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

Why paper.li and automated curation are doomed to fail

If you’ve been active on Twitter recently, you will have no doubt come across paper.li. You know, those autotweets that crop up from time to time encouraging you to click through and read xx’s ‘Daily’.

Essentially, paper.li takes your most recent tweets and puts them (and the sources they link to) in a supposedly easy to read, newspaper-style format. A daily round-up of the things you find interesting. As the creators themselves say:

“paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag.A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7 !”

Bridging the gap

It certainly sounds an interesting concept. Microblogging has always been a fantastic route for those that didn’t want to commit to a full-blown blog, but still wanted to share interesting links and thoughts with a wider audience. The problem arises that when you start following multiple people on Twitter; the information overload issue comes to the fore. Paper.li attempts to solve this by giving a round-up of what you and your followers have said and shared so far. And, if the number of automated tweets are anything to go by, the service is increasingly popular.

Where’s the value?

But I wonder if anyone is actually consuming this content. The autotweets themselves (I’ve blogged before on my feelings towards autotweets, so no need to dwell too much on the issue here) give very little indication of the content that lies beyond. For this reason, I’m usually inclined to ignore them. I’ve seen others also tweeting about their increasing frustration too.

Another reason is that, when I do click through, there seems to be very little added value. You get a list of links and snippets of articles. One or two might be of interest, a couple you’ve probably already seen (no doubt one or two from Mashable!) and some just won’t be of interest.

There’s no personal insight.

A lazy way to spew out more content?

We know the perceived wisdom that ‘content is king’ online, but it seems to me that content only really works when it is interesting and compelling. I think the ‘information overload’ issue is a really interesting one. We’ve moved away from the forced curation of content that we had in the past with newspaper editors and the traditional offline media dictating what we should and shouldn’t read and think (and I know this is still very powerful even today). But we’ve haven’t quite found a way to replace this and ‘manage’ the massive amounts of data that are bombarded in front of us on a daily basis.

For me there is an opportunity out there for a forward looking startup. Tweetdeck and the like may still be the way forward – I’m increasingly using lists in Hootsuite to segment tweeters – and the content they tweet – that I really want to keep an eye on. This is personalised curation and is surely the way forward. I’m just not sure whether the automated curation that we see with paper.li will ever gain much real traction apart from with those that are too lazy to add value and curate for themselves.

It’s PR, but not as we know it

There’s a good blog post from Mark Kobayashi-Hillary (a man with a great name!) over on Computer Weekly. He talks about how, with so many tech (and other trade) journalists now on Twitter, PRs should take note and get stuck in.

It’s a tactic that has become second nature to myself and my colleagues at Wildfire, but, as Mark says, the industry as a whole has often been slow on the uptake:

“This all comes back to the blog I wrote here recently about some executives trying Twitter and then discarding it because they could not find any use in just updating the world on their meeting schedule…Some PR agencies have realised this. There are many now with strong digital and social expertise, but there are so many that are just riding on an existing contract. They will ultimately die out through natural selection.”

There’s a great point here about the inability to react to change and the dangers of ‘doing nothing’. It might be ok in the short to mid term, but the ultimate endgame will be disastrous.

But, it’s another comment that Mark makes that is equally as interesting, when he suggests that tech journalists too are waking up to the benefits of social media engagement and, are beginning to cut out the PRs that are ignoring these new channels (and even some that aren’t) and going directly to their clients or spokespeople:

“This works both ways – how many trade hacks really pay attention to the sea of press releases anymore when they can talk directly to the people they are writing about?”

We’re beginning to take a very different approach – as an agency – in the role we play with some of our clients in this social savvy world. Rather than acting as the gatekeeper, we are much more the facilitator or even the supporter or guide.

This is bloody scary for some PR agencies, but its not going to change any time soon. It’s only going to get worse (or better!).

