Mike’s Points

Maybe it’s USA Today’s fault, maybe blogging is to blame or maybe I have Twitteritis. But, my attention span and getting around to putting together a post of any length is lacking of late. (Good thing there’s a monthly TalentZoo column and the periodic free-lance gig to keep me honest. See page 10.)

Regardless, here’s one post with a couple points for your digestion and review:

A lot on the Internet is free — but there’s still a price

There’s a lot of “things” free about social media. Blogging is free. Social networking is free. Sharing pictures and video is free.

Outside of social media, a lot on the Internet is free. Email is free. Job searching is free. And, a lot of information is free.

And, some of that information is questionably accurate. As an example, Sandeep Krishnamurthy  has a very interesting article at iMediaConnection: Beware: the search advertising sky is falling. There’s good food for thought in Professor Krishnamurthy’s column. However, some of his stats — from compete.com — were questioned by Bill Burke.

Website stats from compete.com are free. So are those from quantcast.com. And, I’m sure there are similar others.

Ah, remember, you usually get what you pay for. Buyer beware.

While social media — which clearly should be a subset of public relations (I ain’t talkin’ advertising) – may be free, doing it well requires an investment in time. Time to get to know the online community to which you are marketing. Time to develope a relationship and comfort level with the community. You don’t need to be buddy-buddy, but any good PR practitioner knows that true success is about relationships. Not about getting “hits.” It’s about connecting your employer or clients’ products and services with the needs and wants of your audience. (For more on this, see one of my TalentZoo columns.)

How best to teach?

You often hear or read in sports that the best managers and coaches know as much about human nature and pyschology as they do about their sport’s fundamentals and tactics. They know which players to pull aside privately to deal with an issue and which will respond better by a public tongue-lashing.

Chris Brogan publically called out a company this week for poor pitching. Chris Anderson at Wired called out a bunch of supposed PR pros for poor pitching. CrunchNotes does it. And, when it occurs often enough, the BadPitch Blog does as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s easy to pick on mistakes PR people make.

I’m not saying what Chris B. or any of the others did was wrong. Sometimes, to get someone’s attention, to really get through to him/her, you need to call ‘em out.

There are times — guess it’s up to your own judgment — when a private approach is best taken to teach someone the right way to do their job.

Just because you can easily give someone a public tongue-lashing, doesn’t mean you should.

– Mike

Photo from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0317_060317_two_headed.html

No matter how effective a particular tactic is, if it doesn’t reach a large enough audience, how effective is it really?

From MarketingCharts:

Print newspapers ads reach people at all stages of the buying cycle - inspiring web research at the beginning and prompting in-store/web purchase at the end, said the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), citing a Google study.

Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo conducted the study for Google.

“Newspaper advertisements drive readers to the web, where they search, find and obtain products,” said Spencer Spinnell, head of the Google Print Ads program.

On the other hand, according to Editor & Publisher, the Newspaper Association of America (same group involved with the above), reported its “worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years.“

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950….

As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

The NAA reported that online revenue now represents 7.0%* of total newspaper ad revenue in 2007 compared to 5.7% in 2006.

*The NAA originally reported in the release that online revenue represented 7.5%.

I’m not poo-pooing newspapers. My original love is journalism. And, I’ve repeatedly posted that newspapers need to capitalize on their online presence and their local news-gathering resources — resources few other media can compete with. The point about newspapers being one of the best go-to sites is backed by another NAA report.
But, it does seem that the NAA and others involved in the print newspaper ad effectiveness survey forgot that advertising revenues are dropping.
-Mike

I try not to be an extreme person. I tend to be leary of people who “just love everything.” (Reminds me of the law of diminishing returns.) And, I hate to be around those who seemingly are negative about most everything and everyone.

While that approach tends to make me wishy-washy at times — I think — it does help me to keep things in perspective.

