“Does Design Matter?” That’s the question I asked during my presentation with Matt Jones from Dopplr at the Sarasota International Design Summit this past Tuesday.

Before I was crucified by the audience, I quickly said it still does, but perhaps not as much.

Why? I threw out the concept last week, asking, “when so much of a brand’s content is consumed via RSS, Facebook, Twitter…does design matter?”

Sure you can design a good looking blog, but if a large percentage of the readers use an RSS reader, does the design matter? Also, what is going to keep you coming back to a corporate blog? It’s the content, not the design.

Many organizations are realizing the interactions they have with customers on sites like Twitter and Facebook are very rewarding, however you have very limited design flexibility on those sites. In the case of Twitter you can tweak some of the page settings, but your primary brand-design element is a 48 x 48 pixel avatar.

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Yesterday, we attended GasPedal’s BlogWell event at the San Jose Convention Center to get some fresh insights on how big companies are already using social media. Nick Ayres from Home Depot summed up the crowd’s sentiment best when he said: “This conference pretty much shows me that we’re no longer asking IF there’s value in social media, instead we’re asking what are the best practices for our social media programs.” That’s right, even big companies (which are inherently slower to adopt new programs or make changes) have accepted that in order to have complete PR and Marketing programs, social media is a must.

With case studies from 8 major brands, from Intel to Kaiser Permanente, Graco to Wells Fargo, BlogWell more than anything, validated the work that we’re already doing for clients like Sony Computer Entertainment America’s PlayStation.Blog and eBay’s eBay Ink Blog.

BlogWell is planning to post footage of the entire event, which we’ll link to when it’s available. In the meantime just wanted to share some key takeaways to think about for other social media programs:

• GasPedal CEO Andy Sernovitz opened the event by saying, “Social Media is about learning to talk to people like people, again” – Sometimes the technology and tactics involved in social media seem to cloud people’s understanding, that in essence, social media is just finding a new way to talk to people like human beings. Engaging them by actually building relationships, which is what PR is all about.
• Lindsay Lebresco from Graco highlighted how the Graco blog is helping create brand affinity to the company rather than specific product lines by engaging with consumers as real people who have the same issues as other parents. Their program is an extension of the success they’ve had through WOM between moms.
• Intel’s Ken E. Kaplan brought up the importance of pairing online engagement with offline meet-ups, as highlighted through some of their projects around Intel’s Developer Forum.
• Debbie Curtis-Magley from UPS surprised most of the audience when she said that given budget and time constraints she’s begun enlisting the help of the administrative staff on social media monitoring projects. She asks them to dedicate one hour a day to monitoring and has each person own one topic for about a month – while she isn’t able to dive as deeply into the results as she would with a dedicated staff or agency, she said that this approach helps keep her attuned to the conversations about UPS and an expert on her own company.
• Kaiser Permanente’s Hilary Weber was very pragmatic about KP’s approach to social media–she sees it as another tactic to complement traditional PR efforts. Their program focuses mainly on peripheral topics like healthy recipes, and wellness tips, rather than actual healthcare discussions. They are limited by the issues that arise when patients begin using forums to discuss their health problems, or when they try to give each other medical advice.

Overall the event was a success – it brought together communication professionals to share ideas about social media and blogging at big companies is, and can be. We look forward to seeing how those who share their stories grow their programs, and to hearing about new case studies at next year’s BlogWell.

Alright, I guess it’s inevitable that amidst this economic shake up, we would return to the age-old argument of Public Relations vs Advertising, and debating where your business dollars are better spent, and you know, whatever, that’s fine, it’s not without good reason.

In fact, I’ll admit, this was a hot topic at last week’s SMC meetup, and again at this week’s PRSA International conference, but here’s the thing: if we (the PR industry) are going to collectively make the business case for a shift in corporate spending, we need better leverage, and man, if there was *one thing* we should be leveraging to our advantage in this argument, you’d think it’d be all the benefits and potential of the social web for business, right?

Sadly, the PR industry, for being inextricably tangled with the web, continues to oddly struggle with how best to use it for communications — and therefor, articulate its value and return in this larger argument we’re all trying to make.

And yeah, to be fair, the ad industry is really struggling with this too, so in a big way, the challenge is just seeing which industry can get past its own tired modes and models of business and acclimate the fastest to new attention, usage habits and trending patterns on the web.

For what it’s worth, I think the PR industry, for better or worse, can actually win this race by doing two things:

First, by each of us assuming personal responsibility for where the industry sits today and how we’ll each move it forward. Seriously, to win this bigger argument, we have to become smarter practitioners through professional education, personal learning (through adoption?) and, well, by having a curiosity and a willingness to experiment and try on different approaches to communications on the web; and

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As a follow up to my WordCamp presentation on WordPress Ecosystems, this screencast demonstrates the WordPress bookmarklet, called Press This, being used in two capacities:

1. To quickly create microposts, and
2. To reblog from one blog to another.

Password-protected WordPress installs are a great way to coordinate blogging activity with other people. I recently converted Press This for use in a theme so we can easily reblog anything shared in that back channel. The bookmarklet works by passing data through the URL. So, to add Press This to a theme, you simply a link to your theme formatted like the URLs spit out by the bookmarklet, but using WordPress template tags to populate the content. The receiving WordPress install will process the link created by both the bookmarklet and the reblog link exactly the same, which is to spawn your blog’s admin in a new window with the content prepopulated. Now, you have a chance to remove any sensitive content, add context, and any other edits you need to complete your reblog.

Cross-posted from JustinKistner.com

As one of Voce’s resident mom-bloggers (who doesn’t mind the moniker), I recently attended an event called Bay Area Working Motherhood “New Formulas for Success” in San Francisco, hosted by Mommy Track’d and Flexperience. My personal goal for the evening was to embrace the Mommy Track’d tagline – the working mother’s guide to managed chaos – and share my newfound wisdom with others who take care of their family and their jobs.

I happily carpooled with friends Robyn and Linsey, also fellow writers for Silicon Valley Moms Group, mostly because I didn’t want to hit the bar alone … er, I mean didn’t want to drive up and down the Peninsula alone. We knew the evening would be interesting because it coincided with the Vice Presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin. Show organizers decided to air the debates during the opening cocktail hour, which made it hard to keep the cardinal rule of “no politics” during cocktail parties. Oh well.

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They say you switch careers at least five times in a lifetime. Is it terrible to say I’ve done it three times in three years? After uprooting from the East Coast, I found myself not only adjusting to new faces and places but regional cultures, idioms, and career choices.

Stripped of the glossy advertising, PR, and event planning work present in New York City, jobs revolving around high-tech, healthcare, and startups became my options after college. So I stepped into the world of life sciences advertising in San Francisco. Then I looked south to “Silicone Valley” where TV and film production consumed my life. When the Writer’s Strike was nearing, I packed my bags to travel through Southeast Asia.

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Where to start? Perhaps late, late in the sense that the planning for this year’s BlogOrlando started much later than previous events. I was even concerned that we couldn’t pull it off. But thanks to some help from some great folks like Chris, Rob, Danny, Ryan and yes you Alex…..we did it. Our tracks grew from four to five, our registrations grew and so did the turnout. A big thanks to all our sponsors, especially Ideablob and Voce :-)

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