When someone does something nice for you — and especially when they do without you asking first — it’s appropriate to say thank you. And offline, that’s pretty easy. You can say thank you in person or over the phone, write a thank you note, send a nice gift (a bottle of wine always works for me), or even buy someone lunch (or a drink).

However, online relationships are a bit trickier. Sometimes we don’t really know the people we interact with online, beyond, say, a Twitter account. But with just a Twitter account someone online can do some nice things for you – tweet a blog post you’ve written, include you in a #followfriday recommendation or just say nice things about you. How do you respond? How do you thank people in an appropriate, meaningful way?

Here are three ideas:

• Return the favor. Retweet, include them in your #followfriday recommendations or publicize a blog post through one or more of your online identities.
• Thank them offline. Send a handwritten note, make a short phone call or, if you’re feeling really generous, send a gift card or a small card. It may take a little extra time to figure out how to do this. Maybe you look up where the person works and send something to his or her office, maybe you figure out who their literary agent or publisher (for authors) is and send something through that route. Be brief, be nice, be polite – but don’t stalk. The point here is to thank people, not make them nervous.
• Talk them up offline. If someone is doing good work, recognize it in your real-world conversations. When I talk to people who want to understand better how social media works in marketing and public relations I frequently recommend they check out David Meerman Scott’s blog or get his books. I think he does great, smart, work, so I talk him up. He may never know this, but in exchange for the insight his work has provided me, I think it’s good karma to pass along his name and web site to others.

How do you thank people? Please leave your suggestions in the comments below.

Here are some of the best links, blog posts and resources I’ve come across in the last week. Note: Many, but not all, of these I first published via Twitter. Please follow me there if you’re not already.

Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2009

How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging (Great idea right out of marketing research 101. Creating personas is something I’ve done for this blog.)

Free Social Media Worksheets (These are good resources if your planning or executing a social media campaign of some sort.)

Media Usage Study Shows Radio, Online Media Consumption is Up (This blog post links to a news release and other resources. It’s a good, basic reference for those of us working in marketing and public relations.)

The Science of ReTweets (Want to figure out how to increase your odds of getting retweeted? This free report is a good place to start. The author, Dan Zarella, studied 40 million tweets in his analysis.)

Membership Programs for Lead Generation (Joe Pulizzi is a content marketing specialist, and he makes some good points about using membership programs for lead generation. This is a must-read for marketing and sales execs trying to understand how to better use social media and the web to boost the bottom line.)

How to Use Social Media to Market a Boring Product or Service (It’s probably not a good sign if you, as a marketer, think that what you’re marketing is boring. Nonetheless, some products and services are less engaging than others. Keith Burtis points out that you can still use social media to market those by trying back to related passions.)

Six Social Media Marketing Case Study Lessons (Looking for ideas and inspiration for social media marketing? HubSpot has six social media marketing case studies with lessons learned from each. This post is worth bookmarking.)

Let me know what you think of these links in the comments.

In the last two weeks, I’ve live tweeted at two different events. One was a public relations seminar, where I was one of several people in the audience live tweeting. The other was a charity event where I was the only one tweeting, and I was doing it under the auspices of the organization that was holding the event. I realized afterward that there were several things I could have done to make the live tweeting a little easier on myself and a little better for anyone following me.

So with that in mind, and also keeping in mind what went right, here are a three tips for better live tweeting.

1. Be prepared with hardware and software back-ups in case something goes wrong. In my case I had a laptop with a wireless broadband card, plus multiple browsers and a desktop Twitter client (Tweetdeck) all ready to go. In addition, I had my Blackberry, which has two Twitter clients (TwitterBerry and UberTwitter) on it. As it turns out, there were no problems with hardware, software or Internet access, but if there had been I was prepared.

2. Research speakers ahead of time. Have their names close at hand (so you can spell them correctly), and find out if they have Twitter handles, blogs or websites you may want to reference.

3. If you’re taking the lead on live tweeting, figure out what you’re going to use as the hashtag. If others are, figure out what the common hashtag will be or suggest one.

I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface here. What other things can you do to make live tweeting better, both for you and your followers? Leave a comment with your tip.

I’ve just completed phase 1 of the redesign of this blog. I’ve created a new header, messed around with the typography and colors a bit, added new social media icons and a Google custom search interface to make the blog searchable. I’ve got lots more work to do, including new posts to write, updating the ‘About Mark Tosczak’ page and other stuff. That will be coming soon. In the meantime, though, I’d appreciate any feedback and suggestions you might have on the redesign, or ideas about what to do next. Please leave a comment below if you’re so inclined.

The press release as a public relations tool is in transition. Before the World Wide Web, before everyone was online, press releases (or news releases) had a straightforward function: persuade a reporter, editor or producer to cover your story in some fashion. Sometimes that coverage was in the form of a fully reported story that the press release kicked off, sometimes the news release itself was printed more or less as is, and sometimes a highly edited and shortened form of the release made it into the paper.

These days, however, press releases are increasingly published as stand-alone content online. They show up on web sites and in online news feeds, thanks to services such as BusinessWire and PRNewswire. More and more journalists, under pressure to produce exclusive content that provides more value to their readers and audiences, will first ask “who else have you sent this to” or “where else has this news appeared” before doing anything with a release.

