PAN Communications prSPEAK

I’m very excited about a benefit PAN is bringing back to its employees! With the realization that the Holidays are just around the corner and that each and every one of us lead busy lives, PAN is giving each employee an extra day off to shop, bake, decorate or participate in any holiday activity they choose! Each employee has been assigned to a (Friday) day off over the next three weeks to enjoy this benefit, and each has been carefully chosen so all our account teams are well balanced. PAN’s team of Directors decided to bring back this benefit as a token of their appreciation during the holiday season. Kudos to our awesome employees! And thank you to PAN for their generosity!

Happy Holidays!

It’s no secret the PR and marketing industries are rapidly changing with the proliferation of social media and networking sites.  With this change come opportunities as well as challenges that we, as PR professionals, are embracing.

While some businesses (and industries) still approach social media, Twitter, and the blogosphere with reservation and sometimes trepidation (just think Mommy bloggers and the headache over the Motrin ad controversy), these outlets and forums are actually terrific ways to gauge customer interest, satisfaction, and engage with target audiences closely. 

And now, Forrester Research is out with its Interactive Marketing Forecast for the next five years, confirming the growth and monetary backing we can expect to see in social media marketing.  Forrester is estimating social media marketing to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums. 

With this burgeoning interest comes the need to understand the impact of all this money being spent on social media marketing.  Did the messages resonate? Were consumers and customers engaged? Excited? Or even angry?  With so much opportunity to engage with the “right” audiences online and so much information being published, businesses are having a tough time grasping the real information from the fleeting comments. 

This is where social media monitoring technologies, like Lexalytics (one of our clients at PAN), comes in.  These technologies can help companies ensure that their business’ reputation isn’t in jeopardy because of what is being written online. And now these technologies can be easily integrated with PR and marketing campaigns to measure success – and areas for improvement.  

This technology, which is more accurate and comprehensive than human analysis, can help businesses analyze blog and Twitter content, etiquette for responding to stories, and how to best leverage the information that is already out there.  Because human analysis is still essential to the process, the technology is enhancing it and allowing PR and marketing pros to decipher the areas for improvement as well as outreach faster, with more accuracy, and with greater analysis.

Within online networks and communities are individuals who will not all feel exactly the same way, so having the ability to extract meaning from all the noise — especially in a crisis situation — and measure extremes of opinion makes a critical difference in important business decisions.  After all, being equipped with information and analysis about what sentiment is living inside tweets, blog posts, and more, is crucial in being able to make sense of all the feedback and live conversations.

And this isn’t just for crisis situations. Being able to determine what areas of market education might be lacking in one area will help companies proactively engage with the right audiences to share information and interact.

As we become a nation of over 20 million bloggers, social media enthusiasts, and citizen journalists, being able to make sense of all the information and online engagement will quickly become a bigger task than human tracking and analysis can handle, so being equipped with the know-how and technology to bring this task down to size for PR and marketing purposes will quickly become most important.

In the past couple of months I have been asking friends and family for suggestions on purchasing my first smartphone for personal use.  “Well, I have the BlackBerry Curve, which I love.  Definitely don’t get the iPhone, you can’t instant message or use it abroad,” one co-worker advised.  “No, no, no, the Blackberry Curve erases all your text messages and the speaker quality is terrible for music,” my father countered. Even my hairdresser offered advice: “Palm Pre’s the way to go. It’s the best for browsing the web.”

 Well, I am not planning on traveling to Europe soon, I have no interest in instant messaging or blasting music from my phone and browsing the web from a two inch screen makes me dizzy- that’s just me.  So, here I am back at square one with a laundry list of contradicting recommendations from unqualified sources.

A recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey indicates that consumers trust recommendations from “known people” first and foremost.  Well, that’s true.  Anywhere from Doctor Referrals to counsel on the best Local Italian restaurant, your list of “known people” is your first source.  But is it always the best?  Asking a handful of family and friends for tips and suggestions might get you the most biased answers of all, each based off of single experiences with relatively little or no expertise.   Although something has to be said for “in-the-trenches” consumer opinions, where do we go when we’re looking for knowledgeable, firsthand, impartial, targeted answers? When advice from your boldly opinionated friends and family leave with even more questions than with which you started, where do you turn?

 As The Nielsen study shows, when we look for answers outside our personal networks, we put trust in faceless consumers on the web.  What is notable about the 70% of respondents trusting online consumer posts is the other sources that the percentage beats out. Over formal advertising, a multibillion dollar industry, we put our trust in the words of complete strangers.  With consumer opinions posted online as the number two source of trusted advertising, it’s clear that the power of social media continues to grow and the term “word of mouth” is no longer to be taken literally. 

The online consumer dialogue consists of industry experts and newcomers alike, giving us the ability to either immerse ourselves in a larger industry-wide conversation or pickup quick, simple answers.  Sifting through blog posts and various responses, pros and cons, multiple experiences etc. force us to become more informed consumers. The ability to seek out fellow consumers who are also considered “experts” on any desired topic, is also what makes social media an extremely powerful tool in terms of consumer decision making.

