No? Nor did I when, on that fateful day 13 weeks ago, I started this blog as a semester-long assignment for my fancy social media class.

But now here we are at the end of semester and my knowledge of blogging is unrivaled (or at least it is within my two-person household). I know what to do (try to be helpful, reply to comments, include photos, make text scannable, etc…) and what not to do (blog when angry, steal other people’s ideas, over-think), how WordPress works and who’s worth reading.

And I also know some more important (and surprising) things that I don’t think I’d have fully understood if I hadn’t tried out blogging for myself. Here are just a few of them:

1. Blogging isn’t easy — actually, maybe this one’s not surprising at all. Even though millions of people do it every day, writing something you’re willing to put on the web forever, under your name, for any future employer to find, is tough — it takes a lot of time, and a lot of mental energy. Particularly when you’re trying to incorporate all “103 tips for better blogging”  you read that week. While also trying to write something original. And helpful. And interesting. So don’t believe the ‘blogging is easy, anyone can do it’ hype of far too many social media ‘gurus.’ Technically blogging is easy, but realistically, it’s hard to do well (as this very much imperfect blog demonstrates).
2. Blogging takes serious time — like I said, it takes a surprising amount of time to write 500 words that you’re willing to put out in public (or that’s certainly what I found). And that doesn’t even include the time it takes to read other people’s blogs, find inspiration, find pictures to include, reply (intelligently) to people’s comments, comment (intelligently) on other people’s blogs, and everything else that goes along with managing and building a blog of your own. If you don’t have at least half a day a week to dedicate to blogging (and probably more), I’d think twice about starting one, if I were you.
3. Despite all of that, blogging can be fun — this was easily my biggest surprise. As someone who doesn’t particularly like writing (future employers, please ignore that last comment) I thought I’d hate blogging. And there were plenty of weeks when I did. But there were also times when I genuinely enjoyed it. Those times tended to be when I didn’t over-think what I was writing about, or when I wrote about things I thought were entertaining or interesting, proving that it’s true that writing about something you’re enthusiastic about is the key to better (and less stressful) writing (although I also discovered that’s easier said than done).

So that’s it. Some of the challenges and surprises from my first foray into the world of blogging. And now the question is: Will I continue, now that class is nearly over and this blog is no longer a requirement?

Good question, that. I’m certainly going to try to. I guess you’ll just have to watch this space to find out for sure…

Class is over... (Image: ne* via FLickr)

"This'll do wonders for my personal brand" (Image: sonofabike via Flickr)

Ever taken part in a Twitter chat?

In case you haven’t and you’re not familiar with the idea (not familiar with something Twitter-related? In 2010? Shame on you! :) ), a Twitter chat is a group of people ‘gathering’ on Twitter at a pre-arranged time to talk (tweet) with each other about a pre-arranged topic (advice for PR students, media relations, professional life as an under-30, whatever).

Everyone who’s part of the chat includes a pre-agreed hashtag in their tweets, and then uses a tool like TweetChat, TweetGrid or another to pull all the tweets with that hashtag together into one big thread which they follow and respond to. Often there’s a moderator, who asks specific questions of the group and tries to stop the chat devolving into an incoherent babble of unrelated questions and answers (good luck with that).

Make sense? If not, maybe the easiest way to think about Twitter chats is as a cross between a panel session, a support group and a networking event, all happening in the magic of the interweb.

Now, Twitter chats are supposed to be a great way to ‘meet’ people in your field (or area of interest), share your experiences and expertise and gain knowledge and expertise from other helpful people. But in my (admittedly relatively limited) experience, it doesn’t usually work out that way, and they end up being more of a cacophonous nightmare than a helpful resource.

