Teaching PR

When does teaching stop?

Some of us #PRprofs had a good conversation on Twitter not long ago that inspired me to ask this question: when does teaching stop?

Here's what I mean. I saw a comment from a young person in my twitterstream making fun of homeless people. I thought it was offensive and not something a young PR professional would really want on their public profile. I clicked through to find out more about the person, and was horrified to see that they're an alum of my school's PR program. I started to send them a direct message suggesting that they think more carefully what they post (which is what I would do if they were still a UGA student, even if I didn't know them). I'd never had the person in class, though, so I reconsidered.

Then I asked the PR profs what they thought I should do: "Do I have a responsibility to non-student tweeting inappropriately?" Urkovia Andrews and Melanie Lockhart (who suggested this as a blog post topic) both responded that they didn't think so; we have to draw the line somewhere, and in this case I don't even know the person, so that crosses the line. Richard Waters also pointed out that being embarrassed to have my university's name on the tweeter's profile is different than having a "responsibility" to that person. And that's true: if were a young PR pro with no connection to my university, I probably would've just unfollowed them rather than going into teacher mode.

Urkovia and Tiffany Gallicano also pointed out that if it were someone else's student, they'd notify the professor -- which is something I've done before, too.  And if I'd known that UGA alum, I'd've definitely sent her a direct message.

It was hard for me to walk away from a teachable moment, but I did. Was that right?

The Week's Best, 26 September 2011

• To Facebook You're Like an Open Book, Valeria Maltoni
• 10 Books for Every PR Bookshelf, Philip Young
• Are PETA's PR Stunts Stellar or Stupid?, James Ernst
• Sex Sells -- Faking It In Public Relations, Heather Yaxley
• How an Ex-History Student Is Using Twitter to Bring World War II to Life, Paul Sawers (via @JeffreyPJacobs)
• Do You Know the History of Your Favorite Social Media Websites?, Neal Schaffer (via @Brandyourself)
• Recent Grads: 19 Great Tips for Your First Month on the Job, Amy Levin-Epstein
• Social Media in Germany (podcast). Eric Schwartzman

Very basic SEO tips for academic bloggers

Over the summer I spoke on a panel of educator bloggers, and when we were asked to provide tips for professors who'd like to start blogging, a couple of us mentioned learning the basics of SEO, or search engine optimization. When someone in the audience followed up, "What do I need to know about SEO?" we provided a couple of tips, but there's so much to cover that it was hard to know where to begin. This post is intended to serve as a better answer.

First some basic information. SEO is simply about helping your posts show up higher on the returns page when someone searches for terms related to your blog's topic or posts. If you want that to happen, you have to make it easy for search engines to find out what your posts are actually about. Put simply, search engines crawl (read pages they can see), index (create a database of words) and rank returns.

So, here we go: very basic tips on search engine optimization for professors and students.

1. Most blogging sites build some SEO opportunities into their templates. Check your blog's design or setting tab to see what options are available to you (for example, Wordpress has SEO widgets, and Typepad has an SEO tab that allows you to add meta keywords that describe your blog generally for search engines). If you can, choose to have your post URLs based on the title of your post rather than just a date or a number.
2. Write headlines as if they will be read by a robot who has no context, no sense of humor, and takes everything literally (in essence, they will be). No puns, no nicknames, no inferences.
3. Search engines read top to bottom and left to right to determine a post's priorities. Whatever you put in the top left corner of a post is most important. 
4. And, since search engines can't read graphics, java, images or video, you shouldn't put them top left. When you do use them, make sure you use an important keyword in the file name.
5. Speaking of keywords, decide which ones you want to use and then use them frequently. Frequently means sprinkled naturally through your text, not used to the point of annoying the reader.
6. Make use of anchor text -- these are the clickable words that you create when you add a link to your text. Search engines use this information to help identify what people think is important about a post, so you can use internal links to reinforce what your own posts are about. If you ever hear someone making fun of "click here" links, that's why -- whatever you're linking to isn't actually about clicking here, but that's what you've just taught the search engine. 
7. Get links from other bloggers and websites. Ask your department or college website to link to it, for example; comment or guest post on other blogs; and don't be afraid to email links to posts to other bloggers who might be interested in them. The more links you get from other sites, the more search engines perceive your blog to be credible and relevant. If that site is already considered credible (for example, has a high Google page rank), so much the better.
8. Most important of all, though, is the actual content of your post. Don't do anything for SEO purposes that will put off your readers or convince a search engine that you're just gaming the system. As Google says, "you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what’s best for the visitors of your site."

