Archive for PR Communication Methods

Facebook is stupid and for old people

04/18/12 Bill Handy Comments (21)

“Facebook is stupid and for old people…”

If you haven’t hear that yet, get ready (click through the image to the right to learn more about one such statement) as its making it way around the internet. I’ve heard similar comments about other platforms which have proven to be wrong. Several years ago students in a social media classroom said the same thing about Twitter. Of course back then Facebook was the Almighty God of online engagement.

We’ve seen Facebook and many other social platforms climb the ladder to success but we’ve also seen many others fall by the wayside during their growth, oftentimes shortly after being called the next big thing.

About a year ago I started hearing not so positive comments about Facebook from students. Comments about their parents or grandparents being on, friends they were friends with it no longer wanted to be friends with, the boredom of doing the same thing every day, after some walking away for a while because of an obligation and never return simply because, “I realize how much more productive I was when I wasn’t on Facebook”

I’ve heard similar comments from colleagues, ranging from, “just don’t have anything left to say” or “not finding anything of value there”. We no longer look in awe at the hours dedicated to spending time on facebook. We look at them with a certain disgust.

The Gartner Hype Cycle says that most technology goes through the peak of inflated expectation and then into the trough of disillusionment. The most effective communications professionals don’t look at this as a bad thing. It shakes out the chaff and allows us to really evaluate technology or in these cases platforms, and determine the best way they should be used.

What’s the next big thing?

I used to get this question a lot and thank you Google Plus for finally coming to fruition proving me right albeit a year or two late. The question these days is similar but has a different tone. I think people are getting tired of what the next big thing is going to be simply because every day there is a new next big thing. Instagram, Pinterest, fill in the blank. And, for those who didn’t jump on the next big thing last year they don’t feel any pain as a result. Nothing ventured nothing gained has a brother, nothing ventured, time not wasted.

If I had to predict the future, beyond what the next big thing will be, I would say, Facebook will go on, twitter will go on, Google plus will go, but each will die a death from 1000 paper cuts. More people will find more reasons not to use them and potential new customers will find the same.

This doesn’t mean that people won’t be living in an online world. Far from it. It simply means they will be using platforms that suit their specific need. And what we know about the world right now is that for as many different people that exist there’s an equal number of very specific needs.

Where to invest money and time

If I had to invest in a start-up I wouldn’t invest in the next mass-market endeavor, I would invest in the niche. A company that solves problems for an identified group whose needs haven’t yet been met. If you’re looking for good example, look no further than any small business offering a community based web site. There are thousands.

The same holds true if I had to invest my time energy and effort into a platform for specific communication initiative. A bit of research will pay dividends. And, of none exists, well, you’ve hit the mother load. This isn’t to say Facebook and twitter might not fit the criteria but it is to say that we need to start looking broader and toward more platforms/communities that fit your organizational need and niche. More to the point you need to start looking for broader and more platforms that your organization can fulfill the need and niche of those who are already there.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Death of a thousand paper cuts (creeping normalcy)

Comments (21)

Categories : "public relations", Current Affairs, facebook, PR 101, PR Communication Methods, Public Relations, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags : Blog hosting services, communications professionals, facebook, Facebook features, Facebook Inc, Google Inc., online engagement, Online social networking, online world, Social information processing, Social Media, Social Media Classroom, Technology/Internet, time energy, twitter, Twitter Inc., Web 2.0, World Wide Web

Sage advice from Photographer Bill Frakes

09/07/10 Bill Handy Comments (0)

If you are pressed for time simply jump to the video. Everything up to that point could be classified as rambling…

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit the University of Oklahoma and participate in Apple’s Creative Pro Solutions Briefing at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For those of you who are unaware of this university it is located in a small town just south of Stillwater, Oklahoma. I’m not saying it’s in an isolated area of Oklahoma but if you were to continue traveling south you would leave the state traveling 192 miles before arriving in a metropolitan city.

