Social Networks | Professional Blog Service

Gmail is the New Black: Why You Should be Using Gmail Right Now

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Do you use Gmail or some other web-based program, or are you still accessing email strictly on your computer, cursing Outlook, and praying for the sweet, sweet release that ~~death~~ a hard drive crash will bring? Do you have a backup of your address book and necessary emails, should that blessed day ever come?

When I give a social media talk, I tell everyone to use Gmail for basic contact management. It has saved my bacon more than once, and I’ve become such a raving fan that I use it as my only email interface. I even forward my work email and other addresses into Gmail, so I have one window, one set of contacts, and the cleanest, least buggy interface I’ve ever had the joys of using. I can send email from any of my addresses, but the interface is all Gmail.

The joys of Gmail

If you’re not using Gmail yet, here are a few reasons why you need to:

Social network building Any social network you join is going to have a way to import your address book into the network so you can see if your friends are on there. Gmail is the easiest one to bring in. Some networks don’t even import web-mail programs like Hotmail. Others are a little more forgiving and will let you import Apple Mail, Outlook and Outlook Express, and comma-delimited CSV files.
Offsite storage of your contact list Let’s say that your work computer crashes, and you lose everything. Or you are, um, no longer allowed to. . . access your work computer due to a new arrangement you have with your now-former employer, and you need to let your friends and colleagues in other companies know about your new work situation. Having a copy of your address book in your control will make this a lot easier. You can even sync Gmail with Outlook, so any time you change or add a record, that is reflected in the other. Warning: some solutions will split up multi-email records, and then sync all those brand new records into Gmail. I had that happen twice, after I spent hours cleaning them up.
Emergency access If you ever need to reach people over the weekend or in the evening, but your computer is at work, you can still do so. This is especially important for people in crisis communication whose organizations are still planted firmly in 1997. If you’re counting on your email server and your email list to be available if you need to do a press release or media alert, you’re totally hosed if that thing ever crashes because of a large-scale disaster. When I was in crisis communication, we had to come up with some plan to work around just that contingency. And if you’re in the middle of an emergency, and you can’t get access to your email server, you need another solution. There are so many workarounds to getting online, as long as you can get there, you can communicate. But if you’re depending on one computer’s data, forget it.
Enterprise email You can even use Gmail for business. For $50 per user per year, you can get 25 MB of storage per user, plus it syncs with Outlook and Blackberry. (For the record, I can also sync my personal email with my HTC Droid.) You keep your corporate identity and addresses, but you have the security and ease of use of Google’s email, calendar, and Docs.

What about you? Why do you use Gmail (or your favorite web-mail application)? Why should people switch to web-mail from computer mail? Or, why shouldn’t they?

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: Gmail, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in All Posts, Crisis Communication, Social Networks, Twitter | 4 Comments »

A Year in Review

Friday, January 1st, 2010

Professional Blog Service started a year ago out of Indy Associates to assist companies in generating content they need for most of their Internet marketing activity.

While at Indy Associates, we always recommended blogging as a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. With the popularity of social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter, the strategy has become even more important. The challenge for most of our customers was the blog content generation. Most companies do not have trained content writers that are able to develop conversational blog content, while writing for the search engines. Most important, many of clients have great ideas with no time to share them.

So, what have we learned in 2009?

Most companies still do not have the resources, or the time to write their own content.

2009 saw the unemployment rate hit 10% in November. It was reported that many companies laid off many in their workforce leaving those left behind with more work to do and little time to get it done. The last thing on anyone’s mind is getting blog content written, even though everyone agrees that marketing is still important in a down economy.

Blogging and Social Media continue to evolve from AOL of the 90s to Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter heading into a new decade.

“Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all Internet time, according to a Nielsen report published in March of this year, “Global Faces and Networked Places.” These numbers keep rising as the year progresses. By 2012, IBM predicts that globally, a quarter of the global population will be using social media in some form.

Results still matter to most companies.

Learning how to play in social media is one thing. Getting people to interact with you is another. Your clients may or may not interact with you through social media. The challenge for all companies is finding out which ones they should engage. You may be able to sell like Dell, or respond to customer complaints like Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue Airlines have done. (Note to my former colleagues at American Airlines – take note!). Either way, Social Media and Blogging is measurable in some way depending on the strategic approach you take with it.