Here’s why:

1. They’re often too big — the most popular Twitter chats (things like #journchat or #prstudchat [that's for PR students, not hot male PR professionals]) just have too many contributors for you to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff and pick up on the smart people and the helpful advice among all the (unavoidable) noise.
2. The technology isn’t up to scratch yet — in my (again, small) experience, most of the aggregating tools that make Twitter chats possible don’t work fast enough to help you keep up with the conversation properly. And even if they did, there’d still be a problem with there being too many tweets for you to process in real time anyway.
3. Most people are just showing off – sadly, my experiences with PR-related Twitter chats so far (naming no names, #PRStudChat) have shown that instead of taking part to help people and share valuable knowledge, most people in Twitter chats (or at least the ones I’ve taken part in) are there to ‘build their personal brand’ and demonstrate how smart and with-it they are to potential future employers. Unfortunately, that means you get a lot of chaff and not much wheat. Lots of shouting and self-promotion, not much conversation or value.

Sad, really, because I’d like to find Twitter chats helpful and fun, but so far, I just haven’t. They feel like social media being hijacked for personal gain, without the authentic, conversational, reciprocal bits that make social media appealing in the first place.

Your thoughts? Am I wrong on this? Are there Twitter chats you’ve found helpful? Or do they all tend to be this way?

Check 'em out (Image: Maddy Milan, via awesome Hipstamatic iPhone app)

They’re my latest Toms Shoes – happy little canvas guys that aren’t just cheap(ish) and cute, but are also doing their bit to make the world a better place. How, you ask? Because in case you hadn’t heard (through the social interweb or the mildly annoying AT&T ad featuring Toms’s founder last year), for every pair of shoes it sells, Toms gives a new pair of shoes to a child in need. Alright, not a huge step toward world peace or the eradication of poverty, I’ll admit, but overall, probably better than buying shoes that don’t benefit anyone but you (and maybe Nike’s shareholders).

Why am I telling you about Toms? Not because I’m boasting about my new things like a four-year-old (actually, that is part of it), or because I think Toms is a nice, socially-responsible company (also part of it), but because Toms’s communications are pretty darned impressive. Toms is living the “engage your customers in conversation and help them advocate for your products” Web 2.0 communications dream, and then some. Here’s how:

1. First things first: Toms clearly knows its audience — young, vaguely hipster, socially responsible types — and tailor’s everything to suit them (voice, products, unique selling point, social media presence etc.)
2. Toms is all over social media, listening to its audiences and talking with them. Twitter (two accounts, one for customer service, one for news and product information), YouTube, Facebook, MySpace (active pages on all of them) – you name it, Toms is on it and using it to involve people more and more with the Toms “movement.”
3. Even better, Toms’s social media content is actually interesting — real people, real enthusiasm, real stories about what Toms does and how its shoes are helping all over the world.
4. Toms makes it really easy to get involved with “the movement” and share your love for their shoes at any level that suits you — take a picture of yourself with your new Toms and upload it to their website, sign up to raise awareness of the importance of putting shoes on children’s feet (?!), rate your latest purchase, host a party to decorate your shoes (again: ?!), or just share a link to the Toms site — whatever it is you want to do, Toms makes it easy, and more importantly, encourages you to do it with repeated calls to action and reminders. Nicely done.

I feel like this list could go on forever. Toms does a lot of stuff to engage, motivate and nurture it’s customers (including asking customers to suggest improvements – Groundswell would be so proud). Which means that thousands of happy Toms customers (this one included) are out there sharing their love for their Toms and for the idea of buying something that does some good.

Of course, it helps that the Toms product is one that’s easy to advocate for — it’s not just a shoe, it’s a cause. But (here comes the serious part) that’s not just a happy accident, it’s part of being a successful business in a Cluetrain/Groundswell/Here Comes Everybody/[insert name of favorite social media book here] world. If you listen to what your customers want (to help the world, to have more fun, to be more efficient, whatever) and give them products that help them do that, you’ll have an army of people ready, able and dying to tell everyone about you.

Sounds simple, right? Ah, if only it were.

