Even Scoble agrees with me that Quora is all hype!

On Thursday, I wrote a blog about how I was amazed at the amount of hype Quora was receiving.

One of the main perpetrators of this hype has been tech blogger extraordinare, Robert Scoble.

A month ago, he was full of praise for the service:

“Thanks Quora for providing a great community and way for people to communicate about what’s interesting in their lives in a new way. That’s innovation in blogging.”

And yet, today we get this:

“Turns out I was totally wrong [about it being a good service for blogging]. It’s a horrid service for blogging, where you want to put some personality into answers. It’s just fine for a QA site, but we already have lots of those and, in fact, the competitors in this space are starting to react… Even worse, I’m getting dozens of emails from people pissed that their questions have been changed, their answers marked “not helpful,” or that they got kicked off the service altogether. Admittedly one of the things I really love about the service is there is very little, if any, spam and everyone is forced to use their real name, but lots of people want to talk about their business or not use their real names.”

Hyperventilating nerds

Scoble is part of the problem. He is the embodiment of the problems the technology industry (and the media) has when it comes to overhyping the latest thing.

Those of us who class ourselves as geeks are always running around hypervenilating over the next ‘new thing’. If you’ve seen any of Scoble’s videos with new tech CEOs you’ll know what I mean. The sycophantic idol-worship he emits as he runs around demoing every new piece of software like a hamster on steroids is quite laughable really.

To be fair to Scoble, he’s pretty honest when he’s made a mistake and judged something unfairly as this post shows

And maybe we need people like Scoble. He pushes things into the limelight for the crowd to decide. Some succeed, most fail.

Services like Quora become victims of their own hype (or Scoble and Techcrunch’s hype). Victims of their own PR.

All PR isn’t good PR

Is this a bad thing? Maybe services like Quora that try very hard are just never deemed to succeed, or at least not on the scale some might think. They won’t be the next Twitter or Facebook or Google, but then the vast majority of businesses never will be.

In the comments in Scoble’s piece, some are comparing Quora to Digg. The latter is a service that, although has often promised much, it never reached the heights some predicted. Instead it is a pleasure ground for geeks. Not that this is a bad thing. Digg is a very successful operation with a healthy revenue stream. Quora could do worse.

The wisdom of the crowd

At the end of the day, the wisdom of the crowd will prevail.

While some of us geeks would love everything we see to become super brilliant, with Scoble at the front as some larger than life cheerleader, most of them never will.

The market and the crowd will always decide.

And that’s what makes this roulette wheel of the tech start up world so utterly addictive!

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The social media backlash continues; our trust in CEOs grows

Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer has some very interesting findings. For example, it reveals that while online search engines are the first place people go to for information about a company, traditional news still ranks as the most trusted source the UK.

It also reveals that 83% of people in the UK need to hear information more than three times before they believe it, while 27% need to hear it six to ten times. This level of scepticism is rivalled only by the US.

These are all important learnings for PRs.

However, for me, the most interesting research to come out of the study centres around who we trust to get information from.

Recent politico-economic events were good for social

With the background of the economic crisis, bankers bonuses and MP’s expenses, the ‘establishment’ has taken a bashing in recent years.

It’s not hard to see how this might have had an adverse effect on the levels of trust we have in people who hold ‘official’ positions.

And, according to Edelman, this has been the case. Except that, this year, the study shows trust is returning. This year, CEOs rank among the top credible people globally. Two years ago they were in the bottom two.

The backlash continues

This is interesting, because it mirrors a move of scepticism when it comes to social media.

It’s as though as our trust in CEOs and the like recovers, we are become less trusting of social channels.

While we like to get the thoughts and opinions of our peers through social channels, when we want to get information, we naturally migrate back to ‘trusted’ sources, including traditional media.

I’ve talked before about the social media backlash more from a marketing perspective, but there seems to be a growing backlash in other quarters too. If you’re interested in learning more about this backlash, there was a really interesting article by Paul Harris in the Observer last weekend.

Clearly, it is hard to base this entire theory on the back of just one consumer survey, but it is certainly a trend I’ll be watching carefully over the next year or so.

Is the PR agency model broken?

I kicked off a bit of a debate in the office today, which then moved on Twitter (as these things usually do!).

The motion is this:

Has the growth of digital rendered the current PR agency model broken?

PR practitioners, especially in agencies, need to be jacks-of-all-trades – strategic, creative, tactical, client-facing…

I’ve often wondered whether the current model is flawed and whether we should be looking at a set up similar to what you would find in adland, with client facing account people supported by creatives, planners and producers etc.

