Getting Started as a Digital Strategist

Last week, a friend of mine emailed me to ask my thoughts on how he get started as a digital strategist. My response was a bit rambling, but I think I can boil it down to a few key thoughts. 1.) Don't Be a Generalist. These days, everyone has a base level of knowledge about how digital and social media work, and even the grad fresh out of ad school has "Digital Strategist" on his résumé. Yet many of these people don't have any deep understanding of how an online campaign actually works, or think that a shotgun approach of trying as many different channels as possible is the right way to go. My friend already has a head-start in email marketing and SEO, and I suggested he focus even further on these. As digital budgets within agencies grow, there will be more room for people with this type of specialization and it will be this type of specialization that will help drive results.

2.) Have a Few Case Studies. Specifically, case studies that demonstrate effectiveness and a return on investment. If you're just getting your start, it will be tough to provide case studies. Again, in my friend's example I recommended he spend a bit of time helping another friend of ours build up their online business, and using the results as a bit of an SEO/SEM case study.

3.) Meet People. I think my friend's approach of reaching out to me as someone in the industry was a great first step, and that he should continue reaching out. Finding out different perspectives from other Digital Strategists or potential employers will help guide my friend both in understanding more about what he needs to work on specifically and if it's even something he wants to get into. I'm always incredibly thankful of all the people I met when I first moved to Toronto a while back and who gave me advice and pointed me in the right direction when I was getting my start in the communications business. I also believe that for right or wrong, a big part of finding a job is about who you know, not where you apply. I don't think any of the jobs I've ever had came as a result of seeing a posting and applying, but rather came about through a personal conversation with someone.

I'm sure there is more to it than that. Do you have any advice for my friend? Leave a comment or shoot me a tweet (I'm @ParkerNow) and I'll update this post.

-Parker

We're looking for an intern! (Toronto, January)

Do you want to work at DDB Canada? My team, Radar DDB / Tribal DDB is looking for an intern to start in January 2012 at our Toronto office. You'll get some really amazing experience working with Laura Muirhead, Melissa Smich, myself, and even grizzled industry veteran Ed Lee.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you've got any questions ( I'm parker (at) blogcampaigning.com ), but all official applications will have to go through hr.toronto@ddbcanada.com

For more details, see the official post that appeared on the DDB Canada website:

Do you scour the internet for the latest and greatest ideas? Are you on social networks your friends haven't even heard of yet? Want to experience the strategic and creative drivers behind great social media campaigns? Radar DDB Toronto, one of Canada's top social media agencies, is offering unpaid internships to students interested in pursuing a career in social media, digital communications and advertising.  You must be completing or have completed your formal education in advertising, marketing or public relations and and be ready to get hands-on experience.  As an intern you will be exposed to an array of projects, all allowing you to work on a number of different facets involved in the process of creating and executing great ideas.  You'll help us write, research and think; in particular, focusing on conversation analysis, content creation, and influencer relations. You'll be very busy, but you'll get a lot of experience in a growing field.

If you are interested in a 3-month internship starting in January 2012, please send your resume and a cover letter that also explains what your favorite website (or app) is and why to  hr.toronto@ddbcanada.com with Radar DDB in the subject line.

Fashion Friday: Anything Other Than Naked

A few weeks ago, I was asked to review a copy of Anything Other Than Naked, a guide to fashion and style for men by a former financial services advisor and Captain in the U.S. Air Force.

As someone who works in a slightly less formal environment these days (the only ties I see in our office are the skinny kind worn with plaid shirts), I'm not sure how handy this book will come on a daily basis. However, for buying a new suit or formal wear (or for those pesky Fashion Friday questions that pop up), this book will a great resource.

In a no-nonsense style, it covers almost everything the white-collar male needs to know about getting dressed for work and the formal occasions in his life. I think this would be a great gift for a young gentlemen just graduating from university or about to start his first job.

A few of the pieces of advice that really stand out are that I should buy proper pants hangars to keep my trousers from wrinkling (hang them by the cuffs, not folded over) and that I seriously need to get a better spring-weight jacket.

You can grab a copy of the book at the following links:

Anything Other Than Naked (on Amazon)

Anything Other Than Naked (on Amazon, Kindle edition)

However, the publisher has also  been kind enough to provide an extra copy of the book as a giveaway to one extra-lucky BlogCampaigning reader. For a chance to win, all you have to do is leave a comment telling us what topic you'd like us to cover in an upcoming Fashion Friday.

