Category Archives: Social Media

My Report Into FIR #678 – Facebook Mobile Sharing, Barriers To Blogging, and Social Media with Israel/Hamas

The Election Echo Chamber – Hearing Only What We Want To Hear

This morning a conservative friend posted to Facebook a link about how Mitt Romney had a very positive message and was a decent person, in contrast to President Obama who was extremely negative, full of lies and was treating half the country with contempt.

This post was followed soon thereafter in my NewsFeed by a link posted by a liberal friend about how President Obama had a very positive message and was a decent person, in contrast to Mitt Romney who was extremely negative, full of lies, and was treating half the country (or at least 47%) with contempt.

Tonight I see posts from my conservative friends with links about how Mitt Romney will be victorious tomorrow despite all the polls showing the opposite because Romney has seen internal polls – and saying how the liberals are all delusional after being fed propaganda polls by the mainstream media.

Those are intermixed with posts from my liberal friends with links about how Barack Obama will definitely be victorious tomorrow despite all the polls showing it to be quite equal – and saying how the conservatives are all delusional because they are cherry-picking only the polls they want to see.

Who is correct? And who is delusional?

The Internet has brought about a glorious revolution in online publishing – easily allowing anyone to post anything they want and have it read by tens or hundreds or millions. We talk within the communications profession about how today, in 2012, “every company is a media company”. In presentations I have given on social media topics I have often accented this point:

There has never been a better time to tell your own story in your own words without the interpretation of media or anyone else. Your words – raw and unfiltered.

What we are seeing in this election, though, is the corollary to that statement:

There has never been a better time to hear your own views echoed back to you without the interpretation of media or anyone else. Your views – raw and unfiltered.

Because it is so easy for anyone to publish information – and because there is so much of it out there – we naturally filter the information sources to find the ones that we think are the “best.”

In this book, The Information Diet, Clay Johnson writes of how we seek information online in our “desire to be affirmed” and that “affirmation” is the goal.

We want to be correct.

And there are any number of people and sites willing to tell us how correct we are.

Liberals read the Huffington Post while conservatives read the National Review. Conservatives watch Fox News while liberals watch MSNBC. Liberals take faith in Nate Silver’s polls while conservatives believe Gallup’s polls are the answer. And a thousand other websites, podcasts and video sites join in the fray.

The end result is that we wind up in a self-fulfilling echo chamber that reinforces and reaffirms the rightness of our views and how wrong the other parties are.

And so my conservative friends could make their strong statements because they are wholly and entirely convinced that they are absolutely 100% correct. And my liberal friends are equally convinced that they are absolutely 100% correct.

Where does it end?

Tomorrow we hold an election. One candidate will win while the other will lose.

The ads, the postings and the articles will fade in their intensity…

… but the echo chambers will remain.

How, then, do we bridge the divide?

As C.C. Chapman wrote in his excellent piece this morning, “Wednesday Morning In America,” the hard work starts Wednesday. Despite all the venom and vitriol… despite all the negativity and harsh words… despite all the divisions… we must as a nation work together to move the USA forward.

How do we break out of our individual echo chambers? How do we suppress that desire for affirmation enough that we stretch our minds and listen to other points of view? How do we move beyond our self-reflected delusions?

I don’t know that anyone has all the answers… but we must together work toward that goal. Somehow.

If you are a US citizen casting a vote tomorrow (and I do hope you will vote (or have already voted)), we need to think of what happens next…

… and how we start listening to each other’s points of view – even if they are adamantly opposed to our own – and finding somewhere in there the common humanity that can allow us to work together… as insanely hard as that may be to do.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

11 Hours Left To Claim Your App.Net Username…

2 Replies

Yesterday, App.Net hit its funding goal of $500,000 USD and at the time I write this it has cruised over $745,000 with 11-ish hours left to go!

As I mentioned in my report into FIR podcast episode 660 back in July, App.Net is an interesting experiment into seeing if a real-time social communication platform can be created without advertising and instead through soliciting paid members.

One note… App.Net is NOT just another “Twitter clone”. Here are two good perspectives on why App.Net is different:

Mathew Ingram at GigaOm: Think App.net is just a Twitter clone? Then you’re missing the point
Orian Marx: How App.net Can Change Everything

In my report into today’s FIR 664 episode, I spoke about what this successful funding means… and about the ecosystem of applications that is already developing around the App.Net alpha.

This is excellent to see… and definite congratulations are due to Dalton Caldwell and the whole crew!

IMPORTANT NOTE: App.Net may or may not take off wildly (obviously those of us backing it hope it does!)… but if it does and you would like to use the same username you use on Twitter, you only have until midnight US Pacific TONIGHT to back the project and claim your username. As Dalton Caldwell writes:

Please note that once the backing period is over, users will no longer be able to “claim” their Twitter usernames. From that moment forward usernames will be awarded on a first-come first-served basis. We implemented “claiming” as a fringe benefit for our backers, not as a go-forward plan. I want to make sure that latecomers are not surprised and disappointed to see that they can no longer get their preferred username.

If you’d like to claim your username, you can go to https://join.app.net/ and sign up as a backer… yes, it will cost you $50 for a year… and yes, the project may or may not turn out to go anywhere… so you have to make your own decision as to whether or not it’s worth the investment.

For me, I gladly backed the project because I see it as potentially offering more competition into the space… and I was a huge fan of the original idea of Twitter as an API-centric social communications platform. I’ve been disappointed with the change in Twitter’s focus, and I’d like to see where App.Net goes.

What do you think? Will you back App.Net? (Have you already?)

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Images/Photos Alone Do Not Make A Content Strategy

1 Reply

Credit: C.C. Chapman

Lately, it seems, the social media world is all abuzz about “images” in various forms. Photos, pictures… Instagram… Pinterest… infographics… plus Twitter, Facebook and Google+ all enhancing their capability to handle photos… and now this intense fascination with posting images with words and sayings on top of them!

I get it. I do. Visual storytelling is incredibly powerful. Evocative. Inspirational. Images and photos can transcend words and cut right to the emotional core of an issue. I personally enjoy photography, and you can usually find me shooting photos at events I attend. I’m sharing photos all the time into Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

But…

… lately we seem to be seeing in the corporate PR / marketing / social media space a really severe case of “bright shiny object” syndrome. All over the place… large enterprises, small startups… and everyone in between.

Oooo… let’s post a bunch of photos to Instagram because we’ll look hip and cool! Hey, clearly we need to be pinning all the photos we can to Pinterest boards, because “everyone” is doing it! Hey, look, another new mobile app that lets us do _____ with our photos – cool! Wow, look how cool we are because we can post a photo with some pithy quote written on top of it in a funky font!

And let’s not even jump into the cesspool of poorly done infographics…

All of this without answering a fundamental question:

WHY?

WHY are you posting those images? Why are you using that service? How do the images help communicate your message to your audiences? How do they help get your message out? How do they facilitate sharing? How does posting the images to ______ increase your interaction with your audiences?

Now, don’t get me wrong… experimentation is awesome and necessary. And I’m the last one to talk about chasing bright shiny objects… that’s what I love to do (and in fact write about). Experimentation is really required if you are going to stay on top of the insane pace of new products and services appearing on a daily basis. But there is a difference between experimentation and trumpeting the fact that you are now using these services, as if the use of those services will somehow make you cooler and help you communicate better.

They might help you communicate better, and you won’t know unless you experiment… but as you experiment you need to think about the why.

Ultimately these services are all tactics that need to line up with a larger strategy.

Why are you using them? Why are you posting the images you choose to post?

Do the images help educate your audiences about your products? your mission? your services?
Do they help humanize your organization and show a more personal side? or show the people behind the name?
Do they entertain or amuse people and help build your community?
Do they inspire people because of how beautiful or artistic they are?
Do they promote your brand name or social account? Will you gain more followers/fans/etc?

How does posting images to service X fit within your larger strategy? Now, maybe you are posting that LOLcat image purely as link-bait to build your followers… that’s okay, just call it what it is. And this doesn’t mean that every image needs to be serious and “on message” – images can certainly be posted “for fun”… and maybe that’s one of the purposes they serve.

The point is that some conscious thought needs to be given to the use of images and the use of the various services… rather than just doing it “because everyone is doing it”!

As I was thinking about this, a trio of posts yesterday on this precise topic caught my eye:

First, in “Pictures With Words“, C.C. Chapman provides this awesome photo that I’ve included here and hits the point:

If your brand is thinking about diving into this because everyone is doing it, remember that it is a tactic and not a strategy. Where does it fit into your other marketing programs and what can you do with this trend that is unique and relavent to your business? Always ask why before you do anything. Make sure it is a fit and that you are not doing it simply because everyone else is. Following the herd rarely gets you noticed.

We as a society love shiny new toys and are scared of doing the grunt work. We see other people doing things, so we have to do them. If there is a shortcut that looks like it’ll make things easier we take it.

Exactly!

Second, in “The Rise of the Junkweb and Why It’s Awesome or At Least Inevitable“, Chris Brogan talks about this new love of images as the “junkweb”:

It’s the Junkweb. Why “junk?” Because the original intent of the Internet was that links were gold, that searchability was key, that this ability to find anything and use resources from wherever was magic. And this new web? The web of pictures with text over them? They’re junk. They’re a dead end. The picture is the payload. They don’t lead you elsewhere. They are the stopping point, the cul de sac.

But goes on to say that maybe this is okay in our new world and that the new tools we have access to have in fact made it easier for anyone to participate and share. He concludes offering three suggestions for people to engage in the “junkweb”:

1. Make interesting graphics worth sharing.
2. Make it easy to share them.
3. Evoke an emotion.

And for Chris the “why” is because this world of sharing images is where the sharing and interaction happen between “regular” people and thus is worth investigating. Good article and, as with many of Chris’ posts, the comment stream is well worth a read, too.

Finally, in his AdAge column titled “The Revolution Won’t Be Televised; It Will Be Instagrammed“ and subtitled “Businesses That Bank on Photographic Storytelling Will Win“, Steve Rubel discusses why businesses should pay attention to what is going on with the rise of visual storytelling through photography. Inadvertently aligning with Chris Brogan’s “junkweb”, he writes:

Visual storytelling today is blissfully cliche. Photos are deliberately over animated, over filtered and even over exposed. They ignore all the rules. Just as the proliferation of texting arguably made the written word less formal and YouTube did the same for video, the ubiquity of smartphones has changed the expectations of what’s considered “good” photography.

On this last sentence my professional photography friends can definitely agree! Steve goes on to basically offer suggestions for people involved with advertising to get involved with this space. Earlier in the article, too, he makes some interesting points with regard to why photos will be more important that videos, particularly with regard to mobile devices.

He doesn’t touch on the “why“, though, beyond the fact that this is the “new normal” and businesses need to be embracing it.

Which goes back to my original points… WHY are you embracing the use of images? Or perhaps more HOW are you going to embrace them? How does it help you?

Are you asking these questions?

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Note to PR People: PLEASE INCLUDE A URL With Your News Release!

A Very Simple Recipe

Here’s a VERY simple recipe for doing this right:

1. Publish your news release on YOUR site. You do have an area of your (or your client’s) site where you post news releases, don’t you?[3]

2. Visit the news release web page on your site using your web browser.

3. Copy the web address from your browser. (That would be the “URL” if you don’t do geeky three-letter acronyms.)

4. Paste the web address into the news release email.

5. Spam your message out to me and everyone else, because clearly you don’t have enough time to do PR correctly and target your messages appropriately.

Okay, step #5 may be a bit snarky… because in truth I’ve seen messages that have been targeted (and even individually tailored to me) that have still failed to include a URL.

A Bonus!

Here’s another tip about why you might want to include a URL. I might not have the time – or interest – to write about your news release today. But I still might think it would be of interest to my “audience” of people who follow my site.

So while I might not post my own article, I might pass along your news via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.

But to do that, what do I need???

That’s right… a LINK!

So by you failing to include a URL you’re missing a moment when I might, right then, tweet out or post about your news release!

Instead I’ll either have to try to find a link (which I may or may not do), or wait until sometime later when I see someone’s post about your news.

Either way you lost my moment right then when I might have acted and helped spread your news.

