By: Melinda Dale

Following the ever-changing world of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and other social media platforms feels a lot like watching local news broadcasts – there seems to be a lot of negative news going around. From the multiple McDonalds hashtag highjackings, to rogue tweets on professional accounts by oblivious employees that cost companies money, to public figures sticking their foot in their mouths in 140 characters or less. It’s no surprise a lot of business owners who aren’t so social media savvy are skeptical about becoming a part of this world that boasted more than 4.2 billion users among the major platforms at the end of 2011.

So it was refreshing to read an article on Mashable last week about how Iceland, a country with the principle that everyone is a friend until proven otherwise, has embraced social media and modern technology to help rebuild the country. For instance:

• Inspiredbyiceland.com uses Vimeo and Tumblr to share sights and stories to whet visitors’ interests in visiting Iceland; and citizens (including the president) post invitations to personally escort visitors on tours of the country. You can even watch a live feed of Iceland, though I recommend not watching at 4 p.m. CST as most of the country is asleep so not much is going on.
• Last year, through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr Iceland enlisted the help of all of its citizens to rewrite its constitution.
• When the country’s president announced he would not run for re-election in 2012 residents started an online petition for him to stay in office, which he ultimately agreed to do until the country’s economic issues are resolved.

Read How Iceland is Rebuilding its Economy with Social Media for more examples of the innovative campaigns they are implementing as they rebuild their economy and their international image.

It’s safe to say this approach would not work as seamlessly in other countries, like the U.S., but maybe it will help us reexamine how we treat our “friends” online.

*Pictured: screen shot of a live feed of Tjornin, Iceland (www.inspiredbyiceland.com).

By: Melinda Dale

Eight short years ago, a sophomore at Harvard University launched an online network that would eventually make him the ninth most powerful person on the planet (according to Forbes magazine). As you know, that sophomore was Mark Zuckerberg and the network was Facebook.

This week’s news headlines were full of reports and opinions about Facebook’s move to file for an IPO, which could set its worth at a staggering $100 billion. You might have to sift through dozens of these articles to begin to comprehend the impact this move will have on the direction of the company and the Internet as a whole. But, one article in particular brought to light a monumental fact about the power of this social network.

In the TIME Business article, Why Facebook’s IPO Matters, Sam Gustin highlights recent events that had a global impact because of Facebook and other social media tools:

• Protests that swept across the Middle East, collapsing governments in power for decades
• Activists organizing Occupy Wall Street movements across the country, ultimately shaping a key issue for the 2012 presidential election
• Opposition against SOPA and PIPA (Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act), causing both the House and the Senate to postpone votes on the bills indefinitely

And just this week, the backlash caused by Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to pull funding for Planned Parenthood. The announcement was made on Tuesday, and within three days almost 30,000 comments were made on posts on Komen’s Facebook Wall about the decision. Long-time supporters from across the country took to social media to either praise or condemn the organization, threatening to pull their own financial support. This morning Komen reversed its decision.

It’s hard to argue against the power of a Facebook post. In just eight years this tool, and the doors it opened for many other social media platforms, has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, and the way we live.

Now we must ask ourselves…what do the next eight years hold?

*Photo: Protests in Egypt, February 2011. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

By: Heather Schablik, APR

Regardless of where you stand in the MAC vs. PC battle or in the iPhone vs. Droid debate, everyone seems to be able to agree on one thing this morning: the world lost an amazing innovator yesterday at too young of an age.

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday after a seven-year struggle with pancreatic cancer. It seemed to have sparked as much conversation as any of the more notable news stories in the past decade – I don’t think I’ve talked to, emailed or texted with anyone in the past 12 hours who hasn’t brought it up. And rightfully so – he changed the way our society works, thinks and interacts. He did something so many of us dream of being able to do.

Innovation is a pretty simple concept – the introduction of something new. But with Jobs, he didn’t stop at that. He revolutionized industries with those new things. Take the iPod, for instance. The concept of carrying around your entire music library in your pocket was ingenious when it first came to pass. And with each new technology he introduced, the fanfare was that much stronger.

