Baseball player Roger Clemens was accused of using steroids in the Mitchell Report, which was released a few weeks ago.  Since the report came out, Clemens has been silent, letting his lawyer do his talking for him.

In a sign of the times, today Clemens spoke about the allegations for the first time in a video posted to his website and to YouTube.  Interestingly, the YouTube account he posted from was created a few days ago.  Another example of how the web allows folks to talk directly to the people without the filter of the media.

The video statement is embedded below.

ImpactWatch is one of our main products. It is a PR measurement tool that our clients use for mainstream media coverage, but blogosphere measurement is harder to assess since readership and authority aren’t easily quantifiable.

Companies simply lack the resources to closely monitor all that is said about them, and blogs have expanded their radar screen. I don’t know if the blogosphere has increased the number of people who chit chat about a company with others, but it has created a forum in which many more voices are measurable.

However, not all voices are equal in their importance to a company. Concerning this fact, one of issues I’ve grappled with is how to weigh general influence and influence within a specific topic.

For instance, using Dell as an example, most of the A-list bloggers very rarely discuss the company and its products directly. Granted, top blogs like Engadget and Techcrunch should interest Dell since they focus on technology, but what about other blogs like Boing Boing and The Huffington Post?

I use Dell as an example since the company has had to deal with a top blog that doesn’t focus on its arena. Remember Dell Hell?

Although Jeff Jarvis and his BuzzMachine blog are prominent, they focus on media, not technology. Thus, they typically shouldn’t worry Dell, but when Jarvis blogged about his “Dell Hell,” the rules changed. In fact, sometimes when bloggers (especially an A-lister) complain about a company and its products, word can spread fast. Sometimes even the mainstream media picks up on such rants.

Measurement is tough in situations like Dell Hell. Does Dell need to devote resources to scrupulously follow BuzzMachine? No, since Jarvis mainly blogs about media and not computer hardware and software. However, Jarvis was worth Dell’s attention for a while.

How can a company determine which bloggers who don’t focus on the company and its field require their attention? Then, when should they start and stop monitoring such blogs?

When I was in traditional PR one of the activities I always thought was a waste of time and money was the creation of internal, morale boosting videos.  Basically, the idea is to make this “cool” video to get everyone fired up at some big event, nevermind the other 364 days in the year.  It almost impossible to make one of these that doesn’t make people cringe.

Thanks to YouTube, these types of videos are showing up on the Internet.  Below are three that represent the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the team building video genre.

The Good

This internal Kodak video is brilliant. It beautifully describes the company’s transition to digital. I got a little fired up watching it.

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My Stuff is a new ImpactWatch™ feature that enables individual users to save stories in the system that are pertinent to them.  To do this each story is listed with an icon that saves the item in a place where they collect articles.  Further, it uses AJAX so that saving items is a smooth process that doesn't involve multiple web pages.

Visit the ImpactWatch™ site to learn more about the program.  We also offer a free demo that features analysis of media coverage about the launch of the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 and provide case studies about how ImpactWatch can help any organization manage its public relations.

Click on the picture for a video demo of My Stuff. 

In the past when a company goofed up with a patron, the snafu remained relatively unknown. The customer likely was disgruntled and either never turned to the company again with their business or thought hard before doing so. Very few people initiated a vicious word of mouth campaign since they have plenty of other things to do besides dissing a company.

However, the Internet enables people to spread their wrath towards a company unhindered by their social network and geographic constraints, and disgruntled customers have harnessed the web to spread their displeasure.  When this happens, it is important for companies to remember that when a customer attacks online, nothing prevents the company from participating in the discussion.  Further, such involvement could help alleviate any PR problems associated with complaints aired online. 

The Internet has changed how customer complaints can spread throughout society. 

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Blog entries about customer service seemed to be following me around yesterday so I figured I’d write a blog post about it. 

First, I read “Seven steps to remarkable customer service” over on the extraordinary blog, Joel On Software.  Joel is the head of Fog Creek Software which makes the excellent FogBugz bug tracking software.  The post is specifically about support for software products, but is relevant to anyone who does customer service in their job (which is just about everyone really, isn’t it?).

His first tenet is perhaps the most valuable: fix everything two ways.  He writes:

Almost every tech support problem has two solutions. The superficial and immediate solution is just to solve the customer’s problem. But when you think a little harder you can usually find a deeper solution: a way to prevent this particular problem from ever happening again.

After reading that I immediately came across an example of a company attempting to fix a problem two ways.  Due to ice storms, JetBlue has had to cancel a large number of its flights (23%) over the last week or so.  People were stranded in airports.  Folks sat on runways for 8 hours.  Your classic planes, trains and automobiles nightmare.  Jetblue was and is under a barrage of criticism for the their poor handling of the situation.