I'll choose the best answer on Wednesday, April 13th and notify the winner via email.

Adventures in Sydney

As some of you might have noticed, I haven't contributed much to Blogcampaigning lately; not only was I busy sorting out paperwork in order to be able to stay in Australia, but I also started a new job (editor's note: Oh, I've noticed!) As of this month, I started work as a lecturer for game design at Qantm college. It sure feels good to turn a life-long passion into a job.

As you can imagine, talking in front of 80 students in a second language and helping to develop part of the curriculum is pretty exciting. Experience in public speaking certainly helps, but when you walk in your first lecture, all eyes on you, people in the back complaining about not being able to hear anything, other students explaining that there's a microphone you don't know how to use – that's when your heart skips a beat.

A couple of lame zombie jokes later and the ice is broken. Hopefully they're enough to motivate the students to do work. Getting them to actually do something for the course is not going to be too easy, given its rather dry content: project management… Not the most electrifying lecture, but certainly necessary. Somehow I'll get them there!

I also started blogging for the Goethe Institute, Germany's global cultural institute. Their Sydney office started the CityScapes blog. This blog:

aims to make visible what unites us and what may divide us, to create an awareness for the necessity to act locally in response to global issues. It endeavours to research the human condition of the young urban dweller in the 21st century.

Every month three bloggers in 12 cities all over the globe write about different aspects of these cities. There's a text blogger (me), a video blogger and a photo blogger.

Step by step, they will create a kaleidoscope of impressions, opinions, ideas and… plain fun.

In January we covered “My year in the city - Work, Play and get out of here!”; this month we looked into “Going Local - Neighbourhood, Kiez and Suburb in my city”; March will be about a theme you've all been waiting for: "Sex and the City."

You can find my first posts here and here.

-Jens

The New Rules For Unfollowing Someone

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I cut down on the social media clutter in my life. Consider this a follow-up. Its a guide to which people you should stop following on Twitter. You know who they are. 1.) They Tweet about the spam they receive - You know those people who Tweet sarcastically "Well, looky here! Another email from a Nigerian prince! My lucky day!"? They're part of the problem, not the solution. Its like giving spammers extra coverage.

2.)They Tweet about bacon -  I'm so sick of bacon-related humor.

3.) They Tweet about dieting - If you have to tell people about it, the diet isn't working.

4.) They Tweet about going to the gym - Like with the above, if you're working out that much, I'll notice the results when I see you in person. If not, why bother talking about it?

5.) Their Tweets are nothing but updates from other networks - I hate using the terms "engage" and "participate" but I mean c'mon - if you're not going to engage on Twitter and participate in the conversation there, what's the point?

6.) They Tweet about how they're working late - We all work late sometimes. Don't act like you're the hero taking a bullet. Besides, maybe if you cut down on the number of Tweets you sent out a day you wouldn't be at work so late.

7.) They Tweet about #FollowFriday - I don't think I've ever followed someone as a result of Follow Friday, or ever been followed as a result of Follow Friday. The whole thing is a waste of time.

8.) They use that "Twit Longer" service - The whole point of Twitter is short messages. If you can't handle that, get a blog.

9.) They constantly Tweet at celebrities - Sometimes its cute when an old person does it, but otherwise it just gets annoying. And what's the best thing that will happen if Kanye notices your Tweet? He'll Tweet you back? And then what? Nothing, that's what.

10.) They make lists like this one about the rules for Twitter.

Have any more? Leave them as a comment and I'll update this post with them.

Where It All Began (4 years of BlogCampaigning)

As a follow-up to my post of awesome pictures the other day, I thought I'd post this gem of a picture:

It is a picture of Jens and Espen, taken sometime in September, 2006. Espen had just launched BlogCampaigning as part of his thesis at Griffith University, and Jens and I were just starting to write posts for the site.

In the four years since then, we've gone on to do some different things but the three of us have mostly kept in touch via BlogCampaigning.

Thanks for reading - we hope BlogCampaigning is around for another four years for you. And for us.

-Parker

Advice For Anyone Who Wants to Start A Blog

A few days ago, a friend of mine mentioned that she had begun PR school and asked for advice about what to do for the blog she was obligated to do for one of her classes. If you're one of those die-hard BlogCampaigning fans, you probably already know my thoughts on adding another PR blog to the over-saturated sea of PR blogs.

Back then, my advice to my young friend would have been that she should start a blog about something she cares about.