A few observations of the day:

I was surrounded by folks who understood, embraced and promoted the balance of technology and education and the critical role each plays to each other. That was a joy.
When I arrived I was feeling a bit burned out. A summer which was supposed to allow for a bit of recharging was filled with long days, stressful project work and travel for business which at times left me not knowing where I was going to be the next week. When I left the meeting I felt inspired, motivated and recharged. As an aside, at the age of 43 inspiring me is no easy task.
It was sponsored by Apple and when I arrived that morning I was a technology agnostic and didn’t have an affinity for any particular brand. I’m still an agnostic but I made the decision to purchase a Mac. More on this later.
I learned about Abilene Christian University’s Newspaper iPad app the Optimist, heard about University of Oklahoma’s focus on teaching tech from an under the hood approach (see image right) which I think is brilliant and even I had a chance to speak for a moment or two about the Oklahoma State University iPad pilot.
The highlight of the day though was the hired talent. It wasn’t only awesome, it was inspirational. During the few breaks which took place the conversations were full of depth, focus and an eye toward learning and sharing. No one was above another and that included the Dean and Assistant Dean in the room.

The final presenter of the day was a gentleman named Bill Frakes. When his name was mentioned as a participant in the day’s events it was always in conjunction with his work with Sports Illustrated. Not being a huge sports fan I went anyway.

Bill Frakes who has a very dry sense of humor, ability to put an audience at ease and makes everyone feel like they are in on all the inside jokes. A very unassuming man you would never know from meeting him that he holds threes degrees from three universities including his Juris Doctorate which we won’t hold against him. (Full disclosure, while I checked out his work prior to the meeting I never knew what he looked like. He joined our lunch table to chime in on an ongoing conversation and sat next to me. It wasn’t until he stood up to speak that I figured out I was sitting next to the award winning Bill Frakes. Memo to self, introduce yourself when someone sits next to you.)

He shared with the room what he can accomplish on any normal week. You can tell it is lots of long days but you can also tell he loves what he does and I’m not sure he would qualify his daily efforts as “work”.

I shot the video below for one simple reason: I wanted to bring some of Bill Frakes back to my students. I took the role of Chris Farley as the bumbling interviewer. Bill took the role of…. Bill. I left the first 1:20 in the video so you could get a feel of who Bill Frakes is (he plays himself very well) but the heart of his message can be found at 1:20 and beyond. It is a message that every aspiring PR pro, journalist, photographer, etc should take to heart.

The video was shot with my iPhone. No comparison to the equipment Mr. Frakes uses but sometimes you want McDonalds.

Sage Wisdom from Bill Frakes from billhandy on Vimeo.

For more on Bill Frakes please visit:
http://www.billfrakes.com/
His company http://www.strawhatvisuals.com
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0703/gallery.canon.frakes/content.1.html
http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/frakes/

Comments (0)

Categories : "public relations", Career, Education, Journalism, marketing, PR 101, PR Communication Methods

Summer Reading – 5 books to enhance your social media efforts

06/04/10 Bill Handy Comments (1)

I’ve seen a few other blog posts about the best “social media” books to read this summer so I thought I would chime in with my thoughts. Before I disappoint you let me clarify, none of the books I list are about social media but I assure you they will help with your social media efforts. They will give you a foundation of knowledge to build upon which is critical for effective communication, one-way, two-way asymmetrical, two-way symmetrical, etc.

Why is this so important? Think about it, you wouldn’t try to build a home simply by purchasing a hammer and reading how a hammer works would you? Nope, you have to understand the fundamentals of architecture, construction, landscaping and more.

So with that I offer you five books to enhance your social media efforts (in no particular order):

Theories of Mass Communication (5th Edtion by DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach) – At $123 this is the most expensive book on my list but if you want to understand how we communicate this little gem covers it all. I will admit its dry and the author’s love of parenthetical phrasing gets old after a while but I learned more about communication theory from this book than probably any other book I’ve read. Yes, I know it was written in 1989 and if you don’t think social media existed back then I would encourage you to check out Chapter 7 which covers Social Differentiation Theory and Social Relationships Theory (which includes one of my favorite theories, Adoption of Innovation) and Chapter 8 which covers Socialization and Theories of Indirect Influence.

