October 2007
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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Ah yes, the SEO thing again. If you remember I was a bit critical of firms that start blogs for SEO purposes. Then Scott Baradell recently wrote a SEO-fueled post. Today I read this Web Worker Daily post about keyword optimizing your resume.
How far do things go? It seems the logical end would be to keyword optimize the names of our children. After all how will they ever stand out in the future job market?
If you name your child Steve or Karen you're condemning them to a lifetime of low page rank. My next child will be named Britney Guitar Hero Facebook or perhaps Google Mortgage Cheat Codes.
The trick is predicting what keywords will be hot in two decades. How about you, what's your child's keyword optimized name?
This will sound ironic from somebody that just took a job with a Silicon Valley PR firm, but there is life beyond the valley. That comment was inspired by a post from Dave Coustan analyzing Scoble's blogging is over meme. Here, here Dave. Good stuff.
When you get ingrained in a culture you do lose some relativity, especially the ability to see the world around you. At the recent PRSA International Conference, there are hundreds (and thousands) of folks that are just learning about blogging. It's all new to them. The excitement and discovery is there.
Robert's comment about TechMeme is also somewhat narrow, "We’ve gotten too caught up in the TechMeme games." What's funny is that I speak with PR groups all the time about blogging/social media....and I never mention TechMeme because it doesn't really matter to a large percentage of people/clients. As Jeremy might say, it's not sexy either :-)
If you are my age, then you know where the last part of that title comes from (inconceivable!). If not, ask around :-)
What does the word conversation mean to you and to your company?
We say the word conversation quite a bit in the social media world. But like some words, when you say it over and over, it sometimes loses all meaning.....sort of like social media. When I started my breakout session at the PRSA International Conference last week I joked with the audience was probably sick and tired of the term 'social media'. They had to be, they had been in sessions for three days hearing it over and over again.
Back to the word conversation though. I think when I say it and hopefully when some of the organizations I work with say it, they mean they want a two way dialogue. Both sides learn something from each other. There is a give and take.
Unfortunately conversation is also becoming a strategy, a marketing plan.
Politicians also use the word conversation. They say, "We need to sit down and have a conversation about that issue." I don't know about you, but when I hear that from a politician I usually think, "I am going to speak with you to give you the appearance that I actually care what you have to say, but in reality I am just going to use this opportunity to force my ideas upon you." Not my idea of conversation.
Are politicians and corporations giving conversation a bad name?
You know when something has arrived when the regular folks put 'the' in front of it, as in 'The Google' or 'The YouTubes'. In preparation for that, I have registered TheHyku.com and from this point forward will always refer to my site as 'The' Hyku. I would appreciate it if you would do the same.
It's a joke folks :-)
Yesterday I sent out a tweet that I was heading to Independents Hall in Philly. A number of friends either direct-messaged me or e-mailed me to say, "Don't you mean Independence Hall?" Nope.
Independence Hall is a coworking space in Philadelphia that is run by Alex Hillman. (Back when Indy Hall launched in Philly I posted a congrats to Alex) Alex Rudloff and a few other folks are looking to start something similar in Orlando.
I worked for an hour or two at Indy Hall and snapped some photos. The environment was great as was the conversation. The entire photogroup is here.
One of the things I'll be doing at the PRSA International Conference is looking at the various conversational monitoring services in the exhibit hall. There are a number of firms that all 'say' they can automate the monitoring of blogs (social media) and provide metrics, tonality, sentiment analysis, etc. It should be noted that a number of these services cost a pretty good amount of $$$.
What's interesting about the search is the I have long said (as have many of the colleagues in this industry that I know/trust/respect) that the free tools and a trained staffer can do the same thing. Plus there is that community context thing :-)
From the South to the North. I'm now in Philadelphia for the PRSA International Conference till Tuesday. I'll be helping Kami and a few others with some conference blogging, but I'm mostly handling some photos (big surprise). I arrived late in the day, so I was able to catch the end of K.D. Paine's session and the Social Media panel with Rob, Peter, Lee and Nicco (below). My photoset will be here, the PRSA photo group is here.
