And now I can.

BlogWell, a case-study rich half-day conference sponsored by the Social Media Business Council, is coming to Atlanta on Nov. 10. At the event, you will:

Learn how the biggest organizations succeed using social media with 8 practical, how-to case studies. You’ll learn everything including how to get started, how to get past roadblocks, and how to make your social media program phenomenal.

You’ll ask questions, network with lots of smart people, and walk away with fantastic, actionable ideas for your social media programs.

And those case studies? We’re talking Coke, HomeDepot, Newell Rubbermaid, UPS, Turner Broadcasting & others.

If you’re still not sold, watch previous case study BlogWell vids (here too) & imagine what more you might have learned if you were in that room to ask questions rather than watch the video months later.

I hope I’ll see you there — register today!

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Oh-by-the-way: In my Navy Reserve work, I’m now supporting the Navy’s Emergent Media Integration division at the Navy Office of Information; the Navy recently became a member of the SMBC. Even if I weren’t remotely in some strange way affiliated with SMBC, I’d still think BlogWell was thebomb.com .

Kaye D. Sweetser, Lance V. Porter, Deborah Soun Chung, & Eunseong Kim (2008). Credibility and the use of blogs among professionals in the communication industry. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 85(1), 169-185.

This study examines use, credibility, and impact on the communication industry of blogs as seen by professional journalists and public relations practitioners. Informed by the uses and gratifications perspective and using an online survey, the study used factor analysis to reveal simplistic blog use categorizations as being either interactive or noninteractive. Results also indicate that those who are labeled “high users” in both factors assign more credibility to the medium. Differences between journalism and public relations professionals were examined.

Other studies from this line of research include:

• Uses and Perceptions of Blogs: A Report on Professional Journalists and Journalism Educators
• Blog power: Examining the effects of practitioner blog use on power in public relations

In this paper, we compared 80 different blogs from gubernatorial, house, senate & presidential candidate blogs during the primary leading up to this November’s election. This paper focused on the female candidates and their use of blogs.

Thanks to Grady doctoral student Kristin English, we have video!

He’s basically been raised deeply immersed in the sailing culture, having been brought ‘home’ from the hospital to his parent’s boat then spent many days underway with his family sailing to port after exotic port. 

Zac’s documenting his (hopefully) historic trip on his blog at http://www.zacsunderland.com/blog/. 

Here’s a video from a Ventura County Star photographer covering Zac’s story.


Teen Chases Dream from jen edney on Vimeo.
 

If you have a question for Zac, you can e-mail it to zacsworldadventure@yahoo.com. He’s answering questions in just about every post. 

Sweetser, K.D., & Golan, G.J., & Wanta, W. “Intermedia Agenda Setting in Television, Advertising, and Blogs During the 2004 Election.” Mass Communication & Society, 11 (2), 197-216.

ABSTRACT: This study examined whether the candidate-controlled public relations tools of political ads and candidate blogs were successful in influencing the issue and news agenda of the major television news networks during the 2004 presidential election. Data showed strong correlations between blogs and the media agenda. Advertisements did not correlate with the media agenda. Cross-lag analyses showed that the media set the candidates’ agenda. The authors suggest intermedia agenda setting occurred as the media transferred their agenda to campaign blogs.

Keywords: blog, advertising, television, spots, ads, political communication, campaign, election, political public relations, intermedia agenda setting

My univerisity doesn’t have access to the most current issues of the journal online so I can’t download the PDF. If someone out there can & would be willing to send me the PDF then I would greatly appreciate it! If/when I get a PDF, I’ll post it here & on my CV page.

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This assignment is ideal for PR Writing or capstone Campaigns courses.

In this assignment, students experiment with engaging bloggers (or pitching to bloggers, though they don’t like that term!). Engaging bloggers must be personal, transparent and is often better received when you’re not even pitching anything from your company at all. Many social media PR practitioners suggest that instead of pitching bloggers to write about their companies, they instead build relationships with bloggers & talk to them about the industry or send them links to information that blogger might be interested in. Some practitioners never even mention their own company or product – if the blogger is interested, then the blogger will ask. Until then, it is just pure relationship building with one’s publics. This is a great opportunity to widen the student’s understanding of media relations. While bloggers may not have a large reach, they represent a specific niche that might be very interested in your organization and engagement could reap great benefits. NASA and U.S. Central Command both have well-known blogger engagement program, which have been known to lead to credentialing of bloggers and treating this group more like traditional media outlets.

If this assignment is used in a writing class, professors could ask students to write a proposed e-mail message to an appropriate blogger that deals with the assigned or selected client. The student would write the e-mail text and submit it to the professor as a graded assignment (not actually send it to the blogger!). If this assignment is used in a capstone campaigns class, students could be encouraged to engage bloggers as appropriate as a campaign tactic aimed building communities and informing publics on the campaign or a particular event. If this is the case, it is strongly recommended that the professor and client approve the engagement text prior to students engaging the blogger.

