Although it is extremely worthwhile to read the entire article and draw your own conclusions, here are the points which resonated with me:

• Experiment with new content formats and user participation: Blog posts are not just columns and op-ed pieces. Stephen M. Walt of the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government found that he could actually develop ongoing pieces based on live developments and included multiple perspectives. Instead of his own single perspective on a certain battle in Afghanistan, he actually began to interact with the battle participants and integrating their perspectives into the analysis. So don’t be limited to column format pieces and truly push the medium.
• Be ready to be challenged and let go of being a perfectionist: Pieces are developed with short lead times and that presents an additional challenge as bloggers: “have to have a much thicker skin because the response is so instantaneous you’re likely to be wrong more often than you would with something you spend months or years working on.” Again, a great piece of insight from Stephen M. Walt. The feedback will range from absurd, to supportive, to challenging so be flexible.
• Don’t be afraid of strong positions and perhaps a bit of sensationalism: Bloggers note that taking on controversial topics gained the most attention and feedback. While not necessarily surprising, it may make sense to create a balance between posts that take on controversial topics that would provide a boost in overall readership.
• Be ready for a real commitment and time investment: This seems to be the biggest challenge. David J. Rothkoff of the Carnegie Endowment found: “My main goal when I started was that it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes a day. That was not successful.” Evgeny Morozov of the Open Society Institute also noted the key challenge of “feeding the beast.” “Sometimes I wake up and just think ‘I’ve got nothin’. I have to do a lot of prior planning. I have a notebook where I keep ideas, and sometimes I’ll incubate something for several weeks.” Being a frequent blogger is quite a time investment so make sure you’re ready for that type of commitment and idea generation is another key challenge.

Blogging is a great platform to take a thought leadership position within an online space and it makes sense to do it especially since most organizations have such a wealth brain power locked away behind the company walls. However, before opening up these points and challenges are worth addressing, otherwise failure is a very real option.

Social Media “frenzies” are over-analyzed as they are happening but are then inadequately remembered after they pass, making their true impact hard to understand.  For example, I would really like to know what was the true impact of the so-called “Motrin Moms” incident?  Did it affect sales, reputation, favorability?

The Skittles experiment in March was hugely effective in generating buzz and traffic but what effect did that truly have and was it sustainable? In these cases it really is just conjecture.  Sales and other brand metrics are not readily available as they are just products within larger organizations, and after initial interest wanes these “social media frenzies” are somewhat forgotten and do not get re-examined.  As this practice area develops, I do believe that Social Media professionals should develop a habit of re-examining these examples as case studies in order to better understand their impact.

One recent example that is interesting to re-examine with having the benefit of time is the Domino’s social media scandal from March 2009 (initially discussed here).  The fact that it is a public company and the top level brand at the company makes it easier to go back and understand the impact of that crisis.  This was actually a frequent discussion point on the company earning’s conference call for that quarter (transcript at Seeking Alpha).  Apparently, the company will not suffer long-term losses, but did suffer sales 1%-2% in that quarter (WSJ article).  So it seems that the damage was pretty heavy, yet limited since that truly was the worst case scenario of a social media crisis.  Domino’s will obviously survive this.

I am not questioning the importance of social media to today’s business. I’m simply suggesting that we should remember to re-examine these events long after they take place as that will give us a clearer understanding about their the long-term significance.

In replacing IPI’s antiquated website with a more robust digital platform, RFI Studios took into account the Institute’s goals of increasing their profile in the foreign policy set and generating buzz among future policy leaders. RFI developed a user-centric application allowing visitors access to content that suits their needs.

To view the new site, visit www.ipinst.org.

As the Wall Street Journal recently explored, this can be especially vexing for layoff announcements in a world of blogs, citing a Yahoo case where “its instructions to managers conducting layoffs — ‘15 minutes maximum,’ ‘don’t engage in small talk’ — were published by the blog Valleywag.com.”

Sites like Overheard in the Office offer an anonymous outlet for harmless (usually) office gossip, but how should companies prepare for the eventuality of a leak that could lead to legal action?

It can be somewhat of a paradox. Building trust with employees and fostering open lines of communication are strong tools for developing a relationship where those with access to sensitive information will honor its sensitivity. Some employees just won’t have that capacity - particularly those who are on their way out or know they will be soon.

So, another approach might be to limit employee access to private information to reduce the possibility of leaks a priori. However, this disintigrates trust, and can lead to cumbersome bureaucracy, censorship, and spying.

Some advocate for companies to act completely openly, as if there is no filter between their email screen and the front page of Gawker. From the PR perspective, this translates as “there is no such thing as off-the-record.”

To complicate matters - in PR, sometimes we walk a fine line of “leaking” information by soft-sounding reporters. It can be appropriate to build a reporter’s interest in a story by sharing some enticing details of a story without providing client identifiers.

