fkcblog

create your own video channel to engage consumers

cindy martin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:25:51 -0800

There’s an intriguing article in a recent issue of Advertising Age about the growing number of marketers who are directly engaging consumers through original content they and their agencies are creating.

In particular, video is identified as an increasingly popular way for marketers to get their messages directly to consumers and other influencers. Production and equipment costs have become more affordable, and opportunities to post the finished result are growing exponentially from YouTube to Facebook to web sites and blogs.

While it’s still valuable for clients to be featured in magazines and newspapers -- it's hard to replace the implied third-party endorsement value -- it’s good to know that marketers and agencies have exciting new options.

70 percent of journalists using twitter to report stories

farrell kramer — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:00:04 -0700

Reporters are embracing a new tool to put their stories together: The Tweet

A study has found that 70 percent of journalists are using Twitter to assist in reporting, according to a post on Journalistics. That's up from just 41 percent last year.

A big part of this shift has to revolve around journalists having less help to do their jobs, while being required to produce more content across various formats in near real-time. Journalists have no choice but to use these tools to find sources fast – and in some instances – crowdsource suggestions, tips and interviews.

For communicators the implications of this are obvious: Posting on Twitter can lead directly to reporters. And isn't that worth it's weight in gold...

don't tweet password-protected links

farrell kramer — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:01:38 -0700

Reposted from Unpolished Thoughts

I just had the unfortunate experience of coming across two interesting tweets from two interesting publications ... only to find them password-protected.

What on earth is the point of doing that?

In the PR world, companies will sometimes put password-protected links on their "In The News" pages. However, this serves a purpose. It shows who's covering them. And given the price newspapers and magazines charge for online reprints, I really don't see a way around it.

But for a publication to post a password-protected link to ITS OWN CONTENT? That's ridiculous. If you want to show folks how good your work is -- in the hopes of getting subscribers -- make the articles public. You don't have to make the whole site public. Just the stories you want to promote.

Otherwise, the very people you want to reach end up clicking your link -- only to be taken to an access denied page. That's incredibly annoying. Instead of gaining subscribers, you'll lose followers.

make sure your tweets aren't too long...

farrell kramer — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:25:01 -0700

Reposted from Unpolished Thoughts

Absurd. Ridiculous. Totally nuts.

How on Earth, you might ask, can a Tweet be too long? By definition, Tweets are limited to 140 characters. Isn't that about the length of a single, longish sentence?

Well ... yes. Tweets are limited to 140 characters. But my point is this: 140 is too long!

At issue is the sought-after RT, or retweet, through which an individual Tweet can begin to go viral in the Twitter community. A retweet can bring fame to an account with just a handful of followers. It can bestow prestige and credibility. It is Nirvana for Tweets.

However, if your Tweet is exactly 140 characters, or 139, or 138, anyone interested in retweeting is going to have to edit it down. Yikes! You don't want to force prospective retweeters to edit. That's like a car salesman asking a prospective buyer to "go home and think about it." It's a mistake. A big one.

The culprit is the format for retweeting. To retweet, you typically add to the front of the Tweet: RT @name. That's 8 characters, and for only a 4-letter name. Add that to a 138 character Tweet, and you've over by 6!

Someone's now got to go through your Tweet and take out 6 characters to send the retweet. That's not so easy with Tweets, because they're usually pretty tight.

The solution is simple. Keep your Tweets well below the 140 character limit. Maybe 128. Maybe 126. Something like that.

If you do, retweeting will be simple as pie. And that's just the way you want it to be.

happiness=twitter+posterous

farrell kramer — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:34:22 -0700

Reposted from Unpolished Thoughts

Film and literature tell us that the most powerful love is the bond that strikes out of nowhere. A bolt of lightning. Ka-Pow! And they lived happily ever after...

This is my second Posterous (I use the first for iPhone photos). And after a few weeks I've concluded that Posterous is the perfect companion for Twitter. Like Adam and Eve. Bogey and Bacall. Sid and Nancy. Eh ... well, you get the idea.

Now, I don't work for Posterous or Twitter. So if this sounds a bit effusive, it is at least well-intentioned. But this strikes me as an important point because so many, many, many folks recoil when I mention the importance of Twitter as a platform for communications. Perhaps you've heard similar complaints:

What can you say of importance in 140 characters?
How does telling people what I had for breakfast help my business?
Nobody's listening, anyway.

To answer the last point, I say: Huh? Just Google the number of Twitter users. You'll see.

