Communication Overtones

The New .Thing Rolls Out Today, Bringing Massive Change for Brands and Nonprofits!

2012-01-12T08:04:00.001-08:00

Today ICANN, which is the nonprofit, non-governmental organization that coordinates the Internet naming system, is opening up an application process for established companies, organizations or institutions can apply to manage a .ANYTHING.

They aren’t opening up the opportunity to own a Top Level Domain (TLD) to just anyone. Excluded are individuals, sole proprietors or yet-to-be-formed entities. And the bar is set reasonably high, with a $185K fee and a 300-page application.

The managers of a TLD are not necessarily the people with whom you have registered your web address, like like Network Solutions, GoDaddy and thousands of others. Instead, these “managers” of TLDs provide the “plumbing” of the Internet.

Anytime you put a .COM into a web browser, Verisign is making sure it reaches its destination. Similarly, anytime you put a .ORG in, the Public Interest Registry is behind it.

We all just expect these things to work. You probably aren’t all that interested in how a DNS resolves or the infrastructure required to bring the webpage you want to your browser.

How this Affects Non-Profits

One of the clients I have been working with at Zoetica is the Public Interest Registry, or PIR. Working with them has given me a further insight into this historic time for the Internet.

PIR, which is itself a nonprofit, is the current manager of the .ORG extension, and was formed to run it as a community-driven asset. PIR is applying to run a new .NGO domain that would be reserved for nonprofits. However, with any open application process, there is a risk that others might also apply for this new extension.

ICANN allows applicants to gather community support to bolster their case, and PIR is asking nonprofit managers from all over the world to support their application for this TLD.

The nonprofit community has banded together to support PIR, and I have included a number of posts from various nonprofit leaders in support of PIR at the end of this post. If you work at a nonprofit, exclusively with nonprofits, or serve on a board of a nonprofit you can sign the petition here.

How this Affects Companies

Generic Top Level Domain Program For Brands

View more presentations from IQ the innovation lab of GSW Worldwide

It’s all about branding!

I expect some big companies to be thinking of getting their own TLD and running it. Think .PEPSI or .COCACOLA. From a marketing perspective, these domains will allow for some clever advertising opportunities and make it easier to get the Internet names they need. The only fights for names will be internal.

For category-type names, like .LUXURY or .BANK or .HEALTHCARE, it will require industry support. Also, no one can get your brand’s TLD without your explicit agreement.

If and when a category name comes open, you will have to determine if it will make sense for your business and if it is run by a reputable organization. A good example of a current domain name with some concerns is the .ly extension, which is run by the Libyan government. The popular shorter bit.ly is on this TLD. But as this website explains, Libya could choose to shut down any site with an .ly extension for almost any reason.

The Campaign for .NGO

Here is some more information about the campaign for .NGO, including an short petition to sign.

Other coverage and support of .NGO

Here are some of the most influential voices in the nonprofit community in support of PIR’s bid for .NGO.

Petition: Protect your brand and domain name, via CauseVox
Give a New Year's Gift to Nonprofits Worldwide, via Waxing Unlyrical
Save the .NGO Domain for Nonprofits - Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media –, via Froogloop, Care2
It's the Little Things That Count in Social Fundraising | Inspiring Generosity, via Razoo
Zoetica Media » Circle of Trust: What Your Web Address Says About Your Nonprofit, via Zoetica
Exclusive Domain for Nonprofits: .NGO - Purple-Power, via Avectra
.ORG vs .NGO: How New Domain Names Can Help Your Brand | GoodWorks, via Advertising Age
The Internet Domain .NGO Should Serve Best Interests of Nonprofits Worldwide: Sign An Online Letter of Support | Beth’s Blog, via Beth Kanter
IMPORTANT: Help make sure .NGO remains in nonprofit hands — SocialFish, via Maddie Grant
Say ‘Happy New Year’ to nonprofits worldwide with one click, via Socialbrite
Sign this petition to keep the .NGO domain only for nonprofits Small Act, via @SmallAct

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Inspiring Your Kids (and Coworkers) to Be Generous with Examples, Empathy and Action

2011-12-22T08:04:00.001-08:00

When the folks at Razoo contacted me to ask if I would write a post about how to instill generosity in kids, it was easy to do. I have been agonizing over how to do it for about a year now with my own three children, who are just now getting to an age where I think they can understand.

As a business owner and parent, I realize that we have been very blessed.

My husband and I have made a pretty good living, and we have three active, healthy and privileged kids. As a kid growing up in a very lower middle class neighborhood with a single mom, this was my dream.

I never realized it could also be a problem.

Lately we have been noticing that our kids are might just be a little too privileged.

It is the small things: whining and fussing about not getting something they want, and when they say to me, “If I break it you can just buy me a new one, right?”

And then there is the times where they step out with such brilliance to help others that is takes my breath away.

With our oldest child now seven, I am starting to see that we will have to be intentional about teaching them to be generous and to appreciate what they do have.

There are three things that I feel are the most important things in teaching generosity and those are to lead by example, to teach empathy and to take action.

Lead By Example

As parents, we need to be generous and gracious. This goes far beyond giving money, though that is important too. It means not just passing homeless people on the street without even looking at them, it means helping a neighbor in need even when it isn’t convenient, and putting your own needs and wants in the backseat to theirs and others. There may come a time when they ask you why you do such things, and then you can tell them. It provides a teaching moment.

But even if they don’t know all that you do, it is important that we also have causes that we are passionate about. Moreover, that we put our resources of time, talent and treasure into those causes regularly. We may not have an abundance of all three resources all the time, but there is always one or more of these areas where we can give back. Moreover, we should have goals to increase in each area.

So, this year, as I am doing my regular year-end giving, I am also going to involve them in the process. Razoo is giving me a $100 giving card. I was a bit reluctant to take it, but I want to give as much as I can this season, and I plan to let my kids help me decide where to invest it. Moreover, I am also buying giving cards for some our clients at my company, Zoetica. We have always pledged to give away 10% of our profit every year, and I plan to do that and a little more. I also like that the credit card fee is only 2.9%, so I feel that it is a responsible way to give. These are great gifts for coworkers, too.

Teach Empathy

I have found that I have to teach my kids that they are not the center of the universe. Not in a belligerent or belittling way, but in a way that helps them to understand another point of view. One way is to give kids words for emotions. For example, when my son hits his sister, I ask, “How would it make you feel if your sister hit you?” The answer is always some various of “sad, hurt, upset.” And usually you see a little light go off in their eyes as they imagine how they would feel.

One time we were preparing to have a family we barely knew over for dinner. They were having trouble with of their kids and we wanted to reach out to them. My son was angry because we had spent the afternoon getting ready rather than catering to what he wanted to do. “You love everyone else more than me,” he yelled. I was able to talk to him, once he was calm, and explain that part of loving your neighbor as yourself involves giving up your own agenda from time to time.

Take Action

This year, for Christmas, we decided to give some money to buy livestock for families in Africa. Instead of just letting the kids help us pick out the livestock and paying for it, we did it as a family. We usually go to a restaurant once a week, so for several weeks we gave up our restaurant visit and added what we would have spent to the fund. As such, our kids sacrificed a little, and understood the gift more.

Also, our oldest son now gets an allowance. We require that he save some, give some and the rest is his to keep. This keeps the importance of giving forefront in his mind every week. As a family, we also give at least 10% of our income.

When I attended the Cause Marketing Summit this year, I was listening to Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, a nonprofit organization that gives grants to teens that are looking to make a social impact with campaigns that don’t require money, an adult or a car.

As a mother of two, and someone who works with teens on a daily basis, she said something that really caught my attention:

“Homelessness is a "gateway" cause to get teens involved in philanthropy.” – Nancy Lublin, DoSomething.com

It turns out my church goes downtown once a month on Sunday mornings to serve the homeless, and children are welcome. It seems that the homeless in the shelter are much more gentle when children are present.

I think we have a date. I plan to start taking my 7-year-old in January.

What do you plan to do to teach your children to be more generous this year? Or how will you use your own, or the resources in your workplace to make a difference?

I could use the tips.

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Social Media Powered Christmas Tree is Cool, But Where is the Call to Action?

2011-12-13T05:01:00.001-08:00

One of the more innovative “stunts” this Christmas Season is by Canadian Tire. They have a Christmas tree installed at Union Station, Toronto, that is powered by the “Christmas Spirit.”(See “How the Tree Works” below if you are interested).

They have designed a microsite that features a LiveStream of the Christmas tree with its 3,000 LED lights, and has social media bells and whistles like Facebook and Twitter share buttons and a nice map of Canada that shows popup messages from the social channels they are using to “power” the tree.

However, as cool as this site is, there is no call to action beyond sharing the page.

Powering the Campaign for Results

So, as much as I love this concept, it falls short.

It isn’t really marketing, and it doesn’t quite fulfill any objective to extend new relationships with people that stumble onto the site. In fact, to find the Canadian Tire Facebook page, I had to click through to the ecommerce site and then look for the Facebook icon. Shouldn’t that be on the Christmas Tree page?

I do wonder if the campaign has any measurable objective beyond traffic, number of messages, and to simply delight? These “attention” measures often lead to a site like this one, which is more pretty than practical.

