Steve is Vice President Client Solutions at CooperKatz, a New York PR firm, and author of the Micro Persuasion blog. He is arguably the most prominent and influential blogger in the PR profession either side of the Atlantic. Last Monday 21 March, I interviewed The Hobson & Holtz Report bi-weekly podcast. Link: download the show containing the interview (MP3, 30.8Mb) and Shel: Well, Steve, thanks for joining us, we really appreciate your taking the time. And, just to start with, can you tell us how things are going with your blog - any changes planned, any developments? Council of PR Firms meeting in Chicago last week, and I talked about RSS and using Bloglines and things like that. I think that's something that we, everyone of us, needs to take responsibility for in getting, you know, somebody in their agency, at their competitor, at their clients, wherever, understanding what RSS is, what blogs are and what this all means, because I think we have a lot more work to do there. New Communications Forum in Paris, right? That was postponed last week. And I think the picture's different in Europe because in the US, that event in January attracted, you know, loads of people who have heard about blogs, not amongst that 100 group you mentioned, who came along and wanted to find out what was going on, what it was all about, how to use it, all that and the picture's slightly different in Europe and it's got me wondering that, you know, what you mentioned - I do that, you do that, we all do that - and there is a lot of talk amongst the converted, yeah, I agree with you. But going out to take that message out to people, it seems to be falling on deaf ears a lot over here, so what else can we do, do you think? Steve: Um I think it's going to fall on the responsibility a little bit of not just the 100 or so us folks in the blogosphere. It's going to rely on the leadership of the agencies, it's going to reply on some of the clients I mean, as you know, I wrote a month or two ago that I believe there's this Fleishman-Hillard who I met at this meeting with the Council of PR Firms said, you know, "hey, the press throw these words around like everybody knows what they mean." So there is a classic disconnect here between the press and the PR professionals. I don't quite know how we bridge that gap but I know it's not just all on our shoulders. It's on our shoulders to tell as many folks out there as possible who are probably not reading blogs to get on the Cluetrain. Neville: Right. So we just keep on hammering at it, er the point you made earlier, just going back to that, the way I see it, it's not so much talking about blogs as a lot of us do - I'm guilty as well, you know, these are the new tools, etc - it's what they can do and just keep repeating that message to as many people as possible until we reach the critical mass. Is that would that be a fair summary of what you're saying? Steve: I think that's fair, but I also think that the PR community views things as safety in numbers. So as more companies start to blog and there's more demonstrable results through that blogging, uh, and they see blogs getting picked up in the press, as, er, sources, I think that will have that kind of cascading effect once that takes place. So, I'm talking to a lot of major companies right now, I mean, our practice has very healthy interest in what we're doing, and I think that, you know, as we work and you work and Shel, I know what you're doing is working with companies and Voce is doing great work with blogs. As we get more proof of concept out there, I think there will be that cascading effect. But with that, there will be people making mistakes as well. Shel: Oh, no doubt. Uh, one thing I've noticed in Micro Persuasion lately is sort of an emphasis on the value of blogs as a search engine optimization tool. Do you see that as one of the benefits to tout to companies so that they understand? Steve: Actually, that's a really good point. Yeah, I thank you for observing that. Yes, I definitely think that is critical because they understand, they already have that so much of what we want to sell into blogs is new, right? And the newness of it may prevent people from actually doing it. But when you link it to something else that they are already familiar with and value, it's going to have more inherent value in itself. So search engine optimization is a good one, um, I think you can demonstrate that the blogs will get mentioned in the press, um, that's also another good way to link it, if you can link it to an online marketing campaign or an offline marketing campaign, um, and say how they might be able to build on that by talking in a human voice. So, yeah, it always makes it easier to sell something that people are already convinced they need. Shel: And is the flip side of that the notion that talking to them at this stage about engaging the customer in a conversation might be, er, a little too much for a lot of organizations? Steve: It definitely will, I mean, I