PR & New Media Summit Panel

Just back from Frocomm's 2nd Annual PR & New Media Summit where I was on a panel with Steven Noble, Walter Jennings and Nick Hodge talking about how the Web is changing communications for PR practitioners.
An interesting session (wish I'd had time to stay longer) but I'm afraid we didn't get round to talking about some of the questions raised so, since I haven't blogged quiet in a while, I thought I'd give them a go here.
Q: How do I find out what’s being said online?
I find Google News Alerts and Google Blog Alert deliver most of what I need. For Twitter I use Twitter Search. I don't (yet) feel a need to monitorFacebook (happy to be proven wrong there).
What is interesting though is that I find my social networks actually help me keep in touch what's happening. It doesn't take long for friends to pass on any news I might have missed.
Update: Forgot to mention wotnews, formerly Plugger, an excellent aggregrator of Australian on-line news. Thanks for the reminder Stephen!
Q: How do I integrate digital/online into my PR/comms?
I'll answer that from a practical perspective. For me, the Web-site is the platform from which everything else grows and, since RSS is the glue that binds social networks, the first step I took at the law firm was to add RSS feeds to key pages on our Web-site and build from there.
Q: What platforms should I consider?
I'd say try as many as you can but concentrate on as few as you dare. Many, if not all, social networking tools are free, so the opportunity cost involved in testing them out is negligible. Each tool or community is different, some will suit some organisations and not others and the best way to find out is to try it for yourself.
Q: How do I sell online to a cynical CEO?
I'm fortunate, the firm I work for has innovation as one of its core values---has consistently used technology to increase productivity since it was formed in 2000---and prides itself on delivering an 'intelligent alternative' to other large law firms.
But it is important to have champions within the business and we have a strong one in the Sydney Chairman, Nick Abrahams. We took the view early in last year that, if we were going to be talking to clients in relation to Web 2.0 we had to be walking the walk as well as talking the talk.
Q: How do I blog and make podcasts?
There are several low cost off the shelf blogging tools available. As for podcasts, I'd suggest the first thing to do is to be sure that a podcast is the right vehicle for you. I've posted my thoughts on vodcasts earlier.
There were some interesting issues raised on the panel but I might save those for another post.

Dell, mini-notebooks and social media

You know, there are times I miss working at Dell -- and today is one of those. Take a look at this story from the Wall Street Journal but don't just read what the journalist wrote, read the comments like:

"Lionel Menchaca, and the rest of the Dell blogger team, are the best example of consumer outreach and engagement."

I've read dozens of comments like that in blog posts, stories about social media and even a recent episode of This Week in Tech -- and I haven't even really been looking.
It's hard to believe the team there has gone from this rocky first week to that WSJ story in just two years -- I don't think they get enough credit for it in PR circles.
Of course there are probably many more negative posts from people who haven't had a great Dell experience. But to me the point is no company is perfect, people and businesses make mistakes, and Dell's really succeeding in identifying and doing something about them.
Of course, the other thing I'm really missing this week is my staff discount now that images of the the upcoming Inspiron mini are out (kudos to David Flynn, the only Australian reporter to meet with Michael Dell in Austin this week, his take on the mini is here).

Tough couple of days for some people

First Apple's PR machinery caught on tape then Apple’s Social Media Hell - Why it Needs to Repent.
NB: In the interest of disclosure, I work for a competitor.

Who do you trust?

Whether it’s our traditional distrust of authority or a symptom of the tall poppy syndrome, it appears bloggers are Australians’ least trusted information source. A September study by the local arm of Edelman PR found Australians regard bloggers as far less trusty-worthy than mainstream or Web-based media with a rating of only three per cent (interestingly, it’s silent of the subject of surveys by PR firms ;-)
2007 Edelman Stakeholder StudyTrust at the Crossroads in Australia
Am not sure if the statistic says more about Australians or Australian bloggers, and one data point does not a trend make, but it’s been a useful reminder to me that the growth user generated content (am not sure if that’s this week’s buzzword, heard a marketer call it ‘open source’ recently) is proceeding differently here than in the US (I suspect that’s true of other countries).I suspect the answer to the $75 question is that we Aussie don’t trust bloggers yet because we don’t know any -- analyst and Herald columnist Graeme Philipson wrote about the relative lack of blogging in Australia a few months ago in this column, and here’s a post from a leading Aussie blogger Ross Dawson on the subject –- though I’m not quite sure I can trust what a blogger says ;-)