Public Relations: Death of the Intermediary

As a public relations consultant promoting thought leaders, I’ve spent my career serving as an intermediary. The person between my clients and the media. The person between my clients and conference organizers. The person between my clients and their potential clients. Now, my job is to get out of the way.

In a social-networked world, my clients can write their own “media pitches” in the form of blogs and they can culivate their own relationships with reporters via Twitter. Conference organizers who search for the most prominent speakers and customers who search for the most experienced vendors can find my clients themselves.

It would seem that I am a dead PR person walking, but the explosion of media channels has me busier than ever. As much as possible, my job now is to work behind the scenes to help my clients understand the new rules, learn how to navigate new media channels, identify target audiences, create endless compelling content, spark conversations and integrate their efforts into traditional media.

I welcome the opportunity to put my clients up front and center and to fade into the background.

Live Tweets from Conference Suites: Help or Hindrance?

I was at the Communintelligence conference on internal social networking today. My mouth hung open as I looked across the sea of open laptops and heard a cacophony of typing punctuating the voices of the presenters. I felt like I had landed on Planet Rude in the distant future where no one could focus on anything but themselves. What in the world were they all doing? Checking email…working on a presentation….surfing the internet. I had to peek over someone’s shoulder to find out. They were tweeting!

At first I felt sorry for the presenters. They must have been frustrated not to have everyone’s full attention, right? What I quickly realized was that people in the audience were tweeting quotes of the presenters to their followers. Why would the speakers complain? The audience was exponentially extending their reach with their tweets. In fact, after the keynote presenter was done talking, she started tweeting too!

I must admit I have mixed feelings about this trend of conference tweeting. I certainly understand why the organizer of the conference, @jgerst, would like to live tweet, but does everyone need to?

As a audience member I found it distracting, but as a public relations consultant, I see it as an opportunity for my clients to extract more value from their speaking engagements. Also, as an avid user of Twitter, I have been on the receiving end of tweets from other conferences, and I have found them to be very useful.

What do you think? Should conference attendees live tweet away?

Twitter: Retweet Robbery a PR Problem

Have you ever been robbed of a retweet on Twitter? I discovered this phenomenon after I began searching on strings of words from my tweets, in addition to my Twitter handle. I found numerous instances of people tweeting my content, but not mentioning my Twitter name. I didn’t think too much about it until a reporter, probably as an oversight, tweeted my client’s content without listing his Twitter name. In cases like this, tweets without the proper accreditation become a public relations measurement challenge.

Chris Curran, the CTO of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, is a dream client. He has fully committed to Twitter. He tweets frequently, he shares his blogs, retweets the tweets of reporters and peers and engages in conversation with other high profile executives. In fact, he recently created a list of CIOs who tweet at his impressive blog, CIO Dashboard. The list has generated interest from inside and outside of Twitter, including from a prominent technology reporter. After I emailed it to him, he tweeted it and let me know immediately. I was grateful for his effort, but I must admit that I was disappointed that he didn’t include my client’s Twitter name in his tweet.

To help remedy the loss, I sent the reporter a tweet, instead of an email, that thanked him for tweeting the list and included my client’s Twitter name in my response. As a result, I encouraged the reporter to begin following my client and took another opportunity to tweet the list.

Have you ever been robbed of a retweet? Does retweet robbery bother you?

Social Media Hypocrites in Public Relations

Public relations professionals could end up looking like hypocrities if their spokespersons are forced against their will to use social media. The Ron Reagan Show, a progressive radio talk show on Air America, is one of the most egregious examples of an organization that is talking out of two sides of its social media mouth.

The show features a regular segment called, “Ron Reagan’s War on Technology,” where the host, Ron Reagan, complains about how the persistent use of technology, such as cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, etc. is warping our existence. Understandable. What is confusing, however, is the commercials that follow.

Typically, after Reagan is done with one of his rants, a commercial-voice chimes in and invites listeners to follow the show on Facebook and Twitter. Huh? It seems to me that Reagan wants nothing to do with social media, but his producers are twisting his arm. Why would I follow the show if the host himself is at war with social media?

My advice to public relations professionals is to get your spokespersons on board before throwing them into the social media waters.

How do you handle a reluctant spokesperson?

Replacing CNN and Email with Twitter

As a public relations consultant, I am an information addict. I used to spend hours watching CNN as I emailed my clients and reporters, obsessing over every story and digging deeper into the issues online in outlets like BusinessWeek and USA Today. But it struck me today that I haven’t watched CNN in months and I barely have email to check anymore. I am so enthralled with using Twitter as my information gathering and connecting resource that the days of CNN, even email, are a distant memory.

In my day-to-day routine, I have replaced broadcast anchors with much smarter print reporters with their own Twitter broadcasting networks. Instead of feeling completely disconnected and disenchanted with the TV, I interact with editors and reporters via Twitter like John A. Byrne, the Editor-in-Chief for BusinessWeek.com and Del Jones, the leadership reporter for USA Today.

Not only do I have access to the stories that they tweet, but I converse with them about the content and help them grow a following by retweeting their tweets. Rather than emailing them, I use DMs to let them know what’s going on in their areas of interest and to cultivate a friendship.

