Web Ink Now

Free social media ebook and video: New Media and the Air Force

The United States Air Force Public Affairs Agency, Emerging Technology Division just released a new ebook and video about how social media is used in the Air Force. The ebook and video contain excellent information for all organizations and should serve as a blueprint for social media guidelines for those who do not have them.

Ebook
New Media and the Air Force
(Please note that this file is nearly 2MB, so be patient)

Video
Air Force New Media
video on YouTube

For those of you who work in large organizations struggling with social media, please share this with your bosses.

Both the ebook and the video show how Airmen are using social media to stay informed and inform others. Airmen have the ability to communicate and tell the Air Force story better than anyone else. By reaching out with social media tools, they're able to it quickly and in their own voice.

As Colonel Michael G. Caldwell, acting director of public affairs for the United States Air Force told me: "We want 330,000 people to be in Public Affairs."

No blog? Then you need a Google profile

One of the currencies of social media is that when you participate, people find out who you are.

For example, when you leave a comment on someone else's blog post, you can link to your profile on the Web. All the blogging tools have a place where you can leave a virtual calling card – your own web URL where people who read your comment (especially the blogger him or herself) can find out who you are and perhaps contact you.

Most people link to their blog in that comment field.

However, most people don't have a blog. What the heck do you do then?

I've seen many solutions, most very limiting.

1. Leave no URL. (Nobody can find you in this case).

2. Leave a LinkedIn or Facebook profile URL (This has limitations, because people must ask to be your friend in order to see your full profile).

3. Leave a company home page. (This shows your affiliation, but nothing about you personally).

I've found an alternative solution that works very well.

Create a public Google profile for yourself and then use that as the URL that you point people to. You can have a photo, a bio, and contact details. It’s really cool and it is free.

Here is the URL where you sign up.

Here is what my profile looks like.

I chose to make my profile simple because I want people to visit my site or my blog. You can make yours much more detailed if you wish. (See the example on the sign up page.)

There are probably other alternatives to a Google profile (if you know any, please leave a comment on this post.)

People who I have suggested this technique to have found Google profiles to be easy to create and flexible to use.

Once you've got a public profile, use it as your virtual calling card all over the Web. Just one example - link to it from your Amazon review page so the authors of the books you review can see who you are.

When lawyers get in the way of PR

I received a press release via email a few days ago from a well-meaning PR person.

Guess what? I can't write about it because at the bottom of the release is this:

NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission contains confidential information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by any other person is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then destroy the message. Opinions, conclusions, and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of AGENCY X shall be understood to be neither given nor endorsed by AGENCY X. Before opening any attachments please check them for viruses and defects. When addressed to AGENCY X clients, any information contained in this e-mail is subject to the terms and conditions in the governing client contract.

Yikes! The notice at the bottom of the press release says I cannot distribute the press release. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.

Or consider this typical press release from Shell that I found on one of the press release wires. Now, I'm not picking on Shell here, I'm making a general point. I could have chosen any one of a thousand releases for this example.

New Shell $aver Card(SM) Available at Shell-Branded Stations Nationwide

HOUSTON, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Shell Oil Products US launched the Shell Saver Card today, becoming the first gasoline retailer to make an electronic check payment method available to consumers nationally. This latest Shell payment option provides consumers with a convenient way to pay for purchases with a direct link to a checking account and savings on each gallon of fuel pumped at Shell stations.

The body of the press release has several other paragraphs and contains 361 words. It is a well-written new product release. But then the lawyers get involved and add a 519 word "Disclaimer statement" (sometimes called safe harbor). The legal crap is much more lengthy than the news and includes minute definitions of things that aren’t even in the release such as these two sentences:

Forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements concerning the potential exposure of Royal Dutch Shell to market risks and statements expressing management's expectations, beliefs, estimates, forecasts, projections and assumptions. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phrases such as "anticipate", "believe", "could", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "objectives", "outlook", "probably", "project", "will", "seek", "target", "risks", "goals", "should" and similar terms and phrases.

Yikes! By including these statements, the press release says don’t believe a word we’re saying. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.

Over the holiday break I read a great book by David Henderson called The Media Savvy Leader. David talks a lot about what he calls "bad habits" around these sorts of disclosures. David says that the legal people include this sort of language so the company can't be accused of lying. That's a terrible strategy if you want journalists to believe you! David suggests: "Always tell the truth and you won’t need to hide behind an attorney or safe harbor."

