Developing websites is a part of my strategic communications business. Heck, managing a brand online is a big piece of what communications in the digital era is all about.

While many organizations leave the issue of getting online to IT people, I’ve found that IT too often is a bit old-school and not current on the latest online technology. I run into situations where the IT people of large organizations forget to include corporate business description and keywords in site coding, a significant disadvantage for brand awareness.

Case in point – the intelligence company Stratfor suffered what has been called the worst website hacking of 2011 when “Anonymous” broke into their servers on Christmas Eve and took everything, including the website, the backup, the company’s email files and customer data. Stratfor’s IT people simply were careless.

Responsibility, therefore, increasingly falls to communications/PR people to stay current to stay competitive.

The clients I work with benefit from open, transparent and appealing websites. It’s part of image, brand and reputation differentiation in today’s online world. It’s an element of how business competes. Search engines (SEO) grade sites on how fast they perform.

With 13 years of working online, I have stumbled into some awful web hosting companies. I’m no techie, I just want web hosting to work reliably and quickly. That’s not always the case. I have found servers that are located in far-off places like Berzerkistan that break down … hosting companies that suddenly go out of business … little-to-no customer service … and so on.

My sites vanished from online several years ago because the hosting company I used at the time, Lunarpages, had a major server fail. Yet, they refused to admit it for days. Media Temple, another hosting company, was hacked and its customer data list stolen. All that data was on an unencrypted Word file at Media Temple’s offices. Yet, Media Temple blamed its customers for the problem until the truth was revealed by bloggers.

Frustrated with all the hype and lies in the web hosting world, I turned to my friend Mike Durkin – who owns the terrific WordPress theme development company Solostream.com. Mike suggested I use Hostgator.com. His recommendation was such a gift.

While some techies and IT people might look down their noses at Hostgator – perhaps because of its odd-sounding names for hosting plans, like “hatchling” and “baby” – Hostgator has gained my trust and respect. They consistently deliver customer service on a par with such terrific brands as Apple, B&H Photo and Zappos. In a world full of outfits that sell computers, camera gear and shoes, Apple, B&H and Zappos, respectively, have become legends by delivering great customer service and support experiences.

It’s no different in website hosting: Hostgator sells an outstanding customer service experience and helpful US-based technical assistance, 24/7, in a very crowded environment. That’s the great brand differentiator that gives Hostgator the advantage. Their competitors are selling nothing but hosting, with possibly an exception I have overlooked. But in such crowded space, customer satisfaction ranks high.

For anyone in PR, communications and business, here are what I hope will be some helpful tips on evaluating website hosting companies:

• Who owns the company or is it shrouded in mystery? This helps determine whether they are accountable for hosting your website or not.
• Where are their corporate offices? If no address is listed on their website, buyer beware!
• Where are their servers (datacenter) located? If you are in the U.S., get a company in the U.S. If you are in England, get a company located in the U.K. And, so on.
• Do not trust any of those websites that compare and grade website hosting companies. They earn affiliate fees and don’t care if you are led astray.
• Don’t get talked into an expensive dedicated server or virtual private server unless you are hosting an e-commerce site or something with special software.
• Do not believe the hype over “unlimited” by hosting companies. There are limits on the number of files or inodes you can host. Some popular hosting companies have a 50,000 limit which is not much. Hostgator’s limit is 250,000. But, there are limits in the truth of the word, “unlimited.”

My counsel is simply to echo Mike Durkin … go with Hostgator and save yourself headaches. By the way, this is an UNcompensated endorsement.
 

Peter Morici makes a point on Capitol Hill. (photo: AP)

Washington-based economist, pundit and professor Peter Morici really knows how to actively generate meaningful media exposure in the digital era … and, he confirms my belief that many intelligent people with a sense of news timing, curiosity and awareness for what editors seek can do media relations.

Most importantly, Morici has taken the time to personally cultivate a vast network of media contacts. He knows how to work the media not only by email but also by telephone.

