Simonsays

Tweet My Blog! LOLs for Hols

I'm on my hols visiting family in the Isle of  Man for a few days, so tweeting will be light and blogging lighter.

But this site caught my eye, made mehave a bit of sick in mouth and then laugh loudly. The sad thing is ..... stuff like this still works!

Via @badgergravling

Technorati tags: Isle of Man, Twitter, Spam

Berocca's Blogger Relief - #PRFail?

Last month all round pick-me-up product Berocca generated a nice bit of online buzz among bloggers by giving away 'Blogger Relief Packs'.

The packs contained a tube Berocca and other neat giveaways and to get one you had to register by entering a set of personal details. But as Stephen Davies pointed out at the time:

"it seems there are no guarantees of receiving one [pack] and reading the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) they’re only giving the pack away to the first 50 applications. Another caveat in the T&Cs is that they may use my details for future marketing activity and potentially share them with third parties in relation to Bayer plc, the company behind Berocca."

Standard T&Cs perhaps or a underhand way to spam bloggers? Either way I signed up for a pack.

But a month on and no pack. I Twittered to see if others received their packs and Clashcityrocker she had indeed received her pack.

Now, I get that there were limited packs available, but why not a short email from Berocca to say they have run out and I've not been lucky. The whole affair seems a bit short-sighted, lazy blogger relations and a #PRFail if you ask me.

Technorati tags: Berocca, blogger relations

*UPDATED* Bloggers, Tory MEPs and why political parties should be worried

One of the findings from my research into agenda-setting and political bloggers in the UK earlier this year was that there is a distinct blurring of the roles between infuential journalists/media and influential bloggers.

To reinforce this, Mark Hanson has blogged about how two top political blogs drove last week's high-profile campaign to unseat a number of corrupt Tory MEPs.

Both Guido Fawkes and Conservative Home were "swapping research, swapping sources, [and] referencing each other" according to Mark.

Two things strike me as interesting and significant here. Firstly, the timeline of this bears hallmarks of previous political blog campaigns - specifically Guido's hounding of the Smith Institute which was closely followed/suported by the Daily Telegraph.

However, in this instance the sharing of material and sources came primarily from online sources - ie. without support from a mainstream publication (although I acknowledge this may have happened covertly).

Secondly - and as Mark points out - this was a Tory/libertarian attack on Tory MEPs. Antony Mayfield suggests it may be "right-wing bloggers cleaning their own house" but equally it suggests two further things:

1. a concerted online campaign around a specific issue - significant because the internet allows people to aggregate around single issues, something traditional political party structures are unable to foster
2. these single issue campaigns and campaigners are becoming more and more powerful. So potentially powerful in fact that parties ought to be extremely wary of their disruptive force in the future.

This campaign is fascinating because it is a 'ritual cleansing' (to adapt Antony's idea) of the Tory party in Europe - but one conducted by those on the periphery of the party and even beyond (as Antony Mayfield points out: "Guido Fawkes is *not* a Tory").

Traditional political party structures are becoming increasingly redundant and threatened by highly influential and super connected individuals driven by single issues. If was in charge of the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems I would be investing heavily in understanding the major changes the internet is having not just on communications but on an organisational level as well.

*UPDATED* Political consultant and blogger Tim Pendry gives his very expert analysis on what this online encounter means for the UK's wider political scene.

Technorati tags: Politics, Guido Fawkes, Conservative Home, Mark Hanson

Paddick's a Qwitter

I blogged back during the London Mayoral elections about Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick using Twitter as a tool for a virtual Q&A session with the electorate.

Well it seems that his dalliance with the tool has ended pretty soon after the election happened.

Personally I think it is slightly worse that he is signing off with a "I'm winding down now" message which kind of implies that he has been a regular user of Twitter rather than what was essentially a engagement-initiative-as-PR-stunt.

Maybe that is a bit of an extreme take on it, but wouldn;t it be more authentic to just say: "I tried this during the election to engage with voters and now the election is over I'm signing out."?

Hat tip: Dominic Campbell

Technorati tags: Twitter, Brian Paddick, Politics, Mayoral Elections

Finding 'natural communicators' - the real role for PR consultants in a social media world?

May has been a crazy month and hopefully normal blogging service will resume shortly.

But in the meantime I was thinking about some work we have been doing with one of our clients over the past month – seeking out views on how social media (and the wider social web) affects business and more specifically corporate communication.

One of the key questions that saw significant debate was whether organisations are in a position to trust their employees – both communications/PR staff and non-communications/PR staff – to become online advocates and de facto communicators for the business.

The discussion was varied and swung between those who argued that employees are effectively communicating about their employer all the time anyway so why not support that; and those that adhered to the traditional notion of channelling all the company’s news and communications through professional communicators.

The interesting thing for me is that the opposing views didn’t follow a divide between comms and non-comms staff. It seems that the main differentiator between those that ‘get it’ and those that don’t is dependent on a much wider mindset; perhaps between those that recognise the importance of authenticity in business and those that like a more traditional controlled approach.

This got me thinking: some of the best ‘communicators’ or ‘communications advisers’ in a socially connected online world are not corporate communicators, but those that can be considered more ‘natural communicators’.

And maybe that is where we are going wrong with social media strategy and programmes – we try to teach corporate communicators how to communicate naturally – that is authentically – which doesn’t necessarily come easy. An analogy might be trying to teach a senior civil servant to write poetry.

Instead of focussing our effort on converting people in roles that are traditionally siloed, should we – as PR consultants - instead be tasked with identifying an organisation’s natural communicators and empowering them (or helping their employer empower them) to speak authentically on their employer’s behalf.

Review of Charlie Beckett's Supermedia

So it's been weeks since I've ahd a chnce to put some thoughts down into a blog post, but an email from Charlie Beckett, director of the new media think-tank at the LSE and London School of Communications, about his new book called Supermedia [full title] has finally spurred me into action.

Supermedia is an optimist and positive book outlining how the media can enhance its forces-for-good using the internet. its essential argument is that:

1. journalism plays a vital role sustaining healthy liberal societies;
2. journalism (like most industrial economic complexes) is being re-shaped by the internet;
3. that we are a media cross-roads where we have the chance to shape the future of journalism for the better;
4. that when we talk about contemporary journalism we mean, in effect, digital journalism.

Charlie terms this type of contemporary digital journalism: Networked Journalism. Networked Journalism includes what we term ‘citizen journalism’ bit it is also a type of journalism that “is a reflection of emerging realities” as well as an opportunity to transform the ethics as well as efficacy of journalism.”

Now I haven’t read the full book, just the introduction (available with other chapter excerpts over at Harvard University’s Berkman Center). But it seems to me that in creating the concept of Networked Journalism Charlie is seeking to explore how journalism – and by extension – the news media can function in an internet-enabled or to use Yochai Benkler’s term, networked information economy.

This gets my thumbs up. There is a lot of general talk about how the social web and its various tools is changing media production for the worse - eg. the dumbing down argument (in fact, Private Eye magazine, the original challengers of establishment views are one of the worse purveyors of this which really annoys me – but that’s for another post).

The only issue I would raise about this line of argument is that in a networked world where everyone can publish their news, Charlie takes a specifically journalism-centric approach to the question of who actually owns contemporary media production.

Nowhere (at least in the book’s intro) is this made more clear than the following sentence: “Networked journalism offers the news media to enhance its social role.”

In my notes I wrote: “Or offers society to enhance its news media role.”

The point I’m making here is that the internet rejects the traditionally formalised structures and boundaries we artificially created around things like “the media” and “business” and “politics”. To borrow David Weinberger’s idea, the internet makes all of these traditionally siloed areas of life miscellaneous.

To push that idea a bit further, the interent removes these areas of life of their identity until we chose to invoke those identities in what ever form suits us best - not media publishers, not politicians, not business leaders, us.

So with this logic, the news media is no more. Or at least is no more different than citizen journalism, blog content, Flickr content etc. Charlie discusses the importance of these new social media tools, but still privileges ‘real’ journalism as a separate part of this new media ecology. In my mind the internet rejects any and all hierarchy and distinctions between citizen journalism and professional journalism.

Anyway, I’m getting abstract and I don’t think this represents any faults with Charlie’s arguments. Charlie himself tells us early in the intro that “I do not pretend to be objective … So I’m afraid that it is back to the journalist this time to understand what is happening to our news media.”

Supermedia is a book about what is happening to contemporary journalism, written by a journalist, from a journalist’s perspective. That’s not a problem – that’s the framework through which Charlie is interpreting the miscellaneous landscape of the internet.

One final thought on this is where PR or the professional communications industry sits in this view. I bet that for every 10 citizen journalists or bloggers there is a PR person trying to work out how to influence what that blogger blogs about.

This clearly presents challenges and opportunities to the growing ethics and efficacy of the news media. Maybe this issue is covered off later in the book but I’d love Charlie's take on the subject.

Technorati tags: Charlie Beckett, Supermedia, Polis, London School of Economics

I've been cloned!

Or rather this blog has. Doc Searls spotted this post over at the spammy-looking site, Lalaia - the virtual city, and blogged it.

It doesn't take a close read to spot it's word-for-word the same post. If you look further down the site you can spot pretty much all my other posts this month.

On the one-hand if it's a spam blog then I don't really see there's much I can do. But if - as Doc points out- they making commercial gain from the content then where does that leave me? I can't see any form of  contact for the site's owner/author.

There is a link at the bottom of each post directing the reader to the 'oriinal post' which sends them to my blog. BUT... as Michael May points out in a comment on Doc's post Lalaia are breaking the Creative Commons 2.5 I use for my blog because "no CC license copy is distributed on the copy site."

For the time being I'm inclined to do nothing but keep a close eye on the site. Doc's linked to what looks a really good post I need to read - and I'd welcome others' thoughts too.

But, if nothing else this occurance seems to reinforce the growth of flogging, splogging etc etc. Even Technorati seems to have atrophied under the volume of these sites.

Technorati tags: Doc Searls, splogging, flogging, Creative Commons

Social media and the dark side of doing PR

There’s a, well.... how can I put it... rather depressing post by former Friendly Ghost aka Brendan Cooper on the issue of ghost-blogging. It’s quite timely given my post on the subject the other week, although Brendan comes at the issue with a very different perspective.

The post begins:

“The blogosphere is no garden of Eden. We can try to self-regulate, but in so doing we’re only exposing our own naïveté.”

And it continues with the theme that, like it or not, the internet will evolve to match the current world of traditional media and PR.

Rather than clients appointing us to help them create sustainable, long-term relationships based on trust and respect using the social web, it will be business as usual where spin, ghost writing and paid advertorials are not only common place online but expected.

If that sounds a little bleak, Brendan tells us to quit our bleating and hammers home his point:

“There will be a time, a year or two or three hence, in which we look back at the arguments against ghost blogging, and laugh. It lacks transparency. It lacks integrity. It lacks authenticity. Gimme a break. In a year or two or three hence, the big money will be savvy. It will be pushing messages out in every digital channel available. The people you think are saying things, will not be saying them. Other people will.”

I find this alarming both in the sense that Brendan thinks these thoughts but is also prepared to share them with others - although perhaps I *would* think that given that Edelman takes very much the opposite stance to Porter Novelli. In fact we've just launched a group blog about PR and the drive for transparency appropriately called Authenticities.

In a way, Brendan’s view kind of makes sense. He is a former copywriter and now social media planner – which suggests to me (and is alluded to in by Brendan his post) a strong tradition with top-down, command and control communications.

Arising from Brendan’s post are a number of interesting things. Firstly, I personally believe Brendan is missing the entire challenge to traditional media and PR created by the internet. People don’t trust advertising, PR and marketing. That’s the power of social media – it is connecting real people with real people. That’s why it works. Faking blogs or social networks etc will similarly shut down genuine relationships built on trust.

Secondly, Brendan’s post is timely because if offers a startling counterpoint to the idea raised by Dave Winer and now picked up on by Doc Searls that maybe it’s time to get out of blogging. Blogging is becoming flogging, suggests Searls. Brendan seems to reinforce this idea – or at least confirm its growth.

Thirdly, I was blown away by the Cluetrain manifesto when I first read it. Brendan suggests in a comment that the Cluetrain Manifesto is “pretty naïve”. Um. Woah. I’m not even going to get into that one.

Technorati tags: ghost blogging, blogging, flogging, command and control, Cluetrain

Radio 4 on corporate blogging and ghosts in the machine

Interesting piece about corporate blogging on R4's Today this morning. As you might expect from the MSM it was a tale extremes. One the one hand there was Tom Coates talking about his recent experience with PROs pitching him in ways "that are probably illegal" to Spin Vox's Chief Blogger, Mark James Whatley and on to an anonymous 'ghost-blogger' who makes his living speaking to CEOs and writing their blog posts:

"ghost-writing blog posts is no different to ghost writing books by premiership footballers."

Erm....

I wonder if he work's agency-side or as a freelance. either weay, he can't be a memebr of the CIPR as he's in breach of their Code of Conduct.

I confess I didn't listen to it live, but woke up to a volley of texts from friends and family saying "are you listening to R4 now?" At 7.30am on a Saturday that is also my birthday? NO!

You can listen to the package via the BBC's iPlayer here - although you'll have to fast forward to 43 minutes in.

Technorati tags: Radio 4, Today, ghost blogging, Tom Coates, Spin Vox, Mark Whatley

Great VRM debate: will PR still have a place to play in a customer centred business environment?

There's a great round-up on a recent VRM debate by Ian Delaney - although I am galled I missed the chance to meet Doc Searls :(

The event was put on by Media Influencer's Adriana Lukas who raised the spectre of PR (as well as advertising and marketing) having zero relevance to a world of VRM.

She flagged this issue in response to a comment I left on Ian's blog suggesting that VRM might drive PR back to where it is supposed to sit in a classical business envirnoment: at a strategic board level (at least according to Grunig).

I buy into Adriana's point about disintermediation entirely, but can't help but feel that PR will still maintain a place at the table. It will be a radically altered place, but a place nonetheless.

Technorati tags: VRM, Vendor Relationship Management, Adriana Lukas