Teaching PR

Special topics graduate seminar on social media

This semester I'm teaching (for the first time) a graduate seminar on social media. It's similar to my undergraduate special topics class in that it's not focused solely on social media in the marketing mix, but it's much less hands-on and much more concerned with social and cultural impact. I organized the class by waiting until the first day to find out who the students were and what their interests are, so some of the topics and readins are tailored to their needs. In addition, the class chose from a menu of options to decide how they would be assessed.

Here's the syllabus, minus the boring parts:

Introduction

This course aims to help students understand social media from both scholarly and professional perspectives. This seminar will explore scholarship on social media about important issues such as collaboration, privacy, and security; from academic fields such as psychology, business, and communications; and in subject areas such as politics, education, and social reform. Because the field is new and rapidly changing, students will also read popular literature on these topics. In addition, students will participate in several collaborative learning projects and will have the opportunity to work hands-on with social media.

Required reading

Students will be required to read and be prepared to discuss both scholarly and popular literature on social media for class each week. Links to these articles are provided on the schedule. In addition, students will be asked to read a book for the team book review project.

Assessment

You will be graded on your written work, your oral presentation, your ability to synthesize and conceptualize the material, and your contributions to the class. Prompt attendance and conformity with deadlines are expected at the graduate level. In case of dire emergency, contact the instructor prior to missing class.

Blogging (20 percent): Each student will choose between two options.

1. You may create an individual blog on Wordpress.com with the goal of posting at least 12 times during the semester and making efforts to build an engaged community of readers.
2. You may participate in the class blog by initiating posts at least five times during the semester as well as commenting on at least 30 other students’ posts with substantive, insightful comments that further the discussion of weekly readings.

Team book presentation (20 percent): Students will work in small groups to read and present a book to the class, creatively using social media as part of the presentation.

Participation (10 percent): You are expected to participate in weekly discussions of the readings.

Original research case study paper (50 percent): Students will work in pairs to research and write a case study, using original, triangulated research to develop theory relating to social media.

The weekly topics are as follows:

• Collaboration
• Amateurs vs. Professionals
• Social Media, U.S. Law, and Ethics
• Online Identity Production
• Privacy and Social Media
• Social Media and News
• The Social Side of Search
• Personal Branding
• Social Media and Business
• Social Media and Education
• Social Media and Politics/Government
• Attention and Distraction
• Social Media and Entertainment
• Social Media and Social Change

My grad assistant typed up the reading list, so if you'd like the course bibliography, email russell dot uga at gmail and I'd be happy to share it (Word document).

 

 

They're no longer my students, but they're still blogging

From time to time I publish lists of links to student blogs to entice you, my loyal reader(s), to check out their work. This time, I thought I'd re-publish a few links to blogs written by former students who are no longer blogging for grades but are still keeping their blogs going.

• Ashley Biondich's Glamazon Guide (fun and fashion)
• Lauren's Nice Ideas (definitely wedding-related these days)
• Emily's ET it up "Between the Hedges" (Georgia football)
• Cory's Dicks Dig the Chick Flick (movie reviews)
• Emily's It's a Colorful Life (color and design)
• Andrea's Belle Appetit (food and fashion)

I know it's hard to keep blogging when jobs or more school get in the way, so I'm giving 'em a big old round of applause.

Very basic SEO tips for academic bloggers

Over the summer I spoke on a panel of educator bloggers, and when we were asked to provide tips for professors who'd like to start blogging, a couple of us mentioned learning the basics of SEO, or search engine optimization. When someone in the audience followed up, "What do I need to know about SEO?" we provided a couple of tips, but there's so much to cover that it was hard to know where to begin. This post is intended to serve as a better answer.

First some basic information. SEO is simply about helping your posts show up higher on the returns page when someone searches for terms related to your blog's topic or posts. If you want that to happen, you have to make it easy for search engines to find out what your posts are actually about. Put simply, search engines crawl (read pages they can see), index (create a database of words) and rank returns.

So, here we go: very basic tips on search engine optimization for professors and students.

1. Most blogging sites build some SEO opportunities into their templates. Check your blog's design or setting tab to see what options are available to you (for example, Wordpress has SEO widgets, and Typepad has an SEO tab that allows you to add meta keywords that describe your blog generally for search engines). If you can, choose to have your post URLs based on the title of your post rather than just a date or a number.
2. Write headlines as if they will be read by a robot who has no context, no sense of humor, and takes everything literally (in essence, they will be). No puns, no nicknames, no inferences.
3. Search engines read top to bottom and left to right to determine a post's priorities. Whatever you put in the top left corner of a post is most important. 
4. And, since search engines can't read graphics, java, images or video, you shouldn't put them top left. When you do use them, make sure you use an important keyword in the file name.
5. Speaking of keywords, decide which ones you want to use and then use them frequently. Frequently means sprinkled naturally through your text, not used to the point of annoying the reader.
6. Make use of anchor text -- these are the clickable words that you create when you add a link to your text. Search engines use this information to help identify what people think is important about a post, so you can use internal links to reinforce what your own posts are about. If you ever hear someone making fun of "click here" links, that's why -- whatever you're linking to isn't actually about clicking here, but that's what you've just taught the search engine. 
7. Get links from other bloggers and websites. Ask your department or college website to link to it, for example; comment or guest post on other blogs; and don't be afraid to email links to posts to other bloggers who might be interested in them. The more links you get from other sites, the more search engines perceive your blog to be credible and relevant. If that site is already considered credible (for example, has a high Google page rank), so much the better.
8. Most important of all, though, is the actual content of your post. Don't do anything for SEO purposes that will put off your readers or convince a search engine that you're just gaming the system. As Google says, "you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what’s best for the visitors of your site."

