Many times, this Blog pinpoints the interaction between digital and traditional PR.

More specifically, my point that in a viral world, one hit leads to another in an exponentially greater and faster pace than ever before in history. So much so that once the viral fission is unleashed, it moves beyond our control, and that’s a good thing, because it radiates further than you could propel it if you managed the process inch by inch.

With the Internet, once you toss a rock into the water, if the rock is big and provocative enough, the ripples emanate from it, sometimes with the force of a tidal wave.

One of my recent Digital PR blogs resulted in my being called a moron and a loser and that was the good part. It all began when I made an appearance on Fox Business TV, taking what I knew would be an unpopular position supporting certain corporate bonuses at a time when they are deemed to be in bad form, to say the least.

I believe in the position I took and my firm put the interview out on YouTube. In any case, a blogger read my digitial PR Blog, went to the YouTube video I referenced in it, and then wrote a scathing attack on me in his Blog.

He didn’t like my opinion. He doesn’t like my book titles. He detests me (we have never met or even talked) and he went into a major rant about all I stand for. (Or I should say all he thinks I stand for.).

So a TV interview leads to a YouTube video which spawns a Digital PR Blog which activates an anti-Stevens Blog. Just the kind of chain reaction I believe is the beautiful and powerful thing about the fusion of the traditional and the digital worlds.

The anti-Mark blogger however thought I was terrible in my TV interview and that in so many words, said I knew nothing about PR and should fire myself and my firm.

So I guess I need to put out an SOS. Or do I?

It’s that time again when most of us are making New Year’s resolutions. Most are about weight, money, bad habits, unfulfilled dreams.

I think it’s safe to say this is the only one you’ll see about digital PR. But that’s what this Blog is all about, so try these on for size:

• Get very familiar with one lesser known social networking site and figure out how to make it work for your clients.
• Study three major blogs, get to know the writers and develop a strategy for placing stories with them and having them launch a viral wave.
• Build relationships with five digital journalists. Get inside their heads, determine what they love to write about and then race ahead of the curve by providing them with more than they expect.
• Stop thinking that you are focused on either traditional or digital media. You must be active in both, especially effective at fusing their combined power.
  
• Get your most traditional and hidebound clients active in a digi vehicle they would never consider launching on their own. For example, if you have a colorful client–one who moves in interesting circles or does innovative things–have them send reports on their initiatives, their comings and goings, on Twitter.
  
• Experiment with a video press release. One that makes a point in a roundabout way, telling a story or starting a trend without the use of prose. Let the picture, on the Web, tell the story.
  
• Convince that client that tells everyone, with pride, “I’m a dinosaur when it comes to the Internet. I don’t even use a computer,” to launch a personal website and a PR campaign structured to drive visitors to it

There is something captivating about being on the Web. There is something captivating squared about making it work for you and your clients

So Caroline Kennedy wants to be the junior Senator from New York. Great brand. Amazing political heritage. There’s a lot going on there, and absolutely zero going on there, simultaneously.

But it’s not the political pros and cons I want to get into. Let’s stick to the interesting role digital PR will play in this drama…..or will not.

Right now, Kennedy is running without running. Her advisers are shuttling her from honcho to honcho, media opp to media opp-in a window dressing whistle stop that has no substance. It doesn’t have to, really. She simply needs to show the governor that she is popular enough to get the nod and equally important, that she can be of value to him when he has to face the electorate instead of filling in as he did in round one after the Spitzer scandal.

Right now, the media has almost no access to Caroline. That’s the way it was planned and it’s perfectly legal and perhaps a perfectly sound strategy.

But, if Kennedy is granted the seat to America’s House Of Lords, in two years she will have to run the old fashioned way. Greeting real people. Engaging in debates. Appearing on talk shows. Answering tough questions. Revealing parts of her life the world has allowed her to keep wrapped in a cocoon of privacy for a generation.

The Web doesn’t matter now because there is virtually no media access and Governor Paterson will make his decision for reasons that have little to do with what the bloggers and the political sites say. But once Caroline steps off the Kennedy pedestal and becomes a free market candidate, if she does in fact take this turn, the Web will be where the action is.

Think about just one aspect of this horse race in the making. The entire youth vote in New York, the same kids who voted for Obama en masse, have no connection with the little girl who pranced through the White House with her Presidential father or who was the adorable innocent at his sudden and shocking funeral. They don’t know her. But they will learn about her, talents and warts alike, where they turn for election information: the Internet.

You can be sure that those who want to stand in the way of the Kennedy dynasty, who want to paint it as the world’s most exclusive entitlement program, will be leaking all kinds of myths and realities to Drudge and Huffington.

