The Flack

Fame is a drug. Once attained, it's hard to live without. In recent years, many of the famous are famous for simply being famous. Think Paris, Kardashian or Lindsay's girlfriend.

But true talent applied over time, or even a single act of heroic humanity, has the capacity to drive and sustain fame for a lifetime. Think Tiger Woods, Meryl Streep or Sully Sullenberger.

What's a fame-seeker to do when his or her talent-sustaining platforms are in short supply? The answer to that question surfaced yesterday on Twitter when one Sean John Combs (aka P. Diddy) conceived the idea to tweet his way through a "36-hour" session of tantric sex:

I gotta stop. I'm tired and sore!!!! Ill try again tomorrow Go back to work people
about 12 hours ago from TwitterBerry

For all those just tuning in. I'm 6 and half hrs in on a 36 hour tantric sex session. Welcome
about 15 hours ago from TwitterBerry

How do I send yall some picts. Lol Jk.
about 16 hours ago from TwitterBerry

6 hrs down 30 more hrs to go. Some cramping in rt leg but ill be ok!!!!! Can't stop. Won't stop. Lol
about 16 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Ohh yea. God bless everyone!!!!! This is gonna be the best day of your life!!!!
about 19 hours ago from TwitterBerry

After this I actually miss Diddy's other profile-raising endeavors: his Hamptons White party and fund-raising jaunt through the NYC Marathon.

But unlike Michael Phelps, whose bong hit was never intended for global syndication, Diddy concocted and revels in his sudden return to buzzworthy notoriety. It was reminiscent of Paris and Britney's scheme to discard a certain undergarment for their smarmy evening encounters with the paparazzi, i.e., headline-making low-life behavior.

My advice to you Diddy: either get back to the recording studio or find a way to channel your tantric Twitter antics to a worthwhile charity.

Labels: buzz, Diddy, iamdiddy, notoriety, P. Diddy, Sean Combs, tantric sex, Twitter

Not that Jossip is the arbiter of what's real nowadays -- in spite of it being a snarkily fun read -- but I couldn't help but notice its antagonistic (if not anachronistic) view of the PR profession.

In a post titled "J-School to Public Relations: Selling Out or Buying In?," the Gawker/Defamer wannabe castigated any self-respecting journalist for abandoning the quest for gainful employment in the shrinking 4th estate:

"Or might you use your powers for evil instead of good, and turn to the dark forces of public relations work? For the recently graduated and unemployed masses of journalists, the siren call of flackdom may be too sweet to ignore this time around."

It's pretty easy to shit on PR people given the transgressions of so many in our profession, especially in the area of media relations. However, a fresh look at some of the companies leading our industry into the 21st century would reveal a defiance of the old school, top-down, command-and-control ways. How much more can be said about Ford, Comcast, Pepsi and Dell - just a few of the thought-leading enterprises that have embraced dialogue and transparency?

The Jossip post clings to an outdated notion of our profession, and even posts a picture of Madonna and her long-time PR person Liz Rosenberg, taken, it seems, when Madonna was still like a virgin:

"The problem, of course, is that PR represents all that is despised by the press: duplicity, glad-handing and vague comments about their clients that shield that nugget of truth every journalist works to find. (In the newsroom, the word "flack" can be just as dirty as "fuck," if not worse.)"

I suppose some of this remains valid (a vestige of the previous Administration), but the times are definitely a-changing. Even former MSNBC'er Dan Abrams has jumped into the PR biz in a reformative endeavor driven by former (i.e., out-of-work) journalists. I'm not convinced Abrams & co. adhere to Jossip's presumption that:

"When things get better, maybe you'll have enough saved up that you can pick and choose jobs that you ethically agree with, but now is not that time."

As for Jossip's own orientation, didn't I see a tweet from former HuffPost media editor Rachel Sklar (an Abrams associate) in which she quoted Tina Brown as saying ""I'm very hostile to snark, I think it's [sic] days are over...I prefer wit"" Maybe it's time for Jossip to freshen up its act?

Labels: Abrams Research, dialogue, employment, Jossip, journalism, PR, public relations, social media, The Daily Beast, transparency

I've never met Larry Weber, though he's promised on several occasions to "take lunch" if our paths happen to cross in either the Beantown or New York. I certainly am well aware of the agency that retains his namesake, and the success it enjoyed when he reigned, and today under Harris Diamond's stewardship.

