Blog Posts

Blogging and Social Web Tools to Declutter Your Life
Should You Have One Social Media Identity or Two?
Brands and Avatars: Good Idea or Epic Fail?
LinkedIn Strategy: I’m Sorry, Do I Know You?
25 Questions for the Future of Journalism and PR
United Airlines and the Social Media Double Whammy
7 Nitty Gritty Tips for Managing Your Online Identity

Bookmarked Articles

Building Relationships Online? Meet Their Hierarchy of Needs
10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?
User Name Check
Is a Facebook Page a Complete Social Media Strategy?
25 Social Media Marketing Tips
The Ten Commandments of Content Marketing
How to Weather a Twitterstorm

Tweeting a URL is easy. Most third-party Twitter tools like Twhirl and TweetDeck have built-in URL shorteners. Now, Fleck Lite offers a way to aggregate the URLs you’ve Tweet via social bookmarking.

So…Why Fleck Lite?

Every once in a while, I unplug from Twitter. Crazy, right? Unfortunately, every second that I’m unplugged I’m missing links shared by bright people.

Until now, my options were limited. I could visit your Twitter page, scroll through your Tweet stream, and visually sift through in a bid to discern the links from the general Tweets. Tedious, to say the least.

If you were using Fleck Lite, though, I could visit your bookmarks page and see only the Tweets in which you included a URL. Fleck Lite will send the Tweet AND archive the link. It’s like Delicious + Twitter, but don’t tell Fleck that.

Social Bookmarking Makes a Comeback?

I’m of the opinion that Twitter is a threat to social bookmarking sites like Delicious. Why? Because we’re already suffering information overload, and when we can share links via Twitter, why would I want to go somewhere else for content referrals?

Fleck Lite is a win for social bookmarking, though, because it makes cross-platform connectedness easier, just as TwitterFeed makes it easier to syndicate your blog content to your Twitter stream.

Final Verdict

So far, I like Fleck Lite. It still has room to improve, but definitely worth giving it a whirl.

When we were kids, my brothers and I spent our summers at my grandparent’s cabin in the hills of New York’s southern tier.

By day, we’d raise heck like boys do, flinging apples with whittled sticks, searching for salamanders in the gully, or trekking up to the North 40. By night, we’d settle around the campfire to tell stories we’d told countless time before.

Now, half a lifetime later, I’m sitting by the campfire again, telling tales with a cadre of storytellers I barely know. Only this campfire is different.

By the dim glow of Twitter’s artificial firelight, I can make out only the shadowy silhouettes of their faces. I know them only by their voices, so to speak…by the timbre of their Tweets. We are strangers, and yet, we are friends.

We tell a story in which we are all characters. Our Tweets are a sort of folk lore, a shared history we write together. Tweet by tweet, we add to the story — to our story — deepening it, giving it texture. With each keystroke, we allow ourselves to be drawn more deeply into the story.

On those summer nights of my childhood, when the night was lit only by the campfire’s flame, my eyesight would surrender to my other senses. The shrill whistle of an apple log, I learned, is a dialect altogether different from the crackle of old hickory. I discovered the taste of fog, and the mossy scent of a White Pine on a humid night.

I learned, too, that there’s more to a man than he reveals by daylight. I came to know my father best, and grew closest to him, when we stared into the embers of the same dying fire.

Staring into the fire. Following a stream of Tweets hardly seems to compare. And yet, amid the @replies and DMs, there is camaraderie. Around this modern day campfire, in this darkness, I find kinship with these strangers.

As I scroll through the avatars of everyone gathered around the Twitter campfire with me, I’m reminded of an old camp song I heard long ago, adapted from a John Denver tune:

There’s an old man on a mountain, a mile or more away
Heading down an old, familiar trail
His body’s feeling weary, his feet are getting sore
But he smiles for now he knows that he is home. 

Hey it’s good to be back home again
Sometimes this old place feels like a long-lost friend
And hey it’s good to be back home again

Wow. Words of wisdom delivered in 140-character-or-less clarity.

Do you “challenge the thinking” when you blog? Or do you blog just to blog?

Even within the flip-flops-and-tattered-henleys “Rock Star” environment of PRstore’s DesignCentral, I’m known for being a little maverick-y (youbetcha!). I’m the quintessential Rebel Without a Clue. But until I saw Jason’s Tweet, I’d never thought of my blog in quite those terms.

It’s easy to write a blog about marketing or PR, or even social media. Hundreds of us do it. But “challenge the thinking?” Most days I struggle just to find something timely and topical to write about. I bet I’m not alone.

“Challenge the thinking.” Challenge the thinking! In a way, isn’t that exactly what social media asks of us — find a way to do it better, whatever it is? We are the vanguards of our professions, the innovators who are shaping the future of business. If we’re not daring to think in new ways, who will?

