Tag Archives: socialmedia

Why it’s so hard for me to blog anymore

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I’ve fallen off the blogging bandwagon. Big time. Each time I post here — which, let’s face it, has been few and far between over the last 10-12 months — I feel like I have to start with a mea culpa. “I’m so busy” or some similar excuse. The reality, though? My blog and I have grown apart, because I no longer practice what I preach(ed).

When I started blogging, I was working in corporate communications, exploring social media daily (when a lot of things were still in the “new” phase) and actively practicing public relations and organizational communications. It made sense for me to blog about PR, social media, and corporate communications, because that’s what I was living everyday.

My work life and goals are vastly different now. For the last nine months, I’ve been leading sales efforts at readMedia. It was something I didn’t think I was up for when the opportunity arose (“Sales? No way! I’m a PR person! I like writing! I’m introverted!”). But it turns out that I really like it, and I’m good at it. I get a rush from hitting numbers and knowing my team is directly responsible for the growth and success of the business.

Thus, my efforts and attention are no longer focused on the PR and social media minutiae of the Twitterati and Blogosphere. I’m not interested in debating the latest corporate PR gaffe or spending time in Twitter chats discussing the “right” way to do social media. PR Daily has gone unread in my inbox for months now. The echo chamber grew too loud for me, and I’ve slowly been gravitating away from the entire digital/social/PR2.0 ecosystem.

 

I also fell away from blogging because I’m very lucky to work with people who challenge me everyday. I used to “muse” here on the blog as a way to flesh out ideas and spark discussion in the absence of any friends or mentors at my old job. Now, I have the luxury of spending all day with really smart co-workers, and we’re constantly talking through ways to do things better, faster, and more creatively so that we can provide an even more valuable product for our customers.

Don’t get me wrong — via Twitter and my blog I’ve created fantastic relationships with PR pros from all over the world — some of whom I count among my close friends now. And via my relationships with readMedia’s customers, I still spend a lot of time talking with talented communications and PR professionals.

But I’m just not “in” PR anymore. And I’m okay with that.

Photo via Flickr user GiNet

Cause marketing: A bra by any other color

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2285544109_0aab5b967aI was too busy watching college football last night (priorities!) to notice all of the Facebook “bra color” status updates from my female friends. But I caught up on the meme this morning via Stephanie Smirnov’s post. She raises an excellent point: while it is a fun activity in the name of breast cancer awareness, what does it accomplish? Definitely check out the post on her blog. I left a comment that turned into a post in and of itself, so I’ve repeated it here:

Stephanie – your post brings up an interesting, tangential point. In all likelihood, this probably wasn’t an organized effort by a breast cancer-affiliated NFP. It was probably just one or two women who thought it would be fun and started spreading it among their Facebook friends (which is why it has all the characteristics of a good grassroots viral campaign, as you pointed out).

While we’d hope (and expect) that a planned marketing tactic from a large organization (NFP or not) would have a little more strategy behind it, including a call to action or other way to induce a behavior change among participants, this underscores that through social media, ANYONE can start a viral campaign in the name of “breast cancer awareness” or any other type of cause they’re passionate about.

That leaves the NFPs and organizations formally associated with these causes in an interesting position. In some cases, these homegrown campaigns will be fun and harmless (if not effective). But what if a similar meme were to spread that included incorrect information about a cause/issue? While one of the great aspects of social media is that your customers/stakeholders are empowered to market for you and spread your message across their networks, the drawback is of course that you’re not in control of your brand anymore.

It would be great to see an organization like the Susan G. Komen Foundation jump on this meme to turn it from a fun diversion into an actual force of good. What about partnering with Hanes to donate $1 toward breast cancer research for each color status update posted? Or creating some fun visual graphs of the breakdown of colors being reported and have people try to guess which is most popular (after making a donation or watching a short video on the importance of mammograms, e.g.)?

A lot of grassroots cause marketing like this meme probably won’t be as sophisticated and strategic as if an organization had thought through it as a campaign and defined goals for behavior change or donations or any other metric. But these “campaigns” can still draw a lot interest and participation and are a great opportunity for nonprofits and cause-related organizations to leverage the buzz created and transform it into community action.

Yes, I used the word leverage (cringe). But that’s exactly what organizations, especially nonprofits with limited marketing budgets, should be trying to do. If something like a Facebook bra color meme surfaces and becomes wildly popular– and is even slightly linked to breast cancer awareness– then breast cancer organizations should capitalize on it and give the meme the teeth (a call to action) that it currently lacks as a cause marketing campaign.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Image via Flickr user QueenBlingerie

Allan Schoenberg: My Twitter “Patient Zero”

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Ever heard of a woman named Mary Mallon? Probably not. But if I said “Typhoid Mary” that might trigger some recognition. Mary Mallon was the index case for typhoid in the US in the early 1900s. She was a healthy carrier of the disease and spread it to at least 53 people before she was forcibly quarantined. Mary Mallon was the American typhoid epidemic’s Patient Zero.

For me, Allan Schoenberg played a similar role, but without the fever and malaise. I consider him to be my Twitter index case. (Stick with me here.)

I spent the first several months on Twitter not doing much. I followed a few people I knew from “real life” and a few who were into Georgia football. I didn’t even really think of it a professional networking medium at the onset. At some point, though, I caught the Twitter bug and from that point things changed dramatically. And I can trace that moment back to Allan.

