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Monthly Archives: January 2010

Quotes for the week ending 30 Jan, 2010

“Was he a talk-show host masquerading as a politician?  Or a politician masquerading as a talk-show host?”

Editorial in the Arizona Republic, on J.D. Hayworth, giving up his 3-hour slot on talk radio, to possibly run against John McCain.

“Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated.”

Barack Obama, State of the Union address, 2010

“Reverse Psychology: Chinese Knock-Off Firm to Sue Apple Over iPad”

Fast Company, on Shenzen Great Long Brother Industrial company claim that the iPad is a knockoff of its P88 model, presented six months prior at the IFA

“It’s time to find your voice and get an online printing press.”

Wayne Kurtzman, at MediaBullseye

 

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Plenty of “non-experts” – tons of social media expertise

A funny thing happened in the lobby of MADCAP Theater, Monday.

SMAZ_2010_VPRBIt had nothing to do with these two familiar faces. Most of the 400 + attendees at the Social Media for Business event –a..k.a SMAZ –about all things digital, indulged in one of the oldest communication tools, business cards.

I loved how, despite seeing a Twitter handle on the last statutory slide of every preso, this tiny cardboard rectangle still works. It probably illustrates how social practices like this will not go away despite the attention we give to trackbacks, Tweetdeck or Posterous.

PanelIn between working the floors wearing that funny hat, I sat in on some great sessions. The panel on Building Brand Evangelists with Social Media, moderated by Kevin Gawthrope (@gawthrok), was very enlightening.

Then there was our very own Linda Vandrede moderating Social Media 101 a panel that included Amanda Vega, Chris Hewitt, Scott Andrew and Sheila Kloefkorn. Talk about heavyweights! If you’d been to last year’s SMAZ, you would have notices how the audience had changed, even at a 101 level. One of the sticky topics that came up was about outsourcing content. There were two schools of thought here, but both maintained that content creators have to be transparent and committed. Blogola and astroturfing won’t cut it.

As I mentioned earlier, the tone was set by Sitewire president, Greg (“I am not a social media expert”) Chapman but having said that, there was plenty to glean from. Especially in the hallways!

My takeaways (updated):

  • Be the message, don’t just post the message!
  • Don’t treat Facebook like the Yellow Pages.
  • Listen first, tweet, post later. Use Social Media as a listening post.
  • Be cognizant of the ‘channel agnostic customer.’
  • Google handles hyphens better than underscores, so be watchful when you write headlines, tags.
  • “Social media is free” is a huge misconception. There’s a human resource cost attached to it.
  • Social media is not a strategy – it is what you embed into your Comms strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy.
  • Google’s new search engine, Caffeine, will knock your socks off.
  • Think less about the platform, more about the content.
  • Content isn’t king. Optimized content is king!
  • Start with small things. If your boss or client wants to start tweeting, facebooking, start with small goals before the big-hairy-audacious ones
  • There’s a difference between a News Feed and a Live Feed on Facebook.
  • Train others freely. Give away secrets. The rising tide lifts all boats.
  • Differentiate between Goals and Tactics. People mix these up.
  • Just like the way they confuse Strategies and Tactics, I suppose.

If you read other takes on SMAZ , you’ll see that there’s a lot of tech stuff to wrap your head around. But for all the talk about ‘matchbacks’ and Seesmic, Tweetie and Flowtown, I came away with three things:

  • “Social Media is an ingredient, not an entre.” – Jason Baer
  • “Hang out where your customers hang out” – Sheila Kloefkorn

And …

  • Bring a lot of business cards, next time, dammit


Cross-posted from ValleyPRBlog

 
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Posted by on January 29, 2010 in Arizona, Events, Marketing, Social Media

 

“Stop treating Facebook like the Yellow Pages”

Evo Terra was firing rounds of ‘measurement’.

Jason Baer was his usual self –provocative, helpful, and making some terrific observations of where we are heading.

As with last year’s Social Media for Business Conference, (see post here) now better known as SMAZ, this year’s conference had some outstanding panels.

The event kicked off with Sitewire president, Greg Chapman making  statement that was more of less repeated at every session: “I am not a social media expert.”

Followed by a “however…”

So in the company of these non-experts, I learned some amazing things, and confirmed a lot of the approaches I’ve been taking. Here are the ones that I liked:

  • Don’t treat Facebook like the Yellow Pages.
  • Listen first, tweet, post later. Use Social Media as a listening post.
  • Be cognizant of the ‘channel agnostic customer.’
  • Google handles hyphens better than underscores, so be watchful when you write headlines, tags.
  • “Social media is free” is a huge misconception. There’s a human resource cost attached to it. Social media is not a strategy – it is what you embed into your Comms strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy.
  • Google’s new search engine, Caffeine, will knock your socks off. Even if you’re in flip-flops :-)
  • Content isn’t king. Optimized content is king!
  • Start with small things. If your boss or client wants to start tweeting, facebooking, start with small goals before the big-hairy-audacious ones
  • There’s a difference between a News Feed and a Life Feed on Facebook.
  • Train others freely. Give away secrets. The rising tide lifts all boats.
  • Differentiate between Goals and Tactics. people mix these up all the time.
  • Just like the way they confuse Strategies and Tactics, I suppose.

SMAZ also turns out to be a great way to connect with the people we only meet virtually here in the Phoenix area (I met many of our readers from ValleyPRBlog), whether no matter where we are on the analog-to-digital scale.

And lest we forget the person behind the curtain who makes this happen, I want to tip my hat to Fred VonGraf.

 

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SMAZ Conference tomorrow – will you be there?

Big day tomorrow — the second Social Media AZ conference.

It’s at the MADCAP Theater.

I was there this evening helping set up, and according to Fred, they are expecting 400 attendees!

Some great panels, and tracks. I’m planning to check in with the sessions on Augmented Reality, Measurement, and Social Search among others.

Tracks:
Check out the presenters here, and get thee to the MADCAP! (There’s free parking at the 5th and Farmer lot across from Ash.)

Livestream:
If not, you could catch the event online –we are live streaming the Panel Discussions! Check this link at AZWebcasting.

 

Another great use of a wiki

The first two things people think of, when following breaking news is Twitter, or Google Alerts. No doubt about it, these are great.

Ever considered ‘following’ a Wiki?

I do it all the time, because I am the kind of person who’s not content with the echo-chamber headline stuff  (you know: “OMG there’s been a plane crash in…”)

Here’s a great Wiki on Haiti relief.  Maintained by the Open Street Map (OSM) Community.

Even if you’re interested not following the relief ops, and are just curious about how social media works in these extreme situations, wikis and maps are great. check it out. As we have begun to see, maps are being used more and more by media orgs and journalists to report on details of a story.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2010 in Best Practices, Journalism

 

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Quotes for the week ending 23 Jan, 2010

“We’ve got the Internet here at Signal, and it’s been a miracle that we’ve been able to stay on air … “Don’t ask me how we’ve managed to do that.”

Mario Viau, station director at SignalFM, in Port-au-Prince, which has been on the air and online since the earthquake struck..

“Because this is just a dirge. I’m ready to shut it off. And I’m sure there’s plenty other about to do the same.

Anonymous commenter on the Rolling Stone blog that live blogged the Hope For Haiti Now telethon. He went on to say that Live Aid “existed to raise money for a terrible epidemic. But the performances were more like a giant party. People were interested, and it was a huge success. This sad telethon will be immediately forgotten. And that’s a shame. Wasted opportunity.”

“Good attitude Mr. Anonymous. With a mindset like that nothing will ever happen.”

Someone going by the name of Jeff, responding to the above poster.

“We are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales.”

Message on the Twitter web site, supposedly after Haiti suffered aftershocks on Wednesday.

“It puts into the public domain every bit of information collected by public bodies that is not personal or sensitive, from alcohol-attributable mortality to years of life lost through TB. Happily, not all the data sets deal with death.”

Editorial in the Guardian, on the launch of new website, data.gov.uk, which Tim Berners Lee ( and professor Nigel Shadbolt) served as advisors, on the request of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

“News Corp. needs Google more than Google needs News Corp.”

Greg Patterson, attorney at Espresso Pundit, in Mike Sunnucks’s story on the battle eating up over the Fair Use Doctrine

“Yet, honest Abe and HAL9000, both had one thing in common. They conveniently applied a Heuristic theory as they were, in fact, the only one calling the shots.”

Steven Lowell, PR Manager, Voice 123, on why failure, and the ‘Heuristic Algorithm’ is a bad long-term solution.

 

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Maping what’s happening in Haiti

Interesting how geomapping is taking off, as  interactive maps (and visualization) becomes a huge asset to crisis communications, journalism. You may recall how mapping was used for the Swine flu.

Now people can help map the relief operation in Haiti – at Ushahidi, a crowd-sourcing site I love to support.

It’s got links to video, news, pictures and ‘Todo’ lists. The site pulls together urgent need requests and status updates.

Like this desparate request:

@MelyMello @WFPlogistics so clos 2 airprt, can u help get help? 18°35’36.24″N, 72°16’40.37″W Othopedic clinic,needs narcotics,IV antibiotics,diesel,gas

Campaign to map Haiti

You can get involved via txt, email, hashtag. Details here: http://ow.ly/YsKP

 

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