Strategic Public Relations

Bagging Blogger/Brand Stereotypes at Savvy Blogging Summit

Jessica George and I are hitting the road on behalf of our employer, Empower MediaMarketing, and will be en route to Denver in July as part of the Savvy Blogging Summit.

Our presentation is called “Paper or Plastic? Bag the Blogger/Brand Stereotypes and Get Serious.”

We’re focusing on how bloggers can create and improve relationships with brands based on our own experience doing so for several Empower clients. And, based on our perspectives, we'll also take an irreverent look at the stereotypes on either side of the blog post.

In the meantime, the industry is still having much discussion around the topic of influence. What is it? Who has it? How do you get it? We’ll also discuss this topic with attendees to help them move from a one-time transaction into a full-blown business relationship.

We’re looking forward to connecting with the other #sbsummit attendees and soaking up some of the other content. More to come!

5 Things You Can Learn On A Photowalk

Over the weekend, Cincinnati Social Media held a photowalk within downtown Cincinnati. We had amazing weather for it and, in two hours, I took 120 pics and walked a little over a mile with more than a dozen #cincysm members and Instagram fans.

While I've planned a ton of events over the years, every one is different and you can still learn something new each time. So here are five things I learned on the #cincysm #instameet.

1) Cameras Are Not Required: While I was inspired to organize this event by Instagram, it didn't matter if you had the app, or an iPhone -- all forms of capture were welcome. Others had Androids or their SLRs in hand. But a high point of the day was when I realized two children were using their Nintendo DS' to take pictures. The kids were accompanying their parents on the walk. 

2) Back Stories Make Big Stories: It was great to meet some folks for the first time that day as well as others I'd known online, but had not met in person. One attendee had not been downtown for about five years. So it was great to get his perspective on how much the city has changed and improved. Everyone seemed to contribute a lesser known fact about buildings as we walked. This gave a great back story to the pictures we took and we got to know each other better in the process.

3) New Perspectives Will Find You: I've spent a lot of time downtown over the years and knew the path we took has plenty of photo opportunities. But there were still certain spaces, perspectives and details I saw for the first time. Photowalks are great when you're out of town, but they can also reconnect you with a space so familiar that you don't pay attention to it.

4) Promotion Before Makes For Difficult Follow-Up After: Events are shared  and overshared via social media. This one made it to LinkedIn (which serves as CincySM's web page), Facebook (not everyone targeted were CincySM members), on Instagram and all of these pushed to a MeetUp site to keep it organized. This is fine -- even without the context. But it makes it tough to track everyone down post-event. All 12 attendees have different online preferences and a different point of reference for the event online. In addition to Flickr and Instagram, we're using DropEvent for a spot to aggregate images (h/t Christiaan). But even if everyone agrees to a single hashtag and rallying point post-event, you still find yourself repopulating the same sites you used to promote the event with this update.

5)  Organizing For Flexibility Is Critical: With a lot of events -- from weddings to conferences -- your attendance can change at the last minute. So I had multiple routes in mind in case we needed to split up into smaller groups. And as we walked our route, we tried to tweet/instagram a few pics so folks could catch up to us. This worked out well. But for the next photowalk, I'll also designate a single way for late comers to communicate with us so they can catch up more easily during the event.


The event was great and it was a blast taking a ton of pictures with Cawood, FranToh, Stuku56, Castlepoint, JustThinkChris, TorenCastle, GlennaVonHenna, Kathy Jo love blue, Tattooprincess and Pezhunter. Stay tuned for the next one. We'll definitely be doing more.

10 Instagram Hacks

In December 2010, I installed Instagram on my phone.

Six months and more than 215 photos later, I now enjoy using my mobile phone to take pictures as much as I enjoy using my digital camera. And in doing so I join more than five million users of a photo app less than eight months old.

