ARTICULATED

More and more I find myself having conversations with traditional Washington, DC public affairs types who have come to recognize, thankfully, that social media should probably be at least a cog in the wheel of their next campaign. But the beliefs about what commitment of effort and resources will check that box often falls way short of what will actually generate impact.

If you’re one of those, you might be inclined to do any of the below three things.  Don’t.  Because they’re not good enough:

1.  Slap a Facebook logo on the campaign website. Surround it with the words, “We’re on Facebook!”  Link it to a stagnant Facebook page that parrots your very corporate campaign messages. Never look at that Facebook page again.  Don’t designate anyone’s time to cultivate and participate in issue-dialogue on it.  Don’t invest resources in thinking up and pursuing desired conversation “tracks” that are appropriate for that community and might really get people interested.

2. Set up a Twitter account with your corporate or campaign logo as your picture. In the bio area, write “This is the corporate account for Acme Corporation.”  Then log on about once a week, blurt out a campaign message, then log off.  Fail to commit someone’s time to carefully searching Twitter to see who is talking about your issue.  Fail to follow those people, then watch them, then engage them so they might ultimately actually listen to what your campaign has to say.

3. Set up a blog then fill it with corporate-sounding press releases. Rename your campaign’s “News Releases” section a “blog” because it sounds newfangled.  Fill it with anonymous repetition of corporate messaging.  Update it randomly if at all.  Avoid investing time in an editorial calendar.  Fail to identify a very human author.  Avoid the inconvenience of thinking through and specifying the blog’s “voice.”  Don’t allow readers to comment on posts.  If they do, ignore them.

Congratulations for understanding that, depending on your issue and effort, there is much wisdom to thinking about what social media strategy could do for you.  But it’s got to be a strategy, just like your earned media or lobbying component.  That means some resources have got to be put behind it.  Then you might find some real results.  Best of luck.

My Facebook presence is intentionally more open than closed. I like it that way. I believe the power of the social web is the sum total of countless individual choices to be transparent.

But over the weekend, someone who I haven’t spoken to in 20+ years wrote something dreadfully inappropriate on my Wall. The bizarre, erratic comment spent seven minutes in view of the world before I caught it, deleted it, and blocked the perpetrator.  In that short time, on a Saturday night, the comment may have gone unnoticed.  That would be a lucky break — it would have been offensive to just about anyone.

I’m trying to figure out what, if anything, I should do to inoculate against such an incident in the future. I don’t really want to lock down my Facebook Wall. I can’t really imagine such a thing happening once, much less twice. But if it did –- and if I didn’t catch it — it could be really unfortunate.

This is a great blog post from Dave Fleet on how to approach social media as part of marketing, communications and public affairs campaigns. There’s a lot of advice out there on this topic, but I find this one particularly good.  For instance, check out these tell-tale signs that a social media campaign has been approached with the wrong mindset:

• A short-term focus, often manifested in a desire for “disposable properties” and a reluctance to sustain any kind of presence after the end of the campaign.
• The desire for campaign-based tactics with no existing presence of any kind.
• A one-way broadcasting focus, aiming to blast messages out to the target audience.

If you’re interested in the topic, it’s definitely worth a read.

In a couple of short months, business has gone from unsettlingly slow to crushing. It’s been upwards of a year since I’ve had so much work to do that I have approached being overwhelmed. Even the timeliness of updates to this blog is suffering from the deluge.

I don’t know that this run will continue through the summer, but it might. As I posted on Facebook earlier this week, let me count my blessings that at this moment, in an economy that is not quite recovered, I am among the lucky ones.

I met with Willie Brown last week, former mayor of San Francisco and former speaker of the California Assembly. He’s a living legend. He grew up in East Texas just like me (well, before me …).

He was everything I had imagined. Eloquent, purposeful, precise, commanding, and extraordinarily charismatic.  And no surprise, he was decked out in one of the most stunning suits I’ve ever seen. Wearing the absolute nicest suit I own, I felt like a slob by comparison. I wanted to ask him where he got the amazing garment, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to shop there even if he told me.