If this is all too basic for you, consult the SEOmoz Beginner's Guide to SEO or Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

The unexpected consequences of social media use

Any student of mine will tell you that I emphasize privacy and security issues whenever I teach them about social media -- whether it's personal safety or thinking about the security of people friending or following an organization on social media.

But even I was taken aback by two tweets on Wednesday. 

First, Josh Greenberg linked to a CNN.com story headlined, "Bodies Hanging From a Bridge in Mexico Are Warning to Social Media Users." "Mexico's notoriously ruthless drug gangs regularly hang victims from bridges and highway overpasses," the story reports, but "this could be the first time" that people sharing news about drug trafficking on social media have been targeted.

When I retweeted the link, @ezrasf responded with a link to this blog post about the official U.S. response to complaints about "suspicious behavior" on a airplane flight on Sept. 11, 2011. Twitter and Facebook figured into the questioning of a woman who just wanted to go home, but found herself locked in a jail cell and being strip-searched. (She also links to this AP story.) Her tweets didn't get her into trouble, but they were considered as potential evidence during her questioning.

Kind of makes me long for the days when party pictures on Facebook were the problem.

Transmedia storytelling is not just multi-platform public relations

I sat in the audience not long ago listening to a speaker -- a highly-placed professional at a well-known firm -- who talked about "transmedia storytelling" as though it were the same thing as using multiple platforms for public relations.

Transmedia storytelling is NOT just multi-platform public relations.

By multiplatform I mean using a number of communication platforms (both mainstream and digital, collaborative or otherwise) in ways appropriate to the platform. So, on TV you run an ad, on Facebook you have a contest, and on your website you have a game. They all use the same slogan or have similar content, but modified to make it appropriate to the platform. It's pretty much the same thing ad/PR people would've done in days gone by, but with additional platforms available thanks to digital communication.

Transmedia storytelling goes far beyond this. I first read about the concept in Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture. To quote my own post on principles of social media from a couple of years ago,

I like Jenkins's discussion of transmedia storytelling because it suggests telling different parts of the story in different places (movie, game, Web site, etc. -- he uses "The Matrix" as an example) tailored to the medium. ...Applying this concept to PR would mean NOT taking a press release and making a podcast of the press release being read out loud. Instead, a press release might link to a video that has a human interest story related to, or maybe just briefly mentioned in, the press release -- either could stand alone, but together they tell a bigger story.

In other words, the platforms tell different parts of the story but together form one narrative, and the content should not be the same or even very similar across platforms. An example that Jenkins provides from "The Matrix" involves a very minor character who's only seen for a few seconds in the film, but if you play the game you learn that person's whole backstory and thus when you see them for those few seconds, you have an entirely different perspective on what's happening than if you hadn't played the game. (But if you haven't, you'll still enjoy the movie -- in fact, you won't know you missed anything.)

Multi-platform public relations may be hard, but transmedia storytelling takes it to a whole other level. And I can't really think of a PR program that's put it to effective use yet. Anyone else?

Social media and higher ed

A study of four-year accredited colleges and universities shows that 100% of schools are now using social media -- up 34% since 2007. Conducted by Dr. Nora Barnes and Ava Lescault of the U. Mass.-Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, the study finds that only one in five colleges/universities report using social networking sites to recruit and evaluate potential students.

Virtually all colleges/universities are on Facebook (98%), most are on Twitter (84%), and two-thirds have a blog. Meanwhile, message boards have leveled off and Myspace participation is down, while podcasting and Foursquare are up (the study has a margin of error of +/- 4%). Dr. Barnes suggests this shows a maturation process as higher ed institutions develop a better understanding of social media tools.

The press release from the Society of New Communications Research notes that higher ed is outpacing the Fortune 500, the Inc. 500, and the Forbes top charities in adoption of blogging.

Any guesses as to why blogging is so popular? Facebook is not surprising, given that students and potential students are a major public, but the stats on blogging are less intuitive. Also, do you believe that one-in-five stat, or is the word "evaluate" the problem?

You can download the report in full. Thanks to Kim Harrison for passing along the SNCR news release.

Edelman web demo for academics

Of course we've all heard by now about Edelman's controversial new client this week, but here's some other news from the agency.

Edelman has released its updated TweetLevel and new BlogLevel tools, which are designed to help PR people identify influencers on different topics. I played around with the new toy a bit and found out that my "blog is truly influential in [my] sector" -- meaning this blog, with an influence level of 49.3. Poor ol' How Mysterious got a lowly influence score of 7.5 (which I think is generous) and the comment that it's "not a well-read resource for the community you wish to be part of." Waaaa!

As for TweetLevel, I haven't used it much so I couldn't see the difference from version 1, except that now I have a badge:

 

More to the point, Edelman claims that the new tools allow PR people to figure out:

• The most relevant and influential users on various topics (e.g., Moms, food, tech)
• The amount of buzz and noise around a specific area
• The dialogues people are having and the links they’re sharing 
• What any given tweeter or blogger is discussing, influencing, and being influenced by

I found in my 5-minute tire-kicking that the last two points worked a lot better for Teaching PR than for How Mysterious!, but then real clients would have a bigger presence on social media than my book blog, so I'm guessing HM! is irrelevant to this discussion.

Now the real news for my fellow teachers: Edelman is hosting a 30-minute free web demo for academics on how to use these tools to support the PR curriculum. It will be held the week of August 1, and if you're an academic and are interested in the demo, contact megan dot woods at edelman dot com. If that doesn't work for you, there's also a quick video demonstration that might get you started.

 

Movie review: Catfish

My Maymester students recommended "Catfish," a 2010 film about a relationship that began on Facebook, during a discussion on the difference between friends and Facebook friends, so I found it at the local video store and watched it almost immediately after I turned in my grades.

"Catfish" is the story of Nev (pronounced Neev), who became friends with an entire family on Facebook. Nev's brother, Ariel, and his business partner, Henry, shared an office with Nev, and began filming the story of his relationship with this family in 2008. Over the course of a number of months, Nev receives boxes full of art from precocious 8-year-old Abby, talks to her Mom, Angela, hears music composed by Abby's brother's band, and falls for Megan, the beautiful older sister, who's a musician/artist/dancer. The family lives in Michigan, Nev and his buddies in Manhattan.

But then Nev finds one of Megan's songs... on YouTube. Performed by someone else. "It's a cover, it's supposed to sound similar," Megan explains. But Nev continues to investigate and begins to realize that Megan's lying. The guys make a surprise trip to Michigan to find out the truth.

I won't give the whole thing away, but it all turns out to have been a hoax. Nev is understandably upset, but he gets defensive: "They never fooled me," he says, "They just told me things I never called to question." And when they do figure out what's going on, Henry says, "It's not malicious, it's just sad."

Although there are some questions about whether the film is fiction or documentary, Nev's story provides a great way to introduce discussions about anonymity, trust, and online identity. I will definitely use it in class next time we're discussing online relationship building.

 

Your Digital Afterlife, by Carroll & Romano

Evan Carroll and John Romano's Your Digital Afterlife (2011) tackles an uncomfortable subject, but it also provides plenty of reasons that it's important to do so.

You've probably all seen examples of people -- and spammers -- continuing to write on a dead person's Facebook wall, or an unfortunate last tweet (one guy's last word, "w00t!!!", has been at the top of his page for a couple of years now). Carroll and Romano offer advice on how to avoid these problems.

First of all, they suggest, because laws haven't caught up with practices yet, we all need to document our wishes about the digital legacy we leave behind, just so loved ones know what you prefer. If a site has monetary value, it will need to be included in your will, but even if it's just sentimental value, it will be important to somebody. They provide a detailed plan, which starts with making a list of all of your sites and devices: the name, how to access it (who should do so and how), and your wishes (archive, share, delete, leave it up). 

Of course, different sites have different ways of handling death; most include this subject in the terms of service. Facebook can memorialize accounts (no new friends are added, but current friends can post on the wall); Twitter allows family members to remove the account or save public tweets; Gmail and Yahoo! require a death certificate and documentation of legal authority for someone to be able to take over the account.

It turns out that there are even sites that help you designate who should get your digital assets. The authors mention LegacyLocker.com, Entrustet.com, and DataInherit.com as examples.

They also discuss posthumous messaging -- a goodbye blog post (I saw this one recently), or an email that should be sent to people -- and online memorials (MyWonderfulLife.com, Online-Legacy.com, and Bcelebrated.com) which allow people to share their grief and memories of you. 

I haven't even looked at the sites mentioned here, so I'm not linking to them, but I do recommend considering your digital legacy.

I borrowed this book from my local public library.

 

Trying out GetGlue

It's spring break at UGA but my daughter's school schedule isn't synched with UGA's, so I've been hanging out at home all week. Last year I got ambitious and launched How Mysterious! This year I was almost completely lacking in ambition but decided to experiment with GetGlue.

GetGlue works much like FourSquare, but the check-ins are media-based rather than location-based. I haven't tried FourSquare at all, because I really don't want everyone to know where I am all the time, but I did feel a bit bad about not looking at it for teaching purposes. Nonetheless, I was hesitant to try GetGlue when Bert DuMars mentioned it to me, because I don't watch many television shows and wasn't sure what I'd be checking into. Turns out you can check into movies, books, the news, etc. I've set it to post to my Facebook account, where I can include comments (examples: the scary news from Japan, watching the Food Network rather than actually cooking) which have all gotten comments from my friends (in other words, I think it's less annoying than the FourSquare check-ins on Twitter).

GetGlue also makes recommendations based on media you've "like"-ed in the past, which is useful to me particularly in the movies category because I don't keep up with current releases very well.

