COURSEWARE: Social Media and PR Crisis Communication

Social Media Workshop: PR and Crisis Communication

SOCIAL WEB
WORKSHOP
P.R.& Crisis Communication
Series A Level 1 (2008 edition)

Laurel Papworth World Communities 2008 @SilkCharm

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About this PR and Crisis Communications courseware
PR and Crisis Communication: This course combines and introduction to social media tools with strategies and
exercises for Public Relations practitioners who are interested in both monitoring and participating in online en-
gagement. It is focussed on how social networks use word of mouth in crisis such as bombings, floods and bush-
fires. Also how social networks can create a crisis online by creating anti-PR around a brand or company. We also
cover social media press releases

About the Courseware series
It is not a whitepaper, strategy document or state of the industry presentation. It is a workshop, or course based
exercise book. Because I am Australian, most of the case studies are from Australia. These courses have been
presented in Europe, Asia and Middle East, and I have found that most case studies are relevant, or at least initi-
ates discussions, in most cultures.

Some material is duplicated from course to course. So foundation information that is relevant to PR - such as ʻwhat
is a blogʼ may also be relevant to Marketing. However each course invariably has different case studies, as the
way that Public Relations uses social media tools is different than Marketing, which in turn is different from Cus-
tomer Service and Technical Support.

Other Courseware
I have presented many courses over many industry sectors, so intend to gradually in the next few months migrate
my courseware into a format that can be printed by other trainers, online. Some of the current courses/workshops
that I present and have content for include;
•Social Web Workshop: Monetization & Revenue - revenue streams for online communities.
•Social Web Workshop: Enterprise 2.0 - social tools behind the firewall - collaboration & knowledge sharing
•Social Web Workshop: for H.R. and Recruitment Workshop - on how social networks changes the paradigm

•Social Web Workshop: Travel and Tourism Workshop - course on strategies for large group & niche travel
•Social Web Workshop: The Social Media Marketing Campaign - 5 stages of a social media marketing campaign
•Social Web Workshop: The Social Media Audit - search and discover conversations on the ʻnet
•Social Web Workshop: Measurements and Metrics - workshop on how to measure social media
•Social Web Workshop: Small, Medium Size Business - workshop on using free tools for SMBs

In addition, I have case studies and material specific for Social Web Workshops specific for Film and Television,
Finance and Accountants, Law, Medical, Telecommunications and so on. Please enquire.

About Copyright
This work is under a creative commons license so donʼt be evil (attribute me, and ask me before you hack it up).
Iʼm pretty flexible, email me if you need something, never hurts to ask. Contact; +61432684992 (0432684992) or
laurel@laurelpapworth.com for information, licensing or exemptions. If you purchase the printed courseware
through any of the official sites, then that license applies. Donations gratefully accepted http://laurelpapworth.com

Front Page Graphic is from http://wordle.com and

Photographs by Gary Hayes of http://personalizemedia.com

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About Laurel Papworth
I am a consultant and workshop facilitator and international keynote presenter in social networks and social media.
I have been involved in virtual communities and social networks since the late 1980ʼs and running forums and vir-
tual world customer support since the late 1990ʼs. I present courses on Facebook for Business, Twitter for Busi-
ness and also industry streams e.g. Social Media for Banking, for H.R & Recruitment, for Film & TV. I teach social
media marketing campaign workshops through the University of Sydney Centre for Continuing Education and con-
sult on social networks to major companies including Middle East Broadcasting (MBC) - womenʼs online commu-
nity in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore Government, Macquarie Leisure, Sony Electronics, Channel Ten Aus-
tralian Idol community. For information on my speaking engagements and courses available, consultancy and ad-
vice, please go to http://laurelpapworth.com. If you wish to discuss the courseware, http://socialwebforum.com is a
good place to do that.

Thanks to
Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) for giving me opportunities to present my concepts and public rela-
tions stories in Australia and to UK and worldwide (via video) conferences. Thank you also to various Singapore
Government organisations such as Mindef (Defence) and MDA (Media Development Authority) for being such en-
thusiastic participants in my social media and PR/Marketing courses. I learnt a lot from teaching!

On Twitter, thanks to

• @trib (Stephen Collins of AcidLabs) acidlabs.org

• @ariherzog (Ari Herzog) ariwriter.com

• @leehopkins (Lee Hopkins of Better Communication) . leehopkins.net

• @kcarruthers Kate Carruthers kcarruthers.com
for their support as colleagues and high ethics as competitors

• Also @trevoryoung of PR Warrior, prwarrior.typepad.com

• @shel of Holtz Communication blog.holtz.com

• twitter@PRSarahevans of #journchat.info prsarahevans.com
for great social media tools for PR people,

Special mentions to Trevor Cook of Corporate Engagement, who escaped Twitter and is now a PR fugitive - twugi-
tive? Shel Israel@shelisrael and Robert Scoble @scobleizer for their world changing book, Naked Conversations
- I count myself lucky to include Shel Israel as a friend across oceans yet seems to be only a few pixels away.

Finally, thankyou to my partner and co-conspirator and editor, @garyphayes. All the errors are his!

Lastly
I donʼt know if anyone will ﬁnd my courseware useful. If you do, please let me know or make a donation at my
website. Students can share questions and answers at http://socialwebforum.org. The courseware wonʼt stand on
itʼs own without a trainer - use a good one! Additional material (recommended sites, case studies) are available for
trainers to download at http://laurelpapworth.com or http://socialwebforum.org

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Content Networks
8
Content Portal Diagram
10
Blogs
11
Blog Case Studies
12
Wikis
13
Wiki Case Studies
14
Distribution Networks
16
Ripple Effect Diagram
18
Facebook
19
Facebook Case Studies
20
RSS Syndicating Information
21
RSS Case Studies
22
Widgets & Snippets
23
Widget Case Studies
24
Social Bookmarking
25
Bookmarking Case Studies
26
Social Tagging
27
Social Tagging Case Studies
28
Conversation Networks
30
Twitter
31
Twitter Case Studies
32
Forums
33
Forums Case Studies
34
Virtual Worlds & Serious Games
35
Virtual Worlds Case Studies
36
Lists & Links
37

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Social Media
Content Networks

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Content Portal Diagram
An explanation of the social media content portal diagram

What is the diagram about?
Any site that is focussed on content creation - video, podcasts, multimedia - usually has most if not all of these
features. Do not confuse social media content sites with social media distribution or social media conversation
sites. Their primary purpose is quite different from the SM Content Portal sites.
When we create a video for YouTube or DailyMotion or Metacafe, or we post up a photo on Flickr or Photobucket,
or a powerpoint presentation on Slideshare, we have created that information in isolation and presented it to the
social network for comments and questions.
So the PINK represents the content that the content creator has control over. We can create a channel on You-
Tube for all our Videos. Often the Channel is just our name - in my case SilkCharm Slideshare or similar. The
Header is the Title and the content the heart of our creation. We can also display a Profile or About page, and add
licensing (creative commons etc).
The BLUE is viewer created content. This is quite different than our social media - short Comments, Votes or 5
star Rating *****, they can favourite our content and add it to groups they visit. They can also flag it as inappropri-
ate to a moderator.
The YELLOW colour is for the 3rd participant in social media sites - the host. The host (for instance, Google You-
Tube or Yahoo Flickr) offer dynamic information - number of Views, Recommendations, Embed Codes.

