pr-media-blog.co.uk

Hello again and Happy New Year!

After a short hiatus, PR Media Blog is back on the beat.

And what better place to start than today’s Media Guardian, whch gives a pretty exhaustive forecast of the new world facing the media in 2009.

Here is a sample of the most interesting views from the massed media commentators. Have they got it right? PR Media Blog will be keeping an eye on things as the media circus rolls on into another year.

“Leading web thinker” Clay Shirky with his media forecast for 2009: “Newspapers are going to get more and less elitist…a small, niche publication that says: ‘We’re only opening our mouths when what we say is demonstrably superior to anything else on the subject.’ The populist model is: ‘We’re going to take all the news pieces we get and have an enormous amount of commentary. It’s whatever the readers want to talk about.”

Gareth McClean on TV programmes: “As money becomes scarce, ratings will become more important…drama finds itself under siege from light entertainment - and factual entertainment and anything else that’s cheaper, which is basically everything - like never before.”

John Plunkett on Radio: “If ever there was a time for commercial radio to strike back in the ratings war, then surely this is it…expect more commercial stations to go to the wall, expect BBC radio to be less sure of itself, expect uncertainty over DAB to continue - expect a bloody battle.”

Roy Greenslade on newspapers: “The importance of online journalism cannot be stressed too often. It is foolish to call it the future because the future is now…the fight that counts in 2009 is the one for online eyeballs seeking news and informed comment, not for the passive audience handed a freesheet with the minimum of journalistic merit or public benefit.”

Peter Wilby on journalism: “Mass market journalism - short, snappy news items alongside gossip, glamour and articulate prejudice - is by definition doomed…serious journalism will triumph by default.”

Oliver Luft on magazines: “Business publishers may look at greater innovation online to find revenue that goes beyond the blunt approach of either subscription or open access…consumer titles will focus on ways to deliver more audience to print advertisers they want to bring over to the web.”

Danny Rogers on PR: “PR helps organisations create ongoing dialogue with their audiences. The growth of blogs, social networking and Google made this essential if today’s companies, products, governments, celebrities and charities were to impress and thrive. And despite the current recession, this underlying trend remains.”

Jemima Kiss on Digital media: “One of the most powerful technology trends of 2008 was the shift from sites as destinations to open, sharing platforms…Big media needs to start thinking like this…it’s about being resourceful and flexible in order to survive.”

Last night’s inaugural meeting of Manchester’s Social Media Cafe (#smc_mcr) suggested that the “death of the blog” has been greatly exaggerated.

And not only is blogging very much alive, it has graduated from the perceived image and PCs of young men whose bedrooms are adorned with model aircraft.

Craig McGinty, journalist, blogger on This French Life and panellist on the #smc_mcr’s first debate, described a blog as an online “base camp”: “It’s important that you have your own entity on the Internet,” he said. “You’ve got the opportunity to get an audience without going through the gatekeepers of newspaper editors and all it takes is time.” At a more fundamental level, McGinty feels that blogging is just the latest emodiment of a basic human need to communicate, which began with cave paintings. “The only difference is the tools,” he added.

Fellow panellist, Chi-chi Ekweozor, MD of real fresh tv, cited renowned blogger, Robert Scoble’s use of blogging and social media to “meet one new person every day”. Clearly, a bigger task than is possible in the offline world, unless you have hours to kill and walk quickly.

But what about corporate blogging? Is there room for social media activity with professional funding and - potentially - an underlying agenda to sell? Chi-chi Ekweozor has been monitoring the FTSE100 for such activity, and while there are good examples of blogs at work  the UK’s major companies still lag behind the USA, where CEOs have readily taken up the blogging mantle.

But she sees a future for corporate blogging, “for communicating with staff and establishing credibility” with the wider world.

So, it’s agreed: both boardrooms and bedrooms will continue to hum with the creation of blogs and interaction with social media tools such as Twitter, but still leaving time to finish assembling that scale model of Concorde. 

P.S. Keep watching PR Media Blog for exclusive interviews from the Social Media Cafe event.

With so much doom hanging over the economy, who would you expect to be doing well?