No offense to Dad or the folks over at Heavenly Hair, but I’m taking my smartphone questions to the web.  I’ll consult the consumer experts, get involved in the online dialogue and make an informed confident decision about the device that’s right for me.  

 Now if only I could find a smartphone smart enough to make that decision for me…

Mommy blogger community site Momdot.com got exactly what it was after when it announced a P.R. Blackout Challenge to its community of mommy bloggers: more publicity.  Smart.  But it’s a red herring: something done to wave you off the scent; a diversion for reasons other than what’s been stated, and the entity that stands to gain the most from Momdot’s appeal to moms to forego working with PR people for a week, is Momdot itself.

I’m in PR; I’ll get that out right up front so there’s no misunderstanding about which side of this debate interests me more.  But, I also don’t presently represent any companies that have a stake in the audiences mommy bloggers’ attract, so I’m not part of the problem which has led to Momdot’s call it quits on posting reviews, give-aways, recommending something, etc. (unless I’m guilty by industry association).   I’m just fascinated by what does and doesn’t make good PR, and this PR Blackout business makes for good PR.

The Momdot appeal is not misguided; I think it was made with the best of intentions.  But what strikes me is the rationale:

Truthfully, I am waiting for the shit storm of social media suicide to hit. Meaning that women are so incredibly stressed with caring for their families, their friendships, and now their online reputations, blogs, companies and obligations, that they are at the edge, the brink, of a real disaster.

Hyperbole?  I find it hard to believe that successful (successful in any definition that suits your particular situation) women would be “on the edge of disaster” if they continue down some road dictated to them–which is the implication–by obligations they’ve made to people interested in getting in front of their blogs’ audiences.

Where’s the free will?  This sort of leaves you thinking these women aren’t in control of what goes up on their own blogs.  If you read through the comments as to who is and isn’t participating in the self-imposed blackout you’ll see some great, measured responses but also a fair amount of piling-on.  I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t make a special note to say just about all of the comments about PR folks are positive (with the exception of not wanting to talk to us for a week) .  The relationship can’t be so bad, can it?

It’s easy to say no to PR; it happens to us every…day…all…day.  Believe it.  Don’t get the impression there is a ton of pressure on you to do something nice for a company that would like to speak with your audience–it’s YOUR audience.  They read you because when you decided to put your thoughts down on a blog you struck a nerve and created a connection with the person on the other side of your monitor.  That’s your connection, mommy blogger, and you’re the gatekeeper.

If it makes sense for you to take a week and not answer any come-ons from PR people, great. But if, as a result of working with PR you’ve been offering things to your readers that they like and you feel rewarded by doing so, why would you stop?  That doesn’t benefit you – but all this talk about a blackout does benefit Momdot.  Will they take down the PR Contact link at the top of their homepage during the blackout?  I’ll be interested to see.  Momdot also hosts a lot of ads (probably not for free) which presumably pays some bills–will those disappear too?

Update: blogher.com weighs in and does a better job than us of articulating how weird and unnecessary this PR blackout thing is.

Looks like Jay Leno may get spurned in his hometown market.

With Boston’s WHDH-TV Channel 7 refusing to air Leno’s new talk show this fall in the 10 p.m. slot, a battle is brewing between 7 and NBC Television Network. On the one hand, you’ve got 7’s Owner Ed Ansin complaining that Leno’s show won’t be effective in prime time. He’s also worried he’s going to lose a ton of money, and points out that his Miami Fox affiliate does great at the 10 p.m. slot. On the other hand, you’ve got NBC threatening to strip Channel 7 of its NBC affiliation.

The battle is far from over. And no doubt the lawyers are about to enter the fray, which will result in a protracted legal battle. While this is clearly an economic issue for Channel 7,  it also points out a larger truth:  There’s nothing like a pitched battle with big names to draw ratings for your own station. Picture this– Breathless Channel 7 hound dog Dan Hausle, live in the newsroom, reporting how his own station is thumbing its nose at the network. There would be report upon report stating how 7’s very existence is being threatened. Ratings, anyone?

We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out in the coming days and weeks.  But there’s another pressing question I’d ask Jay Leno himself. So, Jay, how does it feel to be dissed in your hometown?

Recent technological advances have provided us with unlimited access to information and the opportunity to communicate with anyone at any time. The Internet, instant messaging programs, and smartphones have revolutionized our culture and the way our society interacts. However, the question remains as to whether our social skills have been enhanced, or harmed by the innovations of the information age.

Much of what makes us human- our gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, enunciation, etc.- are often lost or misunderstood through electronic communication. With the sense of anonymity we feel typing onto a screen, our words become depersonalized, misrepresented, and they can easily be misconstrued. We create virtual personalities that are often more recognizable to our peers than our true personality.

We can essentially live out our lives sitting in front of a computer screen; we can order our groceries online, communicate with friends, stay updated on world issues, sustain a job, learn a language, and virtually satisfy a dream by creating a Second Life. While the prevalence of these advances certainly has benefits, is it ever truly as genuine as the real thing? Where has face-to-face human interaction gone?

