Archive for Liz Caradonna

PR Nonsense Has Moved

May 21, 2009 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna

Our new home is:

http://prnonsense.marchpr.com

Please update bookmarks accordingly. Looking forward to seeing you there!

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In Defense of Ghost-Tweeting… with Caveats

May 18, 2009 at 2:06 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , , ,

Friday’s PR Week features an op-ed by Amy Dean titled “Five reasons why ghost Tweeting will come back to haunt you” [subscription required]. Dean makes a reasonable case against letting someone else use Twitter to speak for you and your brand: it’s misleading to customers, it destroys credibility with reporters, and it can cause you to lose followers in an instant.

But the heart of the issue is here:

Twitter is a new opportunity to have an engaging, ongoing dialogue with customers that breeds collaboration that leads to enhanced customer satisfaction. But that can only happen if there is an honest exchange.

There are lots of reasons it makes sense to put someone else in charge of maintaining your presence online – a ghost-tweeter may have more social media expertise than you do, an especially engaging writing style, or the superb organizational skills it takes to maintain a dialogue with your followers. This is certainly not a case for lying – if you’re going to have someone else tweet on your behalf, you’d better be ready to be completely transparent about that (see @RyanSeacrest for a great demonstration of transparency).

But the biggest drawback of bringing on a ghost-tweeter is that you’re depriving yourself of the benefits of one-on-one interaction with your audience, especially the opportunities you can discover and the business insight you can glean from those conversations. One of the most exciting aspects of social media is that it allows brands to remove a layer of mediation and affect consumers more personally. The more you’re able to participate personally, the more you’ll get out of it.

Besides, it can be quite a kick just to be yourself on Twitter. Who could have adequately imitated Shaq’s reaction to experiencing a hailstorm for the first time?

shaqtweet

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Social Media Doesn’t Influence My Buying Decisions. I Swear.

May 13, 2009 at 9:58 am · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , , ,

Over the weekend, from InformationWeek:

Practical Analysis: Social Networks Get Low Marks As Sources Of IT Info

Art Wittman cheerfully reports:

In a series of questions, we asked where you get your information and what you think of those sources, including vendor Web sites, IT trade magazines, business magazines and newspapers, E-mail newsletters, broad business tech sites (such as Information Week.com), focused tech sites (such as IntelligentEnterprise.com), analyst sites, virtual trade shows and Webinars, social networks (such as LinkedIn and Facebook), tech bloggers, and Twitter.

We used a five-point scale to gauge your opinion of relevance, reliability, timeliness, and bias for each as they relate to your work. Top responses varied a bit from question to question, but typically your top sources of information include broad IT Web sites, IT trade magazines, business news sites, and analyst sites. The bottom three responses were much more consistent: tech bloggers, social networks, and Twitter, with Twitter ranking by far the lowest in a number of categories.

As most scholars know, it’s never quite as precise to rely on people to report on their own behavior as it is to actually observe their actions. Asking people to report on the causes of their own behavior seems like an even less useful research method. Humans are motivated by a collection of often impractical and sometimes downright ridiculous set of factors… and few people have the self-insight – not to mention the humility – to accurately explain why they do the things they do. When presented with a respectable, logical, serious-looking set of alternative options (“IT trade magazines!” or “Business news sites!”), what kind of IT executive would claim that they are more influenced by their online friends and acquaintances, or by the frequency of a brand name on social networks? It sounds so irrational. And yet… most serious research on buying decisions reveals that what drives them is irrational. Purchases are made with emotion, and justified with logic.

To really start to study the influence of social media on IT buying decisions, you need to compare IT pros’ exposure to social media mentions of a company with their eventual purchases. The correlation may be small, or it may be large; but it will certainly be more informative than collecting buyers’ own self-psychoanalyses and reporting them as fact.

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RIP, Geocities

April 27, 2009 at 4:42 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

My second thought upon reading the news that Geocities will be shut down later this year was: that’s kind of bittersweet. My first thought, of course, was: wait… Geocities is still around?!

