Where Do You Stand?

In fairness to Target, who we picked on in a post earlier this week, I felt it was important to recognize that the company is reconsidering its stance in regards to its long-standing ban of nontraditional media, including both blogs and trade publications. PR Week reports that the retailer has upped its communications staffing and will review its blog policy.

In the article, Target’s senior manager of communications acknowledges, “We recognize that blogs are increasing in number, and that our core guests” are writing and reading blogs. She is later quoted as saying, “We will be reviewing that blog policy going forward. We just don’t want to make any decisions we can’t follow up on.”

The decision by Target to reconsider this policy is something we can all agree upon as being a good move. However, they should act quickly. I mean, what are they waiting for: all the newspaper ink to dry out?

I was at a local coffeehouse where I stayed to work a bit after an early afternoon meeting. As frequently happens at this particular establishment, I saw someone I knew. My friend, the founder of a local nonprofit, dropped by my table to chat and within five minutes had convinced me to buy a book and to buy a ticket for an upcoming business breakfast.

Afterward, as she moved on to a meeting at another table and I resumed my work, I thought, who else has that kind of influence on me? I know with some degree of certainty that this person has that power with many other people in our community. She is, without a doubt, an Influencer.

The experience underscored the need for us to identify influencers in our communities, our industries and our businesses. Who are they? Do they know the messages your business wants to promote? Do they know who you are and what services you offer? Do you have a relationship with them and if not, what are you waiting for? Find the influencers and behold their word-of-mouth power.

Bang…bang…ouch! Bang…bang…ouch!

What’s that sound? It’s me hitting my head against my keyboard in utter frustration as I read some of the latest blogging tidbits in the news. A couple of choice examples:

The New York Times reports that retailer Target is refusing to deal with “nontraditional media outlets” such as blogs. Good grief. Granted, the blog entry that started the whole brouhaha was pretty darn dumb (Note to the blogger: the fact that you would think Target’s latest ad is demeaning to women is, in itself, demeaning to women. Most women I know wouldn’t think twice about the ad and are too busy being successful moms, businesswomen and all-around cool people to worry about such nonsense. Go find something legitimate to gripe about.), but still…if it’s truly because Target doesn’t have a big enough PR staff, hire more. If it’s because Target just doesn’t want to deal with it, guess what? You have to deal with it. Sigh.

And, the Hartford Courant reports that more and more university presidents, such as Wesleyan University’s Michael Roth, are embracing blogs to communicate with students, staff, donors and alumni. That’s wonderful - way to go, Mr. Roth, and all the other officials who are putting themselves out there and enjoying great returns on small investments of time and brainpower. Here’s the part that bugged me - apparently, one of the big things standing in the way of university officials writing blogs is…wait for it…PR people. AAGGHH!!!!!

Seriously, PR pros, listen up - do you get that pretty much everyone else in the world gets this but you? I’m on my knees, bloody forehead and all, begging you - get it, or you will become irrelevant.

I give up. Gotta go search WebMD for how to treat a concussion.

It’s easy to fall into a rut – that’s where I was last year. While I enjoyed my job and adored my co-workers, I knew that it was time for a change. I needed new challenges and wanted to soak up as much information as I could. I shared this with a handful of close friends who bombarded me with tons of good advice.

One friend in particular, D, had some personal interactions with Standing Partnership – she knew they were looking for someone and asked if she could pass along my resume. To be honest, I scoffed a little bit – I really didn’t want to stay in agency life. In fact, I had another opportunity that I eagerly anticipated. But I thought I’d humor her and sent her an updated resume – it was the best move I could have made.

Before I knew it, I was huddled in a secluded corner of a hotel lobby in Memphis doing my first phone interview. Soon after, I was in the Standing Partnership office, meeting lots of new faces. Here’s the funny thing… I felt completely comfortable in the office, talking with my soon-to-be co-workers. Then came the interview with The Boss – but it was nothing like I expected! Cathy was very welcoming, sharing details of how the company was born and how it’s grown. She shared her thoughts on culture and philosophy of Standing Partnership – and then I really knew I was at home. It’s been four months since I’ve joined Standing, but it feels like I’ve been here forever.

I firmly believe, now more than ever, that things happen for a reason. Thanks, D.

I follow several dozen blogs, and I can’t wait until the corporate, or business blog, catches up to the conversational tone of personal ones. With conversations like this one, “Dooce” keeps me laughing and intrigued, all at the same time.

How about this for a format:

Media rep: I’m just calling to confirm a piece of information in a release I saw.

