Posts

Your Turn: What Can We Do Better in Public Relations?

10 Comments/in , /by

Jeremiah Owyang’s recent Tweet about a question he was asked during a briefing – “What can we do better?” – made me think this is a question we should be asking the industry more often. Of course, we have regular discussions with our clients about what we, as an agency, can be doing better. But as rumors of the PR industry dying continue (by the way, that’s been tossed around for years now), we thought we’d ask you, readers. PR isn’t dying – rather, it’s changing. But change is good – and we want to hear your thoughts on how PR should evolve and improve.

http://prblog.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/pr_two_point_oh.jpg

It seems there are a lot of opinions out there about what PR is doing wrong or failing at, but very often these complaints are hollow – there aren’t specifics around what companies would like to see more of other than “media coverage.” So how can we as an industry improve? What do you think PR professionals could do better or differently? If you’ve got an opinion on the subject, here’s what we’d love to hear from you:

– What do you think PR professionals most need to improve or change? (We’d love to hear perspective from journalists, business owners, CMOs and VPs, branding and social media experts, etc.)

– In what areas would you like to see improvement? Media relations? Social media? Messaging? Strategy? Crisis Communications? Pitches? Writing? Thought leadership? Other?

– What is PR doing right these days?

– If you work with a PR agency, have they delivered what they promised when you hired them?

We’d love for you to leave your comments here or, if you’ve got a lot to say but want to keep it private, feel free to email me at chris[at]perkettpr.com or fill out our online questionnaire. If interest is high, we’ll gather and analyze the feedback and share some additional insights on how we think PR can improve the problem areas. In any event, let’s stop saying PR is dying. Let’s talk about how it’s evolving.

Thank you in advance!

25 SXSW Attendees Explain Why You Should Attend Next Year…Oh and they did it in two words…

27 Comments/in /by

Inspired by Steve Garfield’s video montage “27 People, One Question” I thought it would be fun to do something similar during my trip to SXSW Interactive. Throughout my time there, I had some lighthearted fun with attendees and asked 25 people to give me two words that describe their experience at the event. Some of the responses, both serious and entertaining, came from folks like Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Justin Levy, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, Jason Falls, Aaron Strout, and many others. Using my handy Kodak Zi6 HD camera I captured some great footage that hopefully encapsulates what SXSW Interactive is all about and in some cases, just made me go “huh?”

So without further ado, for your viewing pleasure check out what some of this year’s SXSW Interactive attendees had to say for themselves. I am sure you will recognize a few of your friends and hopefully have a few laughs along the way.

A special thanks to everyone who participated and shared their two (and sometimes more) words and thanks for all the memories. See y’all next year – SXSWi 2010!

Disclaimer: The video quality and lighting varies slightly due to the ‘extreme’ shooting conditions of SXSW. 🙂

Translation: This was my first attempt and I didn’t lug around all the lighting and sound equipment with me for these impromptu shots, so some responses were a little more difficult to see/hear, but you get the point.

Music: Dan Tharp, Guitar Suite I – Movement I and II
Camera: Kodak Zi6 HD

Persuasive Picks for the week of 02/22/09

1 Comment/in /by

forrester_graph.jpgB2B Buyers Dig Social Media
Jordan McCollum highlights the key takeaways from Forrester’s recent report on how B2B buyers interact with social media. Forrester clients can access the full report here.

Turning your feed reader into a powerful monitoring dashboard
I’m a big fan of using Google Reader to aid in some of my social media/brand monitoring efforts. Mack Collier from the Viral Garden blog shares some tips and techniques on how he uses it in conjunction with Bloglines.

5 Ways To Find & Acquire Customers On Twitter
These days, the economy forces businesses to get creative when trying to finding new clients. Brian Norgard writes this guest post on the ShoeMoney blog to share five ways you can use Twitter for finding new business.

Twitterville Notebook: Jeremiah Owyang
Shel Israel continues his Twitterville series of posts by interviewing Jeremiah Owyang on the topic of personal brand.

Do You Have the ‘Four As’ To Be a Thought Leader?
Dana Vanden Heuvel writes this guest post on Marketing Prof’s Daily Fix to share the four “A’s” you might need to be a thought leader in your industry.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 01/25/09

in , /by

teaching_sm.jpg

Community Managers Must Deliver ROI: Commandments For Surviving a Recession
Jeremiah Owyang provides sound advice to Community Managers on how to step up their game, provide continuing value and (most importantly) help keep their jobs in these tough economic times.

