LB's Rambles

Very Bad PR: You Don't Want to Be on This List

Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief at Wired is fed up.

He gets about 300 emails a day, most of which, apparently, aren't meant for him, many from PR people who can't be bothered to find the right editor or writer on the Wired staff to receive their pitches. Bad move.

In desperation, Chris announced that he's blocking hundreds of these wayward emailers from his email - and listed their email addresses in his blog post.

Ouch.

While I wouldn't do the same - I'd block them and not bother telling them; to hell with their pitches; but I wouldn't publish their email addresses - I can understand his frustration. So can you, if you read some of the many comments. While many agree with him (although not too many agree with his action in publishing the names), there are a lot of replies from angry PR people who seem to think he has a DUTY to take their pitches and redirect them to somebody on his staff who might be interested - the PR people are just too busy to be able to do their own research.

Guess what, folks? He doesn't have a duty to do your job for you. You have been warned.

I've written about this before. Reporters are going to - at best - ignore you if you don't do your homework. If you're not relevant, if you don't know their beat and know what they write, you're an intrusion and will be treated as such.

Good comments from both Peter Shankman at PRDifferently and Kevin at the Bad Pitch Blog.

Show Us the Money

Is there a pot of gold at the end of the social media rainbow? Maybe, although most social media sites today are still looking for ways to make money. Here's a new study that says it's coming - probably within five years.

The study, done for the Society for New Communications Research, finds that 81% of those PR and communications professionals surveyed believe that by the year 2012, they'll be spending at least as much on conversational media as they do on traditional media. More than half said they'll be spending more on conversations than on the traditional forms of communication.

So why in five years? Why not now? Among the obstacles noted, more than half the recipients said "manpower restraints." I'm not sure exactly what that means - perhaps they're thinking of the time and organizational difficulties in setting up real conversations with, and between, company personnel. But nearly as many, almost 47%, said "fear of loss of control." Frankly, THAT's the objection I hear most often from companies looking to get into social media but afraid to take the plunge. And they're right - it does mean a loss of control. But it brings incredible credibility - and, in the end, that will be more important in pleasing customers and potential customers.

(Hat tip: Center for Media Research)

Riches in Niches, the Voxant Way

There's a great Wall Street Journal article today about Voxant, a company that has found a niche among niches: it distributes news stories - and advertisements - to smaller Web sites, including Donklephant, which is a long-time favorite of mine.

Donklephant is a good example of the kind of niche marketing that I think is likely to be the future of online advertising. As the article explains, half of all web traffic goes to smaller sites, usually sites that are too small even to be measured by the big ratings firms like ComScore or Nielsen. A few thousands, or tens of thousands, can reach specialized audiences.

Advertisers will still chase large audience numbers - as they should; mass advertising and mass audiences aren't about to disappear. But a growing number of advertisers are learning the importance of reaching niche audiences who are really interested in their products. Good for Voxant, playing the facilitator here - and finding a niche of their own.

(Hat tip: MediaPost)

Get a Life!

Something is terribly wrong here, folks. According to a Zogby International/463 Communications poll, nearly 1 in 4 Americans say that the Internet could stand in for a significant other, at least for a period of time. Among singles, 31% felt that way.

If you are in that group, I say - without meaning to insult you - that you really do need to get out more and get away from the computer. Please.

Death of a Dumb Idea

Give some credit to New York City officials: they have changed their minds and are killing a truly dumb idea. According to Crain's New York Business, the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting is easing permit restrictions put in place in May that severely limited your right to shoot photos in New York City without a permit and a million dollars' worth of insurance. That meant, say, that if you took a friend to Central Park and shot some photos for more than a half hour, you needed a permit and whopping insurance coverage. There were also restrictions on tripod use. The city insisted it wasn't aimed at sightseers and tourists. The photographers disagreed.

The new rules say it's okay to shoot photos if you don't have a lot of equipment (lights, vehicles, etc.) and you stay out of traffic. Fair enough; most tourists can live with that, as well as those of us who may do one- or two-person photo shoots for business. Strikes me as a victory for common sense.

Social Networking 101

My friend and PR events guru Peter Shankman braved the smoke, if not the flames, last week to speak to the Orange County, California, IABC about social networking. You can read his thoughts here.

