Tuesday, January 25, 2005
HC+T Update: January 2005
The January 2005 e-mail newsletter from Holtz Communication + Technology
HC+T Update
January 2005
In This Issue:
1) FlakGate and the Future of PR
2) Corporate Blogs in a Crisis
3) A Traditional Newspaper Moves Toward Participatory Journalism
4) An Update on Social Networking
5) Does PR Generate Sales Leads?
6) Commercial Success through Open Access
7) A Podcast You Should Listen To: Mine
8) Labor Blogs
9) Sites of the Month
10) HC+T Update
11) Boilerplate And Subscription Information
Because of the special RSS issue, this month’s Update is a little shorter than usual.
1. FlakGate and the Future of PR
Many are questioning the future of public relations in the wake of FlakGate.
At least FlakGate is what it’s being called in some circles. It’s also known as KetchumGate, a more pointed label given that the PR giant Ketchum is the focus of the controversy.
In case you missed it, here’s a quick rundown:
Ketchum was the agency of record for the US Department of Education, the cabinet-level White House agency. Ketchum brokered a deal between the Department of Education and Armstrong Williams, a media figure who was paid $240,000 of taxpayer money to advocate for the Bush Administration’s “No Child Left Behind” program and to convince other African American commentators to do the same. When word of the deal leaked, Williams, Ketchum and the Department were accused of ethical lapses.
The story got interesting from a PR point of view when the New York Times sought comments from associations representing the PR business. PRSA issued a tepid statement placing the blame on Williams, claiming it was his obligation to disclose the relationship, not Ketchum’s. The Council of Public Relations Firms issued no statement but responded in basically the same way. Ketchum itself issued a statement under CEO Ray Kotcher’s byline, appearing in PRWeek, that is laughable in its ineptness. (You can read it at http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story_free.cfm?ID=232353&site=3.)
IABC neither issued a comment or was called for one by the media, which may say something about IABC’s visibility as a communications association.
This publicity was followed by a post by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen to his MediaSense blog chastising PR bloggers for their failure to call Ketchum on its behavior. A flurry of posts came next, in which several PR bloggers (myself included) chastised Rosen in return for failing to find the many posts we authored that DID take Ketchum to task.
Rosen’s article is here: http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/01/19/ktch_pr.html
But the discussion has led to further questions about the validity of spin-oriented PR and how it will survive in an era of blogs, citizens-as-journalists, Web sites like PRWatch and SpinWatch, and markets-as-conversations. Consider this, from Linda Zimmer, CEO of Marcomm:Interactive titled “PR is Dead. Long Live MC (modern conversation):
“If we believe the manifesto (the ClueTrain) that started it all - that markets are conversations and you are who people say you are – then PR is spin, public manipulation and devoid of credibility. All those within the industry waving their hands and pointing to the good, the sound and the ethical within the industry and all the explanations about the differences between types of PR aren’t going to change the fact of perceptions. No one outside understands the subtleties that those inside do. You are who people (markets) say you are.”
Zimmer agrees that PR functions are necessary, but argues that these functions need to be absorbed into a new practice.
“Even though PR firms were those best positioned to take hold of the conversation model they froze in fear and denial. I’ve worked in, around and for many of the major PR agencies (or their holding companies); indeed they have been clients of mine. The mantra is still ‘control the message’ in a world where the message is as fluid as the medium though which it flows. PR was dead. Ketchum just did the requiem.”
Zimmer’s full post: http://freshtakes.typepad.com/znetlady/2005/01/pr_is_dead_long.html
She’s not alone. Doc Searls, one of the co-authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” claimed in the book that PR is dead, and a recent contribution to his blog confirms that belief:
“There’s a need for all the high-minded stuff that the best PR professionals stand for. I’m just not sure the old PR business can deliver it. And I have a feeling a lot of people blogging in the business feel the same way. Bravo for them, if they can change the old beast. Meanwhile, I’m just glad I left its belly a long time ago.”
