New Tools for Mobile Emergency Comms

Elert is getting a lot of traffic on the #SMEM hashtag and among the emergency communications community. Sounds a bit like bringing CERT to the smart phone crowd. My only hesitation here is be careful of the data you generate (and receive). While Fast Company gives it a nice positive spin of:

Elerts is reminiscent of the old Civil Defense system, the plane-spotters of World War II that gave way to the fallout shelters and duck-and-cover drills of the Cold War.

Remember that the same kind of untrained citizen reports often lead to over-reporting of severe weather, or worse, flat out hoaxes.

As a side note, the Washington County Sheriff's office iOS app that I mentioned earlier is now active in the iTunes stores. More counties are set to be on-line with it soon.

Rules of Engagement

A happy weekend to all as I travel back and forth from FYV to NSU.

This flow chart has been around the internet and back again -- recently saw it attributed to a university for its adaptation. But count on CyberCommand to have put together the rules of engagement in such an officious, military manner.

The U.S. Air Force put out this response flow chart in 2008. It was picked up and adapted by Pfizer Canada later.

Do Not Confuse Serious with Solemn

John Cleese said it, and made a post-Python side career of corporate training talks and videos to emphasize that just because you have a sense of humor does not mean you are flip or flighty.

In fact, well placed humor is vital to making "boring" key competencies interesting. The New York song factory and Motown share this in common with good messaging -- find a catch hook, and the public will remember your tune.

Thus FEMA strikes with the creative headline and tweet:

What do Waffle Houses Have to Do with Risk Management?

Well, you have to click on that link. Kind of like CDC's guidelines for the Zombie Apocalypse.

This stuff is brilliant. Yet far too many in athletics in particular, and often universities in general, are too damn scared of looking silly to inject some fun into their daily lives. They are, for the most part, confusing dress, attire and attitude with some "brand" they seek to achieve or a level of omnipotent respect they are wanting to accrue.

If bankers are now dropping coats -- and sometimes ties -- to relate to customers, why do I look down on fields of play from minor league baseball, to professional soccer to BCS athletics and see a bunch of interns forced to run around in skirts or shirts and ties to project a "brand look." No one in the stands is wearing those clothes. Who looks out of place more -- a crisp Oxford and fashion tie on a sideline or a team-issued polo and khakis? Which one will the fans know they should listen to in a crisis?

Conversely, if the university is hosting the opening of a play, and the attire of the audience is mostly formal, that's not the night to bust out the Birkenstocks.

Hey Blogger, What Tha' Hell?

Um, is anyone else getting just a liiiiitle bit peeved by these random insertions of: http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif.

Each time I put in a link or image, I have to go back and edit out that random drop in.

Anyone smarter than me on Blogger know what that gif drop is there for?

Branding? No. Strategy? Yes.

This is a late add to the blog stream, but a wonderful column from last year on his blog by David Rosen that is of great use for people in my old world and my new one. It dove-tails right along with my core philosophy regarding "branding" -- it's what you do when you don't know who you are -- and that it is more important to build reputation and bonding with core groups than pure technique.

Rosen's money quote:

Organizations that establish their communications priorities and programs from a marketing rather than public relations perspective (which I fear is becoming the norm), run the risk of ignoring or alienating important constituencies and substituting short-term gain for long-term development.

How many groups do we know that take that approach, trying to make "sales" rather than long-term friends?

And for those of us in higher ed -- either athletics or university wide -- here's the closer:

Consumers choose a college to attend or a charity to support based on its reputation. While having a good reputation is desirable in the corporate world, it is essential for colleges, universities and nonprofit institutions, which are held to higher standards.

The bold is my emphasis. Discuss among yourselves.

Double Posting is Double Trouble

Friends, netizens, countrymen -- in your quest to save time, do not skimp on making sure your messages fit the format of the end target. As surely as you would not put audio only files on your YouTube channel, please do not "retweet" your Facebook posts.

First and foremost, it sends a message of "I'm too lazy" to post this info twice. It's cut and paste. If your info isn't important enough for you to get it to me from a Twitter-oriented product, you are showing that is really isn't important enough for me to pay attention to in the news stream.

FYI -- You're dead giveaway is all those "fb.me" shortenings.

That's how we know you're doing it, when you don't make the more cardinal sin -- it's 450 characters and conversational on Facebook. It's 140 characters and headline writing (and we all know by now it's really 120 characters) on Twitter.

Otherwise, you get to send out really interesti...

Nothing says I don't care about my audience more than the dreaded "..." that stops a thought, or sometimes a word.

Joys of Moving

Once again, apologies for sporadic posting, but the internet is in the apartment at Natchitoches now and the posting can resume in earnest.

It's Purple Priday

Or Maroon Friday. Fill in the blank, but these "casual Friday" calls to your fans is a great way to create easy interactive.

Here at Northwestern State, the senior women's administrator -- a former athlete for the Lady Demons -- fostered the idea of getting campus folks to wear purple on Fridays.

At Miss State, athletic director Scott Stricklin made an art form out of #MaroonFriday, encouraging fans to then send in their workday photos sporting the school colors.

It's that easy, and a great way to capitalize on interest. Sticklin's Twitter feed has photos from down the road in rural Mississippi to MSU students abroad in Italy.

Starting soon, the email blast will get the social support off campus as we begin promoting #PurplePriday through Facebook and Twitter, and asking for those returns.

Track What Works

Following up yesterday's post about effective institutional video, don't be so involved in your art that you are not listening to the customers.

At the baseball regional in Tempe, Arkansas produced 17 packages of video over a 5 day period. Most of it was direct to digital captures - raw press conferences or post games - but several were cut highlight packages or traditional full voice over packages.

In promoting the videos, we used bit.ly links so we could get an idea of what got traction.

The playing field was pretty level - only one of our local stations attended and the was no live television (only streaming). Point being, if you wanted to see highlights, you pretty much had to go to ArkansasRazorbacks.com.

Intuitively, you would think those post game highlights would be the highest traffic. In fact, they were about even to the uncut press conferences. For other reasons, you would not abandon the highlight reels, but that was an interesting stat.

So 16 of the 17 videos averaged 25-50 click through (gasp hard on that - but remember, that was only the people who got the bit.ly promoted links via Twitter; not the total click through of the RazorVision back end).

Want to know the top video? No. 17 was a simple 360 pan of the view of Packard Stadium from the pitcher's mound. The best click through on any package was. 65. That one-off, straight to render raw shot had 207. That's three times the activity (measurement time was one month out from the regional).

Why do I think it got that click through? It was unique content. It was "insider" content. It was something the average fan doesn't get a chance to experience.

More point-of-view is the future. More go inside the experience. More transport you there to the event - defeating space and time - is the key.

Yo-Yo Tweeting

Pot calls kettle black today as I've been busy and not paying the best of attention to my social media feeds.

Nevertheless, second only to lying, nothing frustrathttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifes a follower base more than inconsistent frequency. Today, eight Tweets. Tomorrow none. Next day, one. Then seven in a day.

One might say is reveals something about the personalities involved as well. Those who keep a solid stream are taking the medium and the exchange seriously.

The others -- well, a little manic, yes?

ADD ON: Here's a recent story on this from The Chronicle about a new scheduling tool to help you avoid the yo-yo.

Link to the Call Notes

Thanks to everyone who participated in the CoSIDA call regarding athletic department mobile apps. CoSIDA has created a page with links to transcripts and other resources -- phttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflus a recording of the call.

App Call Tomorrow

Not much this morning as prep work continues for tomorrow's CoSIDA learning conference call on apps for athletics. Be sure to phone in, and also jump on the CoverItLive for questions. More pre-call notes and links later tonight.

Tips for Effective Institutional Video

Want something to go viral? Take your fans/followers "inside". Show them emotion of the event or institution. Get it up there fast.

There is no accounting for taste, and this certainly applies to on-line video. Yes, consumers want to see episodes of traditional broadcast television -- extremely high production value and cost work -- but they also glom onto the simple.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed takes a look at what got the most traffic on YouTube EDU. The winner: a video of a disabled student graduating at Cal. The video had all three parts.

It took fans inside the Cal graduation.

It gave them an inspirational visual and story.

It got up on line quickly.

My own example from back at Arkansas was the fall band spectacular. We knew about it in advance -- hey, there's a radical concept on internal communication - but that didn't help us when it came to getting out the door. Proud parent in the stands with iPhone 4 captured it from 25 rows up and put it on YouTube.

