I had to write about the experience because I think ALC did everything right–step one was have a super star come speak to the whole organization (that was Charlene Li-my first time seeing her speak and she’s fantastic). As the session ended you could feel the excitement in the room.

Step two: that afternoon, I spoke to a much smaller group of those who would be directly involved in developing strategies and executing the tactics necessary. We dove deeper into the tools available, how they can be applied and most importantly how success can be measured.

Finally, step three: the next day a group of everyone involved-including staff involved in communications, marketing, IT, and privacy got together for a full day discovery session with the intent of being ready to hit the ground running. Led by a facilitator, the day had group activities to get minds working and ideas flowing. The results were definitely impressive.

As someone who’s spend most of my career in startups, I don’t often get to participate in these types of sessions–but the results are pretty remarkable. While I suspect there were originally some skeptics in the room, by the end of the day, everyone knew what had to be done, was excited about it, and the framework for a solid strategy was in place.

Watch out for ALC in the social media realm over the next few months, I think they’ll make quite a splash.

As tragic as today was because the world lost both a TV icon and a pop superstar, it’s a testament to how much people *really* trust social media tools. If you were following along on Twitter, you may have also heard that Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt all died as well. Celebrity doomsday is here! But alas, all rumours. There were even rumours of MJ’s death being instigated by Iranian officials..

Is social media going to kill the mainstream media? Obviously not, if you sift through the search results, everyone was skeptical until it was reported by major outlets. Especially as the tool becomes more popular, the byproduct is really more crap-which means we still very much need to rely on traditional media to tell us what’s really going on.

This is certainly an issue that warrants more research & analysis. What do you think? Do you trust what you hear first on Twitter?

There are so many examples that demonstrate this–customer service, for example, can GREATLY benefit from involvement on Twitter. Frank Eliason from Comcast (@comcastcares) has definitely proved it, and others like Bank of America (@bofa_help) and Home Depot (@homedepot) are further proving it.

Company’s can also take advantage of employees who are already engaged in social media and encourage them to identify themselves of an employee (if they are willing of course). All a company needs is a policy or guidelines detailing acceptable use (NOT censorship, but to protect the company from leaking confidential or proprietary information or anything that may impact the brand negatively).

It seems to me that everyone is so wound up in the hype–they are out there creating social media job functions (i.e. Community manager or strategist) or even a social media department, yet not tying it back into business goals and spreading the concept throughout the organization. Don’t get me wrong, there definitely should someone who knows social media inside and out to lead the direction, but it should be adopted as a way of business, not a department along side PR and marketing.

So by all means, hire a community manager, just make sure both you and he/she understands how the role ties back to business goals. Maybe if we started doing that more, we could all stop whining about how to measure social media ROI and instead be satisfied if it’s meeting our business goals.

Win a free ticket!

There is a cost to attend, but I don’t want that to stop you! That’s why I’m giving away a ticket to one of my readers, all you have to do is leave a comment and tell me what you think is the best way  a business has used Twitter or LinkedIn–doesn’t have to be something you’ve done, just something you’ve seen/heard about. On June 5th I’ll throw all your names in a hat and randomly draw one.  Please, if you do win and later find out you can’t make it, let me know so I can pass it on to someone else.

On July 23,2009, Xerox and the Sens Foundation invite you to be part of an exclusive fundraising event–If you’re one of the first 100 people to register and raise $500 you’ll qualify to participate in a stationary bike race in the Ottawa Senators Strength & Conditioning Centre at Scotiabank Place. If you’re a Sens fan and a fitness buff, this sounds like an awesome opportunity!

There are also great prizes available, including suite tickets for next year’s season opener, a signed Alfredsson Jersey and tons more donated by Xerox and the Ottawa Senators. For more details and to register, check out the website…

Each month, we’ll get a guest speaker–first one is Ottawa’s Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis Communications and the startups include Gazaro, NetworkHippo, DNA 11, Choicebot. The first event is happening next Wednesday, May 27th…which also happens to be my birthday.

