I am sure it will generate some debate. Having spoken to a number of people across the industry in recent months, it seems the jury is still out on the level of experience people think PR people should have in social media. As I said to Craig, I don’t believe it is optional.

Personally, it is a natural fit for social media to belong to PR people and organisations/brands that take a more strategic approach to social media will benefit in the long run. Every expert is telling you that social media leads to more powerful forms of word of mouth. Yet, here in Australia, we still see lots of tactical experimentation which has led to an inconsistent use of social media which, in some cases, may harm a brand’s reputation and the agency behind it. Short term campaign mentality will spawn Facebook pages or Twitter profiles that brands are not prepared to maintain or really engage through. Or abandoned once the campaign is over. They then just hang around on the social web like a bad smell, and for the savvy consumers, show that the organisation is still using social media as ‘push’ channel, and not an engagement channel.

The Twitter sessions were well attended and there were some great questions. With representatives from government, not for profit, local council, private enterprise and PR consultancies, who may all face a very different crisis, it was great to get many different perspectives.

What is good to know, and reassuring, is the appetite for knowledge and the fact that communications teams are seriously considering Twitter as a communications channel, both for ongoing dialogue with key stakeholders, and in a crisis. In fact, those that engage through this channel on a regular basis, will find that when they do face a crisis, the followers that they have already attracted, could be a great asset to help communicate the message.

iSnack 2.0

Now the enquiry begins.

Was this a PR disaster, or a very clever (and brave) way of getting the Australian public talking about the product? It’s no surprise that the name is being dropped so soon, but how will the public feel and how will that impact the new brand and sales. Time will tell.

Expect the discussion to go on for several weeks yet. What isn’t in doubt is that iSnack 2.0 will go down as one of the worst brand names ever brought to market.

To set the record straight, I was approached by The Punch to submit an article following a conference I attended with the editor. If the reader had looked a little closer, my bio is there for all to see.

Since the article was published, I have also spoken to ABC’s Coast FM in Queensland.

In this podcast by BNet Australia, Rohit explains what the role of a blog is for a business and how he managed to develop such a substantial following and what others can learn from his success.

Rohit has also just posted 5 myths on social media, which I recommend. Great post.

Great video and post by Acid Labs Stephen Collins to find out what everyday folk think social media is. Some interesting feedback and a good reminder what ingrediants marketers must pay attention to if contemplating using social media within their campaigns. It’s about engaging in a conversation over a long period of time, building relationships, and trust. Hope you all agree.

We have recently acquired one for our agency here at Howorth.

Here are 5 more reasons why PR people need to get one:

1. Capture video of your work events (social or serious). Social event footage is great for recruitment purposes, to demonstrate what you get up to and the fun employees can have and to share the personality of the organisation.

2. Capture video of your client events to showcase on your website, along with client testimonials. Great third party endorsement and it only takes a couple of minutes.

3. Capture video of your CSR activities. At Ogilvy PR in Australia we have our SoInspired program, which includes whole day activities for employees to spend a day offsite helping a good cause.

4. Capture keynote speakers at events or try to get a 1:1 with them. You will be surprised how often they say yes.

5. Capture comments from journalists, analysts or other key stakeholders. Again, they are obliging.

There is so much more potential.

Meanwhile, according to a  US research study called ”The Fortune 500 and Blogging: Slow and Steady”, conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes, senior fellow and research chair of the Society for New Communications Research and professor of marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite (a Seattle-based research firm), the Fortune 500 are farther along in their adoption of public-facing corporate blogs. It says these organisations are adopting social media at a slower rate than other leading businesses, universities and charities, but many more of them are blogging.  For example, 81 of the Fortune 500 or 16% have public-facing blogs. This compares with 39% percent of the Inc. 500; 41% of the higher education sector and 57% of the nation’s Top 200 Charities.

Among other findings:

·         About a quarter (28%) of the Fortune 500’s blogs link to Twitter accounts. (Other Fortune 500 companies have Twitter accounts, but they are not linked to their blogs)

·         Five of the top ten companies have public blogs: Wal-Mart, Chevron, General Motors, Ford, and Bank of America.

·         90% of the Fortune 500’s blogs have the comments feature enabled.

·         The computer software/hardware technology industry has the most blogs, followed by the food and drug industry, financial services, Internet services, semi-conductors, retail and automotive respectively.

·         Ten per cent of the Fortune 500’s blogs link to podcasts; 21 percent incorporate video.

I haven’t seen any stats on the Aussie market, unless someone can direct me there?

