Who is your audience?

Do you know the names of the reporters who cover your industry? If you are a flack you do; but if you are a business owner you might not. You might know who your favorite reporters are, but not everyone who covers your industry. You should know them (or hire someone who does know them). If those reporters are on Twitter, you need to follow them.

You should follow your customers, your competitors, your employees (not to check up on them, but to learn from them, have some faith in your hiring process), industry analysts, and anyone prominent in your industry. 

Social media is your virtual store front window. It gives prospects and reporters a chance to view your business in a very low pressure manner. It gives them a preview of what to expect.

Social media is the online version of the social hour before a business meeting. It is an occasion to exchange gossip and get to know people personally. In other words, social media is a chance to strengthen existing relationships and build new ones. That is why too much attention to SEO and search engines is so destructive. It diverts your attention from where it needs to be, on your human audience.

Web 2.0 tools for government and industry and how they meld

The show notes from my appearance on the May 4th edition of Amtower Off Center.

Groups Mentioned
DC SPIN
DC XML Users Group
NCC AIIM

Amtower Off Center Blog
The Amtower Report, Volume 6, #18, November 5, 2007

Debbie Weil
Geoff Livingston
Dorobek Insider


David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly
Malcolm Gladwell

LinkedIn
Some good LinkedIn groups for government contractors:
eGov
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
Federal IT Group
The Document Imaging Group
Washington DC Area XML Users Group
IEEE
AIIM

Why Epiphanies Never Occur to Couch Potatoes

Reggie Henry, Chief Technology Officer for ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership presents to DC Web Content Mavens

Mashable: Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For

BearingPoint: GovTwit Directory

The Air Force’s Rules of Engagement for Blogging

We Didn't Start the Flame War

Plaxo

Global PR Blog Week 1.0

B2B Magazine: InterAct keeps the conversation going through online initiatives
The Borenstein Group
IJIS Institute Public Safety Information Sharing

Mike Manuel: The Inefficiency of Social Media

Presto Vivace

The Federal Contractor Network
GovLoop
DC Technology Network

Online PR Thoughts

The case for social media consultants

Mike Nelson has a great run down of social media research tools. There are so many developments within the world of social media that keeping track of it all has become a full time job. Not every company has to follow every development; but a large enterprise needs someone assigned to this task.

Social media is where people are choosing to have the conversation and if you are to have public relations you must relate to the public in the medium where they choose to have their conversation.

Why I am not on FaceBook

You can't go to every party, so why even try?

Great moments in media relations

Military gets own social network after YouTube is blocked

TroopTube is designed to help military families connect and keep in touch when separated, according to a note on the new site. Users can quickly upload videos that can be shared privately with a subset of users, or with all users on the site, the note said.

TroopTube is run by Military OneSource, which provides online information and assistance to current and former military personnel and their families.

MilitaryOne directed a Computerworld reporter to the DOD press office for a comment regarding TroopTube. That office directed a Computerworld back to MilitaryOne.

Blogosphere, social media, and social networking still in early stage

My distinguished competitor, Geoff Livingston suggests that the market for social media services is mature. I disagree. Here are some trends I am noticing - people are using technology in new ways. For example I am now a member of four groups within the LinkedIn community. Before I just had my profile on LinkedIn and didn’t think much about it; but clearly others are forming communities within LinkedIn to promote their interests. Understanding communities within a social media platform is going to be very important in the near future. Very large PR agencies will not just have social media specialists, they will have microblogging experts, social networking experts, blogging experts, YouTube experts, and so on. Incidentally, I think video blogging is going to be a huge growth area for online marketing, it is so efficient.

I am also noticing a blurring between citizen generated content and professional news organizations. For example, Computer World has Tech Dispenser. CNN is using Twitter and blogs in its reporting. I have mixed feelings about this. I am concerned that cheap corporate management may think they can fill their pages with donated copy rather than paying salaries for reporters who know what they’re doing. Such a trend would not be in the interests of our clients. Journalism is work. You need smart people to do it and you need good salaries, health plans and pensions to attract and retain smart people.

I remain convinced that we are still in the very early days of social media and a year from now our world will be transformed again.

