Even if you’ve been living in a cave, you have probably heard of Twitter.

As a person that is somewhat obsessed with travel, the majority of people that I follow on Twitter are companies and influencers in this industry. Twitter has grown to become a major resource for travelers, as it is easily accessible for the ever-expanding number of smart phone users around the world.  The site also offers access to real-time feedback from other travelers and may eventually replace the bulky guidebook.

One category of travel companies on Twitter that is well-represented is the airline industry. Every major carrier, both domestic and international, has a presence on Twitter. As a PR professional, one thing I find to be interesting is looking at how the various domestic airlines communicate to their followers on Twitter.

In my opinion, there are only a few airlines that truly shine on Twitter, injecting humor and fun into their tweets, posting photos, fully engaging with their followers, being a travel industry resource and also a customer service resource for travelers when needed. Virgin America, Southwest Airlines and JetBlue fit in here.

On the other hand, you have other airlines that do what I would consider to be ‘the basics’ – tweet about sales, reply to some customers, and post the occasional industry link – but there is just something missing, that special spark. United Airlines and US Airways come to mind.

To me, the difference that I have found interesting is how the perception of the ‘fun’ airline personality on Twitter seems to be directly related to the airline’s mainstream popularity among travelers.

Last year, both the Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2009 and the Condé Nast Traveler 2009 Readers’ Choice Awards ranked Virgin America, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines in the top 10 for domestic airlines. United and US Airways are nowhere to be found on either. Also, as of today in the voting for Budget Travel’s Readers’ Choice Awards, the three airlines in the lead for Favorite Airline are (you guessed it!) JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, and Virgin America.

Perhaps this is a ‘chicken or the egg’ question – are these airlines popular because they’ve communicated a fun brand on Twitter, or were they able to create this fun persona because they were already popular?

Regardless of which is the case, even an airline that is loved by over a million followers can suddenly find itself in the middle of a social media firestorm, as was true in the recent Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines fiasco. As CNET’s Caroline McCarthy points out, this was another example of how communications and customer service departments are finding themselves having to work together to get the message out when social media enters the scenario.

And it’s my belief that since Southwest Airlines was a meaningful part of the conversation about their company before the Kevin Smith drama, the resulting effect was ripples instead of tidal waves.

So the next time you fly, thanks to Twitter, you may pause when considering your airline of choice – proving that Virgin America, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are solid examples of how brands can communicate with people on Twitter through engagement that creates a sense of personality and, ultimately, increases their overall likability as a company.

Last night, the WTIA held its 15th annual Industry Achievement Awards at Showbox SODO. It was definitely a full house, with event emcee Kevin Joyce poking fun at the geeky tech we all love and were there to celebrate. Our group was particularly proud of two of our clients that were finalists: Picnik, for Consumer Product or Service of the Year; and Hubspan, for Service Provider of the Year. Overall, it was a fantastic event, once again demonstrating how amazing our tech community is in Washington state.

Here’s a glance at some of the highlights of the night:

Ken Myer, president and CEO of the WTIA, kicks off the awards

 

Federal Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra

TechFlash co-founder and executive editor John Cook

Service Provider of the Year, finalist video: Hubspan CEO Trisha Gross

Consumer Product or Service of the Year, finalist video: Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato

Congratulations to all of the finalists and winners!

Getting ready for the program to start...

The conversation, lead by Forbes magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard, touched upon an eclectic mix of topics one of which included her decision to immediately fire Larry Summers if she were ever to become President (which drew applause from the crowd.) However, Huffington also spent some time discussing sensationalism and the media in regards to the “Balloon Boy” phenomenon.  She admitted she did not allow the story to grace the top pages of The Huff Post in order to challenge the fundamental disconnect between real stories that matter and sensationalism.  “Wasn’t the boy found in the attic? Why are we still calling him the ‘Balloon Boy’ and not the ‘Attic Boy,” Huffington joked.

The Churchill Club, Microsoft Campus, Mountain View, CA

As PR professionals, it is often expected from us to create splashy headlines and generate hype for our clients – whether that means dumping a hundred body bags in front of a leading tobacco company or having Paris Hilton holding your product in a tiny black bikini. Let’s face it, fear and sex sells, right? Maybe not.  Sensationalism does not sell as many papers as it used to. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, all it takes is a few clicks between friend statuses to see through the cloud of sensationalist headlines to find the real stories that matter.

