The Future of Media and Communications Starts Here
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Gazing into the Twitterverse
Twitter connects people through a rich and active exchange of ideas, thoughts, observations, and interests in one, highly collaborative and promising ecosystem. The Twitterverse advances micro interaction and connections through an expanding network of applications, engendering the potential for macro reach and resonance online and IRL (in real life).
Following the recent debut of The Conversation Prism v2.0, Jesse Thomas (@jess3) and I proudly introduce an alpha version of The Twitterverse. While the landscape for Twitter approaches 1,000 different applications, this map visually charts the important tools to help communications, service, marketing, and community professionals more effectively navigate, engage, analyze and measure participation on Twitter.
Please share suggestions, additions, or changes in the Flickr comments section. We'll integrate the feedback into the next rev of the Twitterverse and release formally as a poster and a downloadable high-res graphic.
In the eyes of imaginative and opportunistic advertisers and marketers, bloggers and online influencers are the new celebrities and athletes. Brands are showering them with endorsement deals rich with products, cash, trips, exclusive access to information, and VIP treatment each and every day, creating a new genre of star spokespersons.
Many expert and lifestyle “citizen” bloggers and online weblebrities are creating communities around their persona as they freely and actively share personal and identifiable experiences online, in social networks and also in the real world. Those who can successfully connect their stories to others in and around their peer groups earn trust, visibility and authority – limited only by ambition and ingenuity. They’re rewarded for their presence and ability to point their followers in strategic directions.
These new brand ambassadors are almost the perfect instruments for surreptitiously sparking and cultivating groundswell within desired and vital target markets.
Consumers look to experts and trusted peers for guidance and insight when making decisions.
Who’s to say that the information they’re receiving from their trusted sources is indeed truthful and honest, if they’re unaware that these authorities are actually directly or indirectly compensated for their opinions and insights.
Journalists and reporters on the other hand, most of them anyway, are held to strict editorial guidelines and policies that denounce the practice of receiving products, gifts or compensation in exchange for editorial coverage. There’s at least, a line that separates ethical press from advertorials – whether it’s crossed, is another story.
But in the new online world of citizen influence, there’s no line on the horizon – at least not yet. Driven only by loosely defined and sporadically practiced methodologies that promote at-will disclosure and transparency, many brands, intentionally or deliberately, are blurring a consumer’s ability to discern the distinction between partisan and genuine experiences.
But that’s all about to change. Under new guidelines proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, brands and/or bloggers may be held liable should either the FTC or scorned consumers deem that the actions or claims misguided their decision and/or misrepresented actual performance or efficacy.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, the ability for a consumer to exercise better judgment and common sense is indefensible when a glaring absence of disclosure is pervasive.
Earlier this year, The FTC published recommendations to update its guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising and public relations. A new set of guidelines, enforceable by the FTC Act, is due soon.
The Guides, 16 C.F.R. Part 255, are designed to assist businesses and others in conforming their endorsement and testimonial advertising practices to the requirements of Section 5 of the FTC Act. The Guides interpret laws administered by the Commission and therefore are advisory in nature. However, proceedings to enforce the requirements of law can be brought under the FTC Act. The Commission would have the responsibility of proving that a particular use of an endorsement or testimonial was deceptive.
In its review of the proposed guidelines, BusinessWeek observed, “The world's more ambitious bloggers like to call themselves 'citizen journalists.' The government is trying to make sure these heralds don't turn into citizen advertisers.”
I disagree with BusinessWeek’s observation and so does the FTC.
In a discussion with Mary Engle, the acting deputy director for the Bureau of Consumer Protection, she articulated, “It’s not about preventing citizen journalists from becoming citizen advertisers, that’s just not true. We’re acting to ensure that bloggers don’t create a bias in the consumer decision-making process. Consumers just need to know that what they’re reading is technically an advertisement.”
Whether the post is compensated with cash or with free product or rewards, the FTC views them equally. Engle observed, “The real test is whether or not the consumer’s impression or decision would change if they knew the post was sponsored.”
It’s about responsibility and credibility.
But honestly, why chance it?
This is about building credibility and earned relationships through engagement and empowerment for both company/product brands and personal brands.
The FTC Guides advise that an advertisement employing a consumer endorsement on a central or key attribute of a product will be interpreted as representing that the endorser’s experience is representative of what consumers will generally achieve.
Even still, the practice of paying bloggers and influencers or providing them with free products not only clouds their ability to share an impartial story, but also risks credibility and trust of brands and influencers among the very people they’re trying to inspire and galvanize.
With or without the new FTC guidelines, the practice of disclosure is not an option when the potential for significantly damaging customer relationships in a very public spotlight is at stake. Unfortunately, it’s not at the forefront of many of our marketing programs.
Free Products are Gifts that Keep on Giving
Ignorance is bliss, until it’s not...
In 2006, Microsoft introduced its Vista operating system to consumers using traditional and new media. In one of the programs, bloggers of varying levels of influence, received Acer Ferrari notebooks to potentially review and share their experiences of the OS and also the notebook. Initially, it wasn’t made clear to these bloggers that disclosure was encouraged. I saw many variations of the packages and letters. Depending on which version a blogger did or didn’t receive, instructions and intentions were also vaguely communicated. What was commonly perceived and understood by other bloggers and ultimately consumers, was that these expensive notebooks were theirs to keep whether or not they shared anything online. To say it created a blogstorm of controversy would be a gross understatement. The lessons learned here served as precedent for those seeking guidance, but didn’t necessarily translate intro industry-wide standards.
Brands view the practice of sending products to bloggers and online influencers as a natural extension of their product PR campaign. In many cases over the years, companies simply didn’t expect to receive product back from reviewers, whether or not they were employed by a publication bound by editorial guidelines against the acceptance of gifts or free products. Bloggers and online influencers, until the recent FTC attention, were viewed no different.
Sending free products, according to the FTC, is viewed as compensation, which translates into an advertisement or paid endorsement. The FTC pays attention to products of "significant" value.
Under the FTC guidelines, disclosure is required in any case where the brand is hopeful of obtaining a published review of the product, when its return, either explicitly or implicitly conveyed, is not expected. This attempts to ensure the protection of all parties against liability or legal action.
Sponsored Posts and Conversations
Whether or not disclosure is evident and forthright, the question really is, whether or not the practice of giving gifts to encourage reviews or outright paying for them is ultimately effective and sound for channeling influence, community building and revenue generation for the long-term.
