Blogging: who decides what's interesting?

This week, 78 new Creative Communications students at Red River College will launch blogs -- many of them for the first time. (They'll be posted on the CreComm Blog Network by the end of the week.)

Blogs, blogs everywhere

NM Incite, a McKinsey/Nielsen company, tracked more than 181 million blogs by the end of 2011.  There is a blog on just about any topic you can imagine -- from the view from the White House to cooking in a kitchen the size of a closet to unnecessary (and inappropriate) quotation marks in signage.

What makes a blog successful?

For a budding professional communicator, a successful blog attracts readers beyond your circle of friends and family, and specifically, within the public you're hoping to reach. If your blog attracts readers for reasons other than that they like you personally, you've likely hit on something: your blog provides content that is interesting.

Of course, determining what's "interesting" is never really objective -- what's interesting to me might not be interesting to you. But in professional communications, employers look for people who understand how to create communications that appeal to the specific publics they want to reach.

How do you do that? Logically, to be able to appeal to a certain group, you need to:

• recognize the make-up of the group;
• understand what interests that group;
• be able to create communications that attract and retain their interest, and motivate them to share them with others with common interests.

This calls for more than simply creating an online diary in which you report on your own observations of the world around you, unless your observations of the world around you are very compelling to your intended public. For example, are they entertaining? Are they unusual? Do you see the world from an uncommon perspective, which could be interesting to your readers?

Choosing the right topic

The best blog topic is targeted to a particular interest group, and serves up regular helpings of information that group is interested in. 

That group doesn't have to be huge, and it doesn't have to include a single person you already know (nor do its members need to know each other). But if you can write a blog these people with a common interest come to find interesting -- and they begin to return regularly and bring others along with them -- your blog can build a loyal following. 

If you can achieve that, you have a measurable (and therefore provable) accomplishment you can take to a communications job interview for a step ahead of your competition.

It's not rocket science... but it's not easy.

To attract people to something, you have to give it characteristics they find attractive. To motivate people to do something (e.g. read your blog), you have to give them a reason to do it.

Writing a successful blog takes a great deal of careful thought -- both about your publics' needs/desires and about your ability to generate a regular stream of content that'll keep them coming back. It has to be informative, or entertaining, or both.

So, who decides whether your blog is interesting?

Whomever you write it for, of course. If it interests them, they'll read and they may return; if it's not, they won't.

Happy blogging!

Think mainstream media is dead?

Think again.

Yesterday morning, many Winnipeggers (myself included) started the day with a bit of a challenge: how to get ready for work/school/whatever with low (and in some cases, no) water pressure. According to this morning’s Winnipeg Free Press, at around 7:30 a.m. a power outage affected three of the city’s water pumping stations, which caused the problem.

In my house, our first instinct was to check our own pipes (no problems). Second: check the street to see whether there’d been a water main break (no apparent problems). Third: call 311 (busy signal: uh oh, this must be a big problem – it’s not just us if 311 is overloaded). Wait it out, and rinse off.

But others had different ideas.

Call CJOB!

As I drove in to work listening to local radio station CJOB, I heard morning show host Richard Cloutier (who’d been at work long before the water problem) say that at the station, they’d noticed a momentary problem with the power, then their email system went dead, then the phones lit up with calls from listeners with shampoo in their hair – I’m sure both wanting to know what was going on, and wanting to complain about it.

Don’t discount mainstream media

These days, social media is the darling of PR conferences, webinars and professional development meetings; it’s our shiny new toy. There are people in our industry quickly re-branding themselves as social media experts, ringing the death knell for mainstream media, and recommending all-social media communication strategies to their clients.

For some clients, whose audiences exist uniquely in the online and social media space, that might make sense. But for the rest (who, I’d suggest, constitute the majority out there), it’s important not to ignore the power mainstream media continue to have to communicate with our audiences.

Don’t get me wrong: I am a social media evangelist, and I firmly believe that its tools give us unprecedented access to certain segments of our audiences – both for sharing information, and for building relationships. From my perspective, social media opens the door for PR to do what it has always strived to do: to establish and nurture two-way relationships with its audiences (at varying levels, of course).

But social media isn’t the be-all and end-all for strategic mass communication – at least, not yet. Many of our audiences are not using Twitter, and aren’t influenced by those who do. Many (it seems, more and more every day) distrust Facebook. Many don’t read blogs, or spend much time online at all. Many others do participate in social media, but aren’t able to determine whom to trust – and turn to mainstream media to make sense of it all.

These audiences rely on mainstream media, among other more traditional communication channels (e.g. calling customer help lines), to inform themselves about the issues that interest them. And as long as they do, good strategic PR will continue to take advantage of those means of reaching them.

As more amazing and revolutionary technologies come along, smart PR people will engage with them, will investigate them, will understand their strengths and weaknesses, and will figure out how to employ them to help clients reach their communication objectives.

But the really smart PR people will always remember to go where their audiences are.

Behave online, redux

Today I saw a news release from CareerBuilder, a human resources company, providing research that supports what I've said in a number of blog posts and Tweets about how important it is to maintain a professional brand online. Click here for the full release and survey methodology -- but here are some key findings of their survey of 2600 hiring managers, conducted this June:

- 45% of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates (up from 22% last year); a further 11% have plans to begin using social networking sites to screen future employees.

