Communications

Webinar on social media measurement

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I cannot attend this one but I just heard from Angela Sinickas about a Ragan webinar she is conducting this afternoon on measuring social media.

The idea of knowing and measuring what effect social media has on the business you are in, drives people nuts –sometimes in a good way.

Yesterday I showed a colleague in the office how I track visitors to our blog, Light Bulb Moments, and she wanted to know “where I got those from.” That it was just the built-in dashboard for WordPress blew her away. And that’s not even getting into Google analytics.

Social Media analytics has got a lot more complex, and necessary. Before diving into any social media tool, first think of what results and measures you would like to have. Start with the end in mind, I guess.

Listen to Angela describe it in a much more succing way here.

Twitter may be the worst way to..

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Fill in the blanks here, if you could.

I am sure you’ve heard of some bad etiquette and bad practice when it comes to using Twitter. I am a big fan of the this micro-messaging tool, but I occasionally come across stories where tweets are so inappropriate.

  • There was that incident last year of a journalist tweeting at a funeral of a kid.
  • Recently at the BBC, a possible case of someone being promoted to a top position using a tweet. When will someone get fired via a tweet, one wonders?
  • Using Twitter to push TMDI –too much damn information– that might overwhelm followers. I’ve unsubscribed the right non-word is ‘un-followed’ to one famous person for this reason.
  • A lazy journalist’s use of Twitter as a replacement for vox pops – – excellent analysis here.

Twitter may be a terrible way to tell your boss you are not coming to work (and forgetting to use the direct messaging function), flirt, attack someone, disclose something you should only be doing offline etc. I am sure there are dozens more examples. I like to hear.

(Image above linked to from NewsPhobia)

Blogging the salmonella outbreak

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There are divisions of the Federal government  you probably never knew existed or paid attention to that are blogging –such as this or this.

So as they get up to speed with new media, it’s interesting to watch how the latest outbreak of salmonella poisoning –and the massive recall of peanut butter — has been enough to get a blog going. It’s barely two weeks old.

Called the PeanutButterRecall blog, the directors of the CDC and the FDA have begun communicating without simply relying on the statutory press release.

The site runs a bit slow, especially the link to the government database that lists hundreds of products from cookies to pet food to store brands, and the map is not exactly interactive, but who cares? Without waiting for the perfect format someone in the bowels of the crisis seems to have given the order for the PB Recall be covered from their perspective, with so many media lenses trained on them. One more thing, they also have a Twitter account.

Good job!

Sidebar: You can appreciate what these guys are doing when you look at the other Peanut Butter blogs out there. These are mainly run by fans or foodies, but they seem to be carrying on as if nothing has happened to the product.

Big guns atweeting – what could we learn from them?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

What does the Dalai Lama‘s office, Number 10 Downing Street, and the new Governor of Arizona have in common?

They’ve all taken to Twitter, lately.

You can tell the groundswell has moved up into the corporate office. Says the Dalai Lama’s office (which counts iJustine as one of the person it is following (?): “His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience.”

By now, you’ve probably come across a dozen uses of Twitter. I’m in a group at Arizona State University where more staff members than you would imagine have been tweeting.

We may all have different uses for this uncanny upstart of a micro-blogging tool that has suddenly made a come back –since it came into being in 2007. But the best one I came across this week was from Jason Calcanis, founder of Mahalo. “if I want to leak something to the press, I can do it by just saying ‘what do you think about this…?’ and if it’s notable, it will be on 10 blogs in a day.”

Calcanis, if you have been following him even outside of Twitter, is a self-proclaimed PR machine. Maybe we could pull the different strands together and learn a few good ideas from all of them.

If anyone cares to contribute to this thread, I’ll follow up with a Lessons Learned post that includes your comments. Thanks!


Tracking the first 100 days – everyone wants to do it!

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The first 100 days is now a yardstick of performance, especially so for the new Obama administration. Of course the media is following it diligently.

