Four Thoughts about Social Media for Companies Still Not Conducting Social Media

It's probably safe to say that there are more blogs than we truly need. Yet it's also true that there are businesses (usually B2Bs) and organizations (usually smaller nonprofits) that should be using social media and blogs to get out their messages and stories -- but haven't done so yet.

One reason to do so: traditional print media have been shrinking in size, both the number of reporters and the size of their issues. That means the competition to get an article about your organization is tougher than ever, and that there's less space for that article about you.

Second, today's reporters have to file more stories -- plus they also use social media to cross-promote their articles. For example, we know that local TV reporters are pressed by their bosses to continue to post content across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram; not sure if they got bonuses or not but their bosses are well aware if their numbers decrease. And a freelancer we spoke to this week said that she got turned down for an assignment because she doesn't have enough Twitter followers.  

Given that, we tell reluctant clients that if reporters, who have an outlet to communicate stories, are also expected to use social media to drive traffic to their website, the same goes to them too.

So here are some basic thoughts on why and how reluctant organizations should engage via social media.

1. Social media and blogs are a great way to establish a brand, a corporate personality and values, which are increasingly important, whether  the company is a B2B or a B2C. Customers, whether they’re business or consumers, want to know who they’re buying from, so having a different voice – one that could be informal and snarky on social media while the blog is formal and stodgy, may confuse customers, partners and employees. That said, we had a client with two divisions, one that marketed to small businesses and the other that marketed to large companies; in that case, we recommended they developed a distinct voice and different communication vehicles since the two customer segments had different needs and resources. 
2. It's important to understand that each platform has a different set of characteristics, how people interact, what they respond to. One way to start is to focus on one of social media platforms, and get comfortable interacting and engaging on that platform before launching on another platform. Keep in mind that over time, those features evolve, so it’s important to understand how users interact with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. 
3. Many larger companies have create a consistent voice by creating a style guide offering suggestions regarding word choice, tone, style, and artwork, is a valuable tool. Style guides are used to ensure there’s a consistent voice across marketing, such as email newsletters, brochures, and ads but they should also be used to establish or maintain a consistent voice across social media and blogs. New hires responsible for social media and blogs need to review the style guides to get up to speed quickly about the brand, and style guides need to be reviewed after a significant change (like an acquisition) or every year or so to ensure the company is keeping up with social media changes.,
4. Keep in mind that you may need to have different Twitter accounts to reach different audiences. You may want one for customer service, another for HR, and another for the main brand, to highlight key milestones, new product or service news, etc. Further, HR might use LinkedIn for recruiting and Facebook groups for communicating to current employees or former employees in so-called alumni groups. Twitter or LinkedIn could be ideal for thought leadership campaigns aimed at customers. In each case, the choice of voice, subject matter and style may be different. The company may still want to keep the tone consistent, and still should use a shared calendar so that each group knows what the other will be posting.  

We have helped a range of clients to get involved in social media, including small businesses and technically oriented B2Bs (that otherwise felt their customers wouldn't seek advice and insight or make purchase decisions via social media). For one, a biotech client, we increased traffic to its site by 95%. For another client, a financial software developer that was a small division in a large global company, the work we conducted on social media, including a blog, got the attention of global marketing, and our client get recognized for its cutting-edge social media content. That company's social media work also enabled it to leverage and highlight customer case studies that led to more new business opportunities.

If you have questions about how to engage in social media, please contact us at info@birnbachcom.com.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

In an interview in June's Entrepreneur, Seth Godin, who has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter, says that Twitter can become "a very unhealthy and distracting addiction."

In an interview for the article, "Twitter: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?," Godin says, "I don't see a way to use Twitter properly and still do the work I do at the level I'd like to do it. So rather than use it halfway, I decided not to use it at all."

I think that a lot of companies that have not yet embarked on social media feel the same way as Godin does. PR functions within organizations or their PR agencies have to evaluate what the company could gain -- or lose -- by not participating in social media.