When Old Technologies Were New (by Carolyn Marvin) – This is an amazing book which walks right up to the line of being a dissertation but never looses site of the fact that its audience is much more broad than a bunch of academics. I would argue this book provides more insight into what is going on in the world of social media than any other I have ever read and reinforces the message that history repeats itself over and over. Read it and you will understand why folks like Solis and Brogan play a critical role but that role is short lived – yes, there were telegraph and telephone gurus in the day (don’t get me wrong, I read these guys religiously and they ad huge value to the conversations taking place today) and how the debates over how best to use communication technology (e.g. twitter) is nothing new. For example, many times you could swap the word “telegraph” for any new social media platform and it would read like any blog posted today. From the Amazon review, “Quotations and anecdotes from the popular press illustrate how professionals struggled to control the new media and preserve the social order by excluding ‘outsiders’…”

Public Relations Strategies and Tactics (9th Edition by Wilcox and Cameron) – Yep, another text book but one which will walk you through the history of public relations. Bottom line, social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum – understanding public relations is a must. If you are looking for a bit more advanced book than this I would recommend Public Relations Writing and Media Techniques (6th Edition by Wilcox) which has a heavy emphasis on the tactical elements so often used in public relations.

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine, Locke, Searls, Weinberger & Jake) – I read this book first back in 1999 when it was published online. These were the true leaders in internet communication and each author has followed up with their own groundbreaking work and blogging (google them all and add them to your daily reading list). The irony of this book is much of what is being said today as groundbreaking ideas were presented by these guys more than ten years ago. The other irony is folks still aren’t listening – or jumping on “the cluetrain” as the case may be.

You Are Not a Gadget (Jaron Lanier) – Okay, this one is about social media but it’s a contrarian view written by one of the first visionaries of Silicon Valley and when Jaron Lanier says to watch out for something I assure you I am listening. You can read it for its face value or dig a bit deeper and look for was to avoid the pitfalls of social media.

Well, that’s all I have. What books would you recommend?

p.s. what’s on my radar? Brains on Fire: Igniting powerful, sustainable, word of mouth movements

Comments (1)

Categories : "public relations", Books, PR 101, PR Communication Methods, Social Media

Tags : "public relations", Books, okstate, PR, Social Media

My moment with the Aha Moment Team

05/18/10 Bill Handy Comments (1)

I received the following email from Ashley Hinds (Skadaddlemedia.com) back on May 12, 2010.

Hi Bill,

I work for the company that is producing Mutual of Omaha’s “proud sponsor of life’s aha moments” campaign– visit www.ahamoment.com to see what an aha moment is and the great real stories we filmed during the campaign in 2009.

Associated to that, we have a 34-foot Airstream mobile film studio that is traveling the US on a 25-city tour to capture the country’s aha moments. We are headed to Tulsa on Monday, May 17th & Tuesday, May 18th, and would love to invite you to share a defining moment in your life – large or small. I came across your social media project and various other websites and think you would have a great story to share! You would just have to step into the Airstream studio for a few minutes and tell your story on film, which would be posted to www.ahamoment.com.

We would love to have you if you are interested! We will be parked at Hotel Ambassador (1324 S. Main St.) on Monday, May 17th (11am to 7pm) and Tuesday, May 18th (11am to 7pm).

Also, it would be great if you could tweet about this event some time soon! You can follow the campaign on twitter: @myahamoment.

Let me know as soon as possible and I can reserve some time for you, thanks!

Blog Link: http://blog.ahamoment.com/
Follow the tour on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/myahamoment
Ashley Hinds

—————————-

Hats off to Ashley for not simply sending a generic email (as others have done) asking for my support. She took a few moments did a search for my name and from that was able to personalize her note just a bit. My hats off also to Skadaddle Media for understanding you sometimes have to use non social tools (email) to gain traction in the social media world. Of course everyones a critic and I do have a few thoughts on how to enhance their efforts just a bit (not much though, everything was very smooth all the way down to the reminder emails) which I will share with my students next semester.

Oh, and before I forget, Jessica Henry was the Tour Manager and, from my understanding, somewhat responsible for the social effort of the ground team. Once her gig with Omaha is up she will be looking for a job. This girl is dynamite and if you have an opening I would contact her at jessica@jesshenry.com (her website is jesshenry.com and well worth the effort to check out). She was great to work with, had her messages down pat, quick on her feet and nothing phased her. If I didn’t know she graduated from GA I would swear she came from OKState!

