Unique Communities :: PR Embraces Social Media for Healthcare and Nonprofits

Jeremy Pepper has an interesting post about social media and healthcare over at Pop PR Jots.

Jeremy joined in a panel with Amy Tenderich, from Diabetes Mine.

From his post, these three paragraphs - in particular - struck a cord.

When explaining social media, I use a Town Hall analogy. From a conversation with a friend, she wrote it out like this: Imagine a small New England town with a highly civically-active community. On a regular basis this tightly-knit community hosts Town Hall meetings to discuss current events, areas of concern, etc. Now imagine someone wholly unconnected to community coming in, raising a topic of concern and just leaving. Town Hall meeting members have every reason to be annoyed, incensed and even hostile.

Now take that Town Hall scenario, multiply it exponentially, and stick it online - where anyone and everyone can see it. The quaint little Town Hall is now a blog. And the outside, rude intruders are PR people - those that neither seem to care or understand the community, but are just following orders to get “ink” no matter what.

For healthcare, take that Town Hall scenario, and put it in the hospital ward. With some health blogs, you are either talking to the patient, or the patient’s relative.

In our work with Camp ASCCA, the patient is the camper and the patient’s relatives expands out to the entire family and that unique “family” one gains like physical therapists, doctors, nurses and many others while dealing with issues brought on by your disability. That family even involves donors and volunteers that make trips to Camp ASCCA possible for thousands each year. And, it even involves that area formerly known as B2B when dealing with vendors. Yes, we even address them in our social media strategy.

You just can’t talk with these audiences using a blast email or shotgun press release approach. After all, that’s talking “to” someone, isn’t it?

It is these communities of nonprofit and healthcare “family members” that may well match the blogosphere’s community aspects more than any other. They don’t want advertising. They don’t want to be pitched. What they want is to be a part of something and truly feel that they are making a difference.

I also see this as similar to what we encounter in fundraising. First rule: don’t be afraid to ask. What can they say? No? Well, it isn’t like I’ve never heard that before. But, you have to ask in the right way. And, there must be a relationship before you can ask. Well, if you want to have any hope of being successful.

On another front, Jeremy’s partner in the panel - Amy Tenderich - might be interested in something we’re going to start this coming week with the Southeaster Diabetes Education Services. They are going to begin blogging and video podcasting much the same way students have been doing it at Camp ASCCA’s Journal.

Both examples use blogs for stakeholder outreach - like the campers, counselors and parents of people with disabilities. For ASCCA, as an Easter Seals facility, we work with anyone and everyone to achieve the goal of providing services to people with disabilities. Examples of those services may be found in these posts

• Four-Wheeling :: It is a Realistic Recreation Activity for Spinal Cord Injury Patients and Campers
• USA’s Carmen Hughey :: Experiential Learning about Therapeutic Recreation at Camp ASCCA
• ASCCA’s Campus Is Both Therapeutic and Educational This Weekend
• Christine Geever Ziplines and Spreads Smiles during the 2007 Shepherd Spring Weekend

The best part about all of those posts is that they were created by students gaining experience and they involve multiple organizations and universities all doing one thing - making life a little bit better, and a little bit more fun, for people with disabilities.

The video below is one example. It comes from our intern, Cathy Cochran, from Sewanee. She’s doing some great work at Camp ASCCA. Cathy is only a sophomore. She has very little experience with video and production. Yet, look at what she’s done in only her first week.

I think this could be a really great summer for social media and Camp ASCCA.

Paull Young’s Successful PR Blog World Tour :: He Makes a NYC Converseon

The news was wonderful to hear. Paull Young lands a great job in New York City. And, he’ll be working with another great guy, too.

The release said it all. “Converseon today named Paull Young as a senior account executive in its New York headquarters. Young, author of the Young PR blog and a respected PR blogger and podcaster, will execute social media strategies for Converseon’s clients, reporting to Converseon’s director of social media, Constantin Basturea.”

I have to say, any firm with both Constantin and Paull is definitely a firm to reckon with in social media. Others are likely taking notice of this pairing. They should. Constantin is top notch.

Paull even got props from the Converseon CEO. Pretty cool. “Paull embodies what Converseon is all about,” said Converseon CEO Rob Key. “He offers passion, innovation, commitment and a desire to push the edges of digital communications where possible. We’re delighted to have such a talent as part of our team.”

You can check out all the news yourself. Visit Paull’s post, Constantin’s post, and the the media release. Paull even put a little podcast in his post about the news.

