Tag Archives: SXSW

Social Media Club NYC Recap: A NXNE Roundup of SXSW

Posted on April 9, 2013 by | Leave a comment

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.

images courtesy of Stephanie Grayson

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.

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Applying Android Design Vision to Communications

Posted on March 19, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Android UXOne of the best things about SxSW is hearing the people behind the products and services,we use today detail their journeys, providing a behind-the-scenes view of the thinking and processes that went into product design.  A session I attended featured two of Android’s leading ladies in UX and design, and they revealed the principles they used to focus their design on people

Speakers Helena Roeber and Rachel Garb are two of the driving forces behind Google’s Android platform. Rober spearheaded Android’s user experience for the last five years, and Garb, who leads leads interaction design for Android apps at Google, summarized their people-oriented design vision simply: Enchant Me. Simplify My Life. Make Me Amazing.

Android UX3

Roeber and Garb found that design affects emotion and we now have an opportunity/responsibility as developers to tap into the emotions of our users in a positive way. When they created the vision, they intentionally created this in the first person so that it reflected the vision of their users, not of themselves. “We wanted to speak more to people’s hearts [with our designs]“, Roeber said.

I found this to be very interesting as this was a new concept for me.  As a product manager we often get caught up in the nuts and bolts of our product that we sometimes forget what the main goal should be: how are users feel when they interact with it.  Garb pointed out that for every interaction that triggers a negative emotion, 3 positive ones must be offered to lift your user back up.  People tend to blame themselves when things go wrong with technology.  So what Garb and Roeber did was look at the negative emotions through a year-long study of observations called the “Android Baseline Study” and asked themselves how they could turn these into positive principles and to use these principles to create beautiful, usable and innovative design.  They realized that little annoyances had the power to destroy all the magic you’ve created.

Example:  Feedback: Users tend to be overwhelmed by too many options and limitless flexibility.

Turned into the principle:  Only show what I need, when I need it.

They went on to contextually explain each principle and how they came to be and it was quite interesting, but in the end, it made sense!  Why wouldn’t positive emotions reflect a better user experience?   It even opened up my eyes to how things are phrased and worded in the user interface.  Android refuses to use the phrase “Are you sure?” in their UI because it invokes a negative emotion by placing doubt or uncertainty on the user.

What I also liked was that it wasn’t just about stimulating positive emotions, but individual emotions based solely on the things that are important to me.  In a world full of so much information being thrown at you from so many different directions, connecting to your user on an individual level is more important than ever!

Google Now, the newest technology launching from the Android team that was announced at SXSW was created using these principles.  It goes beyond any traditional method and applies the “Delight Me in Surprising Ways” principle on a whole new level by automatically pulling information that is important to you only by learning who you are.  What’s the weather like where you are?  What’s the traffic situation for your commute to work? What’s your favorite coffee shop, here’s a coupon. No preferences need to be made, it gets to know you and learns your habits.  This allows it to adjust to you and only shows you what’s important to you. The cool thing is that it reconfigures each time so it won’t remember old habits if things have changed in your life!

So what does this mean?  As a product person, this definitely gives me some guidelines in how to approach the decisions we make on how to make our products better.  So the next time we  are looking at what next new innovative feature should be applied to our product or what next NEW product we should develop, we’ll pose this question as our clients — Are you enchanting us? Are you simplifying our lives? Are you making us amazing? And remember the emotion involved when it comes to our users!

Resource: Design Principles: 
http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.html

Author Erika Kash is an online services product manager with MultiVu, a PR Newswire company.

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Common Themes from the Content & Distribution Track at SXSWi 2013

Posted on March 14, 2013 by | Leave a comment

This year’s programming for South By Southwest featured an entire track devoted to the subjects of content and distribution.   The sessions in that track varied wildly from ultra-tactical (“How to Rank Better in Google and Bing,”) to the esoteric (“#CatVidFest: Is This the End of Art?”) Despite the wild array of subject matter and expertise that are the hallmarks of SxSW Interactive, common themes did emerge over the course of the conference, and communicators should take note.

Don’t forget we’re talking about human behavior.

In addition to the hundreds of panels devoted to the discussion of storytelling and other content tactis, the Interactive program also devoted considerable space to user experience design (“UXD”) and different aspects of psychology.  Why?  Because ultimately, marketing communications exist to influence human behavior.   Sitting in sessions that picked apart the psychology of habits, the social behaviors that drive the rapid spread of a meme across social channels or discussed how YouTube’s treatment of comments encourages troll-like behavior among those commenting on videos really drove this fact home.

