Now we’re all looking forward to enjoy Aaron Sorkin’s next big drama – The Newsroom – which is an upcoming American HBO drama television series, premiere June 24th.

Very few have been written about the series, so far. HBO describes this upcoming production very much undramatic only in a few sentences on their web site:

“From the mind of Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and screenwriter of The Social Network and Moneyball,  comes The Newsroom, a behind-the-scenes look at the people who make a nightly cable-news program. Focusing on a network anchor (played by Jeff Daniels), his new executive producer (Emily Mortimer), the newsroom staff (John Gallagher, Jr., Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, Olivia Munn, Dev Patel) and their boss (Sam Waterston), the series tracks their quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles-not to mention their own personal entanglements.”

But I do think this is only the calm before the storm. The trailer gives us some indications that the film will portray an old fashioned newsroom which is struggling in crisis, where the audience escapes from traditional media for the benefit of user-generated stuff on social media, and leaves a news anchor in some kind of nervous breakdown.

And it seems that Huffington post share this point of view when they write:

“Jeff Daniels is shaking up “The Newsroom” this summer. The trailer for the Aaaron Sorkin’s HBO series has just been released, and Daniels stirs up some serious drama in this mere two-minute video of what promises to be an action-packed show.”

However, I guess, for us who’s working in this industry, this will be a smashing hit, and another lesson, what’s going on.

“Influence is not some quantity invented by a PR firm, analytics provider, or measurement and evaluation company that rolls up a number of indices and measures into some relatively arbitrary compound formula that makes any appreciation of the underlying approach, variables and mathematics completely opaque to the end-user thereby radically attenuating any little use it may have been but in such a way that it can be branded nicely and sold as “unique”.

He says:

“You have been influenced when you think in a way you wouldn’t otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done.”

And furthermore that:

“We are more influenced by the 150 nearest to us than by the other six or so billion combined”.

That’s why you lose respect for anyone who ostentatiously goes out and say that they know who the most influential.

Like Aitellu did a few days ago, when they wrote “Jonas Gardell (Swedish artist) and 299 of the most influential on Twitter in Sweden – the whole list.”
Laughable or/and tragic? Yes – they had a methodology for that, of course. If you can read Swedish, you’ll find a post about it here and the list here. But it seams to be as many influence methodologies as there are companies creating them.

When Aitellu published there “story” about the most influential people on Twitter in Sweden, one of our (Mynewsdesk’s) developer, Ingemar Edsborn, react immediately and wrote a email to me:

“I couldn’t let it be, so I just wrote a script that run through all the accounts, checked up their Peerindex and Klout scores, and then ranked all of them, based on these scores. Guess what? The result was really different from that Aitellu came up with! I’ve shared the document with you! Do something fun of it …”

And, here I am, but fun? No, it’s not funny. It’s just laughable. I’ve got full respect for most of the companies like Peerindex, Klout among others, that are trying to map and understand the influence business, as long as they show some humility and don’t claim to know what influence is and who’s got it with 100% certainty.

Keep up the good work!

It all started with the home page. Preferably for business and organizations. Because it was too complicated and/or too expensive for citizens to create their own pages on the web. As a matter of fact, even for the majority of businesses. Anyway, then, at the end of last century, we all could publish and express ourselves on the web, for free, by ourselves. Few years after that, the web literally exploded of abilities to create profiles and pages of all kind. Suddenly the web became social. And the business joined the conversation. The question is how many brand pages do we need? And why do we need them? And is there any need for a “newsroom”? Which of your pages will survive, when page views dies? Your homepage?

314 passwords for different accounts of which 109 originate social media accounts

I recently checked my 1password account to get an idea of how many passwords I’ve stored within that service. Do you know what? 314 passwords for different accounts of which ca 109 originate social media accounts! I’ve no idea how many social media accounts or “brand pages” my business (Mynewsdesk) has, but a wild guess… I would say at least 40. One of them is the home page, another one is the newsroom. And then the blog. And of course Facebook fanpage, Google+ page, LinkedIn page, blog page, Twitter page, Youtube Channel, Flickr page, Foursquare page, among others.

That’s the places to meet, engage, and serve the people that matters to your business

Why all these “pages”? The answer is simple: Because that’s the places to meet, engage, and serve the people that matters to your business, these days. As saying goes: “Be there or be square”. But “be there”…? What does that really mean? How to “be there”?

First of all you need an account to administrate your page. Not the same “profile” account like people in general, but a “page” (brand page”), if possible. As you all know, most of the social media and networks do offer brand pages for business, to be able to connect and engage with their audience.

