• Euskara, one of the few pre-Indo-European tongues extant on the Continent, likely passed the ears of Aryan charioteers invading Iberia, around the same time the first pharaohs arose in Egypt.

• While the rest of Europe labored under feudalism, the Basques from at least the 14^th century onward elected members of their own Juntas Generales or representative assembly, one of Europe’s earliest democratic institutions.

• Basque women didn’t have to wait for the 20^th century for equality; records from the 1st century B.C. show that they could inherit and own property, officiate at religious ceremonies, and work alongside men.

• Basque culture, now thoroughly modern, remains distinctly unique and their own. Although the ETA movement is dormant, Basques in general see little value in absorption by the corporate governance of France and Spain.

As you may have surmised, I’m a big fan of that now largely discarded notion called belief in “the independence of small peoples.” Which is why, tangential though it may at first seem, I take issue with Chris Perry’s latest post in Forbes.

Perry makes the case that in a world turned upside down by social media, companies need a more structured approach to managing the multitude of venues that comprise communications. To his credit, Perry is taking on one of the biggest challenges facing communications today: the seeming disconnect between social media and the legacy institutions — branding, marketing, advertising and PR — tasked with managing social media’s transformational impact. Content, as Perry notes, is “at the center of it all.”  So far, so good.  Here are the parts that bother me:

• “Few organizations have an overarching strategy that channels all this branded content into a consolidated planning model. In parallel, we see lack of defined leadership for overall orchestration and accountability for content-driven programs.”

• A new caste of leadership, per Perry, must “impart new ways to help teams understand how content plays holistically within plans. . .”

In point of fact, we already have such leaders with the very same mandate. They’re called Chief Marketing Officers. Within a corporation, all communications both internal and external typically roll up to the CMO. The best develop their strategy, lay it out for their respective teams to follow, then manage with a light touch that encourages individual creativity within guidelines. By trusting her or his teams to be responsible and accountable, the CMO takes on risk; minimizing the classic corporate review cycle in order to ensure the timeliness of content means giving up a certain amount of control.

There will be the danger of that one time out of 100 that content not perfectly in sync with the corporate story line gets out the door. Still, the occasional SNAFU beats the alternative: a bureaucratic approach to content management that virtually guarantees slow progress through the corridors of power, and the scrubbing of content to a stultifying, “holistic” sameness.

Forget the CCO.  Give us “creatives” who stand out, keep the pulse moving and the mind alive — even if it means they stand apart.

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.

If you’re like me and pay a cable/sat provider through the nose each month, you have probably long wondered why you are a slave to their programming. Why is it that night after night, scrolling through the guide, we find the same films and TV shows — chosen by the provider, not us — listed ad nauseum?

Content selection in TV is very similar to radio. It lives by a Top 40 or Top 100 list outside of which no other content exists. If you went by what played on classic radio stations you might conclude that “Money” and “Another Brick in the Wall” are the only two songs recorded by Pink Floyd — because those are the only tunes you’ll ever hear by the group on commercial broadcasts.

This self-limiting approach to content is as bad or worse in TV. As a result, be assured that somewhere in the world, usually on my flat screen, Jaws, ET, The Shawshank Redemption and Godfather Part II air every day. They’re inescapable. Fans of classic content don’t fare much better. AMC and TCM can be relied on for showings of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush or Modern Times. But good luck finding The Great Dictator, Chaplin’s first talkie and most commercially successful film. For whatever reason, it didn’t make the cut with content dictators. Similarly, if every episode of Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life is available for viewing somewhere, I’ll eat my cigar.

Think you’re better off with Roku, Xbox, Apple TV and Google TV? Got news for you: You’ve cut the cord and saved a buck, but you’re still chained to a menu — their menu.

Why make a fuss when there are thousands of channels, plus OTT options and YouTube?  Precisely because these are only channels. Channel counts pale beside the amount of video content produced over the last century — perhaps millions of shows, many of which still exist. Why can’t we see them?

To be sure, like Mr. Jacoby, I’m thrilled at the prospect of tweeting during Mad Men, seeing ads tailored to my needs and interests, and even playing with T Commerce to buy wingtips just like Steve Buscemi’s in Boardwalk Empire.

But I’m not kidding myself that the apps are anything but a toy. “The show’s the thing.” Smart TV will have truly arrived when viewers control content access 100 percent and can order up any program, film or even commercial ever created.