Don't forget: Godin engages in a lot of other social media activities, including blogging and podcasts.

The Danger of Always Being On

About a week ago, a client complained about the media, saying it is very hard to get the attention of reporters these days, and that she thought the reason could be laziness.

I assured her that the reason that she saw so many wire service stories instead of local stories is not due to laziness but resources.

Not only have local papers shed lots of reporters -- the Boston Globe once had more than 500 editorial staffers and now has fewer than 350, a significant decrease -- but increasingly these reporters are asked to also take the photographs and video that accompany their articles and produce podcasts and video segments, too. Oh, and file more stories since there are fewer reporters.

There's a danger in that, and in always being on. Clark Hoyt, ombudsman at the New York Times, wrote about it, and I think it's an issue for journalists to be aware of, and PR functions, too. Because a tired, frustrated reporter vented her feelings about a press conference that makes both the Times and the company (Toyota) look bad. Check out the article, "The Danger of Always Being On."

How Do Blogs at the New York Times Operate? Are they really blogs?

The question came up last week from a startup client: how should they approach blogs? The initial answer: carefully, of course.

The more complete answer is that instead of making PR-Journalism train faster (as in viral), blogging relations can often take longer because you need to spend more time researching a blogger, reading his or her posts and the comments to those posts.

By our client asked a follow-up question: what are the standards of a blog when the blogger is also a reporter? And when the blog appears somewhere on the newspaper's site.

Good question.

And it's one raised by Clark Hoyt, the public editor or ombudsman at the New York Times, whose job is to offer transparency and insight into how the Times is put together, to analyze issues in the coverage, and to set things kind of straight, if possible.

I've been reading the Times' ombudsman columns for years because they often provide useful insight into the editorial approach and theory, as practiced by the Times.

Recently Hoyt has been asking the question: "Are blogs' stanrads the same as the paper's?"

The answer: Writing in a column entitled, "A Private Room With a Narrow View," Hoyt says, "even such short, narrowly focused pieces need to be fully reported enough to make sure they are accurate and fair."

According to Wendell Jamieson, deputy metropolitan editor for the Web for the Times, "'I use the same journalistic criteria' for blogs and the printed paper."

Meanwhile, James Sunshine, a former editor of the Providence Journal (now living in Oberlin, OH), responded:

"Is a blog merely the private thoughts of the blogger, who has been given the privilege of saying what he happens to think at the moment without a qualified editor passing judgment on it for accuracy, taste, appropriateness and so on?

"Or is a blog a short news story published online? Your column suggests that it is, and that it is edited by an editor like anything else approved for publication in the paper and must meet Times standards. If that is the case, why call it a blog (whatever that is supposed to mean)? Why not call it a news story? Must everything we do be a matter of clever marketing?"

Responding to that, Jill Abramson, managing editor of the Times wrote:

"Blogs are an important part of our news report. On big, running news stories, like the oil spill, the earthquake in Haiti, the elections and so forth, they offer readers the most important, up-to-the-minute developments. Prescriptions, our blog on the health care overhaul, is a great example. It became the go-to site for developments on the complex legislation. There was more material than could fit into a fixed number of news stories, and it gave an outlet to our reporters to share what they were learning on a fast-paced story with many different tentacles.

"For events like sporting matches, Congressional hearings and political debates, we offer live blogging where our journalists report in real time what is happening or being said.

"Some of our best blogs focus on the arts, fashion, food and technology, and offer our journalists and critics a less formal structure to share their reporting.

"While the opinion side of The Times also has blogs, the news blogs exist to report and analyze, not to offer slanted 'takes.' Times blogs are never personal diaries. All of our blogs are carefully edited, and we apply the same standards for accuracy and fairness to them."

I don't usually quote that much directly from other sources, but I thought it important to capture, rather than just summarize or point people to the link (see the follow-up article "Other Voices: What Exactly Is a Blog?"). Very interesting. I wonder how many other newspapers have editors work with their bloggers.