There are great tools like Yahoo Analytics (shameless plug as we are a Yahoo Analytics consultant). Radian6 and Scoutlabs can track who’s talking about you, and help you decide whether to act on the positive or negative media being generated.

We predict that 2010 will be the year of results with blogging and social media. In a nutshell, you are doing it to build your marketing list, or to generate interest in your products or services. To succeed, you will need:

An understanding of how your market uses blogging and social media, if at all
A plan to participate
Execution and commitment to the plan
Measurement of the results over the course of the year, not a month

If you can learn how to do it before your competition, you win. It will take them 12 months just to figure out what you have done.

Happy New Year from Professional Blog Service

About the Author: Paul Lorinczi
Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

Tags: blogging, business blogging, Social Media, Social Media Analytics, social networking, social networks
Posted in Blog ROI, Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Research Desk, Social Media, Social Media Analytics | No Comments »

Social Media & Internet Creating Communities, Reducing Isolationism

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

I was an early adopter of AOL. In the 832,000s. They hadn’t even cracked a million by that time.

And as the Internet grew more popular, people started worrying that this was destroying communities, increasing isolationism, and making it too easy to shut ourselves off from the outside world.

I was talking with my friend Lalita Amos one day about this idea, and she pointed out that it wasn’t the Internet that destroyed communities, it was television. If anything, the Internet has restored community.

Think about it: Back before the days of TV and radio, you had to rely on everybody else to survive. It took a village just to get through a year, let alone raise a child. You were close to your neighbors, family lived nearby, and you took care of each other.

Then radio and TV came along, and people started spending more time inside. Pretty soon, we were in our houses being entertained.

“Our shared experiences were what we saw on TV,” Lalita said. “It wasn’t what we did together, it was what we all saw on TV and talked about the next day.”

As we got more channels, and as technology advanced, people had more things to watch, with fewer things we held in common.

Now, thanks to things like Facebook, Twitter, and specialized sites like Smaller Indiana, we’re getting connected in ways we never could. We can find people we have odd things in common with. People who like independent coffee shops. People who write radio theatre plays. People who collect marbles. There’s a community for everyone just based on your interests alone.

Or there are mini-communities within geographic communities. I belong to a community of networkers, a community of social media professionals, and a community of Indianapolis Colts fans.

In fact, I met Lalita Amos strictly because of Smaller Indiana and Twitter, two online communities. We never would have met if it hadn’t been for those online communities.

And what do we talk about when we get together? Our shared communities, not television. Thanks to social media, we’re no longer sharing what we watched passively; we’re actively doing things, creating content, sharing ideas, and talking about that.

To all the naysayers who think the Internet is destroying our communities, look again. Sign up for a Facebook account and see if you can find people you went to high school with, used to work with, or have something in common with. Create the community you want, rather than being stuck with the ones you live with.

Tags: community, Social Media, social networking, social networks
Posted in Networking, Social Media, Social Networks | No Comments »

19% of Internet Users Are on Twitter

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Want proof that Twitter is not just a flash in the pan? Check out the latest research from Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, and Aaron Smith at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

According to their most recent report, 19% of all Internet Users are now using Twitter or some other micro-blogging service. This has grown from December 2008 and April 2009, when only 11% of Internet users said they used a micro-blogging service. This report follows 10 months after Pew Internet reported that 35% of all adult Internet users have a profile on at least one social network.

In other words, not only are the adult populations on social networks growing, but Twitter and micro-blogging usage is growing as well.

There are three populations who are responsible for this growth: social network users, mobile Internet users, and younger (under 44 years) Internet users.

(Let me first take this opportunity to thank the Pew Internet & American Life Project for recognizing that 42 is still young.)

I was particularly interested in these findings, and the idea that people who are on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are 35% more likely to use Twitter, as compared to the 6% of Twitter users who don’t use anything else.

The message to marketers, public relations flaks, and crisis communicators is that while you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one social media basket, you are more likely to reach people if you stick with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, because they’ll be on more than one network.

Find the two or three networks they’re likely to be on, and focus most of your energies on them creating deep and wide networks, rather than spreading yourself out to 8 – 10 different networks and keeping a shallow presence on each of them.

