Now here’s a way of starting the year on a positive note.
Seth Godin, a great marketing thinker (and blogger) of our times, managed to get an inspiring group of more than 70 entrepreneurs, bloggers, thinkers to contribute a one-pager essay on one word they suggest for people to focus on for 2010. All these one pagers put together form What Matters Now, an easy to read (and free) eBook that will make you want to be a better person this year.
You can download What Matters Now by clicking on the book’s title or the image above. You can also click here to view Seth Godin’s original blog post introducing What Matters Now, where you will also find a note announcing that a print edition is now available, of which all proceeds will go to Room to Read.
I have to say, I’ve been following Chris Brogan’s blog for a while now, always finding interesting posts, but after reading his How To Reach Out To Bloggers blog post, he is definitely on my favorite bloggers list. I strongly advise anyone who is in PR and wanting to start reaching out to bloggers to read this one first, it’ll save you from doing some rooky mistakes, but more importantly it’ll help you understand how bloggers relationships should be viewed. After all, this is what PR is essentially all about, creating relationships first and foremost. Moreover, drawing from my sales, marketing and PR experience, creating good and honest relationships on a more personal level with people you interact in your professional life is what will have them be open to hear you out with their defenses down on what you’re pitching before reaching a decision instead of flat out turning you down before even giving you a chance. People want to talk with people they feel they can trust and who are being honest with them.
I would also definitely read the comments section as there are some good points and additions on there. I’d surely stop to read the comments of jaybaer, Jim “Genuine” Turner’s response comment, michelledamico, tallulah, Tyler M and postrank among others.
Here is an excerpt of the post which sums up well the initial steps to be considering when trying for a ‘bloggers outreach program’:
Be There Before the Sale
This is something Julien and I wrote about in Trust Agents, and it’s the first part of making your blogging outreach more successful. If you want people to write about you, they should probably know about you first. Quick ways to get that started:
Follow them on Twitter.
Comment on their blog posts.
Set up Google Alerts and comment on related articles.
Is this more work than just blanketing someone with email and hoping a few write about it? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.
The trick is not to talk about your stuff. You should have started this outreach weeks and weeks before ever needing anything, and it should be genuine. Be interested in the people you hope will take an interest in you.
As with every new year, there are a number of predictions on what will be in stored for us all during the year, as a way of expressing the optimism (or pessimism) a new beginning always triggers. Reading quite a few 2010 predictions blog posts (especially around social media and online vs offline) I did find a lot which pose good, well-rounded points but there are also quite a few that tend to exaggerate, either to spark a good conversation around them or in an attempt to step out of the crowd or, or, or.
Now, I am not going to give you these out-of-this-world 2010 predictions, by trying to give you the insider’s view of what the world will be like in the future, however I will leave you with just 3 very basic points for 2010 by using logic and past precedent:
Social media and the online world is and will continue to grow in use and popularity. No surprise there really as there’s too many studies and researches out there which showcase the sharp and ongoing growth of internet penetration, social media use and participation over the past few years, which is not going to end with the close of 2009.
The offline world (meatspace for some) will continue to exist and be of importance. We all participate in both the online and offline world so it is highly unlikely for one of the two to disappear within 1 year. Plus, we need both ‘worlds’ to keep a balance in our lives (I am of course speaking about people for whom online is now an integral part of their everyday life which consists of the majority of the developed world population). For those who talk about an online vs offline battle; it’s not really a competition whereas one of the two worlds will win and where the defeated world will need to cease to exist.
Traditional media will not disappear. Yes online reliance on finding news is increasing immensely with traditional news sources dropping in readership, ratings etc, however, a lot of people still like to read the newspaper in paper on their way to work, they still want to watch the news on TV or on the radio and this emotional bond which is part of a sacred routine for some will not disappear within the timespan of 1 year. Let’s not forget also that a lot of the traditional media (especially paper media) are now evolving to keep up with today’s digital times (of course there are ones that are strongly trying to resist the online impact to how people find news, see Rupert Murdoch).
At the end of the day, we can make all the predictions we want and a lot can happen in a year, but no one can know for sure what will be in stored for the world in 2010. After all, in 2007 there weren’t any predictions for a worldwide financial crisis or the Lehman Brothers closing in the next year, but there you go.
