… sometimes the bear gets you. And sometimes you have to throw on the Lucha Libre mask and strike a blow for creativity!

“I’m like a Ninja with no hopes and dreams.” Wally, “Dilbert” May 17, 2009

Just a quick thought or two before crashing for the night. (hopefully they make sense) For a while I’ve been pondering the future of public relations and advertising/marketing firms in this new media world. (Why wait until now to share this with y’all? What can I say, I’m shy.) While many people have been talking about the future of the mass media in this world, I don’t know how many people have pondered the other side of the coin. I was talking with Crosscut Communications‘ guru, Will Reichard, about this after the Social Media NM meetup last week and we bounced some ideas off of each other about the potential future for PR firms.  So up front I’d like to thank Will for letting me bend his ear and giving me some really good pointers.

In this New Media Age the majority of businesses need to not only be in business, but also be media outlets. While news outlets are shuttering, laying people off or switching to three days per week publishing schedules, businesses need to be able to present their own talking points/communication starters online, circumventing the mainstream media to a certain extent.

But what is the impact on PR firms? Those who are used to sending out press releases and newsletters, and creating plans based around getting more “earned media” from an ever shrinking news universe. Are they going to go out of business?

Of course not. There will still be a need for PR firms to work on getting “earned media” despite the shrinking newshole, but savvy PR firms will shift their focus. In my previous post I talked about PR professionals (working for organizations, I don’t think I made that clear) serving as diplomat-facilitator-community relations.  Communications firms should be on the cutting edge of new media, social networking and content creation. They should take over the role of teacher, leading their clients through the basics of new media/social media, and building social networks (whether on Facebook or Ning, or checking out what Pursuant is doing and trying to match that) and let their clients go on developing messages, creating content and developing outside evangelists.

This won’t lead to the clients dropping the firms, far from it. Clients will need these firms to develop online infrastructure and create/manage video pieces, podcasts and other new media projects for their clients. And there will be a big need for these services, as many companies, especially smaller companies, won’t have the facilities to make high quality video or audio podcasts, and won’t have the connections with regional or industry bloggers.

(Now’s probably a good time to point out that people working in PR firms should already be blogging and connecting with others in the industry their clients work in. Or at least monitoring the chatter.)

Just my two cents to mull over tonight as we drift off.  G’night y’all.

This is starting to become quite the epidemic for communications professionals.  Not all communications professionals, but those who still insist on operating in the pre-2.0 mindset of a centralized command and control structure.  These people still think they can dictate the terms of engagement to the social media-sphere.  The actor in question this time is Matt Farrauto, the former N.M. Democratic party head honcho and currently working as a communications professional on Capitol Hill.

In an exchange with myself and with the Albuquerque Journal’s Washington Bureau chief Michael Coleman, Farrauto claimed we didn’t get his point about not commenting on his Tweets.  They were off the record – he said so.

Specifically, Farrauto put up a sentence on his Twitter account stating that all of his “musings” are off of the record.  It’s like standing in the middle of a room of people, some of whom are his friends and others of whom are reporters, and shouting at the top of his lungs, then not expecting the reporters to write about any stupid things he said. Right, I really see reporters giving up that kind of control.
(Plus, going “off the record” is nothing more than a hope that the reporter you are spilling the beans to will not publish your name next to the beans.)

Then he decides to get in an argument with those same reporters and bloggers who are really the lifeblood of his profession. PR people know that’s usually not the best thing to do, especially after trying to dictate to them what they can and can’t report about.

In the age of Media 2.0 and social networking, the role of communications personnel has to change.  We are no longer the “gatekeeper” for the company, customer or candidate.  We are now part-facilitator, part-diplomat, and part-community relations peeps – communicating a positive message about our organization, responding to negative attacks, but most importantly collaborating with people.  Talking back and forth with them, listening to what they have to say and responding like human beings, instead of regurgitating prescreened talking points.

