Monday, March 31, 2008
It's Olympic Time!
With the talk of the 2008 Olympics becoming more apparent in the months before, I wonder how social media can make its mark in the Olympic world. I had heard that an Olympic team of several competitors was getting together to learn how to blog and such. The point is to give people at home a version of what it's like for the Olympians during the exciting and high-stress time. I'm sure it's also planning on helping give the Olympics a new audience and better publicity. All of this gets me thinking about a friend I have who has been in China for the past year getting ready for the Olympics. How cool would it be to have someone like her blogging? A normal person who will be around all of these amazing athletes. I think blogging is making its print in so many aspects of our lives, why not the Olympics. For those of us not fortunate to ever be an Olympian or even travel to China, this can give us a better feel for real life situations than CNN or MSNBC. I'm so excited to pitch this idea to my friend, she doesn't blog currently, but hopefully I can convince her to find time to.
Tibet's PR
As we've seen the 2008 Olympic madness start in Beijing, we also see a lot of controversy on Tibet's front. What's interesting is the use of PR, or soon to be use of PR and social media that is used for this issue. I stumbled across the Students for a Free Tibet Facebook Page today and did a little research. Apparently, the situation in Tibet is really working in the social media world to gain awareness and support with what little money they have. What better way than free media like Facebook? This page has about 37,900 members and a YouTube page where organizers post reports and footage from protests. Students for a Free Tibet, which is a member of the international organization, sends out its own talking points, press release templates and protest plans to its 650 chapters, supplemented by the cause page on Facebook.
S.F.T. member told the NY Times, “S.F.T. realizes that the media is a very effective tool getting our message across. One way that we ensure that our message stays on point and is disseminated to audiences it’s targeted to, is by training our S.F.T.-ers to be the best media spokespeople themselves.”
While working toward eye-catching demonstrations that will get coverage, S.F.T. also holds weeklong “action camps” four times a year. Attendees learn to organize protests and deal with the police, and receive training in attention-getting activities like rappelling and guerrilla street theater. Sessions for pro-Tibet groups are held by the S.F.T. to give media training, focusing on anything from artfully answering reporter's questions to delivering a good sound bite.
This has really put pressure on China to do something, and not just with Tibet but on behalf of their PR representation. It's no secret that China needs a better rep and frankly, with the Olympics coming up I'm surprised they haven't been advised to do so earlier. Gene Grabowski, a crisis P.R. specialist at Levick Strategic Communications who worked on the Chinese toy recalls, told the NY Times that he was'nt surprised that the protesters were winning so far.
“The Chinese government is still new to the challenges and the game of playing on a world stage, and playing on the world stage today doesn’t just mean understanding how to control the messages that come out of formal government ministries or the messages that are prepared and disseminated to the global news media,” he said. “There are the blogs, there are Web sites; there’s a whole world of Internet-based communication that the Chinese government still doesn’t seem to understand or appreciate.”
S.F.T. member told the NY Times, “S.F.T. realizes that the media is a very effective tool getting our message across. One way that we ensure that our message stays on point and is disseminated to audiences it’s targeted to, is by training our S.F.T.-ers to be the best media spokespeople themselves.”
While working toward eye-catching demonstrations that will get coverage, S.F.T. also holds weeklong “action camps” four times a year. Attendees learn to organize protests and deal with the police, and receive training in attention-getting activities like rappelling and guerrilla street theater. Sessions for pro-Tibet groups are held by the S.F.T. to give media training, focusing on anything from artfully answering reporter's questions to delivering a good sound bite.
This has really put pressure on China to do something, and not just with Tibet but on behalf of their PR representation. It's no secret that China needs a better rep and frankly, with the Olympics coming up I'm surprised they haven't been advised to do so earlier. Gene Grabowski, a crisis P.R. specialist at Levick Strategic Communications who worked on the Chinese toy recalls, told the NY Times that he was'nt surprised that the protesters were winning so far.
“The Chinese government is still new to the challenges and the game of playing on a world stage, and playing on the world stage today doesn’t just mean understanding how to control the messages that come out of formal government ministries or the messages that are prepared and disseminated to the global news media,” he said. “There are the blogs, there are Web sites; there’s a whole world of Internet-based communication that the Chinese government still doesn’t seem to understand or appreciate.”
The 2008 Viral Politics
I stumbled across this article from USC's Online Journalism Review while researching for my podcast. Since Obama Girl and the Soprano's spoof, people have really taken notice of the impact and popularity of viral politics. The article talks about the 1984 Apple Super Bowl ad that stars Hillary. The famous commercial continued in popularity with the new twist because Web citizens found that she was saying one thing and doing another online, said Rasiej from the article. "She claimed it was a debate, but the questions were all preselected and filtered." Rasiej believes that Clinton's campaign managers wanted to capitalize on the online community but "didn't understand" that the dialog has to be free and open to gain the trust of the Internet community. Four million viewings later, Clinton's campaign has "woken up" he said. It's interesting to see how these videos are generating so many viewings and comments. What I've found is that the majority have feedback from viewers who don't like the candidate and bash them several times. This creates an online conversation between people to debate their favorite things or dislikes about each candidate.