So what are they doing?  Trying to fix the problem two ways.

To address the specific customer problem, they are reimbursing the people who were caught up in the delays.  Here’s the payment schedule according the Consumerist:

• Delays 1-2 hours: $25 off a future flight
• Delays 2-4 hours: $50 off a future flight
• Delays 6+ hours: Free round-trip ticket

To solve the long term program, JetBlue has announced a Customer Bill of Rights.  Here is a list of some of the changes that have been taken to prevent this kind of event from occurring again:

• All non-airport crew members of JetBlue will be badged and ready to go if needed to be called upon
• Increasing number phone lines open for changing reservations
• Tripling the size of the group that schedules pilots and stewardesses

To announce the Bill of Rights, CEO David Needleman posted a video on YouTube explaining the plan of action (embedded after the jump).  The YouTube video has been viewed 33,000 times so far.  A nice use of social media I think, although they should have done a better job with the web during the crisis itself. 

All of this sounds great but won’t mean much if the changes don’t work. We’ll see.

Anyway, give the piece from Joel on Software a read.

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In the most recent volume of Communique Magazine , TBG’s Gary Bivings authored a featured article. “Watching the Web” is a great piece about how PR and marketing techniques are changing to incorporate the monitoring of various new forms of media, primarily the Web. The article cites several examples of how the Web has affected PR and customer involvement in the pharmaceutical industry, and discusses how content tracking platforms can be an effective addition to any PR firms strategy (this includes our very own ImpactWatch !).

Among other issues, Gary listed the Top Seven Online Media Monitoring Practices in his article:

1. Get involved sooner rather than later
2. Implement a platform that will track online media for you
3. Categorize online activities of target markets/information seekers–blogging, message board posting, etc.
4. Make a list of the top sites to monitor per public/target audience
5. Track site statistics (eg, how often the site is visited)
6. Track bias of various sites with regard to your product
7. Decide how you will respond to the circulation of negative information about your product

You can read the article in its entirety here.

It’s been a great year for us here at The Bivings Group. Our blog has grown immensely throughout the year, and we’ve gotten some great attention from bigger blogs and organizations. We decided to take a bit of time and highlight our Top 10 Moments from 2006 (in no particular order)

• We are the #1 public affairs blog on Technorati. No joke. Check it out here. We’re also the 17th “public relations” blog on Technorati.
• Getting mentioned on CNN’s “The Situation Room”, Buzzmachine, and Romenesko.
• Todd’s post “9 Ways to Improve Newspaper Sites“, which he entered in a contest run by ProBlogger. Not only did this post generate enormous amounts of traffic from its mention on Holovaty, but also raised interest from LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller and several online publications.
• The Nintendo Wii vs. PS3 post, which now has generated 104 comments and is the most popular post on TBR. By a stroke of luck, this post comes back as the #1 search result on Google using the terms “Nintendo Wii vs. PS3″. Thanks to Google, this post from TBR has been read by a huge amount of people. TBG has followed this up with a series of blog posts, and an Impact Watch demo that tracks media mentions of the two game systems. You can go here to sign up for a free 5-day pass to view the demo.
• Tom and Jei’s redesign of USA Today’s Homepage. While only viewed a handful of times, our designers did a great job integrating the best of Web 2.0 with a realistic newspaper design. Here is Tom’s explanation of the redesign:

“In putting this together, we included every element of the current USA Today site. We wanted to come up with something that could actually be implemented, not something so conceptual that it could never see the light of day. In other words, we didn’t take the easy way out.”

• Todd’s introduction of the TBR Wiki. Used to organize our newspaper research and comments by blog readers, The Bivings Report Wiki is a great example of how bloggers can cooperate more with their readers. The Wiki didn’t get all that much attention, but I think it was a great idea.
• Tom’s “Web Design Matters” post. All around an interesting piece. And, according to Todd, this was one of TBR’s first posts to go viral and get passed around the Web.
• Our media research studies. These studies have not only given us a way to express opinions about mainstream topics such as the print media and politics, they have allowed us to suggest ways these outlets can improve. Some studies have been popular, while others have kind of dwindled with little traffic. All in all, however, conducting this research has been a great way for us to get involved with the media, expand our site’s traffic, and generate interesting content on our blog.
• Todd’s post “Do PR Firms Blog? Not so Much”. Partially the inspiration for TBR’s wiki, this post shows off what TBG does best: online public affairs. Quoting Todd’s post:

“I think its obvious that the ability to implement a successful blogging strategy for yourself is a pretty good indication you can implement one for a client.”

Also check out “PR Firms that Blog: an Update” and “PR Firms that Blog: Who Got there First?”

