OnlineSpin has an excellent post today about the woes of traditional media and the constant whine that it’s all due to Craigslist. 

It is not Craig Newmark’s fault - but it is a result of the Internet making it easy to publish.

Newspaper companies have a business model that is not designed for a world where the vast majority of consumers (their readers) and marketers (their advertisers) are connected to a robust, Internet Protocol (IP)- enabled communications network, says Dave Morgan.

And some smart entrepreneurs, like Craig Newmark, saw the light a long time ago. His websites have had a telling effect on newspaper revenues, there is no doubt.  But he was not the cause.  He was just smart enough to see the possiblities in online publishing.

Morgan makes some good points about traditional media and how Google may be going down that same path. Read the full post.

If you have not yet read it, do so.  If you have not read it for a while, read it again. 

And when you finish the book, read chapter four again. (Doc Searls does know of what he speaks)

“The long silence — the industrial interruption of the human conversation — is coming to an end. On the Internet, markets are getting more connected and more powerfully vocal every day. These markets want to talk, just as they did for the thousands of years that passed before market became a verb with us as its object.”

And the Net certainly has changed that situation in the last ten years.  As PR people you’d think we’d be the first ones to get this clue.  After all, PR is about communication and conversations.

Better late than never. Don’t let another ten years go by. This is the core of PR today. Get the clue and get on board. 

I am doing a series of posts about who got the clues at PRoactive. The first post is about lessons to be learned from Dell about markets being conversations. 

There will be a new post about one of the clues each day.

It worked for Dell. IdeaStorm put them in touch with their customers and allowed them to tap into some smart new ideas for product development.  Other companies are sitting up and taking notice.  Starbucks is one. 

image: jimg 

Back in the CEO seat since January, Howard Schultz took a leaf out of Michael Dell’s book and launched MyStarbucksIdea.com.  Using the ‘ideas’ software from Salesforce the site allows customers to offer advice and ideas for improving the brand.  Customers make suggestions and others discuss and vote on them.

Taking it one step further Starbucks has added 48 idea partners - employees who act as hosts for the discussions. Their role is to facilitate the conversation - not lead it.

Idea partners also act as advocates for customers’ suggestions back at their departments, so that “customers would have a seat at the table when product decisions are being made,” And in reverse, they are a conduit to the customers, giving them feedback on what has already been tried - what works and what doesn’t.

In contrast to what many companies fear, the site is not being used to whine and complain.  Customers do say what peeves them, but they’re offering constructive ideas to solve the problems.

Waiting for your coffee in long lines is high on the list.  Put my regular order on a card so I can swipe the card when I enter the store, place my order and pay, all at once, was one idea to sorten lines.  Have a separate line for brewed coffee orders that are quick to fulfil was another.

In an interview with BusinessWeek, Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Saleforce pointed out that in this age of nonstop, immediate communication in blogs, wikis, Twitter, and YouTube,  “your customers are having a conversation about your products and practices. The question every company has to ask is: ‘Do I want to be part of this conversation? Do I want to learn from it? Am I willing to innovate on the basis of it?’ ”

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester tweeted today that since many of the companies he covers, and clients, are on Twitter, it’s essential he is there too. And he pointed to this post on Technobabble which has a chart showing how various analysts are using the tool.

The chart lists 59 analysts, how active they are and their comments on why they’re using Twitter.

If you’re new to Twitter read Lee Odden’s post about five new Twitter tools you can use. And Jeremiah just posted an update to his list of 7 essential Twitter tools. He’s now using Summarize to search Twitter content, since it can follow conversations.  Add this one to your list of Online Reputation Management tools.

Need a guide to the constantly changing social media landscape?  Subscribe to the PRoactive Report

Harry Hoover has a list of Journalists who are on Twitter here and here

Todd Defren of PR Squared says, “Am I seriously suggesting that a PR person MUST become an active Twitter user if they want to have a meaningful career? Even though Twitter is supposedly still a below-the-radar service? Well, yea, kinda. But for more – and more varied – reasons than you might think.”

Smart companies like JetBlue and Zappos are legitimately engaging on Twitter, says Steve Rubel. It’s becoming a front line for customer service. At a minimum, every consumer facing company should be monitoring the chatter. Even better, participating can cut problems off at the pass or even better foster evangelists.

