CustomScoop Blog

CustomScoop launches Media Bullseye

Media Bullseye, a multimedia magazine providing news and commentary about the intersection of traditional and new media launched today. Media Bullseye offers content relevant to communications, marketing, public relations, and media professionals interested in the modern communications landscape. We hope to provide timely, engaging content that explains what has changed from a variety of viewpoints.

We're always looking for great content, so please write to us and let us know what you want to learn more about, or who you'd like us to interview. We'll also pay for content if you'd like to write or produce a video for us.

A special thanks to Chris Brogan, Chris Thilk, and Scott Monty for providing great content for the launch!

 

Technorati tags: Media Bullseye

Arriving Late to the Meme Party!

Nothing like being fashionably late! I was tagged in this meme almost a week ago, but I couldn’t just let it slide without adding my contribution.

Ike Pigott tagged me to participate in a meme started by Kami Huyse that begged the question, who has had the greatest influence on your career, and why?

Perhaps a good excuse for my tardiness is that I really had to think on this one for a while. After all, I’m still young (if I do say so myself), and having only been out of college a few years, my career path has been rather varied. I’ve had three major employers, all quite different, and even took a “year off” at one point in which I worked a series of temp jobs in an effort to figure out where I wanted to end up.  

The only constant in my career has been writing. Regardless of what kind of job I was working, I’ve relied on my writing and editing skills to set myself apart. Even during my in-between year, I always blogged or wrote privately to keep those skills sharp—I knew that no matter what I ended up doing, keeping my writing game intact would be essential. So who had the biggest influence on my writing?

That’s easy: Jeanne Provencher, my 11^th grade AP English Composition teacher. Up until I arrived in her class, teachers had gone out of their way to inform me that I was a “gifted” writer. My essays were always read aloud in class, I always won the Young Author awards, I always got A’s (I am aware how fully obnoxious this sounds, but just wait). AP English Composition? “Hmph,” I thought, “that’ll be an easy A for my college applications!”

The first thing Mrs. Provencher taught me was that I knew nothing about good writing. Nothing. My grammar was pathetic, my sentence structure weak, my paragraphs nonsensical and my transitions nonexistent. Don’t even get me started on comma splices, passive voice and dangling modifiers. I got a C- on my first paper, and almost stayed after class to tell her she’d made a horrible mistake. I couldn’t believe I had failed at the one thing at which I’d always excelled.

Seeing that paper covered in red was a wake-up call that perhaps I still had quite a bit to learn about the written word. I ended up working harder for her than I would for any teacher before or since, snagging an A on the biggest research paper of the year and never forgetting that no matter how much I write, there’s always room for improvement.

We sing the virtues of better writing in public relations quite a bit on this blog, so it’s only appropriate that I single out my favorite writing teacher as the person with the greatest influence on my work thus far.

As for the meme, let’s keep it going! I tag Nathan Burke, Kait Swanson, and Christi Eubanks to join in—I want to hear what other young voices have to say.

Apple Ad: The PR Lady

While perpetuating a stereotype, this is funny.

H/T to Valley PR Blog

 

Technorati tags: Apple, Public Relations

The Kindle vs. Books (is this really a contest?)

Amazon launched the Kindle this week, a nifty little device that is heralded as "the iPod for books," in that you can purchase entire books from Amazon.com and download them to the Kindle for reading on the go.

My initial reaction to all devices like this (the Sony Reader being the previous incarnation) is nothing short of pure horror. I may have a zest for technology, but I'm also a bibliophile.

Nothing could ever replace the experience of books for me--the way they look, the way they smell, the soft rustle of turning pages, hushed libraries, arty bookmarks, the fluttery feeling of excitement as you wind down towards the last page, the "ah" sigh of satisfaction as you close the book upon finishing...the reading experience is so much more important to me than the relative convenience of a portable device. And I don't think I'm alone.

That being said, I'm more than willing to give the Kindle a fair initial analysis based on the product reviews I've read.

I'll start with what's bad:

1) The price. $399? I'd rather spend it on an iPhone. Or a new Coach bag big enough to carry my books in (oops, I said I'd be fair, didn't I...)

2) Most of us, particularly tech nerds and bloggers, already spend a great portion of our days doing immeasurable damage to our peepers squinting at a computer screen. While Jeff Bezos claims in interviews that reading on a Kindle is highly comparable to reading on paper, with little "eye strain," I can't help but find this claim rather dubious. It's not paper.

3) Half the fun of books is sharing them with others--with the Kindle, unless you hand over the device itself (and your account password, and who is going to trust anyone with either?), there is no sharing of books among friends.

