The Intersection of Online and Offline

Like many people, I spent my Thanksgiving and today watching the horrific events in Mumbai unfold.  I have learned over the years that the less said, the better in times of tragedy, but it breaks my heart to see India experience such carnage, but more so played out over several days. There are a billion people in India, but countless millions living overseas who want to know something — anything — about what is happening.  Feeling that disconnected to your homeland must provide a sense of immeasurable longing and powerlessness.

I have been trying to follow the coverage on BBC America, but with two young children popping in and out of the room, it’s hard to catch anything consistently.  Some of the best updates I have been getting are from Shonali Burke and I have also been following #mumbai.

All I can say is that one of my Tweeps, Shonali, and one of my students, have both been affected by this tragedy — which makes it more personal for me — but not nearly as personal as for them.

Like I said, the less said is the better — I’ll just state that that the Indian people and my friends and colleagues are firmly in my thoughts and deepest hopes for this thing to end.

And the best and most up-to-date news I have seen has come from #mumbai.

Mark

I’ve had a pretty good “offline” week that is a direct result of a pretty good online week.

Last Saturday, I “celebrated” a birthday (anyone over 40 puts “celebrate” in somewhat sarcastic quotations), but I must have received more than 30 birthday wishes via Facebook and Twitter.  Although I don’t use it, I understand that Facebook has a little reminder when your friend’s birthday is near.  That’s all well and good, but you still have to take the “offline” initiative to say “Hey, Mark’s a decent guy, I’ll send him birthday greetings.”  And I appreciated every single one.  Online wishes made offline happiness.  And then there was today.

My pal and social media guru Jason Falls made the following post on Twitter:

The man has a following, let me tell you, because I have picked up bunch of new friends/followers since Jason’s shout out.  I owe Jason a big thanks, but also to those of you who chose to follow me today.  Several have remarked that if Jason says I’m “freakin’ brilliant,” then the pressure is really on.

So rather than trying to be witty or snarky (read yesterday’s post: “Lou Capozzi to Me: You Are Like a Right Wing Talk Show Radio Host ), let me give some online thanks for some online love to those who chose to follow me today.  And I believe in what we refer to as “linkey love,” so I thought that if you were nice enough to take Jason’s advice and follow me today, I’d like to offer you some “linkey love” in return.  So, I have listed every person who began following me this morning and would like to say “thank you” to all of them.  I gave this some thought on the “is this creepy?” scale, and then remembered that anyone can see who anyone is following anyway.  So my thanks go to:

1. Tiffany Winbush
2. Matthew Chamberlain
3. Kelli Nowinsky
4. Marisa Alexis
5. Charlene Blohm
6. Dibegin
7. Brandon Chesnutt
8. RealPolitix
9. Soc Media Headhunter
10. Martin Kulakowski
11. Caryn Stein
12. Jennifer Ross
13. Social Media Smarts
14. Scott Iseman
15. Brian Cross
16. Richard Arblaster
17. Jayadeep Rath
18. Chais Meyer
19. Kevin Urie
20. Patti Fousek
21. Anna Tarkov
22. cbits
23. roundpeg
24. Amy Stark
25. Beverly Macy
26. Erik Florida
27. drooling
28. Walter Pike
29. Yael Beeri
30. A. Martin
31. Paul May
32. Beth Watkins
33. Kim Dushinski
34. Ernest Koe
35. djsiry
36. Lauren Ban
37. Sylvia Martinez
38. Maren Hogan
39. Jay Ehret
40. Wayne Armstrong
41. Jason Mical
42. Barbara Gibson
43. Shonali Burke
44. Media Mum
45. Ari Adler
46. Ken Burbary
47. Chelsea Hamilton
48. Sharnese LaNier
49. Kate Buck
50. rrcowden
51. Dana Willhoit
52. dlayphoto
53. HumidCity
54. Dan Thornton
55. Erica Holt
    
56. Susan Getgood

Thanks, guys,  I’ll try to be brilliant.

Mark

I’m doing a lot of thinking these days about measurement of the effectiveness of public relations programs.  We’re covering this in my class and my day job is, well, getting kicked around a bit of late.

I have long been a proponent of the premise that, in order to do good measurement, you need a “mashup” of tools.  You need to look at, of course, print, blogs, Web sites, message boards (especially in the world if finance), but measurement often lags behind the subject matter that it measures.

