Category Archives: social media

Tony Clement talks about open government at Third Tuesday

Third Tuesday is back with another blockbuster speaker: Canada’s President of the Treasury Board, Tony Clement.

Tony Clement is well-known as a politician who maintains an active Twitter presence, sharing what is on his mind and what he’s doing, and engaging in conversations with Canadians. Anyone who follows Tony Clement knows that his Twitter conversations are sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes combative, but always genuine.

Tony Clement is also the President of the Treasury Board of Canada. That puts him in charge of Canada’s public service and makes him responsible for setting the standards and rules by which social media is being introduced into the Government of Canada.

As a Minister, Clement has pushed forward with initiatives to enable Canada’s public servants to use social media in the workplace and a broader initiative to introduce open government standards to the government of Canada.

In November, Mr. Clement

- unveiled the Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0, the reference document that will be used by Canadian Public Servants in determining whether and how they should use social media in the workplace.

- announced that completed access to information requests now will be posted online.

In December, Clement

- announced the addition of 4,000 data sets to the Open Data Portal.

- initiated a public consultation on Open Government. (The consultation closed in mid-January and the Treasury Board site promises that a final report on the findings will be posted in March 2012.)

- participated in a Twitter Chat on Open Government to give people a chance to raise issues, ask questions and engage with him online.

That’s a lot of action in a short period of time. But, what’s been happening now? How are the Web 2.0 Guidelines being applied by Canadian public servants? What did Canadians tell the Minister during the consultation? What’s on the agenda for 2012?

Third Tuesday participants will get a chance in February to ask these questions and talk directly to the Minister when he appears as our featured guest Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto. Follow these links to find the details and sign up to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or to attend Third Tuesday Toronto.

If you’re interested in open government and the use of social media by government, this session will be of real interest to you. I’m looking forward to a great evening of discussion with a man who has matched his actions to his convictions. I hope to see you there.

 

How do you manage your organization’s editorial calendar?

In the era of fragmented attention, we must publish content where our communities spend their time. That means that we must post content across a range of channels – blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google+, traditional newsletters and even media releases.

As I plan for the New Year, I’m wondering if there’s a tool that I can use to help me manage my company team’s publishing program. Ideally, this tool sould be collabrative to enable all team members to review it, add to and edit our editorial plan. It also should allow us to view content plans over time and to integrate real world events that we might want to note or cover.

Currently, I use the WordPress Editorial Calendar to plan what I will write about on my blog, Twitter and Google+. But I’m looking for something more sophisticated that can be used by a team publishing across media.

Lisa Gerber described the Editorial Calendar spreadsheet that she created in Excel to manage the editorial calendar of Spin Sucks Pro. I’m thinking of setting up an Excel spreadsheet along the lines of what Lisa has suggested. But Excel is an all-purpose tool that requires a lot of care and maintenance of the tool itself. I’d still prefer to find a good tool which someone else has created so that I can concentrate on my top priority – planning and managing our content creation and publishing process.

Do you use a dedicated tool to plan and manage your organization’s editorial calendar? Would you recommend it for others to use?

UPDATE:

Thanks for Ali Symons (see her comment below), I’ve discovered DivvyHQ - which seems to be exactly the tool I’m looking for. I’ve set up a Beta account and I’m adding my team members now. We’ll test it over the next month and then I’ll report about our experience in a future post. (I’m adding an entry in DivvyHQ to remind myself to write that post on January 12.)

 

 

 

Third Tuesday participants rave about Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts

Jeff Jarvis launched his new book, Public Parts, in Canada last week at Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ and Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW. Judging from the participant reviews on the third Tuesday websites, Jeff presentation was one of the most popular and well-received presentations in six seasons of third Tuesday.

What people said

Stephen Da Cambra: really enjoyed Jeff’s presentation. It appealed to me directly because of my own struggles with giving up my privacy on the web. Even high-profile guests can ramble on a bit – but Jeff was on point throughout, with enough short divergence to keep it interesting.

Rick Weiss: Jeff Jarvis was great. He’s an engaging speaker and presented a lot of food for thought around privacy in the digital age.

