Straight Talk PR .com

Giving Time, Over the Web, in Small Chunks: A Prediction Mashup for 2010

It looks like it'll be hard to get through mid-January without seeing predictions across the blogosphere for the hottest trends of 2010. (And there're lots of expressions of good riddance to 2009, to boot.)

The most interesting prediction I've seen was published on Mashable and written by Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org. His predictions concern changes in social good behavior for 2010. He's in a position to know.

His predictions:

1. Social activism will explode across the web.
2. Micro-volunteerism will become extensive.
3. Giving work will become as important as giving money.

Mr, Rattray's conclusion:

These three trends – providing new ways of giving voice, giving time and giving work – represent the future of social change on the web.

I don’t mean to imply that giving money will stop being important. On the contrary, the web will continue to be an essential tool for fundraising in 2010, and for good reason – donations are the lifeblood of non-profits and the Internet is a highly efficient means of raising money. There are also an increasing number of effective fundraising platforms that leverage the unique power of the web to enable new types of giving – including well-known innovators such as Kiva and DonorsChoose, and new entrants such as Vittana.

But fundraising isn’t where the innovation will be in 2010. Instead, we’ll see the rise of new forms of participation that move beyond fundraising and make 2010 the most interesting year yet for social change on the web.

Interesting trends to spot. Read his post. Sign up for The Extraordinaires at BeExtra.org

What do these trends need that we can offer? Communications and great content. And training presentation materials. And more...

---

Cross-posted to ContentWordshop.com

The Bottom Drops Out of Newspaper Circulation

A disturbingly impressive graphic depiction of circulation among America's largest newspapers from the past two decades. Via Steve Rubel's Lifestream, at which you can read comments. More comments -- and an explanation of why USA Today is missing -- at The Awl, whence this graphic originated. 

While I mourn the loss of newspapers, I welcome the range of communication tools that the lack of newspaper hegemony is introducing into culture.

Cousin Heather Kirk-Davidoff on Churches and Blogging

The Rev. Heather Kirk-Davidoff, who is married to my cousin Daniel, is the author of an article in Congregations magazine this fall about successful blogging at her church. She is the enabling minister of Kittamaqundi Community, an independent church in Columbia, Maryland, USA. She is also the founder of her church's blog, Grounded and Rooted in Love. The title of Heather's article, which is available only to members of the Alban Institute (a not-for-profit think tank for congregational development), is "Entering the Blogosphere: One Church's Journey from 'Heaven Forbid!' to 'Why Not?'" I've been reading Kittamaqundi's blog occasionally since it was started, and I've been impressed by the number of authors who have become involved. I like this statement by Heather concerning the blog's success:

Our church's blog has enabled us to both open up our communication and also streamline it. Within six months of starting our blog, we stopped publishing our newsletter, which had been limping along for years. Between the blog, a once-a-week e-mail of announcements, and printed announcements in our Sunday bulletin, the newsletter had become completely redundant and no longer worth the administrative time spent on developing it or the cost of printing and mailing it. ... When our blog had been up for about nine months, I began my report to our Church Council by saying, "Guess what? One hundred and twenty-seven people stopped by our church yesterday!" Everyone was stunned and when I explained that was how many people had read our blog, they all started to smile. They knew people had begun to use the Web to find information about churches in the community, but since our website is largely static, once a person has read what is on it there is not much of an incentive to return. But our blog is so dynamic and so engaging that people come back to it again and again.

Why Not Talk About It? This Economy Is A Reality Check, Even For Alfred E. Neuman

What, me worry? Given the developing economic slump in the United States, if not throughout the world, corporate blogging expert Paul Gillin thinks that even the best corporate blogs are keeping their pens -- if not their heads -- in the sand and just try to ignore our festering troubles. As Debbie Weil points out, Gillin's headline says it all: "Corporate Blogs Blather While Markets Tumble." After reviewing blogs for 15 blue-chip corporations, Gillin writes:

Between checking Marketwatch.com and commiserating with colleagues, it’s safe to say there wasn’t a lot of work getting done this week. Nervous investors flocked to the Web for some sign that the turmoil in the financial markets would soon die down. With so much attention riveted on the future of the economy, this seems an ideal time for corporations to use their blogs to provide guidance and reassurance, or at least perspective, on the Wall Street meltdown. However, a quick tour of 15 prominent sites demonstrated that they were doing anything but that.