Searls’ post, “Payola Relations”, is at: http://doc.weblogs.com/2005/01/20#payolaRelations
There is no question that public relations has a reputational problem, always an amusing notion for a profession that is supposed to manage reputations. The problem is that the agencies capable of improving PR’s image have no billable motive for working on it and the associations that are supposed to represent the profession don’t seem willing to take on the issue.
I’ve thrown out the suggestion that the product-and-service-focused part of PR be separated from the institutional/corporate side. I don’t know if this is a good idea; it’s just a discussion starter. Unlike Linda Zimmer, I don’t think we can start a new profession and call ourselves “issues managers” and fool anybody into thinking we’re not PR people. We need a way to rehabilitate the PR image.
It will start with associations giving their ethics policies teeth. Ketchum should have been sanctioned by organizations to which it and its employees belong. Why weren’t they? Because it could mean the loss of dues dollars, I suppose. Or the associations aren’t willing to point an accusatory finger at one of their own. Or the consensus-driven nature of associations precludes PRSA, CPRF, or IABC from settling on a response.
The reason, though, is irrelevant. As long as watchdogs like PRWatch and MediaSense are policing the profession—instead of us cleaning up our own house—the image of PR people will be right down there in the gutter alongside lawyers and politicians.
2. Corporate Blogs in a Crisis
Pity poor Bigha. The laid-back Corvalis, Oregon-based company makes the Bigha Bike, a “recumbent” bicycle. It also makes Jasper, “the brightest, most reliable laser you can operate without a special permit (for you techies out there, it’s a Class IIIa, 5mW green laser).”
It was a Jasper that a customer used to point at a commercial aircraft, leading to his arrest and a flurry of publicity about the potential terrorist applications of these gadgets. Bigha, formerly a quiet company that went about its business without generating a lot of publicity, was at the forefront of a controversy.
The company already featured the Bigha Blog as an element of its Web site. A number of employees posted to the blog, sometimes just for fun and sometimes for marketing purposes (the blog was used to announce the winner of a bicycle giveaway, for instance). One employee posted an item recounting how he was able to point out constellations to his kids using the Jasper on a camping trip. Sometimes the posts were just downright silly. Otis, the company dog, was the purported author of some posts.
When Bigha became the focus of scrutiny following the aircraft incident, the blog became a forum for Bigha to get its side of the story across. Noah Acres, a marketing and customer service rep for Bigha, fired the first salvo on January 1 after he had been contacted by the FBI: “The good news is they are coming up with ways to track and catch the culprits. The bad news is, we have reason to believe at least one of the culprits is using a Jasper. Wow.” The post concludes with this statement:
”...if you are amongst the one or two losers amongst thousands of responsible Jasper users, please be aware that you will soon be caught. The next time you point your Jasper towards a plane, you will see a police helicoptor (sic) or military aircraft flying around your area. They will see your beam, which points right back to you. Then they will come to arrest you, and hopefully put you in jail. Your Jasper will be confiscated, and you will not be issued a refund.”
Noah continued posting as the company remained in the news. On the 5th, he wrote, “I’m really shocked about the magnitude of this story. Here we are one day, a small company in Corvallis, OR (on a holiday!) manufacturing and selling outdoor recreation equipment, then the next day we’re asked to be experts on everything from terrorism to the Patriot Act.”
That’s when the comments started pouring in. And while most of the comments have been supportive, there are some like this: “Oh My God! These Bigha lasers are going to kill everyone! God Help us All! I think that this company should be shut down, and its corporate executives sent to Guantanamo Bay!!” You have to give Bigha credit for an open blog that leaves all comments up, pro or con.
But the company isn’t limiting its response to its blog. In addition to the latest means of connecting with customers and other constituents, Bigha is also applying some traditional techniques, including letters to the editor. In response to an editorial critical of the company appearing in the Toledo Blade, Acres sent a letter that was published today. “Quick!” he begins. “Which is responsible for more deaths on an annual basis: alcohol, tobacco, motor vehicles, or green lasers? While the first three battle it out for top prize, green lasers have caused exactly ZERO deaths. Ever.”
