• The Media Are Blogging
• Anniversary Email
• Come see me at the summit!
• You are so cutting edge.
• Finishing School
• Perils of Blog Pitching
• All About Authenticity
• If you build it, they won't necessarily come
• Build Bridges, Not Pitches
• Rules, Rules, And More Rules

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Blogs

When we gathered this summer for the Academic New Media Summit, we heard from members of the print media that they are now in the 24-hour news game. They are blogging, they need video and they are getting increasingly involved online as individuals and as companies. Let's take a quick look at some of the blogging that mainstream media is up to.

1. The Gray Lady, the New York Times, is now up to 45 blogs offered at NYTimes.com. All are rss-enabled and include blogs focused on pretty much everything it covers. One I think is particularly interesting is The Lede which follows a story as it spirals off in a new direction.

2. In France, Radio France now features a dozen blogs. Many of the blogs are fairly new, with archives only going back 2-6 months, but the posts are generating comments. Of course it isn’t only blogs, Radio France also has an extensive library of podcasts.

3. Italy has two major dailies and both are blogging. The Corriere della Sera features four blogs (and stunning photography) and Repubblica offers a number of blogs using Kata Web, which also offers readers a chance to create their own blogs.

4. In Korea, citizen journalists and freelancers contribute to OhmyNews International which is written in both Korean and English. The site also includes podcasts to let readers hear the writers in their own voices.

5. Another great resource is the European Journalism Centre. You can click on any country and read a report on the major outlets of the country. Most of them are starting to try blogging in some fashion. Some reports even include a civil media list for the country.

What mainstream press blogs that you love to read have I left off the list?

Today marks my anniversary. Not at Edelman or in the me2revolution, but the anniversary of sending a weekly global email called the Friday5. Each week, with the help of my colleagues, I write an email related to social media and send it to the global Edelman network. Sending an email to 4000 people began as an intimidating task, but has become part of my routine.

I thought I'd share with you my anniversay edition, called Great Posts for Great Minds.

For this anniversary edition of the Friday5, we take a break from “How To” and “What’s that” editions to look at five stories or blog posts that we have enjoyed over the last couple weeks. Sometimes reading stories that are off the beaten path can help you gain a fresh point of view or find a new solution to a nagging problem.

Without further adieu, here are five posts that got us thinking.

1. When I need inspiration for a presentation, I turn to Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen. Last week he wrote about Pecha Kucha nights. Pecha Kucha is an international phenomenon that gives speakers 20 slides and only allows 20 seconds per slide resulting in high paced presentations that are very different than your average deck.

2. Raul Gutierrez is a New York based artist who shared a wonderful story of unexpected community on a New York Subway platform. “We were all spread out across the platform, all standing, but after half an hour everyone had migrated to the benches and we were all sitting in a row. Nobody had anything to read, cellphone service wasn't working, and most unusually, no one was attached to an ipod…”

3. Only-Connect is a “wannabe, amateur photographer” in Chicago who has found a way to turn the odd layout of Flickr into a way to share visual stories. Take time to scroll through the photo-stream and see how this artist sees the world.

4. Do you need a mind map or do you need a concept map? Knowledge Management blogger Jack Vinson helped a reader figure out what she really needed and how to pick the right tool for it.

5. Finally, Chris Brogan gives us 100 posts to write. Posts that he wants to read for inspiration or to learn how other people think. He asked, “Make the coolest ideas from whatever these spark in you, and keep coming back to these as often as you want. Bookmark the page. Copy/paste it into a notepad file. Whatever works for you. Or just use them as a way to bounce into better posts of your own devise.”

Have you read something outstanding this week? Please share it with us

I'm live blogging from the Harvard Club today, so visit me at the summit blog.

http://www.edelman.com/Summit07/

Back to note taking....

Just two weeks after being told, "I've never read a blog," at a Thanksgiving dinner, a friend told me this Saturday, "You are SO cutting edge."

Anyone that knows me knows that I'm not exactly cutting edge. I haven't bothered to buy a DVD player, I only replace my cell phone at the two year mark, and I only set up a del.icio.us account two weeks ago.