The indefatigable Jeremy Pepper tweeted earlier: "Can't figure out WTH Larry Weber is doing - so, 2 Martinis is just Racepoint and Dig with a new name?"

Pepper is alluding to today's Chris Reidy piece on Boston.com about Weber's newest agency birth, branded Two Martinis (for whatever reason). It joins Racepoint and the Digital Influence Group as part of Weber's burgeoning boutique empire, W2 Group Inc..

Former Weber-Shandwick prexy Maryjean Lauzier is listed as CEO on the new agency's Flash-y website. Hey, wait a sec. She also holds the CEO titles at Racepoint and Digital Influence Group. Maybe Jeremy's onto something?

Larry, if you're reading this, chime in on how these agencies are differentiated. If you're not, then so much for the PR 2.0 mantra of listening to the conversation. (The tags below certainly make this one easy to find.)

Labels: branding, Digital Influence Group, Larry Weber, PR, Racepoint, Two Martinis, W2 Group

Over the years, this blog has looked at the phenomenon of hype, and specifically, how too much of it can result in diminishing returns for the recipient (i.e., your client). I always believed that regulating media attention, especially when demand for client access is at its peak, leads to long-term sustainability and (en)viability.

Over the weekend. Steve Rubel tweeted a link to an item posted on PaidContent, the must-read chronicler of all things digital content. It compared Twitter's media trajectory with that that of Second Life.

In "The Second Life Hype Has Fizzled—Is Twitter Next?," reporter Tameka Kee recounts MediaShift's Marc Glaser's sobering and substantive assessment of the once mighty virtual world from the perspective of media coverage thereof and participation therein.

"How did the media go wrong in coverage -- and participation -- in SSL, and what went right? It was a typical hype-and-backlash scenario..."

Glaser describe the rush by many news organizations to open SL bureaus and the great public fanfare that ensued. Even a few PR agencies flocked to Second Life to establish beachheads. (This blogger once strolled into a Second Life PR meet-up without his shirt.)

Glaser quotes Rob Hof, Business Week's Silicon Valley bureau chief, who anointed Second Life on the cover of the magazine in the midst of the media feeding frenzy:

"Unless you consider coverage of any kind as constituting breathlessness, I'm not sure the overall coverage was too breathless [back in 2006]. It was just voluminous for awhile there, probably a little too positive at the outset and then, for some good reasons, more negative later...As you know, this kind of cycle is endemic to journalism, for better or worse: Build 'em up, tear 'em down."

Glaser did acknowledge that there's some life remaining in Second Life:

"While the effusive media coverage might be long-gone, Second Life is evolving into a practical platform for some educational and business purposes."

As for comparisons to Twitter, PaidContent observed:

"So what does this have to do with Twitter? Twitter’s hype has reached a fever pitch. Celebrities including Britney Spears and Shaquille O’Neal Tweet regularly, and with stories on CNN, in the WSJ and the NYT, among others, it’s garnering about half as much news coverage as Facebook, with barely a tenth of Facebook’s traffic (via VentureBeat). Flush with $35 million in new funding (and still no business model yet), Twitter could be headed for an incredible backlash.

As Rob Hoff [sic] told Glaser: “This kind of cycle is endemic to journalism, for better or worse: Build ‘em up, tear ‘em down.” "

I, for one, do not believe that Twitter will suffer the same hyperbole-fueled media meltdown as Second Life. First, Twitter's much easier to use. Second, the development crowd already has written hundreds of apps for it, and third, did you follow #oscars feed last night during the telecast? How fun was that?

Still, if I were @Ev, @Biz or @Jack, I'd tread very carefully with regard to media coverage at this pivotal point in the microblog's history. Stay focused on the user experience and business model.

Labels: Biz Stone, Evan Williams, hyperbole, Jack Dorsey, media, microblogging, PR, Second Life, Twitter, virtual worlds

A couple of weeks ago, I penned a post on a new PR search application with which I am involved that I believe holds considerable promise in its ability to help the profession find the "right" journalists for their news or feature story suggestions.

