c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
esc
cancel

Updates from April, 2009

  • The Press Release Page
    A New Approach

    mike manuel 4:32 pm on February 26, 2008 | 15 Permalink

    So I’ve never really considered the whole ‘press release vs. social media release’ debate an either/or situation. The way I see it, there’s arguably utility and merit in both formats, as there are gaps and drawbacks. Frankly, I’m not convinced either approach is really the best way to think about news distribution on the web, and well, maybe for that reason alone, I think there’s still room for experimentation.

    With this in mind, the Voce team did an experiment of our own recently, something we’ve been calling the “press release page.”

    Conceptually, it’s pretty simple: We “announced” a partnership two weeks ago. There was a press release which we distributed over the wire, as well as an accompanying web page (i.e., the press release page) we created to augment and contextualize this news. I’ll explain both things here…

    The Press Release

    It was 175 words (less than this blog post). It captured the top-level news and highlighted the type of info the reader might find helpful on the accompanying press release page. It was a functional teaser of sorts, that’s it. The goal was to pique interest and pull attention to the press release page for more information — and, well, looking at our stats among other things, it more than accomplished that.

    Now, did the format of the release really matter here? Not really. Did we encounter any wire distribution headaches? No, none whatsoever. If it had been a “true” SMR, by all the standards, would it have spread further across the web? I don’t know, maybe. Was it expensive? Nah, it was less than $100 bucks, although your milage will vary, depending on the wire service and the distribution circuit you pick.

    The Press Release Page

    It was a simple web page we created with WordPress, the same platform that runs our company blog. We did some minor CSS and HTML customization, but nothing radical by any means. Again, the whole purpose of the press release page was to augment, color and contextualize this announcement with copy and content – basically, the very same stuff that would have torpedoed the attention and economic gains of our press release had we tried to shoehorn a fraction of this into what went across the wire.

    Press Release Page

    Now, could we have made this press release page a little more dynamic? Could we have enabled comments? Yeah, and we should have, because *this page* is where the value of conversation bears real fruit, longer term, for us and those that trip across it with future web searches, it’s not, however, the press release, which will steadily and inevitably disappear online.

    And therein lies one of my biggest gripes with focusing so much energy on the release format.

    There’s been too much fuss over the wrapper, not enough focus on the package.

    Again, I make no claim to this being anything other than an experimental approach, an experimental alternative to news distribution on the web. One that that I think has real practical potential for an increasing number of companies that are already deploying corporate blogs and could very easily squeeze more PR value out of those platforms, by extending their scope and purpose a bit.

    , , , ,
     

  • My Two Cents: Social Media Newsroom

    mike manuel 9:36 am on February 6, 2007 | 1 Permalink

    Todd Defren’s at it again, this time with the Social Media Newsroom.

    And again, like with the Social Media Press Release, I can’t help but be a little indifferent to it all….

    I like the way Todd’s vision of the new newsroom breathes life back into a fairly tired corporate channel. For too long, I think companies have either approached their newsrooms as info graveyards, the place where corporate collateral goes to die once its utility is exhausted, or they’ve treated newsrooms like glorified shoeboxes where a mixed bag of content lives, most of which is useless, but some of which is useful stuff - if you can find it.

    So, yeah, a healthy argument can be made that corporate newsrooms can and should have more utility and value for a company’s customers, partners, investors, media, etc.., I just don’t get the sense that these audiences consider this much of a pain right now, especially when third-party resources like Yahoo! Finance, Google News Alerts and Technorati Watchlists get the job done rather easily (oh, and for free). Thus, my indifference….

    Regardless of this, there’s still value in forcing people to re-think their assumptions and their approaches to pretty much everything these days, including the newsroom, so my hat’s off to Todd for doing this (again).

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

  • Media 2.0 Workgroup Rolls Out

    mike manuel 10:34 pm on January 29, 2007 | 2 Permalink

    The Media 2.0 Workgroup is a group of industry commentators, agitators and innovators who believe that the phenomena of democratic participation will change the face of media creation, distribution and consumption.

