LOST IN MASTICATION

UC Irvine hosted a budget write-in this week and I can’t imagine why we’re still putting pen to paper.

While delivering letters in bulk to our state legislators is much more civil and respectful than the protests and disobedience that have been observed around UC campuses this past month, aren’t there more innovative, collaborative and effective ways in which to communicate our dismay with the state of the State and University?

After all, isn’t the University of California the top public institution in the world?  Don’t we produce Nobel Prize winners and Fulbright Scholars, life-saving research and game-changing technology?

Advice to UC students.  Take what you know best — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — and turn it into a campaign that legislators can’t ignore, toss aside, or hand to an aide to craft a scripted response.

The write-in would have been a good opportunity for student leaders to flip out their mobile phones and interview each other about the personal impact the fee hike will have on them come the new academic year.  It was a chance for students to plead their hardships, share their personal stories, and talk about their needs… and to tell their stories through a new medium to legislators and public citizens alike.

If just a 1,000 students from each campus joined a Facebook fan page or custom website that integrates Facebook Connect (or the like) and allow students to voice their concerns online – that would be a collective power of 10,000 voices telling their story to the public. The public and media can then help pay it forward and tell tens of thousands of other people how devastating the fee hikes are.

A letter only goes to one person, and your voice may or may not ever be heard.  But new media content can be shared, redistributed, repackaged, emailed, linked, tweeted…  The same effort put into a letter can be put into a message that has the potential to be heard across the world.

And all it takes it the one story that becomes viral.  The one story that tugs at the hearts of the voters of California, the philanthropist across the globe, and the legislator who votes on the UC budget.

How about a video profile of how much it costs to be a bio major:  How much are your textbooks?  What additional lab fees do you pay?  And how are you able to afford the expensive rent around Westwood, Irvine, Santa Barbara?

Letter-writing campaigns didn’t even work in my time as a UCSA Legislative Affairs member or ASUCD External Affairs Chair.  What worked were the face-to-face meetings with the educational committee members, staffers for the legislators or better yet the legislators themselves.

Today, students have the best tools at their fingertips: new media and social networks.  Whether it’s a student, parent, professor or staff member speaking, why aren’t we using these innovative communication mediums, which are either no-cost or low-cost, to effectively lobby the State and its citizens?

A collective voice is a powerful thing when used the right way.

Protesting and rioting may have worked in the 1970s.  But times are different. Technology is different.

The UC’s budget is an obvious mess, and I have strong personal opinions about it.  What it boils down to though, is there’s plenty of blame to spread.  But I don’t think it’s too late to make a new media move — the right move — to influence change from the ground up.

Picket signs, the wood sticks and magic markers to poster board is so last millennium, and so un-ecofriendly.  If you want to be heard, to be green, to be innovative with your message, take a lesson from the 2008 Presidential elections.  That wasn’t that long ago…

THEN

Marketing and branding were about pushing your message to consumers. You sold them what they never knew they wanted.

Marketing used to be all about the product or service. What made your product unique from anything else on the market? What was the value-add in your version versus a competitor? Did you have the best price or experience for the money?

Branding was all about the image of that product or service. What perception did you want your customers to have about your company? What did customers feel about consuming what you had to offer?

NOW

Marketing and branding are responses to real-time customer demands and needs. Customers are telling you what they want. You are listening – more than ever – to the consumer, instead of dictating to them what they can or cannot live without.

Marketing is now much more than the product or service.  While people still connect with an object such as a particular coffee brand or airline, it’s not enough to sell how tasteful your peppermint latte is or the extra 6-inches of legroom compared to a competitor.

Likewise, branding is now about customer interaction (not to be confused with customer service), corporate social responsibility, online culture and community, and much more.

Making this shift to social media isn’t an easy move. Wait too long to get on the bandwagon, and you’ve lost your first-mover advantage. Act too fast, and you may not have a well thought-out strategy.

So how do you know whether to jump into the next new web trend? How do you evaluate your presence in that landscape? How do you use the new media tool in such a way that no one else is using it? Thinking outside the box and being innovative with the new media tools will help in setting your company, brand and product apart.

Whether it’s a mobile app, interactive website that has nothing to do with your product and everything about your consumers, there’s definitely a niche that you can create for yourself within your industry that will accomplish the original goals of branding and marketing.

