A Geek in PR

I Did A Guest Post You Should Read

2011-07-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy with work lately and haven't had time to really write a post here in a while. My apologies.

However, I did write a guest post for the oneforty.com blog yesterday that I really liked and I think you should read it. Rather than re-posting it here and stealing their readers, I'm just going to link to it. It's about finding an easy way for all departments in your company to have a handle on what's going on in social media without really disrupting their regular work flow. Check it out and enjoy:

How to: Rout Social Media Through Your Whole Organization

Why Would I Do That For YOUR Brand?

2011-06-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on the Sysomos blog, my colleague Mark Evans wrote a great post about what's in it for consumers if they "like" or follow your brand in social media? Some people will do that out of a real love for a specific brand, but most brands are trying to get anyone and everyone to also "like" them. But what are brands doing to earn that? Some aren't doing anything besides just asking you to "like" and follow them. This idea ties in perfectly with a picture I took this weekend.

This weekend I went out for a friend's birthday to a bar I've never been to before in the Toronto area (the name isn't important). What was interesting about this bar was that up on the wall was a giant poster, which I took a picture of because I thought it was semi humorous and I'd never seen a poster quite like this one before. This is the poster that was in the bar:

I thought it was semi clever of the bar to have a big reminder to check-in on Foursquare, Gowalla or Yelp. I would have checked in anyways (I need the points so I can beat my friends), but perhaps some people wouldn't have thought about it until they saw this sign. So, I checked in and... and nothing. That was the end of it.

I've seen posters and signs in places before reminding people to check-in, but usually it's because there's a deal to be had with that check-in or at least something for the mayor of that specific place. In this case though there was nothing beyond merely checking in. I thought that a bit strange.

What does my check-in do for that bar besides possibly a tiny bit of publicity to those that check where I've been on Foursquare (as I don't push my check-ins to Twitter or Facebook or anything). You would think that since they were clearly asking the pubic for a favour, by asking them to check-in, there would be some sort of "reward" or something to go along with that check-in, but there wasn't.

This goes back to my original question; what did this brand do to earn me checking in? I'm not really a fan of the bar in question, so I didn't do it out of my love for them. There was no deal for anyone who checks-in, mayor or otherwise. So what's in it for the average consumer to actual check-in? In this case nothing and I learned my lesson.

This also goes back to the Sysomos post from yesterday. Brands need to offer something to get people really engaged with them. It doesn't have to be a free something-or-other or even a discount, but there should be something to make us want to engage with these brands. Otherwise they're just asking us all to do some free advertising for them with absolutely nothing in return. That's not really a way to keep people engaged with your brand, that's a way to try to get people to advertise for you for free whether they really want to or not.

So here's my question I'm going to ask and you can answer in the comment section; What are you offering your audience in return for them taking time to engage with you? Content? Discounts? Engaging conversation? Anything?

Or, am I just being petty?

Can You Have Privacy In Social Media?

2011-06-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

People by nature are social. That's pretty much the reason that social media has become so popular. We like to talk and connect with people over all kinds of things. But is there ever such thing as too much connecting? Can someone be fully into this social media revolution of "let's all be connected" and still have some kind of online privacy?

I face this challenge every day. Yes, I love social media. Yes, I love connecting with people over all kinds of things. Yes, I'm open to meeting and becoming friends with almost anyone anywhere in the world. However, sometimes I don't need the whole world to know EVERY little thing about me and what I do. That's why I'm pretty much open to connecting with people almost anywhere in the real world and online, but I reserve my Facebook for just select people.

I look at Facebook as a place to stay in touch with my real friends. Most of my good friends aren't into the whole social media lifestyle and Facebook is the one place that most of them are online. It's a place where can share pictures and talk and whatever. It's not like there's any incriminating evidence of me doing weird and/or illegal things there, but it's the one place online that I keep for just me and my friends.

I don't think it's that strange of a practice. I'm sure a lot of people do this. I mean, we've all heard the stories of people that have been fired because of something they said on Facebook forgetting that they're Facebook friends with their boss. Sometimes there's just a need to have a little private space.

I've been fairly good about sticking to this rule. Every once and a while I get a friend request from someone who I spoke to once on Twitter about business and I kindly let it slide. However, some people get offended when you don't become their "friend."

Here's my question though; do they have the right to get angry about it? Am I an asshole for not accepting their friend request?

I would understand if they were someone who considered you to be a real good friend, but someone who you sent two tweets to hardly constitutes a friend. I add work colleagues to Facebook, but only the ones that I've gotten to know and really consider a friend. People assume though that because I'm available to connect pretty much everywhere online, why wouldn't I let them into Facebook as well?

Is it too much to want a little bit of privacy online in a social media world?

I don't want to sound like a jerk or anything when I write this. I actually kind of mean it as a serious question. I've told you what I think of this, I'd love to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let me know if you think I'm a jerk or not. Do you have a private space on the internet? Do you wish you did?

Countdown to SXSWi

2011-03-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

Hello friends, it's been a while. Been a bit busy with work and havent found the time to blog lately, but today I have an alliterative motive to blogging. It's because I'm going to SXSWi and I want to be able to meet as many awesome people as I can while I'm there.

I've been working as a community manager for Sysomos for almost a year now (about 10 months) and I've built up a great network of people online, but haven't had a chance to meet many in person yet. I think a lot of these great people will be down at SXSWi beacuse it's a gathering of social media and tech people, and I want to meet as many as posible. I want to meet current clients, potential clients, social media writers and bloggers and pretty much everyone else that will be there.

On top of the Sysomos community, I have a great bunch of people in my online networks that I know from outside other places whom will also be down in Austin. I want to meet all of them too. If you can't tell I'm really excited to go down to Texas and pretty much meet everyone I can to expand both my company's and my own networks (although, they are kind of one in the same).

So if you're going to be down in Austin for South By South West Interactive, please let me know and lets meet in real life. If you're there and looking for me, because I hide my face in most of my online avatars, this is what I look like:

Meeting people isn't the only reason I'm excited to go though. I'm not sure if anyone knows this but I used to work in the music industry. Before there was an "i" on the end of SXSW, South By South West was a music festival/convention that I always wanted to go to. Tons of big bands and smaller emerging artists always play there and I always wanted to go down to check it out. I always attend NXNE which happens in Toronto, but I heard that SXSW was much crazier and better. I hope I can catch some wicked music while I'm down.

And of course, I'm also excited about the "geek parties". To go along with my wanting to meet people, I've heard the best way to do this is at the parties that go on during SXSWi. I have also heard many an epic story that has come from the parties for geeks at SXSWi and I can't wait to attend some of them. I don't think I have to say any more about this. You understand.

SO, if you're going to be down at SXSWi, I want to meet you. If you're not going to be there but know someone who is, chances are I want to meet them too. Leave me a comment here and let me know you're going. Also, tweet at me, I'm @40deuce, so I can add you to my list of people I need to meet at SXSWi.

See you in Austin!

[The great photo of me above is courtesy of Rannie Turigan]

Popularity, Influence and Social Circles

2011-01-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everyone!!

I've been meaning to write a post on the idea of online influence for a while, but every time I think I have all my thoughts in order I think of something else I want to say. This morning though, I read a great article in Advertising Age about the difference in popularity and influence and it really seemed to be on the same thought wave that I am about the whole concept. It really got my mind racing, so I thought today would be the day to sit down and bang this out.

A lot of people in the social media community seem to be talking a lot about 2011 being the year of "influence". The only problem, in my opinion, is that no one really has the concept down properly. And that's probably not just my opinion, as a lot of people have been up in arms after hearing that Klout, a company that measures online influence, claimed that Justin Bieber is one of the most influential people in social media. According to the way Klout ranks influence though, it's absolutely true (and they back up their statement well here) To me, I see the problem as this not being the true idea of influence.

Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing at all against Klout. I've participated in one of their campaigns and loved it. I've had the Klout people guest moderate on my #smmeasure chat. I even met a couple of the Klout employees here in Toronto and keep in touch with them. When we met, I spoke with Megan Berry and I believe that Klout really is intent on constantly refining their process for determining online influence. However, for now and from how I understand their metrics to work, it plays off a bit more like online popularity.

To me, the difference between popularity and influence comes from an internal motivation. Liking and respecting someone are different than being influenced by them. We as people like a lot of stuff. It's part of our human way of classifying things so that we can understand. One of the easiest classifications for us is "things I like" and "things I don't like". Things we like we tend to pay attention to and things we don't like we tend to ignore.

In the online world there is so much stuff floating around and we tend to be drawn to search out the things we like. This includes web pages, products and even people. In social media we tend to follow people we like, people we respect and people we think are interesting or have interesting ideas. Some of these people seem to have large followings because they do embody one of these categories. These people are popular. Are they influential though?

To some people, yes. But I think to a majority of people they are popular and because of that are likely to have more people hear what they have to say. They have the ability to make sure thousands or even millions of people hear what they have to say, which is great, but just because I hear you doesn't mean you necessarily influence me.

To me, influence means that I trust someone enough to have their thoughts and opinions actually motivate me to do something. The key for me is the word "trust". When I really deeply trust someone I let their thoughts affect my own. And trust, I mean real trust, takes time to build. This is why I think the only real influence we get as people come from our trusted social circles and not some of the big "talking heads" we like to read online.

An example I like to use while talking about this with people is the online wine community. There is no doubt that Gary Vaynerchuk is one of, if not the most, popular online wine aficionados. People all over the world watch his Wine Library TV to see what he has to say. However, while Gary may bring new and interesting wines to the world's attention, does he necessarily influence what people think of wines?

In what I know of the world of wine (which really isn't too much) I've found that wine lovers are small communities of friends and acquaintances that like together and sip wine. They are usually like minded people who trust each others opinions and thoughts. These people influence each other on their wine thoughts. While Gary Vaynerchuk may bring new wine to their attention, it's when someone in their social circle recommends the wine that really gets people to act on it (in this case it would be buying or trying a wine).

It's through these much smaller social circles that I think real influence comes from. These social circles are made up of people whom we like, respect and most importantly trust. The trust is the key to motivation, meaning influence. I think that that if marketers and communications people really want to get a handle on influence they will need to find ways to penetrate these smaller social circles and reach out to the people there rather than go for the big popular talking heads.

I also want to point out here that I do think that popularity does have a part in the role of influence, but not nearly as much as a concept like trust does.

Going back to Klout, I think that they are working on ways to find these people that are influential within these smaller social circles. A problem they face though is that a lot of these social circles exist more offline than they do online. It's not to say that they aren't online, but there is something that these offline bonds have that just isn't found as much online.

In the meantime though, are a lot of people still going to see what popular people like Justin Bieber and Gary Vaynerchuck have to say? Of course. But are these people really having true influence over those that hear what they have to say? I don't think so. They may turn our heads to something we previously didn't know about, but true motivation to do or buy something new will come from inside of us and our feelings of trust towards who is telling us.

I know personally I trust my actual friends a lot more than the word of someone I've never met or spoken to but follow on Twitter.

And that's my rant on the idea of online influence. What do you think? Are we ever going to be able to truly measure the idea of influence?

We Live In Public

2010-12-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

I was planning on writing my year end blog tonight, but I'm now saving it for a few days so that I could write about this great documentary I saw yesterday.

Yesterday I was invited over to some friends' place to watch the documentary We Live In Public. It's dubbed the story of the greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of. The tag line does not lie.

We Live In Public is the story of an internet entrepreneur named Josh Harris. Josh Harris was a leader in the dot-com scene/ explosion in the end of the 90's. He started the first internet television network called Pseudo, but was obsessed with the idea of putting people's lives on the internet. He hit the hight of his obsession with two projects, or experiments as he called them, both with the title of We Live In Public.

The first "experirment" was actually called Quiet: We Live In Public. For this project Harris took 100 people and had them live in an underground bunker like building he specially built for a month. Inside the bunker he had set up pods for sleeping and hundreds of cameras and TVs that only showed what was on the cameras. The people were given free food, drink, board and even artillery (they had a shooting range in the bunker) in exchange for Harris being allowed to tape everything and probe for information from the inhabitants. The thing that was unclear to me was if this whole thing was streaming to the outside world on the internet, but I assumed it was given the nature of the man. It looks like it started off fun, but people eventually started to go a bit nuts with their whole lives being viewed publicly 24/7.

The second "experiment" Harris tried was just called We Live In Public. This was the first ever reality show almost. For this project Harris wired up his entire home with cameras and streamed the life of him and his then girlfriend to the world along with an interactive chat feature. Again, the pressure of being in the eye of the public 24/7 proved to be too much and his girlfriend left him and he eventually became frustrated with it and shut it down.

While these experiments on their own seemed really interesting, it was the commentary of the film and how ahead of his time Harris was that really struck me.

Today, social media is exactly like Harris' dream of what the internet would become. It's people talking about and sharing their lives with complete strangers via the interwebs. Through the use of blogs and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Flickr and other forms of web 2.0 we are all sharing our lives. Some more than others, but still enough of us that it's become almost the norm. Harris saw this happening over 10 years ago.

I don't want to ruin the whole film for you because I really think that everyone who lives and plays on the interwebs should see this film, but I need to give you one more quote from the movie. Harris makes a great play on Andy Warhols' famous "15 minutes of fame" idea by saying (and this may or may not be an exact quote as I'm working from memory), "people want their 15 minutes of fame... every day." I think that perfectly summarizes how some of us internet folk are everyday.

Yes, we do it for the social interaction and to share ideas in ways we couldn't 10 or 15 years ago, but we also do it for personal reasons. We all want to do something extraordinary and more than that, we want to be recognized for it. Even I'm guilty of this. In a world where we can be known around the world for something small, why wouldn't we constantly try to stand out?? Why wouldn't we try anything to be in the eye of as much public as we can if we have the means to??

The question will soon become though, like it did in the movie, how long can live our lives in public?? How long will social media be like it is?? How much of our lives can we share before we NEED to pull back??

Check out the trailer for We Live In Public here:

If you've seen the movie, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts about it. If you haven't seen the movie, see it, then let me know what you think. If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to see it, I'd still love to know your thoughts about living our lives in public through the internet, so leave me a comment and lets talk about it.

Why the World Was Ready For WikiLeaks

2010-12-14T19:47:00.000-08:00

I'm by no means a big fan of politics. I pay attention enough to have some idea of what's going on here and there, but not much beyond that. But, like a large portion of the world I've become kind of enthralled by WikiLeaks. (I linked to a Google search because the web address for the site keeps changing)

While some of the things that have been released by the information leaking organization are chock full of interesting information about some of the most powerful countries in the world, I don't want to talk about that in this post. I don't want to talk about the continuing adventures of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. I don't even really want to talk about WikiLeaks specifically. What I do want to talk about is how from a social media slash PR perspective, the world was ready for something like WikiLeaks.

While some of the world has a certain perspective on PR people as "spin artists", those in the industry know different. One of the first things they told me in PR school was "don't lie." People want the truth. If you're going to give the public information about something, don't lie. There are certain ways to handle certain situations, but most seasoned PR professionals will tell you that lying usually comes back to bite you in the ass.

Then, In social media we talk a lot about transparency. Transparency is almost the exact same thing as "don't lie", but people in social media like to use it more. It also goes a bit beyond just don't lie and covers ideas like don't hide information, full disclosure and be accountable for your own actions. People now demand transparency from companies and celebrities and pretty much everyone in the world through social media.

If we demand these things from companies and people we look up to, why would we not demand the same from our governments?? The answer is we do, most people just wouldn't know how to act on that. Luckily though, some do.

While I don't believe some information should go out, such as releasing the names of spies or anything that really puts lives at risks, there are some things that people wanted to know their governments are up to. Sometimes governments do things that are morally wrong and more and more people are starting to stand up against this. There is no way to make them stop if we don't know about these things. The release of this information helps to hold people accountable for their actions. This is what the majority of people demand today.

Of course the people involved in the information released are upset, but that's what happens when dirty secrets get out. It's no different from when anyone's secrets get out. And when secrets get out we (usually) call people on them and want them to be accountable for their actions.

When companies do things that are immoral we call them out for it. To think that the same shouldn't be done with governments is just silly. People always want more information and when they find things that are wrong they want people to take responsibility for it. WikiLeaks has helped to bring some of that information to light for people to see.

That's why I think the world was ready for something like WikiLeaks.

Show Them So They Hear What You're Saying

2010-11-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

I wanted to get this blog out a little while ago, but I lost the key component. I've found it now, but it's a little crumpled up, but at least I found it. So, without further ado, here it is and the blog post begins...

So you think your company needs to get more involved with social media, but they're not willing to? How do make them understand? The best answer I've seen from many other social media people is to show them what's going on online involving the company.

A few weeks ago I was speaking at something for the Ontario Government about social media and I met William Young, a senior issues analyst for the cabinet office. He showed me a little report that he makes up every week for his office he calls "Blog Watch."

Every week William puts together a report that highlights some things going on in the social media space that relates to his specific office. He splits it up into three sections:

Featured Blog Topic of the Week: Here he writes about the most prevalent issue he found being talked about in the blogosphere or the one he thinks is most important. He gives a breakdown of what was being said and a couple quotes.
Weekly Blog Report: In this section William takes other subjects being talked about in blogs and gives a brief description of each.
Social Media Themes: In this last section he highlights issues from Twitter.

Your can always switch around the categories in these types of reports to focus on areas most relevant to your company.

I like the idea of doing this in a report for a couple reasons. It's much more professional looking than just telling your boss. It separates social media areas to show just how many places the talk could be going on. Most importantly, it shows specific examples.

I think if you can put something like this together your boss may just see what you're talking about.

What do you think of this idea? Do you have a better idea for getting your higher-ups to believe you that you need to be more involved in social media?

Someone Thinks I'm an Expert

2010-10-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my friend Melissa asked me to help her out with some videos she was making for her work. She was interviewing "experts" about different subjects that they specialize in.

She tapped me as a social media expert. Who knew? Someone thinks I'm an expert at something.

Doing the interview was fun. It was very casual and I had a little bit of fun with it. It didn't hurt that I also knew everyone in the room at the time and we're a bunch that likes to joke and fool around. I think the lightness of it though makes the whole thing work.

Anyways, after a few weeks of patiently waiting, they uploaded the video. Bellow you can find me being an expert on something.

After you watch, please do me a favour and leave a comment letting me know what you think. This was my first time being an expert on anything and I'd really appreciate some feedback.

Did The Interweb Kill Weird Al?

2010-09-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

No, Weird Al isn't really dead. Your geeky mind can rest at ease.

I was having a conversation the other day about Weird Al with a couple friends about how we used love him. He was a huge part of so many of my friends' childhoods. But, where is he now?

He's still putting out records (he had one last year. I looked it up on Amazon to be sure), but how many people are listening to them? I was surprised to even see that he's still doing music (No offense Al). How many kids these days know the genius that is Weird Al? Probably not a lot. Why do you think this is? I'll tell you why: the internet.

Back when Weird Al was a big deal, things like music sharing and YouTube didn't exist. Weird Al got a record deal for being the best parody artist around. He was signed to a real record label and had world-wide major distribution of actual physical products (remember when music came like that?). This is how music got to the masses not too long ago.

The internet changed all that. Now any yahoo with some kind of device that records can create a parody song and upload it to the interweb for the whole world to see. You don't even need musical talent anymore. People are making funny songs and putting them on the internet at an alarming rate. It's hard for anyone to really stand out amongst the crowd of "parody artists" on the net. Something that's hilarious one day is old news and forgotten the next. Remember this one:

Probably not. But that's my point.

Songs don't even need to parody other songs anymore. They can parody real life situations caught on tape now also. Look how popular the "bed intruder" guy is! This song is iTunes for gods sake:

The point is old channels of distribution are dying. Everyone talks about paper is dying because of the internet, but it's not the only thing. Everything that used to get distributed physically is completely changed due to the internet. And if they haven't, they better or they could get left behind.

The days of the international parody artist may behind be us, but I am enjoying all the little stars that pop up every day.

Also, I still love you Weird Al!

"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" from Aaron Paul

The Speed of Social

2010-08-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

This weekend Mitch Joel posted a fantastic article entitled "The Real Time Web is a Big Problem for the Web". In it he talked about how when things spread in real-time, like say over Twitter, it's not always the easiest to keep up. He used the story of how a plane had crashed and someone in the vicinity tweeted about it right away. Mitch saw the tweet and immediately checked CNN's website, but there was nothing about it there.

In today's society where we're exposed to information at a constant and quick pace through things like social media, instant messaging and cell phones that we expect everything else to be keeping up with us. Is that really possible?

In Mitch's case, a big news outlet like CNN has to hear about a story, do some research on the topic (even if that's just checking if said story is even really happening), write something up, edit it, get approval, send it to their guy that puts stories up on the site and then publish it before any of us common folk get to see it.

Mitch isn't alone with this problem. Tons of people, myself included, think of something and then expect instant gratification. Unfortunately the world doesn't always work like that.

