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

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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).