Political blogging
My group podcast decided to go with the whole political blogging theme since the subject was very present and very new. The amount of social media tactics we've seen in this election is truly amazing and deserves to be noted.
While doing this project, I specifically focused on John McCain’s Presidential Campaign. I found that his site has a blog that is probably the most successful of any of its other social media strategies. They regularly blog, although it’s nothing much compared to Barack Obama’s blog. Rather the blog be used as a tool in getting the Republican’s message out about the campaign, it is more of an after thought to report on nomination wins. A couple unique things on the blog is readers can rate the blog posts as well as leave comments to each post. Digg and Delicious are on each of the blog posts. Also, the blog allows for posts to be emailed to friends. Search Marketing Gurus, a blog that includes a group of professional search marketers, points out some unused options of McCain’s blog, including the tags feature. Most recent posts have no tags which makes it difficult to categorize the posts. Another fault in John McCain’s blog is that it doesn’t allow for a reader to subscribe to the entire blog through RSS feeds but only to five separate issues such as Health, Economy, Spending, Campaign, and Iraq but one cannot tell what posts are included in each issue because the posts aren’t visibly categorized.
John McCain’s presidential committee started off early last year showing high expectations for social media usage within its campaign, but has since dropped the ball somewhat on promoting the five social media strategies they launched. Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Veoh, and Yahoo! Answers are online projects the committee uses to actively interact with Americans and in turn, voters can engage with John McCain and learn about issues. National eCampaign Director Christian Ferry says, "People are fed up with politics as usual and Facebook and MySpace are giving them the opportunity to organize and influence the process in ways that could not have been imagined during John McCain's last campaign for President”. Although his committee recognizes the advantages of social media, they have done little to show they truly understand these sites by not playing on their key opportunities. The website doesn’t offer an easy way to locate the campaign’s social media strategies and the initiatives they’ve taken seem to be a result of “jumping on the band wagon”.
Search Engine Optimization for McCain’s campaign is somewhat successful. The official website ranks #1 in Google and Yahoo! for “John McCain” but not in Live nor in Ask. The Splash page was removed early this year and has since done little to improve SEO. As far as social networking sites, there isn’t a direct link to his Facebook page from his website, but one must physically search for John McCain once signed into the network. McCain has a personal social network called McCainSpace similar to Barack Obama’s but a major problem with this network is that it doesn’t reach out to intergrate with other social networks. It is a gated area for the McCain community that doesn’t spread the campaign’s message. Two video channels were created on YouTube and Veoh to host the same videos available at John McCain.com. In addition to these outlets, Yahoo! Answers initiates discussion with Americans about wasteful spending.
It's great to see that our politicians are trying to reach out to us in ways that make it easier and more enjoyable to get involved. Although the fact that all of this content is on the internet can make the elections even more of a popularity contest than in past years.
While doing this project, I specifically focused on John McCain’s Presidential Campaign. I found that his site has a blog that is probably the most successful of any of its other social media strategies. They regularly blog, although it’s nothing much compared to Barack Obama’s blog. Rather the blog be used as a tool in getting the Republican’s message out about the campaign, it is more of an after thought to report on nomination wins. A couple unique things on the blog is readers can rate the blog posts as well as leave comments to each post. Digg and Delicious are on each of the blog posts. Also, the blog allows for posts to be emailed to friends. Search Marketing Gurus, a blog that includes a group of professional search marketers, points out some unused options of McCain’s blog, including the tags feature. Most recent posts have no tags which makes it difficult to categorize the posts. Another fault in John McCain’s blog is that it doesn’t allow for a reader to subscribe to the entire blog through RSS feeds but only to five separate issues such as Health, Economy, Spending, Campaign, and Iraq but one cannot tell what posts are included in each issue because the posts aren’t visibly categorized.
John McCain’s presidential committee started off early last year showing high expectations for social media usage within its campaign, but has since dropped the ball somewhat on promoting the five social media strategies they launched. Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Veoh, and Yahoo! Answers are online projects the committee uses to actively interact with Americans and in turn, voters can engage with John McCain and learn about issues. National eCampaign Director Christian Ferry says, "People are fed up with politics as usual and Facebook and MySpace are giving them the opportunity to organize and influence the process in ways that could not have been imagined during John McCain's last campaign for President”. Although his committee recognizes the advantages of social media, they have done little to show they truly understand these sites by not playing on their key opportunities. The website doesn’t offer an easy way to locate the campaign’s social media strategies and the initiatives they’ve taken seem to be a result of “jumping on the band wagon”.
Search Engine Optimization for McCain’s campaign is somewhat successful. The official website ranks #1 in Google and Yahoo! for “John McCain” but not in Live nor in Ask. The Splash page was removed early this year and has since done little to improve SEO. As far as social networking sites, there isn’t a direct link to his Facebook page from his website, but one must physically search for John McCain once signed into the network. McCain has a personal social network called McCainSpace similar to Barack Obama’s but a major problem with this network is that it doesn’t reach out to intergrate with other social networks. It is a gated area for the McCain community that doesn’t spread the campaign’s message. Two video channels were created on YouTube and Veoh to host the same videos available at John McCain.com. In addition to these outlets, Yahoo! Answers initiates discussion with Americans about wasteful spending.
