PR Communications

Brawl Over First Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Resolved!

During Dr. Nora Gamin Barnes’ presentation on her research results at the Society for New Communications Research Symposium in Cambridge, MA on Friday Shel Israel suggested that the first Fortune 500 company to run a corporate blog was General Motor’s Fastlane blog (Jan 2005).

I piped up and suggested there were earlier corporate blogs among the Fortune 500. We also got into a debate about the definition of a corporate blog. If the criterion is the blog is branded by the company and run by company employees not for personal purposes I think I can find at least one blog earlier than GM.

Looking back I conducted my first corporate blogging survey back in 2004, and interviewed Gary Lerhaupt at Dell, the company had started a Linux blog, here’s the interview with Gary.

That blog is no longer around, but it was definitely an official corporate blog.

However, to me Microsoft, and SUN were certainly using blogging for corporate purposes. We had several large technology companies before Jan 2005 encourage employees to write a blog, and gave them a corporate blogging platform to run a blog. The blogs may or may not have been personal though. See this badly written article of mine in 2004, where I mention Microsoft had 700 employee blogs.

Several companies; Microsoft, Oracle, SUN, also had blog aggregation sites. I an article about blog aggregation in 2005, mainly about Macromedia, but I’d found several blog aggregators during 2005 from the large Fortune 500 technology companies. We have to remember that blog search engines were only just appearing, Technorati started in 2005 so many of the big blogging companies build their own blog aggregators to bring the community together.

If you define a corporate blog as the “official” blog then Dell might be the first in the Fortune 500, but if you include employee blogs like John Porcaro’s or Heather Hamilton at Microsoft, I think we have to look back earlier in time.

In addition, Microsoft’s channel9 website goes back to 2004 as this posting from March of 2004 indicates, maybe not the first corporate blog, but certainly the first corporate Fortune 500 video blog.

Five Social Media Lessons Learned From The Cisco/WebEx/Dimdim Crisis

Cisco appears to have a good social media presence with guidelines in place and a good team. What went wrong with the Cisco/WebEx/Dimdim blogger review? The Cisco social media team didn’t catch the initial review, or the subsequent Dimdim blog post. What can corporate social media professionals learn from the incident? Here are five lessons for any corporate social media:

1) Empower the social media team to monitor the web for brand interactions.

Give communications people the tools and guidelines to monitor, triage and develop a response. Cisco might have easily missed the first WebEx blogger post, but it was tough to miss the post from the competitor referenced Cisco/WebEx post. As soon as the second post was published, a monitoring team should have found the post, and attempted to resolve the issue with the blogger and Dimdim. Set up a monitoring unit within your company to find crisis communications incidents.

2) Build a triage and response work flow within a company.

It maybe that there is a monitoring unit in Cisco/WebEx but no work flow process has been negotiated within the different corporate silos and subsidiaries such as WebEx, Cisco and WebEx recently merged. Use incidents like the competitor review to build better links across the company and encourage different divisions to build their own social engagement expertise.

3) Provide social media training across the enterprise.

Everyone needs social media training, even those people expert in how to talk with the media, or old hands at social media.

4) Even the best systems fail, don’t worry about failure worry about repeating the same mistakes.

Cisco and WebEx took a hit to their brand on this incident, not necessarily because of the actions of their employee. I believe the WebEx employee genuinely needed good counsel on how to handle the unfolding communications crisis. Once given good counsel he adopted some great approaches and resolved the matter. From this outsider’s viewpoint it does appear there are some problems with the social media engagement process at Cisco, (1) monitoring should have caught the incident, (2) earlier intervention and counsel with the employee to advise them on the right strategy to use. I am sure they are working to resolve, plus we don’t know what internal communications difficulties exist when Cisco has to advise a WebEx employee, remember the two companies recently merged. Learn from their mistakes, if you have a crisis event don’t be afraid to review your processes and work to improve them.

5) Lastly respect your employees’ privacy.

In preparing for this story I’d pinged Cisco PR several times and the professionals there have done a good job explaining it is difficult to talk about the incident because it involves an employee’s personal blog. Learn from the Cisco team here, even if an incident tarnishes your brand, remember your mission and values and support your employees, even when mistakes are made.

Once again, the sequence of events:

Cisco/WebEx employee writes a review of a competitor on his personal blog. The review is critical and has some factual errors. In addition, the blogger did not disclose his relationship or publish comments submitted by the competitor.

