The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
Just this week the New York Times wrote about how Craigslist is affecting the revenues of mass media. How did this come about?
"We think we have a really good culture of trust and that's because without consciously doing so, we have stood by some core-shared values. The fundamental value is that we feel you should treat people like you want to be treated, which means that you provide good customer service and it means that you should have a "live and let live attitude," and it means that now and then you give the other person a break. These are values that most everyone in the world shares." Craig Newmark
In fact, the woes of the newspaper industry are due to the fact that the Internet made it easy for us to get online, connect and talk to each other. Craig was just smart enough, early enough to see the possilbiities.
Travel is another industry that really got this clue right between the eyes. While some whine on about Tripadvisor, and the fact that people are taking candid shots of hotel rooms and posting them online, others saw the opportunity in connecting people and letting them talk about their travel experiences.
American Express recently launched Members Know Travel, a site where AMEX members can share ideas, experiences and travel advice. And they tied in their print magazine - members can talk to experts and editors from Travel + Leisure magazine, owned by American Express Publishing Corporation. The site also links to AmericanExpress.com/Travel where cardmembers can browse and book the latest offers.
Health content is another area where connecting people pays off. Sites that allow sufferers of a particular disease to share experiences and ways to cope have sprung up all over - and some companies are savvy enough to sponsor or support these efforts.
Even the staid banking sector has seen the light. BofA has a site for small business owners. You don't have to be a BofA customer to join.
"Small business owners need a place where they can go to learn from one another, share their experiences and get answers to the questions that will help them better run their business," said Mark Hogan, president of Small Business Banking for Bank of America.
PR Lessons: The fact that people are connected and having conversations with each other doesn't mean you can't talk to them too. It just changes the way you do it.
Social media marketing is very effective - you just have to get it right.
Working with bloggers is a new media relations 'must'
Even as bloggers rise in prominence and frequently set the national press corps' coverage agenda - they typically demand to be approached differently than their mainstream media (MSM) counterparts.
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PR University
Bulldog Reporter
We know now that bloggers are influencing the news. But the trick is to find the righ bloggers that are influencing the news in your filed. And once you've found them, how best to approach and interact with them.
We've all seen those 'egg on the face' blog posts when bloggers out a PR person for doing it wrong.
Social media does have steep learning curve. But it's one that absolutely has to mastered, if you're to succeed in PR today.
PR University has an audio conference with top bloggers this week. "Blog Pitching Update for PR: Top Tech Online Influencers Reveal Advanced Blog Relations Practices" could be just the leg-up you need.
The panelists for this audio conference are:
- Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, "D: All Things Digital;" Author, "BoomTown"
- Tom Foremski, Publisher, "Silicon Valley Watcher;" Board Member, Research Fellow, Society for New Communications Research
- Neville Hobson, Blogger, "NevilleHobson.com;" Social Media Consultant; Co-Presenter, "For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report"
- John Biggs, Editor in Chief, "CrunchGear;" Author, "Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals and Scammers in the Internet Age;" Publisher, "BigWideLogic"
They're going to speak on everything from PR pitches bloggers love to hate, to tips for using Twitter and Facebook, to the unvarnished truth about embargoes in today's 24/7 blogosphere.
Don't be put off by the Tech label. These bloggers are giving tips that apply to any space.
Reading Twitter today I saw a reference to this blog post by Clay Shirkyon.
It's a lightly edited transcription of a speech he gave at the Web 2.0 conference in April.
He compares the early days of the industrial revolution to the early days of TV, when we spent endless hours watching sitcoms.
"If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom."
Then came the Internet and the ability to produce and share content online.
To the question - where do people find the time to produce all this online content, he figures that if everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing content online, that one percent would be enough to do 100 Wikipedia-sized prjoects every year.
"If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen? I'm betting the answer is yes," says Shirkyon.
More B-to-B marketers have been using email,SEO-organic and webinars for more than 3 years than BtoC
Although many people view Web 2.0 - blogs feeds, social networks etc - as a BtoC play, the study on BtoB use of online marketing and PR tools presented at the Association of National Advertiser's (ANA) B-to-B Conference last year found that in fact far more BtoB companies had embraced, and stuck to, these new tools over the last three years.
And it would seem that B-to-B marketers that see these online platforms as PR tools - Brand Building is most frequently accomplished through blogs, second life, social networks, viral videos, wiki and their own websites.
Lead generation is more often accomplished through email, online, SEO, SEM, and video on demand
Blogs, podcasts and webinars are being used to generate Customer Loyalty.
The study showed that there is quite a big difference in effectiveness betweent B-to-B and B-to-C companies. While both have seen success from their own website, B-to-C companies have seen significantly more success from paid key word searches, online ads, and social networks, B-to-B companies have seen success in webinars. Which makes perfect sense.
BtoB companies are much more likely to devote a higher percentatge of their marketing budget to new media platforms - as much as 20 percent.
And the biggest concern about new media for both BtoC and BtoB marketers?
Lack of experience, closely followed by an inability to prove ROI.
You can really only learn about social media by doing social media. It's not a fad. It's not going away. If you are in marketing or PR you need to learn how to do this. Social media conferences abound. But in depth social media training programs over a period of time are not so easy to find.
Clue #1
