From all the furious effort companies and agencies devote to posting comments, one might conclude it’s the new holy crusade of PR.  No sooner does an article appear in national press than PR people blurt out comments by the score.  The same happens in trade press, though to a lesser degree.  Whatever the media outlet, editors accept nearly all comments. Since anybody’s can be posted, everybody’s usually is.

Aside from providing PR people with an easy “hit,” what’s behind the current rash of commenting?   Likely it’s the herd of social media pundits, who give me a rash on a number of matters.  The common wisdom among this lot is that commenting on others’ blogs and articles helps drive traffic to your own web site.  Izzat so?  Writing in DailyBlogTips, Daniel Scacco notes that including your url in a comment may well draw traffic for awhile, but mainly when your blog is new.  After that, trying to attribute traffic spikes to a comment is a crap shoot.

So is commenting worth it, or just a waste of time?  Let’s mull that.

There may be some merit in commenting on trade media articles.  So few readers actually weigh-in on trade stories that their remarks are virtually guaranteed of placement bump-up against the story itself.  Great positioning? — you bet.  Anybody who reads the article also sees the comment right away. But does the comment generate measurable new traffic to a company’s own site?  Heck if I know.

What about national media — is it worthwhile posting comments there?  That depends.  When readers have the option to “recommend” a piece, popular comments can fly to the top of the heap and gain great position.  Just as often, though, comments are published in chronological order.  The odds of one comment standing out among the multitude posted are nil.  As for generating new traffic to the commenter’s site, who knows?

In the end, comments are just a poor man’s letter-to-the-editor.  They don’t qualify in any true sense as a placement, and don’t rank anywhere near a guest blog, byline or op ed in importance.  You say you posted a “major blog comment”?  So can my toy poodle.

Bark back if you like, but be sure to include the ROI on your PR comment program.

In case you missed it, Google has unveiled its intention to deploy “ultra high speed” Internet service in selected communities.  The goal: to help lift America’s dismal global rankings in broadband availability to citizens.

Not coincidentally, universal broadband access is a top priority of the Obama Administration, whose FCC is at loggerheads over the issue with the telecom sector.  Telcos argue that they can’t afford to invest in advanced network build-outs until guaranteed the right to charge tiered rates for high-speed Internet access.

Then up pops Google with its own high-speed offering.  The telco response: descrying Google’s move as an unfair “PR stunt pressuring telecommunications companies.”

Is it a stunt?  Sure.  Google isn’t really doing anything new.  They’re already a major customer of companies that provide private, low latency fiber optic networks. Ergo, the cost of Google’s proposed ultra high speed Internet network will be a rounding error compared to what they currently shell out for state-of-the-art private fiber optic infrastructure.  But by making the gesture of providing high-speed Internet access, Google showed that its heart is in the right place — on the side of the public interest.

Google made equally effective use of PR last Fall when it rolled out its Smart Metering dashboard to help consumers monitor energy usage.  At a time when people are worried about rising energy costs, Google saw the opportunity to help, and at the same time burnished its image as a pro-consumer company.  Cost to Google: nada.  Will Google ever be a major player in the utility sector’s SmartGrid movement?  Probably not, but their involvement even on a token basis is sufficient to help propel market momentum on SmartGrid and move the U.S. quickly toward energy efficiency.

More recently, Google threatened to shut down operations in China after experiencing cyber attacks aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  Google’s response was a breath of fresh air and a reminder of what we’re dealing with in China: a brutal totalitarian regime that will go to any length to repress freedom of expression.  Because Google’s business in China is negligible, some have dismissed their threat as yet another no-cost PR stunt.  Perhaps, but it was a brave gesture nonetheless.

To be sure, Google is no saint. Some might argue that Google’s intrusion into new markets and readiness to smack a sovereign nation in the chops are ploys to distract attention from its outsized influence in the search engine arena.  Whatever Google’s motive, its recent public initiatives remind us of our responsibility to confront, never appease, those with absolute power, and that the aggressive use of media is the most effective way to do so.

Why mourn the fate of The York Times or other members of the print media establishment?  They will evolve or pass on.  It’s the way of things in this business, and as students of the history of journalism, The Times most certainly knows that.

