Hint: Blogging isn’t all about writing posts – it’s about community & conversation

Social bookmarking sites, lifestreaming, social networks and file sharing sites all consist of content created, shared and discussed by the masses. Clearly social media. But what about blogs? Some blogs are looking more and more like traditional media outlets and visa versa. So why are blogs considered social media?

Community. Successful blogs exist not only on their homepage, but across the social web as a part of a community. Before you argue, I realize that many traditional news sites also have great communities. I would say that those active sites are also social media – and probably have writers and editors who are engaged in those communities. Check out this post from Mack Collier at the Viral Garden. Mack says that successful blogs aren’t successful solely because of great content, but because their bloggers are actively involved in social media.

Mack writes that ”being active in the blogosphere and on social sites IMPROVES the quality of the content you create on your blog! It gives you a better idea of what your readers are looking for, AND it exposes you to other viewpoints, which helps you solidify and strengthen your own thoughts. And as this is happening, you are also exposing your blog to other people, by interacting with them in their space.” Read it all..

10 things you can do to produce an outstanding blog

Cision’s SVP of Research Ruth McFarland told me about a LinkedIn discussion she read from a public relations group which started with the simple question, “What makes you read a blog?” The answers varied from “author expertise and topic” to “an interesting spin.” One woman commented that “the layout does matter. Messy layouts usually turn me away…”

As more and more media relations people produce content themselves, it’s important to identify what attracts readers (and keeps readers) coming to your blog. And it’s not all about great writing (although that’s a big part).

I could learn more about blogging, too. So to help us all out, I’ve compiled this list of 10 things that make a great blog, including links to other blogs, resources and experts who have touched on similar topics. Read it all..

Image courtesy Fimoculous via Flickr

IBM maintains one of the world’s largest employee blog networks with more than 16,000 blogs. If you think of IBM in the gray-suit, Organization Man image of ole (which the company has successfully spoofed in a popular YouTube video), it might surprise you that its social media policy for employees was drafted by its internal, online community with no revisions by the company’s legal or HR departments. That kind of crowdsourcing is a testament in part to the work of Adam Christensen, IBM’s social media communications manager, who recently spoke on a Conference Board panel about how social tools like blogs are increasing collaboration across the company (here’s a cool presentation from Adam covering IBM’s internal social media efforts). For IBM, the only barrier to internal collaboration through social tools is older than stodgy corporate cultures and more difficult to overcome: language. Read it all..

Plus: Huffington Post’s Media Editor discusses how your expert can become a HuffPost blogger

You represent a product, service or brand with a person who is an expert in his/her industry. Beyond quoting them in your latest press release, how can you leverage his/her expertise in your media relations campaign?

Last week, my fellow CisionBlog blogger Jay Krall and I spoke at the PRSA Digital Impact conference in New York. One lunchtime panel was “Build Your Blogger Relationships.” Five well-known bloggers discussed what they cover and how they would like to be pitched.  Huffington Post Media Editor Danny Shea mentioned that many of the site’s featured blog posts are written by outside contributors. Here’s a really quick video on two ways your expert could be a HuffPost blogger (please pardon the video quality):

Read it all..

On-the-go advancements and growth bring new challenges to content producers

Can’t wait to watch last night’s episode of 24 on your DVR? You may soon be able to watch it as it airs while on the train, at a meeting or in a park. Yesterday broadcasters at the NAB Show in Las Vegas announced that free digital television is coming soon to cell phones, laptops and other mobile devices in the nation’s capital. Local network affiliates in Washington, D.C., will be the first to test new mobile DTV technology as early as this summer.

The new mobile DTV technology is just the latest in an explosion of mobile-ready media advancements. The mobile web has been a discussion for years now, and for consumers who think a newspaper or magazine is too cumbersome while travelling, the Kindle and other mobile readers have provided print media content for several years. Broadcast media has now, unsurprisingly, followed suit.

