PlugIN

The LA Times ran a story on Friday: “Scientists discover why locusts swarm.” Apparently, several scientists have shown why typically solitary grasshoppers suddenly begin to cluster into massive locusts swarms:

“Desert locusts are normally solitary individuals who eke out a meager subsistence while avoiding others of their species. But when food sources become abundant, such as after a rain, they transform into ravening packs of billions of insects that can strip a landscape bare.

The key to the transformation, researchers said Friday, is the brain chemical serotonin, the chemical that in humans modulates anger, aggression, mood, appetite, sexuality and a host of other behaviors.

The locusts swarm when contact with one another triples their serotonin levels, British and Australian researchers reported in the journal Science.” LA Times, Click here for more.

This got me to thinkin’ about social media (of course).

People (like grasshoppers swarming into locusts) don’t tend to gather as a community online unless they are driven by a compelling reason to do so. And, like those funny little grasshoppers, when they do get together in one place, if it’s engaging enough, they’ll become even more excited about what they’re doing help to build the community (bringing in more grasshoppers). As more and more people get involved, the community takes on a life of its own, resulting in a positive or negative influence on the web as a whole.

In other words, just because you create something online—a social profile or a micro-site or something else—that doesn’t mean people will automatically flock to it. NO! You need serotonin. You need juice to get them there. If you want to be technical, call this “viral activation,” i.e. that thing that makes people aware of and drives them to your site.

And when they get there, you had better make sure they’ll find something to keep them engaged (MORE SEROTONIN! MORE JUICE.) What does it all come down to? Compelling content and a publicity strategy that’s strong enough to get people’s attention.

Aha! Suddenly, Web 2.0 is becoming less scary. We just need to think more like grasshoppers (or locusts for that matter).

I found a great video through Charlene Li’s blog The Altimeter (co-author of “Groundswell”), that makes an excellent statement about the place we are in with advertising today. I think this can translate to PR as well and marketing in general. It makes me think about those meetings I sit in when I’m asked by executives, “but if we create this site, how do we control it?”

Ughh!!

Watch this. I think it makes the point. Kudos to the filmaker, Geert Desager who’s originally from Brussels, has lived in Cape Town, Paris and is now in Singapore. You can find out more about him and his work at Bring the Love Back. 

THE BREAKUP

I meet with people at least once a week who say that want to do more online. Usually, the executives I’m speaking to are in their mid–40s and above, are active users of email, go online regularly but don’t really have an in-depth or serious understanding of what social media is or how it can help their business or organization. Even the applications that have been out for a while are still foreign to them.

“An RSS feed? Yes, I know I think I know what it is.”  But when I start talking to them about the details of a feed and some of the ways it can be integrated into their communications and PR or used for outreach, I quickly see their eyes glazing over.

More importantly, when we start talking about budgets for social media initiatives, they go blank. Budget? Isn’t all of this free? The truth is, I don’t think the executives in power—the ones who control the purses—are fully ready to embrace social media as a legitimate communications channel. Perhaps it’s because the medium is so new and they’re unsure of how to use it. Perhaps it’s because they don’t use the technology and therefore don’t understand it. Or, perhaps it’s because marketing budgets are shrinking these days and many are unsure of what kind of money they’ll have to play with in the coming months. After all, when you’re insecure about the future, most tend to go with what’s “safe.”

Here’s the kicker though: You can’t expect any kind of real results from any marketing or communications initiative (including a social media initiative), if you’re not willing to invest in it. Social media, like any communications channel, is only as strong as the campaign, creative minds and money behind it. If you don’t invest in all three, your campaign will likely fall flat. And, it’s not a short-term fix. Social media is similar to PR in that it’s a long-term investment.

Right now, most are just talking about social media and the fact that they “know they need to start using it.” But it’s not enough to simply talk about it. Those who are in a position to call the shots must truly understand what social media is and realize that it can’t be treated separately and independently from their overall marketing strategy. They then must be willing to truly invest in the program and embrace it whole-heartedly.

Eventually, I’m certain we’ll reach this point: When the people who make these decision “get it,” and are “comfortable” enough with the technology to put money and time into their social media initiatives. It just seems a shame that in the meantime, those of us who realize the potential of this channel if its truly integrated with an overall marketing strategy will have to wait.

