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Pros & cons of using Facebook, Twitter geo-location features

Any day now, you’ll be able to let your Facebook friends and Twitter followers know where you are when you post status updates.

Daniel Ionescu’s article in PC World says Facebook will start adding friend location starting next month, though it’s uncertain exactly how this will work. Twitter turned on its feature briefly this week and then turned it off. On the main stream, Twitter will show maps overlaying individual tweets, together with place names and your location. On both sites, the geo-location features will be optional.

Ionescu offers three reasons for using them:

To get social recommendation from real people
To find relevant local news
To find friends and cool people around you

His three reasons for not using them:

Criminals are reading Facebook and Twitter status updates, too. I wrote about how unsuspecting Twitterers are showing up on sites like PleaseRobMe.com
Even more advertising in your face
The lack of control over who actually sees your location.

If you’re planning to use the geo-location features, let’s hear why. If not, why not? Share details of how you’ll use these features in a PR campaign. Comment here.

Posted In: Facebook, Social media marketing, Twitter
posted On: 3/11/2010: 2:44 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Job-hunters, publicity-seekers: Wake up your boring bios

Boring bios are more potent than sleeping pills.

Yet you read them all the time in people’s online press rooms, in their books, and even on the mini-profiles they write on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

Sometimes job-hunters include a useless paragraph of incredibly dull information on their resumes.

Publicity expert Nancy Juetten hates boring bios, too. The arrogant ones really get under her skin. They include sentences like this:

“Complimenting her extraordinary capacities as a prodigy composer of collaborative entrepreneurial masterworks is her former multi-disciplinary career as an entrepreneur and corporate executive, encompassing 34 years of exemplary achievement in well over twelve industries, including…”

She wrote about those kinds of bios at her blog, and just created the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide ($49), which should be must-reading for every author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, consultant and expert who needs to rewrite a bio or make over their current one, and for every job-hunter who really wants to stand out from the crowd.

It includes handy templates, examples of great bios, and work sheets that will help you inject life, fun and even humor into even the most boring bio.

Nancy is running a special promotion that ended on Sunday. But she said that anyone who writes “Joan Stewart” in the comments section of their online order form throughout the month of March 2010 can get an anniversary bonus gift, her Publicity Express Digital Workshop which is a package of audio files and other goodies. The bonus applies to the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide and her DIY Publicity Success System. Order here.

Here’s Nancy’s own bio:

Nancy Juetten (rhymes with “button”) is a passionate and engaging publicity trainer who shows business owners across America how to get seen, heard, and celebrated in their own backyards … and beyond. She created the NEW Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide to help job and publicity seekers wake up decision makers and open doors fast. Her essential advice: “It’s your story. Tell it well.”

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion, Facebook, PR Consultants/Publicists, Twitter, Writing Articles
posted On: 3/8/2010: 2:10 am: By Joan
Comments: 3 Comments

Why a press release and not just a blog post?

If you’re releasing a report on the state of your industry, what’s the purpose of writing a press release? Why not just post the information to your blog?

In fact, why even bother with press releases? Can’t blog posts serve the same function?

That’s what law firm marketing expert Kevin O’Keefe asked at Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

He will be releasing a report later this week on the use of blogs by large American law firms, and he asked:

“My question is who do I send the press release to? Don’t I accomplish the same thing by posting a blog post with the report as I always have? As a courtesy to reporters and editors, couldn’t I just email them a link to my blog post? How does a press release help them?

“Some law firms and companies use press release services such as PR Newswire or PRWeb for press releases, many in large part for Search Engine Optimization. Getting links from such sites to your company website or blog using keywords describing your offering causes your website or blog to rank higher on such keyword searches. But that feels a bit like a sham and I’m not looking for SEO.”

Write a release and a blog post

Do both.

Press releases are written much like a newspaper article would be written with “just the facts.” And, of course, you can link directly to the report and anything else you wish.

One of the big advantages of press releases is that journalists, bloggers and others can simply cut and paste from the press release and add what you’ve written to their own copy. Blogs, on the other hand, are written in a more informal, personal style that make wholesale copying difficult.

A blog also serves as a great platform to comment on various aspects of the report, in one or more blog posts. So while that press releases is pulling traffic at PRWeb, your post is pulling traffic at your blog.


