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Fortunately, I pushed the button! Today I don’t hesitate to confirm my past thoughts: Indeed! I already gained a lot from blogging! And do you know what? Recently, my blog won the Euprera Social Media Award 2010 for the best student blog at the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (Euprera) Spring Symposium in Ghent, Belgium. This year the University College Arteveldehogeschool hosted the event (I was impressed by the modern campus). Wow! I’m speechless and very happy about that!

Last but not least, I would also like to thank Anderson Lima who run the PR and New Media Module at Leeds Metropolitan University last year for the insights into social media and Richard Bailey through whose blog I took notice of the Euprera Social Media Award.

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America – not the easiest place to attract attention but a place to get easily lost in ‘woods’ of show cards and advertising. Poor ‘sandwich men’ who try to get the attention of pedestrians and car drivers in this sea of advertising: Have you ever heard of ‘sandwich men’ – so called because they walk back and forth on the sidewalk with advertising signs hanging front and behind from their shoulders? “Sign holding is perhaps one of the oldest forms of advertising, dating back to mid-evil times, and has had a presence in a number of different cultures. Even in the 1990s, people could be seen lackadaisically standing on the side of the road, advertising for different businesses.” (source) In America you will find these people on every corner – therefore nothing unusual or special? Indeed. Don’t you even get the feeling that this form of advertising might be a bit mundane or even boring nowadays? It Is hard to believe that you will get enough attention for your product this way in a world of overstimulation. Can’t you do this job more entertaining? Yes, you can.

Acrobatic Advertising

Have you already heard of AArrow Sign Spinning? Some years ago its founders noticed the potential of the traditional sign holding approach and started to do tricks with the signs, spinning them around and tossing them into the air to attract attention (read the full story here; articles one and two Los Angeles Times; Business Week). From time to time the sign spinners freeze the sign to present the clients message. On the official website it says “AArow Sign Spinning is a guerilla marketing technique that infuses extreme sports with street performance to catch attention of spectators and communicate a targeted advertising message.” (source) Clients range from smaller retailers to fortune 500 companies.

Advertising that does the trick

What do you think about this? It leaves an impression, doesn’t it? I believe Sign Spinning is an interesting new adverting medium that is nearly impossible to ignore. The spinners are an interactive, dynamic and engaging eye catcher and it is fun to watch their tricks. Obviously, there are some striking advantages of this new approach of getting attention for organizations and products:

• Hits thousands of members of the target audience an hour
• Dynamic, interactive and engaging
• Personal and friendly
• Unconventional and unexpected
• Memorable (not only because of its unconventional nature but one-to-one advertising experiences by taking the time to advertise to one person at a time)

In a nutshell, Sign Spinning leaves an impression. I think especially the personal nature of this new way of advertising is valuable because it delivers what no other form of advertising can: eye contact and smiles. And there is no doubt that the spinners’ moves attract the crowd. I believe Sign Spinning is a cheap and thus cost-effective way for organizations and products to get massive attention (According to the Los Angeles Times AArrow charges $25 an hour and up for its spinners’ services).

Sign Spinners supported Presidential Campaign

Did you know that Sign Spinning was also used to support Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign in California, North Carolina, Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Montana and Nevada? To increase the reach of the Obama message and to register a record number of new voters to the campaign AArrow Sign Spinners were dispatched to college campuses and large cities around the country. To my mind this example emphasizes the value and good standing of Sign Spinning as a communication tool.

In the end, I am convinced that fitness is the ultimate thing to do the job of a ‘sign-wielding roadside marketer’. It looks easy but I am sure it is an act of strength to spin the giant signs around and flip them high into the air. But the act of strength seems to be worth doing it.

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Do you believe the day will come when Social Media will replace television as the main news source? Or is time already there? What about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, for example? They were communicated more quickly on Social Media sites than on the TV screen. According to Mike Elgan “the only thing TV news does better than social media is to display higher quality pictures and video. Otherwise, TV news is just like the Internet as a news source, after you take away user control, alternative opinions, timeliness and 99% of the stories.” (source) Do these examples show that Social Media has become a ‘competitor’ of traditional media?

