Last week I chaired a ‘Thought Leaders’ event at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) in London where I interviewed Tom Foremski who became the first major journalist to quit mainstream media to make a living from blogging when he left the Financial Times to found Silicon Valley Watcher.

The event did leave me with some optimism that corporate media – that is companies paying real journalists to do real reporting – might be one future for quality journalism. Where I wasn’t so optimistic was where the next generation of quality journalists will come from. The traditional training ground was local newspapers and their decline mean opportunities for that crucial early learning are becoming rare. Some see the plethora of blogs and websites covering every conceivable subject area as being the alternative. I’m not convinced as they don’t have the seasoned old hacks who can teach the tricks of the trade. And I don’t mean fiddling expenses or hacking phones, but the old journalistic craft of knowing how to sniff out the truth in a story. How to check and double check the sources and facts. How to write well (and it’s not being pedantic to say that means good grammar, doesn’t need perfect grammar).

We explored a wide range of topics including content, corporate media, ethics, reputation, SEO, ‘Every Company is a Media Company’ and ‘brand journalism’ (we both hate the term).

As I was chairing the event and interviewing Tom I didn’t take any notes or record the conversation. However, I’ve captured some of the best tweets in Storify. If the embed doesn’t work for you then you can see it on the Storify site here.

On Wednesday May 8 I’m looking forward to speaking at a special event with Tom Foremski looking at ‘Can corporate media support serious journalism?’

The session is at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) head office and sponsored by content sharing technology provider PressPage which has posted a social media news release:

Can ‘corporate social media’ support serious journalism?

As everyone now has access to an online printing press that can potentially reach tens of millions of people, corporate media -the next step up from brand journalism- is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

PressPage, the leading provider of content sharing technology, and the CIPR are co-hosting a session on May 8 in which Tom Foremski and Stuart Bruce will explore the role and possibilities of corporate media.

As traditional media outlets shrink, corporations are stepping up their own media creation efforts. Some are starting to produce serious journalism.

During this Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) hosted session, Tom Foremski and Stuart Bruce will explore four important questions that are facing so many communications departments today:

• What’s the role of corporate media?
• Will the rise of corporate media serve society, or hinder it?
• Could corporate media become the new funding model for serious journalism?
• Could corporate media win a Pulitzer?

Interested in joining this CIPR event? Register here.

“Back in 2008, Tom’s initial ideas about the digital press release was a main inspiration for the PressPage founders. It is really exciting to see how his research and ideas are evolving towards corporate media,” said Bart Verhulst, Co-founder and CEO of PressPage.

“Stuart Bruce is the éminence grise of online newsroom technology. Having Tom’s ideas on corporate media translated into practical implementation is an exciting idea,” said Roel Cozijnsen, PressPage’s General Manager UK

About Tom Foremski

Tom Foremski is the founder and Editor of the popular and top-ranked news site Silicon Valley Watcher, reporting on the business and culture of innovation.

In May 2004, Tom became the first journalist to leave a major newspaper, the Financial Times, to make a living as a full-time journalist blogger. Tom has been reporting on Silicon Valley and the U.S. tech industry since 1984. His current focus is on the convergence of media and technology—the fuel for a new era for Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has become Media Valley, and this is affecting businesses worldwide

Foremski is also the originator of the ‘Every Company is Media Company‘ concept and actively researches the role and possibilities of ‘corporate media’.

About Stuart Bruce

Stuart Bruce MCIPR is an international trainer and consultant specialising in digital corporate communications, online PR, digital public affairs and social media for private sector and government clients in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. He is a part-time lecturer to post-graduate and under-graduate students at Leeds Metropolitan University and one of the authors of Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals.

He is a CIPR national council member and a founder member of its social media panel. He is regularly listed in PRWeek’s Power Book of the UK’s top 1% of most influential PR people and is also a frequent speaker at international PR and communications conferences. Stuart was one of the world’s first PR bloggers and has been writing stuartbruce.biz for almost 10 years.