The discussion of what makes media spread in the panel titled “Spreadable Media,” offers a profound example.  Think about it: we sit in front of our screens, and an avalanche of Tweets, Facebook posts, links in emails and other content floods our attention.  As human beings, we make specific choices about that content. What’s worth passing along, and to whom?  And in which channel?  And as part of what conversation?

“If we just think in terms of going viral, we’re not treating the audience as having social agency or cultural effect,” one of the panelists (I didn’t catch which, though I captured the quote verbatim) noted. “We strip away the politics of what goes viral.”  Simply referring to a piece of media as “viral” in nature glosses over the choices that went into mobilizing the material, which means that we overlook the very mechanics of the message, and what caused it to resonate with the audience.  And I think that any marketer can agree, that is stuff worth knowing.

Content needs to be quality.  Everything else is a waste of time, and can injure your brand.   

There are myriad reasons why it’s important to be selective about what you publish – and that message was emphasized in a variety of sessions.  Quality content that’s useful to the audience generates the kind of engagement signals (e.g. time on page, click-throughs, shares) that search engines notice.  The same sort of quality content is that that is most likely to spread and augment your brand’s image and credibility.

It turns out that the downside to publishing content that doesn’t make the grade with the audience isn’t simply a waste of time.   Lightweight content that doesn’t deliver value to the reader will cause visitors to “bounce” (immediately leave) from a web page, sending a negative signal to the ever-vigilant search engines.   Bad content can also result an active departure from the brand audience, by motivating people to disassociate from the brand by un-liking or un-following social presences, or unsubscribing from an email newsletter.   Content for content’s sake is a bad idea.  It won’t trigger the human behavior you’re after, which in turn won’t result in the search engine ranking the brand desires.

Now that you’re back home and have had a chance to unpack – both your luggage and your brain – what were the theme that stood out to you at South By this year?

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

Want to make your media spread?  PR Newswire can distribute your content — text, images, video and any combination thereof — to digital audiences both broad and narrow.

 

 

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SXSW: Forget Stories. Your Brand Needs a Narrative.

Posted on March 12, 2013 by | 12 Comments

If you’ve spent any time at all recently reading PR and marketing blogs, you know that storytelling is a top trend, and for good reason.  Building storytelling into the communications mix delivers the personable and engaging messaging that sticks with audiences and is effective fodder for social content consumption.

However, at SXSW yesterday, I learned where stories fall short in a brilliant presentation titled “Moving from Story to Narrative,” by John Hagel, author of “The Power of Pull” and co-chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge.

The problem with stories, Hagel argued, stems from the fact that they’re not participatory.   Stories are told to the reader, from the vantage point of the teller.  This leads to the next problem.  Stories eventually end, and the reader moves on to other things.  Now, savvy marketers reading this will say to themselves that those other things can be influenced by providing compelling calls to action, streams of related nurturing content or the ability to participate an adjacent community.   Without a doubt, this is all true, but even the best CTAs don’t work all of the time.

Enter the narrative.

Narratives differ from stories in two important ways, according to Hagel.  First, narratives don’t have an end.  They are open ended, and the resolution is yet to be determined.  Secondly, narratives invite participation.   The inherent message isn’t “Listen” — it’s “Join.”

“Narratives motivate actions,” Hagel noted in his presentation.  “In some cases, they motivate life and death choices.  Stories don’t do this.  Every powerful movement that has impacted our world has been shaped and energized by a potent narrative.”

The “Think Different” slogan from Apple beautifully encapsulated the company’s narrative: how technology and intuitive design can enable people to achieve  more. As Hagel said, Apple founders Jobs and Wozniak thought differently from day one.

  • Apple:  Their charge to “Think Different” isn’t about Apple.  It’s about us, and how we can use technology to achieve more.  Apple is the catalyst.
  • Christianity:  People are born in sin, but have the opportunity to be saved.  How things turn out isn’t known, but it will be determined by people’s choices and actions.
  • The American dream — Anyone from anywhere can achieve anything:  This opportunity expressed in this narrative has drawn people from all over the world to America for hundreds of years.

“In a business context, if you can harness the power of narrative, you can derive competitive advantage,” said Hagel.  Narratives work because they don’t simply motivate employees, they can galvanize a broad swath of people, and inspire them to action.

From campaign to context

I took pages and pages of notes during Hagel’s presentation, even winning kudos for speed and thoroughness from the reporter sitting next to me in the audience.  For the last 24 hours, I’ve been noodling on what he said, thinking about how a brand might start to embrace narratives.  As Hagel mentioned in his presentation, narratives take root organically, growing from the actions of people, and they evolve over time.  They aren’t the product of a brainstorm session, so this post won’t contain Tips for Making Narratives Work for Your Brand or anything like that.

However, there are strong parallels between Hagel’s description of the narrative, and the move we’re seeing in marketing away from episodic campaigns, and toward living brand streams.  The clear message is that today’s audiences crave context, and communicators can derive more power for their brands by providing that important framework.

I’m going to go away and think about the narratives emerging within my company, and my industry, certainly. However, I’m also going to be thinking long and hard about the connective tissue content generates, and how that can be used to create context around opportunities.  If a narrative emerges, great.  But in the meantime, there are important lessons for communicators about what makes people tick in John Hagel’s work.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

Is your interest in honing your brand’s content strategy piqued by today’s post?  Join PR Newswire and special guests Brian Solis,  Jim Lin and Lou Hoffman for a live event  in San Francisco titled  Tipping the Engagement Scale in Your Favor: How to Employ Multimedia Content for Compelling Storytelling

Related reading:

Create narratives, not stories – Moxie Interactive

Moving from Story to Narrative – @ItsDane

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SXSW Interactive: What’s Catching My Eye

Posted on March 11, 2013 by | 1 Comment

sx big fishThis is an unusual year at SXSW Interactive, because as of this writing, there’s no big break out story, company, app or trend – at least that I can detect – and I’m hearing the same thing from the journalists and fellow bloggers I’ve been talking to up in the Samsung Blogger Lounge.   That said, a few things have landed on my radar screen over the last few days, including:

Big data about influence + smart filters * knowledge graph = HeyBigFish

From the folks behind Little Bird comes a great new way to look at real-time and influential conversations swirling around an event.  HeyBigFish lets you dive in to the digital discussions around specific topics at an event like SXSW.   You can find out in an instant what emerging conversations are about  and who’s shaping the discussion.

Note to brands: Need=Opportunity

Click the icon to get the beta version of the Ion app.

Click the icon to get the beta version of the Ion app.

The app I’m really digging:  From the folks at Otterbox – makers of cases for all manner of mobile devices – comes a neat new app that tells you exactly when your device is going to run out of power, based on your usage.  It’s actually very handy at an event like SXSW when you really do want to conserve and manage your power, because the days are long and you just don’t know when you’ll be able to recharge.  Called Otterbox Ion, it’s out in beta for you to try.

Along the same need=opportunity line of thinking is this simple but clever sx t chargepromotion from AT&T.  They have created secure charging stations, and have placed them all over South By.  You can put your phone in a little locker to recharge while you run to the washroom or grab a cup of coffee.  It’s smart and relevant branding.

The pervasiveness of cats.    

So we’ve been talking (and joking about) the prevalence of cats on the internet for years now.   But cats are a hot topic at SXSW this year.  Lines to see Grumpy Cat at the Mashable House stretched for blocks.  And a session on the Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Fest (@catvidfest) was packed.  Even among the digerati here in Austin this week, cats are cool.

SXSWi attendees waiting in the rain to meet Grumpy Cat in person at Mashable House.

But really, the take-away here for marketers isn’t to stick cats into all your messaging.  However, it is worthwhile to spend some time reflecting on what is about cats that makes them so attractive to digital audiences – which is ultimately the ability for people to relate to them – and to assign conversations, feelings and emotions to them.

Real social relationships:

It’s interesting watching the juxtaposition between people who dive 100% into the whole SXSW experience, and those who don’t – and the difference between the two is (at least as I’ve observed it) is emphasis on real-life versus digital experiences.  It’s important to remember (and invest in) the real relationships and experiences that social media fosters.  Without interactions IRL, you miss a lot of value.

Watch this space for more from SXSW over the next few days.  And if you’re in Austin this week, tell me, what’s catching your eye?

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

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What Content Creators Can Learn from Tablet Design Pros

Posted on March 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment

According to recent Adobe study, tablets are trumping smartphones in global website traffic.

Users of the internet prefer to use tablets for more in depth visits.  Whether they’re shopping, watching videos or just leisurely browsing the mobile web, tablet users tend to visit 70% more web pages than smartphone users do.