My friend has been spending a lot of time working in San Francisco lately and that is why she thinks I'm so cutting edge. "Leah," she continued, "everyone out there blogs and has a MySpace. I mean everyone. And you do all that stuff, you should move there."

Another friend chimed in, "I only have MySpace because my brother in LA has MySpace and he insisted that I get one."

To me, blogging and social networking are not cutting edge; they are necessary tools for writing and working. (I actually just celebrated my third anniversary of blogging on November 24.) I said it after Thanksgiving and I'm saying it again, it is very important to learn these tools now. We might be tempted to say, "Blogging is dead, what is the next big thing?" but we need to remember that to lots of people, it is still cutting edge.

What online tool do you consider a daily necessity that makes your friends call you cutting edge?

I've been blogging since November 2003. It started innocently enough, I was working in London and didn't want to send mass emails to family and friends detailing my new life. So I googled "blog" and came up with Blog City as a host.

That's when the addiction started--writing my own blog, reading other blogs, commenting, learning how to use RSS, subscribing, linking, statistics. Now I write two personal blogs, contribute to two multiposter blogs and an online magazine.

And today, today I start Blog Finishing School. At least that is what joining the me2revolution is starting to feel like. The past few weeks, friends and fellow bloggers have noticed that I'm a bit more opinionated about the etiquette of blogging. And they have started asking me questions about attracting more traffic.

I'm going to tell you all what I tell them. And in six months, I'll come back here (don't worry Phil, I'll post in the meantime) with a more finished approach to increasing traffic and good blog etiquette.

1. Write. Write regularly, write good stuff. And if you are a photo or video or podcast, same goes for you. Produce regularly, produce good stuff.

2. Read & Comment. Go out into the blogosphere and read other blogs, comment on other blogs, be a part of the greater community. But don't comment with "Hey I'm awesome, can I have a link." Comment on the real conversation and people will come to you, because you offered something interesting, insightful (or inciteful)and they want more of the same.

3. Register. Claim your blog on Technorati. Use Blogarama or similar "clearinghouses" of blogs. It makes it easier for people to find you.

4. Feeds. Make sure that people can easily subscribe to your blog, come on now. RSS and ATOM. And then tell your readers that the feeds are available, introduce them to one of the many sites that collect the feeds. My Yahoo, Google, My MSN, Bloglines, My AOL, Newsgator, Technorati favorites...

5. Links. No, not linking to some big influential blogger, but linking to the people you read, the people you think are interesting, the conversations you want to join.

6. Live. If you don't live your life, you've got nothing to blog about. So make sure you take some time to be with friends, read books, eat fabulous meals, laugh, watch movies, walk on grass, and dream.

Those are my personal blogging strategies, but like I said, this is only my first week in the group. Ask me again in 6 months.

ValleyWag recently took a PR rep to task for sending an ill-advised pitch. The story is a good example of why it’s better to participate, rather than pitch, when it comes to blogs. ValleyWag also offers some helpful (albeit snarky) advice for PR professionals, but there are a few other lessons to be learned:

• Pitching a blog isn’t verboten, as long as you're offering content that’s useful to the reader. Edelman’s SF office recently pitched a client to several personal finance blogs and received a favorable response from at least one of them. The key is to pick a site that's directly relevant to your client and do some research to make sure the pitch won’t be used against you.
  
• Just because you have neat tools like embedded video and sound, doesn’t mean you should use them. In the case of the ValleyWag pitch, the link to the release included a loud audio file that required you to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page in order to turn it off. Unwanted surprises like this make journalists, and bloggers, cranky.
  
• Finally, good writing always matters, no matter the media outlet you’re pitching.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, pr, public relations

These days, when you go to enough conferences and read enough blogs about communications, the word "authenticity" comes up a lot.

What I find disturbing, though, is that many communicators too often talk about "authenticity" in one of two senses.

