Monday, May 29, 2006
HC+T Update: May 2006
HC+T Update: May 2006
- The Press Release is Dead. Long Live the Press Release
- Join Me June 1 for an Interactive Podcast
- Hearing From Road Warriors Like You
- Customer Service on the Edge
- Virtual Meetings Gain Steam…Just Not in Business
- Trust in Leadership is Worth Half a Million
- Business Blogs in Regulated Companies
- Workplace Surfing: Is the Tide Starting to Turn?
- Do Corporations Need Blog Monitors?
- Site of the month
- HC+T update
- 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. The Press Release is Dead. Long Live the Press Release
I haven’t jumped aboard the “press release is dead” bandwagon because I just don’t believe it. I have no argument with the issues that lead supporters of the movement to proclaim the press release’s demise. They say that most press releases have no news and are poorly written. This isn’t a recent phenomenon. I remember working for $550 per month in 1975 as assistant editor of a weekly community newspaper. I was deluged with press releases, most of which made me roll my eyes in disgust.
The doomsayers also insist that new media can better serve the objectives press releases have offered. In some cases, that’s true. In others, I’m not so sure. There are plenty of current stories of press release effectiveness. And while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not require material disclosure through press releases, press release services like PR Newswire and Business Wire know how to reach all the right audiences concurrently and satisfy the regulations that do exist.
Besides, as I’ve noted so frequently, new media do not kill old media. Old media adapt and evolve.
Shift Communications—a San Francisco-based PR agency—has given the press release a nudge along its evolutionary path. Shift’s Todd Defren, responding to “Silicon Valley Watcher” Tom Foremski’s original post calling for press releases to get with the interactive, social, digital era, proposed an approach that would satisfy Tom’s desires. According to Todd, Shift has released a social media press release template, which the company is making available to the profession:
“The template is 100% open to the PR/marketing community. No copyright baloney. We hope it can serve as a helpful guide to kickstart thinking about how we can evolve the PR sector. Maybe it can serve as a talking points memo to show to clients, to convince them to give it a try? Maybe you hate it? Maybe you’ve got some ideas on how to improve it.”
You can download a PDF of the template and view what Shift is touting as the first-ever press release to apply this next-generation format.
The release is broken into sections that are easily put to use by busy reporters and editors. First is contact information, followed by a headline and core news facts, preferably in bullet-list format. Then come a link and RSS feed for a “purpose-built” del.icio.us page. This page offers links to “relevant historical, trend, market, product & competitive content sources, providing context as-needed, and, on-going updates.”
Images and multimedia links are next, followed by pre-approved quotes, then links to relevant coverage to-date, boilerplate statements, an RSS feed to the company’s releases, an “add to del.icio.us” link, a Digg This link, and Technorati tags.
The press release Shift released is about the agency’s release of the new-media press release template, a great example of walking the talk if ever there was one. Shift has gone an extra step, creating a purpose-built del.icio.us site to track the evolution of the concept.
This is outstanding, thoughtful work and worthy of considerable recognition. The question remains, though: How many traditional PR practitioners are savvy enough about the changes occurring in the media and communication space to even recognize this is a good idea, no less be aware that the Shift template exists? In any event, those that figure it out will earn props from the media that find the press releases far more usable and useful, while those who continue spewing out the same old crap will earn their derision instead.
Todd Defren’s post: http://pr-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/social-media-press-release-debuts.html
Social media press release:
http://www.shiftcomm.com/Web20Releases/5232006.html
Tom Foremski’s original post:
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php
Download the template (PDF file):
http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf
2. Join Me June 1 for an Interactive Podcast
I was one of the participants on the conference call when “Naked Conversations” authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel hosted the first interactive podcast offered by startup Waxxi. While I thought Scoble and Israel were just fine, I just didn’t get Waxxi. The conversation took place via a plain old conference call. Like most conference calls, it was recorded; this recording was to be converted to MP3 and made available as a podcast. While participants listened on the phone, they could also participate in a live online chat, made possible using a free chat utility that anybody can add to a web page.
The technology and the production process were such a no-big-deal that I decided I could do exactly the same thing. So, on Thursday, June 1, episode 142 of “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report” will be live and interactive. Rather than spend the bucks for a conference call service, though, we’ll be using Skypecast (see item #5 below). At 9 a.m. PDT, 4 p.m. GMT, go to our Skypecast page:
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=6843
You’ll be able to participate LIVE in the conversation Neville Hobson and I generally do by ourselves. We’ll record the entire session and post it as our regular podcast. At the same time you’re listening and (we hope) participating, you can also engage in a live, real-time chat right on our podcat website:
http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php/chat
You’ll need Skype to participate, but it’s completely free and drop-dead-easy to use. If you don’t already have it, just download it and install it at http://www.skype.com.
