Engage in PR

It’s hard not to smile when you say “Squidoo“…say it…aren’t you smiling now. You are, and you’re welcome. A year ago I had created a Squidoo page and to be honest I really didn’t get it at the time, I saw it as simply a portal page, nothing more than MyYahoo or iGoogle. Recently however while reading a recent post at The B2B Lead Blog one of the comments by Mark Hinkle. Mark mentioned Squidoo and the smile instantly returned to my face and I returned to the site.

Squidoo allows you to build a page that is centered around one of your passions and engage with other pages designed with that topic or another one that peaks your interest. On your page(s) you can link to all your favorite other social sites including Flickr and YouTube. It also allows you to integrate RSS Feeds, keyword searches and more. Since one of my primary interests, as noted from my drop-off from Twitter, is my new job I created a Squidoo page (they call them lenses) for network performance and security:

This becomes a great resource for folks looking for company information and allows them to head on over to our online community if they so wish or engage with us immediately. But think what you can do around more fun pursuits like sports, recreation, technology, gadgets, etc. Instead of a network that is focused on who you are, this one is focused on what you know. I’m having fun surfing around the ‘lenses’, finding new sources of content and of course smiling each time I say that name.

–Kyle Flaherty

Why get involved in this ‘PR blacklist‘ topic now, after so much great and misguided stuff has been written? Because “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more“. I was offline most of Friday when the action started, but as I caught up on Todd’s blog the evening I just had to leave a comment:

Todd, as someone who not only has pitched media and bloggers for longer than I can remember, but also receives dozens of pitches for my own blog each week, I certainly can empathize with both sides and I also agree with Gina that people should NEVER pitch her at her personal email. However, my issue remains with the way people are punishing people, it is an overreaction of media and bloggers by outing people on blogs.

It’s mean and it smacks of self-righteousness, it is done with little or no research into the companies nor an appreciation for all the times PR people have actually helped them out.

Let me be even more clear:

I don’t blame Gina for her frustration and she has every right to be pissed off. I think she is completely within her own power to block these domains, I’ve done the same thing in the past after frequent attempts to get an agency to stop pitching me. My problem is how people are acting to punish individuals and now entire corporations with the public outing. Blacklists don’t work, and they never have. They are a cruel punishment for individuals that are typically making a mistake because they are either too dumb to know any better or, more likely, their manager is the one lacking the brains to teach them the proper technique. Education is key in this fight, NOT listing off offenders for all to see and blindly blast. The relationship between PR and blogger continues to degrade. I fear that it is only a matter of time until PR folks start online lists of the journalists who curse them out over the phone, make them put them in a cab because they can’t handle their booze at a corporate function, mis-quote and mis-use information?

That type of public listing would not be fair and more importantly, it would not be productive. Each of those things, and more, have happened to me in my career in PR and in each instance I had a conversation with the journalist, one-on-one, telling them how I felt and we always came to a better understanding and a stronger relationship. Can you do that with dozens of people, probably not. But if you can put up a Wiki where you publicly flog people or companies you could simply turn that into a page where you teach people a better way to behave when they are reaching out to you.

–Kyle Flaherty

I’m spoiled, I’ll admit it in front of all of you. I enjoy the new bells and whistles of life here in 2008. Oh sure, it’s nothing like the Jetson’s, but to be honest I don’t trust that Elroy. I don’t need a flying car and a vac-tube that whisks me to the other side of town…right now I need a vehicle that has power locks and power windows. A simple request. It is only when faced without something familiar that you truly appreciate the minor technologies that make life a bit more simple.

This week I’m in our offices in Austin and therefore have a rental car, a slick 2006 Kia Rio. When picking up my car the kind rep at Enterprise asked if I wanted to upgrade, as they always do at point-of-sale, for a few bucks a day. Scoffing, I turned away and walked towards my red beacon of hope (that’s what I’m calling my Kia). Did I really look like I couldn’t handle manual windows? Was my mind so clouded that I would simply forget to lock my car now that I could not do it from a distance of forty feet?

