Strategic Public Relations

Program or Be Programmed

Right now, I'm reading media futurist Douglas Rushkoff's latest book: "Program or Be Programmed."

Normally I'd do my established book report post on it once I'm done. But he does a better job presenting the concepts. And I'm not sure I could do it justice in a single post. It's such a great read however that I present you with two points from the book.

Social Media -- Lacking Up To 93 Percent of Human Communication
"According to best estimates, only seven percent of human communication occurs on the verbal level. Pitch, volume and other vocal tone account for 38 percent and body movements such as gestures and facial expression account for a whopping 55 percent. As we have all experienced, the way a person makes eye contact can mean a whole lot more to us than whatever he is saying."

Keep the above in mind when we talk about the difference between creating engaging content vs. just broadcasting. Broadcasting mindset assumes the job is done once the content has been distributed. Engagement understands content starts the conversation. Distributing it is, in many ways, just the beginning. And the above research reminds us why this is the case.

History Can Help Decode The Future (Again)
Rushkoff of course jumps in to the discussion of social media. In a very concise way he reminds us that historically the Internet has always been social -- even during its .gov Arpanet days.

"The history of the Internet can probably be best understood as a social medium repeatedly shaking off attempts to turn it into something else. >snip< Our digital networks are biased toward social connections -- toward contact. Any efforts to redefine or hijack those considerations for profit end up compromising the integrity of the network itself and compromising the real promise of contact." 

Take It Offline
Even if we don't think in marketing silos, far too often we neglect to consider the consumer's offline experience in relation to her online experience. So even if we break out of the silos we can fall into when we're "distributing messages," we need to remember "the real promise of contact." And, to be clear, I'm telling this to myself as much as I am to you. This is not finger-wagging pontification from high atop Mt. Typepad.

Cross-posted to my work blog. Image back story can be found here.

Top 5 Social Media Inspired Names

Mashable points to a couple naming their newborn "Like" after the one-year-old Like button on Facebook.

They join a couple that named their child Facebook.

Is this one of the seven signs that preceed the end of the world? No, it's not end times. It's just pop culture at it's best...or it's worst depending on your outlook.

So from the home office in Cincinnati, Ohio, here are

The (worst) Top Five Social-Media-Inspired Names:

5) Retweet** -- It's arguably not even that original. Remember Rerun?

4) Poke -- Again, unoriginal. A Pac-Man fan wouldn't blink(y) twice upon hearing this name

3) Tumblina -- Tumblr would be cool with it. But I'm not sure if the kid would grow into it or not.

2) Fail Whale -- You're pretty much guaranteeing the kid a life of therapy.

1) Viral -- Oh sure, the baby vids might rack up the views on YouTube. But try scheduling a play date for this kid. Srsly.

Honorable Mentions: Hulu/Boxee, Wiki/Widget, Meme, Geo, Bebo/Blip, DeviantARTIST, Orkut, Plaxo, Vimeo, Yelp and Micro-Blog

Care to add to the list? Comment below. But no celebrity baby names accepted.

**Hat tip to Chuck Gose for inspiring this post.

Lessons from “The Future of Non-Profits” | BOOK REPORT | 05.17.11

Open publication - Free publishing - More authors

Randall Moss asked me to review “The Future of Non-Profits” and I’m glad he did. While it’s specific to non-profits, some of the content can be applied to other organizations. In fact, the book is a practical guide with several resources to get readers started with innovation in their own organizations.

My abbreviated review for his promotional efforts:

It’s a must-read for anyone looking to go beyond the status quo and instigate sustainable change in an organization. Randall Moss and David Neff translate decades of hard-earned experience into an action-oriented book. The rapid rate of change brought by digital technology has rendered the word innovation a broadly-defined cliché. “The Future of Non-Profits” reclaims meaning for this word.

The book is organized into three sections to help readers build out a process around innovation within their own organizations:

• definitions and strategies,
• the three pillars of innovation (awareness, structure and staffing) and
• implementation and future considerations, including the future of fundraising and communications.

Throughout these sections it reinforces some important points that apply to more than just non-profits.

