InsidEPR

Does the new Twitter glitter?

By Mike Tomlinson

For all the supposed earth-rattling changes that Twitter built up in anticipation of its new layout, its quiet rollout over the past week left a lot of us at EPR hanging - do I even have the new twitter redesign? Is this really it? Thankfully, at least Christmas came early for me and I wasn’t the last in the office to roll over to the new design. Checking my account hour after hour, I was soon granted access to what I imagined would be a triumphant, gold plated Twitterdom of a new age; a revolutionary upheaval in how the tweeting masses, well.. tweeted!

Alas, what I realized was that despite a few noteworthy changes, businesses wouldn’t be changing their twitter strategy much, if at all. It wasn’t the gilded paradise I had been hoping for, but there were still a few changes worthy of a second glance.

One highlight of the new design that will help businesses are the ‘Connect’ and ‘Discover’ tabs on the user home page, making it easier for users to monitor exactly who is interacting with them as well as enabling a better ‘news feed’-like visual representation of what is trending between the website’s members. The obvious win for businesses is that keeping track of power re-tweeters and responders. This will help companies stay on-point or adjust their message depending on the trends developing from their account output. Expandable tweets—not something new—have been tweaked to allow users to expand tweets within the stream, saving users the hassle of being redirected to a sidebar or another page to read the full tweet or see its media contents.

Another neat new tool is the ability to embed tweets on a third party website; no longer must you capture a screenshot and upload it as a picture! Instead users are now able to feature, for example, a tweet by an industry analyst on their company’s press room page simply by copying the provided code on the bottom right of any tweet (‘Embed This’). This should lend more credibility to third-party tweets, giving others who want to promote things being said about them a clean, easy way to repost these comments on their own websites or online press rooms.

But, that was pretty much it (cue the sad face). Ultimately, anything that streamlines the steps required to get select information,  is a good thing, especially for businesses. Yet for most of us, our personal day-to-day usage of twitter likely will not change. The informal nature of twitter posts make it unlikely a company’s tweet—controversies aside— will wind up in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. But the new layout means that staying in touch with key influencers is easier and more manageable, and that’s certainly something worth tweeting about.

Triple Bottom Line is Pointing Us in the Wrong Direction

By Fran Lowe

"How we define the relationship between environment, society and the economy will dictate how well we respond to the challenges currently facing us," says Marianna Grossman, executive director of Sustainable Silicon Valley. 

In a recent article in Environmental Leader, Ms. Grossman calls the widely accepted model of three pillars of environment, economy and equity (or people, profit, planet), misleading.

'“The environment is the service provider that enables human society to exist. Human society creates the conditions, rules and relationships that support economic activity.” In other words, the environment contains human society and human society contains and creates the conditions for the economy.

Until we move away from the dominant model of 3 equal pillars (people, profit, planet) we will continue to address the wrong problem.

Ms. Grossman goes on to imagine several "what if’s" that fit under what she calls “regenerative capitalism.”

“What if we had an economy based on “regenerative capitalism?” Like a healthy natural ecosystem, what if materials cycled through the economy to be used and reused over and over again?”

Such questions will be the focus of Sustainable Silicon Valley’s annual WEST Summit taking place in 2012 in Santa Clara, CA. The goal of the WEST Summit is to catalyze a sea change in action towards long-term resiliency through distributed management of water and energy supply in Silicon Valley. The 2012 Summit will focus on the impact of climate change on global trade and regional resiliency.

Think no further than this year’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the current flooding in Thailand to consider our current dependency on global trade and total vulnerability to the gathering realities of climate change.

Two more of Marianna Grossman’s "what if’s" seem eminently sensible: What if companies formed industrial “neighborhoods” where natural resources (materials, water and energy) can be used and reused, creating markets for waste streams as well as for finished products? This could create local jobs and reduce the energy required to ship finished goods and waste products long distances.

What if culture, ideas and communication were exchanged widely, but most manufacturing was done on a just-in-time basis, in a way that allows each region to meet their needs primarily from local resources (feedstocks, water, energy, labor, etc.)?

Let us and SSV know what you think of the new model for sustainability, and your own what if’s for “regenerative capitalism”.

Disclosure: SSV is a client of Engage PR.

In Sum: Nick Bilton’s “I Live in the Future and Here’s How It Works”

By Caitlin Mattias

I recently dove into a book from Nick Bilton, lead writer and technology reporter for the New York Times Bits blog, titled “I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works.” As a PR practitioner, I’m skeptical when a journalist actually commits a book to print about technology – it seems dated the moment it hits the presses; but, overall I commend Bilton for his examination of culture and human behavior as it relates to the growing tech landscape.

