PR Day Jobs of the Twitter Famous

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I'm very selective about whom I follow on Twitter. My "strategy" seeks to capture authoritative voices in media, marketing, PR and technology. Conversely, here are three sure ways to get un-followed:

• Twitpic an image of what's on your dinner plate;
• Fill my Twitterstream with excessive, ho-hum check-ins via FourSquare;
• Overly and overtly promote your employer or your clients.
  

To that last point, many PR industry pros use their spheres of influence to benefit the agencies or vendors that employ them. Who can blame them? Isn't this the raison d'etre for the social media marketing set? I even suggested in a previous post that the size of one's "following" might even accrue to his or her career fortunes, depending of course on how much value a prospective employer assigns to that metric.

I thought it would be fun to create a top-ten list of some of the more socially engaged PR industry peeps and their special interests:

10. ValerieSimon (@valeriesimon, following 4241, followers, 4777) Employer: BurrelleLuce Media Monitoring and Measurement; Lead role in organizing #PRStudChat.

9. David Armano (@armano, following 5885, followers 26,064) Employer: Edelman Digital; New to that agency, and a savvy social media persona whose tweets of late tend to revolve around his new employer.

8. Soraya Darabi (@sorayad, following 1005, followers 467,605) Employer: Drop.io, Presslift; Recently left the social media trenches at NYTimes.com, taking her massive following with her.

7. Sarah Evans (@prsarahevans, following 13,645, followers 41,407) Employer; Sevans Strategy, Pitch Engine, Elgin Community College, and a welcome fixture on the social media scene.

6. Jason Kintzler (@jasonkintzler, following 7,216, followers 10,740) Employer (founder): PitchEngine; Jason is an indefatigable promoter of the PR story-packaging service (platform) he founded in the wilds of Wyoming.

5. Mickie Kennedy (@ereleases, following 19,593, followers 17,812) Employer (founder): eReleases; Uses his Twitter feed primarily to curate and share PR-relevant content (and, to his credit, less to advocate for the press release distribution company he founded).

4. Brian Solis (@briansolis, following 2477, followers 50,238) Employer (founder): FutureWorks, but with interests in PitchEngine, BuzzGain, and others. A prolific blogger, author and authority on the changed PR/marketing landscape, Brian is a ubiquitous presence on the social media circuit. You'll find him of late chatting up his new book Engage.

3. Mark Ragan (@markraganceo, following 14,485, followers 14,625) Employer: Ragan Communications Inc.; A constant (automated?) presence on Twitter, and savvy curator, re-tweeter of all things PR with an emphasis on content and conferences produced by his company.

2. Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra, following 26,199, followers 27,822) Employer: Radian6; Amber is actively engaged in the social graph and is a mainstay on industry panels, albeit on Radian6's dime. Ahhh, if only the other conversation monitoring companies had someone with her following.

1. Peter Shankman (@skydiver, following 596, followers 57,002) Employer (founder): HARO; They broke the mold with Peter Shankman. (But we knew that based on the name of the PR firm he once led, Geek Factory.) The prolific and personable proprietor behind HARO, Shankman's Twitter followers get a heavy dose (sometimes too heavy) of his worldly travels and death-defying adventures.

Happy Twitter trails.

Forget the Bong

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Over the weekend, the inimitable Michael Arrington -- he of TechCrunch fame -- laid down the gauntlet to reputation minders everywhere via a blog post titled:

"Reputation Is Dead:
It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions."

The post, which Mr. Arrington tweeted and retweeted assiduously, asserted that the myriad anonymous opinions, spawned by social media, renders one's ability to influence his or her online reputation "pointless." He goes on to say that ultimately the public will grow immune to past indiscretions (e.g., the bong smoker pictured in his post). He writes:

"Trying to control, or even manage, your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become pointless to even try."

From Yelp to Facebook to Twitter to a new startup that’s "effectively Yelp for people..."

