Where Do You Stand?

Twitter has been the discussion EVERYWHERE as of late, including the Standing Partnership lunch room. One of my colleagues who shall remain nameless challenged me to provide him with thoughts about Twitter’s usefulness.

BusinessWeek’s Stephen Baker is currently writing a story on the growth of Twitter as a business tool … in 140 character chunks ON TWITTER! Why is this useful? For PR professionals, it proves that the media is accessible beyond our old school media lists and telephone books. With over 600 people following Baker’s story, it illustrates the fairly-accepted notion that journalism is moving beyond the print methods of yesteryear.

Industry-based conversation takes place at all hours on Twitter, from searching for an SEO expert to social media best practices. Many prominent bloggers, who are often inappropriately pitched via their blog, also use Twitter and often report when they’re spammed (because truly, 90 percent of “blogger outreach” is spam) by a public relations person trying to get them to peddle products unrelated to their blogs’ content. A group of public relations practitioners (myself included) have taken it upon ourselves to debunk the myth that all of us are spin-doctors reaching out to anyone and everyone for a hit. By putting ourselves out there, and allowing our personalities to be known, we can show that we are people too, and we may be more relatable than just another nameless product pusher.

Personally, I have been using Twitter for nearly a year now; hardly a first adopter but not exactly a new adopter. I have 158 followers and I follow 138 others. Yesterday, one of my Twitter followers, DtotheK told me that I was the top St. Louis area Tweeter according to TwitterLocal. Recently I had some concert tickets stolen, and upon learning of it, one of my followers told me that through his connections, he could help me replace them should I not be able to replace them using traditional channels. Twitter connected me to someone who made my life just that much easier.

What’s next? I’m betting my skeptical coworker will be on Twitter within the month. With Twitter-based love connections, business deals virtually inked in 140 words or less and at least one marriage proposal occurring via the microblogging site, anything is possible.

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, look for me as one of the top Tweeters from TwitterLocal’s St. Louis feed.

We talk a lot about the vast possibilities that the Internet has afforded PR, especially on this blog. But it is not often we reflect on the limits of the Internet, as Felix Salmon points out in this Portfolio article.

 If you were to help build a list of limits, what would you include?

Standing Partnership is proud to support Stray Rescue of St. Louis as one of our 2008 community partners. Tomorrow, we’re hoping that hundreds, maybe even thousands, of St. Louisans will also be proud to support this critical organization for the city’s homeless animals.

At 9 a.m. on Thursday, May 1, Stray Rescue will be hosting their largest event to date at 2320 Pine St. — next to the building it hopes will someday soon become a state-of-the-art animal shelter. But, in order to make the shelter happen, it must first win a $1 million shelter makeover competition, sponsored by www.zootoo.com.

In a brilliant social media move, www.Zootoo.com began challenging animal shelters last October to drive attendance to its new Web site. Shelters were able to gain points “towards the makeover by encouraging their communities to be active on Zootoo.com.” Each mouse click gained more points for the shelter makeover, and also connected animal lovers across America. In turn, online dialogue began booming on the site, and Zootoo’s mission to help raise awareness of pet shelters and loveable, adoptable animals came alive. Bravo!

After more than six months of generating awareness and excitement for the contest, Stray Rescue hopes tomorrow’s pep rally will show Zootoo officials the determination we have for getting homeless animals off the streets.

Cardinals’ Manager Tony La Russa, Mayor Francis Slay, the St. Louis Rams Cheerleaders and St. Louis Blues players Barret Jackman, Bobby Plager and Kelly Chase are just some of the local dog lovers who will be in attendance. Adoptable Stray Rescue dogs and the St. Louis Police Department K-9 unit will also be showing their spirit.

To view the potential new shelter, along with the kind of dogs that will benefit, click here.

We hope to see you there!

Ever have a story that almost happens?

We had a peach of an opportunity. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band booked tee times at Spring Creek Golf Club, a client of Standing Partnership’s in Charlottesville, Va. While The Boss and the band didn’t want publicity while they played (and we respected that, of course) there was potential for some photos and some post-game publicity.

Springsteen ultimately didn’t make it; he was busy rehearsing for his concert at John Paul Jones Arena Wednesday night and some of the stage and audio crew, as well as a couple of E Street band guys, kept the tee times instead.  At left is a photo of the tour bus I shot in the parking lot of the course; in the window you can see a small Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band sign.

While it was disappointing not to get to meet The Boss, it was also very exciting that he and his band had chosen Spring Creek Golf Club, Golf Digest’s 2007 number one best new affordable public golf course, as the golf course they wanted to play in Virginia.

Springsteen doesn’t know what he missed — or, he did, when his friends returned from the course to tell him how spectacular it really is. Next time you’re in town, Bruce, we’ll have the course ready for you.

Here are a few more shots I took of the course; it was a beautiful day out at Spring Creek.