- the most popular online research tool identified by hiring managers was Facebook (29%), followed by LinkedIn (26%), MySpace (21%); managers also search blogs (11%) and Twitter (7%).

From the release:

Why Employers Disregarded Candidates After Screening Online

Job seekers are cautioned to be mindful of the information they post online and how they communicate directly with employers. Thirty-five percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate. The top examples cited include:

Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information - 53 percent

Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs - 44 percent

Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients - 35 percent

Candidate showed poor communication skills - 29 percent

Candidate made discriminatory comments - 26 percent

Candidate lied about qualifications - 24 percent

Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer - 20 percent

Fourteen percent of employers have disregarded a candidate because the candidate sent a message using an emoticon such as a smiley face while 16 percent dismissed a candidate for using text language such as GR8 (great) in an e-mail or job application.

Why Employers Hired Candidates After Screening Online

Job seekers are also encouraged to leverage social media whenadvertising their skills and experience.Eighteen percent of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate. The top examples include:

Profile provided a good feel for the candidate’s personality and fit - 50 percent

Profile supported candidate’s professional qualifications - 39 percent

Candidate was creative - 38 percent

Candidate showed solid communication skills - 35 percent

Candidate was well-rounded - 33 percent

Other people posted good references about the candidate - 19 percent

Candidate received awards and accolades - 15 percent

"Social networking is a great way to make connections with potential job opportunities and promote your personal brand across the Internet," said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder. "Make sure you are using this resource to your advantage by conveying a professional image and underscoring your qualifications."

Haefner recommends the following DOs and DON’Ts to keep a positive image online:

1)DO clean up digital dirt BEFORE you begin your job search. Remove any photos, content and links that can work against you in an employer’s eyes.

2)DO consider creating your own professional group on sites like Facebook or BrightFuse.com to establish relationships with thought leaders, recruiters and potential referrals.

3)DO keep gripes offline. Keep the content focused on the positive, whether that relates to professional or personal information. Makes sure to highlight specific accomplishments inside and outside of work.

4)DON’T forget others can see your friends, so be selective about who you accept as friends. Monitor comments made by others. Consider using the "block comments" feature or setting your profile to "private" so only designated friends can view it.

5)DON’T mention your job search if you’re still employed.

Socrates! Blogs and tweets are public!

Steve Martin did a bit in 1980 in which Socrates complains that, despite all the time he and his students spent together, no-one ever mentioned that hemlock is poisonous [note: the part related to this topic is over by the 2 ½-minute mark].



Conservative Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is finding out this week that sometimes, what seems obvious (or at least, common knowledge) isn’t so obvious to everyone. He and his party are doing a little damage control after Edmonton-Calder MLA Doug Elniski posted some ill-considered “advice” to high-school girls on his blog [another note: this clip is preceded by a 30-second commercial, and followed immediately by other news stories].

Mr. Elniski reportedly has also had to apologize for comments he made on Twitter.

Everywhere we look these days, there’s discussion of how social media tools like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook are revolutionizing communications by allowing organizations and people in power to converse directly with their customers or constituents online. With that free access to “the people”, though, must come the recognition that what you say using these tools is “out there.” Sometimes, it can feel like a tweet is just a short-lived, offhand comment to your friends – but when you have a public reputation you care about, you need to make sure your tweets (or blog posts, or Facebook status updates) reflect who you are professionally.

We give this same advice to our CreComm students at Red River College. What you post online contributes to how the world – including future employers – sees you; so resist the temptation to post things that will reflect poorly on your “personal brand”. Once you post them, they're “out there”, for far more than your close friends to see. People who don’t know you will make judgments based on what you post – and that may not tell the whole (or even an accurate) story.

OK, gotcha. Watch what I say using social media, check. Case closed?

Not quite.

In an article in The Globe and Mail online, Elniski says he will continue to use online communications – “but he may have his comments vetted, possibly by government officials, before they appear;” for his part, Stelmach’s chief of staff says he’s going to “send a letter to Tory MLAs in the coming days about the dos and don'ts of using social networking websites.” Certainly, that might help reduce the number of similar embarrassments to the party in future – but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue of the MLA’s personal views and judgment. [For the record, Elniski has publicly regretted and apologized for the comments, and Premier Stelmach has clearly stated that the comments don't reflect "my values, they don't reflect the values of our government, they don't reflect the values of the caucus nor of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party."]

Historically, many Canadians have voted for candidates without ever having had direct contact with them; they voted for the ideas and ideals attributed to the candidates, but didn’t have much opportunity to get to know them personally. Now, social media tools like blogs and Twitter allow politicians more opportunities to speak directly to their constituencies without the filters of the mainstream media (or even, apparently, party brass); they allow people to get to know their representatives a little better on a personal level, for better or for worse. Today, if your candidate has a less-than-politics-friendly sense of humour, people are going to notice it.

Vetting politicians' blog posts and tweets may reduce the potential for online embarrassments, but if they really represent their views, they're just as likely to express them in other forums. New media and traditional PR tactics aside, the most important ingredient in any successful PR campaign is your product: if there are characteristics of your product your customers won’t like, the best PR strategy for the long term is to address them.