Hope to see you there!

Going on the belief that if it’s not broke-don’t fix it, I kept on contently using TwitterFon, but I always had that little wonder in the back of my head: “Is Tweetie better? Is it worth $3 when I have a perfectly good free app?” Yes, I *know* $3 isn’t a lot of money, but it’s more about principle…

So if you’re using TwitterFon and wondering if Tweetie is worth the money, don’t worry, I’ve checked them both out and compiled a detailed comparison for you here.

So first, my short answer: If Tweetie married TwitterFon and had a baby, *that* would be the perfect app. I know that’s not a great answer, so let me break down what I like and didn’t like about each:

Tweetie

The good:

• Manages multiple accounts awesomely
• Loads much faster when you follow a lot of people
• Uses the GPS functionality to find nearby users (a feature I loved about Twinkle, which I ended up dumping because it lacked many of the features I wanted)
• Settings include lots of options to optimize your Tweetie experience

The bad:

• Does not provide notification of new replies and DMs (you have to click the tabs to see)
• The search function-works fine, but does not save past searches, if you often search the same terms (as I do) then TwitterFon has the leg up here. Also no search refresh-doesn’t seem to update itself

The ugly:

• Only one criticism here, and it may be my own fault. When you load Tweetie with multiple accounts it launches the account you were in last, which can lead to posting from the wrong account. *Yes* it says right at the top which account you are in, but sometimes my fingers work faster than my brain. I’ve fallen victim to this once.

TwitterFon

The good:

• Notication. I love how it uses the little red iphone style numbers to notify you of new replies or messages.
• Highlighting new tweets, another one Tweetie doesn’t do is colour code new responses since refreshing.
• Search cache - saves your searches so you just need to type in the first letter or two and it will appear. Very handy if you search the same terms often.
• Links I strongly prefer the way TwitterFon opens links–you click on the link icon beside the tweet and it presents a list of all the possible links (i.e. other user names, URLs) whereas Tweetie just shows the tweet again with clickable links (I find this redundant)
• DM conversations display like the iPhone text messaging, which I LOVE.

The bad:

• No support for multiple accounts. Which means before I downloaded tweetie I used multiple free apps to manage my multiple twitter accounts.
• If you have more than one DM from the same person, it only displays the latest. Therefore if you get a lot of DMs and do not use the email notification you could potentially miss some.

The ugly:

• The one thing that drives me CRAZY about TwitterFon is how it completely freezes when loading. The more people you follow the longer it freezes, I’m following about 2,100 so it’s pretty unbearable.

Conclusion:

To be perfectly honest, I really like both and will continue to use both. I will probably use Tweetie more often because of the quicker load times and the multiple account support… However I’ll keep on wishing it had some of the features I love about TwitterFon.

Get all the details and don’t forget to register!

Nambu is hot off the press and still in beta, but has already won me over. Apologies to my PC friends, but it’s only available for Mac (you can, however, still use Tweetdeck, which is a great tool).

One thing I didn’t like about Tweetdeck, was that while you could create and manage groups and searches, if you closed those windows, they were gone forever. With Nambu, each subsection you create lives in a convenient sidebar for future use. Also, this is the first tool I’ve seen that is great for managing multiple Twitter accounts (I have three) which is a huge timesaver.

Here’s what my Nambu looks like:

When you first start up Nambu, it will ask if you want install the Growl notifier–this will allow notifications to pop up on your screen for new tweets (You can also edit in preferences whether you want to have notifications for all tweets, or just private messages). This I find convenient on my big iMac screen because I can glance over and see if anything interested is going on without opening Nambu, however on my Macbook, I find it takes up too much of the screen and is far to distracting.

It is in Beta, so don’t expect everything to run perfectly–however I haven’t had any problems yet, so I’m happy. Another thing I will come oto love about Nambu is after it’s out of Beta it will allow you to integrate other services, (identi.ca, Friendfeed and ping.fm) but right now those features are disabled in beta. If you’re a social media fanatic without the time to manage all these services (like me) Nambu might prove to be a life saver.

