Let's see. What's going on? Tons.

Still loving my new job. Still pinching myself, even though the hours are a heck of a lot longer than my last job. And I don't even mind. I figure that long hours + working from home + sleeping in + working in my jammies is much better than fixed hours + long commute + evil dress code. Though I do miss the cafeteria.

In addition to long hours, there's turning out to be a lot of travel and I'm very excited. Next month I'm heading to Glasgow (by my lonesome!), attending the BlogHer Business Conference in NYC, and driving to Toronto with my sister and Jimbo for sis' birthday.

April's not so bad. I'll only be traveling to San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo with my bosses. We're already talking about a day trip to Sonoma!

Other than that, life's pretty normal. I hung out with Janet last Friday. We had dinner and a bottle of wine at Macaroni Grill, then did the drunken walk around the mall followed by coffee and reading at B&N. Typical Friday night stuffs. We also got together with our friends John & Kristen on Saturday night and then I went dress shopping (for my cousin's wedding) with Mom and sister Tot.

Tuesday night my new A Girl Must Shop editor Darlene, stopped by to talk about AGMS and just about everything else under the sun. We always have such a great time!

Blah Blah, nothing else. Chickens are good. Jimbo is good. Life is good.

Fond of Snape: Friday Fill-In #9

1. Once, when I .... woke up in the wee hours of the night, the neighbor was blasting music. For hours.

2. Lately, it seems that .... we need to add a bit of spark to our lives

3. Starbucks .. is so damn good!<

4. Here's something you never knew about me; I .... am really, really lazy.

5. I am so ready for .... Spring!

6. If you put together ... dirty martinis and tapas ... you'd have ... a great night out!

7. My plans for the weekend include ... Movies w/Janet, Kristen's birthday party and an At Home party with Monique and friends. !

Fond of Snape: Friday Fill-In #10

1. Fridays are .... absolutely fabulous.
2. It was a dark and stormy night; .... i forgot what i was going to say
3. I was texting ... and then I hit a parked car, causing the alarm to go off!
4. If wishes were ... free... then I'd ....keep wishing?
5. Do you get .... why my cat won't stop meowing? Yeah, me neither
6. Where in the world is ... Janet. She's totally idling
7. This weekend, I hope to ... Get to Glasgow in one piece and have a fabulous time!

Jimbo dropped me off at the airport at 7:30 and I grabbed a (rather strong!) dirty martini and a sammich before heading off on an 8-hour flight to London. I got plenty of sleep, though, so that was good. I got to Heathrow about 7am UK-time and waited/sat on a bus/waited/ran/waited in line for about an hour and a half before finally getting to my gate, stopping at the loo and boarding the plane.

The second flight was nice and short and I even got a window seat so I could see the hills and wee little houses down below. A gentleman behind my seat offered to help me with my bag and the one next to me was extra nice. I liked the UK already! Got into Glasgow on time, picked up my luggage in record time and caught a cab to the hotel. The older gentleman cabbie was also very very nice and we chatted about Glasgow and the states. He dropped me off where I was staying and wouldn't take a tip.

I walked down the street to a separate hotel I was to check into and was told I was to wait a few hours until my room was ready. I was cheerful from the cab ride and kind Scotsmen that I was fine with it and went to find shopping. I stopped at a Starbucks and grabbed a coffee and rested for a bit before hitting the stores for two hours or so before heading back to the hotel. I didn't buy anything!

Got back to the hotel to get my room key and got some help getting my bags over to the building where I'd be staying. It was an apartment. Nicely decorated and modern but unfortunately it didn't have internet access nor a phone, so I was a little bummed, but more tired than anything else so I took a nap, went out to grab some grub and then read a bit before hitting the hay early.

Monday I got to work right on time after stopping for a bagel and nutella (I love this place!) and met all the people I'd be working with. Then from there it was smooth sailing. That night I went out for drinks and dinner with the sweetest guys, ever. They wouldn't even let me carry my laptop bag, and helped me move my junk from one hotel to a new one with internet access and a phone. Course it wasn't as fancy as the apartment, but I was so thrilled to be in the hotel that it didn't matter.

That's about it so far. Back at work, day two. Having a ton of fun with the "Blokes" and working per usual. Not many pictures, yet. I'll have to work on that!

From Janet

I'm up at the crack of dawn getting ready for yet another business trip; this time to BlogHer Business '07 in New York City.

