Open The Dialogue

It’s been a while, but we’re back with another edition of LOTD. Remember you can get our links anytime through Twitter or Friendfeed. Enjoy!

• Forget Facebook vs Twitter, the next big skirmish on the Social Media landscape will be all about the dough. Pizza dough.
• What’s a tweet you ask? Well Mashable’s got your answer to any Twitter question at their new Twitter Hub.
• Michael Jackson’s unexpected death sent shockwaves through the world and the Internet. Twitter experienced a massive response and the mighty Goliath Google even went down.
• Want to follow Tweeps who think like you do? Check out Dan Zarrella’s latest Twitter Innovation TweetPysch.

We will make sure to post more soon! What are some of your favorite links from the week?

Jessica Smith is one of the top mommybloggers on the Internet, writing about social media, business and life as a working mom on her blog Jessica Knows. Jessica is also a social media strategist for Care.com and MomForce.com, as well as consulting for brands and working as a spokesperson for such companies as Ford and EA SPORTS. She also recently launched a new initiative to bridge the gap between bloggers and PR professionals called Buzz Cooperative, which are weekly email newsletters of pitches from PR professionals and requests from bloggers. Jessica has also been featured by AdAge and CBS, among other blogs, and Nielsen Media named her one of the Power Pack in their Power Mom 50. She lives with her husband and son in Washington D.C metro area. In addition to her blog, you can find her on Twitter at @jessicaknows and on Facebook.

DialogueMedia:  How did you get started in blogging and social media? Was it before or after you had kids?
Jessica Smith: I’ve been involved with social media since 1989 when I connected with people on the Prodigy BBS. In college, I networked with other Greeks to share marketing ideas when I was VP Marketing for my sorority. After getting my degree, my first job was with Sapient Corporation, a business and technology consulting firm. I registered my Twitter account in 2007 and definitely didn’t get it at first, then tried again last year around this time and it clicked.

As for blogging, I didn’t really get entrenched until the middle of last year.

How has being a Mommyblogger affected your life?
Being a mom that blogs has made my life more fulfilling. I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned throughout my career with my readers with regards to marketing and building a brand. I also enjoy sharing products and services with other busy moms like me who are trying to achieve work/life balance.

The best part though, I have to say, is the connections I’ve made with other bloggers via the interwebs and the amazing opportunities it’s brought my consulting business.

It doesn’t come without it’s setbacks though. I do feel overwhelmed at times and sometimes I’m scared to open my Google alerts because you never know what people are writing about you.

How do you manage your time being a mom, a wife and a blogger withrunning your own business?
I take things day by day. Luckily, the companies I consult for, like Care.com, are mom-friendly and offer flexibility.
I’ve learned that time management and being able to constantly prioritize has helped a lot.

Many mommybloggers are starting to charge money or request free products not to be returned in exchange for press. Some PR pros are unaccustomed to this because we don’t pay journalists for placements nor do we typically give journalists products to keep. How do you recommend PR pros and bloggers work together with these new expectations?
I think the protocol for this is ever-evolving. Journalists are typically employed or contracted by a publication. Bloggers. Well, we ARE our publication. Some bloggers identify with being journalists themselves, while others don’t. At the end of the day, it comes down to our influence. And I know that for a lot of readers of blogs, they’re reading not because we report the news, but because we talk about what we believe, our personal experiences, and our lessons learned.

You have worked with many PR professionals – what has been your best experience and what has been your worst experience?
Best experience: PR pros that look at our relationship as a long-term, ongoing one.
Worst experience: a pitch for a review of a baby item the day my “Say No Can Mean Saying Yes to Success” post was on the front page of my blog specifically indicating that those are not products or services I would review.

You started Buzz Cooperative a few months ago, which helps connect bloggers with PR professionals. What was your inspiration for starting the service?
My inspiration for starting this service came from a few things. First, my virtual rolodex is pretty large, I wanted to pay it forward without compromising the privacy of my contacts. For that reason, I created the opt-in email list format. Second, there are so many influential bloggers that get overlooked for campaigns because it’s easy for PR firms to just pick bloggers from the campaigns that are already live. Buzz Cooperative allows blogger members to pitch the PR pros, in other words, turn the tables. The feedback for creating this exchange has been great so far and for me, this is personally rewarding.

