Technology just gets in the way

How many times have you had to stop and puzzle something out on your computer today? This week? How much billable time are you losing out on because you need to format something just right but can’t find the button to do so?

Since getting a Mac, I’ve had such a smooth computing experience I sometimes find myself at a loss for something to do. With my windows computers there was always something to fix, a program to update, virus scan to run, and so on. The experience has opened my eyes to two concepts: User interface and willingness to learn.

How user interfaces get in the way of you doing your job
The user interface is what you use to interact with a Web site or program. It’s that collection and arrangement of buttons and commands. And the more of them there are, the more difficult it is to work with something. I’ve you’ve ever seen the new look of Microsoft Office 2007, you’ll know what I mean — Microsoft went to great pains to hide the many of the commands we rarely use, while putting all the usual commands in context. Do a Google search for “Office 2007 ribbon interface” to learn more.

Bottom line here is, every Web site you visit or program you launch forces you to spend time wrapping your head around how to navigate it before you can even start learning anything. Now, I love diversity as much as the next person, but it sure does get in the way. An example? Let’s say you’re looking for the editorial calendars from The New York Times, Newsweek, and Fortune. Each publication stores its edcals in a different place with respect to the others. For some, its all under advertising. For others, its under the masthead. Argh!

Willingness to learn
Sometimes, someone will come to me and ask them for help with something I’d helped them with before. Or help for something that can be easily solved by Googling for a few seconds first. This isn’t a matter of laziness or fear of technology — I think it is out of being overwhelmed. By too much work, by the crush of life issues. Whatever. By the time you have to figure out how to align the numbers on a table of contents, your head explodes!

What would be ideal is this: When you come up against a vexing computer problem, stop everything. Mentally, physically, whatever. (This isn’t asking much — you end up stopping yourself anyway!). Stop and think about the problem. Have you seen it before? What might be causing it? Is it a simple matter of trying to find a command or button somewhere, or is something malfunctioning? Is it possible someone online has encountered it before, and would a Google search help?

That’s my troubleshooting thought process. If everyone thought that way we could focus our IT departments on helping us do lofty things, rather than help us sort out why we can’t color-code table cells.

Event aggregators: Not so great without support

I wrote about event aggregators here and here a while ago. In those posts, I wrote about using event aggregators to keep an eye out for speaking opportunities for your clients. Recently, I had an opportunity to create entries on these services on behalf of a nationally well-known client. The goal was to make people aware of the event and encourage them to attend or, at the very least, click through to a special website the client had set up.

The results? Very, very disappointing.

What I learned
What was the quote about an unexamined life? Anyway, I examine a LOT. After creating an entry for our client’s event on every aggregator I mentioned in those other posts — a process that only took a couple of hours — I sat back and watched…but activity failed to pick up.

So the “learnings”? First, these sites really are geared to business or industry conventions, not fun & free consumer events. Second, if your event isn’t happening in a major city — and ours wasn’t — you’re not going to get any views. Finally, it would probably be a good idea to pick an aggregator site and link to it in your press release.

The good news
A couple of the aggregators — Meetup and Upcoming for example — impressed me with their range of options. Integration with Flickr was a plus and saved me the bother of having to find and upload photos, too.

Bottom line
I’m not going to bother with these services again unless the event is in a big city — seriously big, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Boston. Even then I would stop and consider it — the two hours expended there, could they be put to better use for my client elsewhere?

When do you stop blogging?

I initially started this blog because I wanted to show everyone how much I knew about social media. I wanted to show everyone how much I knew because I wanted a job, at a firm, where I could work with this new medium every day. At the time I was working at a PR firm that, I felt, was too slow in adopting social media tools to achieve more for its clients. This blog was like an addendum to my resume — proof, due to my lack of comprehensive social media case studies (I had four good ones), that I knew what I was talking about.

And it worked. I’m working at a different firm today and am content with how things are progressing. So content, in fact, that I haven’t seen the need to post to Tech for PR since early July. The blog’s mission is accomplished.

But.

Since my last posting I’ve had more emails from readers than in the six odd months I’d been regularly updating. You aren’t just asking why I haven’t updated in a while — you want to network. You’re asking me to review your efforts to provide feedback. You’re asking for help with technology.

So I’m back. But with a slightly different mission. I’m still going to talk about great software and tricks that should make life for the average PR professional easier, but I’m also opening the floodgates to your questions. If there’s anything you want to know, get in touch. I’ll publish your question along with my answer — you just have to remember to come back and check.

And I stand firm by my promise (made earlier in the year) to stay away from the heady metaphysical stuff. No “wisdom of the crowds” and “citizen journalist” crap here folks. Just results. Cheers, and see you soon.

Building an Internet Meme: I Still Don’t Know How

Allow me to direct your attention to I CAN HAS CHEEZEBURGER?

This blog/site has been at the top of traffic lists on WordPress for weeks. All it does is post pictures of animals with funny or cute captions around them. I’ve included one here, in fact. But I digress — in this post I just want to introduce you all to memes. Just so you know what they are.

It Are Crazy
I Can Has Cheezeburger? is an example of a Meme. Or, to break it down, something popular that most people are aware of and refer to every now and then. It sorta becomes a part of the history of the Internet and everyone, spreading virally. Other examples include the Subservient Chicken (when I first heard of this, I thought it was some sort of perverted S&M dealy). There’s also the Star Wars kid. I won’t link to that video because I feel bad for the little guy.

Anyway, bottom line is, if you can create a succesful meme, you deserve a cookie. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’m concerned that I simply lack the imagination to come up with something diabolical enough. Seems to me the most successful memes have the following components:

• Weird humor
• Interactivity
• Easy to share (”Click to mail a link to your friends”)
• Have an “inside joke” elitist vibe
• Controversy: Memes can be just a little bit disturbing or offensive

I also think you need the following if you plan to build a meme:

• Stability: If the site hosting your meme goes down for even a second, the national attention span kicks in and poof goes your audience
• Self-restraint: People are going to create knockoffs. Live with it. Your client is going to want to plaster marketing messages all over the site. Don’t let it happen. Someone is going to want to create a follow-up or sequel — stop that at all costs. The most succesful memes exist alone, generally void of any corporate logos or advertisements

The bottom line
Ultimately, memes are ways of subtly getting and keeping top of mind. They appeal best to a very broad audience, so I don’t think they’ll work for serious businesses like Oracle or Hitachi Data Systems. Do you think differently? Let me know!

Stop and smell the roses today

Fourth week on a new job and, as usual, I’m learning new things all the time. The most recent lesson? The difference between a plain document and an attractive document is HUGE. Heap-big. Imagine presenting your client with a document that is little more than bolded headings and blogs of text, versus bold use of colors — dark blue background with white text, for example.

I’m not advocating going overboard here, nor am I saying that creating a nice looking report/document will win or keep you any business. What I am saying is that presenting your reader with something well organized will grease the skids and make life a bit more pleasant.

Through the craziness of our days, we sometimes forget to take the time to craft a document, rather than compile it. Take a look at the PDF I’ve appended to this post. It’s printed from, literally, a Word document template. I used pre-formatted objects within Microsoft Word to create this, and it took no more time to do than a standard, run-of-the-mill plain document.

So next time you’re putting something together for a client, think about how you can give it that extra oomph to make them feel appreciated. It’ll pay off in spades later.

Click here to see the nice document. It’s a very small PDF file.