Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Gathering around the video - The new unifying medium

The next national event will be embedded in our consciousness on video, not TV.  Some of this is already happening.  We experienced the 2008 election, the death of Michael Jackson, and the Fort Hood carnage primarily on video on our laptops, not TV.  Where were you when Sarah Palin was elected President of the U.S.?  By our laptops in neighborhood watering hole. 

The commercial implications are there.  Traditional advertising is in the crapper.  But video advertising is surging, reports Brian Stelter in THE NEW YORK TIMES.  More requests from prospects are coming to me for scripts for video.  Delivering messages via video has become the way to do things, in terms of advocacy, fundraising, and to launch a new enterprise.  Make it interactive, as does JellyVision.com, and the odds are your close rate will go up.

One for Dr. Freud: Did Cornell John of The Steamy Emails Want To Be Caught?

By now, those with an interest in prurient things all know that at Cornell, John the tech consultant pressed the "cc" button.  As a result that particular steamy email and an electronic trail of others to his mistress went out campus-wide.  Thanks to blogs like Gawker, this story broke yesterday in the media.

Both John and Lisa are married to others.  Those others are probably not having a good weekend.  Their employers and supervisors are probably not having a good weekend either.  After all, such use of the university email system seems both inappropriate and a waste of the employees's time.

By now it has likely dawned on the Dr. Freuds among us that John is indeed a tech consultant.  He is no ham-handed newbie with technology.  Therefore, we have two questions to ask: One, why was he sharing his erotic desires and fantasies on the university's email system.  And, secondly, how did he "accidentally" press the cc button.

Those who believe in the existence of the subconscious would speculate that John was uncomfortable in his present situation.  He might have wanted to end it but didn't have the know-how or courage to do so.  Therefore, in a desperate act akin to the young girl in crisis becoming pregnant, John pressed cc.  He may not only be out of the relationship but also out of a marriage and a consulting assignment.

Cornells' John & Lisa - Makes Reality TV Seem Stiff

Cornell employees John and Lisa, both married to someone else, got snagged.   Their steamy spanking affair was blown into a million juicy pieces when John pressed the cc button.  The whole campus got to enjoy an electronic trail of rich fantasy.  Bet the reality doesn't measure up, though.

Tech players can't outgrown the first sandbox

It's an axiom in high tech: Pioneers in a technology can't outgrow that first sandbox.  When the technology matures, they're more or less done.  The best they can do is milk the cash cow, taking the money and run.

That seems to be the story of Microsoft.  Today it is probably doing its third round of layoffs in 2009.

Not doing social media? Paul Gillin thinks you fear negativity

According to eMarketer, more than 75% of U.S. adults is now online.  But most of them are lurkers, that is observing, not participating.  That's like being at a bar and not drinking. 

Lucking usually stems from fear.  But not fear of what you might be thinking, such as technology. It's primarily because, contends Paul Gillin, you fear negativity.  Social media, an in-your-face platform, doesn't filter that out as did much of old media. Gillin, who's also the author of "The New Influencers!" says that in his 2009 book "Secrets of Social Media Marketing."

That fear is understandable.  Social media makes business a conversation.  Remember when business was carefully scrubbed corporatese?  Conversation is a back-and-forth process that no one can control.  So, yes, the fear is there.

But, the reality is that negativity is happening any way everywhere on the web.  It's just the lurkers are stuffing it instead of turning that negativity to their own advantage.  Here are just some of the uses of all those lousy things other digitals are saying about you:

• Leveraging feedback as free research.
• Exploiting having the spotlight put on you and putting out there your point of view, facts, and more.
• Deconstructing the message to identify and fix emerging problems
• Opportunity to admit wrong and explain solution.
• Creating sympathy/third-party support for the company.

As a digital immigrant versus a digital native I needed all the attacks directed at me.  That's how I could finger what I was doing ineffectively in tone and content.  In fact, it wasn't until I received over 100 comments on one post that I recognized I was preaching, not opening up a conversation to others.

Spam aka "Content Seeder"

The term for spam is now, at least on the help-wanted, "Content Seeder."  No fool, the placer of the help-wanted did not identity itself.  All it indicates is it wants folks to leave comments on blog and video threads. 

This opportunity is on Craigslist Costa Rica section.

