The Ottawa Chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society has launched a new website.

The site was designed, built (on WordPress) and will be maintained (all in-kind) by Thornley Fallis and 76design.

The new site is built around a blog that board members of the local chapter will contribute to.  There are already a few posts to check out.

Note: Keelan Green & Stephen Heckbert of Thornley Fallis and contributors to this blog are CPRS Ottawa Board Members.

Back in January, I did a post about FPinfomart adding blogs to their media monitoring service.

In it, I also commented that FPinfomart and Canwest papers should get with the program and begin offering RSS, which was long overdue.

I am pleased to report that both are now with the RSS program.

FPinfomart subscribers are now able to receive their personal profiles, current events and industry news via RSS.

And several (if not all, I haven’t checked) Canwest papers, including the National Post, Ottawa Citizen and Montreal Gazette, have added RSS feeds to their websites.

This will make my life and the lives of many others in the Canadian PR sector much easier.  Props where props are due.

Check this out, and if it doesn’t restore your faith in humanity, you’re missing something quite extraordinary.

I’m not normally given to underdog stories, but I know what I like, and I love that the British audience — probably not filled with opera fans — nevertheless knew enough to know they were in the presence of true, unadulterated talent.

Bravo, Paul, and congratulations on winning Britain’s Got Talent.  I don’t buy many CDs anymore, but I’ll be preordering yours.

Hat tip to Paul Wells for this.  

Ted Demopoulos of Blogging for Business did a post last week with three facts to ‘get bloggers back to earth’.

1. Blogging is a fad.
2. You can’t blog on whatever you think is “cool” and build a large audience.
3. You’ll never quit your day job to blog.

Ted forecasts that, “the wild growth of the blogosphere is going to stop soon and there will be a lot of ex-bloggers”.

This got me thinking.

Our CEO, Joe Thornley started blogging about a year and a half ago.

My colleague in our Toronto office, Michael O’Connor Clarke has been blogging since 2001!

Both have successful blogs, but neither have quit their day job.  In fact many social media ‘purists’ frown on ‘blogging for dollars’. 

What constitutes a successful blog among the reported 60 million in existence?  400 subscribers?  1000?  5000?  Whatever the number, its a lot less than what constitutes a successful newspaper or TV show.

Our firm has immersed itself into social media (blogs, podcasts, wikis, RSS, etc).  As a leading PR/communications firm we needed to, but we also believe in it as a tool and we do it.  Basically every member of our team has their own or is a co-contributor to a blog and/or podcast.  We know our stuff in the area and have helped clients launch blogs, podcasts and other social media tools as part of their communications programs.

However, I often hear PR/communications professionals and bloggers/podcasters say they are uncertain about ‘where all this is going’. 

I often wonder how many blogs of the 60 million are like this one and have less than 100 subscribers?  How many of them haven’t had a new post in 6 months?  How many of them have never received a comment?

I think blogging, podcasting, etc. is another part of the communications mix, not a replacement for the other channels.  There still is and will be for the foreseeable future mainstream media, advertising, traditional websites, public events and even print materials.

Like financial investments, diversification in communications is important.

Can you have a successful communications campaign exclusively based on social media?  Of course, there are many examples.

Can you have a successful communications campaign exclusively based on advertising?  Yes again.

Would a communications campaign that includes both plus mainstream media outreach and public events be even more successful?  Likely.

In the last year or so, the vast majority of communications programs our firm has developed for clients have included some form of social media in them.  Some have been very heavily social media focused, but it depends on the target audience and the objectives – launching a blog is not the answer for everything.

The reason I’d like Ted’s post is because a lot of people that are really into social media are untalkable about anything else and do need to get back to earth a little.

Like many other people in my profession, I don’t know where social media is going.  I do know that communications programs still require a mix of vehicles.

David Eaves, a frequent speaker and consultant on public policy, wrote an interesting piece on the banning of access to Facebook by government organizations in the May 17, 2007 Globe and Mail.

Tory blogger Stephen Taylor is the guest speaker at Third Monday tonight.

I’m looking forward to hearing more about this incident where Press Gallery officials and Hill Security removed him from Parliament Hill on Budget Day.

I was talking to a veteran journalist about this incident last week.  He had an interesting take:

We’ve seen this before on the Hill, with radio and then with TV.  This is the next form of media.

Todd Defren of Shift Communications recently posted on his PR Squared blog a template for a Social Media Newsroom.

One of Todd’s/Shift’s clients Neatreceipts has launched a Social Media Newsroom.  Check it out here. (by the way, Neatreceipts’ Scanalizer looks like a cool product)

In his post, Todd has a couple of questions company’s should ask before launching a blog, podcast or Social Media Newsroom where anyone can post comments about their products and/or services:

• Are you confident enough in your product that you’re willing to endure the potential for public criticism? 
• Are you sure that you have enough time, and adequate support resources, to respond to such criticisms in a consistently prompt and professional and public manner?

I think both Shift’s template and Neatreceipts application of it are really good and hope the format will begin to be implemented by other organizations – maybe by one of my clients at Thornley Fallis.

Ryan Anderson of The New PR also posted his comments on it.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has joined Facebook.

Here’s an example of an excellent viral marketing / social media campaign.

More than 25 million people have watched Utah-based Blendtec’s series of ‘Will It Blend?’ videos on YouTube.

To see all the videos, check them out here on YouTube or on the company’s Will it Blend? site.

There’s also the Will It Blend? Blog.

Since debuting in November, the videos have regularly been among the most popular on YouTube, and Blendtec’s sales have quadrupled.

Blendtec’s Total Blender, the one used in the videos, sells for US$400 and the Connoisseur model sells for US$825.

You’d have to do a lot of blending (basically every meal or at least daily) to pay that much for a blender, but the low-cost campaign is definitely very cool and very creative.  No doubt, there are many people out there that will buy the blender just because of the videos. 

Bill Gates was speaking this morning at the National Arts Centre about the coming decade of change in the world’s ongoing digital revolution.

It was a very good presentation, and the speech was very well received.  What impressed me as well was that he said he’d speak for 20 minutes, and then he did.

Twenty minutes on the future of technology and its impact on our lives.

The lesson for me?  If that only took 20 minutes, then odds are good the longest any speech should be, ever, is 20 minutes.

The event started on time, ended early, and Mr. Gates is now the proud recipient of an Ottawa Senators jersey to boot.

Welcome to Ottawa, Mr. Gates — please come back soon.