We sat down with Mike at our North America digital meeting to get his thoughts on the digital landscape in the U.S. – where it stands, trends, barriers to adoption and some examples of industries and companies he admires (including Ford Motor Company and, not surprisingly, professional sports!).  Take a look – and share your thoughts in the comments.

Text 100 has been short-listed in the following categories:

Best of Use Digital

Client – Cisco Consumer Products

Campaign – Flip Your Profile

Company – Text 100 Singapore

Technology Campaign of the Year

Client – IBM Australia

Campaign – Creating a Smarter Transport Agenda for Australia

Company – Text 100 Australia

PR Consultancy of the Year

Text 100 Australia

Mid-Size Network of the Year

Text 100 Asia Pacific

Fingers crossed for a successful awards ceremony on March 30!

When San Francisco 49er President and CEO Jed York sent a tweet asking fans to submit via Twitter why they should be the recipient of four tickets and pregame field passes to last Sunday’s NFC Championship game against the New York Giants, it wasn’t a question as to if I’d enter – it was how. To put the excitement of this game for 49er fans in perspective, not only would the 49ers make it to Super Bowl 46 if they defeated the Giants in the NFC Championship Game, but my boys hadn’t made it to the playoffs since 2002 and hadn’t made it to the Super Bowl since 1994.

The question became how to differentiate myself from the countless tweets Jed York would receive, and how to pull this off in less than 24 hours (!!). Stepping back as if I was consulting a client, I naturally decided on a video submission – most people would simply send tweets so multimedia was the way to go. Of course the video would be placed on my YouTube channel, tagged to have strong searchability and be no longer than one minute of course to best ensure it would be watched in its entirety.

But the bigger question was the focus of the video. Following a brainstorm with my friend, colleague and soon-to-be video creative director, Kerry Hall, we came up with the campaign idea – my 49ers enthusiasm couldn’t represent only me, it had to represent all of San Francisco! I spent my Monday evening identifying ideal quintessential San Francisco individuals who should be represented in my video and scripting the 49ers expressions and press conference quotes to include. And the next day, we hit the streets of Union Square, filming me in my throwback Steve Young jersey and gold 49ers startup jacket – cheering and screaming with San Franciscans for the legacy team so appropriately named after the gold prospectors from the California Gold Rush.

From the hotdog stand worker, to the trolley passengers, to the cop, to the construction workers – I represented the best of the Bay!

Following some scrappy video editing with the assistance of my colleague Pierre Le Leannec, I was ready to send Jed my tweet submission linking to my YouTube video. (Well, okay, only after nervously reading and rereading my tweet and excitedly hovering over the send button on Tweet Deck for about 5 minutes, and having the tweet proofread and edited by a couple people.) SEND!

But what better way to help my plea for Jed to award me those NFC Championship Game tickets than to leverage my network and Twitter followers? How could Jed not watch my video with the huge amount of tweets directed at his handle, and reinforcing that I’m THE number one 49er fan? Thanks to my friends & family, Text 100 colleagues, clients, reporters and even people I’ve never met for retweeting my video, and endorsing me to go to the 49ers game.

And as a result (cue drumroll please)…

Although the game may not have worked out in the 49ers favor (to put it nicely since there will be no profanity on Hypertext J), I’m extremely fortunate and thankful to have had the amazing experience of going to the game with tickets five rows off the field. Up to nearly 5,000 YouTube views, I can honestly say the video garnered more attention than I ever would have thought, plus local San Francisco blogs such as SF Gate and SFist even covered and linked to the video. Next year is our year, 49ers, and I need to start thinking about how I’ll top my campaign for Jed to send me to the game next year!

PR people have feelings too. Well, some of them...

weeks. Responding to a post about PR blunders on popular web-technology blog ReadWriteWeb, a commenter fired off an angry response titled “10 Nightmarish behaviors PR people hate about journalists”.

This provoked a lot of discussion in our office and, before we go any further, I want to say why I feel I can offer a balanced response; I spent 13 years as a technology journalist before leaving my own kind to live amongst the PR people in 2005, so I know what life is like on both sides of the industry.

