Strategic Public Relations

5 Tips for Free, Easy Photo Edits

The news of Google's latest service shutdowns means picture editing is no longer a Picnik for many bloggers, Flickr users and others.

Google is shutting down Picnik and wrapping the technology into services like Google+. And while many die hard Picnik users are understandably miffed, the odds are good that several alternatives have come about to handily replace their de facto image editor.

Whether or not you use Picnik, here are five tips for free and easy photo edits.

1) Your Computer: Most laptops come preloaded with image editing software. It may only cover the basics, but it'll do in a pinch and they work whether or not you're online.

2) PowerPoint: This may be seen as Macgyver by some and MacGruber by others, but you can pull images into a powerpoint slide, edit them and save them out again as jpgs. This is also great if you don't have photoshop and want to combine images. Again, you're limited in what you can do, but you can do more than you think.

3) Pixlr: If you prefer Photoshop, but don't have access to it, check out Pixlr. It's a great, free online image editing tool that closely resembles the graphic design software.

4) BeFunky: I've used BeFunky in the past for some photo fun, but they've enhanced and expanded their offering with plenty of free options to edit and filter images, add special effects and more. Thanks to Matthew Dooley for the heads up on BeFunky's full array of options.

5) Picassa: I use it on my desktop. It also connects to Picnik, but it lets you do quite a bit of editing without it. It's also a great photo management tool.

Bonus Tip: If you're in love with a photo app on your smartphone? Use Dropbox or something similar to transfer images back and forth and simply edit on your phone. It's not as straightforward as the above options. But if there's a filter you're in love with on your phone, it's an option for the right shots.

UPDATE: Thanks to David Parmet for also tipping me off to the Aviary App which allows you to edit pics from/in Facebook. 

Picnik is a great site. Hopefully Google makes a quick and obvious integration of Picnik into all of its photo tools. In the meantime, the site's given refunds to all its users and is free to all until it shuts down in mid-April. This gives die hard fans plenty of time to find an alternative that might even improve upon their former photo editing habits.

Social Media Consolidation Leaving Users in Lurch

Picnik is just one of several sites changing their policies or shutting down completely. Co.Tweet's moving to paid only as part of Exact Target's product offering. Twitter bought Summify and it's shutting down soon.

Social Media is maturing and, as sites buy other sites or evolve, it's impacting users. Hopefully it means more from mainstream sites like Twitter and Google+ in the above examples. Just remember it's business. And it's something  we'll surely be seeing more of in the future.

And a thanks to ShannanB for inspiring this post. 

 

5 Examples of How Social Media is Changing the 2012 Elections

There are plenty of ways you can use social media to follow the long march from the Iowa Caucus to the November Elections. Several sites, including Instagram and Tumblr, are being used by candidates for the first time to engage and inform citizens.

From behind the scenes access from the media and each candidate's content to larger sites tracking how the candidates are doing overall, here are just a few sites to check out.

1) 2012 Elections Site | Google: By far, Google does the best job of a non-news organization tapping its products to bring you a complete destination for bipartisan election content. It's using search, YouTube, Google+ and even Google Calendar to fuel its efforts. And in addition to covering the elections, it has a toolkit to get voters engaged in the process.

2) Media Mentions | Washington Post: Media Mentions tracks how candidates are doing in news coverage as well as on Twitter. And The New York Times, with the help of Big Data, will tell you that candidates who do better than expected will get more media coverage as a result.

3) Tapping Klout to Rank Candidates? | CNN: CNN using Klout is a big win for the polarizing ranking site. I'm hoping someone also comes back to note how well ALL of the platforms did as a predictor of candidate success. As we've already seen, unexpected outcomes are standard fare. And we're already seeing folks use a single social platform to make assertions about which candidate might/could win.

This is uninformed and it's already being seen that the correlation between quantity of Twitter followers, Facebook likes and YouTube views does not necessarily correlate to the number of votes. In fact, this gets back to the discussion of influence. If someone has all the social buzz, but not the votes....

