Proposing New Choices: SHIFT

The Society for New Communication Research released a SHIFT Communications (SHIFT) designed "Social Media News Room" template that seems to succeed as a starting place to ask questions rather than receive answers.

Before I consider the merits of the template, I'd like to clarify that SHIFT Communications is a San Franciso-based public relations agency that seems to be working hard to take a lead position on the social media front. As such, I can only commend them for the effort and hope visitors read this post for what it is and nothing else: a point of dialogue.

With that said, I would be remiss not to point out that, much like Web site templates, one size is unlikely to fit all. This newsroom template design seems to be most suitable for people who like buffets. There's nothing wrong with buffets per se, but there is a lot to be said for controlling the experience like a fine dining establishment. So I am thinking that what seems to be at risk is losing sight of the first priority of any communication: a clear message.

I felt the same way when I saw SHIFT's 2006 Social Media Release template. There is so much going on that I couldn't help but to wonder what the intent of any communication tucked into this format would achieve. It begs to be questioned. Will we overcomplicate communication by paying too much attention to the delivery and not enough on the content? Are we to resort to sound bites and bullets so our messages become a bed of nails that have no impact? Does the future of social media relations (if we call it that) mean abandoning all the lessons learned from the past by attempting to start over from scratch? Are we trying so hard to reinvent the wheel to a point where it no longer functions like a wheel (or does it make more sense to add rubber to our preexisting models)?

For social media releases, I propose the future needs a simpler approach: send a one or two paragraph news summary and a link to a longer blog-embedded news release that includes other delivery and cross reference materials. After all, if you cannot capture someone in the first two paragraphs (preferably the first sentence), then the rest of the information doesn't matter much anyway. Keep it simple.

The same goes for newsroom templates of the future. While I respect Todd Defren's, principal of SHIFT, position that "all visitors should be able to easily pick-and-choose, receive-and-share only those content aspects that are relevant to them, as individuals" has merit, I'm also wondering if too many choices might be just that … too many.

I think we can all relate to the idea that buffets, like cable service with DVRs or Tivo, require more effort to review than it does to enjoy the choice. However, that is not to say that SHIFT is doing anything wrong. On the contrary, SHIFT is doing something, which is much better than nothing because, like it or not, social media is changing the way we employ communication.

Chasing Newspapers: Social Media

With all the talk about the decline of traditional media, especially newspapers, I decided to take a peek for myself, given I often quote Bruce Spotleson, group publisher with Greenspun Media, who once observed that, to date, "no new media has ever replaced another media." Here is what I found...

In 2006, the magic number was 102,406 — the circulation needed as a publisher to break into the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers by circulation. Not to take away from whatever East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Ariz.) is doing right, but that number seems somewhat paltry to me given there are blogs that easily draw a heavier readership.

In fact, not counting Sunday circulation (most newspapers usually have larger Sunday circulations), none of the top 51-100 broke 200,000 in 2006, according to BurrellesLuce (using figures filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations), a leading media monitoring company. Only three — USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times — break the one million circulation mark.

In contrast, you need significantly more visitors to touch the Top 100 Web sites; several of which — Yahoo, MSN, and Google — provide news content. More specifically, many top social media outlets (blogs) have a higher readership than almost all daily newspapers.

If you need any more proof that daily newspapers are in trouble, consider that comScore Networks announced that 747 million people, ages 15+, used the Internet worldwide in January 2007, a 10 percent increase from January 2006. Or that PEW/INTERNET recently noted that 15 percent of Americans cited the Internet as their primary source of political campaign news in 2006, doubling since the last mid-term election.

Does this information mean I'm changing my position and beginning to think that traditional media is dying? NO! Not for many reasons, including that more targeted publications (magazines, weeklies, etc.) are still growing in America. My position remains that all media, social or otherwise, is important to public relations professionals.

However, this information does indicate that it is time for newspapers to realize that each, on its own individual merits, must decide whether it will evolve or die. For everyone's sake, I hope they all choose to evolve.

