Another Step towards the Adoption of Social Media Releases?

The Swiss blog "das Wortgefecht" today reported that PR firm Burson-Marsteller just launched a Social Media Release (SMR) distribution service named OurSocialMedia.com. Although the site currently only houses a few examples, it shows that the PR industry is getting serious about SMRs. 

I took a closer look at the only publicly available English language SMR on the site (yes - there's a password protected Social Media Release on the site - not very social if you ask me...). The publicly accessible SMR announces fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld's decision to design 80 limited edition homes on an island in Dubai. 

The layout of the page is simple and clean (especially when compared to some of the early SMRs), but the site itself seems to be lacking some elements that would make it a truly interactive and social site. SHIFT Communications' latest SMR template called for the integration of a commenting feature and pointed out the importance of offering an easy way to embed multimedia files. Neither of these features seem to be present in the Lagerfeld SMR however. Add those features to the site and I think you'd have a really nice example of a news release worthy of the 21st century.

Update (8/19): Turns out the service does allow you to grab the embed code by using the video contained in the body of the release instead of the one listed on the sidebar.

Update (8/19): The CNW group, a Canadian news and information distribution provider, also just launched a very nice SMR distribution tool. Their service allows for user comments and displays the video embed code right under the video.

Web 2.0 Course Resource for the Upcoming Semester

Here's a great resource on Web 2.0 created by David Wiley, a professor at Utah State University. Contains lots of links to resources on blogging, tagging, podcasting, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. Check it out!

PR Crisis brewing online for the National Communication Association

There's an old joke floating around the communication discipline which implies that the people who are attracted to the study of communication tend to be the worst communicators. Judging by the National Communication Association's (NCA) latest actions (or inactions), this may very well be the case.

Here's a case study in PR crisis management courtesy of our own disciplinary organization: NCA is "the oldest and largest national organization to promote communication scholarship and education" and counts roughly 7,700 members. Last year, the NCA Executive Committee approved a new registration policy for its annual convention, which is usually held at the end of November. The new policy requires all designated presenters, panelists, chairs, and responders to pre-register for the conference by August 6, 2008 or be removed from both the printed and online convention program. This new policy and the way NCA has attempted to enforce it, have unleashed a backlash of angry comments and calls for a boycott of the convention on CRTNET, a daily e-mail listserv managed by NCA.

The anger seems to stem not only from the policy itself, but also from the harassing tone and the exaggerated number of reminder emails and announcements NCA has been sending out during the last few weeks. Below are just a few sample messages sent out to members:

1. If you are a solo author, chair, or respondent and are not registered for the convention by August, 6, your paper/panel will be removed from the printed and online program.

2. Are you a listed participant in the 2008 Convention Program?
Program Participant Registration Deadline: Wed., August 6, 2008
Hurry Register Today! Don't Wait Until the Last Day!

3. There are two ways to register.
Mail/Fax – ALL PROGRAM PARTICIPANT REGISTRATION FORMS MUST BE RECEIVED IN THE NCA NATIONAL OFFICE BY AUGUST 1st FOR PROCESSING! (Doesn't NCA know all caps means shouting?)

4. Dear NCA member,
Q: What do the following books have in common?
- Cat in the Hat
- Guinness Book of World Records
- War and Peace

A: No one will find your name in these books.

Please don't let this happen with the NCA Annual Convention Program Book. Register by August 6!"

When you consider that most of NCA's members are communication professors who examine messages and their effects on an audience for a living, it goes without saying that these nagging reminders received a thorough critical review. As one professor put in on CRNET:

Note to the NCA office: You people may want to start reading some of the research published in your journals. Generating reactance and animosity from condescending, pushy, and annoying email messages---high in controlling language and low in positive and negative politeness---may gain you a short burst in compliance, but it will likely result in source derogation and a serious loss of referent power.

What is amazing is that although NCA manages the CRNET listserv and should therefore be well aware of the storm that's brewing online, it has yet to respond to the growing criticism and animosity. Could it be that NCA isn't listening and monitoring online conversations? Surely, they would have to. They're the National Communication Association after all! Why they haven't joined the conversation is beyond me. From a PR perspective this seems rather foolish. Why not respond to NCA members who've vented on CRNET, or at least explain their side of the story? Seems like there might be some truth to that old communication joke after all...

Another good Example of the Risks of Guerilla Marketing in a Post-9/11 World

KENS-TV station in San Antonio was evacuated Tuesday morning after receiving a suspicious looking cake with wires and a cell phone charger sticking out of it. As it turns out, the cake was part of a viral marketing campaign designed by a local theater chain to get anchors and DJs excited about the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight". See the KSAT report for more details. Although the cake campaign wasn't all that new, this seems to be the first time the bomb squad was called in on a cake delivery.

We've already discussed the Aqua Teen Hungerforce guerilla marketing campaign that let to a partial shut-down of the city of Boston in  January 2007 and the ING promo that triggered a similar scare and traffic chaos in Luxembourg city just a week later.

This latest example serves as just another reminder that you have to carefully implement guerilla marketing campaigns in this post-9/11 world - unless of course you want the bomb squad to come blow up your promotional materials. 

