The Social Media Club of New York City (SMCNYC) hosted an event last month showcasing Ford Motor Co. on the floor of the New York International Auto show to reveal Ford’s fun, new marketing campaign for its fuel-efficient vehicle C-MAX.
Team Detroit, Ford’s agency, came up with print, TV and digital banners using the Italian “La Linea” character, but they needed social too. This is when the social group at Team Detroit stepped in to create a concept.
C-MAX Live Social Campaign
The group describes C-MAX Live by saying: “Imagine yourself in a live crowdsourced Instagram animation.” The concept they came up with integrates traditional, media, and social media in a way that hasn’t been done before by creating a live, crowdsourced animation, which is done through Instagram.
The Process Behind the Concept
Team Detroit needed to bring the “La Linea” character to life, so they decided to literally bring people into this character’s world. The group wanted to create an animation that would incorporate real people interacting with the character, but first they needed to create a story.
Team Detroit started storyboarding it out and seeing how many frames it would take to have people interacting and doing certain scenarios with the “La Linea” character. Shilo studios joined the project by doing the math that was necessary to figure out frame rates and make sure everything worked in size and scale. They had the line drawing put together into a storyboard. From that storyboard they pulled 68 individual frames that had people interacting with them. Those 68 frames were then used for traditional out-of-home buys, such as postings in malls, movie theaters, and events all over the country in their top C-MAX markets.
How People Can Interact With the C-MAX Live Boards
What they are asking people to do is to literally line their bodies up with the dotted line on the boards (see images below). Once you line yourself up with the “La Linea” character in the background, you take your picture through Instagram and apply the hashtag “C-MAX,” and through object recognition they are able to pull that animation and stitch it back together in real-time live.
You then go to a landing page and you opt-in through Instagram, and you can see yourself in the animation with people from all over the country in real-time. The animation is always dynamic and changing, so you will always see yourself but everyone else will change because it is pulling in those people from all over the country who are interacting with the boards. In addition, if you have an Instagram friend participating in a different city and at a completely different board, then you will see them in your animation.
This campaign launches on May 1 in various cities. Here is a list of the cities, along with a link to the animation: social.ford.com/cmaxlive
Whether you’re a reporter, blogger, author or other content creator, ProfNet can help you with your search for expert sources. You can send a query to tens of thousands of experts and PR agents, search the more than 60,000 profiles on ProfNet Connect, or get timely experts and story ideas by email — all for free! Need help getting started? Email us at profnet@profnet.com.
Written by Polina Opelbaum, editor of ProfNet, a service that helps journalists connect with expert sources. To read more from Polina, check out her blog on ProfNet Connect.
Last Thursday, Social Media Club NYC met to discuss the topic of social media measurement. Doh Young Jung, data scientist at Brandwatch, was one of the speakers at the event. The second speaker was Martin Murtland, vice president of platform management at PR Newswire. The moderator for the evening was Howard Greenstein, president and organizer of SMCNYC.
Q: What is your role in your company?
Murtland: I am responsible for developing the roadmap for a lot of the products. Some interesting research is that 56 percent of brands and agencies are equating the value of their social media activities to their business outcomes. So we need to know how to show businesses the value of what they are doing with their social media activities. I am a firm believer that the key to this is for practitioners to talk the language of business, which isn’t necessarily talking about all the metrics you can have but more about trying to understand how you can link to those metrics with what you are trying to achieve from a business perspective.
Jung: I am part of the analytics team. We do a lot of consulting services with clients, and we try to help them understand social media as well as how to use our tools better. In addition, I do a great deal of reporting for clients when they have specific social media questions.
Q: What are we talking about when we say social media measurement?
Murtland: It goes back to what you are trying to achieve from a business perspective. You can look at it like a marketing funnel which you flip over, and then you have to push your leads through the different areas. And you have to work very hard to get them through. Try to think about what you are doing with your campaigns; what metrics are appropriate in each of those general areas, as well as what you are trying to do inside the marketing funnel. For me, it is important to look at where the industry is going and what companies are doing to create these tools to enable users.
