Here are some of our key takeaways:

 Mind Your Manners!

• Good conversation skills translate into good social media skills. Don’t offend.   Keep your audience in mind and be polite. And always as a rule of thumb – be sure to do a sensitivity check before posting social content.

Stay True to Your Brand Online

• You have to be a good brand in real life before you can be a good brand online. Conveying your brand online doesn’t always relate to marketing – it’s how you embody the values and philosophy of your company.

Social Media is About the Audience

• User behavior should determine the platform strategy for brands. Some platforms perform better for certain brands and digital strategy should be based on what the audience interests.  Engagement in social media is dependent on people caring about what you’re sharing, so be sure that what you share is genuine.

Be Passionate About What You Do

• Dave Oksman from Life is Good gave a very passionate speech on how his company’s brand was about inspiring optimism.  Everyone from the brand who spoke was a passionate brand ambassador. That clearly translated into the work they do for their brands online and off.

It’s Okay to Play Traffic Cop

• It’s easy to become inundated with content when working across numerous business segments within an organization. Just because you’re getting tons of content doesn’t mean you have to use it all. Take the time to check that the content fits within your social strategy and if it will resonate with your audience. At the end of the day, quality always trumps quantity.

Written by: Michele Moore, Steph Kanaan and Kate Foss

Image sourced from flickr user doughaslam

Recently, using social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter  and Facebook enables us to drive recruitment, create platforms for internal processes and host remote global training/meetings.   The use of digital technology can help foster engagement with our co-workers by encouraging more face to face communication, providing more easily and readily available information about our peers and exposure to our cultural identities.

Being a social business is not only about the use of these tools, but about engaging and communicating with others to continue strengthening relationships. Having more shared information about our respective cultures through these social channels encourages a higher level of employee interest to work face to face.  At Text100, we promote that connection through a large number of programs.  The following programs aim to work in conjunction with our digital platforms as tools to collaboration:

• Secondments: A development tool that encourages our staff to work from a different office for one or two weeks at a time acquiring and/or upgrading skills. This year our focus is on digital skill development; working with and meeting colleagues within the company with the existing skill set and expertise needed to support our social proposition.

•  City swaps:  If a team member is going to be visiting another country for reasons such as vacation or holiday, they can opt to work from another office for up to five working days.  This presents an opportunity to experience a new team, culture and country; all while forging new relationships with colleagues.

•  Mentoring: Our employees can be supported by a mentor; within their home office or at a different regional location.  This offers another view –independent of their line manager- and helps further develop their skills.

• Transfers: The opportunity to move your position to a different location (temporarily or permanently) while experiencing life abroad for an extended period of time.

• Global or Regional Virtual Meetings: Used to share news with our employees, introduce our strategy, celebrate milestones, etc.

By embracing these offerings and allowing them to complement our digital tools, Human Resources can further engage and connect our unique culture of international employees in meaningful ways.  This gives our organization a competitive advantage in attracting, hiring, and retaining talent.

So, what else can we be doing? Keep the suggestions coming!

Millennials get a pretty bad wrap these days.  Between the Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers there are a lot of articles and blogs out there that consistently reprimand this generation for their sense of self-entitlement, lack of professionalism or inability to function in non-coddling environments.  I’m not here to focus on that today.  Instead, I’d like to share a few survival tips I’ve picked up along my journey from Intern to Senior Account Executive.  I believe it’s more important to focus on the skills we can help our millennial colleagues build upon to ensure their success rather than focus on their downfalls.   After all, we’ve all been there.

My Top Three Tips to Survival & Success:

• #1: Take Notes
  This is the best lesson I learned from my own internship experiences.  Take detailed notes at every meeting, during every call and anytime someone stops by your desk with a request.  You never know when you’ll be in a meeting and an executive will turn around and say, “You were taking notes right?”  The more comprehensive your notes, the better prepared you will be to take on writing projects, pitch journalists and share your learnings with others.

• #2: Ask Questions
  Never be afraid to ask questions!  Questions are crucial to our business.  In Public Relations we deal in information.  It’s crucial that we are constantly seeking out information by asking the right questions.  Asking questions will help you understand your client’s business better, ensure you’re getting the right information you need for/from a journalist and are understanding instructions for tasks/projects assigned to you.  Do you ever feel like you’re questions aren’t getting you the answers you need? Check out this Fast Company article that can help you learn to ask questions like a journalist.  At the end of the day, they are the pros!