I’m coming late to the party, but ReadWriteWeb reported on the Twittermeter, a way to measure mentions in Twitter.  They state:

Enter Twittermeter. Twittermeter uses the Twitter API to scrape the site’s public feed and creates a database of every word sent over Twitter. Though database overages have forced the site to display only results for the past week, they have data since November 6th, 2007 totaling over 14.5 million words from 2.1 million status messages.

Twittermeter creates buzz graphs comparing words. For example, the graph below for the word “earthquake,” clearly shows a spike during the UK quake that took place earlier this week.”

Cool.  The challenge, for communicators, is now to add that to one big tent.  I am an unabashed fan of Custom Scoop, a platform that, while collecting information for thousands of print sites and blogs, also offers one of the opportunity to accept .xml feeds from other sites.  The more that you can measure under one big tent, the better. Tweetscan (or Twitter Search, whichever you call it) can also do it.

And while I am at it, measurement should not be about the tone or favorability ot articles, but of mentions of the company or issue that you are tracking.  Thanks to Katie Payne, I am now a disciple of “Measuring Public Relationships.”

Mark

I have gained semi-notoriety this week because of my online-based apology tour, having said stupid things, apologized and my idiocy was well-documented and forgiven on CareerDiva.net, the New York Times, and I even did an interview yesterday with the Washington Business Journal (no link yet because it will be a couple of weeks, but you can count on my self-promotional side to pimp that too).

I have a semi-foul mouth, which has been curbed only through my parenthood, but for those of you who have read this blog, you’ll note that when I become particularly exasperated by something that I think is inane, my usual response is:

“Jesus.”

Well, now I have either an outlet for that, or an e-portal which may just ensure my eternal damnation.  Tech Crunch reported recently on the launch of Gospelr,

…a microblogging platform for people who want to share thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement, prayer requests, daily scripture readings, and oh so much more.”

I am honestly not here to praise or condemn this, but one of the questions that I get asked frequently and was asked yesterday during the interview was “What is the next BIG THING?”  Some people B.S. (there’s that foul mouth again), their way through this, but my answer was simple:  Anyone who tells you what the NEXT BIG THING is is lying.

An example of this is the fact that Gospelr is based upon the Twitter platform and represents a segmentation of the Twitter audience.  A year ago, who predicted that Twitter would launch, crash (literally), an then crawl back into our waiting arms?  And what about that stupid whale?

I think that Gospelr represents the fact that microblogging has now become so intertwined with our lives, we’ll begin to see more and more platforms that are targeted towards a particular segment of the of the  population who share common interests.  Now THAT’S interesting.

I’ll avoid all other commentary as to minimize the flaming comments that are undoubtedly headed my way.

Mark

I wrote an article for Media Bullseye magazine last week in which, among other things, I used the phrase “you bet your bippy” and offered (without checking with them, of course), a free tour of Media Bullseye HQ for anyone who could trace the origins of the phrase).

BUT - the thrust of my article was a list of suggestions on how to convince the unwashed at work that Twitter can be valuable business tool.

My pals at Media Bullseye tell me that there has been quite a bit of commentary on the piece, so while I encourage you to visit Media Bullseye and read the whole article, here are the highlights of “How to Sell Twitter at Work::

1. Know what you are talking about. Before you try to sell Twitter, get your own account, follow people, interact, and know the different type of Twitter users.
2. Know how to translate a “micro blogging platform.” That’s your elevator speech. If you can’t explain Twitter in 30 seconds (probably the equivalent of 140 characters), you are dead in the water and will get the deer-in-the-headlights look at work.
3. Know that the lawyers will get involved. God bless all of you in communications roles who are not subject to legal approval, but most of us are.
4. Resist the impulse to make it all about you. People who regurgitate fluffy press releases are seen as hacks.
5. This is WAY old school, but in addition to the rest of the stuff that people never read in your signature line in your email (except POSSIBLY) your phone number, list your Twitter account name.
6. When you are looking to build an audience, ask questions. People love to give opinions and if you have a helpful user base, you can develop dialogue with people and get answers.
   
7. I mentioned this earlier, but if you use a Twitter account for business, do not mix personal stuff in.
   
8. Finally, understand, that like radio advertising, like TV advertising, like earned and paid media, it takes a lot of time and effort to build your brand.
   

So you bet your bippy that you can sell and make Twitter part of your communications enterprise.

Mark