That, of course, means PR people are wondering how they can use location-based social networks to build better customer relationships for their clients. Lots of retail chains (and small businesses) are already experimenting with special rewards for customers who regularly use Foursquare or Gowalla to ‘check-in’ to their stores (like Starbucks are). And, more creatively, Chevy ran a campaign at SXSW that involved things like offering free rides from the airport in new Chevy models to people who used Foursquare or Gowalla to ‘check in’ to the airport once they’d landed. Not sure how sustainable or effective these initiatives will be, but at least people are experimenting.

But what about nonprofits? Are they using Foursquare (and Gowalla and Brightkite and others), to engage (existing and potential) supporters, clients and volunteers? And if not, are there ways in which they could be?

Foursquare - the offline version (Image: Jason McKim, via Flickr)

Well, no sooner had that question popped into my head, than this blog post on the Frogloop nonprofit marketing blog — which asks pretty much the same question — popped into my Google Reader.

In true social media style, the most interesting bits of the post come in the comments. There are suggestions for using location-based social networking as a volunteer-mobilization tool (use Foursquare to ‘shout’ for more volunteers if you’re at an event that needs them) and bits of advice on things like the need to think about how location-based information in general (rather than these specific tools) could be used by your organization (good advice, that).

Rather than rehashing the commentary and debate from this and other blog posts (not much value there), instead, for people interested in nonprofits and location-based services, I thought I’d share a quick run down of other recent blog posts on the subject, together with a few examples of how nonprofits are already using location-based services (mainly Foursquare, for now):

Blog posts

• The ever-insightful Beth Kanter‘s thoughts on the value she gets from Foursquare. Again, worth reading the comments for examples and ideas, including more on using Foursquare for volunteer engagement and management, and using Foursquare as a fundraising tool through corporate cause marketing programs.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy asked readers if they think charities have a home on Foursquare in a blog post late last week. The comments (again) have some interesting examples, including encouraging kids to join events at a community center by rewarding those who check in for lots of activities (interesting, but potentially flawed — if you’re unethical, it’s easy to game the Foursquare or Gowalla system).

Examples

• The Brooklyn Museum — mentioned in the comments of all the blog posts mentioned above; uses Foursquare to share visitors’ tips, reward frequent visitors, and share staff tips on places to eat or visit nearby. Also has a great blog post on why and how it’s using Foursquare. (Incidentally, the Brooklyn Museum uses lots of other social media tools to engage its community – check out the museum’s community pages for more info.)
• Minnesota History Center — not only uses Foursquare to reward frequent visitors but also promotes the Foursquare offer via its Facebook page. Nice.
• Harvard University — Is this really a nonprofit? Probably not, but Harvard uses Foursquare to share people’s tips on how to get around the campus, where to eat and what to know. What’s interesting here is that Harvard’s Foursquare profile explicitly states what it’s trying to do with Foursquare: build connections within the community and provide useful information. Good practice, I think — it gives guidance for participation and positions Harvard as a community, not just a campus.

For now then, it looks like nonprofits are using Foursquare in much the same way for-profit businesses are — to reward frequent visitors. I’d be interested to see if more novel uses (like the volunteer engagement) turn up in the near future and to hear if you have any examples of those kings of uses. Feel free to share in the comments below!

Not having any experience in arts PR, I can’t say for sure, but I can take a few guesses. Your best bet is probably to maintain a good relationship with the people at the Times who cover your industry.  Or, judging from some recent(ish) stories from the section’s front page, maybe you could put on a really great (or really terrible) exhibition or performance (or whatever it is you do), leak something exciting about an upcoming project, have a public falling out with one of your famous members of staff, or do something controversial.

Or maybe you could learn something from last weekend’s Art Handling Olympics, and have some fun.

The Art Handling Olympics

The Art Handling Olympics was held last weekend on the Lower East Side, and was essentially an afternoon-long joke about the art world and the things that art handlers (“the backbone of the art industry” — most of them penniless artists themselves) have to put up with. It’s possibly the most genius art event I’ve ever heard of.