There are many new PR graduates just launching their careers. What advice does Professor Smith have for the PR pros of tomorrow?
Nurture relationships with those who are connected…it will make your job easier in the long run. Also, this wild, wild West of the interwebs is ever-changing, come in with flexibility and the understanding that there’s a learning curve every day and you can’t go wrong.

You’re in the RSS feed of many people, but who’s in your RSS feed? What three blogs do you recommend the OTD readers check out?
Oh gosh, I can only pick three?
Mashable
Horse Pig Cow by Tara Hunt
Yeah Dave by David Romanelli

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to attend Day One of Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference at the New World Stages in New York City. The crowd was a diverse mix of small business owners, start-ups, high level executives, PR and marketing folks, bloggers, among many others. What brought everyone together was the love – or at the least interest – in the  social media phenom known as Twitter.

The presentations were kept short and sweet. Most no more than ten minutes, though panels occasionally crept up to fifteen minutes. The idea was to fit in as many people and their ideas as possible into two days. One panel stood out, however, as leading the conference timer with an outstanding forty-five minutes. It was the session on Twitter as a newsgathering tool, with a panel starring NBC’s Ann Curry, CNN’s Rick Sanchez, FOX’s Clayton Morris, and NBC’s producer Ryan Osborn and hosted by Robert Scoble.

The premise of the panel was that during the Iranian protests after their election last week, CNN and other news organizations have dropped the ball on reporting everything that is happening in Iran. Robert Scoble stated that when he attempted to find out information about what was going on in Iran on Saturday, he could find nothing. He turned to Twitter, with its on-the-ground users, who provided a more comprehensive, useful and educational picture of the current events. The debate raged back and forth between how far a journalist (and his/her producer) could go with trusting and/or using Twitter in the news cycle. On one hand, the point that Twitter users are often far more valuable at breaking news has been demonstrated again and again, whether it’s earthquakes or a plane landing in a river. On the other hand, as Ann Curry pointed out, one cannot tweet something that is wrong as news, and there is a level of fact-checking that comes naturally to a news organization.

Twitter users have been valuable at providing feedback and context for stories, as was explained by John Byrne, editor-in-chief of Business Week, who says he crowdsources to get information, leads and sources for stories they are working on. The difference, the panel concluded, was a “judgement” aspect, which is sometimes lacking on Twitter. Ann Curry stated, ““Judgment is not taught in ‘J’ school. Judgment is learned. Judgment has to change with the times.”

At the end of the day, Twitter is not going away and it is being adapted in more ways than I imagine it’s founders (including Jack Dorsey, who made an appearance that morning) anticipated. I doubt Jack, Evan and Biz imagined they’d be asked by the federal government to delay routine maintenance because of the effect Twitter was having on Iranian protesters. What we as Twitter users, PR professionals and advisors to corporations is to continually insistence on the core tennants of social media: honesty, transparency, accountability and responsibility. The conference spoke of a new type of a media, a hybrid of “new media” and “old media,” which Jeff Pulver called “now media.” But now media, as well as new media, must still be held to the same standards as old media. Bloggers, citizen journalists and other man-on-the-street reporters must, when they choose to report the news, maintain a high level of honesty and accurate reporting. We have a responsibility to all who read our words.

Those who report the news, whether in the form of personal experiences or otherwise, must work to maintain a level of integrity that has moved beyond the ivory towers of the broadcast studios in Manhattan to the homes of men and women around the world.

(For more on the panel on Twitter as a newsgathering tool, please see Brian Solis’s post on TechCrunch).