Rather than rely on job titles or reporting beats, MatchPoint spiders a database of 3 million articles from 11,000 print, 25,000 websites and 10,000 blogs to produce a results ranking of journalists whose body of work, going back six months, actually matches the search query (i.e., a release, pitch letter or keywords).

The idea to deviate from the decades-old method of media targeting and list development gelled in my mind several years ago (after many painful sessions moderating journalist panels at our Publicity Club of New York luncheons). Chris Anderson, Michael Arrington, and as of yesterday, Forrester's Josh Bernoff, all have decried the misguided PR spam that floods their inboxes.

Mr. Anderson, who gave me permission to cite him in the MatchPoint news release, outed the worst offenders by publishing their email address. Mr. Arrington ranted about not working with certain PR pros, and agreeing to, then breaking their requests for embargoes. Whle Bernoff took a more quantitative approach to dissecting what perenially has tarnished the PR profession, let alone rendered the story pitch useless.

In his Groundswell blog post "Three quarters of the PR email I receive is irrelevant. Why?", Bernoff writes:

"For the record, I really like working with PR people, I just don’t like all of their tactics."

Ahhh. The kiss of death. Here's his methodology:

"For a two week period, January 15-28, I tracked every single PR email I received, a total of 114 emails regarding 88 different companies. I didn’t count PR emails trapped in my spam filter. I sent each emailer a reply with a short personal note and a request for more information on how they use email for PR -- more on those responses later."

On the first (and in my mind, the most important) measure, relevance:

"Amazingly (I never counted before) more than one in five of the emails I got were completely irrelevant, like the German-language newsletter and the release that reveals "Tony Duquette Files Infringement Suit Against Michael Kors.” Who are Tony and Michael? An awful lot of effort is going into sending me the three-quarters of PR emails in my inbox that have little or no relevance to me, to my clients, or to you."

Josh then delves deeper to describe the different means of dissemination, i.e., automated, personal or a combination thereof, whether there's an opt-out clause, formatting, and timing for which he noticed a groundswell of e-mailed pitches "the day after Inauguration Day." (So glad it wasn't on Inauguration Day.) He constructively concludes:

"I am contributing this in an attempt to be constructive. PR professionals, show it to your boss or your client when they insist on the broadest possible distribution. Channel your energy into targeted, personal outreach to a few people whom you care about and know about, and you’ll do much better. And our inboxes will thank you."

Josh, thanks for running the numbers. We hear you.

Labels: Bad Pitch, groundswell, Josh Bernoff, media relations, PR, public relations

I knew the moment the news broke that Facebook was in for a rough patch in the court of public opinion. For those of you in the Bahamas or on the slopes this week, on Monday news broke that Mark Zuckerberg and company decided to alter the terms-of-service (or TOS) on the dominant social networking platform.

The change, which in essence decreed that all content uploaded onto the site was now "owned" by Facebook -- not you, the uploader.

A firestorm naturally erupted, and to his credit, Mr. Zuckerberg took to the Facebook blog to explain and hopefully quell the criticism. It wasn't enough. The damage was done. Today, Facebook relented and the controversial ownership terms were summarily retracted.

Now I don't want to delve too deeply into the merits or demerits of Facebook's TOS play. The subject certainly was covered ad nauseum across the media and micro-blogosphere these last couple of days. Rather, I'm reminded of Mr. Zuckerberg's last PR gaffe that involved a little monetization scheme called Beacon, which in essence, gave Facebook's paid sponsors access to the network's users personal info. That squirrely scheme also was eventually retracted.

It's unclear who's advising the Facebook executives on reputational matters, but what is clear is that the public outcry these controversial moves spurred could and should have been avoided. The best in our business actually earn their $400 hourly fees for anticipating how the public will respond to potentially problematic business decisions. And if you think that fee is excessive, consider what Warren Buffet once said:

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

The real value seasoned PR pros offer seems to be in short supply at many tech start-ups, even the most successful ones. It has less to do with the number of journalists or bloggers the PR person knows, or even his or her ability to craft a sticky story line. The real value lies in one's intrinsic sense of how a "public" will react to various outputs -- a skill that is only honed after years of wallowing in the mud.

