Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins have teamed up to offer a wonderful new resource — an introductory guide to social media. Are you a newbie to the online space? Or maybe you’re already well involved in social media, but you’re such an expert you might need some help explaining it to folks new to the medium. Then step right up — this 30-page e-book is for you!

This guide is good and thorough, covering everything from the basics of RSS right through tips for a successful blog and on to site stats and monitoring. And a major plus, in my eyes at least, is that they’ll be periodically updating it. This is only version 1.0. One of the key traits of social media is how rapidly it changes, so naturally any guide that covers it needs to stay up-to-speed. So thumbs up to that.

Bravo to these guys for putting together such a handy resource!

Technorati Tags: social media, new media, social media guide, trevor cook, lee hopkins

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I came across this amusing post from CNET News.com’s David Carnoy that talks about this wife-acceptance factor (or WAF) idea that marketers are using to empower men to “spend large sums of money on sleek electronic gear without the slightest bit of guilt.” Hmm.

Granted, I’m stirred and amused by a few of the author’s remarks. For example: “And the fairer sex actually does recognize when a product performs a cool function.” (Amazing! Women are capable of recognizing cool things, too! So profound.)

But rather than poke good, healthy fun at this guy’s post (which I certainly could do, considering I’m a gadget and electronic geek, myself — so I totally rock the stereotype), but for our purposes at Forward, I’d rather stick to the marketing strategy at play here.

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Think back to the long, hot days of summer. Remember the biggest talking point in PR blogging? It was a double-barrelled fusillade launched from the Australian winter - the claim that ‘Astroturfing is evil’. My link is to Trevor Cook’s blog, but the inspiration for this campaign came from Forward’s own Paull Young.

And who could disagree with them? Of course we all believe in what we do, and want to believe that the public relations we practice is respectable, legitimate, open and ethical. So why not distance our brand of professional PR from the disreputable end of the business? How hard can that be?

I like Paull; I admire Trevor. Yet I only felt able to lend lukewarm support to their campaign (my comment on Trevor’s post hints at some reservations, though my defence of a royal walkabout was perhaps not universally compelling.)

Now Edelman stands indicted of this great evil. (Edelman, remember, is the global cheerleader for ‘the new PR’ and an active headhunter of the best blogging talent including the UK’s Stephen Davies and Forward’s managing editor Erin Caldwell.) Ashley Imsand has already commented at Forward on the Wal-Mart blogging furore.

So where do I now stand on astroturfing and on the crucial issue of transparency?

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The whole point of this site is to act as a springboard for young PR professionals and students. So we think that when major issues come up in the field of public relations, this should be the first place you want to come to get the issue spelled out in plain terms. So, here goes for a major topic of interest in the PR blogosphere right now. But first a little background for those who might want it:

Background on Uses of Social Media

One thing that may be hard to understand until someone really spells it out like this is how exactly companies are trying to use blogs and other social media. One trend we are seeing, is a movement away from advertisements which some companies feel consumers can see right through and are not effective, to a more consumer-engaging way of communicating positive ideas about your company. That’s where blogs come in.

Granted, this idea is not catching on at lightening speed and is having a kind of slow adoption rate, but many people feel that it is the way of reaching consumers in the future, or any target audience for that matter.
(For some, this might be old hat, but who knows, this might be helping others…)

So some companies are looking to have conversations with their publics instead of sending one-way messages through advertisements that they can only hope the consumer will respond to positively. Some companies are responding to new media by having a customer service function which goes out and responds to complaints or queries about products posted on various consumers’ blogs. I have had that happen to me personally. Orvis did a remarkable job of finding where I had complimented a program of theirs and the company wrote me personally saying they were glad I enjoyed a particular program they were doing. I was impressed, heck I am sitting here still talking about it on this site, and that’s what other companies are trying to do: reinforce positive images or get rid of negative opinions of their company that are showing up in blogs for the rest of the world to see on the Internet.

Other than customer service, word-of-mouth campaigns are being started through blogs to reach audiences, and Wal-Mart is one company who has begun similar efforts.

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I attended a very interesting PRSA teleseminar today on communication strategy during class-action lawsuits by Helio Fred Garcia of the Logos Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Leadership. Garcia is the president and founder of Logos Consulting Group, the executive director of the Logos Institute, as well as an instructor for NYU’s brand new Master’s in Corporate Communication program. He is also one of the authors of the just-released book “Reputation Management“. While he mainly focused today on class-action litigation, Garcia’s lessons can be applied to most all lawsuit situations, as well as to dealing with NGOs and activist groups. One of the most interesting things he discussed is the symbiotic relationship between lawyers, the media and government regulators. Below are some key learnings from the seminar.

