Tuesday, January 31, 2006
HC+T Update: January 2006
The January 2006 email newsletter from Holtz Communication + Technology, in blog/RSS format.
HC+T Update
January 2006
1) In defense of traditional websites
2) Work on an intranet? Beef up your video
3) Why isn’t there more talk of PR uses for SMS?
4) “I’m sorry” getting easier to say
5) Useful labels
6) The heretic and the number cruncher
7) Another way to focus your attention
8) A rationale for moving meetings online
9) Site of the month
10) HC+T update
11) Boilerplate and subscription information
As usual, this issue represents mostly material I’ve written for my blog over the past month. You can find the blog at http://blog.holtz.com. And don’t forget, you should seriously consider switching from the email subscription to the RSS feed. Just add the following URL to your RSS news reader: http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/update/rss_2.0/.
1. In defense of traditional websites
A lot of voices are rising up to proclaim the death of the traditional website. For example, in a list of “10 Web Trends That Should Die in 2006,” the Google Blogoscoped blog suggested…
“I hope in 2006, major companies who are still on the web 1.0 train will upgrade to the world of blogs, podcasts, RSS, etc., and replace their ‘homepages’ with it.
There are, to be sure, any number of corporate sites that could benefit from adding blogs, podcasts, and RSS to their sites (not to mention wikis and other social media). There may even be some traditional websites that can stand to migrate entirely to one of these platforms. Amy Gahran, for example, offers a very rational explanation of why her “borchureware” website was better envisioned as a blog. My podcasting co-host Neville Hobson has never had a website to market his services; his online presence is entirely contained within his blog, NevOn. I even plan to tap into the power of my blogging application, Expression Engine, to convert my website so it’s easier to maintain and more tightly integrated with my blog. (Not that my website, powered by PHPWebSite, is all that difficult to maintain.)
Still, the notion that all websites would be better off as blogs is yet another case of overzealous enthusiasts getting carried away. There is plenty of valuie to the traditional hieracrhical website. What kind of site you offer your audiences depends on the purpose you have in mind for it. In other words, strategy should precede tactic. “We need a website; let’s do it as a blog!” is no basis for sound decision-making. Establishing connections through a blog is one terrific goal. Providing quick access to information customers want or need through well-planned information architecture is another. Great as blogs are, they’re not a marvel of information management. After all, they are charaterized by a reverse-chronological-order structure.
Take technical support, for example. I would much rather click through two or three links on a navigationally sound site to find an answer than stumble through searches and categories on a blog. Of course, a technical support blog would certainly enhance and improve any tech support site, but would be a miserable replacement. The blog would keep users up to date on new issues and problems; the hierarchical site would allow users to drill quickly to archived information they need to solve their problems. I’m a huge fan, for example, of Macromedia’s tech support site, which breaks its offerings into clear categories that include the ability to participate in user forums and subscribe to RSS feeds.
Product-oriented sites, like Hewlett-Packard’s, would also be far less usable as a blog. This is one of many sites that has figured out user-driven navigation, with primary links based on what the user is looking for, not how the company or its product line is organized. And imagine turning briliantly conceived media relations sites like General Electric’s and investor relations sites like FedEx’s into blogs and wikis. By all means, add social media elements such as blogs and RSS to these sites, but replace them? How about, instead, using the tool that best achieves your goals?
Philipp Lenssen, author of the Google Blogoscoped blog, is one of those guys who sells hammers, hence seeing every problem as a nail. (I know, I know, I keep using this hackneyed old metaphor, but it works, so what the hell.)
Lenssen offers a couple other points in his 10 trends post with which I disagreed. For example, he wants long articles to appear on a single page, suggesting that “continued” buttons aren’t intuitive and splitting the article in multiple pages harms Google indexing. While I agree that “turn page” is no way to produce copy, we also know that readers won’t scroll endlessly. Context-independence, such as that practiced at WebMonkey, still makes sense. For instance, in an article about podcasting, separate pages are dedicated to discrete topics, such as creating and finding content, recording and mixing, and publishing and syndicating. As for ensuring the article is indexed appropriately in search engines, you could always do what Webmonkey does: provide a printable version in which all the pages are stitched together.
