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PR Needs to Tell More Stories and Pitch Less

On January 5, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

: Image via Wikipedia

There’s a brewing problem. Reporters are strapped an under increasing pressure to compete with bloggers. This results in reporters writing re-tweetable headlines which are sometimes misleading or stories being written with unchecked facts and inaccuracies. The solution, of course, is good journalism. But until the market sorts out the news business there’s a void that needs to be filled.

In the tech space that’s almost completely being filled by bloggers. Some bloggers are stepping up to fill that gap but most aren’t and don’t want to be burdened with the title: “journalists.”

Remember the whole TechCrunch and Last.fm blog-storm? It was really fascinating to watch. Paul Carr then of the Guardian has a great story on the whole thing and why he thinks TechCrunch got duped. (Funny that he then went to write for TechCrunch.)

The big tech blogs like TechCrunch regularly race to market with sketchy information with an inflammatory headline knowing that Mashable, NextWeb, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, etc will all run follow on posts with even less facts. This results in the 1st article racing up Techmeme, Tweetmeme, trending topics, Digg etc and massive link juice and traffic.
We’ve even started to see traditional media take similar “Digg bait” approaches and as their revenue and staff get even thinner you will see more of it.

The point of Carr’s article is that even if bloggers and media lead with a story they believe is true it has never been easier to dupe them.

When you read TechCrunch (especially Arrington’s) posts about Last.fm or Google buying Twitter or Apple’s iSlate rumors or any other exclusive/leaked story you usually find a line similar to “a source close to the deal said…” That could imply the guy in the office across the hall who saw Google execs on the elevator on their way up. Which happens to be in the direction of Twitter or some other company, therefore Twitter’s being bought by Google. Said informant thinks, “I’ll tell Arrington and be famous, kind of. Or at least maybe Arrington will like me and get me tickets to TechCrunch 50″.

Companies need good journalism as much as democracy does. The problem is that neither blogs or traditional media will provide this at the level companies need (at least not in the short term). The solution is that companies need to tell their own story and not rely on journalists to do it for you. Invite the media to come along but don’t wait for them to catch up.

The idea isn’t so far fetched.

Neil Benson, editorial director of the U.K. Trinity Mirror regionals is calling for newspapers to become PR agencies: “The best of PR agencies are often run by ex-editorial people. People who worked in regional press know what it takes to hit the spot in terms of press releases and they know how to package it. So why don’t regional publishers think about launching an arm’s length PR agency?”

He went on to explain that newspapers could offer SEO, microsites, and video productions services to advertisers. Essentially, certain advertisers could team up with journalists to create sites dedicated to one topic and go beyond the advertorial as we know it

This is one area where PR agencies need to evolve and offer real reporting (they have the skills), but companies can even go so far as to hire their own internal journalists.

Now the purists who read this will be quick to point out the conflict of interest and ethical issues with this approach. I would argue that they are no more compromised that journalists who can’t run a story because a company will pull their advertising.

Companies need to tell their story. Journalists don’t have the time to tell some of the best stories inside companies, both because of access and time. Corporate press sites need to evolve into news sites. (This is something we’ve been working with our clients on see here for a client example.)

I’m not talking about traditional journalism. These new journalists need to be separate from Marketing and PR. These new journalists will be able to do the deep reporting you don’t get from a press release or a marketing campaign. And while you won’t stop the inaccurate stories that flame up out of control, it will give you a way to respond with better reporting.

I would also argue a company that knows it has journalists walking around it’s halls would be less likely to do things that would get them in trouble. While these journalists won’t be writing the scandalous behind the scenes whistle-blowing articles, they need to be free enough to go off message and call a spade a spade.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Will 2010 be the Death of Free and Open?

On November 30, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson

: Image via Wikipedia

Arrington, I’m really sorry, this seriously sucks.

Mike Arrington can’t get a break. His Last startup, before TechCrunch became his full-time gig, Edgio, DeadPooled 2 years ago and now the CrunchPad joins it’s much older sibling in that same grave almost exactly 2 years later.

This is disconcerting to me for a few reasons:

I know how hard it is to lose a startup. It sucks more than anything I’ve gone through.
I really believed Arrington was on to something and was excited to see a content company join the hardware fray.

But what really, really concerns me is what this could be an indicator of.

