FutureComms

Facebook Shares: Would You Buy Them?

Sat, 19 May 2012 07:52:00 +0100

So after weeks of anticipation, Facebook’s finally gone public. And it’s fallen more than a little short of expectations. ‘Facebook’s IPO Sputters’ reported the Wall Street Journal, as bankers struggled to prevent the stock from ending its first day with a loss. ‘More Whimper than Bang’, said CBS News. Talk about anticlimax. It’s more Google Buzz than Apple iPad. So, interested in a view from the trenches, I carried out a small poll among my networks.

Yesterday I asked the simple question: would you buy $38 Facebook shares? Ignoring those who said they don’t have $38 (smart arses, you know who you are…), 57% of respondents said they WOULD buy shares in Facebook. 43% said they wouldn’t.

This I find very surprising. It’s no secret that many financial commentators feel that Facebook is hugely overvalued and at the centre of a new tech bubble. But maybe this message has been lost among the hype? Or maybe people just don’t care? In answering ‘no’ to my question, Danny Brown said: “Facebook needs to make at least $100 per user to cover this at a minimum. They’re (by all accounts) at least 90% shy of that. That leads to an interesting few early weeks and months ahead.” Quite. Similarly, Arie Moyal said no “for ideological reasons - it could affect a lot of people’s lives when it comes crashing down”. He adds: “I’m expecting a lot of annoyed shareholders over the long term. Facebook isn’t set up to listen or interact and now it’s opening itself up to expectations and obligations to do just that.”

Tech Bubbles and Innovation

To my mind, $104 billion does seem a ludicrous amount to justify, no matter how popular Facebook is. Although I’m sure with $19.1 billion in his back pocket, Mark Zuckerberg’s not that bothered, while Paul McCormick, better known as Bono, walked away with a cool £1.9 billion from the launch to split among the partners in his Elevation equity investment group. The numbers are staggering and do seem symptomatic of an economic bubble. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

The thing with bubbles is that they inflate and they inflate and they inflate…and then they pop. But while they’re inflating, they finance great innovation, ideas and reinvention that can have a lasting long-term impact. The question is: how long before the bubble bursts? And that, no-one has an answer to. Charlie Southwell answered ‘yes’ to my question: “I’d certainly buy into the Facebook shares as they float now. It’s a great investment and with all the hype bound to grow hard and fast. But I’d also definitely be wary of the bubble bursting and be ready to sell them at any point.” Charlie cites the recent $1 billion purchase of Instagram by Zuckerberg (incidentally, the IPO now means Instagram is valued at $1.27 billion) and wild valuations of Pinterest at $1.5 billion (a network with no real revenue model) when he says that “the bubble popping moment can’t be far away”.

Two years? Five years? Ten years? Who knows, but my opinion is that some people are going to be very badly burned at some stage. Would you take the risk with Facebook shares?

The Bullshit Way to Approach a Blogger

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:19:20 +0100

I recently received the following email:

That’s the full email in its entirety. And there is so much wrong with this approach that it’s hard to know where to start. This is why:

The message title is misleading. Upon receiving the email, my initial reaction was “cool, someone would like to pay me for writing a post for their website”. Upon reading the first line, however, it’s apparent that someone’s after what’s termed a ‘sponsored post’. Which means they want to pay me for giving up space on my own blog to them. Oh…
“For your editing and publishing I would be more than happy to compensate you a little.” Could you be much more patronising? So you’re trying to wrap up the fact that you basically want to buy advertorial as if you’re paying me for my time. On my own blog. Right?
Even if I were interested (it will never happen…ever), there’s no information on what ‘compensation’ we’re talking about. £10? £50? £100? £100,000?
There’s no context. At all. At no point does the email attempt to communicate what this article might be about other than it’s a “tech article”. What sort of tech’s that then? Mobile? Contract manufacturing? Mechanical toilet flusher?
“You would have complete control of the article if you wish to edit it any way.” Really? On my own blog? Wow! That is SO generous. Thank you, thank you. Douche…
I have no idea whatsoever who Anna Kay Hicks is, where she’s from or what her agenda is. She could be the CEO of a global tech company or a 15 year old schoolgirl. But I’ll never know as she’s included no information and I’m certainly not going to waste my time trying to find out.

Why Sponsored Blog Posts Suck

On the face of it, this email is little more than spam. I’d assume it’s from an SEO professional (I use the word professional in its loosest possible sense) looking to buy backlinks for whoever her poor, unfortunate client is. What it does do, however, is highlight a bigger issue that’s been doing the rounds recently: that of sponsored posts.