It’s been more than three weeks since I last wrote for this blog. And in doing so, I think I’ve broken a sacred tenant of the blogosphere: thou shalt blog at least once every seven days. Where did this even come from? Was it pulled from some apocryphal chapter of a forgotten text? Why seven? What is so very special about that number? Why not three? Why not 15? Why not when you actually have something to say?

The truth is, in the last few weeks the business of ‘life’ has come before this blog—work, family . . . wanting to take my dog for a run on the beach. If I were to be even more honest, I’d say I haven’t felt inspired to write about Web 2.0 in any way. In fact, I’m getting really tired of talking about it and would love to somehow change the conversation so that it could take on a new air.

I feel, lately, that we are getting lost in the mungle (my own word) of social media, with too much writing and not enough thinking. We are putting words out there—lots of them—without being thoughtful about what we are saying or why we are saying it. The consequence is that the beauty of language and power of voice are being held hostage by a linked–in, virtual world in which a thousand tiny points are being intertwined through ‘keywords’ and ‘tags,’ few of which mean anything or make any actual human connection.

A professor once told me the most difficult thing to do as a writer is to write very little. You see, we can all create sentences; very few of us can be disciplined or articulate enough to express ourselves in just a few syllables. I understand this now very differently than when I first heard it because now we have so many words going out into the world—lost words that are not meant for human beings but for ‘bots.’ We are writing to machines.

A friend recently sent me a link to a TED video of writer poet Chris Abani, who was imprisoned three times by the Nigerian government . Abani is not someone who writes for machines. In fact, I’m quite sure he would laugh at the idea of writing for ‘search engine optimization’ (maybe even be appalled by it). He writes in search of his own humanity. That, I can appreciate.

TED Talks: Chris Abani

Perhaps I should think more about my own writing (not ‘blogging; writing) and decide if I want to write weekly for a ‘bot’ or write when I have something truly honest to share with a fellow human being. It’s certainly not within the ‘rules of blogging.’ Then again, I never really did play by the rules.

Yesterday Barack Obama delivered a speech in Berlin that inspired many around the world to rethink the importance of tearing down walls. In the speech he said:

“Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”

I have to agree with the man. It’s the “not knowing” of one another that puts us in a fight, and when there are walls between us (both physical and metaphorical) that hide our humanity from one another, it becomes very difficult to empathize with the person on the other side.

To me, the greatest hope for changing this is the social web. These new tools allow us to shine a light on the lives of people across the globe—through video, audio, photos and the written word—and share their stories with our friends and family. We are able to see into the hearts and minds of people half way across the world almost instantaneously, and better understand the struggles they face. And for the first time in the history of the world, not only do we hear the stories of other people, we can also reply in real time . . . talk back to them. That is what’s different.

Our best hope for tearing down the walls that divide us is to talk to one another—to see the humanity of the people on the other side—and the social web facilitates those conversations like never before.

For more full text on Barack Obama’s Berlin speech, click here.

The number of social media tools available today that companies can use is growing at a mind–boggling pace. And surprisingly (at least to me), most of them are free. But what exactly is the value of “free?”

Most of the social platforms offer free applications to run your blog, create a social profile, bookmark and share stories about your company, and more. And yes, anyone who is willing to dedicate their time and effort to first learning how these platforms work, then building and finally writing, creating and maintaining whatever applications they’re using, can do it. The question is, do you really want to?

The most precious commodity most people have today is time. “If I only had six more hours in the day . . . ah, what I could get done.” And with time at a premium, do you really have room in your schedule to take on yet another project?

The other issue is expertise. We can all learn the basics of social media and how to use it. (I would argue that everyone in business today should at least know the basics of what social media is–and many don’t.) But do we all have time to become an expert in it?

Let’s take, as example, blogging. When it comes to conceiving, building, writing and maintaining a blog, it may be free, but there really is quite a lot that goes into making it something that can be useful for your business. This includes everything from the details of how the blog is designed to its set-up (Which platform should you use? Should you host on their servers or yours?), editorial focus, the link relationships you build, the keywords you use in your blog posts (and how they link back to your web site to improve SEO), and how you promote it to your customers, constituents, members, colleagues, and the market.

