Marketing Edge » PR

Twitter Traps and The Social PR Paradigm

Albert Maruggi — Sat, 28 May 2011 14:38:52 +0000

Time 26:14

Patrick Strother, A long time, thoughtful practitioner of strategic communications and public relations is the guest on this episode of the Marketing Edge Podcast. He is the Chief Creative Officer and founder of Strother Communications Group and a visiting faculty professor of PR and strategic communications planning at the University of Minnesota.

The inspiration for this conversation was an article written by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, The Twitter Trap. In this article, Keller (@nytkeller) laments giving his 13 year old daughter permission to be on Facebook, and I as a father of three teens, can empathize with Keller.

The journalist also highlights his concerns about how Twitter, et al. social is impacting out ability to give serious thought to issues, demand our attention, and perhaps even erode a bit of our humanity by undermining “complexity, acuity, patience, wisdom, and intimacy.”

Strother (on twitter @patrickstrother )and I talk about Twitter’s impact on parenting and the decisions that social media participation forces on adolescents. I thought this particularly appropriate given that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to explore the possibility of children younger than 13 joining social networks safely. This agenda advanced at a summit of internet and public policy leaders called the eG8 last week.

Strother and I take the conversation to uses of Twitter in building relationships with journalists. In his eyes, Twitter is not a pitching tool, but an effective research and relationship tool. Agreed. I also enjoy using Muck Rack to discover the journalists using Twitter. I read Poynter.org to stay close to the heart and soul of being a journalist in changing times. It pursues the agenda of independent journalism’s importance to democracy.

We discuss some of the skills necessary for companies to effectively participate on the social web, a place shared by journalists and company thought leaders. A place that can reward discourse.

The Social PR Paradigm in corporate communications operation should include:

1) Editorial planning as if you were a news organization for social spaces that feature your company’s expertise. I’ve talked about this for a while as the idea of an embeded corporate journalist
2) Read, engage, and comment on journalists blogs and twitter profiles that cover your industry
3) Gain a greater understanding of writing with a news , as contrasted with say marketing collateral.

On this last point, Strother makes a strong case in the podcast and is working to incorporate this concept for his students.

HootSuite Explains – Blah Blah Blah – Makes It Right, But No Sorry

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:01:18 +0000

I’m a fan of Hootsuite, I enjoy the paid service and admire Hootsuite folks like Dave Olson, with whom I’ve interacted. Dave, you’re great! That’s why I was a bit taken aback by the email that was almost, but not quite an apology and explanation. (The Hootsuite Making it Right post was also an email to paid users.) Before reading on, if you are into PR and writing you should read the HootSuite blog Making It Right to which this post is based.

I appreciate the enormity of the outage experienced by Amazon’s Web Services hosting which caused Hootsuite to be down for “approximately 15 hours”. HootSuite’s email which originated as a blog post, buries the lead which is “We are Making it Right” and eliminates an apology, what no we’re sorry, really? That’s what would have been my lead.

Hootsuite is a social media company, you know the whole “speaking with a human voice” stuff and drop the corporate speak and have a relationship with the customer. If that’s the case, the lead graph would have been along the lines of the following:

We apologize for April 21 being such a bad day for our customers. It was a bad day for us as well. We realize that being down 15 hours and loosing data is unacceptable regardless of the cause. We are offering our Pro and Enterprise customers $50 worth of coupons for our social analytics reports. One of the reasons for this form of apology and offer is even though the terms of service agreement provides a refund for a 24 hour outage, we simply didn’t foresee the Amazon Web Services EC2, upon which Hootsuite relies, being down for 15 hours.

From this humble lead, then by all means proceed to explain how “stellar performance with minimal outages” Hootsuite has, or how Hootsuite serves over 3 million social networks sending over a million updates per day with almost zero downtime.

Instead here is my brainwave emotional meter thinking out loud transcript as I’m reading this Hootsuite email — yawn yawn, lawyer inserted phrase, whatever, oh, 15 hours is “significantly” less than the 24 hours in the contract so I should be damn grateful to get this $50 coupon, so long as I use it in the next three weeks, Wow, is it possible they didn’t say sorry? Wait let me reread this, it says “we know how important up-time is for you and truly appreciate the kind words from our users who missed using HootSuite.” hmmm no sorry there, but in the midst of a 15 hour outage you still managed to get a testimonial in your own “having a bad day” blog post.

I suspect that “acknowledging the inconvenience” is as close as one can get in corporate speak to what I would have preferred. That would have been a more owly like “really sorry that me getting sucked into the Amazon cloud wind sheer caused a bad day for both of us.”

Sorry to be so harsh on the post gents, but I still dig the owl. Now, perhaps because this was the words of CEO Ryan Holmes, such candor is inappropriate from a PR and legal perspective. Afterall, Mr. Holmes signs contracts and is held accountable, a cute little owl isn’t. And this may reflect the nature of how corporate culture and institutions are less aligned with the culture of social media than I would like to believe.

Three Resources for Reporters And Key Social Steps for PR Practitioners

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:16:22 +0000

Time 24:50

St. Paul Pioneer Press technology reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata triangulates social media, news services, and a robust personal network as he researches story ideas and articles. Ojeda-Zapata, author of the new book iPad Means Business, is a prolific writer who considers Twitter as an oracle of information. Admittedly, the rule of thumb is a critical mass of followers in a certain topic area in order to use Twitter as a resource, but usually Ojeda-Zapata can throw out a question to his 12,000 plus followers and be pointed in the right direction.

The Society for New Communications Research released a survey earlier this year about how journalists use social media, for example 49% of media surveyed use Twitter in the context of their reporting. In conjunction with the somewhat random nature of Twitter, Ojeda-Zapata also uses services such as ProfNet, a paid service provided by PR Newswire, and Help a Reporter Out (HARO). These services allow reporters to cast out queries for resources on a topic they are considering for a story. I’d also suggest that journalists in addition to proactively using these services also consume information about what others are doing which may give them ideas for stories.

Doing a quick search on www.tweepz.com for reporter in the Twitter profile bio and English as a language returns nearly 9,000 individuals. Some of the notables on this list are Jenna Wortham, tech writer with the New York Times and Chuck Todd, political reporter and analyst for NBC and MSNBC.

I’ve been in PR for more than 20 years. Here’s my take on how communicators can benefit from social tactics.

