Okay, so the last 18 months have been near cataclysmic for many Americans. We lost our money in the stock market, our jobs and even our homes. We’re mired in a two-front war. We loaned money to save the very institutions that created the financial collapse of the Great Recession, only to have them thumb their noses at us by loaning little of our money to help small business and average American’s while they continue to pay out big bonuses.
No, I’m not disillusioned (well, maybe a little). But now the 2009 edition of the highly respected Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that we have lost trust in virtually every form of communications, most industries and all but a few people. To this, I feel I must quote Homer Simpson, “D’oh!”
I trust my dog and my mom less this year than I did in early 2008. (I pick them not only to make a sardonic point but because neither has a computer or cell phone where they read this betrayal.) As Richard Edelman said about the study, “The events of the last 18 months have scared people.” Damn straight it did. And fear is the antibody of trust.
Michael Bush’s article Monday (Feb. 8) in Ad Age about the Trust Barometer purports that the survey shows that social media waned in 2009. The evidence? The number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half, from 45 percent in 2008 to 25 percent. Not surprising given the general sentiment and how many more people are using – or, perhaps more accurately, misusing – social media over this same time period.
Several blogs, among them Going Social Now, disagree. They even go into great detail about what makes certain individuals more credible than others and that individuals are more credible sources of information about products than they are on companies. I mostly agree with these points.
But Edelman staffer Steve Rubel does a good job of putting things in perspective – “…for social media the Trust data shows that we’re desperately seeking out experts. It means that we’ll have to work harder to build credibility through online thought leadership.”
Who is credible? The sources we trust more this year than we did in 2008 include CEO’s (26 percent), government officials (27 percent), NGO representatives (44 percent), financial/industry analyst (52 percent) and academic experts (64 percent). While increased trust in CEOs and government officials is, at least to me, surprising, their numbers are still relatively anemic. (And to put this in perspective, the study says I trust my friends as credible sources about a company on a par with the CEO? I don’t think that’s saying much about the CEO.) Meanwhile, perceived independent experts – like analysts and academicians – carry some considerable credibility.
There’s a lot of noise in social media and a lot of companies using social media as part of their marketing mix. Like any medium, perhaps those with the most knowledge and expertise in a specific topic will carry the most weight – and create the most trusted messages in the social media space. There’s nothing new there.
The recent massive recall at Toyota, aside from breathing new life into a moribund General Motors (an Obama conspiracy?), raises an interesting question for public relations folks. If your management makes a conscious decision to take more risks in manufacturing, is it also obligated to communicate this strategy’s potential impact to stakeholders, particularly customers and investors?
Toyota Taking its Lumps
The Lean Manufacturing approach at Toyota puts standard parts into a wide variety of vehicles in their lineup, and by doing so raises the risk that failures will cause havoc to the company’s public relations, or worse, harm to its customers. So, how do you balance the additional profit per vehicle with the increased risk that if something goes wrong, it goes wrong big-time?
As Daisuke Wakabayashi reported in The Wall Street Journal last week, the Lean Manufacturing technique is seen as risky even by its promoters. David Meier, co-author of “The Toyota Way Fieldbook” and a consultant on the approach, was quoted in the Journal: “The cost may be decreased in the short term, but the risk is increased.”
Some experts say that Toyota’s perceived quality score could fall 20%, leading to a 4% drop in the residual value of its cars. The company could face difficulty borrowing for its operations (Fidgety Fitch put the company on negative watch recently). Some analysts predict impact on sales of over $1 billion. Add to that the lawyers’ fees, the increased advertising and incentive costs, and you have the makings of a true corporate crisis.
Now, Consumer Reports has a dedicated page of blogs on Toyota issues.
Another overlooked-but-important question, then, is “How much is this going to cost me when I sell or trade my Tundra pickup?” Toyota had about 17% of the 10.7 million car and truck sales in 2009, according to WardsAuto.com. In recent years alone, their huge share increases mean that they’ve put millions of us at risk of experiencing a drop in the value of our vehicles.
Does a company engaging in this risky business of Lean Manufacturing have an obligation to tell customers and investors of the risk? Or, is it caveat emptor? Toyota lists 10 risks of doing business in its 2009 annual report’s automotive section. Lean Manufacturing didn’t make the list. While it may not be material to Toyota in an accounting way, what about reputation and brand risks based upon exposing Toyota owners (both of their vehicles and of their shares) to such significant costs?
Roger Vincent and Ken Bensinger, reporting in The Los Angeles Times this week, focused on the “public relations blitz” begun last Sunday, quoting some PR professionals saying that the recent communications represent a “too little; too late” approach. In their reporting, Vincent and Bensinger characterize CTS Corp., manufacturer of the pedals, as apparently “taken by surprise” by the recall.
Was the Toyota PR team surprised, also?
Regardless of what happens to Toyota sales, it is important for the company to look at this incident with its legendary attention to detail. While the recall certainly has an impact on the seven wastes that are so high on the Toyota Production System radar screen, there is an even better reason to analyze and address the circumstances that led to this foulup.
The confidence of consumers can be a fragile thing. The discipline of disclosing risks to consumers and investors has to include revealing risks like the one coming from Lean Manufacturing practices. This means that a very deep look into operations should be married with a propensity to overdisclose; both to the company’s public relations, risk and sustainability professionals, and other, external stakeholders.
Toyota will survive and even thrive. The bigger opportunity here is to rewrite the book on how a manufacturer tells the rest of us about our risks due to its way of doing business. Toyota is in a great position to change the rules in favor of such transparency.
First the good news – business loves social media. A January 3 update to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research annual survey on the adoption and practice of social media by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., found that more businesses are experimenting and engaging with social media. Among the survey respondents, 91 percent of companies report they incorporated at least one social media service or tool in 2009. Literacy and awareness was also on the rise with roughly 75 percent stating that they were now “very familiar” with social networking. Conversely, there was an impressive drop in Inc 500 companies that did not use social media at all, which plunged from 43 percent in 2007 to 9 percent in 2009.
Now, here’s the bad news. Control is still a major issue, especially at larger companies. According to a nationwide survey conducted by Robert Half Technology, 54 percent of 1,400 companies surveyed completely restrict employees from visiting social networking sites. Another 19 percent restrict use for business purposes only.
Businesses are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes, but those same companies don’t want employees logging on during work hours.
The Robert Half spokesperson said employers find social networking a waste of time. “It takes away from primary responsibility. When socializing on sites such as Facebook, we lose track of time.”
A secondary concern companies mentioned is the potential for employees leaking confidential information or sharing thoughts that may reflect badly on the company. The spokesperson said that many of these companies are still trying to set boundaries.
So while business increasing embraces the desire to “push out” info using social media, they still have not gotten over the fact that they have engage communities by trusting people to have conversations with customers, suppliers and their many other stakeholders.
I’d love to see a survey of how many of the 91 percent of companies using social media are failing miserably because they still just don’t get the fact that every employee is an ambassador, whether at the supermarket, a cocktail party, the kids soccer match or when active on a social media site. They trust their salesmen to represent the company unsupervised, but can’t trust their employees to use social media responsibly. Seems like there’s still a lot of growing up to be done in 2010.
After repeatedly hearing how executive buy-in is critical to social media success, I decided to sit down with April Harned, the Director of Communications at Progress DataDirect to see what was her magic formula. My podcast with April will tell you how a B2B company embraced social media and started reaping the results of a successful blog, Data Connections. Yes, the podcast is a little long but trust me if you are still on the fence with corporate blogging, you want to take 10 minutes to either listen or read the transcribed version below.
Priya Ramesh: Thank you April for joining us today. We’re very excited to speak to you about how Progress DataDirect has embraced social media and share your experience in making social media a part of your overall PR process. Could you please give us a brief intro to yourself and Progress DataDirect?
April Harned: Sure. I’m April Harned, the director of communications for Progress DataDirect, formally known as DataDirect Technologies. We are the world’s leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration. Some say that we’re the industry standard for standards based data access. Progress DataDirect is now the data infrastructure division of Progress Software, which is a leading provider of software to enable enterprises to be operationally receptive.
