Larry King, The Great Conversation Starter

Larry King signed off on CNN last night.



I met Larry one time, he was a guest at a corporate event I produced a few years back along with my friends and colleagues from Turner Broadcasting. King was taller than he looks on TV, and was a restless type. He was always on the move and anxious to get the party started.

In recent years his once sky high ratings disappeared, the victim of competition from others doing what he helped invent. It's the way of television.

That said, there was a time if you wanted to live in the White House, you needed to appear on Larry King Live. Larry King had the biggest Rolodex file in the world, and he got the guests others could only dream of. Heads of State, the biggest stars and the odd....oddball.

His interview style was quaint by today's standards. He didn't rant, rave or attack. He just asked questions folks on Main Street would ask. It worked for a very long time. Should he have hung up his trademark suspenders earlier? That wasn't for us to decide. Larry King did that last night.

Moving forward, Piers Morgan takes over the seat. You might know Morgan as the British judge from America's Got Talent. Personally I don't think Morgan has the talent to keep this particular talk show ship afloat. CNN ratings have been in a huge decline in recent years, ironic in that they invented the 24 hour news format. Others have jumped in, innovated and taken the lead.

The one constant about TV, is nothing is constant.

Brian Olson
Conversation Starters Public Relations
"We start the conversation about you"

Zuckerberg good choice for Person of the Year.

Courtesy: Time Magazine

Facebook PIC (Poster in Chief) Mark Zuckerberg is having a good year. At age 26 he's worth billions, a hit movie was made about how he either created, or stole the idea for Facebook and now he's on the cover of Time Magazine as "Man of the Year." He's the second youngest person ever to grace the cover. Aviator Charles Lindbergh beat him by a year. In a way, both accomplished similar things in how we live our lives. Lindbergh proved we could get from here to there faster. Zuckerberg has us communicating faster than ever before.

It's a good choice. The Tea Party by the way, was runner-up.

My epiphany about Facebook came this summer while in Alaska. While we had plenty of Internet access, even at a remote village 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, we were so busy there was little time to digitally check in. I noticed that I was going to both my business and personal Facebook pages first.

I've heard/read different opinions about just how many people are connected by Facebook, but 1/10 of the world's population is a good estimate. Some 500 million people. There are a lot of people actually making a living teaching others how to make the best use of Facebook as part of a social media strategy for business. I'm one of them.

For most, it's just being connected. A colleague keeps her network to a group of close friends. She described Facebook as like having a high school reunion every day.

Business Schools are already studying Facebook's business model and how Zuckerberg runs his business. You've heard of Cloud Computing. Facebook has Cloud Management.

More than a few pundits wondered why WikiLeak LIC (Leaker in Chief) Julian Assange wasn't chosen. The response was that five years from now, he'll be at most, a footnote in history. As for Facebook, we'll see.

When someone is chosen as Person of the Year, it's not necessarily for doing something good. Just having a profound impact on society; good, bad or in-between. Among the 500 million Facebook users are a lot of very bad people using the technology to steal and to stalk.

There's also no small irony in Time's choice as it's a very analog publication trying to be relevant in this age of Facebook.

Most striking is the cover itself. Study the picture, especially those eyes. It's like he's peering into our very soul. Maybe he is.

Brian Olson
Conversation Starters Public Relations
"We start the conversation about you" (Facebook is one way we do that)

It's not your brand anymore. It's "Ours"

I attended a Social Media Summit produced by Ragan Communications (Which I heartily recommend) earlier this year and came away with several knowledge nuggets including the fact that companies really don't "own" their brands anymore. In this age of social media which empowers consumers like never before, it's "We the digital people" that own the brand.

A few days afterwards I shared this with the CEO of a company that had an increasingly bad reputation on the Internet, a rep growing worse every day. He scoffed at the concept that anyone but he owned the brand. Analog thinking in a digital age.

A few months later the company was OOB. You can't run and you can't hide anymore. Treat a customer poorly, and if you don't make good, they'll post about it on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Others of the same opinion will soon share it and voila, a movement begins. Just ask the TSA. Heard any stories about junk being grabbed lately?

It can work in a positive way too. One of the biggest fan pages on Facebook is for Coca-Cola. It's not run by Coke, but by fans of the brand. The site has tons of followers. Some friends of mine have started a social media campaign for their chain of restaurants. Their food and service is good, they're nice folks so I click the "like" button anytime I see a post.

Social Media can also protect the brand reputation. Should someone complain about you online, engage them and try and solve the problem. Social Media can be a great fire break, before the fire breaks out. An established social media presence can also act as a 'Future Shock-Shock Absorber" when un-fair attacks are made.

Good product and service remain the golden rules of business. Ignore your customers and they'll do anything but ignore you. Take them for granted and they'll take you right out of business. It just takes a few clicks.

They own the brand. Get used to it.

Brian Olson
Conversation Starters Public Relations
"We start the conversation about you"