Last week Foursquare celebrated its 40 millionth check-in. As I was explaining geotagging, the next iteration of social media, to my client, he was befuddled.
If your client or boss is still on the sidelines of social media, share this video.
Read any good books lately?
In addition to being one of my favorite interview questions, the topic of good books makes for great networking and cocktail conversation too.
Welcome to my video series on business books and blogs. We’ll explore some of the newest titles in business and public relations as well as revisit the classics.
The first recommended title is for anyone struggling with building the business case for social media. Paul Argenti of Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and Courtney Barnes of Think Communications and editor at PR News have written an excellent primer: Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications. The book explores how Web 2.0 is informing public relations, government relations, employee relations and investor relations – every aspect of communications for every company. The authors presents case studies in branding, public affairs and crisis communications along with resources for measuring social media.
If you think you can avoid reaching into the Web 2.0 toolbox, please think again. At least some segment of your stakeholders are on the Web and talking about you. Start listening. Start participating. Start building your social media presence today. Otherwise, you risk having to create social networking in response to a crisis putting you and your company on the defensive.
Yes, this headline was a question on the APR exam to define one of Lippmann’s barriers to communication. (The answer is: Distortion due to compression).
When I started my blog last fall, I had intended to write more about the process of studying for the APR exam. Instead, I found my passion in writing about social media, crisis communications and current events.
Now that I have earned my APR, I am both relieved and excited to join this elite group of public relations professionals. Here are my lessons learned for the successful completion of the APR readiness review and computer examination process.
1) Be ready to make the commitment to read a lot (study guide, text books, articles, case studies) and to exercise the APR knowledge, skills and abilities in hypothetical scenarios.
2) Form a study group. You can meet in person or chat online (e.g. Google Chat). Invite APRs to your study sessions. Talk through every scenario in the study guide and your own case studies. Deconstruct case studies and rebuild them.
3) Embrace communications theory. It had been years since I thought seriously about diffusion theory and the Grunig models of activating publics. These and other theoretical concepts have helped make sense of the confusion surrounding social media, for example.
4) Research and measurement tied to objectives. Unfortunately, many PR operations often do not have sufficient budget for pre and post research or measurement. Yet, these topics are a significant portion of the exam. Study up, and you’ll find new ways of thinking about how to incorporate research and measurement into your job with no or little budget.
5) Business literacy and ethics. Experience is the best teacher in these areas. If you haven’t worked for a publicly traded company or been faced with challenging decision making, seek out colleagues who have.
6) Sitting in front of a computer for 3 hours and 45 minutes was not as painful as I envisioned. There is plenty of time to read the questions and review answers if necessary.
The following post appeared as a guest blog on Communication in a Web Saturated World.
At a recent business meeting, I was asked the following: “Why do people I don’t know want to follow me on Twitter, and should I allow them to do so without first approving?”
While few will be like Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and garner 4.6 million followers, if you activate privacy controls, you limit your accessibility.
This reasonable inquiry, however, underscored the potential dark side to social media – forsaking privacy and risking potential harm to the reputation of you and/or your organization.
As with the adoption of any new communications channel, you should thoroughly assess the pros and cons and protect your online activities. Allowing unknown fans and followers may boost your numbers, but you need to evaluate the ROI of allowing just anyone into your social network.
If you understand the risks, you can mitigate potential harm. Thus, I encouraged this individual to open himself up to allowing strangers to follow him. And I have advocated that every company should consider adopting social networking into its communications strategy.
Also, here are some tips on managing your digital activity that bear repeating.
1) Use privacy controls to limit access to your profile and activities as appropriate. It may seem unproductive to limit access if you are trying to build a following or fan base. However, you also want to ensure that your community is populated with members of your target audience.
2) Use Twitter’s location finder feature and post away status updates judiciously. It may make sense to let followers know when you are on a business trip but not necessarily when you are on vacation. In fact, Please Rob Me was launched three weeks ago to raise awareness about the dangers of announcing your location (or your absence) on Twitter or other social networking applications like Foursquare.
3) Create unique passwords for each site. As content owner or administrator of your organization’s social networking channels you are responsible for these basic security measures.
4) While you want to engage in a two-way conversation with your community, take a moment to validate the usefulness of unsolicited information such as unknown links.
5) Keep your browser updated. New enhancements will help maintain security measures.
6) Follow your organization’s data management protocols and consult best practices in managing information security from the Federal Trade Commission and other industry organizations.
Social media has made sharing private feelings publicly acceptable. I, like many friends, have learned of deaths, illnesses and embarrassments on Facebook, for example.
Privacy and personal security, however, received a dramatic jolt last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Facial recognition technology, such as that found on Facebook and iPhoto, combined with cloud computing and other technologies can be used to capture a person’s social media profile — simply by pointing a mobile phone at the target. The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, has developed a prototype camera phone that can match pictures to those in an opt-in database to create a social media calling card.
Perhaps this is no more threatening than beaming your business card from Palm to Palm. Besides, the partnerships with device manufacturers and social media sites to make identity sharing possible have yet to be forged.
Regardless, it will add another challenge to managing your personal identity in Web 2.0.