I don't want to second-guess the youthful Mr Zuckerberg. I'm sure there are legitimate business reasons for tooling with Facebook's TOS. I just wonder if he might have avoided the maelstrom by using his blog to secure input (and buy-in) from the FB crowd before unilaterally making the contentious change. Just a thought.

Update (2.27.09) - Facebook Open-Sources its Terms of Service. Do you think Mr. Zuckerberg & co. read the last graph of this post? Nah.

Labels: Beacon, FaceBook, Mark Zuckerberg, PR, reputation, TOS, Warren Buffett

Slate's John Dickerson tweeted news that the administration has "revitalized the press release...with the launch of Recovery.gov."

The site sub-head reads "Your Money at Work" and includes the following mission statement:

• Education: Explain the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act;
• Transparency: Show how, when, and where the money is spent;
• Accountability: Provide data that will allow citizens to evaluate the Act’s progress and provide feedback.

Now, I think characterizing this as a press release may be a bit of a stretch, but the new site does serve a comparable purpose, i.e., to announce news. In this case, however, the White House press office treats the people and the press equitably vis à vis timing, sort of a Reg FD for government, and does so with aplomb.

I don't think the Obama-ites have totally given up on issuing standard news releases. Just yesterday, the Recovery.gov site announced that White House photographer, Pete DeSouza, put up a photo gallery of the President working his way through the recovery. The brief announcement linked to a blog post containing the images with added context, and was titled:

"The story of the economic recovery package (photos)"

The new site/"press release" also features a video (embedded via Vimeo) of President Obama speaking directly to site visitors, and a section called "Accountability and Transparency" that reads:

This is your money. You have a right to know where it's going and how it's being spent. Learn what steps we're taking to ensure you can track our progress every step of the way.

Finally, it cleverly solicits Americans to "Share Your Recovery Story" through a simple form that also serves as a conduit to complie even more names for the administration's growing (d-to-c) database of U.S. voters. (I'm assuming those under 18 will not be sharing their "recovery" stories.)

For some reason, I can't imagine the Bushies ever doing this.

Labels: john dickerson, news release, obama. white house press office, recession, recovery.gov, Slate, transparency

When I think of pro bono in public relations, I'm reminded of the yeoman work many agencies and individuals perform on behalf of non-profit and non-governmental organizations, many of which are sucking wind in this economic climate.

The personal satisfaction one derives from using his or her professionals skills to advance a worthwhile cause is second to none, and cuts across many professions.

This week, we witnessed a contemporary model of pro bono activism when thousands of individuals around the world, this blogger among them, tapped their digital spheres of influence to generate awareness and participation in Twestival in support of charity: water, an organization that delivers potable water in less-developed countries. Didn't it feel good to give of yourself to support this very worthwhile cause?

But then there are those who conduct "pro bono" work for the lure of the media spotlight and their own aggrandizement. (That is until they receive death threats for doing so.) It's unclear whether the Tampa PR firm repping Blago and Drew Patterson was compensated for its dual brushes with infamy, or what the fee structures are for others in the "celebrity" space. At least Paris Hilton can pay her publicist, but I bet other PR types do it gratis just to be near their infamous celebrity clients.

Today we learn that the firm that so generously donated its time to represent the welfare woman who literally conceived her celebrity in a petri dish has resigned after receiving death threats. According to The AP:

"The Killeen Furtney Group was ending its free representation after receiving at least 100 graphic e-mailed threats and swarms of nasty voicemails that went to the Los Angeles agency and even to some of its other clients, Killeen said."

I wonder if this experience will give Ms. Killeen pause when contemplating the client company she keeps? Unlikely.

Labels: celebrity PR, charity: water, Nadya Suleman, pro bono, twestival

What's a socially networked person to do? All these outlets to share one's thoughts, ideas and cool links! It's exasperating. Well, first he or she should get a handle on each channel's distinctive DNA and utility.

Take Twitter. The inimitable David Pogue, who's been tooling on the microblog these last few weeks, pondered in his column today how it should best be used:

"One says to use Twitter to market your business; another says never to use Twitter to market your business. One recommends writing about what you’re doing right now (after all, the typing box is labeled, “What are you doing?”); another says not to. One of these rule sheets even says, “Add value. Build relationships. Think LONG term.”