Morici is exceptionally good, and creates far more media coverage for himself on a daily basis than most corporations and organizations can achieve with a team of PR people cranking out press releases. Chances are you will see or hear Morici many times a week … C-SPAN, CNBC, NPR, etc. His pieces appear almost daily on the popular site, TheStreet.com, which is followed by financial leaders in DC and on Wall Street.

He does his own media relations, by himself, working often from his home in northern Virginia, near Washington. Here’s how:

Peter Morici (right) live on C-SPAN.

• Arising early, Morici quickly determines what’s making headlines in the financial markets around the globe.
• Quickly crafting his expert third-party perspective that the media wants, he’s on the phone with radio assignment editors and on the air early.  Morning drive-time radio, whether network or local, loves to have expert opinion on top economic stories.
• By 9 a.m. eastern time, Morici has a 400-450 word OpEd or column sent to editors at TheStreet.com.
• Television news editors – always monitoring who is saying what online and on the radio – are soon calling to get Morici into a studio and on camera.
• By 5 p.m., chances are this one-person finely tuned media relations machine has been seen and hears by millions of people, further enhancing Morici’s voice, opinion and gravitas as a financial expert and leading to lucrative speaking engagements.

Peter Morici’s tools are a telephone and his laptop. He has no blog, no huge media distribution list or PR agency. Forget press releases and all those outdated crutches of PR that seldom, if ever, worked. Morici swims with the current of what’s making headlines at a given moment and seamlessly finds ways to be hear, whether online, on radio or on television.

By the time many PR people are at their desks with coffee and reading the latest top-5 how-to tips to get media coverage, Morici has done a half dozen interviews and headed for TV cameras, wearing his trademark bow-tie.

Here’s the most important point … Morici’s style of media exposure is the way it’s done today. Morici is no media relations guru … but he is smart, aggressive and intelligent, and he’s learned what makes news in the digital era. He works the media much like New York financial blogger Joe Weisenthal, featured recently in the New York Times. In both cases, the approach to working with the media in today’s fast-moving environment is light years ahead of most PR agencies and corporate shops.
 

Volvo's 1993 "Survivors" TV commercial, best of the year.

Look around us. Listen. It seems we are becoming, in America, a culture of noise, coarseness, exploitation, avarice, and division. Real life mirrors television, television mirrors real life.

On roadways, motorists drive with the same reckless deference they see in TV car commercials. But, the commercials are often made with animation.

Pundits – those minds of the great mentioners, according to David Brooks – act as if discussions are won by shrillness, interruptons and spewing more words than the person across the table.

Eavesdrop on a conversation in a cafe, and you may hear people parroting – perhaps without even realizing it – the words and speech affectations they heard on popular TV shows.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about a two-minute TV commercial for P&G airing in Britain that has captured widespread attention and influence by its simplicity and quietness. There is a reason the commercial is getting attention. Think about it.

In 1993, nearly 20 years ago, I was involved in producing a similar creative contrarian way to deliver a message. I facilitated the use of an original composition by English choral composer John Rutter for a 60-second Volvo commercial that won most advertising industry awards that year and is still talked about because of its simplicity to deliver a powerful message. Here it is:

I believe that few people comprehend noise. Most people, in my opinion, are fundamentally, perhaps instinctively, attracted to beauty and simplicity … and a human story they can relate to.

The contemporary chronicler of the human condition, writer William Boyd, once said, “The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.”
 

The Carnegie Deli, one of New York’s fabled artery clogging eateries recently added the “Jet Bow” to its menu, a 4 pound edible edifice named in honor of Gotham’s newest celebrity, the genuflecting back-up quarterback of the New York Jets, Tim Tebow.

The "Jet Bow" sandwich at New York's Carnegie Deli.

