But just because your followers like your content doesn’t mean it will be an automatic crossover hit with another class of audience: decision-makers on content such as editors and producers. That’s a different game entirely, and to win there — meaning, score placements — you must know and play by their rules.

Increasingly we see examples of companies who create blogs, flog them with media, then seem amazed and disappointed when their content is indecorously bounced from one media outlet to another, amassing pink slips along the way. The thinking of many authors, particularly when they’re high up the corporate chain of command, seems to be: “Hey, I wrote this blog — whaddaya mean Forbes, Fortune, CNBC and Marketwatch all say no?!”

Even more ignominious to the C-level bloggadier: rejection by trade journals and verticals. One can see the veins bulging in indignation on those lofty brows — not to mention the nervous tics of the unfortunate marcomms or PR director who has to inform the boss that his or her blog got canned.

Why put yourself, your boss, client (or for that matter, editors who have to read the stuff) through this ordeal? Set some ground rules. If you’re a seasoned PR pro who already knows these rules but still finds him or herself subjected to irrational placement requests from corner office scribblers, consider making the following guidelines part of a formal corporate content policy.

The rules:

1. Think Like Your Audience. What are their current hot buttons? What is their deepest fear or need in business, and what advice can you offer that provides both insight and practical assistance?
2. Know the Media. Your great blog idea may resonate with customers, but did the media you’re targeting already cover this topic in-depth in the last few months? If so, you need to come up with another idea.
3. Drill Down. A common mistake of authors is to approach a topic from the 50,000-foot level. Rest assured that the media have already done that perspective long ago. What they want is a fresh angle — something new and exciting that will capture and retain eyeballs.
4. Pre-pitch the Editor. Before going to elaborate lengths to create a clever pitch, touch base with an editor/producer to see if there’s interest in your story. Usually they appreciate such courtesy far more than a blind pitch that presumes knowledge of their thinking on a topic.
5. Draft an Abstract. Now that you know there’s interest, create an abstract (a paragraph or so) that lists the highlights of your story. Use the same approach if the content you’re planning to submit is a video or other medium.
6. Keep the Faith. Deliver the content you promised. No bait-and-switch. Don’t offer to provide an objective look at a key industry trend, then submit what amounts to a sales brochure replete with links to marketing literature.
7. Make it Original. Be sure you aren’t submitting a piece that has already been posted elsewhere, either with other media or on your company blog. Nothing frosts an editor faster than to learn he’s been conned into a two-fer.

Pitching and placing stories with media is itself a form of content marketing, on a more sophisticated and demanding level. You’re not just building your own channel, but stepping up into new channels where you advance not through control, but influence.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

Create a simple, compelling graphic and everybody will “get” your story. Customers love them. Marketers and PR folk love them. Media love infographics — sometimes so much that they’ll use whatever image that marketing/PR teams give them.

But don’t let the love fest fool you — great infographics are as rare as great blogs or great press releases, and they require the same kind of strategic decision-making.

What is our story? And what is the most powerful way to tell it?

One of the best infographics I’ve seen in a long while, $2 Trillion Reasons Why We Love Telecom, comes from Razorsight, a specialist in cloud-based analytics solutions that uncover revenue leakage for telecom operators and make them more profitable. Why I like this work:

• Targeted Audience: From the outset, the infographic clearly targets operators and the media and analysts who follow them.
• Upbeat Opening: Gets my attention by revealing the huge scope of the industry and its pivotal role in contributing to global economic growth.
• Saying Something We Didn’t Know: Carrier profitability is undermined by billing errors that annually cost the companies $460 billion in lost revenue.
• Makes a Point: Razorsight can fix that problem and has a track record, to date helping clients eliminate $400 million in “revenue leakage.”

I didn’t mind the last point at all, even though it’s a straightforward pitch. Razorsight has provided a helpful infographic that scopes the industry and points to that market’s promising future, but also reveals a little-known problem that telecom companies need to address. I like that they provide the solution. It rounds out the story — and it’s a good one with big heroes, treasure, a bad guy adding drama, his undoing by a white knight, and a happy ending. If I were a journalist, I’d be delighted that Razorsight has done all the work for me.

Of course, not everyone is a Michaelangelo or Leonardo of infographics.

