Conversations Matter

This article in the Boston Globe reinforces the well-understood value of blogs in political campaigns - and how they can easily become tools for deception. The fact that an opponent's campaign organization will post negative entries to hurt a political candidate should come as no surprise. The election process can be cutthroat experience. But so can the marketing of technology products and services, with competitors willing to do (almost) anything to increase market share. Sock puppets, shills, and trolls inhabit the tech PR arena as well.

"Meat puppets" is another evocative term for social media fakery. A marketer may set up an account on a popular networking site, based on a made-up identity complete with back story and photos, and use it to promote a product or service, gain support for a cause, or hurt a competitor. It's also a way to gather thousands of email addresses for later use.

Of course, the use of aliases to promote something has been around long before the Internet Age. Not surprisingly, an early example comes from Hollywood, where everyone plays someone else. A Washington Post article on the topic recalls that the young James Cagney wrote fan letters to his studio under different aliases.

As Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism says, "Public relations agents are attracted to the blogosphere because Web comments can fly under the radar and have no fingerprints attached to them." Our job as PR professionals is to remain vigilant and advise clients both to avoid the urge to anonymously slam a competitor through social media outlets, as well as how to defend their own brands if it's done to them. The two-edged sword of social media can inflict serious wounds when posts are revealed as misrepresentations. In Europe concern about their pervasiveness has led to a ban beginning in 2008. (How they intend to accomplish that remains to be seen.) The good news from an integrity standpoint is that such outlets can also be effective at self-policing.

I have mixed feelings about this development for Wikipedia. On one hand requiring credentials may compromise the participation rate—as many users value the so-called “anonymity” that contributing currently provides. That said, are we ever really anonymous on the Web? Postings, images and links live on forever…and most of what we say, view and purchase online is stored someway, somehow, somewhere. And of course, requiring authors to back up their assertions with credentials sets a precedent overall for more accountability. As PR professionals, we are always careful to cite sources, attribute quotes and provide full disclosure of how we arrive to a conclusion or viewpoint. Shouldn’t we expect the same from the people driving the progress of one of the Web’s most popular tools?

While my colleague Jesse has written about Twitter a couple of times now, the purpose of this entry is not to debate whether or not it's a worthwhile service. In fact, I haven't used it and haven't done all that much reading about it--because it doesn't interest me. My feeling is that it fulfills the same function as an away message does...except away messages are a natural extension of telling people what you're doing at any given moment, if you're away from your keyboard/desk...hence the term "away message." It's effectively the same concept as voicemail or an email auto-response: if you're unreachable, it makes sense to direct traffic on the channels with which others might try and reach you. Twitter, however, takes ordinary channels out of the equation and assumes that we are all simply interested in knowing where everyone is at a given moment.

But I said I wouldn't debate the service. So I'll quit while I'm ahead.

I bring up this topic because of a post by Steve Rubel on Micropersuasion yesterday in which Rubel says people are abandoning blogs in favor of Twitter, and contemplates the value of being able to update more frequently with more mobility.

This is where it gets messy for me. Blogs as a media are already so much more tasking to keep up with. As PR professionals, we need to be "in the know" at all times and devote a decent amount of time to scanning newspapers, magazines, industry books, etc. to stay current on industry trends, market predictions, competitive news and relevant happenings for all our clients. Now that we have blogs and social networking sites to contend with, scanning has become real-time as opposed to daily--and we're walking a fine line between taking in too much, too fast to be able to respond effectively to everything that demands our attention.

But that's what separates the savvy from the beginners I guess...and here at Matter at least we're adopting new strategies and tactics to meet these changing demands without getting overwhelmed.

But if everyone adopts mobile posting and begins sharing news and commenting on it even faster with services like Twitter--how on earth can we all keep up with that?

Kathy Sierra of the excellent Creating Passionate Users blog today posts about why face-to-face discussions will never be replaced by online ones.

I have to say, I couldn't agree more. Oh, wait, I did say it...last August on my old blog.

What do you think? Are the days of the in-person press briefing or the one-on-one contact with a customer at the booth long gone? Or are blogs, Webcasts and other online vehicles a way to enhance and complement those meetings?

In my daily scanning of various blogs and industry books, I came across this entry on TechCrunch which quickly captured my attention. It seems the folks handling Microsoft's PR mistakenly sent a briefing backgrounder on Wired editor Fred Vogelstein...to Fred. Yikes. Having merely skimmed the document itself and not digging too deep into this story, I can't say whether this is an all-out "PR crisis"...except for the fact that the briefing materials contained some not so-flattering remarks about Fred's interview tactics and writing style. Considering he now knows exactly what these folks think of him, it's not exactly an ideal relationship-builder.

I guess my initial reaction to this is "don't put those types of things on paper!" and that briefing sheets should focus more on tactics and key messages for clients to drive home, that the reporter is looking for, and less on information on the reporter itself. Those thoughts should be shared during a prep session, mock interview or even a brief phone call to go over the materials and make sure everyone is ready for the call.

What are your thoughts on this?