Jung: Our goal is to always deliver relevant content in a timely manner. When we talk about relevance it is about understanding our client’s objectives in terms of the data that they want and knowing when they need that data. We always want to make sure that our tool is easy for the practitioner to use and the reporting is easy to understand. Many of our clients come from PR and marketing agencies, and then we also support their clients. In addition, we have some larger financial clients that use social media monitoring for their product offerings.
Q: Why is social media measurement more difficult than just turning on these tools that you offer and letting them do the work?
Murtland: The software providers know part of the puzzle but it also takes work on behalf of the user to understand what issue they are trying to solve. It is important to know what you want to achieve consistently over time. One of the key things from a measurement perspective is to benchmark yourself. Don’t worry so much about what metric you use in the beginning, but try to benchmark what are you doing — otherwise you will not know what’s having an impact and improving. If you are able to do it well then include in your benchmark some of your competitors. You want to try to create reference points to see how well you are doing. From there you can think about what kind of metrics you can cover and what metrics you should be covering from a business perspective. Then look for an overlap between these two groups of metrics, and that should be the metrics you use.
Q: You (Jung) are a data scientist, so what is the science of what you are doing?
Jung: We deal a lot with numbers. We do want to show the different trends going on with social media data. As companies start to collect this type of data and look into it, the more accurate of a vision they can have of relating it back to their business purposes, such as the their marketing or financial results.
Q: Do you consult with companies about the purpose of the stats they are collecting?
Murtland: We do have a team for that. The first question to ask is: What are you trying to achieve from a business perspective? No metric or tool will resolve your business problem, you have to start by identifying the problem and then let everything else drive it.
Jung: Our starting point for every discussion is helping clients ask the right question. For example, if there is a case where a company is starting with zero awareness about whatever they are releasing then we have to do competitive research. So if they are releasing something on the market that already has competitors, we go into competitive data sets and see how they are doing in the market and then we tell the client what the competitor is doing successfully or wrong. This gives them some type of strategy.
Q: Now that we have established a baseline and know what business goal we are trying to achieve with our social, what’s next?
Murtland: The next step is to understand some kind of cause and effect. It is important to log and record the type of activities you have been doing. You want to show that what you are doing is actually driving the change.
Q: Can you have a tool where you are can both send out your social and measure it?
Murtland: We have a product that is an engagement console where you are able to track some of your activities. Likewise we have different tools for more earned media. You are able to log your activities in there.
Jung: We started out as a monitoring tool, so that is our core focus. We have seen more requests for engagement, and this is an area we want to venture into.
Q: Not all the networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) make their metrics available, so how do you bring all this stuff together into one global picture that you can start to understand as a marketer?
Murtland: Work out what metrics you can measure and what metrics you should be measuring. The other thing to try to validate is where that data is coming from and what it means. I think there is a lot of jargon and ways to express different things, so try to understand it.
Q: How do you view a single metric vs. combo metrics, because the combo metrics seem more accessible?
Jung: It depends on your business goals. Also different types of clients have different things they are more interested in, so there is no one easy formula. PR agencies are more interested in influencer identification, which is trying to identify whether a tweet from a personal account is different than a tweet from a more influential account. They want to find those Twitter handles that have more influence and impact on social media.
Q: How do you determine what is influential for that particular brand?
Murtland: What is important to me is the contextual influence, so what is the person’s domain and whether they are influencers around that. You can also check if they are an influencer by seeing if their followers are active; look for retweets.
Jung: Our tool can collect historical data as far back as two-and-a-half years. We begin by identifying Twitter handles or any sort of users that mention a relevant brand or marketing campaign topic. We then delve into what they are posting about and look for the topic in their conversation.
Q: How much semantic or sentiment analysis are you doing, and how do you decide if it makes any sense?
Jung: We do have built-in universal sentiment engines and they are based on things like swear words. We are able to customize syntax and understand the language better of certain conversations that have been surrounding positive or negative topics. We can manually change the rules, tweak it, and make sentiment more reliable.
Murtland: There are a couple things you want from a sentiment tool. They are: 1) automated sentiment, looking and analyzing large volumes of content and identifying trends inside it; 2) manually being able to override the scores.