Even a couple of small tweaks would help. For instance, allowing people to “LIKE” your Facebook page from the site gives another chance for Canadian Tire to reach these potential customers through innovative Facebook posts. Or how about a link to the Holiday section of the Canadian Tire website vs. the home page? Right now the link to the mother ship is buried at the bottom left. Why not a very small message, “Let us help you deck your halls?” By the way, for my American audience, Canadian Tire doesn’t just sell tires.

Finally, they have an amazing opportunity to bring this to the local community by having a real-world event. How about a inviting your social media fans (Facebook and Twitter) to the lighting of the tree? Also invite local influencers, real world and social media. The concept would drive local media to come out and it might have a bigger share of the news that night.

To be fair, they may have had such an event, but looking for it online, I didn’t see any coverage of it or events on their Facebook page. They do have this press release on their corporate site that has some interesting stats and I expect that they will get a fair share of media coverage.

It would make sense to extend the investment they obviously put into this microsite. Can you see anything you would change or tweak?

How the Tree Works

They have a handy page to explain it, but I here is the gist.

Using a social media monitoring service, they are searching for Christmas-themed keywords on Social Networks, Blogs and Forums, News Media and messages shared from ChristmasSpiritTree.ca. They designed a computer lighting software to translate Christmas posts into data that can then be visualized as lights on the tree.

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Part 5: What Is Your Measurement Personality Style?

2011-12-01T12:03:00.001-08:00

Take the Quiz to Find Out

What is Your Social Media Measurement Personality Style? » Quiz Maker

The Freewheelers

The Naysayers eschew measurement, calling it antithetical to the ethos of social media. This camp says that each individual voice is important and that all input should be seen as valuable. It feels that by measuring, an organization sets up a transactional relationship instead of building a more desirable, egalitarian one.

The Bean Counters

On the opposite side of the divide are the Bean Counters, those who say that business results should drive the involvement of an organization in social media. They are not very interested in the softer measures of influence, reputation or relationship building. Their focus is return on investment (ROI), and they don’t see the point of wasting valuable resources on something that doesn’t contribute to the bottom line.

The Measurement Explorers

The third camp, which we will call the social media Measurement Explorers, falls somewhere in between the other two and is happy to look at multiple measures to show the efficacy of social media. While a monetary return is the primary objective, there are a variety of ways to measure the impact that social media channels have on advancing the goals of the business or nonprofit. This moderate view is the most common-sense approach for social spaces and usually yields the best results.

Which one of these styles are you?

It likely that you are in one of the shaded areas in the Venn diagram above and I would take a hazard to guess that the more you move toward being an explorer, the more likely you will achieve success.

It’s hard to run a business or nonprofit on good feelings alone, and conversely, facilitating word-of-mouth advocacy will be difficult if the goal is to convert every touch into a transaction.

So share in the comments which style you tested out to be and if you think it is accurate.

Then you can go an read or download a free copy of the Whitepaper, from which this framework was taken, “A Commonsense Framework for Social Media Measurement.”

Here are the previous posts from this measurement series as well:

Part I: A Commonsense Approach to Social Media Measurement
Part 2: Setting SMART Objectives
Part 3: Measurement as a Diagnostic Tool
Part 4: The 3 As of Social Media Measurement

The whitepaper was a guest chapter authored by Kami Huyse in Geoff Livingston’s book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate.

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The Double Edged Sword of Social Media and Privacy: What is the Responsibility of Communicators?

2011-11-22T12:13:00.001-08:00

Social media is by definition, public information.

As a marketer and public relations professional, I have really enjoyed the fact that I can easily share, find and communicate with people.

As a power user, I love that everything and everyone is at my fingertips and that I can so easily share amazing stories and experiences with people I would have never met otherwise.

But….as a mother, friend and human being that cares, I have some concerns.

Our Eroding Privacy

My first concerns came as Facebook started to continually shift its privacy settings as it added new features and everything was opt out. At the status quo on Facebook, advertisers can use your connection with a brand to market to your friends without your knowledge through social ads; any of your friends can “check you in” to a location without your permission; if you add your cell phone to the system, marketers can harvest it for promotion, as well as your email through apps; until you reset it, your posts to your wall are set to public, and so on….

Recently Facebook settled with the US Government over how it “misled users about the use of their data.”

But the real concern is actually integration. Once you integrate one social network with another, or even a website, unexpected things can occur. For instance, my friend Tonia Ries blew the whistle on the Klout integration with Facebook, which had the effect of a minor getting a Klout account just from posting on his more public Mom’s wall.

This led to an apology by Joe Fernandez at Klout and also led to Klout adding a way to “opt out” of a profile on that service.

How Far Is Too Far?

And that is the rub. As adults we can make decisions about how much information to share, and we can thicken our skin an take the hit if we happen to make a mistake.

But as my 7 year-old son asked me a few weeks ago, “Mom, why is is okay for you to use your whole name online and not me?”

As a marketer and public relations professional, I believe I have an ethical duty to ask myself how I am using people’s data. I have started a Scoop.It topic on the issue of Social Media and Privacy. If you are interested in this, be sure to follow the topic in the graphic below.

How do you feel about privacy and social media? How far is too far? What, if any, is our responsibility for using this data?

Evolving Privacy in Social Media

Direct link to all privacy articles

Photo credit:

Double face by Photo by uzi978

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The Holy Grail of Social Media: Three Questions to Ask, Three Archetypes to Avoid

2011-11-17T13:06:00.001-08:00

Everything you need to know about risk and social media you can learn from Monty Python.

Okay, perhaps not everything, but the classic scene where the Knights of the Roundtable approach the “Bridge of Doom” in their quest for the Holy Grail holds a lot of wisdom.

Three Questions to Ask for Your Social Media Strategy

Who are You? Knowing who you are as an organization isn’t as easy as it sounds. You need to understand the culture of your company, and you need to know a lot about your stakeholders. Are they a Facebook crowd or more likely on LinkedIn? What about Flickr or YouTube?
Where are you going? I am always amazed at how many organizations have no real goals for their social media interactions. Be sure you have some SMART Objectives in place and know what are you are trying to accomplish.
What don’t you know? You need to know Your Achilles Heel. What are your weaknesses as an organization? Where are you likely to stumble? Do you have a secretive culture? Be sure you have guidelines in place to keep things moving in the right direction.

The Three Archetypes to Avoid

The Early Adopter. This may be a sacrilegious statement for some, but don’t aim to be an early adopter. This personality has more of “shiny object” syndrome and often is not the most efficient. Sir Lancelot only made it across the bridge with a turn of good luck and some bravado. Moving first has its advantages, but notice that King Arthur wasn’t the early adopter in this clip, but instead used his intelligence to outwit the bridge keeper.

The Overconfident Guru. The other archtype is one that gathers a few case studies, attends a few webinars and decides that this social media stuff is pretty easy. Problem is they often fly without a plan. Like Sir Robin, they push others to go first and then come in behind with an arrogant attitude. Sometimes they end up in the “Gorge of Eternal Peril,” too (Muhaa-ha-ha).

The Copycat. The final archetype is one that carefully studies the market and his or her competitors, then decides to do something “just like” a competitor. In this clip, Sir Galahad is not true to his own personality, and thus end up in the Gorge with the others.

If nothing else, I hope it makes you chuckle.

Many thanks to I have to give credit to Kathi Kruse (@kathikruse) whose own excellent post on this subject inspired me to add the captions.

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Think that Celebrities are a Home Run for Fundraising? New PayPal Study Says Community Works Better

2011-11-03T04:45:00.001-07:00

It turns out that when it comes to fundraising for a cause, it is not about who knows YOU, but who you KNOW. A recent study sponsored by PayPal Nonprofit, and penned by Geoff Livingston and Henry Dunbar for Zoetica, shows that a personal story, a tight knit community and the authenticity of the messenger count more than simple fame.

Four Tips for Fundraising with Weblebrities

Personal connections and authentic passion for the cause.
Willingness to ask their personal friends to get involved and not just their ‘publics.’
Identify avid users of social media, both by the celebrity and their social networks.
Welcome the non-traditional celebrity.

Consider just these few examples where micro-celebrities outperformed well-known celebrities:

Facebook’s Causes

Paddie O’Brien, a 9-year-old cancer patient with virtually no online presence generated more donations than any other individual, including television star Ashton Kutcher.

DonorsChoose.org

Tomato Nation’s Sarah Bunting raised over $383K, beating out better known names like TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and All Things D’s Kara Swisher.

Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees

Scrapbooking blogger Ali Edwards, whose son has autism, outpaced 60 celebrity fundraisers, including Kanye West, who didn’t get even one donation. By contrast Edwards brought in 2,313 donors giving 47,849 to benefit Autism Speaks.

PayPal-sponsored Regift the Fruitcake

Filipina singer Charice and her engaged fans beat out more notable celebrities such as Paris Hilton [4 million+ Twitter followers], Billy Bush of Access Hollywood, the NBA’s Lamar Odom and his reality TV star wife Kloe Kardashian. None of these delivered Charice’s impact.

TwitChange

In a charity auction where fans buy mentions, follows, and retweets from celebrities on Twitter. Two of the celebrities drawing the most attention and highest bids have been actor Zachary Levi (of TV’s Chuck) and celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart, beating stars such as country singer LeAnn Rimes and celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton.

You can download the Effectiveness of Celebrity Spokespeople in Social Fundraisers, in full from the Scribed site.