What's Good Interesting (can't bring myself to call anything good out of my loyalty to Dead Tree Books!):

1) I get the appeal of the portability, as someone who packed four books to take on a recent cruise (I drastically overestimated the amount of time I'd spend reading, and only got through one), books are heavy and take up space.

2) At $9.99 per book, Kindle books are cheap. Even cheap paperback beach reads can run you $12.99 at times, and with first-run hardcovers clocking in at $29.99 and up, $9.99 is a bargain (unless you factor in that you've paid $399 for the device itself..but there I go being all negative again).

3) Now this part I really do like: You can subscribe to newspapers, magazines and blogs for a monthly fee. As someone who (on top of those four books) also frequently boards planes with several cumbersome magazines (what? I like to read!), I can see where storing all the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek on a small, portable device would come in great handy. (Although since the screen is text only, you would be hard pressed to view any of the accompanying photos...darn, there I go again!)

Final call: I'd hold off on the Kindle for now. I'm just waiting for the price to go down by a couple hundred dollars right after the holidays, causing an uproar among the forty or so people who will actually buy this thing (oh drat, okay, I'll stop now, I promise).  While the device holds some promise, and I particularly am interested in having access to blogs and newspapers on the go, right now I am unmoved.

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Amazon,Jeff Bezos,books,bibliophiles

Friday Fun: Word Usage

I’ve been a fan of the NBC show My Name Is Earl since it premiered—I find it funny and smart and I’m a big believer in karma. A scene in last night’s show had me in stitches over something that has driven me nuts for years—people who confuse “mute” and “moot” in the phrase “moot point.”

As a legislative aide back in Missouri, I heard some of the most creative butchering of the English language when I listened to legislators during floor debates. “Pass muster” was “passed mustard.” (No, I am not kidding. Yes, I realize that makes no sense at all.) One senator often used the word “flustrated,” which I believe was a mash-up of “flustered” and “frustrated” before mash-ups were part of the lexicon. Rampant use of the non-word “irregardless” is so common I hear it everywhere—people actually think this is a word. It is not. It is another incorrect mash-up of “irrespective” and “regardless.”

And, of course, there’s the moot point. In my opinion the reason that this phrase is so commonly mistreated is that “mute point” on some level makes sense—mute=silence, mute point=silent point. This is how the scene played out on Earl last night.

For word etymologists out there, “moot” is described thusly by the always useful Dictionary.com:

The adjective moot is originally a legal term going back to the mid-16th century. It derives from the noun moot, in its sense of a hypothetical case argued as an exercise by law students. Consequently, a moot question is one that is arguable or open to debate. But in the mid-19th century people also began to look at the hypothetical side of moot as its essential meaning, and they started to use the word to mean "of no significance or relevance." Thus, a moot point, however debatable, is one that has no practical value. A number of critics have objected to this use, but 59 percent of the Usage Panel accepts it in the sentence The nominee himself chastised the White House for failing to do more to support him, but his concerns became moot when a number of Republicans announced that they, too, would oppose the nomination. When using moot one should be sure that the context makes clear which sense is meant.

(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.)

Of course, anyone reading this blog already knows this. But now I feel better, and the  story about how I once saw "death nails" instead of "death knell" in a news release can wait for another day.

 

Technorati tags: Word usage, etymology, My Name Is Earl

Social Media Tug of War

An old boss of mine used to describe finding the right niche for his employees by co mparing running a business to driving a bus. In order for the bus to run smoothly, all the riders need to find the appropriate seat. I could groove on this notion, because after a certain amount of time at one seat on his “bus,” I switched to another and found it a far more comfortable ride. The idea is that the more comfortable an employee is in their role, the happier they’ll be—and happy employees are good for business.

But what about the tools of business? Do they need their own seat on the bus or should they be a part of the whole?

Todd Defren recently questioned whether it was necessary to segregate social media into its own division within PR firms. He rightly argues that social media skills should be a part of every PR pro’s arsenal; why bother having social media “specialists” or “divisions” when everyone at an agency should be learning how to use new media to more effectively communicate their clients’ messages?

The idea of a social media “expert” is something I’ve seen batted about plenty, on Twitter in particular. I recall Jeremy Pepper and Kami Huyse’s recent engaging back and forth regarding whether anyone should really call themselves an “expert” in social media. According to Jeremy, no one is a social media expert, and shouldn’t bother trying to be one—what they ought to be doing instead is using social media knowledge as just one more tactic in a wide-ranging set of skills. We don’t need social media gurus operating behind closed doors, separate from the rest of the profession. What we need is education, from the student level on up. Segmenting social media into a specific department will only encourage those who willfully don’t get it to continue to not get it, and to feel entirely justified in their ignorance. This is dangerous; that ignorance is no cure for the industry’s current reputation crisis.

Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer of the Bad Pitch Blog appeared on Luke Armour’s podcast today, and dedicated an entire portion of the show to the recent poor publicity for the PR profession. Someone pointed out that journalists complaining about annoying publicists are actually nothing new. What is new is the level of publicity this whining is getting. No reporter back in the day would publish the names of every publicist who drove him batty with spammy press releases, and no newspaper editor would allow it. Bloggers are their own editors, and some of them have quite a bit of juice, pushing the issue of poorly managed PR campaigns into a very hot spotlight.

This brings us to a new issue raised by Geoff Livingston: which facet of business “owns” social media? Is it truly PR, or do marketing and advertising win out? Jeremy has already argued that advertising, with its slick, sexy campaigns, will win the day unless PR shapes up. My reaction to these debates tends towards the idea that there is room in social media for many different aspects of business. Why the talk about winning relative “ownership” of such a complex medium?

Perhaps, because social media is all about building relationships and engaging communities, people assume that public relations should be the only industry that can truly understand how to best utilize those relationships. Not to mention that traditionally speaking, advertising and marketing are more about manipulation and trickery, and talking at an audience rather than with a community. But much has been made recently of the ways that public relations as a profession has been forced to change with the times—who is to say that other aspects of business aren’t also being forced to make those same changes?

Just look at mainstream media. Is there a major newspaper operating online right now that doesn’t have its own blogs? Even the curmudgeonly New York Times has gone 2.0, allowing reader comments on its online content.

The social media revolution has far reaching implications. Attempting to allocate it as a single resource of a single element of corporate America is a misguided and futile effort.

Technorati Tags: social media,new media,Todd Defren,Kevin Dugan,Jeremy Pepper,Richard Laermer,Kami Huyse,Geoff Livingston

JotPourri!

I’ve been struggling with blogger’s block the last couple days. Plenty of thoughts and ideas swimming around the brain, but none of them seem to want to come out and play when I sit down with a white piece of paper. Hugely frustrating. The white piece of paper is my least favorite part of the writing process.

How does the old saying go? I love to write, I hate to start. Once I get going on a post I could be clacking away at my keyboard nonstop for as long as it takes. Before that, however, I could stare at the blank screen, brow furrowed, pen tapping against my chicken-scratched notes, for ages.

Which is, of course, why I invented JotPourri! It’s been a while since the last one, so I figure it’s as good a cure as any for my current state of blockage.

Just a few things I’ve been thinking about lately.

First, what the heck are these guys thinking? Is this one of those “any publicity is good publicity” type deals? I covered this story in the Jots last week, but a fascinating follow-up is that one of the principals of the fight has left comments to the post adding more fuel to the fire. I can see standing up for one’s self as a good quality, but…I just think he’s coming off even more petty than the emails posted made him seem. Perhaps, since one of his comments specifically defines his firm as “aggressive,” this sort of antagonistic behavior reflects well on him in the eyes of the clients seeking his firm’s assistance. I just have a hard time picturing any prospective client, even one looking for a particularly aggressive firm, being impressed with these rants. What do you guys think, am I off base? Is any publicity good publicity for these firms? Or does stuff like this only add to the growing anti-PR sentiment in the blogosphere?

Next up, have you tried Utterz yet? While my initial fervor for this new social media discovery (it was all the rage at PodCamp Boston 2) has died down somewhat, I still check it once a day and plan to continue contributing my own multi-media micro-posts. Listen to my most recent Utter (a few of my thoughts on Facebook’s “social ads”) here.

I find that with some new media tools, once the hoopla dies down, so do the number of users (after initially really enjoying it, I haven’t been on Pownce for weeks). I hope that doesn’t happen with Utterz. It’s engaging, simple to use, and could add real value to the online conversation. My only gripe is that finding friends proves a little difficult. I definitely have not added all the contacts I’d like to; but this is a minor gripe for now.

Finally, something that’s been circulating a while. I posted on it over at my personal blog, but have continued to consider it since then: should PodCamp always be free? A topic mentioned in several post-PodCamp Boston blog posts and podcasts discussed the official removal of PodCamp Rule #4—that PodCamp must be free. While you can certainly still organize a PodCamp that is free-of-charge for attendees, you are no longer required to do so. Some may lament this development, but I welcome it. If PodCamps are growing at such a rate that organizing them without asking for at least a deposit from attendees is becoming unfeasible, isn’t that a good development? It means that the community of folks dedicated to bringing new media to the mainstream has exploded, doesn’t it? While it is disappointing that about half of those registered to attend PodCamp Boston weren’t able to attend, the numbers still tripled what they were last year…who knows what future PodCamps will bring? And if a fee becomes necessary to support the growing numbers of campers and make the event even better, then it’s a change I wouldn’t mind at all.