Open Collaboration

Arrington’s approach with the CrunchPad mirrors very closely the model laid out in the book Collaborative Entrepreneurship. From Amazon:

Collaborative Entrepreneurship: How Communities of Networked Firms Use Continuous Innovation to Create Economic Wealth: Today, the ability of firms to innovate is restricted by barriers both inside the firm and within their existing markets—barriers that produce limited knowledge utilization and incremental innovations. “Collaborative Entrepreneurship” describes how these barriers can be overcome so that shared knowledge can drive continuous, sustained innovation across a network of firms and markets.

The book is very theoretical but prophetic at the same time. I know that the scenarios they lay out in the book won’t come to fruition exactly the way they predict but I do believe they’ll come about in some form.

I loved the blog, hardware crossover Arrington was taking. Hardware is tough. Really, really tough. I always stayed away from business plans that required hardware. Too many hard costs, too many headaches. Arrington’s trials are proof of that.

Cross company collaboration is probably even harder. Even the poster child for open collaboration, Wikipedia seems to be cracking under the pressure:

Free vs IP

What about Cris Anderson and the promise we were given in his book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price? The real irony is that even Chris struggles to reinvent Wired and their business.

I’m also a big fan of Cory Doctorow and his new book Makers which may be more accurate than any non-fiction business book:

The decline and fall of America and the boundless optimism of open source/hacker culture
Brilliant geeks in a garage, are trash-hackers who find inspiration in the growing pile of technical junk
Cheap and easy 3D printing, a cure for obesity and crowd-sourced theme parks

Both Chris and Cory support open/mixed/free (whatever you want to call it) business models. The CrunchPad is the counterpoint to their argument. Greed is the reason we have lawyers and IP laws. It’s a sad reality we have been trying to fight since Gen X started taking corporate jobs.

Content Ownership and Advertising

2010 could be the year that Murdoch pulls his content from Google and hundreds of publishers could follow suit if he’s at all successful. I firmly believe that a publisher should be allowed to do whatever they want with their content but it does move counter to this free and open trend we’ve been living off of.

Hulu’s been great but they are slowly adding more and more ads to their programming, negating half the reason so many of us have flocked to it.

Apple (which made the opposite move Arrington was shooting for, from hardware to content) has recently filed patents for unskippable ads on their devices: Apple Files Patent for Un-skip-able Ads on iPhones, iPods

Even Google, the original purveyors of this free and open movement have been slowly adding more adds to their content to the point that some worry about the lines they may be crossing. Google Experiments With Paid Inclusion & Does “Promoted” Meet FTC Guidelines?

Where’s the Money?

Finally what really worries me is the lack of sustainable revenue from the big social media companies we rely on. Twitter is finally taking the easy fix with advertising and away from their promised premium and value add revenue models.

LinkedIn, Digg, Technorati and Facebook have gotten so huge and taken in so much VC money that the only reasonable exit strategy is an IPO. But none of them have the revenue to support that strategy yet. As this recession plods on and some begin to talk about a possible second dip, despite this “jobless recovery,” You have to wonder what will the big social networks do? How desperate to monetize will they be? Will they be able to deliver on the promise we all bought off on?

Or have the last 5 years been a departure from reality and the fact of the matter is that advertising is the only option and you should never openly collaborate and any collaboration joint venture should only be done with legions of lawyers at your side?

I believe in the open nature of the Internet. I have always believed that open is better than closed. I truly believe that open collaboration is the greatest approach to creating value and economic wealth. But for the first time I have doubts that it’s an unstoppable force.

Murdoch extends WSJ Paywall to iPhone (vator.tv)
Get the “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” Book for Free (bradblogging.com)
An Interview with Retweet.com about Ripping off Tweetmeme.com (newcommbiz.com)
Twitter and Distributed Influence (newcommbiz.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Cory Doctorow • CrunchPad • Digg • Facebook • Google • LinkedIn • Mike Arrington • TechCrunch • Technorati • Wikipedia

Excuse me, News Industry. Why did you matter? I forgot.

On June 4, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

: Image via Wikipedia

I want you to think back over the last decade. First mainstream media had to take part of their sites online to keep up with these crazy portal pages. Then Google came along and scattered their content to the wind. Bringing them more online readers than they knew how to monitize. That’s because they couldn’t figure out how to sell banner ads and most refused to open their sites for free.

Now think back 5 years ago. Most newspapers have torn down their walls. Google’s “stealing” their content (while sending them hundreds of thousands of visitors.Â And they still haven’t figure out how to monitize all that content. But guess who did? Those crazy, angry geeks siting around in their underwear typing HTML into their Web logs. Those geeks were no threat to the journalism industry, even if they were making a few dollars on AdSense (stupid Google).