I hope to see you there!
3. Hearing From Road Warriors Like You
I wasn’t familiar with Steve Cody or his blog before today, but he’s now on my list of feeds. In a post on May 10, the co-founder of Peppercom, an independent PR agency, talks about a word-of-mouth campaign he came across involving jetBlue Airways.
This caught my attention because I’m a jetBlue fan. Sometime this year, I’ll hit 1 million true miles on United Airlines, which is a big deal. When you accrue 1 million true lifetime miles, United makes you a Premier Executive for life, even if you never fly another mile on their airline. Yet given the opportunity to accumulate those final 48,000 miles, I pass if I can take jetBlue instead, even though there’s no first class to which you can upgrade. I’m a jetBlue fan because of the way they treat passengers.
My wife and I were at Dulles International a year or so ago, scheduled to fly jetBlue back to the Bay Area. Weather delayed the flight 5-1/2 hours; a scheduled 7 p.m. flight left after midnight. The gate agents were constantly on the PA with updates, even if it was just to tell us they had no new information. They brought pillows and blankets from the jetway that were supposed to be boarded on the plane and handed them out to passengers waiting in the terminal. Then they went back down the jetway and brought up drinks and snacks. When we finally boarded, they gave each of us a free one-way ticket. “For a weather delay?” I asked. “You’re under no obligation to compensate us. It wasn’t your fault.” The reply I got: “Our fault or not, you were inconvenienced. We want to do something to make up for that.”
So I was delighted to read Cody’s account of jetBlue’s word-of-mouth campaign that involves the installation of “story booths” in major airports jetBlue serves. According to Cody:
“At the futuristic-looking booths, a virtual jetBlue crew member will guide passengers as they enter their stories. There will also be simple postcards handed out and mailed to JetBlue customers asking them to share their experience stories.”
I’d do that. I’d sit in that booth and tell my story. Since the campaign includes using the war stories of real travelers, my tale could end up as part of a TV commercial or some other formal communication.
Cody stacks this concept against the popular and typical celebrity endorsement approach. In an era where (as the Edelman Trust Barometer has shown) people trust others like them more than they trust institutions, it makes sense to have road warriors like you tell stories that will make you want to use the same service.
A Brandweek story has more detail on the campaign:
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/leisuretrav/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002275345
Steve Cody’s post:
http://www.repmanblog.com/repman/2006/05/why_wordofmouth.html
4. Customer Service on the Edge
Companies that listen to bloggers have a unique opportunity to improve their reputations and win converts to their business models. Listening, after all, is a critical element of communication, but one that most organizations employing traditional communication practices often ignore.
A case in point arises from an item I posted to my blog. In that post, I complained that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 flagged potential phishing sites, then made it difficult under some circumstances for innocent sites to get excluded from the list. The site that generated the phising warning was a membership directory for a religious congregation. The database-diriven directory is password protected (as you might expect) and will provide far greater flexibility and currency than the paper directory distributed to congregants every other year. Among the directory features is a form members can use to update their own information in the database, such as a change of address. That’s the feature, I suspect, that brought up the phishing red flag. As my earlier post documented, my interaction with Microsoft to have the warning removed was frustrating.
I was surprised —- but also delighted —- to see the first comment on that post came from Dean, who listed his URL as the Microsoft IE developers blog. HIs comment: “Ouch. that surprises me. I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for writing up the feedback.”
The next day I received another email from Microsoft: “After further investigation, we have fixed the rating per your feedback. Due to client caching, you may continue to see warnings on the site for up to 24 hours. “
In case you didn’t catch it, they fixed the rating per my feedback. I don’t think they revisited my original email. I believe it was Dean’s review of my post that led to the outcome I was looking for. Next time, rather than simply complain, I may take a somewhat different approach with a blog post, positioning it as a request for customer service.
This is consistent with a theme I’ve been hearing with increasing frequency: the notion of content on the “edge.” Most content is aggregated and controlled in a central place, from customer service (you have to call the company) to classified advertising (you place the ad in the newspaper or on eBay). New models, though, suggest that you keep control of your content on your own space and through tags and other identification techniques, the service providers identify it and respond. That’s the idea behind Edgeio, which lets you post your classifieds on your own blog with appropriate tags; the ad then is listed on Edgeio’s categorized ad listing site. BlogBurst syndicates content from participating bloggers on sites like the Houston Chronicle and the Washington Post. Corante’s hubs take existing content on specific topics (like marketing) from participating bloggers, offering access to it through the hub and commenting on it on its own blog.