Within 12 hours, it had 5,000-plus views - and emails streaming in from the chancellor, the AD and others alerting us to this really cool video and maybe we should promote it. All great ideas, except that we were finishing a fully produced version from the floor, with two cameras, interviews and supers.

By the time we put our version out, and promoted it extensively with emails back to those folks plus the band, official Twitter and Facebook pages, we were down that 5K and it took 6 1/2 months for the HD, high quality version to finally catch and pass the number of views -- both over 25,000 noes.

The point being, quick and dirty sometimes wins the race. The lesson learned is that we'd raw capture anything like that and push it as fast as possible, then return with packages.

Branding

While reading over a semi-rant about what "branding" means for journalists by Matthew Ingram at gigaom, a pure nugget of the obvious:

In other words, what you say and how you behave in these networks determines what your personal brand is. As marketing types like to say, your brand isn’t what you think it is, it’s what others say about you. (The bold emphasis is mine)

Followers here know my feeling: Branding is what you do when you don't know who you are.

The line by Matthew Ingram is another expression of that -- you don't control your brand, but the way you act, the way you seek to be an expert in the areas of your ability -- that is what creates a "brand."

Random Thought on Feed Names

If the goal is to be transparent and genuine, why do we use names that are clearly handles to represent our "brands" rather than our own names? If we know the disassociation principle is the key to bad, dark behavior on line, why do we encourage it by utilizing labels?

The thought hits me when looking back at the names of some of the more recent followers of my feed. OK, there were some thousand Bill Smiths -- but I'd argue that picked something pretty close to who I am as well as memorable.

When we hire a coach at a school or a dean is named for a college, they don't become DemonCoach or FulbrightDean -- they are still the people who got hired. Seems like we spend a little too much time on the institutions when what people want is to deal with people. Part of this thinking related to questions at convention about what to do when you have invested time in building up a following for a coach or a player, and then they leave. Yes, they will take part of that with them.

Be yourself. In the long run, it's better than being SchoolBB_SID -- especially when you are no longer with that school.

Discovery: Not Rocket Science

PR News provides this quick hit on how Discovery approaches social media for the network. Shocking, the five tips are pretty basic.

Personal favorite? While No. 1 is great, I'll take No. 3: Think long term.

Olympics Understand Twitter?

I'm not sure how to read it, but the IOC may have caught the clue that it doesn't make a lot of sense to tell athletes competing in the Olympic Games they cannot comment about their own performances. The London games look like they will have more voices, at least if the "leak" via the Australian Olympic Committee of the guidelines.

Reuters has the story here.

The key: not for commercial gain. Who will determine that? Hmm . . . IOC?

Remains quite an improvement over Beijing and other recent games where the IOC firmly fought the social media tide. Now they apparently believe like most that more discussion is, well, more.

Twitter for Media Toolset

Quick note: If you missed it, Twitter is working hard to position itself with the producers formerly known as journalists. There are tips and ideas for the branded journalists out there as well in the Twitter for Newsrooms(#TfN) website.

Additionally, you'll find some interesting Twitter strategies pitched directly at TV on the main Twitter Media page.

Famous Fourths

In service to the "road" part of the blog, great Fourth of July events of the past. CoSIDA took me on the road the past 26 years to a lot of major American cities, and here's how I'd rate the big fireworks.

1) Boston. On sheer fireworks, nothing compared. Massive low altitude plus high altitude, and the coordination with the local television coverage makes it rival the National Mall.

2) Washington DC. Only the firepower I saw in Boston tips the balance - we're taking the pyro shows - can begin to tip the scale away from the gold standard classic. That said, nothing like watching the PBS national broadcast from the Mall. The atmosphere in DC is without comparison - you can walk the memorials then settle in for the national birthday.

3) Seattle. Who can argue with a humidity free, 70 degree celebration? Plus when we were there, you had two fireworks displays to enjoy.

4) Philadephia. Now on sheer party atmosphere, celebrating Philadephia Freedom with Sir Elton and about 250,000 of your closest friends is fairly epic. But the all day wait and the human car wash of the crowd - and sultry temps - rather opt for something a little cooler.

5) San Diego. You can't go wrong in a military town on the Fourth, and navy dominated SD certainly qualifies.

Steve Martin Twitterist, Historian

Steve Martin proves the point that you can reinvent yourself as long as you have talent and are willing to put in the work. Thus, his new career as a blue grass banjo player, writer of American history songs (check out a review on the single and iTunes for Me and Paul Revere) and most of all for this space, Twitter maven.

That a stand-up comedian would build a 1.3 million follower list is not a surprise, nor that his 140 characters are funnier than yours. (BTW - the link takes you to @SteveMartinToGo)

What I see as refreshing - and the soul of the artist coming out - was his comments about Twitter in USA TODAY on June 30:

"it's funny to be walking down the hallway and have a tweet appear in your mind . . . and not really knowing where it comes from. That unpredictability to myself might mean it's unpredictable to the audience in the same way."

Digital Marketing Checklist

Once again, our friends at PRSA strike with a quality link from the Friday email -- that I'm holding over for your Fourth of July. These 12 problems with digital marketing are great, but one in particular stands out after last week's CoSIDA Convention.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Listening to the feedback from those who asked questions both in person and on-line, I get the clear sense that point #4 in Robin Neifield's article is the most important for the college world:

In talking about avoiding looking at digital media through, as she says, old media goggles,

One way to encourage that understanding is to get comfortable in the social channels on a personal level first and study successful company efforts before putting your brand's reputation on the line.

iPad For Speeches

I had to give a straight speech on Tuesday at the convention in acceptance of the Bob Kenworthy Award. Usually, I've memorized most of my main points and my PowerPoint is the outline that keeps me on track.

So I write out my script, traditional all caps, double space, large text for reading at the podium. Head down to the business center of the hotel and . . .

Sir, we only have one computer that can print out material. And I just put someone on it.

It's 20 minutes to the start of the luncheon.

Putting aside that a massive resort-scale complex's business office has exactly one computer to print stuff off a USB key from guests, I wheel around and head for the room to now hand write out my notes.

As I walk in, I see my iPad and think, well, I could email it to myself.

Why this has not come to me before, I don't know. The geek-factor of walking to the podium with iPad in hand aside, I've never given a speech easier. The two pages of wide double space now became a continues scroll that I could brush along like my own personal teleprompter. Obviously, I've seen these lash-up prompter rigs that used a laptop, or a tablet, or even an iPad, with the usual reflecting screens.

I highly recommend the next time you have a formal speech that requires a written script -- use the iPad and recommend that your executives that you write for do the same. Obviously, need to practice. And, have the back up paper copy (which I didn't) in case of battery or other failures (thankfully, didn't happen).

The News Cycle

Ben Porritt made a great point that politics first created the 24x7 news cycle, then destroyed it -- his point there is no news cycle.

Firm believer in what Ben says, but as strategic communicators, we now need to discover the best way to put our message out so it is noticed in that formless void that is the N.O.D. world -- News On Demand, just like V.O.D. for Video On Demand.

With consumers taking advantage of the TiVo life and time shifting their entertainment, they will do the same on news. That becomes the role of the more static tools -- websites and Facebook pages.

To get attention of the fan base in real time, we need serious consideration of strategy and employment of tactics to get the Twitter/MMS/Text alert world working for colleges and universities.

First step, creative repetition. Get the message out more than once in a day cycle -- especially if it is breaking, unique content or high priority message. But to avoid annoyance of the end user (and to get through Twitter's rudimentary spam filter), vary the phrasing and language. Use multiple voices also to get the repetition. Remember, east coast drive time, west coast drive time, east coast lunch time, west coast lunch time.

Second step, reverse distribution network. Have your social media team include outsiders who will be a part of spreading your words via retweet and direct tweet.

New Contact Info Soon

As soon as I have the new address and email at Northwestern set, I'll put it here and send along to those who need it.

In the meantime, if you need to ask a question or reach out for help, use my gmail which would be bismith75.

End of An Era

End of an era

The definition of a generation in social sciences is 20 years. So I can honestly say, I lasted a little more than a generation at the University of Arkansas.  Literally as some of the children of athletes who were there or recently departed when I arrived in 1989 are now beginning to attend here in 2010-11.

In this life, everything comes to an end. DeGaulle said it: The cemeteries of the world are fill of indispensable men. Our jobs are public trusts, and when people begin to think of themselves as the job - not just the current occupant - well, that's when you can get a big dose of hubris. The sports page transactions are filled with coaches and administrators who made that mistake.

At my going away, I told the group - mostly newcomers but a lot that had been around, some I helped hire to UA - that what 22 years teaches you is that it really is about people.  The people you work with.  The people you work for. And that is who you miss; not an institution or a title.

The people I've worked with have been some of the best in the business - and recently I include in that the thousands of fans we began to more directly interact with in the last few years through social media and participatory media (read: message boards).  I make that point because you learn a lot when you listen to the customers.

The people you work for really hasn't changed: it ultimately was always those fans and the people of the state of Arkansas. So I go back home to Louisiana and do the same thing, but this time for the whole university at Northwestern State.  I'm very excited to cross over.

And most important, I'm not going away. I might not be @ArkRazorbacks or the main blogger voice for the Hogs, but I'll be around. This space continues as strong as ever - maybe even more so.

No More Athlete Arrest Secrets

In Sneakers (one of my favorite foreshadowing movies), Robert Redford's computer hacker character realizes the power of the special program and chip that he has discovered that the U.S. government wants to own. It can decrypt everything, thus the tagline of the movie:

No More Secrets

In a couple of weeks, dozens of local public safety agencies will begin to deploy custom iOS apps that will take their on-line intake arrest files and make them mobile.

So what, you may say. That stuff is already on-line, and fans, friends and news media can find out about an arrest anyway.

True, but they have to go check. They have to know the athlete's full names. And they have to monitor.

The next generation of these apps will allow users to put in lists of names they want monitored. And when those names show up in the arrest intake, a notification gets pushed to the mobile app.

Now you get it? With very little effort, the entire rosters of whole athletic departments -- student-athletes, coaches, staff, etc. -- can be monitored. So that third string offensive tackle? Busted. The walk-on swimmer? Busted. There will be no such thing as "flying under the radar" or "a sport no one cares about" when arrests happen -- two very common misconceptions I've heard over the years at many athletic departments.

This is a don't blame the messenger moment -- and I might add -- a teachable one too. Along with telling students (not just student-athletes) at your fall orientations about the dangers of their social media, if your county/city/municipality has publicly published arrest intake, hold up your iPhones and remind them that the media, the fans and their parents (yes, if little Johnny has gone away to college, don't think mom and dad won't use same to know if he gets DUI'd in that far away College Town) can know immediately and easily if they get arrested.

As Cosmo (played by Ben Kingsley) says to Marty Bishop (the Redford character) at the end --

There's a war out the my friend and it isn't about who has the most bullets, it's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think, it's all about the information.

And if you haven't seen Sneakers yet, shame on you. Netflix or iTunes rent it now.

A Pelican Flies Home

More tomorrow

When Marketing Becomes Spam

A slight clarification for those listening to Monday's talk on strategic communication and Twitter. Certainly, it is OK to use Twitter (or other social media tools) to sell things to fans or followers.

The key is frequency.

Just like television has an ad block and newspapers had ads to content ratio, when feeds become nothing - or more importantly, PERCEIVED as - but one pitch to buy a tee-shirt, buy a ticket, renew a subscription, give to a seating plan, participate in a campaign that is when friends drop you.

No one wants to gather together and then be told hey, let me tell you about the wonders of a product.

THAT is what leads people to drop you like a rock and have a really bad taste.

Remember, the Internet has a very strong giving culture. One great line I heard today from the podium was you better provide a very high ratio of good to self promotion. And the mentioned 10:1 didn't sound bad. That means promote 10 other things before you promote yourself, or give 10 good pieces of information before asking for a buy.

The fact that those kind of "selling" pitches accounted for more percentage and reasons to depart than the one you hear far too often - you tweet too much - should be the takeaway.

If you are providing good, interesting, useful information, people are not likely to leave you due to frequency of messaging.

If you are not giving them value, they leave. Pretty simple.

Maybe The Revolution Isn't On Facebook

Dovetailing on We're History episode about the "revolutionary" impact of social technologies on political uprisings, Ed Schipul and Daniel Keeney peeled back the reputation of Twitter and Facebook on the Middle Eastern events of this spring.  In many cases, they reveal that in spite of Wael Ghonim of Google's claims, the numbers of users just didn't support the claim that Facebook was critical to the Egyptian uprising. The authors echo our historical perspective:

"Nobody puts his or her life on the line because he or shee was invited to a tweet-up. They are mobilized after concluding that the only way out of their despite is to rise up."

Schipul and Keeney broke down the impact of social tools and tend to agree with our point: every generation uses it's accepted means of communication to spread revolutionary word; this generations is just faster and able to have broader reach.

Along with some key points on how these things expand (link out), they talk about the "findability" of social tools, or as author said, the ability to defeat time and space by bringing together groups of similar interest. They point to Peter Morville's term "ambient findabilty" and couple that with the virtual community can scatter leadership, preventing the ability of the ruling authority to isolate and cripple an organization by removing it's head. They use Nelson Mandela's imprisonment as the retardation of a movement. I'll go with V for Vendetta - when everyone becomes V, there is no way to stop V.

CoSIDA Presentations

Here are links to the unanimated version (coverted the views into individual slides) of the Monday talk about strategic communication and crisis management and Wednesday's tips and time saving tips.

Monday Presentation

For those who would like the slides, I have Monday's presentation as a PPTX on my Google Docs. That is an animated PPT, and I will make "flattened" version later this week.

Measuring and Monitoring Impact

Jay Krall's article in PRSA Tactics gives you three ways to look at on-line metrics: reach, engagement or authority. For example, retweets show both reach (quantifiable number of people who read and thought it was important enough to share) and engagement (the act of retweeting).  

He talks about the need to rethink page views and consider inbounds links from quality sources - the Google algorithm factor.  Facebook Likes? They are reach and engagement, but deceptive.

Writing on social media's impact on Middle Eastern revolutions, Ed Schipul and Daniel Keeney validate this point. Speaking of the expansion of social technologies, if one person has 500 Facebook friends and each of them have 500 friends, within two degrees of separation you have a potential of 250,000. Go one more degree: 125 million. As they aptly said:

"So is CNN still the "Worldwide Leader in News" that it claims to be?"

Not measuring and monitoring asks for any organization or person to become the next Hosni Mubarak, or Jim Tressel. Add the speed of stepping through those degrees of multiplication and it is easy to understand that organizations must be nimble and quick to react. By listening, you get the early warning.

They deliver a second big hitter:

"Too often, calls on communicators to deliver information are aimed at making our organizations look better, which has the effect of glossing over the problems: 'Don't look over there - look over here'."

Thanks for Feedback

I appreciate everyone attending today's session at CoSIDA, and I hope you all enjoyed. The slides will be up soon. Can't thank Scott Striklin, athletic director from Miss State, and Ben Porritt of Outside Eyes, enough for participating.

Meanwhile, a few links to older blogs to answer a few of folks questions after the discussion.

The UA social media policies for download.

PRSA on social media policies.

The ANSE social media suggestions.

Is Curator Just Journalist By Another Name

Catching up on my PRSA Tactics while airborne to CoSIDA, a great article by Ryan Zuk talks about how content curation is the future (although the headline makes one believe it may be a bad thing).

He picks up a great Pew Research Center stat that in 2011 the amount of time spent consuming on-line news exceeded time spent with newspapers. As an aside, I've questioned a little on the methodology on that report - was content created by newspapers (or other legacy media like broadcast/cable networks) segregated out of the time on on-line?  Is this more a reflection of how news is consumed rather than the source? I digress.

Zuk gives solid definitions for the uninitiated on what constitutes an information curator and curator editors.

"Information curators are trusted editors to those who follow them, and this results in communication potential for PR practitioners."

He continues with some ways to approach and what makes for better curation (mixing original content with linkage) and then, I stop dead in my tracks while reading this.

I jump immediately back to his 140 line: Information curators are trusted editors to those who follow them.

Um, once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, didn't we call those people . . . . journalists?

The bloggeratti scream: Blasphemer! Heretic!

At the least, aren't your being so quaintly 20th century.

Think about it. Another blind to the obvious underlying human communication going on here.

Classically defined, what does a journalist do? Go out and find out stuff for the public that the public doesn't have time to do itself.  Gather that information from multiple sources.  Present it to us - and if we are being honest, with the writer's own original thinking stitching that information from sources together, interpreting it.

So because you do it with a bunch of links to the sources (hey, let's hear it for hyperlinks so we can read and judge for ourselves) that somehow makes it "content curation?"

Don't get me wrong, I've advocated this to mixed results for some time.  It is a very important tool for athletic departments and organizations to message strategically.  Why?  Because of the very reason given in Zuk's article by Michelle Golden:

"You can't fake an interest. You must be authentic to win."

Be genuine. Be honest. The rest will take care of itself. 

