With the launch of the eBay Ink blog we (meaning Voce and cnp_studio) had a nice hat trick on the WordPress.org site. The screenshot below shows the 'Powered by WP' in the lower right. I'm proud to say that they're all ours :-)

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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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In my screencasts for Radian6 the example I used was the current Presidential election. I created a basic topic profile to monitor all 'conversation' involving the four major candidates at that time, McCain, Romney, Clinton and Obama.

It's been interesting to watch the level of conversation related to select topics within the profile. Here are two trend graphs looking at the past 30 days. Looking at the first, guess when Romney dropped out :-)

Looking at the second, it's interesting to see how conversation involving states with primaries rises and falls in somewhat perfect time. At the far left, we were just coming off of the South Carolina and then Florida primaries. It's interesting to see the dip for Texas and Ohio come before the primary next week. Perhaps people are tired of talking about it :-)

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Over at work we've been using Radian6 for quite a while for a variety of clients. Yesterday we sent out one of those 'announcement' releases, but more importantly we put up some information on our approach to social media monitoring and measurement.

As part of the monitoring/Radian6 content, I created a series of screencasts on Radian6. You can check them all out here. The first one is shown below:

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Cross posted from Media Bullseye:

A number of social media/pr bloggers are slowly becoming avid photographers...toting their Nikon or Canon DSLRs around wherever they go. They're always snapping photos at events, at home, just about anywhere. However, there is a method to their madness though (I think).

We're all familiar with the phrase, 'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'. A picture is an easy way to tell a story, to set a scene. Sure you can do it with words, but as we all know, sometimes words can't quite capture the moment like a picture can. If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it also a substitute for a blog post or a good addition to one? Of course!

A photo can be a great compliment to a blog post, but it can also be a blog post...just a simple photo, with a sentence or two. In that way it's a very efficient way of blogging that involves less writing. The right picture can also be a great inspiration for a post. Many times when I'm stuck in a blog-rut, just looking at photos can inspire a number of different ideas. The downside is that I find myself writing less and posting more photos.

Ask any friend that is a photography buff, "Would you rather spend an hour writing a blog article, or taking photos outside?" I think you already know the answer.

Like many of my blogging friends I was recently bitten by the photography bug. My interest came from the conference circuit. I was attending a number of events in 2006 (NewComm Forum, BlogHer, Gnomedex) doing the live-blogging thing at most of them. At each event I was always impressed with the photos that people like Scott Beale and Kris Krug were taking and posting. I wanted to do the same. Great photos could enhance the blogging I was already doing.

My gateway drug was the tiny Nikon Coolpix I carried around. Sure it served its purpose, but I needed to upgrade. In September of 2006 I purchased a Nikon D80 and haven't looked back.

But let's be honest, many of us are gadget geeks, and nice cameras are a big gadget. It's also easier to 'sell' the purchase of a nice camera to the loved ones, "Honey, think of the great pictures I can take of the kids!"

I think for many of us photography is an evolution of the social media work we do in our everyday lives. Pictures allow us to communicate and convey messages in a different way. As I said earlier, photos can replace the written word, or enhance it.

It's another tool at our disposal, but it's also a gadget! (It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!)

--

In preparing to write this article I began to think about the friends/colleagues that now carry around DSLR cameras. The list is long, and got longer after the holiday season...many friends found DSLRs under the tree :-)

Of course there is the eternal Nikon/Canon debate, but among my friends Nikon is the clear winner. In the Nikon camp there are: David Parmet (D80), Brian Oberkirch (D70s), Jake McKee (D50), Dave Coustan (D80), David Alston (D80), Tris Hussey (D80), Jeremy Pepper (D80), Chris Scott (D40), Judson Collier (D40), Chris Gent (D50), Erik Hersman (D40), Tom Biro (D80), Paul Stamatiou (D80), Mike Manuel (D80), Stephanie Roberts (D80) and Mario Sundar (D80).

In the Canon camp there are: Chris Heuer (XTI), Brian Solis (XTI), Chip Griffin (30D), Howard Greenstein (XTI) and Alex de Carvalho (XTI).

With all these friends, photography is another touchpoint. It's a frequent topic of conversation at dinners and conference meet-ups.