Comments like this are deeply unconstructive. Instead of this kind of sniping, it might be a bit more useful to help both professions understand the challenges and frustrations we all face.

It’s important to understand that, from the point of view of a journalist, a lot of PR communication is not particularly useful. I’m sure that none of you highly skilled professional communicators reading this will have ever desperately pitched a weak story to whichever journalists will pick up the phone, or tried to persuade journalists to attend a completely irrelevant event just to get the numbers up, but you’ll have to take my word for it that this kind of thing happens.

Imagine trying to do your job while dozens of people every day are clamouring for your attention by phone and email, but only about 10 percent of those people have anything relevant or useful to offer.

It’s not surprising that journalists get frustrated, or that they occasionally write articles to let off a little steam, since they often have the benefit of a platform on which to voice their displeasure. PR people generally don’t have a platform from which to voice their own frustrations and, in any case, since a key goal of PR is to build good relationships with journalists, few would be willing to publicly rant about them.

So in the spirit of constructive dialogue, here are some things I did when I was a journalist that I am now deeply, deeply sorry for because I’ve seen the consequences from the other side of the fence:

• Not showing up for events or cancelling at the very last minute with a half-baked excuse – I was guilty of doing this myself many times, but now that I realise that I probably dropped a lot of PR execs into hot water with their clients and/or bosses. When a journalist agrees to attend an event or briefing, a lot of effort goes into preparing for them. It’s much better to just say upfront that you’re not interested in coming so that the place can be offered to somebody who would find it useful.
• Saying “I’ll cover your story in the next issue….” even though I probably wouldn’t. What I didn’t realise was that while I was just telling the PR what they wanted to hear to get them off my back, I was causing them a real headache because they’d tell the client to expect some media coverage that, in reality, was never happening. Again, I realise now it would have been better for everybody concerned if I was honest up front and simply told them why I wasn’t going to cover the story.
• Being excessively rude/harsh to PR people who called at a bad time or otherwise inadvertently irked me. OK, I wasn’t particularly guilty of this, because I’m a laid back kinda guy, but some of my colleagues used to treat haranguing PR people as a sport. Not everybody in the PR industry has a thick skin, when you give them an unnecessarily hard time it can have a very real personal impact.

So what do PR people really think of journalists? We love working with them and, of course, we couldn’t do our jobs without them – we just wish sometimes they’d be a bit nicer to us…

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Text 100 UK blog.

What is it about this rapidly expanding microblogging tool, oft-referenced as the blog counterpart of Twitter? More and more, brands are hopping on this platform to appeal to audiences in a different way. There are other large blog communities, but on Tumblr the instilled follow, like, and reblog create greater opportunities for good content to spread. And interestingly, rather than the standard blog post thriving on Tumblr, the jewels of its operation lie in photos, videos, quotes and questions – text snippets with a bit of edginess or inspiration also prove to be popular.

The strategy appears to be working. Since our last stats check in 2010, Tumblr has grown to see roughly 51 million new posts daily, hosts more than 41 million unique blogs, and grew a staggering 900% (!) over the past year (check out this super interesting Tumblr infographic that Mashable whipped up recently). Not to mention, it operates in eight different languages.  In four short years, Tumblr has grown from relatively “underground” to international microblogging network, mostly due to its informal appeal and brand-building potential.

Here’s an update on how several different organizations have taken to Tumblrhood lately, and maximized their brand presence:

• Popular soft drink maker Coca Cola launched a Tumblr to share happy content with teenage bloggers, referencing everyday opportunities to recognize life’s simple pleasures—even featuring some older Coke graphics and advertisements. The effort is part of Coke’s goal to connect with teens and other Coke fans on new platforms and through more visual, aesthetic experiences.
• The Standard Hotel, a popular hotel located in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, launched its Standard Culture Tumblr. It serves as a pop-culture forum, featuring content from guest bloggers, downloadable music, and videos. It also promotes a calendar of pop-culture attractions for each of the hotel’s cities.
• Fashion brands—seemingly built for Tumblr with their highly visual cultures—cover the site with looks from their collections, even disclosing links to sales. (See Bergdorf Goodman, Kate Spade, and Oscar de la Renta’s PR director).
• News sources are by far the leading brand category on Tumblr, from Newsweek to Rolling Stone and NPR. Many of them have fun with their posts, whether it be for teasing content, pulling memorable quotes or sharing compelling imagery.
• Activists and political organizations are increasingly using the platform to share views, political cartoons and videos supporting their beliefs. (See  the Rainforest Activist Network’s recently launched Tumblr dedicated to tracking Bank of America’s criticisms and shortcomings, the Republican National Committee’s blog devoted to examining President Obama’s presidential record over the past three years, and the President’s own campaign Tumblr, in support of his re-election for 2012.)
• Celebrities have hopped on the platform to share some of their favorite content and near-and-dear causes with fans (see Alicia Keys, Glee’s Dianna Agron, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt – even Lady Gaga played with it for a second). Sometimes, even faux-celebrity Tumblelogs arise, to maximize the fandom of certain well-known Hollywood figures, or poke fun at them (See Suri’s Burn Book, a funny blog positioned as written by Katie Holmes’ and Tom Cruises’ adorably rich and famous toddler, and celebrity-fun-poking webcomic But You’re Like Really Pretty).

For fun, here’s a snapshot of some Tumblr engagement on Text 100 NA’s end, engaging you with the people behind our brand and work culture:

• Textual Harassment (Text 100 NYC’s Tumblr): A catalyst for my crush on this place.
• Text Appeal (Text 100 Rochester’s Tumblr): Texties of northwest NY.
• Text Messages (Text 100 Boston): Text 100 in Beantown.
• Text in the City (Text 100 San Francisco): Silicon Valley’s finest.

What about the rest of you out there in the Interwebs—are you finding Tumblr as a useful tool? If you used it early on, how has your usage changed? How are you using Tumblr to support your brand, whether personal or professional, or what are some examples of usage you’ve seen that support or question our observations? Let us know in the comments below.

There’s been a lot of debate over the future of PR.  From PRSA’s #PRDefined initiative focused on revitalizing the definition of PR, to the evolving role of communications professionals and agencies. Historically, “traditional PR” has been heavily defined by media relations. And while media relations remains important, the industry is increasingly seeing our function becoming something much bigger. PR’s success focuses on building companies’ brands and growing their businesses – using storytelling and compelling messages to communicate to the people your company wants to influence, and ultimately influencing their behavior.

Digital and social are certainly major components of this discussion. A front page feature in the Wall Street Journal is valuable but if a blog post from the leading cloud computing expert generates more hits to your website and coverts to more sales, which has more value? The way people are consuming media and are influenced has evolved, and communications is no longer solely defined by the ability to generate media attention for a brand. Rather, we can take these conversations direct to influencers and to customers via social channels, knowing the benefit of them then sharing the content with their network(s).

We’ll continue this discussion around the evolving function of PR, influencers and content creation in this session at Social Media Week San Francisco, taking place on Monday, February 13 at 10am at Trulia SF. I encourage you to register, join the discussion and hear from a former reporter turned corporate blogger; the corporate communications director at Cisco who operates “The Network: Cisco’s Technology News Site”; ad:tech’s content director; and, myself (communications and digital at Text 100).

And, please let me know what topics you’d like to hear discussed in the panel in the comments section or on Twitter (@chanslor).

Picture credit: The phone is ringing by Kerolic on Flickr (cc)

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Social Media Week San Francisco blog and is re-published in support of Text 100′s involvement in the event.

In celebration, we wanted to share the video below. We sat down with our community manager, Amber Rinehard, just before the new year to get her thoughts on how the community manager role evolved in 2011, what she sees for the future and what she considers the three most important qualities in a successful community manager.

Are you celebrating #CMAD today? Want to learn more about community management and how it can help your business? Reach out to Amber via Twitter @omgitsamr or LinkedIn, and check out the other #CMAD and community management resources below!

