Blogging Wizardry: Day Nineteen

Wagging The End of Your Tale





As this elderly gentleman -- a.k.a. the Storytelling Wizard -- says, you need to know your destination, or ending, before you can set off on your journey. We two were pretty clueless before we started this blog, but in the process of researching and interviewing people with direct experience of this medium we have learned much. Friends have been generous with their time and ideas for future blogs.

The following collection of short YouTube videos feature NPRs Ira Glass, who offers some hard-hitting words about how failure is tied into success in online broadcasting, he stresses "the importance of abandoning crap," which is easier said than done, advising that out of every 6 stories followed, perhaps 1 will live up to your standards. "About a half to a third of everything we research...we kill...By killing, you make something else, even better, live." (Thanks to Dana for forwarding us this clip)

Flickgrrl Carrie Rickey, who has authored her own widely followed movie blog for many years, offered her formula for success, suggesting: "With blogs, you've got to let people get in and out quickly. They want to leave with a tidbit." (in an interview June 7th) "You want to take them places and show them the value-added. And people like videos, as long as they are under 2 minutes long." (Y-E-S, got something right; our magical storyteller comes in under 2 minutes)

Cue hasty departure, but not before Keri shows off her latest technical wizardry. Tra-la. A video clip.



Footnote from Keri (our kitchen cinematographer): Here's how we shot and posted the video clip--easier than we would have thought--and we fully recognize that there may be another way to do this but this method worked for us. NB: this applies to macs only.

1. Open Photo Booth. See alarming closeup of your face.
2. Click on the icon that looks like a filmstrip (remember those?).
3. Click the red button in the center of your photo booth screen to begin recording.
4. Click the square in the lower center of your photo booth screen to stop recording.
5. Click the email icon in the upper left and email the movie to yourself.
6. Open the email and save the attachment to your desktop or iphoto files.
7. Open blogger and click "add video".
8. Click "browse" and open your iphoto, desktop or document file where the clip is stored. Click on your new movie file.
9. Click "upload file" then "save".
10. Take a deep bow.

Posted by: Claire and Keri

Twitter Tips And More from Sky Blue Events Entrepreneur: Day Eighteen

"Colored Engagement Rings--Love it or leave it?"




Do you care even...? You might not, but plenty of people do says Jennifer Grove, owner of Sky Blue Events and social media marketing maven.

Sky Blue Events relies 100% on Twitter and Blog Conversations to Generate Business. That's right, their advertising budget is $0. And they can barely keep up with the traffic.

Says Grove: "I spend at least 2 hours a day blogging and tweeting. And that's not enough. That enables me to look after the business that comes into me, but doesn't give me the time to go out and generate new business. I also have a marketing assistant who works on maintaining our relationships. Between us, we probably spend around 20 hours a week on social media."


Sky Blue Events has capitalized on the potential of social media in ways that traditional wedding and party planners have not. Their clients range from non-profits and boutiques to weddings and pan-national launches. When Grove hires a new employee, twitter following and facebook friend lists are a prime consideration. Applicants with small numbers need not apply. The customer base grows via virtual word of mouth recommendation--or word of keypad, as it seems to be nowadays. This seems impersonal, but it's not. Grove relies on a tried and trusted network of friends in ever widening circles.

A recent success story: Grove tweeted about Sugarcoma, a tasting tour of bakeries in Washington DC. Within twelve hours the tickets were gone, and there were clamors for more. A similar event is being planned in Baltimore--followers are requesting tickets even before a date and location(s) have been announced.

Grove's business model draws from the best elements of her professional experience and with 7 years of e-Commerce under her very fashionable belt, she is way ahead of the pack.

Her biggest challenge is maintaining the relationships. In the immediacy of today's communication, clients expect a prompt response. Sky Blue Events is fanatical about this. The two hours each morning we mentioned above? Item one on the daily agenda. Responses come within twenty-four hours or less--and even that can be a struggle for the team.


Jennifer shared her Top Twitter Tips:

1. Strike a balance between personal presence and professional presence.


2. Stay active; people will drop off if you're not entertaining and engaging.


3. Seed keywords in tweets, that's how people find you: " wedding planning" or "engagement ring".


4. Put a URL in tweets so people circle back to you.


5. Link a blog to your tweets; ask people to retweet.
   


6. Solicit opinions; people love to share theirs.


7. Jump in with both feet.

Flickgrrl Shares her Thoughts on Blogging: Day Seventeen

We were lucky enough to score a meeting with The Philadelphia Inquirer's film critic and blogger extraordinaire Carrie Rickey who generously shared her observations on social media strategies and spaghetti.

Q: In interviewing our coterie of Social Media 'experts' one theme keeps repeating itself. It's all trial and error. Val at Plannerzone , described the situation aptly as "throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks." Do you think this is a fair description?


