Back in the day, we used to rely on family, friends and old wives tales to diagnose medical conditions.

My sons-in-law married into a family that believes the primary care physician is part of the family. It’s commonly advised that you should visit this family physician every year or so if you need their expertise to help figure out what ails you. While respectful of their mother-in law’s advice, these young men have informed me that they can pretty much figure out what our family doc might have to say by checking in first with “cousin” Google. It seems many folks agree with my sons-in-law.

We’ve known for some time that consumers are not afraid of using the Internet to find health information. In fact, nearly 60 percent of U.S. adults have looked online for health information this past year. We now know that consumers are also turning to the Internet for diagnosis – either as a first stop before going to the doctor, or as an online second opinion. According to a new report by the Pew Research Center, more than one-third of U.S. adults have turned to the Internet to diagnose medical conditions for themselves or others.

When medical professionals hear data like this they get nervous that consumers are replacing “Dr. Welby” with “Dr. Google.” But, I think a deeper look into the research tells a different story.

According to the Pew study, nearly half of those looking for a diagnosis online said the information led them to want to seek the attention of a medical professional. And of those, 41 percent said that their clinician confirmed their findings, which tells me the information people are finding is not far off-target. The survey also showed that, when it comes to serious illness, 70 percent of U.S. adults received information, care, or support from a doctor or other health care professional.  So while referring to the Internet may not always be more reliable, your search will likely take you to trusted sources like WebMD, Mayo Clinic, Medline Plus, familydoctor.org and cancer.gov.

The most important lesson for the medical profession is to be online where consumers are. Some health systems have done this well, such as Nemours, which created KidsHealth.org, one of the most frequented sites for information on children’s health. With the introduction of electronic medical systems, some physicians are embracing email to answer basic questions. I recently emailed my doctor with questions about a new medicine I was taking, and she quickly responded with the answers to my questions. She even sent me a link to some helpful resources. There was another time when I emailed with a more complex question. Instead, my doctor asked me to give her a direct call to discuss.

I appreciate that my doctor is trying to achieve a balance between being available online for general health information and knowing when it’s time to step away from the computer and get face-to-face. We as healthcare consumers need to be mindful of doing the same.

By Emily Valentine (@ebvalentine)

While some companies still see corporate responsibility as fluff, increasing evidence that responsible brands perform better financially than their less-responsible peers means the skeptics are becoming fewer and farther between.

I recently completed an inter-office tour with my CR-expert colleagues to foster dialogue around this topic. The goal of our tour was to assess how our clients currently approach corporate responsibility, and explore how to enhance their efforts in ways that engage employees, satisfy customers and build brand equity.

Over the course of various meetings, we heard questions, concerns and anecdotes that brought to light several do’s and don’ts of corporate responsibility. Following are a few key takeaways:

Corporate Responsibility Do’s

• Do make sure your corporate responsibility strategy is based on sound research and tied to business objectives. My client BISSELL Homecare got this one right early on. Years ago, the company identified pet owners as a key customer group due to the inevitable messes pets bring into homes. BISSELL’s commitment to supporting pet owners and advocating for adoption was affirmed when its research revealed that 38 percent of Americans would add a pet to their home if “cleaning up after them” was easier. This statistic (and those showing millions of pets enter shelters in the U.S. each year) reinforces the company’s contributions to animal rescue groups and efforts to teach Americans that pet clean-up can be simple with the right tools.

• Do clearly articulate your program’s vision and mission, and make sure your approach is highly focused and differentiates you from your peers/competitors. Google gets kudos in this arena for its commitment to supporting members of the LGBT community in countries that criminalize homosexuality. The company clearly articulated its vision and mission in this statement about the launch of its “Legalize Love” campaign last month:

At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. In all of our 60 offices around the world, we are committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive. We also want our employees to have the same inclusive experience outside of the office, as they do at work, and for LGBT communities to be safe and to be accepted wherever they are.

Sure it’s Google, and it can do whatever it wants, but it still deserves a nod for tackling an issue that conservative companies would not. This will truly set its CR program apart and minimize the chance that another big brand will try to play copycat.

• Do seek support of leadership and identify company leaders as spokespeople and “owners” for your corporate responsibility programs. Our client Charles Schwab & Co. offers a great example of the key role company leadership can play in steering CR programs. It promotes financial education and well-being though the Charles Schwab Foundation, and its efforts are bolstered by the fact that Charles Schwab and his daughter Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz have both sat on the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. Ms. Schwab-Pomerantz also serves as president of the Foundation, speaks and writes extensively about personal finance issues and offers advice for American consumers in her syndicated weekly column, Ask Carrie.

• Do walk the walk before you talk the talk. Make sure your corporate culture supports your corporate responsibility efforts, and involve employees in programs as appropriate. By now, you’ve all seen Chipotle’s “Back to the Start” video, which touts the company’s commitment to sustainable farming. At 6.6 million YouTube views, it’s safe to call it a smash hit … but the only reason it’s been so successful is that it’s backed up with action. Chipotle began moving away from factory farm suppliers 10 or so years ago, and now says it uses “organic and local produce when practical … dairy from cows raised without the use of synthetic hormones … and meat from animals raised without use of antibiotics or hormones.” According to Sustainable Brands, Chipotle also engages employees in its sustainability programs whenever possible. For example, before partnering with a regional group of agricultural, horticultural and recycling operations to start a food scrap program in Cleveland, the company included its employees in a Q&A about the program and their role in supporting it.

