PR Via Status Updates: The HARO Effect?

The inimitable Peter created a Facebook group earlier this year (as you know) to distribute reporters' requests for interviews. Since then, it's grown into - as Kevin puts it - "a free media source matchmaking service with more than 14,000 members."

So yes, part of this is, Peter's asked for plugs. And if you are or know anyone who is or wants to be an expert in anything, or if you do or know anyone who does ever need to quote an expert in anything, you really should go sign up.

But what's specially interesting is how he's promoting it today. He asked subscribers (free brainstorming) for social-media ways to get attention (free publicity). And the winner - unfortunately I don't have her name, because she deserves credit for a genius idea Laura Ackerman - suggested asking subscribers to put a promotional tagline on their social-network status messages on one day. So, today, you're likely to see, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., “Get sourced. Get quoted. Get famous: http://www.helpareporter.com – putting journalists and sources together, one quote at a time.”

Iit's a fantastic direct social-media PR idea. Simple concept, minimal effort, quantitative results. And so I'm super curious to hear whether it's actually successful. A jump in subscribers today will tell a lot about how strong the connection really is between the influence of networks and actual action.

So, yes, if you want to see who reporters want to talk to, go sign up for the HARO list, and massive props to the anonymous idea girl Laura. Cool stuff: let's see if it works.

Updated to add Laura's name, and to note that with the day not yet over, it's tracking to quadruple the average daily number of new subscribers to the mailing list. Seriously, I love this stuff, don't you?

Social Media Truth: So/Me Outs the Good

(via Olga and USAT Pop Candy)

So this girl posts a video of herself sniffling while she watches the Wall-E trailer. No big deal.

What's cool is what Pixar did when they found out - because it's the essence of social medial. Simple, basic, genius.

Amazing employee relations to surprise their people with the girl they'd all seen who genuinely loved their work so much. And great press, both product for Wall-E and corporate for Pixar (Her blog, Metafilter, local news, and now Pop Candy).

And it cost them maybe a grand to bring her to their party? Just a small nice thing, paying off for them because it deserves to.

I keep saying this: social media outs the good.

It's so simple. If you're good stuff, social media shows that off. And if you've been trying to pass with a fake front, that will come out too.

Exhilarating - or terrifying - depending on who you are. Karma is like that.

The Girl Effect

Ian is one of the people I adore knowing: cool as hell as a friend AND fantastically intelligent as a professional. Less filling, tastes great, you know?

Anyway, he just showed this to me, and I not only love the cause, and the execution, but also his pithy commentary on it: "The execution is especially good for PR people. It means our words still have meaning - it's not just about flashy animation."

And seriously. I was looking at orange text, and I got the chills. That's not Flash doing that. (And it's not a plain-Jane press release, either.) It's a narrative done right.

(Deliberately skipping controversy on the Nike Foundation, FYI.)

Two SoMe Links To End a Short Week

First, a truly fantastic, working-blue explanation of social media (by Bona Fide Marketing Genius, via PR Squared). Take three minutes to go through it, then pass it to anyone who doesn't get SoMe yet.

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Second is the Life Changing Box.



(Via Managing the Gray and Adrants) It's a marketing scheme, but I'm into it. The site is going viral because people are curious - but moreover, it's got a related, prize-giving Facebook app that encourages repeated daily interactions, and that's what's got me interested. Viral is four years ago. (Think Subservient Chicken.) But, done right, this could be a great case of how to pair viral with social networking. I'm intrigued to see how it goes.

(Um, plus, I totally want a new TV.)

Happy Fourth, y'alls.

Speaking Up: As Patients, As Consumers

(via FDANews -> Pharmalot -> Pharma Marketing Blog)

When a patient has a bad reaction to a prescription drug, that's an adverse event (AE). Those should be reported to the FDA, and healthcare professionals are required to - not only doctors and nurses, but pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies.

New data (2006, but newly published) shows that the number of AE's reported by the consumers themselves has surpassed the number reported by doctors.

