Why, after 50 years, have news reports boiled down to this essential format?
As hilarious as this clip is, sadly I think it summarizes what has (unfortunately) probably become the best format for TV news, especially for those age 40 and above. It probably came about after years of research, or either reflects the best of what’s known about how TV viewers watch TV. Effective for today’s generation? No. But they’re not watching TV news.
What do you think?
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Tip: Blog something you know or created for another purpose.
Example: I was asked to compile a list of West Hawaii social media resources. Afterwards, I thought it might be good to share with you. If you have an addition, or would like to see something changed, leave a comment.
Changes in the way news is collected and reported isn’t just going through a phase, says Advertising Age columnist and author Bob Garfield, it’s changing the media and public relations industry in irreversible ways.
“It’s an actual revolution yielding revolutionary changes including, but not limited to, the disintegration of the media and marketing infrastructures that have worked in perfect symbiosis for almost four centuries.”
Garfield is author of “The Chaos Scenario,” which chronicles the disintegration of old media and offers ideas for what to do next.
Garfield’s remarks were reported in Public Relations TACTICS following a Nov. 11 luncheon. Garfield cautioned PR professionals that they better “shut up and listen” or the industry would be doomed. He refers to the business of listening as “Listenomics.”
“Every institution that has formerly dictated from the top down must begin treating its constituencies not as the anonymous hoi polloi, but as genuine stakeholders and partners,” Garfield said. The fundamental change in corporate culture and business practice is to LISTEN.
I think the TACTICS write-up shows PR professionals are recognizing the value of social media and will increasingly use it to improve relationships with stakeholders. And this will distinguish online public relations from online sales in 2010.
PR professionals will use social media to enhance and build authentic relationships and support all business-related functions, not just sales.
The opportunity for PR pros, therefore, is to showcase the value in ‘relationship-centered’ campaigns, which will increasingly define the the future of online PR campaigns. Since the core of each sales transaction is based on trust and credibility, PR pros will need to support a growing number of diverse relationships for their company’s brand — relationships that will help support the company’s sales, investor, employee and business development goals.
Garfield pointed to Lego Mindstorms as an example of an online community that volunteered to work with company executives and helped turn the product into the most profitable product lines in Lego history. It wasn’t because the company reached out to the group with the intention of making more transaction-based sales, but because Lego reached out to the group for their advice in developing a better product. The volunteers reinvented the brand, and the entire company benefited.
Everyone has their way of deciding who’s worth following on Twitter and why. Here are three ways to judge.
1. Ratios. These are wonderful ways to compare one aspect of a Twitter user to another. The most reliable ratio is “Followers” to “Following.” Divide the number of Followers by the number of people Followed. At a minimum, the number should be greater than “1″ and I prefer numbers closer to 2 or 3. Typically, the greater the number, the more influential the profile. Most news sites have higher scores. @abcnews follows 68 profiles (Jan 2010) yet has more than a million followers (14,700:1). TV news profiles get followers from widespread media exposure. Same with well-known authors, screen personalities and so on. Spammers will follow large numbers of profiles, knowing many of those profiles will follow back. Spammers almost always have low ratios of .985 or less because they are selling products and seminars. For them, the number of followers is all that counts — more followers = more sales. You can use ratios of 0.985 or less to gauge how likely you are to be “sold to.” Low numbers = more sales pitches; higher numbers, less sales. On average. Truly worthwhile “experts” will have ratios of 10 or more. That tells me they are getting lots of publicity through events, radio, seminars and are delivering outstanding value to their followers.
2. Quality of Followers. You’re about to pay $75 for Social Media traing when you decide to look at your speaker’s profile on Twitter. Do they have a large number of foreign followers? Particularly from India or Russia? This could be a sign they are paying sites to generate large numbers of “fake” followers — empty profiles used to pump up the numbers. Are a lot of the followers young, attractive women soliciting their companionship? Or are there lots of profiles selling vitamins and skin cream? Be wary of social media “experts” who excel at attracting spammers. Ask yourself, “how many of this profile’s followers are like me?” The more in common you have with the other followers, the more relevant the content will be for you.
3. Engagement. How often does a profile engage directly with their followers? I want to follow people who are reaching out to other people. I want to follow conversations. I want to see how people respond to content, and to each other. Some profiles have a policy of not following anyone, using their feed to strictly disseminate news. That might be fine for some, but it gives a profile an “old media” personality, the old-fashioned “one-to-many” model of so many newspapers. It’s like going to a cocktail party and having a guest just sit there and blather on and on about themselves. Isn’t the purpose of conversation to bounce ideas off of other real people?
How do you evaluate Twitter profiles? What tricks of the trade have you learned? Leave me a Comment to share what’s working for you.