Apparently, it is. For now, at least. Geocities was purchased by Yahoo! in 1999 for 5 billion dollars. Kara Swisher has a fab retrospective (along with her original article about the purchase) at All Things Digital. While most of the discussion of Geocities’ death this week has revolved around its implications for VCs and the current crop of Web 2.0 investments, the thing that struck me more immediately was the contrast between the hyper-literal Geocities Internet of 1999, and the “everything ends in R” Internet of 2009. Indulge my memory for just a moment…

Geocities began as a personal website hosting service in 1994, in a period of time when most people’s understanding of the Internet relied very very heavily on literal interpretations of analogies. Consider: “world wide web,” “information superhighway,” “bulletin board systems (BBS)”… (this was before the “series of tubes” framework had gained widespread acceptance, by the way).

Accordingly, Geocities took a highly literal approach to peddling web sites – sorry, home pages – by offering users addresses modeled on actual neighborhoods, streets, and house numbers, grouping pages on similar topics in the same neighborhood. I know of no technological justification for this, but I do know that in 1994 it was totally normal to be the only one among your friends and family who had a website, and to explain, “It’s www dot geocities dot com, slash SouthBeach, slash Sands, slash 8990. You can see all my favorite quotes from Friends there and listen to MIDIs of Hootie & The Blowfish songs.”

To Yahoo!’s credit, they discontinued the neighborhood-based structure shortly after purchasing the site. A pretty bold move coming from a company whose original purpose was to create a static, manually-updated directory of all web sites. For nostalgia’s sake, though, here is a list of Geocities neighborhoods of yore. Farewell, Geocities. You were adorable while you lasted… and boy did you last.

Any other cute or hilarious memories of the 1999 Internet? Share in the comments. My own favorite Geocities eulogy so far is by a designer/writer/artist named Atherton Bartleby, and can be found here.

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Tool Academy

March 26, 2009 at 2:43 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , , ,

So you’ve got your head around an integrated social media strategy… now what?

As a necessary caveat – we don’t condone starting to ‘do’ social media based on which tools everyone’s talking about (also known as the “we’ve gotta get on that Twitter!” mentality). With that said, it can be daunting to approach the practical aspects, how-tos, dos and don’ts of using specific media.

Soon we’ll be launching an area on PR Nonsense that keeps track of these particulars of using and intelligently reaping the benefit of social media tools – the elements that come after social media strategy. Of course, this is a resource that can never be complete, so to speak. Considering the pace of growth and change in this area, both the best tools for your objectives and the best practices surrounding them are a constantly moving target. So we’ll be collecting and featuring, on an ongoing basis, the best resources and hands-on tool guides we can find.

As we begin to compile these resources, what are some you’d recommend? The more current and specific, the better. General websites and blogs about social media are great, but an article titled “16 Ways YouTube Won’t Help You Grow Your Business” is better.*

Here’s a good starting point for getting familiar with the tools we’re talking about: Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism (the latest version of the prism can be viewed here). This is a consistently updated graphical representation of social media tools by category, useful for comparing tools within each category, but brilliant for exploring the purpose of one type of tool versus another.

* This article has never been written, to our knowledge, but it certainly ought to be!

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Stop tagging me, Dad!

March 13, 2009 at 1:44 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , ,

The statistics Nate reflected on earlier this week should come as no surprise to those of us in our mid-twenties who have found ourselves, of late, frantically untagging Facebook photos posted by our parents in which we look unspeakably hideous and embarrassing. Yes, it’s inescapable – “old people” are on Facebook now. Related discussion of the generation gap among Facebook users (and reactions from some “old people” themselves!) has been ongoing this week at The XX Factor.

My own Facebook nightmare arrived late in the game… it was barely two months ago that I suggested to my father, jokingly, that he should be on Facebook. My fiancé’s parents are on Facebook, I explained, and it’s adorable! His immediate reaction was begrudging consideration. “I just don’t know what I would use it for.”

