PR meets the WWW / Constantin Basturea’s weblog

Is The New PR nothing else than the old PR? No, I would argue (but I’ll postpone explaining why, since it’s past midnight already).

Think this way: if nothing else, self publishing and new technologies have created a rhetorical situation which compels us to speak — publicly — about PR as a profession and discipline.

This is our chance to make people understand that public relations is not about spamming journalists with pointless press releases, or about controlling the information, or…. [add your pet peeve here]. This is our opportunity to show that we have a role, one that goes beyond what has been traditionally assigned to us (from town crier or steward to traffic manager and conductor), and to (re)define it.

Let’s not waste this chance.

Brian Solis:

[...] PR 2.0, therefore, is significant and it is worthy of discussion, rather than ridicule. And let me point out, that there will not be a 3.0 or any other rev numbers, unless there is another tremendous evolution, fusion, or breakthrough in the practice, science, and art of communications.

Too late, Brian:

The age of PR 3.0 is upon us.
And the New PR is now a company.

Oh, well.

You’re writing about PR and communication (or not :). You want to help your readers to promote your postings on NewPR Crispynews (what’s that?). But how?

It’s simple: add a flare to your Feedburner RSS feed:

1. Log into your Feedburner accountand click on the feed’s title in the My Feeds page.

3. Click on Optimize.

3. In the left side menu, click on FeedFlare.

4. You’ll find a list of Official FeedBurner Flares; at the bottom of the list is a Personal Flare. Paste this URL - http://newpr.crispynews.com/crispyflare1.xml - in the Personal Flare space, then click on Add New Flare.

5. The Submit to Crispynews flare is now displayed under Personal Flare. Check the left side box.

6. Scroll down the page and see how the flare will look like in your RSS feed (hint: it’s the Add to NewPR link). If you have other flares enabled, you can change their order by drag-and-drop. You can also get HTML code that will show the flare on your blog. Just choose your platform and a window will pop-up; there you’ll find the code and how to add it to your templates.

7. Finally, click on Save (at the bottom of the page).

Now you can go to your blog’s Feedburner feed, and check to see if the flare is there. Here’s mine:

If you click on the Add to NewPR link in your feed, it should redirect you to the submit page on NewPR Crispynews, and title and URL of your entry should be there, too. (You’re not going to see a title if the title of your post is not in the blog’s entry title tag.)

Also, if you added the flare to your blog template, refresh your blog’s homepage and check if the flare is there.

Questions, comments? Please leave a message. Add please go and vote on the new articles posted on New PR — otherwise the top stories are not going to change :)

Credits & thanks:

• The guys from CrispyNews who made this possible
• Rick Klau from Feedburner, for his help
• Shel Holtz, for coding an earlier version of the flare.

• What: A Digg-like website for PR and Comm news — top stories, debates, interviews, blog postings, podcasts, research, etc.
• Where: newpr.crispynews.com
• Why: To identify and promote the most interesting PR-related articles
• Who: You :)
• How:
  • go to the site (you’ll find a couple of articles I posted, just to get this started)
  • register for a username with your e-mail address
  • submit news items (make them count): strong>use this bookmarklet: Share on New PR (thank you, Kami)
  • vote on the news stories already posted, and comment on them
  • subscribe to the feeds (for all the articles, recent articles, and recent votes)
• Questions, comments? Read this first, and leave a comment here. If there’s something you don’t like, say it; we can change everything - title, description, categories, etc..

Is it going to work? (what about irrelevant content, lack of votes, etc.). I don’t know. It’s up to you :)

Hat tip: Anthony Mayfield, who wrote about starting a “Digg-a-like [site] for marketing and PR stuff in the UK“. I recommended him CrispyNews, than I thought about following my own advice.

Updates:

• you can vote on a story as a guest, but your vote will count 3 points; if you vote as an user (after registering), it will count 10 points :)
• if you click on the article’s title you’re redirected to the original article; if you’re clicking on “Full view” you can see who voted for the article. For example, here are the votes for Stephen Davies’s 12 steps to a successful PR campaign
• you can see also the most recent articles (feed)
• here are the users who submited or voted on articles; also, each user can track his/her record (votes, articles submitted, comments)
• finally, you can associate an image with an article - here’s one submitted by John Wagner

• PRWeb is “working on new social bookmarking, content recommendation and expert profile ranking using principles of Web 2.0,” and on “APIs that will allow others to interact with our content in revolutionary ways.” [source: Lee Odden's interview with PRWeb's CEO, David McInnis]
• The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) will launch the first issues of the Journal of New Communications Research at a research symposium scheduled for this coming Fall. They’re looking for support.
• Dan Karleen is working with the SNCR on “a blogging study that’s looking at how well corporate blogging policies are working“. He’s also the host of Conversation Strategies in Higher Education, a Skypecast on how colleges and universities can “capitalize on new communication and networking tools to foster meaningful dialogue with constituents.”
• Mike Manuel has a teaser :) about an upcoming site - OpensourcePR.org.
• Edelman will launch a new type of press release in June. It looks like they’re reading Todd Deffren.