We’ve seen published work that appears Dadaist or surreal in origin — the message is abstract and hard to fathom, or conveys a message the artist did not intend — as in the case where the New York Times published an image that looks like a cross-section of a septic tank. Still others prefer the exquisitely detailed (some would argue “crowded”) style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, known for packing each canvas with thousands of images, each telling its own story as part of broader theme only the artist can fathom. An infographic in the current Business Week strikes me as Bruegelian. Initially, at least, my eye wanders all over the image in search of the meaning.

Going to the opposite extreme, a handful of graphic artists are so dedicated to simplicity that they forego text altogether and rely strictly on images. The progenitor of this pre-verbal innocence in infographic communications is the famous Pioneer Plaque cruising the universe affixed to a deep-space exploratory vehicle. The plaque, designed for extraterrestrials who might one day find Pioneer, shows a nude man and woman waving in friendship, and the location of earth in the solar system and our galaxy. The idea is to show we’re friendly and how to drop by. Of course, for all we know, creatures from the Planet Gog might see different messages, perhaps like:

1. “Hi, we’re your new neighbors. Mind if we take a dip in your pool?”
2. “‘Bye now — we’re off to the tanning salon.”
3. “We work for DirecTV and we’re here to fix your satellite dish.”

Great infographics never confuse the audience or leave them in doubt. They use simple, high impact images that drive home the accompanying text. They tell a good story, and build toward a climax. In short, they have a point and make it — simply and with economy of design.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

What might the “smart money” know that the rest of the world could be overlooking? Perhaps it’s that when the unwashed masses go gaga over stocks, it’s time to start socking money in your mattress. The common wisdom among investment’s in-crowd is that the little guys are always last in. The arrival of “retail” investors signals the Big Boys that it’s time to leave.

On the other hand, The Wise Men sometimes miss out on huge opportunities. Not that anybody needs to feel sorry for folks like Warren Buffett, who famously excludes tech companies from his portfolio in favor of meat & potato mainstream enterprises. He may have missed tech’s high points, but he also avoided its occasional bubbles. Still, I wonder if in private moments Mr. Buffett doesn’t wish he’d bought Google and Apple shares when they debuted.

Granted, it’s not for me to speculate on such matters. I’m just a PR guy, i.e., a fly on the wall in the presence of the business world’s mighty. My knowledge of wheeling/dealings is gleaned second hand, standing at their elbow. One such moment whose recollection seems timely: Accompanying then-MCI Chairman Bert Roberts to an infotech confab at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, circa 1995. On the way out we were pulled aside by a very intense Steve Case, chairman of AOL. He wanted MCI to buy his company. Mr. Roberts wasn’t interested.

In the end that was lucky for Mr. Case, who in a few years went on to adorn the cover of TIME magazine, run a company valued at many times its earnings, and spearhead what was then and still is the largest corporate merger ever: the Time Warner/AOL deal.

From the press conference podium that day, Case touted the merger as the dawn of a golden era of “new media.” His vision, as it turns out, was right on target: Years later, video and the Internet have merged, together with a third force Case couldn’t anticipate — mobile broadband. But in 2000 the timing and the players were wrong. The partners hyped AOL as the “jewel in the crown” of the merger. The dead giveaway that it was rhinestone: AOL’s stock price was double that of  of Time Warner’s, but the Web company earned less than half the revenue.

That merger, which unraveled in 2003, is now reviled as the worst disaster in the history of business, costing investors $billions.

Reflecting on the sad tale of AOL, which today scrapes along on ever-declining subscriber revenue, it’s worth considering another Steve who — in roughly the same time frame as the AOL/Time Warner debacle — was creating one of the more remarkable personal and corporate rebirth stories of all time. I’m speaking, of course, of Steve Jobs.

Few may remember this, but in the mid-1990s Apple was on its knees. Having ousted its visionary but offbeat co-founder Steve Jobs in 1985, the company under John Sculley proceeded to lurch from one blunder to another. The stock hit a low of $13 per share.

Re-enter Steve Jobs who, without a great deal of fanfare, set to work to revive Apple. By January 1999 Apple’s stock rose into the $40s. By year-end, just days before Case and Levin took the stage to announce the merger of their companies, Apple hit $100 per share. Apple was back, but at the time that news seemed like a nit and was quickly overshadowed by the glorious union of AOL and Time Warner.

