Public Relations

Ghost blogging & dictated blogs: Give Blogging CEOs a break!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Not sure if you’ve been following the debate on Ghost blogging. It’s a topic (not as simmering as ‘Blogola,’ for instance) that’s been popping up now and then that’s worth discussing if you’re in PR, marketing or media relations. Why? Because of our vested interests in transparency (or the lack thereof), and the power of authenticity.

I spotted an interesting comment from the CEO of Reuters, who’s been blogging, but not been a celebrated blogger like Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz, for instance.

Responding to a question if he was actually the person behind the blog, he was pretty candid: Yes, it was him, but on occasion, he phoned in his post and dictated it to his assistant, who transcribed it and posted it.

Sallie Goetsch has a long, well thought-out post on the topic. In a situation where many CEOs speak “bland corporate drivel,” a ghost writer is able to channel those ideas.

Someone who shoots  from the hip and doesn’t know what corporate drivel is, is Bob Lutz. GM’s CEO. He talks all things automotive, and they don’t seem to moderate (read: delete) negative posts. Last week he addressed the sticking point about not posting often enough. To which he apologized, and shot back at his critics who thought he had got bored with blogging. Interestingly, in his defense, visitors to the blog came out in support. There were 95 comments as of today.

People need to give CEO bloggers a break. They do have real jobs, but the fact that they are inviting a conversation, whether they are dictating their posts, or taking some breaks between them, is still admirable. No one seems to get too upset with people who send out press releases with predictable verbiage, made-up quotes, and sentences often pulled off their spec sheets and web site.

At least these guys like Schwartz, Lutz, and Glocer are trying.   

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Ghost blogging & dictated blogs: Give Blogging CEOs a break!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Not sure if you’ve been following the debate on Ghost blogging. It’s a topic (not as simmering as ‘Blogola,’ for instance) that’s been popping up now and then that’s worth discussing if you’re in PR, marketing or media relations. Why? Because of our vested interests in transparency (or the lack thereof), and the power of authenticity.

I spotted an interesting comment from the CEO of Reuters, who’s been blogging, but not been a celebrated blogger like Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz, for instance.

Responding to a question if he was actually the person behind the blog, he was pretty candid: Yes, it was him, but on occasion, he phoned in his post and dictated it to his assistant, who transcribed it and posted it.

Sallie Goetsch has a long, well thought-out post on the topic. In a situation where many CEOs speak “bland corporate drivel,” a ghost writer is able to channel those ideas.

Someone who shoots  from the hip and doesn’t know what corporate drivel is, is Bob Lutz. GM’s CEO. He talks all things automotive, and they don’t seem to moderate (read: delete) negative posts. Last week he addressed the sticking point about not posting often enough. To which he apologized, and shot back at his critics who thought he had got bored with blogging. Interestingly, in his defense, visitors to the blog came out in support. There were 95 comments as of today.

People need to give CEO bloggers a break. They do have real jobs, but the fact that they are inviting a conversation, whether they are dictating their posts, or taking some breaks between them, is still admirable. No one seems to get too upset with people who send out press releases with predictable verbiage, made-up quotes, and sentences often pulled off their spec sheets and web site.

At least these guys like Schwartz, Lutz, and Glocer are trying.   

Continue reading →

Steve Rubel’s Twitter lesson

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This kind of thing was bound to happen, when blogs either get it wrong, or an email is fired off too quickly, only to be retracted. With social media, however, it’s almost impossible to undo something said.

Steve Rubel posted comment on Twitter that said something not so nice about PC Magazine (that it is just another magazine, and it goes into the trash) but soon apologized to the Editor in chief of PC magazine, when they threatened to boycott Edelman, his employer.

"I learned a valuable lesson. Post too fast without providing context and it can elicit an unintended response.

Perhaps the incident will give Twitter users something to consider, about always using it with the broader audience in mind, even though it’s a targeted communications channel.

Rather than condemning the technology, let’s make sure we learn the lesson and move on. We all make mistakes, Steve. Your Open Letter was the right thing to do.

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Shel Holtz’ tutorial on blogs, brands, social media and marketing

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment
Trust Shel Holtz to articulate something that certainly nags people whether they are in marketing, journalism or just wondering about social media.

It’s a long post but I highly recommend it, especially if someone in your organization questions why you’re trying to implement weird strategies that have been untested, and when everything’s changing too fast.

As a frequent listener to For Immediate Release, I have to say these two people –that’s Shel and Neville Hobson are the brain reserve of social media, and the amazing thing is how they do it for free, twice a week on their podcast, and with posts like this.

You may wonder why this shameless plug. I am just talking to someone about social media and marketing, and I realized that having gleaned so much from them, I have never quite acknowledged it openly.

For the naysayers who wonder about blogs, Shel’s social-media ain’t-really-new comment is worth repeating:

When you think about it, paintings on cave walls were the earliest form
of blogging, an effort by an individual to say, “Here’s what I did
today,” a pre-language journal entry. Blogs simply amplify the content,
making it available to a larger audience and enabling what we call a
“conversation” to ensue about it.