Here are a few new media integration examples that are successful at tying together “new marketing” and “new branding” into the digital customer experience:

Sonicare: Adopt-a-Tooth

The Sonicare Facebook application keeps the user engaged over and over again by encouraging good dental hygiene through a “pet” tooth.  Take better care of our “canine” and be privy to special gifts and promotions.

When someone takes action with their pet tooth, it can appear on their friends news feeds, and is always visible on the owner’s profile.

In today’s social network landscape where the popularity of social gaming such as Mafia Wars and Farmville are growing exponentially, it’s smart for a brand to jump into the arena with the right interactive app.

Coke Zero Facial Profiler

Coca-cola claims that Coke Zero has been one of the most successful product launches in its history. In the two years since its release, Coke Zero has sold nearly 450 million cases and is available in more than 100 countries. So why not take this success and broad reach to connect your fans online?

That’s exactly what cokezero.com does. The site says nothing about the product except for a wordmark that includes the tagline “Real Coke Taste. Zero Calories.”  Instead, their site is home to the Facial Profiler application, which uses Facebook Connect to troll tagged images of you to help find your look-alike.

The premise? A social experiment: If millions of people like you enjoy Coke Zero, then there surely is another person that looks like you that enjoys Coke Zero.

USAA Mobile App

Your new media presence doesn’t always have to be through a web browser. USAA takes personal finance management to a whole new level with their iPhone app. Unique features include:

• Deposit@Mobile — Depositing a check is as simple as snapping a photo.
• ATM Locator — Find the closest ATMs.
• Loan Calculator — Estimate monthly payments on a loan.
• Rental Car Locator — Find the nearest Avis, Budget or Hertz location.
• Accident Checklist — Record accident details to help you file a claim.

[Unfortunately, this isn't a well thought out post, and completely un-researched.  I write this blog-post-turned-essay as a way to spark constructive discussion about the Web and the way it is transforming lives.]

Happy 40th birthday Internet.

The first test that led to the operation of the Internet happened on September 2, 1969.  Many other things happened that summer, including the Apollo 11 lunar landing and Woodstock.  All three events changed the course of history in then unimaginable ways.  None, however, has affected individual lives as much as the Internet.

The Internet made the Web possible. (By comparison, the Web is only half the age of the Internet.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Web has changed so much about our society, culture and habits.  Many are embracing it, while others will continue to shun it.  Regardless of which side you’re on, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the Web is here to stay.

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How does the Internet see you?

That is the question that Personas, a project at MIT, asks.  It’s a kind of Doppler Radar for your Web presence.  Here’s what my Personas looks like.

It leaves me wondering… what’s so “illegal” about me?

I don’t think there’s anything you can decipher or definitively pull from the Personas analysis.  But it is a great way to take an alternate look at your personal brand on the World Wide Web.

Here’s an analysis for Liz Pulliam Weston, a personal finance adviser, and contributor to MSN.  Liz’s presence is much more diverse, colorful, and spans 29 dimensions (versus my three).  If nothing else, it says that her brand touches a wide-spectrum of interest and very broadly on the Web.

And why not type in your corporate brand as well and see what comes up?

[Hat-tip to Sam Kaufman]

I responded to a manifesto by Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch today, asking:

Why do you, or why don’t you, use Twitter?… I only forbid one answer: “because everyone else is doing it.” That’s the same reason people wore Hammer pants.

In short, my answer was that I use it because it’s part of my research to do my job effectively, and to stay on the cutting edge of my industry.  (Go here for the long answer.)

That all led me to wonder how my tweets were being used by others… if at all.  I know what value I am getting, but what do others get out of my 140-character banter?

Sure people retweet what I say or converse with me via my public lifestream at @sherrymain.  But is all the noise I make actually worthy of anything other than building my online-ego?

I came across an LA Times article from May 21 that quotes my tweet verbatim (down to the hashtag!), and associates it with my full-time profession:

Gun scare at UCI serves as test for text-alert system

…Reports also spread through campus through hundreds of messages on the microblogging site, with students sending tweets about helicopters hovering above campus, swarms of police and apparent lockdowns. “For those reporting on #UCI incident, evidence that UCI’s ZotAlert system works, and Twitter helps to spread the word beyond,” wrote Sherry Main, a communications director at UCI.

Someone is listening!  The media are listening, especially  because I wear a communications hat.  So in fact, the primary reason for my tweeting maybe to research the medium, but a by-product of that research is that I represent not only my private self, but any and all organizations that I am affiliated with.

