Archive for the ‘Communities’ Category

The "to comment or not to allow comment" dialog is happening again… (I’d hardly call it a raging debate). The word moderating strikes me as clouding the issue of managing dialog. For any dialog to be effective it has to be moderated in some form. But when dialog is made exclusive by limiting who gets to participate it strikes me that this then changes the blog into a traditional media site, moderated message board or web page by making the reader a spectator rather than a participant.

There seems to be to kinds of behavior when it comes to comments:

Fully Enlightened: Blogs are all about dialog and participation – spam is a small price to pay. Blogging requires a time commitment. Get over it. I get about 30+ spam messages a day which take me all of about 30 seconds to clean out. That’s less than I spend on junk mail. So, let the comments flow. Good, bad, ugly… I’ll take them. This is a talking post.

I also don’t have any problem with a company or individual pulling down
comments that are off topic, that are abusive, or that represent the views of trolls and
agitators. It’s your blog. But if you want dialog – and especially if
you want to stimulate dialog – you are going to need to put up with
some heat. There is a line that gets crossed at some point though. As soon as that heat goes way off topic or is clearly just
soap-boxing, you have the right to clean it out. After all, dialog is
dialog.

But restricting up front who gets to post comments and who doesn’t is a worse sin than not allowing them at all. It introduces a layer of complexity that results in exclusivity and superficiality.

It also ignores a very simple notion – the Blogosphere is wonderfully self correcting.

The Lock-Down: This person doesn’t allow comments. They are either too scared or lazy to moderate the conversation. Their view is that this is my web site from which I transmit my views using blog technology as a convenient publishing mechanism. Screw dialog or participation, this is about transmission.

IMHO you can now add to this category those that want to restrict the conversation in the name of convenience. (I refuse to allow the frame "moderate" to be applied to this issue). Sorry if this is a little tough but it just isn’t in the spirit of what blogging is all about. Web sites get to be exclusive. Blogs need to be inclusive.

I don’t mind logging on to post comments – even though it’s a pain. But if that then requires some kind of authorization by the site owner then I’ll never do it again – and it’s unlikely I’ll visit that site ever again.

I recognize that there is a flaw with the the current generation of Blog technology. It allows spam in far too easily. I don’t have a solution to the spam problem other than packet filtering
at a host level by the major blog engines. This isn’t hard to do, but
it does require an investment. Also, controlling comments is still too hard – I’d love it if I could manage comments from my phone. Saying that, I’m very happy with how TypePad works.

Let the comments flow….

I really don’t like pundits very much. And I really dislike the commentary – which is generally seriously unfounded, out of date and not based on any empirical evidence – that goes along the lines of: "XXXX believes there is a less than 20% probability of XXX".

CXO advisory group has some interesting commentary on Jim Cramer – "on of the most visible and prolific members of the financial media". Get this:

• Mr. Cramer is right about 50% (25 out of 51) of the time with his stock market predictions, prone more to headline hyperbole than equivocation.
• His predictions sometimes swing dramatically from optimistic to pessimistic, and back again, over short periods. It is difficult to infer his guiding valuation theory, if he has one. We wonder whether he tends to be swayed by the arguments of forceful advocates with whom he most recently interacted.
• Investor sentiment is sometimes an important contrarian indicator for him. When he sees most investors leaning one way, he advises to go the other way. [See our blog entries of May 19 and October 27, showing that broad investor sentiment is backward rather than forward looking. The entry of May 27 suggests sentiment expressed as futures positions by classes of investors may have modest predictive value.]
• He sometimes anchors on historical analogy, such as: "it’s ’91 all over again" or "I’m placing my bets for 2004 strictly using 1994’s tip sheet.";
• In summary, Mr. Cramer’s stock market calls since May 2000 have low consistency and approximately coin-flip accuracy. He seems more an entertaining (to some) stream of uncalibrated opinion than a stock market maven.

Ouch… Wouldn’t it be interesting if every show ended with "There is less than a 50% chance that anything I’ve said is accurate". Imagine if all pundits were audited in the same way. Perhaps it’s a case of pundits really depending on opacity to succeed. But then blogs come along and introduce a big dose of transparency. I just love these two quotes:

"Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand." – Unknown

"He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass." – Edgar Fiedler

This is topic we’ve debated a few times now. With regard to Steve’s comments, IMHO:

1. Press releases are not dead. Take a look at Yahoo. Take a look anywhere. They remain the dominant means in which news is disseminated. Do I wish many of them were dead? Yeah! But as I’ve said there is not alternative for fair disclosure purposes and the good journalists far from depend on them anyway. We also shouldn’t ignore the utility of the press release in triangulating news and verifying it. And the utility of central third party repositories (wire services) in this process. Blogs aren’t the reason to kill 50% of your press releases – the reason to kill them is that about 50% aren’t news. And don’t transfer the garbage to blogs, put it where it belongs, in the bin.
2. Blogs are the new press releases. I hear this one lots from the non-PR blogeratti. Our arrogance/hysteria in assuming the pervasiveness and application of blogs outside of tech is unfounded. Do I think blogs are a perfect mechanism for distributing news? Yeah. Do they replace press releases? No. Do they complement them? Yes. Are they a terrific alternative in some sectors for some audiences for non material news (today)? Absolutely. But we are some ways off complete pervasiveness and verified authority.
3. Are wire services dead? Not for a long time – but if they don’t start innovating around RSS then it might happen. The logic doesn’t work today – if PR Newswire is dead, then next comes Reuters. Just don’t see that happening. RSS doesn’t replace wire services. It’s a technology that could be used as much by them as it is by us. RSS remains one of the most important technology developments in communications and you’d better be getting your own feeds to your own communities. But abandon wire services – at least in the next 5-10 years – at your peril. Just do RSS well.
4. The humans will rise to kill the machines? I agree with the case for authenticity – but this is not an absolute case for blogs over press releases. This is just a case for writing well, and authentically. Everywhere, all the time.
5. Feedback: Why can’t people leave comments on press releases? Again, this isn’t a case for blogs as much as it is a case for using social networking technology. I’m a big advocate of companies posting press releases, keynotes and other materials with trackbacks and comments sections. Makes perfect sense. Doesn’t mean though you stop doing press releases. Dealing with the spam though is a real issue. Until we get new tools and technologies here I expect only the bravest of companies to head down this path.

Seems that Ian Skerrett, Director of Marketing for the Eclipse Foundation has taken this idea very literally, posting a set of draft releases to his blog for comment. Given they represent a community, getting the community involved in the creation of press releases only seems logical – although posting them kills the news and defeats the purpose of a press release. So why bother – other than for the PR value?

James points to this as an example of open source marketing – while I agree with the point he is making here where James is really on is that stealth marketing isn’t the only strategy for getting news into the market. There will be many instances where enterprises will benefit from engaging with their community in the creation of news. Blogs offer a new alternate to the "one size fits all" approach of the press release.

Frankly, I find the the focus on press releases vs. blogs a nuisance. Lift the lid on the issue and what you get to is writing less releases better. And then using new mediums – like the blog. I definitively agree with this.

For me the real issue is the shift from the business of transmitting news to news as a dialog. From the business of sending to the business of engaging.  From complete and final communications to incomplete and constructive conversations.

It is for this reason that I believe the technologies and features of the blog will start appearing as a key component of press releases. Maybe the wire services will propel this forward. Maybe the companies will do it themselves. Either way, the sooner we get to press releases with comments, trackbacks, permalinks, lotsa links and tags – the better off we all will be. Press releases become more blog like. But they won’t go away.

Here’s an interesting thought on how Coke can pivot off Pepsi’s current communications challenges. As a spectator in the Cola wars I’ve long thought that Coke’s marketing is, well, boring. Lacking in guerrilla activity. This could be a real good move for them.

A great Editorial from Adage… gets right to the heart of the issue on pulling advertising…

The primary reasons for advertisers to invest in any media product should be the bond that product has with its audience and the relevance of that audience as a marketing target. Such relationships are often based on trust and credibility. Tools such as ad-pull policies can damage that credibility. They make clear to editors and publishers that if they don’t create an editorial environment friendly to a marketer’s message, the money will go elsewhere. – AdAge

A seperate story staes: "The memo cites a new BP policy document entitled "2005 BP Corporate-RFP" that demands that ad-accepting publications inform BP in advance of any news text or visuals they plan to publish that directly mention the company, a competitor or the oil-and-energy industry."

BP says:

"Scott Dean, a BP spokesman, said that to his knowledge MindShare penned the memo. He called the language in it "unfortunate" and "regretable."

"This is not meant to be Draconian or to influence coverage. We are just asking for a head’s up" about a cover story about the oil industry. We never asked to read [editorial] copy in advance."

Grikey mate… You have you no right to either. Its this thing called freedom of the press. Nice try though.

I’ve been a big advocate of companies not funding media or analysts that they deem to be unfairly reporting on them – the media have a right to free speech as much as companies have to free investment of marketing dollars. But even that is a dangerous game.

Given this seems to be an escalating trend it seems smart for all PR teams to get ahead of this issue by briefing both their procurement functions and media buying teams on media policies. A little education might go a long way here…