I met Lesley at a Mastermind event and we hit it off. Once I saw her work, I realized I couldn’t live with anything less. Lesley is a celebrity portrait photographer. She LOVES to connect with people and make them look beautiful.

Lesley and Susan

Since so much of our contact is made online now, it’s more important than ever to have images that reflect who you are and bring out the best in you.

Here are some images from my shoot and photos of Lesley’s studio and of her working with another client.

Klaas Wiema and Mathys van Abbe

This is first in a series where I take JD Lasica’s meme “Coolest Power Tools” on a “spin” to see not what our US geeks are using, but what our European Brethren find as their favorite aps.

I’ve queried some of my favorite new friends from Amsterdam, London and Cambridge about the tools they love. Here’s the first response, from Mathys van Abbe, founder of MobyPicture.

MATHYS VAN ABBE

My list:
- playfoursquare; In my opinion the first potential successful Location Based Service. Really like the fact they use playfulness to reach the necessary critical mass.

- soundcloud; Revolutionary collaborative tool for musicians. Not at all that musical myself, but really admire the distruptiveness of the service and the simple interface.

- startpix; Nice intuitive visual startpage which I use over 250 times a day. The fact it is visual and fills over time really makes it the easiest start on the web.

- mobypicture; founder and heaviest user ever since the launch. Not because you have to practise what you preach, but simply because I love to share my adventures!

Mathys’ blog:
http://mathys.vanabbe.com

Here are my favorites:

Susan Bratton

• MobyPicture for syndicating my photos and videos from my iPhone and Mac across all my social nets simultaneously (kicks TwitPic’s booty). I wrote about it here.

• TweetLater Professional for scheduling tweets in advance (I wrote about it in my roundup of social media tools)

• Trackur for online reputation management and social listening. It’s superior to Google Alerts. (See my post on Online Reputation Guidelines.

• Testing uberVU, a social media commenting tracking and reply system, in their private beta. (See my post on this.)

• A Twitter Custom Search bookmark on her Firefox browser toolbar (see my post on how to do this).

• Skype with screen sharing (see Are You There? Skype is My Traveling Geeks Lifeline).

• Innovate Ads “video spokesperson” and video banners for my book, Talk Show Tips. See Creating a High Converting Video Spokesperson for Your Landing Page).

• iMovie with YouTube uploader

• Wordpress with Zemanta plug-in (image and article recommendations) for Firefox

• Facebook

• Flickr via iPhoto uploader

• Tweetdeck on her Mac Mini

• iPhone app: Twitterific

For Immediate Release

Public Relations Leads Social Media Engagement at Most Organizations

Social Media Skills Now Required for Staffers, Study Shows

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 10, 2009) – Public relations professionals are taking the lead in managing the organization’s use of social media communications channels, and social media skills are nearly as important as traditional media relations skills when searching for and hiring public relations professionals, according to a new study.

The 2009 Digital Readiness Report, a study conducted by online newsroom provider iPressroom with support from Korn/Ferry International, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and Trendstream, also identifies which new media and social media communications skills are most important to today’s hiring decision makers.
“The most commonly asked question at my social media workshops is ‘Which new or social media communications channels are most important?’” says iPressroom founder Eric Schwartzman.  “With more organizations realizing that there are tangible benefits to be gained from this type of engagement with their audiences, the importance of hiring individuals with advanced new media and social communications skills is increasing.”
Among the key insights from the study are:

1. When searching for prospective new hires, social media communications skills are nearly as important as traditional media relations skills.
2. Public relations leads marketing in the management and oversight of all social media communications channels within organizations.
3. When searching for prospective new hires, social media communications skills are nearly as important as traditional media relations skills.
4. Public relations leads marketing in the management and oversight of all social media communications channels within organizations.
5. Marketing leads public relations in the management and oversight of bulk email communications and search engine optimization.
6. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging skills are the three most important social media communications skills for job candidates to have, according to public relations and marketing hiring decision makers.
7. Most organizations are considering hiring social media specialists.

The 2009 Digital Readiness Report, “Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills.” is available for download free at http://www.ipressroom.com/readiness (registration is required).