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People are always trying to create the next X, where X could be MySpace, Facebook, etc. When building a product you always look to improve on what somebody else is doing. But what about the worst traits of products? Is there a double-negative cancellation thing?

With that, I'm looking to build something that has:

- The teen-appeal of LinkedIn
- The reliability of Twitter
- The design quality of MySpace

All kidding aside, well not really....what's the worst mash-up you can think of with current products?

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The full title should probably be, "In our own minds, we all think what we blog is relevant to other people." That's one of the major appeals of blogging, it's self publishing. We get to say what we want and then other people read and respond (hopefully). There is a scary truth though and that is the 'importance' of what we say may not be that important.

As an experiment, a few months ago I unsubscribed from a number of 'influential' blogs....some might call them the dreaded A-list term, or in today's political climate 'agents of change'. Would I miss their commentary, would I miss out on the latest trends or topics?

Well a funny thing happened. Many of the folks I unsubscribed from were not missed at all. In fact I also never heard their names mentioned on other related blogs, or were directed there via links. Maybe this is a function of the blogging they're doing, less conversation, more talking at. Perhaps the real conversation has moved to Twitter?

The people I did miss though were what I would call friends or colleagues. I found myself missing their blogs not because of what they wrote about, I just missed them.

I'm still chewing through what this means in the evolution of social interactions online, but it does point back to the relationship aspect of things.

How many of the blogs you follow religiously are from 'industry leaders' and how many are from friends? In my experience my top folder in NetNewsWire is my friends folder.

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Jake has some good points and there of course is interesting discussion going on in the commentary in his post about 'expertise'. There are those that talk and those that do.

I think some of it has to do with the work/blogging balance that many professionals have to face. When you're not busy with 'work' you have plenty of time to blog and participate in conversations. When work gets busy, the extra stuff tends to drop off. But then again that's not following our own advice, we always tell clients to make time for blogging, so we should as well :-)

I think it was last year that Tom Biro said something to like, "the reason I'm not blogging is because I"m busy doing actual client work." I chuckled at that statement and now with the full-time gig I understand what he means.

Should people follow the example one leads on a blog, or the example they provide via the work they do with their clients?

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There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Blog Council, some positive, some moderate. David's initial thoughts were that it might not be a good idea and Geoff took issue with the 'closed door' approach. Here are some follow-up thoughts:

1. Like I said in the previous post, some groups like to meet among their peers and talk shop without outside influence/distractions. That can sometimes be good, or perhaps bad. One similar organization I have worked with is the Insurers Public Relations Council. It's a gathering of the top PR pros at the top insurance firms in the US. The meetings they have are part business, part fun. But ultimately they can get down to business fast since they all work in the same industry, all face the same issues, and all speak the same language. They still seek outside council though....but they're very clear, if you're speaking you're there to educate, not pitch.

2. Following-up on that last thought.....if you remember my rant from a few weeks ago about the standard presentation-as-pitch issue. If I could join a comms/professional group that promised to deliver good quality content that was pitch-free...sign me up.

3. Give them time. Hell the group was just announced. Ultimately the members will be able to see if there is any value in the organization. If it's good it will survive, it not it will die a slow death :-)

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What is ANTB? That stands for Andy's Next Big Thing. Who is Andy? Andy Sernovitz, he used to run the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and now he's launched the Blog Council.

Back in early October, Andy shared his plans for me, and it's great to see this finally launch (and stay true to the original vision he set out):

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

Representing thought leaders from corporate departments as diverse as corporate communications, global communities, marketing and customer service, the Blog Council's advocacy role functions as a collective voice in support of responsible, ethics-based corporate blogs. Other issues the Council will address include:

- How do global brands manage blogs in more than one language?
- What do you do when 2000 employees have personal blogs?
- What is the role of the corporate brand in a media landscape increasingly geared toward consumer-generated media?
- What is the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about your company?

It's true that major brands have issues unique to them. They also like to interact/share with their peers, in confidence.

I was fortunate enough to present to the group earlier this week along with John Bell on the topic of blogger relations.

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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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(Cross posted from the VoceNation)

Social media strategy doesn't always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed....and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.

The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr....why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That's what the Georgia Aquarium has done.