Up until last week my main purpose for attending this conference was two-fold - to volunteer as a live blogger and to cover the event for my day job. Then I got an email from Elisa about speaking at the Ask the Experts session on day one and I signed right up. I'm going to be talking about blog bling and widgets and how to make your blog as cool as humanly possible.

I'm really looking forward to the sessions and networking at the conference. I remember BlogHer 06 in San Jose last year and I met so many great, inspiring women. I'm sure this one will be no different.

Jimbo dropped me off at the airport and I was just sitting down to wait for my flight when I realized that I had forgotten my power cable for my laptop. I was surprised at how when I composed myself. I immediately texted Jimbo to send it overnight for morning delivery. Gah! Thank goodness I received it just about 8am this morning. Jimbo is my hero.

As expected, BlogHer Business is amazing. My hotel room is fabulously large for a NYC hotel and I have a corner room with a view Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. It’s really a trip to see people coming and going during rush hour; crowds flow to and from Penn Station.

I went to a little pre-conference party last night and met some really great women. That’s what I love about this conference, everyone has one thing in common and we’re all so welcoming to one another and there are always tons of laughs.

The $15 martini I had last night (on an empty stomach no less) kicked my arse. I woke up at 7am with a headache that has been off and on all day, but I’m doing alright. Meeting tons of great women and having a great time. Those who I’ve met up with so far:

Bee Kim Wedding Bee
Michelle Madhok She Finds
Gabielle Design Mom
Mir Miriam Kamin
Maria Niles Consumer Pop
Laura sk*rt
Kristen Darguzas Blogher
Shannon McKarney Tomoye
Christine Jordan Notes from the Trenches
Jen Jen Lemen
Rita Arens Surrender Dorothy Blog
Jennifer Simpson a.k.a. jesais
Lish Dorset Hand Made Detroit
Amy Gahran Contentios
Lori Magno MAGNO

So I might have messed up some of the links on my last entry, but I'm way too tired to fix it right now.

It's past midnight and that means that it's way past my bedtime. Today has been a whirlwind. As a BlogHer volunteer, I reported for duty at 10am sharp with the other volunteers to go over our duties. The conference started at 11am and it was nonstop from there.

Obviously BlogHer is a ton of fun. It's a smaller conference than the big one in San Jose, but this one is more focused on business bloggers, and I must say that I really enjoy the smaller crowd better. Many of the "A-list" bloggers are noticeably absent and as one of my fellow bloggers pointed out today, it makes us all feel like we're on the same level.

It was a day of tons of really excellent networking. I met a ton of people, but one person who I was thrilled to meet for the first time was Elise of Simply Recipes and Learning Movable Type. Being a total Movable Type nerd, I originally discovered Elise through Learning Movable Type where I actually gained a huge amount of my MT knowledge. I also attended her BlogHer06 session How to Build Blog Traffic and came away with a TON of hugely useful ideas for my blogs. Elise is hugely down to earth and I really enjoyed talking with her.

After the conference, I joined my fellow volunteers and hit the after party and about four Yahootinis and chatted it up with zillions of more people before hitting this lovely cheese restaurant and dragged my bottom back to the hotel....

so much more but i'm so darn tired.

Death or co-existence? The new social media press release. How it works. Does it work? Just one example of how social media tools are changing the face of P.R. Learn about it from people on both sides of the fence. Erin Kotecki-Vest moderates this discussion between Julie Crabill (from ShiftPR...a social media press release pioneer) P.R. veteran Betty Taylor and someone on the receiving end of all those press releases, MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco.

photo by mil8

The new social medial press release is a more interactive way of communicating with journalists. As opposed to the old style press release, this new version democratizes access to media and empowers a two-way conversation.

What’s the new social media press release? Well, it’s an interactive document that provides a great deal more information than a traditional press release. The press releases of the olden-days were text-heavy and brimming with editorializing and spin. It was a marketing pitch. It was bland. It puts us to sleep.

The new social media press release is an interactive documents, including:

• Contact Information
• Headline
• Core Facts
  
• Link & RSS feed to del-icio.us page purposed-built with relevant historical, trend, market, product and competitive content sources.
• Photos
• MP3s or podcasts
• Graphics
• Video
• Multimedia downloads (i.e. white papers)
• Quotes from executives, analysts, customers and/or partners
• Boilerplate statements
• RSS feed to news releases
• Add to del-icio-us
• Technorati/digg this

What the new social media press release does is provide a heck of a lot more content, resulting in a lot less work on the journalists end. Not only that, but the company has more control over the content that the journalist will see. It is however, more difficult to provide “spin.”