FDANews suggests it's because people are more aware of drug-safety issues (after highly publicized problems with drugs like Avandia and Vioxx). Ed and John seem to agree. They also both point out that while the other rates of increase are pretty steady, the rate of consumer reports is pretty much skyrocketing. And John notes that the FDA, post-Vioxx, made it a lot easier for people to submit AE's online.

I'm sure news about adverse events makes people more alert to the possibility that they could have a bad reaction to their medicine - and I think the ease of reporting helps a lot - but I actually think it's bigger than both of those.

John points out that pharmaceutical companies don't seem to be submitting a lot more AE reports, despite the fear that Web 2.0 outreach efforts would cause patients to tell them about AE's and require a lot of expensive, time-consuming new reporting procedures to be put into place. It doesn't seem to be the case. And that fits my theory. We're getting smarter. We know that the company probaby won't be our fastest solution there.

My thought is, Web 2.0 has made us all a lot more personally responsible for our lives as consumers. Whether it's looking up restaurants, comparing shoes, checking out vacation destinations, researching the condition you've just been diagnosed with - we find out what experts and peers and strangers have to say. Just about everybody does it now, and just about nobody did a decade ago.

If you went to the doctor in 1998, would you have rushed off to the library on your way home to yank out the Merck Manual? But now, there's WebMD, there's Medline, there's even Wikipedia.

That we have this ability (and that it's only getting easier) shifts our mindset completely. We are far less likely to accept things, far more likely to know when something happens that we shouldn't accept, and far more able to take action when it does.

Personal accountability. Just another benefit of Web 2.0.

Social Media Is for Gi-irls

I was talking to Doug earlier this week about how one of the reasons why I'm loving social media is that I'm not always the only girl in the room anymore. (A situation usually marked by that *blink* when a guy realizes that you somehow have two X chromosomes AND a working understanding of technology.)

And now Colleen has just written about how women are all over the relationship-driven aspect of social media. (And Gary has vlogged with a very important reminder about how all of your relationships are worth valuing. Quality, not quantity.)

Anyway, I love that people I think are amazing are all talking about this. My socnets aren't mostly female, but that because that's the way I am in regular life. I don't think the exact balance is key - the thing is that there IS balance.

And my main follow-on thought from Colleen's article is, I wonder if the power of social media is going to be the final straw that breaks the glass ceiling. Who knows, right?

It doesn't matter how old you get, girl power is still nice. (*In a Ladies Who Launch kind of way, not in a Sex and the City kind of way.)

Post Number Nine Hundred

Well, damn.

When I started this, I never thought I'd have 900 things to write about. (And perhaps some of you think I haven't, ha ha.)

Then, I was desperately trying to figure out the transition from college - what I wanted to do with my life, how I fit into my professional and personal spheres, how they fit me. All I knew was that I wanted to write about it all while I did it.

Six years later, I'm delighted with where I am, both personally and professionally, but - of course - still trying to figure out how the world fits me, and how I fit it. Less desperation, thankfully, but just as much curiosity.

And this place has changed to match.

I can offer useful commentary on my profession - public relations, the pharmaceutical industry, social media, and how they all fit together.

(However, I still like pop music, silly links, pretty things, and shiny bits of technology. Some things won't ever change.)

Thank you for reading. Sincerely. It's an honor to know that you think I'm worth the time. And while it's always a nice place to air out my opinions, it's ever so much better when it's a conversation.

So I'll try to make sure this stays worth its place in your RSS reader. And don't worry. I'll keep talking in the meantime.

With love and appreciation.

Weekly Roundup: Milestone Week Edition

The first week of June brings me good things. High school graduation - 12 years ago Wednesday. The start of my blog - 6 years ago Saturday. My current job - 5 years ago tomorrow. And birthdays of five lovely people - Matt, Kristin, Sac, Derek and Melissa. How much goodness can you fit into one week, you ask?

