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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Think tankers

I had completely forgotten that I’d taken my little Casio digital camera with me to the IABC Research Foundation Think Tank a few weeks back. I was browsing images from the camera when I stumbled on this, which someone from the Think Tank graciously shot of me with Neville Hobson (left), Adrian Chan, Chris Heuer, and J.D. Lasica.

image

Posted by Shel on 06/25 at 12:31 PM
General • Social Media • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #460: June 25, 2009

Content summary: Join us for FIR Live on Blogtalk Radio on June 26; sign up to the FIR mailing list; follow-up on Habitat UK and Twitter: blame the intern!; Dan York reports from Enterprise 2.0 in Boston with Eric Schwartzman and Christopher Penn; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits - Apple plus Steve Jobs’ health and a cult of secrecy, FTC becomes blogging’s Big Brother, research suggests email patterns provide early warning of organization crisis point, Washington Metro train crash exposes the sad state of emergency communications, King of Shaves asks customers for cash to bump up its marketing spend, how are Fortune 100 CEOs using social media?; news about next week’s shows; music from Sarah Fimm; and more.

Get FIR:

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for June 22, 2009: A 66-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

FIR Show Notes links
Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

FIR on Friendfeed
Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday June 29…

Posted by Shel on 06/25 at 11:24 AM
For Immediate Release • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, June 22, 2009

TSA wastes no time responding on its blog to critical news story

As a matter of habit, I check the websites and/or blogs of organizations who make the news to see how quickly, and how well, they respond. I’ve been doing this since at least 1996. I remember sitting in a hotel room in New York and checking the TWA website as soon as I heard that Flight 800 had gone down. (The site had been updated to provide information on the crash by the time I visited it.)

So when I saw a story on CNN in which a passenger accuses the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of improper treatment—leading the American Civil Liberties Union to accuse the agency harrassing interrogation and unlawful detention—I hopped over to the TSA Blog (recently renamed “TSA Blog” from the former “Evolution of Security”). I saw the story on CNN’s website yesterday. The response was up today.

image

This is an agency that understands the importance of using its blog well. The response, written by Blogger Bob, explains where the TSA beleives it acted within its authority and where its agents went wrong. Bob also notes that the officers involved have already been disciplined for the inappropriate language they used when questioning to the passenger.

Agree or disagree with the TSA’s actions (the rules under which they operate seem pretty clear to me), from a communication standpoint, you just can’t argue with the agency’s understanding of social media as a channel for updating the public as well as engaging in conversation with travelers. I’m meeting Wednesday with another U.S. government agency that is reluctant to employ social media. This is an example I plan to show them.

I’ll be watching for comments to the post (there were none yet when I saw it), but I expect the conversation between the TSA’s bloggers and the public to be as open and candid as everything else they do on the blog.

Posted by Shel on 06/22 at 03:49 PM
Blogging • (5) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #459: June 22, 2009

Content summary: Next FIR Live on Blogtalk Radio on June 26; join the FIR mailing list; discussion on conferences and unconferences prompted by listener Robin Brown; Michael Netzley reports on China’s Green Dam and censorship; the Media Monitoring minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: Habitat UK shows how to behave like a Twitter spammer, Matrixx Initiatives shows the effective use of social media for Zicam; Friendfeed FIR Room round-up; Podsafe Music Network is now Mevio MusicAlley; music from Zoolab; and more.

Get FIR:

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for June 22, 2009: A 62-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

FIR Show Notes links
Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

FIR on Friendfeed
Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday June 25…

Posted by Shel on 06/22 at 09:59 AM
For Immediate Release • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Gary Vaynerchuk on the next FIR Live

FIR Live #15
Friday, June 26, 2009
10 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m. EDT / 6 p.m. UK

An activity almost guaranteed to provoke reactions from people far beyond the PR community is that of pitching: the act of “stretching my imagination and getting me excited,” according to one definition via Twitter.

It’s part of the bread and butter of the PR business. It’s also an activity that many who do it get it very wrong indeed, say many who are on the receiving end, especially bloggers and others who use social media.

The next FIR Live on Blogtalk Radio on June 26 will look at PR pitching, taking as a specific example an email pitch conducted in early June on behalf of entrepreneur, personal branding expert and video blogger Gary Vaynerchuk.

We’re thrilled to have Gary as a guest on this live episode, together with John Cass whose post about the email pitch engaged a number of people in conversation with Gary; as well as John Bell, head of the 360° Digital Influence team at Ogilvy PR which produced Ogilvy’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics and Austin-based communicator Connie Reece.