Most of the time, if you want to get news coverage a well-honed pitch to the right journalist at the right news outlet is your best bet. But a pitch is a different thing from a news release. It’s not intended for distribution beyond individual journalists and is designed to earn fully reported coverage, not to be published as is or revised.

Too many people still think PR means “press release,” so I think it’s time we rethought the press release, and other forms of content that public relations pros like me spend time trying to get out. It’s time to more clearly define the role of the press release in the public relations ecosystem.

A new role for press releases

A press release should:

• Enhance search engine optimization.
• Provide a full package of content – the whole story, not just part of it – in a form that’s easy to share through social media (hence the increasing use of the “social media release“).
• Be written with a broad, general audience in mind, not just journalists.
• Be considered a public document. (For public companies and some other organizations, in fact, issuing a news release is sometimes considered a form of disclosure under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules.)

There are still times when the news release is what you send to journalists to announce something. But increasingly, a news release should communicate directly to other audiences as well. We need to start thinking of the news release as just another form of content – like white papers, newsletters and blog posts – that are a part of the public relations toolbox. Sometimes that content goes to journalists in hopes that they will then publish a news story about it, but increasingly that content will go directly to end users.

This does create some new challenges, though. Companies need to do a better job of including noncompany voices in their news releases and making the content more compelling and authoritative. Companies also need to make sure they’re working just as hard to get their news releases out to other audiences as they do to get them to journalists.

Tools for earning media coverage

Does that mean I’m advocating giving up communicating with journalists? Absolutely not. But I think when it comes to journalists, PR pros should concentrate more on pitches – whether delivered over the phone, via email or in-person – when trying to earn coverage. What’s the difference between a pitch and a press release? A pitch:

• Is designed to elicit interest and follow-up from the news media.
• Should be personalized and customized, as much as possible, to each individual journalist’s needs and preferences.
• Gives just enough information to demonstrate the news value to the journalist.
• Is less formal than press releases and other forms of company content.

My overall point is simple: If you want to communicate to a broad audience, particularly one that’s online, a press release may be a great tool for that. But if you want coverage in the media, because of its greater reach and the added credibility that comes from making it through a news outlet’s filters, then don’t immediately turn to a news release. A pitch might be a better choice.

Twitter, the microblogging sensation that is all the rage – at least among marketers and social media aficionados – requires a considerable economy of phrasing. Fitting a useful thought into 140 characters, including a URL, can be tough sometimes. And if you want your tweet to be retweeted – spread by your followers – than you’re better off making it even shorter, like maybe 120 characters.

To that end, here are a few tips on how to tighten your tweets:

1. Cut unnecessary words – fillers, redundancies and words that don’t add anything, for example. If you put an opinion in Twitter, you don’t need to say “I think” – we assume that’s why you tweeted it unless you’re attributing it to someone else.
2. Choose shorter words over longer – “about” instead of “approximately,” for example.
3. Eliminate unnecessary punctuation. Do you really need those quote marks to emphasize something? Probably not. Do you need the extra “:” that Twitter adds in retweets? Again, probably not.
4. Use contractions (ex. “didn’t” for “did not”) and acronyms, though judiciously. Don’t sacrifice clarity for conciseness.
5. Make use of symbols – %, &, etc. – liberally.
6. Substitute punctuation for conjunctions. For example, a comma in place of an “and.”
7. Incorporate hashtags as part of the tweet, instead of putting it on the end. For example, “#PR pros will find this useful …”
8. Revise, revise, revise. It’s amazing how often, just as I think I’ve boiled a thought down to its essence, one more revision allows me to tighten it even more. Focus on your core thought or message.

That’s it. Follow these guidelines consistently and you’ll end up with shorter tweets that are more retweetable. If you have more ideas about how to shorten the length of your tweets, please add mention them in the comments.

I got an email last week from someone who administers a group I’m a member of on LinkedIn. He had a simple question: What could he do to get me to be more active in his group. It was a good question, and one that deserved an answer. So I told him the truth: I don’t have time. Most of my personal social media activity, I told him, was confined to Twitter and Facebook and I simply didn’t have enough time to also participate in LinkedIn groups.

Nonetheless, I still find a lot of value in LinkedIn. It helps keep me connected to hundreds of professional contacts and gives me an easy way to reach them even if I’ve lost a phone number or email. It also keeps me in touch with people who are probably not going to be on Facebook or Twitter or other social media sites for quite a while. Sometimes LinkedIn seems to be the social media site for those who feel uncomfortable with the whole idea of social media.

But the biggest thing about LinkedIn is that it’s an easy way for me to keep in front of people. I hear from people all the time “I see you on LinkedIn,” which means they see my status updates on LinkedIn. The one thing that I do pretty faithfully, usually at least five days a week, is update my LinkedIn status. That simple action keeps me popping up in front of others when they log into their LinkedIn account. One update a day – about two minutes – and it unobtrusively but effectively keeps my name in front of lots of contacts.

