I recently wrote a post on this blog introducing you to Jan Chipchase’s Future Perfect blog in an attempt to introduce people to some blogs that might be outside their usual reading scope. Continuing with this series is a post about SEOMoz and why you should be reading it.

A concept that has been around for a long time in the web industry but only recently seems to be gaining steam amongst communications professionals is that of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). According to Wikipedia, this is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site via natural or “organic” search results. Basically, the more optimized your website is, the better traffic you’ll get to it.

For some reason, many of the people that I have spoken to in the past few months seem to think that there is some sort of alchemical magic or technological wizardry that optimizes a site for search engines.

Put aside those thoughts and start reading the SEOMoz blog, written by some of the world’s leading SEO experts. Some of their posts are directed at newcomers to the world of SEO and can offer a great introduction. Others are a little more complicated and technical, and the balance of the two types of posts lets you pick up anywhere and start learning or applying what you already know.

If you’re more of a visual learner, they also have a series of posts called Whiteboard Fridays where one of their team members will create a short, casual video explaining some SEO concepts.

One of my favorite posts on SEOMoz is about the Three Cornerstones of SEO. Even though it was published back in mid-September, I’m constantly referring to the great diagram they have that makes it easy to explain the basic concepts of Search Engine Optimization.

So head on over to SEOMoz and find out why can proudly say they’ve got more than 30,000 subscribers to their RSS feed.

-Parker

PS: Related is a great post from Ed Lee about why your site sucks in search engine rankings. As I commented there:

“I also think that too many people complicate SEO, particularly in our industry. They think that it is some kind of alchemical magic, when it really comes down to the three simple “pillars” that you mention. I’ve always heard that if you design a site that is easy to navigate by humans, the search engine bots/spiders will also be able to crawl it easily and find your content. If you’re creating relevant content and writing naturally using words that people are likely to search for rather than jargon, people will be able to find your site and are more likely to get something out of it, and subsequently link to it.”

Over the past few months, I’ve given a lot of thought to Social Media Releases. They are a great tool, but only if used correctly. In the few years that they’ve been out, there have been a lot of different types and styles, successes and failures, but no real agreed-upon strategy for how to use them.

I think it is time we should start thinking about how exactly to use them, and less about the actual form they should take. My recommended strategy for a course of action when including a Social Media Release in a communications campaign includes four points: Monitoring, Message, Media, and Media Relations.
1.) Monitoring: Paying attention to what is being said about your brand or organization has always been recommended as a first step. As has been said before, social media is a conversation. Just as you would wait until your turn to speak in a real-world conversation, and then say something relevant, you should do the same in an online conversation. Monitoring will help you ensure the timing, nature and relevancy of your message.

2.) Message: This is what the core of the release is. It is why you are making an announcement. It is what you are hoping your audience of bloggers and the online community will care about enough to engage with. As April Dunford recently wrote in the blog post entitled “A Skeptic’s Guide TO Social Media Press Releases“:

“You need to answer the question “Why is this interesting right now?”  What is it about your announcement that makes it important information to share right now?  If you can make your news relevant to a broader audience than experts in your space, you are well on your way to spectacularness.”

If you can’t think of a reason why your announcement would be interesting to anyone, you’re probably not going to get a lot of media attention.

3.) Media: One of the coolest things about a Social Media Release is that you can include photos, audio and video to accompany the text of the release. However, this doesn’t mean that  a JPEG of the CEO’s head and a television commerical uploaded to YouTube constitute great multimedia content. Instead, you should think about your target audience and what might appeal to them. If it is a product launch, including images of the product in use and with a plain, white background would probably be beneficial to bloggers that might use them. Similarly, including a short video of the product in use might do wonders (but keep it short).

My thought is that a Social Media Release should provide value to the intended audience. The text portion should provide value in that it is informing them about something new. The accompanying media should either reinforce this value, or provide value on their own. One of the reasons I believe that the video CNW Group produced with Mark McKay got picked up online (here and here, for starters) is because it provided educational value by teaching people what a Social Media Release was. Similarly, April Dunford mentions in her post that she also provided a white-paper that showed other companies how they could start a green program in their organization.

4.) Media Relations: Contacting journalists has always been a part of traditional public relations, and it should continue to be a part of public relations in the blogging age.  Just because the audience you are trying to reach is online and you might never see them in real life does not mean that you can simply blast them with email. In fact, a huge part of the Social Media Release is the social aspect, and the fact that it is able to connect you and your news with so many people. Research and follow blogs that are relevant to your news - just as you might have different traditional media contacts for different types of news, you will probably want to reach out to different bloggers as well.