What’s the big deal? Some suggest it’s Polaroid nostalgia. But the app’s power is in its utility, simplicity and community. Instagram is an easy to use, but powerful, social camera. It allows you to point, click, edit using one of 11 filters and share all within a single app. It’s essentially a microblogging platform focused solely on pictures.

Regardless of what you call it, Instagram introduces you to its community and their stories one photo at a time. Here are 10 things I’ve learned using Instagram that will make your experience with this app even better.

1)  Community: Check out Instagramers.com to meet new, passionate fans. Created by Phil Gonzalez, the site features users and includes tips, tutorials and a photo of the day contest. It’s a great way to connect with people and to see how creative users are getting within the apps constraints. Or if Facebook is more your style, check out the Instagram Community fan page.

2)  Ambient Awareness: From fashion, music and luxury brands to news outlets, non-profits, startups and some of your favorite beverages, there are a lot of brands on Instagram. And with any new platform; it’s interesting to see how brands use it to interact with fans. We’re already seeing examples of news releases, activism and extreme branding.

3)  Stats & Back (that pic) Up Hacks: Instagram’s open API has inspired a flurry of sites that create a richer web-based experience for this app. There are more than I can list in a single post without losing your attention. But if you only check out one, make it Statigram. It provides you with analytics around your Instagram account.

For those of us that want to back up our photos for archival purposes or just to make it easier to share with others, we have a couple of options. Facebook fans can use Instasync to create a Facebook Photo Album. Dropbox users can tap into Instadrop to automatically make a copy of your Instagram pics as they’re posted. Or use Copygram (currently in beta) for a more universal back up option. These are great when you find yourself with too many pictures on your phone.

4) Flickr: Yep, for me, Instagram and Flickr provide two different things. In this case, head over to Flickr and check out the Instagram group. If you’d like to mash up the two sites, Gramjunction is worth checking out. Juan Sanchez tapped the Insta-API to create a site that takes your Flickr pics tagged with Instagram and serves them up in a stream. Clicking through takes you to the Flickr page/account for that photo. This allows Flickr Fans to continue to focus on their site of choice and still parse out their instagram pics.

5) Instaview Sites: By far the web-based sites allowing users to interact with and view Instagram pics are the most popular choice for developers tapping into the API. There are a ton of these “Instaview sites,” but most require you to be a member of Instagram to access them.

Regardless, I enjoy using Inkstagram for its interface (it doesn’t work on IE, fwiw). But there is something for everyone in this category from sites including Extragram, Gramfeed, Webstagram, Instagrid, Listagram and a viewer that lets you view popular photos by filter used. You can even create a screensaver (web-based or Mac-based) with your Instagram pics. Or create a widget to bring your pics to your blog.

6)  Novelty View Sites: Novelty view sites are like Instaview sites but they come with a twist. Are you a cat person or a dog person? Anecdotal evidence tells us there are more cat people using Instagram but maybe it’s better to compare kittens and puppies?

Or view pics based on geography (map-based), color or geo-location (near you). Hot or Not fans will appreciate Instawar and Pic A Fight. Or if you just want to gaze at the popular crowd, visit Rrrewind to do so across a variety of social content.

7)  InstaMake Sites: If you thought the novelty view sites were cool, a host of sites take it offline to create Instagram souvenirs. Teeny Tile and Stickygram offer magnetic attraction. Instatees and IGTees let you wear your Instagrams. Hatchcraft and Keepsy allow you to frame your pics or make them into a scrapbook.

And while Instaprint was one of the first options for printing your Instagrams (using a pre-identified hashtag), it has been joined by Postagram, stickers, Instamaker and other Instagoodies as well as posters and contact sheets from Printstagram, Social Print Studio and Printo.

8)  Challenges: I can frame this section up with a single name: Josh Johnson. @JoshJohnson is a photographer with daily tips and a rotating set of photo challenges that get the Instagram community congregating from around the world. Challenges are one of the best ways to engage with Instagram (participation = social media satisfaction, hmmm, sounds like a meme) But while Josh is the most active and prolific Instgramer I know, Spenser Kaufman @deceivexxdeny, also provides some interesting opportunities amongst others.

