Social media success stories and strategies featured prominently in this year’s PRSA 2012 International Conference in San Francisco from October 13-16, 2012. For those who did not attend — like me — social media (blogs and tweets) brought the conference to our desktops and mobile phones. Here is a brief round up to give you some of the highlights.

Reflections on the PRSA International Conference in the City By The Bay. Ric Pratte posted on The Meltwater Group Blog: ”…Social media has had a dramatic influence on public relations. Transparency, trust, crowdsourcing and storytelling are just a few of the hot new themes in our profession…Another popular theme was the blurring lines of public relations and marketing…Storytelling, one could say, has become the alchemist that transforms corporate speak into interesting, value-adding reading material.”

PRNewswire posted nine stories on its “Beyond PR” blog “Exploring Modern Communications with PR Newswire at PRSA 2012 International Conference:”

• May The Forces Be With You: Collaborative Communications ”…we don’t hear too much about the benefits derived from a collaborative communications environment…It’s not about ownership any more but about collaboration…”
• Communications Keys From Pandora: Hands On & High Touch ”…Tim Westergen, founder of Pandora Media, was one of the keynote speakers at PRSA this morning and he shared some amazing insights and thoughts on what has made Pandora such a huge success…word of mouth marketing…hands-on, high-touch response…company’s need an icon…”
• Sustainable Business & CSR: Will Consumers Pony Up? June Cotte (@jcotte), an associate professor of marketing at the Richard Ivey School of Business in Ontario, “…discussed responsible consumer buying habits…The big question she posed was this: Will people spend more on “responsible” products?”
• Storytelling: The Lynchpin for New & Traditional Media This was a panel with the communications pros at Facebook, Twitter and Skype. “…There were some fun voyeur facts (Facebook has 40 people on their communications team, Twitter has eight, and Skype seven) and that Facebook’s team reports up to the COO, not through marketing…Storytelling and blogging have a symbiotic relationship.”
• New Career Opportunities at the PR Agency of the Future Airfoil Public Relations, Hill+Knowlton, Golin Harris and PR Newswire “…sat down to discuss what the future holds and contribute creative ways the profession will need to adapt to address changing client needs…”
• PR & the Presidential Election: Commentary from Michael Steele, MSNBC Political Analyst & Former RNC Chair Michael Steele’s fascinating critique of the PR successes and failures in the presidential debates (delivered just prior to the second debate on foreign policy).  ”…good PR means effectively playing your role, positioning your narrative with your persona to make a connection with the voters, using appearance, body language, cadence, content, and effective messaging. In other words, effectively engaging with your target groups…”
• Social Media & The Presidential Election Lawrence Parnell, PR program director/associate professor at The Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University moderated a session (on how the presidential campaigns have wielded social media) with Joe Garofoli, national political reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle and David Almacy of Edelman PR.
• Content with Intent: The Intersection of PR & Content Marketing Lee Odden, chief executive officer of TopRank Online Marketing, noted that content marketing and public relations “rely directly on listening and taking appropriate action to earn results…any content marketing plan needs to pertain directly to creating, demanding and dominating search results…”
• Pushing… er, Pulling All the Right Buttons ”…PRSA 2012 was a living, breathing example of integrating inbound marketing into communications. Inbound Marketing is an effort that pulls in your audience by offering them information they want, and ideally, they’ll be running to you…”

PRSA International Conference –Twitter Notes Here are a few of the tweets that Martin Waxman posted:

So that’s the snapshot. Obviously, it would have been better to have been there in person. Maybe I’ll see you all at the next one.

It’s pretty clear what the ethical thing to do is. If you need a little more convincing about why you should mention the paid relationship: “Full disclosure” is the legal term. “Transparency” is the mot du jour. Those terms should guide us in all that we do in our professional communications.

But when you are a big company involved in a court case, as is Google against Oracle, it’s not always so black and white. Nilay Patel writes in The Verge that both companies were ordered to disclose which journalists and bloggers they compensated. Google initially replied that it had not paid anyone, but after the judge responded that Google had “failed to comply,” Patel writes that Google then listed “a number of people who have commented on the case in two categories: current and former Google employees, and people who work at organizations who receive donations from Google.” Google included in the list Stanford Professor Mark Lemley who provides “outside counsel” on “unrelated cases.” Oracle also complied by noting in a subsequent filing that it retains Florian Mueller, who writes FOSS Patents, as a consultant.

A blogger is technically anyone who posts public commentary in today’s “translucent” world. The lesson here is that even if you don’t actually commission someone to write on a specific subject, the fact is if that person does write about your company, and also happens to be affiliated with your organization, this must be disclosed from a legal standpoint.

Three incidents have left me frantically searching for news alerts and updates about police and fire activities in my neighborhood. Each time I find myself in the middle of the crossfire, I wonder why our local newspapers are not taking advantage of social media to keep us informed.

It’s no secret that social media offers instant news-gathering and news-disseminating communication channels at little cost. Web sites, Twitter handles, Facebook and LinkedIn business pages can keep residents (and subscribers) updated on the fast-breaking news their beat reporters are gathering. Most of that news will be stale if it waits for tomorrow’s paper.

Debates rage on about whether newspapers, and journalism will survive an era that glorifies bloggers and citizen journalists who need little more than a computer and an opinion to get started. To me the answer seems obvious.

A Means to Thrive, Not Just Survive

If local newspapers are to survive (or thrive), they must embrace the new communication channels at their fingertips. I don’t mean that their marketing, advertising and subscription departments should use social media because they often do. What I mean is that their editorial departments must embrace social media as a vital tool of the trade. It may prove to be the best way for local newspapers to win a younger readership — one their Gutenberg-inspired printing presses have failed to do. 

In every editorial department the world over you will find journalists with Twitter handles or Facebook pages. But these are often independent endeavors. How many news organizations have editorial policies that guide and inspire good journalism with cutting-edge social media techniques and tools throughout the editorial department?

News departments are shrinking as advertising budgets get tighter, but even if newsrooms were not feeling the pinch, it would be impossible for staff journalists to cover every local event. Welcome to the 21st Century.

Social media can collect information from the people at the scene who with their smart phones and home computers are wired to the world. Reporters on the scene can file instant news updates about what they are seeing and hearing. Yet the newspaper world has refused to cede any editorial control. Twenty-four hours is simply too long to wait for news updates that have to wend through a coterie of editors.

This news void has spawned hyper-local Websites such as Topix.com whose tagline is “Your Town, Your News, Your Take,” and AOL’s Patch.com that claims to be “your source for local knowledge you can’t live without.” Hmmph. Where were they in my hour of despair on April 19th? These sites simply rehashed newspaper stories that were eventually published.

This is my personal story…

As a CHP helicopter circled our hilltop home for 30 minutes and police sirens screamed up and down the road below, I was all thumbs as I punched into my iPhone search terms like “Local news twitter marin county.” I couldn’t think fast enough.

I had no emergency sites bookmarked on my browser or Twitter handles readily at hand. Fortunately, several neighbors at the bottom of the hill, whom I had never met, were tweeting updates. One linked to an article in The Marin Independent Journal that explained it all: Armed heist at San Rafael pot club prompts massive search effort. It seems that a few hours earlier, four armed men had robbed a medical marijuana dispensary 7 miles away. A sheriff caught sight of their car in China Camp State Park and chased them all the way into our bucolic neighborhood. Now our neighbors were adding their own comments about what they were seeing after a SWAT team moved in.

That is how I came to learn that the police department was telling people to stay indoors and lock up. That’s also when I realized how serious things were. Up until that point I had been planning to lace up and go for a run through the very area where these men were hiding out.

I was impressed to see that The Marin IJ had a reporter by the name of Jessica Bernstein-Wax (Twitter handle @jbwax for Jessica B-Wax) actively tweeting updates and gathering information as the manhunt unfolded. She was not the reporter who filed the initial story. But she was using Twitter to ask for further details. She is one of the smart journalists who are using Twitter and Facebook to troll for leads, find sources and gather information as material for their stories. As far as I can see there’s very little downside to social media when used in this way.

Sure there’s always the chance that public information about the police whereabouts could tip off the criminals. But  if those fugitives are using their cell phones then surely they will be so much easier to find. The upside is that such news can save lives, and the most popular social media tools cost almost nothing to use in their most basic forms. Social media is also the answer to engaging a younger generation who look for their news exclusively online.

The Marin IJ’s Bernstein-Wax saved the day for me with her use of Twitter to gather and provide information as the events unfolded.

I am also thankful to Gary Klien, the reporter who wrote the story and to his editors for getting the story online so quickly. The next day Klien wrote a follow up article with Nels Johnson entitled: Fourth suspect still at large in San Rafael pot club robbery.

So what could our local newspaper have done better in this case?

Imagine how helpful it would have been to see a Twitter feed next to the Marin IJ story. The neighbors were providing invaluable in-the-moment information on Twitter about what they were seeing and what they were being told by the police. Clearly there was no consistency in the way information was being shared by the police. A few neighbors spoke to the police as they ran across their doorsteps, while some received phone calls from the police department advising them of the severity of the situation. Others turned to Twitter for updates or just let their imaginations run wild.

As I end this post, I am still waiting to get an update about the fugitive that was last seen in our neighborhood.

Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Web site to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.

If Twitter is the modern day equivalent of a soapbox, then Muck Rack Pro is the cocktail party (sans drinks and hors d’oeuvres). It’s a virtual forum where you can schmooze and make witty repartee with the press in the room. All you need is a computer or smart phone for Muck Rack Pro to drop you into any number of conversations with thousands of journalists who are tweeting about today’s breaking news or the article they are writing. It’s as if you have a bionic ear. Select a few search terms, and Muck Rack Pro does the eavesdropping then delivers the relevant tweets to your inbox from the far corners of the twittersphere.

Eavesdropping with Muck Rack Pro

I can imagine you might be saying to yourself that you can already find tweets about the topics you’re interested in by searching for key words on Twitter or with tools like HootSuite and Seesmic. This is true, but Muck Rack Pro zeroes in on the journalists who are discussing your topics on Twitter. That means you can be one of the first to hear about story opportunities, jump into the discussion and pitch story angles.

Muck Rack Zeroes in On Journalist Tweets

Tweets from thousands of journalists in Muck Rack Pro

Muck Rack’s Web site states that thousands of journalists have requested inclusion (a listing in Muck Rack means journalists get to use Muck Rack Pro for free), and “dozens of media outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times and AP have shared their lists of journalists with Muck Rack.” The Web site says “all journalists are vetted by Muck Rack’s editors, who also proactively search the social web for journalists, before they’re added to the directory.”

The relevant tweets are sent to you in an email that includes links to view each tweet on Twitter or to reply directly from the email (see the next illustration). You get the name and title of the journalist and his or her publication. The first 10 tweets are free for communications professionals, but to see the rest you must sign up and pay for Muck Rack Pro. Pricing starts at $99 per month.

Once you become a member you get access to a members only Web site with a comprehensive Journalist Directory and The Newsroom where you will find the top “Stories Journalists Are Talking About” (see the first illustration). There are search tools to find journalists by beat, location and publication, and you can use these tools to track what the journalists are saying about your company, competitors and industry in real time. You can create your own Media Lists, and Muck Rack Pro intelligently makes note of what search terms you used to find them.  These lists can be exported and merged with other media databases such as Cision and Vocus. There’s also a tab to view the Muck Rack Daily digest of breaking stories as they appear and are discussed on Twitter.

My Search Term is Too Broad

Your search terms can be as narrow or as broad as you like. If you choose a term like “venture capital” as I did, then don’t be surprised when you get a “Muck Rack Alert” email with 3,142 matches.

I had more success with my search term “Forbes Midas List.” That search term typically yields one or two tweets a day. It’s clear to me that I need to think more strategically about the three search terms that I have access to under my $99 per month program.

If I’m intellectually lazy (but feeling rich), I can pay $199 per month for 10 search terms. If I’m feeling really flush then I can pay $899 per month for unlimited search terms. Nah, I think I should put on my thinking cap and re-evaluate my search terms. This is a powerful tool, and it should be handled with care.

A PR colleague of mine tipped me off about the free Muck Rack Daily several years ago when it was launched in 2009.  That was the first iteration of this Twitter search tool from Sawhorse Media, which also launched the Shorty Awards. You might start by signing up for the Daily to get an idea of the journalist tweet coverage it provides on every topic under the sun. You can sign up for a 30-day trial of Muck Rack Pro from there. The Muck Rack Blog has tons of information about how to get the most out of this service.

Muck Rack says that it “delivers a glimpse of tomorrow’s newspaper to you today.” They aren’t kidding. Every morning when I sit down with my cup of coffee to scan the two daily newspapers delivered to my door I see stories that I know started out with a single tweet the day before.

I was curious to find out what Muck Rack co-founder Gregory Galant envisions for the next iteration of Muck Rack. Here is what he emailed me yesterday:

 “We’re building more tools for journalists to get better access to information and wider distribution for their work. We’re also making improved tools for PR pros and others seeking press to find the right journalists quickly and send extremely relevant pitches. Our goal is to put an end to the pitching spam that clogs journalists’ inboxes and ruins the reputation of PR people. “

Gregory Galant, Co-Founder of Muck Rack

So what are you waiting for?

When you sign up, say hi to Greg for me. Did I mention that he is extremely helpful and responsive to any questions that you may have?

For More Reading:

TheNextWeb.com: “This may be one of the most useful tools ever invented for media professionals, particularly those working in public relations.” Courtney Boyd Myers, East Coast Editor (12/1/2011)

MediaBistro: “It’s these email alerts that I’m particularly interested in: imagine getting an up-to-the-minute digest of the latest tweets from journalists about the topics you find most interesting, or whenever a journalist mentions your brand.”  Lauren Dugan, Contributor (12/2/2011)

School of Information Studies Syracuse University: Quote by Muck Rack co-founder Gregory Galant: “Muck Rack has been tremendously well received by journalists. Over 5,000 journalists have requested to be listed, and dozens of top media organizations have requested we list all of their journalists on Muck Rack. Many journalism professors have now integrated Muck Rack into their curriculum.” Alyssa Henry, Graduate Student (2/29/12)

Niemanlab.com:“Muck Rack has transformed from a cesspool of banality into a truly useful site probably worth a bookmark. Now users can sort journalists’ 140-character dispatches into broadly defined beats.”

What Social Media apps do you use, and why?

I only use Twitter. I like its low barrier to entry, nothing to maintain, nothing to manage, just point and tweet. And when the day comes when we all move en masse to the next big thing, and that day will come, there is nothing lost as twitter exists in the moment.

Which ones are you steering clear of, and why?

As I said above I only use Twitter. I pretty much steer clear of everything else.

I don’t like the user interface of FaceBook and dislike the constant changes in privacy policies. Essentially I have a deep distrust of Face Book. Social media is a moving target and for now the home base tool of choice for staying in touch with the people you already know or for creating a home base for some businesses is Face Book.  But Face Book feels constrained to me and I have no interest in reconnecting with anyone from my past.

I find no value in Foursquare and all other “check-in” type of apps. These apps are just noise to me. Goggle Wave seems to have washed ashore with no one on it and I have no desire to join Google + at this point in time.

I used to be an early adopter of all new technologies, but now I am a diligent laggard. I don’t have the time or inclination to be out on the SM front lines determining if something is worthy. I let the masses prove the concept, and if the buzz is maintained and people I trust like it, I will consider joining. But I have no desire to be first in to the burning building anymore. My fireman days are over. Prove it to me first. My time is too valuable to be beta testing.

How do you measure success/ROI?

It depends on the context. There is no dollar value invested in most SM apps, just time, so I guess it’s some metric of how much time spent vs. what you want to accomplish. One must have a goal or target to reach before success can be measured.

How did your Twitter followers find you?

Probably most of my followers come from the two huge billboards I put up with my twitter handle along Highway101. Kidding of course! But seriously, how does anyone track how they get any followers?  I have no idea how people find me.

