New York Social Media Guy

Whoa, Facebook Graph is personal.

Very recently I spoke to the Public Relations Professionals of Long Island concerning emerging trends in social media for 2013.

My main points were simple.

1. As a construct: trend spot, integrate, aggregate and audit (social search),

2. Social media curators, or social media aggregation a la Rebel Mouse, Flipborad and Vizify, will pick up steam, and

3. Social search will explode thanks in large part to Facebook Graph.

What I meant was Facebook Graph has the potential to yield credible, hyper-specific demographic trends that will inform public relations campaigns in new ways. That remains true.

However, I now see, courtesy of Tumblr and Mashable, that Facebook Graph may just cause some “explosions.”

Here’s one to get you started….

Facebook Graph Search

Did I send this already? I’m not checking, we could stand to read it twice: Instagram’s New Terms of Use, Translated into Plain English http://ow.ly/gWwof

# Nice. Bloomberg: The pedestrian plazas are here to stay | Capital New York http://ow.ly/gVYZn

Hat Tip to a legend: PR Legend Dan Edelman Dies – Business Insider http://ow.ly/gSfGl

Most PR pro’s will tell you that pitching a story is very hard, because it is.

pr pitching

To that end,  below the jump are 5 pitching tips from the Daily Dog via the Tech Affect blog “Hitting the Home Run: 5 Pitching Tactics from the Associated Press.“

I’ll save you some time and paraphrase the 5 points for pitching the AP:

1. Data is scrutinized
2. Don’t pitch an old story
3. E-mail subject = headline
4. AP does NOT equal local news, and
5. Timing, timing, timing.

I agree.  Here are two additional thoughts I have found helpful:

One: a social account(s) is a reporter’s beat.

Most of us are accustomed to reading the newspaper, scanning articles of interest to us and noting the applicable reporter by-line.  This allows one to more easily target a subject specific pitch to the appropriate reporter(s).  Nowadays, that’s just not enough.

Nowadays, scour a reporters Twitter feed to supplement your pitching intelligence.  A news story may change several times in a day.  Whereas an hour ago reporters were finishing a story for publication, two hours later they are looking for expert reactions. Typically you will find out about this first via social.

Two: Say it several ways.

Everyone will tell you to pitch a story by tailoring it to the person, I am telling you to pitch a story to the same person in multiple mediums.

Let me be clear. Do NOT badger. No one likes that and it will make you persona non grata. Yet, everyone uses social media differently and everyone uses different social media (re-read that sentence if you don’t get it.)

So, to cover your bases simply use the Share Page function via HootSuite, a multi-account, auto-share tool, which insures that my pitch — typically 140 words or less — is posted or direct shared across multiple accounts and at the right time.

Enjoy these two extra tips for pitching in the social age, and feel free to leave your war stories.

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Check Yo’Self

THE ICE CUBE PRINCIPLE: As PR practitioners we often learn a lot fast and share it fast. As a result it is important to check back in with a source, or re-visit a story, repeatedly. I call this the Ice Cube Principle, because you must in fact “Check Yo’Self” on a continual basis.  We must do the same with social media.

Why? Because often the story changes and new opportunities emerge.  The same is true of social media.  So as you remember to apply the Ice Cube principle to pitching a story, it is important to do as much with your social media accounts because like most stories our social media applications are ‘living,’ or changing rapidly to keep pace in a dynamic communications environment.

With that in mind, here are some useful tips published by Jaffe PR concerning LinkedIn.  Below the fold is the original JaffePR post on recent LinkedIn Enhancements and the opportunities they present. Bear in mind JaffePR is targeted towards attorneys so not all bullets will make sense to all people, but the basics are a good read.

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