9)  Tag It: Much like Twitter, hashtags are a critical device with this app. They’re used very creatively on Instagram to tell stories. All of the challenges rely on tags and tagging your location is a great way to meet folks in your community using Instagram. That can come in handy for photowalks.

10) Photowalks: Photowalks take the Instagram community offline and in person -- where it's most important and powerful. They're an amazing way to get inspired, meet other photographers and take a ton of pics. There was a global Instameet earlier this year. But you don’t have to wait until next year to have one. Just head to Instameet and create your own. Or find one to participate in. Psst, the Cincinnati Instameet is on Saturday, June 25th. Join us!

Instagram is APPtastic
Phew! In an earlier post, I focused on mobile photo apps and left out Instagram. And now it’s probably obvious why. It’s inspired an ecosystem of sites Now it might make more sense if I tell you that, on average, 10 photos are posted to Instagram every second.

To check out the above link storm, uh, hacks in a curated page, check out my Scoop.It on Instagram sites.

It’s a far from exhaustive list, believe it or not. So if you have a site to add, do it there or share it in the comments below. Or post about it on Instagram and copy @prblog.


Cross-Posted at My Work Blog

SXSWi | Friday Flickr Fix | 04.01.11

While you're sorting through which tech posts are fact and fiction, I'll just serve up some photos for you. In hindsight, I could have focused just on taking photos at SXSW and I would not have made a dent in event coverage.

My approach in the future will be much different. In the meantime, here's a set of the pics I generated while in Austin. The set makes it look like I was a "promotional anthropologist" based on all of the columns and tables consumed by stickers/posters/fliers that I wound up capturing. Regardless, my set is a blink in the more than 27,000 already posted to Flickr.

Influence at SXSWi -- and a #throwdown with Fast Company

Post-SXSWi, I've recovered and even dug out a bit. There's still a metric ton of content I want to post. But I will point you to some posts I wrote as a contributor to The Cincinnati Enquirer's SXSW blog during the event.

During the melee in Austin, David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Saul Colt and I sat on a panel to discuss the topic of influence. Below is the director's cut of slides. We did not get through all of them, so I added a few as well as some links for reference in the speaker notes. I went long in the Slideshare version as we addressed some of the questions folks were asking on Twitter. We just ran out of time before we could answer them.

In discussing what Influence is NOT, we got into celebrity influence. This brought up everyone from Charlie Sheen (popular vs. influential), Ashton Kutcher (broad/absolute influence) and Kenneth Cole (did his errant tweet have a positive impact?), to Klout (one site can't do all the work), Chrysler (a missed opportunity for the brand to be human) and Kim Kardashian (relative influence with a specific group).

SXSW 2011 - Influencer #Throwdown: Defining Influence Once & For All

Fast Company Throws Down
One reason we ran long was a special, unexpected guest. Fast Company Senior Editor Mark Borden discussed the panel singling out the Fast Company Influencer Project in our session description. "Influence 'experiments' like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence." Borden's point is that the project was test and learn...and Fast Company did learn from it. Good point. And in hindsight the fact that we didn't ask Mark to sit on our panel is a miss. We're glad he stopped in.

But we stand by our comment. I have more of an issue with social voting projects as a whole. As I've said here previously "When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can be executed well and can have an impact. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric."

Recaps, Cases & Tweets
In addition to what we did talk about, one case study I wanted to discuss focused on how to find influencers. A team of folks at my employer used a process we have in place to create a blogger outreach list. It was trained on the top 20 influencers discussing DIY, home design/improvement projects. You can see more in the slides on how the list was created and the impact it ultimately had on the results.

