We frequently talk to our clients about how issuing news releases (often called press releases, a term I think is antiquated) can help a site be found more easily in Internet searches. Fresh content with key words and phrases appropriately used can be an important part of a well-planned search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. However, the trend of writing news/press releases for the sole purpose of SEO needs to stop.

After all, the first word in the phrase “news release” is “news.”

I’m going to pick on a real-life example, below:

Two virtually identical pieces (I’m not going to even call them releases) with slight changes posted to a free service. Looks to me like someone wants to show up when someone searches for things like “Washington Park Realtor” and “Denver Hilltop Realtor.” Good goals. But spamming the free news release site with stuff like this is off-target. You want to be found, but you don’t want to be found to be pumping out junk.

Writing a bad release for pure SEO goals is kind of like warming up a sandwich on your idling car engine. It’ll work, but it’s not the best way to complete the process. While the free news release distribution sites are not where most journalists go to look for news or story ideas, they also shouldn’t become useless spam repositories.

Some thoughts on when and when not to issue a release:

• Do you have something that is actually newsworthy to say? That’s rule #1. “It’s Monday, and Acme Dry Cleaners is Open and Offering 10 Percent Off Shirt Laundry” is not news. It’s an ad. “Acme Dry Cleaners Announces Change to 100 Percent Green Cleaning Process” is news. As my reporter friends would say, if you want the former in the paper, call the ad department. Even though we can now talk directly to consumers through news and release sites, a release should offer some news.
• If you’ve never written a news release and have no idea about news writing or AP Style, get some help from someone that does. There’s a format and language that’s appropriate and expected, even it the goal of the release is mostly SEO. A headline that screams that buying a home is like winning the lottery is out-of-place and pure hype. It may or may not be a good ad or brochure, but it’s a terrible news headline.
• If you’ve got an audience that’s interested in news about you/your company that might not have broad appeal (10 percent off is a good example) consider starting a blog. That’s an appropriate place for that level of “news.”

Reporters have griped—and in many cases, justifiably so!—about poorly written, buzz-word ridden, non-newsworthy releases for decades. A new crop of folks being encouraged to issue news releases for the sole purpose of driving site traffic is misguided, plain and simple. Use the right tool for the job.

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Each year for my birthday, I spend part of the day riding one mile for every year old I am that year. Yesterday was my annual birthday ride, and since I’m getting older (or, maybe just old!) I had to go a ways: forty-seven miles, to be exact, to hit my goal (yes, I made it!).

During my ride I found myself in the middle of a large charity ride, which included a longish (3-4 mile) climb to a small town near Boulder. Sadly, it was obvious many of the participants were not adequately prepared. I was reminded that cycling is not easy. I ride an average of 125 miles weekly in the summer to prepare for long rides.

Most things require work and preparation. It occurred to me that social media is no different. That is, there are no easy ways to build a community, no short-cuts, and it’s not something you can just dive into and be successful. It’s hard work and requires preparation in order to be successful and attention over the long term to grow what you’ve built.

I cringe whenever I see programs that will “get you followers while you sleep” or “double your Facebook friends tomorrow” or any other variation of snake oil. Can you get a bunch of new Twitter followers with some programs? Of course. But, much like many of the people I saw on Sunday trying to climb a hill with the wrong equipment and too little preparation, you won’t know what to do with this new-found “wealth.” You might even find yourself suffering a little. Or a lot.

Think about Community Access Television. Just about anyone could get time, but if the program was unwatchable drivel, it was like shouting in the wilderness. Social media gives us all easy access to a myriad of large networks, much like Community Access Television. Same idea here. Let’s say you get 10,000 Twitter followers through a short-cut of some kind… now what? What are you going to talk about? What does your “community” want to hear about and, better yet, have a conversation about? If you don’t know that first–and build a community based on that, not on auto-follows and other tricks–you’ll find yourself shouting in the wilderness, and your 10,000 followers will soon by 9,000, then 8,000, and so on.

The act of buying a bicycle alone does not prepare you for a four-mile climb, just as having 10,000 Twitter followers is not all it takes to build and maintain a community.