Maryland Tech Council: Social Media for Business

Register now for the Growing Your Business Through Social Media Seminar on Wednesday September 10th at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus in Rockville from 8:00 am until 12:00 noon.

The Growing Your Business Through Social Media Seminar is vitally important for marketing professionals and the professionals who manage the day-to-day business. You’ll learn easy-to-use tips to increase your company’s web footprint for little or no cost.

Learn how to leverage the power of new media to acquire leads, drive new business that will help your company grow. You’ll learn how to take advantage of FREE Web 2.0 tools at this FIRST-TIME seminar.

Over a dozen Web 2.0 marketing veterans will teach you and your staff expert tips on Internet channel marketing to help increase your company profile, generate leads, and earn press coverage from the comfort of your desktop.

Sponsored by Vocus, the cost to attend Growing Your Business Through Social Media is $49 for TCM MemberPlus; $60 for TCM members and $129 for everyone else. Only 20 seats remain! Register now!

Alice Marshall! live at the Tech Council of MD!

Growing Your Business Through Social Media

September 10, 2008

08:30 am - 12:00 pm

Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus, Academic & Research Building, Room 106-110 9601 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20850

Social networking websites are fueling America’s next big business and marketing boom. We’ve all been asking ourselves what's next after e-mail marketing and the answer is Social Networking!

Social Networks help people connect over the web in unique ways. Businesses are turning to Social Networks to market to clients they never met and meet new prospects they would have never known.

Learn everything you could ever want to know about Social Networking at the Tech Council of Maryland’s Social Networking Conference. Learn how to leverage a blog, how to build an account on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, or upload your video on YouTube to drive traffic, interest and money to your business! We’ll teach you how to enhance your company’s reputation, connect with customers and build trusted relationships like never before.

Our interactive morning brings together expert panelists who will teach you how to get started in social networking circles and how to market like never before. Learn best practices and killer marketing techniques to get you noticed in different media. We’ll teach you how to stand out, how to rise above and how to drill into Social Networking circles for big money.

Whether you are a newcomer to the social networking phenomenon or someone who is utilizing multiple sites, this workshop will to you how to maximize social media and how to make it work for your business and your personal goals.

Social Networking Agenda

8:00 - 8:30 am	Registration and Networking
8:30 - 8:40 am	Welcome Rick Harris, Executive Director, Tech Alliance, Tech Council of Maryland
8:40 - 9:10 am	Opening Keynote Marketing Survival Strategies for the Attention (less) Economy Jeremy Epstein, Marketing Navigator; www.jer979.com
9:15 - 10:00 am	Using Social Media For Lead Generation and To Find New Customers Chris Hopkinson, Director of Business Development, DubMeNow Tien Wong, Chief Executive Officer, Lore Systems and Opus 8
10:00 - 10:15 am	Break
10:15 - 10:45 am	Using Social Media to Generate The Right Kind of Press Coverage For Your Company I.J Hudson, former NBC-TV4 technology reporter and current Director of Communications for Garson Claxton LLC Jiyan Wei, Product Manager, PRWeb, Vocus
10:50 - 11:20 am	How To Add New Media To Your Existing Media and Communications Department Marc Hausman, President and CEO, Strategic Communications Group, Inc. Alice Marshall, Founder and President Presto Vivace
11:25 - 11:50 am	Social Network Superstar Case Studies Chuck Kramer, Sr. Vice President &CTO, Social & Scientific Systems Robin Ferrier, Communications Manager, Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus Chris Frew, Scientific Recruting Manager, Tech USA
11:50 - 12:00 pm	Closing Comments

Sponsored by:

Register for this Event

Member Plus (Individual) $49.00, Member (Individual) $60.00, Non Member (Individual) $129.00

e-discovery comes to ning

Yes, there is an e-discovery group on ning, a sure sign of the times.

Chris Dorobek at the Social Media Club

Chris Dorobek spoke at the Social Media Club last night about the use of social media by federal agencies He said that while adoption is slow, and the civil service is doubly risk averse in an election year, some agencies were moving forward.

Dorobek said it was better to talk about collaborations tools rather than social media. The more I think about this, the more I think he is correct. Social media, social networking, Web 2.0, are scary terms. Collaboration is a familiar term in government circles, and it really the point of social media. Rather than trying to explain that social media is a good thing because it promotes collaboration, it would be better to talk about collaboration tools.