Here are his most compelling points…in sum:

Adapt or die.Well, he doesn’t put it in such bleak terms, but those people (we all know at least one) that starkly refuse to purchase a smartphone, do not IM and frown upon emoticons and abbreviations, will soon be tagged as cultural outsiders. Bilton points to a quote from New York Times’ coverage around the introduction of the telephone in 1876:

“Thus the telephone, by bringing music and ministers into every house, will empty the concert halls and churches…”

We all know that the music recording industry didn’t collapse until the introduction of file sharing via Napster, so clearly the telephone’s detractors overestimated a tad on how long it would take for the phenomenon they describe to impact society. Long story short, the texting and social media naysayers are the “earth is flat” subculture of our generation. Come on, even the Dalai Lama is on Twitter these days.

Trust is king.With a constant stream of information about friends and family, products and news available via SMS, web browser or app, the way that people consume and filter data has changed. In the consumer world, word-of-mouth has long been known as the most impactful information leading to someone making a purchase. But in an environment where those endorsements come somewhat anonymously through forums and conversations online, we’ve developed a more sophisticated filter for what information is more valid or trustworthy for us as individuals.

Digital natives now look to their social “anchors” for the best information about where to eat, shop and play. These anchors vary on the situation, but are most often friends, family, coworkers and acquaintances. In the digital world, however, our anchors also expand to certain journalists and experts that we’ve developed virtual relationships with online through reading their blog, following their comments on Twitter, or listening to podcasts, etc. The power that these community “anchors” wield has not been lost on marketers, who are now keenly focused on building influence and credibility online.

Bilton posits that as artificial intelligence advances and takes advantage of our online activity (purchasing decisions, reading materials, email content, etc.), we may trust our Watson-like computers to act as the filter between us and the world.

It’s not you, it’s me.In the short history of social networks and online services, one trend is still plowing ahead: personalization. From the lastest iPhone’s Siri personal assistant technology to Spotify’s recommendations for what music you prefer, advances in software and hardware lead to consumers being able to make things more their own. Bilton sites a laundry list of services that have become wildly popular based on their ability to “guess” what our preferences are and deliver us the product that we’d be most likely to purchase, rent, or view as a result.

Customization has become key to the way that digital natives evaluate the quality of experience they receive from a device or service and what they’re willing to pay for it. This is having a profound impact on business models for digital services as companies flounder to find the right equation of pricing and unique experience to keep their customers engaged.

Back to the future.As technology and the way we use it evolves, Bilton expects big changes to our cognitive processes as a result of our mulit-tasking and always-on behavior. Are we addicted to our devices? Can video games make us better drivers or surgeons? Only time will tell how the brain reacts and filters the data we throw at it, but we can expect that the changes of the past 15 years will be eclipsed by the next 15. Hold onto your wi-fi, because it’s about to become a bumpy ride!

Celebrity Journalists & the Trust Factor

By Caitlin Mattias

Newspapers, and the publishing world in general, are in crisis. We’ve watched as the biggest names in national news have floundered to regain subscriber numbers by alternately posting free content online, despairing at low advertising returns, erecting paywalls and tearing them down again. Meanwhile, print subscriptions continue to be cancelled and aggregators like Google News have become our go-to source for news in real time.

Many journalists have given up the industry altogether, heading for greener (and more secure) pastures practicing public relations for companies they once reported on, or even launching their own venture capital fund, e.g. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund. With fewer overall journalism jobs, the competition is fierce…but no less fierce than the fight for readership.

Our world is now driven by metrics like page hits, retweets, and Facebook “likes.” Though many publications have denied using web traffic as a metric in performance reviews and layoffs, there’s no denying that some journalists and bloggers have risen from the masses as pseudo-celebrities. This is especially true in the tech world.

These big names – think Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of Wall Street Journal’s All Things D, Nick Bilton, David Pogue and Jenna Wortham of The New York Times – are becoming more relevant in a changing culture where trust is the true coin of the realm. In an online ecosystem where rumor abounds and the allure of page hits often trumps verifiable facts, readers have developed highly-sophisticated radars for paid content. We can smell thinly-veiled advertising a mile away and don’t turn to that blog or news source again as we make purchasing decisions.

