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Medium: A blogging platform for writers

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Last week I learned about a new social media platform called Medium and was given an exciting directive to explore their new website and report back to the rest of the team. I didn’t know much about Medium going in, other than it proclaims to be based on the belief that the sharing of ideas and experiences is what moves humanity forward. Sounds great!

Truth be told, after several days of exploration I’ve come to the conclusion that Medium is my kind of platform. It’s for the 1% of us that like to write opinionated quasi-intellectual notes on Facebook that unintentionally alienate half of your friends. The best part is that your parents, employers and colleagues haven’t discovered Medium yet, so it’s like Facebook circa 2006 when you could still get away pouring your heart out over the course of an evening (and a bottle of Chianti) with no repercussions.

Medium is currently in über beta start-up mode, but I thought it might be fun to poke and prod around their website with the proverbial stick. The following is what I’ve discovered.

Blogging Platform Reimagined

When I went to explore Medium, I did it from the perspective of their motto, ie, someone trying to move humanity forward, and I was immediately drawn to this post: Stop working (so hard).

medium logoYou don’t have to worry about that, Medium.

But in all seriousness, from what I understand, Medium is trying to reimagine the concept of a blog by making it more socially interactive than current designs allow and by facilitating longer conversations and extraneous dialogue in the process.

It became immediately apparent that this platform is geared towards a certain type of person. You know the Facebook friend who posts cute kitty photos and gets all twisted whenever someone talks about politics, science or demonstrates critical thinking? Yeah, this site is not for them. Medium is more accurately for people who like to write, or those who like to critique what other people write.

Comment Makeover

In a typical blog format (Tumblr, Facebook, Blogger, WordPress) all of the comments on a given post are archived at the bottom of each post. With Medium, the comments are displayed to the right side of the post, which results in a more fluid interaction. When you comment on a given post you can highlight the exact word or phrase you want to comment on, and subsequent users can comment further. This feature makes for more functional interactions with a post, and I like it.

Check this out:

medium image

Formatting blogs

Do you remember how crazy Myspace got when people could add pink backgrounds and floating sparkles and snowflakes to their landing pages causing your Pentium III computer to freeze up? Do you hate it when you arrive at a blog with an orange background with white typeface? Medium has simplified the way people format their blogs by eliminating choice, essentially subtracting a lot of the functional ability and formatting options that you may be used to with other platforms. They also allow only a single headline image for each post. I think this works because it makes their blog system cleaner and easier to read.

Here is an example of what I mean:

medium image 2This is what the blogging tool looks lik

medium image 3You’ll notice the following:

  1. You can only add one image
  2. Your title is large and bold
  3. The body of your writing is in smaller font

That’s it. You cannot change the font, add italics, underline things, create orange backgrounds or add snowflakes to accentuate a wintry theme. This is blogging simplified.

Categorizing Blogs

In the following image you can see that Medium allows you to review posts, and collections of posts (demonstrated below).

medium image 4

You can customize your own collection of posts under the heading “Collections” or if you don’t want to go with the ones that they select for you, you can create your own, which could be a fun way to stimulate conversations about topics that are relevant to you personally. My favorite category is “Armchair Economics” because the topics flatter my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and/or ego.

Who should use Medium?

I’m answering this question wearing my PR professional hat as clients are often asking for the return on investment (ROI) on social media platforms. I haven’t done enough digging around to fully understand Medium’s policies, but if you have a business or a brand that relies on the dissemination of ideas and information to relevant communities, Medium may be a good platform to keep your eyes on.

I’m a little conservative when investing too much time in new platforms – I like to watch others jump in to see how they may be benefiting before I invest my most precious commodity, time. It is unclear to me if writing a blog-like post in Medium will create any less or any more SEO for your brand.

Medium challenges the notion that attention spans are getting shorter or that people require all information to come in 140 characters or less. Medium is embracing the idea that everyone can write long, drawn-out prose, and that there are people out there that want to read your meanderings.

Go ahead, check it out and explore for yourself.  http://medium.com

Twitter puts it all out on the Vine

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You may have heard of micro processors, micro blogging and micro machines – but have you heard of micro video? Well if Twitter has its way, their acquisition of a new company called Vine will help them branch out to the next big thing … an app that allows you to share 6-second video clips.

