of course, I use a dog wherever possible!

How do you listen?  Used to be the obvious answer:  with your ears.  Today, you listen online with your eyes.  You monitor what’s being said about your brand by keeping a close eye on all the sites you can, and then some.  Read voraciously on all topics social media.  Become the expert on your brand’s interraction with the brave new social media world.

There was a great line on an episode of Mad Men a while back where Don Draper tells a client, “if you don’t like what’s being said, change the converstation.”  Forty-some years later, the job of the communicator is to ENGAGE in the conversation and address areas of concern…or if there is no conversation, get one going.

Social media offers a gaggle of opportunities to do this and there is no one right way.  No one-size-fits-all-cookie-cutter solution.  At a recent all-day social media seminar I attended (been going to a LOT of those), the moderator said that a colleague eagerly asked him:  ”what are you reading–you’re always so in-the-know and well-versed on every topic.”  After a brief pause came the moderator’s one-word answer: “Twitter”.  Interesting.

Social media maven Chris Brogran says to grow bigger ears. Where would you start?

Winners of wine prize at Himmarshee Twineup

It’s a given that social media is rapidly taking its place at the public relations table alongside traditional media. Some say the old is being replaced by the new. But, wait, not so fast. If you sift through your bag of traditional techniques, you’re bound to find many that translate beautfiully into the new social media language.  

Sure you can offer an e-mail, instead of a traditional coupon, tweet out specials and contests.  But how can you build an event using social media?   Here’s a good–and tangible–example of a new way to promote a time-tested favorite: the wine tasting.

Take a restaurant known for its exceptional food and extensive wine list.  Add a Twitter personality who is a popular wine enthusiast to host.  Using the increasingly common Tweet-Up formula, combine the two for a wine-tasting, and differentiate by calling it a #Twineup.   Create an online invitation like Tweetvite.  Promoting the event through Twitter and ask friends to retweet your message. 

Traditional PR (like a guest shot on a morning TV show) doesn’t hurt either–and yields a roomful of happy imbibers.  And while most will tweet right through the event, a few are, inevitably, sans mobile device and have never even used Twitter!

How can you employ successful tactics you have been using for years in tandem with social media?

Like everyone on Bus #3 to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens, and especially Craig Murphy, Ted’s brother, (who answered my varied questions on the ride back while hiding his connection to the event and its organizer, remaining polite even while surreptiously taking cell phone calls to plan his Friday morning onstage Ted impersonation), I was rolling in the aisles at the video haunted house winner. The guy was so scared I was expecting the worst, but I’ve seen social media seminars more daunting than those houses!  Then there are my SoFla tweeps and friends IRL @muurayiz and @amandastewart.  The latter got me to ride the biggest, scariest roller coaster I’ve ever been on, just by being her kind and competent self!  You can put your brain on auto-pilot when you hang with Amanda because she is always on top of things!

Speaking of on top of things, it was top of the next morning when Ted opened the show, followed by a steady two-day discourse on all that’s new and true in social media. The panels were well-chosen, the topics on-point, PR Sarah Evans, Brian Clark and Liz Strauss nothing short of awesome and Chris Brogan’s delivery by now is so comedically well-timed he could be doing stand-up in Vegas… or anywhere.

And the parties? Well, to paraphrase Brogan…what happens at IZEAfest stays on Facebook!

Tweet and Re-Tweet

We all know and admire people who have elevated tweeting to an art form.  Finally, for the rest of us, something we can really wrap our heads…and our fingers…around.

In “The Science of Retweeting”, Hubspot viral marketing scientist Dan Zarella has gotten the art of tweeting down to a science, and with great certainty can predict not only what words are most likely to be retweeted, but the best day and time to send out the 140-character missive.  And on today’s brave new social media landscape, where apps change faster than you can download them, there’s some measure of comfort in those measurements.

Zarella studied 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets, more than Ryan Seacrest, Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey or Kim Kardashian have to comb through, to get his results.  Fast Company’s Dan Mascai has done such a good job of laying it all out with charts and graphs in his Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter post that I’ll just cut to the chase here.

Do use links, but preferably shortened with bit.ly, ow.ly and is.gd.  Tinyurl’s effectiveness is shrinking faster than a Tweetdeck link.

RT @PokenGirl: the Poken Pulse has been launched! http://bit.ly/1ZjRiD Avail for pre-order http://bit.ly/pokenpulse #yagottagetone!

Manners count.  The phrase “Please Retweet” is met with positive results, not spammy disregard.  In fact, you, twitter, please and retweet (in that order) are the four most Re-Tweetable words in the English language.  Or at least the parts of that language that have appeared on Twitter.  The least?  Game, going, haha and–you’re gonna love this one–lol.

And punctuate, please!  Ninetyeight percent of RTs include some form of punctuation.  The colon ranks highest here.  Headline style tweets containing nouns and proper nouns combined with third-person verbs get the fingers flying.  And don’t second that emotion.  Tweets about work, religion, money and media/celebrities get more RT action than negative comments, complaints and references to self.

Best time and day to tweet?  Four PM on Fridays.  Guess weekend-watchers are catching a little early 5 o’clock whistle action…and re-tweeting it!  How would you explain it?

Jed devouring his food and attention from his favorite vet, Carol Falck

I could have started blogging yesterday. Or last week. Or last month. Or last year. Or back when Chris Brogan started journaling. But I was too busy toiling away at “traditional” marketing to begin chipping away at it. I did have one of the first live webcams around in the early 90′s, so I think in some way I intuited what was to come.

I could have started cooking at any of those intervals, too, or much sooner actually, because I’ve had a stove a LOT longer than I’ve had a computer. But, except for a brief experimental stint starting at 16, working my way through The Joy of Cooking (or was it the Joy of Sex) Cookbook on my college-freshman boyfriend, I didn’t. Aside from making meatloaf for my beloved father and eventually all meals for my beloved first dog Jojo, when he was sick. Both were extremely receptive audiences who would have appreciated anything I whipped up for them. My good that I didn’t foist my culinary skills on others.

So I can’t help but wonder if it is not some extremely cosmic coincidence/blunder that has my current old dog, Jed, who is sick, scheduled for his TV debut Thursday, in a piece where my holistic veterinarian client and friend, Dr. Carol Falck, demonstrates how she is treating his kidney failure with Traditional Chinese Medicine, including nutritional therapy. Thereby necessitating that I cook something for him. Today.

While at the same time, a very good friend is going way out of his way to show me how to configure my WordPress.org blog so that I can get on the (blog)roll and start rocking like so many other communications professionals do.

So on virtually (get it?) the same day, I am going to become an active participant in two commonplace, everyday activities that I have heretofore watched from the sidelines: cooking and blogging.
With regards to the former, I won’t really be cooking. I’ll be throwing a bunch of stuff into a crockpot, setting it on low and hoping I don’t set the house on fire. It may be made of Dade County Pine (the house, not the crockpot), but I don’t think it’s really indestructible.

And then there’s the latter. Yeah, I’ve nailed my share of sixty-second radio spots and press releases in my day. When I was president of Fort Lauderdale’s largest civic association I wrote 24 (count ‘em) monthly columns inspiring complete strangers to come up to me on the street and tell me that they were actually reading the VPCA newsletter column for the first time in its 20-year history.

Let's Mix It Up, Let It Simmer and See What Comes Out!

For my dog Jed, I’ll be combining healthful ingredients (can you spell organic chicken at $9.99 a pound?) with a pinch of spices in a pot called a crock in the hopes of making his life a little better.

For my reader(s), if I have any, I’ll be sharing social media information learned, which is hopefully not a crock, and experiences encountered on that vast new frontier, hopefully peppered with some success stories, with the intention of making the lives of fellow social media newbies a little easier… or at least less isolated.

Along the way, I do promise I won’t claim to be an expert on anything… especially cooking, blogging or for that matter any and all matters related to domesticity and social media. Because the former elude me and the latter has proven to be digestible to me in bites and with a lot of help from friends.

I’m a newbie with a huge appetite for learning. So let’s take this journey together, and have some fun along the way. I know one thing for sure. My dogs Jed and Willow are gonna like it!