(Hat tip to my good friend Lalita Amos for turning me on to Pew Internet & American Life. These guys are a font of information!)

Tags: micro-blogging, Pew Internet & American Life, social networks, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | No Comments »

How Health Departments Can Use Twitter to Monitor Public Health Emergencies

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

This post was originally published at the DeckersMarketing.com blog

A couple years ago, I worked at the Indiana State Department of Health as the Risk Communication Director, otherwise known as “Oh shit!” PR. (Because that was my first reaction every time one of the epidemiologists called me with an emergency like this recall of lead-contaminated children’s library toys (my first incident, two weeks after I started the job. I swore a lot that week). Or this. Or this. That’s when I had to deal with the media, who sometimes had the same reaction.)

When I was the ISDH, we still had our feet firmly planted in the 20th century. Sure, we were using email and BlackBerrys to communicate with each other, but it was 2006 and we were, well, using email and BlackBerrys to communicate with each other. To make matters worse, if we had to email each of the state’s 94 local health departments (LHDs) – we had a distribution list, which made life easier – it could quickly get clogged with Reply Alls, email threads that were miles long, and 94 people all chiming in at once with a their thoughts about what to do about this particular incident, or what everyone’s response should be.

We occasionally did exercises with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, and they had an expensive piece of software that was supposed to monitor this sort of thing, but it was heavy and cumbersome and a general pain in the ass to learn, let alone use. You could put in information, sort of like a wiki, but it was awkward to access, and you couldn’t easily find the information if you weren’t familiar with it.

Enter Twitter. It slices, it dices, it lets you easily follow as many people as you want. For free. (And since state and federal government budgets are being cut, especially those in the Preparedness world, free is about the only way to get new technology now.)

With the increased popularity of Twitter, this has become an important tool for anyone in the crisis response business to use. And since many first responders use BlackBerrys, this is still a viable option.

So how can 94 LHDs hop on the Twitter bandwagon and use it to keep up with what’s going on in your district, the state, or even the country. Here’s a step by step process of what to do, what to use, and where to find it.

1. Set up a Twitter account for your LHD. Go to www.Twitter.com, and sign up for one using your county and title. If you’re the Local Public Health Coordiantor (LPHC) for Clark County, register as Clark_LPHC. If you work for the state, use the agency acronym and your title (ISDH_RiskComm)(Government types LOVE standardized naming systems, and this makes it easy for people to see where you’re from, and what you do. Plus, it makes you NIMS compliant.)

Be sure to fill out your bio, including your role and the name of your local health department. Be sure to include the name of the state too. (You’ll see why in a minute.). Try to avoid abbreviations like LPHC, in your bio.

“Bob Smith is the Local Public Health Coordinator for the Clark County Health Department in Indiana.”

If you want to set up a personal account, be sure to use your home or private email. Don’t tie it in to your work account. If you leave the position, you don’t want to lose access to this account.

IMPORTANT: During setup, click the Protect My Updates box if you want to keep your Tweets (Twitter messages) private. This may be important during a public health emergency. If you want the public to be able to follow you, consider setting up an account for the whole department (ClarkCounty_HD).

2. Go to http://search.twitter.com or www.Twitterment.com and do a search for other LPHCs. Use “Public Health” and “Indiana” in your search terms. Follow those people. You will also receive an email whenever someone follows you. You’ll need to approve them, since you protected your account.

3. Download TweetDeck, a Twitter client you can use on your computer desktop. You can create different columns to collect groups of people you follow. Create a group for your district, and one for your county emergency response departments (because you’re going to get them to use this, right?).

I also like Twhirl, a client that lets you run several accounts in several windows at once (TweetDeck doesn’t). However, Twhirl only has a single column view, not groups, like TweetDeck. You may have to make a tradeoff, or during an incident, run both programs on two different computers or monitors.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss how health departments and first response agencies can use Twitter to monitor public health emergencies.

Tags: Indiana State Department of Health, local health departments, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in Crisis Communication, Social Networks, Twitter | No Comments »

Most Corporations Block Social Media

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

When I worked in crisis communications at the Indiana State Department of Health, I was blocked from a number of sites that I actually needed for my job, and had to get special permission to be able to see. Once, when the State Health Commissioner had made a video that was put on YouTube, everyone in the department was blocked from ever seeing it.

