Talk about your PR disasters. Here's the crux of a news and blogosphere headline item that's getting a lot of air time this week (the graphic here will make sense if you bravely, patiently read this to the end):

Edwards charges $55,000 to speak to UC Davis students about poverty.

That's from a post by someone called Shamalama writing on a blog called Common Folk Using Common Sense. The writer goes on to say… Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who recently proposed an educational policy that urged “every financial barrier” be removed for American kids who want to go to college, has been going to college himself — as a high paid speaker, his financial records show.

Common Folk Using Common Sense isn't, shall we say, the most objective forum in the world, which is fine by me because no attempt is made by it to pretend otherwise. From there, I checked a few places for additional confirmation of the basic story. Here's how the more mainstream News&Observer out of Raleigh, North Carolina played it:

$55,000 poverty talk

North Carolina's former senator also found himself under fire Thursday for taking $55,000 last year for a speech on poverty at the University of California at Davis. Dick Rosengarten, publisher of California Political Week, called it "outrageous."

I am a politically atheist… I don't believe in any of them, so this isn't about, for or against, this hairdo. Fact is, $916 a minute isn't exactly accurate because he had to get there and back and presumably had to prepare something. Two, I suppose anyone with something some people think is really, really unique and important to say is entitled to charge for it. People weren't forced to go.

Back in the day, years and years ago at the birth of PR, a once very famous practitioner (as I recall the story) was summoned to his client's headquarters (Texaco, I think) for an all-day summit on how to improve the gas station business. Highways were being built, stations were going up across America, and competition was becoming increasingly intense. The PR guy listened all day long, saying nothing. He listened to stats about well-head production, petroleum refinery facts and figures, fuel transport logistics and on and on and on.

As the meeting drew to a close, the CEO said, "You haven't uttered a word all day. What do you think of all this and what's your advice for improving our business, for gaining marketshare?"

The PR guy said just four words, left, and sent in his bill for $25,000 — a ransom in those days. The client promptly paid it. Here's what he said: "Keep your restrooms clean."

Sorry for the longish post today, but it's the eve of the long weekend. I hope you all have a good, contemplative Memorial Day.

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Here’s a great piece from lifehack.org which touches on a lot of key concepts with regard to branding your blog for success.

There is a lot of creative heavy lifting to do in terms of branding your blog. Each of these answers needs to be translated into the physical elements of your blog. But isn’t that part of the fun?!

Indeed, there is a lot of heavy lifting required in order to have a successful blog. Measuring success of Social Media in general is an evolving art (not quite a science yet) and you have to be up to the challenge of both thinking a bit differently and be ok with leveraging several different tools.

The bottom line is that blogging is not an event, it is an activity. You want to have a nice steady growth for the Unique Blog Readers metric. Like many other things, in order to be successful I encourage setting goals – say a 10% growth in readership every month – it can be unbelievably motivating.

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As the battleship that is traditional PR does it's ever-so-slow U-turn to face the blogosphere opportunity, tons of bloggers are getting all touchy about how they are approached. It amuses me. The bloggers aren't wrong. But most of what they're demanding in the way of being 'pitched' sounds very, very familiar. Here's a good example of one of the more well-written and thoughtful pieces on this topic. It comes from a blog called navigate communications.

See, for years many not-so-hot traditional PR people (they number in the zillions) have pitched magazines they've never read; they've pitched writers about whom they know nothing; they've broadcasted blanket, one-size-fits-all, generic pitch emails. They've pitched products and services with which they have only a vague familiarity. Some of these same people are doing all the same old things when it comes to the blogosphere. And bloggers are responding with comments like, "Have you even read my blog?" Does't that sound a lot like, "Have you ever even read my magazine?"

It amuses me because the anti-establishment citizen journalists may have more in common with traditional journalists than expected. This probably means we could take a few lessons from mainstream editors who have been putting up with this problem (insert more descriptive word here if you want) for years.

In the end, the smart traditional PR people who know the value of doing their homework will do just fine in the blogosphere. The key to it will be they will learn how to lurk. Lurking is the exercise of showing PR restraint while becoming familiar with a blog, as in, like, OK, actually reading it regularly. Then these same people will devise a specific and appropriate approach. As for the rest who are incapable of learning and lurking, I suggest bloggers respond to unwanted emails and phone calls with the following expression: "Lurk, Jerk." Then hit send or hang up. That's pretty much what the mainstream media has said and done for years to PR people who just don't get it.

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