Stage Two's blog

As the Internet and self-publishing tools have flourished and caused massive ripples to the journalism industry, the next wave of the ripple is hitting PR firms.  During this transition, the number of journalists went from few to many.  At the same time, the number of companies & new products needing media coverage went from few to many.  And this has happened quite rapidly, so the industry as a whole has not had a chance to catch up.

It is my opinion that many PR firms will begin to suffer as a result.  The needs of the times are no longer met by “old-school” PR methods, and few firms have enough internal talent to recognize the changing needs.  This is natural and normal of any evolving industry.  Even now, at the end of 2008, few PR firms truly recognize “the bloggers” and most are barely scratching the surface of “social media” as a means of communication (but of course it’s in their pitches to win new business).

What surprises me the most is the number of companies who still hire these firms.  If you are in need of a PR firm, either for the first time or in order to replace an existing one, I’ve put together a handy little comparison chart you can use to help make your decision.

Consider these as baseline criteria for picking your next PR firm (or judging the one you have currently).  Of course there are many other aspects that go into any service relationship including budgeting, team/personality fits, area of expertise, etc.  But you should know before you even start the relationship whether, as the ad goes, your salsa is made in New York City… or in San Antonio by folks who know what salsa is supposed to taste like.

12seconds has some fun news to announce, the kind of news that’s a joy to pitch.   Today they launched a re-design of their website, unveiled their site to the general public in an open Beta, and released an iPhone application.  Apple approved their application and it’s on sale for $0.99 in the iTunes App Store.

iphone app for 12seconds.tv from Sol Lipman on Vimeo.

12seconds first launched in an invite-only alpha this past July.  Since then they’ve had wonderful success with users and gotten solid attention from the press.   Today is shaping up to be no different; a number of publications have covered the announcement, mostly with positive things to say.  We’ll continue to update this post with the news coverage as it occurs throughout the day.

• VentureBeat
• Geek.com
• AppShopper
• MobileCrunch
• What’s On iPhone
• Center Networks
• Mobile Marketing Watch
• Fearless Blogger
• Social Times
• MIT Technology Review
• Boing Boing
• MacNN
• Laughing Squid
• Our Man Inside
• Face Reviews
• Inquisitr
• Media Bistro (and Todd’s great Podcast)
• The Apple Blog
• Cult of Mac
• AppVee
• TUAW

Mike Arrington wrote a ranting-yet-good blog post today called Death to Embargoes, in which he states:

PR firms are out of control. Today we are taking a radical step towards fighting the chaos. From this point on we will break every embargo we agree to.

I’ve written before on the conundrum the embrago process creates, but considering a portion of our services include PR, I felt it important enough to address the topic.  Mike blames PR flacks, and he’s partially right yet partially wrong to do so.  I’m sure he gets a tremendous number of pitches, the vast majority of which are terrible.  As I’ve said many times, the PR industry itself is in a time of major transition.  The old-school tactics of blasting out releases to purchased media lists barely work at all, and, per Mike’s post, are causing more frustration than they are creating news.

But let’s share the blame a little bit, shall we?  These days, the momentum shift of newsmaking is being the absolute first to break a story.  We’ve heard numerous times that outlets won’t cover a piece of news because of pre-existing coverage, from the same day!  I wrote a blog post on how differing factors of online newsmaking have wreaked havoc on the entire PR process.  The problem is, there’s no “better” way to handle it.

So the fit hits the shan when these two competing interests meet up, which tends to centralize around “real” news (which I’ll define as something worthy of a blog post/article).  If we all stop using embargoes, then we have to tell the media news as it happens, which truly puts writers into a race situation.  Odds are less coverage for the company.  Furthermore, for those of us in the business of building real relationships with journalists, it’s a losing game.

The key problem is the unmovable object vs unstoppable force argument.  Companies need to attract attention to themselves. They need to be newsmakers.  The problem is there’s often a lack of interesting news.  At Stage Two we help our clients determine the stories we feel are newsworthy, and we do this based on our relationships with the media and bloggers we know.  Even then, there are times where we think the interest level will be high, but at the end of the day the pickup is low.  Hey, it happens.

On the flipside, bloggers are faced with the challenge of building traffic.  If you are in the business of breaking news, as sites like TechCrunch are, your brand will live or die based on your ability to have quality news.  So when your competition breaks an embargo or otherwise “scoops” you, you lose credibility, lose traffic, and therefore lose money.

I’ve also heard the argument made that embargoes cause the same story to get written in numerous outlets, and that this is a problem.  I don’t agree.  While us “echo chamber” people follow Techmeme and see the overlap, the majority of readers do not aggregate from all tech news sites.  They find writing styles they like, and while they may subscribe to several blogs, they certainly don’t look at things the way we do.  For the general news consumer, more/wider coverage is good.

So while I still believe in the embargo process, I also applaud Mike for calling the industry out on the problems.  I put the onus of responsibility on bloggers and “PR folk” alike.  Here at Stage Two we’ve had a few embargoes broken, and we take each very seriously. In every case we’ve received an apology and explanation from the outlet who broke it. In some cases entire publications are removed from our targets for a period of time.  Other times, we accept the mistake and move on.  It’s a two-way street.