I remember when I was young and I had a question, I had to wait to got home and then hope I still remembered the question. Then I could try and look it up in an encyclopedia and even then it wouldn't always hold my answer. A few years later the internet came around and if I could remember a question by the time I got home I could then google it. Now, I carry around an iPhone and when I have a question I can pull my phone out of my pocket and look up an answer instantly. Everything should be like that, right?

I work and talk a lot about brands monitoring social media for people talking about them. I wholeheartedly believe that they should be doing this and respond to a comment or join a conversation when they can. The problem is when we're the one waiting and expecting for that company to answer, we expect it to come almost instantly.

If I'm having a problem with a piece of software and I tweet at their twitter account, I would want them to answer me right away. But what if I was having my problem at 3am in the morning? Would I still expect them to respond right away? Probably, but that isn't a very realistic expectation.

You have to remember that whoever is on the other end is just a person (sometimes more than one, but still people). We say that we want brands to show us the real people working for them, but then we sometimes expect those people to be super people.

At work I handle our companies Twitter account from Toronto, but we deal with people all around the world. If someone in Australia tweets at me at my 4am, I'm not going to be able to answer them until I'm awake and moving in the morning. I'm a person too and I need my time to sleep, eat and do other things that take me away from the computer for more than five minutes at a time. I will answer them, but it probably won't be at 4:05am.

The problem with coming to this realization is that it's not going to really change anything. You're still going to expect people and brands to answer you instantly when you have a problem, or else you're going to say that they're not doing a good job with social media. Even worse is that writing this isn't going to change my perception on how the world should work either. Despite me being on the side that is supposed to be "watching all the time" and knowing the limitations to that statement, I'm still probably going to want another brand to be on the ready at my beck and call.

I suppose that's just the way our society has evolved... for now.

I figure as long as we can try to remember some of this every now and again, it's better than nothing.

What do you think?

Haters Gonna Hate and Why You Should Love Them

2010-07-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm working in the world of social media monitoring I hear and read a lot of stuff about sentiment. Mainly the talk is about negative sentiment. "We don't want people to say bad things about us", "What should I do if people are saying bad things about us?", "Here's how to deal with negative people", etc.

Now that everyone can have a voice on the internet they can also say whatever they want about whatever they want. Companies seem to have two main problems with this; a) they don't want people to say bad things in places where the entire world can see, and b) they're not sure what to do when people say something negative about them.

There's nothing you or anyone can do about the first one. People are going to speak bad about things all the time whether you're there or not, so you might as well be there. Get over that fear.

The second problem is going to have millions of answers for millions of different scenarios. The one thing that I will recommend you always do though is listen to what they're saying. Even if you're not going to respond, listen. The people who speak bad about you are your best critics in terms of constructive criticism.

Sometimes these people are just venting frustration about things, but sometimes these people are complaining because they think you're doing something wrong. Chances are if one person thinks it others do as well. If you listen to what these people are saying you're doing wrong, you have a basis to work off of on how to fix what you're doing.

When people tell you that you're doing something wrong it means that while they have something negative to say now, they're still paying attention to you. These people are part of your public, and social media in a corporate sense is about bringing together your public with your company. These people are paying attention to you but telling you they think you're doing something wrong. That means there's a good chance they want to pay attention to you and like what you're doing. By listening to these people you're getting insight into how to best reach your public in a positive way.

Some companies go for the quick fix. A quick response online apologizing and trying to make amends with a single person at a time. But, not everyone is always going to speak up. Like I said earlier, if one person has criticism of your company, chances are others are feeling the same way. Rather than respond to the ones that speak up one by one, listen to what they're saying and take it in to account when doing your next phase of planning. Don't buy people off, make them really like you by listening to what they say and take it into account.

Haters are always going to hate. People are always going to complain about something. You're not going to be able to change in response to every piece of criticism, but you are getting free input from the people that should matter to you.

Haters are gonna hate, but you should learn to embrace their hatred.

My Search is Over!!

2010-06-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not updating here in the past few weeks, but life has been a little crazy.

My best friend got married, I just moved into a new apartment, but most importantly I started a new job!!!

Yes, that's right folks, all my searching and hard work has paid off because I landed myself a new job that I'm super excited about!! I'm now the community manager for Sysomos, a company that makes social media monitoring software. This job is everything I was looking for. I get to do a perfect mix of PR and social media. I get to meet and talk to new people all day long about interesting things. What's not be excited about? Also, I really like the people at the company and the software, so this is going to be awesome!

Tomorrow morning on the Sysomos blog I'll be making my introduction to the community, so feel free to keep an eye out for that.

So, that's where I've been hiding, but now that I'm starting to settle in I'll be back posting here regularly again. Hopefully this new job wil give me even better inspiration for things to write about as well.

Some Comments on Comments

2010-05-17T16:50:00.001-07:00

I wanted to have this post up last week, but a few discussions around the topic with some people made me want to go back and reformulate it a bit.

The idea for this post started because of my last post. I was feeling kind of proud about it. I thought it was one of the more intellectual posts that I've written here. But then, no one really said anything about it. More than that, no one was commenting on it. Not that I want you to think I'm begging for comments, but something about it made me think people would have something to say about it, agreeing or disagreeing.

I mentioned something about it, which sparked a little conversation between me and some people on twitter.

A friend of mine (@joncrowley) says that sometimes when people don't comment it's because you succeeded at getting your point across well. No one has anything to add or disagree with in the post. This could be very true, but even so, perhaps that is something they could have said.

This reminded me of a blog post by another Toronto social media blogger, Dave Fleet, who wrote that Commenting Makes You Sexy. In his post he says that he enjoys getting comments of any sort on his blog because it gives him a chance to interact with and get to know his readers. He gets to know if they like what he writes, if they have something to add or if they disagree with what he has to say.

This is what every blogger should want. Feedback from your audience. That way you get to know what your audience likes that you write about and what they don't. With this information you can then write better for your audience. Seeing your posts get so many clicks is one way bloggers can know if their material is being well received, but it's not the the feed back of the actual words.

On the topic of click numbers, a former teacher and current friend of mine, Karen Snider, said that comments aren't the only measurement for blogs, and she's absolutely right. There all sorts of different types of measurement.

This topic also came up in Danny Brown's blog last week, The Metrics of Social Media. In the post he listed some ways in which companies can start measuring the success of their social media campaigns. Some examples I first picked out were things like "likes on facebook" or "views on youtube", and how these numbers also related to sales. Down in the comments though, began a great discussion of what ROI in social media means and how different measurements mean different things for different campaigns. I brought up the topic of public sentiment and we discussed how both a mix of sentiment and other numbers can be put together to find success (or to find out what doesn't work).

Again this is true. Especially when we're dealing with companies who are ultimately trying to turn their social media efforts into actual sales. The more numbers they have to look at, the more they can find out what their public really responds to and constantly improve to reach them better. These are the number they can gather both through analyzing sentiment and other web analytics.

In the end I came to the conclusion that comments can mean different things to different people. But they seem to come around to the same thing; gathering sentiment. Both companies and bloggers like to know what their publics think of what they are doing. This way they can both better get to know and improve for their audiences.

While comments are not everything, they are helpful and always good to see.

Any comments?

Some Comments on Comments

2010-05-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

I wanted to have this post up last week, but a few discussions around the topic with some people made me want to go back and reformulate it a bit.

The idea for this post started because of my last post. I was feeling kind of proud about. I thought it was one of the more intellectual posts I've written here. But then, no one really said anything about it. More than that, no one was commenting on it. Not that I want you to think I'm begging for comments, but something about it made me think people would have something to say about it, agreeing or disagreeing.

I mentioned something about it, which sparked a little conversation between me and some people on twitter.

A friend of mine (@joncrowley) says that sometimes when people don't comment it's because you succeeded at getting your point across well. No one has anything to add or disagree with. This could be very true, but even so, perhaps that is something they could have said.

On the topic of click numbers, a former teacher and current friend of mine, Karen Snider, said that comments are the only measurement for blogs, and she's absolutely right. There all sorts of different types of measurement.

This topic also came up in Danny Brown's blog last week, The Metrics of Social Media. In the post he listed some ways in which companies can start measuring the success of their social media campaigns. Some examples I first picked out were things like "likes on facebook" or "views on youtube", and how these numbers also related to sales. Down in the comments though began a great discussion of what ROI in social media means and how different measurements mean different things for different campaigns. I brought up the topic of public sentiment and we discussed how both a mix of sentiment and other numbers can be mixed to find success (or to find out what doesn't work).

Again this is true. Especially when we're dealing with companies who are ultimately trying to turn their social media efforts into actual sales. The more numbers they have to look at, the more they can find out what their public really responds to and constantly improve to reach the better. These are the number they can gather both through analyzing sentiment and other web analytics.

In the end I came to the conclusion that comments can mean different things to different people. But they still same to come around to the same thing; gathering sentiment. Both companies and bloggers like to know what their publics think of what they are doing. This way they can both better get to know and improve for their audiences.

While comments are not everything, they are helpful and always good to see.

Any comments?

My 3 I's for a Social Media Campaign

2010-05-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

While I was in my Masters program down in Australia one of my big semester-long projects was to come up with a full communications plan for a fictitious company. Of course, I decided to make my plan focus around the use of social media.

I came up with a plan I called "The Three I's". I liked it, and I did fairly well on the project. I added the comm. plan to my portfolio to show perspective employers, and those who saw it seemed to like the idea. One even asked if I had come up with it "all by myself"? Although, it didn't get me that job.

Anyways, that got me thinking. My Three I's plan worked for that specific project, but in reality I now believe that it can, and should, be applied to all social media campaigns. Let me explain...

The three I's of my plan stand for: Inform, Interact and Integrate.

These three simple things should be the goal of every social media campaign. Here's why:

First, social media is a way to stay in constant contact with your publics. The first thing you'll want to do through your points of contact is to Inform your public. You want to inform them of your company/product, things you're doing, things you're working on, etc. Pretty much anything that you feel your publics should know you can pass along through social media. Always be informing your public. The more info they have, the more they get to know you/your company/your product.

The second "I" stands for Interact. Any half-decent so-called social media expert (myself included) should tell you that social media is not a soap box to yell from, but rather a place to converse and interact with your publics. Once you've disseminated some information you've (usually) created something where a conversation can start. People can talk about liking or not liking your information, or it could go deeper into conversations about how the info came to be, or suggestions on how to improve on said information. The key is to have this conversation go on between your public and your own brand.

Interact doesn't only have to be about the information from the first "I" either. Conversations about any and all facets of companies/products are taking place across social media all the time whether you're involved or not. It would be much better if you were involved. This could be from jumping in on others' conversations, to responding to blog posts written about your company/product, or simply just answering messages sent to you by your public.