About PressPage

PressPage offers a social media release and newsroom platform to PR agencies that can be easily branded and seamlessly integrated into the websites of an agency’s clients. The platform gives PR agencies the opportunity to create, manage and track rich multi-media (press) messages with direct integration to and from social media platforms.

PressPage partners with PR agencies, providing them with the technology to make the most of the content they develop for the brands they work with. The secure technology, enables agencies to deliver a newsroom for their clients without needing access to other parts of the website. As well as integrating with social media platforms PressPage’s technology also enables agencies to share content with clients for approval before it is published and to make changes in real time. The agency is able manage multiple client sites through a single portal while limiting access rights to those who need them. It also has the ability to collect data from users and deliver measurement.

PressPage has partnered with leading PR agencies worldwide who have integrated it into their offer for small clients through to multinationals. PressPage is also a preferred supplier of the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) and a partner of IPRA (International Public Relations Association)

Two of my questions are around its implications for both PR professionals and for social media. One fear is that Leveson will point the finger at PR professionals and implicate them in some of the worst that has gone on. I believe that this will be a mistake. There are lots of examples of poor – and even corrupt – PR practice, but there are also lots of ethical PR professionals. PR professionals that are CIPR members and abide by its Code of Conduct. The report will undoubtedly find that there are corrupt and unethical journalists, but it should also find that the vast majority of journalists and ethical.

The question of social media is will Leveson recommend regulation or control for ‘citizen journalism’ and user generated content.

Some of these tips I talked about yesterday, but others are new as time didn’t allow me to cover everything.

Think online first

1) Know how newsrooms work today and don’t ignore online editors

Too often corporate communications and PR professionals think primarily about print and broadcast media, downplaying the importance of the online properties of mainstream media. Former Sky News journalist Ruth Barnett said that one of the most annoying things about PRs is that they don’t understand online and appreciate that a story that didn’t deserve ’20 seconds of live coverage’ might benefit massively from online coverage that would ‘exist on Google forever’.

Many publishers expect journalists to produce content for the paper and additional content for the website. Coupled with reducing headcounts this puts considerable extra pressure on them, where you can help. Another difference is deadlines. This now means different things at different media. Some still prioritise the print edition, others break news online first, most adopt a mixed approach.

2) Think beyond mainstream media

Blogs are the most obvious media to look at if you want to go beyond mainstream media. In fact many ‘blogs’ have become so big that they challenge and dwarf mainstream media. Blogs like Engadget and Huffington Post are now proper publishers with paid journalists and huge advertising revenues. Beyond this there is still a huge range of blogs still published by ‘amateurs’ in their spare time, many of which can be highly influential and are watched by mainstream media journalists looking for stories and sources.

Another more frequently neglected area is online forums. It was good at SAScon to hear MoneySupermarket’s Ben McKay cite the importance of the Martin Lewis Moneysavingexpert forums, he could equally have cited MoneySupermarket’s own forums which are highly influential in personal finance.

Search analytics and SEO

3) Use search analytics to create your target media list

One of the main tasks for junior public relations people is to compile a target media list. The traditional way of doing this is to use one of the many commercial media databases to find media outlets and journalists that cover your particular topic. Today that list is also likely to include some blogs. You’ll consider factors such as circulation, readership, ABC profiles of the readers etc in order to help identify the most important targets.

However, there is an alternative approach. Most internet sessions start with using search and many mainstream media websites rely largely on people arriving there by using a search engine. You can therefore start to select your media targets by finding out where people will arrive if they search for that topic. That’s where you want to be.

4) Use search data to pitch your content

So if many mainstream media websites rely on search to generate traffic then it’s logical that they would perhaps welcome content that helps generate search traffic. Ways you can use this include looking for content gaps where people are searching for particular keywords or phrases, but not finding what they are looking for. Another is to look at search trends to see what is increasing. Armed with this data you can then pitch mainstream media to say look here is the evidence people want this information and we can help to provide it.

