A Rant - in 30 min or less

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Uncle Ben’s words ring loudly in my ears today as I watch the video of a Domino’s executive reading a statement about how horrified the company is about the “prank” committed by two idiots and the tweets heard round the business world.  The New York Times reported brand damage…I feel like the whole issue is borne of brain damage.  

“The independent owner of that store is reeling from the damage that this is caused and it’s not a surprise that this has caused a lot of damage to our brand.” 

I am not going to write a long treatise condemning or defending the social discussion around business brand issues.  I’m sure this rant adds to a long list of conversations had by others with experiences and expertise in this area.   But maybe you haven’t seen, remember the fury of the Motrin Moms?  Surveys done later found that most (gasp) MOMs weren’t offended by the ads.  45% liked the video and 15% didn't like it. 8%, said it negatively affected their feelings of the brand, 32% said it made them like the brand MORE.

Businesses NEED to be a part of the social discussion, but they don’t deserve to be BULLIED by it.  Dominos responded well, and had to.  There will likely be no long term band damage, and in fact they may ultimately benefit from their response to this event. But I guess it just continues to baffle me why these things are given so much weight in the public discourse.

As many have learned all too painfully and personally in the social world online, your actions have ramifications in the “real world” on yourself and others.  To steal a page from the mom’s handbook – treat people as you would want to be treated, or even better, if your best friend wants to jump off a bridge, does that mean you will too?  Social media is about facilitating discussion and conversation – which may lead to valid criticism and action, but we have to be careful of rapid overreaction, condemnation and crucifixion.

We love to ridicule celebrities and sports figures that use their visibility to air their politics or personal issues as if they are of a higher authority.  Well guess what.  As Twitter prepares to get a big red O sticker today, we all have been given that megaphone to some degree.  It comes with some assembly required, but the one critical piece we need – is a filter.  Decide what you want to be, understand the power you wield, and use it responsibly.  

My point?  I dunno.  I guess with an unprecedented ability to inform and affect change, why can’t the new social reality work harder to avoid the bad things about the old one?

Social Media PR: Market Innovation or Market Correction?

I’ve been meaning to put this question and associated thoughts to a screen for some time now, but something always seems to take precedence. 

As I read the Twitter streams and blogs of PR, press and other experts about what works, what doesn’t and what is the essence of social media, I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic.  I’ve done tech PR for the better part of 17 years at this point, and in my activities with social media – both for clients and for myself – I have often wondered if in PR industry terms, it is a mystical power or lost art?

“Social business” expert, Jennifer Leggio in particular penned a relatively recent post based on a panel conversation about what social media has done for, and to, the PR industry.  She also wrote an earlier piece on the area in which I have lived much of my professional career – enterprise IT.  These are great pieces which served to support my belief that one of the best things social media is doing for the PR industry is forcing many to actually get back to public RELATIONS.  It is also hopefully driving the end of public carpet bombing that was the result of an industry that used technology as an excuse to be lazy and undisciplined.

When I started in PR, relationships where critical, and the social media tool of the day was the phone.  Sure there was voicemail and (gasp) fax machines, but to sell a reporter on a story or a piece of news required you to have a real, live, bi-directional conversation – and build a relationship based on continuous value add.  That forced you to understand not only your client’s product, but made you understand their business and the larger context in which it operated.  You understood competitors and you had to anticipate direct questions, because you couldn’t hide behind an email.

I won’t bore you with a “I had to walk both ways to school uphill and get up from the couch to change the channel”-style history lesson, but suffice to say that an initial run through an editorial calendar back then took about 8-10 hours.

But with technology came disintermediation.  Thousands of emails could be sent at once, press release pitches gave a cliff notes version of what many thought was relevant – FOR EVERYONE, not for the one.  Sure, good firms still taught people how to do it right, but one look at all the bad pitch blogs show how far things had fallen in some cases – no targeting, no understanding, no conversation. 

Social media in my experience at its best is another outlet for creative energies, and a place that enables a different class of necessary conversation.  And whether on my own Facebook page or Twitter stream, or in counseling my clients around theirs, almost every interaction I have benefits my business and my clients.  Apart from direct pitching or communicating issues for my clients, my own interactions continue to challenge me in the way I think.  They make me think differently, think individually, and have more focused conversations than I have before – and in some cases likely wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

Jennifer is a great resource for understanding the value of social media, especially for those in B2B tech sectors, and I’d recommend for those who are not following her, you do so immediately.  She’s on Twitter as @mediaphyter.  As the risk of paraphrasing, she also cautions against the herd mentality that many PR people trying to understand social media are taking, which is being too quick to ask tactical questions about “how” to use certain tools, instead of first trying to understand why those tools are or aren’t appropriate in support of a client’s business objectives. 

