We frequently talk to our clients about how issuing news releases (often called press releases, a term I think is antiquated) can help a site be found more easily in Internet searches. Fresh content with key words and phrases appropriately used can be an important part of a well-planned search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. However, the trend of writing news/press releases for the sole purpose of SEO needs to stop.

After all, the first word in the phrase “news release” is “news.”

I’m going to pick on a real-life example, below:

Two virtually identical pieces (I’m not going to even call them releases) with slight changes posted to a free service. Looks to me like someone wants to show up when someone searches for things like “Washington Park Realtor” and “Denver Hilltop Realtor.” Good goals. But spamming the free news release site with stuff like this is off-target. You want to be found, but you don’t want to be found to be pumping out junk.

Writing a bad release for pure SEO goals is kind of like warming up a sandwich on your idling car engine. It’ll work, but it’s not the best way to complete the process. While the free news release distribution sites are not where most journalists go to look for news or story ideas, they also shouldn’t become useless spam repositories.

Some thoughts on when and when not to issue a release:

• Do you have something that is actually newsworthy to say? That’s rule #1. “It’s Monday, and Acme Dry Cleaners is Open and Offering 10 Percent Off Shirt Laundry” is not news. It’s an ad. “Acme Dry Cleaners Announces Change to 100 Percent Green Cleaning Process” is news. As my reporter friends would say, if you want the former in the paper, call the ad department. Even though we can now talk directly to consumers through news and release sites, a release should offer some news.
• If you’ve never written a news release and have no idea about news writing or AP Style, get some help from someone that does. There’s a format and language that’s appropriate and expected, even it the goal of the release is mostly SEO. A headline that screams that buying a home is like winning the lottery is out-of-place and pure hype. It may or may not be a good ad or brochure, but it’s a terrible news headline.
• If you’ve got an audience that’s interested in news about you/your company that might not have broad appeal (10 percent off is a good example) consider starting a blog. That’s an appropriate place for that level of “news.”

Reporters have griped—and in many cases, justifiably so!—about poorly written, buzz-word ridden, non-newsworthy releases for decades. A new crop of folks being encouraged to issue news releases for the sole purpose of driving site traffic is misguided, plain and simple. Use the right tool for the job.

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Each year for my birthday, I spend part of the day riding one mile for every year old I am that year. Yesterday was my annual birthday ride, and since I’m getting older (or, maybe just old!) I had to go a ways: forty-seven miles, to be exact, to hit my goal (yes, I made it!).

During my ride I found myself in the middle of a large charity ride, which included a longish (3-4 mile) climb to a small town near Boulder. Sadly, it was obvious many of the participants were not adequately prepared. I was reminded that cycling is not easy. I ride an average of 125 miles weekly in the summer to prepare for long rides.

Most things require work and preparation. It occurred to me that social media is no different. That is, there are no easy ways to build a community, no short-cuts, and it’s not something you can just dive into and be successful. It’s hard work and requires preparation in order to be successful and attention over the long term to grow what you’ve built.

I cringe whenever I see programs that will “get you followers while you sleep” or “double your Facebook friends tomorrow” or any other variation of snake oil. Can you get a bunch of new Twitter followers with some programs? Of course. But, much like many of the people I saw on Sunday trying to climb a hill with the wrong equipment and too little preparation, you won’t know what to do with this new-found “wealth.” You might even find yourself suffering a little. Or a lot.

Think about Community Access Television. Just about anyone could get time, but if the program was unwatchable drivel, it was like shouting in the wilderness. Social media gives us all easy access to a myriad of large networks, much like Community Access Television. Same idea here. Let’s say you get 10,000 Twitter followers through a short-cut of some kind… now what? What are you going to talk about? What does your “community” want to hear about and, better yet, have a conversation about? If you don’t know that first–and build a community based on that, not on auto-follows and other tricks–you’ll find yourself shouting in the wilderness, and your 10,000 followers will soon by 9,000, then 8,000, and so on.

The act of buying a bicycle alone does not prepare you for a four-mile climb, just as having 10,000 Twitter followers is not all it takes to build and maintain a community.