So, I'll never be the mayor of anything, but I have earned my Bootcamp sticker.

 

Book review: Human Resources Guide to Social Media Risks

When Jesse Torres, CEO of the Pan American Bank in Los Angeles, asked if I'd like to see a copy of his new book, Human Resources Guide to Social Media Risks (2011), I said "yes," and right away, because it's a subject that I knew almost nothing about. Of course I've warned my students about the importance of organizations having a social media policy, told them to check with employers before blogging or tweeting about jobs or internships, and explained (thoroughly) how important it is for them to be careful what they post when they're searching for jobs.

But that's about all I knew.

In reading Torres's quick (about 50 page) primer, I learned a lot more. Based on the assumption that "all organizations, regardless of their involvement in social media activities, are subject to social media risks in the workplace," the book walks through the basics of social media from a human resources management perspective.

The book begins with a quick review of social media tools for people working in HR who may not be familiar with social media in all its variety. It then discusses three main areas of concern: using social media for recruitment--he suggests stating that background checks may include review of publicly-available information (and then sticking to what's publicly available); employee use of social media -- including challenges like loss of employee productivity and disclosure of confidential information, among several other topics -- this section is the lengthiest in the book; and social media-based terminations. At the end of this chapter, Torres provides a list of action items for HR managers for all three areas of concern.

The book includes a bibliography with references to blogs, trade publications, and news media discussions of case studies and legal actions that would be helpful to anyone in human resources -- but also to employees engaging in social media and to organizational social media experts who may understand the tools but not their HR consequences.

I skimmed through this book in about half an hour and would recommend it to educators, students and professionals who would like a clearly written introduction to the HR implications of organizational uses of social media.

 

Josh Bernoff on making leaders successful

Once again, the amazing Bert DuMars brought a fabulous guest to Newell Rubbermaid and was kind enough to open it up to the rest of us. Social Media Atlanta was, by all accounts, a big success, and although I only made it to this one event, Josh Bernoff speaking about his new book was no doubt a highlight of the week.

I use Groundswell when I teach undergraduates about social media, so I was very interested in the follow-up, Empowered, which focuses on empowering employees so they can in turn empower consumers. Bernoff started with two personal examples, a bank chat room where the employee promised to help but didn't actually have the power to do so, as compared to Best Buy's Twelpforce, which helped him locate a small part he needed... and then he ended up spending $1,100+ on equipment because he was in the store and kept thinking of other things he'd been meaning to buy. The difference in the experiences for him, as a consumer, was the difference in how the employees were empowered to help.

Bernoff urged us to think of customers as a channel, not just a source of revenue. Four things work together to empower customers today: smart mobile devices, social technology, pervasive video, and cloud computing services. He recommended four steps to tap the consumer channel:

• I - identify mass influencers (example: Giffgaff)
• D - deliver groundswell customer service (Twelpforce)
• E - empower with mobile information (autotrader.co.uk's mobile app)
• A - amplify fan activity (Ford Fiesta)

Companies, Bernoff asserted, should embrace new technology (even when companies try to block sites, employees get around it, for example by using Google Documents on their smartphones) because "resistance is futile." Instead, they should empower employees and develop policies on employee use of such sites. They should also encourage experimentation, commit to collaborative systems (pointing as an example to a Spanish bank that used a blog as its Intranet to foster discussion), and use councils to spread best practices within an organization (example: Dell, where they're sharing information across countries to learn from each other, rather than trying to have a single SM department).

During the Q&A Bernoff referred to Forrester's forthcoming "Social Media Maturity Model," which describes the phases companies generally go through from "we don't do social media" to total coordination of a social media system. Another good point he made is that if you set up a channel, you should expect customer service demands to appear there. "The customer deserves to be connected with, even when they're wrong," he said. This doesn't mean that every comment must be answered; if someone says a company sucks, that's not a customer service issue and no response is needed. But if customers are airing legitimate issues on social sites, even if you didn't intend the site to be for customer service, they will have to be addressed.

One of my favorite things Bernoff said came in response to a question about measurement of social media success. "How do you measure the success of the Internet for your company?" he responded. The answer, of course, is that it depends what you're trying to accomplish. 

More information, including a link to his slides from this talk, is available through Forrester.

Update on my How Mysterious! experiment

My book review blog, How Mysterious!, is approaching its six-month blogiversary, so I thought I'd give an update on my progress.

The short version: Wow, this is harder than I thought. The longer version: I'm making progress. 

It didn't take me long to realize that I picked a bad topic for my experiment; it takes hours to do a single post (first reading the book, then writing about it). Nonetheless, I was right that it was the topic I enjoy most, so I'm not spending any time regretting that decision--just revising my mental timetable on how long it'll take to make any appreciable impact on the book blogging world. 

I spent the summer reading crime fiction and watching movies, so I have a nice backlog of posts now (knowing that my pace will slow now that school's started), and I've put up lots of content -- 90 posts as of today. Including e-mail I've got about 30 loyal subscribers and a small group of steady commenters, and on Twitter @howmysterious is up to 225 followers. I also have a sad little Facebook fan page that I haven't had time to invest in beyond posting the occasional mysterious link, but it's got 16 fans. I've won a couple of books on other blogs and had the chance to read advance review copies (ARCs) for a couple of others. 

