I love having the opportunity to connect with people through social media tools. I’ve reconnected with old friend, built bridges with former acquaintances and stayed in contact with those I see on a more frequent basis. From best friends to networking buddies, we’re all connected through one social network site or another.

A few weeks ago, I thought this would be a great tool to help my brother connect with some of the friends he’s made over the years. Let me tell you a little about big my brother, Peter. He has cerebral palsy and is quadriplegic. He can’t speak or communicate beyond a simple nod “yes” or “no”. He’s smart and stubborn, like all men in my family, and has a lot to offer the world, even though his body may limit him most of the time.

My brother and I get together to update Facebook as often as we can. It can be as simple as sharing what he had for dinner or posting the artwork he creates at one of his programs, Creativity Explored. He attends a program each weekday so it’s become an opportunity for communication between his aids and my family. His aids can share if he had a good day or a bad one and what they did so we know to ask Peter the right questions.

Facebook has also allowed for Peter to connect with his friends that have similar limitations. They may never be able to “talk” to one another but they can communicate through their Facebook pages and the person managing that page. I run everything by my brother before I post it and we play Farmville together. It’s not perfect but has opened so many communication doors. It has even inspired my brother to be interested in his communications device that he’s long given up on because it’s a challenge to learn to use. Bringing that enthusiasm into that challenge was difficult but Peter’s activities on Facebook presented and opportunity to reintroduce the idea.

My brother has 17 friends on Facebook. If this were a numbers race or some kind of client launch, it may not be viewed as a success but what we’ve been able to accomplish in the past few weeks is beyond measurable. There is not measurable ROI beyond the smile on his face when I show him some of the comments on his wall or the pictures posted by a friend. This is where I see the true value of social media: giving a voice to those that didn’t have one before.

*If you’re interested in checking out additional art by my brother and other artists at Creativity Explored, please click here for times/dates of gallery showings in San Francisco”

by Brian Solis via PR 2.0

I almost can’t believe that this day is finally here…

Deirdre Breakenridge and I proudly announce the availability of our new book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.”

The book is in stock at Amazon, the Amazon Kindle store, Barnes & Noble, Safari, and bookstores everywhere.

Deirdre and I spent a good part of the last year pouring our heart, soul, and real world successes and failures into this book, and we only hope that it will help you excel in whatever role you choose to pursue.

This book is written for the those facing the new intersection of all that is Public Relations including PR, media and analyst relations, customer service, product development, social media, brand and community managers, executive management, HR, journalists, bloggers, marketing, advertising, students, teachers, content publishers, and everyone in between.

Book Summary:

PR, as we know it, is a dying practice having evolved away from the public and instead concentrating its energy on broadcasting disconnected messages to “media and analysts.”

What we’ve learned and what we know are quickly fading into irrelevance and obscurity. Reporters and analysts are now sharing the stage with a new generation of influencers. In addition to a still relevant process of media relations, we now need to expand our scope of participation and outreach by also identifying, understanding, and engaging the everyday people who have plugged-in to a powerful and democratized online platform for creating and distributing information, insight, and opinions – effectively gaining authority in the process.

The very people we had always wished to reach through traditional channels are now the very people we need to convince and inspire directly in order to remain part of industry-defining and market making conversations. This is a new era of influence and in order to participate, we have to rewire our DNA to stop marketing “at” audiences in order to genuinely and intelligently humanize our story to connect with real people and the online communities they inhabit.

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is a critical and mandatory process to shine in today’s social economy. It will help businesses forge meaningful relationships with those who will bridge specific benefits to distinct groups of consumers in order to cultivate a loyal, vocal, and hyper-connected community of customers and influencers.

I sincerely hope that this book helps you…

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Bonus: If you happen to live near San Mateo or Palo Alto, please visit Barnes & Noble or Borders for a pleasant surprise.

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by Brian Solis

At SXSW this year, I am privileged to host a book signing for my brand new book written with the wonderful Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.”

The book will be available for sale on site or feel free to bring your copy.

Hosted by Barnes and Noble and located on the Trade Show + Exhibition floor, the South by Bookstore is where registrants will find books, CDs and DVDs by their favorite SXSW participants. Book signings by industry notables are scheduled during Trade Show hours as well as artist meet and greets.

Looking forward to seeing you!