I can hear your eyes rolling from my office. In fact, you may be asking, “Cam, why should I pay attention to yet another app?”

Here’s why:

Debuting on January 24th, this product has already caused quite a stir in the social media world. In two weeks, online Vine users shared 113,897 videos on Twitter on over a single weekend. That’s over 2,000 videos every hour.

Major brands like Urban Outfitters, Lucky Magazine, GAP, Red Vines, Moose Tracks, Coke-a-Cola and Pepsi have already put up videos.

Brands are currently using this format to demonstrate how their products work, to hold contests and to share creative content that they hope will resonate and connect them with their target audience. Still skeptical? Check out three of my favorite videos, and perhaps I can change your mind.

1.


2.


3.

 

4. BONUS – If you want to be endlessly entertained follow James Urbaniak

 

For more information:

Wired Magazine – “Why Vine’s Going to Grow Into Something Huge”

Entrepreneur Magazine – “The Pros and Cons of Using Video App ‘Vine’ for Marketing”

 

Branding, Communications and Public Relations: Questions to Answer Before Working With a PR Firm

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At AM:PM PR we begin each new client relationship with the hope it will lead to a long-term partnership. We believe the more we know about a prospective client’s business, the better we can understand the qualities that differentiate them from their competition, thus allowing us to do a better job helping to communicate each client’s unique story to targeted audiences.

During our information gathering process, we like to ask a lot of questions – a process that is beneficial to both parties. Answering the following questions provides potential clients an opportunity to think about the way they communicate about their business, product or service. If you’re ready to ask us how we may help you, copy and paste the following questions into the body of an email with your answers and email them to: info@ampmpr.com.

As you ponder your answers, are you learning anything new about your business, your brand, or your current need for marketing and PR assistance? Here are some branding, communications and public relations questions to ask yourself before working with a PR firm.

Introductory Questions:

What short-term and long-term goals are you hoping to achieve with PR and marketing services?

Have you worked with a PR firm in the past? What was your experience?

What are you looking for from a PR firm?

What is your budget for PR/Marketing?

What is the PR assignment, as you see it? How will you define success?

Your Brand:

What is your positioning statement? What sets your brand apart from the competition?

What is your brand personality/culture?

What are some examples of your messaging?

Have you tested your messaging?

Communications Focus:

What is the background of your business (your history, your story)?

Who are your target audiences? What is the demographic and psychographic profile of your key customers? What are your key insights into these audiences?

What media does your target audience consume?

How do they currently learn about your business/product?

What is your consumer promise?

Who is your competition?

Do you advertise? If so, where?

Website:

When was the last time you made improvements to your website?

Do you have a budget for improvements to your website?

Do you use and monitor your web analytics? Are you making adjustments based on your analytics reports?

What are the search terms that lead visitors to your site?

Are you blogging?

Social Networking:

Please describe how you are engaged with social media? Which tools are you using and what do you share?

Are there any social media tools you refuse to use? If so, why?

Curious to learn more about our services? Please contact us to learn more by clicking here.

New MySpace steps onto the field

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by Cam Clark

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, MySpace has been reborn, and I have taken a plunge into the new world. Under the ownership of a seemingly endlessly talented Justin Timbmerlake, this is a whole new beast.

The first thing you notice about the new MySpace, especially if you had an account on the old MySpace, is that it’s beautiful. It’s very visual, with lots of context-based menuing. Although it was disorienting at first, the side scrolling has quickly grown on me.

new myspaceIt is also very apparent that the site is now focused solely on music. Every piece of the site appears to be wrapped around the idea of listening, sharing, and exploring music. With access to what seems to be a massive collection, you can quickly immerse yourself.

MySpace is not without its issues though. The icon showing who you’re connected to, although simple, looks like a master card logo, and it is not instantly clear how to use it. Also, what do the different states of the icon mean? It’s not always obvious how certain layers of the site are opened and closed. There is also a stark lack of intuitive linking; I find myself trying to click on things that don’t have links, especially in the “Discovery” area.

From a competition standpoint, I wonder what Facebook thinks of MySpace’s re-entry into the social scene. After spending some time with the site, I realized that it isn’t so much Facebook that should be paying attention to this brand resurrection as Spotify, Pandora, and potentially iTunes.