Lenssen would also have organizations dismiss users of low bandwidth, even though they represent nearly half the consumers in the country. You should know your audience, and if they’re dialing in, you dismiss them at your peril.
Bottom line: Let strategy, not tactics, drive your online decisions.
2. Work on an intranet? Beef up your video
I had already been pondering the surge in popularity of online video when Steve Rubel wrote about the “Big Bang” that occurred when Apple began selling TV series episodes and other video content through its iTunes store.
Steve (http://www.micropersuasion.com) asked if your marketing or PR program is Big-Bang-ready. I’m wondering more about intranets.
I have maintained for years that anything that succeeds on the web ultimately finds its way onto intranets. Companies rejected the idea of instant messaging on intranets, for example, dismissing the technology as a way for idle teens to waste time in mindless chatter. Today, more than half the companies in the US employ instant messaging for work-related purposes on their intranets.
The uptake in online video has been staggering. A number of factors have driven it, including…
- Adoption of high-speed access passing the tipping point
- Easy-to-use editing software leading to thousands of consumer-created videos available online
- Services like Atom Films, Our Media, You Tube, Veoh, Google Video, and the iTunes music store providing access to videos
All of these changes don’t hold a candle to the changes about to surge through the population in terms of viewing habits. Even one of TiVo’s executives was quoted saying that TiVo is an interim step. Eventually, through whatever mechanisms emerge, consumers will download the shows they want to watch without waiting for the show’s time slow to roll around. Time-shifting will be the norm (with obvious exceptions for news and sports).
As consumers (who, by the way, also happen to be employees) come to consume online video as a matter of routine, intranets will seem quaint and old-fashioned unless the ability to download video content works somewhat the same. Town hall meetings, executive speeches, video summaries of major company events, chronicles of investor road shows, loops of new television commercials…it’s all content that employees will use if it’s available. Grabbing the latest manager meeting from the intranet should be no different than grabbing the latest episode of “Lost” from the Net.
This is different than the low-quality streams available now on some intranets. We’re talking about subscribable, downloadable content that can be transported from the computer hard drive to a video iPod, a Sony PSP, or any of the other dozen or so handheld devices out there that play video.
Sadly, it’ll take a long time for companies to embrace the idea no matter how much sense it makes. I can hear the dismissals now: “We don’t have bandwidth for that.” “We’re not in the business of providing entertainment for our employees.” “They can just read about it.”
If you work with an intranet, start exploring the potential for quality video sooner rather than later. Many of your employees probably already have devices that will play the videos, and the adoption rate is going to soar. (Apple sold 14 million iPods in the last three months of 2005 alone.) .
3. Why isn’t there more talk of PR uses for SMS?
I’ve been pondering the lack of discussion about the potential PR applications for SMS (short message service for wireless/cell phones). This thinking has been prompted by several news items I’ve read, such as word from a German company called Smartmachine that it has developed a system that lets cell phone users buy and receive tickets to events using SMS. According to an InfoWorld report…
“Smartmachine and its technology partner Skidata have developed a mobile ticketing system that allows customers to have a ticket sent to their mobile phone via SMS (Short Message Service) in the form of a 2D (two-dimensional) bar code. At the gate, they slide their mobile phone display showing the bar code by a bar code reader.”
I’m already printing tickets from Ticketmaster on my computer; the printout includes a bar code that is read as I walk into a theater or concert hall. It’s genius to shift this concept to a cell phone, and even greater genius to use SMS to deliver the goods.This week’s BusinessWeek reports that the government of South Korea is delivering updates on legal proceedings and notices of traffic and environmental violations at a potential saves of $1.2 million in postage (subscription required). The brief item in BusinessWeek also notes that…
“Banks confirm financial transactions via test, doctors and dentists use it to confirm appointments, and in 2004 credit card issuer KEB Credit Service even delivered layoff notices to 161 employees.”
