Where Do You Stand?

Last week, I shared my thoughts on the BlogNewsNetwork controversy. With some, I hit a nerve. The conversation about BNN continues and is still heated.

At Standing Partnership, our tagline reads, “Standing together. Moving forward.” I see this ongoing discussion as an opportunity for the St. Louis blogging community to stand together and move forward. I think the discussion about blog aggregators has been very interesting. I think for the most part, the blogging community agrees that, when done appropriately, a blog aggregator can be a very useful tool. Overall, there is agreement that BNN is not the best blog aggregator. I became very interested in capturing the community’s thoughts on what attributes the best blog aggregator would, and would not have.

We’ve set up a collaborative wiki to put some structure to bloggers’ and blog readers’ thoughts on the topic, in an effort to make a shopping list for what the ideal aggregator would be.

The wiki is open to all. Please contribute your thoughts and let’s discover together where this project could go.

I had the great pleasure this morning of listening to Roger Mudd, famed broadcast journalist and Washington correspondent for CBS News and NBC News and speaker at the Virginia Festival of the Book Business Breakfast. Also, to my great thrill, I had the opportunity to ask a question before the audience and meet him at his book signing after the event. (Pssst, Loren: there’s a package on its way to you!)

Mudd, at 80, has written his first book, The Place to Be, hence today’s appearance, the first on his book tour. The book, and Mudd’s highly entertaining talk, chronicles the history of broadcast journalism during his era as a reporter beginning in the early sixties and ending in the mid-nineties. It’s fascinating to think about the way television journalism was produced years ago, with film that had to be flown back to New York for the nightly news; audio transmitted over phone lines (that sometimes worked, and sometimes did not), typewriters, mimeograph machines and other dated technology that evokes images of vast, noisy newsrooms filled with the clickety-clack of reporters hard at work.

When I had the chance, I (of course) asked Mudd to address his opinion of citizen journalists and bloggers and their effect on today’s news industry. Mudd shared with the audience his respect for Salon and Slate; and dismissed Drudge Report for what it is: rumor. He pointed to the story bloggers broke that ultimately ended the career of Mudd’s colleague, Dan Rather. He said, “There are 12 million bloggers out there, many of them ranting, but there’s some serious journalism being done as well.” Mudd finished by sharing his appreciation for the tools we have today that make gathering, producing and delivering the news more efficient and timely. And he should know; he’s used every tool of the industry from the late fifties to the present.

I feel very honored to have had the opportunity to hear and meet this living historian of journalism. If you have a chance, pick up Mudd’s book and let me know your thoughts. Also, if you’re in Virginia, don’t miss the Festival of the Book, with over 150 programs for readers and writers it is, in my opinion, one of the finest annual events in Charlottesville. For more blog coverage of the event, check out C’ville Words.

Tags:  VABook08, VCCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia Festival of the Book

So, maybe I’m a snob, but I truly dislike JCPenney. That is until now. Living in an exurb of St. Louis, JCPenney is the only department store within 15 minutes of my house, so I’ve been forced to go there a time or two. When trying to find a quick replacement to the dress my daughter has outgrown or the shoes that suddenly don’t fit my son, I have wandered through the women’s clothing section. The fact is I have left feeling totally left out.

They have plenty of merchandise for my mother-in-law’s generation and lots of items for the junior set but nothing for me. The good news is that it appears this may be changing. With the introduction of American Living by Ralph Lauren and the introduction of their Simply Green brand, I am eager to explore JCPenney again.

The image of American Living is comfortable, messy and beautiful just like the idealized life of middle America. The American Living launch gave me hope that Ralph Lauren could lead JCPenney through a reinvention that helps middle America redefine itself in a way that is deeper than the promise of Target and better defined than the promise of Kohl’s. If you haven’t seen this, take a look:

Then recently JCPenney announced their Simply Green line. It is an effort by the company to enhance their private label merchandise by adding the Simple Green ingredient brand to those items that meet predetermined green standards. The next time I’m at JCPenney – possibly out of desire rather than necessity – I will take a look at these items.

These new brands and the tagline, or “philosophy” as the company calls it, of “Every Day Matters” gives me reason to believe JCPenney may be at the beginning of a very interesting reinvention.