Google has very clear guidelines about paid links, designating that such should be identified and tagged as no-follow. Break this rule and you risk being blackmarked as Google does not like search results being manipulated. Which is fair enough. But some PRs see buying posts (and thus links) from bloggers as standard practice. And, to be quite frank, it sucks.

Sponsored posts go against everything that social communications and blogger relations are about. It’s a lazy, ineffective, short-term activity that has nothing whatsoever to do with relationship building and mutual respect. But it’s not just PR and SEO consultants who are to blame – if bloggers didn’t accept sponsored posts, it wouldn’t happen. It works both ways and I wholeheartedly wish that bloggers would just tell people to sod off every single time they’re approached in this manner. Or, better still, blog about it! Name and shame!

As for PRs, well if you’re not smart enough or can’t be arsed to invest the time and effort into doing blogger outreach properly, then you really shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

Social in Action: When a Book Launch Takes on a Life of its Own

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:51:00 +0100

Last week hugely respected marketers Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston formally launched their new book, Marketing in the Round, in Chicago. I have never seen so much fuss over a book launch in my entire life. If you’re friends with them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d discovered a cure for cancer. And I mean this in the nicest way possible.

The level of tweets, retweets, Facebook comments, likes and general shares I’ve seen in the last few days regarding Marketing in the Round is incredible. And the reason, I believe, is because both Gini and Geoff don’t just know social inside and out – they epitomise social. Not only are their blogs among the most informative and original on the web (the phrase ‘all killer, no filler’ applies to both), but they’re also among the most helpful and friendly people I know. I’ve been fortunate enough to count Gini as a friend for the last year or two (even if we don’t exactly always agree about things social media) and she’ll always take the time out to answer questions, respond to comments, thank people for sharing her content or just to shoot the breeze. And the same goes for Geoff, who is equally as generous with his time, knowledge and experience. Lord knows how they ever find any time to do any work. (My secret belief is that Gini’s business partner Lisa does all the work within their agency while Gini plays on Twitter all day.)

The outcome of all this goodwill towards the pair and their subsequent popularity is that news of their book launch has spread like wildfire. Simply by ‘being social’, they’ve built truly engaged networks of friends, acquaintances and contacts who are spreading their news rapidly among their own peers and networks. Without being asked to. It’s a fantastic example of word of mouth at scale, and those new to the world of social media or struggling to get to grips with this modern way of communicating would benefit hugely simply by observing and learning from how Gini and Geoff conduct themselves online. Think you can’t please all of the people all of the time? Think again.

For those of us in the UK, you can pre-order Marketing in the Round from Amazon. Do it today.

Have Comms Pros Forgotten How to be Professional?

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:08:00 +0100

There was a huge internet furore at the back end of last week over the fact that Mark Zuckerberg dared to wear a hoodie to presentations to talk up Facebook’s upcoming IPO. Parts of the media labelled him as arrogant, disrespectful and immature. And it set me thinking not so much about multi-billion dollar pitches (for which I admittedly only have a modicum of experience) but more about the online comms world in general, and whether its informal nature means we’re doing ourselves a disservice.

The way we now communicate in business is increasingly casual, especially in terms of tone. It’s more colloquial; more friendly; more social. And for someone like me, who hates formality and stuffiness with a passion, that’s fantastic. But can it mean that we’re losing sight of professionalism? I had lunch recently with someone who’s pitching out a large comms account. She told me that some of the email responses she received to the initial announcement were bordering on presumptive in the casual nature in which people introduced themselves. It’s as if we’re forgetting that there’s a difference between how we address business contacts and how we address our mates. Because as much as we might like to think that social media makes us all one big, happy family, it doesn’t. There is a difference.

How Much Does Initial Impression Matter?

The same is true when we meet in person. For personal business meetings I tend to still wear a suit, albeit with no tie and a more casual style shirt under my jacket. The whole jeans thing just doesn’t sit well with me, no matter how many creative comms types I see having adopted this dress code. But I have in the past been asked to dress both more casually and more formally for two meetings within just a matter of days by different people. So where do we draw the line? IS there a line?

Looking at the bigger picture, I’d like to think that it doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) matter what one wears to a business meeting or what email salutation we use. If Zuck feels comfortable in a hoodie, then why shouldn’t he wear a hoodie? If I think it’s suitable to start my introductory email with ‘Hey Richard…’, then why shouldn’t I? What’s the harm? But that’s not the real world that we live and operate it – not yet, anyway. Social media is new, business isn’t. And until the business world fully catches up with the tone and language of Twitter, those of us working in comms have to know when we can be informal and when we just have to suck it up and have a little bit of respect for old-fashioned professional values. As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

IF YOU REALLY MUST AUTOSHARE, PLEASE DON’T DO IT LIKE THIS! A...