think you have the companies fall in two camps and there's some in the middle. Um, there is a Doctor Phil or there is a Soviet Union. Ok? And what I mean by Doctor Phil is that they, quote-unquote, keep it real. They'll talk to you in a real voice, they'll, you know, um Boeing because they didn't know enough because they didn't know enough of the facts that their CEO had issues. Um, I don't know if that's quite going so far but it's certainly talking about real issues. And that's going to be cultural, I think. You're going to have another group of companies that are going to want to be, you know, controlling the message, marching it through Red Square when they're ready and putting it into a silo and launching it. So those companies, I don't think blogging is for them. And then you have the companies who are in the middle. But, you know, blogging doesn't have to be black or white. It can be: start small. And it may be starting whether you like it or not, because your employees could be doing it. Neville: Yep. So it's dip your toe in the water and see what happens, no matter what you do, try it? Steve: Yeah. Well, I don't know about no matter what you do, try it. I think you have to say, ok, is it culturally right for us? Neville: Yeah, that makes sense. So, you do a lot of speaking. I was looking at blogged about it, and I said that was just fantastic what you're doing. But it is good that I get to go out on the streets because, you know, it's like here's the flaming madman, you know, here's the lunatic on the fringe, right, who belongs at [indistinguishable] or something like that, ok? Uh, you know, coming down from the mountain to talk to people about something they could care less about! Uh, no, in all honesty, I'm happy to do it and it's a perk to me and yes my agency is wonderful in letting me do that and getting out there. I actually turn down a lot more than I'm actually able to do. Um, but my sense is that there's a tremendous amount of curiosity on this topic. They are hungry for information. They want to know what this means for them. I think there is a little bit of FUD out there, ok? You know, fear, uncertainty and doubt about what this all means, you know. Is it really important or is it not important? Uh, I think people are intimidated by all the words. You know, blogs, wikis and RSS. So am I! Right? Ok, so it's lions, tigers and bears. So I think there's an education process and I'm happy to actually fulfill that role offline, because actually I think that's kind of like what we all ought to be doing to the degree that we can, and initiatives like the New Communications Forum are great because that's, er, that's a very welcome move. But I think we should be taking up maybe we need a whole PR campaign around blogging, you know? I don't know, it couldn't get more media attention than it does now, but, I mean PR Week, God bless them, they hardly cover blogging. Right? Now PR Week dot com and Keith O'Brien does a great job. But again I think we're talking a bit in circles here, so I'm hearing curiosity, I'm hearing fear, I'm hearing, um, what do we do with this? And so I think it's when does it happen? When does it hit the tipping point? I'm kind of thinking that we already did and I got to think GM blogging, you know, when the smokestackers start blogging, ok, you know something big is happening. Neville: Maybe there's a lot going on under the surface that we just don't know about. I'm thinking, you know, on the one hand there was that news recently about Hass MS&L with their MS&L Blogworks practice that they started about a month ago. And you, er I keep hearing about what Richard Edelman is out there today talking to, er, the PubSub feeds, Feedster feeds and Technorati feeds, etc. So we're monitoring for all the clients. So they're interested in doing something with blogs and we sell it to them, but to some companies it's much more of a "let's jump in" and other companies it's "let's wait and see." Ok? Much to our discussion earlier. So I'm really leading that effort when they are interested. Now look at me not only as a, er, kind of a resource person the other accounts have. In addition I also have a new business role here at the agency obviously, and that's where all the speaking comes in and talking to all these different accounts. But, er prospects, I should say. But the other thing that's happening is the other services we plan to launch are much more involved with what I call, for lack of a better word, flee. Ok? Our philosophy is four-fold. We say: one, find your evangelists and your vigilantes online. Two, create every channel and means possible to listen to them, actively, ok? Three, engage them in a dialog. And four, and this is not for everybody but if you can, empower them to do great things online and to spread your message for you. Ok, so I'm going to give you an example. Engage. I think GM is engaging. I think Steve: Yeah, it is humorous in that sense but don't say run away, run towards it. But, you