Q: What do we need to do next to tie what we are doing (getting inquiries, selling products, etc.) to some sort of a business metric?
Murtland: You need to start by looking at the peaks and troughs, and try to see if there is a correlation between them. You can try to see the causes and effects that are happening and the correlations, then you can begin understanding and seeing what’s working and not working. Do more of what’s working and less of what’s not working. Repeat and then see the effect.
Jung: As a company becomes increasingly savvy about social data, one thing they can do is set a target to reach. For a lot of PR agencies, the target is often key message penetration. They want to see that a message they crafted is actually being delivered through social media to the audience that they want to reach. An increase in key message penetration has resulted in positive/negative business performance.
Q: How do you keep out confounding data? An example of this was when the “Old Spice Guy” first came out and there was a huge spike in sales, but then someone noted that P&G had a major couponing campaign going on.
Jung: Our entire app is based on Boolean, so if we see a peak we are able to delve into it. We can cut it out and see what the marketing volume was about as well as the coupon conversation. Then we look at the relationship there, and if we see both things increasing then that can mean both have worked.
You can watch a video of the event here:
(If you’re unable to view the video on this page, please go to: youtu.be/TXGg6rXLMcs)
Whether you’re a reporter, blogger, author or other content creator, ProfNet can help you with your search for expert sources. You can send a query to tens of thousands of experts and PR agents, search the more than 60,000 profiles on ProfNet Connect, or get timely experts and story ideas by email — all for free! Need help getting started? Email us at profnet@profnet.com.
Written by Polina Opelbaum, editor of ProfNet, a service that helps journalists connect with expert sources. To read more from Polina, check out her blog on ProfNet Connect.
“Content We Love” is a weekly feature written by a team of our content specialists. We’re showcasing some of the great content distributed through our channels, and our content specialists are up for the task: they spend a lot of time with the press releases and other content our customers create, proof reading and formatting it, suggesting targeted distribution strategy and offering SEO advice. In Content We Love, we’re going to shine the spotlight on the press releases and other messages that stood out to us, and we’ll tell you why. We hope you find the releases enjoyable and the insights gained from discussing them enlightening.
Visibility and Press Releases.
In a world driven by SEO and multimedia, crafting a story to stand out can seem daunting. In music, many songs rely on a “hook.” This is what captivates the audience in a reasonable and simple way to maintain attention.
When I saw Elmer’s release introducing a new glue made from natural ingredients, I found the hook. It was pure music to my eyes.
Between the crafty headline and the multiple images, this release provided multiple elements we’re positively stuck on.
Headline: With many search engines indexing only the first 65 characters and other sites displaying the headline alone, it is imperative to stick up for your story and stand out.
Not only is the headline within the guidelines, it fulfills the three-prong search rule.
Three-prong search rule?
Have three key words/phrases to summarize the entire release. This will make it searchable and thus increase your visibility.
These key words/phrases will appear throughout the release and in the headline.
(*fun hunt: perform a search on your own releases by finding the words you think are most important to tell/summarize your story. Can you find your news?)
Images: We live in a world of images. Visuals aid in sharing the news and giving a tangible context to the words.
Including images on your release not only make the story “pop” but also showcase the story through a different platform. Our visual world demands visuals and with Elmer’s introduction of a new product, the imagery sticks with you.
How does adding images increase your visibility?
Our eyes are glued to pictures.
The target audience will automatically check out the images if images are available. PR Newswire’s analytics found that adding just one image increases the visibility 1.8X.
Press releases take your news on an adventure. It travels across search engines, consumers, the media, and more. Remember to add a headline with a hook and imagery to captivate attention.
Thanks to Elmer’s(R) Products, Inc. for providing a release we’re glued to.
The Social Media Club NYC event began with a quick discussion of any new tools or websites in the social media industry, as per usual.
Vine, the mobile app by Twitter, is an amazing tool and you can do a lot of things in a six-second video. Even Tribeca Film Festival is holding a Vine competition.
