ryan l.

Shel Israel dishes a little advice to the McDonald’s blog team on ways they can improve their pretty pathetic attempt (thus far) at joining the blogosphere. He breaks it down for us:

• Start conversation with your customers
• Talk about a day in the life of a franchise owner
• Ask your customers what they want from you
• Drop the corporate language
• Read other blogs and join conversations

And I’m going to take the liberty to add a couple of more:

• Since Shel won’t say it, I will — pick up the book Naked Conversations, it’ll help
• And on a serious note — post with frequency. Two posts in a week’s time is not enough.

I’m not really one to talk about posting with frequency because I know I don’t, but I’m not a coporporation with an image problem trying to leverage a new platform for repairing one. Like others, I wish them well. A blog can be a pretty damn useful tool for communicating with customers, but you have to use it properly. Hopefully after a little bit of practicing they’ll catch on. And as Shel noted, drop the corporate speak. Despite sounding too formal, it sometimes makes a person (at least me) stop reading and move on. Good luck McD’s.

I’m walking on eggshells with this post because I’ve just entered PR, recently marking my one-year anny. But I, like many other PR professionals, must defend our industry.

Tom Foremski is at it again. A couple of weeks ago we heard the now familiar “PR is dying” bit from him and it provoked plenty of responses defending PR. Despite his points having some merit, I’m not going to let it get me riled up. Clients speak for themselves when they hire an agency. They hire them to fill their communication needs in what they view as a valuable way. Whether that’s counsel, news hits, or blogrelations / new media activities, or all of those.

Others have made the point that the media isn’t dying, it’s changing, and the same goes for PR. Adaptation is taking place, albeit at a slower pace than it should, but it’s happening. More and more PR firms are diving into the blogosphere, as are enterprises, and changing their communications models. Does the rise of new media and blogs devalue traditional PR successes like a BusinessWeek or WSJ hit? I don’t think so. Why? Because it is still a big part of what companies require of their PR hands. Will a print hit always carry the same weight? Probably not — now, more and more, online hits are just as important. But these things don’t indicate that the media or PR is dying, simply changing.

Honestly, I think Foremski knows this and is simply trying provoking us. Maybe we as PR people should simply take his commentary as encouragement to ensure we evolve with the changing communication landscape. I think CNET is the best example of a traditional media outlet that gets it and is the model for success if the rest of the MSM is to avoid losing too much ground (Random thought, my bad).

On a side: I met Tom for the first time on Thursday night, but only briefly as he was rubbing shoulders with, ironically, some PR folks. Kind of confusing given his comments, but like I said, maybe we take it and spin it into motivation. He has said some nice things about Voce, so I can’t hate on him too hard.

Well, it’s probably a little early to declare a “winner” between PR and Advertising — maybe there never will be one clear champion. I was always under the impression these two fields were supposed to be complimentary. Maybe it was just me. Out of a deep desire not to look like a fourth grader copying his homework, I have to throw out a little credit for the initial thoughts on this topic to The Flack and others, but I swear I thought about this in the car on the way home tonight.

To the point: I came across this Economist article at work today, which I suppose signifies my tardiness in commenting on it since it was published on Jan. 19. Despite that fact, I wanted to at least mention it. It’s a nice balanced view of our industry and really displays the shift in value that is taking place within the various types of companies that hire us PR folks. One part got me thinking though:

“It forecasts PR spending will grow by almost 9% a year. This is faster than the overall market for advertising and marketing, now worth a colossal $475 billion and growing at 6.7% a year.”

“It” being Proctor & Gamble which conducted a study on PR and advertising spending in relation to effectiveness, found that money directed toward PR will grow in the coming years, but what does that mean for PR — besides a little bit more dough in the company pocket? To me, this only indicates an even greater importance placed upon reporting and measurement. It has been a constant battle for PR — how do we justify our existence?

I liken PR to a pit bull, at least in spirit. Proving our services valuable has never been easy because measuring the impact of our work has always been difficult. There has been the old standby, clips, but that’s so … not getting it done anymore. The value of PR isn’t always in how many mentions or articles we’ve placed, but also in the strategic component we are able to bring to the corporate table, when we’re invited. But, more and more, as the Economist indicates, PR people are being welcomed into the inner circle of the corporate structure. It is this invitation, in my mind, that only increases the pressure to justify why we belong in the room.