5.) Monitoring: As with any communications plan, monitoring success and following up where necessary are an important part. In the case of a campaign involving a  Social Media Release, monitoring should include not just checking to see where it got picked up and how it was used. I included Monitoring as both first and last on the list because it marks the beginning of a new communications cycle.
I hardly think that the Social Media Release is the only tool for communicators to reach an online audience, but I do think it is a good one. If you have any thoughts, suggestions or criticisms of my “4M Theory” I’d be happy to hear them.

-Parker

(As with all of my posts on BlogCampaigning, this reflects my own personal thoughts and opinions. These may not necessarily be the same as those held by my employer, CNW Group).

Well, I’ve been tagged by Sharon in a great little meme first thrown out there by Collin Douma.

The game is two come up with 5 great examples of social media use that our peers might not have noticed.

The rules are something like this:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List five Social Media projects that deserve better exposure.
3. Tag EIGHT {as many as you’d like} “Social Media / Digital Experts” at the end of your post and list their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.
5. Tag your post “Five Gems” so we can search for all of these great examples.

I’m also going to go ahead an tack on what I think should be a 6th, rule, and that is that we should all tag our posts (and examples) as 5gems on Delicious so that they are easy to find later.

1. The CNW Group Social Media release announcing the CNW Group Social Media Release - Although a bit self-referrential, I think that this is an excellent case study in how a Social Media Release can be effectively used. People left comments, bloggers embedded the video on their site (due to it being educational, rather than advertorial in nature) and one site even used the CNW logo provided with the release. (disclosure: I work for CNW, and worked directly on this).

2. Journalist Source -While they aren’t using social media directly besides having their homepage built on Wordpress and using a Twitter account, they are providing a great service to writers (I’m thinking bloggers here) that might not necessairly have the kind of resources needed to research a story on their own and source experts.

3. MySpace - Look, I know that a lot of people don’t care about MySpace anymore because it is just full of retina-burning designs and emo kids. But ever since I started a music blog a few months ago, I’ve been all over MySpace. It’s where the cool stuff happens: the creative kids are on MySpace, designinging their own pages, seeing what they can do within the constraints of the site and promoting themselves. The boring kids are on Facebook, installing applications and de-tagging drunken photos of themselves.

4. I Like Totally Love It -My Blogcampaigning co-author Jens told me about this site a little while ago, and it is definitely worth checking out. I don’t really know how to describe it, but they are kind of a social-voting site for products and things that you want, or I guess, things that you, like, totally love.

5. Movember - Growing moustaches for charity…what a great idea, and they’ve really used the online space to build traction for this. I participated last year, but I can already tell that it has grown alot since then. (if anyone is doing it this year, let me know and I’ll sponsor you!).

I’m tagging Chris Clarke, Martin Waxman, Jessica Ayers, Michael Allison and Alecia O’Brien.

-Parker

Next week I’m going to be giving a presentation to a group of PR students.

Besides telling them about Canada’s favorite newswire, I thought I’d also give them a bit of advice.

As I mentioned earlier, Julie Ruscioelli Rusciolelli* recomends that they include some of their interests on their resume, so I’ll probably tell them about that.

I also plan on telling them that they should get involved in social media - its a great way to start learning about PR and a great way to start interacting with the people that will eventually be their peers (and potential employers).

Can you think of anything else I should tell them?

*UPDATE: Also make sure you check your spelling.

If you’re involved in PR and social media you’ve probably heard people talking about social media releases, social media news releases or even social media press releases and the accompanying acronyms.

In the olden days, journalists were called ‘the press’ (an example of synechdoche) because the primary form of media was the newspaper, which was printed on

If Google trends is anything to go by, the majority of people still think that those releases that go out on the wire are called ‘Press Releases.’

However, most modern-day communicators will probably agree that this is an antiquated term, and that we should be calling these ‘News Releases’ or ‘Media Releases’ instead.

So, that gets rid of the term ‘Social Media Press Release’ and its ugly acronym “SMPR.”

We’re now left with Social Media Release and Social Media News Release, and I’m going to argue that the former is better than the latter.

I’m fine with calling a traditional release a News Release or a Media Release, and I think you’ll agree with me that calling it a Media News Release or a News Media Release is a little bit redundant (and referring to it as just a ‘release’ sounds odd unless you’re talking to people from the industry).

So why do we need to refer to PR’s hottest new tool as a Social Media News Release? Yes, it has a bunch of fancy Web 2.0 features that enable it to be easily shared. That aspect is covered by adding “Social” to the front of ‘Media Release.’

I’d actually be happy with either Social News Release or Social Media Release, but I think that the latter sounds better.

So, can we agree to standardize the name as Social Media Release?

-Parker

image courtesy of vivid tangerine on flickr

Ryan Peal blogs for Hill and Knowlton at Creativity In Public Relations. While it isn’t the most creative title for a blog about creativity, all of his posts are about really neat PR campaigns.

His most recent post is about AMP Energy Drink’s new “Walk of No Shame” video that I’m sure they’re hoping will go viral.