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:00:00 +0100

IF YOU REALLY MUST AUTOSHARE, PLEASE DON’T DO IT LIKE THIS!

A couple of days ago I happened to be flicking through the LinkedIn app on my mobile (hey, there’s a first time for everything…) and I stumbled across this beaut. Someone had shared a photo on their Facebook profile. Which had been auto-posted to Twitter. Which had then been streamed directly into their LinkedIn profile as they have their Twitter account connected. It’s a crazy example of how crossing the streams using autoshare tools could go disastrously wrong. In this example, the offending item was just a picture of some flowers, but it could have been so…much…worse.

So a simple plea from me: if you really feel that you have to cross-post stuff (and it’s really not advisable to use autoshare tools, y’know) please, please be aware that what you’re posting on Facebook in a personal capacity may end up on your LinkedIn profile in a professional capacity. OK? Here endeth today’s (slightly condescending?) lesson.

The Inherent Value of Regular Writing

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:54:00 +0100

There’s been lots of rhetoric recently about whether blogging is dying and why, or why not, this might be happening. Gini Dietrich recently looked at the benefits of business blogging on SpinSucks and asked, very openly, whether companies are just being lazy. Geoff Livingston wrote a month or so back about how the larger blogs are increasingly starting to dominate the blogosphere and command the traffic that is the lifeblood of any blog. But whatever the reason, it’s an issue that has really struck a chord with me, and something I feel deserves more attention.

When I commenced FutureComms at the start of the year it was at the expense of an established blog, TheSocialWeb. I wanted to try something different using Tumblr, mixing up feature posts, guest posts and short, snappy comments and quotes as a reaction to what I saw happening around me in the blogosphere. But due to the demands of my day job at BOTTLE and feeling a little jaded, it ground to a halt after just a couple of months. And so for the last few weeks I’ve been seemingly following the trend and considering giving up blogging completely, other than my weekly posts at BOTTLE Uncorked.

And then something happened.

Well, more a series of things. A couple of weeks back, the guys at Eloqua released an infographic ‘tree’ of the 67 most influential communications blogs in the UK as ranked by Edelman’s Blog Level tool, which measures factors including influence, trust and engagement. The tree covers disciplines as wide as marketing, social media, PR, design, SEO and tech, and lo and behold, within the tree is FutureComms. Considering it was probably only two months old when the analysis was undertaken, it really is great to be featured.

This was followed by a chat with someone else on the tree who’s own blog has seen a significant resurgence over the last month after a long quiet spell.

And then, just last week, I read a post about the importance to comms professionals of writing. The argument was along the lines of ‘how can you consider yourself a PR/comms pro if you don’t even write?’. There are two ways to view this: the article suggests that only by writing regularly can you improve your skills, but when I considered the value of writing to me personally, it’s more about framing thoughts and ideas. If you write regularly (and for that, read ‘blog’), you allow yourself the time and space to sit and think around a subject, to research topics and to come up with new ways of doing or explaining things to others. And in doing so you start to generate a profile and reputation, and you start to generate leads. The value of that process cannot be underestimated and reaps significant rewards both personally and professionally.

So what’s next?

The combination of these events and the thinking it’s led me to has given me one almighty kick up the butt. So as well as making more of an effort to find the time to blog regularly here at FutureComms, I’m going to take a look in more detail at the evolution of blogging and where it might be headed. If you’re a current or ex-blogger, I’d love to know your thoughts by completing a very brief survey on your own experiences over the last few months – it’ll only take a couple of minutes. And pending the results of that: do you think blogging still holds value for the writer and the reader? Or do you think it’s a dying form of communications due to social networks and the image-based web?

"Young people are ‘conditioned for connection’. Their brains are wired for the connected..."

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:51:14 +0000

“Young people are ‘conditioned for connection’. Their brains are wired for the connected world. Whereas old folks like us have had to learn how to cope with new technology, these young people have been exposed to it their whole Iives.”

- Susan Murphy from ‘The Myth of Distraction in the Classroom’

Revealed: The Secret to Awesome Online Influence

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:06:00 +0000

Warning: the following blog post may contain sarcasm

Poor old Klout. It does come in for a bashing from the digital communications community from time to time. So much so that some notable people have opted out, frustrated with the way in which it attempts to gauge influence, by how it can be gamed and alarmed by the way in which it uses, and sells, personal data - there have even been questions about whether Klout is actually operating illegally. Regardless of all that, however, people stick with it and it still seems to be gaining in popularity. So if you feel that your Klout score needs a boost in order to reflect your true level of guru-like ninja influence, I think I’ve stumbled across the secret for you: have a birthday.

I know it might not seem like the best way to demonstrate your awesome level of social media awesomeness, but at the end of the day Klout is the only proper way we can measure our social communications awesomeness, right? It is, after all, The Standard For Influence - it says so on the website. So it makes sense to do all we can to ensure our score is as guru-high as possible. After all, there’s no point in trying to sell your expert webinars and training courses on how to get an awesome Klout score if you can’t display your own awesome Klout score on your website. So my recommendation is to make sure you have a birthday every couple of months and to pimp this around your networks as much as you can. The effect of this is fantastic, as the graph below demonstrates.

Last week I had a birthday. The day before my birthday, March 13th, I had a Klout score of 58.35, which is pretty awesome. By March 15th, my score had jumped by an entire point, to 59.45, which is even more awesome. The reason? On March 14th, loads of my Facebook friends posted birthday wishes on my wall, and loads of my Twitter followers sent me messages of congratulations. Mostly, I suspect, because of my guru-like status as a social media ninja. Either way though, Klout recognises that anyone who ever sends me any message about anything makes me more influential, no matter what the context of that message. And that’s a valuable learning for anyone who wants an awesome Klout score.

So in order to become more influential I’m devising a strategic plan of birthdays and anniversaries over the next year. Oh, and baby scans and births - they always get a huge reaction. This is my top recommendation for social media awesomeness for 2012. Let me know how you get on, or if you have any other tips on how to sell over-priced expert webinars about how to get an awesome Klout score.

40 Years of Tech, 40 Years of Me

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:00:05 +0000

1972. Iconic movies The Godfather, Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange were released to critical and public acclaim. David Bowie dominated the music scene in his new guise as Ziggy Stardust, with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars proving to be a seminal moment in pop history. And Led Zeppelin toured one of the best selling albums of all time, the untitled Led Zeppelin IV. Oh, and the internet was first demonstrated privately by the US Department of Defense…

Yes, it’s been 40 years since the internet was first developed. The initial system, called ARPAnet, was devised in 1969 and, after initial demonstrations in the early 1970s, came to fruition along with the first email program in 1973. So why raise it now? Well, today’s my 40^th birthday and, if you’ll forgive the self-indulgence that comes with a midlife crisis, I thought I’d take a look back at what tech was around 40 years ago. And it goes to show just how far we’ve come.

Moon Landings & Pocket Calculators

Bear in mind at this point that we’d already been on the moon for three years and that, in 1972, not one but two Apollo missions landed there (if you don’t believe the conspiracy theorists, that is). Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan became the last men to walk on the moon that year; incredible to think that given all the technological advances in the decades since, it’s been 40 years since anyone has returned.

And those technological advances have been significant. 1972 saw the introduction of the first digital watch, the development of the Compact Disc by RCA in the USA (in CD-ROM format, although the CD didn’t become commercially viable until the mid 1980s) and the first commercially successful video game, Atari’s PONG. And if you’re too young to remember the marvel that was PONG [pictured right], then (for today only) I hate you :o)

But more important than the digital watch and the video game,1972 also saw the introduction of the first scientific hand-held calculator, a development that truly astounded people at the time. Hewlett Packard dubbed the HP-35 ‘The First Slide Rule Pocket Calculator’ (I know, I know…you’ll have to Google ‘slide rule’ to find out what I’m talking about *sigh*), and with it brought the functions of scientific mathematics to the world. Prior to this, most calculators only had four functions: +, -, x and /. HP priced the HP-35 at a massive $395 (and this is 1972, remember) but later admitted it had no idea how much demand there would be and, despite the price, had to warn people to expect waiting lists. This was the iPad launch of the day, something completely ground-breaking that paved the way for four decades of consumer-facing innovation.

And I was there. Just. I wrote recently about Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns (“we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century; it will be more like 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate”) and the exponential rate of change of tech. And looking back at 1972, doesn’t this make you wonder where on earth we’ll be in another 40 years?

14 PR Pros Have Their Say On Flawed PRSA Definition

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 06:45:00 +0000

When the PRSA announced back in November that it was going to attempt to redefine public relations, I remember going on a bit of a Twitter rant (I know, not like me right?) about what a pointless and misguided exercise it was that was unlikely to bear any relation to working on the coalface of the PR industry. I’m not right very often, but on this occasion I was sadly bang on the money. The PRSA’s recently announced definition (and I’m not even going to type it because it winds me up too much) has left many PR professionals feeling frustrated at a missed opportunity and angry at how it does little to alter our perception as spin doctors.