Spotleson, who spoke to my "Writing for Public Relations" class last night, asked a pretty pointed question. Given that daily newspapers traditionally inform/educate (in more detail than broadcast), stir public opinion, cover politics, provide a forum for ideas, entertain, and recognize individuals ... "Who will pick up the slack (if daily newspapers die)?"

It's an excellent question because it seems to me that daily newspapers function differently than the Internet news outlets. Generally speaking, a newspaper reader peruses newspaper sections and stumbles upon news they never thought to look for. Contrary, Internet news readers search for specific topics or look for popular topics with the advent of user-powered content like Digg, Reddit, Yahoo, Technorati, etc.

The difference between these two styles of news consumption is larger than the Grand Canyon. If we always consumed news like we do on the Internet today, it is possible some of the greatest stories of the last century would have never been covered.

I'm not saying one news consumption is better than the other, but given it is often traditional media that is investing the money to cover (or uncover) the news that social media then opines on, one might wonder if social media can afford to lose newspapers.

As much as I'm becoming more vested in the concept of social media and how it might benefit clients, I also concede that social media and information sources like Wikipedia are not always the most credible sources. Just ask actor-comedian Sinbad who recently commented on his presumed death (thank you Kristen Hunsaker for the tip). This bit of trivia doesn't even touch on the idea that most, if not all, political blogs are even further to the right and left of traditional media.

What I am also saying is that as much as I am a fan of social media, I am also a fan of traditional media. And that, if individual daily newspapers want to survive, they need to begin thinking harder about business and technology right now.

There is an immediate need for newspapers to improve hard copy content, enhance content delivery online (beyond search engines), develop better analytics for advertisers, rethink subscription rates, abandon this notion of one day charging for online content, and half a dozen or so other things. (Frankly, sometimes I think I had a better business model to integrate hard copy/Internet circulation and advertising sales five years ago before blogs even entered the picture.)

After all, I can only guess that there are reasons that both the Associated Press and PR Newswire have agreements with Technorati, which tracks 71.5 million blogs. I imagine, in part, they are preparing for a world where their biggest distributors might not be dailies but rather bloggers who are even less inclined to fact check.

There is an old saying that if you want to save the world, save yourself. Nowadays, it very much applies to daily newspapers.

Targeting Gibberish: David Meerman Scott

Most people would never know it, looking out over the vast expanse of desert, but Nevada's biodiversity ranks as the fourth highest in the United States, placed near Florida and Hawaii. There are many reasons for what some call an environmental paradox, but the simplest explanation is the combination of dramatic elevations and abundance of mini-ecosystems that were created when the ocean receded from the Great Basin.

Not dissimilar from business, each complete ecosystem provides a home for tiny pockets of unique animals and plant species that can survive nowhere else. Just as Devil's Hole pupfish adapted to living inside a limestone cavern, business people in every industry adapt to the language used by their company. Inside, it's a matter of survival to know the terms; outside, no one really gets it.

David Meerman Scott gets a hat tip today for sharing how an agency public relations professional, who obviously learned to survive in the "comprehensive electronic document management" industry, forgot that those survival skills might not translate into the real world. Scott didn't get what the company (Esker) does and I suspect that the pupfish, er, public relations professional, still doesn't understand why.

Scott goes on to ask that public relations professionals eliminate gobbledygook and try to speak like human beings. If your mother doesn't know what the company does, neither will the media that you are trying to pitch. He also defines that gobbledygook often resembles the meaningless terms he found in 388,000 news releases in 2006 alone; words like next generation, scalable, and mission critical.

I appreciate what he is talking about because there are many days I want to take down "Words. Concepts. Strategies." from our banner and put up "Translator." The only reason I don't is because some people will not appreciate the humor when I begin listing industries as opposed to foreign languages. You see, I believe that business communicators and writers are the ones who are supposed to translate all those inner ecosystem terms into words that everyday people can understand.

Usually, after I make this case, someone like Eric Eggerston will come along (he commented on Scott's blog) and say “Most administration managers or IT managers know what a document management system is, so I don't think the jargon will get in the way of communicating with their target market."