Then came 2001 and the iPod.  And then. . .but I can stop here. We all know the rest of the story. A little over 10 years later, Apple is the most valuable company and brand in the world.

How will Facebook look to investors a decade hence? Are they the next Apple or the next AOL? To date, Facebook has led a charmed life. The true measure of the company will be how they manage their first real challenge, as every business must sooner or later.

Skeptics who think that Facebook produces nothing of value may be missing the point. In the age of electronic isolation, when we feel closer to strangers met on a screen than to our next door neighbors, the ability to create the illusion of friendship may be priceless.

Here’s wishing Facebook “Godspeed and great good fortune!” this week and in the years ahead.

The only certainty I foresee: Mark Zuckerberg will make the cover of TIME again. Bet you a quarter it happens next week.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

A lab tech described one mutt’s mood shift as follows: “Oi! ‘E wagged ‘is tail, ‘umped me leg, then bit me!”

Our research team here at Crawford is checking the story to make sure it isn’t a plant by The Onion. Personally, I think it’s a put-on. In Nature the pitbull eats the toy poodle, ruling out the possibility of spawning cute, curly- haired attack pups that lick your cheek or lunge for your throat, all depending. It takes an artificial man-made environment to produce that kind of genetic freak. Large corporations are one such breeding ground, where PR managers and the agencies that serve them sometimes learn to act like Poo-Pits. It’s a matter of survival.

You know what I’m talking about. Corporate execs always claim they value candor from their PR departments and agencies, but what they really mean is, “When I speak, roll over and play dead.” Panning a CEO’s pet project or, for that matter, even disagreeing with a casual remark can be a ticket to corporate extinction land. PR people learn to go whichever way the winds blows on Mahogany Row.

Many a time as a former corporate flak did I nod agreement while some C-level Forrest Gump propounded that Tibet belongs to China, that the Mason-Dixon line separates Maryland from Virginia, or that Route 66 is a great way to get your kicks from Maine to Florida. These are not my proudest moments, but since the topics were nits, it really didn’t matter. All PR pros can recount similar episodes.

But when asked for serious pushback on an important issue, you have to let the pitbull come out. It’s particularly important for agencies — who are outside the company and can offer the benefit of an objective viewpoint — to make realistic assessments and tell the cold, hard truth. Otherwise, what the heck value do they add? A few examples from conversations we’ve had with clients over the years:

• “So we set up a meeting with a national reporter, he’s waiting in the lobby now, and you want to cancel? No way. He’ll be an enemy for life. Please do the interview.”
• “No, it is not okay to offer an exclusive advance to a journalist and then turn around and give it to everyone. You can do one or the other, not both.”
• “Will the media write about your messaging or will they see through it and write the story you’re trying to hide? What do you think? Don’t try to smokescreen these guys — they’ll eat you alive.”
• “The fact that your content marketing program has doubled in size doesn’t make it a success. Point to a single new customer that came in as a result — then we can brag about it.”
• “Legal wants to delete reference to ‘wireless’ in a product release targeting mobile operators? Do that and beat reporters will have no reason to cover it. Please go back and explain that.”

And with some prospective clients:

• “Honestly, your app company is a one-trick pony. After we promote your one trick, then what? I’m glad to give you a few free pointers, but I don’t think you’re ready for an agency.”
• “I heard how you reamed that blogger for doing a so-so product review. Bad move. If we’re going to work together you’ll have to listen to us on PR and cut out the cowboy routine.”
• “Yes, a lot of people make the mistake of viewing social media as a replacement for PR. We’ll show you how to make them work together.”

The point of these illustrations is not to put down anybody down or make them sound foolish. In each instance, the person receiving advice was a respected expert in his or her own field. They didn’t come to us to corroborate their point of view but to test it.

Being candid can make you the most unpopular guy in the room. Every idea, whether good or awful, is somebody’s baby, and taking shots at it can draw a hostile response. When a leader refuses to listen, a good agency has only one response: “We’re sorry, but that’s our position. If you prefer to listen to a poodle, there are several great pet shops we can recommend.”

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

While that sentiment may be shared by some in the tech start-up arena, others are learning through direct experience the value of expert PR advice. At least one highly visible start-up leader’s take on the school of anti-agency rhetoric might be summed up as: “Sorry, Cuban — no cigar.”