No surprises then that Google has posted outstanding third quarter figures, with revenues up 31% to a dizzying £3.2bn (though dwarfed by bank handouts from you and I) and profits up 26%.

And everyone’s favourite search engine is now providing 63% of online searches in the USA (August figures), which is double that of its closest competition.

Which somewhat supports Jeff Jarvis’ notion on Buzz Machine that the “Google economy is just different”.

Jarvis says that Google typifies the “small-is-the-new-big” economy in which the myriad of advertisers of all sizes using its services now adds up to a critical mass. This mirrors the inter-relationship between Google and online communities, whereby Google recognises the critical mass of activity generated by social media, including blog posts, user-generated comments, content sharing and bookmarking sites such as Digg, etc.

If people you need to reach are using the Internet to research before they buy or make decisions about something, the equation is this:

a) The majority of people are using Google to search the Internet.

b) Google’s techno wizardry ranks quality online destinations according to their level of activity and interactivity.

c)  Therefore, you might need to include some form of social media activity as part of your communications.

To paraphrase the old Clinton campaign slogan, it’s the Google economy, stupid!

And, on the topic of Peter Mandelson’s return to Government, it wasn’t long before the knives were out.

Already, the Tories are accusing the new business minister of stage managing his return to the department, with hooting supporters suitably placed for maximum effect. Of course Mandelson denied it, but the Prince of Darkness, architect of SPIN, will be a difficult reputation to shift.

SPIN - that concept feels like it belongs to the era when the Milennium Dome seemed like a great idea. Yet it’s become part of the lexicon, to the point where I hear people in companies talking about how they’d like to “spin it” this way or that. Maybe they don’t mean “spin” in its purest sense; but it’s still a dangerous place from which to start your communications campaign.

The Oxford Dictionary defines spin, rather politely, as “a favourable bias given to a news story”. Journalist and broadcast, Andrew Marr, was somewhat more blunt, calling it “Evasion, truth-shaving, manipulation, bullying.”

Whether you’re pushing a sexed-up WMD dossier to justify invading a country, or a new product launch, spin is best avoided. Resorting to it would suggest a cover up of something that won’t withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, there is always someone willing to scrutinise and find you out,  which risks harming your reputation.

And today, with the spread of social media, it gives voice to many, many more people scrutinising and - potentially - lampooning your claims in cyberspace forums and blogs, which have a habit of showing up in Google searches.

Mandelson might be back, but some of the tactics he pioneered should be confined to history. Let DJs do the spinning.

The world of blogging, or should I say the Blogosphere, has had a thorough sifting and analysis thanks to leading blog search engine, Technorati. And some of the conclusions should add something to marketing departments’ “to do” lists.

The graph below shows the impact that blogging has had on professional and corporate bloggers, with the main benefit to businesses being a higher industry profile.

A good example of corporate blogging well done has to be that of Sun Microsystems’ CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, who manages to have a respectable blog “authority level” - that is the number of other blogs linking to your blog - without compromising the company’s image.

Social media expert, Chris Brogan, is one commentator who has lauded Schwartz’s blog for making the company appear human and having that extra, indefinable sheen that goes beyond pounds and pence.

Following on from a recent post about how some professional journalists in the US are adopting a different model online in order to survive, this latest departure in web journalism takes it down to an even more local level, with MyBallard being an online news service for a neighbourhood of Seattle.

Still, the couple behind it are life-long professional journalists, which raises the question of how good a news service as opposed to a blog - any news service - would be if there were no professional journalistic input.

 Maybe the demise of journalists has been greatly exaggerated?

Our friends at TBWA\ have shared with us the latest data on social media usage, showing a growth in social networks as an online destination. About 70% of ”silver surfers” (that’s people over 50, not a lonely, Marvel comic character hanging out in the galaxy) log on daily to social networking sites while teens and tweens are the main consumers and content creators. 

One stat - showing that 35% of teenage girls blog compared with 20% of teenage boys, while boys are twice as likely to post video online than girls (19% vs 10%) - throws an interesting light on the girls vs boys intelligence debate. Are girls simply more literate and better at stringing together sentences than boys? Do boys like the ape-like simplicity of going “video - good! - upload”?

All I can say, ladies, is “one picture tells a thousand words”, rather like what the one above says about men.