IABC

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Has social media affected suppliers to PR?

I interviewed several vendors who were exhibiting on the trade show floor at the recent IABC World Conference. Clearly, social media has had as profound an impact on those who provide products and service to the communications profession as it has on the communicators themselves.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Join Neville and Shel for FIR #455, live and in person

Neville and Shel will record FIR #455 live and in person on Monday, June 8, and you can be part of it. We’ll be on the exhibit hall floor at the IABC World Conference, with recording set to begin around 10:30 a.m. If you’re attending, please drop by and share your thoughts with the FIR listener audience. (You need to be a paid attendee to get into the exhibit hall.) We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Thursday, June 04, 2009

What aspects of social media rate a large-scale research study?

On Saturday, I’m chairing the annual Think Tank for the IABC Research Foundation, which funds research into communication issues that can benefit the entire profession. The Think Tank is meeting ahead of the IABC World Conference, which kicks off in San Francisco on Sunday.

This is my second go-around chairing the Think Tank, which brings a diverse group of some 20 or so communicators together for four hours to brainstorm the current issues facing the profession that warrant research. Usually, this is a sweeping overview, but for the first time ever, the Think Tank has been asked to focus specifically on one subject: social media.

Research into new communication is the mandate of the Society for New Communication Research (SNCR), of which (by way of disclosure) I am a founding fellow. In order to tap into synergies and avoid duplication, I invited Jen McClure, SNCR’s executive director, and several SNCR fellows to participate in the Think Tank.

Even with SNCR’s perspective, it would be great to present a list of topics to the group. So I put it to you: What dimensions of social media rate a full-blown research project? What issues do you face that could be aided if you could tap into data from a statistically valid, large-scale study?

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The spotlight shines on the kind of work PR people really do

I recently had the privilege of serving as a blue ribbon panel judge for IABC’s Gold Quill awards. Submissions to the annual international communication award program go through a first-tier judging process. The entries that score high enough are passed on to the blue ribbon panel, which meets for two grueling days of judging at IABC’s San Francisco headquarters.

If the judging taught me anything, it’s that the dismissal of PR as a bunch of hacks sending out clueless emails is even more misguided than I had previously believed. PR’s impending death has been wildly exaggerated. Along with the other judges (who came from places like Russia, Argentina, South Africa, the UK, China, Australia, France, and India—along with the U.S. and Canada), I saw a parade of communication efforts that applied tremendous creativity and innovation in support of very specific and measurable business goals. And only a few of them were designed to generate press coverage.

There was the web video designed to discourage college students from binge drinking, the social site for lovers of a particular brand of cheese, brochure that addressed the issue of childhood obesity (yes, a print document produced spectacular results). In every case, regardless of whether the entry ultimately was awarded a Gold Quill, the 200 or so entries the panel reviewed were designed to meet a specific business need and showed exactly how the effort met that need.

For communicators sick of hearing how PR is all about email pitches to bloggers, I suggest you block out this wrong-minded drivel (you’ll never get those who believe it to change their minds anyway) and strive to continue producing work that would pass muster with the Gold Quill blue ribbon panel. The panel’s work, after all, is not subjective, but based on a seven-point rating system applied to a number of very specific criteria (like how you know your work achieved the measurable objectives you set for it, the characteristics of the audience, and the the effectiveness of the solution in employing messages, tactics, and media).

For those who are convinced that PR is merely pitching badly by email, take a look at this, this and this.

I’ve argued before that most PR people don’t spend most, if any, of their time pitching media. Seeing the range of high-quality, compelling work cranked out by communicators in this year’s crop of entries only reinforces that belief.

Monday, February 16, 2009

There are communication jobs out there

Even as the number of tales mount of communicators whose jobs have become casualties of the economy, companies are at the same time hiring to fill critical communication positions. Here are three resources that list open positions companies are trying to fill:

IABC

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) lists jobs ranging from the executive level to specialists. Current listings include positions with companies like Avery Denison, Mercedes Benz USA, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Kaiser Permanente, and Symantec. You can apply directly from the site.