"Today we have quick fire and semi or completely anonymous attacks on people, brands, businesses and just about everything else. And it is becoming increasingly findable on the search engines. Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, etc. are the new printing presses, and absolutely everyone, even the random wingnuts, have access."

I certainly hope the new start-up he references is not Formspring.me, the current target of a massive boycott on Long Island following the suicide of a high school girl whose character was defiled through this anonymous social channel. I even noticed that Loic Lemeur -- he of Seesmic and Le Web 2009 fame -- was tooling with this insidious channel over weekend, and I felt compelled to draw his attention to the human tragedy it helped foment.

Still, Mr. Arrington's right when he says:

"...it’s much harder to get that stuff off of services that exist to publish that information. Businesses freak out over a bad Yelp review but can do little to stop it. Imagine how you’ll feel when the top result for your name is a site that includes “reviews” of you by anonymous people who know you."

I'm not convinced that learning to live with online unpleasantries is an acceptable solution. After all, as PR pros we are charged with dealing with just this kind of stuff. So rather than admit that the situation is helpless, what can we do to "manage" personal or client enterprise reputations in an age when dubious and indelible opinions have the capacity to proliferate rapidly online?

Musing on this meme, NY VC Fred Wilson directed eyeballs to one of his earlier posts titled "Own Your Online Brand" in which a group of MBA students extolled the virtues of active management of one's online persona for enhancing job prospects. He cited David Karp:

"David's point is that you can't control what other people do (tag you in photos, post pictures you'd rather not see online, say awful things about you), but you can control what the Internet sees about you by overwhelming it with your social media presence."

Mr. Wilson adds:

"I agree that controlling your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. But I do not think it is pointless. Reputation is everything and there is a way to fight back."

I too am not willing to throw in the towel. Here are several points to consider for companies concerned about their online reputations (aren't they all?):

1. As Mr. Karp suggests, "overwhelm" the Internet with positive content that could trump any negativity that may exist. But wait, you say. This is not scalable at the enterprise level. In-house PR staffs simply do not have the bandwidth to overwhelm anything. If anything, they're overwhelmed just trying to keep up with incessant information requests (and planning meetings).
   

In addition to optimizing and expanding your company's formal content, you now have a valid reason to convince management to unleash the power of the employee base. Most, after all, already are engaged with the social graph to varying degrees. Why not institutionalize that engagement, within agreed-upon guidelines, to build a stronger digital footprint with a more informed portrayal of the company? Doesn't IBM have thousands of employees doing just that in its vertical circles?


2. Secondly, ratchet up the monitoring and mining of online conversations. Consider utilizing premium tools from Radian6, Scout Labs, Invisible Technologies or Converseon to capture, analyze and serve up real-time sentiment. First, this function acts as a vital warning system for potential PR problems. Second, it helps identify potential detractors, as well as prospective brand evangelists to engage.


3. Thirdly, and to the point of scalability, be more judicious about your company's engagement strategy. While some consumer-facing companies insist on reaching out to literally every detractor, and are bolstering their "social CRM" staffs to do just that, some detractors merit more attention than others.
   

Mr. Arrington may be right when he says

"We’re going to be forced to adjust as a society. I firmly believe that we will simply become much more accepting of indiscretions over time."

Now this may fly for individuals hoping that their past indiscretions will be muddled in the social media mire, but companies don't have that luxury. The consequences -- material and otherwise -- are simply too great to hope that affronts to their reputations will eventually dissipate. For now, real-time monitoring and engagement strategies, within reason, remain valid.

Friday's Video Views

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This week's edition of Video Views features David Pogue crooning about his iPhone, a clip on one remedy to bolster print newspaper readership, USA Today's Jon Swartz at his first SXSWi conference, and a fresh old look at unintended acceleration.

Here's a sobering perspective of newspaper demographics and a potential remedy for preserving readership. (HT @steveouting) The idea of newspaper content as a more accurate reflection of reader demos may be catching on as this piece from Online Journalism Review affirms.




