Flack's Revenge

It's Fun not to Share

I am dating myself, but there was a public service announcement ad campaign many years ago called "It' s Fun to Share." (please don't press me on exactly how many years ago this ran).

My post on Social Fluency today cautions against too much sharing, especially on social networks.  It describes how researchers were able figure out the social security numbers of users based on the mundane details available from profiles and online conversations.  The post also describes software that calculates your online vulnerability.  

"We're a B2B Company. Why should we care about Social Media?"

I have a post on the Social Fluency blog that refutes the notion that social media is not relevant for B2B companies.  In my post Social Media and B2B: Hit or Myth? I write:

Regardless of whether you are a B2B or B2C, you can rest assured that your business prospects go online to find information related to your business...

So, you need to consider search engine optimization and online industry media, that much is clear.  But it is also true that people are increasingly discovering and sharing content through various forms of social media...

Business and tech stories that originate in traditional media can be buzzed about endlessly online, and this can effect future coverage and the trajectory of the story.   Bloggers are increasingly becoming sources for stories and breaking news on their own.

While it is true that the networks and forums might vary – and you simply need to take the time to understand these – in my experience, in just about every tech industry (and non tech, too, I would guess) there are forms of social media that are very important for B2B...

Right now, while you are reading this, people are buzzing about issues related to your area of business – and very likely about you and your competitors (don’t just take my word for it; you can go ahead and plug the right key word or brand name searches into the following social search sites: Social Mention, Same Point, uberVU, Twitter search, Google blog search, etc.)

Don’t you want to take part in the conversation?

Using Social Media to Build Influencer Relationships

I have a post on the Social Fluency blog today: Getting on the Radars of Influencers via Social Media.

It covers ways that you can use social media, e.g. blogs and Twitter, to build relationships with influencers.  Please see below for an excerpt, and visit Social fluency to read the full post.

For all the challenges the PR profession faces amidst the transition to an online-centric media world, it is important to realize that there are new opportunities too.

One example is in the realm of media and analyst relations.  While it is true that the influencers we want to court have more distractions than ever (just like everyone else) it is also true that there are now more ways to get on their radars – especially if they (and you) are active online.

Here are some examples:

For influencers who blog (or whose articles appear online):

• Comment on their posts/articles
• Link to their posts/articles
• Add their blog to your/client’s blogroll
• Write posts that mention and link to their posts/article
• Invite them to subscribe to your (or client’s) blog
• Invite them to guest post on your (or client’s) blog

For influencers who tweet:

• Follow them
• Call out and comment on their tweets via retweets and mentions
• Thank them if they follow you
• Use direct messages (carefully)
• Use hash tags to align with topical areas
• Tweet about topics relevant to their beats

HiveFire Enables Content-rich Blogs

It has been awhile since I have written about an area that Robin Good called newsmastering when he wrote his series of seminal posts on the topic several years ago.  Back then I covered KipCast, a newsmastering technology company, and still use its MySyndicaat solution on this blog to publish a news stream (the one I have in place now finds and publishes articles that mention Twitter and PR).  See my post Newsmaster Flash for additional details on newsmastering)

It is an important topic, and one that I had planned on revisiting. So, my ears perked up when the name HiveFire was mentioned in a client meeting recently, within the context of blogging platforms that make it easy to launch and maintain content-rich sites via built-in newsmastering capabilities.

Keeping your blog fresh and interesting takes a serious commitment and hard work. Solutions such as HiveFire's alleviate some of that pressure by making it easier to surround your posts with relevant news and topics.  They can make your site more dynamic, interesting, and increase its appeal as an info rich destination.

So I went to the Web site and could not find any way to kick the tires of the service unaided, but did put in an inquiry, which resulted in a prompt response, and a demo which I took in earlier this week.

The demo was indeed impressive - it showed me how you can surround your posts with content from a variety of sources and easily create and maintain news sites or company blogs.  Having so much related content does a number of things: it boosts SEO for your site, and takes the pressure off of making your posts the sole focus of the site.