Fix The Process!

Now, when I’ve asked some PR people why they have failed to send out a link in their email, often the comment is that “it takes a while” to publish the news release to the company/organization’s site. They’ve wanted to get the word out quickly when the news release goes on the wire… and don’t want to wait for whenever the company’s web or IT team gets around to getting the page up on the site.

So FIX THAT!

This is 2012, people!

If your website is not up to the task of dealing with real-time publishing of content, maybe you need to be asking some tough questions about your site.

Pretty much every content management system (CMS) I am aware of has some mechanism for scheduling content publishing in advance. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, others… they all have it either built-in or available as an add-on. You should be able to get the news release loaded into the website and even get the URL that the news release will be available at. Then, when the news release goes live, you can be all ready to send out your spammy email to everyone pointing them to your site.

You’re already loading the news release text into a wire service web interface to distribute it… why can’t you (or someone within your organization) also load it into your own site and queue it for publication at a specific time?

This is NOT rocket science or quantum physics.

If the “web team” or “IT team” won’t let you load it into the site – or has some other issue making the content available at a specific time or at the very least getting you a URL – well, that is a process issue.

Fix it!

Send me and everyone else a URL to where your news release is posted on your site.

Help us tell your story!

One simple step.

Stop making excuses.

Do it!

P.S. And no, I did not write about that news release I saw this morning because the PR person did not include a URL… and I spent my time writing this rant instead! 🙂

P.P.S. And for bonus points, you can even go a step above your other PR peers and have the link you send me also have links to company logos, quotes, photos, videos… other things you might want me to potentially include in my article. It could be a full-blown “social media news release” – or it could just be a set of easy-to-find links in the sidebar next to your news release. Help me tell your story! Make it super easy for me to do… and odds are I will!

[1] When I say “people involved with PR”, I do not mean only people at PR agencies. It could be someone on staff or contracting for a company/organization… basically anyone sending out email messages promoting news releases.

[2] NONE of which were actually targeted to me, but rather just spammed out there… but that’s another “PR101” topic for another day.

[3] Some people do send out URLs to the news release on distribution services like PR Newswire or Marketwire and while that’s at least a link we can use, why send traffic to the distribution services site? Why not send it to your site instead? Where it can be surrounded in your branding and your other links?

Image credit: _maracuja on Flickr

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Watching The Colossal PR Train Wreck Of The Susan G. Komen / Planned Parenthood Debacle

2 Replies

This, my friends, is what a truly colossal PR/social media train wreck looks like…

… and the comment count will undoubtedly be higher by the time you all look at the Facebook page.

If you’ve missed the story that’s all over the news, the Susan G. Komen For The Cure organization has got itself into a PR nightmare. Most of us in the USA and many parts of the world are probably aware of the Komen organization. It is a major force in efforts to raise funds for research into a cure for breast cancer and has made the now ubiquitous “pink ribbon” a powerful symbol. My wife and I have donated to Komen and run in multiple Komen-sponsored races and walks, even before my wife wound up fighting breast cancer.

Today, though, the Komen organization is in a great bit of trouble.

Last year, per the company’s story, in an effort to be more accountable and be sure their dollars were making the most impact, they tightened up their eligibility requirements for future grants.

This, in and of itself, is a good thing. Charitable organizations should look at how to be more accountable to their donors and ensure their dollars are going the farthest.

Back in December, Komen notified its longtime partner Planned Parenthood that under the new guidelines they would no longer be able to receive new grants, apparently because Planned Parenthood is under investigation by the US Congress related to its use of federal funds.

Again, one can potentially see the point. If an organization is being investigated about its funding, other donors to that org may want to take a “wait and see” approach until the investigation is resolved.

And if the organization in question were not Planned Parenthood this might all have all been seen as proper fiduciary responsibility on the part of the Komen organization.

Playing With Fire

However, in our hyper-politicized age, and in an election year, an organization like Planned Parenthood is a insanely hot lightning rod. The mere mention of the name can send some crowds into a frenzy.

Anything involving Planned Parenthood is playing with fire.

