Personal Content Assistant - An Idea Whose Time Has Come

The ubiquitous Gary Vaynerchuk has just created a new position, and I think, provided the germ for a dandy new job in corporate communications: Personal Content Assistant.

Gary, who has pivoted from using Internet marketing to grow a liquor business into being a fulltime digital marketing consultant, has redeployed one of his people to join him at various speaking events and check in with him at other times to capture content that Gary wants to share with his substantial audience. He broke the news through an interview with Forbes, and then the story picked up steam when Ford social media chief Scott Monty critiqued it. Gary then posted a quick video response about it, which is worth watching:



This is one of those slap-on-the-side-of-the-head, why-didn't-I-think-of-that ideas. The single biggest roadblock nearly everyone faces in content marketing is getting ideas and thoughts out of their heads and onto the Internet. So why not create a staff position to handle the production process of capturing, finalizing and uploading the content to the net, and keeping it curated and fresh?

Before you scoff and say -- who needs more mindless content on the Internet -- I say wait! This idea is all about improving quality, not increasing quantity. You really can't create too much content that is educational, informative and entertaining for your audience. Even if you literally used every idea you had, you could spend years reproducing those ideas in different forms in social media (for instance, writing a book about social marketing, doing a video and podcast about the same subject, tweeting about it, pinning about it, blogging about it. And so on...).

So this gets us back to roadblocks - what stops most people who want to do content marketing is getting the content produced. Even super-productive people like GaryVee experience this, so this is not an affliction of the shiftless.

Gary's idea goes a long way toward solving that problem - and that's just the germ of the idea. He hasn't really explained yet how he see such a job working, for him or other people. And I'd be willing to bet that others have thought of this idea too -- outsourcing content creation through ghostwriting is alive and well, so why not bring the person in-house? I'd love to hear from other people who know of in-house Personal Content Assistants or similar positions.

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Blogging note: I'm really excited by this idea and have ideas for more posts, but I decided in the name of speed to get this first post out, then follow up with others, rather than my typical approach of trying to cover a topic in one blog post. As GaryVee says in his video, he's tripling down on content. I agree, and one way to do that is to break one longer post into 3 posts. Who wants to read anything longer anyway?

Pinterest Bursts Onto the Scene

Pinterest has come out of nowhere to be the hot new story in social media.

For the uninitiated, Pinterest is a dandy way to share images you like on the web. You just download their little "Pin It" button and then select images you like, pinning them to "boards" on your Pinterest page.

What has made Pinterest particularly pin-teresting is that women 25-34 are the most active users of the site. It has quickly become a hub for fashion, beauty and housewares, and savvy brands have already launched Pinterest pages to get into the conversation.

And predictably, there is some blowback. Pinterest essentially lives off the images uploaded to the web by others, so the big question is: is Pinterest trying to build a business solely on someone else's intellectual property? On the other hand, so much of the web is about linking and sharing, where's the harm to any individual copyright holder of an image being shown on Pinterest?

We'll be discussing the way brands can capitalize on Pinterest on a Bulldog Reporter PR University webinar, and some of the possible speed bumps, on April 20.

Financial Services Firms Finally Making the Move Into Social Media Marketing

Banks, brokerages and other conservative financial services industry firms have been very, very slow to adopt social media marketing practices -- and for good reason.

The regulatory environment for financial services firms that sell their services to individuals and businesses is very strict, particularly around the kind of "loose talk" that is so common in social media. The companies employ very highly paid "compliance" officers, using trained and experienced corporate lawyers, whose job it is to say "no" to most of the kinds of marketing that unregulated companies use on a daily basis.

But to ignore social media marketing is to stay in the buggy-whip era when everyone else is moving to gas-powered cars.

How to get around the problem of strict regulation? One solid strategy is for financial services companies to create a library of approved content that staff members can tweet or blog or post on Facebook. Another is to use third-party software from players like Hearsay and SocialVolt that is built to allow Compliance to review social media posts before they go out. Firms such as Northwestern Mutual and Morgan Stanley are starting to test these sorts of initiatives.

But make no mistake -- this is still a difficult industry to move in to the social media. Scary example: it's not okay for a Facebook user to "like" a post by an investment adviser, as it constitutes illegal word-of-mouth marketing. I get the regulation, but sheesh, something is going to have to change, since social media isn't going away.

 

2011 Trends from Social Media Guru Charlene Li

Charlene Li of Altimeter Group

Charlene Li, one of my favorite social media pundits, gave a speech at the PRSA International Conference this week and then gave a “press conference” to those of us (including me) who were designated “press” for the conference.

Li said that like most analysts, she is in the midst of developing her “outlook” report for 2011, and she gave us a preview in the press conference.

The two big trends Li is watching as the year winds down are:

1. the rise of “social data” and “social search” and


2. our evolving feelings regarding privacy and permissions in social media

On social data, Li is watching to see how all the volumes of data we are generating in social media are used. Marketers and others are quickly realizing that social media users are providing reams of valuabe information about brands, trends, likes and dislikes, but are just now starting to figure out how to gather and analyze it.

On privacy and permissions, Li sees us moving away from protecting our privacy and toward managing the permissions we give web sites and our contacts. She likened the transition to what happened when Caller ID was first introduced. Peoples’ first reaction was that it was an invasion of privacy, but after awhile, as they realized that it had value, it became more about giving people useful information that reduced life’s friction.

dna13's new Enterprise edition is the next generation of reputation monitoring

We're now far enough along in the development of the Internet and desktop software that corporations can now access very sophisticated tools to monitor the messages flowing out there in the world about them. I recently had a chance to demo dna13's new Enterprise software and it looked to me like the future of reputation management.

First, let me say that I do not ordinarily tout PR tools and technologies, and this is not an endorsement per se. But I was sufficiently impressed by the depth and breadth of dna13's software that I wanted to write about. If you want to stop reading my drivel and go straight to their site for more information, here's the link.

To communicate in today's world, think "infosnacks"

Tweets. Text messages. Emails. Emoticons. LOL.

You name it, and we can shorten it into a tidbit of information. That's an "infosnack."

No longer do people want to "digest" a full newspaper article or curl up with a good book. Give me the story in 140 characters (twitter) or even less (TXTing) and let's get it over with.

So -- to get to the point -- what sorts of "infosnacks" are you providing to your key audiences? Are they the usual corporate inedible mush, or is it something tasty and brief?

This is one of the main challenges in PR today -- in some ways bigger than the Internet revolution itself. People don't have time, or don't want to take the time, to understand what you are trying to say. They want it now, fast.

That means:

• Short email subject lines


• Tweets


• Social media style press releases


• 60 second videos


• TXT messages

Give it to them the way they want it, or find yourself asking why you're being ignored.

Did You Know that Evite Sucks?

By now, pretty much everyone on the Internet has gotten or sent an Evite, those ubiquitous, slightly annoying online invitations to everything from weddings to barbacues.

I don't care much for Evite, but I don't hate it. It's an online system, it has some cool features that weren't available pre-Internet, and it does what it's supposed to do, which is invite people to an event and track who said yes and no.

But there are apparently many other, better online invitation sites out there, including Socializr. But until today, I had never heard about them, nor did I care. Online invitations are not a big part of my life.

I heard about the alternatives from an article I happened to be reading about Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Socializr and before that, Friendster. He, uh, feels very strongly about the evils of Evite and the superiority of his and other services.

But until today, I had never heard of them! No one invited me to an event using his service. There was little buzz in the wider world about these alternatives.

And this is the point: Abrams is spending a lot of time railing about Evite when he should be spending his time promoting the virtues of Socializr! That's real PR. Yes, I finally heard about Socializr today and will check it out. But I still don't know a lot about what makes it superior to Evite. That's where Abrams is really missing an opportunity.

PR lesson: you may draw attention by picking a fight, but you don't build a business that way. People want to know what you offer them to solve problems and make their lives better or easier, not just what you are NOT.

Bonus PR lesson: Great names rule! Evite is a great name. It tells you what it is, it's like an e-invitation, it's an Evite. What the hell is a "Socializr," and did I spell it right? Simplify, dude, and come up with a better name!

Which New Media Skills Do PR People Need to Compete?

This post is a follow-up to a great post by PR Pro Sarah Evans called, "Top 4 new skills all PR professionals must have." You MUST read this post. Evans' top four skills are: basic HTML coding, SEO for PR, how to use a Social Media Release, and online presence (on Facebook, Twitter, blogging, et al).

I'm just going to add on here with some additional thoughts:

• HTML coding, while critical, is not as important as having the basic ability to use a Content Management System (CMS). What's a CMS? It's the blogging software I'm using right now to write this post. Using it successfully doesn't require any knowledge of HTML, though such knowledge does help. A CMS can also be used to manage a web site (I use one to manage the web site of my client, El Dorado Ventures), and again, using it doesn't require HTML knowledge, though again, it helps. Either way, if you are scared of using a CMS, get over it -- fast.


• Need to know more about HTML? Needless to say, there are a gazillion web sites devoted to HTML and web programming, but for starters, here's one to bookmark: HTML Code Tutorial.


• Newswire distribution services: It has gotten to the point where I rarely if ever rely on the traditional newswires to disseminate my press releases. I think it's much more useful to distribute your release via a quality email distribution list of journalists you think might cover your news. What the newswires do offer that you can't get anywhere else is third-party web site distribution of your release. Which means: when you put a release on a newswire, they turn around a push it out to potentially hundreds of web sites that immediately create a new web page with your release. For example, here's a list of the sites that re-use Business Wire releases, and here's an example of a release I put on Business Wire that is now also posted on Reuters.com.


• Using online media databases: do you know how to navigate and use online media databases such as Cision or Vocus? You must.


• Video: Do you know how to make a low-cost/free video and post it on YouTube? If not, get up to speed ASAP.


• Blogger relations: very different from traditional media relations in every sense. Every single blogger is different (take the difference between me and Sarah Evans for example -- same 'beat' but totally different blogs) and needs to be approached in a customized way.

These skills, of course, are in addition to the three core skills of PR: writing, pitching and being a communications strategist.

To Stay Relevant, You Better Learn About Digital Marketing

Contrary to conventional wisdom, many of the "traditional" functions on PR are not going away any time soon. These include things like media relations, crisis PR and trade shows. Companies will still need people to do these things. Media relations, in particular, is not going away, despite dire warnings about the death of the mainstream media.

BUT -- if you think you can skate by in PR for the next several decades without becoming an expert in digital marketing, you're deluding yourself. This is more than knowing how to write a blog post or how to pitch a blogger. This is knowing about the tools of online marketing and how to sell campaigns to clients using those tools.

Here's the latest evidence of this overwhelming trend: a report by e-Consultancy on the dismal state of online PR.