All kinds of goodness, clearly. And already for this week I've got lovely stories to tell. Oh, and I've got Plans. With a capital P. So stay tuned.

In the meantime... some beautiful things.

• I'm dreaming of my next runaway.
  
• Tara Parker-Pope (how often do I link to her? I love me some TPP) on cooking at home
• Tim Ferriss on wintering like old money
• Mitchell York on professional speaking and actually being good at it
• Great examples of new-media art, including Eric Nordenankar's utterly amazing biggest drawing in the world (via Ze Frank)
• Kid Koala (if you can ever go see him perform, do.)
• Patti Digh (You should know by now she will come up when I speak of beautiful things. I collect her posts like vacation postcards. But I think she knows.) on love and loss and being your best and learning and dreaming and seeing what matters... and seeing what matters... and seeing what matters... and seeing what matters. On commitment (one that I needed very much when she wrote it). And on making friends (in which I realize only now from the photos that she delivered Yaron practically to my doorstep).
• Janine Payer's Brielle necklace
• Lisa Lindblad's job
• Botkier bags
• A coin to flip
• This t-shirt
• This one even more
• Beer cupcakes
• When famous people (like Wonkette's Amanda Chapel and Techneuroti's Joel Postman) start following me on Twitter (and I haven't followed them)

And some useful SoMe stuff while I'm here.

• Acronyms and shorthand for SMS and Twitter
• Social media buzzwords
• Lifehacker on managing your online reputation
• Chris Brogan on the value proposition of social media and what a “social media expert” ought to be able to tell you
• WebWare’s best Web 2.0 applications of 2008

(And lastly, a geek laugh. On the "oldest" page of bookmarks I found this. You think I can let go of it?)

Healthcare Beat Reporters on Social Media

A survey released this morning asked a variety of beat reporters to rank blogs and social media news sources that they valued most highly. I’m looking forward to reading a copy of the full results, but in the meantime, an article with this pull quote about healthcare reporters is interesting (although they seem to be conflating web sites and social media):

The "big four" health sites followed by health care journalists were NIH, WebMD, Mayo Clinic and MSN Health. All of the remaining top 10 sites tested were far less likely to be followed regularly (or at all!) by health care journalists. For health reporters, views on credibility largely mirrored their active engagement. NIH and Mayo were, by far, viewed as the most credible of all sources of health care information, followed by WebMD and MSN Health.

Alongside the article, you can see some graphs on what each beat think of social media. While healthcare reporters didn’t like what it was doing for accuracy or quality in their field, they did like what it was doing for tone, editorial direction and diversity. And either way, they're all very much immersed in it, spending extensive time reading, commenting and writing.

A cool snapshot of how social media are changing journalism from the inside, as well as from the outside.

Post-Conference Wrap-Up

Plenty of people have been writing about ESM, probably better than I could. So I’ll just show you where you can get all that (done), and instead just give you my take on it.

I have to say, at first I was skeptical. (I’m like that.) When I realized that the majority of attendees were speakers or session leaders, I expected two days of navel-gazing and self-promotion.

And I’m not saying there wasn't any. But while the balance may not have been great financially for the conference, it ended up being phenomenal for me. I was surrounded by people who really knew their stuff – in many cases, who I’d read and known by reputation for years. It was great.

Especially since, as I mentioned, I’ve been thinking about how to translate all this cool talk into practicalities. It’s fun to Twitter back and forth in a conference room like passing notes in junior high, but how does my familiarity with that technology help me or my company or my clients?

If I were consulting on increasing software user numbers, or getting tech geeks to communicate more efficiently within a company, that might be a simpler path. Not easier work, but easier to see what to do.

To clarify, I’m not complaining. The exact opposite. Working in one of the most scrutinized industries with some of the world’s tightest federal and ethical regulations… it actually makes it that much more interesting.

I mean, it’s like sonnets. It’s hard enough to write poetry. But to get your point across in that restrictive structure is that much more of an undertaking.

To clarify that, nobody’s glorifying anything here. This ain't poetry. All I’m saying is, it's a challenge, and I like it that way. Will my clients – or my own company – embrace every social media concept right away? No. (Nor should they.) But it will eventually, when it’s right.

It just means a little creativity and a lot of stubbornness. (And I’m like that.)

Pratfalls and Other Technological Events

So: today.

I wake up at 3 a.m. to catch my flight home. I work on the flight, so upon getting to my connection, I need one of those rare-as-diamond outlets. The only one I can find is far from my gate.

At this point, I’ve completely forgotten four things: I’m on far less sleep than I usually function with. I’m on a shorter-than-usual layover. I’m in a different time zone than I’ve left or than I’m going to. And neither my laptop nor my Blackberry clocks update the time zone. So I'm tapping away, working and IMing and Twittering.

If you guessed that the story ends up with me exhausted, humiliated, furious with myself, and on a later flight, you’d be right.

A friend told me this was because of my over-reliance on technology. I think she just meant I needed to wear a watch. But maybe she's even more right: maybe this is a fantastic, irony-bathed example of the ills of social media. Coming back from a conference on all this trendy new technology, all hopped up on its coolness and promise... I miss my flight, while hooked up to all this so-called helpful technology. I'm my own cautionary tale on the useless distraction that is social media.

Yeah. That was definitely part of the mortification. But. While I completely, undeniably, did something stupid, the thing is, I've never required technological assistance to do stupid things. I’ve been doing them all my life, and I’m sure I’ll keep doing them, with or without anything electronic nearby. Nothing I was logged into or out of created my stupid mistake.

But on the other hand, technology put me in touch with people who (despite my aforementioned proclivity to do stupid things) care about me. And when you’re feeling alone, dejected, and very, very foolish, that can be the best thing in the world.

After some commiseration and some old-fashioned sympathy, I felt less alone in my stupidity. Moreover, I felt less alone, period.

So is social media a concatenation of distractions that can leave you overstimulated, confused, distracted, and unable to focus, like the naysayers argue? Absolutely.

But people argue that about the internet overall. About computers. About television. Probably Moses took crap from people who didn’t like stone tablets.

And they’re always right. Because like McLuhan said, the purpose of technology is to take your regular capacities as a human further. To imagine, to converse, to learn, to hear, to see. It’s like a pair of stilts. If you don’t get the balance right, you’ll fall down, it’ll hurt, and you’ll look pretty stupid. But if you do, you can be head and shoulders above those who aren’t bothering to try.

So I’ll just keep wobbling along and try not to mind the bruises.

Edited to add related link.

Executing Social Media

…sure, it's annoying, but does it really deserve the death penalty?

Sorry, but I’ve been making that awful joke in my own head and it had to come out.

Anyway, that's the name of the conference on social media that I'm attending. And so far, it's been an odd experience in several ways.

First, being at a meeting, to me, normally means being at a medical convention with tens of thousands of doctors, looking conservative, tracking down reporters to hook them up to interview doctors, managing events, rewriting press materials, collecting competitive intelligence. Instead, I’m sitting still. Taking notes and Twittering and emailing and IM’ing and learning. It’s startlingly relaxing, actually being an attendee.

Second, I’m usually one of the geekier people I know, being something of a technology magpie. But here, I don’t come close. It’s disorienting. But very good.

Third, I work for an agency and I work in the pharmaceutical industry, both of which make me odd here: I’m not a tech consultant. So while I’m getting a lot of information, it’s going to require a lot of thought to translate it to practicalities.

One of the main things I’m realizing is that there are several different facets, for me, of “figuring out social media.”

The first is, how to use it for my own benefit? That's not new to me.
The second is, how to use it to benefit the agency? That's getting clearer.
The third is, how to use it to benefit clients? That's the hard part.

Which realization is in itself something of a breakthrough; I hadn’t really divided it up that clearly before, but now that I have, it makes things make a lot more sense for me.