Fast forward to the start of 2009. The media has now added commenting, sharing widgets and write Digg bait articles. Yet the media industry still can’t monitize that stupid Web traffic and blogs are raising venture capital while newspapers are closing their doors.

Well the newspapers will show them. Tired of playing the bloggers game, they’re taking their content and going home. Rupert is trying to lead a Quixotian quest to rebuild those walls they tore down several years ago.

What do the bloggers do? Up until now they’ve always stayed one step ahead of the traditional media. Not much. They still offer megabytes of great content each day for free. Oh yea and they’re also:

Building mini media empires.
Selling analyst level reports on the industries they cover. (Forget Google, watch out Gartner)
Selling subscriptions for premium content, services and special community features
Holding conferences and award shows.

And, uh, wait, I’m forgetting something. Someone is doing something else….

Oh, yeah. Making freaking sweet looking computers! CrunchPad: The Launch Prototype (Screw Google and Garter, watch out Apple.)

But hey media, news guys, good luck putting up those walls. Why did we want to see what’s on the other side again? I forgot why you mattered.

Print media facing ‘lethal’ drop in advertising (telegraph.co.uk)
Ads and Paywalls won’t save newspapers and magazines (sociallyminded.co.uk)
New CrunchPad Prototype Photos and Video [Crunchpad] (gizmodo.com)
Transparency isn’t about creating trust it’s about creating better content. (newcommbiz.com)
Yahoo wins by going old skool (newcommbiz.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Apple • Blog • Digg • Google • Mass media • search • Search Engines • Twitter

What I’m doing to fight the social media echo chamber

On June 2, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson

: Image via Wikipedia

I think the number one threat to social media is the echo chamber.

Online social media is an amazing thing. One of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it’s a scale free network. This is the phenomena that create viral videos. People, companies or their agencies don’t create viral videos, scale free networks create viral videos. Scale free networks are why once you get to the top it’s infinitely easier to stay on top. This is why when Robert Scoble posts something on FriendFeed it gets dozens of likes and comments (seriously EVERY single thing).

The downside of this attribute is what we call the echo chamber. I don’t have to follow Seth Godin’s blog because so many people will share his most recent post on Twitter or in their Google Reader. I used to not (but I do now) follow TechCrunch because of the same reason. If you’re on FriendFeed you don’t have to follow Robert because someone else in your network will like it and it will show up in your feed.

The great thing about this activity is that it creates a certain layer of human filtering. This is why sites like Digg, Techmeme, Slashdot, Tweetmeme, RSSmeme and others are so useful.

The problem is that it leads to group think. We’re all reading the same blog posts, following the same people ipn Twitter, linking to the same things and drinking the same Kool-Aid. It’s dangerous. It’s this kind of group think that leads really smart people to miss really obvious things (mortgage crisis anyone?).

That is why I try not to share links from the obvious sources, unless I REALLY feel they are worth while. This is why I spend so much time looking for the really good long tail blogs. I try and share posts on Twitter and this blog that most people aren’t talking about. This is why I break up my twitter posts with things like what I’m listening to on Pandora. And while it may not seem like it this is also why I’ve started sharing less stuff on Twitter and trying to write more posts here on my blog. Beyond 140 I can add context. I can expand why I agree or disagree

Media Consumption: Scoble vs Rubel (newcommbiz.com)
What Makes for a Well Balanced Media Diet? (newcommbiz.com)
On Being a Human Filter (newcommbiz.com)
Talk With Me, Not At Me (regulargeek.com)
I Am Your Filter (regulargeek.com)
Forget The Statusphere. How About The Egosystem? (davefleet.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Digg • FriendFeed • Google Reader • Robert Scoble • Seth Godin • TechCrunch • TechMeme • Tweetmeme • Twitter

TIME hates on social networks but has no problem using them

On April 3, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Why is TIME calling Facebook dead? That’s a little premature isn’t it. At first it struck me as a serious case of sour grapes. One thing to note is that the article was published on April 1st but as far as I can tell it’s not an April Fools joke. Another factor that leads me to believe that this is a legitimate rant post is that TIME has a rich history of hating on the Internet.

Facebook Takes a Dive: Why Social Networks Are Bad Businesses – TIME

The business of having online sites with content created by amateurs to be viewed by other amateurs never had a reasonable chance of making money.