Yesterday, the Times not only covered the ‘Olympics’ on the front page of the Arts section, but also gave it it’s own highly entertaining slide-show of pictures on the Times’ Web site too. That’s coverage that lots of arts organizations would kill for. So how did an event that served no greater or more artistic purpose than having fun and getting drunk get that coverage? What can arts (or other) PR people can learn from it?

• Do something different – a fairly standard PR lesson, but still a good one. Journalists (and normal people) like things that are new and different (and entertaining). If you want people’s attention, don’t always go for the textbook approach. Do something interesting and different, but remember to make sure it fits with your goals and your organization’s identity. In this case, the goal was to have fun (good goal, that) and possibly also to demonstrate that art handlers are creative and intelligent people — the coverage from the Times was, as far as I can see, unexpected and unintentional, but also unavoidable.

• Don’t take yourself too seriously — maybe less of a standard PR lesson this one, but still an important one. As I’ve said in a previous post (almost) everyone likes to laugh and everyone likes people (and organizations) that can laugh at themselves and have fun, just like these art handlers. Under the right circumstances, doing things that people enjoy, which make them laugh or which show that your organization is human and doesn’t take itself too seriously could well lead to a more positive perception of your company or more coverage of your organization (if that’s what you’re aiming for) than thousands of earnest press releases and pitch letters about how important or interesting what you’re doing is.

• Don’t try too hard — be genuine. Part of the reason the Art Handling Olympics made it into the Times, I think, is because it wasn’t a PR stunt, it was just a group of people having fun. The best PR isn’t necessarily about having the best pitch or the fanciest, most original or most fun event, but about being an honest, genuine and human organization — like this group of otherwise anonymous art handlers — that makes people want to talk about and get involved with what you’re doing.

What do you think? Valid lessons, or a transparent attempt write a PR blog about something amusing but entirely unrelated to PR? :)

Last Monday, the U.N.’s Special Envoy for Malaria announced that for the next year, a group of special Social Media Envoys (including Ryan Seabiscuit Seacrest, Arianna Huffington, and Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, NJ) would be tweeting and facebooking to raise awareness of and support for the U.N.’s malaria control program. Each Social Media Envoy is a prominent person with a large social media or traditional media following, and each has agreed to “take one social action, such as a tweet on Twitter or a wall post on Facebook” advocating for malaria control at least once a month for the next 12 months.

Image: Corey Booker's and the Social Media Envoy initiative

“Interesting initiative,” I thought. “Nice use of influential people to reach a wider audience about an important issue. Might make an interesting blog post.”

So here it is, a blog post about the good, the bad and the questions raised in the launch of this new and ambitious U.N. project.

The good

• Influential people get your message across better than you can. For better or worse, in the world of social media, Ryan Seacrest has more influence and can reach more people than the U.N. Special Envoy for Malaria, Ray Chambers. This Social Media Envoy program recognizes that and, rather than setting up an @malariaprogress Twitter account which the Special Envoy’s office would have to work hard to promote and maintain, uses people who are influential in the medium it’s interested in — social media — to do the work and consequently reach more people, more effectively than the Special Envoy’s communication team could on its own. Sure, using influencers to reach your audiences credibly is PR 101, but it’s nice to see that being done in the social media world, where I think sometimes the power of existing social media influencers can get forgotten in enthusiasm for setting up your company’s or cause’s own Facebook page or Twitter account.

