Do however look at the Edelman Trust Barometer website for more reports and multimedia – in fact take a look at the range of platforms they are using to make information available including Quora.com – reviewing the website is a case study itself for corporate communicators or anyone publishing research.

Additional resources I am sure will be published in the weeks ahead for specific markets – I am hoping there will be an Irish report published.

The report indicates the importance of repetition – the more we hear something the more likely we are to believe it – 59% of respondents will believe the information they receive if they hear it 3-5 times. That will also apply to internal communications and reinforces the need for consistency in your communication with employees especially at times of change.

We certainly love search engines as it’s rated by the respondents of the survey to be not only the preferred first source for news about a company (29% of respondents) but also 23% of people will turn to it as their second source of information.

The results on who is seen as a credible spokes person in the global study is somewhat of a surprise given just a few years ago the results indicated that the respondent reported that it was ‘a person like me’. Significantly the most credible spokespeople are seen as an academic or expert, a technical expert within the company, a financial or industry analyst followed by the CEO.

In the event that you do have a crisis the results of the survey show there is a difference in terms of who will be the most credible person to represent your company, product or service dependent on if there is impact to a local community or if you have a product recall. Overall however the preferred spokesperson is the CEO. What implications does this have for you in terms of making sure that your crisis communications team is prepared to respond as a spokesperson in the media?

What matters most in the context of corporate reputation is unsurprisingly high quality of services or products, transparent and honest business practices, being a company people can trust and how well you treat employees. With the advent of social media it’s never been easier for people to get a 360 view from friends and colleagues about how a company performs in these areas.

 You can see the summary of the global results for the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer here: 

You can watch Richard Edelman comment on how companies can build trust in this video

Originally published on krishnade.com

Take a look at this video – Edelman CEO Richard Edelman delivering the summary findings of his firm’s latest annual report on trust:

(RSS/email subscribers: if you don’t see the embed, the video is here.)

It’s not a particularly remarkable video from a quality point of view. Pixelated, indistinct images, for instance. The sound quality’s not bad, though, and that’s because I was sitting right next to one of the loudspeakers.

You can get a much better audio-visual experience if you watch the video captured on a pretty awesome-looking broadcast-standard TV camera that was the ‘official’ video recording system at the event.

That video is on YouTube.

What I think is remarkable is that the video embedded in this post is a recording of a live video stream shot by someone sitting in the audience (me) with just a mobile phone on a cellular network connection, and which showed Richard presenting in real time, ie, it streamed the video live.

The service I used to do this was Qik (which I wrote about a few days ago).

If you were on the Qik website at the time I was streaming Richard’s speech, you would have seen it at the same time, live, in real time. Just like TV.

It wasn’t only Richard’s presentation I broadcast live over the net. I also did keynoters Patience Wheatcroft and Quentin Letts. Before the event started, I grabbed Edelman’s Simon Collister to explain what the event was all about.

All of this was live, not recorded and then uploaded. And all from a mobile phone, a Nokia N95 8GB in this case.

It’s not that long since the big thing at public events was live blogging, which is evolving rapidly.

Today we have live Twitter text streams which Edelman Europe CEO David Brain and Simon both did.

Now there’s also live streaming video which anyone with a supported mobile phone and a cellular or wifi network connection can do, easily and instantly. I did all my live video streaming with Edelman’s permission, by the way.

So what does this suggest for events in the future?

Well, it suggests that any participant who has a mobile phone with a camera can broadcast your event as it happens.

Imagine a product launch, for instance, or presenting your latest financial results.

You may have live TV there from the mainstream media. You’ll also now have live TV there from the social media.

Take a look at what’s going on at the World Economic Forum in Davos with live mobile video if you want to extend this thought a little.

And what about internal events in your company, behind your firewall?

Think about it. Things aren’t the same any longer.

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Now, full disclosure, I used to work for a competitor, but also interviewed both Richard and the head of the US, Pam Talbot and have a view on the firm (it’s below).

