Six lessons learned

This blog has helped me to reach some useful conclusions about how public relations should make best use of the internet. Here are some of the main themes that have emerged:

1) Get to the point
Whether for better or worse, much of the blogging community is beginning to naturalise the "Tweet ethic"- limiting one's message to 140 characters. Some bloggers specify that even press releases should be kept to this length! Whether taken to this extreme or not, the amount of data on the internet is such that that if you do not keep your messages short and sweet, it is likely to be filtered out.

2) The breaking edge
Twitter is a very useful tool for environmental scanning. Not only is it very easy to search, but news, gossip and feedback breaks on this format before it appears anywhere else. PR professionals trying to establish an online voice should not underestimate this increasingly prevalent communication medium, especially given it's recent use in reporting world events (eg. in Gaza and Mumbai).

3) Transparency and honesty
PR agencies and their clients will be smoked out and punished if they try to dupe their online audience, and since new laws were passed in the UK, flogging or astroturfing will carry a legal penalty as well. Therefore PR professionals must exercise utmost caution when trying to create online 'buzz', and must make every effort not to misrepresent themselves or their product.

4) Let go - The best buzz comes from others
Corporate efforts at creating a 'viral buzz' with a carefully sculpted marketing message are likely to backfire. The best buzz is created by those who take your product and interpret it themselves. In the nomenclature of Wikinomics, mashups and remixes are what the internet does best, so let it happen!

5) Social media aren't for everyone
Different products and different messages have different amounts to gain from social media efforts. Some products (like the Wii) are well suited to this communications environment, while others will seem out of place.

6) Learn what works
Scan Digg, Delicious and other sharing sites to see what kinds of articles are being given preference. The online rules of newsworthiness are a little different from print and broadcast media!

I'm sure I haven't covered everything here, so please use the comments to add some more observations of your own...

Wikinomics - A short rant (part 2)

Read part 1 here

According to Tapscott and Williams, the second way in which the internet is transforming news reporting is by allowing the internet user to be an editor of news content. Content sharing websites like Delicious and Digg enable users to receive customised feeds of news stories which they like. Tapscott and Williams argue that the collective logic of multiple web users is making the traditional role of editor obsolete, and they ask the question: Are the editors really in a position to best the collective judgement of their audience?

To answer this question I went over to Digg to have a look at what Digg users were Digging...















Perhaps I'm completely out of step here but what of the bombing of Gaza? Climate change? The global financial crisis?

I'm not saying I haven't already clicked on the sex shop story and sent it to all my friends (here's the link if you're interested). Like every other web user I'm all over twisted funny stuff like that. The point is that I need editors to save me from the trivia, and to force the more boring - yet undoubtedly more important - stuff down my throat.

PR of course loves the trivialisation of news. We thrive off pithy features, funny research and non-events. In this respect the phenomenon of user-as-editor will play into the hands of PR practitioners, provided they know what kind of stuff has internet mileage. A good place to start is to look at sites like Digg or Delicious to find out the features of a viral story. But none of this helps the case of mass collaboration as a reliable organiser of news and content - in the case of Digg, what we get is a peek into the grubby mind of the internet masses rather than a rewarding and informative news experience.

I don't believe that this particularly hurts the Wikinomics thesis. The book documents many cases where the principles of openness, peering, sharing and thinking globally have brought about staggering advances in business, technology and education. However, readers of Wikinomics should be careful not to get so caught up in the rhetoric to believe that mass collaboration makes absolutely everything better.