All the statistics will tell you that we first trust “people like us” more than any journalist or so-called expert, but this mindset only extends so far. Especially as consumer electronics companies rely on the live media conference launch of Apple fame, we have no other choice than to turn to reporters who were front-and-center to drill down the facts for us. The question is – have these reporters developed such cache that we’ll follow where they lead?

Earlier this year, popular consumer technology columnist Rob Pegoraro left The Washington Post, but hasn’t seem to affected his invites to major product launches, like the recent launch of the Kindle Fire. He’s been enjoying his time according to his blog, spending time in the garden, but has been recruited as a freelancer by the Consumer Electronics Association and Discovery. He doesn’t get the scores of replies he was used to while working for the Post, but it’s clear that he’s still viewed as a credible source of gadget knowledge.

Josh Topolsky and a whole host of Engadget’s greatest writers left the site last spring and are close to launching The Verge,what’s sure to be a new competitor in the tech blogosphere. Knowing the quality writers backing this project, I’ll be sure to drop in to check it out at the very least.

Only time will tell how this trend continues, but do you see yourself following the journalists you trust from publication to publication? Or are they only the cogs in the wheel of great journalism that’s sure to continue with or without them?

A Integrated Approach To Building Thought Leadership Using Social Media – And why the C-level Needs to be Authentically Involved

By Fran Lowe

A recent IBM research report covered in Mediabistro revealed that although top marketing execs are well aware of the major shift taking place via social media, a majority of them are unprepared to address this new world. Based on responses from 1,700 chief marketing officers (CMOs) from 64 countries and 19 industries, the Global CMO Study reveals that while 56 percent of CMOs view social media as a key engagement channel, only 26 percent are tracking blogs. Additionally, 42 percent are tracking third-party reviews and 48 percent are tracking consumer reviews to help shape their marketing strategies.

I don’t know if the study also asked the CMOs or their C-level colleagues if they were actively participating in social media on their own behalf or that of their company; but, I suspect a sizeable number are still only peripherally engaged and have not yet experienced the power of social media.

Social media offers a way in; a way to connect and collaborate with members of your audience or community that you would never otherwise reach, and an opportunity to influence. But, here’s the thing – it takes passion, time and commitment. It also requires authenticity and a strategic, integrated approach with your overall PR and marketing plans and the ability to talk about issues.

Offering insights and fresh-thinking on issues that impact your market space; discussing and highlighting emerging trends; sharing commentary and new or controversial thinking from others as well as yourself, AND resisting the impulse to “market” your own company and products, is what differentiates social media pros from those who simply see social media as another channel to blast out their marketing or PR messages.

All good communication starts with predefined goals and is built around a sound strategy and compelling messaging. Part of the payoff with social media done right is that you have the opportunity to “socialize” your audience so they will hear and respond to what you are saying. And the key to social media is to use it in concert with all your other strategic communications channels and tools – hence the need for an integrated approach.

Your target audience, whether that is 50 of the top influencers or reporters and analysts covering networking or green IT for example, operates in an interconnected world. Your communications outreach must perform the same way. Consistent, insightful blogging may result in syndication or a speaking opportunity.  Building a highly targeted Twitter following, showing Twitter love and linking to your own blog, website or media coverage can get you listed on key “Top 10 lists” and help establish you as a Thought Leader in your own right.

The point is social media is not a random practice. To attain the results and ROI you would demand from any marketing or PR program, social media needs to be approached strategically as an integral part of outreach over time. It is essential to have the right messages, channels and outlets to reach the audiences you need to reach.

Engage PR is presenting a webinar on Using Social Media to Build Thought Leadership this coming Monday on October 31, in conjunction with Sustainable Silicon Valley. The webinar will guide tech and CSR executives on integrating social media into company strategy, with a presentation and Q&A session.  Additionally, Greg Ness, VP of Marketing at Vantage Data Centers and an Engage PR client, will discuss how he has used social media to build his own personal brand and thought leadership over the past 5 years.

Facebook's Latest Face Plant

By Dale Legaspi

People are unhappy about some changes Facebook has rolled out. In other news, the sun rises in the east, the weather is cold in the winter and most of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.

Also, people are resistant to change. I’m usually all about ranting at big companies in my posts, but I think Facebook is only part of the problem here. “I hate the new Facebook” is not good feedback.  Clearly, there is no guarantee that Facebook cares or will change anything, but at least give a specific example of something that is actionable. Here’s my attempt.