London, 19 July 2011

It is thus that social media rumors and hoaxes start. Someone invents a story on a lark (or in this case, a pigeon), and soon what began as a joke gains followers en masse til it is believed true. Before you know it scores of guileless American tourists are fanning out through London asking where they can buy copies of The Great Love Tweets of William Shakespeare.

There’s a lesson or two herein, and given enough coffee and nicotine I will try to sort out it or them:

1. Information begets information. The more we tweet, blog, follow, like and comment, the more and the faster social media propagates, ad infinitum. If you could print and stack all this content it would, like one of those Facebook user statistics, reach from here to Mars.
2. Social media has a gnat’s lifespan. Our hunger for new content instantly pushes aside the old. One moment Blake Lively is ubiquitous, then Bret Favre, Tony Weiner and now Voicemailhackingate. It doesn’t matter that nothing ever disappears on the Internet. Most of whatever causes a stir there is soon supplanted and forgotten.
3. What will social media’s legacy be? Five centuries hence, when archaeologists dig up the great servers of our time and peruse the trillions of communications recorded, how will they rank it among civilization’s great achievements — between the hula hoop and the pet rock? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, as directed by the powers that be and know, we blog and tweet anon. In days of yore, writers kept skulls on their desks as a reminder of the transience of life and follies of mankind. For me, my father’s old telegraph key — a remnant from the day when “ham radio” was the social media du jour — has the same effect.

Shouldn’t all that we create, even in the mundane realm of business, operate on this principle — to inspire an audience?

Today, in the world of corporate social media, we are surrounded by pundits who urge us to churn out “content.” The spirit of a single piece matters far less than the purported collective impact of multiple ones. And so we must blog, tweet and connect on Facebook consistently and on schedule. It’s a routine, like brushing your teeth or coming your hair, and just that interesting.

Those who produce such “content” are much like factory workers in a smokestack industry. They stamp out the words on a digital drill press, embellishing with hypertext that invariably leads to a corporate sales pitch.

Inspiration’s got nothin’ to do with it. Ninety-nine percent of corporate social media comes straight off an assembly line. Content marketers are the absolute worst. When I hear the expression “content marketing,” I think “mass production.”

Anybody want to read or view that stuff? Not me. So why “produce” it?

I was going to leave you with a few bullet points, but somehow the idea of presenting rules seems counter-intuitive here. Instead I’ll pose three questions:

• When you write, or make a video, or whatever — are you creating something or merely hammering together familiar words, phrases and images?
• Will your audience share in your original enthusiasm?
• Will it inspire them to do something as good or better?

The world is full of hacks. Those that inspire are rare. China’s T’ang dynasty poet Li Po may have best expressed the difference between the two in these lines:

A CONFRONTATION WITH TU FU

When the gods so please

they fling incense and wine

onto the simmering forge of my mind

which, catching the coals of ideas,

blazes forth a fragrant breeze.

You, Tu Fu, who chisel and polish verse,

your wit attending your purse –

and all for the pleasure of the Empress –

will never understand this.

Monetizer (left), Curator (right)

The job’s highlight came in June: covering the annual convention of the Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives Association (PRSA) held in a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn outside Cleveland. Because most pharmaceutical sales reps of that era seemed to be former high school and college athletes dreaming of bygone glory, presentations tended to begin and end with Vince Lombardi anecdotes and quotes.  [When I die and go to hell, the punishment for my sins will be a front row seat at Eternity's motivational festival.]  Since the motel had a decent swimming pool, I alternated between listening to the positive thinking palaver indoors and working on my tan while I typed up story notes. Yes, Virginia, that is what trade reporters really do at such events.

I made sure to catch the last day’s Vince Lombardi Paean delivered by a Wayne Dyer knockoff named Dwayne hired out of Poughkeepsie. With the final “leaders aren’t born, they are made” homage to the old ball coach, the audience leapt to their feet and cheered. The group’s president, a college linebacker gone to flab, rushed toward the stage to open the Q&A session.

“Dwayne,” he panted earnestly, “can you example what you were talking about?”

In that moment, as if the Archangel Michael himself reached down from the heavens and touched me, I knew my life’s mission, or one of them anyway.  I stretched an arm into the aisle and grabbed the mic from president Flubadub.

“Excuse me, Flubs, but did you just use ‘example’ as a verb?”

I’ve been on a tear ever since, outing pompous, inflated and/or inappropriate use of language. It’s a never ending job in the tech sector, where The Word is ruled by experts in verbal inflation.

My current peeves: “curate” as a catch-all verb and “monetization” for making money.

