Is e-mail the boss of you?

Posted At : October 28, 2009 9:07 AM | Posted By : Steve McGrath
Related Categories: Social Media,Commentary

Four thousand years ago, somewhere in Mesopotamia, a prescient soul texted a lover. The sender memorized some verse, stirred up some clay, unsheathed his reed stylus, etched in the cuneiform script, baked the tablet in the sun, and lugged it to his heart-struck recipient. Today, in high tech and beyond, our messages are instantaneous and electronic, but that’s not necessarily progress.

“I think the speed with which we communicate changes things,” author John Freeman told customers last week at RiverRun, Portsmouth’s bookstore. “We’ve reached terminal velocity with communication and we can’t keep up with the machines we’re communicating with….[E-mail] deprives us of deep thinking, either in the culture or with yourself.”

Freeman explores this development in his new book “The Tyranny of E-Mail.” A few years ago, Freeman, now editor of the esteemed Granta literary journal, had been receiving 300 e-mails a day, more than he could process. Sound familiar? The deluge extended his work day, robbed him of sleep and snuffed out relationships. “It’s about time for an intervention,” he thought. So he wrote the book.

The title says “e-mail,” but it stands for the larger family of easy instant communication. Among the victims of e-mail, according to Freeman:

Community: The more “virtual” that e-mail makes institutions like banks, post offices and bookstores, the more they fade away from the neighborhood. And the fewer reasons to walk down the street and see your neighbor.

Culture: It’s too easy to have misunderstandings on e-mail, exacerbate the problems with further e-mail, and watch relationships devolve into icy stalemates. Even when e-mail sustains friendships, it leaves us with nothing to say when we do meet face to face.

Well-being: We check our e-mail before our first cup of coffee, at stop lights (ahem), all day at work (bathroom visits, included), after we’ve climbed into bed – and, of course, on vacation. Says Freeman, “There’s no downtime anymore.”

Mental health: When the server goes down, workers tend to click manically or assault their computing devices. “We used to work to live; now we work to e-mail.”

Brain chemistry: Scientists compare e-mail with slot machines. The reward – whether a good news message or a jackpot– comes intermittently and randomly. The technical term is variable interval reinforcement schedule. The only way to get a reward is to keep pulling the lever.

Eyes: What is the effect on our optic nerves of processing all the artificial light from our constant stream of electronic messages? In the olden days, reading involved natural light reflecting off an organic surface.

Literature. Though Freeman liked the publishing sensation “Eat, Pray, Love,” which has spent 141 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, it’s probably no coincidence that it’s written in 108 bite-size chapters. Is that what we want? In recent fiction, Freeman has detected a “casualness and antsy type of speed… an insinuating quality.” Going with the flow, he readily admits he included plenty of subheads in “The Tyranny of E-Mail” on purpose: “Because I want to change the way people think, I wrote it in a way that is most digestible.”

So what's the answer? You may have heard of Slow Food, the antidote to fast food that focuses on fresh, local, organic, traditional cooking and eating. Freeman is calling for something like that in human conversation.

If we are to step off this hurtling machine, we must reassert principles that have been lost in the blur. It is time to launch a manifesto for a slow communication movement, a push back against the machines and the forces that encourage us to remain connected to them.

Although Freeman is decrying e-mail’s tyranny, he’s not calling for its assassination:

Many of the values of the Internet are social improvements – it can be a great platform for solidarity, it rewards curiosity, it enables convenience. This is not the manifesto of a Luddite, this is a human manifesto.

The manifesto has 10 tenets. I love number one: Don’t send. Freeman doesn’t mean don’t ever send. Just don’t go out of your way to create e-mail bloat with “thanks” messages, unnecessary forwards, micro reports, or provocative statements that are sure to spark discussions better held offline. After all...

As most people now know, e-mail only creates more e-mail, so by stepping away from the messaging treadmill, even if for a moment every day, you instantly dial down the speed of the e-mail messagopolis.

Hmm, don’t send.

To see the next nine tenets of the manifesto, join me in turning off your Blackberry or iPhone and opening the book. Here, watch me turn it off… I’m turning it off ... right … now… oops, just one second.

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Tired, fading & dead PR words

Posted At : October 21, 2009 12:31 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Media Relations,PR,High tech PR,Marketing,Public Relations,Commentary,News

Lots of companies – especially those in B2B – still talk about (or request) PR services that increasingly strike me as tired, fading or dead.

Press tours & press briefings – yes, there are still industries where the press tour is alive and well (entertainment!) but most reporters, editors and bloggers don’t have time to meet in person anymore. I always felt bad for them during the height of this practice when an endless stream of PR people with clients in tow stacked-up to get their turn updating glassy-eyed reporters.

Hits & clips – counting clips (printed editorial coverage) and putting undue weight on offline publicity to measure PR success should have died two decades ago. Ask Katie Paine, one of the leaders in communications measurement. She says “hit” stands for How Idiots Track Success.

Press kits, brochures & collateral – in this era of sustainability and green, it’s hard to believe companies are still printing, but some are. Remember the days when major trade show/conference press rooms

would be filled with press kits? This practice has largely stopped; it’s a digital world, let’s stop killing trees.

Press releases – the function of the news release has shifted so dramatically that in most instances they’re written and issued to primarily serve other stakeholders (customers, investors, prospects, etc.), not the press. The term “press release” is still (marginally) more prevalent than “news release,” (139 million vs. 104 million per Google) but call ‘em by the latter. It’s a more accurate, current and legitimate term.

Pitch – this term bugs me more than any other tired/fading/dead PR word because it epitomizes the old-world model of one-way communications. We have two-way conversations, we listen, we seek-out opinions, we build relationships and we tell stories. We shouldn’t “pitch.”

Users – this term has been around in the world of tech for decades; “users” referring to people who “use” products. For bizarro reasons I could never fathom, they aren’t called customers or consumers. Time to bury this one.

Big bang announcements – there was a time when PR practitioners would communicate with reporters well in advance of actual news being issued. Two or three months before the news broke, corporate spokespersons would inform industry analysts and “long lead time” magazines. Then they’d pre-brief the bi-weeklies, then the weeklies, then the dailies. This is a breathless concept. Blogs break news before most offline news outlets are even aware of it. Other social media (Twitter especially) inform in true real time.

Publicity – I’ve never liked this word in the context of defining public relations practice. Are we trying to build trusted reputations and create belief? Or, are we simply trying to get attention (Balloon Boy!)? True public relations is not publicity.

Embargos & lead time – PR practitioners used to negotiate up-front agreements with reporters not to run pre-fed news stories until the official date/time of the announcement. Hardly anyone wants to be tied to this practice; it’s still around but is fading fast.

What PR words bug you?

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How to create best practices programs

Posted At : October 9, 2009 3:48 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Social Media,Strategy,PR,High tech PR,Marketing,Public Relations

Getting your customers to come to you with their success stories

A best practices award program is a contest your company/organization creates, manages and orchestrates to reward customers for outstanding product/service implementations. At the end of the contest, winners are acknowledged, creating positive visibility.

In addition to pleasing winning customers – deepening your partnership with them – a best practices program has a very useful residual effect: it gives you high quality references. Because customers want to participate and win, they put in the time and effort to share perspective filled with detail and ROI benefits. This kind of “pull” campaign is a welcome addition to the tedious “push” outreach to seek out and find customer references.

How are winners selected?

Success is measured using a variety of factors you determine. Some ideas include:

innovation;
measurable cost savings;
productivity gains;
process improvements;
quality improvements;
time savings;
unique and innovative applications;
anecdotal commentary about value and business impact.

Category creation

Best practices programs can recognize and reward multiple customers, not just one. Do this by creating categories of winning entries by:

product;
vertical market;
application type;
ROI;
geographical or sales region;
innovation categories;
etc.

What’s in it for the customer?

Customers participating in best practices programs not only get an ego boost (because of the acclaim and public recognition), they also win valuable prizes and/or goodwill for not-for-profit causes. Ideas for rewards span from simple and inexpensive to more elaborate, including:

philanthropic donation in the customer’s name to the social cause of their choice;
dinner with customer and your CEO;
social media buzz;
all expense-paid trip to your annual user conference;
“guest of honor” status at your awards dinner;
all expenses paid vacation;
tickets to sporting events, concerts, theatre;
consumer electronics;
product discounts;
leased vehicle for one year;
etc.

An important note: it’s important to do the right thing for each customer, factoring in ethical considerations, timing, relationship subtleties, politics, economic realities and organizational cultures when assessing prizes and compensation.

How do I do it?

Follow these 10 steps to a successful best practices program:

Create a small team to drive the effort.
Gather to discuss the concept. Create submission and measurement criteria. Brainstorm a catchy program name, categories and awards. Consider existing customer touch-points to launch the program (i.e. user conferences; seminars; webinars; etc.). Discuss the viability of using sponsors. Work in enough lead time to solicit entries and select winners.
Create digital overview creatively describing the program, process, prizes and payoff.
Get it out there 6-9 months – possibly 12 months - in advance of your deadline.
Engage your sales force and other customer-facing employees to send reminders, field questions and encourage customers to participate. Incent your people to deliver customer entries.
Create an area on your Web site to promote the program. Use social media to inform and promote.
Gather submissions; appoint objective judges to evaluate and determine winners. Judges can include past winners (once the program is off the ground); current customers, industry analysts, luminaries, partners and bloggers. Share submissions with the evaluation team.
Select the winners and get the awards in motion.
Announce the winners and prizes at your Best Practices event.
Promote the winners and case studies via social media, your Web site and in other ways.

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