Web 2.0, marketing and PR blogger Adam Singer compiled a list of 22 inspirational quotes from around the industry (see below), and recently put them together into a multimedia presentation. Enjoy!
Bloggers quoted:
Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Eric Friedman, Tim Jahn, Brian Solis, Chris Anderson, Peter Kim, Matt Dickman, Steve Hodson, Robert Scoble, Mitch Joel, Skellie, David Armano, François Rocaboy, Mark Stevens, Mark Dykeman, Kevin Kelly, Maki, Leo Babauta, Jamis Buck, Jeremiah Owyang, Sarah Lacy.
Deirdre Breakenridge recently posted in her blog the article 'Are You a PR 2.0 Champion?' which created a space for me to reflect upon my own journey in learning about social media and its impact on communications and 'new' PR.
Essentially, she says that because of the way technology and social networking are transforming the art of communication and redefining relationships, the new PR practitioner needs to be a social media expert, a market analyst/expert and also a conversationalist and listener. These I agree and buy into, and you can read more about my thoughts on these issues on 'The Fall of Communication and the Rise of Dialogue in the Web 2.0 Era - Part 3.'
Deirdre also states that the new PR practitioner must also be a web marketer, customer service representative, a relationship marketer and a viral marketer. It is really a convergence of responsibilities brought about by the more intimate conversations with our customers (D2C) due to the blurring of lines between social networking, PR, marketing, all fueled by the push of technology.
 How do you know if you are ready to champion for a change to the way we communicate?
Deirdre provides a checklist. Do you:
- actively listen and engage in social networks?
- try new technologies as they’re introduced (set up new profiles and test various social networking communities)?
- have RSS feeds, and use social media tools including widgets, wikis, podcasts and streaming video?
- have a list of favorite bloggers and also comment on their blogs?
- share interesting blog posts and other news/information with members or your social networking communities?
- blog?
- ask questions so that you better understand social media and also answering questions to help your fellow peers?
- share valuable information to help people to make decisions?
So how did you fare?
 For me, I must say that I’m able to put in an unequivocal ‘yes’ to most of the questions, Though I should qualify that the level and degree of involvement in each question are a different matter altogether.
I consider myself new to the social media scene and it’s been such a massive challenge trying to build an understanding from scratch. Oftentimes I feel like a fish out of the water, or one trying to swim upstream.
I’ve a traditional PR background back where I came from, and yes, that includes a heavy emphasis on media relations, speech writing, event management and those kinds of things. And I didn’t really start engaging with social networking until I came to the U.S. for studies because it was my colleagues who urged me to join their Facebook group to keep in touch.
While I didn’t baulk at the idea, it certainly took me a while to get warmed up to it. A few weeks into it, I remember a friend who wrote me on FB asking me what sort of a Facebook account is it without a face… how I’ve grown roots in it since then.
Today, I’m also maintaining a presence on Twitter (and learning how to be a productive tweeter without spamming others!!!), Flickr, LinkedIn, and many other platforms.
We must be prepared to learn and re-learn if we go down the new PR track. It must be a brand new mindset with an attitude towards openness and preparedness for dialogue and community participation.
With the way the Web and social networking applications are growing today, nothing less will do!
I’m glad I stepped in to learn and get engaged already. I think I am a champion for productive and gradual change.
What about you?
 Yesterday evening, I had the unique chance to sit in on a talk by Dan Schawbel, one of America's up and coming voice in the field of personal branding through Web 2.0. Organized by the Boston Salty Legs Career Club at the function room of the Vlora Restaurant (see the registration process above), Dan gave a 50 minute presentation about what it takes to improve our personal branding and in this economy, how Web 2.0 tools could be used to fashion a powerful online identity, and how, in his four-step branding process (discover -> create -> communicate -> maintain) we have a robust roadmap of building our Web 2.0 brand from scratch and setting it on the route towards recognition and success.
 Networking's the name of the game! I was so glad to have had the opportunity to befriend Alan Billing and Tim Fitzpatrick. Alan (left of picture) is a go-getting entrepreneur now heading his seventh start-up company while Tim's looking to develop a brand new career out of Web-based writing and communications services in the niche area of chemistry. Me? I've a fire-fighting background but am now reading my Masters in Communication Management, and developing a profound interest in Web 2.0 and social networking. I'm not sure if you can get anymore eclectic than that...