Case Study Two
Case Study One
You Tube
The Power of The Embed
The embed code allows fans to distribute your con-
tent - videos, podcasts - around the internet rather
than forcing people to come back to your site or
YouTube. However you can still measure view
count.
The trickiest part of embeds is understanding that
the video is not duplicated. Itʼs not downloaded and
saved to the viewers site, it just adds a widget. A bit
like watching the television through a window. You
are in another room (on say, a blog) but the video is
playing on the main server (YouTube).
In fact, the television is a good analogy - the You-
Tube page broadcasts out, but the TV set is on the
viewers Facebook, MySpace or some other page,
receiving the signal.
Embeds are powerful - remember getting the mes-
sage out is more important than traffic to a site.

FInally
While you control the content, the additional tools tell a viewer whether to bother or not. Learn the analytics. Content
sites have poor built in audiences - unlike Facebook with friends lists - so use embed and RSS and other distribution
tools as much as possible to seed you content from the content portal to distribution sites.

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Blogs
This section covers blogs and how they are used by PR practitio-
ners to communicate with the public.

What is a blog?
If you blog as an afterthought,
your readers will read it as an by Laurel Papworth
afterthought. Jorn Barger,
coined term “Weblog”. A blog is a series of articles written in a
diary format with comments and social
tools embedded. The articles are usually
written in the 1st person (“I am”) and
Blog Options seek to inform, entertain or otherwise
engage readers. While they may have
PR an advertising component, usually the
Write from the public relations purpose is to address and communicate
perspective, offering expert in- issues either about the company speciﬁ-
formation, videos, photos to the cally, or the industry as a whole
community to discuss.
Unlike a wiki or a forum, a blog is a one-to-many channel. The blogger
CEO sets the topic, tone and timeframe for discussion. The article (blog post)
A dynamic CEO with a unique is written in isolation and then presented as a ﬁnished product to the
“voice” may use a blog to voice audience, who may then comment and ask questions. The audience
his/her corporate vision and in- usually must stay on topic (that the blogger or author has set) and will
dustry directions. be consided “spam” if they stray onto other topics. While a blogger may
Customer Service invite other bloggers to contribute (group blog), they will stay retain con-
trol by pre or post moderating comments or removing commenters.
Staff that engage with consumers
on a daily basis may make excel-
lent bloggers as they know the
questions and answers and cur-
Why?
rent issues.
The fact that blog posts are written in isolation and are edited before
Leader
being presented to the social network makes them perfect for PR and
Sports bloggers for a health drink
marketing. As long as the writer seeks to engage with the audience, the
company, TV star bloggers for
topic, tone and content stay on target for community conversations.
teen fashion companies, external
leaders with a voice in that
demographic can blog about sto-
ries of interest.

How do blogs t into your PR Strategy?
When and how to implement
Use a blog to address emergency situations - product recall, rumours, staff
changes - where you seek to limit the discussion. Blogs can be either up-
Wordpress, Blogspot, Typepad, dated regularly (once a day or once a week) or hidden until required. How-
and others- these blogging plat- ever, be aware that “in case of emergency, break glass” blogs do not have
forms show you or a customer the trust and credibility as those that are always engaging with the target
can set up a blog in 3 steps. Add demographic and regularly updated. Monitor comments carefully until situa-
in YouTube video, Flickr for pho- tion is in hand.
toblogging and Slideshare for
Blogging press releases (see Social Media Press Release section) will con-
powerpoint presentation blogs,
tinue to offer social media assets (content) that brand evangelists can use.
and you can see that depth of
content sites are easy to use.

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Blog Case Studies
This section helps you understand who is using blogs as a busi-
ness tool and how they are implemented.

How is it used in practice?
Blogs have built in content tools but few audience tools. Consider the topic, tone of voice, and content matter.
Video blogs, photoblogs, text and multimedia have a different look and feel. Original indepth content often mixes
with distribution - links to newspapers and other sites.

Case Study One Case Study Two Blogs To Watch
NowWeAreTalking by Telstra FASTLANE by GM Motors • 1 - The Consumerist - Shoppers
Australiaʼs largest telecommu- The car manufacturer is in the top Bite Back
nication company has a group ten of corporate blogs, and have • 2 - BadPitch Blog.
blog (12 bloggers) to discuss now built their own channel so they
• 3 - NotGoodEnough - Austra-
regulatory issues and other do not need to rely on traditional
liaʼs Complaints Site
topics that were not getting fair media (newspaper, magazines) to
• 4 - PR Disasters - PR disasters,
mainstream press. publish their press releases.
spin doctors and reputation
During the last few years, management gone wrong
NWAT has laid off or sacked
• 5 - Better Communication - Lee
bloggers. Consider the conse-
Hopkins
A blog is not collaborative but it
quences of raising the proﬁle of
• Crikey - Trevor Cook
IS discussion. Publish industry
a few bloggers only to lose
them, acrimoniously or other- content, not just corporate.
wise. Tip: Laurel Papworth

Exercise - What shall we blog?
• Look around for videos - particularly howto or DIY? Who in the organisation can manage the role of blogger
best? Class - get into groups of four, write 3 sentences on your passion/interest, then ﬁnd a segue to link to
each other.

FInally,
If you have content such as reports, powerpoint slides, videos of HowTos and the CEO presenting their vision, consider a mul-
timedia blog. Easy to update, you can engage directly with consumers through comments and avoid dependence on main-
stream media.

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Wikis
This section covers wikis and how they are used by PR practitio-
ners to communicate with the public.

