I am a firm believer in reading and absorbing research and surveys done nationally for how old and new media interact. There are lessons to be learned from this national research on how we should interact in our own communities.

The merging of old and new media continues to play out in the world of journalism.  No longer do people just read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal for news, but also a growing number of online entities such as HuffingtonPost, Drudge, TechCruch, GigaOm, and even social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In our own communities this could mean the community paper, Twitter, Facebook and micro news websites.

Earlier this year, Pew Research Center issued a report analyzing this trend and examining how blogs and social media agendas relate and differ from traditional press.  The report, New Media, Old Media, takes into consideration a year’s worth of analysis, making it very in-depth.  It answers the various questions that are increasingly becoming difficult to track, such as “What types of news stories do consumers share and discuss the most? What issues do they have less interest in? What is the interplay of the various new media platforms? And how do their agendas compare with that of the mainstream press?”

Some highlights from the report include:

• News today is increasingly a shared, social experience
• In less than one third of the weeks did the blogosphere and traditional press share the same top story
• The stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead in the mainstream press, but they also differ greatly between social media platforms
• Of the three social platforms tracked in the survey – blogs, Twitter and YouTube – they only shared the same top story once
• Bloggers gravitated toward stories that elicited emotion, concerned individual or group rights or triggered ideological passion and unlike other forms of media, don’t favor one partisanship
• Traditional media news agendas are more event-driven and institutional
• While most original reporting still comes from traditional journalists, technology makes it increasingly possible for the actions of citizens to influence a story’s total impact
• 44% of online news users get news at least a few times a week through emails, automatic updates or posts from social networking sites
• In 2009, Twitter’s monthly audience increased by 200%

Share on Facebook

To many of us integrating social media into our PIO or PAO pr and marketing plan seems to be a daunting task. Some look at it as all encompassing and begin to ignore the traditional and still strong forms of news dissemination such as newspapers and TV. Others see social media as such a big challenge that they push it off and say “I’ll start tomorrow.” But in essence, social media is no more or less an additional tool for the old pr toolbox.

Public relations is one way of getting your message in front of the community, because PR is about building relationships with your residents through the media. With PR, you use newspapers and magazines to reach out to the community.

What social media has done is that it has allowed you to build the relationships directly with members of your community, as well as directly with the media themselves.

For example, large numbers of folks are on Twitter — including reporters in your area. They’re starting to get on social networks like Twitter. Suddenly, a barrier has been removed that was previously there. Journalists, editors and producers are more accessible now through social media.

If you’re on Twitter, check out Media on Twitter. It’s a database with thousands of reporters. You can see at a glance their Twitter names, their title and who they work for. This is a media list, which in the past you had to tediously compile yourself, or would have to pay a lot of money for. Now you can find journalists on Twitter and talk to them directly.

Social media is as simple as getting yourself some PR in the online world. You can create your own content and broadcast it yourself through your website, through your networks, through You Tube and other “channels”. At the end of the day, social media is just another method of communicating. Social media tools facilitate this communication and to be effective in social media you need to be able to communicate your key messages well. Just like in traditional PR.

Share on Facebook

Even after the masses spoke out against Washington’s way of doing business during the last election, politicians and their minions continue to try to spin their talking points to the American people like we just fell off the turnip truck.

It doesn’t make a difference whether it is a democrats or republican, these empty suits continue to use the same old political talking points they used before the election and expect us to fall in line like sheep.

I read an interesting story on the CNN website that took a close look at the actions taken by the White House communications team over the course of an hour one afternoon last week after the Democrats voted against bringing President Obama’s tax bill to the floor.

I would hate to work in an environment where my whole job was based on spin and trying to connive the American public. Wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Share on Facebook

A few days ago I was the guest speaker at the local Rotary. I was giving the Rotarians a general overview of my department and how we provide service to the community. In preparing an outline for my remarks I recalled that a member in the club always throws out a historic trivia challenge during the meetings. His facts are great and always met with amazement and a rumbling across the room of “I didn’t know that!”

Not to be one upped I needed a great wow factor fact about the fire service to win over the hearts and minds.