Whether it’s a sandwich emporium with a worldwide reputation or a neighborhood coffee shop, most of us expect to see a new item on the menu from time to time. In the case of the Carnegie Deli, it’s the continuation of a decades-long exercise in acknowledging accomplishment or, in the case of Tebow, (and to paraphrase a meritorious New Yorker, Woody Allen) merely showing up.

By the time the check is placed on the table by the waiter, we realize…it’s just another sandwich.

Granted, public relations firms aren’t populated with the sort of characters that push the pastrami at the Carnegie but they have seemingly taken a page from the deli’s playbook to gain attention from prospective diners…I mean…clients.

Take, for example, an item that appeared in the 4/17/2012 issue of PR Week. The headline read:

“Edelman launches executive positioning offering.”

My inner Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler rumbled: Really!

In the spirit of full disclosure I once was in the employ of that organization and consider Richard Edelman, its globe-trotting CEO, one the most driven, dynamic and inventive minds in the industry. I also believe its annual Trust Barometer to be useful research, not self-promotional sludge.

Steve Hoechster, New York PR executive.

That said, how is a “service to help clients position their top executives in a relevant and credible way” a truly new offering. Isn’t this a fundamental part of just about any executive positioning or visibility program? The Edelman wrinkle appears to be the use of subject matter experts and former members of the media brought together as a sort of communications SWAT team to produce the CEO equivalent of “The King’s Speech.”

In the digital realm, the folks at Hill+Knowlton Strategies just announced availability of “a new service called Influence Point” that “can serve online ads directly to individuals identified as influencers” using “a proprietary methodology” to spot the desired influencers who are then served various digital ads to computer and mobile platforms.

The firm’s claim is such targeting cuts “wasteful spending on large online ad buys.”

To restate Seth and Amy: Really! Since when is any media planning and/or buying effort not oriented toward the highest possible efficiency in terms of reaching a defined audience?

Honestly, is either of these so-called new service offerings clear indications of the firms’ awareness of marketplace needs or something they’ve always had but now make on rye instead of whole wheat?

Whether it’s at a deli or in a conference room, the next time you sit down with a PR firm…before asking what’s new…ask what’s good today. (Or, are they just recycling what they should be already offering?)

[Steve Hoechster's email is:  shoechster@aithent.com]
 

Screen capture of GlobalPost.com

One fisherman told Al Jazeera that some of the crabs she’s seen appear to be “dying from within…they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they’ve been dead for a week.” Yum.

Note the word, “Yum,” among other embellishments.

When I contacted Silverstein through Twitter (@amysilstein) to ask about the misleading photo, her reply was: “Stock photo fail!” Yet, even admitting an error, GlobalPost didn’t change the photo.

Less than twelve hours later, more than 3,000 other media outlets around the world had picked up and spread the story, according to a Google search. It reminds me of an old phrase about reckless journalism, “Don’t let facts get in the way of a sensational story.” So goes it in today’s media world.

I know nothing of Al Jazeera’s thoroughness and skill in covering stories but their video report was sloppily done, in my view, with incomplete or questionable sources and unattributed statements. Furthermore, the Al Jazeera reporter never mentioned whether the story could have been cooked up by plaintiff’s attorneys trying to extract more money in damages from BP as a result of the oil spill in the Gulf two years ago.

This, my friends, is the media world we are living in.
 

Apple learned that fundamental pillar of effective communications years ago, a style that’s help rocket sales. P&G is the latest shining example, using a stunningly beautiful and storytelling TV commercial now airing in Britain.
 

 

What’s particularly powerful about this TV commercial is the minimalistic music interwoven with natural sound so as not to be intrusive … a polar opposite of many videos produced today with bombastic music.

This is P&G’s elegantly simple message:

Being a mom is the hardest job in the world. But it’s also the best.

This Procter & Gamble commercial honors everything that all moms do to help their children succeed by showcasing the amazing moms behind Olympic athletes at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The hardest job in the world is truly the best job in the world.

