Les revenants

Trop drôle : j'ai échangé quelques courriels avec un des profs mentionnés ci-dessous suite à la publication de mon billet d'hier. Ce gentleman sudiste d'un âge respectable s'interroge sur Facebook. Semblerait-il que ses étudiants lui expliquent que c'est le dernier cri et il veut savoir si j'y suis.

Et comme les historiens sont de nature des créatures dotés d'une curiosité insatiable .. je m'attends à y voir sa binette dans un avenir rapproché.

PR history nerds unite

I came to PR by way of History - my undergrad and graduate university studies are in a field which my professors assured me would lead me to great things and provide me with the rigorous discipline needed to accomplish pretty much anything. I'm not sure about the discipline, but cranking out weekly 30 page history papers was certainly a good foundation for what I do now. Besides, having a solid cultural background and knowledge of what has come before helps me make the kind of links that help me help my clients make informed strategic choices.

So for all you history buffs out there, the best of both worlds: an online museum of PR history.

How exciting is that?

Check it out here

Bonus points to whoever can give me the name of uncle of the father of modern PR? (Try saying that 10 times fast). Explains a lot, actually.

So, professors Emery, Simpson, Kellow, Fahmy-Eid, Linteau and Bernard .. this one's for you. Merci, pour tout.

Ghost blogging: the peanut gallery wades in

Ok, so it's a beautiful summer morning, but the weight of my promise to write about ghost blogging is getting heavier, so before heading out to Jean Talon Market, I've decided to go on the record:

Ghost blogging. Thumbs down.

From a strictly mercantilistic point of view, I should be all for ghost blogging. I mean, educating my clients about the power of social media and then letting them have a go at it without reaping the financial rewards sounds like a bad business model. Really, if I were a 'good' business person, I would be accepting all those requests to ghost blog instead of contenting myself with the odd strategic consulting fee that might come my way as I hold my client's hand through seemingly treacherous waters. Or crisis management fee, should something go terribly, terribly wrong.

But my idea of being a good business person includes being a good PR professional ... and so goes beyond strictly financial considerations.

Ghost blogging doesn't sit right with me, ethically. Entering into an ongoing conversation with Monsieur-et-Madame-tout-le-monde as if I were my client is frankly kinda creepy. For me, the whole point of social media is the removal of barriers between people : between companies and their clients, for example. It is, and should remain, a direct connection.

The problem with social media, I find, is convincing a client to invest time in it. I don't actually know too many clients who would consider it a wise investment of their time to start blogging, and I'm still amassing the arguments that will be required to change their mind. Start-ups are a little easier to convince : they're used to working crazy hours for little money anyway. They're willing to sacrifice in the short term in the hopes of reaping rewards in the long term. What they want is to get their name out there. Blogging is perfect for them. More established companies? Not so much.

Clients need reassurance and so I'm slowly building up a list of clients willing to take the social media plunge and become case studies for successful social media execution. None of them are big corporate entities .. at least not yet. I'm working with Rats de Ville, a Montreal art online webzine, on the vlog front. We'll see where that takes us. In my role as Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame Director of Corporate Outreach, I'm setting up a Facebook page to promote this non-profit group's mission and activities. A blog and/or podcast may be on the horizon if that goes well. This could actually work, for this client, given that I'm on the inside -- one of a small team of consultants supporting an association that currently has a payroll of one. Wouldn't consider that ghost blogging or ghost podcasting (can one ghost podcast?!).

Ghost blogging strikes me as something along the lines of a Cyrano Syndrome - not sure what the point is of pretending you're entering into direct dialogue with your client base when someone else's fingers are on the keyboard. Lovely fingers though they might be, in the world of social media, the company president's are always the loveliest.

So to paraphrase (or maybe quote .. not sure about my memory) David Jones, from a recent edition of the InsidePR podcast : Ghost blogging. Don't do it. It's stupid.

Article of the day: Pro Bono PR and the Merits of Giving Back

Providing such corporate philanthropy is indeed good for business (helps with clients, staff retention, etc.) That's a given. However, ultimately, we should embark on such philanthropic work because we can all make an important difference.

The fit is natural. PR professionals are ideally suited to pro bono work, because, as media experts, we know how to harness the spotlight to focus the public's attention. Moreover, we are natural storytellers, and many of these stories need to be told. It's time that more people in our industry realize that they can do well by doing good.

