New PR Grants Available for Non-Profit Organizations
Creating Buzz About Companies and Products
F.r.e.e Media Monitoring Trial
Flip Side of Business Blogging
Top 10 News and Information Destinations on the Internet
2004 Media Monitoring Survey Results

    For the second year, CyberAlert (www.cyberalert.com), the online media monitoring company, is awarding PR grants to not-for-profit organizations. In January 2004, CyberAlert awarded grants to 16 organizations in the United States and Canada.
    The PR grants range in value from $2,340 to $3,540 for each grant and consist of one full year of f.r.e.e. online news monitoring services. For the coming year, CyberAlert has committed to awarding a minimum of 10 grants with a total value of at least $25,000.
    All not-for-profit, educational and charitable organizations in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply for the grants. CyberAlert is accepting grant applications until December 31 and will announce the grant recipients in January. Previous award-winners are not eligible for another award.
    More information about the PR Grants program, including a list of this year's 2004 award winners, is available at https://secure.cyberalert.com/grants.html.
    A simple and secure grant application is available online at https://secure.cyberalert.com/grants.html.

    The cover story in the December 5 issue of the New York Times Magazine analyzed the use of volunteer "buzz agents" to tout companies and products.
    The in-depth article is up on the Web.
http://www.nytimes.com/ 2004/12/05/magazine/05BUZZ.html?oref=login
You have to register for the New York Times, but the article is f.r.e.e. for a few days after publication.
    The article features companies that utilize thousands of volunteers to talk up products to their friends. As a new, more structured form of "word-of-mouth" PR and marketing, the buzz campaigns have promoted products such as sausages, books, jeans and teenage beauty products.
    The article includes some interesting research results about how to use volunteers to promote companies and products, raises some provocative questions concerning the ethical limits of the practice, and provides insight into both the power and controversy surrounding this new form of PR and marketing.

Key points:

• Individuals perform the promotional activities vo luntarily without monetary reward. Instead, they receive the "social rewards" of being "in the know", "ahead of the curve", "a trendsetter", "an influencer". In this context, it seems social rewards are more powerful than financial rewards; having influence over others seems to be an acceptable reward and motivator for many people.
• For each campaign, the "buzz agents" receive a briefing paper ("guide") on the key points to tout about the product.
• The most successful "buzz agents" are individuals who like to talk a lot to a lot of different people.
• PR/marketing campaigns using the voluntary marketing army of "buzz agents" have been quite successful - stimulating name recognition, corporate reputation, and product sales — often producing better results than more traditional PR and marketing approaches.
• The "buzz agent" approach commercializes one of the last trustworthy sources of product recommendations - friends - potentially tainting the traditional word-of-mouth channel.
• By commercializing normal everyday "chit chat", marketers are testing the bounds of ethical behavior since the volunteers often do not reveal that they are in some sense working on behalf of the company sponsoring the campaign.

    The article is a worthwhile read for all PR and marketing professionals - even if you have to purchase it from the New York Times archive.

    CyberAlert is now offering a 14-day F.R.E.E. TRIAL for each of its major products including CyberAlert 4.0 for monitoring over 25,000 online news sources worldwide in 17 languages; Netpinions 2.0 for monitoring newsgroups, message boards and forums; and BlogSquirrel for automated daily monitoring of over 100,000 blogs. The F.R.E.E. TRIAL is available at https://secure.cyberalert.com/ftorder.html.

    As many businesses become blog-friendly and encourage employee-written blogs as a way to communicate with customers and build relationships, companies need to be aware of the potential downside. Blogs enable employees to publicly complain about work to a worldwide audience, resulting in a potentially serious jolt to the company's reputation, dissemination of inaccurate company information, release of confidential company data, and other problems. Microsoft, Delta Airlines and other companies have encountered difficulties with employees posting inappropriate material on their blogs. So while consultants are encouraging companies to include employee blogs in their marketing plans, companies must also recognize the need to (a) monitor employee blogs on a regular basis and (b) provide the blogging employees with clear guidance on what the company considers to be acceptable content concerning the company, it's policies, the employee's work and fellow employees.

    The Nielsen/NetRatings' Week in Review of 10/10/2004 showed the following Top 10 online news and information sites.

Top 10 Online News & Information Destinations
Brand or Channel	Unique Audience (000)	Active Reach	(%) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
AOL News & Weather	6,798	6.45	0:14:18
Weather Bug	6,283	5.96	0:07:47
Yahoo! News	5,962	5.66	0:09:53
CNN	5,746	5.46	0:10:30
Weather Channel	5,709	5.42	0:05:39
MSNBC	4,840	4.59	0:07:52
About.com	4,147	3.94	0:03:02
Yahoo! Get Local	2,909	2.76	0:05:57
AOL Elections	2,815	2.67	0:04:07
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division	2,506	2.38	0:08:01

    It is worth noting that only one of the ten news sites in the Nielsen/NetRatings' report is a traditional newspaper publisher — and that one is in 10th place only because it aggregates many newspapers including USA Today. Three of the Top 10 are cable broadcast news stations. Six sites are web-only news and information sources with no print edition.
    The top online news sites have "circulation" ("unique audience") that is far greater than the print circulation of the country's largest newspapers.
    Clearly, placements of news releases on Web sites can vastly increase audience size because of the high numbers of daily readers and because Web sites have what is referred to as a "long news tail" or "persistence". While newspapers are usually discarded at the end of the day, information in Web sites tends to persist for weeks or months, readily available to all site visitors and search engine users.
    Lesson: In devising a distribution scheme for corporate news releases, it's important to target Internet news sites — especially those Internet news sources that do not have a print version. To do this, it is best to utilize distribution channels that automatically place news releases on those sites. And, bear in mind that the Web sites of TV networks and local TV stations often publish far more news than the on-air news broadcast. News stories that have no hope of making the on-air broadcast are often carried on the broadcaster's website.
    Finally, monitoring Internet-based sites should be an integral part of a corporate media monitoring and measurement program.

    An executive summary of the results of the 2005 Media Monitoring Survey conducted by Slipstream Group are available at no cost at http://www.cyberalert.com/execsummary.html. Completed by 1,443 PR and marketing professionals, the survey results show the current use of various types of media monitoring services; market perceptions of strengths and weaknesses of major categories of media monitoring services; market satisfaction with current services; and end-user expectations of current media monitoring services. The complete survey report with 47 pages and 34 tables is available for $99.95 for a limited time. The report can be ordered at https://secure.cyberalert.com/cgi-bin/orderdocument.pl.

    To follow up the media monitoring survey, Slipstream Group is currently conducting the 2004 Market Survey of Media Measurement, Evaluation and Analysis. All PR professionals are invited to complete the survey. The online survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=94457567901

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