Apple aficionado David Pogue works out his vocal chords (to our considerable chagrin) in this musical paean to the iPhone recorded (cinema verité style) at the Ragan Communications' Social Media for Communicators conference at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Ga. -- Feb. 23, 2010. This probably won't do much to quell allegations of Mr. Pogue's unusually strong affections for the products of one particular Cupertino company, in spite of residing in the majority.



Instead of acres and acres of products like CES, here it's "acres and acres of people with ideas," Jon Swartz, technology reporter for USA Today, commenting on his first SXSWi conference and how his employer hopes to compete with more nimble digital media.



When CBS "60 Minutes" did a story on the problem of unattended acceleration in Audi automobiles, it sent the German automaker's sales into a tailspin. This was in 1987 when Audi and its PR firm had no other recourse than the mainstream media -- earned and paid -- to get its POV across. Yet, here's a video Audi produced at the time featuring legendary race car driver Bobby Unser advocating on its behalf. Too bad YouTube was still two decades away.



Just when we thought it was safe to own a foreign automobile, we get this:

The World According to Meerman Scott

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I had a chance to catch yesterday morning's keynote session featuring David Meerman Scott at the Search Engine Strategies New York conference, which continues today and tomorrow.

He is one helluva a speaker who made a cogent case for the "new rules of marketing & PR" by asking the audience five very simple questions:

1. In the last one to two months -- either privately or professionally -- raise your hands if you've answered a direct mail advertisement from the post office.
   
   
2. In the last one to two months -- either privately or professionally -- raise your hands if you've gone to mainstream media to research a product or service you might want to buy... magazines, radio, television or newspaper.
   
   
3. In the last couple of months -- either privately or professionally, please raise your hands if you've gone to the print yellow pages.
   
   
4. In the last one to two months -- either privately or professionally, raise your hand if you've used Google or another search engine?
   
   
5. In the last couple of months -- privately or professionally-- in researching a product or service you might want to buy, have you tapped your online network -- friends, family members, colleagues -- and an answer came back to you that was on Skype, email, Twitter, LinkedIn, instant messaging or some kind of network and it was a URL to a website you visited?
   

The answers:

1. One half of 1 percent
2. 22 percent of the room
3. Four percent
4. 100 percent
5. 85 percent

What Meerman Scott found fascinating is that these questions were answered exactly the same wherever (and to whomever) he spoke -- from Estonia to Istanbul to Boston to New Zealand and elsewhere.

It begs the question:

"How many companies are still marketing using those early ways?"

If you have about 51 minutes, here's the audio clip of his presentation. I had a chance to ask David a few questions about the PR biz, including which of the marketing disciplines might have the right stuff to succeed in the new world order. His answer may surprise you. Here's a short clip of that chat.

Separately, I sat in on the search engine marketing session where I saw Backazimuth's Bill Hunt, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. with my friend, former client and sometimes colleague Mike Moran.

I had to ask him about the ins and outs of optimized news releases and the new tool he's developed that should help PR people get a better fix on keywords that can "pull" in eyeballs. Here's the audio clip or our brief exchange.

All in all a most enlightening day.

Into the Newsroom

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When I heard a week or so ago that The New York Times was prepping a daily video newscast, I wasn't expecting much. Perhaps a talking head reading headlines from a teleprompter with some still images or graphics peppered in to make the point.

I knew not to expect globe-trotting TV news producers and their ENG crews feeding slickly edited packages to stream during the hour-long 1pm webcast. Economic realities couldn't justify this.

Nevertheless, how pleasantly surprised I was to see the first daily "TimesCast" take us into The Times newsroom. And not just in the newsroom, but smack in the middle of the previously unseen "Page One" morning meeting. There was associate managing editor Jim Roberts (@nytjim) calling on his editors to provide the topline of what stories are in the pipeline (with two cameras no less.)

