Okay, I finally did it. I’m on Twitter. After hearing for months and months about the buzz of this new phenomenon, I will now follow my favorite cyber friends’ twitters and join the millions who have already started using it. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Do you not know what the New York Times’ has called “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet?”

Twitter is an online social networking application where people write short, almost haiku-like messages about what they are currently doing/thinking. Seems simple enough. Once you start “following” someone around, you get an RSS feed of all the messages from people you are following, which change daily, often several times a day.

The thing that actually spurred me to start my own personal account was this article from PR-Squared, declaring: “Get Into Twitter or Get Outta Public Relations.” This wasn’t as shocking to me as it may be to some people since I heard a PR professional go gaga over Twitter during a panel that was discussing PR 2.0 tactics, which Kerry McClenahan had moderated for the local PRSA chapter last year. However, this article certainly makes a bold statement.

Just as my colleague and teammate Venera pointed out in a recent blog post, online social networking is quickly becoming the way to create real relationships with editors and industry influencers. PR professionals are using Twitter as a way to follow New York Times editors, for instance, or share ideas with colleagues. Sometimes editors will throw out messages commenting on what article they are writing or quick anecdotes about trade shows they are currently attending. Keep in mind these are mostly personal blog post style messages. For example, here’s a recent Harry McCracken (PC World) twitter: “Just discovered I accidentally bought an elliptical exerciser from Amazon. And it’s shipped. I have no idea how that happened…” This may seem trivial and too silly to actually produce any ROI, but it’s valuable information in developing a personal connection to this seemingly “untouchable” editor.

So, according to Venera’s post, it makes sense that Twitter is quickly becoming mainstream for PR professionals. Given the trend of these media crazes trickling down into our deep technology world (i.e. online video, blogger relations, etc), this may be something for us all to keep bookmarked.

Here is a list of the 100 most mispronounced words and phrases in English. This list acts as a good reminder that mispronounced words can be just as damaging as misspelled words. I mean, what if I consistently spoke to my clients about their bidness instead of business? (Do people really say that? According to this list they do!)

My grandmother will surely make fun of me for the following Jeff-like-totally-doesn’t-get-it post but, after using social networking sites for a couple years now, I have to get some unfashionable thoughts off my chest.

1. E-mail Exists: If you have access to it, correspond with me over my work or personal e-mail, not through the social network’s inferior messaging tool (until they improve). I know, I know, your kids tell you that e-mail is for old people, but they also thought Britney Spears was cooler than Bob Dylan at one point, remember?

2. Just Say No to Touchy-Feely Facebook Apps: I appreciate the thought, but please don’t send me any Facebook app requests that make us feel like we’re in middle school. I’m talking virtual hugs or flowers or teddy bears in exchange for friends’ email addresses. (Heh, unless one of our clients created the app…) The forced invites petition suggests others agree.

3. Some Statements Don’t Belong in Comments: Yes, the brave new world is all about transparency, and opacity is so yesterday, but must we leave the door wide open with the air conditioner blowing while riots line the streets?

If not, let’s try to keep conversations, which we would have kept private five years ago, out of the comments sections of social networking pages. (This is particularly a problem on MySpace, where the bad kids in the back of the bus hang out.)

It’s nice to ask about how that new shoe lift is compensating for my leg-length discrepancy, but, man, can’t you ask me in person, and not in front of my 10,000 “friends?” (All jokes aside, one of my legs is longer than the other, says my doctor, but I choose to roam the Earth suffering.)

Now, guys, please don’t unfriend me! I’m just sayin’!

Move over tweens and Gen Yers. Electronic engineers were involved in the social networking world long before you had your first Sidekick or profile on MySpace. Back in the day, “social networking” was how engineers shared ideas and helped one another out via the Internet. In an article published this week on EE Times, Junko Yoshida looks at how these online communities have morphed over the years and are still providing intrinsic value to their users.

This morning, McBru CEO Kerry McClenahan and I participated in an InnoTech panel called Strategies for Planning and Building an Online Community as part of the conference’s eMarketing Summit. I really got a lot out of not only the insights from fellow panelists Dawn Foster and Barry Tallis of Jive Software, but also the audience questions. They ranged from how do you integrate print advertising with an online community and how do you measure the success to how do you find the time and how do you light light a fire under your staff.

Ruby Gates of MarketShift Strategies asked a question around how the panel thinks online communities will impact the business community in the future, which I’d like to expand on.

Five years out, I believe one of the main shifts in the business community will be attitudinal: There will be less fear.

Today, one of the main objections I hear from companies considering creating an online community is that they fear the two-way conversation: criticism on other sites, criticism in their comments sections and other feedback features and even criticism from their own company.