Brand pages banned on Quora

But not all of them. Not Quora, for an example. Businesses are banned there. Like Quora says on their site: “Quora does not support accounts for organizations”. But that doesn’t really matters because you can easily sign up as a business representative, which, as a matter of fact, might be a better way to do it, even in other social environments. Because, who wants to talk to a brand? After all, we all know, behind that logo, there’s a person, hiding. And these people, the representative for the business, quite often PR practitioners, use to feed these accounts with content.

Content marketing vs Social Marketing

Lots of them usually treat these places like media channels; they just synchronized their mailings, with their social accounts. Ok, nothing wrong with that, really, but you will get what you deserve; tell your story to the world, sounds great, but your audience has something to say and requires some attention as well. And you know that. So, listen to and engage with them. Make them happy.

Some says there is a difference between “content marketing” and “social media presence”, though. In a post on Walll blog, Wessel van Rensburg, says:
“…they both have something important in common. They are increasingly distributed and shared by the public at large. But they differ in important respects: Social media is built around relationships. Content marketing is built around communication that has substance, significance and meaning to a wide audience…”. The social media is based on: “Community, relationships, two way, small, reciprocity”. Content marketing is based on: “Content, audience, one way, scale, meritocracy”. Hm… I only partly agree about that.

Yes, I do think there’s place for one way content marketing. But I do think content marketing is, or should be, a starting point for further sharing, conversation and interaction. Because that’s what content use to do in social media. Everything starts with a piece of content; some piece of news or similar. Which means all the social media accounts are some kind of newsrooms – social media newsrooms, right? Like Facebook Page?

Facebook your company newsroom?

Do you remember Josh Peters, article in Mashable, a couple of years ago: “How to: Make Facebook your company newsroom”?

Josh is a freelance social media consultant who has been deeply involved in the research and application of social media for several years and is the co-author of TwittFaced. He knows what he’s talking about. And he wrote by then:

“Having an online newsroom for your company is a very important way to provide information about your business for customers, bloggers, and journalists. Through a well put together newsroom, you can control the story in order to make sure news about your company reflects what you want out in the public. Unfortunately, most corporate newsrooms are boring, static, and sometimes days late getting info up. Facebook can help you change that.
Facebook Fan Pages are perfectly suited for use as company newsrooms because they have a low barrier of entry, high visibility, numerous customization and automation options, and can be put together in an afternoon. A Fan Page can be more engaging and informative than most newsrooms out there, or it can act as an information portal that redirects customers to other, more engaging product Fan Pages.”

So Facebook page is as much a newsroom, as a brand page, right? Exactly like Linkedin company page? I guess you don’t agree, because there’s a huge difference between these two, when it comes to interaction and media features! But who knows what’s around the corner. For an example, John Battelles wrote a interesting blog post recently with the headline: “LinkedIn – the media company?”. He said:

“…LinkedIn has quietly built itself into a significant media business. It’s added a newsfeed, status updates, and “top stories today” features. Late last month, it added “following”  as well. And I’ve begun to notice the LinkedIn share button popping up all over the web – it isn’t quite the attention engine that Twitter has become, but its power is rising…”

The company page on Linkedin is still very much static so far. But the company pages on Twitter is not. Nor is the brand pages on Foursquare. Etc. They are all some kind of newsrooms.

Are they entitled to exist – the traditional newsroom suppliers?

But I guess that’s not the kind of newsroom TekGroup is dealing with and talking about in their “2012 Online Newsroom Survey Report”. TekGroup says it’s “The top online newsroom software company”. In their report they say that “Journalists expect your organization to have an online newsroom. In today’s digital era, where news breaks around the clock, millions of people are sharing news stories using social media and fewer journalists are responsible for more content — your organization needs an online newsroom to remain competitive.”

I guess they haven’t included either Facebook or anyone of the “page providers” as “newsroom providers” in this case
Because they believe a newsroom is equivalent to be the service for journalists to get access to corporate content.

98% of journalists think it’s important for a company to have an online newsroom

The survey reinforces that hypothesis:
98% of journalists think it somewhat important (15%), important (33%), or very important (49%) for a company or organization to have an online newsroom available to the press.
98% of journalists say it’s somewhat important (8%), important (34%), or very important (56%) for a company to provide access to news releases within their online newsroom
98% of journalists agreed the ability to search news archives within an online newsroom is
somewhat important (10%), important (36%) or very important (52%) to their work.