A: "I think it's more a case of throw the Spaghetti at the wall...and see what people eat. Some people like the Department Store approach, the aggregators, like The Huffington Post, while others like the boutique experience within the Department store, like flickgrrl

"Social media is transformational. It's like when the first radio came out in the 1920s. No-one knew how to monetize this, but they liked it because it was new and hip."

Is it a TARDIS (DR Who's Time Traveling Machine)? Is it an early refrigerator? Nope, it's one of the earliest commercial radios.


Q: How much time do you spend on blog posts?

A: "It depends, some take longer than others. For example...Clint Eastwood's 80th Birthday took several hours and significant research but Talking Dogs could be zapped out in 15 minutes."

Q: Do you use Facebook and how many followers do you have?

"Facebook is hugely important as a way to broaden and maintain my audience. I post under my real name Carrie Rickey and I have about 1200 followers. But also some of these followers will forward my posts to their friends, so word spreads that way.

"I always post my flickgrrl blog on facebook and usually put a question in the caption to that post, so people will comment. People like to give their opinions."

Q: What happens when you get to 5000 - the Facebook maximum?

A: "I've got a long way to go...The way I decide on who to friend is I generally friend people who have at least 10 other friends in common."

Q: Do you Twitter?

A: "No, and I know I should. Roger Ebert said I just MUST get on Twitter and I will have to shortly. Roger is so good at the apercu. He'll be leaving a movie review and come up with that quick one liner which is just hilarious. "

Q: What are your favorite blogs?

A The Atlantic Monthly. A movie blog called the self styled siren and A List of Things Thrown 5 Minutes Ago.

Thanks to Carrie for taking the time to share her insights about blogging. Kind readers, vote now...what's YOUR favorite blog? (besides this one, of course.)

Posted by: Keri and Claire

Going Viral with Lane Bryant: Day Sixteen

Have we gone from spaghetti to cheesecake and back again?



The recent contretemps between Lane Bryant and Fox/ABC networks demonstrated the tremendous power of social media.

Lane Bryant, clothier of plus-sized women, created a suggestive commercial showcasing their new lingerie line.

Fox and ABC refused to air it, deeming it too racy. Lane Bryant posted the controversy on their blog, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Bloggers far and wide voiced their outrage, decrying the networks' unwillingness to show a scantily clad curvaceous woman on TV while they routinely broadcast skinny gals romping in their skivvies on other commercials, not to mention the skin they bare on regular programming. The video of the forbidden commercial went viral and, according to Advertising Age, was the #1 viewed clip on YouTube last week with well over 3 million hits.

What we would like to learn and, despite many attempts cannot, is how this happened. Was it a true grass-roots, organically grown campaign that legitimately voiced real people's opinions--essentially the spaghetti that did stick to the wall--or was it a brilliantly crafted strategy by the Lane Bryant ad execs who know that along with skin, righteous indignation sells?



The end result, of course, was that the networks gave in. The commercial was aired during the last ten minutes of American Idol, which is a primo timeslot, thus demonstrating the power of social media as an agent for change. Ok, ok, it didn't end world hunger or stop gun violence, but it has been called a victory for curvy women everywhere, a boon to the First Amendment, and proof that if enough people speak out, they can make a difference.

Some claim the whole saga was merely a publicity stunt by Lane Bryant to get more bang for their advertising buck.

What do YOU think?

Posted by: Keri

Day Fifteen: Search Engine Optimization (Insider Tricks)

The Spider and the Fly

A Poem by Mary Howitt

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."

Search Engine Optimization is yet another one of those insider buzzwords that gets thrown around with gusto (SEO for short, if you're in the biz, apparently).

The more we read up on the subject, however, the more it comes across as a dark art; practized by a near secret society of search engine optimization "engineers," "consultants," and cognescenti. From a superficial reading of on-line resources, we have gleaned the following insights:

1. Get inside your visitor's head

In order to get your website or blog noticed, you must think like your visitor; you need to try and work out how they found you or other similar sites. Which keywords are your friends / customers / followers typing into Google in order to track you down? This wonderful piece of wisdom is explored at length on HubSpot's website - HubSpot is one of the Social Media Marketing specialists in this area - and their website is worth trawling for all things related to SEO marketing and other such pearls of wisdom.

An excellent starting point, again from the generous folks at http://www.hubspot.com/ is "The Shortest Tutorial Ever on SEO." Go play.

2. Enticing your visitor into the Pantry....

Said the Spider to the Fly,"Dear friend what can I do,

To prove the warm affection I 've always felt for you?

I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;

I'm sure you're very welcome -- will you please to take a slice?"

Accepted wisdom suggests that your website or blog needs to have a 'landing page.' This is that page which looks like an empty form with lots of boxes to be completed. The goal of your website/blog is to draw your visitor onto this page so that they voluntarily offer you information which then enables you then to profile who they are and interact appropriately.