I’m not the first to pick on the expanded use of curate as verb.  The New York Times did the best job back in 2009, noting how those who like “to curate” are indulging in a harmless form of self-inflation. Since then, use of “curate” as a verb has expanded to include any kind of managerial function, e.g., the act of selecting, commenting on and regurgitating somebody else’s news in a blog –which somehow seems a tad removed from the original function of a curator as caretaker of the soul, or of a museum.  Nonetheless, the blogosphere is rife with self-styled curators.

On another front, merely making money from a product simply won’t do anymore. One must “monetize” it.  Again, the blogosphere overflows with advice on how to “monetize” social media.  In the telecom sector there’s a movement to “monetize bandwidth.”  Translation: Make a buck.

“Monetization” sounds so phony that I was surprised to find it’s an actual word dating from the late 19th century. But its specific meaning is to legalize or coin an object as money — not profit from.

In all fairness, what appears strange to me may seem normal to many others.  Those that like to curate and monetize might be right in asserting that I’m over-educationalized and given to pedanting. I’ll mull that while I curate the barn stalls and daydream of monetizing what I muck there.

What is it that’s so hard about blogging? We all know we’re “supposed” to do it; a stream of expert commentary has become a cornerstone of business promotion and outreach. But again and again even the largest — i.e., well-staffed — companies find it nearly impossible to write so much as 500 words a week. And, sadly, the slower the rate of production, the less excitement surrounds the whole effort; one blog post doesn’t beget another, and would-be readers have time to forget you exist between updates. When a post finally does land on the website, the deafening silence reinforces a sense of futility.

Blogging is pointless, you think. What a friggin’ waste of time.

And unless you can upgrade both expectations and efficiency, you would be right.

Blogging, like any creative PR effort, has an exponential rate of return; one little toe in, even if it’s dipped religiously, once a month, is simply not going to cut it. If you want to use a “content factory” to drive interest in your business, respect for your innovation, and loyalty from your customer base, you’re going to need to take a few elementary steps in attitude adjustment:

1. Kill crisis by committee. It’s a blog post, not a legal treatise. If the approval process takes longer than the writing process, you need to streamline it, and either learn to trust your employees or hire some employees you can trust.
2. Design a campaign. It doesn’t have to be in minute detail, but your blog is a part of your identity branding, and it pays to know what features you want to highlight. Lay out topics that are important to what you do, and outline a plan to hit them repeatedly and with fresh content.
3. Implement accountability. Bloggers need to blog, whether that’s the CEO or a team of PR flacks. Set expectations, lay out simple guidelines, and crack the whip — on yourself, if necessary — if the ball gets dropped.
4. Let writers write. Not every blog post is going to be a brilliant specimen. But it’s blogging — a writing medium in which quality matters but quantity counts.  As long as they’re in line with company objectives, let writers run with their concepts; they’ll feel impassioned about the topics, and their enthusiasm itself can be a reader magnet.

In short, oil the gears and get the thing humming. Like any process, public relations obeys the law of conservation of energy: you get out what you put in.

The problem with many social media practitioners is that they’re clueless on plot lines. People love stories. What are movies, TV shows and even the news itself all about? — stories that let our imagination take wing. Creating and telling a story are all the more important in the at times dry corporate arena. A great story lifts your company above the arid plain where most enterprises dwell.

As in all such matters, it’s helpful to take a page from the founders, in this as in so many other cases, the Greeks. Here’s a story on story-telling, and where it all began, that still holds value today.

Once upon a time, years before there was an Internet, a PC, a phone, a car — heck, the wheel itself was still something of a marvel back then — there lived one of the world’s first and greatest practitioners of social public relations: Homer. Though blind from birth, Homer had a rare gift that more than compensated for any sensory shortcoming — the art of storytelling. His great epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, have enthralled audiences since 800 B.C.  But of specific interest, I believe, is why they were so popular in their own time and might be called the social media experience of that long distant past.

Homer’s poems were oral works recorded only to his memory. They were composed for live recitation before an audience, and thus one of the earliest communal communications venues. People came together socially to hear Homer speak — not in a theater, but around a fire or in a nobleman’s hall where they could engage with the performer and the experience.

Homer understood the value of relating to his audience in a way that induced interaction. During a performance, he deliberately selected and delivered passages specifically focused on the illustrious exploits of listeners’ ancestors. The audience could relate personally with what they heard because they were related to the protagonists. Members might even leap up and retweet, “That was my great-great-grandfather leading the Acheans at the walls of Troy!” Outbursts up to 140 characters were acceptable but anything longer, frowned on.