As a 16 year old supermarket clerk long ago, I learned that groceries are to be bagged in a thoughtful manner. Frozen foods go with other frozen foods. It’s OK to throw in some dairy, as long as there’s not enough dairy to fill its own bag. Non-food things like dish detergent and soap go together. Dry goods such as boxes and cans should share a bag. Produce goes with other produce, of course. Bread and eggs ALWAYS go together. Fresh meat goes ONLY with other fresh meat; and if it’s leaky, it should be wrapped.

I learned that when we do this, customers feel treated well. They come back to the store again and again, the store makes more money, and I get to keep my minimum-wage job.

But somehow over the years, that basic principle of grocery-store marketing has been lost. I suppose that if I patronized a supermarket where I could easily bag my own groceries – which I’d prefer – it wouldn’t matter. But my neighborhood Albertson’s is one where items cross the scanner and go directly into bags without ever leaving the cashier’s hand.  Loyal as a labrador, I keep going back for more.

Mind you, I’m not entirely resigned to my plight. Lately I have become incredibly precise in how I place my items on the conveyor belt. I place them in such a way that they cross the scanner in the exact sequence that they should go into bags. Cans and boxes first. Six or so inches of space, then the group of cold items. At the near-end goes the fruit and vegetables, from firmest to softest. Then bread and eggs to finish it off.

Obviously, my objective is to make it as easy as possible for the checkout clerk to bag the groceries properly. But they never do.

Working for new client Rose Community Foundation, I played DC tour guide earlier this week for the superintendents, teacher-union heads, and other leaders of five Colorado school districts, including its three largest. Each of them are amid innovative experiments in teacher-pay reform and went to Washington to tell what they’re learning. I was unsure what to expect, but I was quite taken by the reaction from leaders of the U.S. Department of Education, education-focused members of Congress and staffers, and noted think tanks.

Congress, the Obama Administration, and those who advise them are trying to figure out how student achievement should be reflected in teacher compensation — a thorny issue, to be sure. After hearing about the groundbreaking work happening in Colorado, many of the folks we met with expressed genuine appreciation.  They were reminded of how Americans in locales far and wide are blazing trails on real issues — issues around which Washington’s grappling tends to be more academic. They were riveted by the on-the-ground perspective. I was thankful they were so attentive to these local leaders who took time out of their busy lives to make the trip.

My little role was to add education-focused journalists to the mix. We secured briefings for the teachers and superintendents with USA Today, the Washington Post, the National Journal, and others. All were equally surprised by what is happening in our great state, and equally grateful to now know of it.

Public relations people of the world, I’d like to make a counterpoint. I’d like to defy the advice we’ve all received from so many reporters and very sage fellow PR practitioners. If you must, go ahead and pitch that story.

We’ve all been in the situation. The client or the head of marketing or the CEO is absolutely certain that Metropolis Daily would write about so-and-so if only we would ask them to. Mr. CEO says, “You need to send them a press release. You need to get Jane Reporter to write about us. What we’re doing here is different and interesting.”

You smile and nod politely, imagining drying paint. You respectfully note that the story idea lacks a timely peg. You advise Mr. CEO that neither Jane Reporter nor Metropolis Daily has ever written such a piece. You suggest that Metropolis Daily might find what we’re doing less interesting than we do.

You explain that if we did X or Y or Z, that might be news, and thus might get us a story. You even volunteer to help.   But you advise him that we’re headed down a dead-end road.

In response, Mr. CEO says, “If I want s%*t from you, I’ll squeeze your head.  Now go do it.”

You imagine the reporter’s condescension, and you grimace. You’re certain that if she doesn’t already think you’re stupid, she will now. You wonder how much money Mr. CEO makes. But you swallow your pride, call that reporter, and pitch the story like you mean it … because you really have no choice.

Lots of industry commentators would call you a bad PR person for it. But are you? After all, the opinion of the person signing your check matters far more than the opinion of some journalist who will probably be rude to you whether your story idea is newsworthy or not. I’m all about integrity in PR. But sometimes you just have to do what The Man or The Woman asks, and you don’t owe anyone an apology for it.

My other half was blessed with a whip-smart, often bone-dry sense of humor. It keeps me in stitches.

Recently, I read a Denver Post article about a prominent philanthropist who is buying a colossally big estate, one that is a major, high-profile local landmark. I asked Dennis, “Why do you suppose that guy would want to live in a 33,000 square foot house?”

He thought for a second, then offered flatly, “Maybe he’s Batman.”