Tonight is the blogger dinner. More to come. I plan to post a wrap-up from the UGA Connect conference soon.
I'm not really at Buffalo Airport, I'm in Athens, GA for the UGA Connect conference. However, I did take some cool photos of the sunrise at Buffalo airport this morning.
Last week during my trip to Indianapolis I was able to go one other special place besides the RCA Dome. This was something really special for me as a racing and Formula 1 fan. I was able to get on the track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, not driving though, walking. The pictures below are: 1. Right on the track surface of Turn 1 which has a 9 degree banking 2. Me on the famous Yard of Bricks. Cool stuff.
You remember the Spirit Airlines story I blogged about a few weeks ago. Well it just keeps getting better. Yet another paper has mentioned it, this time the Chicago Tribune. What is Spirit's response? I'll let them speak for themselves:
"We wouldn't respond to a blog post," said spokeswoman Alison Russell, who noted that their original tickets cost a little more than $35 each and they turned down the offer of $100 in travel vouchers. "This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great."
Nice. Spirit says their customer service is great. Well Alex has about 400+ people who have commented that don't agree.
Thanks to the 40 of you (at last count) that left a comment on my previous post about my change in direction. It's great to get feedback from so many friends. The Voce Nation launch went very well yesterday and the content keeps coming with the first podcast going up today.
Now it's on to the real work and back on the road. Tomorrow I start a rather lengthy road trip. Here's the itinerary:
Wed: Fly to Buffalo, NY
Thur: Working in Buffalo, NY for the majority of the day
Fri: Travel to Atlanta, GA then on to Athens for the UGA Connect conference
Sat: Still in Athens for the UGA Connect conference
Sun: Travel to Philadelphia, PA for PRSA International conference
Mon/Tue: Hang in Philly for the PRSA International conference
Wed: Travel to NYC for the day before heading back to Orlando that night
Seven days, five cities, four plane trips and one jaunt on Acela. It will be my first time on Acela and I'm looking forward to it.
I'm looking forward to meeting Kevin Dugan for the first time and hanging out with my UGA friends as well as Paull, Constantin and KD. Sunday is the big blogger dinner in Philly, more fun.
See you soon.
Some friends have noticed some hints in my blog posts recently, something about a change. Well a change has been made. On October 1st I joined Voce Communications as a New Media Strategist. I'm really stoked to be joining a great group of friends, specifically the social media team of Mike Manuel, Andrea Weckerle and Scott Sigler. As part of this Voce expansion we're also launching the Voce Nation blog. The Voce Nation will be the collecting point for all the shared knowledge of the team.
This move has been in the works for some time, officially and un-officially. Officially in the sense that Mike Manuel and I really started talking about it in July of this year. Un-officially in the sense that I've been working with Voce for almost two years on projects.
What happens to Hyku? Well two things, first off Hyku has become my personal brand and will remain as such, but the focus will change. You may notice a slight design update to this blog, well that's part of the change. I'll still continue to post here on all types of subjects (plus photography), but I'll reserve much of my serious social media posts to Voce Nation.
Second, as a company Hyku will not being going away (just yet). I still have a number of clients that I will continue to serve. I will also continue many of my speaking engagements, I'll just be wearing a Voce hat during most of them.
Are you moving? Nope, I'm staying in Florida. What's been great about working with Voce over the past two years is that much of what I do can be done remotely. I will be taking more trips to San Francisco and Palo Alto though.
I'm excited that I'll be working more with great clients like Sony and Yahoo to name a few.
At the end of this past week I spent some time with the Indianapolis CVB. As a CVB, they have some connections and were able to get me into some cool places. One of which was the RCA Dome, home of the Indianapolis Colts. I was able to have my run of the place, even on the field. I snapped quite a few photos, including some shots of Peyton Manning's locker, and his chair :-)
I even got to ride the turf fluffer.
On Wednesday of this week I was at a speaking event at Daytona Beach. Before my session I walked up and down the boardwalk area. This was a shot of the bandshell that I snapped.
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When you travel quite a bit things like luggage become really important. Especially if you never check bags. Serious travelers know that you never check bags. Not checking a bag has saved me a number of times.
I've been using my trusty Briggs & Riley carry-on for the past few years, but I'm really lusting after the new T-3 Ducati series from Tumi.
Nice. Anybody is free to buy this for me and send it my way :-) I'll let you know my address. I ended up buying it for myself right before Christmas :-)
In my previous post I put forth an analogy to illustrate a point. I do that quite a bit in training sessions. I'm constantly comparing online/social media situations to things we see in everyday life. Analogies help those just learning about social media find a relationship to what they're used to. (Big Social Media Consultant Secret: Many of rules you use in personal interaction offline, apply online :-) pass that along.)
Conversational monitoring, blog monitoring, persistent keyword searches...whatever you call them are a standard item in any social media toolkit, but what do you do with the results? As in what is actionable? What is important and needs immediate response, and what can wait? None of the paid services offer this function (that I've seen). You need to be involved with the community to know the impact.
Here's another analogy:
Imagine you're at a coffee shop and you overhear somebody talking about a subject/client in a positive/negative way. What are your options?
A. If it's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years chances are you might know the person or the subject very well. You would know that person's standing in the community. Are they like E.F. Hutton? When they talk do others listen? Or are they the village idiot? In this case you could start up a conversation in a natural manner, or introduce yourself. Chances are the other person knows you, or at least has 'seen you around'.
Once you start that conversation the discussion is wide open. Maybe you state your case, perhaps you change their mind, or at least get them to see your side of the issue. The point is you know all the social intricacies of the situation. You know that talking to one person will take care of the issue, and that person will talk to you.
or...
B. You're on a trip far from home and the 'local' coffee shop is somewhere you've never been before. You're the 'stranger' sitting by themselves in the corner, the locals are asking, "Who's that?" How did you get here? Some search dropped you here.
When that person across the room talks, you have no idea who they are and what their standing in the community is. You have no idea what the impact of their statements are. How do you approach them and introduce yourself? We've been in situations like this before. Introductions like that can be awkward to say the least.
Talking to that person might actually make the situation worse. You just don't know.
Spend a week in the coffee shop though, and your situation changes.
If you've been doing your homework and have built a presence in a particular community, we can add an Option C:
C. It's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years. Somebody has a problem/comment. Rather than saying something to a group of folks, they come directly to you first. Perhaps it's a genuine issue, or it's a simple misperception. However, a few quick, private words between friends takes care of everything.
Today at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum I moderated a panel on B2B blogging. When you get a room full of marketers the conversation will sometimes turn to SEO and of course ROI. Mix the two and you have a lively conversation.
Yes we all know that Google loves blogs, but if your only reason for blogging is SEO, then you're going to fail. Back in early 2006 I posted about a newspaper that wanted to start community blogging. I told them if the reasons were revenue or page views that things would fail. The primary purpose has to be conversation and community. If you do those two things right (and have your blog properly configured) then SEO and all the other benefits should follow.
During the panel today the analogy I used was this:
If your fiance asks you why you love him/her and want to spend the rest of your life with them you shouldn't say:
A. I'm looking for increased ROI thru shared living expenses.
B. You have a great network of (hot) friends, and partnering with you allows me to position myself favorably with them.
It should first and foremost be about love and compassion (with your fiance).
Here are some BlogOrlando recaps from other folks out there:
- Dave Coustan
- Chris Scott
- Alex Rudloff
- Geoff Livingston
- Jake McKee
- Joe Thornley
- Laurie Mayers
On the live-blogging front Marijean and Mistie from Standing PR and Sherry did a bang-up job. Jim Hathaway has a link-round-up as well.
And photos....do we ever have photos. The BlogOrlando Flickr photo group started with 250 photos on Thursday. As of this post it's at 1,083.
I'm still recovering from BlogOrlando and hope to have a big wrap-up/thank-you post up in the next day or two. For now though I'm off to Chicago for the MarketingProfs B2B Forum.
On a good-travel-karma-note, my first requested upgrade since becoming a SkyMiles Medallion member was confirmed, woot!