Researchers speculate that in Homer’s time adults still possessed an ability that is common in children today but seems to disappear in modern man around the onset of puberty: the gift of eidetic imagery — seeing detailed mental images that appear as tangible as reality. Homer’s tales were the 3-D of their day — as visually real to an audience as Avatar, but without the special glasses.

Homer didn’t need to post flyers in the neighboring hamlet to alert audiences on his next tour date.  The word spread virally, just as it does via social media and social PR today. Long before Homer arrived, people knew he was on the way.

Of course, Homer likely had competitors who took advantage of the same antedeluvian social media tools. What made Homer stand out — a great story. Story still matters, whether the setting is a skyscraper. . .or Medinah.

Some years ago I was wandering one evening in the marketplace of Casablanca. The Medinah held all the usual attractions: snake charmers, jugglers, singers, dancers, even the fantasia — a wild charge of Berber horsemen firing traditional muskets. But the entertainer drawing the largest crowd was the old blind man reciting the Koran, a story that still enthralls listeners.

Does your story do that? You’ve just finished a story that tells how. Long after you’ve forgotten some bare bones list on the importance of building community, relating to an audience in a way that prompts interaction, using text and images that create a vision in the audience’s mind, and leveraging viral communications to promote your story, chances are that the same elements, related here in a tale, will remain vivid in your thoughts.

May you all live happily ever after.

The End.

In the effort to differentiate a niche, tech and telecom companies sometimes stray so far into the realm of EngineerSpeak that they become completely unintelligible. Sometimes, as in the case of the phone company that thought it was a gyp, the end result is plain ludicrous. But it’s not so funny when revenue dries up because customers can’t figure out what the heck you do.

Never forget this basic rule of Marketing and PR 101: Customers don’t want to learn a special lexicon in order to buy a product or service. If you can’t speak their language, they’ll find somebody who does.

Recently I came across a company that builds private fiber networks. Because these door-to-door, high-speed networks bypass the communications “traffic jam” of the public network, they’re the best thing going for financial services institutions, social media companies — or any outfit that cannot tolerate delays.

But could the company convey any of this in plain English? Afraid not.

Not content to say they provide fiber optic networks, a concept whose implications everybody understands by now, the company decided it was much better to call their services, “high bandwidth connectivity solutions.”

And it wasn’t enough to point out that fiber optic lines are fast. So the company dug deeper into its bag of technical jargon and opted for “low latency.”

Put it all together: They offer “low latency high bandwidth connectivity solutions.”

High low what? Sounds like some sort of telecom poker game. I don’t get it, at least not at first blush. And I suspect that many prospective customers don’t either. That’s a pity. This is a great company with an outstanding product.

Always communicate in the simplest possible terms. The company that mistakes technical terminology for sophistication is a dupe gypping itself out of potential business.

It’s about mass market trends, our willing gullibility, and then blogs.

The lone dweeb strolling along Pennsylvania Avenue blabbing into his cell phone. . .that was around 1992. At the time there were 13 million cell phones total in the U.S. (Go look it up yourself — I had a long night.) He was the wave of the future, of course. Now every man, woman, child and canary owns a mobile device, maybe two or three. These chattering, thumb-sore, squinty-eyed souls might be mobile but they’re still wired — the invisible umbilicus between mobile handset and brain is every bit as binding as any land line. So they talk, type, play games, watch miniature videos or whatever, just because it’s there and they can’t help themselves. It’s a cheap, legal addiction and those who indulge willingly put this monkey on their backs.

Switching gears. Does any of the above remind you of. . .your blog? What about your corporate blog, or for that matter, the company’s entire approach to social media programs?

There are probably as many blogs now, or more, than even mobile devices. (Look that up, too.) Companies blog and do other social media because it’s expected. For the most part, a canary tweets better and makes more sense. Doesn’t have to be that way, though.

