If you follow me on twitter, you know a lot about me. You know I have a sense of humor, you know I love the Phillies, you know I love my job, you see campaigns I am working on for clients, and you know my dad's been battling cancer.

There are things I don't share on twitter and keep to myself, but for the most part, I like to keep my social media...social. I try to only follow people who do the same. We don't do business with a company, we do business with people who work for the company, don't we? I buy from and tune in to people I know and like. I think many people do that. Isn't that what word-of-mouth is all about?

Social media isn't the cure for the cancer that is killing big pieces of traditional media. It also isn't the enigma that so many people may think it is. Social media, is just another media channel. A few years ago, my colleagues and I at Red Tettemer illustrated what that channel looks like:



And yes, this channel works a little differently, so did TV when it was introduced.

It's going to be ok.

More than 3 years ago, my friend Chris Heuer shared something the CEO of iProspect said, which I've never forgotten: "The Brand with the best storytellers wins." I love that. That, is the secret to social media - not much of a secret; it's something that advertising and PR have known for years.

The opportunity with social media, for creative advertising agencies, is enormous. No longer is creative chained to :15 or :30 or :60. We aren't limited by 1/4 page or 1/2 page or double trucks. We can create content and tell our stories to massive global audiences and immediately hear back from them, what they think. It's like being in everyone's living room when a tv spot airs - exciting and scary, isn't it? We can launch unfinished content, and let the customer tell us how they want it to end. We can engage our audience and give them option to buy DIRECTLY FROM OUR CREATIVE WITHOUT EVER LEAVING THEIR COUCH. That may make some advertising execs shiver, it gives me goosebumps from excitement.

I see a shift happening within the social media channel. Initially, PR seemed to dominate integration of this channel in their work, naturally, because it connected them quickly and widely with global audiences - press and consumers alike. The channel didn't have that many features and that was ok for PR because they just wanted to tell their stories.

Today and in the future, the channel has bells and whistles. And while PR will continue to work in the channel, telling stories, advertising creatives have the opportunity to stretch the functionality of the channel, create new features with their partners in interactive, and tell the stories with mind blowing creative showcasing new products and services like we've never experienced before.

You want the secret to making social media work for a brand? It's all about integration. A holistic approach to social media in your overall marketing plan, great storytellers and oh...creative that gives you goosebumps.

Crowdsourcing my Social Media for PR Syllabus: Need your Input!

The end of the fall semester is right around the corner and that means it's time to start thinking about spring classes. When I started teaching my Social Media for PR class in Fall 07, the field was so new I had little to go on to help me put together a syllabus. In the end, I developed my syllabus by compiling a number of social media and PR topics I felt my students needed to know. I have been tweaking the class ever since -- adding topics, changing readings, experimenting with assignments, etc.

This semester, I'm ready for a major overhaul and I'm asking for your input! I'd love to create a state of the art Social Media for PR syllabus crowdsourced by experts in the field. And I'd love to hear from you! Actually, make that I need to hear from you!

What do you think PR majors should know about social media -- specifically:

• What topics should a Social Media for PR class cover?
• What readings are absolute musts?
• How can students demonstrate their mastery of course content? What should the student projects/assignments consist of?

I have started the brainstorming process in this wiki and I would like to invite anyone with an interest in social media and PR to contribute to it. The wiki is open to anyone (you will need to create a free Pb Wiki login if you don't already have one). Please feel free to suggest additional topics, projects, readings, etc. I've also posted my old syllabi on the wiki for reference purposes.

Can't wait to hear from you/see your suggestions!

You don't need to tweet to get value out of Twitter

Yes, you heard me right: You don't necessarily need to tweet in order to get value from Twitter! Let me explain why I say this. For the last few semesters I have been encouraging my PR students to get on Twitter. I've explained the necessity to be Twitter literate (twitterate?) and discussed examples of corporate, non-profit, and personal uses of Twitter. I've even thrown in a lecture on how to use Twitter as a job search and personal branding tool. The response though has been mixed. While some students get really excited, others react much less enthusiastically.

Let me make a confession here before moving on: I probably fell into that second category myself when I first learned about Twitter back in 2007. I saw its potential as a PR tool, but as an academic, I didn't see the need to tweet myself. I set up an account mainly because people were talking about it and I felt it was something I should discuss in my social media class. I basically registered my account so I could learn about Twitter.

So now you know - I never planned on tweeting myself! Having said that, I think I can understand my students' initial hesitation about joining the twitterverse. I've been there. So here's my advice for them (and anyone else sharing their feelings): Just set up an account, develop a network and listen in - no need to jump in with your own tweets right away! Staying away from tweeting for a while might even open your eyes to Twitter's potential as a powerful social search engine.

So how do you develop a good network?

1. Start by identifying a few people in your field whose work you admire. Then look them up to see if they tweet. You may use Twitter's built-in search engine to locate people on Twitter (click on the 'Find People' link on the top right hand side of the page), or you can check their blog or other social networking site to look for their Twitter handle.
2. Now you can piggy-back off their following/follower list! Go through both lists to see whether there are any people who share your interests or who tend to pass along valuable information. A quick look at their latest tweets usually is enough to make that call.
3. When someone in your network sends out an RT (retweet), look up the person who sent the original tweet. Again, check their latest tweets to see if you could benefit from the type of info they tweet.
4. Check out the #followfriday suggestions from the people in your network. Every Friday thousands of Twitter users all over the world participate in this event by suggesting people who are worth following.
5. You can also check Twitter for suggested users although those suggestions won't be tailored to your specific needs. Twitter uses the analogy of your local book store's staff picks to explain its suggested users list.
6. If you want to receive suggestions on who to follow based on your current network, give Mr. Tweet a try. Mr. Tweet looks through your relationships and tweets to identify the influencers and followers you should follow.
7. An even easier way to discover new and interesting Twitter users is to consult a Twitter list. Twitter is in the process of rolling out its own list feature to the public, so you may want to check your favorite tweeter's lists once the feature goes live for everyone.
8. In the meanwhile, check out the lists published on TweepML, another service that allows you "to manage and share groups of Twitter users." Use its "find a list" search tool to locate lists of Twitter users in your field (for instance, check out this list of educators on Twitter, or this list of PR pros).

If you implement all of the steps outlined above, you should end up with a pretty good-sized group of people to follow. Now all we need to do is a bit of network tweaking:

1. Start by filtering your incoming tweets. That's the only way to keep on top of Twitter when you are following a large group of people. Get a Twitter desktop client such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic and divide the people you follow into groups. For instance, I have a group for PR educators, one for PR professionals, another one for non-English tweets, etc. By organizing them into categories, the tweets will be neatly displayed in columns which will make it much easier to scan your tweets for relevant information.
2. "Test drive" your Twitter subscriptions for a month or two. Then re-evaluate. Are there accounts you are subscribing to that aren't providing much value to you? If so, hit the "unfollow" button! Think of your subscriptions as coming with a money back guarantee. If you don't like what you see, simply cancel at no cost to you.
3. Don't forget to repeat steps 1-8 every now and then to add new voices to your Twitterstream.

Do this for a while and I'll almost guarantee you'll see the value of Twitter and will want to get involved yourself. You'll learn so much from the people you follow and come across so much great information you'll want to reciprocate by sharing your insights.