It's great to see that our politicians are trying to reach out to us in ways that make it easier and more enjoyable to get involved. Although the fact that all of this content is on the internet can make the elections even more of a popularity contest than in past years.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Podcast
Hey all,
here's my group's podcast project. Podcast Politics 2.0 is a show we created to discuss Social Media practices in the 2008 Presidential Elections. You'll here Patrick Kirby, Gabriela SiFuentes, and me talk about the leading candidates.
Podcast Politics 2.0
here's my group's podcast project. Podcast Politics 2.0 is a show we created to discuss Social Media practices in the 2008 Presidential Elections. You'll here Patrick Kirby, Gabriela SiFuentes, and me talk about the leading candidates.
Podcast Politics 2.0
Sunday, March 16, 2008
"Tools of the Trade"
Paul Gillin discusses in the chapter titled “Tools of the Trade”, the necessary use of products and services that alert you when the media is talking about any topic. If he hasn’t yet convinced you to become a part of the blogosphere, he at least stresses the importance for a business marketer to know what is being said about him/her, a company, or product.
Gillin points out that some of these tracking services can cost a pretty penny but luckily, monitoring engines such as Google Alerts, Ask.com, and Yahoo! provide these services free. You can specify any topics for regular searches. An e-mail is sent to you when new results appear that informs you of the mention of your name, your company’s name, or a product name. People want to hear what the world is saying about them to better prepare themselves in case something such as a blog swarm occurs. Our class has seen first hand how these alert systems can be useful for big, bad, important CEO’s. Within an hour of posting about the new Jawbone viral ads on her blog, Christina Timms had a rather long comment from the CEO of Digital Axle. (See here and here) Most likely, this quick response was made possible by Bruce’s Google Alert or some other alert system that showed his name, Digital Axle’s name, and Jawbone all tagged. Because of the controversy with his firm's relation to the ad, he probably receives alerts on all of those names so that he can know what's being said and can quickly respond.
Gillin notes that familiarizing yourself with the advanced search features of any engine you choose to use is a good idea because many make searches even more specific and easier. In Yahoo!’s search engine a command called “linkdomain” gives a list of links to the page or domain that you specify and also allows you to choose one particular website to search.
Searching blogs is different because of the RSS feeds that bloggers use to show their blog was updated. The RSS feeds are monitored in blog-specific searches but are less effective when it comes to filtering the results of a specific search. Opinmind.com is really interesting. It classifies your search results by bias, which means the tone of a blog post is analyzed to display whether the opinion of the post is for or against the searched topic. Basically, you can separate the mean people from the nice ones by having Opinmind.com show if someone was trash-talking you, or praising you. Technorati is also a good tool to measure the popularity in blogosphere to determine how influential a bad post or good post will be for your search.
Podcasts also sometimes require different search engines due to the difficulty in indexing the content. Podscope.com and Podzinger.com are two that list podcasts that mention a specific search term. You can further use their services to listen to the exact segment in the podcast where your term is spoken.
Gillin points out that some of these tracking services can cost a pretty penny but luckily, monitoring engines such as Google Alerts, Ask.com, and Yahoo! provide these services free. You can specify any topics for regular searches. An e-mail is sent to you when new results appear that informs you of the mention of your name, your company’s name, or a product name. People want to hear what the world is saying about them to better prepare themselves in case something such as a blog swarm occurs. Our class has seen first hand how these alert systems can be useful for big, bad, important CEO’s. Within an hour of posting about the new Jawbone viral ads on her blog, Christina Timms had a rather long comment from the CEO of Digital Axle. (See here and here) Most likely, this quick response was made possible by Bruce’s Google Alert or some other alert system that showed his name, Digital Axle’s name, and Jawbone all tagged. Because of the controversy with his firm's relation to the ad, he probably receives alerts on all of those names so that he can know what's being said and can quickly respond.
Gillin notes that familiarizing yourself with the advanced search features of any engine you choose to use is a good idea because many make searches even more specific and easier. In Yahoo!’s search engine a command called “linkdomain” gives a list of links to the page or domain that you specify and also allows you to choose one particular website to search.
Searching blogs is different because of the RSS feeds that bloggers use to show their blog was updated. The RSS feeds are monitored in blog-specific searches but are less effective when it comes to filtering the results of a specific search. Opinmind.com is really interesting. It classifies your search results by bias, which means the tone of a blog post is analyzed to display whether the opinion of the post is for or against the searched topic. Basically, you can separate the mean people from the nice ones by having Opinmind.com show if someone was trash-talking you, or praising you. Technorati is also a good tool to measure the popularity in blogosphere to determine how influential a bad post or good post will be for your search.
Podcasts also sometimes require different search engines due to the difficulty in indexing the content. Podscope.com and Podzinger.com are two that list podcasts that mention a specific search term. You can further use their services to listen to the exact segment in the podcast where your term is spoken.
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