Now, my advice would be that they avoid starting a blog altogether.

Instead, she should start a Facebook Page.

Right at the start, she can populate this Facebook Page with information about herself (or her project) and what the page is about.

Since I'm pretty sure students in these PR classes are encouraged to read each others' blogs, she can then ask her follow students to 'Like' the page (a much easier task than subscribing via RSS).

Instead of daily blog posts, she can write daily status updates for the page. Facebook's newish tagging ability makes it easier to link to other pages, and isn't really that different than the traditional HTML links you'd include in a blog post. These tags have the added ability of ensuring your post is visible on the page that you tagged, potentially increasing your audience. Interactions on these pages (Likes, Comments) will be spread across the social network of her and her friends, encouraging further interaction and becoming much more visible than if these same interactions were made on a blog.

If she does all this, she'll have the framework for a 'blog' that has the potential to be more popular than any of her classmates. She'll also learn a lot about an increasingly relevant tool in the communicators' kit.

She'll still have to ensure her posts are interesting, resonate with her audience and encourage interaction. A supporting website with basic contact information and direction to 'Like' the Facebook page couldn't hurt, either.

What do you think? Is this good advice for a PR/communications student? If you're a teacher, would you give a passing grade to a student who did this instead of starting a traditional blog?

-Parker

I'm Done! Adventures in Ph.D. Land

As some of you may have noticed I didn't contribute much to BlogCampaigning lately (Editor's note: Yeah, I noticed). Not only was I busy working in my new job but I also prepared for my last Ph.D. exam: the oral disputation of my thesis. Once my supervisors completed their written reports on my thesis, I was a given a date to orally defend it. I had 15 minutes to introduce my thesis to a panel made up of my supervisors, an observer for the protocol, lecturers and other students (it was a "public" event, i.e. any student of the school could attend the disputation). After the 15 minutes were over, my supervisors and the observer asked me questions regarding different aspects of – and issues with – my work.

Overall, the whole procedure lasted a bit longer than an hour. Once everything was over, I was awarded a "magna cum laude".

However, officially I can't call myself "Herr Dr. Schröder" yet, the reason being that I didn't yet publish my thesis. This is a usual procedure at German universities, you are only awarded the doctorate once you can proof that your work is available to the public. There are different ways to meet my university's requirement in this regard; however, the most common way is to publish the thesis as a traditional book. Dead trees it is!

The problem is not so much finding a publisher, but rather a publisher with a good reputation – and reasonable prices. The thing is, you have to pay them. There's a constant and huge supply of dissertations, and let's face it, most academic books won't sell like hotcakes. So you basically have to buy yourself into a (reputable) publisher.

So far I have been offered contracts ranging from 0 to 4,000 Euros. If you don't really care about your future renown in the academic world, you might as well go with the lowest offer. However, given that these publishers and their print-on-demand model will spam the market with pretty much everything – including course papers – don't expect much credit for you work. I heard of a uni that won't hire lecturers if they published their work with one of those vanity press companies.

As you can imagine, if the publisher is somewhat renowned, this is also reflected by their prices. These (ideally!) also reflect their services and the advertising measures they plan to undertake. Will they, for example, send out review copies? Which measures do they undertake to announce the publication of your work? Do they offer help in regard to proofreading or formatting your thesis? Can you reach your publisher by phone? (Apparently some publishers regard personal contact as obstructive to their work flow!) Which other marketing issues are planned and do they make sense?

I came across a publisher that was offering to advertise new academic releases on hip postcards. Somehow I doubt that this will help to increase sales. As much as I think that I wrote a good thesis that – for an academic work – is of comparatively broad appeal, I don't think that that this measure will encourage the public to spontaneously buy a 173,000 word book. Basically, it seemed like a good excuse to squeeze out some more money from their authors.

(Considering that my thesis was completely in English, publishers from the English speaking world also seem like an option. The problem is that some of them ask you to change parts of your work to give it more mass appeal [the ones I talked to anyway.] Unfortunately that is not an option as my uni's Ph.D. regulations state that you have to publish exactly the same text you handed in.)

The publisher I'm likely to go with seems fulfills most of the important criteria: Their author's support is good (personal phone calls!), they have several (sensible) marketing mechanisms in place, their prices – while high – are still comparatively reasonable, and they would also make my work available as an e-book; something I attach great importance too considering that my thesis is also of appeal to the Australian market.