Question to PR people: Have you ever had a lawyer ask you to review a contract in order to remove the jargon and legal gobbledygook? I never have. So why does it happen the other way?

I was fortunate when I was VP of corporate communications for several NASDAQ publicly traded companies (before I escaped the corporate world in 2002). I had an understanding with the lawyers and we only put the safe harbor in the quarterly financial releases, but not the others. I'd recommend that you come to an understanding with your legal department and do the same.

For more on this subject, check out David's book The Media Savvy Leader. It is a terrific book because David has been a success both as a journalist and as a media-relations practitioner. He is an Emmy Award-winning former CBS network news correspondent so he knows what it is like to be a working journalist. And as a media-relations advisor and strategist, he has been responsible for such stunning successes as generating massive national media attention on little Branson, MO. And Henderson knows the online world. He writes a terrific blog and knows how online communications fits into the mix.

Gartner fails miserably in product test, immediate action required

UPDATE 1: About six hours after this post, Andrew Frank commented (see below) and also clarified on his blog in a post This is Not a Product Test. Thank you Andrew.

UPDATE 2: The day after this post, Andrew Frank posted The Watchdogs List which aggregated the responses from the two Gartner blogs in order that they were received. This is a welcome and appropriate followup to my blog post below. Once again. thank you Andrew.

++++++++++++

ORIGINAL POST:
Andrew Frank, a Research VP at Gartner "the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company" conducted an interesting experiment in a blog post on October 2 called Which Social Media Monitors Eat Their Own Dog Food?

Unfortunately the experiment went terribly awry and Gartner did nothing about it. I find this behavior by a research firm appalling and misleading and completely counter to the sorts of things that they advise clients. In fact, I think given the post in question, Gartner should be required to issue a formal apology.

Frank issued a challenge to firms that monitor social media by including the names of some companies in the space in a blog post. The test was to see who noticed and you told Frank by leaving a comment.

The companies included 1st2c, Biz360, BrandIntel, BuzzLogic, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, CIC, Clarabridge, Collective Intellect, Converseon, CoreX Technologies, Crawdad Technologies, CSC NameProtect, CustomScoop, TNS Cymfony, Echo Research, Envisional, Factiva, Kaava, Market Sentinel, MotiveQuest, Networked Insights, New Media Strategies, Onalytica, Opinmind, Popularmedia, Radian6 Technologies, RelevantNoise, ScoutLabs, SentiMetrix, Techrigy, Trackur, Umbria, Unbound Technologies, Visible Technologies, Waggener Edstrom Narrative Network

So far so good. It’s sort of clever actually.

However the blog comments that were a part of the Gartner blog system made this a terribly flawed experiment. Several people’s comments did not appear and they had to resend. One person commented within 24 hours and that comment never appeared. It is quite likely that some people commented and their comment never appeared at all.

Here are some of the comments that led me to write this post:

Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6 said: "Hi Andrew, We are listening. Didn't see my earlier comment appear on your post so trying again."

Andy Beal of Trackur.com said: "Unfortunately, I see all and hear all. Nice test! **Either you need a better confirmation system, or my last comment vanished. Feel free to delete this one if needed. **"

Alecia O'Brien of dna13 said: "We are in fact listening (and have been..). We posted a comment several days ago but I guess comments are being moderated?"

At the New Marketing Summit #NMS08 yesterday, I had an opportunity to speak with several of the companies in this experiment. Many were, excuse my language, ROYALLY PISSED OFF.

One person said that they reached out to Gartner through the blog about the issue and got an email from Tom Kobak, Communications Director of Gartner's Product Platforms Group who said: "Thanks for your email to Site Feedback about your comments on the Social Media Monitoring on one of the Gartner blogs. I have passed on to the appropriate person here to take care of, so should be fixed shortly. Sorry for any problems, and please let me know if you have any questions." Interestingly, Kobak's email signature line included this: "Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day."

Okay, so here is why this is an appalling situation that Garner must make right:

1. Gartner is an analyst firm. Clients trust them to make decisions on technology. In this case, clients may make actual purchase decisions based on this flawed post.
2. In this post, Gartner was testing media monitoring company speed of response to a post. They were TESTING PRODUCTS on the blog but the test was ridiculously flawed. (The test implies that when you are quick to respond, you are better, yet some people were unable to respond).
3. The flaw was pointed out yet Gartner did nothing about it.
4. The vendors in question would probably be too timid to call Gartner out on this for fear of retribution in the form of bad product reviews.