The bad

• Where are the links? Though the news release and the Mashable article that first announced the initiative included links to the Twitter pages of each special Social Media Envoy, Malaria Progress — the main site explaining and tracking the work of the Special Envoy for Malaria — barely mentions, and only minimally links to, its Social Media Envoys. The only information on Malaria Progress about the initiative is in a text-only news release, linked to through a small, text-only news item on the homepage. For a program that’s all about social media, engagement and sharing, I’d have liked to see the Malaria Progess site integrate more social tools like sharing buttons, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube icons, and links to the social media sites of each of the envoys, to help make more people aware of the initiative and to get visitors to the site involved in helping to spread its messages even further.
• Lack of coordination. Clicking on the links for a few of the Social Media Envoys after reading the Mashable article announcing this initiative, I expected to see each person tweeting something about the announcement and their involvement with it. Disappointingly few of them had though. Launching a communication program that’s all about a few people’s social media actions without those people taking any social media action at the time of launch seemed like a wasted opportunity to me. 

The questions raised

• Will it work? Nice though it is to see the U.N. getting involved in social media for social good, and extending its concept of Goodwill Ambassadors into the Web, this initiative raised a good few questions with me:
  • Will the Social Media Envoys use their ‘social actions’ to ask their followers to take specific online or offline actions? If not, how successful will this initiative be in achieving its goals of supporting the U.N. Secretary-General’s goal of “universal bed-net coverage” by 2010 and “near-zero” malaria deaths by 2015?
  • Is one social action a month by each of these people enough to achieve this initiative’s goals? Or is is too much? Or too arbitrary?
  • Is putting a limit of a year on this initiative the right way to achieve lasting action against malaria?

I’ll be interested to see what happens with this over the next year and will be keeping an eye on it. It might even make an interesting capstone project, methinks…

Thanks to Farra at Big Duck for putting me on to this initiative.

Audience? Or clients? (Image: fensterbme, via Flickr)

If you work in public relations, who do you view as your client? Just your agency’s contracted clients (your ‘internal’ clients if you work in-house in corporate communication)? Or also your clients’ stakeholders, the groups of people you’re trying to communicate with?

Reading Henry Jenkins‘s Convergence Culture this week for my social media class, I was struck by a particular part of a story about how the original version of the Star Wars Galaxies online role-playing game was developed. (As well as being a great read for understanding the social and cultural implications of social media, Convergence Culture is also great for discovering new forms of geekery you’d never otherwise have heard about. Pixelvision film-making or Machinima, anyone?)

In describing the collaborative approach that Raph Koster and the development team at LucasArts took to developing the Star Wars Galaxies online role-playing game, Jenkins says:

‘To ensure that fans bought into his version of the Star Wars universe, Koster essentially treated the fan community as his client team…’

This got me thinking. Maybe we in public relations should think about our (literal) clients’ stakeholders and target audiences — the communities whose buy-in our clients are seeking — as client teams too.

I’m not suggesting that we ask all of our clients’ stakeholders for feedback and agreement on every decision we make, or that we start billing the public for the work that we’re doing, obviously. But I am suggesting that make sure we work as hard to listen to and understand the needs, problems and goals of our clients’ stakeholder communities as we (hopefully) do to listen to and understand our clients.

Why do we need to do this? Because it’s our job to.

If you accept that the purpose of public relations is to give strategic advice on public opinion and public perception to clients, and to help them act and communicate in ways that will gain the support of their key audiences (which, hopefully, all PR professionals do accept), then understanding the needs, problems and goals of those audiences is an essential part of doing that job properly.

By thinking about audiences as clients on whose happiness our success depends, I think we’re more likely to take their needs seriously and more likely to look for ways for our (paying) clients to give those audiences (a.k.a. stakeholders) what they really want and need. And once our clients are fulfilling the needs and wants of their stakeholders, the long-term support and goodwill of those stakeholders should pretty much be guaranteed.

I guess essentially what I’m saying is that as public relations practitioners, if we think of our clients’ key audiences as clients in themselves, if we listen to them and seek their feedback more meaningfully and more often, we’ll give our clients better advice on how to gain and keep the support and engagement of those audiences in the long term. In other words, we’ll be more effectively doing our jobs.

What do you think? Does treating our clients’ stakeholders as clients in their own right make sense, or is the whole concept just downright confusing?!