I’m not recommending that companies use SMS—or any tool other than face-to-face—to deliver layoff notices. But these expanding uses of SMS are intriguing, both as an example of what SMS can do and to heighten my wonder that the communication profession hasn’t embraced it. (Marketing has progressed a bit further with SMS—but not much.)
I remember hearing about a session at a conference during which the speaker supported the integration of digital media players into cell phones. The audience scoffed, so the speaker asked how many of those in the room had MP3 players. Most raised their hands. “How many of you have your MP3 players with you?” Only a couple responded. Then the speaker asked, “How many of you have cell phones?” Everybody raised their hands. “And how many of you have your cell phone with you?” Again, everybody raised their hands.
Cell phones are ubiquitous. When you leave the house without yours, don’t you feel like you’ve forgotten to put on pants? And most cell phones has SMS capabilities. We’re missing an opportunity here. My preliminary, off-the-top-of-my-head thinking produced a couple of no-brainer applications:
- Let reporters subscribe to SMS messages alerting them to news updates on specific issues and subjects they cover
- Residents who live near a manufacturing facility could subscribe to get updates about anticipated traffic jams and other facility-specific news
- A crisis team could set up an SMS subscription service to provide news as it happens to interested individuals
One of the readers of my blog offered this idea: “In San Antonio, our local water system (SAWS) sends out weekly watering advice by e-mail, phone message or their call-in line. SMS would be an easy and natural extension and might even save time and money over automated phone messages. Make government cool.”
Other uses should present themselves when we’re engaged in projects — as long as we keep SMS in mind as a potential tool in the toolkit. What other thoughts do you have about how we might incorporate into SMS into communication planning — or what implementations have been been involved with?
4. “I’m sorry” getting easier to say
I’ve seen two instances recently in which companies apologized after incurring the wrath of bloggers.
The most recent is the head of Jung von Matt, a German advertising agency. Jean-Remy von Matt sent an email to his staff complaining about bloggers after several savaged a campaign for which his agency was responsible. He called blogs “the toilet walls of the Internet” and asked, “What on earth gives every computer owner the right to exude his opinion, unasked for? And most bloggers really just exude.”
The blogosphere didn’t react kindly when the internal email was leaked. Now, according to the UK’s Guardian, he’s seeking forgiveness:
“My mother taught me something. If you make a mistake, apologise ... I was agitated, and I wrote an email to my colleagues, who had worked hard for months on the campaign and deserved some encouragement against the criticism, justified or unjustified.”
Von Matt wasn’t content to let it go with the apology, sadly, taking one last shot at bloggers:
“Even if most of the criticism of my email was serious and constructive, I still see it as a breach of respect that an internal memo of mine could be sent scampering like a sow through Little Bloggerville.”
A better job was done by Alan Jones of Bluepulse, a developer of software for mobile phones. The controversy here began when the mobile phone blog Mobhappy found a misstatement on the Bluepulse website. The site claimed the software worked on any phone. The company denied it had ever made the claim and quickly changed the text on its website to suggest it works with almost every phone. The folks at Mobhappy had no trouble pulling a copy of the website from the Google cache link that contained the old claim.
Jones wrote a detailed apology and explanation, as did Luke, the fellow who changed the website. Jones’ mea culpa begins, “I apologise unreservedly; personally and on behalf of bluepulse.”
Reactions from readers who initially blasted Bluepulse were accepting:
- “That was a sincere apology and Carlo should update his post to point readers to it.”
- “I applaud bluepulse’s decision to own up to and apologize for their mistake. While they certainly should have done so earlier, it speaks positively for the integrity of the company that they will admit to what they do wrong, and seem to have learned their lesson.”
- “Mr. Jones’s well thought out and well written apology seems to have saved the day and managed to turn the gathering tide of criticism against them.”