To hijack a cliche:
Cost of MP3 player: 75 bucks
Time taken to download FIR: Two minutes
Education in social media: Priceless

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PR Slice and Clipmarks nifty Firefox add-ons

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Those Firefox extensions keep getting more interesting. I’ve been a huge advocate of the Social Media Press Release from Shift Communications for some time now, and this latest extension for the browser form PRX Builder helps writers, big time. Why, because it reverses the process of the SMPR, by allowing you to strip out the elements of the media release and only get to the parts you want. Meaning, avoid the fluff, or even the parts that you may  want to skip for the story.

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The iPhone is here. Yawn!

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I suppose this is news, that Apple launched its iPhone, yesterday. For months, or maybe years, this had been predicted. The patent was filed last year. As expected (since the Rokr) it’s the iTunes delivery/storage system. About the price of two smart phones, it has low battery life, but oozes with the cool factor.

These days, anything held up by Mr. black turtleneck, against the slightly out-of-focus logo, has instant coolness bestowed upon it by the media.   

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Dell’s response to Robert Scoble’e response to Apple

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

On its blog, Direct to Dell, Dell came back fast on the post by Robert Scoble who posed the question as to why Apple gets better treatment, and Dell gets all the bad media karma.

The language (and hopefully the attitude) is largely influenced by the early Scoble

"We entered the blogosphere in part to take on negative issues. Will we make more mistakes along the way? Sure, but we are listening and learning
as we go. In fact, the blog is all about those conversations, and it’s
why I’m recognizing this debate that goes on about and around us."

Scoble’s comments are interesting, because Apple does get a pass, and great reviews. In a previous comment about the bad customer service his son got over a Macbook, he called on the heavywright media tech writers such as WSJ‘s Walt Mossberg to show off Apple for what it really is. (Note: Mossberg, who has been featured in an Apple ad, always acknowledges his Mac preference):

Hey, Walt Mossberg or Steven Levy, why don’t you call up my 12-year-old son
and write a column about Apple’s customer service failures instead of giving
them tons of praise about the new iPod cell phone that’s gonna come out at
MacWorld in a week?

So Dell would have relished this, and reader comments to their post. Speaking of which Scoble was accused of drumming this up for turning his son’s experience into a company face off, and doing it for the kind of traffic that Jeff Jarvis got for his Dell hell post. People see conspiracies in what they want to. If I write passionately about a great experience, or a bad one, does that mean I am going off at the deep end? This might turn out to be less of an Apple vs Dell debate and more about the reviewers and bloggers. Interesting.

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Astroturfing and Transparency. Faking a fake grassroots website

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Workingfamilies_1_2
Take a look at both images. One is from the official, um, fake, grassroots Walmart site ForWalmart.com (that calls itself ‘Working Families For Walmart’).

Workingfamilies_2_1
The other is a sharp stick poking Walmart in the eye. It’s run by WalmartWatch, who has registered the domain ‘WorkingFamiliesforWalmart.com.

The anti-Walmart site had been registered in April this year. The scandal about the WalmartingAcrossAmerica blog (domain had been registered on the 24th August 2006) broke in October in Businessweek. Note the question mark after the word Walmart. and of course the unhappy faces in the spoof header. There are other subtleties, such as the link ‘Paid Supporters’ (to counter the original site’s ‘Paid Critics’ link, etc.

Thanks to Jaffe Juice for tipping me off to the story.

But the larger question for PR people is whether WalmartingAcrossAmerica was an astroturf campaign or a pathetic attempt to hide behind the curtain. More than being a fake grassroots attempt, it is a combination of a ‘flog’ (fake blog) and PR Puppetry (PRP) -meaning someone pulling the strings tries to hide from the audience. If you think about it, there is a lot of PRP that has gone on under the guise of advertising, too. We’re going to see a lot of exposes like this soon, as the transparency effect takes hold.

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Code of Ethics for WOMMA. Sounds like the VNR controversy all over again

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

So now that WOMMA has spoken about Edelman’s ‘violation’ of its code of ethics with the fake Walmart blog (after much outrage from other professionals in this space) it’s time to step back and see how practitioners can adopt to the code. Whether they are members of WOMMA or not.

WE could take a leaf from Dell (yes, that Dell) who has adopted the code. Their press release goes into great length about it’s "formal ethics commitment" to

"ensure that blogs and other consumer-generated environments stay honest
and authentic. By holding their agencies to the same standards, Dell is
leading the charge to drive word of mouth ethics throughout the
marketing community."

I wish Edelman would lead the charge from the PR end, and take the issue head on, since they got this thing started. After a few posts in October, they’ve let it slide on their blog –it’s called ‘speak up,’ after all! Debbie Weil wonders if they will.

My guess is they will, and are probably crafting a response right now. Ah, the suspense!

To draw a comparison, PRSA backed the FCC rules about VNR’s to comply with ‘sponsorship identification.’ Maybe they should step up and execise similar muscle here.

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