Great News from Our UK Team!

Hats off to our ION UK team for scoring Cisco work across the UK and Ireland — read all about it in PRWeek, enough said—well done team!

A while back Manuel sent around an internal email asking what everyone thought about Newsvetter. At the time, my head was filled with thoughts about PR spam. So, when I looked at the service by following the link in Manuel’s email, I thought it was a service designed to combat PR spam. I promptly tweeted a question that popped into my head. Andrew Fowler, Newsvetter’s creator, saw that tweet and reached out to me. We set up a phone call to discuss the service, and I learned that I missed the boat entirely. Newsvetter does have a PR spam fighting quality, but that’s more like a cool side effect than it’s focus.

What is Newsvetter and how does it work?

Newsvetter is a service enables story pitchers to submit ideas to the media through a structured process. The structure was based on some research Andrew did with media to determine what are the common criteria for evaluating a story. Media, and media only, can then comment on and rate the ideas as a vetting process in a closed environment that essentially works as a backchannel (visible to the pitchers).

While the service does connect people, the truth is that the service doesn’t need to have a ton of members to be useful. PR professionals can use the story brief form as a template for writing pitches, which is made from the common criteria Andrew surfaced from interviewing the media. Journalists and bloggers can require people pitch them through the service to guarantee that their required questions are answered and to solicit opinions from other media contacts. Naturally, as the service expands networking and reputation can play a larger role. PR firms may one day point to their Newsvetter rating, which is based on their percentage of stories that are picked up, as validation during their new business pitches.

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So you could argue that the Achilles heel of most social media programs is that we’re all, in some way, increasingly relying on a variety of third party services and tools to augment our efforts online — and with that reliance comes an assumed risk that these services will remain accessible and dependable all the time, especially when we need them most.

But what if they aren’t? What if they break? What if the ‘new fantastic tool’ turns into more of a liability than an asset?

At what point do certain social media services become, well, too risky for corporate use?

Take Twitter for example, a service I personally dig and use regularly, and one that’s already been examined and adopted as a comms tool inside some very large organizations. Twitter has become, sadly, the poster child for inconsistency, poor performance and frustration among many, at least lately. I don’t doubt that Twitter’s technical woes will get figured out, but it’s all coming at a cost to others, and if you’re Dell, Southwest, Red Cross, and the like, you have to wonder:

Do the advantages (and potential) of Twitter still outweigh the risks and headaches that come with relying on it right now?

Yeah, it’s easy to pick on Twitter here, but frankly, this bigger point of social media “risk assessment” is not unique to Twitter at all and can — and should — be applied to any third party service that sits in a broader social media program.

The truth is, almost every service out there has its shortcomings and fail points. YouTube constantly hiccups with its flash conversions. Del.icio.us has a wonderful way of stalling out with multiple API calls. Feedburner freaks out with certain media enclosures. WordPress WYSIWG, well, any WYSIWG really, just never quite works, and the list goes on….

It doesn’t mean these problems outweigh the potential and return of these services, but it’s safe to say, as companies rely more heavily and frequently on these tools — and micro collections of ’subscribers,’ ‘followers’ and ‘friends’ develop around them — there’s an inherent responsibility as both a consultant and as a company to commit to the tools that will last, and to at least consider some sort of exit plan if they don’t.

Ultimately, it’s still about picking the right tool for the job, a choice that just increasingly requires all of us to first ask:

Will this tool work all the time, most of the time or just, you know, some of the time?

The answer we’re each content with is our choice to bear and perhaps over time, a reflection on our abilities to discern between what’s popular verse what’s functional, what’s an okay free tool verse what’s a great paid service, etc., etc., you get the gist, good luck.

[This post has been cross-published to Media Guerrilla]

Alright, so one of the weird little misconceptions I’ve been dealing with for a while now is the belief that social media marketing is, well, how do I say this? “Cheap.”

It’s an opinion often held by marketers, communicators, executives, and the like, many of whom have clicked on the pony-tailed chief’s ‘DIY’ blog and the clever, professionally underproduced video on YouTube and the messy, yet oddly functional fan page on Facebook, and because of this, have formed an opinion of what social media marketing is, how it’s done, and ultimately what it must cost.

And really, can you blame them?

These folks are simply making a calculation of value based on the tangible merit of what’s being presented to them — with very little insight, understanding or weight placed on the effort required to really bring these projects to life, let alone what it takes to keep them going and make them truly successful.

Of course, to complicate things, there’s a near endless parade of free online tools and services that are surfacing every month, each in their own way perpetuating the “man-this-stuff-is-cheap” mentality as their own hype cycles crest (cough, FriendFeed) and later crash.

Lastly, and most importantly, I think there’s a tendency in ROI conversations to over indulge in hard numbers sans consideration for all the underlying soft costs of social media projects. And by “soft costs” what I’m really getting at are the *absurdly high* time and attention investments that typically come with these projects and what are the unique shared scars among many a social media practitioner. If you’ve ever administered a blog or a community of sorts, you’ll know what I mean, nuff said.