Caroline Kennedy is hardly a creature of the Web. And I’m not sure her advisers are either. Or that it is central to her thinking, as it was to the President elect. But her actions to embace the Web or not, digital PR will play a pivotal role in the ultimate campaign for the six year term as Senator from New York.

The Internet doesn’t care if you embrace it. And unlike Meet The Press, if you are not on the show you are on the show.

The internet puts you front and center without asking if you want to

appear. There’s no place to run. No place to hide. There is simply nothing more important in politics.

Mark Stevens

CEO

An old PR axiom holds that any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right.

Like most of conventional “wisdom,” I’m not sure that’s exactly true. Allow me to explain. Last week, I was asked to appear on Cavuto to take an unpopular position. That is, to support the would-be bonus of a Wall Street Executive who was not personally responsible for the economic meltdown.

Believing in the case I was asked to make, I accepted the offer and made my appearance.

And then the “you know what hit the fan.” Viewers found their way to the MSCO website, and to my personal email, lambasting me as a fool, a tool, a threat to decency, a dumb and irresponsible excuse for a human being. I doubt there was anything positive about the publicity, about my appearance on Fox, but that’s not the real issue I am driving at here.

Digital PR is fast, furious and viral. Things deemed to be cool or fun or in cases like mine, truly abhorrent, can quickly develop a life of their own and spread like a wildfire out of control throughout the Internet.

The fact is, when you engage in traditional PR today, such as appearing on a television show, you can inadvertently wind up in the digi world. Not because you place yourself there, but because someone who wants to demonize you or your client, puts you there. And then the chain reaction starts. And you can wish they spell your name wrong.

Or, well, maybe not. There I was, hours after the show and into the next day, reading all of these vitriolic comments about myself. Mark Stevens, Capitalist Pig. The digi PR world lifted me out of the broadcast PR world, and threw darts at me. They spelled my name right, but they did the same with the words “idiot, incompetent, myopic.”

So what do you do when the PR you initiate runs away from you online? Well, I always believe in the importance of trying to control the agenda. So my team and I threw oil on the fire. We placed the entire segment on YouTube and if that wasn’t turning the tables enough, sent the link to every critic who thought it was their duty to diss me.

And I made sure to spell my name right.

The next day an organization interested in reforming corporate boards contacted me about the segment and asked if I would meet with them on corporate governance.

PR is a beautiful thing. And the old axiom about spelling is, after all, right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu9cXXgkGH0

In many ways, the Internet is a massive selling machine. It’s an all out, move the metal, push the pills, hawk the homes bazaar. You have banners and adwords and websites and videos and vlogs. If it’s at all saleable, and even if it’s not, someone is going to try to sell it to you.

And then there’s the professor. That’s what I think of as the educators on the Web. On the surface, they don’t try to sell you anything. Instead, they impart their wisdom or experience, or both, on a topic. Any topic. From health insurance to French cooking.

In many cases, they are more powerful than the salesmen. At selling!

A few weeks ago, I went on a Web search for an expert on corporate bonds. I was considering adding an exotic type of bond to my portfolio. As I cruised along from one Google hit to another, I was lost for more than half an hour in sales pitches of one form or another, all designed to sell me bonds. And all missing a key element: an expert description of the type of bond I was seeking.

Before I would buy, I wanted to be informed. And I was determined to work only with a source that would provide me with the sense that I was working with a true expert.

For awhile, it seemed that everyone wanted to just sell me. It was as if they were saying, “We have no patience for education. If that’s what you want, look elsewhere.”

And then I stumbled across a professor. A bond firm executive who placed not an ad on the Web but a well-written article, first published in a finance magazine, that delved into the intricacies of a wide scope of exotic bonds, opening my eyes not only to the type of bond I was curious about but a wider range of bond options.

With a series of clicks, I wound up on the expert’s own website, reached out to her via email and the next day we were talking on the telephone, the educational experience continuing. And then a week later, I made the first of what may be many purchases.

It is such a powerful and often invisible paradox that the best way to sell in the digital world is to not sell at all. But to teach.

Enter the PR professional. It is our job, our responsibility and our priviledge to advise our clients to detour the well worn path to sales, by selling, and to opt instead to educate. The more informative content you and your client can create, the greater you drown and actually belittle the salespeople of the Web and drive traffic into your intelligent and reassuring arms.

I take it as gospel that marketing campaigns should:
* Explore the digi PR options before they turn to advertising.
* Consider foregoing advertising completely if PR and web guerilla tactics succeed.
* Develop a philosophy and spread it, in editorial fashion, throughout the Web.
* Be the content king.

Of course, there will always be a role for salespeople in digi land. But the great teachers will trump them every time.

Although they are loathe to admit it, most companies websites are forbidden planets.

Meaning: They are hardly visited. They are un-loved. They provide little useful information.

