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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Mindy McAdams highlights the skills required in the future journalist. Go check it out.
Journalists who can flourish in both the Web newsroom and the print newsroom today:
- Can package the news online.
- Can create original multimedia.
- Have solid journalism credentials.
- Have strong technical skills.
Ever since I started using my Nikon D80 I've been a shoot and upload person, that is no post-production. I also never shot in RAW format, it was sort of a mystery to me, plus the whole processing thing took time and when I'm shooting at conferences I just want to get it online.
Lately I've been wanting to play around with Lightroom and take my photos to the next level, but it's a learning curve. At Gnomedex this year I spent a few moments with Kris Krug asking him about his Lightroom workflow and he was kind enough to share his process. It's not much, just a few tweaks for color-correction and sharpening.
Over the Thanksgiving break I decided to make the switch, that is start shooting in RAW and using Lightroom for some basic processing. I bought a new 8GB Ultra II SD card which will hold around 650 RAW shots (or 1,800 in the old Fine JPG format I was using). The first test was Bok Tower at sunset yesterday. Here are the shots:
Some companies are loved, others are hated. That general perception carries over to media coverage and public discussions of their mistakes. At the recent PRSA International Conference panel on ethics in Philly my colleague Rick Murray pointed out this double-standard when it comes to Wal-Mart and Target. People generally hate Wal-Mart and love Target.
Granted, Wal-Mart has made a few social media mistakes and has been raked over the coals for it, but how about Target?
Recently Kaye Sweetser posted about a situation with Target's Rounders program and one of her students. You can read the entire post to get all the details.
In short, Target instructed their Rounders to keep their relationship with Target a secret. When one of her students questioned this on Target's Facebook wall the thread was removed.
Was there a mass outcry over this? Not really. A front page article on the New York Times? Nope. Why? A double standard? What do you think?
Those of you that follow me via Twitter learned last weekend that I feel down some stairs. That in itself was not fun, luckily I didn't break anything and came away with a nice hematoma, that as of today is a nice yellow-brown color.
However, I wasn't the only thing that fell down the stairs. My MacBook Pro joined me in the 'flight' down the flight of stairs. What was surreal is that the entire fall seemed to last forever and the entire time I saw my Mac sliding next to me, just out of reach.
We did reach the bottom at the same time, which answers the age-old question, which falls faster Josh or a MacBook Pro....it's a trick question, they fall at the same rate.
The damage to the MBP was mostly cosmetic as you can see, but it still requires a bit of repair to the external case. Could have been worse though.
John Moore first mentioned this to me a few months ago, and now Geoff Livingston has posted something about it, there is a mention of me in Seth Godin's new book, Meatball Sundae.
John told me it has something to do with the Katherine Harris comment-spam posts. Need to get confirmation of this though.
On Thursday and Friday I was in New York City for a presentation. During my downtime I ran around the city as much as I could to grab some photos. The night shots are here, the day shots here. The highlight of the trip was being able to present in the boardroom of the New York Stock Exchange.
In the corner of the boardroom is a massive Faberge vase, the NYSE spokesperson said it was the largest piece that Faberge ever created. It was a gift to the Exchange from a Russian Czar for helping finance the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The 70-200 f/2.8 Nikon lens came in handy for this shot of the Chrysler Building (same shot in black & white).
And this shot of the Empire State Building (same shot in black & white)
I was also able to visit the famous B&H Photo Video, which, if you're into photography is like candy-land. Dinner on Thursday night featured PR bloggers Constantin Basturea and Stephen Davies. It was a quick trip, but a good trip.
This post has been simmering for a while, but I just can't take it anymore. I was driven over the edge by a few things:
1. Todd's post of the state of 'practices' by some firms.
2. David's follow-up to that
3. Recent conference statements/events
Rant start//
Many times recently I've been sitting in conferences listening to 'experts' talk about various subjects. I've always said my definition of expert, especially when it comes to social media, is loosely defined as 'a few years ahead of you on the learning curve'. It's funny though that these experts were asking 'what is social media?' just a short time ago.
I sit in these conference session and I try not to be a Dave Winer and call out all the bullshit and look like an ass, but it has to stop. Some of us have been using Twitter to make our snarky comments, but the rest of the audience just sits and soaks up this knowledge. They don't know any better.
The other day at Executing Social Media conference in Atlanta, Paull Young reports that a speaker advocated that corporations edit their Wikipedia entries and insert links. Nice.
At the same conference a speaker used most of their time to pitch their product and subscriptions to their newsletter. Classy.
I've joked about making up simple little 'Bullshit' signs that we can hold up as a silent protest. Perhaps the speakers would see these and change course.
What to do? Ask your next social media 'expert' for some recent client projects they've developed. They don't have any? They've just been 'consulting' Nice.
Yes, you can still provide clients with a baseline of education without having much of a project base to draw from, but until you've actually run a social media campaign/project you just don't know it all. I'm not saying I know it all, it's a relative scale. If I say something you think is BS in a speech, call me on it, question it. Let's talk about it.
In the end the level of 'expert' and 'conference speaker/keynote' needs to be examined.
Rant over//
So what do we do? Start to publicly name the folks spewing BS and blatantly pitching audiences under the veil of an 'expert speaking'?
Alicia Dorset, Dave Coustan and I took the afteroon and played a bit of hooky to visit the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coke in Atlanta. This was my first visit to the Georgia Aquarium since I wrote about their Flickr group. Aquariums are one of my favorite locations to take pictures, plenty of interesting subjects and plenty of contrasts. I love shots like this one below. I recently created a silhouettes group in Flickr to gather all my contrast shots.
At the aquarium it's hard to tell who is on display, the fish or the people. This fish is clearly mugging for the camera.
The scale of the main viewing room at the Ocean Voyage exhibit is hard to comprehend till you're there. This shot makes me think these people are stading in front of an IMAX movie screen.
And please folks, if the sign says no touching, don't touch. Complete set from this recent visit, shots from January 2007.
I'm at the Executing Social Media conference today, just got off the stage from the opening address with Chip Griffin, now I'm in the audience taking photos of course. Day-one of the event is being held at the world headquarters of Coke. Nice hosts....free Coke!
The photoset is here. I plan to post a wrap-up later today or tomorrow.Hopefully a few of use will be able to sneak away to see the Georgia Aquarium.
If you're an aviation geek like me and live in Central Florida, you may want to head over to Orlando International Airport today since the Airbus A380 is scheduled to land around 4pm. Chris Gent from the Orlando Sentinel's Conway blog has all the details on the short visit.
Unfortunately for me, I am flying to Atlanta earlier in the day and will miss the visit :-(
Of course you could wait till Wednesday and make the 'international' trip to Orlando to celebrate the opening of Ikea and then go see the A380.
Photo from Airbus
I'm off to Atlanta today to take part in the Executing Social Media Conference. Chip Griffin and I are leading the opening keynote session. I'm looking forward to seeing many old friends from the conference circuit.
On Thursday I head to New York City for a meeting on Friday morning. Then it's back to Atlanta for the weekend and a few days next week.
(Cross posted from the VoceNation)
Social media strategy doesn't always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed....and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.
The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr....why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That's what the Georgia Aquarium has done.
Back in October I received the following e-mail invite via Flickr. Of course I joined the group, and as of today there are 89 members with close to 400 photos. Why only 400? The aquarium has asked members to submit their best five photos. I don' agree with that entirely, but I can see their point.
The photo collection was part of their web site relaunch slated for November (which is now up). The plan is to feature the photography and stories of visitors from around the globe. Not a unique idea, but it still works well with destinations. Below is a screenshot of the new site featuring one of my photos.
The 'how-to' section instructs users to join Flickr, then join the Georgia Aquarium group...then upload their photos into the group. The description on the photo will be used as the 'story'. This use of Flickr is similar to what the University of Florida did with GoGatorNation.com. Rather than creating some proprietary and hard-to-use photo-upload system, why not just use something that everybody is using already? Smart.
Let's recap. Finding the photos is simple, just do a Flickr photo search for 'Georgia Aquarium'. As of this post there are 43,574 photos, not bad, but it pales to the 883,000+ you'll find for Disney. Once you've found the photos, create a group and begin to invite the users to the group. Of course you need a purpose or strategy for the group. In the aquarium's case it was to build out a sharing/story function on their web site.
What's next? You have a community, but you need to provide something of value to the community. I'm not sure what their plans are, but here are some ideas:
1. Host a private function at the Aquarium for the photogroup members and invite in a professional aquatic photographer to host an instructional seminar. Then give the photogroup access to the aquarium for a few hours all to themselves (before of after normal hours). I can't speak for everybody, but if they offered that, I'd fly to Atlanta on my own to take part
2. Provide photogroup members access to behind-the-scenes area for pictures.
3. Feature select photos on the primary home page of the Georgia Aquarium Site.
4. Take the best 12 shots (determined by a user vote) and produce a calendar.
What other innovative campaigns have you seen built upon user photos? For me the Nikon campaigns come to mind..how about you?
Howard Greenstein contacted me a few weeks ago to let me know that his family would be at Walt Disney World for a few days on vacation. We made plans to meet-up this past Sunday at MGM Studios. It had been a while since I had been to MGM and was really looking forward to the new Lights Motors Action stunt show, as well as a few other things. The LMA show was great and I took a ton of photos. The complete photoset from MGM is here.
Another highlight of the trip was when Howard and I starred in 'Harbor Attack' as part of the Backlot Tour attraction. Yes, Howard and I were trusty (or is that rusty) deckhands on a PT boat that was attacked.
If you ever have the chance to star in this movie, remember to put your hood on, since you will get very wet.
During a recent presentation a few weeks ago I noticed a pretty big drop in the number of results Technorati was returning. A search that normally returned 15,000+ results, now only showed less than 2,000. The irony of course is that conducting a search right now, shows 0 results, a common occurrence on Technorati.
Heading over to Google Blog search, the same query returns almost 15,000 results. I talked about these anomalies with Peter Himler at PRSA and he blogged about it. Technorati soon responded, and now TechCrunch has posted a similar thread. The official Technorati response, one to Peter:
Hit counts are often dubious metrics. Index rebuilds, spam purges and other search engine management functions will always cause fluctuations. As part of Technorati's cost and performance management efforts, we've been running the service with the data sets of historic data scaled back. We may bring that data back online in the future but the days of monotonically ascending hit counts are currently suspended.
and a similar comment on TechCrunch:
We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.
On TC, some of the comments have said, 'who looks beyond 36 hours,' or why do we even need the old data?
Here's the issue, the client. When you're dealing with a newbie client that is just learning the world of social media and you show them the search services and one shows a few thousand results and the other ten thousand or more the question will always come up, "Why is Google finding more?" or something similar. Now we can talk till we're blue in the face about relevance and community context, etc, but so many times it's just about raw numbers to a client.
With that, they prefer to use Google and Technorati moves even closer to.....(insert witty comment here).
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