Innovation’s Not Just for R&D Labs: This isn’t news, but it’s important. Innovation doesn’t need to be cordoned off in a special location, away from the rest of the company. And it doesn’t have to equate to inventing the next QR Code or writing music that hasn’t been invented.

The Process of Innovation: Following a well-defined process can lead to more incremental innovations. This can have a greater impact on an organization over time and this approach can make innovation a sustainable process.

Entrepreneurs & Selling In To Your Organization: To me this is what gives the book some sharp teeth. It’s a realistic review of who you’ll need on your team to succeed, how to recruit them and how to innovate within the organization vs. innovating despite the organization.

Lead with Examples: The book serves up several cases throughout to show how much fundraising has changed. With Goodwill International on Twitter, American Cancer Society fundraising on Second Life and Susan G. Komen’s “Race For the Cure” attracting half a million “likes” on Facebook, even well-known non-profits are regularly changing their approach.

Advocacy, Action, Donation
While the above examples lend themselves to fundraising, organizations should evaluate whether or not social gaming, Twitter, Flickr, geotagging and even mobile apps might help their cause.

Change? Her Name is Constant
“Change is a constant” was first uttered in 535 BC by Heraclitus. Nearly 1,500 years later, this snowball keeps rolling down the slope, seemingly gaining speed.

As a result, innovation is no longer a nice to have. To live in a state of constant iteration and still GTD, books like “The Future of Non-Profits” need to rise to the top of your to do list.

Twitpic, Instagram, Flickr & Facebook - Got the Picture?

For some reason, I know that I started using Twitpic three years ago today.

You could care less and I don't blame you.

So in addition to pointing to my first Twitpic, most viewed Twitpic and one or two others illustrating this post, I'll make some observations about photo sharing platforms in general.

You may not care about this either. But the odds just shifted significantly.

All Bets Are Off
Just a few short months ago it seems we could classify platforms based on what you did there: social networking, photo sharing, publishing. But even then it didn't acknowledge LinkedIn's focus on business, Facebook's ginormous user base, Flickr's deep community and Say Media's killer Ad Network.

And as these sites have evolved, so have consumer habits. Case in point: the second most used search engine is YouTube and not Yahoo. Yahoo's busy competing with AOL as they try to become content players instead of what they built their brands on respectively.

Assumptions Make Us Stoopid
I'm not being nostalgic with the above observations. My point is to dig deeper and go beyond commonly-held beliefs. Platforms evolve quickly...more quickly than the dot com days.

We assume that teens do nothing more than text. That's a safe assumption since the number of text messages sent and received each day exceeded the population of the earth -- in 2007. But it's not safe to assume they don't watch TV. They simply text while doing it. It's called a multi-screen experience.

So while Flickr and the other two top photo sharing platforms combined are dwarfed by Facebook when it comes to number of images hosted, this is more than a quantity discussion. Consider what else Flickr provides its users. That's why they're still around today -- in blatant defiance of The Highlander Complex. And if that reason ties to your target audience it's a viable option for your consideration.

Less is Even More
Twitpic and Instagram are other disruptions in the photo sharing discussion. Suddenly my iPhone can take and edit pictures that look better than the ones I take with my camera. And it's obviously easier to share those pictures. As we see a trend of consumers that are more into documenting the experience than the experience itself, we need to consider what that means.

This is all part of a larger discussion around content and what value it delivers the consumer and their role in creating it. Content is king oversimplifies the discussion. You have to consider the consumer, which then drives how and where you serve up "his majesty." And it doesn't even begin to take into consideration concepts like sharing and curation.

Slowly Unveiling a Story
The short form, heavily-social Twitpic, Instagram and others offer opportunities to tell very short stories. Tagging helps fashion those stories into volumes. Two interesting examples of sites trying to tap into this are Hash Album and a promotional site set up by Brisk for SXSW, BriskPic. It was a crowd-sourcing/packaging test by Pepsi. Did they learn from it? Let's assume yes. But don't underestimate the power of simplicity when it comes to images. Could they replace a news release? Depends on the news. Much like Twitter, it's forcing communications to be stronger, yet shorter. Our skills increase as consumer attention spans shrink.

What examples have you seen of brands tapping into photo sharing in a way that added to their message?