Michelle Kostya from Research in Motion speaks at Third Tuesday in December

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When it comes to social media, it’s a mobile world. It’s a long time since social media resided primarily in our browser or in applications on our desktop. Today, our social media connections are rarely farther away than the device we carry in the palm of our hands – our cell phones.

RIM – Research in Motion – is the Canadian standard bearer in the mobile device wars and Canada’s leading technology hope. As social media has evolved and as apps have moved onto mobile devices, RIM has been challenged to evolve its own approach. And we’re seeing it do this. Earlier this year, RIM introduced a new operating system with embedded social features along with the Torch, a new generation of BlackBerry that combines a large touchscreen display with a slide out keyboard. In the new year, we’ll see the Playbook, RIM’s tablet offering.

As RIM evolves its platform, it’s also using social media to reach out to its users and engage with them in online community and social media. Michelle Kostya is one of the people charting out RIM’s path in social media. And she’s our next speaker at Third Tuesday.

You can register online to join us December 6 at Third Tuesday Ottawa or December 7 at Third Tuesday Toronto to hear Michelle talk about how Research in Motion uses social media and how it views the future of social on its platform.

Thank you to our sponsors.

Once again, I’d like to thank our sponsors – CNW Group, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Your sponsorship makes it possible for us to bring great speakers to Third Tuesdays across the country, including Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. You make third Tuesday a truly Canadian affair.

Meet Terry Fallis on the eve of the Canada Reads Short List

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Next week, we’re holding an event in Ottawa to celebrate the journey of Terry Fallis from “guy like me” to celebrated author.

It’s a remarkable story. An aspiring author writes a comic novel, The Best Laid Plans, and then seeks a publisher. The response: rejection after rejection. But he doesn’t give up. He decides to self-publish his novel. So far, this is a familiar story. But this one has a twist.

This novelist is Terry Fallis. The time is 2007, the early days of social media. And Terry’s an early adopter of social media, with a podcast, a blog and 20 years experience in communications. And he decides to bring his two passions – communications and writing – to promote his book.

He decides to create a podcast in which he will read a chapter of the novel each week. He creates a blog to host the podcast and he makes sure it’s available on iTunes.

The Best Laid Plans

Then the power of social media kicks in. Terry’s novel finds an audience. They talk to him and he talks back. They celebrate what he’s doing with his podcasting his novel. And it helps that his novel, the best laid plans, is a great read.

Others notice what’s going on. They read his novel and they think it’s good. And one morning Terry wakes up and discovers he’s been nominated for the Leacock Medal recognizing the best Canadian humorous novel of the year. A couple months later it gets even better: Terry wins the Leacock medal.The Best Laid plans is recognized as Canada’s top humorous novel of 2008.

Success builds on success. Having opened the door through social media, the critical acclaim and recognition of the Leacock medal leads to traditional success. He is taken on by one of Canada’s most highly regarded literary agents, Beverly Slopen, and she lands a traditional publishing deal for Terry with McClelland & Stewart.

Terry is having the time of his life doing what he loves to do. He has written a second novel, The High Road. And it may be better than his first.

But The Best Laid Plans isn’t finished with Terry yet….

Every year, CBC stages Canada Reads, an annual literature competition between books chosen by Canadian celebrities. This year, they’re doing something special. They’re asking Canadians to help select the Essential Novels of the decade. And guess what? The Best Laid Plans was nominated by Canadians to be on the list of the Top 40 essential novels of the decade. Then, through an online vote, it was selected as one of the TOP TEN essential novels. Now, we’re waiting for November 24, the day that the TOP FIVE essential novels of the decade are announced.

An invitation to attend

On November 23, the evening before that short list is announced, Terry will be coming to Ottawa to celebrate Canadian publishing and to talk about how an unknown author can make an impact in the era of social media.

You can meet Terry and you can be part of this event. if you’d like to attend and meet Terry, register online at the Third Tuesday Ottawa website. Come join us to celebrate Canadian publishing, creativity, and the power of social media.

Thanks to our sponsors

Okay, I’ll be honest. Thornley Fallis is throwing this party for our co-founder and friend, Terry Fallis. But we also wanted to reach out to the Third Tuesday social media community, a group that Terry co-founded in 2006. Third Tuesday is important to Terry and we want to share this celebration with you. And we wouldn’t have been able to sustain this community without the support of our sponsors: CNW Group, Radian6, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, and Rogers Communications. Thank you for helping us build and sustain our social media community, not just in Ottawa, but in cities like Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver as well.