• TBG wins three awards.
• The Iron Sabre Award: Impact Watch beats out Hill and Knowlton for best product in the Evaluation Category
• Best of Blogs Award: TBG wins the award for Best Corporate Blog
• TBG Recognized as a Socially Responsible Business: During the 2006 Business Philanthropy Summit, The Bivings Group was recognized as an example of a small/medium size business demonstrating outstanding service to the community for its work with Bread for the City.

Overall, it’s been a great year here at TBG, filled with lots of successes. Thanks to everybody on our team that made it possible!

Today Steve Rubel unveils Edelman’s take on the social news release, Storycrafter (note lots and lots of others are doing similar work). I like it. I’d rather get something like this than an old fashioned press release. But two quick thoughts:

(1) Regardless of the format, the key with press releases IMO is to produce very few of them. If you are putting out pointless press release every day reporters are going to tune you out no matter how cool or evolved your format. It’s about interesting content more than format.

(2) Why not just release your news on your blog? That’s what we do for ourselves. When you get down to it that is basically what Edelman is doing. They have cleverly deconstructed the content of the press release and added a bunch of features common on blogs. And that’s it basically.

Update: Here is a link to a competing service, PRX Builder, and to Phil Gomes’ post about the Edelman product.  SHIFT Communications developed a template for the social news release previously.

A few months back Edelman Public Relations and the blog search engine Technorati announced a partnership. The gist of it seems to be that Edelman gave Techorati some funding to fast track the expansion of Technorati into other countries.

Due to Edelman’s recent troubles, some folks are raising questions about the propriety of the deal.

Me? I’d prefer that a search engine I use not take money from a PR firm in the business of molding public opinion (note that this comes from someone who does interactive PR). People love Google because they trust it and it works. They trust that the results don’t contain any human bias.

By cutting this deal, Technorati opens itself up to criticism that they are tweaking their results to help Edelman and its clients. It rasies questions I wouldn’t want raised if I was Technorati.

What do you think?

Andrew and I spent a couple of hours today at a panel discussion on “Trends in Political Blogging” hosted by Edelman and the Institute for Politics, Democacy and the Internet. Here are some semi-coherent thoughts from the event:

(1) Three representatives from Wal-Mart Watch (probably GWU student volunteers) were passing out flyers at the event about the whole Wal-Mart/Edelman fake blog fiasco from a few months back. This doesn’t seem to be going away.

(2) The panel started out by summarizing some new blog stats from a survey performed by StrategyOne, the research arm of Edelman. The survey, entitled “Blog Readership in the USA,” was conducted in September (I can’t find a link). Here were the parts of the study I found interesting:

• 27% of adult Americans read blogs once a week (that is 60,193,913 people for the math majors).
• 34% of American Influentials* read blogs once a week.
• 28% of Americans that read blogs have taken a public action as a result of something they read on a blog (16,854,295 people).
• 49% of American Influentials have taken action due to something they read on a blog.
• People who read blogs are more likely to be politically active (sign petitions, attend public meeting, write a politician, etc.).

*Influentials are losely defined (by me) as the 10% of society that drive trends.

These stats confirm what anyone reading this already knows innately - that blogs can lead people to take action and that the people reading and writing blogs tend to be more influential and publicly active than those that don’t. Still, it is good to have more ammunition.

(3) The panel itself was pretty much what you would expect from one of these things (lots of good anecdotes but nothing mind blowing). Some tidbits:

• I enjoyed hearing Bill Allison from the Sunlight Foundation talk about the efforts of his organization to use the Internet to clean up government. They are doing good work.
• Jacki Schechner from CNN’s Situation Room said that CNN listens to blogs and adjusts accordingly. She said CNN had changed programming after being heavily criticized by bloggers for seemingly only covering stories about “missing white women.” She also emphasized that blogs can make news without the Mainstream Media and that in some ways her job was simply to amplify and expand on stories already reported on in the blogosphere.
• Robert Moran from StrategyOne mentioned that the rise of political blogs is good for conservative and liberal politicians but bad for moderate candidates in both parties, since swing voters are not really participating. He thinks blogs can potentially play a big role in a close Presidential primary that is largely decided by Party activists, as opposed to a general election decided a larger group of folks. A great point.

Anyway, the panel got my brainwaves moving a bit, which is all you can really expect from one of these things.

The DC Examiner has an article this morning about the use of blogs by Washington-DC based non-profits. The article highlights the blogging efforts of our client, the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, and features a quote from me as well.