And sometimes PR pros purposely and openly “leak” information in the form of an embargoed press release. But as we’ve seen recently, the practice of ignoring embargoes has been catching on, as TechCrunch recently announced they will ignore embargoes and WSJ partially adopted a no embargoes policy.

Have you ever leaked sensitive information?

Maybe don’t answer that on this blog.

[Also published on Social Media Today]

Search is a hot topic these days and has occupied many headlines. “Bing takes market share from Google”, “YouTube is the second most popular search engine”, “Facebook competes with Google by acquiring FriendFeed”, and so on… The more I see these, the more it seems that we cannot group all these discussions under the headings of general category of “search.” It seems that we may not be talking about a single market share but a market that is evolving, growing, and segmenting itself. I believe time has come to begin to distinguish the various type of “search” into sub categories that are based on user intent or expectation of what a user wants to do. These are the proposed categories:

Real time, personalized advice: This is grounded in a belief that micro content platforms and social networks are competing with traditional search engines. Users can tap their personal networks for queries like “what is the best way to manage Twitter?” or “What is a good hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica?”

I don’t think that this is a type of search that is worrying Google for the next several years. Yes, they are taking steps to making their search results more real-time, but ultimately this type of search depends on the strength of one’s social network and its ability to field these questions. Most users still wound not rely consistently on their social networks to provide the type of information. If this were a threat to traditional search engine use, we would begin to see a decrease in overall number of queries and users on Google, Yahoo, and Bing and that has not happened yet.

Video and music search: This category is strong enough to stand on its own at this point and while I have heard the mention of “YouTube is the 2^nd most popular search engine”, perhaps it is better to say that it is the “top video search engine” or “top niche search engine” because it simply ONLY indexes video content.

It comes down to: does a user want to watch video or do they want to read? AND, the way we consume information currently is by consuming various information sources quickly. We scan content and therefore reading seems to be the most appropriate way. Reading suits our short attention spans (created in no small part by TV)— and videos are actually less efficient way of consuming information. Therefore, video search is a category, not an all encompassing search engine. It’s a tool for entertainment and niche instructional segments.

And finally:

Topical (or traditional) search: Traditional search engines will remain the immediate source of information for all types of results, video, niche, news, education, etc…. They are effective regardless of how strong your social network is and they have an algorithm behind delivering authoritative results. Going back to an earlier point, if that position was threatened we would already be seeing those trends.

It is important to distinguish between the various types of search in order to be able to properly understand the role of each because it impacts user experience and expectation as well as how organizations can plan to leverage them, but they are not all “search”.

This conference call had all the classic elements: poor sound quality, audible  typing into the microphone, and long blocks of hard-to-follow dialogue.  However, overall the effect of galvanizing support and getting the message across to the influentials worked: it resulted in on-message coverage from all the bloggers.  Granted, this is the actual President of the United States speaking to bloggers so they are likely to pay attention; nevertheless, there are important lessons here.  This was a high level executive making time to actually speak to bloggers and make relationships.  Not many CEOs do that.  The element of research was also present as these were progressive/liberal leaning bloggers that would almost certainly be receptive to the President’s message.  This research element of understanding a blogger position before outreach cannot be underestimated.   Bloggers are the new journalists and need to be treated accordingly. It is nice to see these basic tactics being practiced by President Obama.

See sample coverage and listen to the call here

Ruder Finn Intent Index

The Intent Index reveals a new view on why people go online and redefines how we look at demographics. The important concept here for digital business trends is that marketers need to truly connect with their audiences, and not treat their online communications like a checklist of tasks.

As a result, Ruder Finn co-CEO Kathy Bloomgarden has said that “intent is the new demographic.” She continues,

“Delving deeper into the underlying motivations of online behavior is critical to developing proactive strategies. Just being online is not enough to leverage digital channels to drive business imperatives. Audiences must be targeted based upon their intent.”

She recently discussed the Intent Index in a video interview with PR Week.

You can view the results, which will be updated quarterly, with a cool, interactive flash tool here: www.ruderfinn.com/intent

It’s quite addictive.

You can view the full press release along with interesting results here: RF’s New Study of Online Behavior Focuses On User Intent

The survey has the capability of being narrowed down for specific industries. Please comment if you’re interested.

For those of you on Twitter, here are some “re-tweetable” findings (using #intentindex or #rfintent via @RuderFinn):

More than twice as many people go online to socialize (81%) than to do business (39%) or shop (31%)

72% of people go online just to become part of a community

Seniors are going online today for the same reasons younger people are; to have fun (82%) and to socialize (80%)

More people go online to connect via a social networking site (41%) than to post comments or opinions (34%)

More people go online to be entertained (82%) than entertain others (48%)

People seek education and entertainment: most people go online both to learn (88%) and have fun (83%)

Almost half of people (47%) go online to learn to improve themselves and nearly one-third (31%) to find self-help experts or books

The desire to learn drives people to the Internet; top areas are new subjects (68%), the world (65%), a disease or condition (61%)

Three times as many people go online to compare prices (66%) rather than people via dating sites (21%)

E-commerce isn’t dead — one-third of people (34%) go online to purchase an item

Top things people go online to buy: household items (49%), electronics (45%); music (35%), movies (29%)

More men (42%) than women (36%) go online to do business

Women comment, men read: 55% of women go online to find venues for personal expression compared to only 43% of men

The age of blogs: 44% of people go online to create or update blogs and 42% of people go online to read other people’s blogs.