Join P&G in saying “Thank you, Mom” by sending your Mom a message of thanks at: www.facebook.com/thankyoumom

P&G’s Facebook page has received more than a half million “Likes” in just a couple of days. They know … it’s not about their company, it’s all about finding an emotional, meaningful connection with audiences.

Let me just add that if this TV commercial were to air in the U.S., it might become a centerpiece of this year’s Presidential race.
 

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten has gotten fed-up with PR people and is taking his beef public. In a May 6, column, Weingarten wrote, “Their (PR people) entire existence teeters on a ludicrous lie they tell their clients: that they are tight with the media.”

“A PR pitch tends to be an enthusiastic description of a product or service that is so lame it actually needs the help of a PR professional. As pitches go, they’re particularly slimy — not like spitballs so much as snotballs. Loogieballs,” in Weingarten’s words.

Bravo! More professional journalists need to speak out, as well, about the pervasive fear that many if not most PR people have of actual contact with the media and PR’s widespread ineptness about how to present a legitimate and timely news story to the media.

I see it often … a PR firm lies to a client about tight connections with the media, and then, uses a press release distribution service to blanket the media’s email in-boxes with more meaningless and misdirected spam.

Will the PR industry hear and heed Weingarten’s warning? Probably not. PR people I know are too busy billing clients to read newspapers much less ever talk with a reporter.
 

Raf Stevens of Corporate Storyteller

Raf has found that the more companies self-promote, the less likely they are to connect with audiences. It’s the same in Europe as it is in America.

The digital era is all about connecting with and engaging audiences.

This week, I had shared with some colleagues, including Raf, yet another example of a company undermining itself and any opportunity to build awareness … a consultancy located near DC claimed it had done speculative trend research on the baby boomer generation. Yet, there were no stats, no proof of substantive research.

The virtual consulting firm’s press release gushed self-promotion of the consulting firm. There was no story, no authentic awareness achieved, no media attention. Pure rubbish. Such things give PR a bad name, in my opinion, particularly in today’s highly competitive environments.

Here’s what Raf wrote back … and I could not agree with him more:

“Content marketing means that companies today are quite busy producing lots of online or offline content, writing corporate messages and creating images, video or audio. They are blogging and publishing articles highlighting their expertise with tips, advice and commentary.

“They issue all kinds of newsletters and publish their content much like you would on a blog. They use it to build a subscriber list that could come in handy when promoting products and services later. Or to write white papers showing off their knowledge and proving their expertise in their field. They do webinars and e-courses and all of that to demonstrate expert knowledge in a subject area and try to teach others. Obviously they bring in their credentials and experience to back that expert status up. They run video blogs or Web series. They podcast or Internet radio shows.

“All this marketing content rarely connects with an audience. Why? Because it doesn’t make them feel anything. All this stuff is really just marketing material thinly veiled as content, and it’s quickly becoming the kind of one-sided content that turns people off. What makes great content spread is how compelling and inspiring the message is, not how it slants into a direction that ultimately positions your company as the only one to buy from. Content should make connections. I would even go further: content follows connection.

“First you need to engage, build rapport and make your audience trust you. And pure information or marketing messages do not make that happen. All these new forms of storytelling can not change the fact that if you communicate in facts and figures, you communicate “brain to brain”. To be successful in any kind of communication, you need to go human to human, heart to heart, emotion to emotion.”

Thanks, Raf. Right on the money … again.

As Brooke Gladstone, host of NPR’s “On the Media” says: “Journalists are taught to talk and write in human terms. Tell me a story.” That’s how we humans are wired to communicate with each other. What’s so hard about that?

As Leonard Bernstein wrote so famously at the end of his opera, “Candide” – “Any questions?!”

Raf’s consultancy is Corporate Storyteller. Read Raf’s “No Story, No Fans”

Best known, perhaps, is Fred de Sam Lazaro’s Under-Told Stories Project at St. Mary’s, a program that combines international journalism and teaching. His remarkable stories air regularly on PBS NewsHour.