Social Media Skills Influence Hiring Decisions
Schwartzman says the survey data also suggest that public relations and marketing professionals without new media and social media communications skills cannot, and will not, satisfy the requirements of today’s hiring decision makers.  To help professionals master these skills, Schwartzman and PRSA will conduct Social Media PR Boot Camps in four additional markets in 2009: Los Angeles (Aug 26 – 27), San Francisco (Sept. 24 – 25), Chicago (Oct. XX-XX) and New York on (Dec. 3 – 4).

“To circumvent the risk of obsolescence, communications professionals are seeking out new media and social media training oppor¬tunities that allow them to rapidly update their traditional public relations and communications skills-sets,” he says. “The demand for this type of knowledge is huge.”

The research also suggest a potential gap in online communications strategy at most organizations, since the channels with the greatest reach and adoption levels — email and search engine optimization — do not appear to be the most important channels in practice.
In addition, organizations do not appear to be as intent on leveraging the trust advantage of their own websites over social networking services to promote their company line.  Instead, organizations say they’re more focused on getting the word out than on using new media and social media channels to attract visitors to their own, destination websites.

About iPressroom
Online newsroom software as a service (SaaS) provider iPressroom (http://www.ipressroom.com/) was founded by social media strategist Eric Schwartzman, who also produces the award-winning PR podcast On the Record…Online (http://www.ontherecordpodcast.com), about how technology is changing the way organizations communicate, and how people consume media and information.  Based in Los Angeles, the company supports the rapid deployment of online newsrooms for businesses, nonprofits and government agencies.

#   #   #
Media Contact:
Arthur Yann
Vice President, Public Relations
Public Relations Society of America
212.460.1452

Kyra Reed, Markyr

Conversation ranges from Bing to GoogleWave to Hashtags to TweetCrawls. Then we get into social influence marketing strategy and creating a solid, active community site.

Then things get dishy as Suz and Kyra talk about men with presence and why that’s the sexiest attribute a man can have. Don’t you love how the show combines humanity and marketing business advice all in a 30 minute treat?

Kyra Reed, Markyr on Community Development, Integrated Microcosms, Tweet Reach

I got another excellent email in my inbox today. (I reported on this regarding Sephora and the “Insider’s Club” last week.)

This email from Virgin America lets me one click Tweet their low airfares. Good job, VA! What a clever idea. Kudos to whomever is responsible for coming up with that clever addition. Virgin America is a brand that’s proud to believe they have fans willing to promote them via Twitter. Confidence builds on confidence.

Virgin America Email

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The panel was entitled: “Energizing your Business through Social Networks” plus Show & Tell How businesses should be using social media/ social influencing marketing
An interactive event led by Omobono and created by East of England
TG Panel:Robert Scoble, Susan Bratton, Renee Blodgett & JD Lasica

Here’s a clip taken by Jim “Sky” Schuyler of me talking about how companies can get involved in social media. Thanks go to @ShivSingh of Razorfish for coining the term Social Influence Marketing and to Lorrie Thomas of Web Marketing Therapy for bringing to my attention the importance of Give to Get in the social sphere. Both are recent DishyMix show guests and the links to their excellent interviews are below.

Here is the clip Sky took and and his blog post about it.

Image of Shiv Singh

Shiv Singh, Razorfish on the Social Influence Marketing, the Portable Social Graph and Friendsters

Image of Lorrie Thomas

Lorrie Thomas, Web Marketing Therapy on Chill Pills, Give to Gain and the Four Agreements

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• Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report (socialmediatoday.com)

Whether I’m keynoting or participating on a panel or even at a party, socializing and talking business, I get the same basic question over and over.

“How do you manage to be everywhere at once?”

They are not talking about my physical body, which is mostly planted in my Aeron chair moving Personal Life Media forward. What they are talking about is the level of conversation I keep up online via Twitter, on Facebook, in my LinkedIn page, on my blog, with my weekly podcast. And everyone wants specifics. Exactly what do I use and how do I connect all the disparate services together?

I use a couple of really good meta-tools that lay on top of the various social nets, allowing me to write once-post many with my written content and my photos/videos/images. This syndication is at the core of my work and simplifies and radiates my work to my friends and followers across multiple networks.