What is a wiki?
If a blog is like a lecture with
questions at the end, a wiki is by Laurel Papworth
like a collaborative workshop.
Laurel Papworth A wiki is an article on a web page
that is editable by a group of peo-
ple and makes a great example of
a broadcast, collaborative knowl-
Wiki Uses edge management system. Every-
one can add pages, update pages,
Replace eMail comment and discuss pages on-
When staff leave they take ac- line. Unlikes blog posts that have a
cess to their email with them. All locked down article with comments
conversations are lost, or must underneath, wikis have both an
be forwarded/printed up. Wikis editable article and a discussion
keep the conversation accessi- tab for comments.
ble.
Because, like a blog, there is no software to download, everything is
FAQs and Manuals accessible on the webpage. Within the Enterprise, wikis make a com-
Customer Service can update pelling argument for replacing email and outside the firewall, can be
wikis on the fly. Publish parts used to collaborate with the consumer. Upload pictures, videos, dia-
publicly, keeps others internal grams, tips, bullet points and FAQs to a collaborative system and watch
only. as consumers add value including translating to other languages.
Collaborative Press Releases
Staff that engage with consumers
on a daily basis may make excel-
Why?
lent bloggers as they know the
questions and answers and cur- Collaborative knowledge management tools reduce email traffice, ver-
rent issues. sion issues and make sure everyone is “on the same page” - literally.
They are great for workshopping an idea or group editing contextual
Leader
documents.
Sports bloggers for a health drink
company, TV star bloggers for
teen fashion companies, external
leaders with a voice in that
demographic can blog about sto-
ries of interest.
How do wikis t into your PR Strategy?
Start with the internal directory page - place that on a wiki and allow every-
one to update their own page with their own contact details and photo-
graphs and calendars.
Encourage those with niche information to update and share on the internal
Imagine a world in which every
wiki - critical and time sensitive customer and business issues such as cus-
single person on the planet is
tomer service or technical support.
given free access to the sum of
all human knowledge. That's Start to publish well patronized and updated pages to the public, with an
what we're doing option later for the public to changes some pages.
Jimmy Wales, Even further into your strategy, the public may choose to collaborate in co-
Founder of Wikipedia creating public relations services.

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Wiki Case Studies
This section covers how wikis affect PR. Also how Enterprise uses
them as collaborative knowledge management systems.

Blogs have built in content tools but few audience tools. Consider the topic, tone of voice, and content matter.
Video blogs, photoblogs, text and multimedia have a different look and feel. Original indepth content often mixes
with distribution - links to newspapers and other sites.

Case Study One Case Study Two National Emergency
Wikipedia vs WikiScanner Wikileaks During the Mumbai bombings,
Monitor Wikipedia for entries Wikileaks is developing an uncen- bloggers created a Google Doc
about your brand or company. sorable Wikipedia for untraceable that could be edited by anyone.
The wikipedians have a strong mass document leaking and analy- You added the name of someone
culture and will remove any- sis. Removes the need for a “whis- who was missing in Mumbai and if
thing that is untrue or defama- tleblower” to connect with a journal- anyone else heard news of that
tory. ist, and puts the power of publish- person (safe, in hospital, or dead)
ing and audience into their hands. the document was updated.
However, do not edit the page
to remove true information. Crowdsourcing during the Tsunami
Wikiscanner doublechecks all led to a wiki being created, and the
Wikis are becoming an essen-
changes to wikipedia pages, Australian bushfires news was
tial communications tool for
and recently the Australian De- kept updated on WikiNews.
partment of Defence was enterprises,
named as having edited Ross Mayfield, SocialText Wiki
Wikipedia 5000 times.

Exercise - What shall we wiki?
• Think about using a wiki internally first as they can be the most challenging to manage with customers. How
could you share information better using a wiki in the office? Class: Make and edit a list of 20 words on either
ʻblueʼ, ʻrockʼ or ʻlightʼ. (leads to Tagging exercise later).

FInally,
Using crowdsourcing or “collective intelligence” may lead to faster raising of awareness and distribution of time critical informa-
tion during a crisis. It is the responsibility of communications professionals to collate and verify this information.

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YOUR NOTES

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Social Media
Distribution Networks

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Ripple Effect Diagram
An explanation of the connected chain reaction diagram for
distributing content through social networks.

What is the diagram about?
Most companies think of broadcast when determining distribution of information strategies. As many eyeballs, visi-
tors to site, viewers of videos as possible.
The blogosphere, Twitterverse and other social networks work more on a chain reaction or a ripple of content.
A blog is great for content creation but doesnʼt come with an inbuilt audience. The key is to connect with others
who are interested in this content. Content moves around one network - e.g. retweeted on Twitter and then
bounces out into other networks - to Facebook, for example. Corporate blogs that do not link to other blogs or
other pages do gain trafﬁc from those sites. Reciprocity is a social contract between content creators
Two key concepts with this type of distribution are disintemediation and democratization. Disintermediation means
that you can go to an original source - if there is a quote in a newspaper or blog, you can follow back to the original
thinker and view the entire press release or article. Only bloggers and distributors that add value retain audience.
Democratization allows a blogger with very few readers to still have a major impact - as long as one of their read-
ers moves the content along.
Over time content may be driven into many networks, and fastmoving channels like Twitter present the opportunity
for velocity - 1 blog post may develop into 47 million media impressions over a weekend. So while Ripples are not
broadcast, they can have the same impact as traditional marketing channels.

Case Study One Case Study Two
Engadget vs Apple Deaf Mom vs fast food giant
In May 2007, Engadget received an email from an Not all ripple start with a big blog and large reader-
Apple.com email account stating that the iPhone ship. In January 2008, Karen, of Deaf Mom blog,
would be 3 months late, as would the Leopard op- drove through the drive-thru of Steak-and-Shake,
erating system and ignoring the mike/speaker, asked to make the
order at the window because she is deaf. She was
“Appleʼs stock promptly tanked on massive selling,
denied service. Her small blog post caught the eye
going from $107.89 to $103.42 in six minutes
of Diversity Inc which in turn was reblogged at The
(11:56 - 12:02). This wiped just over $4 billion off of
Consumerist (large blog). Journalists read about her
Appleʼs market capitalization. A lot of people lost a
story on there, contacted her, and she was on the
lot of money very quickly.” Techcrunch
evening Fox News on TV, and the local newspaper.
Ignoring blogs and social media can affect your bot- During this time, when you did research on Steak-
tom line earnings, stock price and trust/reputation in and-Shake on business news sites like Yahoo!
the marketplace. if you have a problem with C-level News and Google Business News, two facts were
executives in your company understanding the obvious. One, that a deaf mother had been denied
value of being involved in social media, as them to service contravening the Disabilities Act of America
read my blog post on the issue. and two, that Steak-and-Shake were at a sensitive
stage of negotiations regarding a merger.
http://laurelpapworth.com/apple-0-blogosphere-1-bo
gus-iphone/ http://laurelpapworth.com/australia-event-social-net
works-and-pr/

FInally,
Creating content is not enough - listening and responding, promoting relationships and being engaged is a fundamen-
tal change from broadcast channels. Understand that the absence of a relationship with social media circles creates a
void that will be ﬁlled by content that may harm you. Yet building Trust and Reputation through engagement would go
a long way to mitigate erroneous information. Not all bloggers are created equal, learn who has a voice, and how to
get corrections, updates and apologies out in a meaningful way.

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Facebook
This section covers how to use Facebook as both a social net-
work operating system and as a business communication tool.