Are we really ready to move beyond Social Media 101?
Many of us in the PR and Marketing space have been teaching the basics of Social Media for quote some time now. Some might think its time to elevate those teachings to the next level. However, LiveWorld’s social media evangelist Bryan Person shares some incite in this MediaBullseye.com guest post on why that’s not the case and advises those who teach to “keep beating the drum.”

How Lisa Genova used social media to turn a self-published book into a NY Times bestseller
Best selling author David Meerman Scott shares an abbreviated version of fellow writer Lisa Genova’s success in using social media to propel the promotion of her book “Still Alice” all the way to the top of the charts. Her complete success story and many others can be found in David’s latest book entitled “World Wide Rave.”

Podcasters report their top 3 podcasting tips (Part 1 & Part 2)
Marketing consultant Devon Dudgeon shares TONS of podcasting tips in this two part post. The tips were submitted by seasoned podcast veterans around the globe and are aimed at those who have been thinking about getting there own podcast off the ground.

Why blogs matter
“Q: Who reads blogs? A: Journalists”; Shannon Paul delivers another thought provoking post that shows why blogs might just be the ultimate tool in your social media arsenal.

Image Credit (sans modifications): Jade Gordon

Interactive video campaigns begin to emerge

2 Comments/in /by

Back in September Jeremiah Owyang created a post entitled “YouTube Videos Get Interactive: Choose Your Own Adventure” that featured an example of a video that makes use of YouTube’s new annotation functionality. This functionality allows content creators to embed notes, speech bubbles and clickable hotspots into their videos after they have been uploaded to YouTube. While this type of interactivity has been possible with other technologies like Adobe Flash, YouTube is making it extremely easy and accessible for all “YouTuber’s” to integrate into their projects.

Being a social media guy and new media creator, I naturally saw some great potential for using these new features as part of a future client campaign. Coincidentally, the opportunity to do just that came about a few days later for our client TeleMessage and their TeamText campaign – geared toward educating consumers (specifically teens and tweens) about the ability to send text to landline.

The result is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style video dubbed “Jenny’s Dilemma,” in which the viewer can choose from one of three different endings to the main story. The correct outcome features a call to action that directs the viewer to a landing site for additional information related to the campaign.

Other examples that use the new annotation functionality include a trivia question from Val’s Art Diary (as featured in Jeremiah’s post) and a racy (mildly NSFW) “choose your own adventure” campaign for the Samsung Instinct mobile device called “Follow Your Instinct.”

It should be interesting to see how marketers integrate this new YouTube functionality into their campaigns moving forward. We hope that you’ll take a look at our submission to the interactive video genre, and let us know what you think!

Persuasive Picks for the week of 09/01/08

in /by

Podcastin TrendsPodcasting dead or alive? TrendsSpotting marketing indicators
Taly Weiss from Trendspotting.com dives head first into a well researched post about podcasting trends and whether podcasts still provide value as a new media tool.

A List of Social Media Marketing Examples
Peter Kim launched an extremely valuable list of brands that are currently using social media. He invites readers to contribute to this ongoing list via the comments section where he’ll integrate submissions into the main post on a periodic basis.

Making the case for social media in PR
Shannon Paul knocks another one out of the park with this great post on stepping back from the hype of social media tools and getting back to basic communication.

Social Punishment: The “Bozo” Feature
Every once in a while Community Managers need to deal with “troublemakers” within their online communities. Jeremiah Owyang approaches the subject by suggesting the “Bozo” feature as potential solution. Be sure to dive into the comments section for a good discussion on the topic.

A fresh take on the browser
One of the most blogged about topics this week was the release of Chrome, Google’s new web browser. This post on the Google blog started the avalanche. Continue the reading from these Techmeme links.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 07/21/08

in /by

AOL is MeltingFull Text Of AOL Email: XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile And Bluestring To Shut Down
Assets at AOL continue to crumble with the announcement of four product cuts following the recent coverage of cuts across cuts with their blogging properties their blogging properties. Mike Arrington shares the full text of the official email from AOL EVP Kevin Conroy in this post.

Facebook Connect: OpenID Without the Email
Nick O’Neill from the SocialTimes.com blog shares his view on Facebook’s recently announced “Facebook Connect” initiative that was announced at this week’s F8 Facebook Developer’s Conference. Audio of the Mark Zuckerburg Keynote is also available in a separate post.