Article here

I've set my own professional objective here. I try to donate about 10% of my consultation time to non-profit groups on an ongoing basis. Right now, I'm working with the Société de Saint Vincent de Paul de Montréal on their communications plan and image. The SSVP is a very old, very big ship to turn around (read: very conservative) and progress is slow. Over the past 3 years, I've found it rewarding to sit as a member of their communications committee, contributing to bring about positive change which is helping the association meet its financial and PR objectives. What's also been encouraging has been to bring other PR professionals on board : my colleagues over at AGC Communications provided the SSVP with additional communications expertise last year, spearheading a survey which the association is now using as a benchmark to guage public perception.

Livre du jour : Gutenberg 2.0 : le futur du livre

J'ignore si le livre est bon, mais le débat l'est, selon moi.

Après une mise en perspective historique de l'objet livre comme support, de la naissance de l'écriture à nos jours, le livre aborde les nouvelles technologies à l'oeuvre dans ces livres de nouvelle génération. Les nouveaux e-livres disponibles, les prototypes et leur prospective sont analysés. L'ouvrage se termine avec une synthèse ouverte sur les impacts et les perspectives nouvelles pour l'économie du livre.

Lorenzo Soccavo est spécialisé dans l'actualité et la prospective de l'édition. Il est déjà l'auteur de deux livres pratiques dans le domaine du livre et il a collaboré à plusieurs guides de l'édition. Il est le créateur et l'animateur du blog Nouvolivractu : nouvolivractu.cluster21.com, premier blogue francophone de veille sur les nouveaux appareils et systèmes de lecture.

Article AMPQ ici

Profil de l'auteur ici

Personnellement, j'aime bien tourner les pages ...

Divulgation d'intérêts : j'ai récemment complété un petit (très petit) contrat pour la maison d'édition ERPI.

Article du Jour: How Blogs Are Affecting Media Relations

Que vous soyez journaliste chinois ou poupoune à Beverly Hills, les blogues sont devenus pour vous une source crédible d'infos. C'est ce que démontrent un nombre grandissant d'études portant sur les médias sociaux.

Sally Falkow en fait le résumé et commente les nouvelles tactiques qui s'imposent.

Article ici

Mea Culpa

Vous me pardonnerez, j'espère, mais franchement il fait beaucoup trop beau et je suis trop en manque de soleil pour passer énormément de temps devant l'ordi de ces jours-ci. Je profite donc du beau temps pour me balader avec mon nouveau iPod. Je m'amuse à écouter Mitch Joel, David Jones et Terry Fallis : et je vous promets que c'est tellement plus plaisant de le faire allongée sur une chaise longue dans le jardin ou en choississant mes artichots au Marché Jean Talon à 13h un mercredi après-midi pendant que les bureaux du centre-ville débordent.

Si vous n'écoutez pas ces deux podcasts (Six Pixels of Separation et InsidePR) vous manquez qqchose. Ça vaut le détour.

Je ne vous ai pas oublié, par contre. Le débat entourant le Ghost blogging fait rage depuis quelques jours et, d'un côté, je regrette ne pas avoir pris le temps de commenter le phénomène.

Mais entre toi et moi? Too bad. Les rayons du soleil sont plus tentants que ceux de mon écran d'ordi.

Bref: Ghost blogging? Je suis contre et en même temps...

Toujours compliquée, la Michelle, j'te dis. À suivre.

A+


Ghost Blog
A ghost blog is a blog run and managed by an anonymous author(s). A ghost blog can also be a blog written by a company or person on behalf of another company or person.

Example: person B is blogging on behalf of person A

A ghost blog may also be a blog about or dedicated to apparitions and poltergeists.

There has been much debate about whether ghost blogs should be taken seriously and whether they can hurt the blogger’s overall reputation in the blogosphere.

Ghost blogging

Been thinking about ghost blogging from an ethic standpoint recently, since a respected colleague brought it up on Facebook (or was it Twitter)? Will write my thoughts on the practice in the next couple of days, but until then, this cartoon is priceless:

Article of the Day : David Henderson

Click of a Button Crisis Communications: New Media Makes Mass Notification Essential

If there is an essential element in today's approach to crisis communications—in addition to clear, accurate and consistent messages—it is the need for instantaneous delivery of important and often-critical information to audiences, sometimes to large numbers of people. What better way to communicate while underscoring transparency and responsiveness? It is akin to that long talked about concept of reaching the world at the click of a button.

Article here

Invitation du jour : CNW et les médias sociaux

Savez vous ce qui est plaisant en entreprise? On ne niaise pas avec la puck.