• #3: Learn to Take Criticism
  Not everything you do is going to be 100 percent perfect, 100 percent of the time.  Learning to take constructive criticism gracefully will save you a lot of heartache and stress.  Everything you do, no matter the level you are, will be reviewed and edited by a team member, supervisor or client.  Look at this as a good thing.  Many times that document will come back to you so marked up you’ll be lucky to find three consecutive words that were yours. This is how you learn to be a better writer, a better thinker and a better PR pro.  Listening, learning from your mistakes and then putting into practice the feedback you receive will help you stay steps ahead of the game.  You’ll learn to anticipate other’s needs, the questions that they’ll ask and what their preferences are.  It could also help you keep from repeating your mistakes!

These are just a few skills I feel have helped me along the way.  I keep all of these in mind every day and hopefully they will help others too.   All in all, an important thing to remember is that PR is fast-paced, complex and an ever-changing and evolving field.  Remember that you are not alone in your journey to success.  Your colleagues, account teams and supervisors are you best resource.  You’re all in the same boat aiming for the same great outcome.   We all started somewhere!

What other survival tips have helped you throughout your career?  Do you have other tips for the next generation of PR millenials?  Sharing is caring!

Picture credit: kerolic

In the onslaught of mobile applications which seem to appear and disappear at the same rate as emails – the mail-management savior has arrived!

Enter Mailbox, a swipe based re-imagination of mobile email.  The application tracks swipes of the finger to determine the final destination for each message.  A short swipe in one direction will archive the message; a long swipe in the same direction will toss it in the trash.  If you decide a message isn’t worthy of immediate response, a swipe of the finger allows you to “snooze” it for later on; a longer swipe in the same direction lets you drop it in the appropriate folder.  You can see the app in action in a short trailer Fast Company posted to their website.

As a young PR professional working in a fast paced agency, Mailbox is a handy tool for organizing my war-zone of an inbox.  With emails pouring in from multiple clients and colleagues around the globe, an easier mobile email interface provides a much needed boost in efficiency and organization.

Feature Highlights:

The snooze feature is especially intriguing.  If a message comes through when you’re on deadline or you’ve thrown in the towel for the night, a quick swipe to the left insures the message is resent at a time of your choosing.  This places the message at the top of your inbox when you know you’ll be ready for it.

The ability to easily archive, delay, and delete messages can significantly increase the efficiency with which colleagues interact with each another and with clients.

Additionally, the swipe-based interface is so user-friendly and intuitive; the system starts to feel like second-nature in no time.  Rather than sitting back and watching the messages pile up, you can swipe your way to a streamlined, clean inbox.

According to Fast Company, Mailbox recently scrapped its long wait list to download this handy application.  Now the app is available to anyone and everyone (with a Gmail account) looking to improve their email management skills.

Have you tried the Mailbox App? Are there other email management tools that we need to know about? Do tell.

Screenshot courtesy of Barry Coklin, Text100 SF / Kerolic / Mailbox

In the wake of the terrorist bombing in Boston, the people of this city went through the full range of human emotions.   The immediate feelings of shock, fear, anger and grief were joined by pride in the brave reaction of our citizens and first responders.  Then a wave of sadness as we saw the human impact on the victims, those we lost and those whose lives have been forever changed by horrible injuries.  That sadness lingers.  But alongside it has come a sense of resolve, and a desire to help.

From that desire to help – to do something – has emerged a remarkable event for the Boston public relations community.  On May 29, our industry will come together at Boston PRoud – an evening to raise money for The One Fund Boston, the charity founded by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to raise money for the victims of the bombing.  What started as an idea in a team meeting less than two weeks ago has gathered remarkable momentum.  More than 30 public relations firms have agreed to come together to co-host this event, and in just a few days those firms have helped to sell more than 600 tickets to the event.

The news that there was going to be an event like this spread across the Boston PR community like wildfire.  It went from one agency to another by word-of-mouth and every possible social network.  Agencies went from hearing about the idea to making the donation required to become a co-host in a matter of minutes – then offered to help to promote the event further.  PR Newswire immediately jumped on board as a sponsor, to help defray some of the costs of the event, and more sponsors are welcome as the event continues to expand.

We’re proud that the idea for the event started at Text100.  But the reality is that everyone across Boston was feeling that desire to do something.  The idea for Boston PRoud came along at the right time to capture that spirit, and gave people across our industry something to get behind.