Get on Twitter and follow all of the journalists in your areas of interest
Create Twitter lists public or private for those topic areas
Create a RSS feed for related hashtags of those topics
Participate in Twitter chats related to your topic areas of journalism such as #journchat started by @PRsarahevans or #hcmkt for healthcare marketing issues.
Blog relentlessly about topics your company has an interest in dominating. Reporters use search and blogging is part of successful SEO on topic areas.

iPad Means Business Drawing

Want a chance to win a copy of iPad Means Business? Comment on this page, Tweet out your thoughts about this podcast with a #mktedge hashtag, or just email me at marketingedge AT providentpartners DOT net. We’ll get your name in the drawing and give a food item to a St. Paul food shelter. We’ll draw a winner next week.

Twitter CRM Embraced by MyTweeple.com

Albert Maruggi — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:32:30 +0000

Time 26:41

Twitter is, if not the default database for many marketers PR, and communications professionals, a very important repository of individuals and relationships. The ability to focus on certain individuals among those you are following and who are following you is critical to deliver content that is of value to that segment of your relationships.

Granted, there are many ways to export your followers, one of the first among them was MyTweeple developed by Shannon Whitley. He also developed one of the more popular Twitter, WordPress plug-ins called Chat Catcher. That tool allowed tweets and links about your blog post to populate the comment section of that specific post. In this podcast we talk about why that service is no longer available.

Back to MyTweeple. Over time a relationship is about getting to know individuals, treating each person and their uniqueness separately instead of looking at Twitter followers as a list. Yes, I am speaking directly to social media and PR consultants who think that a Twitter list is for blasting irrelevant blather. I do not subscribe nor recommend this tactic. More importantly to buyers of PR services, please don’t get the impression that Twitter is cheaper or makes it easier to find free advertising for your mediocre product or service. I am sure there are firms that will take your money for such a purpose, ours isn’t one of them.

Whitley is a thoughtful, passionate developer who sought to address the issue of how to better understand the relationships he was creating on Twitter. This was his inspiration for developing www.mytweeple.com Here’s what I like about it.

Format is clean yet packed with information about each individual
Includes Klout information
Add notes about each individual
Add private and public tags for each individual
Export data in CSV format for importing into other databases

The new site we discussed in this edition of the Marketing Edge podcast is now live at www.mytweeple.com give it a try and share your thoughts with Shannon.

Book Drawing

Get your name in the drawing for #Twitterworks by Joe Sorge, Phil Gerbyshak, and Scott Baitinger by emailing me at MarketingEdge AT providentpartners DOT net or just Tweet @albertmaruggi with the words @ajbombers book drawing and we’ll get your name in the hat. We interviewed Joe Sorge on a previous Marketing Edge podcast about social media in the restaurant industry.

Restaurant Opportunity Cost Hidden in Social Media

Albert Maruggi — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:54:13 +0000

Time 23:58

This podcast is loud, but we were in a successful restaurant. In this case it was dinner with Christopher and Mary Lower of Sterling Cross Communications. I usually talk social media and PR with this couple and on this occasion we decided to record it. The setting was a Tuesday evening at the Loring Kitchen and Bar. It’s a bit noisy, ok it’s a lot noisy in parts, apologies ahead of time, but it was a neat opportunity to talk about why restaurants have such opportunities in social media and public relations.

The Changing Ways We Search

Searching for a restaurant yields a variety of results including restaurant websites, articles in local newspapers or from foodie bloggers, and comments from patrons on sites like Yelp. According to Chris even Foursquare is becoming a quasi search engine.

Foursquare along with several other geolocation services include gaming elements where individuals can obtain points and badges. Businesses are using this element to reward, recognize, and incent loyalty and other behaviors. When you read this you might get images of the rat in BF Skinners box, but to the skeptics the gaming is there for those that like that sort of thing and for those that don’t, look it as a way to obtain content that you do find useful.

In the image below you’ll notice that you can use Foursquare as a search engine to find things. In this case, Pad Thai in St. Paul, MN. No games, no badges, just the information I want from people who have experienced it, giving me some comfort that I’m not wasting my time, money or sacrificing my intestines on a whim.

The tie-in to social media and PR is a natural. Like most business owners, restauranteurs are too knee deep in details to see the story angles of their business. Or, if I may be so bold, have no idea how to tell a story and therefore they are in the right business of cooking food to make people happy and not in PR. Mary Lower is great at taking a fresh set of well trained eyes to uncover story gems. It can be the personality of a chef, the design of a dish or the unique wine selection, PR in the competitive field of food requires research, creativity and persistence.

We get into the discovery process of great story lines in this podcast. The ability to be both cheerleader and cynic, to question without interrogating, and to describe the story in a way that connects to the audience of the reporter or blogger.

Have you used or commented on restaurants online?

Enjoy this podcast. Coming up in future episodes is Joe Sorge of AJ Bombers, and Luther Lowe, Manager of Small Business Development for Yelp.

If keywords were a stock price Public Relations would be hurting

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:12:11 +0000

Back in 2005 it really hit me that public relations was impacted by social media. Between a client (Technomic Asia) getting called directly from a National Public Radio reporter after the reporter listened to his podcast, and another client’s feature piece on the front page of the Wall Street Journal getting but an ounce of subsequent attention, I realized the world of communications was changing.

So I did a little keyword number crunching and dug up this chart from Google Insights for Search. The Red trend line for good ol’ PR is not exactly stellar performance. If the PR trend line were a company’s stock performance heads would roll. Now I completely understand that these search terms are relative and in some cases public relations has more absolute searches, relative to social media, however public relations keyword searches were on a long slide to parity if not lower than the term social media.

I suspect social media consultants and PR firm executives will battle royal over which is which, and who was a leader and who was a follower. The inconvenient truth for corporate communicators, marketers, and public relations professionals is the two must coexist. In my digital dog walk audio piece for Tuesday, August 4 I reminisce about the public relations & social media tipping point, and reflect that it is not an us vs them world.
Here’s what i have found to be helpful for client PR as these two functions have converged:

Four Ways to Capture Reporter’s Attention

Identify key people inside a company that can relate to a social audience
Find ways for the client to tap the social web either by their own actions or mentions by others on the social web
Tell the client’s story on social channels
Create a multimedia newsroom
Reference articles and blog posts in your client’s digital footprint

PR Pros Does Speaking On Background Work?

Albert Maruggi — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:54:49 +0000

I was worried that all this social media transparency would bring down helpful PR tactics in media relations. Among those tactics, speaking on deep background so as not to be quoted or even described in some way by general title. Imagine my fear after 10 years as a political PR adviser what this would do to adding value in several types of situations such as damage control, personality profiles, and adding texture to the details of making a tough decision. Not to mention the occasional attempts to poison the well, take down an opponent on character assault or the ever popular distraction tactic.