Shutterstock introduced Spectrum, which is a tool that categorizes and catalogs all of their images by color.
TaskRabbit is a helpful tool for making reservations and completing errands.
Google Reader is shutting down. However, Listly has a crowdsourced list of RSS readers instead of Google Reader. And so far, Feedly has been the most popular option and has received the most attention.
There is a new app called Mailbox that is replacing Apple Mail. This app doesn’t help if you like to put your stuff into labels and organize your email, but it is useful if you just want to get rid of mail. Warning: There is a very long list of people waiting to download the app.
Another email app called BirdsEye was built specifically for tablet use, and is based on your Gmail.
Tempo app connects with your accounts and shows information about your schedule for the day in either a calendar or list view. It is a very useful tool if you have a meeting, because it will provide you with all the information for that meeting on one screen.
Past SXSW Experience
It was interesting to see how SXSW had a dedicated health track. It was especially interesting how everyone was embracing Quantified Self-Improvement. Quantified Self-Improvement is self-tracking by using data for a specific purpose, i.e., tracking your sleep pattern, steps taken, foods eaten.
Great show for everyone to get together and learn about the different trends.
This Year’s SXSW Experience
A lot of the show is about meeting up with people on the fly. It is difficult to plan prior to the event and the sessions are very booked. You need to make sure to get to the sessions 30-60 minutes before each one.
You meet many great people at the show, especially in places that are a little quieter and less crowded.
There is something for everyone at the show, and you can make it what you want it to be.
Here is a post on how to prepare for SXSW by Tim McDonald, community manager at HuffPost live: bit.ly/15L11fj
If you look at SXSW as a festival vs. conference and go for the people, then it is a great place to go. McDonald said, “It is the utopia of networking.”
What Trends Were Present at SXSW
MakerBot: Many people talked about MakerBot, which is a 3D printing device that lets your print 3D shapes in plastic. MakerBot comes with many pre-made shapes and things that you can utilize as well as easy 3D tools.
Google Glass: People talked about Google Glasses, but nobody saw any pairs at the show.About Google Glass:Google’s Glasses allow for an unobtrusive interactive experience. The glasses make it possible to be engaged in the moment while experiencing the digital aspect of it. Mark Hurst wrote a post about the dangers of Google Glasses, which discusses another side to these glasses. Watch this video to learn more about Google Glass:bit.ly/X6tgXy
Multimedia Screens: There were unique things going on with multimedia screens and view prompting based on various social actions. For example, the Twitter party had screens up on a wall and you could make a rocketship fly by if you tweeted a specific hashtag.
Near Field Communication (NFC): There was a lot of NFC at the show. Samsung was really promoting NFC, and they set it up so you could use it to get into VIP and some of the lounge parties.
Car Service Apps: Uber and SideCar are services you can use to “virtual hail” to get a car to pick you up, and they were big at the show. The HAIL A CAB™ app was another great service which enabled you to find a nearby taxi.
Quantified Self: An example of Quantified Self is Fitbit. The added social aspect of these apps and devices help reinforce the tracking of your heath, which can be a good type of social pressure that helps you stay on track. Social is a big part of medical adherence, so tracking of health can really help enable people digitally.
Memes: The Grumpy Cat hashtag trended more than anything else that was tech-based. The obsession with memes may come from people automatically connecting because they all recognize the meme. Also, memes are something anyone can do and start.
People were often looking for places to charge their devices at the show. There were lounges at the show where you could charge up. In addition, one solution for this issue are the Duracell portable power packs.
Trends Not Seen at SXSW
There were no Windows tablets seen at the show.
The Leap Motion Controller is a company that creates a gesture-based interface for computers, and the product wasn’t really seen at SXSW.
There wasn’t anything different mentioned at the show regarding Social TV. Social should be an integral part for reality TV shows, but it really isn’t.
Other Interesting Discussions from the SMCNYC Event
Warby Parker allows you to buy glasses and you are also buying glasses for someone in the developing world. The glasses, which are typically plastic, come to you in the mail and you can chose a pair you like from the 3-5 options. You send the other ones back. They even have a Web interface where you take a picture of yourself and you can see how you look in the different frames before you even order.