know, er, [indistinguishable] called it flee and we're stuck with it! But that's where I think the opportunity is here and that's the new world of PR. Shel: If you extrapolate that out to, er, the really big agencies, a Hill & Knowlton, a Fleishman-Hillard, somebody like that, how would they handle a practice like this? You're small enough that can just sort of be part of all the engagements, er, but when you get to the Steve: My goal is to make this place bigger, so I mean if that's going to happen, it's not just, you know, Steve Rubel comes in and teaches everyone how to do this. We're training our entire teams in how to use these tools, how to know what the ins and outs are, so, er, we are delegating a lot of this beyond the I'm immediately involved at a strategic level but executionally I need a lot of help with the team and the expertise of the team and their own ideas come in here as well. So this is far from the Steve Rubel show. I mean, this is an organization and a team with a lot of talent. So it's up to me to train the folks to be able to do this, and the bigger agencies I hope they're doing that. Neville: Yeah, I would be very surprised if they weren't, Steve, to be honest. The thing that's been in my mind, too, listening to how you've described the structure at CooperKatz, thinking about the big agencies they tend to be more, well, bureaucratic by virtue of their size and traditions and things like that, and I would imagine that, you know, for the larger more global firms, they'd need to approach the concept of where this fits into their existing infrastructure in a different way than if they were just setting up a department. I mean, that's how I imagine it would be, don't you think? Steve: It's integration, like I said. I mean, it's er ok, so when you hire an account coordinator, right, or an intern, you teach them how to write a press release, right? You teach them what makes a pitch work, what doesn't. Right? Well, at some point, you're going to teach them how to use RSS feeds, so hopefully this will start the academic level, ok. And I think it's already starting there. And that's terrific. But at some point, they're going to have to come in and know how to use RSS feeds, and know ok, you know what, if you want to set up a blog, I'm not going to expect them to know how to set up Movable Type on a Unix server, um, but I'm expecting them to know a bare minimum on how to use Technorati and PubSub, ok, which our entire team now knows. And to know just to be aware that things, you know, could start there that could have an impact. And then at the higher level, I'm teaching them to engage with the bloggers. I mean, I Robert Scoble and Kevin Dugan's blog today, um, but he, er, raises the question... as long as you brought up the Smallblock Engine and FastLane blogs knows they do not lend themselves to discussing job actions but blogs are dialog and readers may steer the conversation to this news. Obviously talking about GM's bad news last week. How would you counsel them if you were working with them on dealing with that? Steve: Well, generally speaking, when you have news out there that's negative, right, you don't want to talk about it unless you really have to. Right? Unless you really feel it's going to steer the dialog in the right way. Right? So, um, because sometimes you can only fuel the flames that way. So in their case, I mean I think it's a little unrealistic for everyone to think that these blogs are going to talk about everything that's happening to an organization at any given point in time. Ok. I think that if GM if you look at those blogs, they're really about thought leadership and about marketing. They're not, you know, the sole voice of the organization. So I don't criticize them for not talking about that there. I think if there was, for example, a glitch in the smallblock engine, ok, that they had to recall the engine, then I think you could make a real case that they should be talking about that there. But I think that's a little bit, er, idealistic to think that companies should talk about everything that's happening to them through their blogs. They're not at that stage yet. I mean, we should be happy that the smokestackers have blogs. Neville: I agree with you, Steve. I've seen a number of blog posts, in fact not just Kevin's, I saw John Udell's excellent screencast and how to use del.icio.us, for example, that to me would make it clear that these things really can be very powerful tools. That's how you see it, obviously. Steve: Yeah, I think that obviously you can tell that I think they matter in a big way. Number one is, they make content that's difficult to find, easier to find. Ok. So let's just say I wrote a flaming post about GM. And somebody finds that post and tags it under GM in delicious. Or it's, you know, if I have a Technorati tag for it, it will show up in Technorati under the tag GM. Or whatever it is. All those tags. Instantly that content is much more discoverable because people who are