Sadly, time and attention factors are often overlooked and greatly underestimated in most marketers’ understanding and appreciation of these projects.

Now, does this mean social media work can’t be done on the cheap? Nah, of course not. You go right ahead and create your corporate Blogger account and your executive’s MySpace page and that barely-discernible-but-kinda-indie looking mobile video of your company event;)

Kidding aside, just remember that free is never really free. That time’s an investment too. And that social media marketing requires a lot of it and because of this, “cheap” investments could end up costing you a bundle if you’re not clear about what you’re buying.

[This post has been cross-published to Media Guerrilla]

Alright, so there’s all sorts of assumptions companies make about social media these days, one of the most dangerous of which is the assumption that the feedback, opinions and insights people share online are absolutely representative of their customer base.

Be careful about walking into this particular perception warp, it’s very easy to fall into and terribly difficult to escape.

Yeah, there’s a ton of valuable customer feedback to be gathered and analyzed on the web, however, more often than not, that feedback is coming from what’s best described as, well, a vocal minority. The perception warp is believing this group of customers online reflects the opinions, attitudes and experiences of *all* your customers (e.g., the much, much larger silent majority).

I was reminded of this recently on a client project where we were analyzing commenter registrations on the company’s blog. Our WordPress admin page showed thousands of comments and thousands of registrants, but as we chopped up the user data, we found that about *40* commenters accounted for nearly a third of the total comments.

I’ve seen very similar patterns on other projects, and generally speaking, I think there’s plenty of evidence to support the fact that the ratio of writers to readers online is wildly disproportionate. And unfortunately, once again, it’s one of those unique challenges that falls onto the laps of those who manage social media programs to determine just how much weight to put on the collective customer feedback culled from the web; also I suppose, how influential (or not) your vocal minority of customers are to your silent majority of customers.

Over the weekend the famous ‘measurement’ question was discussed quite a bit by Scoble and Owyang. A few months ago we talked about the monitoring and mining aspect, but Scoble asks the direct question, “how will doing this help my sales?”

Like Robert says, this question is asked quite a bit by some of the large firms we talk to. What’s the quick response? “How are you currently measuring your PR/Comms/Marketing programs?”

The answer usually can go one of two ways:

1. A company describes how they currently measure the ROI of their PR/Comms/Marketing.
2. A company admits they really don’t have a good measure on the ROI of existing programs.

If 1: then part of your work is already done for you. Find out how to apply some of the existing methodology to the project. After all if X is the standard they use to measure all other programs, then how can you integrate a way to measure X in your project?

Kami Huyse did this with the SeaWorld Journey to Atlantis project. Many of the existing programs are measured by exit surveys, why not use the same tool to ‘equally’ measure the different programs.

If 2: then you can set the precedent for measurement within and organization. One of the great things with online content is that you do have plenty of data to work with. The trick is what to do with the data, and how to determine what’s relevant to the client. Is it RSS subscribers? Comments? Links? Bookings?

If you know how and what you’re measurement goals are to begin with it’s easier to build in the proper components from the start.

Recently, we blogged about some new trends in social media PR—namely Stowe Boyd’s call for pitches via Twitter and Marshall’s request for an OPML from PR firms. We blogged about those items because they are areas where much of the PR world is afraid to tread, and exactly where Voce wants to be. I was talking about some of this with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext fame. He had some great insights from both a PR client perspective and as an innovative software vendor in the very space causing these new disruptions.

I think what he said would be of interest to some of our other clients as well as to other PR professionals. There is some good fodder in here for further discussions about:

- What is the big shift in PR and why are people split about whether or not to be happy about it?
- What is the role of a modern PR firm?
- Tactically speaking, how has the PR process changed?

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Voce Nation wanted to say thank you to the crew of cardsharks that joined us last week for the second annual Interop Poker Tournament. Voce, NetIQ, and Barracuda Networks hosted the event as a chance for media and analysts to escape the grind of vendor briefings and reporting, unwind with peers and have a healthy dose of competition.

Poker pro Mark Seif was on hand to provide pointers on how to play Texas Hold ‘Em.

Check out Shamus McGillicuddy’s post on the event for a first person account of the tourney.

Larry Howard of Infonetics Research took home top honors and bragging rights for 2008. Will he be able to defend his title in 2009? You’ll have to join us next year to find out.

More pics from the event are on the voce nation photostream.

So last Friday, half a dozen students from Chico State’s journalism program (my alma mater), came to Voce’s Palo Alto office and spent the day observing and discussing agency life.

As part of this visit, I spent some time talking about the web and its impact on the PR industry. It was one of those discussions where unfortunately you just end up having to go a mile wide and an inch deep on things, however, one question shook out of this talk that I thought other students and new grads might find interesting and helpful, I’ll elaborate on it here. The question was pretty simple:

What *new* skills are important to PR?