Case Studies

How Reddit Rocked Stephen Colbert’s World

Other coverage of the paper:

Celebrities May be Overrated, Chronicle of Philanthropy
Paypal Research Shows Strength of Community Trumps Popularity,
Geoff Livingston How Reddit Rocked Stephen Colbert’s World
PayPal Paper Shows Celebrities Not Always the Best Choice for Fundraising, Zoetica
Good News for Giving 2.0: Your Organization’s Champions are Your Most Valuable Resource, Beth Kanter
Online Celebrity Fundraisers Only Succeed with Authentic Interest, The Case Foundation
Online Celebrity Fundraisers Only Succeed with Authentic Interest, Razoo
The Effectiveness of Celebrities in Social Fundraisers, Frank Berry on NetWitsThinkTank (Blackbaud)
Is Ashton Kutcher a Fundraising Dud?, Sherrilynne Starkie
Celebrity Schmelebrity, The Facts Don’t Lie, PVSM Blog
Do Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Other Celeb Tweets Really Help Causes?, Huffington Post
4 Top Tips for Recruiting Celebrity Fundraisers, Charity Buzz
Who would you pick as your next spokesperson… lady gaga or your next door neighbor?, Social Citizens

Photo Credit: Photo from Blue Oregon coverage of the Ali Edward’s fundraiser for Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees

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Study: A Month Later, Is TechCrunch Less Relevant without Michael Arrington?

2011-10-13T11:30:00.001-07:00

Photo Credit: TechCrunch on Flickr

On the week that Searchmetrics launched its social media search database, Searchmetrics essentials, the popular technology blog TechCrunch was undergoing some internal drama on a very public stage.

Its founder Mike Arrington was being fired by AOL and Arianna Huffington for conflict of interest. Mike Arrington, MG Siegler and Paul Carr, each wrote scathing posts on TechCrunch about how the site wouldn’t survive without the influence and independent voice of its founder.

It seemed that everyone was talking about the drama, the unprofessionalism and the sheer entertainment of the spectacle that the staff at TechCrunch was providing. (read any of those links for backstory)

From a PR angle alone this was interesting story, and it seemed the perfect site to analyze with this new tool.

Impact of TechCrunch Insurrection Posts

September 11, 2011

I plugged in the three article URLs for the three stories on September 6-8, 2011, into Searchmetrics to get a feel for what kind of links they garnered and there was a notable spike of incoming links to the Arrington post. Unfortunately, the Searchmetric tool does not look at what they call “directories,” or social spread on networks like Twitter and Facebook in its tool (it only looks at the root URL).

I hope they consider adding this capability, because these three articles gathered plenty of buzz on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks during that week. According to TechCrunch’s own metrics, the article by MG Siegler did better than Arrington’s in social networks.

Buzz Generated in Social Channels by Debacle

	Arrington, 9/6	Carr, 9/8	Siegler, 9/6
Comments	281	153	492
Likes	833	297	2K
Tweets	1,961	503	5,895
LinkedInShare	404	115	1,348
Google +	273	97	672
TOTAL	3,752	1.165	10,407

Data Source: TechCrunch widgets

Finally I looked at posts with most social visibility and none of the three, “I Quit” articles by some of its most influential writers and founder of TechCrunch broke into the Top 25 out of 19,264 posts. In fact, I looked through the first 2,500 results in order of their search visibly and didn’t see any of these articles. Searchmetrics does allow an Excel download for its paying members and I didn’t have access to that.

Will TechCrunch Become Less Relevant Without Arrington?

As for the claims by Paul Carr that TechCrunch will loose its famous swagger, and thus its relevance, without its bad-boy founder, that remains to be seen. According to the Searchmetrics tool, its social buzz continues to grow.

Alexa shows TechCrunch Reach is up 7.2% month to month as of today (October 12, 2011). Compete shows that the TechCrunch traffic is down by 34.38% this month, and 23.14% this year, since a high in August. Also, the Searchmetrics tool shows that SEO Visibility is down for TechCrunch as well, though this slide follows a rather meteoric rise earlier this year, and even at reduced levels it is higher than it has been historically.

Source: Searchmetrics SEO Tool, cut out portion is just a long period of similar results around 200K

So, the verdict is out still on the future of TechCrunch, but it seems that there are still plenty of people looking at the publication as an industry leader. And it also looks like there are plenty of people willing and eager to interact with Michael Arrington and his swagger on his new blog, launched on September 29, 2011, with a simple message, Here I Am? He already ranks 4,529th in the US for traffic via Alexa. And Searchmetrics puts the social visibility of the sit at 3,454. As a comparison, Robert Scoble’s well-established blog ranks at 493,726 on the tool.

What do you think? Do you think TechCrunch is less relevant without Arrington and crew, have you even noticed a difference over the last month?

The comments are yours.

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Growing a “Do Gooder” Culture: Where Does Your Company Fall on the Spectrum

2011-10-07T07:38:00.001-07:00

Credit: From a presentation at SchipulCon by Courtney Siegfried of the 20K Group Chris Vadez, Primer Grey

The benefits of cultivating a “Do Gooder” culture for a business are huge but you can boil them down into two basic principles:

A Business Boost
The Happiness Quotient

A Business Boost

It’s Good for Business, it is a great way to differentiate your brand, it is a wonderful recruiting tool for young talent and is also great for reputation management. There have been a number of studies showing that people are responsive to purchasing from bands that they see as being socially responsible.

Happiness Quotient

Implementing a cause focus (be it a formal Corporate Social Responsibility program or cause marketing) for your company also will pay dividends with employees. Companies with programs have better recruiting

You Cultivate the Next Generation of Happy Employees. Generation Y feels more personally responsible for making a difference in the world with 61% of 13 year olds feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world.

5 ways to spot a do gooder

So that said,w what are the qualities of a “do gooding” company. I loved this list of 5 things that Courtney Siegfried and Chris Vadez mentioned in their presentation.

Transparency (financial, public tax records and charity navigator, 95% on mission, look at the board list, ask around town)
Openness to change and Improvement
Conscientiousness
High standards for social engagement
Happy employees

5 Ways to Grow a Do Gooder Culture

Here is how Siegfried and Vadez say you should grow your “Do Gooding” culture.

Lead by example
Make social responsibility an core value
ID and expand your spheres of influence
Make room for individual passion projects
Hire the right people

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Pat Bowland’s 7 Tips for Living Your Life Well

2011-09-28T11:08:00.001-07:00

Credit: Post_It originally posted on Reddit by GlitterintheAir

I belong to a secret society or two, do you?

One of these secret societies, Love Drop, shared a really powerful message from the grave. It was a Post-It Note that a man, named Pat Bowland, kept in his cubicle at work to remind him of what was important as he fought brain cancer, which ultimately claimed his life. Not surprisingly, the note went viral after his death.

Social media has made it possible for us to share with each other at a level and a distance that we never have before. Sometimes, as marketers and PR professionals, we forget why people use social media.

It’s about connections, connections with people like Pat. A man none of us will ever “know,” but whom we now can know through his co-worker who posted his inspiring goals, through his own personal blog and Twitter account, and through articles written about him after his death.

It’s not much, but it is enough to inspire people to share, and perhaps to gain a little perspective.

We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that people aren’t listening so much to brands on Facebook and other social media arenas. In as much as they are listening to them, it has more to do with their own agenda than the brand. The brands that connect at the personal level understand this.

Why should they give their attention if brands can’t connect to them what matters most in life?

Here is Pat Bowland’s List of 7 things that really mattered to him. What are yours?

Love life, friends, family and God

Smile - Walk tall - Dress sharp

Be passionate

Say, "I love you" and "thank you" more often

This is a challenge not a disease

Set GOALS

FIGHT

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How to Moderate a Panel and Energize an Audience

2011-09-14T08:05:00.001-07:00

Photo by Ed Schipul from the IS Conference in Houston, Texas, 2010, moderated by Maggie McDonald

Maybe you have a panel up for consideration at one of the many conferences out there, maybe someone just asked you to lead a panel, or maybe you are just interested in how people could be crazy enough to take on the job of moderator.

Whatever the reason, you are looking for information, and answers about the art and tricks of moderation, or simply to just survive the experience.

Panels are tricky business, they can be a huge waste of time, or they can be a lively banter of thoughts and information that leave the audience energized and brimming with ideas. The moderator is largely responsible for which experience people have.

And you will rarely get any of the recognition for leading the panel well, though once in awhile someone might recognize your contribution for one of your panels, and this is as it should be.

Over the past two years, though my association with the Houston Social Media Breakfast. I have led over 30 panels and discussions, as well as several more for major conferences. Here are 5 Tips I have learned about how to make your experience as a moderator successful.

1. Recruit Interesting People

Photo Credit: SxSWi 2008 Corporate Blogging Panel moderated by Mack Collier, photo by Jeremiah Owyang

If you are so lucky to also be able to choose the panelists, look for people that bring an interesting perspective to the conversation. Don’t look just for the well known, but also for those with opposing viewpoints or different perspectives on the topic. And look for diversity too, diversity of ideas, backgrounds and demographics. Also, three panelists is perfect, four is a crowd and more than that is a disaster.

Resist the urge to go the easy way and recruit just a handful of your friends or popular people in your field. Of course, you might not have any sway in the panelists, in this case, it is on you to do your homework and find out what each person brings to the game. Visit their websites and social profiles, as well as Googling their name, to see what views they hold on the topic on which the panel will be speaking.

