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Read This if No One Cares About Your Blog … Yet

While researching outlets for a future outreach project, I came across a March 2010 piece by blogger and entrepreneur Joel Spolsky on Inc. I thought was especially relevant to the work we do at MS&L. In it, Spolsky shares insights on corporate blogging he gathered through developing his own personal following – most importantly, how to get people to connect with your business or product. I think it’s worth the read for anyone with a little writer’s block.

For the full column, click here.

Oh, and what was that future project? A corporate blog, of course.

• Date: 07.02.2010
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Yahoo Launches New Style Guide for the Digital World

Mashable announced this week that Yahoo will release a comprehensive style guide full of tips and guidelines for producing digital content. Since both the PR and journalism industries have relied on the Associated Press Stylebook, almost exclusively, for decades, it’s unclear how the new guidelines will be received, and the “word nerd” community is abuzz with feedback. Even Mashable, staying true to AP style, fails to use Yahoo’s trademark “!” in any mentions of the company.

Recently, some have found fault with the trusty old AP stylebook, especially as new words and phrases enter the digital realm. Just this year, the AP changed “Web site” to “website” in an effort to accommodate modern usage. The Yahoo Style Guide promises to be “a must-have for anyone who writes or edits for the web,” once it becomes available on July 6, 2010.

Our culture has made a habit of adjusting language to meet new technology, but what does this mean for the many traditionally-trained journalists and PR pros who are now, because of changes in the media landscape, writing more for online audiences than offline ones?

Following the release of the Yahoo Style Guide, we’ll provide an in-depth review, so stay tuned for more.

• Date: 07.01.2010
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The Social Web is Sink, Swim or Grab a Life Jacket

You know how you go to a website and you see those little buttons with the logos of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social networks on them?

Those aren’t for decoration, but many businesses, organizations, and other websites seem to think they are.

Case in point:

The other day I was looking up one of my favorite water ski show teams. I grew up competitive show skiing and lately have really been missing my sport. My best friend (we grew up involved in the same ski club) and I are thinking about taking a for-old-times’-sake trip to the U.S. Show Ski Nationals this year, and I was curious to see what a few of my favorite teams were doing.

I’m not going to call out which particular team I’m referring to, because it is a legendary team, near and dear to my heart. Besides, I’ve seen this happen all too often online.

However . . . upon going to the team’s website, I noticed it had been redone since the last time I had visited it, which was about six months ago. Right there, front and center, is “Follow us on . . . ” followed by the standards buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

As a social media professional this excited me to no end. I couldn’t wait to see what my favorite team had been up to, and was looking forward to seeing some videos of their latest shows and acts.

Cue sad trombone music.

Their Twitter account hadn’t been updated since August 19, 2009. Their last sign in at their YouTube account was a year ago, and their featured video was highlighting their 2004 show. Their most recently uploaded video was dated January 20, 2009.

On Facebook, 1,183 “like” them, but their last update was almost two months ago.

This saddens me for many reasons. As a fangirl for this über team, I was very much looking forward to seeing what my favorite team was up to and interacting with them online. As a social media professional, it further emphasizes one of the key aspects of the social web:

You must cultivate your garden if you want it to grow.

If you don’t keep your content fresh, both on your website and your social networks, not only will you will fade into SEO oblivion, but you will disappoint your brand enthusiasts/evangelists, and your community will either a) wane, or b) not grow to its full potential.

The social web is no joke. If you’re going to make the commitment to have presences on certain networks, you better be fully prepared to fulfill that commitment to your community with frequemt updates. If you’re going to put the “Follow us on . . .” buttons on your website, people expect you to be active. If you don’t have designated people to update your social networks, if you have organizational problems internally, if your legal department is a PITA, or if there’s some other reason why you’ve got presences on social networks and you’re not active, please take the social network buttons off your website. You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

If you, your business, organization, or whatever are willing to dive into the social web waters head first, reality is that there’s no boat to tow you and your team. It’s sink or swim, and if you can’t do it yourself and need a life jacket, that’s what agencies are for.

Photo by Spierson82.

