Hypertext

I’ve been catching up on the Scobleizer’s recent posts on what’s doing over in Second Life.  The virtual world pioneer has unveiled a new browser and is integrating more with social networks.  Interesting stuff.  But as a PR guy, what fascinated me was when Scoble acknowledged that, from a PR perspective, Second Life of late has been about as visible as a polar bear in a snowstorm.  “…many people are reacting to my early tweets with messages like ‘I thought it was dead,’”  Scoble wrote.  And that apparently was the point.  Linden Lab’s CEO Mark Kingdon ”admitted that they had been pretty quiet and avoided doing more PR work until just recently.”

Odd.  I’m of the opinion that when people wrongly believe you have died, speaking up might actually be a fairly effective means of changing their perceptions.

Here’s the progression as I understand it from Second Life’s birth as the “next big thing,” through to today’s exhumation. (more…)

Two weeks ago, an acquaintance from the Publicity Club of New England invited me to speak on a panel about job searching and networking. The panel was well rounded and included national communication headhunters, etiquette and image experts and local hiring managers. In attendance was a room full of twenty-something job seekers whose ranks easily exceed the number of available PR jobs.

Many of the experts agreed with the tough challenge facing recent grads. One headhunter working exclusively in filling communications positions throughout the U.S. and Canada told attendees that August through October 2009 was the most difficult year for his firm in more than 30 years of business. The hiring managers in attendance nodded in agreement and you could almost feel the audience mentally bracing themselves for the job search struggle ahead.

I could certainly relate. Only three months prior, I had finished a temporary PR apprenticeship with a Boston firm and was back on the market. Facing that kind of job market, I knew it would require far more to be considered for a job than submitting a cover letter and resume. I decided that I had to treat my job search like a public relations challenge, which it truly was: trying to have my voice heard over a sea of static and competing messages from other candidates.

This kind of mentality allowed me to think strategically about my search. I imagined the challenge of hiring managers – dedicating only a fraction of their time to evaluating candidates, they need material that had an impact and was entertaining to digest – while demonstrating on face value that I understood how to apply PR concepts. I reached out to PR Week and pitched a story about my job search. To my shock, I got it. From there, I created www.burkeswork.com so employers could easily navigate my material and see a personal image of me that was more “real” than a name on a resume.

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David Armano recently contributed an interesting piece to Harvard Business Review’s blog, “The Conversation” on “Six Ways to Find Social Media Talent.” He shares some good practical advice including empowering employee networks to expand recruiting efforts and grooming internal candidates – all helpful tips.

But while literally finding talent in a digital haystack poses its own set of challenges (and advantages), it’s knowing what type of person you’re looking for in the first place that’s the critical piece of this selection process. Armano refers to a spectrum with deep social media expertise at one end, practical professional experience on the other and a sweet spot somewhere in between. Let’s dig into that.

If you’re looking for someone to lead social media internally or an agency to help, you want to focus on critical thinking skills first. Actually, make that first, second and third. Look for a logical thought process that takes into account your specific goals (the business kind, not just social media), target audiences, where they spend time, the types of interaction they welcome and how your brand fits into that picture. They should examine your organization’s ability to realistically execute, the relevant balance of broadcasting vs. interaction that’s right for the task at hand and how to define success.

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As we enter a new decade undoubtedly full of hyped trends, disruptive platforms and outrageous applications, we asked our experts to tell us their predictions:

You may recall images flashing around the world in 2006 that showed laptops bursting into flames.  These dangerous fires were caused by faulty batteries.  However, few people appreciate that Sony was not identified as the supplier of these batteries until Dell Computer named it in a post on the company’s corporate blog.  Dell’s post generated 1.5 million web links in only nine days.  Sony’s share price fell 18% in seven very short weeks and was eventually forced to issue a profit warning.  This experience shows how one company’s efforts to protect its brand online harmed another company’s brand.

Is the future of branding as we know it under threat?  Is it possible to build a brand online – or is online brand building simply a defensive strategy?  Does loyalty matter anymore?  Text 100 is bringing together a panel of Europe’s leading brand owners to debate these questions and more.  If you’re in London on Tuesday, January 19, please join us at the Paramount Private Members Club on Level 31 of Centre Point Tower (New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1DD) at 6.30pm.  You’ll hear from:

• Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic and special adviser to Sir Richard Branson
• Brian O’Shaughnessy, Head of global communications, Skype
• Vijay Solanki, Senior Director of digital marketing, Research In Motion (RIM, creators of the Blackberry)
• Cristina Hoole, Marketing and PR Director Europe, LinkedIn
• Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text 100 (acting as host and chair)

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One suggestion we’ve offered repeatedly over the past year is to use more video as part of your PR and social media efforts. There’s no disputing that we’re visual people and “seeing is believing.” Adding more video posts to your corporate blog is one way to breathe new life into your blog in 2010, boost the “shareability” of your content and hopefully improve brand perception.

But don’t just take our word for it. Jeanette Gibson and John Earnhardt from Cisco’s PR team (disclosure: Cisco is a Text 100 client) recently caught up with JD Lasica of the SocialMedia.biz blog to talk about how Cisco uses video. Earnhardt says:

“The return on investment for using video is a no-brainer. If you factor in the cost of the camcorders and training time, the ROI is 4 cents per video view and dropping. The real hurdle is just starting [the process]: getting the camera, teaching people how to get the video up on the Web. The real message is just to go out there and do it.”

Watch Alyssa Weir, a Textie in Rochester, share her thoughts on why video is a great PR tool as well as some of her favorite video blog examples. Lastly, don’t get bogged down with developing an overly-polished video strategy or waiting on professional production. As Earnhardt suggests, just get out there and start experimenting!

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The world is looking to Copenhagen where the UN climate conference 2009 is currently taking place. At Text 100 we advise many clients on CSR and social media communications and have therefore been very interested in considering the communications landscape surrounding the conference this year. We want to find out how Web 2.0 and especially the rise of social media has revolutionized the way politicians are communicating their positions, how NGOs are trying to influence the discussions and how COP15 is bringing climate experts to the “blog table” to offer insights into the climate discussion. It is very interesting to take a look behind the scenes and understand how many different stakeholders can stay up to date every minute of  the day.

Prior to the start of COP15 we created an international Text 100 COP15 team with the objective of monitoring the social web including blogs, Twitter, social networks, online forums, YouTube, Flickr etc. and analyzing what we found. The team started its work with the COP15 pre-conference in Barcelona, on 2^nd November. After six busy weeks we have observed the following, topline trends.  We will be pulling together a thorough analysis of our findings in early January.

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