The respondents strengthens the hypothesis that “one of the biggest values of an online newsroom is that it can store all of your valuable communications content”.

94% of journalists say it’s somewhat important (14%), important (28%), or very important (52%) to have access to photographs – both web and print ready – within an online newsroom. They also want access to product information within an online newsroom with 90% indicating the availability of such information would be somewhat important (25%), important (34%) or very important (30%) for their work.

Although journalists and similar are increasingly using the brand pages on social media as sources, they’re still looking for the corporate information on the homepages.

Homepage – still king as source for information and research – so far

According to PRWeek Media survey 2010, 90% of the respondents (journalists mostly on newspapers) says they’re acquiring information about a specific company on its homepage. And that 94% of them are using the the homepage in doing research for a story.

When I was in Orlando, U.S, for the PRSA International Conference, I took the opportunity to interview some of the attendees, in this matter. And I also created a minor poll (only 50 repsondents) in question.

I asked them: What’s the main purpose of your newsroom?
57% said: To serve journalists with content to get publicity.
38% said: To find, connect and engage with people that matter most to your business. And 29% said: To serve any visitor with content to get buzz?

76% would you like to improve their newsrooms.
86% of them would like it to be more social, interactive, and engaging for the visitor.
64% of them would like it to be synchronized with other social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and others.
57% of them would like to be able to engage with the visitors.

As far as I understand, there’s a great need for a newsroom, as TekGroup define it, particularly if it serves its stakeholders with great and comprehensive content. But the audience, whoever they are, are demanding human businesses and social treatment, these days. Which requires social home pages and newsrooms, as well. Mitch Joel recently wrote on his excellent Six Pixels of Separation Blog: “Death to the Page View”. He believes that “there’s still something inherently wrong with the page view model” and says:

“How a user engages with the content in the digital format is so fundamentally different than print that it’s almost laughable that we’re still even thinking about page views as an advertising metric at this point.”

So what we can conclude, is that the content is moving into the social space, and the sociability is moving into the content. I believe the reason for why journalists looking for content on the homepages, is because these pages use to be the places where the content is. And because the home page normally is one of the top hits on Google.

Will your homepage survive, when page views dies? 

But I guess that has come to and end. If the page view as a measurement for success is dying, the page without social features will die as well.
The homepage and its newsroom have entitled to exist as long as they treat the visitors as they like, with a lots of understanding, humanity, engagement, knowledge, and great content. But what happens if Google+ adds the ability for business to upload and organize all kind of corporate content, with far better social solutions and usability than web pages can offer. And furthermore prioritize these pages on their “social search”?

We all know by now that the new ipad3 will be launched the 16th of March. That’s great news. And we also know that the this tablet will contain some amazing features like much faster and more powerful A5X processor, a HD display with 2048×1536 pixels, 4G LTE Data connection and new iSight 5 Megapixel camera, and more. That’s even better news.

But the biggest most interesting news, from my point of view, is that the tablets are gaining huge market shares at the expense of computers(?), and that the Ipads now conquer the tablet market, entirely.

Avinash Kaushik recently said on Google+ that Tim Cook told the audience during the “gdgt” conference in SF:

“We’ve sold almost 15.5 million iPads last quarter alone. We sold more iPads in the last quarter alone than any PC manufacturer sold in their entire line.”

And Michael Oryl editor-in-chief for Mobile Burn wrote:

“Cook went on to say that his company has sold over 55 million iPads since the initial iPad tablet wasintroduced back in 2010.”

The reason? According to Tim Cook, it has to do with 200.000+ amazing apps which no other tablets have.

For content marketers, PR practitioners and others – this is your reality now.

Look at Avinash Kaushik’s picture and Tim cook’s graph, below, and think about it.

Most of us are all connected. And always. We can express ourselves in many ways. And get as many impressions as we want.  There are an overflow of tools, solutions and abilities. We can follow thousands of people, from all over the world. We can easily build huge networks, and be members of hundreds of groups, forums, clubs, communities. And the super users do. And rest of us do so, partly. Businesses are no exceptions. We’re creating thousands of pieces of content, curating another thousands and share everything we do generously and in public. Not only on demand but automatically. We just listen to a song, and it will automatically be shared. We just going to that place, and people will know by default. Quite often, it’s transparent, it’s authentic and it’s in real time.
It’s the purification of the communication. We just act, and anyone will know that we are. It’s like the truth. The final proof of the truth, like the wide famous french philosopher René Descartes, found out after years of pondering; “I think, therefore I am”?

