Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Summary

McDonald's and Seth Godin acknowledging that marketers are losing control of their brand marketing programs online? Who to put in charge to help marketers regain their online voices and direct their online conversations with customers? PR. This is a great opportunity for PR to take leadership of the strategic role of integrating the voice of the customer between corporate IT and marketing. Any Fortune 1000 company that has a threat (blogs) also has a need. PR people...fill that need. Company threats are met by the opportunities of other services. Conversations developing online should be answered. By PR.

Author: Robb Hecht | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Robb Hecht | Topic 3 Making PR Work

Step-by-step promotion

If you already blog, you use a tool that can promote clients. Elements of your writing become part of a larger mass of information that is trawled and combed by Internet search engines. Linkages between your message and other related themes bubble up. Those linkages become part of directories of information. Before venturing into public space with any sort of a message, it would be wise to know how to make the best use of your effort. This knowledge enhances return on the time and money invested in forming, promoting and tracking messages.

As a PR lecturer, I teach some checklists that help measure return on investment (ROI) for clients. We mount campaigns during the academic term that invoke specific rules of thumb. If we pretend the "Global PR Blog Week" is a client, we can tick off the checklist items step-by-step as our promotion campaign evolves.

The three phases of the campaign:

1. Preparation
2. Implemetation
3. Evaluation

1. Preparation.

• Form a message. In the Global PR Blog Week event, the message percolated in a Yahoo Group mail system. People commented on what they wanted to cover, content evolved, topics gelled, and a programme gestated. The ring leaders were helped by an gold-plated ingredient: new content by PR bloggers.
• Distill memes. These two-to-five word phrases--sought by search engines--might be hot topics extracted from the press or they may be exact links from other sites. Select the correct memes and you spawn your own talking points. From a client's point of view, a well-defined set of memes helps put campaign goals in the crosshairs.
• Storyboard the release. Don Crowther brilliantly explained the basis of this tactic. My quicklist follows:
  • Write snappy titles to all text items.
  • Construct links from specific text fragments.
  • Slice up your content according to individual themes.
  • Use web design skills to craft a presentation template pleasing to both a human reader and a search engine crawler.

2. Implementation You should polish most of the implementation tasks well before the campaign starts. Many campaigns start the minute an embargo expires. Here are the steps.

• Release the information text. When released through bloggers, your campaign information should document linkages from other entries directly into related pages on your client's web site. In the case of Global PR Week, a half dozen other bloggers link directly to topics being discussed on the program.
• Make comments on other people's blogs, linking into your page that discusses that same topic, again, using your targeted keywords as the text in the link (sometimes called the "link text.")
• Ping related URLs. In blogging programs such as Movable Type and TypePad, you can "ping" other blogs via Trackback or you can send your ping through http://rpc.pingomatic.com and automatically alert electronic crawlers from all major search engines.
• Release images. We often offer photo albums on blogs that promote products, people and services in a PR campaign. Photo editors need that kind of collateral. Provided quality captions accompany the photos, we're able to promote a client's message through a photo blog. Students helped the 2003 Kilkenny Arts Festival.
• Check your blog items through several different browsers on several different connection points. I have seen items copied and pasted into blogs from Word or from e-mail and the information displays unwanted characters and annoying line breaks.
• Monitor live flows. Geobytes offers a way to see who is on now.

3. Evaluation. This stage documents measureable results. You must monitor the program’s implementation. You must assess its impact and efficiency of various nodes of information.

• Daily evaluation.
  • Look at links, power links and inches of coverage. The Global PR Blog Week includes a live tracking of traffic with Sitemeter.
  • Technorati searches the "world live web." Type in a url (try it for Global PR Blog Week), keyword or phrase above and search the World Live Web. Checking on the client's URL (www.globalprblogweek.com) gives us 241 links to the site.
  • Check on Feedster and find 350 posts pertaining to the client.