(that’s not to say talking points don’t have their place in social media, but don’t spit them out at people, explain it to them.  Why are these “talking points” important?  Are they actually “talking points” or are they now “conversation starters?”)

If Farrauto doesn’t want reporters to write about what he says on Twitter, he should either make all of his comments private, or take the advice all of our mothers have given us in the past and think about what he says before he says it.

I understand why Farrauto has a hard time dealing with new media, as my friend Mark Bralley pointed out here, Farrauto’s used to being the 800-lb gorilla in the room, pushing people around, as Mark explains.  But in the new media-sphere, he’s just another person – one who can no longer exert total control over the message.

Today I was driving back to work from lunch with some of the members of the new NMPRSA board and listening to ESPN radio. The host of the show was talking about athletes who are on Twitter, and the potential of these athletes to “leak” confidential team information. (firings, new players, etc.) SEC fans found out the dangers of Twitter earlier this year when Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin tweeted the name of a recruit who had might signed with a team – a violation of NCAA rules.

One of the points the host (whose name I can’t remember right now) talked about the problems he saw with athletes preempting team announcements about fired personnel, cut players (especially before the players found out) and the like – and asked how long it would be until players were accidentally – or staffers were purposefully – pulling a Kiffin and violating some kind of rules structure.

So I sent out a tweet mentioning the topic and got a couple of interesting responses back. First from Albuquerque PR firm owner Tom Garrity:

@desertronin , interesting tweet on ESPN and their percieved “danger”. Team owners should be embracing twitter, not fearing it.

And a follow up by blogger and online journalist Matt Reichbach:

@tg123 @desertronin but athletes should use common sense on what to tweet and what not to tweet. (e.g. things that haven’t been announced)

This reminded me of the recent cluster-tweets I’ve talked about before. Sometimes people don’t realize that Twitter is not just a communications tool between friends, but between you and (up to) hundreds of thousands of their closest “friends.” Any one of which can resend their tweet, or take one tweet out of context. (See above link)

Not to mention how many of them might be reporters, especially if you’re a celebrity. And then the story’ll take off. For fun, replace team with “your company” and athlete with “an employee.”

Now, stop hyperventilating at the thought, take a deep breath and go get a stiff Old Fashioned. Feel better? Great!

So what’s to be done?

The first inclination of many CEO’s and PR professionals is to shield up – shut down, don’t answer the press’s sudden incoming questions, possibly take the athlete – or employee in a company’s case – aside and berate/suspend/beat about the head and shoulders/fire them for leaking company info.

Do I really need to say “don’t do this?”

You should already be online, using these tools to communicate your own thoughts, in your own voice.  If you haven’t done this yet, then this would be the perfect time to jump in. (maybe with that employee you wanted to fire?) Come up with a plan and follow it.

And go full-throttle. Blog, get on Twitter and Facebook, fire up the Friendfeed, mug it up in front of the YouTube, start a podcast – even better, sit down with reporters and interview them and put it up online. You’ll make some mistakes, cross swords with your opponents (make sure you have your extra-thick skin on) and you might need someone to help guide you along the way (may I recommend someone like Chris Brogan, Peter Shankman, Seth Simonds, Todd Defren, or look inside your company at who’s tech savvy and might be involved in this already.)

My favorite example of this kind of owner/CEO is Mark Cuban, the rebellious owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He’s a boss who has embraced so many aspects of social media and knows the importance of engaging his fans and, more importantly, his detractors. Probably because of his interest in technology, he knows how these tools work and how to use them. He blogs, he tweets, he probably runs a secret podcast for himself and his CEO pals. Plus he runs the Mavs, HDNet, and other business ventures. (Where does he get the energy for all of this? I don’t know, but I have my Red Bull-fueled suspicions.)

If you are not a CEO, and are a mid-level employee instead, then think about taking it on yourself to engage your audience using social media tools. I’m not advocating breaking your company’s rules if they actually have rules against using social media (don’t laugh, I used to work at a company that retained the right to suspend you for writing for online-only outlets, blogs included). But it’s easier to go to your boss with a social media plan if you can show how these tools are already being used to engage with your customers.