Priya Ramesh:Excellent! April, do you want to tell us what was the defining moment when you said, “Okay, I think it’s time for us to start leveraging the power of social media.” And walk us through your decision making process in implementing social media at Progress DataDirect?
April Harned: Well having been a ten year veteran of the PR agency world and keeping up on latest trends impacting our industry, I noticed that more and more people were embracing social media tools and tactics. I knew that was the future of a successful PR program. So we made initial efforts to research third party firms that could help us educate our internal audiences and decision makers on the importance of social media and help us create a foundation to get started, and then build upon.
Priya Ramesh: Could you tell us more about what were some of the initial steps you took in implementing a social media program? Where you focused on a blog as a first step, creating a thought leadership position using a blog, and then eventually taking your brand to Facebook and Twitter. Tell us how you went about selecting what media to choose.
April Harned: Well the problem we had faced initially was that several internal thought leaders had maintained their own blogs separately. So we knew we wanted to bring those blogs together under one corporate umbrella where we could more easily manage traffic, as well as topics that were being addressed, etc. So that was initiative number one. Secondly, we knew that we also needed to embrace other tools that were becoming very popular by not only our customer and prospects, but the software community at large. By that we mean, not only blogging but the growing presence of Facebook at the time and the importance of being on LinkedIn, and at the time, the new phenomenon was Twitter that more and more people seem to be embracing.
The blog was definitely our first concern; its not only bringing all of those under one umbrella, but then to encourage other internal resources and thought leaders to be more active within the blogosphere and to demonstrate the value that the blog would bring to our marketing and sales efforts.
Priya Ramesh: That’s great. We’ve seen from an agency perspective, that’s pretty much the first step that a lot of the B2B companies take, start off with a corporate blog and start aggregating industry leading topics and eventually take that content to Facebook and Twitter. So I think you guys were very smart to start off with Data Connections and see such increased traffic through your blog to your main corporate Website. Well done there.
April, one of the things that keeps repeating when we talk to communication professionals, people like you, is the fact that there is this huge roadblock when you have to get your executives and top management to say, “Yes, let’s do social media.” Because with social media comes that loosing some control over messaging, and loosing a little control over your brand, and opening that door to your community online and having a conversation, which is two way. Did you save any organizational challenges as you got started to implementing social media at Progress DataDirect? And, if yes, could you share with us how you overcame some of those challenges? I think that would be very beneficial to some of our listeners and companies out there still kind of struggling to overcome that roadblock.
April Harned: Well first and foremost, I think that our real problem wasn’t necessarily their concern about not being able to control the message, but rather the time commitment that was involved. Just a misunderstanding or misconceptions of how much of their time might be needed for participating in the blogosphere. How we overcame that was – I could tout day and night why we needed to be more active in the blogosphere and with social media tools, but it just seemed to be falling on deaf ears, and maybe because I’m an internal resource – we felt the best strategy to convince the leadership team was by the importance that we needed to be out there and needed to be active, not only to communicate with our communities, but to drive sales. In an effort to do that we thought it was very important to have a third party, unbiased expert come in via an agency. So that was definitely the route that we looked to take.
Again, even to this day, I don’t ever hear any real concern about controlling the message. I think that if you’re out in the blogosphere, and I think our participation there is pretty well maintained, I work closely with all of the bloggers to ensure that they’re not going out there with something that we as an organization don’t feel comfortable with or that might get us into some legal hot water. We’re very conscientious about what we put out there, but at the same time we want to answer our community’s most pressing questions. We listen and we respond accordingly.
Priya Ramesh: That’s fantastic. That leads us to our next question: Progress DataDirect has done an excellent job of getting some of your senior executive team members to take that time that you just talked about and, not just that they’re actually very active, they’re actually very passionate about Data Connections; they want to talk about some of the hot topics that matter the most to your audience online, and having worked from an agency perspective on Data Connections for you, we’re just so happy to be talking to some of your senior like Gregg Willhoit who’s a thought leader in the IT space, taking the time with his busy schedule to actively blog and talk about key industry topics on Data Connections. Any tips, advice that you can share with our listeners today on how you manage to get your senior staff to embrace social media?