Within two hours my dad had posted his first Facebook photo album: Fish I Have Killed, the contents of which are exactly what you’re imagining. Within 24 hours my stepmom had a Facebook account, then my two aunts, then a variety of my parents’ friends and neighbors, all posting on each other’s walls with wild joy and abandon… and intense frequency.

Then came the mortification. Photo albums filled with family pictures of me at my most awkward, worst-dressed, and ill-maintained – all several years old and now at the top of Facebook’s “Photos of Me,” flouting proper chronology and pushing more current, flattering photos down the queue, provoking both my vanity and obsessive-compulsion in one fell swoop! Come ON, Dad!

In fact, the whole thing’s still kind of cute. But it does demonstrate a permeating fact of the social web age: it is becoming less and less realistic to break your public image into facets for each audience, and to hold back artifacts inconsistent with your desired branding. The answer, again, is to stop scrambling for control and start building. Identity is a constructive process, and the only way you can come close to controlling yours is to be the primary purveyor of content about you. Especially now that your Dad and all those fish are on Facebook.

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Googled yourself lately?

March 4, 2009 at 1:44 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , , , , ,

From Seth Godin this week: Personal Branding in the Age of Google.

It surprises me a bit to see Godin writing about such a well-trodden subject. Hasn’t it been the “age of Google” for almost a decade now? While his post is about all of the well-known ways Google search results can hurt you in the professional sphere, there’s been far less attention paid to how the relative permanence and authority ranking by Google can help your branding – as an organization or as an individual.

A quick Googling of my own name turned up about fourteen pages of results filled with (in order of appearance):

I’d say this is a pretty accurate and fair representation of who I am, what I’ve done, and where my professional and personal expertise lies. And for a person with a relatively uncommon last name, I have a fairly long Google record. This is unsurprising; I live a lot of my life on the Internet, and don’t expend too much effort trying to keep things from showing up in Google results… as Godin advises, “The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.”

I am predicting, however, that the matter of maintaining one’s own Google presence will become both more urgent and more complicated in the future. Employers, prospects, and customers will start being as concerned about what isn’t discoverable about you on Google as what is. Claim to be an expert on a subject, but Google can’t find any articles you’ve written on it? Advertise that your company has top tier customer service, but it has no presence on social networking sites, and no visible responses to conversations about your product? While there may have been perfectly valid excuses for these scenarios five years ago, this is not the case today.

It’s tough (and in some cases impossible) to erase the online record of things you wish you’d never done or said. But it’s never too late to start doing the opposite – leaving a long-term trail of realistic, flattering, and credible evidence to support the values of your brand.

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Do you ‘do’ social media?

February 27, 2009 at 8:57 am · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , ,

On everyone’s mind this week – the results of Jennifer Leggio’s research report: Is ’social PR’ for real? Which agencies get it?

Leggio surveyed over 600 PR decision-makers in various industries about what they consider important when it comes to ‘doing social media’ and how well they think their agencies are approaching these tactics. Some of the results were obvious: 79% of respondents think it is ‘extremely important’ for their agencies to understand social media strategy, and only 37% think they have a ‘great’ understanding of how to use social media for business themselves. Clearly this is an area where clients see the necessity and need the expertise.

More surprising and somewhat depressing? Not quite half of the respondents agreed that their current agency ‘understands how PR needs to fuel entire business strategy, not just news coverage.’ And as far as social media goes, only 20% reported that their agency recommended social media programs beyond tools to support business endeavors. Says Leggio:

This is scary. No social media decision should be led with tool selection. Companies need to first consider their corporate objectives, then determine where their customers, partners and competitors are, and also consider how such use of tools ties to the corporate culture. Agencies, this relates back to the importance of team members understanding the fundamentals of a client’s business.

With this in mind,  “does your agency ‘do’ social media?” is the wrong question.

Do we ‘do’ social media? The short answer is “Yes.” The long answer is this:

All media is social. To boot, print and broadcast publications are relying increasingly on online and user-generated content, or transitioning to an online-only format. Online influencers (both collectively and as individuals) have gained unprecedented authority in the traditional media.