Social media: no old media mindsets need apply

I wrote a rather ranty blog post the other day following an opinion piece on NMA suggesting that social media wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The whole incident got me thinking about the reasons why some people, brands, agencies, marketers etc. find social media so difficult to understand and get to grips with. Afterall, it’s not rocket science and the vast majority of us use it in our personal (and often professional) lives on a daily basis.

I’m more and more convinced that the real reason for misunderstanding social media is that, more often than not, it is approached with an old media/marketing mindset.

Because that is the key challenge for brands. It’s why so many marketing industries have struggled to get to grips with social media. PR runs scared because it diminishes the role of media relations. Advertising is scared because it doesn’t let you buy your way into people’s living rooms. SEO is scared because it is reducing the power of natural search (just ask Google). Direct marketing is scared because it challenges the role of email (and offline).

These however are all worries that can be overcome. PR has a fantastic opportunity to use its traditional skill-set to engage directly with end users. Advertising doesn’t need to worry about a lack of paid-for opportunities on social networks. SEO can add social media into it’s toolbox and influence SERPs in new ways. And even DM or email can link up with social media to reenergize and increase the effectiveness of campaigns.

Social media is just another channel and whether your background is earned or paid media, there are opportunities. But the old techniques and tactics just won’t work. We all need to adapt and learn new ways of using this new channel.

Often however, to get the most out of social media, it needs to be integrated with other marketing forms. This isn’t a new approach. Very few brands do PR or advertising in isolation. Marketing departments exist to ensure that all marketing activity across all channels is unified an integrated to a certain extent (or at least they should). And social media is no different.

So, investing in social media is important and requires new skills and approaches. But, just because of this, don’t silo it, integrate it into the rest of your marketing activities to get the best returns.

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Are we still really talking about AVE?

Sometimes the “PR industry” really frustrates me. It annoys me when I see discussion about whether PR should get involved in digital or social media (yes, this still happens) and also about PR’s role in SEO. But, whilst all these might be vaguely tolerable, it’s utterly ridiculous that we are still having discussions about AVE.

Not only is the AVE debate still going on, but it is being debated by some of the biggest names in PR. Recently some of PR’s bigwigs met in Barcelona under the auspices of the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication to agree a set of evaluation and measurement ‘principles’. The so-called Barcelona Principles were agreed as follows:

  • Goal setting and measurement are important
  • Media measurement requires quantity and quality
  • AVEs are not the value of public relations
  • Social media can and should be measured
  • Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results (outputs)
  • Organisational results and outcomes should be measured whenever possible
  • Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

I’ve not really got an issue with any of these. However, they are all pretty basic and obvious. Also, ambiguous wording such as “results and outcomes should be measured whenever possible” gives PRs an easy opt-out. The principles don’t add anything to the debate and don’t push the boundaries of what forward thinking PRs and agencies already know.

The mention of AVE embodies this. Don’t get me wrong. I know there are lots of PR agencies out there that are still using AVE (I’m proud to say we are not one of them). And I know there are even more clients out there demanding it.

But AVE is a dinosaur and by still debating it and talking about it, we are merely giving it more awareness. In a digital world, AVE has absolutely no place (I personally doubt it had much place in a non-digital world either, but I wasn’t around then!). The other horrible thing about AVE is that it diminishes the role and power of PR. It reduces the power and raison d’être of PR to a mere ‘cost-effective way to do advertising’. Incredibly, by using AVE, all PRs are archiving is ‘doing-down’ their role in the marketing mix.

So whilst I can’t argue against the principle which declares that AVEs are not the value of public relations, it’s just sad that the conversation hasn’t moved on from this point yet, at least at an ‘industry body’ level.

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Newsjacking in a social media world

The PR industry is used to the term of newsjacking – the idea of taking something that is on the national news agenda (e.g. the budget, new legislation or even a event like the World Cup) and using it to get coverage or mentions for a brand. It’s a tried and tested tactic and can get good, short-term, results.