With PRs increasingly having to deal with multiple specialisms, from SEO and social to traditional media, bloggers and analysts, is it just too much to expect everyone to be proficient in everything? Do they even need to be?

I have no answers as yet, but I’m keen to get a bit of a debate going.

If you had to start an agency from scratch tomorrow, how would you structure it?

What do you think? Do you know PR agencies that have a slightly different model? Does it work? Can we all be specialists in everything in these days of media fragmentation?

UPDATE: James Poulter has posted his thoughts here

UPDATE 2: There’s a small get together happening next week to discuss this further – find out more here

UPDATE 3: The PRCA have offered to host a (offline) debate about this in March. Ping me if you’re interested

Which online news sites are right for your audience?

Some really interesting mini-research out today from Realwire’s Adam Parker and Andrew Smith of Escherman.

They took 50 online news sites from across different industry sectors and analysed them against three key areas: readership per article (average numbers of UK page views per Google indexed url per month), engagement (time spent per page to indicate how long a reader is likely to be spending reading that content when they get there) and UK relevance (what proportion of the sites readers as a whole come from the UK and would therefore be likely to be relevant if you were trying to reach a UK audience).

The results are really interesting as Adam states:

“if you remove these six high scoring sites from the samples then the sector specific sites still achieve, on average, between 30-60% of the readership per article of the remaining UK Nationals or Consumer titles”

In addition, the titles that scored high for readership per article were not the same that scored high for engagement.

These findings have massive relevancy for the PR industry, as Andrew states:

“In the past, the notion of measuring engagement with editorial content was largely theoretical.  Circulation and readership figures were treated as proxies for engagement (if a newspaper has a readership of 2 million, then we assume that a large proportion must be in some way engaged with some or all of the content – we just aren’t sure which content and to what degree. Or whether this engagement results in a meaningful business outcome).

“However, you could argue that Google data now provides for a much deeper understanding of editorial engagement. At least online.”

At Wildfire, we take a very audience centric approach to PR (and online/social media) campaigns. This means knowing firstly about the audience that the brand/client wants (but also needs) to target and then, as demonstrated above, knowing which channels are going to be most effective.

This is crucial insight for planning but is also important for measurement and reporting as well.

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Why PR just doesn’t need journalists anymore

There’s an rare article about PR in today’s Independent, which lifts the lid on the ‘new PR’:

PRs, who once had to go through the prism of journalism to convey their messages to a mass audience, are increasingly confident in circumventing traditional media altogether. In generating their own video and text-based digital content on behalf of clients, they are not only taking the bread from the table of a weakened advertising sector but encroaching onto the old territory of television and press companies.

Despite much of the article reading like an advert for Edelman (this line for example: “Other PR companies acknowledge the boldness of Edelman’s play”), it nicely recaps the position that PR finds itself in and the potential opportunity that many of us feel exists.

I bang on about this potential opportunity the industry has to really take control in this democratised and fragmented media world we find ourselves in. At a time when brands are quickly waking up to the fact that the ‘push’ marketing of yesterday just doesn’t cut it anymore and that creating intimate relationships directly with end users is not only possible, but is quickly becoming vital for brands.

It’s an exciting time.

It’s PR, but not as we know it

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the online PR debate organised by NMK last night, but I’ve been following the fallout today on Twitter and entering into the fray myself, as well as catching up on the blog posts that are now starting to trickle through.

It looks like it was a good event (as Ian’s always are) that tossed around some interesting arguments.

For me though, I get slightly annoyed by the need to define everything. Often we go out of our way to define something which then loses its meaning or is interpreted in a different way. It’s all just semantics really.

And the jargon of new media certainly falls into this space. It is why PR is so synonymous with media relations and journalism. Why SEO and social media seemingly also exist (or feel they need to exist) within their own spheres.

I’m not saying that specialisms aren’t important but that rather than PR v. SEO v. digital etc., we should be looking at the wider, bigger picture. I’m sure this is how many of our (as agencies) clients see things; the bottom line is everything for them. [And I note that it was pretty agency-weighted last night]

This is what we are attempting to do more and more at Wildfire. We are seeing the blurring of disciplines and are also identifying areas where the traditioanl media aspect of PR is dying very quickly. Our venture into new realms isn’t driven by shiny new toys and networks, but by an attempt to get results for our clients and influence the publics they are attempting to reach.

Now to me, this feels very much like a definition of PR. But, I am aware that it is equally true of other disciplines, e.g. advertising, as this Ad Age article demonstrates.