In a perfect world, every single one of our clients would have a crisis communications plan. No, the Standing staff isn’t part of some crazed doomsday cult predicting disaster at every turn (although if you flip around our website fast enough, it can look a little psychedelic.) We’ve just had too many frantic midnight or weekend calls from clients (or imminently-about-to-be clients) saying, “You know when you asked us to prepare a crisis plan in advance of a crisis, and we said no? Yeah, we really should have done that.”  

Crises happen. And, being crises, they usually happen with alarming speed and when you least expect it. My children’s preschool just weathered a serious crisis - one of their kitchen helpers was arrested on child pornography and molestation charges. Although not involving any of the kids at the school, it still could have destroyed the stellar reputation this school enjoys.

Fortunately, they had a crisis communications plan ready to go (and no, Standing didn’t write it - I’m not tooting our own horn here). School administrators personally called every single child’s parents a full two days before news of the arrest hit the media to alert everyone. They brought in a counselor to talk to any parents or children who needed one and stayed late every night to talk with concerned parents. They then followed up with a letter outlining their cooperation with the police investigation, a reiteration that no child at the school had been harmed, the cell phone numbers for every administrator to ensure they could be reached at any time, and a list of the additional steps they’d taken to further strengthen school security and employee oversight.

As a parent, I was grateful for their professionalism and comforted by their intensive efforts to work with the police and ensure no child at the school had been harmed. As a communications professional, I was thrilled to see they had a plan, that they worked the plan, and that the plan worked - not one child was removed from the school, and they actually had an increase in new enrollment calls the week after the story broke, with many interested parents saying that the way they handled the crisis gave them even more confidence about the school’s safety.

If that doesn’t convince you, check out author and Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor’s great blog on the really dumb things that happen to really smart business leaders. Notice I said just “really smart.” The smartest business leaders have a crisis plan ready to go when those really dumb things happen. 

This month’s issue of Public Relations Tactics revisits the Tylenol cyanide tampering crisis of 1982 – an industry standard of crisis PR done right. Times have changed and social media has certainly added an even timelier element to crisis management. However, the main principles of how Johnson & Johnson handled their response are still the cornerstones of successful crisis communications:

1. Being prepared ahead of time.
2. Acting quickly and definitively.
3. Telling the truth.
4. Treating the media with respect and honesty.
5. Meeting media deadlines whenever possible.
6. Following up with answers to questions that may not be readily available.
7. Avoiding speculation on information that is not yet available.
8. Identifying a high-level spokesperson to communicate with the media, as well as other internal/external audiences.

Learn more about what happened during Tylenol’s crisis, which resulted in seven deaths.

I read the other day, in my Vogue magazine, that Wendi Deng, who’s married to that guy, ugh his name is on the tip of my tongue, is heading up MySpace China.

Tom?

No, bigger than Tom.

Rupert Murdoch?

Yes!

That’s cool. You should blog about it.

What would I write?

Hmm …

I don’t know how she does it with two children, but I digress. The company is trailblazing ground with the effort, which has been criticized for censorship among other things. It’s very interesting to observe something that’s inherently global meet resistance as it takes roots in a new market.

Yep. You should definitely blog about that.

Back in January, I wrote a post on my personal blog about the UPS Store and how a single employee had really made my day. That set into motion events which led me to write a post for Where Do You Stand? about the UPS Store and their apparent and admirable handle on blogger relations. John Cass picked up on the post and proposed a deeper look at UPS and social media as a case study for the Society for New Communications Research. (For the backstory on what started this whole adventure, read Amber’s post.)

To bring the story full circle, I share this anecdote. On my usual trip to “my” UPS store, I was stopped by the same employee who came to my rescue in January. “Thank you,” she said, face reddening.

“For what?” I asked.

“I wanted to thank you for writing about me. I was awarded ‘Hero of the Month’ because of what you wrote,” she said.

I smiled all the way down to my little blogger heart because THIS is the difference the blogosphere makes in people’s lives. The UPS Store was smart enough to pay attention to what customers like me (and you) are saying about their services and generous enough to bring it on back to the exact employee who should be rewarded — and did it.

This is how businesses earn customers for life.

A hot topic amongst St. Louis bloggers has been the presence and practices of David Mastio’s BlogNetNews.

Sigh.

The less gentle, more irritable part of me wants to tell ya’ll to chill the heck out. (Editorial note: since I moved to Virginia I am absolutely permitted to use ya’ll in a blog post, even though I remain morally opposed to it in official correspondence or conversation.) The reasonable, professional part of me also wants to dive into the fray state my opinion of aggregators with advertising, such as BlogNetNews.