He then asked Evan Williams (at ev), the founder of the over-heated microblog, his thoughts. Williams said they're all wrong, and Pogue deduced this to mean that they're all right, and thus titled his column "Twitter is What You Make It."

But does this mean that the PRotectors of reputations shouldn't proceed with caution? Last night I tweeted a link to a post on TPM, which revealed how the Virginia GOP chairman's careless use of the microblog probably cost his party a voting majority in the state Senate.

And then today, Converseon's Rob Key shared his colleague Christin Eubanks link to a story recounting how a reporter for Canada's National Post had a very public Twitter melt down with a PR person who used Twitter to out her spat with the reporter. Here's part of the reporter's Twetort:

Publish Post

sirdavid: @aprildunford what the fuck. I called you for comment two days ago. What did you expect when you called me back? Don’t post that shit online

sirdavid: @aprildunford furthermore, I called you several times in the afternoon. Don’t be condescending to me when I actually wanted to talk to you

Lesson learned: Twitter may be "what you make it," but discretion still applies. Or as Converseon's Eubanks astutely noted:

[This is] "Another example of how [passive] aggression on twitter – even when no names are called out – can ruin relationships and reputations. In this case it was a reporter vs. a marketing professional, and both ended up making public asses of themselves. This is an extreme case but it’s certainly a good reminder to think before you tweet and save the private/controversial/inflammatory comments for more private conversation venues."

Labels: David Pogue, National Post, PR, public relations, social media, social networks, TPM, Twitter

It goes without saying that unfiltered, real-time, citizen-generated news reports often serve as the first write of history.

In New York Magazine's wary look at Twitter this week, the reporter happened to be sitting in Twitter's offices as US Air 1549 dropped into the Hudson River:

"And then I noticed something on Twitter Search. The first person was “manolantern,” who, at 12:33 local time, posted, “I just watched a plane crash into the hudson rive (sic) in manhattan.” After that, the updates were unceasing. Some fifteen minutes before the New York Times had a story on its website (and some fifteen hours before it had one in print), Twitter users who witnessed the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 were giving me updates in real time."

In fact, company co-founder Biz Stone had a twitter-inspired twinkle in his eye when describing to the reporter the role his micro-blogging platform played in bringing first-person accounts of the Mumbai massacre into the public domain:

"Twitter executives are proud of the Mumbai aftermath; Forbes called it “Twitter’s moment,” and Stone’s face lights up when it’s mentioned. “Twitter is not about the triumph of technology,” Stone says. “It’s about the triumph of the human spirit.”"

But the real value of Twitter, and for that matter, SMS, and Internet-enabled cell phones with photo and video shines when governments restrict the flow of information through mainstream media channels. The New York Times today reports on the Chinese news blackout surrounding the spectacular fire that destroyed the building housing the government-owned broadcast network, Central China Television (CCTV) and a future Mandarin Oriental Hotel:

"There were no pictures on the front page of The Beijing News. The home page of Xinhua, the official news agency, featured a photo from another tragedy: a stampede in South Korea that left four people dead. Throughout the morning, CCTV’s brief bulletins about the blaze omitted footage of the burning tower.

Even before the flames had been extinguished early Tuesday, images of the burning hotel had been removed from the country’s main Internet portals. By afternoon, the entire story had been buried."

Citizen journalists apparently didn't receive the government directive, which read:

“No photos, no video clips, no in-depth reports,” read the memo, which instructed all media outlets to use only Xinhua’s dispatches. “The news should be put on news areas only and the comments posting areas should be closed.”

They emerged as the primary (and only) source of images and details of the fire:

"...it was ordinary citizens, armed with cell phone cameras and camcorders, who provided the first images and accounts shortly after the fire began. Photographs were traded through texting and e-mail. One home video widely circulated on the Web showed how the fire began after the shell of a firework landed on the hotel roof."

As I watched last night's Presidential presser, and specifically the pre-ordained MSM-centric pecking order of journalists given the floor (i.e., AP, Reuters, CBS, NBC, Bloomberg, ABC, CNN, NYTimes, Fox News, WashPost, Hearst and NPR). I was glad to see Huffington Post get a turn (just after 88-year-old Helen Thomas of Hearst).

HuffPost's prime-time anointment affirms the blog's mainstream media membership, albeit with a distinct POV, but also speaks volumes of the prospective value home-grown media will have in tomorrow's media ecosystem. Witness the fires in Australia. Are you prepared, China?

Labels: blze, CCTV, China, citizen journalism, command and control, Mandarin Hotel, PR, propaganda, Twitter, US Air Flight 1549

In this new communications paradigm, what PR skills and client deliverables remain unscathed?

Converseon's chief strategist Mike Moran retweeted a link to a post this morning by Paul Gillin with the bodacious title Why Online Matters More Than Print.

In it, Mr. Gillin extols the superior buzzmaking virtues of online media versus print (and broadcast), which builds on the theme of his other more provocative blog "Newspaper Death Watch." (No relation to TheMediaIsDying).

In his post, Gillin observes the tangible effects of three different media mentions of his blog (in BuzzMachine, The New Yorker and The Economist). Both BuzzMachine and The Economist mentions appeared online, while The New Yorker ran in the magazine only.

"Prior to the reference in BuzzMachine, the site was getting about 500 unique visitors per day. After Jeff Jarvis linked to one of my year-end roundup articles, that average jumped by about 200 visitors a day. It jumped again after the mention in the Economist... However, a prominent reference in the New Yorker...had no discernible impact. Why? Because The New Yorker reference was the only one that didn’t include a hyperlink. ...In both the BuzzMachine and Economist cases, a surge of inbound links from other bloggers followed the mentions on their websites. This improved my Google search performance and Technorati authority rankings. Subscriptions to my RSS feed shot up by about 5% in each of the days following the links’ appearance."

Now we can debate the qualitative differences of each mention, let alone the intangible prestige of The New Yorker, but Mr. Gillin weighed the publicity's value on quantifiable metrics, e.g., site visitors, Technorati rankings, etc.. This brings me back to the original point of this post.

The PR paradigm is still about garnering editorial buzz, and frankly the skills required to do so remain somewhat intact, i.e., cogent, concise and compelling communiques to the most appropriate journalists or "friends." What has changed -- for the better in my opinion -- is that our success may finally be measured by the action the publicity spurs, not by the coverage itself.

Advertisers don't measure their success by the publication or airing of their creative executions, which are simply the means to the end. The PR industry, with its fancy clip books as the client deliverable, traditionally has. Perhaps no longer. Mr. Gillin concludes:

"Not long ago, online publishers were frequently called upon to defend the value of a mention on their properties. Public relations professionals told me that Web coverage was nice, but their clients really valued a mention in a prominent print publication. I would submit that this scenario has now been reversed. With companies increasingly using the Web for promotion, lead generation, sales and customer support, a link from a prominent website is of far greater value than a print article in a prominent print or broadcast outlet. And as a younger generation of business and consumer readers gathers more of its information online, that value will only accelerate."

Labels: broadcast media, journalism, media relations, newspapers, online media, Paul Gillin, PR

The Associated Press moved a piece yesterday on The Pentagon's growing PR spend: The AP's comprehensive investigation revealed that:

"...over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents."

Now it's to be expected that The Associated Press, of all journalistic enterprises, would equate PR and propaganda, especially after eight years of the Bushies giving our industry a black eye with the likes of Armstrong Williams, paid "news" stories, and former generals-as-TV surrogates.

But what intrigued me most about the AP look into Pentagon PR was whether the military's communications operatives (all "27,000" of them) will diverge from the command-and-control ways of the previous administration. In other words, will Obama's much-heralded social media and direct-to-constituent communications paradigm seep from the Oval office into other areas of the government?

Some say it already has. Wasn't that Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (@claircmc) twittering her doings in DC last week? And she's not alone. Still, judging from some of the findings in the AP report, I'm not especially encouraged in spite of sporadic glimmers:

"The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations, which targets foreign audiences."

There's something about that word "target" that gives me pause.

"Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of strategic communications for the U.S. Central Command, says psychological operations must be secret to be effective. "We have to be pragmatic and realistic about the game that we play in terms of information, and that game is very complex,' he says."

