Embargoes – Valid in the Brave New World of PR?

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Recently, I saw CenterNetworks tweet about broken embargoes and Allen wrote a follow up post about his views on embargoes.  This raises an interesting question about whether or not embargoes are still valid in this new world of instantaneous news and the desire to scoop your fellow bloggers and traditional media. 

 Even before blogs, you always risked the possibility of a reporter breaking your embargo. Heck, this happened to me when I worked with a reputable national business outlet before my client launched at a conference. The article appeared on the Sunday before the conference began and also mentioned a couple of other companies.  

 The saving grace? Reporters were still interested in learning more about the company and technology. And there were several high-quality articles written about the company. 

 In the end, I believe embargoes are still valid. The question isn’t should you have an embargo or not but rather how you go about securing and managing embargoes.  

Considering an Exclusive to One Outlet – Depending on your news and objectives, it may be worthwhile to give one media outlet an exclusive on the news. Usually, if the news is big enough for a top-level reporter/blogger to honor an embargo for an exclusive, other reporters/blogs will still cover your news. 

 Use Your Common Sense – If a reporter or blogger has consistently broken an embargo, it’s most likely that that they won’t honor an embargo. Still brief the person on your news, but schedule the briefing for the day of your announcement, not before. If the briefing is early enough, then they still have time to write up a brief for online publication. 

Not All News Require an Embargo – I think we tend to fall into the habit of trying to have embargoes for all press releases. This just won’t work. If you’re going to require an embargo, make sure the news is worthy of one.

 Be Consistent with Embargoes – As Allen highlighted in his post, he “broke” his embargo because he noticed the news on the company website. If you’re going to have an embargo, be consistent on when information gets updated to a corporate website, blog, or social network, as well as distributed on the wire. If it happens often, reporters/bloggers will begin assuming it’s ok to post things early.   

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: December 14, 2022

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Better late than never – here is this week’s of interesting articles. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed:  

 What Consumers Really Use Media – Via KD Paine’s blog, I saw this tidbit about Ketchum’s new survey. The survey highlights where consumers turn to for information and advice. Here’s the gist of the results: “Despite the strong evidence that friends, family and experts play a key role in influencing decisions, only 24 percent of communicators report having a word-of-mouth program in place.” 

 Refresher Course for Blogging – Robin Good posts this primer from Joshua Porter. Joshua provides his nine tips for blogging. As communicators/practitioners/marketers, I think it’s key to understand how bloggers are constantly seeking to improve their blogs. And personally, I liked Joshua’s tips! 

 To Astroturf, Is to Be? – Now is Gone is fast becoming one of my favorite PR related blogs. In this post, Ike highlights that astroturfing is just part of our human DNA. In the great words of the Borg “Resistance is futile” – or is it?  

 Take a Community to Build a Social Network – Toby Bloomberg shares 12 tips for creating a social networking community. Very solid tips for any company wanting to create a community.  

 The Great Twitter Experiment – As many may have heard by now, Jeremiah Owyang started an interesting experiment earlier this week. Jeremiah’s twitter post helped many people find each other, including yours truly. Check out my post about this as well. 

 When Blogging Isn’t for Everyone – This comes courtesy of the Influential Interactive Marketing blog. Seems like Scott Adams of Dilbert fame is realizing that a blog may not be the best outlet for achieving his goals. In this case, Adams had some goals for his blog. As Rohit states: “Free or not free, if your blog ends up having a different voice than what your audience expects, then you may need to come to a similar realization about your blog.”  

 Social Media in China – Da Jia Hao! (Hello Everyone!) – I will always have a soft spot for China and Taiwan. Buzz Bin brings us an interview with Debbie Weil and the growth of social media in China. Don’t underestimate China. Just because the media and information is supervised doesn’t mean it will curtail participation by individuals. People have learned to adapt within the unsaid rules of the culture.  

 An Evolved CMO –  I found this interesting CMO research from Forrester interesting as it may help to understand what a CMO’s ultimate goal is. And heck, maybe we can help with this as well!  

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Getting People to Tweet to Your Tune

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I will probably not be the first or last person to blog about this interesting experiment that Jeremiah Owyang initiated today. Check out the original post about conversations shifting to Twitter. 

 In a post, he invited people to leave their Twitter link in the comments to increase more introductions in the community. 

 At the time of this writing, there were over 160 200 comments and on Techmeme. I’ve only reviewed maybe 40 of the comments so far.  

 My main problem had been how to find people to follow. By listing my Twitter account in the comments, I have been able to increase the number of people I’m following and seen more people following me. Don’t worry – I will try to add everyone who is following me tonight as work is getting in the way. 

In the end, experiments like this are demonstrating the power of Twitter and other new tools that facilitate conversations.

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PR Relationships:Update on Online Reputation

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OK – I previously wrote about how to manage my many online personalities here and here.  Since those posts, I’ve reversed my previous position about my online reputation. The heart of it is managing relationships through the tools available to me.

In the end, PR is about relationships. How do you build, nurture and maintain them. However, it is challenging with the nature of PR – reporters moves, accounts change and an unending cycle of new account folks.

I read recently that the average number of jobs that today’s workers will have throughout their lifetime is about 12-14! With that type of churn, you’re expecting only a person to be in their current job an average of less than 2 years. Developing the relationships that are key to our industry require a long-term, patient approach.

What are the tools that enable me to identify, develop and maintain these contacts? I now have four ways for managing these online relationships:

1. Facebook – Despite my previous email about keeping my online reputation to a minimum, I realized that Facebook is another avenue for connecting with colleagues and industry contacts. By friending people, I can subscribe to a RSS feed to keep up to date on what’s happening. I still need to learn more about Facebook, but I’m starting to understand how Facebook differs from LinkedIn. Friend me and I’ll friend you back.

2. LinkedIn – I still use LinkedIn more for business contacts as I’ve had this account the longest. LinkedIn’s strength is when you’re looking for a job or for seeking advice from peers. I use LinkedIn Answers quite a bit for a professional perspectives. View My LinkedIn Profile

3. Twitter – I lost wrote that Twitter is changing how news/information is being dissemated. I just started getting into Twitter via Jeremiah Owyang. In fact, I responded to some questions about my company’s solutions as Jeremiah and CenterNetworks were viewing a webcast. Like Facebook, I’m realizing that Twitter is an important tool for following trends, competitors and my own company. Follow me on Twitter and I’ll follow you. 

4. Personal blog – And of course this blog has enabled me to make good relationships. By linking to posts and commenting on other blogs, I’ve developed new relationships that wouldn’t have been possible. Whether a corporate or personal blog, I strongly believe that a blog is key if you want to engage in “blogger” relations. It demonstrates that you’re contributing and spending the time to understand the community.

Are there other ways that you manage your online relationships? Let me know.

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PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: December 6

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Here is this week’s of interesting articles. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed:  

 Online Video Kill the TV Star –Blip.TV interviews Vivian Schiller, general manager of the NYTimes.com about the differences between online and TV video. To paraphrase that iconic song, “will online video kill the TV star?” 

 Or Did ROI Kill Marketing? – Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Tech makes a good point about ROI. His point is, if everything is measured against an ROI, then there are probably some campaigns/initiatives that wouldn’t be done because it wasn’t measurable. 

 Does the Long Tail Work for PR? – Now Is Gone does a great job at highlighting the Long Tail for PR.  I’m in the middle of reading the book so this posting will help me to position PR/marketing as I read through the book. Also included as part of my 2008 trends piece.  

 WPP Lands a Big Whale – Dell selected WPP to create an integrated marketing agency that will serve Dell’s business over the next three years.  It’ll be interesting to see how WPP organizes this new entity before March 2008. Will key individuals throughout the WPP group be hand picked to lead the charge? Will smaller (less profitable?) agencies be merged together to create this new agency with instant staff? Or will WPP create an entirely new entity and poach talent from the competition? Only time will tell. 

 Social Media Reaches Into Your Lives – I’ve started reading the Lonely Marketer, which provides ideas for small business marketers. In this post, he writes about how social media can be used to find target customers, thereby increasing touchpoints for increased engagement/participation.  

 Video’s Political Influence? – Granite Slate posted an article about how KD Paine & Partners is measuring the impact of online videos on a candidate’s influence and surge in the media. This is an interesting concept and would love to see how accurate this is as the caucuses approach. I could envision this having a larger impact on younger people who normally may not go to the polls to take action and participate. And isn’t that what it’s all about in the end?? 

 Bribes Aren’t Conversation Starters – Mike Volpe of Small Business Hub highlights how Vocus tried to follow up on a “sales lead” from a white paper download. Love the cookie idea, but no connection to the value that Vocus provides to Mike’s company. As Mike pointed out, you need to start a conversation with the person which can be started via phone follow up or email with links to valuable information. Provide value, not tchokes. 

 Note to NYT – Keep up with the times… – Read Kate Swisher’s post on BoomTown about a recent speech by Bill Keller of the New York Times. Keller bashes on bloggers and the quality of reporting. Does this mean I should stop reading the Bits blog? The issue isn’t about quality of reporting but how blogging augments the information flow out there. You can’t tell me that all “traditional” media have excellent standards. Keep up with the times Mr. Keller. 

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Let the 2008 Trend Lists Begin

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It’s that time of year when reporters, bloggers and companies take out their crystal ball to predict trends for 2008. Here are my top three trends that will impact the PR industry:

1.   Let a 100 Blogomerates Bloom: With the relaunch of Industry Standard (I believe as a blog) and the popularity of GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch, I envision more blogomerates gaining prominence and influence on the media landscape. “Traditional media” have already started creating blogs in specific topic areas but this will need to branch out more in terms of open comment policies and having dedicated bloggers versus reporters who blog. 

2.       Social Media Connections: I envision savvy PR departments/agencies leveraging social media networks to keep key reporters, bloggers, analysts and other influencers up to date on announcements. Facebook is probably the best default for this as you can maintain the invites and funnel interesting tidbits related to a specific industry/company for story ideas. Will news be broken via Facebook or other similar tool, that will be interesting to see. 

