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As a whole, Washington-based trade associations aren’t known for their innovative Internet strategies. The big secret about trade associations is that they have a lot to offer the Internet community – most have great stockpiles of content and staffers who are genuine experts in their fields. And a big part of a trade association’s mission is to serve as an information resource on their industry.

With Web 2.0 hitting Newsweek this week, I figured it would be a good time to develop a quick tip sheet on how trade associations can incorporate some new media tactics into their web strategy. So here’s a David Letterman style Top 10 list:

(1) Create an RSS feed of your press releases. Open up a rapid distribution mechanism to bloggers and reporters who prefer to get information via RSS. RSS is the next iteration of the traditional blast fax or email.

(2) Allow reporters and interested bloggers to comment on your press releases in your site’s Newsroom. Open up the process of media relations and have an open discussion with your site visitors about the information you are highlighting.

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Recently, NPR’s Story of the Day podcast (Empowered by Technology, Indians Fight Government Corruption) featured how SMS technology effectively gave middle class Indians the ability to launch large scale protests against a legal system that is notorious for protecting the interests of the elite class. Fashion model Jessica Lal was shot and killed at an exclusive nightclub/bar in Dehli nearly 7 years ago, allegedly by Manu Sharma, the son of a wealthy Indian politician. A month ago, Sharma was acquitted of all charges after evidence related to the case mysteriously disappeared. Witnesses became uncooperative. The acquittal came on the official basis of insufficient evidence. It is believed that bribery and corruption were key to the outcome of this case.

India’s middle class was largely angered by this latest demonstration of the Indian legal system’s incompetence. As a response to the verdict, Indian news broadcast station NDTV launched a “Justice for Jessica” protest campaign and asked their viewers (mostly composed of middle class citizens with cell phones) to text in their signatures for a petition to reopen the Jessica Lal murder case. According to NDTV broadcast journalist Barkha Dutt, the lines were open for only 3 days but the yielded over 200,000 messages in support of the campaign. All responses were registered as votes. An impromptu rally was also held in the capital after students text messaged each other of their plans and forwarded this new age call to action to their friends. Again, there was an unbelievable turnout. The NDTV petition was forward to India’s most influential political leaders and the case has since been re-opened, with support for Jessica coming from political elites such as Sonia Gandhi, as well as the prime minister and the president.

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We took a quick look at corporate, trade association, and non-profit websites. Seems like less than 10% have set up an RSS feed for their news releases. Here’s an example. Here’s another. Notice the and icons.

RSS is the increasingly standard way content get passed around the web — among blogs, websites, and news aggregators. And anyone can subscribe to such feeds for automatic updates of favorite sites, blogs, podcasts, etc.  It’s a contemporary version of an email alert, yet it appears in your browser (and can be turned into email).

So what’s the big deal? If you want to increase the distribution and circulation of your news releases among your journalists, target customers and audiences, and those who move and shake your market or arena, you need to offer RSS feeds of your news releases. For most sites, this is easy to do.

So PR folks and communications managers, tell your IT department or web consultants to turn on the RSS feed feature!

Like a lot of people, I work from multiple computers. I have a personal laptop, a work laptop, and randomly find myself using different machines when going to meetings, traveling or visiting friends and family. So I have a problem getting files from one machine to another. I have a flash drive I use on occasion, but usually resort to emailing myself files I know I’ll be working on. The result is multiple versions of documents and, well, confusion. In talking to friends, lots of people have this problem.

I’ve been using Netvibes as my homepage for awhile now and recently tried out the Box.net tool Netvibes offers as a plug in. Box.net is an online storage service that allows you to access your uploaded documents from any computer with an Internet connection. It is a great product. Box.net stores up to one GB worth of documents for free, and includes features like tagging, the ability to make documents private or public and extremely fast uploads and downloads. There are a number of other players in this space besides Box.net, including Amazon.com.

I’ve been using Box.net pretty cautiously so far. I’m not storing any documents that are sensitive in nature and make sure to have local backups of anything I post to Box.net. But having just used this service for a little while, I’m sold on the power of online document storage and will be watching closely as the online storage industry matures.

