2011: End of Year Wins

Twitter released their official Year in Review “Hot Topics” for 2011.

Much to my surprise and excitement, the inspirational hashtag Maria Shriver and I created back in March — #threewordstoliveby — was the #3 most popular hashtag on Twitter, following #egypt and #tigerblood. Amazing! And, even after 10 months, people are still tweeting their three words to live by.

In addition, a FastCompany blog recently included Maria Shriver on a list of the “7 Greatest Communications Successes of 2011.” For those who don’t want to click away and read the article in its entirety, here is the section that references Maria Shriver.

Maria Shriver: Shriver handled her husband’s very public betrayal in a way consistent with our times. She had recently established herself as a leader in the women’s empowerment movement, one of the characteristics of which is telling it like it is in the daily act of juggling work and family. She reached out to her legions of followers by releasing a series of unglamorous, do-it-yourself videos in which she asked for their advice about getting through tough times. This endearing tactic cemented the relationship all but ensuring attendance at future Maria-sponsored events.

Onward to 2012…

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Every Tech Company Needs a Dennis Crowley

Ad Age’s Edmund Lee wrote an absorbing profile of Dennis Crowley, co-founder and chief executive of Foursquare, that attributed his company’s success largely to his media and marketing-savvy rather than his technological prowess.

While it may be curious that advertisers, investors, and Foursquare’s ever-growing horde of users continue to maintain faith in the company’s fortunes, this allegiance has almost entirely to do with the enchantments of a single person: Mr. Crowley. He is part of this late generation of entrepreneurs — showmen and polymaths, ringleaders of a geeky, sometimes awkward sort who dominate whatever conversation they’re having. But unlike other internet celebrity founder-CEOs — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Google’s Larry Page — Mr. Crowley isn’t a master of computer science or an impresario of technology. His particular talent, according to those who know him, lies in his awareness of something his more highly remunerated contemporaries are often criticized for lacking: how media works.

“I’m not an engineer,” he says. “I tell the story. That’s what I do.”

His early boss in the ad business agrees. “He’s one of the best storytellers of his generation,” Michael Duda, the ad exec and entrepreneur, tells me. “He comes from a marketing-journalism background, and he knows how to tell a story and killer products tell a great story.”

It’s easy to forget that the principle responsibility of any CEO is to be their company’s Chief Story Teller or Chief Evangelist. So many tech start-ups are led by engineering geniuses, not storytelling ones. The skill can certainly be taught — as a communications consultant, I can attest to that — but just ask Apple what it means to have a natural storytelling talent at the helm of a technology company.

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Twitter: Much Ado About 140 Characters

Ezra Klein shared an interesting insight today into Twitter’s success.

Forget the 140-character limit: it’s not the platform’s forced brevity that has led to its popularity. Klein suggests that Twitter’s key differentiation (from Facebook, at least) was putting this insight into practice: that the “circle of people you want to follow and the circle of people who want to follow you are not necessarily the same.”

Yes, I buy that. And I think he’s right that Google+ can overtake Twitter at some point in the future because it incorporates this useful asymmetry, but it’s not “hindered by the 140-character limit.”

I was optimistic about Google+ from the beginning, but mostly because I thought it would offer a chance to create the sort of private social network that Facebook originally was, but eventually evolved away from. But it turns out that Google+ retains Twitter’s appreciation of asymmetrical social networks: people can follow you without you following them, and you can choose to broadcast messages to them, and they can reply, and so on. I’ve been experimenting with this over the last few days and have been really surprised and impressed by how rich the resulting discussions are. It’s really highlighted the drawbacks of the 140-character limit and made Twitter a lot less appealing to me.

That’s been a surprise. I thought Google+ would be a better private social network than Facebook, and that’s proven true, at least for me. But I didn’t expect it to be a better public social network than Twitter. At this point, however, Twitter seems good for posting links, making jokes about live events that everyone is watching at once, and, on my private account, informing friends which bar I’m at. Google+ is better for posting interesting quotations, actual thoughts, and having real conversations. That’s a much more engaging set of activities, and so my guess is I’ll end up spending more of social-network energy on Google+.

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

More Social, Less Self?

Are we becoming so “social” that we are losing our selves?

Zadie Smith seems to think so (an oldie but goodie):

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.

With Facebook, Zuckerberg seems to be trying to create something like a Noosphere, an Internet with one mind, a uniform environment in which it genuinely doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you make “choices” (which means, finally, purchases). If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out. One nation under a format. To ourselves, we are special people, documented in wonderful photos, and it also happens that we sometimes buy things. This latter fact is an incidental matter, to us. However, the advertising money that will rain down on Facebook—if and when Zuckerberg succeeds in encouraging 500 million people to take their Facebook identities onto the Internet at large—this money thinks of us the other way around. To the advertisers, we are our capacity to buy, attached to a few personal, irrelevant photos.

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Pepsi’s Social Vending: Consumer Mousetrap?

In its apparent quest to exceed every company in the world at being “social,” PepsiCo announced that it has designed a social component into its vending machines. What was once just a mundane, transactional and (better yet) anonymous experience has now been made social by the ability to give away your friend’s valuable contact information while you “gift” them a drink.

A prototype of the “Social Vending System” debuted this week at an incredibly wonky-sounding trade show — the National Automatic Merchandising Association’s One Show in Chicago. I’m kicking myself for not requesting a media credential.

While I applaud companies for doing something truly innovative in this space (and the Pepsi Refresh Project was just that), what this vending technology seems to really be about is how to take a consumer touch-point, apply social wrapping and a piece of social cheese, and turn it into a consumer mousetrap.