Yesterday colleges turned up the heat, to communicate the complexity of what the world is up against with global warming and climate change, and what the president needs to do in his first 100 days.  ASU participated as well in the national teach-in.  (The webcast is here)

Butothers are using social media to record and comment on –even crowd-source– the first 100 days. Here are a few:

ObamaCTO: Tehcnolgy folks keeping tabs on Mr. Obama

WhiteHouse2 – an alternative ‘house’ run by citizens!

First100Days Blog – you’ll never gues who’s blogging the first 100 days! Anderson Cooper? guess again! The GOP? Nah! It’s the State Department.

When life gives you furlough…

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As some of you in Arizona may have heard, last week ASU announced it is implementing a ‘furlough‘ for all staff. It was a proactive step taken while the legislature decided how it wanted to mangle education in Arizona. I could go on with a long rant about this, but there are other venues for that.

Many have asked what’s a furlough. Here is one explanation.

What’s next? There are many ways I could use my 12-day furlough, but considering that there are people out there who don’t even have job openings to apply for, I have an idea.

Job Camp. If anyone cares to join me, I plan to run a job search workshop. It would be based on my interest in the ‘social media resume‘ and include new thinking on areas such as:

  • How to reach hiring managers
  • What recruiters are looking for
  • What are the best ways to connect with them.

It would also cover some basics on:

  • Writing a strong resume / Designing a resume
  • Embedding it with social media elements.
  • Targeting your job search with your resume

Details will follow.

A few communicators I know have volunteered their time. If you like to help out, I’d really like to hear from you. Leave a message here, reach me via LinkedIn, or send me a tweet.

Thanks!

Miller’s hundred-dollar a second joke could payoff

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Miller High Life ad that will air today tries to gain some edge by taking a whack at the absurd cost of the Superbowl ad.

What a *great* way to spend a client’s money by coming up with a storyboard that questions the logic of the ad! I get the feeling that it’s not the ad that will get traction, but the several “one-second ad” cuts that apparently got left behind on the editing floor a.k.a. Mahalo, YouTube etc! Watch them here.

Watch all the other commercials here!

Quotes for the week ending 31 January, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“I’ve got one question: WTF? Where’s the funding?”

Student Tommy Bruce, president of the student-body at the University of Arizona, at the protest this week against state legislators slashing education budgets

“Our model is not for a quick rebound,” he said. “Our model is things go down, and then they reset.”

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, in The New York Times, about the layoffs at Microsoft

“pop culture and media that’s ripe for parody”

Ralph Podell of Barely Digital, a new tech comedy model that will feature the ‘Obama Girl’

“It kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate.”

Governor Rod Blagojevich, invoking that other scandal of secret taping. The Governor was wire-tapped by the FBI which used it as evidence to bring charges on him.

“He’s all about PR.”

Christine Radongo, Senate Minority Leader of Illinois, commenting on the impeached governor Rod Blagojevich.

“Digging into work. Must turn off Facebook. Too distracting. So why am I now on Twitter? Argh!”

Corrine Heyeck, Tweeting about (what else?) the distraction of social media

Then: Echo Chamber. Now: Think Tank

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

What’s the value of Twitter? I’m sure you get asked this question a lot. I’ve been barely active for the past six months, and find myself pointing people to resources such as this ebook (by GreekPreneur) and Chris Penn’s great Power Guide to Twitter.

I found the head-scratching by David Pogue (he, a tech columnist @ The New York Times) very enlightening. Even Pogue is figuring it out as he goes, so I don’t feel too bad.

Anyway, all this preamble is to make the point that Twitter to me is proving to be a customizable focus group that never sleeps; one I could configure with a  few clicks, so that it’s pretty well targeted.

twitter_pollI found a quick poll being taken at The Strategy Web, (try it!) and the instant result confirmed what I thought: More people have found it valuable as a think tank, than a reputation enhancer. The number of people it reflects is very small, so this is not exactly representative of the Twitterverse, but it vindicates my time spent.