How has Social Media changed the way you work/think/communicate?

I use Twitter as my ad hoc email, my first point of contact more that regular email. It’s less effort and more succinct. I still think I think the same. I may if anything think more before I tweet something than if I were speaking in person because people have trouble determining tone and context sometimes.

What has been your most rewarding experience with Social Media?

Social Media has been rewarding in the most literal sense. I’ve been very lucky and have won several Twitter based contests including dinner for two, wine, lavender soap from a lavender farm, books and tickets to a music festival.

Have you had any Aha! moments?

Aha! There are a lot of weird people on Twitter!

Has Social Media caused you any embarrassing moments?

Auto correct causes the most cringe worthy moments but that’s not specific to Twitter.

What Social Media tools do you think are the most useful for businesses?

Depends on the business, but I think they need to try on everything, see how it fits and then monitor how it plays out for their particular goals.

Do you have any advice to share?

Don’t adopt or join anything based solely on how it works for other people. Make your own decisions, don’t crowd source your life. Do what makes sense to you not just what’s on trend. I may have just inadvertently given advice here, but this could be considered a trick answer to a trick question.

About Marcy Gordon

Marcy Gordon’s background is in consumer marketing and she worked positioning start-ups for launch including Travelocity and OpenTable. Her love of travel and writing led her to work in publishing for The Touring Club of Italy, where she was contributing editor and co-designer of the Authentic Italy guidebook series. Her narrative travel writing has appeared online for World Hum and in print in many Travelers’ Tales anthologies including Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011 and 2010. She will be the editor for “Leave the Iguana, Take the Mascara: Funny Travel Stories from the Road”- due out from Travelers’ Tales in 2012.  She writes Come for the Wine a popular blog about wine tourism destinations around the world. Visit www.comeforthewine.com for more information or follow her on twitter @marcygordon / @winetourismconf / @leavetheiguana

Recent Interviews:

International Wine Tourism Conference & Workshop: http://www.iwinetc.com/news/top-wine-travel-writer-marcy-gordon-comes-back-for-the-wine/

Wine Tourism Conference 2011: (Scroll down to the post “Twitter and Wine Tourism”) http://winetourismconference.org/%page%/twitter-and-wine-tourism/%/

Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.

I wish I could say my favorite tool of the day is a new discovery. One that will bring you great fame and fortune. I would love nothing better than to promise you a shiny new social media toy that will captivate you for the next few weeks or even months (if your attention span is a little longer than the norm).

But no … If I’m completely honest (and I always am). 

It’s without a doubt, something you’ve been hearing about ad nauseam: Twitter.

I have to admit, I didn’t get the Twitter thing at first. In fact, I sat on my new Twitter account for a good seven months while I “played” with Facebook and LinkedIn. I signed up for Twitter more than three years ago on June 9, 2008, but my first Tweet wasn’t until January 26, 2009. I can assure you that I wasn’t going to tell anybody what I had for lunch or about my latest mundane thought. To the uninitiated, it sometimes seems that is all people talk about on Twitter.

As a PR practitioner, I was feeling growing pressure to get with the Twitter program. The catalyst for me was when one of my enterprise software clients was ready to launch a new Website alerting people to breaking news and commentary on cybercrime. It wasn’t long after that when I began to see how useful it was to my other enterprise clients who were releasing industry trend predictions and writing by-lined articles for the niche trade press. 

Somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that there was more to Twitter than broadcasting. I discovered that many reporters and industry influencers were using Twitter to share personal information and engage with their followers. I set aside my biggest fear (that I would become the poster girl of what not to do on Twitter), and gingerly Tweeted a question I had for a well-respected blogger (for all the world to see).  And guess what? He responded. Emboldened, I began to regularly comment on Tweets from the reporters and editors I followed. My rules of engagement are to reply only if I think I have something of relevance to add — even if it’s just an alternative point of view — or if I want more clarity.

Twitter has replaced the Power Lunch

What I came to realize is that many business and tech journalists who more often than not ignored emails and phone calls from public relations reps or tech companies were responsive on Twitter. This was indeed a revelation for me because it offered a way to build and maintain relationships with busy journalists who no longer have the luxury of time for casual meet and greets over lunch or at trade shows. Looking back over this past year, I have to admit that several of the biggest stories my clients have landed started with a single Tweet.

Twitter has become my favorite social media communication tool for business. I signed up for Google+, but I haven’t gotten into the flow with that one yet. No surprises there given my early reticence with Twitter. I’ll give you an update in another three years!

]]> http://www.jagwiregroup.com/wp/2011/08/08/my-favorite-tools-twitter/feed/ 0 http://www.jagwiregroup.com/wp/2011/05/18/are-government-jobs-where-the-pr-money-is/ http://www.jagwiregroup.com/wp/2011/05/18/are-government-jobs-where-the-pr-money-is/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 01:07:53 +0000 Julia Glenister http://www.jagwiregroup.com/wp/?p=974 “In the past three years, state agencies have spent more than $20 million in taxpayer money on outside advertising, public relations and media campaigns,” writes Gregory B. Hladky of the Hartford Advocate (May 17).

A policy advisor for Connecticut Governor Dannell Malloy is quoted in Hladky’s article “Is The State Spending Too Much Money On PR?“ as saying that when the new administration took office in January they were surprised to find how much money was being spent on outside PR consultants. [Note that the $20 million under scrutiny here is in addition to PR staff already on state payroll.]

Personally as a California resident, I’m relieved that this week’s revelations about Arnold Schwarzenegger having fathered an illegitimate child 10 years ago broke after he left office. Imagine the PR tab California would have to bear to address this latest scandal!

Legal counsel has contributed to a public relations failure if you ask Sanford C. Bernstein & Co analyst Brad Hintz. He told The Washington Post on May 16 that when you ask a major law firm what to do when you are under oath you are told to keep the answers very short, don’t offer new information. “If you do that when you are on television you sound very wooden and you come across as if you’re dodging and weaving and that is where Goldman has lost in terms of public relations,” he concluded.

If you are at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival in Austin this week run don’t walk to the nearest movie theater screening Something Ventured, a new documentary offering an insider’s look at the genesis of some of the most successful tech companies in the US. Something Ventured, narrated by Po Bronson, features interviews with the original VCs of the 1950s and 1960s, and offers a rare glimpse of what the Silicon Valley was like 50 years ago when the two words “venture” and “capital” were auspiciously joined to form an industry that would eventually fund 27,000 companies to the tune of $47B.

Luck of the VCs

In this 85 minute film, the original investors and founders of such companies as Apple, Atari, Cisco, Fairchild Semiconductor, Genentech, Intel and Tandem Computers share their memories of successes and failures.  Listening to the candid and occasionally self-effacing recollections of these gutsy investors and entrepreneurs who brought us the personal computer, fault-tolerant computers, human gene-splicing and the router among other innovations that we take for granted today, it is striking how much of their success is due to serendipity. The investors and entrepreneurs interviewed in this documentary include Nolan Bushnell (Atari), Reid Dennis (Institutional Venture Partners), Bill Draper (Draper Richards), Pitch Johnson (Asset Management Company), Dick Kramlich (NEA), Tom Perkins (Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers), Arthur Rock (Arthur Rock & Co), Don Valentine (Sequoia Capital), Dr. Herbert Boyer (Genentech), Jimmy Treybig (Tandem Computers), and Sandy Lerner (Cisco Systems). Each has a fascinating story to tell about how they followed their gut to bet the farm on long-shot investments.

Arthur Rock

Don Valentine

“You’ve got to be lucky,” says Arthur Rock. He invested in the “Traitorous Eight” engineers and scientists who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to form Fairchild Semiconductor, and he later invested in Intel on the basis of a one-page business plan typed by Robert Noyce that was perhaps most noteworthy for its typos. Rock, along with Valentine and entrepreneur Mike Markkula went on to invest in Apple Computer, a company that Perkins, Dennis, Draper, Johnson, and Bushnell turned down. Only a prescient (or lucky) few believed there was a market for the personal computer.  Johnson admits to wondering at the time why anyone would need a computer at home. “Was it to keep recipes?”

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs

Don Valentine, whose investment portfolio includes Atari, Cisco Systems, LSI Logic, Oracle and Electronic Arts, notes that “so much luck goes into these things that … without it I think very few of us would have very many successes.”

Fortunately for Valentine and Rock they had the foresight to see Apple’s potential, although both admit that Apple’s co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did not make a good impression. Steve [Jobs] was in his “Fu Manchu look” at the time, notes Valentine.

Nerves of Steel

A high aptitude for risk tolerance is a trait of these investors too as evidenced by Rock’s decision to invest in the unproven Apple, Fairchild and Intel. Tom Perkins did what most VCs tell you never to do when in 1976 he invested $250K in “pure research” at the embryonic Genentech (sold in 2009 to Roche Holdings for nearly $47B in cash). Jimmy Treybig, the founder of Tandem Computers, a company turned down by multiple investors, said “you have to be brave, and brave is one thing you can say about [Perkins].”

Tom Perkins

Yet, Perkins admits to having had failures, pointing to an investment in a company called Snow-Job (yes, seriously) that converted motorcycles into snow mobiles. It was ready to go into production just when a fuel crisis hit. Needless to say they couldn’t find distributors from that point on.

Then there was Dick Kramlich of NEA who believed so strongly in Robert Campbell’s PowerPoint (offering an alternative to presenting information on overhead projectors) that he funded it himself because it automated “a very cumbersome process.”  ”When you see it you just know it. It goes right through your bones,” he explains. Years later, Campbell is still lamenting his decision to sell PowerPoint to Microsoft in an all cash transaction.

Cisco's Sandy Lerner

Cisco’s Sandy Lerner Reflects

One of the highlights of the film for me was Cisco co-founder Sandy Lerner’s reflections on the troubled corporate culture at Cisco in those early days. She and her co-founder husband, Leonard Bosack, were early evangelists of what would become the Internet. Their router capitalized on that foresight. But Cisco was plagued by what Lerner herself called a “trench mentality,” and she admitted to alienating others in the company. One of the first tasks of Cisco’s newly-anointed CEO John Morgridge was to address the problems, including actual physical fighting in the hallways. He eventually fired Lerner at the bidding of the company’s vice presidents. In Something Ventured we see the human side of Lerner as she recounts that difficult period. She notes that she was the only woman at Cisco. ”I think I was just very, very frightened and there just wasn’t a box for me,” she said even as she admitted that she didn’t make it easy for anyone.

One thing that I learned from this film is that the last thing you want is to be at the helm of one of the companies Pitch Johnson referred to as “The Living Dead.” Unfortunately, anyone with a track record in tech has probably worked for one of those.

The Wizards Behind the Curtain

This slick documentary is produced by Miralan Productions, led by Paul Holland, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with Foundation Capital (whose idea it was for the film) and Molly Davis, a founding partner with Rainmaker Communications, who I have worked closely with in marketing communications over the years. It is directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Geller Goldfine Productions), the directors/producers of such films as Ballet Russes, Kids of Survival and Frosh: Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm.

The North American distribution rights for Something Ventured have been picked up by Zeitgeist Films who also distributed “The Corporation.”  It will be released to festivals and the educational market this Spring and Fall with a release to the TV and Home Entertainment markets to follow.

Update: 3/31/2011

On April 24th and May 1st, Something Ventured will make its West Coast premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Several of the film’s subjects will step on stage on May 1st for a short Q&A. They are: Don Valentine (founder of Sequoia Capital), Tom Perkins (co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Mike Markkula (early CEO of Apple) and Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari). They will be joined by Paul Holland (co-executive producer) and Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (the film directors).

Tickets are $15 each and they can be purchased at: http://fest11.sffs.org/.

Links to News Coverage

The Austin Chronicle: “Veni, Vidi Venture”

The New York Times: “A Film About Capitalism, and (Surprise) It’s a Love Story”

The New York Times: “Festival Films Have Minimalist Themes“

Apple's Steve Jobs and investor Mike Markkula in the early days

A one-of-a kind documentary film chronicling the early years of Silicon Valley’s venture capital industry will debut in the Spotlight Premiere category of the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival in Austin in a few weeks (March 11-19). “Something Ventured” is a must see for everyone in the tech business, but it will captivate most anyone who uses a computer, creates PowerPoint presentations, once played Pong, or has ever started a business. As told by the original VCs of the 1950s and 1960s, the film offers an insider’s look at the genesis of some of the most successful tech companies in the US.

I first wrote about my impressions of the documentary when I saw an early screening at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA last year. Since renamed, the film offers a rare glimpse of what the Silicon Valley was like 50 years ago when the two words “venture” and “capital” were auspiciously joined to form an industry that would eventually fund 27,000 companies to the tune of $47B.

For more information, please visit the official site of Something Ventured.

[Technorati Claim: ZQQ3R62AVP3]

When an embargo on a social media news announcement was breached in November, a prominent tech journalist sent out a sarcasm-laced tweet: “Shocking!”

This was just one of many broken embargoes in the tech industry last year. I recall one particularly memorable breach (and tweet) that lit up the Twitter transom in August after eWeek broke Google’s embargo on Gmail Priority Inbox. By some accounts, there were more breaches in 2010 than ever before – some were accidental, and some were not.

So why bother with embargoes?

Embargoes can be useful. As a PR practitioner, I pre-brief journalists under embargo only when I believe my client has particularly newsworthy corporate and product announcements. This approach has always seemed like a win-win situation for major stories. Embargoes often result in quality coverage for companies, and on the flipside embargoes give reporters time to research and write their stories before the press release hits the wire.

As we all know in the PR business, once the press release is out, the news is about as inviting as a waft of Limburger cheese. Many reporters appreciate the time the embargo buys them. Sure the investigative news journalists and bloggers bristle at the thought of anyone controlling the release of news, but most agree to honor the embargo because they know they wouldn’t have the story otherwise.

In Embargoes We Trust

The concept of embargoes was conceived in a pre-hyper-communications world where journalists and PR professionals formed “real” relationships over Martini lunches (ah, I remember the good old days she says with nostalgia). Trust is critical to the success of any embargo, and relationships aren’t easily forged over the Internet. The temptation to be the first out of the gate with the news is strong because the publication that breaks the story wins in the viral game. In this age of social media, the big industry-shaking stores are sure to go viral.

But, isn’t an agreement still an agreement even if you have to cement it with a virtual handshake these days?

Fortunately, in my 15 years in PR, I have experienced only one intentionally broken embargo by a now defunct tech magazine. The reporter had agreed to the embargo, and was truly mortified when his editor over-ruled him and the story went out early. That publication quickly became known for its anti-embargo policy, and as a result its reporters weren’t invited to participate in pre-briefings on the major industry stories.

Will the demise of Martini lunches lead to the demise of embargoes?

Should we end the practice of embargoes? Even I’ve wavered on this one given the frequency of ethical lapses lately. However, a recent experience suggests that embargoes still have a role to play in the highly competitive tech market where favoritism (i.e. exclusives) breeds enemies.

I was working with a company whose PR strategy called for embargoing our news so as to reach all the key industry analysts and publications rather than giving one publication an exclusive. But there was pressure from the company’s Board of Directors to get downloads as quickly as possible. We buckled and approached key tech reporters and bloggers with our pitch. We briefed the first to make room on her calendar, and I must say that we were very pleased to get into that publication. However, when the story broke, we nearly lost the second interview we had lined up with an equally important publication because the reporter was understandably peeved to find she had been scooped by a competitor. By this point we had zero chance of getting into industry-heavyweight, TechCrunch.

By the end of our campaign we had several decent stories in online blogs and hundreds of downloads, but no coverage by the traditional news and trade publications (or by the industry analysts) whose publishing lead times are usually much longer. Now juxtapose this with a quasi-competitor who released their news under an embargo. They set up many briefings for the press with their executive staff, and had plenty of time to follow up with requests for follow up interviews and materials. That company’s clip book was three times the size of ours and included a fair number of key publications in the traditional and social media realm that covered their product launch in depth.