We’re now talking about outright paying for posts and conversations versus simply sending free product or rewarding them with various incentives and hoping for complimentary posts and discussions in exchange.
A recent report published by Forrester Research defines sponsored conversations as, “A marketing technique in which marketers provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for their posting blog content about a brand.”
In the report, which is available for $749, Forrester recommends adding sponsored conversations to the corporate marketing toolbox, “Sponsored conversation is controversial; many bloggers believe it threatens bloggers’ reputation for independence. But we think this practice is here to stay. Why? Because bloggers want to get paid and marketers want to pay them.”
According to the FTC guidelines, if there were a financial or other relationship between the advertiser and the endorser that would affect the credibility of the endorsement, that relationship would have to be disclosed under Section 255.5. So, as long as the blogger is clear that the post or conversation is “sponsored,” all guidelines are respected and satisfied.
Wait, what about the brand?
Just because bloggers want to get paid and brands want to pay them, doesn’t make this a no-brainer business practice does it? Or, better yet, does it actually enhance the product/company brand or the personal brand of the blogger in the long run?
Some of the biggest brands in the world are already experimenting with paid posts including, 1-800Flowers, Black&Decker, Cold Stone Creamery, Dell, Disney, MTV, Sears, Sony Pictures, and TiVo. For example, Kmart recently sent several high profile bloggers on $500 shopping sprees in exchange for “sponsored posts” about their experiences.
I suppose, it’s in the way that you use it...
So, let’s examine something of deeper impact and consequence. Every community thrives on interaction rooted in respect and defined by credibility and trust – at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
For bloggers to risk or leverage their existing, and more importantly, potential credibility in exchange for blogola is either absurd or simply gratifying and motivating for now. Maybe the bigger picture has yet to come into focus for many bloggers and the act of recognition is enough. And, for brands to either take generations of brand integrity or shape its new and emerging identification on the backs of bloggers who’ll loan their stature and reputation is either brilliantly forward-looking or foolishly shortsighted. In the end, it’s the consumer who holds the power to decide their degree of affinity and affiliation or mutiny and backlash.
Integrity and Reputation vs. Buzz and Google Juice
The more I write about this subject, the clearer my focus. The impending FTC guidelines and whether or not bloggers and brands are at risk of legal punishment isn’t the issue. We just have to deal with it. We can choose as consumers whether or not we want to engage with this content.
The real discussion should center on why a company or blogger should even care to participate. The things we do for money are governed by personal boundaries. As individuals, we define those lines and how clearly we wish to view and abide by them.
If we examine Forrester’s case for sponsored conversations, we’re essentially fueling word of mouth by paying for authorities to share their views about our company or product brand in their domain. This is important. We’re talking about paying for people to write about a company or product on their existing, personally-branded content platform associated with it’s already existing, captive audience. This theoretically sparks Webwide buzz that connects a brand to the community of would be customers who rely upon these personalities and voices in the blogosphere to make informed decisions.
Seems simple enough, except two things are going to prevent this from effectively promoting the sponsoring brand over time – 1) disclosures read like warning signs; 2) There are reports that claimGoogle is downgrading the PageRank of select blogs or sites that actively publish paid content and violate Google's Guidelines.
Google Software Engineer Matt Cutts recently weighed in on the subject again. He commented on Jeremiah Owyang's blog post on sponsored conversations, "Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google — and other search engines — do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example."
In a followup post on Matt's blog entitled, Paid posts should not affect search engines, he states, "My bottom-line recommendation is simple: paid posts should not pass PageRank. We do take the subject of paid posts seriously and take action on them."
And, in an interview with Eric Enge, Cutts reminded us that this is about providing disclosure for readers and search engines alike, "Google has made its policies pretty clear on paid posts, about the fact that they should be disclosed not only for humans, but also for machines. Because, it is machine readable disclosure and you are not selling links to past PageRank."
I bet many of you reading this now are responsible for the direction, visibility, and perception of a brand. So as brand managers, you are what the market says you are, tethered by the credibility and stature of the people who collectively voice their thoughts (paid and unpaid.) In the world of pay-per-posts or sponsored conversations, brand association starts to portray a picture of guilt by association, not necessarily the building of strategic brand presence or resonance.
This is a deeper discussion of reputation and trustworthiness versus funding word of mouth buzz and viral marketing. To simply state that “disclosure” alleviates and resolves all risks involved with sponsoring conversations trivializes the discussion.
Brand Ambassadors and Inspired Communities
Whether we like it or not, many new service providers are offering brokered services to facilitate “pay to play” campaigns in Social Media. Concurrently, many brands are also running these programs from within.
Clearly a balance scale exists where integrity and paid buzz are on opposite sides. So the real question is, how do you leverage the laws of perception management in your favor? One way to do so is through traditional, people and solutions-focused public relations.
Identify target bloggers and work genuinely with them on developing a meaningful story that helps and informs their community. This is a necessary program in of itself and it cannot be underestimated. However, if you must pay for sponsored conversations, then consider shifting away from the pay-per-post model of blogger-hosted advertorials and explore other options.
Obviously paid endorsements work when the platform for conveying paid messages is understood and accepted. Celebrities have effectively pushed products in commercials without tarnishing their brand for decades. Essentially, the difference is the forums and networks in which these paid messages appear.
While the value of having a dedicated paid post about your product directly in the influential domain of your target bloggers, look to the existing business of paid endorsements to build and manage a campaign that effectively reaches and compels potential customers without the negative attributes that cling to per-per-posts.
Essentially, hiring or recruiting influential Weblebrities and online experts is not unlike the model for linking real world celebrities to brands through commercials, events, appearances, or other dedicated vehicles to promote the alliance and the story. These campaigns, when concepted and executed properly, effectively link the product/company brand to the celebrity’s persona and prestige to convey a relationship that connects to consumers through aspirations, affinity and emotions.
So in the emerging and highly influential world of Social Media, it only makes sense to create dedicated campaigns and supporting online residences to showcase these strategic alliances and relationships. Essentially, we’re taking the “sponsored conversation” away from the host blogs and moving the potential for influence into a dedicated domain that naturally appeals to customers in ways that complement the behavior and compliance for viewing, interacting with, and potentially absorbing sponsored messages and endoresement. This levels and equalizes the campaign and the ensuing experience, while protecting, shaping, and promoting brands on both sides.
The idea is to create and host a two-way street that still inspires word of mouth and viral marketing, whether it’s funded by cash, rewards, or simply affiliation and recognition. And it just might also offer the best of both worlds, as the blogger or online personality will most likely share their experiences and involvement in their communities anyway.
For example:
Mozy hired iJustine as an official spokesperson airing content on Mozy.com as well as across multiple social networks including YouTube and iJustine branded properties.
Wal-Mart established Elevenmoms, an expert group of independent bloggers who receive free sample products to review and then freely choose which products to review based entirely on their personal opinion and experience.
Based on the company’s successful foray into influencer relations with its Flex loaner program, Ford is currently initiating a consumer groundswell for its impending launch of the Ford Fiesta by enlisting every day consumers to share their experiences online and in social networks.
In the end, sponsored conversations will continue to receive funding, as brands remain tempted by low hanging fruit. That’s the reason why it’s called low hanging fruit after all. Anyone can pick it. So, establish a program that harnesses the reach and influence that is rife throughout the social web and incite a more calculated and valuable response.
The FTC is simply striving for truth in advertising. Perhaps in Social Media, there also needs to be a bit more value, dialogue, sincerity, and empowerment in the relationships we invest in and promote whether they’re subsidized with monetary compensation or recognition and affiliation.
The point is that when establishing a paid Social Media campaign, anything that is less than clear, honest, or actively contributing back to the bottom line of the business and/or brand resonance is actually taking away from it.
The press release is over 100 years old and for the most part, its evolution wass mostly stagnant for the majority of its lifespan. However, the press release has evolved more in the last decade than it has over the century thanks to the proliferation of the Internet and most notably, the Social Web. The tired and oft disregarded press release is finally tasting reinvention as it transforms to chase the new channels of influence as well as adapt to the rapidly shifting behavior of content discovery, consumption and sharing.
We are witnessing the modernization of an aging communications tool and the distribution networks that connect them to the outside world of influencers and consumers. While the Web is serving as the catalyst for this regeneration, we can also look at innovating the template for traditional press releases as well, starting with the very documents and HTML pages on existing corporate newsrooms that serve as their primary source of PR and corporate presentation.
It’s about time we breathe new life into the press release template.
Over the past few years I have been a vocal supporter and committed practitioner of Social Media Releases (SMR) because they offered the ability to share stories in a more palatable and meaningful format, supported by the media content that helped reporters and bloggers retell the story using the media building blocks that contextually framed it. Social Media Releases also served as a hub for connecting disparate media elements across multiple social networks serving as a frame of reference for distributed videos on YouTube, pictures on Flickr, supporting documentation on DocStoc, market reports and information bookmarked on Delicious, etc. SMRs represent a new and promising opportunity to renew the dialog around improving the foundation for the communication of news, information, and events that left most immune to its overdue potential.
Sometimes in order to embrace innovation we need to blend it with existing methodologies and processes (what we know and how we do it) to eventually propel change, technology and comprehension across the bell curve of adoption.
As you know, I’m a strong proponent for change, where change is merited. It must serve a purpose and not associate with hype or shiny objects. In an online world, where both media and communications are altering how content is produced and distributed, the information we share and how we share it must match the correlating workflow and production processes. At a minimum, they must align with the reader’s persuasion, provide the tools and services they need to retell your story their way (links, video, images, bookmarks, etc.), and also provide a mechanism for inviting feedback, and also encourage sharing through a myriad of services that sends information across the social graphs.
Web 1.0 spurred the modernization of the press release, the first in a series of innovations that continue today and represented the most significant changes to the standard format since the introduction of audio and video news releases (VNRs) serving the broadcast industries.
In 1997, BusinessWire debuted the Smart News Release, which offered businesses ability to integrate links to supporting audio, video, and digital images. BusinessWire also hosted the release online to complement its wire counterpart. According to the company Dell and AMD were among the first adopters of this new release format.
In 2001, PRNewswire released its MultiVu multimedia release (MMR) service, which also offered a branded, stylish online dashboard for businesses to tell their story through text and corresponding media. The first multimedia release published using MultiVu introduced the movie Pearl Harbor and featured stills, clips, and other media files to create a more immersive experience.
Soon thereafter, all existing and also new breeds of wire services, including PRWeb, BusinessWire, MarketWire, among others, debuted online multimedia friendly press release hosting solutions that adapted to the Web’s migration from 1.0 to 2.0.
In 2006, Todd Defren introduced us to the concept of a Social Media Release, which connected online media to social networks. To this day, Todd and I continue to collaborate on the advancement of the Social Media Release in conjunction with many visionaries across the communications and Web marketing communities.
Shortly thereafter, Shannon Whitley developed PRX, the first automated system for building and distributing Social Media Releases.
Last year, PitchEngine launched a dedicated service to empower PR to create, host, and publish branded Social Media Releases and Social Media Newsrooms without the help of developers or Web marketers. I since joined the company as an advisor and stakeholder.
Recently, MindTouch debuted a powerful wiki-based mashup platform and application for automatically creating affordable, custom, and hosted Social Media Releases and Newsrooms for SMBs and enterprise organizations. This was the first service that provided IT and Web marketing with the tools necessary to socialize static releases and newsrooms without changing the hierarchal process of Web site and content management systems.
One of the easiest solutions to deploy and manage online press releases are also the least discussed and most underestimated. Blogs represent some of the most effective platforms for communicating solutions and offering answers to the community of customers and prospects seeking insight. It’s the most profound forum for actively demonstrating expertise and sharing vision and direction consistently over time. Blogs are also an ideal home for sharing news in a format that tells a story in a more human voice. It shouldn’t read as a typical release however. It should capture the essence of what’s new, unique, and worthy of attention and present it in a format that mirrors the story you would ultimately hope to read elsewhere – complete with all of the shareable media content that also speaks to people, their way.
Renovating the Methodologies and Voices for Press Releases
As I said earlier, in order to successfully embrace a new way of communicating news, existing processes and approval cycles must influence the desired evolution – step by step.
Tools, networks and services are facilitating and simplifying the system for creating and distributing new media releases. But most of the time, they start in Microsoft Word or another standard word processor before they’re transmitted to wire and hosting services or published to the existing corporate news page.
Everything starts with the existing template that we use from previous releases, which usually forces us to fill in the blanks in a way that prevents and discourages artistry, ingenuity, value, and believability to flourish. Press releases, in this case, are merely “cookie cutter” productions that usually read as such.
We attack the creation of press releases the wrong way.
First, we have to ask ourselves a question, “Who are we writing for?” In most cases, the answer is not the very influencers or consumers we wish to reach, but the product and management teams that will grant us approval to issue the release. We usually don’t speak the way a press release reads. In fact, I’d argue that we’d never speak to a customer in that language or tenor in real life, so why are press releases less informational and more self-serving...
What if we empathized with the customers we wished to inspire and adapted the story to their channels influence based on the preferences and focus of the authoritative voices that reach them?
It might change the way we approach a blank slate.
And, what if you had to write the headline in 140 characters to convey the value of your news to someone on Twitter? Better yet...what if you distilled the essence into 120 characters encouraging retweets of your story.
It very might modify what and how the rest of the story unfolds.
In order for new media releases to work, they have to receive support representative of an entirely new methodology for communicating stories. It’s not anything new. Corporate executives, spokespersons and marketing and sales professionals have long faced the challenge of refining the value proposition into a compelling elevator or better yet, an escalator pitch.
The idea of the escalator pitch is game changing and powered by the brevity that takes place on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other micro blogs every minute of every day. It inspires us to embrace brevity and relevance outside of these communities, in the real world, to help people "get" what we do and why they should care.
News flash: New media releases aren’t a new tool to package the same old marketing "speak" that form and enforce the stereotype of existing press releases. They are indeed an opportunity to improve how we, as individuals representing a company that helps real world customers, share our story with them in a way that means something.
The process of humanizing a press release also begets another game changer into the process of writing—answering the above question of to whom we’re hoping to reach. Markets are distributed and supported by mainstream and vertical segments. Not one tool, publication, blog, peer-to-peer network, or story reaches and compels them similarly. Having one press release with a general set of value propositions is necessary but also potentially limiting. Whether or not you address this in your pitch letter to varying representatives of these markets is one thing, but also think about the SEO value of distributing releases targeted directly to various customer groups who are actively looking for information on traditional search engines.
Don’t forget, an Outsell study surfaced the fact that over 51% of IT professionals report that they get their news from press releases discovered in Yahoo and Google business news searches over their top trade journals.
The press release is not simply a function of PR, but an opportunity to tell your story in a way that serves as a catalyst for influence and action, directly and indirectly. The press release thus becomes a social object, capable of sparking conversations, movement, and events.
Breathing New Life into the Existing Template for Press Releases
Improving the narrative, formula and format for press releases is obligatory regardless of supporting mechanisms and technologies. The inclusion of social media elements within the release also fortify stronger cornerstones for improving personal connections and engagement to the release, but also enabling the discoverability and sharing of the content. Having the ability to include videos, pictures, audio, all served from different social networks into one centralized story dashboard, forces us to rethink how and what we share within the story. It introduces a storyboard element that begins well before we write the first word of the release.
We effectively become storytellers and the process of press release writing now transforms into an experiential and technical production, with ROI measured not only in hits, but also release and content views, trackbacks, tweets, mashups, conversations, comments, extended sharing within individual social networks, and also the call to action we integrate into the release. Yes, we can measure and steer experiences now.
Once we move beyond the creative, storyboarding, and production process, we can tackle the creation of the press release. Because everything usually starts with good old-fashioned word processing, I’ve included a new template to visualize these new ideas. Essentially, you can “socialize” a press release simply by integrating all of the content within the release and also by adding “live” links to the content.
Ultimately the release may or may not cross a wire or garner Web visibility through services such as PitchEngine or PRWeb. They will, at the very least, attempt to earn an audience with reporters, bloggers, influencers and also prospective customers via the corporate Web site, online newsroom or via email. The originating template now also serves as a source of an organized story as well as resource for storytellers to grab media in their desired formats and also for consumers to save and share information without sending them to multiple locations.
Regardless of the new media release format you choose, for example, bullets versus prose, do start the release with keyword density in mind to improve its search engine optimization (SEO), which enhances visibility and ranking in search results. In this case, search engines will prefer that the release starts with a headline and also an introductory summary or paragraph whether or not you also include supporting bullets in the body of the release.
Following is an example of a press release document that was socialized to mirror its counterpart that crossed a traditional wire service and also received distribution and online hosting using PitchEngine. I’ve embedded a viewable and downloadable Word and PDF version below via Docstoc. It’s not unlike the Word-based template that many savvy communications professionals were utilizing in Web 1.0. It’s only gained in strength and potency over the years.
Let’s dissect this example to more effectively explain inherent advantages, design features, and overall structure of the release.
Twitter Pitch
As Stowe Boyd coined it, the TwitPitch or Twitter Pitch, is the ability to communicate the substance of the news release in 120 characters encourages us to think about the story in terms of brevity and relevance and also how what we say might also incite tweets and retweets. I dare you to not change how your release reads after running through this exercise. This is where I usually start the process of writing the entire release and not the reverse.
For those who mastered the art of pitching via email, this exercise shares the lessons learned when crafting a subject line for our messages.
Images
Word processing has significantly evolved over the decades offer desktop publishing capabilities to help communications professions transform static releases into interactive experiences. They now aesthetically mirror their online Social Media Release brethren. Visually telling a story helps place the news in context, making it approachable and potentially immersive.
We amplify value and extendibility of socialized content by linking to the images where they’re hosted as well as connecting to complete photo albums. This offers viewers the ability to reconstruct the story visually and also builds a bridge between the content where it resides as well as establishing an associated storyline with supporting information.
Allow me explain, as this applies to all other social content that potentially resides in the press release. Featuring content from flickr (insert any social content network), for example, the viewer can not only jump to a more immersive set of images, but also users in each respective content network who may find your content, can also click through from the image (or video, audio file, etc.) back to the release. Content should absolutely link back to the host release from each network in order to connect disparate media to the story hub. In the description sections for each piece of content, it’s also wise to include a summary of the news release to help boost Social Media Optimization (SMO) and also frame the story around the material they’re viewing. More on SMO below...
Cross-linking is key to building a hub of social spokes to construct a wheel concentric engagement.
Summary
Providing an encapsulated explanation of the news sets the stage for comprehension and desire to read the remainder of the story. SEO specialists will recommend that writers employ a strategic architecture of keywords (not to be overdone) in order to optimize its performance in search engine results.
When writing press releases, many of the classically trained communications professionals will remember the inverted pyramid style of leading with the most important information. Think of it as making a first impression or as writing the elevator or escalator pitch. Attention is scarce and on the verge of becoming an endangered human characteristic. You have to earn the right to capture and hold attention with each and every release you produce. Make it matter. Answer questions. Solve problems. Direct readers to solutions and beneficial information. Remember, brevity and empathy speak volumes.