2. Prepare in Advance

Photo Credit: Joe Jaffe’s TwitVid showing the panel preparing before the start of the PRSA International Conference.

Sometimes it is like herding cats, but you should always, always, always prepare with your panel in advance. It can be by phone, but you need to make a roadmap for the conversation that will ensue onstage. It takes a lot of work to get this down and it is wholly the responsibility of the moderator to make sure the panel is prepared. Ask your panel two questions:

What two things are most important (in your mind) for you to share on this topic during the panel?
What would you like to learn from the other panelists and/or from the audience (when questions will be taken) during the panel?

This call is critical. It gives your panelists a chance to get to know each other and hear the other panelists answer this question, and it also helps you to plan the flow. and most important, what the panelists thinks is critical may not be important to the audience. In this call it is your job to act like a journalist, to listen and ask probing questions, then to record the juicy bits, which you will use to formulate your questions. Usually after this call I distribute a list of questions I might ask to the participants. This helps them to feel confident that they are prepared.

3. Slay the Dragons

Photo Credit: By Mike O’Dowd

Whatever your topic, you probably know already that certain parts of it might be controversial, so why not use this to your advantage?

A panel, when done right, is really a storytelling opportunity. You lay out the argument for both sides during the event, letting the audience make up their mind on which side they fall. It’s a bad idea to try to avoid the controversial items. The audience will hate you for doing it and it insults their intelligence.

However, you shouldn’t be controversial to be controversial. Instead, by bringing the issues up yourself, and planning in advance to do so, it makes your panelists look smart and well informed. Even if they don’t agree, the audience will be interested in the panel’s thinking. Slay the Dragon before it breathes fire. It will make your panel more interesting and ensure that the panel and audience don’t riot.

4. Facilitate the Conversation

Remember your place as moderator. The main attraction isn’t you. One thing I love about great moderators is that they know how to turn anything into a question. It is your job as moderator to keep the conversation going, to make sure one panelist isn’t dominating, and to continue to redirect thoughts and questions back to specific panelists.

Usually when the moderator takes over as presenter, it is because they didn’t do their homework on the panelists and don’t really know where to direct a question. It is all about the conversation. That is why talk show hosts like Oprah Winfrey or Neal Conan from Talk of the Nation are so good, they know how to get, and keep, people talking. I also learned a ton on how to do this from learning how to moderate a focus group.

You should also avoid PowerPoint if at all possible. A panel is already cluttered and nothing is more deadly than four mini PowerPoint presentations followed by a lackluster discussion. If you must have a visual, make them bold and few. You could put up a slide with the social profiles (name, title, company, Twitter handle, if you like).

5. Stay in Control

If you hang out in social media circles, you might believe that trying to control the conversation is a bad idea. However, the opposite is true of the panel.

As a moderator, it is your job to take and keep control of the conversation. Something I learned from my business partner, and talented presenter, Beth Kanter, is to never let go of the mic.

This does not mean that as a moderator you should be the center of information. You should keep tabs on the panel, look for audience input at the right moments and otherwise keep the conversation lively. It is a bit of an art, but mostly remember that you are more of a mirror as a moderator, you are reflecting to get your panel members to reveal the right information at the right time.

Always tell your panel ahead of time, just before you go on, that you will interrupt them if necessary, and that they shouldn’t take it personally.

Some better moderators in the social media communications space that I have worked with and seen include Shel Holtz and Eric Shwartzman. Who are your favorite moderators?

Have you served as a moderator? What have you learned? Do you have any specific questions or thoughts?

The comments are yours.

Photo credit: MIc Photo by Katrina Esco.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.

Tour of New Facebook Places, Better Communication, Less Privacy

2011-08-29T08:25:00.001-07:00

When Facebook rolled out with “Places” last year, like many of their feature upgrades, it came with a feature called “Tag Friends with You” turned on by default. This feature would allow your friends to check you in anywhere, even if you weren’t there, and even if you didn’t want to be checked in. It turns out that the new Facebook Places brings this feature back, but you can’t prevent people from tagging you at all, you can only remove the tags from you own profile.

While usually, Facebook tends to count on the trade blogs, like this post by All Facebook last week about the changes, to spread the word about new features. Unfortunately, the average Facebook user is unlikely to figure all of that out for months, or longer.

However, this time they are giving out the information in the form of a tour:, which is a step forward in its communication strategy. Let’s just hope that they roll out all new features in a similar way:

New: Control Privacy Inline

There is still a privacy area to fine tune settings, but many of the settings can now be applied post by post, and can even be changed after a post has been put up. However, if you do most updates from an app on a smartphone, you may not be able to change them and new posts will be stuck on the last setting you posted with.

The New Tagging Feature: Who You Are With

You still have to go to Account > Privacy > How Tags Work > Edit Settings > Tag Review to chose to moderate this setting.

In your privacy settings you can turn on the profile review feature (see image below) and have Facebook ask you before adding the tags to YOUR profile. However, you can’t prevent your friends from adding the tag to THEIR own profile. Not ideal, but at least clear. In the last iteration you could prevent anyone from “checking you in” to a place, now it seems we have lost that choice.

TIP: While you are in your “How Tags Work” settings, be sure to consider disabling Tag suggestions if you want to make sure Facebook doesn’t recommend you be tagged in friend’s photos that Facebook thinks look like you (another feature Facebook turned on without much warning earlier this summer).

Facebook Has Moved the Places Checkin to Updates

The big news is that you can now check in anywhere you post with the nifty little push pin button. Beware that once you set this it is skicky and defaults to the last setting. So, coming home from a conference where you may have wanted to check in, you might use your smart phone app and unintentionally check in to your house when you just wanted to give an update.

Control Privacy of Single Post

Actually this isn’t new, but it was great for Facebook to add it here. You can also edit each photo album from it’s “Edit Album” settings. So if you want to share photos of your kids with your Mom and not your social media friends, you can get that granular, or just with friends, or with a list of people.

If you want more information, go to the Facbook one-pager about the new Sharing settings here. What do you love and hate about the new changes?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.

How to Recover When Rumors About Your Brand Go Viral and Become Urban Legend

2011-08-23T10:13:00.001-07:00

How does the average person know if an urban legend is true or false?

It has happened to all of us. You get an email from a parent, a friend, the guy who likes to send jokes.

Usually it looks something like the image of the email below which claims Tyson Foods is eliminating the American Labor Day holiday for the Muslim Eid Al-Fitr holiday.

Usually it claims that the company in question did something horrible, unAmerican, and insert your own concerns here.

Usually, these types of claims are only partially true or worse yet, patently false.

What if Your brand gets hijacked by an urban legend?

Usually when I get one of these emails, I head over to Snopes.com, a website that does a pretty good job of getting the details of these rumors right. In this case, the email received above had a warning at the end that they checked it out on Snopes, and they found an article from 2008 corroborated their point of view.

However, the article is from 2008, and as I write this it is 2011. This was about a single Tyson’s plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., that was negotiating with its largely Somali refugee workforce. Within a few days, the union negotiated to keep Labor Day and let workers choose between a birthday and the Eid holiday.

What Can Companies Do About These Rumors?

When I received this email, I contacted Tyson directly to get some idea of how they were handling the rumors, something very few people do as they pass on an email, ReTweet a message on Twitter or pass something along on Facebook.

Tyson’s is hardly alone in being caught up in persistent rumors like these. P&G underwent something similar with its Swiffer brand, and many others have done the same. You can see the Top 25 Urban Legends of the moment over at Snopes.com.

Step 1: Get Out Your Own Statement

The first step is to put out a statement out your own media room or blog. It helps to have a balanced view out there when people go to search. You can click on the photo above to see how Tyson handled its Labor Day Rumor.

Step 2: Submit Up-to-Date Info About the Rumor

Snopes.com is the go-to source to learn about the veracity of many rumors. Other sites also deal with rumors, including FactCheck.org, which focuses on political rumors, and even debunked this one about Snopes.com.

The site at Snopes,com has a Contact section, as well as sections to submit a rumor and/or a video. According to those that have done this, Snopes doesn’t necessarily respond immediately, so be persistent.

About.com also has a rumor section called About Urban Legends, so be sure to contact them as well.

Step 3: Get Third Parties to Pass on Correct News

Illustration of David and Barbara Mikkelson by Matt Weems, and used by permission of Yahoo.

Most rumors start with a kernel of truth, Snopes founders David and Barbara Mikkelson say in this interview in the New York Times last year.

There are many people (like me) that always take the time to look up rumors and get back to the person who sent it on to us. It seems that if a few reporters and bloggers tell the real story it leaves electronic breadcrubs for others looking who are reticent to just pass things on by like to get to the bottom of a story – lIke this opinion piece by Stephanie Salter in the Edmondsun.com, which takes chain letter writers to task and mentions several brands that were targeted by this practice.

Some people won’t believer the true versions of facts, but these breadcrumbs allow a brand to point to third-party debunking of the rumor and to minimize damage.

Step 4: Contact People Directly

One way to stop rumors is to respond to emails that are incorrect with up-to-date information. Also, if it is a blog post, to leave a comment as a brand representative with the correct info and a link back to a statement, like the one Tyson Foods has on its site. At that site I might also add a link to Snopes and other third-party and credible information.

Has your brand over faced a rumor like this? What would you recommend that other brands do when they find themselves in a persistent and untrue email chain letter, Facebook campaign or Twitter scalding?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.

Does Content Really Rule in Social Media?