You can do all of this yourself. But there are people out there who can probably do it more quickly and better for you. I’m not advocating that you hand everything over to a consultant. In fact, if a blog is written under your name, you should be very involved in the content, i.e. what is being written, the topics, etc. Does this mean that you have to do everything else (including–and this will make some people cringe–the writing)? What if you’re not a writer, but have a lot of industry insight that you can share with others? Then you work with someone who can take your ideas and put them into readable form. (Ghostwriters have been around for a very long time. It’s nothing new. Better to get a person’s knowledge and expertise out than do nothing because they got a C in grammar.)

Social media is similar to public relations. In truth, PR is also free. Technically, you don’t need a consultant or agency to do PR work for you. You can create your messaging, write your press releases, put together an editorial list, pitch the media, follow-up, and do the interviews all on your own. Chances are though, if you hire a professional—people who have experience and relationships with the media, but more importantly, understand what makes a good story and how to pitch it—then you’ll most likely have a whole lot more success in getting your name into the press.

For me, it really comes down to time and expertise. If you have both in the area of social media, then by all means, go for it. If you don’t, you might want to consider working with someone who does.

Here’s an idea: why not turn your old, tired press page into a social media engine? Dump the outdated, static version of your HTML–based press page and use a blog platform to launch a new, more community oriented press blog.

What are the advantages?

• A blog-oriented pressroom will help optimize your site in general, with its keywords, links and continuously updated information.
• Your new press room will be much more dynamic, giving you the ability to have RSS feeds, commenting from customers, video and audio uploads, photos and more.
• You can create several pages for your pressroom, with the main page being reserved for your latest press releases (posted in a blog format). Other pages could include: downloadable logos and other graphics or photos, executive bios, video, audio, a company backgrounder, annual reports, and more.
• Create an RSS “News Feed” and pull that into a page within your press blog. Not sure how to do that? Click here. This can include any articles in which your company was mentioned or featured. Create a button that your readers can subscribe to and receive automatic updates of new stories, press releases, etc.
• Create a product or service review page. You can create a product review page specific to a product launch or existing product. Invite your customers to leave their comments and suggestions on this page. Be sure to monitor and respond when necessary.
• Tag your press releases. Another advantage to having a press blog is that you can tag your press releases with keywords that can be easily searched by the search engines.
• Offer users ways to share the press release with buttons for Digg, del.iciou.us, Facebook, Yahoo Buzz, Newsvine, Reddit and more

These are just some of the creative things you can start doing with your pressroom by moving to a social platform. Quite frankly, I’m only scratching the surface.

We need to move away from our old ways of thinking when it comes to distributing our press releases, news and information about our company. Continue to follow traditional media channels, as there is still value to news wire services, directly contacting the media and more. These are still a very important part of your public relations, but now is the time to start thinking about how you can augment what you’re already doing. And social platforms are a great, inexpensive tool for doing just that.

Anyone have other suggestions? I’d love to hear them.

In my last post, I talked about how I use del.icio.us in my day-to-day public relations work. In addition to bookmarking and tagging, del.iciou.us can also be used as part of a tool set to create an RSS feed for any topic of your choice, which you can then push out to your blog, web site, Facebook, LinkedIN profile or any other social platform.

There are several ways in which you can set up an RSS feed, but I’m going to focus on the way in which I set up feeds, using Google, Feedburner and del.iciou.us together. If anyone other suggestions, please feel free to comment.

STEP 1: DETERMINE WHAT YOUR FEED IS GOING TO BE
Determine the subject matter and purpose of your feed. Are you trying to publicize your blog? Or, do you want to gather articles you’ve found of interest on a specific topic, such as “recommended articles on designer shoes?” You can create a feed for just about anything you’ve found on the web, as long as it can be tagged. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to use the example of creating a feed for press coverage on your company. We’ll call this feed “Our Company in the News.”

STEP 2: FIND ARTICLES AND NEWS COVERAGE
Establish a way to search and review new articles, blog posts, rich media, etc. on a daily basis, looking for things in which your company is included or mentioned. I use primarily Google Reader and Google Alerts as my primary search tools, but there are many more out there. Also, keep in mind that Google can find most, but not all, of the press coverage you may receive. You’ll also have to use your own awareness of stories that are going to run, or you may want to use a clipping service or newswire tracking service to be completely thorough. Basically, just find the coverage.