The evolution of media always follows three distinct phases: innovation, consolidation and upheaval, and then the process starts all over again.

For print media, innovation began in the 1830s with “penny papers” that made news and information (with a heavy overlay of the publisher’s opinion) cheap and widely available.  Penny papers founded by Greeley, Pulitzer and Ochs were so successful that they evolved into major dailies like the New York Herald, Baltimore Sun and New York Times.

Then came consolidation.  At the beginning of the 20th century, for example, New York City had 40 major daily newspapers.  By 1940 that number had shrunk to eight.  Now the Big Apple is down to two.   These leftovers from another age are barely hanging on as new online and social media wrest their advertising revenue and readers, and make newsprint as outdated as the dodo bird.

Today the industry is in full bore upheaval with an explosion of blogs, mini-blogs, video and podcasts, and the conversion of print media into online versions.  Just like their penny paper predecessors, most online and social media is cheap or free and often heavily opinionated, thus derided by the surviving mainstream print press for its “bias” and “lack of objectivity.” When you hear such criticism, remember that what sounds like a scoff may be a dying gasp.

It’s the democratic nature of social media — the ability to say whatever you want without editorial censorship, rejection, or fear of censure for violating some code of journalistic correctness — that makes it so uniquely valuable to its audiences.  Once again, as happened nearly 200 years ago, we are in an era where media offers choice.  Only this time, the choices are seemingly limitless: not just in the 10s of media vehicles, but in the 10s or 100s of thousands.

Where’s the “profit” from social media?  Simply this: Online media sites are as much devoted to opinion as to straight news.  Arguably even more so.  They seek expert viewpoints that resonate with and help their audiences.  This means you, buddy.

Who’d have thought 10 or even 5 years ago that we’d see mainstream media showcasing opinion pieces by corporate leaders?  It’s happening.  The online versions of publications as illustrious as Forbes and Business Week now seek and publish great content from companies large and small.

They must — or else.  To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, a 17th century writer who lived long enough to see the dawn of newspapers in his native Great Britain, “At their back they always hear, Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”  At the reins and coming up swiftly: the New Media Order.

I’ve worked in a factory, a steel processing plant where I operated drill presses, drop presses, shears, lathes and bandsaws — heavy, fast-moving equipment that can rip your arm off if you look away for a second. When I speak of factory work, it’s from the experience of a man who has stood 8 hours a day, six days a week at a drop press, bending thousands of pieces of steel re-bar, one-by-one, to reinforce the concrete slab that keeps your house from tumbling over.

On breaks or at lunch time, I might go out in the sun and lay back on a bag of steel bolts to read “Ode to A Grecian Urn” — something a marketing executive today would reduce to the lowest common denominator and call “content.”  Friends kept a respectful distance.  I must’ve had this look that said I was thousands of miles away, maybe on the Spanish Steps where John Keats walked.  And I still would be — transported far off in spirit — when I re-entered the dark, clattering, hissing cavern of the steel plant.  I was 20, and I knew that the “content” I loved and the factory I loathed were as far removed, one from the other, as is heaven from hell.

Today when companies talk about creating “content factories,” it jars on the ear.  I have a hard time putting those two words together, at least until I realize what the social media shop floor boss means by content: blogs and tweets turned out quickly, cheaply and uniformly, like any other assembly line product.  That kind of content certainly fits in a factory environment, so it all makes sense.

Or does it?  The ostensible goal of this content is to attract the public’s interest and drive traffic to the company’s web site.  But will people care about content that holds no more life, spirit or interest than a hunk of pig iron?  If you try to run creativity through a mill, quality suffers. Lose that spark of genius that makes great content unique, and lose the people, too.

Look at the world’s truly great bloggers: in the business arena, Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, Chris Brogan, and on the political front courageous dissidents such as China’s Liu Xiaobo, Iran’s Mohammed Ali Abtahi and Myanmar’s Nay Myo Kyaw.  It makes no difference whether they blog 10X per day or only once per month: When they reach out to the world, it’s to say something significant.  These remarkable individuals write from the heart, never to meet a production quota or deadline.  For that reason, each has enjoyed a huge following.