4) See the Elections Unfold | Instagram: The "niche photo site" points out three major news organizations using the platform to augment their coverage. And it gives me a wicked idea (evil laugh).

5) Politics & Election News | New York Times: Book-ending our examples is the New York Times who is devoting significant resources above and beyond curating their own news to cover the election. In addition to a mobile app, its bloggers and interactive team are going deep to deliver some interesting insights and examples of social's impact in the 2012 elections.

Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn

A scan on my part shows nothing of permanent of note from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn just yet. Twitter is showing folks how to live tweet for a better election experience, noting how Twitter and live TV go together like peas and carrots. But based on its White House Town Square effort, I'm sure they're capable of a more substantive offering.

Facebook is being tapped for live chats as well. It's good to see an engagement platform being used more for, uh, engaging with voters.

Instant Social Traction
It's wild to see how quickly and thoroughly single moments in an election, or other nationally broadcast events, can unfold through social media. From Santorum's unfortunate shared meaning of his last name (no link, just trust me) to his fashion choices.

Social spoofs will be an interesting sideline to distract from the carpet bombing of political ads we'll see online and offline increasingly over the following year. In a year that election spending is touted as helping to save big media, you know we're in for some serious political noise this year.

But based on the above alone, I'll note social is helping bring a new experience to the the 2012 elections -- online, offline and on TV. It's early and we'll surely see more interesting examples of how it's used to inform and engage voters.

We Interrupt This Blog...

So I've been playing with the blog's design as well as the content feed.

As I'm perfecting this, you've gotten one or two email posts without context that include my photos and my curated links.

The end result is better, more frequent content from me. Your patience is appreciated.

Branding with Color: Lessons from Coke

At my previous gig, my colleagues took pictures of a client's store and the competition's stores. A designer would convert them to black and white photos and blur any logos in the pics. Then they'd ask the client to match the stores with the brands.

It was rare for someone to ace this test. It's a powerful lesson in the power of color in branding (and the need for a store design that also helps reinforce the brand). This test is also done for web sites.

Cuckoo for Coke Colors
From store shelves to the packages on those shelves, Coke realized how well they've used color to differentiate their three big brands from each other when they broke their own rules. A holiday-themed design for the Coke can seems harmless enough. But as you can see, Coke and Diet Coke fans alike were understandably confused by the temporary switcheroo.

You can call this a Coke fail, but I call it a reminder of how good Coke's established its individual brands with just color. But then again, I'm not covering the cost from recalling the holiday cans earlier than planned and replacing them with "the right colors."

Branding through color is well-documented. "Color is one of the brain’s three visual pathways and, since we process every object within view simultaneously, color is the mechanism that places emphasis on certain areas. In addition to enhancing on-shelf visibility, the appropriate use of color can increase brand recognition by some 80%, while also serving as an important brand identifier."

Do you own your brand colors in your competitive space? Is your brand's color palette representing you correctly?

Sensory Branding 
Brands need to consider all elements of  their brand as it pertains to the five senses. Starbucks obviously uses smell to brand their coffee. But it also asked, "what does our brand sound like" and now they have an in-store entertainment network layered on top of its free wifi. It all works together to help connect with the consumer.

(RED) Taps Media Convergence to Promote Awareness

Some will tell you I've got an Instagram addiction. While I'm not sure about that, the social photo-sharing platform does have a loyal following.

Instagram has shown me some great examples of brands testing and learning the concept of No Channels.

Brand Power
Of the 35 or more brands I follow on Instagram, (RED) seems to have the most fun playing up the visual nature of its brand and the various partnerships it has with other brands.

But more than brand awareness, (RED) is smart about giving followers simple calls to action. In one example, (RED) is using Instagram to encourage users to tap into a promotion for the (RED)-branded Shazam app for music discovery on the go. The proceeds benefits the non-profit's push for AIDS awareness.

Convergence & Cross-Platform Thinking
The promotion starts and ends on a mobile device and it uses two niche apps to get users to support (RED). This is certainly not new. But it is a great reminder that thinking cross-platform doesn't just apply to multiple platforms. In this case it applies to a single-device.