Hey i’m not knocking the tactic, it is however, used for good and evil. So you may have an open blogging policy, but only a select few can officially be quoted by the media. That’s a tricky one. Again just observing how organizations are grappling with an open information landscape.

I found it interesting in reading a piece in the New York Times on Conan O’brien’s strategy for his websie that employees were not comfortable going on record about a squatter using ConanOBrien.com. Instead, Conan is using www.TeamCoco.com to highlight his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour. Below is how the New York Times article referenced the issue from an April 6 article titled Web Luddite No More: O’Brien Hits Internet, by Brian Stelter

“Because ConanOBrien.com is owned by an online squatter, Mr. O’Brien’s representatives decided to adopt Team Coco, one of his fans’ chosen names, as the host’s own. They even licensed a fan’s artwork for the tour poster. TeamCoco.com is a single Web page now, but as the tour gets under way, the site is to expand.

“We didn’t start the fire; we just add a log now and then,” said an employee of Mr. O’Brien’s, who, like three others interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because he did not have permission to speak publicly about Web strategy.”

This is a classic case where companies, organizations big and small are moving fast, involved in potential legal issues, are trying to keep everything in check, so there may be strict rules on who speaks to the media. Some might bristle at the phrase “no have permission…” but taking a step back you can see where having roles in a organization will help it stay focused. I also believe it gives some leeway to both reporter and the individual being interviewed to have a constructive conversation without feeling scripted. Others contend deep background can lead to a pretty leaky organization which has it’s own set of problems. I will say, before anyone jumps my case, that sometimes an organization where people have access to media, but are not comfortable being quoted may indicate a very risk averse and stifling place to work.

Shades of speaking on background paint the reality of a situation and I believe play into the desire for candor that social media, and society crave.

Where do you fall on this one, can everyone speak to the media? What if everyone can blog, can they speak to the media?

Your Own Live News Truck Plus Social Conversations – Here’s How

Albert Maruggi — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:14:22 +0000

Time 19:56

What if… No ifs about it, you can. As a corporate communications person, PR executive or marketer, you should be chomping at the bit to have your own live news truck. Just think, off to the scene of some speech by a senior executive, a product demo, major event that your company is sponsoring and you whip out a camera, throw up your antenna and upload a live feed.

Then you tap into the social commentary stream and engage in a dialogue by putting around that live video screen, a Twitter or Facebook feed with your appropriate hash tag, you know #Imageniusforthinkingofthislivestreamandchat or something shorter. It’s here and we did it on the #SxSw road trip.

Disclosure: Verizon Wireless was a client for this project and provided the devices, WIFI, and network. This was very, very cool.

Here’s what we did at a Tweet-up organized by Lisa Qualls the guest on this Marketing Edge podcast episode. We used a HTC Droid Eris for the video stream using the Ustream Broadcaster app we downloaded from the Android Market. We connected to the Verizon Wireless network on their MiFi 2200 device. That’s me holding the camera interviewing people around the table. Photo credit for the guy taking a picture of the guy taking video goes to Rick Mahn.

Then using a platform called Twitterface.com created by Qualls’ company Fresh ID we branded the event website and placed Twitter streams for our hash tage and following mentions of @albertmaruggi and my colleague @rickmahn on our way to South by Southwest. Below is a screen shot.

As a former broadcast news reporter this is nothing short of live broadcast feed capability that fits in your pocket. When you incorporate the ability to integrate social streams as you’ll hear in this conversation with Qualls, your mind starts thinking, “that would be great for…

Product Launch
Internal Communications
Event sponsorships
News Conference

Please add some of your ideas below and take a look at how Qualls used this live video and social engagement for other companies.

Devices, Gadgets, and Drives – SxSW Road Trip 2010

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:12:48 +0000

Time 6:15

We are working our way through the Heartland of America on our way down to the South by Southwest Interactive festival. The more social we get online and on our phones, the more it seems we want to meet in person. That’s why Rick Mahn and I are looking forward to the tweet ups in Des Moines Wednesday, March 10 at 5:30 at the Raccoon River Brewing Company. Then on March 11, we stop in Omaha at Caffeine Dreams at 8AM – 9AM, Kansas City, at Kansas City Cafe at 2pm – 3pm and Lawrence, Kansas. location is TBD. I know Lawrence there’s basketball this weekend, but we’ll coming by anyway. : )

Our last tweet up before pulling into Austin is the morning of March 12 in Wichita at the Donut Whole. 7:30am – 8:30am. I’m told they have a bacon maple donut that’s TDF.

We’ll do profile pieces on innovators in social media and mobile applications in the Midwest. We’ll capture conversations about what’s working and what’s next in business and consumer technology. During the coverage of South by Southwest I will get into some of the challenging topics including, the next phase for journalism, whether greater community participation is necessary for the social web to grow, and how will life change when more than half the web connections are made with a mobile device.

Gadgets & Devices

What’s a geek road trip without gadgets and devices? We’ll have the latest line of devices to try out from Verizon Wireless including Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris, Palm Pre and Pixi and the DEVOUR with MOTOBLUR and gadgets like the Verizon MiFi.

Oh yes and of course TShirts, plenty of TShirts. I can chuck the map, I’ve got turn-by-turn directions. Special thanks to Verizon Wireless for sponsoring this coverage.

How to Implement The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Albert Maruggi — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:05:25 +0000

Time 22:50

The second printing of best selling author David Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR demonstrates A) these rules work and B) it’s OK to learn as we go. In this conversation with David, we discover that another one of the rules is ideas are fluid and when even two people focus on a topic, preconceived notions can change, and concepts can germinate into the next great case study.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR include participating in the communities with which you do business, not talking at them. Don’t worry we’ll put this in a nice list for retweeting and SEO purposes. The label David applied to this concept is “Brand Journalism” and it’s a hybrid of what trade journalists and thoughtful marketers have tried to do in the nineties. The key here is for companies to consider information that has news value and not just company/shareholder value. Information about the latest widget or big name customer being in the latter category and a more thorough conversation about issues that include technological advances, government regulation, or the ways society is changing to interact with products being in the former category. When a company’s perspective of what’s news expands, so does their number of mentions and conversations. Public relations practitioners can and should expand their thinking of news value, review the online discussions and contribute where appropriate. Not just in news release form, but in the infinite ways their creativity will take them, because any format, any locale, and any audience is now affordable and reachable.

David’s Brand Journalism idea may result in an actual job position I call the “embedded corporate journalist”, a paraphrase from the journalist embedded with military units in the Iraq War. This leads to understanding a situation more thoroughly so you can report it with perhaps greater sensitivity and depth. This is of greatest benefit if the entity being reported on seeks its audience to have greater understanding of its rationale rather than an entity that believes PR and news is a broadcast.