Job of the Week

IABC stalwart Ned Lundquist, ABC, started this email list when he and a few other communicators who were out of work at the time decided to share leads with one another. What started as a handful of subscribers to a simple list turned into an audience of thousands, and the email list is now also available in blog form.

The beauty of JOTW is that the community provides the leads. And there’s more than just job listings here; there’s also converation amnong the members of the community, which Ned aggregates into each weekly listing. When someone needs to fill a job immediately, Ned sends that out as a “JOTW Can’t Wait Posting.”

Current listings on JOTW are for organizations like the ATF, the American Red Cross, the National Children’s Museum, the CUNY School of Law, and Smucker’s. There are, incidentally, 61 open jobs listed in the latest edition, which is par for the course for JOTW.

Resting Communicators LinkedIn Group

Robin Crumby, CEO of the UK-based Melcrum (a communications publisher and conference organizer) has created a LinkedIn group designed, as Robin put it in a blog post, “to connect out-of-work communicators, and give them the opportunity to share their experiences and support each other through the tough times.” Undoubtedly, as with Ned’s email, they will also share leads.

What other publicly-available communication job resources are there? Comment here and if we get enough of them, I’ll start a page on TheNewPR listing them all.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Up to date in Kansas City

I just delivered the opening keynote talk at the Business Communicators Summit, an annual event put on by IABC’s Kansas City chapter. Attendance is about 210 or so, up from about 130 last year.

The conference has embraced a variety of technologies, mostly Twitter. There’s a hashtag (#kcbcs) you can use right now to follow the conference, and participants were encouraged during introductory remarks to tweet freely (enabled by robust WiFi made available for free to all) and apply the hashtag. At the registration table, a flat-panel TV is streaming #kcbcs tweets. The image above features chapter leaders Justin Goldsborough (who also uses Twitter to address issues raised by customers of his employer, Sprint) and Jill Paulsen and the Twitter stream. (Incidentally, I first met Justin when he reached out to me to resolve a Sprint issue, not through IABC.)

It’s great to see an IABC chapter embracing, rather than resisting, the future of conference participation. It’s small wonder that, even in a down economy, the conference has attracted so large and engaged an audience.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Well done! 2009 IABC Chairman’s Award honoree: Neville Hobson, ABC

A number of people are recognized at the annual international conference of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). For example, the association’s newest Fellows are named and a non-communicator senior executive (usually a president or CEO) is presented the EXCEL Award for supporting outstanding communication.

Then there’s the Chairman’s Award, which is presented at the sole discretion of the current IABC chair to a member for “selfless contributions and (who) worked hard behind the scenes to enhance the association’s image, facilitate member development and benefit the communication profession.” (I was humbled and honored myself in 1999 when Brenda Siler, ABC, presented me with the recognition.)

This year, IABC Chair Barbara Gibson, ABC, has selected my friend, colleague, podcasting book co-author, fellow AdHocnium catalyst and SNCR founding fellow, and podcast co-host Neville Hobson, ABC, as the 2009 Chairman’s Award recipient.

(All those “ABCs” stand for Accredited Business Communicator, by the way.)

In selecting Neville, Barb wrote, “In thinking about who I wanted to honor with the Chairman’s Award, I looked to my ‘Four I’s of IABC’ (international, influence, inspiration & individual). I wanted to select someone who was helping the association be more international, who had influenced and inspired me personally, as well as other members, the profession and beyond, and who took individual initiative to make things happen, rather than sitting back and waiting for others to make a difference. Neville Hobson, ABC, embodies all those things.”

That sums Neville up quite well, but no single quote does justice to his long years of dedicated service to IABC nor his contributions to the communications profession. You can get a more detailed overview here.

(Photo credit: Pete Blackshaw, from Flickr)