Here's another test. How long will it take Gartner to respond to this?

Learning from the 3M Post-It Note debacle: Social media ethics defined

One of the most amazing things about the Web is that when an idea takes off on the Web, it can propel a brand to fame and fortune. Marketers particularly love when this happens to a product without their influence. There's no better way to get your product out there than to have people talking about it via word-of-mouse. Think iPhone. Remember Mentos and Diet Coke Geysers?

I call it a World Wide Rave.

However, when companies don’t understand social media or those that hide behind legal eagles and public relations experts frequently get tripped up. Then people talk. A lot. And they say lots of unkind things about your brand.

I call that a World Wide Rant.

Consider the 3M Post-It note debacle. Dozens of blogs have covered this in the past few weeks and I had thought it was common knowledge so I had held off writing about it. However, when I mentioned it in a presentation yesterday, only a tiny percentage of people were aware, so here are the basics:

Scott Ableman and some colleagues strategically placed 14,000 3M Post-It Notes onto a co-worker's Jaguar. The photos they took became a phenomenon with hundreds of thousands of people looking at the photos he posted on Flickr. I have a few below, but you can see them all on Ableman's Flickr page.

Any marketer would be thrilled at this. 3M obviously was, because of what happened next, but instead of celebrating Ableman's cool idea and giving him credit, they messed up.

Ableman writes: "After all the completely free publicity we generated for the folks from 3M Post-Its, they contacted me asking if they could use these photos on their back-to-school store merchandising this summer. When I asked what their budget was, they wrote back and said they didn't want to pay to use the photos. Instead, they copied what we'd done, took their own photos, and used them to create a national marketing campaign. So if you saw this in a store, you saw a copy created by 3M."

According to Melanie Phung in her post 3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar, the amount of money we're talking is a measly thousand bucks or so.

Here is the 3M copycat campaign, again courtesy of Ableman's Flickr page.

Take a look at all the bloggers with negative posts about the 3M behavior. Yikes. I wouldn't want to be a marketer at 3M right now.

Contrast that to what Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for Perfetti Van Melle USA, makers of Mentos did. They immediately linked to the original, famous video with the Mentos and Diet Coke geysers from the official Mentos site. When I spoke with Healey, he told me that he contacted the guys who made the video and offered the company’s support. "When they appeared on Late Night with David Letterman and The Today Show, we were there," he says.

You need t be social media aware if you want to propel a World Wide Rave and to prevent a World Wide Rant. Here are some ideas.

David Meerman Scott's Social Media Guidelines:

1. Transparency
–Never pretend to be someone you are not

2. Privacy
–Unless given permission, don’t blog about something disclosed to you

3. Disclosure
–Disclose anything people might consider a conflict of interest

4. Truthfulness
–Don’t lie

5. Credit
–Give credit to bloggers (and other sources) whose material you have used in your blog

(Number 5 is the one 3M violated).

NY Islanders Blog Box - a bold move into social media

In an environment where many organizations are afraid of social media, consider the bold move made by the New York Islanders. The team created what they call the "blog box," providing press credentials for bloggers to attend select games. Bloggers receive a set of game notes just like those provided to regular beat reporters and broadcasters from newspaper and TV. The bloggers have a special section to sit for games, have access to team practices, and opportunities to interview players and coaches after games.

This is a terrific example of how a smart organization cultivates and encourages participation in social media.

The Islanders Blog Box rules are simple: "The NYI Blog Box will be your open forum. From start to finish, you'll be in control. All we ask is for the chosen bloggers to act respectfully in the restricted media areas and keep all critiques in good taste."

The blog box program was started at the beginning of the 2007-2008 season and appeared to be a first for a major professional sports team. The program continues with the upcoming season. About a dozen bloggers were chosen for the credentials last season and the team links to their blogs from its site.

Contrast what the Islanders have done to the vast majority of organizations. I've found that most communicators are scared to death of bloggers. Executives frequently ask me: "What if they say something negative?" PR people say: "These aren't real journalists. Why should we care about a bunch of geeks in their pajamas?"

Guess what? Bloggers like Frank Trovato are already blogging about the Islanders! Bloggers are likely already talking about your organization too. Why not cultivate a relationship?

Frank says: "My goals for this blog are to voice not only my opinions, but the opinions of so many Islander fans that never get the chance to get their opinions heard because of the lack of forums available to us in the media. The Islanders organization continue to provide the fans the opportunity to speak out and be vocal and no matter what our opinions are seem to really listen and care what we think."