2011-07-14T08:43:00.001-07:00

Have you ever read a blog post that drew you in with its raw talent to draw a picture and tell a story?

Ann Handley’s ANNARCHY blog is one of those. She is a person who can write about the death of child or the phenomenon of Alpha and Beta moms with equal eloquence. She also has been at the helm of the Marketing Profs empire, which cranks out volumes of content every day.

When I heard that Ann was writing a book about how to create content, I was already sold, if only just to get a few crumbs of her insight. When I heard she would be joined by CC Chapman in this effort, I was doubly sold. CC is a long time podcaster and blogger known for his creative bent when it comes to creating content. He is a master of it.

At Zoetica, we pick a book every few months to give away. This month, we are giving away 5 copies of Content Rules. We ask a question, answer it ourselves, then ask you to answer it on the official Zoetica blog (answers here don’t count). We pick what we consider to be the best answers from the contestants and we send you a book – it’s pretty easy stuff.

Answer the Question, Win the Book

The question we have chosen for you to answer on the official Zoetica blog came direct from Ann Handley:

"Can you have a social media strategy without a content strategy?"

At first glance it might seem that the answer to this would have to be, “yes.” What good is a blog or a social media account without content?

But plenty of people have succeeded in social media without any specific strategy of any kind. I would say that having a content strategy is not required, but it sure makes the process of participating in social media platforms less chaotic.

Moreover, there are all kinds of content: original writing, video, graphics and audio; curated content; Riffs of other people’s ideas, and much more.

The key is to have a plan that keeps you organized but which also has the flexibility to move with the online community that are reading and interacting with your content.

And that is the key. Content is not to make you sound great, or even to make you into a thought leader. Content is to inspire interaction of some kind.

CC’s and Ann’s approach to writing “killer” content, and connections are the end result. Here is one highlight from the book by a Kindle reader:

(@MarketingAndCo) shared:

Content drives conversations. Conversation engages your customers. Engaging with people is how your company will survive and thrive in this newly social world. In other words, online content is a powerful envoy for your business, with an ability to stir up interest, further engagement, and invite connection. And that's when things get interesting.

So, what are you waiting for go to the Zoetica Blog, answer the question, read the book, become a killer content creator and master connector. You know you want to.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.

Should Communicators Pay Attention to Google+? A Panel Filmed with G+ Hangout Feature

2011-07-07T12:24:00.001-07:00

This past week, which most people were simply enjoying a long holiday weekend in the US, early adopters of social media have been enjoying Google's new social media play, meant to challenge Facebook - and to a lesser extent, Twitter, for dominance in social interaction.

And unlike Google Wave and Google Buzz before it, which largely failed out of the gate, Google+ seems to have more staying power. All of the people you expect are kicking its tires. Chris Brogan gives you 50 things to think about in Google+ and Robert Scoble explains why he thinks that the platform isn’t yet ready for yo’ mamma or yo’ Daddy (his words, not mine).

And already there are two leaderboards for Google+, Socialstatistics, and the more obviously named Circle Count. Currently, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, tops both of these lists. Oh, the irony.

But besides all of the chatter from social media insiders, and the scramble to get invited to what Google is calling a test, what does Google+ mean for public relations and marketing professionals?

In pursuit of that question, we pulled together a panel of five communications professionals to do a special For Immediate Release Plus edition on one of Google+’s most interesting features, the Huddle. The Huddle allows you to video conference with up to 10 people at once. The panelists on this video are Bryan Person (of LiveWorld), Lionel Menchaca (chief blogger for Dell, Direct2Dell), and Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz (FIR hosts), and myself, Kami Watson Huyse. It runs about 19 minutes and was edited a bit to tighten it up.

The video is a little jerky, so it also works well as a in-the-background podcast. We talk about Google+ for brands, and share the form that Google provided last night for brands that want to experiment.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.

The Commoditization of Social Media: And What We Can Learn from the “Old Days”

2011-06-20T10:50:00.001-07:00

Photo: Early PR bloggers Phil Gomes and David Parmet at the NewComm Forum in 2007

Since the early days of blogging, when we were all dazzled by the ability of social media to connect us to other likeminded people, and those with fiercely opposed viewpoints could laugh at themselves with the community. Like the feud between Jeremy Pepper and Steve Rubel in the links above, people could have a long running disagreement and even make up in the end.

It was okay to stand up and take a stand that was opposite someone else’s without their huge community rising up to attack you.

However, the web was a much smaller place back then. Early adopters have the luxury of trying out new things, failing and chalking it up to experience. Once a mass of people started coming into the space, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter became the norm, the barriers to entry were flung wide open.

And now everyone is looking for ways to make money from their online “properties.”

It isn’t too much different than the rise of the website. At first no one had a website, but pretty soon it became imperative for ALL businesses and organization to have one. The businesses of designing websites became commoditized and people were looking for the lowest cost to get it done. Websites in a box, and templates are the norm today. However, some smart web design businesses realize that they can add value and are still making a profit.

The same thing is happening in social media.

The Social Media Marketplace

Now that nearly every business wants to be “in” social media, and every person who has a Facebook account thinks they can “do” social media. A number of services are popping up to offer turnkey social media solutions.

When every business becomes a content creator, there will only be more of these services springing up, because (let’s face it) not everyone actually IS a content creator, or has the TIME to create content. Those that CAN create content see this as a business opportunity, and maybe rightly so.

But those that use these services need to beware the consequences. Over 70 percent of those who are on the Internet are using social services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They are becoming empowered to speak up about their experiences, both good and bad (e.g. Yelp), and a cookie cutter approach could cause a lot of harm to a business if they aren’t watching the stream themselves.

Moreover, those trying to monetize their blog might find that the very readers they worked so hard to woo might stage a rebellion. Or worse yet, they may stop listening all together.

Here are a few sites I have seen lately that are adopting this model of cookie cutter social media services.

More websites like this one, which is registered to a law firm in San Antonio, are are popping up to offer the McDonald’s version of a social media package. They promise to help small businesses “Create buzz without lifting a finger.” They also say that setting up a social media profile is like “having a a phone number and a business card. Every business needs social media to stay relevant and reachable,” they assert. And if you want to know who the “THEY” are, you are out of luck, they call themselves “writers, marketers and small business experts who share a passion for driving business through social media.” But they don’t provide names.

And it is popping up in verticals too, like this one for Insurance Agents. In this case the owners DO introduce themselves, and at least one of them is having some personal success in social media with over 18K Twitter followers.

Or some like this one, which is an RSS feed you can use in your blog if you are a car care company. My own local auto repair shop uses this in its blog. This is less egregious, but it does underscore how hard it is for people to come up with content on their own.

Of course, for every cookie cutter solution, there is someone out there offering advice on how to make the social media channel one in which you can really build brand loyalty, like this post telling auto repair shops how to build an authentic and interesting blog of their own.

Call me old fashioned, but a connected community means more to me than the mass following that seems so prized today. The early community was intellectually stimulating and fun. Certainly it is still possible to create such communities, but they must remain manageable in size to be effective.

How about you? Have you heard about other services like these? How do you feel about them? Do you think they will work long term? Are you a part of a small community that is really awesome? Is it sponsored by a brand?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Easy Way to Subscribe to TopRank’s 25 Women Who Rock Social Media

2011-06-13T19:44:00.001-07:00

In social media, if you publish a list of any kind you are pretty much setting yourself up for criticism. “You forgot so-and-so,” “your list isn’t diverse (there aren’t enough women, children, people of color, etc.).”

However, if you publish a list, you also are likely to get a lot of attention, especially from the people on it, especially if it is seen as valuable.

For the second year, SEO blogger Lee Odden, with TopRank Online Marketing Blog, has attempted another 25 Women Who Rock Social Media list. It’s not “the” top 25, or the “best” or any other superlative. It is simply a list of 25 very smart women and where you can find them online.

Last year. he released the first list of 25 Women Who Rock Social Media in 2010, which he admitted was a very subjective list of women he was impressed with over the years. This year, he reached out to the women on the first list to form the SECOND list of 25 Women Who Rock Social Media in 2011 (two that I nominated, Kellye Crane and Jill Foster made the list this year).

In order to start to benefit from the collective wisdom of such a distinguished crowd of women, I decided to subscribe to all of their blogs. Also, to make it easier for others to do the same, please find the bundle of the blogs from both lists in A single subscription below. Just click on the box and it will take you to the subscription page.

If you would prefer to visit each blog yourself, here is the list from 2010 and 2011. There were a couple who didn’t have a blog, so they aren’t in this list.