So why not customer service? Rather than simply complain about a company, why couldn’t the company develop tags that designate the post a customer service request. You would blog the issue—possibly on a blog you set up just for classified advertising and customer support—and tag it a customer service request; different tags could designate different types of issues…one for technical support, one for sales issues, and so on. You post and tag your problem and someone from the company responds via comment on your blog.
Of course, offering a service like this would be pointless if companies didn’t provide the resources to ensure customer issues are addressed and resolved. Most companies with reputation problems would be in much better shape if thei provided breathtaking service to their customers. But as way to handle customer service that puts the service request on the “edge” and takes advantage of the strengths of the Web 2.0 platform, it’s an idea I like. And, if the Microsoft is any example, it’s one that could work.
Anyway, I’m back to using IE7 virtually all the time and my esteem for Microsoft has been bumped up a notch.
Edgeio:
http://www.edgeio.com
Blogburst:
http://www.blogburst.com
5. Virtual Meetings Gain Steam…Just Not in Business
The blogosphere has been abuzz with the news that Skype has finally released its long-awaited SkypeCast service. In case you hadn’t heard, SkypeCast lets Skype users conduct online meetings with up to 100 people from anywhere in the world for free. Skype has teamed up with SixApart and other companies to create this capability, which many have taken advantage of even in its first few days of beta testing. As I write this, there are about 100 Skypecasts scheduled; some of those already held have included an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting for people who can’t make it to meetings. USA Today writer and blogger Kevin Maney thinks his band can perform a concert using a SkypeCast. Corante held several Skypecasts featuring interviews and Q&A with speakers from its upcoming marketing conference.
The same capabilities have been around for years for those willing to pay phone companies and conference hosting services to host them. The ability to do it for free can save companies bundles of cash—yet among those 160 or so SkypeCasts scheduled, I didn’t see one from a business. Admittedly, I didn’t scrutinze the list that closely, but if there were any, they were certainly among the minority.
This is no surprise. Big business is notoriously slow adopting new technologies, which is why I don’t expect to see corporate meeting rooms or conference centers set up any time soon in Second Life, even though it seems like a no-brainer to me. Podcasting innovator Adam Curry has built a castle in the popular metaverse and is inviting listeners to drop by whenever he happens to be “home.” His listeners hail from all four corners of the globe and many would love the opportunity to get together with him. Now they can, even if what they see is his avatar.
All this will sound familiar to fans of Neal Stephenson’s classic “Snow Crash,” where the word “metaverse” was introduced. Second Life comes hauntingly close to Stephenson’s vision; add 3D goggles and the ability to control your movements without a keyboard and Stephenson’s vision will be realized.
In Second Life, you can purchase real estate with Linden Dollars you buy with your real dollars. So why shouldn’t a company buy some land, build a conference center, and invite globally dispersed employees to gather for a conference or a meeting? Why shouldn’t IABC charge admission for a daylong event with speakers and presentations?
Some smaller organizations are figuring out, according to a BusinessWeek story by Rob Hof:
Justin Bovington, chief executive of the London marketing firm Rivers Run Red, for instance, uses Second Life as a virtual meeting place where ads, posters, and other designs can be viewed in 3D settings by clients and partners around the world in real time. That saves the weeks it would take to shuttle physical materials back and forth.
Wells Fargo has created Stagecoach Island in Second Life, a place where Second Lifers can play games that teach them about finance “while hanging out with friends.” That’s a great marketing ploy; I’m waiting to hear that Wells Fargo’s next worldwide controller’s meeting will take place in Second Life.
Until then, what about Global PR Blog Week III? We could hold it on PR Island, where the sun always shines and the water is always warm.
6. Trust in Leadership is Worth Half a Million
Regular readers will know that I believe senior leadership communication is a vital element of internal communications at all times, whether significant change is occurring or not. I’ve received two more pieces of evidence to support this notion.
Angela Sinickas sends along the first in the form of research by Warren Shepell, a global leader in employee assistance programs. According to the firm’s research, seven things are required for maximizing employee engagement. At the top of the list, according to the research: “Trust in senior managers.” Trust in supervisors was high up on the list, weighing in at number four. Ranking above that, at number three, though, was, “Understand their organizations’ vision and strategic direction,” just the kind of big-picture issue senior leadership would communicate; supervisors would interpret that information to localize it and help employees understand how those big-picture vision and strategic direction will affect their work.