ProPR gets a new design

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You may notice that ProPR looks different today. For the first time in five years, ProPR has had a redesign of its look and function.

So, what’s different about this design?

First, I hope that the look and feel is cleaner. The old design was heavily stylized with dark borders and broad swatches of color. This design has a more open, light and accessible feel. I hope it scales better on a variety of monitor sizes and that the design doesn’t distract from the content. Does it look good on your screen?

Second, the comments are now powered by Disqus. The old design used the BackType plug-in for WordPress, which was shut down a couple weeks ago, we knew we had to make a change. And after looking at the alternatives, discuss seem to me to be the best of breed in common management. What do you think of the way that the comments work and are presented in this design?

Third, sharing and bookmarking the content is front and center in the new design. You’ll see the Tweet and Facebook Like buttons prominently displayed at the bottom of each post, along with a general Share button and the Evernote Clip button. I think that this reflects the evolution of social networking and puts the most frequently used sharing functions in a place where they can easily be spotted and used. What do you think could this layout?

Fourth,we’ve added simple navigation to the top right corner, with tabs for About, Speaking and Contact pages. This enables me to post more complete biographical information on the About page and details about my future speaking engagements on the Speaking page. The Contact page includes a form to contact me in place of publishing my email address. A small gesture against spammers.

Finally, the sidebar has been cleaned up and reordered. We retired the Friendsroll and TopLinks plug-ins that I had used on the old design. These were developed by my colleagues at 76design at a time when blog rolls were still widely used. Those days have passed and after three years of service, Friendsroll and TopLinks have been removed. Prominent elements that remain on the sidebar include subscription by e-mail and RSS, my Twitter feed, the PostRank top posts widget, as well as the post archive and categories. We’ve added a new list of future speaking events. And, for now, we’ve kept the “Our Community” widget that we developed to point to our other blogs. (I say “for now” because we’re making other changes to the architecture of our other blogs that may lead to a change in this widget. Stay tuned.)

I owe big thanks to the talented team at 76 design for this redesign, Laurence Smink, Shaun Scanlon, and especially Ben Watts. Ben put up with me poking around the administration panel and asking far too many questions. At the end of the day he exercised his good judgment and the results are before you.

What do you think of Pro PR’s new design? Is the information easy to find and read? Does everything work? Are there things that could still be improved?

What matters to you: Volume of followers or Community of interest?

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Inside PR 227 [ 25:08 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

How many followers on social media are enough? Do you watch your numbers and constantly search for new ways to gain a new friend or an extra follower?

Do you see a herd or a community of interest?

In this week’s Inside PR, Gini Dietrich expresses her annoyance at discovering that some people seem to be using the #FF (Follow Friday) hashtag primarily as a means to get the attention of others on Twitter who have high follower counts. Ginny observed that some people she is following seem to point only to others who already have high follower counts. Ginny wonders whether those recommendations are sincere endorsements of content or instead, attempts to get those high follower people to reply, putting the original person’s ID in their Twitter stream and attracting more interest to themselves. Thinly veiled spam? An extension of the old-style interruption broadcast advertising psychology?

I monitor the number of followers, subscribers, mentions and comments on my blog and other social media as part of my calculation of return on investment. Given that my greatest cost of creating and sharing content is my time (and I always have other things that I could be doing with my time), I make a calculation of whether I am talking to myself or whether I am part of a community that shares my interests and is actively engaged with me. While I don’t put a dollar amount on that calculation, I do make a calculation of my relative return on the investment  of my time.

So, having admitted that I do track my numbers, why don’t I spend more time trying to dramatically increase my numbers of followers? The answer is simple: I am interested in engagement with the community that cares about my content, not in raw reach. What counts for me is a genuine connection with a community of interest, not simply growing the size of my audience.

How does that compare with your approach to social media?

Do you focus on finding and engaging with a clearly defined community of interest that corresponds with your personal interests or the interest of your organization? Or do you pursue ever larger numbers of subscribers, followers and friends?

Up close and personal with Movember and Prostate Cancer

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Today is an important anniversary for me. Ten years ago today I had surgery for prostate cancer. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m still here to talk about it 10 years later.