On Twitter, I don’t “favorite” other tweets too often. But, I thought it be worth highlighting some of the 16 great quotes, lessons and pointers I’ve been fortunate to have seen. Not that my opinion necessarily counts more than others, so for what it’s worth, here are some of my Twittered favorites:

Chris Heuer: Blogger relations programs are really more about leveraging personal relations and the reputations we have established in the online world 11:12 AM September 21, 2007

Chris Thilk: More discussion of B2B and social media: It all comes back to knowing the audience and finding the right engagement channels. 09:25 AM October 12, 2007

Jeremy Pepper: I’m seeing a correlation for me with my job happiness and my level of blogging. 11:44 AM October 13, 2007

Lauren Vargas: Amazing people think blog writing is too personal when their phone conversations are blasted in public 07:26 PM November 29, 2007

Phil Gomes: @rickmurray: That and most advertising still relies on the interruption model (30sec spot, banner ad, gatefold). Who likes interruption? 08:11 AM December 13, 2007 from web in reply to rickmurray

DoshDosh/Maki: It seems social media experts are divided into the Digg-SEO type and the ‘PR-conversation-with-the-community-type’. 10:50 AM February 27, 2008

Online Journalism Review: Which is the best free photo gallery editor? http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/080228niles/ 11:56 AM February 28, 2008

Chris Thilk: If your sales dept is always available and your customer service dept is never available, you’ve got it backwards. 11:34 AM March 04, 2008

Brian Morrisey: why i don’t respond to PR pitches. i say no, that’s marketing, not news. dude says, well, how about this other client? like selling ginzu. 03:00 PM March 19, 2008

Ike Pigott: @mikedriehorst - Spring is more than a state of mind: it’s just the Earth being so inclined. (I just made that up. Heh.) 11:04 AM March 24, 2008 in reply to MikeDriehorst

Ann Ohio: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss. One of my fav quotes 04:31 PM March 25, 2008

Brian Morrissey: Add the Wikipedians to the not-fans category re. Modernista’s site: http://tinyurl.com/2wbeaq 12:19 PM April 02, 2008

Andy Sernovitz: I outed MGM for hiring a team of blog spammers. Spread the word: http://tinyurl.com/58slao 10:12 AM April 07, 2008

Phil Gomes: I hate when people enter a socnet and their first contribution is the social network version of the clumsy-grab-for-breast-on-first date. 12:58 PM April 15, 2008

–Mike

(*First, if you are reading into the headline that I or PR communicators should treat their target audiences like children, you’re reading too much into the headline, taking it literally or trying to start something. That’s not the point of this post. If you still believe it is, please leave. Otherwise, I would most appreciate it if you continued reading and left your $0.02 with a comment.)

During some email back and forth a couple weeks ago with Ann Handley regarding a comment I left on her blog, I was reminded how much my children teach me. Then it hit me — that much of what I’ve learned being a parent is very relevant to public relations and marketing communications.

Each child is different, so you can’t parent them each the same way. Different temperaments, different personalities, different abilities, different ways they react to me (and my wife. From here on out, whenever I say me, I mean us).

The same goes with the audiences we are trying to market and communicate to. Each person is unique and reacts in different ways for what “works” for reaching him or her with the message. At the same time, there are generalities we use in parenting our children. We can’t say the same thing four different ways. The same goes for communicating to our audiences. For example, look at reporters at a particular media outlet. There might be a company-wide policy or preference for receiving news, or for when you can contact them.

Be patient because each has his/her own time table. You never really know when something that you’ve been telling or trying to teach your children will finally click and sink in. Or, when you tell one to do something — clean up, for example — he or she will do it, but do it his or her own way. If you don’t have a set time table yourself, that’s fine in most cases.

The same goes for pitching a story. It may be a great story, but the timing for that particular reporter may not be right. You may get a call from that reporter a week or couple months later — because the story was good, but he/she couldn’t for whatever reason act on it then. That’s also why you need to constantly remind your audience of your client or your employer with marketing messages — because the audience may not need your product or service now — but will in three months. Best to be top of mind.

You need to know and be involved in your children’s lives. Yes, that may be an obvious one, but it’s easy to be more of the care-giver — looking after their basic needs — than being a parent and playing with your children. My wife and I have a nearly nine-month-old daughter. While I love her as much as the others, I look forward to the time when she is less dependant on me (when we can communicate better, when she can easily sit up on her own, etc.). While the baby stage is great, it also is great when we can interact more. And, when I need to be less of a care-giver of my daughter and I can spend fun, quality and more quantity time with all my children.

The same point goes for our audience: Essentially, you need to know your audience; not just market or spew forth messages to them. Research, read, contact and even interact with your audience. Know what they like and dislike, their preferences. That’s one of the great advantages of social media: market feedback and interaction.

Yes, really knowing your audience is not easy, but you’ll have a much higher rate of success than the proverbial throwing a lot of mud on the wall and seeing what sticks. Besides, how else can you do point #1 above if you don’t know your audience?