Aggie Fortier: The speaker was very engaging with interesting examples to support his position. More importantly, Jarvis opened the door to discussion on the implications of public versus private. He has raised the bar for future speakers who follow.

Martin Waxman: Jeff Jarvis speaks the way he writes and is entertaining, provocative and insightful. Really enjoyed the talk; looking forward to reading the book.

Dave Fleet: Fascinating subject and a phenomenal speaker. One of the best presentations I’ve been to in a while.

Jim Courtney: Really excellent introduction to and perspective on privacy issues. Loved the stories and historical perspective.

Nigel Newton: Jeff Jarvis is an evangelist for societal change enabled by the net. His generosity of spirit and his belief that we, the users of the net, are capable of respecting the ethics of privacy and public sharing is persuasive. If fear of technology is the primary emotion holding back the natural evolution of the net and its influence on society, then Jeff’s well-crafted perspectives will be a source of courage for the faint-hearted.

Eden Spodek: Jeff Jarvis is a fantastic speaker and I would attend a Third Tuesday anytime he’s invited here – even if he’s not launching a new book. He brings the online privacy discussion to a whole new level and I enjoyed his insights on cultural differences and privacy. I can’t wait to devour Public Parts.

Zach Klein: Great session. Super smart dude.

Mark Blevis: Jeff is an engaging and animated speaker. I really enjoyed this event. It was of high caliber. I could have happily listened for another two hours.

Alfred Coates: I really enjoyed how Mr. Jarvis’s message of openness and sharing felt like a mix of opportunity and challenge to those in attendance. Mr. Jarvis speaks with passion and conviction and a healthy dose of humor. I will be reading public parts this weekend and working my way through Buzzmachine in the foreseeable future.

Karen Runtz: While many speakers may be entertaining at the time, what they say won’t stick with you. That’s not the case with Jeff Jarvis. I have his book for reinforcement! No, seriously, I did find his presentation memorable. It brought me in mind of the excitement I felt at a conference some 15 to 20 years ago hearing and Ithaca U prof talk about the changing nature of communications. She was encouraging us to think of our “products” as workable clay, instead of finished polished pieces sent on their way. That resonated with me, just as Jeff’s words about the Internet did last night.

Read all the reviews

That’s just a selection of the rave reviews for Jeff Jarvis’s Public Parts presentation at third Tuesday. If you want to read the full set of reviews, you can find them at the Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto event sites.

We are hoping that Jeff will be able to come back to Canada for third Tuesday Calgary and third Tuesday Vancouver in either January or February. And if you’re in another city and are looking for a great speaker with thought-provoking content, Jeff Jarvis won’t disappoint.

What others thought

Melanie Coulson, the online editor at the Ottawa Citizen blogged her impressions of Jeff’s presentation.

Don Butler of the Ottawa Citizen also interviewed Jeff for an article which appeared in Saturday’s edition of the newspaper.

Were you there?

If you were at the event and wrote about it, please leave a comment and post the link to your coverage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff Jarvis’ Public Parts at Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW Storyfied

I’ve “Storyfied” some of the highlights of Jeff Jarvis‘ launch of Public Parts at Third Tuesday Ottawa. The Ottawa #3TYOW Storify starts at the beginning of the event and runs through to include subsequent blog and newspaper coverage.

Thank you Jeff for having come to both Ottawa and Toronto to share your insights with us. And thank you to Third Tuesday’s sponsors. You make it possible for us to bring speakers of Jeff’s calibre to Third Tuesday’s across Canada.

Has PostRank been integrated into the New Google Reader?

When I opened Google Reader just now, I discovered that the PostRank scores are front and centre:

Is this just because I installed a PostRank extension eons ago? Or has Google now integrated PostRank (which they acquired earlier this year) as a core element of Google Reader? It would be wonderful if the latter turned out to be true and the ingenuity of Ilya Grigorik and his PostRank team lives on in Google Reader.

UPDATE: Ilya Grigorik reached out to me last night to let me know that, no, PostRank has not been integrated into the new Google Reader. It’s the PostRank browser plug-in that is displaying more prominently in the Google Reader’s new format.