This is some serious hatred here. To TIME’s credit, if they’re right and Facebook (along with all free online content business models) fail, they get to stand with completely validated smugness and stick their tounge at everyone. If they’re wrong, they probably won’t be around to take any flack for it.

Now I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for contrarianism but this seems to take it to a whole new level.

The Ultimate Irony

As I got to the end of the article (fortunatley it’s short) I was struck by, what I thought was the ultimate irony.

They may hate social media and it’s free distribution model but they have no problem taking advantage of it. In fact when you do a search for the title of the article (which I did to try and find out if it was an April Fools Day joke) the #1 result is of course the TIME article while #2 & #3 where the Digg and Mixx site submissions of the article. Not only that but you can see from the StumbleUpon extension I use that the TIME article was also submitted to StumbleUpon. Anyone who is familiar with these sites knows that individually they can send hundreds of thousands of visitors and in many cases easily a million+ visitors.

TIME has obviously figured out how to play the social media game to gain traffic. In fact more and more I’m seeing a trend of “Digg Bait” style articles. They’ve even leveraged Digg functionality on their site. This from ReadWriteWeb:

Time, which wanted to show top stories on Digg had a proviso; it wanted to only show content that originated on Time. It was made possible using the Digg widget and according to Buch, extremely effective. “What we’ve found is that this tends to be more popular than even home spun ‘most popular’ widgets.” While he explained that it’s difficult to know why the Digg widget works better, he speculates it may be the sizing of the font used.

Now Facebook is not Digg but they are both free social networks that monetize through advertising. And most of the content shared on Digg is “content created by amateurs to be viewed by other amateurs.” Does this strike anyone else as kind of hypocritical. I don’t mind TIME being Web savvy but someone that attacks the very services they’re using for free strikes me as someone who has a rather high DBQ.

Just sayin’

Why “Social” Works (inquisitr.com)
Can Social Media Really Help You Blog? (streamxy.com)
Digg Launches New Toolbar – Makes Digging and Sharing Easier (readwriteweb.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Digg • Facebook • Mixx • Social media • Social network • StumbleUpon

What Can Corporate Marketing Learn From Digg?

On April 2, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

: Image via Wikipedia

Who doesn’t like cookies?

The ability to share your companies content on social networking sites should be a huge piece of your social media distribution strategy.

Part of the problem is that there are so many options and platforms out there where do you focus your efforts. The VP of Biz Dev at Digg has some great suggestions. You really should read the whole thing but I’ll highlight some key areas and as usual add my own color commentary.

Want Success on Digg? Think Choc Chip Cookies – ReadWriteWeb

Bob Buch, VP of business development for Digg spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today and explained that if you want successful social media integration, you need to think chocolate chip cookies. “Much like social media, choc chip cookies are made up of five key ingredients,” he explained, “and if you want to succeed, you need to know what those ingredients are.”

5 Ingredients for Social Media Success

1. Sharing: If you love something, set it free
2. Integration: Don’t try to do everything yourself
3. People: People who know: ROFLCopter, LMAO, PWND, Noob
4. Platform: One to one is now one to many
5. Authenticity: Stay true to your core competency

While I think the analogy is cute and people like numbered lists, the real gems IMO were the suggestions around content sharing. There are several great examples he shares but here’s my two favorite.

Give Visitors a Customized Experience
He has a great example of how Wired figured out where there traffic was coming from and focused their sharing efforts around those sites. I think this is a great way to learn who your customers really are. Most companies/sites take a shotgun approach trying to be everywhere. By focusing you can be so much more effective (of course that’s true for just about everything).

Automatic Syndication
Butch shares success around Facebook connect. A service I at first dismissed but have more and more been thinking about using. This may have pushed me over the edge.

Don’t take yourself so seriously

On January 26, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

For an industry that’s surrounded by viral videos, Digg, BoingBoing, LOL Cats and Bacon we sure like to take ourselves seriously.

Maybe it comes from years of no one taking us seriously or maybe it’s because we think corporate America (aka the guys with money) won’t want to talk to us unless we’re very severe.

Hanging out with you guys online for the last couple years has taught me that you’re all a lot of fun. Sometimes I think we forget to include that in our work.

So with all the talk about the economic crisis, the thousands of jobs being lost, the Billions of dollars that we’re giving to people who can’t run their business, I just wanted to remind us all to have a little fun along the way.

Image by Rickydavid via Flickr

Khaaaaaan!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Bacon • Boing Boing • Digg • Flickr • Viral video

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PR Needs to Tell More Stories and Pitch Less