This apparently is not uncommon at all. According to a survey of 1,400 CIOs of companies with 100+ employees, 54% of them completely block employees from using social networking sites at work.

Why? Because, depending on how you look at it, most corporations don’t believe employees should enjoy themselves at work or a lot of employees will abuse that access and waste boatloads of time at work.

I think it’s a combination of both.

According to the survey, which was done by Robert Half Techonology, only 10% of those surveyed let employees use social networks with no restrictions. The remaining 36% have some sort of restriction, like only allowing it to be used for business purposes. The actual results are as follows:

Prohibited completely – 54%
Permitted for business purposes only – 19%
Permitted for limited personal use – 16%
Permitted for any type of personal use – 10%

I remember a discussion I had with a friend about whether his large corporate employer would start using social media as a company.

“No, because we don’t want the secretaries updating their Facebook pages all day,” was his response.

“But it’s more than that,” I said. “It’s the marketing department trying to reach your customers and end users. It’s promoting your product in the places where the people actually are, not in newspapers and cable TV advertising in every city in America.”

“Yeah, but the secretaries will update their Facebook pages all day,” he said again.

Ah, the old “if we let one person do it, we have to let everyone else do it” excuse. I hate that excuse.

I understand that you’re going to have people who are going to abuse their privileges, but they thought the same thing about giving employees phones, email, and computers years ago. While some people will screw it up for everyone, you can deal with those people.

Social media is becoming more and more prevalent, and regardless of what your company does/sells/produces, your customers are already on there. If you’re a government agency, your citizens are using social media for communication. If you’re a nonprofit, your donors and volunteers oare on social media.

So why aren’t you?

Sure, your secretaries may update their Facebook pages, but deal with that situation when it arises. Don’t screw up a good marketing tool for your sales and marketing people because you have staffers with work-life boundary issues.

Try some of these solutions instead:

Give your marketing people access to launch any social media marketing or communication. Monitor the results and the time they spend on it. If you see abuse, shut it back down.
Anyone who handles emergency response should have immediate access to social networking tools and permission to use them as they see fit. Believe it or not, “playing” on Facebook and Twitter is actually useful when it comes to establishing credibility and building up followers and/or journalists. (On the other hand, playing Pirate Clan or Castle Age for hours does not constitute any kind of credibility building. Crisis communicators, don’t screw this one up here!)
Let your customer service have access to Twitter and show them how to use it. Frank Eliason — @ComcastCares — shook up the customer service and Twitter worlds when he dragged Comcast into the 21st century by creating a Twitter account for the beleaguered cable company. Read Twitter Marketing for Dummies on how to use Twitter for customer service. (Full disclosure/complete bragging: Even though my name is not on the cover, I co-wrote this book. It’s a long story for another blog post.)
Let several of your trusted employees use social media and use it to answer marketing and customer service issues on the different social networks, forums, etc. People are already talking about you online. Let some of your employees respond, answer questions, handle problems, thank, and maybe even defend your company online.

Tags: facebook, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | No Comments »

The Downside of Geolocation in Social Media

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I was talking with an attorney who specializes in social media issues. She made a very interesting point about some of the downsides of different gelocation social media tools, such as Google Latitude or Brightkite.

I recently joined Google Latitude, a tool that will find your location and throw it up for all of your friends to see. Brightkite works in a similar manner, allowing a user to broadcast his or her location to other Brightkite users or via Twitter.

This is great if you’re a very sociable person and want all your friends, acquaintances, and even strangers to know where you are at all times (on the downside, if you’re the target of an extensive manhunt, this could work against you).

You set up your account to automatically check your laptop, BlackBerry, or iPhone for your location and then beam it to Brightkite for everyone to see. Your Twitter client and other apps can also tap into your phone’s GPS function and update your location any time you send a tweet, search Google Maps, or even make a phone call. Then, if your friends want to find you, they know you’re at your favorite restaurant, coffee shop, or watering hole.

But what about if you need to keep that information private, say, if you’re a salesperson who makes a lot of client calls?

Now this previously helpful service may actually be hurting you.

Let’s say you work in the poultry feeding equipment business (an industry I was intimately acquainted with for 10 years), and you visit Springdale, Arkansas. There’s only one company in Springdale of any importance to a poultry guy: Tyson Chicken.

Your geo-location app service will helpfully update all your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and other Brightkite/Latitude users that you’re in Springdale.

“Oh look,” says your competitor upon seeing your tweet/status update/Latitude update. “Bob’s in Sprindgdale. I’ll bet he’s visiting Tyson. I think we need to pay them a visit next week.” (If you’re not following your competitor, you’re missing out on a wealth of information.)

So your competitor shows up at Tyson with new pricing, swag, and other ways to win their business, or to at least beat you. Now you have to work twice as hard to overcome their sneakiness — assuming you even know they’ve been there.

This doesn’t mean we’re saying you should not use geolocation services. Just like everything else with social media, be careful. Use your head, and know when it’s safe and prudent to give out personal or company information.

Fon’t give out information you don’t want your competitors to have — new patent, government approval on a product, client visits, etc.
If you’re going on vacation, don’t tell people you’re going.
Don’t set Brightkite or Latitude to automatically update your location; pick and choose when you update your location.
Don’t put too much information in your email autoresponder. Some people will put their entire itinerary into their auto response. We know one guy who used to get great information from competitors any time he emailed them.
Never tweet that you’re at your bank. You’ve just connected two dots: your identity and your financial institution.
Disable all the apps on your smart phone that use GPS, or at least set them up to manual update. Your Twitter client may tap into your phone’s GPS and tell everyone where you are. Most people are blissfully unaware that their cell phones are giving out this information.
Create a list of Thou Shalt Not topics for your company, office, or yourself. Don’t mention those things at all ever.

Tags: BrightKite, geolocation, Google Latitude, privacy, Social Media, social networks
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Social Media Fans Use Email More, Not Less

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Funny story.

A lot of social media pundits have tried to make some headlines by predicting the demise of email at the hands of texting, Twitter, and other social media networks. (So said Dan Applequist in November 2008, Shakespeare the Engineer said it in July 2008).

Turns out they got it backward.

According to a recent study by the Nielsen company (yeah, the TV people), social media junkies are actually using email more, not less.

They wanted to test the hypothesis that heavy social media users had cut back on their email usage, but it turns out that hypothesis was incorrect.

Now, when I was in graduate school, they taught us that if your research didn’t fit your hypothesis, you rewrote your hypothesis, rather than redoing your research.

Nielsen didn’t do either. They took it on the chin, and said that the research didn’t back up their hypothesis, and published what they did learn.

The researchers did state that the increased email usage might be because “social media sites like Facebook (that) send messages to your in-box every time someone comments on your posting or something you’ve participated in, and depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity.”

So while email may be on the way out, it’s not going to die anytime soon. It’s become too firmly entrenched in the business community, it’s an easy way to transfer large files, and a great way to communicate when it needs to be read later without being missed. And while the Millennials may shudder everytime they think about it, their parents and grandparents are still using email.

So until everyone over 30 is dead, email is going to be here to stay.

Tags: email, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | No Comments »

Twitter Will NOT Kill Blogging, Unless You’re Just Not That Articulate

Monday, October 5th, 2009

We keep hearing from some so-called social media “experts” that Twitter will ultimately kill blogging as a form of communication. That somehow, the firmly entrenched method of communicating complex ideas will be replaced by the 140-character text message.

ShinyShiny.TV said that Twitter could kill blogging back in June 2009, James Joyner said it in April 2009, and Andrew Wee speculated that Twitter would kill all of social media in April 2009.

Here’s the deal:

1) They all said this on their blogs. If they really thought Twitter should/could/would kill blogging, why didn’t they say it somewhere else?

2) I’ve said it before: if you can sum up your most complex, worthwhile and thoughtful ideas in 140 characters, then they weren’t that complex, worthwhile, or thoughtful to begin with. If you want to promote your best ideas, they’re going to take a whoooole lot more development than 140 characters. In fact, 140 words won’t even be enough.

Your blog needs to be the center of your social media campaign, not some long-forgotten tool, like the foot-powered lathe or brace-and-bit. It needs to be the hub, the central location of your biggest and best ideas. The way you work out new theories, demonstrate knowledge, or expound on your beliefs. Because “hey tweeps, I think social media is a g8t way 2 reach nu cstmrs!” doesn’t demonstrate anything more emotionally complex or in-depth than a high school prom.