• Do include quantifiable objectives and accountability measures in your corporate responsibility plan. This is an important one, because you can’t prove the value or legitimacy of your investment in CR without continually monitoring progress against goals. For large public companies a sophisticated reporting system like Johnson & Johnson’s GRI Index might be fitting, but for smaller companies, a simpler method for measuring improvement would be appropriate.

• Do complement corporate responsibility with cause marketing or sponsorships as appropriate. Here, I’ll go back to the BISSELL example for a minute. To build on its longstanding advocacy for pet adoption, BISSELL has been a 10-year sponsor of the online pet adoption resource Petfinder.com, and just launched a program whereby a portion of all proceeds from pet products sold on bissell.com will go to help save pets. These programs would be worthwhile on their own, but add even more value when paired with the company’s ongoing grants to local and regional animal shelters.

Corporate Responsibility Don’ts

• Don’t approach corporate responsibility as a media relations strategy. While programs involving large grants or major community outreach may garner positive media coverage, publicity should not be the driving factor behind your CR commitment. If it is, you may end up sorely disappointed in the results.

• Don’t inflate your efforts for dramatic effect. Would you exaggerate the value of your company’s assets? Certainly not. So why would you embellish your charitable contributions or environmental practices? As the folks at Enron learned the hard way, you’ll eventually be held accountable for fabrication, so better keep the inflation in check from the get-go.

• Don’t let the lines blur between management’s “pet projects” and the company’s programs. This is a tricky one because, as noted above, you do want management to support corporate responsibility, but not to the point that they hijack your program’s strategy or resources for their own benefit. If you notice this happening, implement a process for vetting pro bono or charity projects to ensure they comply with the company’s CR strategy.

• Don’t assume your investment in corporate responsibility will come back to you in year one. Effective CR programs take time, resources, discipline and oversight … so it’s important to be patient and “stay the course.” Sure, Dow Chemical reduced its energy intensity by 40 percent for a cost savings of $24 billion, but it took them 22 years to accomplish that feat. Your investment will likely pay off, but it won’t happen overnight.

So, now I’ll turn it over to the readers. What corporate responsibility do’s and don’ts would you add to this list?

Photo credits: Chipotle, Google, BISSELL Homecare

Answer: Sites Ranked 1-4 in Google have the highest probability of getting clicked

The top 4 organic rankings in Google garner almost 2/3’s of all clicks.

#1 Result in Google = 36.4% Click through Rate
#2 Result in Google = 12.5% Click through Rate
#3 Result in Google = 9.5% Click through Rate
#4 Result in Google = 7.9% Click through Rate

Why do the top 4 spots get all the clicks?

Users look towards the top of the page.

This eye tracking study performed on a Google search results page shows that most eye movement is concentrated towards the top of the page. The most relevant search results are ranked highest on the search results page therefore these results contain the most bolded terms. When a user see’s these bolded terms they act as a signal of relevancy and their eye moves towards the top of the page.

Top rankings are “above the fold.”

Essentially you don’t have to scroll to see the top 4 rankings. With these rankings right in your face on just about every laptop, desktop or tablet it’s no surprise that they have the highest click through rate. However, as we think about search results on a mobile phone it’s even more important to have strong rankings as only 2 results are shown due to the smaller screen.

Auto complete keeps you up top.

With the ability to modify a search query in real time some Google users are relying on Google’s auto complete functionality to find what they are looking for. Using the auto complete functionality to find content keeps users at the top of the page which in turn limits their visible results to the top 5 or so.

If you have/own/manage/support a website or blog I’m sure you’ve cracked open Google analytics at least once to see how many visitors your site has received. Some of us might spend more time in the analytics world but at a base level Google Analytics provides some basic solid metrics (visits, page views, time on site, bounce rate) that any website owner or blogger should be interested in.

As you dig deeper into the data world of Google Analytics curiousity might approach you. For instance, you might want to know how those 15,000 visitors last month reached your site via search engines. Visiting the “traffic sources” section in Google Analytics provides you data on what search engines are used, traffic from Adwords and what keywords are queried to reach your site.

All sound great, right? Google Analytics has all the data and tracking you ever needed?  However, a couple of months ago Google started blocking some of the most valuable data that could have been provided to you in analytics. If a user is signed into Google and uses Google to search, the terms they used to reach your site will not be reported in Google Analytics. From Google:

“When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, Google Analytics will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site.” Full Google Post

Knowing the terms  that  are used to reach your site is extremely valuable data. If you are curious or doing any sort of organic optimization, this data is gold. Keywords are the core of SEO and dictate your whole optimization and monitoring strategy. This is huge, with search terms blocked, you are now blind to the queries that are getting used to reach your website. How can we optimize and monitor a website blindly?

Google claims that this was implemented to help protect their users privacy. However, paid search is treated differently, traffic and reporting via Adwords will not be affected by this change. So, privacy is only important for organic searches and not paid searches? Interesting… you do have to pay to play right?

Google also anticipated that this change would impact 10% or less of searches. Wrong! Just take a look at a couple of the sites we manage, those numbers are in the 15% -27% range! In looking at site one, for 27% of our search traffic, we don’t know what terms are getting used to reach our site. Take a look at the others too, in 3 out of 4 examples our highest ranking keyword is “not provided.” Awesome!

