Facebooking business communications

Posted At : July 29, 2008 11:12 AM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Social Media,Strategy,Technology,High tech PR,Marketing,Commentary

Interesting stat I stumbled upon:
 
Although 7 out of 10 enterprise end users think Enterprise 2.0 will benefit their companies, three out of four enterprise end users are “very unclear” on what the term Enterprise 2.0 actually means.
 

 

Hmm, strong support for something no one really gets ….at first glance, it sounds like Enterprise 2.0 might just be the latest big thing for gullible early adopters. But what’s impossible to ignore is that so many people are finding value in Enterprise 2.0 technologies – social networking, RSS, blogs, widgets and the like – to streamline operation of their … personal lives.
 
Take Facebook. Millions use it to stay connected, keep up on the scuttlebutt, and block out the noise that has made email and web surfing a gaping time sink. Everything you want to know about your social connections is focused and fed to you on your Facebook page. You don’t have to plow through spam and irrelevant Google hits.
 
My point: Why can’t business communication be a little more like Facebook*? Whe

 

n assessing the value of Enterprise 2.0, I for one will start from the conviction that the ROI on Enterprise 1.0 is getting more disappointing by the day. In Enterprise 1.0, we waste an enormous amount of time digging through all manner of patently useless email for relevant nuggets of information. In Enterprise 1.0, we pore through 10 irrelevant search results for every one good hit.
 
If Enterprise 2.0 can keep me tight with my most important business contacts, if it can feed me focused information, and if it can unclutter my life, I can smell the ROI already.
 
*Disclosure: this link points to a client Web page.
 
 
 

 

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YouTube for business!

Posted At : July 21, 2008 3:30 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: PR,Social Media,Marketing,Public Relations,Commentary

YouTube for B2B technology; Beaupre communications, branding, public relationsToday’s blog isn’t for the social media intelligentsia. It’s for communications professionals still skeptical about the benefits of online video for their business-to-business company.
 
We were riffing the other day about online video with an established technology company. Most of the folks in the room “got it” and were starting to see the potential of online video. They hadn’t done anything yet with this medium, but were kind of excited about it.
 
Except for one person with a different view.
 
“YouTube?” YouTube!? Why on earth would I want to get my company on that site?” That’s where teens and twenty-somethings go to waste time and be entertained. It’s not a place for business. Do you really think I’m going to put my executives, or customers, in that kind of environment?”
 
She was kind of worked up. Must have been the red blotches on her face and flared nostrils.
 
Luckily, it wasn’t the first time I’d experienced this kind of reaction from someone in corporate America. In fact, I’d had a conversation two days earlier with the head of corporate communications for a Fortune 50 company. He didn’t get the idea (had never thought about it) and kept coming back to “Okay, interesting, but do you have any ideas about scoring more op-ed placements in The New York Times?”
 
While some of us spend a good portion of our day in the social media world, let’s not deceive ourselves thinking this stuff is top-of-mind (let alone mainstream) for B2B companies. It isn’t. An amazing number of people are just starting to think about it.

David Meerman Scott’s popular book about social media The new rules of marketing & PR (read it if you haven’t) discusses the emergence of online video. “The idea of companies using video for web marketing is still new,” he says. “Some companies are certainly experimenting, typically by embedding video (typically hosted at YouTube) into their existing blogs.” Scott cites six different ways to leverage video. Arguably, online B2B corporate video activity has increased many-fold since his book was published - just last year.      

So getting back to red blotch lady, I explained how YouTube has morphed from an online destination solely populated with goofy, racy videos to a location where business people increasingly go to post – and view – business-related video content including:
  • Videos of customers talking about products they use
  • PowerPoint presentations
  • Executives white-boarding
  • Product demonstrations
  • News announcements
  • Talks & speeches
  • Person-to-camera talks
  • Thought leadership seeding
B2B companies are directing key publics (think customers, partners, employees, prospects, partners, analysts, etc.) to YouTube to watch their videos. They link to this content from their home pages. They link to it when blogging and commenting on blogs. They populate their online media rooms with video content. And they urge their sales force/channel to direct prospects to it.
 
Think of it as just a place to go to watch content, instead of reading it or listening to it.
 
All this is happening because businesses are desperate for a place to post their video content. Smart B2B companies have figured out that authentic, guerilla-style video is a credible way to communicate. And while YouTube isn’t a perfect medium, it’s the best place right now to post video content.
 
YouTube says commercial content isn’t supposed to be on their site. Some of the business content posted there isn’t; some of it is. There hasn’t been a large-scale crack-down yet.
 
Jim Kukral of The Daily Flip thinks YouTube can add a billion dollars or more to its coffers by launching a business channel. He issued a “business manifesto” urging YouTube to get its act together.
 
Kukral says a chairman of a Fortune 500 company doesn’t want his corporate videos next to “some girl dancing in her bedroom in her underwear” and would be willing to pay monthly for a different business model. Not a channel, but a portal where companies can post their content, build private communities and do custom branding.
 
It’s gonna happen folks. It’ll either be YouTube or somebody else. There’s no stopping the video train. It left the station a long time ago and B2B companies are jumping on.
 

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Is the news release dead?

Posted At : July 18, 2008 2:47 PM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Social Media,PR,High tech PR,Media Relations,Public Relations,Commentary,News,Writing

A lot of high-tech marketers I work with wonder if the news release is dead. I say no, it’s not even dying.
 
As David Meerman Scott says, more and more customers are finding you by Googling, so you need your name all over the Web. News releases are great way to spread the word. But try to…
 
  1. Be relevant. Directly address the problems your prospects are trying to solve and use their language. 
  1. Deliver value. If you make security software, deliver useful content on how companies can secure their data. “News” is more about thought leadership than ever. 
  1. Offer multimedia. Include images, at least, and podcasts and videos if you have them. 
  1. Webify. Hyperlink appropriately, include buttons for bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg and del.ici.ous). Format your release for the Web, put key search terms in the metadata, and enable prospects to subscribe to your releases via RSS. 
  1. Speak plainly. We all pay lip service to this concept, but BS abounds. And while the news release is healthier than ever, BS is indeed dead. The blogosphere is in many ways a massive reaction to it. When we cut the crap hyperbole, we cut through the clutter. 

 Have you modified your releases for the Web 2.0 era? What are your results?

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Social media’s first big battle

Posted At : July 15, 2008 1:23 PM | Posted By : Mike McGrail
Related Categories: Strategy,PR,Social Media,Media Relations,Public Relations,Commentary

Barack Obama 2008 presidential candidate web site home pageThe November Presidential election will be the first large-scale referendum on social media’s ability to create durable public images. For the first time, images constructed through Web sites, blogs, e-mail, podcasts, etc., will face off against television, print and radio advertising specifically designed to smudge those images on a national scale. Will social media blunt mass media’s impact, or does mass-media carpet bombing still control public opinion at the national scale?

This battle will play out in a political arena first, but it has obvious implications for business, individuals and advocacy groups. The operative question – whether a candidate or individual can John McCain presidental candidate 2008 web sitedefine themselves in positive terms through social media before a negative one is forced on them from the outside – could apply just as easily to a company facing prosecution or a hostile takeover bid. Presidential politics just happen to provide the biggest public laboratory.

Substitute “company” for “candidate” and the same basic principles apply in business as in politics. At the height of the Tyco scandal in 2002, when CEO Dennis Kozlowski’s fetish for buying $6,000 shower curtains on the company dime was making the rounds, Tyco was getting creamed in the media and the stock market. Yet even as Kozlowski’s excesses fueled the fire, Tyco was still a rock-solid company. It had assets, revenues, and a vast portfolio of products whose value dwarfed the sums Kozlowski and CFO Mark Schwartz looted from its coffers. Yet it was lumped in with certified basket cases like Enron and WorldCom, which turned out to be less stable than the neighborhood lemonade stand.  

 With today’s social media tools, Tyco could have seeded facts with bloggers that would have filtered out to investors and the mainstream press. The image of a fundamentally sound company with a few rogue executives would have insulated it from the full brunt of shareholder uncertainty that eroded its value during the Kozlowski period. My theory is that social media personae cannot prevent mass market media images from knocking a few points from a company’s value or a candidate’s polling numbers, at least temporarily. It can, however, limit the damage, shorten the bad times, and help the company recover sooner. Until now, mass media images have appeared on a largely blank canvas. In the social media era, they’ll have to compete for space. November will be the test of how much competition social media offers. 

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The print evolution

Posted At : July 8, 2008 2:51 PM | Posted By : Jeff Aubin
Related Categories: PR,Technology,Social Media,Media Relations,Public Relations,Commentary

Steve Rubel recently posted a blog theorizing there may be a perfect storm shaping up which may eventually take down the print publishing industry as we know it. Three factors, according to Steve, are causing publishers to really get their arms around the print vs. online debate:
 
1)      Increased gas prices are negatively affecting distribution costs for print media
2)      Consumers are environmentally aware that print magazines/newspapers are killing trees
3)      3G-enabled smart phones are becoming easier to use and much more affordable
 
Having seen the high-tech publishing business evolve first-hand over the last 15+ years, I believe Steve is on to something. Today’s “perfect storm” won’t likely kill the print industry overnight, but it will put a dent in it. InfoWorld went online-only in April of 2007, and online sites like TechTarget are thriving. What’s this mean for PR practitioners? The more things change, the more things stay the same, if you ask me.
 
We have to learn and understand how all types of publics operate, whether they’re online, print, blogs or micro bloggers (e.g. Twitter). Good PR people did the same exact thing 15 years ago, communicating with reporters based on what they were looking for, not on what we wanted to give them. If you give ‘em what they want, they’ll value you as a great resource.

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BMW’s viral ‘Rampenfest’ campaign – thumbs up

Posted At : July 1, 2008 9:04 AM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Social Media

Luck is probably the number one factor that makes a chosen few promotional videos go viral. But even when your video takes off, you’ll be lucky to please everyone.
 
The video-consuming public maintains high – I guess you’d call them moral – standards for corporate-sponsored viral video. YouTubers clearly like their camp, but they simultaneously demand authenticity. It’s a razor’s edge.
 
Exhibit one: BMW’s “The Ramp” mockumentary, on the planned literal, physical launch of new Beemer model from a small hamlet in Bavaria to the United States. The town’s sinister, horse toothed event planner had a giant ramp built for the launch event, “Rampenfest.” The physics professor added wings to the car. I found the 30-minute, Spinal Tappy film pretty entertaining. There were also Facebook pages of the characters, T-shirts, and an online Miss Ramp contest.

 
No one complained about the spoof so much as the fact that BMW didn’t immediately come clean when savvy viewers figured out BMW was behind the campaign (duh). The Wall Street Journal concluded that “by keeping mum, the German automaker was taking a risk.”
 
Said the Jossip gossip site, “the problem wasn’t that BMW didn’t take credit for its viral marketing campaign; it’s that BMW didn’t acknowledge a viral marketing campaign that was so obviously paid for and produced by the car maker, only somebody missing his right ventromedial prefrontal cortex wouldn’t have figured it out. And the savvy consumer who bothered to follow the stunt and invest so much energy in the project didn’t like being treated that way.”
 
Said NewTeeVee, “BMW should have acknowledged their involvement with a coy wink by leaving hints that make discovery part of the fun.”
 
They have a point. Timing is everything in comedy.

 

Franz Brendl, the 'Rampenfest' planner

 

Yet despite the handwringing, I Googled and Googled and still couldn’t find all the anti-Beemer flames the writers were alluding to. In any case, BMW’s ad agency for the spot isn’t too worried: “People were saying it was real. People were saying it was a marketing campaign,” art director Scott Brewer told the Journal. “We and the company wanted to stay in character and let them have fun with that discussion.”
 
Will Video for Food’s defense of the campaign (“brilliant”) was particularly well argued. It’s just fashionable, says Kevin Nalts, to bash big corporate video.
 
Bottom line: if you’re lucky enough to go viral, ride the wave, don’t sweat the snipes, but don’t run it into the ground.

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