Back in October I received the following e-mail invite via Flickr. Of course I joined the group, and as of today there are 89 members with close to 400 photos. Why only 400? The aquarium has asked members to submit their best five photos. I don' agree with that entirely, but I can see their point.

The photo collection was part of their web site relaunch slated for November (which is now up). The plan is to feature the photography and stories of visitors from around the globe. Not a unique idea, but it still works well with destinations. Below is a screenshot of the new site featuring one of my photos.

The 'how-to' section instructs users to join Flickr, then join the Georgia Aquarium group...then upload their photos into the group. The description on the photo will be used as the 'story'. This use of Flickr is similar to what the University of Florida did with GoGatorNation.com. Rather than creating some proprietary and hard-to-use photo-upload system, why not just use something that everybody is using already? Smart.

Let's recap. Finding the photos is simple, just do a Flickr photo search for 'Georgia Aquarium'. As of this post there are 43,574 photos, not bad, but it pales to the 883,000+ you'll find for Disney. Once you've found the photos, create a group and begin to invite the users to the group. Of course you need a purpose or strategy for the group. In the aquarium's case it was to build out a sharing/story function on their web site.

What's next? You have a community, but you need to provide something of value to the community. I'm not sure what their plans are, but here are some ideas:

1. Host a private function at the Aquarium for the photogroup members and invite in a professional aquatic photographer to host an instructional seminar. Then give the photogroup access to the aquarium for a few hours all to themselves (before of after normal hours). I can't speak for everybody, but if they offered that, I'd fly to Atlanta on my own to take part

2. Provide photogroup members access to behind-the-scenes area for pictures.

3. Feature select photos on the primary home page of the Georgia Aquarium Site.

4. Take the best 12 shots (determined by a user vote) and produce a calendar.

What other innovative campaigns have you seen built upon user photos? For me the Nikon campaigns come to mind..how about you?

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During a recent presentation a few weeks ago I noticed a pretty big drop in the number of results Technorati was returning. A search that normally returned 15,000+ results, now only showed less than 2,000. The irony of course is that conducting a search right now, shows 0 results, a common occurrence on Technorati.

Heading over to Google Blog search, the same query returns almost 15,000 results. I talked about these anomalies with Peter Himler at PRSA and he blogged about it. Technorati soon responded, and now TechCrunch has posted a similar thread. The official Technorati response, one to Peter:

Hit counts are often dubious metrics. Index rebuilds, spam purges and other search engine management functions will always cause fluctuations. As part of Technorati's cost and performance management efforts, we've been running the service with the data sets of historic data scaled back. We may bring that data back online in the future but the days of monotonically ascending hit counts are currently suspended.

and a similar comment on TechCrunch:

We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.

On TC, some of the comments have said, 'who looks beyond 36 hours,' or why do we even need the old data?

Here's the issue, the client. When you're dealing with a newbie client that is just learning the world of social media and you show them the search services and one shows a few thousand results and the other ten thousand or more the question will always come up, "Why is Google finding more?" or something similar. Now we can talk till we're blue in the face about relevance and community context, etc, but so many times it's just about raw numbers to a client.

With that, they prefer to use Google and Technorati moves even closer to.....(insert witty comment here).

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This will sound ironic from somebody that just took a job with a Silicon Valley PR firm, but there is life beyond the valley. That comment was inspired by a post from Dave Coustan analyzing Scoble's blogging is over meme. Here, here Dave. Good stuff.

When you get ingrained in a culture you do lose some relativity, especially the ability to see the world around you. At the recent PRSA International Conference, there are hundreds (and thousands) of folks that are just learning about blogging. It's all new to them. The excitement and discovery is there.

Robert's comment about TechMeme is also somewhat narrow, "We’ve gotten too caught up in the TechMeme games." What's funny is that I speak with PR groups all the time about blogging/social media....and I never mention TechMeme because it doesn't really matter to a large percentage of people/clients. As Jeremy might say, it's not sexy either :-)

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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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You remember the Spirit Airlines story I blogged about a few weeks ago. Well it just keeps getting better. Yet another paper has mentioned it, this time the Chicago Tribune. What is Spirit's response? I'll let them speak for themselves:

"We wouldn't respond to a blog post," said spokeswoman Alison Russell, who noted that their original tickets cost a little more than $35 each and they turned down the offer of $100 in travel vouchers. "This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great."