- “I just wanted to send you some kudos. After making many mistakes myself and seeing many others do them, I don’t ask anyone that they do not make them. What I do value highly is that they listen to criticism, and do their best to correct the consequences as soon as they’re aware. To me, you’re apologies & explanations above are the best possible handling of that. And we _all_ make mistakes…”
- “I think BluePulse has handled this well.”
Jones continued a dialogue in the comment thread, and Carlo Longino (the author of the initial post) did amend it to note that Bluepulse had apologized.
Once, companies that made mistakes could get away with an arrogant attitude because word of their stance was slow to spread and couldn’t spread very far. These days, a sincere apology is the quickest way to quiet the storm when the consumer audience (and that’s who populates the blogosphere) catches you doing whatever it is you shouldn’t have done. Some companies seem to be grasping the concept. Maybe others will learn from the positive results of their actions.
5. Useful labels
I scoffed when a representative from Lake Superior State University, appearing on MSNBC’s “Countdown” (my favorite cable news show) issued the university’s 2006 “List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.” Among this year’s choices: “breaking news” and “talking points.”
The university has been presenting the list since 1976, making its selections from nominations submitted by just about anybody. I gave up on the list last year when it included the word “blog” along with this rationale for wanting to ban the word:
- “Many who nominated it were unsure of the meaning. Sounds like something your mother would slap you for saying.”
- “Sounds like a Viking’s drink that’s better than grog, or a technique to kill a frog.”
- “Maybe it’s something that would be stuck in my toilet.”
- “I think the words ‘journal’ and ‘diary’ need to come back.”
The first two comments suggest a word should be banned if some people don’t know what it means and don’t like how it sounds. By that standard, we’d eliminate 30% of the words in the dictionary. It’s the last comment, though, that warrants some discussion. It seems to have become a popular notion that more general terms should be used to replace specific labels with narrower meanings. In this case, a “journal” or “diary” could be on paper as easily as they could be online. Paper diaries record intimate thoughts, often that people wouldn’t want shared. Blogs use blogging software and incorporate the technology enabled by the software, such as commenting, trackbacks, and the like. Say “journal” and people will wonder what kind. Say “blog” and people will know just what you’re talking about.
The same reasoning bubbled up in my mind when I read a post yesterday from Chuck Tanowitz’s Media Metamorphosis blog in which Tanowitz expressed his disdain for the term “blogger relations:”
“During a recent lunch conversation with John Cass, he and I argued over the term ‘blogger relations.’ Personally, I think it’s a lousy term. He believes it’s the hot term of 2006.
“I’d like to suggest another: Open Communications. I’m thinking about this in the same vein as Open Source, that is, a way for everyone to contribute to the conversation. It’s a way of simply better expressing what is going on today, and giving a label for corporations to attach to this to differentiate it from traditional PR, media relations and advertising.
“At a certain point all of this becomes one and all falls under the general “communications” umbrella, but we’re not there yet.
“For now, it’s all about being Open.”
From where I sit, “blogger relations” has specific meaning. It’s the alternative to “media relations,” coined because public relations practitioners cannot approach bloggers the same way they can pitch media. Blogger relations should, of course, be open. But there’s more to it than that. It is a useful term, for now, as the principles of employing blogs in a public relations context are defined and codified.
The author of the Clogger blog (I have no idea who he or she is; there’s no profile on the page) suggests that any corporate blog is an example of blogger relations:
“Clogs don’t exist. Blogs don’t exist. The corporations are pumping money into blogger relations strategies that are only serving to inform a closed network of other corporations what they’re up to. The information survives forever in a closed loop.”
Again, this post suggests broader meaning than intended. It’s like suggesting that “media relations” is everything an organization says publicly, since the media might pick up on it. While that may be true, “media relations” refers to a defined set of strategies for maintaining positive relationships with the press.
