I recently began a new Public relations internship with The University of Toledo.  It requires a good deal of writing for UT News and coming in I felt my ability to write was not up to par. I am constantly yearning to learn more about writing and public relations. 

I’m searching for more quality sites that can aid me in sharpening my skills.  I absolutely love being a PR major and want to succeed when I graduate.  Currently, I use www.prprotips.com and www.prweb.com but would love some more suggestions!

A study released this week outlines the 10 most important things that PR (educators) should be focusing on.

Compiled by Tom Watson, of Bournemouth University, the study appeared in Corporate Communications: An International Journal.

While there were only 31 respondents, from an original 44 who were approached, the study used the Delphi method, which is “characterised by a structured process of questionnaires or rounds of discussion until a group consensus is reached” (Beretta, 1996; Green et al., 1999), sort of process of elimination. Not rigidly academic, but nevertheless has been used in various professional.

So, according the the “experts”, the 10 things we should be considering are: 

1. Public relations’ contribution to strategic decision-making, strategy development and realisation, and efficient operation of organisations.

2. The value that public relations creates for organisations through building social capital and managing key relationships.

3. The measurement and evaluation of public relations both offline and online.

4. Public relations as a fundamental management function.

5. Professional skills in public relations; analysis of the industry’s need for education.

6. Research into standards of performance among PR professionals; the licensing of practitioners.

7. Management of corporate reputation; management of reputation.

8. Ethics.

9. ) Integration of public relations with other communication functions; the scope of public relations practice; discipline boundaries.

10. Management of relationships.

Then came: Client/employer understanding of public relations, The impact of technology on public relations practice and theory, The role of public relations in community/social responsibility programmes, International issues in public relations.

More PR at http://www.prlab.com.au

The anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd is clearly winning the PR ‘war’ in the Antarctic.

With access to satellite technology, a PR person in Melbourne to update material on line, and a media-accessible ship’s captain, the organisation is doing everything to textbook perfection. Or is it?

Horrific as whaling is, could it be possible we are being presented with too much of a one-sided story in this saga?

There are no journalists from Australian media organisations in the Antarctic. That would be impractical. So the media depends on images from Sea Shepherd. 

We saw two activists crew members being held by the Japanese after they boarded a Japanese whaler. But little mention was made of the fact it is illegal to board foreign vessels. In fact, it amounts to piracy. This is no way to excuse the whaling activity; merely to highlight the reporting imbalance that’s occurring.

The Japanese PR effort is being run by a New Zealander, a Maori, who also represents some Maori fishing interests. With many Maori opposing whaling, he’s starting to run into PR problems of his own. Some Maori want to dump him.

It’s interesting the Japanese hired a Kiwi to do their talking. Far better for their credibility to have one of their own. Their effort has been lacklustre. Then again, it’s pretty hard to compete against bloodied whale corpses.

Australian car manufacturer GHM stretched its credibility somewhat when it announced the third recall of its Commodore model – 86,000 of them, in fact.

The V6 vehicles are being recalled due to a potential fuel leak.

Company spokesman Ian Butler said it wasn’t unusual for a vehicle to be recalled three times.

Really?

This blog can also be read at http://www.prlab.com.au 

I wonder what the West Coast Eagles hope to achieve by conducting a week-long training camp in South Africa? According to news reports, they are there to either help expand the game (in a country that has next to no knowledge of AFL) or to do do charity work in “Durban township” (at least that’s what the ABC TV News called it).This trip is a nonsense. Certainly the Eagles must have more money than sense.I guess it’s a chance to search their souls (after a tumultuous period) as they strive to bring a sense of joy to the underprivileged black children they will encounter. But why couldn’t they do the same thing here? After all, charity begins at home. I’m sure the money they spent on airfares and accommodation could have been donated to a worthy Australian cause.

Whether you like it or not, the Ben Cousins saga continues. Because the West Coast Eagles and Cousins are such a part of the WA media landscape you can not ignore their antics from a PR perspective.

Cousins was supposed to vist Los Angeles for a second round of drug rehab. Instead, he went on a five-day cocaine bender (proven by LA 911 records).