Stealthmode Blog – Francine Hardaway
Communications Passionista – Lisa Grimm
Kommein – Deborah Ng
MissyWard.com – Missy Ward
Very Official Blog – Shannon Paul
Brass Tack Thinking – Amber Naslund
What's Next Blog – BL Ochman
Alexandra Samuel
Beth’s Blog – Beth Kanter
Diva Marketing (Blog) – Toby Bloomberg
Debbie Weil's Blog
Julia Roy, A Digital Girl
Kikolani – Krsiti Hines
m2h blogs by Marcia Hansen
MariSmith.com – Mari Smith
Laura Fitton oneforty
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
Search Marketing Gurus – Li Evans
Communication Overtones – Kami Huyse
Spin Sucks – Gini Dietrich
Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg
Uploads by DigitalRoyalty – A. Jo. Martin
Mashable Startups, Jenn's Super Awesome Posterous and JennLIve – Jennifer Van Grove
JessicaNow....career. life. tradeoffs – Jessica Smith
KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog - Katie Paine
Kiki's Korner – Kristie Wells
Nothin' but SocNET – Zena West
PR SarahEvans – Sarah Evans
Rashmi's blog – Rashmi Sinah
Social Media Group » Blog – Maggie Fox
Solo PR Pro | Successful Freelance PR Consulting – Kellye Crane
Women Grow Business – Jill Foster (founder)
Altimeter Group – Charlene Li
A n n a r c h y – Ann Handley
Blogher posts by Lisa Stone
Conversation Agent – Valeria Maltoni
Deirdre Breakenridge – PR 2.0
::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon – Tara Hunt
Lip-Sticking – Yvonne DiVita
Jennifer Cisney - ljcfyi
Social Media Strategy | Online PR | Proactive Report | Sally Falkow
Social Media - For Women - By Women – Viveka Von ROsen
Internet Geek Girl – Stephanie Agresta
The Harte of Marketing – Beth Harte
The Web is Social – Alisa Leonard
Waxing UnLyrical _ Shonali Burke
danah boyd | apophenia
Shira Lazar

Not on the feed list, but included in the list are Shauna Causey, who runs Voluntweetup.

Update: You may be wondering why there are only 49 women on the list. It turns out that Liz Strauss is on BOTH lists (2010 and 2011). Liz deserves every honor, but I was driven to distraction figuring it out!

Five Principles for Amazing Cause Marketing that Makes a Difference

2011-06-02T05:42:00.001-07:00

Excited to give a presentation today on "Five Principles for Amazing Cause Marketing that Makes a Difference" at the Cause Marketing Forum and wanted to share my deck with all of you.

The five principles to consider for great cause marketing campaigns include:

Not All Contests Are Created Equal
LIKES are a Start Not An End
Being Social Works Better in a Community
Social Happens in Real Life (IRL)
The Word on the Street…Integration

The first one is not exactly a principle, but with donation contests on the rise I felt it needed to be addressed. My business partner Beth Kanter has done a lot of work in this area. I have put together a list of best practices in the deck that I have drawn from her and other’s criticism and work.

What are the things that companies and nonprofits need to keep in mind when doing cause marketing campaigns and programs?

Five Principles for Amazing Cause Marketing that Makes a Difference

View more presentations from Kami Huyse

Website Contact Forms for Dummies: Claiming Your Email Back From Spam

2011-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Contact Kami Watson Huyse

I was looking for a way to add my email to add a form to my Blogger sidebar. I was getting tired of offering my email online and getting tons of spam. I found this cool tool, Response-o-Matic, that helps you build and host a contact form.

I love hearing from readers about any ideas they have, or ideas for this blog. I particularly love hearing anything where social media strategies and appoaches are used in:

Public Relations
Corporate Social Responsibility
Cause Marketing
Social Media Measurement
Cool Tools, like this one
Crisis Communication

The form sends an email directly to my inbox, so feel free to say hi and tell me if this tool works for you. How can you use it on your own blog or website? I realize some people hate forms, but if you are clear about how they are being used (and why) does that make them more palatable? You can tell me in the comments, or on the form :-)

Click here to put a form like this on your site.

7 Ways to Get the Most Out of Social Media in a Disaster Zone #crisisdata

2011-05-26T09:36:00.001-07:00

Google Map of tornado path in Joplin, Mo.

I have a personal connection to Joplin, MO, where an F5 tornado ripped through a crowded residential and business zone on Sunday, May 22, 2011. My Mom lives there, and was extremely blessed to have been just missed by the killer tornado by a few blocks. Additionally, through the work that Zoetica did with the Red Cross on the CrisisData Summit, it is clear that people need more education about how to use communication channels effectively in a crisis like this one.

This post is a primer for individuals and organizations that find themselves in a crisis situation and want to have a quick guide on the effective use of social media in a crisis.

1. Using Text Messaging

It is well documented that after most widespread disasters, or terrorist attacks, cellphone service, Internet and even power are usually disrupted for long periods of time. The demand placed on a damaged system usually proves to be too much.

While not fail proof, it seems that texting, or SMS, usually works where voice doesn’t.

Usually, if you have a charged phone with no outgoing or incoming voice service, you can usually get in touch with text messages. There have been many examples during the Joplin tornadoes, and in other tragedies, of survivors reaching out through text messaging. Kerry Sachetta, principal of Joplin High School, said in an interview on NPR, “Facebook and social networking and text messaging has been a big help to get a hold of students. You know, coaches, sponsors that talk to their kids through text message to make sure that they know how to get to practice or games or whatever has been a big help.”

TIP: Keep electronic devices charged using a car charger, or travel to a nearby (unaffected) town for the day and use an outlet at a restaurant.

Also, most social networks have a method to post updates using SMS text. This allows savvy survivors a way to update family in friends in mass about their whereabouts and status (I did this during Hurricane Ike for my family using SMS to Twitter).

On a more broad basis, organizations that are helping with recovery are successfully deploying “text to give” campaigns to raise the funds to assist with the response effort.

2. Using Facebook to Get in Touch

If you have the connectivity, and can update your status on your social channels, it can be very comforting for friends and family. Even if you don’t have Internet, you can sometimes use SMS texting to update. However, may need to set this up before a disaster hits (for those of you not currently in a disaster, do this now). If you use social networks on a regular basis, you should install the appropriate applications (if you have a smart phone) or manually set SMS capabilities in your settings for Twitter and Facebook (click for directions).

3. Using Facebook to Find Missing Persons


Skyular’s Page	Lantz Hare’s Page	Will Norton’s Page

Several families in Joplin have started to use Facebook as a platform to aggregate tips and information about their missing loved ones. Most notable have been the search for Skyular Logsdon, Will Norton and Lantz Hare (click below to see these pages in action or on the names in this sentence to get the stories about each of these people). Additionally, the local newspaper, the Joplin Globe, put up the Joplin, Mo. Tornado Survivors Facebook page to help people locate specific people and addresses that were affected.

The problem with such “search and information” pages is that they usually cause a lot of unnecessary emotional distress for the family and they are much less efficient than you might think.

4. Challenges of Facebook and Twitter in Disasters

Unstable and Sick Individuals: When a horrible tragedy is underway, it tends to bring out people that are unstable or pranksters that use the page to tell horrible jokes or make false (and sometimes very hurtful) statements. The goal is usually to get attention for themselves.
Volume of Information: These types of pages also bring out people that just want to lend their verbal support to the family with thoughts and prayers. This onslaught of and support, while a wonderful outpouring, can become overwhelming for the family. Not only that, but Facebook has no good way to organize incoming information, or to tag important stuff to read later. You have to go page by page and wade through an avalanche of data. Facebook was just not designed for this kind of info and archiving.
Irrelevant Information: Along with the well-wishers, there are those that add “helpful tips” that honestly are irrelevant. Additionally, unverified leads and false rumors (which are often hearsay, or even made up) are mixed in with possibly helpful information and there is no way to tell the difference between the two.

These are significant problems with both Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, which usually use hashtags (such as #crisisdata) to aggregate information.

So does this mean you shouldn’t use social media to search for missing people?

I think that it can be done. But it requires some work. Facebook is a tool, and it can be modified somewhat to be more efficient. Somewhere late in the second day, the administrator of the Help Find Will Norton used the settings in Facebook to bring some sanity to the page.

5. Crisis Settings For Your Facebook Page

The key is to restrict fans of the page from posting directly on the wall. Under the Manage Permissions area you can take three steps to make the flow of information more manageable. You will still need someone actively monitoring the page at all times, but it goes from being impossible to being difficult, but doable.

Limit Wall Posts to Admin: On the Wall Tab Shows drop down box, choose “Only Posts by Page.” This setting will allow only the posts by the admin to show on the main page. In this way, people can react to the posts by the admin, but they can’t clutter the main page with irrelevant messages.
Unclick the Expand comments or stories box: Posts that have double to triple digit comments (which easily happens when you have thousands of followers), the comments can take up quite a bit of the page. You can experiment with this option, but once you have lots of comments coming in, it is better to turn it off.
Turn off posting ability for fans. Even when you turn this off, fans can still comment on what you post on the wall, they just can’t add content of their own. Again, you might want to experiment with this, but when the comments are coming in at 4-5 per second, this helps a lot to keep it under control.

6. Making Contact with Other Survivors

After a disaster, when you find you are Safe and Well, the natural tendency is to want to find friends, family or help your community in some way. Be sure that you are dressed appropriately for the task in shorts, t-shirts and tennis shoes or work boots, if you have them. Also, don’t go out into what amounts to a war zone without heavy gloves, a first aid kit, some water, and a buddy. Never head out alone, or you might become a victim. Also, you might want to check in with any Red Cross shelters, as they often can use volunteers to help with operations after they train you. Be patient because it often takes a while for ongoing operations to incorporate new, untrained volunteers.