If you’re relying solely on Twitter to carry your deep thoughts and grand ideas to the masses — or at least your potential clients — just make sure you keep your résumé up-to-date. Or plan on having a client base that has the same intellectual depth and short attention span as you do.

Better yet, dust off your old blog, and put it at the center of your social media marketing. Make it the hub, and turn Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools the spokes.

Tags: blogging, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Should We Stop Calling it “Social Media?”

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Jason Falls is all a-Twitter. And not the social media kind either.

Dave Breznau, author of s.m.o.g. talk, recently left a comment on Jason’s blog that caused him a little angst over the definition of social media.

is the term “social media” the problem? not only is it redundant, it is also currently inclusive of both “social” and “commercial” interest. truly “social” conversational participants will be put off by any “commercial” interruption. which is why, as you have stated, that we’ve all started gathering here in the first place. this has always held true, but also to degrees of personal and individual tolerance(s), which (to me) makes trying to establish rules… useless. social networks in all forms will continue to be about personal control (preferences) which will allows us as individuals to determine the degree of “commercial” interaction we’ll accept within our “social” space.

Although Jason says he won’t support getting rid of the term, he did see Dave’s point:

If it is true, as I pointed out in the post, that what we call “social media” evolved because consumers ran away from other mediums due to the overabundance of marketing messages, then this “medium” is inherently different than others, perhaps so much so that “medium” isn’t an apt qualifier.

Add to that a growing sense of tiredness of the term “social media” from some who practice it, not to mention Shannon Paul’s accurate insistence that having the term in one’s title is limiting, and we have to ask ourselves if “social media” is wearing out its welcome. At least as the term used to describe this new genre of communications.

As someone who has witnessed this kind of “we-need-to-define-ourselves-accurately” discussion before, let me offer this advice:

Don’t do it. Leave it alone. It’s not worth it. Focus on something else, like, uh… my car keys! Ooh, shiny! Deedle deedle deedle!

People in their particular industry always want to be as descriptive and technically accurate as they can. Needless to say, they make things much, much worse. As a writer, it kills me whenever one of the so-called industry experts — who doesn’t know squat about effective writing — gets ahold of my text. They manage to turn 100 words of tightly-written copy into 500 words of drivel and gobbledygook.

These same people will write mission statements before committee meetings, they try to cram as much knowledge into a beginner’s head as possible, and create 10-word job titles to encapsulate every minute detail their job entails.

Don’t do it.

Several years ago, as a radio theater playwright and member of an online radio theater group, I participated in more than one email discussion about why we should/should not call our favorite art form “audio theater,” instead of the more commonly-known “radio theater.”

“We’re not heard on the radio anymore. People can get us on CDs, MP3s, and on the Internet. So it should be audio,” said the audio camp.

“Yes, but no one knows what ‘audio theater’ is. We’ll have to explain to everyone what audio theater means,” said the brilliant, noble, erstwhile radio proponents said. So, I kept explaining over and over what audio theater meant over and over. Finally, I just gave up and just kept calling it radio theater, and let the audio theater people think they won.

I’ve seen this happen over and over. People who are burdened with the curse of knowledge think everyone should share that burden, and so try to be complete, thorough, and technically correct. The problem is the other 99.999% of the world just doesn’t care, and you’re just going to waste time trying to explain it to people who never will.

So while “social media” has the problem of ALL media being social, and containing too much commercial crap now, we still need to call it social media.

But if you think you can come up with something better, let me hear your ideas. We’ll have a contest. Whoever comes up with a better term, we’ll start using it to see if it catches on.

The rules: It has to be two words or fewer, 13 characters or fewer, and five syllables or fewer. Good luck.

Tags: Jason Falls, networking, Social Media, social networks
Posted in Social Media, Social Networks, Writing | No Comments »

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The joys of Gmail

Professional Blog Service started a year ago out of Indy Associates to assist companies in generating content they need for most of their Internet marketing activity.

So, what have we learned in 2009?

Most companies still do not have the resources, or the time to write their own content.

Blogging and Social Media continue to evolve from AOL of the 90s to Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter heading into a new decade.

Results still matter to most companies.

Happy New Year from Professional Blog Service

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