Even terms that are worthy of disparagement can be traced back to a meaning that was useful. In the corporate world, the word “paradigm” is one that evokes laughter and eye rolling. Originally, though, it had a specific meaning that was useful. It was only after every insignificant change in strategy was dubbed a “paradigm shift” by jargon-happy executives that the word fell into disrepute. Still, if a business undergoes a genuine paradigm shift, consistent with the original definition, I have no problem with using the term to define the action. I’d be equally happy to see a company genuinely empower its employees and achieve world-class status.
In the end, though, all this discussion about whether we should use “blogger relations” or “open communication” sparks two conclusions:
- Complain all you want. The words are part of the vernacular and aren’t going anywhere.
- Focusing on the labels instead of issues of substance undermines credibility. This was Joan Didion’s argument in an essay from her “White Album” collection in which she chided the feminist movement for wasting its capital of specious issues like getting people to say “camerawoman” when it could be striving toward equal pay for equal work.
I do hate “clog” as a term for corporate blogs, though. I always thought those were wooden shoes.
6. The heretic and the number cruncher
John Wagner wasn’t too impressed when Katie Paine introduced a new metric she dubbed PR Value Ratio. Wagner, owner and principal of Houston-based Wagner Communications, has posted several subsequent items that elaborate on his position that communication measurement is overrated and will never be a priority. While Wagner finds some measurement valuable, he sums up his dismissal of measurement as a standard PR component on several grounds:
- The tools are no good
- The tools don’t measure the right things
- Clients don’t want to pay for it
- It’s too much work
* Some PR efforts don’t lend themselves to measurement
Wagner summed up his initial salvo with this gem: “When measurement is possible, great. But it will likely always play second fiddle to good old-fashioned intuition.”
Katie responded by suggesting Wagner isn’t the heretic he dubbed himself, but rather a menace and a dinosaur. While Katie echoes the sentiment of a lot of PR pros—measurement is a path to a seat at the management table—Wagner responded:
“If public relations professionals are to be credible “at the table,” we have to make sure that the data we provide for our programs can withstand the scrutiny of bottom-line oriented business managers. In my opinion, that’s impossible to do with most measurement tools based on circulation or viewership.”
The debate has turned into a he-said she-said exercise (paraphrased below):
He said: The number of eyeballs viewing placed content isn’t adequate because it doesn’t assess whether the communication influenced the target audience.
She said: Well, duh. Have you never heard of opinion research?
He said: Sure, I’ve heard of opinion research. But who’s gonna pay for that?
And so it goes. Ultimately, though, I have to wonder how much investigation Wagner has done into communication research tools. I reported here last month about a tool Procter & Gamble developed to measure the value of its PR efforts, a tool that showed PR generated higher return on investment than other marketing channels in four out of six brands the company’s PR department tested. The instrument, called PREvaluate, “incorporates detailed analysis, including information on cost, scope, audience, geographic markets, and possible synergy with other marketing tactics,” according to Hans Bender, the company’s manager of external relations. A review of Angela Sinickas’ manual on internal communication measurement and Lou Williams’ book on external communication measurement reveals a treasure trove of solid tools. So are the basic PR textbooks, which leads me to my next point:
My biggest objection targets Wagner’s assertion that only some PR efforts lend themselves to measurement. Any PR effort, no matter how large or small, should be based on achieving some kind of outcome. John, are you suggesting that outcomes cannot be measured? Here’s what Cutlip, Center, and Broom write in the widely-used PR 101 textbook, “Effective Public Relations”:
“Surely knowledge, outcomes, predisposition changes, and behaviors can be measured. So what excuse justifies not knowing if the action and communication strategies are making progress toward achieving program objectives? What justifies not documenting how the program worked? What justifies not being able to say whether or not the problem has been solved?”
