TopLinks plugin for WordPress

Thornley Fallis and 76Design have released two plugins for the WordPress blogging platform today: TopLinks and FriendsRoll.

“TopLinks replaces the manually edited blogroll with a widget that automatically generates a list of the Blogs and sites that I most often link to. […] FriendsRoll enables your readers to sign up to appear on your list of Friends. Any data they provide will stay with the blogger, not reside on some external site. So the relationship is directly between us.”

Joe Thornley, CEO, Thornley Fallis

I tried out TopLinks on my blog. It works well but I couldn’t get it to look right (yet). It doesn’t fit the way my sidebar is set up (1 custom column on top, and 2 widget-enabled columns on the bottom). Maybe I’ll find a way to customize it and reduce the width of the TopLinks box.

Not sure whether TopLinks really needs to be a replacement for the traditional blogroll. For my blog, I’d see it more as an addition.

Congrats to TF and 76Design for a great idea! if you have a WordPress blog, definitely check it out.

CPRS writing workshop for junior practicioners

Great writing skills are a strong asset for anybody who wants to get hired in PR. The student steering committee of CPRS Toronto and News Canada are offering a writing workshop for junior practitioners. Good initiative!

Scheduled for March 17, 2008, the event is led by News Canada’s Managing Editor, Jane Stokes. More info and registration on the CPRS Toronto website.

PR Toolbar: Making room for more feeds

The list of blogs in the RSS reader has grown quite long. After talking to Michael O’Connor Clarke and Gary Schlee at the last Third Tuesday, I’ve decided to split up the RSS reader in the Canuck PR Toolbar into two sections: one for PR blogs (red) and one for marcom and social media blogs (blue). 

This has nothing to do with ”separating church and state”. It is simply a functional improvement because a couple toolbar users told me that some RSS feeds had become unreadable because in lower screen resolutions the combined list extended beyond the margins of the monitor. Now the two RSS readers have a little room to grow again.

I will do another round of search on the weekend and add new Canadian PR and marcom blogs (suggestions welcome, as always).

The toolbar will update itself automatically. No need to reinstall. If anybody has trouble with the updated version, let me know.

Links of Note - April 10, 2007

1) “How To Live Up to the Innovation Hype” - Business Week innovation and design writer Reena Jana on former “next big thing” companies that didn’t live up to the initial hype but are now seeing an upswing in business growth because they have “refined their technologies, remade their business models, and reached out to new audiences.”

If these [new] technologies weren’t taken to market, their owners may never have found that better use,” Chesbrough writes in an e-mail. “Innovators need to learn how to play poker in pursuing these technologies, rather than playing chess, where the objectives and possibilities are clearly defined at the outset.”

Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

2) “How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job” - The Wall Street Journal

Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.

PR Blogger Kevin Duggan is quoted in the article. He says that his blog generates “about one job lead a month”. 

Blogging still plays a minor role for PR hiring practices in Canada. But the importance is growing. Blogging can definitely help people get a new PR job here, too. Just ask Chris Clarke or Michael O’Connor-Clarke or Tamera Kremer of Thornley Fallis.

CNW calling, PR bloggers answering - with a debate

After CNW Group asked a few Canadian PR bloggers to put ads on their blogs, the bloggers started a discussion amongst themselves about the ethics of it all. I’ve been watching it from the sidelines. Here is my perspective.

On a personal blog it is an individual decision. If your employer knows about it and let’s you have income from those types of “other sources” and you don’t mind ads on your blog, why not?

Does an ad on a personal blog automatically mean that this company is a preferred supplier for the agency the blogger works for? I don’t think so. At High Road we leave this specific type of vendor decision (based on factors like value, price for reach and quality of service/support) up to the individual account managers or client preference.