At its heart, I think being a “social company” is about transforming customers into better citizens, not better consumers.

I have a different standard for what constitutes a social technology. And “Social Vending” just doesn’t meet that standard.

What do you think?

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Publicists: The Social Media Clean Up Crews

It seems every week brings another high-profile social media mishap. I’ve been saying this for a long time and wrote about it recently: social media isn’t a job for interns. Well, according to the NY Times, social media isn’t a job for celebrities either.

This line summed up the perils of celebrity tweeting best for me:

“I don’t think about it as if I’m talking to a reporter,” he said of Twitter. “It’s a bit strange.”

It’s very easy for a celebrity to be lulled into the false impression that they are only communicating to their own followers and fans.

On an intellectual level, celebrities know that every tweet or Facebook post is public information broadly available to the media. But the casual directness, immediacy, intimacy, and one-to-one engagement that social media affords can confuse that understanding.

Most celebrities are natural performers. They intuitively know what will make their fans happy and social media allows them real-time feedback and confirmation of their instincts. Yet, what may serve, amuse or charm one’s own “community” may not play well in a wider context. What hits the spot for one group may badly miss the mark for another.

There are simply no walls around social media performances, and that’s a painful lesson many celebrities learn.

When asked, my advice is always — apply a filter. And I’m sure that advice is music to a publicist’s ears.

- Matthew DiGirolamo

9 Crisis Communications Tips From Biz Stone

On his personal blog last night, Biz Stone gave a terrific response to Fortune’s predictable Trouble @Twitter article that was meme-ing around, well, Twitter all day yesterday.

His blog, The Trouble Bubble, was so smartly executed that it could be a case study for successful executive-level crisis communications. Not every negative or probing article requires a response. Not every criticism or complaint needs to be addressed. But when a reporter questions the soundness of an organization’s management, operations, vision or culture, then an executive-level response is merited beyond just a soundbite or short statement. And this is how it’s done well.

So, based on his post, I give you:

9 TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS FROM BIZ STONE

We founded Twitter, Inc. in March of 2007 and while we have long said it’s about the users, not the service, we have nevertheless enjoyed favorable media coverage. What took so long for somebody to write the article that says we are falling apart?

Tip 1: Provide historical perspective — long view backwards.

The normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. It’s much more interesting that way. Twitter has had so many ups and downs you’d think we would have had more negative press. To me, it’s like watching the movie Rocky—he’s up, he’s down, he’s out, he wins!

Tip 2: Put criticism in context. Show perspective.

Fortune magazine finally stepped up to knock us down with a cover article, “Trouble@Twitter.”

Tip 3: Thank those who are complaining or criticizing for doing an important job and providing valuable information or lessons.

Here are some examples of how this works. After mostly positive coverage of Facebook, Fortune finally published an article in April of 2009 titled, “Is Facebook Losing Its Glow?” However, later that year they published, “What Backlash? Facebook Is Growing Like Mad.” Google received similar treatment. In July 2010 Fortune published, “Google, The Search Party Is Over.” Later that year, they published, “Google Continues To Gain Search Marketshare.”

Tip 4: Be matter of fact in tone. Build your own case logically and methodically.

We’ve had lots of positive press from Fortune in the past. In July of 2010 they published an article titled, “Twitter’s Business Model: A Visionary Experiment.” The article ended with, “Facebook might want to take notes.” It may seem odd, but from my perspective, this means we are being taken very seriously. Twitter is an important company and it’s under scrutiny from journalists—this is exactly how it’s supposed to work.

Continue reading…

The Micro-Mantra: Three Words To Live By

Yesterday, @MariaShriver created the worldwide trending topic on Twitter – #threewordstoliveby.

This is the tweet that started the trend. And this is the one that first established the hashtag.

People all over the world have been writing their three-word life credos. Other celebrities have chimed in. Brands like Nike and AMC have advertised around it.

Maria kicked it off with an inspirational tone — “Here are three words to live by: pass it on.” — and so it continued that way for hours: tens of thousands of messages — some uplifting, others profound, a few silly — circulating around the Twittersphere.

Maria shared dozens of her favorite micro-mantras through re-tweets to her nearly 700,000 followers.  Once it became a trending topic in the United States, she encouraged her followers to make it a global phenomenon.

And then it did.

When it went completely viral, it went beyond her. Over time, the original messenger was dropped. But, surprisingly, the original positive spirit of the message remained. Well, mostly.

A little less than 24 hours later, it’s still the top trending hashtag worldwide.

So, what three words guide your life? Join the conversation.

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- Matthew DiGirolamo

A Full Communications Society

Kara Swisher moderated this (slightly subdued) conversation on the evolving landscape of communications at the 2011 DLD Conference. Featured panelists included Silicon Vally/tech communications gurus Brandee Barker (former Facebook Communications Director), Brooke Hammerling (Brew Media Relations) and Margit Wennmachers (Andreessen Horowitz).

The inside baseball conversation covered a range of issues, from managing virality and communications crises to the evolving role (and power) of executive, employee and customer voices in “a full communications society” – as Kara Swisher dubbed it.

All three communications professionals shared some candid and useful insights into their mistakes and “PR disasters” along the way. In typical fashion, Kara gave ‘em hell.

Margit made a great point about the importance of managing the tone of communications — getting the tone right first — in this new media environment where transparency, authenticity and audience engagement is paramount.

I’ve found the same thing to be true. Always manage the message before you try to manage the media.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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- Matthew DiGirolamo

Why Social Media Isn’t a Job for Interns

Above all, it requires good judgment.

Hat tip @The Daily Dish

- Matthew DiGirolamo