Invitation au Petit déjeuner avec les médias CNW Telbec - 7h 30 23 mai 2007 au Loews

Médias sociaux : êtes-vous à la page?

Conférenciers: Marc Snyder et Michel Dumais.

Les blogueurs discutent-ils de votre entreprise? Pourquoi le font-ils et comment profiter de la vague?Michel Dumais et Marc Snyder vous entretiendront des facteurs sur lesquels repose l'explosion de l'importance des médias sociaux. Comment se fait-il que des outils communication qui n'existaient même pas hier sont les outils que vous aurez à utiliser demain? Quels sont les facteurs qui expliquent la croissance phénoménale des médias sociaux?Quels sont les bénéfices que vous pouvez en retirer? Quels sont les risques si vous n'y portez pas suffisamment attention? La séance vous permettra de cibler les avantages de ces sites pour votre entreprise et de bénéficier de conseils utiles sur la gestion de votre réputation virtuelle. Nous vous convions à un petit déjeuner dans le cadre duquelnous vous offrirons une visite guidée de cet univers. MM.Dumais et Snyder présenteront une conférence qui comportera de nombreux cas concrets de succès et d'échecs, ici et ailleurs.

Consulter la version html de l'invitation ici

J'y serai. A+

Étude de la semaine: Pew Internet & American Life Project

À lire quand j'aurai deux minutes (ou plus) - quelle semaine de fou!

Un sondage à grande échelle portant sur les technologies de l'information que possèdent les gens, sur la façon dont ils l’utilisent et sur ce qu’ils en pensent (d'après Canoë)

Disponible ici

Ce que d'autres en disent:

Matthew Ingram, journaliste du Globe & Mail - And while most seem to be somewhat depressed by the results of the study, I was pleasantly surprised to find how *many* people engage in “Web 2.0″-type activities. The study says that when asked about things that include blogging, posting comments to a blog, uploading photos or video, creating webpages or mixing and mashing content from other sites, 37 per cent of those surveyed said they had done at least one of those things. What’s not to like about a number like that? I was expecting the proportion to be much smaller — along the lines of the emerging 1-9-90 rule of thumb for social media, where about one per cent of people create content, 9 or 10 per cent consume it and about 90 per cent couldn’t care less about it. I find the fact that almost 40 per cent of people blog, upload photos, post comments and so on cause for considerable optimism.

Jason Chervokas - If 37% of American adults have engaged in at least some Web 2.0 behavior, that means 83 million* people over 18 have either posted to a blog, tagged a photo, or watched a YouTube video. That’s a big number. Also, the numbers for podcasting in the report are atrocious, even among the most elite users. If podcasting where a stock, I’d short it.

Ed. Note: Population des États-Unis, selon le CIA factbook : 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.) - donc 37% serait plutôt 111 421 780 individus, tout âge confondu, mais enfin - c'est pour dire que ça en fait du monde!

Plus près de chez nous, Canöe (en collaboration avec l'AP) positionne l'étude ainsi: Vaste potentiel inexploité chez les Américains.

Quote of the Day: Jason Calacanis

Today's quote of the day comes to us courtesy of Jason Calacanis, who you can hear a iMedia Connection podcasted keynote speech here. Quote @ 35:35.

Having a conversation is hard work. Putting up billboards is not as hard. Marketing is turning into, like, going to a very sophisticated dinner party. That's how you have to look at it. And when you go to a sophisticated dinner party, you don't, like, come in the middle of the dinner party and uh, Bush is an idiot! Bush is an idiot! Bush is an idiot! Bush is an idiot! Bush is a .. y'know .. like if somebody did that everyone at the table would be, like: Oh my god. Like who is this person? Why did you invite them to the dinner party? But people do that on message boards. Or on people's blogs. You know they just come in screaming and going crazy. And some of this marketing is like that too. Think of it like a dinner party: you come in, you introduce yourself or you're introduced, preferably, you sit, and you listen. And you figure out who's at the table.

Jason Calacanis is the co-founder and former CEO of Weblogs, Inc., which was sold to AOL in November of 2005. Upon joining AOL, Calacanis was named senior vice president where he became general manager for the Netscape brand. He's currently an "Entrepreneur in Action" at Sequoia Capital.

His blog here.

Good thing I'm a whiz at dinner parties.

Article du jour: Phénomène Second Life

Un petit aperçu du débat auquel auront droit les participants de la conférence Webcom le 10 mai prochain.