Hmmm... since when did the burden of communication become the responsibility of the listener and not the speaker?

The answer is never. As Scott points out, the media, analysts, employees, partners, and suppliers don't really want to learn a new language every time they turn around.

No, I don't mind learning new terms because I enjoy working in many different industries. However, when it comes time to communicate to a specific public (and all those other publics), I think it's best to drop the jargon and speak English. (I am not even going to touch on anacronyms, considering I recently spent 20 minutes discovering that "I-n-A," as pronounced, means "Information And Assistance," which is what you need when you first hear the term.)

One of the first examples I share with my "Writing for Public Relations" class is a very telling example: a writer working for us asked me my opinion about a sentence that started "The object of sequential inputs for counting..."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "That's what they told me. Does it sound good?"

Yeah, well, um, maybe … maybe it sounds good to the five people on the planet who actually know what you are talking about.

The sentence was promptly tossed out. It's a good trick. If an editor with little or no experience on an account can understand the communication when they read it, then you are on the right track. Sure, naysayers will always come back to the idea that everybody in their ecosystem understands what they are saying. Fair enough...

However, if you go out into the world wearing your "burro" suit, don't be offended if someone thinks you're just a ... um, burro.

Answering Questions: Richard Becker

As an optional assignment for students of my "Writing for Public Relations" class, I offered to become the subject of their project by answering 10 questions (with 5 follow-up questions as they deemed necessary). From Internet research and answers to these questions, the assignment was to write a 2-page news or feature release about me or the company.

The assignment presents an interesting opportunity to practice a real life client-story exploratory, applying economy with interview questions, working around communication and time limits, building a story from interview answers, additional research to fill in blanks, and, of course, writing a news or feature release while adhering to AP Style, etc. In sum, it's not an easy assignment, but certainly a worthwhile instructional exercise.

At the risk of publishing an overly gratuitous post, I thought I would share the first round of questions and answers, edited a bit to make the session more palatable. (By the way, the boon for the student is that I doubt I'll ever forget her after she took on an extra assignment for the sake of learning.)

Q: Did you open Copywrite, Ink. in 1991?
A: Yes, but not as Copywrite, Ink. I originally entered the Las Vegas market, after returning from Reno, Nev. as a freelance writer because advertising agencies in Las Vegas, impacted by a recession, were not hiring copywriters or creative directors with a writing background. They were more interested in account executives and graphic designers who understood the computer graphics programs that were coming out at the time.

My first client was Collins Communications. I had worked in-house with Cathy Collins for about two months. We decided we liked each other's work, but could not coexist under the same roof, mainly because she wanted an account executive too. Collins started her business after leaving R&R Advertising (now R&R Partners). I still miss working with her (may she rest in peace) and sometimes wonder what would have happened if I took over her agency like she hoped I would one day.

Anyway, the name Copywrite, Ink. was introduced in late 1992 because a production company I worked with suggested "freelancer" meant "looking for employment." Turns out the producer was right. A few years later, we incorporated.

Q: How many awards have you won?
A: I've made it a point never to count awards because I believe that awards should be the sequel, never the pilot. That is my cute way of saying that the goal should always be about results for the client before anything else. I do know, however, we've won more than 100 awards in every medium, from news releases and articles to television commercials and total integrated communication plans. I've been honored with some professional awards too, over the years.

Q: Are there any you are especially proud of?
A: If I had to choose, I would have to say the Community Achievement Award from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce because it recognizes professionals for contributions in their community as well as their profession. I received that in 1999, which seemed like a considerable accomplishment given my age and the caliber of the other nominees in my category.

The other one that always comes to mind is Outstanding Small Chapter of the Year from the International Association of Business Communicators. The Las Vegas chapter received the award after my term as president (for my term). I appreciated it, not for me as much as for the board. Every one of my board members met every goal we set and then some, moving the chapter from small to medium in the course of a single year. This was also important because it helped reinforce that Las Vegas did have credible business communicators at a time when this community was not taken seriously in the field.

