With a mind-boggling variety of high-tech tools available to PR professionals, it's easy to be swept away in the frenzy, using technology for the sake of technology. But taking advantage of interactive capabilities can be detrimental to your PR efforts if it's not done for the right reasons.
Kelly Peters, senior manager of Internet retail banking at Bank of Montreal, stresses the need to rein in some of the online efforts and expectations across the Internet where once she evangelized increased online use. As founding president of WebgrrlsCanada.com, an online resource for women north of the border, she is shaping the technology to the needs of the users, not the other way around, as can be the tendency.
PR NEWS spoke with Peters last week about what the Web should - and
shouldn't - do for your organization.
PRN: Webgrrls is growing rapidly in part because of the resources available,
but also because of the sense of community it engenders. To make a Web site
effectively achieve its goals, does it require a similar sense of community?
Peters: A lot of times, people are just looking for product information without a connected chat room or newsgroup. If anything, I think it's detrimental when you go to a Web site and the newsgroup or chat room is empty and devoid of content other than a welcome note from a moderator that was posted six months ago. I think that's a disaster.
PRN: How do you avoid that public relations disaster?
Peters: I think chats are very difficult to make successful. I think it's as much a challenge of the technology today as it is the users' desire to participate in that medium. Chat technology today is still limited primarily to text. So, if our chats are limited to text interface, it's a difficult medium to make successful and compelling.
PRN: How do you do it?
Peters: The first question any Web site manager needs to ask is, Why are we doing a chat? If you're doing it simply because you want to say you've got a chat, to say that your site is interactive, you're going at it for all the wrong reasons. It shouldn't be driven by the technology and the desire to use all the new toys. You're doomed for failure with that kind of attitude.
Hosting a chat should be conducted when there's a burning desire to provide your members an opportunity to interact on either a particular topic or with a particular guest, and there's no other way to facilitate that action. It's got to be driven by the event, the moment, the topic. Otherwise it's not going to be a successful event. I find that 99 times out of 100, people really want a newsgroup, not a chat.
PRN: The difference being?
Peters: A newsgroup is a great place to facilitate a conversation. No, it's not real time, but it doesn't need to be. If we're trying to discuss the benefits of a new product with members or host a discussion about how people feel about a particular political issue, a newsgroup is a great place to have that.
First, from the site's perspective, it's much easier to manage. You can keep the content much more focused, clean and targeted. It's much easier to moderate. You can spike it with tons of postings that will elicit interesting response. You can coordinate and manage that response better. If your newsgroup is off to a slow start, you can even post messages yourself to make it look more active. Unfortunately, newsgroups are the kind of thing where no one wants to be the first [to post]. The solution is very simple - create several responses and postings yourself, even under different names, to kind of liven things up.
PRN: No ethical dilemmas with going under a false name?
Peters: Nope. I think the content should still be honest, but posting questions and then responses and starting to make it look more active is a great way to kick it off. But that momentum would need to be sustained through the life of the newsgroup.
Now, it's much more difficult to successfully achieve that kind of control in a chat. It's much more difficult to achieve a level of satisfaction in a chat. Most users won't be able to get their particular question answered because your event is of a limited duration, typically 60 minutes.... I love chats, but there's a time and a place. Only one out of a hundred times is it appropriate.
When I was with CANOE (Canadian Online Explorer), we had chats with Wayne Gretzky and Don Cherry. Those are big draws and we still faced a lot of challenges in reaching the significant numbers that I think justify the effort.
That said - while I have the podium - these are critical learnings for all of us. I think we should experiment with things, even if we know we won't make sales or make the impact we want. These are critical steps for organizations to go through. It's still a good time to get out and experiment. But popping a chat every Tuesday night with some expert isn't necessarily going to drive traffic to your Web site, provide significant value to your members or achieve other goals you might have in mind. In that case, I'd recommend a newsgroup instead.
Kelly Peters will be speaking at the PR NEWS Strategic Online Communications Seminar March 13 in Toronto. She can be reached at 416/927-2324 or visit her site at KellyPeters.com. For more information about the PR NEWS seminar, visit http://www.PRandMarketing.com/seminars.htm.