I’ve spent more time than I care to add up listening to lawyers explain the intricacies of federal law when it comes to social media and disclosure requirements. Apparently that’s not the case at ESPN. The sports network and several of its reporters (including former Denver reporter Adam Schefter) may be hearing from the FTC soon.
“I call Twitter ‘the microphone for morons’.”
—Denver Broncos executive John Elway (@JohnElway), at the NFL’s career development symposium this weekend.
In a word where consumers increasingly value transparency, Samsung’s “Selfie Stunt, Part 2” is falling flat.
From Justine Sacco, Director of Corporate Communications at the publicly traded IAC/InterActiveCorp. If you are job hunting, there likely will be a position open there on Monday.
1. KMGH/Channel 7 vs. Fox31
2. Denver Broncos vs. Jacksonville Jaguars
If you are looking for a quick way to follow Denver and Colorado media on Twitter, Eric Anderson at SE2 has put together a pretty comprehensive list.
Denver Broncos VP of PR Jim Saccomano has turned to Twitter to call out a “reckless ‘journalist'” at the Sporting News for reporting that Broncos QB Kyle Orton has demanded a trade.
Circulation numbers are still king, of course, but here is the ranking of U.S. newspapers according to their Twitter followers (Note: it only ranks the newspapers’ primary Twitter accounts).
The Denver Post ranks a very respectable eighth, although the follower numbers fall off a cliff after the top three.
Fast Company examines BP’s “Twitter trouble,” and the implications for every business.
Shawn Martini at the Colorado Farm Bureau learned the hard way that joking about natural disasters rarely ends well (see former Chicago Bears great Dan Hampton for another recent example). I have no idea what Shawn’s original Tweet was (it has since been deleted), but here is the string of apologies he has offered for it so far:
@RealPRMedia I see that now. My apologies.
@zarchasmpgmr @stevehirschhorn @HKoren @tweet_fail@pookla @wcwestfeldt @5280PRGal @hardcorps80204 My apologies. The joke was in poor taste.
@hardcorps80204 @milesbeyond @mackaymiller @tedrock et. al. My joke abt the #boulderfire was in very poor taste. My sincerest apologies.
@RealPRMedia Thank you for your understanding. I do apologize 4 the comment. Very poor taste on my part. My prayers R w/ everyone affected.
@thegoodhuman Very much agreed. Please accept my sincerest apologies.
Update: Here is Shawn’s original Tweet:
7000 ac. fire in Boulder. sure gonna take lots of Priuses &solar panels 2 make up4 that big ol’ carbon emission
Here’s today’s free PR tip: If you are drafting quotes for a client, make sure the client 1) reviews and approves the quotes and 2) agrees not to disavow them publicly.
That advice would have helped Campbell Levy of Aspen’s Promo Communications. Levy reps Denver chef/restauranteur Frank Bonanno, who is engaged in a war of words Tweets with Westword over a Westword blog post that revealed his plan to open a new French-American restaurant and quoted Bonanno.
The problem is that Bonanno is claiming no knowledge of the information that lead to the blog post, which came from Promo Communications and included quotes from Bonanno. Here is the Twitter exchange so far:
Bonanno (@FrankBonanno):
@sarah_gore [The Westword blog post is based on] Bad information . . .I think there are even quotes in that story, which is odd . . .
@sarah_gore [Westword’s Lori Midson] wrote what someone said I said. Thing is, I had a different deal working–but that blog [post] ended it.
Westword (@CafeWestword) responded:
LM: @FrankBonanno As you know, it was your PR person who e-mailed me with very specific info about your new place — with a quote from you.
Ouch.
Ahhh, delicious irony. The self-important Jacob Morse is profiled in the New York Times for spending his time “calling out the (grammar mistakes of the) self-important” on Twitter. In the spirit of Mr. Morse’s endeavor, I’m starting a “Name that Tweeter” contest to identify the authors of notable tweets. The first (and likely only) installment:
“Its impossible to eat sopapillas with hiney and not get sticky.”
Identify the author and you win lunch and a free Bawmann Group pen.
UPDATE: 5280 publisher Daniel Brogan correctly identified Andrew Hudson, publisher of the brand new Andrew Hudson’s Jobs List Blog, as the author of the Tweet. Andrew’s Tweet was quickly followed by a second one that read, “Arrrggg. I meant ‘honey,’ not ‘hiney.'”
Better not let your company Tweet something congratulating an Olympics athlete for doing well – the USOC or IOC may come after you.
Paula Berg leaves Southwest Airlines to join Linhart, and then all (social media) hell breaks loose. Coincidence? I think not.
PRSA and Linhart are sponsoring a Tweetup on Thursday to welcome new PRSA members. Door prizes include two roundtrip airline tickets from Southwest Airlines. Details are:
5:30 – 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 4
Cru Wine Bar, 1442 Larimer Street (in Larimer Square downtown)
Congratulations to Ef Rodriguez, who was named Westword’s “Twit of the Week.” In the accompanying Twitter interview, Rodriguez shares that he “was drawn to Twitter by the promise of high-fives and makeouts. While I have received neither, my incurable optimism spurs me ever onward.”
Congratulations to CBS4, which posted its first 10 p.m. newscast ratings win in years. 9News GM Mark Cornetta blamed his station’s second-place performance on “re-runs, specials and football (that) tend to skew the ratings results at this time of year,” but we all know that the real reason CBS4 landed in first place is because of Misty Montano’s twitter presence.
A digital billboard that combines an ad for the WPMI-TV news team with the station’s live Twitter feed goes bad.
(Hat tip to Dan Welch)
The college football season is nearly over, so it must be time to start complaining about the lack of a playoff system. To get ahead of the curve, the BCS launched a social media campaign last week touting its effectiveness, but Advertising Age takes the campaign to task for simply spewing propaganda rather than engaging fans.
Social media guru, author and MediaonTwitter co-founder Brian Solis will be in town Tuesday (tomorrow) for a book signing/tweetup. The event is from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. at Tryst Lounge in Larimer Square. Click here for additional details.
PRSA Colorado is taking its PR Boost program for nonprofits to Twitter. A panel of local PR experts, including Gina Seamans, Bill Green, Lisa Cutter, Jane Dvorak and Kristy Bassuener, will answer questions from non-profits tomorrow (Wednesday), Nov. 4, from 11-11:45 a.m. MST. Click here for information on how to participate in – or just follow – the Twitter conversation.
That community college-loving Sara Evans can try to take full credit for the Media on Twitter database, but we all know that it is a collaborative effort among Brian Solis, Peter Shankman, Sara and Denver’s own Melissa Hourigan and Ed Dunigan.
Teach Colorado Republicans how Twitter works (specifically that people can see your tweets even if they don’t “follow” you), and how open communication can be a good thing, even if not everyone agrees with you.
Cohn Marketing is sponsoring a Twitter Twongue Twister experiment. Details are at http://twonguetwister.com.
Scatterbox makes the case that “engagement” eventually will give way to noise and a relentless bombardment that will cause the “the hottest social media thing since the one before it” to collapse under its own weight.
How important has Twitter become? From today’s Washington Post:
“The State Department asked social networking site Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance earlier this week in order to avoid disrupting communications among tech-savvy Iranian citizens as they took to the streets to protest Friday’s reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. …
” ‘One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter,’ said a senior State Department official in a conversation with reporters, on condition of anonymity. ‘They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to.’ “
I keep reading media articles that position politicians such as U.S. Rep. Jared Polis as technology-friendly leaders who use social media to connect with constituents, and I have to shake my head. Rep. Polis has 2,439 Twitter followers, and he has followed a grand total of 59 of them back. To Rep. Polis, Twitter appears to be just another bullhorn through which he can spread what he wants constituents to hear. And he isn’t alone:
The power of social media is in creating relationships – or at least engaging conversations – with people who matter to you (and to whom you matter). Of the major elected officials in Colorado, only one at least makes an effort to create the appearance he uses social media to listen to constituents:
And, surprisingly, a significant number of high-profile Colorado politicians aren’t even using Twitter yet:
Revolut!on Magazine compiles the list and the reasons:
(Hat tip to The Denver Egotist)
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and Denver’s Tennyson Center for Children will receive a $5,000 gift from Noble Energy if it can hit 1,000 Twitter followers by the end of today. So go to http://twitter.com/tennysoncenter and click on “follow.” There are kids who desperately need your help.
If you are interested in following the tweets of Denver’s PR community, PRSA Colorado is assembling the comprehensive list.
The “Media On Twitter” coalition – Digital Idea Media’s Melissa Hourigan, Elgin Community College’s Sarah Evans, Help a Reporter Out’s (HARO) Peter Shankman, FutureWorks’ Brian Solis, and TrackVia’s Ed Dunigan – announced today that the database has moved to its permanent home at http://www.mediaontwitter.com. The database has grown to nearly 1,000 reporters, editors and producers since it launched three weeks ago.
Cori Keeton Pope of Keeton PR was featured in a KMGH/Channel 7 story on companies that are using Twitter to connect with consumers.
What’s Next Blog compiles the list.
TrackVia, Digital Idea Media, Sarah Evans and HARO‘s Peter Shankman are jointly launching Media On Twitter, a powerful media database available to all Twitter users. The database — which is populated by Twitter users, vetted by editors and free to the entire community — allows users to sort media twitter IDs by beat, location, name or media outlet. (Disclosure: I am a partner in Digital Idea Media and TrackVia is a client).
Last week, it was the Wall Street Journal that discovered Twitter. This weekend, it was the Denver Post. And the Denver Business Journal is now on Twitter: http://twitter.com/denbizjournal.
IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) founder Ted Murphy believes it has taken the industry three years to “warm up” to the idea of sponsored conversations such as blog posts. And with the trend evolving to include Twitter and Facebook, questions of disclosure and authenticity will take center stage.
PR firm Waggener Edstrom has launched Twendz, a Twitter tool that examines tweets on topics and calculates whether opinions on them are trending positive or negative.
Which means there’s a 50 percent chance it has jumped the shark.
Remember the old days when a spat between a reporter and PR or marketing person took place on the phone and only their friends and colleagues found out about it? Well, no longer.
(Hat tip to Sydney Ayers’ Twitter account)
I’m sure the Vice President of Corporate Communications at FedEx takes some pride in living in Memphis, and I imagine he wasn’t thrilled to have a high-priced vendor consultant denigrate it. But he probably also is wondering why his communications staff has such low self-esteem (and so much free time) that they find it necessary to write a formal (and catty) rebuttal and email it to all the bigwigs at FedEx and Ketchum.
And one last thought: Don’t be stupid and tweet bad things about clients. You’d think a VP at a big agency would know better.
Johnson & Johnson brand Motrin got schooled in the finicky art of social media over the weekend when one of the ads it wanted to “go viral” did just that. Unfortunately, the conversation, which began on Twitter and spilled over into the blogosphere, focused on why the ad was insulting rather than clever.
By 8:30 last night, the Motrin website was down as the company removed the ad. Unfortunately for Motrin, the print executions will continue for another month before they cycle out.