The basics: You need to want to be a parent, or at least be open to it and take it for the important responsibility it is. There’s been enough times when I’ve heard about, seen or read about people who really should not be parents. More often than not, they’re too selfish. I have felt sorry for their children, and hoped that God would particuarly watch over them. For the vast majority of people who are parents, even if they didn’t at first want to be, they were responsible enough to know and take on the sacrifices and life re-focusing that’s often required to raise children.

As with public relations and any profession, you need the basics. You need to know stuff like good writing (grammar, how different tactics call for different writing styles, etc.), have a solid work ethic, be honest and ethical, have a natural curiosity for your clients’ businesses (and definitely your employer’s business!), and have a sincere interest in others.

After all this, please don’t think I’m elevating the role of PR and marketing communications to that of parenthood. Being a parent is by far one of the most important things I’ve ever have and ever will do in my life. That’s why, I’m looking at parenting and seeing what I can apply from it to my job — not the other way around.

-Mike

Whether you work predominantly in offline marketing (like I used to) or work predominantely in online marketing (like I do now), knowing your audience and where you can find them is invaluable.

Blogs, boards and social media in general have been around for many years. However, like most product lifecycles, they’re still in their infancy, still in the growth mode. Being so new, many people and companies are trying to carve out a social media expertise for themselves. That’s fine and good, but don’t get myopic.

The United States population now is about 303+ million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Okay, but really, most of us are not marketing to youth. As of July 2003, there were 217.8 million people age 18 and older, with a total U.S. population of about 291 million people. So about 75% of the U.S. population were adults (18+ yoa) in 2003. Let’s assume that’s consistent with 2008.

According to eMarketer, nearly 194 million people in the U.S. are online, as of a February 2008 report.

That eMarketer report doesn’t distinguish if that population consists of adults only or all age groups, so I’ll assume all. That’s only 64% of the total U.S. population (194/303). Not bad, but I’d think it’d be more. If you use the same 75% figure as above — that 75% of the U.S. population consists of those 18+ yoa — then only about 145.5 million (0.75×194)U.S. adults are online.

How many are using social media technologies like blogs, boards, sharing videos, rating products, etc.?

According to Forrester’s Social Technographics data obtained in late 2006, only 48% of the U.S. adult, online, consuming* population are using social technologies. It’s simple math since the graph stats 52% are not in any of the categories Forrester measured. (*I’m not sure what % of the adult online population Forrester counts as “consumers” so my numbers may be off, but still good for the point being made.)

If you take 48% of the 145.5 million adults online (0.48×145.5), you get a little less than 70 million U.S. adults online using social media technologies.

To have success in social media, word-of-mouth activities, you really don’t need a lot of people. And, with the ability to niche your market, you likely only need fewer than that to call a social media marketing campaign a success. So, that’s still. a. lot. of. people.

However, don’t get caught up in your own online, interactive, digital world and think “everyone’s online.” They’re not. A sizeable part of your and your clients’/employer’s audience may be offline or — believe it or not — simply not using social media.

The good news is that, enough of them may be online. And, likely that online, adult, U.S. population using social technologies will be growing. (But, that’s another post for another day.)

– Mike

Often, one of the best results from reading blogs is that it spurs other, related thoughts.

The judgement and weight given to how you differentiate your brand and the need for clarity in communication came to mind after reading the Mark Cuban/BlogMaverick post on Branding and Newspapers, a Lesson in How Not to Brand and Market.

He makes several noteworthy points about the value of differentiation in branding. For example:

Never, ever, ever consider something that any literate human being with Internet access can create in under 5 minutes to be a product or service that can in any way differentiate your business.

If you feel that you must offer this product or service as a means of “keeping up” or as a checklist item that you must have for competitive reasons, then do everything possible to brand the product or service in a manner that segregates it from the masses. Perception is reality. If you can leverage your existing brand to create the perception that yours is different from the masses in some meaningful way, then you must do everything you can to do so.

Creating a perceived differentiation can take the form of promoting better execution or quality of the product or service, or it may be something as simple as just branding it with a different name than the mass product or service.

Failure to do so will pull your brand down to that of the masses or elevate the masses to a position of being better able to compete with you.

For the most part, the emotional ties around a brand are what make it a success, a failure or just mediocre. The strengths of the brand are what allows the company to survive a crisis, and what propels the company to continued growth beyond competitors. And, for weak brands that have no emotional ties and rely on other activites like low-end pricing and commoditization, they struggle in times of crisis and the regular, cyclical market downturns.