We catch a glimpse of managing editor Bill Keller, but more importantly hear from those who are closest to the most significant developments of the day. Direct questions from reporters to other reporters, recognized previously only by their by-lines. For me, the personas of ET's "The Insider" didn't hold a candle.

Not only was the report brisk, informative and engaging, but it opened the curtain on a news organization whose historical lack of transparency has contributed to its share of unwanted scrutiny in recent years. I'll never forget helping The Times celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Ochs-Sulzberger family's ownership of the newspaper. A crew from CBS "Sunday Morning" requested to shoot in the newsroom, but Times policy prohibited any filming in this vaunted space. (Eventually an exception was made.)

My how The Times are a changing. TimesCast -- not unlike "The PBS NewsHour" -- was made for discerning news consumers, and offers a sublime addition to the news report coming from a news organization at the top of its game. I only hope that this fresh look into the newsroom, and more importantly, the news decision-making process, will put to bed those questioning the value and fundamentals of quality journalism.

Friday's Video Views

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This week's edition of "Video Views" features the founders of Google and Mashable, a Facebook privacy tour, one company's vision for the magazine stand of the future, and yet another Chatroulette clip. Enjoy.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore on curation as journalism, a term he'd prefer to lose given its varied (and "loaded") meanings (via emediavitals).




Facebook has faced its share of privacy issues. Just this week, a $9.5 million settlement was announced stemming from America's most visited site's ill-conceived foray into targeted advertising. More recently Facebook debuted adjustable privacy settings, which spurred its share of confusion. Here's a video from long-time tech journalist Larry Magid (@LarryMagid) offering a helpful tutorial on how to ConnectSafely.




The magazine stand of the future? Here's a demo captured at SxSWi via eMediaVitals w/ HT to @zimbalist:




Eric Schmidt talks a future mobile-centric Google at the recent Abu Dhabi Media Summit (via paidContent) Running time: 45 minutes:




Yes another viral Chatroulette video, but this one is total improv and urbane, a stark contrast to the loser randoids that populate Russia's answer to social media. Now what if Chatroulette limited its use to college students?

Joslyn James: 9.0 Magnitude

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March 18, 2010

Mr. Ari Fleischer
President
Ari Fleischer Sports Communications
(and George W. Bush Apologist)
767 Fifth Avenue
44th Floor
New York, NY 10153

Dear Ari,

Your website boasts of your ability to "help [athletes and sports executives] handle the bad news and take advantage of the good." So how do you handle this latest piece of bad news?

You took full credit for Mark McGwire's success in dodging the bullet following his come-to-Jesus moment on a cable network affiliated with the firm that bankrolled you.

You must be a PR genius, or could that little 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti the next day have played a role in saving Mr. McGwire's hide?

Whatever. It's the end result, not the facts that matter.. Gee, not unlike your (still-unrepented) promotion of the war in Iraq. But that's history. You're a sports guy now. Few untimely deaths in your new profession.

Still, I can't help but wonder how that natural disaster proved so fortuitous for your steroid-abusing home run king*, while helping you land your current high profile client. Sure, Tiger's with that same firm that put you in business, but McGwire no doubt sealed the deal for you to orchestrate the beleaguered golfer's public re-emergence at The Masters.

So far so good. Everything is proceeding without a hitch. CBS's stock price is up. Photos of Tiger and Ellin at their home popped on the cover of yesterday's New York Post. And Tiger's fans anxiously await to forgive and forget.

Until today...when porn star Joslyn James decided to up her celebrity quotient by releasing some sexts written by her most famous patron, your new client.

