The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part III

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Part three of a three-part series...

Your Brand vs. the Brands You Represent

Whether we believe it or not, everyone within an organization is at some level, responsible for Public Relations. Everything we do, online and offline, builds the public perception of not only our personal brand, but also of the organization we represent.

As an active participant in Social Media and also a professional working in any capacity within a company, eventually an important and cognizant decision will determine your outward presence and whether or not your personal brand and your corporate responsibilities intersect, compete or clash.

When a small bank ran an online search for the results associated with its brand, the first link turned up a profile on Myspace of a young woman with fun, but inappropriate pictures that definitely didn't lend support to the bank's charter of earning and maintaining financial customers.

This particular individual wasn't participating online as a representative of the bank, only using the social network to communicate and share events and updates as Millennials do. She simply listed in her profile that she worked at this particular bank, and that was enough.

However, as many businesses are realizing, not only the opportunity, but in many cases, the requirement to participate and engage with customers, peers, influencers, and prospects in their respective communities, new roles and responsibilities for outbound communications and service emerge.

Since we're focusing on your digital identity and your real reputation, one of the first questions is, when representing a brand other than my own, do I participate as "me" or do I create a new entity in order to participate on behalf of my company?

The answer is, it depends.

Yes, perhaps not the brilliance you were seeking. The truth is, that it really does depend on a series of factors that are to be evaluated on an individual basis.

1. Does your personal reputation lend value to, or subtract from, the brand you're representing and vice versa?

2. Is this a career path and industry you intend to commit to for the long-term?

3. What is the ROI or potential losses associated with not only your participation, but your departure, should you at some point, decide to change jobs?

4. What's most advantageous to you and the company you represent, now and in the future?

Whichever path you take, it's important to realize that there isn't a right answer, at least not yet. It's more important to participate honestly, sincerely, transparently, whether as "you" or as "you, company representative."

Several, very visible, companies dedicated to cultivating personal relationships in social networks, have opted for the creation of a corporate brand for the individuals who participate on their behalf.

Comcast has employed Frank Eliason and team under the @comcastcares moniker. Dell is empowering its social team led by Richard@dell (Richard Binhamer) and Lionel@dell (Lionel Menchaca). In these cases, the companies opted to invest in a unique digital identity that promotes the company and personal brands.

Depending on the company and the state of its social media prowess, policies may or may not exist. Those who are experienced in communicating using social tools can assist marketing and service leaders to establish best practices and policies that govern how, why, when, and where to participate and how to build the persona that elevates the brand for the company and also the person representing it.

Managing Your Online Reputation

Everything starts with listening and observing where, how, and why these conversations are taking place and the tone and nature of the dialog.

As part of the marketing process, companies employ (or should incorporate) an Online Reputation Management (ORM) program. This process serves as a radar for all discussions, blog posts, and search results to identify potentially damaging, less than favorable, as well as neutral content, to fuel participation and communications strategies to steer them in a positive discussion.

There are a series of tools materializing that simplify the process of listening and tracking related conversations. Depending on the size of the organization, they may or may not be affordable, however they're worth looking into. Companies include Radian6, BrandsEye, BuzzLogic, and StartPR. Typically, ORM focuses on company and product name/s, executives, and/or brands, and each of these services automate the process of searching and presents the results in a manageable, easy to navigate dashboard. The differences between each lie under the hood, where the individual algorithms distinguish each service in how they discover, track, and present data. And, none of these services are all inclusive. There is still a manual element involved here, requiring you to search specific communities directly.

ORM isn't only limited to businesses. In the era of digital reputations, individuals can also benefit from the process of monitoring the conversations related to their personal brand.

Google Alerts, which scours News.Google.com, Blogsearch.google.com, and other Google properties, is one of the most effective, free services available for tracking keywords and automatically presenting them to you as they appear online. It gives you, as the primary stakeholder, the opportunity to participate and respond immediately, as you should, in order to protect the integrity of your brands as well as the ability to continually cultivate your community.

Search.Twitter.com (formerly Summize) allows you to search directly in Twitter. You'll be surprised at the frequency and volume of conversations in the Twittersphere. You can search your company, your executives, your competitors and also your personal brand to see what people are sharing at any time, with access to historical content as well.

A new service, which I'll write about shortly, is BackType. It is a new service that allows you to search keywords as they're used in the comments sections of blog posts. BackType is a very promising community that not only allows us to search relevant comments across the blogosphere to uncover important conversations that may require our participation, it also connects us to like-minded thought leaders and the posts that compel them to comment on, in addition to publishing content on their own blogs. Please read Louis Gray's post for a more detailed summary.

Technorati, BlogPulse, and services such as StartPR also provide the ability to search related keywords in blogs, tags, and online conversations.

Also, don't forget the social networks that are related to your industry or your social graph. For example, in the social media and marketing world, searching Facebook, MarcomProfessional, SocialMediaToday, Gooruze, Yahoo Buzz, among many others, can yield incredible conversations that not only reveal how your identity, brand and reputation are discussed, but also provide the opportunity to participate in ways that increase your community awareness, visibility, and social capital.

There's always something to learn as we're forever students of New Media.

Whether you're investing in your brand, or you're the brand ambassador for a company or organization, active listening and observing is as important as participating and contributing. It's proactive versus reactive and it is always the difference between positive, productive discussions and crises communications or defensive exchanges.

This is your identity, your reputation, your brand, your experience, own it.

Socialized media is extending everyone's proverbial "15 minutes of fame," and providing us with the real opportunity to build and grow our personal brands and establish a position of authority based on our expertise. It only matures and expands the more we devote to listening, participating, and contributing to related conversations over time.

You are your best investment and you'll earn the rewards and relationships you deserve.

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part I
The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part II

Additional Resources on Personal Branding and ORM:
Personal Branding Blog
Lee Odden
Reputation Advisor
Andy Beale

Connect with me:
Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk, BackType, or Facebook.

personal brand identity social+media social media socialmedia brian+solis pr+2.0 pr 2.0 public+relations publicity promotion branding media+2.0 media2.0 reputation

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part II

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Part two of a three-part series...

Defining Your Online Persona

The Social Economy is defined by the exchange of ideas and information online, and in the real world, and is indexed by the dividends earned through new opportunities and alliances. Relationships are the new currency of the Social Economy as they fuel and extend interaction, insight, and loyalty, and in turn, contribute to the social capital of the individuals who actively invest in their personal branding portfolio.

In the workforce and in our personal lives, the things we share online define who we are - it's a fortunate or unfortunate reality (depending on how you look at it). Social profiles in Facebook and Myspace aren’t protected in a secret society that only the cool people can find and share. These profiles are showing up in search engines and what’s in them tell us everything about how you view yourself and therefore how you may wish others to view you. It’s not just your profiles in the social networks where you participate, it’s what you say and share everywhere, from blog posts and comments to wall posts, the music you listen to and the widgets you embed, as well as your status updates and even product or service reviews.

This is your digital identity and your real reputation and it’s yours to define and to nurture.

Instead of simply thinking about social networks and social tools as new ways to communicate with friends, family and associates, let’s view these communities as dashboards for our online brand and collective expertise.

Answer these questions, what do you stand for and how would you prefer others, not just friends, but also professional associates, view you today and tomorrow?

It's important to proactively weigh, factor, and proactively contribute to the impression you want others to have when they stumble or intentionally find your profile/s. This is the first step in defining and shaping your online brand.

Social Networks

Many of us aren’t masters of Web design and therefore, the idea of creating our own entity on the Web is untenable and perhaps, nowadays, even unnecessary. Social Networks provide an easy-to-use, fully-searchable and discoverable platform for us to create, define, and fortify our identity.

The most popular social networks, such as Myspace, Facebook, Hi5, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Friendster, offer users the full ability to customize and personalize their pages and in the process, proactively paint a more accurate self-portrait.

Social networks are indeed a hub for your digital identity and activity, connecting the disparate pieces of your persona from across the distributed Web and portraying a more crafted, organized, and representative digital resume and knowledge portfolio.

Social networks are far more expansive than those dedicated to connecting friends around people and their social graphs. They can focus on exchanging and discovering niche content, video, images, bookmarks, events, news, thought leadership, and the list goes on and on. The point is that there are social networks for almost everything you can and can’t imagine. Join those networks that are instrumental in associating your brand with the industry, ideas, content and people that further your brand’s reach and resonance. And in each case, craft a consistent profile that conveys what it is you stand for and the value you bring to the table. Yes it’s cumbersome and time consuming, but it’s the only way to ensure the integrity of the specific and unique attributes that define your brand and reputation.

Oh, a simple, but often-overlooked tip, is to start with professional quality portraits. Feel free to share other personal photos, but present yourself artistically and professionally as well. You never know who might find these profiles.


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Newsfeeds and Lifestreams

Obviously you have passions, experience, and aspirations. Share the content that reinforces these strategic attributes through the tools that keep you connected to the communities that are important to you. Social networks feature the ability to showcase your activity in various networks, packaged neatly in the form of embeddable applications. For example, if you’re active on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, upcoming.org, blogs, etc., many of these services offer applications or widgets that can be installed directly onto your profile. They display your latest contributions and events and more importantly, compartmentalize your content into a presentable focal point for the brand “you.”

Applications aren’t the only way to filter this content into your profile. Practically every social service produces an RSS feed that can be imported into personal newsfeeds. And, in the land of social networks, these feeds are evolving into lifestreams that channel external and in-network proceedings into one, easy to follow flow.

The practice of channeling the most representative and complimentary pieces into one complete puzzle is known as curation. The practice of curation is the most effective policy for presenting and communicating a well-crafted personal brand. It requires the identification, collection, and contributions of meaningful and topical content that when aggregated, creates a more holistic and powerful depiction of any brand or idea.

Social network profiles and associated newsfeeds aren’t the only tools available to curate and present strategic content. Tools dedicated to the art of lifestreaming gaining in popularity. Similar to the newsfeeds within social networks, these dedicated communities provide the ability for users to also aggregate their activity into one river of relevance. They collect the feeds and updates from the services you choose to include and merge them into a personal or brand stream. These solutions include LifeStream.fm, SocialThing, Swurl, Ping.fm, among many others. Specialized services, such as FriendFeed and Jaiku, combine streams and conversations and allow others to not only follow the activity, but also comment on and bookmark favorite content as well, thus facilitating hosted conversations surrounding content directly, as it happens.

Text-based lifestream example of John Smith

“Conversations taking place in social networks help to define one’s online brand” – via Twitter XX date, XX time (link)

Uploaded a new photo album entitled, “diagram of my social map” – via Flickr XX date, XX time (link)

Wrote on Jane Doe’s wall, “Excellent post today on conversations across the distributed Web. I agree. Have you experimented with reputation management tools such as SezWho? – via Facebook XX date, XX time (link)

Published a blog post, “Using social networks and online content to create and reinforce your online brand” – via ACME: The Brand You Blog XX date, XX time (link)

Robert Johnson commented on “Using social networks and online content to create and reinforce your online brand,” “John, nice post. I learned a lot, thanks!” – via Friendfeed XX date, XX time (link)

Bookmarked “Online brands and the art of aggregating ideas into a collective and cohesive flow” – via delicious XX date, XX time (link)

Blogs

Lifestreams and Social Networks aren’t the only tools to help aggregate and centralize your digital identity or collectively assemble the bits and pieces that, when combined, help to define your identity and reputation. Blogs are perhaps, still the most effective platform for sharing your observations, thoughts, ideas, expertise, and vision on the subjects of which you’re most passionate.

Unlike micromedia tools such as Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca, FriendFeed, as well as social network profile pages where brevity is promoted and rewarded, blog posts inherently boast the ability to share expanded content, text, video, audio, images, tags, links, to more effectively and deeply express, explain, and support the ideas and context related to any given topic.

Blogs with an almost undeviating mission of focusing on key topics, boast an expansive library of keywords that can intentionally or unintentionally contribute to a valuable search engine optimization (SEO) infrastructure that ranks your brand and ideas higher in search results for related topic searches. And, as your content library grows and expands, your blog’s page ranking authority escalates along with it. Higher page ranking combined with keyword density (the concentration of keywords related to your expertise) equates to greater authority you’re given in search engine ranking pages (SERPs).

Remember, blogs are indexed in traditional and blog search engines, and with a focused emphasis on SEO and page ranking, your blog will almost always rank higher in search results over any other form of social content you contribute or publish.

Reputation and Expertise Aggregation Services

A new and necessary set of online services are permeating the social web to help track and aggregate the activity of individuals, improve the caliber of feedback and comments, and in the process, create a concentrated portfolio of published content and commentary. SezWho, Disqus, Co-comment, and Intense Debate run inside of blog comments sections, forums, and websites and make the process of content creation and the ensuing conversations more interactive, lively, and trackable.

For example, with SezWho, content hosts can add a few bits of code to their site or blog template to instantly offer readers the ability to not only comment on the post, but also rank the quality and insight of other commenters as well as the post in general. When commenting or voting, the service asks for your email address and then tracks your individual comments and your ranking history to provide interested visitors with an amalgamated representation of your views and aptitude.

As in any social network, these tools and services empower and encourage users to provide a more complete and descriptive profile to effectively represent the context along with the associated experience of the content they choose to rank and publish.

These services aggregate the distributed thoughts and dispersed identity beacons of individuals into one representative profile. As active participants in the social Web, we comment on relevant articles in addition to publishing our own thoughts on our blogs. With one click, anyone can see view a history of our posts and comments, in one place, tied to a profile that we define.

Read the Rest of the Series:

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part I

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part III

Connect with me:
Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk, BackType, or Facebook.

personal brand identity social+media social media socialmedia brian+solis pr+2.0 pr 2.0 public+relations publicity promotion branding media+2.0 media2.0 reputation guru listen leader conversation expert marcom thought+leader

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part I

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In the era of the Social Web, practically everything we create and share online is open to public discovery, interpretation, and feedback – positive, neutral and negative. It sounds sensational and perhaps a bit ominous, but it’s not meant to serve as a deterrent. It's only intended to introduce the subject and the context of this subject as well as raise awareness for the need to be proactive about cultivating and managing your brand and your reputation.

Your digital identity defines who you are and in this genre of Web-savvy content creators and purveyors, your online reputation does indeed precede you. The pictures and videos you upload, the bookmarks you share, the profile you define on each social network, those you befriend, the comments you share on blogs and other profiles, the posts your publish, the tweets you send on Twitter, basically everything you contribute to the Social Web shapes and contributes to your personal brand and how people will most likely perceive it. Hopefully in most cases, it can promote and showcase your expertise, and sometimes, what’s representative online can and will be used against you.

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog posts and comments, basically every piece of content you generate collectively feed search results in Google, Yahoo, Ask, and all other search engines. All it takes is someone to “Google” aka search your name to begin the process of forming an opinion and perception based on the search results – usually without your knowledge and definitely without the opportunity to explain the results.

Whether you’re a student, currently employed, seeking a new job, a brand ambassador or the official community manager of a company’s social media strategy, your activities online contribute to and ultimately shape your identity and lay the foundation for your reputation.

It’s been said that Google is the new resume. Truth be told, any search engine, whether social or traditional, is the resume – it’s the Wikipedia entry for the rest of us. It’s no longer what we decide to curate onto a piece of paper or onto one traditional one-page digital resume. It really is moot in a world when anyone can practically piece together your story without the help of a document designed to shape and steer our perception.

“Seventy-seven percent of recruiters report using search engines to find background data on candidates. Of that number, 35 percent eliminated a candidate because of what they found online.”

-- Kevin Donline, Star Tribune Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota

Indeed, there are many stories that fuel the urgency for everyone to take control of their online persona. In one such case, a highly qualified candidate appeared for a job interview and was confronted by the comments that he left on a series of older, unrelated blog posts that cast his opinion in a way that was questionable to those making the hiring decision.

In another such instance, a candidate was offered an interview, which was later rescinded due to several negative blog posts that portrayed him as an undesirable teammate.

Did they do anything wrong? The only answer is that they weren’t proactive in defining, correcting, or steering their brand and underestimated the impact of social content on the job selection process. The same could be said for employers and employees.

In four different cases involving DWI car crashes, the convicted defendants received greater sentences because of the pictures on their profiles in Facebook, Myspace and other communities. In one case, a 20 year old was shown wearing a Halloween jailbird costume drinking and celebrating after seriously injuring someone. After viewing the pictures, the judge labeled the defendant depraved and extended his sentence.

In another similar case, the defense lawyer recommended to his client that she delete her Facebook profile prior to the trial. She refused and the pictures that she chose to share painted her in an unfavorable light and contributed to a maximum sentence.

While these legal cases may be extreme, and certainly sharing pictures is not illegal, the idea here is that the content they chose to share online didn’t convey remorse, instead visually demonstrating that important lessons weren’t learned.


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Social Media and The Generation Divide

Generation Y aka the Millennials are groomed in the new generation of online communications, while veteran communicators and marketers are learning how, and why, to adapt.

Millennials communicate with each other using the very tools and services that are foreign to most others within older generations. SMS, Tweets, MySpace and Facebook wall posts, YouTube videos, IM, are representative of only a few varying ways that fundamentally changed human communication. My generation and the generations before it are just now evolving beyond email, and maybe in some cases, IM, SMS, and VoIP (Skype). This does not include those early adopters who populated the bulletin board services at the early stages of online communications or those who were active in forums and networks during the Web 1.0 “content is king” era.

Collectively, however, Generation Y is much more proficient in online communications, simply because it’s inherent to their culture.

While this new and more Web-savvy generation is ushering in a new era for interpersonal digital dialog, their standards for business etiquette may be a bit unrefined and therefore the idea of tying online activity to strategically crafted personal or corporate brands may seem alien.

IDK, DQMOT, but I think we all can learn 2gether, IMPOV. IAC, take it FWIW. HTH. L8r

If the Millennials are more sophisticated in their knowledge of using social tools, then those who are more experienced in appropriate and effective communications must learn new technologies at a much more rapid clip than previously introduced and adopted technologies.

On either side of the spectrum, each and every generation not only needs to know how to use the social tools available today, but also combine an understanding of the cultures and ethnography (a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies) of each online community and the opportunities for providing resources and helpful information based on the company and solutions an individual may represent. Either way, the activities that connect you to communities and more importantly, the individuals who are seeking and sharing relevant insight, begin to shape and cultivate an overall portfolio of ideas, biases, and value that feed online brands and reputations – personal and professional.

Whether you know it or not, this is already well underway, and for many of us, a preliminary online personal brand may already exist. Social Media doesn’t discriminate between age groups and technical proficiency. Everything is indexed and saved equally on the Web where it will remain for years until more strategic content is produced that will invariably eclipse what exists today.

This becomes increasingly important as Social Media becomes more pervasive in corporate communications, business development, and customer service, and those who are on the front lines of customer and influencer engagement are judged and measured by their previous contributions.

It takes champions to bridge the generation and marketing gap in order to effectively communicate with customers and peers regardless of demographic or psychographic profiles. This is the only way to truly build and nurture genuine relationships that last over the long-term.

Read the Rest of the Series:

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part II

The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part III

Connect with me:
Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk, BackType, or Facebook.

personal brand identity social+media social media socialmedia brian+solis pr+2.0 pr 2.0 public+relations publicity promotion branding media+2.0 media2.0 reputation

PR is Not Dead

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Stop the presses...there's another "PR is Dead" meme that's circulating the blogosphere again. This time, all that's new is that many bloggers are revealing that they prefer discovering new and interesting products on their own and breaking the news before anyone else.

Welcome to the news business.

Any print or broadcast news reporter would say the same thing, and honestly, it's the competition and desire to break news first that's driven the business for over 100 years.

Did that kill PR?

Nope.

Does that mean that PR didn't play a role in the business of breaking news?

Hardly.

Perhaps the most troubling theme of this discussion however, is a very dangerous insinuation, disguised as expert advice, that suggests great products and services do not need PR. Certain bloggers are implying that "if you build it, they will come." While others imply that if you're great, people will notice what you do.

If you run a company and are considering DIY (do it yourself) PR, understand that it's not impossible to do so without an agency or consultant, but resting on the expectation that market leaders and influencers will discover it and create a surging groundswell of visibility and demand for your product is as likely as winning the lottery.

Yes it happens. People win lotteries all the time.

But do you, as the leader of the company's brand, responsibly gamble strategic opportunities to increase visibility and revenue for your business?

Of course not.

Hope and luck are not viable, effective or intelligent strategies for marketing any new product or service. Even the best products need help rising above parity and cutting through the noise.

It's proactive versus reactive. And, in a fast-paced world where attention is a precious and ever-thinning commodity, sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone to discover you or solely relying on experimental grassroots campaigns may cannibalize your opportunity to generate industry-wide attention, your way.

Let's not forget that some of the very bloggers who are suggesting that great products or people don't need PR are also among the first to tell you that they will not cover your news once the first person has already written about it, citing that it's "old news" - even if it's only a few minutes old.

There are some incredibly adept PR professionals who can help companies do the right thing, the right way. There are also many more PR people simply working the grind and dispassionately pumping out garbage and tarnishing the PR industry in the process.

With that said, there are some new, clever, and innovative ways to break news nowadays and any smart executive would be unwise and practically irresponsible to issue news without first researching published strategies or consulting experts prior to releasing potentially momentous information - whether they ultimately do it on their own, do nothing, or contract a consultant or agency.

PR after all, is much more than press releases, canned pitches, and email blasts.

Now that doesn't mean that Public Relations isn't broken.

It absolutely is...

Traditional Public Relations is old and most of the principles, methodologies, practices, and tactics have gone unchanged for decades. But, what has changed is that these processes are no longer as effective as they once were.

The reality is that the Web (1.0 + 2.0) has forced the transformation of the PR business from the edge toward the center - albeit slowly. Make no mistake, it's improving.

As I wrote earlier this year in "PR 2.0 = The Evolution of Public Relations, Nothing Less, Nothing More," the reinvention of public relations was sparked ten years ago and its just now gaining momentum.

1) PR as an industry is in dire need of evolution in order to not only stay relevant, but also prove that in the social economy, it can be one of the most effective forms of marketing that cultivates customers, ambassadors, and enthusiasts.

2) Social Media is not New PR. It is a classification of “socialized” media and it is inspiring new PR, but they are not one in the same.

3) Darwinism will weed out those who don’t get it as well as those who pretend to get it (even if they don’t realize they don’t get it).

Those PR professionals that get it, will understand that much in the same way bloggers have created and earned notoriety and influence, that they too can harness the democratized, Social Web to cultivate an influential platform for which to help businesses generate strategic mindshare and presence. However, it requires an entirely new approach, mindset, commitment, and re-dedication to improving your craft, and with it, the rest of the industry will follow in your footsteps.

Welcome to what just may be the greatest evolution in the history of PR.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk or Facebook.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble supports good PR and shares his tips for improving the landscape for PR 2.0. Thank you for the kind words!

Highly Recommended Reading for Startups:

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

PR Tips for Startups

Free eBook: PR Tips for Startups

New Rules for Breaking News Part I and Part II

Addendum:

Some of the best in the business shared their insight on Robert Scoble's post, "PR-less launch kicks off a stack overflow of praise."

Jeremy Toeman, "My point was really about your comment that implies PR is useless. You’d never have heard of either Bug or Sling if it wasn’t for PR…I completely agree with you re building good products, and I completely agree with you re ‘me too’ products. But neither statement should be interpreted as not needing PR… If anything - it’s the really good ones that need the best marketing work done, to help position and distinguish them from the crowd…"

Francine Hardaway, "Wait, everybody! Define PR. PR is not a press release, or a crappy pitch. It’s the process of letting the right people know something is available — the public for the product. so Robert and Jeremy, you are both correct. Ideally, word of mouth is best, but it’s not fast enough for some publics (the tsunami is coming, run for the hills, quit eating Mexican peppers because they are causing salmonella). For those, press conference and press releases are best. –signed, Tired of Fighting to Explain This."

Miiko Mentz, "I love controversy, but I must admit this topic is getting old. It’s as tired as the lame-ass pitches you are bombarded with on a daily basis."

Noteworthy:

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote an excellent and well-balanced post on ReadWriteWeb that explores whether good tech needs PR.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch explores the challenges of PR in a new media world.

pr public+relations pr+2.0 pr2.0 media+2.0 media2.0 publicty diy startup techcrunch robert+scoble blog blogger blogger+relations dead social+media social communications marketing marcom brian+solis press+release

Introducing The Conversation Prism

Last year, Robert Scoble and Darren Barefoot debuted the Social Media Starfish to visualize and document the rapidly evolving landscape for social tools, services, and networks.

If you work in marketing, public relations, advertising, customer service, product development, or any discipline that's motivated, shaped, and directed by customers, peers, stakeholders and influencers, monitoring and in some cases, participating in online conversations is critical in competing for the future.

Over the last month, I worked with Jesse Thomas of JESS3, to create a new graphic that helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web. The Conversation Prism is free to use and share. It's our contribution to a new era of media education and literacy.

The Conversation Prism



The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

If a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen?

Indeed. Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.

As a communications or service professional, you'll find yourself at the center of the prism - whether you're observing, listening or participating. This visual map is the ideal complement to The Essential Guide to Social Media and the Social Media Manifesto, which will help you better understand how to listen and in turn, participate transparently, sincerely, and effectively.

As conversations are increasingly distributed, everything begins with listening and observing. Doing so, will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. This dialog can be charted into a targeted social map that's unique to your brand. In the example below, I created a Social Map using MindJet to represent the communities where I either need to or currently contribute based on my initial research.



Perhaps most importantly, the process of listening and observing will reveal the cultures of the very communities you may wish to engage.

Remember, participating in Social Media is more meaningful when you have a deeper understanding of anthropology and sociology and not just the social tools that facilitate interaction. This is about creating and cultivating relationships with people, online and in the real world, and these relationships are defined by mutual value and benefits.

In the social economy, relationships are the new currency.

Enjoy the Conversation Prism and please let me know how you'd like to see it evolve.

Please also see The Social Media Ecosystem by Deb Schultz, which debuted in November 2007.

For more on the subject, please also read:

- Comcast, Dell and The Socialization of Service
- New Communication Theory and the New Roles for the New World of Marketing
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Art of Conversation - It's About Listening Not Marketing
- Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?
- Cultural Voyeurism and Social Media
- Free ebook: Customer Service, The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
- Distributed Conversations and Fragmented Attention

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk or Facebook.

social+media jess3 social media socialmedia brian+solis pr2.0 pr+2.0 pr public+relations communications publicity marketing marcom advertising customer service media2.0 media+2.0 community conversation map expert guru robert+scoble conversation+prism antropology sociology manifesto

Happy 10th Anniversary PRWeek

Happy 10th Anniversary PRWeek.

As part of its 10th anniversary celebration, PRWeek is honoring one of the most important technological advancements in content distribution of the past 10 years: the blog.

How does PRWeek celebrate blogging? They're hosting a competition between 32 leading PR-focused blogs selected by PRWeek staff and others in the industry. The tournament will take place over five weeks.



I recommended to PRWeek's Keith O'Brien that instead of a blog competition, perhaps the magazine could spotlight and celebrate the bloggers who are working together to improve a much-tarnished industry, while also empowering PR professionals to help usher in a new era of more effective and intelligent public relations.

Keith pointed out that it's all in good fun, and he's right.

Make sure to cast your vote here.

At the very least, the competition introduces blogs that may not already be on your radar. Each blog shares tremendous insight, thought leadership, and industry information. Please add them to your RSS reader.

PRWeek Blog Competition

Pit bulls and Labradors
Digital Influence Mapping Project
Livingston Buzz
PR Squared
Neville Hobson
The Daily Lark
Communication Overtones
6 a.m.
Drew Kerr's PR Rock and Roll
Micro Persuasion
What Do You Stand For?
A view on PR from Silicon Valley
Murphy's LawIntakeA shel of my former self
Pop PR jots
Beyond the Hype
Influential Marketing Blog
The Flack
THINKing
Phil's Blogservations
PR Measurement Blog
Measuring Up
Sage Circle
PR Blog News
Glass House
Bitemarks Down the Avenue
Voce Nation
Bad Pitch Blog
Your PR Guy

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