Social Media

What’s your company’s public face?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

I heard a comment by Sarah Wurrey at Custom Scoop (who btw writes a good blog) the other day that resonated with me because of a company I have been talking to.

“It’s easy to forget in the days when anyone can broadcast every moment of their life, that the official spokesperson is not the only public face of a company.”

Time was when the “public face” -at least the physical or tangible one– was the corporate tower, the web site, the PR department, the CEO. What companies need is more than a corporate facial, but an injection in reputation management basics.

Who manages your reputation from within? If the focus is on manages, then yes, it’s the internal folks usually assigned to the job, the PR department, and the marketing department. But it’s becoming painfully obvious that employees define/articulate the true reputation of the organization.

We’ve all worked at companies where the press release goes out and the employees literally laugh at the language that describes the product –or the CEO. What do you think they talk about when they go out to lunch or meet their neighbors over the weekend? Certainly not in the boilerplate language that hit PRNewswire.

As for the external brand and media handlers, I tend to be biased, and believe they can be a lot more realistic and objective. They don’t have to put on a happy face every time the boss walks by, so they can give him/her a better reading of the reputation out there.

State Department’s blog could be more bloggy

/ Angelo Fernando / 4 Comments

“This blog does not represent official U.S. Department of State communications.”

And yet, Dipnote is the voice of the State department, and the “official blog” which just started it’s blog last month. The disclaimer, notwithstanding, is just a way of saying it does not over-ride the content on the office site.

The blog has lofty goals: “to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.”

A breath of fresh air? Definitely. Especially when public officials are allowed to speak (their minds?) on topics on anything from Darfur, the Afghanistan situation, the Dalai Lama’s visit, and even Blackwater.

The good thing is that they have posted not-so favorable comments, and commentary reflects an international audience. One post from Rafael Foley in Iraq had over 360 comments. What’s not very clear is how much of censoring and editing is done to comments (even it has a seven-point comment policy) since I notice a few instances of using ellipses.

If Dipnote aims at some degree of transparency, why not officially represent the department? Why not expand its offering so that people could leave questions for an official to respond? With RSS feeds it could then reach out to a wider audience. Interestingly, the main State Dept site allows you to ask a question from an official or ambassador. But the transcripts of responses somehow come across as canned policy statements. Dipnote could make these officials come across as being more human.

Facebook bragging could get you … arrested

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It won’t be long before lawyers pull up Facebook profiles before a judge to substantiate a point.

This story of students of Ball State University is an example for those who need to take FB 101: what not to post about or comment on. They attacked another student and bragged about the incident on each other’s FB pages.

So the cops arrive at a future scene, could storm the dorm room, gently snap on those cuff links and go, “You have a right to remain silent, a right to not post on my wall…”

Strumpette’s underbelly exposed. Now what?

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Some in the PR industry have predicted that Amanda Chapel, who exited the scene recently as a blogger using the handle “Strumpette,” may indeed surface under a new guise.

Robert French’s expose of Chapel gave several others an opening to reveal the same ugly side of a PR blogger they experienced. One called her a front for a Libelous Troll Brigade. Another, an avatar. French simply calls Chapel “it.”

Indeed the approach it took – a blog that called itself “A Naked Journal of the PR Business” — drew many in, with vituperous attacks both online and off. The Washington Post had some theories too. I was one of its lesser targets, with comments to a post here, that went from mild insults to name calling. When I threw in question to see if its comments were really serious, the response was telling –dismissing Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory a bunch of hooey, etc.

To be sure, Strumpette was an half-brained experiment. Many others, just like last year’s Lonely Girl, have tried to massage the blogosphere and the social media eco-system to see what happens. Jeff Jarvis suggested it could have been a book proposal badly done, or someone slighted by a loss of clients.

Moving on. This brings to the surface once again an issue that’s uncomfortable for some: anonymous blogs and ghost blogging– a topic that’s been debated over and over again by PR folk for more than a year. Let’s see how this evolves.

Taking notes on the run – It’s a Jott thing

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I tend to use a flash drive less now that I have a wiki that serves as a data dump, and free online file space with sites such as XDrive and Dropboks.

Then came along a service called Jott, a way to leave those ‘notes to self’ without a voice recorder. It’s pretty simple. You register your cell phone with Jott, then add the Jott number to your phone’s speed dial and whenever you can’t find a pen and paper to scribble something down, you call that number and leave a voice note. The audio file then gets sent to your email, or for that matter anyone you want to share the idea with.

Now comes a sort of Jott campanion. It’s called Jjot. It allows you to take notes online, and access them later from any computer. And just like Jott, you could email that note to anyone, or yourself.

Which gives me an idea: What if Jjot would let me email files to my personal page? Then I could use Jott to make audio notes while driving, and archive both audio and text notes on Jjot!

Lessons from Forrester’s Groundswell Awards

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

In July, Forrester Research put out a call to organizations using social media to submit their work for the what they called the Groundswell Awards. These were anything innovative by way of blogs, wikis, and communities to achieve some goal.

Last week, they announced the winners. In the seven categories (Listening, Speaking, Energizing, Supporting, Embracing, Managing, and Social Impact) there were unexpected winers. Meaning, some of them were probably so focused on their niche, we didn’t hear much about them.

Alli Research Community (Alli being a Glaxo Smith Kline dietary product) was a finalist in the listening category. In the Managing section, Avenue A Razorfish won for a wiki, and many may remember the ‘design a border fence’ campaign from Brickfish.

To me there were two lessons worth taking away. It was all about focus and participation. Marketing groups tend to lose sight of these two elements.

Focus: It’s easy to set aside the rifle and grab the shotgun because many people are still operating in the mass media/mas marketing mode. Also, there are often too many fish to fry. Too many goals, too many audiences to ping, too many middle managers to keep happy. Chevy Aveo’s Livin’ Large was focused on students. Narrowly focused on seven campuses, in fact.

Participation. Allowing people to collaborate is messy, doesn’t work to plan, and makes the ‘gurus’ look incompetent –especially when the best ideas come from people without marketing or design in their title. We cannot know what kind of content showed up on Avenue A Razorfish’s wiki (it’s a private wiki) but with 6500 pages of content contributed by employees, and 2000 blog posts, it was most unlikely to have been oozing in HR-speak.

Social Media Press Release becomes major tracking tool

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

From time to time I have been covering the development and adoption of the Social Media Press Release. A lot has happened since Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications came up with a great wish-we-thought-that-up-first idea.

But unless you dig deep into the press releases of companies you’d never know who’s using it. I found this one at Ford Motor company, using the SMPR template for its Ford Focus.

It’s got all the (standard) elements of a press release and more. Much, much more. The links, attachments, visuals and navigation give it the feel of a micro-site. They integrate well with the company site (for those concerned about branding), enrich the social experience (to Flickr photos, and the YouTube video on brand ambassadors) and add entry points for feedback and conversation. This is especially valuable for journalists looking beyond the happy CEO statement, to check the pulse of the market.

You could bet all these internal and external links, and commentary gets tracked by their SEO agency, PR agency, and ad agency giving the marketing folk a daily or even hourly reading of who’s looking at what.

Texting while driving

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Ford Motor company is using college students as Brand Ambassadors for the Ford Focus. While the presentation is quite bland, they demonstrate two features that their demographic would relate to – text messaging on the road and calling up music on their iPod.

The car actually uses a Microsoft application to sync with an MP3 player, and integrates with a cell phone so that the driver could have text messages read out, or displayed on the dash!

Quotes for 13 Oct 07: Challenges, disruption, stealth and resignation

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded the old-fashioned way…”

Thomas Friedman, saying he is impressed and baffled by college students who are just too quiet about present issues. One climate activist group challenged him, saying it’s more committed and organized than he realizes.

“Twitter is simply a digital manifestation of this phenomenon of thinking “aloud” and seeing if there is a response. A bit like bat echo-locating, but on a social rather than topographical level.”

Member of MyRagan, responding to a question about whether or not Twitter could replace blogging. 90 percent of conversation is meaningless filler the writer notes.

“You will be ‘vanilla’. Bland. Inoffensive. Overlooked for more exciting flavours.”

Australian communicator, Lee Hopkins on why it’s important to blog. Actually this is a quote from 2005, from his blog Better Communications.

“My question is: What should I do with this PR stuff?”

Someone posing a question (at Ask a MetaFilter) about accepting an offer from a PR firm to place videos in her Facebook group formed around a movie.

“Practically speaking, I fought the good fight. I’ve variously made my points. Together, we’ve exposed a few frauds and killed countless sacred cows … BUT now I am tired; and now regrettably, I seem to spend all my time revisiting the same battles previously won.”

Amanda Chapel, who resigned from Strumpette on October 8th.

“Facebook has real competition coming. Competition they haven’t yet faced.”

Robert Scoble (who says he has 552 reasons to hate Facebook) on what to expect now that Google has bought Jaiku. world

“As long as it doesn’t mean a tumor is growing on my leg because of my BlackBerry, I’m fine with it … Some people have biological clocks, I might have a biological BlackBerry.”

Jonathan Zaback, PR Manager at Burson-Marsteller, quoted in an AP story on people imagining vibrations from a BlackBerry when no one is messaging them.

Free copywriting seminar

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Who is this guy and why is he giving away free advertising advice?

If you’re a copywriter, you may want to check this out. Trevor Crook, an Australian writer, is giving away a copywriting seminar. It’s called the Copywriting Blueprint Formula.

The catch? Apparently none. He simply believes in the pay-it-forward principle, and expects everyone who listens to the 10-part audio seminar (downloadable MP3files) to share the knowledge. In a world where everything that could be is “monetized,” it surely stands out. Check it out!

Thanks to Lee Hopkins, a fellow IABC member for the tip.