The best thing that's happened so far is that How Mysterious! won a "top crime fiction blog" award which was especially rewarding because each blog had to be nominated by its readers and then reviewed by a committee of five people, so it wasn't just a popularity contest yet it did reflect reader interest. Actually, I take it back -- the best things are that I've made some online friends, read a bunch of really good books, and inspired at least one person to read more for fun.

Next up: now that I've got some content I'm starting to work on SEO a bit, which is something that I need to learn a lot more about for teaching purposes. I'll let you know what I learn.

Charlene Li on open leadership

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to be able to hear Charlene Li, author of Groundswell (which I use in class) and Open Leadership, speak at Newell Rubbermaid in Atlanta (thanks Bert!). After bulldozing my way through Atlanta traffic, it was great to sit back and take in all of Charlene's insights on open leadership.

Charlene began by explaining that she wrote the book because, following the publication of Groundswell (co-authored with Josh Bernoff), she got tons of questions about how to open up a company on social media: "How open should I be?"

She emphasized the social media is not about technology but about relationships. No person is always authentic and transparent in every relationship; why should a company be any different? So you don't have to be all open, all the time. Rather, openness requires confidence, humility, and discipline, and it inspires commitment from others. "The New Normal," she explained, is conversations, not messages; human, not corporate; and continuous, not episodic. Openness therefore consists of 10 elements that fall into the categories of information sharing and decision making (see her Openness Audit).

Charlene also described four open leadership archetypes: Cautious Tester, Worried Skeptic, Realist Optimist, and Transparent Evangelist based on two continua -- independent--collaborative and pessimist--optimist -- stating that the Realist Optimist is most important because they can see the light but also have the skills to overcome obstacles that are sure to arise. She identified Dell's Lionel Menchaca as an example of someone who shares easily and is authentic, transparent, and disciplined.

She provided four important steps to creating a social media program based on open leadership:

1. Align with strategic goals: pick one of your organization's current goals where being open and social can have an impact
2. Prepare your organization: create a response map for how to handle social media comments or problems (i.e.: are there factual errors? If yes, this; if no, that response)
3. Understand the value: don't underestimate open/social just because it's hard to measure
4. Prepare for failure: dialogue increases trust and speeds recovery from problems

Charlene drew many examples from the new book, which I'm definitely adding to my reading list.

Requiring social media participation in classes

A discussion on PROpenMic this week reopened a question that educators have been debating for several years now: should students be required to participate in social media as a class assignment?

Reasons not to require it:

• Using social media means participating in a conversation with transparency and authenticity; can someone be "forced" to do that?
• Students should be using social media anyway, so there's no reason to make it a course requirement
• Requiring social media turns it into a "chore," which is not a good learning experience
• There are no set standards for what "good" participation should be; how can you grade it?
• Students sometimes show poor judgment in what they post, so requiring them to participate puts them in danger of harming their future career options

Reasons to require it:

• Social media are an increasingly important part of public relations practice, and students should practice using it with transparency and authenticity while in school so they are prepared to use it properly on the job
• Using social media personally (hanging out with friends on Facebook) is not the same as using it professionally, so students may not be as well prepared as they think
• Many of the assignments students do in school are "chores" -- would students practice doing surveys or writing news releases if they were not required?
• Teachers can create rubrics to explain how students will be graded, just as they do with other assignments, so that grading will be fair
• Students sometimes demonstrate poor judgment in what they post, so they'd better learn now what is appropriate and what is not; a poor grade or bad experience now is better than getting fired later; and using a closed platform like PROpenMic can help to limit the damage

You all know which side I come down on, since I've been requiring students to participate in various platforms for years now. But what do you think?

Addition: Be sure to read Tiffany Gallicano's important follow-up post on public participation.

Introducing How Mysterious! -- an answer to a challenge

At last year's Connect conference on PR and social media, NC State's Richard Waters tweeted a question to the PR profs in attendance: how many of us had actually used this stuff? For real? I tweeted back that I had used social media to promote the Connect conferences. Nonetheless, that question stuck with me.

Six months later, I decided to take Richard up on the challenge inherent in his question. (I should add that he was my student as an undergrad, so the challenge had perhaps more meaning than it would have from someone else.) Last month during spring break I developed a new project: How Mysterious!

For many years now I've been reading mysteries for fun. Even during grad school, when I read my eyes into new glasses, during holidays and vacations I trundled over to the library for some light entertainment. Thus, when I tried to think of a social media project that I'd actually love doing, something that involved reading mysteries came straight to mind: How Mysterious! is a book and movie review site for people who love mysteries.

So, I set it all up -- Wordpress blog, Twitter stream, Facebook fan page and Google account (mail and reader, and analytics), widgets, gadgets, bells and whistles. It's a work in progress-- haven't done much at all for SEO purposes, for example-- but working on it nights and weekends, early mornings and lunches at the desk, I met the modest pre-launch goals I set for myself (create the accounts, find the community, write 12 blog posts, attract 50 followers on Twitter), and I'm launching today. 