Since we can’t know for sure what will happen in the future then there’s no point stressing about it either now is there? Rounded numbers always feel better so let’s hope that 2010 will be a good year.
According to Techcrunch, foursquare will be adding 14 new European cities today, as stated by foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley. These cities will be Helsinki, San Antonio, Madrid, Manchester, Paris, Prague, Rome and Stockholm and of course continuing with the already available London and Amsterdam.
For those (hopefully not so many) that still haven’t heard of foursquare, it is a location-based social network game. What you do is “check-in” to the place you are/ going to, along with a brief message and recommendation on the place. Then it pings your friends, letting them know your where you are, as well as lets you know where they are – provided they are using foursquare too and are not hiding from you. What makes foursquare cool is that you can create and share lists of your top places and places you’ve always wanted to go, so guess what, next time a friend is going there and wants to do something nice for you or wants to throw you a surprise party, he/she knows just the place. For the fun-loving competitor friend (or not) in all of us, foursquare has you collecting points for “checking-in” and even becoming a mayor if you have the top score. Be warned however as you can get dethroned by a higher score holder.
For more details on how it works you can read Pocket-lint’s ‘What is Foursquare?‘ or get it straight from the horse’s mouth by clicking here.
For those wondering why ‘foursquare’ and why the boy with the ball on the logo, four square is a real life ball game played with 4 players, 4 numbered squares and a ball of course. The objective of the game is to eliminate other players of higher ranks, advance to the highest ranking square and remain there for as long as possible. (Source: Wikipedia) See the connection now? Huh? Huh?
That’s excellent news foursquare, keep it up.
And who knows, maybe one day foursquare will be available for Nicosia, Cyprus too… well, at least one can dream right?
For those out there still trying to grasp the basics on how social media are changing the business realm, without getting a migraine from the information overload, here is a light read that could help. The article is titled “Social Media – A Business Game Changer”, written by PR Blogger Stephen Davies and published in the latest issue of the Apollo Executive Review, published quarterly by Action Global Communications.
As this is a flipbook, there’s no way to isolate the relevant pages this article is sitting on, but just go to: http://www.actionprgroup.com/flipbooks/apollo/2009Q4/index.html and see pages 18-21 (tip: enter the number 18 at the ‘Go to page’ field on the very top of the webpage and hit ‘Go’).
Disclosure: I currently work at the headquarters of Action Global Communications, steering their Digital PR initiative.
I was reading the a very interesting article by The Guardian the other day, “From the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet history“, which gives a nice round up of all the milestone internet firsts. Specifically it talks about the first email, virus, online community, smiley, multiplayer game, search engine, browser, webcam, blog, cybercafe, eBay sale, Wikipedia entry, social networking site, major dotcom failure and YouTube video.
A 1977 TRS-80 Microcomputer (Source: www.trs-80.com)
Reading about how they all awkwardly started and where they are now, made me realize how far along we came since then, which is mind boggling when you think of how huge of a leap we’ve taken in just a few years. What’s even more mind boggling is thinking where we could be a few short years… I can already see the next generation, where kids are taught Interned History in school as a worldwide subject, where teachers will need to explain to their students what a ‘computer device’ was, what it was like to flip through a book, turning pages instead of scrolling down pages and having to ‘connect’ to the internet instead of being automatically online 24/7 (Minority Report, anybody?). You might argue that this sounds too futuristic and too far away, but don’t be so sure. I remember a dear MIS professor during my St. John’s University years who was already talking with arguments about the near future where our kids/ grandkids will be laughing at us when we tell them that we actually had to go out to buy a computer because by that time computer-like capabilities will be accessible through hypodermic microchips installed on each person.
Furthermore, take into consideration that it takes about 30 years for confidential military technology to trickle down to commercial use availability as it is being said and that they are already working on quantum computing in universities (as I have been told 3 years ago by a friend of mine who’s a PhD student). This makes you wonder how advanced military technology must be by now.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s some food for thought, a TED talk video on (mind blowing) sixth sense technology that’s already available for buying
and the Nokia Morph Phone Concept which explores telecom uses of nanotechnology, expected to be commercially released by 2012.
There has been an ongoing war discussion for some time now about how social media are affecting traditional PR and how this is PR and this is not PR in the digital world.
Why is this shift to new channels creating such a heated discussion?