My constellation of tools includes:

1. MobyPicture for syndicating my photos from my iPhone and Mac across ALL my socnets simultaneously (kicks TwitPic’s booty) Read my Post Once Appear Everywhere review of MobyPicture here.
2. TweetLater Professional (there’s a free version) for pre-scheduling Tweets to come out over time about my DishyMix podcast episodes, other shows on Personal Life Media and some of my better blog posts, of which I hope this is one
3. Trackur for online reputation management and social listening. It’s superior to Google Alerts
4. I’m also testing uberVU in their private beta as it’s a threaded listening/commenting system, because once you syndicate your content across multiple networks, you get comments coming in from all those places and you need a single UI in which to manage the conversations
5. and a Twitter Custom Search bookmark on my Firefox browser toolbar that @DaveTaylor taught me how to do: “dishymix” OR “susan bratton” OR “@susanbratton” OR “personal life media” OR “talk show tips” (learn how from Dave here)

Note: MobyPicture is a Dutch company, founded by Mathys van Abbe. More about MobyPicture here. TweetLater Professional is a Canadian company, founded by Dewald Pretorius. Trackur is a US company, founded by Andy Beal. uberVu is a Romanian company, founded by Vladimir Oane and Dragos Ilinca. We met an amazing number of social media start ups on our Traveling Geeks tour which you should check out.

This post will focus on how I use Tweetlater Pro to schedule and use “spinnable text” so that I’m promoting my work over time across Twitter. I do link my Tweets to Facebook, so they appear there as well.

This is an excerpt from my elearning system, Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret Master Host Techniques in which I teach you how to prepare for a conduct interviews but also exactly how I use social influence marketing to promote my shows. TweetLater Professional is a mainstay in my strategy.

Using TweetLater Professional to Manage Your Twitter Schedule
I am so glad Dewald Pretorius (love that name!) had the organizational foresight to invent TweetLater Professional. I follow him on Twitter @dewaldp. I want to be in the Twitterverse on a consistent basis, but I have a business to run and a life to lead. TweetLater Professional “TLP,” for which I pay $29.97, a month is completely worth the price for its time-saving features.

I have a lot I want to Twitter about. I blog, I have my podcast, we do 39 other interesting shows on the network, I find other blog posts and articles I want to share, I like to post about where I’m speaking, I want to “crowd source” answers to my questions…I love to interact on Twitter.  I take a proactive approach to much of what I Twitter. I like to write a whole series of Tweets and then schedule them to appear at times when I know my East and West Coast friends are most likely to see them. Then I supplement those pre-planned Twitters with all of the spur of the moment things about which I want to communicate by Twittering on the fly.

I also know that any one follower may not likely be watching their Twitter stream when I’m Twittering about a specific subject. For important things, like my weekly show, I want to be able to Twitter about it more than one time.  I will write 4-8 different versions of a Twitter about a single episode and schedule them to appear over a 1-3 week period. That way, if one post doesn’t catch your attention or your fancy, another one about the same show just might.

Here is what the basic TweetLater data entry screen looks like.

TweetLater Main Entry Screen

Here are examples of four Twitter posts I scheduled through TweetLater Professional (using Spinnable Tweet Text – more below)  to come out in one month about one single episode of DishyMix:

Pivotal Veracity. I don’t know what it is, but I want it. McClosky recommends cool email tools. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/
The Jazz Club Dolphin on Text Vs. HTML http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/
40,000 Email Marketing Campaigns Later, The #1 Piece of Advice Emerges http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/
Shy? An incredibly convoluted but elegant solution to networking from Bill McClosky. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/

Notice that they all have the same TwitPWR url?  That way, which ever ones get RT’d, give more power to that single url and reinforce my standing at TwitPWR. I also save draft tweets that include text and a TwitPWR url in it if it’s a really good episode and I’ll want to promote it for weeks afterward.

Spinnable Tweet Text

My very favorite feature of TweetLater Professional is not just scheduling tweets that will be published every X number of hours, days, or weeks. The “Spinnable Text” feature is BRILLIANT. To avoid having the tweet say exactly the same thing every time it is published, you can provide alternate tweet text options (multi-level spinnable tweet text) from which the final tweet text is compiled every time a recur is published.