But, part of that branding is to clearly communicate what’s so different. Educating the market is often unnecessary time and costs spent away from effectively marketing the brand — and communicating what’s so different, so special, so unique, so in-demand about it.

Sure, education plays into the branding process, but it can be an up-hill climb and distracting from the core message.

Just because someone can quickly, easily duplicate the appearance of what you’ve done — copy a blog like the one you have — it doesn’t mean the content and the quality are also copied. A blog is just a platform. The content is what makes it different.

I’ve been working on this post in my head since Friday. Before finishing it Tuesday evening, I checked back on Mark Cuban’s blog. Lo and behold there was a comment on another post that makes my point — and makes it better. It comes from NYTimes Sports Editor Tom Jolly:

[T]he defining difference among all news sources has been whether the reporting is reliable - and that has been the case since the beginning of time. When you need information - real, trustworthy information - you go to the source you believe in, whether they are distributing their content by word of mouth, on a cave wall, via pamphlet, newspaper, magazine or through a digital format.

We call our “real time” news reports “blogs” because it’s a term our readers have become familiar with, but what we do with our blogs is different than, say, Deadspin or BlogMaverick. The convention is popular because of the ease of posting, but that doesn’t mean the content of our postings is the same as other sites that also describes themselves as “blogs,” any more than the content of our newspaper is the same as other newspapers.

As with any branding effort, there are judgment calls in how to proceed. Yes, you need to set your brand apart from others in the marketplace — but you can’t confuse the marketplace with your communication.

There is no right or wrong answer in the process — until you start getting results and you see where you need to better differentiate or more clearly communicate.

–Mike  

UPDATE, March 7, 2008: The fine folks at CustomScoop’s Media Bullseye republished the below post. I updated the content to include two other services: CyberAlert’s BlogSquirrel and CustomScoop’s BuzzPerception.

See a need, fill a need: It’s a philosophy that is one of the primary themes of Robots (and what inspired Rodney).

You could also say it’s the driving force in a free market, and why many businesses are started.

While social media is still in its infancy — it’ll have a long life, so many years is still an “infancy” — many who’ve been involved have several years experience. Some of us, even have a couple!

However, while the social media populous has been and continues to grow, the tools available to public relations professionals have been lacking, compared to what we’re used to offline. Offline, there’s media tracking services like Luce (okay, BurrellsLuce) and Bacon’s (okay, Cision), as well as newer online and less costly services like Factiva (via the WSJ) and NewsLibrary.com. If you’re tasked with keeping track of clients’/your employer’s media coverage, it’s great knowing you have other professionals and reliable services to work with.

But, online? It was much more manual and, from my experience, included doubt because social media was so new, and there. seemed. to. be. so. many. blogs! Early search engines like GlobeofBlogs, Technorati, BlogPulse and Google Blog Search while free, were very manual and still left a bit of doubt.

However, 2007 saw and early 2008 has seen the birth of many new social media tools. Tools that actually have functionality and make our jobs easier. Still, there’s spam and junk blogs to filter out, but the functionality of these tools versus what’s mentioned above is like day and night.

Here’s a rundown of the tools I’m familiar with — please offer your comments and positive/negative feedback if you’ve tried them, or add your own cool tools. (When possible, I’ve included what I know about each of the services — but by no means are my comments below a thorough commentary of all tools noted. For your own use, please review/evaluate these services yourself.)

Comprehensive tools

Techrigy’s Social Media Manager: Covers blogs, as well as a discussion boards/forums, social bookmarking sites, Flickr, YouTube and other, Twitter, etc. Offers a lot of functionality and flexibility. Note: I had an extensive evaluation of SM2 last fall and into early 2008 before we committed to a contract with Techrigy. I’m very satisfied with SM2, and company has been extremely responsive to suggestions and on-going communication.

Radian6: Similar to Social Media Manager in its range of social media covered. It’s been in the news every so often with contracts with some notable agencies. Note: I had demo of Radian6 early this year, and liked what I saw. In many ways, Radian6 and Social Media Manager are comparable — though each have their “differentiators.” There were a few key differences as to why we chose SM2.

Visible Technologies’ TruCast: I’ve not had a demo of TruCast, but from its site and from some communication with a sales person, it seems to offer capabilities comparable to the above: a “comprehensive solution for social media analysis and participation. Our enterprise level solution enables clients to complete the conversation by allowing them to track, analyze, and participate in blogs, forums, social networks and online communities.”