Nice. Spirit says their customer service is great. Well Alex has about 400+ people who have commented that don't agree.

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Some friends have noticed some hints in my blog posts recently, something about a change. Well a change has been made. On October 1st I joined Voce Communications as a New Media Strategist. I'm really stoked to be joining a great group of friends, specifically the social media team of Mike Manuel, Andrea Weckerle and Scott Sigler. As part of this Voce expansion we're also launching the Voce Nation blog. The Voce Nation will be the collecting point for all the shared knowledge of the team.

This move has been in the works for some time, officially and un-officially. Officially in the sense that Mike Manuel and I really started talking about it in July of this year. Un-officially in the sense that I've been working with Voce for almost two years on projects.

What happens to Hyku? Well two things, first off Hyku has become my personal brand and will remain as such, but the focus will change. You may notice a slight design update to this blog, well that's part of the change. I'll still continue to post here on all types of subjects (plus photography), but I'll reserve much of my serious social media posts to Voce Nation.

Second, as a company Hyku will not being going away (just yet). I still have a number of clients that I will continue to serve. I will also continue many of my speaking engagements, I'll just be wearing a Voce hat during most of them.

Are you moving? Nope, I'm staying in Florida. What's been great about working with Voce over the past two years is that much of what I do can be done remotely. I will be taking more trips to San Francisco and Palo Alto though.

I'm excited that I'll be working more with great clients like Sony and Yahoo to name a few.

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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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This post wraps-up to my series on the individuals involved with corporate social media programs. In the first part I looked at the downsides of an organization becoming too reliant upon an individual with a social media/community initiatives. The second post looked at the same issue from the standpoint of the individual who may become overshadowed by the brand they serve. I wish this third post could come under better circumstances, but in business things don't always turn out the way you want them to. What happens when you layoff the staff that runs your corporate blog?

Earthlink corporation has been undergoing some tough times recently that culminated with a number of staff being laid off last month. One of those was their official corporate blogger, Dave Coustan. Dave was hired in 2005, to be the first 'blogmaster' for Earthlink. Longtime readers of this blog may remember that Toby Bloomberg first spotted Earthlnk's ad for this position back in 2005.

If you have a corporate blog and you take away the blogger, well you guessed it, the blog probably goes away too. Dave talked recently about the changes going on at Earthlink and what it will mean for Earthling, the corporate blog.

While many corporate blogs are indeed that, a 'corporate' blog, the people reading them often follow the personalities that write them. This is very similar to how people follow columnists in the print media. While I read SI.com, I usually seek out the work of Peter King. If Peter ever left SI, I'd probably visit SI.com less frequently.

One of Dave's major responsibilities was writing the blog, in his absence what can/will Earthlink do? I don't think turning the blog over to a group of people that can't give it their full attention would be wise. Also, Earthlink says one of their goals is to concentrate on doing a better job for their existing customers. It's a bit ironic then that they'd take away a communication vehicle between company and customer.

Tying back to my first two posts on this subject: 1. What could/should happen to the blog and 2. What should Dave, the individual, or in this case the Earthling do?

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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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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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In the past few days I have been receiving the following message when I visit Flickr. Needless to say it scares the shit out of me. I have close to 12,000 photos on Flickr, so when they say they don't have them....well it's not a good feeling.

A number of us use external services like Flickr or YouTube to store our content. Most of the time it's free and easy. In the case of Flickr it's not free, I pay the yearly subscription fee. In the end though, we're putting a tremendous amount of faith in their hands.

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Brandweek has published an interview with Brice Ertmann, Toyota's corporate manager of consumer-generated media (there is that phrase again):

When bloggers write smack about Toyota, Bruce Ertmann is there to read every word and, in some cases, respond. As corporate manager of consumer-generated media at the Torrance, Calif.-based automaker, Ertmann constantly trolls the Web to see what people are saying. This includes both the gray anonymity or the way-too-public blogger world, and not just the good and the bad, but also the ugly. Although other car companies also have people who track and write blogs, Ertmann's title is believed to be the first in the U.S. auto trade.

The interview is decent, and shows how often the 'voice' of a corporation online falls to one person.

