Category: blogging

blogging

Top ‘O The Mornin’ To You, Folks!

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

Just a quick post to say “Hi!” to all of the people who might stop by here today after reading my guest post on Geoff Livingston‘s blog this morning. Geoff’s on vacation this week, and he’s been gracious to let some of his Facebook peeps, yours truly included, write a guest post for his site. So for those of you checking by here for the first time, “hidee ho!” Check the site out, look at the obligatory “About Me” page, and I’ll see if I can keep the site updated with posts throughout the day and from here on out!

If you want, you can check me out on Twitter as well at @desertronin. I guess, if you want a little glimpse into me (although not as over the top as this) I’d refer you to this video…

(Yep, kind of a big deal. In my own mind at least 😉 )

Thanks again to Geoff for letting us guest blog for him this week, and to my fellow guest bloggers for writing some incredible stuff!

– Benson

0
blogging, social media

Everything I know about social media I learned in Powerlifting

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

I want to share a secret with you – many years, and about 65 pounds ago, I had been a devotee of something with a much greater pull than even social media and its allure.

That’s right, I had been a quasi-athlete (not a great one, but just one), well I was a rugby player – define that as you will. As part of being an athlete, I really got into powerlifting, it was a better way to get into shape – not as monotonous as running or cycling. (I wasn’t great at powerlifting either, just ask my workout partners 😉 )

I had flirted with the idea of being a strength coach, because I enjoyed working out and studying exercise physiology, but as my instructor used to say, he couldn’t advise that we complete four years of college in order to earn $25,000 a year as a strength coach.  So I ended up in PR, where a four-year degree earned me just a little more per year. 😉

And recently, while two torn up knees and a bum ankle are keeping me off of the rugby pitch, I’ve been getting back into powerlifting more and more.  So as I’ve jumped back into powerlifting I’ve noticed a lot of parallels between this sport and social media. I quickly grabbed the laptop and started jotting down as many notes as I could keep trapped in my mind. I’ve included a list of this baker’s dozen below.

  1. Practice, practice, practice!
    1. It’s not only how you get to Carnegie Hall, or hit that new record bench press, it’s how you hone your social media chops – and learn what works for you (whether it’s video, audio, blogging, etc.)
  2. Form is important.
    1. As everyone who hits the weights knows, you have to perform each exercise correctly. If you don’t learn how to do each exercise correctly then you run the risk of injuring yourself later.
    2. In social media, you have to look at this as focusing on the narrative you want to tell, the stories about your organization that are important.
  3. You won’t hit every lift, it’s OK.
    1. Whether you are working out or at a powerlifting meet, you’re not going to perform every lift perfectly, sometimes you will fail to get the weight back up – it was called “bottoming out” when I lifted – and that’s OK.
    2. In social media, every post isn’t going to be perfect, or totally make sense to your target audience, or tell the story you want it to tell. No worries, you’ll get it next time. And maybe you can learn something from what you might consider a “failing post” that you can use in a few weeks.
  4. Build your posts to an “event”
    1. In strength training, there’s a philosophy called “periodization” – where you prepare a workout schedule that fluctuates from light workouts to hard workouts and back to medium – which turns into the new “light workout.” As you progress along this program, you will gain more strength, step by step. Usually you plan your workouts back from a scheduled event (the start of a sports season or a powerlifting meet).
    2. Why not do the same thing for social media? Plan on having a meetup/tweetup, or another social event or giveaway several months down the line and start creating a schedule of posts, videos, etc that you want to use to build up to this event.
  5. Start easy at first – don’t overstress yourself.
    1. Until you feel comfortable with your “social media workout,” don’t push yourself to do too much – too quickly. In powerlifting and social media it can lead to burnout and abandonment of your new plan. Remember, follow your schedule, and don’t frontload it with too much work until you are prepared for it.
  6. Mix up your “workout”
    1. Doing the same kind of workout, or creating the same kind of content, over and over starts to get stale.
    2. In strength training, this leads to boredom and your workout gains start to stall.
    3. In social media, this can lead to boring posts, losing readership, and eventually you might give up on creating new content.
    4. Just mix things up, don’t always do the same kinds of posts, or create the same content in your social media plan – some days do a podcast, or a quick video, or take a little time off (see below)
  7. More is not always better
    1. In strength training, as in social media, your first inclination might be to jump in with both feet and overdo everything.
    2. If you need to take a little time off, do it. While social media, and powerlifting, are very cool and a lot of fun, it can start to wear on you. But don’t take too much time off, or you might not return again – it’s the difference between a quick break and quitting for good. In strength training it means you’re going to get out of shape again, in social media it means giving up on your content, when you might be on the cusp of a breakthrough piece.
    3. If you’re at a company, see if you can find a couple of people to stand in for you for a while to continue building your audience.
  8. Don’t neglect your “core training”
    1. In strength training, you have to develop your foundation, your core muscles (the abdominals, lower back, upper back, shoulder girdle and legs) in order to get stronger.
    2. In business and social media communications training, you have to look at your organization’s core competencies and ask “what are our communications goals?”
    3. How are you going to achieve those goals? How will your narratives, the stories you share about your organization, help you reach your goals?
  9. Speaking of goals, set realistic goals.
    1. If you’re starting out in powerlifting, you’re probably not going to hit a 400 pound bench press overnight, or for quite a while. But you can add 20-30 pounds in a few months.
    2. If you’re creating social media content, blogging and videocasting, you’re not going to reach Bob Lutz, Geoff Livingston and Chris Brogan reader numbers overnight – and that’s OK. Keep your measurements realistic, if you impact a handful of people that’s still wonderful, in fact they might even get back to you and let you know about that impact.
  10. Everyone is unique – in strength training and content creation.
    1. Not everyone will feel comfortable sitting in front of a video camera, or audio podcasting. They might be better at connecting with people via social networking tools (which are different from social media).
    2. Go with what works for you – and include this in your social media “periodization plan”
  11. Have the right equipment for your needs.
    1. And know how to use it. In strength training, doing deadlifts wearing sandals might leave you injured – trust me I know.
    2. In social media, you need to have the proper equipment – it doesn’t have to be too expensive, but instead of getting a flip camera (which seems to be the rage among communicators) look at something that allows you to get decent audio (a much overlooked piece of the YouTube puzzle) as well as audio.
    3. Use this equipment in your practice sessions, knowing how to use your equipment ahead of time makes your life much easier, whether it’s in powerlifting or social media.
  12. Get a trainer
    1. When you start working out, it pays to invest a little bit of money in working with a personal trainer. They help start you down the path to a healthier life, or a stronger body. They give you the tools to move on, only needing to check in with them periodically when you need something new to add to your workout.
    2. It’s the same thing in social media. If you are new to this, you can start off by reading a few books and trying to get some “book learnin’” and try to piece this together. This isn’t a bad idea, but you can avoid some of the “bad form” you might learn from reading various tomes if you hire a social media communicator to help train you, to show you what might or might not work for you and then let you loose on the InterWebs to see how this works. Then you can bring them back from time to time to teach you something new or change your routine a little bit.
  13. Finally, and more importantly, at the end of the day you have to do this yourself.
    1. No one can work out for you. You can’t have someone from outside your body lift the weights for you. You have to sit down at the bench and start pressing the weights on your own.
    2. When you are creating content for your social media outlet, you can hire someone to come into your company and write for you, or you can have an employee do it on behalf of the company, but leaving this in the hands of an agency instead of learning how to do it yourself can be dangerous – because it leaves your communications goals vulnerable to an outside organization that only has your best interests at heart as long as the checks don’t bounce.
    3. You need to take the lessons learned from all of the above points, and what your social media trainer has taught you and either do it yourself or bring someone in to your organization who can “lift the weight” for your organization.
3
blogging, social media

Another Take on "Blogger Relations"

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

Social media is more about social interaction and being online as another means of message distribution than it is about “blogger relations.”

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that we in public relations should not be focused as much on blogger relations in our social media planning and usage, we should instead be focused on creating cool content and building relationships with other bloggers/podcasters/etc. It involves being engaged with people on a smaller level, much the same way as the mainstream outlets are fragmenting more and more. But interpersonal relationships are like that, you can’t be best buds with thousands of people.

It’s the argument of the “cool kids” vs. the “popular kids.” The “cool kids” are too busy creating content to worry about whether or not you are hanging out with the “popular kids.” If you have to choose, you should pick the road less traveled – the one of creating content to attract an audience of interested people who want to listen to what you have to say, and then developing your online connections.

Take Twitter (please! Just kidding) for instance.  You can have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, but is that anything more than just a status symbol? It’s especially telling for people like Ashton Kutcher, or other celebs on Twitter – those people with millions of followers, but are only connected to a couple of dozen themselves. In cases like this, these accounts are used as purely broadcast platforms for people who want to “see a part of the life” or “catch of a slice of AK.”

This is not a bad model, in and of itself, and it leverages the popularity of these celebrities quite well. But for average companies or people, it’s not really a model that works. Remember, people are interested in connecting with people, not with companies. It’s the uncommon company that can get away with having a fierce group who just want to be part of the brand (i.e. sports teams, Apple, etc)

In the meantime, it might be better for people to focus more on developing the content that will interest and attract people to their “brand” and produce enough content to keep them interested in returning. Believe it or not, the content might not be directly related to their work or product. If the people keep coming to check it out, your personal brand might achieve that “top of mind awareness,” or to put it another way, might stick in their mind.

When I spoke a little bit about this on the video linked below, I didn’t realize that the Godfather of Social Media, Chris Brogan had given a different take at his site.  This is just my humble two-cents.

Are We Focusing Too Much on Blogger Relations? from Benson on Vimeo.

0
blogging, Iron Chef Social Media, social media

“Bigger Boobs Through Social Media?”

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

If you are interested in social media, and learning how to get started or engage more in this burgeoning online media-sphere, then you have probably run across quite a few stories/blogpieces/ads pimping how “You Can Get 10,000 Twitter Followers in 30 Days!” or “You Too Can Become a Facebook Gawd!!1!!” and other such nonsense.  To me these are nothing more than just the latest “How To Get Bigger Boobs Through Social Media”-esque BS lures to remove you from your money or time (both of which are important).

A lot of these try to latch onto our need to be recognized, to be acknowledged quickly for our brilliance – and claim to provide a quick, “gimme gimme gimme now” fix to achieving this. Like most things in life and business, working in social media is going to require a lot of patience, time, strategic planning and hard work.

One of the big ideas these “plans” leave out – especially important if you are a business owner or corporate type – is the need for some kind of merging of your strategy between social media and communications. Social media are great tools for building additional communications and increasing your community outreach/developing a community relations platform, but they will never really replace your communications/pr strategy.  They can help augment it, but your social media outlets are really one more avenue to communicate with people, and need their own strategy to . But you need to have a firm strategy in place before you really jump in and drown in all the noise out there.

(as an aside, there will be a Holiday present for those people interested in social media and strategy coming up before Dec. 25.)

At the end of the day you’re not going to land 10,000 followers in a month, nor are you going to achieve deitific bliss on Facebook or – Buddha forgive – MySpace. As with most things in life, you need to work at it and show patience. Engage with your target audiences, look at the strategy you have developed – what do you want to say to them? What goals are you hoping to achieve? Why are you writing or recording?

0
blogging, public relations, social media

When Bloggers Attack – Swinging Back

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

I love working in social media – blogging, podcasting, video work, social networking and more.  All of them give you ample opportunity to interact with others. Sometime for good, and other times you’ll find you or your organization getting blasted by a blogger, content creator or just a plain old curmudgeon.

While many people in social media, a lot of whom are incredibly knowledgeable, and many communications officers feel that your organization should “rise above” any kind of crossing swords with people online who are attacking you, I wish to disagree. There is a line in the sand where you should be willing to kill any detractors with kindness (always remember to be understanding and offer the honey-laden olive branch as much as possible) but once that line is crossed you should be able to respond factually, forcefully and passionately.

Many social media peeps, especially when looking at business social media, will tell you to keep your statements and content as even-keel as possible. You never want to engage in mud throwing or flame wars. I agree with them on this, but where we might diverge a little bit is my opinion that when your organization is being attacked, possibly unfairly, by online peeps who are unwilling to look at facts, or try to skew facts to match a caricature they created to attack your organization.  Then these are the times when you will need to stand up, use the facts as your sword and shield, and call out your detractors.

This isn’t an open call to start flame wars and a rousing round of “nanny nanny boo boo.” Keep your responses slightly snarky (maybe a little more. Remember that you want to keep a little bit of a bite to them). They need to be classy, but sharp as a razor’s edge. You want to remind your opposition that if they want to misquote you, or tweak facts to match a false claim, that you are going to repeatedly respond by throwing high and inside.

Look at how various political campaigns ran their social media outlets during the 2008 and upcoming 2010 campaigns. They brought in bloggers who already had followers, but more importantly were passionate about their candidate’s stands (or, let’s be honest, became passionate about their positions once they started receiving a check) and were willing to stand up for them. In addition, Barack Obama’s campaign built online tools from scratch to help foster their community of supporters.

Balancing the Playing Field

If your organization is going to have “what it takes” to respond to online attacks this way, you need to have a CEO who has the spine to understand that for a short while, the attacks might intensify as your opposition tries to determine how far you will go before folding.  In order for this to work, you have to be willing to repeatedly defend your position with this idea of “classy passion.” Again, humor is one of your best weapons here.