The competitor writes a rebuttal of the original review of the post, but receives no response from the Cisco/WebEx blogger, the competitor's comments are not published.

I start writing about WebEx blogger, and ask for opinions from communications experts.

No response from the blogger or Cisco/WebEx social media team.

I contact Cisco social media team by twitter, still no response, though one of the members of the social media team tweets that they disagree with employee's post and response to competitor.

I reach out to the employee, who after some discussion and coaching decides to connect with the competitor. After a few days the competitor's comments are published, the disclosure updated and the blogger apologizes.

WebEx Blogger Updates Dimdim Review

David Chao the WebEx employee updated his blog yesterday. David runs a personal web conferencing blog, and wrote a blog review of Dimdim, a competitor in the web conferencing space.

David had not published a disclosure about his employment directly on his blog or in the review post, plus he had not published a comment from Kevin Micalizzi, the community manager of Dimdim. Kevin had commented on the post because he found David Chao's post to contain several inaccuracies about the servers Dimdim uses to support clients. David Chao had suggested Dimdim uses Amazon.com servers 100% of the time when Dimdim has their own servers, while clients do use Amazon.com servers it is only at their own request. David Chao had based his comments about Dimdim's servers on a Mashable article that referenced a Dimdim client using Amazon.com.

David Chao has updated his blog to display a disclosure about his employment with Cisco within the side navigation and in the original review post.

In addition to publishing Kevin's comment, David posted a comment in his Dimdim review post stating that the facts about Dimdim servers were inaccurate. David also gave a more detailed explanation of why he did not publish Kevin’s comment on his blog in a comment on this blog PR Communications.


In addition to the discussion with Kevin Micalizzi from Dimdim, David Chao had also criticized the Amazon.com EC2 servers. In response a blogger had commented on his blog. David had then got into an exchange with the blogger via email, which he published on his blog (hopefully with the blogger’s permission!)

I think what’s interesting about the incident with David Chao is that through community persuasion we’ve been able to make helpful suggestions about disclosure, publishing comments and responding to them that gave David enough information so that he has changed his blogging practices. This case study is an example of how situations turn around once people, companies and brands understand the value of engagement and realize that there’s nothing to fear but everything to gain.

WebEx Blogger Never Published Dimdim Comment!

In a follow up to my two earlier posts, the WebEx blogger, David Chao, has revealed to me via email that he did not delete Kevin Micalizzi’s comments on his blog review of Dimdim; rather David never published the comment! 

David Chao decided not to publish Kevin’s comment when he discovered that Kevin Micalizzi of Dimdim published his own blog post about David’s post.

David also said that he thought the link to his linkedin profile was enough of a disclosure about his connection with WebEx.

I gave the following background to David on some of the practices that are not written in stone but are expected to be performed by bloggers in many blogging communities:

1) Disclosure about your connection with a company is usually expected in a post or on a blog, especially if you work for a company or are paid by them in some way. While you do prominently put a link to your linkedin profile on your blog, you have to click through to read your bio. That extra step though small and not unreasonable, in the context of writing a post about a competitor means that to many bloggers having a link to a bio is not enough, the community expectation would be that you’d disclose your connection with WebEx in the post that reviews Dimdim.

2) Unless a comment is obvious spam or inappropriate, even if that comment is negative but constructive, once you publish a blog, the etiquette of most blogging communities is that bloggers with open comments should publish any posted comments. When a someone like yourself who is connected with a competitor to the company you are commenting upon, the fact that you didn’t not publish Kevin’s comment looks to some people that you don’t want to allow any real discussion around your blog post.

3) If you write a post and get any facts wrong, and someone informs you that those facts are incorrect, the standard practice in the industry is that you post an update to the original post. You might also go the extra step of writing a follow up blog post to notify your readership who may be subscribed to your RSS feed that there is has been a development in the story, otherwise the readers may not have caught the update to your original post.

These practices are very much entrenched in blogging communities, most bloggers would expect that you’d follow them no matter what other people do on their blog. While David Chao might consider Kevin’s actions, his post, inappropriate in the sense David had not had sufficient time to publish Kevin’s comments, before Kevin published his post. Most bloggers would overlook the fact that Kevin published his blog post not realizing his post had gone immediately into moderation because they would have expected David to publish the comments, whether Kevin published a post or not, and follow up with Kevin to clarify any information that was incorrect.