Technorati tags: PodCamp Boston 2, Utterz, writing, public relations

Relating to the Public

Over the course of the past week or so, I’ve seen blog posts that have left me wondering what the heck has happened to the practice of public relations. A number of bloggers have called out PR people for writing bad press releases, or spamming them, and there’s always the constant mantra in the blogosphere of “why do we need PR people at all? They’re just flacks who lie, obfuscate, and spin.”

Steve Rubel on Monday said:

“Meanwhile, demand for PR specialists is expected to climb 18-26% during the same period. So what are all those bodies going to be doing exactly? I don’t believe that the industry is progressing fast enough when it comes to embracing the digital age so there feels like there is some big disconnect here.”

And Strumpette argues that:

“PR is (should be) the business of making the case to the public on behalf of a client. Exclusively! Period. And the disappearance of the skill of writing in our business is inextricably related to the loss of the ability to do just that. By default, this is absolutely why today the business endorses “the conversation.” It’s because the business has lost the ability to make a convincing, meaningful and memorable presentation. If you cannot do formal, endorse casual.”

One is arguing that the industry isn’t moving quickly enough to get up to speed with technology, while the other argues PR has embraced social media at the expense of what PR should be.

I think it’s a little of both.

When I read reports of PR/social media experts speaking at conferences who ask audiences of PR professionals if they know what RSS is and no one raises a hand, I cringe—this isn’t a passing fad, and as communicators, they should be at least familiar with RSS. (But at least they’re there, learning.)

When I read about poorly crafted news releases, sent en masse to bloggers, I cringe. That’s not a rookie mistake anymore; it’s willfully ignoring a changing landscape.

Bad writing is everywhere, it’s an epidemic in our society and it is tragic that many in a profession of communicators cannot write well or clearly. Cringe.

But when I read blog posts about how horrible it is that everyone in PR isn’t completely engaged and up to their eyeballs in all of the new social networks and so on, I cringe at that too.

Strumpette is correct; PR is about presenting a client to the public. The variety of clients and client objectives presents a wide array of how this should be accomplished.

It’s ridiculous to say every client should engage full-force in all that is social media. It’s equally ridiculous to tell every client to eschew any form of social media for some “higher art” PR. As every client is unique, so to should be the mix in their PR portfolio—and that mix should match their objectives. This means giving careful thought to which audiences of the public need to be reached on any given campaign.

The audience and the issue should also dictate the tone used. Both formal and casual exchanges have their places. Don’t wear a ball gown to build a Habitat for Humanity home, and don’t wear a ripped tee and flip flops to dinner at Le Cirque. Use the correct tone for the context.

The PR profession is changing, there’s no doubt about that. It can be a good thing too—the medium of blogs can force a change in transparency that is needed. PR practitioners can use blogs as an excuse to say no to the no-news news releases that clients sometimes want, by explaining that such nonsense is quickly called out by bloggers.

PR isn’t just about pushing a message out to the public; it also needs to understand the public response to that message. So, the “conversation” (established through social media) is important. But the “conversation” shouldn’t be the only objective either. Not everyone is participating in these new tools, and those of us who are in this space every day I think can get a little myopic about the significance of social media to the broader public.

We need balance. Real change can begin when all-or-nothing protestations stop.

 

Technorati tags: Public Relations, Social media

Initial PodCamp Takeaways...

Podcamp Boston 2 wrapped up yesterday, and I had the great  pleasure to be in attendance. Many, many thanks go to Chris Brogan and Chris Penn (and countless others) for putting together such a stellar weekend. I hope the other attendees got as much out of it as I did!

I hope to cover a number of topics from the weekend, and do a few more posts in the next couple of days (a “shout out” post in particular with lots of juicy link love for all the awesome people I met for the first time, and all the awesome people I already knew but got to spend some more time with), but let’s begin with a few simple takeaways:

This community is powerful.

See Chris Brogan’s post on one of the “products” of PodCamp, LOL Saur. Basically, some PodCampers put their heads together, and within a couple of hours (seriously) had a new site up paying tribute to those infamous LOL Cats.

The site is…well, it’s not the greatest. The jokes could be better, and the “LOL + something” meme is kind of played out in my opinion.