My Spinnable Text post for the above four Tweets about Bill McClosky’s interview on DishyMix looked like this in the entry box:

{Pivotal Veracity. I don’t know what it is, but I want it. McClosky recommends cool email tools. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/|The Jazz Club Dolphin on Text Vs. HTML http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/|40,000 Email Marketing Campaigns Later, The #1 Piece of Advice Emerges http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/|Shy? An incredibly convoluted but elegant solution to networking from Bill McClosky. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/}

Note: You can always cancel or pause these kinds of recurring Tweets if they become noxious or are no longer viable. Also, the directions for how to do Spinnable Text are very well done on the TweetLater console.

In addition to the advanced scheduling, another feature I like in TLP is the ability to schedule for multiple accounts. I manage my own Twitter account @SusanBratton, I also manage the Twitter stream for @PersonalLIfe and I contribute to the Association for Downloadable Media’s Twitter feed, @ADMTweets. I can write any Twitter and decide to post it to one, two or all three of my accounts using TLP.

TweetLater Pro Accounts

Note: I also own @TalkShowTips and @DishyMix and send potential followers to @SusanBratton to follow me there.

Track Your Keywords on Twitter with TweetLater Professional
I have set up alerts and track a list of keywords using TweetLater Professional too. I use it like I do with Trackur, which I view about once a week. I like getting the Twitter digest every day in email so I can discover new people to follow or who I can tell about TalkShowTips. You can also use this feature to track your @replies, though I keep up with them through TweetDeck when I’m at my desk and Twitterific on my iPhone. It feels more timely to me to get them at those places, than TweetLater Professional.

I am actively looking for Twitterers who are posting about their latest show, so I can ping them about this book or respond to them in general. Here are my current list of keywords and phrases I track:

“latest podcast”, “my podcast”, “my show”, “new episode” ,”new podcast”, “new show”, “personal life media”, @susanbratton, #adtech, #TG2009, dishymix, podcast advertising, show host, susan bratton, susanbratton, talk show, talk show host, talkshow, talk show tips, talkshowtips, plm

This is how the email digest of results from your Keyword Tracking in Tweetlater Professional looks. These are a few Twitters, mostly from others, about DishyMix:

TweetLaterPro Keyword Digest

The Big Brouhaha About Twitter Automation
I must warn you. There are some features of TweetLater Professional that are unpopular with the “Twitterati*.”

You can set Tweetlater Professional to automatically follow anyone who follows you, even with a 72 hour window to manually review your new followers before you confirm them. Turn about is fair play. You can also autmatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you. Fair enough. You can also automatically send a message to anyone who follows you. I like to thank my new followers, but a LOT of big name Twitters do not agree with me. They feel it’s spammy. They hate what are callled “Auto DM’s.” It’s a personal choice. If someone is really going to unfollow me because I thanked them for following me, then OK. I can live with that.

I am a mannerly woman and I like to say thanks. You should choose what feels best to you. Here’s a post I did on a dozen things to know about managing your online reputation. Always go with your gut. Here’s my SXSW interview with Guy Kawasaki where he says if he’s not pissing somone off, then he’s doing something wrong. With 150,000 followers, he can afford a few unfollows.

Twitter is a big social experiment and you have to have the confidence to feel your way through, apologize for mistakes and try new things! I find an apology is all it takes if you cross someone’s boundary.

Now you know the set of tools I use to “be everywhere” and a bit more detail about how I leverage TweetLater Professsional. Let me know what additional questions you have and tools you like for managing across social nets.

* Twitterati means the celebrity people on Twitter who have a large share of voice. Like the Glitterati or the Digerati… They can wield a big stick with their opinions.

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What happens when the MySpace gen goes to work?

If Andy and Alastair have the answer, it’s “use Huddle,” their collaboration service that succinctly integrates file management, file sharing, permissions, whiteboards, task management, and online meeting tools into a clean interface that comes to you, in your social environment.

Huddle Workspace

One of the first companies invited to integrated into LinkedIn, Huddle is next launching within Ning – to bring group collaboration tools to groups, where than hang out.