His presentation is on how PR is changing, and how we need to change with it. For those basic rules, he points out:

• Transparency
• Dialogue
• Honesty
• Immediacy
• Depth of content
• Updating as you learn
• Journalistic level of accuracy

Okay, it has been an interesting speech. While I don’t agree with all the hires for the ME2Revolution, Edelman (the man and the firm) has pushed the boundary much, much more than any other agency out there. During my round of interviews with both PR firms and start-ups, I was often asked which agencies get it, and I would say three firms immediately: Edelman, MWW and MS&L. While Edelman gets a lot of the press out there (it’s the good stuff you don’t hear about, just the Walmart crap), the people at MS&L and MWW have done great stuff.

And, well, when you do good work, it’s in the background. You should not know about the campaigns (despite claims of transparency and full disclosure, a good campaign is integrated and smooth, and about getting information out to the right audiences).

The job of PR is to not control, but to help move the conversation (old news, wrote about it in the past via Jack O’Dwyer that we need to be the bridge for media, and not pulling the Heisman).

Embrace the issues, adopt to the new reality – it’s about coming together and trust.

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The session was titled, "Public Relations Train Wrecks in the Interactive Biz: Disaster Can Be Avoided!" I assumed we’d hear about how things like the Microsoft/Edelman PR Blooper. I figured it would address how search results can haunt a company like Walmart, that handles their PR badly. I thought it may be at least peripherally about how bad PR search results are persistent due to bloggers linking to results using the company name.

The session description says,

"Interactive marketers know that public relations and marketing are hopelessly intertwined. Yet many in the interactive space do not understand how to develop a successful relationship with key publishers. Don’t just issue a release and hope for the best. Learn the difference between productive efficient contact and annoying drivel. This unprecedented and candid discussion with today’s top interactive marketing editors will reveal train wrecks (no names please) and best practices for you.

I chose to attend this session thinking, since this is a search conference, that it would have to do with search. I guess I’m going to have to carefully read session descriptions to be sure they aren’t talking about things that have little to do with search. Hmmm.

Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ, (sister site to SEW under Incisive Media ownership) and Brad Berens of Imedia Connection (I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed that I haven’t heard of them) were the only panelists introduced by moderator Kevin Ryan (of Incisive media). The two panelists sounded as though their days are spent under a constant flurry of bad press releases, follow-up emails, and pitches from PR firms, followed by endless phone calls from annoying publicists. The session description might have been accurate, but what does this have to do with search?

Don’t get me wrong and think that I’m suggesting that this wasn’t a good presentation by some worthwhile panelists on an interesting topic – but I spent a good deal of my time waiting to hear the relevance to search. It never came.

Both Berens and Lieb strongly emphasized how important it is for PR representatives to "Know thy Editor" and to know the Audience of the publications they seek coverage from – that they not "waste" the time of editors (and publications) that have little to do with the topic being pitched to them.

Were Berens and Lieb told they were speaking at a search conference? Do they know the audience at SES is made up of SEO’s and SEM’s? "Know thy audience" might be suggested to speakers at search conferences. The session was sparsely attended, but if PR reps are lacking at a search conference – I hardly find that unexpected. Perhaps if that description were changed a bit to include a bit more SEARCH relevance, and the speakers covered a topic expected at a SEARCH conference – or even skewed this topic toward search topics, the attendance might increase just a bit.

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About the Author

Mike Valentine is an SEO Specialist offering occassional commentary on Search Engine Developments through his Reality SEO Blog and developed WebSite101 Small Business Ecommerce Tutorial in 1999 to help educate the little guy to the intricacies of online business.

As usual, the post-mesh social in the atrium and the post-post-mesh social at the Distillery District were some of the highlights of the first day — tons of fantastic conversations happening in the atrium of MaRS and then at the Archeo restaurant and the Boiler House, with people like Mike Masnick of Techdirt and Christine Herron (who is leaving Omidyar), Andrew Coyne and Phil de Vellis, Jon Dube of the CBC and Rachel Sklar of Huffington Post.