Had a recent chat with social media marketing pro Kate Schackai at Design Plymouth, which helps Northeast businesses get up, running and stay on track with social media marketing. A few (but not all) pointers she offered so that your blog works for you and not vice versa:

1. Have a plan. Your blog should be a Google magnet, a hub of dynamic content for current readers, and provide a wealth of accessible information for potential clients.
2. Know your “key words.” Do key word research (better yet, have it done by an expert) so that key words appearing in social media fit your company and audience.
3. Optimize content. Plug those key phrases into the blog to attract the right eyeballs to your site.
4. Be Anti-Copernican. Use the blog as the center of content releases — articles, videos and podcasts. The sun and planets should revolve around your web site.
5. Easy content navigation. Use high-level titles and pick tags that capture important niche concepts. Avoid date-based archives (who knows, cares or wants to scroll through what you posted last September?), and get rid of any duplicate categories or tags.
6. Use integrated applications to push blog content to social media platforms.  NetworkedBlogs, TwitterFeed, Feedburner, Aweber, etc.

Hm. Just realized I’m neglecting or have violated at least half this list of rules. What an idiot. Better have Kate fix it, but meantime I see the dog left his bluetooth on the kitchen counter and it’s ringing like mad. That “Lassie, Come Home” ring tone really gets up my nose.

“Rover, c’mere, dammit!”

Fact is, not every “story” a client considers hot stuff is really worth a press release. Make sure it has genuine news value before pushing the button on editorial costs to create it, staff, management and customer time/resources to review & approve it, and wire service costs to distribute it.

What’s newsworthy? New products. Client wins. Major partnerships. Key new hires and promotions. Some awards, i.e., those sponsored by a key industry organization or media that can add luster to your reputation with customers — but first make sure that the entity bestowing the award will participate by providing a press release quote; if they have a special “award logo” you can post on your home page, even better. Just one caveat: Recognize that other media rarely run coverage on a competitor’s awards program. However, you’ll get the usual postings on Yahoo Finance, etc., and the award logo looks spiffy on your home page.

As long as we’re in penny-pinching mode, here’s an updated version of one of our most popular blogs, “10 Ways to Save on PR.”

1. Hire Agencies that Hire Journalists. Reporters are trained to ferret out a news angle quickly, make it compelling and produce results on deadline. Emphasis on speed and performance translates to lower billable hours.
2. Always Ask What it’s Worth. Product development teams tend to think that everything they invent is priceless. Counter by asking how much revenue it will generate. Allocate PR resources accordingly.
3. Focus on 3 or 4 Big Stories. Ask management to list the top stories they want highlighted in the coming 6 – 12 months. Focusing on “what’s big” ensures a consistent story line and strong image. Diffuse PR programs undercut the brand and waste hours.
4. Brief the Account Team. Many an hour is lost because the client pulled its agency into a project at the last minute with no prep. Time spent up-front leads to high-impact, cost-effective results.
5. Use “Straw Man” PR Plans. A bulleted one-pager on goals, news, message, spokespersons and media targets is easy/cheap to create, and gets the attention of the execs you design it for. Sir Winston Churchill refused to read any memo longer than half a page.  Your execs think the same way.
6. Shop Around for Wire Services.  This is the Internet Age.  There is no excuse for vendors that charge $hundreds/$thousands for electronic press release transmissions that cost them pennies. Look for better deals from new online distribution services — after you first check that they offer the same breadth of distribution and immediate turnaround as the Big Boys.
7. Distribute Locally – Never Nationally.  The only reason to use any wire service is to push your announcement to search engines.  The same SEs receive your release whether you distribute it with a local dateline (low price) or nationwide (high price).  Always go local.
8. Keep Press Releases Short.  A  press release should be a door-opener with reporters, not a warehouse of technical or marketing gibberish.  Keep releases short and simple — like a wire service story — to generate interviews and coverage and cut content creation and wire service costs.
9. Re-Purpose Content.  Writing is expensive. Editing is cheap. If a subject is hot enough for a white paper, it may also be good for a blog, podcast or bylined article. Maximize your mileage on content by adapting it to multiple vehicles. (As an example, this year Crawford has created 15 home page blogs for one client and placed nearly every one of them, with only minor changes, as a “guest blog” or byline with the customer’s targeted media.  Blog creation and external placement were included in the monthly retainer — the client didn’t pay one nickel extra.)
10. Keep Meeting and Reporting Time to a Minimum.  Take a close look at your line-item agency invoice. You may be amazed at how much time is devoted to weekly meetings and reports.  It shouldn’t take that long for the agency to say what they’ve done and plan to do. Streamline the report, too.  Fancy, colorful spreadsheets overflowing with tabs on last year’s results, this year’s editorial calenders, next year’s trade shows and other filler are a waste of time. The weekly report should focus on one thing: Key action items. Period.

Get to it, my fellow Scrooges. PR is always your best and most lasting form of promotion, marketing, and yes, advertising — and the cheapest, too.