As to the first two questions, here's the real issue. Quick conversations with followers are fine. But after a while, you've got to put up some real, substantive content. That's where Posterous comes in.

It's the dead easiest way to post content on the Internet today. You just email whatever you want to a Posterous-created email address. And like magic, your content is up.

It works for words, photos, video, music, audio interviews. You name it.

Now, blogs are great and I've been blogging for many years on different platforms. They will work just fine for this purpose. Yet, Posterous seems different. So simple. Just drop a story or a photo. Then, tweet your content and link it to the Posterous post.

The tweet now has substance. There's steak with the sizzle. You're providing real information in your tweets, information that can come in all possible media formats -- which is what the web is all about these days.

If you've already got an established blog or podcast, this will not be terribly important. However, if you've been looking for a way to enter the Twitterverse only to be stopped by "not having anything to say," this is the answer.

Upload your content to Posterous. Link to it via Twitter. It's a match made in... Well, let's not get crazy.

how often should you tweet?

farrell kramer — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:02:44 -0700

Folks sometimes ask me how frequently businesses should tweet per day for optimal results.

The answer, according to one expert interviewed on {grow}, is either every 31-60 minutes or every 2-3 hours.

Again looking at the clicks per tweet, the optimal space between business tweets to attract the most clicks is either 31-60 minutes or 2-3 hours. Tightly packed tweets just don’t appear to attract as much attention as tweets with more space between them. I’m not certain what causes the dip in click activity for tweets between 61 and 120 minutes but I suspect it has to do with missing prime Twitter activity time on the East and West coasts (we may look into this in a later post).

I recommend checking out the entire post if you're interested. There are some great bits of information.

For example, did you know the average lifespan of a business tweet is 4 days?

follow me on twitter

farrell kramer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:26:16 -0700

Just a quick post to let everyone know I've created a separate Twitter account for my PR/marketing posts.

Please follow me at @farrellkramer.

Separate Twitter accounts are a pretty good idea if you tweet with friends, or you tweet on a non-business topics, and want to keep your business conversations separate.

Several Twitter apps let you monitor multiple accounts at once. My favorite is TweetDeck, which also has a nice app for the iPhone. With TweetDeck, you can update multiple Twitter accounts by simply choosing the "from" account. You can also do this with Facebook updates via TweetDeck.

Importantly, you can view your followers in separate columns. Thus, you are able to separate conversations by topic. This is very useful to reduce the noise in your Twitter streams.

twitter traffic exceeds new york times, wall street journal

farrell kramer — Tue, 12 May 2009 06:44:04 -0700

Anyone questioning the reach of Twitter only has to look at this new fact: Twitter now has more web traffic than The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.

Of course Facebook is much, much bigger -- but for some reason non-users tend to take Facebook more seriously than Twitter. It's probably the Harvard connection and the similarity with MySpace. Twitter is a different animal. It's more interesting.

And now it's more visited online than the New York Times and Wall St. Journal sites. That's pretty incredible. Of course Twitter doesn't create original content. Does it?

The story goes on to answer its own question. Of course there's original content on Twitter. Tweets can link to blog posts, articles, videos, audio, etc.

And if you pay attention, you can find news on Twitter before it appears anywhere else. I have.

to tweet or not to tweet

farrell kramer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:31:10 -0700

I've gotten some questions recently about whether companies ought to use Twitter as part of their communications strategies.

The microblogging service is certainly becoming more mainstream, and useful conversations on a broad range of topics abound. If an organization has someone willing to devote a little time/effort to manning a Twitter account, it might well be a good idea. There's one easy way to find out.

Use Twitter Search to check keywords focusing on your area of interest. If the tweets that come up are useful from a business perspective, that's a strong sign that a Twitter strategy would be helpful to you.

If you decide to tweet, here's a great post on TwiTip that takes you through Twitter from A-to-Z. Here's one important tip: Don't just rely on using the Twitter interface on the web. Download one of the full-featured Twitter clients.

I like TweetDeck on the desktop -- which allows you to track searches and groups as well as your followers -- and Tweetie on the iPhone.

Oh, and if you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm @farrell.

on the future of newspapers, journalism

farrell kramer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:54:08 -0700

There's an essay making the rounds by Clay Shirky that really digs into the future of newspapers and journalism.

Here are a few excerpts:

If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other.

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable.

For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail.

Now, I don't know Clay Shirky or his other work -- though I will look at it now -- but he makes some interesting and persuasive points in this piece. His essay is well worth reading.

Those of us working in this business will need to come to terms with these realities one way or the other.