Pebble is a watch that connects to your Android or iPhone, and one of things it does is show you who is calling when a call comes through and lets you answer on your watch. You basically don’t have to take your phone out of your pocket because you have the watch on your wrist. It pairs with your phone and uses its data. It is another alternate display.
There is a privacy issue where people don’t read any “terms and conditions,” and then this causes a real fear in users over their lack of privacy. For example, loyalty cards can track what you bought and where you bought your items, but at the same it is purposeful for marketing. If you want to see who is tracking you in real-time you can download a Firefox add-on called Collusion. This add-on will tell you everywhere and to who you’re information is being reported after visiting a site. You can also use Private Internet Access, which will make the VPN appear in nine different countries and zones in the U.S. It tunnels your IP address to another place in the world and comes out the other side. The Onion Router (TOR) is another service that makes it difficult to track your information.
Whether you’re a reporter, blogger, author or other content creator, ProfNet can help you with your search for expert sources. You can send a query to tens of thousands of experts and PR agents, search the more than 60,000 profiles on ProfNet Connect, or get timely experts and story ideas by email — all for free! Need help getting started? Email us at profnet@profnet.com.
Written by Polina Opelbaum, editor of ProfNet, a service that helps journalists connect with expert sources. To read more from Polina, check out her blog on ProfNet Connect.
Blog Notes is a weekly helping of blogs recently reviewed on PR Newswire for Bloggers. Would you like your blog reviewed? Tweet PR Newswire media relations manager Christine Cube at @PRN4Bloggers.
TV Fanatic is a big source for TV news, reviews, spoilers, photos, and information. “Our team of writers and programmers work around the clock to bring readers the latest stories, pics and quotes from the most popular shows on the air,” says the blog. TV Fanatic covers spoilers, exclusives, clips, casting news, and caption contests. Content is overseen by editor-in-chief Matt Richenthal, whose favorite shows include Lost, Modern Family, Friday Night Lights, and Dexter. TV Fanatic is owned and operated by Mediavine Inc., an Internet marketing company that specializes in entertainment-themed sites. It also has 866K likes on Facebook. Read the full review on PR Newswire for Bloggers here.
The word “oblivious” in the name of the financial blog Oblivious Investor might sound like a bad thing. This might imply a lack of knowledge or awareness. But in this blog, being oblivious is not a bad thing at all. The author’s goal is to direct readers’ attention away from day-to-day obsessions of the market. Be oblivious to that, and you’ll be ok. Additionally, if you diversify your portfolio and minimize costs, you’ll be even better off. The Oblivious Investor is written by Mike Piper. He’s married and lives in St. Louis. Read the full review here.
Stylonylon is the whimsical personal style, fashion and lifestyle blog of London freelancer Julia Rebaudo. Rebaudo has written for different media outlets, including Time Out, Elle and The Guardian. She says her blog is a “mixture of beautiful things that have caught my eye, interviews, occasional fashion news (new collections, trend & outfit collages, various edits), outfit posts, photography chat and Instagram pics” with an east London focus. It’s a fairly young blog, started last spring 2012. Already, Stylonylon has built quite a following with roughly 10,000 pageviews monthly, up from 1,000 pageviews just last October. Read the full review here.
fiveRemedies.com is dedicated to helping folks heal naturally with simple home remedies. It’s an interesting site, and it covers a lot of territory. In addition to remedies, other content includes organic living, herbal remedies, alternative medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, and other forms of alternative and complementary medication. FiveRemedies.com is an online media firm owned by GoodWebDomains. There are no bylines or names attached to the extensive write ups on health issues. But it’s pretty cool what the site has to say about various ailments. Here’s one that I found interesting: Natural remedies for muscle strain and sprain. Read the full review here.
Christine Cube is a media relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. You can follow her at @cpcubeor see what’s happening over at @PRN4Bloggers.