• ReadWriteWeb - Community Manager Appreciation Day 2012
• Join the Google Hangout, 12 p.m. CST, “Community Management 3.0“
• MediaBistro – 9 Ways to Celebrate Community Manager Appreciation Day
• UserVoice blog, Community Manager Appreciation Day Cards
• Social Fresh – The 2012 Community Manager Report [INFOGRAPHIC]
• Root Report, “Dear Community Manager…“
• Jeremiah Owyang – A Worldwide Salute to Community Managers
• Radian6 blog – Community Managers are the Heart and Soul of Enterprise Social Media

1.       From Bolt-on to Business as Usual

The advent of social media saw marketers attach themselves to channels such as Twitter, Weibo and Facebook with palpable glee. Many felt they were low-cost ways of pushing more marketing messages at a receptive public, and gleefully measured success per 1,000 likes in the same way they’d previously lapped up media coverage measured by the pound. Social networking activity was rather clumsily ‘bolted’ on to existing marketing and communications programs, and often left to its own devices.

The lessons of 2011 told us that social isn’t a ‘bolt’ on. For many consumers, Facebook is the Internet. Facebook traffic is going up and web traffic is in decline. 1-800 numbers are passé – customer support is 24×7 and on your social network. The mission for 2012 is to create a seamless experience across a range of historically disparate social media, digital and offline properties. Wishful thinking? For many, perhaps. But in the social consumer’s mind, the change has happened. Better interaction across business functions isn’t just management dreaming, it’s social consumer demand.

2.       Social goes mobile

More than 300 million people are accessing Facebook via mobile apps as the smart phone becomes the primary internet access device. The users have spoken and in 2012

marketers must be ready for them. The brand relationship is increasingly dependent on smaller screens.

Variables such as geolocation, NFC, mobile search and augmented reality need to be ns which need to offer compelling – and directive – experiences. We’ll need to start marketing through mobile channels first, making better use of images, video, and less text.

factored in as time and location become critical for brands wanting to capture greater mobile wallet share. For those that haven’t considered this, take a look at your website on a smart phone. Hope you’ll like what you see…or more crucially I hope your consumers like what they see.

3.       Influence is currency

2011 saw the influence debate really take off. Google and Facebook are fighting tooth and nail for your social credentials. Klout and Peer Index both have gained greater recognition over the year but with their success has come controversy. The fact that

Klout’s changes caused uproar indicates that reputation measurement is here so stay. 2012 will see even greater use of influence scores as the industry seeks a better standard.

Better algorithms will dictate greater use of scores in shaping PR tactics. Our focus will increasingly be on understanding how the influential and vocal minority can help us shape our client’s brands. Customers and employees will play larger roles in marketing programs as social currency becomes easier to measure. The ability of Klout and its ilk to keep innovating and providing more specific data will change the way we look at PR forever.

4.       Changing channels?

In 2011 the social network wars exploded. The emergence of Google+ saw Facebook and Twitter make significant changes to their UIs. Niche social networks like Instagram and Pinterest found a home on many desktops and mobile devices. In 2012 we’ll see Facebook, Google+ and Twitter continuing to innovate and greater ability to focus conversations

for more specialized groups. Will social consumers remain loyal or will new networks emerge to challenge?

Outside of the social networks, traditional broadcasters aren’t standing still. The entertainment

and social media industries are colliding, with Twitter in particular helping create a new discipline called social TV. Second screen apps such as Umami

and Gracenote are also blurring the lines further.

In 2012, stories will increasingly have to be told across networks to keep consumer attention. There will only be greater attempts at integration while simultaneously the big networks will do more to keep consumers within their ‘walls’. The challenge for brands will be to keep on top of the niche and large social networks and traditional broadcasters. It will be critical to keep an open mind and be willing to experiment as the channels jostle for position.

5.       PR’s future

My final prediction is a big call but that’s the pleasure of forecasting. From my perspective PR will go through a required change in 2012. The shift will reflect the other nine trends I’ve talked to. Our ability to react to changes in channels, consumer behaviors, tools and technologies will cement our future as an industry.

Images sourced under Creative Commons license from flickr users midgley, jcarlosn, Jeff Hester and Moyan Brenn, respectively.

Have a question for Anders? Leave a comment here, tweet him @anders_lundin, or email him directly, anders.lundin@text100.se.

In the middle, there many businesses that have made solid steps but run the risk of seeing their fledgling communities wither and die under the growing threat of recessionary cuts.

And in the distance, we have organizations that are well on their way to becoming social businesses. They have vibrant, self-supporting owned media communities while experts from many business functions act as ambassadors in earned media networks. Their customers and employees are actively engaged in digital discovery and collaborative service development, and all of this is wrapped up with measurable and meaningful ROI.

But let’s be frank. This is certainly the exception and not the rule. With this ideal in mind, it seems timely to look the trends that are likely to shape social business adoption in 2012 and beyond…

1. The year social grows up

The writing is on the digital (or is that Facebook?) ‘wall’… interactive marketing is here to stay. With analysts predicting spend hitting nearly US$80 billion by 2016, social media and digital are no longer the playthings of pajama-wearing bloggers and tweens. Beneath the headlines, though, there lies another story. Social media is hard. The streets aren’t paved with digital gold. For example, Reuters recently reported that financial advisors are seeing declining benefits from social media. In the same month, The New York Times told us Facebook visits were dropping.

Our client IBM’s Social CRM study highlighted the emerging gap between marketing perception and social consumer reality. It showed that while brand marketers felt consumers came to their social networks to feel brand love, the actually were more interested in receiving coupons, discounts and customer support.

In 2012, brands will increasingly be faced with a series of hard choices. I said in last year’s trends post, that a presence in the big four of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube was becoming a non-negotiable. The hard choices come as they realize that building a thriving community in each is time consuming and – without firm goals in place – possibly pointless.

There is a case for maintaining a minimal presence in one channel – perhaps using it as a bridge to another. For many brands, YouTube isn’t a strong community option – but is undeniably the video sharing leader. In this example, they should focus on other channels to build engagement while directing consumers to their videos – and then back to other, more appropriate channels for conversation or to purchase.

All of becomes more complex as brands need to maintain a watchful eye on emerging channels. Case in point is the much maligned Google+ which is tipped to hit 400 million users by the end of 2012. Are you there yet?

Maturing social consumers will also start modifying their behaviors. Social media overload will see them dropping away from social networks that don’t give them what they need. Those brands that have established social presences should start 2012 by asking their loyal, high-sharing social consumers what they want – and modify accordingly. This is especially important for those that have plateaued, are struggling to attract new followers or are seeing engagement levels dropping. The opportunity for brands in 2012 is for smarter, probably smaller, social networks that are built around tangible social customer needs of the vocal, high sharing minority and measurable business outcomes.

2. The age of social consumer relations management

The days of customers being happy with 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday support are coming to an end. Encouragingly, many brands have responded with social brand media monitoring programs and customer support staff in owned social media channels. While things are on the up,  2011 saw brands such as FedEx, Ocean Marketing and Qantas added to the pantheon of social media fail case studies.

Clearly, we’re not there yet. An October 2011 study from by Conversocial found many retailers failed to respond to complaints in social networks. Secondly from the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ school of customer support, issues have also blown up when attempts at online customer interaction have been judged inappropriate. And we’re also seeing backlash when brands have failed to anticipate the likely online reaction to their social media marketing attempts.

I predict 2012 will see the emergence of social consumer support functions. People with solid expertise in managing and predicting online customer behavior will play a much greater role in all facets of a brand’s online presence. The social media gold rush days are coming to an end. We need experts helping to plan and manage discussions. Surveys have told us people are looking for customer support in social channels, so get your customer support people there. This will force even deeper collaboration between business functions and with external agencies. It will also force jobs to be restructured as social consumer support – with its deeper customer understanding – taking a much more strategic role in business decisions. Begs a question – will PR become a social consumer relations function,

3. Drop the ‘social’ as social business becomes business

McKinsey reports that social technology use is increasingly correlated with operating margin improvements and market share leadership. Great news, especially for those of us who see social business becoming, simply, business in 2012, just as e-commerce became commerce before it.