What is Facebook?
If Facebook were a country, it
would be the 8th most popu-
by Laurel Papworth
lated in the world, just ahead
of Japan & Russia Mark Zucker-
Australia has a population of 21
berg
million people. Over 4.5 million
adult Australians (over 18) have
joined Facebook since May 2007.
Whether PR and Marketing profes-
Viral Touchpoints sionals personally like Facebook, it
cannot be ignored as a powerful
Email (out), Inbox (internal)
customer community.
Send 1-1 or group private mes-
sages. Facebook is a personal profile
based site (not blog) that acts as a
Notifications
“gated community” - the member stands at the gate and allows other
Receive messages in email, in-
members to connect, or not. Information is restricted to those who share
box or feed of groups, events and
mutual friendship - you wonʼt find many videos on Facebook that have
applciations friends have added.
been seen 12 million times, like you do on YouTube. Yet Facebook has
Public a huge amount of viral “touchpoints” - tools to pass information around.
The Wall, Shared/Posted Items, Facebooks role is very much distribution rather than content based.
Status Updates, Notes (miniblog)
In addition Facebook Applications platform - F8 - empowers any com-
- places for links.
pany to create an application for distribution in the social network. A
Feeds widget or App may have RSS feeds, be a game, or simply show loyalty.
Minifeed (about me) NewsFeed
On Facebook you canʼt blog and therefore it is quite a different network
(about them) - passive notifica-
than say open broadcast blogs like MySpace.
tion.
Content
Attach item, Photos, Videos -
Why?
promote in other ways
Group Activity Social networks of this size and this well organised are like opening a
stall on a busy shopping mall. Itʼs free, but you still have to staff it, and
Groups, Events, Fan Pages,
find ways of grabbing attention. Still, the speed of distribution (see:
Applications Chain Reaction and Ripple Effect) is high, and word of mouth powerful.
3rd party games and tools,

Brand Fanpages are different
How does Facebook t into strategy?
from Brand Groups . With Fan-
Pages, mutual friendship is not
required, and you have metrics Create your “depth of content” on external broadcast sites such as YouTube
such as how many people visit a (videoblog), Flickr (photoblog) and Wordpress (text or multimedia blog).
page, unique views, become a Then use Facebook to distribute that content. Because Facebook is a per-
fan and graphs. Groups may ap- sonal profile “first” service (unlike Ning that is groups “first”), use FanPage,
pear more authentic. groups and events to bring customers together into channels for discussion.
Use applications to provide interactive promotion and awareness.
Laurel Papworth

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Facebook Case Studies
This section covers how Facebook is being used by Governments
and Crisis Groups.

Some brands use Facebook Fanpages as the branded microcommunity. Others add it as just one tool to a social
media campaign strategy. Applications such as TripAdivor ʻWhere Iʼve Beenʼ mean that a group/page is not neces-
sary.

Case Study One Case Study Two Facebook Groups
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Australian Bushfire on • Itʼs a good idea to find groups
Facebook
The Australian Prime Minister, that are target for PR activity -
Kevin Rudd, uses a Facebook There are 81 groups covering the political, not for profit and me-
page to push out information to fires of ʼ09 including memorial dia. Here are journalist groups:
the members. pages, fundraisers and housing • 1 - Journalists and Facebook.
assistance. While Twitter was used
Mr Rudd distributes his content • 2 - International Journalists
to broadcast news quickly, Face-
from other social media sites Network (IJNET).
bookʼs applications offered fund-
for example My Flickr for pho- • 3 - Foreign Correspondents
raising widgets and event man-
tographs. He also offers a Kev- Club of Facebook
agement tools.
in07 widget “Rudd and Labor
• 4 - Reporters sans Frontieres
Supporter” that voters can add
• 5 - Find a Journalist - Around
to their own Facebook page.
the World
TIP: Add Facebook applications
Notes are used for mini blog
that simplify your life: there are
posts on current affairs.
ones that auto-add your latest blog
post, Twitter tweet or Flickr pho-
tos.

Exercise - Structuring forums
• Class: Split into equal groups. Discuss building an Facebook widget/app for 1. An Orchestra. 2. Launch of a
new car 3. Not for profit to save cats 4. A photography group. Present back to group. Everyone votes but not
for their own presentation.

FInally,
Facebook is used by members to connect to each other in a time of crisis, to find out news of family at risk at a distance, to
gain verified information from society leaders and to share community rituals and events around a situation. Applications such
as ClipIn give donation and fundraising tools to everyone and may impact Not For Profit sector.

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RSS Syndicating Information
This section covers RSS feeds and their importance to PR and
Crisis Communication.

What is RSS?
RSS newsfeeds are usually
made up of headlines, sum- by Laurel Papworth
maries, links and content, and
offer live updates ʻoff siteʼ. Opening up content to RSS (Really
Simple Syndication) is a way of
publishing your content online in a
broadcast fashion. Syndication
RSS for PR means making your information
available to other services, via
Builtin ʻsubscriptionʼ. Before the days of
Itʼs usually built in to the Web 2.0 the internet, news subscription re-
tools like blogs, wikis and forums. quired AAP or Reuters to fax or
Press Centre telephone content around the world
to editors. In a sense, distributing
Consider adding RSS of Press to
their news articles internationally, to other services. With RSS we allow
your site.
subscribers (consumers, bloggers, social media sites) to consumer our
Emergency RSS content where and when they want to . Perhaps they want to receive the
If you work in an Emergency in- headlines of our blog on .. Facebook? MySpace? their blog? Perhaps
dustry, add RSS as a tool for they want our videos on their iGoogle page or MyYahoo? RSS allows
breaking news. that to happen.
Content Part of Web 2.0 is the separation of form from content. This is a way of
Add RSS for videos, photos, receiving the information as text headlines or images, without having to
powerpoint go to the host page.
Internal Comms
Offer calendar and meeting min-
utes RSS feeds. People can see
Why?
when they have been updated
Expecting people to come to YOUR website or YOUR Facebook page
Other departments
limits your ability to build a channel. When a consumer subscribes to
Consider RSS for advertising
your RSS feed, they will be updated on the latest breaking news, with-
(latest special offers), jobs, clas-
out having to open email or visit you. It will be on their favourite, most
sified ads, and event manage-
visited pages, as they choose.
ment.

How does RSS t into your Strategy?
... folks are just beginning to real-
RSS is really part of your distribution strategy. You create content on You-
ize is that RSS helps people (in-
Tube, Flickr, and other content social media sites, and allow fans to sub-
cluding journalists) cut through
scribe (be notified) of new content. Because of RSS flexibility, the updates
the messaging overload. Speak-
are where and when the target audience wants them. Think of ʻbreaking
ing for myself, less than 5 per-
newsʼ from the Sydney Morning Herald appearing on your NineMSN or
cent of the 400+ emails I get
MyYahoo page, and you have an idea of how bloggers creating breaking
every day actually contain rele-
news feeds of their latest blog posts and let people be notified who they
vant, targeting pitches from PR
want to subscribe to them.
professionals.
see my Monitoring Social Media workbooks for using RSS for conversa-
Mark Jones, Infoworld
tions.

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RSS Case Studies
This section is on how RSS will work for service wanting to provide realtime updates
across the internet & not just on their own site.

Because every time you update information on your own site, it is updated remotely on other sites, RSS offers an
excellent tool to broadcast real time business critical information such as bushfires, stock prices and new head-
lines.