Edit -
Dorobek has his own take on the event.
East Coast Blogging has the video.

The problem with people search

Paul Taylor of the Financial Times

Imagine my surprise (and dismay) when I found my photograph, taken at a technology conference, alongside stories about a man of the same name, born in the same Liverpool suburb, who had been sent to prison for a racially motivated murder.

The unfortunate juxtaposition, which came to light as I was testing a new “people search” service called Spock (www.spock.com), was quickly remedied, but it underscores the importance of monitoring one’s online identity or digital persona – particularly if your name is not unusual.

People search companies need to do a better job of avoiding mistaken matches.

Taylor's article goes on to discuss some handy tools:
Intelius
Abika
LinkedIn
Plaxo
Wink
ZoomInfo

Measuring online influence

This blog has 201 subscribers on Feedburner, and 104 on Bloglines. As of today it has Technorati authority of 53. According to Blogpulse it has a rank of 2435. I have 14 fans on my del.icio.us network, 13 friends in Digg, and 2 friends on Slashdot. My Twitter feed has 204 followers.

Try to think how many meetings you would have to attend to build the same number of relationships. This is the power of online communications. It is a time efficient way to build relationships. It offers readers a low key way to get to know you. That, in brief, is the power of business blogging.

Using LinkedIn for business research

Secrets LinkedIn can tell you about your customers

One of the frustrating things about an open-source business is you don't generally know who is using your software. The paid customers you know, of course, but generally this represents a small fraction of the total user base. ...

... Today I found a new way. LinkedIn. What do I mean? And is this only something for open-source vendors?

I was searching for potential sales engineers, and initially did the standard searches: People in Chicago or Austin with Documentum, FileNet, Sharepoint, Java, etc. in their profiles.

Dense though I am, it eventually dawned on me to search for the word "Alfresco" in the LinkedIn database. What I found surprised me.

First, I discovered a wide range of people with Alfresco experience. Some are existing Alfresco customers and partners, some are employees. But a significant percentage include potential customers and partners.

Think about that. Wouldn't you rather hire someone that already knows your code? Wouldn't you rather engage a partner that has already done implementations of your software? Of course you would. LinkedIn can help.

I would never have thought of that. I am sure LinkedIn is being used for all manner of interesting research. I would like to thank the two individuals who sent me an invitation to join LinkedIn. At first I did not understand the value of it; but I think a LinkedIn profile is almost expected, the same way a website is expected.

The Washington Post covers Mashable

I am a little late on this one. The Washington Post covered MashMeet DC Remix. Both East Coast Blogging and Peter Corbett were both disappointed with the article. Reporters are considered “professional” employees, exempt from overtime protection. The reason I mention this is that readers should know that anytime a reporter covers an evening event, they are doing so on their own time. Their mere presence at an event is an indication that they think it is important news.

If you are not used to news coverage, it takes some getting used to. I think attendees at the event should be pleased. The event got a nice write up and all the presenting companies got linked. I would be pleased. Congratulations Ogilvy PR on a successful event.

More from TheLetterTwo, who was favorably impressed with WhyGoSolo.

Blogs: honey bees or hornets?

Social Media Marketing for Government Contractors
DATE: Friday, February 22, 2008

Blogs can establish your company as a thought leader, they can reinforce your relationship with customers and introduce you to prospects. They can pollinate your business, but they can also sting.

Now, just in time for FOSE, Presto Vivace, Inc. offers an audio conference which will teach you how to increase search engine visibility in a positive way, generate buzz, and drive traffic to your website and show booth.

OpenID, security and privacy

OpenID and DataPortability.org to gain major support

Momentum appears to be building behind the related notions that users should have a single set of login credentials to sign into most—perhaps even all—of the web sites that they frequent and that they should be able to easily move their personal data between different social networking services. These ideas have gained so much traction recently that groups like DataPortability.org and OpenID have made many pundits' lists of "what will be hot in 2008." But while reports this week show that OpenID and DataPortability.org are gaining support from giants like Google, Facebook, IBM, and Verisign, a number of lingering questions about security and privacy remain.

Wouldn't a single set of login credentials be a huge honking security vulnerability?