• Offer weekly management indicators. Many clients prefer to have simple bits of information that prove their PR campaign is working.
  • Egosurf on Google. First, I egosurf (look up the key memes or campaign phrases) on Google. For example, when I egosurfed for “Global PR blog week” in the middle of the campaign, you get 5,600 pages returned. One month before the first online session, Google showed just over 1,800 pages. This is remarkable reach for a campaign.
  • Get a snapshot from Vivisimo, a service that shows a thematic view of where the campaign is placing the client. In the case of “Global PR Blog Week,” Visimo presents a snappy result that suggests the Global PR blog week campaign has a Public relations slant, uses a Wiki, features some Irish parts, and appeals to the fuel industry.
• Analyze referrers on a monthly basis. Sitemeter data shows general numbers and specific referrer strings. These two separate data sets tell us that the campaign is building momentum since the numbers of readers on a daily basis are increasing. More importantly, the referrer strings show the campaign is attracting a significant amount of viewers through e-mail boxes. This suggest a word-of-mouth campaign has started on the back of general news releases.
• On a quarterly basis, review the lessons learned. Each stage in program evaluation contributes to increased understanding and adds information for assessing effectiveness.

Author: Bernard Goldbach | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Bernard Goldbach | Topic 3 Making PR Work

Pitching small business stories

Reporters work for their editors - Mary Marshall

Those of us who have the privilege of representing small business always struggle with the issue of newsworthiness. If Megakluge announces the future release of Vaporware 1.0, due to ship three years from now, it will be treated as news for no reason save that it came from Megakluge. But if you call from TheLittleEngineThatCould Technology Corp., you have to deal with the “Who are they?” issue. Presumably, your client hired you to solve that problem.

It is critical to have a detailed understanding of TheLittleEngineThatCould’s product and what problem it solves. The story will almost always revolve around solving a problem that had not been previously addressed. You must determine who cares about that problem and why it is news.

Begin at the end. Since you want the story to generate sales, begin with the prospects. Who buys from TheLittleEngineThatCould? Are they network administrators? Civil servants? Financial advisors? Chief information officers? You must know your audience before you make your pitch.

What sort of publication do TheLittleEngineThatCould’s customers read? A favorable review in an obscure professional journal may be a better placement than a national newspaper. Only when you know whom you are writing for can you begin to formulate the pitch. Have a specific reader in mind as you write. This inspires livelier copy.

The reason Technoflak begins with the reader rather than the editor is that it is too easy to concentrate so much on the news organization that we lose sight of our purpose: to communicate our client’s message to the pubic in a way that inspires trust. Always remember that you are talking to the public, not the reporter.

The other reason Technoflak begins with the reader is that it is easier to pitch the newsworthiness of stories if you can point to specific readers. If you can say something along the lines of “both the network administrators and the security officers who read your magazine will be interested in this story because...” your message will have a better chance of generating a response.

If TheLittleEngineThatCould has an inherently newsworthy customer, the State Department or National Institute for Health(NIH) for instance, you should pitch the State Department or NIH as the story. This is very difficult as you have two different organizations that must sign off on the story before you pitch it. However, your chances of successful placement are greatly enhanced.

Offer exclusives: send email along the lines of “TheLittleEngineThatCould has a new web services application that provides for world peace and thin thighs, please let me know by Friday if The Weekly Whiz is interested.” Setting a deadline encourages a response and frees you to offer the pitch to a rival news organization if The Weekly Whiz fails to respond.

Editors want readers, clients want customers. Finding the place where their interests converge is the secret to all successful story pitches. Reporters want stories that will grab the attention of readers, impress editors and win a promotion. If they don’t want these things they are not doing their job. Persuade them that TheLittleEngineThatCould is moving down their readers’ track, and they will use your story.

Author: Alice Marshall | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 5 comments
Category: @ Alice Marshall | Topic 3 Making PR Work

Las posibilidades de la blogósfera para las RRPP en los países hispanohablantes

A pesar de ser la segunda lengua más hablada en el mundo, el español está a años luz de tener una presencia similar en el mundo internet. Esta situación puede trasladarse perfectamente a la blogósfera.