Not bad for a company that appears to have no professional PR counsel—just its own employees using common sense and good humor to respond to this crisis. Those preaching the gospel of blogs as replacements for all other avenues of PR should pay attention.
Biga and its blog are at http://www.bigha.com.
3. A Traditional Newspaper Moves Toward Participatory Journalism
The evolution of the newspaper business takes a significant step forward with plans announced by the editors of North Carolina’s News & Record. The printed paper itself—still a profitable venture—won’t change, but the paper’s Web site is set for an overhaul that will reflect the increasing importance of participatory journalism. The site will feature “...ways for readers to discuss issues online, more interaction between readers and reporters, and in a dramatic break from a newspaper’s gatekeeper role, even opportunities for readers to submit stories of their own for Web publication.”
According to an item at MSNBC, the move is designed to help yank the paper out of a funk characterized by flat subscription rates, diminished credibility, and a failure to appeal to younger readers.
As evidence that the paper is serious about this shift, the plans have been articulated on the blogs of editors John Robinson and Lex Alexander.
The News & Record is taking these ideas further than any other daily, according to the experts quoted in the MSNBC article, including participatory journalism advocate Dan Gillmor, who says, ““I don’t think anyone is proposing to be quite as reader-centric in a bottom-up way as they say they’re going to do.”
4. An Update on Social Networking
CSO Insights partner Jim Dickie was skeptical when he tapped into the LinkedIn social network in search of some work-related results. Dickie, who writes about the experience at destinationCRM.com, started off with a genuine work need. Research his company conducted led him to wonder why some customer relationship management (CRM) tools were producing better results than others.
Social networking software was his first target. “These systems claim to increase the productivity of sales and marketing professionals by leveraging the theory of six degrees of separation, allowing users to tap into the existing affiliations of other professionals. Good theory, but does it work?” To find out, he wanted to talk to some executives using it.
Dickie already had a LinkedIn account, but had never used it.
“I selected 30 sales executives I wanted to interview, and using LinkedIn I asked my network members to facilitate an introduction to these people I had never met. To my surprise 29 of these individuals accepted my request and passed it on to their contacts with a personal note of introduction. What then shocked me was that 23 of those targeted executives (including people in Europe and the Far East) accepted my request, and offered to consider helping with my research effort.
“At this point I now had information on how to directly contact these sales execs. In following up with these individuals I was able to convince 18 of them to help me with my project. It equates to a 60 percent hit rate—compared with results from cold calling, this is very impressive.”
The executives he interviewed also reported favorable results using social networking for CRM, particularly for “recruiting sales and marketing professionals, conducting market research, and helping with lead generation efforts.”
LinkedIn also proved useful when layoffs were announced in a high-profile acquisition. Thousands of PeopleSoft employees—along with some Oracle employees—were due to get pink slips at home, the natural consequence of the takeover. Some of the affected employees have been LinkedIn members for a while, an affiliation that may pay dividends as they use the professional-focused social network to find new employment.
That makes such sense that over 3,700 PeopleSofties have joined LinkedIn in the 30 days before the pink slips started arriving. That brings the total number of PeopleSofties with LinkedIn accounts to about 5,500.
As the story of the PeopleSoft explosion at LinkedIn has spread among the blogs, many bloggers from technology companies have reported openings at their own companies, according to an article in New Zealand’s National Business Review. An example: Ross Mayfield runs SocialText, one of the companies marketing a business-focused wiki product. In his blog, Mayfield writes, “Socialtext is looking for good people, I might add. Engineers, designers, sales and customer support. Just contact me through LinkedIn.”
This convergence of blogs (reporting on job availability) and social networking (as the means for job-seekers to find job-holders) may be a first, but it certainly seems a natural evolution of the network. How many companies seeking to hire just the kid of people PeopleSoft is losing are relying on traditional recruiting techniques? How many will wish they had a blog and a LInkedIn membership when those employees get snatched up?