The experts on the panel titled “Lean Forward, Lean Back: Tablet News Experiences,” Dr. Mario Garcia of Garcia Media and Sarah Quinn of the Poynter Institute, discussed findings from the Poynter Eyetrack tablet research study, and some of those findings provide useful instruction for content creators seeking to reach tablet users.

You have about 10 seconds to keep readers from bailing out, according to the Poynter study.  Content publishers need to provide readers with what they panelists called “gold coins,” such as pulled quotes and visual elements to keep engaged. Dr. Garcia referred to this as the pop-up moment – something needs to happen to keep them reading more.

People consume content via the “media quartet”  — papers, the web, smartphones and tablets.  However, user behavior for each media type is different.  Papers and tablets are “lean back” media – readers put their feet up, and slow down.  Conversely, smartphones and the web are generally “lean forward” media – users are moving quickly and need to find information quickly.

Content publishers also need to keep these behaviors in mind when designing content, because one size doesn’t fit all.   In order to capture audience attention on each channel, the content needs to suit the users’ needs.

Related reading: a Storify collection from the session: Storytelling in the age of the tablet.

By Erika Kash, product manager, online services, MultiVu.

 

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A look at the future of search with Google’s Amit Singhal at SXSW

Posted on March 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment
Guy Kawasaki interviewing Amit Singhal at SXSW 2013. Photo: Victoria Harres.

Guy Kawasaki interviewing Amit Singhal at SXSW 2013. Photo: Victoria Harres.

Today, Guy Kawasaki interviewed Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of search.  Billed as a conversation about the future of search in mobile world, the conversation ranged into devices and other future Google projects.

To put the conversation in context, it’s worth repeating a fact Singhal dropped on the crowd in response to Kawasaki’s question “What really is on the internet?”

According to Singhal, everything is on the internet, and it’s sitting on more than 30 trillion web addresses, which in turn reside on some 250 million web domains.

The evolution of search

According to Singhal, who’s been with Google for 20 years and has a PhD in search, at the beginning, people didn’t expect search to work.  That’s changed entirely today – searches are growing increasingly granular and complex.  Additionally, people are searching all the time.  When desktop search volumes go down – at mealtimes, for example, and in the evenings – mobile search volumes increase.

How to gain search rank

Once again, the advice was simple – publish useful content that adds value.  However, Singhal made an interesting point – that search engine optimization is really about marketing your content to search engines – telling them what it’s about, and why it’s important.

When it comes to the mechanics of achieving rank, it’s important to keep something firmly in mind: A perfect search engine should know exactly what you mean, and give you exactly what you want, and that’s Google’s goal.  As Singhal said, search engines need to be comprehensive, relevant and fast.

Inbound links are one signal, but they use more than 200 other signals, including: on-page content, words in the title.

What’s in development now?

Google Now is one project Singhal mentioned, describing it as “… the things you need to know, just coming to you.

“The future of search would be bringing knowledge to the world in a completely multimodal environment,” noted Singhal.

He envisions Google Now as a perfect assistant – it’s by your side, you can talk to it and ask it things.  But it should also tell you things proactively, such as when traffic is bad and you need to leave a bit earlier than anticipated to get to your next meeting.

Other things on the collective minds at Google include the knowledge graph, speech recognition and natural language understanding, brought together, as Singhal says, to create “search magic.”

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

 

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Want to make a viral video? Don’t forget the PR! #SXSW

Posted on March 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Newsflash – brand videos don’t go viral.  According to the #ComedyTech panel yesterday at South by Southwest Interactive, viruses go viral; videos spread.  To simply describe that spread as “viral” implies an organic, infective power that simply doesn’t exist — and worse, it overlooks the mechanics of creating a video that successfully develops a life of its own online.

Whether or not a video spreads on the web and in social networks is largely predicated upon three things:

1) Whether or not the video is funny (seriously, when’s the last time you shared an inspirational video? Or a boring one?)

2) The video’s originality.

3) The PR push behind it.

According to the panel, the real driver behind the spread of videos online is getting “a big voice” behind the content.  That big voice can be a celebrity, or it can be generated by media coverage.  Enter the PR department.  Deliberate media research and engagement can deliver the credible media exposure that gives a video message the best shot at internet immortality.

Give your messages a boost with video and multimedia content distribution from MultiVu, a PR Newswire company.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

 

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Content We Love: Social@Ogilvy’s #SocialMediaWin

Posted on March 8, 2013 by | Leave a comment

ContentWeLoveImagine an event full of people. Our modern world has supplied social media in their hands and each individual has a story to tell. Now harness that visually– each person is firing photos via social media and all using one unified hashtag to make it searchable…

#DOAUSTIN

Social Media + Press releases!