STEP 3: TAG ITEMS USING DEL.ICIO.US
If the coverage is online (and accessible), you should tag the item with a specific, unique tag that is only used for your news feed. I make this a phrase that other people wouldn’t use such as “ourcompany2008news.” If you use a generic tag such as “news,” you may end up unintentionally pulling things into your feed that aren’t relevant. Also, be aware that you can’t use spaces in your del.iciou.us tags (use hyphens instead). For why this is and more on tagging in del.icio.us, click here.

Example: If your company is “Bobcat’s Doggie Boutique”, then use something like “bocat-doggie-2008news”

STEP 4: CREATE A SOURCE URL FOR YOUR FEED
Once you’ve tagged your stories, go to your del.icio.us account. In the right–hand column, click on the unique tag you’ve created. This takes you to a page that shows only the items tagged with “ourcompany2008news.” In our example, this would be: bobcat-doggie-2008news.

The URL for this page should read something like:

http://del.icio.us/(your user name)/(ourcompany2008news)

Again, in our example, if our del.icio.us user name is “bobcat,” then the URL would look like this:

http://del.icio.us/bobcat/bocat-doggie-2008news

This is the source URL you will use to create your news coverage feed in Feedburner.

STEP 5: CREATE A FEED USING FEEDBURNER
Now that you’ve tagged your coverage in in del.icio.us and have a source URL, you’ll now use it to create your actual feed using Feedburner. Here are the steps:

• Create a Feedburner account (it’s free) if you haven’t already done so. Click here.
• When you sign up, Feedburner will take you through the steps of creating your first feed.
• The first message you’ll see is, “You have no feeds set up in FeedBurner. Go ahead, burn yours now!” To do this, add your del.icio.us URL—our example: http://del.icio.us/bobcat/bocat-doggie-2008news
• into the “Burn a feed right this instant” box. Click next.
• You may be prompted to “Identify Feed source” Click on the source that looks exactly like your URL above (no symbols, extra characters, etc.)
• Give your feed a title, such as “Bobcat in the News.”
• Feedburner will automatically generate a feed address (URL) for you. You can simplify this by typing in your own copy in the box to the right of the URL.
• Click “Activate Feed”

Congrats! Your feed is now active.

STEP 6: PUBLISH YOUR FEED IN KEY ONLINE CHANNELS
Now that you have created an “Our Company in the News” feed, you can cross promote it by displaying your feed’s headlines on any of your online properties (any place where you can cut and paste a snippet of HTML code). This might be on your press page, web pages (where appropriate), blog site, or social network profiles.

To republish your feed, go to your Feedburner account and click on “My Feeds.”

• Click on the feed you’d like to re-publish.
• Click on the “Publicize” tab.
• In the left–hand column, click on the “BuzzBoast” tab.
• Follow the instructions

Also, be sure to include in each channel a RSS feed button that invites people to subscribe to your feed. To create your RSS feed button, go to your Feedburner account and click on “My Feeds.”

• From the “My Feeds Page,” click on the feed for which you’re creating a button
• Click on the “Publicize” tab.
• In the left–hand column, click on the “Chicklet Chooser” link
• Follow the instructions

Good luck!

This week, I’m giving kudos to one of the most useful social networking tools I’ve come across: de.licio.us, on online social bookmarking web site. Now here is a social utility that provides a very real and useful business solution for PR and marketing professionals. I use it everyday in my work at The Lancaster Group.

As a communications manager, I’m constantly searching for tidbits that are useful or relevant for my clients. de.licio.us gives me powerful tools that help to shorten the time it takes to find those things and get through my morning action list—specifically, identifying and quickly tagging the web pages, online articles, photos, videos and more that I want to share with my clients, blog readers and colleagues either through an RSS feed or by simple sending links to people that are tagged for a particular subject, such as “search engine optimization.”

Here’s the basic outline of how I use del.icio.us everyday in my public relations work. I should make note that I use it in combination with several feed readers (also known as feed aggregators or news readers) such as Google Alerts, Google Reader and my Firefox browser RSS feeds. There are numerous feed readers out there—web-based, desktop, built–in (to your browser), email–based and more. Click here for a pretty comprehensive list of what’s available.