Interestingly, right around the time that Jennifer posted her blog entries, the legendary Guy Kawasaki posted a blog on how to build a Twitter network.  I have to say, I was a little disappointed in that blog because of the cynical, methodical, “perception is reality” approach it seems to advocate.  Is that the essence of social media?  I hope not. 

Finally, Jennifer makes the great point that social media is a platform on which PR people can step up as business consultants.  I’d echo that sentiment wholeheartedly, and expand on that to say that social media should be an extension of PR’s role as business consultants.  When we opened CHEN PR’s doors 12 years ago, we defined a business model based not just on being a communicator for our clients, but also on being a strategic colleague, a confidant and in some cases even an extra conscience.  It’s a model that has served us extremely well through good times and bad, and one that I see in greater demand today and moving forward.  Social media isn’t the ultimate tool to fix everything, it’s the place to start a discussion – between two people, or 2 million, that can drive a business in the right direction.

For those interested, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook or on Twitter @kidko92

Three Questions with David Weinberger, Author of Everything is Miscellaneous

David Weinberger's new book, Everything is Miscellaneous, is playing to rave reviews. David became a techceleb with the publication of The Cluetrain Manifesto, which ranked #6 on BusinessWeek's top 200 books in 2000. He is one of the four co-authors of the seminal work.

In a galaxy far away, David was a client when he was at Interleaf. Happily for me, we reconnected when we invited him to speak at the MIT Enterprise Forum's Brave New Web conference last February.

We are honored to have David participate in our Three Questions series, a regular feature in our (sometimes quarterly) e-newsletter; the Spring issue went out today. We were lucky enough to catch David before his book tour started. Since David is always worth sharing, we'll replay those questions here. If you don't get our newsletter and you'd like to, just email me. At the end of the Q&A, I've included some snippets from reviews.

You have a new book just out -- Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. Could you tell us a bit about it?

It turns out that the way we've organized ideas, information and knowledge for thousands of years duplicates the limitations on organizing physical objects. That's a terrible constraint that the digital world escapes. So, instead of thinking that we should have subject-matter experts come up with complex organizational schemes, we should instead just make a big honkin' pile of stuff. Put in every scrap of information, because it's not like we're going to run out of space in our digital bookshelf or closet. And rather than organizing it all ahead of time, give users the tools to sort and order it as they want at the moment. Then let users add their own information about the stuff, which will enable others to find even more. This enables businesses and their customers to get much more value out of the information available, it reduces the cost of building and maintaining the organizational system, and it greatly improves the customer experience. But, not coincidentally, it also challenges the authority of institutions that used to be able to tell us what's interesting and important in the huge miscellaneous pile of what we know. So, this is a big change not just in how we organize information, but in who gets to control what we know.

In your book, you talk about "meta-business." What's that about?

For decades we've been telling managers that, next to their people, information is their most important asset. But if you want the Web 2.0 network effects, you should let a lot of that information go. For example, airlines do very well by enabling sites like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to have access to their flight schedule information. The travel sites add value to that information, if only by aggregating it with all the rest of the airlines' information, making it easier for people to make travel plans, and reducing the airlines' transaction costs. The same sort of externalizing of what used to be internal information is happening in industry after industry, from iTunes for music and Zillow for real estate. It's all part of the way business is becoming more miscellaneous, contributing to the huge pile of information, enabling people to innovate around how we're going to sort through it and

You recently spoke at the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Brave New Web conference and touched on Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. What’s important about the differences?

Web 2.0 points to three basic phenomena: Sites opening their data and services for use by other applications, the rise of content by users, and businesses taking advantage of "the network effect," i.e., the emergence of new and unexpected value as networks get bigger and more intensely linked. The first makes it far easier for people to create new applications, including "mashups" that combine the strength of multiple sites. The second was always the key driver of the Web's remarkable adoption curve. From the beginning, people jumped into this new world because we got to talk about what mattered to us, in our own voice, with other people. That's not new, but with the arrival of blogs, wikis and other social software, it's gotten even easier. The third - using network effects - has also been with us from the beginning, but as more people join the online world and as we create more and more links, you could say that the network effect has undergone its own network effect.

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Review Snippets (See the book website for links)

"A great read." -- Robert Scoble

"I haven’t read a page-turner like this since the DaVinci Code." -- EducationPR blog

"...his (brilliant, must-read) new book..." -- Ethan Zuckerman

"…every chapter in Everything is Miscellaneous brings new insight to the subject. This is a hell of a book"… an "instant classic." -- Cory Doctorow

BlogHer Case Studies Large and Small

BlogHer Business was cooking today in NYC. I'm trying to keep up with the case studies featuring small business bloggers, a solopreneur, a media blogger and an enterprise blogger. Please excuse the jumping in and out of voice. The Web access here has been a bit dodgy. The veteran bloggers tell me that's the hazard of trying live blogging at conferences.

Small Business Blog

Susan Getgood questioned Shirley Frazier of giftbasketbusiness.com.

Shirley says she went kicking and screaming to Web 2.0. She now has three blogs.

Giftbasketbusiness.com - These owners are a super niche on the Web. Shirley doesn’t own a giftbasket business, but she has tips for these owners. This is a $4.8 billion industry. (Who knew?) It helps these owners do business. She uses Yahoo and Google alerts for articles that are relevant to expand content. She speaks around the country on the topic.

Solobusinessmarketing.com - This site is for independent professionals, for people who work alone but who can’t figure out what to do first in terms of marketing. What can I do on my own? She has a book coming out on this topic, so she started the blog to build a fan base.

laughingchow.com - Is all about photography tips. Shirley says most of the photo blogs are kinda technical and this one is basic photo tips. It's experimental so far.

How have you been able to measure the results of your blog? Sale of her educational materials. (Many people use their blog to tell people about a book or CD.) Her educational materials are moving, so she believes the blog is working. She can see stats on how folks are moving from the blog to the site.

Passive revenue – Her sites are peppered with Adsense and Conterra. The giftbusinessbasket blog pulls a good portion of my revenue. Third way that I can tell things are working out, I’m getting more speaking engagements. I’d get about 25 speaking engagements per year. I’ve doubled that.

Media Blog

Elana Center interviewed Caroline Little, CEO of Washington Post Newsweek Interactive.

We publish washingtonpost.com, newsweek.com and Slate. They had their 10^th anniversary on the Web last year. Initially, they were just repurposing the content on the Web. The Post was a local newspaper; now 90% of the users are from outside the region, so it’s a very different project. We’ve made some mistakes along the way, but if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying new things.

What were the risks? The risks weren’t that great. The journalists were pretty excited about reaching new audiences. Where we’ve gotten a lot of grief – when we have bloggers who are not from the Washington Post newspaper. People say, "You’re representing these people as being from the Washington Post and they’re not."

Mistakes? We had a situation where one of our writers (not from the Post) had alleged plagiarism incident. That was hard for all of us. The coverage of politics can get really heated. Some of the comments are mean, useless and they threatening the journalists, so we shut down the comments section and got slammed. We were the first big newspaper to do this, so we thought we might get a bit of slack, but we got slammed anyway.

In my view, the Web is like a party; you’re not going to talk to just one person. Our role is to help navigate, so we do have links to other stories, sometimes by other news sites. We hope that we’re providing enough context that they’ll come back to us. A lot of other news sites won't link away from their content.

How are you evaluating if this experiment is working? I evaluate it based on things like the national Emmy we won last year and we've gotten lots of awards from the White House Photographers’ Association. Audience and revenue continue to grow too.

How are journos reacting? It’s across the board. Some people feel it should be a reflection of the paper, while others think: “This is the coolest thing. When can I shoot another video?”

The newspaper brings most of the revenue so that’s dominant. But things are changing.

If a blogger links to your story, you put them on your site. Yes, that’s the benefit. People are talking about important issues. (They’re sometimes talking about pretty unimportant issues too :-)

We have 12 million people reading the Post now, online.

What is the biggest surprise from when you started this? In some ways, the more successful you get, the harder it is. I’ve been surprised at our success in the multimedia area. And I’ve been impressed -- there’s an intimacy that comes with a blog. It’s not unlike doing video on the Web. It’s like us talking here today.

(I got to chat with Caroline for a bit during cocktails, she's an impressive woman, but very down to earth.)

Solopreneur

Lena West interviewed Carmen VanKerckhove from New Demographic, which is a company that conducts anti-racism training seminars.

Carmen has two blogs and a podcast and started blogging to support her training business. She has an anti-racism site, Racialicious, which is at the intersection of race and pop culture. She also writes antiracistparent.com, for parents committed to raising kids with an antiracist outlook. Her weekly podcast is: Addicted to race."

Why did you choose to open a public free for all about race in America?

Some days I’ve wondered. I’ve gone a little stricter on the panel moderation. I had no strategy when I started this. I kinda stumbled into it. I started the blog because I was inspired by this blog called angryasianman. I originally thought it would be interesting to take a look at the implications of race and mixed race relationships. We don’t make it a scary subject. It can be funny, and a lot of it can be absurd.

My tips: don't forget about your traditional email newsletter. I'm starting to do tele-seminars. Because I've been aggressive about trying to build my newsletter list, I'm getting good response to those alerts on tele-seminars. And on your site, make it really obvious who you are and how folks can contact you.

Large Enterprise Blog

Maria Niles interviewed Staci Schiller from Wells Fargo Bank.

(I got booted offline here, so I missed some good content.) Wells Fargo is a 155-year-old institution. Staci closed with this, but it makes for a good set-up of her overall point. If Wells Fargo can do it, you can do it too. One of the folks at her table asked (incredulously): WELLS FARGO HAS A BLOG? It's rewarding that the blogosphere has embraced us. It shows that even though it's a big company, I'm a real person and people can come to me for advice. Here's an overview of their two blogs and a virtual world.

One blog is Guided by History, which is a community preparedness and response blog. It grew out of the last earthquake. They've also got a site for helping make the student loan process less intimidating: The Student LoanDown. (How smart - making a bank accessible.) Incredibly, they've also got Stagecoach Island, an online community to teach teens smart money management.

Staci: Since banking is regulated, compliance reviews every post I put up. That's just a fact of life for me. You have to build in a couple of extra days for reviews, but I know they're doing that to protect me and that's just the way it is.

What kind of results have you seen that have inspired WF to dive into social media? In terms of the student loan blog, we're getting a lot of traffic. In January you get a lot of people seeking advice for the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid application) and we're there to help walk them through the process.

In the beginning, she was spending 20% of her time blogging and now its 50%. They're promoting their blogs internally, so people who are dealing with customers will talk it up.

MITEF Cambridge: Digital Living - March 14th

The folks at the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge have come up with another smokin' lineup for their March 14th event: Digital Living - Building Brands in the World of New Media.

Speakers include:

• Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Brightcove, an Internet TV service
• Eric Alderman, founder and CEO of KickApps, a hosted platform for deploying user-generated content and social networking functionality on websites
• Jeff Morris, SVP for Broadband Strategy/Technology Development at Showtime Networks
• Baba Shetty, director of Media and Interactive at Hill Holliday

The event will be moderated by well-known VC Woody Benson of Prism VentureWorks.

The group will chat about opportunities in a consumer-driven marketplace and how we can tap them to reach new audiences.

You can register here.

CNNMoney Says Old Media Isn't Dead

For Valentine's Day, Paul R. La Monica, a CNNMoney.com editor at large, kicked off his ode to old media this way:

This Valentine's Day, I've decided to give a big sloppy wet kiss to something that really needs some love: old media.

LaMonica goes on to defend the thesis that old media and new media will co-exist, a blending that one executive calls "media meshing."

People can enjoy both old and new media. Gregory Coleman, executive vice president of global media sales for Yahoo! (Charts) described the phenomenon as "media meshing" at a Yahoo presentation for advertisers in New York Tuesday evening.

Coleman conceded that TV, among other old forms of media, will always be a big draw for consumers and advertisers. The trick is to recognize that more and more people are using various forms of media simultaneously, meshing if you will, and that this meshing can often enhance the media experience for a consumer.

So now I know that when hubby and I are reading email and surfing sites while watching House, we are "media meshing."

I tend to agree with Catherine Marenghi's perspective on newspapers and other "old" media, which she writes about here. It has its place. No website can replace my monthly Vanity Fair, replete with those lush photos by Annie Leibovitz and those feisty editorials by Graydon Carter.