THINKing

Bad PR Guy, Naughty PR Guy. Social Media Is Outing You!

Chris Brogan has an excellent post about a PR executive who blind emailed a news release to him a couple of days ago and embargoed it. Here’s the salient paragraph:

Dear Tom Mahon of CellSpin - I don’t know you. And yet, I have a press release you’ve sent me about your company, CellSpin, which will announce something at 9AM ET tomorrow, though I’m not supposed to talk about that until then, because you’ve asked me to embargo myself for news I didn’t ask for. Well, Tom, I think if you’re going to build an app that supports Facebook and MySpace, you might consider learning a lesson from them.

Pitching media people with an approach like this is ill advised, but trying to pitch a blogger using this technique in today’s connected world is suicide.

As Chris reported, the PR offender is Tom Mahon. Surely he has a vanity Google alert going for himself. Let’s surprise him with numerous posts.

And, by the way, thanks to Angel Galloway for coming up with the tag: socialmediabitchslap. I’ve used it on this posting.

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Twitter Thoughts

Here’s a random review of some recent coverage of Twitter:

According to MediaPost:

Despite phenomenal growth, Twitter still hasn’t reached mainstream adoption, according to Heather Hopkins, vice president, research, Hitwise Intelligence, who analyzed the service’s Internet visitation rates in the U.S. While visits to Twitter.com are up eightfold year-over-year, and have more than doubled in the past three months alone, she noted that the site still ranked as #439 among all social networks and forums last week.

At Micropersuasion, Steve Rubel says,

There’s been an interesting discussion over the last few days about Twitter’s reach. WSJ reporter Kara Swisher surveyed her dinner party and found out that no one there uses the micro-blogging site. Meanwhile Gina Trapani on Lifehacker is running a survey asking if Web 2.0 benefits only the tech elite.

The Online Journalism Blog reports on how journalists can master Twitter,

Contacts are central to a journalist’s work. Twitter makes it easier to find them. But whereas, for instance, Facebook requires someone to accept you as their ‘friend’ before you get updates; you can follow people on Twitter regardless. It’s where blogging meets social networking.

Finally, Todd Defren at PRSquared says PR folk must Twitter or else,

Am I seriously suggesting that a PR person MUST become an active Twitter user if they want to have a meaningful career? Even though Twitter is supposedly still a below-the-radar service? Well, yea, kinda. But for more – and more varied – reasons than you might think.

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WTF? I Thought Good Customer Service Was Dead

This is a story about local business, word-of-mouth marketing and good customer service. This is not fiction. It actually happened to me yesterday. I’m not making this up.

I won’t take this opportunity to whack Wal-Mart in defense of local business. Wal-Mart has been good for America, particularly its lower income citizens. But being from a long line of small business owners, I have to tell you I do deal with small local businesses when possible.

So, when my heat pump breaks down my neighbor tells me about a local HVAC company. In fact, the owner lived in our neighborhood for years and has worked on most everyone’s system at some point. Great guy, fair, good prices, good service, or so my neighbor tells me. The recommendation is almost over-the-top.

I call and he comes by with information about new systems. But first says, “let’s see if we can get your old system running to buy you some time to plan for this expenditure. That’s what I’d do if it was mine.”  So, he calls his tech guy, who will be coming later this week to try to jumpstart the old heat pump. While the owner is still here, he gives me quotes on a couple of different systems, explains the pros and cons, and answers some questions I have about water heaters and gas fire logs, too. He leaves a written quote, “in case I want to shop around.” He says the quotes are good now, or in the fall, if the old system is brought back from the dead for the summer.

This guy gets it. He understands, even if he can’t articulate it, that customer service is a huge component of branding. Every interaction you have with a customer or prospect - good or bad - affects your brand. Guess who I’ll be buying my heating system from?

Do you have good customer service stories? How about bad ones? Your thoughts, please.

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Technorati Is Dead To Me

Photo Courtesy of Morguefile

Start digging, Technorati is dead. I’m sure, like the old man in Spamalot, Technorati is protesting that “I’m not dead yet.” But trust me, the corpse is quickly reaching room temperature. Bring out your dead.