5. Does PR Generate Sales Leads?
Nearly three-quarters of sales and marketing professionals think public relations and word-of-mouth generate more sales leads than advertising, according to a study conducted by Launch Pad for PR firm SHIFT Communications. The study was designed to assess sales-and-marketing perceptions of the value of public relations. Only 37% of respondents felt that lead generation is an essential PR function and even fewer—16%—said that it’s a primary goal. That, according to SHIFT, is a problem. Firm principal Todd Defren suggests that marketing executives frequently hire PR firms and, at the same time, are accountable for feeding leads to the sales force. Thus, Defren says, PR firms need to make the connection between PR and leads. “Until this gap can be closed, ‘Public Relations’ will continue to be relegated to a tactical line item in the Marketing budget, rather than as a strategic source of lead generation,” he says.
PR firms need to reinforce the value of a company’s reputation—which PR efforts influence—including the repurposing of PR output as marketing collateral (the study, for example, reveals that sales people think reprinted articles are as valuable as brochures). Another finding: 42% of sales people don’t believe Marketing is doing a good job providing them with PR results that would aid in their sales efforts.
While the information in the study is useful, the assumption that sales is the only bottom-line value added by PR is flawed. While sales and marketing professionals certainly should be able to leverage their organizations’ reputations as a sales aid, there’s little point in linking a solid PR effort aimed at, say, activists or government regulators to lead generation. Setting lead generation as some kind of bar for assessing PR’s value diminishes the importance of all the PR efforts the sales staff can’t leverage.
6. Commercial Success through Open Access
The Recording Industry Association of America—that group best know these days for the intriguing strategy of suing their customers—insists that is model guarantees profitability for recording artists. Performers whose contracts with record labels include RIAA copyright protections supposedly earn money every time their music is played on the radio; radio stations (even Internet radio stations) make regular payments to cover these fees. To hear the RIAA (and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich), without RIAA protections, artists would starve as consumers enjoyed the fruits of their labor without paying a nickel for the works they have stolen.
Go tell it to the Lascivious Biddies.
This four-member girl band from New York caught the attention of podcasting pioneer and Daily Source Code podcast host Adam Curry. Since the Biddies have not signed with a major label, their music is “podsafe”—not covered by RIAA restrictions—and Curry was free to play songs like “Famous” and “Truck Song” on his show. Listeners responded not by saving the music and listening for free, but by buying the band’s CDs online at a frenetic pace. The Biddies also have begun attracting larger crowds to live performances. Their popularity has grown even more as other podcasters have picked up on them.
It all reminds me of something John Perry Barlow said several years ago as companies first began worrying about copyright issues the Web might pose. Speaking at an IABC conference in Toronto, Barlow—co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation—recalled his experience as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead (Barlow wrote most of the lyrics for guitarist/vocalist Bob Weir’s tunes). The band made a decision, he recounted, to let fans (known as Deadheads) to tape concerts. The Dead, he said, was a hippie band and wasn’t in it for the money, and besides, it would be bad karma to throw a Deadhead out of a show. The result, however, was that tapers traded tapes and played them for friends, giving the band’s concert sound a broader audience. In short order, the demand for tickets prompted the Dead to move out of concert halls and into stadiums, making millionaires out of the group’s members.
Copyright law in the digital age is bound to change eventually. The antiquated thinking of the RIAA, the labels that run it, and its ilk(e.g., the MPAA) remains one of the most significant obstacles to that inevitable change. Metallica, take note: The Biddies represent the new path to success.
The Lascivious Biddies, by the way, have a Web site at http://www.biddies4ever.com.
7. A Podcast You Should Listen To: Mine
As promised last month, Neville Hobson and I have launched “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report.” Each new podcast is made available on Monday mornings (US West Coast time) from our site at http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz. We’ve done four podcasts now and the response has been very encouraging.
The last two installments have featured interviews, one with Paul Woodhouse, a steel company CEO in the UK who has grown his business through a business-focused blog. This week’s interview was with Jay Byrne, president of v-Fluence, a PR firm specializing in issues management. Neville and I will produce special interview podcasts from the New Communications Forum in Napa this week.
