I was chatting up with a colleague, who is a part of our four member media team in our office, on blogging and the new PR.

The media team, as we know, plays a big role in large PR agencies where events and crisis happen on multiple clients almost every day. While the client servicing teams need to concentrate on a whole lot of things in servicing an account, the media team can just focus on building relationships with key journalists across the country. So in times of crisis and big events, they can leverage on their networks to value add to the client servicing team.

Now the part that we were discussing was that the media team should now look at PR 2.0 seriously and gear up to equip themselves with knowledge of the blogosphere and start building relationships with key bloggers across the country across verticals and subjects. And why not. Media teams have been building relationships with journalists in the print media, tv, online media, and now social media should be a natural extension. Talk about digitally enhanced media teams.

So are you a media relations expert? If yes, my next questions could be ‘how many bloggers do you know well?’ Knowing and engagibng with bloggers is no longer the perogative of the client servicing person alone.

My question is can the media teams of today adapt themselves to the new challenge (or opportunity), or will  there be a new class of blogger relations teams in agencies? For now, there is just the socal media team that do everything.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of witnessing a PR crisis spelling out in the western blogosphere. It all started with Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker posting a status on Twitter about a new PR blacklist wiki she has created. She was apparently tired of PR folks sending her irrelevant emails and decided to filter out all emails coming from specific domains of PR agencies.

One of our PR 2.0 guys, Brian Solis replied to her saying ’some of us are trying to help’. Brian posted another tweet soon after - Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations. Meanwhile Steve Rubel joined in by twitting - @ginatrapani Appreciate your concerns about PR spam but is it really that black and white? Finally Gina tweeted again - PR folks, thanks for your thoughtful replies. Here’s why I filter entire domains. She pointed to this post, which I am sure you will love visiting and reading about the journalist complaining about receiving irrelevant emails from PR people.

All this drama was happening in my Twitterfox right inside by browser. Quite entertaining. While all this time we profess to be PR 2.0 experts, we ended up on the PR blacklist.

So guys, lets try not repeat this in India. Rajesh recently wrote about some PR agency sending some kind of email that he had to sigh. Press releases are not wanted so much anymore by the media today, and especially not by the bloggers. And the copy and paste pitch email mass mailing has to stop. I remember in my early days, I used to send press releases to editors and follow up as well. Lucky me. Phew! The editors were kind enough to day ‘thanks, I will see to it’. I also remember a colleague who had the email addresses of about 500 journalists and he used to mail every press conference invite to all of them.

About journalists, I know one, for whom, in her junior years, I had asked questions to my own client on her behalf because she couldn’t ask any in an interview meeting. Now she is in a hot financial daily and doesn’t seem to recognise me. I also know a journalist who was working in a financial daily with a big shot ‘I hate PR’ attitude, but after she shifted to a daily tabloid recently, she is today the one sending interview requests to PR agencies. Those who used to hate PR yesterday are in corporate communications departments today.

So people, no use trying to wash the dirty laundry in public. Lets just try to make it work together.

Oh about the rest of the weekend, my wife had pretty pink butterfly tattoo done from a parlour at Priya complex in south Delhi. The experience was great (will post a video soon on my personal blog) but funny as well. Funny because the tattoo maker was trying very hard to be cool. Tattoos are cool. So tattoo makers have to be super cool you see.

Now let me shut up.

One last thing, just in case, I tweet at http://twitter.com/palinn

These days a number of media publications in India have mentioned in their stories that corporates are shying away from blogging because of negative comments, besides others. Let me try to give my point of view why the fear is unfounded.

Before that, let’s revisit a bit on why should a corporate blog? There have been numerous postings on this and I don’t want to repeat much. But primarily, it’s because that a blog can be an effective medium to engage with an organisation’s stakeholders, which in turn provide priceless insights on what their opinions are on that particular organisations and what their expectations are. A blog can also be a good medium to increase brand visibility and attract business leads.

Many global companies have benefitted from blogging. We can take the example of Microsoft and how Robert Scoble has helped give a human face to the software giant. According to one blog post whose url I have lost, ‘General Motor’s FastLane blog delivered an estimated USD 410,470 worth of customer insight and marketing at an approximate cost of USD 255,675. This is a return on investment of 67% according to Forrester Research’. Sun encourages its employees to blog and to use their blogs as a collaboration platform with outside developers. Dell has been using its blog for customer support. We also have Boeing whose blog written by its CEO is very popular.

In India, while some start up companies have adopted blogging, many of established companies that are consider to be the face of India Inc., excepting a few, haven’t. Those that have adopted blogging include companies like Infosys, TCS, Rediff, Milagrow, HCL, Cleartrip, Gridstone, Frito-Lay, and Naukri.

So now coming back to our point of discussion, let’s remember that for any corporation, receiving a negative feedback from customers or business partners is not a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to the blogosphere. How many times have we written letters to the editors of newspapers giving our client’s point of view on a particular negative reportage. How many times have we engaged with customers who have lodged complaints at consumer forums and at courts for unsatisfactory services meted out to them? But do we stop engaging with the media or the customers for fear of getting negative feedback? We don’t.

Even if we get a negative comment, there is no need to panic and pack up the blogging tools. We need to ask ourselves what is the basis of that comment? If it has a valid reason and what it says is factually true, then there must be a valid answer to that also. If we have wronged, we should be willing to say sorry. Besides, negative comments are not always bad.

Now if a negative comment is a personal attack or without any substantial base, then it can be moderated. There can be a comment policy on the blog.

Let’s ask ourselves now where these personal unfounded negative comments will come from. Not likely from the responsible bloggers. Let’s admit that many bloggers do practice self-censorship. I am a blogger but it doesn’t mean I can write anything and everything that’s not true. My and my blog’s reputation is at stake. Therefore let’s remember that any responsible blogger wouldn’t come out and try to engage in a dirty fight without any valid reason.

Foul comments will most likely come from trolls who get a kick from lambasting any organisation or person. But even when there is troll attack, simply ignoring those particular comments would send out a message. Others reading it will also understand that.

However, if your product is bad, whether you are blogging or not, the negative commentary will come from other blogs. If you have a blog already and you are engaging in a dialogue with many people in the blogosphere, it becomes much easier to reply back and give your point of view.

What do you say? Shall we engage?

Picture credit: Challenge of corporate blogging at ConversationsMatter (I couldn’t help using this)

If you are looking at getting your self involved with the social media marketing. These 7 Cs should come in handy!!

C #1 - Context

First you need to understand the context that you will be dealing with. This could be in the form of any social media platform. But before you start engaging with them, you need to understand who they are and more importantly what is the motivation that is binding them together, socially. Example could be pure passion for technology or Bollywood or even communication that has led one individual to pursue on the path of blogging.

C #2 - Communicate

Intention to communicate - if you do not have a intention, then you might as well. Just do a cut, copy, paste job and spam the comments section of the bloggers. That is it, then your brand is at the wrath and  mercy of the bloggers. Do not try to push your marketing messages across in the social media, it might just do more harm than good.

C #3 - Conversation

You need to have a conversation , with your fellow human beings even online. My belief is that there was a time on the internet when people use to be faceless and anonymous and they use to take full advantage of it. But now these are the same people who have realised that they are not being able to handle multiple personalities. They are the same human beings. Just try to talk to them, even just greet them, they will be friends.

C #4 - Content

What does not work on the Internet is a copy. We need to be the original content providers for what we are trying to engage the Internet users into. If we copy and they find out, then our reputation online is scarred! The other element to the content is that we need to have contextually relevant content or else again, we will be seen as spammers!! The rule is customise your messages according to the motivation of the individuals that make the communities or groups on the various social media platform.

C #5 - Create

One of the complains that have been with clients is that communications consultants are not proactive enough. Here on these multiple channels of social media, they have the endless possibilities to create original content that is being provided to them by their clients and not only prove that they are proactive, but the original content can be used (hint) in combination of text, audio, video, graphical images, animation, pictures to benefit the clients. Don’t want to actually, boost ourselves, but we do not have any form of 30-second barrier, we need not have a limitations in our word length (copy). We have the power to inform, influence and impress with the power of words.

C #6 - Collaborate

All our management gurus have spoken about team building exercises. Here we have a platform not only build, but also to maintain the relationships that have been fostered over each and every social media platform. Technology gives us the opportunity to collaborate and enhance our relationships virtually. Relationships could be built on social platform based common interests and business platforms based on professional experience or expertise that one has.