Look at what the Obama White House is doing right now with FOX News, they are repeatedly responding to FOX News when they believe facts are in error.   For a while the peeps on FOX News were calling it the “War on Fox,” or some such thing.

There used to be a saying that you never go to war with people who buy ink by the barrel or tape by the yard.  Meaning it was never in your best interest to cross swords with people who run the media, because they can come after you day after day for any perceived slight.  That used to be true, but with the advances in social media, social networking (for audience building) and online communications you suddenly have the tools to create your own media outlet to respond, “balancing the playing field” more in your favor.

Being the old rugger I am, I’ll leave you with this analogy. While you want to play cleanly as much as possible, and give people the benefit of the doubt, I’ve found that one of the best ways to stop someone from throwing punches in the ruck is a good, old-fashioned cleat rake every so often.

0
blogging, public relations, social media

The Future of PR Firms?

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

Just a quick thought or two before crashing for the night. (hopefully they make sense) For a while I’ve been pondering the future of public relations and advertising/marketing firms in this new media world. (Why wait until now to share this with y’all? What can I say, I’m shy.) While many people have been talking about the future of the mass media in this world, I don’t know how many people have pondered the other side of the coin. I was talking with Crosscut Communications‘ guru, Will Reichard, about this after the Social Media NM meetup last week and we bounced some ideas off of each other about the potential future for PR firms.  So up front I’d like to thank Will for letting me bend his ear and giving me some really good pointers.

In this New Media Age the majority of businesses need to not only be in business, but also be media outlets. While news outlets are shuttering, laying people off or switching to three days per week publishing schedules, businesses need to be able to present their own talking points/communication starters online, circumventing the mainstream media to a certain extent.

But what is the impact on PR firms? Those who are used to sending out press releases and newsletters, and creating plans based around getting more “earned media” from an ever shrinking news universe. Are they going to go out of business?

Of course not. There will still be a need for PR firms to work on getting “earned media” despite the shrinking newshole, but savvy PR firms will shift their focus. In my previous post I talked about PR professionals (working for organizations, I don’t think I made that clear) serving as diplomat-facilitator-community relations.  Communications firms should be on the cutting edge of new media, social networking and content creation. They should take over the role of teacher, leading their clients through the basics of new media/social media, and building social networks (whether on Facebook or Ning, or checking out what Pursuant is doing and trying to match that) and let their clients go on developing messages, creating content and developing outside evangelists.

This won’t lead to the clients dropping the firms, far from it. Clients will need these firms to develop online infrastructure and create/manage video pieces, podcasts and other new media projects for their clients. And there will be a big need for these services, as many companies, especially smaller companies, won’t have the facilities to make high quality video or audio podcasts, and won’t have the connections with regional or industry bloggers.

(Now’s probably a good time to point out that people working in PR firms should already be blogging and connecting with others in the industry their clients work in. Or at least monitoring the chatter.)

Just my two cents to mull over tonight as we drift off.  G’night y’all.

11
blogging, social media

Posting Social Media with the NM Independent

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

Below is my comment to a story on Twitter and a recent social media roundtable by the New Mexico Independents’ most excellent writer and Tweet-head, Gwyneth Doland. Here’s her post with a lot of really good points, and below are my two cents…

Hey Gwyneth!

These are some great tips. I’d add that there are a lot of social networks mentioned here (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and those are great to communicate with, but they tend to build the foundation of like-minded people (whether customers/clients, or organizations, non-profits, etc) that you need to follow up with via other communications tools. Things like blogs, podcasts and the like are still great, low-to-no cost ways of creating content that you can communicate your own message with.

And speaking of blogs, you or your organization needs to have a “home base” for all of your social media efforts, someplace that (for lack of a better phrase) I call a “Grand Central You”. A place where people can go for all of the shiznit you have to share, and for that I recommend people use blogs. Especially with a free service like WordPress.com where you can collect your tweets, RSS any podcasts, share your company’s brilliance and embed video. Facebook is another way to do this, but I look at Facebook as a way to drive more people (again from that social networking foundation) to your messages (blog, YouTube, etc).

Video is also very important. You talked about webcasting, and mashing that with a liveblog is a great way to build community and discussion. But beyond that, video is a very powerful tool for social media content creators to communicate with. Whether it’s a video news report about your own company (as long as a VNR is considered to be from your company, and posting it on your blog, with your YouTube account it should be obvious) to downloadable content for people to create their own videos with, or people using their Webcams to tell their story, video is a great way to go. SWOP was doing this for a while with their media updates, I don’t know why they stopped them.