5) Optimise your content for search

When you create content you should no longer just think how you can pitch it to media and get them to cover it – your ‘earned’ media. You should also be prioritising how you use it on your ‘owned’ media and optimise it for search. The more specialist you make your content the more successful this approach can be. You can then ‘pull’ people in to your content, rather than aggressively ‘pushing’ it out to them. Journalists use search to find information and identify sources. You’ll also be making your content directly accessible to your end target audience and stakeholders without relying totally on the third party filter of the media.

SEO specialists will also tell you that you’ve got to get in-bound links to your website. However, that’s easy said than done. Many of the sites that you’ll be prioritising because of their real world influence, such as the BBC, are the ones least likely to provide you with a link. Being persuasive or creative won’t work when they have strict rules governing the use of links to external sites.

Relationships and pitching

6) Social networks complement the pub

An oft-mistaken view of public relations is that it’s all about your contact book and drinks down the pub. Today social networks open up a whole new realm of possibilities. LinkedIn, Facebook and above all Twitter enable you to network with a much larger group of contacts. You can figure a lot about what a journalist is interested in and even what stories they might be working on simply by following them. Interaction becomes easier than ever and you build up a store of goodwill by retweeting their stories and tipping them off about useful stories or contacts that aren’t necessarily of any direct benefit to you or your clients.

And many media outlets make it easy to identify journalists by either publishing a directory on their websites like the New York Times does or with public Twitter lists such as the English list of Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

Content

7) It’s multimedia content, stupid

At it’s most basic modern media relations is about understanding the changing content needs of publishers. When I started out in public relations you’d hear stories about the dumb PR who’d post photographs to a radio news show. Today that isn’t so daft as websites mean that ‘newspapers’ want audio and video content, while radio stations need photos!

So you need to constantly be thinking about what content you can provide that adds value to readers and makes the journalist’s job easier. This might be video, behind the scenes photos, infographics, podcasts or whatever you can think of. Some publishers will want you to provide content directly, others simply to offer the right type of content and make it easy for them to get it themselves.

8 Securing coverage isn’t the end of the story

Once you’ve secured a great piece of coverage on a mainstream media website or blog there is still a lot more you can do with it. As well as tweeting out the link – and remembering to @credit the journalist that wrote it – you can also maximise the value of the coverage by writing about it on company blogs, ‘liking’ it on Facebook and Google+, bookmarking it on news aggregation and bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. You can use Delicious to maintain a list of media coverage on your corporate website or online newsroom, although if you’re in the UK you need to consider the copyright of headlines following the legal action by Meltwater and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) against the NLA.

If the story has attracted reasonable attention and conversation you can then use social curation tools like Storify and Scoop.it to add further value to the coverage. That creates even more good content, without a great deal of work on your part.

Engagement

9) Offer media more reader engagement

As ‘news’ has become increasingly commoditised and readers expect to find it for free it is becoming harder and harder for mainstream media to compete and differentiate themselves. One way they can do this is by engaging with readers and developing a stronger relationship with them. Public relations can help by providing exclusive interactive content such as live webchats, which can just be simple text or even video webcasts. Instead of just a journalist interviewing the chief financial officer about the multinational’s quarterly results you can offer the CFO up to answer questions directly from readers.

Become a publisher

10) EC=MC Every Company is a Media Company

Former FT journalist Tom Foremski coined the term EC=MC for Every Company is a Media Companyand this is one of the most powerful weapons in your public relations armoury. Creating a good social media newsroom or corporate blog enables you to directly reach journalists, influencers, customers and other stakeholders. Just some of the benefits include the fact that if done properly they help SEO; you can publish content that might not be of interest to mainstream media but is of interest to some stakeholders; reduce the number of ‘mundane’ calls to the press office by making it really easy to find relevant facts; by providing genuinely useful facts and information you can actually generate positive coverage and get journalists contacting you, rather than you pitching them.

This top 10 tips about how social media and SEO can improve your media relations could just as easily been a top 100 tip list so if you’ve got any more to share then feel free to do so in the comments and I might do an update post to highlight some of the best ones.