I was lucky because my doctor had me take a PSA (prostate specific antigen) test while I was still in my 40s. I was younger than the average prostate cancer patient. But thanks to my doctor and the PSA test, my cancer was detected and treated at an early stage.

Prostate cancer is a scary thing for men. It threatens our self-identity. We don’t like to talk about it. And that’s not good.

Prostate cancer can be beaten. But to do this, men have to be less squeamish about talking about it. We need to talk to their doctors about the risk and have ourselves tested. We also need more research into better methods of detection and treatment for those who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.

That’s why I’m participating this year in the Movember campaign. Through the month of November, I’ll be joining thousands of other men growing a moustache to raise awareness of prostate cancer and to raise money to fund research into its detection and treatment.

I hope you’ll take a minute to think about whether you can make a contribution to overcoming this disease. Your contribution can take many forms. You could make a donation to defeat prostate cancer. Or you could participate yourself in growing a mustache for the Movember campaign. But you can also make a contribution simply by talking about prostate cancer and raising awareness that it can be tested for and treated.

With your help, there will be more men like me who can say, “I beat prostate cancer.”

Voice recognition software: finally ready for prime time

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Earlier this year, I posted about my discovery of the Dragon Dictation app for the iPad. I dictated a post directly into Dragon dictation on my iPad and then cut and pasted into Pro PR.ca.

Since that time, I’ve used Dragon on both my iPod Touch and iPad. If anything, I’ ve had even better results on my iPod Touch than on the iPad. But still, I do most of my writing on my PC and my notebook. So, when I saw that Nuance has released version 11 of their PC program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I thought I’ d give it a try.

I last used a dictation program on my PC a decade ago. At that time, I found I needed to correct so many words that the dictation program just wasn’ t of any real benefit to me.

However, the newest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking absolutely blows me away. I’ ve been using it for the past two weeks. I don’ t think I’ m exaggerating to say that it is 99% accurate, maybe better. In fact, I’ m dictating this post using Dragon and it has made only two errors: it wrote ” NaturallySpeaking”  as two words, ” naturally speaking” and it wrote ” may be” instead of “maybe.” In both cases, it spelled these words correctly in this paragraph when I was more careful about my pronunciation.

Bottom line: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 achieves a degree of accuracy that makes it faster and more efficient to dictate first drafts of documents than to write them.

If you haven’ t looked at dictation software for your computer for the past few years, take a look at the current generation. Voice dictation finally is ready for prime time.

Inside PR Podcast: I want content that's relevant to me. How about you?

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I’m a big fan of podcasts. I listen to them in the car, at home, while I’m on the treadmill and on the subway. Thanks to podcasting, I can listen to my favorite programs when and where it’s convenient for me. But what’ s even better about podcasts is that I can find content that focuses on my interests. And my interests are much narrower than the general public’ s interests. This isn’t broadcasting. It’s content for me and my community.

Each week, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I record the Inside PR podcast. We talk about things that interest us as communications professionals who are also exploring the changes that social software and social networking have made possible in the ways that people find one another, form relationships and interact. We try to talk about what’ s really going on, not just what happened. So we look for the truths and trends that underlie the communications and technology developments of the week.

It’ s fun for us to share our thoughts. But it’ s even better when you tell us what you think. So, please do give us your ideas for what we should talk about on inside PR. You can reach us on our Inside PR podcast Facebook Group, by leaving a comment on the Inside PR blog, or by tweeting to @inside_PR.

Don’ t be a stranger. Don’ t be shy. Let us know what matters to you and what you would like Inside PR to talk about.

And because seeing is better than reading, here’s my video invitation to participate in setting the agenda for Inside PR.

Six keys to success in social media

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One of my colleagues, Pierre Killeen, developed a list of six strategic considerations that corporate communications should bear in mind when planning their approach to using social media. I was struck by how simple, yet true, these six considerations are. So, I’d like to share them with you.

Six keys to success in social media

1. Success in social media is about human resources. The major input into social media is people’s time. As social media success begins to take hold, the resource requirements will start to grow. Where additional resources are not an option, organizations will have to reallocate existing resources in order to meet ongoing social media needs.