    More details here along with a frankenfeed.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

  • The Care & Feeding of Tech Media

    mike manuel 9:57 am on January 6, 2007 | 0 Permalink

    Via Valleywag, a great collection of tips here for working with popular tech media and influencers. The tips come from Sam Whitemore’s Media Survey, a kick ass service and resource for tech communicators. Get it.

    Technorati Tags: , , , ,

     

  • Social Media, Still Kicking

    mike manuel 9:47 pm on January 2, 2007 | 1 Permalink

    I’m playing catch up, ruminating a bit on the “social media is dead” meme.

    If it’s true then sadly we have terribly low and unimaginative standards for how we qualify and define social media adoption. I think the check-off-box socialization of Big Media to date hardly equalizes things.

    Awesome kid, you’ve enabled comments. High five. Now go do something interesting….



    I’d argue it’s just now starting to get interesting. With so many traditional outlets now adopting social tools, *real* creativity in social media design and execution (read: differentiation) is ours to watch.

    Technorati Tags: ,

     

  • Quotes That Fizzle

    mike manuel 9:35 pm on December 6, 2006 | 2 Permalink

    This cracks me up. A reporter for the Florida Times-Union calls me up last week. He was working on a piece about corporate haters on the web. We talk for about 10 mins or so, it was a simple chat. His story then published over the weekend. Here’s my quote which ran with the final piece:

    “The barrier to entry for writing what you want to write about … is certainly low on the Internet.”



    Wow. Mike Manuel everyone. Just dropping sick knowledge of the web. I’m available for consulting work, speaking engagements, book deals, and bar mitzvahs.

    Luckily, Florida business folks have much smarter locals to turn to for this sort of expertise.

    Technorati Tags: ,

     

  • Headlines That Sizzle

    mike manuel 7:02 am on November 14, 2006 | 0 Permalink

    Okay, the AP’s taking media transparency a little too far….

    Ap

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

  • “Friday with Foremski” Coming to Chron

    mike manuel 7:23 am on March 21, 2006 | 0 Permalink

    Cool, this just in, Tom Foremski, editor and publisher of the Silicon Valley Watcher and SNCR cohort, just emailed me to say he’ll be starting a new column for the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFgate.com site called “Friday with Foremski,” which will look at Silicon Valley gossip and trends, and will appear (I assume) later this month.

    This news comes on the heels of last week’s introduction of the Chron’s new business tech blog (”The Tech Chronicles“), and appears to be yet another step forward for the paper’s broader social media initiative, which just in the last year or so has successfully rolled out several new blogs and podcasts, and continues to experiment with content syndication and new forms of news personalization.

    It’s also interesting to watch the “watcher’s” media career continue to evolve. In the best ways, Foresmki has become the poster child for a new breed of journalist. It started with his departure (ironically) from the Financial Times in early 2004, and the subsequent development and launch of Silicon Valley Watcher later that year. Multiple links later, he started contributing a weekly column to ZDNet (see IMHO), and now this news today that he’ll be a regular columnist for the Chron. It’s nice to see the dividends of hard work beginning to pay off, good luck with this latest endeavor, Tom.

    Update: “Fridays with Foremski” made its debut today (read it here), this from Tom: “It is a great thrill for me to be writing for one of the longest established news organizations in the US, and also to be working with the excellent editorial team in the business section, Al Saracevic, Tom Abate, Dan Fost and many others.”

    The following posts chronicle a handful of my entries related to Tom Foremski’s moves/news the last two years. In some states, this would be called stalking;) Enjoy.

    Tom Foremski, Media Trailblazer? (June ‘04)

    Survey: Which Journalist Will Become a Full-Time Blogger? (June ‘04) (Results)

    Tom Foremski to Launch New Blog “SiliconValleyWatcher” (Sept. ‘04)

    Voce Visits with Tom Foremski (Dec. ‘04)

    Why Do You Blog? The “Watcher” Answers. (Jan. ‘05)

    Technorati Tags: , , , ,

     

  • SF Chronicle Debuts New Tech Blog

    mike manuel 12:43 pm on March 15, 2006 | 0 Permalink

    A mix of business and technology journalists for the San Francisco Chronicle have launched a new blog called “The Tech Chronicles,” that will cover, you guessed it, the Bay Area techscape. Alan Saracevic, the leading contributor, shared this in his introductory post today:

    “Those of you who follow us in print know we spend a lot of time and energy covering the biggest story in the Bay Area: Technology. For the newbies out there, we hope you’ll make us a regular stop on your daily Internet rounds.