There's also some light at the end of the financial tunnel. Some of the money you have to pay to get your work published is offset by the amount you get when you register with the VG Wort, a collecting society for authors. Since your work will get photocopied etc. you get reimbursed via a one-off payment – currently this would cover about two thirds of my costs. However, you only get this money the year after your book is released.

Of course I would also like to make my work available on the net but this is a bit of an issue – most academic institutions still highly value the cultural capital attached to traditionally published books and don't appreciate them being available for free. I will, however, try and find out if I can publish parts here on Blogcampaigning. After all, I want as many people as possible to read my work.

PS If you want to know more about writing a doctoral thesis make sure to check out the illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

-Jens

Staying Organized

I'd say that the two most important skills to have these days is that of staying organized. Everyone has their own system, tips and tricks.

One thing I like to do is write a list of what I have to do the next day before leaving the office. That way, I go home with an idea of what I'm heading into the next morning. Checking off even the smallest items on the list brings a feeling of accomplishment, and it makes sure I'm not forgetting anything. While some bigger projects might not get crossed off in a day, having them on the list is still a good reminder of what needs to get done.

Do you have any tips for staying organized?

-Parker

PS: Yes, my hand writing is atrocious.

Fashion Friday: When To Wear A Blazer

A couple of months ago, I asked readers of BlogCampaigning when it is okay to take off your suit jacket in a meeting. There was some great discussion around that topic, and I've decided to follow it up with what I hope is another question that can help me out:

When is it okay to wear a blazer?

Not being incredibly fashion-forward, my original phrasing of this question to a friend was, "What's the deal with guys that wear suit jackets with different coloured slacks? That just looks tacky." My friend quickly pointed out that these guys are wearing blazers, and that these are less formal ("sportier") versions of the suit jacket.

My take on it is that if you're going to bother putting on a suit jacket (sporty or not), match the pants to it. Otherwise, it looks like you just pulled out the first two things you saw in your closet. The fact that 3 of the first 10 results in Google for "When is it okay to wear a blazer?" are for how women should wear them doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me that this is an appropriate look.

AskMen.com has an article titled Men's Blazers: 6 ways to wear them. In order, these ways are:

1. With a deep V-neck cardigan

2. With a plaid shirt

3. With a chunky patterned knit

4. With heavily distressed denim

5. With cargo pants

6. With combat boots

And none of these six ways seem like good ideas, despite coming from "The Number 1 Canadian Men's Lifestyle Portal".

So what's the right situation for wearing a blazer? Am I completely wrong to think that it isn't a professional look?

MAVERICK Idol Is Back Again

Last year, I wrote about how MAVERICK offered an internship position via an American Idol-type of competition.

Now that I work at MAVERICK, I'm excited to see that the agency is doing it again. One of last year's contestants, Katie Boland, is still a full-time employee here and I work with her on a couple of different projects.

This year's competition will mean that the aspiring intern has to face two rounds of questions from a panel of MAVERICK employees. I think this is a great chance for the applicant to show that they are good at public speaking and can think quickly on their feet.

The winner will be notified that day, and will receive an twelve-week paid internship (from what I've heard, the pay for this is above average for similar internships). More importantly, they'll get experience in media monitoring, writing, planning and social media. While there is no guarantee that they will end the internship with a job, the experience will help them in their career.

For more details, please see Julie "The Maven" Rusciolelli's blog post about the contest (or check the MAVERICK website) . Interested applicants should send an email with their resume to idol@Maverickpr.com by May 7 at 5:00 p.m. They will then have to show up in person at the MAVERICK offices on May 12 at 10:00 am.

Is this a good way to find interns? If you are a student, would you apply for a position this way?

-Parker

Posting, Pitching and PR: The Presentation (#TalkIsCheap)

Last week, I gave a presentation at Centennial College's Talk Is Cheap unconference. The talk was Music Blogging: Posting, Pitching and PR, and if that sounds familiar, its because I wrote a blog post with the same title a few months ago. I've gone to #TalkIsCheap for the past few years, and I've always had a great time. I think it's one of the better social media events in Toronto these days, and the organizers deserve a round of applause. (Thanks for letting me speak!)

The gist of my talk was that as much as I enjoy writing the occasional post here on BlogCampaigning, I don't really like writing about PR, and I don't like reading about PR and and communications. By the informal polls I did of the audience, it seems like most people agreed with me. (I mean, c'mon: do you REALLY enjoy reading about PR and communications?)

