K Street Cafe

I just received a mass email from a Web marketing firm (that shall remain nameless) offering their social media services. The subject of the email was “Social Media Do’s and Don’ts.”

I recently gave a lecture at American University’s Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute on how to use social media and other online strategies for advocacy. You can watch it here.

It took a recession, but resumes finally are receiving renewed scrutiny. The ability to embellish and obscure shrinks when one out of every six workers is under or unemployed. More than ever, recruiters want to see accomplishments, not responsibilities; numbers, not adverbs. (more…)

Can the law keep up with technology? (CNN Tech)
As technology lurches forward at an astounding speed, legal issues are emerging just as fast.  A legal system at least five years behind developing technology is at a loss for how to handle issues such as lawsuits derived from posts on social networking sites.

Census Turns to Kids for Help (Wall Street Journal)
The U.S. Census Bureau is running an interesting campaign targeted towards children in immigrant neighborhoods as a way to reach adults who don’t speak English.

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Communication Center hosted a panel discussion on calculating your ROI for social media campaigns. I was fortunate to join three terrific panelists presenting at the event including Adam Conner from Facebook, Laura Howe from the American Red Cross, and Paul Argenti, a Professor from Dartmouth. (more…)

Over recent months, more and more advocacy organizations have started capturing testimonial footage from their constituents and producing short feature videos highlighting priority advocacy issues. Videos can be a powerful tool to deliver highly personalized messages to the Hill and can be easily leveraged through YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites to virally generate attention for a cause.

One recent example is from the American Academy of Dermatology who just launched a moving video about their Camp Discovery program for children with severe and chronic skin diseases. Please take 5 minutes to watch the video. Click here. (more…)

What can advocacy and political professionals learn from a travelling Indian food truck? When you are talking about the Fojol Bros “travelling culinary carnival,” it seems quite a lot!

First off, they know how to reach DC audiences, they are masters of getting attention on a limited budget, they are working to build a community of support using social media, and they are proactively engaging their detractors. Sound familiar to any of you advocacy folks! Obviously, part of their appeal is also that they offer delicious Indian food at street vendor prices – but hey, you get where we are going with all this.

For those not familiar with Fojol Bros, they have made a name for themselves traveling around DC in a tricked up 1965 Chevy Step Van blaring festive carnival music. If you go up to order at the window don’t be surprised to see them wearing their signature fake moustaches, one-piece jump suits and Indian wedding turbans. (more…)

By Chris Battle

In this month’s PRWeek, the oddly named monthly magazine, an article examines why “marketers struggle to gain consumer trust and interest with branded content.” First, let me offer a shout-out to the new monthly format of the magazine (if not the now-dated name). Having been a reader of both versions, when PRWeek was actually a weekly, the stories often seemed rushed and obligatory rather than thoughtful and analytical. The new version of the magazine – perhaps because the writers have more time to develop their stories – is a far more insightful, digging into tactics and strategies rather than merely publishing the latest news releases from PR firms touting a new business win. (more…)

By Shellie J. Edge

That’s the very question I asked myself when I started a new job where many of my clients are actively involved in various social media networks. Although I’ve been in the public relations industry for more than 10 years, I still consider myself young and hip… or at least I’d like to think so. I have a Facebook page, subscribe to the hottest RSS feeds and even know a little about Twitter.  I was even inspired by what President Obama’s team was able to do with social media during his campaign last fall.

So what’s all the buzz about? Why should we care about social networking? And why should we encourage our clients to take advantage of the potential of social networking? I think we should care for several reasons. (more…)

There is a great discussion going on about whether Twitter is a strategy, or not, on the Progress Exchange Listserv. It was launched by Jon Pincus’s blog post on Tales from the Net and rejoined by Colin Delany on ePolitics.

Jon’s post

Colin’s response to Jon

Here is my response:

At the risk of being inflammatory (no offense meant Jon)… come on folks… aren’t we past the days when we refer to a tool (or a communication channel) as a strategy? The internet is not a strategy. A blog is not a strategy. And neither is Twitter.

These are channels for communication and we develop strategies for using them.

I am a big fan of Twitter. And I am always developing strategies for using it. But that is fundamentally different from saying Twitter is a strategy. Twitter can be used to inform people about ideas, promote events, engage conversations, and mobilize actions. And for each of these you can adopt a variety of strategies and tactics (using hashtags to engage different groups, linking groups together, etc.).

I also believe, as McLuhan wrote, that technology is not ideologically neutral. Tools are not just tools that can be used for any purpose. Each communication tool has its own ideology. For example, socially dynamic tools like Twitter are inherently more democratic than broadcast tools like TV. Thus, strategies for Twitter that exploit the democratic nature of the channel will work better than command and control strategies. And vice versa for TV.

What makes Twitter inherently democratic? Well, 1) generally anyone can follow anyone else and 2) no one can restrict who uses a hashtag or how they use it. What makes TV inherently undemocratic? 1) only the producers of the content control the content, 2) access to the channel is restricted, and 3) no feedback loop.

OK… so the ideology of Twitter constrains what strategies work on it (or at least work better), but the bottom line is still: Twitter is not a strategy, but a channel that allows us to pursue a variety of strategies for how we use it.