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When I’m doing online PR and social media training and communications consultancy I usually spend a lot of time on crisis communications looking at how it has – and hasn’t – changed because of the rise of social media. This weekend saw a classic case of how a smart PR operator can outflank one of the world’s biggest newspapers.

Last week the Sunday Times carried out a classic sting operation when it caught Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas ‘selling’ access to the UK prime minister for £250,000. This week, in classic Insight style, it carried a follow up with more revelation’s that showed the Conservatives appear to have been ‘economical with the truth’ in rebutting the allegations.

It also attempted to widen its attack and planned a new front page revelation that accused Ed Staite, a former Tory PR operator, of also ‘selling’ access to policy makers.

The Insight team attempted to sting Ed by approaching him and pretending to be a wealth management company that needed a communications consultancy. However, during the meeting the fake business people (aka reporters) continually asked Ed about making a donation to the Conservatives in order to meet senior policy makers. From Ed’s account it appears he advised them against this and instead suggested that it would be better to consider entirely open and transparent sponsorship of things like policy groups and conference fringe events.

Unfortunately for the Sunday Times Insight team Ed appears to be quite good at his new job as an independent communications consultant and demonstrated that his claim to do crisis communications is probably justified. Rather than letting the Insight team do its worst Ed fought back using his blog and Twitter.

It’s standard practice for the The Sunday Times Insight team to keep its victims in the dark until the Friday before publication when it lets them know they are under attack. This way it can say it gave them a chance to respond, but in reality give them just a few hours to respond to an attack that has had the benefit of often weeks of preparation. When Ed received his approach he simply responded by publishing the Insight team’s email on his blog, along with his response.

That’s not how the Insight team likes it. They are like bullies in the playground and bullies don’t like it when the little guy fights back. Ed Staite has worked for the Conservatives and for big global consultancies like Burson-Marsteller, but he’s now an independent consultant trying to establish a business – the little guy up against one of the world’s biggest newspapers. The Insight team fought back with a series of tweets:

Spin doctor @edstaite‘s allegations that Insight tried to entrap him with offer of £250k to meet Osborne absolutely untrue. Tapes prove it.

— Sunday Times Insight (@insightST) March 30, 2012

And then even more aggressively:

If spin doctor @edstaite thought meeting with Insight “bizarre,” why did he follow up by sending proposal to charge £40k for his services?

— Sunday Times Insight (@insightST) March 30, 2012

Note the derogative ‘spin doctor’ in both tweets. Hardly fair and balanced journalism, even in a tweet!

Ed’s response on Saturday morning was even better. He published his entire proposal (complete with the budget for each element) which turned out to be a fairly standard crisis communications proposal. No better or worse than I’d expect of any communications professional. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

I think there are three main crisis communications ‘lessons’ we can draw from this:

1) Speed – Ed possibly succeeded in moving the story from the front page of the Sunday Times to a far smaller story one on the inside pages. The Sunday Times was hindered by its print publishing date while Ed was able to publish three detailed blog posts before the Sunday Times even appeared.

2) Transparency – By publishing the Sunday Times email and his response along with his new business proposal Ed has demonstrated what appears to be total transparency. In contrast, as far as I’m aware, the Sunday Times has refused to accede to Ed’s polite request to be as transparent by publishing its recordings of the meetings.

3) Every company is a media company – says Tom Foremski and Ed’s response demonstrates it. More than 20 years ago my old PR lecturer used to say ‘You don’t pick fights with someone who buys ink by the barrel’. Well now thanks to social media everyone has their own barrel of ink. Ed’s blog post and tweets was quickly picked up and tweeted by lots of influential people making the Sunday Times look arrogant and bit daft.

In the interests of full transparency I should point out that I don’t know Ed beyond having read his blog and contributions to the Dale & Co group blog. You also wouldn’t expect me to be Ed Staite’s natural defender as you could probably define him as a ‘competitor’ of what I do and he’s a Tory while I’m very publicly Labour and have advised Labour cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers. But that doesn’t stop me applauding good work when I see it.