First, some discuss "authenticity" as if it is some kind of spice or tonic that makes a lame program a great one. Almost as if to say, "We'll just throw some authenticity in there, Bob. It'll be fine." (I'm paraphrasing of course. I hope...)

Second, others describe it in terms of something that can be created, as in "A blog is a good way to create authenticity for a company." (I'm not kidding you. I have actually heard that one before.).

It really all comes down to companies working to find their voices online. Authenticity is a quality that should arise from that process.

Over at the Northeastern U's class blog, the writer (Laura05) was inspired by this post from Microsoft's Heather Hamilton.

Laura writes:

Being authentic is not about telling people what you are great at, but what you aren't so great at.

Well, it can be a little of both, of course, but I believe her ultimate point is this: A blog that does nothing but beat one's chest is unsustainable from a community participation perspective.

When you're at a cocktail party, do you choose to engage with the biggest blowhard in the room? Probably not. In fact, you try to avoid him.

I encourage you to read both Laura's and Heather's posts.

Technorati Tags:
pr, public relations, blogs, blogging

Some marketers seem to feel that building a blog is in of itself a viable PR strategy. However, let's be clear that sticking a stylish blog up on the Web does not guarantee that anyone, least of all your target audience, will visit it.

If you want to use a blog to develop an interactive relationship with constituents, you must be prepared to put forth the online marketing muscle to proactively let people know about it and convince them to read your blog. So of course, you want to do things like create a blogroll and an RSS feed, link to other popular blogs in your target areas, and engage in search engine marketing and online advertising (if you can afford it).

An even better idea? Consider how you might get involved in active communities about your topic that already exist on the Web. Before you go out and clutter the blogosphere, take a step back and do a sweep of the Web to determine what's out there. Monitor the conversations taking place in the hottest locations pertaining to your area of interest, and, after listening carefully for a while, make an informed decision regarding how you can most effectively participate in the discussion and engage your audience. You might find out, for example, that a highly-trafficked blog in your industry is looking for contributors and would welcome you with open arms, or even that your very specialized audience doesn't read blogs much, but instead prefers their quirky Usenet forum. In any case, you'll spend much less money, and will probably have much better results, if you piggyback on a scenario that's already working.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, womm, word of mouth

When a blogger reaches a certain critical mass, they get besieged with email pitches. Some of these are on target, others aren't. Regardless of their value, bloggers are not journalists who are used to receiving so many pitches. They did not sign up to receive so much mail. They signed up to share and build relationships with like-minded individuals.

Robert Scoble is one such blogger. Robert is the blogosphere's best example of a bon vivant. When I first launched my own blog back in 2004 he was gracious enough to give me an interview. I will never forget how elated I was to even have received an email back from him. Over the past two years Robert and I have become friends. We have shared many a laugh at conferences and I always look forward to seeing him. I built an online relationship with Robert as a friend and this later became an offline friendship too.

Today I was saddened to read that Robert is having difficulty dealing with the barrage of PR pitches he receives each day. I am sure he would love to answer every one of them with a personal note, but he can't. He's human after all.

Reading this got me thinking about how a PR professional should interact with bloggers. Our temptation is to pitch them the same way we do journalists. Sometimes this is fine. Other times, however, it isn't and it's hard to know which button to press when. We don't have a handy directory to tell us like we do with the press.

In my experience, the best way to get on a blogger's radar screen is to build bridges, not pitches. Think about what the blogger's aspirations are and try to help him/her achieve them. Having your own blog helps here. However, if you're not that type, take these steps...

1) Read the blog to see how the blogger wants to engage with PR pros

2) Set up an account on del.icio.us, a social bookmark sharing site.

3) Email the blogger a link he/she might find interesting that has nothing to do with your company or any client you represent. Be sure to introduce yourself and let him/her know you want to become their resource.

4) If they are open to it, point them to your del.icio.us account and encourage them to subscribe via RSS. Tell the blogger that you will be sharing links here just for his/her benefit and that occasionally you might slip in a related link to your client when it's a perfect match.

This will help you build bridges to bloggers. I guarantee it.

