What are the reasons behind this drop in ratings? Well, one of the main reasons is the lack of social media use in past years. Until last year’s telecast, a lack of social media tie-ins thwarted the Academy from achieving higher ratings. The Academy wasn’t harnessing the power of Oscar pools on online channels, using social networking sites (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) to keep viewers engaged in real-time, streaming videos backstage at the awards ceremony, or utilizing mobile technology.

This year, the Academy used social media to boost ratings and connect with the Gen Y Audience. Here are some of the ways the Academy used social media to gain viewers and engage with the audience:

• Streamed nominations live online at Oscars.org, and on the Academy’s Facebook page.
• Revamped website by hosting video and exclusive content from nominees, as well as widgets for Oscar pools and predictions.
• Oscars iPhone application launched in late February. Fans use the app to see how their Oscar predictions faired against others.
• The Academy will release behind-the-scenes footage from the preparations and rehearsals leading up to the 2010 telecast. The videos will also be syndicated to online video sites and digital out-of-home networks.

Do you think these social media tactics helped boost ratings for the 2010 Academy Awards show? Next year, you can expect to see Facebook and Twitter integration for real-time engagement with viewers.  What are some other tactics you think would help in 2011?

Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research last month released a study titled, “Media in the Wired World.” The research team surveyed U.S. journalists regarding their social media use and the study found some interesting results:

• Almost 70% of journalists are using social networking sites, which is a 28% increase since the 2008 study
• 48% are using Twitter or other microblogging sites and tools, a 25% increase since 2008
• 66% of the surveyed journalists are using blogs
• 25% of those surveyed are using podcasts
• 48% of journalists are using online video
• Over 90% of journalists agree that new media and communications tools and technologies are enhancing journalism to some extent

According to the study, reporters are embracing social media and are active on various social networking sites. This is great for us because we can build relationships with reporters and connect with them in real-time. Here at 451, we use Twitter and LinkedIn to follow media contacts. Both tools are useful to see what reporters are writing about, and to watch for potential opportunities to pitch our company and/or our clients.

Do you connect with reporters and journalists through social networking sites? Have some success stories to share? Let us know!

In the mean time, I’m wondering what you think about using Ustream for business purposes. How are you using Ustream for your business? In any unique ways? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the service? Do you prefer a different service? I’d appreciate your feedback!

Thanks.

-@cristinalepore

I remember when I updated my Interests at least once per month, was invited to events by non-promoters, didn’t have to sort through twelve page suggestions every day and could write on someone’s wall without worrying about it showing up on mutual friends’ news feeds. Those are definitely some things I miss, but I enjoy some of the new features as well. Now, the design is more user-friendly and search results are far more comprehensive. I can comment on other people’s wall posts and I can block certain parts of my profile from certain people. The site is certainly different.

I think it’s interesting how much social networking sites change in a short period of time and I’m excited to see what comes next. I’d assume a lot of the social networking sites will focus on mobile integration in 2010. What do you think? What’s next for social networking sites like Facebook?

-@cristinalepore

Let’s look at a few of the ways the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is using Facebook to promote the Olympic Games and engage with Fans:

• The IOC uses the Fan Page to post videos and photos of the events, promote events and games, and to provide Fans with links to Olympic athletes’ pages.
• The Fan Page promotes engagement by allowing Fans to post comments on any status update, or wall post the IOC puts up, and the IOC often responds to those comments.
• The official Fan Page includes a Photo Contest for Fans to submit their coolest photos from the Games and enter to win tickets to events.
• The Mini Games feature is a great promotional tool as well. This feature allows Fans to play short video games with each other, and it promotes the official Olympic Games video game.

The IOC uses Facebook in some original and creative ways. Do you think more events will use Facebook and other social media for promotion and engagement? In what ways? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

-@cristinalepore

What I find most interesting about this case is that the terms EBay were bidding on were not “Louis Vuitton.” In fact, EBay bid on misspellings of the brand’s name; Specifically, EBay bid on the words, “Viton,” “Vitton,” and, “Wuiton.”

While I don’t condone online drafting of a brand’s competitors by using the competing companies’ names as a search terms, I am not 100% comfortable with this court decision. Where does one draw the line? What happened to Caveat Emptor? I am REALLY interested in hearing how others feel about this.

Please voice your opinions!