 It wasn't a terribly big room, but credit to the organizers, I thought they managed to squeeze about 30 people or so in the room. Here you see the leader of the Boston Salty Legs Career Club, Susan Kang, giving the welcome address. She started off by describing herself as someone who's absolutely crazy over Twitter (of course I paraphrased it... she said it in a more hilarious way, but it's something like that...). Guess tweeting is now the new Cocainof our digital socialization! And on comes Dan Schawbel...
 I got to admit. I came because I wanted to hear him for myself. A month ago I'd heard a classmate of mine waxing lyrical about Dan's dynamism and passion about personal branding and Web 2.0 and I wanted to know what the buzz was all about. To be really honest, my interest actually lies more in the repurposing of Web 2.0 for corporate communications and PR, while Dan's expertise is about individual branding. Somehow, as his presentation wore on, I had a niggling sense that there could be a chasm to my expectations. But on hindsight, many of the things that he covered last night seem just as applicable in the organizational context, especially if we see the organizational unit in the light of his personal branding concepts.
Watch a short clip of his talk below...
Some key lessons I picked up?
For one thing, I thoroughly agree when he says that personal branding is as much about how you market yourself to others as it is about how we perceive ourselves to be because the latter is going to define the nature and consistency of the 'narrative' that we present to others. This becomes especially important when we consider the impact of Web 2.0 because, in the ocean of voices all vying for attention (he says, for example, that Technorati counts about 200 million blogs today!!!), unless we have a strong personal brand in cyberspace, we don't even have a foot in the door to the conversations going on (here I'm borrowing a bit from the ideas by Brian Solis, Deirdre Breakenridge and other PR 2.0 evangelists).
And unless we've a consistent narrative or account in the main social networks out there (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), we won't be able to compete against those with a strong and harmonized digital persona. Often, this begins with something as simple as having a common photo profile in our different social network accounts, or even claiming your own public profiles - yourname.com - where possible (hey, I just changed my LinkedIn profile to www.linkedin.com/in/danielseet). These are all little building blocks and trails that we use to build up a memorable brand identity, one that has traction and sticks!
The earlier two points seem fundamental to me because unless we get involved in the networking and the conversations, and unless we build a brand that people recognize and can trust, we'll never be able to bring our message or our side of the story (as Solis and Breakenridge would prefer it to be called) across to our community. I thought it was also insightful when Dan brought up the point that under natural circumstances, we'd want to be part of the social circle with the largest network (consider the millions on Facebook, or the associations on LinkedIn), but if we're, say part of a lawyer's guild of about 30, then this joining a networking group where we can connect with this 30 would be critical too! Though numbers mean something, the quality of the association and the potential long-term ROI (Return on Investment) must be a part of the consideration too!
 I like Dan's personal branding cycle (see image on the left) because of it's scalability in both personal branding and organizational branding as well. Here's a quick review of each phase as it relates to both the individual and the corporation:
Discovery
This is like the intelligence-collection phase where individuals should check out how they want to position themselves on the Web (specific skills or expertise that they want to claim as their own niche territory). Given today's narrowly segmented markets and interests (Chris Anderson's 'Long Tail' - see graphic below), there're opportunities along the tail end of the x-axis where specialized services could be developed to serve a niche community.
For the organization, I would think that stakeholder analysis would fit nicely into the 'Discover' phase because of the parity of the process, where the organization tries to understand the segment of the community it wants to reach, and caters its communications to this specific group of people accordingly. As Dorie Clark, CEO of Clark Strategic Communications says, it’s always going to be about the target audience and who we're trying to reach, finding out what their main channels of communication are, and being part of the dialogue where they are (read more about her thoughts on PR, communications and the impact of Web 2.0 by clicking here).
Create
After the research in the previous step, now it's time to go develop your 'presence.' This could be an account on Twitter, or Facebook, or creating a blog on the online world. In the offline world, it could also be something like developing name cards with your photo on it, because as Dan puts it, faces are harder to forget while names are easy to misplace. "Even if the name cards produced by your organization does not allow you photo to be inserted," he says, "you can always make a separate one with a picture. [While this may be on your own costs,] you're ultimately responsible for protecting and marketing your own brand." Ditto for organizations, though in the corporate setting, this could mean relooking at the company's website, or its blog, or creating a corporate page on Facebook. Whatever develops a presence!