The new social media is distributed in the same way that traditional press releases, via major PR wires, etc.

Bambi, a journalist, never uses quotes from press releases. She loves it when press releases include statistics, traffic, competitive information and links to relevant sources. As a journalist, she doesn’t want to sound like anyone else; she wants to be a exclusive/unique news source. In this, she tends to use very little information from a press release. Information that other, lazy journalists may just copy and paste. The new social media press release provides journalists with a richer amount of information, with less spin and really assists the journalist take the richer content and take it to a higher level.

With this new format, PR companies fear that they have to give up control over the content that will be printed about their company/product. What they don’t realize is that they really had a lot of control to begin with. They’re throw together a press release with spin and editorializing and the media would extract what they want and form it in the manner that they want. They were just under the delusion of control.

Communicating with bloggers is a different ball game. Bloggers require a much more personalized communication. You need to check out the blog, do your research and understand the blog. Most bloggers welcome information from PR firms and company, but they want them to be honest. There should always be a legitimate reason for contacting a blogger.

Is the traditional press release dead? Nope, and it’s not going to die out quickly, either. Julie Crabill: “It’s more of a evolution than a revolution.”

Social Media press release examples (pdf)
Social media press release template
Belkin press release
social media press room template
SHIFT press room

Identifying relevant bloggers in your space. The tools to determine their authority & influence. Effective outreach without backlash. Featuring blogger Elise Bauer, marketing consultant Susan Getgood and Michelle Madhok, longtime expert on women online.

It’s imperative to understand bloggers and craft your messages specifically to the individual blogger. You have to be relevant. For example, if someone writes a blog about food, you don’t want to send them your Betty Crocker mix.

Companies and PR companies struggle to find the right bloggers for their messages. The best way to find the right bloggers is to read PR newswire feed, visit

Where to find the right bloggers….

• PR Newswire
• Quantcast

Where to find mommy bloggers:

• Go to blogher in July
• Start with the blogher site

How to find out who might blog about an item.

• Read back to see their history.
• • Monitor important keywords with tools like Google Alert and technorati.
• Bloggers have as much influence on this world as print.
• What works?
• Ask to send a sample (related directly to the content on the blog). Do NOT ask for a link.
• Know your audience, and how interesting the product would be for your audience.
• Be willing to gather feedback from the blogger. This is valuable focus group information.
• Be willing to provide incentive for the readers. Coupons are widely used, for example.
• ALWAYS getting people’s names right.
• “Did you receive what we sent?”

What DOESN’T

• Repeated phone calls/email inquiries about the status of your submission. Multiple calls and emails are usually ignored and the blogger is less likely to work with you, and discuss your product. This will end up hurting you in the end.
• “Are you planning on writing about it?” Are you planning on writing about our product?”
• Living and dying by technorati and alexa. It’s not about how many people visit, but how many people you impress. If you get mentioned on a blog with 10 influential readers, you’ve reached your goal. It’s not the size of the audience. It’s about the influence the blogger has and what the readers do after they read it.

MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, Second Life, and how that all plays out in an increasingly mobile environment. Even those comfortable with blogs and podcasts are wondering how to deal with sites and channels such as these. How to build your brand across the next generation of the social media landscape. Social software guru Barb Dybwad, teen market expert Anastasia Goodstein, P.R. pioneer Aedhmar Hynes and Linden Lab community manager Cyn Skyberg offer insights into your next Everest. This session is sponsored by Cisco Systems (who gave away the best pens in the swag bag, thanks Cisco!)

Digital Immigrant – Adults, people who didn’t grow up with the technology.
Digital Native – Kids who grew up with technology.

How companies need to treat this environment.

• Aedhmar: We must understanding that a social shift is happening. Social change is being enabled by technology. It’s important to understand that we look at things through a different lens. We have to look at it through kids who have lived with this technology since the beginning. This is a generational shift.
• Anastasia: Kids figure stuff out intuitively; they don't read manuals. But they like simple to use items. They spend time online and have a much different motivation for it. Teens are all about socializing. Individuating from their families. They use technology to keep up with friends. It’s core to their adolescent needs.
• Cyn: Second life, MySpace, ”the internet with people in it.” You’re experiencing stuff in real time with other people.