What has been most rewarding about planning this event has been the opportunity to work side-by-side with agencies that we compete with every day.  We have unbelievably talented people working across our industry – people who simply know how to get things done.  That’s never been more true than in working toward this event.  The idea for Boston PRoud would not have gotten off the ground without old friends at firms like fama PR, March Communications, PAN Communications and SHIFT Communications.  Each saw the opportunity to do something and jumped on it.  Within 48 hours of the first conversations between those five firms, we had 20 others lined up to participate.  When we work together as an industry, we can accomplish things with breathtaking speed.

There was an interesting article in PR Week last Friday about whether the Text100/APCO Worldwide partnership for BlackBerry would start a trend of agencies working together.  Whether it’s a trend remains to be seen.  But what is clear is that with a common sense of purpose, agencies can work together to do great things.  Whether for a client or an important charity, we’re all more successful if we remember it’s not about the agency, it’s about the cause.

So on May 29, at multiple venues on Boylston Street – the site of the bombing – the Boston PR community will gather and raise a glass as one. We will renew old friendships and make new ones while supporting a great cause.   

Our shared contribution – at this point more than $45,000 and growing every day – is a drop in the bucket compared to the needs of the victims.  But for one night at least, competitors will share a common purpose.  And we’ll all have the feeling that we’ve done something.

*Note:  If you would like to attend Boston PRoud, please visit the registration site at Eventbrite here.  If you are interested in becoming a co-host or sponsor, please contact kenp@text100.com

You’ve heard about it, read about it and may even have dabbled in it – but next week is your opportunity to extend your knowledge of content marketing and make it actionable.  With nine out of ten B2B marketers currently engaging in some form of content marketing, and 60 percent of marketers planning to increase their content marketing budgets in the future, there’s no time to wait.

Join us as we team up with the New York Chapter of the Social Media Club next Thursday, May  9 from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at Alison Eighteen (15 West 18th Street, New York) to discuss the future of content marketing.

Jake Sorofman, Research Director at Gartner, will host a discussion with the following individuals who will offer up their unique perspectives on the topic:

• Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text100 Global Communications
• Yvonne MacPherson, Executive Director USA, BBC Media Action
• Ben Edwards, VP Global Communications and Digital Marketing, IBM
• Brian Swarth, Vice President, Group Director Digital Services, Showtime Networks

Some of the topics the panel will delve into include:

• Managing the content ecosystem and aligning content to the buying cycle
• Best practices in building an integrated content marketing strategy
• Content marketing examples and successes
• What brands can do to prepare for  the future of content marketing
• How the future of social media marketing will impact content marketing
• Proving the ROI for content or content strategy

By definition, content marketing uses informative, entertaining and/or consultative content to attract, acquire and engage individuals and groups of stakeholders, from employees, customers, and partners, on through to investors, media, bloggers and other influencers. The key is the use of storytelling to engage with people in a deeper level than the mere pushing of information.

The question is – are you ready to be your brand’s storyteller?

If you’re interested in attending, please email Jason.Clarke@Text100.com  for more information.

Can’t make the event? Check HyperText next week for a recap and follow #HyperTextLive on Twitter.

Social networks and mobility are not only changing the way consumers are communicating and obtaining information such as with the Boston Marathon bombings, addressed in a post my colleague wrote. As enterprises of all sizes look at how to best reach and ultimately sell products or services to customers, they need to evolve the way they’re selling, and improve engagement to leverage social media. They need to become a social business.
Marc Benioff, the founder and chief executive of Salesforce.com, said it well in an interview with Quentin Hardy published in The New York Times around his company’s launch of Social.com:

“All of us have to become connected companies, changing fundamentally how we sell our products to customers. Trends like social networking and mobility…are the future of computing. Everyone has to move to being a connected, customer-oriented company.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

On Wednesday, May 15, Text100 and Social Media Club San Francisco will host a panel featuring participants from enterprises of all sizes to discuss this very topic. We’ll focus on how these brands are successfully tackling the opportunity of reaching B2B customers using social media, best practices and how they’re creating a measurable impact on the bottom line. Following are the panelists:

• Jeanette Gibson, Senior Director, Social & Digital Marketing, Cisco
• Erin Robbins O’Brien, Head of Strategy, GinzaMetrics
• Menaka Shroff , Senior Director, Product Marketing, Box
• Moderator: Melissa Chanslor, Account Director and Digital Strategist, Text100

We’d love to have you join us on May 15 to discuss B2B social media marketing. You can find more information via Social Media Club here, including a link to register.