The trivia King took the microphone and spoke his pearls of wisdom –

“Since we just celebrated Thanksgiving I have a question. When was the holiday not celebrated on the last Thursday of the month?” You could literally hear the head scratching in the room. Knowing he had the luncheon crowd  in the palm of his hand he continued, “President Lincoln in 1863 declared a day of Thanksgiving making it the last Thursday of November, but in 1939, 1940 and 1941 President Roosevelt, seeking to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, proclaimed Thanksgiving the third Thursday in November. Controversy followed, and Congress passed a joint resolution in 1941 decreeing that Thanksgiving should fall on the fourth Thursday of November, where it remains.”

Wow. The crowd applauded in amazement.

Could I possible top this?

I got up to speak after lunch. All I could think about was the point in my remarks where I would attempt to one up the Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of the obscure.

Towards the ends of my remarks I was ready to fire my big gun.

“I want to now give you a quick overview of the Smithtown Fire Department’s fire prevention program, but first I have my own historic trivia question today.”

“Who said, – an Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure?”

The trivia know it all quickly yelled out Benjamin Franklin. Now I was getting mad. He looked at me like I was some rank amateur asking a weak round 1 trivia question that anyone in the masses could answer.

“True” I said, “but why did he say that?”

The King gave me a stare and squeezed his eyes as if he was trying to get some extra horsepower going in his brain. Smoke was coming out of his ears and I knew he was stalling out.

Giving me no credit, he just uttered the word “why?”

Knowing I had had him on the ropes I taunted him for a moment just looking at him with a smile before I delivered the knockout punch.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, was used by Franklin in a letter he sent to a newspaper. Franklin is considered one of the founding fathers of the fire service and was concerned about fire suppression and prevention. Not only did he start the first organized fire brigade in Philadelphia but was a tremendous advocate of fire safety.”

At this point I could see the King taking notes under his table to covertly use this one in the future and take his own credit for it.

I continued, “For the February 4, 1735 issue of The Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin sent an anonymous letter to his own newspaper entitled Protection of Towns from Fire. Using the pen name “old citizen” he admonished readers with this statement -

“In the first Place, as an Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure, I would advise ‘em to take care how they suffer living Coals in a full Shovel, to be carried out of one Room into another, or up or down Stairs, unless in a Warming pan shut; for Scraps of Fire may fall into Chinks and make no Appearance until Midnight; when your Stairs being in Flames, you may be forced, (as I once was) to leap out of your Windows, and hazard your Necks to avoid being oven-roasted.”

The crowd loved it!

After the meeting a humbled King came up to me.

“A great trivia fact, but next year I’ll have a better fire related story then you. It’s my challenge.”

I can’t wait!!

Share on Facebook

Over the holiday weekend I have had the opportunity to do some reading and investigation to attempt to put together the facts from a PR perspective of how things could go so terribly wrong in terms of the “they against us” attitude most folks now have towards the TSA. A number of PR gaffs has lead to this perception.

First off the lame TSA Administrator John Pistole used a worn out administration card saying the TSA knows what right for our citizens but unfortunately they haven’t done a good enough job educating people. Again, we’re so stupid that the wonderful changes they put in place and the stellar way in which they presented it to the public is above our scope of appreciation.

The President uses this excuse every time he talks about healthcare, the stimulus plan etc, yet to my knowledge these alleged communications blunders have not lead to the firing or demotion of even one PR or communication person in the White House or any other agency in Washington DC. If lack of decent PR is such a detriment to clearly explaining administration positions why hasn’t reorganizing DC communications across the board become an administration priority? Why hasn’t the TSA reorganized their public affairs department? Time to stop beating on communication folks and look at yourselves in the mirror.

Back to the TSA. Considering the controversy, threats and headlines regarding the newly announced TSA screening procedures, I imagine the agency wishes they could have a do over.  Maybe not, but in any case, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the meeting room where plans were made.  There were plans, right?

I’d like to know if the following issues were discussed:

1)   Public Announcement – I can’t find anything from the TSA that formally announced the new procedures and timeframe to implement well before they took place.