Have you tried it yet? What do you think?

Twitter

First here are my slides on Twitter:

(note: I have to give credit to my friend Sean Power… I originally created this Powerpoint for the Project Management View webinar I did a couple weeks ago, but last week I found his awesome post “Twitter new user survival guide” and revised a few points. Thanks Sean!)

And to recap, here are the 11 things you need to remember to succeed with Twitter.

11. Build a profile
The more information you can put in your profile the better. Try to load up your bio with keywords that will help potential followers identify what you’re all about and what you’ll be tweeting about. Do not worry about having complete sentences–it’s often better not to, so that you can get more info in. Also–put up a photo. It doesn’t have to be a photo of you if you’re camera shy, but at least find an icon or something that represents you.

10. Find people to follow
Once you’ve set up your profile and posted a  few tweets, you’re ready to find people to follow, here are some sites to help you out:

• Twellow is the Twitter yellow pages. Search for people based on info in their profile (user name, bio, location)
• Twitter’s search function can be used to find people who are tweeting about a certain subject or keyword that may be of interest to you. Also you can use the search to follow a hash tag (#) that interests you and follow those people who are tweeting about it.
• Mr. Tweet is your personal twitter assistant who will make recommendations on who to follow. All you have to do to get your personalized report is follow @MrTweet

9. Get used to 140 characters
That’s the limit twitter gives you, so you may find yourself editing to get your message across clearly and succinctly. Remember if you want people to retweet you, you may want to keep it even shorter (110 is a good guideline)

Also, if you want to tweet links you may want to use a URL shortening services,

• http://idek.net is my favourite because it provides stats about who clicked on your link
• http://bit.ly if you’re really serious about tracking and stats, bit.ly lets you create an account and track all your URLs.
• http://is.gd creates the shortest links, so if you’re pressed for space it’s a good choice.

There are tons of these services out there, and you can drag them onto your browser bar for easy one-click URL shortening. Also if you do decide to use Tweetdeck, it has URL shorteners built in, so it’s even easier!

8. Listening vs. Tweeting
I recommend you spend 80% of your twitter time listening to what your followers have to say, and 20% tweeting. This will help you get more benefit from those you follow and help you avoid over-tweeting.

7. Ask yourself “Who cares?”
If you are looking to build followers, ask yourself “who cares?” before you post. You want to provide value to your audience with each post. This doesn’t mean you can’t inject a little personality, but make sure you’re providing valuable information.

6. Put yourself out there!
If you want to build followers, don’t protect your updates–if someone doesn’t know you, they will not likely request to follow your updates.

5. Promote cool stuff –and not just your own.
It’s perfectly OK to post links to your blogs, or maybe a cool project you’re working on (so long as it’s of value to your followers) but don’t *only* promote your cool stuff. If someone else tweets something you like, retweet it by putting RT @[their_username] and copying and pasting the original tweet. Also if you happen across a cool web site in your daily life, tweet it!

4. Join the conversation
To reply to another user: type @ before the user name. It will automatically link to his/her profile and show up in the side bar even if he/she is not following you.

If you want to join in a hash tagged conversation, just stick # in front of an established keyword or acronym. If you want to start your own, just stick # in front of a keyword of your choosing. To follow hash tag conversations, go to search.twitter.com and search the tag (note you can search inside Tweetdeck too)

One example of a regular hash tagged discussion is #journchat it happens live on Twitter every Monday from 8 to 11 p.m. EST. You can follow the conversation here–by typing in #journchat into search.twitter.com

3. Learn three ways to tweet
Stuck on what to say? Try these common types of tweets:

• Ask a question: Twitter is great for asking question. Ask anything from “What Twitter apps would you recommend?” to “Where’s a good place for lunch in downtown Ottawa?” The larger your twitter network the more answers you’re likely to get.
• Share a resource or wisdom - Post interesting facts, tips and quotes, people love them! Also, if you find a great website, share it with your twitter network. These types of posts can really add value for your followers, so go crazy.
• Report on news and/or events - If you happen to hear/see something before it hits mainstream media, tweet about it! Some great examples of news stories broken on Twitter include the Mumbai bombings a few months back as well as the plane crash in the Hudson river.