And so when the AP broke the news on Tuesday, the predictable media frenzy started. Planned Parenthood blamed anti-abortion foes and right-wing groups and was, understandably, quick to stoke the flames and use the issue as a fund-raising tool. Rather smart on their part and last I heard they had already raised nearly as much in donations than Komen granted to Planned Parenthood in 2011.

Komen’s position was not helped by the fact that they recently hired a vice president who previously stated her strong opposition to Planned Parenthood. In fact, she clearly stated in a run for Governor of Georgia that if elected she would eliminate state grants to Planned Parenthood.

More wood for the fire.

And then…

… the Internet took over.

A zillion tweets… more and more and more… thousands upon thousands of Facebook comments, posts and shares… more in Google+… more in blog posts… spreading like wildfire all around the globe…

The Response?

And in the face of this insane maelstrom, the Komen organization did…

NOTHING!

As Kivi Leroux Miller writes in her excellent post, “The Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure,” the Komen crew was missing in action while all the action was going down.

Komen was not active on their Twitter account nor on their Facebook page…. nor anywhere.

They lost control of the narrative.

They let the story be defined by the media, by pro-choice activists, by critics of Komen, by supporters of Planned Parenthood, by everyone else but them.

Many hours later Komen issued a statement in corporate-speak about how their changes had been “mischaracterized” and that “our grant-making decisions are not about politics”. They subsequently released a video from founder and CEO Nancy Brinker that I thought at first might be an honest outreach to people who were so upset… but turned out merely to be a visual recitation of that same corporate-speak statement. Similarly, they posted a few tweets and Facebook updates… but just again pointing to their statement or emphasizing key points.

Meanwhile, people all across the Internet are talking about ceasing all their donations to Komen. Sure, some who support the decision are saying that they are glad they can finally donate to Komen, but they are far outweighed by those who are critical of the change.

Komen’s Facebook page is filling up with such wall posts and there is a constant stream of tweets directed at them.

They are, right now, pretty thoroughly screwed.

Now What?

So what does Komen do now? They have completely lost any control of the story – and the stories circulating on the Internet are now feeding upon themselves. How do you even remotely start to unmake this mess?

Given that I try to first believe “Never assume malice where stupidity is a far better explanation,” I would personally like to believe that the Komen folks are sincere, that they made some changes to their grant-making guidelines and that this whole debacle has caught them unawares. I’d like to believe that, although admittedly the political angle does make that hard.

If they are sincere, though, were they really so clueless from a PR point of view that they didn’t think about the political ramifications of their decision? Or if they did, why were they not prepared for the reaction?

As Kivi Leroux Miller writes in her post:

It’s a no-win situation that could have been avoided had they developed a communications strategy on this decision at the start. Sure, they would have still angered many of their supporters, but I believe they could have avoided this huge rift had they communicated upfront, and honestly, about the decision. They should have released it, instead of letting Planned Parenthood own the messaging.

Exactly.

On something as potentially contentious as this, they should have gone out first, rather than letting the AP and Planned Parenthood define the story.

Or, in the event of the AP story blowing up as it did, Komen should have had a plan to get out there and explain their decision in clearer terms.

Instead, as Kavi Leroux Miller writes:

Yet it appears that Komen wants to desperately pretend that this decision is being made in some completely different context. By not responding at all to the overwhelming negativity being thrown their way, and continuing to pretend that this has nothing to do with a red-hot social issue, they are alienating a big part of their constituency.

It seems like they are hoping this will just blow over. It won’t.

Hiding away won’t help them.

While they’ve spent 30 years building up the organization, this past 30 hours may go far in destroying all they’ve built up.

Their only chance now may be to come out with more information about the changes to their grant-making guidelines, to explain more about why Planned Parenthood no longer qualifies, to explain what other organizations will no longer be able to receive funding.

It may be too late.

Are You Ready?

All of which begs the question…

are you ready for something like this to happen to your organization?

If a media story runs with comments critical of your organization, are you ready to deal with the resulting social media firestorm? What would you suggest for Komen to do from a communications point of view?

The story is still unfolding, but I think this one will definitely be an example for the textbooks in – so far – what not to do…

Image credits: learnscope and jill_carlson on Flickr

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either: