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I was talking to someone on Saturday who had been thinking about starting a podcast, but for whatever reason hadn’t reached a point where he was ready to pull the trigger. He did mention that he thought podcasting would be more comfortable for him, because he had tried writing a regular blog, and he was very self-concious about his writing ability, and he eventually lost steam on blogging due to his self-consciousness about his writing abilities. I can relate to that feeling of self-consciousness – not necessarily about my writing ability but more about revealing myself to anyone who should stumble across my blog online.

There have been numerous articles, including my blog posts ironically, about the importance for companies to participate in social media. It’s not all that hard to participate in Twitter – responding to people’s tweets, forwarding or retweeting other tweets, and posting links to interesting stories. In many ways, Twitter is akin to a high-volume broadcast version of truncated emails. And, ever since I got into PR in 1997 or so, I’ve lived and breathed email every day.

And, It’s not all that hard to participate in Facebook either. Posting photos, commenting on other people’s photos, posting links to interesting news articles, commenting on other people’s posts, and, of course, deleting over and over and over again people’s weird icons, sheep, mafia wars updates that come my way[this is not a sentence – I would reword this to make it into a sentence].

However, blogging, for me has been different. Over the years, I’ve often avoided writing a regular blog. Sure, I have had plenty of thoughts and opinions about public relations, technology, the impact of digital media on book publishing, etc., but for some reason a crippling modesty – or even shyness -– has kept me from blogging about my ideas. I’m certainly confident about my professional abilities – working with companies to identify the stories that they want to tell about their business and products, then distilling that information into timely, news worthy announcements designed to garner news coverage. And, I’ve always felt very comfortable stating my opinions to clients, giving them unvarnished feedback about their PR ideas and campaigns.

Yet, despite that confidence in my professional abilities, blogging felt foreign to me. I would try, and it would never feel “right” to me. The self-revealation aspect, posted online so that any one in the world could read what I’d written, constantly inhibited me.

Possibly it’s generational. I’ll be the first to admit that I consider myself on the cutting edge of technology and gadgets. I waited in line for an Xbox 360, a Wii, an iPhone, and other brand-new gadgets. Yet, the first computer I ever owned was a Radio Shack color computer – hooked up to an old television for a monitor.

While I’ve always embraced technology, the self-revalatory nature of blogging – while natural for digital natives – has felt awkward and presumptive to me.

Finally though, I realized I needed to join the online conversation more overtly by blogging on a regular basis. I can’t remember a specific watershed moment for my decision. It has been more of a gradual change and a constant process of reminding myself that I do have ideas to contribute (not to sound too much like Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley character on Saturday Night Live).

With all this personal background and info, I think it’s something to definitely think about as social media grows – some people for whatever reason are self-conscious about their social media participation.

Christopher S. Penn, one of the co-founders of Podcamp Boston, just blogged about a somewhat similar issue – breaking the shackles of your potential. It’s a great blog post that I recommend you take a look at.

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Here’s the TechCrunch article – Hey, Where’s The Twitter For Families – that I mention in the video.

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Bernays often indulged in PR “stunts,” a strategy that I’ve vociferously warned clients not to do. How hard is it to get a PR stunt on the Fox 5 Minute? What long-term value do you get out of that? How many people are going to think about your product or company from a 15-second blip on TV and radio, and maybe a photo online and in the next day’s newspaper.

Yet, like my recent post considering what Thomas Edison would be doing if he were alive and inventing today, I love playing “what if” and thinking about how various historical figures would act/react in modern situations.

Without further ado, here’s what I think Bernays would be doing.

1. Social media – Duh, you knew I was going to say that. Bernays would have loved Ashton Kucher’s race to 1 million followers. Because, regardless of what you think of Kutchner, he now has a media platform. An extremely valuable platform as detailed by Jason Calacanis.

I wager that Bernays would have cheered Moonfruit’s Macbook giveaway that made it to the top of Twitter trending topics.

2. Influencer marketing – whether it’s P&G pitching mommy blogs, or software companies targeting key vertical bloggers, Bernays would recognize the impact of influencer marketing on publicizing a product or shifting the conversation both online and off.

3. Politics – Unfortunately, Bernays used his skills at shifting public opinion for some questionable political causes, namely the United States – in conjunction with the United Fruit Company – overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemala. I think Bernays would be fascinated and a participant in today’s fast-paced political news cycle.

What do you think Edward Bernays would be doing if he were practicing PR now?

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However, within hours of launching the promotion, the producers of a new documentary accusing Starbucks of union busting, decided to hijack Starbuck’s own promotional campaign. They encouraged people to take photos of themselves with posters or other signs with negative messages about Starbucks’ anti-union activities and post them on Twitter using the same hash tags as the promotional contest. I’m sure there were some furious emails flying back and forth around Starbucks that day.

Here’s what companies need to realize about social media, and here’s what I would have advised Starbucks to do.

1. Don’t be surprised. Many people have been saying this for quite a while now. The era of one-direction messaging and marketing is gone. Gone forever. It’s not coming back. Your customers have a megaphone. Yep, those pain-in-the-ass, never-please customers can now shout their displeasure to the world. And, they no longer have to wait until they get back to their PC at home or the office. Now, they can grab their smartphone and start ranting seconds later.

This type of brand and promotional hijacking is going to happen – over and over and over. And companies need to anticipate and be prepared figure to respond – or ignore – those complaints.

2. Respond. You’ve heard pundit after pundit say that social media is a conversation, and you’ve heard them say too, “Join the conversation.” Well if someone has hijacked your contest, promotion, or new product launch, now’s the time to start talking.

I’m sure that somewhere within Starbucks (probably HR and Legal), they’ve already developed talking points about the benefits of Starbucks employment (better-than-average wages, healthcare from day one for part-time employees, etc.) Why not use those facts and talking points to respond to the people posting on Twitter?