No company in the technology sector should entertain a PR proposal that lacks thorough consideration of how social media fits into the program – including an explanation of how social media monitoring and participation will be integrated with the rest of the media relations, marketing and lead generation strategy.

So we don’t list “social media relations” on our list of services. Instead, we incorporate social media principles and tools into our client’s campaigns, at both a strategic and tactical level. That way, social media becomes part of what we do for every client, on every campaign.

As long as new social media tools and tactics are being developed, we will continue to find ways to use them to strengthen all of our PR and marketing activities.

What do you make of this research? Agencies can now weigh in with their own side of these issues for a follow-up report: Social PR Survey II: Digging deeper into agency/client relationships – the survey is open to PR professionals at every level, and must be completed by March 31.

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Live… from Davos, Twit-zerland

February 6, 2009 at 7:08 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged , , ,

According to my records, I averaged over an hour a day on Twitter last week. Not because I find the lure of constant 140-character correspondence with 100 of my closest acquaintances absolutely irresistible (although that is also the case!), but because one of our clients was in Switzerland and I had a job to do.

Tideway, one of the 15 IT companies chosen as a 2009 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, had the opportunity to attend the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland last week – a prestigious event that attracts the very top tier of entrepreneurs, politicians, media and geniuses from all over the world.

By now, you’re probably aware of the prominence Twitter has gained in the way people interact at conferences and trade shows.  It’s an ideal tool for connecting people who are all in one physical place, but don’t already know each other or have one another’s contact information. You may be surrounded by six hundred strangers in suits and nametags, but on Twitter you can be engaged in a dialogue with these people about the session you just attended, the big news a company just announced, the party you’re going to later, or the best booths to hang out in. We knew Twitter would be crucial at Davos – and before the meeting started, we had our eye on at least three dozen prominent attendees and media outlets who were already actively tweeting about it.

Tideway’s CEO, Richard Muirhead, sent tweets throughout the week reacting to panels and sessions, responding to open-ended questions, and distributing his first-person blog series about the Davos experience. Our job was to keep our ears to ground and eyes on the screen, communicating multiple times a day to relay who was talking about what, and identifying opportunities to connect Richard with people who would appreciate his perspective and personality. This was, of course, in concert with all of the traditional PR activity surrounding such a momentous event!

The outcomes of this strategy were huge. In just over a week, Tideway received first-time visibility in some of the highest-profile media outlets in the world, including Forbes.com (three times) and the BBC (twice).

Here’s the thing about social media: only the tactics are new. The philosophy remains the same. Following and corresponding with the Davos media on Twitter worked, because it enabled us to take advantage of timing and tailoring - two things every PR team should be doing with any pitch already. Our time spent digesting hours’ worth of 140-character dispatches paid off in knowing what journalists wanted to talk about, when they would be receptive to hearing about it, and where and how to approach them. It’s not always this easy!

The only thing left to be desired from Davos? Bono. He is apparently busy recording an album right now, and did not attend. Bono, if you’re reading this – Richard is still available to meet with you when you’re ready.

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We’re in PR Week!

November 3, 2008 at 5:52 pm · Filed under Liz Caradonna ·Tagged ,

March Managing Partner Cheryl Gale was quoted in the October 27th issue of PR Week:

Firms’ proposals must adjust to the times (subscription required for full article)

Meanwhile, Cheryl Gale, managing partner of March Communications, a Boston boutique specializing in tech, recently responded to an RFP from a start-up social networking firm planning its public launch for fall 2009.

As part of the pitch, March collaborated with a partner marketing agency and an IR group, issuing a response as a team, with March as the lead. They are currently shortlisted with one other rival heading into the final round.

“The most important thing we’ve done to win new business in these cases is to demonstrate our ability to fuse seamlessly with another team and, where possible, to pitch another agency,” Gale says.

She suggests providing case studies of successes the agency has had with partner firms, while always eyeing the bottom line.

She also recommends providing a menu of retainer options and itemizing add-on project work, where appropriate. This distinguishes the response because it rationalizes expenditures.

Good advice! Well-stated!

This is very cool, and as good a reason as any to employ exclamation points!

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