PR person: Happy to help.

Media rep: I think there’s a typo.

PR person: I’ll certainly check it for you. Hmm. I see it was written in another hemisphere, at another location, by another agency, not related to client ABC.

Media rep: So is it a typo?

Are you intrigued?

When the mayor of Detroit sent text messages more than five years ago, he might have been ahead of the social media curve. Now he’s having to engage legal and crisis counselors to deal with the trail.

 A few lessons we can learn from this:

- Don’t text, email or type what you would fear coming out in larger media sources. There are lots of ways to trace electronic signals.

- Think about your tone and your means of communication. (For instance, crisis messages are best received if we see a real, live, warm person delivering the message.)

- Run some exercises with your own team on what emails, blog posts or soundbites might come back to haunt you. Hindsight is 20/20, so use past opportunities to brush up your crisis communications plan, participate in a crisis drill, or add electronic communications guidelines to your employee manuals.

- And, if you’re in a public office, AMPLIFY all of the above.

Lately, we have had several clients tell us they’re “ready to blog.” We often find that becoming a “blogger” is a multi-step process and it’s not often best to jump in head first.

At Standing Partnership, we take our clients through a process to determine the appropriate social media tools for them to begin with, relating it to their overall strategic communications plan.

Clients I have spoken with have responded well to the directive of commenting on preexisting blogs. You can become a part of the conversation without maintaining a blog simply by commenting. If you don’t have the time or other resources to maintain a blog right now, post comments on the blogs you do read. You can become a subject matter expert of sorts simply by becoming a part of the conversation with your target audience. Plus, you’ll have built-in readers if you later determine that starting your own blog is an appropriate step.

The Associated Press recently published a story about friendly non-business-related chatter in the workplace. At one point, the article states: “The camaraderie that comes out of workers sharing a little fun, meanwhile, can go a long way toward their feeling like they’re part of a team. It’s well known that when staffers are happy, they work better.” Opponents of workplace chatter worry that an inappropriate conversation can sometimes make workers feel the workplace is a hostile environment.

At Standing Partnership, Cathy has “fostered a positive, collaborative environment.” This means feeling comfortable sharing our perspectives on topics beyond just public relations. When there’s a concern, we address it as a team so that we can all learn and move forward (often at our monthly staff meetings that Mistie recently posted about).

What do you think, should a business be just that, business? Or is there room for friendly colleague banter? How much is too much?

Amber wrote a post about my trip to the UPS Store last week. I wrote a post on my personal blog about the customer service provided by the UPS Store. Yesterday, a PR person for UPS commented on my blog and asked for the specific UPS Store so she could make sure they were rewarded for their excellence in customer service. I was more than happy to provide the information, and I was also impressed. As a PR person I was delighted to help a fellow practitioner. As a blogger, I was pleased my post was found by someone to whom it meant something and who could do something with the information (i.e. reward the store). Also, as a blogger, I liked the approach. The PR person was upfront, shared her approach in the comments and wrote simply, “Hello, I work for the PR Department for the UPS Store home office.” Her comment was clean, brief and above all, very welcome. A great example of good blogger relations.

This chain of events and interaction demonstrated some things to me:

1. UPS and the UPS Stores offer great customer service.
2. A way to spread the word and reward great customer service is to share your story on a blog.
3. PR people (the good ones!) are paying attention to what is being said in the blogosphere about their clients/corporations/organizations.
4. Good PR should circle back and reward those who caused the good publicity to happen in the first place, in this case, the staff at the UPS Store.

An interesting real-time case study in customer service, good PR and the blogosphere.

“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night …”

These words are inextricably linked to dedicated postal carriers everywhere. And yesterday they defined Standing Partnership’s dedication to excellent client service.

We are developing a broad social media plan for a client and I needed a book - John Cass’s “Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging” – ASAP. We couldn’t get it quickly enough online, but Marijean, who is in our Charlottesville office, had a copy.

I sheepishly pecked an e-mail requesting she overnight it, knowing it was late in the day there. What I didn’t know … Charlottesville was in the midst of a snowstorm.

Unfazed, Marijean quickly leveraged her relationship with the local UPS store to convince them to stay open late. Her husband Mark offered to navigate the snowy streets. Her son and a friend also came to the rescue, pushing the car out of the driveway.

To me, this example of going above and beyond for a client is what Standing Partnership is all about. As our core values state – it’s our standing order; our benchmark. And, as today proved, we’ll deliver – even if we need a sled to do it!