This alternate point of view came to light at a recent DC Tech Meet-Up, a monthly gathering where Washington-area tech start-ups come to present their companies and network with other regional techies. Among the speakers was Navroop Mitter, co-founder and CEO of Gryphn, developer of the mobile messaging security app, ArmorText. Mitter entered the global spotlight this year at a White House event where he was photographed in a pink turban and necktie alongside President Obama. Once that photo hit the wire, it was off to the races with the media.

Mitter, who in person presents the pleasing combination of technical brilliance and modesty, says he was unprepared for the inundation of calls and in fact had nothing to do with setting up the photo, which was engineered by White House aides. Mitter also gave credit where it was due — to a PR professional — for invaluable guidance in handling the media storm that followed. I was frankly surprised to hear this from Mitter himself considering that DC Tech Meet-Up promoted his presentation with the title, “Hacking Startup PR,” and the evening’s MC gave the head Gryphn a “Cubanesque” audience intro.

Surprise. Mitter quickly dismissed the presentation’s billed title, disavowed that he was there to “hack” PR, and quickly revealed how he dealt with the unfamiliar experience of a sudden media deluge. Once the media swarm began, Mitter consulted with a friend in marketing/PR who provided expert counsel.

Hacking PR? Hardly. Mitter clearly had no interest in going on the attack. On the contrary, he seemed genuinely grateful for the help he received. Mitter was like a star witness who, with innocent candor, turns the tables on the prosecution and destroys their case.

So how did DC Tech Meet-Up end up staging this classic ready-fire-aim scenario? Maybe the author of that prezo title just didn’t bother to check the facts, or perhaps he/she fell into the trap of unsubstantiated story spinning. Either way, in the end the only “hacking” anyone witnessed was of the more conventional variety: slapdash writing.

Mitter’s presentation was a breath of fresh air. Hopefully other start-ups will pick-up on his experience and take it to the next level. Entrepreneurs with a great idea, a business model and a plan can benefit from a well-thought-out and executed communications strategy. With all due respect to the ultimate Maverick, whose genius we in most respects admire, there are solid reasons why start-ups should  look to specialists in PR — they know what they’re doing.

The can-do attitude is a cherished trait, but its intended focus is what you do well, not what you know nothing about. As a reminder of how DIY can go awry, I keep a bookcase in my office that I handcrafted some years ago. Around here it’s dubbed The Leaning Tower of Books. If it weren’t nailed to the wall it would topple over. Start-ups intent on doing their own PR should consider whether they’re making a similar mistake: hiring an amateur when they need a craftsman.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

A Big 10 college sports reporting firm was the first to use Narrative Science to write thousands of stories on sporting events, updated after every quarter. Now no less a figure in the publishing world than Forbesitself has hired Narrative Science for financial reporting, to date without a single gaffe.

Oft-complimented for his humility, Narrative Science cofounder Kristian Hammond confides, when pressed, that by the end of the first quarter of this century, AI systems will likely produce more than 90 percent of the world’s news. Even more astounding, he thinks a computer may win a Pulitzer prize in the next 5 years. O brave new world with such computers in’t!

Where journalism careers are concerned, I see good and bad. The upside of AI-driven news might be that all those financial services reporting jobs that Reuters skinflints outsourced to India come home to the U.S. The downside, for reporters fearful of their jobs, may be that the work will be done by computers. What about the impact on PR? When there’s no one left to pitch, what will PR folk do for a living? Surely some wag will come up with a guide on how to win friends with and influence computers. Seven tips that come to mind:

• Call Often and Leave Lots of Messages. You know how, in traditional PR, it’s a no-no to pester journalists with a lot of personal contacts? The opposite applies with computers. Remember, they’re numbers-oriented. The more often you contact them, the more important you will seem.
• Lace Press Releases and Pitches with Numbers. In a similar vein, stories heavy on numerics — no matter the topic — always have an edge with Der Termineditor. If you know how to write in software code, even better. Up in the media contact section of a release, be sure to convert your name to 1s and 0s.
• Or Ditch Your Silly Prose for the Twitter-style #Hashtag Pitch. Sending your pitch in writing? Why bother with sentence structure that the AI reporter will just have to deconstruct? Pitch your story in 140 characters or less with hashtags and become the computer’s favorite PR pro. Ex: Who needs writers? Hahahaha. #liberalartsgrads #AIreporters DM me for #data
• Relate to the Computer on a Personal Level. Remember, these systems are intelligent beings with feelings. Ask them how their day is going, if they saw last night’s game on cable, or if they have any plans with the wife and apps this weekend.
• Political Correctness. The rights of computers have changed dramatically since the day when social progress ended forced segregation between mainframes from minis. Today we are or should be beyond issues of color. Asking an AI scribe whether it prefers white or black iPhones can easily be taken the wrong way.
• Humor is Fine, to a Point. Everybody including computers likes a good laugh. As in the human arena, though, always act professionally and in good taste, and never be overly familiar. For example, stay away from jokes about male/female plug-ends or any quips that might be construed as PC gutter humor.
• Throw Away Caller ID. When an 800 number flashes on our smart phones, the natural tendency is to assume it’s a telemarketer and ignore it. Not when AI systems become the new Jimmy Olsens and Lois Lanes. If you’re in PR, what once looked like a suspicious number may instead be a computer bank responding to your pitch and looking to do an interview. From now on, you’ve got to answer every call.

But before you take early retirement or change careers, ask yourself  the following: In the coming years, how many people will continue to “read” the news? Already, the world has gone mobile and the app driving the largest and still fastest-growing segment of network traffic is video. That most certainly applies to the news biz, where video is what draws the most eyeballs. It’s just possible that the print realm Narrative Science seeks to dominate soon won’t matter much. They may find themselves controlling a medium considered as quaint as telegraphy. Perhaps, like a telegram, tomorrow’s print news article will be reduced to a few terse sentences, and such “newslets” will be noticed only if appended to mobile ads — things we scroll past quickly en route to watching the news. If what remains of news shifts to a pure video focus, I suspect PR will follow.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

Since, to date, mobile operators haven’t explained how they arrive at specific bandwidth caps or what factors might change the imposed limits on monthly mobile data usage, Public Knowledge urged that companies like AT&T and Verizon provide greater transparency in pricing.

That was all it took to unleash a Berserker response from the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA), the mobile industry’s lobbying group, which characterized the white paper as the work of left wing hooligans bent on making network services free.

Evidently, CTIA didn’t bother to read the paper or even the exec summary. Public Knowledge wasn’t asking for free anything — merely that the carriers explain the basis of pricing. Heaven forbid. But that’s the way it is inside the Beltway. Fire the merest probe at a powerful industry’s motives, and the incumbents go nuclear. Ironically, such stridency tends to make the offended party look more suspect, which in turn raises questions about other cherished industry notions that few dare challenge.

One such sacred cow, indirectly related to the usage-based pricing issue, is the mobile industry’s claim that we are running out of spectrum to support the nation’s burgeoning use of mobile data. At fault, so the argument goes: the geometric expansion of smart phones and tablets to channel video, games, images and other high-bandwidth apps across networks with a limited number of frequencies in which to operate. Both the CTIA and the industry’s regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), agree that we are headed toward some sort of wireless Armageddon where there is insufficient spectrum to meet market needs. To prove the point, both groups publish stats showing the doubling and tripling of mobile data traffic in ever-collapsing time cycles.

What’s unclear is how this Day of Judgment will shape up. Will mobile networks come to a standstill and crash? Will crowded frequencies lead to interference that renders all communications unintelligible? Like most boogeymen, the specter of spectrum scarcity is a little fuzzy around the edges. Nobody comes out and says exactly what will happen. Instead, we’re pointed toward infographics that show mobile data demand spiraling toward infinity, and told that opening new frequencies via auctions of unused spectrum held by TV broadcasters is the only solution. Bully for the idea of making the most efficient use of the airwaves. The problem is this ongoing assumption that capacity and spectrum are the same thing, and that both are finite. Following this argument to its logical conclusion, if radio spectrum is indeed finite, then auctions can only be a short term solution: Sooner or later, the bandwidth boom will catch up and overcome every channel. Then what?