So much for transparency. At least the Obama administration plans to scrutinize The Pentagon's profligate PR spending:

"With a new administration in power, it is not clear what changes may be made. Obama administration officials have said they intend to go through the Department of Defense budget closely to trim bloated spending."

Still, I wish they'd consider inculcating the military's PR'ists with the social media strategies that they and many forward-thinking companies have successfully deployed. As of right now, I can't help but be pessimistic:

"In February, the Army released a new eight-chapter field manual that puts information warfare on par with traditional warfare. The title of an entire chapter, Chapter 7: 'Information Superiority.'"

Photo of Robert M. Gates (l) and Michael Mullen (r) courtesy of Getty Images.

Labels: military, PR, propaganda, public relations, social media, The Pentagon

I constantly implore my boys to take their online profiles very seriously. A month doesn't pass without my asking them to expunge from their Facebook pages any obscene wall posts and photos in which their "friends" tagged them in some state of unseemly debauchery, e.g., beer pong games or dubious attire.

Fortunately, compared to others in their age demo, they appear downright conservative -- something for which I am thankful and, one day, presumably they will thank me.

Managing one's Facebook profile is a piece of cake compared to gaming one's Google profile. The Wall Street Journal's tech-savvy Julia Angwin today shared her experience (and success) using search-engine optimization (SEO) to modify her search engine results page (SERP).

In her piece "It's a New Me (As Seen on Google)," she writes:

"One of the paradoxes of the digital age is that the boundless freedoms of the Internet also constrain our identity. Before the ubiquity of search engines you could go on a date or a job interview and construct a narrative about your life that fit the situation. No one in your book group had to know that you were a punk-rocker in high school. But it's much harder to package yourself in the Google era. Online, your digital identity often comes down to the top 10 links on your SERP, or search-engine results page."

Julia proceeded to cull advice from experts, including one of the venerable and still active chroniclers of all things search, Danny Sullivan. Angwin was trying to de-elevate an article she had written years before and even considered asking Google directly to remove it. Sullivan explained that it is "extremely difficult" to remove things from Google's search results: "They don't really intervene unless there is some good legal reason to do that," he said.

On a related note, I recently asked Edelman's Steve Rubel about the strategy of using keyword densities as a means for elevating one's news release's rank in Google's organic search results. He said, in effect, that the keepers of the algorithm driving the world's de facto search engine have gotten hip to that, i.e., it no longer works.

Anyway, Julia then collared Google's Adam Lasnik who offered up what seemed like the company line:

"...create original compelling content about yourself that is easily accessed by Google and earns links from authoritative and relevant Web sites."

Hmm. Easier said than done.

She finally found one of the myriad SEO experts: Rhea Drysdale of OutspokenMedia.com who astutely advised Julia to:

"...focus on linking my online presences to each other -- that is, my Twitter page would link to my LinkedIn page, which would link to my biography on my book-publisher's site. These interlinkages are key to understanding Google's page-ranking system. Google rates Web sites, in part, by how many links they have from other credible Web sites."

Now she was getting somewhere: "By interlinking my sites, my efforts soon began to pay off," Julia wrote. But her efforts to take control of her Google profile soon were disrupted via an article she wrote on Steve Jobs that drew considerable online conjecture. The SERP-altering noise eventually subsided, and she was able to turn her attention to optimizing the meta tags embedded in the WSJ website.

By optimizing her meta data and offering up a steady stream of Twitter links, she exerted even greater control over her organic results rankings, and ultimately her personal brand.

I would recommend reading Julia's journey into the art of search engine reputation management from which she learned: "the final lesson of SEO: Patience is required."

Labels: Danny Sullivan, Google, Google profile, Julia Angwin, online reputation, search engine results, SEO, SERP, Wall Street Journal

The news emanating from Israel's former and once-again terrorist-controlled territory may have fallen from the front pages of the world media (barring today's Times piece), but a struggle to prevail in the court of public opinion remains very much alive.

The latest chapter revolves around the distribution of humanitarian aid -- and which group can exploit it for its own aggrandizement.

This morning, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) accused Hamas of forcibly seizing the supplies it intended to deliver directly to 500 families in a hard-hit refugee camp. From UNRWA:

"Over 3,500 blankets and 406 food parcels were confiscated from a distribution store at Beach Camp in Gaza by police personnel," the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said in its first such statement since a ceasefire went into effect on Jan. 18.