Apenas un par de medios de comunicación iberoamericanos ofrecen RRS: el diario español El Mundo y el argentino Clarín. Aunque los blogs se están volviendo visibles en los medios de comunicación y están comenzando a convertirse en un tema de investigación, aún es cosa de pequeños grupos “evangelistas”, quienes promueven su uso… pero esto puede cambiar en poco tiempo.

Frente a este gran reto, los profesionales de las relaciones públicas de habla hispana tienen que ver las enormes oportunidades que otros colegas, fundamentalmente quienes tienen el inglés como su lengua materna, aprovechan para sus clientes, sus empresas e, incluso, para ellos mismos.

Quizás sea más fácil aceptar para un anglosajón, con una cultura diferente, que para entrar en la blogósfera hay que bajarse del pedestal en el que piensan que deben situarse los líderes y acercarse a miles de personas de una manera directa y sin cortapisas.

Se me hace difícil creer que un político, un alto funcionario o un directivo mexicano, español, peruano o argentino, acceda a escribir un blog directamente. Es más, salvo sectores y casos puntuales, la utilización de los blogs para mantener una comunicación fluida con sus diferentes públicos sigue siendo limitada entre partidos políticos, gobiernos e incluso a nivel empresarial.

En los últimos años, ha sido un gran avance que los líderes hayan visto las ventajas que significa tener una página web y la hayan incluido en su campaña de comunicación.

Sin embargo, para algunos sectores de la población de habla hispana, el mundo de internet aún les es ajeno, difícil y caro, por lo que descartan su uso para comunicarse… y la blogósfera ofrece justamente lo contrario a todo eso: es un medio cercano a la gente, de un manejo bastante sencillo y con un coste muy reducido que, aprovechándose de los recursos que pueden encontrarse en innumerables sitios web, puede ser prácticamente gratuito.

En este sentido, es fácil hablar de que los blogs pueden convertirse en un elemento “democratizador”, con unas posibilidades para cambiar la relación tradicional entre las fuente y los medios con el público.

Los blogs harán posible el “periodismos participativo”, con el que podrán acercarse los problemas de gente de la calle a otras personas con sus mismas dificultades y preocupaciones. Las posibilidades son interminables en sociedades muy dadas a la falta de transparencia en el actuar del gobierno, de las grandes empresas e incluso con medios de comunicación con débil credibilidad.

De hecho, ya está sucediendo en varios países de habla hispana, al igual que en el mundo anglosajón, una explosión de canales que ofrecen información alternativa a la que contienen los medios tradicionales. Están surgiendo miles de blogs que reflexionan, califican y denuncian, no sólo las actuaciones gubernamentales o de los partidos políticos, sino productos, servicios o los planes que muchas empresas llevan a cabo.

Asimismo, entre las pequeñas y medianas empresas, es posible que los blogs puedan ser vistos como la posibilidad real de acceder a internet, sin necesidad de destinar una gran cantidad de recursos ni a tener que depender de informáticos que no necesariamente saben del negocio o que incluso no conocen de comunicación.

Quizás aquí esté el meollo del asunto. Por estos motivos pienso que hay muchas posibilidades por explotar en los blogs por el sector de las relaciones públicas en los países hispanohablantes.

Es posible que en un medio plazo los blogs hispanos alcancen la misma importancia que están ganando poco a poco, pero firmemente, las bitácoras de autores en países como Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, Canadá o Australia.

Ahora mismo, se me hace difícil creer que blogs realmente independientes, es decir, aquellos que no sean parte de importantes grupo de comunicación o que no estén escritos por periodistas adscritos a grandes redacciones que mantienen sus bitácoras de forma paralela a su actividad principal, sean acreditados como medios en actos de importancia como campañas de partidos políticos como ya está sucediendo en EEUU y próximamente en Reino Unido.

En este sentido, el sector de las RRPP en los países hispanos debe estar preparado para obtener el mayor provecho de este fenómeno.

