Are you on twitter? Have you heard of what is known around the internet as “Twitter Chats?” No? Ok, well twitter chats are one of the most useful aspects of using twitter because they connect you with like minded people on topics you have in common.

For example, if you’re interesting in public relations (any aspect) there is a perfect chat for you called #pr20chat that is a discussion for where PR is heading. It happens on Tuesdays from 7-8pm CST and is moderated by @bethharte @JGoldsborough @prtini. They talk each week and generally have a theme that refers to public relations and those working in it. It’s incredible helpful as a career development tool, and it connects you with hundreds of people that you could learn from or share your knowledge.

There’s another one called @prstudchat that connects PR professionals and students. If you’re a professional, this can be just a mentor situation. These students are learning the newest and best ways to get to an audience faster and more effectively – so while they may learn a thing or two from your experience, you may learn a thing or two from their fresh perspective.

Twitter.com is a great place to check a profile but it is not exactly the best place to go to actually use twitter to its full extent. The best places to go are Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Echofon, Seismic, Brizzly, etc. They allow much more functionality for the average users.

However, for a chat, the best options to follow a live chat, are tweetchat.com or tweetgrid.com. They allow for real time results and all the same functionality. Chats can go by extremely fast, so using these system takes a little bit of practice and communication savvy.

Good luck!

It’s been a pretty big year for Facebook. This past week they achieved 500 million users worldwide. The bigger staggering fact is that means 40% of the world’s internet users now have a facebook profile page. How crazy is that?

If you’re using Facebook professionally, however, it can all be really confusing. In the last 6 months Facebook has had yet another makeover and now includes Community Pages as well as Business pages (formerly Fan Pages). Both are used differently and mean different things.

What is the difference?
Business Pages – These are the pages that everyone goes around the internet liking. When you “Like” a brand either on Facebook or on the Internet it goes back to their page from your personal profile. It will now show up in your newsfeed with updates, contests, links, and whatever else they decide to post for their fans to see.

Community Pages – are a bit new and unusual. When you had previously set up your Facebook profile, you could enter in various forms of your interests such as Hobbies, Music, TV, Books, and Movies. What this now did was take all of those and enter them into communal pages. So if you “Like” the activity “Hiking” it will now be added to your profile in your Activities section and you can check the “Hiking” page to see who else is talking about Hiking. Or your favorite tv show, author, or movie, etc. This automatically happened if you had anything in your profile when the changed happened. Now, anyone can see the things you enjoy, unless you delete it from your profile and make your profile private.

So there is a very big difference if you are a business. You will want a business fan page and to keep that up. Do not confuse either of these with groups, which are made by various individuals and do not show up on your newsfeed. They serve more of a discussion and interest section of facebook.

Enjoy!

Press releases. Interviews. Newspapers. Media outlets. Tweets. Facebook posts. Magazines.

There are hundreds of ways for your word to get out there. And once that word is out there if its juicy enough it spreads like wildfire. The role of a good publicist is to make sure that all press – be it good or bad – is monitored. They try to make sure that word gets to where it has to go, and tries to keep it out of where it shouldn’t be.

When it comes to interviews there are a few tips to make sure that you don’t have any career ending quotes.

If you’re giving an interview, practice, practice, practice. A publicist will give a few good questions to the interviewer, and it’ll be up to you to practice the stories you’re be sharing.

And speaking of being prepared – don’t take interviews on the fly. Make sure that they are planned well in advance so you have the ability to practice. Nothing good comes from off the cuff.

When you have planned interviews, you are also now able to create a “no fly” list where you list the topics that are off limits. Sometimes there are just stories and situations that you just do not want to discuss. And that is A-Ok.

One of the last things to consider and this goes without saying – Think before you speak! All of the hairbrained things that go sent spiraling around the internet are things said off the cuff and without thinking.

So by using these tips – you’ll be limiting the amount of work a publicist has to do. And hopefully limiting the amount of monitoring that needs to happen to keep your brand in tip top shape!

