Tech PR Nibbles* » Blog Archive » Social Media or Socialized Media?

Jun 09

Social Media or Socialized Media?

by Luca Penati
Category: Paperless PR, Social Media, Tech PR, Tech Press, Trends, Visual Storytelling

For the past couple of years I haven’t been in a client meeting or industry event where “social media” isn’t mentioned. Forget “mention”: it has been at the core of the discussion. But in all these conversations, what hasn’t been covered is how traditional media, in particular tech press, is evolving, changing, adapting; and what this means for “traditional” tech PR professionals. Publishers like CMP (or better the former CMP) and IDG are changing. They have been “socialized”.

From now on, when I talk to a client or colleague, I’d like to make a distinction between social media and socialized media.

Of course I believe they are both very important, but they are critically different. And since all the attention has been focused on the first one, in this post I want to share some initial thoughts on the latter:

Traditional tech papers have been migrating for the past 2/3 years from print to online. By 2010 there won’t be any print. We will be living in a Paperless Tech PR world.
Traditional space in the media to cover tech related stories is shrinking, but new opportunities to pitch and place stories are rising in new, different venues. The use of video, slide shows, graphs is exploding. The publishers themselves are still sorting out what they want to be, still blurry on what is pay to play and what is vendor content deemed worthy of editorial sharing. They’d be wise to make the distinction. As PR professionals, we now need to learn how to navigate this new environment and become fluent visual storytellers. We always knew that “an image is worth 1,000 words “. Now a video is worth even more.
Almost all “traditional” journalists (I hate calling them traditional, as if they didn’t matter anymore - they do) are now blogging. We all know that. Some of them prefer staying unbiased on reporting, others enjoy the opportunity to become commentators. But the way they get their information and are sharing their stories is changing. Some of them are using social networks to do that, others not. So, in some cases, following a journalist on Twitter can be the best way to find out about a story or to come up with a brilliant pitch.
Everyone is now a publisher. Now, in the “socialized media” world, tech publishers are eager to use vendor-generated content. The publishers are becoming a distributor of information. Transparency, ethics and credibility will play an important role as new rules will apply.
Bloggers can be social media or they can be writing for a socialized media outlet. How can we define what’s what? Traditional bloggers like Michael Arrington, Om Malik and Robert Scoble (I love to define them as the traditional ones!) are spending a lot of time building their own personal brands. We can call them the “brandbloggers.” Bloggers of traditional media outlets (the “journabloggers”) are not focused on that at all. They are journalists by background, enjoy the freedom that only a blog platform can give them and know that branding is not part of their job description.

So what’s the net-net? As PR practitioners we are in front a very complex ecosystem, with a lot of moving parts. I think knowing and understanding the different motivations of all the players (the blogger, the journalist, the publisher, the editor) will make us better counselors and strategists.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Paperless PR, Social Media, Tech PR, Tech Press, Trends, Visual Storytelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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TAGS: Tags: brandblogger, journoblogger, Social Media, socialized media, Tech PR, Tech Press, tech publishers, traditional media, Visual Storytelling

13 Responses to “Social Media or Socialized Media?”

bob Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
i think its “byte” and “nybble”, but that’s just a quybble
Luca Penati Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Bob,

I am glad you asked.. actually it can be both http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble
Michelle Sullivan Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Definitely agree with you here - I’m always happy to have the opportunity to sit down with a journalist to find out how things are changing for them on a very practical level. Recently heard a couple of financial journalists (Reuters and Montreal’s daily La Presse) talk about the atate of the union and they had interesting things to say.

For example, did you know that :
If we weren’t already doing it, we definitely need to write releases with newsy titles, because Reuters’ automated system is programmed to pick up content and publish it as-is on the Reuters site. These early texts are revised by journalists and editors in a second phase.

… and for all those deconstructing and reconstructing the social media press release, it’s interesting to note that Reuters’ system already breaks our releases into point form key messages - the social media release would save them that step while allowing us to be clear about the messaging we’re trying to communicate.

For anyone interested, I blogged about these sessions here :
http://eminencegrisemontreal.blogspot.com/2008/05/media-take-away-breakfast-chat-with.html

and here:
http://eminencegrisemontreal.blogspot.com/2008/05/le-monde-selon-reuters.html

(don’t let the French title on that second blog post fool you - the content is in English. It would seem that a by product of bilingualism is that one switches from one language to another without even realizing it - oops)

Thanks for the post - I’d be interested in finding out more, so please keep sharing and I’ll do the same on my blog.

Cheers!
Luca Penati Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Michelle,

thank you for your comment. We will keep sharing. Stay tuned.

Luca
Arseny Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Luca,

Thanks for the post, very insightful. What surprises me a lot is that paper publications still have issues with making their content syndicated and widely available online. Quite often a big hit in a major international paper won’t show up on Google or Yahoo Finance, and it takes a dedicated research to find it online at all. Thus, lowering the value of such a hit.

- Arseny
Eve Luo Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Luca,

I’ve learned a lot from your newly post blog. As a “traditional media” professional for a long time, I definitly experienced the huge change from traditional media to social media during past years.

Socialized Media must be a more apporiate term by compare with Social Media which we have been used for a couple years. To be honest, during my working period in Phoenix TV, Hong Kong, I was “socialized” by the fast changing of technology. The way I used to get infomation, news and how I bring the story to TV, how audiences respond, how PR person pitched me etc, all changed dramatically. I like this nice change.

Another concern about the traditional paper print goes to paperless online, people only can find infomation through internet by 2010. As a China-born person, I am wondering how to reach those people who don’t go online. The statistics shows there are 210 million internet users in China by the end of 2007, the penetration rate is 16% only. Maybe technology will help them to reach it by simply using their cell phones etc.
Tom Foremski Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
It doesn’t seem as if you’ve explained much at all What is the difference between social media and socialized media?
How social media is changing employee communications « PR Research Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
[...] Alltop seems like a great news aggregator. Brand tags also seems like a great time waster. More here about the change from “social media” to “socialized [...]
Media Social | E os Blogues das Empresas de RP? | Comunicação Empresarial Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
[...] Luca Penalti, da Ogilvy, «For the past couple of years I haven’t been in a client meeting or industry event where [...]
Chuck Says:
June 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Luca:

It’s interesting. Just had this conversation yesterday with my team. Not sure I totally agree that print will go away. There are some studies out there showing that print is still a choice of many engineers. I think the dialog of print vs. blog goes to what is the marketing community buying (And I do mean buying) and is that aligned with audience habits/prefernce or a desire to quantiify, thinking that a “hit” represents some sort of success metric.

chuck
Luca Penati Says:
June 26th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Chuck,

I see what you mean. I don’t mean blogs are replacing traditional media. What I mean is that traditional media is migrating online and therefore is changing the way they distribute content. For example, they are moving from one-two page long story to stories with slide shows 12 page long. That means more views and more advertising $$ attached to that. Another example, some journalists are now measured based on the numbers of “clicks” their story gets. It’s a fascinating, complex world that continues to get more fascinating and more complex.

Luca
Luca Penati Says:
July 11th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Tom,

For socialized media, I mean traditional properties (i.e. BusinessWeek, CNET) who are offering unique new venues for content vs. pure play like the Techcrunch, GigaOM or Silicon Valley Watcher
Media Social | E os Blogues das Empresas de RP? | : fractura.net! Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 10:07 am
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