While we’re on the topic of viral video and guerilla marketing tactics, Amanda Gravel posted a great video via Slate about the future of viral marketing :

And since I know you want to watch one more video, check out this video from the Stock Footage Awards (link).

Have a great weekend!

-Parker

Getting Started Online

Over the course of the summer, a bunch of my friends have started to express interest in starting their own blogs.

One group of friends feels that having a blog will help create an online presence for their band, A Northern Drawl.

Another friend created a blog to share her stories of late-night debauchery and celebrity searching in Toronto.

My friend Sarah asked me to help her set up a blog for her trip to South America.

And my new roomate told me that he wants to start a blog to use as an online resume for his video work (I’m hoping that my other roommate will resume writing the always-excellent T-zero blog about Toronto culture and breakfast now that he has returned from an overseas stint).

In short, they all want an online presence for themselves and since I’m known amongst them as “the guy that knows stuff about the internets,” they’ve come to me for advice.

While I’ll be happily helping them when I get a chance, I thought I’d also share some of the advice I’m giving them with the readers of BlogCampaigning. Hopefully you’ll be able to give them some additional advice, or point them in the right direction when you think I’ve lead them astray.

My advice for starting off has been that they should get a Twitter account.

Why? Because Setting up an account on Twitter is a lot like starting a blog.

Following people, having them follow you and experimenting with some of the tools that work with Twitter are a great introduction to how things like RSS and other social media tools work. For example, I showed my roommate how he could set up an account on The Hype Machine (a website we both think is pretty sweet) so that everytime he favorited a song there it would alert his Twitter followers.

Customizing Your Twitter Profile

Customizing your Twitter profile is also a good introduction to customizing your own blog and working with web tools. I’ve got nothing against blogs based on templates or Twitter accounts that use the default colors and background image, but I think that taking the extra step in customization is very important. Just as Seth Godin equates downloading and installing Firefox as the equivalent to applying for college or university. As he writes: “the kind of person that puts the effort into getting into and completing college is also the kind of person who succeeds at other things.”

Customizing your Twitter profile will help you learn about image editing (as you decide what to use as your profile image and as a background image) and hexadecimal colors. If you aren’t quite sure what you want your blog to look like, playing around with colors and images on Twitter is an easy way to get started.

Doing this sort of customization will also help people identify you more easily, and will help distinguish you from the legions of spammers (when was the last time you followed someone that didn’t have a Twitter profile pic? When was the last time you subscribed to a blog based on an unmodified Kubrick template?).

Online Conversations

“I don’t really get it,” “how do I know who to talk to?” and “who is going to want to listen to what I have to say?” are three of the most common things I hear from my friends when I’m telling them about how to get started on Twitter.

My response to this is to just dive in and get started. I wrote before how I thought that Twitter is like an online cocktail party, full of different conversations that you can either choose to ignore or join (just like a real cocktail party). In both cases, no one cares if you are a wallflower and just listen. Chances are, they won’t interact with you either. To be part of the “conversation” you’ll have to speak up. In Twitter, this amounts to sharing links that you think are interesting, responding to things other people have said, or simply adding your own opinion (”conversation” in quotation marks because I’m cringing at how cliched that word has become even though it is the only one that works here).

Can you think of any other advice for them?

Maybe tell them directly - my roommate Claudio is @Clizz on Twitter, my friend Sarah’s blog is Alpaca For Dinner, my colleague Jessica is @JessicaSine on Twitter and my friend Katie is @Vandertramp on Twitter (her website is Mischief, Mayhem, Parties and Boys). You might also want to check out A Northern Drawl - although the only have a MySpace page right now, I’m excited to help them promote their music and develop and online presence for themselves.

If you’re in Toronto (or love it or are thinking of visiting) be sure and check out my other roommate’s blog Tzero. It is especially great if you’re looking for reviews of breakfast places in the downtown area.

-Parker

The Toronto International Film Festival is known for its glamorous parties full of beautiful people from the worlds of the media and entertainment elite, and this is the first year that Thirsty Thursday is going to take place during the same week as TIFF.

While it isn’t an official TIFF event, it is still going to be pretty awesome.

For those of you that haven’t attended a Thirsty Thursday event before, the basic idea is that it is a casual get together for young people in Public Relations or Marketing.  It began as a few friends meeting for drinks, and has grown into a event to look forward to every month.

Celebrities you will see at this week’s Thirsty Thursday:

Chris Clarke (yes, the Chris Clarke who was quoted in the Toronto Star)

Jessica Sine (the face of Access CNW)

Amanda Laird (my colleague, who got her job as a result of this post on BlogCampaigning)

So get your life together and spend what could be one of the last nice Thursdays of the year swilling beer with Toronto’s finest young communicators on the rooftop patio of Pauper’s Pub (539 Bloor Street) at around 7pm.