If the Nichepaper Manifesto is some sort of harbinger of the future then God help us all. Unfortunately its broad sweep of generalities, trite statements and ill-informed comments are typical of the newspapers-are-dead lobby. A few quotes should suffice:
‘’20th century news isn’t fit for 21st century society. Yesterday’s approaches to news are failing to educate, enlighten or inform’’;
‘’Nichepapers . . . [are] built on new rules that are letting radical innovators reinvent what ‘news’ is’’;
‘’Newspapers strive to give people the news . . . Nichepapers strive to impart meaningful, lasting knowledge instead’’;
‘’Newspapers dictate to their reader what news and opinion are. Nichepapers co-create knowledge through ‘commentage’”;
‘’Nichepapers develop topics — instead of telling quickly-forgotten stories’’;
‘’Newspapers strive for circulation, by telling the same stories in the same ways — in slightly different places. Nichepapers strive for scarcity: to develop a perspective, analytical skills, and storytelling capabilities that are inimitable by rivals.’’;
‘’Newspapers give you the news then. Nichepapers give you knowledge now . . . Nichepapers develop topics of conversation, not individual stories, and let them co-evolve with readers’’;
‘’Newspapers seek perfection: perfect grammar, perfect ledes [I presume he means leads], perfect headlines. Nichepapers seek provocation instead. Sometimes, yes, that provocation is mere titillation. But more often than not it’s authentic provcation: nichepapers provoke us to think; they challenge us; they educate us in ways that newspapers stopped doing long ago.’’;
‘’Newspapers long ago sold out to advertisers, PR flaks, powerful “sources,” and lobbyists . . . Nichepapers haven’t sold out — and if their economic promise delivers, they won’t have to.’’

I defy anyone to get their head around such an amalgamation of nonsense. The article was sent to me today (Wednesday, August 5). That day, as usual, I read the AFR (a specialist finance and business newspaper and website which seeks – and many say succeeds in doing – to develop a perspective, analytical skills, and storytelling capabilities that are inimitable by rivals . . Nichepaper, anyone?), The Australian, the SMH and the Daily Telegraph. All three strove to impart meaningful, lasting knowledge by extensively educating, enlightening and informing me about many issues, particularly the Ozcar debacle in Canberra and the terrorism arrests in Melbourne.

Far from radically reinventing what news is, both those issues had the previous day been the subject of astonishing news breaks by The Australian, with the paper exclusively revealing that Godwin Gretch had admitted to writing the fake email and – even more astoundingly – revealing that the massive police terror raids were being carried out even as our papers were being delivered.

The SMH and The Australian had sections on local news, world news, arts, sport and business (Nichepapers?) and separate liftout sections on Money (SMH), Higher Education, Wealth and the Australian Literature Review (all the OZ). Both papers have interactive websites with the last figures I saw showing smh.com.au with more than 4.3 million unique browsers each month and theaustralian.com.au with 1.4 million.

The Nichepaper Manifesto says Nichepapers ‘’are different because they have built a profound mastery of a tightly defined domain – finance, politics, even entertainment – and offer audiences deep, unwavering knowledge of it.’’

One would have thought that the SMH, The Australian and the AFR – along with their attendant specialist sections – offer all that, plus something more: eyeballs.

The latest circulation figures show that, far from the sky falling, the top three quality broadsheets in Australia – the SMH, The Age and The Australian – slightly increased circulation over the previous 12 months. And, in fact, the three papers have increased circulation over the past five years. And, while I can’t talk for The Australian, I do know the SMH and The Age remain profitable.

News (of the current definition, not the yet to be disclosed reinvented definition) still sells. The Daily Telegraph in London increased daily circulation by around 100,000 during the recent period when it was drip-feeding stories about the spending habits of British parliamentarians.

It is true that advertising has tanked in newspapers. But my theory is that everyone loves a new toy and the lure of the bright, shiny new media was difficult to resist. But in the light of a post-Christmas hangover sometimes those toys are looked at in a more critical light – they might be trendy, but are they better at doing the job?

Nielsen research released in April showed that more than 60 per cent of Twitter users have stopped using the service a month after joining; the two latest ANZ job advertisements surveys have shown an increase in newspaper job ads in June (0.9%) and a decrease (0.4%) in July, while online ads fell 4.8% in June and 3.6% in July.

What it all means, I’m not sure but I’ll finish with a blog in March from Tim Pethick, the young entrepreneur who successfully launched Nudie drinks, among other products. He told of his product Sultry Sally chips, a low fat brand available in Woolworths.

Woolies, which had launched a rival product, told Pethick that he had to engage in mainstream advertising to boost the sales of his chips.

Pethick wrote: ‘’to be forced into a position where I have to take a traditional, main media approach is anathema.’’ His fears were multiplied when a partner suggested advertising on 2GB.

‘’My heart sank. Strategically, I couldn’t think of anything worse. We are talking radio; worse, AM radio; worse still, talk-back radio; even worse, a radio station that everyone knows is only listened to by a few old punters – way, way off target and brand for us.’’

Needless to say the product walked off the shelves, with stores emptied of Sultry Sally chips. ‘’It is working like nothing I have seen before,’’ wrote Pethick. ‘’I love the fact that the old ways still count for something; I love the fact that I can still be surprised, be wrong and learn from it.’’

Actually I won’t finish on that, I’ll finish with the Nichepaper Manifesto which writes that ‘’Nichepapers are the future of news because their economies are superior.’’ ‘’What is different about them is that they are finding new paths to growth, and rediscovering the lost art of profitability by awesomeness’’.

And what is the lost art of profitability by awesomeness?

I quote: ‘’When you can make awesome stuff, you don’t need to find “better” ways to sell it. The fundamental challenge of the 21st century isn’t selling the same old lame, toxic junk in new ways: its detoxifying and dezombifying it, by learning how to make insanely great stuff in the first place.’’

Of course.

Sam North