Every day I get a handful of follow requests from small businesses who simply seem to want followers. I’m sure your bakery in Cleveland is lovely (I made that up so as not to call anyone out!) I might really like it. But I don’t have any plans to be in Cleveland in the foreseeable future, so daily (or more) snippets of news from you doesn’t sound all that interesting. If you found me because I mentioned the Cleveland Browns when talking about football, you’re misusing a short cut and you’re wasting your time and mine.

Before you dive in to any social media network, ask yourself: what are my goals? What value will I try to provide? What can I offer to those who follow me? How can I find those who will appreciate what I have to say, and will want to have a conversation with me? And if you want to use a tool that helps you find people who might have an interest in a bakery in Cleveland, connect all the dots and use the tool correctly. The smart pilots only use the auto-pilot programs when it’s appropriate.

A username and a password does not mean you’re ready, just like buying a bike doesn’t mean the Tour de France is in your future. It just means you’ve taken the first step, and there are no shortcuts.

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The front page of the Boulder Daily Camera yesterday proclaimed “CU-Boulder takes steps to close journalism school.” As I pondered the fate of my profession, I, a former newspaper reporter, posted the story to my Twitter feed and my Facebook page. The fact that I chose to share the information online rather than blasting off a letter to the editor should tell me enough about the future of media to not make me upset about the issue.

However, I was upset.

For starters, I have a master’s degree in journalism. Is it going to be worth anything in 10 years? I knew when I got my degree that I could make a lot more money if I went to business school, but I chose journalism because I was fascinated by how people chose to communicate information and the different ways in which they share it. It was this fascination that drove me into the newspaper business almost two decades ago and it’s what led me to build my first website in 1996, and start my first blog 10 years later. Besides, I hate statistics classes.

Journalism schools, traditionally, have been horribly inept at providing a cross-discipline approach to the trade. There’s the broadcast department, the news-editorial department, and public relations. Never shall they meet. I remember as an undergrad at Colorado State asking about photojournalism classes and getting a quizzical look from my academic advisor because I was on the news-editorial track. I reminded her that they have pictures in newspapers too.

“But someone else will do that for you,” she said, as if the subject had been exhausted. Not anymore. Reporters are expected to write the story, update the blog, create a Twitter feed and post video to the website all before the 5 p.m. deadline. No wonder the quality of the reporting has been going steadily downhill. They don’t have enough time to focus on anything that could make an impact.

It is the spread of web-based information that is, ironically, leading to this need for better journalists. Increasingly, people are overwhelmed with information via online, on television and in print. In this overwhelmed state, they are developing more and more channels of information. “I’m a mom. Tell me about stuff I care about.” Enter the mommy bloggers. “I am passionate about politics.” Enter MSNBC and Fox News. These are just channels though, microcosms of information that provide no context or perspective. It’s more like a stream of consciousness.

Now, more than ever, we need people that can tell us what is important, why it’s important and explain it to us in a way that we can understand. As one of my old journalism teachers used to say, “Don’t just tell me what happened. Tell me why I should care!”

Despite my concerns, I think it can be a promising and very smart move for the University of Colorado to create a school of information if done correctly. You can’t deny the power or the influence of the Internet and social media in particular. If you stop looking at journalism in the silos of television, print, and public relations — and start looking at it as information sharing — then you get to the heart of what journalism really is.

I shared my thoughts with Sandra Fish, a journalist and journalism instructor at the University of Colorado who specializes in politics, government and interactive reporting. She wrote me back this reply:

“I think the potential to create something new that melds journalism and technology is exciting but we also need to keep in mind that journalism, no matter what the form or platform, is essential to our democracy.”

“What about ethics?” I asked. “And GRAMMAR?!”

Learning to understand and accept my own biases but not letting that overshadow my reporting was one of the most important things I learned in journalism school. I also learned people tend not to take you too seriously if you don’t know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their.” I see very little of either proper grammar or ethics on the Internet.

These are all issues that have to be taken into consideration when deciding what the future of journalism will look like. People still need information. Maybe we’ll need more “citizen journalists” who can bring an entrepreneurial culture to journalism and make money blogging, posting videos and podcasting. If that’s true, maybe there will be a need for some of those dreaded business statistics classes.

I can’t wait to find out. The fascination continues.

