Fake Plastic Noodles

…just having a lovely time in London. You should consider my lack of posts a very good thing! Honestly, I’ve only been able to stop back at my friends’ flat for about an hour or so toward the end of the day, so there hasn’t been much time to do anything other than check e-mail, which sort of snaps me out of vacation mode.

Alright then, back to the pub ;-)

Ah yes, so if you missed my post a few weeks back, I’m on my way to London tonight. I’m taking along with me one of my girlfriends who has never traveled abroad, so it should be a blast. We’re staying with a couple friends and meeting up with many more, so I’m very happy that her first trip overseas will be authentic (or at least as authentic as it can be for two Americans walking around central London).

But with travel comes a bit of time-related stress. One of my little tips in staving off jet lag going 5 time zones forward is to get up at 5 am and immediately change my phone’s time setting 10 am. So as of my typing I’ve been up nearly 3 and a half hours, had some tea, painted my nails, went to breakfast and returned all my weekend e-mails. I’ll be sleeping like a baby on the plane.

Here’s to a safe and restful flight.

So one study comes out that says Facebook users in the UK have dropped for the month of January and all of the sudden we’re being egged on to agree that the site is pretty much dead, no hope of resuscitation, especially not for those over 25.

This is where I need an emoticon for eye rolling.

I think we’re making a mountain out a molehill here. We’re talking about a 5 percent decline - 8.9 million to 8.5 million - in users only the UK over a 30 day span. I hardly think that constitutes the death of an entire world-wide social network.

/end rant.

Photo by frankh, Creative Commons, Some Rights Reserved

A while back I wrote a post praising Lois Kelly for her list of “Five Ways to Make WOM Matter to CEOs,” a piece which focused on ways to curb a CEO’s skepticism of losing control of brand messaging online. She recounted a presentation she made about conversational marketing where executives in the room balked at the idea of abandoning control, calling it “irresponsible” and “possibly dangerous.” For those in digital PR, I’m sure this situation sounds pretty familiar.

Obviously losing control is a valid concern - after all, we’re in the business of crafting messages - but what I want to know is how in the world have the more traditional methods completely eluded the “lack of control” branding that digital can’t seem to shake off?

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve forgotten that there’s not a whole lot of control in offline PR either. Even though a press release is crafted with specific messages in mind doesn’t mean that once it gets out there, it’s not going to ripped apart in editorial and offline word of mouth. The only control we have is with the outlets we give that message to and it does not matter if those outlets are online or off. Once that message goes out, it’s gone.

The difference is that we are better able to gauge public feedback online - which can be a huge wakeup call for companies who have been largely unaware about what happens to their perfectly crafted messages once they get out into the unpublished public domain.

Skepticism of digital PR tactics is not about losing control of the message, it’s about staying in denial about what your target audience really thinks. While I maintain that a harmful online mention isn’t necessarily good news, isn’t it better to receive and learn from feedback from your target rather than sweeping it under the rug?

This definitely falls into the “perso” side of this perso-professional blog, but it’s a great Tuesday afternoon nostalgia clip. I dare you to hum along without having someone near you echo in the distance (à la The Office).

Surprisingly, horny 18-year-olds aren’t looking at as much porn as they used to, says a new study from Bill Tancer at Hitwise, opting for more social networking instead.

Trancer tracked over 250 of his Facebook friends (majority Gen Y college students) through Hitwise to find their surfing habits after they leave the social networking site. Overall, he found that after other social networking sites, the most clicked-on category of sites was search engines, which had 11.6 percent of all “downstream” visits. E-mail services were next at 8.5 percent, followed by blogs at 6.1 percent and traditional news sites at 1.5 percent.

Where it gets more interesting is when he breaks it down by age. Of his Facebook friends aged 18-24, after social networking sites, search engines were the most popular, web-based e-mail followed and in fourth place, porn sites. In contrast, with friends aged 25+, porn took second place, with search engines and e-mail following.

This development loosely correlates with what Tancer has been seeing: a decrease in visits to porn sites overall. Almost a 17 percent decrease to be exact.