"This took place after UNRWA personnel had earlier refused to hand over the aid supplies to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. The police subsequently broke into the warehouse and seized the aid by force," the statement said.

Hamas leaders and spokespersons, like their terrorist propagandists, the late Yasser Arafat and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, among others, have few qualms about straight-out lying to the news media if it advances their real objectives - PR or otherwise.

"Kurd, accusing UNRWA of being reluctant to cooperate with his ministry, told Reuters: "Not a single policeman nor any employee of the Welfare Ministry entered any facility or centre belonging to UNRWA."

On the flip side, Reuters reports in Israel's influential Haaretz newspaper, that the EU Middle East envoy has accused the Israelis of dragging their feet in allowing construction materials to flow into their former territory:

"Israel must lift its ban on materials to rebuild Gaza after its offensive in a territory resembling "hell" where children have to sleep outside shattered homes, the European Union's Middle East envoy said in Jerusalem on Tuesday."

To its credit, Reuters did report that "Israel has opened Gaza's border crossings to larger amounts of food and medicine..." but Reuters' hellish headline, "EU envoy: Israel must ease aid restrictions on 'hell-like' Gaza," overshadowed this not inconsequential reality.

Frankly, I believe that Israel should open the flood gates to allow aid - of whatever kind - into Gaza, and re-double efforts to let the world know about it. With that said, I suspect Israel's reticence has more to do with allowing Hamas to exploit the Jewish state's benevolence so the terrorist group can re-assert its hegemony. On this, even the EU envoy concedes:

"When it comes to providing additional public money, governments need assurances about where this money is going, and Hamas is not a government, Hamas is a movement," Otte said.

Labels: EU, Gaza, Hamas, humanitarian aid, Israel, PR, rebuilding, terrorist propaganda

I've been in the PR game for a while, and as long as I can remember, clients have judged and compensated PR pros based on their ability to build a positive presence in the media. This client-agency paradigm hasn't changed much over the years, though the means for building that presence, and the nature of the media itself, certainly have.

Even with the changes, courting journalists (and today's conversation catalysts) continues to endure as a core competency for a broad swath of the profession. The channels of engagement, e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Blogger, E-mail, SMS and yes, USPS, matter less than the message itself and to whom that message is directed or shared.

It's the latter process that has tainted the reputation of many a PR professional -- something accelerated by the advent of electronic communication. Journalists increasingly decry the superfluous PR spam that floods their inboxes, while cursing those who blast it. Now I hear that one news release distribution company has enabled PR pros to (mass?)-disseminate incorporate their "news" and Twitter credentials in their news releases. See comments below. to the Twitter handles of micro-blogging journalists. Tread on this Twitter tack lightly, please.

But I digress. The process of identifying just the right journalist hasn't changed in decades. New York publicists once relied on the New York Publicity Outlet book, while left-coasters had their California Publicity Outlets. These books published the names, titles and contact information for virtually every journalists in their regions - at a time when that was possible. Eventually this relatively vague data migrated to CDs, proprietary agency databases, and the Web where it currently resides via companies like Cision (formerly Bacons), Vocus and others.

What if a PR pro could build his or her media list based on journalists' actual editorial interests and history, not their job titles? A few years ago, this would not have been possible. Today it is.

Over the last year, I have been involved in the development of the first search application that allows PR pros to find journalists based on their cumulative body of work. MatchPoint allows the PR pro to enter a news release, pitch letter or keywords into a search box to produce a weighted ranking of the most relevant journalists (and their contact info). The journalists' names are culled from a proprietary content database of three million articles from 11,000 print publications, 25,000 websites and 10,000 bloggers.

MatchPoint 1.0 debuts today with a ten-day free trial. A release is here. Take it for a test spin, and let me know what you think. Will it replace the media database companies? No. In fact, the patent-pending search application plays nicely with them. Does it portend the end of PR spam? Probably not. That's up to the user. But it's certainly a welcome step in the right direction.

Labels: chris anderson, Cision, MatchPoint, media database, media relations, PR, pr spam, public relations, search engine technology, Vocus