This is a game changer, as more people sign up with Google and stay logged in while searching, keywords will continue to get blocked in your analytics. It seems really odd that a search engine who relies so heavily on keyword usage and relevance for rankings would want to block this data from us. Google provides keyword research tools and resources to help out website owners. It appears that Google wants to help us make our sites more efficient by the use of keywords. Blocking keywords in analytics inhibits this initiative and will prevent your site from being truly “Google friendly.”

By Rosalie Morton (@rosaliemo)

Two weeks ago I headed up to New York to visit an awesome friend of mine, also a PR pro. I’d browsed through The New Yorker on my way up to figure out the “must-dos” for the weekend, and Talk to Me, at MoMA immediately caught my eye. My friend and I went… and let’s just say it was digital PR heaven.

Talk to Me investigates the convergence of technology, design and communication. From the get-go, we loved the interactivity. QR codes by each exhibit offered a deeper look. And hashtags by each exhibit had both of us tweeting about our favorite pieces. Here were a few of my favorites:

MyBlockNYC.com- This interactive map reminds me of CNN iReports. You can click on any block in NYC to see videos that from the specific area that anyone is able to upload to the map. From Jimmy Justice to Mookie and Bookie, the project gives a fun inside look at the city and the people who love it. I love the way it merges interactive digital art with everyday life.

SMSlingshot – This project is phenomenal, and it would make such a fun PR stunt. Users take a digital “slingshot” and enter their messages into it like a text. Then, they pull back and fling their messages onto a digital billboard, where they appear larger than life, like splattered paintballs (watch the video… my description is mediocre at best). The idea that this could be like vandalism—paintballs on a clean wall—but instead it’s digital art, and not negative at all, is such an interesting juxtaposition.

Wilderness Downtown- I am a total Arcade Fire fan… This project takes their song, and turns it into a unique, user-driven experience. At the beginning of the video, you enter your hometown, and the video works with Google Earth to create a unique experience to you, setting the your hometown. This creates a much more meaningful video, as it evokes emotions from each viewer that a generic video could not.

The way I see it, there are two prongs to this interactive art:

1- We are able to create the art ourselves and add to the greater piece (Like MyBlockNYC and SMSlingshot)

2- We enter our information and the art caters to our preferences (like Wilderness Downtown)

From a creative perspective, I find this incredibly thought-provoking and limitless in the possibilities. I think that it challenges art, technology and communications.

But when this use of our personal preferences and interests moves beyond art and into our everyday lives, I’m a bit more reserved.

I’ll explain—I don’t like it that when I’m logged into Google, my search results cater to my preferences, which Google’s algorithms have determined. I also don’t like that my Facebook newsfeed mostly shows news from people that Facebook deems I’m interested in, due to how often I look at their profiles and appear in their pictures.

With Google influencing my search results and Facebook influencing my friendships… who knows what I could be missing.

I worry that these customizations* will make me narrow-minded. It scares me.

Anyways, enough about me… What do you think?

Image credit: MoMA and BabyBanter

*I know, I know I just need to sign out of Google and I can have a generic search… but then, I can’t just simply click into Gmail and Google+ from Google’s homepage. Like most people, I’m a sucker for convenience.

I’ve been on Google+ for over a month now. I was intrigued when people like Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble made the switch. As they quickly discovered, it offers great opportunities for sharing and discussion. I have found slower adoption in the food niche. Access is still limited, and many that are active on it now are in tech and social media, but as the network opens up and enhancements are made, the potential for foodies to connect is tremendous.

Already, people are using hangouts to conduct cooking schools. The limit to 10 participants is a downside. If that is expanded, or larger group sizes offered at a cost by Google, chefs, bloggers and food companies will have direct access and engagement with customers in their home. Imagine the potential for education and product introduction.

Lee Allison, an IT guy by day, has always had a passion for cooking. He enjoys the social aspect of not only eating, but also preparing a meal, and is starting to push those size limitations with his G+ Cooking School. He and Eric McKee started early, creating a simple calendar with meal themes. A shopping list is posted beforehand enabling people to cook along in their own kitchen, ask questions and share experiences and tips. After recent attention from the New York Times and Guy Kawasaki, he tried to accommodate additional participants through HangOutParty.com. It is a new, non-Google site that allowed another 15-17 people to watch along and chat through IM. No indication how many people it can handle, but there were some technical glitches as I watched them prepare gnocchi last night. To stay ahead of demand, they have launched The Social Skillet, with the first class on Hand-rolled Portobello Ravioli scheduled for Monday evening. For those that miss a class, videos are recorded and available online for playback.

I joined one hangout lead by Danielle Gould of Food + Tech Connect that included Mike Lee who is also using Hangouts to lead cooking classes, and a G+ developer leveraging the network to crowd source information as he develops a business model to connect local food producers with customers. This taps into one of the networks best features, the ability to discuss and collaborate. A simple technique I learned from one of my circles for setting up a poll is to pose the question and provide options in the reply. People can then use the +1 button to register their choice.

Food communicators are not yet prevalent on Google+, with low activity from established voices that only appear to have created an account. I believe there is the potential for that to change, but the jury is still out on Google+ and its potential in the long run. It is interesting that no one is in more people’s circles than Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps he agrees with others who see Google+ as a greater threat to Skype than Facebook. Tom Anderson, everyone’s first friend on MySpace, is also widely followed and feels his creativity has been rejuvenated by the platform.