Communicate
Once the 'channels' have been created, we can then go on to communicate our messages, though I believe some PR 2.0 practitioners would rather see it as the participation in the conversations and dialogues. I don't want to be locked down by semantics here, so I'll just say that the key point moving forward is to identify our community segments we want to engage, find out where they're having their conversations (is it on magazines, or forums, or blogs, etc) and then be part of the conversation. That's the communication we're talking about - and it often requires both a hand in new media as well as traditional media. Often, vehicles from both sides are needed to carry a credible and consistent message in order to get heard. I want to echo (or in the lingua franca of the day, to retweet) Dan's point that building genuine two-way communication requires a long-term strategy of building relationships over time. Great point! So, once again, ditto for organizations.
Maintain
This is probably the most unglamorous part of the job - the housekeeping part, that is... The degree of effort we'll need to sort out our accounts online will be directly proportionate to the number of networks and platforms we're involved in. Most of the time, the data will not update itself. Of course, thank god we have systems like ping.fm that help to bridge a couple of the platforms together, but even then, like the widgets that exist to link Twitter and Facebook, these are just solutions for updating our statuses. Other details will require our painstaking effort to maintain, whether it's the lates certification we've received (for LinkedIn, as an example) or new updates on the corportate blog, where organizations are concerned. I would put this as content management on a personal and corporate scale, and our reputations as thought leaders are on the line. Imagine what people would think if they search for a piece of your information only to call up a website or blog that was last updated on the day it was created???
And a Concluding Thought...
And if I may add another thought to this issue of 'maintenance.' I would also see it as the effort needed to nurture the networks that we're cultivating by keeping up a regular (need not be that often, but at least regular on a sensible basis) level of contact, whether it's that message on Facebook, or a retweet of an interesting message from your Twitter 'follower,' or the effort to make a comment on other people's blogs.
All these activities are tied in to our online (and offline) reputation, and people will sooner or later see through our motives: whether we are engaged participants or just another digital opportunist.
MEDIA CENTER
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Now here's something exciting!
While surfing the Internet to check up some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) stuff, I stumbled upon this HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) to PDF (Portable Document Format) conversion service (click here or image above to take you to the website).
 Being curious, I tested the service out on my own blog's landing page and, viola! What I got was a surprisingly crisp and clear rendition of my site's homepage as a PDF, and here's the interesting thing! All the hyperlinks within the page are active as well!
It was just two days ago that I was tearing my hair out trying to get a Microsoft Word document with hyperlinks embedded to be converted as a PDF file, only to find that after the conversion process, the link indicators (underlined blue text) were there but weren't active. The word out in blogosphere (at least those quadrants that I checked) was that the freeware version of Adobe Acrobat does not support the conversion and preservation of hyperlinks ported over from word documents.
I got to be the first to admit that I'm not an expert on this, but all I can say was that it hasn't been an easy process for me to find out how to get my files saved with the hyperlinks intact.
 Enter to PDF File Converter, which is part of the umbrella of services that includes the HTML-PDF conversion application discussed above. You may want to bookmark this site as well.
What it does is that it allows you to choose MS Office, images, web pages, as well as vector graphic format files from your computer or laptop (Source to PDF) and make the conversion, and the application will even be able to mail the converted file to your email.
I tried it out with one of the Word files I was trying to convert and it was accomplished in no more than five minutes, and all the hyperlinks are alive and active. Talk about taking great services right to your doorsteps!
Enter the mini Media Center Suite...
OK. Enough of waxing lyrical about this application. You should test drive the program yourself to see how it meets your needs. But for me, it's certainly a life-saver. In fact, because of this program, I'm now able to integrate a small Media Center suite to this blog so that visitors who find certain articles useful may download it as a PDF of their own.
 For now, I'll be integrating this 'service' into articles posted under the PR 2.0 page (you'll be seeing more of such applications like the one above at the end of each post), and depending on how successful this turns out to be, I wouldn't mind expanding it to all postings in the future. If you are interested to copy the widget, the script is available below.