The community expects a blogger to consider their own actions on their own merit and not in the light of other people’s practices or actions. While Kevin did state David Chao deleted his comments when he did not. When David did not publish Kevin’s comments for all appearances what Kevin is stating in his blog post is what happened. By remaining silent people don’t know your side of the story and assume that everything Kevin published is correct. If David were to engage Kevin, publish his comments and update his post David would be seen to be engaging Kevin and demonstrating that he has nothing to hide.

Update: Also, check out Neville Hobson’s great comments in the For Immediate Release podcast on the WebEx blogger deletion incident.

Disclosure: I learned about the WebEx blogger story through Kevin Micalizzi, Community Manager at Dimdim at a tweet up I organized recently with Kevin as a featured guest.

Five Social Media Insights On Disclosure, Competition & Social Media Guidelines

After writing my post about David Chao, the WebEx employee who wrote a personal blog post with a review of a competitor's product without disclosing their connection with WebEx directly in the post, I thought I'd ping a few colleagues in social media land to get their opinion on the David Chao's approach in the hope that community persuasion might cause a change of heart.

In addition to the original review, David Chao did not publish a comment placed on his blog by Kevin Micalizzi of Dimdim, a competitor; Kevin had clarified some incorrect information published by David Chao about Dimdim use of Amazon.com's services.

Susan Getgood

I asked Susan Getgood, a long time colleague from the AMA about the incident, here's Susan's reply:

Your questions:

Should David have revealed his connection with WebEx in his post?

Should David have written the post?

What do you think of David’s reaction to Kevin’s comment clarifying some facts on David’s original post?

How can companies prepare employees for conducting blogger relations?

My take:

Should you write a post about a competitor? It depends. If the competitor is in the news, and you have something constructive to add to the discussion, a post might be warranted. Should you review a competitor’s product? In the context of a clearly labeled piece that also discusses your own product, sure. Happens all the time. Standard marketing practice.

In a blog post purporting to be objective opinion? Without clear attribution of your own interest in the matter? Absolutely not.

To answer your specific questions, David Chao should not have written a purportedly objective review of DimDim; as an employee of WebEx, he has a stake in the game. There’s no way he can be objective. Further, anything he writes about DimDim, or any other competitor, should have the clear disclosure that he is a WebEx employee. The reaction of deleting the DimDim comment simply compounds the ethical problem.

What can companies do? Employees who are participating in social media, whether personally or on behalf of their companies, should be given simple guidelines on how to engage when mentioning their employer, company products or job. At a minimum, these guidelines should include disclosure of a blogger’s material interests and business relationships.

Bottom line, it is about blogging with integrity. As we stated in the Blog with Integrity (blogwithintegrity.com) pledge:

"I disclose my material relationships, policies and business practices. My readers will know the difference between editorial, advertorial, and advertising, should I choose to have it. If I do sponsored or paid posts, they are clearly marked."

A further point about integrity. Another element of integrity is welcoming “respectful disagreement with my own ideas.” (Blog with Integrity pledge). Sounds like that isn’t happening here either.

David Meerman Scott

I asked David Meerman Scott to comment and in a comment on my blog David stated the following:

John,

I agree that it is okay to write a blog post about a competitor, but I do not think that it is okay to do a negative online  Review of a competitors product. You and I both write books but I would never dream of writing a negative review of a book that competes with one of mine - would you?

However, I think it is a "worst practice" to delete the comments that come in from representatives of the company that you just dinged. That's just wrong.

The biggest problem with this sort of behavior is that the negative aspects of it (you writing about it for example) far outweigh the positives (a few people thinking that a product is not good).

DISCLOSURE -- I am personal friends with and have written about Steve Chazin who works at DimDim.

Cheers, David

Michael Gartenberg

Michael Gartenberg had this to say on one of my questions about social media guidelines.


John: How can companies prepare employees who are using social media?

Michael: In the age of social media, the rules are different. The same way companies are mindful of employee conduct when they're in public representing their firm, they need to instill the same sense of conduct, ethics and behavior when they're online. As personal brands co-mingle with corporate brands disclosure and transparency of affiliations become even more important.

Neville Hobson

Neville Hobson gave his answers in an audio response.

John: Should David have revealed his connection with WebEx in his post?

Neville: The connection with WebEx is a material fact that could influcence your opinion about what was written in the review. Probably is he just did not think about it. However, it is a problem that two weeks have passed and he has not revealed his connection.

John: Should David have written the post?

Neville: I don't see an issue with writing the review, but without the disclosure there's a problem.

John: How can companies prepare employees for using social media?