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Researcher Ben Edelman looked beyond what the New York Times had revealed about the practice in December 2006. He found a half-dozen examples beyond those noted by the Times.

“Harm may accrue to advertisers — by overcharging them as well as by placing their ads in spyware they seek to avoid,” said Edelman. “Harm may accrue to investors, by causing them to overpay for sites whose true popularity is less than traffic statistics indicate.

“In any event, harm accrues to consumers and to the public at large, through funding of spyware that sneaks onto users’ PCs with negative effects on privacy, reliability, and performance.”

Through analysis of packet logs and observations of various spyware packages in action, Edelman was able to specifically cite six examples of video sites that enjoyed traffic above and beyond their usual visits, thanks to the nature of the spyware delivering ads about them.

Here are the sites Edelman detailed in his report:

Bolt.com
GrindTV, owned by PureVideo Networks
Broadcaster.com
Away.com, run by Orbitz
Roo TV
Diet.com

Edelman suggested why video sites may be resorting to these tactics:

Video sites are strikingly prevalent in the preceding examples and in other forced-visit traffic I have observed. Why? Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube inspired others hoping to receive even a fraction of YouTube’s valuation. So far no competitor has gained much traction. But the expectation that video sites grow virally creates an incentive to try to jump-start traffic by any means possible — even spyware-originating traffic.

Though a new video site is unlikely to attract the goo-gobs of money YouTube made in its deal with Google, being able to claim a modest fraction of its value would make a video site’s backers immensely wealthy. It isn’t hard to understand why that would motivate them to seek traffic by any means possible.

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Editor’s Note: Steve is a former blog partner of WebProNews. As such, we held off on this story for a couple of days to await comment. That comment hasn’t come, but we imagine it’s like asking a star running back how he feels about fumbling. Fair enough, right?

A week ago, at 5:44 a.m., Rubel posted on his Twitter page the following:

PC Mag is another. I have a free sub but it goes in the trash

It’s a short pair of sentences long on impact: short because Twitter is for stream-of-consciousness blogging with entries limited to 140 characters; impacting because Rubel is a big player at Edelman, a PR firm representing Microsoft, Palm, Mozilla, Adobe, among others that like PC Magazine’s 11 million subscribers.

That takes it well beyond an idle (public and permanent) statement to 1,600 Rubel Twitter-thought followers (isn’t interesting we live in a time where people can subscribe, basically, to your every thought as you type them? Is that narcissism, idol worship, boredom, or progress?).

CNet was the antecedent to "another," posted at 5:43 a.m., when Rubel asked if anybody still read them. CNet doesn’t appear to have been offended.

But PC Magazine Editor in Chief Jim Louderback was incensed at the remark, posting a long response on Strumpette.com (Strumpette boiled it down to "systemic Tourette’s.") Louderback, who promptly canceled Rubel’s free subscription, asked if an Edelman boycott would be overacting:

But then I started thinking about what this means for our relationship with Edelman. One of the company’s top execs had stated, in a public forum, that my magazine (and by extension, my audience) was useless to him. He wasn’t even interested in seeing whether we’d covered one of his clients. Did the rest of Edelman think like Steve? Were we no better than fishwrap to the entire company?

Rubel was quick to post an apology on his "Micro Persuasion" blog:

I learned a valuable lesson. Post too fast without providing context and it can elicit an unintended response. While the item is true, it does not reflect my full media consumption habits. I subscribe to PC Mag RSS feeds and have linked to several of your publication’s online articles over the three years I have been writing this blog. Further, I have linked to articles from eWeek, your sister site.

Rubel’s been light on the blog posting this week, and seems to have stopped Twittering altogether. His last post was dated and timed 8:40 p.m., April 18 (note to self: to solidify alibi, sign up for Twitter account), less than 24 hours after he posted his apology.

The length of time between Twitters is significant since Rubel has been a fairly constant Twitterer for some time.