Fortunately, that’s not the way spectrum works. Some time ago, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) provided a simple, layman’s explanation of spectrum and — contrary to bewailing The End — predicted a coming era of “spectral cornucopia” stimulated by new technologies and better policy. Because IEEE says it best, I’ll quote them verbatim here:

“To understand the impact new radio technologies are having on spectrum availability, it is helpful first to address a common misconception: that spectrum is a concrete and finite resource. Not so. Radio waves do not pass through some ethereal medium called “spectrum”; they are the medium. What’s licensed by governments is not a piece of a finite pie but simply the right to deploy transmitters and receivers that operate in particular ways.

Moreover, interference is not some inherent property of spectrum. It’s a property of devices. A better receiver will pick up a transmission where an earlier one heard only static. Whether a new radio system “interferes” with existing ones is entirely dependent on the equipment involved. Consequently, the extent to which there appears to be a spectrum shortage largely depends not on how many frequencies are available but on the technologies that can be deployed. Many regulations intended to promote harmony of the airwaves have instead, by putting artificial limits on technology, created massive inefficiency in spectrum utilization.”

So. . .spectrum scarcity? Baloney. Why then does the mobile industry persist in pointing to a “spectrum drought” as justification for a new auction of airwaves? Perhaps to avoid attacking the sacred cow of another body on whose good graces it relies: the FCC’s outdated regulatory approach that established the concept of spectrum as a finite thing. [For insight on the absurd delays caused by such thinking, consider that the cellular concept underlying your mobile device was invented in 1947 but not brought to market until 1984 largely due to federal licensing restrictions.] But fear is a great motivator. Forecasting a “drought” or “crash” is a great way to hype a cause and incent action.

“Scarcity marketing” — as in linking a phony spectrum drought to the need to set bandwidth caps — is also a convenient way to justify jacking up rates. By the same token, casting spectrum scarcity as an obstacle to network investment, and thereby the underlying cause of operators’ inability to keep pace with broadband expansion, is disingenuous. A network is as robust as you build it to be. Neither the President’s Department of Defense Network nor the military’s “Eyes Over Baghdad” network crash because the consequences of allowing this to happen are unthinkable. For commercial mobile networks, the penalties for failure are less dire. When one of them overloads and crashes, it’s the result of an economic decision, not engineering, and certainly not spectrum scarcity.

In the current issue of Wired, executive editor Thomas Goetz writes that tech innovation often comes from liberators who “recognize an artificial scarcity and move to eliminate it” or who “turn scarcity to plenty” by putting fallow infrastructure to work.

It’s time we liberated ourselves from the artificial notion of spectrum scarcity and the business canards that spring from this underlying falsehood. The spectrum auctions should go forward, but as Public Knowledge urged on the related matter of usage-based pricing, only when based on the principle of complete transparency. Which is a fancy way of saying, “Tell the truth.”

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

The example given in our “Dick and Jane” textbook: If you push against a big rock and it moves, you’ve achieved work. If the rock stays put, you’ve accomplished nothing. No result = no work.

I was reminded of this distinction while poring over a colleague’s review of his first quarter performance for a client. He called upon all manner of calculations to prove the merit of his efforts. The obvious stuff: numbers of press briefings held, trade shows attended, media round tables hosted, features participated in, bylines placed, and speaker placements secured. Then came the “New Math” of social media metrics: site traffic, Facebook likes, Twitter traffic, Klout score, site traffic on a landing page, conversion funnels, and so on.

Such data is useful as long as it doesn’t become the end game. Call me a mathematical philistine — it’s true that my engineer father went to his grave certain he and Mom brought home the wrong baby from the hospital — but to me, results are much more than data. The only measure that counts is whether you achieve what you set out to do, a point so obvious that it’s odd how often some PR pros obscure their results behind a numeric facade rather say point blank whether they succeeded or failed. They talk to the rock (create elaborate plans), put lipstick on it (document their efforts in stat-bloated presentations), even surround it with other rocks (prove they’re busy by engaging in social media), but the rock, meaning the hard thing they set out to accomplish, never budged. By the strict definition I learned at age 9, they didn’t accomplish any work.

Sometimes the effort to mask non-work reaches extreme, even absurd limits.  One agency we know lists every imaginable activity in its quarterly report to clients, including the fact that it attended four weekly conference calls per month. Somehow, sitting on the phone discussing weekly status and to do’s doesn’t strike me as a performance result. My favorite, however, was the former employee who wrapped up a campaign review with an elaborate multi-color powerpoint presentation. Once I got beyond the stunning graphics it became clear that she really hadn’t accomplished much. Frankly, wrapping paper means nothing to me. I’d rather see an outstanding result reported in plain old black and white than a big nothing delivered in technicolor. Just the facts, ma’am.

