It was a sobering experience, and just goes to show you how fast things are changing, and how much they are changing.
Wanting to do some market research on the cheap, I asked my friend, a CTO for an online media startup, about his reading habits, and more specifically, how he stays up-to-date on the latest technologies.
Nominally, I wanted to find this information out for a new business pitch targeted to a vendor of high performance computing and storage solutions. But I guess I was also curious in general, and a little afraid of his answer.
As it turns out, Scott no longer relies on the enterprise trades or really any print publication. Instead he spends most of his time on Popurls, a mother of all meta sites.
Popurls gives you an at-a-glance look at the top stories and buzz of the day by showing what is being featured on sites like Techmeme, Digg, Reddit, Google News, TechCrunch, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc., in a very digestible and easy-to-read format.
I pointed out to Scott that this site just aggregates information, and the articles he reads there, and relies on to stay informed about the latest Web infrastructure technologies, originate from some other source, be it a blog or publication. This seems obvious to me, and likely would be to others in PR, but to him it was a minor detail and the name of the publication or byline was almost incidental. In fact he could not think of the name of a specific blogger, reporter or publication that he favors.
I discussed this phenomena – the obfuscation of underlying sources due to how information appears online – in my post A Publication of One, although the example cited there was Google.
Although this was just one person, it seems obvious that PR people need to factor in news aggregation and sites such as Digg, Techmeme, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Popurls in the PR mix – what do these sites mean for the reading habits of our target audiences, and how do we deal with them in our PR programs?
The above is one glaring example of the impact of social media on tech PR. Here are some secondary trends to watch out for:
Transparancy Giveth what Transparency Takes Away
Much has been written about how blogging is driving a new ethos of corporate transparency. This is all over PR blogs and I won’t belabor the point here (please refer to the famous book Naked Conversations about this trend).
To PR people, what this has generally meant is an upending of the communications equation as information becomes much harder to control. It is harder than ever to stage the release of information and successfully execute exclusives or contain crises, as examples.
If you read this blog you know I am an eternal optimist and always try to find the silver lining in the clouds.
The silver linings here are the following:
Transparency is in general a good thing for businesses; it helps build trust and humanizes corporations. Is it possible that the move towards increased transparency will lead to more of a laissez faire attitude towards customer testimonials? When most of the denizens of Corporate America are buzzing on blogs or social networks about the products they use at home and at work, it becomes harder to justify the cloak and dagger secrecy most are sworn to uphold with regard to the press when it comes to the vendors their employers work with.
The flip side of the diffiiculty in keeping secrets is that those who can keep a secret will be at an advantage. People want to keep their blogs buzzing and one step ahead of the pack, and if you have some juicy info that others just can’t have, and you and your team have the discipline to keep the cards close to the vests, well that is a recipe for keeping people tuned in and guessing.
Who will be Your Next Agency Hire?
A top media strategist? Someone with both agency and client-side PR experience who has the journalist rolodex and can write and speak well?
Increasingly, agencies will be utilizing new technologies and hiring people that can elevate digital content and help establish on line presence: people with SEO, Web design and database development and analysis skills. This is already happening, and the forward thinking agencies are adding these people and bringing tech further into the PR mix.`
