"R"OI (and Other PR Blog Jots)

What's Your "R"?
Conversation Agent
Many bloggers wave off the idea of ranking lists, even the venerable Power 150, as unnecessary link-bait, and pay no mind to Google Rank (except perhaps privately…). Some might argue that placement on these lists and a high Google ranking represent the “R” in “ROI.” But does ROI always have to mean big numbers? Really, according to Valeria Maltoni, that “R” is pretty subjective, meaning something different to individual bloggers. Perhaps it’s the relationships you’ve been able to build through your blog, despite its small audience numbers. Or maybe it’s just the chance to become a better writer and communicator. Valeria wants to know, what’s your R? “I really light up when I have deeper conversations with like minded people who may stumble upon one of my posts and decide to stick around and meet the person and vice versa, I love discovering well written and thoughtful resources and getting to know the author(s). Red carpet treatment for people who share ideas in the comments.”

Scaredy Cats
The Buzz Bin
When it comes to social media, what are we so afraid of? Geoff Livingston argues that slow adoption of social media practices and strategies on the corporate level can almost all be linked to fear. Be it loss of message control, negative feedback (beware of troll), legal concerns (beware of troll, and also lawyer), or maybe just a plain old fear of change. If a company has based their entire business model, for example, on flying beneath the radar, adjusting to “Social Media: Land of Transparency!” might not be the easiest undertaking. In the end, however, Geoff thinks that corporate America’s competitive nature will win out. “Competition will eventually force most companies to adapt social media tools, but it’s going to take time. And we who have already adapted need to be patient. The role of the social media savvy is not to chastise these folks, but to help them. I’ve called it evangelism, but perhaps the right word is coaching.”

New Media Crisis Communications: The California Wildfires
Fleet Street PR
In wake of the terrible, tragic shooting at Virginia Tech earlier this year, I began seeing many blog posts regarding how new media might have been beneficial for crisis communicators working with the school to get necessary information out to the media and to students and families. New media’s ability to reach out in a crisis in ways mainstream outlets cannot separates it from the pack. Dave Fleet highlights the many ways that the California mainstream media outlets are using web tools to communicate through the very real crisis of the wildfires raging in the state. He also makes numerous recommendations at what the state itself could do better, recommending using its web resources more effectively. “Why didn't California take the bull by the horns and turn its own site into a communications hub during the crisis? Why not do what the news outlets did and use this technology to provide up-to-the-minute updates?”

Who, What, When, Where?
A Shel of my Former Self
Frustrated with the number of conferences that pass him by unpublicized, Shel Holtz asks a very timely question: why isn’t there a wiki-calendar for social media events and conferences worldwide? We may both be missing it, along with some other bloggers asking the same question, but it doesn’t appear there is a central location online to find out information on upcoming social media conferences. Hopefully, many others will link to this post and sound the alarm, let’s get a calendar together, assuming there is not one already. “What would be great, we agreed, is a single calendar somewhere listing all the upcoming social media conferences. I can’t find one (so if you know of one, please point me to it), so can we start one? I’ll be happy to set up a wiki if others think this is a good idea—and I’m open to alternative means of organizing a collaborative effort to list all these upcoming events (such as Podcamp Boston, BlogWorld, the list goes on...)”