Every day I get a handful of follow requests from small businesses who simply seem to want followers. I’m sure your bakery in Cleveland is lovely (I made that up so as not to call anyone out!) I might really like it. But I don’t have any plans to be in Cleveland in the foreseeable future, so daily (or more) snippets of news from you doesn’t sound all that interesting. If you found me because I mentioned the Cleveland Browns when talking about football, you’re misusing a short cut and you’re wasting your time and mine.

Before you dive in to any social media network, ask yourself: what are my goals? What value will I try to provide? What can I offer to those who follow me? How can I find those who will appreciate what I have to say, and will want to have a conversation with me? And if you want to use a tool that helps you find people who might have an interest in a bakery in Cleveland, connect all the dots and use the tool correctly. The smart pilots only use the auto-pilot programs when it’s appropriate.

A username and a password does not mean you’re ready, just like buying a bike doesn’t mean the Tour de France is in your future. It just means you’ve taken the first step, and there are no shortcuts.

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The front page of the Boulder Daily Camera yesterday proclaimed “CU-Boulder takes steps to close journalism school.” As I pondered the fate of my profession, I, a former newspaper reporter, posted the story to my Twitter feed and my Facebook page. The fact that I chose to share the information online rather than blasting off a letter to the editor should tell me enough about the future of media to not make me upset about the issue.

However, I was upset.

For starters, I have a master’s degree in journalism. Is it going to be worth anything in 10 years? I knew when I got my degree that I could make a lot more money if I went to business school, but I chose journalism because I was fascinated by how people chose to communicate information and the different ways in which they share it. It was this fascination that drove me into the newspaper business almost two decades ago and it’s what led me to build my first website in 1996, and start my first blog 10 years later. Besides, I hate statistics classes.

Journalism schools, traditionally, have been horribly inept at providing a cross-discipline approach to the trade. There’s the broadcast department, the news-editorial department, and public relations. Never shall they meet. I remember as an undergrad at Colorado State asking about photojournalism classes and getting a quizzical look from my academic advisor because I was on the news-editorial track. I reminded her that they have pictures in newspapers too.

“But someone else will do that for you,” she said, as if the subject had been exhausted. Not anymore. Reporters are expected to write the story, update the blog, create a Twitter feed and post video to the website all before the 5 p.m. deadline. No wonder the quality of the reporting has been going steadily downhill. They don’t have enough time to focus on anything that could make an impact.

It is the spread of web-based information that is, ironically, leading to this need for better journalists. Increasingly, people are overwhelmed with information via online, on television and in print. In this overwhelmed state, they are developing more and more channels of information. “I’m a mom. Tell me about stuff I care about.” Enter the mommy bloggers. “I am passionate about politics.” Enter MSNBC and Fox News. These are just channels though, microcosms of information that provide no context or perspective. It’s more like a stream of consciousness.

Now, more than ever, we need people that can tell us what is important, why it’s important and explain it to us in a way that we can understand. As one of my old journalism teachers used to say, “Don’t just tell me what happened. Tell me why I should care!”

Despite my concerns, I think it can be a promising and very smart move for the University of Colorado to create a school of information if done correctly. You can’t deny the power or the influence of the Internet and social media in particular. If you stop looking at journalism in the silos of television, print, and public relations — and start looking at it as information sharing — then you get to the heart of what journalism really is.

I shared my thoughts with Sandra Fish, a journalist and journalism instructor at the University of Colorado who specializes in politics, government and interactive reporting. She wrote me back this reply:

“I think the potential to create something new that melds journalism and technology is exciting but we also need to keep in mind that journalism, no matter what the form or platform, is essential to our democracy.”

“What about ethics?” I asked. “And GRAMMAR?!”

Learning to understand and accept my own biases but not letting that overshadow my reporting was one of the most important things I learned in journalism school. I also learned people tend not to take you too seriously if you don’t know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their.” I see very little of either proper grammar or ethics on the Internet.

These are all issues that have to be taken into consideration when deciding what the future of journalism will look like. People still need information. Maybe we’ll need more “citizen journalists” who can bring an entrepreneurial culture to journalism and make money blogging, posting videos and podcasting. If that’s true, maybe there will be a need for some of those dreaded business statistics classes.

