- "Updating Your Status" | A Twitter Parody Tune ♫ ♪August 25
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I like Cake -- the food that's spawned a ton of TV shows and, more importantly, the band.
I like Twitter too. So why did I take the Cake song "Going the Distance" and create this Twitter parody?
If we can't laugh at ourselves, what's the point? Just be thankful I didn't pick "Tweet It" and I'm not into karaoke.
Is it funny? You tell me. But it's definitely a parody. So here's one of my favorite earworms -- dedicated to the social plaform, and cottage industry, that's grown up around it.
"Updating Your Status"
140 characters, a parting line
Fingers nimble and dancing in time
The fail wail flashes, No tweets go out
So Mashable and Techcrunch begin to shout
We talk amongst ourselves and post cool links
But does it do any good or cause you to think?
Shallow and brief it adds to the chatter
And we follow people who se
- 1984 - not an instruction manualAugust 24
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Preparing for an upcoming presentation, I was considering the documentation vs. experience trend and its impact on consumer consumption habits.
As Ricky Van Veen notes, people are more into recording the trip to Disney World than the trip itself. A socially-inclined, smartphone-toting park guest could check in on Foursquare, record their mouse-inspired lunch on Foodspotting and brag about their Phineas and Ferb t-shirt on Barcode Hero.
This is a nice change of pace because normally they're just logging in their Phineas and Ferb TV time on Tunerfish. And it doesn't have to stop there, with apps like Stickybits and Layar the park guest has even more opps to record actions deemed private by most of us.
Even one of the most private actions of all can now be recorded thanks to
- The Ultimate Social Media Site is OnsiteAugust 23
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The final stop on Day One of the #140conf found @jeffpulver and team in Cincinnati for a Sunday evening RoadTrip TweetUp.
The attendees, the stories and the entire experience remind me that no social media platform can replicate the original social network – meeting live and in person.
Putting faces to names and Twitter handles is part of it. But you obviously learn so much more than you can from even the most well-crafted 140 character missive. We should all do it more often.
With more than 20 people in attendance, there were plenty of stories to tell and document about Cincinnati’s social media community. From something as simple as trading tips about the iPhone and iPad with @elliotcampbell and @JoeyWessels to learning about the latest social media efforts at Union Terminal with @Doug4Cincy.
- Influence, huh, yeah, what is it good for...August 19
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With apologies to Edwin Starr, when did the word influence join the commoditized dictionary with experience, integrated, solutions and the like?
Was it when the word was first used (incorrectly) as a synonym to popularity? I'm not sure. And I don't really care. But popularity is not the same as influence and ever since Fast Company's much-discussed "Influence Project" debuted, I've become interested in defining influence once and for all.
The Importance of Influence
At Empower, we use influence as a guide to our blogger relations efforts. It's an important metric. We know it makes more sense to talk to the people that count than simply count the people that talk about you. If you think influence is popularity, you'd assume a tweet from me was more influential than a tweet from Pete Blackshaw. And anyone that follows the marketing and advertising industries understands
- The Press Release (a rant. for immediate release.)August 17
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Should the press release die? Or should it just become a social media press release? Hey, a press release and social media are like peanut butter and chocolate folks. Are you going to pass on a Reese's?!
Um, who cares?!
OK, I understand there's a sh!t ton of money tied up in the distribution of press releases --from the agencies writing them and the blogs, conferences, workshops, e-books and teleseminars offering tips on how to write better press releases to the wire services and media databases helping to push them out (more than 2,000 each day on average I'm told).
The press release represents its own ecosystem of content and some of that content might even be newsworthy. Even the Bad Pitch blog recommends the topic as part of a balanced diet. But when the topic eclipses the industry discussion, is that balanced?
There are plenty of times the press release is a worthy topic of discussion. I'm not overlooking the obvious need to teach, practice and hone our craft. But the current and steady level of discussion around the press release I'm seeing in the industry is comparable to a group of world famous artists constantly talking about which type of frame is
