PR/Media Week in Review 06-28-2009

If you’re news junkie like me it doesn’t get better than last week. We started out with “Neda” and a bloody crackdown in Iran, Farrah Fawcett finally succumbing in Hollywood, quickly eclipsed by Mark Sanford in South Carolina confusing Argentina for the Appalachian Trail (”Buenos Airhead,” the cover of the NY Post said) - all trumped by Michael Jackson’s ultimate Hollywood ending.

News events last week re-defined and strained the limits of social media. Twitter, blogs, and Facebook proved to be a valuable if inadequate resource in Iran. Twitter crashed a few times under the deluge of Michael-mania, proving that nothing resuscitates a career like death.  Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of the previous ‘King,’ shared her thoughts of marriage to Michael and the premonition that he would die like her Dad, on her MySpace page. TMZ.com, the ultimate insider Hollywood news source, first reported Michael’s death.

More and more, social media transforms how news is created, packaged and disseminated. Increasingly, traditional media follows social media in breaking news, and then reports on reaction through social media channels. It is demoralizing to see that Twitter could not topple a government in Iran - it will take more time, chipping away at the blockages of a totalitarian regime. We thought that 20 years ago Tiananmen Square was the beginning of the end for the Chinese regime - but that was before Twitter and Facebook. For now, guns, batons and the apparatus of repression trump cell phone cameras. #iranelection news on Twitter is moribund but it exists.

The Michael Jackson news will play out through the week. Remember the long line of white Cadillacs for Elvis’ funeral? I’m sure that Michael, who took showboating to a grander level, will top that. There is the suspect doctor, the drugs, another autopsy, toxicology, the battles over the estate, the talk show appearances and the revelations that will be packaged in books. The world has a large appetite for Michael Jackson news.

Today, we hear that Mark Sanford will not resign as Governor of South Carolina. Sure, what else can this bozo do but be a politician? Now that he has been found we see how lost he really is.

Video of the Week

Cyber War In Iran Escalates #iranelection

#iranelection - the ‘hashtag’ Twitter stream - has become the news wire of the Iran resistance.

Great way to follow #iranelection is on Twub with tweet feed, aggregated pictures and videos. The tweet feed is real time, meaning several tweets per second (the Twub widget in the right hand column of this blog is slower).

‘Changing timezones can save lives’ says one tweet on #iranelection. They want all bloggers and tweeters to confuse the Iranian authorities in an escalating, dangerous cyber war. ‘Do not re-tweet Iranian names’ says another. URGENT RT: Police checking cellphones for videos and pictures, transfer your files and clean up your phone #iranelection

On-the-scene photos and videos have significantly decreased in the past couple of days - the authorities do not want another ‘Neda’ martyr on their hands.

Between the earnest and helpful tweets on #iranelection are messages of provocateurs, scam artists and the lurking Iranian authorities, who bought the best minds of our allies to plan massive cyber subterfuge - what we are now witnessing. #iranelection is a real-time example of how an impromptu, global news and opinion network can self-sustain and self-moderate. Combined with YouTube, Facebook and blogs, #iranelection has become the information lifeline of Iranian protesters.

One way to simultaneously follow your own Twitter stream and #iranelection is through Seesmic on your desktop. See screen capture below.

Blogging And the Media - Lessons From Iran

Last week I was a panelist at the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, in New York on ”Blogging’s Role in Today’s Media”  

“What is the most important thing Twitter has done?,” someone asked at the event. “Iran,” I said, without hesitation.

That was last Thursday, before Neda bleeding to death before our eyes, before Allah o Akbar careening like an eerie screech for help through the Tehran night (see YouTube video above), before the tear gas and the clubbings and the brutal robocop security forces.

The topic at ASJA was blogging but Twitter and other social media tools naturally entered the discussion. It’s all connected and all media, established and emerging, traditional and new, singular and organizational, is hooked to the web and pushed out through various social media channels.