The book lists 13 (count ‘em, 13) types of measurement to conduct along three stages of a project:
- Preparation—Adequacy of background information base for designing the program; appropriateness of message and activity content; quality of message and activity presentations
- Implementation—Number of messages delivered to appropriate channels and activities designed; number of messages placed and activities implemented; number who received messages and activities; number who attend to messages and activities
- Impact—Number who learn message content; number who change opinions; number who change attitudes; number who behave as desired; number who repeat behavior; social and cultural change
All of which can be measured; the tools exist. Gut instinct, which Wagner suggests as an appropriate measure, simply won’t cut it in the boardroom. Every other aspect of business—including PR’s cousins in advertising and marketing—is expected to produce measurable results. With attitudes like Wagner’s, it’s no wonder PR gets so little respect! I would point John to a comment posted to this blog in response to an earier item dealing with measurement:
“I work at a large R&D driven company and it wasn’t until we started measuring our comms performance (especially internally) that leadership started to take us seriously. Any number of humanistic theories meant little to the leadership, but show them a multivariate analysis and we’re talking! Since then our comms organization has nearly doubled in size, management are aware that they need to do much better in their personal presentations, we are more often on-message, we have better focus on our channel management and finally we can follow long-term trends in the organization.”
That’s the power of measurement. As for the notion that clients won’t pay for it, that’s why it needs to be integrated into all programs rather than itemized as an optional service. Perhaps the cost of measurement should be built into hourly billable rates, an assumption that a set percentage of a practitioner’s time will be devoted to assessing the effectiveness of his or her work.
But measure we must. Whether it’s content analysis, opinion surveys, cost avoidance (one of my favorites), eyeballs (if that’s what matters to the client), we need to be able to show that our efforts provide value and we need to be able to show it in a way that’s meaningful to management. Claiming it’s too hard, too expensive, and too much of a challenge to convince clients to undertake measurement are just excuses. Remember what the Holmes Report said about why measurement isn’t happening among the top 100 PR agencies:
“In general, (agency) responses suggested that an failure of commitment—rather than the absence of necessary tools and techniques—is behind the industry’s poor (measurement) performance.”
Until the industry—including Wagner Communications—makes that commitment, we’ll continue to be viewed as lower-tier, lower-funded alternatives to marketing and advertising.
7. Another way to focus your attention
I don’t know how I missed this, but thanks to Dave Winer‘s latest Morning Coffee Notes podcast, I’ve learned about and become an instant fan of Top 10 Sources (http://www.top10sources.com).
Winer interviewed John Palfrey yesterday for MCN. Palfrey is founder and publisher of the site; he’s better known as director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
The idea behind Top 10 Sources is simple. A staff picks a topic, then culls through blogs and podcasts to identify the top 10 sources in that subject. The Yahoo!-like index of topics makes it easy to find the subject you’re interested in. Under “Health and Science,” for example, you’ll find Women in Science, Environment, Yoga, Women’s Health, Astronomy, Science News, Weight Loss and Controversial Science. A new topic is added daily.
Click to the topic page and you’ll find an introduction from the editor who pulled together the sources followed by the latest posts from each of the 10 identified blogs/podcasts. I checked the Guitars listing under Music, and found a truly useful set of blogs. The posts are listed in “river of news” style, with each page serving as a feed aggregator. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for each page, pulling the updated contents of each topic into your own news reader; alternatively, you can get the OMPL file to update your OPML reader on a daily basis.
The home page is handled a lot like Wikipedia, with different featured topics appearing every day.
In a press release, Palfrey said:
“Top 10 Sources is about adding a human element to searching and sorting through the increasingly great syndicated content on the Web. Much like Yahoo! brought a hierarchy to the early days of the commercial Internet with its browser, Top 10 Sources organizes information in blogs, podcasts, wikis, photoblogs and other sources into ‘reading lists.’ The goal is to foster an active conversation among readers, authors and editors that is about, and results in, great online content with context.”
The site launched in early December, so it’s not surprising that the Business category is anemic (Venture Capital and Your Money are the only two topics listed so far), but I expect that’ll change as new subjects continue to be added. In the MCN interview, Palfrey also promised that editors would keep an eye on the topics, deleting sources that lose their relevance and adding new ones that rise in prominence. It’s a site—and an idea—to keep an eye on.