Alexander Bie and Arianna Huffington

And in the end, does sensationalism help or hurt our cause? When groups like PETA attack people with red paint or dump animal carcasses on cars, the question one must ask is, what message are they really getting across? Do these actions really benefit the ethical treatment of animals?

As PR pros, we need to know when sensational PR strategies will work for our clients and when they won’t. When they do work, they can be rather powerful, but most of the time, taking the sensational road causes more harm than good.

There are plenty of misconceptions floating around about the PR profession and industry in general.  Many of these misconceptions are only altered for PR professionals when they are in school studying PR.  For the rest of the world, these misconceptions may never be addressed.

In my mind, we can thank pop culture for many of the mistaken beliefs about PR.– Samantha was supposedly in PR in “Sex and the City,” but I don’t think I ever saw an episode in which she worked with a member of the media, outside of gossip columnists.  Jessica Biel’s character in “Valentine’s Day” was in PR and we really only saw her in her office running on a treadmill and eating candy.  And of course, right now there are a slew of PR-related reality TV shows on the air including “Kell on Earth” and “Spindustry.”

These shows and movies — good or bad – are certainly a guilty pleasure of mine, but I also think they have begun to beg the question of how much impact pop culture has on my profession and the PR industry in general.  Is there any truth to these shows from a PR perspective?

While I can say that none of these pop culture representations persuaded me to study public relations in college – they have an impact on many students in recent years., We’ve interviewed countless intern candidates hoping to work in the music industry and plan parties, among other things that I rarely — if ever — do as a PR professional at a top-ranked agency.

With this in mind, here are some ways that these shows and movies are creating false understandings of what PR really is and three things others should know about the industry. 

1.) We don’t just plan parties: Yes, Samantha on “Sex and the City” may have done that and yes, there are opportunities to coordinate launch events and parties – look at the iPad launch for example.  When first released, iPad was covered by an outrageous amount of journalists, but the key to such astounding interest wasn’t because Apple threw a raging party, it’s because the company and its PR team had something to say and a new, exciting product to showcase. 

PR is about just this — getting our clients in the news in a positive light in order to generate interest for their target audiences — not just making sure they have a rockin’ party for their newest gadget, product, restaurant, etc.

2.) Part of PR is acting like a salesman:  In Valentine’s Day, a reporter — Jamie Foxx’s character — comes barging down Jessica Biel’s character’s door to get information from her.  I can honestly say that I have never had any reporter banging down the door to my office, demanding information about a client.  In truth, a majority of the time, we’re reaching out to reporters to schedule meetings, bringing our clients to their office.

I was once told that every job has an aspect of sales in it and PR definitely falls under that philosophy.  You’re selling your clients, their products and their story to the media.  PR people make follow up calls to gauge a reporter’s interest on a story angle and there’s always a chance we’ll get hung up on, but it comes with the territory.  The key to being a good PR ‘salesman’ is being smart about what you’re sending to the media and ensuring that 1.) It is relevant to the topic(s) they cover, 2.) Relevant to the media outlet, 3.) Relevant to what is happening in the industry and/or news cycle.  When you don’t follow these rules, that’s when you hear “click.”  Which brings me to my next point—research.

3.) We track news topics and industry trends to get our clients in the news:  This is something you’ll never see in the movies or on TV: We read and follow loads of news outlets.  That means everything from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times to Travel + Leisure and Cosmopolitan. 

Why is this important?  So we can identify the right reporters to pitch our clients’ news to and understand how different news outlets present their news.  For example, the Seattle Times has a regular feature column called “Interface.”  This column regularly features a general overview on local companies and gives us, as PR professionals, an opportunity to suggest our clients for consideration.  If I didn’t regularly read the Seattle Times, I would have no clue about this opportunity for my Seattle-based clients! 

While these shows and movies get some things wrong in my opinion, they do highlight one of the keys to being a successful PR professional – establishing and creating relationships.  That could be with a potential client, a fellow PR person, a reporter and a client. 