And, just because the talking points came from HR or Legal, you don’t have to be stiff and corporate with your responses. Why not something like, “Our customers are passionate about coffee. @Starbucksunionbusters doesn’t think we’re doing a good job w/ our employees. Starbucks pays better-than-average wages, according to latest employment stats link – for more info.

3. Ignore them. What? We shouldn’t say anything? Yes, I’m saying that’s one potential strategy. Have you noticed one of Obama’s strategies thus far? He doesn’t often engage with his critics. He gives an exaggerated (what a nutcase) eye-roll, or he shrugs his shoulders. A one-sided argument or shoutfest will usually lose steam pretty quickly.

If you were sitting in Starbucks HQ watching those Twitter messages, what would you have done?

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What?

This just reeks of elitism, and is something I simply can’t understand. I’m sure there were plenty of people in 1993-1994 who were happily accessing text links online, and were horrified by the first graphical Web browsers.

Twitter is a fun, useful communications tool that has already proven its usefulness as a mass medium (many people were updating Twitter during the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008).

And, despite what some early adopters may think, I think more Twitter users will only enrich the Twitter conversation. In fact, if Twitter’s demographics explode, you’ll most likely see Twitter search reflect that changed demographic – tweets re: the new Tweetie for Mac app will be far outweighed by people Twittering about American Idol or Dancing With The Stars.

Regardless of what the dominant conversations on Twitter are, you’ll still be able to find people you’re interested in, talking about things that interest you. And, if you’re getting bombarded with @replies that you’d rather not deal with, you can always block. And, I think Twitter’s features for following, building, and controlling your groups of friends will only grow as the service matures.

If Twitter does continue to grow, will instantaneous customer service from Comcast, Zappos, and others be able to scale? There’s a huge emphasis right now on close-to-immediate responses from some large companies via Twitter. Will that be able to continue as the user-base grows?

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Joe Konrath, successful mystery writer and author of the popular Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series (published under the name JA Konrath), recently conducted an extensive digital PR campaign for a new book AFRAID, a horror thriller that is being published by Grand Central Publishing under the pen name Jack Kilborn. Konrath and his publisher decided to publish AFRAID under a pen name because the tone of the book was much more intense and shocking than his Jack Daniels mystery series. To try and jumpstart sales and excitement for AFRAID, Konrath began a blog tour on March 1st – four weeks before the publication of AFRAID on March 31st – the last day of the month.

Each day in March, Joe either wrote guest posts or answered interviews questions from a variety of blogs. Currently, since March 1st, Joe has been featured on more than 200 blogs. And, each day, Joe would post the links to that days interviews or guest posts on his popular blog – A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Prior to his blog tour, Joe posted on his blog and wrote of his plans in his email newsletter and asked for any interested blogs or podcasts to contact him for a guest post or interview.

Kilborn isn’t stopping with just digital PR though. In a few days, Kilborn will be leaving on a “signing tour.” He’s planning to visit more than 200 bookstores, winding up in Florida for the Romantic Times convention at the end of April. Kilborn won’t be conducting any formal book signings on this driving tour, he will be signing the copies of AFRAID that each store has in stock. However, Kilborn is using his digital connections for his book signing tour – he has issued a request via his website for fans to offer him a place to sleep each night while on his driving tour.

Results of Kilborn’s digital PR outreach for his new book AFRAID:

• Before his blog tour, Googling “Jack Kilborn” received 2,880 hits. Following the tour, “Jack Kilborn” has 15,600 hits in Google.
• Konrath’s blog averages 1,000 unique visitors a day, and he saw a slight increase in daily traffic during his March blog tour.
• The Amazon ranking for AFRAID changed from 1,200,000 to 2,000.
• AFRAID currently has 45 customer reviews on Amazon.com – much higher than most new mass-market paperbacks published by a first-time author.

Finally, I asked Kilborn about the future of digital book PR.

“I like blog tours. I think, ultimately, books and book tours will be digital. Your Kindle (or whatever the hot ereader is) will give tour updates, allowing readers to interact with authors while simultaneously downloading the book.

It’s going to be a fun future. ”

Social media book publicity - Jack Kilborn, Afraid

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And, of course, Joe Q Public is usually 4 or 5 circles – or more – behind. As an aside, I drink coffee and read my newspapers every morning at a small, country store/diner with mostly a blue-collar crowd. I always enjoy hearing and eavesdropping on their consumer habits – especially when it comes to online and digital. Needless to say, if I mentioned Tweets to this crowd, they’d look around for a bird.

That’s just a setup for mentioning Goodwill of Washington, DC’s success with a simple ole blog – running on Blogger nonetheless – not even a WordPress installation. It’s important to keep in mind the power of a good blog with compelling content -  especially when I’ve seen more than one person say that blogs are dead in favor of Twitter.

As detailed in this Search Engine Guide story, in June 2007 Goodwill of Washington DC decided to increase their social media strategy.

They had two goals for the program:

1. Transform their live fashion show into a virtual fashion show – to help drive traffic to Goodwill’s new eBay store.

2. Reach a younger, hipper audience online.

Em Hall, Goodwill’s retail marketing manager, wrote her first blog entry on the DC Goodwill Fashion Blog as the DC Goodwill Fashionista on July 12, 2007.

Check out these results so far:

• The blog now averages 3,500 unique vistors a week.
• 1 out of 14 people who read the blog clickthrough to Goodwill’s online stores – eBay, ShopGoodwill.com.
• 1 out of 6 people who visited the virtual fashion show visited one of the online stores.
• The blog rentention rate is over 60 percent.

All that from a targeted, well-written blog hosted on Blogger.com

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