Twitter lagger

I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t develop a romance with Twitter. We were supposed to open an account on Twitter for this module and…use it. So I did open an account. And everything looked so…empty :)) And it still is. Until now I only have 15 followers. Is not surprising, as I tweeted only about my new posts on the blog.

Hmm…so I said…Twitter let’s give us another chance, because apparently people are crazy about you. I just went on twitter and started finding people, looking at followers of followed people, etc. And I found out something interesting wrote by someone…that starting this month the life insurances protect you against thermo-nuclear cataclysm or an asteroid attack. I don’t know if it’s only in Romania, as the post was written by a Romanian. I’m a little paranoid usually and the first think that came in my mind was…do they know something? :)))) But then I thought again…aahhmm, and how is this insurance supposed to protect you from these? Ok, so the money goes to the people on the other side of the Earth, which was not affected by the asteroid? And what money? I believe in such case the whole economic stability joins the people hit by the asteroid go…in death! So all these thoughts intrigued me and I told myself…hmm, maybe I have no idea what it is about after all. So I wanted to send a direct message to that person to ask where he found out from about this. But what I realized is that I cannot send him a message because apparently, he’s not following me. So, Twitter disappointed me. I couldn’t get in touch with someone of whom post I wanted to find out more about. Well, I could, but only if I wrote @user and tweet. But what if I don’t want my followers to see what I want to write to that someone?

And the fact that you can write only up to 140 characters…in this case, for me the information was incomplete. Maybe he didn’t tweet ‘right’, as he didn’t add any links. Ok, I know people have links to blogs, websites, bla bla. But I’m just saying that if I used only Twitter, I wouldn’t be able to get in touch with that person. On Facebook you can send a message to someone, even if you are not friends with them.

So, what I can say is that twitter is just a channel to share your links to other sources of information, and in public relations is the same case. But for example, I personally use Google reader to get updated information from sites, blogs etc.

At a personal level, I prefer Facebook. Maybe because it is more interactive. On Facebook I can share more with my friends, like photos, which I believe are more important taking into consideration the fact that I am abroad. I can join groups of different interests; see a video directly on Facebook, which is not possible on Twitter. Every link opens a new window or tab. On Google Reader I can see everything in one place and go on the source website only if I really want to.

So I couldn’t find major advantages of Twitter for me…at the moment. What can I say…I am a Twitter lagger.

Photo source: http://applicant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/b8.jpg

Stirling through my eyes

We all know by now that social media means sharing, User Generated Content etc.

So I thought to use social media to share a bit of my wanderings in Stirling and combine them with some facts to promote this small, yet a city with such a rich history.

All of the photos were taken by me, though I have to mention that the picture of the football was downloaded from the museum's website, as the ball was exhibited in other place at the moment of my visit.

I hope you enjoy...

Wiki...not only pedia

We all know what Wikipedia is. I guess a lot of us know that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, mostly…because it has some privacy policies. But did you know what a wiki is? Because Wikipedia is the largest wiki. I personally didn’t know what wiki was before I had to do a presentation related to this subject.

I found a definition, on Wikipedia, which says that wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. I have no idea what the last part means, so I thought of embedding this explanation in plain English…


Source: www.youtube.com


The first Wiki was developed by Ward Cunninghan in 1995, as he wanted to build a software for collective work where you can track changes.

Nowadays, wiki is a spread tool for internal communication. Companies are using wikis for project management, as a replacement of emails, phones, case in which you can easily forget where you took the information from and it takes you ages to find it again. There are a lot of advantages. A wiki can be adapted to suit your project, it reduces meetings time, you can track the changes made to the wiki by ‘watching’ – receiving email notifications when someone changes something, you can upload documents, photos, videos etc. Me and my classmate used a wiki to do our presentation. The only thing we couldn’t do online was the Powerpoint presentation. But who knows…there’s always room for improvement in ICTs.

Ok, so the use of wikis internally is huge, and from a public relations perspective, we can say that it contributes to the relationship with internal publics. But what happens when you want to go externally with your wiki…that is where the debate begins.

Some people suggest that wiki can be a very useful tool for in public relations, as it fits into the Grunigian paradigm of two-way symmetrical communication. And that it has the advantage of being trustworthy, as it can be edited by the publics. But what happens when people take advantage of this, as we are not all people who believe constructive collaboration. An example like this is the Los Angeles Times Wikitorial, a feature related to the withdrawal of troupes in Iraq. After three days they took it off, as the content was becoming more like porn website.

There are some controversial issues on which people are keen to express their anger, extreme opinions etc. Let’s take Coca-Cola, for example, which is a symbol of capitalism, corporatism and all the derived concepts. If we look at Coca-Cola’s page on Wikipedia, we can notice that is secured. Imagine if all the people could edit their page.

In general, companies are not using wikis for external communication, as they are afraid of vandalism. Sure, one can argue that you can control to some extent the content, like Wikipedia does with its privacy policy. But when it comes to companies, where is the argument of trustworthiness if they are controlling the content?