“Content We Love” is a weekly feature written by a team of our content specialists. We’re showcasing some of the great content distributed through our channels, and our content specialists are up for the task: they spend a lot of time with the press releases and other content our customers create, proof reading and formatting it, suggesting targeted distribution strategy and offering SEO advice. In Content We Love, we’re going to shine the spotlight on the press releases and other messages that stood out to us, and we’ll tell you why. We hope you find the releases enjoyable and the insights gained from discussing them enlightening.
What Can You Do in 90 Seconds? Through Pushups for Charity, in 90 Seconds you can make a life-changing impact on the lives of veterans healing from a variety of physical and emotional wounds. Pushups for Charity is an annual fitness competition which aims to raise $1 million to support the mission of the Boot Campaign. Your participation will provide Housing, Jobs, Wellness, Urgent Assistance and Family Support to wounded service members, past and present, through the Boot Campaign. http://www.PushupsForCharity.com
A hard workout with sweat dripping from your brow.
In the name of fitness, we push ourselves to new levels and new goals. If you’re anything like me, you feel the best pushing yourself physically to new feats.
The story itself captures the attention with the proper use of bolding.
Why be so bold?
Written word differs from spoken word (obviously) but there are key important details within a story. The solution? Emphasize the important details in text with bolding.
What is bolded in this press release?
Pushups for Charity
aims to raise $1 million to fulfill the mission of the Boot Campaign
May 18, 2013
Visit www.PushupsForCharity.com to search for a Pushups for Charity event being held in your community
Showcasing the major points, The Boot Campaign made the details jump off the page using bolding. Highlight the main points of your story in the release and aid the viewer with the key points to remember!
The release also featured multimedia aspects which took the story from pumping iron to pumping gold.
With the knowledge that multimedia not only increases visibility but also leaves a lasting impression, how imperative it is to add these components!
*But why include a video WITH a release?
Not only does video attract viewership, gain visibility, and tell the story,
but it expands your reach.
Different websites house and host different types of content. There will be websites reposting just the text, the images, and some will post solely a video.
Reaching different audiences through different platforms is visibility multiplication.
No matter the story, adding key bolding and multimedia components win the gold, 90 seconds or less.
Big thanks to The Boot Campaign for sharing your release with us!
Author Scott Mozarsky is PR Newswire’s Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance yesterday that permits public companies to disclose material information such as earnings through social channels — such as Facebook and Twitter – as long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information. The SEC guidance related to an investigation that it has completed concerning a post by Reed Hastings (Netflix’s CEO) on his personal Facebook page that contained material information regarding Netflix’s performance.
So, is the SEC guidance a good thing or a bad thing, and what is impact do we expect this guidance to have on disclosure and the investing public?
We believe fact that the SEC is embracing social media and encouraging companies to use social channels to disseminate information is a very good thing. Companies benefit by disclosing information as broadly as possible. Using social channels in addition to company websites and press releases to distribute material information ensures more engagement with a broader audience. In fact, PR Newswire is encouraging our customers and other public companies to complement their disclosure of material information by using social channels in addition to press releases, their websites, emails, etc.
That said, similar to the guidance that the SEC provided regarding web disclosure back in 2008, yesterday’s statement by the SEC was ambiguous and could be read to permit disclosure of material non-public information solely through social channels. This would not be a good thing for companies, investors, capital markets, analysts, traders, journalists, or anyone else with a stakes in public companies. We believe it is highly unlikely that companies will use social channels as their sole means of disclosing material information. Doing so would limit severely limit the audience.
What does this mean for our customers?
The SEC has clearly stated that the purpose of Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure) is to promote broad and simultaneous disclosure of material information. Investors should have an even playing field. Selective disclosure is not a good thing and is prohibited by Reg FD. Given that the internet and social channels have become a central part of everyone’s lives, the SEC wants to encourage companies to use their web sites as a core part of their overall disclosure strategy and this now extends to social media.
Companies that use their websites as the sole means of disclosure run the risk of uneven disclosure that disadvantages certain types of investors. The SEC has been clear that the idea that investors might have to go and look for the information rather than getting it through a broader distribution is far from ideal. The SEC has also previously noted that some investors don’t have easy access to the Web. Additionally, law firms have consistently been advising their clients that the only way that such clients can be certain that they are meeting their disclosure obligations is to push the information to investors using press releases and other online distribution.