I went on to talk about how much more I enjoyed writing about electronic music and science fiction for my other blog, and how doing that has taught me way more about PR and online communications than writing posts for BlogCampaigning.

While I didn't get too deep into the details of music blogging, I did talk about some of things I'd learned about PR from my other blog:

1. Your pitches don't have to be personalized – I feel like PR and communications pros who blog are the only ones who insist on pitches being personalized. The rest of the blogging world will post about something if they feel its relevant to their audience. Personalized pitches can help, but they aren't necessary.

2. Your pitches should be well targeted – if they aren't, you're just wasting everyone's time. When talking about this, I used an example of a PR person that sent me an album to review for my music blog. I normally only blog about electronic music, but the album was folk guitar. I'm going to ignore every e-mail I get from that PR person from now on, because I'll just assume it is the same type of music.

3. Don't send fancy HTML emails - once again, you're wasting everyone's time. They don't show up well on mobile devices, Outlook frequently blocks the images and even Yahoo! and Gmail don't seem to like them.

4. Don't follow up – it just pisses people off. While admittedly I've gotten some great coverage out of following up with a journalist, and have also posted something just because some guy followed up so often that I started to feel guilty, nobody feels good about a PR pitch being followed up. It's one of those things that everyone just feels awkward about. In the case where you have a good relationship with a journalist or a blogger, then its probably alright to follow up because you'll know when it is appropriate. As someone else commented during my presentation, if you're pitches are well targeted then you probably shouldn't have to do a lot of follow-up.

In the end, I tried to encourage the audience to start a blog about something they care about. For example, if they want to work in PR for one of the big car companies, they should start a blog about cars. If they want to work in fashion PR, they should start a fashion blog. Seeing the world in the eyes of an online journalist will be far more valuable than writing the occasional post about something like the "intersection of PR and social media".

So what do you think—should students blog about their thoughts on the PR industry, or should they be blogging about something they care about?

Have you started a blog, and given up after a while because it was about something you weren't interested in?

-Parker

On Personal Branding

The following is a post by my friend Amanda Laird: Earlier this week I participated as a mentor at Humber College’s Personal Brand Camp. During the event, I heard many students express that they were apprehensive about, if not confused by, building an online presence.

Before we go any further, let me give you a little background on my online presence. I started writing online in 1997 as a way to connect with other young writers and artists (let’s just say my high school had more sports teams than poetry clubs). After college I realized that the skills I acquired building websites in my parents' basement were transferable to the real world. My knowledge of and passion for online communication set me apart from other job candidates, and so my personal brand was born.

I started to wonder if the exercise of forcing students to create an online presence was futile. Making them get online isn’t going to do them any good; in fact I think it might even be counter-productive. If students are keen on getting involved in social media, by all means encourage them to do so—in a smart way; it will go a long way in helping them create a personal brand. But if they’re not, don’t force them. If a student doesn’t want to blog, their blog is going to be lame, and how is that going to set them apart in the job market?

Here are a few tips that Rayanne Langdon, my Personal Brand Camp partner-in-crime and I shared with those students who were interested in getting online, but weren’t sure where to start.

Be where you want to be. If you’re not comfortable with being online, don’t be online. What makes the Internet awesome is the passion that drives people to tweet, to blog, to engage in social media. If, to you, being online means tweeting and not blogging, or blogging and not tweeting, go for it!

Be your fabulous, funny, smart, creative, passionate self, and the personal brand stuff will come on its own. Being authentic will set you apart in a job interview and online.  Unfortunately, if yourself is an asshole, you might be in trouble.

Be passionate. While I am certainly passionate about my work, I’ll leave writing about PR to the Dave Fleets and Martin Waxmans of the world. I write about home cooking because that’s what I love; not only am I better at it, my “personal brand” is better for it, too.

Be nice. This one’s easy. If you can help someone online (and in real life), do it. And don’t do it because you think you’ll get something out of it. Do it because being nice is a good thing.

Be smart. I’m all for sharing online, but you’ve got to give yourself some guiding principles. I’m friends with my dad and my boss on Facebook, so I generally don’t post anything I wouldn’t share with them over coffee. And now, as my professional and personal lives blend together, I even give my actions a second thought. I don’t spend too many nights dancing on tables with lampshades on my head anymore. (But man, those were good days.) You never know where those pictures will end up.