Is the Reply-All Button Making Us Stupid?

I've taken on technology -- PowerPoint, email, Google, among others -- as making us stupid.

I think the Reply-All button, a subset of email, deserves its own shout out.

Last night, a glitch in an email distribution list from Jason Calacanis, made a lot of people stupid.

Calacanis has had a high profile career, including stints as founding editor of Silicon Alley Reporter, a founder of Weblogs, and a former Entrepreneur in Action, at Sequoia Capital. Currently he serves as the founder of Mahalo.com Inc., and his email distribution list is his contrarian way to communicate his thoughts and influence the conversation instead of blogs. Which he says are dead.

So the glitch: somehow, people were able to respond to Calacanis' latest email -- about why we shouldn't trust Facebook (he says they're out to exploit our privacy). Perhaps the initial group of responses thought their emails would go only to Jason.

But there was that glitch.

So that everyone on Calacanis' distribution list received every single reply.

I don't blame the original responders, who might not have known their emails were hitting everyone's in box.

But some people quickly realized, and used the glitch to promote their own companies and agenda.

I think that shows initiative but also bad form; and a bunch of people responded telling the offenders -- and everyone -- that they thought it bad form. (I did not respond via the email, only on this blog.)

Then a bunch of others got upset.

And this is where the real stupidity came in.

A new wave of emails went out asking people not to spam everyone else on the list. For example, the guy who wrote, "Stop f--ing replying all you f--ng idiots." (I know it's the Internet, but my kids might read my blog.)

The folks complaining to the entire distribution list about not wanting to get spammed could have taken a better route. They had the offending spammers' email addresses; they could have just responded to the spammers directly. Instead, they hit Reply-All, and spammed the rest of us.

By definition, those people complaining by email about getting spam were also sending spam.

Making it more annoying for the rest of us who patiently waited for Calacanis to resolve the issue. (Which he has, a dozen hours later.)

I think that's incontrovertible evidence that the Reply-All makes us stupid.

We All Live in a Genre World -- It's a Matter of Choosing What Genre to Live, or to Write

Funny essay in the New York Times Book Review about literary genres.

Seems there really are just a handful of genres. In "What to Write Next," by author Colson Whitehead, author of “The Intuitionist” (ist) and “John Henry Days” (encyclopedic), quickly identifies the mainstream different literary genres.

He did not, alas, identify different genres or styles among bloggers, which I will start to do here, albeit not as humorously:

• Self-expressive: more like a diary open to the public.
• Humorous.
  
• Hobbyist.
• Professional. Opinions and insight into a sector.
  
• How-to: focusing on specific functions or sectors, covering all industries.
  
• Get-Rich-Quick. Which often are used to sell get-rich-quick solutions from the blog's author.
  
• Political: across the spectrum. Some like to fact-check opposing perspectives (i.e., point out wholes or inconsistencies).
• Opinion, Political: often without original reporting.
  
• Mommy -- there are some Daddy bloggers, but seems to be far fewer than Mommy bloggers.
  

What genres of blogging have I missed? Let me know.

The Importance of News

In "Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy," Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, makes an important argument: that newspapers serve democracy in ways that websites have not.

According to Jones, 85 percent of fact-based news comes from newspapers. Other media, including TV and the websites, pick up their news and analysis from what's uncovered by newspapers. This has been true for a long time -- I've seen many cases were NY Times stories set the agenda for the morning shows and have a domino impact throughout the day. Jones says that's still the case today.

The news is not merely what happened yesterday, but an awareness and context for information. For example, it can takes months of investigative journalism to sort truth from rumors and provide the public with information.

And, Jones claims, 150-word articles on a website are not designed to ferret out that kind of news.

The solution: We continue to need organizations that track and uncover news. It just might not be traditional newspapers, although Jones is more optimistic on this point. Well worth checking out. Or, if you don't have time, check out Harold Evans' review in the New York Times.