When I read the headline from Social@Ogilvy, I was instantly stopped in my tracks.  Social@Ogilvy and Chute: Capture, Create and Share with #DOAustin

Not only will social media be utilized at the interactive festival in ATX, but Social@Ogilvy prepared a release to showcase their efforts AND
shared the components!

If your company is using social media for events, for communicating, for interacting, include it in your press releases! It invites your readers to join in the conversations already happening, the pictures already being posted, and the networks already being used!

  • Why include social media?

Social Media is your online community, your networking neighbors.  In short, it is the audience for the message! Social@Ogilvy is taking its instagram interaction and letting it grow into an even bigger movement. The release included not only was the #hashtag, but ways to connect with the company itself through different social channels. (Remember, the bigger the audience, the wider the potential impact!)

What is a #hashtag?

A hashtag is a word or phrase that is searchable on the social media platform. Visible are the “trending topics” of what is being discussed and relevant content pertaining to specific interests can also be found on these channels. In Social@Ogilvy’s case, #DOAUSTIN will be searchable through Instagram and will be streaming the images live throughout the event.

Now that is cool!

So if social media is the audience for your message and your message is searchable (so interested parties can find it)… that is a #SocialMediaWin!

A hearty thanks to Social@Ogilvy for the #SocialMediaWin and the great release!

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/socialogilvy-and-chute-capture-create-and-share-with-doaustin-196083961.html

Author Emily Nelson is a Customer Content Specialist for PR Newswire. Follow her adventures on www.bellesandawhistle.wordpress.com or on twitter www.twitter.com/emilyannnelson.

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Trends We’re Watching at SXSWi This Year

Posted on March 7, 2013 by | Leave a comment

A special-edition SXSW “Panel Nerd” badge from Foursquare. I have a full set.

Today some coworkers and I are heading to Austin, Texas – the land of bluebonnets, BBQ and SXSW Interactive.   “South By” is on my list of can’t miss events, and not because of the parties – I have yet in my four years there to be seen out and about much past 10 p.m.   No, I’m a panel nerd. I go to SXSW to learn.  I’ll be blogging from the sessions, and already, some trends are emerging in the gathering noise from the event.

It’s not about you.  It’s about me.  ALL about me.

Personal technology – and personalization of technology – looks like it’s going to be taking center stage this year.   The Interactive lineup includes a bevy of sessions about personal tracking and health technologies, as well as wearable tech.    I’ll be watching what emerges from this trend – personal tech absolutely influences behavior, and as a marketer, I’m interested in that.

Big data, redux.

Big data was big news last year at SXSW, and I’m expecting a reprise of this subject again, albeit with a more practical point of view.  Last year was about the availability and awesome potential of big data.  This year I’m expecting to hear about some interesting applications thereof.

Science.

Science, specifically space, will be a big theme this year, as the speaker and session lineups include a keynote from Elon Musk of SpaceX to a slew of sessions about space-derived science, I’m battening down the hatches for a lot of extra-terrestrial geekery.  What can this stuff possibly have to do with marketing and communications?  I’ll be looking for two angles to these stories – actual storytelling from brands and thinkers (after all, SXSW draws a highly influential crowd, and watching how brands engage with that crowd is always informative,) and where people are finding market opportunities, within those stories one can find good thinking about segmentation. So yes, even though I tend more toward being a life-sciences enthusiast, I’ll be in a science- or space-related session or two.

Moving targets.

Mobile marketing is kind of old news, except that this seems to be the year that marketers are awakening to mobile, driven by the massive adoption of smart phones and tablets.  However,  mobile behavior and motivations are different other online behaviors.  I’ll be looking for thinking around appealing to audiences in the different contexts in which they’re using their devices.

We’ll see how well I stick to these plans.  I have no doubt my plans will be waylaid by crowds, and I’ll find myself in a session about completely new subject, and if history means anything, I’ll walk away with a significant new perspective.  That’s part of the SXSW serendipity.  I’m looking forward to it.

You’ll have the chance to follow along, and see how I do (and whether or not I’m right in my trend watching.   A number of us are headed to SXSW, and we’ll be blogging, Tweeting, Tumblring, Pinning and otherwise sharing as much content from the event as we can.  And if you’re going to be joining the fray in Austin, I’d be curious to know which trends you think will dominate the conversation.  Am I on point, or did I miss the mark?  Let me know what you think.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

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