Social media provides a plethora of places to find out about media changes - are they all accurate?

There are more changes going on in the media than ever before and having accurate information on the media is crucial to media relations professionals. At Cision US, we have recently received quite a few queries from our clients asking how Cision is tracking all of the changes, layoffs and buyouts that are being announced every day. This is typically our response:

“Because of the growth of online media and a struggling economy, our industry is currently changing at a more rapid pace than ever before. One of the unfortunate side affects of these changes is the layoffs and buyouts affecting nearly every daily newspaper in the nation, as well as a number of magazines, broadcast outlets and news services. The research team at Cision knows how important this information is to you.

To stay on top of these changes and provide you with the most accurate information possible, we are tailoring our research to ensure that we are providing you with the tools you need to communicate effectively. Through developing relationships with key contacts at major outlets, increasing the frequency of research at outlets affected by layoffs, monitoring hundreds of industry sites and thousands of media sites, and a variety of other research methods, our research team continues to provide you with the latest changes. We always strive to offer you the most accurate media database in the industry.”

At Cision US, we have dozens upon dozens of researchers working to verify these changes. We also keep an eye out on changes that are reported elsewhere online. Social media has allowed a plethora of users to post changes to a variety of sites, from wikis to Twitter to group pages on social networks. And although Cision monitors many of these sites, we don’t change anything in our database without verifying it directly ourselves.

One of the up-and-comers in posting media changes is @themediaisdying  on Twitter. The concept? Anyone can submit changes to an anonymous email address and the changes will then be posted on Twitter.

“So, Heidi,” you ask, “Can I trust the changes there?” Read it all..

Nobody’s perfect, but “I’m sorry” goes a long way

Last Friday night, my boyfriend was at the bank and, while he was filling out a deposit slip, he left his Blackberry on the counter. Within seconds, it was stolen. Upon his return home, I immediately called Sprint to put a freeze on his phone. The only problem? I couldn’t make any calls. Could this dastardly PDA robber somehow have sabotaged both phones on the account?? What should we do?

Then I remembered that Sprint has a live chat option with their customer service reps on their site. I quickly sign on, and, after some verification, I was chatting with Danielle, who was understanding and quickly shut down the stolen phone. She provided me with info on setting up a claim to receive a new phone and started troubleshooting the reason my phone wouldn’t make calls.

Turns out there were “voice outages” in my area. (For the record, I have never had an outage with Sprint before, and this one only lasted 20 minutes.)

I started to get really angry. “I am dealing with a traumatic situation here,” I thought. ”How could Sprint do this to me?” Then Danielle stepped in. She handled it so brilliantly that I will just include that portion of our conversation verbatim: Read it all..

Cision Blog talks to Fusion PR’s Bob Geller about the dual role of blogger and media relations professional

During the current explosion of social media and blogs, many public relations people are wondering if they should begin blogging themselves. There are quite a few high-profile bloggers who are also PR pros, from SHIFT Communications‘ Todd Defren and his PR Squared blog, to Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer, from Brian Solis of Future Works and his PR 2.0 blog, to Fusion PR’s Bob Geller and his blog Flack’s Revenge. So what are the benefits to being a media relations professional and a blogger? Should YOU start a blog?

I recently spoke with Bob Geller about his dual role. Geller is Senior Vice President at Fusion PR and started the Flack’s Revenge blog almost exactly two years ago in late November 2006. Geller encourages anyone to consider blogging as long as they have something relevant, unique and/or original to blog about. “It’s difficult to talk about something no one else is talking about,” Geller said. “But if you’re going to blog about it, you should have an interesting take or original idea on the subject.” Geller himself has a unique perspective on PR and social media that is evident on his blog because of his background in the tech industry, from sales, marketing and PR to his engineering degree that includes specializations and graduate-level work in microprocessors and digital signal processing.

Media relations pros in particular can benefit from blogging according to Geller. In his post, “I am in PR. Why should I blog?” he discusses how blogging forces you to write in a creative and engaging manner, come up with interesting ideas and concepts and stay up-to-date on important issues. “So what?” you ask?  Read it all..

Lessons in social media from a traveling minstrel

Paleo photo by Cary Norton.

In today’s social-media crazed world, everyone is pointing toward the next big social technology. To be sure, Twitter, FriendFeed and others are amazingly valuable tools for PR professionals, marketers, customer service professionals, and any professional communicator who needs to reach people. But the hype surrounding these next-generation social networks often overshadows the importance of finding your target community where it already lives online. That community may exist on a Web 1.0 message board, an archaic-looking discussion group, or that favorite punching bag of many social media enthusiasts, MySpace.

Read it all..

Only as part of a larger mix of compelling content

David Cohn

The social news site Digg has come a long way from its origins four years ago as a hub for tech geeks sharing news about gadgets and software releases. Now, the site has more than 1 million users, each day swapping thousands of links to intriguing blog posts and behind-the-headlines news reports on every topic, including food, the arts, cars, business, health and science, the environment and politics.

The way it works is simple: submit a link to an interesting item along with a short description, and your friends will “Digg” it if they find it interesting. The most popular items rise to the site’s front page and topic-specific pages. Dozens of top-tier journalists are known to comb the site for story ideas, and its most prolific users, tracked on socialblade.com, broadcast the most intriguing news articles, photos and videos they’ve found to thousands of fans and friends on the site. Is there a way to engage this influential, news-hungry audience without being dismissed as fluffy and self-promotional? Read it all..

How to avoid thorny debates when editing content about your brand

Photo courtesy animalspeek.blogspot.com

One day, I took it upon myself to add some content to the Wikipedia page about a little town in southern Japan where I had briefly taught English after college. Who else, I figured, would be inclined to add information about the local hotel and restaurant owners’ annual tradition of throwing live pufferfish into the harbor on a February afternoon? So, in December of 2006, I added a paragraph about it. I didn’t cite any sources because I couldn’t find anything written about the event…I had only attended it. A full year later, someone slapped a banner across the top of the page: “This article does not cite any references or sources.” My heart sank a little. Read it all..

Employers are monitoring social networks more than ever - are you at risk?

Virgin Atlantic recently fired 13 employees for participating “on the networking site Facebook, which brought the company into disrepute and insulted some of our passengers,” according to a statement from the airlines. Rob Diana discussed the issue on his blog Regular Geek and does an excellent job of looking at both sides: employee privacy and company reputation.

Regardless of how you feel about the individual privacy issue, it does not change the fact that employers are now monitoring social networks closer than ever. So how do you avoid a potentially embarrassing situation? Here are 10 tips on keeping your social networking clean:

Cision Blog bloggers hula-hoop on Facebook

1. Keep an eye on tagged photos. Both MySpace and Facebook give you the ability to untag yourself in photos - even if someone else posted the photo. Though the photo may still be out there, employers will not be able to search for those photos of you. Or as one PR specialist told me on Twitter, “Avoid posing for those pictures in the first place.”
2. Keep private comments private. MySpace, Facebook and Twitter all have the option to send private messages to your friends (on MySpace, use Messages, on Facebook, use your Inbox, and on Twitter, use Direct Messages). Don’t leave Comments on MySpace, Write on a Wall on Facebook or send a Tweet on Twitter if you don’t want others to see it.
3. If necessary, keep your page private. All of the sites mentioned above also have options for keeping your entire profile private, so if you can’t help but broadcast your latest exploits to all of your friends, isolate it to that: your friends.

Read it all..

Into uncharted territory

Planning a social media strategy for a media  relations campaign can seem like such an epic task, it’s easy to forget what a simple phenomenon social media really is: an evolving mesh of tools for information sharing propelled by people, for whom nothing comes more naturally than describing their interests and surroundings. That explains the rise of social news features on media Web sites. Read it all..

Embracing the chaotic nature of studying many groups and interests

If you’ve ever read one of those “word jumble” sentences in which all the words are horribly misspelled, but somehow, you can miraculously read and comprehend it quickly anyway (“Arinocdcg to rencet rseaerch, the hmuan brian is plrectfey albe to raed colmpex pasasges of txet”), you have experienced the human brain’s deep need to recognize patterns. So it comes as no surprise that, when using multiple social media metrics to gauge the influence of a particular blog or social network, it’s tempting to look for patterns.

Read it all..

‘Tweet-ups’ become organic networking events for new media mavens

The night before Halloween was the first official meeting of the Social Media Club of Chicago. As dozens of Chicagoland bloggers, Tweeters (those who microblog on Twitter) and other social media enthusiasts descended upon the bar the Pepper Cannister, I wondered how many other Social Media Club events and Tweet-ups were occurring around the world.

Cision Blog blogger Jay Krall and other new media people at the first official Social Media Club Chicago event on 10-30-08.

According to the Social Media Club website, there were two other official SMC events going on that night in London and Dallas. A quick Twitter search for ‘Tweet-up’ (a meeting formed on Twitter) reveals that other events were going on in Washington, D.C.; Boston; Wichita, KS; Orange County, CA; Charleston, SC; Greenville, NC; Tempe, AZ and more. And that was all on one Thursday night in October.

Why has there been this explosion in networking events formed through social media? Because the core nature of social media is human interaction. Shel Israel recently wrote a post on his blog, Global Neighborhoods, titled “Online Tribalism & the Future of Social Media.” In it, he explains, “The relevance of social media is that it allows us to interact in the world increasingly more like we behave in our own physical neighborhoods.” Read it all..