The MoPR Blog

As PR professionals, we work hard to create opportunities for clients to boast about their products and services. But we provide a service too, and sometimes there comes a moment when we can boast about ourselves. This is such a moment.

Last month Melissa was quoted in a PR Week story about using online communications media to influence opinion. She was discussing how it’s important for people in our profession to be on top of the conversations taking place online to have the opportunity to shape opinions:

“With tools like Factiva, [media monitoring service] Magenta, RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, and keyword news alerts, there is no excuse for PR pros not to be on top of the online conversations around their clients,” says Melissa Burns, principal at Mobility Public Relations.

Over the last two weeks, Melissa demonstrated why she as at the top of the game when it comes to using online communications to shape opinion and why it is vital to stay on top of the online conversations. This story begins with our new client Talkster.

Talkster has been emerging from stealth mode with demonstrations a component of their forthcoming enterprise communications service. We began telling this story to a select group of important influencers: the voice and mobility bloggers. In virtually all instances, Talkster’s mobile phone-to-instant messaging service won rave reviews from these bloggers, but there were two notable exceptions.

Our positive news streak came to an end after blogger (and iotum CEO) Alec Saunders wrote a great piece about Talkster, then invited his colleagues at other blogs to likewise post stories about their service. Many of these bloggers echoed Alec’s sentiment. Two did not.

Andy Abramson wrote a piece on his VoIP Watch blog that was less than kind to Talkster. His opinion is based on a misperception of Talkster’s business model.

Ken Camp who blogs at Digital Common Sense is also an important blogger. His take on Talkster, while not negative, was less than enthusiastic. In his post entitled “Talkster - Are they Me Too or Voice 2.0? Maybe another Voice 2.0 Entrant in the Game” Ken summed up his lukewarm initial opinion by stating “I see some value in T@lkster, but not for me.”

The story might end there. A lot of people in the PR business accept that sometimes you get a bad review. Melissa is not one of them.

I was in the back of a taxi with Talkster’s president James Wanless when Melissa called me to say she found the two non-positive posts. She wasn’t calling to inform me. She was calling to get James’ schedule so she can get him on the phone with Andy and Ken. Once she nailed down James’ time, she approached Andy and Ken – within four hours of their original posts – to offer them trial accounts of the Talkster service and to arrange briefings.

What happened next was extremely gratifying. Ken wrote a new blog post. The new post was not about the Talkster service. The new post, entitled “How a Startup Shows they ‘Get It’” was about Talkster’s PR team. It reads, in part:

“I say [Talkster is ho hum is] the message I tried to deliver, but to be honest, at that point, I could have cared less if it got any further notice. It immediately dropped off my radar. But not for long. I got email from Melissa with Talkster’s PR team asking about setting up a conversation with James Wanless, the founder. Her message also made it really clear that they, the Talkster team, don’t see VoIP arbitrage as their business model. They see that as a thin slice of the pie, with other values to bring to bear. And they want to talk about it.

Is this anything remarkable? You tell me. Within four hours of a somewhat unfriendly, but certainly not hostile post, they’re in touch wanting to do a briefing. And this has been followed up with coordination work, and a test account because they want me to kick the tires and take a look.

I still have no idea whether I’ll like the solution, or think it’s really a Voice 2.0 hit like Alec does, or even fit the right demographic. But I like the people and attitudes because the folks at Talkster engage.”

The story gets even better. The following day, Alec Saunders posted about Ken’s experience with Melissa on his blog in a post called “Blogs and the New PR.” Check out this excerpt:

“Jim, a PR professional and friend of mine asked me that question last week. What he said was “How do I deal with agency clients who want to shift their PR dollars to blogging”. Indeed! The role of the PR agency has always been to be the eyes and ears of the company in the press, and to shape and deliver messages to the press and analyst community for the client. In today’s environment, however, anyone can deliver that message. I’m doing it right now!

That creates a real challenge for the PR industry.

Blogging buddy Ken Camp posted yesterday about his experience with MoPR, Talkster’s agency, and how much they impressed him. Within hours of his ho-hum reaction to T@lkster, Melissa was on the telephone to set up a meeting with CEO James Wanless. While Ken is still undecided on T@lkster, he’s certainly much more open to hearing their story than he was yesterday.

In contrast, Sears Canada is a bricks and mortar business which has chosen to ignore the blogosphere. In May of last year, at the Saunders household we had a washer breakdown, and a very unsatisfactory experience with Sears. I wrote about it at the time, and since then that page has continued to attract a steady stream of disatisfied Sears customers, all vowing to never do business with Sears Canada again. If Sears had responded to my complaint, I would have written about that as well. They could have turned my complaint into a win for everyone, but they didn’t.

So what’s the lesson for my friend Jim?

1. MoPR are bloggers themselves. They get it.
2. MoPR encourages their clients to run a blog, and uses the Talkster blog on WordPress as a central way to distribute information to those who want to know about Talkster. No need to wait for releases and pitches. Just subscribe to the RSS feed.
3. MoPR engages bloggers actively in order to solicit their feedback, and counter negative opinion in the blogosphere.

MoPR is redefining their role as a facilitator of dialogs, and enlarging the audience they work with. That’s not traditional PR, it’s something new.”

Could this story get any better? Yes, it can. Ken did speak to James this week. He played with the Talkster service himself and he got a better appreciation for what the service is today and where it’s heading. And best of all, he wrote a new post about it, “Talkster - Ken Revises his Assessment” in which he summed up his view this time by writing, “I’m here to tell you my view has changed.”

Andy is busy traveling, but we sent him materials and we hope that we can change his views too. We’ll certainly try.

Thank you Ken and Alec for appreciating what we at MoPR do. We promise to keep doing it!

You can read more of Talkster’s blog coverage on their own blog at talkster.wordpress.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Mobility, Mobility Public Relations, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.