Some other, now sadly ironic, Rubel Twitters in hours before the overreaction (yeah, overreaction, because everybody goofs up from time to time):

Someone told me they miss my feverish twittering. Damn work; damn you. kidding. I love my gig. 06:28 PM April 11, 2007

Quote of the day: "Be excellent to each other." 05:58 AM April 12, 2007

Not trying to be a downer today, but read this. Execs wary on 2.0. http://tinyurl.com/22aeb5 08:19 PM April 16, 2007

How come no one’s talking about "The Secret?" It’s becoming one of the biggest viral memes of all time. It started as a web movie. 06:47 PM April 10, 2007

Okay, so the last one’s not really ironic, just wanted to say, "because it was better the first time when it was called The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale." A lot’s changed in fifty years, but some things haven’t.

Keep your head up, Steve, and remember Mr. Peale’s advice, as paraphrased in Amazon’s book description: Faith in yourself makes good things happen to you.

The conference proper gets underway tomorrow with a keynote by David Weinberbger. Among the sessions I’m anxious to attend:

• Jeffrey Treem, from Edelman‘s Change and Employee Engagement Group, on how top companies are using social media to engage employees
• John Cass and Zane Safrit on the role an organization’s culture plays on the adoption of social media for internal communications
• Katie Payne on measuring social media’s impact
• A panel discussion on the social meia press release moderated by Chris Heuer and featuring Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Tom Foremski, and Laura Sturaitis.
• David Parmet moderating a panel on managing crisis communications in the blogosphere
• Jeff DeCagna on applying Web 2.0 capabilities as a foundation for innovation
• Linda Zimmer, author of the “Businss Communicators of Second Life,” on (what else?) Second Life.
• JD Lasica on citizen-generated video
• Jen McClure, executive director of the Society for New Communication Research, moderating Steve Crescenzo (he who cannot be moderated) and Jeremy Wright for the presentation of “Winners and Sinners.” This one should be a hoot.

There are other great sessions and speakers, but with multiple tracks, you just can’t get to them all. But since my wrap-up keynote is supposed to provide an overview of the conference, I need to do my best to get to as many as possible, which should result in a flurry of posts on what I’ve heard here.

Attendance is well over 350, and things kick off in 45 minutes. Stand by…

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For some time now, people have been emailing and calling and otherwise buttonholing us (that is, the mesh organizers — Mark, Rob, Stuart, Mike and yours truly) to ask when the next mesh Web conference was going to launch, and we are pleased to say that moment is now.

Sorry to keep everyone waiting, but we think — and we hope you’ll agree — that it has been worth the wait

Just as it was last year (memories and podcasts here), mesh 2007 will be an interactive forum for talking and learning about how the Web is affecting media, marketing, business and society, and we have lined up what we think is a killer combination of keynotes, panels and workshops to help make that possible.

At this point, we can tell you that the “keynote conversations” for the four streams will consist of:

• Michael Arrington, founder/editor of TechCrunch.com, speaking about new media and journalism in the age of the Web

 

• Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist.org, talking about how the Web is disrupting traditional business models

 

• Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Co., on the tension between the openness of the Web and traditional marketing

 

• Tom Williams, founder of GiveMeaning.com, and Austin Hill, founder of Gifter.org, talking about the Web as a tool for charity.

So come to mesh and ask Mike Arrington what it’s like to build a new media entity that gets quoted in the New York Times and profiled in the Wall Street Journal — but one that has also been criticized for getting too close to its Web startup sources.

Come to mesh and ask Richard Edelman how it felt when his firm, a leader in Web-based marketing and public relations, came under fire for the behaviour of a blog launched by one of its largest clients.

Come to mesh and hear Jim Buckmaster tell you why Craigslist isn’t interested in making the $50-million (or more) in revenue that some analysts have estimated it could make every year if it wanted to.

And come to mesh and find out why Tom Williams and Austin Hill see the Web as a powerful force for social networking and social action.

You can register here, and stay in touch by subscribing to the mesh RSS feed. More news to come.

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