I can’t wait to find out. The fascination continues.

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Apple’s iTunes Store was compromised–it seems for the first time, at least that was made public in a big way–a few days ago when about 400 accounts were compromised by a fraudulent scheme selling bogus merchandise for high prices.

Big deal, right? Four hundred users out of millions. Could be worse. Far worse.

It is. Far worse, that is.

The biggest issue here, which I believe has been under-reported by the media, is the fact that the House of Steve (Jobs) was compromised. We’ve come to expect behavior like this on the Wild Public Interwebz. I mean, gosh, it’s crazy out there. Phishing schemes. Viruses. Porn. But Apple protects us from all that.

Do we give up a freedom or two in the process? Sure, sure. But hey, I’ll give up Flash if you protect me from all the bad people and the evil they wish to do. Got your App rejected? Hey, it’s for the greater good. After all, as Spock said in one of the Star Trek movies, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

OK. Hey, I’m an Apple Fanboy. I’ll bite (and I do over and over again). But guess what? The bad people got in to our party. They caused problems. They stole things. They turned the iTunes Store into a seedy place where you have to worry about the worst among us.

What is this… Google?

Four hundred people. Forty-eight hours. One bad file.

But a crack in the facade–and that’s the bigger picture.

Millions of people (me and my company among them) pay millions of dollars for Apple products. We rationalize and explain the higher up-front costs with lower overall cost of ownership thanks to superior security and ease-of-use. I can demonstrate that my company saves money by spending more on Apple. I’ve got spreadsheets to prove it.

But there was a crack in the dam a few days ago. A chink in the armor. Superman bled, even if only a little. The numbers don’t make this a big story. The ratios, in fact, make it an insignificant one–at first glance. What makes it an under-covered and significant incident is the fact that someone got into a world in which we allow sometimes draconian oversight in exchange for a clean, well-lighted place. A few days ago, the wolf came right through the door, sat down and ate porridge. Not what we signed up for.

To be clear: one bad Apple doesn’t ruin the entire barrel, but I hope that Apple is recognizing the potential floodgate that could be opening. Their reaction was swift and seems to be very good, but if they begin to need to react in such a manner regularly, what makes this walled world so different from the wild–and less expensive and less stylish–online jungle many of us Apple fans think we’ve abandoned.

I’ll be watching. Carefully.

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This is awesome! Huge brand  (one of my favs…closet on first name basis) taking the hits from fans and then responding and engaging with their customers in a clear-headed, fair and, to my mind, really creative way on Facebook. Take a look.

http://mashable.com/2010/06/18/ann-taylor-facebook/

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If you’ve never read Erika Napoletano’s blog, you’re missing a treat. Erika was kind enough to let me chime in with some social media lessons I figured out while watching The Karate Kid on cable a few days ago.

You can also follow Erika on Twitter (which I recommend) here.

Thanks, Erika!

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posted by Doyle

I picked up my iPad on the first Saturday they went on sale at 9:15 (true to Apple customer service, everything was right on time). If you saw the news at all, you can guess it was crowded—but fun. I saw at least a half dozen friends there.

So, those of you who know me know that my first weekend with the new toy was pretty much consumed with playing the with iPad. Here’s a rundown of the good, the “needs improvement” and the “I’ll see if I get used to that” categories. For the record, I don’t think I’ve found anything to put in the bad category yet.

The Good:

Overall, I think the tablet category is showing promise, and I agree with Steve Jobs’ assessment that the net book won’t be long for this world (in a major way) with the introductions of this technology. The interface is intuitive, so even folks without computer skills can easily run the device. While I’ve not had a chance to examine pending offerings from HP and others, I believe the competition will be good for the category as a whole.

Even though apps don’t run in the background (yet), that’s not a big problem. It would be nice to be able to play Pandora, for example, while doing email, but that’s not there yet (you can use the iPod feature in the background). One of my concerns before using the iPad was the ability to quickly switch back and forth between, for example, email and calendar in order to set a meeting. The A4 processor on the iPad makes this just about as quick as moving between two open windows on my MacBook Pro.

