Some Observations from my print Reading

My next post will be about my media consumption habits but here are some highlights that i would like to share from the print (and i mean actual print magazines although most of this content can be found in their online version) that i read this weekend. I enjoy reading print magazines and due to my professional work subscribe to quite a few.

I started off with the summer edition of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Summer 06 edition of the PR Strategists that had BLOGS on the cover. It had been sitting on my desk at work since the summer and although i had browsered it i figured with our upcoming Social Media round table i would give it a in-depth read. Some of the items across various articles in that edition about social media include:

• Pointed to the fact that Fortune 500 companies- those with the deepest pockets are only now starting to advertise in Yahoo! and Google
• Large companies 'fear' blogs because they are under control of a single person- they are used to editorial boards reviewing what is being said about them
• after the first web bust the Internet stayed on as a tool for companies- regardless if social media busts it will continue as a tool
• PR professionals won't necessarily be the spokespeople in the blog sphere. Instead, their role within the enterprise will focus on facilitating others in the organization to speak directly to consumers and become more educators on how to use the tools
• other types of social media (not blogs but video, podcasts, pictures) will have a faster adoption as a PR tool because it is less-time consuming then maintaining a relevant and updated blog and less risky in some ways because it is more controlled
• many journalists look at blogs for inspiration to write articles- this creates an indirect path to mainstream media that PR professionals can take advantage of or use as an early warning systems of what the mainstream press will pick up.

I then read through a handful of copies of CMP's InformationWeek which i have subscribed to for years and find very valuable.

• One thing that i found interesting was that they have started to print comments from their blogs in their print version next to their letters to the editor-makes sense as a media company that using both online and print media to communicate with their audience.
• I also learned about Movable Type's new Enterprise 1.5 blogging software that now provides more tools for enterprise blogging needs like access control integration (from who can comment to who can post)through enterprise directory services.

Reading through CMP's November edition of Intelligent Enterprise,

• provided a stat that enterprise spam email tools block 20% of legitimate business critical emails- so it makes sense that enterprise are looking at tools like blogs and wikis to communicate with their clients and partners. I know i always check with my client after sending them a file attachment that i think might be blocked.
• Pointed me to Edward Tufte's new book 'Evidence is Beautiful'

PRWeek gave me some good client information as usual and some interesting items:

• Forget social media how about Smelly Media? - KRAFT's rub'sniff campaign (subscription required) includes an experimental campaign in People magazine that will send smelly product adds to magazine subscribers that fall within Kraft's targeted demographic which is women 25-54 with children. According to BrandSense- 75% of all emotions people generate are from smell and not sight. It reminded me of the story i saw in the elevator this week (YES! yet another media distribution method) about the new 'Got Milk' campaign that will put just out-of-the-oven cookie smells into San Francisco bus stops.
• An article about a 'Measured Response' (subscription required) goes through how Sun Microsystems is doing media measurement including social media. An especially good read because of the upcoming Social Media round table . A good overview of Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is provided as well.

And the last that i will bore you with (i won't go into the paper articles i printed from the factiva database or other web content i have been bookmarking) comes from EWeek

• An article for the enterprise on how new technologies should be welcomed, not ignored especially with the rise of wikis in the enterprise. Also pointing to a new point about Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.