Do I respect PR bloggers with ads less or more than others? No. Respect and credibility still depend on the content of the blog post. I am also willing to give any PR blogger the initial benefit of doubt that they are able to a) be transparent and b) separate the advertising and editorial sides. If you are in PR and work with publications every day, the differentiation should be a no-brainer. And if you actually endorse the company that’s advertising on your blog or in a comment (like Michael OCC did here), that is okay, too, in my books. It comes down to credibility, transparency and trust. Maybe I am wrong but I think I’d be able to see through a fake endorsement. If Michael has genuinely had a good experience with the service and/or the company, why not endorse it? Blogs are biased. The great thing is that I can comment on his blog and give him a mouthful if I disagree.

I’d be interested to get an update from CNW and/or the participants on whether or not the campaign was a success in terms of click-throughs. One question I have is how much of an influence these debate postings have on the campaign? How many people only clicked on the ad because they read one of the disclosure or debate postings? Frankly, I might not have noticed (or cared about) the banners without the blogging debate about whether or not to have an ad. Again, I found this debate interesting because it was new to us here. But - for a successful campaign on a PR blog -is it necessary to come up with a debate/dispute in the content section to promote the ad?

As for CNW Group, I say good on them. They are trying. You’ll never please everyone. But when it comes to social media we are all still in a glass house, and there is plenty of room for CNW to join us… 

What I would have liked to see with this campaign is more relevancy towards digital marketing and social media. I am not saying every blog ad campaign has to be about blogging. In Ed Lee’s comment section CNW’s Laurie Smith says:

“Our goal is simple: to better showcase our expanding services to the people who matter most to us - wherever they may be.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean services relevant to social media and blogging. But it would be an advantage if you are targetting PR bloggers, especially if CNW believes that understanding blogs and social media is a differentiator versus competitor CCN Matthews (I am guessing that’s partly the intent).

Again, the slogan “are you a player” didn’t make me click, David Jones’ blog posting about him putting the banner on his blog did. So I’d say to Laurie: mission accomplished - kind of sort of.

I might have clicked without ”indirect encouragement” if the ad would have told me that CNW offers something that helps me survive in this new world of PR, for example podcasting services and a podcasting portal. Okay, I knew about podcasting already. But only because CNW came for a visit to High Road Communications recently. I don’t know if those capablities are widely known within the PR and Corp Comm community already, and - at least at High Road - we keep doing more and more on the podcast front for clients.

Or what about CNW’s “multimedia news releases“? In 2004 they were already half-way to a social media press release - the 2006 hypephrase of choice for PR bloggers. A couple tweaks of how the content is presented, linked through and tracked, and this could have been made into a social media press release offering-plus-ad-campaign. 

Or, if MediaVantage is the key offering for the ad campaign, I would have liked to find out more about blog monitoring within this service (I don’t use MediaVantage so I don’t know if it has this feature; but it might have made me play the game for a free trial).

Or how about creating and advertising a free Web app that provides keyword-based custom RSS feeds for content posted on CNW’s site? Right now there are already feeds for ALL releases in English and French. That’s a lot of news in one feed. But if I could create one that only shows me releases of software companies in Canada, that would be neat. And if I saw a banner for this service on Dave Jones’ blog, I’d click it and add the custom feed to my Live.com feeds. And I’d be impressed by CNW.

So, all in all a good start. Keep going, CNW. And when will we see CCN Matthews ads? 

Finally, from the PR blogger perspective, this whole debate has been one big transparency and ethics lovefest. But from now on, just do it. Or not. Ads or no ads, I will still read you as long as you are transparent and your content doesn’t suck.

New FeedBurner network for Public Relations

Dave Jones over at PRWorks.ca has just created a FeedBurner network for Public Relations. I haven’t used a FeedBurner network before but it seems like a great concept for staying up to date on a subject. Read more about it on Dave’s blog, subscribe to the feed and join in!