RSVP:

Upcoming.org

Facebook

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Larry is a guest blogger and if you’ve read, Hip Hop Schools Silicon Valley”, 21 Lucky Tips for Blogworld” or ‘How to Hack Twitter, Take 2″, then maybe you’ll like his latest: ‘Communication 2.0′

By Larry Chiang

Communication in Internet land is crazy, but with Web 2.0 (coined by my publisher friend, Tim O’Reilly), it is even crazier. Its under studied, sophisticatedly subtle and highly varied. Navigating the ins and outs of social media communication is some they definitely don’t teach you at business school.

Communication 2.0 is about using technology tools to communicate more effectively. Yes, these tips aren’t taught in business schools anywhere.

-1- One Ping Only.

Sub commanders used to ping to confirm sonar position in relation to target. The modern equivalent is to ping an email BEFORE a long email is drafted.

Insert cell number in the subject line.

Include the cell phone number of your receiver and your own cell IN THE SUBJECT LINE to pierce both their spam filter and their interest filter.

For example:
Subj; Lawrence, 650-651-1515, this is Larry-licious 602-369-9741
Body: “hi Lawrence, we met at Arrillaga’s basketball court. Is this the best email for you?”

-2- Twitter Force Follow.

Twitter only allows for direct messages if they follow you. There are two ways to force a follow

a) the Unfollow. Follow. Unfollow. Follow. Method.

This sends a new email message notifying them that @larryChiang “is now following them with an email. Time the Unfollow Follow maneuver at time where you think they’re seeing email subject lines.

b) Force a twitter follow by calling them or seeing them in person.

Walk them through it and wait for the follow confirmation.

-3- Jedi Voicemail Tricks.

Leaving voicemail is like a using a light sabre. Ever see Return of the Jedi?! Yoda can do more damage with a light sabre than a bunch droids with cannons and super spiffy force fields. Voicemail has been called dead. It ain’t.

I think you can not only send a message via voicemail, but also close deals. Read more on “GigaOm”

-4- Text Message Intro.

Email intros have been coached here and here. Good thing you mastered them. Communication 2.0 uses the text message intro. Hitters do. For example, “Lawrence, 650-283-8008, meet Larry-licious 602-369-9741. He’s got Sand Hill Road hardwired”

-5- Plan B for Phone.

Plan B for Fundraising is when you don’t raise VC but are progressing anyway.

Fail forward with the “Missed Call” manuver. Show your vulnerability with communications new “hail mary”: the phone call. A hail mary is a pass that is on a wing and a prayer but if you’re calling from a position of power, no vm is necessary so long as the missed call shows up in the log.

-6- Facebook Wall Markings.

A wallpost that says, “call me” pretty much means, I’ve left you a voicemail because I want you and this is a last resort to get “closure”. Dogs pee on walls to mark territory so in Communication 2.0, people do the same.

After your Facebook wall gets peed on, for all to see, you have one of two options.
A) erase it. That says eeew, I don’t want this (or you)
B) keep it. It means, “yeah you’re a hottie and you can pee on my wall all-day-long. In fact, I like you enough to flirt back on your wall.

-7- Google Alert Them.

A Google Alert is when you use gmail to email you when an alert if a phrase gets read (or crawled and cached) on the web. Every hitter has their name, company name, portfolio stock tickers, and name in a google alert. I said name twice because they get google alerts for mispellings too. When people mention but incorrectly spell “Larry Chiang” by juxtaposing the a” and the “i”, I know about it via google alerts.

A Google Alert is when your name gets read by Google (spidered) and it fires off an email to you. They used to text message alert me but that Google feature’s broken right now.

Google alerting people with something as innocent as a flickr photo caption prods them forward and gets you back on their radar. MBA kids do this to go from the waitlist to getting accepted.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9, which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He has testified before Congress and World Bank on credit.

He is a frequent contributor to Business Week’s blog on “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School”

by Brian Solis

TwitterFriends is one of the most compelling analytical tools for identifying relevant conversationalists, revealing conversation patterns, and visualizing material conversation networks, by Twitter ID. The services aims to map the “relevant net” for any given user, which is incredibly valuable to any communications or service professional identifying influential voices and associated social graphs. For example, stats list to whom you (or any username) reply most often and those who reply back.

The system determines a Conversation Quotient (CQ) that attaches a metric to the volume of tweets that include @ replies. For reference, the average CQ is 25.4%. The reports also provide the size of the relevant net (those you reply to or receive replies more than once in the last 30 days) outgoing and incoming, number of fans, loyalty, Twitter Rank, ratio of outgoing/incoming contacts, the follow cost, the conversational rank (number of public conversations with users), number of replies, a Retweet Quotient, Link Quotient, among many others. Perhaps most interesting, is the visualization of the TwitGraph which displays the rank of any user across multiple axes, Twitter Rank, CQ, LQ, RQ, Follow Cost, Fans, @replies.

