Micro Persuasion

DIY PR: Bob Villa Doesn't Always Know Best

Guy Kawasaki's blog has had a couple of interesting posts on guest posts on PR. The first explains why client-agency relationships sour. The second more important post, on DIY PR, is authored by the CEO of Redfin. He has done a terrific job stewarding his corporate brand on his own. For more, read this Wired piece.

Naturally, this sparked a conversation in blogs, which Jeremiah Owyang summarizes here. My column in AdAge next week touches on the threat of DIY marketing to agency margins. It's real in some industries, but I want to take a broader view here.

DIY PR is definitely a viable option for lots of organizations - especially startups. If DIY media is such a pervasive force, there's no reason that these same technologies can't be utilized to build brand awareness at a fraction of the cost of what an large agency charges.

However, do not be fooled. Web-based entrepreneurs have a better shot at doing their own PR than the rest of the business world. They eat and sleep on the web. This puts them at a considerable advantage in their understanding of the total landscape and who shakes trees. Further, they go to conferences where bloggers and media hang out. They go not specifically to meet these influencers but to learn how to run their business better. The relationships they make at these events are an ancillary benefit. So, net, it's not a major investment in time for this crew to build relationships that carry their brands forward.

But for everyone else, there is a significant cost to doing your own PR. For starters, time. It takes a lot of time to understand all of the various professional and citizen media venues, how they tick and what will make your story stand out. If you're selling shampoo then you're one of 50+ brands on a shelf. How do you differentiate yourself? This is where the pros come in and shine. Our experience and network of relationships can expedite the process to helping to build your brand, not to mention prepare you for potential crises. You won't get that on your own.

So net, even though DIY is a viable option for lots of homeowners who bow to Bob Vila, lots of people who are more than happy to call in the contractors. These pros haven't exactly gone hungry during the housing bust and some stores like Home Depot recognize that there's value in working with them. The same holds in PR. There's more than one road to follow.

links for 2007-05-30

• The Top 60 Web 2.0 Applications in Australia
  (tags: Web2.0 Australia)
• Survival hacks in crowded subways | psychology | Hack the Day
  "Hate the crowded train or subway? Hate to be squeezed like a tomato between sweating strangers? These tips can be a lifesaver."
  (tags: subway NYC lifehacks)

links for 2007-05-29

• TheNextWeb.org - Amsterdam, June 1, 2007 » Blog Archive » The Next Web Documentary
  Five questions about the next web.
  (tags: Blego Video Web2.0 Events)
• The Difference Between Marketing, PR, Advertising, and Branding
  An oldie but a goodie.
  (tags: Advertising PR Marketing Branding fun)
• Digg Charts
  (tags: digg visualization Analytics Stats)

Scripting for Success

Planning is perhaps as old as civilization. A lot of us have short and long-term plans. Pretty much every businesses makes them. Governments too.

Marketers and PR pros are especially fond of planning. Advertising agencies plot out campaigns six months before they see the light of day. I am often called into helping teams craft PR plans for 2008 as early as a year before these strategies are implemented.

The challenge here, however, is that the pace of change is accelerating thanks to the Internet, globalization, fickle audiences and other forces. This can wreak havoc with even the best plans. This holds true for your personal workday as well.

There is a happy medium in between executing a plan and just winging it. It's called "scripting" and I have been experimenting with lately. It works on many different levels - macro for business, micro for individuals. (Coders, this is a different meaning of the word than what you're familiar with, but it's related.)

Scripting was pioneered by legendary San Francisco 49er's coach Bill Walsh during the team's Super Bowl streak in the 1980s. It's now utilized by many NFL coaches who run the West Coast Offense.

Rather than plot out the offensive plan for an entire game game, these men "script" out just the first 15 plays - and then they stick with them no matter what. It's grown more complex too as coaches prepare themselves for different situations.

At its purest, scripting helps teams know their initial plays inside and out. This minimizes mistakes, establishes momentum and dictates the flow of the game. It also gives the coaching staff an opportunity to run "test plays" that are designed to generate a reaction from the competition - e.g. the defense. They observe their opponent's tendencies - and then exploit them.

Football of course isn't business. However, there are parallels. I am not advocating the abolishment of planning. It certainly has its place. Still, nimbleness matters today and by scripting, learning and adapting, you can succeed more quickly.

Marissa Mayer, without mentioning it, talks about scripting in this Fortune interview. I suspect it plays a role in many successful leaders' workdays. I remember reading years ago about how Rich Tong scripted his workday in Julie Bick's excellent book on Microsoft.