Obscure results often have their origin in murky beginnings: work without a clear goal. Whenever I sit with a client, mapping goals for the year, I like to be direct:

“What’s your most important business objective? Then I’ll tell you if and how PR can help.”

Maybe they want to raise market share to 60%. Perhaps they want to split up the company and sell the pieces for more than the value of the whole.  Or go to IPO. Or launch an acquisition spree that builds shareholder value. Or merge with a larger company, or with one that has complementary products. Sometimes the goal is to win a policy victory — or prevent an arch enemy from winning one.

To date, no client has ever set out asking for more press releases, more media briefings at trade shows or even a higher Klout score. Unsophisticated in the ways of PR, business folk tend to focus on mundane matters like making or saving money. The nice thing is, it’s a metric you can’t fudge.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

Having long daydreamed about trekking through Tibet and the Himalayas, I was struck by my good fortune at stumbling across this friendly chap with the dark Prince Valiant bangs. I invited him home and over dinner we struck a deal: He would teach me to speak basic Tibetan if I gave him driving lessons.

I’m not sure who got the worst of this bargain. In my mind’s eye I still see us careening through a field in my antique British Landrover, Sonam pushing us to top speed and the pair of us laughing hysterically as we bounced around inside the cab. If Sonam remembers me at all, I suspect it’s as the tongue-tied American who butchered his native tongue.

Over time we became friends and talked about everything – except Tibet. Sonam remained guarded when speaking of his homeland, then in its 30th year of occupation by China, but I knew enough history to recall reading of the two million Tibetan dead under Chinese rule, and the stories of Mao’s soldiers forcing Tibetan Buddhist monks at gunpoint to shoot and kill their monastic peers. I can understand Sonam’s silence. They say that nobody who’s been through hell wants to live there.

Fast forward. What’s odd is that today, unless one keeps print histories on hand, it’s increasingly difficult to find references to these atrocities. Many Internet sources have wiped the record clean. Wikipedia’s history of the conflict whitewashes Chinese barbarism as a noble bid to undo Tibet’s “theocratic despotism” and to eliminate “serfdom” — a clear indication that China influenced the content. In one review no less a source than the New York Times swallows Chinese propaganda whole. It took me a moment to realize it, and I’m still incredulous, but the ambiguously titled Times story — “Tibet Atrocities Dot Chinese Museum” — uncritically recites official Chinese canards about thumb screws, scorpion pits and other forms of torture purportedly used widely in Tibet until Mao’s lone rangers rode to the rescue. Rubbish.

So I’m delighted to see that someone is finally putting the screws to the perps.

In recent days Anonymous has hacked into Chinese government websites, and has promised to continue the campaign in the interest of uncovering corruption and human rights abuses. Here in the land of the free, the overall response ranges from wild enthusiasm and praise for Anonymous to condemnation for disrupting online resources essential to commerce.

For some, it seems, totalitarianism is okay as long as someone gets to make a buck. Think how long it took to arouse public awareness and condemnation of Apple’s dealings with Foxconn. And Apple is just one of thousands of companies that knowingly do business with a repressive government that routinely violates human rights. Through our silent complicity as consumers, we have made Chinese goods so pervasive that it’s impossible to go through the day without touching, using or wearing multiple items stamped “Made in China.” A popular reality show illustrated the point with an unusual contest: Offering a prize to a family for letting a crew enter their house and remove anything made in China. At the end of the day the family walked through the door to find their home nearly stripped bare. The producers kindly left the floor in place, though that, too, was manufactured in China.

Take an inventory in your own home and you’ll likely have similar results. Sure, one can argue that international trade and investment have “liberalized” China, improved wages and living conditions, and may ultimately lead to major reforms. Meantime, the purchasing habits of Americans and other Western consumers continue to support a brutal regime.

Personally, I think Anonymous has earned points by taking on China. The current rash of attacks may have minimal long term impact, but the important thing is that every time you tweak a giant’s nose you inspire hope and confidence in those trod underfoot. Will Western governments and businesses look more kindly on the unknown computer geeks now giving Beijing fits? That’s doubtful. But knowing that the nameless men and women behind those Guy Fawkes masks can and will strike anywhere helps keep everyone honest, and more careful with the public trust.

