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