In conclusion this isn’t meant to be an attack on investigative journalism. On the contrary, one of my fears about the decline of mainstream media is that it will damage and even mean an end to good investigative journalism. But we’ve got to be careful about treating investigative journalists as if they have a halo- they have an agenda and spin, just as much as the companies and politicians they usually target.

I’ve been involved in handling crisis communications for more than one case of companies or individuals that have been targeted by the Sunday Times Insight team. It would be fair to say that in each case the Insight team did have a case. It would also be fair to say that the resulting story was never fair and balanced and always distorted the facts and used innuendo in order to make it look worse than it really was.

It seems a month can’t go by without Bell Pottinger, the UK’s self-styled ‘leading’ lobbying company, embroiling itself in a scandal. Today’s Independent article has certainly sparked off a plethora of criticism and commentary, much of it ill-informed and ill-conceived. It’s important to try and separate fact from fiction and cut through the spin on all sides of the debate.

Is it right for a public affairs or public relations company to represent a state like Uzbekistan?

Absolutely not, it’s a disgrace to even talk to a country that is run by such a despicable regime appears to be the thrust of the Independent’s article. But if you actually stop and look at what Bell Pottinger said then you’ll see that the first few slides of its presentation (embedded at the end of the post) are all about how a communications and influence campaign won’t work to improve Uzbekistan’s reputation unless the government makes real steps to improve its behaviour.

‘If, however, the government is committed to real and lasting reform then there are many things that Bell Pottinger could do’

‘… change is essential in order to change international attitudes.’

‘But we must be able to show our target audiences that change has begun, that long term goals have been defined…’

‘Once we have the assurance that genuine, verifiable reform is being introduced, we can put in place a communication and media strategy that tells the story of how Uzbekistan is changing for the better.’

That’s pretty unequivocal about saying that Bell Pottinger will only work for the Azimov Group if the government of the Republic of Uzbekistan cleans up its act. Surely that’s what we want it to do, therefore this is a good thing, isn’t it? The fact that Bell Pottinger’s strategy is to ‘tell the story of how Uzbekistan is changing for the better’ recognises that the communications must acknowledge previous bad behaviour, otherwise logically it will be impossible to show improvement.

If the UK government under John Major and Tony Blair had taken the attitude of you don’t talk to or help bad people because they are beyond redemption, then we’d never have had peace in Northern Ireland. This is practical, real world politics. If you want to make the world a better place then you have to engage with people.

It appears in this case that Bell Pottinger was acting correctly. What isn’t so clear is how well it has behaved in the past with some of the clients it has represented. Looking at its track record it could be surmised that this is Bell Pottinger turning over a new leaf. If so, then surely a company improving its behaviour is something we should welcome.

Is it wrong to claim that you as a public affairs company can influence government?

One of the roles of politicians is to listen to what people want, weigh up the arguments and make decisions based upon the evidence available. A good public affairs consultancy simply helps to make the case on behalf of companies, trade organisations, charities, pressure groups and trade unions. It is an entirely legitimate process and helps to ensure that legislation and policy is effectively scrutinised and that the end result is better than if a decision had been made without the full facts available. It is a similar process to going to your local MP’s advice surgery to ask them to do something to support your favourite charity or special interest group. Frankly, I’d be alarmed if a politician said they weren’t influenced by the people they are meant to represent.

What Bell Pottinger does appear to be guilty of is making exaggerated claims about and over-inflating the importance of contacts. Any really good professional public affairs professional will tell you that contacts aren’t as important as the uninformed like to think. But, let’s be honest what company, organisation or even individual hasn’t been guilty of that to some extent at sometime or other?

What is quite surprising is that Bell Pottinger’s major claim appears to be that it ‘got’ the UK prime minister to raise the issue of intellectual property theft with the Chinese prime minister. My main thought on this is that it isn’t a very big achievement, as surely it’s David Cameron’s job to stand up for British manufacturing.

Now that my quick defence of Bell Pottinger is done, let’s move on to what I think it got wrong.

How could self-proclaimed digital experts miss the lack of a digital footprint?