Three companies from Gillin's research are worth calling out because they bucked the trend set by the rest.

1. General Motors, which is famously synonymous with the U.S. economy, has a recent post on its highly regarded FastLane Blog containing a YouTube clip from CEO Rick Wagoner favoring federal financial intervention in the form of loans to automakers to meet fuel economy mandates. Give GM lots of credit for currency and realpolitik on this one.
2. The BenettonTalk blog has had two entries on the crisis. On Sept. 30, Benetton's blog addressed the economy's disintegration. And the next day, the economy was back with a blog review of Americatown, an HBO serial that looks at a near-term future in which U.S. economic dominance has waned.
3. PriceWaterhouseCoopers addresses the crisis from the standpoint of corporate directors.

On the other hand, Southwest Airlines, whose Nuts about Southwest blog just won the best blog award for the second year from PR News, has said little about the financial markets crisis. I agree with Gillin's conclusion about the need for straight talk and clarity about the economy and our roles in it. Here's how Gillin concludes his review:

My point isn’t to ridicule these companies as much as it is to demonstrate how far we still have to go in achieving the culture of openness that new media enables. Here was an opportunity for some of America’s most respected corporations to offer guidance and thought leadership to frightened consumers. Instead, most have chosen to serve up the same old happy-talk mush they’ve delivered for years. That’s their right, but that isn’t leadership. These are historic times that offer businesses the chance to break through the noise and do something daring and different. So far, corporate America has fumbled the opportunity. Perhaps, as the economic picture becomes clearer, some will start talking with their customers instead of marketing at them. That would be a welcome development.

Online PR Featured in New Issue of Canright Communicates

Introducing: Canright Communicates for November-December, 2007.

We feature Barbara Rozgonyi, founder of CoryWest Media and blogger at Wired PR Works, who I introduced earlier. And a how-to piece on putting more interactivity into PDFs. Our milestones include showing off an ad for Blackman Killick atop the new Crain's Chicago Business list of largest accounting firms.

There's also a "web-only" piece -- as the MSM say -- that expands the discussion with Barbara Rozgonyi into blogging itself, as opposed to the wider topic of Online PR.

And no issue would be complete without the ever-popular Canright team's reading/watching/listening/viewing suggestions.

Blog Council Forms, Adding More Web 2.0 Power to Chicago

It was cool to read about establishment of the Blog Council in Brad Spirrison's "Tech Matters" column in today's Chicago Sun-Times. The Blog Council (created by Chicago's Andy Sernovitz, who founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association three years ago) is a roundtable, and an exclusive one at that, for large corporations with major blogging presence. It's a place to share ideas with people in similar positions.

I get that. But some of the biggest and most respected names in blogging are skeptical. Being present as vendors seems to be the problem. And the necessity for the new organization in the face of so many other blogging organizations and conferences is also an objection. European blogger Nicole Simon wrote a great wrapup of the debate.

I guess I get it because I've been there. As I wrote in my comment to Simon's article, the situation reminds me of the National Council of State Housing Agencies. During five years as marketing director for the Indiana Housing Finance Authority, I participated in several NCSHA conferences. We had little problem keeping some discussions to ourselves, and no problem having vendors in other discussions. And the hundreds of vendors help to pay for the organization, which is the voice of state housing agencies on affordable housing policy in Washington.

In the world of old-line public relations, at least in the U.S., it's also analogous to the different missions of PRSA and the Council of Public Relations Firms, an association of the big guns. Moreover, if more major companies blog, more of the middle-market and smaller companies will also blog. And that's a tide that lifts all boats.

Which Came First - The New Employee or the New Employee's Blog?

It's a joy to see the devotion of cutting-edge companies like Cisco to a cutting-edge panoply of blogs.

But I had to chuckle when I read the Chicago Sun-Times story about Padmasree Warrior, age 47, who on Monday departed Illinois' Motorola, where she was chief technology office, to take up the same post at California's Cisco.

Howard Wolinsky reported on Tuesday in the CS-T that Ms. Warrior made the move on Monday. He added this: "In her personal blog at Cisco, she said: 'It is an exciting time to join Cisco. Cisco is the company whose leadership legacy defines ‘The Network’ in many ways. Today, it is a company driving many new paradigms in communications and information technology. In the future, it will be a company poised to lead the industry to the next phase of Internet.'"

Now, that's speed! She leaves on Monday and has a blog post on Tuesday. Kudos! (Here's the link.)

Talk About Personal Public Relations! Within a Day of Getting Going on LinkedIn.com, I Have 330,115 New People in My Business Network

The heck with six degrees of separation. I'm pretty impressed with LinkedIn.com, which I embraced and began to work with about a day ago. Fewer than 24 hours later, I am connected to 20 people personally. They have a total of 2,300+ connections on LinkedIn. And those people -- who are just one introduction away from meeting me -- have a total of more than 330,000 connections on LinkedIn. So by going to friends or to friends of friends, I can access 330,115 people. That's just three degrees of separation! Maybe there's something to this social networking stuff after all! My public LinkedIn profile is starting to fill up. If this story appeals to you, I recommend checking out AskDaveTaylor.com, written by a blogger I met at the Blog Business Summit in Seattle last fall. He has a dozen or so posts on how to take advantage of LinkIn. I know that I'll be reading them during the next few days.

Technorati Tags: Bloggers, Blogs, LinkedIn, Social Networks, Taylor, Dave

What is 'Strategy Matters?' Why Should You Read It?

Before we can develop programs of public relations, there must be a strategy.

I think these are some fundamentals of strategy:

1. In business and in life, strategy always exists. Whether it is established aforethought with intention or established over time in a series of seemingly unconscious and small decisions, strategy is established and a trajectory for enterprise -- in life, or in business, or any other endeavor -- is created.
2. Strategy established intentionally will, over time, produce the intended results.
3. Strategy is superior to process design and to formulas. Strategy accounts for doubt, for reasonable ranges of possible futures, for reasonable ranges of interim successes and failures, and for reasonably anticipated actions by other people and other forces.

These are some thoughts stirred by reading Penelope Roeder's first substantive post in her new blog, Strategy Matters. I've known Penelope for a long time, but I had forgotten -- until she alerted me to her new blog -- about the elegance and conviction from which she writes.

Strategy is not easy thinking. Penelope reminds us why the easy thinking was never enough.

I look forward to more posts in her blog.

Okay, Okay! "Dell Hell" is Real

Mea culpa. Shel Israel was right. There really is a "Dell Hell."

In October 2005, I protested that the Dell Hell thread running through many blogs amounted to piling on bad reviews for a good company. Unfair, I said. Dell still provides good customer service.

But on Friday night, a crazy train of phone calls to multiple toll-free numbers handed to me by clueless Dell customer representatives (clueless because each rep had a different 800 number to which they referred me) left me with the distinct feeling I was in Dell Hell. Worse, the main number I kep trying -- a number I found on Dell's support website, could have referred me to the tech support to fix my problem. Instead, for a computer covered by a bumper-to-bumper service plan, I spent two or three hours on the phone being shuffled around.

"You know, Dell is an worldwide company," one rep told me. Not my problem, I said. It's not my job to navigate a worldwide company. It's Dell's job to navigate its own tech support system. I'm usually tolerant, but Friday night I was jerked around. I didn't like it.

On Sunday, I went to the Apple Store in Indianapolis. I'm tired of fighting. The next time I buy a computer, I think I'll switch.