Meantime, back home, the club continues to bury its head in the sand. In a TV interview, coach John Worsfold claims he knew nothing of the problems, which extend to other players. Sure, John. Pull the other one. Worsfold is no fool. He is a pharmacist by profession.

If the WA media knew of the players’ indiscretions (and they did, because I worked in it) he sure did – as did the club management, led by current CEO Trevor Nisbett.

However, they continue to deny any responsibility for the club’s problems.

This club needs a dramatic cultural shift, yet they persist with the old guard who have only contributed to the problem.

It’s not only Cousins that has to get with the “program”.

Wednesday I was fortunate to participate in a presentation with some great people in Rochester, NY at the HighEdWebDev conference. However, I was in Auburn, Ala. I joined the group via Skype.

The occasion was Dimitri Glazkov and Jeff Keeton’s session Post-Conference Workshop 2.0. Thanks for inviting me, guys. I joined, among others, “Web 2.0’s uncle Chris FactoryJoe Messina” for the approximately 20 minute Skype conference portion of their presentation.

During the questions, I was asked the always difficult question, “So, what’s next? What is the next thing on the horizon?” Well, if I knew (if any of us knew), we’d invest in it and reap the rewards. I did not have the answer, because I don’t know what is next. I’ll post some more thoughts on that, next.

The opportunity was fun. I’ve spoken to the Internet Professionals Society of Alabama (IPSA) in Birmingham for these guys. They are always very nice and really smart. So, I appreciate any opportunity to interact.

You may remember that I have written about their work before – My Opinion: UAB Is A Leader In Online Higher Ed Creative Marketing and PR. Their work is quite remarkable.

Now, I’m off to the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications Connect Public Relations & Social Media Conference in Athens, GA. This will be fun. Evyan Mischke, an Auburn alum, will attend along with Jackie, one of the students from my classes this semester. Also, Dr. Margaret Fitch-Hauser, the director of AU’s PR program, is also attending. They will beat me to the conference. I have a previous engagement Friday, so I’ll join the fun on Saturday morning.

Among the large list of presenters are some we have interacted with during our class blogging experiences. So, we will get to see Josh Hallett of Hyku and Voce along with Paull Young from Converseon. We’ve met both of these fine gentlemen before. But, this will be a first time face-to-face meeting for me with Constantin Basturea, Converseon; Kaye Sweetser, University of Georgia; and Walter Carl, Northeastern University (Walter’s blog). Katie Delahaye Paine, of KD Paine & Partners, I did meet – briefly – when I spoke at the PRSA Counselors Academy conference in Savannah. That meeting was so brief (at the very end of the conference), however, so I’m hoping this will be my first real chance to perhaps get to say hi and really meet KD Paine.

Congrats to Karen Russell for putting together this conference. They have already started their conference blog: UGA Connect. So, follow along as folks will be live-blogging the proceedings. Visit Karen’s blog at Teaching PR, too.

58 new bloggers will be kicking off their blogs this week. I will add them all to the the aggregator where you may easily view excerpts and links to their posts. Right now you’ll see a lot of “Hello World” posts, so be patient for their first posts which will begin shortly.

A different slant on blogging this semester will be evident in some of the blogs. The PR Survey Research group will post once a week. Their goal is to (a) find examples of research – or what is passed off as research – online and critique it, (b) identify best and worst practices, (c) look for transparency and evidence of methodology being clearly revealed, (d) critique the instrument and (e) general analysis of the value of the research effort.

An interesting part of this will be that the students currently do not know much about survey research. I willl be interested to see how their analysis improves throughout the semester. This puts a lil’ pressure on them, but also puts a great deal on me, too.

The PR Messages in Style & Design class will be posting to their blogs twice a week and each post must have a direct relation to current PR/Marcom issues and trends. I prefer that they focus on areas of PR/Marcom of particular interest to their future career paths, how they might implement new media/social media in practice, and what they feel are the most pressing issues for PR/Marcom, overall. Respectful, yet in-depth, critique and/or praise is expected in all of their observations.

This is not a pile-on aimed at Typepad and Six Apart. You may think it is, but that is not my intention. They are a company operating out in public. Their recent problems are common knowledge and there are lessons to be learned.