Difference Between Blogs & Twitter

Here's one difference between Twitter & blogs:

• I've published this blog since mid-2007 & have posted more than 275 articles.
  
• I've been on Twitter since mid-200 & have posted 600 tweets.

Okay, so because they are limited to 140 characters, tweets are faster to write.

But I find greater interaction on the same topics -- which I think is due not just to the quick-hit nature of a short sentence on Twitter, but also because Twitter feed makes it easier to find and interact with others' ideas.

I'm not giving up on this blog. Just thought it is interesting to evaluate my output as well as the input.

Hoax Shows How Easy It Is to Fool Bloggers, Media

Citizen journalism can be a great thing by enabling anyone who wants a way to express themselves beyond their immediate friends, colleagues and family.

Yet one of the strengths of traditional journalism is training and judgment, and the need to source information. The old adage that traditional journalists heard at some point in their careers is that if your mother says she loves you, check it out. In other words, trust no one until you can get two sources to verify.

Blogging often seems about opinion, so fact checking sources gets little attention. And because of the speed of the news cycle -- I remember before the 24/7 cycle -- many people want to get information out there fast. This includes traditional media, picking up stories that bubble up in the blogosphere.

The New York Times wrote an fascinating article about Martin Eisenstadt, a senior McCain advisor, who turned out to be a hoax. Check out the article, "A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence," for the details.

But the point is that most bloggers, and quite a few journalists, accepted at face value the news and opinion from Eisenstadt (played by Eitan Gorlin) without digging deeper. There were clues out there that Eisenstadt wasn't who he said he was, according to the article, for anyone to find. But in the rush, not enough people actually did. Interestingly, there was one blogger who kept on the Eisenstadt trail, pointing out discrepancies in his story. And reporters at major media, when they found out the truth, did apologize and publicly comment. I'm not sure, though, that the disclosure changed procedures/policies anywhere.

That's a challenge for those who turn to the Internet for facts and trend data. It's a challenge for PR departments when reaching out to bloggers.

Cavaet Blogger!

With Limited Resources, Should You Spend Them on Social Media or Media Relations?

Check out Experimenting with Twitter: How Newsrooms Are Using It to Reach More Users.

The article, published Sept. 2007, makes the point that "news organizations aren't just writing about Twitter -- they're using it as a publishing resource for readers and journalists. "

For some clients, the real question isn't whether or not you should use Twitter, establish a Facebook page, etc. and maintain a corp. blog, but how to measure the investment and return on the use of resources necessary to generate any kind of "traction."

A good social media campaign takes as much, if not more, time to generate results. For example, you might get followers on Twitter and visitors to your blog, but that same time could be used for media relations that could secure an article.

The people you're most interested in targeting may not read blogs. Or they may not read newspapers.

The answer of the most effective means depends on who you're trying to reach and what media they consume, how they consume it and where.

We've been telling clients to consider repurposing content across different channels. But recently, a client said he never listens to podcasts -- which actually led us to an interesting discussion. In some corporate settings, computers don't have audio cards and don't have iTunes loaded on them, so they can't easily download podcasts.

The question -- whether to allocate resources to a social media over media relations or vice versa -- comes down, for now, to a "it depends."

Of course, last year, the answer was mostly media relations.

What will next year bring? Let me know your thoughts.

The Influence of the Blogosphere: AP Doesn't Want to Play

For those who don't think blogs are important, the Associated Press is drinking the Kool-Aid.

It thinks blogs are so important, the AP is establishing blog-use guidelines. Check out the PC World article about it, "Associated Press Clamps Down on Blogs" on the topic.

Dell's Blog Campaign Clicks In

BusinessWeek's recent cover story on blogs, "Beyond Blogs: Three years ago our cover story showcased the phenomenon. A lot has changed since then,"did a good job updating general business readers on the state of blogs -- but it missed an important issue for companies, especially those in the B2B space: The metrics by which to judge the success of corporate blogs. Is there an ROI for blogging? Can it lead to new business and stronger client relationships?