Even our emotions have become compilations of punctuation signs – , <3 , >:-(

How long before our soul, the core of what makes us distinctively human, becomes misplaced in a binary world of 0’s and 1’s?

There have been many articles on PRWeek that have discussed the important of blogging and general social media outlets influencing the decisions made by consumers.  One article in particular, “Study finds social media equally influential to conventional outlets” (http://www.prweekus.com/Study-finds-social-media-equally-influential-to-conventional-outlets/article/126482/) written by Aarti Shah, talks about how user-generated sites hold equal importance to traditional media sources when considering technology purchases. Now that the internet-driven world is inherent, companies are making sure that they are reaching out to their audiences in ways that they weren’t even thinking about before.  This new way of targeting audiences, buying consumer products and even getting familiar with the messages that the companies are trying to sell proves that it is important to be aware of what is going on in society since ideas are constantly being created.  With blogging and social media websites being “in” right now, I wonder if the hype will still be as rampant five years from now or if a whole new kind of service that reaches out to the public will replace it. I guess only time will tell. 

Over the past few weeks our class has engaged in several discussions about the rising impact of social media.  As many of us know, social media is more popular today than ever before. It is the home to an ever-growing and changing online community.  There are a variety of advantages to using social media.  For starters, it is a great way to receive a diverse amount of information.  Social media broadens horizons which the mainstream media have no control over.  For example, Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter are are open forums where people can express themselves and their opinions however they please.  Social media is also a great way to broaden one’s network and connect with a large amount of people.  For example, social media is a fantastic way to advertise to niche audiences as well as spread aware and create support around an issue.  A primary example of this was seen last week when AT&T utilized their Facebook pages to stream Lil Wayne’s new single.  AT&T was able to generate support through emails and text messages which created buzz and drove consumers to their Facebook pages.  The result was a success driving a younger audience, who was their target, to AT&T’s facebook page, connecting Lil’ Wayne to their brand.  Networking opportunities are also found through social media as well as the blossoming of relationships between people who may have never known each other. 

Although there are clearly many advantages to using and exploring social media, it is important to understand and be aware that there are also innumerable disadvantages of social media.  Many critics of social media argue that oftentimes, information can be misinterpreted and messages can be skewed.  Because anyone can take part in social media and post on a blog, Web sites and blogs will become cluttered with excesses of information which can be inaccurate and negative.  There is also a lack of security and protection on many social media Web sites so things can easily get out of control.  However, regardless of the positive or negative aspects of social media, one thing is for sure and that is that it is an increasingly popular and innovative industry.  Consequently, visitors to social media Web sites and blogs should be careful when reading and posting information.  Consumers and contributors should always be cautious because frequently mistakes and falsehoods are written in addition to the fact that once it’s up it is for everybody’s eyes, and this should not be taken lightly.

In the recent inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama, he said something in his speech that truly struck me, and ironically reminded me of a recent issue that I have been pondering over in my head. Obama said, “For the world has changed and we must change with it.”

It seems as though there is a reluctance to change though and a growing generational divide, especially among baby boomer generation and those prior, where the new is shunned.  For example, some believe that those of Generation X and Y have adapted a technological way of thinking, causing us to lose the nature of our intellect. In a conversation with my family over the holiday break, someone mentioned how frustrating young people can be about communicating – “Why can’t you just pick up a phone instead of sending an e-mail or a text message (source-personal conversation)?”

There was a recent news story on Sunday Morning about a published book entitled “Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium” (author-Dick Meyer). Essentially, it talked about yearning for the simplicities of the past and why today’s world is at a disadvantage. Some of the things mentioned were bringing back the romance of dating, or the elegance of ballroom dancing.

As a youth on the verge of graduating college, this generational generalization is somewhat offensive. While I agree that life might have been easier before we had eight different ways of communicating with someone, I think all of the wonderful changes things like technology has done for us. We may dance differently than other generations and embrace rap lyrics, but let’s face it, we need to listen to the words of our newly appointed President, “for the world has changed and we must change with it.”

What are your thoughts?

            My name is Antoinette and I am a graduate student at Syracuse University. As I prepare to enter the professional world in a couple of months, I must admit that I’m very nervous, yet excited for what is in store for me.  Before coming to Newhouse, I knew nothing about Public Relations, since my majors in undergrad were English and Africana Studies. But I’ve learned so much this past semester and I’m positive I will learn even more between now and May when I graduate.

  I’m interested in learning about PR Agencies because I have repeatedly been told that if you don’t know exactly what direction you want to go in, then it will be ideal to start working in an agency (vs. corporate).  Of course, this is the reason why I enrolled in this class. I need to know what agencies are all about, what makes it different from the corporate world and whether or not I can see myself working in that environment.  So far, I’m very excited about my choice in enrolling in PRL 530.  Professor Nardone seems very welcoming, friendly and funny and I know I’ll definitely be learning a lot from him and the other students who seem interesting based on their past internships and experiences.  I know I wouldn’t be able to work in an environment where I did the same things every day, and it was very reassuring to learn that with agencies, there is always something new happening.  I need excitement, I need a constant challenge, and so far, I think I’m on the right track with having an interest in agencies.