I can easily see teens and 20-somethings taking to a platform like this, especially those who really enjoy exploring and sharing music. The big question, since currently there are no ads or subscription fees, is, “Where will the money come from?” Once MySpace starts generating income, how will that translate into compensation for the artists? And without any obvious features to best the dominant music players in the industry, how will MySpace compete?

Getting to play with the new MySpace has really created more questions for me than have been answered. At the same time, it’s fun to see a great player come out of retirement, and it will be fun to watch MySpace step out onto the field again. Whether or not the company hits it out of the park this time around is another question entirely.

Don't bury your head in the sand. Be prepared for any scenario.

How To Deal With Bad PR

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– AM:PM PR Guest Post

Sometimes things don’t always go to plan though and you get media attention for all the wrong reasons. Here’s how To deal with bad PR.

I have worked for a number of companies that have been very high profile for all the wrong reasons. The worst thing you can do when things go wrong is bury your head in the sand. Also, responding to a question with: “no comment!” makes you sound guilty straight away.

You need to be prepared. Develop a crisis/issues management plan. Think through every possible scenario and develop specific plans, messages and protocols for each. Doing this will make you feel a little more confident when a crisis does happen at 4pm on a Friday and media start calling asking for statements ASAP.

Include protocols for responding to media requests in your plan. Whoever takes calls from reporters should be writing down all the questions so the communications team can craft solid responses.

Often reporters will accept responses/statements via email. If they do, this is the way to go. It eliminates risks of saying too much. If you are asked to call the journalist back then, unless you know the journalist well, don’t go off on a tangent in your discussion. Keep it to the agreed points and don’t add any personal comment or feelings. The old adage about, “nothing being off the record” is very true.

A few more tips when preparing for the worst:

am:pm pr tips

        1. Be truthful and hold your hands up if it is an obvious mistake.
        2. Don’t try and cover things up un-necessarily
        3. Remain calm and definitely don’t get angry
        4. Make statements clear and short
        5. When all has settled down, ask for feedback from the media

 

Darth Vader and King Arthur's Sword

The Force is strong with Disney’s marketing of Star Wars buy

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Pat McCormick as Walt Disney with his grandson Ian as MIckeyI confess I’m a Disney fan. Disneyland opened the summer before I entered 8th grade, but I never got to go until we went 30-some years later with our kids.

When Disney announced on Halloween that it had acquired Lucasfilm, owners of the Star Wars franchise, it was big news. It also was an opportunity for someone at Disney to invest a little bit of time to make a brilliant marketing move.

Remember the long-running series of Disney “What’s Next?” commercials featuring Super Bowl or NBA or Olympics champs being asked what they plan to do after winning their championships? “I’m going to Disneyland,” was the reply.

Well, on the day of the Lucasfilm announcement, some creative Disney marketer got Darth Vader and some Imperial Storm Troopers to cut a video asking Darth Vader “What are you going to do next?” The YouTube video shows Darth and his entourage enjoying the fun of Disneyland.

What I love about it is that someone, probably with no budget, could execute the idea so quickly. For those of us who visit Disneyland with some frequency (I take each of my grandkids for four days in the parks between their 9th and 10th birthdays), we know that Darth and the Imperial Storm Troopers have Jedi training sessions six times a day, so the costumed characters are easily available.

So is the whole park. Get a video crew Disney marketing team, shoot some video, edit and post.

In one day, the quickly posted YouTube video has had almost 500,000 plays. Congratulations to the marketer that had that idea. Brilliant.

Doctorate-level marketing brilliance

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Excel is creepy

Disney has topped itself. And everyone else.

Check out http://monstersuniversity.com/edu/ and allow yourself to enjoy this genius level marketing brilliance.

Monsters University won’t premier until next summer, but the Disney Pixar team already has released gems like this to get us all giddy with excitement for the movie – and it’s merchandise.

Somehow I have school pride for this university I’ve never attended. You can even buy school merchandise. Conveniently, they’ve already sold out of the four arm T-shirts. This brilliance allows Disney Pixar to start making money from merchandise eight months before you’ll be able to watch the movie.

My inner child has me going back to this site over and over and clicking on every link. They have thought of everything. They even have a way of humorously jabbing Microsoft on the site in the banner ad about “Excel in the art of Extreme Creepiness.”