¿Cómo? Me atrevo a establecer unas líneas de actuación.

* Detectar aquellos blogs que tienen un buen nivel de visitas y ordenándolos por categorías: tecnología, política, medios, etc. Esto ya lo están haciendo directorios como Bitácoras.net, Blogdir.com, Blogsmexico.com, Blogalia.com, por mencionar algunos. Habrá que estar abiertos a ver todo tipo de bitácoras y saber que habrá ocasiones en que no compartamos los puntos de vista de los autores, pero que es importante que contemos con ellos.

Pongamos el caso de las páginas web sobre videojuegos. Hay ocasiones en que niños con apenas 12 años se convierten en verdaderos líderes de opinión, que son capaces de destrozar el lanzamiento de un nuevo juego en el que se invirtieron miles o a veces hasta millones de euros.

* Adentrarse a la blogósfera con el objetivo de conocer el nuevo medio, sus herramientas, sus posibilidades y limitaciones, así como los autores más conocidos, aunque no sean de habla hispana.

Puede parecer una obviedad, pero hay muchas personas que nunca habrán oído hablar de RSS, Feeds, Posts, pero tampoco de bitácoras, sindicación de contenidos, enlaces, ni nada por el estilo.

Un consultor de relaciones públicas no puede sugerir a su cliente que lance un blog sin haberle informado previamente de todo lo que tiene que saber para tener éxito y, sobre todo, no se puede dar el lujo de no saber responder a una pregunta que se le plantee sobre la blogósfera.

* Antes de lanzar un blog corporativo o institucional se debe tener una estrategia clara de lo que se busca trasmitir y entender que el medio tiene su “net-etiqueta”, es decir, sus códigos propios, lo que tiene implicaciones desde la asiduidad, las fuentes, la forma, el tono de la comunicación… y, por supuesto, la respuesta del público.

Nos podemos encontrar que una buena idea puede dar resultados mediocres si se eligen las tácticas inadecuadas. En este sentido, un blog es una herramienta más entre todas las disponibles para las relaciones públicas. Eso sí, ofrece unas posibilidades únicas que otras no tienen.

* Hacer que el blog sea relevante, pero no olvidando que se trata de una bitácora. Hay quien sigue pensando que los blogs son diarios de adolescentes, en parte porque es verdad y no tiene nada de malo, de ahí la flexibilidad del medio.

Por eso, en el momento de lanzar un blog, hay que encontrar un equilibrio entre las características del medio con los objetivos de la organización. No se puede poner posts sin sustancia, ni esperar demasiado a actualizar la bitácora.

En este sentido, si una empresa no tiene la capacidad para mantener una comunicación continua con su público, ya sea por razones estratégicas, por limitaciones legales o de otro tipo, quizás una página web cumpla mejor con sus objetivos.

* Advertir que los resultados pueden ser a medio plazo. Es uno de los principales retos a los que se debe enfrentar cualquier profesional de las relaciones públicas, no sólo con los blogs, sino utilizando cualquier herramienta.

Quizás en el caso de las bitácoras el reto sea mayor por la novedad del medio y, en el caso de algunos países iberoamericanos, por la baja penetración de internet.

* Ser “evangelistas” de los blogs. No sólo hay que conocer el medio, hay que ser parte de él. Esta es la única manera en la que se podrá ofrecer a los clientes una consultoría adecuada. No se trata de ser un gurú con miles de visitas al día, pero sí de estar familiarizado con la blogósfera, de conocer el quién-es-quién. La única manera de persuadir a alguien es estando convencido de aquello que se predica.

La mejor tarjeta de presentación de un consultor que sugiera utilizar las ventajas de un blog para una organización debe incluir, además de su email, la dirección de su bitácora.

Habrá muchas más cosas que hacer, pero este puede ser un buen comienzo para el sector de las relaciones públicas hispanohablante, que tiene que ver a los blogs como una herramienta con un potencial enorme.