A great question, one I could chew on for a while here, but if I had to pick three things, I’d say:

Learn Another Language
Seriously, as communicators, if you really want to be successful using your first language, consider learning a second — HTML. It’s a universal language that’s becoming critically important in PR, especially as the reach and influence of the web continues to shape and inform market opinions and perceptions. I think having some basic knowledge of HTML gives you a small leg up when, for example, you’re using a tool, such as a blog in business. It also provides you with a better understanding of how metadata, markup and the like all quietly work together behind the scenes to aid in the discovery and distribution of what you’re ultimately communicating via the web.

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Staples recently dipped their foot into the social media waters in an effort to brand themselves as a personal data security and identity theft resource. They put out word of blogger events in New York City and San Francisco, featuring personal security and safety expert Bill Stanton, who is a contributor to NBC “Today” and Dateline.

The event was a sit-down between bloggers and Bill, who riffed on his experiences “stealing” identities to expose just how easy that is to do. (Bill is a great speaker, if you’re doing a high-profile event on security, find him and hire him).

Coburn Communications handled the event for Staples.

“As a way to generate word-of-mouth buzz among highly influential mom, young professional, and small business bloggers, as well as local online media, Staples enlisted Coburn to execute a blog-specific event in two markets – San Francisco and New York,” said Coburn’s Kate Tuller.

Basic PR approach: get the influencers in the same room with the products, deliver a controlled message, make them feel important and welcome, make it easy for them to talk about that message.

WHAT THEY DID RIGHT:
In addition to the star power, the Coburn people rolled out the red carpet. Great location, free food, drinks and a gift bag full of the products they’d talked about, such as a lock-down cable and anti-virus software. They introduced the concepts, wined and dined us, then provided product so that the bloggers could use them, and therefore increase the likelihood of an educated post to promote said products. Bill gave a short presentation, then fielded questions about security and knocked it out of the park with his encyclopedic knowledge of how people will try to rip you off.

WHAT THEY DID WRONG:
The purpose of this event was to bring out bloggers and get some online exposure. Yet my first email with questions about the event was sent Feb. 26, and I did not receive a response until March 10, two weeks later. That’s like fifteen years in internet time. Everyone is busy, but if you throw an event for bloggers, then can’t answer questions for two weeks, you’re missing the point. I had to prompt them three times for a response in that time period. And when I did get an response, they said they couldn’t answer most of the questions I asked.

Here are the list of questions provided to Coburn.

1. Where did you get the idea for this event?
2. What cities and why? Why not more cities?
3. Describe the need for an in-person event, as opposed to some kind of online event. We really only saw the shredder work, which could have been done with online video, instead of the expense of the face-to-face event. Tell me about that choice. Tuller’s Answer: Bloggers, as you know, love networking…it was a chance to provide them this opportunity as well as educate and provide useful information and products on identity theft, data loss, and internet threats. Face-to-face events are also better for relationship building.
   
4. How are you defining and tracking success? At what point will Staples say “this was money well spent?” This is the most important question for my blog — how does the customer (Staples) define when they got their money’s worth?
5. What does an event like yours, put on by a big company like Staples, say about corporate America’s valuation of “mom-and-pop” bloggers? There was no Scoble, no Technorati at the event, is that what you were hoping for?
6. Who’s idea was it to bring in Bill? Was this event a Coburn brainstorm, or a Staples idea and they brought you in to manage?

Tuller said she was not at liberty to answer most of these questions. Now to people in social media, these seem pretty harmless. This is basic information. Am I wrong here? Not at liberty to say who came up with the idea? What? Not at liberty to say why you’re targeting mom-and-pop bloggers? Huh? I’m not asking for secret Pentagon documents here folks, I just want to know more about the event … so I can blog about it … which was the point of the event in the first place, no?

When you shine the spotlight of measurement and profitability at social media promotions, most of the time people retreat into the shadows. The culture of openness and transparency is embedded throughout social media, yet we still find companies using the tools without embracing the spirit.

Is this Coburn’s fault? Probably not. They are a vendor. Is it Staples fault? Probably. Staples is old-school big business. The concept of answering simple questions and not just regurgitating what they tell people to say must be very frightening and confusing to them.

I would have read more about the corporate culture on a Staples blog, but oddly enough … I couldn’t find one. So Staples apparently doesn’t have to understand social media in order to use it to sell stuff.

DOES IT SELL STUFF?
Staples won’t say. That’s a shame. The event did seem to produce some hits in the blogosphere, as evidenced by the IceRocket.com blog search below. I searched for “Bill Stanton” and “Staples” and came up with six hits. Not exactly a viral explosion, but not bad at all. Coburn got the blog hits, and that’s the first step because you never know when a message will resonate and be picked up in other places.