The first and most obvious issue I see is that Facebook stayed true to form by doing an absolutely abysmal job rolling these new features out and explaining them to users.  A little blue triangle and a bubble popping up when I scroll over it is not helpful in telling me what is going on and why my homepage was overhauled.  I didn’t know any of it was coming.  At least give me some sort of heads up.

Speaking of the homepage, Facebook will now feed you the “top” stories since your last visit. Similar to when the newsfeed was announced, people are up in arms about this feature.  What constitutes a top story?  What if I haven’t talked to the person featured in years?  Shame on me, apparently. Guess I should do some pruning on my “friends” list.

Directly to the right of that is the new ticker. The only reason I know it is called the ticker is because I asked a friend of mine who works at Facebook. It feeds me more irrelevant facts, but it does it in real time, so I can be thoroughly annoyed on a constant basis.

There are a number of other features that are either annoying or just outright invasive, but this is a blog—not a novel. However, we would love to see more of your thoughts on the worst new features of Facebook.

Editor's Note:  Thank you Dale for your contribution to our blog  -- we will miss your commentary on social media missteps.

10 Social Media Don’ts for the Professional… and Everyone Else

By Ashley Paula

With the popularity of social media today, it is becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to separate their “online identity” from their “actual identity”. This crosses over into the business world. Organizations of all sizes have come to terms with the fact that social media is not going away – not anytime soon at least. Therefore, many companies have integrated social media into their business plans, marketing strategies and service offerings. Because the line between the personal and professional social media forums has blurred, it is necessary to take caution when using social media. Here are a few suggestions of “What Not to Do” when sharing information through social media platforms:

1. Broadcast an opinion you do not want everyone to see:We are all entitled to our own opinions. However, if you are concerned with “who” or how many people will see an opinion, don’t post it. Even if the social media channel such as Twitter or Facebook is not open to everyone, people always share information outside your personal network.
2. Complain about the workplace:Remember, your boss and colleagues are also online – and so are your future employers. Not only can you lose your job due to bad-mouthing the company or your colleagues; but also, future employers can scan your social media activity when looking to hire.
3. Share when you are angry: Social media environments are not the best place to be impulsive or to vent. You can’t take back what you’ve shared online, so make sure you think twice before communicating your emotions.
4. Lie:The more people that know about a lie, the more likely it is to be discovered. When posting anything online, it’s safer to just either tell the truth or keep quiet.
5. Gossip about industry peers: It is a good practice to keep your comments about industry peers to yourself. In almost every industry, networking is an important part of one’s success and reputation. If you are known to gossip, no one will want to connect with you on a professional level.
6. Post when intoxicated: When judgment is impaired and inhibitions are lowered, you never know what you may end up posting and regretting later. Therefore, our suggestion is: don’t post when intoxicated.
7. Post an inappropriate profile picture: Your profile picture on any networking website should be one that would withstand scrutiny from the highest level executive in your industry. Your profile picture is often your online image in search engines, sales tools, etc. For example, Salesforce.com has recently launched features such as Faceconnector that pulls Facebook profile and friend information into Salesforce CRM, allowing users to have a “360 degree view of customers, prospects and business associates”.
8. Share confidential content: It is best not to share information online that is not meant for a larger audience. Items you post on networking sites can be traced back to you.
9. Broadcast all of your personal information: When posting personal information to networking sites, be as discrete as possible. For example, if you post your birthday, for security reasons you may want to alter the year. Also, if you don’t want everyone to know or ask you details about personal events in your life, don’t share them online.
10. Share pictures that you don’t want certain groups to see: When posting pictures to social media sites, it’s best to avoid posting inappropriate pictures – or pictures you wouldn’t want your boss to see. Despite the various privacy settings that social media sites such as Facebook might have, there are no guarantees that your photos will not be distributed.

All in all, the lesson here is to keep your social media and online presence as clean and straight forward as possible. With the lines blurred between personal and professional use of social media, it’s best to protect your reputation by safeguarding your online presence

Google Plus More Like Google Question Mark

By Dale Legaspi

Have you received your Google+ invite yet?  The way this thing has spread, I would be shocked if the answer for anyone reading this was no. Have you done anything with it?  A number of people I know have received invites and either sat on them or accepted them and dabbled. Only a few have jumped in.  No one plans on dumping Facebook.

What does this all mean? 

In reference to the emergence of Google+, I’ve heard and/or read everything from crickets to “Facebook is toast". In my own unofficial straw poll of my friends, it’s not killing Facebook any time in the near future—especially considering almost all of them are on Facebook and a number of them are ignoring invites for Plus. What it is doing, though, is considerably more ambiguous.

As I mulled over the content of this post, I tweeted for help and heard from a friend and a former colleague. My network of Twitter contacts is generally pretty chatty, so my open question only garnering two responses is interesting. Also interesting is the fact that their answers were considerably different.  One simply admitted that she’s sitting in the same boat with me wondering what to do with it.  The other basically threw rocks at Facebook. Clearly, neither is right or wrong, but if Facebook backlash is the only momentum Plus has, is it sustainable?

At the opposite end of the spectrum, one article stated plainly that "Facebook is toast". He lines up a number of good arguments, both anti-Facebook and pro-Google. Facebook’s privacy issues are well-documented and it’s struggling to integrate Skype functionality. Google is a company known for innovation and already has its own e-mail, IM and video chat functionality. All absolutely plausible and he may well end up being right.

Still, at a quick glance, it seems like monkey see-monkey do with Facebook out in front now but Google chasing. Once it gets to the point of two of the biggest names in the business having sites that essentially mirror one another, the natural question is whether or not the market for this particular type of social media platform is saturated. While that’s probably a different discussion for another day, I have a hard time imagining a mass exodus from Facebook.  The expert quoted in the ZDnet article may not agree with me, but last I checked, the readership does—335 likes to 12 +1’s.

Netflix Pricing Changes: Why Not Usage-Based?

By Neila Matheny

Since Netflix introduced the "Watch Instantly" streaming feature, consumer reviews were quite favorable. Many consumers relied on Netflix as their only over-the-top (OTT) video service, eliminating television service altogether, while many others continued to receive DVDs in the mail of their favorite movies and new releases.

However, when Netflix announced last week that they would charge separate fees for the streaming and DVD services, which resulted in a 60 percent pricing increase, the social media firestorm began. After receiving a combined service for so long, consumers were asked to take on this increase without any additional services or features, essentially the same service, with plans for catalog expansion for streaming titles in the future.

For me, the pricing hike prompted me to cancel my service. I realized, once everyone on Twitter was blasting the news, that I hadn’t watched my last Netflix DVD in six months. Worse than that, I didn’t even know where it was. (No worries, I found it within the six-day window in order to avoid a lost DVD fee.) But, why hadn’t I watched it. For a few reasons:

• OnDemand – I recently switched to AT&T’s U-Verse and love their OnDemand selections. While it may be pricey to pay $4.99 for some of the new releases, I only have to pay for what I actually watch. So, after paying over nine dollars a month for Netflix movies I hadn’t watched, I am actually saving.
• Delays and Waits – While it normally only took three days to return a DVD and get a new one in the mail, there was still a delay in receiving the movies, especially when I wanted to watch a newly released movie that was often not available for weeks through the DVD service and not at all for streaming. Once again, OnDemand is instant.
• Technical Streaming Issues – My PC is from the olden days and has its storage space maxed out with iTunes files. So, streaming on this old machine never has worked out well. However, I often find that I will turn to streaming when I missed a recent news event, such as Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jaycee Dugard, which is not available on Netflix. So, the network websites are normally the best answer in that scenario.

Maybe I am not the perfect Netflix consumer, ready to rely on streaming for everything. However, I think if they had offered a pay-as-you-go option, I may have stayed on as a customer. I have seen many other comments on various blogs, articles and social media sites about this topic. So, I wonder, why didn’t they go in that direction?

Has this news forced you to reconsider your Netflix account? Let us know what actions you have taken.

Simple & Cute as a Button

By Ashley Paula

As you may have noticed, Twitter came out with a splendid new tool that has made my life much easier and I’m sure it will make your life easier as well.

The new Twitter Button, which is similar to Facebook’s “Like button” has simple HTML code that anyone can put on their website or blog, and allows visitors to follow the company, person, etc. directly from their web page. Previously, website visitors were redirected from a website to the Twitter profile page. This not only added a step for the visitor; but also, it led traffic and potential sales away from the website. Now, people are able to surf the web and follow the people and companies they enjoy without being redirected to Twitter each time. And, you can still go to Twitter and view the profile if desired by clicking the user name next to the button.

Not only is the button itself attractive; but also, the simplified implementation is the best part. Bloggers or website developers wanting to add the button to their site, simply visit twitter.com/followbutton to get started.  Twitter then asks you to provide your user name and preferred background color for the button and whether you’d like to show your follower count. Then, Bam! In 5 seconds, you have code to copy and paste onto the HTML for your blog or website.

We made one of our own here:

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