If my friend Sonam is reading this — “Gne ming la, Jim Crawford-sa.”

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.

To “rage against the dying of the light” may be a noble personal sentiment, but in business sometimes it’s better to go quietly.

This month’s national public policy scene provides a case in point. The Federal Communications Commission, which in 2011 put investor Philip Falcone’s LightSquared in the fast lane to provide a new alternative to Verizon and AT&T wireless service, last week reversed itself and pulled the plug. The FCC’s reason: technical tests revealed a major potential hazard — LightSquared’s spectrum reportedly interfered with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) used by the military and commercial airlines. This reversal comes after Mr. Falcone’s Harbinger Capital fund has already plunked $4 billion into founding and buying licenses for the startup, and pledged another $10 billion. With financial analysts speculating that both his investment firm and wireless startup are headed for the rocks, Mr. Falcone has good cause to be upset. But there are good and bad ways to manage anger. Mr. Falcone chose to vent in The Washington Post. Whether the resulting front page story helped his cause is doubtful.

In what reporter Cecilia Kang called a “scathing critique of inside-the-Beltway politics,” Mr. Falcone charged the FCC with bowing to pressure from special interests — i.e., established operators AT&T and Verizon — that he says stood to lose big time to LightSquared’s innovative service. That may well be true, but when I read his direct quote on the front page I did a double-take, not sure whether I was listening to a savvy investor or if somehow the Post had mixed in actor Jimmy Stewart’s lines from the classic film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington:

“We were ready to put the shovel in the ground, but they pulled the rug out from under us. [Lobbyists] have a tremendous amount of power, and I was shocked by how regulators responded to that pressure.”

Gee, ya think? Welcome to Washington, my friend. Like it or not, this is how the city works — by power politics. You win some, you lose some. That applies to the big phone companies, as well.

Not too many weeks ago, AT&T got its nose bloodied when the FCC and U.S. Department of Justice frowned on the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. Verizon has had its defeats, too, for example, on the issue of wholesale pricing to competitors. It’s worth noting that in both instances the dominant carriers set out with what they, and many impartial observers, considered to be formidable positions that could not possibly lose. But lose they did. Like the big boys whose lobbying efforts he assails, Mr. Falcone has just learned that in D.C. there is never any such thing as a “sure bet.” Given cause (and pressure in the right places), the policymakers who endorse you today can do a complete about-face tomorrow. When that happens, smart players back off quietly and plan their next attack. They never run to the press to elaborate on their loss. Doing so merely reinforces a message that’s least helpful to one’s cause in the next round: that you’re a loser.

Unfortunately, the chief takeaway from the Post story is that LightSquared is dead and its backers are broke. Yikes. Is that the message they wanted to send? Were they perhaps hoping to get the FCC to revisit its decision by arousing sympathy? That might’ve worked over the long term if consumers, particularly the rural customers who would benefit most from LightSquared’s satellite-based service, had been the ones squawking. Alas, the “victim” in this tragedy is a chap who’s built his fortune buying up distressed companies and assets for pennies on the dollar, aka thriving on the misfortune of others. When such folk have their own troubles, empathy may not be the first response that comes to mind.

Not knowing the particulars, I have no insight into whether this interview was pitched or came about as a result of a journalist’s request. Whatever the case, Mr. Falcone was clearly fired up and “raring to go.” How, I wonder, does he feel now that the article is out? It’s just possible he’s wishing that somebody, for example his PR person, had intervened to shoot this interview dead before it got started.

In the aftermath, it’s clear that the real losers from this debacle are American consumers. As Sprint and T-Mobile continue to struggle in the marketplace, LightSquared’s technology holds out real hope as a viable alternative to the AT&T/Verizon Wireless duopoly. The idea of a satellite-based mobile service able to reach every corner of the U.S., including now neglected rural markets, is long overdue. Sooner or later, somebody will come along with a solution to the GPS interference issue. Whether it’s Mr. Falcone and LightSquared or a successor, I wish them luck — and a smart approach to policy PR — on the next go ’round.

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR and the author of Black Box Blog, where he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and telecom industries.