We got some great questions and some great feedback from attendees. You can get some more back story from the discussion via our Twitter transcript if you want to dig. Or check out  recaps from Christophe Jammet and Kellye Crane. I'm also looking forward to doing a point/counterpoint on "Content is King" with Bazaarvoice's Ian Greenleigh in the near future.

"Instead of counting the people who reach, reach the people who count
My colleague's quote helps me conclude this post. There's no silver bullet, automagic shortcuts for finding influencers. While we'd (always) love better data to measure at a more exact level -- to identify different influencers at different points in a consumer's brand interactions for example -- it's a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures.

Key influencers are more than likely different for each situation/brand/project. Tie it all back to business goals and you'll be able to focus your efforts if nothing else.

Engagement: Getting Brands and Consumers to Commit

We talk a lot about creating engagement between brands and consumers. And that's because social platforms are an engagement tool, not a broadcast tool.

But after awhile, it can start to sound like we're trying to arrange marriages. Perhaps it's the fact that several of my coworkers were recently married or are preparing to walk down the aisle. Either way, we can over complicate consumer engagement as much as we can over simplify it.

Too Complicated?
When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can do a lot over the long term. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric. This example from TED shows a simple, powerful way to engage consumers and achieve qualitative metrics.

And while this New Orleans-based example might be considered a bit esoteric, it is from TED after all, there are just as many examples online from brands including Starbucks and P&G.

Empower MediaMarketing, my employer, has detailed more than a few simple ways to engage with consumers. There are any number of ways to bring online efforts into the age of participation. and still be able to measure the end result.

Too Simple?
In preparing for an upcoming conference focused on blogging, a fellow blogger remarked that she's "tired of brands puking swag all over bloggers and expecting them to clean it up." She means she's tired of brands taking a one-size fits all approach -- pushing products and logo-laden tchotkes at bloggers and expecting a glowing post in response.

Per usual, whether it's the customer, a blogger or a member of the media, it takes an approach customized to the individual. 


Cross-posted to my work blog. 

Social Media: More than Twitter and Facebook? Uh, yeah.

The following post is based on a discussion at the Cincinnati Social Media LinkedIn Group.

In what seems to be a race to oversimplify EVERYTHING, we're creating misdefinitions. In many cases there's simply (a lot) more to the story.

Social media provides the latest example. Do you know anyone with "T&F Tunnel Vision?" This unfortunate condition involves the assumption that the social media landscape starts and ends with Twitter and Facebook.

I've ranted about this before -- more than a few times. And I'm taking this well-worn soapbox with me down to SXSW for a panel discussion I'm on with David Binkowski and Krista Neher about influencers. Simple math shows the folly in T&F Tunnel Vision and Geoff Livingston deconstructs Twitter in a recent post.

Recently I was reminded about an uber-important site for any local strategy -- Yelp.  

Think Local, Act Social (with Yelp)
Alex Shebar and I connected recently so I could get up to speed on his role as Yelp's Cincinnati community manager as well as some functionality to the site of which I was unaware. I've used Yelp before. But until recently I had not visited frequently/regularly.

It's safe to say I'm a minority in Cincinnati. Ohio has community managers in three cities: Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. That's rare and speaks to our level of activity on the site. States larger than ours have only one manager in one city.

Yelp became a bigger focus for me when looking at how small businesses are using social media. In a recent presentation, I spent more time discussing Yelp than I did Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. It's because small businesses stand to benefit by focusing their time and effort on Yelp.

Word of Mouth "is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions" per NM Incite. And Yelp's community is just that. It's tagline is "real people. real reviews." Search is the place to start to determine where your customers are talking about your brand. And these reviews can impact search results in a big way. So even if your customers aren't hitting Yelp, they might be reading the reviews via search results.

Yelp 101
So what can businesses do to step up their Yelp presence? Alex gave me two links as the perfect examples.

** Business Owner's Guide to Yelp: This section of the site shows you how to claim your page, respond to reviews and even buy ads. It lays it out step by step. 