Here's a look at scripting in action. Say you want to convince some bloggers you have a relationship with (this point is key) to consider certain product to review. If you script out the first 15 bloggers you plan to approach and your methodology, you can utilize some of the key learnings to move forward from there in a more productive way.

The same applies day to day in the workplace. Each night I now script out the first five things I will do when I get to the office. If I don't have meetings, I run the script. If I do have meetings, I make them part of my script.

This creates discipline and helps me follow GTD. It means that I firewall my attention and do not look at email or feeds until a certain time I have it scheduled on my calendar. It's in the script. This is a trick I learned from Tim Ferriss. He calls it batching. Combine batching and scripting and you got something powerful. Further, I can adapt my script to any situation. And I learn from it too.

Is this for everyone? Perhaps not. There are ways to improve it too beyond just porting an idea from sports over to business. Give it a go and let me know how you do.

links for 2007-05-27

• Achieving emptiness with "Bit Literacy" - (37signals)
  (tags: GTD productivity rss Books)
• The Laws of Simplicity » laws
  (tags: simplicity)
• USPS Stamps Yoda
  Brilliant marketing campaign is this.
  (tags: starwars USPS Marketing movies)

links for 2007-05-26

• Google Earth Blog: Rising Water Effects for NYC in Google Earth - Part III
  Yikes. This makes me glad I live in the burbs - and far enough inland.
  (tags: GoogleEarth Maps environment NYC)
• The Raw Feed: 10 'Swiss Army Knife' Camera Phone Tricks
  More great tips via Jedi Master Mike.
  (tags: cameraphone Photography Mobile)
• Twitter / ZDNetBlogs
  ZDNet ports its feed into Twitter. Nice.
  (tags: twitter zdnet Blogs rss)
• 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It | zen habits
  I've been doing this for four or five years now and it works wonders.
  (tags: lifehacks Productivity)

Tips for Starting and Maintaining a Blog

Garrett Graff and I are quoted in this week's USA Weekend about starting a blog. Our tips:

• Know your motive
• Pick a platform
• Just do it
• Promote yourself
• Play nice

Lifehack.org also had a great related post yesterday - how not to run out of blogging steam.

The Dawn of the Hyper-Networked PR Era

The old axiom in business is that it's not what you know, but who. With so much collective knowledge now available online for free, the saying holds more than ever. Pure-play PR professionals must invest heavily in strengthening and expanding their networks for the industry to remain vital.

Public relations practitioners, especially those who work inside agencies, know relationships count. Over time many agencies specialize and/or develop practices. This deepens their knowledge of the sector as well as the journalists who cover it. But this alone won't sustain the profession going forward.

For starters, nowadays every public-facing employee has a PR role, even if it's not their trade. In the Hyper-Networked PR Era, a video of a single repairman asleep on the job can spread around the world, eroding a company's reputation. On the positive side, grassroots or sanctioned corporate bloggers inside giant and small corporations have built tremendous goodwill for their businesses with key stakeholders and press.

In the Hyper-Networked PR Era, journalists (pro and citizen) have done a great job building relationships with all kinds of stakeholders directly. This - arguably - reduces the need for PR professionals to fulfill this role and helps them get scoops too. They're turning to social nets, conferences and, above all, a transparent dialogue with their audience. Read Dwight Silverman's blog and first hand you will see what I mean. In addition, check out this recent post by Penelope Trunk on how journalists can use LinkedIn.

Marketers too seem to be adapting nicely to the hyper-networked environment. The ANA, which represents the largest marketers in the world, is advocating that advertisers become more collaborative. And they are. Don't believe me? Read Wikinomics.

The situation in the PR biz is less heartening. What I have seen at my own firm is terrific. However, I feel differently when I look at the pitches I receive from others in the industry. It feels as though many just expand their media lists to include bloggers, podcasters and other online opinion leaders without trying to build relationships. They spam us with meaningless information, just like they do with the media.

If this continues, these firms will see their networks devalue. They must not just focus on generating coverage. That's a byproduct of good relationships.

So as you go out this weekend and invest in your personal circle of friends and family, think about how to do the same in business. My advice? Proactively focus on becoming more networked. Join social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and others. Start a blog. Go to conferences where the influencers flock. Get to know us as people and you will expand your network and your value to clients.

In the Hyper-Networked PR Era, this is the most essential skill you need to thrive.

links for 2007-05-25

• Make-It-Yourself 'Star Wars'
  "Lucasfilm Will Post Clips From Film Saga on the Web, Inviting Fans to Edit at Will"
  (tags: starwars Mashups Video movies)
• Real-time collaboration with Comapping on-line mind maps
  Ian says Comapping is a new on-line mind mapping application that supports real-time collaboration
  (tags: Mindmapping RichInternetApplications)
• Google News in Tabs
  Neat widget/gadget for iGoogle that puts Google News into tabs.
  (tags: Google googlenews iGoogle Widgets)
• DiggReSS
  "diggReSS is the ultimate RSS 2.0 feed for digg."
  (tags: digg rss)

links for 2007-05-24

• Inside AdSense: AdSense coming to a video near you
  Google: "We're launching a pilot with a small group of publishers to test streaming video ads in their online video content."
  (tags: Adsense Video Advertising Google)
• TweetVolume Shows How Many Times Your Name is On Twitter
  (tags: twitter Search)
• New York Bloggers Meetup - 9 June
  (tags: Blogs NYC Events)
• Geek To Live: Useful search plugins for Firefox and IE7 - Lifehacker
  (tags: Search Firefox IE7)
• Branding Your Blog for Success - lifehack.org
  This was one of the best decisions I ever made. Read this advice and ingest it.
  (tags: Branding Blogs Marketing)
• Meez: Home
  Create your own 3D avatar.
  (tags: avatars Fun 3D)
• A Natural Fit: For Science Journal, Web Is 'Second Nature' - SPIEGEL ONLINE
  "Nature, the world's best-known scientific publication, is now being transformed into a multimedia platform that includes include blogs, podcasts and even a Second Life presence."
  (tags: Journalism Media secondlife Blogs Podcasting science)

The Worldbeam and the Next Web

What will the web look like in the future? According to one Yale professor, it will be very different than what we use today.

In a recent issue of Forbes,  David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, paints a scenario that once seemed out of reach but now feels more plausible given the rising use of rich Internet applications.

Gelernter envisions a giant beam of information - a Worldbeam - that's organized chronologically. All of your data is stored on the Worldbeam. You decide who can access its micro components and how. However, none of your data is stored locally on your PC. Information follows you no matter what device or computer you use.

The Worldbeam scenario sounds similar to an artificial intelligence vision expressed Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It's definitely the stuff of science fiction. Still, if you squint you can see the building blocks are in place today. These include the River of News approach to reading RSS feeds and - coupled with it - an increasing movement to organize/store content by time and date-stamps.

Gelernter predicts...

"Every organization will tell its ongoing life story via electronic documents. A newspaper will generate a beam of stories and photos. (Fresh stories are posted at the end of the beam as soon as they are filed.) If you get your news from three newspapers, one cable channel and 12 blogs, you can blend their streams and keep an eye on them all simultaneously. When you tune in your custom-blend news stream, you see a time-ordered list of postings--the world according to all 16 of your sources interleaved, shuffled together."

Should this vision becomes a reality, it could have a big impact on how we consume and create media and how corporations tell their story. Whether you buy into this theory or not, the piece is fascinating and worth a read. Clearly there are lots of privacy concerns. People like having their information close at hand, but perhaps today's Gen Yers and others who grew up with the web will be the first to embrace the Worldbeam.

Track the Google Zeitgeist on iGoogle

Google has launched a trends module for iGoogle. The widget/gadget pulls in the top news, video, image and web searches. PR pros: this is a handy way to see what's on the mind of the public. Not an iGoogle user? Windows Live has a similar gadget. It tracks the top news photos on MSNBC. (Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

Blog Search is Dead and Google Killed It

Technorati today launched a new look and feel and under the hood improvements that are designed to help searchers find what they're looking for across the live web, not just blogs. David Sifry sums up the changes over on their corporate blog. TechCrunch has more.

The improvements are nice, but I have to admit that I don't use Technorati nearly as much as I used to. Link authority was a good metric a year ago, but it's not nearly as worthwhile today when you consider all of the centers of influence one may wish to search and track. Link authority doesn't tell me who's an influencer on Facebook or which video artists are rising on YouTube. It was great in 2005, ok in 2006 and really has faded from relevance in 2007.

A lot has changed in the last couple of years. Web search engines are getting faster, personalized and thus more comprehensive. As Marissa Mayer indicates, searchers want the most relevant and often the most recent results. All you need to do is look at the daily Google Trends reports and it's apparent just how much timely content and news drives search. This necessitates the integration of live information with more static data.

This is exactly the approach Google is taking with the launch of their universal search algorithm. The next natural step for Google is to add RSS feeds and date sorting to their primary index. I wrote about this two years ago and still believe it is coming - especially now. Play with Google's experimental timeline view and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see where this is all going.

While we still use vertical search engines today to dig through news, blogs, video, etc., their days are numbered. The lines are blurrier. Google News, for example, has lots of blogs. More importantly, the big web search engines are going becoming sophisticated enough to make an educated guess as to what information you're seeking. It won't care if it comes from the live or static web. It will serve up relevance and soon time-stamped sorting.

In short, this means the heyday of dedicated "live web" search engines like Technorati is coming to a close. Technorati's best bet going forward is to hook its technology into engines that can scan the archived web. That's where the world is going and what searchers want.

links for 2007-05-22

• How to Change the World: Ten (Nine) Questions with Anastasia Goodstein
  (tags: Marketing geny teens tweens)
• Jezebel: Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing.
  Gawker Media launches a new property for women.
  (tags: gawkermedia Blogs women Gawker)

Google Coop Embeds Gadgets in Search Results

Google Coop has quietly expanded and now can embed data from gadgets (i.e. widgets) as subscribed links. In English, as opposed to Googlese, what this means is that you can opt-in to have important live data pop-up when you enter certain search keywords.

Right now there are only a handful of gadgets you can sign up for. All of them are from Google, but they are handy. They include: time/date, translations, traffic and weather radar/conditions. If you have a Google account and you opt into these links, when you search it will trigger the data to load above the search results. You need to enter certain keyword commands, such as: "what time is it" or "weather 10036" or "new york traffic" or "translate hello into spanish." Google Coop has all the documentation, but see the sample in the screen shot below...

Given the size of the Google Gadget ecosystem, this is an important development - especially if developers begin tweak their gadgets. It turns Google into a giant command-line interface for web data.

However, one wonders if Google will eventually rolling this all up into their new universal search and "widgetsense." As you look down the road, you can see this as an avenue to deliver one heckuva an opt-in online ad. The key is that the information delivered must be compelling enough.

The Flat Future of the Publicity Stunt

Time and again PR professionals love to turn to an old favorite - the publicity stunt. I use the word publicity here rather than public relations because there is a distinction between two. However, they are certainly inter-related.

Everyone likes a good stunt. And who can blame us? In our time-starved world, content that is bite-sized, shareable and fun is often holy. That's why publicity stunts, a tactic, work best when they fit into a larger PR strategy and convey a bigger message.

In the past stunts were cost prohibitive. And to some degree they still are. If you want to build the world's biggest [insert product here] and unleash it in Times Square for all to see on Good Morning America, it will cost you. Plus there's no guarantee for success. This is driving more products and services to try their hand at hatching online publicity stunts.

Web-based stunts have been a staple of online culture since the Internet became a mass medium during the mid-late 1990s. Viral marketing, if you think about it, is really just a glorified PR stunt. Memes are stunts that we create without the help of marketers.

The web, however, is flat - especially with the dawn of Web 2.0 insta-publishing tools. This raises the bar for cleverness substantially. PR pros are competing with everyone. This is why I've heard some have described launching a viral video as a moonshot. For every Subservient Chicken there are thousands of viral marketing programs nobody ever heard of.

A smart approach is to think simple and small. Target a niche, rather than big mainstream audience, and come up with something really different. The good news is that you don't need to spend a lot of time and money to do so. You can use off the shelf tools and an acquired knowledge of online culture.

For an example of this, check out what Scott Heiferman at Meetup launched last week. Using Google Docs, he created a table comparing what it's like to work at their company vs. Google. It's clever, targeted, and it made a point. Oh and it cost them nothing - except creativity! The result: there are already 19 blogs links into the page. That's how I heard about it. And now you did too. (Via Inside Google)

links for 2007-05-21

• Google LatLong: Neighborhood Search Capability
  Google Maps introduced the ability to perform searches by neighborhoods - e.g. Upper East Side, The Mission, etc.
  (tags: Google local Search Maps)
• Logic+Emotion: Career 2.0
  Good luck to Dave Armano as he leaves Digitas.
  (tags: Advertising Friends)
• Google Analytics Report Finder
  Easy way to drill down into GA reports.
  (tags: Google GoogleAnalytics Analytics lifehacks)
• Webmaster Help Center - How do I submit my articles to Google News using Google Sitemaps?
  Google News now has sitemaps support.
  (tags: sitemaps Google googlenews)
• PSFK Conference London - Event Hosted by Eventbrite
  Interesting marketing conference in the UK.
  (tags: UK Events Marketing PSFK)
• GigaOM » Virtual World Population: 50 million by 2011
  Gartner: asserted that “80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 companies) will have a ‘second life’, but not necessarily in Second Life” by 2011
  (tags: metaverse secondlife virtualworlds Stats)

links for 2007-05-20

• Google Operating System: Google Maps Aliases
  Assign friendlier names to long and boring addresses
  (tags: Google Maps lifehacks Search)
• In the Know: Stay on Top of Your Field with Feeds - lifehack.org
  A step-by-step guide
  (tags: rss googlereader tutorials)