It was about this time last year when I was working on putting together a photo book of pictures from my trip to Iceland. I tweeted about it and got a random @ reply from Allan commenting on how great Iceland was and how much he loved it when he had visited earlier in the year. I followed him back and checked out his profile, where I saw that he had a pretty sweet job as director of communications for CME Group. We continued to chat via Twitter throughout the next few weeks about everything from movies to beer (good beer) to the economic situation in Iceland.

Allan Schoenberg and Amy MengelAllan was my conduit to the Twitter PR and communications world. Recognizing that he was pretty interesting guy with an interesting job in my field, I figured that I’d probably enjoy following some of his other Twitter pals. I began looking to see who he was following and unabashedly started poaching his network. This led me to people like Mike Pilarz, Arik Hanson, Matt Batt and Lauren Fernandez. They led me to others like David Mullen, Kellye Crane, Chuck Hemann and Scott Hepburn. And it just kept proliferating.

Today, I consider Allan and that initial group tops among my trusted colleagues, confidants and advisors. In the year since that first tweet about Iceland, I’ve started this blog and my consulting business, founded Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley, and forged what I consider to be lifelong friendships as well as professional alliances with people from Twitter. I’ve had the opportunity to meet most of my closest Twitter friends in person, despite the fact that they all live in far-flung places. Allan even got me a tour of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange when I was visited last spring.

So in the spirit of those Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” ads (though Allan would rightly never drink Bud Light):

I salute you, Mr. Twitter Uber-connector Index Case of Networking Genius Guy. Thanks.

Whose your Twitter Patient Zero?

Recap: Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #4

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In just over four months, Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley has grown to be among the largest in the country. Last Friday about 150 people turned out to hear Aaron Newman of Techrigy talk about social media monitoring and measurement at SMBTV #3.

It was a much broader crowd this time, with a lot of fresh faces and several people who were relatively “new” to social media. While I’ve worked hard as the SMB organizer to keep the event from being at too much of a 101-level (because there are plenty of those events), there were a lot of general social media questions that Aaron did a good job answering.

Aaron asked that the presentation be interactive and he wasn’t disappointed. There were so many questions that at one point I had to ask people to hold them until the end just to make sure we could get through Aaron’s slides in time! A lot of attendees had great social media stories to share and it was good to see everyone networking and enjoying each other’s company.

Here are some of the key ideas I took away from Aaron’s presentation:

  • Monitoring, measurement, and analysis are often used interchangeably when talking about social media but they’re really three very distinct phases.
  • There are lots of things you can measure in social media, but what you should measure depends on your strategy. Start with strategy. Always.
  • Computers don’t understand sarcasm, so measuring sentiment is still a challenge. Not all monitoring can be automated.

Lots of great content was generated about/around the breakfast itself, too:

I’m quite amazed at how quickly Social Media Breakfast has grown in this area and what a great networking and community event it’s become.

The next event is in December and will feature a panel of fantastic blogging minds: Greg Dahlmann, Lara Kulpa, Christina Gleason and Amanda Magee. The College of Saint Rose Communications Department will be sponsoring.The American Red Cross has offered to host us and I’m working with them to try and combine Social Media Breakfast with a blood drive.  More details to come!

Image via Flickr user amymengel (wait, that’s me!)

Why I was wrong about lifestreaming

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I sat staring down the white screen of WordPress death tonight knowing that I was due a blog post but unable to come up with anything (I’m sure no blogger has EVER had that problem before, EVER).

So, in my writer’s-block-induced haze, I sent out the following tweet:

Crowdsourced tweetThe lucky winner? Mark Krynsky (@krynsky) responded first:

Mark Krynsky LifestreamingCrap.

(Although I suppose I should be glad that Arik Hanson didn’t beat him to it, with his “Everything I learned about social media, I learned from Barry Manilow” suggestion.)

Mark was calling on me to refute a post I wrote several weeks ago asking what the big deal was about lifestreaming. That post generated a healthy discussion as readers tried to help me understand what value sites like Tumblr and Posterous added versus a traditional blog and other outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Mark, who authors the LifestreamBlog, left one of many great comments on the post.

I revisited the post and my initial stance. I wrote that original post from the standpoint of genuinely questioning and being curious about the value of lifestreaming, and not necessarily dissing or deriding the practice. A lot of the comments helped clarify my thinking. The most common reason people cited for lifestreaming was that it occupies the space “between Twitter and a blog” and provides an outlet for “off-topic” items that may be out of place on a subject-specific blog. Others use Posterous as a way to clip and save items from the Web, almost like a juiced-up Delicious account.

All are valid reasons, but so far I still haven’t found the time or interest to update (curate?) my own lifestream or really follow anyone else’s.

But, specific to Posterous, which seems to be the most popular lifestreaming tool right now, I will say that I do see the potential from an ease-of-use standpoint. The ability to send in blog posts via e-mail directly to Posterous is very compelling for someone who wants to blog or share information but doesn’t want to deal with a complicated (or even a simple) CMS. And Posterous makes it very easy to record audio clips and send them directly to the site. It’s a way to start creating content with extremely low barriers to entry.

Another interesting “group lifestreaming” experiment took place at Social Media Breakfast Houston. Bryan Person created a Posterous account and had attendees e-mail info and photos. I could see this type of format working for events and conferences as a place to have people collectively contribute content (holy alliteration). The concept is similar to Collecta, a site that pulls in Tweets, photos, and more for specific hashtags.

So, I’m not sure that asking a question can really be “wrong”, but I’ll certainly admit that my eyes have been opened to many more possibilities for lifestreaming. Heck, I may even get around to updating my Posterous account one of these days.

Thanks to Mark and everyone else who participated in my little Twitter/blog/crowdsourcing experiment. For now, writer’s block averted.