<script type="text/javascript"></script><script src="http://web2pdf.freepdfconvert.com/pdfbutton.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
From how I see it, this will be a small but purposeful step towards the gradual transfiguration of my blog entries as Social Media Releases (SMR).
The steps are small and the way ahead is long, but I suppose this is the right way to go. So, here's to looking ahead then...
AFTERTHOUGHT: It's really hard to tell if this service will stay free for as long as we need it, or it'll eventually turn into a pay-per-use or subscription based service, so my take is that we should do as much as we need with it while it lasts...
 You'll notice the title to this post is basically a retweet (RT) of an entry by BBC Click. If it helps, I actually contemplated this for a while before going ahead to use it to head my blog post. I mean, this is the age of new media right? So why can't a RT serve as a bonafide title? So there... I got this off my chest. Now, back to the original purpose of this post.
Gaining access to a hacker's world: The threat of Botnets!
I found Spencer Kelly's recent article on how he and his colleagues managed to purchase the services of botnet providers from Eastern Europe. Wait a minute. Let's back up a little and talk about what a botnet is.
A botnet derives its name from the term roBOT NETwork, and it is also known as a 'zombie army.' Basically, what it is, is a network of hacked computers (yours and mine are possible targets) that are used to insidiously generate and send spam or viruses, or even flood another network with messages as a denial of service (DoS) attack. According to Answers.com, there is a booming botnet business that sells lists of compromised computers to hackers and spammers, and in this case, it was how BBC Click managed to secure one such 'service provider' to conduct their remote testing.
The dangers of botnets, according to the BBC Click article, are essentially threefold. It starts off with the sending of a Trojan virus to an unprotected computer to do the following:
(1) Logging your keystrokes to 'fish' out anything that may look like security passwords;
(2) Redirecting users to fake shopping sites that no nothing more than record your credit card security details;
(3) Generate and send out SPAM to flood other networks, the worse of which results in the crippling of services (also known as a DoS).
Now I think back to all those times when I received strange emails from friends that lead to nothing, and when I checked back with them, they claimed they didn't send it at all. While we attributed it to a virus attack, now it seems more to me that their systems may have been infiltrated and subverted as botnets. Wow! Talk about it being close...
The Long Tail of Social Networking Media
What really struck me was how the BBC Click team managed to secure a botnet for themselves. Kelly said, "There are many [botnets] available to buy or rent from cyber criminals hiding behind fake usernames and the non-cooperation of authorities across international borders."
Botnets, he says, provide modern organised gangs with what he calls the 'firepower to make and launder vast amounts of money.' Recounting how he managed to buy a botnet from hackers in Russia and the Ukraine after many months of pursuits and a few thousand dollars (now isn't that cheap?), the negotiations started in chatrooms where the hackers advertise their services. The deal was finally sealed through instant messaging applications.
I have absolutely no doubt that radicalized organizations are quickly learning the ropes of the trade, and using this as a means of funneling money to fund their extremist plots and schemes (for more related issues, read Web 2.0 and the Transnational Challenge: A Singaporean Perspective).It is frightening to think how 'open' or freely available social networking platforms are being used in these illegal operations, demonstrating the long-tail of Web 2,0 and social networking.
This will be something governments and the IT industry must work to collectively address. Does this mean more layers of security? While I won't discount this possibility in the future, it seems an unlikely option for now given how it runs counter to the general freedom of use associated with most social networking platforms.
Perhaps the crux is not so much the accessibility as it is the anonymity that it offers users? Maybe this will be something to contenmplate as we cast one eye upon the future with Web 3.0, where accessibility, security and privacy needs are better tackled.
Windows users ought to run through the tips the author provides for securing the computer system towards the end of the article. But what about Mac users (like me)? Well, for now, we'll have to hang on to what NETWORKWORLD says, that because most bot headers target Windows, Macs and Linux systems are statistically safe... It's not much of a comfort, I know, but let's just hang on that for now.
Once again, the bottomline as I covered in an earlier post about the Koobface Malware: Our net security is ultimately our own responsibility, so be careful what we do online. Period.