The traditional media was easily corralled and controlled by the Iranian government - the ’wild’ media is in the streets with cell phone cameras and filming from their apartments. In Iran, twittering is a revolutionary act. Security forces pursue the citizen with the cell phone camera as if they are a criminal with a lethal weapon. 

If we need clear proof of the radical shift in media - here it is. Bloggers trump ‘journalists’ getting first-hand news in Iran. Mainstream media nurtures reliable blogging sources, as they call them, to get the news while ‘real’ journalists are holed up impotently in hotel rooms.

Iran is not about Islam vs the West, Persians vs the Jews, old vs new. It is about the hunger to know, to have a free flow of information, the right to speak out. We are also a revolutionary society. We fought and died for our freedoms and suffered a brutal civil war. Freedom of the press and the right to assemble and express our opinions is deeply ingrained in our consciousness - we take it for granted. That is why the Iranian people cry out at night - they want their voices heard. That is why social media is so important - it gives them the platform, the megaphone. Somewhere, someone hears them. And that gives a small measure of comfort that their voices can build to a powerful chorus for change that cannot be denied.

The Greening of Social Media for Iran Democracy

‘Neda” is her name (left) - she has become the rallying cry for Iranian protestors and a martyr for the cause. Videos show her with her father, like thousands of others, at a demonstration in Tehran.  Then she is on the ground, bleeding profusely and dying, her father holding her, others screaming. Who shot her? In this ‘unverified’ news world we now live in, no one can say for sure. Neda now qualifies for her own Twitter hashtag #Neda.

Street demonstrations are looming today in Iran to pay respects to Neda and other martyrs of the Twitter Revolution in Iran.

Where can you follow the news?

• Mashable How to Track Iran Election With Twitter & Social Media
• The New York Times The Lede
• The Huffington Post Live Blogging the Uprising

How can you show support?

• Green overlay your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com
• Post your green Twitter avatar on the Green Wall: http://iran.greenthumbnails.com/

Tehran Minute by Minute

We cannot underestimate the importance of what is going on in Iran now.  Read The Lede  in The New York Timesfor minute-by-minute, sometimes second-by-second updates. This is not original, on-the-ground reporting - it is scans of Twitter, Facebook, other news sources, images and sounds being broadcast out of the country through social media and traditional means.

‘Reporters’ are locked out of the news; citizen journalists are capturing events internally and beaming out to the world. A television station in Los Angeles sent 1,000 tiny USB-enabled cameras disguised as pens inside the country. Facebook is now available in Persian, Google is translating Mousavi’s web feed into English. The picture on the left was sent via Twitter.

This is one more example - perhaps the most telling yet - of how social media and citizen journalists are reshaping how we gather and transmit news. Iranians will get smarter about how to get around the government clampdown on ‘evil’ media and the rest of the world, hungry to know what is going on in Iran, will aid them.

This past week has been a revelation. “Where is my vote?” - the repeated message of protesters, in English, is something we have asked in recent U.S. elections (we have a long history of manipulated elections). They speak of Revolution and Democracy and every citizen counting. I cannot pretend to understand the complexities of the Iranian culture but the events of the last week show that we have similar aspirations for justice and freedom and they need to be supported. (Several sources report clashes between the police and protesters).

Wells Fargo Launches Breakthrough Twitter Stream

On March 26 Wells Fargo carefully and judiciously launched an ‘active’ Twitter account. By ‘active’ I mean it is actually monitored by a person who is available weekdays, 9-5, to answer basic banking questions. This is a bold move that the bank did not undertake lightly. For months, the bank held an inactive Twitter account, saying it was monitoring the Twitosphere before it would become involved. Usually tweets are one way broadcasts - a company or individual telling its followers a snippet of information. By going a step further - engaging its audience - Wells Fargo is once again proving it is a social media pioneer in financial services.