Case Studies

• Reuters news bureau in 2nd life was a fantastic PR opportunity. It provided lots of press and concrete benefits for Reuters as a company and brand. They had a commitment to innovation. The team who put the project together put it together for only the 2nd life community in mind. Lessons learned: when it’s done with genuine intent, it has a better outcome. Feedback: great from access to newsmakers.
• Aedhmar: When we look at the world and advise clients, we ask them to think about an in world presence around themes. Education, collaboration, innovation, marketing. There’s buzz and excitement endorsement from within the company. We invite people to attend events who’ve never been in 2nd life. It gives them a sense of an immersive experience. Business seems to be drawing more into the community. [“Instead of over thinking – just did what was best for the environment.”] You honor the people who live there first. Have respect …. The principles/dynamics/social protocol are all exactly the same: Respect the people who are there already.
• Community. Queen of Spain blog joined Second life and it bumped up her community. It brought mom bloggers to second life. They come hang out, party and go to a nightclub. Tripled the hits to her blog from Second Life. Create a community on top of a community.
• Facebook/MySpace. Social communities, target is spending a lot of time. What might be a way in for marketers to talk to these teens. Create things they’d be interested within the medium.
  • Anastasia: MySpace is cracking down on marketers. Successful – Wendy’s all about the square burger. Burger King’s King have been successful. If you have a brand already resonating with the youth audience. If they love and have affection for it, they’re embrace. If they’re not familiar with them, it probably won’t work. Unique, cool, fun thing to relate to. Teens more likely to respond to an actual teen.
  Anastasia: Facebook: inexpensive way to blast message. Can also create communities. Facebook less commercial. Facebook has been a bit touchier and has been less advertising based.

Advice for companies on how to be more playful

• Cyn: User-created content. Everything in 2nd life is created by people who live there. Tough for people who are more used to rules. What you’re seeing is presented by regular people who are there and are being open-minded. Walking into 3d representation of the internet.
• Aedhmar: Understand your audience. Spend some time understanding what competitors are doing there and what it’s like and what has been done already and what’s comfortable for your company/culture. Listen to the community. Need to think what you want to get out of it.
• Anastasia: Being playful, having a sense of humor is very important. If you can create a game that is good… Coke did virtual world and had a lot of people making stuff… Brands that are comfortable with it. Going the user-generated route is great. Jones soda lets users submit photos and vote on flavors. Harnessing MySpace ecosystem. Widget companies – embedded code into myspace. They have widgets and layouts and slide shows. Celebrating user-generated stars. Knowing what’s happeneing in the digital culture and using it to integrate with culture and making yourself relevant.

Has there been interest by school systems in getting with the program?

• Schools are struggling with it. Teachers are afraid of losing the place as the head of the class… Immigrants. Empower the students who know. Teachers need to be educated and know how to use the stuff. Great equipment not being used. Public social media in the classroom brings up all kinds of issues with privacy.
• Aedhmar: 2nd life surrounded by education. Universities and companies teaching in 2nd life. It’s an age issue. The biggest challenge is the fear factor. Fear or parents/teachers exposing children to stuff that they feel out of control in. Will take time for people to become most comfortable with.
• Cyn: Teen dedicated area in 2nd life. Adults have to go through background check to interact with space. Some educator groups are doing some great work in 2nd life. Really exciting. Much growth in the education area. People need to recognize that teen 2nd life is made for the kids. Careful and conscious of who’s working with the kids.

Non-profit interest?

• Cyn: Giant non-profit sector. Impossible to name all … island for relatives of people with schizophrenia. So they can understand what it’s like. Annual events. Race for a cure.

Youth social media sites:

• Habbo hotel: 2D avatar reality space
• Yville: Toyota virtual car.
• Viacom: virtual laguna beach.
• Nickelodeon
• MTV
• Club Penguin
• Web Kins
• WeeWorld
• Gaia / stardoll virtual paper dolls

Endnotes

• Not every platform is for everyone. Finding your fit is the way to be successful. Lots of places out there in virtual worlds in social media environments.
• Is it an equal playing field in 2nd life? “You should never underestimate jungle drums” it all has to do with what you create and what core you hit with the community.

I have enough trouble with my first life!

Forget “the” A-List, Find Your Blogging A-List: Effective Blogger Relations

The Press Release Must Die

From fondofsnape

1. I love my ... Theraflu, even though it tastes like ASS.
2. Looking in the mirror, I see ... A girl on the road to flu recovery.
3. The best thing that happened to me this week was .... ummm... Jimbo taking care of me.
4. Not coughing ... is one of my favorite things to do!
5. I always have a good time .... NOT being sick
6. I'm looking for ...some relief!... this weekend.
7. "Oh, I'm bein' followed by a ... Jimbo with a thermometer!