Here is a quick video of the experience from my point of view. (I hope to catch up with Ashley for a follow up interview – will post it here if it comes to fruition.)

Comments (1)

Categories : "public relations", jb4520, Media Relations, PR Communication Methods, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags : "public relations", aha moment, mutual of omaha, Research, Social Media

Future of the Internet – An Interview with Dr. David Weinberger

05/14/10 Bill Handy Comments (0)

I posted part of this taped interview a while back and the folks at Oklahoma State University were gracious enough to give me the entire taped interview with Dr. Weinberger, outtakes and all. There is lots here so I hope you will take a second (2,119 to be exact) to watch, learn and debate below. Later I will share my thoughts on this interview and several others I participated in as both the interviewer and interviewee during the last few months. All has further shaped my opinion and philosophy about how we can use the internet to its fullest potential, how to bring value to your online communication and marketing efforts and how, in my opinion, influence is shifting. More to come…

Future of the Internet – Interview with Dr. David Weinberger from billhandy on Vimeo.

p.s. I am in the midst of updating the look, feel and, most important, purpose of this site. Stay tuned and please pardon the mess while I experiment.

Comments (0)

Categories : jb4520, PR Communication Methods, Research, Social Media, Uncategorized

Tags : JB 4520, Mass media, Research, Social Media, social network

5 questions to ask your social media expert

07/15/09 Bill Handy Comments (1)

Peter Shankman and Sarah Evans recently co-authored a blog post, “Is your social media expert really an expert” and all of the 25 questions resonate in the current “everyone jump on the social media band wagon cause there is money to be taken… um, I mean made” environment. I have no doubt organizations need help with their engagement of social media tools. I have said it before and I will say it again, social media is counter-intuitive to most communication/marketing plans and many first attempts at using these tools are awkward at best. Having an “expert” who doesn’t know what they are doing doesn’t help.

Back to the 25 questions – truth be told, there are lots of folks who would probably pass the test. But there are five bonus questions which still need to be answered and will cull the weak from the true professionals.

Are you ready for the test?

Q1 – What is a goal?

Q2 – What is an objective and how is it different than a goal?

Q3 – What is a strategy and how does it differ from an objective and tactics?

Q4 – What is a tactic?

Q5 – How will you measure the success of our effort?

These questions are the basis for any communication effort regardless of the tools being used. I’m not giving the answers although I can assure you most of the Oklahoma State University students who are currently enrolled in the upper level classes in the School of Journalism and Broadcast can answer them, probably in their sleep.

If the social media expert or anyone passing themselves off as any kind of communications/PR expert can’t answer these basic questions then I would recommend walking away.

Thoughts? Share them below.

Comments (1)

Categories : jb4520, Journalism, marketing, PR 101, PR Communication Methods, Social Media

Tags : Mass media, Oklahoma State University, Peter Shankman, strategic communication

I have to be in the mood…

09/28/07 Bill Handy Comments (0)

Public relations people have to switch gears throughout the day. It is very rare that I have the luxury to work on one project without having to switch to another. Sometimes because the phone rings and crisis ensues and sometimes simply because I have to step away and let my efforts come back to a simmer. Bottom line, for me, it helps if I am in the right mood to work on a project. Sometimes I have to turn to external forces to help me.

Everyone has their tricks for doing this effectively. For me it is music. Thank God for Napster! Working on a issue that you want people to take up arms about – Rage Against the Machine (Terror rains drenchin’, quenchin’ tha thirst of tha power dons – makes me mad just thinking about it). Working with an angelic group – Leonard Cohen (Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord). Just need to be creative – hmmm, so many to choose from. Muse is my immediate favorite but don’t get me started surfing through the recommended tab. (confession time – I am forever stuck in the 80′s and 90′s music scene)

Here is the irony… When I read a well written press release, message point, article, etc. – I hear music. Not real music, but the sense of it. Read something poorly written, I cringe as fingernails are run across a mental blackboard and the mic spews forth screeching feedback. Not pretty to say the least.

Nothing stirs the soul like music and I am forever grateful for that.

What works for you?

Comments (0)

Categories : PR Communication Methods