middle child marketing inc.: Publicist Sandra Garcia, Event Publicity, Lifestyle PR, Public Relations, Media coverage, Vancouver BC

Ever been burned by double tweeting?

Oh, how I love Hootsuite. It makes our lives so much easier – the messages across all of our social networks, the scheduling of tweets, all of our mentions and private messages and the lists we like at a glance in separate columns… Hootsuite is indeed a great thing, and bonus that it was borne right here in our fine city of Vancouver.

The other great thing about Hootsuite is it allows us to Tweet across several Twitter accounts. But is this always a good thing?

Over the last year or so I’ve seen duplicate messages simultaneously going out from personal Twitter accounts and business accounts. I get that perhaps a CEO doesn’t mind sharing his/her personal news to followers of his/her company as well. As they say, you want to show that your business is run by a person, right? I can also understand a company with several departments (@VancouverSun or @GeorgiaStraight, for example) with different followers on these accounts who may all want to hear the news. Sometimes those 5 tweets at a time get annoying, but I understand.

But I’ve seen some really bad tweets out there… whether followers recognize it or not, I’ve seen very obvious personal tweets going out on company accounts… or individuals who perhaps didn’t want to reveal that they were tweeting for the company they work for (Interns? Hello, I see you!). I tried to find an example right now, but no one’s tweeting for business at night…

So while Hootsuite (or Tweetdeck, or other similar socmed tool) is a great timesaver tool and makes business and personal life much easier on social media, if you’re not careful with those thumbs and mouse-clicks, your double tweet might cost you.

After trying out the auto tweet-on-Facebook feature (I rarely like to use @ references on Facebook), and the Facebook post-on-Twitter features, my personal preference is still to think about the message, and whether or not it’s appropriate for each network. And I’ve done my share of tweets that weren’t meant to go out, but always try and rectify them by deleting right away.

Have you ever been burned by a Hootsuite mishap?

Awarded a Marketing Guru badge on Facebook

I was browsing Facebook and noticed this on my profile:

My former mentor Cathy Kuzel had given me a badge! SO much better than a Farmville pig, or a poke.

The badge was from a new app called BranchOut, which uses your network to seek out opportunities. Sort of like the Linkedin for Facebook (it allows you to sync with your Linkedin profile). It even has some of the same features. The trouble now is, I’m not sure if all of my 450 friends are going to want to “network” with me again. It’s like Inception… the profile within BranchOut within the Facebook…

It’s gonna take a while for me to complete my profile, so I’ll check it out and report back to you on whether it’s worth joining.

Release: Social Media Marketing Unplugged

I’m happy to have helped out the team at Social Media Marketing Unplugged with some media outreach for their upcoming conference.

I’m choked I won’t be able to attend it myself, but hope to catch some follow-up video footage so I can learn from some of these amazing speakers.

The early bird rate is still in effect I believe, so catch it while you can. Students get 25% off.

Media and bloggers can request passes by contacting Jonathan at the email or number below.

Release: (also available in PDF here)

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The new(s) era of mobile and new media

Two articles published in this week’s Business in Vancouver got me thinking about how rapidly the media world is changing.

1) After 15 years, PR firm Wilcox Group is closing its doors. This follows an announcement from another PR firm Quay Strategies, which was also open for 15 years. In BIV, Mat Wilcox announced that she would dissolve her company to become a private social media consultant, given the way that social media has changed the way that businesses (and consumers) announce their news and communicate in real time.

2) Vancouver company Mobify, a developer of websites for mobile devices, is one of three companies that closed a deal in Japan to convert Japanese websites into mobile ones for Western phones. Mobify sites can be recognized with the .me suffix at the end.

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Social Media panel at Vancouver Bloggers Meetup

Last night I attended my very first Vancouver Blogger Meetup event and I was in for a treat. The Meetup was co-organized by the Social Media Club, and featured a speaker panel on the topic “Olympic Lessons: a panel discussion of social and antisocial media lessons from the Olympics”

The speakers included:

- Kirk LaPointe, Managing Editor of the Vancouver Sun, journalism professor, and blogger
- John Biehler, citizen journalist, photographer, blogger and True North Media House member
- Laurent Piche, co-founder of Improv Everywhere Vancouver, flashmob impresario (so HE’s the one behind those flash mobs!)
- Colin Horgan, columnist at the Guardian and Olympic beat blogger for True/Slant
- Jonathan Narvey, freelance journalist, copywriter, blogger, co-host of the Vancouver Blogger’s Meetup
- Shane Birley, author of Blogging for Dummies, blogger, co-host of the Vancouver Blogger’s Meetup
- Moderator Colleen Coplick, founder of Type-A PR and the MissManifesto network

While I had to leave before the panel ended, I was able to witness an hour and a half of the stimulating discussion, the points of which I’ll recap here. I also wasn’t able to see who was speaking at certain times, but nevertheless the points made were good food for thought.

The Vancouver Sun, which is one of the largest newspapers in BC, didn’t get their media accreditation for the Olympics until about January, so the bloggers who got theirs weren’t notified until a week beforehand. The panelists assumed that VANOC was hesitant to allow local bloggers to cover the Olympics because of the chance of leaking news, as well as the negative news that could come out of it (protests, etc.). A lively discussion on “citizen journalism” (a well debated term here) erupted later, but one of the bloggers pointed out that as much as social media encourages free thought, bloggers could be sued for defamation, especially if their blogs conveyed unjust negativity against VANOC.

Kirk LaPointe of the Vancouver Sun was sad to see that there has been less coverage of the Paralympics than the Olympics, and I agree. The True North Media House at W2 – which April Smith talked about at the What’s Going On salon on Citizen Journalism a few weeks back – is an example of a great hub for sharing content and outreach with local bloggers.
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