That’s too bad. PostRank was a very useful tool and, for a few hours, I hoped that it was now baked into the standard Google Reader feature set. Well, I guess I can keep wishing for this…

The New Google Reader: A Step Forward

It happened. Finally. After several years of little change for my favourite RSS reader, Google Reader, it’s out with the old and in with the new this morning.

When I signed onto Google Reader today, I was greeted with this message:

 

With the new version of Reader, I’ll be able to share interesting content publicly via my Google+ ID. Or I can share them only with circles that I have selected as being interested in specific subjects. I also can add my own comment to highlight what I find most interesting or remarkable in the article.

This is all good news to me. I’ve been a consistent user of Google+ since it launched. And I’ve curated circles of people I follow by subject area. So, I’m getting great value from my time on Google+. Now, with the integration of Google Reader sharing features, it will be easier for me add content that I find worthwhile – and hopefully that will draw more people to follow me on Google+.

So, it’s goodbye to some of the old sharing features. And it’s hello to sharing and promoting content via Google+. I like it.

Inside PR: Intranets and the new face of Facebook

Inside PR 2.70 [ 20:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about Intranets and the recent changes to Facebook.

At Thornley Fallis, our Intranet is built around a Wiki to host content, Present.ly to support publishing and linking to content and Windows Live Messenger to enable one to one video calls. We encourage people to use these three tools to divert content from emails (we all suffer from inbox glut) and to channel communications from broad publishing through to one to one communications via video. For us, video is the best communications channel. Unlike email and text, it enables us to read facial expressions, posture and all the physical clues that add nuance to communications.

Martin Waxman points out that we have so many “places to go,” so many channels of communication, that managing these different channels can become a challenge unto itself.

And then there’s Facebook. We received a comment from Liza Butcher, who suggested that, “With the changes made this past week, I believe facebook it is trying to be too many things in one space, and ostracizing generations of people that may not be as tech savvy as others. … Facebook was a place for everyone, and now it is becoming too technical for the masses.”

Gini and Martin talk about their impressions of the most recent Facebook changes. Gini points out that it will be important to decide what you want to include in your timeline. Sharing everything won’t be for everyone. And it’s important to be aware of what the timeline automatically shares so that you can filter out the info you wouldn’t want to see there. Martin suggests that we all should become familiar with the “view activity” panel that will enable us to remove content from our timeline. Other neat features: the cover photo we can add to our Facebook profile and the ability to add “milestones” to fill in our timeline.

As for me. I still can’t be enthused about Facebook’s effort to move us away from the open Internet toward the walled garden of Facebook. Bah. Humbug.

And one final reminder: Inside PR will be recording live from the PRSA International Conference in Orlando on October 16 and 17. We’ll also be interviewing speakers and participants. So, if you’re planning to be there, let us know and we will grab a sound bite with you.

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cross-posted from the Inside PR podcast blog

 

Why I’m hooked on Google+

Mark Ragan asked on Google+: “Why do you like Google+ or dislike it? What are its greatest strengths? Weaknesses?” I wrote a longish answer, which I’d like to share here as well.

Why I keep returning to Google+

I find myself looking at and replying to the posts in my Circles at least daily. You can see my public posts Why have I added it to Twitter and RSS feeds as a principal source of information?

1) The organization of comments with the original post enables an intelligent, longer form conversation. A step above the declaratory statements that Twitter’s 140 character limit make possible.

2) The absence of the “traffic building” gimmicks that caused Facebook’s interface to become a junkyard (on the way to being he next MySpace in terms of a messy interface?)

3) Google+ Hangouts and Chat provide instant communications options – from every page.

4) Circles, of course! Think about organizing your interests in different circles the way you’d sort your clothes into different drawers by category and season. It makes it possible to focus on the conversation about the subject  you are interested in at any given time.

It still could be improved

Not every thing is perfect. Google+ is still a channel-in-the-making. The biggest disappointment so far is the Sparks feature. I can only hope that Google is going to give us more refined search controls on this feature. Once they do, it too could be great.

My public profile on Google+

If you’re interested in following what I have to say on Google+, check out my public profile.

The Fragmented Social Web: Where have our communities gone?

I’m looking for case studies and best practices to describe how leading practitioners of social media are tracking conversations about organization and issues across an increasingly fragmented social media landscape.

We’ve come a long way since the early days of blogging. Back then, online conversations thrived in the comments sections of blogs. In the open for all to see. Search engines loved it. Blogging had great “Google juice.” We could publish our content on a personal or corporate blog and watch the comments and trackbacks as people responded. And our content would rise in search engine rankings.

Those were simple and satisfying times. But the online world has moved on.

Today, blogs still exist. But a greater volume of online posting and conversation has moved over to places like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

So what’s wrong with that?

Many of these conversations aren’t readily visible to us through simple searches. Facebook is a walled garden with privacy controls. Google+ encourages people to post only to defined “circles” of friends. When they do this, their posts are not viewable through search. And Twitter moved in the summer to make its full Twitter stream available only through Bing, not Google, adding to the work we must go through to search for references relevant to us.

And as the conversation has gone onto these social networks, the comments on most public blogs have decreased in volume.

More and more people are using social media – but much of their interaction is fragmented in walled gardens or available only to their friends and circles.

So, what’s a marketer, community manager or corporate reputation manager to do? Do we give up on seeing our community? Do we spend endless hours and resources tracking every conversation everywhere?

How do you find the conversations that matter to you when they are spread across numerous social media and networks? When they are playing peek a boo in the Facebook walled garden or within limited distribution Google Circles?

I’m looking for case studies or interviews with practitioners for a presentation I’m preparing and a companion series of blog posts. If you’re willing to share how you’re dealing with the new fragmented social Web, please let me know. I’d love to feature your case study or tips.

 

Inside PR: Hanging Out on Google+

Inside PR 2.62 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s two weeks since Google+ launched and the Inside PR hosts, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I, have been testing it for its strengths and weaknesses. This week we  talk about our experience so far.

One of the things that has caught most people’s attention is Google Hangouts, the feature that lets Google+ users set up video conference calls with up to ten users. So we thought that we’d use this feature for our recording. Well, as you’ll hear in this episode, there’s a reason why Google+ is still in the “test” period. Not everything works the way that you’d like it to. We lose Gini part of the way through. But she rejoins us by the end. We also experienced the same problem that Shel Holtz noticed when he and Neville Hobson recorded a special episode of the FIR podcast using Google Hangouts with Camtasia studio. The video recording had several defects – frozen screens and video that lagged behind the audio. Hangouts is quite ready for this use. But we’re hoping that Google will keep improving this feature and we’ll keep testing it. Eventually, I’m sure we’ll be able to produce a video version of Inside PR to accompany the audio version.

Have you ever sat down with a long time partner and said, if we could do it over again, what would we do differently? So far, I think that Google+ is the Social Network that’s doing it over and is doing it right.

For me, Facebook started as a place that suggested we could have private conversations with friends and family. But as Facebook developed its business model, it broke the faith with us on that. Bit by bit, it pushed our information onto public feeds – and it wasn’t always up front about what it was doing and didn’t provide us with easy control over how we could control our information.

Martin has been focused on rebuilding his network on Google+. And he’s found that it feels like the early days of Twitter, before the celebrities invaded it and the network became obsessed with numbers of followers. Martin’s finding that he can connect with his real community of interest on Google+ and have much higher quality conversations than he’s experienced on the other networks.

So far, I’ve had an experience similar to Martin. I’ve found that I share the interests of most of the people who have followed me. And by using the Circles feature to sort people by topic, I can dip into different areas just as I would if I were choosing between sections of a newspaper. A great way to increase the signal to noise ratio.

Martin also finds that a strength of Google+ is the ease with which users can adjust their privacy settings – on a general basis and on a post by post basis. It’s intuitive and clear.

Gini also points out that the Circles approach is different from the asymmetrical following on Twitter and the symmetrical friending on Facebook. And this means that we’ll have to develop a different way of figuring out how to manage ourselves in a way that takes full advantage of the unique properties of Google+

So, that’s our Google+ discussion this week. It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in social media in the past couple years. We’ll continue to test it and share our experiences in future weeks.

And what about you? Are you using Google+? What do you think of it? It’s strengths? Its weaknesses?

Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.