Q: What was your first award?
A: My first award was in Cub Scouts, but I think you're asking about those related to the field. My first advertising-related award was for a traffic safety poster contest sponsored by the City of Las Vegas in 1986. I didn't even know I was going to pursue a career in advertising or communication, but it was still a pretty big deal for a high school senior. We were taken to lunch and met the mayor.

Q: Why do you think you are so recognized?
A: Well, every award program has different criteria (some even dedicate entire workshops on how to prepare a work plan), so it would take considerable time to explain in some cases. However, I can safely say it has NOTHING to do with the budget.

That aside, I can also say that I am blessed to work with some of the best people in the business — clients and vendors alike. As with most things, the better the team, the better your chance to produce results. For example, we're up for an award
this weekend. I teamed with a designer in Seattle to do it. We blended our ideas, he executed some drafts, and I refined it. We also had a client who was very receptive to ideas despite a small budget. The end result is a powerful logo that will help the client meet his objectives. Teamwork.

Of course, this assumes you enter. We work with several clients who enter awards programs. Surprisingly, we don't enter too much; our clients do. However, when we do enter, we do it to as a means to earn recognition for our clients and vendors.

Q: Is there a certain person in your field that you admire?
A: I have always been fond of David Ogilvy for two reasons: he believed that every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand; and one of my professors, years ago, was Bourne Morris, a former president of Ogilvy & Mather.

If you want me to pick someone closer to home, I have to recognize Keith Sheldon, ABC, APR, who was largely responsible for encouraging me to go beyond advertising and begin thinking in terms of strategic communication. He pointed me in a direction that changed the way I think about communication and perception in general. If I quote anyone in class most often, it would be him. Besides that, he's a fun person to travel with while in Mexico.

Q: Has there been an award that you received that you felt should have gone to someone else?
A: No, but mostly because most advertising/communication award programs are not structured to only have one winner. The work competes with nothing but the judges' sense of what is considered best in the field.

However, going back to the Community Achievement Award, I was in a category with Michael Berk, producer of Baywatch. To be honest, I didn't think I had a prayer. (He received an award in a different category the following year).

Q: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
A: Good question. I think the answer to that rests on the integration of technology. I believe that we are moving to have all communication and entertainment devices combined into one media. If we continue on the path we are on and people can tune into a blog or vlog as easily as they thumb through cable stations today, then I think we're headed for a real shake-up of how we perceive traditional media. The future applications of social media are just being written today.

Of course, I'd like to continue working with the clients we have, even if we eventually relocate to another city. Thanks to the Internet, location is becoming meaningless. Right now, about 50 percent of our work is out of market. New Hampshire and Washington are among our top picks. But that's a few years down the road. We contribute to whatever community we live in.

Q: How do you give back to the community?
A: Currently, I serve as a governor-appointed state commissioner, accreditation examiner for IABC, part-time instructor at UNLV, and co-sponsor of the Nevada Business Community Blog to name a few. Traditionally, we've donated our time to improve communication for various nonprofit and professional organizations locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Since 1991, we've probably assisted 30+ organizations. Recently, we signed an agreement with a non-profit organization to sponsor a product fund-raising idea for them in the near future, but we're not ready to release the details. Regardless of the effort however, I have always felt giving back to the community and profession is essential. It's just part of who I am.

Q: If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything differently in regard to your career?
A: Yeah, yesterday would be nice to do over. Ha! I'm joking. Look, I used to think that I would like to do a lot over again, but I don't anymore. There is no right and wrong to any decision, provided we learn something from it.

I mean … would I like to have $50,000 in cash rather than $50,000 in worthless stock from one company I did work for? Or would I have liked two subsidiary ventures to survive after 9-11? Well, yeah, I suppose so … but then again, if I didn't have those experiences, maybe I would not be where I am today. I like where I am today and where I am going, so I guess I would do it all over again the same way. You know, it might have been nice to learn some mistakes don't mean the end of the world (even though it feels like it) much earlier in life, but that's part of experience. Good. Bad. Indifferent. Might as well enjoy it.