Having just revamped my landing page, and having watched my daily pageviews languish between the heights of the 20s and (usually) the lows of five or six, it was certainly encouraging to see the pageviews hit the 75 mark. But thus far, there's been no comments from the visitors. I'll have to check Google Analytics tomorrow to see if there's any marked change to the bounce rate, and in the meantime, will just keep my fingers crossed that readers will start engaging with the articles. But hey, what a re-start!
So according to Google Analytics, my blog has seen some 140 visits since its launch, and most visitors spend an avarage of 4 minutes 43 seconds with the site. A curious item listed in the analysis is what's called a bounce rate, and according to Google Analytics, this measures the percentage of single-page visits, or visits where the person left the site from the landing page. A high bounce rate (mine's 40.71%) indicates that people do not find the landing page as compelling as it should be.
OK, so a rate of 4 in 10 who leave my blog's landing page doesn't seem such a bad deal right? But I wonder how many out of those 6 that do stay are actually my own visits to verify the publication of new posts or changes? Google Analytics can't tell me that. So, make some changes.
Well, if you've been visiting this blog, you'll realize that first and foremost, the global navigation panel has changed. What I've done is to redo the navigation headings in an all-caps format to give it a fresher and more professional appearance (I hope).
But aesthetics aside, I'm also working on a new landing page that aims to give visitors a quick run-through of what the site has to offer them. So, if you've only got a minute to decide if you'll go deeper into the blog, this page is intended to tell you where what is being offered to whom. In the meantime, the ABOUT page has been shifted back.
You'll also realize that there's also a CONTENT PAGE site. Now this acts like a site map of the entire blog that tracks all the entries that were ever made, so if you want to know in one glance what some of the past issues discussed are, this is where you go.
So this is what I'm doing for now. I hope it'll help make the blog a more worthwhile place to visit. Right then! Gotta start putting my public affairs assignment together. Watch out for that under the PR 2.0 site soon ok? Also coming out in a short time are my interviews with two public relations and new media practitioners where we discuss a wide spectrum of issues ranging from PR to public affairs (and their nuanced differences) as well as the impact of Web 2.0 on governance and communication.
OK, will update again then!
 These days my laptop web browser is a sea of clutter - at least that's what my wife says.
See, I've recently uploaded the Flock 2.0 browser on my system to test it out. Personally, I quite like the one-stop service provided by this browser, where I can find all on one common page my favourite social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and others. What's cool about this amalgamation of services is that Flock automatically tracks and updates the latest entries and statuses of my network of friends, from their latest tweets, Facebook entries to photos and more.
I also like the centralized RSS 'dumping area,'
as I call it, which syndicates news and updates from all my favorite sources to make it really convenient for my reading.
But brace yourself. It is information overload because you'ew going to have an ongoing stream of fresh updates all shouting for your attention at once. That's why my wife hasn't exactly fallen head over heels for the browser.
For me, as it is right now, I'm still fiddling with it and trying to see if I can adapt to it, and get it to adapt to my networking and communication habits. For example, I manage a blog on Weebly, but at this point in time, Flock more readily supports platforms like Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress.com and Xanga. I'm trying to figure out how to configure Weebly to my Flock browser tghrough the 'self-hosted blog' function.
Other than that, I guess it's a matter of developing a habit of sussing out just the information I want without being bothered by the rest of the media and information streams. I hope that with time, I'll move past the phase of distraction to optimized performance.
My gauge of Flock 2.0 right now is that it may serve as a good platform for PR and communication professionals to operate from, since it pulls together some of the most common networking applications into one common space. And I think that as we get better at harnessing its synchronization, it'll make communication more fulfilling and liberating experience.
Well, let's see how that turns out.
Facebook users beware! CNN's Errol Barnett files this report on 2 March about the Koobface Worm that is targeting Facebook accounts.
A quick check on the McAfee site reports that the worm is a virus that spreads via Facebook and MySpace. The current variants only target these two networking media specifically.
The worm, once installed on computer through Facebook or MySpace, will start searching for cookie files, and those with logging credentials will be especially at risk!
The CNN news 'New Facebook worm threat' - says that all social networking media are at risk from a variety of Malware (malicious software), but this time Facebook appears to the the main victim.
What can you do to protect yourself?