I’m of the opinion blogging is a no brainer for non-profits:

• It’s inexpensive. You can get a basic blog for free. And it is really not that expensive to hire a professional (like us) to put together a custom blog for you and help you get the most out of it..
• It’s easy to do. Technology has gotten to the point where anyone with basic computer skills can post. So anyone in your organization can quickly write posts.
• It’s a great way to tell a story. Many non-profits are doing great work, but nobody knows about it. Blogging is a great way to share your triumphs and struggles with the world.  You’ll reach people you wouldn’t have reached otherwise.
• It’s a great way to raise money. If your blog is done well, people will read it and more people will learn about your organization. And if they believe in what you are doing, they’ll make donations.

The Society for New Communications Review hosted their Inaugural Symposium and Gala last Wednesday and Thursday in Boston. I attended and am happy to report that your favorite blog, The Bivings Report, won SNCR's coveted Award of Merit in the Business category ! It is a great feeling to be honored by one's peers, particularly on a team effort like our blog.

SNCR followed their awards and anniversary ceremony with a really interesting symposium on, you guessed it, new communications. Highlights, extremely biased my own by personal and professional interests, are below:

• Paul Gillin gave an interesting summary comparing blogs and social media to traditional media.

New media: Outsource everything, leverage free content, involve the community, go after niche markets, market virally, low overhead, few staff, new web creating a robust set of operating principles, little to no barriers to entry.

Old media: Large infrastructure, supported by very expensive advertising, increasingly relies on blogosphere for niche news content, broader markets, subjective editorial decision-making necessary, significant barriers to entry.

If you want to dive really deep into this sort of thing you might want to check out Paul Gillin's book, The New Influencers when it's published early next year. His study comparing new media to old, was quite compelling, and was the first time I had heard so many things that I've come to take for granted strung together in such a logical way.

• SNCR had a panel of executives from IBM, EDS and Novell discussing blogging a la corporate. Topics included policies and monitoring of employees blogging publicly, internal behind-the-firewall corporate blogging successes and policies, brainstorming via blogs, and public blogging in highly regulated environments. Of particular interest to me was the different ways in which blogs were being leveraged internally in organizations, and the new corporate challenges that blogs are giving corporate communications and PR professionals.
   
• I met with Ted Shelton, CEO of Personal Bee, and one of the sponsors of the event, who was kind enough to give me a personal presentation of his new news aggregator. It's got some great ideas — if you can imagine a categorized feed aggregator, where the categories are created and added to socially, with the results presented in a combination of tag clouds and meme-type groupings then you get the idea. The interface is really slick, and is one of the coolest news products I've seen lately. Anyone interested in RSS feeds or news aggregators should definitely check it out. We might have a review on that one for you soon so stay posted…
   
• A panel of university communications executives explained how they had all tried to leverage student blogging as a recruitment tool with varying degrees of success. While corporate communicators can hammer blogging policies home, this panel reported having a hard time dealing with the transparent nature of blogs and trying to keep the image of their university intact.

• There was a discussion on selling the idea of blogging to corporations and the challenges involved there.

• Finally, there was a discussion on the use of copyrighted music in podcasts and the legal implications of doing so. It seems that the jury is still out on this one, but if you podcast, I would strongly advise against using copyrighted work as part of your podcast without consent.

SNCR will be posting the individual panelist findings and the case studies of the other award winners if you're interested in reading more about them. I can't seem to find them online yet, but will post a brief entry when they're up. I had a great time and would strongly encourage other web communicators to check out their next symposium.

So this is kind of weird.

There has been a big flap over at Techcrunch regarding how they select the hot start up companies they cover. Basically, Techcrunch wrote an article about a company called Maya’s Mom and did not cover one of its competitors, Mother’s Click. The folks at Mother’s Milk got angry and accused Techcrunch of writing about Maya’s Mom due solely to a personal relationship Techcrunch’s Mike Arrington has with the founder of the company.

You can read the original article from Techcrunch’s Mike Arrington about the situation here and a follow up post here.

But what’s really interesting is that Mother’s Milk’s PR firm, SHIFT Communications, has posted a thinly veiled entry absolving themselves of responsibility for the situation. They explain that the client is to blame for the situation.

It sounds like they are right and that the client is to blame here. But still.
As a consultant myself, I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have made the post that SHIFT Communications made. I just don’t think the post serves any purpose beyond making the client look bad and the PR firm look good.

Am I a dinosaur? Is this sort of openness by consultants the future? I tend to think there is still a place for discretion. What do you think?

After 200 of Enron's internal emails were placed in the public domain by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioned (FERC) back in 2003, innovative software company Trampoline Systems created the Enron Explorer based on their own SONAR platform. In the Enron case, SONAR was able to illustrate existing social networks and information by analyzing email content from the entire organization during the 1999-2003 time period. Though the 200 emails that became part of the investigation are not representative of every part of the company, the sample does give insight into internal communications at the highest levels at Enron before, during and after its collapse.

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