A couple weeks ago, Open the Dialogue featured a guest post written by Susan Getgood, a leader in social media marketing. Today, we’re pleased to feature an open dialogue with Susan to discuss more about social media, Susan’s experience in the industry, and her advice to those just joining public relations. Susan is the founder of GetGood Strategic Marketing, advising organizations on integrated social media outreach and internet marketing strategies. She also leads corporate workshops on social media and blogger relations. She is a frequent speaker at social media and public relations conferences around the country, including New Comm Forum, BlogHer ‘09 and Mom 2.0 Summit. Her blog, Marketing Roadmaps, is an analysis of current trends, best practices and campaign mishaps. You can also follow her on Twitter at @sgetgood. - AB

DM: One question I’ve heard often is, “How does this social media ‘stuff’ (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) affect my ROI?” How do you convince, or better yet explain, why social media is important for a business?

Susan Getgood: The blogger is your customer. Why wouldn’t you want to engage with your customer in meaningful ways? Now, your client will nod yes, but the words No or Not Now may emerge. What do you do?

• Monitor for mentions of the company or even better, competitors. Lots of activity shows that the customers are in the space.
• If the competitor is getting good coverage, offer ideas on how your client can insert and displace.
• If the client is getting slammed, preferably unjustly, and there’s something you can do in social media to improve the situation, offer the idea.
• Suggest a pilot project. Ask for a little of the budget from somewhere else, whether it be advertising, direct or even the PR budget. Make sure you build a solid outcome oriented measure – a customer behavior – into the pilot so the client can see the results. No one ever went into business to raise awareness. If you can show that social media impacts PURCHASE, you’ll get to do the next project.

The social media space is very overwhelming – even for someone who has grown up on the Internet. For a client, what advice do you have for how they should get started if they’re not sure if they should join Twitter or Facebook, start a blog, start a blogger campaign (among many options)?

You start where your customers are. If you don’t know, ask them. Next, you think about how you can tell meaningful stories. Generally, for a first phase, unless the client has a compelling issue or story that can feed the blog and pull the audience in, I recommend blogger outreach over starting a blog. Get to know your customers using social media, and find out if there’s an unmet need that you could satisfy with a community site or a blog. Then, when you build it, they will come. If you jump in a create the 10th site about something, without doing the research and getting involved in the community, don’t be surprised if your stadium is pretty empty.

On your blog, Marketing Roadmaps, you have analyzed countless PR campaigns and advised on the good and the bad. What have been one or two blogger relations campaigns that really stand out to you as the best, and why?

The outreach APCO Worldwide did for the launch of Greenstone Media a couple years ago still stands out for me because they did such a brilliant job of connecting their offer – to participate in a conference call with Gloria Steinem – with the interests of the small number of women bloggers they reached out to.

I very much like your recent campaign for 1-800-Flowers. I think big events get all the “press” but it’s small gestures that sustain relationships. I also like any project that puts the focus back on the customer, for example, by featuring them on your site as you did in this campaign. I think I was one of the first to use this approach, when I interviewed mom bloggers about photography for the launch of HP’s photo books in Fall 2007, and I love to see it used by others.

You have been involved in social media marketing since the early ‘90s. How did you get started?

When I saw the very first version of Mozilla (the 1st web browser) in 1994, I realized that it was going to change how we marketed to our customers. At that moment, I made the decision to focus my career – to the extent that I could — on using the Internet to reach customers, specifically exploring how the new tools let us engage with our customers to meet their needs.

When social media began to take off in 2004 and 2005, I saw it as the fulfillment of the promise of customer engagement. The channel now went both ways. It wasn’t just companies pushing down content on websites, with limited engagement in forums, by email and from the few tech savvy customers, fan (or non-fan) websites. Social media offers far simpler ways for customers to push up. Push back. From their own spaces. Even if they aren’t geeks.

If we choose, it lets us practice true customer centric marketing. I choose.

As a woman in business and in social media, what tips do you have for other women in an otherwise heavily-male influenced industry?

Social media is certainly male dominated, and PR, while female dominant, is still male dominated. So what’s an enterprising woman to do? Make connections. Network.

Make sure among all your networks, one is woman dominant. It makes a difference. I’m as competitive as the next person, and think I’ve done, and do, fairly well, in a male dominated world and industry. But I truly appreciate the woman’s networks I belong to, the women who have become my network, and don’t think I would be as strong without them.