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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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Mindy McAdams from the University of Florida blogs about some new classes she is teaching. They focus on new tools available to journalists.

The idea behind this class (and the follow-up, Journalists’ Toolkit 2) is that students will learn to use some of the common tools of today’s cross-platform reporting through assignments based in regular reporting practice. The primary tools in the first class are audio, audio slideshows and blogs. In the second class, the focus will be on video and other motion visuals.

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We've heard this story before....blogger has bad experience with company, blogs about it, then Google works its magic. In this case it's Alex Rudloff who had a problem with Spirit Airlines.

Alex's post is now #2 on Google for 'Spirit Airlines'. It's even ranked higher than Wikipedia. That has attracted a number of comments and e-mail from folks with the same experiences with Spirit. It's sort of a mini Dell-Hell.

The latest twist in the story involves Spirit CEO, Ben Baldanza who had a slight e-mail snafu. Fun stuff.

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My blogging-partner-in-crime Chris Gent has a wrap-up post for our conference blogging at the 2007 Florida Public Relations Association Annual Conference. We posted a total of 84 entries, 7 podcasts and almost 700 photos.

Like many conference blogging experiences, it was fun, but exhausting. We had a team of bloggers and we tried to closely follow the conference blogging guidelines I set out last year.

Chris and I handled most of the photography. You can find the FPRA Flickr stream here.

One of the highlights for me was Cynthia Gordon's session on how Universal has been using digital and social media. Many of her examples revolved around the recent announcement that Universal Studios Theme Park would be home to Harry Potter.

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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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One of the best 'booths' at BlogHer this year was Scrapblog. Carlos, Alex, Cindy and the rest of the gang offered hands-on demo of their product and a great photo opp for BlogHer attendees. Bloghers had a number of props and costumes available to 'dress up' and have a Scrapblog made.

During the event I heard a number of women talking about the booth and organizing group shots.

From a social media standpoint, Scrapblog has been uploading all the images created to Flickr and will be doing some follow-up features after the event.

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It's interesting to watch the ongoing Twitter coverage of Elizabeth Edward's closing keynote at BlogHer '07. Almost all the tweets I see are micro-coverage of the Q&A. It's really cool to see the use of Twitter in this way.

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I'll be speaking at the ATDC in Atlanta next Wednesday. What is the ATDC? It's the Advanced Technology Development Center located at Georgia Tech.

What's interesting about this speaking engagement is how it came about. On Tuesday I was traveling to Atlanta and posted a quick update to Twitter. I mentioned that I was going to be in Atlanta next week as well. Lance Weatherby from the ATDC saw this and contacted me.

So, a booking via Twitter. I guess there is a business case :-)

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On June 11th, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) launched the official PlayStation.Blog. I'm proud to say we had a little bit of a hand in the development of this new corporate blog.

The blog is based upon the WordPress platform and features a number of modifications. I handled the design and some of the project management while the team (Nick, Pete, Sean and Mike) from cnp_studio handled CSS, WordPress customization and other tweaks.

Response to the blog was been somewhat amazing with over 500 comments coming in the first 24 hours. Technorati rank went from non-existent to 8,364 in less than two weeks. Not bad.

As with any project of this nature, it's only the beginning. Look for more to come.

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As a companion piece to my 'Jaded View of PR and the Blogosphere' here is something about journalists. Once again the caveat that I've been working with traditional media for a number of years on how they can adapt to the world of social media. Also, the vast number of journalists I work for are great people doing great work. It's just a few that spoil it for everybody else.

Generally when you get a group of journalists together on a panel the topic of blogs will come up. One of the often used responses about the blogosphere is, "Blogs are often inaccurate." Each time a journalist says that I will usually respond, "Really, can you give me a specific recent example." Guess what their response is?

Some journalists say that blogs don't check facts or are mostly opinion and as such not real news. It's ironic that when they make those statements it's often based upon generalities and opinion. In a sense, when some journalists speak about blogs they're committing the same sins they say bloggers commit.

Recently, Social Media Club Atlanta held a panel discussion featuring a number of traditional media folk. To say there were some tensions would be an understatement.