FIR Live #15 is set for Friday June 26, 2009, at 10am PDT, 1pm EDT, and 6pm in the UK. You can take part in the show by calling in to +1 347 324 3723. You can listen in live at the same number as well as online at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fir. You can also join in the chat by text in the chat room.

After the live show, the recording will be made available as a podcast as usual as part of the Hobson & Holtz Report.

We hope you’ll join us on June 26.

Posted by Shel on 06/21 at 06:49 PM
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Friday, June 19, 2009

Public bodies can’t manage a Twitter account? WTF?

imageNeville Hobson just tweeted a link to a news story in the Croydon Guardian about the suspension of a Twitter account. In a nutshell, the Croydon Council had launched a print newspaper for distribution to residents of the town to ensure they received town news distributed principally through press releases. Someone on the staff had set up a Twitter account and then mistakenly sent was was supposed to be a direct message as a regular old tweet for all to see. The tweet was critical of a reporter at the Evening Standard.

The newspaper was instructed to stop using the account as a result.

It was a couple of quotes from the Guardian article that prompted this post. The first one is from “a spokesman”—no other details than that:

It’s the firm belief that the Your Croydon publication needs to concentrate on developing its identity in print, not cyberspace.

Now, I’m a supporter of print and a believer in its value, but this statement still prompted a WTF moment for me. After all, print is a one-way channel and fewer and fewer people rely on print as a means of obtaining their information. It’s startling to hear the representative of any town council suggesting the its interests are best served by ignoring the online world in favor of a print publication. Perhaps the use of the word “cyberspace,” which I hardly hear at all any more, is indicative of just how out of touch this council is.

But it was the second quote that caused my jaw to drop. This one came from Councillor Tony Newman, leader of the Labour group that was quick to condemn the misuse of the twitter account:

How anyone could ever suggest that a public body could control a Twitter account is beyond me.

It would appear that what is beyond Mr. Newman isn’t beyond any number of public bodies—city and town councils in particular. The Oxford City Council is on Twitter. So is the Glasgow City Council, the NewCastle City Council, the New York City Council...the list goes on and on and on.

There are one or two public bodies in the U.S. federal government on Twitter, as well, as evidenced by this list from the amazing Twitter Fan Wiki):

You have to wonder just how many things are beyond Mr. Newman. Do politicians even consider research before shooting from the hip?

Posted by Shel on 06/19 at 10:48 AM
Politics • Twitter • (7) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Palm Pre’s missed marketing opportunity

It has now been more than a week since I got my Palm Pre and I’m even happier with it now than I was when I wrote my review last week. I’ve grown comfortable with the interface and the gestures that make it work. I’ve personalized the calendar, contact list, and email. I’ve been using the universal search (which rocks) and the Synergy features, which really do set the Pre apart from the iPhone. And I’ve been using some of the few apps that are available.

As I noted in my review, the phone has only been available for a couple weeks and the SDK (software developer kit) is still being put through its paces prior to release into the wild for anybody to develop Pre applications. I understand this, and that Apple has had two years to get to the 40,000 some-odd apps that now populate the iPhone’s app store.

Still, I’m jonesing for apps. Jonesing bad. As my podcast co-host Neville Hobson has said repeatedly, it’s all about the apps.

So, at least twice a day, I’ve been visiting the app catalog and tapping the “Recent” category to see if anything has been added. And I routinely heave a sigh when I see that, no, nothing new is available.

And therein lies a missed marketing opportunity.

imageKnowing the SDK wouldn’t be ready and only a handful of apps (like Pandora) would populate the app catalog, the companies should have made arrangements with some of the hotter apps developers to churn out one new app every day. People like me, repeatedly checking the catalog, would find and download the new offering, then talk, blog, and tweet about it. The news stream would then be full of Pre commentary, and not just more rehashing of the phone’s highlights and shortcomings.

It’s worth pointing out that an early analysis of Pre sales indicates that most of the new phones have been upgrades by existing Sprint customers; the Pre has not lured new customers away from AT&T, Verizon, T*Mobile or any of the other carriers. Continuous enthusiastic chatter about a steady stream of new apps that do amazing things would help getting the competition’s customers to pay more attention and gradually begin to covet a Pre.

Sprint could have touted its “App a Day” campaign, proudly satisfying its customers’ appetite even as the finishing touches are put on the SDK.

Instead, Pre owners are left to wonder when a new app might appear. Like I say, a missed marketing opportunity.

Posted by Shel on 06/18 at 08:27 PM
Marketing • Mobile • (4) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
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