** Check-In Offers: This is similar to checking in on Foursquare, but focused more on easily-customized customer incentives. "It provides a measurable way to reward your most loyal customers while attracting new ones."

Based on the type of business, Yelp can be a valuable tool for building word of mouth. You should check and see where your company/your clients shake out. And if you have a great experience retail, food, drink or otherwise? Spread the word on Yelp.

As Alex noted in our conversation, "if you find yourself sitting at home complaining that there's nothing to do, you have no excuse. There's plenty to do. You just need a site to help you find it." 

Driving Miss Social Media
Everyone wants a dependable car that gives them no problems, performs well and gets the job done. But everyone wants to be seen in the sports car that's getting a tune up as much as it's parking a mile from the building so no one scratches the paint job. 

Did I just call Twitter a Ferrari and Yelp a Honda Accord? I'm being dramatic to make a point. But, yeah, there are popular sites and their are relevant sites. Relevant sites are different for every brand and for every customer segment. Relevance wins. 

I think I just named a new line of cars. Make check payable to...

---
Full disclosure: I decided to create this post after the discussion with Alex and due to my recent focus on the site. I did not "unlock any offers" by doing so. In fact, I had to bug Alex to send me the links.

Pic for Strange Facts post - Yelp Fingerless Glove uploaded by Terre

 

 

2011: The Year of Media Convergence

One trend that’s taking place as you read this, one with big implications for brands in 2011, is media convergence.

Digital technology is dissolving the silos used to organize media types and media channels. Paid, owned and earned media (POEM) are blending together across channels that are much more fluid and flexible than ever before – once again due to digital technology.

Empower MediaMarketing is tracking media convergence throughout the year and we created this video to kick things off.



Join the Conversation
No Channels is armed with the video, infographic, Flickr Group and articles that underscore how digital technology is dissolving traditional media silos. And we also want to hear from you.

There are plenty of examples – from iPad’s impact on print and broadcast (since launching a scant 9 months ago) to game consoles turning TVs into full-blown media centers.

Which ones stand out as a fad, and which ones are significant?

The site will update frequently with the discussion as we study the trend, curate content, provide our POV, discuss it with you and detail how brands are responding to this media blend trend.

We've been discussing this for some time now and I’m looking forward to more. Pete Blackshaw, Brian Solis and Jay Baer are already pointing to 2011 as one of convergence. So check out the site, share the content and weigh in on the trend. We’ll be participating -- via any number of screens of course.

Cross-Posted to my work blog, Thought Leadership 

2011 Trend: Changing State of Work

Gyro:HSR (my former employer) created a video to kick off their study of consumers experiencing the impact of technology as it eliminates the 9-5(ish) walls around their professional lives.

"I'm in @work State of Mind" 
With apologies to Mr. Joel, I think this trend has been brewing since 1997 when Daniel Pink chronicled "Free Agent Nation" in Fast Company magazine. The free agent workforce altered the conventional workplace.

In addition to changing roles, management styles are also changing and employees are responding more positively to intrinsic rewards than the traditional, extrinsic reward model. This topic is covered in Drive, once again by Daniel Pink.

Time Shifting 2.0?
The video above suggests that "despite all our rage we're still just rat's in a cage" -- or perhaps a wifi tether. Instead of having more leisure time, the technology is creating more work for consumers.

But I think there are exceptions to this rule. Some consumers, including many profiled in "Free Agent Nation" and Drive, choose the ability to dive in and out of work as warranted. In return, these consumers have the flexibility in when and where they work. It's a form of time shifting for corporate America. The work simply is no longer kept to a day tight compartment.

I'm not being naive when I use the term 9 to 5 and day tight compartment. But I do think work was already spilling outside of those boundaries before my iPhone brought it to me via its Retina display. 

This is an important distinction. As screenagers get older, an @work state of mind will become a seamless part of the multiscreen experience they're becoming known for now. And there will be give and take so they won't feel like work is increasing at the expense of leisure.