A personal brand isn’t a limiting checklist. Sage advice from a wise man. People aren’t one-dimensional, so there is no reason to limit yourself online. Have multiple interests? Have multiple blogs! Contribute guest posts to other blogs or segment your website into sections with posts on various topics. Your online presence is just that: yours. Do it your way.

Amanda Laird is a Communications Specialist at CNW Group, a gig she got through this very blog.  Her personal brand is about home cooking, complaining about the TTC, and the odd smart thought about PR. Find her online at mise en place or @amandalaird.

RSS Problems in Wordpress

Last week, I realized that there was an error with BlogCampaigning's RSS feed. Although some feedreaders were still able to grab the content, others were getting XML Parsing Errors. As I often do when I get a warning message I don't quite understand, I Google it. Chances are, someone else has had the same problem as me and figured it out.

Quick Online Tips helped me fix the problem. The error was caused by some blank spaces in one of my .php files. Since I often muck around in the theme, this could easily have been caused by me or one of the plugins I added.

Going through thousands of lines of code didn't seem like a good way to spend my afternoon, so I installed the Fix RSS Plugin. It scanned all my code, and quickly fixed the error. While the appeal for a $4.99 donation to the creator of the plugin is the first time I've seen something like that in Wordpress, I think it is worth the money.

The lesson to learn here is that even if you think your site is working perfectly, other people might be having problems with it. After making any major changes, you need to thoroughly check to make sure everything works (or have a good team of writers that occasionally check things for you).

Thanks for reading BlogCampaigning—and if you notice any other errors, let me know!

Cheers,

-Parker

Everything I Need To Know About Social Media I learned From The Globe and Mail

A few days ago, I gave a presentation as part of the Canadian Institute's Managing Social Media conference here in beautiful, downtown Toronto.

As often happens with these things, I agreed to participate in the conference months ago, and I'm not even sure how I arrived at the title of "Integrating Social Media With Traditional Media" for my talk.

As I began to put my slides together, I realized that I'd need some solid examples of organizations that had successfully "integrated social media with traditional media".

The one that kept coming up was The Globe and Mail, and I think that communicators can learn a lot from the way this organization, which used to be a traditional, print newspaper, has morphed into combination of newspaper and social media portal at TheGlobeAndMail.com.

The main lessons that I think we can learn from them are below:

1.) Make it easy for people to get the information they want in the format they prefer: By this, I mean offer your content across different channels and in different places. The Globe and Mail has a print edition that I can buy at the newsstand, I can download a PDF version from their site, I can subscribe to their news via RSS, or I can read the actual stories on their website. The point is that I can access it in the way that I want.

2.) Embrace multimedia: The Globe and Mail is a newspaper, yet they use audio content in various sections on their site, and they also frequently embed video in their articles. This is similar to point one in that it offers the information in other formats.

3.) Easy URLs: Social media is about sharing. Make it easy for people to share your information (or access it in the first place) by giving them easy URLs. The example I use in my presentation is how The Globe and Mail has done this by telling readers of their print edition that they can access more information about the Toronto International Film Festival at globeandmail.com/tiff09. Its easy to share, its easy to remember and both of those mean that there is a greater chance that people will view it and give it to others to check out.

4.) Do It Live: The Globe and Mail used to print a paper edition once a day (they might have also had an evening edition or something), as most papers did. However, they constantly update their website. They also frequently hold live chats with reporters and cover events live using tools like Cover It Live. Communicators can adapt this kind of strategy by holding press conferences online, or making their spokespersons available for online discussions.

5.) Keyword-rich, easy-to-understand headlines: Admittedly, this isn't something I learned from The Globe and Mail, but another source. (Props to my friend Michael Allison for pointing this out to me!)

6.) Be part of the community: Inspired by a quote I heard attributed to Mathew Ingram, that "Linking to other sources and reading comments makes journalists stronger", I suggest that the lesson for communicators is to get involved in the community they are trying to reach. Their messages will be more relevant, and chances are the community will be more likely to accept the messages if they come from a trusted member.

7.) Keep it fresh: The reason people read the newspaper everyday is because it has new information everyday. Stories have updates. The take-away from this is that once a story goes live, you don't have to forget about it. Follow up on it, provide more information, and keep the story alive in the public eye with a new angle.

8.) Try new things: As I said in a post earlier this week, stop thinking about best practices and case studies and just go out there and do something new and interesting. The Globe and Mail is undergoing all sorts of change, and I'm sure they are the first ones to try some of the things they're doing. Let's learn from that.

