Drew B's take on tech PR

Thoughts about what good looks like and isolating buzz

In the last week I found myself in a few situations talking to people in industries that operate worlds away from one another and from age demographics at opposite ends of the spectrum. The conversations got me thinking about the various reasons we're asked to 'create online buzz' and what that looks like when buzz reaches the end of the line, and how it impacts public relations and communications strategies.

In one session last week a number of PR and marketing agency bosses exchanged tales of how business is being done nowadays, generally speaking. There were particular observations from opposite sides of the comms spectrum. At one end, people observed that deals were still being done with phone calls. Like that's particularly strange and is still going on.

At the other end, the observation that deals are being struck online on quick and dirty micro communications channels. Like hiring, buying and 'Twitching' over Twitter. Again this came as a big surprise to some, and as commonplace to others.

My final observation was on the reactions of a 20-year old who I had the pleasure of working with briefly this week when he was introduced to PR agency culture. He went to lengths to point out his surprise to see the attention to detail put into online communications. It seemed strange to hear that, but made complete sense.

What I find interesting to keep things grounded is that, when implementing communications strategy and tactics, you can never afford to miss an audience. And creating buzz in isolation is useless.

If your end target doesn't get that phone call, all the buzz won't count. At the same time, get your spread of coverage, get the phone ringing, but if people aren't passing your buzz about online or talking about your stuff down at the industry networking drinks, you miss a trick. Pay attention to detail, but acknowledge that the community you're in does not at all.

Digital Britain report - the impact on our industry

PR, marketing and digital comms professionals will all feel the effect of the Digital Britain report that was released this afternoon, in various ways (like back to school... have a read!). If you've not caught up on the key elements of the paper, at 195 pages long, media sources have done a great job of distilling the key points. The FT, BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and PaidContent are worth reading, and here are some issues that have been highlighted.

• All of the UK will have broadband of 2mbps by 2012, this will be paid for in part by the public. This date will be a deadline for a switch-off of 'analogue' government services
• All radio to be digital by 2015
• Martha Lane Fox is the new 'Digital Champion'
• A harder line on digital piracy
• A £120 million investment in a Digital Economy Programme
• Professionals in the digital and creative sectors to give school ICT training in a new pilot scheme

So what does it mean for our industry? Here's a starter for 10

• We'll be teaching digital to school kids (but they'll teach us a thing or two surely?)
• We'll see increasing drive in PR for digital services from all aspects of day to day live, be it government or private sector, which will be thrust into the same place digital TV has been recently
• More digital radio technology on the market, and a long tail of radio broadcasters emerging
• More investment will mean more R&D, jobs and innovations in digital, even for the relatively small sum of £120m

It's early days.  While I think of more on this topic I will update this post.

Ged Caroll has posted on PR Week's blog about this, but I'm not sure his conclusion that mobile dongles in lieu of 2mb broadband would work. Especially the brand he's mentioned. No signal for that where I live, for the record :)

Those caffienated little monkeys

I thought I'd share a heart-warming story from the depths of The Guardian's tech bureau.

One muggy Friday afternoon after a few big tech news events, tech editor Charles Arthur says his coffee machine is broken: "3 out of 4 coffee machines out of service. We're hanging by a thread here, people."

So 3 Monkeys PR to the rescue: "3 Monkeys PR sending over capuccinos. Our frayed neurons salute you. Coffee machines being fixed now."

If you ever have a client that's looking to befriend a journalist, Twitter's one of the ways you can see what matters most to them, then try (carefully) to make a difference. Nice little stunt - you'd think they were working for Starbucks or something!

Facebook and Twitter ramp up URL management

Today, Twitter announced it will be launching a Verified Accounts programme, where it provides a service to important people that want to prove it's really them behind the tweets. Users can have a badge with proof that it is indeed them behind the account. This will be useful for VIP-type spokespeople who have imitators grabbing followers and affecting the brand.

Then tomorrow, Facebook's vanity URLs programme launches, something announced earlier this week. If you have a page (as opposed to an account) with more than 1000 fans, you can register your own vanity URL tomorrow. For the smaller pages and personal accounts, registration happens on 28th June.

Facebook's a bit late here, with LinkedIn, Twitter and so on having had vanity URLs for a long time. Brands are needless to say moving in to bagsy their place on the map. All this happening all at once at least makes it easier for the brand managers to batch up their work.

What qualifies as news? Wikipedia content's entry into the news agenda

Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab has reported that Google News is using Wikipedia pages as sources of mainstream online news in its results. Neiman Lab's post and The Guardian's follow-up on this issue are both worth reading.

A recurring question from PR managers in organisations is: "should our department be managing our own Wikipedia page?" Both Wikipedia and the Chartered Institute of PR publish guidelines on the right way to do this. But never before has Wikipedia content strictly been classes as news coverage by any PR manager I've met. Perhaps Nieman Lab's discovery will change this.

How will the future of news look, when you can write your own reviews, feedback and headlines? And when anyone can then press delete, re-write or tarnish? It's the beginning of the end of fire-and-forget news.

[pic courtesy of Nieman Lab]

links for 2009-06-09

• Twitter's Ten Rules For Radical Innovators - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org
  How to adopt your approach to management and innovation in the Twitter communication economy

Essential viewing: how to handle an interview under fire. The Mandelson Vs Marr show

Will Sturgeon has written a quality blog post reflecting on the TV interview between Andrew Marr and Peter Mandelson that was on TV over the weekend. The interview started off as an attack from Andrew Marr on Mandelson (aren't all political interviews that at the moment!) and ended up a destruction of Marr using a masterful delivery of a range of interview techniques.

I agree with Will that too much has been made of the interview. It's definitelt not "a victory for media training" (what an insular phrase to use!). The second half of Will's post goes on to broader issues around Labour and the role of PR in politics. All good points well made.  

I actually think that if you forget the broader news agenda, he did an awesome interview. Irrespective of PR or training. He was calm, showed engagement, honesty and frustration at the attitude of the interviewer - and rightly so. His body language, conduct and content were all very good too. I agree with much of what Eb says in his post here.

Some people observed that Mandelson didn't really say anything. I thought that compared to many politicians' interviews he answered a lot of what was thrown at him. And he showed Marr up for being ill-informed and unprepared with a lot of his lines of questioning, misquoting statements much of the time.

If you ever need to advise a company spokesperson on how to conduct an interview, I'd say you should have a look at Mandelson's.

links for 2009-06-07

• Xark!: The newspaper suicide pact
  (tags: paidcontent)

links for 2009-06-05

• How Cloud Computing Will Change Business
  IBM, Qualcomm, Nokia, and other majors, along with startups, are preparing to cash in on new technology. Not that it will be easy