Years ago when I started this company, my first prospective client wanted to speak to a member of the press as a reference.  The Washington Post’s Mike Mills said he’d be glad to, and proceeded to pay me the highest honor I’ve ever received:

“When Jim Crawford calls, I pick up because I know it’s important.”

We won that first account.  And since then, whether it’s in a blog or any form of communication, I’ve always tried to live up to Mike’s words.  Were I to call the media just for the sake of doing so, or blog whether or not I had anything to say, who would listen?  No one.

The leading relationship management company edged tough competition, including several of the world’s largest and most respected companies.  Check out the Magic Quadrant itself.

Among the many factors cited in naming Convergys leader: high levels of brand awareness and strong brand affinity in North America.

Press coverage in TMCNet: Convergys Nabs Leader Spot.

As the North American agency of record for trade PR, Crawford likes to think we play a hand, annually producing some 48% of the client’s total global media coverage. Our latest achievement: A new record of placing 25 executive bylines and blogs during 2009.  That’s a 40% gain over the prior year’s results.

Pardon us for blowing our horn a little, too.

But as long as sufficient time has passed or the client has moved on to new responsibilities, we’re okay with naming a few of the folk we’ve helped turn into stellar speakers and authors over the years.  Note: All of these individuals are former clients — not people for whom we currently write.

The List:

• Carl Grivner, CEO, XO Communications
• Jon Craton, Co-Founder, Cramer
• Dave Dorman, CEO, Concert (AT&T International)
• Didier Delapine, CEO, Equant
• Bert Roberts, Chairman, MCI
• Dan Akerson, President, MCI
• Larry Schwartz, General Manager, Compaq Telecom
• Roscoe Young, President, KMC Telecom
• Heather B. Gold, President, Association for Local Telecommunications Services
• John D. Windhausen, President, Association for Local Telecommunications Services
• Richard Kozak, Managing Director, 1eEurope
• Dan Rosenzweig, CEO, ZDNet
• Paulo Guidi, President, Sprint International
• John Kluge, Chairman, Metromedia
• Howard Finkelstein, President, Metromedia Long Distance

Business leaders aside, we’ve worked for the “other side of the aisle,” as well:

• Lane Kirkland, President, AFL-CIO
• Doug Fraser, President, United Auto Workers
• Leonard Woodcock, President, United Auto Workers
• Olga Madar, President, Coalition of Labor Union Women

Our point: It takes all kinds to make this world click.  Crawford has had the opportunity and good fortune to work for some of the most fascinating people or our time, across a spectrum of interests.  Whatever the assignment, we’ve demonstrated the flexibility to master any topic and the creativity to make it memorable for the client — and their audience.

Software-driven automation is the basis of modern civilization and much of our work life.  Think about it.  Virtually every aspect of day-to-day business now relies on a program.  All but the really key things, that is.  For instance, software doesn’t think — not really, with all due respect to AI — it just follows rules set by thinkers.  And it can’t create a thing.

I see these shortcomings as cause for hope & celebration.

The other day, poring over the latest distressing news about IT spending cuts, RIFs and unemployment, I suddenly brain-segued into a daydream, or rather daynightmare, about a future time when we devolve to a true worker bee environment.  You know, where there’s a queen hatching all the drones, who work their little stingers off through the warm months, then croak at the first frost and are replaced by a new swarm the next year.  Corporate bean-counters would get along well in a hive environment, I believe.

But it has its limits in the non-bee world.  Here a manager can only stoke profits so much for so long by zapping worker bees.  Eventually, somebody has to produce the honey.   It needs a product launch, marketing and promotion.  That involves thinking, creativity and the translation of ideas into visions made of words and images that will stimulate the buying public.

In sum, great content.  Can’t be automated.  A real live woman or man has to do it.  Queen bees of the world, eat your hearts out.

Despite all that’s been written and said about the importance of using social media to build trust by sharing knowledge and expertise — and to avoid turning SM into a sales tool –  much content found in corporate social media programs is only slightly more subtle than the inky advertising supplements that spill out of a Sunday newspaper.