Neville: Depends on the product, the market, the angle you are writing. So long as the review is open.

Neville: You need to educate those employees, be clear on goals. Also think about the support does the employee receives and need. The framework for social media activity has to be viable for employees. Provide some guidelines for all employees and help to set the boundaries for all employees.

Neville has followed up with a discussion on the FIR podcast

BL Ochman

BL Ochman was kind enough to give me some answers.

John: Should David have revealed his connection with WebEx in his post?

BL: Of course he should have he's damaged not only his credibility in that post, but his overall credibility. His action demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the Internet Age. Full disclosure is a much better policy. Having provided it, he could make his case. I, and other people I have come to trust, always include client identification even in Tweets. I've worked hard to build my reputation as a straight shooter, I wouldn't compromise it.
 
John: Should David have written the post?

BL: Sure, if credibility and honesty don't matter to him. No, if they do!

John: What do you think of David’s reaction to Kevin’s comment clarifying some facts on David’s original post?

BL: It was a kneejerk reaction. He needs to think before he speaks or writes from now on. The Internet is forever, what happens online stays online.

John: How can companies prepare employees for conducting blogger relations?

BL: IBM and Sun and many other companies have policies that basically say "don't be a jerk", "don't give away company secrets," give away intelligence, not intellectual property.

Every company should talk to employees, offer them assistance in getting started, and encourage them to be open and honest.  If a company doesn't trust its employees to blog, they may need to make changes in their hiring and training policies. Cashiers in stores are the employees who customers meet, yet many companies hire and continue to employ lackluster people who make it clear they'd rather be somewhere else.

Companies need to think about who's out front, and put a lot of training and trust and rewards to those employees.

Sure there are some bad people in the world, but for most of us, if you treat us with respect, pay us a decent wage, and give us good working conditions, it shows.

John: The synopsis from these five communications professionals is that disclosure is important, and that social media guidelines can be a good resource for employees to understand how to navigate the waters of social media.

Update: I’ve been in touch with David Chao via email. He tells me that Kevin Micalizzi’s comment was never published, and that after Kevin posted his blog post on the Dimdim blog, he decided to do nothing. David has also discovered that the information he wrote about Dimdim’s servers was incorrect, he based his post on a ReadWriteWeb post, but as of this time he has not updated his blog post.

10/11 Update: David Chao has updated his blog, giving a disclosure about his employment with Cicso, he published Kevin's comments, and updated the original post.

Does Content Marketing & Inbound Marketing Represent The Limits Of Social Media?

Inbound marketing and content marketing have fast become marketing buzz words in the industry.

Yet, I think that while companies and organizations have understood the idea that creating content is important, I'm not convinced organizations understand the importance of building a work flow process and infrastructure for engagement and outreach.

Content marketing and inbound marketing works without outreach, but will companies explore the opportunities that exist with further engagement? Or have we reached the limits of what organizations are prepared to do with social media?  While a few companies will attempt engagement through outreach, most will not because of time and the resources needed.

Engagement: The Next Step After Content Marketing

Beth Kanter references my post on the engagement relevancy ranking in here case study on Planned Parenthood's use of social media. She also references John Jantsch's blog post Content Creates Engagement. In that post I'd argued in the comment section that Jantsch was missing something in his article, the idea that real engagement comes from direct outreach and monitoring of the community.

In Beth's article she describes how Planned Parenthood has built an infrastructure for content creation based upon monitoring the community.

"Planned Parenthood has built the infrastructure to be successful.  Their online services department is in charge of web site presence, email messaging, and social networking.   They work in collaboration with the communications team.  As Tom Subak mentions, "But something was missing: The intersection of content that we create with what our supporters create. It doesn’t matter whether it is on our web site or somewhere else. There are millions of stories inside of Planned Parenthood – the stories are incredible. We put a human face on our work and what we’re doing. With our stories, we try to figure out how to get more people engaged and change the public’s view. We now have a department called the New Media Content team. Their job is to create, edit, repurpose, identify content across all our channels. Where does this all come together – part of the organization that is thinking about content – in the way that content exists in now. It doesn’t matter where it is or who created. Another thing to is that it doesn’t matter where the content lives – we’ve been creating widgets that can placed anywhere – not just on our site""

In the comment section I suggested companies and organizations follow three strategies when it comes to social media content creation and also direct engagement.

1) Content Marketing: You can create content that is relevant and engages people because it is valuable. Perhaps by providing a how-to, or connecting with some emotionally. The strategy for content development is based upon SEO strategy or your understanding of what valuable in the industry.