Other Options: Exclusives, Press Conferences

There’s always the fall-back option of holding a press conference or giving an exclusive to one select publication. To hold a press conference, your company has to be a big name or your announcement has to be on the magnitude of discovering the missing link between man and ape to get people to attend (even for an online press conference), and as I wrote in an earlier blog there’s “No Consensus on Exclusives in the News Business” either. For tech companies it’s harder than ever to get noticed. Exclusives limit exposure, but worse, they alienate the journalists who don’t get the exclusive.

If you choose to set up interviews under an embargo, then you should find out where a reporter or publication stands on them. Several publications have openly declared that they will break every embargo that comes their way.

Fed up with being scooped by publications who break embargoes at the 11th hour, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington blogged Death to the Embargo in 2008, promising to break every embargo we agree to.” In principle he was okay with the concept because he noted that the stories his bloggers are asked to embargo “aren’t stories that we’ve dug up ourselves.” His issue with embargoes was that they are offered to “literally everyone who writes tech news stories,” and he noted that there’s “no downside” to breaking them because the PR firms continue to work with them.

This past November, Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsDigital declared that she has “just joined the army of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington on this irksome issue” as a result of the broken embargo on RockMelt. So in sum, my recommendation is to use embargoes judiciously. There’s a time and a place for them, but first ask yourself if your news really warrants a pre-briefing, and consider other options such as exclusives and press conferences (if you are big enough to draw a crowd).  If you decide to pre-brief under embargo, confine your briefing invitation list to those reporters and bloggers you know and trust.

I contacted three J-Schools to find out what they teach on the subject of embargoes:

Boston University: My Alma Mater

• Boston University: College of Communication
• The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
• Northwestern University: Medhill School of Journalism.

I made my inquiries over the holidays so not surprisingly I didn’t get too many thoughtful replies. Let’s put it down to finals and end of semester breaks. I am thankful for these helpful replies that I did get:

Medhill’s Dean of Curriculum said that Medill doesn’t have a policy on embargoes that it teaches because different faculty have different approaches and opinions on the subject.

A senior lecturer at Boston University replied that “on the face of it, it sounds like someone is trying to control the news for their own agenda…I’m guessing that most editors would find this practice to be unsavory.”

It looks like this embargo debate will rage into the next-generation of reporters and bloggers.

Further Reading

TechCrunch
Death to the Embargo 

Wall Street Journal All Things Digital
Arrington proclaims that TechCrunch will break all news embargoes in the future

Business Insider
Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner Talks Embargoes And Exclusives

Vocus
In embargo we trust

LewisPR
Best Practices for Embargoes

SiliconValleyWatcher
MediaWatch: More About Embargoes…
 

Internet News
This tech news is not embargoed

PageOne PR
To Embargo, or Not To Embargo?

Web 2.0 Summit (November 15-17, 2010) San Francisco, CA

Co-produced by O’Reilly Media and UBM TechWeb in association with John Battelle’s Federated Media, the Seventh Annual Web 2.0 Summit (formally known as the Web 2.0 Conference) was live-streamed for the first time in its history this year, and video footage is available on YouTube  from O’Reilly Media. Here are a few links to videos that caught my interest, but there are more here:

• A Conversation with Mark Zuckerberg , CEO of Facebook (Video)
• A Conversation with Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo! (Video) See also VatorNews article below.
• A Conversation with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (Video)
• A Conversation with Robin Li, founder and CEO of China’s Baidu (Video)
• Internet Trends with Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley (Video): Frames 10 questions that Internet executives should be thinking about.

DeFrag Conference 2010 (November 17-18) Denver, CO

• Social Cognition, From Defrag (Blog) (Stowe Boyd)
• Twitter to Sell 50% of All Tweets for $360k/Year Through Gnip (Blog) (ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick)
• Cloud impact: A state of the art discussion (Blog & Podcast) (Michael Krigsman, ZDNet)
• This Week in APIs – November 13-19 (Blog) (Shanley Kane, apigee)
• Big Data. New Physics. (Blog) (Jeff Jonas/IBM)

Amplify Business Pitch Competition (November 18) (San Francisco, CA)

• Esther Dyson on space travel and Groupon  (Blog) (Faith Merino, VatorNews)
• Eric Ries on learning, failing, and pivoting (Blog)  (Faith Merino, VatorNews)

TWTRCON SF 2010 (November 18) San Francisco, CA

The fourth TWTRCON SF 2010 was a one-day event whose agenda featured case studies from major brands, workshops and mini tutorials.

• TWTRCON SF Focuses on Analytics, Influence (Blog) (Lesly Simmons, BlackWeb 2.0)
• The Future of Advertising Has Been Promoted: A New Study (Blog) (Brian Solis)
• Interview with Twitter Revenue Chief Adam Bain (Video) (Kara Swisher, AllThingsDigital/WSJ) Interview at TWTRCON.

These are the best links that I’ve found so far. If you have a blog posting covering these events or a speaker’s presentation from one of these shows that you would like to add, please put a link to it in a comment below.

Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.

I published an online newsletter today in under a minute. All it took was one stroke of a button and voila I had nine pages beautifully formatted with compelling content neatly filed under nine tabs: headlines, technology, business, stories, arts & entertainment, education, environment, public relations and mobile. You think I’m kidding don’t you?

I’m not! You can do it too if you use Twitter. 

Paper.Li is an application that organizes what it deems the “relevant” Tweets and associated links from the people you follow on Twitter into a newspaper layout. I follow 181 people that are mostly writing about technology, public relations and social media so my instant newsletter reflects those interests, but lo and behold it parsed my Twitter feeds into areas that I wouldn’t normally create categories for: arts & entertainment, education and environment.  This gives me a new perspective on the information that I am consuming through Twitter.  News content can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag, according to Paper.Li. You can select the frequency whether daily, morning or evening or weekly. The funny thing is that I see a lot of content in this newsletter that I missed during my scans of Twitter throughout the day.

Paper.li states on its Website that it applies semantic analysis (to determine topic) on English, German, French and Spanish language articles. I must check into this further because one of my clients is heavily into the use of semantics for filtering relevant emails.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Here is today’s handiwork. You can click on this image and it will take you to the actual newsletter. You’ve got to see it.

Now the biggest beef that I have with this newsletter technique is that I have virtually no control of the content. I can pick and choose the people whose content I want to curate, but I can’t pick and choose the content they’ve tweeted that might make it into my newsletter, and which I might think is inappropriate. Also, as an old school journalist something seems wrong about publishing other people’s content without asking. That’s why I think I will just use this to compile a daily digest to scan the hundreds of Tweets that come in daily. I won’t entirely trust Paper.Li to pick the most relevant Tweets for me. I’ll still dart in and out of my Twitter feed during the day, but this way, I will probably find things that I might have missed otherwise.

By the way, the people you follow do have some control and can opt out of being mentioned in any of these Twitter newsletters by going here. I won’t be opting out myself because I will be flattered if any of my content shows up in your newsletter.

If you would like more detail, you can read these recent blogs:

• Small Business Trends: Paper.li Creates Custom Newspapers for Twitter
• Dealmaker Media: Flipboard, Paper.li, and Twittertim.es. Oh my!

PaperLi was created by a Swiss-based start-up called SmallRivers, which is located on the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL campus.

I want an exclusive, baby!

“Giving exclusives still can serve an important function in today’s viral media world, and even may be worth making a few enemies,” asserts Dan Primack in an article entitled How and when to give a media ‘exclusive,’ which arrived in this morning’s issue of  The Term Sheet, Fortune.com’s new daily email about deals and deal-makers. Primack was revisiting what he described as a “fairly contentious”  New England Venture Network (NEVN)-sponsored panel discussion last week with Paul Gillin over the practice of companies giving “exclusives” to select media outlets.

Gillin felt so strongly that such favoritism has no place in “the relationship game” of PR that the day after the panel discussion he blogged Are Exclusives a Good Idea? In a Word: No. Gillin’s rationale is that ”exclusives make one friend at the expense of making a lot of enemies.” He noted that journalists “tend to hold grudges against sources who favor their competition.” Nonetheless, he admitted that in “isolated” situations when a company has the chance to be covered by a big-name publication like The New York Times, it may be worth losing some friends for a scoop.

Primack agrees with Gillin that there may well be some repercussions in terms of relationship fall-out, but he feels strongly that exclusives are worth considering for start-ups. In his article he details a six-point “process” for start-up CEOs to follow under the sub-headings of: 1) Is my news important enough? 2) Who should get my exclusive? 3) How do I approach the publication? 4) Negotiating the exclusive; 5) Handle the fallout; and 6) Did it work?

My own professional opinion for The JAGWIRE Group is that exclusives need to be weighed on a case-by-case basis. There’s no question that if you are a well known company you will alienate journalists if you single out one journalist from your coterie of beat reporters as the lucky recipient of your breaking news story. But what if you are — like many of my favorite clients – an unproven company launching new technology? You might well have the cure for cancer, but you will still have an uphill battle to get a journalist’s ear. Offering an exclusive story in these cases can often sweeten the deal, and you might just catch a ray of that elusive limelight.

In one of my earlier blog posts, Okay, So You’ll Only Talk “Off the Record,” I stated that unless your company is a Google or Microsoft behemoth it is unlikely that you will get an interview in your publication of choice once your press release hits the wire. I suggested that one solution is to grant an exclusive interview to a key publication before your press release hits the wire (and triggers online news dissemination saturation).

The Elephant in the Room: Embargoes

But what about the elephant in the room? The pachyderm of which I speak is the controversial news embargo. If journalists agree to hold the news under an embargo then companies don’t have to play favorites and they are free to brief key news reporters in advance of the story. In return the journalists have time to research, interview and fashion their stories for their readers.

But, as we know all too well, that approach often backfires. Case in point when eWeek broke Google’s embargo on its Gmail Priority Inbox announcement in August.  Twitter lit up with the grumblings of journalists who had up until that point kept their end of the bargain.  Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch will go down in Twitter history for tweeting: “Tech press, I invite you all to raise your collective middle finger toward eWeek for botching the Gmail embargo.”

Social media has given the masses a bully pulpit to communicate and cover news, but that doesn’t mean we should toss aside the established protocols of the media profession. Without protocols it becomes difficult to communicate effectively. It’s clear there will never be a media strategy that will suit everyone all of the time. It’s also clear that there will always be favorites in this business based on audience reach and trusted relationships.

Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.

Email, Tweets, Facebook messages … social media is driving us to distraction! It’s a fact of life that there are days when we are destined to be more productive than others. On those “off” days we run circles around our most pressing tasks. Rationalizing as we go … “I’ll just check Twitter before I start that project … I must clean up my inbox before I can possibly do anything else … if I knock off these easy ‘C’ items on my list then I can plunge into the ‘A’ projects.” Suddenly a long lost friend locates us on Facebook, and we find ourselves crafting an email tome that will bring them up-to-date on our lives.

Aside from a swift kick in the patootie how can we stay on course day in and day out? Why not turn to technology to fight fire with fire? Today my post is about Cohuman, a new kind of productivity tool that coordinates teams and manages projects to keep you and your teams focused on your most pressing tasks.

I first learned about Cohuman when a former colleague from my SmartAge days asked for my help with two pending press announcements: Cohuman Now Available in the Google Apps Marketplace and Cohuman Rolls Out Intelligent Business Solution to Coordinate People and Manage “Need to Know” Projects. When I sat through my first briefing on the product’s capabilities, I imagined Cohuman could be useful for “other” people to keep team members on track and prevent bottlenecks. After all, it’s so easy for people to ignore or pass off a task with email or collaboration software because there is no accountability. Cohuman addresses this by providing a centralized workspace where each team member’s progress and requirements for completion of shared projects is visible. What a novel idea! Team members don’t even have to open up the application to find out what their priorities are for the day, they are alerted to new priorities, outstanding tasks and assignments by email.

What I hadn’t anticipated is that from that point on, project management as “I” knew it would never be the same. My PR communications and tasks with Cohuman were all to be managed from within the Cohuman application. I am tossing my PR consultant hat aside to tell you that on a personal level Cohuman has made me more productive and efficient with my time. First thing in the morning my focus is on deadlines for priority projects.  My motivation is two-fold. Cohuman prioritizes my tasks for me (and it’s deadly accurate), and my progress — or lack thereof — is transparent to my teams.

So how does Cohuman do it? It prioritizes tasks based on an algorithm that intelligently factors in emerging team priorities, due dates and dependencies to ensure that each team member works on the highest priority projects, and no one becomes a bottleneck. This is important because each of us invariably depends on our team members in order to deliver our own projects on time.

What I like most about Cohuman is that I don’t have to hunt for multiple email threads from each team member. Cohuman keeps the team’s many tasks, conversations and file attachments in one place. There is no guess work about who is doing what or about the status of a project. Cohuman ensures that each team member is accountable, and it provides unprecedented visibility into an individual’s and team’s responsibilities. There’s a convenient “Ping” button to nudge people along, and a “Yay” button to reward them. Yes, the folks behind Cohuman have a sense of humor. Another benefit of using Cohuman is that it functions as a document-versioning tool because you will always know exactly where the latest files are. In my case, this meant immediate access to the latest press release draft being passed around for edits. Oh, and those long forgotten tasks. Cohuman remembers them when you don’t.

Information overload is a constant in our lives today, and it is getting worse. Recently there has been considerable buzz about Google’s new Gmail Priority Inbox because it helps filter emails, but at the end of the day, email is simply a messaging protocol for receiving, sending and storing electronic mail. Email is useless for coordinating and tracking team progress.

We all know it’s hard to break the email habit so if some team members want to use email to communicate within Cohuman they can. Cohuman automatically files their replies and updates to specific projects and tasks within the application when they respond to Cohuman-generated email alerts and requests thus ensuring that their input is visible to the team. As previously mentioned, team members also receive email alerts on their daily priorities, outstanding tasks, assignments and status changes.
 
Cohuman is constantly adding new features and functionality. Most recently Cohuman launched a Professional Web-based software package for business users who want more control over the information they share with their teams. Cohuman also recently joined the Google Apps Marketplace after gaining certification for its integration with Gmail™, Google Calendar™ and Google Docs™.

So don’t wait until a project tsunami is heading your way. Get focused on those pressing tasks and get productive with Cohuman. It’s free and you can be up and running in minutes. You can also check out The Learning Center for videos and information.

Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.

One of the biggest regrets of my life (so far) is that I never mastered a second language. I had plenty of opportunities. 

• When I was in Washington DC covering foreign affairs and defense issues across the Asia and Pacific regions my excuse was that there were simply too many languages to master for my beat.
• I spent 10 years of my childhood in Saudi Arabia on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali, and all I can say today is “As-salaam alaikum” “Shukran,” and “Wahid hamburger.” 
• In my teens I spent several years in Iran, and all I can remember is “piaz.” What the heck does that mean? I know it had something to do with my mother haggling over onions in the bazaar. Pathetic.
• I did take four years of French in high school, but I won’t tell you how hard my husband laughed at me when the petite cafe au lait I ordered a few years ago during a trip to Paris found its way to our table as a grande cafe au lait. (Well, you know what they say about those French waiters!)
• I will say that I was rather proud that by the tender age of 22 I was finally able to understand my Grandfather’s heavy Hampshire accent. What? That doesn’t count, you say? Hampshire is a county in England. Ah well, I give up.

Fortunately, for me and the few others out there who are monolingual, there is Google Translate. At the push of a button on my Google toolbar I can suddenly read a multitude of languages including German (without channeling my great grandparents). This isn’t a new offering — it’s been around for a few years — but a lot of people don’t realize they have it in their Google Toolbar or even their Google Chrome browser, I’d wager.  Google Translate lets you translate select text or an entire Website.

Until I hit the Google Translate button, I had no idea what this Dutch blog had written about my client.

Suddenly I could read Dutch!

I’m sure not everyone has preloaded the Google Translate button into their browser so if you want to make sure that people from the far corners of the globe can read your page you can opt to add individual buttons that translate your English-language Web site into 57 languages. Urdu, Icelandic, Welsh or Catalan anyone?

Wish I had access to this tool oh say … back in my school days or in the Saudi suqs. How much easier life might have been.

Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.

I came across TweetyMail earlier this month while holed up in a hotel room in Kauai. The Pacific Ocean and sparkling pools outside beckoned, but because I had piggy-backed on my husband’s business trip (finally somewhere other than the Central Valley), and he hadn’t finished his business affairs for the day, I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I decided to tackle Twitter. Oh come on. You know you would too.

Those torrential Twitter streams drive me crazy. I know I shouldn’t complain because I receive a mere fraction of the number of tweets my Twitter addict friends and colleagues get. Still, I try to follow the industry influencers, and I try to be polite and follow the people who follow me. Consequently, I can not keep up with the deluge.

There are times when it has taken me days to discover that someone  ”replied” to me in one of their tweets.  If I don’t regularly click to see if any replies have come in from the @jagwiregroup username hotlink on my Twitter home page or do a search with Social Mention, I am oblivious. Thankfully, Twitter emails me alerts about direct messages and new followers, but the @ replies where people actually start or continue a conversation with jagwiregroup, just languish in cyberspace until I manually hunt them down.

Who has time to hover over their Twitter page all day long?

So that is why I did a Google search for “Twitter email alerts.” Up popped TweetBeep, TweetyMail, TweetScan and Twilert. I decided that TweetyMail was the one for me. Perhaps it was the name or maybe the TechCrunch  quote on the homepage made it easier for me to decide. I don’t know. In any event, I signed up for the free subscription and I now get email alerts within minutes of someone Tweeting @jagwiregroup. In fact, I can also request email alerts on any keyword or hashtag.

But TweetyMail does much more than that. It gives you access to Twitter directly from your email, which is especially useful when you are on the road. By emailing the following email aliases, you can Tweet photos and links to Web pages (it automatically shortens links), request the latest tweets from your friends and more. It is also possible to schedule Tweets with the premium version. 

Finally I can monitor the conversation about my brand and my clients’ brands. Equally as important, I can be more responsive!  Now, instead of dreading my Twitter streams, I can look for more people to converse with on Twitter.

There are free and premium versions of TweetyMail. To see the full functionality of this useful app, check out the demo. In a TechCrunch blog entitled “TweetyMail: It’s Twitter Over Email. And It Works,” MG Siegler writes that with the features currently available in the free testing phase product “you can completely bypass the need to go to Twitter.com (or any other Twitter client) ever again.”

So folks, today’s blog post kicks off the inaugural “My Favorite Tools,” which will be an occasional JAGWIRE Group column about useful apps and widgets that I stumble across and now just can’t imagine life without. I invite your comments on what works best for you in managing your mentions on Twitter.

So where does The Emily Post Institute weigh in on etiquette for the Web or netiquette? The official Website states: “As new technology emerges, there are new manners associated with these new methods of communication. However maintaining the standards of communication that have served and will continue to serve us well into the future is what’s important.”

Etiquette “is about treating people with consideration, honesty and respect,” says Anna Post, who is following in her Great, Great Grandmother Emily Post’s foot steps as a spokesperson and author at The Emily Post Institute. In June she was the featured speaker at a Business Wire Webinar entitled “Etiquette for the Digital Age.”  Business Wire has graciously archived the Webinar slides and audio, and they are well worth viewing. In fact, a little netiquette may even save your job when your colleague replies to your rant about your boss, and oops, copies “All Employees,” which includes your boss. What do you do in that case? Do you know what you should do if you are meeting with a colleague when you get a phone call from an important client? A few of these questions are raised and answered thoughtfully by Ms. Post.

Here are a few primers.

Etiquette “is not just about the forks and knives,” says Ms. Post. People form impressions by how we present ourselves over this technology, she added. The first rule of communication is that “the good communicator is a good listener.” A few other rules of communication that apply to email, cell phones and texting are as follows, according to the younger Post:

Top Communication Guidelines:

• Be aware if it is public or private: Ask yourself should I be taking this call in someone’s lobby?
• Proofread: The focus is on your mistakes. Because the focus does go to mistakes
• Pay special attention to proper names
• You can cannot hide or salvage the poor [messages]

Quick Tips for Email Communication

• Let it simmer: When you are upset or angry, give it 5-10 minutes. Read it out loud or when in real doubt ask a colleague how it sounds.
• Your subject line is your first impression: You want to have a subject line. Make sure it is spelled correctly, and is pertinent.
• Grammar and word choice matter: Spell check is not always accurate. Re-read your email.
• Be conscious of your voice: 1) ALL CAPs: We all know that ALL CAPS is shouting in email speak; 2) Emoticons: Miss Post has mixed feelings about emoticons . They can make you look juvenile so you shouldn’t use them in communications with clients, but on the other hand they can be a nice touch with people you know well. A smiley face can make it clear that you are not angry; 3) Text Messages: It’s worth the effort to spell out words rather than using text message speak because on a big computer screen it can look like a “tiny squawk.” Also, Ms Post said she is wary because she doesn’t always know the age of the person she is texting, even though it is very common in her generation.
• Salutations, closings and signature blocks: “Hello,” “Hello All,” “Best,” “Best Regards,” “Kind Regards,” “Thanks,” “Sincerely,” are perfectly okay, if a little formal.  It’s recommended that you only use “Warmly,” and”Warmest Regards” if you know the person very well.  Surprisingly, a lot of people do not like “hey.” They hear it more as a jab than a greeting. If you want to be a little more formal go with your “Dears,” and “Hellos.” “Hi” is also “perfectly okay.” Signature blocks are fine, but don’t let it be your sign-off. You should still make the effort to sign off with a “Best Regards” or other signature with your name.

Should this presentation strike you as just plain old common sense, reflect on this. Several years ago when an AP/IPSOS Manner’s poll asked “Have you used your cell phone in a loud or annoying manner in the past few months” only eight percent of the respondents replied yes. Seems low doesn’t it? According to Ms. Post that’s because it’s easier to perceive rudeness in others rather than ourselves.

In a slide entitled “When Words Alone Are Your Image,” Ms. Post noted that “in the absence of facial expressions or tone of voice, interpretation defaults to the negative.” This means that you should never use email or IM to avoid a difficult situation. And it is always best to pick up the phone or visit someone in person if email communication becomes strained or tense. She referred to a recent article in The New York Times about how many signals we pick up from other people that we don’t even know we are processing. I did a search for the article, which I believe is this fascinating article entitled “Seeking Emotional Clues Without Facial Cues.”

For more netiquette advice on modern office manners check out the presentation. Ms. Post focuses on Cell Phones and Office Phones, providing Smart Phone tips, and even tips on iPod and Earbud use.

Connecting Information in Context

Introducing a Guest Blog post by JAGWIRE Group’s new client, Meshstro*, a PARC-incubated company that is developing contextual software solutions to deliver the first natural language and content recognition technologies for email.

Chris Holmes discusses the current limitations of email search, and reveals how Meshstro’s new beta product takes an innovative approach to searching for, and discovering, the emails and documents in your inbox. JAG

Let’s face it: email is ripe for innovation.

We rely on folders and keyword searches to sift through thousands of emails to locate buried messages and documents… but the problem goes beyond the inbox.

Today’s business processes are more dynamic, more human-centric, ad hoc, unscripted, and loosely orchestrated – they represent the framework for our interactions with team members, business partners, and customers. The information that fuels these interactions is digital: emails, documents, web site links, database records, IMs, tweets, and so on.

Keeping track of all this information in the context of a person, a partner or customer, or a particular activity is a TIME CONSUMING, MANUAL, CUMBERSOME process. And it’s only getting tougher.

Meshstro - Information at your Fingertips

Search is not enough

Sure, search can help – but it’s limited to finding information based on a matching, often arbitrary and ill-defined, keyword, and only then in the information format supported by the search tool. But…

• What if you can’t remember the right keyword?
• What if you want to find a document based on its meaning? (e.g., something related to a question in an email message)
• What if you want to find something that looks like something else (e.g., a sales chart used in a PowerPoint deck)?
• What if you want to find all the email messages that included a certain slide deck or contract?

Search fails, or at best, requires repeated, manual efforts to narrow down the results. This is time consuming, prone to error, and so, so frustrating.Connecting information by context

What we really need is a way to connect, or relate, information across different domains by context – connecting information by relevance. Remember when you last gathered all the relevant financial papers to file with your annual tax return? Even for the better organized of us, this is painful and time-consuming.Meshstro, a Xerox-funded project incubated at PARC, is addressing this “‘information connection” challenge (note I didn’t just say “overload”!) by using a specific combination of PARC technologies and competencies straight out of its research labs to create an information net – or what the team calls an “iMesh” – of the relationships between information elements such as the people, companies, and topics within email messages, documents, and other data sources.

Knowledge workers, unite!
Simply put, Meshstro is a software product that connects information by context to improve the way knowledge workers find, sort, and interact with information. We want to make people smarter and faster when managing their information.

Right now, Meshstro is available as a contextual Outlook sidebar – focused on the problem of business email first. Not only is email our #1 business application (57% of us are using email every hour, and typically receive 50-200 work-related emails per day), but it also contains the context of most of what we do. Encased in the messages we send and receive daily are the lifeblood of our tasks and responsibilities, our business relationships, and interests.

Knowing this context isn’t just powerful, it’s mission critical.

So, for now, Meshstro helps users find information buried deep in their email – accurately and rapidly – and very soon the product will link information systems together to provide a “contextual intelligence system” connecting email with file storage, business systems, and the web. Then you can find everything you want smartly and quickly.

* Meshstro is now called Meshin (Update 8/28/10).

Sign up for the beta here.

Moderator Owen Thomas /VentureBeat and Panelists Paul Martino/Aggregate Knowledge; Christine Herron/First Round Capital; Corey Reese/Trumpet Technologies; Tim Chang /Norwest Venture Partners.

Is the tech industry headed for bubble number two? That was the burning question for those who gathered at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco last Thursday. The answer appears to be no — or at least there are no signs of it yet –according to a panel of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs brought together by the law firm Dorsey & Whitney who sponsored the event “Are We All Blowing Another Bubble?” Those of us in the audience who were in tech PR and marketing during the last dot-com boom, breathed an audible sigh of relief.

The panel was moderated by Owen Thomas, executive editor of VentureBeat.  The panelists were Paul Martino, co-founder and executive chairman at Aggregate Knowledge; Christine Herron, principal at First Round Capital; Corey Reese, CEO of Trumpet Technologies; and Tim Chang, principal, Norwest Venture Partners. All of them, except for Reese who was in high school at the time, experienced the dot-com bubble first hand.

Martino doesn’t see any signs of a bubble yet, and noted that there have been only a handful of high profile market valuations recently, yet they have received a disproportionate amount of attention from the press that in turn contributes to a perceptual disconnect with reality. ”Silicon Valley is like high school — until you die,” said Chang, noting that the “hot people” get chased by everybody, and all the attention is on the prom queen and the team captain.

The most popular kids right now just happen to be companies in the social media space such as Facebook, FourSquare, Groupon and Zynga. Chang noted that it’s like the California Gold Rush where one guy makes a fortune, and the rush is on. In reality, those lucky companies represent about one percent of the deals being made out there right now.

So how do entrepreneurs create a bidding war these days? The truth is those days are probably behind us with the last Dot-com implosion in 2001. It really comes down to having a strong “process,” according to Herron and Reese.

Martino observed that he doesn’t think the market has come to terms with the fact that there are capital efficient and non-capital efficient plays. Many “core tech” companies (focusing on chips and enterprise) find it difficult to raise money from venture capitalists because they must look for capital in the neighborhood of $100 million as opposed to those starting social media companies on $10, he said. Our biggest risk is follow-on financing, said Herron. Her biggest question is what do you need to prove your hypothesis?

So it’s going to be business as usual folks. At least for now.

You can read moderator Owen Thomas’ wrap up of the event here: The good news and bad news about bubbles.

Is that the faint tinkle of a death knell I’m hearing for Facebook among its once rabidly loyal small business owners?  Probably not! It’s more likely just the echo of the reverberating collective screams heard on Twitter and Facebook and around the blogosphere since yesterday afternoon when word started to trickle out that Facebook had announced via its Developers Forum that Facebook Pages (formerly Fan Pages) could no longer have landing tabs unless they had at least 10,000 fans (in the new lingo fans are “likers”) or unless they advertised on Facebook. (See Jonathan Mast’s blog posting for more background).

Poof, all those gorgeous designer Welcome pages were wiped off the Facebook map — even the ones that had more than 10,000 fans. Then just as suddenly they reappeared. But for how long? All Facebook, a blog that bills itself as “The Unofficial Facebook Resource” reports that Facebook appears to have reversed the decision.

Disappearing Act of Facebook Business Pages

Such edicts are a reminder that it is not, and never has been, Facebook’s goal to be a trusted partner to its growing coterie of small business users. If you’re not one of the many small businesses who had created a branded Welcome page for your business, imagine how you would feel after spending your valuable time or money on designers to create these pages only to have them removed (with no warning) in one fell swoop when Facebook decided to change the rules. With limited resources, small businesses must choose their marketing channels carefully, and Facebook once seemed to offer a cost-effective way to display and peddle ones wares while building a large, loyal following on one of the most popular social media platforms.  (Here are some examples of designer Web pages, but hurry before they disappear: Mari Smith, Denise Wakeman’s The BlogSquad and Social Media Examiner).

So what’s the answer since there’s no substitute for Facebook on the horizon (yet)? Proceed cautiously and let’s not forget what Chris Garrett, co-auther of the book ProBlogger said about that pesky little ownership problem with posting content to social media sites (See JAGWIRE’s ”8 Hot Social Media Marketing Tips” blog posting. Tip #5). The answer is to create your own social media hub in the form of a Web site or blog so that it won’t matter what the social media flavor of the month is or whether the rules change or not. These third-party social media applications should solely be used as distribution channels to drive people to your own hosted site.

Facebook’s latest antics follow closely on the heels of its controversial privacy policy changes that expose everyone’s “likes” and “dislikes” and what they do online (if they don’t turn that feature off).  It does seem that Facebook is still deciding what it wants to be when it grows up. Who will it serve beyond the almightly dollar?  That Mark Zuckerberg and his band of merry men and women sure are shaking the foundations in the process.

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“Social media is at a place right now where if it can’t prove itself, or if we don’t find the case studies that help everyone else learn, it will go the way of SEO,” said Chris Heuer, the provocative and colorful founder of AdHocnium and the Social Media Club  during a Business Wire media breakfast panel in San Francisco on April 15th.” I use “colorful” for lack of a better adjective because several words that came out of Chris’ mouth in the first 60 seconds of his reply to “What’s the state of the union in social media” are ones that would make my mother blush.

By the end of the discussion it dawned on me that I have been under the mistaken assumption that I was actually getting a handle on the social media phenomenon. After attending Business Wire’s Navigation in Today’s Global-Mobile-Social World: from a PR Perspective, I now realize that I will never be an aficionado on social media tools (I’ve counted more than 150 popular ones so far).  But my revelation is this: Neither will anyone else despite all the social media “guru this” and “expert that” titles being bandied about out there!. Social media tools are changing constantly and with the new functionality comes new usage patterns and new communication trends and fads. The underlying message is that no one should get too attached to today’s tools because they are constantly evolving and could be replaced tomorrow.

Nonetheless there are guidelines and tips that we can share with each other to help us cope and thrive in the social media realm today. The Business Wire panel began by addressing the power, immediacy and wide reach of social media, and the need for businesses to engage with quick, but tempered responses.

Here is a list of the speakers and a few highlighs of their comments follow:

• Chris Heuer, Founder, AdHocnium and Social Media Club
• Maura Ginty, Sr. Manager, Search and Social Media Strategy, Autodesk
• David Toole, CEO, MEDIAMobz
• Rachel Polish, VP, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence
• Kimarie Matthews, Vice President, Customer Advocacy and Loyalty, Wells Fargo, Internet Services Group

Maura Ginty acknowledged that there are plenty of case studies about the damage that can result from the lack of an immediate social media response when a corporate crisis breaks. She cited the Amazon and Dominoes fiascos, but her message was that negative social media commentary can also be an opportunity for companies to reach out and show value. For background on the Amazon and Dominoes case studies, there’s a good overview in The LA Times called Ignore the Twittersphere? Major brands learn that they had better respond — and quick.

Chris Heuer talked about a bad experience he had recently had with American Airlines. Yet he called his very public rant about the matter a personal failure, noting that “you always have to be on” [with social media] … and “sometimes our emotions get the best of us.”

David Toole had a similar story about Virgin America whose managers “in the know” about a flight delay were not communicating with their front desk staff who were also on the front line with the irate travelers at the gate. Those travelers who were wired turned to social media to blow off heads of steam and to find out what was going on. They got the attention of executives at Virgin America. He observed that social media is ”automating human behavior.”

I pulled a few more gems from the Business Wire discussion that I list below from my notes because I think they provide some very useful advice:

Rachel: There are many social media strategists and opinions, but too many companies forget to listen [to the conversations on social media] first. It is important “to build an engagement plan from what you learn.”

Kimarie : Wells Fargo turned to social media when they realized that “reporters wanted more content.”

David: A lot of people who have Twitter think it takes care of itself, but there is a need for someone to engage.

Kimarie:  Twitter “will always be part and parcel of the conversation.”

Chris: This is basic social behavior stuff.

Rachel: The secret at Ogilvy: Listen, Plan, Engage, Amplify, Optimize. This informs our engagement plan. Go where the people are, understand what they are saying.

Rachel: Hot trend – everything converging on mobile devices. (She cited Foursquare as an example). This  is an opportunity for the big [and small] brands to leverage.

Kimarie: Everyone is going to be very different. Some will have [a small number of] followers, others 5,000.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you stay connected when the tools keep changing?

David: It’s human behavior. But you should use the tools you are comfortable with.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Where does Social Media really belong? PR, customer advocacy?

Kimarie: There’s more than one place for it.

Chris: Right now it’s whoever wants it. Geolocation is traditionally marketing, but if marketing’s not doing it…We don’t have the right models to deal with this. Now adapting to organizational structure.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What are the best listening tools for various channels?

Rachel: Radian 6, Scoutlabs, Crimson Hexagon is really good for sentiment, and free tools like Google’s Wonder Wheel, Google AdWords, Google keyword tool.

Kimarie: It really is just about customer relationships. We know how much our customers are worth to us. As a result of being on Twitter we [can] engage the customer who may have been disappointed. If  we “recover them” and they give us public praise or say something to their followers they may become promoters so I think that is a good business case for why we should continue to [engage in social media].

Chris: Steve Jobs is jumping on Twitter now.

Rachel: There’s an opportunity to build thought leadership for executives with Twitter. It depends on the company.

Chris: Tom Foremski says “every company is a media company. Chris pointed to the viral Will it Blend? videos where a “quirky CEO” throws everything from the iPhone and iPad to silly putty  into his company’s Blendtec blender. “He’s himself and it works!”

For more on the conference, stop by Business Wire’s BusinessWired blog or view this short video.

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With my memories still raw from having missed that .com domain name opportunity to make my fortune in the mid-1990s,  JAGWIRE Group quickly took Social Media Guru Denise Wakeman’s advice over the weekend and bought a shiny new URL (jagwiregroup.tv) after listening to SocialMediaExaminer’s Webinar “8 Hot Social Media Marketing Tips.”  One of Denise’s “hot” tips during the Webinar had been to grab a .tv domain for your name, site or company and redirect it to your YouTube channel because video is becoming “so powerful.”

Now at the moment JAGWIRE Group does not even own a video camera other than what was packaged with my Blackberry. Nonetheless, I thought it prudent to buy this piece of “waterfront” property (I’ll explain “waterfront” in a moment) and “park” it until I can figure out what to do next since I don’t have a YouTube channel either. In hindsight I probably should have bought something a bit more marketable. I mean, how much demand is there going to be for jagwiregroup.tv in the future? The stakes would be somewhat higher for Microsoft.tv or McDonalds.tv or better yet Nightline.tv. You get the idea. Well I don’t have the stomach for a big fat lawsuit from any of these corporate brands if the prices go sky high again. So for the time being I will just sit on my new real estate.

It took me about an hour of my precious Sunday to figure out how to register a .tv address. Let me save you some time. I usually rely on Yahoo! Small Business, host of JAGWIRE Group’s corporate Website, for these kinds of things, but they didn’t offer a .tv domain name. I could have a .com, .net, .org, .info, .us or .biz, but not a .tv. After a desperate Google search I learned that the .tv domain is operated by VeriSign, of which the island nation of Tuvalu owns 20 percent. So that’s where I went fishing. VeriSign not Tuvalu, that is.

Alas, VeriSign does not register or renew domain names, but it does certify registrars who do register domain names “for people who need them.” VeriSign provided a link to these certified registrars, and I ended up at Moniker.com where I successfully registered my new .tv domain name. In researching this further for today’s blog, I have learned that VeriSign made some changes that fundamentally altered the process in March 2010. These changes are expected to make the .tv extensions more mainstream, and I explain below.

A blog posting entitled “The State of Dot TV – March 2010” on  AllThings.TV, a discussion forum, explains that last month VeriSign slashed prices on Premium .tv domain names and eliminated the high annual renewal fees for Dot TV domain names registered after March 18th (For more on this, read DN Journal, The Domain Industry News Magazine.  Depending on the Registrar, registration fees can range from  about $7.50 per year up to $39.99. Previously, Dot TV names had to be registered with eNom, and “prices varied greatly for the most popular Dot TV domain names or the names that early-adopters would register and develop.”

DN Journal concludes that these changes make “the .TV proposition more compelling for developers and potential investors alike.”

So JAGWIRE Group says “bring it on.” I imagine that Tuvalu is looking forward to the selling spree as well. You won’t believe this, but .tv stands for Tuvalu not television. Some time ago, Tuvulu realized the potential of its country extension, and according to Wikipedia (which by the way still needs to be rewritten to better reflect the VeriSign changes — anybody?) signed a contract in 2000 to lease .tv for $50 million in royalties over a 12-year period.

Remember that reference I made earlier to “waterfront” property? There’s a hilarious blog in Gizmodo about how domain registrar GoDaddy.com is recommending against people buying .tv names because Tuvalu is sinking into the South Pacific.  You know that old adage that goes something like this: “Hey, if you like that then I’ve got some swamp land down in Florida for you.” I sure hope that’s not what JAGWIRE Group just bought!

• Mari Smith, author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, and founder of the International Social Media Association
• Chris Garrett, co-author of the book ProBlogger, founder of the Authority Blogger site and co-founder of the Performancing Online ad network
• Denise Wakeman, co-Founder of The Blog Squad, she has several  Websites including Build a Better Blog
• Michael Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com (the hosts of today’s Webinar) and the author of the book Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged and the Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

The underlying message was that businesses need to get into the social media game. Michael Stelzner, the host of the Webinar, set the stage when he shared a few facts about the escalating traffic volumes of Facebook and Twitter:

• There are 450 million people on Facebook. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest country in the world, just behind China and India;
• There are 40 million Twitter updates every day.   Your customers are using social media, and the question is: are you engaging them?”

Tip # 1: Online Video Drives Traffic and Boosts Your Visibility (from Denise Wakeman)

Denise Wakeman said that video is a powerful tool for increasing trust and credibility because it connects, engages and converts blog readers. It is a more intimate way to connect because the viewer can see your body language, facial expressions and hear your tonality. She listed the following facts and recommendations:

• A 2007 report by the Kelsey Group says that 24 percent of those who view video on a Website will make a purchase;”
• In December 2009, 178 million people watched 3.2 billion videos with the average viewer watching 187 videos per month in the US alone, according to comScore.  Nearly 40 percent of those videos were YouTube videos. 86.5 percent of the total US Internet audience viewed online video and 134.4 million viewers watched more than 13 billion videos on YouTube alone;
• Video viewing habits in the US are up 23 percent over last year;
• For businesses and professionals Denise recommends adding video to blogs to connect with audiences “in the best way for them.” Not everyone likes to read, but they will watch a video, she noted. Video also increases the amount of time people spend on blogs. You can add video on your home page in the form of a welcome video, how-to video, tip video, demos of products and services, tutorials, testimonials, and interviews with industry experts, yourself and others in your own organization;
• Distribute your content on multiple platforms to get to ”potential clients where they are hanging out:”  YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and iTunes;
• YouTube (owned by Google) is the second largest search engine and comes up high in search engine results. Videos that are “optimized” with information about your blog URL, sales page or .opt-in page should be the first thing that people see in the description of your video. Create and customize your own channel with videos on YouTube as well as the other video sites;
• Grab a .tv domain for your name, site or company and redirect it to your YouTube channel.  Denise believes that .tv urls could be the next big Internet land grab because of the power of video. Protect your .tv name. These domains are a little more expensive then .coms, but she said it’s well worth protecting and grabbing that online real estate.

Tip #2: Drive More Traffic with Twitter (from Mike Stelzner)

Mike Stelzner provided a tip on how to drive more traffic to sales landing pages, Websites and blogs using Twitter. He revealed ”the secret sauce” used at SocialMediaExaminer, noting that they get between 200-1,500 retweets” on all of their posts.” He said that great content is key in social media.

Here’s the “Secret Sauce” recipe and a tip:

• The SocialMediaExaminer blog content comes out at the same time every morning (around 5:00 AM PT Monday to Friday);
• Insert the TweetMeme button (available with a free account) into your blog to make it effortless for people to send your Tweet off to their audience: “To get action you need to reduce friction and make it very easy for people;
• Social Oomph.com (formerly TweetLater.com) makes it possible to schedule Tweets, direct message (DM) followers and track keywords so at 5 AM the SocialMediaExaminer blog posts go live. Several hours later a pre-scheduled Tweet goes over the SMExaminer feed. Next to “New Post,” they add please retweet in parenthesis. Michael cautioned not to ask people to do this all the time. However, he noted that when you do ask people to take action it increases the likelihood that they will. Next a pre-crafted Tweet is sent out for the same article from another of Michael’s accounts, but in this case the secret sauce is a direct message. The DM goes to about nine people he calls Fire Starters (partners such as Mari Smith, Denise Wakeman and Chris Garrett) who can help these Tweets get started. The secret is to time the Tweets so you get a “pump up during a short amount of time.” Rapid tweets lead to trending on such sites as Tweetmeme’s home page.

Tip # 3 Discover Google Buzz (from Chris Garrett)

Google is behind Google Buzz so therefore it is important, said Chris Garrett. People are taking notice because it’s bolted on to Gmail , which has millions of users. His tip:

• If you are not claiming your personal name or personal brand on Google Buzz get on it.  Billed as ”a new way to share updates, photos, videos and more, it is very much like Facebook or Friendfeed. And by the way, if you have a Gmail account you’ve got Google Buzz;
• Flesh out your Google profile because Google Buzz could become very important.  Hook up your Picasa, Twitter and other social media services if you want, but a word of warning. A lot of people are saying that they only want to have people in their networks that are creating original content. So find out what [your targets] are doing first;
• Why use Google Buzz instead of Facebook or Twitter? Google Buzz supports very focused conversations. Unlike Twitter where conversations take place in minutes before you lose track of them, with Google Buzz the conversation can span days. Each conversation, if it’s set to be public, has a public page that could appear in a search engine. It’s probably best to avoid contentious political or religions subjects, but if you are talking about your business – the service and expertise you offer – it can be useful.

Tip #4: Create Facebook Fan Pages (from Mari Smith)

The reason to have a Facebook Fan Page is because there are 250 million people logging on daily for an average session time of 55 minutes, said Mari Smith. She provides tips on building a compelling fan page.

• As Gary Vaynerchuk says “eyeballs are monetizable.” So one of your goals should be to corner some of those eyeballs in your target market and build “outposts” [to your blog] with social media sites such as a Fan Page;
• The content on Fan Pages is fully indexed by Google so all your updates can be found even if people aren’t logged into Facebook;
• Why a Facebook Fan Page rather than just a personal page on Facebook or a Facebook Group? You can have unlimited fans unlike your personal profile on Facebook that limits you to 5,000 friends. The key distinctions between Facebook Fan Pages and Facebook Groups is that content on a Group is not indexed by Google, and you can not add applications to a Group.  Another thing, when you hit 5,000 members of a group you will not be able to email them. So definitely have a Fan Page;
• Can fully customize Fan pages with applications. Have a look at SocialMediaExaminer’s Facebook Fan Page (it’s only 1 1/2 months old). Their Welcome [sidebar] uses Static FBML (Facebook mark up language). You can drive traffic using applications, and you can have landing pages, and more.

Tip #5: Create a Social Media Hub (from Chris Garrett)

The problem with posting content to social media services is that you don’t actually own your own content, says Chris Garrett.  You are posting to someone else’s site, and they can change the rules and remove your account and content.

There used to be service called Pownce. A lot of people thought it would take over from Twitter because it was founded by a superstar chief executive. It was bought out and all the content and accounts are now gone, and the communities have disappeared. People also use the legal system to remove content. A pop star called Edwyn Collins posted a song [A Girl Like You] to his MySpace page. He owned the copyright, and he wanted to share his song, but a record label who didn’t own the copyright took it down. He owned it, but he didn’t have a big enough legal team to protect his own content. You have to play by their rules. That’s the negative.

• So use all of the good, positive benefits of these services and communities. Engage the community where people already hang out and bring them back home. Build your own hub. I’m a blog advocate and Denise is a big blog advocate so we propose that you use a blog, but it can be any Web site.  Build your hub to lead them to even more value, more content, to keep them coming back to your site;
• Build fresh, unique original useful content on your hub and get them onto a list.  If the worst happens and your Website is taken away from you (trademark infringement, etc) you will still have a link. It won’t matter if new services come and go. It won’t matter if Twitter or Facebook is the flavor of the month because you are always growing your core business, not their business. So the positive is that you can use these services to grow your own services to build your own community, build loyalty and keep people coming to you.

Tip # 6: Syndicate Video (from Denise Wakeman)

Denise’s tip focused on using video to leverage your expertise and help people find you and your blog to make a deeper connection with them on various outposts and to give them more information about how you can help solve their problem. She noted that the Web enables us to syndicate, (broadcast or amplify) our messages across multiple platforms. Yet video files are very large and it takes time to upload them to these sites.

• A tool she loves is TubeMogul.com, a free service that provides a single point from which to upload video to the top video sharing sites. It has powerful analytics that enable it to track that go far beyond views and tracks per second audience drop-off, audience geography and a lot more, she observed;
• Set up a free account (there is a premium account but free is fine if you are only doing a couple videos a month). You must invest some initial time setting up accounts  for all of the sites you plan to which you plan to upload through TubeMogul, but then you only have to upload one time in the future to get to multiple sites. She advises her clients to create a cheat sheet with all of their contact and profile information, URLs to their social media sites and blog so they can simply copy and paste the information;
• Each site has a place for your profile and this is important so that when someone views your video or clip on these sites they will know who you are, see your picture, your logo and access information about you;
• You can use the same email and password for these video sites. A word of caution, you will get a lot of email in the set up process so she recommends using a separate Gmail account just for these notifications;
• The pluses: It’s free and it will save you an enormous amount of time because you don’t have to upload to every site. Your sites and stats on your viewership across all the video sites will all be in one place. By syndicating your videos you will increase your reach. TubeMogul claims that people using their service get three times more views per video. 

Tip #7: Broadcast Live Video (From Michael Stelzner)

One of the things “that’s really cool” about social media is the immediacy of communicating with people, said Michael.  Talking faces bring the “Wow factor” to the table. By interacting with your watchers live they can see your physical reactions. Your video can also be broadcast to Twitter and Facebook  followers to drive more traffic back to the live broadcast.

• TinyChat.com is free (with a paid option) You can request your own room like tinychat.com/your company. Once you give people that URL they can immediately enter the live video conference. TinyChat supports up to 10,000 people in a room at once. You can get up to 12 live video streams simultaneously, but it gets a little tricky when you have more than two people [streaming] because some people don’t understand audio [requirements];
• A couple of quick tips on audio. Have your presenters wear their ipod headsets in one ear so the audio from their speaker goes into their ear not out of their computer to prevent feedback. Ideally, have them wear a headset, any kind of USB headset will eliminate background noise like a fan in the room or dogs barking in the background. Consider recording them using Camtasia or ScreenFlow. See a recording I did with Mari Smith on  SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Tip #8: Grow Your Facebook Fan Base (from Mari Smith)

If you build it will they come? You could have the most beautiful Facebook page on the Facebook planet and nobody is coming. Some of my Ninja tricks.

• One of the first things people do is invite all of their friends with the “Friend” feature, but Mari doesn’t think that is very effective. For one thing, Facebook only allows you to  join 500 Fan Pages and over time if you have many friends and are quite active on Facebook those “Suggest a Friend” pages will build up. She recommends using the “Share” button instead.  It’s ubiquitous on Facebook and it’s on your Fan page at the bottom of the left column. When you click ”Share,” which will go to your personal profile you can tell friends why they should come to your Facebook Fan Page. You can say you have a new tricked out Fan Page. But you should tell them what will be going on there – questions about your area of expertise, ask them to add their photos, say you are doing a contest, etc;
• Definitely want to add a widget to your blog. The link is facebook.com/facebook-widgets;
• Recommend adding on your Twitter background image that you can find us on Facebook. It’s not necessarily clickable, but at least it will be clear you have a presence on FB;
• If you have a Web-based email you can use the plug-in wisestamp.com and pull in your Facebook Fan Page link, your Twitter and LinkedIn;
• Think outside of the box instead of just saying “Become a Fan.” Say something like come and write on our Fan Page wall.
• Put your social media links on your business cards;
• People can join your Facebook Fan Page using text, using SMS, and you can Tweet this out as “fan yourusername” to 32665 (FBOOK).

If you missed this Web forum you can listen to the Webinar and download the slides from these presenters (until April 9) from http://www.whitepapersource.com/slides/. You can also sign up for the Web-based  The Social Media Success Summit 2010, founded by Mike Stelzner, that will take place in May.  Speaking at the forum are 24 social media experts including Guy Kawasaki (author, Art of the Start), Chris Brogan (author, Social Media 101), Darren Rowse (author, ProBlogger), Ann Handley (MarketingProfs), Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Mari Smith and many other experts from a cross section of industries.

As I listened today to the speakers on PRWeek’s Webcast “From Foe to Friend: Turning online critics into brand ambassadors,” I was surprised to hear how much time and effort well-known brands such as McDonalds, Kimpton Hotels and Quicken Loans put into responding to negative Tweets and blog posts from ordinary folks like you and me. They don’t just focus on the biggest blogs and those with the most Twitter followers either. McDonald’s PR director said that those with fewer than 200 followers are important too, but you have to make some choices about which skeptics to engage with.

It was the Webcast’s description that lured me in: “With myriad ways for consumers to share their opinion about brands online, there is more opportunity than ever for a single critic to have an amplified voice in the conversation-and a detrimental effect on a brand. But these critics can represent an opportunity to change perception and therefore influence important segments of consumers.”

The speakers were from non-tech companies, and seemed a good cross-section of American commerce:

• Stacey Ellis, director of public relations, Kimpton Hotels
• Kelly LaVaute, social media manager, Quicken Loans
• Molly McKenna Jandrain, external communications manager, McDonald’s USA
• Jennifer Houston, SVP, global lead, Waggener Edstrom’s WE Studio D 
• Moderator: Erica Iacono, executive editor, PRWeek

Each shared social media tips and case studies to show how social media had helped convert their online critics into brand ambassadors (or at least silenced their rants).

Molly McKenna Jandrain, external communications manager, McDonald’s USA

McDonald’s engages consumers through Twitter and blogger. Molly shared five key take-aways from her experiences:

1) Listen and Learn First. Don’t barge in and insert your opinion before listening to what consumers are saying about your brand online. Consumers offer insights into what is most important to them.

2) Personality is Key. Molly noted that Twitter lets McDonald’s personality shine online.  She gave an example of a skeptical customer who questioned whether anyone “really” wins the McDonald’s monopoly sweepstakes game. A McDonald’s “Tweet” (whose job it is to engage in Twitter conversations) eventually convinced the skeptic that yes, real people do win. How did the Tweet do it? Simply, by talking to him like he would a friend.

3) Tried & True Tactics Reign Supreme. Molly noted that Snail Mail is now almost an endangered species so hand written cards add a personal touch to correspondence. 

4) Embrace Your Skeptics. When a blogger posted that the “Mac snack wrap sounds nauseating.” McDonald’s sent him a coupon to try one. Apparently he liked it, though I couldn’t find a blog to that effect. Perhaps he Tweeted?

5) Engage vs. Promote. Strike a balance and create a two-way dialogue.

6) Let Them Experience Your Brand — First Hand. McDonald’s PR arranged for a group of Mommy bloggers to tour McDonald’s.

Stacey Ellis, director of public relations, Kimpton Hotels

This boutique hotel chain launched a social media program focusing on Facebook and Twitter in April 2009.  Their objective was to build relationships with guests, and not to use these social media tools for marketing purposes. Today about 80 percent of Kimpton’s hotels and restaurants are on Facebook, and a blog is under development.

Stacey shared three case studies that showed how Kimpton was able to effectively address adverse situations using social media. They are all good examples of how PR folks can get pulled into a customer service role and turn a public complaint into a PR opportunity.

Case Study 1: The first case study is dubbed ”The Great Coffee Fix.” The story goes like this. A guest posted what Stacey described as “a great deal of displeasure” over the fact that there was no in-room coffee maker.  He was never going to come back to this hotel and so on and so forth went the rant.  Aware that many people are more comfortable expressing their displeasure through social media channels rather than contacting the manager on-staff, Stacey scours the Web daily for what she describes as opportunities to turn things around. One Friday evening she came across this particular guest’s very public complaint and she quickly replied that he could call down to the front desk to have a coffee maker sent up to his room. Quite pleased with her deft handling of this situation, she was a little thrown off when he posted shortly thereafter that he had just called the front desk and they didn’t have a coffeemaker!

So what happened next was interesting. Someone figured out that this disgruntled guest was a Twitter executive. Needless, to say a member of the front desk staff was dispatched pronto to procure a coffee maker. Later in the evening this guest set about posting again, but this time he was full of praise for the hotel. No one is sure if what followed some time later is related to this incident, but it is ironic that this same hotel received a sponsorship from Twitter for several million dollars.

Case Study 2.  Kimpton ”botched up” a surprise weekend getaway that a man was planning for his family. He had asked Kimpton reservations to reply using a separate email address so that his family wouldn’t find out about his “great surprise” for the weekend. The confirmation was sent to the email address that his family was privy to, and he vented his frustrations online, and even sent an email to the chief operating officer. Kimpton immediately reached out asking how can we help. In the end, Kimpton gave him an upgrade to a suite with many amenities. He jumped back on Twitter and espoused his renewed faith in Kimpton.

Case Study 3: Kimpton posted a broadcast clip of a new cocktail offering with food ingredients that had been created by one of its chefs. A follower posted “that’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.” The follower happened to mention in her post that she was going to be staying at a Kimpton hotel in Seattle, so Kimpton invited her to the restaurant to try it. She actually ended up liking it and she posted her personal review.

Stacey offered the following tips for social media:

1) Embrace the narrowing gap between customer service and public relations. 

2) Be accessible

3) Be transparent and trustworthy

4) Connect with care and compassion

5) Admit mistakes publicly; problem solve privately

6) Follow through to resolution.

Kelly LaVaute, social media manager, Quicken Loans

Kelly uses multiple free tools to “dig into the conversations in social media” for Quicken Loans, a top mortgage lender in the US. Her monitoring tools include Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Boardreader, Socialmention, BoardTracker, TwitterAnalyzer, twazzup, Google Reader, and more.

Kelly provided a case study to illustrate how Twitter alerted her to a real estate agent who was frustrated that Quicken Loans was not being responsive to her buyer.  Jody Zink tweeted “Just say no to Quicken Loans. There’s nothing QUICK about it.” Kelly contacted Jody to offer help, and she ran it up the chain of command so that Jody’s client got the loan before time ran out. Jody isn’t sure if she will use Quicken Loans again, but she was clearly impressed with the quick response from Quicken Loans and she posted about her experience on JudyZink’s Weblog. 

Quicken Loans places a high value on reviews and actively seeks them out. Kelly said “Our goal is to respond to all negative reviews with urgency.”

Jennifer Houston, SVP, global lead, WE Studio D.

Waggener Edstrom’s WE Studio D’s focus is digital influence, and Jennifer commended the speakers on their well-defined social media processes. Process is key to how you respond to your critics without letting it ruin your day, she said. And “you can’t bolt on social media to your existing business and expect any kind of scalable results.” Analysis, Development and Process are fundamentals of a sound social media strategy. She added that you must also be clear on content, identify the channels where you can reach your audience and campaign to sustain these ongoing relationships.

So the irony is that while social media enables us to market our brands to the masses with a couple of key strokes, it requires much more time-consuming one-on-one customer care to sustain those brands. Everyone must be in the customer service business now.

“MORE THAN MONEY: The Untold Tale of Risk, Reward and the Original Venture Capitalists” is scheduled to be “widely released” in the Fall of 2010. First hand stories of how Apple, Atari, Cisco, Genentech, Intel, Tandem Computers and others once knocked on these VC’s doors looking for funding unfold as humorous vignettes from the memories and anecdotes of Silicon Valley’s  Illuminati — those early venture capitalists and gutsy entrepreneurs of the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.

Featured Venture Capitalists

These are the men who decided against the odds to fund then unknowns such as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (despite their long hair and need for showers — major issues as we learn in the film), the raw, but brilliant Texan Jimmy Treybig who founded Tandem Computers, Atari’s colorful Nolan Bushnell and Robert Campbell (PDF file) who had a vision that was nearly derailed before it hit the streets as Microsoft PowerPoint.

• Bill Bowes (US Venture Partners)
• Reid Dennis (Institutional Venture Partners)
• Bill Draper (Draper Richards)
• Bill Edwards (Bryan & Edwards)
• Jim Gaither (Sutter Hill Ventures)
• Pitch Johnson (Asset Management Co)
• Dick Kramlich (NEA)
• Tom Perkins (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)
• Arthur Rock (Arthur Rock & Co)
• Don Valentine (Sequoia Capital)

Featured Entrepreneurs

These are the the men whose brilliance so many overlooked until the early venture capitalists took notice.

• Dr. Herbert Boyer (Genentech)
• Nolan Bushnell (Atari)
• Wilif Corrigan (LSI Logic)
• Robert Campbell (PowerPoint)
• Jimmy Treybig (Tandem)
• Mike Markkula (Apple)
• Gordon Moore (Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel)
• John Morgridge (Cisco)

The film’s executive producers are Paul Holland and Molly Davis. Paul is a General Partner of Foundation Capital, and a member of the board of directors of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. Molly is a founding partner of Rainmaker Communications, and a colleague and friend of mine.

We were told not to expect a Ken Burns documentary because the film is still a “work-in-progress” and won’t debut until the Fall, but the executive producers and their talented film makers, Geller Goldfine Productions, have already created slick, cinematic footage that kept last night’s audience glued to their seats for 90 minutes. In the coming months, an original music score and celebrity narration will be added, along with sophisticated animation, said Paul Holland during his welcome address.

You won’t want to forget to add this one to your NetFlix queue.

How many times have I asked that of reporters? Irony of ironies, I recently blogged about how the term “off-the-record” is open to interpretation Okay, So You’ll Only Talk Off the Record.

So I’m hogtied, but I will say this, I am very impressed by what the reporters do day in and day out at Bloomberg News.

Next time a Bloomberg reporter wakes me up at 4:00 AM (or worse, reports on the national wire that I was unavailable for comment) I may just be a little more understanding … or maybe not.

Editing is critical to accurate reporting. This is particulary true when it comes to video interviews because video tells stories in soundbites; splicing the interview footage together.

In this CNBC video, a Toyota spokesman responds to a CNBC reporter’s question about the status of the Japanese car maker’s sticky accelerator pedals. Unfortunately for the spokesman it is a two-pronged question that makes the splicing in of the interview footage particularly tricky, and the end result is that his answer appears somewhat callous.

Here’s how the interview plays out:

The reporter on camera says he’s catching up with Bob Carter, a VP of Toyota in North America, about “the status of the sticky accelerator pedals” — where they are in fixing all the vehicles out there and more importantly about ending all these questions that continue to swirl that this is not the worst of everything — that Toyota still has more information that it has not revealed.”

At this point footage is inserted of the Toyota spokesman’s response: “Quite frankly, the way we are treating this is that it’s not a relevant concern of ours.  We have a couple of mechanical situations that we have to address with our customers.”

Wait a minute. What’s not a relevant concern? The sticky accelerator pedals or ending questions about there being more still to come out? After replaying the video several times, it seems that Carter was responding to another question that might have been about the financial impact to Toyota (footage that is still on the cutting room floor perhaps) because he adds “We’re going to take care of the customer first and then the financial impact we’ll figure that out [afterward].”

For most people the takeaway will be that Toyota is minimizing a safety concern that has resulted in the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles in recent months. That is clearly not the case here, but you might be left wondering because of the way this story was edited.

Next time you sit down to be interviewed by The New York Times or to interview someone for your blog, establish the ground rules and clarify what these terms mean to the interviewer if they come up. Just because you state “this is off the record,” don’t assume you are both in agreement. Make sure the reporter or blogger gives you a verbal okay before proceeding. Far too often the interviewee says too much before discussing the ground rules. Following a remark that is intended to be confidential with a “by the way that’s off the record” is a risky proposition. You will be fortunate if there is any negotiation at that point. It’s far better to say if you will agree not to attribute this to me or my company I can give you more details.”

Here is my down and dirty little guide to these often misunderstood interview terms:

• On Background/Background Only:
  What this officially means is that you Mr/Ms Reporter can use this
  information as context for your story. You may attibute it to “a
  source,” but please don’t name me. This can backfire if you neglect to
  clarify that the reporter should not mention your company name, title
  or department either. Imagine how transparent it would be if the
  reporter wrote “according to a source in the marketing department at
  JAG Wire Group.” So don’t leave this open to interpretation. Always,
  always, always, agree on what the terms mean if you choose to use them.
• On Deep Background:
  This describes a situation where you have inside knowledge and verify
  information that a reporter has already gathered, but in order for that
  reporter to use and attribute it to a source the reporter must find
  others who can also verify it. In other words it is not to be
  attributed to you even as “a source.” In Groping for Ethics in Journalism by Ron F. Smith, Smith says “the term ‘deep background sources’ was invented by Washington Post reporters during the Watergate investigation. Deep Throat was a deep background source.”
• Not for Attribution:
  Use this when you would prefer that your disclosure be attributed in
  the most general terms to “a government source said,” or “according to a reliable source in the defense industry.”
• Off the Record:
  Rule number one; don’t talk “off the record” unless you want the
  information to get out to the public in some form. The term officially
  means don’t publish this information, but it’s open to interpretation
  beyond that. Some people use it when they mean what I am about to say is confidential and for your background only and others might mean you can use it once my own exposé comes out. Remember that reporters and bloggers are there for a story (not gossip and idle chitchat). When tipped off to a juicy piece of news or an interesting twist to the official corporate “position,” any reporter worth his/her salt will find a way to pursue that story and find people who will speak about it on the record. Most bloggers and many journalists will not agree to an interview off the record unless it provides them with valuable insights they can pursue. So if you don’t want this information to see the light of day, keep it under your hat. Or perhaps you really mean “not for attribution.”
• Exclusive: Once your press release goes out over a news distribution service such as BusinessWire or PR Newswire — and lands all over the Web on syndicated news sites — it’s unlikely you will interest a reporter in a one-on-interview unless, of course, you are a Google or Microsoft behemoth or have another angle. One PR strategy is to pitch an exclusive interview to a key publication. If they bite then you give them — and only them — the news to publish. Hey, it works for Barbara Walters!
• No Comment: Never say “no comment.” It leaves you sounding guilty as H.E.DoubleToothpicks.

Here is an interesting read from a reporter’s perspective: : “Halperin/Heilemann Deep Background” And The Sourcing Talmud (The Atlantic)

Photo Copyright 2010 JAG Wire Group and its licensors. All rights reserved.

• MarketingProf’s “Get to the Point“ emails keep you on the razor’s edge of social media. Topics range from Tapping the Potential of Online Demos to Dare to Go Viral Part One and Part Two.
• Mashable “Social Media Guide“ illustrates how viral video is once you realize that many of these videos have probably landed in your email box at one time or another. Here you’ll find links to Sneezing Baby Panda, Evolution of Dance and William Hung She Bangs. Imagine your company’s product getting that much play!
• “Mashable’s 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook.” Learn how to create a LinkedIn badge on your Facebook Fan Page or promote your blog via Facebook or add applications to share documents and tasks within Facebook.
• “Skillfoo“ post questions and get answers to your Facebook questions from “The Unofficial Facebook Dude.”
• “Twitter Search“ to see what is being said about you or your company right now (or not)!
• “Twitterholic” to check out your ranking on Twitter. Egads, I’m ranked 1,141,730th on twitterholic! Oh I get it. Ashton Kutcher is numero uno.
• “Tweetmeme“ to see the hottest links on Twitter.
• “How Sociable Are You” on Twitter? You may not be the social butterfly that you think when it comes to this social networking tool.
• “LinkedIn Group Social Media Marketing.” This discussion group will keep you up-to-date on the latest tools, techniques, trials and tribulations of using social media for marketing. Here you will find thoughtful critiques about how effectively social media is being used to pitch products and respond to breaking news stories and crises.

Feel free to add to this list in the comments and/or tell us how these are working for you.

Some words of wisdom from yesterday’s panelists at Boston University’s Executive Networking Breakfast “Commercializing the Next Generation of Technology” in Menlo Park, CA:

1) “US needs business model innovation” (Innovation is different than invention)

2) “Market Bridging” – Always link technology to the market

3) “You don’t want a solution in search of a problem”

4) “IP is important, but not a show-stopper”

5) “There’s a lot of talk that the venture model is broken in healthcare because it takes too long to develop products, but the fundamental business model has changed”

6) “Resist VC funding until it is really needed”

Panelists:

Franco Cerrina, Boston University Chairman and Professor, Electrical Engineering; Co-founder of NimbleGen Systems, Inc

Mark Deem, ENG’88. Partner, The Foundry LLC

Marc Morgenstern, LAW’75, Managing Partner, Blue Mesa Partners

George Savage, MD. ENG’81; Co-Founder & Chief Medial Officer, Proteus Biomedical Inc

Hosted by: Kenneth R. Lutchen, Dean, College of Engineering, Boston University

In his article, Joshi notes that “the proliferation of paid sponsorships online has not been without controversy. Some in the online world deride the actions as kickbacks. Others also question the legitimacy of bloggers’ opinions, even when the commercial relationships are clearly outlined to readers.”

What’s your opinion?

A draft of the FTC’s proposed guidelines is available for comment.

Click on their names, and you will see everything each journalist or blogger has written in that same time period. Click on the article titles and you go straight to the online article. Click on the publication and you see a list of authors that write for that publication or blog. There’s a summary of the results at the top that serves as a handy table of contents, but that’s not its purpose. Rather it breaks down the number of times each publication and author referenced your search term so you can see at a glance who regularly writes about this subject.

Of course, I had to do my own little experiment. I plugged in “network configuration” and up popped 148 results over the past six months. Whether or not you actually care about network configuration — I for one am personally fascinated by the subject – the point is that suddenly I had links to the latest articles and blogs in publications ranging from FierceVoIP and Computerworld to ChannelWeb and VentureWire.

Contrast that with Google News where I got just 40 results for the same phrase. The Google News results included press releases — which I didn’t want — but they did have a couple of other articles and publications not listed by ITDatabase like AccountingWeb and Computing. Not to worry. ITDatabase tells you up front that while they track “more tech authors than any other research tool – we are only human and sometimes make mistakes.” They note on their Web site that they employ various methods to discover new tech authors and content sources, and they welcome user feedback.

ITDatabase does not track “commercial content such as advertisements, press releases, advertorials or corporate blogs.” This makes it a most useful tool in my book. Culling those from the results gets rid of a lot of the clutter served up by other Web-based media research tools and clipping services. This is why ITDatabase is appropriately described as a media research platform specifically for marketing and PR professionals.

So who’s behind this new media research offering dedicated to IT? Travis Van and Phil Grimm (one a PR guy and the other a techie) founded ITDatabase in July 2007. They formally announced the media research platform in May of this year, and I just stumbled on it. As I started writing this blog post I was surprised to find out that while I have somehow never met Travis, he and I had both worked at the old Niehaus Ryan Wong PR agency, and even represented the same client years later.

Travis’ PR grounding provides some checks and balances to the infinite possibilities of the technology. When I asked Travis if ITDatabase has any plans to provide an email distribution platform for pitches and press releases, he replied that they are “leaning towards it … we are really thinking through how we might protect the tech authors’ best interests and prevent spam.” He acknowledged “there is a practical reason why some PR folks need to send blast emails to authors.” And what might that be? ” If you are a publicly traded company that has been in business for 10+ years, you have canned ‘announcements’ that journalists have opted into. And if you’re a mega tech co., that list might be 500 deep, and you have some last minute announcement going out tomorrow. We certainly don’t want our users in that case to have to ping every individual author.” Already the list building capabilities are in place. A “My Project” feature can be used to build and export (.CSV) lists of the authors.

So what are the weaknesses? According to Travis, ITDatabase only retrieves authors by the frequency that they write about a topic. He notes that this doesn’t mean they are the most important author on the subject. ITDatabase plans to add other criteria such as the reach of the publication “to make determining the relative ‘importance’ of an author a little easier.”

ITDatabase’s price tag of $2,000 per year for a company license for unlimited users severely undercuts other services out there such as Cision and Vocus. Better yet, it’s offered at half that price if you happen to be a Business Wire subscriber. Bottom line: if you don’t require a built in email distribution platform for the handy dissemination of press releases and pitches (and those tools are controversial in light of the PR spam debates), this is a great alternative to track the media influencers to instantly find out what they are writing on the IT topic of your choice. It includes telephone numbers and emails.

But don’t just take my word for it; try a free trial for yourself.

When one of Amazon’s data centers was hit by lightening, disrupting services for five hours last week, one customer reportedly grumbled that “he always felt left in the dark when outages occur.” An Amazon Web Services spokesperson pointed out in the article that AWS runs a status update page, but must be mindful of exposing vulnerabilities in its infrastructure that could lead to security risks. Still, for the most part AWS’ customers took it all in stride, recognizing that some of the inconvenience is attributable to their own configurations or cost-cutting measures that affect service levels.

When Rackspace’s hosted services recently went down for about 48 minutes, Rackspace turned to Twitter to update its customers (and by the nature of this medium the greater public). Brooks wrote: “Rackspace has possibly set a new record for transparency and accountability, if not customer satisfaction, by tirelessly tweeting the entire episode.” On the flipside, however, at press time the reporter was still awaiting a reply to his request for a comment from Rackspace.

As cloud computing grows in popularity with the promise of cost-effective and secure data storage and virtualized enterprise-class infrastructure, each service provider’s responsibility for an effective crisis or incident communications strategy will grow exponentially.  The way that each publicly handles service interuptions or security breaches reflects on the reputation and viability of the cloud computing industry as a whole. This year to date, high profile hosting services such as Google, Salesforce and Microsoft’s cloud development platform have seen their blackouts cataloged by the media.

In an exclusive interview with the JAG Wire on May 11, 2007, Jay discussed ways entrepreneurs can apply low-budget Guerrilla Marketing tactics to boost visibility and sales.

Click here for the full interview entitled Small Businesses Can Boost Profits with Guerrilla Marketing Tactics.

For earlier interviews with Jay, follow these links:

• Learning from Guerrilla Marketing Tactics (2003)
• Guerrillas versus Traditionalists (2003)

Also, you’ll find plenty more on Jay’s Web site.

Countless accounts of “PR Flaks” who have spammed bloggers, mis-targeted pitches or just plain gotten blogger relations wrong fill the Internet. Don’t risk finding your next pitch blasted on your favorite blog!

As a Public Relations professional, it is your job to find every opportunity to get your organization covered and be an expert on the inner-workings of the media. However, the explosion of the blogosphere has left many confused and wondering: How do bloggers operate? What type of approach will get my news covered? How can I integrate blogs into my overall PR strategy?

The new media landscape calls for additional tactics and approaches to the PR practitioner’s toolbox. Download the FREE Vocus white paper Five Golden Rules for Blogger Relations” to get insights on how today’s PR professionals can successfully incorporate blogger relations into their PR strategy and build effective relationships straight from four of the top blogging experts in the industry!

Vocus’ whitepaper features expert commentary from:

• Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology and author of several top PR books including “Public Relations on the Net”
• David Meerman Scott, online thought leadership strategist and author
• Rachel Weiss, noted podcaster, Beware of the Babylon
• Susan Getgood, founder of GetGood Strategic Marketing Inc.

Visit www.vocus.com/bloggerwp now to get your complimentary copy. And don’ t forget to sign up to be notified for Vocus’ June webinar on Blogger Relations, featuring several of the notable blogging experts highlighted in the whitepaper!

Vocus Inc, the global leader in on-demand software for corporate communications and public relations, is offering this white paper at no charge.

Vocus, Inc.

4296 Forbes Blvd.

Lanham, MD 20706

800.345.5572

www.vocus.com

We’re going to continue commenting on PR issues and reporting on PR-type events, but mostly we are going to focus on providing links to resources that PR pros will find useful. These will include Webinars, White Papers and articles.

We hope you will share your own insights and discoveries with us to make this a useful repository.

– The JAG Wire

Fast Company asks what it will take to get the CMO off the endangered-species list, and offers up some observations and a few suggestions in this very interesting read. It has a Seinfeld-esque ring to it because it articulates something we’ve subconsciously known, but rarely express.

See The Most Dangerous Job in Business.

PR Newswire organized an informative Webinar on that very subject on May 17, 2007. The featured speakers were:

Lisa Vickery, Day Editor, National News Desk, Wall Street Journal
Steve Trousdale, Deputy Business Editor, San Jose Mercury News
Polly Smith, Deputy Business Editor, Chicago Sun-Times

Here are some abstracts paraphrased from my notes:

Lisa Vickery, Day Editor, National News Desk, Wall Street Journal

Do you favor public companies?

• Public companies have the edge over private companies;
• One tactic for a private company would be to explain how what you are doing fits into a trend. In other words, explain where your company fits into the world and how it is changing the landscape.

Who should stories be pitched to?

• News is reporter-driven at the WSJ;
• Writers keep an eye on what the Dow Jones news reporters are covering;
• There’s a lot of “horse-trading” of stories between the various news groups, and stories are often re-cast. For example, a tech company may end up in the marketing pages rather than the tech pages because of an innovative marketing technique;
• Stories that have been “chewed on a lot” by others, generally get less consideration.

Will you reach out to trusted bloggers for information?

• The Journal is a very old paper, but we are learning some new tricks. We are adding blogs, but they’re still treated like a different animal. We don’t have a general tech blog. We are talking about it. This is
  already happening with marketing stories where there is a lot of buzz,
  but with business stories we are very cautious;
• We are trying to bring the electronic and print side of the Journal together.

What’s best way to make you aware of experts in an industry? Send you a bio or wait until there is breaking news?

• I always cringe if someone contacts me when there is a breaking story to offer an expert.

What’s the best way to grab your attention via press releases, etc?

• Funny press releases will get my attention. Clarity. Be concise. Short sentences. As far as follow up phone calls, I confess there have been times when someone called after I had deleted an email a little too summarily. If it’s not a breaking story, probably it’s not bad to follow up. Not sure reporters would be happy with that. It’s always better to go through the reporters.

What’s the best way to foster a relationship with a journalist?

• Cultivating relationships when we’re not on deadline is useful.

Steve Trousdale, Deputy Business Editor, San Jose Mercury News

Who should stories be pitched to?

• There are 15 reporters and five assigning editors at the Merc;
• It’s hard to make the cut. Tend to be very picky about what gets assigned;
• There are 260 public companies in the area, including HP and Intel. “We could fill up the paper just with news from Google;”
• Editorial is split between the Web and the newspaper;
• We face intense competition from WSJ, NYT, Chronicle, Forbes, etc;
• News has to interest a wide group of people, and then we’re still very cautious about the stories we take on.

Can you provide some examples of good headlines?

• We look for stories that have consumer interest. Business-to-business subjects don’t do too much for us. Headlines that go overboard just turn us off.

Will you reach out to trusted bloggers for information?

• Our Web people don’t contribute original content. Web content comes from the news desks. We’ll take something pretty quickly from the Web and turn it around in a story.

What’s best way to make you aware of experts in an industry? Send you a bio or wait until there is breaking news?

• Offer industry expertise at the right time. A lot of people call and say if you are ever working on a story…well, that’s not likely to happen. Such offers must be made at a critical time, not six months before a story
  is on our radar screen.

What’s the best way to grab your attention via press releases, etc?

• I can’t remember ever getting excited by a press release from a company. The smaller companies just really don’t make it into the paper. It’s so rare as to be almost irrelevant. It has to be something the NYT will kick itself over for not having first – it has to reach a high
  threshold like that;
• There’s no desire to cover a specific company or a product. We’re leery of being sucked into a story where someone else might be doing as well and we would hate to overlook them.

What’s the best way to foster a relationship with a journalist?

• Approach
  the reporter to develop an ongoing relationship, not necessarily a
  story. Be helpful. Reporters are always on deadline and need
  exclusives. If you can return calls quickly that’s a good way to
  develop a relationship. We realize that PR people are under
  restrictions with Sarbanes-Oxley, etc, but be as helpful as you can be.

How important are photos, video, audio?

• Photos are always good. We just started experimenting with video.

How much time do you need for an exclusive?

• If it comes in the day before then obviously we will do it, we’ll be aggressive. With more complicated stories such as biotech or stories that aren’t as intuitive, the more time the better

Polly Smith, Deputy Business Editor, Chicago Sun-Times

Who should stories be pitched to?

• We focus on Chicago companies. Any story we consider has to have a Chicago angle. Welso enjoy companies that have become local because of the local impact they may have.

Do you favor public companies?

• It’s less important whether your company is public or private. It’s more about how fresh the story is. We look for whether you are handling something in an interesting way. For example, if you have a large immigrant work force, and you are handling language issues in an interesting way then pitch us on that.

How do you utilize your Web sites and blogs to attract readers? Should PR pros try to reach those Web folks separately?

• Go directly to the beat reporters to pitch your stories. Our Web staff is not a news gathering staff yet.

Will you reach out to trusted bloggers for information?

• Bloggers can be an interesting way to reach out for fresh voices.

What’s best way to make you aware of experts in an industry? Send you a bio or wait until there is breaking news?

• Generally, our reporters get their own sources.

What’s the best way to grab your attention via press releases, etc?

• “I don’t have time to be turned off.” I have to go through so many. I have to scan [them all]. First thing I check is the area code. If I can’t see where they are and what industry it is, I don’t have time to figure it out. Follow up calls are a nuisance, I don’t even let them finish their sentence.

How important are photos, video, audio?

• Photos are essential. Video is a new area for us. Hasn’t come up in business yet, but it will. Probably by end of this year we will be.

“With all the focus on ‘benefits,’ it’s easy to forget that benefits
don’t work in a vacuum. Whenever you write copy, there’s more you must always keep in mind.”

You will need to subscribe to MarketingProfs (it’s free) to find out just what Mike says you will need to keep in mind. Trust me it’s worth it. Mike shares some great insights that all of us — no matter how long in the game — can learn from.

Just so you know, Mike O’Sullivan is an independent marketing writer, and a JAG Wire Group consultant. His Web site is http://www.mikeos.com/.

Introducing the Panelists

Moderator Eugene Eric Kim, co-founder and principal of Blue Oxen Associates, prefaced the evening’s events by saying that he doesn’t believe in online communities. Actually, he just has a problem with the term. He
stressed that communities are about the people, not the tools that are
simply a means to an end to bring people together. His company markets
itself as “a think tank devoted to studying and improving
high-performance collaboration.”

Scott Wilder, group manager of Intuit’s QuickBooks.com community,
talked about how community forums can be a low-budget way to create
content for corporate Web sites. His experience spans SGI, America
Online, Borders.com and KB Toys. It was at KB Toys that he first
encountered “Tina the Toy Mom” and saw this enthusiastic (and
well-qualified) user morph into a paid online collaborator. Tina,
mother to nine, built a name for herself as she and her kids reviewed
toys online. Wilder then went on to Intuit where he discovered that
Intuit has “a lot of passionate customers that want to talk about
Intuit.” This was a good thing because he only had a small budget to
create a community forum, and Intuit did not plan to provide content.

Sylvia L. Marino, community manager of Edmunds.com,
a Web site with interactive forums for car shoppers and enthusiasts to
chat about cars, told the audience how her online community provided
information that helped fix a member’s software problem after the
member’s Toyota Prius locked up. The woman found herself stranded with
her two kids after her Prius got what the forum members dubbed “the
blue screen of death.” When she tried to explain to a Prius mechanic
what had happened, “he told her she was crazy” because he hadn’t heard
of this happening before. Marino explained that information had not yet
filtered down from corporate headquarters to the mechanic shops. Yet,
others had experienced this problem too, and they rallied around the
Edwards.com message board to tell the woman how to fix the problem. It needn’t be said, but this is the point where Toyota’s PR machine ought to weigh in.

Tony Christopher, founder of Digital Places,
a consultancy that plans and implements Internet and portal Extranet
services, talked about how he is helping the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) architect an intranet to communicate with their
400,000 employees. The FAA uses something called the Knowledge Sharing
Network Center. According to Christopher, this communication tool has
already resulted in a significant cost savings because people don’t
have to jump on a plane to communicate with each other face-to-face
anymore. He noted that portals can reduce departmental silos within
organizations.

Zack Rosen, founder and director of CivicSpaceLabs.org,
a site that is an online peer support community for users of CivicSpace
software, explained that his site is an open-source platform. People
can commission work on their Web sites. When asked by Kim how customer prospects could be sure they would stick around, he replied that his non-profit is mission-based not profit based. This is the guy who sparked the “DeanSpace” volunteer open-source development project for the Howard Dean campaign.

Lessons on the Fly

So what did we learn from this group? Here’s a grab bag of tips – and some conclusions – from the evening’s discussion:

– Edmunds.com and Intuit use Web Crossing as their community software;
– Don’t bother dictating topics or content to the community, users will define their own. Just give them their space;
– Community forums provide cheap content for corporate Web sites with enthusiastic customers;
– Communities are not about entertainment, they are where people go for support or information;
–
Corporate PR needs to engage in the discussion when the company’s
reputation starts to go south (The “Blue Screen of Death” thread on the
Toyota Prius is a case in point);
– Corporate
writers/editors need to be coached on how to communicate with users,
who are after all, what the community is all about;
– Users can become online collaborators or “answer people,” but they are rarely paid;
–
As community collaborators grow more prominent due to their expertise
they want to be compensated by more than rating systems. Subaru is said
to have flown community leaders “Bob” and “Juice” to one of its events
in Las Vegas, thus paying homage to their star status;
– Subaru PR knows how to work the community. Their product PR people are even featured guests in the online chat forums.

–
Community managers worry that they are exploiting their valuable
“answer people, and will consider some form of compensation;
– Groups anoint community leaders;
–
Good community managers are protective of their users, and implement
policies to prevent press and market research people from coming into
their sites and asking questions or spamming their top folks;
–
“No Solicitation” policies can be tough medicine for entrepreneurs who
are tempted to use the community to promote or build their small
businesses;

– Active monitoring of discussions results in high quality discussions;
–
It’s a time-consuming job to monitor appropriate language and content
on community sites. Edmunds.com hires freelancers to scour the site day
in and day out;

– Always take the time to tell people why their post has been removed;

–
There are different tolerance levels for profanity depending on the
community. Not surprisingly there is low tolerance for it in the
minivan community forums with their family orientation;
– Expect some death threats if you are a community manager.

Surely it’s possible, but how effective is that press release going to be? In addition to technique, a press release requires research. No matter how much research the marketing department may have done, there’s always a need for market context around specific announcements.

Each release will have to stand up to intense scrutiny. In the tech world, the audience is well-informed, but they are busy. They won’t have time to extrapolate what “might” be relevant to them if it is not clearly spelled out.

Think about your news from their perspective. Whether they are journalists or industry analysts, they are writing or advising others of the latest trends and best buys, and they will sound the first siren if anything is wrong. What is the customer pain point and how does your product help?

Today’s Web access means that customers are as likely to see your press release as are the press who used to be the only point of access to the public (whether through PR, advertising or self-publishing).  Anyone who has access to the Internet can receive press releases directly through RSS feeds and other channels.

A release should contribute to industry discussion. If it doesn’t offer something more than the company’s news, and speak directly to the intended audience — telling them why they should care — it probably won’t achieve its purpose.

To my former boss: “The 15 minute press release is a myth!”

This is the kind of question that shows up on my PR listservs from time to time, and it always stirs up a hornet’s nest of indignation. Let’s just say it isn’t pretty to witness.

I drew in my breath and replied to my client that any self-respecting PR type avoids success based pricing because this is anathema to the journalists with whom we have relationships. It would make us more akin to advertising reps, from whom we are quite different. We rely on getting articles in publications based on good story angles, I explained. I should also have mentioned that at the end of the day it depends on the product or service, but since I try to look for clients that have “all the goods” so to speak, that seemed a moot point.

He said he thought what I said made sense, but … “on the other hand investment bankers (like I used to be) have success based pricing and greatly rely on their relationships with the banks and financial service orgs.”

What can I say? It takes years of exposure to PR and training in journalism to even begin to understand and embrace the ethics behind this question. This discussion cuts particularly close to the bone for me, a recovering journalist. After 12 plus years as a foreign affairs/defense reporter for various industry pubs, I went to the “dark side” and became a PR flak. Actually, I try never to use that term “flak” even in jest because I take my job very seriously and getting a client published exercises every bit of journalism training I have accumulated. Sometimes I think I spend more time thinking about the readership of my press targets, and sweating over what would make a good story for them, than I ever did for the publications that I spun out thousands of words for over the years. I wrote about whatever I happened to be interested in — after I dealt with the breaking news, of course.

As I log nearly 11 years in public relations now, I find I have become just as passionate about PR, and what it stands for, as I was about journalism. I would never have left journalism had I not uprooted myself from the East Coast to follow my heart to California. That proved to be a serendipitous voyage because I landed in what was to become a plum PR position. I was fortunate to join one of the two companies that launched Travelocity. I learned about PR on the job as that brand grew almost overnight with the advent of the Web for the masses.

Until then, I had a myopic view of PR. I had contactwith the communications departments of the foreign embassies that were part of my beat, and I dealt with the PR heads at the major defense companies — when I couldn’t find any other way around them. I gave little thought to what their jobs entailed. They always seemed to be throwing parties and inviting me on junkets. They were never my source of news, but in the government they were the only gateway to the military brass and foreign dignitaries that I wrote so intimately about.

It
is only now when I have spent an equal amount of time as a journalist
and a PR professional that I can see many similarities and admirable
qualities in both disciplines. There are good and bad in every
profession, and there are always stumbles along the way, but the codes of ethics are always clear. It’s tempting to cut corners when you are stressed and facing seemingly impossible deadlines or when you are struggling to launch a new PR practice or magazine. Professionals have to make decisions every step of the way, but they should remember that there have been many others that tread the same path earlier and the course is clearly charted.

Blogs and listservs serve as an invaluable communication channel for sharing such information and experiences. There has never been this much information so readily available.

So what’s all this got to do with my client’s question about whether he could just pay me for success? It’s an example of the important role that PR people play in educating their clients on what PR and journalism are all about. We PR folks are the frontline to the companies who make the products and offer the services. Without us there would be no code of ethics.

Technology companies have become savvier to PR in the past five years as their industry took a beating and the press turned on many of them because of their irrational exuberance in the dot-com boom. Today clip counts are not as important to C-level corporate types as they used to be. Volume has given way to quality. CEO’s now tend to ask: Was the article accurate? Did it reach the right audience? Was it positive? Did it result in customer sales?

We’ve come a long way baby, but there are always new entrants to the market, and boutique PR agencies like the JAG Wire Group, must help in educating these shiny new CEOs that are our future success stories.

LinkedIn sent me an email alert the other day. Two former colleagues had come across my name in the network and wanted to know if I would like to connect to their business circles. LinkedIn conveniently serves up the names of everybody in the network who identifies themselves as having worked for any of the former employers you list in your personal profile. My LinkedIn home page tells me that there are 50 people I may know at my former company VERITAS Software (now Symantec),
and others in the network from my now defunct companies, SmartAge and Niehaus Ryan Wong. It even tells me how many new people from those companies have joined since I last logged in.

Up until recently people were saying that the social networking “clubs” aren’t useful for anything beyond dating and keeping up with friends, but I’ve got to tell you that my dance card has been filling up lately with colleagues I thought were long lost. It was less than a month ago that two other lost colleagues tracked me down. It’s almost like bumping into people on the street, only its virtual.

Most of my associates have moved on to interesting new jobs as they’ve climbed the corporate ladder. Some have stayed with dot-coms, others with the Fortune 500s, and some are re-entering the tech industry after several years’ hiatus while they rode out the downturn. I have to wonder how else we would have tracked each other down after all these years and our hectic work schedules if not for this online business network that seems to exponentially grow every time I log in? Today, LinkedIn tells me that since I last logged in a couple of days ago there are 15,529 new people associated with my current 31 direct connections.

I haven’t used the network to its full advantage. I’m like the wall-flower at the dance who sits patiently hoping to be asked. Others I know have been more proactive and have contacted me to get to a business or job prospect three or four degrees removed from them. These are the more enterprising people in my immediate circle of 31 direct contacts. The network map tells them that I am connected to the next person closest to their target, and so they ask me to make an introduction to that person who will in turn be asked to make an introduction to the next person closest to the target.

A couple of months ago, a woman who sits with me on the Board of a software organization approached me in her quest to get to someone four degrees separated from her. It was fascinating to me that her network chain identified my connection to Anne Holland, publisher of MarketingSherpa. Anne won’t be happy with me saying that we used to work together in Washington DC at a magazine called Defense & Foreign Affairs in the 1980s. We haven’t seen each other since, but she and I linked via the network about a year ago when I came across her name. Yes, I was proactive that time.

Most people join these networks because someone they know sends them an invitation to join the network. I signed up after a client invited me into his “network.” How could I refuse?

There are others out there like Spoke Software, which is also great for sales prospecting and lead generation, at least according to the articles I have read. I think I am a member of that one too because at one point a client of mine was talking about partnering with them. I can only handle one of these networks at a time so I am focusing on LinkedIn unless someone makes a compelling argument for why I should have more. It’s kind of like a loyalty program in that if I am going to grow my circle of contacts I want to see all my miles, er people, accounted for in one place.

An Awkward Moment
I can see where I might get into a bit of an awkward situation as more people start using this network. What will I do if someone that I don’t really want to be linked to invites me to connect? I guess I can just ignore it and pretend that I didn’t see the invitation, but I still bristle when I remember the one person who never replied to my invitation a year ago — did they do that intentionally or did it get routed to junk mail? I will never know because I don’t have the guts to ask. Then there’s the added inconvenience of having to write recommendations for people to connect with the next person in the chain of linked connections. And what do I do if someone in my circle gets tied to a scandal or big, public SEC investigation, for example? Do I have the courage to dis-invite them? No probably not, so I guess I will forever be tied to them in the hall of infamy.

Aside from those troublesome concerns, I am quite happy to be one of the first to explore this new medium. LinkedIn calls me a Beta subscriber, which I think means I get the service for free until they decide how to charge for it. A while back they sent me a questionnaire asking how much I would be willing to pay for each connection. At the time I thought I would pay $5 or $10 to keep it a somewhat exclusive club. Yeah, money talks!

So now I’m still waiting for someone to track me down from my former company Worldview Systems. We were a tight-knit bunch all working in the trenches 10 years ago together to launch Travelocity. My one remaining friend from those days isn’t even on LinkedIn. Yes, I guess I could take the initiative and invite her.

But isn’t it true that we are almost always disappointed by the legions of solicitations from the “free” newswires that seem to be in perpetual supply these days? It would be easy to conclude that they are the only ones out there reading our releases off the wires. We know that’s not the case, but gosh they sure are responsive.

Who are these guys, anyway? Why should we trust them with our news? I know a lot of people are wondering the same thing because there’s always inquiries on PR listservs asking what others think about the freebies.

You’ll recognize some of the services that have been around for awhile — PRWeb is one. They’ve got the art of viral marketing down. PRWeb even has a convenient link you can click from their home page to “Tell a friend
about PRWeb,” I know because an acquaintance recently sent me an email
via the link. Interestingly when I clicked on it tonight all I got was
“The page cannot be found.” Hmmm.

Anyone remember Internet Wire?
It was big, and really aggressive in its follow up to the countless releases I put out during the dot-com boom. The first of the genre, I think. I just googled it and came up with this old Clickz article that brought all the memories flooding back. If you follow the link in the article for Internet Wire it leads you to Market Wire.
It looks like it morphed and these guys have found their kitty jar, and
guess what? They’re not cheap! Lest you balk, they provide a convenient
table on their site that compares them favorably to PR Newswire and Business Wire.

Transworldnews — never heard of them before — was the first to send me an email today after my latest press release went out over Business Wire for Ridgecrest Surveys and Computer Troubleshooters USA . They wanted to tell me in their html email solicitation:

“TransWorldNews is currently preparing for its launch. During this phase,
TransWorldNews invites you to post your news stories FREE.” Yeah,
right! And exactly what newsrooms and trade publications subscribe to
their service?

All these choices are rather mind boggling, and would take more time than a working stiff like me has to unearth. I’ll leave it to more inquiring minds to sort out, and continue posting my releases to Business Wire and PR Newswire because I know they have major newsrooms that subscribe.

While we handle PR accounts for technology companies, the so-called “early
adopters,” we would never in a million years be mistaken for early
adopters ourselves. I don’t even have an ipod! I’ve been watching the
blog phenomenon gather momentum ever since attending Doug Kaye’s presentation on blogging at a SofTECH SIG way back in May 2003. We’re now ready to put a toe in the water.

JAG Wire’s Wired Business Communications Blog is meant to be a place to exchange ideas on anything that has to do with business communications and integrated marketing concepts. We’re a public relations agency with a healthy respect for integrated marketing approaches.

Wish us luck with this blog. We’re ankle deep now!