Aún está por verse si el fenómeno que la blogósfera representa para algunos países se extiende al resto del mundo. La aún baja penetración de conexión de internet en los hogares de los países latinoamericanos, una incipiente cultura del uso de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y una manera distinta de entender las relaciones sociales, serán los principales condicionantes para que este fenómeno se extienda como en los países anglosajones o puede que surja un movimiento diferente que todavía no ha explotado. Ya veremos.. aunque lo mejor es que nos vayamos preparando.

Author: Octavio Rojas | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Octavio Rojas | Topic 3 Making PR Work

Possibilities of the blogosphere for the PR industry in Spanish-speaking countries

In spite of being the second most spoken language in the world, Spanish is light-years away from having a similar presence on the Internet. This situation can be transferred perfectly to the blogosphere.

Only two media in Spanish speaking countries offer RSS: the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and the Argentine Clarín. Although the blogs are becoming more visible in the media and are becoming a research topic, still they are something of small “evangelist groups”, who promote its use… but this can change in little time.

To face this great challenge, Spanish-speaking PR professionals have to identify the enormous opportunities that other colleagues, fundamentally those whose native language is English, use for their clients, their businesses and, even for themselves.

Perhaps it would be easier for Anglo-saxons, with a different culture, to accept that in order to enter the blogosphere they must take themselves off the pedestal on which they think leaders should be placed, and be closer to thousands of people in a direct way, without any obstacles.

It is hard for me to believe that a politician, a high-ranking official or an executive in Mexico, Spain, Peru or Argentina, would agree to write a blog. Furthermore, except for some industries (i.e. IT), the use of blogs to maintain direct communication with their audiences continues to be limited to political parties, governments and even successful businesses.

In recent years, there has been a great advance, in which leaders have taken into account the advantages of having a web page and have included it in their communication campaign.

Nevertheless, for some industries of the Spanish-speaking countries, the Internet still is a foreign, difficult and expensive tool, and because of this they disregard its use to communicate with their audiences. The blogosphere offers the exact opposite of this: it is a communication tool close to the people, easy-to-use and with such a reduced price that, with so many resources available on the Internet, it can be practically free of charge.

It is easy to say that blogs could become a “democratizing” element with real possibilities to change the traditional relationship between sources and the media with the public.

Blogs will make possible the “participative journalism”, through which it will be possible to connect the problems of real people to other individuals with the same difficulties and worries. The possibilities are endless in societies that are used to the lack of transparency in government activities and large businesses, and even with media that lack credibility.

In fact, what is already happening in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries, as in the Anglo-saxon world, is an explosion of blogs that offer alternative information to the traditional media. Thousands of blogs are appearing to reflect, qualify and denounce, not only the governmental actions or those of political parties, but products, services or even plans that many businesses are carrying out.

Also, it is possible that the blogs can be seen as the real possibility for the small and medium-size businesses to access the Internet, without needing to provide a large quantity of resources or having to depend on IT people that don’t necessarily understand the business or communication strategies.

Perhaps here is the heart of the matter. These reasons make me think that there are many possibilities for the public relations industry in the Spanish-speaking countries to explore blogs. It is possible that very soon the blogs in Spanish may reach the same importance that other blogs are gradually but firmly gaining, in countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Australia.

Right now, I don’t believe that really independent blogs -that is to say, those that are not part of important communication groups or that are not written by professional journalists that update their blogs parallelly to their main activity- may be accredited like mainstream media in important events such as political campaigns, as is already happening in the US, and soon in the United Kingdom.

The public relations industry in Spanish-speaking countries should be prepared to obtain the maximum profit of this phenomenon.

How? I will tackle this through some proposed plans of action.

* Identify those blogs that have a good level of hits and organize them in categories: technology, political, media, etc. There are some directories that do this like Bitácoras.net, Blogdir.com, Blogsmexico.com, Blogalia.com, to mention a few. We should be open to see all kinds of blogs, keeping in mind that there will be occasions in which we won’t share the authors’ points of view, but that is important that we take them into consideration.