David’s work is insightful and I trust our conversation in this episode of the Marketing Edge is for you. Here is my take on ways to consider the New Rules of Marketing and PR

1) Who Cares? – Find out who cares about your stuff, not just mentions of your brand (that’s so narrow) but things that comprise the universe in which your company operates.

2) Do You Care? – Consider whether your entity really cares about opinions outside of the organization? Seems like a simple question, however, your lip service radar needs to be tuned in with reality here. If they are not, the New Rules of Marketing and PR will read like a novel, not a guide to your success.

3) Can We Try? – Analysis paralysis is a function of group think. We are not landing planes or experimenting with a deadly virus. We are having a conversation and no one will be injured. The prerequisites then are thoughtful, sensitive to community, readily engage comments, and be prepared to acknowledge a short coming. The rest will work itself out.

Practicing What We Preach

On a similar note, I will be covering South by Southwest this week and next on these pages. It’s a similar note because Verizon Wireless is sponsoring the trip. We will feature stories about social media innovators from the Midwest who are attending SxSw. We’ll focus on stories that I believe are hot topics for 2010, mobile applications, location based services, and the mobile web space. We are also doing some fun events and playing with neat gadgets during the week. I am road tripping to Austin with Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul founder Rick Mahn. His trip is sponsored by Tungle the web-based scheduling platform. We’ll be using a variety of Verizon mobile devices including the Droid, HTC Droid Eris, Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus, the Motorola DEVOUR with MOTOBLUR and tap into the Verizon Mifi when no wireless is around.

I suggest this project has the elements of the type of interaction the New Rules of Marketing and PR says are what is needed to engage communities.

The Embedded Corporate Journalist – The New PR

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:47:07 +0000

This is a follow up to the last podcast Five Ways Social Media Will Generate More Leads I read David Murray’s piece from Ragan Communications Protecting Your Sources Leads to Incomplete, Empty Stories

In this piece Murray makes the point that sometimes as a journalist he was concerned his sources would not like the piece when published. He refers to some writers, whether they be journalists or paid writers on internal corporate publications, who attempt to sanitize the piece, not including candid statements or personality traits, that may well be of interest to readers, but perhaps would be viewed as embarrassing for the source.

In a section Murray writes “People, I have found somewhat to my surprise, want less to be praised and more to simply be seen—for who they think they are—and heard, for what they have to say.” And this is my contention for the concept of the embedded corporate journalist. Corporations will gain more among their employees and their intended audiences by living a bit more actively and willing to talk about the elements of decisions as they are unfolding instead of waiting for everything to be perfect and scripted.

The embedded corporate journalist must align what is news worthy, what contributes to the topic, with the expertise and perspective his company or client. This is not about “Spin Doctoring” which is the art of twisting the topic to the point of confusion. This is about “Topic Engineering” which is contributing to the discussion in such a meaningful way that greater clarity is achieved.

More on the embedded corporate journalist

Is your company a candidate for having a embedded corporate journalist? Why or why not?

Gareth Jones And Lou Dobbs Are They Journalists ?

Albert Maruggi — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:03:56 +0000

In this era of fractured journalism, there is a resurgence of the pamphleteers. Is this good or bad for democracy? In a interview with Joel Kramer, founder of MinnPost we discuss this topic Is a pamphleteer a journalist?

This issue is top of mind for me because of two stories in the news about journalists, the first about Lou Dobbs leaving CNN. Dobbs was once the stoic anchorman of Moneyline, a bastion of capitalistic news and analysis. In the last several years Dobbs became a middle age populist, an advocate journalist. His show became a cause driven program on immigration reform, opposition to both Bush and Obama administrations’ economic policy, and other issues about which Dobbs took a stand.

Jon Klein, president of CNN news said of Dobbs departure yesterday, “He pursued some of the most important and complex stories of our time… and with characteristic forthrightness has decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.”

The question – do advocacy journalists report the salient facts across an issue or is their objective to obtain policy or behavior change?

Ukraine Famine Casualty of Advocacy Journalism?

The other story about journalists is one I’m sure less of the readers of the Marketing Edge blog are familiar with compared to Dobbs. His name is Gareth Jones whom I learned about last night. USA Today did a piece on Gareth Jones who is best known for his chronicles of the forced famine in Ukraine by Russian dictator Josef Stalin in 1933 and 1934. Jones had a reputation as a solid journalist among is contemporaries in the 1920s and 30s.

He went to Ukraine against the wishes of the Soviet regime and at considerable personal risk, to see first hand the reports of famine in the country. He wrote about the export of millions of tons of grain to the west by the Communist Party, leaving Ukrainians with little food. The Soviet authorities used the funds to build its military, as estimated millions died of starvation in the Ukraine countryside.

This story caught my eye because I spent time in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union giving presentations about political communications in the United States where there is a free press. I worked as a journalist and as a press secretary in several government positions in the 1980s. I was selected to share my experience on both sides of the news/information equation with individuals who were thrust into a new world order as Ukraine broke away from the former Soviet Union.

Many of Jones’ journalist peers dismissed his reports. As the USA Today article explains, at the time there were many journalists sympathetic to the communist system who disputed Jones’ reports and helped destroy his reputation. One Pulitzer prize winning writer of the day, Walter Duranty of the New York Times described Jones’ articles as a “scare story”. The writings of Gareth Jones are on display at Trinity College in Cambridge, England through mid-December.

The reality is that every journalist has a lens of perspective through which they choose to report. The ideal is an objective reporting of issues. Even though the writer may have an opinion, those beliefs and hypothesis should be submitted to the writer’s own critical examination of the facts as they experience them. Jones meets the criteria of a higher standard in my opinion.

Closed Networks Limit Reporters – Can Twitter Help?

Albert Maruggi — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:12:27 +0000

There is a toxic formula brewing for journalism in the United States and everywhere there is the illusion of a free press. This cocktail has led to the entire industry missing stories with global impact.

I attended a panel discussion at the Media Relations Summit in May (strongly recommend attending other Bulldog Reporter event )with Hannah Clark, of Inc., Robert Lenzner, of Forbes, Stephanie Mehta, of Fortune, and Gregory Morcroft, of MarketWatch

This panel of editors and journalists was wonderfully candid about the state of journalism and the role PR has in contributing to the content and quality of press in this country. Their lament about the status quo of PR and journalism is the echo we all hear: too little time to read every email pitch.. stop sending pitches that have nothing to do with my areas of interest. The members of this panel felt social media had modest to little use as a resource.