Findings on the relationship of traditional and social media

Let’s take a look at some interesting findings of the “Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on Public Relations” by Donald Wright and Michelle Hinson, Institute for Public Relations, to get a better understanding of the relationship of traditional news media and social media. A sample of public relations practitioners from various parts of the world took part in this fourth annual trend study (overview):

On the one hand, 85% of the respondents believe that social media complement traditional news media, 92% think blogs and social media influence coverage in traditional news media and 88% believe blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous. But on the other hand, the findings also show that traditional news media receive higher scores in terms of accuracy, credibility, telling the truth and being ethical than blogs and social media (source). Interestingly, respondents where especially uncertain when asked: “Do you agree or disagree that social media (including blogs) tell the truth.” (53% were uncertain about the answer). Generally, many respondents think that traditional mainstream media and social media influence each other.

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Complementation instead of conflict

In a nutshell, these findings of the “Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on Public Relations” show that Social Media and traditional media seem not to be in conflict with each other. But Social Media enhanced its influence in recent years: “Since first appearing about five years ago, social media networking sites have become increasingly popular each year. Bill Tancer (2008), the general manager of global research at Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive service, says social media have overtaken pornography as the number one use of the internet.” (source) Nevertheless, the findings of the discussed research show that Social Media still has a long distance to go before it will be equal to traditional media in terms of accuracy, credibility, truth and ethics.

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Gandhi was fond of saying that we all have the same 24 hours in our day; it’s all in how we use them (source). Especially within the last days I often thought about this meaningful comment. Why? Well, I think from time to time we all blunder into a time trap, don’t we? Mine snapped recently due to a lot of work for university – exams and assignments needed to be done. But it was not the university work that caused me headaches from time to time – I rather think it was the little time left for my Social Media activities.

Social Media: A time suck?

Social Media gives me the great opportunity to communicate and share my ideas online. But I am sure you will agree with me that it can be extremely time consuming, too. Social Media activities could easily take over your day if you try to create new content on your blog frequently, want to respond to everyone who leaves a comment on your blog or be up to date what is going on on Facebook or Twitter constantly. And these are only some examples of how Social Media could suck your time (Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism gives a very good overview where conversations take place online in addition to that). But as I had to put the last finishing touches to important university tasks last week I hardly had the time to dive into Web 2.0 too deeply.

Scaling Social Media

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I believe the magic word to get out of the ‘Social Media Time Dilemma’ is Social Media Time Management. Looking for ways of Social Media Time Management I came across a lot of helpful tips. I don’t want to keep it from you; maybe you are hard pressed for time, too, and can benefit from one or another tip. Matt Churchill published my favourite tips. That’s why I’d like to give you a brief overview about them here – if you want to read more about these tips please read his blog post on socialmediatoday.com

§  Find the blogs that are most relevant to you, and stick with them. Prioritize material that will be most beneficial to you, and read other blogs and websites at your leisure later.

§  Restrict Your Twittering in using an application like Tweetdeck and monitoring specific key words related to your field of expertise. This means you don’t need to follow every single conversation that takes place in the group of people you follow and it introduces you to new people who are talking about the same topic.

§  Have a clear out of RSS feeds you don’t read.

§  Manage Your Social Networks and cull the services you don’t use regularly – focus on the few networks that make a difference to your online experience and engage with them more, making contacts will all of a sudden be a heck of a lot easier!

Apart from Matt Churchill’s steps to manage Social Media time more effectively I really liked the simple but useful advice of Chris Brogan who suggests to use the divine tool of WordPress, for instance, to write some posts in advance and schedule them to launch when you are hard pressed for time. Brogan says: “This has proven very valuable on days when I’m too busy with other projects to get a post out, but when I know I’d rather you have something new to consider.”

