Defending Social Media (and Other PR Blog Jots)
Communications Overtones
Kami Huyse links to a swan song post from Dee Rambeau of the Adventures in Business Communications blog, who is bowing out of the blogosphere with five reasons why blogging is actually a waste of time. Huyse lists his points, some of which have a little merit (in particular that clients should be focused more on monitoring blogs than authoring their own), and offers counterpoints. She believes that if a blogger (corporate or otherwise) has achieved what they set out to do in starting a blog, than moving on is the right decision. “I think that it is important to put more critical thought into what and why we are doing what we do, and more importantly in how we advise our clients about proceeding in this area. I personally am still moving forward in my goals for this blog, and I have also developed business through it, or at least because of it.”
Is Social Media Really Media? Is it Really Social?
PR 2.0
Linking to recent posts on social media from Robert Scoble and Doc Searls, Brian Solis continues to defend the categorization of Web 2.0 media tools (blogs, wikis, RSS, etc.) as “social media.” He agrees that labeling all these new advancements under one large umbrella is not necessarily the ideal situation, but questions how else to define them. “For example, how else do we describe the difference between someone simply reading a newspaper article and someone reading the story online, commenting on it, then in turn, writing their own post about the story which then reaches a different set of people, thus potentially sparking a new thread? Do we call it media, new media, or do we consider this media at all?”
JetBlue Should Recover from PR Crisis
The Flack
After criticizing JetBlue CEO David Neeleman earlier in the week for apologizing and making promises before the crisis had even ended, Peter Himler believes the company ought to recover from their PR nightmare nicely, and be a better company in the end. He compares their issues to Dell’s recent poor customer service publicity, and thinks that JetBlue, particularly Neeleman, seems believably concerned with fixing their problems and avoiding similar crises in the future. “JetBlue still has more work to do, like introducing some tangible reforms to prevent this from happening again. But David Neeleman, in spite of having jumped the gun without all the info at his fingerprints, came off as contrite, honest, and committed to his customers. That's what we'll remember as JetBlue lands safely then proceeds to soar to new heights.”
A Shel of my Former Self
After some PR bloggers criticized JetBlue for not using social media (namely their CEO blog) as part of their crisis communication plan, Shel Holtz praises the company for posting a video of Neeleman on popular video sharing site YouTube. Holtz notes that Neeleman is clearly not reading from a script, and thinks it makes him seem human and honest as he apologizes to the consumers affected by the massive upheaval of JetBlue’s service. Holtz argues that their response could almost be a case study for proper crisis communication if it weren’t for the slow response time of updating their website. “It leads with the YouTube video and includes Neeleman’s video apology. Nice work, if a little late. (Remember, we’re functioning these days in the 90-second news cycle.) And the pseudo-blog still hasn’t been updated (or turned into a real blog).”
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