• Date: 06.28.2010
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Meet The New Boss

A big MS&L Digital welcome to young Phinn, who spent the day with us today, and who reminded us that everything we really need to know, we learned in pre-school. Pretty sure we’ll all be working for Phinn one of these days . . .

• Date: 06.25.2010
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First Post, From the New Kid . . .

It’s never easy being the new kid. No one likes it. But, as much as I thought I’d hate being the new kid, everyone here at MS&L Digital has gone out of their way to be friendly and to make me feel welcome.
With that being said, it’s still hard coming into an environment, where everyone already knows each other, they already have their own inside jokes, and they already seem to have this sense of community or family.

Seeing as I’ve been the “new kid,” a time or two before, I’ve come up with a few things that can make the transition to “seasoned employee” easier:

1. Learn everyone’s names. You don’t want to be caught in a situation where you should know someone’s name.
2. Invite a couple of coworkers to lunch. It’s a great way to get to know your coworkers. Plus, who doesn’t love food?
3. Be sure to join in the “water cooler” conversations. It’s a great way to let your personality shine through.
4. Do your job, and do it well. It may seem like a given, but you were hired to do a job…so do it!

Follow these tips, and you’ll be feeling less like the new kid, and more like a part of the group, in no time.

• Date: 06.24.2010
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A Public Service Message to AMU: Update Your Google Ads!

Today I clicked on a Google ad that was displayed above my Gmail inbox. It read: “Sports Coaching – www.amuonline.com – Begin coaching sports in your area with a coaching degree from AMU.”

But instead of seeing a convincing landing page, I got a blank page with this error message:

“The AMU website has moved! If you have reached this page from a bookmark, please use www.amu.apus.edu”

This means that American Military University, a for-profit institution, is wasting money on ads that go nowhere. Someone is not paying attention. Are you?

• Date: 06.23.2010
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Accidental HARO/Profnet Couplets

The newsletter Help a Reporter Out (HARO) has been grabbing mentions lately because it was just acquired by media database Vocus. But I thought you might appreciate a little game some of us play with the newsletter, which we read daily here at MS&L Digital. I call it “Accidental HARO Couplets.” See, when you read HARO, a thrice daily list of journalist and blogger enqueries seeking resources their stories, you first scan a list of one-line descriptors for each item. “Looking to speak to an RD,” “Trends in C-Suite software,” things like that. In my mind, sometimes the items go together in such a way as to suggest a story or humorous situation, so me and the other MS&L Digital peeps that work in outreach often IM them to each other for laughs. Example:

36) Sex in all 50 states (Penthouse)
37) Recreational Vehicles (large Regional daily newspaper)

Get it? You need a recreational vehicle so you can … Often some creativity goes into appreciating these and they aren’t always funny to everyone. We also do this with Profnets. Others:

18. Requesting stories of triumph and defeating the odds for a national show (T.V.)
19. Warning Signs of a Loser Guy (National Women’s Mag)

33. Woman’s Guide to Conquering Allergies (WebMD)
34. Are you in an ‘e-lationship’? (national news site)

Haha! See for that last one the woman conquers her allergies by being in an e-lationship with the person to whom she’s allergic.

28) Live Streaming Birth (National Parenting Magazine)
29) Adult Children Who Have Unfinished Business with their Mothers (Freelance)

“You’ve never respected my privacy! Not since day one!” Related:

35) Seeking moms who gave birth via Skype (Anonymous)
36) article on unconventional marriages (Anonymous)

Can’t you just picture it? A little dad blogger humor:

32) Helping Dad feed new baby (popular parenting website)
33) Best Rose Wines for Summer (Los Feliz Ledger)

How ’bout this:

5. EDUCATION: Getting Girls Interested in STEM Careers — THE Journal
6. FASHION: What Your Swimsuit Says About You — iVillage.com

“Yes, girls, you can have a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics! But by the way what are you wearing to McCaley’s party this weekend…”

Seriously, I do this all day. Keep watching this space for more, and if you see a couplet that amuses you, hit us up on Twitter!