The key here is to make sure you're interacting with your public, not just (figuratively) shouting things at them.

The last "I" is the most important one. It also incorporates the first two I's. This one is Integrate, and refers to bringing all parties together into one single community. It's not just enough to try and get stick your head in when people are talking about your company/product. People not only want to know that you are listening, but they want to know that you care and respect them. They want to feel like a part of your community. They want to feel welcomed by you. The more welcome they feel the more they will interact with you and the more they will like/respect you.

In my project I referred to creating this warm and welcoming enviroment by creating what is known as a "virtual third space". There are three key factors to creating this virtual third space, and here is how I laid them out in my project (the italics are what I'm adding in to generalize for every social media campaign, since my original project only focused on one specific campaign):

1) “Virtual third places should situate the interaction in clearly defined locations and/or cultural contexts.” (Soukup, 433)

This will be where you will interact with your community. This could be one specific location, such as your website, or across multiple social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Deli.cio.us, etc), or any combination of online spaces.

2) “A virtual third place must create an environment that attracts diverse community members to join in and participate with the discourse.” (Soukup, 434)

This refers to both where you are putting yourself as well as what information you are putting in those places. You may have different segments of the population you want to bring into your community and they probably interact in different locations and in different ways. For instance, your younger targets may be on Facebook and interact there through quick messages and the "like" button, while your older target publics may prefer Twitter and they like to have full conversations with you through it. The point is to know the diversity of your public and know how to make them feel warm and welcome as part of your community.

3) “Presence, the third condition, is the means of constructing this warm and welcoming home away from home for the participating members.” (Soukup, 435)

This third points touches on the first two along with my first two I's. If you're putting out the proper information to the proper people in the proper places, and then trying to create that interaction with those same people in those same places, your community should be feeling like part of a real community. And that's the whole point of actually being on social media. Creating this warm and welcoming community.

My actual school project went into a bit more detail, but I think (and hope) you get the point of what I was trying to say.

In my personal opinion, if you can accomplish these three I's in your social media campaign then you have a great success on your hands. Of course there are other factors to look at like hard numbers for your ROI purposes and what not, but achieving these three I's should be a goal for all social media campaigns as well.

So next time you're putting together a social media campaign try to remember to Inform, Interact and Integrate.

I'd love to know what you think of my "Three I's" idea, so please leave some comments and let me know.

Reference:
Soukup, Charles. (2006). Computer-Mediated Communication as a Virtual Third Place: Building Oldenburg’s Great Good Places on the World Wide Web. New Media and Society. Vol8(3):421–440

#HAPPO #FAIL

2010-05-03T17:40:00.000-07:00

The last post I wrote here I spoke about the second #HAPPO day that was happening on April 30th (last Friday).

My big plan was to write up a new #HAPPO post on Thursday to have ready to go fresh for Friday.

Unfortunately, I'm sometimes a forgetful idiot and I forgot about something major happening on Thursday. I was having eye surgery!!! (Click that link if you want to know about my eye surgery)

Anyways, long story short, I was blind for all of Thursday and even most of Friday. I never got to write my #HAPPO post and I never got to take advantage of the new contacts I could have made.

I wasn't planning on that day turning right into a job, but I was hoping to make some good connections for a possible upcoming jobs just as I had during the first #HAPPO day.

So, for all of those that read my blog and were looking for that post on Friday, that's why it wasn't there, because I'm stupid sometimes.

I do plan on making it up though with a fantastic post this week (not this one, I promise).

#HAPPO 2: This Time I Need YOUR Help

2010-04-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take you back to a time long ago... about two months ago to be exact.

The day was February 19th and it was the first ever Help A PR Pro Out day, or #HAPPO for short.
The idea behind #HAPPO day was to bring together PR professionals and to help the ones who were currently not working to find new positions. Click here to read my pre-#HAPPO day explanation.

From what I saw, the day was a success. Not in that every person who wrote a pitch had a job by the end of the day, but new connections in the industry were formed all across North America. I know that I connected with people who I never would have known previously. This blog, where my pitch was posted, had the most traffic it had ever seen in a single day. I also received a lot of compliments from complete strangers on my pitch, which was very heart warming and almost as good as finding a job.

One thing I noticed was that a lot of the people who were pitching themselves to companies/agencies were people like me, current or very recently graduated PR students.

Apparently I wasn't the only one to notice that, as the organizers of #HAPPO, Arik Hanson (@arikhanson) and Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon), have brought around a second #HAPPO day specifically for current and recently finished students this Friday, April the 30th. For more info on this, check out the official #HAPPO website.

This means that I'm also going to have a second go at this. Since I already wrote a nice little pitch for myself two months ago (which you can read here) I'm going to try something a little different this time around, and I'd like to get a little bit of help from all of you.

If you know me, in any capacity at all, and have something good to say about me as a person, as a potential PR pro, as a social media "Jedi", as a friend, or any other way you think something nice about me, I would love to use it this Friday as part of my #HAPPO 2 post.

So here my plea to you: if you'd like to help me out and give me a recommendation than please contact me by email (42.fortydeuce@gmail.com) so we can set something up. I'm willing to take recommendations in any form you're comfortable with. It can be two sentences or a whole story. It can be written, a video, a song, even a drawing (that would be interesting). The only thing I ask is that you get it to me before Thursday April 29th, so I have some time to work with it.

So that's my favour I'd like to call in from all of you. My readers, my friends, my colleagues, my.... whatevers. Please help me help myself.

Hopefully this works better than I'm hoping it will, and if not I'll just do what I always do and get creative and do it myself, but I think this way could turn into something fun.

Looking forward to hearing from any and all of you, and thank you in advance.

Finding A Balance in The Force of Social Media

2010-04-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend I decided to update and tweak my Twitter bio a little bit. Nothing major. Just a few minor word changes here or there.

One of the changes I tried to make was finding a way to point out my expertise in the area of social media without actually calling myself an expert ('cause everyone is a social media expert these days). Because I'm a huge geek, I decided on the term "social media Jedi" because I figure most people will get the reference and associate the master of the Force with my new term for master of social media.

Then I got thinking...

In all the Star Wars movies they are always trying to bring a balance to the force. Anakin was supposed to do it, but we all know what happened there (well, us geeks do). Luke might have done it (I mean, he did defeat the entire Emipre, Emperor Palpatine and kind of, sort of Darth Vader). Anyways, Star Wars storyline aside, the point I was trying to make was that the Force always seemed to be unbalanced and there was always one person who was going to restore that balance.

This is the job of a person who does PR/Social Media work. They try to bring balance to the social media Force. They are the Jedi's fighting to make everything right in the world (or universe, as the case may be). Let's look at this:

First you have the public. The public is everyone in the world. In Star Wars the public was everyone who lived within the range of the empire. They were/are the everyday people who work their jobs, live their lives and basically just try to be.

Then, you have these big companies, always trying to influence the public. In Star Wars these were the people on the dark side of The Force (not that all companies are evil, but some people will say they are and it works for this analogy). They want to rule. Be it the universe or market share or whatever.

Finally we have the Jedi. In real life these are the PR/social media people. They are the people trying to bring balance to the Force. Balance does not mean good over evil, balance means making everything even. Not too much light Force, not too much dark Force, but a nice happy Force right in the middle.These social media Jedi try to find a way to make a balance that works between companies and their publics.

Social media gives everyone a voice. These voices could be saying good things or bad things. The Jedi want these people to be saying good things about the companies they represent, but while still trying to accomplish the goals of said company. If they lean too much on just pushing product and not caring about the customer, they're using too much of the dark Force. If they're worrying too much about pleasing the customers so that they lose sight of the company goals, they're using too much of the light Force.

They have to find a way to balance out the Force. Make the public feel loved, appreciated and listened to while still helping the company to gain attention and sell whatever it is they sell.

That's what I want to do. I want to be the one to help find that balance in the social media Force. I want to be that social media Jedi.

What'd you guys think?? Is this a fair analogy to use? Now that I've legitimized it, is it fair for me to use the term "social media Jedi"? Leave a comment and let me know.

Oh ya, and may the Force be with you.

I'm Just Giving It Away

2010-04-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit of time since I gave a an update about my job search... still no job.

Seriously though, I'm trying to up my game a bit.

A little while ago my former teacher turned friend, Karen Snider, recommended that I start to do some volunteer work. It would help me both meet people and get some more experience on my resume.

I wasn't too keen on the idea at first because it made me feel like I would just be working for free, which I didn't really want to do. I sunk a lot of time, effort and money into getting my degree and I want to get that money back (so does the Ontario government).

Now, I didn't go looking for it, but recently I've had a few people approach me and ask me to assist them with some projects, pro-bono of course. Remembering Karen's advice, I figured I have nothing to lose and gladly accepted the projects.

I'm not doing anything too major for these people, but I am doing things that are relevant to my (not too far in the future) field. I think that these things will look great on my resume, plus you never know what kind of recommendation I may get towards a paying job from these people.

In the meantime though I think I may stick with this free work. I have a few things already on the go plus a couple of projects in the works that I've been talking with people about. Even though I'm not getting paid I've at least found a way to do what I want and what I love in my spare time away from my paying non-field-related job. That's what I think is really most important; doing what I love and want to do.

What do you think about working for free? I know most people don't like it, but do you think it can help in the future? Do you have a success story that came from volunteering your services? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

(and for those of you wondering, I may be willing to help you for free too. It never hurts to ask)

Is YouTube Turning into TheirTube??

2010-03-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the interweb was all a buzz about the new Lady Gaga and Beyonce video for "Telephone" (I didn't link to it here on purpose). Being the audiophile that I am, I decided that I needed to go ahead and check it out.

Of course, the first place I go to see this is good old reliable YouTube. Imagine my surprise when I look up the video, click on it to play and am not given the video right away. Instead I am greeted by a 10 second ad for some new movie with a mini banner at the bottom saying "Your video will start in..."

Where did that come from????

I've seen ads on YouTube before, but that was either because I looked them up to watch them (see this post for examples) or they were placed in areas on the page, but never inside the video I wanted to watch before. The whole thing seemed weird to me.

One of the reason I think that YouTube is so popular is because you, the user, got to choose what you watched. Nothing was forced on you. If you wanted to watch an ad on it it was because you wanted to. While there were ads on pages they were never really in your face and forced upon you. There really was a "you" to YouTube.

Of course, the first thing I did when I saw this new practice was tweet about my surprise. A few people responded saying that they've seen this happen before, but not often. I also have not seen it again since on any other of the hundreds of videos I've watched over this past week, which makes me wonder if it's something the company is just trying out as a new source of revenue.

Granted, I have no idea about YouTube's revenue stream and how or even if Google is making any money off the site, but I think this way isn't going to work.

Like I said before, people came to YouTube because they got to choose exactly what it was they wanted to see. Things were suggested for them to watch, but nothing was ever forced on them. I think if this is a new thing that's going to start happening on the site a lot, the company is going to see a big backlash from its users. I know I'm already upset about it.

Seriously though, the thing about the internet is that if people aren't getting what they want, the way they want it, they simply move on to a next site that does give them what they want how they want it. If I wanted these ads before things I watch I could just turn my TV on.

I'm curious to see how this whole thing plays out in the near future. Will it disappear or will it start showing up more often??

I'm also curious to know what everyone else thinks about this whole subject. Have you seen one of these ads before? Please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts about the subject. I'd love to start a conversation about this.

Finally, if you're dying to see the video click here (although I just noticed the ad I'm talking about isn't in front of the video anymore, but I hope you still got my point).

OK GO and Share This

2010-03-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

If you don't know the band OK GO then you obviously have not really spent any time on the internet in the past three(ish) years.

OK GO is a band that managed to go from relatively unknown obscurity (not total, they had been around for a while doing a few good things) to huge popularity almost overnight thanks to this YouTube video:

The video is a music video that the band shot themselves with nothing more than a camera, a couple borrowed treadmills and the choreography of a band members sister. The band posted the video onto YouTube and shared it with their friends and fans, who loved it. How could you not love that video??

From there, the magic of the interweb took over. This video started getting passed around by EVERYONE. This video went seriously viral. Seriously, even my dad has seen this video. The video that was posted officially by OK GO has a play count of over 50 million. Plus, there are other copies of the video on YouTube that also have well over a million plays.

One of the things that made this sharing of the video even more possible was the embed code that anyone could take off of YouTube to post the video on any other website. The band loved that and actually encouraged it.

This video propelled them into the public spotlight and even helped them to gain a spot performing at the MTV Video Music Awards and have the song featured on one of the Rock Band video games' many incarnations.

Fast forward to the fall of 2009. The band released a new album and put together a new low budget, but fun and awesome music video for a song called "This Too Shall Pass". Their record label, EMI, put the video up onto YouTube, but like all their other artists official music videos, turned off the embedding feature. That meant people could watch it only on the YouTube site. For this reason you'll have to click here to see the video.

The band was not happy about this. This lead to a huge fight with their record label over the issue. The band eventually went on to develop a second music video for the song outside of their record label with funding from State Farm Insurance. This one however could have the embed feature included with it. In my opinion this video is better than the first one:

This video was posted about a week ago and the official version already has almost 8 million plays! Also this week, the band left EMI to start their own label and handle all their own business. The band left their MAJOR RECORD LABEL because of how strongly they felt about being able to share things on the internet.

This is a band that understands the power of the general public and the internet. They became famous because of a viral video and they wanted to continue down that route, because they know it has so much more potential.

Other businesses. especially the music industry, need to see the power of the internet and the social networks of people around the world and think really hard about a way to make it work for them as well.

The State of the Interweb

2010-03-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

I originally started this blog to explore where the worlds of PR and social media meet. I also thought that it would be a great platform to talk about my journey into the professional world of both these things.

Lately I've been focusing it solely on my job search and not so much on the other stuff, so I'm going to try to mix the two together a bit more, starting now.

I started this blog off with a video that showed how the internet was changing our world, so it's only appropriate that I continue showing these videos as they keep getting made. I find the info in these videos to be both amazing and sometimes shocking.

This one is called The State of the Internet and was released a few weeks ago. If you haven't seen it already, here's your chance:

This Is Why I Love This Stuff

2010-03-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write this post for two weeks now but have found myself too busy to actually get it out. I'm sorry if you missed me. I'll try to not let this much time pass between us ever again.

So any ways, think back, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to my last post. That was on #HAPPO (Help A PR Pro Out) day. This day was set up to help PR people (like myself) who currently are seeking work (like myself) connect with new people and new jobs.

Well in my opinion, the day was a huge success for making those connections. While I did not get a job offer or find anything really new, I did make a ton of new connections to people in the industry throughout North America, which is just as good.

This is what this social media stuff is all about. Making connections with people in ways that were previously impossible. I love that. Here's what I mean:

On #HAPPO day I put up my post that spoke a bit about myself and what kind of work I was trying to get into. I put it out to my network of people through as many online channels as I could. My network then also helped to pass my post along through retweeting my link and other means. That way new people that weren't in my immediate network were now reading my blog. From there I can only assume that some of these people knew about the #HAPPO movement (either that or they liked my post) because people I didn't know were also starting to pass along my post to their networks. I was also getting compliments on my writing from people across North America. One lady even said she thought I sounded like someone she could love (kinda flattering, kinda weird).

All in all, in 24 hours I had over 700 people read my blog post!! I don't know if that many people have read all my posts combined.

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who had this happen, and that's why social media is amazing for things like this. People were willing to help out strangers and making connections with people they never would have before. The movement was started to help people out, and on that day that's what we saw. An entire community of strangers came together and worked together in ways that weren't possible maybe even 10 years ago.

That's why I love this stuff.

My #HAPPO Little Story

2010-02-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

A wise man by the name of Tyler Durden once said, "It's only after you've lost everything, that you're free to do anything."* So I listened. I left my job and decided to start again from scratch and that's how we got to here.

If you know me online, you probably know me as 40deuce. If you knew me in school you knew me as that guy who looks like he's doing nothing in the back but somehow is getting better marks than me. If you know me in real life you know me as Sheldon. If you don't know me, my name is Sheldon Levine. Nice to meet you.

Two years ago I left my job as the head of the US concert department for a small music promotions company and went back to school to learn the craft of PR. I excelled through Seneca College's Corporate Communications program. I then went on to get my Masters in Professional Communication from the University of Western Sydney in Australia. Both programs were fantastic experiences and gave me solid skills to work in the communications field.

While in school I also became, what some might call, a social media addict. I loved connecting with people in this new borderless world. I loved learning about this exciting new medium. I loved trying new things. I loved that I was part of helping to shape this new way of communication. I can see it's potential for the future and I want to be part of it. It's completely a platonic relationship though, I swear.

The head of Seneca's program noticed my little love affair and actually asked me to help with some ideas for putting together a social media in PR course. It was very flattering, so I of course did it. How's that for a recommendation?

What else can I tell you about me?

Some past work experience includes owning my own company that did club promotions around the Toronto area. We averaged over 150 people per event through online and flyer promotions. I was the viral marketing manager of a North American tour for The Inner City Surfers. This taught me the power of key influencers through my contact with big local bands and music bloggers along the tour route. I was the head of Supernova Entertainment's US concert department. In this role I produced up to five events a month and increased the company's artist roster and fan base through social networking. Currently, I operate multiple blogs that vary in subjects from online PR to sharing cool finds to writing about whatever is on my mind at the time.

Personally, I'm a music addict. I'm a people person. Sometimes I'm too nice. Sometimes I'm too mean. I have a strange obsession with watching curling and darts on tv. I tend to be sarcastic (but always in a good way). I can now surf on both water and snow (you might call it snowboarding). I love reading anything and I probably tweet too much.

So, this brings us to now. I just graduated in November and I'm now looking for a job where I can combine my past experience, my PR skill set and my passion of social media.

With all that said, let's get down to the nitty-gritty here.

I'm looking for a job in the PR and social media field. I'm willing to explore both agency and in-house positions. I've mainly been looking within the Toronto area, but I'm very open to interesting relocation ideas worldwide. I think I'll be great in this field and I hope that you do too now.

Here's to #HAPPO! PLEASE HIRE ME!

If you'd like to know more about me, want my resume, or even just want to chat, feel free to contact me by leaving a comment here, or though any of these networks you should see listed on the right, or email me at 42.fortydeuceATgmailDOTcom.

* Quote from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

Hungry Hungry #HAPPO

2010-02-15T14:09:00.000-08:00

The selfish side of me said, "Shhhhhh, don't tell others about this. Keep it all for yourself and reap all the benefits." But, we all know that I'm a better person than that.

Apparently, I'm not the only person hungry to find a PR position these days. I don't have any hard numbers to back that up, but I'm willing to bet it's true based on the creation of #HAPPO. That lovely hashtag stands for Help A PR Pro Out and was created by Arik Hanson (@arikhanson) and Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon) because they knew good PR professionals who have been out of work for too long and wanted to help them out.

The goal of their #HAPPO project is to bring together companies and agencies that are in need of people with the people who need/ want those jobs. This will be helped along by some key people in certain North American markets, but I'm pretty sure anyone who knows about it can take part. In my neck of the woods, Toronto, we have two great representatives; Danny Brown and as I learned this morning from my RSS feed, Dave Fleet.

I really like this idea because as a job seeker (like myself), you start to learn that you can send out as many resumes as you want, but one of the best ways to find a job and get a foot in the door is through a personal recommendation. The best recommendations would come from people who are already respected in the field, so why not try to get one from them?

The other thing I like about this is the networking possibilities it opens up. While you may not actually get a job on #HAPPO day it should open new people up to each other that previously didn't know the other existed. It could be any mix of PR pro's with jobs, PR pro's without jobs, up-and-coming PR pro's (like myself), agencies and companies. The networking possibilities are almost endless.

While there's a bit of a buzz already going on around the idea the actual event is scheduled to take place on February 19th (this coming Friday) between 11am and 3pm EST. If you're looking for a job like myself you're encouraged to write a blog post for #HAPPO about yourself and what you're looking to do that people can be sent to see. Then, job seekers, job posters and those interested in helping should keep an eye out for anything tagged with #HAPPO for the day.

I have a great deal of respect for seeing a community come together, especially over something like helping each other. I hope that #HAPPO is a great success for everyone involved (and of course myself) and I hope that I can participate again next year but from the other side.

So while my selfish sides says to keep this for myself, the rest of me is telling you to tell everyone you know about #HAPPO that might be interested.

You can watch out for my #HAPPO blog post about myself later this week.

For more info check out the official #HAPPO website.

Take Your Online Offline

2010-02-03T13:45:00.000-08:00

You may have a very strong presence online, but do people know you outside of their computer screens? Do they need to?

The simple answers to those (in order) would be probably not and sometimes.

In my case, looking for a job, I would say that I want people to know me in real life as well as online, and you may too if you're in my situation.