2. Social media platforms facilitate connections and conversations between individuals, not between individuals and institutions. Despite the filter of a social media tool or application, the conversation still takes place between two individuals. This distinction is integral to understanding the social media landscape.

3. People use social media to remain current with news and information filtered from people they know and trust. Connecting with social media influencers engaged in your issues is a key way to earn and build trust and spread your message.

4. Social media communications are about communities, not about target groups and audiences. Whereas traditional communication strategies seek to push messages to audiences, social media strategies are about connecting with and building communities of interest and practice.

5. Social media is about engagement. Some organizations think of social media primarily as another channel for pushing out content. This is inconsistent with the nature of social media and will, ultimately, act as a barrier to social media success.

6. Social media is measurable. Social media communications are rich in data and metrics. If you don’t measure everything you are doing, you are missing the opportunity to understand what is going on and what you are participating in.

What do you think?

I’d welcome your thoughts. What do you think about these points? Do you agree with them? Are there other considerations that you would add?

Inside PR 225: A new Inside PR Podcast Facebook Group

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This week in Inside PR, Martin Waxman and I talk about the changing media landscape. This follows on recent changes to both the digital and traditional paper versions of the New York Times, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.

We also have an audio comment on the power of Twitter to connect communities of interest from Jody Koehler, founder of Coopr PR in the Netherlands.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video of Jeff Jarvis‘ presentation in Frankfurt about creating publics. There’s a lot to think about in what Jeff is suggesting.

You can listen to the complete podcast by clicking on the player here.

Inside PR 225 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What do you think?

Finally, please remember that we produce this podcast as a way of connecting with out community of interest. You can reach us many ways – through a comment on this post or on the Inside PR blog, by leaving a video comment on our new Inside PR Podcast Facebook Group or by tweeting to @Inside_PR. We’d love to hear from you.

Meet RichardAtDell at Third Tuesdays in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver

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RichardAtDell is coming to Canada next month to speak at Third Tuesdays in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver. We’ll lead off with Third Tuesday Toronto #TTT on Monday, November 8, Third Tuesday Ottawa #TTO on Tuesday, November 9, Third Tuesday Calgary #CTT on Wednesday, November 10 and Third Tuesday Vancouver #TTV on Thursday, November 11.

Dell is one of the best known and longest standing case studies of the successful use of social media. It might well not have turned out this way. In fact, Dell was one of the early examples of a company on the receiving end of viral criticism and anger. Rather than go into a shell or attack its critics, Dell chose to enter the social media discussion, learn from it, win friends, and gradually turn things around. Today, Dell uses social media for many purposesw, including to connect with customers, build brand and as a retail channel.

RichardAtDell, aka Richard Binhammer, has been from the outset one of the constants in Dell’s social media presence. I first experienced Richard’s outreach as far back as 2006 when he commented on a post on my blog in which I’d written about a presentation by Robert Scoble in which Scoble had recounted the story of Jeff Jarvis’ upset with Dell. Richard reached out to me at a time when my blog had relatively few subscribers, acknowledging their problems but asking me whether I’d be prepared to acknowledge the efforts they were making to listen and act upon what they were being told. I was blown away just by the fact that a company at the other end of the continent would pay attention to me, let alone actually acknowledge me by coming into my place, my blog, to have a discussion. And yes, that made me a fan of RichardAtDell and Dell’s approach to social media.

Well, it’s not 2006 anymore. A lot has changed. And RichardAtDell has been there to experience the evolution of social media first hand. As the saying goes, he’s forgotten more than many of us ever will learn.

I hope that you’ll join us at Third Tuesday to hear from one of the leading corporate social media practitioners as he talks with us about the journey he’s been on, the path we’re following, and where he sees things going in the future.

Look for details and registration info in the next few days on each of the Third Tuesday Ottawa #TTO, Third Tuesday Toronto #TTT, Third Tuesday Calgary #CTT, and Third Tuesday Vancouver #TTV websites.

Thank you to our sponsors.

Once again, I’d like to thank our sponsors – CNW Group, Rogers Communications, Radian6, and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Your sponsorship makes it possible for us to bring great speakers not just to Toronto, but to Third Tuesdays across the country. You make third Tuesday a truly Canadian affair.

To whet your appetite

If you’re not familiar with the Dell story and RichardAtDell, you can get a taste of what we’ll be talking about at Third Tuesday by watching this video. Enjoy.