Make the Noise

The term “Litmus Test” has been colloquially used to refer to a simple / non-complex test, with a pass or fail.  For The Social Media Litmus Test, I propose (at this moment in time) a simple question to serve as the litmus paper: “Are you on Twitter?”

When social networks were all the buzz I would have recommended the question “Are you on MySpace?.”  In the 90’s, the question may have been “Are you on Geocities?” or  even a farther throw-back, “Are you on AOL?”  And next year, the litmus test for your social-media savvy level may be a completely different question.  While I realize Twitter is just the latest trend,  if you want to be successful in any industry today, you must know and be involved with the latest wave that is changing the game.

This past week I had the rare opportunity to test two different groups back to back, opposites of each other both dynamically and demographically.  On Wednesday, I spoke with a group of college students about new media, and on Thursday I attended a tech-dinner on the gaming industry with a group of individuals that were well established and had been in the industry for years.

During each of these sessions I conducted my mini experiment and the results were shocking, revealing, and proof that these two separate generations haven’t kept up with the trends.

I’ll provide a full analysis of these two groups and others in the weeks to come.

Stay Tuned!

Today I received what is becoming a very common type of  email from a blogger asking if there I had any news or products she could review as it’s been slow for her lately.   The mid-sized blogs who were once embraced (and bombarded) under the umbrella of the blogosphere have become extraneous in the minds of traditionalists.  Traditional PR is now too busy hunting the bigger fish with editorialized content and a full-time staff, and who, for all intents and purposes, are truly part of the new “traditional” media.

What is most interesting to me about this trend however is that my clients see the most click-throughs from the mid-level blog hits. Their stickiest traffic comes from sites whose writers aren’t part of the big corporate blogging machine, but have passionate and rabid readers despite their size.

One thing publicists must remember is that social media will forever be about connecting with people on a personal and meaningful level.  That is why it is crucially important to remember that our auidences aren’t neccessarily just reading the biggest and the brightest sites, but are dedicated subscribers to the smaller voices of those who write because they love what they are talking about and want to share. Remember the little guys, they are the ones who will always stand by your side and help to make the noise real.

In yet another way to say “Go to Hell” to the PR industry, Arrington wrote a post yesterday that caused blogosphere that I “live” in light up with firey response. “Death to Embargo” http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/  outlined where and why PR in general should go.

Here’s the thing, while the posts that were popping up left and right after the debut of this bit of “news” (self-manufactured, imho), not one of them reminded the bloggers, journalists and writers in general that even if they think they don’t need PR people, they do.

Does anyone know how difficult it is to get a quote from a CEO at some companies?  Or how convoluted the companies descriptions, news items and announcements are before *we* the PR people make them nice and shiny – make them make sense?

Its different than marketing – it’s about understanding what is newsworthy and reaching the right people with it, before it breaks. And its about larger trend pieces from the inside that we’re observing as a company and would like to share with the world.

Without the Embargo, stories would be thrown up on the wire and no-one gets to “Break” the story except for PRNewswire, MarketWire, etc.

Fight on ReadWriteWeb, and the rest of the blogging sites with scruples… http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/we_will_respect_your_embargoes.php

For this post, I’ll go a bit off from my usual PR focus, as I have been discussing with a few of my friends the sheer brilliance of the McCain camp for choosing Sarah Palin… at first we all thought he was nuts, a no-name governor from a state the size of Riverside, CA, yet no, wait a minute, look at this, the winds are shifty, the soccer moms are coming together, and bam, the brilliance of it all comes through…. A Woman of the People… A women just like you! … I am a democrat, proud of it, will always be, and personally the idea of this woman being a heart-beat away from the Presidency scares me to death.  However you can not discount the Palin-Effect.

I’ll define the Palin-Effect as something that seems really stupid at first, but after some time, it becomes clear it’s brilliant.  People love train-wrecks, and who doesn’t like a train-wreck that happens to have some upbeat moments…

I think the same will go for these Microsoft ads (http://www.microsoft.com/windows). While it seems almost beyond belief that 300 million dollars would result in something so unbelievably horrible and completely pointless, it got people talking… and I think if we give the good ol’ boys over at Microsoft a moment, the sheer brilliance will come through.

 It’s about good-will and making people feel warm and fuzzy.  Both Palin and Microsoft are doing a darn good job of reaching the warm and fuzzy button for the majority of Americans.  What a world we live in, where the actual brain need not think any more, rather let us all just lead with warm and fuzzy emotions.

As Obama has been quoted many times in saying…. you can put lipstick on a pig, but in the end, it is still a pig….

Wonder how many people will not realize this truth before its too late.