Case Study One Case Study Two Things to Do:
Homeland Security, US Gov. Centers for Disease Control and • Check PRNewswire.com for
Prevention, CDC, US Gov.
“Can I use Homeland Security examples of using RSS for PR
News Feeds on my Web site? CDC has RSS feeds. EXAMPLE: • Check Feedburner.com and
“CDC Flu - Get notified whenever other Feed sites.
Yes, Department of Homeland
any new or updated documents are
Security headlines and stories • Consider feeds for: PDF, Pow-
posted anywhere on the CDC Flu
may be displayed on your Web erpoint, Video, Audio/Podcasts,
Website Includes Avian flu, Travel
site using RSS. Your own tech- Images/Diagrams, Downloads.
advice, PandemicFlu.gov.”
nical staff is your resource for • Note the use of RSS in the later
implementation.” section on iGoogle - manage
your information overload.
EXAMPLES: News, Press Re- RSS feed readers are now built
leases, Speeches, Testimony, • Use create-rss.com to combine
directly into browsers such as Mi-
Leadership Journal multiple feeds such as Top 10
crosoft Internet Explorer, Firefox,
PR Blogs
Safari and Flock.
• RSS your common search
terms.

Exercise - Using RSS
• Class discussion.

FInally,
RSS breaks the internet up so that people can receive your latest headlines on their Facebook page, My Yahoo! an RSS
reader, email, in their browser and so on. Itʼs all about feed subscriber numbers, not site visits or unique visitors now.

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Widgets & Snippets
This section covers widgetizing content for distribution across the
Internet as games or interactive panels.

What is a widget?
Widget content is not static, is
interactive, and is a small by Laurel Papworth
frame on another website.
Offer a widget, also called a snip-
pet, or (in the case of Google) a
gadget, as a way of extending RSS
content. While RSS tends to be
Widgets for PR purely information such as head-
lines being offered on external
Clocks websites, widgets are more graphi-
Branded clocks that people can cal and can be extended into
add to their webpages games and information boxes.
Countdown to Event While a list of weather in capital
Consider a countdown widget for cities is an RSS feed, pinning live updates of the weather to area maps,
a conference or school holidays. with the map widget being clickable or zoomable, makes for a more
Auction Tickers interactive experience. Extending this even further, so that images of
people wearing different clothes based on the weather is fun yet infor-
Using RSS to bring a widget with
mative.
latest auction items
Stock market tickers Customers who choose to add your widget to their sites and pages are
doing advertising for you. If in turn those widgets empowers sales e.g.
Add RSS widgets with stock price
eBay or Amazon widget, customers are also selling to customers. Word
and news
of mouth takes place by their choice to add your brand to their social
Fundraising space.
Allow people to add ClipIn dona-
tions to their blog and Facebook.
Traffic and Map
Why?
Map mashup widgets include
traffic jams Widgets breakup the internet into “little bits everywhere” making for
Weather and Planetary highly customizable and personal sites. By offering a widget, that is use-
ful, informative, education and/or fun, the consumer is comfortable with
Daily weather, planet positions
branding their personal social space with widgets that their friends can
and the tide
see and use offering viral seeding into relevant social networks.

Widgetized maps of areas af-
How do widgets t into your Strategy?
fected by natural disasters allow
everyone concerned to add that When and how to implement
information to their sites. It is an
There are a substantial amount of non-nutritional social networking products
effective ripple or word of mouth
available for free to millions of consumers. By non-nutritional I mean ʻfunnyʼ
campaign to ensure that the
applications that are added once then never used again. Try to develop a
message - whether avian flu or
fun, yet useful widget to ensure long term engagement.
bushfires - is passed along. The
map updates with Official infor-
mation.
see my Facebook for Business workbooks for using application widgets
for promotions.

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Widget Case Studies
This section is on how widgets work for organisations as peer to peer
distribution of information.

Many companies use widgets as advertising - hoping that a poll, silly questionaire or funny game will entice cus-
tomers to add the company branding to their page. However some widgets are very indepth including map mash-
ups.

Example Case Study Two Things to Do:
Homeland Security, US Gov. • Move beyond text - what up-
Real Time Terror Alert Warning dates (weather, stock price)
Badge could be graphical?
• What internal databases could
“Displays the Homeland Security
be opened up - stock availabil-
departments' current terror alert in
ity, ofﬁce opening times, health
a handy color-coded badge. “
or travel information?
The RSS is now a changing badge.
• Consider asking your public
what they want - a competition
maybe?
Advertise your site with an interac-
• Professional and educational
tive widget. Offer sales through a
works for critical information.
sales widget. Keep people upto-
• Fun and personal widgets work
date with graphical information.
for everyone else.

Exercise -Creating a widget
• Class activity - in groups, discuss your group activities from earlier in light of making a widget or application. If
no subject has been chose, pick Orchestra, Formula 1, or Icecream.

FInally,
Widgets allow customers to show brand loyalty and add value to the visitors to their blog or Facebook page by adding your
information. During times of crisis, having a widget ready will see a large uptake in that widget.

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Social Bookmarking
This chapter covers filtering and favouriting sites and sharing
them across the social networks.

What is Social Bookmarking?
Find others who are book-
marking the same sites you by Laurel Papworth
like and use their list to find
more! Normally when you bookmark or
Laurel Papworth,
favorite a site in your browser, that
site is only available to you and
only available on that computer or
device.

Social Bookmark Social Bookmarking services allow
you to bookmark into ʻthe cloudʼ -
Sites save the bookmark on the internet
Technorati and then to choose to share or not
Has been around for a long time that bookmark with others.
and tracks hundreds of millions of
Some bookmarking sites are purely to aid your memory - found a great
blogs
website? Bookmark it, share it with others doing research, write a note
del.icio.us about it. Others, such as DIGG function more as a social newspaper
A popular shared bookmarking with Citizen Editors pulling in articles from the internet to share with oth-
site ers.
StumbleUpon Using the bookmarking service at work cuts down on emails passing
The fun of random sites book- links around, and means that monitoring of bookmarked sites can be a
marked by a large community. shared collaborative office activity.
Digg Keep each bookmark private, share it a group, or share with everyone.
Vote bookmarked items up and
down to see if they make it to the
front page of citizen newspaper.
Why?
Facebook
Creating content is time consuming and requires a reasonable amount
Yes, Facebook can also be used
of commitment and knowledge. Finding relevant information and sharing
to store bookmarks or see others
it, on the other hand is relatively easy which is why social bookmarking
- check out POSTED ITEMS, for
is one of the most common and popular toolset on the internet today.
a start.
Friendfeed
Lots of people like to chat about
bookmarked items on Friend-
Feed.
How this ts into the Social Media strategy
6th August 2005
Ask the team to create social bookmarking profiles on the same service and
These three activities – the then ask them to share with the team the sites they are moderating, com-
“Three Fs” of finding, filtering ments they are watching, and use the notes section to share concerns.
and forwarding – scaled up to Monitor your own sites and forums on popular services to gauge public re-
the swarm of a billion Internet action. Push out time critical, emergency communications into sharing sites
users, describe the world we to ensure coverage.
see today.
Mark Pesce, Future Street Consult-
ing

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Bookmarking Case Studies
This section lists the major social bookmarking sites and gives an
opportunity for the class to discuss strategies.

As a promotional tool, bookmark sites and their widgets empower readers to forward your content into their own
networks. Monitoring social bookmarking sites helps with analytics and measurements, making for easier organi-
sation.

Notes
Laurel Papworth
Many major newspapers are adding social book-
mark buttons to their sites to add readers who wish
to share the article with friends using other re-
sources than simply printing or emailing a link.
Most of the sites on the right offer analytics - so you
can see how many times your information has been
saved as a bookmark, sent to others, rated with 1 to
5 stars, listed on popular leaderboard lists, and gain
rankings in niche communities.
Remember you donʼt need to visit every site - you
can pull in an RSS feed (see earlier section) and
monitor the communication that way!

Exercise - using bookmarking on your own site
• Class - discuss how you use your bookmarks now - alphabetical, in folders, one long list?

FInally,
Remember, some of these sites are not just for bookmarking but develop their own communities. Leaders may
promote your bookmarked item to hundreds of thousands of others, if you ﬁt in to their community.

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Social Tagging
This chapter covers how we name content on social media sites
and categorize our conversations.

What is Social Tagging?
The spontaneous cooperation
of a group of people to organ- by Laurel Papworth
ize information into categories
Wiktionary, 2008 Until now, most of humanities clas-
sification systems have mostly
been hierarchal (called Taxonomy).
Think of a book in a library - it be-
longs in one section, one place and
What is a TagCloud? nowhere else.
from Wikipedia
Social tagging, also called collabo-
rative tagging, social classification,
The first use of tag clouds on a
social indexing and folksonomy,
high-profile website was on the
uses keyword tagging to classify
photo sharing site Flickr, created
content. Each person viewing the content can use their own keywords -
by Flickr co-founder and interac-
or view popular keywords provided by others.
tion designer Stewart Butterfield.
That implementation was based Finding information becomes easier because of this ʻmetadataʼ - you
on Jim Flanagan's Search Refer- can find websites not only based on taxonomy but on emotions such as
ral Zeitgeist,[3] a visualization of ʻgoodʼ, ʻawfulʼ ʻfunnyʼ ʻtragicʼ.
Web site referrers. Tag clouds
Now the book - an online version anyway - can be kept wherever you
have also been popularized by
want. Multiple keywords means you can find the link to it in multiple lo-
Del.icio.us and Technorati,
cations.
among others.
A text cloud or word cloud is a
visualization of word frequency in
Why?
a given text as a weighted list.
The technique has recently been Allowing consumers to tag information with their own keywords helps
popularly used to visualize the with brand recall and retention of information. Many also add bookmark
topical content of political widgets to their websites and blogs that say “What Iʼm Reading” dy-
speeches. namically updating as they read your articles. Search becomes easier.

How this ts into the Social Media Campaign
6th August 2005
On Twitter, members use the
Tagging can reveal consumer sentiment about content on your site. Tags
letter # (hash) in front of key- such as ʻusefulʼ ʻinformativeʼ may be measured against ʻawfulʼ ʻuselessʼ.
words. This tells the readers Navigating content via Tag Clouds is an alternative to search that visually
that a tweet belongs to a par- oriented people may prefer.
ticular thread or conversation.
Because the content is being tagged, Google and other search engines
#followfriday, #election..
rank the metadata tags higher than the normal data/words, because 5 or 6
Hashtagging on Twitter words describing a page helps the search engines deliver appropriate
search results to users. Tags may therefore help with Search Engine Opti-
mization.

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Social Tagging Case Studies
This section gives examples of tagging, tag clouds and an exer-
cise.

Easy navigation of websites, widgets that use tags to deﬁne the person “this is who I am” and assists with releas-
ing website information from the long tail (content that rarely gets found or read).

Case Study One
Laurel Papworth
A local council service in Australia found their or-
ganisationʼs Intranet search hard to use and unreli-
able. So one of the women in the ofﬁce went
through every document and bookmarked it in
Del.icio.us, tagging each document with keywords
relevant to the different groups in the organisation.
However, as tagging is really a social activity, it
wasnʼt long before everyone was bookmarking the
documents, sharing them amongst themselves and
clustering the documents into many different
groups.
Remember: staff will use tools that work for them, or
that they use anyway in their every day life.

Exercise
• Class - Split into groups. Take one keyword each. Rock, Blue, Water. Now create more keywords based on
your one keyword.

FInally,
Keep an eye on tagging sites to see how your brand material is being tagged. Implement tag clouds so that people
can navigate the site based on metadata. Check tag clouds to see what keywords are strong, and which ones
weak.

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YOUR NOTES

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Social Media
Conversation Networks

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Twitter
This section covers Twitter as an instant (synchronous) communi-
cation tool, some software to use with it and itʼs role in news.

What is Twitter?
Follow people who share your
values, sense of humour and by Laurel Papworth
interests. You decide who and
what is important. Laurel Pap-
Twitter is a mobile social network -
worth
though mostly used through the
web in Australia - where you have
140 characters to answer the ques-
tion “What Are You Doing”. Most
Twitter Terms answers fall into 1 of 3 categories -
Testimonials (I am going to work, I
Tweet
am taking the kids to school), Dis-
140 character - 1. testimonial, 2.
tribution links (Read this blog
linking URL or 3. @conversation.
http://tinyurl.com/link) and Conver-
Followers vs Friends or sation (@SilkCharm how are you
“Followed” today)
The people who are listening to
Twitter functions as a realtime (synchronous) network and while it is
the your tweets vs The people
possible to continue a discussion days later, picking back up the thread
you are listening to.
weeks later is rare. Twitter is not a depth of content based network like a
hashtags # blog, but a conversation and distribution network. A simpliﬁed version of
searchable topics Facebook it works on a half-gated policy. You can openly broadcast
your own content yet selectively ʻfollowʼ other people.
Tweetup
Organising a real life meetup with Twitters real power is in itʼs open APIs and hundreds of applications/
Twitter folk. services (see later for API information) including ʻadd followersʼ tools.
@Replies
Put @ and their twitter name,
and the public message will show
Why?
up on recipients Reply timeline.
TinyURL, Twurl, Bit.ly etc A fast growing social network (Entered Top 100 sites early 2009), and
Use a URL shortening service to because of itʼs realtime communication tools, Twitter facilitates ex-
include long links in your 140 tremely speedy distribution of news and critical information. Even with-
char. out a large audience, substantial number of ʻretweetsʼ ripples your mes-
sage out.
TwitPic
Upload a foto to Twitpic and it will
be auto tweeted

How does Twitter t into your Strategy?
Connect to people based on geo-location, interest, or reach. Use velocity of
Why Twitter Is Useful
marketing to get message out, and receive market intelligence. Use the
For business, Twitter can be channel to engage particularly Customer Service answering real time ques-
used to broadcast your com- tions, publicly, and to empower Twitter members to co-create with you. En-
pany's latest news and blog sure you EITHER participate in community events and rituals such as
posts, interact with your custom- #2ForTuesday OR simply run an autobot for news, clearly stating that fact.
ers, or to enable easy internal
collaboration and
Tweeternet.com

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Twitter Case Studies
This section is on how Twitter will work for business as a real time
Q&A tool, for distribution of information and customer service.