People found out, that if we don’t express ourselves, we are nobodies. And businesses are no exceptions. For them, like for everyone else – we’re living in a attention economy. If they can’t hear you – yell louder. And louder. But – no – this is old school. And it’s been old school since… I can’t even remember. I have some doubts whether it ever been an option? Yes, once upon a time – the broad cast mass communication seemed to work out. That was during the laid back passive era of media consumption. And probably a short term solution.

Much of the wisdom contained in the PR and communications industry had gathered during the Ragan Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications conference in Las Vegas. There were thought leaders like Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Shel Holtz, and many many smart and experienced PR and social media managers from well-recognized companies around the world.

Brian Solis said in his lecture:
“Social Media is different than other media channels before it. Here it’s about relationships, recognition, engagement, value, and help.”

He was talking about the “3F’s” which means you should look beyond just: “friends, fans and followers to find meaningful metrics”.

And he mentioned one quote from some Cisco hot shot (whose name I’v forgotten):
“The purpose of these stories isn’t to showcase Cisco or our technology, but to create compelling content in the topical areas that we care about. We are creating this content in the hopes that our audience shares it and becomes more educated on the topics that are important to Cisco and to our customers.”

They really care. But the sum of all the speeches made me rather to think about the necessity that it all has to start with love and passion for what you do. And in this matter I have to refer to Robin Sharma and a quote from Viktor Frankl:

“The secret of happiness is simple: find out what you really love doing and devote all your energy to do it. If you study the happiest, healthiest and most satisfied people in the world you will notice that they all have found their passion and then spent every day to exercise just that. And such a calling is almost always a chore to serve others in one way or another. When you focus your mental energy and effort into something that you really love, the flow of wealth into your life, and all your desires are met with ease and elegance. Your passion must somehow enhance or serve others. Viktor Frankl expressed it so well: Success and happiness can not be hunted, it must be a consequence.”

For me, that was one of the key take aways from the conference, and I guess that’s one of the holy grails for PR in general, and not least one of the holy grails for life. Live it!

I’m really looking forward the 2012 International Social Media and PR Summit in Amsterdam the 11-12th of April.

See you there.

Would you mind  some coverage in TechCrunch? Well, then you better learn how to deal with the “crunchy” guys. One of them, Mike Butcher, wide famous editor for Techcrunch in Europe, gave an interesting speech during The European Startup Festival in Vienna, last year, where he taught the audience how to pitch him and his colleagues. I think his words are very thought-provoking for people in the PR business. But also for people in general. So take a few minutes to learn how to pitch Mike Butcher.

Everyday, Mike has 3-5 news stories by 9 am, 4-5 feature ideas, write ups from trips, arranging travels, arranging meetings and tons of incoming email, sms, voice calls, skype/IM’s, Facebook IM’s / Messages, Twitter @replies, Twitter DM’s and Face-to-face chats, as far as I understood, most of them crap, like: “@mikebutcher Hey Mike, we just launched”.

Mike says: “News is a purple cow.” Which means something remarkable (please read Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”). Mike says: “News is about my traffic, my title, my readers – not your company.” “The fact that you exist is not news.”

I ask myself – how hard can it be!? We all know the rules, right? If you’re working with PR, I guess you’re working with news and story telling. And if you do so, – you’ve got to join the news agenda. You know that. And you also know that conversations usually beats press releases. It’s pointless to be a leech. Join the conversation instead. Find the right people that you can serve with something that really matters to them. “Network. Get noticed.” as Mike puts it.

“The man who bit the dog, is far more interesting that “the dog that bit the man”, right? So find that kind of a story, for Mike, with an tech angle and right to the point. Then pre-brief the story in one or two line email, or whatever channel, as a human being, as the one that really knows Mike’s work and agenda, and preferable exclusively. That could also be the starting point for a great professional relationship between you and Mike, which is a qualification for further pitches and contacts.

Check out Mike’s speech an presentation. And think twice before your next pitch. And let me know what you think.

How to deal with tech media by @mikebutcher

The most conspicuous is the growth of websites worldwide – from 255 to 555 million – a growth of amazing 117%! I wonder what did happen in question? Could it be due to the strong growth of social media? According to Pingdom, there are now 2.4 billion social networking accounts worldwide. Just Facebook did grow with 33% from 600 million users 2010 to fabulous +800 million. But I guess that’s not affecting the numbers of sites?

Please give me an explanation of the enormous growth of websites.