Cross-Posted to my work blog 

Product Placement on TV

Product placement is a marketing topic that vascilates between invisible and shameful. For my favorite shameful example, we have "How I Met Your Mother" retroactively rebranding a book to promote a movie...as if they could travel in time. But there's a lot more to product placement. And someone pitched me on this fancy infographic that does a good job of detailing it. So enjoy.

Via: Online MBA Advice

Presentation Trap #234: The (Slow, Boring) Build

A payoff slide kills the boring build, letting you assert first, support later.

There are more than 100 ways to deliver "death by PowerPoint." One death blow I've wrestled with lately is narrative flow.

We tend to build a case for assertions before making them. It's even built into the standard "problem, solution, results" case study. But building up to an assertion risks losing the audience before you can make your point.

The Payoff Slide
Depending on the presentation, I start out with a "payoff" slide in my deck -- not unlike the payoff sentence that kicks off this post. It's my main assertion -- a 140-character elevator speech that can be tweeted by the audience. And I spend the rest of the presentation proving out the assertion. Here's an example on the second slide.

As I've said before, you still need to tell a story that your audience wants to tell after your presentation. So you still need to end on a high note. But if you save it all until the end? You lose the audience before you get there.

Payoff To Stop Walk Out
Losing an audience is literal these days as presentation attendees are more serious than ever about investing their time. An extreme example is South by Southwest Interactive. I've seen SXSWi speakers flame out as people leave during the presentation -- in droves. It's not polite. But it's based on the content they're getting (or not getting) from a presentation. And it reinforces the need to capture and keep the audience's attention.

This guy is boring uploaded by Narisa 

#NOCincyBananaSplit & #bananasforCLT -- a tale of two hashtags

Can Twitter sway an international brand and its potential relocation plans?

That remains to be seen. But I’ll argue it can’t hurt.

#NOCincyBananaSplit
A few weeks ago, Twitter’s J.B. Kropp contacted me and expressed his desire to get organized around what is now known as #NOCincyBananaSplit. It’s our Twitter-based campaign to make sure Chiquita knows that Cincinnatians want them to stay in town.

It was inspired by the news that Charlotte, the other Queen City, was being considered along with a third city as possible spots for Chiquita to relocate. And it’s great to see how quickly we were able to tap into Twitter and show our support.

Here’s how a phone call turned into an online dialogue with Chiquita’s CEO in less than 36 hours.

On September 16, 2011 at 9am J.B. Kropp contacted me about the Chiquita news. As a Cincinnati native, he saw the opportunity to tap into Twitter to make a difference.

Within an hour, a colleague and I came up with #NOCincyBananaSplit and an initial email from J.B. went out to a small handful of local influencers. From there it snowballed into 140 character calls to action. This initial burst of activity got Ad Age’s attention. This in turn got the local media’s attention.

And by the end of the work day, the news had taken place, it was covered by the media and we all moved along with our lives.

Twitter a CEO Tool
That next day @FdoAquirreCEO responded to Cincinnati's show of support, via Twitter of course. And it’s important to note that, while Chiquita’s CEO’s use of Twitter is not unique, Fernando Aguirre is definitely more evolved than the average Twitter user. He understands more than the basics and uses it to engage with other users and not to simply broadcast messages. It’s a potentially humanizing tool and he’s using it to put a face with a large company.

Tweets continued off and on. And a week later, on September 24^th, @BrianDFrancis turned the Cincinnati campaign into a friendly competition by getting Charlotte organized for its own Twitter campaign.

CLT or CVG TBD
#BananasForCLT did as much to underscore the importance of these efforts as it did to make their own side of the story heard. In addition to giving #NOCincyBananaSplit a second wind, this whole exercise has reinforced a few things.

1) Offline & Online: While the vast majority of this, including media coverage, took place online, it all started with a phone call and an email. The need for more direct and personal contact should never be overlooked. And making sure online and offline complement each other is the easiest way to make this happen.