What can your organization do to work with bloggers (and podcasters / vodcasters too)? Can you provide access to your organization like the Islanders have? Can you include bloggers in your press conferences? Does it make sense to schedule interviews with your executives for bloggers? How about making bloggers part of your product beta tests? These are just a few ideas, maybe you have more.

Disclosure: Last week I spent half a day with a group of marketers and communicators from the New York Islanders to discuss the new rules of marketing & PR. In the photo, I’m the dude with the black striped shirt (note a stack of my books behind my head). Josh Bernstein, vice president of communications for the Islanders is in a coat and tie. (Thanks Josh!)

The dumbest Public Relations person in the world?

Readers of this blog know that I get hundreds of unsolicited press releases and PR pitches every week. I'm on a bunch of lists because of this blog, my books, and the magazines I write for. Ugh.

I've said before that almost all the crap I get from PR agencies is spam: A broadcast email message sent to a huge number of journalists with the hope that some poor sucker on deadline and will give in and write.

- No, I do not want to buy Viag*ra.

- No, I do not care one bit about the press release announcing version 3.1 (beta) of your flexible, scalable, mission-critical, next generation product.

- No I do not want to share in the $20,000,000 (twenty million US dollars only) that your now dead husband, the former oil minister of Nigeria, had stashed away.

- No, I will not talk to the CEO of your client who has graciously made time next Thursday to speak to reporters about the company’s new initiatives in the dog food business.

[Editorial note: If you have something to say to me personally, great. Please send it. My email is public. You can also reach me on Facebook or Twitter. I do write about things sent to me in my books and on this blog. But it needs to be an idea that you send just to me. Please don’t spam me.]

OK, so let's get to what may be the dumbest PR person in the world...

Yesterday I get a press release sent via email. It's typical – some technology product that is so obscure and inconsequential that nobody, not even Geekster Weekly News would care about.

1. The subject line of the email reads: "News Release: [XYZ Company] enhances line of [blah blah]"

2. The email starts out: "[XYZ Company] is pleased to announce…"

3. Then there is a bunch of jargon-laden, hype-driven nonsense.

4. The sender then says: "Feel free to contact me if you would like more information or images to supplement this story."

5. Then the entire poorly written, gobbledygook-filled press release is pasted into the email.

So far, the release follows the standard (but ineffective) old-school PR agency playbook.

But then this is at the end of the email:

"PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL- WITHOUT PREJUDICE. Confidentiality Message. This e-mail message is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee. Any other person is strictly prohibited from disclosing, distributing or reproducing it. If the addressee cannot be reached or is unknown to you, please inform the sender by return e-mail immediately and delete this e-mail message and destroy all copies. Thank you."

Holy cow!!

Here's some PR spam that has obviously been sent to thousands of journalists (because I got it and I have never once written about this stuff I know it is spam). But the sender says that the recipient of the spam email cannot disclose it. Huh?

You invade my email box with your crap.

You send an identical message to thousands of others.

You want me to write about your stuff.

Then you say that I cannot disclose the information because it is confidential and sent just to me?

WTF?

Top ten PR tips for small businesses

Last week I participated on a call with John Jantsch who asked me to share my top ten PR tips for small businesses with his audience. John is the author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide and he writes the very popular Duct Tape Marketing blog.

I had to take the call from my room in the Beverly Hilton because I was speaking at The Milken Institute Global Conference. OK, I'll admit that I didn't prepare for the call (sorry John) and just banged out ten tips a few minutes before we spoke.

After the call, I realized that sometimes there is value to top-of-mind ideas. Nuggets of value may be lost when you obsess over getting every detail perfect. So I thought I'd share the list with you. No, it is not comprehensive - given time I would choose different things for the list and re-order what's here:

1. The old ways to get noticed were to buy expensive advertising and beg the media to write about you and your products. The best way to get noticed today is to publish great content online.

2. Don't talk about what your products and services do. Instead talk about how you solve problems for your customers.

3. Be enthusiastic and have fun. People want to do business with people they like.

4. Don't rely on spamming the media with your press releases and PR pitches.

5. Use press releases to reach buyers directly.

6. Comment on blogs, forums and chat rooms (but don't talk about your products and services).

7. Read the popular books in your market and write a review on Amazon. Use your real name and affiliation.

8. Shoot a short video and put it up onto YouTube

9. Know what search terms people are using to find products and services like yours and create content that search engines will reward with high search engine rankings.

