Tell your story – Storify

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storifyWorking in an industry that’s constantly evolving, it’s imperative in PR to stay on top of the latest technologies, tools, and services. Whether it’s a social network (we love LinkedIn for networking and thought leadership opportunities) or a social media management tool (Hootsuite is on the top of our list)—we’re always on the look out for new and innovative ways to improve efficiency and enhance our client service. Being open-minded to new ideas, testing out new processes, tools, and services helps PerkettPR remain in the forefront. Did you know in 2008, we were one of the first PR firms to join and find value in Twitter? So, it’s no surprise that when I came upon social media curation service, Storify, I was eager to explore this social network that allows users to tell virtual stories using videos, pictures, tweets and more.

In PR, storytelling is pivotal. Every brand has a story. And it is how a brand creates a story for its target audience—one that features compelling content and meticulous thought – that makes it relatable and engaging; however the way we tell the story has evolved from traditional mediums like newspapers to the concise art of 140 characters. Storify extends our “storifying” abilities even more. Being in PR, this network is especially enticing as it gives us the control to creatively tell our clients’ stories – on our terms. Whether it’s showcasing client coverage, sharing videos, or promoting an upcoming event there are many valuable uses for this tool. Storify makes stories more interesting and authentic—bringing together many voices into one story—allowing a brand to build more trust and credibility with its audience. This network proves to be both interactive and social—giving stories depth and resonance—qualities needed in today’s social media savvy age.

In fact, Storify recently launched Storify Business, a premium service that allows companies to spread story content more effectively while building their brand presence. Some of the new specialized features include the ability to make stories private, more accurate analysis of results, real-time updates, CSS styling with custom story display, and enhanced technical support. We’re looking forward to seeing how marketers and companies alike embrace this new service.

Do you use Storify? Is it useful? What are some of your favorite stories? What additional features would you like to see to further boost your story? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Got content? 5 tips for great newsletter content

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contentNewsletter creation can be remarkably challenging for even the most prolific writer. After all, your newsletter has some lofty goals: get through spam filters, attract readers’ eyes, get opened, get read, get click-thrus, convert to a lead, and if all the stars align – result in a sale. Phew!

Coming up with good content is easier than you might think. Here are some proven tips we’ve picked up over the years to help you get started:

  1. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes – Think about newsletters you like to read and try to mimic that type of content. Is the tone fun and lighthearted; is the content informative and educational? If you enjoy a specific style or type of content, chances are your readers will too.
  2. Don’t try to sell anything – Sure, the ultimate goal with any marketing tactic is to increase sales, but a newsletter should first seek to engage your audience. Your goal should be to capture their attention and provide interesting, compelling content that holds their interest over time. This helps to keep your services top of mind when your prospects are ready to buy them.
  3. Lighten up – Business is serious, but dry and dull is not the kind of content you want to provide your readers. Your content can be both informative and entertaining. Hear a funny customer story? Share it. A Ron Burgundy fan? Include a favorite quote when it makes sense.
  4. Recycle existing content – Old content can be new again. Revisit archived blog posts, customer success stories or past campaigns. Even current content on your blog, website, Pinterest page, or other marketing channel can be repurposed as newsletter content.
  5. Create repeatable content – Create a series such as a customer or campaign of the month, or a tips series where you share one piece of advice to a common challenge in each newsletter. This helps keep your readers engaged and looking forward to your next issue.

When thinking about newsletter content, remember that your audience – whether they’re prospects you’d like to convert to customers, or existing customers you’d like to retain – they opted in to your newsletter for a reason: they’re interested in learning more about your business and what you can do for them. You don’t need to attract their attention; you need to keep it. Cater to their interests with relevant content that offers valuable, entertaining, educational information. Keep this in mind as you develop your newsletter and you won’t disappoint.

What’s your best tip for creating great newsletter content? Please share in the comments.

Lights, camera, action, oh my?

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clapper with handsJust as personal computers and the Internet have sparked the writer and publisher in everyone; camera enabled devices and social media are now making videographers and producers of us all. Video has not only become a part of everyone’s social life, it’s become a necessary skill in the public relations and marketing world.

