You gotta love free online tools, especially if they aren’t for mission critical items. I hesitate to use anything free for essential items, but these are pretty darn good and should definitely be tinkered with if you’ve got some elbow room: Continue reading
One recent evening, I was listening to a talk radio station while driving home after a business trip.
(As an aside, did anyone else think they would never ever ever listen to talk radio when they were kids?)
I don’t recall the exact topic of conversation, but it was insignificant until the host’s last line: “You’ve gotta be careful. Twitter, Facebook, social media will hurt you.” At that point, I started making odd faces at my digital dial, because there was obviously a disconnect between the host and the actual concepts he was discussing.
You see, social media platforms like The Twitter (thank you, Betty White, for making that an acceptable phrase), The Facebook (thank you, Justin Timberlake, for reminding us why they dropped the “The”) and others are tools. Tools can’t hurt you unless you make them. Continue reading
Twitter is a fad.
So are Facebook, MySpace, and all the other social media sites.
And so’s the internet (Ha!)
Those familiar with my writing know that at this point I’d find a good definition of fad and see if these sites fit the bill.
But here’s the thing people — it doesn’t matter. Continue reading
Over the last month or so I’ve posted a few technical stories over here – Email tracking and Tweet Dilution (as well as an April fool’s piece and the chance to play devil’s advocate). Today we’ll have a bit more fun with the more websites and services that have popped up around and support our favorite social media sites (or feed our habits)
• FriendOrFollow.com – Remember that person who worked for Widget, Inc. in Chicago that you followed months ago but can’t recall her username to save your life. FriendOrFollow.com to the rescue. The service allows you to download your friend, follower and fan lists as CSV (Comma Separated Value – readable by Excel and other, similar programs) including their username, location, bio, etc. making it easily searchable. Throwing a party – find all your area fans at once (except those that use coordinates as their location) with a simple resort of the column. Concerned about your account being suspended, use ForF to keep a backup of all your Twitter people. Continue reading
If content is king, then it’s about time we crown collaboration the queen.
By now, we all understand the value of quality content — in terms of SEO, traffic, engagement, readability, and so on. But, only recently have PR people begun to rethink our uber-competitive nature. And, we’re discovering that working together leads to better results for our clients.
For example: How many of you have seen a HARO query, and thought “Hey, that would be a perfect fit for X.” If X is another PR person, technically they’re a competitor. I don’t know about you, but when I first started my career, I never would have shared a lead with a competing agency. But, now I don’t think twice about giving someone a heads up if I see a HARO that might be relevent to them or their clients. If nothing else, it’s good karma, right? Continue reading