(and if you don’t have a social media plan, I’m working on one to post on here that you can feel free to take parts from and give them to your boss).

Ok, an idea.

For the legions of people… ok the three of you… who read me regularly, I want to pick y’all’s brains.

Since I write a big pile of different things here I was thinking about splitting off my social media and PR posts into another blog and leaving this as my personal one. Since you take the time out of your day to read this, I wanted to hear from y’all before I did anything.

So speak up now, remember I’m going deaf so you’ll have to be clear.

B

Below is my comment to a story on Twitter and a recent social media roundtable by the New Mexico Independents’ most excellent writer and Tweet-head, Gwyneth Doland. Here’s her post with a lot of really good points, and below are my two cents…

Hey Gwyneth!

These are some great tips. I’d add that there are a lot of social networks mentioned here (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and those are great to communicate with, but they tend to build the foundation of like-minded people (whether customers/clients, or organizations, non-profits, etc) that you need to follow up with via other communications tools. Things like blogs, podcasts and the like are still great, low-to-no cost ways of creating content that you can communicate your own message with.

And speaking of blogs, you or your organization needs to have a “home base” for all of your social media efforts, someplace that (for lack of a better phrase) I call a “Grand Central You”. A place where people can go for all of the shiznit you have to share, and for that I recommend people use blogs. Especially with a free service like WordPress.com where you can collect your tweets, RSS any podcasts, share your company’s brilliance and embed video. Facebook is another way to do this, but I look at Facebook as a way to drive more people (again from that social networking foundation) to your messages (blog, YouTube, etc).

Video is also very important. You talked about webcasting, and mashing that with a liveblog is a great way to build community and discussion. But beyond that, video is a very powerful tool for social media content creators to communicate with. Whether it’s a video news report about your own company (as long as a VNR is considered to be from your company, and posting it on your blog, with your YouTube account it should be obvious) to downloadable content for people to create their own videos with, or people using their Webcams to tell their story, video is a great way to go. SWOP was doing this for a while with their media updates, I don’t know why they stopped them.

While a nice tool and a great way to crowdsource and communicate, remember that Twitter is a double-edged sword. I’m dunno if you guys remember the James Andrews/FedEx and prior to that the Steve Rubel/PC Mag cluster-tweets from the recent past. As they showed, 140 words is enough to give your company and clients a serious self-inflicted wound. I won’t waste y’all’s space here, but I talk about it in a couple of places:

Here

And here

(For the most recent tweet problem in the world of sports, look up Lane Kiffen Twitter in Google news or ESPN)

Another thing to consider is that many of these items mentioned are tools. There needs to be a change in the “top-down control” mindset of many communications professionals. We’re in the realm of collaboration and conversation, not control. How can I develop trust with my clients without being didactic in the way I communicate with them?

And as a follow up, how can I tap into the network of people who are supporters/purchasers/etc to improve my end product? It’s the idea of the “networked mind,” that while two heads are better than one, 20 heads are better than two, and 2,000 are even better. You can get the best ideas from your customers on what they would like to see in v.2.0 of your product/campaign/etc.

(I know I’m jumping around right now and I apologize, but it’s getting late and I wanted to get this down before crashing, I’ll try to expand on this more tomorrow/later today. What can I say? I love social media.)

And as a second follow up – for PR, marketing and advertising professionals, you have to change your mindset of who the media is. Social media combined with computing advances have removed the barrier to content creation not only for yourselves but for anyone covering you. Nowadays anyone with a $249 netbook, a Flip Video camera, a cell phone camera and a WordPress site is essentially a member of the media (that includes you, your organization and your PR people). They have questions, they want answers… heck, they want respect from us. If you can’t get them the answer they need, have the professional courtesy to tell them so and treat them with respect.