For more on the implications and risks of this ruling for the financial markets and investing public, please see Scott’s discussion on the Building Investor Compliance blog titled, “PR Newswire applauds SEC guidance on social media.”
Blog Notes is a weekly helping of blogs recently reviewed on PR Newswire for Bloggers. Would you like your blog reviewed? Tweet PR Newswire media relations manager Christine Cube at @PRN4Bloggers.
I find blogs everywhere. This blog candidate arrived by mail – a catalog from Design Within Reach. The content caught my eye pretty quickly. Then I noticed the blog URL. Design Notes is a look at beautiful architecture, stylish things, and interesting people. I also happen to appreciate the writing in this blog. The most recent piece posted by Gwendolyn Horton was on location with architect Michael P. Johnson. In the post, Johnson says, “One percent of buildings are architecture. The rest are just stuff.” Read the full review on PR Newswire for Bloggers here.
A Daily Pinch is a lifestyle blog written by “an over-achieving, list-making, gets it done gal.” The voice and brain behind it is Lisa Frame, a digital media strategist and community manager who manages the Toyota Women Influencers Network for the Clever Girls Collective, according to the blog. She’s been blogging since 2002. Her most recent post is entitled, Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer is My Life Analogy. “I’m not content to sit back and let life happen around or to me,” Frame says in her post. Read the full review here.
Booked is the “random, specific and bemused” travel blog of Amy Welborn. One day, while pouring over upcoming writing assignments, Welborn decided she’d much rather be a travel blogger. So she started writing. Then she started traveling. And she kept on writing. It’s worth noting that this site is not a travel advice site. There aren’t many recommendations, either. This is rather an online repository for Welborn’s travels. She also doesn’t do pay for play. In her own words: ”What I won’t do – and you can depend on this – is do product-sponsored posts or reviews of items or accommodations that have been provided to me. It is just not going to happen. You can trust that everything I experience here has been paid for by me.” Read the full review here.
The Doctor’s Tablet features “reflections from the frontlines of science and medicine.” It’s mostly written by faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University ”about what it’s like to be a physician in today’s rapidly changing world.” This includes the latest in biomedical research, medical education, and health policy, according to the blog. Editing the blog is a team of two: Paul Moniz, managing director of communications and marketing, and David Flores, social media manager. Read the full review here.
Christine Cube is a media relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. You can follow her at @cpcubeor see what’s happening over at @PRN4Bloggers.
Sending a message in a bottle across the ocean, hoping for it to be found by someone faraway, is an idea as old as the Ancient Greeks. Christopher Columbus did it, NASA has done it, The Police sang about it. We all recognize the romance, the adventure and the endless possibilities of communicating with the unknown. So it was only a matter of time before a message in a bottle got its own Twitter account: @solosoftdrink.
Norwegian soft drink company Solo has launched the World’s Largest Message in a Bottle into the Atlantic from the island of Tenerife. Their perfect press release combination of a fun story, great images and an accompanying Multimedia News Release made sure that a good idea caught all of the attention it deserved.
Click on this image to access the full multimedia press release for Solo’s Message in a Bottle campaign.
The best content has to quickly grab readers’ attention as you have only around ten seconds to convince them to keep looking. Solo’s use of images in this release is a perfect example of engaging content. People will want to see the largest bottle in the world, and get answers to: “How big is the world’s largest bottle?” “Will it float?” “How will it sail?” Note the dramatic Norwegian icescape, the promising ocean blue and the magnificently over-sized bottle.
The videos are action-packed, showing exactly how you go about building a two and a half ton bottle complete with a 12m2 letter, satellite tracking technology and the ability to survive the Atlantic Ocean. Then there’s the glamour footage – the sun soaked island, and the inevitable presence of Miss Tenerife, who obliged by falling off the bottle and getting a soaking.
This story will run and run, thanks to clever use of social media. The bottle is live tweeting its journey across the ocean and fans can chart progress on Solo’s great looking Facebook page. Additionally, on the MNR an Instagram widget displays Solo bottles in attractive and fun settings, making the page even more visual and interactive so viewers are more likely to click the Follow button. These are all great examples of engaging people with a campaign and letting them have their say, which is essential if you want readers to stay interested in what you have to say to them.
Author Andrew Woodall is one of PR Newswire’s social media ambassadors and is MNR & operations manager for the PR Newswire EMEA team based in London.
Would you like to know what’s happening around the world, in real-time? Search Twitter for “WTF was that,” says Andy Carvin, senior strategist at NPR’s Social Media Desk. It’s a common question people will tweet in the event of an earthquake, for example.
Andy Carvin (NPR), Ayman Mohyeldin (NBC News), Meredith Artley (CNN Digital) and Jim Frederick (Time International)
Carvin was on a panel at SXSW which discussed how media organizations are approaching news gathering in a real-time world. Others on the panel included Jim Frederick, Editor, Time International, Meredith Artley, Managing Editor, CNN Digital, and Ayman Mohyeldin, foreign correspondent for NBC News based in Egypt.
Of course you’ll get lots of tweets and lots of twitterers during a natural disaster, but that’s where traditional journalism tactics come into play. Carvin figures out who his trusted sources are and puts them into a Twitter list (brilliant!), then proceeds to collect information and verify. “You end up using a lot more sources,” he said, “and you have to figure out which characters work best in that moment.”
One problem brought up by Frederick which is prevalent during major news events like Hurricane Sandy is all the misinformation and outright lies that can go viral via social media. Think of the fake photos that were being tweeted and posted during Sandy, like sharks swimming in the flooded streets of Manhattan.
Mohyeldin offered that the public has a certain responsibility along with the media, especially when they have the power to instantly feed bad information to hundreds or thousands of people via Twitter and other social networks. “You have choice as a user to decide what you trust and you should be responsible in reposting things.”
And what of the responsibility of governments and others that hold great power in controlling how information gets shared?
“The first couple of days of the Egyptian Revolution cell phone connection was cut off by the government,” said Mohyeldin. But governments have become wise to the power of social media and are now using it to communicate with the masses, and surely to ‘listen.’ “You wonder how the regimes 2.0 will use these tools.”
But back to news organizations, what are the social media tools they see making a splash in how news is reported in the future?
Carvin gave a brilliant answer to this question. “Whatever gives critical mass the opportunity to have a voice.” How true. A tool can only be powerful when it empowers the people. And that’s where the stories come from.
And what about money? “Can news organizations monetize social media?” asked Frederick.
Artley said this is a subject that is frequently brought up. “Social media attracts new audiences and that is value. Also, clients and advertisers want to do business with companies that are doing things in the social space.”
Carvin added that rank and file journalists now have to think about the money side of journalism more and more. They use their personal brands to promote their work and the organizations they work for. They drive traffic.
Does this mean news organizations have a claim on a journalist’s personal social media accounts?
“That was a conversation that happened years ago when Twitter was new,” said Carvin. A personal Twitter account has the value to the brand of helping to drive traffic, but it still belongs to the individual journalist. “Authenticity [offered by personal brands] can pay off dividends.”
“We have a vibrant social media team that projects an experience, what it’s like to be a reporter,” said Mohyeldin. “That is translated into viewership.”
But social media has also given new power to the audience. They have greater awareness and expectations.
“Social has broken new grounds, we now can be exposed if we’re not covering events, conflicts around the world,” said Mohyeldin.
But the most interesting change social media has caused in the newsroom is in how they start their day. They listen to the audience.
“When we meet in the morning, we talk about what people are talking about in social and what is trending,” said Artley. “We also find stories that way which are unique and we wouldn’t have heard about in another way.”
This of course leads us back to how the panel started, with Carvin speaking of using social to learn what is happening in real-time during a major news event. Social as a listening tool seems to have the greatest impact of all for the media.
What impact has social media had on how you do your job?
Victoria Harres is Director of Audience Development at PR Newswire, the main voice behind @PRNewswire, social media lead for @Business4Better and a frequent speaker and writer on social media for business.
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