Image courtesy of 10 Downing Street (via Flickr)

What can a celebrity chef teach us about nonprofit communication?

Well, if it’s Jamie Oliver, recent winner of the 2010 TED Prize, it turns out there are quite a few things he can teach us.

Check out my guest post over at Duck Call (the blog of Big Duck, the nonprofit communication firm where I’m doing my practicum this semester) to find out what they are.

Here’s the link: Jamie Oliver: For Better or for Worse

Over the past couple of years, there’s been fairly regular news coverage (in The Washington Post, on the ABC News Web site and on NPR, among other places) of the increasing number of older people on Facebook and the ‘problems’ that’s causing for people who don’t want their mums to see what they say and do online.

The way I see it though, your mum being on Facebook isn’t a problem at all; it’s a good thing — and not just in the “your mother gave you life, the least you can give her is a phone call” sense, either.

Image courtesy of Melanie Milan

Instead, your mum’s presence on Facebook is a good thing in a “there’s no such thing as privacy in social media” sense. It encourages you to think twice before you post an inappropriate status update, drunken photos from a frat party, or a link to a questionable video. It serves as a reminder that anything you put online is going to be seen by lots more people than the 20 or so friends you had in mind when you posted.

Depending on your privacy settings, anything you put on facebook could be seen be at least your 200+ other friends (which could easily include your professors, employers or future employers), and might well be seen by hundreds of other people too.

In a world where employers apparently reject candidates because of their inappropriate Facebook photos or status updates, and where it’s possible to calculate 8 digits of someone’s Social Security Number using just her birth date and hometown, anything that reminds you that your online private life might not be as private as you’d like can only be good thing.

So I think we should all be glad that our mums are on Facebook, (but maybe start managing their access to our profiles, too).

Incidentally, my mum is my most avid (only?) reader on this blog – anything you’d like to add, Ma? :)

*Sorry AP Stylebook, but this is an international blog, and I can’t bring myself to use ‘mom.’ I just can’t.

@prweekuknews Twitter stream

I was going to post about that, but then (thankfully) I took a closer look at the Twitter feed in question, and discovered that it wasn’t actually an official PR Week account. It’s just an RSS feed of all the news that PR Week UK publishes, set up by a helpful person who (as far as I can tell) has nothing to do with PR Week at all.

That left me needing to come up with a new blog idea at short notice (argh!), until I realized that there’s still an important lesson to be learned from the @prweekuknews feed. That lesson? Monitor. Monitor not just what people are saying about you, but also whether people are saying things for you without you knowing it.

@prweekuknews is saying things for PR Week, and in doing so, may be harming PR Week’s reputation. I’m fairly confident that of the 14,000 other people following @prweekuknews, at least a few of them (and probably more than a few) also thought that it was PR Week UK’s official Twitter account (or at least thought that for a while). I’m also pretty sure that a decent number of people were also unimpressed by “PR Week UK’s” tweets, and, consciously or not, thought less of PR Week as a result.

Like any brand, PR Week should be (hopefully is?) monitoring Twitter and other social media for any mentions of its brand, considering what those mentions mean for the brand, and taking action or getting involved in the conversation where appropriate.

In this situation, I think taking action is appropriate, since there’s a danger that the PR Week brand could be harmed (even if only slightly) by this feed. Not big action – like trying to shut down the account, which would be silly since it’s an entirely labor-free additional communication channel for PR Week at the moment – but something small like thanking @chris_reed for setting the feed up and asking him to include a little more information in the bio, making it more clear that it’s not the official Twitter account of PR Week UK.

Of course, the alternative lesson here isn’t that PR Week needs to monitor social media and consider the implications of all mentions of its name more deeply, but that I should pay more attention to bios of people I follow on Twitter… (I now do, this was one of the first ‘people’ I followed on Twitter when I first joined).

I think they’re both valuable though – be careful who you follow, and monitor (and consider all of the implications of) what people are saying about you and for you.