Shooting and editing video has never been more accessible. Whether you use a laptop, tablet, phone, helmet, or glasses you have a video camera at the ready. With a little luck, you can capture the fun, happy, mundane or big moments in your life with ease. Where do you start when you need to shoot video in a professional capacity? A shaky camera and bad lighting may fly in coach, but a poorly shot video will lose its charm in business class.

Here are some simple tips to consider for your next video shoot:

  • Use a tripod if/whenever possible.
  • Position your subject (or yourself) a little to the left or right of center and leave a little headroom at the top of the frame.
  • For online video, avoid pans (horizontal movement of the camera) and zooms (focusing in or out using the zoom feature on the camera).
  • Don’t shoot your subject in front of a window or with the sun behind them, the best light source comes from behind the camera. If you happen to have a lighting kit – or even a few floor lamps – check out Media College’s illustrated guide to Three Point Lighting Technique.
  • Use the viewfinder on the camera to watch the interview at the same time that you look over the camera and make eye contact with the subject. This puts the subject at ease, gives him/her someone to look at and also makes the interview more natural-sounding.
  • If your subject will be looking off camera for cues, it will work best if you sit next to the camera and have your subject focus their attention towards you, not the camera, and you provide cues. This also helps put the subject as ease and makes the interview feel more natural overall.
  • Don’t make any sound at all when your subject is talking. Flipping pages, coughing, moving in chair, etc. can all get picked up by the camera’s microphone and will surely sound undesirable to viewers.
  • If your subject stumbles in their response, instruct them to relax, gather their thoughts and respond again. Make sure they do not feel rushed.
  • If your subject is willing, consider shooting multiple takes. When editing footage, it is always helpful to have multiple takes to choose from. If nothing else this offers your subject the opportunity to run through the process and to feel more at ease in subsequent takes.

Circle back after the shoot for Part 2, where I’ll discuss choosing a video editor and provide some helpful editing tips.

Have some helpful tips of your own? Please leave a comment below.

MavenSay What?

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Every now and then, I come across a product or service that makes me ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?” MavenSay—a new social networking app– is no exception.

mavensayWith this app you’re able to share your lifestyle with a trusted community of enthusiasts and local taste makers. What pair of running sneakers do you love? Where do you get the best coffee heath bar ice cream? Where should I get my eyebrows waxed? What’s a new song I should download?

At its heart MavenSay is about knowing what’s good by sharing the latest trends — fashion, food, music, shopping — through reliable and trusted recommendations. With a soft launch in October, the six month old app is making huge strides in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. More than a location based guide, MavenSay wants to be the community for lifestyle curation.

mavensay2So how does it all work? Well, one of the best things about MavenSay is how easy it is to use. Simply, find you friends through Facebook and Twitter to see their recommendations. You can also visit the weekly “Discover” section to find a curated collection recommended by MavenSay. or use the nearby map feature to view favored local finds.
And with a spokesbear named Fred the Honey Maven ¬and creative video ads like this one¬ http://vimeo.com/58834365 — it’s hard not to appreciate this bright company’s creativity to attract Mavens.

It will be interesting to see if MavenSay will stick. Are you a Maven? What are some of your favorite features? What could MavenSay do to enhance their app? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Facebook Just Made Your “Friends” More Likeable with Graph Search

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By now you’ve heard the news that Facebook has announced Graph Search, eloquently explained here by Steven Levy at Wired. While the tech world buzzes about Google’s reaction, the everyday user of Facebook is trying to make sense of it all – and probably worried that marketers are going to stalk them even more now – and privacy activists are sure to help them shake in their boots.