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If you’ve never read Erika Napoletano’s blog, you’re missing a treat. Erika was kind enough to let me chime in with some social media lessons I figured out while watching The Karate Kid on cable a few days ago.

You can also follow Erika on Twitter (which I recommend) here.

Thanks, Erika!

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posted by Cortney Harvey

The New York Times recently covered Coca Cola’s inclusion of social media in their Super Bowl ads. Some said “Huh?”

I disagree. Though it has been slowly emerging recently, this is yet another brilliant way that socmed can and should be used. Reading this article got me thinking about how socmed will impact this famed sport event and what means for the future of sports and media.

For most, the first thing that comes to mind when they think about the Super Bowl (besides the game) is the commercials. Although Coca Cola still holds two commercial spots for tomorrow’s main event, they are, for the first year, putting their eggs in the socmed basket. So what effect does this rush of socmed into the Super Bowl spotlight have? And why hasn’t this come to the forefront sooner? There has been the slow introduction of communication technologies incorporated into these scenarios over the past few years, but nothing compared to what is possible.

My question: why isn’t there a stronger push being made towards using socmed for this purpose? When used right, socmed can be of such great value… Who cares if it’s not traditional, it’s what’s happening now and will be what’s happening tomorrow. And not only does this mean something for once-a-year sports events, but can have a profound impact on how sports news and updates are communicated daily. The relationship between the two will change sports media forever, because today so many of us enjoy these play-by-play updates on our Facebook page and Twitter feeds instead of the annoying “too much information” one-liners.

Another trend in advertising for the Super Bowl!

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Someone said to me the other day that customer references aren’t important any more. “After all,” they said, “your customers are all talking about you online, so potential customers will just look there. No sense in compiling a bunch of references.”

Not so fast.

While it’s true that there’s lots of conversation online about lots of different things, you can’t sit back and hope some of it is about your company—you’ve got to help drive it. Additionally, if a bad review pops up someplace, it’s best to have some references in hand rather than trying to close the door once the cow is out of the barn. This is true whether your company sells directly to consumers (B2C) or to other businesses (B2B).

Click below to see a white paper I recently completed that addresses this subject. Feel free to download and share and, as always, join the conversation on this important topic.

Customer Reference 02 2010

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posted by Doyle

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) stepped in a bit of a pile of its own making this week — yet another example of treating social media like broadcast media.

Once and for all: it doesn’t work.

Allie Sullivan wrote a great post about the situation on her blog. I agree with her point of view, and also agree that I’m not against what PETA does, but what they did here gives us another case study for how not to execute a program via social media.

PETA’s basic idea wasn’t bad: get moms with strong social media voices to express outrage over the treatment of baby elephants by circus trainers — in other words, you shouldn’t take your kids, and here’s why. That could be a very good use of social media — get those who support your cause to be your advocate to their networks, with whom they’ve built trust.

But a good idea poorly executed typically falls apart. This one sure did.

Instead of analyzing these mom’s posts to see if they were likely to support the PETA cause, and then engaging in a conversation with them to see if they would be interested in helping spread the word, they used Twitter @spam (sending a Tweet to someone who may or may not follow you starting with their Twitter handle so they’ll see the message) and reached out to people based on only two things: the size of their audience and the fact they were “mommy bloggers.” As a result, just about every bad thing you could anticipate happened. So, where all did they miss?

1. First, they used “@spam.” This irritates me more than regular spam. To be blunt, it’s nothing more than pee in the Twitter stream. If I got @spam from a cause I did support, I wouldn’t help based on principle. If you want to talk to me and choose to reach me this way, it better be an invitation to a conversation, not a random mass message. BIG blunder.
2. They assumed their “targets” (and I use that term loosely here) would support their cause. Just one of the key differences between traditional and social media is the fact that if a regular ad reaches me and I don’t want to respond, I’ll probably just ignore it. In social media, there’s a decent chance I’ll do just the opposite of what you want me to do. You might get my attention alright, but it won’t be the attention you want. Anyone who reads Jessica Gottlieb’s blog knows you don’t want to be on her bad side, and you might want to figure out what side she’s likely to choose before you engage her (that’s just a good idea in general). I loved her comment on the Adrants blog, noting that she doesn’t follow PETA on Twitter and “was busy eating a hamburger when the tweets started.” If they had done five minutes of research, they would have found Jessica is not a supporter, wouldn’t be a good target and reaching out to her just may backfire. It did.
3. They hoped for a response rather than asking for it. If I’d like someone to do something for me, I need to ask. “Would you be willing to do this?” is an important question. PETA hoped these women would view the baby elephant photos, be outraged and push the message to their large and often influential networks. That’s a pretty big assumption. In some cases, even if the targeted mom agreed with the cause, her blog might not be an appropriate place to post such information. I’ve had people send me things for my blog that I didn’t do anything with not because I disagreed, but because they just didn’t fit with the editorial idea I have for this space. In public relations, you don’t pitch a software story to the sports reporter, and if you want someone to talk to their network about you, make sure you’re the kind of thing they would talk to their network about. You find this information by first listening, then requesting. Assuming will not get you the response you’re looking for.

