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..

Mashable’s 10 ways J-schools are teaching social media are important lessons for PR pros, too

Vadim Lavrusik wrote a great article last week on Mashable, 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media. With new positions being created at traditional media outlets for social media coordinators and editors, universities have started incorporating social media best practices into their curricula. Lavrusik himself is a new media student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

If all of the up-and-coming journalists are learning how to best utilize social media, PR professionals will need to learn Web 2.0 skills as well to effectively communicate with the media. So I started thinking… if I was teaching a social media class to public relations students, what would those skills and lessons be? I started writing a blog post on the topic and here’s what surprised me: I created the exact same list for PR students as the list Lavrusik compiled for J-school students. As the media industry changes, so does the PR industry — and there are fewer and fewer differences in the set of skills required to work as a journalist or a media relations pro.

I highly recommend a click-through to the article to read each lesson in more detail, but here are the titles of the 10 lessons: Read it all..

Who you know might just teach you what you know

We’ve all heard the battle cry of networkers (all together now): “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” At the surface, that may seem disheartening – no matter how much expertise you have, if you don’t have great connections, you won’t go anywhere. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that through networking you will not only build connections, but continue to learn about your industry as well.

Social Media Club of Chicago members listen to a panel at the group's May 2009 event.

CisionBlog has spent a lot of time discussing how social media, a struggling economy and shifts in the media landscape are changing the world of public relations more rapidly than ever before. How can any busy PR professional stay on top of it all? Of course, reading magazines, blogs and other articles on the industry is a great place to start. But networking with others in your industry can do even more. You can take what you’ve learned from reading, experiences or school and discuss the concepts that are changing our industry. You can share stories and learn from how others handled a similar situation. You’ll develop connections that can help you in your career development, whether it’s finding your next job or learning more about your current position from others. Here are three ways to start making those valuable connections: 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..

Services that promise more aren’t necessarily promising better

CisionBlog frequently discusses how to target the media effectively without using ’spray and pray’ tactics. Social media has given voice to journalists who are now bringing attention to deep-seated bad habits of some PR professionals. Basically, journalists want you to read what they write, understand what types of pitches they are looking for and know their beats and writing styles. Just take a look at a few selected quotes from top journalists in Cision’s database:

Lawrence Armour, Fortune: “Please make sure you know what I cover before making any unsolicited pitches.”

Therese Poletti, MarketWatch: “Do research before you pick up the phone.”

Barbara Staurch, New York Times: “The best thing PR people can do is to get to know which reporters cover what, and try to develop a relationship with that reporter, giving them useful tips on real news.”

This stuff is important. Journalists tell us day in and day out that their biggest gripe is untargeted pitching. I know it sounds basic, but it still happens all the time – and I still hear about it every day. Read it all..

Bringing law & order to the Wild West isn’t always easy

Like the Wild West, social media is so new and growing at such a rapid rate that governing, monitoring or just keeping general order in regards to your company or brand can be difficult. Recently, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other media outlets have received attention on Gawker’s Valleywag, Editor & Publisher and elsewhere for their newly introduced social media policies. Many are critical of new policies and rules (particularly Bloomberg’s) as being too strict and not allowing authentic engagement. 

Nicholas Carlson argues on the Silicon Alley Insider that journalists can build a personal brand and drive traffic to their sites through engagement, but that involves sharing opinions, personal anecdotes and links to articles and sites that they aren’t affiliated with. He recommends that they should use “less Draconian” rules like “Don’t give away story ideas” or “Be a human, but a good one.”

Those suggestions are terrific, however, we’ve seen many horror stories where some employees don’t use their best judgment. Remember the FedEx Twitter fiasco and the Virgin Atlantic employees who got canned for badmouthing passengers on Facebook? We all have different definitions of ‘appropriate’ and ‘ethical.’

So how do you create guidelines that foster openness and encourage growth while still establishing what is appropriate for your company? Read it all..

Last week, my colleague Jay Krall and I presented the latest installment in Cision’s Social Media Webinar series. The free series covers social media monitoring, engagement and content creation. In last week’s session we got some great questions. In occasional posts, we answer questions we didn’t get to during the webinar. Thanks for all your questions!

Joahna: Is it reliable that a pr pro uses a personal profile in Facebook to push or support his client’s campaigns?

Heidi: This is definitely a hot topic, Joahna, and the short answer is yes, you can use a personal profile to support client campaigns. However, proceed with caution. First off, it is imperative that you fully disclose your association with the campaign. Social media is about radical transparancy and honesty. Second, make sure that your personal profile aligns with the values and culture of the company you are representing. For tips on avoiding some of those Facebook pitfalls, check out my post Top 10 tips on how to avoid a professional embarrassment on Facebook. My fellow blogger Jay also touches on the subject in his post If Walls can talk: managing a corporate presence on Facebook.

Marina: Can you use Twitter to create a support group? 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..

Gartner and IDC offer best practices for working with analyst firms

Media relations. Crisis communications. Community relations. Internal communications. Investor relations.

A PR person can wear many hats… but one hat we don’t hear about often is analyst relations. Some tech companies may have a person exclusively dedicated to analyst relations, but most of the time, it falls to the PR professional to manage a company’s relationships with research firms.

Not everyone in our industry is familiar with how to work with analysts, what it means for their companies/clients or even what an analyst or research firm really is. Never fear, CisionBlog is here to give you a quick introduction…

I interviewed IDC and Gartner this week (two of the world’s largest and most respected industry research firms) to discover some best practices. 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!