What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites
The topic of Facebook Connect continues with this great post from Jeremiah Owyang that discusses what this new offering from Facebook might mean to corporations.

What are the five strengths of a Community Manager?
Many of last week’s picks centered around the topic of community. Here’s another good one to add to the bunch written by Mario Sundar, Community Evangelist & Chief Blogger at LinkedIn.

A Guy Walks Into a Bar…
Scott Monty reaches out to the Twitter community in search of answers (punch lines) to the question “How many social media experts does it take to change a lightbulb?” The humorous replies are featured in this post.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 06/09/08

in /by

Talking About Competitors
John Cass, the newly appointed Online Community Manager for Forrester touches on how to talk about your competitors and shares 5 tips from Dharmesh Shah at OnStartups.com.

Ongoing List of Social Media Examples in the Auto and Car Industy
Jeremiah Owyang provides an excellent list of social media case studied revolving around the automobile industry.

Blog Topics for Business to Business Customers
Coming up with a steady stream of topics for your corporate blog is sometimes not an easy task. This can be especially challenging in the B2B space where topics can be rather, well…dull. Chris Brogan help ease the process with several good suggestions.

H&R Block Social Media Programs Success
Jennifer Jones from PodTech interviews Paula Drum, VP of Marketing for H&R Block on their use of social media tools and the success that they’ve had. Be sure to check out all of Jennifer’s other excellent interview podcasts as well.

Must-Read Books for the Social Media Marketing Newcomer
This post on the Ignite Social Media blog touches on 9 “must read” books for those diving into the social media space.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 05/05/08

2 Comments/in /by

How I Increased Page Views on My Forum by 66.7% in a Month
In addition to ProBlogger.com, Darren Rowse also runs Digital-Photography-School.com, a wildly popular digital photography blog. In this post, Darren chronicles his experience in bringing more traffic to his forums by running a prize-based competition. It’s a nice little case-study for those looking for new ways to stimulate activity within their online communities.

Social Media FAQ #5: How Do I Talk to my Executives about Social Media?
Jeremiah Owyang continues his excellent on-going Social Media FAQ series with this post which contains advice on convincing your executive team why social media may be important to your business.

Building Community in the Enterprise
ACDSee Community Manager, Connie Bensen, visits the topic of community in the enterprise by recapping the main points from this week’s Forrester webinar presented by Rob Koplowitz. She provides an excellent summary for those who weren’t able to catch it live.

Make a Professional Podcast on a Minimal Budget
If you’ve considered starting a podcast for your company but have been overwhelmed with the technical aspects, then this post from SocialMediaTrader.com will help ease your anxieties a bit. The whole process is really easier than you would think. Our client Mzinga has been turning out great interview podcasts for a while now. Feel free to check them out at http://www.wearesmarter.com

FaceBook In Reality
I’ll wrap up this week’s set of picks with some humor. If you use Facebook in any capacity, you’ll appreciate the humor in this YouTube video from idiotsofants.com and BBC’s The Wall.

Have a great weekend!

Persuasive Picks for the week of 04/07/08

in /by

Most of this week’s picks are front the first half of the week do to scheduled travel, but I think we definitely have some winners here!

I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day
Mike Arrington from TechCrunch.com (like you didn’t know?!) shares some perspective on the future of social networking on mobile devices. Mike has demoed the future and it could involve an iPhone. Make the jump to read more.

Social Media Networking and ROI: How to Maximize Value and Minimize Cost
Maki from the DoshDosh blog breaks down the hot topics of Social Media measurement and ROI. As most in the field will agree, the returns you’ll get out of networking via social media are not direct and immediate. However, Maki shares some ways to maximize your efficiency.

Forrester Marketing Conference Day 1: Understanding Your Customers Through Engagement
Since endless budgets for attending conferences rarely exist, we can be thankful that folks like Jeremiah create posts like this and share the experience virtually with lots of New Media goodness.

My Interview with three 8th Graders on the Future of Social Media
If you still think that your company doesn’t need to start participating on Social Networks, then take a look at this video clip that Jeff Pulver captured during a Social Media Breakfast in Tel Aviv, Israel. These kids are your future customers and employees!

Going viral with YouTube
Jiannis Sotiropoulos of the Pandemic Blog dives head first into how YouTube differs from other social networks in terms of content submission, friends, popularity and going viral.