The selection of applications native to the iPad (meaning, they can take full advantage of the outstanding screen) is not yet overwhelming, but it’s decent. The Apple Bookstore is lots of fun, although the section is not yet where it needs to be. One of the most pleasant surprises for me was the ability to bring over every book I’d ever purchased on the Kindle Store—and even purchase new books there—for use through the Kindle app on the iPad. In fact, my daughter now has my old Kindle.

Four of the more pleasant surprises are the three iWorks apps (Numbers, Pages and Keynote) along with the Wordpress app (which I’m using now) to update my blog. At just $10 each (Wordpress is free) they’re a great value. They’re not 100 percent—and I’m less than blown away with how the iPad handles fonts—but I can do enough work that I have not carried my laptop away from my office now for two weeks.

One note on carrying the iPad vs. my MacBook Pro—it’s not just the difference in the weight of the two devices. With the MacBook, I carried a cord (no need with the true 10-hour battery on the iPad), a second battery (again, no need), and various other accessories. For the iPad I pretty much need—the iPad. In fact, I often just carry my iPad, Sprint Mifi unit and Apple bluetooth keyboard in a small InCase travel case, saving my a large briefcase and probably 10-12 pounds.

Needs Improvement:

As I mentioned above, the native font selection is far too limited, in my opinion, and I hope that improves.

Like many, I’m a little perplexed at the lack of a camera of any kind. The iPad is great for calls over Skype, but I do enjoy using video Skype to talk to my family when I’m on the road. Without taking my MacBook Pro along, I can no longer do that. (If the photos of the “leaked” iPhone are accurate, maybe Apple didn’t want a camera in both devices. I do find I use my iPhone less since getting the iPad.)

I’m still trying to learn to type well enough on the on-screen keyboard to leave everything else behind. At this point, I use that for brief emails but use the Apple bluetooth keyboard for longer documents. I’m not sure yet if that’s a learning curve or a keyboard limitation. I plan to keep playing with it to decide.

Again, as I noted, the App Store for iPad is still a little thin, but I’m confident that will move along quickly.

The lack of Flash support is becoming less of a problem every day, but it’s still annoying. There are many things I have to watch in my office simply because they are Flash based. As HTML 5 takes over, this will be less of an issue, but Flash is still pervasive. I wish the feud would end.

I’m very disappointed that Hulu is not available yet. I have to believe it’s coming, but I miss not being able to grab a quick episode of “The Office.” The Netflix app, however, almost makes up for this. It looks great, is smooth and easy to use, and the streaming videos are completely watchable.

There are few small glitches that I’ve noticed on various sites, but nothing really significant. In the end, I can do well more than 90 percent of what I need to do on the iPad, which is more than enough to leave my laptop behind.

In general, I’m more impressed than I thought I was going to be. It is a smooth device, it’s fun to use, and the battery life moves it from good to very good in my book. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

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posted by Cortney Harvey

The New York Times recently covered Coca Cola’s inclusion of social media in their Super Bowl ads. Some said “Huh?”

I disagree. Though it has been slowly emerging recently, this is yet another brilliant way that socmed can and should be used. Reading this article got me thinking about how socmed will impact this famed sport event and what means for the future of sports and media.

For most, the first thing that comes to mind when they think about the Super Bowl (besides the game) is the commercials. Although Coca Cola still holds two commercial spots for tomorrow’s main event, they are, for the first year, putting their eggs in the socmed basket. So what effect does this rush of socmed into the Super Bowl spotlight have? And why hasn’t this come to the forefront sooner? There has been the slow introduction of communication technologies incorporated into these scenarios over the past few years, but nothing compared to what is possible.

My question: why isn’t there a stronger push being made towards using socmed for this purpose? When used right, socmed can be of such great value… Who cares if it’s not traditional, it’s what’s happening now and will be what’s happening tomorrow. And not only does this mean something for once-a-year sports events, but can have a profound impact on how sports news and updates are communicated daily. The relationship between the two will change sports media forever, because today so many of us enjoy these play-by-play updates on our Facebook page and Twitter feeds instead of the annoying “too much information” one-liners.