interested in autos, really interested, ok, are going to use delicious to find information like that. So it's critical, it makes that kind of content much more discoverable. So, that's one. Two, it's for the marketer and gives a sense of how people think. Ok. If people are categorizing something, er, under one genre as opposed to another, or one tag as opposed to another, it gives you a sense for how they view this stuff. So it's almost like a living focus group, it's available to you 24 hours a day. Ok, and you might say, you know what, people don't think of whatever our product is or whatever our service is in this way; they think of it as this. Maybe they don't think of the features, they think of the benefits. Ok, so I think that's it's a window onto the psyche of the world. So I think for those two reasons that they're incredibly, incredibly powerful and I think that, er, they seem to click with consumers, they get it, they say gee, I can share my information the way we want and you just kind of decide how to classify things together, and I think it's, er for the two reasons I said earlier, extraordinarily powerful. Neville: Ok, I agree with you in fact. So, how does it feel to be a celebrity blogger? I'm thinking about Media Magazine's Media 100 list. Shel: A-list blogger, Steve. Neville: Yep, A-list celebrity blogger! Steve: Am I a celebrity blogger? I doubt Neville: I think you are. Steve: It's unreal to me that I am. Er, I'm actually I'm a little uncomfortable with it. Because I think it's especially with that Media Magazine 100. I'm honoured by that, but my wife asked me, gee, how come they don't have a party for all those folks? Neville: Maybe that's coming up! Steve: Right, you know? Are you going to go to the party with Oprah? No, I don't think so! Unless I, you know, figure out a way to have a child by myself, um, and end up on the show! But, um, I think that the one thing I will say about it is that it shows that I am a guinea pig for the power of blogging in PR. I'm a walking guinea pig, ok, for what I preach. And if you're out there, and you're thoughtful and you're engaging in a dialog and you're, um, pushing things in the right direction and you get noticed, you can end up being part of the public discourse, whether that be online or offline. So, um and I'm a little uncomfortable with it that I'm not here because I know that there are some PR bloggers especially like Tom Murphy, Phil Gomes, that were blogging when dinosaurs were walking on the earth. Ok? And so, who am I to be any more important, so to speak (and I don't believe that for a second) than they are or you are? And I think what you guys are doing is amazing and actually I'm sitting here thinking, gee, how come PR Week has not got a story about this podcast? Neville: Excellent! Shel: We haven't sent them a press release yet! Steve: You know what? I'm going to send Julia Hood an email, because and she's the editor because I think that what you are doing is outstanding and Neville: Well, thanks. Steve: I think you should be submitting it for awards also, because it's carrying our profession forward in a new way and its lending more transparency into the PR community, so I mean, it feels it is what it is and, um, it's my 19th minute of fame, Neville! Neville: Right. Steve: It's [indistinguishable] Neville: Ride the tail in that case! Going back to Micro Persuasion, your blog, I mean Shel's the same, the reality is everywhere I look, Steve: My God, you make me want to go out and buy a candy bar for myself! Shel: Well, Neville raises an interesting question, Steve Steve: Wow, a special treat for me today! Shel: Well, there's your ego boost for the day, but Neville raises an interesting question, you do seem to find Steve: Neville, did you hold back, because I felt like you were holding back there! Neville: Yeah, I need to tell you what I really think! Shel: But as a result of having this higher profile, are people forwarding you stuff, is that one of the ways you're learning things? Steve: I get so much well, some of it I get forwarded, I get pitched a lot, ok, and actually so I kind of got sick of it! And I said here's a way to do that using delicious so let's open that up, um yeah, so that's I guess I am, I mean you know, why me and not Richard Edelman? Why me and not Richard Edelman? And that's a good question. Here's one of the most influential people in the PR industry and a guy from a 20-person agency that most people had never heard of until for a while, now has influence. Um, it's fun, it's fun. And I'll tell you, Neville, it gives me incredible responsibility. Ok? Because, my blog posts are in Murdok. And Ketchumgate thing sprang up, I really didn't blog about it that much, at all. Because I felt that was kind of outside what I talk about and the but you know what? The PR bloggers did an amazing job despite what Cameron and NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at NevilleHobson.com
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