So, more later, but now, back to the presentations. (While doing some client work simultaneously. Maybe not so relaxing after all.)

Be More Social. But Also, Fact-Check.

An overdue explanation and apology for misunderstanding, misinterpreting, jumping to conclusions and just altogether being me.

(Please read this post or this conversation will make zero sense.)

Tracy: A public notice that my reading comprehension skills suck?!
Sarah: Wha?
Tracy: The blog, baby. The blog!
Sarah: It was not! You read his blog and took it personally. Now you read MY blog and take IT personally.
Tracy: Harrumph. Did not.
Sarah: Did too!
Tracy: The post came across to me as... if you don't keep up on technology, you WILL get left behind. Not ME personally, but everyone who doesn't start Twittering.
Sarah: Well, sorta, but it's like, don't just try to figure out how to play these new technologies your way or try to ignore them - keep learning and keep an open mind.
Tracy: See. You have just implied that my reading of his post was incorrect.
Sarah: Not incorrect. I just see it SLIGHTLY different. CRIKEY, LADY.
Tracy: Stop yelling at me biotch!

...some time later...

Tracy: Hey, what if, hypothetically, you got all riled up about the wrong guy?
Tracy: http://www.pr-squared.com/2008/04/get_into_twitter_or_get_outta.html
Tracy: I'm just sayin'.
Tracy: It could happen. You know. Possibly.

Sorry Miss T. You were right. But, then, you already knew that.

Saturday Afternoon Geek-Out: BuzzLogic

(Via KD Paine, via Shel Israel)

BuzzLogic is fantastically cool to me. What Biz360 and Cymphony started 5-10 years ago for media monitoring... this is the next logical step from that. Those companies went beyond "how many mentions of your term are in an article, and how many readers did that article have "to "what did the article say about your term and what did they mean". Now, this is trying to tell you not just what bloggers are saying about your topic, but how much each blogger matters in relation to the others. And therefore, which ones you need to talk to. Which is not 100% of the point of media monitoring, but pretty close.

The thing I really love about this, though, is that they're working with the realization that the most influential people on one topic are not necessarily influencers on any other issue.

This is super obvious to anyone who reads blogs. You're not going to go to Perez for tech news, and you're not going to Gizmodo to see what's up with celebrities. (Oooh, happy birthday, David! But I digress....)

So it's intuitive, but in terms of how media measurement has always functioned, it's groundbreaking. Because if you took an old-school approach, all you'd be able to do is compare two sets of numbers - site statistics - which represented reader populations that had absolutely nothing to do with each other. It wouldn't tell you which people were important to reach at all. Useless.

But here, you see which people are the influencers. That's pretty huge.

Publicis is using them - no surprise there - and I must admit I'm jealous. The drawback of working for a small agency is not having access to fancy megabucks vendors. But we've figured out how to do Biz360 work on a shoestring in-house. We'll just have to figure out how to approximate this, too.

Be More Social!

It hit me today that the word "social" is not often used in a positive context.

Seems like it's either used to yell at you for being quiet... "Come be social!"

Or to yell at you for having more to do than the speaker does... "Well, aren't you just the social butterfly." "You and your social calendar."

So maybe that's why I've taken to disliking the term "social media".

I'll tell you one thing, it's a bitch on my tagging, because "new media" stopped being "new" and got all declasse, and now "social media" is ticking me off. "Emerging media" sounds better to me, but pretentious because it's not very widespread. And "SoMe" is still a little eye-roll-worthy.

But seriously. Social media? Think about that. Isn't it kind of the most redundant phrase in the world? Media is communication. Communication is between people. Of course it's social.

Anyway, I wish I could get comfy with a term for what all this is called.

As Tracy and I were leaving work today, she said she'd read that that if she wasn't on Twitter, she should get out of PR. So I went home all riled up about Jeremy Pepper discounting her career because she hasn't joined what is still, whatever we Twitterers want to think, a niche social network. (Maybe there are a million people on Twitter, maybe even 12 million, but there are over 70 million Facebook users.)