Another trend in advertising for the Super Bowl!

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There are many companies who seem to have the attitude that customer review sites are just a bunch of noise, populated by complainers and ignored by the vast majority. That might be true today, but over time, I think it’ll become of critical importance for companies to be paying attention to this data.

To demonstrate how the future might well look, let me show how a quick Google search for a restaurant’s address caused me to change my lunch plans…

A colleague had sent me email saying “let’s have lunch, you pick the place” and I remembered that a new Mexican place had opened up here in Boulder called Agave. The signage was good and I thought it’d be a nice chance to try somewhere new and hopefully add a venue to my favorites.

To confirm the address, I searched for the restaurant in Google (“agave boulder co”) and when it showed me the location, it also showed me the following tip:

As you can imagine, that little snippet was enough to make me want to learn more. Who wants to have a meal at a place where the service is “horrible”?  I clicked on the “A” button and got a bit more info:

Seven reviews for a brand new restaurant?  That’s worth checking out, so I clicked on “7 Reviews” and found that while there was one good review, there were plenty more from people who had experienced bad service and – worse – bad food there too:

Suffice to say I was turned off and decided then and there that Agave wasn’t going to be the restaurant for us to use as our meeting spot.

Here’s where it gets interesting, though, because immediately underneath the bad reviews was the following:

I looked at the nearby places and thought “Larkburger!” and that’s where we went.

The important takeaway from this – particularly so if you are the owners of Agave – is that customer reviews really do play a part in your business success and while it might only affect a small percentage of potential customers today, I promise that as we move more and more into a mobile always-on world, this sort of experience will make or break a retail outlet, whether you’re a cafe, tire shop or restaurant.

And as for us? I’m sure we’ll have a great burger and fries at Larkburger.

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Nate Warren

I admit that I’m not always the best person to evaluate a new technology: I was the last among my friends to get a cellphone; I was late among my professional and social circles into the Facebook and Twitter pools. I can’t look at features and functionality a priori and make a bit of sense from them. I adopt new technologies once they have a near-ineluctable social momentum. I don’t see this happening with the Kindle. I’m pretty confident I’ll never own one. As a writer and a bibliophile, I find the device abhorrent on several levels.

• Reading a book is my conscious break from devices, scrolling and screens. The feel of paper in one’s hand, the warm light of a nightstand lamp on printed type, is what it’s all about. I don’t want another device in my hand at this point.

• It’s already happened with music: our personal experience with art is more and more a tableau of disembodied files. Dust jacket art is cool. Album cover art is cool. The physicality of the artifact matters. I want something on my bookshelf, the rows of colored spines a kind of journal and a mark of my role as a curator of written culture. What about the bookshelf?

• If I lose my copy of Journey to the End of the Night at the airport, I can still read my other books. Having dozens of my favorite titles on one device does not appeal. Neither do I want my ability to read to be dependent on batteries.

Those are just a few of my objections. In the interests of testing this stance in the crucible of friendly debate, I’m calling out my esteemed colleague and new technology enthusiast Doyle Albee. Doyle, you’ve got a Kindle. For God’s sake, why?

Doyle Albee

Unlike Nate, I’m the first kid on my block to get the new toys. I’ve often said that if the Apple Store served beer and had a TV to watch sports, I’d never go anywhere else!

So of course, I have a first-generation Kindle. I purchased one almost as soon as they were introduced. Here’s why:

Like Nate, I love to read, but I’m a schizophrenic reader — I jump from book to book and have several going at once. My behavior doesn’t change on an airplane, but I have no desire to carry four or five books with me wherever I go. My Kindle (since I put in a memory chip) will hold more than 1,000 books. I can read whatever, wherever.

If I lose my Kindle halfway through Journey to the End of the Night, I can finish it on my iPhone until I replace the Kindle. And when I replace it, I can download all my books again (no need to buy another copy) and Amazon will even remember the last page I read — whether on my Kindle or the iPhone. Not only didn’t I lose the book, I didn’t even lose my place!

One time, I was sitting on the plane and realized I only had a few pages left in my book and was facing a three-hour flight. Ninety seconds and $10 later (much less than I would have paid at the airport bookstore), I had a new book on my Kindle, thanks to the cellular connection to Amazon.

Reading is a wonderful break from my computer, but I’m in love with words, not the container in which they live. To me, a Kindle compares to a book much like the pages from Gutenberg’s first presses compared to the previously handmade copies of books done by monks. The printing press just made the words more accessible to more people in more places.

Nate Warren

I certainly differ with you regarding content trumping format: the delivery system does matter, all the way down to how our brains are able to process it. Words read on a wall from a passing car are different than words read on a screen, which in turn are different than words read in a book — particularly when the delivery systems means that you have six or seven other books in your hand, all competing for your attention. But you bring up an important point: the value of a Kindle really depends on what kind of reader you want to be.

Although a late adopter, I’m not a Luddite: I spend hours every day combing the blogosphere, jumping article to article, link to link on everything from SEO to foreign policy to college hockey. This is what I’m going to call “web reading” for purposes of this debate: reading in a shifting tapestry where all works are permeated by references to other sources and media. You’re not just reading an essay, you’re reading the whole culture. Whether you see this as a nuisance or an enrichment is very subjective. While you can get a quicker view of context and the cultural ecosystem of what you’re reading, the potential for interruptions are huge and you can fritter away hours in goldfish fashion. I think really getting something out of this kind of reading takes a particular focus. If I have to juggle six books, at least four of them better be filled with pictures of animals.

For me, picking up a hardback means it’s time to shut out extra-textual streams and engage deeply with the author’s idea, language and sound — the “singlemindedness” that David Weinberger of Harvard’s Beckman Center spoke of in this great post. When I finished F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night earlier this year, I couldn’t wait to jump on the Web and find critical works and learn some of the back story from Fitzgerald’s life that influenced the novel. But I don’t want that served alongside (and to the detriment of) my engagement with the primary text, best served on the printed page in big, uninterrupted chunks.

I guess it all depends on what kind of reader you are. And Doyle, if you truly were the schizophrenic reader you claim to be, then at least one of your personalities should have finished the copy of James Salter’s Burning the Days that I lent you months ago. Try it sometime. Books are awesome.

Doyle Albee

And that, my friend, is why I carry a Kindle — a technology one-trick pony if there ever was one. For me, maybe the word “carry” is the key difference. Since my reading time tends to be catch as catch can, I read what’s in my bag — and that means I read the Kindle.

Could I read all these books on my computer screen, or even my iPhone, and carry one less device? I could. But the experience is as you describe — too schizophrenic for even me. Sometimes I feel like a monkey jumping from branch to branch, even while I’m trying to work. (Bonus hint: writers, check out the full-screen mode in Pages 09 for Mac — it really helps me focus when I need to knock down some serious words).

So for me, the one-trick Kindle is the best of both worlds:

When I select the book I want to read at that moment, that’s all I get — one page of that book at a time, just like a book. No messages, no distractions, no pop-ups. Yet, in the physical space of one book, I can carry hundreds with me. If, after an hour of fiction I decide I’d like to take a break and read a business book for a while, which I often do, it’s as easy as turning a page. At home, that’s not so important — and I still have a stack of books on my nightstand. On a plane (where I spend too much time), it’s critical.

The e-ink technology mimics a book page like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s so much like a paper experience for me that I’ve become engrossed enough to actually reach for the device to try to physically turn the page.

And, honestly, carrying books is the reason I’m behind on the piece you loaned me. I like it, but it’s never there when I have some time to read (airplane, break in a coffee shop, etc.). If it was on my Kindle, I would have devoured it already. Since I’ve had that book, I’ve burned through 10 books on the Kindle.

Another recent discovery while reading a paperback is another nod for the Kindle — ergonomics. When I’m reading while in a plane seat, or trying to eat a bowl of cereal, a book is kind of a pain. I have to hold it open, and if I need to do something for a moment with two hands, the book flops closed. Not my Kindle. I just set it on a table or a seat-back tray and keep reading. Time for a new page? One quick push of a button.

Now, if I could just get the stewardesses to stop telling me to turn it off for takeoff and landing…but that’s another blog post.

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