Good job, Tracy. Only a few were closed, potentially yes or no answers. Look forward to seeing what you do with it.

Thinking Out Loud: AgencyNext

Sterling Hager sees the world differently than most public relations firms or marcom agencies in Boston, or anywhere for that matter. He tends to be a bit more aggressive on the merits of social media, falling just shy of boycotting traditional media relations all together (or maybe he has, it's hard to tell from a couple posts). However, we both see tremendous potential where most people in our industry (or any industry for that matter) do not.

Recently, Hager posted his take on what he calls "CR," which includes constituency relations; customer relations; client relations; consumer relations. It's another way to say direct-to-consumer communication or one-on-one communication, which social media seems to mirror for those who use it wisely.

Where I depart a bit from Hager is I tend to see traditional media and social media as different tools to achieve the same strategic objective, without one necessarily replacing the other. However, every day, I see more evidence that suggests social media might not be just about talking to the wingnuts of the public: the 10 percent on either side of a bell curve with 80 percent of the mainstream public sitting somewhere in the middle. It might be today, but it won't be tomorrow.

What difference does that make? Traditional advertising and public relations prowess tells us not to waste our time on wingnuts, people who love you or hate you. It's best to target the 80 percent because if you can move it even 5 percent, you've changed the landscape forever. Until recently, I suspected that similar to the Revised Technology Adoption Life Cycle that Harry Joiner was nice enough to link at Recruting Bloggers.com, active social media represented a small segment of wingnuts, about 10 percent of our population, overall. You know, not-ready-for-prime-time players.

What Joiner did by posting that graph and accompanying report was remind me that the wingnuts of today (innovators and early adopters) are the shapers of the mainstream public tomorrow. Sure, sometimes they don't get things off the ground: hovercrafts and electric cars among them. But sometimes they do: cable TV companies and cell phones. He also reminded me that sometimes you have to look outside your industry to find the answers (duh! I learned customer service from concierges not designers).

So that's what I did in between deadlines today. I didn't have to look far. Last August, I posted about how AT&T U-Verse provides all-digital television on your TV and home computer at the same time. Sure, that's only one example. Until you consider Apple's iPhone or Verizon's "Personalize Life" concept. Or, well, take your pick. Everybody from the makers of iPods to PlayStations are pushing for the next communication revolution to be all about the total integration of the broadcast/gaming/cable/celluar/Internet.

Why is that significant? Totally integrated entertainment/communication means traditional media and social media will be on a reasonably level playing field with the only differential being their ability to capitalize on brand and consumer product delivery.

So no, Hager is probably not right that traditional media can somewhat be discounted today. However, this is hardly a criticism as I think he is just a few years of ahead of what will one day be inevitable. Anybody with a blog or vlog will be able to compete with mainstream media because the distribution method is only a few short years away from being permanently level.

Provide the right content mix and Recruting Animal's radio show might compete with Howard Stern or Aaron Krane could be the next Dan Rather. Of course, that all assumes some of our clients don't launch the "fill-in-the-blank" company channel and newsblog, with anything and everything you can think of. Hmmmm... this seems to be much more exciting than moving from typesetting and paste up to camera ready computer art. And, you know, I think the transition might be even faster.

Talking Transparency: Fox News

On Friday, the Nevada Democratic Party backed out of a FOX News-sponsored presidential debate after Roger Ailes, president of FOX, made some remarks, jokingly comparing Democratic Senator Barack Obama to al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

As written up by the The Huffington Post the remarks prompted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Tom Collins, the head of the Nevada Democratic Party, to cancel the debate. The letter read:

"A month ago, the Nevada Democratic Party entered into a good faith agreement with FOX News to co-sponsor a presidential debate in August,'' Reid and Collins said in the letter. "This was done because the Nevada Democratic Party is reaching out to new voters and we strongly believe that a Democrat will not win Nevada unless we find new ways to talk to new people. To say the least, this was not a popular decision. But it is one that the Democratic Party stood by.''