  CLICK HERE TO REGISTER  

If you’re unable to make the event in SF, we encourage you to leave comments of questions you’d like address or you can submit them to me, @Chanslor, using #socialB2B.

Hope to see you there!

Over the last two weeks I’ve found myself constantly refreshing my Twitter feed, Google news alerts and browser tabs for CNN, The Boston Globe and the New York Times looking for the latest details on the events surrounding the Boston Marathon.  I’ve been equally riveted and panicked about the information at my fingertips. .

While I understand (and am guilty of) having an insatiable appetite for information in real-time, it stirs up some interesting questions about the intersection of social and traditional media. What is the value of the masthead these days and where do people turn now in times of crisis?  Do you shift your attention to the news or look to family and friends’ tweets and status updates?

I initially heard about the bombings via a news alert forwarded by a co-worker.  The few brief lines that came across my cell while I ate my lunch only contained a few lines of information that didn’t answer all the questions I had.  My initial instinct was to go to CNN.com to get more detail; however, there wasn’t much more there.  I turned to Twitter and Facebook to check if any of my friends in Boston shared any news or if there was breaking information from the media sources I follow. My news feed was brimming with updates from people that were lucky to escape the scene unharmed, people questioning why this had happened and when we would get more information.

Later in the week once suspect pictures were widely shared and focus turned to the Watertown stakeout, information couldn’t come fast enough.  I spotted theories on the suspect names, live feeds of the police scanner and all sorts of breaking news tidbits from a wide variety of  sources. Information was spreading that wasn’t officially verified and there were widespread complaints about conflicting reports of what was going on.  While I hadn’t retweeted or shared misinformation, I certainly fed into this cycle of consumption.  This left me feeling a bit queasy; was my desire for immediate information outweighing the value of fact-checking?

Analyst Jeremiah Owyang  from Altimeter Group posted a tweet in the days following the event that really got me thinking about how social media is changing the ways we report and consume information:

The four impacts social has on Boston situation: 1) Aid in finding suspects, 2) breaks news, 3) propagates rumors, 4) compromises police

— Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) April 19, 2013

As communications professionals, I think it’s important we hold ourselves accountable for the tools we use to share information.  While we can’t (and don’t want to) stop people from sharing their opinions on events in the world, we can help separate speculation from facts.  We need to think about the statement we’re making before we press the button to share and retweet.   We must consider the information at hand and validate the source.  We need to ask ourselves what constitutes reliable information and think about the consequences of sharing details that may not be true. If we don’t, we risk losing credibility with our audiences, making it challenging if not impossible to win back.  To take it a step further, we also risk damaging others reputations or in the case of the Boston incident, potentially someone’s safety.

When we do make mistakes it’s important to acknowledge them as quickly as possible – a lesson that the Associated Press is taking away the hard way and had to institute these lessons soon after when its Twitter feed was hacked sharing false “breaking news” that a bomb had gone off in the White House. Even though the hoax was unveiled almost instantaneously, the stock market dropped sharply for a few minutes before recovering. The AP reacted fast, suspending the account almost immediately but it lost nearly 1.9 million followers by the time it came back online a day later.

Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor of The New York Times, credited the outlet’s “model of restraint” when delivering an important combination of “fast, deep and accurate” reporting offering their readers “ cool headed certainty” that the news was right. This all contributes to the Times maintaining its reputation as “the place to come for accuracy, perspective and depth.”

In our industry, it’s easy to get caught up in this rapid cycle. It’s equally important to know when to pause and think before we tweet.

Do you have other examples of these false representations of information surrounding the Boston events or beyond?

Which weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?

Neither, they both weigh a ton!

Alright, so maybe not everyone can be a comedian…but @ComedyCentral’s upcoming festival, #ComedyFest, will make you feel like you’re in the midst of a comedy club right through your mobile device.  As the first comedy festival of its kind, the five-day event will be hosted solely via Twitter and Vine!  Already, the festival has captured the attention of Mashable, The New York Times and ABC News for its unique integration of viable digital platforms. 

Instead of hosting an in-person show, comedians will be posting video segments of routines, Vine video sessions, live stream panel discussions and interactive jokes utilizing the hashtag #ComedyFest.  Essentially, any Twitter follower will have a front row seat for all featured events!