I've embedded the slide show below. Since I'm as much of a student of the Masnickian school of Powerpoint presentations as I am his thoughts on economics, the deck has 103 slides that I covered in just under 40 minutes.

Integrating Social Media With Traditional Media

You can also download it at ParkerMason.ca/globe. Thanks to the Canadian Institute for giving me the chance to speak and to everyone in the audience for listening.

And special thanks to Joe Thornley for preserving on his blog what the Twitter community said online during my presentation. Credit for the photo above also goes to Joe.

-Parker

Stop Reading PR Blogs

Earlier this year, I suggested that PR students wanting to get involved in the online world should avoid starting a PR-focused blog. Now, I'm going to suggest that we all stop even reading PR blogs. They aren't that representative of the real world—the wilds of the internet.

Rather than focusing on how this tightly knit community (I believe David Jones referred to it as a "circle-jerk" on Inside PR) does things and communicates, why not spend that time getting more involved in understanding the way actual people use the internet?

Learn how your clients' audiences look for things online. Learn about what they're interested in. Become passionate about what they are passionate about, or at least try and understand their passion.

I'm willing to bet that most of you don't spend your evenings re-reading your old PR textbooks (nor do you buy the latest version every year), but that you probably do browse your region's daily newspapers on a regular basis.

Do you have any idea how few people care about RSS feeds? How many of your friends (outside of those involved in the communications industry) actually care about Twitter or even understand what it does?

Forget case studies. Forget best practices. When is the last time you did something truly new and interesting?

-Parker

What does Twitter do? (Part 1)

I've been using Twitter now for a few months, and I still have little idea of it's purpose—or if it even has one. At it's base, Twitter is a simple way to share and receive bits of information, the modern currency. It's like a data marketplace—a microcosm of the internet itself, and more manageable than the world wide web. But I like that it has undefined boundaries, and that users have come up with new uses for it. I don't go out of my way to read about Twitter's development on technology blogs or whatever. I have my interests (technology and internet culture among them), and I read about them semi-regularly; but I don't have the time or the interest to consume or sort through all of the blather, opinion, and predictions about something like Twitter, which I would prefer to explore myself.

That said, here are a few of the ways in which Twitter has changed my internet and information consumption behaviour.

1. Interest-targeted information I never had a selection of specific blogs that I would visit regularly to find news on a certain topic. I retrieved stuff from the internet mostly via news sites (e.g., TheStar.com), search engines, and aggregators (e.g., Digg and Reddit), each of which serves a particular purpose for finding information. Google news was my main news source for a brief while a couple of years ago. I also began using Google Reader to follow with pitiful—make that pathetic—regularity my friends' blogs.

These all might have their own purposes, but I found them inefficient because they forced me to visit a website and scan through bits of info for what I wanted to read. I had heard of RSS feeds, which could send interesting links directly to a central location, such as your e-mail or a web application like Google Reader, but I was too lazy to bother figuring it out, and besides, Facebook had captured most of my internet attention; and with Facebook, I could share information as well as receive it.

This was all before Twitter. I looked at Twitter last year some time and thought, like just about everyone else on the planet (that's facetious western arrogance, by the way): "What is this nonsense? Who cares about what everybody/nobody has to say about their nonsense lives?" I hardly realized that millions were already paying attention to others' nonsense on Facebook all day long. But Twitter just seemed too simple and pointless: why would anyone actually want to know about what others were doing or, you know, thought about stuff?

Well, I was wrong. I mean, I still don't care about what most people are doing or what they think about stuff—my use of Twitter has actually made this abundantly clear. I also note that recently (even before Twitter) I've been using Facebook far less than in the past. The thing is, now I can "follow" "twitterers" who "tweet" information in which I am interested, as well as my friends—those who are currently taking advantage of the service—and all of that information goes to one central place, where I can scan it with far greater ease than before.

For example, I used to visit Digg, which aggregates user-submitted stories from the web, placing the top stories (by users' votes) on the "front page". This is incredibly useful, but the content is still all over the place. Current events and world politics are combined in an unholy mixture with pictures of cute animals, celebrity "news" and UFO and crop circle sightings, and eventually, I found myself disillusioned with sifting through all of the stuff I wasn't interested in. As for friends' blogs, as I mentioned, I simply didn't look at them very often, probably because I was spending my online time scanning Digg.