Graduation day is right around the corner for many public relations students. What is one lesson or piece of advice about public relations that Professor Getgood would like to impart?

Wear sunscreen?

Seriously, I think the future of public relations lies in integrating what have traditionally been view as marketing communications skills. It’s not just about reaching out to mainstream media using those rules of engagement I mentioned at the outset. You have to understand your role in a broader context in order to be successful.

If you take the inside (versus agency) path, be willing to take slightly non-traditional, at least in the PR sense, jobs in order to get exposure to the business, the real business of your company. It will serve you well in understanding how to really engage with the customer.

Talk to customers. Whenever you can. Even if they aren’t yours. It’s worth its weight in gold to have a glimpse at what motivates, interests, impassions people. PR people just aren’t used to talking to the customer. Get over, get used to it, do it.

What three blogs do you recommend to someone just getting started in social media?

Other than mine, Marketing Roadmaps, you mean?

Four PR Blogs I love:
Communications Overtones
PR Squared
It’s Not A Lecture
The Bad Pitch Blog

But do yourself a favor, and don’t just read professional and PR blogs. Find some blogs that interest you personally. About your hobbies, or parenting, or travel or whatever. If you just do the business stuff, you may never really understand why people get so engaged in social media. It’s all about meeting people like you, all over the world. People you would never meet if it weren’t for social networking. They may just become some of your best friends.

That alone is worth the price of admission.

Yesterday, Facebook announced in a blog post that starting 12:01 EDT, Saturday, June 13^th, vanity URLs will be available for all Facebook profiles and Fan Pages.  This is an important step for Facebook. They are perhaps the last of the major social media platforms to offer them, as both  MySpace and Twitter already do.

A vanity URL is key for your personal brand because it allows us to find others online, by name and without a lot of work. Sure, Facebook has a search bar, but right now the problem is that once you search for someone and it pulls up results and then you still have to dig through those all of those to find the “right” person.  Once Saturday hits, you can easily just type in a friend’s specific URL and you’re DONE. Much easier.

This also means that Facebook can now play a more pivotal role in a person’s online brand.  Across all social media platforms, most of us try to keep consistent whether we use our real name or a pseudonym, people learn about us and look for us based off of the personal brand we have built.

Why else does this matter? It’s good for SEO and it allows us to find exactly what we’re looking for and know what we’re looking at. Something with a bunch of random numbers and symbols at the end doesn’t really tell us if we’ve found the right person or page. It also makes me dig even more when searching.

A few questions I have about the change though: will we find that Facebook users will begin to utilize the platform differently? Will search be as popular and will we still browse through the hundreds of random “John Smiths” of the world until we find the right one?  It will be interesting to see if this alters behavior in any significant way.

 What are your thoughts on the new vanity URLs? Will you be staying home this Friday to get one?

Also, to stake your customized claim on Facebook this weekend, you can visit http://facebook.com/username.

We’re really excited about launching the M.insight mobile app today, for the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.

Our colleagues often ask our recommendations on great blogs covering marketing communications and social media.  And quite honestly, with a bewildering number of blogs covering the space, it can get a bit overwhelming trying to decide which ones to read regularly to stay on top of news affecting our industry or clients.

Well, M.insight is designed help.  It’s a simple, free mobile app that aggregates content from a hand-picked group of highly respected blogs and news sites within the industry so you don’t have to dig through hundreds of blogs to get to articles that really matter to you.  And M.insight delivers this up-to-the-minute content right to your smartphone, so you can catch up on your reading whenever you have a few spare minutes.  You can add as many of your favorite feeds as you like, or delete feeds you don’t care about.  You can even monitor social media right from your smartphone.

Check out mww.com/minsight to learn more about the app and download it to your smartphone.

We really hope this app becomes a useful and time-saving tool for our colleagues and peers.  We’d love to hear what you think!  Let us know in the comments section.