The 4-Hour Workweek - Behind the Meme

I am starting a new semi-regular feature here called Behind the Meme. You've heard of the VH1 show Behind the Music. This is similar. Each post will take a look at a meme (e.g. an idea that spread through conversations) and how it started in the Web 2.0 sphere.

This time I am looking at Timothy Ferriss' new book, The 4-Hour Workweek. I just finished listening to the unabridged audiobook on my iPod Shuffle,which I use as my go-everywhere audiobook player. You can get it at your bookstore or on iTunes. (Some report glitches with other iPods. Word is the Audble.com version works fine.)

Even if you never plan to leave the rat race, Tim's book is outstanding and sure to be popular on beaches and iPods this summer. In it Tim describes in great detail how to use 80/20 rule, Parkinson's Law and "batching" to reduce the need for email, meetings, phone calls. This is music to minimalists and GTD fans like me.

Ferriss also talks about how to put big chunks of your life on autopilot with everything from personal outsourcing to online businesses. Some of it is applicable to everyone immediately, other parts - like selling much of what you own to go live in Argentina for a few months - are not for the faint of heart.

Tim's book hit store shelves on April 23 - just a few weeks ago. It debuted at an astounding #123 on Amazon.com and rapidly ascended the charts. As of this writing it's #21 overall. So how did Tim do it? Was he on Oprah? Did he have huge media coverage or an ad campaign to support the book? Nope. He did it all via word of mouth on blogs. (In the past Tim has outsourced his PR needs to his virtual assistants India, who he uses to book media interviews. It's in the book. Think about that!)

The following chart shows how The 4-Hour Workweek has sold since it debuted on Amazon ...

As of this writing there are exactly eight news stories about the book Google News. And some of these, like WebWorkerDaily, are blogs. That's not exactly what you would expect for a book that's ascended up the charts the way The 4-Hour Workweek has. I bet the media will pick up on this book soon.

Think about the competition too. This is the beginning of the busy summer book-selling season when everyone is looking for vacation reads. Tim is competing with everyone from Lee Iacocca's new leadership book to Don Rickels' memoir. The 4-Hour Workweek is ahead of both of these on Amazon, as well as perennial favorites Getting Things Done and The Tipping Point. Amazing for a first-timer.

So how'd he do it? By bonding with geeks like us. Tim spoke at the SXSW Conference in late March. His brief, five minute presentation set the blog world on fire. Plus, he built relationships there with lots of influencers. He also relaunched his own blog around the same time.

In April he spoke for just five minutes at the Web 2.0 Expo Ignite event. The speech was so riveting, he was invited back to the stage the next day for more. He also hooked up last month with Brian Oberkirch for a super podcast, which I highly recommend. The buzz only continued to build from there. Uber-blogger Merlin Mann, who writes the incredible 43 Folders productivity blog, picked up on the podcast, so did Problogger's Darren Rowse and the meme was off to the races.

All this buzz increased pre-orders for the book, which is why it debuted so high. Finally, earlier this month Robert Scoble got hooked and now all of his minions - myself included - are on board.

Here's a look at some incredible charts I pulled from Technorati to illustrate just how much buzz there has been for the book. The first chart shows mentions of Tim Ferriss (I used a few variations to compensate for misspellings). The second does the same for the title of the book.The lessons?

• Go where bloggers go
• Be there with a message and a story that will appeal to their interests, not yours
• Build and maintain those relationships through your own blog too

links for 2007-05-17

• Hugg /
  Digg for environmental news.
  (tags: environment green socialnews digg)
• A Master Editorial Calendar (for Everything) | Internet Marketing Strategies : Conversation Marketing
  Maybe there's something here. Anyone else?
  (tags: calendar PR Blogs)
• Google Experimental Search
  New features that Google is tinkering with.
  (tags: Google Search)
• Three Laptop Tricks For Better Presentations
  Three tricks that are less well known.
  (tags: Powerpoint presentations lifehacks)
• Everything TypePad: Go beyond blogging with TypePad Pages
  "With the new TypePad Pages, you can use all the power of TypePad's posting tools to create as many individual web pages as you want."
  (tags: Typepad Blogs lifehacks)