Ironing out some thoughts on brainstorming

After Ed Lee posted his thoughts on brainstorming, Julie Rusciolelli provided her perspective:

If we rely on sanctioned brainstorms to come up with every creative solution for our clients it can be taxing on the staff and burn up valuable resources. […] The best creative ideas I’ve had, have not been inspired by a big group of people in the boardroom. Even those silly books on creativity, stimulus cards and there’s even a software program to help you harness the power of your right and left brain are all useless tools. It’s being alone with my thoughts; a clear unobstructed mind that allows new ideas and concepts to seep in and take over is a best practice I adhere to.

Julie Rusciolelli, Rusciolelli Blog

While I agree with Ed on some of the nutritional challenges of having too many brainstorms, I’d like to expand on Julie’s perspective. I don’t really understand why the concepts of boardroom brainstorming and thinking creatively on your own should be weighed against each other. 

I don’t get my creativity kicks at the ironing board like Julie (maybe a newer iron and a better board would help me) but I have my own little ways of letting my mind wander and explore new creative territory.  Where and how doesn’t matter - as long as you do it. So, first of all, clearing your mind and allowing new ideas to seep in should be a no-brainer. If people aren’t thinking creatively on their own and need encouragement, what are they doing in a PR job? Inspiring people is important but it should only be the icing on the cake.

Second, the key to “sanctioned” brainstorms is preparation and discipline. Sounds boring? Maybe. But if you think that a boardroom brainstorm starts in the boardroom, you’re making a huge mistake from the get-go. It’s not about stimulus cards or software programs, it is about managing the process (if you are the organizer) and showing up prepared (if you are a participant).

If people haven’t started thinking on their own before the meeting, the whole group brainstorm could end up a huge waste of time. It’s about everybody doing some creative thinking on their own and then getting together as a team to develop something truly unique - based on everyone’s input. In other words, if Julie hasn’t ironed a few sheets on previous nights, she shouldn’t be in my brainstorm.

My High Road colleagues Natasha Compton and Hugh Scholey have taught me a thing or two about managing brainstorms:

• Management starts days ahead of the brainstorm. It only works if you apply discipline to your process. To think outside the box you first have to know what’s inside the box.
• Prepare and send out a brainstorm briefing. If you take care of the preparation and anticipate the biggest questions, you make it a lot easier for everyone else to free up their minds and focus on creative ideas
• Choose your participants. Not everybody in the agency needs to come to every brainstorm. Everybody has a different background and a different way of thinking. Put together a good mix of people.
• Ask everyone to come prepared with a few ideas based on your briefing.
• Facilitating the brainstorm meeting is critical. Just like a good moderator improves a talk show or press conference, you need somebody to be leading the meeting and keeping it focused.
• The biggest mistake made in brainstorms, and meetings in general, is keeping the participants thinking in the same direction. Brainstorms are made up of two essential elements – converging for ideas and diverging on one idea at a time to explore it further. If everyone in the room is converging and diverging separately then they’re not working toward the same end goal at the same time. You need to know how to run a good session.
• There are a number of different brainstorm techniques. Apply them. It works. If you want to know more about it, I’ll be happy to put you in touch with Nat or Hugh. I found that the techniques that sounded the worst on paper actually helped me come up with some good stuff

We’ve used this approach for internal meetings and for joint brainstorms with our clients, and it has been quite a success. Not only does it help to come up with bright thinking, it also allows us to do it without wasting time or resources. And it makes it more fun for everyone.

However, I do agree with Julie that boardroom brainstorms don’t necessarily inspire creativity. They are just a productivity tool. You don’t need a team brainstorm for everything. Choose wisely!

It is important to keep finding new ways and stimuli to inspire creativity in people. But once you’ve got them inspired, putting heads together in boardrooms can be a smart way of coming up with the next brilliant strategy for your client.

Links of note - October 9

Temple of Technology: Interview with Amiga CEO - Who knew? Amiga is (still) developing a new operating system. Ah, the good old Commodore days…

Business Week: First, blame the software - Good article about the “human factor” behind Airbus’ software issues that caused the company to delay delivery of the new A380. The Airbus CEO stepped down this weekend (after the BW article was published), further highlighting the management issues at the aircraft manufacturer.

