August 2008 Archive

Several month old PR Week survey appealed to me in a new way when looked at from an angle of corporate blogging. To take a step back, the piece of research relevant here is the Media Survey 2008 (download pdf) and it focused on the evolving job of a journalist. It had interesting numbers for many questions: yes, journalists go to the company website for research (89%), and yes they use Google (73%), and yes 45% use blogs, 29% are on Facebook, and so on and so on….

One of the more interesting insights however, is the overall change in the nature of the profession and the pace of story output. A journalist mentioned in the study that "the fervent pace kept by bloggers - both amateur and professional - means reporters who have been filing dispatches at the same pace for decades now must work at a speed once reserved for wire correspondents." The traditional outlets introduced their own blogs to create a new content vehicle and to keep up with Gawker, Gizmodo, The Huffington Post, and Co. So perhaps there is a bit of weariness in WSJ’s Health blogger, Scott Hensley’s quote: "We post eight to 10 times a day. We try to have three up by 9am; a half-dozen by noon. ‘When I was writing for print … I wasn’t even thinking about what a possible story would be most days by 10am.’"

As the value of corporate blogs is constantly rehashed, another benefit they create is its place in this environment. Not every corporate development needs a press release and a blog is the perfect format to get that out into the world. Frequency of output is a very important factor here and a blog can do that. One company that is doing this very well is GM. Just check out its GM FastLane Blog and its blog friendly social media newsroom.

Gone are the days when digital PR was a realm of only interactive professional. Now it a standard skill set for a PR professional. With everyone wanting to reach influencers and bloggers specifically online, it is interesting to note that the offline world still has a large influence. Analyzing various spaces it should be said that this is particularly important in the technology and corporate reputation sectors. Looking at a number of influential bloggers in this space it was apparent that large shares of postings were driven by what was happening in the offline world. Many blog postings originated from:

• Pickup of major media stories (that were originally driven by offline PR)
• Offline conference and event attendance and the various contacts that were made face to face (BlogWorld, SOBcon, D Conference, even BlogHer and annual investor meetings)
• Unique access that bloggers received in the offline world such as corporate HQ visit, executive interview, etc…

So moving forward, instead of just jumping into online outreach and relationships, make sure to truly know the bloggers and identify what actually sparks their post writing. It may not be all digital….

There have been some debates online about the value of having online presence "everywhere." If looking for an example for what "being everywhere" means, I suggest looking at the Barack Obama site. One of the callouts on the site lists every possible way to stay in touch with Obama, from the obvious profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to being on category social networks like Eons and MiGente.

So a question emerges: "does it make sense to be ‘everywhere,’ when its possible to just cannibalize traffic to your destination?" The best way to analyze this is to go develop a comprehensive online strategy. This strategy should identify the various touch points and how they are to be used. "Being everywhere" is a great tactic to build awareness, stay connected to your audience and be top of mind, and also show that you are user centered. The destination really functions as the main conversion vehicle and a comprehensive home for all related information.

It’s interesting to note that fifty years ago, there was a similar debate in the sports world. The management of the top-flight English soccer teams felt that television would take away actual game attendance and the direct revenue it provided. It took a long time to change that mindset. Clubs now, of course, are richer than ever because they are accessible from everywhere and by television viewership, the internet, merchandising, sponsorship deals, etc….

Wikipedia has become a hugely influential and highly usable online property. It is consistently in the top 10 web properties in terms of users and gets around 53M unique visitors per month (Comscore). That generates so many page views that even Google started a competing property - Knol. Of course there have been many other topical Wikis started based on this incredible success of Wikipedia. There are Wikis for something as broad as recipes and something as specific as sustainable transportation. It seems that Wikis do well at compiling a mass body of knowledge but lack the social ranking mechanisms that help to bubble up relevant content.

A good example where a wiki just does not seem to function well is the wiki for tourism or WikiTravel. The issue is that it just does not seem to be that useful. Yes, it has basic information on many destinations and what to see, where to eat, stay but the problem is that it is indistinguishable which item is better than the other because of lack of rankings. It is simply a list. A site like TripAdvisor however, and its massive community makes it easy to understand which are the better hotels, restaurants, sites, etc… This is a big negative for any Wiki model which just does not have a built in mechanism for ranking content

Just compare these pages for a destination like Brooklyn, and see where you will find some good ones…

Brooklyn’s restaurants from TripAdvisor

Brooklyn’s restaurants from WikiTravel