Forums/Boards

As a smart man once twittered — “forum mining is a tough nut to crack; it’s the deep, unsexy social web stuff that’s oft influential AND overlooked…” — discussion forums and boards are more important than blogs in social media monitoring in many ways. You can obtain so much feedback and trend information on companies, issues and industries by monitoring and participating. And, unlike blogs, you have only a few places to look.

Awhile ago, I had a post about a number of vertical forums and boards. Now, without time-consuming, in-depth searching, you can use board-focused search engines to find, review and monitor them.

BoardReader: “BoardReader was developed to address the shortcomings of current search engine technology to accurately find and display information contained on the Web’s forums and message boards.” (Personal/Local note: It was developed by some U of Michigan people! Go Blue!)

Twing (courtesy of the aforementioned “smart man,” aka Mike Manuel): “Our intent is to enable you to quickly find highly relevant communities and discussions pertaining to your interests, as well as keep you informed on the latest trends influencing communities.”

Omgili: “Omgili is a specialized search engine that focuses on ‘many to many’ user generated content platforms, such as, Forums, Discussion groups, Mailing lists, answer boards and others.”

Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter what tools we use — clients/employer just want quality, cost-effective results. However, it sure is nice when the marketplace sees enough demand to develop tools to make our respective jobs easier and more effective.

See a need, fill a need.

– Mike

For your browsing, reading and thinking pleasure, may I direct you to:

I’m Done With Social Media, Dave Fleet/davefleet.com

The Golden Rule of Media Relations, Kami Huyse, APR/Communications Overtones

Demystifying “Above the Fold,” FluidDesign blog

The Social Medium is the Message, Marcel LeBrun/Media Philosopher

The Press Release Page: A New Approach to an Old Problem, Mike Manuel/MediaGuerrilla

And, finally, some co-workers recently started a cigar blog. So, if you are a cigar connoisseur of any kind, check out El Cigarro Maximo.

–Mike

The basic purpose of any writing/typing is to accurately and succinctly communicate information that is clearly understood by the recipient(s). For some types of writing, maybe being succinct is not as high a focus (such in novel and other writing), and you can have double meanings to play on words.

But, the basic premise is to be accurate and understood.

Good, quality writing is a skill that is underappreciated and very much lacking across all media. Here’s an example from today on the front page of Yahoo!

Taken a glance — which is what we often do on pages: glance or scan — it sounds like that Bobby Brown is not buying cocaine with money, but getting it in exchange for community service. He gives his time to help the community, and gets some drugs in return.

Ain’t that nice!

Of course, even though we know what it reads, we likely really know what it means.

Is it just me being picky?

I hope not.

Simply, say what you mean and ensure that what you say and type communicates what you really mean.

–Mike

I’m not social scientist (though I like to think I play one in my job), but I wonder if there are any studies that show the natural evolution of socialization. And, if that natural evoluation of socialization actually builds up walls rather than bringing the larger community together.

Let me explain more of what I think could happen regarding online social networking….

Through blogs, discussion boards, social networks, communities and even virtual worlds, we have opportunities to “meet” and “know” more people than we can via face to face networking.

Through my own professional interest, I have way more than 50 blogs in my Bloglines account. Sure, I have other categories for my other, usually personal interests, but none that compare in quantity.

Sure, for various work projects and other activities related to work, I explore other topics and niche blogs and communities in social media. But, while they are interesting and I love to learn, if it wasn’t for work, I doubt if I’d explore too many or any of those other topics.

Is the norm to stick to our own interests as we grow our social networks, or is it the norm to go outside of our comfort and knowledge zones?

Without social media technology, our networks are face to face, and their size largely depends on if we tend to be introverts or extroverts.

Then, social media opens new opportunities. But do we still tend to aggregate to circles that are comfortable — despite the great opportunity to expand our horizons, given our limited time between life, family, work, community, etc.?

If we stick within and expand our given comfort level due to the opportunities afforded by social media, will that ultimately decrease the opportunity to really develop and become part of larger communities? Will we simply have larger cliques? Larger cliques, of course, that take up our already busy schedules and cut us off from expanding our real, social horizons to grow?

Another angle: I’ve been tossing around this post in my head for some weeks now. In the meantime, Shawn Sieg — a friend I knew before we added each other via Facebook — sent me an interesting link asking if social networking is making us anti-social. That’s another view of social networks — are your friends really friends, or is it some ego contest to see who has the most?

– Mike