So far, no new news here for me, until the candid Bob Lenzner painfully offered that journalists missed some of the biggest financial stories regarding AIG, the global economic crisis, and the bailout details. He acknowledged in retrospect that the media should have been more diligent, for example, in reading the “footnotes” of AIG’s financial statements. He wished those in PR would have highlighted these issues with greater vigor.

It struck me at that moment – 1) journalists or their researchers are the ones that should be digging into footnotes; however, budget cuts over the years have diminished that capability, and 2) the hurdles to get the attention of journalists and those journalists that are predisposed to trust a small circle of PR sources contributed to this failure of journalism to have seen this complex and long brewing financial crisis coming.

The toxic formula includes: a narrow circle of trusted business PR professionals, a dwindling number of resources to report the news, a faster news cycle, a shorter news story lifecycle, and an increasingly competitive news environment.

Can Twitter be an Antidote?

I have seen a wide range of uses of social media by journalists. Twitter is the most visible, with Business Week and CNN being among the leaders in using the platform for information gathering, sourcing, and distribution of news. The 140 Conference is coming up in New York this week. As one of the moderators on Tuesday, June 16, I’ll ask whether social media is a way to counter the side effects caused by reduced resources and increasing time demands on journalists, or is Twitter another potent ingredient that distracts from the business of reporting on serious and complex issues.

Will Twitter specifically and other forms of social media give journalists other trusted sources, will there be the time, tools, or other resources necessary for to take better advantage of the individuals who have a different voice, a new perspective, or a critical counter to the “conventional wisdom” of the select few?

Some of the journalists and news media representatives speaking on Tuesday include John Byrne. Editor of BusinessWeek.com @JohnAByrne – Rick Sanchez, Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) and Ryan Osborn (@todayshow) – Producer, NBC Today Show among many others.

Stay tuned this week for tweets, posts, and podcasts from the conference.

Using Experts to Get Better Media Coverage

Albert Maruggi — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:39:45 +0000

Time 15:00

Bruce Zanca, SVP and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Bankrate INC, has spent his career reconciling the agendas of journalist with clients, (e.g. employer). In his current position, he has connected the dots between PR and revenue. Bankrate is a media content platform that raises revenue through advertising. The number of eyeballs on the site are increased the more valuable information about personal finance is on the site other when other media carry information originated by Bankrate Inc which further drives Bankrate.com traffic.

Brankrate.com is in the top ten personal finance websites with information from mortgage rates and car loans to Certificates of Deposit and credit card rates. It is also a resource for other financial and consumer media and bloggers.

In this “Soundbites From the Road” podcast, Zanca and I discuss the highlights of using experts to provide greater depth of information and analysis. This is a good follow-up to the Marketing Edge podcasts with author Paul Schempp of the book, 5 Steps to Expert. We did a two part series with Dr. Schempp, part 1, 5 Steps to Expert podcast posted on May 16 and part 2 featuring how experts continue to learn was posted on May 26 about developing experts within an organization for PR objectives.

Zanca combined the use of a unique checking study Bankrate conducted, a financial industry analyst to provide commentary and depth of the study, and advanced top tier media interest (USA Today) that helped drive significant coverage of the topic. We put the pieces together in this Marketing Edge podcast. Last week, Bankrate won a Bulldog Reporter Gold Award for this program.

Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit 2009
Best Website – Business/Consumer
Gold Winner
Bruce Zanca, Kayleen Keneally, Chris Spagnuolo
Bankrate, Inc for
Bankrate, Inc “Bankrate.com’s 2008 Checking Study”

The current PR dynamic is comprised of the following characteristics:
1) less reporters (layoffs and all) to do more work, and
2) the potential for greater exposure of company produced information via search engine rankings, whether it’s a news release, blog post or podcast.

This environment necessitates having a bull pen of experts to produce content in order to have a successful sustained PR program.

5 Steps to Expert with Paul Schempp Part 1

Albert Maruggi — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:40:23 +0000

Time 21;27

As more of the practice of PR becomes exposed to all of the public, and not just the segmented silos of the past, it is important for corporate PR and marketing practitioners to change their perspective as well. A company that views how it makes news, not just by what it does, but by the contributions it can make to their industry and community, will have ample opportunities to get attention. In this perspective, the main challenge is to identify the experts in their company matching the right expertise, personality, and talent with the medium and venue.

This perspective led me to writing about the concept of the embedded corporate journalist where the company considers public commentary it can make about external events. Not just the standard new product or customer release, but commentary about issues affecting the larger world in which that company lives.

While developing this concept I came across the book 5 Steps to Expert by Paul Schempp. In it, he outlines ways to become an expert and the qualities you will find in people who are at the top of their field. I turned his concept clockwise about 90 degrees and applied it to corporate PR as a helpful aide in finding experts in their companies. Using the characteristics in Schempp’s book, it may stimulate thinking in finding venues to showcase experts to contribute to issues in the news. It is also quite valuable in developing a dynamic to personal and professional growth.

I found it to be an exceptional read with plenty of interactive worksheets that make the book a one-on-one experience.

Schempp is an interesting expert himself. He coaches golfers on the PGA and European tours, is a scientific consultant to Golf Digest, a professor at the University of Georgia, and president of Performance Matters, Inc. He speaks and counsels companies frequently which made him a wonderful guest for the Marketing Edge podcast. This is the first of two parts, the second part will run next week

The Marketing Edge comment line is 206-600-6887 and Provident Partners will donate a food item for every comment we get on the blog below or to the comment line.

A New Form of Corporate PR, The Embedded Journalist

Albert Maruggi — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:40:51 +0000

Time 23:45

Golf is like social media, when you play with good players your game gets better. In reading and conversing with colleagues like David Meerman Scott, (World Wide Rave) Geoff Livingston, (Now is Gone) and Brian Solis (Putting the Public Back in Public Relations) you are bound to come up with a few good ideas. Brian Solis and I discuss a few of them in this podcast about the changes in PR and revising your organization to address those changes.

I come to this idea of an embedded corporate journalist as the result of accepting two premises 1) The public appreciates candid companies, and 2) companies can afford and have access to all communications formats (video, audio, and print) at essentially zero cost for information distribution.

In this environment companies can be successful at public relations if they engage in public relations. That is if they view their company as part of a universe, not the center of the universe. I refer to universe here as being the larger category of which that company is a part, it could be industry, job discipline, scientific community, that kind of universe.

With this company newsroom perspective on the universe, there are considerably more opportunities to comment on news going on in the universe. Things like government regulations and economic or trade reports are fair game for you to make a newsworthy contribution. Scientific advancements, industry trends, and other events in the news are all likely examples of places to make a thoughtful contribution. This brings me to the embedded journalist.

A journalist mentality looks at the big picture and focuses in on detailed elements of the picture. It is a mentality of describing how things relate to each other, not just how things relate to buying my widget. To have this perspective inside a company in today’s environment is an asset. Over the years I have believed one of my biggest faults as a PR person was that I was a former journalist. Today I’ve reversed that belief and embrace my journalistic roots.

This perspective inside a company combined with a senior management team who embraces the two premises above, will achieve the following:

Greater candor and with it credibility
More opportunities to be heard
Greater exposure to audiences that are involved in your universe

A company can deploy an embed journalist in many ways, someone on staff or on contract, that’s a budget issue. The more important point here is not the journalist person per se, but the way the company looks at information in its universe. For example, during a typical staff meeting are people looking outward for opportunities to participate, not just whether you have software version 7.1 coming out or whether XYZ company just became a new client. See what is going on in the universe and match it to expertise, information, thoughtful opinions among those in the company to make a contribution. Those contributions can take many forms, blogs, comments on blogs, presentations, news releases, videos, podcasts, and many others.

And to answer the question up front, Does this mean we report negative news? Yes, objectively, fairly and without the sensational headlines to boot. See there is an upside to an embedded journalist reporting negative news, you don’t need “sky is falling” headlines to sell papers, to fight the paparazzi, or compete with alien abductions at the checkout line. Another bonus, you can tell the whole story, you just need to tell it straight.

An interesting way to do this is with Pitch Engine. It is a platform to build social media news releases and get you thinking differently about news and the other audiences that will consume that information. This is not a replacement for wire service distribution, it’s a way to build in a process to form your message in a socially-friendly way.

Sometimes I think consultants (guilty) make a big deal about little things. I appreciate the social media news release for what it is, a neat package of information that advances a point with plenty of footnotes (links, videos, images, etc) to deeper associated content that is handy if you want more information, and a way to share this information with others (social distribution e.g. Stumble Upon, Facebook, Twitter etc). It’s kind of like your thesis paper in college with footnotes, references and a bibliography. You get that paper back and you got an A. Then you share that paper with others who borrow ideas, (what! Tell me you didn’t do that in college.) add their own perspective, and now we are back to the beginning of our story – being social will improve your game.

See you at NewComm Forum

Here is a $100 discount code for Marketing Edge readers and listeners, SNCRFRIEND if you only want to attend the New CommForum (see agenda) or if you want to attend the New CommForum and the InBound Marketing Summit use this code NCFFOS to get $200 off the listed price. The conference is being held April 27-29 in San Francisco.

Business Smart Tools

This half day session is in Stamford, CT, I have two tickets to give away to Marketing Edge readers, be the first to email me and we’ll get you there. Send the email to MarketingEdge AT ProvidentPartners DOT net with Business Smart Tools in the subject line. This event is being held May 5.

Measuring Messages As You Build Relationships

Albert Maruggi — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:47:48 +0000

Time 25:48

When people ask me what is the ROI on a social media relationship I often think of my wife. Let’s see we are married 22 years, have 5 kids that have yet to complete college, braces, went through 2 Suburbans vehicles for the last 10 years, I mean there are not many cars that can hold a family of 7. I figure financially this relationship might not be the jackpot most CFOs would appreciate.

I raise this point first because as the web becomes more social, the quantification that corporate America has come to rely on for every action seems a bit callous when it comes to time spent online. Long before the social web, plenty of sales managers said this to a less than stellar sales rep, “you seem to be playing a lot of golf with John, when is he going to sign a contract?” Perhaps the same phrase can apply when it comes to the time spent on twitter or in social communities, blogger sites, and Twitter, however, I suggest online relationships have a more complex nature than golfing with a “targeted prospect.”

In this episode of the Marketing Edge podcast, we discuss what to measure in a PR relationship with KD Paine, author of Measuring Public Relationships: The Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Success It is not just about the number of press clips. Today’s measurement equation, if you have the patience for it, goes deeper in both the measured topic, and with whom to cultivate relationships around your business objectives.

Some of the tools KD uses are:

`A Twitter Tip`

Twitter is most noted for being a great tool to promote your cause and otherwise build relationships that are primarily focused on externalizing a message. There are other ways Twitter can be used to learn more about the market and competitive information. One of them is creating key words in www.search.twitter.com or using hashtags to attempt to collect the tweets around a topic, conference or other category you select.

Let me share a non-business example. When you are driving, do you ever go just a little bit faster when a certain song comes on? Yeah you know what I mean, so for the fun of it while on Twitter one night, I created a # (hashtag) called #Gofast which started a running dialogue about songs that make people Go Fast. I suspect a couple of insurance companies are monitoring this string right now and will update their applications to include this very question.

In this podcast, I highlight another Twitter tactic that flies under the radar which may give greater insight into what competitors are doing.

`More Shout Outs`

I get just a tad over the top in responding to listener comments. Apologies in advance to any friends with Boston accents, but you gotta admit, the running battle between who speaks better Bostonians or New Yorkers is pretty funny. Thanks to Kevin Newnan for the sound files used in the podcast of Boston phrases, his website The Wicked Pissah is hilarious. It hasn’t been updated in 10 years, but it still ranks high in searches for Boston Accent sound files.

Also a hat tip to the Guy’s Guide to Marketing to Women by Stephanie Holland a.k.a. Sheconomy on Twitter – I suspect this has both business and personal application (Mother’s Day is coming up and all).

`Hope to See You at the NewComm Forum and InBound Marketing Summit`

A terrific conference is scheduled for April 27-29 in San Francisco. It is a combination of the Society for New Communications Research of which I’m a senior fellow and the marketing conference produced by Chris Brogan, Paul Gillin and David Meerman Scott. Here is a $100 discount code for Marketing Edge readers and listeners, SNCRFRIEND if you only want to attend the New CommForum (see agenda) or if you want to attend the New CommForum and the InBound Marketing Summit use this code NCFCOMBO2 to get $200 off the listed price.

Get a Reporter’s Mentality in Your Marketing Department, Social Media Will Reward You

Albert Maruggi — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:55:18 +0000

Let’s connect some dots.
DOT 1 – Social media recognizes, even rewards candor and honesty.
DOT 2 – Traditional media is declining and those journalists that remain must do more in the same amount of time – God Bless You.
DOT 3 – Recession is causing executives to search for something less costly, more effective in marketing.
DOT 4 – Companies realize they are not the center of the universe, just part of it.

A recent article I wrote for Upsize Magazine, a business publication in Minnesota, received some traction yesterday on Twitter thanks to a few re-tweets, thank you for that Twitter readers. It was called “For better PR create a newsroom culture in your company.” So I thought I’d highlight it in a blog post.

The executive summary of the article is this, with the dots I mentioned above, there is an opportunity for corporate PR to have more of a news mentality than a promotional one which will be more beneficial to the company’s communications goals. Dots 1 and 4 mean if you are less of a corporate shill and contribute to an objective conversation of issues impacting your universe, others in the online world, journalists, bloggers, customers et. al. will respond favorably.

Instead of only looking inward to pick off the low hanging PR fruit such as new product release, new hire (or recent round of layoffs), earnings (or lack thereof) report, and new client win (Oh please God), instead of that, let’s dig deeper and examine how the company appeals to a segment of the market, how it is participating in new technology standards, what is its reaction to the Obama stimulus package, or where it envisions job skills changing in their industry.

Have a heart and make it easy on everyone, build a story for multiple platforms, Dot 2. Journalists are writing blogs, hosting podcasts, and in general breaking their butts to accommodate new media. Package your content in those formats, meaning, produce a series of soundbites that can be used in a podcast, create a video (preferably not talking heads) that enhances the storyline, post a powerpoint on Slideshare with pretty charts and graphs, better yet, also have those single images available on a newspage or blog post for easy linking. Yes, this is more work, but it costs much less to do today than just a couple of years ago.

Which brings me to Dot 3, all formats are affordable, video, audio, even news distribution services (depending on which one you choose). I said affordable, not free. Sure, tools like Help a Reporter Out and Pitch Engine , and on Twitter MicroPR among others can be used at no cost, but someone needs to put this stuff together. Time is money and people still need to eat. However, shooting quality video and multi-purposing that content is a fraction of what it was. I bet for around $5000 (either time or cash) you can get a comprehensive story told in video, audio, images, and text that can be used across many platforms such as YouTube, Blip.tv (an example of a B2B video channel for enterprise software), iTunes, Flickr (just see how many people take pictures of coca cola),Utterli (a great platform for producing audio and other content) blogs, and other appropriate platforms.

Throughout the year pick off several issues and you’ll look back to see the following:

Better position in the market as a thought leader/player
More news media mentions and coverage in social media
More conversations about your company
More and better information that sales teams can use
Higher quality employment candidates

Put the dots together and you’ve got your self a fully functional, multimedia newsroom, ready to capitalize on issues in your universe, whether they are generated internally or externally, framed in a style that is more valuable to your audience and distributed in a channel that is likely to share your story with others. What’s your take?

Two for the Price of One Conference

An invite to attend the NewComm Forum and InBound Marketing Summit in San Francisco April 27-29. It’s a combined conference with strategic and tactical workshops on using online marketing, PR and social media. There is a line up of terrific speakers and ample opportunities to focus in on your specific questions. The NewComm Forum, sponsored by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) is colocating the forum with the sponsors of the InBound Marketing Summit making for a comprehensive event.

Marketing Edge listeners and readers, email me for a discount code at marketingedge AT providentpartners DOT net with NewComm in the subject line.

How to Help a Reporter Out? Read, Connect, Follow

Albert Maruggi — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:38:18 +0000

Time 16:48

Public relations is changing before your eyes, don’t believe me, visit Help a Reporter Out a website where reporters post their inquiries for experts, guests, and story angles. Then, the site’s founder Peter Shankman emails those inquiries out morning, noon, and night. No, I’m not kidding, three times a day. In fact, I use his emails as a reminder to feed my dog. She gets a cup of food at each email and is pretty happy about it (see smiling photo). Shankman is also a pet lover who, on the HARO website, supports several animal non-profits including Best Friends Animal Society and the Search Dog Foundation, helping train dogs to locate disaster victims.

Back to public relations, you may think HARO this is similar to ProfNet or other services, and you are right, but the world of social media is changing business models and Shankman is adding value at less cost.

The way PR is changing requires change on the part of companies buying PR services and delivering those services. Practicing PR for 25 years, I’ve found the equation of PR firm and client interesting. A firm is paid by a client to advise and implement services the success of which is on a third party, reporter or blogger. In that equation I’ve always considered the journalist very similar to a client in their own unique way. They, at times had a specific need for information or at other times just a general curiosity of information I might have. Finding the match of client information and journalist need is the Golden Ticket.

Here are some points for both buyer and provider of public relations services during these changing times.

For buyers of PR services

Think about PR before you have a problem
Be a resource before you want to pitch
Technology speeds distribution not necessarily learning about reporters
Don’t just measure clips, measure the real-time way people respond to company

For PR professionals

No substitute for learning about reporters by studying their work (this includes bloggers!)
Don’t rely on any one list, (purchased or otherwise), search for journalists using social media
Your value is not just in pitching, nor some ancient relationship, it’s the knowledge of what will interest said reporter/blogger.
Don’t be afraid to advise your client to expose their talents/expertise directly to reporters via social media.

Thanks to Peter Shankman for your time, Provident Partners just donated to Best Friends – see social media does work.

HR

The Marketing Edge book contest for February is The Perfection of Marketing by James Connor, to enter the contest email me at marketingedge AT provident partners dot net and in the subject line put the word perfection.

You can get on the podcast with your questions or comments by calling 206-600-6887, we’d like to hear from you. That will make us smile.

The Single Best PR Advice for 2009 – Think Like a News Organization

Albert Maruggi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:07:45 +0000

Time 27:53

The problem with many companies trying to get PR and media coverage is they think like a company. They need to think like a news organization about themselves, their industry, and the communities in which they play. In the first Marketing Edge episode for 2009 we talk with Kevin Dugan, co-author of the Bad Pitch Blog. The Bad Pitch Blog is a must read for any PR or corporate communications professional, and more importantly, clients of PR organizations. Why clients? Because you don’t want to put your organization or your firm in a situation where the pitch becomes the news. We get into how not to craft a bad pitch and approaching PR with a different perspective in part because social media has changed the landscape of public relations

Meanwhile here’s an old PR versus new PR list for 2009, Kind of like a PR fashionista list.

Old PR Thinking

News is only when the company has a new product, version or customer.

News is something you distribute to the news media

Avoid discussion of controversial subjects that impact the company

No discussion of company strategy or internal debate

Limit most of communication to print or text

New PR Thinking

Evaluate potential news items as if you were an editorial board of a multimedia publishing company monthly if not more frequently.