Yes, I am going to see this movie. I can hardly wait, and I haven’t even seen the trailer yet.

 

Be cautious with outbursts on your Facebook Business Page

Promoted personal posts just might kill Facebook

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I have long defended Facebook to friends and colleagues as a free service that allows us to connect with far-away family and long lost friends. I’ve also thought that nothing yet created had the potential to truly compete.

Now it seems Facebook can only think of ways to make itself more attractive to analysts rather than its loyal users.

I can accept promoted posts and ads from businesses because the service needs to pay for itself and the ads are really not that intrusive. What I cannot accept is the idea that my Facebook friends can now advertise their posts to me. How strange and useless. I see their posts anyway.

I have no interest in using Facebook anymore (except when I have to for my profession) if personal connections pay to have their posts highlighted. Maybe that’s a bit drastic, but that’s not the service I signed up for. I’m guessing I’m not alone.

For $7 any user can now promote her most recent post. How obnoxious. What will it even look like? Will friends know if a post is paid for? I don’t know, but I’m going to test it by promoting this article. Yes, I’m aware of the irony, but I’ll consider it research. I really hope this option goes the way of many tested features Facebook has gotten rid of.

I did actually read an article by Tech Crunch that shared one compelling use case for this feature. Judge for yourself.

Be cautious with outbursts on your Facebook Business Page

What not to do on your Facebook business page

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Damaging your own reputation through social media – a cautionary tale

A restaurant owner in small town in Washington surely regrets sharing publicly that he pay his utility bill and blaming the local PUD on his woes. The reactions below demonstrate risks of outbursts for managers of a Facebook business page.

What can we we learn from this Facebook business page fail?

  • Don’t post when you’re angry. You’ll regret it later and it just might turn viral.
  • Don’t share your financial issues with customers. You’ll lose respect.
  • Don’t act maliciously. You’ll lose fans quickly.

Your Facebook business page publicly represents your company in a platform that allows all of your customers to engage or witness your engagements. Every comment you make can be shared with thousands in seconds. The impression you make can have a lasting effect. Be cautious and interact in a way that supports the reputation you want to have. If you think what you’re about to post has the potential to be misconstrued or hurt your reputation, run it by a second pair of eyes first.

For more cautionary tales (and some laughs at others’ expense) check out Failbook.

 

bundling PR services

Rethinking how we sell our PR services

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marketing agency blueprint

As AM:PM PR approaches its second birthday, we’re changing how we sell our services. We’ve packaged services for clients – creating a prix fixe menu of options rather than the usual ala carte list.

PR services
We think bundling PR services and pricing them clearly will make it easier for clients to understand what they’re buying. It also recognizes how different the practice of public relations has become in the 24/7, constantly connected world we live in today.

Historically agencies based their pricing on billable hourly rates, much like lawyers and other professionals. Clients that have little experience using public relations agencies struggle to understand why services are billed hourly. Those with more experience may understand billable hours, but many don’t connect hours billed with results achieved.

The truth is that not every hour we work produces the same benefit for clients.

Over the Holidays, I read a book (The Marketing Agency Blueprint) and shared it with my colleagues. It triggered our effort to rethink how we price what we do so it makes more sense to our clients – and to us.

 

service bundling

Much like Progressive, we think bundling our services together might help us better serve our clients’ needs.

“The traditional billable-hour system is tied exclusively to outputs, not outcomes, and assumes that all agency activities … are of equal value,” declared Paul Roetzer, the book’s author and founder/CEO of PR 20/20 in Cleveland.

Today’s communications landscape has radically changed the contents of our PR toolkit. It requires us to be full-time listeners, even for our smallest clients. In the digital world, opportunities and risks don’t wait patiently for open times in our schedules.

Our ability to help a client requires a high level of trust in us, as communicators and strategists. Trust takes time to build. Our service packages anticipate that we will work with the client for a minimum of six months. It’s a step away from casual dating. It signals our priority is on building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.

We’re eager to talk about these packages with prospective clients, and learn from them whether this new format helps them better understand what they will get in working with us. Like everything in our business, the packages are subject to change. Our hope is that they will form the foundation for some great relationships.