Technorati Tags: robertscoble, publicrelations, PR, blogs, weblogs

David Parmet earns the distinction of introducing us to the term "icky chills."

There's been a rash of advice on how to become a better blogger, which has inspired David's reaction.

While the term "blog" certainly evokes certain expectations of how the publishing platform is used, far too much attention is paid to "tips and tricks" beyond the goals of self-expression or relating to a particular community (micro or macro) in near-real-time.

Technorati Tags:
pr, public relations, blogs, blogging

Those were the seven words that killed the Internet boom, so sayeth Bob Metcalfe.

So, it would seem that few are taking my New Year's post to heart. Basically, I'm not sure where all this jumping up and down and jeering gets us.

You see... One company has dipped its toe in the blogosphere, and folks are making a meal out of the metatarsals.

As Kate of MyNameIsKate fame points out:

No big corporate entity is going to do it RIGHT the first time out. Or the second. Or maybe even the third. But they are trying and they will contribute to the evolution of the blogosphere.

This reminds me of when a couple of guys go out for a drink and see the same girl in a bar. At one point, one guy starts making fun of his buddy in some lame attempt to impress a girl who knows better.

So, when you spend so much time and energy dissing fellow communications colleagues, exactly whom are you trying to impress?

Technorati Tags:
blogs, blogging, mcdonalds

Start-ups live by them, Fortune 500 companies are either embracing them or cursing them, and now politicians of all parties have embraced them.

"When Barack Obama addressed the bloggers at the Democratic National Convention" in 2004, said Rosen, "He said, 'Welcome, welcome. I may start a blog myself.' And he said, 'I may be coming to you for advice.' And I shouted out to him, 'Write it yourself.' He said, 'Oh, well, as soon as I find three free hours a day, I will.' Which meant never. And he's learning it's necessary for him to write it himself. Because that's what's really powerful."

In the past week I have given presentations on online communications and blogging to two very different companies (although no politicians – Arnold are you listening?). One is a world class semiconductor company and the other is a highly successful regional healthcare provider. They both have very different reasons for doing so, but a common goal, a new way to engage with customers.

Politicians used to engage with their constituents by attending BBQ’s and taking whistlestop tours, with each member of Congress, representing 600,000 people, those tactics don’t quite scale to meet their needs or the needs of their constituents.

To those that elected representatives who aren’t afraid to go back to the type of communication that happens 1-1, where everyone’s voice can be heard, “Welcome.”

As everyone who has jumped into the blogosphere has learned, it’s not easy, but good communication usually isn’t. It takes a commitment, forethought and hard work, all to make it look easy.

If you’re serious about talking with your constituents, customers or partners and not at them, jump in, if you’re not, get ready to pay the price, because they’re already talking about you, or get ready to explain why you’re not.

Neville Hobson points us to BrandWeek's less-than-rosy estimation of the power of blogs.

As Neville cites from the BrandWeek piece (PDF):

Blogs provide almost no new information. They’re frequently inaccurate. They contribute to the hysterical polarization of our nation’s political discourse. And they’re often written by people who can’t, you know, write. So naturally marketers have flocked to associate their brands with them. Seriously, it’s not entirely clear why so many marketers have rushed to get themselves name-dropped in one of the most unreliable media environments yet invented.

When approached with the criticism that science fiction was an inferior literary form, Sturgeon agreed that "Ninety percent of all science fiction is crap." However, he also informed his critics that you could say that about pretty much anything.

The point is well-taken, though, that there has been a mad rush by marketers to show how much they "get" blogs, sometimes with disastrous results. But the issue just isn't about whether the media environment is "unreliable."

"Unreliable media environment" or not, it's the communicator's responsibility to achieve understanding of that environment.

Nevertheless, it's become pretty clear that people make extreme negative statements about blogs in order to drive chatter and controversy.

TalkShop is a blog about word-of-mouth and the Me2 Revolution, published by Edelman and hosted by Phil Gomes, the company's Senior Counsel, Online Communications. This blog pulls in thoughts and opinions from members of the worldwide Edelman network.

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