Category: Technology PR

Like most people I know, I’ve been spending more time than is healthy on Facebook in the last few weeks (which is why my blog posting has slowed to a crawl). However, the more I use it, the more I’m convinced it offers a model for the way PR will be conducted in the future (especially media relations).

Take for example the concept of journalist relationships – every agency will wax lyrical about the strength of its journalist relationships. The problem in the past has been that it is nigh on impossible to actually quantify this. With Facebook, journalists can choose who they want to have on their friends lists – so presumably only trusted PRs would get on there (I think people are very relaxed at the moment as to who they accept as Friends – but the option to remove people you don’t want is there – and I’m sure people will use it if they feel they are being used/abused). If a client wants to verify whether someone has a relationship with the journalist, they simply check the friends list – if you aren’t on there, it suggests your relationship isn’t that good.

In the past, agencies have made great play of their level of knowledge of  journalists interests – both professional and personal. Now, journalists can provide this information to whoever they see fit. The need for all those tedious briefing documents simply disappears – because the journalist will, by default, provide that information on their Facebook page – at least to those they consider appropriate to have access to it. And if an agency tries to construct a profile that doesn’t match what the journalist has on Facebook? Again, more flanneling is exposed.

And what about how journalists want to be contacted (the possible answer to Charles Arthur’s prayers?)
By using a status alert, it is very clear what they are currently up to eg I’m busy for the next 2 hours – only contact me if urgent. They can provide a landline or mobile number that only trusted contacts have access to – so hopefully ensuring that they really do only get the urgent (and relevant) stuff. Or they can have a Skype app on their FB page which shows whether or not they can be contacted in this way (again, only those PRs in the trusted circle would have the Skype ID).

And if anyone breaks the rules? They will simply get de-listed from the Friends list – or the journalist can post a public note about serial offenders on their wall.

Perhaps will also see the death of "liaising" with journalists from PR reports eg we have a great relationship with journalist X, but we couldn’t get hold of him. If you aren’t on the friends list, then that’s a porky – or if his/her status alert for that day clearly said he/she was in the office and contactable, then this sort of flannel will be easily rooted out.

Journalists are also beginning to use Facebook to research stories, etc. Even books.
I can see a time where journalists routinely use Facebook to ask for input for stories – either via their trusted network of PR friends – or cast their net wider by Wall posts, etc – whatever they prefer (a threat to Responsesource?)

And why spend a fortune on surveys when you can run them on Facebook. Or the dreaded media survey when journalists get contacted by PR agencies trying to get their feedback on a prospect they are pitching to? Clients themselves can check out a journalist profile and see which PRs really do have a relationship with a particular PR.

What does this all add up to? I really do think it has the potential to provide a much great degree of transparency into the PR process. For too long, PR agencies have treated media relations as a black box exercise and milked client’s ignorance – Facebook does offer a glimpse of a more transparent model – which should hopeufully reward the PRs who really do have genuine relationships with the press and come up with the best stories.

I could go on – but I think you get the idea.

So if your boss asks you why you are spending so much time on Facebook, just tell them you are upskilling to ensure you have a long term career in PR.

BBC NEWS | Technology | From here to cyberspace:

A timely piece from Bill Thompson at Beeb website. He writes: “One of the big problems with Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and the other social network sites is that they
bring the many different groups we all belong to into one online space, creating a ‘social soup’ that encourages intermingling when most of us work hard to keep our friends, family and colleagues just a little bit separate, negotiating the boundaries with more or less skill.

The tools used to manage privacy and sharing online remain crude and inflexible compared with the nuanced way we handle real-life social networks, and we are going to have to learn to deal with the new modes of social engagement that result.”

A good point – whereas in the past you would maintain different circles of friends, we are all potentially intersecting at one central point in the Venn diagram.

He continues: “(Facebook) is rapidly becoming more than just a social network site.

Its support for third-party applications and services is turning it into a platform for all other forms of online social activity, from talking about movies via the Flixster application to asking friends questions or ‘superpoking’ them. Facebook may well become the single point of contact with one’s online networks, wherever they may be hosted. I rarely visit Twitter, the site that lets you send short updates about what you’re up to, because it’s easier to post from within Facebook. And as this trend develops, more and more of us will spend more and more time on Facebook instead of elsewhere. Once someone builds ‘MySpaceBook’, an application that lets you run your MySpace profile from within Facebook, the game will be over.

Is Facebook becoming the first true portal?

TWL has now turned up on Facebook – though he has had to adopt the name Theo as Facebook needs a "proper" first name.

More PR fun to be had here as well then.

Is it just me or has the whole world gone Facebook mad? I only joined a few weeks ago – but I can see how it is turning into the greatest productivity destroyer of all time.

Friends and contacts keep popping up daily. It’s like being in a sweet shop – someone invites you to try out a new application and you can’t resist – my profile page is awash with the things – but I guess you can try things out and remove if they don’t prove useful – I sure hope I settle down to a small core of relevant apps.

All in all, I feel a bit old. I was therefore amused to see that Jack Schofield of The Guardian is getting advice on how to use this new fangled Facebook thing from his son James – take a look here – on Jack’s "Wall".

BTW – the Food Fight app is probably the silliest thing I’ve seen for a long time – but I can see that quite normal people are spending significant amounts of their time flinging virtual burgers at each other.