I’ve been grading papers this week (a LOT of papers) for the two college courses that I’m teaching. I keep running into a problem: Students citing Wikipedia as a source. It’s not just in my classes that I see Wikipedia being overly legitimatized. A colleague of mine (bless her heart) recently used the Web site to define the term “journalist.”

As I’ve found while working here at Standing Partnership, not everything found on Wikipedia is accurate. We regularly find incorrect information on the pages for our clients. And because it’s frowned upon when the actual company or a PR agency attempts to correct mistakes (an outsider must do that), the process is quite complicated and frustrating.

In future semesters, I plan to tell my students, “Wikipedia is not a legitimate source of information for your assignments. It’s an open-source wiki, and just about anybody can post information on the site with little verification of its factual merits.” I will also tell then that they are welcome to use Wikipedia as a starting point — it’s great for that — but they need to verify the information through a more legitimate source.

I’m somewhat of a cynic, so perhaps I’m overreacting. What do you think?

After work yesterday, I went to the Trader Joe’s in the St. Louis suburb of Brentwood to buy some ingredients for a stir-fry dinner: onions, tofu, snap peas and green and red peppers. I got home, broke into the cellophane that contained my peppers, and went to chopping. Before I could cut the pepper in half, some nasty, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-like ooze started seeping out of the green pepper. Disgusted, mad, but most of all, hungry, I packed up the pepper (and the other veggies) and trekked back to Trader Joe’s (in rush hour traffic, mind you) to report my grievance.

“This can go one of two ways,” I said to myself. “Trader Joe’s can acknowledge my situation and remedy it, in which case I may write about it on Where Do You Stand. Or, they can simply refund my money, doing nothing to fix the fact that not only was my food spoiled but I drove to their store twice during rush hour traffic amidst a time with high gas prices.” In the second scenario, I was planning to write a negative testimonial on my personal blog.

I took my bag of ooze-like vegetables to the customer service counter where the supervisor told me to go wait in one of the massive checkout lines to obtain my refund. After patiently waiting for the gentleman in front of me to pay, I was refunded my money. The cashier said, “Sorry about that,” I shook my head, and off I went.

I was formulating the complaint-ridden blog post for my personal blog, when out of the corner of my right eye, I spotted the supervisor who was rushing toward me.

“For ruining your dinner,” she said.

The supervisor handed me a bouquet of their nicest (and most fragrant) flowers … and gave me a sincere smile.

I immediately switched my train of thought from negative to positive blog post – and here I am.

Sometimes it’s little things, like flowers, that help manage a brand’s reputation.

Michelle Golden has a great point on her Golden Practices blog. At Standing, when we begin branding conversations with clients we lead them through discussion about who they ARE; what promise they’ve made and kept to their communities. A different approach, and one that may be simpler for clients who are in disagreement about who they are and what they offer, is to encourage discussion about who and what they are NOT.

I’m looking forward to having some of these brand-defining conversations with new clients in weeks to come.

A recent conversation with my mother-in-law had me thinking about the way journalism has evolved over the past few years. Are those who are in the social media world (i.e. bloggers, online news gatherers, etc.) changing the role and definition of “journalist?”

According to Wikipedia, a journalist is “a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.” It goes on to identify journalists as reporters and columnists, as well as editors and visual journalists (photographers, graphic artists and page designers).

The entry does acknowledge modern media and “citizen journalists” who offer grassroots, non-corporate coverage. The consensus through a quick survey on Twitter (thanks, Susan!) indicates that many people prefer the term “citizen journalist.” However, some argue that “citizen journalists” can’t be called journalists, because they aren’t held to the standards and norms found in the Society of Professional Journalists ethical code.

But consider the recent earthquakes around Illinois and Missouri. I’ve heard rumblings around the office that the earthquake was first reported on Twitter - they beat the radio stations, TV crews and newspapers.

So, what do you call these modern news-gatherers? Are they journalists? What about conversation-starters? Or perhaps you like the term citizen reporters?

Talk amongst yourselves…

Standing Partnership has a cool office - elegant, organized and with a beautiful “treehouse” feel due to the view most of us have of the mini-forest right outside our office. 

At least I thought we had a cool office - until I saw these. Bonus points to Google for featuring a corgi (my furry friend of choice) as the doggie model in their photos. 

Cathy, I’m thinking our next office really needs a small roller coaster…or at least some killer bumper cars.

With the number of flight delays and cancellations I’ve experienced lately, I’ve come to expect that I’ll be stranded at an airport for an extra few hours each time I travel.

That’s why I was so happy to read my St. Louis Business Journal daily update e-mail to find out that XpresSpa will open two locations at Lambert-
St. Louis International Airport. The locations should be open in about six months.

If you’re going to be stuck at an airport, why not get a pedicure while you’re there!