If this is all too basic for you, consult the SEOmoz Beginner's Guide to SEO or Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

The Week's Best, 19 September 2011

• Gee, Beav, Isn't PR Just Like Advertising?, Richard Laermer and The Bizarre and Uncomfortable Future of Advertising and Public Relations Convergence, Todd Defren
• Silliness of the "Over-Educated" Argument, Bob Batchelor
• Social Media Policy Video from Australian Government Department, Stuart Bruce
• A PR Professional's Code of Ethics, Wendy Marx (via Jason Chupick)
• Everyone's Excited in Press Releases and Bad Dogs: 18 Brand New, Worst Press Releases, Jeff Domansky
• 10 Examples of QR Codes for Real-Time Marketing, David Meerman Scott
• Definition of Pay for Play in Public Relations, Annie (via @PRCarrS)
• The West Wing Chronicles (videos), Gnosis Arts Media Group (via @tmccorkindale)

The unexpected consequences of social media use

Any student of mine will tell you that I emphasize privacy and security issues whenever I teach them about social media -- whether it's personal safety or thinking about the security of people friending or following an organization on social media.

But even I was taken aback by two tweets on Wednesday. 

First, Josh Greenberg linked to a CNN.com story headlined, "Bodies Hanging From a Bridge in Mexico Are Warning to Social Media Users." "Mexico's notoriously ruthless drug gangs regularly hang victims from bridges and highway overpasses," the story reports, but "this could be the first time" that people sharing news about drug trafficking on social media have been targeted.

When I retweeted the link, @ezrasf responded with a link to this blog post about the official U.S. response to complaints about "suspicious behavior" on a airplane flight on Sept. 11, 2011. Twitter and Facebook figured into the questioning of a woman who just wanted to go home, but found herself locked in a jail cell and being strip-searched. (She also links to this AP story.) Her tweets didn't get her into trouble, but they were considered as potential evidence during her questioning.

Kind of makes me long for the days when party pictures on Facebook were the problem.

The Week's Best, 12 September 2011

• Over-Qualification: When a Higher Degree Doesn't Pay, J. Salvage, and Don't Hire People Who Went to Grad School, Penelope Trunk
• In Praise of Publicity -- A Woman's History, Heather Yaxley
• Agency vs. Corporate: Which One is Best for You?, Jeanine Black
• The Climate Reality Project (event on Sept. 14), via Celeste Altus
• Transparency, Ethics, and Lasagna: How Ketchum's Fake Dinner Backfired, Jacqueline Church, and In Marketing, Honesty Trumps All, David Reich
• In Defence of the Right to PR Representation, Paul Seaman
• U.S. Hispanics Connected and Online: Getting Around the Digital Divide, Christie Cendejas
• Real World Review: 1 Year at Engauge, Kaitlyn Dennihy
• Blackberry Hate Mail Roundup -- I Wonder If PR Firms Will Ever Quit Sending Us This Stuff!?, Kevin Michaluk
• A New LinkedIn Feature: Volunteer Experience, Kate D'Amico
• Poll Dancing: PR's Perceived Image, Tim Penning

Transmedia storytelling is not just multi-platform public relations

I sat in the audience not long ago listening to a speaker -- a highly-placed professional at a well-known firm -- who talked about "transmedia storytelling" as though it were the same thing as using multiple platforms for public relations.

Transmedia storytelling is NOT just multi-platform public relations.

By multiplatform I mean using a number of communication platforms (both mainstream and digital, collaborative or otherwise) in ways appropriate to the platform. So, on TV you run an ad, on Facebook you have a contest, and on your website you have a game. They all use the same slogan or have similar content, but modified to make it appropriate to the platform. It's pretty much the same thing ad/PR people would've done in days gone by, but with additional platforms available thanks to digital communication.

Transmedia storytelling goes far beyond this. I first read about the concept in Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture. To quote my own post on principles of social media from a couple of years ago,

I like Jenkins's discussion of transmedia storytelling because it suggests telling different parts of the story in different places (movie, game, Web site, etc. -- he uses "The Matrix" as an example) tailored to the medium. ...Applying this concept to PR would mean NOT taking a press release and making a podcast of the press release being read out loud. Instead, a press release might link to a video that has a human interest story related to, or maybe just briefly mentioned in, the press release -- either could stand alone, but together they tell a bigger story.

In other words, the platforms tell different parts of the story but together form one narrative, and the content should not be the same or even very similar across platforms. An example that Jenkins provides from "The Matrix" involves a very minor character who's only seen for a few seconds in the film, but if you play the game you learn that person's whole backstory and thus when you see them for those few seconds, you have an entirely different perspective on what's happening than if you hadn't played the game. (But if you haven't, you'll still enjoy the movie -- in fact, you won't know you missed anything.)

Multi-platform public relations may be hard, but transmedia storytelling takes it to a whole other level. And I can't really think of a PR program that's put it to effective use yet. Anyone else?

The Week's Best, 5 September 2011

• NFL Hall of Famer's PR Staff Prematurely Reports His Death, Cork Gaines
• PR Suffers From an Image Problem, David Reich
• GWEN, Richard Edelman
• Against the Ethical Tenets of Modern PR, Rosanna Fiske and Confusing Client Ethics for PR Ethics, and Correlation for Causality, Radar
• Revisiting the PR Take on CSR, Aman Singh
• "Advergaming" and Online Gaming Experiences, Desert Rose Design (via @YouTernMark)
• Should Lawyers Be PR Advisers?, Tim Marshall