You'll recognize when you're on this page on a website because it's the point where the site asks you for your personal information name, your telephone number and email address and there is normally an open ended question asking you to clarify what you are seeking. [In order to get you to surrender your personal details, you have probably been offered a related freebie -- a free e-book, webinar, information about an event, for example.]

3. 12 tips for using Google search more effectively.

We came across this excellent insider's guide to improving your use of Google. You may think you know this stuff already, but again if you want to hone your understanding of how keywords work, it's worthwhile improving your own search skills. Prepare to be surprised at some of the easy-peasy ways you can search more effectively. For example, "define easy peasy" takes you to a dictionary definition of the word. If you just type in "easy peasy" then you'll get adverts for a new Linux operating system called by the same name.

Tired of desk research, we're just nipping off for lunch with a well-known Philly blogger who regularly gets tens of thousands of hits a month on her flickgrrl blog

Our goal is to find out what it takes to write a commercially successful blog.

Guessed who it is yet?

Posted by: Claire

Day Fourteen: Social Activism & Social Media

Driving in the city last night, we were stopped in our tracks by a political protest of some 200 or so protestors. As the protestors waved their placards ferociously, the commuters sat watching wearily. The traffic lights changed several times as the protestors' police escort effectively grid-locked Center City.

That same day, we were accosted in the street by beaming students on two separate occassions; on Chestnut Street we were assailed by the charity Doctors Without Borders, on Walnut by an environmental group. Clearly, the nicer weather has flushed out all those clipboard-wielding volunteers and activists who like to burn off calories while championing a worthy cause.

While not wishing to demean the beliefs of any of these groups of campaigners, it becomes interesting to speculate how much more they might achieve using social media.

Compare this protest in Center City, to the Facebook (FB) community's campaign to overturn Facebook's loosey-goosey* attitude to the privacy of personal data. By coming together en masse and agitating for change, using Facebook itself to spread the word, the FB community overturned the status quo in a remarkably short period of time.

A recent article in USA Today, (25th May) explored the nature of this phenomenon:

Twitter is "brewing a social revolution," says Jeff Pulver, a tech entrepreneur and founder of #140conf, an annual conference on all things Twitter. "Now it's about me the people, not we. Individuals have a voice like never before, and it's a voice that's connected to the world...during Haiti's disaster, everyone was tuned to the same channel, and it was called Twitter," he says.

As airlifts sped to Port-au-Prince, Pulver read a tweet from NBC reporter Ann Curry about a Doctors Without Borders relief flight that was unable to get clearance to land. Pulver re-tweeted that to his followers and immediately got a response from the U.S. Air Force saying, "We're on it."

The plane soon was able to land.

That's Twitter as a rallying point for social good, something co-founder Stone hopes will blossom. "Twitter is people emoting, and we would love to extend that to empathy," he says.

Nice thought.

If you've read to the end of this blog, your reward is yet another fascinating factoid. Loosey Goosey apparently comes from the slang African-American term "Loose as a Goose", which according to the Urban American Dictionary has a rather naughty meaning: the term seems relevant to FB, given the company's recklessness with other people's personal data...

Posted by: Claire

Day Thirteen: A Cautionary Tale

Last week, I committed a Facebook faux pas. I received a friend request from a woman whom I did not recognize so I declined it. I’ll call her Virginia G. Castorini, though that is not her real name. Turns out, it was my cousin and she was extremely miffed. Problem is, I know my cousin as Ginny Greene (again, not her real name), and had forgotten her recently acquired married surname. I was also unaware that she was using the extended version of her Christian name. I learned all of this via back channels after the fact, of course. When I tried to go back in and send Ginny a message to undo the damage I'd done, I couldn’t find her on Facebook.

Knowing my relatives, this will go down in history as “The Facebook Incident” and could easily cause a family rift if swift and decisive action is not taken. Since I failed to locate Ginny on FB (or Virginia, as she is apparently now known) I sent a direct message to her husband explaining the gaffe and issuing abject apologies accompanied by reasonable explanations. That was 25 hours ago. Given the immediacy of Facebook, I do not find the delay encouraging, alas. If a response does not arrive soon I shall have to break down and call her. (Oddly, I don't have her email address.)

So, Facebook requires caution. In the same way that we take privacy measures to protect ourselves from unscrupulous people, we must also take measures to avoid hurting others. We Dopes deem it better to leave a request unanswered than to commit a FB snub. But we readily admit that this is not a perfect solution and as we move closer to Doyenne status it will not fly. Presently we can plead cluelessness. For the uber-active FBers (some might call you cyber-sluts), you can invoke the 5000 friend maximum rule. But that only works if you are nearing the magic number.

We are eager to hear your thoughts on addressing this thorny problem, particluarly for the vast majority of FB users who fall between the Dopes and the 5000 Club. Please share your suggestions under the comments section below.


For help with the more serious and potentially dangerous side of FB, we found some useful resources for parents and teachers:

Stop cyberbullying

Facebook Resources for Educators

Posted by: Keri