Right now, I am monitoring and learning the network. As access and features are expanded, I am excited to see where it is headed. When the critical mass is there, we will be ready to guide and establish our clients in the space. Whether hosting cooking hangouts from our in-house test kitchen, or taking advantage of features that are yet to be launched, we aren’t looking to just chase the next shiny object, but ensure we don’t miss the boat or are late to the hangout.

Photo from Simply Recipes

So are you feeling pressured to start toying with Google+ and join the 10M users that are “circling,” “hanging-out” and “sparking” on Google+. My verdict is: definitely play around and identify engagement techniques for your brand but there is no need to shift from Facebook and Twitter just yet. As a social agency, CRT/tanaka is constantly evaluating new tools and applications, BUT we also preach the “Don’t fall for the shiny object syndrome” mantra. With that mindset, my personal (limited) usage of Google+ and listening to expert reviews, here are some key things to keep in mind when you talk about Google+:

Get Familiar with G+ Buzz Words “CIRCLES,” “HANGOUTS” and “SPARKS”: Much like the Facebook ‘Like” and Twitter “Follow”, G+ comes with its own set of engagement buzzwords and the most popular one is “CIRCLE.” Unlike Facebook, where anything you post is shared with both your personal friends and professional friends, G+ enables you to group your contacts in different “circles.” You can control what you want shared with whom in a much more organized fashion on G+ unlike on Facebook. The Visa Blog gives a good analysis of G+ Circles and how to use them efficiently on the Visa blog http://visablog.net/2011/07/7-tips-to-use-google-plus-g-circle.html.  Another great place to learn more about G+ is of course https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/+/learnmore/index.html#circles.

G+ “HANGOUTS” Can be Used for Better COLLABORATION: The “hangout” feature of G+ offers a group-chat functionality for up to 10 people. The video quality may not be near-perfection but offers a great medium to bring in folks across different parts of the globe on a single video-interface. Mashable calls “Hangouts” the killer functionality of G+. Facebook recently signed a contract with Skype to add a video/audio feature to their chat but this is still in the works and not sure if it enables group video-chat. G+ Hangouts is offering this for free and that’s freaking cool from a collaboration perspective. Just think of bringing in your clients, colleagues in different offices to now “hangout” versus an audio-only meeting. A great use of the Hangout feature from this Mashable post: Sarah Hill, an anchor for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri, has been inviting her Google+ fans to join her in Hangouts, the network’s video chat service. KOMU hosts a Hangout during the 5 p.m. newscast to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the newsroom. She then interviews people in the Hangout on-air about their reactions to the day’s news.”

Journalists MORE ENGAGED on Google+:  Meghan Peters, Mashable’s communtiy manager in her post, “Five Ways Journalists are Using Google+” points out that journalists who are typically the cautious adapters of new technology are showing more engagement on Google+.  The easy to “group and share” functionality has attracted the journalists who are able to organize their professional contacts more effectively on G+ than on Facebook Groups or Twitter Lists. So if you haven’t connected with your target media list on Twitter or LinkedIn, may be you can ‘circle’ them on G+. The overall theme so far about G+ is that the conversations are “smarter and more meaningful” on G+, which could be an added incentive for journalists to spend their time on G+. So definitely encourage your media relations team to leverage G+ to connect with your target media.

We are definitely closely following G+ and curious to see how businesses will leverage what’s been called a “truly social product from Google” by CNET. Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20079844-250/google-makes-me-happier-than-facebook/#ixzz1SSva5CVt. My only word of caution is: Get your hands dirty around G+ but don’t change course on your digital activities just yet. Facebook and Twitter have not become MySpace yet for you to abandon them and don’t fall for the sensational blog posts on G+, everyone will and should talk about G+, BUT you’ve got to filter facts from fiction. Do share your experience so far with G+ with Buzz Bin readers and thank you for stopping by!

Image courtesy: Mashable http://mashable.com/2011/07/17/journalists-using-google-plus/

By Pia Mara Finkell (@piamara)

To the delight of Googlers everywhere, the leading search engine Google announced a shiny new algorithm last Friday, which promised “to reduce rankings for low-quality” content farm sites, and “provide better rankings for high-quality…sites with original content and information.” Using SEO to their advantage, content farms not only hire droves of writers to increase their reader page views, but also aggregate and republish an endless flow of original content from other sites (without permission). This strategy lands them on page one of a Google search, whereas the original author/website is sequestered to page two or three.

Google’s announcement spoke of reducing low-quality site rankings and maintaining a “healthy web ecosystem” with a greater emphasis on original content. Their definition of low quality, “sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful,” beckons the question: how does the algorithm decide what is and isn’t useful? When I Google terms like “wine” and “social media,” would the search engine rank the Wikipedia definition as the most useful, or Wine Enthusiast magazine’s most recent article on the subject? ZDNet tech blogger, Larry Dignan fears “there’s a slippery slope here where Google acts as the Web’s judge and jury.”

While bloggers and online writers are likely ecstatic about this news, big business content aggregators, such as the ever-popular Huffington Post and Demand Media are not exactly breaking open the bubbly. Bottom line, content farming is big business, with high ranking and page views increasing sites’ advertising revenues. According to The Washington Post, “Demand Media fetched $1.9 billion in its initial public offering, and the Huffington Post’s aptitude for SEO-driven programming–much more so than its stable of A-list bloggers or its original reporting–explains why AOL is paying $315 million for the site.”