Traditional PR is clearly defined as “is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics” (source: Wikipedia) with practitioners knowing that the way to reach your publics is usually via mass media. That’s how things worked from the beginning of PR and they’ve worked well until now.
The definition itself has the end goal of reaching your publics, not of going through the media necessarily. The reason why mass media worked well for so long is because that was the most effective medium to reach your audience in mass. This is what you learned in school, this is what you learned in practice while working in PR firms. Now, all of a sudden PR practitioners are asked to take what they’ve known and practiced all this time, throw it out the window and try to reach their audiences, the end consumer for example, directly and to have a conversation with them instead of a one way flow of messages. Wait… how are we supposed to handle that, what do we do when the public answers back not agreeing completely with our messages or even worse, disagreeing? Maybe if we hide under the blanket long enough it’ll go away. No my friends, I’m afraid social media is here to stay and is already evolving the way people communicate, act and how they use the internet (even shifting from Web2.0 to Web3.0). So two choices are at hand, get on the social media train and fast because it’s leaving the station or stay stuck at the station.
This shift doesn’t mean that traditional media are now obsolete. For a truly succesful campaign you need a mix of many factors and channels, so you do need to include traditional media in your campaigns. I know that there are arguments out there that traditional media are slowly dying and that the power now is given back to the people, but I think traditional media still have a long lifespan, as they too are evolving to the new era of communication and information.
Conclusion: traditional media and PR are evolving, social media is here to stay, for a successful PR campaign you need a good mix of both, not underestimating either medium.
I still find life’s coincidences with things you’ve just started thinking about and how they pop up in front of you soon after surprising. A phenomenon which I am faced with a lot more often I find with the online world! Case and point: I’ve just started looking into posterous, subscribing for an account just last week and today *tadaaaa* I come face to face with 2 articles defending Posterous and how great it is and how much better it works than conventional blogging.
Well, considering that Mashable’s piece is included in the Econsultancy blog post might exclude it as a pure-coincidence and classify it more as a clicking-on-the-related-link-of-the-post-I’m-already-reading-placed-there-purposely sorta thing. But who’s keeping tabs anyway!
The weirdest techie coincidence I’ve had up to date is when I first signed up for Twitter and was asking our company online strategy Consultant for his expert opinion on how to retweet easier and how to include shortened links in my tweets. While I was waiting for his response I randomly came across TweetDeck and started downloading it. In the meantime I went to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water where our pre-mentioned consultant was there asking me if I’m downloading TweetDeck…for which I said yes in a weirded out ‘how the hell did you know that, is Big Brother watching me’ look on my face. When I asked him, he told me that he just sent me an email telling me to download TweetDeck as the solution for my questions. Then it was my turn to weird him out by telling him that by pure coincidence I had started downloading it seconds before sending his email. Muahaha!
…and don’t even get me started on real life coincidences like randomly meeting my grandmother’s godson, who I’d never met before in my life, in a cafe in New York (note that my grandmother comes from a tiny village in Cyprus called Vavla with a population of 40 people at best). But those are stories for a different time.
Google, a fun loving company that has always relied in non-traditional marketing and PR campaigns is now doing (fun of course) TV and YouTube ads for its new web browser, Google Chrome.
Makes me wonder, why would a company that non-traditional mediums has been working well for creating a viral effect for its products is now resorting to methods that are slowly perceived as more outdated? Is it innovation, desperation or altogether trying something different?
Reuters did a story the other day on how Hate Goes Viral On Social Network Sites, presenting an argument that social media help promote hate and help hate groups flourish, according to a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, something that needs be contained by the social networking sites themselves. The report argues that “over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism.” Even though that might be the case (even though talking about terrorism is taking it to the extreme), you can’t blame social media for enforcing this behavior, nor can you ask social media and social networking sites to try and control such context by eliminating it. What revolutionized the notion of social media and what Web2.0 is all about, is the fact that this is not a controlled environment,but instead an environment where people can express themselves freely and build a community around their common interests. Now, I absolutely disagree with people hating other people just because they are different to the degree where they want to eliminate them, but I’m afraid that this is a case where you have to take the bad with the good and let the social media landscape slowly weed out or naturally contain such groups that are potentially harmful to others.
Also, think of it this way, wouldn’t you prefer having such haters venting and consuming their anger in front of a computer screen rather than in the streets onto real life people who have done nothing to deserve such a hateful behavior?
Recent Comments