Let's just say they provide a little too much information that may complicate your PR strategy. Here's a sampling:

Tiger: Sent: 03:32 PM 08/29/2009:
I have no idea. I would love to have the ability to make you sore

Tiger: Sent: 03:36 PM 08/29/2009:
After i cum you better start sucking my cock to get it hard

Tiger: Sent: 03:37 PM 08/29/2009:
Do you ever hook up with other guys or girls

Tiger: Sent: 03:41 PM 08/29/2009:
You didnt answer the question

Tiger: Sent: 03:43 PM 08/29/2009:
Ok. I would like to have a threesome with you and another girl you trust

Tiger: Sent: 03:48 PM 08/29/2009:
Does that excite you at all or no

Tiger: Sent: 03:52 PM 08/29/2009:
God girl. You better want to take care of me

Tiger: Sent: 04:07 PM 08/29/2009:
You are my fucking whore

...and (too) much more.

I look forward to seeing you work your magic here. Too bad the healthcare reform vote is still a week or more away. Now wouldn't that be ironic? Ari Fleischer pushes for quick (like today) passage of health care reform legislation.

Lots of luck,

Peter Himler

Is Social Media Marketing Just Hype?

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"Hype right now exceeds the reality" is the sub-head of a piece in today's Wall Street Journal whose headline "Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media" says it all.

But don't be fooled. Several of the entrepreneurs featured in the story actually gushed over how they converted leads to sales through active listening and consumer engagement via Twitter and elsewhere:

"'The people coming from social media have been buying,' says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.

As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines.'"

The operative here: consistent engagement. Registering for Twitter and Facebook accounts without a dedicated (and engaging) professional to feed and nurture them will invariably lead to dashed expectations, as evidenced from a survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners, which found that:

"...just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What's more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives."

My guess is that many of these firms signed up for the ride, but didn't invest the time. Others may have been hoodwinked by one of the social media snake oil sales force that abounds on the inter-tubes. In fact, eMarketer today posted a study titled "Social Fans More Likely to Buy" from Chadwick Martin Baily/iModerate, which found that:

"social friends and followers feel more inclined to purchase from the brands they are fans of... More than one-half of Facebook fans said they are more likely to make a purchase for at least a few brands, and 67% of Twitter followers reported the same."

So while today's Wall Street Journal headline may be provocative, the case for, and growing number of business case studies about, social media as a measurable marketing discipline will soon silence most naysayers. As the Chadwick Martin Baily/iModerate study found:

"The power of earned media gives a further boost to brands: 60% of respondents claimed their Facebook fandom increased the chance they would recommend a brand to a friend. Among Twitter followers, that proportion rose to nearly eight in 10."

If you still have doubts, just talk to any of the ebullient attendees of this year's SxSWi.

Location Location Location (and #freebeer)

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I felt like I was there, even though client and family obligations kept me in New York for this year's SxSWi conference.

It seemed that two-thirds of the tweeps in my Twitterstream were in Austin over the weekend where the scuttlebutt was all about location-based services, and the endless stream of events -- whose venues benefited from these services.

First, the parties. Virtually every social media brand and enabling technology held some sort of beer-infused corporate-sponsored gathering, except perhaps for the one hosted by @garyvee whose libation of choice was vino. I had a chuckle from the following Robert Scoble tweets:

@Scobleizer How do you know a @sxsw party is really exclusive? When they turn down @leolaporte and me like Twitter just did. We are having a good laugh.

@Scobleizer That said the hot parties of the evening are the NPR, Mashable, and ICanHazCheezburger ones, so we will have plenty to do.

@Scobleizer Thanks to @leolaporte for letting me tag along. We got to @garyvee party just as he was pouring last of 180 bottles of wine.

What especially fascinated me about many of these parties was the real-time, flash mob nature of the invitation process. One of the event hosts would simply tweet details minutes or hours before the event, which prompted his or her location-based disciples to oblige with attendance. Forget eVite, Pingg and eventBrite.

Parties aside, the real noise from SxSWi revolved around the battle for primacy in the location check-in services space. One journalist for Silicon Alley Insider went out on a limb to declare NYC-based Four Square the winner over Austin-HQ'd Gowalla, based on Twitter buzz alone.

