If you would like to read further here are the sites I used to learn about Social Media press releases. http://del.icio.us/mherzber/smpr
Please feel free to ask any questions or leave comments below. Or you can email me at mherzberger [at] gmail [dot] com. I’m always will to help so feel free to ask. You can also get great info about interactive marketing at http://bloghighed.org.
I’ll finish with one last video that cover the points in a fun manner, Thanks - Matt
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I will be doing an upcoming conference in St. Petersburg, FL for the Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference. I will be speaking about press releases in a talk named Press Release 2.0: Generating Buzz in the Social Media Era. This is a talk that I have done before that I have since revisited and changed quite a bit. I originally talked about social media press releases and now it has changed to both social media releases and building newsrooms and making them engaging.
I am going to be attending HighEdWeb 08 and look forward to meeting lots of you. I will also be presenting a session on Tuesday at 9:45am. Press Release 2.0 - News Releases in the Social Media Era. I did this talk once before with what was a very social media press release take on it. I plan to change it a bit while still integrating social media press releases also talking about how to make a good pressroom as well.
I plan to be in town on Sat at 5pm ish so feel free to find me. I am heading to this meetup on Saturday night. Otherwise, I am totally open and look forward to meeting lots of you. Here is a photo below so you know what I look like.
Also if you have any questions about BlogHighEd feel free to ask.
I have noticed a trend over the last year at many conferences. The only discussion being had is not that of the speaker on stage. But that of the attending and following along online audience as well. This isn’t an entirely new revelation people have been live blogging and irc channels for years. But not with the addition of tools such as twitter, ustream and a few others; there is a timely back channel going on discussing the positive and negative points of the talks.
Eduweb 2008
This year at eduWeb there was a solid twitter back channel. The discussion was aggregated with the hashtag #eduweb2008. I, while not an attendee was able to follow most every session at the conference from my office. I was even able to interject some questions at the conference from my remote location. I had my questions relayed via twitter. Ustream was another very helpful service that was used to stream live video of conferencesessions.
Now as the organizer people might think, oh no bad idea. Wrong, this was able to get more buzz out about this conference that probably ever before. It made it relevant to more than just the attendees and the buzz can be carried on from here.
SXSW vs Lacy
One of the best examples of back channel rebellion is that of SXSW v Sarah Lacy when she was doing a live keynote interview of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. She lost trust of the audience and boy did things go south. If you want to read more about this just google sxsw and sarah lacy.
Tools of the back channel
There are many tools that can be used to create back channel at a conference; they can all work in unison to create the big picture.
Twitter
a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Twitter search
this is the search tool used for the twitter service, it can be used to search real time via #hashtags, usernames, keywords, location and date among others
Ustream
a real time free live video streaming site, where you can view conference sessions live, it also has a chatroom so you can add to the discussion while the session is going on
Meebo rooms
Chat rooms with a theme via the Meebo browser based instant messenger service
Flickr
as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, tell the story of the conference via pictures
Call to action - HighEdWeb 2008
So now that we have all these tools and a proven model from eduweb 2008. I think we need to improve on this. This is where you come in. If you plan too attend or not you can participate in the back channel at HighEdWeb2008.
Here are a few ideas I had for how to add to what was done at eduWeb.
Audience ombudsman
A person or many in the audience of every session (just anyone ,no nomination needed) that will monitor the back channel of a session and ask the questions of those who are following via twitter or ustream.
Central hub
A place where all the back channel can be monitored at the conference, for example as screen in the lobby that will display all the tweets with #highedweb2008 live. There is a tool called twittercamp that can accomplish this. I’m sure with all the geeks attending we can find other way to accomplish this as well. Or create our own tool if needed.
Ustream the sessions
As was done during many of the sessions at eduweb 2008. I think people should stream the sessions this year to provide coverage for those who are not able to attend and another vehicle for back channel.
Let me know your thoughts and lets get moving before HighEdWeb 2008!
Unfortunately, I’m not able to attend this year but since I am going to be keeping up online I thought I would provide all I find as a resource to others as I did last year. This post will be updated multiple times over the course of the conference.
I had one of the best web user experiences I have ever had the other day. Enough that I feel obligated to post about it.
I was purchasing a Flip camera via Amazon. Amazon in general is a great shopping experience. The cart the recommendation, the reviews. It ties everything together in a great package. So I was kind of flustered while ordering and I forgot to change my shipping address. I was getting it shipped overnight and I needed to change it quick. So I got to my order and there was a edit your order link.
After I click it gives me options a contact and an urgent contact. I needed this changed quick so I go to urgent and it says phone. So I click expecting to have a phone number to call where I will have to sit though 30 voice prompts. I was wrong, it asked for my phone number and within 3 seconds my phone was ringing. It was a computer but I was told I was already in the queue and within approx 30 seconds I was on with a live human being. No enter 3 for this and whatnot. Straight to a real person because they knew I needed a really person fast.
That in an of itself was great. Now I tell them my issue and they say the item has already begun the shipping process. Bare in mind I only purchased this item approx 2 minutes ago at this point (talk about well oiled machine). So they sent the item back or origin, they reset my order and told me to refresh the order page and there was now a link that said “change order info”.
This is an amazing experience, in the day and age of people dreading most customer service interactions Amazon took the time to care about me and address me in a timely manner and I was left feeling great and now I am selling them to you as a genuinely satisfied customer.
So now to the hook, imagine a student in the recruiting process getting this kind of VIP preferential treatment. They give us their info and have a personalized call made to them in a short timely manner. In my experience of universities I have dealt with the recruiting process is a very confusing and poorly planned process for many students. I will follow up shortly with more experiences I have seen lately.
Remember the students are now in the power position in ever step of the process so we need to treat them like royalty, user experience is a huge deal and can leave a positive or negative impression of your organization.
I had a running “Friday Design Inspiration” series that I would post here on the site and due to the fact that I am ridiculously busy with consulting and other things I am going to change it up a bit. Rather than the Friday highlight posts I will just update whenever I find something.
