Feeds-
Practices
-
Expertise
-
Companies
Opinion on marketing strategy & more by Kevin Dugan / @prblog since 07.02
Updated: 3 days 22 hours ago
Links for 2012-02-06 [del.icio.us]
- Super Bowl Twitter, Facebook Use Up More Than 6X Over 2011
If you remember that mobile doesn't simply mean outside and that most everyone watching the game probably owned a mobile phone or had access to a laptop, the above is not a surprise. Advertisers had plenty of "conversation starters" -- from hashtags to shazam tags -- in their ads this year too. - Balance your Mix of Stock and Flow Content Like A Pro | The Content Strategist
The need for a mix of content and the advantages of mixing it.
Categories: Public Relations
Links for 2012-02-05 [del.icio.us]
- NYPL Labs | The New York Public Library
New York Public Library is doing some interesting things in their labs. - 4 Ways to Tweet as a Visual Brand
Some helpful reminders from mashable that apply to more than visual tweets. Not sure I agree about only using Twitter. As a default, it makes sense. But if you're a luxury brand, for example, I'd suggest using instagram. It all depends on audience...per usual.
Categories: Public Relations
Like Angry Birds [Flickr]
prblog posted a photo:
Great to see folks skipping the F icon and simply using the thumbs up.
Makes sense as its a clear call to action. In fact, Facebook changed the Fan action to Like because twice as many people would click Like.
And now we will be seeing similar actions offered on Facebook. It's a move to create more "lightweight user actions" on Facebook and create an environment of frictionless sharing.
It helps their advertising for one. But it also makes it easier to participate on Facebook.
Categories: Public Relations
Like Orange Tic Tacs [Flickr]
prblog posted a photo:
Great to see folks skipping the F icon and simply using the thumbs up.
Makes sense as its a clear call to action. In fact, Facebook changed the Fan action to Like because twice as many people would click Like.
And now we will be seeing similar actions offered on Facebook. It's a move to create more "lightweight user actions" on Facebook and create an environment of frictionless sharing.
It helps their advertising for one. But it also makes it easier to participate on Facebook.
Categories: Public Relations
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. UPDATE: Mashable asserts Twitter can predict who's winning the GOP presidential race.
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.
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. UPDATE: Mashable asserts Twitter can predict who's winning the GOP presidential race.
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.
Categories: Public Relations
Links for 2012-01-27 [del.icio.us]
- Tips for Better Listening based on 7 Types of Listeners | Lead Change Group
There's a great stat about how much of communication involves listening. And it's a higher percentage than you think. Yet we're never taught about it in professional development of even college.
Categories: Public Relations
Links for 2012-01-26 [del.icio.us]
- GE Study Proves Consumers Respond More to Shared Content | Digital - Advertising Age
Word of Mouth Marketers will simply note this is an online extension of offline word of mouth. Which is just to say that it's not surprising to see this prove out. But keep in mind, earned may deliver response while paid may be required to deliver eyeballs to help respond.
Categories: Public Relations
Links for 2012-01-25 [del.icio.us]
- Put Your Taproot Into the Independent Web | John Battelle's Search Blog
Zynga and Causes realize what many others know, Facebook's part of a much larger picture when it comes to social media and the web.
Categories: Public Relations
Links for 2012-01-24 [del.icio.us]
- McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories
When activists use hashtags, it can be very effective. When brands use them, they need to be prepared to have consumers take them in a different direction -- even an offbrand, negative and NSFW direction. - Marketers Tease Super Bowl Commercials
The days of 1984 commercials are long behind us and campaigns around the Super Bowl ads have gotten more extensive as media continues to converge. Volkswagen's BarkSide was an ad teasing an ad. So it's not a shock to see others follow suit this year.
Categories: 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.
Categories: Public Relations