Facttactic

when is an embargo not an embargo?

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High profile, Unites States blog Techcrunch has a new media policy – break all embargoes, even the ones they agree to.

One reason is that the outlet that publishes a story first in today’s online world get the best visibility online and the best search engine ranking.

And, the second reason is that there is no downside to breaking an embargo. Techcrunch argues that United States PR firms are so desperate to do well for their clients that they will continue to send media relases to anyone and everyone in an attempt to get publicity no matter how they have been treated in the past.

I’d also say that in New Zealand we are doing our clients no favours when we use an embargo simply as a scheduled time slot for a release to be made public.

keeping it real, but how real?

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‘Authenticity’ is the name of the game with social media campaigns. Real voices holding real conversations with customers. But where is the line between your corporate voice and your personal voice and how (if at all should) should you distinguish between them?

For small business owners, who you are as a person is vitally important to how your business is perceived. Your personal voice would be a real asset online. And you can mix personal stories in with your  business messages.

For large corporates, showing a human side is important to personalise decisions made by a company and to personalise experiences for customers.

For example, you can find Vodafone’s external comms guy, Paul Brislen, popping up (casually, but always on-message) regularly on the web with comments on blogs and other online environments in an effort to tell his company’s story and correct information where-ever people are commenting on Vodafone.

Here are two other blog posts on the dilemma of professional/personal online personae:

Social Media Identity: Personal vs. Professional

Can professional and personal social media strategies successfully coexist?

online video the new media release?

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Video is being used more and more as an online communication tool of choice – including how-to instruction guides; vlogs (video blogs); promotional and marketing tools; and real world marketing activity being videoed and the video put online. The good thing is top-end production values are not always necessary. A strong idea well-constructed inexpensively and quickly can be just as successful, if you know how to find and engage your audience.

Here’s a blog piece that explains the concept and shows some useful case studies; another giving some tips on making and marketing online video; another explaining how to find an audience using YouTube; and here’s an article in the NZ Herald charting the rise of ‘webisodes’.

make a ‘performance’ of your online activities

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Wondering how to get attention to your online communications? Interesting stuff here from a new report …

Some US web researchers (Rubicon) argue that online discussion is a poor way to communicate with the average customer, because average customers don’t participate. But it is a great way to communicate to them, because average customers watch and listen.

So you kind of have to put on an online performance to attract and hold their attention.

What do they mean? Well … if you have lots of comments or customer feedback to your site, they reckon proportionately few people actually create them – 80 percent of content is created by 10 percent of users.

The active 10 percent is therefore the group that holds all the power and influence over how your business is perceived online.

“This means it is critical that companies understand who [they] are, and how to take care of them, because they are the companies’ fellow actors in the online performance. … Use your website to reach out to them and make sure their needs are met,” Rubicon says.

To get the most benefit from these active participants on your site, interaction with them should be viewed as performances, because the other 90 percent of visitors will simply be watching passively as an audience. You need to interact with the active users to “educate, persuade, or entertain everyone else”.

“When we say web communities are theatre, we mean that literally — you need to partner with the [actors] and make sure the show looks good. The difference from theatre is that you can’t pay the actors; you have to win them over through love, enthusiasm, and fairness.”

Need to know more? Read the recent Rubicon report here. It’s packed with clearly written, easy-to-read information and lots of great graphs highlighting stuff.

what the f*** is social media?!

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We get asked a lot about how social media (or Web 2.0) can help with an organisation’s PR efforts. We say heaps! But there are ways to do it well and ways to stuff it up. We will be focusing a bit on social media over the coming weeks to explain how to use it.

First an introduction, but don’t be put off by the title! This presentation is a compelling, intelligent and stylish look at why Web 2.0 is so powerful for business. (Click on the controls below the image to play the presentation.)