In such a public forum, I must always be “on” – whether I tweet about my restless night at 3 a.m. or the hair in my lunch – people (and the media, which include major papers, bloggers, etc.) are listening and looking for quick, easy ways to obtain and retool information.

I’ve always been consciously aware that anyone can read what I write, but being consciously aware that someone can reuse what you write, is something completely different.

What starts as research quickly turns into addiction – ahem, Twitter and Facebook – especially when my interactions with the respective communities grow.  But the value in this addiction lies in the ability to filter out the noise and extract lessons for both my life and more importantly to carve a career path and expert niche for myself.

Twitter backgrounds can now be interactive… [Correction: Works on any browser!  See comment  from ShiftComm below.]

Installing and activating your page with Clickable Now is good practice.  Your followers, customers, and constituents may be using either browser, and this is just one more step that will help ease the process for people who want to interact with you on the Social Web.

Install the add-on or script into your browser from here, then give Clickable Now access to your Twitter account.  Once you do, it’s pretty simple (See the screen shots below):

1. Click on the “New Link” button.
2. Drag the link box to the portion of your sidebar that you’d like hyper-linked.
3. Resize to fit the area to be hyper-linked.
4. Enter the email or Web site information, and choose the highlight color.
5. Save settings.

That’s it!  Although this only works on Firefox browsers, and for those who have installed the add-on, it’s a big step forward.  We’ve been wanting the Twitter backgrounds to be interactive for a long time.

You can see below what we’ve hyper-linked @INCULINK or on my personal page @SherryMain.  We’ve added live links to our logo and URL, personal blogs, personal Twitter accounts, and to our Facebook fan page.

Perhaps one day, HTML will go the way of Photoshop layers and allow us to upload custom HTML backgrounds behind the Twitter feeds.  But until then, this will do…

Hat-tip to Todd Defren (@tdefren) of ShiftComm.com.

Check Vark out on Sunday’s New York Times… Congrats, Vark Team!

A few months ago, I wrote a post introducing Aardvark (aka Vark) – a service where your question is broadcast to those mostly likely able to answer it within the Aardvark community.

Vark has been really useful because I can broadcast a specific question without clogging Facebook or Twitter feeds, and count on someone with at least a basic knowledge of my query, to point me in the right direction.

Today, I got an email from CEO Max Ventilla:

Since you’ve blogged about Aardvark in the past, I thought you might be interested in some exciting developments…

…Anyone can join now at http://vark.com using their Facebook account. (We’re integrating with other social networks very soon.)

[Fan them on Facebook too.]

This is a great move on the part of Aardvark.  They’ve really come a long way in the last few months, partly thanks to the growth in number of users.  Once it reaches critical mass, it’s value will increase exponentially.

Five more suggestions that I think will make their tool and brand name powerful are:

1. Allow my Vark Q&As to be published to social network feeds, particularly on Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed.
2. Facebook app that can also be a tab within a profile where friends can see your Vark profile, and question/answers.
3. iPhone app (this is already in the works)
4. And if an exact or very similar query has already been answered, to automatically “reuse” that answer for faster responses (with a like/dislike option).
5. Vanity URL to profile.  (I’d like “vark.com/sherry”.)

I enjoy Vark because it’s (almost) anonymous social networking: I’m interacting with strangers to help them out, and vice versa.  If you use the instant messaging (IM) tool for Vark, the unexpected randomness of questions breaks up my work day.  Vark “interrupts” subtly by asking “Are you there?” and you can choose whether to engage or not by typing “sure”, “busy”, or “pass”.

Try it out… you’ll be surprised at how much you actually know.

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“Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”

-Philip L Graham, Publisher, Washington Post

I had several conversations this week about how Communications Directors and other media relations folks can use Twitter to interact with the printed press.   Interesting topic for a few reasons:

1. All indications are that the printed press is of the dying breed;
2. Using a 2.0 tool to connect with 1.0 media seems like an oxymoron;
3. New media communications is about getting information out quickly, and interactions surrounding it.  Print offers neither.

My colleagues and I stopped using news wires, primarily because of the cost associated with their services.  The same effort that it takes to write a press release and submit it through news wires can easily be used to broadcast yourself by serving as your own news service.

Communications needs have changed, as well.  I find more value in the interaction and feedback with our constituents on our blogs and social networks (primarily Facebook).