C #7 - Contacts

Contacts - This may be one of the result that you will achieve in the process of your social media marketing effort. You would enjoy being a part of the wise world where knowledge sharing and problem solving are the things to do (TTDs) on a daily basis. This is the element that builds up the social support that you receive even from the online world, which helps individuals at the need of the hour in taking action at both personal front as well as professional!!

These 7 Cs have been the culmination of observation, experience, and research in the field of social media marketing over the past 10 months. If you have any more Cs or for that matter any element that you can think of that I have missed, just let me know!!

I chanced upon an interesting format of a press release. There was no longer the ’so and so company/ person today announced…’. sentence in the opening para of the release. The content was simple and to the point. The spokesperson quotes were not merged into the rest of the content as one long story. Instead they came in bullets under their own section titled ‘Quotes’. There was a list of key points highlighted in another section called ‘Quick Facts’.

This was a format of one of the press releases issued by the Ontario government that I happened to see quite by chance browsing through my Del.icio.us subscriptions (thanks to Boyd’s post).

Now what is so interesting? While the standard opening sentence of press releases have been omitted in many press releases by government organisations and NGOs in India and it’s not new, how the Ontario Government placed their quotes and the Quick Facts were new (at least to me).

Is this just a good example of a social media news release? Or can we replicate the same for our press releases that we issue to the traditional media?

Pros: Content is to the point and well segmented that helps reading easily. One can notice the key points quickly without going through the entire document.

Cons: Journalists have to redo the draft. So if you are looking for a time-crunched editor who will quickly cut a portion of your release and put it into tomorrow’s paper, then this is not the ideal format.

What do you say? This is how one of them looked like:

So you are planning to hire an agency for your company’s social media outreach initiatives? Creating a blog, or a social networking site? Easy. An annual plan, aligned with your overall communication goals? Then it becomes tricky. The social media agencies scenario in India is sadly still in its infancy.

I decide to put down my thoughts on this after seeing a good round-up by Gaurav. It made me ponder a bit. He wrote

The Indian players offering social media marketing services can broadly be divided into three categories:

- Digital advertising agencies offering social media marketing services with a focus on virals, social network apps, social media campaigns etc.

- Public relations agencies/ practitioners offering social media services with a focus on online reputation monitoring and social media outreach etc.

- Prominent bloggers offering, basically, corporate blogging consulting services and workshops.

He has also listed down a few companies that are today engaged in providing social media outreach programmes for its clients. Now when somebody looks at this list, he might wonder which category is best suited for his company. My not-so-perfect take on this is simple:

There’s a media, and there are ways to leverage it for a corporation. In the traditional setup, a corporation would hire an advertising agency to buy ad space on that media and hire a PR firm to engage with the editorial of that media publication. I suppose it wouldn’t be so drastically different when it comes to the social media.

A digital advertising agency today would primarily look at creating blog banners, websites, and applications, while a PR 2.0 agency would look at engaging with relevant bloggers to spread its client’s messaging, and participate in social networking sites and engage with the end consumers.

Both have their weaknesses. While a digital advertising agency might not have the expertise to engage continuously with a client’s target audience, a PR 2.0 agency would lack the technical skills required to say perhaps create a Facebook application.

Now as a corporation, you would probably want to hire a firm that is good in providing both the services.  Why have two different service providers? As PR agencies have been handling your communications programs with other media, you might perhaps want to work with them and combine your traditional media approach with the new media. But is that so simple?

This can be one reason why I could imagine a lot of partnerships between digital advertising agencies and PR 2.0 firms in the near future. This might work out in a way where PR agencies are outsourcing the technical part of the job to application developers and website creators while they take care of the messaging and maintaining a particular property with the target audience.

Also it is interesting to note how PR agencies  are ramping up their processes to offer social media outreach services to their clients. An improvement from my last post - dare I say

Apart from Fleishman Hillard and Edelman that Gaurav mentioned in his post, we have  Weber Shandwick starting its social media division Screengrab in India. Then we have 2020 Media, Redifussion PR, Adfactors PR, and Genesis Burson Marsteller starting their own.