Leading financial services into social media. Wells Fargo has been blogging for over three years; the company has several blogs in product areas and its own dedicated YouTube channel.  Ed Terpening, VP of Social Media for Wells Fargo, is the kind of buttoned down visionary that financial services neeeds to show how social media can be used for PR advantage. In the top Vator.tv video in the right column of PRBlogNews, Ed talks about how Wells Fargo used a blog to quell a potential crisis.  “We want to use all channels available to get our story out,” says Ed. That means sometimes publishing comments that are harsh and negative- as long as they comply with  strict posting guidelines.  Acknowledging prevailing sentiment to a particular event is often more constructive than ignoring or denying it. By having its blogs set up and running, with thousands of subscribers, Wells Fargo is able to respond quickly to a broad audience.

Social media for mergers.Wells Fargo launched a blog to manage communications for its merger with Wachovia (see bottom Vator.tv video on the right). The objective was to humanize the company, tell Wachovia customers what to expect, and reach a vast audience of constituents with news about the combined company. “Wachovia customers love their bank,” says Ed; there was strong brand allegiance to Wachovia.  Combined with Wachovia, Wells Fargo now has approximately 250,000 employees and millions of customers. A single blog can reach employees, customers, mainstream media, other bloggers and the general public. A blog is an incredibly efficient information distribution channel.

Social media as PR asset for financial services.  Financial services companies are heavily regulated, highly scrutinized and understandably reluctant to delve into the uncontrolled world of social media. Note the disclaimer on the Wells Fargo Twitter page. As Ed Terpening says, blogs, Twitters and videos are usually the last stop for company information to be disseminated, after it has been thoroughly scrubbed and approved by compliance officers, lawyers or regulators.  In essence, Wells Fargo is simply pushing out public information through added channels that have become available via the Internet and mobile devices.

The economy dominates news these days. Money is an emotional issue. We need to feel good about the company, and the people who manage or advise us about our assets.  Social media helps humanize an institution and offers the comfort that real people are listening to our concerns, offering feedback when appropriate, and are consistent in their approach. Wells Fargo has bloggers, an editor and programmer on staff, and now  Twitter ‘responders.’ Not every financial services company can devote that level of resources to social media. But most could benefit from following Wells Fargo’s lead in exploring the PR advantage derived from deploying a social media program.

PR/Media Week in Review 04-26-2009

 Die! Twitter! Die! Die! Die!  Twitter Twaddle amps to record level last week - is the end near?

Over three years ago Tom Foremski fomented social media revolution with his seminal post Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! - confirming and articulating a mass perception and setting many of us on a mission to find the next stage of public relations. Blogs, RSS, widgets, video - we could get information, entertainment and news straight to constituents and ‘relate’ to the ‘new’ media in a much more efficient manner through a myriad of free distribution channels.   A blog post can be a press release, Brian Solis said.  He was/is right. Then came Twitter.  Annoying, invasive, addictive, self-destructive Twitter. I didn’t think Twitter would last - then I didn’t think Barack Obama could win the election.

The obscene pervasiveness and inevitable flame-out of Twitter should be evident. What is not is how Twitter corrodes our communication. There are now two kinds of Twitterers: 1) inane 2) self-promotional. I am in category 2 (at least that’s my self assessment) and follow other self-promoters, whether they are journalists, news oraganizations, shills for products or services, consultants, flacks or flack service providers. My Twitter stream is like a Times Square news zipper with tips and news I can hopefully use. It has some value for time wasted sifting through the dreck.

It is category 1 that frustrates and will be the death of Twitter. Many social media gurus fall into this camp. ‘Just stopped into Starbucks for double soy latte.’ ‘Tied my shoelace and buckled my belt.’ ‘Bought a magazine - wow.’ Most of Twitter falls into the “Too much information” category and the rush to build ’followers’ leads to silly behavior, blatant prostitution (link whores have ceded to Twitter sluts), and obsessive non-sensical Twittering. Twitter is not about communication - it is Ashton Kutcher trying to build his brand and infiltrate as many minds as possible with the least effort.

