PR Thoughts

Launch of the new PR Thoughts

I am moving my blog on a new URL: www.prthoughts.net

Please update your blogroll and RSS subscription, and come and join me there at PR Thoughts V2.

The story of the move is told there.

A new blog soon !

I am actually finalizing my new blog that will be hosted on www.prthougths.xxx and will be revealed soon ! ;o)
For this reason, I am posting since today on the new one to have some content ready before I leave www.prthoughts.com as an open archive.

Stay tuned, I'll announce the official new URL in the very next days.

By the way, I am not going to publish it thanks to SquareSpace that I've been testing for several days, I have to say that I have not found it so intuitive and efficient as I was told it was. This might probably be due to my strong Typepad culture, I might not have been able to fit with it's spirit and to get use to it's mechanism. I have to say that I've been a bit lost with it's "module" feature, I haven't found it so easy to use at all.
Probably someone who is not used to any weblogging solution but begins in the blogosphere will have less issues adopting it. But not in my case.

Reading Philippe's post, who got Forrester's last report, it is interesting to see the Top 3 most used enterprise blogging plateforms in the world:
1. iUpload
2. Movable Type & WordPress
3. Telligent Systems, Traction Software, TypePad and Drupal.

Well, the choice I made for my new blog is in this Top 3.....;o)

Technorati Tags: forrester, iupload, squarespace

End of PR Week Forum

That's it, it' s the end of PR Week Forum in Wales today, I am using the last hours of the wifi network that has been set up here to do this post, it has been a great Forum, and my blog is the most appropriate channel (in my views...) to thanks PR Week for having inviting me to handle those 2 workshops on "The rise and rise of weblogs".

By the way, in this week issue, PR Week has a interesting article coming from the PR and New Media conference that they organized recently, with quotes from Peter Bale, editorial editor of the Times Online, explaining why communities like MSN and Yahoo! also becomes their competitors, such as The Guardian and other MSM - from his point of view.

Interesting also to know about the Times Online's Sounds podcast, containing interviews with bands and some of their tracks, sponsored by Sony Ericsson, and which had notched up 170 000 downloads since January...

Back to Paris now...

Technorati Tags: prweek

Robert Scoble to join PodTech

You probably already heard about this story.... Robert Scoble leaves Microsoft to join PodTech (the company behind the famous InfoTalk podcast from the Silicon Valley), part of the reason why is there. Scoble considers his job at Microsoft is done and wants to participate in a nascent industry.

Today, PodTech's server has been down for an hour due to the huge traffic coming from the blogosphere following the announcement of Robert's departure... Amazing and not astonishing at all...

The press release is available there, by the way this is the first time I see a release on a corporate website open to comments...;o) and to trackback !!

Robert Scoble was a "first time" in the blogosphere, we are going to need a new one as reference for the corporate blogging world...

Technorati Tags: podtech

Edelman and Technorati to announce an exclusive partnership

Well, today I am happy to announce a partnership that will have a direct impact on my business blogging life !;o)

Technorati and Edelman announced yesterday that we will have an exclusive right to offer Technorati's analytic tools in Chinese, French, German, Italian and Korean, starting with French in July and continuing into early 2007. The analytic tools themselves will be able to cluster blogs by language, not only the user interface.

As I wrote it, french will be the first customized analytic tools available, so I'll be more than happy to experience it. This will definitely help us track more efficiently conversations within a specific language and provide local feedback to our client. We are indeed often asked about the ability to track conversations not only on a world wide level but also on a local level.

As you can easily imagine, there are two mean reasons for that:
- First of all, companies might make announcements that will only have a local impact
- Second, reaction to a specific announcement will be different depending of the local culture and of microeconomics parameters.

Those are two good reasons to motivate such a customization. This will be definitely very helpful.

So, stay tune, I'll share first experimentations here soon !

Technorati Tags: edelman, technorati

When the Police starts blogging....

Amazing... Quite at the same time, The Los Angeles Police Department and the french National Police have launched their blog.

I think it's going to be very interesting to see how each of both is going to use this media to share their news with their audience, I wonder what is going to happen... While the LAPD is hosted on Typepad with a very basic design, the french Police made the choice to set up it's own blog, including a blogging policy. Surprisingly, there is no RSS feed on the french blog... Both have enabled comments, none offers trackbacks.

Let's wait and see...

Back from Blogging4Business

Back from Blogging4Business full day conference in London which has been a very nice success, congratulations to the organizers, Matthew and Bernhard !
Again, it has been a great opportunity to meet and connect with many people there, about 170 people attended the conference, only few have been blogging in real time, probably due to the fact that the hotel has not been able to provide any wifi access in good conditions (in a budget sens....).
The official blogger hired for the event can be read here, more is available on Technorati of course, some have been taking pictures of the event also, have a look on Flickr.
We were two PR pros invited as speaker at the conference, nice to meet you by the way Antony... ;o)

I've been surprised to see several time during the conference people still talking about "controlling information"... I've been reacting in real time but would like to confirm my position on this: I don't believe we can still pretend to have the same kind of "control on information" we (=whoever we are) used to have in the past, we definitely have to be prepared to loose this control as soon as we are entering the blogosphere or as soon as someone is beginning to blog about your industry/brand. The rules of the game are changing, while everyone becomes a media, everyone is able to express his views on your company, whenever he is right or not, which isn't the question here. People are talking about you, that's all. Your choice is then about deciding to participate in the conversation or let them talk about you without you...

This is the issue.

Technorati Tags: blogging4business

Blogging4Business

It's happening now in London

Technorati Tags: blogging4business

Last books on blogging

Debbie published a post following NewComm Forum where she met authors of five other books on corporate blogging. The list is below, I'm certainly going to buy them all...:

Publish & Prosper by D.L. Byron et al
The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil
Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood
Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright
Blogging for Business by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopolous

Congrats for yours, Debbie ! You'll be welcome at PR Thoughts if you plan to make a blog tour to launch it ! ;o)

Update: Constantin Basturea remind me the link on the NewPR Wiki page dedicated to books on blogging, have a look there, another great resource.

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Cyril Fievet leaves Pointblog

You might have heard about our french blogzine dedicated to the blogosphere, Pointblog, without doubt the most popular french one.
Launched in 2003 as a personal initiative, PointBlog became a company recently.

Today, the original founder announced he is leaving (title of his post : "Without me") and pointing out the bad administrative management and the lack of consideration for the team by the head of the company.

I don't have any information allowing me to take any position here, I hope Pointblog will survive to this crisis, it would be really sad to loose it.

On a corporate blogging point of view, this is an interesting point to see that the founder (co-founder in this case) of a company is announcing his departure on the blog itself, making by this way a strict application of "transparency" so precious to the blogosphere.
But I am wondering....
He didn't just announced he left the company, he gave the reason of his departure and directly pointed out one men's responsibility. Did he go one step too far ? Should he have tell the whole story on the company's blogzine... Well, it's not so easy to answer I am afraid... In my deep thoughts, I would rather not have gone so far, but on the other  hand, as he is the founder of this blogzine, everyone would have asked for the exact reason of his leaving...
I'd leave the question open.

Update: One more thing: the founder, Cyril, is selling is shares on his blog...

Tags: pointblog, cyril fievet

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Some thoughts back from London

I've not been blogging a lot those last days due to my new new responsibilities here at Edelman, and I have to say "slamed" is a word which is going to stick to me for a while...

Anyway, I spent this all day in London attending the event organised by the london office around blogging or "why you can't ignore blogging" at this great place, One Aldwych. It was a nice opportunity for me to meet Stuart Smith, CEO of Edelman London, Pamela Fieldhouse and Julie Halley but also Charlie Cannell from EIS and Jackie Cooper from JCPR.

Kevin Anderson from the BBC was one of the panelist and we have had some amazing discussion about his podcasting activities and how he collects some of his interviews from countries like China per MP3 files sent piece by piece to a Gmail account... He also explained how chinese bloggers are using their Flickr account to avoid censorship by sending pictures of themselves handling big shields on which they write their messages... Unbelievable, but... only the truth.

And again, the french riots... Two articles in this morning issue of USA Today, this is really in everyone's head around the world, so let me confirm, you can come in France now without risking your life, we are a safe country and tourists won't be hurt ! Unfortunately it's not our first time, we are used to these suburbs problems, even if we'd love to see an issue for it, although I don't see any at the same time, this is such an old problem, all governments have tried to solve it and all have failed...

Anyway, now that I am on the way back, I really appreciate to be part of such an international team with so many complementary skills and at the same time, such a strong voluntee to work all together and to make it happen ! That's just great and so exciting to connect with you guys.

(I've moblogged some photos of the event on my moblog Winks)

Technorati Tags: edelman, JCPR, london

CEOs find blogs usefull

Quick post following an article from CNET News:

A growing number of American chief executives rate blogs high as employee communication tools, though a majority of them remain skeptical about starting their own, a new study shows.

This is also about employee blogging:

Many companies encourage employees to share new ideas in their blogs and get feedback from customers or users of their services.

Read full article. Via Nevon

Leaving for Bruxelles' conf on Blogging

I have to run out to catch my train to Bruxelles, I am participating with Jacques, Loïc and Philippe to the first conference in Belgium on blogging, François invited us as panelists to speak on corporate blogging.
Very excited to meet belgium bloggers there !

Edelman & Intelliseek to publish a second survey on blogging

Edelman published with Intelliseek the second survey on their serie about blogging, "Talking from the inside out: The rise of Employee Bloggers".

You can download it at Edelman or Intelliseek as pdf file, 22 pages. I didn't have had enough time to read it carefully at that time, just had an overview, but will do in the very next hours as it seems to be of the same good quality as the previous one. A joint webinar is also announced on Intelliseek's web for the 21st. September on the topic "employee bloggers".

The press releases announcing the survey is available there.

Technorati Tags: blogging survey, internal blogging, Edelman, Intelliseek

Adobe is joining the blogosphere

Adobe launched on the 15th of august it's community of bloggers at Adobe's blog, the first 8 bloggers are on the road, I won't miss to keep an eye there !

Suggestion : (I fully agree with Niall on this), provide your readers a link to get back to the portal of the community after visiting one of your individual blogs, it's just impossible to get out of any of them from now, I have had to write down again the URL to find the home page of the portal... Just my 2 cents...

Welcome in the blogosphere ! ;o)

Technorati Tags: corporate blogging, adobe

Hill & Knowlton launched it's blogging community

I just learned (thanks Stanislas) the launch of Collective Conversation, H&K's professional blogging community, and I have to say I am glad to see their arrival in the blogosphere !

It seems like there are now two bloggers there, the portal has been launched recently, middle of june but the official announcement to the employee around the world has been made today.

The first two bloggers are:
Niall Cook, blogging at "Marketing Technology" on marketing technologies and blogging communities (hey, you'll have a new reader Niall !),
Chris Colby, blogging at "Netcoms" on Insight and expertise in networked communications (damned, second new blog to subscribe to...).

I'll be curious to see how fast this community is growing... The adventure begins with a quizz to see if employees are ready to blog, I did the test, although the first question was really not easy to answer, I've been hired as "BlogStar" ! ;o) Sorry guys, the star won't be able to blog at your side, I am not filling the first condition: "be an employee of a wholly-owned Hill & Knowlton office"... ;o)

The blogging policy is available, you can also find there the additional recomandations to the young bloggers.

So come on guys, let us see what you have to say ! Welcome again !

PS: will we see Paul Taaffee following Richard Edelman's path ? ;o) I hope so !

Technorati Tags: employee blogging, hillandknowlton

The "truth" on Kryptonite's affair...

Everyone in the blogosphere remembers the Kryptonite (the bike lock company) case in september 2004 and knows how the lack of information and reaction from the company has been a disaster...

Scoble and Israel have published on Naked Conversations excerpts from their email conversations those last days with Donna M. Tocci, Kryptonite’s PR manager who is bringing interesting feedback from their side of the mirror.

In the first two-three weeks we worked 18-20 hour days, every day, to formulate a plan regarding the locks and reply to the folks that were coming to us - consumers, dealers, distributors and media.  Again, not being able to rewrite history, we just didn't have the man or woman power to go and answer every forum question or blogger comment - and there were quite a few, as you know.  As the weeks went on and I did comment on some inaccuracies, we were blasted for 'not getting it'.  Apparently, you aren't supposed to correct bloggers.Being new to the space, admittedly, we backed off a little bit at that time because, we really didn't need to rile up anyone else.

Read the full story at Naked Conversations

Technorati Tags: corporate blogging, Kryptonite