If PETA had sent this information in a press release to reporters that cover animal issues, it may have been successful in generating stories (assuming they target reporters better than they target bloggers). But just as you don’t buy 30 seconds of television time to show a still picture of your newspaper ad, you don’t use the tactics from traditional media in social media. If you do, your chances of failure are pretty good.

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I had two great examples of what I’ll call “asking computers to do the thinkin’ for ya” hit my radar in the last 24 hours, and both reflect poorly on the organizations from which they originated.

Readers of this blog know I enjoy using and rely heavily on technology, but we don’t live in the Terminator movies, and computers are not yet Skynet. We control computers, not the other way around. The excuse of “our computers just do that” is feeble, at best. Computers do what you tell them to d0.

Here’s what can happen if you don’t pay attention.

Example 1: A poorly targeted mass email.

CNET’s Caroline McCarthy sent this tweet today:

“In my inbox: Baby formula newsletter. “Congratulations, Caroline! We’ve heard your exciting news!” Um, what do they know that I don’t know?”

While I don’t know Caroline personally, I can gather from the tweet that she’s not pregnant. Honestly, that’s a pretty big mistake to make. It’s not like this was random email marketing for a bank or department store — something that just about anyone has the potential to be interested in. This email made the assumption that Caroline was pregnant. That’s pretty specific. Why did this happen? Because someone just bought a list and pushed “send” without really checking it. That’s lazy and they’ve wasted time and damaged their reputation.

Example 2: Sending gibberish to your customers.

My daughter is a senior in high school here in Boulder. If she misses a class, I’m alerted via email. That’s a good idea, actually. However, the email content makes it a good idea poorly executed. Here’s what they sent:

Boulder Valley School District

“Hello this is New Vista High School calling about attendance of morgan.  Your student was Absent on  Dec 9 2009 missing these periods  04 05.  Call us today and say why your student was absent. Periods 1 through 6 are morning periods. Periods 8 through 11 are afternoon periods.   Please call  7 2 0 5 6 1 8 7 0 2.

Your student was absent from school today. call us now to say why.”

Seriously?

If that had come from someone other than the people responsible for developing education programs for my child, I may not be so offended. But for a school system (and a good one at that) to send something that reads like this is simply unforgivable. Further, the information isn’t even accurate: my daughter’s school has AM block and PM block. When I asked her about missing periods “04 05,” she told me that she had no idea, since they don’t have 11 periods, as the email says. If the program they’ve selected really can’t do a better job than this, I’d recommend getting a new program — or suspending the emails until this can fixed.

I almost called the number and just said “why your student was absent” and hung up. After all, that’s what the email says to do!

(As an aside, I’ve brought this to the attention of the school district a couple of times over the past several years. Guess they think these are fine as written. Scary.)

These are both examples of someone making the decision to use a technology tool but not manage it. Computers can make much of our work so much easier — but in most cases, they can’t do our job for us. Every communication sent from your organization says something about your organization, and the old “that’s just how our computers do it” excuse is now inexcusable.

Be aware of the message you’re sending about your organization. Do you want to buy baby formula from a company that can’t manage an email program? Does that communication from my daughter’s high school instill confidence in me, as a parent, about her education? No in both cases.

Are you managing what technology does for you, or have you become a lazy bystander?

