KoiFish — The World’s Second Best PR Blog

Respect for old-school journalists is just one reason to retire the "Press Release"

Once upon a time PR was all about working with the media. Back then, we didn’t need to qualify the word media with a word like “traditional.” There was no such thing as “new” media or “emerging” media or “social” media. These were simpler times.

Back then — as it is today — the term “press release” was used interchangeably with the term “news release.” But even back then, there was some debate about which was better. For the most part, the PR community was indifferent as was the majority of the editorial community. But there were some editors — mostly old-school journalists — that did express a preference. They preferred the news release. They would argue that a news release was the vehicle a company should use to issue news; and if it wasn’t news, it shouldn’t be released. To these reporters, calling it a “press release” made it seem disingenuous — as if the company was subtly admitting the intent of the communique was to manipulate them rather than to provide them with the facts. Journalists back then cared about facts. Some still do.

In those days, it seemed that we were always fighting with clients NOT to send out meaningless drivel via news release — even if their competition insisted on doing so. It tended to piss editors off to have to wade through a mountain of crap just to get to something meaningful. But things have changed.

Today, there are plenty of practitioners who argue that companies should be a lot more liberal with news releases and they are correct to do so. Releases aren’t just for the media any longer — they are used to directly communicate to a whole array of audiences who read them online. News releases can — and should — also be used to help out with search engine optimization and as part of a social media strategy.

Strangely, many of those practitioners who most actively evangelize non-media uses of  releases still insist on referring to them as press releases. I say the time has come to purge the term “press release” completely from our vocabulary. The term is no longer technically correct. What say you?

Ghostwriting is ghostwriting, no matter what the medium

There has been a lot of debate about the topic of ghostwriting as it pertains to various forms of social media. This is an important debate to have since the underlying issue is credibility, which is something we must all strive to maintain. In this context, terms like full-disclosure and transparency come up early and often. And, while both of these terms are extremely valuable to this discussion it would be a mistake to consider them absolute.

Dave Fleet is one of the many industry insiders who has recently taken on the issue of ghostwriting for blogs and social media. His position is that it’s OK to ghostwrite a blog on behalf of a corporate CEO as long as you provide a disclaimer that the blog is actually written by someone else. I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. If you make that disclaimer, by definition, it ceases to be ghostwriting.

My take is that ghostwriting is ghostwriting and it can be done effectively and ethically no matter what the medium. So long as the attributed author takes full ownership and responsibility for the material, message, language and ideas being presented, there is no foul. The way I see it, it is up to the individual to choose how they wish to represent themselves publicly. If they wish to enlist a professional writer to help them express their ideas as eloquently and coherently as possible, that is their right.

Though still controversial, Ghostwriting for individual executives on company blogs is becoming commonplace. Blogging has come a long way since “the good old days” of a few years ago when blogs served more as online journals written by a singe person expressing their own thoughts. Today, it is hard to distinguish a great blog from an online magazine, which has lead some old timers to declare that blogging has died. This is wrong. Blogs have not died, they have just evolved. Today, they provide an excellent platform for many types of companies to provide information, interact with customers and build its brand. However, expectations regarding the quality of content have risen. Frankly, I prefer reading things that are well-written and have been proofed and edited. And I’m not alone.

As with any type of communication, there are always multiple variables to consider. Blogs and social media have quite a few. We encourage most of our clients interested in blogging to go with a multi-author format. This allows us to write as ourselves as part of the client’s team when it makes sense (which is most of the time). However, there are some posts that are most appropriate coming from a member of the company’s senior management. In those cases we are always willing to edit or ghostwrite these posts.

When ghostwriting a blog post on behalf of a client, we follow some very rigid guidelines. First and foremost, we make sure that the attributed author reads, edits and approves everything before it is published. This is critical. It is equally important to make sure that the attributed author is involved with responses to all comments made to that particular post.