Jobs was definitely a technological innovator, but for many of us in the PR/marketing industry he was also a marketing innovator. Apple made the press event relevant again. In an industry where press conferences are a dying breed, Jobs and his company reminded us of what “real news” was and how to get the proper media attention for such things. Apple mixed up the perfect concoction of technology and marketing savvy, resulting in the right amount of buzz for every announcement, every single time.

Steve Jobs and Apple accomplished what so many in our industry long to do – make our clients and brands a household name. Apple is just that. Whether or not you are an Apple fanatic is irrelevant – you know who Apple is, you recognize the ads as soon as they come across your television screen, you know the products from across the room, and you could point that logo out from a line-up in no time.

Regardless of where you stand in the debate, one thing is for certain – Steve Jobs left his mark on our society. And he will be missed.

By: Aileen Katcher, APR, Fellow PRSA

When I first joined Facebook several years ago, it had recently made a change.  It didn’t affect me since I joined right after, and I couldn’t figure out what all of the complaints were about.

Last week, I felt like it was déjà vu.  One friend, artist Rick Russell, summed it up in a post:  “‘If it ain’t broke, fix it.’ – Mark Zuckerberg”

Why?  People don’t like change.  Why would Facebook make changes knowing it might upset its customers?  Douglas Rushkoff’s piece in CNN sums it up well.  He writes:  “We are not Facebook’s customers at all.  The boardroom discussions at Facebook are not about how to help little Johnny make more and better friendships online; they are about how Facebook can monetize Johnny’s ‘social graph’.”  And, what’s wrong with that?  Facebook is a business after all.

Apparently a lot in many Facebook members’ eyes.  In response to my post:

“How do the recent Facebook changes compare to the past times Facebook has changed? Worse, better or about the same? Discuss”

I had many friends weighing in on how they felt about the new changes.  No one loves them, three friends like them, but the overwhelming majority don’t like them.  Comments included:

• Feh (which means I don’t like them)
• I’m lost
• I prefer the former set up
• If they are so technologically savvy, why can’t they devise a way to interactively allow the user to design their own Facebook pages?
• Don’t expect Facebook to listen to complaints any more than they have ever done.
• I don’t like the huge photos
• I’m more likely to leave, the more often I’m relearning navigation.

Kim Phillips shared a link that enables you to remove the new news ticker by using Google Chrome (wonder if it also automatically subscribes you to Google+.)

And Christine Taylor, one of the three friends that like the changes shared a link about how to use the new timeline to enhance your Facebook experience.

Christine has the right idea.  The change is here.  It’s likely not going to change back.  So, embrace it – or stop using Facebook.  Complaining won’t fix it.  Facebook is a business and businesses must change to remain competitive.

Earlier this week, Facebook announced its integration of video calling powered by Skype, a group chat and a new chat design.

Brier Dudley, writer for The Seattle Times, attended the webcast and provides a minute-by-minute overview in his blog.

Reaction from the field seems mixed with comparisons to Google+ Hangout, which was announced last week.

If you’re curious, Preston Gralla from Computer World offers an in-depth comparison of Facebook Video Calling vs. Google+ Hangout.

Jennifer Starkey, a fellow APR I met at a PRSA conference, provides a shrug, a “we’ll see” and an easy-to-digest “6 Thinks To Take Away From Facebook’s Announcement” in her blog, Internet marketing trends and emerging technology.  

KVBPR’s Melinda Dale offers a different take.

“I think these new features are the next logical step in the evolution of Facebook,” said Dale.  “With the group chat feature, people might turn to Facebook even before texting.”

Additionally, Dale believes the partnership between Facebook and Skype is a great business move, as it introduces Skype’s capabilities to new audiences, including Facebook’s ever-growing senior adult population.  Technology often appears less intimidating if it’s part of a service to which people already subscribe.

