Google Quotient: How relevant are you online?

Like the idea of an online brand calculator to determine how your personal brand is findable on Google and whether you are Digitally Distinct, Digitally Dabbling, Digitally Dissed or Digitally Disastrous.

Here are my results, with an important caveat:

"Congratulations. You are digitally distinct! This is the nirvana of online identity. A search of your name yields lots of results about you, and most, if not all, reinforce your unique personal brand. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity. That way, if something negative, such as an anonymous ad hominem attack on your character on a blog, crops up, you can address it quickly, before it gets out of hand."



Some interesting facts in the book linked to this tool, Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand:

- 83% of recruiters use search engines to learn about candidates and 43% of recruiters admit to eliminating candidates based on information they found online ( ExecuNet Study, 2007).

- Today's employees change their jobs on the average every two years, their companies every three, and their industries every four (US Department of Labor).

- Corporate leaders are changing companies every 3.2 years down from 3.6 years in 2005 and 4.1 years in 2002 (ExecuNet surveys). For chief marketing officers, at the world’s top-100 branded companies, tenure is just under 2 years (2004 Spencer Stuart survey).

PDF Excerpt from Career Distinction.

PR Workshop and Social Media 101

Addressed the Rotary District 3300 PR Workshop participants on Feb 22. The following slides may be of interest:

1.Harnessing the power of the Web:
View on Scribd | View on Slideshare
2.Social media 101:
View on Scribd | View on Slideshare

Mad as hell

The most memorable scene from the movie Network, 1976, when reporter Howard Beale played superbly by Peter Finch in an Oscar-winning, but sadly, final performance, still resonates especially in these troubled times:

Take it away, Howard Beale: "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

"We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

"We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

"Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

"You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!'

"So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

"I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

The news reporter of the future is here

The newsman of the future is already here. And he isn't some geeky, know-it-all 20 year-old. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion says he's Peter Abraham, the Yankees beat writer for the Journal News in Westchester county (circ. 100,000), NYC, the 94th largest newspaper in the US.



Quote:

Abraham is on the scene in Tampa where the Yankees are training and he's doing it all - in addition to filing regular reports for the paper that appear in print. Here's an inventory of his social media footprint....

First, he has a blog with a full-text feed that includes several posts/day and hundreds of comments/day from readers. It dates back to 2006.

In addition, Abraham has a Facebook group that has about 1600 members.

He is posting photos from spring training using his iPhone. Note the gear the others are using by comparison.

There is a podcast up on iTunes that right now is updated daily with audio.

Finally, today he was using both CoverItLive and Mogulus to have a live video/text chat with readers.



All Abraham is missing is Twitter, YouTube and maybe Flickr but he seems to be doing just fine with what he has here.

In the words of the Pitbull of Personal Development "Shut up, stop whining and get going already".
MORE.

Social Media 101

Have been researching Social Media and trying to find a visual way to explain the subject. Some of these explanations may be useful to you too:

1. Scott Henderson of Mediasauce explains social media in terms of mountains, valleys, antennas and cables:

Mass Media: The first time someone climbed out of the valley to the top of the mountain and built an antenna; things changed dramatically. This antenna could broadcast and receive information and images to (and from) far away places. Bringing the world to us.

But this era had its limits, too:
-It took a lot of money, work, and resources to build and maintain these antennas.
-Because there were only so many antennas, they were only so many choices.
-You couldn’t talk back to what was being broadcast.
-You couldn’t talk with others about what was being broadcast when it was ‘on the air’.

Social Media: Slowly and steadily, we began to lay cables around the world connecting these groups of people. First these cables let us talk to each other directly one-to-one and in small groups. Then, we began to use these cables to share images and sound.

This changed everything…again - making it easier for us to find information and people faster. But it was still static and one-way. And we needed to know complex languages to make the images and sounds do what we wanted.

When we realized we could build tools that made it easy for anyone to create images and sounds in the way they wanted, this changed everything…yet again. People from across great distances could live, work, and play together without needing the antennas.

The focus shifted away from what was being sent from the mountaintop and back to what was happening in the valley – but in a different way. A person in one place can connect with people in different groups and valleys, who they previously would’ve never known about.

And even this era has its issues:
-Many people still are trying to figure out how they need to change.
-Some think the antennas don’t matter anymore.
-Others try to use the tools like they’re broadcast media, pushing their images & sounds out in a one-way monologue with no interest in ongoing conversation.
-The rest don’t even realize things have changed.

On Slideshare.net found the following that were useful:

1. Social Media is... by Lee White.

2. I am the media by Alain Thys.

3. Web 2.0 and Social Media by Shantanu Adhicary.

4. Web 2.0 by satyajeet_02

5.Crucial Conversations In Social Media by themoleskin

6. Social Media 101 by Jeremy Pepper

And on Squidoo:

7. Social Media 101: Comprehensive list of resources.

Also:
8.Free ebooks (right column) by Brian Solis.

What journalists want in your website

In my previous guise as an online journalist, I used to be very frustrated with corporate websites that lacked the immediate background info needed for my stories.

Very often they didn't even have a Newsroom or Media section or the UI or search was so clunky it was impossible to find stuff like when the CEO was named the CEO, the company's headquarters or specifics on when a product was launched.

Thank god, Google came along and made search within sites easy with the operator site:abc.com.

In training, we emphasise the need to have a Quick Facts or FAQ section specifically for the media. When archiving, make press releases searchable by quoted exec, topic, brands, product, service and date can help ease the journo's job.

On the other end, we teach simple Google tricks which go beyond just typing what you want in the search box.

Useability guru Jakob Nielsen interviewed 40 journalists to get their views. His conclusions are a worthy read:

Journalists are not gullible, and they don't take a company's own word as truth. Indeed, almost all journalists said that press releases were useful only to find out how a company is trying to position itself. We strongly recommend that PR areas have links to external sources, including press coverage; journalists often consider articles from independent newspapers and magazines to be much more credible than a company's own press releases. We've seen similar findings in studies of prospective customers evaluating products on consumer- and business-oriented sites, so links to external press coverage can also help promote sales.

The top-5 reasons journalists gave for visiting a company's website are:

* Locate a PR contact (name and telephone number)
* Find basic facts about the company (spelling of an executive's name, his/her age, HQ location, and so on)
* Discern the company's spin on events
* Check financial information
* Download images to use as illustrations in stories

This basic information must be easy to find and should be cleansed of the marketese and excessive verbiage that smother the facts on many sites. Journalists don't have time to wade through deep, complex navigation trees or sift factual wheat from marketing chaff. In particular, pages must present information in well-organized chunks that are easy to scan. Distracting animations and irrelevant stock photography don't help journalists who are in a hurry to find the facts.

MORE.

Citizen Journalism 101

This Flash explanation of Citizen Journalism is brilliant, despite the typos. From VizEdu.com: