Over the weekend, a molehill has started to become a mountain. Or, in the view of some, a mountain became an even bigger mountain.

SageCircle posted a claim that Forrester Research will restrict its analysts from having personally-branded research blogs, implying that the policy will reduce the risk of analysts building their personal brands before bolting from the firm, taking their audiences with them.

Use of social media has become second nature to many, but one look at the range of comments on the SageCircle post reflects how strongly people still feel about the dichotomy of personal/professional social media usage and the tension around a company’s ownership of a worker’s intellectual property. Cries of Big Brother, paranoia and censorship abound, tempered by other statements that it’s good business practice or simply a matter of whose servers hold the data.

Source: speedy2

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We found this recent post by Justin Siefert especially interesting and valuable.  Not a day goes by where we aren’t having to defend our use and support of Twitter as a communications channel for our clients and for us, as a matter of fact.  Despite skepticism from late Twitter bloomers…end users are using this medium as a way to get info…and so are influencers.  Thanks for the insight, Justin…hope your eyes are better.

Event tweeting occurs quickly, especially if your point person is fed streams of information by multiple participants. The thoughts that people jot down may not even resemble proper tweet fodder, but don’t sweat it. When your client is tweeting about an event or conference, follow these simple tips to make sure their tweets are the center of attention and not another brief event mention.

1. Develop a tweet calendar based on the duration of the event.
   1. A minimum of two tweets per day is recommended: A tweet to start the day and a tweet to end the day
2. Craft your tweets around specific events or participants. For instance:
   1. What, if anything, is the client demoing or showcasing?
   2. Is your client speaking?
   3. Is your client exhibiting?
   4. Are there any panel sessions you want to draw attention to?
   5. Is the client introducing a new product or service?
   6. Is there anyone famous speaking at the event that will promote visibility of the event overall? For example, #MichaelJordan speaking at #VoiceCon may be a trending topic, but #AndrewEvangelista? Not so much…
3. Solicit instant updates from your people at the scene, if they aren’t able to tweet themselves. A couple of questions to get them started:
   1. What trends or hot topics are being talked about at the client’s booth and on the show floor?
   2. What’s the mood of the crowd?
   3. Anything exciting, surprising or particularly funny happen?

Hope these three tips help at your next event!

Embargoes aren’t for everyone. Last year Michael Arrington made that very clear. Here we are almost a year later, and it’s still a topic that spurs much debate. Yep, more outlets have abandoned embargoes, but it’s definitely not an extinct practice. It’s also not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Source: xuhara hamid

From a communications perspective, you’ve got to consider your client, their story and audience, and develop a strategy that makes sense for the individual situation. Does it even make sense to employ an embargo? It might not, especially for a private company. What may have been standard practice in the past may not apply anymore.

If it does make sense to embargo your client’s news, talk them through the risks involved and do your homework…know the policies of the outlets you work with, and be sure you develop and maintain trust with your contacts. You should also be prepared to move quickly in case the news is leaked.

As the dynamics of the media world continue to change, I expect there will be many more conversations about how to effectively evolve our methods of communication and news dissemination. Will we still be talking embargoes this time next year? Maybe so.

A couple of stories piqued my interest today.

First, E.B. Boyd of Bay Newser reported that McSweeney’s has unveiled a preview of its broadsheet project, the San Francisco Panorama. It’s an ambitious effort to show, in essence, that print’s death has been exaggerated, its worth underestimated, and its creative potential untapped. The list of talent that is contributing to Panorama will make your head spin. To preorder a copy, click here. (Bay Area locals, apparently there is going to be a special Bay Area-only price, so hold your horses).

Story #2 is from Peter Kafka and is in regards to Will Ferrell’s “Funny or Die” setting up a channel on YouTube. You might ask why Will & crew would do such a thing, considering they already have their own site on which to host their own content.

The answer: millions of eyeballs.

It’s all about tapping into YouTube’s ridiculously large audience. They’re taking the funny over to a place where a gigantic community already exists, which should help them garner far more exposure. “Funny or Die” will still premiere content on its standalone branded site and give its loyal followers the first peek before taking it majorly mainstream.

And on that note, I leave you with the classic “Landlord” video:

No, I can’t speak a lick of Latin, but I can convey a thought or two in 140 characters. When it comes to tweeting about their news and events, that’s all the real estate your clients will get to convey their message. To bring that size, or lack thereof, into perspective, my first two blog sentences are a total of 216 characters, well above the Twitter limit. That means you should put a lot of thought into making those 140 characters as impactful as possible.

Consider the title of this post. Let’s take the first part of the original Latin phrase and dissect it to add meaning and value: “Cogito,” which when translated into English means “I think.” I presume you care about Twitter since you’re reading this blog post, either for personal or professional gain, so I ask you to open a separate Internet tab and take a look at your personal Twitter feed. Of the dozen or so tweets on your page, what percentage shows a lack of foresight, care, or dare I say “thought”?

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If I see one more quote claiming that all companies should jump into social media because its free…I’m going to poke my eyes out.  So when I read this morning’s post on the Future Changes blog I couldn’t help but share the insight.  The quote below…and the heart of the post succinctly depicts the issue with why people think social media is free…and why it is not.  A distribution channel or channel for engagement is only as good as the content being distributed or shared.  Yes the channels are free…the content…especially the most valuable kind is most likely not.  Thank you Stewart Brand.

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

Apparently, social media is on the rise.  Haven’t you heard?  According to Inside Facebook, more than 12,000,000 users are active on the popular social site. Among the demographic of users, those between the ages of 18 and 34 constitute the largest group on Facebook in the United States. If you’re between these ages, you’re probably dialed into the world of social media already. But how do you apply that knowledge to make you more valuable as a PR professional in the eyes of your clients, company and colleagues?

Come join us on Thursday, Oct. 15, for the PRSA-SF (Public Relations Society of America – San Francisco chapter) Young Professionals program: “How to Leverage Social Media to Advance Your PR Efforts.”  Hosted by PRSA-SF and Eastwick Communications, this free event will provide attendees with the latest tips, tricks and tactics for integrating social media into your public relations initiatives. Eastwick’s very own Senior Director Rachel Shelton and Senior Associate Lyda Velez will discuss how to select the right social channel for effective communications. Learn firsthand how to monitor conversations, engage with audiences and build a community of brand evangelists.

This Thursday night mixer for young professionals will be held from 6 to 8 PM at Eastwick’s San Francisco office, located at 444 De Haro Street, Suite 112. We recommend registering in advance to ensure your space is reserved (friends and colleagues invited too, of course). For directions to the event, click here.

See you there!

With the exception of David Letterman, we all know that business and pleasure don’t mix.  But the line drawn between personal and business social networking keeps getting fuzzier everyday.  We’ve all seen our outgoing co-workers’ embarrassing party pictures on the same Facebook page they promote client news on.

For this, and many other reasons, I’m not surprised by the results of a recent survey by Robert Half Technology.  According to the survey of 1,400 CIOs, 54 percent said their companies completely prohibit employees visiting social networking sites while at work.  Fair enough.  What really interested me was that 19 percent permit employees to use social networks for business purposes only.  Good luck with that.

The Robert Half survey came one day after Deloitte’s 2009 Tribalization of Business Study found that 94 percent of enterprises are looking to maintain or increase investment in social media and communities.  Only 6 percent plan to make less of an investment.  The survey included more than 400 companies.

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Charles Lindbergh, his mother and President & Mrs. Coolidge

Several years before Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight across the Atlantic and before the publication of a little modern novel called “The Great Gatsby,” the American Society of Newspaper Editors met to establish some ethical guidelines in the “Canons of Journalism.”

The code of ethics states that the primary function of newspapers is “to communicate to the human race what its members do, feel and think.” In 1922, the ASNE may never have dreamed of such developments as Facebook or Twitter, but if that first sentence doesn’t scream “social media,” I don’t know what does.

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