Warning: Engaging can be tricky, so it is recommended that professors and students read through all of the resources below before beginning this assignment. Bloggers are known to copy and paste an entire e-mail message (both good & bad pitches) to post them on their blogs. Additionally, transparency is a must: practitioners must practice ethical public relations at all times and identify one’s self as a practitioner for the organization. See the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s code of ethics for more on this.

Directions to student: Compose an e-mail message “pitch” to engage a blogger. The communication to the blogger should be personal and show that you know who he/she, have read the blog and understand what interests the blogger. One would never send a “form letter” type pitch to a blogger. Offer up information or resources – have a reason for e-mailing the blogger. The voice of this e-mail message should be informal but the content should be informative. The e-mail message should include at least one hyperlink and not appear too over-the-top regarding advertising or public relations. Use this as a personal platform to begin an unmediated, direct conversation with your publics. You may use the in-class resources provided, notes or the Internet for tips on writing a good blogger “pitch.”

> Learning objectives

• Practice relationship-building with publics
• Apply Web-writing composition techniques
• Diversifying “pitch”/outreach/engagement skill set to include non-traditional media sources

> Layout and content recommendations

• Indicate your organization’s name at the top of the page
• Before starting the e-mail pitch, provide a 1-2 sentence intro to instructor explaining the blog you chose to engage and why (this is not part of the pitch “e-mail” but provides context)
• Have a subject line for the e-mail message. Subjects should be short, yet informative. Make it relevant to what you talk about in the e-mail message (avoid “Question” or “Your Blog” as subject lines)
• Limit e-mail text to no more than 150 words (excludes intro statement, subject and URLs – this limit is ONLY on blog pitch e-mail text)
• Contain at least one hyperlink properly placed in the message. Note that many bloggers like to see the hyperlink first and so it is recommended that the first line of the e-mail contain any hyperlinks you may talk about later in the text.

> Tips and resources

• Clearly identify yourself as a practitioner from your organization, read Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics
• Show the blogger you know who he/she is by referring to past posts or general interests of the blogger
• Provide useful information or suggest a resource (it doesn’t always have to be about your company)
• Write it from a first-person perspective and make it conversational
• Try to humanize the organization
• Don’t PITCH — ENGAGE!
• Never ask the blogger to lie or misrepresent information or the practitioner as a source of information
• Compose well-written and properly formatted e-mail message
• See these resources for additional tips
  • http://marshallk.com/5-pr-pitches-the-good-and-bad
  • http://www.ensight.org/archives/2005/02/10/how-to-pitch-bloggers
  • http://www.ryanablock.com/archive/2006/12/how-not-to-pitch-a-blogger
  • http://mobhappy.typepad.com/russell_buckleys_mobhappy/2005/07/pr_solutions.html
  • http://www.globalprblogweek.com/archives/the_pr_lessons_of_a_.php
  • http://www.womma.org/blogger
  • http://badpitch.blogspot.com
  • http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001531.html
  • http://blogsurvey.backbonemedia.com/archives/2006/04/clicktv_pitch_p.html
  • http://dring.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/good-organization-bad-bad-pitch

> Grading rubric

When grading the blog engagement e-mail, ask if it looks or feels like a “normal pitch” that went to a group of people (without any personalization). If the answer is yes, then it is a very bad e-mail engagement (e.g., D or C for a letter grade). Frankly, what makes a bad pitch in traditional media relations also makes a bad pitch in blogger relations. Additionally, practitioners must identify themselves (their company), never ask someone to lie or hide anything & behave ethically at all times. If the blogger e-mail fails to adhere to these ethical standards, the student should be marked down. However, if it includes hyperlinks to third-party independent resources, talks about something the blogger has said on his/her blog and seems to be a very personal e-mail offering up information or helpful resources the blogger may want access to then it is likely excellent (e.g., A or B for a letter grade). Blog pitches have to be personal – you can’t write one and then send it to 10 people. It is highly recommended that prior to grading the blog pitches, you read over the recourses in the tips section above because it shows examples of pitches gone wrong and those well done.

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This assignment is ideal for PR Research, PR Cases Studies, Administration and to use for the research function of capstone Campaigns courses.

In this assignment, students monitor the online conversation occurring about an organization on posted by that organization’s publics (i.e., environmental scanning of blogs for discussion of company issues). Adoption trends show that the number of people reading blogs jumps each six months and more than half of journalists turn to blogs for sources, story ideas and to “break scandals.” Academic research finds that people who read blogs cite them as credible sources of information and there are several notable anecdotes about stories jumping from blogs to the mainstream media. As such, it is important for public relations students to learn how to monitor blog and other social media content in a systematic way that provides the same insight that more traditional environmental scanning methods do. Remember though, these scans are good only if they include the entire online world — don’t just look at blogs but include microblogging sites like Twitter, and multimedia sites like YouTube or Flickr.

Directions to students: Many people will discuss your organization and its products/services on their own Web sites, outside of traditional media. Just as it is important for you to know what the media and your community are saying about your issues and organization, it is important to know what is being said in social media sites like blogs and message boards. In this assignment you will listen to the “cyberchatter” about an assigned client for one week. During this time you will (1) monitor social media sites, (2) assess the importance/impact of each site that discusses your organization and (3) write a short analysis of the week’s conversation. Additionally, you may make suggestions for action or engagement based on this analysis.

> Learning objectives

• Apply environmental scanning and issues management approaches to non-traditional information sources
• Practice research skills in diverse information environments
• Connect environmental scanning practices with emergent technology
• Familiarize yourself with potentially powerful, persuasive and relevant conversations occurring about your organization outside the mainstream media

> Layout and content recommendations

• Assign a client to students or allow them to pick their own clients (suggest large Fortune 500 companies)
• Identify key search terms with students for their client. Don’t just rely on the organization’s name. Include CEO, product names, issues and common misspellings for associated organizational terms.
• Demonstrate key word searches on various blog search engines like IceRocket, Technorati, blogsearch.google.com
• Show students how to set up Google alerts on key words
• Explain RSS feeds, how to identify them, subscriptions & readers such as BlogLines or Google Reader (note: you can do an initial search on the blog search engines & then subscribe to that search to make life a little easier)
• Explain tags (often used on blogs, Flickr, YouTube, etc)
• Explain that blog site importance/impact can sometimes be determined through reading the “about” page of the blogger and reading the comments on posts

> Tips

• Monitor inbound links to the company’s Web site through Technorati or IceRocket and by typing link:url (with url being your company’s URL) into Google
• Do Web searches on the company name (including common misspellings) and products/services
• Start with quality search terms
• Follow key words on Twitter
• Always follow links in a blog post – the link may contain all of the meaning
• Always read all of the comments on a blog post – the post may appear neutral then the comments might contain a heated discussion
• See these resources for additional tips
  • http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/blog_monitoring.html
  • http://www.globalprblogweek.com/2005/09/21/wyman-reputation-management/
  • http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001728.html
  • http://hyku.com/blog/archives/000189.html
  • http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/05/354.html
  • http://radiofreeblogistan.com/2005/04/29/assessing_blog_authority.html

> Grading rubric

When grading the online conversation monitoring report, treat it much like you would any traditional environmental scanning report. The only difference here is that the net for area to be monitored is cast much wider. The best thing a student can come away from this assignment understanding is that one is always monitoring one’s organization – and it is important to add social media sites to this list of sites monitored. Once systems are in place (e-mail alerts, etc.) the work is streamlined and much easier.

Not to diminish the work of Talking Points Memo’s Joshua Micah Marshall or his recent honor of the Polk Award for excellence in investigative journalism (because I really do think it is great) — but I just find it interesting that a blogger that wins such an award is actually a “real journalist” anyway.

I found out about this story the old-fashioned way. I was making copies at work & my colleague Dr. Hugh Martin, a journalism professor, came up to tell me about this. Hugh gave me a run-down on the history of the award & its importance in the journalism community. When he told me a blogger won this year — & the story about how that blogger had basically employed his army of readers to sift through public record materials to get to the bottom of a story — I was not as amazed at the story of bloggers & readers uncovering a story as I was of the journalistic community actually embracing it! Not *that* was news!

Then Hugh told me the name of the blogger & I realized: False alarm. This wasn’t the earth shattering event I had thought it was. They had picked the “safest bet,” one of their own if you will.

Is this what some have called “a landmark day for a certain kind of journalism?” Ehhh. Not so much.

Don’t mistake me, I really am thrilled about the award & marvel at the ingenuity of a blogger to use his readers to help get to the bottom of a story. But is a “blogger” who wins an important investigative journalism award the coup I thought it was? Not when that bloggger was already a card-carrying member of the industry already.

Thanks to: Dr. Hugh Martin for telling me the story & socialmedia.biz for blogging about it this morning to prompt this post I had planned.

Sweetser, K.D., & Kaid, L.L. “Stealth Soapboxes: Political Information Efficacy, Cynicism, and Uses of Celebrity Weblogs Among Readers.” New Media & Society, 10, 67-91.

This study tests the effects of personalized and `stealth’ political discourse on weblogs (or blogs) and the repercussions on levels of political trust, information efficacy and political uses/gratifications. By surveying readers of three different blogs (N=1838), this study identified significant effects as a result of exposure to political statements on blogs. Indeed, there were differences in the levels of political cynicism depending on how political statements were communicated. Readers of non-political blogs were more confident in their level of political information and their ability to participate in politics. Finally, political uses/approaches and avoidances were examined, as were differences based on gender and age.

Keywords: blog, celebrity, cynicism, Internet, online, political information efficacy, uses and gratifications

My univerisity doesn’t have acces to the journal online so I can’t download the PDF. If someone out there can & would be willing to send me the PDF then I would greatly appreciate it!

Slowly but surely the press releases are being posted on the Grady College Web site … so far you can find out about the party school experiment or how the candidates used dialogic communication in the primaries on their blogs.

If you can’t wait to find out more about the other 3 projects, check out my Facebook:

• Atlanta-based PR pracititioners’ use of social media
• dialogic analysis of primary candidates’ blogs
• experiment testing credibility of crisis alert systems at a university
• impact of “party school” image on a university’s image
• uses and grats examination of media (video, music) downloading

Enjoy their research!