I was excited when the President’s new administration announced that their website Http://www.whitehouse.gov would play a big role. Here’s what it said:
One of the first changes is the White House’s new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.
Awesome!
They’ve also opened the site up to search engines, for the very first time. Great step!
They promise more communication, transparency and participation. Sounds good, but their blog is not open for comments.
That’s right. Although you can fill out a form, commenting on their blog isn’t available.
Communication …read more

I don’t know who Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives have doing they’re public relations, but did you catch her YouTube video which was created to kick off the House’s new YouTube Hub?
Here’s the video, just in case you missed it.

I feel bad for the Speaker of the House. A Rick Roll? Really?
It’s so old – and got even older after Macy’s tried to do the same thing at their 2008 annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
Nancy, if this was your (or your PR people’s) idea to look cool, hip and with the times, you’ve made a big mistake.
The Speaker …read more

You have to feel sorry for social media companies.
Take Obvious Corp., creators of the messaging/microblogging service Twitter.
The Little Service that Could grew quickly attracted millions of users, who all expected Twitter to be available, reliable and responsive to their needs. Instead, there have been regular outages, reduced features and occasional customer service lapses.
The more they succeed, they more pressure they face.
Inevitably, they can’t be everything to everyone. In some cases, they can’t even meet some basic expectations.
Success sucks, eh?
Technorati Tags: twitter,customer service,expectations,scaling,obvious corp,services,tools

The reflective Greyhound emblem shone brightly in the still photos and video of the scene where a bus passenger repeatedly stabbed a young man before cutting off his victim’s head and then leering at other passengers and police.
The media coverage repeatedly referred to the bizarre attack “on a Greyhound bus,” further tying the company’s name to the incident.
I heard a Greyhound rep commenting about the difficulty to providing security for bus services, compared to airline security, but that was almost two days after the gruesome killing.
Garrett Saunders found Greyhound’s crisis response lacking, suggesting the company should have quickly had …read more

The White House probably wishes it could take a mulligan, after widely distributing a Reuters story in which the Iraqi president agrees with Barack Obama on the timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals.
The flurry of attention from the boo-boo came as Republic John McCain had to respond to the Iraqi presidents comments without appearing to back down from previous statements about a possible lengthy U.S. military presence in Iraq.
Just a blip in the blogosphere, but always interesting to see when someone inadvertently appears to be endorsing a news story by sharing it with others.
Technorati Tags: iraq,john mccain,barack obama,u.s. presidential race,eleciton 2008,foreign …read more

Reviews are hell.
Writers, actors, directors and restaurant owners hate them. And so do business owners.
It’s never easy observing or taking part in a discussion about your business, especially when customers are taking potshots at you.
Calley Nye writes on TechCrunch about businesses fighting back against the review site Yelp by creating “sucks”-type sites about the site that features local reviews.
She says: “The good news for Yelp is that when businesses are afraid of you, it’s only because they realize how much power you really have. See, for example, Paypal and Ebay, two of the most reviled and profitable businesses …read more

Your customers/clients have predictable needs.
Any organization that doesn’t act on its knowledge of those needs, risks alienating the people it most wants to impress.
I wrote the other day about talking on the phone with the local agency that handles driving tests.
The follow-up call today, to book a road test, offered up another example of making false assumptions about your clients.
I booked the road test today, and the woman on the phone was very specific about the things my son would need to bring with him:

his driver’s license,
his driving school certificate, and
the receipt for his prepaid driving test.

Now, …read more

Great news! The local TV news wants to drop by and interview you!
Bad news! You are wearing something that will look ghastly on television.

Always keep a neutral dark suit, pantsuit, skirt/blouse or other ensemble handy that you can jump into if you regularly act as a spokesperson.
I was reminded of this fairly standard bit of media relations advice last week by Roger Francis, of Gryphon Reputation Management.
Roger has done work with the media and media training for a couple of decades, but this bit of advice is just as valuable today as it was in the 1980s.
Gaudy prints, …read more

It’s okay to make shocking statements that mock public figures and stretch the bounds of decency. In Canada, anyway.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that a B.C. radio commentator was using fair comment when he exaggerated the position held by critics of school use of books depicting same-sex parents.
From the Globe and Mail:
“We live in a free country, where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones,” Judge Binnie said. “In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are as much entertainers as journalists.”

The 9-0 decision by Canada’s highest court should …read more

You have to wonder how the talk went at CBC the day they decided to play hardball with the author of the iconic Hockey Night in Canada theme song.
“That theme is too recognizable,” one exec said to the other. “Is that really worth a couple of million dollars?”
(Pardon me while I get out my calculator and figure out how much cash the theme song would generate in mobile phone ring tones at $3 per customer…)
Tired of the legal strictures of their expiring agreement with the jingle’s songwriter, CBC decided to play hardball, setting a deadline for negotiations with the …read more