Thus, when I was contacted by Lasallian Brother Ed Siderewicz to help enhance awareness for a new program using the approach of brand journalism, I immediately agreed.

Brother Ed – as he prefers to be called – is one of the visionary leaders of the pioneering First Generation Initiative (FGI) at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. It is a special program developed to help and empower youth who are financially disadvantaged with a chance at higher education. The program’s focus is to provide the academic support and mentoring they need to help make their dreams come true.

Saint Mary’s FGI is one of the nation’s most comprehensive solutions for first-generation students. What makes FGI unique – compared to other programs for economically disadvantaged learners – is that the program partners with multiple middle and high schools in low-income communities to create a seamless education from middle school to high school to college.

“The reality and potential is that it has a transformational effect on the families and communities that surround these children in the urban communities from which they come. We have watched it,” Brother Ed says.

A few of the First Generation Initiative scholars ham it up.

Through discussion with Brother Ed and Dr. Jane Anderson, the distinguished academic director of the program, we developed consensus that a storytelling brand journalism website was the best direction. Not hard news stories but rather stories, openly and transparently told, about personal value and importance.

In order to achieve the program’s outreach objectives as quickly as possible, we would bring alive the core value and purpose of First Generation Initiative through the faces, voices and stories of students who benefit from the program.

FirstGenerationStories.org has become our platform for the stories.

Driven by the power of WordPress, using a custom theme by Solostream.com and design by TM Design, we built the site and published 12 stories within two weeks. What has happened since is pure magic – the site’s popularity and online ranking have taken off like a rocket!

• U.S. online ranking of about 100,000, according to Alexa.com, within two weeks … and still climbing! That’s almost unheard-of.

It was a contrarian journalistic approach to quickly building awareness and appealing. Rather than the typical, boring (and somewhat narcissistic) style of talking “about” a program, we asked students to share their personal stories – hardships, challenges, achievements and dreams.  I found them to be astonishingly candid. This credible approach … first-person storytelling … has catapulted awareness and interest for First Generation Initiative. Its value immediately shines.

The lesson to be learned - if a variation on brand journalism works so effectively for this trend-setting university program, think how powerful it can be at other centers of higher education to underscore the critical importance of education in America.

On a personal note … I found the week I spent at Saint Mary’s to be deeply, profoundly inspiring. First Generation Initiative is one star in a galaxy of remarkable programs at the Lasallian university, an important center of leadership in higher education.

Credit: Remarkablogger.com

Jobs, promotions and key advantage are increasingly going to those who make the most noise and create illusion of importance … even if it’s nothing more than self-importance hype behind it.

Heck, a former unemployed guy who had time on his hands in the early days of Twitter to build an enormous number of followers has bragged that CEOs have paid him $22,000 for a couple hours of his “wisdom” … although whatever wisdom he possesses is based on nothing but hype and B-S.

No wonder some people abroad think America has given over to insanity.

I don’t dismiss “Self-promote or perish” because it’s akin to what I counsel companies and organizations – Learn to tell your own news in an attractive news-style or be relegated to the dark competitive shadows of obscurity.

Don’t count on the media to write a story about you, let alone read some boring, self-aggrandizing press release.

The news media as we’ve known it is disappearing. If a company or organization wants its news told, it must embrace new disciplines of news-style storytelling, get smart about online news sites and learn how to target audiences with timely and real news stories that attract attention and a growing audience.

Just scan MediaBistro.com to witness the grim demise of mainstream media, and the rise of sensation and titillation.

“Freelancers: Get $2 word to ‘spin a really great yarn’ about business news for Bloomberg Businessweek.”

~ MediaBistro.com, March 27, 2012.

You thought Bloomberg Businessweek was a respectable business outfit? Ha! Welcome to 2012. It’s P. T. Barnum time all over again.