Whether it’s a blog, a tweet, a podcast or a video, everybody clicks his heels and salutes the corporate message.  Few have the nerve to discard the agitprop and say what they really think — and what audiences want to hear.  Instead, corporate blogs transparently reverse-engineer products into “trends,” including the inevitable link at the end to more sales-speak.  Twitter home pages spew links to corporate press releases, reminders of webinars and plugs for upcoming speaking engagements.   Podcasts are often the worst, droning on for 20 -30 minutes while the “talent” reads a marketing brochure verbatim.  Nowhere to be seen in this wasteland of sales garble: a real live human being speaking his or her mind in a believable way.

End result:  A fresh new medium designed to liberate instead fosters conformity.  At the root of this problem is the rush to embrace what business perceives as the “next big thing” in marketing and communications. The problem is that businesses sometimes don’t distinguish between the two.

The purpose of marketing is to directly drive sales.  Communications is about building awareness, which may, in turn, indirectly drive sales.  They rarely mix well.  Notwithstanding all the blather about “digital marketing,” social media is really just another vehicle, or set of vehicles, for communications.  Used correctly, social media can engage the brain, inform, educate and trigger the process that may lead to interest in your company, and reinforce a purchasing decision at some point.

But when the author uses a blog, tweet or YouTube video to peddle a company’s wares, his or her intentions are immediately obvious, and have the opposite effect to that intended.  They turn audiences off, and away.

To drive that thought home, here’s a little illustration.

A while back, a Business Week reporter bent my ear complaining about a tech PR executive for a Fortune 500 company.  I was surprised to hear this rant from the ordinarily mild-mannered reporter, and said so.  “Don’t get me wrong,” he explained. “I have nothing against PR people in general, but that guy’s just a propagandist — I can’t believe a word he says!”

The next time you set out to tweet, blog or add to your corporate Facebook fan page, keep that lesson in mind.  Skip the sales pitch, be candid, simple and straightforward without seeking gain.  In so doing you’ll be in “perfect pitch” with your followers.

Crawford produces a huge amount of content for our clients: bylines, blogs, white papers, speeches, presentations, marketing collateral, op eds, letters to the editor — you name it.  We have one Iron Rule about content: Every piece must be fresh and original.  Occasional use of source material is fine as long as the reference is brief and the author of the borrowed idea is given full credit.

Here’s a conundrum: When content is produced as a “work for hire” and purchased by the client, can they do whatever they want with it?  That’s a trick question.  The answer depends on how and by whom the content is used.  Here are guidelines that may help when you face this issue.

1. Bylines Belong to the Publication.  If you pitch and place a bylined article with a media outlet, it belongs to them unless you negotiate the right to re-use the identical content.  You may not reprint it without permission.  You most certainly may not offer the same piece to another publication.
2. Guest Blogs Must Follow Copyright Laws.  Editors want fresh content.  If the guest executive blog you’ve promised them has already appeared on your web site, make sure the editor knows that, to avoid any potential conflict with or later embarrassment to the editor.  If the blog you write appears first on a publication’s site, regular copyright rules apply — the piece belongs to the media outlet.
3. Re-Purpose Means Rewrite — Not Re-Title.  Merely slapping a new headline on old content doesn’t make it new.  If a piece has great ideas worth repeating for new audiences, then it’s also worth doing a fresh take on the content from the standpoint of those readers.
4. Never Steal Someone Else’s Content.   You’ll get caught for sure. Placing a new byline on somebody else’s content is the worst editorial sin of all — even if the client owns the content.

A few years ago a British PR agency that supports one of our clients in Europe ran afoul of these rules.  The agency was lifting, in toto, bylined articles already published in the U.S. on the client’s behalf, substituting European executives’ names for the original U.S. authors’ — and pitching these pieces to UK-based media.  When the client discovered what was going on and confronted the agency, the account rep’s attitude was: “Hey, what’s the harm?  Who will ever know?”

Here is the harm.