-@ajgerritson

Rick first began his career at Sony in 1990, and over the course of two decades, was instrumental in overseeing the public relations and corporate communications efforts for the entire electronics division. His role encompassed media and analyst relations, and product marketing and promotions, as well as executive, employee, environmental and crisis communications initiatives. Rick was also one of the first communications executives to embrace the web as a new channel for brand communications and customer support. He now lives in the San Diego area and remains a communications advisor and social media advocate. You can find out more on Rick’s LinkedIn page.

We spoke at length with Rick about his career at Sony, and in particular, his pioneering work in implementing social media and online community management into the company’s external communications and PR and marketing campaigns.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your career in corporate communications at Sony. What were your PR and marketing duties like when you first started with the company and how did they evolve throughout the 90’s?

As part of the corporate communications teams at Sony during the early days our focus was primarily on media relations. Obviously the basics, press outreach, press releases, product reviews and the like. Eventually, this evolved into more of a focus on stakeholder outreach and management—the analyst community—and then global communications planning. With the emergence of social networking, our focus turned to corporate public relations from a much broader perspective. The bigger, faster, more integrated world forced us to become much more customer centric and conversational.

Q: Do you miss the days when traditional media outreach, ad placement and tradeshow marketing were the be-all and end-all of a sound communications and marketing strategy? Do additional channels create additional challenges that outweigh potential benefits?

I don’t miss the old days at all. There is a tremendous opportunity for PR professionals to be at the forefront of engagement through direct communications with customers. All PR pros should feel passionately about this evolution because the returns and rewards will be great.

Along those lines, this groundswell of channel development has certainly provided plenty of benefits. We can break down several internal walls and be more communicative with all of our different departments—human resources, legal, customer service. Externally, companies should recognize the importance of engagement and embrace a commitment to responsiveness over other potential challenges or issue.

Q:  When did you first recognize the role that the web could have in facilitating the way you communicated with the media, customers and employees?

Well to set the stage, about four years ago was when we first noticed an increasing amount of online conversation were taking place about Sony that we were in no way involved in. These conversations discussed our technology, products, customer service and even management. At this point, we were just monitoring and not engaging. Over time, our communications team began to recognize that there was no value in remaining silent, and if there were areas where we could effectively engage with people, and provide some help, we should give it a shot.

Q: How did your team begin to put the wheels in motion with an online engagement plan? Was their hesitancy from management about this approach?

Our approach transitioned from initial monitoring and tracking to assessment of the conversations. We actually incorporated assessment because there was hesitancy from both upper management and our customer service team, so presenting this information helped us to demonstrate why we needed to respond in the first place. It took a few presentations, but it became clear that Sony was ready to step up and address this stuff, engage and just become more involved online.

Once we were approved, we began to engage certain third party communities—message boards, sites like EndGadget and TechCrunch, Consumerist, green blogs, “mommy blogs”, and all sorts of tech blogs. We then started our own blogs (I volunteered to become Sony’s first corporate blogger), and eventually created full-fledge communities around our product line through micro-sites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Q: How did you specifically interact with these communities? Did you put protocols in place that dictated who would engage, and how they would do it?

At first, we interacted with the external communities by engaging with editors. Eventually, we took the gloves off, introduced ourselves and responded via comments, message board posts, etc.

These decisions were generally made on a case by case basis—sometimes the communications team would address an issue directly, but on occasion, we would bring in other experts from different areas of the company to offer their take. Since our team was more experienced with third-party communications, and we did not have the experience of communicating directly with consumers, it was also helpful to involve the customer service team. That said, we quickly realized that you need to treat these conversations the same way you would treat a face-to-face interaction with a customer.

Q: Tell us about the launch of Sony’s first community blog. Was there a lot of management push-back and confusion with this move? Did you notice immediate results? Any highlights?

I made a point of it to infuse my personality into the blog. I introduced myself as Rick Clancy, not just a Sony representative. There was some sensitivity involved with a flack serving as the face of the company, but I was very upfront about my role and with my intentions for the blog. Over time, management gave me full reign to develop the blog and use it as I saw fit. I began blogging about a wide range of industry issues that I had an interest in, and had experience dealing with but I would also bring in guests from across Sony to get them involved. This kept things topical when I didn’t quite have the expertise to cover something myself.

I also made a point of it to develop trust through the blog. I recall blogging about Sony in comparison to Microsoft and Apple and other brands. I compared and contrasted products, and addressed their competitive sensibilities. It wasn’t all just all Sony, all the time.

One of the highlights was definitely the Sony blog tour. I would travel to different Sony retail stores across the country to set-up shop and meet with customers, answer questions, communicate produce updates, and assist where necessary. Each store visit turned into a great post. An event like that really represents the total integration of social media, PR and direct marketing.

Q: So, did you first foresee these new forms of communications (your community blog, Twitter, YouTube, etc) as forums for customer service and collaboration, or for PR/Marketing? Where do you see them now?

I certainly viewed these channels as a forum for PR/Marketing professionals, but the more we conversed with people online, I began to recognize the enormous potential for customer service professionals here. Customer service-types should embrace the opportunity to step up and blog, engage with customers like they would offline, and merge with PR pros to create a multi-faceted partnership based on responsiveness and added-value.

Q: Then who should lead the way with “social media strategies?” Should it be left in the hands of specialists, or should PR and marketing practitioners excel at understanding these channels and deploying the techniques necessary to optimize them for communications?

Because in the end, the message is still the most important component of these conversations, PR people are in a great position to lead the way in the online space. While customer service pros can definitely redefine their roles here, it’s the PR pros who have an awareness of the issues, a sensitivity to them, and an understanding of their relation to the firm as a whole. In PR, we’ve learned to listen, reflect on different points of view, and advocate on behalf of our company and client, and those fundamentals are all in play on the web. We’ll see these channels open up a bit more across a company, but PR teams, as well as agencies will play the lead role in monitoring, providing guidance for structure, strategy and authenticity.

-Jeff Benanto (@jbenanto)

Buzz is Google’s newest way of showing it is committed to making Google “as social as the web itself.” It’s also a way for Google to directly compete with Facebook and Twitter.

Let’s take a look at some of the cool feature of this new service:

Source: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-buzz-in-gmail.html

• Buzz will work through Google’s mail service, Gmail. It will allow users to post status updates, photos, and links to “friends,” or the people users email or chat with the most on Gmail.

• Users will be able to choose to make posts public or private, and they will receive new comments and updates in real-time.

Source: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-buzz-in-gmail.html

• The service will also pull in activity on other sites like Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa and have inbox integration, so updates will go directly to users’ email inboxes.

• The coolest thing, in my opinion and no offense to any of my friends, is the “Just the good stuff” feature. With this feature, Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out info a person is likely to skip.

What do you think of Google Buzz? Do you like the idea of having a more socialized email account?

-@cristinalepore

Here are some of the highlights:

• As part of the redesign, you’ll notice that the left sidebar on the homepage has a lot going on. Some features, such as events, that were previously under the Applications tab in the bottom left were moved to the left sidebar on the homepage. You’ll also notice that the left hand sidebar is now home to the Friends tab. When a user clicks on a feature, they now open in the main window where the feed appears, rather than directing a person to a new page.

• Additionally, Facebook Chat and the message inbox have been moved. Users’ Chat list is now on the left sidebar as well. Users can now check their inboxes from a dropdown menu at the top and send messages from there as well.

• On the homepage the search bar is significantly larger and more strategically placed; this is line with Facebook’s recent focus on search. A few months ago, Facebook added real-time search features and last month Facebook’s privacy changes were made so users’ updates would appear in other users’ searches for information. The search bar placement is yet another way for Facebook to stress its commitment to the importance of search.

I think the new design is great! The layout makes Facebook so much easier to use. What do you think of the new design?

-@cristinalepore

There was no real benefit to wearing your pants like this other than to fit in. I don’t really know how or where this trend started, but it lasted for a couple of years and eventually vanished. Thinking back, it was ridiculous.

I bring this topic up because when I think about emerging technologies, applications, web platforms and social media, I wonder, “Which of these applications are going to be the ‘pegged pants’ of 2010?”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I typically lean the other way in this type of discussion. That is, I almost always try to find value or use in emerging technologies, and am usually excited about new things. But lately I have seen a lot of ridiculous things in our space and I hope a lot of money was not wasted on them.

If you agree (or disagree), or want to add what you think is the next pegged pants below, I would welcome your comments!

-@ajgerritson