And, to top it all off, there is even a post by Erin Caldwell at Forward blog. Paull has contributed there and headed up their podcasting efforts, too. Erin started Forward while she was at Auburn and has created opportunities for students, like Paull was when he began contributing, with her efforts.

I’m particularly happy, for somewhat selfish reasons, to learn of Paull’s success. He was our first international student to blog at PRblogs.org. Paull turned those terrific efforts into gold. I hope other students will learn from his success story.

So, three “cheers” for Paull. Much deserved news, Paull. Have fun in New York.

Britt Bravo Believes :: Have Fun, Do Good :: Nonprofit Use of Social Media

While we’re considering nonprofit related blogs, I wanted to to share this recent find - an excellent example. Several students have mentioned working in the nonprofit sector, this semester. One just posted about it. So, let’s explore how nonprofits have been using social media in their daily PR and marketing activities.

From Oakland, California, we discover a great site. This one will be particularly interesting for those students thinking about a future in nonprofit work.

Meet Britt Bravo of Have Fun • Do Good, “A blog for people who want to make the world a better place AND have fun!” Now there is a cool name - Britt Bravo.

Britt Bravo is a writer specializing in stories about individuals and organizations who are creating social change. She writes for blogs, produces podcasts and teaches women to blog and podcast. Britt writes for Have Fun * Do Good, BlogHer, WorldChanging San Francisco, and NetSquared. She also produces the Big Vision Podcast and the NetSquared Podcast. Using her 15 years of experience working with nonprofits, socially responsible businesses, and artists, Britt provides consulting for nonprofits and individuals to help them realize their Big Vision. To learn more about Britt go to her web site, Big Vision Career and Project Consulting, at www.brittbravo.com.

Her latest post is Have Fun • Do Good: 10 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Blogs and Bloggers to Support Their Cause. A good post and one we should all check out for ideas. Read more

PRblogs.org Upgrade Complete :: Thanks, James Farmer

Cross-posted from PRblogs.org

Many thanks to James Farmer of edublogs.org for his tireless work over the past few weeks.

A complete revamp of the PRblogs.org software platform is essentially finished. I’m still looking around to find any possible quirks that may have arisen. Please feel free to comment with any problems you may encounter. The Flickr plugin is a little goofy right now, for instance. We’ll get it.

Also, we have our own PRblogs Forums coming up. Thanks, James. That will allow us to better communicate our FAQs and report any bugs. I’ll alert you when that comes on-line.

Frequent users have likely experienced sluggish service and downtime at various times over the past few days, especially. I apologize for the interruptions in service. We are growing and experiencing those unfortunate growing pains. I believe this upgrade solves those problems.

Also, we can’t forget that PRblogs.org is a free service. Still, we want to bring you the best service. Your patience is appreciated.

PRblogs.org is hosted, along with almost 65,000 other blogs, at edublogs.org. James has been our benefactor all this time. We are very lucky and grateful to have his assistance. I hope to have further news in the coming days about other positive movement for PRblogs.org, too.

Our blogging platform, WordPress Multi User (WPMU), is now upgraded to WPMU 1.0. This is the same platform being used by The New York Times, Yahoo!, Harvard and Le Monde magazine. Also, edublogs.org is the prime example of WPMU implementation highlighted by WordPress.com / Automattic as a WPMU blog hosting provider.

PRblogs.org, like edublogs.org, is free to all. No ads. James has recently launched Edublogs Premium, an even more robust and affordable enterprise option for edublogging. Check that out if you are interested in something for your school or enterprise, for example.

There are new tools for posting videos, audio, photos and more. Podcasting is now possible at PRblogs.org.

Here is one example of how video may be posted to your PRblogs.org site. Read more

Blogs, Press Releases, and Farmers in Appalachian Valleys

This is the meme that won’t die. I was going to stay away from it, until I received a comment from Stowe Boyd yesterday. His comment was so long that my response (I feel) deserves a post, rather than a simple reply. The funny thing is, today I received an email from a former student (Sarah) who opened her eNewsletter from Lawrence Ragan Communications today and saw my name at the top of Shel Hotz’ post about the post in question. Kinda cool. Oh, and “Hey, Sarah!”

If you aren’t confused, re: Farmers in Appalachian Valleys, then I’ll appreciate your help - ’cause I am confused. You see, I have never written about Appalachain Valley farmers and press releases (have I?), but apparently Stowe Boyd thinks I did.

The title of this post is but part of a comment left by Stowe Boyd on the post, Blogs are Soma to So Many. At least he liked the metaphor - sort of. His comment is in blockquotes below. I respond.