It is standard business practice to do some basic due diligence on potential new clients. It’s inconceivable that a ‘magical’ team of digital reputation experts would miss the fact that the Azimov Group, and the people meant to be involved in it, wouldn’t have a bigger digital footprint than its own website which is just a holding page on Google Sites. Ironically the proposal even highlights that ‘Google searches for ‘The Azimov Group; brings back only one relevant website.’

Given the history of journalist stings that should have set alarm bells ringing – especially if you claim to be media relations and reputation management experts. It’s kindergarten stuff.

Did Bell Pottinger offer the right counsel?

It is on the digital public affairs counsel provided that Bell Pottinger really comes unstuck. The first mistake is that it doesn’t appear to have done even the most basic digital due diligence. But its presentation includes even worse as it appears to advocate ethical malpractice and potentially even illegal behaviour.

Bell Pottinger’s recommended ‘Actions’ include:

‘Create and maintain third-party blogs which are used to seed positive content containing popular keywords that ranks highly in Google search results’

If this means what I think it does – that Bell Pottinger will create and run fake blogs pretending to be from genuine people, then it is not only unethical it is potentially illegal. It could be perceived that this would be pretending to be a consumer, which is illegal under the Consumer Protection Regulations 2008. It’s certainly not within the spirit of the law, even if it is within the letter of the law.

Creating fake blogs like this also doesn’t work that well! You can buy crude software tools that will automate the process for you so there is absolutely no need to pay a substantial retainer for a technique that doesn’t even work. It’s a technique that is used by unscrupulous and usually ineffective SEO companies.

‘… we would create a dedicated and independent website e.g. www.uzbekistancottonreform.org…’

Let’s give Bell Pottinger the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume it would be 100% transparent about who was running and funding this ‘independent’ website, although given the previous recommended action it’s hard to be certain. If it was a genuinely open and transparent site then the recommendation could be seen to make sense.

The Bell Pottinger team presenting didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory by sounding rather clueless about what digital reputation management and online public affairs actually is. Talking of a ‘magical’ digital team and a team that could ‘sort’ Wikipedia made them sound rather amateurish, rather than the professional image I’m sure they were trying to portray.

The lack of specifics when talking about ‘search’ also make the proposal appear amazingly amateur. What terms are people actually searching for to find the negative coverage about Uzbekistan, what is the volume of searches? Both of these matter a lot and effect how easy or difficult it will be to achieve the desired result. Although even if search volumes are low it can still be very important if those searches are being conducted by key influencers such as policy makers, politicians, special advisers, political researchers or think tanks.

It also doesn’t make clear quite how Bell Pottinger would ‘sort’ Wikipedia, but one would hope that it wouldn’t involve violating Wikipedia’s codes and best practices which would prohibit the team from making the changes directly themselves or masquerading as third parties to do so. A legitimate and effective way to ‘clean up’ Wikipedia entries is simply to use your own online properties such as a blog or multimedia newsroom to point out the inaccuracies and link to evidence. Legitimate Wikipedia editors and users will then almost certainly ‘clean up’ the entry for you. The Independent has already covered PR people unethically manipulating Wikipedia (including a quote from me).

The rest of Bell Pottinger’s claims, offers and recommendations are more or less what you’d expect although the Independent article tries to spin some of them to make them sound sinister. Simple search engine optimisation (SEO) activity is described as attempting to ‘manipulate Google’.

In conclusion, this episode once again hasn’t left the public affairs profession covered in glory, but neither is it as shocking or disgraceful as the Independent is trying to spin it. What is does highlight is the need for far greater transparency and openness about what is being done on behalf of clients. That way not only do we help to reduce and hopefully eliminate unethical behaviour, but we also start to rid the profession of amateurism and over hyped claims of what can be achieved.

UPDATE: The Independent now has a transcript of the video in which Bell Pottinger MD boasts “”We’ve got all sorts of dark arts. I told him he couldn’t put them in the written presentation because it’s embarrassing if it gets out because he’s so good at it.”

BellPottpresentationtoAzimovGp1

Thanks to Harry Cole for the embed.

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