Leverage existing technologies to create your own social networks. Check out Ning to look at creating your own social network (One of the cool things about DCF is how they seamlessly moved (from an outside perspective) from a group blog to city blog to now its own social network). Does your organization need that kind of narrower social network? Ask Barack Obama, but keep in mind they hired one of the minds behind Facebook to create my.barackobama.com.

Don’t forget you have to give your message authenticity. You can’t post press releases as “blog posts” or put them on Facebook. If people want to read that stuff they will go to your online newsroom. (you do have one of those, right?) People want to think that they are interacting with a real person, not a PR flack faking it. If you’re a PR flack and admit it, I don’t think there’s a problem because people know up front. (more on this later, I know I’m throwing a lot of spaghetti against the wall here)

One more quick tip, one of the must have tricks in my toolbag (sorry, running out of steam) – check out HARO. PR guru Peter Shankman’s Help A Reporter Out (http://www.helpareporter.com/). He started it as a Facebook group and it quickly grew beyond the max capacity for Facebook and he turned it into an email list. Three times a day you get an email of topics that reporters need experts for. The great thing is that the reporters send him the queries. And if you’re a reporter, you can send in a query and get responses from all over the world if you want. The best thing about HARO: it’s free.

Social media monitoring is also very important. Not just for your company, but for your competitors and your industry. For example, I work in higher ed at UNM. My Tweetdeck has searches up for “UNM,” “NMSU,” and “#highered”. Plus you can use Google Searches for those terms to keep track of not just what’s being said in the news but also in the blogosphere about your organization and topics of interest. If you have $ for social media, then check out Radian6, Pursuant or AwarenessInc for your monitoring needs.

Always be looking for the next technological innovation. Today it’s Facebook and Twitter (but a lot of the cool kids are already gravitating towards lifestream aggregators like FriendFeed, or using their blogs as that central launching base – check out Chris Brogan, www.chrisbrogan.com), but yesterday it was Friendster and Ryze. (anyone remember Friendster?)

I’m fried, I haven’t even gotten to RSS aggregators, media snacking, collaborative work with competitors and my Robert Scoble example. I’ll spare y’all now but if you want more, I‘d be happy to share.

G’night John Boy.

Benson (@desertronin)

Just a quick post to say “y’all got to check this out!” Our UNM Live account is linked to it.

Real posting to resume soon (if the New Mexico winds don’t blow me halfway to Canada before next week!)

A guest post on the current 501c3 bogusosity in New Mexico politics, by my friend, who wishes to remain anonymous and goes by the pen name “Mad Dog Casey.”

True Believers,
 
It’s time to dust off the cape and spandex and break out the nonprofit ninjitsu–after many long years of silence, MadDogCasey rides again to combat the misinformation spewed forth by the leftist, er, progressive blabosphere. 

First, to you whiny activists who believe that you can violate IRC 501(c) by actively campaigning for or against specific political candidates and then calling it “free speech”–piss off!  You know you’re wrong, so quit trying to hide behind the First Amendment. It’s absolutely clear that you’d like your cake and ice cream too, but that’s not how it works in the bright shiny world of the federal tax code.

Now for those of you saying, “Screw you Mad Dog! You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” Let me take you back to school–Ninja style.

When New Mexico nonprofit corporations apply for and receive tax-exempt status under 501(c) from the IRS, it provides some great benefits, but there are several strings attached–particularly when it comes to political communications like direct mail campaigns and canvas efforts to unseat an incumbent lawmaker. Hmmmmmm. I’ll bet that sounds familliar to some of you rubes. Here’s the MadDogCasey breakdown on what most nonprofits can and can’t do according to the IRS.