Blogs about Social Media Time Management

If you like to read more about Social Media Time Management I found some other interesting blogs for you:

Time Management in the Age of Social Media

My Half Hour Social Networking Plan: The First Ten Minutes

The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile

Social Media Time Management

7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You

3 STEPS TO BETTER TIME MANAGEMENT OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media time management strategy

If you are generally interested in information about how to listen and in turn, participate transparently, sincerely, and effectively in social media and new media marketing I recommend reading Brian Solis’ eBook ‘The Essential Guide to Social Media’.

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At the end I almost missed one essential tip I found out: Set Social Media time and log off when that time is over. Well then, I log of for today

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“The Web has become our workplace, our water cooler, and our social mixer.” Doesn’t this quote of Chris Brogan hit the nail on the head? To my mind it definitely gets to the heart of Web 2.0. I came across this convincing quote in relation to personal branding – a topic that has been around for a while but that has become much more prevalent in recent years. In his ebook ‘Personal Branding for the Business Professional’ Brogan claims that the reason why personal branding has become more prevalent in recent years partly relates to how the web has become our workplace, our water cooler, and our social mixer. I agree with him. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is very difficult to convey as much information online as in person.

Shaping the personal brand

An interesting example of how to create a digital identity is Brisbane IT-worker Hailey Turner, 20. She was among the top 50 vying for Tourism Queensland’s ‘Best Job in the World’ (read my recent posts one, two and three to get more information about the context). Apart from the demanded application video she travelled to seven cities in 12 days including Tokyo, London, Copenhagen, New York and Los Angeles to promote her application and the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Besides, she raised funds and sponsors and created a website where she uploaded videos, photos and blogs (source one, two, three). Everything Hailey Turner contributed to the Social Web shaped and contributed her personal brand: the pictures and videos she uploaded, the profile she defined on social networks like Facebook, the blog posts she published and the comments she shared on other blogs or the tweets she sent on twitter.

Authenticity and passion matter

Although Hailey Turner did not succeed to get the job in the end her personal brand gave her the ability to stand out in a sea of similar ‘products’ – her competitors. I think she succeeded in marketing herself as something different than the rest of the applicants in any case. According to Chris Brogan in some ways the difference on brands is what you deliver: “Doing something new is a great way to get people to be interested in what you do. (…) In a world full of people doing somewhat similar stuff the person who innovates is definitely ahead of the game.” That’s what Hailey Turner did with her journey, the funds and sponsors and her website.

Apart from that, there is another factor that strengthened Hailey Turner’s personal brand: the mixture of authenticity and passion she delivered in the contents she shared online. In my opinion, passion and authenticity are the two sides of the same coin: Because passion is hard to fake authenticity matters in building your personal brand online and it is very important to be yourself. Branding isn’t playing a role. With reference to Chris Brogan “a strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention and execution. (…) Brands are complex and not especially one dimensional.” To my mind, the ‘brand’ Hailey Turner was colourful and interesting.

If you wish to find out more about personal branding I recommend reading ‘Personal Branding for the Business Professional’ by Chris Brogan and Brian Solis’ blog posts ‘The Socialization of Your Personal Brand’ part one, part two and part three.

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Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin – finally, the tropical dream came true. Unfortunately, not for me but for the British charity fundraiser Ben Southall, 34: He was one of the 16 finalists who recently spend three days swimming, snorkeling, diving and lounging under the close scrutiny of Queensland Tourism officials. They psychometrically tested the candidates for the ‘Best Job in the World’, the ‘Islandreef Job’ (read my recent posts number one and number two about the competition to get more information and the latest press release published by Queensland Tourism). Ben Southall staved off competition from almost 35,000 worldwide applicants to secure the post and was awarded the $150,000 (£73,000) contract beginning July 1 to serve as the caretaker of a tropical Australian Island. He now has the chance to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton island, in the Great Barrier Reef, for six months while writing a blog to (source: The Guardian). If you like to read his blog click here.

