Way beyond blogs

A year ago, Peggy Sturdivant, a Seattle neighborhood news blogger, invited me to do a joint presentation for a PR class (the PR Certificate program) at the University of Washington.

We've been invited back to present again this year, and, as I'm putting together my notes, I'm discovering two things:

1. That the role of blogging in PR (and in several other areas of business and professional communication) has changed fairly dramatically in the past 12 months; what were emerging trends in January 2008 are so established as to be taken for granted today. (More on this to come.)

2. That the way information is presented in a classroom is pretty much light years away from how I communicate online. It's slow, it's boring, it's cumbersome. Classrooms need presenter computers connected to a large-screen TV or projector screen. In reality, they have nothing but whiteboards or a non-functioning setup that theoretically allows a presenter's computer to be connected to a screen, but which, in reality, never works because some cord is missing or some software isn't compatible. Sigh.

Anyway, on to the actual presentation.

Most of what I'll be presenting tonight are short tips that students can explore later by clicking through to these following links on this blog. Tips are likely to include:

1. Online PR has gone way beyond websites and blogging.

Suggested reading:
Barry's Hurd's "Social Media Demographics and Analytics 2008-2009" in which Barry comments that "such things as reputation and brand impact will be occurring real-time 24/7."

2. Fortunately for those of us who do PR, a much more realistic attitude now exists about blogging. It's been demystified; is no longer viewed as a magic bullet.

Suggested reading:
Darren Rouse's post on getting fast traffic to a blog.

3. Unfortunately, the new "magic bullet" that CEOs read about in airplane magazines and decide their marcom folks must create immediately is "community." That's simple but difficult to create and maintain. Instead, you need to participate in robust existing communities, a behavior with is antithetical to old-school corporate behavior. ("But is has to have our name on it!")

Suggested reading:
Barry Hurd's "PR is killing itself and it hurts to laugh"

Chris Pirillo's YouTube video on creating community.

4. SEO is now the "hot new thing," a PR essential for blogging and websites.
• Basic SEO is easy.
• More sophisticated SEO is not for amateurs and should always start with analytics before you throw money into implementing SEO.
• Gray-hat (shady) SEO is not as smart as the people telling your company to do it thinks it is. It can, and will, turn around and embarrass you.
• Make sure you understand "social bookmarking" and "tags" of all kinds. You may not need to use them, but you need to know if you need to use them.

Suggested reading:
Boing Boing's post "Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?"

5. Twitter PR is free and powerful, but not easy. (Hint: It's not advertising, it's information.) And, watch how closely it's linked to blogs. Think of it as a headline for your blog posts or for your comments on other blog posts, plus a way to create the credibility that will bring others to your blog.

Suggested reading:
Sign up for a Twitter account and follow:
• moniguzman (Monica Guzman, writer of the P-I's big blog)
• hrheingold (Howard Rheingold, social media theorist and professor — you'll get links to his class materials)
• joehageonline (Joe Hage is putting social media principles into action, right in front of you, in his work as a MarCom director at a major corporation, and then explaining it on his blog)
• UDistFoodBank (excellent use of Twitter by a non-profit)
• chrispirillo (Chris epitomizes the concepts of branding and communication; watch how he uses Twitter to drive traffic)