What’s my point? Sometimes even a minimal, but consistent, use of social media can be effective.

Here’s the situation: I was laying in a hospital bed, with an IV in my arm and a chest tube in my side attached to a gurgling machine that provided suction. I was on some pretty hefty drugs – morphine and then other narcotics for pain. At 38, I had been hospitalized for a totally unexpected reason.

For those of you who don’t know the story, I had woken up early on the morning of March 2 to chest pain, and after several hours of dithering around (because I was pretty sure it wasn’t a heart attack, so it couldn’t be serious, right?) I went to an urgent care where x-rays showed that my right lung had collapsed. Think of a balloon popping; that’s more or less what happened with my lung. As it turns out, you can function on one lung, especially if you’re relatively healthy, as I was (at least up to that point). The condition is called spontaneous pneumothorax, and no, the doctors don’t really know what caused it.

My wife was sending out emails to a select group of friends, co-workers, my boss and some relatives about my condition periodically, but there are many more people not on her email list – other colleagues, friends, etc. – who were interested in how I was doing. Fortunately, when I had driven myself to the ER (yes, I made several bad decisions that day), I brought along my BlackBerry. That not only allowed me to call my wife (”Honey, I have a collapsed lung and am going to be admitted to the hospital”), and send email to my boss (”Um, I’m not going to be coming in to work today”), but it also allowed me to update my Facebook status. And that is the whole point of this post.

I spent 12 days in the hospital, almost the entire first half of March. And without that BlackBerry and the ability to send email and update my Facebook status, it would have appeared to dozens and dozens of friends and acquaintances that I had disappeared. In addition, some friends who wanted to know – people who stopped by to visit me – would have never known that I was hospitalized with a serious medical condition. Even my sister, who called me almost every day, sometimes more than once, relied in part on my Facebook status updates to keep tabs on me.

I had lunch with a friend this week who said that my status updates on Facebook during my hospitalization really made him appreciate the power of social media. I have long been a social media enthusiast (and, professionally, an advocate), but this whole incident really brought home to me the power of these tools. I received wishes to get well, messages of concern and requests to visit through Facebook, which were instrumental in keeping my mood mostly positive during the experience. (In fact, I should say again to those people – thank you so much for your support. It made a huge difference to me.)

Most of what we post on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites is ephemeral – a fleeting thought, an interesting link, a comment or question you’re likely to forget in a few hours or a few days. But in some circumstances, these interactions can be incredibly powerful, engaging, and socially and emotionally meaningful. So the next time someone tells you that all this online stuff is just a waste of time, or it’s just for kids, or it’s not important, tell them my story.

Clive Thompson has an interesting article in the current issue of Wired that looks at why even though we live in a world awash with information, more than ever, people seem to be less knowledgeable about all sorts of important issues.

Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory?

You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven’t. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It’s 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the ’90s, according to Gallup.

It turns out that even though there’s more information, there’s also more misinformation. The ease with which anyone can publish information makes it easier for interest groups to sow doubt about things that might otherwise be taken factually. It’s what the tobacco industry did for years to try to cast doubt on the enormous weight of scientific evidence that smoking is dangerous.

Read the story here.

This morning I woke up to find that Gmail had enabled Tasks on my account. A task list has probably been one the biggest hole in the suite of Google apps and tools, and this new Gmail add-on looks like a pretty good start on remedying that

This is still a very lightweight app, and it doesn’t have half the features of some of the more mature task management apps out there, such as Remember the Milk and Todoist. While not specificallly designed for David Allen’s Getting Things Done time management methodology, with a few simple tricks it looks like it can be turned into a serviceable tool for GTD. Here are three tips to help.

1. Create a Next Actions list as well as Someday/Maybe lists and any other lists you might need.

Gmail allows you to create a series of lists. So I’ve created a series of lists to serve my purposes – Next Actions for actual task management, Someday/maybe for those things I might want to do someday, To read for books I’d like to read, etc. You can create and edit these lists using Tasks’ pop-up lists menu, in the lower right hand side of the Tasks box.

2. Use indentation to create GTD contexts within your Next Actions list.

Within my Next Actions, I’ve created a series of Tasks called @calls, @work, @home, @errands and so forth for the contexts that I typically use. When I want to add a next action within a particular context, I just put my cursor at the end of that @context line, hit return to get a new task and then tab to indent it. This creates sub-tasks for each context.

Since I’m using ‘@waiting for’ as a context, I can easily drag and drop next actions from one context to another by using the mouse to grab the ‘handle’ on the left side of the screen for each task. I can also re-order my contexts by dragging and dropping those context lists; the actions underneath each go with them.

3. Use the notes line to classify individual tasks by project.

Finally, I like to be able to see my tasks as part of the various projects they belong in. That’s easy. I just add a project title, in all caps, to the notes field for an individual Task. That shows up on the Tasks list, giving me a quick overview of what individual project a particular task belongs to.

I admit these ideas are, at best, work-arounds. It would be great if Google would add features such as tags and the ability to move tasks between lists. But until that happens, these ideas help.

Have some more thoughts about how to make better use of Gmail Tasks? Please share them in the comments.