What do you think?

As social technology outlets race to provide value to users it’ll be interesting to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Photo Credit: James Martin/CNET(http://news.cnet.com) Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Skype's Tony Bates during partnership announcement

By Heather Schablik

Picture this: you’re sitting at an industry conference, and the speaker says something that you want to share with your coworkers when you get back to the office. What would you do? Would you reach for your notebook and pen to jot the note down, or reach for your cell phone to send a quick text, type a digital note or Tweet to your many followers?

This basic scenario had me thinking the other day as I followed the constant Twitter stream from several attendees at an industry conference.  One thing is for certain – how audiences listen has definitely changed. I remember a conversation with my boss early in my career (before smartphones were really that smart) about the ultimate business faux pas: using your cell phone in a meeting. It was pretty much NEVER acceptable, except in a “hit by a bus” type of emergency. If you had children, you could possibly get away with having it accessible. Perhaps a sick relative would buy you a pass. But never because you forgot your notebook back at the office. Borrow a piece of paper from that person next to you.

Fast forward 10 years and look at us now: notepads are so 2005. My question is: How does this look from the front of the proverbial classroom? If you’re speaking at a conference and look out at a bunch of professionals typing fast and furiously on their smartphone keyboards, does it frustrate you or do you see it as a digital compliment? If you’re leading a meeting and realize someone rushed to their phone to Tweet your latest nugget of wisdom, do you question their motive or welcome the attribution? What do you think?

By Holley Stein, APR

Nashville Post launched its new website today.

Some changes that I love:

• The navigation tabs have moved from the left-side of the screen to the top of each page;
• Users can now switch between Nashville Post and The City Paper websites with a click of the mouse;
• The industry pages pull up current news and relevant personnel announcements for that industry; and my favorite,
• An enhanced search capability where you type in your search term and it pulls from both websites’ blogs, personnel announcements and news items. This is very helpful when searching for client news.

It is interactive, user-friendly and does a good job of integrating both publications. Have a look for yourself.

By Aileen Katcher, APR, Fellow PRSA

The goal: raise awareness of the Nashville International Trade Mission to South America for the Nashville Health Care Council and the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.

The challenges: jet lag, a three-hour time difference, a packed agenda, language barriers … oh, and I was in week three of my personal push to stay off caffeine.

The opportunities: 30 delegates with different perspectives meeting health care and government leaders in Chile and Argentina and exploring the potential to work together and learn from each other.

The KVBPR solution: a plan that became the road map for best practices in intercontinental event communication, significantly raising awareness of the trip in the Nashville business community and highlighting perspectives.

An exclusive relationship with SouthComm provided advance stories, daily blog posts and post-mission trip stories. Each day of the week-long mission, the NashvillePost ran a blog or video post from their Latin American correspondents (myself and Council President Caroline Young) and included it in their daily email summary of stories.

With a three-hour time difference and a packed agenda for the mission, developing content and making deadlines was sometimes a challenge. It meant occasionally skipping lunch, leaving evening events early, or rising at the crack of dawn to write about the prior day. Sound hectic? It was, but it was also the most enjoyable writing I have done in a long time.

Although we had developed a list of potential subjects to cover, we had to be flexible and seize opportunities. For example, the “We are Chile” post practically wrote itself after we learned how the country had come together following their tragic earthquake and mining accident. Another blog developed after three delegates discovered they attended the same law school at different times yet ended up in very different health care related jobs.

While I was busily writing and recording in South America, the KVBPR team and Council and Chamber staffs in Nashville were proofing, editing video footage, formatting photos, updating social media sites and delivering completed materials to the NashvillePost each day. The Chamber posted links to the stories on its site and the Council encouraged its members to post links on their sites.

In addition, KVBPR produced The Daily Five – a daily email news digest of the top five local and national health care stories, plus any trip coverage, in a PDA-friendly format that helped delegates stay informed of news at home.

