Online Communications

Wanted: PR/Marcoms that are not blogging and might want to try it

Are you new at blogging and want to try it ?
Then this is for you: Robert French, teacher at Auburn University and initiator of the first groupblog authored by PR students & PR Pro is offering part of his hosting space to PR / Marcom practitioners and particularly those who are new at blogging.

Say Robert, "This is just an effort to effectively use - for my students benefit - all of these domains and web hosting gigabytes I have at my disposal."

So if you don't want to take care of hosting and technical issues, get there, Robert will set up a blog for you and you could be proud being hosted by such a fellow teacher !

Edelman and Intelliseek publish the 1.0 Guide to the Blogosphere

Edelman and marketing intelligence firm Intelliseek just published a report on the Blogosphere for Marketers & Company Stakeholders, Trust MEdia: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard (PDF available for download from both firms' websites)

This white paper pretends "to sound a huge wake-up call: Blogging is not a passing fad…but any brand, business or organization that fails to grasp the fact may very well be."

Impossible to make any more extract now, I just learned about it, just have had time to get an overview of it but I am dead impatient to read it carefully, so find below the links:

Download the report: Edelman | Intelliseek (registration required)

Reminder: Richard Edelman's blog

Via NevOn

NewCommForum Europe is postponed

Today we made the tough decision to postpone the New Communications Forum Europe. We have discovered that it is just too early in the technology adoption process here in Europe for PR and marketing professionals to invest in a two-day conference dedicated to blogs and other new tools.

We firmly intend on holding the Forum once we have judged the market is more ready, hopefully towards the end of this year. We are exploring a variety of partnerships as well, in order to broaden the audience and share the risk. If you are interested in talking to us, please drop us a line.

We want to thank our speakers, our sponsors and those who did register for the Forum for their support and hard work preparing for the event. We will do our best to make sure that work isn't in vain, through
planning a variety of online and other activities throughout 2005.

Please stay tuned by subscribing to our blogzine, which you can do at our website.

A list of more than 160 PR Blogs feeds

Constantin Basturea has been gathering a incredible new PR list of more than 160 entries that includes personal, consultants and corporate blogs, with authors from 17 countries !!!

Following his already existing Headlines from PR blogs that has more than 100 PR blogs but all written in English, Constantin decided to initiate a more inclusive one.

Thank you so much for this fantastic resource Constantin !

Remember Marqui's Blogosphere program ? Now Nokia is playing ...

You certainly remember Marqui's blogosphere program that has been launched last december ? Marqui has been recruting bloggers to blog about their product and paid them around 800 $ a month, providing them with a contract with the following terms sumary:

- Mention Marqui and link to our site - once a week.
- Put our mark/emblem on your site.
- Three month contracts will be honored.
- No "gotchas." None.

20 bloggers have been playing the game, and a huge controversy erupts at that time... See the Technorati on this story.

It was the first time a brand has been recruting bloggers and announcing with full transparency they will be paying bloggers to give feedback on their products.

Why do I remind this story ? I've been recently hired by Nokia as member of  Nokia 7710 VIP Program, including 1800 people around the world, 50 in France. That's the reason why I remember Marqui's story...

What is it about in this case ? We are asked to give our thoughts on the Nokia 7710 Smartphone by connecting once a week on a specific forum, to answer two times to a phoning questionnaire and of course to use the Nokia 7710 as our main phone during the time of the testing. We can keep the Smartphone for us at the end.

I found this approach very intersting and clue for several reasons. This time, people are not able to pitch as in Marqui's case, Nokia has been hiring them. We didn't ask, we've been asked. So we couldn't decide to do it to get something in return initially. Then we are much more free than in Marqui's case, we are not asked to blog or to sign any contract, we just have to connect on this forum and participate a little bit + answer the questionaire by phone, which is much better for lazies...

What I like more than everything: the composition of the VIP pannel: Celebrities/stars, well-known CEOs, and bloggers. And bloggers ! How clever from Nokia to ask bloggers to participate. How many discussions are going to raise from this 3rd group. And more over, at a time where so many people are seing the fall of PR vs. the raise of Bloggers, (the PR pro blogger I am is talking ...) thanks to this new channel = blog offer to anyone who wants to say anything, Nokia comes whith it's VIP Program.

Let me make the point. PR has always been recruting stars to promote brands or messages, the marketing archives are full of examples. This is indeed not the most original side of Nokia's strategy in our case. But the mix between traditional PR and what some are calling "New PR" is here just great. It shows that some clever folks have understood that PR is definitely not dead, (but traditional PR is) and can be on the contrary strengthens by new communications tools as blogs that where supposed to replace them ! And this is huge.

So congratulations to Creadrive who has been working in France on this project with Xavier des Horts, Communication Director of Nokia France, thanks for having hiring me, it was a good surprise for the geek or IT friendly that I am.

For transparency reasons and as I'd like to share my deep thoughts without any confusion, I am going to create a specific category on this blog, dedicated to this program.

 

Neville's conclusion on NewCommForum 2005

Neville published his first thoughts after our event in Napa, and I must say I fully agree:

"Communicators, opportunity for you and your company is staring you in the face. It is yours for the taking. But you have little time to grasp that opportunity before it is whisked away from you by other, more nimble, people. If that happens, your value and relevance to the strategic development of your company is gone. You will become followers of events designed and created by others, not shapers of those events. Your participation, in fact, will not be required."

