Social Media tool-blog

A blog is a website where entries or posts are listed in chronological order. Blogs commonly allow for readers to provide comments, which are posted along with original entry.

For a further basic understanding of blogs, here are some resources:

·      Read these articles:

o   Wikipedia’s entry on Blogs

o   About.com’s article “Anatomy of a Blog”

o   About.com’s article “Frequently Asked Questions About Blogs”

o   Technorati’s article “Blogging Basics”

·      Find and explore some blogs with these Directories and Blog Search Tools:

o   Technorati’s Blog Directory

o   Google’s Blog Search

o   Blogpulse

o   Blogarama

·      Visit some of these Blogging platforms for creating blogs:

o   Blogger.com

o   WordPress.com

o   Typepad.com

Social Media for Crisis Management

This week’s topic is risk assessment and crisis management. Oglivy On has an executive guide to social media for crisis management.

First, we need to get a clear view of the five trends in digital crisis management.

·      Everything happens at lightening-speed

·      People demand “hyper-transparency”

·      Dialogue as important as message delivery

·      Search reputation delivers multimedia

·      Brand detractors have the same tools

Second, according to the trends and characteristics stated above, strategies are as follows:

·      Monitor all relevant consumer generated media, not just traditional media

·      When responding to emerging crisis, you may need to react fast- in a matter of hours, not days

·      Have a streamlined approach and a team in place

·      Experience in social media will help you respond fast

·      Be ready to reconcile contradictory business practices

·      Ensure any CSR efforts are sincere, defensible and authentic

·      Inviting customers into a conversation is the most effective way to build goodwill and brand advocates who will support you if crisis hits

·      A system for listening is critical to remaining responsive

·      Listening to consumer generated media is critical

More social media for crisis management: a framework

1.     Monitor

Before the Crisis:

·      Establish weekly social media monitoring to complement existing media monitoring reports

·      Reports should include analysis of discussion, topline charts or visuals, and clip sheet of the most relevant “hits” across social media

       After the Crisis:

·      Expand weekly monitoring reports to daily or hourly reports

·      Include response recommendations to take action against

2.     Cultivate

Before the Crisis:

·      Create an influence map to know where your promoters and detractors live online

·      Consider influence engagement campaigns during non-crisis times to develop relationships that could be revisited if needed

       After the Crisis:

·      Engage influencer in your rapid response efforts as needed: be personal

·      Monitor pre-identified detractor sites and apply messaging strategy to determine appropriate response

3.     Prepare

Before the Crisis:

·      Develop crisis messaging and adapt it to social media venues

·      Identify and train marcom staff for social media

·      Set up online crisis collaboration site

·      Design and build a crisis dark site

       After the Crisis:

·      Turn on dark site or messaging on home page, and use collaboration site to communicate around the crisis in real time

4.     Response

Before the Crisis:

·      Develop your brand’s presence & voice on the social web-a corporate blog, Twitter handle, Facebook page, YouTube channel

      After the Crisis:

·      Actively update home page or dark site

·      Consider using video to deliver a human message

·      If corporate, use social web platforms to respond-these are most effective when they are well established and active prior a crisis

5.     Promote

Before the Crisis:

·      Build list of keywords (negative and positive) to use for SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization/ Search Engine Marketing)

·      Explore leveraging or creating online advertising

·      Identify potential multimedia responses (photo, video) and key players necessary to create them

   After the Crisis:

·      Deploy a keyword buy across major search engines

·      Create and optimize a variety of multimedia content to help tell your story in multiple ways

·      Advertise online with crisis messaging

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective YouTubers

This week’s topic is about web video production and video-hosting sites. I want to share with our PR folks the effective ways of utilizing social media from Megan O’Nell’s study.

Takeaway 1: Proliferate

One of the common denominators between successful video producers is that they are all productive. They pump out tons of great content on a regular basis. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you need to be uploading multiple videos in a single day—you shouldn’t sacrifice quality for quantity.

Takeaway 2: Schedule

Scheduling is one of the most important keys to YouTube success. Setting a schedule and sticking to it is a great way to keep yourself on task and on target, and your subscribers and fans will appreciate it as well.

Takeaway 3: Promote

Online video promotion falls into three main categories: social media promotion, in-video promotion, and the perfection of metadata. Don’t only focus on YouTube, have a strong presence on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which give you the opportunity not only to promote and share each new video that you upload, but also to communicate with your audience.

In-video promotion is also important because the “subscribe” graphic popping up on the screen is an effective way to gain subscribers.

Another part of promotion, which falls by the wayside for many video producers, is metadata. You need to refine your keywords, titles and descriptions to make it search-friendly.

Takeaway 4: Converse

Starting a conversation with your viewers is one of the best ways to increase your fan base and get more views.

Takeaway 5: Collaborate

Another way to increase your popularity and subscriber base is collaboration, particularly with video producers who have a large following. When you collaborate with others you then introduce one another to your respective fan base.

Takeaway 6: Measure

Another important habit of successful video producers and YouTubers is that they test and measure. It means you’ve got to experiment and try out different types of content in order to see what sticks.