In the Internet era, media is not confined by national boundaries, and hasn’t been for many years.  In the tech arena particularly, English is the new lingua franca, and U.S.-based media dominate.  When a story appears online in a prominent tech trade, it likely has as many readers in Mumbai, Bonn, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and London as in New York, Seattle or Silicon Valley.  If the same story appears twice under different names or titles, then readers — and the authorities — will be all over it immediately.  International copyright laws apply in most countries.  But even if there were no such laws, would you want to risk incensing an editor by tricking him into using content already published by another, or to lose credibility with your audiences due to such buffoonery?  Of course not.

So. . .how did I take the news that content developed for the client was appearing in multiple countries under different names?  It stopped me cold. It’s a sad comment on the state of the media world when agencies, whose principle job is to create and place fresh content for clients, pilfer others’ work and don’t even know that’s wrong.

In 2009, Crawford boosted Convergys’  byline and blog placements to 25 major thought leadership pieces in U.S. trade media.  With Crawford’s direct involvement in creating and placing exciting new content, Convergys continued a three-year trend of increasing its U.S. trade press placements by 40% annually.

It’s not the numbers alone that impress, but also the breadth of reach.  Crawford helped Convergys make its message accessible across an array of disciplines and vertical industries.  The full tally for 2009:

1. Contact Professional CP Wire – “Top 10 Things Your Customers Want You to Know” (Jan. 21 ‘09)
2. Training Magazine – “Home Schooling for Home Agents” (Jan. 22 ‘09)
3. Customer Management Insight — “Get Closer to Your Customers and Employees in 2009″ (February ‘09)
4. CRM Magazine – “Outsourcing Tech Support — The New Customer Loyalty Engine” (March ‘09)
5. Customer Management Insight – “Service Levels — One Size Does Not Fit All” (March ‘09)
6. Contact Professional — “Are You Ready for the Great Millennial Migration?” (March/April ‘09)
7. B/OSS Magazine — “An Incremental Approach to BSS/OSS Improvement” (May/June ‘09)
8. Speech Technology — “The Best Response to a Tough Economy” (May ‘09)
9. Speech Technology — “Creating Dynamic Multimodal Interactions” (May ‘09)
10. InsideARM.com — “Loan Modification and Delinquency Management Approaches That Build Loyalty” (June ‘09)
11. CRMXchange — “How to Thrive in an Economic Recession” (June ‘09)
12. Talent Management — “Follow a Performance Map to Superior Service” (July ‘09)
13. Contact Professional’s CP Wire — “Succeeding with Customer Care in Challenging Times” (July 8  ‘09)
14. Speech Technology — “Voice Authentication – It’s Not Just for IVR Anymore” (July 20 ‘09)
15. BAI Banking Strategies — “Collections Poker – How to Achieve a Win-Win” (Aug 3  ‘09)
16. Speech Technology — “Creating the ‘Wow’ Factor for Customer Retention” (Sept.  ‘09)
17. Speech Strategy News — “Multimodal Customer Service Transactions” (Sept. ‘09)
18. 1to1 Media Guest Blog — “Analytics Bring Customer Perspectives into Focus and Make the Save” (Sept. 10  ‘09)
19. CRM Magazine — “Turn Your Satisfied Customers Into Loyal Ones” (Sept. 21  ‘09)
20. CRM Magazine Guest Blog — “Using Intelligent Self-Service to Compete in a ‘Free’ — or Any – Marketplace” (Oct. 22  ‘09)
21. 1to1 Media Guest Blog — “Millennials and Today’s Experience Economy” (Oct. 27  ‘09)
22. Contact Professional’s CP Wire Guest Blog — “Five Reasons to Use Home Agents” (Oct. 28  ‘09)
23. International Customer Management Institute — “The Intelligent Self-Service Imperative for Call Centers” (Nov ‘09)
24. Customer Management IQ Guest Blog — “Service Level Targets” (Nov. 9  ‘09)
25. CRM Magazine — “Strategic Partnerships May Be Your Most Important” (Dec. 17  ‘09)

In addition, Convergys racked up 74 feature articles and nearly 800 trade press hits from press releases.

Already, Convergys is off to a strong start for the New Year with two new byline placements in January 2010 — and many more in the pipeline.