Podcasting, if you’re new to it, is a means by which just about anybody can produce a radio show. These shows are saved in the MP3 format. Using software called a “podcatcher,” you subscribe to podcasts you want to hear. The podcatcher automatically retrieves new installments and saves them to your media library (iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, etc.). You can listen to them there or move them onto a portable digital media device like an iPod (but certainly not limited to iPods). You can get a podcatcher at http://www.ipodder.org.
8. Labor Blogs
Organized labor has always been Net-savvy, taking early advantage of e-mail and the World Wide Web. I recall around 1995 when Charles Pizzo, who specializes in labor-oriented communications, presented a session at a conference in which he displayed some online tactics that revealed a level of sophistication that outpaced the businesses for which their members worked.
It’s a matter of perspective when wondering whether unions have been slow to jump into blogging. On the one hand, I’ve been expecting to see union blogs for a while now. After all, corporations have blogs and it’s not like labor to follow business in leveraging a new channel. On the other hand, the percentage of businesses with blogs is miniscule and, in the grand scheme of things, blogging hasn’t been around that long.
The Los Angeles Daily News reports today that the Engineers and Architects Association, a significant player among LA unions, has launched a blog that so far is being used to target incumbent Mayor James Hahn. The union has endorsed Antonio Villaraigosa, one of the politicians challenging Hahn in the mayoral race.
The blog, Blog City Hall, is missing many of the hallmarks of a typical blog, including RSS feeds and trackbacks. It is riddled with bad grammar and spelling errors (Fleischman Hilliard instead of Fleishman Hillard, for example). And all items—both posts and comments—are anonymous. So far, the blog has only a few posts and scant comments. But it’s easy to see from this early example how unions can tap into the blogosphere as a new element in labor campaigns. Already adept at getting their messages out quickly, unions can use blogs to increase the speed of communication. Blogs give the average member an opportunity to weigh in. And in the case of Blog City Hall, it’s not likely that Hahn or other city officials will respond with blogs of their own.
The launch of this political blog should give businesses that haven’t started already a good reason to both monitor the blogosphere. In a larger sense, though, it suggests that companies should look at blogging as a means of communicating with and engaging its employees so the union blogs will have less to talk about.
9. Sites of the Month
Labor Research Portal—While most unions haven’t caught onto blogs yet, there’s still great information about labor on the Web. If you work in a unionized company, this resource could become invaluable to your communication with union employees.
http://www.iir.berkeley.edu/library/laborportal/
RealClimate—Here’s an example of a blog designed to influence influencers. Established by climatologists as a resource to journalists and “the interested public”, the site provides a quick response to climate-related stories.
10. HC+T Update
- I’m speaking at a number of conferences coming up. I’ll be at the New Communications Forum in Napa this week talking about blogs in crisis communication. In March, I’ll talk about engagement at a pre-conference session at Ragan’s leadership conference. And in February I’ll do two talks on online communication for the US Forest Service.
- I am conducting an intranet audit for a manufacturing company.
- I’m working with a major Silicon Valley company to develop a strategic internal communication plan.
11. Boilerplate And Subscription Information
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005
HC+T Update—Special Issue: RSS
A special issue of the monthly e-mail newsletter from Shel Holtz, ABC.
HC+T Update
January 2005
Special Issue: RSS
In This Issue:
1. Why A Special Issue On RSS?
2. What Is RSS?
3. How To Use RSS
4. Newsreaders
5. RSS-Related Software
6. More Information And Resources
7. These Are A Few Of My Favorite Feeds
8. Boilerplate And Subscription Information
1. Why A Special Issue On RSS?
Over the last couple months, more than a few readers have commented to me that they’re losing interest in HC+T Update based on my ongoing reporting of new communication tools including blogs, wikis, and RSS. One e-mail commented that I’m too far ahead of the curve for most people working in the day-to-day world of organizational communication.
I’m worried by these observations. I don’t think I’m far out in front of the curve. I fear communicators are too far behind the curve. Consider these applications of RSS in the real world:
- CNN has just launched a series of RSS feeds on its Web site. The feeds are prominently located on the CNN home page.