One thing underlines all these tactics though, and that is establishing a message and conveying this to an audience – and this is something that PR professionals are usually very well placed to do. The conveying might be through traditional media, it might be through engagement or conversation on social networks or it might involve search engines and advertising.

As a PR (and marketing) professional (caveat: who is and has been immersed in digital and social media), I am excited and thrilled by the opportunity the internet and digital affords us practionners and our clients or businesses.It’s refreshing to be able to knock out the middle man, to ‘go direct’.

And in order to achieve this effectively, the more tools we have in our tool box, the more options we have and the more potential we can achieve.

The future is bright. It might not be PR as we know it. It might not be called PR. It might even be called social media and be carried out by ‘social media experts’ :)

But my bet is that no one group will dominate and that there will be plenty of new tricks to learn and plenty for everyone to practice.

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Update:

Lots of chatter about this – here is a quick round-up:
Lloyd Gofton

Peter Hay (PR Week)

Jo-Rosie Haffenden

Rowan Stanfield

Roger Warner

Jed Hallam

Ian Delaney

Steven Waddington

Gerel Orgil

Drew Benvie

Too little, too late for the trades?

Interesting post from Wendy McAuliffe looking at how the trade press are (or aren’t) using blogs:

“What’s apparent is that some trade publishers have been nervous about blog content undermining the value of their magazine and online editorial, often failing to grasp where blogging can add value.”

The two examples she cites are particularly telling. NMA and Revolution are titles you would expect to be leading the way, and yet they aren’t. Revolution were very late to the party earlier this year and NMA still aren’t really there (although look out for a newly launched nma.co.uk on Monday…complete with a blog? Who knows?).

But, as Wendy says, there are obvious concerns for publishers whose history is steeped in print.

For me though, it does seem a bizarre and dangerous tactic.

Whilst these ‘giants’ are sleeping, a whole array of ‘amateur’ bloggers are springing up, gathering followers and writing some great stuff. The trad media may still be able to catch up, but what damage has already been done?

The same could be said of the PR industry’s own bible – PR Week. Despite its recent obsession about Twitter and the quoting of blogs in the magazine, the website is hardly 2.0 (and that’s not even discussing the pay wall it has in place – for which I keep forgetting the password!).

And perhaps the problem lies in the fact that these are big publications, ruled by big publishing houses, which find it difficult to ‘change’. And when they do decide to change, it takes time.

Revolution has its new website, Retail Week launched its new site yesterday and NMA has its turn on Monday.

These are all steps in the right direction. But where is the innovation? Are the steps too small and too late?

Working together to make a happy car…

Oh Charles, what have you started!?

Tech journo supremo Charles Arthur this week compared the client/PR/Journo relationship with the car industry.

Confused? Well, yes, you might be! But stick with it. There are some interesting points raised (some more valid than others) including in the comments section if you can be arsed to wade through them.

Here are a few short, sharp observations of my own:

  • Mr Arthur is not your typical journalist
  • Every journalist is different – see this post Not all PRs/journos can be tainted with the same brush – this is a big industry with many sectors
  • Media relations (which is what we are talking about) is only a (diminishing) part of PR
  • MRs (and therefore PRs and their clients) still depends on journalists
  • There are more and more PRs and fewer and fewer journos
  • There is still a place for good quality, best practice MRs
  • PRs need to be consultants and need to be specialists and need to be realistic
  • As Guy says, the journalist doesn’t work for the client
  • But, the PR does work for the client
  • And most many journos need MRs
  • Many PRs HATE MRs
  • ‘Did you get my press release’ – these calls do work sometimes and, in desperation, are understandable (if unfortunate)
  • But they don’t justify/want/need spam
  • As with everything in modern-day marketing, targeting is absolutely crucial
  • Good PRs are not merely consumed by money and/or results. We know the issues and the topics and how to write good stories
  • But we all (PRs and journos) have commercial interests; sometimes (at the best times) these can be mutual
  • We all get it wrong from time to time

About

This is my story. I've always been fascinated by the internet. My first passion was music and I studied a music degree at Birmingham University. But once graduated I quickly went back to the web working as a digital marketer. I also ran a web startup for a few years. In the need of a new challenge, I turned to the world of PR and now work as an Account Director at EML Wildfire. My interest is primarily looking at how PR professionals can make the most of the web and digital marketing. This blog contains my thoughts and things I find inspirational.

© 2012 Danny Whatmough - Made by me