So, this most recent incident with their customer service failures offers an excellent opportunity to discuss the use of social media in crisis communication.

When will blogs not work?

Well, first of all – they won’t work if you don’t use them. In the October failure, Six Apart didn’t use their support blog – hardly at all. People were mad. They did do some emails to ’select’ customers. That just made some users even angrier. Then, it took them quite awhile to get around to addressing grievances. Certainly, their offer of refunds – and allowing users to choose how much they received – was a good move. It was just late in coming.

In the second episode, they did post a bit more in their “Everything Typepad” blog. They use that for support. As of today, they have not stated if they will be giving refunds again. One would think they will, but – just how much is all of this costing them? Will they be bold enough to this time give everyone the two days of service (plus a little more) off on their next bill?

However, that isn’t enough. The word “sorry” – as in apology – did not appear on their support blog until yesterday. That should be the first thing you say to your customers when you make a mistake. It was a nice apology, just too late. (See pull quote to your right.) Thdy did cause the mistake, even if they claim hardware failure as the cause. Among the steps they could have taken are (1) having redundant hardware on hand in case of a failure and (2) sufficiently testing the upgrade before implementing it. Sure, the cost may have been high for a redundant server(s), but what value do they place on their reputation and the best interests of their customers?

A simple first rule to remember? When the problem is one ‘you’ cause, then it is your responsibility to be proactive and go to the customers. Now, in a way they did do that with a message in their login area. If you wanted to get into your blog, apparently you were redirected to the support area – or, were given a brief message about the outage. I don’t know which (or if both) were applied.

Still, not enough. Why not have an email waiting – in advance – before someone goes to their blog? Seems like a simple and quick form of communication. They certainly have email addresses – probably ready to go (think billing) – for their customer base.

Is email the total answer? No. But it does show your customers that you are making all of the available efforts to reach out to them.

Is it really that hard? No. Can you tell me any other single tactic / strategy they have at their disposal to immediately contact all of their Typepad users? No. Or, maybe you can tell me yes on either (or both) of those options. I’d love to hear it.

They could even use SMS + RSS. And do it, for free! Again, make it opt-in/opt-out. The latest Yahoo! announcment (their new partners) makes it possible.

Further, in the time between October and the recent server crash, Six Apart could have instituted an opt-in/opt-out traditional email subscription process for any user that ‘does’ want to be warned – immediately – when the entire blog service goes down. Now, how hard would that be to implement? Really?

I posted a comment at JEremy Pepper’s Pop-PR Jots blog. It covers, what I think are some key failures in the Six Apart handling of the events. I honestly do not think they had any strategy in place.

That is strange considering they just had a similar problem in October. They had plenty of time to prepare a crisis communication plan in the interim. The comment points to specific instances of company leadership either sitting silent, posting places – other than at Typepad – and the most bizarre one … writing about music and other goofiness while it all happened.

When people praise some new tactic as a powerful tool, and pitch their services to business (as Six Apart has been doing) for all the great things it can accomplish for them – then, fail to utilize the great tool…. well, it is just mind-boggling. If you can’t put the products you pitch into useful practice, what kind of credibility do you have?

The following goes a bit deeper into specific examples of Six Apart’s failures. (Update: Just found where the comment was quoted at association inc. in a post by Kevin Holland entitled: Email Still Matters.)

This is the comment I posted at Pop-PR Jots:

Six Apart has not done enough to fully address their users.

Some examples.

Barak Berkowitz, Chairman and CEO of Six Apart, gave a very contrition filled nice explanation of the problems … in Debbie Weil’s CEOBlogWrite site, as a comment. It is not on the Typepad site. In fact, no explanation with any depth appeared until today, on their site.

Barak hasn’t posted one word on his blog since December 10, 2005.

Mena Trott is apparently still healing wounds from her Les Blogs meltdown. No posts from her since then.

Benjamin Trott has been writing about music and other such frivolities while this all came down.

MSNBC, Forbes and countless others pointed to them and said “failure” by pointing out their foibles.

A podcast with Technorati was their strategy for crisis response? Please.