Not to toot my own horn, but I think that I have a pretty strong presence in the online world. On a daily basis I'm communicating with people all over the world. While it may not be possible to ever meet all of these people in real life it probably would be a good idea to try to connect with some key ones in your own area. Especially if that's the area you're looking for a job in.

Since I'm looking for a job in the PR and social media areas, I've been presented with the perfect opportunity. This week is Toronto Social Media Week, which is a bunch of mini-informational-and-fun events that focus around the world of social media. What better place to meet people in the field I want to get into??

These events will give me a chance to meet people whom I may only know from online dealings, some that I may never have known before from anywhere, and of course, touch base with those who I know (both online and off) but don't see often.

The key to having this event help me is that I have to be the same person I am online offline. For me that's not such a problem. I love to talk as much through my mouth as I do through my fingers (that sounds a little weird now that I think about it, but it's still true). The main thing that I'll have to remember is to get my point out the same as I do online. Online I can just post that "I'm looking for work" while in real life I may have to be a bit more subtle. I can't just be walking up to random people, shake their hands and say "Hi, I'm Sheldon and I need a job."

The point that I'm trying to make though is that I think having the chance to meet people you deal with online in real life can be beneficial because then people know you a bit better, can put a face to a screen name, and possibly may be more inclined to help me/you once they feel a bit more personable with you. As well, this gives me the opportunity to possibly make contact with others who aren't currently in my network and bring them in to help.

While this may not be my most eloquently written blog piece, the point I'm trying to make is that I'm not just relying on the online world to help me get a job, I want to be doing the same thing in real life. It's just like I learned in school; the message has to be the same across the board in every medium you present it to properly get it out to your publics.

Go Ahead, Tell Them... Tell Them All

2010-01-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about social media is that it opens the world up like never before. It makes it easy to find and communicate with people anywhere in the world. It also opens you up to meeting and engaging with people you would have never had the chance to before it's invention. It makes the previously impossible possible.

Because the possibilities are endless through this new medium, I decided to try and make the best of that situation. You may be asking yourself what exactly I mean by that? Well let me explain a bit.

Last week I decided to update my Twitter bio. I didn't change it all that much, I just added the simple line "seeking work" after where I stated I'm a Master in Professional Communication. Doesn't seem like a life changing event, I know, but perhaps it could be.

I know the first thing I do when I get a friend request on twitter is I go look at the persons bio. I'm sure most other self respecting twitter users do the same. I also get added by a lot of social media and PR types, which just happen to be the fields I'm interested in working in. So, I figured if these people are going to look at my bio, why not let them know that I'm currently seeking a position? What's the worst that can happen, someone may know of something for me??

As well, while it may seem like some sort of strange self-promotion (and I suppose in a way it kind of is) I also try to mention in some way or another everyday on twitter that I'm on the hunt for a job. I don't ask people to throw things at me, but just because of the relationships I've managed to build with some people they do, and greatly appreciate it.

The way I see it, we've all used social media to connect with people we never would have had access to before, be it celebs, the upper-executives in companies, other people in our industries from all corners of the world, and we did it for many reasons. One of the main ones I did it for was because I love to network. I love to meet and talk to new people (both on and offline). If one of those people wants to help me out, I say let them. I'm always willing to lend a hand and help others out as well if I can.

I'm not going around begging for people to help me, but just by letting some people know what I'm doing they're willing to help me out out of their own good nature, and I love that. So I figure, why not let everyone know what I'm up to?? Some people will act on it and some won't, but it never hurts to try.

I also encourage others to do the same. I can't even remember how many times I've seen a random tweet about someone looking for something or having an interest in something and I've had links to point them towards. Half the time it's people I've barely even interacted with.

Social media is here to be social with, so why shouldn't we?

Has social media helped you accomplish things you may not have been able to before?? Please, share some stories in the comments section or just leave a message if you have something to say about my thought process here.

They're Coming For Your Head... But In The Best Way Possible

2010-01-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

Last week I had an interesting experience on my hunt for a career. I had my first ever encounter with head-hunters (the business kind).

For those who don't know, head-hunters are kind of like an outsourced HR department. Companies have positions to fill and rather than do it themselves they find a head-hunting firm and ask them to find suitable candidates for them. It is also my understanding that job-seekers can also use head-hunters to help place them into the jobs they're looking for, but I don't know if that happens as often. Anyways, my experience deals with the former.

I'm not going to mention any names here, although I'm sure they wouldn't mind, but it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Here's my experience:

A friend who knows that I'm looking for work heard (really saw) someone tweet about a position he thought I may like and passed it along to me. I messaged the original tweeter and found out that he works for a head-hunting company (they call themselves "executive search and recruitment" but it's the same difference). I sent my resume out to this person and the next day he called and asked me if I could swing by their office later that afternoon. I said yes, despite being unprepared (or dressed) for an interview that day.

When I got there the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed than most interviews I had been to in the past. They said that this was more of a "get-to-know-me" type thing than an interview. They just wanted to get a feel for me to see if I was the right fit for this position they were trying to fill.

So, we chatted for a while. Both about job and non-job related things. I felt very comfortable during the whole thing, which is strange for me because interviews usually make me really nervous for no real reason.

Eventually I got to also meet the account holder for the position they were talking to me about, who was also nice. They gave me some tips on how to change my resume to more suit what their client was looking for, which I thought was amazing and very different than anything I was used to. I assume they did that because they liked me and wanted to pass me along to their client (but lets not get my hopes up).

I changed my resume to their specifications over the weekend and they told me it was much better (I liked my other one better, but they're the experts). So now I must play the waiting game.

Overall, my first experience with being head-hunted was really good. Whether I get the job is another story though.

I would now even consider possibly trying to find myself a head-hunter that will help me find the perfect job for me rather than waiting to be head-hunted for a job.

What are your thoughts on head-hunters?? Have you ever used one to hire someone or find yourself a job? Have you ever been head-hunted? Do you think it would be a good course of action if I tried to find one to help me find myself the perfect job?
Let me know in the comments section.

How To Add Experience To A Resume When You Have None

2010-01-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

The title of this post may be a little deceiving. There should actually be a question mark at the end of that title because this is not a "how-to" post, but more of another one of my many questions.

As you may know from reading my blog or following me on Twitter or even just knowing me, I'm heavy into the social media uprising. I'm not one of those people who claims to be a "social media expert" or "guru", but I do think that I have a pretty good handle on the medium and genuine interest in it.

I would like to be able to incorporate my love of this new "buzz" medium into anything I do in the PR/communications field. In fact, that's probably good because a lot of companies are seeing its potential and looking for people who understand how to best use social media to their advantage.

I'd like to be one of those people.

Here's my dilemma though: how do I add social media experience into my resume when I really have no "experience" in the traditional business sense??

I have been heavily involved in the social media scene, especially here in Toronto, for well over a year and half and think that people would agree that I pretty much know what I'm talking about. As well, while in PR school I tried to incorporate social media strategies and tactics into my projects as much as possible. Most of these projects seemed to go over fairly well.

Now how can I incorporate that into my resume??

My resume currently highlights different skills I learned in school, such as different forms of PR and communication writing, but I didn't actually learn any social media or writing for the web while in school. Some of my larger communications plans would incorporate social media, but how can I say that when I already have just communications plans down?

I enjoy a good creative writing challenge, so I'm looking forward to trying to find a way to squeeze my social media "experience" onto my resume. However, I'm always willing to take some advice from experts on the fields of PR, social media or even resumes.

As always, comments thoughts and opinions on the matter are both welcomed and encouraged below.

Go Ahead HR, Creep My Facebook

2009-12-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

So, a lot of people may not agree with my thoughts on this subject (I know because I've read a lot of blogs, articles and books that don't) but this is my opinion anyways.

I'm fine with prospective employers looking at my facebook.

I thought about this because last year a friend of mine in law school was applying for his summer articling student position and while doing so he completely changed around his facebook. He made the security extra secure on it and even removed his wall altogether. When I asked him why he did this, he said, "because I'm trying to get a job right now." This made no sense to me.

I'm fine with prospective employers looking at my facebook.

I'm not going to completely change around the way I live my life just because I'm looking for a job right now. I've even thought about why I wouldn't change my facebook.

For starters, I have a certain level of security on my facebook already. Most things on my facebook can only be viewed by people I've accepted as friends. To that, I also know that most of my friends on facebook are or were real friends of mine anyways. I'm not one of those people who will just add everyone and anyone. For me, facebook is a place for me to stay connected with actual friends. Any other social network I'm open to adding anyone that may grab my interest. I may even add you to facebook after we've bonded on another social network. But, if we're not really friends, we probably won't be facebook friends.

Second, I'm not ashamed of my life. In fact, I'm quite proud of it. Yes, I sometimes have stupid status updates, but that's my personal brand of humor. I'll probably say dumb stuff like that in real life too. I don't (really) do anything that would be considered evil or against the law, so there'll be no pictures of me doing such things. Sure, they might be some pictures of me with a drink or cigarette in my hand, but I do drink alcohol sometimes and I do smoke (although I'm trying to quit, but that's a completely different story) and I'm not ashamed about either. I'm not going to pretend like I don't do those things just because I want a job. Chances are if I did pretend I didn't, my new employer will be disappointed when they find out that I do.

Lastly, I do have some friends who can sometimes write dumb things on my wall. Truthfully, I do the same to them. That's what friends do, they joke around with one another. Chances are my future employer will have friends that do the same to them, so they should be just as ashamed of their friends as I am of mine.

So go ahead prospective employer - creep my facebook. I have nothing to hide from you. I am who I am, and I'm proud of who I am.

Now some may argue with my logic, and I invite you to do so.
Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on the subject of facebook while looking for a job, I'd love to hear what others think.

I May Have Been On Vacation, But My Mind Wasn't

2009-12-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

To bring people up to speed, I just spent the last month in Thailand and Laos after completing my masters down in Australia. Now I'm back in my home town of Toronto and ready to get my life going again.

While I was travelling though, I couldn't help but wonder (and maybe worry a bit) about my future. I just spent the last year and half learning for my new profession, public relations. Now it's time that I need to put all that learning to good use and get myself a job. The problem is, I have so many questions about this new life of mine.

When you decide that you want to do something like PR there are many subsequent questions that come up that I now have to weigh options on and make some serious decisions.

What kind of PR do I want to do?
Do I want to work for a specific company?
Do I want to work for a government agency?
Do I want to work for a large PR firm or a small boutique agency?
Do I want to specialize in social media (which I do seem to favour) or do I want to try and encompass many faculties of the industry?
If I do want to specialize in social media, how can I put my expertise onto a resume despite my lack of actual social media work experience? (a full blog post on this subject will follow soon)
Because I got my masters, should I still be looking for internships or can I just try to find a real job out the starting gate?
What's the best way to go about finding myself a PR job?