I’ve given it a little while to let the dust settle, but my opinion hasn’t changed: the definition sucks. It spectacularly misses the point with some of the language it uses, and it paints PR further into a corner that is already rapidly decreasing in size. It’s difficult to believe that it’s taken the guts of four months to come up with something so generic, jargon-packed and out of touch. In fact, it’s so lame that it appears the entire project was nothing more than an exercise in stroking some already large and smug egos. But listen, this is just my opinion and FutureComms is supposed to be about the wider view. So I asked some other folk for their thoughts…

“They may as well have said: public relations is the gobbledegook practice of big words that make us sound smarter than you, which is why we charge the big bucks. Motto: The bigger the word, the bigger the fee”, says Danny Brown. “I’m probably biased as I hate corporate speak with a vengeance. But for an organization that’s trying to decloak the mystery behind PR, they’re making it even cloudier. When I hear organizations [in the definition], I immediately think of large companies. So does that mean the PRSA doesn’t want its members helping the little guy? And come on, but calling the customers of an organization ‘their publics’ [also in the definition] is so cold it should be a team sport in Antarctica.” Indeed (and relatively restrained for Danny!).

Similarly, Meg McAllister feels that “it’s a bunch of carefully selected buzzwords strung together in a sentence that will result in anyone outside the industry asking: “What does that mean?” This whole exercise has been pointless in my opinion, and has been nothing more than PRSA grandstanding for its own self-importance.” “If I told my Nan this is what I do every day, she’d be none the wiser”, adds Louise Smith.

I suspect Louise’s Nan wouldn’t be alone. “As a non-PR I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment, but from a holistic perspective as an outsider, it doesn’t exactly inspire or create wonder as to the potential of the industry to make a difference”, says Hugh Anderson. Oh dear.

The Perception Issue

For an industry whose raison d’etre is reputation management and communications, the perception of PR couldn’t be a lot worse, something not missed by Gini Dietrich: “The New York Times did a piece on the new definition [in which] they referred to the industry, as a whole, as spin doctors. PR is more than publicity. For those of us who include media relations as one tactic in an overall communications program, spinning the truth is not something we do.”

The point about the scope of PR is something that Sara Hawthorn expands upon when she says: “PR is a diverse medium of communication, and encapsulating its essence - especially at the pace the sector is changing - is a difficult task. Strategic engagement provides a much more substantial qualification than simply calling it a communication process. I suspect many PR people will feel this undervalues the work they do.”

Shelley Pringle says: “I guess that’s what PR practitioners do, but it certainly wouldn’t be my pick for a 30-second ‘elevator’ explanation. It’d be far more beneficial if our industry associations spent their time identifying where we’re headed as a profession and providing us with the tools to get there. Otherwise many PR pros will soon find that their skills are obsolete (if they aren’t already).”

Contributing to Our Own Downfall?

This is something that worries me too. The importance of relevance in terms of achieving PR outcomes should not be underestimated. We are, after all, marketers, and we cannot let jargonistic and self-serving exercises like this one deter us from that.

“It seems to me that PR is ashamed to say we are trying convince people to buy something (business), join something (association), support something (government or non profit) or vote for something (political)”, says Frank Strong. “The industry gets wrapped up in this idea that we are impartial, we liken ourselves to journalists, and we focus on ‘mutually beneficial relationships’. We are not impartial. We are advocates for a particular point of view, product or idea. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that!”

This is something we’re focusing increasingly on at BOTTLE. As CEO Claire Cairns says: “Surely we need to focus on outcomes, impact and behaviour change, rather than a ‘process’? This will only serve to reduce trust, not increase it. The PRSA has inadvertently made the definition far more complicated and I’m not convinced they’ve improved upon the Oxford English Dictionary.”

Why Do We Need a Definition?

The entire issue of needing to define PR in the first place has come under a lot of fire. “To be honest, [the PRSA] could have got this from Wikipedia and saved themselves the 12 country collaboration, ‘nearly a year of research’, a definition task force and 1400 odd votes”, points out Kate Hartley, while Kate Stinchcombe-Gillies says: “They (definitions) belong in text books and essays, and very few of these serve a relevant purpose in the practical delivery of our awesome industry.” “PR is fluid in the 21st century - it can’t be restricted to one single sentence”, states Matt Churchill, while Nick Henderson says simply “The definition doesn’t cut it, especially at a time when expressing our value as an industry is more important than ever.”

The last word (somewhat inevitably if you know her) goes back to Gini Dietrich: “While I commend the PRSA for taking on this initiative and understand they can’t please everyone, the process was flawed. They had us fit our definitions into a fill in the blanks formula that didn’t allow for true crowdsourcing or independent thinking. The definition is jargon, at best, and still doesn’t explain what we do. Until the industry, as a whole, can describe what we do, in terms of business results, this exercise was futile.”

"Building a network is the most important thing any young person can do. It is a lot more than..."