Stowe Boyd: I think the metaphor is pretty, but misleading. You could make the case that anything that any group advocates is like Soma. I don’t buy it. Blogging is not like taking an anti-depressant. It is (at a physical level) a collection of tools for web publilshing, and (at the societal level) a social medium through which we gain understanding of the world. Not a drug.

Actually, my intention re: the use of the metaphor is as follows.

The assertion that blogging will right the wrongs of poor corporate and organizational communication with stakeholders gives blog enthusiasts solace. Enthusiasts hope and believe that social media’s conversational form will bring relief to the distress of poor customer service and customer relationship marketing / management. So, it is the idea of a blog revolution that serves as your soma. You embrace it as something that will make society and corporations, for instance, co-exist in harmony. And, you seem to expect us to get in line - quick.

I agree that blogging is a medium, but I’m a little surprised that you used that term. Isn’t “place” or “space” the blog-speak appropriate term, along with “people” instead of audience? I wouldn’t want you to be drummed out of the Blog Thought Leaders Club. (See David Weinberger’s JOHO the blog, your own reference to Doc Searls, Dan Gillmor’s The Former Audience Joins the Party, and Jay Rosen’s The People Formerly Know as the Audience.)

Those enthusiasts are, after all, creating waffle words or jargon. (See Milton Friedman.) But, wasn’t this supposed to be the movement that did away with required appropriate norms of speech and definitions. Isn’t it the movement that frees all to speak in their own voice? The implication being, if you don’t subscribe to the dogma, “you don’t get it.” I think Stowe Boyd used that phrase.

Stowe Boyd: Your argument boils down to the fact that established mechanisms of PR have been baked into law and other conventions, and therefore blogging — which wasn’t foreseen when those where codified — shouldn’t be used in place of old timey ideas like press releases distributed by newswire services. I have suggested that we could work collectively to get these conventions, or laws, if necessary, changed.

No, my argument is two-fold. But, yes … we can work to change the old laws. However, it will take a lot of time. Read more

Name Change :: Re-branding :: University of Missouri - Rolla

One of my favorite examples for using a blog is where an organization employs them to gain input from their stakeholders. It is particularly rewarding to see dialog, about sometimes sensitive issues, being discussed so openly. I think it shows great transparency - even a bit of bravery - for an institution to follow this path.

In the past, I have written about Cornell.edu Redesign: Why it is a good blog and the student initiative of BuzzFlood :: Dartmouth Blog/CMS PR Tactic.

Andrew Careaga, of higher ed marketing, recently shared news from his university, the University of Missouri-Rolla, about a new “name change” blog. See the release: UMR News and Research: Weblog shares info about potential name change.

Last October, UMR Chancellor John F. Carney III proposed a discussion about changing the university’s name to one that better reflects its role as a technological research university.

“The University of Missouri-Rolla is unique among the four University of Missouri campuses because of our focus as a technological research university,” Carney said. “We believe a more distinctive name would afford UMR several advantages in recruiting students on a national level.”

I’m enjoying watching the conversations. It is new, yet they are already getting traffic.

The most exchanges, thus far, have taken place on a post about Alumni survey results: 70% (of respondents) favor name change. You can tell that the respondents feel ownership of “their” university. It is fun to read.

Go over and check it out. Thanks to Andrew for the tip, too. I love these kinds of blogs.

Related Links:

• Name change conversations - Missouri-Rolla
• Cornell University - cornell.edu Redesign
• BSU.EDU Relaunch
• collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed, Karine Joly - the keeper of all things higher ed web.

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges :: We do need Resources

Alfonso Bedoya made that quote famous in the 1948 John Huston film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was Bedoya’s character, Gold Hat, that said, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”

OK, this is just my cute way to share some resources with the students and broach the subject of best practices in online communication. Also, I loved that film and enjoy seeing that line repeated in all its incarnations, like Blazing Saddles and Goin’ South, to name a few. Finally, Bedoya was a great character actor - so, I’m a fan.

There is a lot of talk about transparency and open dialog online, particularly with regard to business communications and social media. Some have suggested that a group label or badge might help to at least alert visitors to your Web site that you are interested in transparency and honesty.

The image to your left, for instance, offers a way to “take the pledge” and promise to be a good little blogger.

Well, badges may be cool to have on your Web site, but let’s remember that it is - to borrow a phrase - “the content of your character,” and not the little badge on your blog, that will make the big difference to all who read and interact with your Web site.

Still, a stated personal code of conduct can be a good thing. Some bloggers devote whole pages to their potential conflicts of interest, such as investments, stock holdings, employment, client list, and more. Nothing wrong with that and certainly a good idea if you wish to retain your good reputation.

So, with that said, let’s revisit some of the good sites with guidelines for positive online behaviour.

Allan Jenkins’ Desirable Roasted Coffee Code of Blogging Ethics is always a good read.

Then, there is the combined resource of Constantin Basturea’s epic work in the NewPR/Wiki.

At TheNewPR/Wiki, you will find the following resources (and more):

• Blogging Policies
• Anti-Astroturfing
• Rules for Social Media Optimization
• Pitching Blogs

Oh, and that “Blog Honor” pledge I referred to, it is here: Read more

The Social Media News Release and News Room are Heuristic :: Help Us

This post is about the good ideas that have been generated re: PR, social media, news releases and more. What my students desire is to see how journalists are reacting to all of these new ideas. Media relations is, after all, a large part of many PR practices. We have yet to see any significant research (actually, no research at all) as to whether the new approaches will work. So help us, please.

An heuristic effort is one that “encourages a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error: a heuristic teaching method.” We need your help in pursuing research on the issues of hreleases and social media newsrooms.

What we are seeing in the hrelease, social media press release and social media news room efforts are experiential learning activities. It is collaboration. It is the essence of what this interactive conversational media represents. Just read the conversations it has generated.

I love these learning and experimental efforts. I’m often confused, even saddened, by the way they are so quickly written off by observers. To me, blogging and wikis and all of the interactive online dialogs are the best part of the WWW. In fact, the best part of blogging to me has been the wide variety of ideas and opinions it opens up to students. That is why I’m so happy that so many PR practitioners are choosing to blog.

So, whether we are talking about Todd Defren at PR Squared and his Social Media Newsroom Template or his “Social Media Press Release” Template; or, Chris Heuer’s Idea Engine and Brian Solis at PR 2.0 - Silicon Valley and all of the people involved in the Social Media Club … it is all one big collaboration.

Comments and input from those like Brian Oberkirch about “The Case for hRelease” and Tom Foremski’s rant on the press release and attempts to change it are all equally important.

Phil Gomes, Rick Murray and Ming Lee at Edelman have given us StoryCrafter and Shannon Whitley has given us PRX Builder.

Everyone is learning. I don’t think any of the participants in the collaborations actually purports to have all the answers. Now, my students want in on the action in a little deeper inspection of all these ideas.

What is the one of the important things that is missing? The research to see how journalists will react to these new ‘animals’ like the hrelease, newsroom and social media in the PR/Journalist symbiotic relationship, overall. My students have done research on social media adoption by newspapers. Now, this semester, they are embarking on research to see how journalists react to these new approaches.

Anyone want to participate? Want to help us, please?

Leave a comment and we can hook you up with the student group that is doing the research. Anyone that may provide contacts and introductions to national journalists in the top 50 newspapers, for instance, will likely help the students achieve a more successful survey effort.  In their previous efforts, it was easier to get through to the 51-100 top markets.

My hope is that three different research teams will focus on three different groups of journalists. Those are:

• local journalists in a regional area, like Alabama, or any other state,
• national journalists in the top 50 newspapers,
• one specific trade group or market segment - to be determined.

What are your thoughts? This way we’ll have an idea of the viability in a large section of PR that seems to go unnoticed in these discussions - local PR practitioners and journalists. We’ll also address national media. The trade group, or market, can be anyone’s choice - as long as we can get to a significant respondent pool.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see if these people actually find benefits in all these new tools or approaches?  How about gathering their input as to ways the approaches might be improved to increase acceptance and adoption by journalists. Or, we might just find that they aren’t desired at all. Who knows … until we ask.

I’m just testing to see if merely posting this in a blog will bring in participants, by the way. We’re going forward with it regardless. But, we’d love to have help and guidance. Thanks.

Blogs are Soma to So Many

This is one of a group of posts I’ve been sitting on re: the recent press release kerfluffle. Todd Defren suggests I “git a little louder” in comments at Shel Holtz’ latest post, so here we go. I just posted about five items that I’ve been thinking about. Some are rants, others are reports of activities we’ve been undertaking in classes. This particular post is more rant than anything else. I just can’t contain it anymore. My intent is not to offend.

For those in the Brave New World, soma was their panacea. The cure-all. It made you feel good. It kept society in line and manageable.