Social Starts Inside

In preparation for this year's two CoSIDA presentations, here is an article that is the heart of one of the key slides: Your external message begins with internal communication.

It dovetails on my own point about having multiple voices speaking from the same playbook, or singing from the same hymnal.

What Tom Johnsmeyer's post makes so clear in the Social Times article is that people do not want to hear from institutions, they want to hear from other people. They will accept that the ticket manager, the facility director, the basketball coach, the media contact are all taking the "party line" -- but they want a face and a personality to relate to in accepting that official information.

Look, do you like form letters? Why would it be acceptable to have unlabeled, or "branded" messages? Is it less of a formula communication if it comes via text message?

The article gets to an inverted McLuhan moment: the message is more important than the medium. Just because it came on Facebook doesn't magically make it social. Plastic is plastic, and people want to relate with your genuine people and their expertise.

Difference Between Branding and Bonding

Walking out of the Broyles Center today, I see a classic Razorback scene. Red tee-shirts, father and son, in the opening of the northeast corner of the stadium. He's taking his kid's photo with the iconic "HOME OF THE RAZORBACKS" sign on the press box behind him.

"Excuse me," dad says, "is that building open?" He points to the Broyles Center. "I want to take him inside."

Yes, absolutely, the museum's open.

Here's the difference between branding and bonding; between public relations and social media.

I ask him, did you take a picture? I did of him, and I've been working on him to be a . . .

And it hits the dad, "Would you mind?"

Not at all. Let me see your iPhone. No move over a bit, let's get the Hog and the sign in the background. Let's take a couple more.

Dad -- who now makes sure I know his oldest is in orientation, he brought his son to the Alabama game, gosh wish we'd won that, and thank you, thank you, thank you for stopping to help us.

Not a problem, and Go Hogs.

Son -- lights up at that. The grown up who works here just told me Go Hogs.

The tee-shirts they wore weren't current vintage with the "right" logos. They could have just walked into the museum and walked around by themselves and been bombarded by all the correct symbols and messages.

But because someone stopped and took no more than 90 seconds out of his day, there's a bonding moment. Dad appreciates. With any luck and the right set of future circumstances, the youngster -- I'll guess he was 8 or 9 -- will pull up that picture he took with his dad that day and remember the kind Arkansas staffer.

For no other reason than that, he might put Arkansas on his ACT score recipient list. Or be more willing to listen to a call from a recruiter.

Sure, they might be life-long state residents, and locks to attend and support the school. If so, the affirmation of their feelings strengthened the connection. If not, maybe that made one.

I'll bet my next paycheck that picture ends up on Facebook. Where friends and family will see it. Some other parents will think, hey, next time I'm in Fayetteville, I want to go by there and get that same picture.

Call it Butterfly Effect. Pay it Forward. Chaos Theory.

I just call it good business.

Scott Davis Strikes again

Some days, you just got to love you some Dilbert.

Sometimes The Old Ways Are Still Best

Broadcasting remains an important club in the communicator's golf bag. As surely as you don't use a 1 Wood on the green, this New York Times story reminds us that radio remains a perfect means of projecting unfiltered information.

Reminds me of the public safety question -- should the weather net just be a chat room? No, just like a fire battalion attacking a fire, everyone needs to HEAR everyone without any interface. Same for VOA in this situation.

If this didn't remain important, why would Cuba spend such great time jamming VOA in the past, and why would China be concerned about that "old" technology of shortwave?

By the way, thinking back to an early post, chew over this line from the Times:

Mr. Isaacson’s solution sounds like the blueprint for a state-owned CNN: create a state-of-the-art global newsroom that would gather all the programming generated by the five networks and send it out via television, the Web, social-media services, mobile phones — even shortwave, where it still makes sense.

Is it branded journalism or propaganda?

Distant Replay of Civil War

Years (OK, decades) ago, I wrote a column in the Ouachita Citizen I called "Distant Replay." Since we were a twice a week local newspaper, it was hard to be current with the news on high school football -- we came out on Wednesdays, a long time after everyone knew the scores from the local Gannett daily. So I decided as the sports editor that with the passion for the local teams -- and my own love of reaching microfilm and old papers -- I would do a weekly recap of one, five, 10 and 25 years ago this week. It was also a shameless attempt to get names of the past legends into the paper and get people to want to see themselves and old friends in print again -- selling subscriptions and single copies.

Today, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Pause while you let that whiplash catch up. In prepping remarks for the annual Arkansas teacher's seminar on the Civil War, I have discovered one of the most brilliant mash-ups of distant replay, history and contemporary digital media: the Washington Post's "coverage" of the war.

Through multiple Twitter feeds, the WaPo is creating a real-time stream of quotes, facts, information and "coverage" of the war. There are straight history facts, there is the Robert E. Lee feed giving thoughts and concerns of the war from the CSA's master strategist. The respective presidents weigh in daily as do correspondent feeds from each side (wpUnion and wpConfederacy).

The best single line of what WaPo is doing comes from the description line of several of the feeds:

The Post is tweeting the Civil War, in the words of the people who lived it.

There is a feed just for the media of the 1860s and one written by modern day media who look back on the "news" of each day (CivilWarWP) in a daily blog. Since it is a little in my historical area, was quite interested in the coverage of the Union decision to deploy an aeronautical corps of balloon observers to the battle front today.

You can follow individuals, or the composite list created by the Washington Post. I'm promoting this heavily next Thursday as both a resource for the teachers and an excellent example of what they can do to make the war come alive for their students -- or the history of their town, county, state, subject area.

Now if I can just find all those old Distant Replay research files and get them digitized . . .

They Smell Your Digital Fear

When things go bad, the initial 20th century PR reaction is to say nothing, or less. The Hill provides a masterful graphic of how 21st century meta data says more about you than you think -- is a drop in social media content, specifically Twitter, reflecting fear from the political class of their inner Weiner?

Frequency of posting is a very important skill within social media. What time of day, how many times to repeat a message and when -- but in crisis times, the lack of messages is as significant as the messages themselves. When it is hitting the fan, bunkering tells the masses you have something to hide. You may not, but that's what it looks like.

The story acknowledges that Memorial Day weekend could be a contributing factor. Still, people watch how much you message, and will attempt to read things into it.

Local News Suffers? Non-Shocking

Our good friends at the PRSA daily newsletter provide this link to Poynter speaking of the FCC's findings that local news is declining.

Ranks right up there with the shocking news that there is gambling at Rick's.

Why is this the case? Because the news industry is chasing it's profit tail too hard, is forced by shareholder demands to keep profits up, and the result is things perceived in the short run to be high cost and low -- or no -- return get cut.

More Lindsey Lohan, less Jim Lindsey and what's happening in local real estate or construction markets.

Ask yourself, good readers, why is this the top link today with the Public Relations Society of America? Because in the absence of local journalism, someone will fill the gap. Increasingly, it is branded journalism (and another past link on that subject and one on Churnalism and sports). As longtime readers know, I don't see that as a bad thing as long as the rules of engagement are strictly followed.

The people formerly known as the audience want information. They will find it where ever they can. When the people formerly known as the local journalists become upset at the "conflict of interest" or the desire to "be our own media" because institutions are more and more willing to cover themselves, let me gently remind them that we didn't ask to be our own beat reporters -- we are filling the hole left by local journalism's departure.

Close reading of the FCC's suggestions, however, should creep out anyone concerned about -- to use the report's own phrase -- the independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned -- by one of the report's suggestions: directing more government advertising money toward local news outlets and changing the tax code to favor a "non-profit" model for news organizations.

Isn't the top reason given for fear of branded journalism that it is bought and paid for propaganda on behalf of the organization doing the funding?

If transparency is the coin of this new on-line realm in which we live, I know who is providing my paycheck -- and so does everyone who reads my stuff -- when I blog actively for the Razorback athletic department. Will we know the same under the suggestions given by this report? And if the State is helping fund the Fourth Estate, will we get the "journalism we need" to use another popular phrase?

Not to mention how directing more government advertising money to local over national outlets syncs with that stubborn old Constitutional amendment that says "Congress shall make no law . . . ".

Twitter Rising

Facebook remains the 800 pound gorilla in the social media world, but ignore the stealthy ninja of Twitter at your peril (talking to you who have recently thought you
"don't need" presence in both). Two major recent events reinforce that the concept of the short news message direct to individuals -- especially mobile users -- is about to leap forward. The first was Twitter's purchase of its last major external gateway program worth a poop -- TweetDeck.

That means nothing without Apple's addition of Twitter to the new i0S universe. Want a message to go out? Just tweet straight from the device.