As you delve into various forms of social media, the waters get a little more murky. While I believe that you still could ethically ghostwrite for someone on Twitter or Facebook, I can’t think of many instances where you should. Practically speaking, if an individual client is involved with social media in a professional capacity, it is something they should do themselves.

We do maintain Twitter accounts for a number of clients. In these cases, we normally Tweet on behalf of the company as a whole. We field questions, weigh in on relevant issues, share interesting articles or promote new items on the blog. Followers rarely are concerned with the actual identity of the person of people manning the Twitter account. If asked, we gladly reveal our identity.

Typically, when agencies or companies run in to trouble is when they intentionally misrepresent their identity and motives online. And when they get caught, they deserve every bit of grief they get. It is great that the marketing community, for the most part, is vigilant about maintaining ethical standards as we plunge into this ever-changing world, but going after ghostwriting seems to me to be a mistake.

Former Financial Times reporter Tom Foremski wrote on his blog about a conversation he had with a PR veteran who believed she was qualified to advise clients about social media even though she doesn’t actually participate in any social media communities herself.

His view is that you cannot know enough about social media by reading about it to provide adequate counsel to a paying client – it is something you really have to experience to fully understand. I couldn’t agree with him more. There is but one way to understand social media and that is to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.

Today most PR and  marketing agencies claim to have expertise in this arena — and many of them actually do. Fortunately, this experience is easy to verify — it’s all just a few mouse clicks away. If you are looking to hire an agency to help  you with your social media strategy, you owe it to yourself to do a little digging. Check up on the members of the team your potential agency is proposing. It doesn’t take long to figure out who is an active member of the community and who’s a poser, wannabe or tourist. If they are on Twitter, do they actually Tweet? If they have a blog, how often do they post? How’s the content? If they are on Facebook, do they have a lot of friends? When is the last time they posted something? Even if it is just pictures of their cat or a link to some funny video it shows that they understand the medium and how the community works — and that is important.

One way to avoid the whole size discussion -- while reducing your impact on the planet -- is to take your own mug

I freely admit that I am no fan of Starbucks. It isn’t because I think Starbucks is a big, evil corporation. It isn’t because they have mediocre coffee or that I am opposed to paying $4 for a non-alcoholic beverage. It isn’t because they have automated espresso machines that eliminate the artistry of the Barista and it isn’t that I have a phobia of the stereotypical MacBook-toting customers that infest the place. The reason I dislike Starbucks is the lingo they want me to use. At Starbucks, they want me to call a small a “Tall,” a medium a “Grande” and a large a “Venti.” And I refuse to play along.

This is harder than you might think. Every time I go in there (which isn’t very often) I ask for the same thing — a mocha with 4 shots in the smallest cup they offer, hold the whipped cream. Without fail, this brazen act of defiance ignites the same battle of semantics with the person who pushes the button that activates the automated espresso machine (a.k.a the artist formerly known as Barista).

“You mean a Tall?” they say, while holding up a small – but not the smallest – cup for me and the rest of the store to inspect.

“No, I mean a small,” I say pointing to the stack of the small cups I know damn well they refer to as “Short.”

At this point, they grab the small cup and announce to anyone within earshot that I’ll be enjoying a short quad no whip mocha. Never — and I mean not once — have they just said OK and made my drink. It is as if their training demands that they correct me before they commence with the button pushing.

I’d be content with this little game — and I’d probably even play along —  if Starbucks was cool and hip and counterculture enough to refuse to conform to a cup size nomenclature thrust upon them by “the man.” But Starbucks is the opposite of cool. In many ways, Starbucks is “the man.” Everything about Starbucks says safe, milktoast, corporate and vapid. That’s why mainstream America embraces it.

I’m sure some see this as a branding coup for Starbucks. I see it as an annoyance.

Update: It appears I’m not the only one who sees it as an annoyance. A reader sent me the link to this video …

Movin' on up

KoiFish, the world’s second best PR blog, just made the move to WordPress.  Now that I’ve had a few days to settle in, I’m very happy with my new home.

My initial decision to go with GoDaddy’s blog platform was mostly fear-based. The thinking was that, if I ran in to a technical issue, there would be someone I could call. Unfortunately, I’ve since found out that GoDaddy’s customer service is next to useless (unless you complain about it on Twitter).

My decision to make the move was based on the fact that GoDaddy does not provide the ability to tag individual posts, which means search engine optimization is limited.  SEO is part of  the reason I blog, so I had to move on.

The first step was easy. WordPress has a function that lets you import most of the stuff from your old blog into your new one. IF your old blog posts aren’t full of legacy formatting codes you’ll be set.

Unfortunately, most of my posts were originally authored in Word and then pasted into my blog. When you do that, you end up adding a bunch of HTML gunk — including unwanted formatting code — at the same time. That code caused me trouble then and caused me more trouble when I moved. The good news is that WordPress has a function that lets you paste word copy into a special place where all that gunk is stripped out. I ended up cutting out all the copy from my old blog, pasting it into Word, then pasting it in to WordPress using this feature. It worked like a charm. Now I can make format changes in the template and they are applied to every post.

Images also moved right over. However, my images were actually housed on my old blog. When I imported my old posts, the images themselves weren’t actually moved. Instead, links to the place where the images are stored were created. No big deal except for the fact that they are stored on the old blog and that blog is going bye-bye very soon. I ended up moving each image, one at a time, to my new blog. This took a while, but at least WordPress gives you the option of changing image names, creating captions and making alt tags for each image. This is all good for SEO.

Comments didn’t transfer. I ended up cutting and pasting. This was tedious, particularly since I went in and tweaked the dates to reflect when they were originally posted on my old blog (rather than when I posted them to the new blog).

After having a few days to play around with WordPress, here’s what I’ve concluded:

Benefits:

• There is a lot of SEO functionality built in
• The dashboard is very easy to use
• There are thousands of templates to choose from, so you don’t have to design your own page if you don’t want to
• You can cut and paste copy authored in Word without having to deal with formatting problems. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it actually kinda is
• Images are easy to manipulate and tag
• There are thousands of “plugins” to choose from. These let you easily add some very slick funcitons to your blog. If you can think of it, chances are someone has already designed it. Stuff like additional SEO functions, Twitter streamig, Google, etc., etc., etc. is all there for the uploading. And uploading most of these plugins is simple
• Most hardcore blogers use WordPress. If you have a question or run into a problem, there is a large community of people you can ask for advice

Drawbacks:

• Because templates and plugins are created by the community, some work well and some don’t. Trial and error is required
• Templates are coded in PHP instead of HTML. If you want to create your own (or tweak an existing one) you need to know PHP — or know someone who does
• The template can be somewhat restrictive in how you lay out each individual post. For example, the template I use mashes the body copy of a post directly under the list of tags under the headline.  I like a little more breathing room for the copy, so I need to insert a space at the beginning of each post. Inserting this space in older posts can be tricky — I can only do it when I make edits using Explorer. I have no idea why that is
• Speaking of Explorer, you need to check the appearance of your blog in Explorer and Firefox. It will not look the same in both. This is really an Explorer/Firefox issue as far as I understand it, but it is still a hassle. It was less of a concern using GoDaddy software

I’m still looking for a great way to make sure links to old blog posts will be properly forwarded to their new home. Until I get that sorted out, my blog will currently reside in two places. I’m pretty sure this is a negative thing for SEO.

Many thanks to my pal, David Naylor from Truth Entertainment for all his help in customizing the template to make sure it has the same great look and feel to the KoiFish Communications Website.

Update:  I guess the joke’s on me. I just put a quick note up on the GoDaddy version of the blog to tell people to come to this version instead. Damned if they didn’t just add the ability to tag each post. This was my main complaint and it has been fixed. I still like WordPress better, but find this to be more than a little humorous.