How to publicize an industry report

I gave Kevin seven ideas for publicizing his report:

Write a press release and post it to PRWeb. Journalists and others can also search the PRWeb site by topic. I found eight RSS feeds at PRWeb just for legal news. So if the only place that somebody can find info on the report is at Kevin’s blog, they’ll miss it if they’re at the PRWeb site.
Let your Twitter followers, Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections know about the release. Just give an enticing headline and link to it at PRWeb. (See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.)
Write a blog post that ties into the press release. Why was the report written? Are the results surprising? Can you offer a behind-the-scenes look at the benefit of blogging for big law firms, something the press release doesn’t explain?
Post the same press release at your website, in your online press room. You want to do this so that people who come to your website can find recent information about what you’re doing.
If you wish, you can now pitch the story to a select group of journalists and bloggers. These can be people whose names you have collected and put into a database. I’d create individual pitches for each journalists or blogger, customized for their audience, and then include a link where they can see the press release.
What about people on Twitter who “tweet” about law-related topics? Don’t forget about them. Sometimes you can get far more traction on Twitter than you can in traditional media, simply because of the retweets.
How do you find people who would be interested in the report and are most likely to retweet? Go to Search.Twitter.com and search for #law, #lawyers, #legal and other related words, using hash tags. Twitter will return a list of tweets written by people who have used those keywords in their posts. You can then go to each person’s Twitter page and decide if they’re worth following. If so, follow them. They might follow you back. You can then send them a direct message and let them know about your report, and link to the press release on PRWeb.
Finally, how about creating a short video, about two and a half minutes, discussing the report? You can do this with an inexpensive Flip video camera and upload the video to YouTube, which can pull more traffic to your blog or website.

Kevin might also consider a subscription to Expertclick, the Online Yearbook of Experts. A subscription puts you in their experts directory and lets you post up to 52 press releases per year. You can then link to these releases from your blog or the online press room at your website. That’s what I do. Learn more at Expertclick.com.

How do you use press releases in conjunction with your blog?

Posted In: Blogs, LinkedIn, Pitching the Media, Publicity for Niche Markets, Social media marketing, Twitter, Video, YouTube
posted On: : 12:32 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

When you tweet, you might end up on PleaseRobMe.com

Lots of people don’t think twice before advertising where they are, or where they’re going, on Twitter or Facebook.

“Dinner’s only half made, but I’m rushing to pick up my kid from soccer.”

“Leaving home and heading to a client meeting at Pete’s Bistro.”

“Outa here for a weekend on the ski slopes.”

If that describes you, and you also use the FourSquare app on your phone, don’t be surprised if your smiling face and your next tweet show up on PleaseRobMe.com, a site that mocks people who broadcast to the world when they’re leaving home and where they’re going.

Here’s how it works. People download the FourSquare app to their phone and create a profile. You can invite friends from your Gmail, Facebook or Twitter accounts. You then use FourSquare to ”check-in.” When you tell people where you are, FourSquare tells your friends where they can find you and recommends places to go and things to do nearby.

The problem occurs when you tell FourSquare to automatically broadcast your whereabouts to your Twitter and Facebook followers. As soon as somebody checks in, their tweet or message shows up on a scrolling list on PleaseRobMe.com’s home page. Dozens of new messages appear each minute.

Thieves can use the information on PleaseRobMe.com several ways. They can set up a filter and search by username or city. Both Twitter and FourSquare note when you have marked your location. That gives thieves an idea of about how long you’ll be away from home.

“The danger is publicly telling people where you are,” says PleaseRobMe. ”This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home.”

Social Media Rx, the social media assessment I created with my business partner, Jeanne Hurlbert, through our company, MySocialMediaSolution.com, warns people about sharing information about when their homes are unoccupied. The assessment is a series of multiple-choice questions designed to test the user’s knowledge of social media. The report it generates gives each user a customized formula that guides them on what to discuss at social media sites. And it offers hundreds of other helpful suggestions about social media protocol, tips and tools, including advice about safety.

Here’s what our report says about advertising when you’re going on vacation:

Sites like Twitter, where some people bare all, could be a criminal’s best friend. Some people love sharing details of their vacations and other out-of-town trips with their social media friends. But not us. We think it’s smart to never let people know when we’re leaving a house or office that will be unoccupied.

What about you? Do you use FourSquare with Twitter or Facebook, and if so, do you restrict the types of messages you broadcast to the world?

What about PleaseRobMe.com? Do you think the site is a public service because it underscores the safety problem? Or does it give burglars one more tool? Do you think most of the people who show up on that site have any idea that they’re there?

Posted In: Facebook, Social networking, Twitter
posted On: 2/22/2010: 11:48 pm: By Joan
Comments: 8 Comments

How to promote a group of expressive arts facilitators?

Gabrielle Javier-Cerulli, of Rochester, New York writes:

“I just launched the Global Network of Expressive Arts Facilitators and need to get the word out about it and attract new members on an international scale.

“It’s a membership-based organization for facilitators, all non-therapists, who use the creative process (painting, drumming, singing, journal writing, collage-making) with their clients with the intent of self-discovery, clarity, enjoyment and healing.

“Our mission is to build community for these heart and soul-centered facilitators and also to publicize our members and what they do via listing them on the online directory, by highlighting them in the Member of Week, a BlogTalkRadio show, and opportunity to submit their articles on videos to the website.

“We have Twitter and Facebook pages and a blog. I’d love to hear other ideas of getting the word out to this global niche market. Also, how do we go about finding speaking engagements to talk about the network?”