PRSA to launch monthly podcast on diversity

I just received an email from the Public Relations Society of America announcing the launch of a new monthly podcast series that will feature in-depth and frank discussions on the role diversity plays in our profession.

“PRSA Diversity Today,” which launches on July 21, 2008, will delve into diversity theory and practice and will feature best practices and interviews with PRSA and diversity professionals that can help prepare PRSSA members for a rapidly changing business environment.

This would be a good series to add to your feed reader/aggregator!

Lively: Google's answer to Second Life

Yesterday Google officially launched Lively - a Google version of Second Life. I just checked it out. Had to switch to a PC to do it though since Lively currently only supports Windows XP or Vista.The avatars remind me a bit of a mixture of Bratz dolls and Pet Shop animals... Anyways, here's the office I created:

Drupal troubleshooting tutorial

This post is a little out of the ordinary since I don't normally focus on the technical aspects of web 2.0 technologies on this blog or in class. Our class really focuses more on the practical applications of these new technologies and their impact on the PR industry. We're currently on summer break though, and that has given me an opportunity to catch up with research and to finally get around to playing with some new social media technologies and web 2.0 applications.

Since I've been needing to revamp an old webpage for a while, figuring out Drupal was on top of my summer to-do list. I won't lie and say that getting to know Drupal was a breeze, but I do believe that the initial frustration is well worth the effort. Most of the problems I encountered while installing Drupal and setting up the website seem to be fairly common, so I've decided to list them all here together with their solutions.

Installing Drupal 6:
This Lullabot video is the best installation tutorial I found. Pay special attention to the discussion of the invisible .htaccess file. That file has come to haunt me several times!

Making the invisible .htaccess file visible:
I use Fugu as my FTP program and it allows you to view hidden files by selecting "show hidden files" from the SFTP menu. You'll also need a way to edit the invisible file - I downloaded the free trial version of BBEdit.

Fixing the Register_Globals error (on 1and1):
After following the installation instructions, I received the following error:
"The following error must be resolved before you can continue the installation process: register_globals is enabled. Drupal requires this configuration directive to be disabled. Your site may not be secure when register_globals is enabled."

My web host is 1and1, and in order to fix this problem, you need to pull up that invisible .htaccess file and place the following line AddType x-mapp-php5 .php in it. I put it on the top of the page. Now upload the corrected .htacess file.

Enabling Clean URLs (on 1and1):
Clean URLs eliminate the "?q=" in internal URLs. This is important for search engines and SEO. I kept getting the message: "Your system configuration does not currently support this feature"

This doesn't necessarily mean you can't enable them. In some cases, you just need to tweak the code a little. To enable clean URLs on 1and1 it's back to the .htaccess file. You need to uncomment the following line:

# RewriteBase /
should become
RewriteBase /

In other words, remove the # symbol.

Configuring the cron so you don't have to run it manually:
For an explanation of what it is and why you need it, check this Drupal page.

1. You'll need a way to get "shell access", which means that you need to be able to connect to your web host using telnet or SSH. I switched to my husband's PC and downloaded Putty (Windows only). There's a way to do it on the Mac terminal but I couldn't figure out how.
2. Launch Putty and log in. For screenshots, check this tutorial.
3. Type "whereis lynx" or "whereis wget" (without the quotation marks) to see where lynx or wget is located. This should return something like: /usr/bin/lynx or /usr/bin/wget. Check this tutorial for why you need to know this.
4. Type "crontab -e" (without the quotation marks)
5. If the "whereis wget" command returned "/usr/bin/wget", enter the following line:
   45 * * * * /usr/bin/wget -O - -q http://example.com/cron.php
   to have a wget browser pull up your cron page 45 minutes after every hour. Replace example.com with your domain name. You can of course customize the schedule for your crontab (check this tutorial). Note that you need to enter the letter O in the above example and not a zero. (I've learned that lesson the hard way).
6. To save, hit ESCAPE and type ":wq" (without quotation marks), then hit ENTER

To see if the crontab was saved correctly enter "crontab -l" to see a list of schedules. Your schedule should now be displayed.

If you don't want to deal with all this, try the poormanscron module. It basically simulates a cron job.

Hiding the link to the homepage on nodes:
This is relatively easy to do, but it took me a while to find the solution. Simply download the Menu Breadcrumb module. It allows you to hide the breadcrumb if all it contains is a link to the front page.

Warning: Cannot modify header information error:
This error was caused by a line of white space I accidentally left after the opening and closing PHP tags in the template.php file in my theme's directory. So, don't leave any extra spaces!

Hiding the authoring information on some pages/content types:
Go to Administer >> Themes >> Configure to configure the global settings. Check or uncheck which content types should display the authoring information (see also).

Turning the Statistics module on in Drupal 6:
Go to Administer >> reports >> access logs settings

Creating a sitemap for your Drupal site to submit to Google:
I used the XML Sitemaps Generator and submitted it to Google.

Setting up a file sharing application:
I needed a way for users to be able to upload and download a particular file type. I used the Web File Manager module to do so. It's easy to set up and seems to work well (needs Javascript to run though).