Consider information as it is perceived by a variety of communities impacted by your company, that’s who really determines news.

News can be targeted by community participation, posted to a blog, included in a podcast and a variety of other means, you don’t need to blanket the world

Use the right medium, audio, video, print, mash-up, others to convey the story

Get involved in issues that matter to your industry, whether you take a position or participate in the debate, don’t sit on the sidelines.

You are your own media outlet, create a channel like blip.tv, blog, podcast, slide share, and make it easy for users to share with others.

Video is not limited to TV, fully integrated multimedia news organizations may well be the right target for a pitch that was previously considered the realm of television.

That’s just a few, we can always talk more, start with a comment either below or at 206-600-6887. Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelter for every comment we receive. Happy New Year!

American journalism at a crossroads

Albert Maruggi — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:44:55 +0000

The future of news is both a fiscal and emotional issue. Newsrooms across the country are struggling with the economic realities across the spectrum from energy costs to the impact of the internet. On the emotional side, the press, vilified as it is by those whose agenda it suits, still remains a cornerstone of a free, democratic society.

Somewhere in the 1980s, the discussion of fairness of news organizations became a central part of the political and general discourse in American society. This debate chipped away at the credibility and integrity of journalism as an institution. The bickering, some real, some imagined combined with the explosion of blogs and citizen journalism created threads of 19th century yellow journalism which was woven into the once trusted resource of Cronkite and Murrow. The result is a crossroads for American journalism.

Despite the gloom of many newsrooms, it is an exciting time for American journalism. When accomplished reporters for the New York Times (and many other newspapers) are not constrained by one format and can tell their story with video on their newspapers website, that is exciting. It is exciting, when a television reporter can extend their piece, which before the web was a one time only production, to include conversations from viewers via a blog. It is an exciting time when the insights of citizens can be tapped to cover a topic that may only affect a small neighborhood, but nonetheless, makes that community grow closer.

The issue is in large part about the money and who will pay for this information. Economies of scale of the mass produce and consume 1900s no longer apply. Financial sustainability of the news media as we know it now requires innovation on the part of the news organization to develop new products, creativity on the part of business/advertisers to financially support communities and causes in which they believe, (without getting in the way of truthful reporting where appropriate), and citizens to become more involved with the news.

I see it this way. Before 2000, the news was a cookie sheet. A metal surface used to produce the same product on a regular basis. Today news is the cookie dough. Consumers of the news want to shape the information as they need it. They want to add to it from other sources, they want to share it with anyone and everyone, and they want to consume it wherever, whenever, and however it best suits them. Journalism will thrive when it figures out how to generate revenue with this new dough.

People like Chris O’Brien and the Next Generation Newsroom project are in the middle of these exciting times. The Project for Excellence in Journalism and Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute has done an wonderful evaluating the trends in news organizations and the way Americans are consuming information.

Today, Thursday, June 12 I’m participating in a panel on the changing face of the news media put on by the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce. Add your comments below, email them to me at amaruggi AT providentpartners DOT net or tweet them at www.twitter.com/AlbertMaruggi

Panel Discussion – Changing Face of Media/Alternative Media Sources/Credibility vs. Sensationalism.
Purpose: We are interested in exploring whether or not, how and why traditional media such as newspapers and television are being supplanted by internet resources and user generated media such as Youtube and Facebook. How are younger generations (Gen Y) using the new media and how they will gather news and information in the future.
Moderator:
Liz Bogut – Communications Director, Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
Panelists:
Joel Kramer, Editor and CEO of MinnPost.com
Kristin Henning, Publisher, The Rake
Barbara Laskin, Media Relations Manager – Macalester College
Thom Fladung – Editor – Pioneer Press
Albert Maruggi – Founder and president of Provident Partners

New rules of marketing and PR: it’s about what buyers value

Albert Maruggi — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:31:25 +0000

Time 16:56

A major change for a company marketing today is the transformation from “messaging to the masses” to “valuing the individual.” This value can be shown by first understanding lifestyles, priorities and associations of a company’s buyers, rather than their age and income, then tailoring a personal approach that is relevant to their needs.

We discussed this issue with David Meerman Scott, author of the New Rules of Marketing and PR. In the podcast, we highlight the following:

–The need to move away from messaging to return to a more personal style of communicating. I would term it a function of transforming from the industrial age to the service age. Service is about the individual, and industrial is more about the masses.

–How companies can take advantage of the value web search engines place on relevant and fresh content. That means companies need to put greater emphasis on being a provider of valued content. For example, our client Technomic Asia doing the China Business Podcast to discuss issues related to – you guessed it – China business. Or Whirlpool, an example of a company that uses its podcast as a vehicle to discuss issues of concern to its audience, rather than discussing Whirlpool’s products. That podcast covers topics like juvenile diabetes, toddler safe play, and how to get organized — nothing to do with appliances but everything to do with what their audience values.

Scott has a bit of different perspective on the issue of “conversations as marketing.” He does make a distinction from these new marketing and PR rules and the conversation that is usually reflected in social media. He contends social media is a subset of the new rules of marketing. Some situations are more about being relevant for your buyer’s persona and they may not be looking for a dialogue. Companies that are unsure of whether they should blog can still implement tactics hat allow them to benefit from the new rules of marketing.

According to Scott, the new rules of marketing do not necessarily equal conversations. The first steps are about achieving a greater understanding of the individuals in the communities a company is attempting to serve and creating content that they value.

The Marketing Edge book drawing for April will be Scott’s book. Send an e-mail to marketingedge@providentpartners.net with the words “New Rules” in the subject line.

Also the NewComm Forum www.newcommforum.com is coming. As a listener and reader of the Marketing Edge podcast and blog, if you are interested in attending this conference, shoot me an email for a discount code you can use when registering. It has an excellent line up of speakers with focused conversations on strategies for business communications. I will be there and look forward to seeing you.

Crisis communication lessons learned from Gov. Eliot Spitzer

Albert Maruggi — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:43:42 +0000

Time 21:28

You’ve probably heard about Eliot Spitzer and his, well, lapse in judgment. We’re not going to spend too much time rehashing the ins and outs of what happened and the political significance (or lack thereof, depending on your perspective). Instead, my colleague Mike Keliher, who heads our PR practice here at Provident Partners, and I are going to analyze this situation from a PR perspective and share some thoughts on crisis communication.

As I’ve mentioned before, I worked in politics for a long time, which included a stint as the press secretary for the Republican National Committee. So I’ve been around the block on political communication. In this podcast, we talk about the important considerations in planning crisis communication, using the political example as a teaching point for corporate situations.