All this said, many journalists are adopting 2.0 tools in order to save their 1.0 business. Just this week, the New York Times appointed Jennifer Preston (@NYT_JenPreston) the New York Times’ first Social Media Editor.  Both the Times and Washington Post are doing a great job using new media and multimedia tools, and creating unique content using free resources such as Google maps and API calls.

So how do you find the reporters/journalists that best fit your communications needs?  Try these resources.  (If you have other ones, let us know by leaving a comment!)

• @muckrack – Muck Rack is the best repository of journalists that I’ve seen so far.  You can sort by beat, news outlet, or even recent tweeted photos.
• @wefollow – We Follow is a user-powered Twitter directory where Twitterers self-identify their areas of interest or affiliation through tags.  It’s not as easy to search by beat or outlet as Muck Rack, but you may find some unusual suspects here.
• Media on Twitter – In addition to U.S. journalists, Media on Twitter has lists of journalists and news media Twitter accounts in Australia, Canada, France, India, Malta, Mexica, Russia, South Africa, Thailand and the UK.

By the way, if you’re a major newspaper needing a Social Media Editor, tweet me @sherrymain.  I’m interested… and interesting!

I often find myself trying to explain why I tweet, how it helps me, and why not Facebook… to list just a few questions.  Tweeting isn’t for everyone.  And, to each their own.

So here are my personal reasons for Tweeting (note: this does not translate to my philosophy on my professional/business uses of Twitter):

• I learn A LOT. 140 characters gives a quick summary about a story, and helps me decide if I want to read more – whether it’s new media stories from @Mashable or current events from @WSJ.
• Making connections.  I communicate with reporters such as @grobbins in my professional capacity or find the best local eats from @dbgoudie.  I even get virtual high-five’s from @charliefogg.  It’s like going to a networking event or meet-up… but not.
• Be the first to know.  News travels like rapid-fire on Twitter – way before it can be picked up by online newspapers.  Imagine had Twitter existed on September 11, 2001.  How many more lives may have been saved, I wonder?
• It’s not about getting 17,000 followers.  I’m on Twitter because it’s a great way to discover new things.  I enjoy the random conversations that I could never have otherwise with @ChasL, an interactive designer in Austin, or ReadWriteWeb blogger @eng1ne.  That said, I am flattered that 500+ people find what I say to be interesting enough to follow me.
• Brands and celebrities are uninteresting.  I hate being marketed to and I don’t gain anything from knowing where Britney is getting her car washed. But I do enjoy @Zappos or @JetBlue because they aren’t just about selling, but about offering human connections.
• No need to reciprocate.  In Facebook, you are mutually “friends”.  In Twitter, there’s no obligation to follow anyone… even those who are my real friends.  In fact, I only follow those who regularly post unique and intriguing tweets.  I can’t imagine trying to follow 1,000 tweeples as an individual.
• There are no rules.  BAH to those who say to limit tweets to 5x per day or avoid tweeting personal details.  I’m human and if I want sympathy for my migraine, I’ll seek it.  Tweet as little or as much as you want, about whatever.
• Camaraderie. Put another way, snobbery.  It’s yet another elitist clique where you have unique friendships – a sort of post-college sorority/fraternity.

Join the club and follow me @sherrymain I’d love to hear about your personal philosophy on tweeting too.  What do you get out of it?  Leave me a comment and let me know.

Alas, I’m tool old for this competition, but if you’re 28 years or under, check out the YouTube, Cannes Young Lions video competition.

Create a YouTube video in 48-hours starting at Midnight on May 15, and you can have the chance to be at the Cannes Croisette at the very moment that the world’s advertising community is in town for their annual get-together at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

Two winners will be part of a team that takes on 37 others from around the world in a week-long challenge to shoot and edit a 60-second commercial on behalf of a charity.

More from YouTube:

In terms of the YouTube competition, would-be winners (who must be 28 or younger) will be able to see the brief from midnight on May 15. They will then have to upload their finished ads to the Cannes Lions channel within 48 hours, and then embark on a quest for clicks and kudos before the curtain comes down on the competition on June 1.

A panel of industry professionals will review the entries (as well as views, ratings and the profile of the ad) before announcing the winners. So stay tuned to the Cannes Lions channel for more information, review the efforts of those who have gone before you, and make sure your creative juices are set to flow forth once the starting pistol is fired on May 15.