The one that got me thinking the most was this Social Media Statistics infographic demonstrating a study conducted by Pear Analytics, where 2,000 random tweets were analyzed for content. Long story short: the majority of tweets consist of completely pointless babble. Surprisingly, considering the number of companies getting on the Twitter train, only 10% are spam or self-promotional. Not surprisingly, under 10% were considered interesting with pass along value. It’s also interesting to note that conversational tweets were a close second in frequency. In other words, people like to chat on Twitter, putting the social in social media.

So, as a PR professional and active Twitter user concentrating in food and beverage business, what does this mean for me? It definitely means I’ll look to up the ante in my interesting and unique content to stand out in the crowd. For our clients, I’d say our best bet is to strike up some meaningful conversations with all the foodies out there in Twitterland. As a smart colleague once said, participate in the conversation.

Here are some thoughts on how to improve your or your clients’ Twitter communication:

• Be a resource: Tweet useful bits of information and links to educational or interesting blogs and Web sites, or drive people to useful parts of your website for educational purposes. This is an occasion where self-promotion has a purpose.
• Be funny! Encourage retweets and community interaction with a little bit of funny. Humor goes a long way in grabbing people’s attention. A good example: I posted a picture of an empty glass of Rioja and tweeted “Sad Times.” This was retweeted and followers of @RiojaWine went up significantly that day.
• Chat ‘em up: Following people within the foodie community, there are countless opportunities to strike up a conversation. This is grassroots PR at its best, and a great way to engage and create a loyal following. Is this time consuming? Yes sir! Is it absolutely necessary? You betchya.
• Jazz it up a little: Don’t just post words and random thoughts. Post pictures, a GPS location of whatever cool place you’re tweeting about or a link to an interesting article. If you’re sipping a nice glass of wine, take a picture of it, post a review or talk about what you’re pairing it with.
• Make it searchable with #hashtags: This is an oldie but a goodie. Journalists searching for trends and people searching for communities and Twitter friends will more easily find you in the sea of information out there.
• Make friends: This seems obvious, but invite 25-30 followers in your respective community per week. They will follow you back, especially if you follow some of the above rules to tweet by.

1. Site Build

• The web site itself is developed in a manner that allows Google and other search engines to crawl and index the site properly.
• Wordpress has a handful of plug-ins that will help search engines through this process.
• Google Sitemap Plug-in “This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your site. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.”
• All in 1 SEO Plug-in This will allow us to tweak title, keywords and descriptions for each page.

2. Content

• Unfortunately a site can’t just rely on how it’s built for SEO.
• The more content updates you have to your site the better. The more articles, additions and posts to the site the better.
• If search engine bots recognize that your site is full of new relative content, they come back more often. The idea behind these frequent bot visits are to raise page rankings thus getting more traffic to the site via search engines.

3. Networking

• Content needs to be networked and talked about outside of your site.
• Content needs to be pushed/pulled to/from other networks in an effort to generate traffic to your site.

Today, former ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips came clean. Phillips was involved in a sex scandal (ala Tiger) involving a 22-year-old production assistant last fall. He was immediately fired by the network and the story died. Or, so it seemed. This morning, just a day or two after leaving a treatment program for sex addiction, Phillips surprisingly decided to come clean on the Today Show. What is interesting about his appearance is the fact that not only did he take responsibility for cheating on this wife and kids, he also tried to describe what “sex addition” really means. I’m sure there are many who feel he’s just looking for an excuse, “…ask for forgiveness and move on.” But this morning, Phillips became the face of the issue. It’s a risky move if he hopes to rebuild his career, and one in which you have to question the true motive. He spent a lot of time talking about the need to repair his relationship with his family, which poses the question, was this effort really about saving his marriage, or was it about saving face? While getting out in front of the issue makes sense from a PR perspective, does it really help his kids who will likely face a new round of whispering behind their backs? According to Google’s story “hotness” scale, this story is “on fire.” That’s what happens when you put a little hot air on simmering coals. While it makes Mr. Phillips a hot commodity, I question whether the appearance aligns with his stated goal of winning his family back.  

 
photo credit: Greg Timm

 There are two types of people in this world: snow angels and snow crabs.

Snow angels embrace the snow. They eagerly anticipate its coming, stocking up on hot chocolate and brownie mix. They get out their snow gear–and they have a ton of it–so they can be ready for snowball fights and romantic walks in winter wonderland. For them, snow is full of opportunities. It’s a welcome and well-loved friend.

But all that snow just makes snow crabs, well - crabby.  They complain about how messy it looks after the first day. They gripe about the fact that schools are closed and they can’t get to work. They mope about not being able to get to the gym. They whine that they’re cold. For them, snow is something to be simply endured until it goes away.

I admit it–I’m a snow crab. The foot of snow blanketing central Virginia has not made me happy. It’s screwed up my carefully planned agenda and caused me to rearrange my priorities. It’s forced me to think differently about how to accomplish what I need to get done for my clients, colleagues and family. It’s required me to find new tools and new people on whom to rely. It’s made me slow down (gasp!) and think about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.

But really, is that all bad? Most people rarely take the time to examine what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. In our rush to get things done, we don’t make time to really listen, learn and absorb. But that listening, learning and absorbing is critical to creative ideas and transformational thinking. It’s essential for bringing value to our relationships, whether they be with clients, classmates, coworkers or even family.

I hear we’re going to get wallopped with another snowstorm this weekend. This time, I’ll be prepared. Instead of fretting about what I’m not getting done, I plan to leaf through some art books, dig around on the Web to see what more I can learn about clients’ industries, bone up on  the details of what’s going on with our legislative session, call professional colleagues whom I respect just to chat. I’ll think about different things in hopes that it will spur me to think differently about ordinary things.

With any luck, my inner snow angel will whack my outer snow crab with a great big shovel.

Bring on the snow.

Here it is the last week of January and I can already see the New Year’s resolution bandwagon starting to lose members at my local gym. I’ll have to admit, I’m not exactly following my resolution at 100 percent, but a campaign I’m working on is giving me added incentive to stay engaged in my goal of improving my wellness. It’s called America’s Wellness Challenge and you can learn more about it at www.lifesupplemented.org.  Right now we are running a $15,000 sweepstakes to incentivize Americans to take that first step in improving their wellness – kind of like health care reform at home. 

All you have to do is take the free My Wellness Scorecard which measures your  overall wellness. I’ve been a WannabeWELL for years but with the big 50 around the corner, it’s time to make a change.  The best way to lower our health care costs is to take better care of ourselves. Now you have a chance to win $15,000 at the same time!

Peter Shankman of Shankman.com and founder of HARO (Help A Reporter Out - a social media PR and marketing company serving reporters, entrepreneurs and small businesses) announced the “dawn of a new HARO” today. The new and improved HARO now allows “Vertical HAROs” - a chance for subscribers to select what topic queries they want to receive. Other new features include advertising via the HARO site (versus directly to Peter) and reporter emails are now masked. Visit HARO and tell us and the HARO team what you think about the new changes.

Are you planning an event this year? Event Coup’s Samuel J. Smith lists 10 ways social media will transform events in 2010. He says, “As attendees become more comfortable with these new two-way communication experiences, they are going to start demanding similar experiences from their face-to-face events.”  Two of the ways he lists include: events will become communities that last for weeks and months rather than a few short days and attendees will want a voice in the discussion, learning and decision making process. Read the rest of the ways social media will transform events  and don’t forget to add your own input.

Meryl K. Evans shares how to make the most of your social media time. According to Meryl, “while social media is [her] primary marketing tool, plenty of others spend more hours social networking than [she] does and for different reasons.” Meryl spends her social media time comprised of a mix of social networking at the same time every day, posting tweets throughout the day using a scheduling application, joining the right Twitter chats, reviewing Facebook updates once a day, updating her LinkedIn status a few times a week, writing at least two blog post entries per week and reading other people’s blogs. How do you spend your social media time? Share your responses at Web Worker Daily.

Mobile applications are on fire, which is why more and more companies should think about mobile marketing. Christina “CK” Kerley of CK’s Blog provides a 10-step starter guide for integrating mobile into the B2b marketing mix slideshow. She says, “Why the marketing crusade? Because business professionals, which are B2Bs’ target audience, not only use mobile devices to stay connected, they rely on them to stay informed and make business decisions when not located at their place of business.” Check out Christina’s starter guide and don’t forget to add your insights about mobile marketing.

1 Good Reason - Social Marketing’s Chris Kieff discusses “Getting” Twitter. Chris explains why some people don’t “Get” Twitter. He attributes the reason to ‘a basic signal to noise ratio problem’. Signals provide useful and meaningful content while noise is useless and empty. Chris’s recommendation to fix this bad signal is for ‘all newbies to follow at least 200-250 people.’ He says, “But if you’re not “Getting Twitter” it’s not because of anything in you, or the people that you follow, it’s most likely just because you’re not following enough of them yet. So give it a shot and try to follow 200 and see what happens.” What do you think of Chris’s Twitter recommendation?