Might add, the story link provides an interesting monetary reason for the move.

Thanks to PRSA for this story -- if you want a current snapshot of the Twitter user base, this is a great graphic representation. A crucial takeaway? 71% of the messages produce no action -- thus a band MUST make sure that it is getting retweet through its internal feeds if nothing else to begin to generate relevance within the Twitter-sphere.

Warhol Moment in Real-Time Media

Cannot stress enough the drop everything and read this aspect of Matthew Ingram's assessment of what are the rules now that anyone can publish the news. Along with the Bin Laden real-time info and Weiner-gate, Ingram brings us a potential rape case.

Read through it all, then come back and consider these items for your own communications plans:

-- For emergency services, what if the public is giving the public incorrect or dangerous information.

-- For institutions, how will you manage a media that has no central control point, or any assets to risk.

-- For individuals, what will be the increased chance of SLAPP and other liabilities as the power to Tweet gets misused.

I think of the recent events where police rolled on a house based on the accusation of an individual that there were dead bodies, and in particular children, in a mass grave. What if that psychic didn't just call police, but instead used a real-time social media to send it out?

Pranksters and revenge artists can use the same tools with impunity. Ingram considers that, but again, have you reviewed your institution's communications plans -- particularly emergency communications -- to be ready for use of (and for the institution to make use of as well) social media?

10,000 Fans Can't Be Wrong

Real-time reporting from live events is nothing new. Whether telegraph or Internet, people want to know what is happening, and if possible, they want to know right now. Technology changes; human nature doesn't.

This is the core reason behind my early adaptation of Twitter and then CoverItLive to connect with athletic fans. Add the mobile aspect - no matter where they are, they can be with your team - and this is the ultimate bonding tool. (Remember, it's about building a brand into a bond; fans into friends.)

Need further proof of the theory? Record setting weekend at the NCAA Regionals for baseball, peaking with 1,079 current moment and total CiL participation of 10,992 for the final versus Arizona State. In the stands, there were around 2,000.

All weekend, Arkansas had more people on-line than were real head count in the stands - 756 moment/7,824 total for the Charlotte second game and about 350 in the stands Sunday afternoon as an example.

The four-game weekend netted 29,396. Certainly aided by a lack of any TV and streaming video only that was technically challenged on a couple of days, the blog exploded.

We have four dates left - NCAA Outdoor - but year-to-date, 216,391 participants and 83,910 more via replay in all sports at Arkansas. If it was a single sport attendance, it would rank third behind football and baseball. As a percentage of the overall, it is about 19%.

That is extending your range with the fan base, and a pretty consistent number if you commit to the concept - it takes a few weeks for fans to get use to it and come to depend on it. We made that time investment last year to build the core sports, and with a few sports we did not this year and they struggled.

Trolls Equal Bathroom Walls

Froma Harrop provides a new way of looking at unsigned comments online:

Like reading the bathroom wall

Kinda like it. Simple. Earthy. Accurate.

Now Harrop has her own agenda (BTW - try typing her first name with autocorrect on, good luck). She does columns and reviews, and in particular finds Yelp a disturbing mess.

Counter to my long standing believe in the people mantra, yes. Perhaps I should modify it to say I believe in the wisdom of the honest people, Harrop points out that more and more, anonymous posting is becoming a dishonest means of either marketing - pumping up your own product or service - or trashing - injuring others either for delibertate malicious intent or just, as they say here on line, for the LOLs.

Let's also be honest here, Harrop also harrumphs over the lack of more use of the professional reviewers. But the column is a somewhat evenhanded - if not somewhat personally motivated - look at anonymous reviewing.

Three Word Social Media Policy

More on the ANSE social media best practices for those still searching for their own - when you follow the link, you will find at the end an appendix of numerous media outlets. Ways to draft your own.

Still, from the ANSE short article, the best if all possible guidelines: Don't be stupid.

Another Set of Social Media Guidelines

The American Society of News Editors issued guidelines for social media. The top ten read like almost any corporate list which given the current state of traditional newspapering is missing the chance go leap forward.  At the top of the list of counter-intuitive: don't break news on Twitter, break it on the website.

Spoken like an organization who has classically forgotten it's past. Extra, extra, read all about it - newspaper folk deny the future.

So when I get a text message alerting me to Associated Press breaking news, or a tweet teasing me to same - what exactly is breaking news?

If anything, news that is happening in real-time is best conveyed via real-time methods. Is the ASNE saying breaking in on a broadcast with news of the Challenger disaster should wait until 6 o'clock? Or that a tornado is bearing down on a hospital is best on the website?

The point of news gathering and dissemination is to get information into the hands of the public as soon as possible, as accurately as possible and through whatever means reaches the public so that they may use that information to make decisions in the public good.

What platform you use should be meaningless to that primary task.

A couple of the others reveal equal corporatism: 

"Keep internal deliberations confidential" - Right, unless you are a government official or corporate news source, then please, let ASNE members know as much as possible about your organization's internal deliberations.

"Use social media to engage with readers, but professionally" - Does this mean one must wear a tie while posting on Facebook?

I scoff, but several other points are important if not simplistic (assume everything on line will become public - hmm, JournaList, anyone).

Daring to reach out into those Internets, a round table of interesting reactions.

Weiner-gate: Who You Follow Matters

Along with some important basics - either have a hard to guess password or be darn careful who you give your password too - Anthony Weiner learns another more vital Twitter lesson: who you follow matters. This thing isn't going away any time soon for the New York representative, and the latest is a look at the unusual choices of who he followed. For a quick recap of the whole business, Washington Post blog. Also, the good congressman lawyers up.

When I started the official Twitter feed for Arkansas' athletic department back in 2008, I followed all our local media and coaches. As more and more people got on the service, I began to realize that who the official feed follows is a tacit endorsement of those persons. At the time, I wasn't thinking about what are more pressing concerns these days - spammers, sexually explicit and other non-image friendly followers. If you followed one media person, but not another, it looked like we were favoring one over the others.

So I dropped following down to only the other official feeds from UA - even dropping other schools. I moved all that to my personal feed, because as an individual, I could make and maintain those choices as, well, personal.

By the way, why in the world is this "hacking" story continuing to have so much traction days later? Because I get the sense the media believes that this, as I've said, Watergate Bad.

Social Media Disconnect?

Not meant as a piling on, but just an observation of how there is a disconnect still with many about the public nature of social media. Ohio State current players made all the right moves with the local Columbus Dispatch. The initial reaction stories in the Dispatch observed that most players contacted said they had no comment. And, kudos for the transparent, they said they were instructed to not comment.

Again, no issue at all there. Unfortunately, more than a few of the players didn't think the "don't talk" instructions didn't apply to their Twitter feeds. Or, as the Dispatch wrote, "several" players Tweeted opinions, and then they added "a sampling" with three player's Tweets.

I'd be willing to bet they have been told posting on Facebook or Twitter is just like talking to the media, yet the players still did it.

New Twist on History

On my list of to read goes Steve F. Anderson's Technologies of History. To get a better sense, the April 22 Chronicle has a nice Books & Arts review (yes, I am that far behind with the combination of surgery and baseball season).

Of course, anything that invokes the venerable Mr. Peabody has my attention.

The crux of Anderson's work is that historians and academics are not fully considering the impact in shaping what is capital-H History for the society as a whole.  The credentialed book-bound and footnoted historian lacks the impact on today, and certainly the future, that the skilled multimedia presenter.

In other words, as ABC used Mr. Peabody to fulfill a federal requirement to educate in the middle of a cartoon series - we may laugh and not grasp that is is shaping historical perceptions.

Quoting Anderson from the piece:

"it is very likely not the book by the Harvard historian that 300 people in the world read that gives us a historical sensibility and becomes part of how we behave in the world. It's The X-Files."

Or more currently based on the film trailers, X-Men.

The High Cost of Blogging

While waiting for the next SEC Baseball Tournament game to start, a cautionary tale to those who like to express opinions, either on behalf of yourself or your employer. Just don't.

Alright, that's hardly useful advice from this space, but a series of recent events does call into question both the practical limits of your First Amendment rights and if being social is worth the potential cost.

You don't like a product or service and want to say something about it - be prepared that the age old tactic of the SLAPP suit has arrived in the blogosphere. Catching up on my On the Media podcasts brought this coverage of the tactic of filing a frivolous suit by those with means - particularly against individuals - simply to force them to shut up. Marc Randazza talks of the practice, but has advice: check your homeowners or renter's policy for the ability to add defamation coverage. I'll be checking into that when I get home from this road trip.

