Ghost writers for blog posts and Twitter accounts are common for busy figures, particularly celebrities. There are a lot of busy figures who don’t have ghost writers too–look at the goofy antics in the news! A Wired article had a facinating interview with a ghost tweeter writer, Annie Colbert. see http://prnt.in/ZfK   Colbert’s clients include starlets, sports icons, and authors and, according to the article, even one of my favorites, Guy Kawasaki, author of business books and a noted Apple evangelist. Guy has made his name in many areas in the tech field, I was not surprised but a bit disappointed to hear he has a ghost writer but I still enjoy his thinking and his advice is spot on. What was more interesting in the article was the method of payment and how Colbert strategizes to create the voice of the client, notes who to follow, and who is following her client. She charges an unknown flat fee per month.  Not only does she send tweets but she also checks sites, registrations etc. to be sure their accounts are in order. Reputation management  most likely. Of course some of the tweets need vetting too; so the process is lengthly. Odds are some politicians and others wish they had a vetting system. (Oh yes, if a bad tweet goes out from your ghost writer or you, you can always say your account was “hacked.”  Right?)  I have heard of companies in our industry that are hiring bloggers and paying a consultant to write pithy, knowledgeable notations.  (No names of course.)  I have not heard of ghost tweeters in our industry.  Ghost tweeters? Ghost bloggers? What do you hear? Do you care if the person you are following uses a ghost author/writer?   Do you need one?  Are you a ghost writer in the industry? Please write me your thoughts about ghost writing in social media.  Regards,  Mary...

I love to watch for the new entries in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.  It usually reminds me of my cultural awareness (or lack of awareness).  Of the nine new words added, only one was unfamiliar—parkour which “is the sport of traversing environmental obstacles by running, climbing or leaping rapidly and efficiently.” (My kids were doing that decades ago but I thought it was just playing outside.)  Now I know! The other words were: boomerang child, bromance, crowdsourcing, fist bump, helicopter parent  robocall and tweet.  See the full article...

At a Printing Industry staff meeting in Pennsylvania on Tuesday August 23, the earthquake shook the building for a few long seconds.  As most people recounted, the tremor was fast and not much happened even while buildings in DC and other places were evacuated for safety and security reasons.  We later learned that the quake made Virginian history as the epicenter while it was felt in a dozen states and several provinces in Canada. Damage was recorded; but in light of huge devastation in other earthquake sites, I will not discuss the damages associated with the earthquake.  But a different kind of history was made in the Internet realm.  Only eight minutes passed before the 2011 Virginia earthquake was written up in Wikipedia. That is amazing!   Here is the Washington Post article talking about this and the people involved. http://prnt.in/ZSa   According to the WP article, over 80K people viewed it at publication.  Newspapers can never really compete with these numbers!  Alvaro Duran is one of 88K regular volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and he was the first to write a quick sentence and a link to the US Geological Survey.  Later he and others added to the page and the Wikipedia link is over 7 pages long.  Here is the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake  While I am regularly amazed at the recent disclosures of social media’s role in flash mobs, rioting, anti-government rallies, this nearly instant update to Wikipedia gives us a continuing picture of the transformation of the Internet and communication.  I bet for Alvaro Duran, a master’s degree student, his role in this story will be one of his milestones in his career. Cheers for his role in making written history! Wikipedia shares the spotlight in this history of the VA earthquake.  ...

Recently, I participated in a discussion about the ROI of social media. Print industry audiences are always looking for examples.  One printer recently told me that he gained two to three new contacts that resulted in sales by using LinkedIn.  Calculating the ROI and linking it back to new revenue is a challenge. Most evidence in our industry to date is anecdotal so far. You cannot measure what you do not track.  The first item to start tracking is your time on social media.  Can you translate your time in hours per day or week?  So if someone gets two or ten new customers, what were the other expenses associated with the total customer acquisition?  Also what is the value of the spend for the first job and potential for other jobs.  Obviously there are many questions to answer the cost of a social media campaign.   The link http://prnt.in/Zwc discusses the ROI such as staff costs, advertising, external fees and the “other” category to estimate, tracking, technical or creative costs.  The article is very discouraging.  The suggested salary of the needed positions to carry out a campaign was also listed such as the social media strategist at 52K, community manager at 95.6K etc.  The article lists various benefits for social marketing such as customer engagement, direct customer communication, instant feedback, low cost, brand building etc.  Since I could not really relate to the total cost of a social media campaign (212K) in my non-profit-association world, the benefits and the campaign were of more relevance to me.  It was fascinating that just over half the respondents to a mentioned survey cited the “low cost” as a benefit. The respondents, like me, have not calculated the details if the results mentioned in the link above are accurate.  Really, 212K?  OK if you are a Fortune 1000 company, this figure is reasonable but for me?  I am still calculating how much time I spend on social media and the benefits I see.  What do you think?  ...

Hear an interview with Adam Ostrow of Mashable Blog, where he talks about how the Mashable blog operates behind the scene.  Since we have a blog that needs to find its balance, I am looking at how to make the SMFG blog more successful.  I was fascinated with the fact that Mashable publishes 30 articles daily and they have 20 people working on the blog and that does not include the other contributors.  It was discouraging since it is easy to see why it is difficult to keep a blog going but we (Julie and I) are planning to re-launch the SMFG blog to be more relevant and gain more people interested in the contents.  If you are interested in blogs, check out the short video with Ostrow.  You probably will find it very informative and worth the few minutes.  Let me know what you think. http://prnt.in/Z3P  Mashable is a very good example of a blog to emulate.  I checked out Technorati for other blogs to review. http://technorati.com/blogs/top100 Sure enough, Mashable was #3.  Huffington Post continues to rack up #1 positioning on blog ratings; www.huffingtonpost.com   According to Technorati, blogs are now the new arm of the fourth estate.  The 2010 State of the Technorati Blogosphere is an excellent source of information about blogs. http://prnt.in/Z3W Any blogs that you like? What topics attract you?  ...