2) Content Marketing through social media monitoring: Creating content based upon the monitoring of social media, as you describe in your overview this is what planned parenthood does with its New Media Content team. The team creates, edits, repurposes, identifies content across all our channels. I differentiate this approach from strategy one, because there's a more formal system set up to monitor the community on the web.

3) Social Media Engagement: Engagement occurs when there's a team set up to engage your community on the web about your brand or organization. You answer comments on the community member’s web site; write content about them on your own website. I think there does have to be some context, such as relationship or context within the industry.

I suspect that direct engagement occurs naturally within all three strategies, but what I suggest is that there's a definite choice on the part of companies and organizations about which strategy to follow, as each strategy requires the commitment of resources.

The concepts of inbound marketing and content marketing are relatively new, and both theories focus on the idea that success in social media comes from building the infrastructure to develop a constant stream of content that’s relevant and valuable to your community. Yet I often see little discussion about creating the necessary infrastructure for engagement when discussing content marketing.

I do understand that some companies also conduct engagement as well as following a content marketing strategy, but I think it is really important for companies to understand the value of dialogue to the enterprise. Customers turn to evangelists, customers service, and product marketing.

Marketers are familiar with the concept of creating advertising or campaigns, so the approach of content marketing is an easy next step, especially when you consider that search engine optimization has always been about creating great content. In some ways, the term content marketing is all about SEO. I think if you ask most marketers what their marketing goals are online, they would say lead generation or achieving higher rankings with SEO.

Content marketing put in the context of a marketing department that understands SEO makes absolute sense. This is one reason why the concepts of inbound marketing and content marketing have grown so rapidly, the ideas are not a great leap from existing approaches in SEO and SEM.

Here I'm going to sound rather pompous I am sure, but I've been a blogger since 2003 and the PR and Marketing community five or six years ago was heavily influenced by the cluetrain manifesto and the concept of conversations. PR and marketing bloggers, people who wrote blogs and were involved in the community had come to understand the value of dialogue and conversation as well as content. Look at what the community was writing in 2004 during the Global PR blogging week to understand the focus of the community at the time.

My thinking about how companies use social media has always been put in the context of the practical, how do companies use social media for business, how do they build the necessary infrastructure to be successful? Many of the case studies that convinced me that social media was valuable for an organization described how content creation was a primary reason for starting a blog or other social media technology.

I've discovered the companies that were really successful in social media also put time and effort into direct outreach to their community, and I’ve personally experienced this in my own blogging efforts, here at PR Communications or in the many blogs I've run at the companies I've worked at or helped start with clients over the years. Lastly, the concept of engagement outreach was discussed by the community five years ago in the virtual conference Global PR blogging Week.

I think content marketing can be successful and is a good next step for companies thinking about using social media. The concept makes logical sense to marketers familiar with SEO. And marketers can outsource content development to other writers. Here I think some people in the industry might criticize me for suggesting hiring a writer to create content and posting that content on a blog when the writer is not an employee of the company is unauthentic. Well you'd be right, but I think it also depends how a company represents the content, does the writer have a byline.

By the way, while I'd certainly recommend a content marketing strategy for a company website, I really think a company should not create content within social media by outsourcing that content unless they are transparent about the action. But I'd not going to spend too much time on attempting to police the industry, why? Because the floodgates are already open. The industry would be better off spending time on developing case studies that demonstrate why building engagement outreach infrastructure is the next step after content marketing.

I'd suggest while you might achieve good results from creating content, from higher SEO and some engagement, if you don't build an infrastructure for monitoring the web, discovering brand mentions, and also industry references, and then triaging those opportunities for response and engagement, no matter how big a content development infrastructure you build a company will not be prepared for crisis communications incidents without the infrastructure for successful engagement outreach in the community.

The leaders in the community of social media; Dell, Comcast etc, are not following a content marketing strategy, they are following an engagement and community management strategy. See Charlene Li's and Wet Paint's EngagementDB research and website for more evidence of why the depth of engagement influences results. Certainly start with content marketing, but move to an engagement strategy once you’ve built the case for building the necessary infrastructure.

Really social media engagement and content marketing are all a matter of resources, it’s a lot easier to hire a writer to write content, than it is to hire someone to respond and manage a community, both strategies can be successful, but the question is can you get a better ROI from engagement. I believe so.