More times than not, once a company notices that the sky doesn’t fall when they’re criticized online, and they actually learn something from the experience or turn around a detractor, the company gets a little more comfortable with the two-way conversation inherent in online communications. And as other companies watch their peers go through the process — sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly — they too will learn to discern what’s a communications crisis and what’s not. They’ll learn what kind of community participant to take with a grain of salt and who to trust. They’ll begin to view these communities as, sure, risky — at least more than producing another piece of collateral — but with a lot of potential upside, if you can brave the rapids.

For those in the Portland area, there is still about another hour left in today’s eMarketing Summit. And tomorrow has a full day of talks, too. Go check out the agenda; I’ll sure you’ll find something worth the trip to the Oregon Convention Center.

Of course being from the soggy Pacific Northwest, I instantly noticed Marketing Pilgrim’s blog posting tip on posting SLUGS. It’s almost common knowledge now to optimize your blog/Web site’s searchability using key words and tags (this is known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO).

To go one step further than maximizing your tags and titles, bloggers are now creating slugs at the end of their posting’s URL in order to make that specific post more searchable. Marketing Pilgrim gives a great tutorial on how to effectively add slugs to your posts. Now if only I could effectively get rid of the slugs in my garden…

Over at the LinkedIn Answers forum, author Ron Graham asks a question that I bet many of you engineers and tech marketers would love to address:

What is it about engineering that others really don’t get?

I have written/edited a book, Rhetoric for Engineers, that includes nearly ten years of lecture notes on various subjects bridging gaps between topics in engineering and topics in written and oral argumentation. But that the book exists (and for now, anyway, is FREE) isn’t nearly as important as my interest in always keeping it up to date. So it’s on version 2.0 now and I’m already working on version 2.1.

So what I’m looking for is new questions to answer. New subjects to address. New complaints about communicating engineering concepts to non-technical people, or so-called “soft” topics to technical people.

If you’re an engineer, or are otherwise technical in some way, tell me: what topics do you have the most trouble communicating — and find you have to anyway?

If you’re not an engineer, and you need to deal with us (LOL), what topics do you have the most trouble communicating to your own techies?

Go add your two cents.

If you want to understand the direction of effective advertising and marketing today, just look at the Obama campaign. A few months ago I was half joking to friends that he’s gonna win because he’s got the best website. Then as I dug in deeper, I noticed that this guy is doing everything right to sell himself, and that his campaign reflects, more than anyone else’s, the future of business. Check out what this article from Fast Company has to say.

“The fact that Obama has taken what we thought we knew about politics and turned it into a different game for a different generation is no longer news. What has hardly been examined is the degree to which his success indicates a seismic shift on the business horizon as well. Politics, after all, is about marketing — about projecting and selling an image, stoking aspirations, moving people to identify, evangelize, and consume. The promotion of the brand called Obama is a case study of where the American marketplace — and, potentially, the global one — is moving. His openness to the way consumers today communicate with one another, his recognition of their desire for authentic ‘products,’ and his understanding of the need for a new global image — all are valuable signals for marketers everywhere.” 

As someone who’s spent some time today finding creative ways to RickRoll certain associates, I think I can appreciate good (and bad) April Fool’s jokes. Here’s an excellent example of the craft (click the video to enjoy the full effect).Kudos to the BBC for the inspiring computer animation. It’s funny to think: 20 years ago, this caliber of digital animation was beyond the reach of the prevailing technology; 10 years ago, this sort of work was the exclusive domain of high-end studios. Today, broadcast networks are using it to throw together prank videos in their spare cycles.

McBru recently launched, for one of our electronic clients, a video ad banner that was a little different than a branded video banner. It had the look and feel of a YouTube video. Our creative department used a 15 second clip of raw footage, not professionally recorded or edited, to create the banner. The clip presented a common customer challenge in the industry segment our client serves. Once the banner introduced the video, users had the option to either watch the clip again or to click on a button that directed them to the complete video. The banner concept was a success! Not only was this ad format attractive to the electronic engineers we were targeting (since it truly appeared as if a peer created it), but it increased the amount of traffic to our client’s microsite by more than 50 percent in a 30 day period.

Other industries are finding success with online video promotions as well. At this year’s Search Engine Strategies conference in NY, the demand for and the success of online video was a key topic. Presenters explained this newer online tool to be a strong avenue for a company’s branding and visibility efforts. In one seminar, tips were offered (listed below) on how a company’s online video presence can be boosted.

• Make sure you have the right keywords in the title tag and description

• Use keywords in the video file name and separate them by hyphens. Example: www.herroom.com/sports-bras

• One video per URL (and avoid Flash and pop-ups)

• Surround video with on-page relevant text

• Allow video files to be embeddable and include a logo watermark. This is very importnt as it makes it possible for bloggers to use your video material

• Brand yourself in the video: right now it’s easier to rank video than text

• Mention your videos where ever your key audiences are