And those are just a few of the questions I have racing through my mind right now.

Lucky for me though, I'm not currently unemployed while I try to answer these questions. I was very fortunate that my father's company needed some help, so I'm working, but it is not in my chosen profession. I will however be trying to answer these questions and find a job in my chosen profession while I still make a little bit of money.

I'd like to hear what other people may think about some of my questions here. Especially if you're a seasoned PR vet, I'd love to know what you think about some of these things. So please leave a comment here because any form of guidance I can get would make my day.

Also, keep your eyes here and watch for this blog to become much more active as I settle back into real life.

That''s All Folks... Or Is It?

2009-10-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time. School is done. Which means the reason why I started this blog is no longer a driving factor to maintain it.

However, I like this blog. I've gotten semi-attached to it. That's why I've decided to keep it going. I've also decided to change it up a little though.

While I still plan on exploring the use of web 2.0 and beyond in the world of PR, I'm also going to use it to document my venture into the real world of PR.

For almost two years I've been studying PR and now that I have my Masters I'm going to be looking to apply all of my new knowledge in an actual working environment. I'm going to now be blogging here about things I'm doing to get a job, updates of how those things pan out and hopefully my experiences once I actually start in the field on top of my little analysis' of things I find interesting in relation to PR.

So please, continue to read, follow and comment on this blog.

I hope you enjoy the change.

Bookmark This

2009-10-12T03:49:00.000-07:00

So far in this blog I've looked at a bunch of different popular forms of social media and web 2.0 tactics that companies are using and how they are using them. There's one that I've been holding off on though, because I just don't have much to say about it, but I thought I'd try anyways.

I'm talking about social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is an online tool that acts just like a bookmarking tool in your browser, except it is online and can be shared with other people (if so desired).

Here's a video that explains social bookmarking a little bit better:

The video highlighted one social bookmarking site known as Del.icio.us, but there are many more. Another two popular social bookmarking sites that I know a bit about are Digg and Stumble Upon.

I thought I'd start by explaining how I personally use the social bookmarking tools.

I personally use Del.icio.us and Digg, but not very socially (at least I'm being honest). I usually use Del.icio.us to bookmark sites or articles I find online that interest me, but that I just don't have enough time to read then, or things I want to save to share later with other people. I tag each page I save accordingly. For instance, the articles that I want to save to read later I tag "later" (go figure). Then (now this is a little trick you may want to try for yourself), I have my browsers homepage set to my del.icio.us page for the tag "later". This way, whenever I open my browser the first thing I see are articles I didn't have time to read at previous time, but I might have some time to read then. Now, I don't use this service in a social way, I more use it for me to remember things. I don't subscribe to anyone else on the service, but others may be subscribed to mine.

The other one I use is Digg. Digg is more of a news aggregation site where users decide on what are good and/or important things to read. It's a bit hard to explain, but this video does a fantastic (but not the most exciting) job of explaining exactly how the site works:

I use Digg for just finding interesting things to read. I have an account so I can a) give my opinion about things I think others should read by digging something, and b) because the upcoming diggs link shows me new articles that I may find interesting based on previous things I have dugg (that seems the appropriate past tense of the word).

But how are companies using these sites as communication tools?? That's a good question that I don't really have a good answer. This is one of the web 2.0 tools I can admit I know little about, but still have a basic understanding of how companies would use them.

First we'll look at Digg. Companies and organizations can add a digg button onto almost any web page they may have. This could be their homepage, a video (on or off of a site like youtube), a picture (on or off a site like flickr) or their blog. Companies can then submit their own material to digg or let someone else do it. The more diggs the page gets the higher it will rise on the digg chart. A company should hope that their page gets a lot of diggs because the more popular it gets the more people are likely to see it.

I tried to find an example of a large companies digg page to show you as an example but failed. I think you get the point though. I do have an example using del.icio.us though.

As you saw in the video people and companies can bookmark things on the del.icio.us site for others to see. People can subscribe to a companies del.icio.us feed and see what that company is putting up to share. What a company puts on their page is up to them. It could be any page of their own they want people to see, or it could be something related to their company or industry that they want to share.

Adobe is the maker of many computer products used in design. These include programs such as Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator and Dreamweaver. These are all widely known and used programs. Because of this there is also a large community of people who share tips and tricks for doing things with Adobe's programs. Adobe has created a del.icio.us page where they book mark all the pages they find where others share their secrets to using the programs. Their del.icio.us page probably has a large following because it will be an easy place to find new and interesting info on using the Adobe programs. Check out the page here. This is a great way to use a tool like social bookmarking.

As I said, I know a bit about using these social bookmarking tools, but not too much. If you have something to add, I implore you leave a comment.

Let me know if and how you use social bookmarking sites, or if you have a good example of how a company is using one.

Another Video With Social Media Info

2009-09-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

I started off this blog with a video that showed some numbers behind the power of social media, so I thought it only fitting to show a newer version that has recently come out (some of you may have heard me talk about it in class).

Best Buy Gets "IT"

2009-09-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

In my last post I talked about Best Buy's newest social media campaign called "Twelpforce", but while I was doing some research on it, I was given some great info on the company's entire social media strategy. So, for this post I'd like to show you why I think Best Buy is a company that is at the forefront of using the 2,0 web. A special thanks to Kelly Groehler for providing me with the info.

Best Buy knows that in order for them to be a successful company they have to be able to best serve and connect with their customers. They've done so by launching a few different initiatives which allow their publics to interact directly with their company thereby building that ever important relationship with their customers.

For one, the company's CMO, Barry Judge, has a blog where he writes about Best Buy but also looks for advice on how the public thinks they can make Best Buy better (see image bellow). I think that having a major player in a large company online and talking to its people is a big must-do for all companies in the social media game.

Another interesting thing Best Buy has done is set up a site they call Best Buy Remix. The jist of this site is that they give access to their catalogue of almost all the products Best Buy currently or has previously sold for others to use. This means that people can take product pictures, descriptions, specs and other info for their own use. The best part is they make it available to anyone to use with only three minor and understandable limitations:

Don't claim to be Best Buy
Acknowledge that the data came from us when you use it
If you offer commerce, we need to be one of the options

Not only is Best Buy listening to their public through Barry's blog and their numerous Twitter accounts, but they've actually set up a full website where people can make suggestions directly to the company called IdeaXChange. On this site people are invited to make suggestions on how Best Buy can be a better company. They can also vote for other peoples suggestions if they think someone else had a good idea (see image bellow). That way Best Buy will know which ideas customers think are most important by their rankings. If that isn't a creative way to listen to your customers, I don't know what is.

Best Buy has a few more initiatives in place as well (see my last post for Twelpforce as an example of one) but the ones I highlighted here are some of my personal favorites that I think highlight the company's great efforts.

If you still don't believe me that Best Buy knows what they're doing, watch this video:

Tweeting With The Best of Them

2009-09-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

Twitter is on the lips of every company right now. A lot of companies already have a presence on the micro-blogging site. Of course some have a larger presence than others. This week I want to take a look at a few companies that I think are doing well by integrating Twitter into their overall company communications.

The idea for the post came around because I've recently been hearing a lot on a Twitter campaign being run by Best Buy, a North American electronics company, called "Twelpforce" (more on this in a min). I also knew that the company had a large presence on the site with other Twitter profiles because I've been in contact with and following @KeithBurtis, who used to be a head part of the team that lead Best Buy's social media efforts. Keith no longer works there, but kindly enough, when I asked him for a little more info, he pointed me to @KellyGroehler, who sent me a ton of great info. So I decided to not delve too much into all the Best Buy twitter accounts today, and instead do a whole post on them next week. I will however use their "Twepforce" in this post.

So without further adieu, here's a couple of examples of companies that I think are doing a great job of using this new medium to their advantage:

Of course, I'll start with Best Buy's Twelpforce. This was a great and interesting idea. Best Buy has set up a single account where customers can ask questions to Best Buy ranging from help on making product decisions, tips, to technical support and all sorts of things in-between. This is where it gets interesting. While a lot of companies may have one to a few people monitoring their companies Twitter account who could probiby answer those questions adequatly, Best Buy has inlisted their entire staff. That's right, your question could be answered by any employee at Best Buy that feels they have an answer for you.

Best Buy's Twelpforce is done on an employee volunteer basis. Any employee of Best Buy that wants to help can be part of the Twelpforce. All they need to do is sign up using both their Twitter and Best Buy logins, and from there they can monitor the Twelpforce stream to see questions customers ask. If they think they have an answer, they simply reply from their account and use the hashtag #twelpforce and the Twelpforce page will agrigate their messages and display them on the main page. The best part is that they are told not to be pushy and try to sell things, but to rather just be real, friendly and helpful. Click here to see a short page that briefly explains the program to their employees (I also recommend clicking on the "tips and expectations" link on that page as well).

I think this is a great way to use the Twitter platform. It's on a voluntary basis, but if someone has any questions about electronics, they now possibly have the chance to get advice from over 15000 experts. Also, because it's voluntary (as well as linked into the employee's work login) you;d think that the employees wouldn't take advantage and say things they shouldn't. The company has even made commercials that never even mentions their main store website, it only directs them to the Twelpforce. Check them out:

One of the first companies to take a major advantage of Twitter was Zappos.com. Zappos is an online retailer that started off with only shoes, but has since expanded into clothing. The company has always been known as a leader in customer service. They have an upbeat staff that really does love to interact with people and be friendly and helpful. In return, the company treats it's employees equaly well. Check out this profile done on the company:

As you can see from the video, employees seem to like working at Zappos and talking to customers. That's why CEO Tony decided to let them interact with customers even more by getting them on Twitter. Before Twitter even became mainstream the company had a Twitter microsite built which agrigated all of their employees on Twitter as well as anyone mentioning Zappos across Twitter so all could interact at twitter.zappos.com. Here the company could engage their public through it's individual employees about both company and non-company related things. I think this really gave the company a personal warm and welcome feel, which is what the public is looking for these days. The company is so into engaging people through Twitter that they even have a page that ranks which of their employees can get the most followers.

One thing a lot of companies are doing is running basic, but well done Twitter campaigns. One of my favorites to follow is Marvel (yes, the comic book people).

I was a comic book fan when I was kid, and although I don't read them anymore I'm still kind of interested. Marvel's Twitter account regularly updates with cool things going on at the company, updates about their movies and, my favorite, gives exclusive content to people following. I enjoy companies that do thing like this, because I wouldn't really ever surf over to the Marvel website to read about anything, but if something floats down my Twitter stream that sounds interesting, I'll click the link and see something from Marvel.

