more.)

The change you CAN believe in are fundamental shifts that were already underway Before the Fall of Lehman Brothers (BFLB). The auto industry, for example, was dealing with over-capacity, high commodity prices and other increasing costs including massive legacy health care obligations. The twin blows of very sharp spikes in fuel prices last summer followed by the liquidity crisis knocked the wheels off the auto companies -- and then the recession spread and sales really dried up. The result is a tremendous acceleration of change throughout the industry. And, this we can be certain of, the auto industry ISN"T going back to BFLB.

Another trend that the recession has accelerated is the demise of the newspaper. Craig's List and similar sites had already taken away the lion's share of a newspaper's most dependable revenue -- classified advertising. Circulation numbers were already in free-fall. But then the recession led to wide-spread cuts in corporate advertising dollars that have devastated display ad revenues, along with further reductions in subscriptions brought on by consumer's "new frugality."

In 2008 alone, 15% of newspaper newsroom jobs were eliminated, according to the NY Times in "J-Schools Play Catch-Up." The article details how journalism schools have added courses on the future of journalism in the Internet age including how-to courses such as "Multi-Media Story-telling." (Not sure what took so long. Force for Good readers will recall "Next Practices: Story-telling Wins Out," from March 2007).

The J-school's new-found emphasis on the future is long-overdue. Enrollment numbers continue to be strong at most university j-schools; many show increased enrollment since the economic clouds rolled in. Where are all those j-school grads going to work?

The next generation of grads are going to have to help find new solutions -- both in monetizing on-line news sites of major news organizations and in creating new outlets for professional journalists. And time is running short.

The future of news media is uncertain, to say the least. But, safe to say, it is never going back to the old way.

- Jon Harmon

How to attract readers to your blog (circa 2009)

Today the Force for Good blog passes a milestone of sorts -- with 25,000 visitors since I started it back in December 2006. That's an average of a little more than 31 visits every day according to the Typepad tracker.

Not exactly numbers that threaten the New York Times' bloggers or those writing for the Huffington Post. But not bad, either for a site with very specific content -- current thinking in "aspirational public relations." Those who visit this site come here because you are interested in PR. I hope you continue to find it worthwhile.

With this milestone in mind I'm going to update one of this site's most popular posts -- How to attract readers to your blog from April 2007.

The advice from that post still applies:

1)  Content -- offer something unique: new insights, a fresh take on a current issue, etc.

2)  Voice -- find your creative voice. It's a blog, not a white paper.

3)  Optimize to be found -- use SEO techniques smartly and ethically, linking to related content, using interesting headlines, providing feeds, grouping posts by categories, etc. to help interested readers find your posts -- not to trick them into your blog only to be disappointed by what they find.

Now some additional insights for today:

• Provide a mixture of  the fresh and current with plenty of long-lasting "evergreen" posts. Posting frequently with new thoughts provide a reason for readers to subscribe to a feed or at least visit often. But most of your readers will find your posts when they Google a phrase that is close to what you wrote about. Evergreens don't get stale or out of date and continue to draw visitors months (or even years) after they were posted. Like "How to Attract More Readers to Your Blog." People keep coming back to that one. 
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• Typepad's control panel enables you to skim through a day's visitors and see what they typed to find your blog. You can see what's connecting and what's not. Adjust your content accordingly.
   
• Include photos or videos when relevant or humorous (I didn't include any visuals with this post, but generally I do.) Include a photo credit, particularly if you have ads on your site or other means by which you are generating revenue. There are no paid ads on Force for Good, so I'm not a stickler for crediting sources for photos.

- Jon Harmon

Does anyone still read a printed newspaper?

 

Whether you get your news on a printed page or over the Internet, it's hard to miss all the hand-wringing over the future of newspapers.

A TIME magazine cover story"How to Save Your Newspaper" by Walter Isaacson is drawn from lectures he is giving, beginning at the University of California - Riverside this week.

And there's plenty more on the topic at the Poynter institute and the Columbia Journalism Review.

After some initial reluctance back in the day, most newspapers today provide a wealth of timely reporting and other substantive content on-line -- free of charge. It's an attractive way to consume the news. Why wait for the next day's paper when you can get news on any subject on-line now? And why pay for a subscription when you can read most columnists, editorials, etc. for free on-line? And why restrict yourself to your local newspaper when you can get news from any locale on-line?

If you have a wireless router in your home, you can take in the morning news out on your porch or deck on your laptop and get caught up quickly on whatever you want to read while you sip your morning coffee or afternoon lemon-aide.