The New PR: Five steps to starting a successful blog - Ryan Anderson provides great advice for anyone looking to create a blog.

Get the new Canuck PR Toolbar - version 1.0

As promised a couple weeks ago, here is a first version of a Canadian PR toolbar. Download it at http://canuckpr.communitytoolbars.com/.

The toolbar is based on a very cool, free service by Conduit. I am looking for a few people who are willing to test it and provide feedback. I hope this will be a community effort.

It is now called Canuck PR Toolbar because somebody else must have already reserved the term ”Canadian PR Toolbar” (Ed?) on the Conduit site. Anyway, the Canuck PR toolbar includes:

SEARCH BOX

Google.ca is set as default but once you download the toolbar, you can change it to other search engines. I’ve added Technorati, MSN, Yahoo!, MSN News, Yahoo! News, Google News and Wikipedia. Other wishes?

It also comes with a “highlight pen”. If you put in words in the search box and click on the highlight button, it highlights those words on the current site in your browser.

PR BLOGS

The current list of Canadian PR blogs is just a start, it has nothing to do with a ranking or a “top list”. If you have or know of a Canadian PR blog that is missing, leave a comment and I will add it. Don’t be shy (you are in PR, remember). Nominate yourself and others. It makes it easier for me. 

The cool thing about this toolbar is that once you have it installed, your toolbar will be automatically updated whenever I update the list on my end. So it doesn’t matter if your blog isn’t on the initial list; everybody who has the toolbar will still get to see it once I’ve updated the list.

Question: do we want other related blogs (marketing, news, U.S. PR bloggers etc)? Let me know your opinion. I can include submenus to differentiate between different blog types.

PR RESOURCES

This is a list of links that includes events, associations, podcasts, publications and services. It will serve as a directory of PR resources. Again, just a start. If you have an idea for additional links, please leave a comment.

PR BLOG NEWS TICKER

The news ticker provides the latest headlines from Canadian PR blogs. Right now, everybody included in the blogs list is also included in the news ticker (except for one of the blogs where, ahem, I couldn’t find an RSS feed). Also included are two del.icio.us feeds with PR headlines from Constantin Basturea (Daily PR Digest - okay, let’s call it an honourary Canadian feed) and David Jones to broaden the scope a little bit.

I will try to include all new blogs that I am adding to the blog list in the news ticker, too. Since this toolbar is based on a free web service, there may be restrictions for the number of RSS feeds that can be added. It doesn’t say so but I am still trying to figure out the whole system, so I will add Canadian PR blog feeds for as long as possible.

OTHER FUNCTIONS

The toolbar also comes with the option of adding a few other features including weather forecast (you can input the city), a pop-up blocker tool, an email notifier (works with Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail) and buttons to open Windows programs such as Word, Media Player or a calculator. With the exception of the search box, all items can be activated/deactivated. 

Again, according to the instructions by Conduit, it is not necessary to download new versions of the toolbar to receive updates to the installed features such as the blog list, the resource list or the blog newsticker. A new download would only be necessary for a major change. So if you send me suggestions for Canadian PR blogs and sites, I can add them in (just give me a bit of time, I do have a day job).

So much for now. It was a fun project putting a first version together. Please go ahead and try it out if you are interested. And let me know if you like it or think it is a waste of time. Feedback welcome. 

[Please note that I have only tried the toolbar with IE7 Beta. There is a Firefox version for download, too. But I have not tested it]

Wired Woman Toronto event on October 24

PR bloggers David Jones and Leona Hobbs apparently know more about High Road’s speaking engagements than I do. Just saw on their blogs that Leona is speaking at the Wired Woman Toronto event on October 24 - together with High Road co-founder and president Mia Wedgbury. More information about the event here. 

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