    So, what are we going to do? We’re going to report and write about the technology universe, centering our coverage on Silicon Valley and San Francisco but spreading it around when needed. From wired to weird, if it’s got bits it fits.”

    From an outsider’s perspective, the Chronicle has been a little trepidatious (cough, slow) in the socialization of its content, in comparison, for example, to regional papers like the Mercury News and national papers like the NYT, but with that said, the organization seems to be catching up *very* quickly, particularly when you look at what Marcus Chan and Benny Evangelista are doing with podcasts on SFGate.com, also, how the paper’s bolstering its online presence via other forms of original syndicated content, like the Tech Chronicles, but also blogs on Culture and Politics. It’s good stuff.

    Congrats the Chronicle team, I’m subscribed.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

  • Mediocre Pitches Work Too, Sometimes

    mike manuel 12:08 pm on February 22, 2006 | 5 Permalink

    I’ve been loosely following the ping-pong rhetoric justifying the Bad Pitch Blog and now the Good Pitch Blog and I have to admit, I think there’s a real opportunity for creating the Mediocre Pitch Blog. I mean, come on, why should we limit our highly objective judgments of others work to only praise and penalty when in reality, mediocre pitches get the job done at leeeast 30% of the time. That ain’t bad….;-)

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

  • For Now, NDAs Remain

    mike manuel 6:24 pm on February 15, 2006 | 0 Permalink

    ZDNet’s Ed Bott captures the pains of interpreting the do’s and dont’s of a corporate NDA in a media environment where bloggers are increasingly receiving the same levels of information and access as their big media counterparts, but are oddly being held to different standards of disclosure — which is the case, right now, with Microsoft’s Office 12 beta:

    “I noticed that Microsoft’s army of Office bloggers (at least 17, by my unofficial count) and a large corps of external reviewers from print and online media had been given carte blanche to publish as much detail as they wanted about Office 12 Beta 1. That’s cool, unless you’re an official beta tester with a blog (like me) who is staring at an EULA that strictly prohibits any commentary of any sort.”

    Not surprisingly, Bott’s post sparked a response from Robert Scoble (read: “The flattening of the press world“) and a host of others, all of which is now working its way up the meme trackers, with the typical set of media 2.0 prognostications, stating mostly that the NDA is dead, and that it symbolizes the last bastion of control in the PR universe, that PR people aren’t adapting, oh, and that we’re mean and that we all drive gas-guzzling cars and eat our fast food from the old styrofoam containers and club baby seals in our spare time…blah…blah…blah.

    Alright, I’m exaggerating, a little.

    Joking aside, there’s no easy answer here, at least not today. This is one of those issues that will continue to surface as companies transition from old communications models, where hierarchy, control and exclusion remain the PR tactics de jour, to new models of communications, where horizontal thinking, open access and inclusion are the standard — but we’re far from this place right now. I also think trust plays an incredible role in this discussion, which complicates things, to the extent that it probably warrants a separate write up to do it justice. But for the time being, like it or not, IMO, the NDA is here to stay.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

  • Blogger Disclosure Practices Tested

    mike manuel 9:24 am on February 9, 2006 | 6 Permalink

    If nothing else, this piece in the WSJ underscores the argument that bloggers are not journalists, or as Brian Oberkirch rightly puts it, “personal blogs are not media.” Unlike the MSM, disclosure standards and practices in the blogosphere are uniquely defined by each and every blogger, so trust is the only capital that can be built or dissolved, based on how we each *choose* to share or conceal our conflicts of interests when they surface.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

Older Posts →