I’ve remained quiet on this topic for quite some time, while bloggers I know and respect have posted at length on the topic. I’ve read it all and link below to what is, to my knowledge, the entire catalog of BNN-related St. Louis blog posts. So here it is: I respectfully disagree with the majority of you. In fact, when BNN launched its Missouri product, I contacted them and ASKED TO BE INCLUDED. Here’s why: where I live, there is a great blog aggregator, www.cvilleblogs.com. In the two years and three months I’ve used the aggregator and had my blog projects included in it, it has proved itself a tremendous resource for the blogging community, and for me, personally. C’ville blogs is not monetized. Honestly, I had to go look to be sure. I would not care if it were. In fact, I’d be pleased if my friend who runs the site made some income off this service he’s providing to the blogger (and blog reading) community.

In fact, when working with blogging clients, I recommend they seek aggregators within their industry, topic or geography as a way to get their content found and read.

So when BNN came on the scene in St. Louis I was, frankly, thrilled at the opportunity for added exposure for both my personal blog and Where Do You Stand? I e-mailed my colleagues joyfully to let them know about the aggregator and that we’d be part of it.

Here’s why the ads don’t bother me one bit — I read the hundreds of feeds that I monitor using Bloglines. With an aggregator service, I plug that feed into my feed reader, therefore bypassing all advertising altogether. I never click on ads. Ever. I do click through to blog sites from the headers, keeping money in the pockets of people like Dana, who do monetize their blogs as a source of income.

I understand how the bloggers feel — I do — the accusations of scraping and splogging have flown thick as a plague of flies. The bloggers are indignant over their original content; copyrighted, trademarked content, being repeated on another Web site. A monetized Web site. I get that. I just don’t feel that. Maybe it’s the industry I’m coming from. Some of you would consider me a “suit” — while a blogger, I’m also a PR person, with longstanding relationships with the media and other “suits.” It’s more than that, however. There’s very little pride of ownership in our industry. Many of the first writings I published were under someone else’s byline. We’re traditionally behind the scenes writers, accustomed to having our work appear on someone else’s site, with someone else’s title and photo dangling above our carefully crafted language. Perhaps this is why what David Mastio has done, is doing, doesn’t bother me one bit.

If you’re not already so tired of this topic you could spit, please share your take in the comments. And please, no flaming. I’m just sharing my opinion.

If you care to read the entire blogging backlog of BNN-blastingrelated* posts, I have linked to those I’ve read, below:
*(edited: I realized later that I generalized. Not all these posts were blasting BNN. There are several different opinions represented.)

Virtual St. Louis
Little Bald Doctors
WOBL in Training
Superfunpatrol
The State of Discontent
Mamalogues
Slacker Moms-R-Us
The Broad Brush
Prologos
A Bun’s Life
Highway 61
MidwestBlogs -St Louis
CourtneyWatson
STLbloggers
The News Bitch

Therese Poletti at MarketWatch has posed an interesting question: Will America Online’s $850 million deal to buy social networking company Bebo alter the valuations of social networking firms, specifically Facebook? Bebo, the second largest social networking site in the United Kingdom (and the fourth in the USA), receives around one third of the traffic of Facebook.

Facebook has been valued at $15 billion, but with Bebo’s price of $850 million, will Facebook’s valuation be lowered?

I have heard people talk about how they’ve “quit Facebook,” because of the clutter of user-created applications and lack of substance. Personally, I prefer the look and simple features of 2004’s Facebook (from when I first joined) with the contacts I have on today’s Facebook (four years ago, I could have never imagined having my dad and my boss as “friends”). The benefits Facebook provides me are so large at the moment (networking, keeping up with old friends, client outreach), I can’t imagine “quitting.”

Social networking is becoming the traditional method of networking, and even if the survivors of the space will be less than 10 (according to Harry Wang, a senior analyst at Parks Associates), and even if “advertising standards have not yet been set that could help determine valuations,” I think the value to a potential buyer will be based off of the benefits users find in the service; and for Facebook, at least for the foreseeable future, the benefits are gargantuan.

The Wall Street Journal’s online “Small Business” section is a plethora of online visibility pointers. Among them:

• What are the pros and cons of LinkedIn?

Building an Online Community of Loyal and Vocal Users

Allowing Customers to Friend You on MySpace and Facebook

Improve Client Relationships Through Social Media