Category Archives: social media

Announcing the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters Conference

July 29th, 2010 at 8:07am

We’re kicking off the fifth season of Third Tuesday Toronto (#TTT) with something special: a day long conference on social media measurement.

Third Tuesday: Measurement Matters conference (#TTMM), Sept. 28, 2010

“Are we there yet?” “How much longer before we arrive?” Every vacationing parent recognizes these words as the first expression of our need to know where we are and what progress we’re making.

Measurement matters. It’s how we know whether our efforts are having any impact. It’s how we know whether we’re making progress toward a goal or whether we’re stalled.

We measure what’s important to us. We measure to understand what is going on. We measure to provide insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Measurement really matters in emerging and fast changing fields. And social media is a field that is evolving rapidly. Evolving in participation, as it transforms from something for early adopters to a part of mainstream life. Evolving as new tools and platforms proliferate. Evolving as people adopt it and find new uses for it.

Anyone who uses social media for their work or is serious about it must understand what we can and should measure and how we can do it.

That’s where Third Tuesday Measurement Matters comes in.

A discussion of best practices and leading edge thinking

Many smart people are spending a lot of effort figuring out measurement methodologies and developing new metrics and measurement tools. They’re developing insight into the nature of participation in social media and the new patterns of social interaction. They’re developing new metrics to measure these new interactions. And they’re developing suites of tools that enable us to monitor, measure and analyze what’s going on in social media.

We’ll be inviting leading experts in social media measurement and companies who are developing the measurement tools to participate in Third Tuesday Measurement Matters. They’ll talk about the measurement challenges we face and offer their thoughts on how we should tackle these challenges. They’ll also demonstrate the best tools we can use to measure social media.

Help us shape the conference that you’d like to attend

We want this conference to deal with the issues that interest you and answer the questions that matter to you. So, we want your input into what we should discuss and who you think has insight to offer on the important issues.

In the coming days, I’ll post a preliminary agenda and ask for input on the topics that you’d like to discuss and the speakers you’d like to hear from.

Check back here in the next few days for more information and your opportunity to shape the agenda and lineup of speakers.

Third Tuesday Measurement Matters (#TTMM), Toronto, September 28, 2010.

Social Mediators 9: Promoting a book with social media

July 13th, 2010 at 6:55am

Recently, Terry Fallis found both of his novels – the Leacock Award winning The Best Laid Plans and the soon to be published The High Road – in the top five of the iTunes Literature podcasts. In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Dave Fleet and I talk with Terry about how he and his publisher, McClelland & Stewart, are using social media to find and cultivate a fan base for Terry’s novels.

Also up for discussion this week: Social media adoption still isn’t universal among communicators.

Do you think social media is just a niche expertise or should it be a core skill set for all professional communicators?

Social Media, the G20 & our view of the news: Inside PR 2.10

June 30th, 2010 at 1:32pm

In the next few days, both Canada and the United States will be celebrating our National Holidays, on July 1 and July 4 respectively. And these holidays fall only a week after the G20 summit of world leaders held this past weekend in Toronto.

So, it’s not surprising that Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I found ourselves focusing in this week’s Inside PR on earth-moving news (yes, we had an earthquake in Canada too!), including the G20 Summit and the view that social media, especially Twitter provided of this event.

In a nutshell, the social media coverage was visceral, diverse and community-oriented. Traditional news media, on the other hand, while capturing pictures of the street level action, had a near monopoly on coverage of what went on inside the secure perimeter of the actual G20 Summit.

Does this highlight a limitation of social media? People can’t cover what they can’t get access to?

Listen to the complete Inside PR Podcast

Inside PR 2.10 [ 22:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thanks to @michael_kerr @hummingbird604 @SeanMoffitt @digitaljoy @dereklothian for suggesting the topics for this week’s podcast.

Shownotes prepared by Inside PR Producer Yasmine Kashefi

0:27 Martin opens the show.

2:17 Martin tells us how the G20 impacted his move to the new energi PR offices.

3:46 Joe paints a picture of what the G20 was like over the past weekend in Toronto and introduces this week’s first topic: the G20 and social media.

6:36 Joe points out the limitations of social media during the G20.

12:51 Joe wonders why the G20 organizers failed to incorporate elements of social media to inform the public during the talks.

14:53 Martin introduces the second topic: how social media is breaking “news” before traditional media.

18:18 Gini explains how it is difficult to determine what is and isn’t credible on Twitter.

21:18 Martin closes the show.

Taking The High Road with Terry Fallis

June 28th, 2010 at 7:22am

Terry Fallis‘ story started out the same as that of almost any other unpublished writer with a first novel. Pitch it to every publisher he could find – and be rejected by every one. And it could have ended there – as it does for most first time writers.

But Terry knew something about social media. And he decided that, if he couldn’t get his book to readers in the traditional way, he’d try to get it to readers in a totally different way. He’d read a chapter a week and distribute it as a podcast on his Terry Fallis blog and via iTunes.

And that’s the way The Best Laid Plans found an audience. Via social media. Virally. One fan at a time found it, liked it and passed it on to friends.

Some of the people who heard about the book and read it were on the selection committee for the Leacock Award. They liked it. In fact, they liked it so much that they nominated it for the award. And in a true Hollywood ending, Terry Fallis’ The Best Laid plans won the Award in 2008. And then traditional success followed. He picked up representation from one of Canada’s leading literary agents and a traditional publishing deal from one of the country’s most prestigious publishers, McClelland & Stewart.

Well, Terry’s back with a sequel, The High Road. And he’s persuaded his publisher, McClelland & Stewart to test his approach again to see if lightning will strike twice. This is a first for a Canadian publisher. And I’m sure that others are watching closely to see whether podcasting the book in advance of publication will lift sales.

This week’s Inside PR, features an interview with Terry about how he and McClelland & Stewart are using social media to promote his book. Following the interview, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about Terry’s experience and whether it can be more broadly replicated.

Listen to the episode:

Inside PR 2.09 [ 29:45 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here are the complete Inside PR show notes, prepared by our producer, Yasmine Kashefi.

0:23 Martin opens the show.

2:50 Joe mentions that Terry Fallis’ book podcast has made it to number one on the iTunes literature podcast charts.

4:03 Joe interviews Terry about how he used social media to promote his two books.

13:00 Martin, Joe and Gini comment on how innovative Terry was with his approach to social media to promote his book and himself.

19:00 Joe presents this week’s topic, recent developments in social media. He starts with the YouTube news feed and how citizen journalism has changed how news is defined.

24:21 Joe adds that the move toward government 2.0 has been gaining momentum and cites the Australian government’s Gov 2.0 as an example.

25:53 Martin introduces a new closing segment, the round up.

26:12 Gini kicks off the last -30- segment on Inside PR.

28:14 Martin wraps up the show.

Inside PR 2.08 – I’m up in the air + Social Media Trends

June 16th, 2010 at 1:39pm

I missed the recording of this week’s episode of Inside PR. Both Martin Waxman and I were en route to Regina, Saskatchewan for the Canadian Public Relations Society‘s national conference. However, my plane developed mechanical problems (thankfully, while it was still on the ground) and I was still up in the air at recording time. So, Martin and Gini Dietrich went ahead without me. That’s one of the real benefits of three co-hosts. We can still have a discussion if one of us misses a recording date.

Inside PR 2.08

Inside PR 2.08 [ 22:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Inside PR Show Notes

This week on Inside PR, Martin and Gini discuss trends in social media.

0:30 Martin opens the show.

2:10 Martin mentions that Joe was unable to join them this week, and that they are presenting at the CPRS Conference in Regina, Saskatchewan.

3:10 Martin addresses listener comments from last week, the first from Ed Lee, congratulating Martin on the merger.

4:08 The second listener comment comes from Rob Jeanveau about the jeans issue that Gini brought up last week.

7:01 Martin introduces this week’s topic: 5 social media trends. He kicks off the discussion with the first trend, video.

10:00 Martin introduces the next trend: search.

13:42 Martin and Gini discuss the next trend: location based applications.

16:30 The next trend discussed is mobile payment applications.

18:58 Gini discusses the importance of the last trend, social media policies.

22:00 Martin wraps up the show.

Thanks to our Producer, Yasmine Kashefi, for preparing these shownotes and the great work she does producing and publishing Inside PR.

Eqentia – a new social media monitoring tool for enterprises

June 7th, 2010 at 11:14am

Eqentia is a social media startup headquartered in Toronto Canada. In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Eqentia’s CEO and Founder, William Mougayar, joins Dave Fleet and me for a discussion about Eqentia, what it does, who its aimed at and future plans for it.

Eqentia is positioning itself as a team-based knowledge dashboard that can be managed by one or two users, freeing others from the need to set up and refine searches. William hopes that managers will turn to it each day to answer the question, “What’s new that I need to know about?”

Eqentia’s text mining engine promises to deliver content to users in near realtime, providing them with an up to the minute picture of conversations and references to their brands and issues of interest.

William sees Eqentia becoming a productivity tool for medium and large enterprises. Initially, power users can curate the content to ensure that the highest relevance and most valuable content is featured, saving time and effort for the rest of the team. Once the principal user has set up the tool and refined the settings so that it focuses on the company’s specific interests, other team members will have access to the data without the need to manage the sources, relevancies and advanced filters and settings that make all of this possible.

Eqentia will be most attractive to teams that have both power users and executives who don’t care about how to use the tool, but just want to see its output. The power users can publish the information in user-friendly form for the end users – via email, Twitter, RSS feeds, or by giving end users access to individual topics.

Unlike many other social media tools that focus on providing users with the ability to build folksonomies by applying multiple tags, Eqentia incorporates predefined taxonomies to standardize searches and make it easy for end users to find the same data set with a simple search.

Still to come in Eqentia’s development – a comprehensive approach to social media metrics.

The company has some potential client deals in the works and hopes to be able to begin to announce these in the near future.

Eqentia has been seed funded by Extreme Venture Partners, who also funded Bump Top, which was recently acquired by Google. William says that he had the funding to carry on with the development of the product and to explore its marketing potential.

Have you tried Eqentia? What are your thoughts about it?

Why you should attend the Social Media for Government Conference in Ottawa

May 20th, 2010 at 8:38am

For the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of chairing the Social Media for Government Conference in Ottawa. And I’ll be chairing the next conference to be held in just one month, from June 21 to June 24.

A great learning experience

This conference is an opportunity to learn about how social media is being used by government and to discuss the challenges and opportunities it presents.

Speakers from all levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – will be sharing their experience with social media and the insight they gained. Organizations presenting case studies include: Public Safety Canada, Alberta Environment, Army Public Affairs, the U.S. Department of State, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Ontario Ombudsman, the Public Service Commission of Canada, the Ottawa Public Library, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Norfolk County and the cities of London and Ottawa.

I’ll be speaking as well. On the day before the conference proper, I’ll be presenting a Social Media 101 Workshop and on the first morning of the conference, I’ll be co-presenting with Pierre Killeen about public engagement in the age of social media.

Save $400 off the registration fee for the Social Media for Government Conference

If you’ve read this far, it’s fair to say that you’re interested in learning about the adoption of social media by government. So, here’s a great offer.

People who registered for the conference before April 30 were eligible for an Early Bird Discount of $400. But April 30 has come and gone and that discount has expired. That’s the bad news.

Now the good news. Just mention my name when you register for the Social Media for Government Conference and you’ll receive a $400 discount off the registration fee. That’s the equivalent of the Early Bird Registration – and you can use my discount right up to conference day. It doesn’t expire.

Why I attend the Social Media for Government Conference

I chair and participate in this conference as a volunteer. I do it because it’s one of the best learning opportunities available to me in Ottawa.

Based on my experience over the past three years, I know you won’t regret attending this conference. You’ll learn a lot and meet some smart people. What more could you ask for?

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