If you chart the rate of visits to social-networking sites against those to adult sites over the last two years, there appears to be a strong negative correlation (i.e., visits to social networks go up as visits to adult sites go down). It’s a leap to say there’s a real correlation there, but if there is one, then I’d bet it has everything to do with Gen Y’s changing habits: they’re too busy chatting with friends to look at online skin.

I wish the study broke down more into gender. I think it would be interesting to track the habits of both men and women. Additionally, the study says nothing about under 18s, which I imagine still use porn as their window to the online world.

Hat tip to Daniel for the link

*Disclaimer added Feb. 13: This is all based on the idea that the day-to-day practice of pitching blogs won’t change much in the future. I don’t want to make any judgments on the theory the practice, which I imagine will change quite a bit.

If there is one fear I think a PR person who focuses on blogger relations has, it’s redundancy. With more companies conducting blog outreach programs in-house to save budget, it begs the question if blog outreach teams on the agency side will have a place in the future.

This is something I’ve thought quite a bit about seeing as how I don’t want to be out of a job in a few years time, and honestly, I do think there will always be a need for specialists in the field. Although, as one might expect, I think the dynamic and some could argue, effectiveness will vary greatly.

The Near Future:
In the next five years, blog outreach specialty teams will continue to be instrumental in the success of any digital campaign. They are the ones who hold the relationships, know how to talk to bloggers and get the results the client is looking for with a fast turnaround. I firmly believe that any company who just “goes out” with information to targeted bloggers today, however relevant they might be, will have less luck getting them to write about it than someone on a blog outreach team. At least that’s been my direct experience.

The Future:
However, blog outreach teams can’t stay in denial that they’ll always be the only ones who can deliver. True, they will always hold the Ace when it comes to longevity of the relationships, but I think we’ll start to see a loss of the stronghold over the mid to high-traffic blogs that established outreach teams have had so much luck with in the past.

As the blogosphere becomes more overrun with PR people both clueless and savvy, I predict that more of these sites (Mommy bloggers included) will close their doors to PR with a Boing Boing-esque no e-mail pitching, submission-only policy - even to their friendly PR contacts.

At that point, it’s the content that will reign supreme.

photo via Blaugh

The headline is taken from a Tweet from Busy Mom, who *full disclosure* is a blogger with whom my agency has worked with for many years on many campaigns. We love her :-) Anyway, as that came across my feed, I nearly jumped off my tissue-laden couch with an enthusiastic “YES! And thank goodness for that!”

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of weekend blogging. I’ll do it occasionally if it’s a fleeting thought or a mash-up of cool stuff, but if I have a really good idea I save it for Monday or Tuesday when more people are sure to read it, just like this post (although it could be argued if this actually is a really good idea for a post or simply a cop out post of a clever observation). Part of the reason is that I’m a believer in separating your mind from work as much as possible on the only two days off you have per week.

I was never sure others felt the same way though. When I would come in Monday mornings, my Bloglines would be chock full of tomes written on a Saturday afternoon. However, I’ve noticed in the past few months there have been fewer and fewer weekend posts from the PR blogosphere and at the same time, more and more Twitter action. I love it. Microblogging is perfect for those who want to get away, but just can’t seem to do it completely. It’s a small step toward complete Saturday and Sunday freedom.

Many thanks to Busy Mom for pointing this out. I hadn’t put two and two together on that one. Besides freeing up some time in checking feeds Monday morning, I’m just glad to see that people are taking a break from thinking too much about word-of-mouth trends, analytics or digital epiphanies on days when they should be mentally recuperating.

I started writing three different posts today, but couldn’t seem to finish a thought. It’s probably because I feel like crap. Last night I had a fever of 101F (What constitutes a fever in Celsius?), which I’m sure I can thank my flu-ridden coworker for. He’s responsible for skillfully wiping out half the office in two days. Thanks Pots :-P

I’ll be back blogging when I stop feeling like death warmed over.

An inebriated Bournemouth University student literally swallowed his house key in order to stop his friends from taking him home from a party on campus.  He had to let “nature take its course” in order to get it back because he couldn’t afford the £20 charge that his landlord would have charged him for a new one.  Wow.

Thanks Daniel!