Having a good relationship with our clients is vastly important, but measurement is the key to maintaining and ultimately proving why we deserve a chance. I’m sure anyone who reads this will want to know how I would suggest measuring effectiveness, or lack there of, but really, we all know there are a number of ways. So, I’m open to hearing what people think on this one, if anyone cares to comment.

And one more thing — I know I talk/write a lot, but bare with me, I’m working on fixing that. I blame my long-winded father.

No, this isn’t Extreme Makeover and no, I didn’t get any plastic surgery. What I did get was logical and less paranoid.

I originally started this blog (not very long ago) with the intent of keeping my true identity out of it because I didn’t want to worry about what my employer or others would think about anything I wrote. That or I thought I was a spy or some other delusional thought. Compositional freedom was all I wanted, but as time went on I found myself being more paranoid about someone figuring out that my name wasn’t “Mike” and that I worked at Voce.

So, I’ve decided to give up the charade, feeling as if I’m coming out of the witness protection program or something. It’s not as if I did anything wrong, I was just paranoid and needed a colleague smack some sense into me.

From now on, I will own my opinions and not be such a little bitch about it.

Oh, by the way, the name’s Ryan.

It seems like huge announcements, like the one Steve Jobs made today at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, don’t carry as much weight as they used to — or at least not with me.

These days the media, and hey, bloggers too, are so astute at dissecting the goings on in the technology sector that nothing seems to ever truly stay a secret anymore. Did we have proper notice of this coming to fruition? Well, yeah, but still. I’m not sure about anyone else, but the element of surprise is something I enjoy. So, naturally I was half-disappointed when what we had known since June turned out to be true. The only surprising part was that the promised delivery of tangible, working computers using Intel processors from Apple was originally the end of 2007.

As the subject line indicates, I’m underwhelmed. Not only did we know this was coming based on past announcements and endless speculation, but now that the computers have finally been announced, they’re still too expensive for my taste. Maybe I’m just cheap.

Admittedly, I’m a biased HP home PC user, but I live in a split household and have seen the iBook and iMac’s past capabilities and haven’t been overly impressed — especially for the money. You have the new Intel-powered iMac coming in at a decent $1300 for the 17-inch model and $1700 for the 20-incher, but really, unless you’re a die-hard, why would you switch/convert?

I’ve considered the switch to a Mac, whether that be desktop or laptop, but just can’t muster the confidence or pocketbook boldness to get one. To me, the normal PCs suit my needs just fine performance-wise and so do the prices. Sorry, Steve, not sure you’ve hooked me just yet. You are on the right path though.

A little behind on blogging. The last few days have been pretty hectic. Anyway, I meant to throw something short up about this interesting article from Red Herring that discusses the “old media’s” difficulties adapting to the ways new media is altering the communications landscape.

Most of us have heard about the ever-declining newspaper readership and revenues in recent years or months, and the layoffs that have taken place at the New York Times and others. But, as the Red Herring article displays, readership drops and the chain reaction such drops have caused seem to allude to something bigger. This quotation especially caught my eye:

“And younger people don’t have the same habits as older people. Some 13 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds get their information from online sources. Of the same group, only 2 percent are serious newspaper readers, the report said. Meanwhile, 8 percent of them are keen magazine readers.”

The steady decline of readership, at least to me, seems to be less about how newspapers are going about disseminating their news and information and more about a generation of people whose attention has been drawn to different things - a shift in priorities I suppose. Current events just don’t hold the same level of importance with younger people as they used to. Probably goes back to the same apathetic attitude label the 18- to 24-year-olds get slapped with when it comes to voting.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with the position this article takes, because if you look at some of the figures they’ve cited, it doesn’t seem that online readership is all that either. However, I won’t dispute its viable challenger status when compared to the old media types and the impact it is having.

Anyway, good read. Check it out whoever you are that is still reading this blog off of the links it received the last week.