Takeaway 7: Have Fun

Building an online following of  fans and getting millions of video views take a lot of time and if you aren’t having fun then it’s just not worth it. 

Michelle Phan, a YouTube sensation for her makeup toturials, has transformed her life

   Born in Massachusetts as a Vietnamese descendant, Michelle Phan was raised by her mother in Massachusetts, California, and Florida.  Inspired by her mother’s career as a nail technician, Phan successfully convinced her mom allowing her to major in illustration instead of dermatology by the request of her mother. 

     The self-taught painter showed her talent in beauty illustration when she was five years old.  Phan painted herself a mask for Halloween by using a paper plate and red lipstick when her family was on food stamps. “So at around five, I was already drawing on anything that was blank—a wall, napkins, backs of paperback books, etc.”, said Phan. With a unique insight of beauty, She has been blogging about beauty since age 16.

     She got into the makeup-teaching business by popular demand. “Many of my fans on my personal blog wanted me to make a tutorial on achieving a natural look, ” Phan says of her 2007 debut. “I decided to create a video tutorial instead, and it’s been a hit ever since. ” Besides her insightful interpretation of beauty, another attributor that made Phan stand out in the social media flow is her surprisingly professional filming and editing abilities. “I’m lucky that video editing is actually a hobby of mine. I love to work with motion graphics, and developed an eye for it”, added by Phan in her 2007 debut. Phan’s video style incorporates her voice-over instruction with music and text subtitles. Because of her soothing style of narration and methodical makeup demonstrations, Phan has been affectionately dubbed “the Bob Ross of makeup” by commenters on her YouTube channel. Phan has created over 200 videos concerning beauty tips from basic daytime makeup to more complex club or catwalk themed looks. Popular beauty tutorials on Phan’s YouTube channel have included “Romantic Valentine Look”, “Brighter Larger Looking Eyes”, “Makeup for Glasses,”  “Mysterious Masquerade Look,”  “Lady Gaga Poker Face”, and “Seductive Vampire.”  In January, special effects were used in her new lady Gaga “Bad Romance” video, and with the Buzzfeed’s profiling of Phan’s new work overnight; it turned into a viral video.  Up till 2011, Her viewer-convenient videos have made her the most subscribed woman on YouTube, with more than 455 million views and 690,000 subscribers.

     The rare instance of YouTube stardom turned real life job offers. Today, Phan works as a spokesperson and online video producer for luxury cosmetic brand Lancôme. Besides being featured in magazines like Vanity Fair, Forbes, People, Nylon and Vogue, Phan has also done work behind the scenes at fashion shows (New York Fashion Week!) and on-set for music videos.

      However, the 23-year-old is far from just stopping in social media spotlight, Phan, with a partner, launched a niche skin-care brand IQQU for online sale only. “It’s aimed at acne-prone skin,” she says, and the acne serum is the line’s best-seller. The social media titan also had the spark with charity this year by starting a charity channel ricebunny to post videos about her everyday life. Every month, she donates money to two organization selected. The amount of money depends on the number of views. She also launched a gaming channel alongside video game host Adande Throne called PressStart.

Personal branding

This week’s topic is about personal branding. Undoubtedly, social media plays an important role in building a personal brand. Here are some takeaways I want to share with our PR folks.

Takeaway 1:

Do not forget to fill out your brand profile. You need to have a clear idea of who you are, what you want to be known as, and the type of content you can consistently publish, otherwise you won’t stand out.

Takeaway 2:

Learn as much as you can about what people are saying about your brand, as well as review competitor and partner activities, and peruse industry trends and case studies. The more you read, the better and more prepared you will be to communicate through various social media channels.

Takeaway 3:

Endorsements mean great recommendations. An endorsement could be from a happy customer, and industry expert, a professor or someone else that is respected by society. The endorsement will give you more credibility and respect.

Takeaway 4:

Partner with others. To save time and energy, you should look to locate other people online that are looking to achieve similar business goals and link up with them. It helps to have multiple content creators so that you can focus on the marketing of that property too.

Takeaway 5:

Have a unique identity and take a niche. The more you can offer a new perspective or a brand new concept, the more people will gravitate to you.

Takeaway 6:

Commenting on blogs is exceptional marketing for your brand. Starting a conversation is always a good way to keep people involved and drives traffic to your social media platforms, as well as building a relationship with the blog authors.

Social media as a customer service tool

Texts, tweets, blogs, status updates—the proliferation of social media available today has created a barrage of information in front of the public. What makes social media different from traditional media outlets is that it provides a two-way communication context for the two ends of information dissemination. Taking its specific role, social media is now playing as a customer service tool to a lot of businesses.

“Social media is nothing more than a customer service tool”, Peter Shankman, founder of the Help a Reporter Out site, or HARO, which connects reporters searching for a source for their stories, a need he said had yet to be filled on a mass basis.

Social media has changed the old one-way relationship that existed among a public relations professional, a reporter and the public. Instead of a pitch to a reporter who turns the story into an article for an audience, information is flowing back and forth among all three groups.

Therefore, companies are going to have to be more proactive with their customers instead of just reactive.

Read more to this link:

http://search.proquest.com/docview/389830995?accountid=14585