Oct 5 2009

You Don’t Want My Lifestream

October 5, 2009 – 12:08 am

3920938681_9056b86fa2You probably don’t want to see photos of me kissing Caitlin on the Buzz Bin, a professional blog. 

by Geoff Livingston

Lifestreaming’s back (last blogged about on the Buzz Bin in 2007)! From Steve Rubel’s lifestream-only decision to Jane Quigley’s recent BlogPotomac interview, which pointed-out that mobile lifestreaming technology Posterous has become red hot, lifestreams are the all the rage! But why?

Has technology really become that impressive? Or are we that narcissistic to assume that people want to see EVERY aspect of our lives? Or is this simply using a blog platform to intelligently aggregate content in one place for a core stakeholder group?

I would say a combination of all three. Some who say they lifestream — a la Rubel — really aren’t. Instead they are providing multimedia content in one place — a.k.a. blogging — on a mission, like Rubel’s "Daily links, insights, photos, videos and more on emerging technology."

Blogging vs. Lifestreaming

Let’s define lifestream. From Wikipedia: The term "lifestream" was coined by Eric Freeman and David Gelertner at Yale University in the mid-1990s to describe “…a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life; every document you create and every document other people send you is stored in your lifestream.”

Blogging isn’t necessarily text only. Blogs are just publishing mechanisms. They range from traditional platforms to more mobile platforms like Posterous. Using a variety of plug-ins and RSS, you can publish almost anything on a blog, and do so in a strategic manner. Blogging to me is on topic, lifestreaming is every piece of content, regardless of a particular mission or stakeholder group.

I assume that you, dear reader, don’t care about my lifestream. You don’t care about my photos, all of my inane Tweets, my geolocation, what I ate, etc. In fact, if you are reading this post, you likely only care about social media, marketing or PR. That’s why I blog, rather than lifestream.

I’m not so foolish to assume you want more than that. That’s why I manage and separate several online media properties, assuming that they cater to different stakeholders, some of whom may actually want more than one property:

  • Communications biz posts on the Buzz Bin
  • Photo blog on Flickr
  • Personal blog on social cause activity and life views
  • Twitter (public schmorgasborg of all the above, plus links)
  • Facebook – Twitter, plus less frequent personal updates, socializing & photos
  • LinkedIn – Professional socializing
  • Foursquare for local geonetworking

To shove all of this down every media users’ throat in one fat pipe — a la lifestreaming — would be a mistake.  My ability to effectively impact multiple stakeholders would be dramatically impacted. I figured that out in 2007 when I first played with the concept. So, lifestreaming isn’t really a good communications strategy. Plus, from a privacy perspective, lifestreaming can mess up your personal life.

It seems in social media, there are always these types of paradoxes: Personal branding versus strategic communications; follower counts versus outcomes; noise versus meaning; and now lifestreaming versus blogging.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , | Comments (12)
Oct 2 2009

Why Can’t We Measure Simple Things Simply?

October 2, 2009 – 8:15 am

by Michael Whitlow

The age-old challenge of the public relations business is measurement. First, we want to measure impact – stuff that means something important to our organizations (we all know that most “followers” aren’t really following, right?), rather than jusphoto_4882_20090228[1]t activity. Second, we want to be assured that the measurements we take are accurate. But, measurement in the age of the expanding media universe is tricky.

Increasingly, PR people are being asked to track the myriad conversations taking place in social media, and several tools are in the market attempting to be the one-stop shop for social media analytics.

Unfortunately, the the tools we have available aren’t yet up to the task for the most fundamental of measures.

We’re taking a new look at Radian6, Buzz Metrics, Squidoo (news about this business model here) and others in hopes of finding a better way to do a very basic task – analyze the conversation about our clients, assess the content and report it in a form that reflects its real importance. The options, as the shortened list would indicate, range from very specific to broad and brand focused. Here are some key issues for us in one of the services, and we’d like to start a movement among the PR community to build more ability from the measurement/lenscrafting services:

  1. Often clients want to see enough of each post to understand what’s going on. In one service, the HTML export method only displays 1-2 lines, and the .pdf view can’t be embedded into an e-mail – converting to make it useful takes lots of time.
  2. Sometimes, after deleting several irrelevant posts out of the limited stream of 25, the service freezes and users are unable to go to the next group of blogs. To fix, the user must log out and log back in, losing changes made previously.
  3. The tools for associating a single clip with more than one category in charts are hard to use and must be unduly manipulated to give an accurate picture of the conversation.

If you were in charge, what would you require from these increasingly important tools?  Is there one that answers our basic questions and others (more ambitious, perhaps) you might have?

This may for now just be a case of the technical tale wagging the management/counseling dog, but in order for us to continue to do our jobs in the brave new world, measurement must improve, and we have to ask as much from social analytics as any client asks of SAP or Oracle (Seibel; PeopleSoft).

For more on the subject, see KD Paine, Chuck Hemann at Dix & Eaton and Alston, et al at Radian6.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Michael Whitlow | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (13)
Oct 1 2009

Hospitals Need to Friend Their Employees

October 1, 2009 – 8:11 am
friendship.jpg

 

By Jenn Riggle

As organizations adopt social media and create corporate pages on Facebook, they have to take a closer look at themselves and decide who their friends really are.

This is especially true in the health care industry.

When you look at hospital Facebook pages, it’s surprising how many hospitals have only a handful of fans. Yet, as one of the biggest employers in a community, you would think they would have lots of people who want to follow them.

The problem is one of trust and control.

Many hospitals don’t allow their employees Internet access at work because they are concerned their staff will spend too much time updating their Facebook status. While this is a valid concern, it’s important that someone from the organization to monitor the hospital’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to see what people are saying and answer any questions they might have. The key to great customer service is responding quickly and transparently to these queries – and to do this, the marketing team needs to have Internet access.

Other hospitals have actually blocked people from commenting on their Facebook page, making it just an online brochure.

Rather than limiting access, hospitals need to engage their employees in their social media efforts. They represent a large portion of the communities they serve and while they may not be able to comment during work hours, they should be encouraged to join the conversation. After all, employees serve as a hospital’s brand ambassadors in the community.

One hospital that is doing a great job at this is Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Shawn Halls, a market research manager at the hospital, manages the Sarasota Memorial’s Twitter account at @SMHCS perhaps said it best during an interview with The Side Note: “We’re not just Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, we are 4,000 individuals who are part of our larger communities, and we enjoy communicating with our customers because they’re also our neighbors and friends.”

To provide ground rules for helping employees engage in social media, hospitals should provide their employees with a social media playbook or Code of Participation that outlines:

  • Who will represent the organization online? This may be specific individual or a team of people.
  • How will the organization respond if employees post something inappropriate online? For example, emergency staff at an English hospital were recently suspended for posting photos of them participating in the “lying down game” on Facebook.
  • How to respond to questions and/or negative comments? Quickly responding to negative feedback can help diffuse the situation and put it into perspective.
This is an exciting time for hospitals, as they use social media to find new ways to engage with their community, their patients – and their employees. By being open and extending their hand in friendship, hospitals can make a difference in how people view health care.
 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Jenn Riggle | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (14)