M.insight Splash Page

M.insight Categories

There have been lots of examples of brands and individuals getting hacked on Twitter. In some cases, this results in exciting opportunities (think @The_Real_Shaq), in others, it can be a threat to personal or brand reputation (think Exxon or, most recently Tony LaRussa).

In response to the lawsuit filed by Cardinals manager, Tony LaRussa, last week, Twitter founders had the following to say, “Impersonation violates Twitter’s Terms of Service and we take the issue seriously. We suspend, delete, or transfer control of accounts known to be impersonation. When alerted, we took action in this regard on behalf of St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.”

In addition, they’ve previewed a new service, coming this summer, that will seek to authenticate brand or personal accounts so that owners and users can have a clearer sense of who they’re talking to and why they may or may not be getting the responses they’re looking for. Verified Accounts will come with a badge, like the one below.

Twitter Verified Account

Now, until this service is launched, there are a couple things you can do as a brand to be prepared.

1. Do your homework. Even if you aren’t ready to start a Twitter account, you should take ownership of your brand name and a few derivatives. This will prevent people from stealing your name. While you’re at it, check out Name Check, and see where you are susceptible to hacking all over the web. There are other services out there as well, such as Reputation Defender, that can help individuals track and improve your online reputation.
2. Set up Live Listening. Use an RSS reader. Set up searches for your name and your company’s name. Pay attention to where you are being mentioned and how.

Also, it’s important to remember that not all hackers are bad. Really? Yes. Take, for example, the hack-job done in conjunction with one of my favorite TV shows, Mad Men. You can follow @Don_Draper and the gang on Twitter – but these characters are not from AMC or their agency. This network of profiles was set up by fans of the show. After initially trying to disband the characters, they were allowed to continue tweeting, and continued to grow an audience and provide fans a way to connect with the show. Big win all around.

Jeff Pulver is one of the leaders in social media networking, having hosted dozens of social media events around the world, including the upcoming 140 Characters Conference taking place in New York City on June 16 and 17. He is also the founder of the Social Communications Summit and the host of Breakfast with Jeff Pulver.

Jeff is the Chairman and Founder of Pulver.com and one of the pioneers of VoIP, founding FWD, the VON Coalition, PrimeTimeRewind.TV, Vivox and is the co-founder of VoIP provider, Vonage.

Jeff can be found in a myriad of places online, namely Facebook, Twitter and his blog on pulver.com.

DialogueMedia: How did you get involved in social networking? How have you seen social media enhance your business?

Jeff Pulver: Social Networking is part of our day-to-day lives as much as anything else it. The only thing is that for a long time we didn’t have a name to describe some of the things we do each and every day from the time we made our first friend in the sandbox to the time you met the person for the first time last Tuesday.

The moment we meet someone new we become networkers. Without networking (social media based or otherwise) it would be challenging to be in business. I’d like to believe we have all been engaged in a form of social networking since we were all kids.

You are a master networker – what suggestions do you have for people who are just starting to attend tech, social media and PR events?

Before you attend your first event make sure you exist on Twitter and Facebook.

Be prepared. Look at the names of the people planning to be there. Spend the time googling the names and the people. On Twitter start to follow the people you want to meet the most and be sure to read their respective feeds the week before the meeting. This way you will have plenty of things to talk about in the event you are lucky enough to get into a conversation with one or more of the people who wanted to meet.

Do NOT hang out with the walls at the event. This means both the people who are leaning against the walls as much as the walls.

Do make an effort and walk around the room. Be mobile. And be available for a conversation.

You’ve also created a number of your own events, like SocComm, The 140 Characters Conference, and your series of social media breakfasts that you host pretty much everywhere. What inspires you to create so many events? What do you hope to accomplish?

I believe that the next person you meet may change your life. I would like to believe you have a chance to meet that person at one or more of my events.

As a business professional, how do you manage your work/life/social media balance?

I don’t look to create walls between work / life / social media so I don’t really have that much to balance. Depending upon the context my answers may vary but at any moment my blog may have a story reflecting something from deep inside my soul or it might represent my latest idea for where a certain technology is going to evolve. Connect with me at your own risk, as your milage with me may vary with use.