Except then I found his post, read it, (wondered why he hasn't updated in over a month,) and totally agreed with him.

Part of his post is on the J&J mommyblogger debacle I've mentioned. But overall he's talking about an issue that I think I see slightly differently. He seems to see an overall attitude toward social media by PR people that includes management apathy, staff incredulity, underfunding, underresourcing, and deliberate attempts to undermine social media structures.

I don't disagree that those things exist, but I think I'm more optimistic about it. Or maybe I just like the solution.

In my company, and in my industry - small agency, pharmaceutical clients - the learning curve is long. But people are learning. And the only way they're going to, is if people who have something to teach, teach. Explain why the old way doesn't work, and what the purpose of the new way is. Use baby steps and easy examples. And don't stop. If you love this stuff, it's easy. If it's fun to talk about new ways to connect with people, and better ways to make things happen, you're exactly who should be teaching.

And then maybe nobody will need to write grouchy blog posts about it.
(I still don't like that it's called "social media," though.)

I'm Omnivorous

According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, anyway....

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.

They have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace and express themselves online.

Basic Description
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

Defining Characteristics
You might see them watching video on an iPod. They might talk about their video games or their participation in virtual worlds the way their parents talked about their favorite TV episode a generation ago. Much of this chatter will take place via instant messages, texting on a cell phone, or on personal blogs. Omnivores are particularly active in dealing with video content. Most have video or digital cameras, and most have tried watching TV on a non-television device, such as a laptop or a cell phone.

Omnivores embrace all this connectivity, feeling confident in how they manage information and their many devices. This puts information technology at the center of how they express themselves, do their jobs, and connect to their friends.

Who They Are
They are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.

What are you?

Social Media Friday: Bits and Bobs

I really have to clean up my post tags. I’m not looking forward to it. Sigh.

. . .

So after over a year trying, I may finally be figuring out the point of Twitter. Sometimes, yeah, (like this morning) it’s trying to get songs stuck in people’s heads. Sharing links or catching up or being silly. But sometimes you do see the implications of the ability to share quick information broadly, instantly, wherever. Wednesday a USAir passenger claimed he had a bomb - and a passenger Twittered it. How will this change what we call breaking news? It's going to be wild to see how wide-ranging the implications will be.

. . .

As companies slowly wrap their brains (and budgets) around social media, it’s interesting to see the acknowledgment of effort. Honestly trying gets appreciated, while being disingenuous gets called out. The J&J Camp Baby debacle – scheduling a mommyblogger gathering concurrent to BlogHer, and then not making accommodations for kids – has gotten plenty of scorn, but seems to have been understood as mostly a mistake borne of ignorance and awkwardness in an honest effort. Unlike, for instance, the fake WalMart/Edelman blog, which in my opinion was worse. I think the problem is laziness - when you try to use old-media tactics, it's going to be painfully obvious. Think like people, not like companies... and go from there.

. . .

Brian Solis talks about how social media are evolving to distribute conversations. So news might start with a blog post, that gets commented on, that gets Twittered about, that gets other blogs linking to it, which get commented on… etc. Yes, obviously. The point? Well, for starters, I realize that media reports are going to be rapidly more useless. Unless and until the semantic web makes terms more cross-platform searchable. And, of course, I realize this while writing… a media report. Oooh, the irony, she is palpable.

. . .

Finally, I wonder, is it greedy to want rather desparately to see Patrick Stewart on stage yet again when I’ve already seen him in The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, The Tempest and King Lear? It is, isn't it? Hm. Well. I guess you can just call me greedy.

. . .

By the way, Maria, go read Embers.

Web 2.0 in 2 Minutes

Wait, isn't this that Jersey guy from all those wine billboards?

He's succinct and dead on: what's all this technology for and why it matters. via CC)