I’ve used Basecamp and Lighthouse among other collaboration tools and Huddle looks like a definite improvement for a few reasons. First, the buddy list brings humanity into an experience that’s previously been “document” or “project-focused” rather than people-focused. Secondly, there’s web conferencing built right in. Third, you can live edit documents together, which I find I do often. And you can manage tasks for multiple projects in your account.

At Personal Life Media, though our experts are mostly in NY and SF, our production group is in Florida, we have developers in Chicago, New York and Chennai. All businesses are moving to global collaboration and Huddle is the next generation of collaboration tools. And there’s a Freemium business model, so you can try out a free account.

Replace Basecamp, GoToMeeting, Google Docs and your Chat ap with Huddle.

Andy McLoughlin, co-founder, Huddle

These co-founders have a great personal interaction - a good sign for success.

Andy and Alasdair Speed Dating with Howard Rheingold

From the Seedcamp Profile:

Andy McLoughlin     Alastair Mitchell

Twitter: huddle

Email: hello@huddle.net

Website: http://www.huddle.net

Contact Phone: +44 (0)7811 103 540

Company Description
Established by Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin in November 2006, Huddle.net is a multi award-winning network of secure online workspaces where users can share files, collaborate on ideas, manage projects and organise virtual meetings.
Its customers include P&G, Pearson, Nokia and UNICEF, hundreds of thousands of small businesses and a number of UK and US government departments. Huddle’s API enables developers to integrate their applications and build new services on top of the Huddle platform.
In October 2008, Huddle.net launched on the LinkedIn application platform as the only non-US company, alongside Amazon and Google. In February 2009, the company partnered with InterCall, the world’s largest conferencing provider, to provide services to theit 1M+ customers. In June 2009 BusinessWeek called Huddle.net one of their ‘50 most promising startups’ globally.
Huddle.net’s 30 staff are headquartered in London with sales offices in Chicago. A San Francisco office will open in September 2009.

Image of Shiv Singh

Shiv Singh, Razorfish on the Social Influence Marketing, the Portable Social Graph and Friendsters

Image of Clark Kokich

Clark Kokich, Razorfish on Social Influence Marketing and the 2009 Digital Outlook

Today Razorfish unveiled “Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report.”

Based on how much I enjoyed their Digital Outlook 2009 report, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this too. I find Razorfish’s reports to be very high quality and they always give me a better perspective on what I’m seeing in the market. I’ve taken to calling Social Media Marketing, Social Influence Marketing now that Clark and Shiv have gotten ahold of me.

David Deal, VP Marketing at Razorfish says, “we believe Fluent dispels some common myths about social media and influencers, such as:

·         Myth 1: Companies are finally figuring out how to build their brands through social media and influencers.  In fact, consumers surveyed by Razorfish reveal widespread indifference to brands in the social world.  Six out of 10 consumers don’t bother to seek out opinions of brands via social media.  We believe the problem is that marketers still treat social like any other channel for spreading their messages when in fact they should be taking advantage of its participatory nature.

·         Myth 2: Television is dead.  Our survey shows that consumers view TV ads as more trustworthy than ads on social networks when purchasing decisions are made.  Our take: Social Influence Marketing complements, but does not replace, television.   Moreover, marketers can increase levels of trust in social by developing a credible social voice and engaging with consumers instead of treating social like a one-way broadcast mechanism.

·         Myth 3: you cannot correlate consumer perceptions of your brand in the online and offline worlds.  With the help of TNS Cymfony and The Keller Group, Razorfish has created a mechanism – the SIM Score – that can help brands understand the relationship between what consumers say about you across the online and offline social worlds.   The SIM Score (introduced in Fluent) measures how much consumers talk about your brand and how positive or negative those discussions are.  In Fluent, Razorfish applies the SIM Score to companies ranging from GM to Capital One.  Although the SIM Score focuses on the online world, in two industries we correlate SIM Score to the offline world.  We’ve found that a brand’s online share of voice corresponds closely to offline.  The correlation is important because offline friends remain the single most trustworthy sources that influence consumer purchasing decisions.”

Let me know your thoughts on this report and I’ll be posting mine as well.

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