• Date: 06.22.2010
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Josh Works

By Charlie Kondek
Director of New Media Relations

A lot of PR people don’t typically work with creatives. Normally, this species of communications professional is found on the advertising side. But at MS&L Digital we get to work on a lot of projects that might normally come through an ad shop or a web development firm, and we have a whole department of people that make things look good (designers) and make them work (programmers).

It’s always interesting to me to watch how the creatives, especially those on the graphic design side, behave, think and conceptualize. I don’t want to make too big a distinction here but a lot of the creatives I have known are very visual thinkers. They are always sketching, doodling, changing the font on the paper in front of them. This is not idle work to them, this is the outward sign of a designer’s mind. And it always amazes me how sometimes to “get” something they have to draw it out, to generate a visual shorthand of what’s being discussed.

This happened at our place just the other day when we were collaborating on a video that shows what our Multiloguer does. As creative director Josh Weston drilled down on what the video should accomplish, he quickly had to resort to filling the white board with visuals, words, and arrows to get his arms around it. As a writer, I’d rather organize things into words and sentences. But it takes all kinds, doesn’t it?

And, honestly, this touches on something dear to my heart. The communications professionals best poised to navigate the current industry are those that can work quite comfortably with people of different backgrounds. As the barriers between what is typically PR and typically advertising further perforate, being able to transcend these distinctions becomes critical, in firms or in people.

So if you haven’t spent enough time with creatives, you just might want to. Make sure they have plenty of white space to draw on.

• Date: 06.18.2010
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Content is King, Marketing is Queen, and I’m the Court Jester

You only have to spend about a week in the social media echo chamber to catch on to the debate between whether content or conversations rule. We can’t seem to agree whether it’s more important to churn out reams of content or chatter all day long.

Why is this a valid question?

It seems silly to me to designate one better than the other. And, usually, I counter with, “Well, if no one says anything useful, we don’t have much to talk about.”

Paul Castain at the Customer Collective hints at why this debate is useless. First, he calls out all the stupid corollaries to “Content is King,” like “then Marketing is Queen.” Or, “then the database is Queen.” Heck, everyone is Queen.

Sure, you need content. You need something to talk about. But you also have to talk about it. When you add “content” and “conversations,” you come up with what Castain calls “engagement.” Yep, another lovely piece of jargon to beat up. Call it “interaction.” Or “social” anything. Heck, call it “pre-sales.”

And this makes me the court jester, because this equation doesn’t give us an answer. We don’t even know what we’re measuring to define success.

Castain takes the content vs. conversation debate a step in the right direction, but he’s not quite there yet. What are you hoping to gain by participating in any social media effort? How about a digital effort? Print? Media relations?

You need to know where you’re going and why before you decide that Twitter, Facebook, live events or media relations will work. And only then will you know what the right mix of talking (publishing) and listening (conversations) will get you where you want to be.

• Date: 06.15.2010
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Internet Sensation Betty White is 88

Since that now legendary Super Bowl ad she did for Snickers, this octogenarian has been in higher demand than when she was on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the ’70s or “The Golden Girls” in the ’80s. A successful Facebook campaign to get her to host Saturday Night Live resulted in the highest ratings SNL has had in almost two years, and she’ll be co-starring in TV Land’s first sitcom this fall, entitled “Hot in Cleveland.”

In a recent interview with AdAge, White gave credit for her hot streak to that Snickers ad, and dished the dirt on all things SNL (including how she “almost divorced her agent” over it), her busy schedule, her lack of knowledge about Facebook, what’s on the horizon, and how she does it all at the ripe young age of 88.

From the article:

Ad Age: It’s been really fascinating to watch how social media and Facebook have had a major role in your comeback. Is the joke you made on “Saturday Night Live” true — did you really not know what Facebook was before the campaign?
Ms. White: Oh, I didn’t have a clue! But that’s just my own stupidity. But then all of a sudden all this stuff was happening as a result.

Ad Age: So what is your daily interaction with technology? Do you have a computer or an iPhone?
Ms. White: I don’t, but I have a secretary who does that stuff, and an agent who manages all my work. I get so much mail that if I click a button at 4 a.m. it terrifies me that I’ll mess everything up.

I can only hope that I am that awesome when I’m that age . . . and that I’m able to keep up with technology.

• Date: 06.11.2010
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