Author: Becky Green (was McMichael)
Jacek Utko: Can design save the newspaper? (via TED talks)
Google profile ties together search and social
Just came across this via a tweet from @jopkins – Google profile. Fairly simple idea where you fill out a short bio, contact info and add social network links to increase searchability through Google.
Here’s mine.
Google describes it as:
A Google profile is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are. With a Google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location. You can include, for example, links to your blog, online photos and other profiles, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and more. You have control over what others see. Your profile won’t display any private information unless you’ve explicitly added it.
Anyone with a Google account can sign up and providing you tick the box that marks your enables your full name to be searched upon it makes you a lot easier to find and also pulls together your social network links into one place too.
{updated} Now with vanity URL switched on: http://www.google.com/profiles/BeckyMcMichael
social media: creating a winning campaign
Image courtesy of Gaping Void
Great post here from Darren Barefoot on how to create the much sought after social media purple cow. His checklist is about right for every industry I can think of:
- Bring the funny
- Explore extremes
- Keep it short
- Go meta
- Give it away
- Add mystery
- Respond to current news
- Bring sexy back
- Demonstrate extraordinary skill
- Embrace the ephemoral
And the most important piece of advice….you are creating it for your audience; not for everybody so don’t try to be all things to all people.
Amazon sees censorship decisions magnified through the social web magnifying glass
Now we all know the effect the Internet and indeed, the social web have on magnifying seemingly small issues or business decisions in record time….don’t we? Well Amazon apparently does not.
Twittering merrily about choccie eggs has been usurped today by the issue of #amazonfail, currently ranking pretty highly on Twitter and attracting interest across the blogosphere.
What is #amazonfail?
The letter here sums it up perfectly:
Somehow, the brain trust of your company has decided to protect the “entire” Amazon customer base by restricting access to content that someone (who?) decided was offensive. In your zeal to protect me from myself, of course, you managed to leave content that I find singularly repulsive online (really, exploring the human condition is bad, but Mein Kampf is just fine?).
This loss of ranking, listing, search functionality seems to be largely, but not wholly!, limited to fiction and non-fiction with themes relating to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues. Authors affected range from E.M. Forster to James Baldwin to John Barrowman, our beloved Captain Jack on Dr. Who and Torchwood and others, including a host of female authors who write erotic fiction.
Gee, I can buy a book on training fighting dogs (something so offensive my stomach hurts just looking at the cover image), but specific types of human relationships are suddenly taboo?
Whist watching this PR disaster in the making, what is interesting to me is how the story ends up being reported tomorrow and Tuesday as fellow PR, Eb Adeyeri points out:
Fascinating to see the twitter-verse rise up on an issue such as #amazonfail I wonder if their PR gets to it before it makes the nationals
As far as I am aware, Amazon does not have a “rep” on twitter, or not one that is very well known anyway either in house or agency-side. If they did, this could probably have been nipped in the bud earlier or at least properly explained. Instead, the twittering-classes have pretty much made up their own minds and the issue (and possible damage to reputation) will no doubt have been done by the time a more damaged piece appears in the press.
Ironic that one of the world’s largest online brands seems to be at the centre of a potentially large online PR disaster and its blog hasn’t been updated for over 24 hours.
What lesson can all brands learn from this about the online world? Even if you don’t contribute very often to the online conversation…at least listen and respond.
{update} great piece by Clay SHirky on the topic here. I still think that regardless of the issue, organisations are dealing with percepotions and the FAIL Amazon made was not speaking up early enough.
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