“Kell on Earth” is a good example of this.  During a trip to London Fashion Week, Kelly is shown sternly asking people to move out of several front row seats during a fashion show because they were reserved for American press that she had invited.  PR is about creating relationships and for the media, making sure that they have all of the information and resources they need to write a story – whether that means getting a front row seat at a fashion show or providing an interview with a client spokesperson that has expertise on a topic they are writing about.

With all that said, are these shows creating loads of misunderstandings about PR?  I haven’t fully decided, but I know it’ll be refreshing when I tell someone “I work in PR” and they no longer say “Oh yeah, like Samantha Jones, right?”  Sigh.

Sometimes, keeping up with the rapidly-changing world of social media can be overwhelming for public relations professionals. That’s why we plan on presenting quick, timely guides to various topics in the world of online PR. So we’re proud to present “Google Buzz – Everything You Absolutely Need to Know.”

Hear that sound? Buzz doesn’t just describe the name of Google’s latest platform for social networking. “Buzz” also describes the angry, bee-like sound of a swarm of privacy complaints, a class-action lawsuit and the frantic revisions made by Google since the platform’s launch. But what is Buzz, why did Google release it and what does it mean for PR pros?

What is it?

Buzz is a social network tightly integrated with Google’s Gmail Web-based e-mail service. It provides the commenting, sharing and conversation-hosting features that have become commonplace on many social networks over the last two years. It also has a strong emphasis on mobile, location-aware features.

In order to understand Google Buzz in relation to other social networks, it helps to understand another site, FriendFeed. FriendFeed is a social network/aggregator with a strong emphasis on real-time results, search and hosting conversations around content from the Web. Buzz’s functionality very closely resembles FriendFeed (which was incidentally launched by two ex-Googlers and acquired by Facebook in August 2009). You can easily pull content from other Web properties such as your Twitter, Picasa, Google Reader and Flickr accounts so they are displayed in your Buzz feed. Your followers on Buzz can then comment or like the content, just like on Facebook, Friendfeed, etc. The site now includes @Replies, made famous by Twitter and incorporated into Facebook earlier this year.

What’s different about Buzz from previous social networks is that it benefits from Gmail’s massive user base and allows users to leverage their Google Contacts (launched in May of last year) and Google Profile (launched in 2007) to engage in a social experience not previously possible on any of Google’s Web platforms.

This isn’t the company’s first foray into social networking the company previously acquired Jaiku (a Twitter competitor) and Dodgeball (a location-aware social network in the vein of Foursquare) years ago. Those services were left to die quiet deaths, but the company still has Orkut, the biggest social network Brazil. Social features like IM were added to Gmail way back in 2005 and services such as Google Reader, YouTube and Google Docs have incorporated social features for years now. In fact, you could argue that most of Google’s online properties (even search) incorporate some form of social interaction.

How they screwed up.

Despite all of these exciting features, the response to Buzz has been a litany of concerns, critcisms, general backlash, bugs and lawsuits aimed at the service. These problems were unanticipated by Google, but should have been. It appears the company ignored the historical concerns which have long accompanied social networking Web sites.

Social networks run into their biggest PR problems whenever they make a change to their site, whether it is a change to privacy settings, features or even just a general redesign of how the site looks. Site redesigns are a fundamental PR headache for every social network or social communication platform out there, from Facebook to Twitter. What’s worse, some of these other sites provide good models of what works and what doesn’t. Many of the proposed ways to fix Google Buzz on the Google Moderator page are simply suggestions that Google adopt the same functionality found in these social networks. 

Google also failed to learn from past criticism. When you’re one of the world’s biggest companies that collects user data on hundreds of millions of people every day, people get worried about how you will protect their privacy. Google CEO Eric Schmidt was criticized in December for saying that privacy didn’t really exist online. Unfortunately, the company badly misjudged the public’s privacy concerns again with the launch of Buzz. When the network launched, Buzz automatically followed everyone in the user’s Google Contacts list. It also made this list public. This is very bad, when users expect this information to remain private. E-mail information is protected under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, in some cases. If they had launched Buzz as a standalone product, much of their problems could have been avoided.

Another possible problem may have come from the company’s internal testing. Google Buzz was tested internally, with no feedback from outside users. This was extremely odd, because many of Google’s best services or features have gone through the familiar, opt-in vetting that Google Labs provides. By relying on internal stakeholders only to vet their products rather than exposing to a subset of their public user base, the company missed an opportunity to avoid many of the problems they are now having.

What you need to know.

 If you haven’t used Buzz yet, go here for a quick feature overview and how to get started.

Buzz has immediate implications for reputation management and media monitoring. Buzz’s content is very searchable, and you can begin using it immediately as a supplement for daily monitoring tasks. Google Operating System shows how you can save Buzz searches to make the process easier. Buzz content is already incorporated into the Google Trends real-time search results feature. Radian6 and Viralheat have both added Buzz results to their respective analytics platforms.

As you can imagine, building a Google Profile for your brand might be a good idea, right about now.

But Buzz doesn’t have the same mature feature ecosystem for brands that Facebook does. It doesn’t have the history of rapid-reaction corporate response that you find on Twitter. It appears to be very under-utilized by Gmail users. It will not be the “next big thing” in corporate social media PR (for at least a few months).

The Google Buzz story is really the story of several long-term Web trends coming to a head. Just as Google has slowly added social features to all of its Web properties (including search), social networks continue to add “traditional” e-mail and IM features to their services, if they do not already have them. This makes sense, because e-mail is a social network. We already have MySpace e-mail, and we will soon have Facebook mail. Even Microsoft’s Outlook will soon incorporate basic social networking tools. With all this sharing, privacy concerns will continue to be a major headache for all of the above companies. Features like @Replies and “likes” will become standardized across platforms, which will lead to commoditization of microblogging services such as those provided by Twitter. Buzz is built on a framework for distributed social messaging, which will lead to less-centralized social networks and more fragmented audiences. This will magnify the need for better research and monitoring capabilities in public relations. It will also make it more difficult to cut through the noise and connect with your target audience.

We hope you’ve liked this guide to Google Buzz. Feel free to leave your feedback in the comments.

Just a quick recap — Last night a few of us attended the PRSA Totem Awards which honored the best PR campaigns from the Puget Sound region over the last year.  There were a few surprises throughout the evening, like the award winners who didn’t show up to accept their awards (that’s embarrassing….) and surprisingly much fewer attendees than we remembered in years past.

That said, it was still an interesting night to learn about other successful PR campaigns for companies such as Boeing and Starbucks, among others. 

Additionally, Suzanne Hartman, Director at Seattle City Light was the honored speaker of the evening.  She took the Totem’s theme “Celebrating the Impact PR Creates” to heart when she described a campaign she worked on in the 1980s with Seattle Public Utilities (SPU).  The campaign was focused on getting more Seattleites to recycle, before reducing your carbon footprint was all the rage.  The campaign truly showed what kind of impact PR can have on our communities.  For example, while SPU hoped for a noticeable increased adoption rate, even they were shocked when an astounding 80% of Seattleites signed on to recycle.  Even more interesting is that because of the success of this campaign, it was reused in communities throughout the U.S. for years to come.  The key takeaway here:  PR can make positive short and long-term impacts on our community – a pretty cool thing, considering we’re not neurosurgeons saving lives every day!

Also, the emcee even turned out to be a local celebrity, Pat Cashman, who is known for his Emmy award-winning skits on the comedy show “Almost Live,” which made the event quite entertaining!  

And a little pat on the back to some of our fellow MWW team members – in addition to a selection of internal PR teams and outside PR agencies, MWW took home Certificates of Excellence for our work, including:

• Fulton Innovation: “eCoupled Wireless Technology Takes Charge of CES 2009”
• Tetris Online “2008 Tetris Online Launch of Tetris Party for WiiWare”

Thank you to the Puget Sound PRSA for putting together a great evening and to Pat Cashman for the laughs!

How time flies!  TechFlash celebrated its first birthday last week and we were there to check out the TechFlash Holiday Party & Birthday Bash. 

 John Cook was in his best Santa hat as he hosted the tech trivia challenge which included questions that we couldn’t even begin to guess the right answer –

• Robin Williams named his daughter after which video-game princess?

And others that we could –

• Season six of Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” starred which Seattle entrepreneur as a contestant?