The other is the growing practice of political parties and advocates to use Freedom of Information Act requests to get at the emails of public employees. Hey, no big surprise here - fans of certain athletic teams have made this a staple of get the coach. But as the practice widens out, it is both chilling and shocking to many that work in the public sector. Here in Arkansas, we have our own version of it today between the state GOP and a Democratic leaning blogger. ADG coverage, but subscriber link.. I could link to the blogger, but he's done a takedown on himself. There is an opposition blog, The Tolbert Report, that has an overview.

Finally, also from OTM, the new practice of treating bloggers who pick up info for their usage on-line like they were stealing audio files. Some media companies have licensed their copyright content to a legal firm created essentially to threaten lawsuits and extract thousand dollar settlements. Fair use be damned here. This takes the previous moves of AP and others to charge by the quote to a new level. Read more from the OTM transcript about the activities of Righthaven.

My serious advice: get the legal coverage, do your diligence to keep personal and business email separated (and by that, doing public business on a GMail account isn't a way around that, it only opens up the private email to public inspection) and no matter how juicy the quote, take extreme care in what you use and how you cite.

When All Else Fails . . . Facebook?

First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers this morning are going out to those killed and injured last night in Joplin.

The line is familiar to every amateur radio operator - the tag line of ham radio emergency volunteers. But on this day, I'm reminded of the ability of Facebook to become that last line of communication for an agency. Reading the Joplin Globe this morning, the local school system posted the alert that all schools were closed after last night's devastating tornadoes, and that until further notice, all official communications would be posted on the school system's official Facebooks page.

Why? My guess is that since the technology center campus was one of the ones destroyed, the systems servers and in turn website probably went down in the storm. Not unlike university athletic department websites for schools like Lamar and Tulane during the 2006 hurricanes, it becomes the stand off back up information system.

I mentioned this earlier in the year regarding our own weather troubles at Arkansas - have you incorporated social media tools into your overall emergency communications plans?

And remember back from the Rogers schools Twitter spoof, this is one time where Facebook's limited duplication ability enhances the security and verifiable nature of your groups messaging in an emergency.

Couldn't Say It Better

A reason why Rosanne Fiske is CEO of PRSA. Speaking in response to commentaries about the Facebook incident:

Branding is not merely the communications of a company’s values and ethos, it is a strategic management function requiring skilled knowledge of how a company and its employees can best express what it is, what it stands for and what value others derive from its products and services.

And who in the athletic department is truly best equipped for that role? We've had that discussion already.

Read Fiske's whole response at Marketing Week.

Steer into the Skid: Zombie Apocalypse

Thanks to Don Faulkner for the regular link as I saw this first last night on my Facebook page from a friend. If you are the Centers for Disease Control, how can you find a new way to get people to pay attention to basic preparedness?

Issue a set of guidelines on the Zombie Apocalypse.

On a weekend we are told the end of the world is neigh, here's the U.S. Government's most serious disaster response group saying tongue in cheek that you should consider preparing.

Somewhere the ghost of Mad Men past emerge from the grave to scream "NOOOOOOOOO you can't do that; use your BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNS."

Take your shovel, grip it firmly and take that dead man walking from the public relations' past and remove the head from the shoulders. OK, that's just zombie 101 talking, not the CDC.

What CDC did was latch onto a meme of the day -- zombie literature -- and find a way to get us all A) talking about disaster preparation and B) make something deadly serious at least have some perspective.

Be honest -- you looked at the link. You might have read a little of the material. It was written in an engaging, This is Spinal Tap mockumentary way. I bet you read most of it.

Be even more honest with yourself -- if this was about disaster tips for avoiding the great Mississippi River flood of 2011, would you have cared? We just had a major disaster drill in the state of Arkansas focused on the high likelihood of a New Madrid fault earthquake. Would the exact same general catastrophe guidelines get half the attention in the social media world if it was pitched based on that?

Think about things you want from your fans. This past year, I saw one of the best efforts on the tired old sportsmanship pregame video. Miss State took the script and set to movie clips and other against type visuals. It was odd, and it was compelling. You couldn't look away because you weren't really sure what was going to happen next. Southwest Airlines' take on the dull and boring preflight briefing video is another example.

If the goal is to get the information consumed, never overlook the opportunity to take advantage of quality satire or solid pun.

In the words of John Cleese, don't confuse solemn with serious. Trust him, he's a Python.

Essense of Branding

More for the less-is-more school of whatever "branding" really means from Mark Ritson and Marketing Week of the UK. His argument: extreme brevity drives clarity. He's focusing on the work done by Robert Polet, late of Gucci, and how Polet hammered home three word branding. The full read explains, but here are the takeaways:

The secret of every great brand I have ever worked for is that it can define its brand in up to four words. And the problem with every weak brand I have ever worked for is a brand manager with a diagram that looks like Leonardo Da Vinci conjured it up on acid.

And the even more direct:

Any moron can come up with 20 words to capture the essence of their brand. Only the good ones like Polet are smart enough to whittle it down to three.

Tight is right. Long is wrong.

It falls into one my my key tenants where message intersects with mission: Brand is what you do when you don't know who you are.

To that end, Ritson:

Every month I sit through a presentation from a marketing team who need 10 minutes and their overhead slides to explain their brand essence. Switch off the projector and ask them to continue unaided and your actions are met with blind panic.

Branding is just a set of tools for tactics. The soul of an organization lies elsewhere, and when you can find that, refine that and express it succinctly, now you have strategic thinking (and communication) that many confuse with "branding." Good brands, true to their nature brands, don't need that PowerPoint Ritson speaks of and instead just need three little words.

Hmm. Like the title of this post day, no?

That Was Watergate Bad

Good friend was in a graduate level journalism readings class in college. One week, the weakest presentations to the group provided the most profound single line of the year. The scholarship was shoddy and the writing, well, painful, but the conclusion of the report about some mistakes made by the media lives on.

"It was bad. Watergate bad."

Thus in our circle, when something was really ridiculous -- like the report and the soon to be departed graduate student who made it -- and simultaneous terrible -- like her subject matter -- became known as "Watergate Bad." This isn't the first time I've told this story, but it certainly bears repeating today.

Long intro to say Facebook and one of the nation's top PR agencies now finds itself in Watergate Bad trouble over a campaign to smear Google. In the political world, opps research is coin of the realm. Considering Mark Penn as the head of the agency, this is another day at the office.

The media, however, isn't finding it routine. Why we even have the reference:

" . . . seemingly worthy of a Nixon reelection campaign . . . "

Oooh. That is not only a cringe-worthy line in the Newsweek Daily Beast coverage of the start of the controversy, if you are actually invoking Nixonian references, you are, yes indeed, Watergate Bad.

The industry isn't really happy here, as an on-line post from PRSA clearly reveals.

What I find most interesting is that no one seems as creeped out about the play -- pitching borderline inaccurate or certainly overhyping a potential problem -- and focused on the lack of disclosure by the ad agency when caught.

Then again, wasn't that the heart of Watergate? As I preach, it's not about the crime, it's about the cover-up.

Five Scattershots While Waiting

Render, render, render said the video -- here's a handful of links and quick thoughts on passing recent news.

More on Microsoft and why buy Skype from CNN. I find No. 1 and No. 4 the most interesting and potentially game changing. The phone improvement seemed to obvious from the outset.

Another note on the Skype sale via the PRSA emails and Fast Company. Good info, but I like it if for no other reason than the image. Won't spoil it for you -- must see for the old school among us.

Want to know what Facebook thinks you should be doing? Here's their own guide to Social Media practices.

I had a conversation with Scott Bourne at NAB about this problem with blogs, and count me with the Atlantic among those mourning the decline of wit in favor of the science of SEO.

Last of all, I'm still stunned about the events last week at Ohio State. If you're in the SID business and didn't see this, time to catch up.

What Works for Web Content

Part two on Josh Keller's story in The Chronicle about colleges rehabing their home pages. I actually found the last parts of the story more significant that the opening 2/3rds, and wondered if two stories got mashed up into one longer feature.

Keller talks at length about James Madison University's use of "shareability index" to prove to the internal stakeholders what works in a university press release. Andrew Perrine has some pretty blunt things to say about what gets media and more important audience attention.

Colleges naturally like to promote news of their successes: a high ranking for a chemistry program, or a program that helps high-school students. But those stories tend to get little attention. "It's always about: The world is beautiful and it's because of us, and there's no reason to read that," he says.