8. A rationale for moving meetings online
How many meetings do you attend that could be offloaded to a wiki or some other online mechanism? The kneejerk reaction to such a suggestion is that online community is reducing the amount of face-to-face contact we have and that’s a bad idea. We’ve been hearing this since message boards first gained popularity.
I’ve never bought this argument. I’ve met more people online whom I have since gotten to know in the real world, people with whom I never would have dined or worked had I not gotten to know them first in the virtual world. Using the asynchronous online world as a surrogate for meetings also lets people participate without having to travel or block out inconvenient time slots.
Now there’s a new argument for shifting face-to-face meetings to a team wiki, a team blog, or some other online channel. According to research from the University of Minnesota (Duluth), meetings have a deleterious effect on employees. The study found “a general relationship between meeting load and the employee’s level of fatigue and subjective workload.”
The study, reported in the journal, journal “Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice,” was based on a test of two theories:
- Employees experience increased “negative effects” when the number of meetings they have to attend increases
- Employee experience increased “negative effects” when they have to spend more time in meetings.
“Negative effects” refers to fatigue and worsening moods. The authors of the study — Alexandra Luong and Steven G Rogelberg — arrived at the notion of “the meeting as one more type of hassle or interruption that can occur for individuals.”
The Guardian has a complete article on the study, including some of the early research that informed the project. (For example, a 1973 study established that typical managers spend more of their time in meetings than doing anything else.)
Of course, some meetings will need to be held just because they’re the most practical way to accomplish the goal that led to the meeting. But this research could serve as an argument to reduce the total number of meetings and shift the work to a project wiki or other online productivity tool.
9. Sites of the month
The Bad Pitch blog has gotten a lot of attention, and for good reason. The communication profession takes a helluva beating for the bad pitches—often in the form of miserable press releases—that hit the desks of reporters and get posted to the web. Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer have launched a blog dedicated to displaying the worst of the worst. Bad pitches—ones Dugan and Laermer find themselves and others that are sent to them—are posted without the name of the offending practitioner, unless they get three from the same person; then the practitioner is “outed.” The blog also features good pitches (for balance). But it’s reading the losers that makes the blog a guilty pleasure—and a learning experience. These are, as the blog’s name implies, real doozies.
Thanks to Constantin Basturea, we have links to a whole new batch of PR blogs. Constantin notes that this list brings the total number on his PR Blogs List to 330. It made me happy to see I was already reading several of these, and had subscribed to the feeds from four of them. The real delight was discovering a blog by an old friend I hadn’t seen or heard from in years. Jeri Cartwright was part of Craig Jolley’s original “Communicating in the Wired World” tour, sponsored by Lexis-Nexis (Craig’s employer at the time), back around 1992 and 1993. Usually, the speakers for this daylong session designed to introduce communicators to the Internet and other online services (like CompuServe and Lexis-Nexis) included Pete Shinbach and me. I remember like it was yesterday, though, the tour on which Jeri joined us. She’s bright and funny and way ahead of her time, and it was delightful to find her blogging. I’ve already dropped her an email. Who knows who else I’ll run into as more practitioners take up their keyboards to blog?
http://www.bloglines.com/public/prblogs
Teleflip has appraently been around for a while, but I hadn’t heard of it. Now that I have, I’ll probably use the hell out of it. Innovated by a fellow who was tired of not being able to send text messages to cell phones from his computer, Teleflip lets you use your email to do just that, and it’s completely free. I just tested it, sending a message to my own cell, and the message arrived in under a minute. Just send the message to the phone number at teleflip.com (I’d type in an example but some scum-sucking spammer would probably harvest it and start flooding the Teleflip service with garbage.) The service is currently workin in North America, and any costs your cell phone company would charge for a text message would apply. More information is at the Teleflip website. Let’s hear it for the altruists of the world.
10. HC+T update
>>I’m presenting a weeklong series of presentation and consultations for the tourism board of a major US city in early February
>>Also in February, I’ll conduct daylong workshops in two cities for a Canadian conglomerate
>>I’m speaking at the Des Moines PRSA chapter on February 16
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