First and foremost, do not assume you are immune to the worm even if you operate on a very tight net security regime. According to Daryl Johnson, a professor on internet security from New York that CNN interviewed, you are only as strong as the weakest link on your network. So long as that someone else is not as careful as you are, then there opens up a window for Malware to attack your system.
Secondly, run through this list of actions to see if it is helpful to you:
(1) Be cautious about accepting links and attachment downloads from the Web, even if they seem to be from people you know. Nowadays, many viruses are heavily disguised to appear legit!
(2) Run virus scans on your system regularly to make sure it's clean. You can tap on some free viral scanning software provided by Facebook on their Facebook Security page.
(3) If you think you may need more help, contact the Facebook User Operations team immediately.
Bottom line: Do something! Your net security is ultimately your own responsibility.
I'm currently learning about Twitter - one of the many micro-blogging phenomenon that are slowing sweeping the Web. You might think it's a bit late, and it probably is. But what the heck right? Many of you may be like me. Eager to jump on the bandwagon to test out the stuff, but not knowing what or how far to go with it.
I suppose for currency's sake, Chris Pirillo's article yesterday about 10 tips on being a good Twitterer is a good starting point.
Because I'm also coming at this from a 'business or professional application' perspective, I won't be covering all the 10 things he discussed, just five good ones. Some of the points are really trivial stuff you don't need to get bogged down with. As you'll see from point (3) below, it pays to forward only stuff of value...
And of course, like any good student, I've tried to paraphrase the tips too, not to mention rearrange some of the points for relevancy!
Here goes:
(1) Be natural in what you write, but since it's the Web, be careful too. The stuff we post online has such a digital longevity that it may still be there long after we're gone. Like the cockroaches from Joe's Apartment, who were 'around' for a hundred million years and will be here long after you! For future presidential candidates, you don't want people digging up past dirt on you right?
(2) Feel free to interact with others. When you mouse-over (or trackpad-over... whatever) a tweet entry, you'll see a curved arrow and/or a blurp that says 'reply to username'... use that feature to connect with the sender and let him/her know what you think of the post. The usual convention is to start with '@username' followed by your comments, for example:
"@Hot_Stuff I really liked the tips on Twitter provided. Some good stuff!"
But remember, you only have 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. And some URLs you copy may be exceedingly long, so take note.
(3) Better yet, Retweet the posts you like. Retweeting (or RT) is the third-party ink, or word-of-mouth (word-of-mouse?) endorsement that gives the source credit for the original post. But beware! Don't go around retweeting everything you see because it will diminish your own credibility. Nobody likes spam. Be selective and retweet only what's of value to others, and both your followers and the originator will appreciate you for it. How do you do it? Here's some suggestions:
(a) "Retweet: @Hot_Stuff Twitter tips http://hs_twitter - some really great tips!" or
(b) "RT: @Hot_Stuff Twitter tips http://hs_twitter - some really great tips!"
Remember, you have 140 characters. So in a sense, option (b) may be useful since it saves on six character spaces. Pirillo says that by giving credit to others, you're sowing good seeds where others may return the credit when you publish something of worth yourself. For more on how to retweet, visit AJ Vaynerchuk's simple guide.
(4) 'Outsource' your ideas and questions and someone may just fill in your blanks. Pirillo calls this process 'crowdsourcing' and I kind of like the ring to the phrase. In fact, what led me to stumble on Pirillo's article was a CNN news clip I saw while working out at the gym this morning - one story about how doctors were using Twitter to make ongoing updates about a procedure being performed on a patient. It probably won't be too long before it is common practice for the scientific community to latch on Twitter to broadcast issues and source for comments and opinions, like a hyperinflated focus group.
(5) Follow others of interest. Pirillo says to look out for celebrities and government officials to follow. But I think the actual spirit of his point - from a business perspective - is to find people of common professional interests to follow and form your own community of practice. Make use of search.twitter.com to get going and find out what others are saying about you, your brand or your company.
ADDENDUM: For those of you who want to know more about Twitter, just take a look at this ABC news story "Tweet like a bird: Your guide." Even if you don't think you got anything out of it, it's still a great laugh!
[Author's Note: I've just started out exploring new media, especially on business applications. Please feel free to leave your comments, or even contact me via Facebook or email for discussions or clarifications.]
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