- The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are among major media outlets providing RSS feeds. Amazon is also offering feeds, along with MSN Music.
- Firefox, the browser threatening Internet Explorer’s dominance, has RSS subscription capabilities built into it.
- Yahoo!, the most popular online consumer destination, offers several feeds, including feeds from its news service and even its hot site of the day feature.
- RSS is being used commercially by business ranging from travel to auctions.
- In the public sector, everyone from local churches to local governments is starting to offer RSS feeds.
- Reporters, overwhelmed by e-mail, are turning to RSS feeds from PR agencies for their story pitches.
- Companies like Nooked (http://www.nooked.com) offers RSS services to corporations specifically for new purposes. Nooked’s tagline: “Rescuing Corporate Communications: Manage, create, publish and measure your news with RSS.”
Add to this mix the efforts of some tech companies to develop event-driven RSS (designed specifically for internal communications purposes) and RSS-specific servers. What do you get? The fact that RSS has arrived. It’s here. It’s being adopted by a rapidly expanding number of our audience members. It’s not a future technology. It’s a current technology that the PR and communications community has been slow to embrace.
This special edition of HC+T Update focuses on RSS in the hopes that readers who haven’t adopted it yet will start looking at it more seriously. I certainly don’t mean this as an insult to RSS-less communicators. I certainly recognize that we get lower budgets that our advertising and marketing brethren, that we have smaller staffs, and that we have less time to explore new channels.
But a little push never hurt anybody.
2. What Is RSS?
In suggesting that I produce this special RSS-focused issue, reader and friend Bill Boyd wrote, “If you can convince readers that subscribing to RSS is easy and get them to actually do it, I’m sure they’ll find it as valuable as you do.”
Subscribing is, in fact, ridiculously easy.
- Get yourself a news reader. Section 4 of today’s Update includes links to several, many of which are free.
- Find a feed you’d like to subscribe to. May I suggest my blog as a starting point? (Hey, this is my newsletter; there’s no reason I can’t be self-serving with it!) Just go to http://blog.holtz.com, click, on the link that says “RSS 2.0,” and copy the URL of the resulting page into your news reader.
- There is no 3. You’re done. That’s it.
What happens now? You reader will “ping” my server as often as you tell it to. Most readers are defaulted to every 60 minutes, but you can change that to be as frequent or infrequent as you like. When I post something new to my blog, your news reader will find it, capture it, and (in most cases) alert you that the new post is there.
What’s special about this? Two main points. First, all you’ll get are posts to services you subscribe to. No spam. No CC’s from people covering their asses by copying the world on their e-mails. No jokes or inspirational stories or chain mail. Just the material you want to read. Second, you can monitor as many sites as you like without ever opening your browser. You can stay current on all the news and information sources that are important to you by simply reviewing the feeds in your reader.
Second, all those Web sites you like to follow come to you. No more surfing around to each site in order to read the latest information there (or discover nothing new has been posted). All that material is delivered to your news reader so you only have to go to one place to get caught up. (Hence the term “aggregator”.) I follow about 200 Web sites in my reader; it takes me about 40 minutes each day to stay current. Can you imagine how long that would take if I had to visit each site individually?
Before you begin to explore the use of RSS as a means of delivering information for your organization, you should become a consumer of feeds. Do it for a week. By then, most of you will be converts.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It also stands for Rich Site Summary and RDF Site Summary (RDF stands for Resource Definition Framework), depending upon whom you talk to. RSS, whatever you decide it stands for, is a means of allowing anyone with an Internet connection to subscribe to an information source and receive updates pretty much in real time without using e-mail. Developed primarily as a tool for blogs and to make the My Yahoo portal work, it has expanded well beyond these early uses.
RSS is made up of a couple key elements:
- An XML file that complies with standards for RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, or Atom feeds. If you use blogging software like that produced by Typepad, Blogger or others, these files are generated automatically. You can craft the file by hand or use some inexpensive software to build the file for you. Each file contains several elements. The first of these is a “channel,” which represents the page that contains your various “items,” the individual stories or articles or posts that are part of the channel.