501 (c)(4) organizations–often called issue advocacy groups and referred to by those in the know as shadow pacs–are allowed to send out campaign literature, to speak on issues, and engage in political campaign and lobbying work–they have to be careful in terms of what they can do in support of or against specific candidates, but there aren’t a lot of restrictions. As far as nonprofits go, 501(c)(4)s have the greatest amount of freedom when it comes to political speech. Here’s the major drawback: Although 501(c)(4)s can fund raise, donations to those groups are not tax-deductible. As a nonprofit ninja master, I can tell you that if donations aren’t tax-deductible, supporters don’t like to open their checkbooks.

Now most of us are familiar with the important work that 501(c)(3)s do: youth services, affordable housing, animal shelters and humane societies, care and support of the disabled, etc.  Here’s what they are not allowed to do: political communications and campaign work for or against specific candidates. Now they can address issues that affect their constituents, but typically, no more than 10 percent of their budgets can be spent on lobbying and issue advocacy. Furthermore, when it seems that all a 501(c)(3) organization is doing is political work, then something is wrong. In the case of a few NM nonprofits that campaigned against Shannon Robinson in the primary election last year, it resulted in spankings from the NM Attorney General Gary King, and backlash legislation this year from the Legislature.

Most other nonprofit organizations have to follow similar rules laid out for the 501(c)(3) organizations. BTW the reason for the communication restrictions lie in the fact that public charities and private foundations are public entities that use public money for their work–much like government agencies, which aren’t allowed to use their funds to campaign for or against elected officials either. 

The one possible psuedo-exception to the above are churches. During last year’s election cycle, churches on the far right preached politics from the pulpit and claimed that they not only had a free speech right to do so, but that their speech was protected under religious ground. Now this isn’t a real exception–yet. The right-wing activist churches knew they were breaking the law, but their purpose is to challenge the tax code in court.

Frankly I agree with the attorney general’s actions regarding the organizations that banded together to take out Shannon Robinson. He reclassified them into their appropriate catagories (501(c)(4) or 527)–if a nonprofit public charity or private foundation engages in substantive political campaign work it needs to reclassify as a 527 (PAC) or a 501(c)(4)–period. 501(c)(3) organizations receive huge benefits–exemptions from property tax, gross receipts tax, and tax-deductible donations just to name a few. In exchange for these perks, the organizations agree to abide by the rules of conduct established in the federal tax code, which are explicit when they say something like this: “Yea verily thou shalt not engage in politicking, and if you do, thou shalt face dire consequences. So there!”

MadDogCasey is the nom-de-plume of an award-winning journalist, public relations practitioner and nonprofit ninja master.  

Here endith the lesson.

One of my job duties, in addition to working on content creation (blogs, YouTube, etc) and writing stories for the university newsletter, is handling press calls.  I really like dealing with the press, especially out here because I get along with so many of them, including the local bloggers. I can hear some of your now:

Bloggers?  You have to deal with bloggers?

Yeah.  And I’m always working to get answers to their questions, or send them information about what’s going on around campus without forcing them to jump through additional hoops that the members of the traditional media don’t have to deal with.  Many bloggers covering your organization want to be given the same treatment and respect that you will give other members of the mainstream media.

Back when social media was called “new media” it was being heralded as a new way for people to engage in civic journalism – turning average people into journalists.  Now those people are taking advantage of these tools to write about their own communities, loves, and hates.  As PR professionals, we have to be ready to treat them like any other journalist, because you never know when that one blog post you didn’t respond to will be the one that the NY Times journalist will read and base a story around.

For those of you who haven’t read The Long Tail yet, run – do not walk – to read this book.  One of the concepts I came away with was the idea that a blog post can travel up the Long Tail graph, from a blog with relatively few readers, to one read by thousands or hundreds of thousands of people a day with a few link referrals.

Instead of blowing off these bloggers, even those who disagree with you, think about engaging with bloggers.  Answer their questions when they send them to you.  Send them information via Twitter – no hard sell, just a quick tweet asking if they would be interested in XYZ.  Follow them and pay attention to what they say before you need to contact them for anything.  Engage with them, on their terms first (via their blogs) and then on your blog after you develop it.

What do y’all do to engage these new reporters?  Have you held an event for bloggers only?  Is this something you’d be interested in?

Recently I’ve been talking with my friends about an idea that business guru Guy Kawasaki has been at the forefront of for many years, the idea of “product evangelism” or utilizing your biggest supporters to positively promote a product or organization (i.e. Apple’s iCabal). 

Following up on this thought, you should look at how to develop your company’s/industry’s supporters into a cohesive “pack” (for lack of a better word) that is willing to support and defend your company.  Non-profit coalitions have been doing this for quite a while, and businesses can learn quite a bit from these organizations.  Many non-profits, if not almost all of them, have spent decades doing more with less when it comes to communications and coalition-building.  What these groups lacked in financial strength, they made up for in passion, perseverance, strategy and volunteerism.

What social media tools then did was lower the bar for strong content creation by these groups.  Once the bar was lowered these groups were able to produce their message cheaper and for a potentially larger audience.  This content creation then works hand-in-hand with social networking to build a larger base of volunteers, or as they tend to be called in a business setting, “evangelists.”

I call this idea “Darwin’s Bulldog 2.0″. (but I didn’t create this idea, it’s been out there for a while, but I wanted to look at how to use evangelists to passionately support and bolster your organization.)  A quick history lesson for y’all:

Thomas Huxley was a 19th century biologist from England.  He was a fierce proponent of this burgeoning scientific theory called “evolution” at a time when evolution was still being derided by many intellectual elites in England.  It was because of this devotion to his cause that he became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog.”

Huxley was groomed by Darwin and for a time became the face of public debate in favor of evolution.  He was known for his spirited debate about evolution with Samuel Wilberforce in 1860.  After this debate he served notice to the forces of traditional orthodoxy that evolution would not be easily pushed aside.  He stood in the face of this adversity for much of his career after the Wilberforce debate, giving as good as he got.

What does this have to do with public relations in the Web 2.0 world?  Quite a bit actually, especially when you advocate for your position or organization.

You can see much of the same kind of fervor online today, usually in political partisans (see Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Daily Kos, Eschaton, etc.)  since blogging entered the political realm back in the wee early 2000s.

While not all organizations or industries would need someone to vigorously defend them, as your organization moves into the social media realm, or develops a social network of allies (on Facebook or Ning, which I recommend) you can start to “feel out” if there are any of your online evangelists that could/would serve as your fervent supporters or defenders.

Trying to put together a “viral” social media campaign will not be successful without some level of separate, independent evangelism from your supporters.  (see “Walmarting Across America” or the definition of “greenwashing.”) This is where working with Ning, Awareness Inc., a site like My Barack Obama, or Facebook can help with creating a community for your supporters.  Giving them a chance to interact with each other, sharing and improving on ideas for your organization or product.

Suffice it to say, you will need to monitor and nurture this potentially burgeoning community.  As your community grows, you’ll get opponents signing on to keep track of what your organization is doing, and potentially flaming your community and sabotaging your efforts in growing the community.  You need to have a member of your social media team, probably one of your bloggers (if you have the luxury of hiring more than one person to take care of your social media creation needs) also oversee the community and interact with your evangelists in it.  Check out Dell’s IdeaStorm site for ideas to build on.

It’s important that these people be organically independent of your business.  You don’t want to be caught in the position of “paying” for support,” and the following blogstorm that will ensue. (see “Walmarting Across America” for an example of what not to do) 

If your evangelists do work for your organization, they have to be up front about it – and then go the extra steps to prove that they mean what they advocate, and aren’t just cashing a paycheck. As long as they own up to working for the company, they aren’t disqualified for representing their company with passion.

To my PR readers out there, what do you think?  Should your organization have a “bulldog,” someone who is out there passionately defending your brand?  What do you think the downside is?  Can they be seen as a “loose cannon” who can do more damage to your brand?  Should you let one of your internal defenders speak out for you, or do you think that will cause more damage to your organization’s brand?