And Perrine gets a lot more to the point: if you keep writing drivel that was designed to make someone (and usually, high emphasis on the "one" in someone) happy, it is both a waste of time and blocking the chance to get real attention for the school. Again, from the story:

For instance, a writer re­cently turned in a story about nursing students doing community service in rural areas. "I was bored within the first paragraph," Mr. Perrine says. But he edited the piece to highlight a buried fact that roughly half of the homeless people in the surrounding county were children. "Bingo, there's your lead," he says. "And then our nurses are the ones trying to solve the issue."

Oh my, taking a news approach to press releases. Creating good storytelling. Using drama and human interest -- why we wrung that out of most you during college and certainly shortly there after with a good dose of corporate-ism.

So Perrine uses Vocus to help track how the more dramatic -- his word -- stories can have four to five times more likes, forwards, reach. That is critical, especially when Perrine opts to not do some piece of "here's my great research" PR blandness.

Thinking ROI on Websites

A great technology story from the April 22 Chronicle of Higher Ed by Josh Keller talks about three university's approaches to rebuilding their websites. I used a lot of similar thinking in the last go around on ArkansasRazorbacks.com last fall, but what is now making its way to the institutional front page is a step further.

If you think athletics faces content problems, consider the main institution. A great pull quote from John Drevs, the manager of web services at Loyola, speaks to the problem of the "five-headed monster" of the primary audiences: students, prospective students, faculty, staff and alumni. Drevs admits:

"Right now, our home page is a shotgun approach"

Athletics solved part of that problem with coach's recruiting sites -- but those quickly become fan driven competitions as well -- and foundation websites for donors and alums. What you haven't seen a lot of in athletics is Drevs' approach for Loyola -- an internal website that is served up to computers that are within the Loyola domains.

The article also talks a lot about the use of analytics -- an overall must read.

Athlete Facebook Troubles in High School

I'm a little surprised that this hasn't happened already -- a Boston suburban high school has suspended 11 athletes for Facebook faux pas. Considering you add illegality to the possession of tobacco (18, sometimes 21) to alcohol issues that sometimes catch college freshmen or sophomores not 21 yet, it becomes wicked simple to do what some "concerned parent" did. Screen capture all the naughtiness you see on like and Church Lady it right over to the school administration on a USB key.

Presented with the evidence, what is a school to do? In the case of Melrose High, enforce things.

How does it come to pass? One clue might be in the Boston.com coverage when apparently MHS athletes had photos portraying marijuana use, and nothing was done because the photos could not be determined as recent. Lack of action perhaps prompts the citizen's arrest like effort, and this time, based on athletic gear issued, it could be determined the approximate date of the activity.

Yahoo! Sports brought the story to a wider audience in the past day with it's overview coverage by Cameron Smith. Smith writes ominously in his conclusion:

The concern for other athletes across the country will come when and if other administrations begin to monitor social media with the vigor with which Melrose officials have.

Ask yourself the same question. Smith means it for high schools, but it applies to all.

Couple of quotes from the superintendent involved, Joseph Casey.

"We're serious when we say that being an athlete is a privilege, not a right."

"We are not trying to interfere with what happens outside of schools, [but] if you're going to represent the school we expect you to uphold that image 24/7."

The impact of this event in Massachusetts should be to get everyone to revisit policies -- if you have them -- and discuss openly and honestly what will happen not if, but when, someone walks into your department with that USB key. Motivations will range from simply seeking justice to the more Machiavellian of removing rivals for playing time -- both within the team and by opponents.

This shouldn't be seen as just an athletic issue, either. The town of Melrose has the additional hook of a local ordinance that is on the books to go after parents who either provide or condone alcohol or other illegal for teens consumption on their property. The local PD is looking into charges.

The whole world really is watching.

Email Tips from The Chron

Rob Jenkins writes one of the best single columns about email etiquette in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. I highly recommend you taking the time to read it, and perhaps share it with your staffs.

It is filled with great practical tips.

One of the great takeaways in his column was this:

A few months ago, while in the process of refinancing my home, I received an e-mail from a bank official that contained emoticons and text-messaging abbreviations, including (I kid you not) "LOL." My thought at the time was, "Why did I get a 14-year-old loan officer? May I please have one of the 40-year-olds?"

I laughed out loud at this part. I've seen his recenly from similar places, and had the exact reaction.

The Social Media Policies

Here links to the University of Arkansas' policies that I wrote back in the summer of 2009. The student policy is based on the previous Women's Athletics Department policy written in 2007. Feel free to use as you see fit.

Student-Athlete Social Media Policy

Staff Social Media Guidelines

Confidential and Proprietary Information Policy

It's a three-part process, and a lot of the social media guidelines are predicated on the CPI policy. Don't overlook that in your own guidelines.

Where did I get my info? In part, existing university or state of Arkansas guidelines on proprietary policy and Duke University's proprietary info policy for its institution.

Skype Sale Means Game is Afoot

Microsoft put itself back in the telecom future using the oldest trick in the Bill Gates playbook: buy somebody doing it right. In offering up over eight billion for Skype, Microsoft shows that the path to end users is mobile. How did I reach that conclusion? The Legions of the Blue Screen of Death only go after outside tech companies in areas they think are crucial to their survival. There is great media coverage on this at SF Gate.

When Microsoft began to pursue a more aggressive cloud strategy, it also started more aggressive promotion of it's mobile telephone operating system.

This reminds me of the last days of Window Media Encoder. WME was a standard for audio and video we all used, but Flash was starting to take over the Internet. MIcrosoft countered with Silverlight and used the Beijing Olympics and NBC as the launch point. But the tech failed when it went to MLB, and since Silverlight has gone through significant changes and lost considerable market share.

It appears this time through, Microsoft decided to get a gold standard instead of trying to create one, avoiding the Silverlight debacle.

Here's another angle that comes to mind. So here is MIcrosoft wanting to counter Apple and Google in the growing mobile market. The iOS FaceTime is a little clunky and not great, but it is typical Apple - easy to use and good enough for the average user. Android is open to Skype, the clear leader in this area. Apple wised up and let the Skype app onto the iOS.

Now Redmond owns it. Is it about to be a redeux of the Jobs thinks Flash is a security problem and Skype disappears from iPhones?

What's the takeaway for my college media relations colleagues in all my geekness today? Remember how I've been preaching getting your apps and focusing on social media messaging to the Web 3.0 mobile world?

Microsoft just laid down an $8 billion bet that I'm right. Steve Balmer does not like to be wrong.

11 Better Must Have Apps for PR Pros

Usually, I'm a big fan of the links that come out via PRSA's daily newsletter, but today's link to PRNewser's Top "Must Have" Apps for Mobile PR was weak.

And in the spirit of building a better world, let me light a candle rather than cursing the darkness. And yes, there is a Zippo app for that too.

Some of the apps listed in the story are on my fave list (Instapaper, Recorder, Evernote and Dropbox), I can't really say unless I'm setting up meetings in NYC or LA that Open Table is anywhere close to the ones listed below, and frankly, most of us in the college side aren't managing travel to need Tripit.

We do need the ability to do work fast, and with some degree of panache. To that end, you're going to see more than one photo program here, and some other publishing tools besides WordPress.

HootSuite -- Until they fix the epic fail nature of crashing TweetDeck**, this is your iPhone Twitter reader of choice. Sending, you're OK with Twitter's dedicated app, and in fact, it can save you if you are doing corporate work to mono-task that account with Twitter, do your personal stuff and monitoring of lists via HootSuite.

PressReader -- This is the killer app for iPad and elsewhere to read 1900 worldwide newspapers. Period. Nothing comes close. Spend the money, get the $30 unlimited subscription. So your local paper isn't on the list? USA TODAY and most of the major dailies are, and there is a high probability that your opponent schools and other schools of interest papers are. (Um, you're going to tell me with a straight face you don't OppResearch teams in trouble?)

PhotoShop Express -- The free photo editing software from Adobe allows you to make average iPhone photos into great web pictures with quick crops, exposure and color changes. Quick. Simple. Free.

Camera+ -- Don't confuse with Camera Plus. This turns your iPhone camera into a much more flexible shooter, better zoom control, timers, exposure and focus control. It will also edit photos, but I find it clunkier and slower than the PS Express. Well worth the $1.98 you'll pay.

Pano -- Need a 360 shot? An ultra wide angle? Pano will automatically stitch your images together. Results look better than dedicated desktop programs at 10-times the price.