Article ici

Je suis déchirée : Webcom ou Mesh? J'avoue que Toronto chante comme une sirène dans mon oreille en ce moment ...

____

and on another note:

Facebook apporte de belles surprises. Des échos d'un passé lointain.

Autrefois, lorsqu'on perdait quelqu'un de vue, on pensait à lui de temps en temps mais on n'espérait plus le voir. Maintenant? L'ami d'un ami d'un ami qui a un profil sur Facebook connaît le petit-fils d'un tel qui était son voisin lorsqu'il habitait avec son cousin en face du Parc Lafontaine. Je pense qu'on peut maintenant déclarer avec certitude que le monde est petit. Maintenant, si seulement Facebook pouvait nous aider à remonter dans le temps ..

I'm reading Maggie Fox in a ROB article about Twitter

If this were Twitter, instead of my blog, my standard title for this kind of thing (Article of the Day: Twitter in ROB) would be something like what's printed above.

Yesterday, everyone would have known that I'd spent the day procrastinating, booking my communal garden, negotiating a new contract, going to the bank (deposit! yay!), fretting about my website ravamp, talking to my brilliant 6-month old nephew Caleb in Vancouver, and eating chicken stir-fry for dinner. That I'd gotten a tad nostalgic watching a wedding on ER and shaken off the blues with a buddy, stuffing condoms, lube, and information about HIV into tiny plastic bags for distribution in bars in the Village (long story, don't ask).

Facebook offers a similar gadget.

I've tried both. At best I find it amusing, at worst I find it weird. This idea of sharing details of your life by virtual post-it note smacks of the generation that has no qualms about using their cellphone to dump their girlfriend, while riding a crowded city bus. Then again, 32 to 39 year old women are probably not Twitter's target market (and no, I'm not telling you where I fall within that demographic).

Our good friend Maggie Fox, over at Social Media Group and the Social Media Collective, is quoted in Shane Schick's article on Twitter and its business applications.

As everyone learned with IM, and e-mail before that, you cannot close the floodgates. This application will get in whether you like it or not.
-- Maggie Fox

Article here.

Should you be curious as to why Caleb-the-six-month-old-nephew deserves the title of 2007 Most Brilliant Baby, well, besides the fact that we share the same genes, get this: Bébé Caleb 'talks' to me when I call by slamming his hand down on the telephone touch pad to beep at me when I coo at him over speakerphone. Bonjour, Caleb gets me 2 beeps. Bon-jour. Brilliant. He'll be on Twitter within the year. Guaranteed.

Search engine of the decade : Google

I love Google. Ask any of my friends. I've gushed to them all over the years about my new best friend. Sometimes I think my love for this search engine is unnatural. I tell myself it's the historian in me -- the chick who loves research and discovery. As time goes on, I realize it's the actually the PR chick in me, thrilled by the possibilities.

There you have it: in my relationship with Google, I'm like a 16 year old cheerleader with a crush on the captain of the football team.

Interesting article on the relationship between PR and Google by Greg Miller, President, Marketcom PR, available here.

Excerpts:

What does it mean for us as PR and marketing professionals? Here are the new facts of life in the Google universe:

-There really is no such thing as a secret anymore.
-Your key audiences get information about your company as quickly as you do.
-(From) Google's perspective, your corporate information is a commodity, with no more inherent value than any other information its spiders pick up in their Web trolling.
-The media is now using Google as a primary news source—and often the only one—in its coverage about you and your company.
-Blogs can report—or distort—information about you, your company and your products in ways that are nearly impossible to prevent or, once posted, take down.

What can PR professionals and marketers do? At a minimum, you need to consider these three things:

-Do an immediate and thorough audit of how your company and its products are represented in the search engine database.
-Start a holistic campaign that surfaces good things about you, your company and your products. Use press releases, media coverage, speaking events and bylined articles to get the word out.
-Leverage the power of the new media. Can a well-placed item on YouTube help sell more product? Can a sponsored blog support your litigation strategy? Is it time to think about Google Ads? And don't forget the piece of new media real estate you directly control—your company's website.

Quote of the day: Peter Verrengia

Peter Verrengia, president of Communications Consulting Worldwide, a global business unit of Fleishman-Hillard was recently quoted as saying, "PR people need to be careful that they don't spend so much time defending the label of their activities that they miss an opportunity. Marketers have had the advantage in the past, but the direct connection to the customer is no longer in their province."

The article quoting him isn't half bad either. Available here.