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The Conversation Prism

Many thanks to Brian Solis & Jesse Thomas for creating The Conversation Prism, a wonderfully visual way to think about how we communicate using social media. According to Brian:

[The Conversation Prism] is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

If a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen?

Indeed. Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence your business and brand.

I encourage you to read the complete article at the PR 2.0 blog.

Photo Credit: To see the full version of The Conversation Prism image, visit Flickr.
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Chris Brogan Shares Links to 20 Free e-Books on Social Media

Earlier this month, Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology at CrossTech Media, shared 20 links to free e-books on social media. With Chris’ permission, I’ve reprinted his list below. Thanks Chris, and thanks to all the authors, for sharing this content with us.

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

  1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
  2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
  3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
  4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
  5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook
  6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
  7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting
  8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
  9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
  10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
  11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
  12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
  13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
  14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
  15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
  16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
  17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
  18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
  19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
  20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

Photo credit: “30 Free e-Books to Learn Everything About Personal Finance,” originally uploaded to Flickr by  Mint Software

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A Twitter Lexicon

Twitter is my favorite microblogging service. There are many, many glossaries of Twitter vocabulary on the web. So many, in fact, it’s almost overwhelming to a newbie to Twitter.

Let’s come up with the top 10 words that someone new to Twitter should know. Here are eight that I came up with quickly. Can you help round out the list?

  1. Tweet: Your 140-character (or shorter) message
  2. Twittering: The act of sending your tweet
  3. Followers: People who receive your tweets
  4. Retweet: Forwarding a tweet to your followers
  5. @ : The symbol that precedes the name of a person you’re replying to
  6. Tweep: Someone you know on Twitter
  7. Tweeple: See “tweep”
  8. Twoops: Accidentally sending a direct (private) message publicly

(And if you’re wondering “what’s Twitter?” see the clear and concise description from Common Craft, the company that specializes in explaining complex things in plain English.)

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Jumpstart on Fall Classes: Textbooks

If you’re looking to get a jumpstart on my classes at Georgia Southern University this fall, here are the books that I will be using. I’ve linked to many of them at Amazon.com, but of course you can purchase them from anywhere you like. I recommend you try the Facebook Marketplace first, so you can get a good deal AND help a fellow student.

For All of My Classes

A USB drive, at least 1G

Corporate Public Relations (PRCA 3331)

Doorley, J., & Garcia, H. F. (2007). Reputation management: The key to successful public relations and corporate communications. New York: Routledge.

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies
Boston, MA: Forrester Research, Inc.

Public Relations Publications (PRCA 3339)

Morton, L. P. (2006). Strategic publications: Designing for target publics. Greenwood, AR: Best Books Plus.

Recommended but not required: Botello, C., & Reding, E. E. (2007). Design collection revealed: Adobe InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3 & Illustrator CS3
Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning.

Public Speaking (COMM 1110)

German, K. M., Gronbeck, B. E., Ehninger, D., & Monroe, A. H. (2007). Principles of public speaking (16th ed.). New York: Allyn & Bacon.

Making Connections: Facebook & Beyond (FYE 1220)

No textbook required, but occasional access to a digital camera needed

Photo Credit: bookshelf, originally uploaded to Flickr by chotda 

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Link for 2008-07-27 [delicious.com]

  • The 10 Commandments of the Social Web
    The social web embodies all of us and as we progress forward, I’m realizing that there are some really core concepts embodying all of these services. When it comes down to it, the social web is simply about communicating and no matter how many tools or websites are developed, it still all boils down to communicating with others. So after using tool after tool, site after site, I’ve come up with the 10 commandments that everything on the social web should embrace.
    (tags: socialmedia Web2.0 socialnetworking rules)
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Grammar Girl: My Superhero

“Grammar Girl? She must be a superhero!” exclaimed my daughter Katey last week when she was peeking over my shoulder as I read some of my tweets.

After I finished laughing, I stopped to think about what Katey said. I guess Katey’s right: Grammar Girl is my superhero. Anyone who can take a subject that could be dry (at best) and turn it into an intriguing, humorous and award-winning podcast and then a book has done something amazing, something that most humans cannot do. That sounds like superhero work to me!

I’ve been a listener of Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl podcast for about six months now. My favorite episode of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips is the one on when to use lay and when to use lie. My tendency had been to substitute a word rather than figure out the rule. Now I think I may understand it! (The true test of this will occur when I explain to my public relations students when to use which word.)

Wednesday evening, Katey and I are making a girls-only road trip to the Atlanta area to meet Mignon in person and have our copy of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing signed.

To subscribe to the Grammar Girl podcast, visit the Quick and Dirty Tips website. You’ll be glad you did.

Take the Grammar Girl Challenge; it’s on the right sidebar of Public Relations Matters. Let me know how you did!

And finally, if you know what the punctuation mark is right under the letter G in “girl” in Katey’s poster, drop me a comment here. Hint: Look close; it’s not a question mark.

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Wordle Me This

Have you tried Wordle yet? It’s fun, and it’s addictive. I took my resume and tweaked it slightly*, and then imported it into Wordle. Here you can see me, in about 99 words. Fun!

*To tweak my resume, this is what I did:

  • for words that I wanted to have joined together (like “public relations”), replace the space between the words with a tilde (public~relations)
  • took my name and copied/pasted it about 15 times, so that I was sure my name would be the largest word in the image
  • replaced variations of a word (like communicates, communication, communicate) and standardized it to one word (communication)