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:12:57 +0000

“Building a network is the most important thing any young person can do. It is a lot more than knowing people - it’s really about interacting with people and building relationships so that when you need help or are in trouble or are looking for a job, the people you’ve been closest to are going to help you the most.”

- Harold Burson, founder of Burson-Marsteller, from ‘Wisdom from the Most Influential PR Professional of the Century’

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The Long, Slow Death of Blogging

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:19:00 +0000

An article in the New York Times this week firmly suggests that blogging is dying. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before, right? Well maybe, but this article says that ‘the younger generation’ is losing interest in favour of spending more time on social networking sites. It quotes a young, aspiring filmmaker from San Francisco who says that “I don’t use my blog anymore. All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.” Which, to my mind, spectacularly misses the point.

Blogging complements social networks. In fact, it drives much of the content shared on social networks. It starts the debates and the discussions which are the lifeblood of Twitter. And for anyone who’s looking for more depth than a soundbite fired off in a couple of hundred characters, blogs are the home of real opinion and insight. You quite simply don’t find the same level of debate or conversation on Facebook.

The End of The Conversation

So why is it that many bloggers are reporting declining readerships or giving up completely? Can it really be the case that ‘the younger generation’ (which I assume means Gen Y) are more interested in infographics and Pins than in well thought-out opinions and arguments? Geoff Livingston, a blogger I read and respect and from whom I found this piece on Facebook, said to me that he believes “the conversation era has passed its zenith”. And on reflection, he may have a point. The rise of Tumblr and Pinterest would seem to bear this out. What was the last innovation in ‘conventional’ blogging – Disqus or LiveFyre? Hardly cutting edge, is it?

So maybe, as Geoff asserts, people just don’t want conversation anymore, instead favouring the fleeting nature of social networks. Or maybe people have just got sick of reading 700 word articles reeling off ‘ten reasons to do this’ and ‘five reasons you should do that’. And I can’t say I blame them. It’s tedious, whereas newer forms of blogging such as Tumblr feel more immediate and more ‘social’.

Maybe, when all is said and done, it’s truer to say that blogging is evolving. I for one sincerely hope that there will always be room for more depth, passion, thought and debate than a picture or a 140 character tweet can ever convey. What about you?

PR Agencies Adapt or Die: A Response

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Public relations is in real trouble. At least, according to some areas of the content marketing industry it is. And they may have a point. I’ve heard awful stories from bloggers of impersonal approaches to them that a child would make a better job of and, combined with the decreasing influence of traditional media and the perceived ‘specialist’ nature of digital content, PR is in danger of becoming siloed into an increasingly small sector.

An excellent post on the Forrester blog entitled ‘Adapt or Die’ from Darika Ahrens, someone whose opinions I’ve admired for some time, looks at the reasons why PR is under such threat and suggests a possible solution in the form of search marketing. Darika is spot on when she asserts that a lot of PR agencies still think in terms of traditional media, with search, social communications, mobile and blogger relations very much ‘add ons’ rather than fundamental pillars of a programme. In some cases it’s the client who doesn’t value online coverage (and so needs educating) and in some cases it’s the agency or the consultant who doesn’t have the digital mindset. But either way: not good.

Over the last few years, PR agencies have been mopping up the ‘community manager’ role, carrying out tactical Facebook and Twitter campaigns for clients. But that work is starting to be taken in-house – and rightly so. There’s no way an agency consultant can have the same degree of day-to-day understanding or access to information or culture as someone working in-house. And community management necessitates that.

The crazy (and frustrating) thing is that PR people have all of the relevant skills to be at the very forefront of the new communications industry. The two things that PR does well are content and relationships…otherwise known as social communications. We have the relevant knowledge to be true ‘consultants’: guiding clients, assisting in content creation and helping to build relationships with influencers. But we’re still being too slow to react to new technologies and new methods of communication. We’re still doing things like it’s 1995. And we’re, arguably, losing the battle. How long before social comms pros working in PR agencies start jumping ship for digital content agencies?

CONTENT MARKETING AND THE FUTURE OF SEARCH Content marketing is...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:03:06 +0000

CONTENT MARKETING AND THE FUTURE OF SEARCH

Content marketing is increasingly important for anyone wishing to make an impression on the web, and yet surprisingly few business people understand what it is or why they should do it. This cool infographic from BlueGlass Interactive goes some way towards explaining why content marketing is so important to an SEO or social media strategy, and what types of content can be utilised. It’s part of a larger infographic with additional detail (which you can access via the source link below), but this is the part I found particularly striking. It looks at how Google+ and Search Plus Your World are impacting content marketing, and demonstrates how important articles, blogs and social media marketing are in the battle for good positions in the SERPs. Enjoy!