Today, there are the blog evangelists in the Brave New Blogosphere. For them, blogs are too often desired, just as soma was in Huxley’s novel. Let us remember that Huxley’s novel was fiction. Some of what the blog evangelists preach is fiction, too. I’m not saying be quiet. I’m asking that the evangelists, the enthusiasts, look at the larger world and not allow the myopic anecdotal observations of their market (mostly the tech market), to cloud their suggestions for all markets.

They think that blogs will right the wrongs of the customer / corporate relationship. Blogs, they think, will be adopted by all and revolutionize the way customers interact with businesses, citizens with politicians, and so many more stakeholder relationships. Some seem to worship blogs as if they are Panacea, the Greek goddess of healing. That is less jest, and more realistic observation, than you may think.

In Huxley’s book, people would say:

“you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma

In the Brave New Blogosphere, they say:

You have communication problems? Why not just use blogs? (or here)

If you think about it, blogs are their idea of utopia. But, for those of us that actually read books, we know Huxley’s book was not the ideal of utopia. It was a nightmare. To follow some blog evangelist cries to “Just use a blog”, you might be creating a nightmare for your client. OK, the “actually read books” thing was mean. I apologize. But, it does bother me. Can you understand why I’m sometimes miffed when I read these things? The statements about adoption of blogs are so broad, so universal, that they miss the realities of our world.

Is it any wonder that some blog evangelists have koolaid stained lips?

“the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of a soma blog-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was!”

It gets better worse. As I mentioned in a previous post, there is a tendancy to dismiss calls for rational thinking as wholesale dismissal of a movement - like social media. Nothing could be further from the truth, for me. I embrace it. But, I try to do it with an eye on the vast world of numerous public relations jobs my students may wind up in down the road.

This back and forth about SMNRs and press releases may be an example of the Koolaid Point, from 2005. Again, I’m not dismissing the thought leaders. I read them. I like a lot of what they say and write. But, reality has its place, too. Right?

These same evangelists say that press releases are dead. They no longer have any use or value. These evangelists seem to think they understand PR and they don’t - not the entire world of PR practice, at least. Most of these evangelists reside in Silicon Valley or other tech industry rich areas. They are, in these anti-PR rants, myopic to the rest of the real world.

Let’s visit a new place for those in their technology world, soma (blog) induced, myopic haze. It is called - welcome to our world … the realistic practice of public relations across the world … of just the United States.

Read more

William Murray, PRSA COO/President :: Chats with Students

Yesterday, our Style and Design class enjoyed a telephone interview with Mr. William Murray, the new COO / President of PRSA, the Public Relations Society of America.

The experience was enjoyed by the students very much. Mr. Murray was very kind and more than willing to take all of our questions. It lasted approximately fifty minutes. I want to thank Mr. Murray and Mr. Cedric Bess, who set up the interview, for making this possible for the students. We are very grateful.

I will wait to post about the interview until after my students have made their posts. I’ll be sharing the URLs of their blogs after the first posts. I don’t want to influence their opinions any more than I may already have done in our lead up to the interview and the follow up discussion after it concluded. You may view a list of the questions we pre-submitted for the interview. Not all were addressed, but the majority were covered.

Below is a letter I sent to Mr. Murray today. It outlines some suggestions for PRSA. As I said in the letter, unsolicited advice is cheap. I don’t know if any of it will be accepted, but I hope it is at least discussed among the PRSA staff.

Your comments, criticisms and suggestions will be appreciated.

Read more

PRblogs.org Offers SimpleSMPR News Release Plugin

The free blog provider, PRblogs.org, is dedicated to providing blogs to all public relations students, educators and practitioners that wish to explore blogging. To that end, we also always try to provide the most appropriate tools to use within those blogs. Today marks a new addition to PRblogs.org.

To further the use of PRblogs.org for the purpose of learning, sharing and incorporating PR practices into blogging, we now offer the SimpleSMPR plugin from Shannon Whitley of PRX Builder.

So, today students, educators and practitioners may create a blog at PRblogs.org and experiment with social media releases.

Use the SimpleSMPR plugin by activating it in the Admin area. In addition, you may use the Viper007Bond.com Viper’s Video Quicktags to further enhance posts and releases with video from YouTube, Google Video and iFilm.

Beyond these tools, PRblogs.org also offers the use of Sidebar Widgets to make creation of a unique sidebar and custom blog.

Finally, regarding the SimpleSMPR releases, you may also download Shannon Whitley’s Media Tools to easily access and use the elements of releases created with the SimpleSMPR plugin.

The release announcing SimpleSMPR on PRblogs.org is available PRblogs.org. It was created with the SimpleSMPR plugin.

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