Why this growth in mobile media? Quite simple, really: market demands. According to a February 2009 survey from Tellabs, up to 71% of consumers in the US and 41% in parts of Western Europe anticipate that they will use the mobile internet and other mobile data services on a daily basis over the next two years – with a significant increase in the next 12 months.

How can content-producing media relations pros go mobile? Well, if you want to make mobile-ready a large corporate site, lots of video/audio content or anything else that’s really complicated, you should consult a developer with experience in mobile readiness. However, there are a few easy things you can do to keep the on-the-go reader/viewer in mind. Here are 5 ways to manage your mobile media relations:

1. Ask your friends! Check out your site on an iPhone, a Blackberry, a G1, a Palm, etc. The best way to see where your site is lacking in mobile-readiness is to actually try to navigate through the site on devices that people use every day. See what comes easily and what is muddled or won’t load.
2. Make your shortcut menu friendly to small screens. One of the most frustrating things for mobile users is difficult navigation. Take a look at your page and see how easy it is to move from page to page. Add a link at the bottom of the page to hop to the top. Make sure the site map is easy to locate on each page. Put a search bar near the top of the page to make finding contest simple.
3. Keep page sizes small for blogs and smaller sites! Developers know all the tricks to ensure that your page isn’t too large to load on an iPhone or Blackberry, but if you are personally maintaining a blog or smaller site, you can probably do this yourself. Keep the site size under 16K. This is really small, but if you don’t have tons of graphics and ads to load, pretty easy to do. 
4. Create a mobile version of your site with a subdomain. Again, developers can do this for you, but if you’re a one-woman shop with your own blog, a developer may not be in your financial plan. Just Google “Create a free mobile subdomain” and you’ll find lots of options – from as complicated to writing your own code to as easy as plugging in your URL. For a basic mobile site, I really like MoFuse - you just enter the URL and in a few simple steps, MoFuse creates your mobile subsite, adds your blog to their mobile directory and automatically detects mobile users to redirect them to your mobile site.
5. Go easy on the eyes. While desktop monitors are generally getting bigger and wider, mobile Web devices are getting smaller. Keep in mind that long paragraphs and words are tough to view on many mobile devices. For example, a paragraph of the blog post I wrote yesterday is 72 words long. In my desktop browser, this paragraph takes up 5 lines. On my Blackberry Pearl, it takes up 17 lines! By creating shorter paragraphs, you add more white space, thus making the content more pleasurable to the eye. Use shorter words because longer words will take up a whole line on their own, or, on some devices, force the reader to scroll to the right.

Now you can go ahead with on-the-go content!

Is there a universal solution to preparing for crises on the Web?

Earlier this week I moderated a panel on crisis communications at the PRNews Media Relations Forum in Washington DC. Just check out the session titles and (as can be expected in today’s world of economic turmoil and online networking) you’ll see that social media and crisis communications were the prevailing themes throughout the day. 

These two topics intersect at one point: How should a company use the Internet during a crisis to get their message out to consumers, clients, shareholders and the media?

A few years ago, dark sites started growing in popularity. According to Ed Lee, blogger at Blogging Me Blogging You, a dark site “is a pre-developed, non-public Web site that can be published to the live Web in the event of a crisis.” Dark sites are typically developed for areas of known risk or vulnerability for an organization.

For example, check out this post from Idil Cakim, GolinHarris’ VP of Interactive Media on his dot WOM blog from a few weeks ago about the Turkish Airlines’ crash near Amsterdam. Turkish Airlines’ quickly put up a dark site in multiple languages with information about the flight and crash, a hotline and passenger information. Because of their quick response and preparedness, Turkish Airlines’ was able to provide valuable information during a crisis and was able to control their messaging by providing a hub for people looking for information about the crash. Read it all..

How to determine which data can help you find the right blogs and sites

Photo courtesy of Todd Sternisha

Too often, discussions about Web audience metrics and social media metrics get bogged down in the minutiae of how they’re calculated, rather than how they can help you find the most influential blogs and social networks for developing relationships. As I’ve discussed here before, if your goal is simply to get as many eyeballs on content about your brand as possible, your best bet may be to look for patterns of strong activity across both traditional Web metrics (such as Unique Visitors) and social metrics (like inbound links and blog comments). But without tracking lots of figures for each blog or site you think may be worthwhile, you can use some of these metrics individually to hone in on which online destinations are right for your campaign based on your goals and your social media strategy.

Read it all..

This post is cowritten by Heidi and Cision Internet research editor Ashley Cunningham. Ashley researches blogs and news websites for Cision’s research database. She formerly wrote the blog Biscotti & Blahniks.

Are new interior design blogs filling the void left by the closing of Domino magazine?

When Domino magazine recently announced that the March 2009 issue would be its last, groans of disappointment rippled through Cision’s research department. As Ashley said when we started discussing this post, “It was the perfect interior design magazine for me. I mean, if I went with some of the others, it’s not like I have 50 grand to drop on custom cabinets for my kitchen.”

You see, Domino’s goal from the onset was to bring interior design to the masses. Appealing to readers’ eclectic tastes and tighter budgets, Domino offered space-saving tips to apartment dwellers and lower-cost options on the latest styles. It balanced the inspirational with the practical, pairing Philippe Starck chairs with Target lamps and readers loved the results.

Advertisers, however, didn’t feel the same. In a farewell letter on Domino’s website, the editorial team wrote, “From your tremendous response, we know that we were onto something. In this tough economy, however, we simply weren’t able to get the advertising support we needed.” Read it all..

This post is written by Cision guest blogger Annette Arno. Annette is a Research Director and analyzed the survey data and prepared the final report for a study released yesterday by Cision and George Washington University: How the Press Uses and Values Public Relations and Other Media Resources. She has more than 15 years of experience in market research.

Exploring social media usage by editors/journalists

Social media —the myriad ways in which individuals create and share information and ideas on the Internet, using such entities as blogs, social networks like Facebook, hybrids such as Twitter, and the venerable podcast (audio/video files distributed via the web)—is for everyone. And why not? These resources make great use of great technology – which can sometimes be isolating – to instead foster connections to others and share information. This is fine for personal use, and many corporations have entered the fray in order to become closer to their constituencies.

What about the journalists?

But what about the media? Specifically, the editors and journalists who are the gatekeepers of more traditional media? Do they use social media in their editing and reporting? You know, the NEWS?  That is the question Cision and George Washington University set out to answer when we launched a study of 12,337 editors and journalists, recently accomplished via online questionnaire. Read it all..

Just because you don’t tweet doesn’t mean social media is not for you

I hear it all the time: “I don’t know if social media is for me.” Or “I really like traditional media. I love picking up my newspaper on a Sunday morning.” Maybe it’s about Twitter: “That just seems useless and overwhelming. I don’t have the time to keep up with it all.”

I get it: Many people are intimidated by social media. We hear about social networks in the news all the time and the investment to understand and participate seems daunting.

The good news is that you don’t have to be everything to everyone – especially not at first. I was reminded of that just last week…

SMC Chicago panelists Howard Wolinsky, Wailin Wong, Andrew Gill, Dan Honigman & David Viggiano

Last Thursday, Cision sponsored the Social Media Club of Chicago February event. The panel included members of Chicago media who discussed how traditional media is working with social media. Social media heavyweights included panelists Andrew Gill, producer of interactive media for radio station WBEZ, Daniel Honigman, social media strategist for Tribune Interactive, Wailin Wong, technology reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Howard Wolinsky, former Chicago Sun-Times writer and adjunct faculty member at the Medill School of Journalism.

Despite the cumulative decades of social media expertise that these panelists brought to the event, it was social media newbie David Viggiano, entertainment reporter for Fox News Chicago, that really got me thinking. Read it all..