Net, net: They are of little or no value to anyone.

How does this happen and what does it have to do with digital PR?

Let’s take the questions in order:

1. It happens because companies get caught up in the aesthetics of their sites and give short shrift to the strategy, or lack of it, that should be their driving force.

Just the other day, I talked to the partners of a five-year old law firm that is struggling in the current economic environment. When I asked them about their sweet spot in terms of expertise, they waxed poetic about their exceptional experience in representing businesses entangled with government agencies. A perfect place to be through all economic cycles, especially in times like these.

And then, seated in their conference room, we reviewed their website together. This window to their world said not a word about their government expertise. Why? Thinking of all the clients they could serve through the broadest possible shotgun approach, they were fearful of being pigeon-holed into a limited practice segment.

End result: they created a plain vanilla, cookie-cutter site that completely omitted their sweet spot and made them appear like a zillion other law firms. Worse yet, like so many other firms and companies in all industries, they actually camouflaged their greatest asset.

2. And now for the PR fallout. As PR professionals, we all recognize the need to hone in on our clients’ unique expertise or whatever comes close to unique. And then we go to the media with the story, the case examples, the Op Ed’s. And if we do our jobs well, the media is intrigued and even before they talk to us, they zip right over to the client’s URL.

Here is where the message we seed the media with and the message on the site, must be in tandem. One and the same. In fact, the site must reinforce and make our media message bullet proof. It must provide:

* A philosophy that relates to the core expertise

* Testimonials demonstrating that the company can deliver on its promise.

* Documents that expand on the key message.

* Ideas on how the company’s expertise can be applied in the real world.

There is a hand and glove, a fusion, a marriage, between a company’s PR and its website that right now is often an awful disconnect.

One that leaves the planet forbidden and the press pitch sucked into a black hole.

Imagine a forum where rumors fly like goblins on Halloween eve. Where
millions air their personal agendas disguised as “the truth”
without any regard for whether it is true or not. Where dirty little scandals are
widely favored over news of shifts in global geopolitics or upheaval
in the corporate suite.

That forum is something called the Internet.

Oh, I know the net is a vast sea of information, all structured in a
form of open democracy where everyone has a voice. Where all the world
can play. But behind this spin of info age perfection, much of the
Web is a cheesy tabloid that is more like The National Enquirer than
The Economist

I raise the issue for a simple but powerful reason: PR professionals
engaged in web strategies—and everyone should be—need to learn how
to make news on the wild and wooley sites that are at once at the core
and the margins of the Internet.

Think of it this way: what is more powerful for your client? A story
on USA Today online or on The Drudge Report or for that matter, The
Huffington Post? Until you really get the fact that the Web is a
biased, often out of control rumor mill, you will tilt toward USA
Today. And as good a hit as that may be, the Internet feeds off of the
rivers and streams of opinion that flow out of viral thought leaders,
the opinion setters, that are the Drudge’s and Post’s of the Web.

It is from these outposts that bloggers connect to bloggers and that
the traditional media—the likes of CBS and NBC—turn (though they
would never admit it) for dirt they can turn into stories for the
evening news.

So it is interesting: to truly succeed in the arena of digi PR, PR
pros must learn to play a new game, feeding the rumor mills that fan
the flames of the Internet. Those who prefer to play it by the vest,
who don’t want to dirty themselves with the rascals of the Web, miss
out on the ripple effect that is the 600 horsepower turbo charged news
generating machine that is unrivaled by any other.

It may not sound as good to tell your client that you landed Drudge,
vis a vis The New York Times.com, but when the full tally is taken,
the impact can often be far greater.

Maybe the medium really is the message. All over again!

Before you start screaming at me, hear me out:

Last night I was watching Bill O’Reilly talk about a segment he had
Done earlier in the week where he implied that he attacked Congressman
Barney Frank. It sounded like a classic, over-the-top O’Reilly blitz.

Unfortunately, I missed it. But the more Bill and his guests talked
About the Frank ambush, the more I wanted to see it. Bill can be good
theater.

Fortunately, the Internet stores a record of just about everything.
So I Googled O’Reilly vs. Frank, and seconds later I was watching a video
of the verbal brawl. Surprisingly, Frank held his own, slamming Bill with
as much venom as O’Reilly was tossing at Barney.

Now assume I was PR counsel for either man. and that I wanted to
build a case that my guy was smarter, tougher or more adept at TV combat
than the other. I could go to the Web, as I did, extract the evidence,
present it in the way I believe it played out on TV and support my pitch in
living color.

We all think of the Internet as this futuristic wonder that has
Somehow arrived on our planet and changed our lives. And it has, but its
great value is as a creature of the past. Virtually everything of importance or
complete irrelevance to the world at large, is collected in and trapped by the
Internet. Forever.