Here are some ways to communicate with others in your area and with family and friends out of the area:

Leave a Note: After the storm was over, my mother in Joplin was concerned about the fate of her dear friends Granny and Papa Green. She got a buddy and walked six blocks through the disaster zone to their totally demolished house to make sure they were okay. When she got there, she found a handwritten note, on a piece of debris that read: “Green’s Okay, 417-000-0000.” Sometimes the simple approach is the most elegant.
Twitter Hashtags: If you use Twitter, it pays to determine what hashtag is being used by people in the area to exchange information. During the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, and also during the storm itself, tracking this hashtag gave me the important links I needed to stay on top of weather reports, storm information, and later water distribution points and shelter locations. It also helps survivors communicate with each other, which is comforting. In the recent tornado they used the hashtag #joplin and someone aggregated these tweets on a map powered by the visualization software Ushahidi.
Register Yourself on Safe and Well: If you are a survivor, you can often register yourself at a Red Cross shelter, and people with either your phone number or address can look in the database to get information about you.
Register Someone Else Safe and Well : Also, if you have been in touch with a relative or friend outside the area, you can ask one of them to do the registration at the Red Cross Safe and Well site for you. They will need direct information about the person’s whereabouts and have that person’s full name, address and phone number, as well as the address of their new location (would have like to see a temporary phone number field).

7. Crowdsourcing Crisis Response in Facebook

Facebook can be great organizing tool, but you have to use it surgically.

Once you have asked people to help you crowdsource a solution, in this case calling hundreds of hospitals around the region to see if they have a John Doe, it is very hard to get them to stop. Unfortunately, this led to some hospitals being called multiple times by people asking the same questions. It finally prompted the administrators of the Facebook search pages to ask people to STOP calling to no avail.

It is much better to recruit a small team (you can use the page to get these people) and move your action communication out of the public space. So, if you need 10 people to help you call 100 hospitals, just ask for volunteers to help with some calling (don’t specify exactly who), then move this group into a direct message thread or start a private group to work on the requests. Private groups are nice, because if you get a troll or bad apple, you can easily boot them out.

Will Norton’s family did this to organize and on-the ground search and to find an aircraft to help with the search.

A Simple #BlueKey Can Change the Lives of Thousands

2011-05-19T08:42:00.001-07:00

There is something powerful about using simple communication to make big changes in the world. That was what was intriguing when Shonali Burke, a social change advocate and veteran communicator, posed a powerful idea.

Change the world for $5.

It doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes that little bit is all it takes to change a life forever.

There are some pretty startling statistics when it comes to the sheer number of people who are displaced around the world due to war, threats of war, ethnic division and a host of other ills.

It’s so startling that is is much easier to do nothing.

Have you ever heard the story of the Lost Boys of Sundan?

Keuk, one of the lost boys, talks about his own harrowing experience, and how people like Jens Hesseman helped him escape death when he was just 8 years old. I have a son who is 7, so this hit home.

Jens serves on United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) emergency roster and is ready to go into these often remote and dangerous places to assist refugees like Keuk. Jens is one of more than 6,000 UNHCR staffers working worldwide to save these people.

The Blue Key campaign is a project of the "USA for UNHCR," the US-based nonprofit that supports UNHCR's work.

Like most good PR programs, it is pegged around World Refugee Day on June 20, 2011, to raise awareness about the plight of refugees. The goal is to get 6,000 thoughtful U.S. residents to get a Blue Key pendant or pin for $5 as a symbol of support for refugees and those that care for them.

This is one of those PR programs that actually impacts lives in a positive manner. So, just take 5 minutes to click that big button and get a key.

As of yesterday, there were only about 2,000 keys issued – it’s time to let these refugees and workers that help them know we actually care! If you need motivation, you can read just a few the stories of some of these people below, which I got from the Just a few of the stories at the BlueKey project blog. If you click on the picture it will take you to the full story.

Two of George and Nisreen's daughters start packing up their belongings ahead of their departure for Romania. Photo © N.Bose/UNHCR

Amina fled Tripoli with her son and husband after gangs looted their house and threatened them with violence.

This woman and her children are happy to be out of Misrata. Caught in the fighting, many traumatized children from Misrata have become more aggressive or hyperactive, while others keep wetting their beds – a sign of fear and stress. Photo © UNHCR/H.Caux

I have agreed to serve as a Blue Key Champion. Here are a few of my fellow champions and what they have to say:

You can also serve as a Blue Key Champion to get the Word out! Here is how you can join the team (see bottom of post).

Steps for Building a Social Media Plan: Aim for the GOAL POST

2011-05-16T04:22:00.001-07:00

Great ideas are only as good as their implementation and planning. The Goal POST method of public relations and social media planning is a great way to both organize your thoughts and keep from making easy-to-avoid mistakes. It is also something you can complete in about an hour or two, and which can save you untold hours when you start implementing the plan.

Here is an example of how the method looks in the context of the overall initiative, which includes Research, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation. Each of these other steps can also be broken into parts, but for this post we will only look at the Goal POST part.

Research	Using methods such as SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) as well as secondary and primary research on what others have done.
Planning
Goal	Large overarching vision for your communication Example: To raise the number of people getting secondary education.
P	People, the most important part of your purpose Example: High-school Juniors and Seniors
O	Objectives, measureable, or SMART Objectives Example: Raise the number of high school juniors and seniors applying for college by 20% over two years in the pilot schools.
S	Strategies, the general approach you plan to take Example: Education and support to overcome obstacles and objections to college or other secondary programs
T	Tactics, the channels and other things you will do Example: Use Facebook, texting and in-person mentoring
Implementation	Should include timeline, budget and allocate the people and other resources to each task
Evaluation	This is the measurement portion of the plan and it should match with the Objectives

Using this method is not only a great way to win communication awards but also to get a great job. If you take have a portfolio filled with a couple of campaigns or programs that you approached in this manner it is much more impressive than a bunch of press release writing samples. If you add in the Research, Implementation and Evaluation pieces, it becomes even more valuable.

The Goal Post methodology is not new. I first heard of it in a public relations accreditation workshop in Washington, D.C., back in 1997. And more recently it showed up in Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's book, Groundswell.

The following presentation was given to arts organizations in the Bay Area as part of a grant-supported program administered by Theater Bay Area, an arts organization that serves more than 300 member theatre companies and 2,900 individual members in Northern California. Beth Kanter has been leading this for Zoetica and designed the training. It goes into more detail about the Goal POST method using arts examples. However, you can drop in any examples that apply to your work and the method still works.

I would love your feedback. How do you approach social media planning?

Becoming a Networked Nonprofit: Social Media Planning

View more presentations from Kami Huyse

Photo credit: By woodleywonderworks

PowerWomen: Raising a New Generation of Tech Gurus and Busting Stereotypes

2011-05-05T04:50:00.001-07:00

Photo Credit: Winners of the NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing

Don’t let these classic high school pictures fool you. These young women are wicked smart. These girls have built Robots (one even has a club called Robo Chic), written papers on Fuzzy Quantum Logic to Learn Facial Gestures and even have helped design intelligent wheelchairs. They have interned at Google, Microsoft, NASA and Intel, among others.

And they are all 18 and under. They are the future of tech and they are the answer to the persistent question, “How do we get more women interested in Math, Science and Technology?”

The way to overcome the persistent pay gap for women is to kill stereotypes that say women with children might be distracted from work, that they are less likely to get venture capital funding and that they face an uphill bottle in tech. Even ludicrous examples of why women are afraid of money – imagine that!

Advancing Excellence

Instead we need to focus on, and advance, excellence. One of the biggest criticisms of the equal opportunity argument is that people should be recognized for their skills rather than their gender or skin color.

I wholeheartedly agree!

The biggest problem is that people tend to only look within their own little circle, and not beyond these boundaries, to recruit talent and fill power positions. It’s time to expand the horizons.

There are women like Lisa Barone from Outspoken Media, who are fed up with this relentless onslaught of reasons why women can’t succeed. In her brilliant letter of apology she takes on many of these myths head on. Moreover, she refuses to accept the impossibility of the fight.

After all, why should there be 10 women who secretly run the Internet when they could be obviously running it? As a women and an entrepreneur and a mother of three kids (one a girl), I have a bone in this fight.

I listened to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk last December about some of the obstacles faced by women in top C-level jobs. She made some good points about what we CAN do. Her real message was to take your place at the leadership table without apology and don’t discount yourself.

What Can We Do?

Self reflection is great, but more important is promotion of talented women at ALL levels. The girls who have won the NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing are a really good place to start.

Donate $10: Just that little bit will help to inspire a whole new generation of tech leaders through the NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing (go read the winners stories and be inspired). Also, today only, Network Solutions is offering a matching grant today, so your money is multiplied.
UPDATE: The NetSol match was made. So, I am going to put up $500 of my own money and match any donations made to my Crowdrise page today for NCWIT.
Change Your Avatar: Change your avatar on Twitter and Facebook today to a picture of yourself in High School to represent the promise we all had and are now living into (see mine below).
Talk About It: If you have a blog write a post or send a Twitter or Facebook update about what you think of this issue. (I will happily link it to it here if you give me the URL in the comment section)

BlogHer Study Shows the Continued Slide of Twitter Influence, Facebook Makes Gains

2011-04-14T13:12:00.001-07:00

All of the talk around Klout Twitter influence is missing the point.

When Twitter was in its infancy in 2006/7, it was a heady platform. One could ask questions and get answers in record time. Don’t know what kind of laptop is best? Ask “Twitter” or your friends on Twitter, anyway.

Today, if you ask a question, it is likely to get ReTweeted, but less likely to get answered. It has increasingly become a broadcast channel vs. a relational one. A Pew study late last year underscored this problem. It showed that just under 1/2 of users were not checking the Twitter status of other people.

