Drew B's take on tech PR

Business Week, Management Today and Forbes on business management styles

An article just out in Business Week on the 25 most influential people on the web has made me want to relink to two other business articles I recently enjoyed reading and thought that maybe you would do to. I like to read about different ways people work, so these articles are in my bookmarks - one on research about working styles and two about profiling big names in business.

First here is today's Business Week article. I'll link to half-way through the online version, where the one of 25 people profiled is the token 'communicator' Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, Le Web and Typepad.

Second, an article from two years ago in Fortune magazine titled How I Work profiles 12 of CEOs and execs focusing on how they work in exteremely different ways. Starbucks' CEO starts his day with a coffe a broadsheet and report handed to him by voicemail. Google's Marissa Mayer works through 800 emails a day and 14-hour Sundays in front of her email. She says she is very speed sensetive.

Third, an article from earlier this summer in Management Today on the different ways we work in business. It splits workers up into ages; generation Y, X and baby boomers. The article and the research behind it talks about how the 30 and under generation has had and wants many different jobs and is used to prosperity. "Portfolio careers, switching industries, career breaks, flexible working, a more objective view of one's value in the market, are all defining features of Work 2.0, this new world of work which Generation Y is helping to create," says the article. But it concludes with a thought - what about when the market falters, how will work 2.0 cope then?

Seven Twitter feeds for tech thought-leadership

For those of you working in tech, like enterprise IT tech, here are some corporate Twitter feeds you might want to subscribe to.

1. Gartner - http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc
2. Forrester - http://twitter.com/forrester
3. CIO Magazine - http://twitter.com/CIOMagazine
4. EMC Corp - http://twitter.com/emccorp
5. Sun Microsystems - http://twitter.com/sunmicrosystems
6. Intel Software - http://twitter.com/IntelSoftware
7. CapGemini - http://twitter.com/Capgemini

Enterprise IT is where I spent my early days of PR, so I kind of understand what some of these Twitter feeds are talking about... And they are corporate Twitter feeds, rather than being Twitter accounts from spokespeople at the companies.

PR is about personal relationships

A lot of media blogs recently have been writing about how PR is evolving with the impact of social media. Some have said the death of PR, some have said the birth of the PR geek. This article though, currently top story on Techmeme, looks at PR in the digital age as being less about public relations and more about personal relations. Worth a read, if only because it quotes 4hr Work Week as an example.

What I think's interesting about the example in this blog post is that Tim Ferriss' book is all about how to outsource as much as possible from your life so that you don't have to do the work yourself. Yet his outsourced PR only managed to get him one article so he took the PR and 'personal relationships' work back on himself. Sounds like it was a bad experience on both fronts.

It takes time to cultivate and make the most of relationships to promote a business, a blog or a campaign (or a book!). Certainly more than a 4hr work week. And I would strongly agree that PR that works is PR that combines a knowledge of the public relations discipline with personal relationships with the people you want to be writing about your brand. So that the client doesn't feel they would be better off doing it all themselves.

How do you save your ideas?

I have a colleague who has an email folder called Ideas. She puts interesting stuff in there for a future date. She doesn't use social media much, let alone to bookmark, or share stuff, but if it ain't broke don't fix it. My client @rossb82 showed me today why he prefers Google Reader to Bloglines or Firefox for his RSS feeds, and a lot of it seemed to be how he stores and shares ideas. Blogger Steve Rubel has been posting tonight about how he uses Gmail for all his ideas too. His method is a kind of super-user back to basics approach. Everything's on Gmail, but in a vary complex way. Take a look if you feel brave.

It got me wondering if the way I store and share my ideas is the right way?

Sharing: I use delicious, Twitter and blogs. I don't use Google Reader's shared items. I share pics on Flickr and Ffffound (forgive all the 33's!).
Storing: I have pages in my Moleskine for ideas, I tag and star emails in Gmail and use it as a a storage space because the seach is so good. I store pics in Ffffound and have private pics on Flickr. I also have private ideas saved on Delicious.

How does that look? Am I missing a trick or two? Would like to know what PR Geek, Emily, Ste and Paull think about ideas?

Toast your web feeds

I literally cannot believe this. I don't. Electrolux has (or possibly has not) launched a toaster that runs off your computer, and it burns stuff from the web or your email on to your breakfast. See for yourself what it looks like here. Some pictures are below. Is this real, really? I want one for the office!

Flickr redesign launches

Users of the photo and video sharing social network Flickr may have noticed a small link appear this evening offering a sneak peek of a new look Flickr site. Flickr has launched a redesign, softly, but open for anyone to see. And it looks good! Not hugely different, but good. There's more social aspects of the site on your homepage, such as your groups and popular groups.

Here's what the new look Flickr looks like:

Take a look, the direct link to the new site is http://www.flickr.com/#.   

Google Chrome's comic PR launch

Google did a nice PR stunt to bloggers today. It posted a comic describing its newest product - a browser to compete with Microsoft IE and Firefox - to some bloggers. Except the bloggers got it earlier than intended and have started talking about it.

Here are scans of the comic. And here's the bloggers' description of what happened. What people are saying online is that the Americans, on a public holiday today, didn't think anyone would receive the comic in the post until tomorrow. "Philipp Lenssen scooped everyone on the GBrowser. How? He lives in Germany and there's mail today," said Steve Rubel. Hmm. I'm not so sure. Surely noone assumes US public holidays are global? This was a nice way of amplifying blog coverage, if it was in fact done intentionally that is.

Either way, great idea getting a cult cartoonist to cartoon your launch. Very nice indeed. Especially considering Google's target market.