Jobs Jobs Jobs with Tucker Carlson aka "Dancing with the Stars" pro

Change or Die.  Tucker Carlson seems to have chosen the former.   On the Washington DC Craigslist help-wanted for Writing, Carlson has multiple listings.  This one is for an executive editor for an online news site.  Wonder if he's taking on the folks at Politico? 

In any event, these may be opportunities for the TIME writers who will be losing their jobs before Turkey Day.

Chuck DeVore - First Conservative Pol Casting Spells through Social Media

Chuck DeVore's position on the issues: Those you can get from his news-sites,  YouTubes and the exploding media coverage of his "common-sense conservatism." 

What grabbed me by the throat tonight during the one-hour exclusive interview with him was that he is the GOP pioneer in social media.  For me, that's the story. 

The last time we bumped up against this kind of saga?  Those were the deconstructions of Barack Obama's win via digital tools.  The April edition of FAST COMPANY, for example, profiled Chris Hughes, FACEBOOK co-founder.  It was Hughes who created the social media campaign which gave The People the down-loadable tools to organize others, conduct special events [which only the wealthy could once do], and even fund-raise.  In Chapter 9 of his book "Grown Up Digital," Don Tapscott, who also wrote "Wikinomics," did just about the same thing.

With egg on its face for its lack of digital know-how and breatkthrough insights, some GOPers have tried to redeem themselves.  Here in Connecticut, that blew into a 1000 pieces as GOP got nailed for setting up 33 Twitter accounts impersonating Democrats. 

That's exactly why DeVore, a Republican who hopes to win Barbara Boxer's U.S. Senate seat, triggers a lot of neck-snapping among most of his watchers.  And daily the number of Watch DeVore surges.  Yeah, they smell the conservative analogue of JFK.

DeVore's approach to communications has long been to engage through social media. In his current position as a third-term Assemblyman [R-Irvine] he always blogged.  And he did it himself, everything from posting the content to responding to comments.  He constantly updated his website, when most considered that medium static. 

Today in his Boxer Rebellion that has simply been a must.  "I'm not a celebrity and am not wealthy," DeVore told me tonight.  "I can't afford those political consultants even if wanted them.  I have no choice but to reach out through social networking."

His version of Chris Hughes is volunteer Joshua S. Trevino [add a tilda over the "n."] of Trevino Strategies and Media.  And DeVore's digital metabolism is the speeded-up kind of Politico.com and HuffingtonPost.com as well as DrudgeReport.com, with its blue-light breaking news.  But there is none of the seeming lack of judgment and destructive hypomania of U.S. Representative Alan Grayson.

After Carly Fiorina, who could oppose him in the primary, voiced her anti-First Amendment stance about the Internet, DeVore's team sprung into video action.  Within eight hours it was a wrap on a YouTube piece rebutting Fiorina's thinking. 

This campaign will be post-Obama.  Leveraging digital tools this time around might come to be called DeVore 3.0.  That's my interest.  In fact the pull force was so strong that I volunteered my old-print-girl self to put together the opinion-editorials he will publish in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST. 

 

"PR agencies operate as black boxes," Former PR Executive

Why is this tremendous response to the post "Fire Your PR Agency?" 

That's what I asked a number of experts in the field of media.  As soon as "Fire Your PR Agency" appeared on this blog, heavy traffic started.  It continues unabated.  Stunned, I sought out answers.

The most insightful analysis - and a detailed one - has come from a former PR executive in California.  She had worked in the industry for more than a decade, after earning an MBA.  She left BigPR.  Currently she is one of those New Creatives who are renaissance professionals.  She operates a boutique providing social media and career-transition services.  At this time, she wants this to be off-the-record. 

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Question:  Why such interest in "Fire Your PR Agency?"

Answer from former PR executive in California, now a New Creative:

Jane, anyone who has worked in PR or has been a client of BigPR has experienced the peculiar institution the traditional PR agency is, or at least has become.  That's where the interest and perhaps the desire for change [Change or Die] have come.

One, PR AGENCIES OPERATE AS BLACK BOXES.  Clients aren't allowed to see inside.  There is little collaboration.  The relationship between the company and the agency is like a bad marriage:  The agency does a dog & pony show bringing out all the big guns to win the account, then the brains go away and the work is pushed down as far as possible - even to the intern level.  That's how agencies are profitable.  Agencies make money by keeping their operations methodologies secret. It's the Great Oz Behind the Curtain phenomenon. 

Two, NO ONE IN AGENCIES REALLY KNOWS SOCIAL MEDIA (Read: Collaboration, relationship-building, listening to consumers, and more).  Agencies say that they do, tend to operate like RazorFish used to.  Well, I'm sorry but if the attitude and black clothing are all you're bringing, that just doesn't cut it any more.  You have to understand the audience the client needs to go after, figure out where that audience is, and what they want and then engage them.  And that is not a function of chronology, race, where you live or any of the markers that business has used to dis-include older folks, women, people of color and so on.

Three, THE KEY REASONS AGENCIES FAIL (Both PR and especially advertising) is that people want a conversation.  Companies can now have much more than consumers.  They have  fans. You've probably read some of the material by Clay Shirkey.  Yes, fans - people who know their products and services deeply, who love them, want more colors, more flavors and will tell the company about specific features they desire.  Corporate America has spent billions getting this information from SRI, McKinsey and the other biggies.  Now, with the Internet, they can get it directly and save huge amounts of time and money.

But wait, there's a catch.  What is it?

The corporation has to be willing to have a conversation with the user-fan and listen. 

No push the company agenda.  Not do what the CEO wants.  Not try and sell bales of products because the Board will like it and award the Push Patrol with bonuses and stock options.

Example: I was sailing around somewhere on the Internet and found out about Diane Birch.  I went to YouTube and found her music.  I listened.  I liked it.  I went to her website.  I went back to YouTube and picked up several of her videos and made myself a Diane Birch playlist. Tonight I just grabbed one of her videos and put it on my Posterous.

Old model would have been that I'd have bought her record album.  New model is that I learned about her, set up a playlist and shared it.

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To get your arms around social media, a useful read is:

DIGITAL HANDSHAKE by Paul Chaney.  The book is a how-to.  Digest it and you're on the way to conducting a conversation with all the communities you need to reach.  That even includes the new way to put media releases out there [no they're not dead] via PRWEB and Pitch Engine.

SEO: The new language of commerce, the way English was

This tells you something, in fact, a lot.  There are many more help-wanted on Craigslist for those who know SEO - Search Engine Optimization - than for those who know Mandarin.  And that high demand is global.  Recently, I created a SEO proposal for real estate in Costa Rica, which was accepted.  

SEO, says expert Rebecca Lieb in her 2009 book "Search Engine Optimization,"

"is the art and science of getting a website to appear prominently in organic search engine results when a search submits a query relevant to that website."

And search, says social media leader Paul Chaney in his 2009 book "The Digital Handshake,"

"is the default source for finding everything."

Therefore, it's not futuristic or hyperbolic to consider SEO the new language of commerce, the way English was.  Want to sell/buy/influence - we do it according to the communications rules of SEO.

Here are some of the fundamentals:

• Find out the keywords important to your business, according to the users's perspectives.  A banker talks about loans.  Users talk about borrowing.  Check the keywords competitors have in their sites.  You can also do research at www.informit.com/title/9780789738318.

• As you learned in Freshman Composition, make references concrete.  Don't say "my company."  Say "Jones & Smith Inc."  Don't say "shoes."  Say "Open-toed, 6" heels."  Don't say New England."  Say "New Haven, Connecticut."

• Front load keywords in title and early in text, but do so gracefully.  Keyword "stuffing" turns off users and search engines.  Analyze successful competitors's sites.

• Text trumps graphics.  Search engines "read" words, not cool designs.

• Interesting, topical content counts for a lot.

• Link to high-traffic sites such as WSJ.COM and NYT.COM.  They in turn will link to your site. Links out and in attract search engines a la wisdom-of-crowds.  To get a new site off and running fast, link it to your others sites.  Search engines will note the family resemblance.

• Change content frequently.  Search is not a static entity.

• Track or measure what's important to your business.  That might be conversions not the number of visitors per se.  If you're not getting what you need from your SEO approach, change it.  You know the mantra: Change or Die.

• Don't pile-on the technology.  That could confuse search engines.

Even for local businesses such as Casablanca Hair Design, North Haven, Connecticut, SEO is a necessary language.  Increasingly, folks search for local vendors on the Internet, not the old print Yellow Pages.  Indeed, SEO creates the digital Yellow Pages.

SEO is not hard to learn.  With practice we get better.  After all, it's also an art, not just a science.  Soon enough, those pushed out of journalism, financial markets, and law practice can make a good living translating what an enterprise needs to communicate into the ever-mutating dialects of search engines.