Some brands use Twitter for customer service ʻpersonalʼ service albeit publicly accessible discussions. Time criti-
cal information picks up velocity with re-tweets. The mobile nature makes it ʻalways-onʼ. Or distribute via an RSS
bot. An account that simply links out all the time is ignored - must have conversation or testimonials as well.

UK Security and Defence @BigPondTeam from Telstra • Search for lists - Famous peo-
updates Australia ple on Twitter, journalists on
UK newsfeed on security and Bigpond initially made an error in Twitter.
defence issues @In_Terra ﬁlling their tweets with “thankyou, • Join friends on Twitter - keeps
automatically posts up informa- weʼll get back to you”. Eventually you honest and friendly.
tion using RSS and autobots. Customer Service engaged and
• Investigate tools like Monittor,
answered questions on Twitter.
EXAMPLE: SECURITY NEWS Tweetdeck, Twitterfall.
Reduces helpline calls and aids
FEED: Medhat received death • Search bios with Peoplebrowsr
threats - Fatah leader: Slain or Tweepsearch
senior Palestinian of..
• Tweet jobs available, items for
TIP: @RichardFromDell is better
http://tinyurl.com/djobf4
sale, housemates wanted with a
than simply @Dell. Or leave
Notes using an ʻauto-botʼ to link to deeper content sites.
enough room to sign off your
autopost Tweets is useful (if •
tweets with your ﬁrst name. reTweet fundraising events or
limited) for high alert time criti- coffee meetups for followers.

Exercise - Using Twitter
• Class discussion - discuss using Twitter for real time updates for business information. Focus on Sales and
Customer Service.

FInally,
Try to use Twitter to show a human face (tell your story), make sure you link to other interesting, humorous or educational
articles/blogs as well as your own. Respond openly to questions with @name. Following many, with few following back, looks
like spam.

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Forums
This section covers forums and how they are used by consumers
to raise awareness of issues around brands and organisations.

What is a forum?
A bulletin board is a place where
you can leave public messages - by Laurel Papworth
to advertise, buy/sell, promote
events, or provide information.
Forums allow anyone to start a
conversation - unlike blogs. And
while the conversations (called
threads) are not editable by each
Forum Features member (unlike a wiki), each mem-
ber can comment back in a linear
Many to Many fashion.
Anyone can start the discussion.
Forums are asynchronous (not real
Topics are placed in relevant sub-
time). The real time version of fo-
forums. Others join in.
rums would be chat channels. Fo-
Peer to Peer rums are also called bulletin boards or bbs and are sometimes a second
A blog limits the conversation to step after setting up a blog for companies.
the topic of the blogger. By open-
Forums often have builtin social networking tools that the other social
ing up a forum, customers can
media tools donʼt offer. For example, titles for commenters (called “post-
feel that their needs are ad-
ers” in forums). This enables the natural hierarchy and leadership roles
dressed by allowing them to post
of a community to be implemented, enabling the community to scale up
discussion threads and answer
larger much quicker. Moderator/Admin tools are quick sophisticated and
each other.
subforums for special groups work well as reward systems. The ability
Complex and mutilayers to offer Karma Points (forum loyalty points) is also a feature.
Many people responding on
many topics - following
subthreads and repeat threads
becomes challenging.
Why?
Long Tail
The power of forums is the fact that one customer can ask a question
A forum thread can have thou-
and another customer can answer it. This provides authentic testimoni-
sands of responses, sometimes a
als and peer to peer support, reducing cost of acquisition of the cus-
small group may post many times
tomer and technical support costs.
over a number of years. This sort
of discussion rarely happens on a
blog.

How do forums t into your Social Network?
Everything about your forum -
If your blog is popular and you would now like to have the customer com-
colours, leaderboards, path to
munity respond back proactively rather than through comments, a forum
community moderator, Badges
might be for you. Blogs are light on community - itʼs hard to badge leaders,
for roles, tribal areas (subfo-
reward roles of welcomer, teacher and give tools for subgroups on a blog. A
rums), rituals and events should
forum usually has these things built in. By offering forums, you may ﬁnd
work together to build a good
your community grows exponentially - rather than a blogger setting the
behaviour. Donʼt rely on Code of
agenda for the conversation, the community choose themselves what they
Conduct or Etiquette Statement.
wish to discuss.
Laurel Papworth

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Forums Case Studies
This section covers how forums work for business as a peer-to-
peer support tool and many-to-many conversation. .

Forums offer many-to-many discussions. They drop technical support and customer service costs to 1/5th by em-
powering one customer to answer another customers question. Sophisticated complex social tools empower fast
growth.

Case Study One Case Study Two Forums
Parents Jury (Australia) Whirlpool.net.au (Australia) • 1 - Big Brother and Australian
In Australia, the Parents Jury This is a community of nearly Idol for TV microcomunities.
forum addresses issues around 300,000 telecomms technicians • 2 - Hepatitis and Diabetes for
children and healthy food and discussing broadband in Australia. health and children.
advertising. They have become They undertake some of the roles
• 3 - EssentialBaby for mothers
a successful lobby group, and of Regulatory Affairs, highlighting
and babies
won a battle to have over- inaccuracies in contracts and ad-
• 4 - Microsoft, Cisco and Open-
sugared cereals removed from vertising and are more visited than
source forum communities
supermarkets. telco sites.
• 5 - Sports forums
Watch carefully industry
• 6 - vBulletin, PHPBB, Simple-
boards/forums - this particular
Board are three examples of
one has a Fame and Shame Online forums do not belong to
cheap or free bulletin board fo-
award - the one for Pester Gen Y. The ﬁrst forums or BBSʼs in
rum software. Some come pre-
Power is to shame companies the 1970s - weʼve socialized PCs
installed on a hosting plan.
that use children to advertise to together since the beginning.
children.

Exercise - Structuring forums
• How many subforums can you think of - Announcements, on topic, offtopic? What roles would you allocate in
the community? Teachers, ʻcopsʼ, editors, event organisers? Class: play a game of telling a story. Each person
tells the next line, following on from before and only ONE line.

FInally,
Once you have established clear behaviour sociability features in your forum, they need a lighter hand than other tools. In fact
the host should not insert as much content as they would in say, a blog.

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Virtual Worlds & Serious Games
This chapter covers how we use 3D worlds to engage and distrib-
ute information.