This was in spite of the fact that Gowalla (with 100K followers versus FourSquare's 500K) walked away with a SxSW Award in the mobile category. TechCrunch called the "location war" a "dead heat." Here is how the founders of each service distinguish their mobile apps:

Gowalla's Josh Williams (@jw) via Bloomberg:



FourSquare's Dennis Crowley (@dens) via CNN:



Even though I didn't make it to this year's confab, I was happy to learn that this blog was one of two to have won a Hive Award in the Blogging category. The awards "honor the unsung heroes of the Internet." I guess I have to sing louder.

Friday's Video Views

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Here's this week's edition of Friday's Video Views, entertaining and sometimes edifying video clips from around the Web:

"An Inconvenient PR Truth" - If Al Gore turned his sights on the pollutive effects of PR Spam, this is what might emerge (albeit with a British accent). Of course, violators can always test drive MatchPoint, (a spam-killing app that this PR vet helped develop).

An Inconvenient PR Truth from RealWire on Vimeo.

The New Dork - Entrepreneur State of Mind - Sounds like New York, and frankly the tech scene here could easily qualify for the setting, but this is an all west coast affair.




Long-Form Journalism Is Not "Entirely Dead" and e-Readers May Give Rise to Entirely New Forms, The Economist's Daniel Franklin (via Beet.TV)




Jon Stewart plays Chatroulette and encounters some familiar faces. Let's hope he (and the other pervs on this channel) will soon find themselves geo-tagged.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tech-Talch - Chatroulette
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Wolff Trap

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You gotta love Michael Wolff's visceral reaction to the recent overture from the PR team for MySpace. He was so inspired, he crafted a Newser post titled:

MySpace Is Back! Really! Totally! Meet Jason and Mike! Wanna Interview Them?

The headline essentially captures Mr. Wolff's (and others') intractable notion that MySpace is washed up, and that any effort to shore up a once (and still?)-valuable commodity in the News Corp empire is just spin - even if it isn't.

No stranger to News Corp, as author of an authorized biography of Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Wolff is known for his caustic, if not knee-jerk assessments of the fate of old media. He's fond of tweeting nasties about The New York Times, which brings us to his second PR-related post in as many days.

In "Can Better PR Save The Times?", he echoes fellow media watcher John Koblin's post earlier this week, but goes a step further by imagining what the head of corp. comms. at a media company might actually do:

"Practically speaking, the job of a media business flack is to protect one media business from other media businesses. In other words, while news businesses are supposed to be getting the story about others, they too, when it's about them, have an interest in keeping reporters from getting the story."

Well, not exactly, Michael. The Times, like many digitally aware, consumer-facing organizations, has come a long way in recognizing the value of open communications (versus "keeping reporters from getting the story.") NYTCO is far from Toyota, but admittedly has some distance to travel before joining the ranks of Dell or Zappos.

The PR department may not have the bandwidth to respond to every NYTPicker, nor should it have to engage its "determined detractors." Absent from your diss--missal is any recognition of the organization's push for its rank-and-file to embrace the social spheres. Few can argue with the digital advantage it has over other authoritative news orgs in its peer set, e.g., NPR, HuffPost, WashPost, and Politico, among them.

So, Michael, before you proclaim the demise of this still influential and vital journalistic enterprise, ask Bob Christie to have Nisenholtz, Zimbalist or Frons give you a tour of what's brewing there on the digital front. It may give you pause before you blindside the "newspaper" you no doubt read every day.

A Social Guide Post

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Alex Howard aka @digiphile tweeted to his followers today a link to Reuters' new social media guidelines, which he called "progressive." Here's an excerpt:

"We want to encourage you to use social media approaches in your journalism... Many of you are using social networks like Facebook or Twitter both as part of your newsgathering and as part of your personal social networking. In the online world private and professional are increasingly intertwined but we do expect you to maintain a professional face at all times in your work for us and this extends to your use of social media. Put simply, we're expecting you to apply standards to your professional use of social media that will probably differ to those you would use for your personal activity."