While a nice tool and a great way to crowdsource and communicate, remember that Twitter is a double-edged sword. I’m dunno if you guys remember the James Andrews/FedEx and prior to that the Steve Rubel/PC Mag cluster-tweets from the recent past. As they showed, 140 words is enough to give your company and clients a serious self-inflicted wound. I won’t waste y’all’s space here, but I talk about it in a couple of places:

Here

And here

(For the most recent tweet problem in the world of sports, look up Lane Kiffen Twitter in Google news or ESPN)

Another thing to consider is that many of these items mentioned are tools. There needs to be a change in the “top-down control” mindset of many communications professionals. We’re in the realm of collaboration and conversation, not control. How can I develop trust with my clients without being didactic in the way I communicate with them?

And as a follow up, how can I tap into the network of people who are supporters/purchasers/etc to improve my end product? It’s the idea of the “networked mind,” that while two heads are better than one, 20 heads are better than two, and 2,000 are even better. You can get the best ideas from your customers on what they would like to see in v.2.0 of your product/campaign/etc.

(I know I’m jumping around right now and I apologize, but it’s getting late and I wanted to get this down before crashing, I’ll try to expand on this more tomorrow/later today. What can I say? I love social media.)

And as a second follow up – for PR, marketing and advertising professionals, you have to change your mindset of who the media is. Social media combined with computing advances have removed the barrier to content creation not only for yourselves but for anyone covering you. Nowadays anyone with a $249 netbook, a Flip Video camera, a cell phone camera and a WordPress site is essentially a member of the media (that includes you, your organization and your PR people). They have questions, they want answers… heck, they want respect from us. If you can’t get them the answer they need, have the professional courtesy to tell them so and treat them with respect.

Leverage existing technologies to create your own social networks. Check out Ning to look at creating your own social network (One of the cool things about DCF is how they seamlessly moved (from an outside perspective) from a group blog to city blog to now its own social network). Does your organization need that kind of narrower social network? Ask Barack Obama, but keep in mind they hired one of the minds behind Facebook to create my.barackobama.com.

Don’t forget you have to give your message authenticity. You can’t post press releases as “blog posts” or put them on Facebook. If people want to read that stuff they will go to your online newsroom. (you do have one of those, right?) People want to think that they are interacting with a real person, not a PR flack faking it. If you’re a PR flack and admit it, I don’t think there’s a problem because people know up front. (more on this later, I know I’m throwing a lot of spaghetti against the wall here)

One more quick tip, one of the must have tricks in my toolbag (sorry, running out of steam) – check out HARO. PR guru Peter Shankman’s Help A Reporter Out (http://www.helpareporter.com/). He started it as a Facebook group and it quickly grew beyond the max capacity for Facebook and he turned it into an email list. Three times a day you get an email of topics that reporters need experts for. The great thing is that the reporters send him the queries. And if you’re a reporter, you can send in a query and get responses from all over the world if you want. The best thing about HARO: it’s free.

Social media monitoring is also very important. Not just for your company, but for your competitors and your industry. For example, I work in higher ed at UNM. My Tweetdeck has searches up for “UNM,” “NMSU,” and “#highered”. Plus you can use Google Searches for those terms to keep track of not just what’s being said in the news but also in the blogosphere about your organization and topics of interest. If you have $ for social media, then check out Radian6, Pursuant or AwarenessInc for your monitoring needs.

Always be looking for the next technological innovation. Today it’s Facebook and Twitter (but a lot of the cool kids are already gravitating towards lifestream aggregators like FriendFeed, or using their blogs as that central launching base – check out Chris Brogan, www.chrisbrogan.com), but yesterday it was Friendster and Ryze. (anyone remember Friendster?)

I’m fried, I haven’t even gotten to RSS aggregators, media snacking, collaborative work with competitors and my Robert Scoble example. I’ll spare y’all now but if you want more, I‘d be happy to share.

G’night John Boy.

Benson (@desertronin)

1
blogging, media, public relations, Technology

Oh Dear…

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

Just found out I’ll be presenting at the same conference on Social Media and PR that Richard Edelman will be keynoting.

Richard Edelman, the mac daddy of social media and public relations.  A crown that no one has been able to wrest away from him yet.

And I’ll be speaking at one of the breakout sessions after his keynote.

No pressure…

Now where did I put the Tums? 😉

Technorati Tags: ,

0