I agree with a lot of what he says about networking, though I disagree with him about LinkedIn, which I've found an easy-to-use and very useful way to reconnect/stay connected with old friends and colleagues. While I'm on Facebook as well, I think there are too many distractions provided in the Facebook environment - his comment about it not being OK to bite somebody using their vampire widget is a good example...  ;-)  But, as always, I commend his comments to you as very much worth your while reading.

Hallowe'en Party

Here we are just a couple of days away from Halloween, so I thought this would be a good time to trot out a great mystery for the occasion: Agatha Christie's "Hallowe'en Party," this week's review on the "Classic Mysteries" podcast.

A gruesome party, indeed. A young girl, preparing for the party, blurts out "I saw a murder once," and is promptly drowned during the party in a bucket used to bob for apples. Hercule Poirot enters the case to determine what happened, why, and, of course, who was responsible. It's one of Christie's better escapades, and just right for the season. The link to my full review, as always, may be found on the right side of this screen. Give it a try - you may never look at apples quite the same way again.

Why I Don't Upgrade on the First Day

I'm a big fan of waiting to upgrade my computer and/or software and/or hardware and letting those who have to be on the "bleeding edge" bleed on my behalf.

On Friday, Apple released its newest Mac operating software, code-named "Leopard." A lot of people - and I mean a LOT of people - eagerly lined up for the $129 upgrade and tried installing it.

To be fair, I suspect that a lot of those people installed it just fine.

Then there were the horror stories.

I have two Macs (and two Dells; I'm an equal opportunity addict). I will be upgrading them to Leopard.

Eventually. Maybe...three to six months?

My sympathies and thanks to the bleeding edge experimenters who will eventually, with Apple's help, get things to work properly for the rest of us. As one frustrated poster on that thread observed, "This is the most Windows-like experience I've had on a Mac. This upgrade appears to have finally closed the gap between the MacOS and Vista."

Ouch.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

Escape from Hell

Remember "Dell Hell"? Jeff Jarvis, whose Buzz Machine blog should be regular reading for you, consigned Dell and their computers to that fate when he ran into really awful customer service from Dell. He wrote about it and set off a firestorm that apparently affected Dell's bottom line.

Dell, to its credit, appears to have learned something from the encounter: it has learned that customer service is critical to its success and also that it must carry on a conversation with its customers. That means not just talking to (or at) them but actually listening to them. And they have done so.

Take Jeff Jarvis's word for it. In an article a few days ago in Business Week, he says Dell has "leapt from worst to first." And apparently their satisfaction ratings have gone up even as the number of negative blog posts about Dell has gone down. And Dell has taken active steps to give consumers even more of a voice in the process, learning from them and even giving customers the ability to make product suggestions, alert Dell to problems, and help other customers fix the problems. That's true involvement. And, more and more, it's what doing business in a Web 2.0 world is all about.

(Hat tip: Sally Falkow)

Measure for Measure

As the Association for Downloadable Media and other interested organizations and individuals struggle to come up with a useful and agreed-upon standard for measuring site audience, a lot of attention is being paid to the kind of audience advertisers should be trying to reach.

In traditional media - as well as the initial attempts to measure online audiences - the emphasis has always been on raw numbers: how many people saw our ad? How many people read that paper? How many people saw that web page?

But there's a growing chorus of voices arguing that perhaps advertisers should be focussing on the quality rather than the quantity of people who see their ads: how many people respond? How many sales, or visits, or whatever, can be traced directly to a particular ad?

Over at RemainComm, Phil Wilson presents a cogent argument on behalf of this kind of realignment of our thoughts about measurement. Key graf:

The numbers in question continue to be based on the way we measure TV, Radio and Newspaper. “How many see it? How many hear it? How many read it?” I would submit that we need to focus on “Who uses it?” New media advertising offers something to the consumer that no other media does…instant interaction. Clicking on a banner, downloading a video or podcast, that’s something you can measure. In fact, I think that if a new media ad inspires someone to take immediate action its worth more than a TV, Radio, or Newspaper ad.

I've heard it said by a number of people, "The good news is, we can now tell advertisers how many people have viewed their ad. The bad news is, we can now tell advertisers how many people have viewed their ad." True - but. If we can come up with a system which tells advertisers, in effect, "Never mind about bulk numbers - look at the number of interactions/sales/responses you have generated from an active audience," then we may be well on our way to proving our value to advertisers. It's up to us to come up with a way to deliver that proof.