While the party was definitely hopping and the trivia competition was fierce, we found ourselves – as PR professionals – discussing how much the media landscape has changed in the last year, in the Seattle market and elsewhere. 

 We came to a common agreement about the evolution of the Seattle media market — Even though we’ve lost the traditional print version of the Seattle PI, there are increasingly more and more interesting and credible non-traditional news sources for our clients to reach and some that enable us to really zero in on a specific audience. 

 Take the blog MyBallard: not only has it become a credible source for the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard, it recently won an Online Journalism Award for community collaboration, beating out stiff, and in a sense, more traditional competitors such as the Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald!  For some of our clients, MyBallard has morphed into a better place for them to see stories posted about their company — because it’s hyper-local and the readership is quite obvious.

 This thought also led us to consider what the future holds for the Seattle media landscape and the PR industry.  From our perspective, it comes down to a couple of key takeaways:

1.  Hyper-local forums and blogs like MyBallard will grow in readership (Yes, even my parents will read them….if I can get my mom to use the Internet for more than finding recipes on the Food Network Web site…) and will increasingly be the first place readers stop for news that relates to their lifestyle and where they live.
2. ALL of our clients will one day ask to see coverage on their company in online outlets like TechFlash and MyBallard just as often as they ask for coverage in traditional outlets like the Seattle Times.  We’re not fully there yet, but we’re definitely seeing a shift!
3. While the newspaper industry appears to be dying a very slow death, newspapers will never go completely away. Just take a look at SeattlePI.com: while it has obviously changed, the site earlier this year boasted 4.3 million monthly unique visitors – not bad for a news Web site many people thought wouldn’t survive.

 Our conversations may have turned into a philosophical PR and media discussion, but I can honestly say that we all enjoyed the event, the refreshments, the food and the company!

 And, in case you’re wondering, the answer to the Robin Williams trivia question is Zelda and “The Apprentice” question is James Sun.

At the 2009 Puget Sound Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) chapter’s holiday gala last week, there was something besides the live auction of locally-baked deserts that raised a few brows in the room.  

The holiday gala traditionally marks the announcement of the PRSA “PR Professional of the Year” award. This year, not only were there two recipients of this award, but they are also both former strategic communication professors of mine, Soon Beng Yeap and Barry Mitzman, from my alma matter, Seattle University.

A pioneer of public relations higher-education, Soon Beng Yeap came to Seattle University in 2006 and took the communication department by storm. With much persistence, he established the first-ever undergraduate degree program in strategic communication in the State of Washington by Fall 2007.

If you’re noticing an influx in highly-qualified competition for public relations positions around town, at least you now know who to blame.

The “818? 310. Nice.” line in the movie “Swingers” was classic, but 13 years later it’s beginning to show its age.

This isn’t just because the real estate market has moved all the good girls to The Valley in Los Angeles. It’s because as more and more of us cut our land lines (at home and in the office), move from job to job and city to city, we have started to cling to that one number that can follow us anywhere: our cell phone number.

In fact, since I moved to Seattle, I have met half a dozen people that live here but have decided to hang onto their out-of-state cell numbers.

I can relate. I am keeping my old, out-of-state number too! But my decision was based on the fact that where my cell phone company could give me a new and shiny area code, they couldn’t put a message on my old line to let callers know my number had changed. I have a lot of long standing media relationship, and having them get a dead line wasn’t going to work.

Well I just nabbed my new Google Voice number and this is all going to change. I now have a single number (with an area code of my choosing) that I am putting on my business cards. One number, and each caller (friend, client, media, wife, bill collector) will be routed not only to a special message, but also to any number I choose.

Here are some of the things it can do:

• Screen calls before you accept them
• Hear voicemails as they are being left
• Automatically transcribes voicemails and deliver them to you via text, email, etc.
• Allows you to automatically forward both calls and texts to any phone number
• Allows you to create separate greetings depending on who is calling (e.g., my wife is from Germany and her family gets a special voicemail from her in German)
• Most importantly, gives you the ability to separate your business and professional lives with one phone number (and one cell phone)

To get a Google Voice number — go to www.google.com/voice and sign-up for a phone line. If you don’t mind having a random area code, you can put in words or expressions to see if you can nab a vanity number. I won’t put my number here, but I will say that it includes the words: ski and fun.