I don’t think Mike’s solution is perfect, but I do like the fact that it will help “prune out” some of the signal from the noise. On both sides of the fence, that is.

Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester, put out a couple of good blog posts last week analyzing the general distrust of corporate blogs (which, I guess, includes this one).  Here’s a nice chart of the study:

What’s surprising to me is how much people are surprised by this news. I am in complete agreement with this comment from RWW:

It also depends on the brand of the company itself. Let’s take Walmart as an example. It’s one of the corporate blogs listed above by The Blog Council. It’s fair to say that Walmart isn’t the most loved brand in the U.S., so I’m probably less likely to trust its corporate blog as a result. The style of blogging unfortunately doesn’t do any favors to Walmart either. Would you trust the following product recommendation from Walmart’s Checkout blog?

“As you know, I am an Apple fanatic, but this deal even has me looking twice. Our computer buyer has put together this!

It seems like it’s all so easy, but I guess it isn’t. Joe Wilcox from eWeek wrote a blog post that pretty much sums it up in the title: Make Your Corporate Blog Believable. That’s it folks, that’s the entire ball game.  I have no specific tips on how often you should blog, nor the length of a post.  It’s utterly irrelevant if you can’t decide on using your blog as a genuine, authentic voice of your company.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today on “The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World.”  I can summarize it fairly quickly as well (and I don’t have to say either “Web 2.0″ or “social media” to accomplish it): the Internet has made it too hard for you to hide your dirty laundry, so you’d be a lot better off getting out in front of it. Incidentally, that sentence summarizes the output of months of work from most high-priced social media consultants.

So back to the “how-to” part of this post.  Here are some tips we give our clients:

• Commit.  Regardless of posting frequency, it’s important to view your blog as part of your marathon run, not your sprint.  Except there isn’t even a finish line to the marathon.  The only upside to this is it’s okay to make it a relay race (more later).
• Focus. You can use your corporate blog for product/company news (new products, technology, staffing, events, etc) – I’d call this a “marketing” blog, since you are really using it as a marketing vehicle.  Another option is to use your blog for thought leadership, getting involved in bigger topics/debates online.  The two aren’t mutually exclusive by any means, but you might want to maintain two separate blogs (or more) depending on the frequency of updates.
• Interact. Having a blog, but not allowing commenting is just plain ridiculous.  But allowing commenting and not responding to commentors is just as bad.  By no means do you need to engage with every snarky jerk who leaves a nastygram for you, but you should be generally interactive.
• React.  The blog is not the end-all/be-all of your interactivity online.  If you see others writing about your company, or you are “in the news”, or basically anything important is happening out there, you should address it on your blog.  Remember, this is about enabling two-way discussions between your company and your customers, so the blog is one of the ways you should engage with those discussions.
• Spark. Don’t just be reactive to content, your blog is a great way to spark conversation.  Maybe you have a new technology you are using/developing.  Maybe there’s a policy debate about something that pertains to your company.  Share your thoughts and opinions on the topic.
• DON’T sell. I think the Wal-mart example above is apropo of what’s wrong with selling on your blog.  Your company should have enough other vehicles for “selling” your product.  It’s fine to be gung-ho and a believer in what you are doing, but let that come through naturally.  You don’t have to weave “why we’re so awesome” into every conversation you start.

A last thought on all this:  pretend your blog post is the summary of something you talked about at a cocktail party (prior to your fourth appletini, that is).  While at the party, you probably had interesting conversations about something related to your business.  You probably spoke excitedly about some new innovation you are excited about.  Maybe you talked to someone who had a really fascinating perspective on something tangential to your company.

You certainly didn’t whip out a credit card machine.

When TuneUp launched their Windows version this past summer, the most asked question was “where’s the Mac version?” (which really just validates our theory on how Apple’s computers are in a lot more people’s hands than traditional market share analysts would have you believe).  The question is now answered, as the company launched their OS X version this morning.  From Gabe, their CEO:

“TuneUp for Mac is a major step toward our goal of delivering the ultimate user experience for all music lovers,” says Gabriel Adiv, CEO and founder of TuneUp. “Based on the overwhelmingly positive response we’ve received from the iTunes community, we’re now working hard to expand the program to other major media players.”

I’ve known Gabe and Raza for a long while now, and I’m really excited to see the success of the product.  I’ve worked with a lot of passionate leaders over my years, and its the ones who are building products they personally love that show the most success.  Blake at Sling always pushed us to make sure the Slingbox was the best device for watching TV anyone could buy.  Peter at Bug never misses a moment to share his vision of open, connected devices built by anyone with a little knowhow.  Sol at 12seconds has undying faith in helping connect people to each other, a fifth of a minute at a time.  Gabe eats, sleeps, and breathes music, and sees no obstacles in truly helping millions of iPod owners in improving their music experiences.

Check out TuneUp here – it’s free to try, with a nominal fee to unlock all the features.

Coverage so far (will be updated throughout the day):

• iLounge
• MacNN
• VentureBeat (and The Industry Standard)
• TechCrunch (and Washington Post)
• TUAW
• Geek.com
• Cult of Mac
• AppleMacHQ
• Softpedia
• Crenk
• The Apple Blog
• iPod Observer
• Charged [ZA]