So, personally, I think an organization should think very carefully about the issues they want to expose to public debate, and after analyzing all the channels they can use for reaching the audience and what they imply, they might as well choose wiki as an alternative.

Google does the statistics for you

Part of this whole blogging experience was to connect my blog to a Google Analytics Account and talk about what I learned by doing that.

Firstly, I have to set up the context of me starting to blog. Ok, so we were given the assignment somewhere at the beginning of March and we were supposed to set up the Google Analytics account and link it to the blog. I did that. And then I started spending my time on customizing the blog, finding the right widgets, searching for templates etcetera etcetera, apart from all the other things for other modules. So this took me approximately 3 weeks, as the work was more laborious than I thought. And I don’t know how, but I managed to screw up my blog with downloaded templates, as I did the huge mistake of not saving the basic template. Well done, student! And because my eyes are becoming suddenly smaller and somehow silly when looking at the Html code, of course I couldn't save anything and had to set up another blog. Don’t want to remember all the thoughts related to that…the analytics won’t have the same amount of time to analyze stuff, what will happen, how I am going to write about it; content analysis, organizational analysis…aahh it’s too much!! But anywayz…had to say ‘My bad!’ and get over it. Work with what you have…it’s like a 2008 advertising budget…no worries, we still have PR :)

So, my period of blog analysis was 4th of April – 4th of May. What I did it was that I started looking at all those numbers and try to understand what they say. And I actually came to the conclusion that Google Analytics is indeed, a very good tool to evaluate what’s happening with the online presence of the blog/website and you can follow-up to improve that presence. I will give some few examples, though they are not that encouraging for me personally, as the absolute numbers are very low…149 visits and 92 absolute unique visitors.



It seems that on 17th and 23rd of April I had two peaks of visitors, mainly because I had new posts and I promoted them on Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo Messenger. Also, if I look at the Map Overlay, almost half of the visits come from Romania, which are represented mostly by my friends on Messenger. But if we think about a website which is continuously promoted on a specific number of ways, we can relate this to the content of the website and see which information is more relevant. Furthermore, Analytics shows you the statistics on Content, making a top of pages most visited, top landing and exit pages.

Also, you can analyze visitor’s loyalty, by measuring visits repeated, recency of the visits, which means when was the last time the same visitor was tracked, length and depth of visits, last one showing how many pages they accessed on one visit.

Google Analytics shows the traffic sources, which I believe is very important, as it shows you exactly how good you are targeting your audience, might show you new audiences which you didn’t think about before, thus there is a need for exploring the communication with that audience.

All these are just some basic features of Google Analytics, but I’m sure there are a lot more to exploit in order to optimize the content and dissemination of the website.

PSD should use social media for rebranding

Recently, I had to visit the website of the Social Democratic Party in Romania for some information. And because I am studying Digital PR I told myself ‘Let’s have a look at the online presence of the party’. And I was disappointed to notice that this is a good example of bad social media.

The electorate of Social Democratic Party is mainly formed from old people, people from the countryside and they have always talked about how to attract young electorate, people from the cities, people with high education, electorate which is mainly liberal or undecided. And social media is a very good channel to reach these people. And now that they have a new president, of whom most striking feature is that he is very young, and from this all the other characteristics, I thought that one of the new approaches in communication would be starting using social media for the reasons aforementioned. It could be part of the rebranding of the party.

But unfortunately, the party is not using social media as they are supposed to. Instead, they are doing a lot of the DON’Ts.

Social media is not about having a Facebook and Twitter account. It’s about, among others, having a Facebook and Twitter account with RELEVANT and UPDATED information. It is about the CONTENT. PSD has a Facebook and a Twitter account. Let’s see how they are using them.

TWITTER



Last tweet was on 8th of June 2009, about the President Mircea Geoana. No wonder there are only 159 followers. Also, there is no link to the website.

Now let’s see the Twitter page of Labour Party in Great Britain.



It looks more updated. But a party which is using even better Twitter is the Lib Dem Party.



FACEBOOK



Last update on Facebook was a post of someone asking for some information, as he wanted to get involved as a militant. And he was young, living in Bucharest, the target we are talking about. Unfortunately...no answer.

I have tried to connect to RSS Feed of the PSD website, but it’s not working. National Liberal Party in Romania, for example, is using better this tool.
Another Web 2.0 tool which I found on the website is the blog of PSD, called ‘Electronic Communication Service’, with a nice motto ‘Join the online campaign of PSD. Show the people that the Internet can be red.’ Unfortunately, the Internet is still not red enough. I had to scroll down a lot to see a nice two-way communication tool, a question addressed to the visitors about what articles would they like to see on the blog. The only updates on the blog were posts related to the event on 1st of May, a post about a scholarship for young politicians and a Happy New Year post. So, in total, 2 updates since the start of 2010? Oh, and an RSS Feed of Carmen Moldovan, a former PSD deputy who is now INDEPENDENT! Update, update, update!

Also, I noticed a link to Technocrati search about the blog, called ‘Others about us’. Click.



No others. That should be a hint to them that they need to work a lot harder on their social media channel. And also, with the new President, it is the best opportunity for rebranding online and target the young electorate.