Kudos, Jason, for capturing in a brief, off-the-cuff Tweet what so many social media haven’t captured in a lifetime of blogging.

Step 1 – Create a Twitter Account for RSS Subscriptions

You’ll need to create a Twitter account that has just one follower: you. Create a new account at Twitter.com. In the settings panel, change the privacy setting to “Protect Updates.”

Step 2 – Follow Your New RSS Account

Log out of the Twitter account you just created and log back in using your main account. Do a search for the new account and request permission to follow. Then, log out again. You’ll need to log in to the other account to approve the request.

Step 3 – Approve the Request to Follow

Log in to your RSS feed Twitter account and approve the request to follow. We’re halfway to the finish!

Step 4 – Set Up TwitterFeeds for Your Favorite Blogs

Visit TwitterFeed and create an account if you don’t already have one. You’ll need an OpenID (there’s a link if you don’t have one). Once you’ve logged in, click the link to create a new feed. In a separate browser, navigate to your favorite blogs and news website and grab the URL for their RSS feeds. Plug the URL in over at TwitterFeed and configure the TwitterFeed to your liking. Repeat as necessary.

You’re done! Now, in addition to updates from other Twitterers you follow, you’ll get a Tweet anytime one of your favorite bloggers publishes a new post. The Tweet stream will be completely personalized and visible only to you.

Editor’s Note: If someone REALLY likes your taste in blogs, you could always encourage them to follow the RSS Twitter account you just created. You’ll have to log in to approve their request. Unless you’re being stalked, though, I don’t know why anybody would want to read all of the same blogs you read.

The housing market may be in a mess, but there’s one real estate sector that’s still busy: social media real estate.

For weeks, I’ve been wrangling for control of PRstore’s username at the top social media sites. The username “prstore” is available at some, taken at others, which makes consistent presentation of the PRstore brand tricky. I was finally scored victories at YouTube and Twitter, but not without some artful negotiation and maneuvering.

Gaining control of your social media real estate matters to every company. Here’s a quick rundown of the what’s at stake:

The Challenge

Suppose you’re Joe Smith and you want to set up a Flickr account. Only the Flickr username JoeSmith is already taken. You settle on JoeSmith1974 and head over to Twitter, only to find the name @JoeSmith1974 is unavailable. You snag the name JoeSmith, but over at Mashable, neither of your first two choices is available. Here, you go by JosephSmith74.

And on and on it goes.

When you’re a company, your name isn’t just a word; it’s part of your brand, a brand your customers interact with regularly. Consistent presentation of your brand is key to building brand awareness.

PRstore corporate would like to own the username “prstore” at established and emerging social media sites. So, for example, we’d like to own or control these accounts:

http://www.flickr.com/prstore
http://www.youtube.com/prstore
http://www.mashable.com/prstore

But as I’ll explain later, our desire to own these usernames is sometimes undermined by employees, franchises and squatters.

Why It Matters

• SERPs. Sites that have a targeted keyword in the URL(in this case, “prstore”)  tend to rank highly in search results. Each account PRstore owns is one more page whose message is consistent with ours. We’d like these pages to rank as high as possible in the search results.
• Brand Consistency. We don’t want to be seen as “PRstore” on one site, “PRstore 1” on another, and “PRstore LLC” on another. Most social media sites let you choose what name you’ll present to the public. Still, better to create a consistent brand experience across all platforms.
• Simplicity. Remembering half a dozen usernames is a pain in the neck.

Roadblocks

There’s no other PRstore in the world, so you’d think claiming the username “prstore” would be easy, right? Think again. With 30-plus franchises and the typical coming and going of employees, that prime real estate is often snagged before corporate HQ knows it exists. Here are some of the roadblocks:

Weak/Non-existent Social Media Strategy

Like many firms, PRstore is learning social media strategy by trial-and-error. We experiment, in part, so we can advise future clients of best practices. As a result, we sometimes rush to a new social media site with little thought toward a username real estate strategy.

Franchises

With more than 30 franchise owners nationwide, plus store employees and corporate staff, PRstore’s brand isn’t easy to control. Most folks in PRstore Nation are brand enthusiasts, but we need to do a better job explaining the best uses of the PRstore name in URLs, usernames and profiles.

The Twitter account @PRstore and the YouTube channel “PRstore” were both set up by energetic franchisees eager to promote their stores. It took several weeks of investigation to identify the owners of those profiles, negotiate their release, and help the affected stores re-create their social media presence.

Squatters

In the Web’s early days, cyber-squatters registered the domain names of well-known companies, hoping to strike it rich. Now, speculators register private sector usernames on social media sites. PRstore doesn’t have this problem yet, but we’re a growing company. It’s just a matter of time before someone sets up camp under our flag.