Stirrings about Google’s official announcement have reached as far as the wine industry, and the new algorithm will possibly effect one of the most popular and highly ranked wine review site, Snooth. One of the most popular wine blogs, Dr. Vino, reported yesterday on Google’s announcement, wondering “what would happened to Snooth.com, the wine web site that seems to be a champion of SEO, ranking high in the organic search results yet providing so little useful information that they were found to be scraping cellartracker.com content since 2007 to populate some pages.”

While Dr. Vino reports Snooth’s page views have declined somewhat, they still appear at the top of the Google charts for wine searches. It seems some sites were more affected than others, so perhaps not all sites are created equal when it comes to how Google now defines high and low-quality sites.

To find out how this affects your site, here’s a good article and way to track the changes.

Photos courtesy of Smackdown, and Hudson Horizons.

Last Monday, I had the opportunity to talk social media trends and what’s next with Chief Marketing Officers in the healthcare space at the Innovator’s Studio in Chicago. As part of the discussion, we were asked to break into two groups and identify a few traditional PR tactics that the CMO’s in the room would commit to get rid of in 2011. Let me just say the experience was very eye-opening. I strongly recommend this exercise with your PR team at the end of each fiscal year to sit as a group and identify where you can cut expenses and re-invest that money/resources into other more efficient ways of doing things. So here’s a list of five things that a group of highly experienced, smart healthcare marketing leaders decided to move away from in 2011 that might get YOU thinking:

1. YELLOW PAGES: Are you kidding me? I mean, I was surprised that big organizations still spend millions of dollars every year in advertising in the Yellow Pages (physical directory) that goes straight to the dumpster! Seriously, when was the last time you reached out to that bulky thing to find a business or a service? There is a reason why Google is so successful. Why not spend the Yellow Pages budget into SEO for your website? Chris Silver Smith, SEO expert and contributor on one of my favorite blogs, Search Engine Land discusses why Yellow Pages is becoming an obsolete concept. Must read. If you are still doing Yellow Page advertising in 2011, I really would love to hear from you and understand the ROI behind that. All about hard metrics at the end of the day.

2.       PRESS RELEASES: This debate continues in the PR world, and those who continue to churn out press releases every week openly admit that they do so to appease their C-Suite. So let’s do the math quickly, depending on the purpose of the press release, the whole process involves several hours of research, writing and my favorite part: the APPROVAL PROCESS. Then we drop it blindly on a distribution system without any SEO, multi-media content, anchor text and hope that the Wall Street Journal and New York Times is going to call you asking for an interview. I am sorry if that’s what you are doing right now, you belong to the dark ages of PR. First let’s start by renaming it a News Release. With citizen journalism, blogs and Twitter breaking news these days, company announcements need to be geared toward all audiences versus just the “press.” Maybe its time to cut down on the weekly churn and focus on multi-media content for your company announcements that actually get read, blogged about and tweeted. Start by exploring Pitch Engine. CRT/tanaka clients have seen good results with Pitch Engine releases.

 3.       NEWSLETTERS: Every month, we spend a gazillion hours mailing or e-mailing the company newsletter that’s filled with content about ourselves. We all know readers are more interested in WIIIFM (What Is In It For Me?). Instead generate content that highlights industry hot topics, best practices, use cases that help your customer/employee get better at what they do.  Further e-newsletters are fading due to low click through rates and corporate blogs are taking over as good alternatives. All that time spent on a company newsletter can very well be spent on a blog that generates fresh content and keeps you on top of search rankings and if you do it right, start generating leads for your business. Debbie Weil, well known B2B social media expert shares some very useful tips on how to integrate your e-newsletter with blog efforts in this post.

 4.       BROCHURES: Okay I get it that some of you might need that fancy brochure to leave behind after a sales meeting or at a trade show, but honestly, do we really need to kill that many trees every year on print materials that get tossed once you leave the room? How about creating digital content that’s more engaging? I still like flash drives or a piece of personal technology that eases some stress in my work life. If the whole point is to get noticed, then why not provide something that matters to your audience and in the process of doing so, ensure they remember your brand name. Hey if healthcare marketers can move away from printed collateral in 2011, anyone can! Right?

 5.       MEETINGS WITHOUT SPECIFIC GAME PLAN: Some 25 million meetings take place in corporate America and according to Peter Economy, 50 percent of business meetings are a complete waste of time. I couldn’t agree more when the groups at Innovator’s Studio agreed that they need to think before scheduling a meeting and then to run that meeting most efficiently. Giga Om’s Imran Ali did a really nice story on how to run meetings effectively — Google style. http://gigaom.com/collaboration/work-hacks-how-to-run-meetings-google-style/. I think its beneficial to highlight an excerpt of the Giga Om story below:

Google’s Marissa Mayer was recently interviewed by Business Week. In the interview, she described her own methodology for dealing with the 70+ meetings she needs to attend each week.

Mayer’s six key principles for running productive meetings are:

1. Set a firm agenda. Mayer believes agendas provide focus and help participants find routes toward achieving a particular goal.
2. Assign a note taker. Mayer’s meetings tend to use multiple displays to project presentation slides, a live transcript of the meeting and a ticking stopwatch! Each element provide focus, and crucially a record, enabling non-attendees to stay informed.
3. Carve out micro-meetings. Mayer routinely divides larger meetings into smaller 5-10 minute blocks to highlight particular subject areas. This enables agendas to remain flexible, but disciplined, and also allows wide-ranging discussions to occur.
4. Hold office hours. Each day, for 90 minutes at 4 p.m., Mayer holds court with colleagues in her own office. Co-workers can choose a slot on a first-come-first-serve basis. Incredibly, she’s able to get through up to fifteen meetings in these periods.
5. Discourage politics, use data. To avoid showing favoritism and to minimize office politics, Mayer insists all decisions are driven by performance-based metrics and analytics. (This approach has caused some controversies, as related by former design director Douglas Bowman.)
6. Stick to the clock. The “ticking clock” mentioned earlier might sound draconian, but is apparently a source of levity at meetings, exerting a subtle motivation, but also underlining a precious commodity in a busy organization.