This functionality comes at a price, and it is more expensive to use HiveFire than, say, TypePad.  But time is money, and it seems that HiveFire can reduce the time commitment needed to keep your site humming with fresh and relevant content.

Regarding the time commitment required, Taariq Lewis, the executive who demonstrated HiveFire said:

We've studied our customer usage of HiveFire and on average, customers spend 20 minutes, a day, using HiveFire to impact their industries and their customers.

That time does include education about current industry issues and discovery of new blog topics.  Our customers do tell us that HiveFire makes them and their organizations smart about what's happening in their industries.  As such, it's easier to blog, write, and craft relevant marketing messages from their HiveFire usage.

Here is an example of a site that uses HiveFire: Green Data Center News (see the screen shot above).

In addition, the platform gives you a way to build a list of email subscribers and keep in touch with newsletters. I definitely think HiveFire is worth checking out.

Twitter Chat Horse Race: Which Tool Kicks Apps?

I wrote a post for the Social Fluency blog yesterday that relates my recent experience in participating in a 
Twitter chat.

I used several programs simultaneously to keep up with the flow of the dialog.  Here is an excerpt, please visit the link above to read the entire post.

After studying the advice in the Handshake 2.0 post in detail, I readied the apps for the upcoming chat. TweetDeck was easy – just add a search column with the appropriate hashtag. TweetChat, a Web-based tool, required no client side app or plug-in and was also very simple to sign up for. HootSuite, also a Web app, has a rich interface that lets you set up a page for monitoring a chat, with separate columns in which you can follow each participant.

Twitter is very democratic in that it treats each tweet the same.  The disadvantage is that it can be hard to follow the flow of a discussion.  Replies contain no reference to the original post, apart from the originating user’s Twitter name (for a new micro blogging platform that excels at organizing conversations, see FriedEggs). So, I thought HootSuite could solve this problem by grouping Tweets from the same user into different columns.

TweetDeck, the one client-side app I used, had the advantage of a pop-up window that surfaces relevant tweets as they occur.

The clock ticked inexorably toward 9pm, when the chat was supposed to start.  As I got ready to jump in, I was of course very focused on the subject matter, and keen to participate and learn.  But the geek and PR guy in me wondered. which app would win the “horse race.”

Although all apps had their advantages – between tweets I was able to switch among them – I found TweetChat to be quickest in posting updates.  Also, it automatically added the hashtag to every Tweet (the most common mistake with Twitter chats is to leave out the hashtag, according to Kelly’s advice).

Although in other aspects, it has fewer bells and whistles, TweetChat is obviously purpose-built for Twitter chats, and I found that it worked the best.

Twitter Chat Enables Virtual Town Hall Meetings and Round Table Events

My post on Social Fluency today provides an overview of Twitter as a tool to support virtual events such as town hall-style meetings and round tables.

I learned a lot through my participation in last night's Campus Chat, which was organized by Smart College Visit.  So I want to thank Kelly Queijo of SCV for inviting me, and Anne Giles Clelland of Handshake 2.0 for introducing me to Kelly.

My post on Flack's Revenge yesterday discussed how I came to be involved with the event, and the Social Fluency post shares my thoughts on the experience, and on Twitter as a tool to support Twitter town hall meetings.

You can find a summary of the Campus Chat conversation on the Smart College Visit site, including a link to the complete transcript on What the Hash Tag.

Twitter Chat about College Decision Process Tonight at 9PM

Last November I blogged about an  innovative social media campaign designed to build buzz for SmartCollegeVisit.com.  In brief, the site - which is a great info resource for college-bound kids and their parents - worked with social media partner Handshake 2.0 to source and publish firsthand stories of college visits.

They invited me to participate, and I was glad to do so, given that my eldest daughter was looking at schools at the time (I am happy to report that she has since been admitted to BU, my Alma Mater, and will be attending this fall).  The story I wrote about our visit to BU last year can be found here.

Well, SmartCollegeVisit.com is once again creatively applying social media by hosting a Twitter chat this evening.  I will be participating this time as well (for those who are new to Twitter chats, Kelly Queijo of SmartCollegeVisit.com has posted some helpful tips for following along).

