Q&A for PRSA

I was privileged to present a virtual seminar this week to the Public Relations Society of America. Some interesting questions came into my mailbox after the program was over, so I thought I’d answer them here.

If you’re at the PRSA International Conference in October, be sure to stop by and say hello. I’ll be giving a presentation on Monday, Oct. 22, as well as sharing the stage with PR legend Larry Weber.

Here are the questions and my responses:

Sarah writes:

I am interested in the standards of new media and wanted to ask you specifically about the emergence of advertising on the new media platforms. Are advertisers gaining traction on these sites? I imagine they are. So then…will the new media have a mechanism for separating edit from ads? More fundamentally, how do I trust that the blogger-citizen-writer is free from advertiser influence?

One phenomenon I discuss in my book is the emergence of a rich set of ethical standards in the blogosphere, the kind of standards that any journalistic organization would be proud of. Basically, deception is considered a high crime, and bloggers who have written for hire have been roundly flogged. There are services that pay for coverage, but as a rule, bloggers are expected to disclose these affiliations.

The question of separating ads from editorial is always a moving target, as it has been in print for many years. I believe advertisers and publishers both know that disguising advertising as editorial is bad news. Standards for how ads appear on a page are evolving, but our perceptions will evolve with them. Just as avid newspaper readers instinctively know how to tell an editorial from an advertorial, I expect the same intuitions will develop online.

Jason comments:
While Facebook is exploding beyond [its origins as a service for students], the core users still base their involvement on personal networks. The majority of my Facebook friends are former students I worked with while a PR manager in academia. Integrating these less than professional interactions with fellow PR pros and even clients makes for pins and needles monitoring.

No matter how many identities you might have, Google ruins your chances of complete separation. Unless you resort to pseudonyms for your interactions, the transparent society in which we surf will forever dangle the threat of exposure if you like to keep your person and persona separate.

Can an executive at, say, Ford, share beer jokes with college buddies on his or her MySpace page? Or manage a personal blog about erotic photography while representing Ford on the company blog?

My questions are:

1. Do you see potential pitfalls of people juggling multiple identities in the online world?
2. Where should professionals draw the line in becoming a social networking participant on a personal basis?
3. HR professionals are already Googling potential job candidates. Should your Facebook/MySpace/etc., profiles be off-limits and how can they be if the information is there and free? 4. How long will it take for the Supreme Court to have to decide what a person’s online world means in terms of their employment?
4. How long will it take for the Supreme Court to have to decide what a person’s online world means in terms of their employment?

Your questions imply that people should expect protection over what they say in a public forum beyond those already afforded by the Constitution. I fundamentally disagree with that. The public Internet is every bit as much a public space as Times Square, the exceptions being that one’s indiscretions on the Internet may potentially be seen by many more people and may also be easily searched, copied and stored. It’s no secret that the Internet is a public resource or that public websites are, well, public. I think it’s foolhardy to assume that what you say on the Internet is private.

This puts a greater burden on the individual to be aware of the risks of their behavior and to be discreet. Personally, I would never say anything on a public website that I wouldn’t want published in a newspaper. But the burden is with individual, not with those who witness a person’s behavior. If you want privacy, pick up the phone, use an anonymous e-mail server or encrypt your messages. But don’t expect the courts to come to your rescue. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law, and failing to understand the obvious risks of speaking in a public place should not be an excuse for doing something stupid.

Cindy asks:
When I returned to the office, I immediately tried to go onto Technorati and search for bloggers in the mortgage technology arena, where many of my clients are focused. I found many mentions of mortgage and technology but could not figure out if [the authors] were influential or if they focused in the industry. Is there a better way to go about finding these bloggers? I think I may be too old for this stuff.

I doubt you’re too old, Cindy! It’s more a matter of the search tools being different in this world. I’ll preface my response by saying that all search tools are imperfect. You should use these resources only to give you a general idea of a blogger’s influence.

When you look at the search results in Technorati, you’ll notice a small green label that says “Authority.” This is a ranking that Technorati uses to distinguish the popularity of bloggers. The higher that number, the more links to the bloggers site and, supposedly, the greater the person’s authority. Click on the name of a blogger to see a more complete profile of that person, including his or her ranking among all the blogs that Technorati tracks.

Blogpulse is another site to look at. You can search on a term and then click the “view blog profile” link on the right to learn more about the author. Blogpulse’s database is smaller than Technorati’s, but it has some interesting and unique features.

Here are a couple of Google tricks. When you type a search term, look at the URLs of the sites in the results. You can often tell by the domain name whether a site is owned by an individual or a business. If a site looks interesting, type “site:sitename.com” into Google to get a list of sites that link to that one. The more links there are, the more popular the site.

You can also use the “site:” operator to find all mentions of a particular search term on a site. So typing “social media site:paulgillin.com” will return a list of all articles on paulgillin.com that mention social media. This is a good way to find out how much a blogger refers to a topic.