But it doesn’t stop there. Benedikt Koehler aka @furukama provides the ability to measure your network redundancy, density, and network efficiency.  The part I found most fascinating is the ability to visually map your incoming and outgoing network and how your contacts/nodes also connect. For those who wish for a deeper analysis, Twitter Friends can also provide a network map for Friends of Friends (the network of your followers’ followers).

INCOMING:

OUTGOING

Read more about Twitter Friends, the relevant net,  and the social sciences that serve as its undercurrent here and here.

For more on tools and services for Twitter, please visit the directory on PR 2.0.

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by Brian Solis

Stephen Baker and Helen Walters of BusinessWeek recently asked readers to nominate those individuals who are driving the evolution and pervasiveness of Social Media as part of its “voice of innovation” series.

Who is truly the most innovative force within social media? Who’s really making a difference? Who really gets it? Who do you think your fellowBusinessWeek readers NEED to know about?

The submissions are in and I’m honored and humbled to be included in the list of candidates.

Now, BusinessWeek needs you to help them sort through the nominees to tell them why one or another should be featured in BW.

The candidate Steve and Helen consider most worthwhile will be featured in a short profile and video we run in the Innovation channel.

Let them know by leaving a comment here.

This list (see below) features my peers and mentors whom inspire me to not only look ahead but also build a bridge back to the real world so that we can all move forward together. Truthfully, it’s impossible to select any one person to profile as the “voice of innovation.” Everyone is worthy of a profile and perhaps, in true social media fashion, BW can feature submitted videos from all of the nominees to feature as the collective voices of innovation. It is social media after all – of the people, for the people.

Over the years, I’ve worked with some truly amazing people such as Doc Searls, Stowe Boyd, Robert Scoble, Jay Rosen, Chris Heuer, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Israel, Chris Shipley, Deb Schultz, JD Lasica, et al., among many many others to theorize, debate, define, defend, and promote Social Media – before it was Social Media. Some of those definitions are still widely sourced today. Now, Social Media is widely recognized as the latest chapter in an ongoing evolution of “New Media” and it’s completely transforming the way we share, discover, communicate, and learn.

In early 2009, JESS3 and I will release v2.0 of The Conversation Prism to help chart the rapid expansion and contraction of the Social Web so that we can visualize the complete opportunity of how and where to listen, learn, study, and ultimately participate.

At the end of the day, Social Media is about people, not technology. The tools and technology that serve as its foundation is governed by the dynamics of human behavior and interaction. The true Social Media experts will understand the ideologies of Social Sciences (sociology, anthropology, enthnography) combined with an understanding of specific services and networks to individually connect with the people who define the communities that are important to their ecosystem. It’s the difference between theory and practice.

Again, thank you for even including me in this list. I will continue to share all that I learn so that we can grow in tandem.

The Complete List of Nominees (Make sure to update your reading list):

Mark Cramer
Lee Odden
Peter Shankman (aka Skydiver)
Jeff Pulver
Linus Torvalds
Ward Cunningham
Tim O’Reilly
Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus
Richard Edelman
Dave Winer
Chico the Dog
Simon Berry
Jay Rosen
David Chamberlain
Honey Bee network
A top-10 list
Lawrence Lessig
Tristan Harris, Apture
Steve Rubel
Robin Good
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Richard MacManus
Rachel Sterne
Gary Vaynerchuk
Liz Strauss
Craig Stoltz
Shel Holtz
Andy Carvin
Shel Israel
Laura Fitton
jeremiah oywang
Fred Wilson
Guy Kawasaki
Jason Goldberg
Chris Brogan
David Weinberger
Kevin Rose
Robert Scoble
Chris Hughes
B. L. Ochman
Beth Kanter
Biz Stone
Mohammad Yunus
Shannon Paul
Tim Jackson
Amber Naslund
Jason Falls
Beth Harte
David Armano
Mack Collier
Brian Solis
Rashmi Sinha
Bob Pearson
Frank Eliason
Seth Godin
Ev Williams
Kathy Sierra
Hugh MacLeod
Chris Bruzzo (MyStarbucksIdea)

Additional Resources on Social Media at PR 2.0:

State of Social Media 2008

The Essential Guide to Social Media

The Social Media Manifesto

Now is Gone (Available on Amazon)

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