- A place to host the file, your own server or one where you have an account.
- The news reader, which your readers use to subscribe to your (and other) feeds.
(“Feed” is just a fancy high-tech word for the items that are sent from a server to the news reader. )
It’s really simple (hence adoption of the acronym “Really Simple Syndication”) and it’s going to get easier. Dave Winer, the “godfather of blogging” and one of the developers of RSS, is behind an initiative to develop “click to subscribe” functionality.
3. How To Use RSS
The primary use of RSS is for the eventual elimination of your opt-in e-mail mailing lists. There’s research aplenty to support the idea that people are fed up with e-mail. It’s not the fault of the technology, which works just the way it’s supposed to. Rather, it’s the fault of those evil ne’er-do-wells known as spammers. Spam has led to the introduction of spam filters, which invariably produce false positives—that is, they filter out legitimate e-mail you want to read. And, of course, some spam sneaks past your filter and gets into your in-box anyway. Consequently, the degree of trust people have in e-mail has diminished considerably over the last few years.
Any of your opt-in mailing lists are candidates for RSS. This includes press releases, financial updates, product announcements, notices of upcoming events or activities, and notification of changes or updates to the Web site.
There are more innovative uses to which RSS can be applied, some of which I hinted at earlier. For example, you can notify your media contacts of an RSS feed to which they can subscribe; you’ll use it whenever there’s a story you want to pitch. One company is using RSS feeds to let readers subscribe to products they’re interested in. Whenever that product is made available somewhere on the Web at a lower price than was available before, it generates a feed. RSS is a relatively new technology, so much of what it will be used for in the future hasn’t been devised yet; you are limited by your imagination.
For you internal communicators, the opportunities are even greater. One of the biggest complaints I hear about intranets is that it’s hard to drive traffic. If employees don’t click to the news page on the browser, they don’t see the news. If every employee has a news reader with a default feed to vital all-employee news, you’ll be able to push the news to them. Of course, if they want to read more, they can click the headline to open the browser directly to the story. Then, employees could select other feeds in order to get news that may be of interest to them but not necessarily to others.
What other material could you make available as feeds to employees? New executive speeches, upcoming employee activities, project updates, new addition to departmental intranet pages, just about anything. You aren’t limited in the number of RSS feeds you create. In fact, the more targeted you can make them, the more inclined employees will be to subscribe since they know they’ll get meaningful news and not a lot of material that isn’t relevant to them.
Most organizations with RSS feeds make them available in two places:
- On the relevant page
- In an aggregated listing of feeds (like this one at Yahoo! News: http://news.yahoo.com/rss/
Another way to use RSS is, of course, with blogs—one of the original reasons for the development of RSS. I don’t want to go too deeply into the use of blogs in formal communication. However, lest you think this is a practice whose time has not yet come, let me point you to two blogs. First is http://fastlane.gmblogs.com, a blog for General Motors executives currently featuring several prominent posts by Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman. Second is the new blog from Margot Wallstrom, a commissioner of the European Commission responsible for Industrial Relations and Communications. Her blog is at http://europa.eu.int/comm/commission_barroso/wallstrom/profile/index_en.htm. Executive blogs are for real and communicators need to start taking them seriously, along with product blogs and employee blogs.
Internally, blogs are being introduced to intranets at a record pace, used for everything from knowledge transfer to project management.
Since both internal and external blogs feature RSS feeds by default, your audiences within and without will easily be able to subscribe to these feeds.
4. News Readers
When it comes to RSS news readers, you have a wealth of options available to you. Your two most basic options are software to install on your computer or Web sites that provide news reader services.
First, software (which is my preference, since I can read feeds on my laptop that were delivered earlier even when I’m no longer connected). I use software called FeedDemon http://www.feeddemon.com. I’ve tried several readers and settled on this one—at least for now. It’s easy to use and boasts several features I like. It’s also an investment of $29.95. Some of the more popular free readers include RSSFeedEater at http://www.babisoft.com/. A lot of people seem to like Pluck, at http://www.pluck.com.