Let’s take the the case of the videogames web pages. There are occasions in which children with barely 12 years become true opinion leaders, who are capable of destroying the launch of a new game in which thousands or even millions of euros were invested.

* Enter into the blogosphere with the objective of understanding the new medium, its tools, its possibilities and limitations, as well as the best-known authors, although they not be Spanish-speaking.

It may seem obvious, but there are many people that have never heard about RSS, feeds, posts, blogs, syndicated content, links or anything along these lines.
A public relations consultant can’t suggest that his or her clients launch a blog without having previously informed the client about what it takes to be successful and, above all, he or she can’t afford not to know an answer to an issue that may be presented in the blogosphere.

* Before launching a corporate or institutional blog, one should have a clear strategy of what he or she hopes to be communicate and should understand that the blogosphere has its own “net-etiquette”, that is to say, its own codes, that have implications regarding updating, information sources, the form, the tone of the communication… and, of course, the feedback of the public.

We can find that a good idea may produce mediocre results if inadequate tactics are chosen. In this sense, a blog is one more tool among the many available for public relations. And, yes, it offers some unique possibilities that other don’t have.

* Make the blog relevant, but take into account that it is a blog. There are people that keep thinking that the blogs are newspapers for teen-agers, in part because it is true. However this is not something bad at all since this shows how flexible blogs are.

Therefore, at the moment of launching a blog, one must find an equilibrium among the characteristics of the blogosphere with the objectives of the organization. One cannot do is to create irrelevant posts or wait too long to update the blog.

If a business does not have the capacity to maintain a continuous communication with its audience, whether for strategic reasons or legal limitations of another type, perhaps a web page is better for its objectives.

* Note that results can’t be immediate. It is one of the main challenges to all public relations professionals that should be faced, not only with the blogs, but when using any other tool.

Perhaps in the case of the blogs the challenge is greater because of the novelty of the medium and, in the case of some Latin American countries, by the low penetration of Internet.

* Be “blog evangelists”. One must know not only the blogosphere, one must be part of it. This is the only way in which a consultant will be able to offer his or her clients an adequate consultancy. It is not a matter of being a guru with thousands of visits a day, but it is necessary to be comfortable with the blogosphere and knowing who-is-who. The only way to persuade someone is being convinced of that which is preached.

The best business card of a consultant that uses the advantages of a blog for an organization should include, apart from its email, his or her blog addresss.

There will be many of things to do, but this could be a good beginning for the Spanish-speaking PR industry, that has yet to see blogs as a tool with a huge potential.

We must wait to see if the “blog phenomenon”, that is taking place in a number of countries, will spread to the rest of the world. The low internet penetration in Latin American countries, an incipient culture of the use of IT and a different way of understanding the social relations, will be the main obstacles that will determine if this phenomenon spreads as it has in the Anglo-Saxon countries, or maybe it will be possible that a different movement arises with local particularities that haven’t been exploited yet. We will wait and see… and we better be prepared.

(Ahora incluyo la versión en castellano...)

Author: Octavio Rojas | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 3 comments
Category: @ Octavio Rojas | Topic 3 Making PR Work

Tools for Building Communities

Back in the late 90s, it seemed every other business plan I saw had "building community" as a major component. These were the wild and wacky days of the web gold rush, and the one identified way to make money was to consolidate lots of eyeballs and push ads at them. Of course, the same few thousand people and the same few hundred ad buyers were targeted in all of the 14,876 plans or so I had the pleasure of perusing. Thus the Oh-Ohs and the resounding thud heard 'round the world.

Yet, the drive towards "building communities" has not disappeared. Witness the stellar growth of LinkedIn, Friendster, Orkut. Yet [hand to ear]...do I hear the whistle of a coming thud? Is the buzz on "social networks" already dying?

I think there is something fundamentally broken about the way organizations have birthed online communities up until now. And in the face of a dramatic (for Americans at least) cultural decline in joining communities (as chronicled in Robert Putman's book Bowling Alone), organizations that are interested in fostering community need to adopt new strategies and tactics to be successful.