A successful social media campaign and its imitators

The recruitment for the ‘Best Job in the World’ was part of Tourism Queensland’s Islands of the Great Barrier Reef Campaign. The cooperative marketing campaign aimed to highlight the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and showcase Australia’s own unique Island experience, to the global market (source: press release published by Tourism Queensland). I think, I don’t need to tell you again that influential newspapers like The Guardian, The Mirror or BBC or German newspapers like Der Spiegel or Der Focus picked up the story once more among other media. According to Der Spiegel the marketing campaign exceeded all expectations of Tourism Queensland: Tourism director Anthony Hayes is of the opinion that there will be more bookings within the next 12 month at the end of the campaign. Probably the ranger casting will become an annual event? In anyway, there are already imitators of the campaign: According to Der Spiegel Taiwan thinks about starting a similar competition to promote its tourism.

‘The moral of the story’

What remains to say? As mentioned in earlier posts the ‘Islandreef Job’ competition was a striking campaign idea which was based on some remarkable PR and marketing decisions like the concept of the admirable independent blogger like you and me, the integration of the audience in the voting and the content-rich website (read my recent blog post) and supported by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (read my recent blog post). Doubtlessly, a short-term campaign success. Will it become a long-term success, too? Only time can tell.

Old photos – horrific experiences or great fun? Whatever you think when you recognize yourself on an old photo I’m sure it evokes certain emotions. I think it’s a great fun to rummage in old photo albums with friends – sometimes wondering how different we looked when we where younger or just remembering good times we spent together. That is why I try to have my digital camera with me whenever possible to catch all the versatile chapters in life. Over the years my computer became my digital photo album which I can organize easily thanks to the technical development.

Welcome to the online photography world

If you not only want to share your photos with your family and friends at home Flickr gives you the easy opportunity to share them with the whole internet (klick here to read wikipedia’s description). To say it with Amy Shuen’s words: “Flickr essentially gives away the services that amateur photographers need and want most: Photo sharing; online storage; and indexing, tagging and photo inventory.”

But Flickr is not only to the amateur photographer’s advantage who can organize his photos, drops into a creative photo database or may even be discovered if talented – it is an interesting communication platform from the corporate perspective, too.

Flickr stream: “Michel Comte Retrospektive”

I’m sure you have heard of Michel Comte, one of the most sought-after fashion and magazine photographers in the world (he portrays numerous celebrities from the world of art, music and entertainment. In addition to portrait photography and fashion he moved towards photo-reportage and documentary). Currently, the exhibition “Michel Comte Retrospektive” can be visited in the ‚NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft’ in Duesseldorf, Germany.

Michel Comte – 360° from nrwforumduesseldorf on Vimeo.

To promote the exhibition a number of Web. 2.0 tools were used like communication via the website of the ‘NRW Forum’ and a blog which reflects the course of the exhibition. But the most noteworthy idea was to create a Flickr stream. Especially in this case it was a very good idea to put a photo show on Flickr – a platform where all the passionate photographer’s come together to share and exchange their experiences about photography. Doubtlessly, these people are the prospective visitors of the exhibition. To my mind a promising step in the communication concept of the exhibition.

Benefit from Flickr as a professional

To end up for today I’d like to point out two tips of Seth Godin how you can benefit from Flickr as a professional. You will find a full description of them in his blog post ‘Where to find great ideas and arresting images (for free)’:

1. If you need photos for a presentation or website or brochure, try Flickr.

2. When you are trying to brainstorm, Flickr is a great place to find connections between ideas that hadn’t occurred to you.

Why not try them out on the job floor?

Easter break + more or less nice weather = travel time!? If you were lucky you might have spend some days away from home. Wouldn’t it be a strange idea if every step of this journey would have been observed by someone? I think so. But there is one particular journey on which it can be very beneficial to keep an eye. Any idea? I think about the customer’s journey on a corporate website.

Web analytics tools like Google analytics, Omniture, Hitwise and Web Trends make it possible to track what is going on on a corporate website or corporate blog. This is especially helpful if the target of an online PR campaign is to drive traffic to these websites. The web analytics tools make it easy to identify where the traffic came from, for instance.