I spent a very pleasant hour or so yesterday afternoon over a chilled glass of Oyster Bay with the mastermind behind TWL. (No, I won’t name them, but plenty of people know who it is anyway – and I’m sure it will be common knowledge soon enough). It was good to finally meet tech PR’s masked crusader – and to get an idea of where the TWL brand is going.

TWL has been around the tech PR biz for some time – hence why the content is nearly always "on the money". And as Peter Kirwan has already pointed out, although one may think that the site is simply there to find fault with everything, TWL would really like to run some genuinely positive material – it just seems hard to come by – or no-one feels comfortable sharing it.

The following are some of the (many) things we discussed:

1. TWL fulfils a need

Spin Bunny proved the concept and TWL has essentially picked up the baton. Interestingly, TWL is looking at expanding its coverage to encompass other areas such as financial and healthcare PR – broadening the appeal of TWL is certainly one way to give it more long term viability.

2. Bringing the fun back into tech PR

We both agreed that much of the fun appears to have gone out of tech PR – the industry’s general inability to laugh at itself needs addressing. TWL is at least doing its bit to help.

3. Fear of TWL link love

TWL revealed that many people are afraid to link to TWL because it is perceived as being, well, a bit naughty. Again, the sooner everyone lightens up the better.

Clearly, TWL has a whole lot more planned in the coming months – which will no doubt be revealed in due course. For what’s its worth, I think TWL is on to something – I really do think it can be a force for good – as well as offering an alternative voice in an industry that has traditionally run scared from discussing real issues openly and honestly. I certainly wish them well as things develop. More power to your elbow TWL, etc.

Well, this Valleywag piece (in turn based on a NYT article) was saying that video bloggers could learn from the porn biz – but the two comments they highlight could be be more generically applied to PR:

We use good-quality lighting and very good sound," said David Joseph, president of Red Light District, a production company in Los Angeles that has made films like "Obscene Behavior."

ie high production values are seen as a differentiator – all those PR 2.0 types armed with a mike and a copy of Garageband ought to bear this mind when recording their next rivetting podcast

There’s not a whole lot of story — it’s basically right to the sex, but we’re consistent with the quality," he said, noting that the company is also careful to pick interesting backdrops. "We use different locations, rooms and couches."

Of the hundreds of press releases that land in journalists in-boxes daily, how many get "right to the sex? Or provide a suitably interesting context?

As we all know, things are tough in the world of PR recruitment at the moment – so agencies are resorting to ever more aggressive tactics in a bid to lure talent.

However, seems that Inferno MD Grant Currie has somewhat shown his cards early in an apparent attempt to lure Rainier staff over to his camp. Clearly Inferno are feeling the heat in sustaining their 48pc y-o-y fee increase to £2,363,883.

Stephen Waddington has rather sportingly put Grant’s contact details in his blog post for anyone looking for a job at Inferno – though wonder how many other agencies have been targetted by them?

As Strumpette says, we Brits seem to be demonstrating what wildly creative PR types we are (or just naturally good at doing captions).

Full story here. As I told Strumpette, the easiest $1,000 I ever earned.

The Economist has just launched a a full audio edition  of the weekly mag. Clearly a lot of resource is going into this. On first inspection, the entire content of the print mag is being repurposed for audio – seems to involve an army of voice actors reading out, word for word, every article.

However, there are a number of issues here. First, you have to go to a specific web page to download (no iTunes podcast integration).  You can choose to download the whole mag (100MB – blimey) – or you can download individual sections. But each story is saved as an individual MP3 file – and unless you have some idea in advance (ie by reading the mag first), you don’t really have a clue about the content of each story (Retailing, for example, covers a rather wide range of possibilities).

Also, the reading of a single one page story lasts about 6.5 minutes – I’m sure the time-pressed senior execs who make up the magazine’s readership could read the printed version a lot quicker. And given that much of the material is focussed on figures, audio doesn’t seem the best medium to convey this – how do you create an audio version of a trends graphs, for example.

To listen to the content for the entire mag would come in at around 4.5 hours – I hardly think anyone, let alone a FTSE 100 CEO, has the time to spend listening to the Economist – especially when you can get the info you require much more quickly by simply reading the magazine.

Would have thought they might reconsider a re-think of their appoach – surely a 10 – 15 minute bespoke digest of the week’s main stories would be far more useful (and cost effective) solution.

PS The feedback survey is also quite frustrating – where you can provide additional comments, you are restricted to about 8 words – only right at the end can you provide in substantive feedback – I wonder how may people will bother to persevere to the end?

MediaShift . Our Voyeuristic World::Are We Sharing Too Much Information via Social Media? | PBS.

Good piece from Jennifer Woodard Maderazo – especially this comment:

Would clients be less likely to hire me because they know, through my
blogging, what my political views are? Would a suitor have second
thoughts if they found out, via LastFM ,
that my musical tastes mirror a late night Time-Life infomercial? Would
a potential employer not call back because — perhaps worse of all —
they see that I spend way too much time online, constantly updating the
world about the banal details of my life?

My LastFM stations are often used as the background music in the office ie I’m not actually at my desk listening to what is being selected – so my apparent musical taste may not reflect what I really do like – or listen to.