The second research study comes by way of Malcolm Ruddock, director, Employee and Advancement Communications at Canada’s University of Western Ontario. Ruddock forwards along an item appearing on the website of the Vancouver Board of Trade regarding research conducted by John Helliwell, one of the world’s foremost researchers on people’s happiness and well-being.
To illustrate his results, Helliwell put a dollar figure to give a recognizable value to how important certain factors are to well-being. Factors measured were engagement (how connected people are with others); employment (paid or not); family, friends and neighbours; good health; high quality of government at all levels, and adequate income (relative to expectations).
Trust toward management was worth more than any other single factor, whether at work or at home, worth half a million dollars in Helliwell’s dollar-valuation equation, “when the most-trustworthy and least-trustworthy managements are being compared. This shows that even a modest change in workplace trust relations can significantly affect life satisfaction.” That half-million stacks up against the $125,000 it’s worth to have more time with family and $100,000 to have more time with friends.
Don’t let anybody convince you that there’s no value to leader communication.
7. Business Blogs in Regulated Companies
At the Ragan Corporate Communicators conference -— and again with a Chicagoland client with whom I met following the conference —- I heard an objection raised to business blogs that I’ve heard before. How can a company blog when it functions in a regulated environment? In fact, a communicator with a financial services company noted that, in addition to federal regulatory oversight, the company is also subject to distinct regulations in each of the states where it does business.
This objection to business blogging is a far more reasonable and thoughtful one that those I usually encounter (e.g., we’ll lose control of the message, we don’t want negative comments on our own company site, etc.). However, there is an answer: Don’t blog about anything that is covered by the regulations to which you are subject.
At the Ragan conference, I spoke with a communicator working for a pharmaceutical company. Having worked for a pharma before myself, I could easily relate to her concerns. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not allow a company to make any claims about a drug that do not reflect the FDA’s approval for the drug. Here’s an example: When I worked for Allergan, we could discuss Botox only in terms of the indications for which it had been approved at that time: strabismus and blepharospasm. While cosmetic surgeons were injecting their patients with Botox as a means of smoothing out wrinkles, we couldn’t talk about that. Doctors can prescribe drugs for anything they want, but we could not talk about a drug’s potential benefits for anything other than its approved indications—and even then only within the scope of the FDA’s approval. That is, even when discussing strabismus, for example, we couldn’t talk about any benefits of the drug that were not addressed in the approval, even if our clinical trials and shown them to be valid.
The concern, then, is that a blog could wind up referencing something outside the scope of the limited FDA approval. While the company representative writing the blog might be careful enough to avoid any such references, something could slip by in a comment, too subtle to be noticed in a review but still available to any regulator looking to catch the company in a violation of the rules.
This argument against blogging for regulated companies, though, supposes that a company blog has to focus on products and services covered by regulations. I suggested to the pharma communicator that a company selling diabetes products, for example, could host a blog called “Living with Diabetes.” There is no need to talk about the company’s product. The blog could talk about diet and exercise and other lilfestyle considerations, examine new research, interview diabetes sufferers, and cover a host of other topics without ever making any claims about any drugs. Further, company blogs can address non-consumer issues, such as the world of pharma R&D (e.g., what it takes to get any drug from research to pharmacies), the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and universities, what it takes to recruit research scientists…the possiblities are endless without ever stepping over the bounds into content that would attract the eye of regulators.
What a company blogs about, ultimately, should be driven by a strategic planning process that identifies issues and audiences that can best be addressed through a blog.
8. Workplace Surfing: Is the Tide Starting to Turn?
From the unlikeliest of places, a challenge has been mounted to the knee-jerk management belief that workplace Internet surfing represents a dire productivity problem. While companies like Websense have reaped the rewards of their fearmongering, a New York administrative law judge saw it differently today when he recommended the lightest punishment possible in the case of a city worker who surfed the Net at work despite warnings not to.
Administrative Law Judge John Spooner just didn’t think it was that big a deal when he said:
“It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.”
Spooner, who recommended only a reprimand, pointed out that the city lets workers make personal phone calls so long as it doesn’t affect their performance. In the AP article I read, there was no reference to Spooner pointing out the benefits open web access can bring to a company. But I’m still delighted to see this official and authoritative recognition that the web isn’t the workplace demon Websense would have executives believe it is.
