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!

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!

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!

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?

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.

Well lets start with the basics. Of course it matters! More and more customers are spending their on their computers versus traditional outlets. You must go where your target demographic is and interact with them now to gain their attention and their loyalty.

Is there a difference between writing a traditional press release to be sent out versus a social media press release? The answer is a plain and simple, unequivocal – yes. Social Media strives on keywords. With the searching capabilities of Twitter, Facebook, & Google Primarily, people are imputting specific keywords to find things they want and companies must somehow know these keywords and use them to their advantage.

How do you do it?
As with any case of good journalism or press – the headline is everything. It must be short and sweet and have the exact keywords you’re hoping to have searched.

When you start to write the press release, keep in mind that absolutely no one has time to read a full page, single spaced article about whatever it is that you are doing. Today, people have more options than ever before and less time to choose. Get your point across succinctly and quickly.

You want to market these releases to bloggers who can disseminate your information to their networks and other interested parties. The trick here to remember, is don’t just use boring text in your body. Create hyperlinks to enrich and fulfill your press release that tie into your product, or create ways for people to get in touch with your company more easily.

Formatting is key. Use bullet points somewhere in the middle that will draw the eyes directly to the most important factors. Have headings, bold fonts, italics. Make your story pop out and scream, “Read me!”

These suggestions take minutes to do and will yield amazing results. Otherwise, your press release won’t get any snap, crackle, or pop and you’ll be left behind the competition.

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.

Being that this medium is so new, and gaining so much momentum analyzing how useful it is, is fairly difficult. There are a few tools out there to help figure it all out.

Facebook Fan Pages
Facebook comes pre-assembled for you. Simply create a page attached to an individual’s account, and that individual will automatically receive a weekly email with stats that look like this:

+20 Fans this week (62 total Fans)
1 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (0 last week)
85 Visits to your page this week (134 Visits last week)

Google Analytics
Google does everything well and of course they’ve created a tool to use for analyzing social media. Their official website for Google Analytics states that you will be “prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.”

Google is known for its simplistic graphics, and ease of use, and doesn’t stray from that with GA. It gives an HTML code to stick onto your blog or website that goes unseen, and reports back in a simple graph when you log into GA for the day, week, month, or year.

Each function is also easily customizable and the homepage also shows a number of graphs for easy translation of complex data. It measures visits/visitors and bounce rates. Google Analytics seems to be the crowd favorite, and it’s free.

Web SEO Analytics
According to their official site, “Web SEO Analytics is about to become the most innovative web place providing SEO tools, SEO trends scouting and Search Engine Optimization techniques.”

Its functions include monitoring Web SEO, Keyword Battle, Link Popularity, Page Rank Check, and Bookmark Finder – and looks to be free.

Sysomos MAP
Their official website states that MAP or Media Analysis Platform enables the user to “effectively listen, measure, understand and engage” and it is all very comprehensive with graphs, charts, and reports. This system looks as though it would be perfect for small businesses, and you can request demos from their sales departments.

Biz360
Biz360 has been used to determine social media predictions of American Idol weekly outcomes. Their official website states that they connect customers, prospects, and critical influences and is a must for a small business.

Whichever tool you decide to use, analyzing the information that flows through social media is a must.

Using Social Media for Market Research
Social media can aide in market research by taking advantage of your follower or fan base to interact in such a way that would bring insight into your companies service or brand. Through interaction, surveys and other means, you can discover what marketing techniques work or don’t work that your business can either keep or start implementing. Looking for any trends in fan or follower base will also help give you insight towards the type of people your company attracts and your market niche. Join other company social networks and see what others are up to. Study what others have done in social media that have already been successful. What are ways you can do something similar?

Google Analytics
Google analytics is a web blogging tool that gives detailed statistics on web site traffic, allowing individuals to discover what works and doesn’t work in blogging topics, and information. What is the audience most interested in? Google analytics can help. What keywords are people searching to get to your company blog? This information can help businesses tailor topics to focus on and what will have more mass appeal.

By joining the social media ranks, your company can firmly establish itself in leading trends not only in their market, but in the 21st century digital age. PRechnology can help you reach a wider audience through social media.

E-mail newsletters are a great way to promote your company, brand, and/or blog. If you have valuable information to share, creating an e-mail newsletter tells people that you have value and authority. Keep it fresh by separating your blog content from your e-mail newsletter so that both are unique. Giving unique content to your audience with your e-mail newsletter also entices them to subscribe, so they don’t miss out on your work.

Try to keep your E-mail newsletters on a schedule. Creating a schedule and sticking to it gives your audience some predictability and something to expect. Try not to bombard them with e-mail so you keep your content in demand, rather than becoming annoying spam. Once a week, maximum, or bi-monthly is a good start.

Offer contests, giveaways, and discounts. Offering something to your audience keeps your content valuable and worthwhile. Keeping your content worthwhile generates traffic to your blog and website that will remind your audience that you are an authority, and you appreciate their loyalty. Another great way to give value to your audience is by offering them sneak peaks on projects that are not officially available to the general public.