So when all these are happening, the biggest hurdle would be lack of good manpower - professionals who know how to handle the communications of a client as well as understand the social media well. That goes for the another post. Till then let’s wait and watch and smile a bit. What’s you take? Leave a comment.

Some time back, press releases were perhaps meant only for the journalists. Not so anymore.

Today the consumer is fast becoming the fourth estate. With the increasing influence of social media in our lives, we are now reading/listening and expressing our views using blogs and podcasts, watching videos on YouTube, sharing pictures on Picasa and Flickr and sharing our lives and views with the virtual world through social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook and giving updates through Twitter. Now, if we want to share some information with our friends, we just don’t send them links, we want to share the videos, photographs, audio with each other.

Now if corporates want to target this lot, the traditional plain Jane press releases are a complete no no. We use what is called the Social Media Press Release (SMPR) that enables all these sharing in an interesting manner with ease. Since this not only provides the opportunity to share information in a way our new age consumer wants but at the same time also gives enough opportunity to engage the consumer and the critics in an ongoing dialogue.

One of the companies that use the Social Media Press Release effectively and efficiently is Ford . I particularly liked the “Digital Snippet” concept in this Social Media Press release only because it is like providing information to the blogger the way he/she would like to see, share, and publish through his/her Google reader or Bloglines.

Now how do we create a social media press release? The latest template has been developed recently by Social Media Group. This can be downloaded here.

There is another format developed by Shift Communications that can be downloaded from here. This particular template was simple to understand and easier to information as was briefed in within template limits.

If not for anything else, the Social Media News Release can come very helpful in certain traditional PR practices say for example in creating a video news release. Using the new release format, you can skip the tedious process of having to burn dozens of copies of CDs.

So are you using any social media press releases for your company/clients? What are your experiences? Share them for the community here.

At a recent communication seminar where I was speaking on social media, a beautiful lady participant asked me about how one could go about writing a blog. She believed that she is not a good writer and if I could give her few tips on writing…

I told her that I would write about it in my post this Thursday and here I am. In fact, I changed my subject for her. I desperately wanted to write about the need of having a body like BCCI for PR Industry. BCCI knows how to play some amazing games off the field. They do everything in style, be it announcing the high-profile IPL team ‘owners’ or arm twisting CA and ICC to nail the monkey and chain the wild dogs and let our very own DSP of Punjab Police, Bhajji continue his Balle Balle with ball and balla.

Last night I saw Mr. Sharad Pawar in my dream. He was busy finding a way to merge his just ‘Pawar-full’ NCP into a powerful BCCI to realise his long cherished dream of becoming a PM. My dream is to have a BCCI for PR. Both seem to be farfetched!

Anyway, a gentleman shouldn’t keep a lady wait any longer than required. There are some amazing writers on our blog and honestly I am not one of them. It reflects in the vivid subjects being chosen by each one of them and the insights they share with us through their writings (look at last three posts). I read lot on the net, in books, on blogs and on websites. I do have my favorites and I also have my own specially designed ‘block -that-stupid-writer’ tab as well. I interact with many of them and learn quite a few things.

I consider myself a good reader and that allows me the authority to judge the quality of writing. Does it involve any philosophy? Well, yes.

Many of us must have read ‘All Marketers are Liars‘ by Seth Godin. The basic premise of the book is the art of telling stories. According to the author – Marketing is all about telling stories. Story, that inspires you to buy a particular soap or a toilet cleaner. Story, which creates a ‘chemical locha’ in your brain and inspire you to take a walk to your neighborhood shop to pick up a chocolate bar or drive down forty miles to have a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town. If we go by this logic, tell me who is better than public relations expert to tell compelling and believable stories about your organization?

I strongly believe that PR has the most important role to play in an organization – even more significant than that of marketing. ‘In fact, your honor – mere paas saboot hain!‘ my heart jumps with joy from within. ‘We will talk about it in our next post’ I promise to my heart and it decides to keep quiet for the time being.

But, this post is going all over. Where’s the guide we were talking about? Oh yes, let me come back to that topic. If you search on the web you will find many guides on the subject. So, what’s my story?