In a BlogHer Study released this week, they asked a sample of the U.S. population how they used various platforms. As you can see by the slide below, they preferred blogs and Facebook in bigger percentages in every category. Even with Twitter having much fewer users, this slide shows the uphill battle for the service that has dazzled celebrities and is the jewel of online influencers.

BlogHer cofounder Elisa Camhort Page commented on the problem with Twitter in a series of two Tweets that I have put together (and added all the letters, the benefit of the long form blog):

There's big article in Fortune about what I've been saying for two years now: Twitter still niche as far as *active* use because of 2 things:

Doesn't serve compelling purpose and
Doesn't help regular people figure out how to use it well...they suggest following celebs!

So Why Is It So Popular?

With so many challenges, why is Twitter a media marketing and “influencer’ darling?

It’s probably the ease of access and the ability for marketers, and anyone else, to bend the service to almost any purpose. It is the democratized social network.

It also allows a hierarchical approach. Who has the most followers? Who is trending? Who or what is the flavor of the day? @charliesheen anyone? It’s built-in influence gaming makes it a powerful driver for those who have had success with the service and its potential reach makes it attractive to brands and marketers as well.

Facebook is a different story, it is much more controlled by both Facebook itself and by the users as well. The “Fortune Magazine” article mentioned by Elisa, the “Trouble @ Twitter,” points out:

“This is one area in which [Twitter] has the upper hand over Facebook. Facebook communications are private unless a user chooses to make them public; all tweets are public, which gives marketers a potentially richer pool of content for targeted ads.”

One can protect their tweets, but the vast majority of people and organizations don’t.

So, how are you using Twitter these days? When do you turn to it over Facebook? On the other side, how are you using Facebook and Blogs? How does the slide apply to you?

While RTs are welcome, please comment, I really want to know.

The Game Layer: The Next Big Thing in Social Media

2011-04-13T06:59:00.001-07:00

People are competitive.

In the workplace we “climb the corporate ladder.” In our playtime we compete in sports, video games, cooking contests, and every other kind of competition you can name. Some games are cooperative and some games are not and there are game theories developing for almost every discipline, especially economics.

“Oh, the games people play….”

Check out this list of games and SCVNGR’s Game Mechanics Playdeck for ideas

Influence as is Game

So, why would it be surprising that social media would be ripe for gaming? Twitter was devised as a simple group messaging service, but over time, people made it into a status symbol, and thus Klout and its competitors were born to measure status.

Before Twitter, blogs were King, and Technorati ranking was as popular as Klout is today. Plenty of people are talking about measures like Klout, its problems, its purpose, how to increase it (all the while telling you it doesn’t matter), and why you have to spot influential people before they become influential. Beth Harte even recently talked about the problem of the slide from Influence to propaganda. Before blogging there were bulletin boards, forums and many other venues. Gaming in this way transcends technology.

Gaming on Location with the Social Web

Social networking applications such as Yelp, Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrl, and now SCVNGR are pioneering location-based gaming, with other competitors like Facebook Places (which has no gaming elements yet) starting to pop up everywhere.

SCVNGR’s Seth Priebatsch argued at SxSWi this year that the social layer of the web has already been built, and now the gaming layer is the next logical step. You can see him in a TEDx presentation last year making the similar, and somewhat persuasive, claims. Funi Gabe Zichermann, author of “Game-Based Marketing” and “Funware in Action,” predicts that, “Within the next 10 years, almost every consumer interaction will have game mechanics built into it.”

Gaming for Good

What if we could harness all of this energy to reach higher status, and channel it toward solving huge societal problems? What could we accomplish together in a big, cooperative game?

People are already trying this to varying degrees of success. One example of an organization benefitting from gaming tendencies is Crisis Commons, which uses a short weekend format to accelerate the development of standardized tools to solve problems. This kind of interaction plays to the gaming theory of coordination, with the “profits” being the successful resolution of the situation. Another example of this is the mapping of Boulder Country homes that had been destroyed by fire using the #crisisdata tag on Twitter that had been formulated at a national coordination event led by the American Red Cross (client).

Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken, is evangelizing this idea of gaming for good in a number of presentations and media interviews throughout the country. I have dropped in one of her TEDx talks below.

What do you think? Are games just the latest marketing trick, or (as mobile becomes the norm) will they change the way people behave in the real world?

DATE	ARTICLE	VISIBILITY
4/10/11	Peter Thiel: We're in a Bubble and It's Not the Internet. It's Higher Education	131,327
9/22/11	How To Enable Facebook Timeline Right This Second	125,197
9/2/11	To Celebrate The #Jan25 Revolution, Egyptian Names His Firstborn "Facebook"	118,204
3/27/11	Why Startups Need to Blog (and what to talk about …)	109,818
3/17/11	Whom Should You Hire at a Startup? (Attitude over Aptitude)	107,418

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Communication Overtones

The New .Thing Rolls Out Today, Bringing Massive Change for Brands and Nonprofits!

How this Affects Non-Profits

How this Affects Companies

The Campaign for .NGO

Other coverage and support of .NGO

Petition: Protect your brand and domain name, via CauseVox

Give a New Year's Gift to Nonprofits Worldwide, via Waxing Unlyrical

Save the .NGO Domain for Nonprofits - Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media –, via Froogloop, Care2

It's the Little Things That Count in Social Fundraising | Inspiring Generosity, via Razoo

Zoetica Media » Circle of Trust: What Your Web Address Says About Your Nonprofit, via Zoetica

Exclusive Domain for Nonprofits: .NGO - Purple-Power, via Avectra

.ORG vs .NGO: How New Domain Names Can Help Your Brand | GoodWorks, via Advertising Age

The Internet Domain .NGO Should Serve Best Interests of Nonprofits Worldwide: Sign An Online Letter of Support | Beth’s Blog, via Beth Kanter

IMPORTANT: Help make sure .NGO remains in nonprofit hands — SocialFish, via Maddie Grant

Say ‘Happy New Year’ to nonprofits worldwide with one click, via Socialbrite

Sign this petition to keep the .NGO domain only for nonprofits Small Act, via @SmallAct

Inspiring Your Kids (and Coworkers) to Be Generous with Examples, Empathy and Action

Lead By Example

Teach Empathy

Take Action

“Homelessness is a "gateway" cause to get teens involved in philanthropy.” – Nancy Lublin, DoSomething.com

Social Media Powered Christmas Tree is Cool, But Where is the Call to Action?

Powering the Campaign for Results

How the Tree Works

Part 5: What Is Your Measurement Personality Style?

Take the Quiz to Find Out

The Freewheelers

The Bean Counters

The Measurement Explorers

Which one of these styles are you?

So share in the comments which style you tested out to be and if you think it is accurate.

The Double Edged Sword of Social Media and Privacy: What is the Responsibility of Communicators?

Our Eroding Privacy

How Far Is Too Far?

Evolving Privacy in Social Media

The Holy Grail of Social Media: Three Questions to Ask, Three Archetypes to Avoid

Three Questions to Ask for Your Social Media Strategy

The Three Archetypes to Avoid

Think that Celebrities are a Home Run for Fundraising? New PayPal Study Says Community Works Better

Four Tips for Fundraising with Weblebrities

Personal connections and authentic passion for the cause.

Willingness to ask their personal friends to get involved and not just their ‘publics.’

Identify avid users of social media, both by the celebrity and their social networks.

Welcome the non-traditional celebrity.

Facebook’s Causes

DonorsChoose.org

Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees

PayPal-sponsored Regift the Fruitcake

TwitChange

Case Studies

Other coverage of the paper:

Study: A Month Later, Is TechCrunch Less Relevant without Michael Arrington?

Impact of TechCrunch Insurrection Posts

Buzz Generated in Social Channels by Debacle

Top Five Most Socially Visible Posts on TechCrunch

Once again, what seemed like a huge kerfuffle in the tech, social media and marketing/PR communities, turned out to be just a whisper in the hurricane of the overall traffic and buzz created by TechCrunch.

Will TechCrunch Become Less Relevant Without Arrington?

What do you think? Do you think TechCrunch is less relevant without Arrington and crew, have you even noticed a difference over the last month?

Growing a “Do Gooder” Culture: Where Does Your Company Fall on the Spectrum

A Business Boost

Happiness Quotient

5 ways to spot a do gooder

5 Ways to Grow a Do Gooder Culture

Pat Bowland’s 7 Tips for Living Your Life Well

Love life, friends, family and God Smile - Walk tall - Dress sharp Be passionate Say, "I love you" and "thank you" more often This is a challenge not a disease Set GOALS FIGHT

How to Moderate a Panel and Energize an Audience

1. Recruit Interesting People

2. Prepare in Advance

What two things are most important (in your mind) for you to share on this topic during the panel?

What would you like to learn from the other panelists and/or from the audience (when questions will be taken) during the panel?

3. Slay the Dragons

4. Facilitate the Conversation

5. Stay in Control

Tour of New Facebook Places, Better Communication, Less Privacy

New: Control Privacy Inline

The New Tagging Feature: Who You Are With

Facebook Has Moved the Places Checkin to Updates

Control Privacy of Single Post

How to Recover When Rumors About Your Brand Go Viral and Become Urban Legend

Love life, friends, family and God

Smile - Walk tall - Dress sharp

Be passionate

Say, "I love you" and "thank you" more often

This is a challenge not a disease

Set GOALS

FIGHT