Best Practices

Think before you share (or thank God for real journalists)

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This is a follow up to my oversharing post that got some interesting feedback.

I blog, I tweet, I sort of ‘report’ since I cover a variety of issues in a few venues. But the closet journalist in me always holds me back in the urge to just spew off stuff like “I am on a flight, the cabin doors are closing” (who cares?) and such.

Those who whip out their phones to generate content based on unverified facts, a.k.a. citizen journalists, sometimes get it wrong. Or often they only ‘report’ one fraction of the story. In some instances those fractions or slices are hugely valuable. Like the tweets and photos form the United Airlines splashdown last year.

But contrast that to this story, by Austin American Statesman journalist, Robert Quigley, who used Twittter to fact-check a story that the citizen journalists with itchy thumbs had got skewed. They had broken a story that a gunman in a local bar had taken people hostage. The gun and the hostage situation proved to be wrong.

once we confirmed what was actually happening, the rumors stopped flying …having a journalist who has access to the police and the habit of verifying information is valuable. It did turn out that the guy did not have a gun, and police now say he was never in danger of harming himself or others.

Wow!

Or from another point of view, thank God there still are some solid journalists –who happen to use social media– who know their job.

So the lesson to those wanna-be journalists, and information sharers: think before you type. You may be the only ‘reporter’ on the scene, but a string of words that help nobody, especially when unverified, amounts to dangerous oversharing.


Quotes for the week ending 18 April, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“If we’re still in the first inning of social media, we’re clearly at the bottom of the first, with two men out, runners on first and second, and a hitter who routinely hits into double plays at bat.”

Catherine P. Taylor, in MediaPost, on the Dominoes’ viral video fueled by social media

“this lately exploded pustule on the posterior of the British body politic.”

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, writing in The Telegraph about Damian McBride, the communications strategist at the center of the email scandal in the British Prime Minister’s cabinet.

“The real impact of a blog story happens only when it moves into the traditional media”

Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, on how the scandal surrounding Gordon Brown has shifted and exploded.

“The emails were sent from an official government computer email account, so let’s just assume he was at his desk when he wrote them, shall we?”

Editorial in the Daily Telegraph, saying the Prime Minister cannot excuse his political strategist lightly.

“The online social world is about as two-way, multi-way, any-way…”

Josh Bernoff, in Advertisng Age, on why the term ‘social media’ is fraught with too much baggage to inspire people to participate in it.

“It’s a hostage rescue operation, something like the Entebbe rescue mission …It has to be discreet and surgical.”

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Defense Minister, on the Sri Lakan government’s decision to reject the UN appeal for hostages held by the terrorists to leave the so-called safe zone.

“We are linked by geography and history”

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, on the digital town hall meeting from Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, on the eve of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

“@statesman: I see people on Twitter calling this a “hostage situation” at the Apple Bar. We have NOT been told that by police.”

Robert Quigley, a journalist, on how journalists can still play a role in verifying information. The Austin American Statesman was 35 minutes late to the story, but got it right, debunking the story. People had ‘reported’ via Twitter that a man with a gun was threatening guests.

Blogs suffer collateral damage in U.K. email scandal

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

As I was passing through London on Monday I couldn’t help notice the communications storm ripping through Number 10 and the media.

The case of spin doctors being used by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, seems to have consumed everyone from political consultants to the media and communicators on both sides of the political aisle. It was initially a story about slanderous emails, intended to generate content for a web site –one of those attack sites some organizations use. But it soon generated a lot of collateral damage.

As Stephen Pollard, an associate editor of The Jewish Times, in a commentary in The Times observed:

I am no starry-eyed fan of blogging per se. But I am evangelical about the benefits that it can bring – and I accept that the price of being able to print genuine exposés may be the freedom to print rubbish.

As a newspaper man who has turned to blogging he believes crises like these don’t create quite the firestorm unless mainstream media pours on some gasoline. (Note the headline the Times gave his piece: “Don’t be fooled by the power of blogs.”)

Other in-depth analysis included The Independent‘s story on the “Axis of spin” and the raging battle of other newspapers editors’ blogs.

Yes, blogs have become the connective tissue between much of PR, journalism and political communication. We all rejoice in this, but that’s a two-edged sword. In the UK, several cabinet MPs have their own blogs, more or less bypassing the traditional communications teams. Which has another interesting side effect: Not updating one’s blog during a communications crisis, could hereafter be construed as a bad move, too! Almost like offering a “no comment” when a microphone is thrust in one’s face.

Take  Tom Watson, the Labour MP who was one of the earliest to have his own blog. The Independent slammed him for being tardy on his posts saying “The digital expert staying strangely silent on the internet.” Apparently he’s stopped tweeting as well.

Oddly enough few are paying attention to the fact that this was basically an email scandal, since it’s now turned into a political PR issue, with blogs at the center of it.

For crisis communictions experts paying attention to blogs (or not) this will go down as a great case study. Stay tuned!

Quotes for the week ending 28 March, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“This is to voice exception to Leonard Pitts’ use of an entire column on Monday to dis Laura Ingraham’s critique of Meghan McCain’s diatribe about Ann Coulter.”

Rick Melton, of Fountain Hills, Arizona, a reader of The Arizona Republic

“Obama slams CNN dufus…“

Tweet after Barack Obama snubbed CNN’s Ed Henry, during a prime time news conference about the budget proposals.

“I got flamed for bitching about how facebook is like twitter, but thank god I have sympathizers.”

Jamie Ell, a student at ASU

“This isn’t something you can jump into without first reading the instructions. Your failure to first listen, empathize, and formulate a genuine strategy that inspires the community to grow the community will unfold publicly and damage the very attributes you wished to promote.”

Brian Solis, writing of the most thoughtful –and very long– posts on Twitter and how it is ushering a new era of relationship marketing that blogs gave birth to.

How do we present a ‘black lung?’

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Excuse the horrible metaphor, but I had two amazing conversations today that made me think a lot more deeply about what we communicators do for a living.

We do not perform complicated surgical procedures, we do not step outside the space shuttle to fix a broken rudder, we do not stand atop a Humvee in Fallujah ducking sniper fire. All we appear to do is generate content and try to get some buy-in.

OK, I know we have ambitious strategic plans, and wear business development hats, sit at board meetings and what nots. But still…

When it comes to presenting something, especially something that’s somewhat complicated, slightly controversial, icky, we  summon the best best tools from digital cameras to–as they say in the military– human assets. But we tend to lean heavily on  ‘push’ tactics.

Speaking to these two senior communicators, I realized that 95% of their time appears to be devoted to understanding the audience, and 5% into the messaging. Without naming names, one is the director of an organization with multiple audiences, another the head of an outreach effort that involves a web site, with as many audiences as there are dots on the world map. Let’s leave it at that.

  • The Comms Director was someone who’s  finely attuned to considering what the audience was interested, using the web and as a listening post, as much as a publishing platform.  “We appreciate your views in helping us grow,” he mentioned. I was not in his orbit, not geographically, or professionally close to anything that his outreach program was all about. And yet…
  • The Corporate Director was someone who thought a lot about–some would say overly sensitive to — information overload, and losing the audience. “We shouldn’t come across as far too complex. We sound like we are trying to cure every form off cancer, when in reality, we may be just experts in lung cancer.”

I asked if she meant pruning down the content? More than that, she said. “How do we present the black lung?” The what? She  remembered way back when smoking was being attacked on all fronts with logos, warning signs, ad campaigns etc, how one simple presentation in school made an impression. It was a canister with a black lung, and next to it a unsullied one. It was not the slick PSA copy in the campaign that made her decide she would not smoke. It was the black lung!

Which brings this to us.  We tend to pack our communication tool kit with everything we’ve got, when all it takes is one memorable take-away. Not to say we need to drop everything. But perhaps we unintentionally clog up (pun intended) our message.

So I am formulating this black-lung theory. We all have this black lung problem. We present way too many bronchioles, blood vessels and pulmonary side shows as a stand-in for a real solution.  In other words, sometimes it’s time to cut down that presentation deck from 35 slides to 5. Or … zero?

There are other ways to keep the black lung front and center.

  • Use more visuals, less words.
  • Speak for 35 minutes and leave 25 minutes for questions.
  • Better still, start with questions and end with a presentation, counter-intuitive as this might seem
  • Listen to the blogosphere, twittersphere, whateversphere
  • Analyze leads, study your audience, use Google analytics
  • I bet there are dozens more

If you have some great presentation examples (or even horror stories) I’d like to know. And so will my two unnamed sources.

Transcript of Twinterview with Johna Burke

/ Angelo Fernando / 4 Comments

Last week, I conducted my first Twinterview with Johna Burke, VP of BurrellesLuce. Experimenting with Twitter, and writing about it, made me want to use this format to get a better handle on how a 140-character limitation would work. I found out some interesting things as the back-and-forth was going on.

There were time lags, and given the fact that an interviewer doesn’t have the benefit of evaluating an answer by body language or eye contact, Twitter can be challenging. But then again an interviewee like Johna Burke compensates for that.

@heyangelo: Welcome Johna Burke. You’re probably good at this –got an 140-character elevator pitch?

@gojohnab: As VP at BurrellesLuce I consult with PR Pros on measuring PR effectiveness. In almost 20 yrs I’ve seen a lot of changes

@gojohnab this is my first twinterview and I’m excited

@heyangelo Will get 2those changes in a min. Youve been a leading voice in get’ng comms and PR 2pay attention 2socialmedia Tough road to hoe?

@gojohnab Not really. The audience is really receptive and there’s a need to get up to speed quickly. I’m glad to be making a difference.

with any new development there’s always some resistance, but this medium requires quick action.

Quick action as in getting to understand need 4 speed of response, or getting up to speed on new tools fast?

@heyangelo @gojohnab – your response is being timed

@gojohnab keep in mind there’s delay on tweetdeck today…doing the best I can with the tools I have…like all PR pros:)

@gojohnab I think it’s both, but more understanding how to make it work and the relevance for their audience. This is still 1 tool of many

@gojohnab a little nugget of experience…make sure you leave a space after the hashtag otherwise your interviewer may miss your response

@heyangelo Re your recent webinar on ‘Listen-Monitor-Measure’ Do we chatter (yes, even here!) more than listen Whatsthematter with us peeps?

@gojohnab Sr management from the perspective of investment and allocation of overall resources.

@gojohnab This new tool is being incorporated into existing programs not totally replacing other tools altogether.

@gojohnab There’s no blanket answer to that question. In social media, as in real life, there are talkers and listeners.

@heyangelo Could you give our followers an example of how you blend this tool into other programs?

@gojohnab That said, the linear nature of Twitter (screen) sometimes makes it harder to listen and respond and easier to talk.

@gojohnab and we naturally have a lot of good things to say and this is a n easy platform:)

@gojohnab Being an active participant in social networking drives audience and message penetration to other comm. i.e. Blogs/webinar

@heyangelo Moving on 2 your recent post – Harvey Levin’s expose of Northern Trust. How could PR & communicators support a struggling media?

@gojohnab establishing social media presence also translates into other PR opportunities: press interviews, speaking opps. & twitterviews:)

@heyangelo Let’s switch 2 Media Monitoring. Its on steroids w/ BlogPulse, BuzzLogic, Streamwall, & good ol Technorati etc. How do u compete?

@gojohnab Provide more than fluff. Educate on your industry so reporters do their job and tell the story. The post: http://tr.im/htEJ

@gojohnab BurellesLuce makes a big deal about human monitoring. Aren’t bots and algorithms practically running the analytics world?

@gojohnab BurrellesLuce has the content plus the ability to provide qualitative judgment on both monitoring and measurement. ….more…

@gojohnab plus iMonitor http://tr.im/hqmH is getting traction in the market. It’s our new self-service, online news monitoring service.

