Posts Tagged with Social Media
4
Twitter celebrated its 5th birthday last week. Unlike the five year old in my house, I’m fairly confident Twitter’s party didn’t have an Optimus Prime pinata and a Autobot cake… Twitter’s loss. Milestones always seem to me like a good time to reflect and ruminate. Of course, I wasn’t there on day one, but I’ve been on Twitter for a while (just over 4 years), and it’s certainly had a big impact on me. A few things that stand out in my mind: I joined in April 2007, but didn’t really start tweeting regularly until June 2008. Like all applications, it takes time to find your groove, figure out how it fits into your work flow. Does it make life easier/better/more satisfying? My rule of thumb for new Twitter users is to give it 30 days and try to follow/be followed by about 100 people. I’ve sent almost 20,000 tweets... Continue Reading
11
“…PR people are ruining social media…” “…P.R. people drive me crazy…” “…PR sucks…” Okay, that last one is more of a paraphrase than a quote, but you get the point. PR has taken a bit of a lashing recently. Beyond being tired, cliche and trite, the “PR Sucks” meme is an informal fallacy - a straw man argument. The assertion of most of these pieces is that because much of PR (particularly agency work and especially over the last 20 years) has been focused on earned media (media relations), that PR people are not suited/incapable/really bad at social media strategy and implementation. That media relations models don’t work in the social world, so clearly we’re ill-suited. But media relations of course is only one specialized function – this argument reveals more about the respective writers’ (lack of) experience or limited view of PR and its role in management than it does... Continue Reading
0
My Strategic PR Communications students were immersed in blogging this term. In fact, they wrote a minimum of fifteen posts over the course of about eight weeks. And they did a great job. Keeping up that kind of schedule is demanding, as you bloggers know. I want to showcase some of my favorite posts from the term. I have at least one favorite from each student. Best of the Best These six students really took flight with their blogs. The posts I’ve selected here stand out as the very best. Daniel McCrone had two great posts. Daniel’s a really good writer, so I encourage you to hang out on his blog and check out some of his other posts, but these were my two favorites: In Twitter Symptoms May Vary, Daniel explores the five stages of twitter from an older post by Rohit Bhargava. And in Behind Every Success There are... Continue Reading
3
What an amazing week! There’s nothing like watching a revolution via social media to bring the power of shared communication, collaboration and instant connections into full view. Besides the revolution in Egypt, I found lots of great content this week to share with you. This infographic is very busy, but has some good info about how people are using social media in crises and emergencies. Pretty remarkable, yet very intuitive. I’m sorry, the story of Sony’s social media blunder, to me, just doesn’t have the weight or consequence that some of the other recent social media blunders (like Kenneth Cole’s). But it is worth noting how far and wide a single tweet can travel. This Q and As on Quora is really interesting and has some good lessons about blogger relations with some of the most read tech blogs. I’ll note that most of the answers are not from PR... Continue Reading
4
Been a bit under the weather this week, but lucky for you there’s still lots of great stuff to share. Enjoy! Popular Shoe Company Makes Most Offensive Egypt Tweet Yet (Business Insider): Kenneth Cole made a bad, bad choice with this tweet. It’s surprising. For a company who has a focus on social responsibility and human rights – at least that was my perception – this kind of thing makes all the previous good seem inauthentic. Lots of years of good undone in one tweet. Sizing Us & Them, A Lesson in Transparency from Rich Becker: This post is a great read with some terrific insights about the idea of transparency. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, so this post really resonated with some of my own ideas. It’s a little “heavier” than some of the linky love posts that I send your way, but if nothing... Continue Reading
0
Wow! I actually had to stop looking at my feedreader. Way too much good stuff to share this week. Enjoy! What skills (tangible or conceptual) do public relations students need as they graduate from college? I asked this question on Quora, the newest shiny object that social media peeps are paying attention to. Check out the great responses I got back. And share your thoughts! Please, Facebook: Help shameless recruitniks help themselves by Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated. A tongue-in-cheek open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, asking for a Facebook shut down to save all those football recruits from themselves. An interesting look at college football and social media. The History of Social Media from Mashable I love infographics. This one is a timeline, going back to the first email that was sent. An interesting response post could be just to share your thoughts about how these tools have changed your... Continue Reading
1
This post can also be found at the Lunar Logic blog. Lunar Logic is a web development firm in Eugene, Oregon. I’m working on a series of posts for my friends there and this it the first. *** If you’ve been pondering a social media strategy, it’s likely you’ve heard the advice to “listen first.” Lots of super smart people have talked about how to listen and monitor with blog post upon post that provides reviews of tools and links to resources. In fact, I’ll share some of my favorites with you. 13 Essential Social Media “Listening Tools” from Marketing Profs (free registration required) 25 Ways to Listen to Customers on Social Media from Social Media Today Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Tools What you don’t find written about much is what you should be listening for. Maybe it’s intuitive to some, but in my experience, once you set up... Continue Reading
5
I had the opportunity to chat with the staff of the Oregon Daily Emerald about how they can use social media for themselves and the publication.I borrowed liberally from a recent Mashable article, adjusted, modified and expanded it to provide a handful of tips for student journalists. I would preface all of these with the recommendation to sit down and spend a little time setting some personal and professional goals for yourself. Think about what you want to be known for and what you want people to remember about you. Knowing your goals will help you make intentional decisions about where to spend your time and energy when it comes to social media activities. Consider it a personal mission statement. Promote your content Use your social media network to promote your content. Post your articles/blogs on twitter, your links to YouTube videos on your Facebook page. As long as you’re... Continue Reading
6
I’d argue that we all face ethical dilemmas every day, particularly in and with social media channels. They may be small (should I say this or that on Facebook) or they might be bigger (no, I can’t pepper the web with positive reviews of that client’s product or service). As you probably know, I’m working on a book with my friend and colleague, Michelle Honald. We’re focusing on the ethics of social media in one of the chapters. I’d love to hear your stories and examples of ethical dilemmas that you’ve faced working in public relations (or any type of communications). You can leave actual or hypothetical examples in the comments or email me. I’m not (necessarily) looking for case studies, I just want to make sure I cover the reality of ethical decision making for those of you working in social media. photo by yewenyi... Permalink
6
The cost of social media isn’t in the hard costs, it’s in the time costs. Creating a process for yourself will help save time and also make social media activities a part of your routine. If you missed Tip #1, check out my advice on setting up an RSS Feedreader here. I find it challenging to share my personal process because I’ve developed it over more than four years. So take what you think will work and modify the rest to work for you. The point is to have a process, not replicate my process. My process basically breaks down into three categories – making time to track, time to write and time to play. Time to Track You’re doing all this great monitoring with your feedreader, but you have to give yourself time to track – time to read and browse your feeds, your Twitter stream, your Facebook news feed.... Continue Reading
1
Comments