You travel to Tel Aviv, Israel frequently. Have you noticed any differences in the way businesses and individuals approach social media, compared with the U.S.?

Tel Aviv is a city of innovation and opportunity where some people work what feels like 25/8 in pursuit of a dream. I am not aware of many other cities anywhere in the world where this is also true. When you are around people who are driven it effects you.

Israel is not a leader in the adoption of twitter but it is a Facebook friendly nation and it is a place where the use of twitter has seen extreme growth of the past 6 months.

Thousands of newly-minted PR professionals are about to graduate this spring. What is one lesson or piece of advice about public relations that Professor Pulver would like to impart?

To be in PR means that you should not be LAZY. Please read this post.

What three blogs do you recommend to someone just getting started in social media?

The answer varies depending upon which industries they plan on being involved in.

I personally don’t read a lot of blogs but when I do, chances are they are written by people like: Fred Wilson, Chris Brogan or stories posted to places like TechCrunch and Mashable.

Laura Halsch is the newest Digital Strategist on MWW Group’s digital media team, DialogueMedia, having joined our team in May 2009. Laura will help develop and execute strategic online communications programs for a number of our top clients. Before joining our team at MWW Group, Laura was a digital specialist in the 360˚ Digital Influence Group at Ogilvy Public Relations, and also served as an account executive in Olgivy’s Washington D.C. office. Laura is a graduate of Georgetown University, and can also be found on Twitter at @lauraah. – AB

DM: My first question is the class job interview question: Why did you want to become a PR professional? Was this something you always wanted to do?
LH: I always liked writing and was interested in art and design, but I was an English major in college and didn’t really know where that would take me. My Junior year, I started taking journalism and marketing courses and that set me on track to work in PR. While I do have a traditional PR background, I’ve always liked looking at the intersection of PR and other marketing disciplines.

How did you get into social media? Were you on Facebook in college?
For me, social media was always a part of my online experience. I remember getting all these emails inviting me to join Facebook during my semester abroad in college, and it became this great way for my friends to keep track of each other while we were all around the world. I read blogs, watched online video, and joined local social networks, but it was always just for fun.

When I started in the Consumer Marketing group at Ogilvy PR, I was drawn to the work being done in the Creative Studio and the Digital Influence Group. By hanging around their team, and picking up work when they were over-capacity, I started to learn about creating social media programs as part of PR efforts, and was eventually invited to join the team full time.

What do you like about working in digital media, versus traditional media? Why do you think it’s important for companies to be involved in social media?
The reasons I like digital media fall in line pretty closely with the reasons for companies to get involved, so I’ll answer these together. It allows companies to connect directly with the people who are passionate about them to create additional value, reward their fans, and help their detractors. It is constantly changing and evolving, which creates a challenging work environment but a huge opportunity for companies to try new things and grow and evolve with the landscape. Especially as younger generations age, digital media is becoming the primary source of information, and it is our obligation as PR practitioners to make sure our clients are represented there.

You’ve also worked in Washington D.C., when you worked for Ogilvy. Do you notice a difference in how social media or public relations are approached between D.C. and NYC?
Government organizations and partners obviously have a big role in everything that’s happening in DC. It was exciting to be a part of and watch as government organizations started getting involved in social media and really began to see results from their efforts. In DC, I had the opportunity to work on more issues-driven projects, whereas here in NY my work has largely been in the consumer space.

What advice does Professor Halsch have for all the newly-minted graduates about to start working in public relations, especially when it comes to landing a job?
The job market is definitely different now than it was when I started out. Recent grads need to work to stand out among their peers and demonstrate their passion. The best advice I’ve read recently was from Charlie O’Donnell, over at Path 101. If you follow these steps, you’ll be more than set.

What are three blogs you think everyone should visit?
For quick-bites on WOMM and Customer relations, Church of The Customer.
For technology, healthcare and social media, and just a really passionate guy, Andre’s Blackman’s Pulse and Signal.
And to get some laughs from a smart social media enthusiast: Catch-Up Blog.