Mathew Ingram's coming to Third Tuesday Ottawa

March 17, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • globeandmail, mathewingram, ThirdTuesdayOttawa

Third Tuesday Ottawa When I announced Mathew Ingram‘s Third Tuesday Toronto presentation on How the Globe and Mail is using social media to connect with its readers, the session sold out in less than an hour.

Clearly, there’s a lot of interest in what Mathew and his colleagues at the Globe are up to. And there should be even more interest in Ottawa, where the government, politicians, and interest groups live and die by the Globe’s coverage.

mathewi So, I’m really excited to be able to tell you that we’ve snagged Mathew for Third Tuesday Ottawa on March 30.

If you’re planning to be in Ottawa on March 30, you can register online to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa with Mathew Ingram.

Thanks to our national sponsor, CNW Group, this Third Tuesday will again be free to the community. CNW Group covers the cost of our sound system, which is our biggest single cost. So, thanks to CNW for supporting Canada’s social media community.

Mathew Ingram on the Globe and Mail's digital future (present)

March 16, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • mathewingram, ThirdTuesdayToronto

ThirdTuesdayToronto Social media has turned the news gathering and distribution world upside down. No longer must we sit mute as we read our newspaper or watch the television news, knowing that they’ve got it wrong but unable to voice our views. Now, we can easily post our views on a blog, Facebook, Twitter or any other social media publishing platform we choose to use. Others who share our interests will find us and, if they think we’ve said something worth reading, they can redistribute our content with a simple gesture on the platform of their choice.

Not only can we talk about the news we receive, we can report it first hand. We’ve already seen citizen generated news sites like NowPublic spring up to take advantage of the fact that there are many, many more citizens who are originating eyewitness reports on events where the news media have yet to touch down.

Mainstream media is rapidly being undercut as audiences move to online social media and advertisers realize that what worked yesterday may not be working today.

On the other hand, let’s be honest that we all get a thrill if our content crosses over into traditional mainstream media and gets referenced there. That’s a simple acknowledgment that while most of us write for niche audiences who share our interests, an appearance in traditional mainstream media gives us access to a much larger audience. And, in most cases, mainstream media still carries with it a greater degree of authority in its newsgathering and reporting.

So, what’s a newspaper guy going to do? Stick his head in the sand and hope that the user trends don’t make him a casualty before retirement?

mathewingram1 If you’re Mathew Ingram, you’re taking a different path. You’re embracing the new online social media tools and exploiting your incumbent advantages of authority and reach to try to build a new relationship with your audience in the new medium. And you’re helping (pushing) your employer, Canada’s newspaper of record, the Globe and Mail, to embrace new media and explore their potential.

And, if you’re Mathew Ingram, you’re going to share your knowledge, experience and vision with Third Tuesday Toronto on March 24.

The Globe recently appointed Mathew as their “communities manager.” He is well qualified for this position, having established himself as (one of) Canada’s most respected and widely followed technology bloggers and reporters.

Since he took over as community manager, the Globe has engaged in high profile social media experiments – most notably using CoverItLive for live coverage of a subway shooting in Toronto, the Canadian budget and the visit to Ottawa of President Obama; the establishment of a public policy Wiki; and encouraging other Globe reporters to make it personal by using Twitter.

This will be Mathew’s second appearance at Third Tuesday. He helped us establish Third Tuesday when he agreed to be the speaker at our third event. Then, he was talking about the use of social media by reporters. And he was a great hit.

I’m sure he’ll be an equally great hit this time – and a sellout. If you’d like to attend, you can register online at the Third Tuesday Toronto Website.

Presentation Etiquette: It's about the participants, not the speaker

March 9, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • presentationzen

NewComm Forum I frequently speak about social media at conferences and workshops. As a presenter, I always want to give participants at my sessions full value for their time and attention. An incident at a workshop I presented a couple weeks ago has been gnawing at me.

In a nutshell: I was presenting a half day workshop on social media measurement. During the early part of the morning, I made a reference to Facebook as “a vast wasteland of empty content,” suggesting that Facebook is a great platform for connecting with people and signalling affinity for causes, but that I don’t see much serious content there. When we took our mid session break, one of the workshop participants approached me to tell me that she thought I’d sold Facebook short. She was quite annoyed. Clearly, my quick dismissal of Facebook as a platform for organizations to publish information ran counter to her view of Facebook.

I thought about the participant’s complaints during the break and decided to address them after the break. So, when we reconvened, without identifiying the person, I indicated that it had been suggested to me that I’d given short shrift to Facebook. And then I explained my position more fully.

Situation well addressed? Not quite. Not at all.

A few days after the workshop, the conference organizer sent me the participant evaluations of my session. All glowing. All rating me at 4.5 or higher out of a possible maximum rating of 5. All except for one evaluation. And that one person gave me the lowest possible score. A 1 out of 5. With comments like “talked too much about himself.”

Ouch. Time for some soul searching.

I realized that my handling of the situation only made matters worse for the person I’d upset. Instead of giving voice to her concerns and addressing them in a balanced way, I’d only succeeded in restating my point of view.

What should I have done?

I should have called on the person to present her own point of view to the group – and then encouraged the group to discuss it. My views were no more important than what other people perceived. I’d already stated my opinion. If people wanted me to explain or restate, they could have asked me to do so during such a conversation. But in allowing that conversation to occur, I too could have learned.

Instead, by my action, I imposed my view on the group and alienated someone who had a right to expect better.

Lesson learned. Next time I encounter this, I’ll ensure that I provide opportunity to those who disagree with me to fully and completely state their views. I may not agree with them, but I can definitely learn from them.

What would you charge for public relations services?

March 5, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • business, fees, publicrelations

istock_000000752057xsmall I received an email through the CCPRF Website from a new public relations practitioner asking how he should charge for his services. I’d like to share his email and my response.

The question:

I’m an up and coming media/PR consultant. I was in the media industry for 13 years and now I’m looking to develop my own consulting business. …

Recently, I acquired my first client. I’ll be paid on a per project basis. The client wants me to work on a social networking website campaign I suggested. Basically, I’ll be putting together this small business’ Facebook and Twitter pages. I’m trying to figure out how much I can charge this business. Should I go with a per hour rate? If so, how much? Or a flat rate? If so, how much? I’m also trying to determine how long it will take to build traffic and interest to these social networking pages. I’m guessing it’ll take 4 to 5 months for any substantial growth. This company is looking at this campaign as a new way to attract interest to its website/store.

I’d appreciate any thoughts as to how much I can charge.

My answer:

What you charge depends on the overhead you must carry (your needs), the value to the client (what you should charge), the budget of the client (what you may only be able to charge.) Bottom line, I’d start by asking for a fee equal to what I think the project will be worth the the client based on anticipated results. Then, if they cannot afford this, you can decide whether to negotiate an acceptable fee.

Your thoughts:

How would you answer this question? What’s the right way to charge for public relations services?

Cross-posted from the CCPRF:

This is cross-posted from the Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms‘ Weblog. I’m this year’s Chair of the CCPRF. And while the posts there are not as frequent as I would like, I think it’s worthwhile subscribing to it’s feed. When posts do appear, they’re usually authored by a CEO of a Canadian PR firm. It’s a unique aggregation of content.

If you're in Calgary or Edmonton, let's talk social media

February 27, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • Calgary, Edmonton, MRIA

When I return to Canada from Australia next week, I’m heading to Alberta to make two presentations on social media at the University of Calgary on March 4 and then at the University of Alberta in Edmonton on March 5.

The sessions are being hosted by the Alberta Chapter of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association. It’s their first foray onto university campuses. So, I’m really keen to do a good job for them.

The MRIA Website describes the session this way:

Social media has become an important fact of life for a growing number of Canadians. As its use increases, it has far reaching impact on our choice of media and how we spend our time. People no longer serve as mute audiences, but now engage in the act of creation, sharing and curating content. In the process, new communities of interest are forming that transcend geographical boundaries.

Social media is different from the early Web. It’s about relationships. It’s about community. It’s about the things that happen offsite – the linkbacks, the retweets, the references to our content, and the online (and offline) communities that are formed. How can organizations know what they want to achieve in social media and what are the emerging tools they can use to measure success against those criteria.

Join us for our next Lunch and Learn event on what social media is, how its read/write nature fulfills the potential of the Web, and how different people use it in different ways (for example; lurkers, critics, joiners, creators, etc.)

If you’re in Alberta and you’re interested in social media, you can register online to attend either the Calgary or the Edmonton sessions. And if you read this blog and attend the session, please do say hello to me. I always welcome a smile and a human connection.

Help! I'm drowning in a sea of email!

February 26, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • efficiency, email, Management, Productivity, time

I’m snowed under. I’m awash. I’m overwhelmed. By email. Lots and lots of email.

istock_000002649953xsmall How bad is it? I’m on a trip to Australia. Away from the office. And today, I logged over 5 and 1/2 hours reading and responding to the emails I received since yesterday. That leaves precious little time to actually do the work that’s important to me.

I’ve put practices in place to try to deal with my emails more efficiently and keep the important ahead of the urgent. I try to touch each email only once, deciding on first reading if I need to respond or if I can delegate any necessary action. I quickly delete emails that have been sent simply to me to “keep me in the loop.”

But what remains takes too much time.

And as I ask myself why, I think I’ve seen a pattern. The emails that take most of the time are those that ask my opinion. In many respects, it’s the emails that are asking “what should we do?” or “what is your opinion?”

Now, if this were a face to face encounter, I would respond by asking the questioner what he or she thinks we should do. The smart, competent people will always supply an answer that I can quickly agree with or that we can refine together.

But I find it tougher to respond to an email in this way. It seems rude. Worse, it also delays a decision and can turn into the dreaded email ping pong exchange. So, I invest my time to think through the question – and then I write a considered response. And that can take a lot of time. Over five hours today alone.

But I simply can’t keep going this way. I have to get my head up above this email tsunami.

But how?

What do you do to keep email at a manageable level? Can you do this and still do your job if as a manager? How can you do it without offending people? Is there no other way than to step back into another century and hire an assistant to divert most of the flow?

Can you throw a guy a lifeline? What can I do to get my head above the email flood?

Blogging brought the world together. Twitter is pushing us apart.

February 25, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • community, communityofinterest, Twitter

When I first started blogging, I was struck by how quickly and easily I discovered bloggers around the world who shared my interests and from who I could learn. My community of interest spanned the globe, including people like Neville Hobson (in Amsterdam and later the U.K.), Darren Barefoot (at that time on a one year sojourn in Malta, now in Victoria B.C.), Allan Jenkins (Copenhagen), Katie Paine (New England), Josh Hallett (Florida), Shel Israel (California), the other Shel, Shel Holtz (California), Jeremiah Owyang, Lorelle VanFossen (Pacific northwest) and even and Lee Hopkins (Australia). Blogging had enabled me to form a community with others who shared my interests – a community that transcended time zones and geography.

Over the past two years, Twitter has taken up an increasing amount of my intention. Its 140 character micro bursts of ideas, links, emotions and idle musings bring me into instant contact with the people in my community. I drop in and out of the flow several times a day.

But at the same time that Twitter has given me the ability to connect constantly and quickly wiht the people in my community, it also has led to a shrinking of that community. Yes, it transcends geography. I regularly tweet to people in other countries and in Europe. But at the same time, it has restricted my community to people within a band of time when we are all on the network live. In other words, I’ve lost sight of that part of the world in which our business days don’t overlap.

In effect, my world through the lense of Twitter has shrunk to encompass only those people who are online at the same time as me. So, I’ve lost sight of those people whose workdays and online times don’t overlap with mine. They are invisible to me and I too am invisible to them.

So, Twitter is a good news / bad news story for social networking and its ability to expose us to different points of view and draw us closer together. In a way, Twitter has narrowed my horizons while making my experience with the smaller community richer.

Have you experienced this “invisibility effect”, losing track of people you previously experienced regularly? if so, what are you doing about it?

Things that keep me awake … at Third Tuesday Calgary

February 23, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • ThirdTuesdayCalgary

I’m getting a chance to visit old friends in Calgary early in March. And they’ve been nice enough to ask me to be the speaker at Third Tuesday Calgary.

I’ll be arriving the previous afternoon from Sydney, Australia and also will have spoken to another group at lunch. So, I’ve kept the promise and, hopefully, the expectations of my performance modest with a session description that I hope will spark some good discussion among participants once I’ve kicked it off. Here’s the description from the Third Tuesday Calgary meetup site:

Things that keep Joseph Thornley awake at night…

Joseph Thornley will lead a different type of Third Tuesday Calgary discussion. What are the issues relating to social media that you keep coming back to? What are the ones that just haven’t been put to bed yet?

He’ll prime the discussion by sharing with us the things that keep him awake at night:

Twitterquette: How much honesty is too much? Can you make a critical point in 140 bursts? Or is better not to?

Social Media’s relationship with Mainstream Media: (Yes, that again.) MSM takes pride in the editorial function. But is that still a factor when both the CBC and the Globe and Mail use CoverItLive to provide real time coverage of events like the Federal Budget and President Obama’s visit to Ottawa?

Measurement: Are we what we measure? If that’s the case, what is social media?

Fragmentation: It’s not about blogging anymore. Social media tools have proliferated. And as they have, our presence has fragmented into shards spread around the social media scape. How do I stay in control of my own social media presence in this fragmented environment?

The social media creation gap: Canadians lag behind Americans in creation of social media content. According to Forrester’s Social Technographic profiles, the number of online Canadians who are creators, critics or collectors is only half that of Americans who do the same things. Will we continue to be able to see ourselves in social media if this trend persists?

If you’re in Calgary on March 4, I hope you’ll come out to Third Tuesday Calgary and participate in the discussion. You can register online to attend.

Thank you to @andrewmcintyre for organizing this event. And as always, thanks to all the good people at CNW Group, who continue to support Third Tuesday as our national sponsor.

Deciding who to follow on Twitter

February 18, 2009 • Joseph Thornley • community, Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter more and more over the past year. Especially at conferences like those run by the Advanced Learning Institute, Canadian Institute, and OpenDialogue, as well as Third Tuesday Toronto and Third Tuesday Ottawa.

I’ve replaced live blogging with live tweeting. It’s very satisfying – connecting me directly with other attendees and people who care about the same subject.

The more I’ve put into Twitter, the more I’ve received back. At the same time, the number of people following me has increased. And the pace at which new followers are added has increased.

This presents a problem.

I set up my Twitter profile to notify me via Gmail of each new follower. When someone follows me, I visit their Twitter profile to see if they share my interests. I follow people who write about things that interest me or who have blogs in their profiles or stand out in some other way. As I’ve done this review, I’ve found myself following about 1 in 4 of the people who follow me.

Why don’t I follow more people?

Well I don’t use Twitter as a publishing platform. Instead, I use it as a “town square” – a way to connect with my “community of interest.” And to really connect, I need to keep the number of people I follow in the hundreds, not the thousands. (That’s not a criticism. I admire anyone who can attract more than 60,000 twitter followers. But that’s an audience, not a community.)

Recently, the pace at which my new Twitter followers has been increasing has been greater than my ability to check out everyone’s profile. (I realized this when the number of my pending Gmail emails exceeded 900!) So, I’ve settled on a new way to decide who to follow.

Instead of visiting every follower’s profile (which at the rate of 20 -30 new followers a day takes over an hour), I’ve decided to watch for new people who either retweet one of my tweets or respond to me with an @thornley.

I’m doing this in the belief that these people who actively engage with my content are more interested in me. And these are the people who I should be checking out and probably following.

What do you think? Is this a reasonable strategy for identifying people to follow in Twitter? What approach do you use?

UPDATE: Jay Goldman offered some great advice on how he decides who to follow in Twitter. I missed this in my Google Search. Sorry Jay.

Kelly Rusk also had a post about what she looks for when deciding who to follow on Twitter.