(According to an article in the Boston Herald, “research” by Salary.com suggests that web surfing in the workplace, along with water cooler chit-chat and personal phone calls and errands, cost companies $759 billion per year. This is the kind of scare tactic I’m talking about, presented strictly to draw business to the services companies like Websense and Salary.com provide. These numbers are arrived at by (a) selecting a dollar amount to represent the cost of employing a worker per hour, (b) determining the number of hours spent surfing the web, chatting with colleagues (that is, engaging in knowledge transfer), and running errands, and (c) multiplying a times b. It’s an absurd number that defies logic, since it does not account for the hours spent at home engaged in work activities or the number of hours these employees spend at the office beyond the required eight hours. The real measure is whether work is getting done on time and whether it’s quality work. Period. It still amazes me that these outfits get a free pass on these numbers despite US Department of Labor statistics that continue to show workplace productivity increasing. I keep wondering when somebody in the mainstream press is going to call Websense and Salary.com and their ilk out on these insipid studies.)
The 14-year Department of Education veteran could have been fired for his transgression. Some organizations never let it get that far; they simply block employees from even making the effort. That is, you’re blocked from doing the equivalent, in Judge Spooner’s estimation, of making a phone call or reading the paper.
According to the New York Daily News, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is miffed:
“You’re supposed to be working during the work day. The taxpayers are paying you to work. It is not unreasonable to expect you to work…If you are spending hours on the Internet, yes, I think it is inappropriate. Why on Earth do you think you’re hired? Do you think your boss would let you do that? I don’t think so. “
In the hearing, though, it was revealed that no work was backed up and that no calls were going unanswered. One has to wonder if the employee in question was taking work home, using his own computer to perform it, or he was working any hours beyond those required by his contract. I know I keep beating the same drum, but work-life integration is a fact of life for knowledge workers these days. Employers need to get up to speed on the concept if they hope to engage the workforce and improve overall performance.
I don’t expect this ruling to have any immediate or significant impact on most companies’ policies, not while Websense releases studies that manipulate numbers to give workplace surfing the appearance of a productivity catastrophe. But every journey begins with a single step, and Judge Spooner’s may be the one that sets this journey in motion.
9. Do Corporations Need Blog Monitors?
I was taken aback by an item in The Blog Herald that was inspired by an item in Stowe Boyd’s blog. Stowe wrote:
“I think it is more likely that a role analogous to press relations will arise: blog relations. These folks will keep tabs on Blogpulse and Technorati, to see what is going down, but they will also maintain and active and on-going relationship with the major bloggers in their sector.”
Matt Craven, who wrote the Blog Herald item, responds by noting that he is aware of several companies following this pattern. He cites one Fortune 500 company that sends its execs a daily intelligence report gleaned from Buzzmetrics, and another using several sources (Bloglines, PubSub, Technorati and Feedster) to monitor keywords, assembling the results into daily intelligence and “pulse” information.
All of which is great; I’ve been advising clients and audiences to start monitoring the blogosphere for a couple of years now. My question is whether blog monitoring needs to be a discrete function in the organization or whether blogs should simply be added to the monitoring mix. Public relations academics refer to “environmental scanning” as the gathering of intelligence about publics and environmental forces:
“These activies are conceptually distinct from performance control feedback, program adjustment feedback, and organizational adaption feedback…These feedback loops are conceptual representations in an open-systems model of the three types of program evaluation that practitioners use to measure the preparation, implementation, and impact of public relations programs. Scanning research is different…Such research is exploratory in nature…The strategic function of scanning is early detection of emerging problems as well as quantification of existing or known problems in the environment.”
— Excellence in Public Relations and Communications Management
In other words, companies that scan the entire environment and aggregate the results to make informed assessments will be far better off than those that compartmentalize their scanning—one person looking at blogs, another looking at media, another looking at activist groups and so on.
How organizations deal with the blogosphere needs to be thought through carefully; there are significant differences between blogger relations and media relations, as Stowe Boyd suggests. How we monitor, though, should be based on a holistic view of the world as it intersects with the organization. We should add blog monitoring to the mix, not create a new function that fails to reconcile the intelligence obtained from the blogosphere with that obtained from the multitude of other channels in which our organizations are fodder for conversation.
10. Site of the Month
Spell with Flickr
Flickr is a treasure trove of material; it’s remarkable what people will take pictures of. For example, people shoot pictures of letters they find on signs. Some folks with a knack for programming have put together a little application that lets you type in the letters you want, then snatches those letters from Flickr and assembles them in your order. Don’t like one of the letters? Click it and the app will find a different one.
11. HC+T update
- I’m presenting at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) conference. My primary session takes place the final day of the conference, June 7, but I’m also on a panel on Sunday, June 4.
- I’m wrapping up the final two intranet audits of the five I’ve been working on.
- I’m presenting an update on the role of social media in communications at two financial services institutions later in June.
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