But world-class reporting and writing is by no means free. So where is the business case for on-line news as subscriptions for printed papers dwindle and ad revenues dry up?

Up until the Sept. 15 default of Lehman Brothers kicked off a severe recession, news organizations could recover a decent amount of revenue in on-line advertising. The Internet model was to provide content for free, build a huge audience and sell ad space in crawlers and pop-ups. But that seems so 1999 today. The bubble has burst.

The question is will people pay something (anything!) to subscribe to online services of top news organizations -- like the New York Times, Washington Post and maybe your local newspaper? It's worked for the Wall Street Journal and a few others, mostly financial sites like Barron's and Motley Fool, who have successfully protected a unique space well enough to charge for it. But will enough news consumers opt to pay for quality reporting to keep the premier news organizations afloat -- or will they die off and leave us with only Yahoo! news and MSN? And if we're only left with news aggregators, what news will they aggregate? Are you ready to turn over the Fourth Estate to bloggers, aka citizen journalists? I'm all for cit j's to supplement the news, but I still want an aggressive, knowledgable and experienced media pool doing most of the heavy lifting.

The key will be for each news provider to demonstrate unique value that consumers will be willing to pay, at least a nominal amount, to read.

But won't we lose something vital if there no longer is a printed newspaper we can touch and feel?

- Jon Harmon

Whole Foods' CEO Throws Ethics Out Window, Where is the Media and Blog Outrage?

The anonymous postings of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey slamming a smaller competitor, Wild Oats, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, have certainly been the fodder of much media and blog discussion the last two days. The basic facts of the matter are not in dispute -- Mackey admits on the Whole Foods news site to years of venomous posting against Wild Oats under the pseudonym "rahodeb." He says he did it because "I had fun doing it," and that he "never intended any of those postings to be identified as me." To that last point we can be sure -- he never intended to be exposed.

But something is missing from all the coverage to date. Neither media nor the blogs have jumped into the story with the same fervor they would have if say, the CEO of Exxon or Wal-Mart had done the anonymous attacks. Here's the story as reported by ABC News. Obligatory comments from experts criticizing the lack of transparency to be sure, but it's all downplayed as "not exactly new news" considering such past ethical violations as the Wal-Mart-Edelman flog.

Where was Diane Sawyer asking Mackey if he planned to resign as she asked the President of Virginia Tech the morning after the VT massacre? 

That Mackey's behavior was irresponsible is without a doubt. Whether it was also criminal is a key issue: Mackey deliberately used his anonymous attacks to hurt his competitor, and likely to drive down its stock price in advance of Whole Foods' attempted takeover of Wild Oats. That's worse than shady behavior.

So why haven't journalists and bloggers rushed to condemn this unethical behavior? Why has Mackey's lame excuse -- that it was harmless prankish behavior -- played without criticism.? Don't you think the "Wal-Marting across America" flog was pretty tame by comparison?

The kid gloves treatment Mackey has received to date is clearly a case of media archetyping. Whole Foods has been a poster child for good behavior -- entrepreneurial company, organic food, environmental social responsibility, etc. This type of company plays the "good guy" in archetypical reporting, both in the media and in the blogosphere.

There is so much to genuinely like about Whole Foods. But the serious ethical (even if they don't prove to be technically criminal) violations of its CEO should not be swept under the rug. There should be a blog storm calling for his resignation whether or not the FTC (or SEC) seeks criminal charges against him.

So let's get it rolling. John Mackey needs to resign or be fired. Period.   

- Jon Harmon

What Will Blogs Become When They Grow Up?

Only the few corporate communicators and journalists who truly have their heads stuck in the sand will deny that a communications revolution is transforming the way consumers receive and absorb news and form opinions about products and companies.

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We’re past the point of thinking only about effective ways to communicate to consumers; consideration has to be given to participation in a dynamic myriad of conversations. It’s certainly no longer just about shouting above the din in a one-way blast of product information to the market. It’s not even about a two-way conversation with prospective customers. It’s about reaching key influentials that are especially inter-connected on subjects relating to your brand in ways that are relevant to them. And it’s about opening your company’s doors and windows to allow interested parties to come inside and take a virtual look both at your products and your behaviors. And it’s also about telling your brand’s stories in interesting ways while being authentic both in facts and in tone.

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It’s not just about starting a corporate blog. In fact, the word “blog” is surely destined to the oblivion of passé status, dismissed as being “so 2006.”