 Tweetle dee and Tweetle dumb:  The week’s Twitter news roundup

• Maureen Dowd tweets a big one in her NYTimes Opinion piece: To Tweet or Not To Tweet 
  (Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
  The Tweets of outrageous fortune
  Or to Twitter against a sea of troubles)
• Land Rover Pays for Tweets - Is tweetola the new payola? from Advertising Age
• Which celeb will dominate the Twitosphere? http://tweetrace.com/
• Twitfit! Restaurant reviewer calls in lawyers to claim Twitter identity - NY Times 
• Twittering a recipe is now a twecipe
• Twitter now accepts telepathy - scrambled brain on Twitter, The Escapist
• Oprah pumps Twitter traffic - USA Today

Web Video of the Week / Evil Side of Twitter

The Seattle P-I online edition dropped off the top 30 list of newspaper sites in March, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. There are all sorts of prognostications about why this has happened - they no longer have a print edition to support the online presence - but the reality is that the online P-I is a poor excuse for a news source. Hearst eviscerated the P-I news bureau and essentially turned the seattlepi.com into a bottom feeding web aggregator, not a ‘news’ source. The P-I web edition illustrates the difficulty of grafting a new media venture on to an old media property.

SHORT TAKES: Police Working With PR Firm in Shift Toward More Communication - Washington Post | Evidence and PR spin collide in Vioxx courtroom battle - The Australian | Negative press hurting Kaylee’s family, PR rep says - Jason Wallace and his public relations consultant lashed out at the media yesterday, saying negative publicity has threatened the family’s financial stability, globeandmail.com, Canada |

Online Newsroom Practices to Attract and Satisfy Journalists, Investors and Analysts - Thurs, Apr 30, 1:00 PM EDT, Bulldog Reporter’s PR University, $299 per phone site. Seems relevant. Productive?

So you want to break into public relations?

This is a difficult and confusing time to break into the public relations business.  As  traditional media continues to disappear at unprecedented speed, and the acceptance and use of social media increases exponentially, the PR landscape becomes radically altered.  How do you promote a service, product or person in 2009 when the rules of engagement have shifted so far that nobody can say for certain what they are? How do you judge success when you have no verifiable way to measure it? Why on earth would anybody want to break into this business now when there are no jobs and nobody can agree what public relations is anymore?

I faced a room full of mass communications students last weekend at VCU and tried to answer these questions. The short answer is:  Uncertainty brings opportunity and this is a thrilling time to be in the communications field.  It begins at the top, as Barack Obama re-defines how government communicates with and interacts with its constituents.  And it comes down to us - never before have the methods of communication - the ability to package and distribute news and information on a mass scale - been in the hands of ‘the people.’

All the news and info distribution sources we now have at our disposal - including web sites, blogs, Twitter, Flickr (or any web photo platform), YouTube (or any web video platform), RSS, widgets - are absolutely free. All it takes is imagination and time and you can shout to the world. 

The PR business still treats social media as a curiosity, an add-on. They generally still don’t get that  PR needs to lead the communications mix (PR/marketing/advertising) and PR needs to follow media into an Internet-based, digital distribution system. Instead of pitching the media we become the media.

Writing has always been an important, and sorely under served, element of public relations. Now that we can’t complain about lack of avenues for publishing, writing is even more important.  Check out Emily Valentine’s blog Cultural Anthropologist. Emily was one of the 50 or students from the 10 colleges and universities at the VCU PRSSA event last weekend.  There are also links to writing samples on Emily’s blog, including Microfinance: social networking meets social enterprise on the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy web site. Coming into the ‘new PR’ landscape, Emily is honing her writing and social media skills, and engaging in socially optimized PR. It make take some time for PR employers to understand the value of writing, blogging, and social media literacy - but the smart ones will soon enough.

See The Future of PR (SlideShow) | Mark Rose LinkedIn

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