Reuters' encouragement of its staff to jump on the social media bandwagon is an astute move that will enhance awareness and authority of its news content, and the producers thereof. It contrasts with the policies disseminated in May by a competitive news organization:

"Our code of ethics says the news staff may not publish websites, blogs or other online journals, that discuss companies, people or topics covered by [said news org]...direct Internet traffic to media competitors or discuss them... Journalists should be aware that anything posted on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, social networks, web feeds, or other blogs can be disseminated by someone seeking to discredit, belittle or embarrass the reporter of the organization. Failure to abide by this ethic may be grounds for termination."

Admittedly, this latter policy was created last May, eons ago in Twitter time. Since then, I met the company's new social media executive (with a solid digital pedigree) who was hired to catalyze the news organization's historically conservative culture. Let's keep an eye on it.

More and more companies, especially media companies, are scrambling to establish guidelines for employees to engage the social graph. This is not only prudent, but for communications professionals, an absolute necessity given internal PR departments' limited bandwidth to effectively advance brand esteem in an atomized media world. It is almost vital today for a company's rank-and-file to carry the torch -- again, within reasonable guidelines.

For those advising their client-companies on these matters, here are some useful resources:

• Policy Tool (for Social Media) - "a policy generator that simplifies the process of creating guidelines that respect the rights of your employees while protecting your brand online."
  

• Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Journalists - "From making use of social media tools to create and store content (ala YouTube) and other video blogs to tracking down sources (via Facebook) to publicizing stories and interacting with readers (by logging into Twitter), social media tools have opened up a whole new realm to today’s journalists."
  

• Harvard Business Review's look at "Intel's Social Media Training" -- "We have been following the journey taken by Bryan Rhoads, Senior Digital Strategist at Intel whose job title is our pick for one of this year's coolest. Rhoads starts by explaining the Intel journey."

• Directory of Social Media Policies -- "Here are a num­ber of pub­licly avail­able social media poli­cies and guide­lines for cor­po­ra­tions, non­prof­its and media com­pa­nies. In some cases, we’ve repro­duced them on this site because of how often they get moved around or dislodged."

• Online Database of Social Media Policies (searchable by industry)

• IBM's Social Computing Guidelines

• Enterprise: List of 40 Social Media Staff Guidelines

• Forrester's new social media policy
  

Drudge-Driven News

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During a recent Publicity Club of New York media panel, I brought up the downside of real-time news, citing Silicon Valley Insider's Henry Blodgett's now-famous faux pas in which he broke the "story" of a supposed Steve Jobs heart attack. The report was wrong...as further evidenced by Mr. Jobs' star turn in a tux at last night's Oscar ceremionies --->.

Even so, two of the most influential new-breed journalists today, Gawker's Nick Denton and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, make no bones about their desire to be the first out of the box -- even with half-baked muffins. Arrington on Twitter conjecture:

"Sure, lots of Twitter messages are flat out wrong and can spread disinformation. But...other people tend to immediately correct those errors. Bad information is quickly drowned out by good information."

Speaking for his PCNY co-panelists from the Wall Street Journal and its sibling outlets, All Things D's Peter Kafka reasserted The Journal's commitment to good journalistic practices, and added he's not averse to incrementally posting pieces of a story as facts become known.

But what happens when a partisan blogger knowingly issues a fabricated, "Drudge-driven" report for unaware citizens to eagerly embrace and email around to their AOL friends? (Email, as opposed to Twitter or SMS, remains the default information-sharing mechanism for much of America.)

My wife just forwarded me a blatantly anti-Obama piece allegedly penned by my former client Mort Zuckerman. It was sent to her as part of a lengthy email string from the right wingnuts whose naivety in such matters makes the missive's inaccuracy inconsequential.

In this particular case, a partisan citizen-journalist nut named Paul Hollrah from St. Charles, MO took a recent editorial by Mr. Zuckerman that was critical of Obama, and literally re-wrote it to fuel the keyboards of his disciples.