Before I get to what is broken, first I thought it would be useful to list the four characteristics of community as defined by McMillan and Chavis, which are the most widely accepted among community researchers. [This materials comes from an article by Anita Blanchard that is part of the excellent new gathering of academic work on blogs: Into the Blogosphere.]

* Feelings of membership: Feelings of belonging to, and identifying with, the community;

* Feelings of influence: Feelings of having influence on, and being influenced by, the community;

* Integration and fulfillment of needs: Feelings of being supported by others in the community while also supporting them; and

* Shared emotional connection: Feelings of relationships, shared history, and a “spirit” of community.

So, if we take these traits and apply them to virtual communities, which I think you can without too much trouble (read the papers on virtual communities at Into the Blogsphere for more on that), we begin to see where the problem I mentioned earlier lies.

To date, communities have usually been created for the primary benefit of the organizer to sell eyeballs or to create the illusion of mass support of an objective (environmental organizations are a good example here). These creative people have come up with a variety of benefits to the members, which they then market in the goal of getting more members. The organizers of community are enamored with numbers. But, let's be careful here. In fact, for virtually any membership community, only two to 20 percent of members are active in any way at all. And generally, the number is closer to the low end than the high end. (Source)

So, if you are interested in forming a vital community of contributing members, you have to overcome the inertia of built-in, cultural passivity. (Again, I am speaking mainly of the American public today, but I suspect the lessons can be applied in many other countries.) Clearly, that is something that isn't going to happen overnight. However, there are some approaches you can take, guided by the attributes of successful communities I listed above.

First of all, you must create a framework around which the community can grow organically. Trying to force fit a structure onto a group of people doesn't encourage participation! MeetUp is a great example of an organization that created a few simple tools then backed off. Now, we can argue that MeetUp itself isn't the community, but that isn't for here. It simply serves as a good example.

Then, you need to provide tools for people to contribute in ways that they feel comfortable. The usual tools include email lists, discussion boards, petition signings, etc. etc. Here, I want to focus on how blogs can be used, drawing on work I am currently doing with an business membership organization.

Blogs as Framework Of Participation

In my example, I am working with a recently launched non-profit industry advocacy group/membership organization. Our goal is to build a set of knowledge about an emerging market, while simultaneously helping to define the market itself. Furthermore, we are attempting to provide a forum where users and vendors can meet and discuss their mutual goals and challenges.

With limited budget and few human resources, we decided the best thing to do was to create a framework where others could easily contribute to the knowledgebase, while providing the opportunity for influence and recognition (see list above!). We are using a variety of tools, including case study databases, speakers bureaus, eNewsletters, committees and so on. I am going to describe how we plan on using blogs (we are on the verge of launch, but haven't done so yet).

1) We are creating a blog that will be the "voice" of the association. The managing director will be the primary author, with my help.

2) We are inviting a variety of guest authors to post for a week at a time on a subject of interest to them as well as our members. Over the past few months, we have briefed more than 20 industry analysts in the US and Europe. In many cases, we will be featuring their research on our website. At the same time, timed when possible around the launch of a new report, we are inviting them to be a guest author. This is a win-win for everyone. We get the benefit of building a set of knowledge and they get good PR.

3) We are creating a blog for all vendor members, and they are welcome to post their thoughts, challenges, etc. as a channel of communication to the member base and a broader audience. (We do not allow them to market to our list of members directly).

4) We will provide a blog for any member who would like one. They can post whatever they like in it (with guidelines for libel, profanity, etc.). Again, our goal is to create a public forum where people can share their ideas.

I'll be reporting on progress on these participatory community building efforts through the use of blogs on my own blog from time to time, so please stop on by. In the meantime, if you have questions about using blogs for community building, please drop them in the comments, and I will respond.

Author: Elizabeth Albrycht | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 2 comments
Category: @ Elizabeth Albrycht | Topic 3 Making PR Work