2)   Timing – Why was the full blown implementation of these policies introduced during the biggest holiday air travel week of the year?  How was the implementation of the new procedures factored into the security process that has to take place when a massive amount of people go through airport lines? The public really had no advanced warning of what to expect.

3)  Anticipation of Issues – All good plans anticipate issues.  In this case, I’m wondering how many issues like consumer reaction, training uniformity, advocacy group backlash and political posturing were anticipated and plans made accordingly to counter those arguments.

4)  Collateral Tools – You had to drill down through the TSA website to find any information or tools to demonstrate what travelers should expect with the new screenings.  The website’s statement from Administrator John Pistole was as lame as he is.  The TSA has tried to play catch up by posting better information in recent days but the dour tone of the website still does not do a great job of justification.

5)  Testing – While the new procedures were tested at a few airports, I went through one of these new scanners during testing close to two years ago if I recall, did they try to gauge consumer reaction?  I don’t remember being asked what I thought or given a survey. Were media invited to a “screening of the screening” to provide insight on rationale and benefits of new procedures?

The point here is that when you’re dealing with change, especially when it impacts a lot of people, you can’t plan enough.  A solid PR and marketing plan seems to never have been put in place to deal with new screening procedures.

An investment in good creative advertising, PR and marketing would have eased the public’s angst and fear of the unknown.

Share on Facebook

As a PR and marketing guy I have over the year been confronted, when a consumer or customer thinks that an injustice has been done to them, spew the old line “I’m going to the papers with this.”

I used to love to hear this sentence spoken when I knew someone with no case, truth or validation to their complaint assumed the “papers” would hold the presses so the masses could hear that we were out of blue logo tees or a donation receipt was not mailed to a donor within moments of the envelope being opened. The chance a journalist or reporter had in receiving a Pulitzer Prize for the irate information usually tended to have them pass on the story.

While this type of unfounded consumer threat used to make me laugh, today that same threat needs to be taken seriously when anyone with a computer can post their grievances on Facebook, Twitter or even set up their own blog to pound on who they conceive to be the perpetrator of the injustice.

We as PIO’s and PAO’s have to grit our teeth and bear it in how we answer members of the community and their perceived grievances. I know it can become tedious and time consuming but our jobs now dictates we cross every T and dot every I or else suffer the consequences of being smeared in the cyber world.

 A case in point was how Alaska Airlines recently handled a flyers complaint and how the world including I found out about every sordid detail. The example does involve though a consumer with what I think was a legitimate complaint.

Alaska Airlines stepped into a PR mess that could’ve been avoided with a “dotting” patience I mentioned.

A few weeks ago, Colleen Roberge, Dan Blais, and their son had to make a last-minute restroom pit stop before boarding their flight. Blais spoke with the airline agent about the situation, but in the time that it took to change a diaper, the airline had given away two of the family’s tickets. And, according to Blais, when he said he wouldn’t board without his family, the agent said she’d give away his ticket too.

Mom and baby were crying, the family’s bags left with the plane, and it cost more than $1,000 to rebook the next day. Now Blais has started a blog called “Alaska Airlines Hates Families.” If that isn’t bad enough, there’s the response from the airline.

The airline’s social media manager Elliott Pesut replied via blog, Business Insider reports: “Reservations are subject to cancellation if customers aren’t ready at the gate within those times because many tasks must be completed before departure…We can’t push the plane back from the gate till everyone is sitting down. And so on.”

The best part is the “And so on.” Way to go Alaska Airlines.

Update: Way to go Alaska Airlines. The family behind “Alaska Airlines Hates Families” now says “Alaska Airlines Doesn’t Hate Families.” Apparently, the family has been reimbursed and the issue resolved.

Share on Facebook

Over the last year or so I have been closely watching how various corporations, emergency service arms and organizations utilize social media to report on a serious incident or crisis. I am not totally convienced that reporting details rapidly on Twitter or Facebook is the most advantageous way to let the public know about an emergency. With things moving so quickly and so much at stake in giving details, social media can trap you into churning out information before we can actually put the unfolding events into perspective. A case in point took place in Singapore last week.