But let’s slow down for a minute. Isn’t garnering information from your friends and fans a good thing? Don’t you want to better understand your network, and be able to both gain and share information in a more targeted way? For example, I don’t want to bombard all of my “friends” with my current diet habits as I’m doing a 21-day Paleo challenge. But I would love to know which friends have also done it in the past, what their experience was, and any advice they have to share. Sure, I can post that question on my timeline, but it’s momentary – maybe some friends will see it, but many will not as it gets buried within the rest of their scrolling “news.” I also don’t want to ask the question and tag people because it’s just obnoxious how the question is then plastered on their Wall (or in their notifications, pending approval), and I’m not totally sure which of my 1300 or so friends it would be appropriate to ask. It’s just not a very gracious way to ask your network questions. In fact, here’s what it looks like right now in Facebook:

But from what I understand, with Graph Search, I can easily do just what the name implied – search my network (social graph)  and find those in it who might be interested in this particular topic, based on their updates, information and posts. I could query “friends of mine who have tried Paleo,” and Facebook would immediately provide me with data that I could then use to ask an appropriate question – or share information – to friends who might actually care. That means I annoy less and connect better on topical information. Or, perhaps you’re interviewing for a new job and you want to know if any of your friends have worked at the company you’re considering. Not many of us know the career history of all of our “friends,” and we’re not about to go searching through everyone’s bio – on Facebook or on Linkedin, for that matter. If Facebook could deliver an instantaneous list of “friends who have worked at EMC,” for example, you could easily ask them what it was like, if they recommend it, etc. (Granted, Linkedin allows you to search by people/companies.)

But what about privacy?

This is, understandably, always the first question that comes to mind when Facebook makes a new announcement. We’ve been conditioned not to trust them, and often we have reason. But again, from what I understand, Graph Search simply allows you to make better use of information already available to you. They’re not unveiling information you’re not already sharing – they’re just indexing it in a way that allows your friends and fans to easily search it at any time.

Personally I’ve been wanting Facebook to make it easier to search details on my network. Yes, I have lists and privacy settings, and as long as Facebook is honoring those, I’m happy to be able to go back into someone’s “archives” in a more organized and instant way to find relevancy to what I want to ask or share. Nothing’s changed from the old adage, “If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard, don’t put it on a social network.” (No matter what the privacy settings. )

And anyway – didn’t we all already know that the Internet is forever?

Here are a few of the more choice quotes from Levy’s article – they may help you quick study the news:

  • Nobody has feared this day more than Google, which suddenly faces a competitor able to index tons of data that Google’s own search engine can’t access.
  • Facebook is helping them [users] tap its vast, monolithic database to make better use of their “social graph,” the term Zuckerberg uses to describe the network of one’s relationships with friends, acquaintances, favorite celebrities, and preferred brands.
  • “People use search engines to answer questions,” Zuckerberg says. “But we can answer a set of questions that no one else can really answer. All those other services are indexing primarily public information, and stuff in Facebook isn’t out there in the world — it’s stuff that people share. There’s no real way to cut through the contents of what people are sharing, to fulfill big human needs about discovery, to find people you wouldn’t otherwise be connected with. And we thought we should do something about that. We’re the only service in the world that can do that.”
  • Thanks to Graph Search, people will almost certainly use Facebook in entirely new ways: to seek out dates, recruit for job openings, find buddies to go out with on short notice, and look for new restaurants and other businesses. Most strikingly, it expands Facebook’s core mission — not just obsessively connecting users with people they already know, but becoming a vehicle of discovery.
  • Graph Search will be improved based on how people actually use it. So Facebook plans a slow introduction, limiting the initial rollout to a small number of users. Zuckerberg’s expectation is that by the time it becomes available to millions it will be considerably improved.

And, as GigaOm tells us, “It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.”

As a marketer, I can’t help but be excited about this news – discovering, sharing and positioning information is what we do for a living. But I’m also interested from a personal standpoint because I think it will make me a better Facebook “friend” in many ways. What do you think? Are you excited or nervous about this rollout?

ADDENDUM 

I just learned from Robert Scoble that you can sign up to try it: “To get the Graph Search on Facebook you have to sign up at http://facebook.com/graphsearch and it will roll out over next few months.”

I did, and here’s a look at the sample search it ran for me – looks good, although I’d love to be able to query something more specific.

 

Vetting Your Brand’s Voice – a Lesson from KitchenAid

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This morning I caught wind of a Twitter “oops” made during last night’s Presidential Debate by the well known brand KitchenAid. Someone responsible for the Twitter handle Tweeted, “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president” – in regards to President Barack Obama’s deceased Grandmother.

While a lot of outlets are reporting on how KitchenAid handled the bump – Cynthia Soledad, the senior director of KitchenAid’s brand and marketing division jumped on Twitter immediately apologizing and offering explanations and interviews – I’m more interested in how such an accident happens in the first place. My Twitter pal Chuck Gose said,

This “simple case” begs the bigger question for me on how companies are vetting and qualifying employees responsible for corporate social communications. It goes beyond the technology tools and “need for social apps that let you better separate accounts.”

I’m thinking beyond that. I understand social media managers could have a dozen or more Twitter accounts that they are responsible for. I understand how easy it is to be furiously Tweeting in order to keep up with the conversations taking place, and to accidentally tweet from the wrong account. I get all that and yes, from that perspective, it’s a simple mistake.

The bigger question is – are brands thinking about who they are hiring for such important decisions and investing in the right level of experience for such? I’m not talking about HR violations like asking what someone’s political preference is, but rather, taking a look at their communications experience and ability to think strategically in the way they present information and engage constituents in conversations. I’d also recommend taking a look at their personal Twitter accounts, blogs and Facebook status updates to get a good sense of cultural fit with your organization and corporate values. I don’t condone asking for Facebook passwords but I do believe that checking a candidate’s public social behavior is a must – especially if they will be a public voice for your brand. In this case, perhaps that “tasteless” individual would have shown such characteristics and not been hired. Would you hire someone that made such a crass comment in an interview? I don’t think so. And if you’re hiring a social media manager, I think checking their social behavior when they’re not “on the clock” is perfectly acceptable.

I’ve watched the evolution of companies finally coming around  to social as an important part of their marketing mix. But I still think it’s a bit of a stepchild – companies want to be social but they still don’t take it seriously enough to put a strategic communications expert behind the curtain. This isn’t the role to throw an inexperienced, entry level executive into managing. Let me ask you this,

Who would you put in front of the microphone to represent your brand at a news conference?

Who do you have in charge behind the scenes to write speeches and content for that person to present?

Those are the same people who should be in charge of your social communications.

It’s been argued that the younger generation should be in charge of social because they “grew up on it” – with one young lady going so far as to say no one under 25 should be a social media manager. I don’t understand this mentality at all. Just because someone knows how to use a tool doesn’t mean they’re good at it. Everyone has a telephone, right? It doesn’t mean they are effective, strategic communicators. I have said this time and time again – putting someone in charge – or even as a team member – of your social should be carefully considered. You are vetting your brand’s voice and putting it in their hands!

Perhaps the KitchenAid executive was just one of a handful of folks who have responsibility for – and access to – updating the brand’s Twitter account. Perhaps they aren’t in charge of producing strategic content, but rather just posting prewritten updates. In any event, brands need to be very careful about who has control of and access to using social networks on their behalf – this is a good lesson that anything they say or write – even a “simple mistake” – can come across as your brand’s voice, and reflect on much more, such as political views, religious beliefs and other stances best left out of the corporate environment. (Not to mention, if they’re this tasteless, do you really want them in charge of your creative communications ideas?)

How do you manage your social accounts? Do you vet who has access and participation rights? How deep do you go in the HR process to check their online behavior before hiring them?

 

 

Flexing your social savvy: Do you ‘THINK’ before you tweet?

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We’ve all committed social gaffes at one time or another, saying something in the heat of the moment that we immediately wished we could take back. But thanks to today’s public social media platforms, ‘what happens on Twitter’…can really stick around to haunt you.

The most recent case in point: This year’s Miss Seattle, who proclaimed her annoyance with the city of Seattle, its residents and its weather one dreary day in December. A local reporter caught wind and blogged about the blunder, which became a veritable viral sensation. An honest mistake, by all accounts – Jean-Sun Hannah Ahn, 22, a Seattle native, said she was merely missing the sunny weather in Phoenix, where she attended Arizona State University and was crowned Miss Phoenix – but damaging nonetheless.

Ahn has since spent the majority of her time in the position apologizing for her social media misstep. Most recently, she spent a day educating school children on her new platform: “THINK Before You Post,” which stands for Truthful, Helpful, Inspiring, Needed and Kind to remind them to make sure their online posts fall into those categories.

And so she joins the ranks of other famous (infamous?) faces who have failed to recognize that a public social media platform is just that…public. But they’re not alone; even though it may not be breaking news, there’s a good chance that many of us are also guilty of the same faux-pas. In fact, a recent Daily Mail poll revealed that approximately 25 percent of people have tweeted something they regret, and approximately the same number of people said they have posted something on a site that they never would have said to someone’s face.

So while there are no official ‘rules’ for using Twitter, we thought it might be helpful to review a few tips for projecting a more professional image, regardless of whether you use it for work or personal purposes. After all, you never know just who is watching…

  1. Have a goal. Decide what you want to get out of having a Twitter account before you set it up. Make a plan, have a purpose, and direct your actions accordingly.
  2. Mind your grammar. Capitalize only when needed (DON’T SHOUT IN CAPS!), use active language, refrain from using numbers “2” replace words, and use abbreviations wisely.
  3. Focus on value. What can you offer followers that others cannot? Post quality content regularly, – take an active interest and you’ll keep them connected, interested and engaged.
  4. Be edgy, not offensive. There’s a fine line between pushing the envelope and pushing the limits of good taste. Take your followers into consideration, but – above all – use common sense.
  5. Think before you tweet. This is definitely worth repeating. And when in doubt, wait. Give yourself a window for cooling off when you may be emotional.

Got any Twitter best practices? Or pet peeves? Feel free to share in the comments below!

What’s behind our urge to share on social media?

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Most of us take Facebook at, well, “face” value – a social network that “connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them,” as the site itself says. But peel back the façade of friends, likes, photos, apps and more, and you’re left with an extensive data set on human social behavior that intrigues scientists and psychologists alike.

From CNN’s first-of-its-kind list of “The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers” to AllFacebook’s more recent post on “7 Facebook Personalities to Avoid” and even Vanity Fair’s take on “The Six Most Common Personality Types on Facebook,”  it’s clear that we’re fascinated by the fact that human interaction has migrated online, and that it’s able to be observed so easily within the Facebook microcosm.

Consider this: Each month, more than 845 million people record and share intimate details of their daily lives, relationships and online activity through their friend connections, messages, photos, check-ins, and clicks. Couple that with predictions that the number of active Facebook users will reach 1 billion in 2012, and you can’t help but ponder the common thread that unites approximately one-seventh of the entire world population, inspiring them to share so freely and publicly.

Well, according to several Harvard University psychologists, there’s a definitive reason behind why we like to reveal our thoughts, views and opinions to friends, near and far. The research, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences by Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell of Harvard’s Department of Psychology, even went as far as to claim that humans devote a surprising 30–40 percent of speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences.

Why, exactly, are we compelled to do so? The act of disclosing this information about ourselves actually triggers the same pleasure centers in the brain that are activated by fundamental rewards such as food and sex, according to the study. Throughout the course of their experiments, the pair even found that some of the participants were willing to forgo money in place of disclosing information about their personal experiences!

Tie this back to us and our use of social media – and Facebook, in particular – as PR professionals and marketers, and we can get a much better idea of how to use these tools to connect with (versus broadcast at) target audiences, encouraging them to raise their voice and join in the conversation. And the more we practice this golden rule of social networking – keeping it about “them” not “us” – the more mutual success and satisfaction we’ll find in these relationships, both online and off.

How do you feel about sharing online, and do you have any particular best practices to share regarding personal/professional content? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Three tips for handling email overload

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There may be some debate over whether or not email is dead, but take one look at your email inbox each morning, and I bet you’ll beg to differ.

As Peter Bregman reported in his recent Harvard Business Review blog, this affair with email is starting to really affect us in negative ways. According to an article he cited from USA Today, the number of lawsuits filed by employees claiming unfair overtime is up 32 percent since 2008. What’s to blame, in large part, for this increase? Email. And when you factor in devices such as smartphones, which we have with us – and neurotically check – at all times, there’s no denying that it’s quietly infiltrated our personal lives.

His advice for coping? Assign designated times to “bulk-process” emails and set designated non-email times, resisting the urge to constantly check email during these off-email hours.

Now, before we all balk and say that this is completely unrealistic, especially in a service industry such as PR where we’re expected to be on top of breaking news and at the beck and call of clients ‘round the clock – I believe that his is an argument worth hearing. We have to remember that the ability to be available and respond swiftly to inquiries is only one facet of the value that we’re able to provide as PR professionals. Public relations is more than managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics; our focus on building important relationships and relaying vital information back to an organization for analysis and action can have real, measurable impact on the achievement of strategic organizational goals. And this often takes time, focus and uninterrupted thinking.

Consider this, for example: Research in the UK revealed that employees working on a computer typically switched applications to view their emails as many as 30 or 40 times an hour, for anything from a few seconds to a minute. Dr. Karen Renaud, who carried out the study, said quite simply that email has gotten out of hand:

“Email harries you,” she said in an article in the UK’s Daily Mail. “You want to know what’s in there, especially if it’s from a family member or friends, or your boss, so you break off what you are doing to read the email. The problem is that when you go back to what you were doing, you’ve lost your chain of thought and, of course, you are less productive. People’s brains get tired from breaking off from something every few minutes to check emails. The more distracted you are by distractions, including email, then you are going to be more tired and less productive.”

This brings us back to Bregman’s point. He’s not suggesting that we throw the baby out with the bath water and abandon all established email etiquette when it comes to keeping up with the daily workflow. Rather, he’s proposing that we merely try to be more mindful about it. For example, when you set up designated intervals to handle emails, you’ll be working for that express purpose, effectively making you more focused and efficient on the task at hand. We have our heads down during these email-only times, and waste less time transitioning from one activity to another in a blur of information.

The hardest part is resisting the urge to check…and check…and check…which has likely become more of a reflex than a deliberate action. So until you can resist temptation and set up some real boundaries between you, your inbox and your daily to-do list, here are a few ideas to help make the detachment process a little less painful:

1. Stop it at the source. Whenever possible, try to reduce the amount of junk email that enters your inbox on a daily basis. Set up a spam filter, unsubscribe from unnecessary email newsletters and turn off automatic notifications.

2. Realize that hoarding won’t help you. Many of us like to let emails linger in our inbox, keeping them in digital limbo until we decide exactly what do to with them. It’s a matter of personal preference, but if you find that this system just isn’t working for you, try a more aggressive approach with filing and deleting.

3. Think before you hit send. And unless it requires a direct response, don’t do it. Tim Ferris spoke with blogger Robert Scoble about how he stays on top of tens of thousands of emails, revealing that “replying to more people more often — the goal of most people — actually creates more work instead of cutting it down.”

What are your favorite tips for cutting down on email chaos? Please share with us in the comments below!

Digital PRoductions – Client Work Highlights

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Some folks don’t realize that our agency has long gone beyond traditional PR and offers digital production (in addition to social marketing and training services) that drives our clients’ content and community initiatives – providing creative services from graphic and web design to online video production to integrated community and user-engagement campaigns for all social media platforms. We’re pleased to share some recent examples of digital production work for clients, as part of a new series showcasing our expertise in this area. This month’s focus is on work for enterprise software client, Aternity. Please let us know what you think!

Monitoring BYOD Infographic for Aternity (client)

Infographic by PerkettPR showing new challenges IT organizations face as they widely adopt BYOD policies and allow employees to bring personally-owned devices to the workplace for use and connectivity on corporate networks.


Click image to see full infographic

Facebook Timeline Cover for Aternity (client)

A custom Facebook Cover Photo created by PerkettPR for Aternity Inc., the industry leader in end user experience management solutions for Global 1000 enterprises.

Aternity Product Demo – Mobile FPI (client)

Video production of an 8-minute demonstration of how Aternity’s breakthrough new technology unplugs end user experience management – by going mobile.