PR | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

My Ragan/SAS Presentation

Here’s the presentation I’m scheduled to give this afternoon at the Ragan Communications conference, Corporate Communications in a Web 2.0 World.

Updated: Shel Holtz is liveblogging the conference on his blog.

Here’s the information about how you can enroll in SMUG. I would appreciate any comments or questions from those participating in the session. Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below. You also can leave a recommendation on LinkedIn, or “friend” me on Facebook (be sure to mention that you attended the Ragan conference.)

Here are links to our:

Mayo Clinic News Blog

Mayo Clinic YouTube Channel

Mayo Clinic Podcast Blog

[polldaddy poll=999558]

Facebook Chat Will Enhance Business Utility

Now that Facebook‘s Chat function seems to be officially out of Beta and is deployed everywhere (if it’s on my network, it must be everywhere), I got a chance to try it today.

I haven’t been a big user of IM (Check that: at all.) This is completely new to me.

But I can see how Chat will be a strong addition that will make Facebook even more valuable for business networking, as Adam indicates. I think of it particularly in a PR/Journalist relationship. If you can see whether your journalist friends are on-line and can send them a quick message, that will be less interruptive than a phone call. If you continually send them worthwhile news tips or ideas, you can solidify the relationship. If you start abusing them with off-target pitches, they can un-friend you…or block you. It’s one more way Facebook can put the “relations” back in media relations.

I think this also has obvious applications for workplace collaborations…the ability to have conversations that are much more informal, back and forth, without the ponderous formality of e-mail.

“Can’t you just pick up the phone instead?” Of course. But just as my middle daughter (in particular) uses SMS text messaging to connect with her friends (and don’t get me started on how far she went over her monthly allotment of 300 in March) instead of getting into a long conversation, sometimes a more terse interaction is appropriate in the business world, too. And Facebook Chat could be a great way to do this.

In fact, I had a nice conversation with my son-in-law, Kyle, via Facebook Chat this morning (see above); I saw he was on Facebook and had the pleasure of introducing him to this new feature. Would I have thought to pick up my cell phone and call him? Highly unlikely. But when I saw he was on-line, we were able to have a chat that didn’t take a lot of time, but let us touch base.

I think Chat will likely cause me to keep my Facebook status more regularly updated, too. And I like how well Chat and Messaging are integrated. I was called from my desk during my chat with Kyle, and by the time I returned he had signed off. So instead of continuing the chat, I was given an option to send him a message in Facebook. This is a great way of blending the rapid interactivity of Chat with the asynchronous tools already built into Facebook.

Here’s a good Facebook Chat FAQ that outlines some of the current features for those of you who, like me, haven’t been IMers.

I hope you’ll try out Facebook Chat, and if you see I’m on-line, start a conversation. If you’re not my friend yet, you can add me here, and I’ll make you part of my Blog Friends list.

Which leads me to a set of feature requests and enhancements that would make Facebook Chat a really strong business networking tool. That will be the subject of my next post.

Mike Moran Keynote

Our luncheon speaker is Mike Moran from IBM, author of Do it Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules.

Mike opened with the great point that what we need to have the freedom to dip our toes into Social Media, and sip from a glass instead of drinking from the fire hose like Robert Scoble. We need to experiment and try things, becoming expert in what works for our employers and clients. Realize that most of what you do will fail, but that’s OK. Fail faster.

Now you can target even the smallest group. You can measure the results of everything you do. But the flip side is that you must change your message in response to what your customers Say (comments, blogs, product ratings) and Do (search, purchases, page views.)

It’s just as important to pay attention as it is to get attention.

Continue reading “Mike Moran Keynote”

Facebook and LinkedIn in Media Relations

This morning I have the pleasure of presenting at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit 2008 in San Francisco. My co-presenters are Chuck Hester from iContact and Valerie Jennings from Jennings PR. Chuck will be focusing on LinkedIn (here’s his profile, and mine), while I will do the Facebook portion (please feel free to “friend me.”) Valerie will wrap it all up.

If Chuck and Valerie want to upload their presentation to Slideshare.net (a site you should check out), I will be happy to embed here. Meanwhile, here’s mine:

I’m including below links to some of the web sites I will reference in the presentation, so you can see the actual sites (vs. the screen shots in Slideshare) and relive the magic.

I will revise and extend, but here’s the basic presentation. Here are some of my earlier writings that outline some of the potential I see for media relations through Facebook.

Putting the “Relations” in Media Relations

“Cheers” for Medical News

Toward a Medical News Community

I believe that with the long-awaited granular privacy settings Facebook has implemented, this will become much more practical. People will use Facebook increasingly for business when they are able to more effectively segregate what information is available to their professional contacts and what is more personal. I’ll be writing more about that soon.

Scoble Media Relations 2008 Keynote

I’m blogging from the front row of Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations 2008 Summit, as Robert Scoble begins his keynote. I like how Robert starts his presentations by gauging the experience of the audience, so he can speak at a level that will be meaningful to them.

Robert says Web 3.0 is “the death of the page.” An example is Twittervision. He’s giving the group (more than half of whom haven’t been in Twitter) a tour of his life. Most of them haven’t seen FriendFeed either. Robert is on 20 different services in what he calls “the social media starfish” and Friendfeed brings them together. Here is his FriendFeed and here is mine.

Robert is using Sliderocket for his presentation, which is an online version of Powerpoint. It allows collaborative editing. It’s like a wiki for presentations.

Scoble uses Google Reader for reading his RSS feeds to create “a river of news.” Techmeme tells him the big stories. The thing that just changed in Google Reader a few months ago is the addition of friends, which lets people share news.

He talked about “the friend divide” which means that people who are new to a service aren’t going to get as much value out of it because they don’t have a lot of friends yet. The solution: Get friends.

Upcoming.org is another site for seeing what is…you guessed it…upcoming.

Robert closed with a demonstration of Qik, which live streams video from his cell phone. It’s a TV station in your pocket. The minute he turns off his cell phone it becomes a recorded archive on the Qik site. It only works with Nokia phones right now, I think.

Robert’s take-away: The word-of-mouth network is hyper-efficient. Even in the 1980s when he worked at a camera store, 80 percent of his sales came from word-of-mouth. With the web today, it’s a world-wide network for word-of-mouth. That’s what I’ll be talking about at my presentation.

Go to the Bulldog Media Relations group to see more of the pictures from Robert’s presentation.