April Harned: I would say that, that was definitely our biggest hurdle, and an ongoing challenge. The way that we overcame it was giving them a taste of the success that can be achieved through social media. While they were reluctant, and when kicking and screaming, once they had a taste of how it could be used effectively they were sold. For instance, with Gregg Willhoit, from the get go he was concerned about the time commitment of actually sitting down and writing blog posts – he just didn’t see that happening throughout the course of his day. So what CRT/tanaka advised, and I think it has been quite successful, is doing once a month a one hour podcast where we go through and ask him in a Q&A type format various questions that relate to product news or industry trends that we’re seeing, or competitive news. And he goes into great detail about each of those topics, and then we edit those podcasts and get it on the blog with transcription services provided as well. So that has been a great tool to get the content we need up on the blog, but at the same time not spend too much of Gregg’s time throughout the course of the month – only one hour. So he’s definitely bought in there.
And then in terms of his conversion, from a skeptic to a fan, has really been with some recent competitive events that we’ve been able to get our positioning quickly up on the blog and not have to go through the legal, corporate, bureaucratic channels to get our position up and quickly, and then point media to how we differ from this other particular competitor in the space has really done wonders. So there is a lot of confusion out there on how the DataDirect Shadow product differs from Neon zPrime, and through the blog we’re able to constantly answer and clarify those concerns by the market place. So we’re often pointing people to the blog in order for people to get that quick fix, both from prospects that are unclear, as well as media that have some confusion on how our product differs from another competitor.
Priya Ramesh: April, I think you hit a key point in how a company can use blogs as that extended platform to communicate different things that you may or may not be able to do on your Website or through a press release or some of the traditional modes of communication. It just gives you that much more ability to clarify things or be able to comment on some industry topics or even on some of your competitors. I think that’s a great way on how you have taken Data Connections as that extended medium to engage in more meaningful conversations and leverage to get beyond the traditional modes. So that’s great.
April Harned: In that respect, too, we’ve found some of our blog posts being included in extra articles in the mainframe space. So that’s exciting to see.
Priya Ramesh: From a PR perspective, and April we know how metric driven you are and that’s great because one of the challenges of the PR profession is always being able to explain ROI, the tangible benefits of your PR efforts. So with social media, would you mind sharing some of your ROI and some of the tangible benefits you have realized?
April Harned: Just from a traditional PR standpoint, obviously, I’ll address how we use blog posts to pitch the media as well. So I think it offers us real time information sharing that is so difficult. In terms of metrics, it is very difficult to measure the success of PR programs through traditional media. You can say, we had ten hits, but you really aren’t sure if those hits in traditional media outlets are driving traffic to your Website, or helping with sales. You might hear some anecdotal stories here and there, but just a very difficult activity to measure.
With social media, there’s so many tools in place, through Google Analytics and our own analytics program, Omniture where you can easily track how certain blog posts have fared, what the traffic has been, how much of the traffic is moving from your blog to the DataDirect.com as well as our rankings within search engine optimization. I know recently that when you type in mainframe middleware we’re the third term, right below IBM. That’s a big success measure that resonates within internal audiences as well. So it’s always about keeping them happy, and keeping them in the know. They might not understand all that goes on under the covers, but they certainly understand when you can say that you’re third, behind IBM, on Google. I think that’s been a huge success for us, and just the volume of traffic that’s coming to the blog now verses what it was 6 months ago on the three various blogs. That’s up from a few hundred to now a few thousand a month.
Priya Ramesh: And I know we’ve noted visitors being directed to your main Website, DataDirect.com, which is a huge metric that we’ve accomplished through social media. Now that we’re in the last quarter of 2009, and all of us are putting together the budgets for 2010, as a PR professional, as someone who has embraced social media, do you think that it is here to stay? It is probably a no brainer question, but what are your thoughts on the future of social media? And more and more companies, especially in the IT industry such as Progress DataDirect embracing it and taking it to the next level.
April Harned: I think that PR as a profession will no longer exist. I think traditional media will still have its place, but I think social media in the years to come is really where the profession is heading. So companies that want to get their name out there, and that are accustomed to and have bought into PR programs much embrace social media or they will be left behind. So I think that it’s critical, and I think that corporate blogs are going to be kind of taking on more and more. Almost becoming their own news room, if you will. I think that traditional media outlets are going to become thinner and thinner, and companies are going to go directly to the source, verses the third party media outlets.
Priya Ramesh: That’s a fair statement to make, definitely. With that I want to wrap up with some advice from you, any lessons learned. Every company has to go through a process when they implement something new. I’m sure with the social media implementation there are some lessons that you learned or the marketing team at Progress DataDirect went through. So any advice to other companies that are just getting started would be very helpful.
April Harned: I would say be prepared for change. I think that I wasn’t as prepared – I didn’t prepare myself for the time that it was going to take to not only help manage expectations internally, but insure that myself and that those that were involved in the program were educated, and that we continue to educate ourselves because I feel like there’s new tools and new techniques available, almost on a daily basis that I need to get up to speed on in order to be successful. And to insure that we are using the best tools available to us. Those that make the most sense for our organization and our corporate culture. I would advise people to read up on what’s available, and definitely ask the expertise of their firm to help them guide through the processes.
Priya Ramesh: That’s a great point: Flexibility is key to social media. Facebook and Twitter are here to stay, but then every day we see a new trend or a new tool out there.
April Harned: And they enhance those staples.
Priya Ramesh: And at the end of the day I think it’s not just about tools, it’s about making the connections with your audience online. I see a lot of people get a little bogged down by let’s have a Facebook campaign or a Twitter campaign without thinking through, why is it that you want to be on Facebook or Twitter? What kind of conversations would you like to have with your target audience? Definitely, flexibility is key, and having that open mind to social media definitely drives success at the end of the day.
Thank you so much, April, for taking the time to speak with CRT/tanaka and sharing some of your experiences with social media. And we only look forward to continued success for DataDirect.
April Harned: Thank you for all of your efforts. It’s been a hectic six months, but a very successful one. I’m very proud.
Priya Ramesh: We have enjoyed working with you. Thank you.
I can pay to listen. I can listen for free. I can “monitor,” even. I can pay others to listen for me. I can lurk. I can engage.
There have been some great posts on the tools for listening. The list for both paid tools and free tools is ever-expanding, it seems. If I want to latch onto the latest and greatest, I only have to visit Alltop or check Twitter. Recently, for instance, Crazy Egg caught my eye. How sociable? is also really interesting in that I can view my brand as “mentions” across the web. But with all the focus on listening, is there enough focus on doing something about what you are hearing?
Looking for Answers (www.freedigitalphotos.net)
Jason Falls took on the subject of listening, posting on “The Five Ws of Social Media Listening” in August, where he also noted a favorite of mine from Michael Brito about active listening on the social web being overrated.
If you answered “1,” you aren’t listening deep enough, perhaps. The answer is “5,” since there’s a big difference between deciding and doing. I still smile almost every time I think of this little riddle because it was a particulary apt way of stating the challenges of a merger or an acquisition. There is often so much attention paid to the decision and the “doing” of the deal that the doing of the integration, etc. often goes wanting.
It’s the same with listening, whether you call it active or not. Maybe we should embrace another way to look at ”why.”
It’s called 5 Whys. It is a great process to move listening from just listening to doing something about what we hear. It’s been practiced by Jeff Bezos at Amazon, and it is a good tool for us to use in our social media listening (thanks, Pete Abilla for the Amazon example). Credited to Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota, the 5 Whys are most often seen in the context of industrial processes, but the same persistent asking of “why?” could go a long way to getting beyond the surface in social media measurement.
For example – “The car won’t start,” my (son/daughter/wife/husband) says (Wikipedia example): Why? – The battery is dead. (first why) Why? – The alternator is not functioning. (second why) Why? – The alternator belt has broken. (third why) Why? – The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and has never been replaced. (fourth why) Why? – I have not been maintaining my car according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, probably the ”root” cause)
Remind you of conversations you have had with clients or bosses? Can you think of some 5 Whys from your work in social media? Could the 5 Whys be a useful tool in getting deeper into your listening and monitoring? Would a shift to “actionable” listening be a possible outcome from using this discipline in your work? And, if we couple the Actionable with the other two “As of Metrics” that are talked about in the measurement world, we’ll make our measures Accessible and Auditable.
Some very progressive organizations might even open up the three As to the outside world, pushing ROI and transparency even farther down the path we’re on. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
As a marketer, I just shake my head wondering why we keep measuring social media in old ways – like expenditures. And using social media like other marketing tools to “push out” our messages. How often do we need to be reminded that social media is about engaging customers and potential customers in a meaning way. Is $5 million of a $100 million budget too much or too little? Well, social media isn’t all that expensive in the hierarchy of marketing expenditures. The best money you can spend is on people to staff your social media effort – just look at Southwest Airlines as a great example. (With Southwest, it doesn’t hurt that the social media effort totally supports a brand persona born through years of traditional customer engagement.)
If the social media effort is old school, then the $5 million is way too much and it’s probably alienating more people than it is engaging (thereby decreasing the effectiveness of the rest of the marketing mix). If it is well done, then perhaps one less $1 million TV spot is better spent on more, equally effective social media.
On the marketing side, a year is an eternity, especially when it’s about half the average CMO’s shelf life of 23.2 months. Like many of my clients and prospects, CMOs are bombarded with requests from non-marketing types, emboldened by all they see and hear about social media, asking why the organization is not doing this or that social media tactic. The result can be launching any social media effort in support of other marketing efforts (i.e., push out strategies) rather than the right social media engagement strategies. Let’s just hope that the crossroads between the need to keep up appearances (increasing social media expenditures) and the real value of the social media programs funded doesn’t end up being the ruin of a good thing.
Wind Power. Renewable Energy. Green Economy. There is an awesome amount of momentum in the America right now around all of these topics. We’re on the cusp of real change in how we create the gobs of energy we increasingly consume in a manner that is kinder and gentler to Mother Earth.
One problem – we have a power grid infrastructure (i.e., those big transmission lines that cut across the landscape), once the best in the world, that has gone neglected for many years. The current system was built for few big energy on-ramps (like coal-fired power plants and nukes) not a lot of small, variable energy outputs like the on ramps needed for renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass. Expanding and updating the transmission system is perhaps the most contentious project you could ever undertake. They are often ensnarled in protests and lawsuits so it takes decades to build even small additions to the grid. And the current transmission grid is far from smart right now.
The process of developing and implementing the smart grid is just starting in North America.
Lots of old equipment will have to be replaced.
And, many new automation technologies will have to be deployed in order to get there.
According to Dean Anderson’s blog the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory defines a smart grid as having the following characteristics:
Self-healing from power disturbance events
Enabling active participation by consumers in demand response • Operating resiliently against physical and cyber-attack
Providing power quality for 21st century needs
Accommodating all generation and storage options
Enabling new products, services, and markets
Optimizing assets and operating efficiently
If you saw this weekend’s 60 Minutes broadcast. we should all be greatly concerned about creating a smart grid that is resilient to cyber-attack. In typical 60 Minutes style, our electrical grid was “exposed” as a prime target for cyber terrorism potentially dropping our nation into darkness and confusion. More alarming was the interview that pointed out that some of the components damaged in a cyber or physical attack could take four months to replace. (I once spent 11 days without power due to an ice storm. I can’t imagine what four months would be like!) Remember that in 2003, a simple tree limb on a power line in Ohio resulted in a power failure that in mere seconds enveloped the Midwest to Broadway in darkness.
It will take time to develop a smart grid system designed to be more like your office and home wireless LAN but less susceptible to hacking.
Two years later, we’re enthralled with harnessing wind and solar, but all that excitement won’t get us far if we don’t address the much more mundane but essential infrastructure needed to turn all that excitement into real progress.
It doesn’t matter what the property is (image by junkerjane). From Twitter and email to document and blog post titles, your ability to write great headlines (or 140 character writing) matters more than ever. Great headlines drive traffic and interest.
Attention spans have shrunk, and if you can’t interest someone right off the bat with a great, witty headline then you’re out. Done, finished, out! That’s why Peter Shankman is right in valuing writing skills above all else.
Below find five basic tips from my experiences writing headlines:
1) Active versus passive: Man, it drives me crazy when I see one of my posts using a passive verb. People want exciting, fun titles. Active headlines inspire emotive responses, while passive ones invite reader to click visit someone else’s feed! Passive headline writing means I’m sloppy and that I didn’t care enough to review my work thoroughly.
2) Get sassy with it! Yeah, I said sassy. Seriously, throw some edge into it. You can call it tabloid, I call it interesting. Who wants to read business writing anymore? How exciting are all of these press releases? Oh boy! No thanks!
That doesn’t mean write sexual entendres into every communication. You may not like what you get back! Plus, great writers infuse edginess and excitement into their writing without resorting to juvenile tactics (at least most of the time). This is a great segue for…
3) Genuine headlines: Your headline serves as a preview. It should be genuine in describing the actual content, as opposed to teasing readers into a false experience. Consider this: You want them to come back, right? So write authentic headlines that do relate to your copy. Further, back the headline up right away in the first paragraph with a great thesis statement.
4) Less words: My dad used to be managing editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. Growing up with him editing my documents was a Dantean experience at times, but one for which I am now eternally grateful. His mantra: Cut the fat! What can you cut? How can you say a six word headline in four? What words can you replace with a new singular word. Take the time time to relentlessly review and cut the fat.
5) Intentionally incomplete: Sometimes I’ll just drop a phrase or even one word as the headline. It accurately depicts a part of the story, but is so open ended it’s the complete tease that draws them in. The post or document must be well described by such a phrase so the headline’s abstract depiction resonates.
A recent poll of corporate communicators conducted by Ragan Communications and PollStream shows up this week, saying that “only 49% of today’s professional communicators say they think press releases are ‘as useful as ever.’ ” About a third say that the news release is holding on largely due to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s old school disclosure rules for public companies.
“Press” releases have been declared dead on other occasions. Mary Schmidt did so in September in Lipsticking. Shel Holtz weighed in 3+ years ago with a reasonable call for evolution (…is Dead. Long Live the …). “Press releases generally don’t create either relevance or trust. In the Darwinism of this crowded new media environment, they don’t survive,” declared Josh in Span Society during the post-election crisis in Iran. Mark Naples of iMedia Connection posted recently on “6 Facts Every Marketer Must Know,” in which he heaps another shovel of dirt on the release based on polls of people who cover marketing for large media outlets.
For a guy who started out his PR career trying to convince clients that an objective of “getting out 100 press releases this year” wasn’t a good objective, I should be heartened. But I’m not. I am hopeful that while the form has used up most of its nine lives, there are many more miles in this cat. And, I am challenged because of what all this talk about the news release says about our culture.
There are three reasons for my faith that the news release has a few more lives.
First, our writing for the ear and for the eye has been expanded in unprecedented ways in recent years with the advent of text messaging, mini-blogs, online video and the like. But, we haven’t given up on the written word. The value of a news release may come in the complete telling of the story from the client’s perspective all in one place. The fact that it has evolved from being written purely for the eye and now includes video or audio that covers other senses is allowing readers/viewers to experience the subject more fully. The better targeted the communication, the more likely it is to be a part of a story, column, post or on-air piece, for sure, but well-timed and well-executed releases still have value.
Second, the very nature of most public companies and a great number of private ones makes the wide-open exchange anticipated by the new media environment unlikely anytime soon. The evolution of the release to its social media form is happening, but the logical extension of true two-way conversations with audiences is less assured in the lawyer-dominated culture of the public company and in many private companies.
Gladwell (Social Media: not changing world)
That said, there is a tipping point coming, even if, as reported by rocker/chairman Khan Manka, Jr. , “Malcolm Gladwell (The New Yorker) basically (has said we are) all full of ourselves if we think for one minute that we’re changing the world in any way.” (Khan wrote of the Strauss Zelnick’s Rooftop Salon recently).
Third, the “market” for these communiques is separating the good from the bad. There are literally hundreds of bloggers and journalists who are now able to push a button and purge all messages from a lousy PR person. There are whole blogs and columns written about what not to do. Beth Kanter delivered a great one recently that contained an admonition agaist “cravat” pitches (her husband’s neckwear at their wedding was described in Esquire – with elegant language – as “last seen around the neck of the Undertaker before his match at Wrestlemania XXV. Unless you can deliver tombstone piledrivers to anyone who scoffs at you, opt for a bow tie.”). She also noted, ”My husband didn’t ask me to marry him on our first date.”
And what does all of this say about our culture?
We are “uprofessionalizing” news at a rate that amazes me. Whole media outlets are falling by the wayside. Whole TV shows are now being done in Tweet form (TMZ). Journalism is trending toward Drudge’s world view in a Liberty Roundtable quote from 1998 – a nation of 300 million reporters.
Rumor, gossip or opinion is taking on the same relevance as news. But, in this stream, journalists from traditional media are finding some good-sized fish, too.
Bloggers, for the most part, aren’t coming up with a sustainable business model, so when the economy improves how many of us will find other jobs? In the meantime, traditional media are handing over the keys to covering the news.
Developing a new relationship between public relations professionals and new media is presenting a tough value proposition. Some want the relationship building to move beyond appropriate first date behavior quickly so we can get to the good stuff. Fortunately, most humans aren’t that easy. Building relationships takes time and resources well beyond what was required in the old press release culture, and many still remember that old culture too fondly. (How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to actually change the bulb while the other two talk about how great the old bulb was.)
Engagement is difficult in the form of comments, tweets and limited face-to-face. The old model of engagement was a cab ride uptown to do a personal deskside briefing. Technology has brought us closer in many ways, but it’s more ambient closeness and quasi-relationship in some ways. I’m encouraged by how there are places to meet up, but they also are proliferating and straining the resources traditionally dedicated to communications activities in the old one-big-trade-show; four-big-magazines era.
Many of us continue to move at light speed in sorting this out, and the tilting against traditional windmills work is exhausting. So, I still cling just a little to the evolved news release while doing all these other things. Does that make me a bad person?
I have lived in several places throughout the east and Midwest, but I spent my formative years (8 to 18) in the garden spot of the Garden State and I have now lived in Richmond, Va., for the past 19 years (my longest stint so far in one city/location). So I have a special interest in the odd fact that New Jersey and Virginia have the only two gubernatorial races in the country this year.
And they are pretty telling races. Historically Democratic “blue” New Jersey has incumbent Jon Corzine running neck-to-neck with Republican Chris Christie, a former U.S. Attorney (who apparently has little respect for copyright law). The polling difference between the two candidates falls within the statistical margin of error making it’s anyone’s race.
In Virginia, which as a one-term limit state never has an incumbent candidate for governor, Attorney General Bob McDonnell has a commanding double digit lead in the polls over Democrat Creigh Deeds, a long time state politician. A Republican win would end two back-to-back Democratic administrations in a traditionally Republican state.
What national implications should we read into these two races? Has Obama lost sway and, in turn, Democratic candidates? Well, according to the SmartPolitics blog, there’s a far less knee jerk story to all this. To quote the blog “A Smart Politics analysis of historical election returns in the Garden and Old Dominion States finds that the two states have voted in tandem during the last five gubernatorial elections dating back to 1989 - and always electing the party which is not in control of the White House. (If it’s not too late, find a bookie and put all your money on Christie in Jersey!)
From a social media standpoint it is interesting that in Virginia McDonnell has outspent the Democrat Deeds 5-to-1 in social media (a number which far exceeds the Republican spending advantage in traditional media.) As blog site bluevirginia reports, ”That’s inexcusable…that the McDonnell campaign has blown Creigh’s campaign away in new media.”
But perhaps the most telling statement here is the naïve assumption that social media is the domain of the Democrats. The success of the Obama campaign taught both parties a lesson. If the Democrats want to learn something valuable this November for the 2010 midterm national elections (especially for U.S. House seats), it’s that social media, like liberty, is accessible to all.
Photo: Exercise in Mistrust from Black wolf
By Mike Mulvihill
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