Great Source for PR Book Reviews

If you’re thinking of buying a book focused on public relations, marketing, communications, social media, etc., be sure to check out the For Immediate Release Book Review podcast. Bob LeDrew is the FIR book review editor who provides brief and comprehensive reviews of the newest books on the market. Some reviews are also provided by some others in the FIR community.

Recent titles that have been reviewed include the following. Links are to the book websites. For the reviews, go to: http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php?/C9/

• The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Welcome to the Fifth Estate, by Geoff Livingston
• Social Location Marketing: Outshining Your Competitors on Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp & Other Location Sharing Sites, by Simon Salt
• Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World, by Peter Shankman
• Curation Nation, by Steven Rosenbaum
• The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, by Evgeny Morozov
• The New Small: New Breed of Small Businesses Is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies, by Phil Simon
• Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, by Nancy Duarte
• UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging, by Scott Stratten
• Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, by Wendell Potter.

Get a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Communicating the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Don’t miss this interview of Gerald Baron, founder and director of PIER, and Neil Chapman, a BP communicator. In a conversation by the For Immediate Release podcast, they discuss the communication efforts since the event and consider the lessons for crisis communication. It’s a fascinating conversation where you’ll hear what really happened in communications.

The For Immediate Release podcast is hosted by Neville Hobson, ABC, and Shel Holtz, ABC. Here is a little more about their guests (as posted on the FIR website for the show).

Gerald R. Baron is the president and founder of Baron & Company, a marketing and public relations firm in Northwest Washington, USA, and authors the Crisisblogger blog. He created the PIER System, the only completely integrated Internet-based communication management system for crisis communications, issue management, and ongoing press and public information management. A frequent speaker at conferences, he has served as a strategic and marketing consultant, corporate communications director, publisher, college professor, and entrepreneur.

Gerald is the author of three books on business and marketing, including Now is Too Late 2, one of the best books available on crisis communication in the digital era. More recently, he wrote the white paper, "Unending Flow: Case Study on Communications in the Gulf Oil Spill," available for download as a PDF (free) or as a Kindle ebook ($6.99).

Neil Chapman has worked on high profile public affairs issues in different parts of the world for more than 25 years. He has responded to major crises in the US and UK including the Deepwater Horizon event, legal cases, helicopter crashes, trading scandals, hostage taking and natural disasters. From January 2011 he will run his own communications consultancy, Alpha Voice Communications, focused on crisis communications readiness and presentation/media training.

Neil has been on the communications front line for controversial industrial projects, company takeovers, restructuring and lobbying campaigns. He also has experience working on developments for growing business in Latin America, Africa and Asia. As an oil company executive, he was PR chair for three energy associations - the US Natural Gas Supply Association, Center for LNG and the UK Offshore Operators Association - when they each faced some of their most difficult communications challenges. He has trained and counseled scores of business people at all levels on honing their communication skills, particularly when delivering hard messages or facing hostile audiences.

Neil was a journalist in the UK, working for newspapers, TV and radio.

What's ahead for PR? – Congrats to For Immediate Release's 500th Podcast!

I know I have recommended to you on this blog that you listen to the For Immediate Release podcast, hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. And I still do. It is an excellent podcast that is currently an hour twice a week. I know that sounds like a lot to listen to. But frankly there is that much happening in public relations – or as Shell and Neville put it, at the intersection of communications and technology. Each podcast is packed with information, case studies, resources, reports and data that you can use in your practice. It's excellent free professional development.

So why am I bringing it up again? Well, something special is happening with FIR tomorrow. FIR will be posting its 500th episode. Did you get that? They’ve done this show twice a week 500 times!

Shel and Neville have invited listeners to share what we think they will be reporting on during the next 500 episodes. So I thought I’d share some of my predictions and see what you would add.

1. Shel and Neville will be talking about the use of 3D avatars online across platforms. The 3D virtual web will no longer be limited to special programs like Second Life and gaming programs. It will become part of the natural course of our use of the web. I have confidence in this prediction because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, when they were on a stage together, predicted this as well.

2. I also think that nanotechnology will be the poking its head into the communication world. I have no idea in what way (if I did I’d be talking to a stockbroker right now). I just think it's going to be something we will paying attention to.

3. And of course, during the next 500 episodes there will be talk about new (misguided) studies showing that the latest communication tool is a “drain on worker productivity.”

What do you think?

Think of the Social Media Release as an Online Press Kit

The social media news release concept has been in a kind of development stage for several years. During that time, we’ve seen creative ideas and lots of confusion. The main point of contention is the mistaken idea that the social media news release should replace the traditional release. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

What is the Purpose a Social Media News Release?
The social media news release is really an online press kit. It provides your news in ways that assist journalists and bloggers to write stories about your news. It gives people tools to share your audio and video clips, download logos and photos, and immediately find key stats and quotes rather than sorting through prose. Since a sizeable percentage of stakeholders are generally online, they are more likely to get your news there.

How do You Use Both Kinds of Releases?
There is still value in the traditional release. Some trade publications in your industry may still practically print your release unaltered. And it presents your story in a narrative form. Storytelling is good. I’ve also found that when there are lots of internal levels of approval, the final traditional news release serves their purposes, while the social media version is more of an aid to journalists.

There are several places you can go to learn more. One of the best recent ones is an audio presentation delivered by Shel Holtz, ABC, co-host of the For Immediate Release podcast. You can listen to his engaging down-to-earth speech and see his ppt presentation online. It’s a great way to get a crash course on a powerful communication tool.

Talking PR Strategy with Legal and IT Departments

There has been a lot of ranting over the years about the opposing views of a company’s PR counsel and its attorneys. PR staff in a crisis would find themselves having to stand by silently while CEOs listen to lawyers telling them to say nothing, admit nothing, help no one. They’d talk of the risk of lawsuits. While the risk of reputation loss was not even factored in to the equation.

I’ve never faced this myself. But – like you I’m sure – I’ve heard the arguments that typically call lawyers short-sighted and put the PR folk in the helpless role.

That’s why I found a recent live podcast recording by For Immediate Release so refreshing. They focused on the issue in a more balanced and constructive way. For Immediate Release is hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Their guests for this show were attorney Jim Golden and crisis expert Helio Fred Garcia. They talked about the relationship between attorneys and communicators and how it should change.

Part of the change they recommended was for the PR person in the room to come in talking about strategy rather than tactics. Don’t bring in a press release and ask about message points. Rather, instruct the CEO about reputation risks to the business for different stakeholders. Think like someone in the C-suite should be thinking.

The funny thing is that this is the same advice that some of my PR friends need to get through to their IT teams. I cannot believe how much leeway IT staff are given by CEOs to make what are really business decisions. Technology is a tool for business. And in our context, it is a tool for communications. We do communications to reach organizational strategic goals – not to be cool and never to put the organization at risk. It is IT’s job to make those tools available and to make them work for the organization.

I know I am ranting here – and it is not about my own situation (where there’s no reason to rant). I am ranting on behalf of some colleagues I know through PRSA. On at least three occasions in the last few months, I’ve had folks tell me of the trouble they are having getting their work done because of technology tools that are not available to them. In one case, the rationale was the out of pocket cost was too high. But clearly no one had not added the cost of wasted staff time caused by using the inappropriate tools. In another case, IT staff really don’t have an understanding of the particular tool in question, so their assumption is that it’s risky. In the third case, the IT staff are… well let’s just say sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

In all of these cases, the technologists are talking tactics, not strategy. But the paradox is that they get the ear of the CEO because when the network shuts down, the company shuts down.

Perhaps where I’m headed with this is that we each need to find a way to talk about strategy that is immediate and crystal clear. There’s no time to craft flow charts. With social media today and the 24-second news cycle, when a crisis hits, we don’t have days and days to argue with attorneys or with IT folk about the best response. We have minutes. And while we are focusing on strategy, we need our technology tools to help us handle the tactics.

Podcast Interview with Michael Cherenson, PRSA’s chair-elect for 2009

You may remember the recent visit to our chapter by Michael Cherenson, PRSA’s chair-elect for 2009. Now he's been interviewed by Shel and Neville on their For Immediate Release interviews podcast. It's an excellent interview, and as usual Michael does not hesitate to answer the tough questions.

Listen now online or download the audio file to listen on your iPod or mp3 player.

Quick Options for Finding Blog Coverage of Your Client, Company, Product, Etc.

I got an e-mail from a friend the other day who was looking for quick suggestions on how to monitor blog coverage or conversations. I thought I’d share my answer with you and you can add your suggestions as well if you’d like.

There are three big services – free. I use the first two all the time. I’m going to check out the third. Just like free media monitoring, it’s beneficial to use more than one source.

Google blog search http://blogsearch.google.com
Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/
Technorati http://technorati.com/

The advantage that Technorati has over the others is that it somehow calculates a ranking for each blog which can help you determine which ones to target. The disadvantage is that its searching capabilities have declined significantly in the last year. So you will miss some important ones if this is the only service you use.

A really good paid service that I've tried and loved is Custom Scoop. It does media monitoring including blogs. You get an e-mail each morning listing and linking to all your coverage for each search term. You can do a free trial through: http://www.customscoop.com/fir (FIR just stands for the For Immediate Release podcast, one of three PR/comm. podcasts I don't miss.)