I learned a lot (including developing a love for Mate, a tea product that provides caffeine-like results without the negative side effects), met some fabulous people (including a neighbor who runs by my house everyday on his jog), saw and fell in love with two countries I had never visited, and overall had a fabulous time. And, the Nashville Health Care Council and Chamber achieved the visibility and awareness of the trip that they were seeking.

So, where are we going next?

By Greg Bailey, APR

Granted, the statistics I’m about to toss out are from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), but it looks like the questionable future of America’s newspapers may be clearing up. And finally, American readers have now found their newspapers online.

After years of declining circulation and awful advertising revenue, there appears to be some good news about the daily newspaper in America. According to the NAA, an average of 105.3 million people per month visited a newspaper website in the fourth quarter of 2010. Even better news is the demographics behind the readers: sites reached 58 percent of 25- to-35-year-old adults and 73 percent of individuals living in households earning over $100,000 per year.

The site visitors spent about 3.4 billion minutes per month on the newspaper sites, accounting for an average 4.1 billion page views per month. Being no mathematician, I have to trust the NAA’s data slicing-and-dicing of the minutes and views per month, equaling about 32.3 minutes and 38.9 page views per individual per month.

While those numbers don’t equal the average reader’s time spent with the Sunday edition of The New York Times or Chicago Tribune, it does prove that the newspaper sites are no longer Internet-marketing vehicles for their hard-copy products. There is life for newspapers beyond paper and ink.

While reader habits may be changing, the gloomy news about the business side of newspapers remains – and it may be awhile before advertisers join readers online. Through the third-quarter 2010, the NAA reports that total online revenues increased by 9.5 percent to $2.16 billion. During the same period, total print ad revenues dropped by $1.55 billion or 8.7 percent, a total of $16.35 billion.

For public relations professionals and clients, these visitor statistics show that placement on news media websites isn’t the abyss we thought it was five years ago. People see and read what is posted. Shifting demographics, mobile technology, bandwidth and content are all playing a role in either moving readers to the sites on a full-time basis or supplementing what others are reading in the paper that lands in front of the house or the front desk of the office.

I’m an old newspaper guy, so I like spreading a newspaper out on my desk and going through it – reading stories and headlines, admiring photos and mocking bad layout. Still, I visit six or eight newspaper websites each day, throughout the day, to see what’s going on the world.

What about you? Are you a traditional hard-copy reader? Or are you an online-only reader Maybe you do both? I would be interested in learning how you obtain your news each day.

By Heather Schablik, APR

Less is more. Quality, not quantity. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. The clichés are endless (and somewhat contradictory), but one thing seems to ring true – people care about what you’re saying…and these days, how many characters you are using to say it.

When Twitter first launched in 2006, I’d venture to guess that most people didn’t pay much attention to the character count in their word processing programs. I surely didn’t, unless I was charged with writing an article that fit certain parameters. And even then, it was words – not characters.

But nowadays, it’s all about the characters. 140 characters or less in a Tweet. 160 or less in a text message. When did society become so obsessed with the number of punctuation marks, spaces and vowels that grammar and proper spelling no longer mattered? And perhaps the better question is, why?

I’ve always been somewhat of a grammatical nerd. I was the one who proofed my friends’ papers in college. And there is nothing that gets under my skin quite like a dangling preposition. So how does a girl like me grapple with the fact that I now get business emails using phraseology like “u” and “LOL?” And that society says that it is okay when those things slip into our business communication – because after all, it’s just “a sign of the times.”

All that to say, my main concern actually has nothing to do with the grammatical accuracy of the emails I receive anymore – but simply that we as a society have become more obsessed with how we are saying it than what we are saying. When content goes out the window to preserve the need to keep us under a certain character count, is it really worth it? And does a sentence have the same meaning when you strip it of its proper punctuation and vowels? I’d love to hear your thoughts, because I’m guessing it may just be me.

Thx in advance and I look fwd to hearing from u. TTYL.