It’s a new year, which means our content pipelines and social media strategies are in full swing. Because it’s a new year, we’re also looking for inspiration. And if you are too, it might inspire you to try something you’ve never done in social media before. The two we like right now are Twitterchat and social media monitoring tools.

Twitterchats, Tweetathons, T-chats, Tweetups, whatever you want to call them, require a 100% team effort. If done right, they can greatly increase web traffic, improve organizational transparency, increase your Twitter followers, and build up or improve your community. It may be hard to convince your client this is a great thing for visibility, but all evidence points to success.

Since I’ve wanted to organize a Twitterchat for months now, I went searching for the best way to go about the task. I found a step-by-step blog from The Blue Key Campaign, which spent a week promoting and organizing its first one. The first step, of course, is that you need an established community. If there’s no one there to participate, where will your responses come from?

I mentioned before that this effort requires input and time from every team member. In our agency case, we’d need the PR team plus our clients, in order to answer questions in the format they arrive, whether it’s Twitter @reply, DM, or email. My hope is that once everyone gets on board, we’ll see results for our clients and as an agency. If you’re looking for a way to start a Twitterchat, check out Blue Key Campaign’s steps. They are as detailed as they come!

Have you ever tried a Twitterchat? What were the results? What would you do differently next time?

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Technorati Tags: community, PR, Social Media, Twitter chats

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In this episode of PRobecast, Renatta Siewert and Justin Martell join me in talking about Facebook pages for SMBs, Google’s Virtual Wallet Platform, Sony and Drunk Driving apps.

Facebook for small businesses – An article on USA Today talks about the reasons why small businesses should leverage Facebook when promoting their businesses. The article offered some great Q&As to help aide any business wondering what this “like” business is all about and how they can participate.

Google announces their virtual wallet platform – Google is announced near-field communication (NFC) to be added to their Android-based phones, allowing consumers to make payments, redeem coupons and earn loyalty points via their mobile device. Some though are saying not to hold your breath for this technology as Google tends to start small and slowly when it comes to rolling out products.

Sony has been hacked again – First Playstation, now Sony Ericsson’s Canadian version of their online eShop has been hacked – this time by a “Lebanese grey hat hacker” who accessed 2,000 records of customers, and posted almost 1,000 of the records online. While after the hackings, it was originally said to have cost the company $50 million, it is now being said to be costing them $170 million. Can they recoup?

Smartphone apps helping drunk drivers avoid checkpoints – Applications made for the iPhone, RIM and Andoid platforms are designed to alert drivers if there are sobriety checkpoints, then alerting them with alternate routes. Are these apps helping drivers stay off the road by alerting them of these checkpoints or are the making it OK to drive drunk on an alternative route?

Now it’s time for the PRobecast PR Power Ranking – which is when we go around the room and pick the story that we think ranks the highest PR-wise – meaning any aspects of PR could be the reasoning behind the pick. Is it the story itself, good data that was used, what’s getting the most pickup, was it a good PR move the company made, etc.

This week, the article talking about how small businesses can use Facebook to promote their businesses wins. First of all, if you are a small business owner, time is normally not something that you have a lot of. Articles like this that lay out the details clearly can be a huge asset to any small business owner looking to market their business through a new channel. With so many people on Facebook, if they aren’t participating they could be missing out on a big demographic of potential customers. So – jump in! It’s all about trial and error, however articles like this can at least jumpstart marketing efforts.

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Technorati Tags: Drunk Driving, Facebook, Google, Hacking, Small Business Marketing, smartphone applications, Sony, Virtual Wallet

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We had a special guest joining us during this week’s PRobecast – Sam Whitmore, founder and editor of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey, which provides tech media analysis and consulting to tech PR Pros and media buyers. Along with Sam, Topazers Tony Sapienza and Liz O’Donnell join me for a round table discussion about how PR has changed – from pitching to different social media tactics.

Add to our discussion – how else has PR changed?

MP3 File

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Technorati Tags: Infographics, Pitching Media, Sam Whitmore, Scare Tactics

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