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Since I last posted, there’s been quite a bit of coverage around this topic, including several high profile posts that have referenced this series.

In part four, we’ll explore how to write for and initially reach bloggers more effectively, using existing and new tools and services. In part five, we’ll review outreach techniques for good old fashioned relationship building.

The previous article discussed, “Reaching the Blogosphere – Finding Bloggers in Your Market” using tools such as Technorati, Sphere, Google’s BlogSearch, Blogpulse, Alexa, CyberAlert, BuzzMetrics, Cymfony, and Umbria.

Now that we have walked through examples of how to identify the right bloggers for your market, we need to determine how to best reach them and why they should even receive your news in the first place.

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I had the wonderful privilege of attending ConvergeSouth in Greensboro, NC, this past weekend. Among the many great lessons and stories I have from that weekend, one that I’d like to highlight here comes from the Scobles’ session titled “10 Ways to a Killer Blog.”

Haha … well, we attendees really got over-serviced! Not only did we get to see Robert and Maryam Scoble share the stage and co-present (which believe me, is a HUGE treat in itself!), but they also offered up 15 tips rather than the promised 10. I’m delighted to share them with you here:

1. Blog because you want to. Don’t blog because you feel like you should, because everyone else is, or because someone else tells you that you should.
2. Read other blogs. (Extra tip: Read 50 blogs for two weeks. Either you’ll feel compelled to join in, or you won’t be a good blogger.)
3. Pick a niche you can own. Be different.

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[Author’s note: This is the second of a series of metaphors of PR. The first is here.]

If you think about your typical rock band, you’ve got a singer, a guitar player, a bass player, and a drummer. You could take several bands from the 70s to today and probably (depending on your age) be able to name all the band members BUT the bass player. It’s okay, it’s not your fault; you’re not a bass player. Look, let me show you. The Who. Singer: Roger Daltrey. Guitar player: Pete “The Windmill” Townshend. Dummer: Keith Moon. Some would say the best drummer ever. Bass Player? Uh, wait, wait, don’t tell me. You don’t know, do you?. Some more. Van Halen…the original: David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen. Bass Player? You don’t know. Violent Femmes: Gordon Gano sang and played guitar. Victor DeLorenzo was the drummer. Best acoustic bass guitar player ever. You don’t know, do you? The Fray: Well, they don’t count. They don’t even have a bass player. Nickelback: Wait, I hate Nickelback. The Killers: Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning strums it, and Ronnie Vannucci Jr. lays down the drumbeat.

And what’s my point?

My point is that everyone knows the other members of the band, but how incredibly important are the bass players? Very. And whether you know it or not, they are. And whether you know it or not, a good one can make you soar and the bad ones can kill you.

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In this 12th episode of the Forward Podcast, Paull Young and Erin Caldwell team up to bring you a candid conversation to kick off a collection of audio comments from an outstanding group of young people in PR.

We dedicate this episode to the sole purpose of declaring and discussing why each of us is proud of PR — both as things are now, and as we anticipate and hope the profession will develop in the future.

Naturally, we all know Paull and Erin from here at Forward. But we also have comments from:

• Jill Pyle, a public relations student at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, NS, who maintains her own PR blog here and is also part of the Less Than 3 podcast
• Ashley Imsand, a public relations student at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., and also the assistant editor here at Forward
• Owen Lystrup, a student at Cleveland State University in Ohio California State University in Chico, who also runs the Into PR blog
• Luke Armour, an AE with Innis Maggiore in Canton, Ohio, and also a principal contributor at Forward and the author of Observations of Public Relations

We hope you enjoy this episode and come away inspired and dedicated to making this profession something we can all be even more proud of in the years to come. Thanks to the folks above who contributed, and we certainly encourage you to share your own thoughts in the comments below.

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Listen Now:

 Forward #12 - Pride in PR [19:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (421)

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Naturally, as players in this online world, we’re all QUITE familiar with spam. But in this case, I’m talking about SPAM (Hormel’s food product). A story on the news caught my attention this morning: “The producer of the canned pork product Spam has lost a bid to claim the word as a trademark for unsolicited e-mails.”

Even the news anchor reporting on the story was ridiculing the food company’s recent attempt. Hmm. Not a good sign, Hormel.

In this Fortune article, this little ditty is my favorite:

“Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, ‘Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?’”

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