Strategy

A little forethought can help you avoid serious social media headaches down the road. Here are a few tips:

• Choose a Username. A unique company name might be available at every site. If your company name is a common one, though, consider a variation that is more likely to be available. If all else fails, try a unique personal username; you can always get your company name visible in other ways.
• Build a Social Media Target List. Rather than chasing every MySpace, Mebo and Orkut that pops up, do some research. Choose social media platforms that make sense for you and fit your marketing goals. Compile a list first – we’ll worry about creating accounts later.
• Check Username Availability. If you want to present yourself to the world as ABC Company, you’ll be competing with dozens of other ABC Company’s for online real estate. Review your target site list and conduct a search to see if your preferred username is available at each site.
• Create an Account. Once you’re confident your username is available at most of your target sites, go ahead and create an accounts. You’ll want to create a complete profile at each site, too, with strong descriptions and relevant keywords woven in.
• Review. When a new social media site attracts your attention, revisit your real estate strategy before creating an account. Is the whimsical username you’re about to create without a second thought consistent with your other usernames? Slowing down at the start could save you countless hours later.

Of course, locking up your social media real estate is just one part of a comprehensive marketing plan. But in marketing, as in real estate, it’s still about location, location, location.

I got a great email from a prospective PRstore franchisee this week, and thought I’d share it with you:

I’d like to know more about how you use Twitter. Do you have a Twitter strategy? What are your typical Tweet tactics? How do you measure Twitter success? What are your Twitter goals and how do they support or fit into the PRStore marketing strategy? I’m curious about the corporate goals for Twitter, blogs and social media, and even SEO. Do you focus on awareness and penetration to attract new franchisee prospects or is your focus to increase awareness of the "storefront" brand and ultimately reach that customer "sweet spot" of 11-100 employee businesses? Or both? If both, what percentage breakdown?

Wow. Great questions! These are questions not just for PRstore, but also for anyone using Twitter and other social media. Let’s see if I can answer some of them:

Do you have a Twitter strategy?

Yes. My strategy is a bit fluid, of course; it evolves as I experiment. In fact, experimentation is part of my Twitter strategy. Still, I try to follow broad guidelines: Provide something of value. Be authentic. Ease up on the self-promotion. Nurture relationships. Help others. Don’t be afraid to show some personality. Be interesting.

More specifically, I try to align my Twitter strategy with a few corporate goals. More on that later…

What are your typical Tweet tactics?

My Tweets typically come in one of five flavors:

1. Links to my blog posts
2. Links to insightful blog posts by other authors
3. Questions or ideas to prompt discussion
4. @replies to questions/ideas posted by other Twitterers
5. Inane ramblings

There are other Tweets, of course, but these five cover most of my contributions. I stick to these tactics because they’re the right tactics for building relationships, which I consider my most important Twitter goal.

For more info on the types of conversations happening in the social media arena, check out this post by @93octane.

What are your Twitter goals? How do they fit into the PRstore marketing strategy?

Before we can talk about Twitter goals, check out my social media to-do list.

I like Twitter for its conversational nature, the connections between users, and the information sharing it enables. These traits make Twitter an effective tool for building relationships and relaying PRstore messages to new audiences.

Like a press release or a postcard, though, Twitter is just a tool. A good marketing plan uses a combination of tools, and matches the tool to the task. Twitter is just one part of PRstore’s marketing and communications program.

Do you focus on attracting new franchisees or boosting in-store sales?

PRstore is unique among marketing firms in that our success depends not just on attracting and selling to clients, but also on selling new PRstore franchises.

In-store sales make our stores profitable. Revenue from franchise sales is critical to our corporate profitability. Ultimately, our marketing efforts must reflect both needs.

With a limited advertising budget and competing priorities, achieving all of our marketing goals is no simple task. Our social media program is a pressure valve, of sorts, giving us low-cost channels to promote both agendas and to experiment with messaging.

Twitter has already proven helpful in building PRstore’s brand awareness and attracting interest from potential franchisees. Has it boosted in-store sales? We simply don’t know yet. Finding a way to answer that question is definitely on our to-do list, though.

How do you measure Twitter success?

This is the biggie. As I see it, “How do you measure ROI?” is the #1 question for social media. How do you measure the value of conversations?

I’m not good with numbers, so here’s a list of some of the successes in which Twitter played a role:

• Pushing our blog content further downstream and to new audiences via Twitterfeed
• Building brand awareness for PRstore
• Positioning PRstore staff as experts in marketing, PR, media relations, social media, etc.
• Idea sharing with others in the PR & marketing industry
• Establishing connections with journalists that may lead to publicity opportunities for our clients and PRstore
• Connecting with potential franchisees
• Answering questions about what PRstore is and what we do

This is just a start, but you get the idea.