Become the customer you want to reach and speak to them as a peer of influence. Don’t try to sell, hype, or deceive readers. In the era of the social Web, customers and influencers now have the ability to equally share the negative attributes of your release as well as the positive, important, and value-added benefits.
Links
Providing helpful, clickable links within the release steer the reader to valuable informational resources and pre-defined experiences only to return to the original release enlightened and knowledgeable. An important note here is to remember that wherever you proactively send your reader, where it can be controlled, should complement your story. Ensure that the destinations are consistent, articulate, easily navigable, and conducive to safeguarding a positive return trip.
Also include links to the traditional or other social media releases should they include varying angles or access to additional information.
Embed Codes
One of the structural assets of a Social Media Release or multimedia release is the seamless capacity to easily grab content (videos, images, audio players, presentations, and many other forms of helpful content) and embed it elsewhere (blog posts, tumblelogs, Web pages, social network profiles, online stories, etc.) without having to recast, record, or shoot new material based on your information. You’re making it easier for influencers to tell a good story to their audiences.
Readers simply cut and paste the embed code you provide in the release into their destination post or page to automatically include the playable/viewable media in their domain. Essentially by simply including the code, you’re making your content and story portable.
Connecting Corporate Profiles Across Social Networks
As we’ve discussed earlier, the ability to link your story to additional pictures, video, and content albums, channels or files residing in other social networks ameliorates or improves the experience to convey significance. It also introduces viewers to your individual corporate profiles in each respective network, allowing them to friend or follow your activity based on their consumption and engagement preferences, setting the foundation for community cultivation within individual and connected networks.
An important lesson here is that releases are typically viewed as isolated events, when in fact they can string together a theme or corporate libretto that is narrated with every new form of content uploaded and shared within each or all of our strategic social networks.
SMO
We briefly discussed the art and science of Social Media Optimization above. But, allow me to further clarify this practice. If you recall the Outsell study that revealed how press releases factor into customer searches for relevant information, we know that behavior is already a precedent. So, if I were to tell you that a social network was actually the second most popular search engine behind Google, optimizing social content would make perfect sense. Well indeed, this is the case.
YouTube performs more keyword searches than many popular, yet traditional search engines. Unlike keyword density exercises in SEO, SMO involves artful and poignant descriptions that feature keywords and also employs the convention of intentional and crowdsourced tagging. Tags are similar to keywords in that they describe the content directly or indirectly. When individuals search for specific content in social networks, it’s a combination of tags and keywords that unearth relevant and associated content.
By providing recommended tags and keywords, we’re also encouraging disseminators of our information to also tag and discuss our story in complementary fashions. Note: You may see “Technorati Tags” in other hosted online Social Media Release services. To put things into perspective, Technorati is the premier blog directory for indexing blogs based on areas of topics and expertise as well enabling information seekers to search keywords that connect results to authoritative blog posts. So, unless the service is hosted on a truly social platform such as a wiki, social network, or blog platform, these Technorati tags that are included in these online press releases today will most likely not appear in Technorati search results. This is one of the many reasons why hosting and managing a corporate blog is important. Just because it’s on the Web, doesn’t make it truly social.
The Social Graph
Connecting this content to the overarching corporate story is how we merge traditional to Social Media. More importantly, when influencers and customers interact with the content, their mere participation offers a reverberating effect that introduces the material to respective social graphs representing first degree friends and followers as well as potentially spreading the story to second and third degree friends of friends and so on – the proverbial social graph.
In other words, when someone bookmarks the news on delicious, “likes” or posts it on Facebook or FriendFeed, shares it on Twitter, that discrete activity is shared within one or multiple networks simultaneously for others to potentially experience. It’s this behavior and peer-to-peer implicit and explicit endorsement that sets the stage for content to potentially become viral. Peer-viewed content is usually trusted and qualified.
Feeds
Subscription feeds help influencers and customers stay up-to-date with your news. Providing RSS feeds for important product or corporate news channels or an all-inclusive OPML file enables people to effortlessly and automatically receive updates within their feed reader of choice.
Social Bookmarks
A note about social bookmarks: earlier, we outlined how people can bookmark or share your content in services such as Delicious or Diigo or in news communities such as Digg or Mixx. In PR, you can also create purpose-built pages dedicated to providing an industry overview that supports your company’s position within the marketplace. With SMO, these pages can also surface in social search to reveal your side of the story.
Issuing releases on the wire and hosting them on Social Media and Web-based news services such as PitchEngine and PRWeb, is only reaching a small percentage of your potential audiences. When we think similarly to the multitude of potential customers who represent different markets, it becomes clear that in order to reach them, we must connect with them directly where they congregate to discover and share information.
In addition to wires and Web services, PR can benefit by creating and linking to corporate profiles on content networks such as Docstoc or Scribd. Uploading related press releases, whitepapers, research papers, customer success stories, etc., combined with strategic SMO, enable people to find your information above others. And like YouTube, copies of this content are also embeddable and downloadable providing the seamless sharing and dissemination of supporting documents such as financial statements or market reports, or perhaps, the press release itself. Imagine hosting a dedicated channel of supportive written documentation.
Call to Action
One of the most compelling attributes of new media releases is the ability to direct focus and activity. Now that we've embraced the notion that the press release can also serve customers directly, why not borrow a page from the worlds of inbound marketing and advertising by integrating a "call to action" in the body of the release. Southwest Airlines experimented with direct links to discounted airfares within the release, recording $1 million in sales directly attributed to the release appearing in search. Many other companies successfully guide and rally customer activity by integrating links to "Buy It Now," "Vote," "Tell Us What You Think," or "Register Here" pages on the Web.
Wire Distribution
While releases are hosted online as they appear in the template, the wire is a different story. The embedded images and logos for social networks can't necessarily cross the "wire," since technically only text can make the journey to news desks. However, integrated links, embed codes, and keywords remain intact.
Note: for contact information, you can also include links to your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, vcards, or any other form of social contact that effectively reaches you.
Press releases are both a mechanism for refining and distributing news and now also serve as a conduit for connecting influencers and customers to information as well as the people behind the story through social networks. Upgrading the template for the development of press releases improves the foundation for the story and the transparency, authenticity, and believability required to extend it across social networks, online press outlets, and throughout the blogosphere.
Press releases represent a privilege to share our story with others of absolute consequence. They might serve as a required form of communication and disclosure, but releases do not fundamentally guarantee an audience, coverage, nor sharing. It’s our job and our obligation to amplify, extend, and connect our stories to the communities who can benefit from the advancements and innovation that define our business.
How does this change your process for writing and distributing your next press release?
Update:PRESSfeed offers a free browser toolbar to help optimize traditional press releases for SEO.
I’ve just returned from Next09 in Hamburg and Disruptive Media in Stockholm where I’ve unveiled my new focus for what just may serve as the foundation for one of the next two books I hope to write.
As we are tempted by social networks and the kinship of new friends, followers, and fans, we intentionally or inadvertently, create a new era of personal recognition and attention that extracts an unconditioned human response and consequently shapes an unpredictable personality and behavior over time.
Social networking, common sense, prudence, and direction are not ingrained in our DNA. We all need a little help and advice, now more than ever.
We're becoming important in our own domain and it's blurring the lines of how we interact and behave when we step outside of it. At the same time however, finding comfort beyond of our comfort zones opens our heart and mind to appreciating and ultimately engendering new opportunities. This is how we can create our own destiny and one day, work our way to becoming significant.
Embody the change you wish to symbolize - today.
Be. Do. Get.
Determine exactly where, who or what you strive to achieve...
Symbolize and exercise the attributes, responsibilities, and disciplines required to earn and sustain your aspirations...
Earn the very thing you were already becoming as you forced evolution through actions and outlook...
This is very much our moment in which we are empowered to shape how history remembers us.
Nowadays and for the foreseeable future, we are measured by the relationships we perpetuate and judged by the company we keep. Therefore, it’s our obligation to explore the strategies and techniques that help us navigate through the chasms that surround the Social Web. We can only be enlightened through the study of what we think we know, don’t know and what we should know about the rapid evolution of media and the transformation of relationships, self-worth, human interaction, and how what we say, don’t say, share, and consume ultimately affects and defines us.
This is our chance to have a positive effect on the future of media, our culture, and our place within the social ecosystem. While we perceive the social landscape to lay flat, it is very much hierarchical.
This is an opportunity to earn genuine significance through sincere and productive curation, recognition, alignment, and interaction.
I believe we are at the cusp of a personal fusion of separate yet hopelessly intertwined ideologies and methodologies and the connections we forge based on shared interests and passions. This works for and against us as we set the stage for engineering individual and collective significance or irrelevance.
It’s a delicate collision that births a new level of consciousness and awareness, setting the stage for literacy, ethics, and with it, higher education and insight.
The Human Network
How we establish and configure our human network is maturing with the socialization of the Web. Before Web 2.0, we maintained relationships through written correspondence (email and snail mail), instant and text messaging, fax, phone, and in person – but it was typically confined to those contacts with whom we mostly knew or were getting to know.
In the era of the social Web, we are building a human network that transcends geographic boundaries as it expands our reach, connections, potential influence, and exposure to new ideas and principles. Social networks alter the way we think about how we embrace social media – personally and professionally. Our connections are no longer defined, nor are they bound or limited to that of our traditional relations or association. Now, we enjoy the freedom to choose with whom we wish to follow and ultimately connect, creating a framework linked by shared interests, aspirations, and distractions.
We are defining a new era of society and how we ultimately communicate with one another and it’s not only facilitating distributed interaction and globally dispersed contextual networks, but also spotlighting those individuals who can consistently demonstrate expertise, capture attention, and empower their matrix of peers. We are bound by commonalities online, which extends our relevant net beyond relatives and those with whom we have somehow, some way, experienced introduction or sustained contact.
In many ways, we’re fueling a genre of aspiring digital celebrities whose new found sense of Internet fame is measured in connections, the ability to inspire and galvanize action, and the encompassing conversations that extend their work, ideologies, and insights beyond the first degree of their social graph.
However, relationships over time are measured by the mutually beneficial rewards that we experience over time. We invest in each other and harvest the fruits of our collaboration and interconnection.
The Privilege of Participation
The success of any business or career starts with you and is only amplified by how you harness the promise of the social Web to earn prominence and influence online and in the real world.
Those who stop seeking wisdom, answers, direction, or guidance, will find themselves competing against the very people who formerly represented their community of followers and friends.
While in Germany I had the good fortune of spending some time with Andrew Keen, author of the controversial book, ‘The Cult of the Amateur.” Keen and I have corresponded over the years and he’s someone whom I’ve come to respect and admire. He possesses a unique aptness to assume a seemingly adversarial position only to introduce you to credible and ambitious plans to improve the future of media and communications.
In his book, Keen describes social media and the networks and platforms that define it as conduits for nothing more than ignorant egocasting, “They claim to be all about ‘social network’ with others, but in reality they exist so that we can advertise ourselves.”
Indeed, many of us spend far too much time broadcasting and not enough time listening. As Social Media is democratizing the Web, it is also creating opportunities for the emergence of new influencers, mediums, while contributing to a state of informational anarchy. As Keen puts it, “many of us have strong opinions, yet most of us are profoundly uninformed.”
While we’re both excited and enticed by the new found freedom and power associated with sharing our thoughts and observations in social networks, blogs, and micro communities, we’re also seduced and intoxicated by personal recognition and validation. We’re lured into a false sense of hope and the illusion of fame and relevance and it potentially takes us off course from securing the objectives we hope to achieve . Without realization, many of us are not embodying the democratization of content at all, but instead the deconstruction and dissemination of authority and influence in the name of self-expression and freedom of speech.
This is why you are my inspiration and focus. Together, we’re going to leverage the socialization of the Web to build a prominent presence and community for the values, beliefs, and interests for which we stand in cooperation with those who share them.
Indeed, perhaps we should spend less time taking and apply a little more effort into giving and giving back.
Is this really about conversations or is this a channel to share inconsequential information or personal exploits. Truthfully, we have to ask ourselves, at some point, how does that help us?
We give far too much credit to common sense. As discussed with Anders Abrahamsson, sometimes common sense equates to common nonsense.
Very few conversations we witness or join are actually two-way, limited by the technology and culture of existing networks. For example, in Twitter, conversations are disjointed. And in networks where conversations are indeed threaded, time, focus, and attention inhibit follow up.
There’s a responsibility that comes with participating on the Social Web and it is a privilege we must recognize and personify.