Day 2 of NewCommForum in Napa

Unfortunately I couldn't participate in New Communications Forum 2005 US session which is so frustrating as co-organisator with Elizabeth ... I have to stay in Paris to welcome a US VP WW marketing & sales coming for a one week press tour in Europe and a one day stop in Paris, which I must say, I hoped till the last time would be cancelled but unfortunately, it didn't happen. So I am missing my forum... That's life... I hope the press tour will be successfull, we have 8 meetings set up....

Constantin Basturea who is participating in NewCommForum as instructor has been setting up a specific page on NewPR Wiki for those who are blogging about NCF, unfortunately I can't edit the page as I can't request a password from Constantin right now, he is attending NCF, so I am going to put here every post I can find from now. This will be my 2 cents...

From Nevon:

First session blogged

Blogs in crisis communication

The Napa experience Day 1

The Hobson & Holtz Report - RSS Special Edition - January 26, 2005

EPIC: The age of participatory communication

Panel discussion: Blogging and branding

Panel discussion: Blogging and journalism

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Jeremy Wright Interview - January 27, 2005

Opportunity knocks for corporate communicators

From For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz report

The Hobson and Holtz Report -- Special RSS Edition,  Fergus Burns CEO of Nooked, interview from the New Communications Forum

The Hobson and Holtz Report -- Jeremy Wright interview

From Shel Holtz

Blogs vs. message boards

Measuring conversations

Journalists are Webified

From Alice MArshall'sTechnoflak blog

Beethoven in the Audience

From SilliconValleyWatcher

How to Pitch Bloggers: Quick Notes from the New Communication Forum

Quick Notes from the New Communication Forum

Leading bloggerists heading to Napa for conference...the end of marketing is nigh

From Anita Campbell's Small Business Trends

Live Blogging from Blog University - Blogs vs. Discussion Boards

Live Blogging from Blog University - How to Pitch Bloggers  

Live Blogging from Blog University - How to Write a Blog

Live Blogging Day 2 Blog University: More Links

Andy Lark with Lessons for Today's Business Communicators

Some photos

From Active Voice

Updated: It's a BlogFest!

Andy Lark NCF Keynote

More NewCommForum posts

From Pop! Public Relations

At the NewComm Forum

From Richard Koman's blog

Blogging and journalism

I'll be adding more here as soon as they pop up...

From Lois Ambash's Metaforix blog

Live, from Napa, it’s the New Communications Forum!

What’s the big deal about blogging?

Neville Hobson on corporate blogging

Technoflak: Alice Marshall on "How to Pitch Bloggers"

 

Interviewed by Corante

 Alex Williams of Corante recently interviewed Elizabeth and I about the NewCommForum via Flashmeeting.  You can listen to the whole thing here or just bits and pieces based on the "minutes." 

FlashMeeting is really a cool technology, I've been impressed to see how easy to use it was, by the way the first time I've been interviewed on a webcam and not really easy for a non US native as I am... I have to listen to it to check if I am even able to understand myself ;o).

Alex explains it in terms of Hypermedia here.

 

10 reasons why Advertising, Marketing and PR Pros should blog

Bob Cargill from A Fine Kettle of Fish blog has been writting a three-part series on the many reasons why advertising, marketing and public relations professionals should blog.

Nice series indeed. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |

Via the Radiant Marketing blog

On line PR university on blogs and Wikis

I recently learned about a great initiative in the US: Robert French, from InfOpinions is teaching  public relations and multimedia at Auburn University, in Alabama. Robert started a blog in preparation for a class he is teaching.

He is going to use blogs and wikis to work with his student and is also looking for PR pro to volunteered. Robert is going so fast it is difficult to follow him ! At this day, he already set up several blogs and wikis for his student, with specific target for each.

Where the story begins: InfOpinions . Then you have the MarcomBlog, MarcomWiki, PR Topics blog based on a great idea: two ongoing discussions at the same time, two different point of view on the same issue, each one has to choose his path, and then two debates will grow  based on two initial different views...

See the "Welcome " note to PR Topics which begins with followings:

 "I have wanted do develop a blog that will expose students to contrasting views on various PR Topics of interest - in a ‘different’ way.

This is it.

The blog will be part learning tool/tactic, incubator, mentoring process, and lively discussion. Most of all, I want it to be fun.

Now, you may ask, “Robert, why? They can search the web like the rest of us and join in the conversations in so many blogs.” Yes. They could. But, will they?

Sure, they could search through the myriad of PR blogs on the internet and find similar topics. I will introduce them to search tools like Blogdigger.com and Google News Alerts. I will encourage them to branch out. Still, some will balk and hesitate.

So, to help break through that barrier, I want their first experience to be in a familiar surrounding that they know was created just for them. And, it will help them to have a more localized comparison of these varying viewpoints side-by-side so that students may contrast and critique them in a dialogue with the authors.

I also hope that the authors will revisit their posts and engage the students in comments on the blog posts."

Of course I decided to volonteer and Robert has kindly accepted my contribution. Octavio Rojas from Spain already contributed with a great article in Spanish about Crisis Communication.

Robert is looking for some other PR pro volunteering, I hope some of you will join and support this so great initiative !

Good luck Robert ! ;o)