My story is pretty & simple. If you want to be a good writer, just write it. Just write it as you would speak with your friend. Make a point, be real and write with passion. Ignite a thought. You do not need to be the most intelligent person on the earth, you do not need to be the most respected person in your profession, you do not need to be the authority on the subject – you just need to be passionate, you need to be honest, you need to be emotional and above all, you need to remember just one thing, write with your heart. Write something which you would love to read today, tomorrow and day after.

Now, do you need any other tips to be an effective writer, speaker, listener, manager, leader or any other adjectives we see on the covers of many bestselling books? Just try changing ‘write’ with ‘speak’ and so on…

Are you looking for a brand ambassador for your client? Or thinking of inviting a celebrity to your event? Or compiling a list of celebrities? Till now, it’s mostly done on the basis of how many names you and your colleagues can come up with.

Rest assure. Web 2.0 is on the rescue with Tinfinger. This is a search engine for famous people. You can check out its directory as well to view over 650 categories of famous people. Tinfinger also lists down the recent news that any particular famous personality has been getting in the media. You can submit profiles of famous people to its directory as well.

This is one good resource for PR professionals. The Indian celebrities category lists at the moment around 35 people, which means nothing. But considering that this service has just started, it’s worth a wait and watch. Maybe when the number comes to around 500, then it will be a gem.

Now what about Indian resources? Are there any sites?

Celebrities in India is one find where you can find lists of Bollywood actors. Not very useful but at least you can see a profile picture of each actor complete with personal biography, filmography, likes and hobbies, etc.

I couldn’t find any lists of socialites. Maybe creating one can be a good PR idea for the likes of Delhi Times and HT City. Or maybe India PR Blog should start a directory.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india tinfinger

As corporate India and the Indian PR industry wake up to blogger relations and many are now experimenting inviting bloggers to their corporate events and including them in their outreach programs, it becomes essential to develop a fine target bloggers list. Take it as another form of the media list that we are so used to.

So today if you are handling a tech client, maybe you should know the names of the top ten tech bloggers in India. Likewise if you are handling an automobiles client, you should know who all are writing on bikes or cars. The list goes on with bloggers writing on healthcare, education, economy, current happenings, etc. etc.

So how do we start compiling a list of bloggers? These are some of the good resources that I use and you might find them useful as well.

1. Technorati - Here you will find Indian blogs listed according to their ‘authority’- the standard Technorati way of ranking blogs primarily based on how many blogs link to a particular blog. This may not be the best way to judge a blog to fit a client’s program. I would rank a blog based on how many people read it and who are these people. Also you might not be able to judge a blog’s subject merely by reading the list. You have to get pretty familiar with the blog yourself. Nonetheless, this might be a good start to look at some of the good blogs.

2. India Blogs - This one groups the various blogs in India based on their content subject. The list looks clean, meaning you might find it hard to believe that a spam blog might get featured here. But that’s all. You have no way of telling which is the best blog in a particular category. The criteria for inclusion is not very clear as well. However you can pick up the blogs from here and run them through Technorati to see how much influence they have got in the blogosphere.

3. BlogStreet - BlogStreet groups Indian blogs according to subjects, language, and cities. At first glance, this looks like the perfect resource. But considering the hundreds of similar blog directories floating around the blogosphere, you cannot escape having that lingering doubt about the authenticity of such a directory.

Maybe if you pick up some blogs, run them through all of these directories, and start monitoring them for some time, maybe you can figure out which are the best for your client. Also a point to remember is that you cannot compare a technology blog, read by one and any, and a marketing blog, read by a niche audience, in the same parameters. For instance, while many consider Technorati as the one site having the final say on tech blogs, it can be the Power 150 (this blog is ranked 406th as of today) for marketing blogs. For PR blogs, there are PR Voices (this blog is ranked 22nd as of today) and The PR Friendly Index (this blog is ranked 42nd as of today). Similarly there will be sector specific ratings for other subjects.

However the rankings on these are also based on Technorati, Bloglines, and other services - which many professionals and blog readers might not have heard of. So if a medical blog is read by well-known doctors but not through Technorati or Bloglines, it does not mean the blog is not influential - a point I gathered from a friend. So proceed with care. The final word could be then to use the directories to pick up the blog names. Then use your wise counsel to figure out the blog yourself.