While this is the first comedy festival held on Twitter, it is not the first online festival. ABC News reports that “in February, the WIREDarts Fest brought theater and dance performances to the Internet with 24 streaming performances.”

With the growth of social media, brands are developing multi-platform strategies to reach their audience through more channels than ever.  And what better way to engage an audience?  With the average number of 58 million tweets per day, Twitter has grown into a major form of communication. Therefore, by aggregating the festival in one place – alongside a viewer’s social feed – @ComedyCentral is able to develop an effective dialog with its consumers. 

Yes this all sounds like fun and games, but @ComedyCentral’s festival demonstrates a new evolution in the relationship between TV and social media.  Now, brands can leverage this idea to improve upon it and brainstorm diverse strategies for future campaigns.  For example, a virtual event might be an interesting alternative for a company that does not have the desire or resources to run a full-fledged in-person event.  Instead, a brand can facilitate one of these new platforms as a launch pad for a simpler, yet effective form of outreach.

Reaching an audience can be a daunting task, but with the integration of social platforms – like Twitter – brand engagement can be experienced in the palm of their hand. Text100 has noticed the value of those brands that have evolved and utilized mobile technology to enhance a user’s experience.  As my colleague once shared, digital interaction can even be harnessed through a simple hashtag to garner a consumer’s utmost attention.

Digital innovation has provided a plethora of opportunities for a virtual event to come into play.  Recently, Text100 facilitated a live Google+ hangout as part of its clients’ “Ask the Expert” series.  This virtual event brought participants together to experience a lively discussion on a topic of interest.  Even though the experts were located across the United States, they were united by a single digital platform.  And the depth of engagement doesn’t end there.  Viewers could watch the episode stream live or have the option to replay the video, which is now found on multiple digital platforms, including YouTube.

I must be butter because I’m on a roll! So before I dive any deeper, what creative ideas do you have for assimilating virtual events like #ComedyFest into your B2B brand? 

*The festival takes place Monday, April 29 – Friday, May 3.  So if you’re interested in following its success and want a good laugh, search the hashtag #ComedyFest!

 Picture credit: Kerolic

Almost three months have passed since Vine was launched and it’s reaching the top of the charts for free downloaded apps in the Apple App Store. Now we can see many of the communications possibilities it’s offering to bloggers, journalists and media. Vine is a popular app for iOS introduced by Twitter which allows users to express their creativity in a six-second video playing in an infinite loop. We first posted about Vine after its launch – Vine is to YouTube What Twitter is to WordPress/Blogger.

Video is all about storytelling.  It connects video sharing apps like Vine closer to the filmmaking industry. Before the Tribeca Film Festival, actor Robert De Niro was asked how he thought technology is changing the film industry.  He responded by describing his first experience using Vine:

“Six seconds of beginning, middle and end. I was just trying to time on my iPhone six seconds just to get a sense of what that is. It can actually be a long time.”

However, if you try to time six seconds, you might wonder — what can be told in such a short time? Mashable has recently released a series to demonstrate the creative things that can be said in six seconds.  Being one of the first news outlets to leverage Vine, they produced some of the most joyful videos with the stop motion technique. Their first videos included a reorganization of Mashable’s name while introducing it’s employees, a funny Pac-Man game and a very colorful Crayola painting.

Some other news outlets have adopted the concept of the ‘behind the scenes’ to give a peek inside office life and use Vine to create more transparency with their readers; even if the transparency only lasts six seconds. The German newspaper Rhein-Zeitung was one of the first to show their readers how their front page was made.  Additionally, WVEC’s journalist, Mike Lopez, used Vine to show how a live report was broadcasted.  Taking a different approach, sports and political cartoonist Rob Tornoe, illustrated his drawing process with a Vine video.  All of these examples pose the question: can we as communication professionals take advantage of Vine’s possibilities?

When I think about my existing IT-consumer oriented clients, there are many #Tips&Tricks we can use to leverage Vine. There are also many #Unboxing videos and #HowTo videos that can be shared with media and journalists. Additionally, Vine has just introduced the trending hashtags feature (similar to Twitter’s trending topics) where we can measure a video’s social impact and reach.

Do you have more ideas on how Vine can be used by our industry of communication professionals? Have you seen any interesting case studies that have amazed you and would like to share? Join our LinkedIn discussion. We welcome you to share any interesting thoughts about Vine!

Picture credit: kerolic / logo: vine