@gojohnab Automated solutions are 80% accurate at their best, but are definitely a fast means to get some idea of quantitative metrics

@gojohnab Most PR pros are after PR effectiveness. That is only achievable with a holistic program of quantitative and qualitative metrics.

@gojohnab Self-service monitoring? Is this not the thing agencies are trying to get people to avoid? Trying to do it all?

@gojohnab Self-Service monitoring- Has been adopted by many agencies due to ease of use and affordability. …

@gojohnab Qualitative= key messages, marketing power, editorial tone & prominence

@gojohnab The BurrellesLuce difference is content sources and tools.

@gojohnab So it’s all about empowerment, then. Lets switch gears now.
Must ask an IABC question:What was it like 2run the Phoenix chapter @ d early stages of social media?

@gojohnab Exciting. The Phx chapter has amazing thought leaders, yourself included, who embrace comm challenges in a strategic way…

@gojohnab 2004-2005 as pres or IABCPHX and current (2008-2009) Chair of Southern Region
We were struggling with whether 2 provide a paper newsletter and gladly one still exists today & is also available in pdf online

AT IABC We used the medium to attract attendees to events and new members to the organization..
There is a growing IABC Southern Region presence on facebook promoting upcoming events and many IABC members on twitter.

@barb_g current IABC Chair, has really embraced twitter and has elevated the organization profile through her efforts.
Another great thing about IABC volunteering is having a non-threatening environment to learn for your company vs. @ your company.

@heyangelo What year was that when u were pres of @IABC_Phoenix? Were there some warning signs things were changing?

@gojohnab in 2004-2005 we had message boards on the website..seems so archaic now

@heyangelo Time management update: 7 more questions…

@gojohnab I’m ready….keep ‘em coming!

@heyangelo Let’s talk about jobs. This is a horrible time for job seekers, Any advice to folks getting into PR, marketing, media positions?

@gojohnab I blogged recently of the power of networking even when you don’t need a job http://tr.im/hwsD and some great people to follow—
on twitter: GenY &Interns: @heatherhuhman and other Comm openings follow hashtags #PRJOBS…these are good, but don’t replace face to face and other connections inside a company where you want to work. Word of mouth and personal referrals are powerful and LinkedIn is an amazing professional resource with discussion groups and contacts….grow your network…the right way I also suggest to young communicators to showcase their Social Media talents and make sure that is a listed skill on resumes

@heyangelo At BurellesLuce, would you hire someone of even look at their resume if they didn’t have some Google juice, or online experience

@gojohnab depends on the position. Most positions require online savvy since we are full digital delivery now.

@heyangelo But one person’s online savviness could be another person’s baby steps, no?

@gojohnab Would agree it’s a relative term.

@gojohnab I can share a BurrellesLuce success story. Our SVP of Marketing found recruits using LinkedIn.

@heyangelo Go ahead

@gojohnab A local example is @JessicaLHansen and how her social networking “worked” when she needed a new job and how people found her
Community is powerful.

@heyangelo speaking of whom @JessicaLHansen just sent a link to http://twitter.com/microjobs could we be doing more to connect people?

@gojohnab The PR twitterverse is well served to help peers during this challenging time.

@heyangelo No offense, but when I hear ‘community if powerful’ and ‘join the conversation’ my eyes roll. I want to see concrete steps…

@heyangelo Maybe this tiny twinterview will raise awareness, and get some engines revved up

@gojohnab Fair enough. I personally listen for opportunities and pass those to my network…open to other ideas…

@gojohnab your Blog talks about your endeavors can you share something with us?

@heyangelo Last 3 questions: Twitter could hurt your career, too. Did you see this? http://ow.ly/15r4 Any advice about using this tool?

@gojohnab I did see this story. And like with anything else on the internet be prudent about what you say and know your audience…..

@gojohnab Twitter is only private when you use the DM feature

@heyangelo @SenJohnMcCain is tweeting. Does that mean he’s cool, or is it a signal that micro-blogging’s on its way out?

@gojohnab LOL

@gojohnab I think that signals its perceived effectiveness.

@heyangelo Excuse the Sarah Palin-like scrutiny: What media –name some names– could you NOT live without?

@gojohnab Industry pubs: PR News, PR Week, AdAge, Daily News: AZ Republic, USA Today, CNN Personal: Harvard Business Review, People, TMZ
Even TMZ.! No CW Of the newspapers and mags, which do you read as print, and which online?

@gojohnab and of course CW for AMAZING Angelo stories:)

@gojohnab You must have missed my CW follow up tweet. Online: CNN, TMZ & USA Today Print edition: all others. I need print on airplances

@heyangelo Ha! Sorry Hootsuite is crawling today. Good 2 know. The folks @IABC won’t cancel your membership now

@heyangelo Any final thoughts before we go, gojohnab?

@gojohnab My 1st twinterview is behind me and I have new perspective on how social media plays into PR Effectiveness. Thanks @heyangelo

@heyangelo Johna, Thanks for taking time for this. It’s been great, um, joining the conversation…No really, you had some great ideas.

@gojohnab “eye roll” right back at ya:) This was fun and I appreciate the opportunity. Catch you in the bogosphere http://bit.ly/2picy

Quotes for the week, ending 21 March, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“The Holy Grail is to know as much as possible but to protect to the greatest extent privacy rights. Google’s halo has slipped for the very reason that it believes in the first part of the equation but not in the second.”

Simon Davies of Privacy International, on Google’s Street View maps of the UK.

“This is like the captain and the crew of the ship, reserving the lifeboats.”

Congressman to AIG chairman Edward Liddy on Nightline.

“My job then becomes one of ‘comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable.”

Social Media Today’s Blogger of the week Dennis Howlett, on the need for PR and Communicators to get buy in from middle management, who have much to gain from social media, but feel most threatened.

“We’re just now emerging from a dark age, and as we ease out of decadent late capitalism and into a more sustainable way of life, transparency, authenticity, balance, egalitarianism and distributed models will become the norm.”

HilaryBromberg, Writing for CMO Strategy in Adverting Age, on the 8 strategies a marketer could do tp stay afloat in an uncertain economy.

“We need human colors to paint the greatest piece of art that has ever been made – the world.”

A line from a video submission by a high school student, José Vinícius Reis Gouveia of Brazil, that won the online contest for video held by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.

“Forget live blogging everything people say. It’s too much pressure and I guarantee there are way too many pro/experienced bloggers doing it better and more consistently than you in the crowd. Let them.”

Rohit Bhargava, a prolific blogger,with a few tips on how best to manage time and resources at SXSW Conference in Austin Texas this week.

“The role of the curator is to, in a lot of instances, broaden the horizons of the audiences …so that they don’t get stuck in an echo chamber.”

Gina Trapani, founder of LifeHacker, at a session on Curating a Crowd-sourced World, at SXSW Conference in Austin, TX.

“I also suggest to young communicators to showcase their Social Media talents and make sure that is a listed skill on resumes.”

Johna Burke, VP of BurellesLuce, in a Twinterview I conducted this week, responding to a question about the why job seekers in PR and Communications need to be doing

Cross-pollinating content benefits you, me, Mark and Rupert

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Two things made me think about how content might begin to flow across networks.

The first was watching Charlene Li at South By Southwest (the video) ask about ‘what will it take Faceboook and MySpace, Google and Yahoo play nice, and allow us to migrate data backa and forth.

The second a news item I heard Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson talk about, where The Guardian is letting developers access its API use its Open Platform to re-purpose content.

This is where all media organizations have been hesitant to go, because they see their content as the crown jewels. I don’t blame them, for now. But what happens when content tends to get created by people outside the organization? By freelancers, by citizen journalists who are so coveted by everyone from the CNNs of this world to local newspapers. Wouldn’t they want to take their content with them, to their Facebook page or blog? Facebook is learning this the hard way –via Facebook protests like this!

It’s coming to a point when cross-pollinated content –for want of a better term– will be more valuable than the original. That’s why the mash-up video is so much more compelling than the original ad, the curated content and the RSS feed more rewarding than a visit to the source.

If you take this blog post and add a new dimension to it, add a few links, sidebars and comments, my readers might find it more interesting than the original piece. Yes, we are going to bump into copyright issues, but along the way we are going to learn to ‘play nice’ as Charlene said.

Speaking of which, just today, the copyright owner Rob Cottingham, emailed me to say how much he loved the use of his cartoon in a post about Twitter on IABC xChange. He asked if I could give him credit, which I promptly did. Just that small gesture of asking and not suing made his cartoon and my post that much more valuable. (The one used above is his as well and perfect for the SXSW conference I referenced.) Who knows, Rob’s cartoons, Noise To Signal, might influence someone to think harder and bring more clarity to a topic becuase he decided to let his content migrate into mine.

Maybe Murdock and Zukerberg could learn something from Cottingham.

Twinterview with Johna Burke of BurellesLuce

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Today I am starting a series of Twitter interviews. It is at twitter.com/heyangelo

The first is with Johna Burke, Vice President of BurrellesLuce, the largest media monitoring and measurement company in the United States.

Time: 10.00 am Pacific

Johna is a hands-on PR and social media  practitioner, plus a  great speaker who talks about the changing practice of public relations, especially PR in a time when the media is in a state of attack/transition/re-design –pick your description. She recently moderated webinars and round tables on real-time communication and measurement.

You could follow the teinterview by following me on @heyangelo or her on Twitter @gojohnab

Quotes for the week ending 14 March, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Stewart’s attack on CNBC is not some cable cockfight. At the heart of this spectacle is a lesson that reporters, anchors, editors, news directors and anyone with a stake in a vital American fourth estate should heed.”

Joe Vince, blogging about the Jon Stewart – Jim Kramer fight, where Stewartwho has a popular Comedy Central show, attacked Cramer of CNBC for failing to warn people about the risky Wall Street conduct.

“lot of people will actually get to see the Internet”

Tim Berners-Lee, the farther of the World Wide Web, talking about how mobile devices will be the main access points for the web in much of the developed world. He however warned of the vulnerability of being able to be snooped on.

“Guava threw together this spot in which a Blackberry literally shoots through Apple.”

A fruity quote by AdRants about a story about a new TV spot by Blackberry taking aim at the iPhone, without mentioning the latter.

“So is advertising really adding value to our brands or not? I am sure agencies fail their clients from time to time … But the difference is that civilians don’t attempt to do the job of a military man. That is why they are set apart and called civilians and military.”

Udara, a blogger at JWT Sri Lanka, commenting on the eternal problem of how anyone with a Mac and a designer may not be in the ideas business.

“So far “McCain” in gothic letters on the back of my neck is winning my unofficial survey.”

Meghan McCain, commenting on her latest media tour and writing stint.

“We’re going to attempt to conduct a full interview exclusively on Twitter — complete with the 140-character limit!”

George Stephanopoulos of ABC News announcing his attempt to ‘twinterview’ John McCain on twitter next Tuesday

“Some of the communications I see haven’t changed since the 1960s. Same bad photos, same jargon (we need to leverage our core competencies and strive for World Class synergy), same platitudes … same spin.”

Steve Crescenzo, in an interview with ValleyPRBlog, on why he he speaks out against corpoorate-speak. Crescenzo will hold a full-day seminar for IABC-Phoenix on Thursday 19 March.

“You don’t have to have your fingers in every social media pie. All these channels are grouped under one category but … If a chat forum works best then stick to that.”

Sona Hathi, Assistant Editor, Melcru, on the ROI and reasons for using social media.

“The more we can do to open the process to the public, the greater the public understanding – the more legitimacy the public system will have in the eyes of the public”

A Kansas Judge J. Thomas Marten, who allowed a court reporter to use Twitter slthough jurors are told to avout newspaper, broadcasts and online media.