A Qantas flight from Singapore to Sydney had to make an emergency landing after the plane had a problem with one of its engines.

A far scarier version of the incident spread lightning quick via social media, with pictures showing damage to the plane, people supposedly holding pieces of the plane, and false reports about a plane crash.

Ultimately, the airline did post a statement on its website with assurance that no one was hurt and there was no plane crash. And eventually, the airline posted an update on its Facebook page, according to Tnooz.com, but its Twitter accounts sat idle for some time.

Everything turned out fine, but it raises the question: Is Twitter now the proper place for first response to a crisis situation?

Kudos to Tnooz.com, a technical travel site.  The story on the social media angle of this story was well done and the follow-up comments are interesting.

Share on Facebook

Yesterday evening I was watching the Mike Huckabee Show on Fox. I like Huckabee. He’s sort of like a left over relic from the Leave it to Beaver era when the country was a kinder, gentler place.

Huck had a cooking piece on about deep frying a turkey. It got me to thinking that many of us as PIO’s are getting ready to let our community know, through releases, speaking engagements or on our websites the numerous dangers presented around Thanksgiving  by this form of cooking.

The Fox segment not about dangers, but about the taste of deep frying, triggered a memory that I recently received an email about a public information campaign about fire and burn danger in this form of cooking.

I opened the email and State Farm insurance has done a great job in producing a bare bones video of the dangers of deep frying. It’s easy to understand, does not use a narrator, fancy graphics or high end production techniques, but certainly hammers the point home in a minute and ten seconds.

This is the one I’m going to use this year on our department website.

Share on Facebook

The Backstep Firefighter made a post yesterday titled PR DILEMA:BUFFALO. The post, with video, is about a house fire in Buffalo, the department’s perception of how it was fighting the fire and a neighbor’s perception of lack of effort to get water on the job.

Backstep Firefighter concluded the post with these questions -

Do our public relations go far enough in explaining what we do?
Are our usual messages too technical?

I try to address both of these questions to the homeowner or a close neighbor anytime we have a working fire.

On the fire ground, once I establish who the homeowner is, I introduce myself and tell them that I will keep them updated on our progress and what is transpiring during the operation.

During the worst day in someone’s life, I think it is our responsibility, as PIO’s, to let them know, in the least technical terms, what we are doing and why.

When a homeowner is watching their house burn they are also wondering among other things why –

We are cutting massive holes in their roof.

Knocking all the glass out of their windows.

Have firefighters on a line by their front door seemingly just hanging out.

Have firefighters with a stokes basket, pike poles and rescue equipment apparently standing idle near the front of the home.

I think it is important for us to let the homeowner know during the operation what ventilation is, what a primary and secondary line are, what a RIT team does etc.

If the homeowner does not have that fire department point of contact to talk to they suffer from additional angst. They need to know that at the end of the operation a Chief will talk to them to answer their questions. They need to know that I will provide them with my business card and a booklet to tell them what to do post fire.

By letting the homeowner know how our operation is unfolding we present ourselves as professional and doing all we can do to salvage what we can from their property.

Share on Facebook

Just when you think you are getting a good handle on social media and how to apply it to your PIO or PAO protocols some new toy comes along to potentially add to the mix.

If Twitters 140 characters aren’t enough room for all the insightful things you have to say, then maybe you’re ready for Tumblr.

The October 13^th issue of The New York Times goes into detail about the attributes of the new blogging service, which includes the ability to go on for more than 140 characters, the addition of photos and other content, and its ease of use. For smart phones, there’s also Posterous. The Atlantic and John Mayer are among Tumblr’s users so far.

Twitter’s appeal is the ability to provide a quick update in real-time, so it seems Tumblr isn’t really an alternative. But the company says it’s getting 30,000 new users per day, so there’s some appeal and perhaps some new publicity uses.

I just read the story and signed up to take a peak. Although I say it is new, Tumblr has been around for a few years but has received little notice for its applications.  I’ll report on the service after I take a test drive for a few weeks.

Share on Facebook