The answer is simply yes. Perhaps it is a sign of my overall weakness, however, I like to see it as a result of how a good technology can impact your life. The technologies that impact life are the ones that come in with a roar, level off to become part of your scenery and when they are gone you truly understand their importance. Sound familiar? The typical result: “How did I live before Xxxxxx entered my fairly pathetic attempt at a life?”.

As a technology communicator we adhere to the same, what I call, “Three Cycles of Impact”:

1) Introduction of Technology

2) Acceptance of Technology

3) Lack of Technology

Funny what a Kia Rio can make you think about.

–Kyle Flaherty

We’ve talked several times here about the importance and fun in messaging exercises. We’ve also dabbled a bit on how you can use the messaging to be consistent in how you externally communicate. One area we have not discussed, in terms of messaging, is company alignment or the communicating of new messaging within your organization so that everyone, from engineering to sales, is on the same page.

Currently we are undertaking this exercise after settling on strong messaging and overall branding. The challenge now is how do you communicate this to a diverse workforce in a way that is education, exciting and inspiring? I’ve been through this from both sides in the past and I think that it is important to follow a few rules:

1. Understand your audience, even if they are diverse. Have something for sales, developers, HR, executives and more;
2. Speak with one voice. Try and focus the presentation of the messaging with a minimal amount of physical voices, one is stronger than many in this instance for the sake of consistency;
3. Prove it. Back it up with research, competitive info, data from surveys;
   
4. Put your money where your mouth is. Show folks what the new messaging looks like in real-world instances…this could be the web site, news releases, data sheets or even an eMail signature;
5. Reinforce. I’m sure everyone is listening to you with 100% of their attention…um, no, they aren’t. Follow up with materials, a quiz, prizes…whatever it takes to reinforce the messaging and brand;

Later this week I’ll be back with some specifics of what we are doing down here in Austin, but how does your company communicate YOUR messaging to you? Is it simply an email pushed to your inbox or perhaps a staff meeting in the big conference room? Tell me your stories and I’ll include them in my post on Friday.

–Kyle Flaherty

Yesterday morning I ventured out to Social Media Breakfast VII and enjoyed some great talk about hiring in a 2.0 world. I’m going to post a bit of my thoughts around that tomorrow, but one conversation I had with a few people concerned the launch of Dell’s new YourBlog. By the time I was back in the office (which right now is my kitchen) I had pretty much forgotten about the Dell launch until I got an email from Aaron DeLucia (with the PR agency I work with and used to work for) with some great insight including:

Very smart approach of engaging their customers and the broader consumer base by making it a very open and interactive community and not dictating the types of topics that will be discussed. Great description of what they want the site to be - little bit Community + Lifehacker + ReadWriteWeb + Gamespy.

Aaron is dead on correct. It is definitely, IMHO, the only real way to launch a blog. Surely you need some editorial direction/focus, however you MUST let the conversation be driven by your community. For me it’s like a good radio talk show host…they have an outline of topics they want to discuss, but that gets thrown to the side as soon as someone calls in with a topic.

What I REALLY love about the actual YourBlog site is the following:

• author profiles with the cool bit of AJAX when you mouse over the faces
• the ‘personality’ and warmth to the site, even with the overuse of white space
• the use of video is very effective thus far
• the ability to choose your own color scheme for the header banner is another cool tool (and a not to subtle slap at Apple)
• and of course the portal to IdeaStorm, which is really the genesis of their community

(UPDATE: John at Dell commented with some more info on the blog and how they engaged with customers, great stuff)

Notice it isn’t really about what they are talking about…yet. They are talking about what they are up to, posting helpful videos and letting the conversation of the community dictate the overall direction. This is highly important for me because I’m currently working on our own “Proverbial Opening Post” right now for the launch of our community (excited? I am!). It certainly will have a different flavor than YourBlog, simply because of our audience, but certainly the same feelings must get through to our community, to ANY community.

At the end of the day launching a blog is really about getting input from people, from your community. I don’t want to just come out and say “…our blog is about XYZ”, but instead be honest with folks and tell them that this is going to be a place for them to talk with us, about us, to us. The conversation will go from there, but it will take a bit of time to watch it grow properly.

You guys think I’m on the right track??

–Kyle Flaherty