2) Less Can Be More: We talked about supporting the Twitter campaign with everything from a Facebook page and a microsite to larger, offline expressions of our love for bananas. But it didn’t make sense. @FdoAguirreCEO’s use of Twitter was proven and doing anything more would simply diffuse our efforts.

3) Professional vs. Personal: If this was more than a friendly-competition, I’d take several steps to generate a bigger impact. Creating a Twitter landing page to make avatar swaps and creating tweets of support dead simple for people to join the cause would be my first step. Paid ads, most likely on Facebook, would help drive folks to the page. And an offline way to express your support would also be made available.

4) Don’t Be a Jerk: With most any online effort, there will be trolls trying to take over your bridge so to speak. But it was great to see how friendly competition helped both sides out in the long run. It would be easy to get into trash talk with 400 jobs on the line. But there were even cases of members from each side policing their own supporters.

Twitter’s ability to sway the relocation of 400 jobs is still up for debate…even after Chiquita announces its selection. But it’s a humanizing platform and it’s helped @FdoAguirreCEO connect with consumers nationwide in this example. And its helped two cities make sure Chiquita knows exactly how much their presence is appreciated. Mission accomplished.

Marketing, Hoarders & Throw-Aways

For one reason or another, I always seem to uncover items that are being kept around even though they no longer hold value. Items become obsolete -- from this diskette I hung onto for years at my last job to time-sensitive marketing materials that have an expired date or use the old brand identity.

But we hoard these items because of nostalgia perhaps or, more likely, because time or money was invested in them. Whether it's a well-intended “just in case” security measure or otherwise, it's usually overlooked or generally accepted.

Loaded Down with Ideas
Hoarding happens with more than just objects. Marketing practices, and internal processes, are sometimes clung to because “that’s how it’s always been done.” It can be understandable due to the success these intangible assets have achieved in the past.

We’ve all been guilty of hoarding at one time or another. Practices or processes don’t take up extra space. But without changing or reevaluating them, they can slow down organizations, impact productivity and over time they can lead to obsolescence.

Stay Close to the Shiny New
I’m not suggesting we change for change’s sake. I’m also not suggesting we flock to the shiny new. But as our industry is in a constant state of iteration, I am suggesting a balance. Even the longest-held practices or processes should not be off limits when considering what’s working, what’s not, what can improve and what needs to be thrown away.

Facebook: Will You Subscribe?

Despite this post and my last parody post, I'm NOT trying to be the Weird Al Yankovic of social media (emphasis on trying).

But I was thinking about the new subscribe feature on Facebook. And thinking about "I will subscribe" reminded me of "I will survive."

So apologies in advance for all of the various federal and international laws of good taste I'm breaking. Just do me a favor and hum the song when you read the lyrics? Trust me.

** "I Will Subscribe" **
First I was annoyed
I got snarkified
Kept wondering why Facebook changed
its interface design
After I spent so many nights
Making custom Facebook tabs
They looked wrong
But iframes forced me to carry on

And now you’ve changed
You’re all f8
I just logged in for Spotify and
Scoble’s timeline’s in place
I want to cancel my account
Praying 750 million leave
But who are we really kidding
I meant the g-damn site is free?

Go on now Zuck, walk out the door
Take Parker with you
Cause you’re not welcome anymore
Weren’t you the ones making friend a four-letter word?
Our cookies crumbled
Web browsers laid down and die
What can I do?
I will subscribe
It’s the one big change they made
Keeping my Facebook love alive
I’ll get on my wall to moan
how the old design did pwn
But I’ll subscribe
I will subscribe.

If you thought I was mad
about the new design
Just wait till Apple fan boys
see the iPhone and say “SQUIRREL!”
and they'spend oh so many nights
just sifting through the iPhone pr0n
That phone may pwn
I’ve already got my own
and you see me
with iPhone 4
Chained to another contract
some time before I’ll renew
Until then I’ll save my hipster angst
for one more site tragically free
In fact I may unleash my snarking
for someone on Google+