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
Mike- totally right. I could have handled it differently. I went back and x’d out his name and the company name, but in future efforts, I won’t ever make it about the person. I’ll make it about the issue.
As a bit of penance, I wrote a piece about considerations of the difference between mainstream press and bloggers, just to try and get back on the positive side of the fence.
Thanks for your points.
Chris,
I did later see you removed the person’s and company’s name, and should’ve noted that. As I did state, I wasn’t being critical of what you and others did and do. Just we often see that, and of course don’t see any private replies to bad pitches.
I think too many PR pros have the mentality of
“throw enough mud on the wall and see what sticks.” Since they don’t take the time to know you and others, it’s a guess on how best to handle them so they get the point without causing (too much) embarrassment.
-Mike
Chris, you’re miles above the rest right now. You have handled this with a lot of grace and intelligence.
I’m glad you took the time to come over here and address this, right or wrong. What you did is show that you have an uncanny ability to learn, and I think your new approach is great. After all, it’s not really about who’s talking. I love the idea of the discussion focusing around the tactics. It keeps everyone out of the mud.
Nice work, you two!
I’ve had a few issues in this area myself recently. Good post Mike. Interesting discussion.