Social Media Leaders Identified Through Engagement

Charlene Li, Partner at the Altimeter Group and Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint have put together a report and companion engagement website that details the level of social media engagement of companies of the top 100 global brands from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking. This highly useful report gives good insight into how major companies are engaging with their customers and communities using social media.

The top 10 brands in terms of engagement are:

1. Starbucks, which scored 127 points

2. Dell (123 points)

3. eBay (115)

4. Google (105)

5. Microsoft (103)

6. Thomson Reuters (101)

7. Nike (100)

8. Amazon (88)

9. SAP (86)

10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

Using 40 or so metrics to measure the level of engagement by the major brands the report also compares a company's level of social media engagement with financial data, and determines there is some correlation between level of social media engagement and financial performance. The report however, does not show any direct financial correlation.

The section of the report that was most interesting to me was the section that shows engagement by industry. Technology sector companies are highly engaged in many channels with Media a close partner. I found this information about the technology sector interesting because it agrees with insights I'd previously gained from the Fortune 500 business blogging wiki, where technology companies dominate the fortune 500 that are blogging and also rate highly from the reviews of blogger reviewers.

The reason this engagement report is so important is that by showing to the industry who are the leaders within the industry for social media engagement, other companies have a standard by which to work towards. The Advertising Age Power 150 is an index of the top bloggers around the world on the topics of marketing and advertising. Using various metrics the Power 150 tracks the most successful bloggers. The index is not perfect but provides a good gauge of who is widely read and engaged. As a result bloggers compete to appear on the index, and also use the index to review the leaders and emulate their efforts.

Existing websites that detail social media usage include Debbie Weil's list of large brand blogs, Peter Kim's list of companies using social media, and the SocialText Fortune 500 business blogging wiki (currently voluntary managed by myself). Each of these lists provides some insight into the use of social media by companies, but none of them provide a great deal of analysis. Though the wiki does encourage bloggers to write independent reviews of f500 blogs, and does correlate some of the results. What's been frustrating with all of these lists is that there is no way to estimate the level of engagement by companies.

Charlane Li and Ben Elowitz's report provides a benchmark for the industry to gauge their own practices, and as a result emulate the leaders in the industry. The report is not perfect because many companies were omitted either because they were not global brands, or private companies. But the index and report pushes forward the industry in leading the way for how companies should build a successful social media engagement strategy and infrastructure.

The report details four companies, including Toyota, Dell, and Starbucks, and in those case studies, the how and why of each company's social media engagement practices are described. These case studies give the reader some insight into how each company's high results were achieved and ideas for implementing their own programs.

I'm particularly excited about this report because it parallels my earlier thinking about developing methods to measure social media engagement in my posts on "Social Media Maturity Index: Finding Social Media Engagement Leaders" in March 2009, and in "Conversation Over Appearance: Finding Social Media Engagement Leaders," in December 2008.

My hope is that the index can be expanded beyond the existing list of companies so that business people will be able to see what companies are the social media engagement leaders beyond the global 100 by industry and size of company. Just as the Advertising Age Power 150 has helped fuel the industry's understanding of what a successful blog is within the marketing and advertising industry. I think the engagement index will help to motivate and encourage companies to follow the leaders within the industry.

Tom Murphy Calls For More PR Bloggers

Continuing my series of interviews with Alumni from the Global PR Blog Week, I interviewed Tom Murphy, I think Tom’s interview was particularly fascinating because as a PR professional he has worked in agencies and now works for a global company, Microsoft, he has seen PR practiced around the work, and brings a unique perspective to global and US readers about PR and the profession. Given the recent discussion in the community about the relevancy of blogging, I think it is also interesting to see Tom encouraging PR professionals to blog and read other bloggers.

John: What did you learn from the Global PR Blog Week?

Tom: Well I am a firm believer that you never stop learning.  It’s one of the best things about PR and indeed about social media.  There’s always new insights and perspectives.  I learned a lot from the first PR Blog Week – I didn’t agree with everything I read mind you – but you had over 35 authors sharing their views on every area of Public Relations and there was a huge opportunity to learn and broaden your horizons. There still is, the content is still online and there’s some great articles there, I highly recommend it.  My biggest personal learning was that regardless of what area of the profession we are working in, PR people face many common issues. The other thing that becomes very apparent from reviewing the content is that change takes place a lot more slowly than we expect.  If you look at many of the issues that were addressed, they are the same issues we face today.  Sure some of the buzzwords and tools may have changed, but the challenges are very similar.

John: What did you learn about blogging (if you learned anything about blogging) from the blog week?

Tom: I think PR Blog Week confirmed my belief that there was a fantastic, informal global community of PR people willing to share their experience and their expertise with the broader world.  There is a fantastic online PR community and it’s growing every day.  You don’t have to agree with everyone, but it’s a fantastic resource for everyone working in this business. I would strongly recommend any PR practitioner to get online and get reading.  You’ll probably learn a lot and at the very least the authors will provoke your to think about your career and your day to day job. As I mentioned before, you never stop learning, you never stop taking on new perspectives.

John: Did the conference give you any new insights into PR, if so, what were they?

Tom: The conference covered an amazing array of topics from PR ethics to Search Engine Optimization, Measurement and Crisis Communications; every article provided compelling content.  I took insights from most of the contributors. In fact after you interviewed Trevor Cook last week, I went back to the archives and browsed many of the articles and there’s great stuff up there. The fantastic thing about the Internet is that there are opportunities to learn every single day.  The challenge for all of us is putting time aside to capture that opportunity.

John: What were the lasting effects of the Global PR Blog Week?

Tom: I think the Global PR Blog Week was a seminal moment, when the PR industry found its voice online.  I started blogging in 2002, mostly by accident and as a way of capturing the little online PR content that was available.  By the time the event took place in 2004 there was a strong PR community online.  The PR Blog Week underlined that community and put in place a network that has since grown and grown.  It’s staggering to see the number of PR blogs now online, and I am delighted to note that probably 90% of the contributors to that first week are still blogging and tweeting today.  I would love to think that many people went and read the content and took away great insight. I think it’s still valuable content today, so if you haven’t already read it, go and dive in today!

John: How did the Global PR Blog week influence you and the industry?

Tom: This was the first time (in my memory) that a group of PR people came together to share their knowledge and expertise freely online – where anyone could come and read it.  When you look at the breadth of the subject matter, there was something for everyone.  I would love to think that people took the time to read the content and to be honest I think the vast majority of it is still relevant today.  Many of the issues being discussed back in 2004 are the same issues we’re facing today.

John: Was the conference truly global? What was the influence of the conference in Ireland?  Did your global perspective about PR change after the global conference?

Tom: Yes I think it was global.  We had contributors from all across North America, Europe and Australia.  No doubt if you held it today you could build an even broader geographic spread, but that’s pretty global for a grassroots online event. I’m not sure what the influence was in Ireland, we had two Irish-based contributors (myself and Bernie Goldbach), and I know many PR people in Ireland followed the event.  I think when you live in a small country you have a pretty global outlook because you are influenced by larger countries. Personally speaking I have been working around Europe and the US since 1995 so I had a pretty solid international outlook! That said it’s up to people whether they took the time to read it or not. I think any PR practitioner or student would get value from it.

John: Reviewing the post(s) you wrote for the Global PR Blog week what has changed? What has not changed, since you wrote your post?

Tom: Nothing has changed since I wrote my post.  The PR profession is still struggling with the same issues then as now.  Our profession operates in every country, language and economic and social sector in the world.  The practice of PR differs widely – even inside the same country and sector.  We are still struggling with balancing new and traditional tools and we still haven’t got a single, agreed form of measurement. As I’ve always said, as long of PR agencies view measurement as a “strategic differentiator” we’re in trouble. Last week I read the New York Times piece on Spinning the Web and it brought me right back to 2004.  I’d love to know how many PR practitioners read that and thought that doesn’t resemble my day job in any way shape or form?  That was my reaction. The variety of PR is one of its strengths but also one if its weaknesses. I don’t have the solution but I think social media is raising the issue of transparency and that’s probably a good thing. The more we read the perspectives of other practitioners, the more we can understand them and see the common ground.  That’s why the ever growing number of PR bloggers is not only great – it’s important.

John: Give an update on what you've been doing in the last five years, and what you are doing now?

Tom: Back in 2004 I was working for a small software company called Cape Clear Software (now part of WorkDay).  Then in the summer of 2005 I moved to Microsoft in Dublin where I ran the company’s PR and Corporate Social Responsibility programs in Ireland. Earlier this year I moved my family to the Pacific Northwest, to Redmond Washington where I’m now working in Microsoft’s Corporate Communications team looking after our global Citizenship and Community Affairs programs.  All change, all good!

John: Thanks Tom! Great insights!