If you'd like to tune in, search for posts that include #campuschat.  It will start at 9pm ET and run for an hour.  A transcript will be provided afterward.

Synchronized Swimming, Social Media Style

I have a post on the Social Fluency blog today about how to communicate more efficiently across multiple social networks.  It includes links to roundups of tools that are available, and discusses how to reap the benefits of this approach while avoiding pitfalls.

As one example, I use Ping.fm to share select posts from Typepad and WordPress blogs across LinkedIn, Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter.

Can't We all Just Get Along, Online?

There were two excellent op eds this week, one in the NY Times and one in the WSJ, both related to how we communicate online.

David Brooks' piece Riders on the Storm describes research from years ago that hypothesized that the Internet results in polarization - a widely held view (Instead of the public square we could end up in a collection of information cocoons).

Brooks points out a new study that contradicts this theory.  According to the op ed:

The core finding is that most Internet users do not stay within their communities... most people spend a lot of time on a few giant sites with politically integrated audiences, like Yahoo news... but when they leave they often go into areas where most visitors are not like themselves.

[The researchers] found that the Internet is more ideologically integrated than old-fashioned forms of face-to-face communications.

In the WSJ op ed Is Internet Civility an Oxymoron, Gordon Crovitz looks at a very specific facet of how we communicate online and argues that unmoderated, anonymous comments create more noise than wisdom. 

It points out that media sites are reevaluating policies of treating all comments equally. Some sites are no longer allowing anonymous comments, or any comments at all.  Others are encouraging anonymous comments (and in one case, building an entire business model around the concept).

In an interesting twist, Gawker put in a system last year that gives preference to certain commenters based on reader and editor ranking.

Fried Eggs Asks "What's Cracking," giving PR Something to Crow about (and with)

It is nothing short of amazing, the innovation in social media.  This can present a challenge in terms of 
constantly needing to keep up (as I alluded to in my post on Social Fluency) .  On the other hand, there is never a shortage of new tools to add to the quiver.

I thought I'd take the opportunity this week to review two that I believe show great promise: UberVU and Fried Eggs.

Fried Eggs is a micro blogging platform modeled on Twitter. However, it offers a number of improvements that make it a great app in its own right.

For those who know Twitter (and who doesn't these days), Fried Eggs provides a familiar experience, and uses many of the same conventions - you can direct message, retweet, and follow to your heart's content and find myriad ways to put the ubiquitous "@" sign to work.  So it is pretty easy to get started with the app and understand what it can do.

Once I got past the similarities, a number of features jumped out and made me think: why didn't Twitter do it this way?

Fried Eggs tackles the most obvious challenge with the Twitter - the 140 character limit (some would argue that Twitter's simplicity and brevity are the reasons for its success - yet trying to squeeze thoughts into 140 characters is not always easy).

Simply hitting a button labeled "elaborate" opens a window that lets you do just that. The extra characters are hidden in the default view so that the screen is not gummed up with so much text, but you and your followers can easily get to it if needed.  It seems like the perfect feature and platform for launching press releases - the headline can go in the crack (somehow, that just doesn't sound right - should it be creak, or cluck?) and press release body text, in the elaboration.

Fried Eggs also does a better job by showing comments and nested discussion threads, and gives you an easy way to store pictures and video inline - you do not need to invoke a separate application, as you have to do with Twitter.  In another nice touch, there is a search box right there - no need to go somewhere else to search Fried Eggs.

These days it is not enough for a social app to be better - it needs to have a critical mass of users and an ecosystem of other apps around it.  Will Fried Eggs get enough users to truly become a force, and will developers jump on board?

Who knows.  Although I doubt Twitter is too worried, they might have given Fried Eggs an opening with developers, given some of the bad buzz last week in the wake of Chirp and Twitter acquisitions (see the CNET story Et tu Twitter? Here comes Developer Ire).

At any rate I think it is worth checking out.  I am having a lot of fun with it.  And when Twitter is down, it provides another outlet for me to share my thoughts.

Next up: My review of UberVU