They failed, again, to implement any customer base emails – on a wide scale – and although a bit better about posting to the support blog, they just dropped the ball again.

Why they cannot learn from these mistakes is a mystery.

Email could help. Offer an opt-in/opt-out support list for members to subscribe to for such instances.

Six Apart seems to think that the customers should come to them (visit the blog) when problems occur. When the problem is Six Apart’s, they should be proactive and go to the customers. The blog isn’t enough.

Disclosure: I do not use Typepad. I did use it for a ‘brief’ period. I could not justify the expense of the account while comparing it to a WordPress blog or a Movable Type blog (or any other, for that matter) that I hosted myself on some shared-hosting provider or my own servers. It just didn’t make sense – for me.

I am discussing this solely as a public relations best/worst practice issue. That’s all. I honestly wonder if Six Apart will ever create a crisis communication plan. We’ll see. Isn’t there a saying about bad things happening in threes? That is a funny blog, by the way. And, she appears to be a loyal Typepad user. Member since 07/2003

There was a little tiff between bloggers the other day. We’ll get to it in a bit.

The real story – the most telling bit of this whole story – is something off-topic that Steve Rubel let slip in the comments of the offending post.

He writes, “I don’t blog much on PR, you may have noticed. I’ll bore my readers.”

Are you as confused by that as I am?

It is remarkably telling since he had a tagline (when he posted that comment) that read, “Steve Rubel on how blogs and participatory journalism are impacting the practice of public relations.” (Wayback Machine. There are more recent caches, too.)

It now states, “Steve Rubel blogs on how blogging, podcasting and citizen journalism are impacting marketing communications.” Please note that he changed the tagline while the conversation in the comments thread was going on. So, blogs are persuasive in some instances.

Stuart Bruce has an interesting discussion of the flawed logic in Rubel’s supposed switch to Marcom as his main point of interest while claiming “I like to look at the broader picture…” Marcom is narrower. Marcom is the short-term (driving sales) offshoot of PR that avoids the longer strategic aspects of a campaign. In fact, many PR practitioners wouldn’t even call those campaigns. For definitions, check out this page at MarcomBlog.

Very confusing stuff from the PR Marcom uber-blogger.

Now, on to what sparked off all this talk about “trackbacks” on blogs.

Rubel accused Jeremy Pepper of trackback spam. He missed the point of Jeremy’s comment.

Jeremy was linking to an old post of his. The point was, “Steve, this meme is old.” I don’t call Pepper’s link a trackback. It was a point. A simple point. And one that was missed and blown all out of proportion.

Trackbacks. What are they? says they do PR. It is the first thing they mention in their “Services” area.

As an advocate, Rubel could do a fine job of it if he just took the plunge. Seriously. But, I don’t really know anymore if this is Steve’s blog, or CK’s blog. If it is his, it has his name on it, then what is the reason for not taking stands? If it is CK’s, do they not want the risk of contrary opinions? Edelman tackles tough issues with grace. But, who would fire Edelman?

The most recent stands I can remember Steve taking are the trackback misunderstanding and the idea that blogs will replace press releases. He also touted a blog – turned pressroom – his client created to serve as an online pressroom. Steve writes, “My client built this site entirely using TypePad.” Um, it may be TypePad, but that pressroom might as well be a static page.

The thing is, our students last semester created better ones – and did it for free. Ouch! Ya’ see, his customer’s blog didn’t have RSS, didn’t have contact information and didn’t have an email opt-in/out function for people to subscribe to the feeds / releases. My students did in their’s. They used WordPress.

The funny thing about all of this?

Steve claims that Jeremy was seeking traffic. He doesn’t need it. Come on. This is all quite silly. Neither of them need it. That post has drawn more comment traffic than most of his recent posts. 23 comments and 3 trackbacks at last count. Steve should be sending Jeremy a thank you note.

Steve and Jeremy, the best thing would be for both of you to put the personal difference aside and focus on the goals. Steal a scene from the old Saturday Night Live.

You guys should launch a group blog. You can be “Jane” and say, “Jeremy, you pompous gasbag.” Jeremy can be Ackroyd and say, “Steve, you ignorant slut.”

Think of the readership! I’d trackback to it.