10. Don't be egotistical. Nobody cares about you and your products. Your buyers care about themselves and solving their problems.

Al Gore: PR agent for planet earth

Al Gore was on 60 Minutes last night and I was struck with how successful he is in the role of Public Relations.

(Please note: This is not a political blog. I am not commenting on presidential politics or on the politics of global warming. This is commentary on Gore as a communicator.)

PR and marketing professionals should look to Gore as an important case study on how to do things right. Here are my top-of-mind thoughts:

1. Al Gore has successful communicated a powerful idea, that "Global Warming is the greatest challenge facing our time." He doesn't talk about his products -- books and movie -- instead he communicates powerful ideas. He knows exactly what he wants his buyer personas to believe.

2. Gore pays attention to buyer personas and he tailors his presentations accordingly. For example, when he talks to evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible.

3. Gore is persistent, building his ideas over time. When he first started talking about Global Warming years ago, very few people were interested. He kept at it, speaking to hundreds of groups and building the buzz.

4. Gore understands how to use the media to help deliver his information. In practically every interview I've seen with him, Gore talks about climate change. To use an old PR term, he is "on message." Even when reporters draw him into other discussions, like who he supports for President, he brings the conversation back to what is important to him.

5. Gore understands how to use the Web. He has an attractive, content rich Web site and he is a blogger.

6. He is the undisputed thought leader when it comes to climate change and he delivers his ideas through various media including online, print (his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We can do about it), and video (the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.)

7. He knows how to deliver compelling live presentations.

8. Gore understands global communications. An Inconvenient Truth been translated into 27 languages, and he delivers speeches all over the planet.

9. Like many successful PR pros, Gore knows that sometimes advertising is important in an overall communications campaign. He is using the profits from his books and documentary as well has his Nobel prize award to kick off a $300 million advertising campaign to raise awareness about climate change. (You should start seeing TV ads soon.)

10. Awards programs, another PR tool, are part of his work. You can't do much better than an Oscar and a Nobel. (An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2006, and Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for the "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." And when he wins an award. Gore talks again about his powerful idea because he know the world's media is paying attention.

Al Gore, PR Agent for Planet Earth.

PR and Marketing pros can learn from his work. I certainly have.

When reaching out to bloggers, don't ask for them to write about you!

Lately I've been getting dozens of pitches a week from PR people who want me to write about their stuff on this blog. Most of the pitches are just spam, with the PR types using the exact same techniques that they have used with journalists for years.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. That's what PR people do to bloggers now. And then at the end of their email they basically say: "please write about me."

Here are portions of actual emails I've received recently. (I've paraphrased or modified to remove the identity of the people who contacted me).

"Would [this news] be something you are interested in covering? If so, when would be the first time you could publish something on it?"

"Are you going to be able to post something about...? I can send you suggested copy."

"Can I send you [the new book] so you can review it on your blog?"

(It's not just me. Other bloggers I've spoken with have the same problem with PR people.)

Here's the thing. Bloggers are not the same as journalists. We don't have editors telling us what to do. We write about what interests us and we are always on the lookout for things to share. But it is not our job to write about you and your stuff.

Here is an important point missed by virtually everyone - bloggers have other identities and can help you in other ways:

> Would you be happy if I talked about your stuff in front of the 20,000 people I speak to at conferences and events per year?

> Would you like to see your stuff profiled in my next ebook? (The last one has been downloaded 100,000 times in three months).

> Want to be in my next dead tree book?

> How about if I wrote about it in one of the magazines I write for?

> What if I mention your company the next time I am on the phone with The Wall Street Journal?

> Or perhaps I could write something in one of the other blogs I contribute to such as The Tuned In blog?

> What about a tweet on something you did?

It's OK to share things with a blogger that you feel they might be interested in. Just don't spam them with broadcast pitches and whatever you do, don't ask for coverage. We all know why you contacted us -- don't belittle the information you send and embarrass yourself by begging.

Want the good news? I'm always looking for things that are of interest to me! I'm happy to have you send stuff my way. (Other bloggers are too). But don't ask me to write about it on this blog. And don't send me the same pitch that you sent to dozens of others.

Thanks for reading this far! Here's bonus information for alert readers like you. I am currently looking for interesting examples of online viral marketing for possible use in an upcoming hardcover book I am writing that will come out in 2009. If you have a great example of reaching people online, go ahead and send it to me via email. Hey, maybe I'll even write about it on this blog too.