I rarely get any traffic from Technorati anymore. It’s been weeks since any traffic was referred to THINKing from Technorati. Do you get any traffic from them? Do you gain any value at all from Technorati?

Many bloggers agree with me that it’s time for Technorati to turn off the servers and the lights. Once they descended into the pit by accepting spammy ads, Technorati was dead to a lot of people.

The final straw for me was when they turned off the WTF function. This was the last in a long line of missteps by Technorati. It was useful for a time, but it’s time has passed. So, what’s next?

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Twittering Journalists - Part 2

Here are some more media outlets using Twitter, mostly from Red 66. Please add to the list if you know some we’ve missed.

47 News, Tokyo, Japan @47news

ABC News, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia @abcnewsbrisbane

AgendaTwiMedios @agendatwitter

AmericasReport @AmericasReport

Breaking News Alerts @BreakingNewsOn, @LivePressAlert

CNET News @CNETNews

ESPN Headlines @espn

Mahalo News @mahalonews

MarketWatch @MarketWatch

Marketwire @marketwire

Motor Awards, Venezuela @MotorAwards

MSN Noticias, España @msnnoticias

MSNBC @msnbc_world

Noticias Emol @twitter_emol

WFPL News (NPR - Louisville) @wflpnew

More Twittering Journalists

Adam Boulton, Sky News, London, UK @SkyNewsBoulton

Darren Waters, Technology Editor, BBC News @djwaters1

Ginny Skal, WNCN NBC 17, Raleigh, NC @ginnyskal

Jim Long, NBC @newmediajim

Wayne Sutton, WNCN NBC 17, Raleigh, NC @waynesutton

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Twittering Journalists

UPDATE 12/19/2009 - I have consolidated all of the Twittering Journalists wiki into Twitter lists. 

Twittering Media Outlets

Twittering US Journalists

Twittering Canadian Journalists

UPDATE: Twittering Journalists has been moved to this wiki.

I’ll be adding to this list, and if you have names of Twittering journalists, please feel free to post them. Here is what I’ve dredged up to-date from sources including Red66, CNET and keyword searches on Twitter:

MEDIA PEOPLE

BusinessWeek: Sara Lacy

CNET: Charles Cooper, Caroline McCarthy, Ina Fried, Dan Farber, Jim Kerstetter, Elinor Mills, Maggie Reardon, Stephen Shankland

Techcrunch: Michael Arrington, Duncan Riley

The Charlotte Observer: Jeff Elder

The New York Times: Saul Hansell, John Markoff

The Wall Street Journal: Kara Swisher

MEDIA OUTLETS -Newspapers

Charlotte Observer, @theobserver

Financial Times @FTmedianews, @FTfinancenews

Honolulu Star Bulletin, Honolulu, HI @starbulletin

Knoxville News Sentinel, Knoxville, TN @knoxnews

LA Daily News @ladailynews

LA Times @latimesbreaking, @latimesworldNashua Telegraph, Hudson, NH @NashuaTelegraph

The New York Times, NY @nytimes

The News & Observer, Raleigh, NC @newsobserver

The Oregonian, Portland, OR @oregonian, @OregonianBiz, @OregonianTraff, @OregonianSports

The Orlando Sentinel, Orlando, FL @orlandosentinel

USA Today @ondeadline

MEDIA OUTLETS - Radio & TV

CNN @cnn, @cnnbrk, @CNNNewsroom

Fox News @foxnews

KOAT, Albuquerque, New Mexico @KOAT

KPBS News, San Diego, CA @kpbsnews

News 2 Colorado, Denver, Colorado @News2Colorado

NPR News @nprnewsblog, @nprnews, @bryantpark

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Top 10 Story Starter Tips For Blocked Bloggers

Are you blogged out? Got writer’s block big time. So big even my previous post on writer’s block didn’t help? Never fear, your doctor of creativity is here. I have some big time block busters.