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken"

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:50:00 +0000

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”

- Oscar Wilde from ‘Why Personal Branding is the Bane of Social Media’ (I may possibly have made up the source of this quote)

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The Law of Accelerating Returns

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:51:06 +0000

Do you ever catch yourself thinking ‘I can’t keep up with technological change’ or ‘I’ll catch up on the latest communications developments when the dust settles’ or, perhaps in less considered moments, ‘aaaaarrrrrrggghhhh!’? Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last five years, you’ll be fully aware of how fast the communications industry is developing, and that change is being driven by technological evolution. But it has to slow down, right?

Unfortunately, the bad news is that Moore’s Law means that the rate of change is unlikely to decrease any time soon. In fact, given than technology is the major catalyst, it’s more likely to increase than decrease, certainly in the next few years. Moore’s Law depicts a 50 year trend where, in simple technological terms, the number of electronic chips that can be placed on a circuit doubles approximately every two years at no additional cost. The performance of many digital communications devices (computers, mobile phones, digital cameras etc) is inextricably linked to Moore’s Law due to factors such as the performance of processing speeds and memory capacity, which are improving at roughly exponential rates. Which, in layman’s terms, is “very fast indeed”.

Increasing Rate of Change

Futurist Ray Kurzweil proposed ‘The Law of Accelerating Returns’ in the early 2000s, positing that the rate of change in a variety of evolving systems increases at this exponential rate. He says that “we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century; it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)”. So if you’re finding it difficult to keep up now, what’s it going to be like in ten years’ time?

If Kurzweil’s correct, the communications industry hasn’t even begun its own evolutionary change. He argues that whenever a technology approaches a barrier to progress, a new technology is invented to cross that barrier. And as we invent better technologies, we also discover more effective ways of doing things – like communicating. Furthermore, Kurzweil predicts that, within a few decades (he’s stated 2045), machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence leading to a ‘technological singularity’. Mathematician Vernor Vinge popularised this premise in his 1986 novel, ‘Marooned in Realtime’.

If it all sounds a bit “Danger Will Robinson!” to you, think about the last 60 or so years. Life has changed almost beyond recognition since the Fifites. And it will continue to do so, but at an ever-faster rate.

Keeping Up

So what’s the point? Well, I was asked at last week’s Future of Communications panel discussion in London how to keep up with all of the changes in the tech, social media and communications fields. My answer was rather low-tech: read. Read articles, read blogs, read news and opinions. And then experiment with things. Play with tech, try out different social media platforms and functionality, take nothing for granted. You’re doing yourself no favours whatsoever by leaving communications tech to the company social media geek or the IT staff. Don’t have time? Make time. Subscribe to blogs using RSS and read them on-the-go on your mobile. Spend half an hour playing with social media tools on your lunch break. If you don’t do it, someone else will. Your career, your choice.

Social Media Week and the Future of Communications

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:49:00 +0000

Yesterday I had the honour of taking part in The Great Debate as part of Social Media Week in London. Organised by MyNewsDesk, the panel event was focused on cutting through the hysteria and the hyperbole (a lesser man might say ‘the bullshit’) to raise and discuss some of the key issues that face the communications industry as it evolves, and featured Jon Bernstein, Deputy Editor of The New Statesman, lifestyle blogger extraordinaire Eva Keogan and Katie McLean, European Digital Manager for Spectrum Brands. It even nicked my #futurecomms hashtag (tsk…)

When I started FutureComms back in January, I asked a dozen comms industry thought leaders what they felt the future looked like, and three of the major themes to come from that formed the bedrock of the things we spoke about yesterday: relevancy, humanisation and diversified job roles.

From a relevancy perspective, there’s a big focus on ‘the conversation’ due to the participative nature of social media. But whether you’re a brand, a blogger or a journalist, there’s little ROI to just having a conversation: as I wrote in a recent post for BOTTLE Uncorked, sales people aren’t rewarded for having meetings, they’re rewarded for making a sale. So as communicators we have to start to focus on the outcomes of those conversations. It comes back to the old mantra of ‘content is king’ and how that content is disseminated.

Social tech has brought about the humanisation of that content dissemination process and, when it comes to setting the news agenda, citizen journalism has a big part to play. But whether it’s gradually building long-term relationships with bloggers or journalists becoming as much content promoters as content generators, the future of the communications industry is very much about people, not messages. We must start to listen better, to pay attention to what interests one another, and to understand what others care about rather than trying to sell in stories and messages.

And that leads onto changing roles and responsibilities. Anyone working in communications now has a lot on their plate. Being able to write and form personal bonds is only part of the story – we now need to have at least some understanding of SEO, mobile tech, video and html, and we have to stay on top of the latest developments, trends and tools. We’ve got to adapt, and we’ve got to adapt fast! Communications is no longer about crafting the perfect message – it’s about being authentic and about using the most relevant tech intelligently to spread word of mouth.

