» Social Media - The Cycle

Calif. governor’s race gets a dose of social media

Posted April 22, 2009

Did you catch the social media blitz by San Francisco’s mayor Gavin Newsom, yesterday? In announcing his candidacy for the state’s governor, the youthful politician (41), took a cue from President Obama, it appears. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Aiming to stake his claim to the tech-savvy young voters who helped elect President Obama, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, 41, today took to the new media to formally announce he’s running for governor - by directly addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters simultaneously via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

The video came in three languages: English, Spanish, and Mandarin. Touche. SFGate’s story continued…

‘We can’t afford to keep returning to the same old tired ideas and expect a different result,’ the Democrat told supporters in his three-minute YouTube announcement, part of the unprecedented ‘virtual fly-around’ campaign announcement done entirely in the new media.

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Filed under: Politics, Public Affairs, Public Relations, Social Media, Technology

Tags:Gavin Newsom, Social Media

eBay sets live-blogging standards

Posted March 10, 2009

Two things that many in the financial communications probably didn’t expect to see together in the same sentence anytime soon: IR and Twitter.

On Friday, eBay announced on its blog, eBay Ink, that after three quarters of reporting its quarterly earnings via blog and covering the earnings calls on Twitter, the company has created some best practices for the earnings blogging going forward.

Those practices include a separate legal page to the Ink blog, rotating financial info every 90 days on the blog and Twitter, and special language that will designate some Tweets as a live-blogging session for the earnings announcement.

Ebay blogger Richard Brewer-Hay wrote that he was worried when he had to approach his legal team for the first time to talk about best practices and couldn’t find other companies who were using these social media tactics for their earnings announcements. But his fears were unfounded.

“I was worried I would be forced to cease this innovative way of reporting company information to our constituents,” Brewer-Hay wrote. “Thankfully that was not the case. Rather, it was mutually agreed that we could take this opportunity to set up a best practices approach to live-blogging and reporting company information via the Web - beyond traditional conference call and press release.”

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Filed under: Announcements, Blogs, Corporate Communications, Financial/IR, New Media, Technology, Web sites

Tags:blog, earnings announcements, Ebay, IR, Social Media,

Social media for dummies

Posted December 11, 2008

On Tuesday, PRWeek’s editor-in-chief Keith O’Brien moderated a mediabistro.com panel, “The Customer is the Company: How Social Media is Changing Business”. Among the seven panelists were Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder and customer service rep; Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos; and Jeff Howe, contributing editor at Wired and “crowdsourcing” expert.

The panel touched upon your typical social media issues - why/how/when to use, when to separate corporate and personal blogs and Twitter accounts, ROI, etc. - but the techy talk seemed to fall flat next to Hsieh’s passion for customer service and a discussion about Zappos’ internal comms and hiring strategy (and Keith’s jokes about robots, of course). At the end of the first week of the four-week long new employee orientation, which includes customer service training, Zappos offers employees $2,000 to quit to weed out those who aren’t completely dedicated to the concept of service and the brand– seriously!

While Hsieh focused less on social media than on how Zappos’ corporate culture - customer service and a positive staff energy - contributes to its success, it’s well known that the company served as a social media pioneer, using Twitter for customer interaction. So Zappos serves as a model that success in the digital age can also be rooted in Stone Age values.

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Tags:Mediabistro, PRWeek, Social Media, Zappos

Horn Group raises longstanding issues for industry

Posted November 14, 2008

This week I attended the Girls in Tech and the Horn Group panel called “Is Social Media Killing PR?” at the Horn Group offices. The panel included Kara Swisher, a tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital; Susan Etlinger, a digital media strategist for the Horn Group; and Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist with Forrester Research.

While the conversation started about social media, very quickly it turned into the age-old issue about PR folks making irrelevant pitches to reporters. Swisher’s point for the night was social media hasn’t changed what makes a good story and you can’t PR a bad a product.

Of course this raised questions about targeted pitches, measurement, and relationship building. But I got the sense this is the same conversation the PR industry has been having since social media first emerged. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, it’s evidence of the industry’s commitment to social media and, ultimately, to its future.

But based on some questions from the audience – in addition to conversations I had with folks at the reception – it is clear the PR industry still grapples with a reputation problem. There is no clear solution for this, but panels like this one are probably a good place to start.

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Filed under: Public Relations, Social Media, Technology

Tags:All Things Digital, Forrester Research, Horn Group, Kara Swisher, Social Media

Obama might have to shift social media strategy now

Posted November 5, 2008

Most communicators agree that the Obama campaign understood social media. David Almacy, former Internet & e-communications director for the current Bush administration, said he knew the campaign got it when he heard an Obama radio ad that directed listeners to text message the campaign.

“[When I heard the ad] I was sitting in my car at a stoplight,” Almacy said. “I was not at my desk or my computer, yet I was able to get more information.”

But when asked whether Obama can leverage his online network as president, Almacy, who is now VP of digital strategies at Waggener Edstrom, said maybe not.

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Filed under: New Media, Politics, Public Affairs, Social Media, Web sites

Tags:Barack Obama, David Almacy, Social Media, Waggener Edstrom

Once bitten, twice shy?

Posted October 23, 2008

An agency source recently told me that he’s having trouble convincing clients to get on Twitter, because they still feel burned from Second Life. Mostly, the clients don’t believe they have a sizable audience on Twitter, so they don’t want to invest in another ghost town, he says.

I suppose this is the risk of being an early adopter, they’ll be some misses. But I wonder if others have faced a similar problem: are your clients more skeptical of social media because of some misses, like Second Life?

Also, stay tuned PRWeek’s upcoming feature on November 3 about Comcast and Cisco using Twitter.

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Filed under: Agency-client relationship, Social Media

Tags:Cisco, Comcast, Social Media,

Calif. governor’s race gets a dose of social media

eBay sets live-blogging standards

Social media for dummies

Horn Group raises longstanding issues for industry

Obama might have to shift social media strategy now

Once bitten, twice shy?

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