Young Influencer

Gareth Thomas, who head up the interactive division at Brands2Life, a PR agency based in London, sent along this picture and says, “Thought you may find the pic amusing. Think I’ve found your youngest reader! (It’s my daughter Jessica)”

Thanks so much for the snap and the smile, Gareth. Now can you ask Jessica to write an Amazon review?

Listen to my interview on The Advertising Show this Sunday

This Sunday, I’ll be a guest on The Advertising Show, America’s only globally distributed weekly program focusing on advertising, media, branding and marketing. I’ll be interviewed on a half hour segment about my book, The New Influencers. The Advertising Show is sponsored by Advertising Age Magazine. You can listen to a live webcast of the interview starting at 5 p.m. E.T (2 p.m. Pacific Time). The show will also be archived and available directly here beginning Monday, August 20th.

The Mass. Registry of Motor Vehicles blogs – badly

I went online today to learn about renewing my drivers license and was amused to discover that the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles has a ”blog.” I use quotation marks because the website violates nearly every rule of good blogging:

• There have been only five entries in the last 18 months and only one in the last five months.
• There is only one link in the most recent entry, and it’s to a press release.
• There are no tags, comments, blogroll or RSS feed. The lack of comments is a shame because the latest topic – widespread abuse of handicapped parking medallions – seems like something a lot of people would want to talk about.
• There is no distinctive look or feel. The “blog” is dropped in on the home page like a press release.

To give credit where credit is due, the Registry should be commended for even experimenting with a blog, given that government agencies aren’t inclined to live on the edge. Also, the Registrar does make an effort to bring some personality to her writing, though her comments lack passion. I have to wonder if her posts are approved by the press office before publishing.

All in all, this effort s a good example of why some organizations should avoid the blogosphere.

Google News comments presage a new approach to journalism

In a move that could serve as a model for the next generation of journalism, Google has announced that it will allow people to comment on stories indexed in the Google News search engine.

A lively debate sprung up on the Internet earlier this year when Jason Calacanis refused to conduct a telephone interview with a Wired editor out of concerns over being misquoted. The on-the-record interview is a staple of journalism, of course, and the idea that a source would want to publish a paper trail of his or her comments goes against the grain of most journalists’ thinking.

However, I think Calacanis had a point. The existing model of journalism, in which a reporter interviews a source and then decides what is relevant about what that source said is based upon outdated assumptions. Until a few years ago, individuals had limited ability to publish. That left the job of deciding what to publish up to the people with access to printing presses. This model is error-prone and shot through with subjective value judgments. If someone was misquoted, which happens more often than a lot of journalists would like to admit, their only recourse was to ask for a correction, which might run days after the original article appeared.

Today, we have a new model. If someone interviews me for a story, I can post my version of the interview on my blog or publish an audio recording. I also think it’s reasonable to ask the publication to link back to my comments or recording. After all, neither of us has anything to hide, right? This new approach to reporting would reduce the chance of error and provide readers with the option of reading a more detailed version of the information presented in the story.

I can’t see anything wrong with this. A reporter’s job is to get the facts, and if an error is made, the original source should have the option to present his or her version of what was said. I believe that over time this is the model of new journalism that will take hold. It will force reporters to pay more attention to accuracy and it will force publications to be more accountable. It also provides a service to readers by adding depth and perspective, if they choose to read it.

I’m sure this idea won’t sit well with a lot of journalists, though. What do you think? Is this the start of the new approach to journalism, and are there downsides I’m not seeing?

Spock does people search

Spock debuted yesterday and it looks pretty cool. It’s a search engine for people. Queries return only results about people, and the depth of those results is impressive. I searched on my own name and found a listing with my correct age, a biography snipped from LinkedIn, a photo and tags related to my interests and background. I could claim the bio, if I wanted, and add to it, kind of like a public Facebook profile.

A search on “1967 Red Sox” turned up dozens of mini biographies of players and fans from that year, all with similar elements.

In some ways, the service is like ZoomInfo’s People Search feature, but the two sites are oriented very differently. Spock returns only information about people, whereas ZoomInfo is aimed at business research. I think specialized search is going to be a big business and this is an interesting new entry.

Warning: the site was experiencing a lot of technical problems today and was only sporadically available.

Outdoor advertising surges

These days, it’s sometimes easy to forget that human response to stimuli doesn’t change just because media changes. I thought about that when reading a recent story in MediaPost about the surge of the outdoor advertising business. Over the next four years, it’s expected to grow an average of 13% per year, more than any other conventional media.

The reason? People are more mobile these days. We carry our technology with us and we’re never out of touch, which permits us to be on the road more than ever before. When we’re mobile, we see things like billboards.

And there is technology innovation going on there as well. While passing through New Jersey recently I saw some video billboards that were truly stunning in their clarity and color.

Apple certain he understands the value of this 100-year-old medium. The company spends lavishly on outdoor advertising for its iPods. I suppose it reasons that a lot of target customers can be found standing at bus stops. Good call.