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So what will blogs and other forms of social media become as they “grow up”?  In the spirit of the new media, your thoughts are welcome. But let me jump start the conversation with some initial observations:

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• The numbers game may not be the best way to measure relevance. Some blogs and Facebook communities have huge numbers of passive “participants” with little in common; still, their “circulation” numbers are dwarfed by a decent mid-market newspaper. If blogs are in many ways a rebellion against something-for-everyone mass media, are the biggest and blandest blogs really relevant? Blogs with sustaining relevance, it seems to me, will be those that unite and energize focused communities of people with common interests and passions, even if their overall numbers are only in the hundreds.
• But those hundreds may be spread all over the planet and bring a true diversity of thought to the conversation. This “Force for Good” blog, for example has readers from five continents with a common interest in public relations practices and reputation management. (Note to Australia: still haven’t heard from you!)
• Related thought: This fascination with “popularity” leads some frenzied participants to comment hundreds or even thousands of times without adding any value to the actual topic. Last week the Danish news site Avisen.dk banned 35 prolific bloggers who seemingly have nothing better to do than continually leave inane comments. It’s a common problem. The egoists who rush to be first poster with such insightful contributions as “First here!” or to spend hour upon hour jousting with other losers need separate playpens.
• Nearly every newspaper columnist has a blog – call that a reader forum and assume that it continues well into the future. As will some form of blogs by political candidates and those special interests pushing a particular political intervention. Assume also that the tens of millions of blogs created in the original “here’s-what-I had-for breakfast-today” spirit of the first web-logs will continue to appear and flame-out without much impact on anyone.
• Technology increasingly will free participants from being anchored at a fixed computer. Laptops with wireless, Blackberries and now i-phones and soon other hand-held phones with multiple modes of connectivity will proliferate with obvious and not-so-obvious consequences. Emergency warnings, including urgent notices to evacuate, could help college campuses and other communities better deal with life-threatening crises. But the same electronic readiness could turn a stupid prank into a hugely disruptive or even dangerous stampede.
• As communication increasingly becomes hyper-shortened, will thought and discussion be reduced to quips and barbs? Blackberries have taught e-mail users to be concise (their notes limited by the speed and dexterity of their thumbs) – a good thing, but also to mindlessly proliferate “discussion” by adding yet another reason to question a potential decision and then clicking “Reply to all.”

That’s what I think. What about you?

- Jon Harmon

China at the Cross Roads: Old Ways and New Responsibilities Collide

With both potentially the world’s largest consumer market and a workforce of more than a billion low-wage workers, China plays prominently in most multi-national companies’ growth strategies. But now there are other reasons to pay attention to this awakening giant.
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Several important developments in business and communications are coming to a head in China that will have major implications globally.

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Consider that:

• Numerous products exported from China have been shown to be grossly defective posing grave health problems, from pet food full of melamine, spinach with dangerous amounts of pesticides, other toxins found in candy, toothpaste and seafood, appetite suppressants that pose risk of heart attacks (left), to defective tires prone to tread separation. In each of these cases, the Chinese manufacturer has denied responsibility and insists the products are safe – not a good sign that China companies are ready to step up to their responsibilities to global consumers. Chinese exports of every type of product certainly will face increased scrutiny for injurious product defects.
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• Blogs in China are far out-pacing the Chinese mass media in presenting information disconnected from government-sanctioned “news.” Tight reigns on Chinese media make them less interesting that many of the best blogs in China. Chinese bloggers increasingly serve as informed sources for international mass media correspondents based in China. Media are learning to individually evaluate the reliability of bloggers as accurate sources just as they would any independent source, writes Rebecca McKinnon this week from the World Journalism Education Conference in Singapore. Look for this trend to proliferate in other parts of the world with tight controls on media, McKinnon writes, as well as political hot spots, such as the Palestinian territories, where bias from each side obscures the underlying truths that may be brought to the surface by citizen journalists living in the moment.
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• In the past week, the Communist government in China has reversed itself regarding the Internet, now taking an "if you can't beat them, join them" stance. Writes the Poynter Online's Fons Tuinstra: "In the 1990s, authoritarian regimes like the Chinese government saw the Internet as a lethal threat. Today they see the net as a tool for sustainable development." Tuinstra quotes an editorial in the People's Daily June 21: People should note that developing Internet policies well will enrich the development of socialist democratic politics. However, it does not represent all people yet. Only by comprehensively and objectively mastering Internet politics, and rationally understanding it, can we better promote its development." (Note to Comrades: Good luck mastering and understanding the Internet's politics! You may want to start by rationally considering the concept of extreme diversity of thought.)

(Previous Force for Good posts on China: China Launches Not-So-New Virtual World, Epic Showdown Looms in China: Don't Bet Against the New Media )

- Jon Harmon