New figures from Hitwise show that year on year, Internet visits to Twitter.com are up 8 fold. In the past three months, visits have more than doubled and traffic continues to climb, up 60% in the past month.

The site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites. Are you listening?

I had a delightful lunch with Linda Zimmer of Marcom Interactive yesterday.  We sat outside in the courtyard at Madeleine’s Bistro in Pasadena and talked about the need for better social media training options for PR and marketing folk, as well as the C-suite execs.

In a ClickZ post today Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen Online says ”CGM (consumer-generated media) has moved into the C-suite, and executives and brand managers face an unprecedented range of choices, from how much to invest in digital marketing to how to leverage social media in public relations.”

We are hearing this from many sources.  Attendees at conferences tell me that while they appreciate the breadth of data you get at a conference you can’t learn how to implement social media strategies in a forty-five minute session. 

The two questions we get asked most often are

1.  I get the concept and I know I have to do it - but HOW do I do it?

2.  How do I convince management?

It’s one thing to hire an agency to do the work for you, but the in-house marketing and PR people still need to understand how the process works, so they can manage the agency. Linda made the point that the only way to really learn how to succeed in social media is to be involved in social media.  That takes time.  We came to the conclusion that learning social media would best be done over a period of time with some ongoing consulting as part of the package.

We’d love to hear your ideas and considerations on this subject. 

We’re doing a session together in LA at Executing Social Media this month.  Ours is the wrap up session on Day Two and it’s titled 20 TO-DOs FOR 2008

The question hangs in the air, “but what do I need to do now to get myself or my company up to speed in social media?” Sally and Linda will boil it down to twenty essentials. Each will give you ten specific tactics to arm yourself or your business with crucial social media savvy.

So if you are in the LA area, or can make it out here, come to our session.  The weather is perfect right now. 

We’d love to continue our conversation about the need for in-depth social media training.  Join us after the conference at the dine-arounds that evening. We’ll do another session at Madeleine’s.

If you have not yet caught the Twitterbug here are two stories that should convince you that it’s a worthwhile exercise in customer service.  Companies should be monitoring Tweetscan, if nothing else.

Frank Eliason works for Comcast.  He started to check out what people were saying about the company on the micro-blogging service  and he tweets under the name comcastcares.

His tentative Twittering hit the spotlight after he noticed a post from Michaal Arrington of TechCrunch complaining that his Comcast Internet service was down and he jumped right in. When he was accused of helping because it was Arrington, others came to his defense saying that he had helped many others as well.  

Robert Scoble tells the story of how he was contacted by H&R Block after he posted on Twitter that he was doing his taxes there.  Again a high profile blogger broughy it to the fore, but these companies were on Twitter helping folk before that high profile relationship started.  They just catapulted them into the limelight.

“I’m hoping that going forward, the Frank Eliasons of the world — whether they communicate via Twitter or elsewhere — will not only be commonplace but corporate priorities, not picked because they happen to be the right people at the right place at the right time, but because, just as corporations can’t operate without PR and marketing executives, it’s important to have people on staff in charge of online customer outreach.” writes Catherine Taylor , who interviewed Eliason for Social Media Insider. 

A recent Burst Media Online Insight survey of more than 6,000 consumers found that four out of five (79.6%) respondents go online to conduct personal research on green initiatives and products. Data in this survey could hep you with your online PR content strategy

Consumers indicate high recall of green advertising but are often skeptical of advertiser claims. To allay doubts many seek more information on green claims made in advertising. Where do consumers go to find this information?  The number one source is the news

• News stories (43.7%)
• Word of mouth/family and friends (35.2%)
• Personal research (33.9%)
• Advertisements (26.7%)
• Community initiatives (18.4%)
• Organized groups (12.2%)

Consumers over the age of 35 rely on news stories much more than respondents under 35 - 47.6% versus 36.3%, respectively.

What kind of news stories would grab their attention?

1. Recycling information (35.6%) 
2. Healthy recipes (33.9%)
3. Alternative energy sources (27.5%)
4. Natural remedies (26.2%)
5. Eco-friendly cleaning products (25.4%)
6. Green technologies (25.2%)
7. Nature/outdoor recreation (24.8%)
8. Tips for simple living (24.0%)
9. Gardening/organic gardening (23.9%)
10. Organic foods (23.8%)

Get your content in to an RSS feed and syndicate it.  Add ways for people to share the content and add it to social media sites.  That way it’s likely to get picked up by bloggers.

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