Michael Blankenship of PepperDigital asks, “How will you manage social media customer engagement in 2010?” He lists TweetDeck, Klout, HootSuite and FiltrBox as ‘four of the potential difference makers of 2010 that are worth considering by brand managers and PR agencies for customer communication and engagement’. What tools do you plan to use this year to manage your social media customer engagement?

The influence of budget shortfalls and technology advancements will make higher education a great game to watch this year. Photo credit: djwudi via flickr.

Here’s the replay.

If you look closely (and transform from college football fan to higher education professional), Alabama’s Eryk Anders kind of looks like a 2010 budget nightmare demolishing the ivory tower.

What a hit!

Many state supported colleges and universities are going to feel it this year. Watching how they dust themselves off,  adapt and get back in the game will be fun to watch.

I anticipate pain for higher ed, but I also think we’ll see  innovations emerge that reform and improve how campus communities deliver their education product. I’ll be looking for those innovations this year, and I’ll note them here when I see them.

Technology’s influence on delivering higher education also promises to continue hitting hard in 2010. Two stories caught my eye last week.

First, Inside Higher Education reported Jan. 8 that college libraries are increasingly open to text messaging as a channel for connecting research librarians with students.

OMG!

Second, just imagine what new touch screen tablet computers might do to libraries, text books, lectures, note taking and studying. This Jan. 4 video at the Wall Street Journal takes a glimpse at the future according to one book publisher. Check it out.

I’m looking forward to how it all plays out, and will try to provide some play-by-play commentary as it does.

Now, I think I’ll watch Garrett get creamed again.

There was a point in time where my mom was either going to check out of technology completely, or make an effort to learn how to use it.  In the beginning, my brother, sister and I would just do whatever it was that she didn’t understand -  “Move out of the way, I’ll attach that for you,” “Scoot over, I’ll download the pictures from your camera.”  But she told us she needed to learn it herself, and that’s when things began to change.  She had the tools (new computer, iPhone, digital camera, etc.), but she needed our patient instruction and then to play around with things herself until she knew how to use them.

In a lot of ways, my mom was like an old-school client averse to social media.  When people don’t understand something new, they don’t see the value and develop a distaste for it.  But it’s our job to teach them.  If we do everything ourselves, our clients will never understand or start interacting on their own. 

The current shift in media is perhaps the toughest transition we will see in our lifetime, and it is our responsibility as PR professionals not to shove our clients out of the way so we can do it ourselves, but to show them, patiently and effectively, how to play in the new sandbox.  Social media will be most powerful when the company’s interaction is integrated and everyone knows how to participate – from the CEO to the summer intern.

Old dogs can in fact learn new tricks.  You just have to teach them.

PS: If you read this, Mom, you’re the most youthful looking old dog I know.

Dave Fleet of davefleet.com shares his 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem based on a post about the differences between owned media, paid media and earned media by Forrester Research and analyst Sean Corcoran. In his diagrams, Dave provides key elements of each type of media. He also notes “that the different elements work best when we succeed in breaking out of communications silos and integrating our communications strategies.” Read more about Dave’s marketing ecosystem and share your thoughts at his blog.

For the first time in 23 years football fans will not see TV spots of Pepsi during this year’s Super Bowl. Instead, the company decided to spend $20M on a social media program called Pepsi Refresh. Augie Ray lists some of the ramifications and non-ramifications of Pepsi’s new marketing decision including a fight for marketing dollars between traditional (aka TV) and social/interactive tactics. Read more about Pepsi Refresh and Augie’s assessment of the company’s marketing tactic on The Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals. What do you think this will mean for marketers in 2010?

Speaking of TV and social media, Tim Difford of The Next Web asks, “Will 2010 be the Year of Social TV?” According to Tim, “Social Media and TV fanatics are ahead of the game right now and bending the rules to their will.  It remains to be seen whether the broadcasters, perhaps spurred on by advertisers eyeing a potentially motivated and engaged audience, will be able to serve up an enticing interactive broadcast experience during the forthcoming year.” Read the examples Tim shares and don’t forget to answer whether or not you think 2010 will be the year of Social TV.

Brian Solis shares results from an updated annual study on the adoption of social media by the Inc. 500 companies. He says, “The essence of the report shares the tools that are carving the evolution of the fittest. At a minimum, Social Media is affecting and shaping the pillars of business.” Results show that 91 percent of companies reporting the incorporation of at least one social media service or tool in 2009. Other results show an impressive drop of 43 percent to 9 percent of Inc. 500 companies not using social media. Check out the rest of the results at Brian Solis.  What are your thoughts about the increase in social media usage by Inc. 500 companies?