Check out the sites, subscribe, follow or fan me, and send your suggestions to mysterybookreviews at gmail dot com. 

**Credit for the logo/avatar and Twitter background to Lori Randall of Social Media Design -- I was the lucky winner of a freebie when I had just started developing the sites! 

Online reputation is not 9 to 5

• At last week's panel on using social media to find a job, a student asked, "Where's the line between personal and professional?" The panelists suggested that you should show some personality; employers want to see it.
• During her school's spring break this week, Barbara Nixon tweeted that she'd be happy not to see "f-bomb-laden tweets about hangovers etc." and said "I guess some think that professionalism and reputation are a 9-5 thing."
• Also this week, Lauren Fernandez wrote a "Think Before You Tweet" post that said, in part, "Gen Y overshares, but most clients and bosses that you interact with aren't... There is no rule that you must share every detail about your life."

The simple truth is that every single thing you (or your friends) put on the Internet, whether it's on a locked Twitter account, a semi-private Facebook page, or a public blog, reflects on you as a person as well as a potential employee. There is no line between personal and professional. 

Once you post something, you cannot take it back. I have an example of this in my RSS aggregator: I favorited a blog post that the author later deleted because it showed poor professional judgment -- it criticized another agency's client. I still have it. I still show it to students. Once he posted it, even though he deleted it, he can't take it back.

So, that thing you post -- that funny picture, that negative comment about a company, that drunken tweet, that snarky comment about someone else or that thing you meant as a joke -- once you post it, you can't control what other people do with it. If I wanted to, I could link to an example of each and every one of these mistakes recently made by a PR student somewhere in the United States. I'm not that cruel... but other people will be.

Showing your personality is one thing. Showing a lack of judgment is another. 

Using social media to find a job

I had the pleasure of moderating a panel featuring recent Grady grads Lizz Judd (Newell Rubbermaid), Beth Farrar (freelancer) and Davis Adams (Brandware Public Relations) at Grady College's career day yesterday. I probably looked a little strange standing there taking notes while they talked, but it was such good information that I couldn't stand to see it confined to the attendees in the room.

Here are some of their thoughts and advice to current students:

On specific ways to use social media in a job search

• Building an online portfolio via LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social sites (Lizz)
• Creating a blog that establishes you as an expert in something you're passionate about and builds a network of relationships with people who know your work (Davis)
• Following job search specialists and recruiters, strategically targeting your social platform activities (Beth)

On building a social presence

• Be everywhere (not literally, but on a lot of sites) and link them all together. "Presence is a must" (Beth)
• Build a brand by showing your personality, but keeping it classy
• "I frequently Google myself," because you need to see what other people are seeing (Lizz)
• Assume that everything is public; don't put something up on any site that you don't want an employer to see

On benefits of social media participation

• If you want a job in social media, you have to be using social media
• People with social skills are valuable (as in compensated well)

On social media don'ts for students

• "Don't be disingenuous"; if you aren't really passionate about something or don't really hold a particular opinion but try to pretend you are or do, it will show (Davis)
• "Don't be private" -- that is, don't lock your tweets or hide your profiles; people will assume you have something to hide (Beth)
• Don't hide your personality, employers want to see a real person
• "Don't be comfortable where you are." Social media is always changing, so you can't just get on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and think you're finished; try the new stuff (Lizz)
• "Don't be a lurker," participate in the conversation (Davis)
• Don't be unethical; be transparent and be yourself

#PRStudChat wrap-up

Today I served as one of the guest panelists on #PRstudchat on the topic of social media in PR education. I'm afraid I didn't say much that Teaching PR readers haven't already heard, but it was fun anyway. The conversation was so lively that the search on Tweetdeck had a hard time keeping up.

Some thoughts: I emphasized (as usual) that educators should focus on principles rather than tools, because tools will change but principles are more lasting. By principles I mean transmedia storytelling, collaboration, entrepreneurship, etc. I also said that I think social media should be incorporated into all PR classes rather than segregated into its own course -- after all, it's incorporated into a larger PR program in practice. The trick, I think, is to help students become confident in their abilities to figure new tools out for themselves.

On the question of textbooks, I'm not opposed to using books to teach social media (I've used David Meerman Scott's New Rules and Bernhoff & Li's Groundswell with success), but told the crowd that I subscribe to Josh Hallett's approach: "learn by doing." I think some people were surprised that I wasn't opposed to textbooks out of hand--but maybe my definition of textbook is different from theirs.

Another question asked about using a backchannel such as live tweeting. Is it helpful or disruptive in the classroom? Well, I can't multitask well enough to try it. Honestly, for me it would be disruptive. I know that Mihaela Vorvoreanu had students live tweet a guest lecture (with the speaker's permission), which seems to me a good way to practice Twitter without disrupting the class, but a lot of the people in the chat seemed to think it would be helpful, and fun. (Have to say, though, it seemed to be the pros and students who were in favor of it! And Robert French was definitely opposed.)

We also talked about evaluating SM use in the classroom. In my opinion, for beginners, just grading participation (i.e., setting a number of tweets or blog posts, etc.) is enough. Upper-level students, though, need to show they can create and use SM channels for clients. In the capstone campaigns class especially, I expect students to integrate social media into their programs as relevant to the client and its publics. This includes everything from setting up the tools to using analytics.

Last, we discussed how educators can keep up with the rapidly changing digital environment. Frankly, I don't think you can effectively teach SM unless you participate in it. Other people suggested using an aggregator to read blog posts and news, joining PROpenMic, reading current books, and going to professional conferences. 

All in all, it was a great discussion--this post doesn't even cover what I said, much less what everyone else contributed. Thanks again to Deirdre Breakenridge and Valerie Simon for inviting me to participate and Mikinzie Stuart for moderating. The chat, which takes place once a month, has a LinkedIn group for more information. I definitely recommend it to students and educators. [Addition: chat transcript.]

#PRStudChat on public relations education

Ever participated in a Twitter chat? People interested in the same topic get on Twitter at the same time, someone poses questions, and everyone can discuss their answers real-time. The conversation is organized around a hashtag -- here's an example: #journchat -- and/or by a moderator, like this one: @u30pro. 

This week I'm participating in the PR Student Chat, that's #PRStudChat, organized by Valerie Simon and Deirdre Breakenridge, which will focus on PR education. The chat is Wednesday, 13 January at noon (Eastern U.S. time). PR student Mikinzie Stuart will moderate.

Questions or strong opinions about PR education? I hope you will join the conversation (...and here are some tips on participating). 

PR professors on Twitter

Twitter's latest innovation is the list, which (like Tweetdeck and other applications) allows users to organize people into groups. For my first, I created a list of people who teach public relations.

If you're on Twitter, you can follow the list, which allows you to read the most recent tweets from anyone on the list; or you can just click on the "following" tab to find smart and interesting people to follow.

If you know of someone who's not on the list and should be, just reply to @karenrussell and I'll add them. As of today, I've identified 64 people, but I'm sure there are others!

BlogWell: How big brands use social media

I just registered for a great event, BlogWell, taking place in Atlanta on November 10. The event promises "eight great case studies on the best social media programs at large corporations" and features speakers from companies including Newell Rubbermaid, Coca-Cola, UPS, Home Depot, and Turner Broadcasting.

BlogWell costs $250, but the organizers have given me a 20% discount code to share with my readers. DM me on Twitter, @karenrussell, or e-mail me, russell dot uga at gmail dot com, for details. Hope to see you there!

What students learned at UGA Connect

Lizzy Nephew, a member of the Connect social media team, is also the editor of PRecedent, the newsletter for UGA's PRSSA chapter. She solicited quotes from some of the students who attended Connect that really captured the day. Here's her PRecedent article, reprinted with her permission. 

Connect 2009: Integrating Social Media and Traditional PR 

Connect ‘09 brought together PR professionals and students to discuss social media and its effect on traditional public relations. Check out what students learned at Connect ‘09:

Before engaging with your publics through social media, know your audience, have a specific goal in mind and build a strategy to execute that goal. You should not join social media just because it exists. You need to know how you can best use it to engage your publics and foster two-way communication. As the PR professional, you are the spokesperson for your organization and need to know 100 percent about your brand. You have to live and breathe the brand and be fluent in the brand’s culture.

- Lesley Anne Dickerson

• Not everyone is connected within all of the social media networks including people our age. Young adults around the world are not as “connected” as UGA students.
• Online buzz is influencing offline buzz such as the growth of business by Naked Pizza, a restaurant in New Orleans, due to its Twitter account. The customer base grew tremendously.
• Gripe sites came before Facebook and Twitter. These gripe sites include Murder King, Wicked Wendy’s and other sites that bash companies. I didn’t even know it existed.

- Erica Holland

Connect taught me to look at social media in a strategic way. It is not about having the tools, it is about knowing how to use the tools. I encourage everyone to delve past the surface of social media. Look at how it can help the overall goal.

- Debbie Ebalobo

When it comes to social media, each organization must first decide why they need to have a presence and then how to best utilize the various platforms. These two considerations vary from organization to organization; however, there are certain guidelines that remain constant across the board: 1) People are talking about your brand in the social media space, whether you engage them or not. 2) Authenticity and transparency are essential for successful engagement. 3) Social media tactics should not serve as a replacement for traditional communication methods. Social media platforms should have a complementary role, not a supplementary one. 4) The same basic communication rules apply to social media. It’s not about changing public relations principles; it just provides new tools.

- Allison Brill

Cross-posted on the UGA Connect '09 blog

PR Camp Atlanta: overcoming resistance to social media

Last Friday I attended PR Camp Atlanta, organized by Dan Greenfield and attended by 200 people at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The first session focused on getting "clients and bosses to extend their interest in new media." Attendees broke up into four groups, with discussion lead by Melanie Babcock (Manning Selvage & Lee), Bert Dumars (Newell Rubbermaid), Carol Flammer (mRELEVANCE), and Katie Mingo (Delta Airlines). 

The discussion focused around several questions.