Amber Rhea a local Atlanta blogger e-mailed me after the session and conveyed a story similar to one I've experienced. A traditional journalist on a panel will say, "What you do is more......" Just insert your own ending there: 'entertainment', 'fun', 'opinion', 'of a dairy'. In Amber's case her response was, "What 'I' do? Have you ever read my blog? Do you even know what 'I' do?" Hmm, a journalist making a statement without looking at the original source material.

I write a hyperlocal blog and it's a mixture of news, links and opinion. In the year and a half I have run the blog I've only posted incorrect information once and it was more of a writing slip-up than a huge gaffe. I quickly updated the post and pointed out the correction. When a journalist says that blogs are often inaccurate I say, "Really have you looked at my blog or other hyperlocal blogs?"

Making general statements about blogs being this or that infuriates me. Likewise, most newspaper folks will bristle when somebody makes a similar blanket statement such as, "All newspapers have a liberal bias."

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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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I'm still working on part two of my CVB post, but for now here is a tidbit I've been sharing with CVBs and other travel and tourism folks. In fact I talked about it on Monday to a group of airport communicators. Benet Wilson from Aviation Week also blogged about it.

Every day is a FAM Tour

For some background, many convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs), attractions, airports, etc. rely upon familiarization tours or FAM tours to promote their locations. FAM tours are designed for journalists. CVBs bring in travel journalists/writers and then wine and dine them while showing off the best that their location has to offer. Their hope of course is that the journalists will then write positive stories about their destinations.

There is one problem with that.

Today every visitor can be a journalist in some way. People are constantly blogging about their travel experiences. The good and the bad. Those posts might only be read by a few friends and relatives at first, but eventually they begin to appear in the all-important Google results. That's when the fun begins. Benet talks about a recent example:

In the past, complaints like this were either never seen, or if they were, they were tossed aside, with the thought that one person's opinion didn't make much of a difference. But TravelGolf.com specifically targets this community, and I suspect it's a large one.

Golf is an important tourism tool for the Miami region. And if Tim McDonald says MIA is "hell," some of his readers may read that and decide to move their golf outing to somewhere like Tucson, which also happens to have an airport that's easier to navigate.

The question then is: Why don't you treat every visitor like you treat a journalist on a FAM tour?

The long-term impact of a positive/negative blog post is probably greater than a one-time column in a local paper talking about a 'Weekend Trip to X'.

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Travel and tourism is a great example of an industry that has been impacted by social media. Not long ago online travel booking spelled doom for the travel agent. Will CVBs (Convention and Visitor's Bureaus) face the same fate?

Savvy travelers are very self-sufficient. They'll book they're own travel and research their own trips. Sure they may look at an 'official' site for a location or hotel, but more and more they'll use a site like TripAdvisor or another third-party site that is dedicated to their destination.

A great example is Disney. There are dozens of Disney-specific web sites such as The Disney Blog or Mouse Planet. These detailed fan-sites can give you tips galore, some of which Disney probably wishes they didn't.

One of the driving forces behind social media is the notion that we trust each other more than we trust media/business. We're looking for good, reliable information. If the CVBs aren't providing it, we'll look elsewhere. We want to know what's good and what's bad. We want honest opinions.

That's the crux of the CVBs though. You're never going to find a CVB web site say, "Don't stay at this hotel." Chances are, that hotel is a paying supporter of the CVB and they wouldn't like it too much if their 'marketing' organization was driving customers away. Perhaps that's why many CVB run social media sites are somewhat sterile.

Most CVBs are funded by tourism taxes (aka bed taxes) and are tasked with promoting their area to the rest of the world, i.e. 'Come Visit Beautiful X'. Swap out the X for your local city, county or state. Statewide CVBs often have huge budgets with large traditional media buys. In Florida, FLA-USA has a budget of $24.7 million and was asking for an additional $34.3 million this year.

CVBs realize that consumers are looking to social media for travel tips, they want to be part of that mix. However, is it even possible for CVBs to run a social media initiative?

Another issue is truth in advertising. CVBs often produce glossy 'Destination Guides' that showcase the beauty of a particular location. The problem is the real thing rarely ever looks as good as the picture. One CVB I know of features a picture of a private home's lakefront on their cover. In other words, the cover photo that represents their destination is somewhere you can't even go to.