It’s interesting and paradoxical that as much as we think of the
Internet as the cutting edge, there is something so old fashioned and timeless
about it. Anything we work on today as PR professionals, can benefit from an
info check on the Web. Want to write a pitch about Biden or Palin’s
chances of making a difference as VP’s, study profiles of their predecessors
on any of thousands of history sites, psychology sites, their own Wikipedia
pages. It goes on and on.

When I was writing my new book, Rich Is A Religion, I discovered in
The course of my work that the Puritans had a fully developed
philosophy about the management of personal finance. One that would have saved us from the current financial crisis.

I knew nothing of this when I started writing the book. The
Internet led me there. Engaged in research on the childhood of my former client, Treasury Secretary Bill Simon, I picked up on a path of knowledge that led from 20th century America to 17th century England.

It continues to strike me just how interwoven digital and traditional PR are today. Two sides of the same coin. The past and the present. Both reinforcing each other.

I talk a lot about the intersection of traditional and digitial media, and, in turn, traditional and digital PR.

In great part because I see it unfolding before my eyes every day. And quite often I am swept up in its vortex.

Just recently, The Drudge Report ran a now-infamous story that Oprah flashed thumbs down to Governor-turned-rock star
Palin’s requested appearance on her show. The Gov’s PR people who made the request moved quickly to a counteroffensive, alerting the global media, traditional and digi, that the diva from Alsaska had been snubbed by the czarina from Chicago.

Within moments, all manner of reporters, editors, pundits, PR people, campaign aides and the like - the whole media zoo and more- were in a frenzy:
* Was Oprah biased in favor of Obama? (I don’t think that’s a tough one to figure out.)
* Was this a form of blacklisting?
* Does Oprah talk the open minded talk but fail to walk the walk?
* Was Oprah simply adhering to her programming policies?

Within hours, I was swept into this carnival. At 1 pm on the day the news broke, I was in a studio recording an audio book. My producer stopped the tape, rushed into the booth and announced I had a call from Fox News, where I am a regular guest on the business channel.

Anyway, they wanted to usher me onto a 4 pm show to opine about, you got it, the Oprah/Palin bout. I said sure, rushed home to don a suit and prepared my thoughts in the limo on my way to the News Corp building.

Think of this chain reaction that is at the center of our world today:
1. A PR person leaks a story to Drudge
2. Traditional media catches wind of it and confronts Oprah’s PR people.
3. Oprah’s PR people come out with a statement seeking to establish the czarina’s neutrality.
4. Fox sees a bigger story here and calls me to get my slant on it all.
5. Now I am recounting the story in my Blog which will be spread virally by its readers.

The moral: PR today is not simply a profession. It’s a mash up.

A few weeks ago, one-time corprate raider now would-be guardian of corporate governance (talk about the Mother Of All PR coups) Carl Icahn won a seat on the Yahoo Board.

Yahoo and Icahn forces issued press releases and seconds later, in the land of digi PR, it’s news on a zillion on-line news services and websites. In time traditional media gets in on the act too.

Moments after the news breaks, I get a call to rush down to Fox Business Channel to appear on air to talk about how a 70 plus year old who doesn’t use a computer winds up on the board of a an Internet giant. I wrote a book, King Icahn: The Biography oF A Renegade Capitalist years ago, and whenever Carl makes news, I am asked to comment on it.

And everything Carl does, makes news. And it all converges: digi,
tv, print, radio….and it all reinforces each other. And that’s the key element for PR pros. In most cases, digi is the first match that gets lit but it all spreads like wildfire throughout the media machine. And the best pros know how to work it from all ends.

Soon after my Fox appearance on tv, the segment appeared on the Fox website. From there, bloggers spread my comments to other bloggers and some of this viral chatter wound up, of all places, at the BBC in London, which then asked me to do a live remote on the radio.

Which I did.

And then comments on my Carl comments wound up on my firm’s website and in my Blackberry email. It all swirls around the world in nanno seconds and its all interconnected. PR pros have to look at this news meteor from a mile up looking down and from the ground looking up. We have to see all of its component parts. We have to see how they come together. We have to know how to orchestrate not any one channel, but the fusion of the channels.

This is the big story. This is the difference between today and any other time in the past. This is the challenge and the exhilarating opportunity.

Yes, if it’s Icahn it’s news. The same is true when your client does something exceptional. Or something terrible. Wins a Nobel Prize or is the Wall. Street scandal of the month.

Un either case, in any case, be prepared to master an entire set of moving parts, flying fast, in different directions, and various speeds. And then all converging.

When you make news, be sure to manage it before it manages you.
You can’t simply ask The Times to hold the story any more. Drudge won’t. Huffington won’t.

Ask Icahn. Ask Edwards.