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posted by Doyle

When I was a kid, my grandmother loved to listen to a radio show called, if I remember right, “The Radio Garage Sale.” A few times every week for a couple of hours each time, a local radio station allowed listeners to call the station and go on the air to buy, sell or barter. A typical call might be something like:

“I have a red sofa I’d like to sell for $25. It’s in great condition, and I just bought it last year. But, I just got new curtains and the sofa really doesn’t match the room any longer. If you’re interested, you can call me at 635-2951.”

Listeners would call those with offers they were interested in.

Sounds funny, doesn’t it?

However, doesn’t it also sound a lot like eBay? I think it does. In fact, I believe the rise of social media we’ve been experiencing is less of a change in the way we act and more of a change in the tools we use. Let me explain.

Humans, for the most part, are social creatures. We want to talk to others. When we don’t like something, we want to tell someone. When we have a good experience, we like to share it with others. We don’t really like to be talked to, but rather, spoken with. We like to have influence over our world and what we bring into it.

For example, when I was a kid, I could call the disk jockey at the local radio station and request a song, and more often than not, he’d play it. Then came media consolidation. I couldn’t call the DJ anymore, because he wasn’t local. He said the time was “20 after the hour” instead of “20 after 8” because he was talking to several time zones. If we didn’t like something, or wanted to ask for something different, we could send a letter or call a receptionist, but that was about it.

Social media — from Facebook to Twitter to comments after a story in the New York Times Online — allows us to talk to each other and to those that provide content, from a blogger to a nationally syndicated columnist. Craigslist and eBay give us a forum to sell the things we no longer want and find a good deal on the things we’re looking to buy.

So what’s happening? Access to the Internet and the development of social media sites has allowed us to take small conversations and put them out to a potentially global audience. Instead of clipping a story from a newspaper and sending it to a co-worker in an inter-office envelop (remember those?), I can now post the link on Twitter, sharing it with thousands in just seconds. And I can see what other people who are interested in the same things as me are reading. Does Jeremiah Owyang, formerly of Forrester Research and now with The Altimeter Group, have time to send me a personal news clipping? No, but I can read his tweets and follow the links, and the benefit is the same.

So the fundamental shift, to me, is not rise of the conversation, but the rise of the public conversation. When we tell a few friends about a coffee place we really like by posting on Facebook, the conversation can easily be seen by others, forwarded and linked to. The same is true for complaints, requests for help, opinions — you name it.

Is this a fad? Only if sharing our thoughts and ideas with others is a fad, and it seems to me it’s been going on for thousands of years. The tools will undoubtedly shift and change (we’ve seen that already. Anyone still using Friendster every day?), but the fundamental shift — taking our voices to an easy-to-use, online public forum — is here to stay.

What’s your take?

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The event will be co-hosted by Metzger’s Dave Taylor, who manages three blogs, including the popular Ask Dave Taylor blog, and is a national keynote speaker on a variety of technology and social media topics, and Doyle Albee, president and Social Media Practice director at Metzger.

Unlike many social media seminars that simply help attendees set up a Facebook page or a Twitter account, Social Media for Executives presented by Filtrbox has brought together many of the nation’s leading social media experts, each with a specific focus in a key management area — from communications to customer service to human resources — to provide a strategic overview of emerging best practices and strategic management of this important new area.

The day’s speaker line-up includes:

• Paula Berg, manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines.
• Jessica Berlin, Social Media manager for the Resident Shows Division of Cirque du Soleil.
• Deirdre Breakenridge, a 20-year PR and marketing veteran and the author of four books.
• Ari Newman, president and founder of Filtrbox.
• Linda O’Neill, general manager for Customer Operations for EMBARQ.
• Liz Ryan a former Fortune 500 human resources executive and the author of Happy About Online Networking: The Virtual-ly Simple Way to Build Professional Relationships.

The conference is being presented by Filtrbox (www.filtrbox.com).

“Our goal is to present a conference to truly help senior-level executives understand how social media has the potential to impact nearly every area in any company and to discuss the strategies and emerging best practices with industry leaders and their peers,” said Dave Taylor, one of the conference hosts. In order to facilitate interaction with both the speakers and the attendees, space is limited.

For more details or to register, please visit our Web site at www.executivesocialmediabriefing.com.

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