We recently completed the launch of a new Website for the International Journalists’ Network (IJNET). IJNet.org, which is provided in its entirety in four languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic), is a global online service for journalists, media managers, media assistance professionals, journalism trainers and educators, or anyone else with an interest in news media. In addition to offering a plethora of content relating to news, media assistance, codes of ethics, media laws, etc. from countries across the globe, it also provides a number of tools that really make it a virtual community, such as discussion forums and article commenting. For instance, once a comment is posted to an article, a discussion is automatically generated regarding it within the Discussion section.

Fully supporting multiple languages, including a right to left language such as Arabic, is what makes this site really cool. In the Discussions section you can view commentary in a single language or even read them with all of the languages intermingled. The site’s email bulletin in also provided in all four languages, as is its RSS feed.

The site is based around a custom built CMS system that controls all of the site content and many of the site elements. This allows IJNet to post and edit nearly anything on the site at will. It was a very challenging project, but I think the finished product came out quite well (as evidenced by comments made on the site regarding the press release about the launch) and we are pretty proud of it.

Found the “Results of the first European Survey on Weblogs in Public Relations and Communication Management” by Philip Young, Ansgar Zerfass and Swaran Sandhu (Jan 2006). You can dowload it here. (It’s the link under “Results.”) Not sure whether the 500 or so respondents being self-selected makes the survey scientifically representative, but the ‘findings’ are rather interesting.

Good news: Most know about blogs; 68% either read, add comments or write their own blog. Those who don’t have a blog, some 42% plan to have one within the year. Nearly one-third don’t want to create one. Reasons? No clear idea what to do with one, can’t come up with enough blog content, worry about comments and feedback, and don’t have the time or budget. (I know, it’s work to blog.)
But here’s the best slide:

So what does this say? Says that European bloggers want an easy and cheap way to be hip (early adopters) and popular. (I guess if it were Americans, it’d be guys looking for a date). They also want to be able to connect directly with their audiences. Like politicians? The real business reasons for blogging; not that important.
Curious to do a similar survey in the States — may be very similar, maybe not.

Saw a story in last week’s PRWeek that mentioned the “State of the Media Report” by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The project is an institute affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and funded by the Pew Charitable Trust.

Didn’t know what to expect, but it seems well-researched and exhaustive. It’s a long read, lots about newspapers; national, cable, and local TV; radio; magazines and the web. Here’s one quote regarding blogging:

“With only about a quarter of the population having ever read one, blogs remain a relatively unfamiliar platform for much of the public. In February 2005, only 26% of Internet users said they were “very familiar” or “somewhat familiar” with blogs, according to a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll.

And who makes up this minority of Americans who consume blogs? Research suggests they are more likely to be younger and male. And ironically, the most fervid blog readers are journalists — the group perhaps that feels most threatened by them.^“

Here’s an interesting graph showing where Internet users go online for news:

Well Yahoo repackages news from other sources, such as the news wires; AOL and CNN are owed by Time Warner; and MSNBC is owned by NBC (a part of GE) and Microsoft. Most everyone gets there news from the mainstream media.

Now look at this chart on trust:

Overall, blogs don’t fare too well. Yes, there are some very credible blogs in certain sectors: tech comes to mind. But to the average American, blogs aren’t that believable. Again it’s the mainstream media that is most trustworthy — contrary to many claims otherwise.

Earlier this morning, I learned something very disturbing. According to a CNN.com article, Julia Roberts is the voice of AOL. Roberts didn’t volunteer to do this as part of some Time Warner movie studio crossover media deal and she wasn’t paid market rate for her work, which is typically $15,000 to $20,000 for a commercial that would be broadcast nationally. According to the article, she was most likely paid somewhere around seven figures to do this ad, not that AOL would disclose that sort of information. Commercial director Laura Chesire is quoted as saying that hiring actors to do voiceovers is “usually worth the expense, because you get more emotion–which sells more product.”

Maybe I’m the exception, but hearing what I suspected might have been Julia Roberts’ voice didn’t quite move me to adopt AOL. Actually, what I remember thinking during the second run of the commercial was, “That does sound like Julia Roberts, but why would she do a voiceover? She’s a big star. Voiceover work is for ordinary people.” I decided it was not Julia Roberts, but someone who sounded a lot like Julia Roberts. Not once did I consider the actual product or the features she might have rambled on about in the commercial. I was too busy deciding whether or not it really was Julia Roberts and, if it was, what could have happened that she was so hard up for cash that she would do an AOL commercial. A voiceover, I immediately thought, is a step up from a mall appearance.

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