Chris makes an extremely valid point: it’s not whether the site “deserved” to make the front page of Digg within hours (which it did), it’s that the site was a brilliant experiment showcasing the power of the PodCamp community when they put their creative minds to work. To go from a silly joke to making the front page of a site like Digg in mere hours is pretty huge, even if the content itself isn’t exactly genius.

All about the benjamins, baby.

As I said in my PR Blog Jots this morning, “The idea of money hung in the air throughout the conference as participants wondered about the future monetization of social media, podcasting in particular.”

Nearly every in-depth discussion I participated in managed to incorporate money somehow, and there were several sessions dedicated solely to monetization issues. Podcasting was a hot topic; particularly how to monetize it when it has not yet hit the mainstream. And what was the answer?

(crickets)

That’s a bit dramatic, but I didn’t hear anything concrete, and what concerns me most is why there appears to be so much urgency surrounding the money issue. Why take something that has enriched our personal and professional lives and grow obsessed with how to commercialize it? That may sound hippie-hippie-dreamerish to some, but Mitch Joel rightly points out in his post over the weekend that for most people, podcasting is merely a hobby. Why can’t we just leave it at that? Am I naïve?

Conversations Friendships

Rooming with the lovely Christi Eubanks of Converseon, I spent a lot of time with her and her fellow presenters for Sunday’s “Reputation Management for Digital Natives” session (more on that and other sessions in a future post).

At one point, Paull Young nixed using the word “conversation” and suggested “friendship” instead. His feeling was that conversation had become too much of a PodCamp buzz word.

I’m on the fence about whether conversation is a cliché (my history in politics only reinforces the notion that when you are so sick to death of hearing something it makes you want to vomit, the general public is just starting to absorb it), but agree that highlighting the relationships we form at events like these is essential.

If one thing is certain, it’s that I left PodCamp with many, many new friends. Not “online” friends or “Facebook” friends that I never actually talk to…just friends. They are friends that may also be “contacts” beneficial to my professional life, but they are creative, thoughtful, fiercely intelligent, passionate individuals who I am just grateful to know, regardless of what I do for a living.

As much as I enjoyed every session I attended, I find that the true value of PodCamp (for me) is welcoming new friends who share my passions into my crazy, wonderful, little life.

Welcome! And if I didn’t get a chance to meet you, I’m currently trying to pick the next PodCamp I’d like to attend (seeing chatter about both Toronto and Nashville), so who knows, maybe we’ll get another chance.

Much, much more on PodCamp to come, hopefully soon!

Tags: Podcamp Boston, Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, Christi Eubanks, Paull Young, Mike Denton, podcasting, monetization, social media

PR missteps

There were two major PR missteps that caught my eye recently, and the response to both was predictable.

First, FEMA's "fake" news conference. I'm not sure whose bright idea this one was, but good grief, someone should have put the brakes on this the second the idea came up. For those who haven't heard the story, FEMA staged a news conference and populated the "audience" with its own employees to ask questions. Inevitably, the press discovered the background of those asking the questions, and FEMA was rightly called out on this charade. Dumb, all the way around on FEMA's part, and totally avoidable.

The second misstep is a bit more complex, but still should serve as a reminder to all in PR that social media has changed the landscape. Last week, the AP reported that it had evidence that Comcast "throttles" or "blocks" BitTorrent applications on its network. This allegation was the buzz of many blogs (and the allegation was actually first made in a popular forum back in May), and in response Comcast issued a very carefully worded statement that appeared to come directly from its legal department, with perhaps a brief pass-over by the PR department--maybe to check for spelling mistakes.

Essentially, it said that Comcast doesn't do any of this "blocking or throttling" but that it has the right to "manage its networks." That sounds like perhaps they don't do it, but that they hire someone else to do so. Which is exactly what Consumerist pounded on, in no fewer than four separate posts on the issue in two days. And that's just one blog. The coverage has been extensive.

Both instances involve some level of deception, which is exactly why the general public doesn't trust PR. Both entities have had these incidents added to their respective Wikipedia pages (Comcast; FEMA), so there it will live. Both entities have lost at least some credibility and trust.

One of the most important skills of a PR practitioner can possess should be the ability to say no to ideas that could harm the organization he or she is representing. Ideas like these--a fake news conference or elaborately parsed explanations--need to be viewed through the lens of new media.

PR practitioners need to ask: does the risk outweigh the reward?

UPDATE: Potomac Flacks is reporting that the FEMA official responsible for the fake news conference did not start in a post he was to have begun today; his record is being reviewed due to his role in the flap.

 

Technorati tags: PR, FEMA, Comcast