But listen, don’t take my word for it. Here’s a Storify of what was said during a really interesting couple of hours yesterday:

Oh Dear, Tesco. Oh Dear...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:28:00 +0000

A rather incredible example of poor communications practice was pushed my way last week from a friend of mine, Jan Minihane. To cut a long story short, she was stuck in gridlock in a Tesco car park for four long hours after heavy snow and traffic accidents and, unsurprisingly, wrote an open letter to Tesco to try and gain an explanation. Cue 2000 web visits, a Twitter skirmish, public outpouring and a brief television appearance. And a deafening silence from Tesco.

From a PR and communications perspective, it’s a bit of a shocker. Jan says in a follow up blog post that Tesco has maintained radio silence to her on Twitter despite repeated, polite requests for clarification, and despite responses to people who have @replied to her. She says it also deleted her post from its Facebook page, despite answering others’ concerns. And she says that there has been no public statement by Tesco about the hundreds of people stuck in its car park for four hours. What on earth is going on, Tesco?

In a world where customer service issues and grievances are increasingly aired online, the ‘bury the head in the sand’ approach does nothing but infuriate people. It gives an impression of not caring a jot about customers and serves no purpose other than to add fuel to the fire. It makes it look like there’s something to hide. And furthermore, it’s public. Everyone else can see the lack of care too. In this instance, a public acknowledgement and a small apology would have quelled much of the situation. Two words would have done the trick, Tesco: “we’re sorry”. After all, Every Little Helps…

An Appeal: Please Make Your Point

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:06:00 +0000

Did you know that there are 1.4 billion people in the world who still have no access to electricity? Or that 2.5 billion people have to rely on collecting firewood for cooking and heating? Or that smoke from cooking in the home on open fires kills more people in the developing world than malaria? Neither did I until I started doing some work with the charitable organisation Practical Action in January. So why mention it on FutureComms? Because I firmly believe that we (the tech, comms, social media and PR community) are in a unique position to make a real difference just by doing the stuff we do every day.

Perhaps more to the point, we SHOULD. The comms and tech community has access to a massive and influential collective network. So why don’t we start using that network for the greater good, rather than simply for personal gain?

Technology Justice

The thing is, a large part of the issue in the developing world is about access to energy. Without energy, something that you and I don’t even think about as we sit in our centrally-heated homes with the lights on and the oven cooking a meal while we watch TV and play on our mobiles, people have little chance of improving their lives or working their way out of poverty. And yet the truly shocking thing is that the technology needed to ensure that everyone has access to the basic services required for a reasonable quality of life largely already exists. It’s how energy and the rights to access it are distributed in the developing world that causes a problem. And it’s bloody immoral.

Bill Gates said in a 2009 debate: “It’s wrong that more money is spent on finding a cure for male baldness than a vaccine for malaria”. Brings a degree of clarity to the issue, doesn’t it? Practical Action has coined the phrase ‘technology justice’ to summarise the concept of giving Governments a kick up the backside (my words, not theirs) to remove the senseless (again, my word) political barriers and address issues of capacity in the energy supply chain that prevent poor people from using technology to gain the most basic of services, such as electricity.

What the Comms Community Can Do to Help

2012 is the UN’s International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. And Practical Action has launched the Make Your Point campaign to build interest and awareness ahead of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, which will address worldwide commitment to global energy access. And that’s where you and I can really have a voice and an impact.

I’m not asking you to make a donation, to shave your head or to cycle up Snowdon on a tricycle. In fact, I’m not even asking you to leave this website! All I’m asking is that you click one of the five coloured boxes below, and fill in your name and email address. And then share it. Tweet it, Facebook it, Tumble it, Stumble it, Pin it…share it within an inch of its life! THAT is how the comms community can make a difference. We have the power between us to make a real difference. Please, just do it…

THE UNDER-UTILISATION OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS I spotted this...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0000

THE UNDER-UTILISATION OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS

I spotted this infographic today on The Wall blog (it’s part of a larger infographic that you can view via the source link below) that highlights the primary reasons marketers are using social media platforms. I was surprised that ‘customer retention and support’ didn’t have a higher share, especially given what CONSUMERS want to use Twitter and Facebook for, not what business wants. That would point towards somewhat of a disconnect. And while it’s no surprise that ‘brand awareness and reputation’ comes out top, I’m amazed that ‘having two way conversations with customers’ and ‘gain new names for out database’ even register as the primary goal. The former is positively old school in social comms terms and has no relevant business benefit, and the second is a really poor ‘primary use’ of social media. Back to the drawing board folks…