Keyword: online evaluation

But analyzing a corporate website is just one thing – the online environment provides other interesting opportunities to evaluate the success of PR work, too, of course! Just think about blogs, for instance: Regarding the corporate blog you can easily get an idea of how many people are engaging with the company by looking at the frequency of comments. Counting the volume of conversations, comments and track backs to the corporate blog is one option to evaluate it. Another possibility is ‘The Conversation Index’ developed by Stowe Boyd. This index measures the degree to which a blog generated conversation. Additionally bookmarking sides like Technorati or Kineda are helpful tools to measure a blog as the rank blogs according to their popularity.

The challenge of the online environment

Doubtlessly, the online environment gives versatile chances to measure online PR activity. The mentioned tools are just one part of an interesting, new working field (if you’d like to get a deeper insight into it, why not read my fellow student Jennifer’s or Sam’s blog). Nevertheless, I think it is important to keep in mind that the exploration of the online world requires a large dose of common sense, a structured approach and enough knowledge of the technologies that are available to help, too!

Anyway, I’ll set off for another virtual journey now! If I get across interesting PR topics, I will let you know, for sure!

Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin … Admittedly, I’m catched in this summer-like daydream again! I got lost in it for the first time when I recently blogged about the ‘The Best Job in the World, the ‘Island Reef Job’. The idea about earning £70,000 for blogging about the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef/ Australia while living rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool on Hamilton Island is tempting if you look out of the window and all you see are trees and shrubs devastated by the stormy weather. Quite apart from the rain.

Wild Card candidate selected

But stop building castles in the air! I promised to keep an eye on the competition of Tourism Queensland for you. After the top-50-shortlist from over 34,000 applicants for the job was announced on the website some time ago, the Wild Card candidate for the final round of the competition has now been selected by the visitors of the website: It’s Claire from Taiwan. “Clare has done a remarkable job of promoting her quest for the Best Job in the World in Taiwan and has become an overnight media celebrity. She has been in virtually every newspaper, on every TV network in the country, plus online media and social networking sites”, says Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes in a recent press release.

All up 475,855 votes were received during the Wild Card voting process. Clare received 151,676 votes – almost three times that of her nearest competitor, Mitchell from Canada who received 55,532 votes, followed by George from Ireland with 30,372 votes.

A successful social media campaign

Influential news papers like ‘Der Spiegel’, Germany, reported on the progress of the competition again (just a quick reminder: the winner will be named on May 6^th 2009). As far as today the Island Reef Job seems to be still a very successful social media campaign. For instance, Queensland Tourism set up profiles relating to the Island Reef Job on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (further information about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube on Wikipedia).

I’d like to pick up Queensland’s profile on Facebook as it is an interesting example to show that Facebook is not just a social networking site for students anymore but a great place for companies to communicate, too: Queensland’s Facebook page aims to help visitors share, plan and organize their trip to go there.

Facebook – a communication opportunity for companies

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With regard to Facebook marketing David Meerman Scott* names different useful ways to deliver information and ideas to a network of people who are interested in a certain topic of which two can be found on Queensand’s profile, too:

1. Friend-to-friend communication: In its personal profile Queensland is promoted as a amazing travel destination. You learn about the country and get reasons why it might be rewarding to travel there, for example.
2. Groups: Queensland keeps interested people informed on their profile (additional material include e.g. e-brochures and podcasts). Currently, it has got about 4.500 fans who actively take part in the communication process as you can see on the wall.

You see, Facebook can be an interesting marketing tool for companies. The following quote of Walter Doyle, CEO of uLocate, puts it in a nutshell very well: “People are sensitive to corporate content. It’s okay to be corporate if it is funny. Entertainment, fun, simple, and whimsical are all good.”  In other words: The experience on Facebook has to be very simple and devoid of commercialization. Indeed!