PR Blog Week Founder Looks To The Future Of PR

Australian PR blogger, Trevor Cook, played a significant part in organizing the Global PR Blog Week conference in 2004. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the conference, his role in organizing the event and what he has been doing since ’04.

John: What was the significance of the Global PR Blog Week for you?

Trevor: It was fun and it helped demonstrate how people could come together online and create a body of mostly good quality material on line. Most of all I think it helped to counter some of the "PR is dead" stuff that was popular around that time, which originates from a false (IMO) view that PR is only about spin when PR done well is mostly about good communications. People (eg Naked Conversations) sometimes like to think that if only PR got out of the way then communications in our society would automatically improve. That's a bit like Reagan's "government is the problem not the solution" statement. It's simplistic and wrong-headed. The real challenge is to make PR better, and social media will help, is helping, to do that.

John: As one of the organizers of the conference what did it take to organize the conference, what do you recall about the event from your perspective?

Trevor: I basically came up with the initial concept and contacted a bunch of people to participate. This was easy because there was only about two dozen PR bloggers in the world at that stage (now there seem to be countless thousands), and most responded to my email within hours and were keen to participate. Most of the real hard work was done by Constantin Basturea who is now at Converseon in NYC. He did all the website stuff, which I can't do. Constantin deserves most of the credit for making it happen. Today, with twitter and facebook etc PR blogweek would have been far more interactive - the technical challenges were greater back then. Constantin's work meant we were able to do the whole thing without cost to the user - a bit like the Bloggercon idea - and that made it far more accessible.

John: What were the lasting effects of the Global PR Blog Week?

Trevor: The NewPR wiki that Constantin set up after PR blogweek partly as a way of storing the material was a very valuable resource for a lot of people. Anecdotally, I think a lot of people were encouraged to start blogging or to get more committed by the examples they saw in PR blogweek

John: How did the Global PR Blog week influence you and the industry?

Trevor: I think it helped to point to, or confirm, that PR could embrace social media and get real benefits from it. But it was a conference, and there have been many others. It was of its time when PR blogging was embryonic to say the least. I made contact with some great people like Constantin, Steve Rubel, Neville Hobson, and more and that was great fun and taught me a lot about PR in other parts of the world.

John: Reviewing the post(s) you wrote for the Global PR Blog week what has changed? What has not changed, since you wrote the post?

Trevor: Social media has grown rapidly much as we anticipated back then, but the rise of twitter, youtube and facebook have all been a surprise to me. Many of these services are far more accessible to users than blogs. Blogging tends to be a bit high end. Blogs that survive and do well over a period of years need to produce great content consistently and regularly and that's hard work. I find it difficult to blog and do everything else I want to do in life, as do many others - social media provides an easier way to stay in contact.

The media has adopted social media to a large extent and is promoting it heavily. Can that save big media - well some of it, but there is still going to be an almighty rationalisation especially in regard to newspapers. Nevertheless, I find the continuing "blogging versus journalism " debate so tedious. Bloggers are not journalists, and only a few want to be. Just as boring is the "social media can do everything" line that passionate advocates sometimes push. No-one believes it in the real world. Your client is interested in how social media fits in and adds value to the existing comms strategy. Few clients listen to the 'social media can revolutionise everything' hokey. I was more naive back then, a few years of trying to sell the social media idea to clients has toughened me up on this point. I stopped doing media interviews a while ago because the journalists always wanted you to either say something alarmist about social media (identity theft etc) or they wanted a cookie cutter evangelist to say something simplistic and naive.

In my view, we'll be there when we lose the media / PR construct and just communicate. Media would add value principally by selecting and packaging great stuff for a mass audience. PR would be the people in your organisation that facilitate but don't actually do the communicating. The roles of journalist and blogger would be in the background, and the real business of communicating would be in the foreground. We're still a long way off.

John: Give an update on what you've been doing in the last five years, and what you are doing now?

Trevor: In the last couple of years I've changed direction a bit and while I still do some PR work, I'm back at university researching a Phd on Australian politics and teaching, most recently in a course on Australian Foreign and Defence Policy. I still blog a little bit and I've written a lot of articles for Australian online media sites. I'm on twitter and I enjoy Facebook because a lot of my real world family and friends use it.

John: Thanks Trevor for coming up with the original ideas, helping to organize the conference and a great interview.

(Note: I kept Trevor's original spellings from his answers to my questions. Trevor's from Australia, and Australian-English like British-English has a few different spellings compared to American-English)

Picture of Trevor Cook: Uploaded on November 7, 2004 by Mickipedia