Mash-Up. One of my favorites is to take a subject that so clearly has nothing to do with another subject and meld them into a question. For instance, “what can we learn about social media from crocodiles?” I have no idea but it makes you think about the topic differently.

Divide And Conquer. If you are tackling a topic, it may just be too big to take on in one post. This gives you fodder for several days if you can you divide it into several posts as I did recently in Big Boy Marketing, part 1, part 2, and part 3

Past, Present, Future. Consider your subject matter - in my case marketing communications - from the historic perspective. How did people sell things before mass advertising? How does that relate to what’s happening today and may happen tomorrow?

Picture This. Go to Flickr and take a few moments to look through photos. Write down what the picture is telling you. There’s a story idea in there waiting for you to find it.

Talking Topics. OK, let’s say I’m writing about billboards. How would I feel if I were a billboard? What would I want to tell you about myself?

Merge. Go to three of your favorite blogs or websites. Write down the first headline that catches your eye at each one. Now, try to come up with a single topics using the words from these headlines. Here are three recent headlines from THINKing to get you started. Newspapers: Dig The Grave, Journalists A Twitter, and Get Well Defined.

Natural Disaster. From the following list, select a natural disaster: tornado, hurricane, flood, avalanche, tidal wave, sand storm, thunderstorm. Pose a statement like this: My (topic here) is like a (natural disaster here) because…

Word. Grab your favorite dictionary. Go to page 529 and select the 21st entry on that page. In my dictionary, it’s “gravy”. How does that word relate to your topic?

At Random. Click on “give me a random idea” at the Writer’s Window website. I got “being in a car accident.” What could you do with that in your blog?

Gender Game. Consider how the opposite sex from you would think about a topic. Is there a female approach to social media? How would that manifest itself?

Do you have ways to break through writer’s block? If you try some of the above ideas, let me know how they worked for you.

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Journalists A-Twitter

Journalists are not adopting Twitter as rapidly as one would think. Twitter is a way to quickly reach new sources, as well as to build a personal following for your reportage.

If Twitter had been available when I was a reporter 100 years ago or so, I’d have been all over it. I wrote a media criticism column and had a group of Media Miscue Rangers who kept an eye out for media misdeeds. Man, Twitter would have simplified communicating with my posse of Rangers.

I’m assembling a list of reporters who are using it. A number of newspapers and media outlets have jumped on the bandwagon, such as @startribune; @asheville; @nytimes; @nj_news; @foxnews; @theobserver

I’ll be posting this link to Twitter soon to see if we can drum up some journalists’ comments about how they are using it.

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Be My Guest

Photo By shoshanah (Flickr)

Hey! Yes, you. Are you interested in writing a guest article for this blog? And why wouldn’t you be? THINKing has a worldwide Alexa ranking of 133,100 and a US rating of 33,108, so you have an opportunity to build your personal brand.

If interested, comment on this posting, letting me know what advertising, PR, marketing or social media topics you would like to address and what your premise is. I’ll get back to you on deadlines and such. Looking forward to hearing from you.

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Writer’s Block?

Photo By PPDIGITAL (Flickr)

The toughest thing about writing a news release is getting started. But writing doesn’t have to be hard. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you beat writer’s block.

Before the story, think about:

• audience. who do I want (or expect) to read this? What do they want to know? What do I want them to know?

• “gatekeepers.” These are usually the editors who will decide if they will use your story. What kind of story do they normally use? How long? Style?

If you just can’t get the first word down on paper, here are some things to try.

• Talk to someone about your story. Listen to yourself. Write the story like you told it. You can always rearrange sentences or paragraphs later.

• Go through your notes. Star the things you think are most important. Then try to start a story with at least one or two of those important things in the first sentences.

• Write the headline first. Then make sure your first paragraph or two says essentially the same thing as the headline.

• Try being childlike. How do kids tell a story? They blurt it out, getting to the point fast with plenty of action verbs.

• Plagiarize, sort of. If you see something written that you like, borrow the idea, but not word-for-word. I’m especially talking about borrowing ideas of style.

Now you have the tools to bust writer’s block. Get write to it.

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