Thank YOU Innovator’s Studio especially Karen Corrigan and Carla Bryant for facilitating this discussion last week. Nothing ever gets translated into action if we first don’t accept and verbalize the areas of improvement.  Your workshop helped us just do that.

So if you had to pick just one of the five goodbye items above, which one would you say goodbye to in 2011?

By Mike Mulvihill

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Microsoft sacrificed online privacy features on IE8 in order to accommodate the needs of advertisers and marketers.  I trust this does not come as shocking news to most of the world.

Essentially, MS decided that IE8 would always have privacy features turned off.  What’s more, even if consumers turn the feature on, Microsoft designed the browser so its InPrivate Filtering doesn’t stay on permanently. Users must activate the privacy setting every time they start up the browser.

MS’s response on its IE blog is to say there’s no such thing as perfect privacy: “Because some of the technologies that can be used for tracking are also essential today for basic functionality, there is no ‘Just give me perfect privacy’ feature.”.  As blog popsci points out, ironically, to read the blog post, you’ll need to create an account with MSDN Blogs, giving Microsoft your full name and other details.

While our expectation of online security for confidential personal and financial information should be high and uncompromising, what should our expectation be regarding personal information and online usage information gathered by marketers?  Some of the conveniences we enjoy online and via mobile, such as customized offerings specifically geared to us, are based on our prior usage patterns and lifestyle information.   

From a marketer’s standpoint, this information is golden.  Michael Fertik, founder of ReputationDefender, in a NY Times blog said,  “It is fundamentally impossible to run a media company in the digital age and care deeply about your users’ privacy. Why? Because the only thing you have to sell are details about your users! The more you collect, the more detailed the profile you can sell to advertisers and others.”

And, in the future, more and more information will be shared unknowingly, unwittingly and unwillingly. Google and Facebook are racing to be the first to offer truly “personalized” search that is tailored to exactly fit your interests and that of your peers’.

What role do we play in condoning this situation, as Paul Ohm,  a law professor at the University of Colorado, says if you don’t  use Facebook’s privacy settings to restrict access to photos and status update, the  law probably wouldn’t protect your privacy, because the user’s actions (or inaction) would speak louder than words. “Saying that you want privacy is probably not enough if at the same time you fail to take simple steps to protect privacy.” Does the same hold true for not turning on IE8’s privacy setting every time to launch it?

As Mr. Fertik says, social search will also worsen other problems. “These sites will need to collect a tremendous amount of information to personalize your search, even to the level of tracking every search term you enter and every link you click.  Google and other search engines will piece together isolated observations to make a complete picture of your life.”

Will the Wall Street Journal’s investigate report create a more vocal cry to create a legislative push?  According to the Washington Post, ”The (current) legislative proposals add momentum to a push by consumer groups to create stronger federal rules for how companies such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon.com and Google can track user activity and place ads based on that information.”

As with most federal legislation, such a move would ultimately disappoint as many consumers as it pleases.

Photo couretsy of bejealousofme

The 100 degree flirtations of the past several weeks along the Eastern Seaboard remind me of a line from Good Morning Vietnam delivered by one of Adrian Cronauer’s (Robin Williams) voice characters, Roosevelt E. Roosevelt. “It’s Hot. Damn Hot. Real Hot.”

There have been isolated brownouts and blackouts (most vocally noted in the New York City area).  But, otherwise, I’ve not seen or heard much about severe service interruptions (blackouts) or widespread voltage reductions (brownouts) that usually accompany prolonged heat waves.  Mind you, it is only July.

 Nonetheless, could it be that after years of deregulation induced under-spending on power grid infrastructure, America has actually improved its power transmission and distribution systems?

The short answer is yes, a little, but bigger improvements are in the offing.  These improvements have been spurred by energy conservation (demand response) mandates from state public utility commissions and the burgeoning need to convert a transmission grid built for a few big on-off ramps for large power generation plants into one that can accommodate many, smaller on-off ramps for renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc.).

According to the blog good.is, it wasn’t easy for New York City’s utility (Con Edison) to prevent brownouts and blackouts as the heat wave mounted. The utility went so far as to call individual customers, pleading with them to turn off nonessential appliances.

But, as the NY times featured, Con Ed put in play a demand reduction initiative that lets the utility reprogram thermostats in 20,000 homes and businesses outfitted with central air-conditioning systems. When the heat wave began, Con Ed sent radio signals to the thermostats, triggering them to cycle on and off every half hour. The initiative saved 25 megawatts of energy during peak demand last week—enough to at least partially prevent the grid from collapsing.

ConEd is not alone in this effort – PG&E can shave 63 MW off its peak load, Texas utility Oncor just started a partnership with energy management startup EcoFactor, and many other major electric utilities have some form of commercial (if not residential) voluntary demand reduction system in place. Consumers can even initiate their own demand reduction efforts. Smart meter-equipped customers of select utilities in the United States and Europe have automatic access to Google’s PowerMeter software, which helps users track energy use over time and predict annual energy bills. And select Duke Energy customers in North Carolina and Ohio will have access later this summer to Cisco’s Home Energy Controller for home energy management that allows users to automate energy consumption based on the time of day, participate in utility pricing incentive programs and monitor energy use of all networked devices in the home.

But this is only scratching the surface.  Smart meters and smart grids have been called “…the biggest investment of the next 50 years,” by the CEO of GE (NYSE: GE). Cisco says it will be “100 to 1,000 times bigger than the Internet.” (How’s that for a bold statement!) And a Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) analyst recently told SmartGrid, “They expect 80 to 140 million meters to be installed in the next 10 years. And they expect total smart grid investment of $215 billion in the next four to five years. Needless to say, this is going to be huge.”

So huge, GE is willing to let all of us in of the opportunity. GE and four prominent venture capital firms are offering up $200 million for winners of its Ecomagination Challenge in an effort to quicken development of a national smart grid. Until September 30, smart-grid entrepreneurs can submit proposals in one of three areas:

• Maximizing penetration of clean energy into the grid.

• Improving the efficiency of the grid.

• Helping electricity customers use energy more wisely.

Representatives of GE and the investment partners (RockPort Capital, K.P.C.B., Foundation Capital and Emerald Technology) will decide which ideas to finance. Winners may even get a partnership deal with GE to develop and distribute the technology.

Keep your excitement in check – when it comes to technology and research intensive new energy start-ups, $200 million is barely enough to fund a single company.  (Take large scale solar energy generator BrightSource as an example. They have raised more than $300 million in financing and have $1.4 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy.)

 SmartGrid and large scale battery storage are the 800 pound gorillas in the room when it comes to moving large hunks of our population to wind and solar power for base load electric power needs.  In other words, power that is always there regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. There are serious infrastructure issues that will require huge amounts of investment (including public monies) and years of development. Let’s hope we can trace dramatic movement on both technologies to this Summer of Love for the SmartGrid.

Photo courtesy of mrwaterslide

Photo courtesy of dane brian

By Jenn Riggle

New research shows that in many ways, Twitter functions as an RSS feed or news service rather than a social networking site.

That’s not to say there isn’t conversation on Twitter, but a lot of people are sharing news and articles with their followers. In many ways, Twitter’s the thinking man’s water cooler.

Twitter followers register to receive updates and often have limited interaction with the person tweeting. By comparison, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook require people agree to become “friends” before they share information with each other.

It’s interesting to note that Hitwise (a traffic and monitoring service) reports that more people get their news from Facebook and Google than Twitter. According to their research, Twitter represents only 0.14 percent of the traffic to news and media sites, while Facebook drives 3.64 percent and Google News drives 1.27 percent of their traffic.

Twitter may not be driving people to news and media sites because instead, it’s driving them to non-traditional news sources like the Huffington Post and blogs. In addition, the people who go to Google News and Facebook for news probably skew slightly older than Twitter users and are more likely to seek out traditional news sources. Or maybe Twitter users are used to skimming the headlines and only click onto the links that really interest them.

As a news junkie, this research validates why I’ve always felt drawn to Twitter and not to Facebook. It also explains why news stories like the US Airways Flight 1549 landing on the Hudson River (commonly known as the Miracle on the Hudson) spread so rapidly on Twitter and why traditional news media and public relations and marketing folks are drawn to Twitter. Their lives are inextricably linked to what’s happening in the news.

But it also poses a more important question: What does this mean for news media?

If stories break on Twitter first, traditional media can seem redundant. When I watch the 11 p.m. news, it’s often a rehash of stories that broke on Twitter hours before — along footage of the night’s shootings, fires and sports scores.

Rather than try to compete with Twitter, traditional news media needs to find ways to harness its interactivity. CNN has the right idea. At the bottom of the TV screen, they invite people to go to Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation and talk about the issues. Other times, they have a Twitter feed on large plasma screens in the background, which they reference during the show.

The Washington Post published a great article a while back that looks at how TV anchors are using Twitter to give behind the scenes look at shows like “Meet the Press.” But they also solicit questions for their guests from the followers, giving citizen journalist a whole new meaning.

The bigger question is how the newspaper industry, which is already facing huge financial hurdles, can use Twitter. It’s already using Twitter to drive people to stories on their websites. But why not ask people what they think about stories that impact them? Or ask them to report about traffic accidents on the highway? Or maybe have a gardening expert on Twitter who answers readers’ questions about things like why the leaves on their gardenia plants are yellow.

Twitter is a great way to whet people’s appetite for news and direct them to websites for more information. But it won’t stop there – with Twitter scooping stories, traditional media needs to find ways to integrate Twitter’s interactive capabilities and stay relevant.

Now that Twitter hype is starting to cool off a bit, marketers need to take the time to evaluate the real value of this social network. First of all, Twitter offers a great place to talk with technologists, marketers, journalists, select stars and cause-activists. However, it’s not that great of a social network to reach buyers (h/t Valeria Maltoni).

Delving deeper, social media whiz Jeremiah Owyang recently compared Google Buzz, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. His analysis compared the networks from a perspective on where customers already are. His one liner on Twitter, “Has opportunity to become utility-like infrastructure, but not a destination.”