RadarScope/PinPoint Lightning -- Forget travel tracking, you need to know if your events are going to happen or if your flight is delayed. RadarScope is a bit pricey, but you will not find better radar data on iOS anywhere. Period. Take this advice from a semi-pro who is trained on radar interpretation. This is the real deal. Same for PinPoint Lightning. Yearly license because -- dirty little secret -- the nation's lightning detection system is a private enterprise (unlike the NWS radar systems). For the price, again, you can't beat the accuracy.

Skype -- Yes, FaceTime is nice. Skype is the bomb.

Instapaper -- I repeat from the top 10 list because this is one of the best apps for saving things to read later from websites.

iMovie -- Quick and dirty edits and titles of iOS video.

CoverItLive -- If your school does these, you must have the app. Walk around your venues and keep your blogs going, put remote team reporters in dugouts or other places.

** -- The hot rumor is Twitter will soon by TweetDeck, and that either means we lose the awesome desktop ability to see multiple streams/searches at once, or Twitter's app will suck into its GUI this must-have ability.

Relationships and Recruiting

Buzz word central these days include branding, relationship marketing and of course social media. Is there an intersection here that can be of use? I'll argue yes, especially when it comes to recruiting. And, this is bad news for the NCAA.

Bold stuff, yes?

What has me thinking about this is the relationship part. At the end of the day, success on the internet revolves around friendship. The persons we are close to, we accept a lot of input from and we are not concerned about the over-sharing. But why?

I'm going to posit that it is because we know each other. Yes, that's a totally objective, undefinable proof. Just cause it is simple to the point of cliche doesn't mean it isn't true. We care about people we know. The only way to get to know someone is to open up and be willing to share things about yourself. See the relationship part?

So for a coach to make the connection these days with a prospective student-athlete - or let's broaden that, a university to reach any prospective student - they better be ready to engage with those people on a personal basis.

A one-to-one basis. Ah, here's the NCAA rub. Social media can be used to recruit, but once it is personalized, that becomes not permissible. However, generic, one-to-many messaging can often look staged, or worse self-absorbed. That's injurious to the person (or school) trying to make a relationship work.

Big talk - where is the proof. Don't have it. At least, not right now. What I have is a year and a half of working with the interactive blogs I started at the University of Arkansas. Sharing becomes caring, caring becomes friendship.

When we started, just me and a handful of fans that I would answer almost any question for and in turn, they began to trust and become untreated - not just in the games, but in the little community of friends that was building.

Building to the point of over 2,000 cumulative per game this spring in baseball, peaking past 3,600 for a high mark.  That's a better average attendance than many Division I baseball teams get in the actual ballpark.

Sure, when you're team can put 9K plus in the house on a regular basis, easier to get those numbers. But why don't that many come for football, which averages over 60k a game but was doing great (in comparison to other SEC schools who shared their numbers) at 1,500 a game?

Because in baseball I have time to talk with the fans more, get them interested in me and take interest in them. I fully recognize how conceited that statement was - but it is a fact. I've built a following, of sorts, just like a good play-by-play announcer does with the fans. The best radio voices know, you respect your fans, they will respect and adore you.

What in the hell does this have to do with recruiting? The essential element is personal relationship. If I was being bland and branded, fans would come for the facts, and that's it. The potential for loyalty and taking a fan to friend (and if you keep it up from friend to donor) is in the personal touch.

That's what the NCAA is not allowing - and in 2005 social media logic, makes sense. Today we are in a world in which the regular student really does believe they should have a personal relationship with teachers, with administrators, with admissions officers. The more successful ones in those areas understand that. For them, it's not a burden to interact with students. It is a privilege.

If Bobby Jo Williams is the starting point guard of a local team with a 25 ppt average, good ole Coach Smith can't post on his wall or message him directly without potential repercussions. But if Bobby Jo is a 35 ACT and interested in biomed, darn sure the honors college admissions director and dean are going to be all over him.

We want our student-athletes mainstreamed. In this one way, why can't we treat all the potential students of a school the same.

"Fact Pattern" the Spin of '10s?

Did someone in the White House Communication Office really say that they were backing off of speaking about the raid until they got their fact pattern right? Apparently in the frustration of straightening out the timeline of events, the new press spokesperson dropped the term. It is a legal one, referring to evidence trails in cases. Still, as the UK's Telegraph and good old Fark.com says, it now joins kinetic action in the newspeak jargon of politics.

Obviously, it is hard to get things together when you have a large organization. But word choice means something, and when you use legalese in places that seem to call for plain language, it does not help the situation.

But The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

Gil Scott-Heron might have said the revolution will not be televised, but nobody said the military raids would not be Tweeted. A cautionary tale for all my colleagues who believe you can control media access anytime, anywhere -- if the United States Navy SEALs can get their cover busted by citizens, anyone can.

If you missed it in the Osama coverage, two local residents of the neighborhood where the compound was located were inadvertent chroniclers of history.

Sohaib Athar was the more famous of the two, issuing his "helicopters over head" tweet in real time. The Los Angeles Times along with Reuters provide a short blow-by-blow. It's amusing in the sense that he's not knowing what is going on - he just wants them to go away so he can go back to sleep. Later he realizes what he was the witness of, and becomes Warhol-ed for the 21st century: he may not have 15 minutes of fame, but he sure picked up more than 15,000 followers in the next 24 hours.

Actually, Athar's feed is up to almost 100K followers.

So what does it really mean for us in college sports? Do you really think that when your coaches are out at events now everything they say isn't fair game? That when athletes are in public and major things happen, they will not be approached by not just media, but casual fans who will post things they say and do?

Once again, the best strategy is to embrace the glass house you live in. Train your people to accept it.

Seeing With Your Ears

Douglas Spotted Eagle spoke about settings and compressions for streaming video at NAB 2011, and he jumped in quickly with the concept that audio is more important than the video. At first, I'm thinking that's just a throwaway line to catch the audience's attention. From my notes, here's roughly what Spotted Eagle said:

Audio is more important than video; if we see crappy video with good sound, we see good video; if we see good video with crappy sound that "looks" look bad video - we see with our ears

As he continued, I let that marinate. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Oh my God, this is why some people think RazorVision's baseball is bad.

Let me explain. For years, we have had the luxury of four-camera traditionally switched live streaming of Razorback baseball. And we've been pretty proud of that because other schools since say 2008 either didn't have any streamed baseball, or had one or just two cameras, no centerfield camera, no replay, etc.

Many folks loved it, but we'd occasionally have someone point out that the audio wasn't that great. Initially, we used nat sound and PA, we were focused on the picture quality. After a couple of seasons, we picked up the audio from the radio broadcast, but we could not get a direct connection to the board - a long story here for another day - and so it came off the air, first from an AM local station, then when the network upgraded to FM.

So we had the call of our excellent play-by-play guy, Chuck Barrett, who frankly is one of the best baseball voices I've heard - at any level. But fans still had issues. There was first the AM crackle, and even with FM, the slight delay of the signal going around the world before it came back to the video.

This year, we added a digital link back to the network to improve audio quality and the stability of the feed; but we were more focused on the video again - putting in a 3-play for more replay, TriCaster 850 for better graphics, adding a score bug, pumping up the resolution (although unable to do HD just yet at baseball).

No one, however, complains about our gymnastics or basketball like they do baseball. And at all three sports, same cameras, same people, but one big difference - direct connected and sometimes dedicated audio for the video.

If my own example isn't enough, think about this - how many times have you seen a network game where that satellite audio gets lost momentarily and they switch the the analog back-up. The picture doesn't change, but it becomes hard to watch because it's hard to listen to. And how relieved you are as a viewer when the regular audio comes back.

Doubting Thomas

I really enjoy my church, and no, this isn't some mission column. I like it because we have a set of priests who give really intellectually stimulating sermons - today being a perfect example. The week after Easter, it's time in the Episcopal church for a Doubting Thomas passage.

All those negative connotations. He was less faithful. He required proof. He was somehow a bad apostle.

Not so, countered my priest today - to quote - doubt is not the opposite of faith; indifference is. He went on to point out that without doubt, we are nothing but asleep going through life or simply ignorant. Remember, he urged, the other 11 disciples had had the chance to see and believe earlier.

So it is in college athletics, and especially during times of crisis. Far too often, the media relations or other staff member - sometimes it may be compliance or student life - that raises a question is cast as the Doubting Thomas. They lack faith, or perhaps aren't true believers. It does not serve the institution to have persons raising questions publicly, but it does strengthen the institution to do so in the proper venue. In preparation for the hard press conference. To vet key facts in taking points. To insure the proper tone in a press release.

So just like the teach at the Advanced Public Information Officer course for Homeland Security at the National Fire Academy:

Trust in God; verify everybody else.

Here endeth the epistle.