In 2012, we’ll see a rapid adoption of social technologies changing all facets of business, whether they want to change or not.

At this year's #CampDigital, Jeremy discussed the social business evolution with Clelia Morales, Head of EU Social Media at eBay; Christophe Rocca, Regional Marketing Manager Southern Europe & Benelux at SanDisk and Jonathan Jiménez, Corporate Communications & Social Media at Vodafone.

The days of a marketing-led social media function are coming to a close. Smart companies are building centers of excellence that are supporting all business functions in a coordinated fashion. They’re also investing in training all employees, realizing that the core demands from social consumers are for subject matter expertise, not the size of someone’s Twitter following, Klout ranking or ability to text 100 words a minute. Text 100 has created an ambitious Digital Certification program where consultants, HR, IT, Finance staff and Office Managers are all tasked with improving their thought leadership, digital consulting skills, community management and training.

Like an increasing number of companies, we’ve realized our social consumers want to interact with us through social channels. In response we’re redesigning our client support, marketing, recruitment and internal communications channels to suit the requirements of our audiences.

The mission for 2012 is for marketers to let go of other business disciplines. Future success won’t be in their ability to interpret what their colleagues in customer service, human resources and so on do and deliver on their behalf. It will be in their ability to partner, coach and ultimately enable these functions.

4. Spokespeople evolved: Executives to experts

A recent GlobalWebIndex report found that B2B decision makers were highly socially engaged and rated conversations with brands on social networks as more influential than webinars, sales presentations, conferences or corporate entertainment. The more complex the decision, the greater the need to ask questions of experts in online communities.

Social consumers who make big decisions want to talk to the right people online. We’ve pushed C-level executives into the spotlight for more than a hundred years – and if they’re the right people to manage these complex online conversations then we need to arm them for the discussion.

We’re increasingly managing Digital Academy training for our clients. These programs help people from customer support, sales, marketing, human resources and so on use social networking channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn to support their business goals. The resulting programs see these experts blogging on corporate websites, managing communities in company discussion forums, and acting as ambassadors in external earned media communities.

Through 2012 and beyond we’ll see people from all business functions playing similar expanded roles in support of their own objectives. This is a logical next step for those companies that have developed owned media properties across Facebook, twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Based on our experience, it’s best to start with one business function, division or product and build a program around someone with a greater aptitude for social media. Measure their success – learn from the things that didn’t go well – and evolve the campaign around them.

5. Big data becomes business as usual

IDC’s “2011 Digital Universe Study: Extracting Value from Chaos” told us the world’s information is doubling every two years. Last year saw 1.8 zettabytes created and replicated. That’s a lot of info and while most PR people would run a mile before diving into the data, that’s one fear our profession is going to have to face.

In 2012, marketers will need to use hard metrics to gauge digital and social marketing ROI. We’re entering a tough economic environment where even harder questions are going to be asked of the PR tactics we propose. The time for social media experimentation is waning in the hunt for solid bottom-line results.

The answer increasingly lies in what’s being called ‘big data’. While the definitions are blurred, at its core big data means using a range of data sets including competitive information, online data such as social networking behaviors, offline data and customer information to enable a three dimensional approach to business decisions.

From a PR perspective the emergence of better, easier-to-use more targeted tools combined with geo-location technologies will mean data will play a meaningful role in PR activities. We’ll go beyond reach and “participation” measures such as likes and retweets and instead derive action-oriented insights from our metrics.

Big data will also help us understand the individuals we’re influencing so we can create more targeted strategies. And if this still makes you want to run a mile, 2012 will also see a rise in specialist data analysts who will increasingly play a role in shaping communications decisions.

We’ll put up part two of this post next week. As always, your thoughts are very welcome. To discuss directly with me, fire a note to jeremy.woolf@text100.com.hk.

Photos courtesy of flickr users Stuck in Customs, KY_Olsen, Text 100, and Koenvereeken, respectively.