When my wife showed it to me, I read this paragraph and knew something was rotten:

Seeing his most ambitious initiative, healthcare reform, die in the flames of the Massachusetts Massacre, Obama made a hastily-planned "sortie" to Ohio for yet another Bush-bashing, self-aggrandizing stump speech on job creation. It was vintage Obama... full of left wing hyperbole and planted questions from the Kool- Ade drinkers in the hand-picked audience... but there were just two things wrong with it: 1) Almost everything he said was either wrong or an outright lie, and 2) He is so overexposed that no one in the television audience really wanted to see him.

Could/would Mort have actually written this? I did a quick Google search and came across the truth on the Scopes.com site. The answer is no. Basically, Mr. Hollrah took the opening graph, added his own pointed prose, then set the viral wheels in email motion. Perhaps Mr. Arrington is correct. This disinformation will eventually be drowned out by the truth. But will it?

If you are Mr. Zuckerman's PR advisor, how would you counsel the esteemed publisher, real estate magnate and potential U.S. Senate candidate to handle? First, I hope his consiglieres have made him aware that these scurrilous words have been attributed to him and they are now rapidly replicating on the Internet.

Second, he should consider the potential political fallout, e.g., Will New York's Democratic establishment back him without a reaffirmation of his support for President Obama, and maybe even a disavowal of the words Mr. Hollrah put on his lips. Or maybe he should leave well enough alone?


Steve Jobs photo: UPI/Jim Ruyman
Mort Zuckerman photo: Getty Images

Friday's Video Views

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As mentioned in last Friday's post, the Web has so many entertaining and edifying videos for PR types, it would be a shame not to see some of them surface. And what better place? Here are three more, as part of an evolving weekly feature, Friday's Video Views.

So what are the ingredients for a viral video? Rube Goldberg would be proud to see what a band of musical (and video) artists called OK Go has produced. Since its posting on Monday, the video has drawn nearly 3 million views. Of course, the endorsements and linkage by many of the Twitter elite (@pogue, @craignewmark and others) helped.



This is an oldie, but goody. For anyone who has ever worked at an ad, PR or branding agency and sat through the sometimes stultifying creative process, you will certainly relate to this video. (HT to @DavidHenderson.)



And finally, in a hand-held video shot from the audience at this week's Financial Times’ Digital Media and Business Conference in London, New York Times Co. chairman and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. sheds more light on the news organization's philosophy as it weighs its options for charging readers to access its high quality journalism. More from Wired's Epicenter blog here.

Hyperbolic Weather

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It may have incurred the wrath of the weather gods, but Accuweather is undaunted. The privately-owned meteorological service has encountered some stormy weather after deploying the term "snowicane" to describe last week's approaching east coast snow storm.

(And I thought #snowpolcalypse and #snowmageddon were over the top!)

Both The Weather Channel and the National Weather Service called out their biggest competitor under the umbrella theme of "it's not nice to hype mother nature."

Here's an excerpt from an AP story titled:

"Snowpocalypse to snowicane: Hype reigns in winter:"

"'It's almost inciting the public, inciting panic,' Evanego said of AccuWeather's terminology." 'It's not an apt analogy to compare this winter storm, which is really all about cold air and jet stream, with a hurricane, which is all about heat and ... things of tropical origin,' said Bruce Rose, vice president and principal scientist at The Weather Channel."

Yet, in spite of the criticism for hyping the storm, AccuWeather media relations manager Justin Roberti today emailed me a news release with the following headline:

AccuWeather.com Repeatedly Breaks Traffic Records
During Mid-Atlantic Snowstorms
Successful Site Launches New Version to Serve Customers Better

May it rain cats and dogs on those other weather forecasters, the release begged. If the word "snowicane" brings more visitors to our website, then we'll continue to scare the bejesus out of our weather-worn fans.

Photo by Peter Himler, Friday morning, February 26 from his backyard in Manhasset, NY