Newsjacking is equally effective in a social media world however and with the luxury of not being dependent on third parties (e.g. journalists), it means that brands (or anyone in fact) can be a little bit more creative.

The strategy is the same. Take an event, issue, news agenda item that is gripping the socialmediasphere, add in some creativity, seed it effectively and you have a recipe for creating the next viral hit.

It’s actually interesting that brands aren’t jumping on the social media newsjacking bandwagon more frequently. There was a good article recently on this by James Whately. When the ITV HD TV channel accidentally switched to an advert during England’s World Cup game, viewers missed a crucial goal. James suggested that this was a fantastic opportunity for Hyundai - the brand whose advert was shown – to create some buzz around the unfortunate incident. I mentioned in the comments that this was in fact similar to a viral video released by Tic Tac following a similar incident earlier last year.

Of course there is a reputation issue here too. It’s not only brands that can newsjack in a social media world. Anyone can create entertaining or thought-provoking content and sometimes this can cause a brand reputation issue. But it can also provide a potential opportunity for brand as well, with grassroots content generation.

I was lucky enough to be at Wimbledon on Thursday and witnessed the end of the marathon Isner/Mahut match out on court 18. I was therefore intrigued to see today a video of the match which has been edited to show a box of Weetabix in Isner’s bag at the end. Whether by the brand or not, it’s quick, entertaining example of digital newsjacking.

So what are the things brands (or non-brands) need to consider when newsjacking on social media:

  1. Be quick – as with all newsjacking, time is of the essence
  2. Be creative – as with all content designed for social media success, the more creative, the better
  3. Seed effectively – seeding content is also important – remember that the majority of information that is shared on social networks actually originates from traditional media sources
  4. Monitor – keep an eye on where the content is being shared, talked about and maybe even reworked
  5. Consider a follow-up – often the problem with newsjacking campaigns is that they are short-lived. Consider ways to lengthen the effect of any activity

Danny Whatmough (@dannywhatmough) is a PR consultant at Wildfire PR. He blogs at dannywhatmough.com and the Wildfire Blog

Are IT journalists abandoning a sinking ship; is PR the lifeboat?

PR Week reports today that legendary IT journalist and editor of CIO magazine, Martin Veitch, is leaving journalism for the verdant pastures of PR (with Bite).

This follows on the back of some other notable moves in a similar direction recently.

So what does this mean about the state of IT journalism and, indeed, the attraction of PR (an industry which many of these movers no doubt bemoaned on a regular basis!)?

Media woes

The problems the media face have been well documented by myself and others for a long time and need no re-evaluation. And the IT sector is no different, especially when we consider the more traditional ‘print’ titles. After the demise of IT Week in 2008, Computing has recently gone fortnightly and even Computer Weekly has made redundancies (not very insightful, but I also think the continually decreasing quality of the paper used by Computer Weekly is a bad sign…!).

The changing face of PR

And whilst the future looks less and less rosy on one side of the pond, PR perhaps offers an increasingly attractive proposition. I covered an article in the Independent last week which reported the appointment of a number of key journalists by Edelman recently. As the article states:

“In generating their own video and text-based digital content on behalf of clients, [PRs/their clients] 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.”

I took a bit of a (deliberately) controversial line of argument suggesting that journalists were therefore not really needed by PRs anymore and, whilst this is certainly not entirely the case, what it perhaps shows (as I stated in the comments) is that some of those traditional skills that journalists have always had (ability to craft a story, find an angle, write great content) are increasingly being needed by PRs.

It’s therefore no surprise to see Bite and Edelman creating ‘client strategy’ and ‘chief content officer’ roles for ex-journos [and it's certainly not the first and/or last time a journalist will turn to PR]. For those of us living and breathing this ‘new PR’ already, the question will be, whether hiring journalists is the way for PR agencies to go, and/or whether there are new skills that we all need to be learning to put us in the best position to help our clients enter into this brave new world!

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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.

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