"However, comments made last night by FOX News President Roger Ailes in reference to one of our presidential candidates went too far,'' the letter went on. "We cannot, as good Democrats, put our party in a position to defend such comments. In light of his comments, we have concluded that it is not possible to hold a Presidential debate that will focus on our candidates and are therefore canceling our August debate. We take no pleasure in this, but it is the only course of action.''

Politics aside, this living case study brushes up against the concept of transparency in business. Just how much is too much? For Ailes, his political leanings obviously have real life consequences, if nothing else, giving Democratic leaders the excuse they needed to cancel under pressure from the more than 265,000 people who signed a petition calling Fox "a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel." At the same dinner where Ailes made the controversial remarks, he also offered a warning about a growing trend.

"Pressure groups are forcing candidates to conclude that the best strategy for journalists is divide and conquer, to only appear on those networks and venues that give them favorable coverage...This pressure must be resisted, as it has been in the past," Ailes said. "Any candidate for high office of either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake."

While Ailes is right, it seems he was equally wrong by being, perhaps, too transparent in his remarks, reinforcing a growing belief that today's media, particularly broadcast media, is biased toward one party or another. Clearly, it seems over the last ten years, traditional media has shifted from reporting the news to setting an agenda to having an agenda.

In part, it is for this reason businesses are looking (or will be looking) for new ways to create more open and direct dialogue with their consumers by employing, among other vehicles, social media. The question that remains unanswered, however, is whether traditional company presidents and CEOs have the skill sets required to get the job done. In many cases, there is growing evidence that suggests they do not.

In their quest to be more transparent, presidents and CEOs tend to be either too tight or too loose with their lips. A few days ago (thanks for the tip Amitai Givertz ... your new "blog-enabled" Web site is looking up!), The Melcrum Blog highlighted an article in the Financial Times UK edition that reminds us of some recent CEO gaffes...

"I don't borrow on credit cards because it's too expensive." — Matt Barrett, CEO of Barclays.

"People say how can you sell this for such a low price. I say because it is total crap." — Gerard Ratner, CEO of Ratners

"Assets like [Sainsbury] don't come on the market very often. Your shareholders would think you were an idiot if you didn't consider it. Watch this space." — Stuart Rose from Marks & Spencer, uttered over a "glass of wine," which was followed by an 'official announcement' declaring that the board of Marks & Spencer had decided it did not intend to make an offer.

For the best CEO practitioners of transparency, the rewards of mastering this double-edged sword are pretty great. According to the International Association of Business Communicators, 72 percent of consumers say reputation influences their buying decisions, 80 percent of employees will accept less money to work with a company that has an excellent reputation, and 82 percent of consumers say reputation is the tie-breaker between equal choices.

Case in point, recently I entertained a relatively gruff recruiter who wanted to establish a "relationship" in case my career goals might change in a few years (probably not, but whatever). It didn't take long to deduce that she only wanted to fill one job (that wouldn't have been challenging for me) and rob my contacts to do it. Even more perplexing was her insistence that strategic communication had something to do with how big your media contact Rolodex is (what's a Rolodex nowadays, anyway?) I've decided against publicly chastising her ignorance out of respect to my friend who referred her, but it fits within the context of mastering transparency basics to remember:

• You are never off the record (you're being interviewed even when conducting an interview).
• You cannot buy it (creating a flog, making false promises, or shifting agendas midstream).
• You cannot fake transparency and hope to retain your reputation over time.
• How you react to a mistakes will have greater weight than the original blunder.

The bottom line is that corporate transparency is not all that different from recognizing that you are in the public all the time (even when you don't think you are). Some people are good at it. Some are not. For starters, however, you have to have a message that is aligned with your business objectives, sensitive to the audience you are communicating to, and not insensitive to other publics who are likely to hear what you said anyway.

For Ailes, whom I generally like, unless his objective was to have the debate canceled, he only considered one of these three elements. Sure, what he said might convey how he really feels, but it always helps to remember that being honest and overly opinionated are two different things.