Q. What do bosses/clients resist social media? 

Answers: Wasting time; Fear of the unknown (including cost); No customers there, relevance; Sustainability over time; Too many channels, don’t know where to start; Legal liability, SEC; It’s a fad, just wait and something else will come along; Not authentic; Age, don’t use personally, so they don’t really get it; Cultural change, social media can bridge between bosses and employees; Fear of transparency and technology; Experience, staffing; ROI; IT fears; Blurring professional and personal; Exposing talent, poaching could occur. As the team headed by Grady grad Katie Mingo summed up: It’s all fear – loss of control, lack of cohesive strategy, legal issues all come down to fear.

Q. What are bosses and clients willing to consider? 

Answers: Monitor, listen; Comfortable reactive zone; Having a track record-- start small, do pilot programs; Immersion – one channel at a time; Encourage personal use, start with younger staff using personally already; Low cost, low risk; Sell it as experimentation—phasing in; Tactics, not strategy; Make sure it's both legally and corp comm. approved – in other words, putting out new releases; Hiring and recruiting; Anything trackable with results—the more measured, the better; Treating it as more of a broadcast channel at first, and then engage more 

Q. What is off the table? 

Answers: Intellectual property; Exec exposure to negative content; Gov’t regulation areas; Legal liability; Outside agencies speaking as employees; Employee participation seen as risky 

Q. How to overcome the biggest obstacles? 

Answers: It’s not going away, have to overcome the fear; Need a passionate advocate inside the company; Appreciate what it is – it is another channel to reach your audience; Consumers are there; Move from reactive to proactive 

After the quick presentations, Dan asked each team to pick the most important idea from their discussion. 

• Bert’s team: Control and manageability, fear of legal liability is really what needs to be overcome 
• Katie’s team: Bosses and clients resist because they’re afraid 
• Melanie's team: lack of education drives all other problems: understanding of social media as an effective channel isn’t there, therefore they can’t design a strategy or objectives, therefore can’t assess its value, therefore can’t make a commitment 
• Carol's team: focus on the idea of permission-based marketing; it’s going to stay in some form, even though the tools might change

"Working Social Media Before It Works You"

On Wednesday, August 5, I had the pleasure of attending a panel discussion on social media at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Boston which focused on best practices for advertising and public relations. The panelists were:

• John Moore, Mullen Advertising and Public Relations

• C.C. Chapman, The Advanced Guard
• Kevin Rettig, MediaVest Worldwide

I really enjoyed the discussion, so even though it's now two weeks old, I'm going to share it with my readers who didn't get to be there.

John argued that "social media is everywhere, and social media is nowhere." It's everywhere, not just in the big obvious places like Facebook and LinkedIn, but in Black Planet and Mom Cafe. It's permeated advertising -- as when he clicked an Absolut vodka banner ad, which took him not to the consumer Web site but to a Facebook fan page. And anyone who likes Absolut can tell all their friends with a simple click of their mouse, via the Facebook news feed. Social media is even starting to enter television; for example, you can watch a show and see what people are tweeing about that show at the same time. Yet, social media are also nowhere. 69% of Americans don't know what Twitter is; clients think that agencies don't get it; and there's no silver bullet in social media, because no one's got it figured out yet.

Kevin agreed that agencies aren't getting it, and he urged them (and us) to stop thinking in a campaigns context. Communications are still siloed, with different agencies having different agendas; he argues that organizations should bring them together to construct a coherent strategy. He provided a list of 5 things to understand:

1. Social media is more than social networks
2. Social networks are at scale and gaining ground (in terms of unique visitors, Facebook is number 5 for instance, and the amount of time spent on these sites is increasing)
3. Social media reaches every demographic (for example, African Americans and Hispanic Americans have a higher propensity to use social networks)
4. Marketing use of social media can take many forms (surrounding communication through media placements, being a part of a conversation through listening and acting upon what's heard)
5. Tracking social media informs many touchpoints (for example, informing media plans, crisis plans, creative messaging, identifying influencers, as well as social media channel management)

C.C. emphasized trust and passion. Passion is contagious, and advocates are already there. Organizations should leverage that passion. Trust is like asking your friends first, but on a global scale. (He referenced Chris Brogan's new book "Trust Agents" here as recommended reading.) He also described subtargeting within social media -- one example would be finding American Eagle fans on Facebook, and targeting college-age women within that group.

There was a lively discussion after their short presentations, but my notes aren't good enough to reconstruct the whole thing. Here are some bits and pieces that might be useful:

• Southwest Airlines is a great example of how to use LinkedIn. CEO Gary Kelly is on there as a person, not a company. Microsoft's small business section is also a great use of LinkedIn. (Kevin)
• Legal, PR and marketing have to work together. The lines between PR and marketing are blurring, and PR is getting it faster. (C.C.)
• There is a disconnect between marketing (ultimate goal = sales) and social media. We should be trying to create content that the consumer finds useful -- a real divergence from the past -- and will seek out, share, use (John)
• The organizational voice starts with culture. Zappos has an open culture, and their employees are all over Twitter. Bill Marriott's blog is conversational -- because he dictates it. Other companies are not as open. You should find a person who wants to blog or participate in social media, and then give them guidelines; but other people will also be contributing unofficially. (John)