2. Try some Twitter Apps
First and foremost, try Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows you to create groups of followers to track separately from your entire stream. For example, you may want to create a PR group that includes your classmates, profs and other PR grads on Twitter.Tweetdeck also allows you to search,
Also you can use Twitscoop to see trending topics via a ‘tweet cloud” (i.e. a cluster of words of various sizes that shows you what’s popular on Twitter)

Also, for a ridiculously exhaustive list of Twitter apps, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki. At least take a few minutes to read through what’s out there. There’s an app to do just about anything with Twitter.

1. Be yourself & have fun!
Self explanatory…

Tips for using LinkedIn

I totally agree with Andrea and strongly recommend you also join LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, and here are some tips to get the most out of using LinkedIn–which unlike Twitter, does not require a lot of time commitment–at the very least sign up, create your profile and just leave it at that, but you can do much more with it if you choose.

• Think keywords when building a profile. Like Twitter, before filling out your profile think of keywords that will describe you professionally. For example, don’t just say you’re a public relations student. Say you’re a public relations student interested in media relations, corporate communications and social media looking for work in the nonprofit or private sector. (Or whatever it is you’re interested in)
• As a general rule, only invite/connect with people you’ve met/interacted with in real life. Unlike other networks, people like to keep their LinkedIn profiles with real life contacts. Some may allow “virtual” connections, but unless you’ve heard them say it, avoid adding someone you haven’t met.
• Give–and ask–for recommendations. Personal recommendations not only help you look better, they help your profile turn up in search results. Also some LinkedIn jobs require you to have recommendations to even apply so it’s not a bad idea to ask for recommendations from former/current employers and colleagues. If you’re too shy/timid to ask, than recommend some people yourself, they just may return the favour.
• When sending an invitation to connect, write a personalized message. Unless it’s someone you know really well, take a minute to write a personalized message in the invitation. This is especially key if you’ve met someone at a networking event where they might have also met many other people, if possible mention something you spoke about. (e.g. “Hi Fred, We met recently at the Night of the Roundtables event at Algonquin College. We had a great chat about doing PR in the nonprofit industry. I’d love to connect with you & stay in touch.”)
• After collecting someone’s business card, add them on LinkedIn. Personally, I’m famous for collecting business cards and never following up (unless we discussed something to be followed up). However, now I treat LinkedIn as my personal contact database - I add someone after I meet them (with a personalized message) and then instead of digging through business cards if I need to get a hold of someone, I just look them up on LinkedIn. And *yes* almost everyone is on LinkedIn these days.

As we also discussed in class, both these tools are fabulous for promoting events and/or campaigns. However, if you start using them now–and not just when you want to promote something–you’ll be able to build a solid network of influence so that when you do want to promote something, you’ll have genuinely interested people who’ll listen and want to help you out!

Social media events in Ottawa

As great as online communication can be, it still doesn’t beat face-to-face communication. If you’re interested in social media and want to learn more, here are a few local events I’d suggest attending.

• Social Media Breakfast happens about monthly and always features an awesome speaker. Costs $10, but well worth it!
• Third Tuesday Ottawa - is a PR/social media event put on by Thornley Fallis. It’s free and always a great time. Don’t be fooled by the name though, it rarely *actually* happens on the third Tuesday. Sign up for the meetup group to get alerts when it’s happening.
• Social Media Book Club - is put on by me and Scott Lake. About every 2 months we read a book and get together in a bar to chat about it. The good news is you don’t actually have to read the book, but it helps!

Good luck with the last few weeks of your first year!