By now, we all know about the tragedy that is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that was brought on by an accident with an offshore oil rig a mile deep. This accident has been going on for two months now and leaking massive amounts of oil into the Gulf and there does not seem to be any end in sight.

BP, which is commonly known as British Petroleum before they rebranded in the 90s, is now officially BP, Inc., and has fallen into a pit of despair as far as their PR and public image is concerned.

They have taken steps to clean up their act as well, but is it enough? Were they the right steps?

By taking a look at their website, it is full of press releases, media statements, pictures that make them seem they are doing everything in their power to stop this tragedy.

Perhaps one of the worst things to come out recently was that BP has bought keywords on Google and Yahoo search engines. This came off as the company attempting to hide news, and well, that doesn’t go over well with the public.

On Twitter, an account was created called “BPGlobalPR” in order to spoof the fact that BP seemed to be doing nothing in the beginning to help it’s PR efforts or speak to the American public about what is going on. BP begged Twitter to have this account taken down only to have the response, “And we beg you to stop the oil spilling into the gulf.” Twitter ultimately made them change their description in the bio to state they were indeed not acting on the accord of BP officially, but they have every right to have said account.

It seems that everything BP does now is too little, too late. And with every day that this oil spill continues everyone loses.

What could BP have done in your opinion to make this better from the beginning? You know, ASIDE from fixing the problem?

According to youtube.com’s fact sheet website they claim, “People are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.”

2 Billion videos a day? That’s a rather large untapped market.

People get inundated with things to read every day. There are so many things that cause sensory overload – like television, newspapers, magazines, the internet, books, and e-readers that are just everywhere. Sometimes at the end of a day, reading is the absolute last thing anyone wants to get done. This is where You Tube comes into play.

You Tube allows people to upload videos on any topic. If you’re a business and want to use this to your advantage it’s a perfect place for you to film vlogs (or Video Web Logs) about your company, your clients, your products, or your services. Create a channel on You Tube that is branded to your business. Add in logos, colors, bios, that all match what your marketing team probably has already created.

Once you start to create these vlogs, you can now start to advertise them elsewhere. Put the direct links right into your blog posts, your online press releases, your twitter/facebook postings, and email it out in your monthly or quarterly newsletter. Watch the number of viewings increase with every place that you put it on line. Even if it is just a simple press release, people sometimes just like to watch videos instead of needing to go out and read a newspaper. And you’re only reaching another part of your market you might not have gotten in other ways.

You may have noticed this week that the word “Like” has popped up on all of your websites all over the place. If you’re an avid Facebook user, you know that this word is used to show appreciation of something, and it accompanied “Become a Fan” within the “walls” of Facebook. Well, this is no longer the case.

This week Facebook held a developer conference, f8, and it announced a whole new platform where it intends to make all of the web social. Facebook wants to be your home-base essentially. “Become a Fan” has been replaced with Like, which now there is no difference in how much you enjoy something.

The interesting part of this, is when you go to an outside website, you can now click “Like” and it automatically reports back to your Facebook profile and compiles your data for third party companies.

It also announced Open Graph, which will help companies to create what they want without having to create a Facbook Fan Page.

If you use Facebook Connect to sign into any other websites across the internet, beware, this will soon no longer be an option.

However, if you do not enjoy the privacy (or lack-thereof) implications, you can easily opt out by following these directions:

Account
Privacy Settings
Applications & Websites
Uncheck “Allow”

Happy Facebooking.

The social media revolution is on the rise and here to stay. More and more companies will embrace social media as they look to leverage their marketing efforts and keep up with the changing times. The conversation won’t be about why we should use social media, but how. How will you utilize social media in 2010? At Prechnology, we specialize in public relations and social media marketing to help boost your businesses web presence and come out on top. Web 2.0 integration with Twitter, Facebook and blogging are among our services.

As social media grows in 2010, networks and communities will begin to become more exclusive. People will find communities to join but will start to tune out other social clutter in their feeds. Social media marketers have to be one step ahead of the game by making sure their feeds do not go ignored or become part of the clutter. As people become more desensitized to social media, marketers must secure their voice and influence within communities. Enter Twitter twibes.