For B2Bs, I'm not so sure. I will be exploring blogging campaigns over the next few days.

But for B2Cs, I think the answer is definitely yes.

Check out Ben Worthen's the article in Wall St. Journal, "Dell, by Going Click for Click With Web Posters, Ensured Bloggers Saw Its New Red Mini Laptop,"in which he reports:

"Dell Inc. hit a viral-PR home run last week when photos of a not-yet-released computer -- a candy-red miniature laptop -- swept across the Internet, creating excitement in advance of the release.

"The buzz wasn't an accident: It was the payoff from a year-long effort by Dell to engage more directly with bloggers and others who write about the company online."

Worthen's article provides an overview of Dell's blogging campaign: "Today, it's nearly impossible to find a story or blog entry about Dell that isn't accompanied by a comment from the company. Dell left a comment in response to a recent post on WSJ.com's Business Technology Blog about the personal-computer maker's plan to offer premium customer service. Another Dell correspondent wrote an entry about the post on the company's blog."

That's a very intense, time intensive program, known as online engagement -- and it must be done transparently, letting people know that the postings are part of a corporate initiative, and entails understanding the tone and subtle rules for each blog, forum, etc. Get the tone or other variables wrong, and the company can be accused of "astroturfing, " a term for artificial grassroots programs. (For more on astroturfing, check out the Wikipedia entry. While I still don't like aspects of Wikipedia's culture, and believe more strongly than ever that it needs a massive copyediting makeover, it is a decent source -- as long as you look at it skeptically. My posts from Aug. 2007: Yet more about Wikipedia..., More advice on Wikipedia, and Some things to know about Wikipedia.)

Dell's initiative appears to be working because it was willing to invest the time and resources. Worthen reports, after all, that the campaign took more than a year. What's interesting is that Dell can point to success by pointing out that whenever someone blogs about Dell, whether it's positive or negative, there's a corporate comment in response. I would be very interested if the company could discuss the ROI for its campaign or to other metrics to demonstrate its success. In other words, can Dell demonstrate the value of its blogging outreach in terms of sales, visibility, new business/lead generation, customer retention, etc.?

It will be interesting to see if Dell responds to this post, by the way.

Pete Hamil on blogging vs. journalism

In an Q&A interview published in the Boston Sunday Globe, veteran journalist and author of books, memoirs and novels, including "News Is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century" (1998), Hamil said: "Papers have a function now that they didn't have before, a verifying function. The blogosphere might be very useful as propaganda or as therapy. But it's not journalism...Of course, the Internet has got great tools. How we lived without Google all those years I don't know.

The downside is too many young guys think if they've worked the Internet they've done the reporting. But there has to be a time when you get out of the building, you go to the place, you look at the thing.

The kind of columns we wrote, the authority depended on the reporting. You went there, you looked at it, you could have the right to some kind of opinion.

And the blogosphere is unpaid and unedited. There's no editor leaning over your shoulder saying, that third paragraph really should be the second.

Boston Globe: Editors -- can't live with them, can't live without them.

HAMILL: But you've got to have them. Particularly with young reporters, the way you learn best -- because it's a craft -- is not in the classroom but from another craftsman.

And I'm afraid that with the blogs you become an opinion maven before you've done the reporting, and have understood from reporting how complicated the world is.

That seems like the main problem when people talk about blogging communications as a PR tactic. Contacting bloggers may work for some clients, but it's about opinion, not reporting. Hamill says that newspaper columnists do actual reporting before delivering their opinions. I think that does make a difference, and are not the pontifications of a man who also addresses the hold nostalgia has on people (including himself) in the same interview.

Blogs are another channel to communicate, but they're about opinions, not necessarily facts or reporting -- what Stephen Colbert famously coined "truthiness." (Defined on Wikipedia as "things that a person claims to know intuitively or 'from the gut' without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts.)

From a PR perspective, that means your approach to reach bloggers must be different from media outreach since bloggers' goals and approach are vastly different.