Before we represent our day job as marketers, customer service professionals, artists, advertisers, branding experts, product designers and developers, et al, we ARE individuals and consumers with views and opinions tied together by personality and passion. The Social Web presents us with an opportunity to amplify our unique persona as an individual and also as a representative for an organization. Our perspective, and the way we share it, establishes character, earns trust and respect, builds presence, and attracts crowds of individuals who also maintain loyal communities of followers for each entity, but not equally.
Participation and cultivation are unique to the perceptions we wish to create and fortify. People and brands must grow their presence across the social Web through strategic and dedicated participation, community building, and relationship management – with some allowance for overlap. But attention and relationships are not earned through broadcasting, they’re established through the art and science of unmarketing, curation, empowerment, and individual recognition rooted in sociological, psychological, and human influenced observation as well as through enlightened interaction.
The laws of diminishing attention and our ability to seize it govern the Social Economy. We’re constantly struggling and learning how to discover and in turn, personify our place within the perpetually evolving social universe.
It is the ongoing saga of bridging the distances between who we are, who we want to be, and what we represent and furthermore, manifesting a cohesive and value-added presence outward.
I believe that we create and define our online persona with every status update, tweet, video, picture, review, comment, and post, we share. We’re forging networks through a fusion of traditional relationships and friendships and also contextually - following and friending those whom we admire and respect based on their ideas, vision, and experience. It’s how we share, discover and learn. The nature for how we view and establish relationships is evolving before us and eventually we will change how we interact based on the contextual network we’ve built.
Truth be told, most of your “friends” don’t care about your professional endeavors. Concurrently, your peers and professional contacts are not better off for knowing about your personal exploits.
Customers have choices and they’re always looking for information to help them make decisions. How does this affect what you share online?
Friends, family and casual acquaintances need not know about the brand, products, and services you represent. Instead, they’re driven by personal observations, activities, and updates.
We can’t be one thing to all people and thus a collision and ensuing fallout is imminent.
So, what’s next?
Multiple Personality “Order.”
Take a moment to think of yourself as a content publisher. Hearst, for example, maintains over 200 publications globally each with its own unique view and focus. It’s not unheard of to cultivate communities through the practice of contributing dedicated information and hosting beneficial dialogue within the specific communities that can benefit from the interaction.
Don’t be surprised if eventually, even if for only a short time, we maintain multiple online personas in the networks that are important to us as a consumer and also as a brand ambassador. It’s the only way to accurately and ethically maintain consequential and dedicated presences in professional and personal conversations that don’t negatively impact or jeopardize devoted relationships.
Just because we have the tools to publish, doesn’t necessarily mean we have something of relevance to share, nor does it ensure that we have an audience.
It’s our individual responsibility to:
- Provide clarity in a time of social chaos and a concentrated signal through online noise and chatter
- Understand what the Social Web really is and what it means for our personal brand as well as the corporate brand we represent
- Create an online corporate and/or personal brand to excel in any industry – written in an inspirational and easy to digest narrative
- Interpret the shift in content consumption and production in order to leverage it for personal and brand amplification and community building
- Comprehend the cultures defining the most popular social networks and how to engage uniquely and independently within each – if we are welcome and encouraged to do so
- Learn how to become a digital anthropologist, sociologist, and ethnographer to immerse, adapt to, and chart any online community in order to build a brand and fan base that spans across each applicable network
- Grasp the art of cultivating a community around our brand and persona and its corresponding impact on the business and financial bottom line
- Create presence and rally action in social networks and blogs for only those instances that merit it
- Master the technique to measure the reach of your brand and the ROI of focused strategies and tactics
We’re already inundated with an overwhelming array of books and blogs covering Twitter, Facebook, and Social Media in general – and more are on the way. However, very few actually demonstrate how to specifically leverage the platforms and cultures that define the “Conversation Prism” in order to become significant online and IRL (in real life). Many are left confused, misinformed or worse, fictitiously empowered to make a difference.
We share in the quest for motivation and instruction to responsibly and effectively participate in order to build vibrant communities around solutions, commonalities, personality and values. This is how we forge meaningful relationships, enlist and commission catalysts and evangelists, and establish fandoms Web wide to propel ourselves into some form of greatness and notoriety.
The challenge is that only a small percentage of individuals and organizations have figured out how to build visibility online. For many others, this has merely dwindled into a meager popularity contest instead of a quest to achieve personal “and” business success. A significant percentage of total interaction is far from human, and even worse, far from interesting and therefore irrelevant.
Right now Twitter boasts only roughly 20+ million users and roughly 30-40% month-to-month retention rate. Facebook has surged to 200 million users. There are over 100 million blogs published today, with one created every minute of every day. YouTube is hosting roughly 90-100 million online videos. Yet, only a tiny fraction of each community has mastered the art of dialogue and content creation that warrants and supports a sense of community and individual influence. In all reality, many have gamed or manipulated networks to build up followers, and most aren’t quite sure what to even do with them. And for the rest of those content contributors who continue to upload useless, irrelevant, and in many cases, irreverent content, they take away from overall value and promise of the networks they dilute.
Many people are diving into social networks and making missteps in the process. Most don’t realize that everything they do on the social Web collectively builds a “persona” that either builds or takes away from their aspirations and opportunities of reaching new levels.
According to Kevin Donline of The Star Tribune Minneapolis, “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.”
Education company Kaplan, a unit of Washington Post Co., surveyed 500 top colleges. The study found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged researching social network profiles to evaluate applicants. 38% of the colleges that factor information gathered from the social web revealed that their findings "negatively affected" their views of the applicant, with several admissions officers rejecting students because of the publicly shared content.
Your persona is yours to define, cultivate, nurture, and craft. Ignorance is not bliss. Everything we post and share on the web collectively contributes to a perception, right or wrong, of who we are and what we stand for. And, it is readily discoverable through search engines and in turn, open to interpretation.
Your reputation precedes you.
It's the curation of all of our disparate and distributed social objects that collectively contribute to our reputation and Social Capital.
Perception IS reality. We can’t get carried away. We must open our eyes.
The social economy flourishes on the exchange of earning and cashing-in on social capital and also through the selfless acts paying “it” forward to bolster the capital of those who move us.
According to Forrester Research, only 1/3 of all people on the Web produce content – leaving a significant percentage of people who simply read, consume, and share. However, the volume of that percentage increases daily.
The Social Web creates unheard of opportunities for worthy individuals and organizations to establish greatness – much like Hollywood in its heyday. But also like Hollywood, aspirations and dreams aren’t always realized. But still, this about becoming significant, earning prominence through our individual contributions and the recognition of others.
Those with ambition and vision also need help understanding how to leverage the social web to become significant. Even rock stars and celebrities need expert managers. Sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves. Sometimes we need not to learn from mistakes in the public microscope.
Restraint, focus, purpose, hope, and judgment will help us build a more formidable online presence while also improve the caliber of user generated content and media literacy overall.
ROI?
How about ROP?
Yes, we should seek deeper meaning and return on our individual participation from the Social Web.
While many have always found comfort in sharing their views and words, we are also empowering individuals who never might have expressed themselves otherwise.
But almost everyone has, or should have, questions when it comes to individual participation, not just how we as online personalities or brand representative need to think about how to leverage Twitter, Facebook, Ning, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, etc.
If we refocus the conversational lens from a business-to-consumer perspective to a person-to-person consumer connection, we realize that many of the interaction has been less on dialogue and more on blindly launching information across “attention” bows. When we stop and reflect upon conversations as they exist and how they should materialize and thrive, our voice will shift away from broadcasting and promotion to one of empathy. Listeners make the best conversationalists and mastering the art of observation and combining it with attentiveness, consideration, introspection, and the ability to connect answers to questions regulated by the rules of respect and etiquette, we might one day earn influence and the corresponding social capital and intelligence that facilitates the ability to define one’s own destiny.
The future is ours to define and it’s both inspiring and auspicious.
Extending the discussion of the Social Economy I reviewed during Next09, I explored the benefits of separating the emphasis of "Me" from Social Media and the advantages of a holistic practice of concerted listening and ongoing observation to shape our participation in the Social Web.
Collectively, we all share the need to discover who we are and why matter to those with whom we wish to connect. But, we should also share a common desire to rise above the noise and establish a formidable and valuable online presence and defined human network that transcends from the online world to the real world.
Why is anyone better off for following or friending us?
As a digital society, we are individually investing in our social capital spurred by unconscious and also deliberate acts that unknowingly convey complacence and fuel an ambition to acquire notoriety and recognition.
Self-importance versus self-awareness...
While we are captivated by the ability to broadcast through the stratosphere and in the process, procure friends and followers, we loose sight of the true opportunity represented by the Social Web. It's not the ability to share what we want, when we want. It's not the rewards of popularity and the illusion of fandom. This is a chance and a means to forge a network of influence based on the expertise and knowledge we amass and share.
Social Capital isn't the currency of The Social Economy after all, it is merely a stature that is representative of what we share, the relationships we earn, and the perception others form based on our participation and contribution in social networks and IRL (in real life).
Attention has officially emerged as the portal to the Social Economy and in order to capture it, we must create or share content so intriguing, relevant, and thoughtful that it forces action and ideally triggers a response.
Content is still king and therefore information and the conversations that support it, symbolize the true currency of the Social Economy.
Twitter, Facebook, TweetDeck, FriendFeed, Seesmic, PeopleBrowsr, Tweetie, et al, have emerged as our attention dashboards. It's where we share, update, consume, and learn. We click away and return based on the content that flows through our timeline. It's the ideas we share, the personality we portray, the stories we tell, the individuals we spotlight, and the dissemination of the things that inspire and teach us that increase our chances of capturing attention to connect and motivate.
DO I HAVE YOUR...
Sometimes we benefit from the art of practicing restraint in order to breathe in the essence of the community we wish to galvanize. The Social Web is not a right, it should be embraced as a privilege. In the end, we earn the attention and the relationships we earn and nurture.
We must transform how we participate and engage online to shift from talking "at" people to investing in the collective consciousness of those communities we wish to influence, foster, and promote.
We must believe we have something to learn.
We must have something of value to share.
It's about the journey we share and not the destination. This is our time to contribute to a more meaningful and mindful future of media and communications and create our own prominence in the process. Our culture and societal values are ours to define - for better or for worse. We must ask ourselves whether or not we take responsibility for the social physics that shape its direction and governance.
Will you seize this opportunity to become significant online and in the real world?
In the end we're measured by our actions and not words. The question is, how do you want to be perceived and remembered?
Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley. Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, and regularly contributes marketing & tech insight to industry publications. He’s a published author and an avid speaker on the topic of new marketing and engagement.
Solis is among the original thought leaders who paved the way for Social Media. He’s a co-founder of the Social Media Club and a founding member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup.
Bio here.
Brian Solis actively keynotes, moderates, and speaks at industry conferences, corporate events, and training workshops. To discuss the possibility of having him speak or provide training, please contact him directly: pr2point0 [at] gmail [dot] com
SOBCon - Chicago, May 2, 2009
Topic: Communication Networks and Competition in the SocialSphere
PRSA - Digital Impact - April 30, 2009
Keynote: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
Inbound Marketing Summit - San Francisco, April 28, 2009
Topic: Using Outbound Communications for the New Web to Drive Exposure and Results
New Comm Forum 2009 - San Francisco, April 27, 2009
Topic: Social Media & Investor Relations – Disclosure & Other Issues
Topic: The New Organization Landscape for Marketing Communications
Girls in Tech LA - Los Angeles, April 16, 2009
Topic: The New World of PR
San Francisco State University, April 14, 2009
Topic: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
SVASE: Startup-U - San Francisco, April 9, 2009
Topic: DIY vs. Outsourced PR & Social Media for Startups
Blog World Expo - Las Vegas, Sept. 20, 2008
Topics: Crossing the Conversation Chasm, New Media PR, & Social Media + Customer Service
Web 2.0 Expo - New York, Sept. 17, 2008
Topic: How Web 2.0 Changed Marketing and PR
PRSA T3 - New York, Sept. 11, 2008
Topic: Return on Participation: Measuring Social Media Strategies
ASAE Connecting - San Diego, CA, August 19,2008
Topic: Media Relations is Dead, Long Live Media Relations
Digital Hollywood Building Blocks - San Jose, CA, Aug 7, 2008
Topic: The Widget Economy - The Information, Advertising, Next Generation Digital Consumer Experience
Bulldog University, August 7, 2008
Topic: Supercharging Press Releases, SEO, SMO, MMO
StartUp SF - San Francisco, June 18, 2008
Topic: PR for Startups
PRSA LA - Los Angeles, June 12, 2008
Topic: Introducing Conversational Public Relations