Here’s my process for using de.licio.us:

• I get to the office every morning and religiously check my Google Reader, of which I have about 20 separate subscriptions (RSS feeds) from various blogs, publishers and online sites that I’ve tagged for specific subjects ranging from things that have to do with my work (such as social media, search engine marketing and small agency business) to topics having to do with my clients (financial services, real estate, small business and wine).

• I also check my Google Alerts, which are sent daily to my email. This is different from Google Reader in that my alerts are notifying me to online news articles and blog post that include specific key words I’ve identified (not RSS feeds but individual news articles that are posted online). This could be anything from client–specific subjects, such as news that includes the company name of my clients to more general topics that have to do with my client’s industry, such as “personal finance.”

• I also check specific RSS feeds that are fed into my Firefox browser directly. (Here is a point of irritation for me—how you read a particular RSS feed with will depend on how the author/publisher has setup the subscription to that feed, and there is no standardization in this area. Meaning, some will allow you to read the feed using Google Reader while others only offer only an RSS feed to your browser, My Yahoo! or My AOL. This makes it so that you have to use several different readers.) There is a reader I haven’t yet checked out yet (but plan to this week) called FeedJournal, which allows one to pull all your feeds into one newspaper–like format. I’ll let you know how it works for me in a future blog.

• Within 30 minutes, I’m able to skim through all the headlines for the day, checking for the articles that are most relevant or interesting. I then read through the ones that stand out (usually about 10-15 of off my list). Some I read quickly, others more thoroughly and yet others I simply tag for future reading.

• Depending on the article, I then tag it with pre–set del.icio.us tags (keywords) I’ve created for as “PluggedInNews.” Every time I see an article I want to feature on my blog, I tag it in del.icio.us with that particular keyword. It’s then automatically fed into my PlugIN “news story” RSS feed that is featured on the homepage of my web and blog site as articles “Worth Reading.” I’ve set up this daily feed using Feedburner. To learn how you can do this on your site, check out my blog next week, where I’ll go into full detail.

• del.icio.us also allows me to tag articles as “do not share,” meaning that I don’t want to share that article but just mark it for my personal viewing.

• Those articles that I’ve tagged for specific RSS feeds are then automatically dropped into that feed and published. This means that the headline of the article, along with the URL link back to the original source and a brief description (if I choose to give it one) are published to my site, not the entire article.

• I can also send my clients via email a link to a del.icio.us page that includes a specific tag description such as “PluggedInNews,” where they can read articles I’ve chosen for that day.

• Finally, if I leave the office and want to access my bookmarks—perhaps I’m using my laptop instead of my desktop—I can do so very easily by just going to my del.icio.us page online.

Del.icio.us has many other ways to use their tools, such as their “Hotlist,” which is a ranking of what’s hot on del.icio.us according to the items that people have tagged and bookmarked. I don’t really use this. You can also set up and automatic way to share links with other people on del.icio.us. Again, I haven’t found this too handy, as it assumes that the person on the other end is a member of del.icio.us, which isn’t always the case.

There are several other things you can do with this utility. You can find out more by going to their site. I’m sure some of you are using it in different ways as well. I’d love to hear about it.

Next week, I’ll talk about setting up an RSS feed using del.icio.us and Feedburner.

I love visual guides. They make processing information so much easier for everyone.

You may have seen my “rough draft” of a visual guide to social media releases in an earlier blog post, “The Path of a Social Media Release”—scary! Luckily, I later cleaned it up into a more readable version. Click here.

Last week, I put together a visual guide for one of my clients to try and explain how offline and online marketing channels can work together to drive traffic to a web site and ultimately convert prospects and inquiries into sales leads that a sales team can use.

I also threw in the importance of a CRM (customers relationship management) solution, as I think this kind of software is essential to helping you manage, sort, filter and ultimately re–purpose the information you collect about your customers and potential customers. If you don’t know what a CRM is, here’s a good resource for learning more. Click here.

I’m going to tweak with this visual when I have more time. (I think it should really look even more like a funnel, with offline marketing channels at the top, driving traffic down through your online channels, to your blog, landing pages, CRM and ultimately to a lead conversion for your sales team.) But that will have to wait until I have more time. For now, check out the jpg below. Also, you can download a PDF version here (this may be more readable).

Let me know you thoughts. Am I missing anything here? Leave your comments and let me know.

Click To Enlarge.