Like I said, lots of companies are doing things like that, I just chose Marvel as an example because I noticed them while I was checking Twitter while writing this.

Leave a comment and let me know of other companies that are doing well with Twitter, or even what some of your favorite companies are doing on Twitter.

If you want to see what some other companies are doing with Twitter here's a list I found with a lot (but mostly American) companies.

Watching A Lot of Viral Videos (for Higher Education... I Swear)

2009-08-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

How many viral videos have you seen in your life?

Just this year?

How many have you forwarded to other people?

How many of those were made by a big company?

How many did you know were?

One of the best things about the internet is that we have the ability to share anything we think is cool/interesting/funny/though-provoking/sad/etc. with all of our friends with just the click of a button. One of the things we love to share are videos that we find. These are usually what are referred to as "viral videos".

Viral videos are videos that get spread around the internet at a very rapid rate. They spread like a virus, hence the name viral video. Here's a quick definition from Wikipedia:

"A viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or Instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature and include televised comedy sketches such as Saturday Night Live's Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box; amateur video clips like Star Wars Kid, the Numa Numavideos, The Dancing Cadet, The Evolution of Dance, the "Benny Lava" video; and web-only productions such as I Got a Crush... on Obama. Some "eyewitness" events have also been caught on video and have "gone viral," including the Battle at Kruger."

As the definition states, there are many sources from which viral videos start, but today I want to look at ones that come from companies.

I got the idea when someone in class was talking about a bunch of roller-skating babies and told me to look it up on youtube. Turns out it's an online ad for Evian Water as part as their "Live Young" campaign. This is it:

Which then reminded me of all the other strange viral videos people have sent me. This is one of the latest ones, it's a clever campaign in the US:

These videos made me think of all the videos I've seen over time, and it's interesting to think of how many have come from a company. While the "Think Before You Speak" campaign clearly has a message in it, not all of them do. For instance, the roller-skating babies could have been anything until the Evian logo came up at the end. There are a ton of different ways that companies use the concept of a viral video, and today I want to look at some of them (with fun examples of course).

Some companies make ads for TV that are longer than the average 30 second commercial, so they show a shortened version on the tube and upload the full version to the internet to be passed around.

Here's a popular one from Cabury Chocolate:

This one is from Sprint (a US phone company):

Some companies make videos specifically as advertisements for the internet which could be due to constraints of mainstream media such as time or subject material.

Here's an example from Agent Provocateur:

This is a clever one from Honda that was too long for TV:

Trojan has a line of ads that were not meant for TV called "The Trojan Games". Here's one of them:

Here's one where Pepsi took an already popular internet phenomenon and built on it. Pepsi took the man behind the "Chocolate Rain" video and used him to make a remix for their new Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper:

Some companies make videos that are made to look like amateur videos that were uploaded to the net, but then stick their name at the end. There are a lot of examples of this.

Check out this one from Quicksilver:

Nike has a whole line of the amateur looking commercials that feature famous athletes putting on Nike apparel before doing something amazing:

There is also a series of videos called "Will It Blend" where it looks like home made videos of a guy throwing stuff in a blender, but really the man is the owner of the company that makes the blender and if you pay attention you see the name of that company all over the video:

Other companies will pay to have their products featured in other peoples online videos. One of the most talked about examples of this was with a vlogger named Lonely Girl 15 who was supposedly keeping a video diary of her life, which turned out to be completely scripted. The episode that wound up revealing this was because of the product placement. Watch for it in this video around the 3:30 time mark:

After she eats the gum, you can even hear her say, "Whoa! That's sour!" which was the slogan of the Ice Breakers Sour Gum.

Of course, companies favorites are the ones they don't even make themselves. The best example of this was done by two video makers who go by the name of Eepy Bird. This duo makes videos of cool and fun science experiments. They started doing some videos of them dropping Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke, which quickly became viral over the net. Copy cats started springing up everywhere. Both Coke and Mentos, whom had nothing to do with Eepy Bird at the time, caught the video and sent the guys a large quantity of their candy hoping they'd use them for more videos, because the more videos Eepy Bird made, the more copycats they'd having using the same product.

Here's the original video they made:

And, here's one they made once they had a little free product to play with:

These are just a few examples of how companies are using viral videos to get their products onto your computer. Surely there will be more to come, since this form of online advertising seems to work a lot better than giant flashy banners.

Leave some comments and tell me:

What do you think of big company made viral videos??

Do you think there should be any ethics behind it?

Or even, what's your favorite company made viral video? (leave a link too if you can)

Is It Worth It To Become A Facebook Fan?

2009-08-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I had an idea for a post where I was going to comment negatively on a web 2.0 tactic being used by American broadcaster NBC. Thankfully I didn't write that post right away. After having a couple of days to think about it, I'm not as against the tactic as I once thought. I'm also not sure that I am for it. Let me tell you the story and you can tell me what you think...

I was reading an article on Ain't It Cool News about a new show for NBC's fall lineup called "Community". You can read the article here. The article was saying that this new show is going to be a hit and that NBC is giving audiences a chance to watch the premiere episode on their facebook fan page.

- A quick note on what a facebook fan page is for those that don't know. A facebook fan page is a page within the social community where users can join to show they like something such as a band, tv show, company, product, etc. On the fan page users can talk and interact with other fans of the same thing. The owners of the page can also share content with all their fans to create more interaction between the "whatever" and it's fans. -

In order to view the pilot episode of the show you would first have to become a "fan" of the show. Now here's my problem: How could anyone say they are a fan of the show if they've never seen it before???

I wanted to go on a whole rant about how a communication professional should use their skills to persuade someone to become a fan of something, not use a quick promise of something to get someone to sign on. I was going to relate it to the credit card companies that offer you a cheap shirt at a sporting event in exchange for you signing up for a card.

The more I stewed over it though, the more I started to think that if they offered the show to just anyone to view, the chance of someone become a fan after watching greatly dropped. Not because the show is bad, but just because you don't have to be a facebook fan of something to still like it. If people weren't going to become a fan of the show it would have defeated the purpose of NBC putting resources into creating the page.

Then, earlier today I came across an article entitled "10 Practical Tips for Facebook Fan Pages". If you read the article you will notice that tip #3 is "Give Your Audience A Reason To Become A Fan" which says, "A Facebook fan page is the perfect place to reward fans because they have specifically chosen to associate themselves with your brand in front of all their friends." It goes on to give an example of how companies can reward their fans. Rewards like exclusive content.

This again made me think that NBC did a proper job with their fan page. Although they were coercing people into becoming a fan of something they knew nothing about, they were offering something exclusive to the people that did.

In the end, I'm happy I didn't make this post right away, because I now have a completely different feeling towards the subject.

What do you think though about the whole situation? Should people become fans of things on facebook just to receive exclusives? Is it right for companies to make people sign up for something to receive something special? Do facebook fan pages even mean anything in the grand scheme of things?? Please comment and let me know.

How Important Do You Think Social Media Is To A Communication Professional??

2009-08-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

I know that I said this blog would look at how communication professionals are using web 2.0, but before I really start posting on the hows, I thought I'd start with a post about the why. Meaning, how important this new version of the internet is.

I actually decided to do this post before another one I had planned because of two interesting pieces of information I had passed along to me this week revolving around the importance of social media in the current world and to communication professionals. Both of these items take the "buzz" about web 2.0 and turn it into factual numbers.

First is a video called "The Social Media Revolution". This video has been making it's way around the internet this week and is extremely interesting. The video uses real numbers to show just how quickly web 2.0 has been adopted by people world-wide and how integrated it has become in our lives.

Check it out:

The second thing I saw this week was a study that a friend and (sort of) colleague passed my way that shows how US companies are adapting to the rise of web 2.0. This study shows that companies are starting to realize the potential that web 2.0 has at reaching their audiences and consumers.

Some of the interesting findings are:

Social networking is currently the second most employed tactic by companies after email marketing - especially in smaller sized companies
A majority of companies prioritize social networking higher than their own website content management
Social networking, blogging, podcasting, RSS and microblogging skills and knowledge are looked at as high priority items for job applicants to have in the communications field
Most aspects of web strategies are handled by public relations professionals

However, the study also points out that while web 2.0 and social medias have become very important, there is still a large problem with being able to actually evaluate the ROI (return on investment) that these mediums are yielding.

Feel free to view the entire study (it's not that long, I promise) here:

2009 Digital Readiness Report: Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills

Now that you can hopefully see how important web 2.0 is to a current day communications professional, the subsequent entries in this blog will look at how they are currently using it.

Welcome to My Blog

2009-08-10T03:41:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit of a computer geek. I know it, and I'm fine with it.

I'm also in public relations.

That's why I'd like to combine the two for this blog on how people in public relations are using web 2.0 as strategies and tactics.

I find it really interesting to watch all the new ideas that are coming out from PR and marketing people as to how to engage their audiences through this new online world. Web 2.0 is very different than how the web was a few years ago, and organizations need to understand that and find ways to make it work for them.

Some of you may be scratching your head as to what exactly web 2.0 means. Here's the brief definition I've taken from Wikipedia as it's very simple:

"Web 2.0" refers to the second generation of web development and web design that facilitates information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web. The advent of Web 2.0 led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites,wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies."

In short, the web 1.0 was one way communication. Someone would put something up on the net and many people read/view it. In the case of web 2.0 someone can put something up on the net and other people can interact with it in one way or another. Some of the best examples that ordinary people would know are sites like YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia. On sites like these one user will put something up for the world to see and other users can comment, share and in cases like Wikipedia, change. The best part of this movement is that most of it is free to anyone with internet access.

This was something I was interested in before I came down to Australia. I want to get into the PR field with a strong grasp on the subject of web 2.0 as I feel it's the future of public relations. Since I needed to create a blog for my Strategic Communications class, I figured why not do it on something I'm already interested in?

Thanks for coming and checking my new blog out, and feel free to comment on anything I say in any of my future posts.

I also have a few other blogs currently running (I told you I was a geek) if you'd care to check them out:

- A-D-D ON PAPER is my main blog. I write here about anything that's on my mind at the time. Sometimes it's of a professional nature, sometimes it's not.

- GET HEP TO THIS is a blog where I post stuff I find cool and want to share with other people. It could be music, funny videos, cool webpages, products, anything really.

- MY TRAVEL BLOG is a blog I set up before I came down to Australia so I could share my adventures with my friends and family back home.

Anyways, I'm going to finish this post up with a couple of videos that may help with your understanding of web 2.0 a little more: