SOCIAL WEB WORKSHOP P.R.& Crisis Communication Series A Level 1 (2008 edition) Laurel Papworth World Communities 2008 @SilkCharm Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 2 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 3 LaurelPapworth.com About this PR and Crisis Communications courseware PR and Crisis Communication: This course combines and introduction to social media tools with strategies and exercises for Public Relations practitioners who are interested in both monitoring and participating in online en- gagement. It is focussed on how social networks use word of mouth in crisis such as bombings, floods and bush- fires. Also how social networks can create a crisis online by creating anti-PR around a brand or company. We also cover social media press releases About the Courseware series It is not a whitepaper, strategy document or state of the industry presentation. It is a workshop, or course based exercise book. Because I am Australian, most of the case studies are from Australia. These courses have been presented in Europe, Asia and Middle East, and I have found that most case studies are relevant, or at least initi- ates discussions, in most cultures. Some material is duplicated from course to course. So foundation information that is relevant to PR - such as ʻwhat is a blogʼ may also be relevant to Marketing. However each course invariably has different case studies, as the way that Public Relations uses social media tools is different than Marketing, which in turn is different from Cus- tomer Service and Technical Support. Other Courseware I have presented many courses over many industry sectors, so intend to gradually in the next few months migrate my courseware into a format that can be printed by other trainers, online. Some of the current courses/workshops that I present and have content for include; •Social Web Workshop: Monetization & Revenue - revenue streams for online communities. •Social Web Workshop: Enterprise 2.0 - social tools behind the firewall - collaboration & knowledge sharing •Social Web Workshop: for H.R. and Recruitment Workshop - on how social networks changes the paradigm •Social Web Workshop: Travel and Tourism Workshop - course on strategies for large group & niche travel •Social Web Workshop: The Social Media Marketing Campaign - 5 stages of a social media marketing campaign •Social Web Workshop: The Social Media Audit - search and discover conversations on the ʻnet •Social Web Workshop: Measurements and Metrics - workshop on how to measure social media •Social Web Workshop: Small, Medium Size Business - workshop on using free tools for SMBs In addition, I have case studies and material specific for Social Web Workshops specific for Film and Television, Finance and Accountants, Law, Medical, Telecommunications and so on. Please enquire. About Copyright This work is under a creative commons license so donʼt be evil (attribute me, and ask me before you hack it up). Iʼm pretty flexible, email me if you need something, never hurts to ask. Contact; +61432684992 (0432684992) or laurel@laurelpapworth.com for information, licensing or exemptions. If you purchase the printed courseware through any of the official sites, then that license applies. Donations gratefully accepted http://laurelpapworth.com Front Page Graphic is from http://wordle.com and Photographs by Gary Hayes of http://personalizemedia.com Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 4 LaurelPapworth.com About Laurel Papworth I am a consultant and workshop facilitator and international keynote presenter in social networks and social media. I have been involved in virtual communities and social networks since the late 1980ʼs and running forums and vir- tual world customer support since the late 1990ʼs. I present courses on Facebook for Business, Twitter for Busi- ness and also industry streams e.g. Social Media for Banking, for H.R & Recruitment, for Film & TV. I teach social media marketing campaign workshops through the University of Sydney Centre for Continuing Education and con- sult on social networks to major companies including Middle East Broadcasting (MBC) - womenʼs online commu- nity in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore Government, Macquarie Leisure, Sony Electronics, Channel Ten Aus- tralian Idol community. For information on my speaking engagements and courses available, consultancy and ad- vice, please go to http://laurelpapworth.com. If you wish to discuss the courseware, http://socialwebforum.com is a good place to do that. Thanks to Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) for giving me opportunities to present my concepts and public rela- tions stories in Australia and to UK and worldwide (via video) conferences. Thank you also to various Singapore Government organisations such as Mindef (Defence) and MDA (Media Development Authority) for being such en- thusiastic participants in my social media and PR/Marketing courses. I learnt a lot from teaching! On Twitter, thanks to • @trib (Stephen Collins of AcidLabs) acidlabs.org • @ariherzog (Ari Herzog) ariwriter.com • @leehopkins (Lee Hopkins of Better Communication) . leehopkins.net • @kcarruthers Kate Carruthers kcarruthers.com for their support as colleagues and high ethics as competitors • Also @trevoryoung of PR Warrior, prwarrior.typepad.com • @shel of Holtz Communication blog.holtz.com • twitter@PRSarahevans of #journchat.info prsarahevans.com for great social media tools for PR people, Special mentions to Trevor Cook of Corporate Engagement, who escaped Twitter and is now a PR fugitive - twugi- tive? Shel Israel@shelisrael and Robert Scoble @scobleizer for their world changing book, Naked Conversations - I count myself lucky to include Shel Israel as a friend across oceans yet seems to be only a few pixels away. Finally, thankyou to my partner and co-conspirator and editor, @garyphayes. All the errors are his! Lastly I donʼt know if anyone will find my courseware useful. If you do, please let me know or make a donation at my website. Students can share questions and answers at http://socialwebforum.org. The courseware wonʼt stand on itʼs own without a trainer - use a good one! Additional material (recommended sites, case studies) are available for trainers to download at http://laurelpapworth.com or http://socialwebforum.org Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 5 LaurelPapworth.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Content Networks 8 Content Portal Diagram 10 Blogs 11 Blog Case Studies 12 Wikis 13 Wiki Case Studies 14 Distribution Networks 16 Ripple Effect Diagram 18 Facebook 19 Facebook Case Studies 20 RSS Syndicating Information 21 RSS Case Studies 22 Widgets & Snippets 23 Widget Case Studies 24 Social Bookmarking 25 Bookmarking Case Studies 26 Social Tagging 27 Social Tagging Case Studies 28 Conversation Networks 30 Twitter 31 Twitter Case Studies 32 Forums 33 Forums Case Studies 34 Virtual Worlds & Serious Games 35 Virtual Worlds Case Studies 36 Lists & Links 37 Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 6 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 7 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Content Networks Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 8 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 9 LaurelPapworth.com Content Portal Diagram An explanation of the social media content portal diagram What is the diagram about? Any site that is focussed on content creation - video, podcasts, multimedia - usually has most if not all of these features. Do not confuse social media content sites with social media distribution or social media conversation sites. Their primary purpose is quite different from the SM Content Portal sites. When we create a video for YouTube or DailyMotion or Metacafe, or we post up a photo on Flickr or Photobucket, or a powerpoint presentation on Slideshare, we have created that information in isolation and presented it to the social network for comments and questions. So the PINK represents the content that the content creator has control over. We can create a channel on You- Tube for all our Videos. Often the Channel is just our name - in my case SilkCharm Slideshare or similar. The Header is the Title and the content the heart of our creation. We can also display a Profile or About page, and add licensing (creative commons etc). The BLUE is viewer created content. This is quite different than our social media - short Comments, Votes or 5 star Rating *****, they can favourite our content and add it to groups they visit. They can also flag it as inappropri- ate to a moderator. The YELLOW colour is for the 3rd participant in social media sites - the host. The host (for instance, Google You- Tube or Yahoo Flickr) offer dynamic information - number of Views, Recommendations, Embed Codes. Case Study Two You Tube FInally While you control the content, the additional tools tell a viewer whether to bother or not. Learn the analytics. Content sites have poor built in audiences - unlike Facebook with friends lists - so use embed and RSS and other distribution tools as much as possible to seed you content from the content portal to distribution sites. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 10 LaurelPapworth.com Case Study One The Power of The Embed The embed code allows fans to distribute your con- tent - videos, podcasts - around the internet rather than forcing people to come back to your site or YouTube. However you can still measure view count. The trickiest part of embeds is understanding that the video is not duplicated. Itʼs not downloaded and saved to the viewers site, it just adds a widget. A bit like watching the television through a window. You are in another room (on say, a blog) but the video is playing on the main server (YouTube). In fact, the television is a good analogy - the You- Tube page broadcasts out, but the TV set is on the viewers Facebook, MySpace or some other page, receiving the signal. Embeds are powerful - remember getting the mes- sage out is more important than traffic to a site. Blogs This section covers blogs and how they are used by PR practitio- ners to communicate with the public. If you blog as an afterthought, your readers will read it as an afterthought. Jorn Barger, coined term “Weblog”. Blog Options PR Write from the public relations perspective, offering expert in- formation, videos, photos to the community to discuss. CEO A dynamic CEO with a unique “voice” may use a blog to voice his/her corporate vision and in- dustry directions. Customer Service Staff that engage with consumers on a daily basis may make excel- lent bloggers as they know the questions and answers and cur- rent issues. Leader Sports bloggers for a health drink company, TV star bloggers for teen fashion companies, external leaders with a voice in that demographic can blog about sto- ries of interest. Wordpress, Blogspot, Typepad, and others- these blogging plat- forms show you or a customer can set up a blog in 3 steps. Add in YouTube video, Flickr for pho- toblogging and Slideshare for powerpoint presentation blogs, and you can see that depth of content sites are easy to use. What is a blog? by Laurel Papworth A blog is a series of articles written in a diary format with comments and social tools embedded. The articles are usually written in the 1st person (“I am”) and seek to inform, entertain or otherwise engage readers. While they may have an advertising component, usually the purpose is to address and communicate issues either about the company specifi- cally, or the industry as a whole Unlike a wiki or a forum, a blog is a one-to-many channel. The blogger sets the topic, tone and timeframe for discussion. The article (blog post) is written in isolation and then presented as a finished product to the audience, who may then comment and ask questions. The audience usually must stay on topic (that the blogger or author has set) and will be consided “spam” if they stray onto other topics. While a blogger may invite other bloggers to contribute (group blog), they will stay retain con- trol by pre or post moderating comments or removing commenters. Why? The fact that blog posts are written in isolation and are edited before being presented to the social network makes them perfect for PR and marketing. As long as the writer seeks to engage with the audience, the topic, tone and content stay on target for community conversations. How do blogs !t into your PR Strategy? When and how to implement Use a blog to address emergency situations - product recall, rumours, staff changes - where you seek to limit the discussion. Blogs can be either up- dated regularly (once a day or once a week) or hidden until required. How- ever, be aware that “in case of emergency, break glass” blogs do not have the trust and credibility as those that are always engaging with the target demographic and regularly updated. Monitor comments carefully until situa- tion is in hand. Blogging press releases (see Social Media Press Release section) will con- tinue to offer social media assets (content) that brand evangelists can use. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 11 LaurelPapworth.com Blog Case Studies This section helps you understand who is using blogs as a busi- ness tool and how they are implemented. How is it used in practice? Blogs have built in content tools but few audience tools. Consider the topic, tone of voice, and content matter. Video blogs, photoblogs, text and multimedia have a different look and feel. Original indepth content often mixes with distribution - links to newspapers and other sites. Case Study One NowWeAreTalking by Telstra Australiaʼs largest telecommu- nication company has a group blog (12 bloggers) to discuss regulatory issues and other topics that were not getting fair mainstream press. During the last few years, NWAT has laid off or sacked bloggers. Consider the conse- quences of raising the profile of a few bloggers only to lose them, acrimoniously or other- wise. Case Study Two FASTLANE by GM Motors The car manufacturer is in the top ten of corporate blogs, and have now built their own channel so they do not need to rely on traditional media (newspaper, magazines) to publish their press releases. A blog is not collaborative but it IS discussion. Publish industry content, not just corporate. Tip: Laurel Papworth Blogs To Watch • 1 - The Consumerist - Shoppers Bite Back • 2 - BadPitch Blog. • 3 - NotGoodEnough - Austra- liaʼs Complaints Site • 4 - PR Disasters - PR disasters, spin doctors and reputation management gone wrong • 5 - Better Communication - Lee Hopkins • Crikey - Trevor Cook Exercise - What shall we blog? • Look around for videos - particularly howto or DIY? Who in the organisation can manage the role of blogger best? Class - get into groups of four, write 3 sentences on your passion/interest, then find a segue to link to each other. FInally, If you have content such as reports, powerpoint slides, videos of HowTos and the CEO presenting their vision, consider a mul- timedia blog. Easy to update, you can engage directly with consumers through comments and avoid dependence on main- stream media. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 12 LaurelPapworth.com Wikis This section covers wikis and how they are used by PR practitio- ners to communicate with the public. If a blog is like a lecture with questions at the end, a wiki is like a collaborative workshop. Laurel Papworth Wiki Uses Replace eMail When staff leave they take ac- cess to their email with them. All conversations are lost, or must be forwarded/printed up. Wikis keep the conversation accessi- ble. FAQs and Manuals Customer Service can update wikis on the fly. Publish parts publicly, keeps others internal only. Collaborative Press Releases Staff that engage with consumers on a daily basis may make excel- lent bloggers as they know the questions and answers and cur- rent issues. Leader Sports bloggers for a health drink company, TV star bloggers for teen fashion companies, external leaders with a voice in that demographic can blog about sto- ries of interest. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia What is a wiki? by Laurel Papworth A wiki is an article on a web page that is editable by a group of peo- ple and makes a great example of a broadcast, collaborative knowl- edge management system. Every- one can add pages, update pages, comment and discuss pages on- line. Unlikes blog posts that have a locked down article with comments underneath, wikis have both an editable article and a discussion tab for comments. Because, like a blog, there is no software to download, everything is accessible on the webpage. Within the Enterprise, wikis make a com- pelling argument for replacing email and outside the firewall, can be used to collaborate with the consumer. Upload pictures, videos, dia- grams, tips, bullet points and FAQs to a collaborative system and watch as consumers add value including translating to other languages. Why? Collaborative knowledge management tools reduce email traffice, ver- sion issues and make sure everyone is “on the same page” - literally. They are great for workshopping an idea or group editing contextual documents. How do wikis !t into your PR Strategy? When and how to implement Start with the internal directory page - place that on a wiki and allow every- one to update their own page with their own contact details and photo- graphs and calendars. Encourage those with niche information to update and share on the internal wiki - critical and time sensitive customer and business issues such as cus- tomer service or technical support. Start to publish well patronized and updated pages to the public, with an option later for the public to changes some pages. Even further into your strategy, the public may choose to collaborate in co- creating public relations services. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 13 LaurelPapworth.com Wiki Case Studies This section covers how wikis affect PR. Also how Enterprise uses them as collaborative knowledge management systems. How is it used in practice? Blogs have built in content tools but few audience tools. Consider the topic, tone of voice, and content matter. Video blogs, photoblogs, text and multimedia have a different look and feel. Original indepth content often mixes with distribution - links to newspapers and other sites. Case Study One Wikipedia vs WikiScanner Monitor Wikipedia for entries about your brand or company. The wikipedians have a strong culture and will remove any- thing that is untrue or defama- tory. However, do not edit the page to remove true information. Wikiscanner doublechecks all changes to wikipedia pages, and recently the Australian De- partment of Defence was named as having edited Wikipedia 5000 times. Case Study Two Wikileaks Wikileaks is developing an uncen- sorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analy- sis. Removes the need for a “whis- tleblower” to connect with a journal- ist, and puts the power of publish- ing and audience into their hands. Wikis are becoming an essen- tial communications tool for enterprises, Ross Mayfield, SocialText Wiki National Emergency During the Mumbai bombings, bloggers created a Google Doc that could be edited by anyone. You added the name of someone who was missing in Mumbai and if anyone else heard news of that person (safe, in hospital, or dead) the document was updated. Crowdsourcing during the Tsunami led to a wiki being created, and the Australian bushfires news was kept updated on WikiNews. Exercise - What shall we wiki? • Think about using a wiki internally first as they can be the most challenging to manage with customers. How could you share information better using a wiki in the office? Class: Make and edit a list of 20 words on either ʻblueʼ, ʻrockʼ or ʻlightʼ. (leads to Tagging exercise later). FInally, Using crowdsourcing or “collective intelligence” may lead to faster raising of awareness and distribution of time critical informa- tion during a crisis. It is the responsibility of communications professionals to collate and verify this information. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 14 LaurelPapworth.com YOUR NOTES Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 15 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Distribution Networks Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 16 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 17 LaurelPapworth.com Ripple Effect Diagram An explanation of the connected chain reaction diagram for distributing content through social networks. What is the diagram about? Most companies think of broadcast when determining distribution of information strategies. As many eyeballs, visi- tors to site, viewers of videos as possible. The blogosphere, Twitterverse and other social networks work more on a chain reaction or a ripple of content. A blog is great for content creation but doesnʼt come with an inbuilt audience. The key is to connect with others who are interested in this content. Content moves around one network - e.g. retweeted on Twitter and then bounces out into other networks - to Facebook, for example. Corporate blogs that do not link to other blogs or other pages do gain traffic from those sites. Reciprocity is a social contract between content creators Two key concepts with this type of distribution are disintemediation and democratization. Disintermediation means that you can go to an original source - if there is a quote in a newspaper or blog, you can follow back to the original thinker and view the entire press release or article. Only bloggers and distributors that add value retain audience. Democratization allows a blogger with very few readers to still have a major impact - as long as one of their read- ers moves the content along. Over time content may be driven into many networks, and fastmoving channels like Twitter present the opportunity for velocity - 1 blog post may develop into 47 million media impressions over a weekend. So while Ripples are not broadcast, they can have the same impact as traditional marketing channels. Case Study One Engadget vs Apple In May 2007, Engadget received an email from an Apple.com email account stating that the iPhone would be 3 months late, as would the Leopard op- erating system “Appleʼs stock promptly tanked on massive selling, going from $107.89 to $103.42 in six minutes (11:56 - 12:02). This wiped just over $4 billion off of Appleʼs market capitalization. A lot of people lost a lot of money very quickly.” Techcrunch Ignoring blogs and social media can affect your bot- tom line earnings, stock price and trust/reputation in the marketplace. if you have a problem with C-level executives in your company understanding the value of being involved in social media, as them to read my blog post on the issue. http://laurelpapworth.com/apple-0-blogosphere-1-bo gus-iphone/ Case Study Two Deaf Mom vs fast food giant Not all ripple start with a big blog and large reader- ship. In January 2008, Karen, of Deaf Mom blog, drove through the drive-thru of Steak-and-Shake, and ignoring the mike/speaker, asked to make the order at the window because she is deaf. She was denied service. Her small blog post caught the eye of Diversity Inc which in turn was reblogged at The Consumerist (large blog). Journalists read about her story on there, contacted her, and she was on the evening Fox News on TV, and the local newspaper. During this time, when you did research on Steak- and-Shake on business news sites like Yahoo! News and Google Business News, two facts were obvious. One, that a deaf mother had been denied service contravening the Disabilities Act of America and two, that Steak-and-Shake were at a sensitive stage of negotiations regarding a merger. http://laurelpapworth.com/australia-event-social-net works-and-pr/ FInally, Creating content is not enough - listening and responding, promoting relationships and being engaged is a fundamen- tal change from broadcast channels. Understand that the absence of a relationship with social media circles creates a void that will be filled by content that may harm you. Yet building Trust and Reputation through engagement would go a long way to mitigate erroneous information. Not all bloggers are created equal, learn who has a voice, and how to get corrections, updates and apologies out in a meaningful way. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 18 LaurelPapworth.com Facebook This section covers how to use Facebook as both a social net- work operating system and as a business communication tool. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 8th most popu- lated in the world, just ahead of Japan & Russia Mark Zucker- berg Viral Touchpoints Email (out), Inbox (internal) Send 1-1 or group private mes- sages. Notifications Receive messages in email, in- box or feed of groups, events and applciations friends have added. Public The Wall, Shared/Posted Items, Status Updates, Notes (miniblog) - places for links. Feeds Minifeed (about me) NewsFeed (about them) - passive notifica- tion. Content Attach item, Photos, Videos - promote in other ways Group Activity Groups, Events, Fan Pages, Applications 3rd party games and tools, Brand Fanpages are different from Brand Groups . With Fan- Pages, mutual friendship is not required, and you have metrics such as how many people visit a page, unique views, become a fan and graphs. Groups may ap- pear more authentic. Laurel Papworth What is Facebook? by Laurel Papworth Australia has a population of 21 million people. Over 4.5 million adult Australians (over 18) have joined Facebook since May 2007. Whether PR and Marketing profes- sionals personally like Facebook, it cannot be ignored as a powerful customer community. Facebook is a personal profile based site (not blog) that acts as a “gated community” - the member stands at the gate and allows other members to connect, or not. Information is restricted to those who share mutual friendship - you wonʼt find many videos on Facebook that have been seen 12 million times, like you do on YouTube. Yet Facebook has a huge amount of viral “touchpoints” - tools to pass information around. Facebooks role is very much distribution rather than content based. In addition Facebook Applications platform - F8 - empowers any com- pany to create an application for distribution in the social network. A widget or App may have RSS feeds, be a game, or simply show loyalty. On Facebook you canʼt blog and therefore it is quite a different network than say open broadcast blogs like MySpace. Why? Social networks of this size and this well organised are like opening a stall on a busy shopping mall. Itʼs free, but you still have to staff it, and find ways of grabbing attention. Still, the speed of distribution (see: Chain Reaction and Ripple Effect) is high, and word of mouth powerful. How does Facebook !t into strategy? When and how to implement Create your “depth of content” on external broadcast sites such as YouTube (videoblog), Flickr (photoblog) and Wordpress (text or multimedia blog). Then use Facebook to distribute that content. Because Facebook is a per- sonal profile “first” service (unlike Ning that is groups “first”), use FanPage, groups and events to bring customers together into channels for discussion. Use applications to provide interactive promotion and awareness. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 19 LaurelPapworth.com Facebook Case Studies This section covers how Facebook is being used by Governments and Crisis Groups. How is it used in practice? Some brands use Facebook Fanpages as the branded microcommunity. Others add it as just one tool to a social media campaign strategy. Applications such as TripAdivor ʻWhere Iʼve Beenʼ mean that a group/page is not neces- sary. Case Study One Prime Minister Kevin Rudd The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, uses a Facebook page to push out information to the members. Mr Rudd distributes his content from other social media sites for example My Flickr for pho- tographs. He also offers a Kev- in07 widget “Rudd and Labor Supporter” that voters can add to their own Facebook page. Notes are used for mini blog posts on current affairs. Case Study Two Australian Bushfire on Facebook There are 81 groups covering the fires of ʼ09 including memorial pages, fundraisers and housing assistance. While Twitter was used to broadcast news quickly, Face- bookʼs applications offered fund- raising widgets and event man- agement tools. TIP: Add Facebook applications that simplify your life: there are ones that auto-add your latest blog post, Twitter tweet or Flickr pho- tos. Facebook Groups • Itʼs a good idea to find groups that are target for PR activity - political, not for profit and me- dia. Here are journalist groups: • 1 - Journalists and Facebook. • 2 - International Journalists Network (IJNET). • 3 - Foreign Correspondents Club of Facebook • 4 - Reporters sans Frontieres • 5 - Find a Journalist - Around the World Exercise - Structuring forums • Class: Split into equal groups. Discuss building an Facebook widget/app for 1. An Orchestra. 2. Launch of a new car 3. Not for profit to save cats 4. A photography group. Present back to group. Everyone votes but not for their own presentation. FInally, Facebook is used by members to connect to each other in a time of crisis, to find out news of family at risk at a distance, to gain verified information from society leaders and to share community rituals and events around a situation. Applications such as ClipIn give donation and fundraising tools to everyone and may impact Not For Profit sector. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 20 LaurelPapworth.com RSS Syndicating Information This section covers RSS feeds and their importance to PR and Crisis Communication. RSS newsfeeds are usually made up of headlines, sum- maries, links and content, and offer live updates ʻoff siteʼ. RSS for PR Builtin Itʼs usually built in to the Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis and forums. Press Centre Consider adding RSS of Press to your site. Emergency RSS If you work in an Emergency in- dustry, add RSS as a tool for breaking news. Content Add RSS for videos, photos, powerpoint Internal Comms Offer calendar and meeting min- utes RSS feeds. People can see when they have been updated Other departments Consider RSS for advertising (latest special offers), jobs, clas- sified ads, and event manage- ment. ... folks are just beginning to real- ize is that RSS helps people (in- cluding journalists) cut through the messaging overload. Speak- ing for myself, less than 5 per- cent of the 400+ emails I get every day actually contain rele- vant, targeting pitches from PR professionals. Mark Jones, Infoworld What is RSS? by Laurel Papworth Opening up content to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way of publishing your content online in a broadcast fashion. Syndication means making your information available to other services, via ʻsubscriptionʼ. Before the days of the internet, news subscription re- quired AAP or Reuters to fax or telephone content around the world to editors. In a sense, distributing their news articles internationally, to other services. With RSS we allow subscribers (consumers, bloggers, social media sites) to consumer our content where and when they want to . Perhaps they want to receive the headlines of our blog on .. Facebook? MySpace? their blog? Perhaps they want our videos on their iGoogle page or MyYahoo? RSS allows that to happen. Part of Web 2.0 is the separation of form from content. This is a way of receiving the information as text headlines or images, without having to go to the host page. Why? Expecting people to come to YOUR website or YOUR Facebook page limits your ability to build a channel. When a consumer subscribes to your RSS feed, they will be updated on the latest breaking news, with- out having to open email or visit you. It will be on their favourite, most visited pages, as they choose. How does RSS !t into your Strategy? When and how to implement RSS is really part of your distribution strategy. You create content on You- Tube, Flickr, and other content social media sites, and allow fans to sub- scribe (be notified) of new content. Because of RSS flexibility, the updates are where and when the target audience wants them. Think of ʻbreaking newsʼ from the Sydney Morning Herald appearing on your NineMSN or MyYahoo page, and you have an idea of how bloggers creating breaking news feeds of their latest blog posts and let people be notified who they want to subscribe to them. see my Monitoring Social Media workbooks for using RSS for conversa- tions. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 21 LaurelPapworth.com RSS Case Studies This section is on how RSS will work for service wanting to provide realtime updates across the internet & not just on their own site. How is it used in practice? Because every time you update information on your own site, it is updated remotely on other sites, RSS offers an excellent tool to broadcast real time business critical information such as bushfires, stock prices and new head- lines. Case Study One Homeland Security, US Gov. “Can I use Homeland Security News Feeds on my Web site? Yes, Department of Homeland Security headlines and stories may be displayed on your Web site using RSS. Your own tech- nical staff is your resource for implementation.” EXAMPLES: News, Press Re- leases, Speeches, Testimony, Leadership Journal Case Study Two Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, US Gov. CDC has RSS feeds. EXAMPLE: “CDC Flu - Get notified whenever any new or updated documents are posted anywhere on the CDC Flu Website Includes Avian flu, Travel advice, PandemicFlu.gov.” RSS feed readers are now built directly into browsers such as Mi- crosoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Flock. Things to Do: • Check PRNewswire.com for examples of using RSS for PR • Check Feedburner.com and other Feed sites. • Consider feeds for: PDF, Pow- erpoint, Video, Audio/Podcasts, Images/Diagrams, Downloads. • Note the use of RSS in the later section on iGoogle - manage your information overload. • Use create-rss.com to combine multiple feeds such as Top 10 PR Blogs • RSS your common search terms. Exercise - Using RSS • Class discussion. FInally, RSS breaks the internet up so that people can receive your latest headlines on their Facebook page, My Yahoo! an RSS reader, email, in their browser and so on. Itʼs all about feed subscriber numbers, not site visits or unique visitors now. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 22 LaurelPapworth.com Widgets & Snippets This section covers widgetizing content for distribution across the Internet as games or interactive panels. Widget content is not static, is interactive, and is a small frame on another website. Widgets for PR Clocks Branded clocks that people can add to their webpages Countdown to Event Consider a countdown widget for a conference or school holidays. Auction Tickers Using RSS to bring a widget with latest auction items Stock market tickers Add RSS widgets with stock price and news Fundraising Allow people to add ClipIn dona- tions to their blog and Facebook. Traffic and Map Map mashup widgets include traffic jams Weather and Planetary Daily weather, planet positions and the tide Widgetized maps of areas af- fected by natural disasters allow everyone concerned to add that information to their sites. It is an effective ripple or word of mouth campaign to ensure that the message - whether avian flu or bushfires - is passed along. The map updates with Official infor- mation. What is a widget? by Laurel Papworth Offer a widget, also called a snip- pet, or (in the case of Google) a gadget, as a way of extending RSS content. While RSS tends to be purely information such as head- lines being offered on external websites, widgets are more graphi- cal and can be extended into games and information boxes. While a list of weather in capital cities is an RSS feed, pinning live updates of the weather to area maps, with the map widget being clickable or zoomable, makes for a more interactive experience. Extending this even further, so that images of people wearing different clothes based on the weather is fun yet infor- mative. Customers who choose to add your widget to their sites and pages are doing advertising for you. If in turn those widgets empowers sales e.g. eBay or Amazon widget, customers are also selling to customers. Word of mouth takes place by their choice to add your brand to their social space. Why? Widgets breakup the internet into “little bits everywhere” making for highly customizable and personal sites. By offering a widget, that is use- ful, informative, education and/or fun, the consumer is comfortable with branding their personal social space with widgets that their friends can see and use offering viral seeding into relevant social networks. How do widgets !t into your Strategy? When and how to implement There are a substantial amount of non-nutritional social networking products available for free to millions of consumers. By non-nutritional I mean ʻfunnyʼ applications that are added once then never used again. Try to develop a fun, yet useful widget to ensure long term engagement. see my Facebook for Business workbooks for using application widgets for promotions. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 23 LaurelPapworth.com Widget Case Studies This section is on how widgets work for organisations as peer to peer distribution of information. How is it used in practice? Many companies use widgets as advertising - hoping that a poll, silly questionaire or funny game will entice cus- tomers to add the company branding to their page. However some widgets are very indepth including map mash- ups. Example Case Study Two Homeland Security, US Gov. Real Time Terror Alert Warning Badge “Displays the Homeland Security departments' current terror alert in a handy color-coded badge. “ The RSS is now a changing badge. Advertise your site with an interac- tive widget. Offer sales through a sales widget. Keep people upto- date with graphical information. Things to Do: • Move beyond text - what up- dates (weather, stock price) could be graphical? • What internal databases could be opened up - stock availabil- ity, office opening times, health or travel information? • Consider asking your public what they want - a competition maybe? • Professional and educational works for critical information. • Fun and personal widgets work for everyone else. Exercise -Creating a widget • Class activity - in groups, discuss your group activities from earlier in light of making a widget or application. If no subject has been chose, pick Orchestra, Formula 1, or Icecream. FInally, Widgets allow customers to show brand loyalty and add value to the visitors to their blog or Facebook page by adding your information. During times of crisis, having a widget ready will see a large uptake in that widget. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 24 LaurelPapworth.com Social Bookmarking This chapter covers filtering and favouriting sites and sharing them across the social networks. Find others who are book- marking the same sites you like and use their list to find more! Laurel Papworth, Social Bookmark Sites Technorati Has been around for a long time and tracks hundreds of millions of blogs del.icio.us A popular shared bookmarking site StumbleUpon The fun of random sites book- marked by a large community. Digg Vote bookmarked items up and down to see if they make it to the front page of citizen newspaper. Facebook Yes, Facebook can also be used to store bookmarks or see others - check out POSTED ITEMS, for a start. Friendfeed Lots of people like to chat about bookmarked items on Friend- Feed. These three activities – the “Three Fs” of finding, filtering and forwarding – scaled up to the swarm of a billion Internet users, describe the world we see today. Mark Pesce, Future Street Consult- ing What is Social Bookmarking? by Laurel Papworth Normally when you bookmark or favorite a site in your browser, that site is only available to you and only available on that computer or device. Social Bookmarking services allow you to bookmark into ʻthe cloudʼ - save the bookmark on the internet and then to choose to share or not that bookmark with others. Some bookmarking sites are purely to aid your memory - found a great website? Bookmark it, share it with others doing research, write a note about it. Others, such as DIGG function more as a social newspaper with Citizen Editors pulling in articles from the internet to share with oth- ers. Using the bookmarking service at work cuts down on emails passing links around, and means that monitoring of bookmarked sites can be a shared collaborative office activity. Keep each bookmark private, share it a group, or share with everyone. Why? Creating content is time consuming and requires a reasonable amount of commitment and knowledge. Finding relevant information and sharing it, on the other hand is relatively easy which is why social bookmarking is one of the most common and popular toolset on the internet today. How this !ts into the Social Media strategy 6th August 2005 Ask the team to create social bookmarking profiles on the same service and then ask them to share with the team the sites they are moderating, com- ments they are watching, and use the notes section to share concerns. Monitor your own sites and forums on popular services to gauge public re- action. Push out time critical, emergency communications into sharing sites to ensure coverage. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 25 LaurelPapworth.com Bookmarking Case Studies This section lists the major social bookmarking sites and gives an opportunity for the class to discuss strategies. How is it used in practice? As a promotional tool, bookmark sites and their widgets empower readers to forward your content into their own networks. Monitoring social bookmarking sites helps with analytics and measurements, making for easier organi- sation. Notes Laurel Papworth Many major newspapers are adding social book- mark buttons to their sites to add readers who wish to share the article with friends using other re- sources than simply printing or emailing a link. Most of the sites on the right offer analytics - so you can see how many times your information has been saved as a bookmark, sent to others, rated with 1 to 5 stars, listed on popular leaderboard lists, and gain rankings in niche communities. Remember you donʼt need to visit every site - you can pull in an RSS feed (see earlier section) and monitor the communication that way! Exercise - using bookmarking on your own site • Class - discuss how you use your bookmarks now - alphabetical, in folders, one long list? FInally, Remember, some of these sites are not just for bookmarking but develop their own communities. Leaders may promote your bookmarked item to hundreds of thousands of others, if you fit in to their community. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 26 LaurelPapworth.com Social Tagging This chapter covers how we name content on social media sites and categorize our conversations. The spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organ- ize information into categories Wiktionary, 2008 What is a TagCloud? from Wikipedia The first use of tag clouds on a high-profile website was on the photo sharing site Flickr, created by Flickr co-founder and interac- tion designer Stewart Butterfield. That implementation was based on Jim Flanagan's Search Refer- ral Zeitgeist,[3] a visualization of Web site referrers. Tag clouds have also been popularized by Del.icio.us and Technorati, among others. A text cloud or word cloud is a visualization of word frequency in a given text as a weighted list. The technique has recently been popularly used to visualize the topical content of political speeches. On Twitter, members use the letter # (hash) in front of key- words. This tells the readers that a tweet belongs to a par- ticular thread or conversation. #followfriday, #election.. Hashtagging on Twitter What is Social Tagging? by Laurel Papworth Until now, most of humanities clas- sification systems have mostly been hierarchal (called Taxonomy). Think of a book in a library - it be- longs in one section, one place and nowhere else. Social tagging, also called collabo- rative tagging, social classification, social indexing and folksonomy, uses keyword tagging to classify content. Each person viewing the content can use their own keywords - or view popular keywords provided by others. Finding information becomes easier because of this ʻmetadataʼ - you can find websites not only based on taxonomy but on emotions such as ʻgoodʼ, ʻawfulʼ ʻfunnyʼ ʻtragicʼ. Now the book - an online version anyway - can be kept wherever you want. Multiple keywords means you can find the link to it in multiple lo- cations. Why? Allowing consumers to tag information with their own keywords helps with brand recall and retention of information. Many also add bookmark widgets to their websites and blogs that say “What Iʼm Reading” dy- namically updating as they read your articles. Search becomes easier. How this !ts into the Social Media Campaign 6th August 2005 Tagging can reveal consumer sentiment about content on your site. Tags such as ʻusefulʼ ʻinformativeʼ may be measured against ʻawfulʼ ʻuselessʼ. Navigating content via Tag Clouds is an alternative to search that visually oriented people may prefer. Because the content is being tagged, Google and other search engines rank the metadata tags higher than the normal data/words, because 5 or 6 words describing a page helps the search engines deliver appropriate search results to users. Tags may therefore help with Search Engine Opti- mization. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 27 LaurelPapworth.com Social Tagging Case Studies This section gives examples of tagging, tag clouds and an exer- cise. How is it used in practice? Easy navigation of websites, widgets that use tags to define the person “this is who I am” and assists with releas- ing website information from the long tail (content that rarely gets found or read). Case Study One Laurel Papworth A local council service in Australia found their or- ganisationʼs Intranet search hard to use and unreli- able. So one of the women in the office went through every document and bookmarked it in Del.icio.us, tagging each document with keywords relevant to the different groups in the organisation. However, as tagging is really a social activity, it wasnʼt long before everyone was bookmarking the documents, sharing them amongst themselves and clustering the documents into many different groups. Remember: staff will use tools that work for them, or that they use anyway in their every day life. Exercise • Class - Split into groups. Take one keyword each. Rock, Blue, Water. Now create more keywords based on your one keyword. FInally, Keep an eye on tagging sites to see how your brand material is being tagged. Implement tag clouds so that people can navigate the site based on metadata. Check tag clouds to see what keywords are strong, and which ones weak. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 28 LaurelPapworth.com YOUR NOTES Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 29 LaurelPapworth.com Social Media Conversation Networks Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 30 LaurelPapworth.com Twitter This section covers Twitter as an instant (synchronous) communi- cation tool, some software to use with it and itʼs role in news. Follow people who share your values, sense of humour and interests. You decide who and what is important. Laurel Pap- worth Twitter Terms Tweet 140 character - 1. testimonial, 2. linking URL or 3. @conversation. Followers vs Friends or “Followed” The people who are listening to the your tweets vs The people you are listening to. hashtags # searchable topics Tweetup Organising a real life meetup with Twitter folk. @Replies Put @ and their twitter name, and the public message will show up on recipients Reply timeline. TinyURL, Twurl, Bit.ly etc Use a URL shortening service to include long links in your 140 char. TwitPic Upload a foto to Twitpic and it will be auto tweeted Why Twitter Is Useful For business, Twitter can be used to broadcast your com- pany's latest news and blog posts, interact with your custom- ers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and Tweeternet.com What is Twitter? by Laurel Papworth Twitter is a mobile social network - though mostly used through the web in Australia - where you have 140 characters to answer the ques- tion “What Are You Doing”. Most answers fall into 1 of 3 categories - Testimonials (I am going to work, I am taking the kids to school), Dis- tribution links (Read this blog http://tinyurl.com/link) and Conver- sation (@SilkCharm how are you today) Twitter functions as a realtime (synchronous) network and while it is possible to continue a discussion days later, picking back up the thread weeks later is rare. Twitter is not a depth of content based network like a blog, but a conversation and distribution network. A simplified version of Facebook it works on a half-gated policy. You can openly broadcast your own content yet selectively ʻfollowʼ other people. Twitters real power is in itʼs open APIs and hundreds of applications/ services (see later for API information) including ʻadd followersʼ tools. Why? A fast growing social network (Entered Top 100 sites early 2009), and because of itʼs realtime communication tools, Twitter facilitates ex- tremely speedy distribution of news and critical information. Even with- out a large audience, substantial number of ʻretweetsʼ ripples your mes- sage out. How does Twitter !t into your Strategy? When and how to implement Connect to people based on geo-location, interest, or reach. Use velocity of marketing to get message out, and receive market intelligence. Use the channel to engage particularly Customer Service answering real time ques- tions, publicly, and to empower Twitter members to co-create with you. En- sure you EITHER participate in community events and rituals such as #2ForTuesday OR simply run an autobot for news, clearly stating that fact. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 31 LaurelPapworth.com Twitter Case Studies This section is on how Twitter will work for business as a real time Q&A tool, for distribution of information and customer service. How is it used in practice? Some brands use Twitter for customer service ʻpersonalʼ service albeit publicly accessible discussions. Time criti- cal information picks up velocity with re-tweets. The mobile nature makes it ʻalways-onʼ. Or distribute via an RSS bot. An account that simply links out all the time is ignored - must have conversation or testimonials as well. Case Study One UK Security and Defence updates UK newsfeed on security and defence issues @In_Terra automatically posts up informa- tion using RSS and autobots. EXAMPLE: SECURITY NEWS FEED: Medhat received death threats - Fatah leader: Slain senior Palestinian of.. http://tinyurl.com/djobf4 Notes using an ʻauto-botʼ to autopost Tweets is useful (if limited) for high alert time criti- Case Study Two @BigPondTeam from Telstra Australia Bigpond initially made an error in filling their tweets with “thankyou, weʼll get back to you”. Eventually Customer Service engaged and answered questions on Twitter. Reduces helpline calls and aids TIP: @RichardFromDell is better than simply @Dell. Or leave enough room to sign off your tweets with your first name. Things to Do: • Search for lists - Famous peo- ple on Twitter, journalists on Twitter. • Join friends on Twitter - keeps you honest and friendly. • Investigate tools like Monittor, Tweetdeck, Twitterfall. • Search bios with Peoplebrowsr or Tweepsearch • Tweet jobs available, items for sale, housemates wanted with a link to deeper content sites. • reTweet fundraising events or coffee meetups for followers. Exercise - Using Twitter • Class discussion - discuss using Twitter for real time updates for business information. Focus on Sales and Customer Service. FInally, Try to use Twitter to show a human face (tell your story), make sure you link to other interesting, humorous or educational articles/blogs as well as your own. Respond openly to questions with @name. Following many, with few following back, looks like spam. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 32 LaurelPapworth.com Forums This section covers forums and how they are used by consumers to raise awareness of issues around brands and organisations. A bulletin board is a place where you can leave public messages - to advertise, buy/sell, promote events, or provide information. Forum Features Many to Many Anyone can start the discussion. Topics are placed in relevant sub- forums. Others join in. Peer to Peer A blog limits the conversation to the topic of the blogger. By open- ing up a forum, customers can feel that their needs are ad- dressed by allowing them to post discussion threads and answer each other. Complex and mutilayers Many people responding on many topics - following subthreads and repeat threads becomes challenging. Long Tail A forum thread can have thou- sands of responses, sometimes a small group may post many times over a number of years. This sort of discussion rarely happens on a blog. Everything about your forum - colours, leaderboards, path to community moderator, Badges for roles, tribal areas (subfo- rums), rituals and events should work together to build a good behaviour. Donʼt rely on Code of Conduct or Etiquette Statement. Laurel Papworth What is a forum? by Laurel Papworth Forums allow anyone to start a conversation - unlike blogs. And while the conversations (called threads) are not editable by each member (unlike a wiki), each mem- ber can comment back in a linear fashion. Forums are asynchronous (not real time). The real time version of fo- rums would be chat channels. Fo- rums are also called bulletin boards or bbs and are sometimes a second step after setting up a blog for companies. Forums often have builtin social networking tools that the other social media tools donʼt offer. For example, titles for commenters (called “post- ers” in forums). This enables the natural hierarchy and leadership roles of a community to be implemented, enabling the community to scale up larger much quicker. Moderator/Admin tools are quick sophisticated and subforums for special groups work well as reward systems. The ability to offer Karma Points (forum loyalty points) is also a feature. Why? The power of forums is the fact that one customer can ask a question and another customer can answer it. This provides authentic testimoni- als and peer to peer support, reducing cost of acquisition of the cus- tomer and technical support costs. How do forums !t into your Social Network? When and how to implement If your blog is popular and you would now like to have the customer com- munity respond back proactively rather than through comments, a forum might be for you. Blogs are light on community - itʼs hard to badge leaders, reward roles of welcomer, teacher and give tools for subgroups on a blog. A forum usually has these things built in. By offering forums, you may find your community grows exponentially - rather than a blogger setting the agenda for the conversation, the community choose themselves what they wish to discuss. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 33 LaurelPapworth.com Forums Case Studies This section covers how forums work for business as a peer-to- peer support tool and many-to-many conversation. . How is it used in practice? Forums offer many-to-many discussions. They drop technical support and customer service costs to 1/5th by em- powering one customer to answer another customers question. Sophisticated complex social tools empower fast growth. Case Study One Parents Jury (Australia) In Australia, the Parents Jury forum addresses issues around children and healthy food and advertising. They have become a successful lobby group, and won a battle to have over- sugared cereals removed from supermarkets. Watch carefully industry boards/forums - this particular one has a Fame and Shame award - the one for Pester Power is to shame companies that use children to advertise to children. Case Study Two Whirlpool.net.au (Australia) This is a community of nearly 300,000 telecomms technicians discussing broadband in Australia. They undertake some of the roles of Regulatory Affairs, highlighting inaccuracies in contracts and ad- vertising and are more visited than telco sites. Online forums do not belong to Gen Y. The first forums or BBSʼs in the 1970s - weʼve socialized PCs together since the beginning. Forums • 1 - Big Brother and Australian Idol for TV microcomunities. • 2 - Hepatitis and Diabetes for health and children. • 3 - EssentialBaby for mothers and babies • 4 - Microsoft, Cisco and Open- source forum communities • 5 - Sports forums • 6 - vBulletin, PHPBB, Simple- Board are three examples of cheap or free bulletin board fo- rum software. Some come pre- installed on a hosting plan. Exercise - Structuring forums • How many subforums can you think of - Announcements, on topic, offtopic? What roles would you allocate in the community? Teachers, ʻcopsʼ, editors, event organisers? Class: play a game of telling a story. Each person tells the next line, following on from before and only ONE line. FInally, Once you have established clear behaviour sociability features in your forum, they need a lighter hand than other tools. In fact the host should not insert as much content as they would in say, a blog. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 34 LaurelPapworth.com Virtual Worlds & Serious Games This chapter covers how we use 3D worlds to engage and distrib- ute information. “As society migrates into vir- tual worlds we become pio- neers exploring the new fron- tiers of the mind” Laurel Papworth, video 2008 Virtual P.R. Second Life Duran Duran made a huge splash in summer 2006 with their announcement of a Second Life presence, that got them more press coverage than theyʼd had in the prior year. Recently, though, Fox broke new ground as the studio brought Bruce Willis into the popular on- line community Second Life to take questions from the fans and media. In order to host such a unique opportunity, Fox con- structed one of the most impres- sive Second Life structures ever built. United Nations Food Force One of the most well-known and highly regarded serious games, Food Force was commissioned by the United Nations' World Food Programme, and aims to educate the user about the causes, effects and solutions to famine in third world nations. ...make sure the people who you employ to represent you inworld are extremely familiar not just with the local space they will be hanging around in but the whole social world. Gary Hayes, Virtual World Expert What is a virtual world? by Laurel Papworth Computer games have been avail- able to the public for many years, but the multiplayer social virtual worlds are growing at a faster rate than stand alone games. Worlds such as Twinity, and Second Life bring members together to create, collaborate and discuss in a 3D environment. Serious games use virtual worlds and gaming technology for ʻseriousʼ purposes - business training or mili- tary or teaching about crisis scenarios. The public is spending an ever increasing number of hours in these vir- tual worlds, and ever decreasing hours consuming traditional media. The newest virtual world tools are overlays on web browsers - Exit Real- ity and RocketOn are two - so that the public can walk around your websites with 3D avatars. Why? The realtime experiential nature of virtual worlds makes them ideal for corporate training and organisational virtual facilities. Simulation and preparedness exercises using webcasts, video, and online courses ex- tend the education of the public into 3D social spaces. How this !ts into Social Media Strategies Advertising, Sales, PR, Customer Service, H.R., Recruitment, Training... Virtual worlds make an excellent Research and Development (R&D) envi- ronment as well as triggers for rippling out into the blogosphere as virtual worlds are intense experiences. Viral micro goods also called branded pixel products are used to both pro- mote and to connect to the audience. Events such as inviting pop stars into Habbo and Second Life to give interviews and concerts can promote a cause or awareness, and are generally well attended. Reuters had a dedicated virtual world journalist in Second Life, the Ameri- can Army use virtual worlds for combat training and over 300 Universities use Second Life as a virtual lab and classroom. There are a vast range of tasks and activities that can be done in a virtual world or through serious gaming that donʼt have the same real time impact in a 2D environment or are not feasible in the real world. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 35 LaurelPapworth.com Virtual Worlds Case Studies This section gives background and case studies on companies and governments using virtual worlds for public engagement. How is it used in practice? . Case Study One Darfur Is Dying Darfur is Dying is a serious game that seeks to teaches about the conditions in which people live in the warring re- gion of Darfur in Western Su- dan. The player is tasked with controlling the members of a family caught in the middle of the conflict. As a chosen family member you have to gather water to help grow crops, but to get to the water you have to avoid roving bands of militia. Case Study Two BioTerrorism Preparedness The Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness and Preparedness program (IBAPP) has been launched to pro- vide bioterrorism and emergency preparedness training to Idaho's healthcare workforce. In augmented and online virtual worlds, humanity will exponentially evolve, free from the limiting ghosts of that other virtual world we call reality. Gary Hayes Things to Do: • View machinima (videos made in virtual worlds) on YouTube • Start a Habbo account as itʼs browser based • Read blogs MUVEDesign, Sec- ondLifeBlogs, Business Com- municators of Second Life, New World Notes • Download Second Life, There.com, Kaneva, or Active- Worlds and start an avatar there • Ask a young relative to talk to you about World of Warcraft or Runescape. Exercise - Virtual Worlds • Class -A RolePlay in Physical Spaces FInally, Virtual worlds provide a better educational system, more engaging entertainment media, creative and innovative collaborative spaces than traditional web solutions. By investing time and research into virtual worlds and serious games, companies have a better idea about true engagement and interaction beyond viral videos and email newsletters. This is a growth area and using virtual tools broadens a companies ability to respond to Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 36 LaurelPapworth.com Lists & Links Here we list top PR blogs, some tools to monitor reputation, sites that explain negative groundswell and how it happened. Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication SocialWebForum.org 37 LaurelPapworth.com PR Tools Online Press Release Grader - pressrelease.grader.com/ Trackur - http://www.trackur.com/ BuzzGain - http://buzzgain.com Radian6 - http://www.radian6.com BuzzLogic - http://www.buzzlogic.com/ BrandsEye http://www.brandseye.com/ Dialogix www.dpdialogue.com.au/dialogix.html PR Blogs Brian Solis - PR 2.0 http://briansolis.com PR Squared - http://www.pr-squared.com A shel of my former self - http://blog.holtz.com/ Pop! PR Jots - http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/ Strategic PR - http://prblog.typepad.com/ Young PR - http://youngie.prblogs.org/ Australia Pro PR - http://www.propr.ca/ Canada PR Communications - http://pr.typepad.com/ PR Newser - http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/ Crisis Forum http://crisismanagementforum.com Lee Hopkins http://leehopkins.net Drawn from AdAge Power150 and From PR to Eter- nity blog. Negative Groundswell Monitoring The Ad Contrarian http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com The Consumerist http://consumerist.com/ Not Good Enough - http://notgoodenough.org Gerry McCusker http://prdisasters.com Bad Pitch Blog http://badpitch.blogspot.com Dell Hell - http://www.dellhell.net/ Parents Jury http://parentsjury.org.au Shaping Youth http://shapingyouth.com UserVoice http://uservoice.com/ Get Satisfaction http://getsatisfaction.com/ Bernaise Source http://bernaisesource.blog.com/ Anti Marketer http://www.anti-marketer.com/ I Hate This http://ihatethis.org Glass Door http://www.glassdoor.com/ Rate Your Job http://rateyourjob-rateyourboss.com/ eBossWatch http://www.ebosswatch.com/ Crikey http://crikey.com.au Travel-Rants http://www.travel-rants.com/ Whirlpool.net http://whirlpool.net.au These sites are known for publishing information that identifies triggers that may inflame online com- munities. Other courses Its pretty important to follow this session with Social Media Workshop: Social Me- dia Press Releases if speed is important. Also, Social Media Workshop: Media Training and Staff Guidelines helps en- sure that your staff donʼt accidentally cause a negative groundswell by blogging, twitter- ing or posting on a forum in a way that has repercussions for your organisation. Finally, Social Media Workshop: Monitor- ing and Brand Reputation goes into more detail on filtering and finding discussions. This is a good start if you are interested in undertaking a Social Media Audit of what is happening online around your brand or organisation. More information at http://laurelpapworth.com