Social Media: It's Messy
This @work state of mind is definitely another facet of the "social media is messy" discussion. Facebook alone is forcing the separation of work and play issue as many consumers see their professional and personal lives overlapping online -- at many levels. Part of that is a privacy discussion perhaps. But it's interesting from a "business anthropology" standpoint.

As GyroHSR's Segal notes, the technology is definitely a primary driver. “The proliferation of network communications and hand-held devices has turned work from a place into a state of mind." It's another
consideration brands must take when engaging with brand participants.

In fact, 2011 will be one big year of convergence. MUCH more on that in my next post. :-)

Four Hairy Weeks & Avatars Saving the World

Geoff Livingston, Richard Laermer and I were in a friendly discussion awhile ago about the Cartoon Avatar campaign on Facebook.

You may recall the campaign wherein everyone was encouraged to swap out their profile picture with their favorite cartoon character* to increase the awareness of the issue of child abuse.

We all agreed to post on the topic. Instead of posting my take on the Bad Pitch blog (in a timely manner), I’m responding here to leave some space for my co-author to do the same.

Geoff makes some great points, including the dark side of lightweight user actions – slacktivism. The first wave of this debate brought the movement’s leader, a volunteer named Jay, under intense scrutiny -- the likes of which is usually quickly (and anonymously) organized online.

As I’m late to the game I’ll make some broader observations as cause awareness raising efforts are fueling a backlash.

Ideas Iterate Online: In March of 2009, P&G brought in a fleet of uber nerds (including myself) to help them sell some t-shirts for a good cause while teaching some of their marketers that social media can move SKUs.

P&G went to great lengths to ensure complete disclosure was made throughout the four hour, Apprentice-like event. Not only was the money going to charity, the person donating got a nostalgic t-shirt in return. It seemed like the perfect scenario to avoid criticism.

Wrong. People complained we didn’t raise enough ($50,000 in 240 minutes which P&G then matched). People complained about a lot of things.To compare the flack P&G received to the attacks made on Jay is more than a bit of a reach. And to be clear, I do feel that there was a wildly unsuitable amount of scrutiny placed on Jay. But some of the more pragmatic voices obviously helped him improve his approach with the addition of a URL to his efforts. Ideas can iterate quickly online.

As Geoff notes: “The great promise of the Fifth Estate [is] the ability to discuss matters when the conventional press and establishment — isn’t doing it well.”

The takeaway is a well-worn phrase I use for internal communications: “give everyone a bar of gold and someone will complain it’s too heavy.” Expect criticism – especially when it can be given from the comfort of an anonymous keyboard. Jay’s critique unfortunately devolved into a mob mentality. But the smaller, quieter and more constructive piece of that critique helped him. Healthy debate can make a healthy impact.

Fewer Silos, More Mustaches: Jay brought a lot of attention to the cause of child abuse. That was his goal and he reached it. Comparing his effort to Movember may seem unfair. But if anyone wants to learn from Jay’s experience, remember when more than awareness is the goal, more than a single effort in a single media silo is required.

Since the concept was dreamed up over beers in 2003, Movember has raised more than $100 million to help find a cure for prostate cancer. That’s a lot of mustache growth in the month of November. Movember’s succeeding because it did not place all of its chips on a single, mass avatar flip. It started offline, it spread and it built out over time.

It Takes an iVillage: Malcom Gladwell noted in the New Yorker "weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.” Daniel Lally is quick to point out, as Geoff does, that weak ties are a start. These ties just usually shouldn’t be the finish too.

So perhaps before throwing our echo into the chamber next time, we consider the bigger picture and we ask if our “barbaric yawp” adds to the discussion or simply takes away by increasing the noise. It won't stop the real issue, but it can help the healthy debate stand out more easily.

*Is it cheating to list the Super Friends as my favorite cartoon character? In my defense I’ll note that one reason is the Cincinnati connection to their hangout.