What about you? What tools are you finding falling away now that you have Twitter in your life?

Ghost Tweeting Wars in Public Relations

I need the help of my fellow public relations professionals. An important issue related to the future of our industry is weighing on my mind.

We are no strangers to ghost writing. Putting words in the mouths of our clients in the form of bylines, press releases, books, etc. is what we do. So, why does it feel so wrong to tweet for them?

I recently discovered a ghost writing service aimed at “movers and shakers” on Twitter, www.ghosttwitter.com. In stark contrast, I had already launched a web site, www.tweetexorcist.com, to keep the Twitter community informed on which celebrities are authentic.

In my opinion, my cause is just and every super hero needs a villain. What do you think? Would you tweet for your clients?

Jack Welch Keeps it Real on Twitter

I was excited to see that @jack_welch joined Twitter, but before I got ahead of myself like I did with @guykawasaki only to learn that he uses ghost writers, I sent Jack a message from @tweetexorcist asking if it was really him.

He responded right away: “I am doing it all myself so please excuse my typing.” To top if off, his wife, @suzywelch, also seems to be “keeping it real” on her Twitter account.

From reading Jack and Suzy’s columns in BusinessWeek, I can tell that they understand the importance of trust in a business relationship. In my opinion, someone’s name on Twitter should be as good as their handshake. Twitter is a 21st Century medium, but the old-fashioned rules of trust should still apply.

Collecting Personal Brands Like Sports Cards

Avid sports cards collectors, like Chris Curran, the CTO of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, take great pains to cherry pick the finest players to add to their collections. In fact, you can visit YouTube and enter the key words, “baseball card break” to watch eager fans culling their cards, as explained in this New York Times article.

When Curran isn’t cracking open a fresh deck, he employs his collecting prowess to help John Sviokla, Managing Director of Innovation and Research for Diamond, select who becomes a member of the “Diamond Fellows,” an eye-popping list of 10 intellectual powerhouses that Diamond keeps on contract like Gordon Bell and Alan Kay. To gain a competitive edge, the firm hosts cozy events for clients with the Diamond Fellows through the program, DiamondExchange.

“Through Diamond Exchange small groups of clients come to interact with the greatest business and technology minds in the world,” said Sviokla. “It’s like intellectual fantasy camp.”

And, when there is a special client problem that calls for a paradigm shift in thinking, Diamond hand selects the perfect player from its star lineup.

“While one client’s challenge might be better suited for Chunka Mui, a former Diamond consultant and co-author of ‘Unleashing the Killer App,’ another client could thrive in a brainstorming session with the inventor of the spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin,” said Sviokla.

In this viral economy, delicately arranging partnerships with high profile personal brands with people power can be potent PR for brands that want to expand their online presence. Innovative media outlets understand this. To move beyond its print magazine, Harvard Business Press is selecting big brains like Sviokla to blog, so now John, the collector, has become the collected.

Oprah Vs. the Twitter Fail Whale

Tomorrow Oprah Winfrey will send her first tweet from the stage of her storied talk show in Chicago. After Barack Obama won the presidency, many media pundits declared that Obama had trumped Oprah in popularity. We’ll soon be able to test that theory as Oprah descends on Twitter like a force of nature that will challenge the Twitter Fail Whale like it has never been tested before. (Before she has sent one tweet, she already has over 37,000 followers.) Obama used Twitter as a launching pad to stature, Oprah’s presence on Twitter will either catapult Twitter into the Netherlands of fame and fortune or the weight of Oprah’s fanbase will send the Fail Whale and the rest of us down to the bottom of the sea. When I visit the @Oprah page on Twitter, it looks like an empty stage of possibility.

The Press Release Paradox

Ten years ago the first thing a public relations professional would do to get the word out about a story was distribute a press release. Today, that is the last thing we do. Like never before, pitching reporters is done underground as long as possible to preserve the exclusivity of the information. Once it hits the wires, it’s a commodity.

When it’s time to pull the trigger on the press release, the question is which wire to use, the PR professional’s great enigma. Which service I use depends on the type of content I have to work with, the longevity of the campaign, and the client’s goals.

Here is how I think about it. PR Newswire has a storied history with the traditional media. PRWeb is the new media press release service that reaches smaller outlets. PRWeb is inexpensive and their press releases live online for eternity. PR Newswire is more expensive and their press releases live online for a few months. Marketwire is a hybrid between the two.

Marketwire reaches mainstream media outlets online and press releases appear on Factiva as well as live online for one year. And, their system is user-friendly and their people are helpful. I weigh the brand attributes of all three distribution services against my media strategy to determine which wire to choose.

For example, recently I launched a media campaign for “The Real Guitar Hero,” Ronald Bienstock, who won a six-year trademark dual with Fender over global domination of the guitar industry. Misinformation about the facts of the story had already appeared online, but the mainstream media wasn’t aware of the ruling, so I wanted a wire service that was sure to reach the traditional media. But, the story was also very online friendly so I wanted to reach bloggers.

In this particular situation, I chose Marketwire. But, if this had been a keyword campaign for a business-to-business firm with less news value but a long shelf life I would have picked PRWeb.