*Book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’

Sunday morning – already reason enough to feel comfortable: The working week is mastered successfully and hopefully a bit of relaxation is on the agenda on this day. I know that work can be time consuming even at the weekends but let’s forget it for a bit. What’s the perfect pastime at the weekend for you? It’s hard to say, isn’t it? A thousand nice things come to my mind when thinking about it. Spending my time with my family and friends is only one of them. But apart from the perfect pastime at the weekend, which is hard to determine because of the variety of opportunities, I can tell you easily what the perfect start into the weekend is for me: A cup of freshly ground coffee! Of course, I drink my morning coffee every day within the week, too. But it’s a different as chalk and cheese to drink your coffee hastily before work or to enjoy it to the full, isn’t it? Do you know what completes a delicious cup of coffee? The smell of freshly ground coffee beans which emerges when you open a bag of coffee! I often asked myself: Why does coffee smell so good?

The chemical riddle behind coffee aroma

I found a very well developed answer to this question in the online media room of the international chemical company BASF (it’s portfolio comprises chemicals, plastics, performance products, functional solutions, agricultural solutions, and oil & gas). In the section ‘podcasts’Jeff, the company’s Chemical Reporter, answers questions of BASF’s Podcast listeners on Chemistry in our everyday life: Why is sugar sticky? What makes lipstick kiss-proof? How does a plasma monitor work? – as just to name a few of them.

Listen to the answer of my question about the coffee aroma yourself. Click here.

It’s interesting that until today, no one has been able to produce coffee aroma artificially, isn’t it? Do you think a perfume with coffee aroma would sell? Kidding aside: In the end, it was not the answer that aroused my enthusiasm but the well thought-out online media room of the company.  

The open secret of the beneficial effects of an online media room

According to David Meerman Scott* a company’s online media room is a great terrific opportunity for PR people to get content out into the marketplace. Just think about all the people who might visit it: I’m convinced that not only journalists take a closer look at the corporate online media room but also people like you and me; students, suppliers, customers, investors, employees etc.. In other words: all kinds of people visit a company’s online media room. It would be an utter disgrace to miss this chance to communicate effectively, wouldn’t it?

Let’s take a closer look at the online media room of BASF because for me it’s a very good example to demonstrate how a well developed online media room could attract people’s attention. First of all, the online press room’s space is well-arranged, navigation is easy and corporate colors underline the corporate design. The navigational design is clear. Moreover, BASF’s online media room is not simply a list with contact information for the organization’s PR person which I’ve unfortunately seen on other online media rooms. Information is available in German and English and in many different formats, e.g. news releases, publications, videos, podcasts and press photos.

As the advantages and reasons for this particular construction of a content-rich online media room are quite the same as of the content-rich website, I suggest you to read my recent blog post about this topic if you want to know more about the benefits of a good design or information in different formats.

A room not only for the media

I’d like to take up the good idea of BASF’s podcast ‘The Chemical Reporter’, which revalues the company’s online media room to me. This idea relates to David Meerman’s suggestion to design an online media room for the company’s buyers which will make it at the same time a better media site for journalists. I personally got useful information from the Chemical Reporter podcast. Moreover, BASF offers interesting background information as a support of the different topics. Concerning the riddle behind the coffee aroma the online media room provides additional material like The story’ September 29^th is coffee day’, The animation ‘See how the brewing unit puts the temperament of Italian espresso into the coffee’, prospects, an info box and downloads. To my mind this kills to birds with one stone: Not only the customer, who wants to learn something new but also the journalist, who searches for  interesting material for his article are offered interesting information on the BASF online media room.

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What remains to say? Did you know that a well organized online media room often has higher search results and drives more traffic than other parts of an organization’s website? Why? Because of the way the search engines work: “A news release dynamically builds out a new set of content in your online media room, with each news release generating its own indexable page, which the search engines all capture.” (Dee Rambeau, founder and managing partner of The Fuel Team quoted in David Meerman Scott’s book* )

*Book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’