-Parker

A few months ago, I wrote an article for the CPRS Toronto publication “New Perspectives” about Twitter.

It was published last week, and I’ve included it on my blog, adding links where appropriate. If you want to view a scanned image of the article, click here. If you want to view the article on the CPRS Toronto website you are out of luck (they list their Spring 2008 issue as the current one).

Twitter 101?

By Parker Mason

CNW Group

If you’ve been paying attention to the social media world these days you probably know that Twitter is the hottest thing since Facebook amongst the digerati.

At its most basic level, Twitter exists for you to answer the question “What are you doing right now?” in 140 characters. But what began as a simple way to update your friends (or “followers” in Twitter-speak) has evolved into something much more. It is being used to share everything from ideas and links to information about natural disasters and the scores at sporting events and it is taking over the world of online communications.

Twitter matters because it gives people a way of opting in to receive information while also participating in a dialogue around it. While a blog could be compared to a formal lecture with a comments section as a formal question and answer period, Twitter is more like a cocktail party. There are multiple conversations happening at the same time, and you can easily drift between them and either or participate as you wish.

At the recent mesh Conference held in Toronto, delegates weren’t handing out business cards or email addresses so much as they were their Twitter account names. Throughout the conference (and, it seems, most social media conferences these days), an entire background conversation was taking place on Twitter. Rather than waiting until after a speaker had finished, delegates were debating their points during the session. As one blogger wrote, “you weren’t at the conference if you weren’t involved in the backchannel on Twitter.”

While it may still be early days for Twitter, there are still millions of people using the service and the “backchannel conversations” happening at conferences are already happening with your clients. As with all spaces (online or not) people will be having these conversations whether you’re there or not so you might as well meet them there.

So who is already using Twitter?

Zappos (http://zappos.com) is one company that has dove headfirst into the Twittersphere. The CEO of this online shoe-company already has over five thousand followers and is climbing up the popularity charts. Nearly every single employee is on Twitter, and all are encouraged to use the service to respond to questions or comments regarding Zappos. In the name of transparency, the company also has a page set up on their website that collects all mentions of “Zappos” on Twitter.

I’m quite proud of my CNW colleagues for embracing Twitter. When not traveling between Calgary and Vancouver, you can find Doug Lacombe, Vice-President, Western Canada, updating his Twitter feed by publicly fielding questions about the newswire business. At the same time, other members of CNW have used the service to find out more about what is going on at conferences or to simply share links with each other.

CNW Group has recently added a Twitter feed of releases being distributed by us in the Internet Technology category. Journalists and bloggers following the feed will receive a message with the headline of the release and a link to the full version on the CNW website at www.newswire.ca.

How can I start using Twitter?

Like most online tools, the easiest way to start learning is to start using. With Twitter, you’ll have to go to http://Twitter.com to sign up for an account. It is easy to do, and once you’re there you can make use of all of Twitter’s features right from their homepage. However, using Twitter from their webpage is a little bit cumbersome. A much more elegant solution comes in the form of a program called Twhirl (http://twhirl.org). Rather than forcing you to refresh your page in order to get updates from your friends, Twhirl automates the process and turns Twitter into an easy-to-use messaging program.

When you’re there, you’ll start seeing how you can integrate your Twitter account with your account at a number of other online places like Facebook.

Parker Mason is the Web Content Specialist at CNW Group, a global leader in news and information distribution services for professional communicators. Follow Parker on Twitter at http://twitter.com/parkernow

There are a lot of creative people in this world, and there are a lot of reliable people in the world.

There are far fewer people who are both creative AND reliable.

Mark Mckay is one of those people, and I recently had the good fortune of working with him on the video that accompanied CNW Group’s announcement about the launch of the CNW Social Media Release (if you haven’t seen the video, check it out now on the release here).

For those of you that don’t know him, Mark McKay was the fellow that did the video for the 2nd mesh conference (”The Wacky World of Web 2.0“), and he also hosts his own online-TV show called “Happy Hour with Mark McKay. If you watch MTV Canada, you’ll know that Mark has parlayed his online success into a regular gig television gig.

I’ve always thought he was entertaining, and knew that he was skilled at creating video content for the online space.

After working with him on this recent video project for CNW Group, I can also say that he is also incredibly reliable. When we first met to start the project, he gave me a time line of when he would have certain elements of the video ready, from a draft script to a rough version right through to the finished copy. We agreed on the timeline, and he kept right to it, delivering the final version when he said he would.

The only thing stopping me from recommending his services to other people is that I’m worried he’ll get too busy, and that I won’t get a chance to work with him again.

You can get in touch with him via Twitter, his website or his YouTube channel.

I’ve posted one of my favourite Mark McKay clips below.

-Parker