John Bell recently wrote that Twitter is a great communal location. It’s also not that great of a place for much more beyond great mass public events a la Mumbai, Iran, etc., and micro community chat center.

Now, we have well discussed the growth of mobile media and its importance to the future. Here, Twitter shows more promise. Recent ComScore usage reveals 4.7 million mobile “Tweeple,” but Facebook still rules with 25 million mobile users.

All in all, Twitter has solidified its place in the social network world. At the same time that place seems to be one of public chatter and quick timely movements. If your community is out there, this is a great place to be.

It’s also definitely not the only social network to maintain a presence on. Now more than ever, communicators need to be in touch with their communities of interest and be present where they are. Not where the hype engine tells you to be…

Right now it seems every company wants to build an iPhone app. Yet given that 60,000 Android phones ship every day, one has to wonder how much longer Apple will have a lock on shiny object syndrome du jour (image by Andrew Mason).

That’s roughly 5.4 million a quarter, and the numbers continue accelerating to rivalingl iPhone shipments. Android shipments will only continue increasing as we see more devices hit the market. Further, globally carriers have now come to recognize Google Android’s presence as a tour de force.

Rather than open up it’s operating system, or allow manufacturers to license the Apple OS, or even releasing a new phone, Apple seems to be relying on reactive techniques. The word Android has been banned from applications being developed for the iTunes store.

Whether or not a mobile application fits into your strategy is one thing. A second evaluation critique for communicators now must include platform.

Unless Apple does something drastic quickly, it’s likely to find itself second in smartphone OS shipments by year end. That means Android applications will become the hot platform. Given the saturation of applications (more than 100,000) that are already in the Apple store, Android may be a quick way to generate mobile traction by being first. At least in the near term.

Google Trends shows how quickly the search has become a hot topic:

It’s not a matter of who is the journalist or news anchor in the case of social media, concern over ownership of retweets or information privacy is out the window. In the case of crisis the network moves the news in order to expand the communal concern rather than respond to ratings.

Recently, an interesting thought was raised about how Social Media has become the news to Traditional Media. In comparison to being a reactionary channel for branding I think involvement in social media has a way to push communication past a professional news pitch to something that hits closer to home. In the case of Haiti news, almost instantly there were charitable actions being shared through the community.

There is great potential for new tools to help maintain the momentum by showing where the money that is being donated is being used to enrich the community. So when the dust settles where will that leave efforts in Haiti? Does Social Media have the ability to extend past the flash of the news to create a sustainable relief effort? If it is to be successful there needs to be a connection past generating the buzz and awareness to continuing the action of support. The ability to store the data from the buzz even has potential to help with generating action plans for the future.

War was declared a long time ago, but now the battle finally begins in earnest.  2010 marks the year that Google Android and its many manufacturer and carrier partners took on Apple and its exclusive wireless carriers. The final prize?  The primary determinant of the third web boom, the mobile Internet.

All the other handset manufacturers had their chance, but no one, not even Nokia or RIM (Blackberry) could unseat Apple’s dominance.  It took another Internet company to truly bring networked functionality to a second mobile operating system.

Now there are omnipresent signs that the full fledged competition has begun:

• Aggressive marketing campaigns from megacarriers like Verizon (which if you include partner Vodafone, has significant international mobile holdings)
• Handset and computer manufacturers are developing a wide variety of devices with Android
• A competitive application marketplace is rising

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been here before.  We all know how the closed MacIntosh OS did against the open Windows OS in the 90s. The question for Jobs is what will you do differently this time?

The long-term impact on communicators cannot be questioned. We will all need to communicate with our stakeholders on two inch screens in meaningful ways.  How that changes best practices for both traditional and social media communications remains to be seen.

Google launched the Real Time Search service enabling users to discover breaking news the moment it’s happening by animating new results into the search results. Using the trends page you can now see what’s hot and watch the results flow in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It seems they cut their teeth on Google Wave, a viable product with virtually no delay between composition and publishing to a specified group. Now, they are able to provide search results in the same fashion, but rather than control the entry and consumption points, they bridge the delivery gap between “publishers” and “content consumer”.

Initially, in contrast to what some users are demanding for real time results, I feel that the results seem to be watered down. Mixing tweets with blog posts, dilutes the content over brevity. Each has a unique purpose and the combination of both in my opinion hurts the full story because of how the typical web user absorbs information. In crisis management, since timing is everything. Has Google made a mess of things pushing the responsible message out of conscience when a topic is trending and further responses or thoughts are possibly negative to the brand?

While I have hesitation over the display of content in the real time search, I think Google has done well to provide relevance to the search query. By providing a way for users to turn on/off the real time feature, it allows for easier consumption as well as shows the commitment to usability that Google is known for.

The second feature was announced this week when Google hinted at their new Google Goggles project with flair typically reserved for Steve Jobs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the one I am really excited over. While the focus has been towards the mobile web, no one has really pushed the boundaries of a “real-time” mobile web. Apps like Shazam, SnapTell and Evernote are wildly popular because they allow the mobile user to search in other ways besides text and finger inputs. Even with the new Nuance Dragon Dictation app taking it a step further with voice, Google trumps the deck by allowing search by life-streaming. Fire up your mobile camera – and query. Real time search by voice, location and sight.

So what’s the next step? Combining Latitude, 411, and Goggles services into real time search by mobile device – the ability to life cast and query became a reality. The real question becomes what impact does your message (brand or personal) suffer or succeed by real time influences.