Is Twitter worth the investment? That depends…what’s the investment? My time? I’m sure our bean counters could tell you whether it’s worth the time. Me? I’m looking long-term. If I’m still here in three years, I guess we’ll know the answer.

Here, in no particular order, are the things I want to accomplish/have accomplished with social media on behalf of PRstore. Which of these have you done for your company? Which do you want to accomplish?

• Build brand awareness
• Promote PRstore-generated content (blogs, press releases, articles, etc.)
• Connect with journalists
• Get press opportunities for PRstore clients
• Get press coverage for PRstore
• Find opportunities to educate myself about the latest marketing trends
• Recruit highly qualified employees
• Connect with potential PRstore franchisees
• Form partnerships with third parties
• Generate leads for PRstore franchise owners
• Gain knowledge
• Bump criticism of our company off the front page of Google search results
• Boost PRstore.com higher in the search results for “small business marketing” and other keywords
• Be a valuable resource to external audiences (customers, other businesses, reporters, industry peers, etc.)
• Optimize this blog so it ranks high in search results for the search term “PRstore”
• Educate our store owners about topics relevant to our clients and our day-to-day operations
• Gather feedback from clients past and present, satisfied and dissatisfied
• Gather feedback from our franchise owners and their employees
• Get invited to speak at a forum on our industry

This is just a short list. What are your social media goals? Which have you achieved so far? Which do you need help with?

For the past few weeks, I’ve neglected this blog while PRstore needed my attention elsewhere. But…and here’s the weird part…the less I wrote, the more people subscribed to the blog. Then, when I wrote a post last week, the subscriber count dropped. This week, I’ve been on hiatus again, and the subscriber count is rising.

Meaningless quirk or something bigger? Is there a marketing lesson in there somewhere?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…pageviews are increasing. Yes, increasing. I can trace most of the increased traffic to Twitter.

So is Twitter to blame (thank?) for falling subscriber count? I’m not so sure. If pageviews were simply increasing while the subscriber count was simply falling, that might explain it. But how, then, to explain the subscriber surge when I’m not writing?

What do you think? And what are the implications? Which metric matters more, subscribers (who read posts in RSS readers and don’t count toward pageviews) or pageviews? How does the answer affect marketing strategy?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

I spoke yesterday with Ryan Squire, managing editor of NBC4 in Columbus. In a LinkedIn discussion about social media’s impact on journalism, Ryan shared with me that that NBC4 was shifting from a TV station to an “information aggregator.”

Information aggregator? I had to know more.

Television news, Squire says, is on its way to becoming an irrelevant product. Advertising, the financial fuel of TV, demands an audience, and TV news simply can’t deliver anymore.

The TV news industry has been slow to adapt to changes in communication technology. Camera crews are regularly scooped by a kid with a camera phone and a YouTube account. Bloggers break news immediately while TV crews have to wait for the 6 p.m. broadcast.

So how is NBC4 adapting? For starters, they’re redefining what it means to be a journalist. Instead of anchors, reporters and photographers, everyone will be a journalist – meaning they’ll have to be a little bit of everything.

They’re also embracing the convergence and evolution of technology. It’s not just about having a website; it’s about blogs, instant video uploads, Twitter. It’s about being more agile, more nimble.

How does this affect the PR community? Squire gave me some free advice: If you’re pitching a story to him, pitch it via Twitter. Email and fax pitches (what legitimate PR person faxes pitches?) are just noise to him.

Wow.

When Stowe Boyd conceived the Twitpitch, it was a novel concept that, in reality, only affected a handful of early adopters. But NBC4? That’s mainstream stuff. Has Twitter really reached critical mass?

The answer, I think, is no. And I think Squire would agree. I’m sure you can still send him an email. But the channel 4 news team’s use of Twitter is evidence of a paradigm shift. The Twitter limit of 140 characters per message forces you to get to the point. And isn’t that, in essence, what’s happening to TV news stations – a trimming of the fat, so to speak?

Here’s another thing: Squire doesn’t connect just for connection’s sake. He takes the community aspect of social media seriously, and he takes the community aspect of living in Columbus seriously, too. He’s got the whole newsroom thinking differently. Instead of sources, he’s taught his crew to think of people as…well, people.

Every member of his team gets time each week to go meet people. Today it’s the mayor, tomorrow some guys at the VFW, next week it’s a plumber in Westerville. And it’s not about conducting interviews and creating a news report. It’s about getting to know their audience. His people produce one or two fewer stories a day, but they magnify their goodwill tenfold.

What does tomorrow look like for NBC4? Citizen journalists instead of staff reporters? Grainy camcorder videos instead of professionally shot and edited footage? Information posted before a thorough fact check? Nobody knows, least of all Squire.

And that might not be such a bad thing.

(Editor’s Note: Living in Columbus? Did you know we have a PRstore in Columbus?)