Women (48%) are much more likely than men (39%) to go online to advocate for an issue or position

The Ruder Finn Intent Index is based on a study among Internet users that asks respondents how frequently they go online for 295 reasons. The Intent Index shows that a person’s intent may be a better indicator for how to develop a communications campaign than demographic formulas.

Inspired possibly by HBO’s “John Adams” series, I’ve been reading Bernard Bailyn’s pulitzer-winning “Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.”

During the American Revolution, there was a medium of communication that allowed for “complete freedom of expression,” yet could also “be more detailed than is ever possible in a newspaper,” and “can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public.”

This medium did not have to follow any standard rules. “It can be in prose or in verse, it can consist largely of maps or statistics or quotations, it can take the form of a story, a fable, a letter, an essay, a dialogue, or a piece of ‘reportage.’”

All that was required of it was that it be “topical, polemical, and short.”

Sounds a lot like blogging or micro-blogging, but these were pamphlets. Pamphlets, in many ways drove public sentiment in colonial America against the British, and as John Adams famously wrote:

“What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760-1775.”

He goes on to say that the pamphlets of the time period are what should be inspected to learn what formed public opinion.

And much like Twitter and blogging, they were cheap, fast, and difficult to suppress.

Unlike today’s social media, however, pamphlets did not allow for certain social aspects like the instantaneous and public nature of comments, re-tweeting and Digg’ing. But they were similar in that they allowed for conversation in a way that resembles the modern day YouTube response video. It takes longer to put together than a “thumbs up” rating, but they’re not feature length productions that take months to make.

The key lesson here is that even though we’re in the digital age, the basic tenets of PR and communications remain the same. Oftentimes the most effective communicators are the ones who find the fastest, broadest, and most credible ways to put their messages across.

The idea sparked a good old-fashioned watercooler debate yesterday on whether or not certain digital trends are here to stay. One colleague claimed to know enough about Twitter without being on it. That might indeed be enough. As we saw from a Harvard Business School study last week, 90% of tweets come from just 10% of users, and average lifetime number of tweets per user on Twitter is 1. The vast majority of Twitter users, it would seem, are “just looking.”

Maybe “just looking” at social media is enough to cut it in today’s PR world.

We can all survive without the latest tech, sure (he said writing a digital trends blog post on his BlabkBerry on the subway). In many cases, we’re probably better without it - Hulu even advertises that it rots your brain.

But, much like my grandmother who is opposed to getting an answering machine because it’s too newfangled, my colleague might do just fine, thank you very much, but will be missing out on a whole world of possibilities. She’ll be missing out on the virtual watercooler conversations taking place at Ruder Finn on Twitter, missing access to journalists who prefer 140-character pitches, and being behind on what’s going on with Shaq.

Another colleague was considering leaving Facebook, failing to see the point of it all. Her argument was that Facebook replaced prevailing technology that came before it, and something else will be along soon to replace it as well.

Without a doubt, there will be something to replace Facebook, and the question today is, “will I someday look back and wonder how I survived without Facebook?”

Is Facebook like the cellphone - a tool that has become so pervasive in our culture that some people don’t communicate any other way? Is Facebook like email - a tool that many people can’t imagine their work lives without?

Does your business live and breathe social media, or can you do without?

It’s an amazing experience to be part of a process that starts out rooted in web development but quickly becomes something bigger.  Conducting a comprehensive discovery period (usability testing, user research, web analytics, brand assessment) RFI learned that external site users were not aware that PARC is open for business, let alone, all of the services and expertise that the institution contains.  This became a core focus of the strategy.

As a result, we developed a unique and streamlined architecture, devised to display the entire content offering at one glance, effectively displaying the PARC universe for all to see. From here, contextual cues were utilized to engage users direct questions: How do I work with PARC? What are PARC’s areas of focus? What has PARC contributed to the Industry? The overarching goal was to ensure easy access of content and promote PARCs prominence.

The visual design is intended to display a cartesian layout, mimicking the strict rules of science and at times allowing the content and visuals to break the mold – a perfect metaphor for PARC, its scientists and the result of their innovative research.

Today concludes an intense, several month technology development process. Throughout each stage, from inception to completion, the website redesign process has involved an intense QA and usability review. The visual design, taxonomy, platform, code and related assets have all been tested time and time again. The end result is what we believe to be a fantastic website which will enable future growth and flexibility for PARC.

View the new site here: www.PARC.com