What is a virtual world?
“As society migrates into vir-
tual worlds we become pio-
by Laurel Papworth
neers exploring the new fron-
tiers of the mind”
Computer games have been avail-
Laurel Papworth, video 2008
able to the public for many years,
but the multiplayer social virtual
worlds are growing at a faster rate
than stand alone games. Worlds
Virtual P.R. such as Twinity, and Second Life
bring members together to create,
Second Life collaborate and discuss in a 3D
environment.
Duran Duran made a huge
Serious games use virtual worlds
splash in summer 2006 with their
and gaming technology for ʻseriousʼ purposes - business training or mili-
announcement of a Second Life
tary or teaching about crisis scenarios.
presence, that got them more
press coverage than theyʼd had The public is spending an ever increasing number of hours in these vir-
in the prior year. tual worlds, and ever decreasing hours consuming traditional media.
The newest virtual world tools are overlays on web browsers - Exit Real-
Recently, though, Fox broke new
ity and RocketOn are two - so that the public can walk around your
ground as the studio brought
websites with 3D avatars.
Bruce Willis into the popular on-
line community Second Life to
take questions from the fans and
Why?
media. In order to host such a
unique opportunity, Fox con-
The realtime experiential nature of virtual worlds makes them ideal for
structed one of the most impres-
corporate training and organisational virtual facilities. Simulation and
sive Second Life structures ever
preparedness exercises using webcasts, video, and online courses ex-
built.
tend the education of the public into 3D social spaces.
United Nations Food Force
One of the most well-known and
highly regarded serious games,
How this ts into Social Media Strategies
Food Force was commissioned
by the United Nations' World
Advertising, Sales, PR, Customer Service, H.R., Recruitment,
Food Programme, and aims to
Training...
educate the user about the
Virtual worlds make an excellent Research and Development (R&D) envi-
causes, effects and solutions to
ronment as well as triggers for rippling out into the blogosphere as virtual
famine in third world nations.
worlds are intense experiences.
Viral micro goods also called branded pixel products are used to both pro-
mote and to connect to the audience. Events such as inviting pop stars into
Habbo and Second Life to give interviews and concerts can promote a
cause or awareness, and are generally well attended.
...make sure the people who you
Reuters had a dedicated virtual world journalist in Second Life, the Ameri-
employ to represent you inworld
can Army use virtual worlds for combat training and over 300 Universities
are extremely familiar not just
use Second Life as a virtual lab and classroom. There are a vast range of
with the local space they will be
tasks and activities that can be done in a virtual world or through serious
hanging around in but the whole
gaming that donʼt have the same real time impact in a 2D environment or
social world.
are not feasible in the real world.
Gary Hayes, Virtual World Expert

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Virtual Worlds Case Studies
This section gives background and case studies on companies
and governments using virtual worlds for public engagement.

.

Darfur Is Dying BioTerrorism Preparedness • View machinima (videos made
Darfur is Dying is a serious The Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness in virtual worlds) on YouTube
game that seeks to teaches and Preparedness program • Start a Habbo account as itʼs
about the conditions in which (IBAPP) has been launched to pro- browser based
people live in the warring re- vide bioterrorism and emergency
• Read blogs MUVEDesign, Sec-
gion of Darfur in Western Su- preparedness training to Idaho's
ondLifeBlogs, Business Com-
dan. The player is tasked with healthcare workforce.
municators of Second Life, New
controlling the members of a
World Notes
family caught in the middle of
• Download Second Life,
the conﬂict. As a chosen family In augmented and online virtual
There.com, Kaneva, or Active-
member you have to gather worlds, humanity will exponentially
Worlds and start an avatar there
water to help grow crops, but to evolve, free from the limiting
get to the water you have to • Ask a young relative to talk to
ghosts of that other virtual world
avoid roving bands of militia. you about World of Warcraft or
we call reality.
Runescape.
Gary Hayes

Exercise - Virtual Worlds
• Class -A RolePlay in Physical Spaces

FInally,
Virtual worlds provide a better educational system, more engaging entertainment media, creative and innovative collaborative
spaces than traditional web solutions. By investing time and research into virtual worlds and serious games, companies have a
better idea about true engagement and interaction beyond viral videos and email newsletters. This is a growth area and using
virtual tools broadens a companies ability to respond to

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Lists & Links
Here we list top PR blogs, some tools to monitor reputation, sites
that explain negative groundswell and how it happened.

PR Blogs
PR Tools Online

Brian Solis - PR 2.0 http://briansolis.com
Press Release Grader - pressrelease.grader.com/
PR Squared - http://www.pr-squared.com
Trackur - http://www.trackur.com/
A shel of my former self - http://blog.holtz.com/
BuzzGain - http://buzzgain.com
Pop! PR Jots
- http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/
Radian6 - http://www.radian6.com
Strategic PR - http://prblog.typepad.com/
BuzzLogic - http://www.buzzlogic.com/
Young PR - http://youngie.prblogs.org/ Australia
BrandsEye http://www.brandseye.com/
Pro PR - http://www.propr.ca/ Canada
Dialogix www.dpdialogue.com.au/dialogix.html
PR Communications - http://pr.typepad.com/
PR Newser - http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/
Negative Groundswell Monitoring
Crisis Forum http://crisismanagementforum.com
Lee Hopkins http://leehopkins.net
The Ad Contrarian http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com
Drawn from AdAge Power150 and From PR to Eter-
The Consumerist http://consumerist.com/
nity blog.
Not Good Enough - http://notgoodenough.org
Gerry McCusker http://prdisasters.com

Other courses
Bad Pitch Blog http://badpitch.blogspot.com
Dell Hell - http://www.dellhell.net/
Its pretty important to follow this session
Parents Jury http://parentsjury.org.au
with Social Media Workshop: Social Me-
Shaping Youth http://shapingyouth.com
dia Press Releases if speed is important.
UserVoice http://uservoice.com/
Also, Social Media Workshop: Media
Get Satisfaction http://getsatisfaction.com/
Training and Staff Guidelines helps en-
Bernaise Source http://bernaisesource.blog.com/ sure that your staff donʼt accidentally cause
a negative groundswell by blogging, twitter-
Anti Marketer http://www.anti-marketer.com/
ing or posting on a forum in a way that has
I Hate This http://ihatethis.org
repercussions for your organisation.
Glass Door http://www.glassdoor.com/
Finally, Social Media Workshop: Monitor-
Rate Your Job http://rateyourjob-rateyourboss.com/
ing and Brand Reputation goes into more
eBossWatch http://www.ebosswatch.com/ detail on filtering and finding discussions.
This is a good start if you are interested in
Crikey http://crikey.com.au
undertaking a Social Media Audit of what
Travel-Rants http://www.travel-rants.com/
is happening online around your brand or
Whirlpool.net http://whirlpool.net.au
organisation.
These sites are known for publishing information
More information at http://laurelpapworth.com
that identifies triggers that may inflame online com-
munities.

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