A fairly comprehensive list of most alternatives (even though it doesn’t feature FeedDemon) is at:
http://www.hebig.org/blogs/archives/main/000877.php.
One alternative to consider if you’re an outlook user is NewsGator, which integrates into Outlook. You view your RSS feeds just as though they’re another folder in your e-mail. It’s at http://www.newsgator.com.
NewsGator also offers a nice Web-based service, so you don’t have to install software on your computer at all. Just log into your account (it’s free) to read your feeds. Bloglines is another Web-based service (http://www.bloglines.com).
5. RSS-Related Software
There’s other software out there to make life easy with RSS. For example, I use an application called FeedForAll to create the XML pages ready to post. I just fill in a few fields and push a button; the page is built on the fly.
FeedForAll is a terrific program, and it’s relatively inexpensive at $39.95. Alternatively, you could get the RSS Channel editor for free. It’s at http://www.xml.com/pub/r/103.
Another free feed-generation program is available at:
http://hunterdavis.com/ssrss.html
Another feed generator you can buy (for $29.95) is at:
http://www.castlesoftware.biz/NewzAlertComposer.htm
6. More Information And Resources
Articles on RSS and RSS feeds. This site also provides targeted feeds of content that could be of value for publication on some Web sites:
http://www.allrssfeeds.com/
A couple ways to search the blogosphere:
http://www.technorati.com
http://www.pubsub.com
A couple plain-English explanations of RSS (just in case this one was incomprehensible):
http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000528.html
http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html
An RSS tutorial for content publishers and webmasters:
http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/
A video introduction to RSS:
http://www.rssdomination.com/video.htm
7. These Are A Few Of My Favorite Feeds
Many of the RSS news readers—like FeedDemon and NewzCrawler—come populated with some starter feeds of general interest. But since we’re all in the communications business, I thought I’d share some of the feeds I follow in order to stay on top of topics related to my work. In order to subscribe to any of these, all you have to do is copy the related URLs I’ve included here into your news reader.
First off, I have some Google News updates delivered as RSS feeds.
Public Relations:
http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php?q=%22public+relations%22
Employee Communications:
http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php?q=%22employee+communications%22
You can set up your own RSS feeds for any Google News search you like, including your a regular search for occurrences of your company’s name in the news:
http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php
The Online Journalism Review from USC’s Annenberg School of Communications has good material:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/rss.xml
Another good source of information on the changes in journalism and communication comes from the Poynter Institute’s Tidbits column:
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/rss.xml
One more in this vein is “Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism,” a new blog by the former tech columnist from the San Jose Mercury News:
http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/index.rdf
From the world of technology, Common Craft is a blog that covers the whole notion of online communities:
http://www.commoncraft.com/index.rdf
Enterprise RSS is a blog dealing with…well, you can figure that one out for yourself!
http://enterpriserss.typepad.com/enterprise_rss/index.rdf
Nooked is a company that provides corporate RSS services, and their blog is often useful and interesting:
http://www.nooked.com/news/feed/nooked?c=Nooked+Blog
Slashdot is the definitive community for tech-oriented folks. You’ll see a lot of posts you don’t care about and some that grab your interest.
http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rss
Doc Searls’ Weblog comes from one of the co-authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”
http://partners.userland.com/people/docSearls.xml
Among business-oriented blogs, I follow the Business 2.0 blog:
http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/index.rdf
FCNow is the blog from FastCompany magazine:
http://blog.fastcompany.com/index.xml
I maintain a list of PR and communication-focused blogs on my blog at http://blog.holtz.com. There are many, many of these. A few to get you started include Micropersuasion by Steve Rubel, which has achieved a sort of celebrity status outside the world of PR:
http://steverubel.typepad.com/micropersuasion/index.rdf
Neville Hobson, a Brit living in Amsterdam, is my partner in the “For Immediate Release” podcast; his blog is very popular:
http://nevon.typepad.com/nevon/index.rdf
Just for fun, get Steve Crescenzo’s “Corporate Hallucinations:”
http://www.ragan.com/stevesblog/RSS/
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