THINKing

Thankful For PR 2.0

You know that THINKing loves the technology that has made the PR pro’s job so much easier and more effective. I wanted to take the opportunity to summarize some of the good things happening in PR on this holiday eve. Here are a few PR tech tools, for which I am thankful:

There is the Twittering Journalist wiki that My Creative Team started. We began it as a means to help PR people keep up with journalists and media outlets utilizing the social media microblogging application Twitter. I can’t add anymore users to the wiki due to cost issues, but if you have additions or updates, send them to: harry at my-creativeteam dot com.

MicroPR, the brainchild of Brian Solis and Stowe Boyd, is a free service on Twitter, along with a backend resource wiki that helps journalists and bloggers find qualified, targeted PR professionals who can help with their current stories.

Then, there is Help A Reporter Out (HARO), a service begun by Peter Shankman. PR pros and reporters sign up with Shankman’s site. Reporters send in requests for information, and then Shankman sends PR pros an email three times a day with the journalists’ requests.

Pitchengine, Jason Kintzler’s social media release platform, is one of my favorites. Here’s how PitchEngine describes itself:

PitchEngine shakes up the PR industry making it possible for PR pros, brands, and agencies to build and share digital, social media releases with their contacts for free. Our PitchEngine SMR takes the press release to the next level, eliminating the need for antiquated email attachments, word documents, image CDs, and more.

Do you have any other PR 2.0 tools for which you are thankful?

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Creativity Redux

Someone asked me a question about creativity the other day and I sent them to the blog to review our creativity category. They were excited about all the content there on creativity, so I thought I’d share the information with you. Here are a few of the top creativity posts from THINKing.

Creative Briefs

Top 10 Story Starters For Blocked Bloggers

Writer’s Block

To Be Creative, Be Brief

Stuck? Brainstorm! 

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Socialize With Us

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let me say I appreciate the time you spend with us and your thoughtful comments on this blog. We are here to listen as well as speak to our peers and customers. You can subscribe to our blog via Feedburner.

Beyond this blog, My Creative Team is sociable in other ways. So, feel free to join our conversation through our other social media vehicles. Here’s how:

You can follow MyCreativeTeam on Twitter, or become an MCT fan at Facebook. We have a Friendfeed, or you can stumble along with us via StumbleUpon.

My Creative Team’s award-winning monthly enewsletter, Think, is another way to follow us.  Sign up here.

We love social media and believe every company should be using these tools to connect with their key audiences. What do you think? How can we do a better job connecting with you?

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Born Branded?

Lisa Hoffmann got me thinking the other day when I read her blog that declares we are born with a personal brand, also known as personalities. Yes, I agree that we do have some “branding” at birth. But to say we are who we are and that’s the end of the story is just wrong.

That is saying we have no control, that we are predestined to be who we are, no matter what. This attitude is one of the reasons America has turned into a nation of victims. “It’s not may fault,” we say. “My mother didn’t hug me enough.” Or, maybe she hugged you too much. Either way, you bear no responsibility for the way you turned out if you accept this premise.

Humans have the power to transform themselves, to be the kind of people they want to be. We hold the key to our personal brands. As Frank Outlaw says:

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

You can be only who you are if you so choose, or you can be someone better.

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Big Brand Blogging

Friend Jim Deitzel handles social media programs for the Rubbermaid brand, a Newell-Rubbermaid company. This is a big brand that truly gets social media, so I thought you might like to hear a bit about their efforts. The content of the Rubbermaid blog focuses on organization, one of their key brand drivers. Some of the recent stories on the blog include a Q&A with a professional organizer; laundry room organization; and festive holiday containers. The brand’s coordinated use of a variety of social media vehicles as a means of marketing content, I think, is the key to their success.

But you don’t want to hear me prattle on. Let’s hear from Jim Deitzel on Rubbermaid’s social media program:

Q: Not many major brands seem to have utilized or been as successful with social media as Rubbermaid has. To what do you attribute that?

Jim Deitzel: I’m not sure that’s an entirely correct statement. Most of the major brands have used or are using one form or another of social media. If you include reviews & ratings, polls, contests with voting, etc. then most brands are doing social media. But newer tools such as blogs, twitter and facebook – only a few companies are currently using them. Rubbermaid, Graco and Sharpie now have blogs. Rubbermaid and Graco both utilize Twitter. There could be many reasons for it. Some of it can be attributed to resources, people, time, etc. I do believe you’ll see some of the other brands beginning to engage soon.

Q: What was Rubbermaid’s primary objective when wading into the social media pool?

Jim Deitzel: Our objective was to connect with people who have an interest in organization. Professional Organizers, who happen to be heavy users of social tools, were the main focus of our outreach efforts.

Q: Can you briefly explain how you got the program started, which social media elements you included in the effort and how the program progressed?

Jim Deitzel: We started our blog and twitter usage at about the same time (actually we had a twitter account since nearly day 1 of twitter, but never used it). The blog began with content surrounding a specific product launch we had last spring. From there it expanded into a more general blog with content surrounding organization.

Q: What has been the most surprising result from the social media effort?
Jim Deitzel: The wonderful connections I’ve made with professional organizers. I have come to know some of them personally and it’s been great. The openness and willingness for them to participate with us has been outstanding.

Q: One of the things I like about your program is the way professional organizers seem to have embraced what you are doing. Can you tell us a little about how that has happened and evolved?

Jim Deitzel: As I mentioned before, one of the key goals was to get in touch with the organizers. Connecting with people online is not much different than connecting with people offline. You meet, get to learn a little about each other, and then begin to have longer and deeper conversations. We now involve professional organizers in our blog, the content on rubbermaid.com, they talk about our products online, and we actually meet up at professional organizer tradeshows. It’s been really great.

Q: You’ve used Twitter and your blog very nicely in a concerted effort. Please tell us how that evolved.

Jim Deitzel: Both tools have their own unique method of communication. Twitter allows for quick, ‘stay in touch’, messages. It can also be used as a ‘look what’s new’ tool. The blog allows for longer length content as well as comments/reponses from our followers. We even ask our followers for input on home makeover projects we are working on.

Thanks, Jim.

If you know of any big brands doing it right, drop me a note or comment on this posting.

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Holiday For Charity Is Back

Americans spent more in two months on holiday items than they did all year on charitable giving in 2007. Holiday retail sales for November and December 2007 in the general merchandise category were up about 1.7 percent, totaling roughly $469.9 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. Charitable giving for 2007 set a record, topping $306 billion.

I am not against capitalism – far from it. But I think that Americans should be giving at least as much to charity as they are spending on holiday gifts. So, we started a program called Holiday For Charity in 2002, and once again My Creative Team is promoting the program that provides some simple ways to help the less fortunate.

The number one thing you can do is ask friends, family and business associates to donate to charity instead of buying you gifts. I think a lot of people would donate to charity in someone’s name but they don’t feel right doing it unless they have that person’s approval. So, give them your OK and help someone who needs it more than you need a Christmas gift.

Here are some other elements of Holiday For Charity:

1. sell the holiday gifts you receive online at eBay’s GivingWorks and donate the proceeds to charity

2. register and shop at iGive.com, whose merchants donate a portion of each transaction to your charities

3. offer to do volunteer work in lieu of buying holiday gifts

4. donate directly to charity in lieu of buying holiday gifts for clients and customers

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Our Top 5

In case you missed them, here are the 5 most popular blog postings from THINKing.
Newspapers: Dig The Grave
Top 10 Story Starter Tips For Blocked Bloggers
A Bigger Logo Necessitates A Smaller Idea
Twittering Journalists
Great Employees = Happy Consumers

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Remember, You Are Naked Online

Here in the Charlotte area a number of teachers are in danger of losing their jobs because of online indiscretions. They posted objectionable items in their Facebook accounts. Last time I checked Facebook was the fifth most visited site on the web with millions of visitors each day.

Did these teachers not know that? Anyone can see what you are saying. When you utilize social media, you are naked online for all to see. If they are that dumb, should they be teaching our children?

I’ve seen many – mostly younger – people airing out too much online. Savvy HR people Google candidates before hiring them. How would you look in an HR search?

This gets back to personal branding, a topic on which I’ve written a lot. A brand rests on truth, not on a thin veneer of calculated actions. So, like any good brand, you must nurture and maintain your reputation. All of your actions – offline and online – add up to form your personal brand. As Warren Buffett said,

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.

It’s a little late for the Charlotte, NC teachers to heed that advice or to read my white paper on personal branding. But you may want to give it a whirl.

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Ethics in Journalism: An Oxymoron?

The Society of Professional Journalists has a code of ethics. Shocked? Having been a journalist in another era, I knew about the code but had forgotten about it until I stumbled upon it again recently. Here are a few key items from the code for your review and comment.

Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

— Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.

— Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

One of my biggest problems is the advocacy and editorializing that is slipping into so-called news stories. So, how do you think journalists are doing?

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MSM Ain’t What It Used To Be

The mainstream media (MSM) continues to suffer through bad times. And it is not just the print media that is in a freefall. TV News also is having it’s problems, according to David Zeeck of the Tacoma News Tribune. His contention is that newspapers aren’t dying. Here I disagree with Mr. Zeeck. Newspapers are dying, but they are doing slightly better than TV news is.

In his column, Zeeck responded to a comment by Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News that  “Internet and changing reader habits are killing the old newspaper business. Circulation is declining almost 1 percent every passing month.”

Says Zeeck,

Nationwide, daily newspaper circulation was down 4.6 percent for the six-month period ending in September, compared with the same period a year ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That’s less than half the rate at which Brian said it was shrinking.

Between 2006 and 2007, when daily newspaper circulation dropped about 2.5 percent nationwide, ratings for the national TV network news dropped 6 percent (though share remained steady).

Over a 10-year period, from 1997 to 2007, ratings for network news dropped 34 percent and share 33 percent, November to November, according to Nielsen data. In the same period daily newspaper readership declined a relatively modest 16.9 percent, according to Simmons Market Research Bureau and Scarborough Research.

I’ll tell you this, if my business dropped 16.9 percent I wouldn’t call it modest.  Sounds to me like both media are on life support. Newspapers haven’t figured out how to monetize their internet content, and TV hasn’t figured out much of anything. What’s your take?

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