3.       Long Tail PR: Chris Anderson described the concept of the Long Tail and Now Is Gone did a great review of this for PR. The question is how does this truly impact PR? Top media coverage now extends from traditional media (i.e. WSJ, BusinessWeek, etc.) to top bloggers (i.g. GigaOm, TechCrunch, Read/Write, etc.). As PR has the opportunity to manage social media relationships, then how do you balance and measure the impact of “long tail” relations will be key in 2008. 

Tom Pick of Web Market Central also provided me with his predictions for 2008. My husband would be happy with number 4:

1. The social networking space will begin to implode. There are far too many players currently competing for too few eyeballs. The biggest and strongest (e.g. Digg, MySpace, FaceBook) will survive as general purpose social sites, but smaller players will need to specialize in order to remain viable. Specialization will revolve around affinity groups and demographics.

2. As a follow-on to prediction #1, businesses (at least a few forward-thinking ones) will begin to figure out how to capitalize on the popularity of social networks. It’s not about running ads on YouTube, it’s about participation: if a CEO or anyone else can bring value to a particular community (e.g. through great content and tags, and spending the time for back-and-forth dialog that adds value), then that person’s company and product/service will benefit from indirect association with that expertise.

3. PR professionals will reach out to bloggers in different ways, beyond just pitching press releases. For example, the blog community can bring value as – pardon the language, but it’s the clearest way to say this – bullsh*t detectors, as in “we think we’ve got something really hot on our hands here. We’d like to make this claim. Will that stand up to scrutiny?” and then let the dialog of the blog help determine the answer.

4. Realizing that none of its teams has a prayer of beating New England in the Super Bowl, the NFC sends its All-Pro team to Arizona. The Patriots still win by three touchdowns.

Here are links to other Top Trends for 2008:

1. Top Marketing Trends via CRM Blog
2. Jon Fine of Business Week via blip.tv
3. Consumer Internet Trends via VentureBeat
4. The Year of Business Networking from Read/Write Web
5. What’s Hot or Not PRSA Panel with top reporters: Wall Street Journal‘s Kara Swisher and Don Clark; Business Week‘s Rob Hof; Forbes‘ Victoria Murphy Barrett; and Scobleizer‘s Robert Scoble. Ann Winblad of venture capital firm Hummer Winblad moderating.
6. BtoB’s “2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans” survey
7. 2008 IT trends from IDG 
8. Year of LinkedIn from Anne Zelenka of GigaOm  – Personal comment – this truly depends how LinkedIn maneuvers to “catch-up” to the other social networks. Advantage – seen by most as a professional site. Disadvantage – first move advantage taken over by Facebook and slow response to changes for the site.
9. O’Reilly’s 2008 Stories they would like to see
10. WebWorkerDaily’s 2008 Predictions
11. AdAge came out with some interesting 2008 trends: marketers & micro trends, another interesting list, and CMO issues
12. David Armano states that 2008 will be the Year of Mobile – what does this mean for PR and marketing opportunities?
13. Micropersuasion’s Digital Trends for 2008 – Part I – this is just the first of several that will be posted, so tune in to the Micropersuasion blog for updates.
14. Interesting SaaS Trends to watch for 2008

15. BtoB Magazine presents their 2008 Trends for Email Marketing – By the way, my company actually did point 4 for a client =)

     

16. An Eentrepreneur’s US Tech Trends for 2008 – note – this is via VentureBeat and written by Bernard Moon.

     

17. GigaOm Panel Discussion with Dan Farber and Rafe Needleman about 2008 Tech Trends (video)

     

18. Jeremiah Owyang interviews Guy Kawasaki about his predictions for marketing and tech in 2008. Interesting point, Guy says 2008 will be key for marketers. Demonstrating key value of programs is important for programs.
19. B.L. Ochman’s 2008 Marketing Trends – personally, I think privacy has been an issue. It just comes back every few years depending on the technological landscape.

20. Judith Hurwitz provides her 2008 Tech Trends

     

21. MediaPost provides insight for Media Trends for 2008.

     

22. Merril Lynch Internet Trends 2008

     

23. Raghav Gupta’s 2008 Trends and Themes to Watch via GigaOm

     

24. John Battelle’s 2008 Predictions – hmmm, I’m actually curious to see if these company predictions come true. I’m wondering if Microsoft can regain that magic and if Yahoo! can make the turnaround happen.

     

25. George Dearing writes his trends for enterprise content management (ECM) in InformationWeek.Adding this because has tangential relevancy to my current company. I’m curious to hear more about platform-as-a-service.

     

     

 Am I missing any compilations? Do you have any recommendations of other trends for 2008? Let me know in the comments.

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PR’s role in new media podcast

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Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology interviewed me a few weeks ago on how new media is impacting PR. Check out the podcast here. Even in these short few weeks, I’ve learned so much more from everyone, such as Jeremiah Owyang, Todd Defren, CK, Mack Collier and others. Update: Bad me, I forgot Tom Pick!

 Let me know what you think of the podcast.

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