Twitter allows me to narrow the scope of my information retrieval. I follow certain news sources and blogs that mainly focus on local (i.e., Toronto) news, for example:

Torontoist for general Toronto news, mostly written by local independent journalists BlogTO for more general news NOW Magazine for the "alternative" news Urban Toronto) for a great look at Toronto's history and future

Some of my other interests are satisfied via:

The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Tech news, commonly involving Google at myunblinkingeye News about all the good food we produce in Ontario from Foodland Ontario

I follow friends (including the writers of BlogCampaigning):

Justin Broadbent, a terrific artist, illustrator, photographer, and videographer Angie Johnson, fashion designer and Montréal boutique owner extraordinaire Tyson Bodnarchuk, another terrific artist and Montréal boutique owner extraordinaire

And I even follow the odd celebrity: Neil Gaiman, writer of fantasy and science fiction Rainn Wilson (kind of), via his "big questions" blog, Soul Pancake

I could go on, but I fear that I'm already pushing the boundaries of attention, and will raise the ire of my fellow blogcampaigners with my first post.

So, to wrap up: maybe you're not an information junkie to the extent that I am, but if you use the internet to seek useful or interesting information for personal or professional use, and you find you're not satisfied with your current methods, I recommend you give Twitter a try. It's not difficult to understand and use, and it should be even easier for people who are already somewhat social-media savvy.

Let me know if you've got questions. I probably won't be able to answer them, but I'd like to hear them!

Upcoming: Twitter as human-powered search engine—the new (better) Google!? Twitter as hyper-modern communication tool—not just for nerds!

Canadian Law Firms And Their Use Of Social Media

My CNW Group colleague, friend, teammate, and BlogCampaigning contributor, Heather Morrison, has put together a great report about the way that Canadian law firms are using social media. Omar Ha-Redeye said it "is likely to become one of the primary sources for Canadian firms looking to enter this area."

Steve Matthews called it "a nice overview of the benefits of social media investment."

And Garry J. Wise wrote that it "thoroughly canvasses the key social media platforms and provides much-needed context via thoughtful comments from several Canadian lawyers who are constructively engaging online."

So what are you waiting for? Download the PDF via the link below:

Canadian Law Firms And Their Use Of Social Media

-Parker

Say Hello To @AdamGorley, Copy-Editor Extraordinaire

The whole reason I got involved with BlogCampaigning was to check the grammar on Espen's English writing (he's Norwegian, in case you missed it). When Jens started writing for us, I edited his posts as well (based on my small sample size, I'd say that Norwegians frequently mix-up singular and plural when writing in English and Germans write paragraph-long sentences rather than using a few periods). Now, we've got someone else to do that copy editing: Adam Gorley. He's a Toronto-based professional copy editor, and he volunteered to have a look at each of our posts before they go live. I've never thought I was a perfect writer, and I'm sure that long-time readers of this blog will have noticed a few typos, grammatical errors and even unfinished sentences here and there. I don't envy the work he's going to be doing on Jens' posts.

I'm hoping that with Adam Gorley's touch, these things will be a thing of the past.

He's @AdamGorley on Twitter and he also maintains his own blog of miscellany at AdamGorley.Blogspot.com. While he's gainfully employed right now, I'm going to go ahead and say that if you need any help with Copy Editing, he's probably your man.

-Parker

(PS: I wanted this post to be a surprise for him, so he didn't actually get a chance to edit it. Any errors are mine)

(PPS: Once I saw Adam play a 90-minute game of Ultimate frisbee wearing only sandals when everyone else was wearing cleats - that takes guts)

Favicons

Have you ever noticed how some websites display little icons in the browser next to their name or URL? Blogger blogs display the that orange B, Wordpress blogs have the Wordpress W, Google has its Mondrian-inspired g, Collin Douma's Radical Trust blog has a hand, the UK's Guardian newspaper has a lower case g that looks remarkably similar to Google's and so on.

This is called a Favicon, and it is a 16x16 pixel image that you can easily create to give your blog or website a bit more style and identity. In order for it to work across all browsers, the image needs to be in the .ico format, although I've heard that some browsers also accept .png files for the favicon.

To create one for your site, use a tool like Degraeve's Favicon creator. I uploaded an image of BlogCampaigning founder Espen Skoland to use as our favicon, and the online tool did the rest of the work.

Once you've got your little favicon created and stored on your computer, upload it to your websites root directory (for example, BlogCampaigning.com/* is our root directory) and it should appear on people's browswers when they look at your site.

For more on how to do all of this, check out How To Create a Favicon by The Site Wizard.