Which social media channel works best for private communications with journalists and bloggers? Which for time-sensitive announcements? And which should you never, ever use?

TWEET ME Use Twitter for breaking news, Facebook for conversations, suggests journalist Robert Niles.

Robert Niles, founder and editor of “Theme Park Insider,” shares his insights on which tool is best for which PR function:

Twitter for announcing news

With short nuggets of information delivered instantly, Twitter’s best for breaking news. Make announcements here first.

Facebook for conversing

Without a 140-character limit, Facebook is a better medium for conversation and reaction. Converse with your community here. And post pieces that will elicit a reaction, spread the word and increase your reach and influence on Facebook.

Email for private communication

Email is best for one-on-one communication and planning. Alert reporters to upcoming Twitter announcements, schedule interviews and send documents via Twitter. Don’t use email for time-sensitive information, though, given the medium’s frequent delivery delays, Niles suggests. And be sure to target and tailor email blasts.

Websites and blogs for in-depth information

The problem with websites is that they make readers come to you. So use blogs and websites to share longer pieces with dedicated followers. If you want to reach larger audiences instantly, use Twitter to refer folks to your site.

Because websites are branded, your organization might feel uncomfortable hosting potentially negative conversations here. Use Facebook — a more visibly “neutral” forum — instead.

And which tool should you avoid?

Never use Twitter’s direct mail for private communication, Niles suggests.

One reason, of course, is Weiner’s Law (“Anything that’s meant to be private will go public on Twitter.”) Plus, Niles writes, “Twitter DM spam has become so common that I never look at DMs any more.”

Reach readers online

Want to master the art of writing for the Web?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions. And find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.

LinkedIn is more effective at helping business-to-business (B2B) companies acquire customers than Facebook, Twitter or the company blog.

That’s according to the latest findings from HubSpot’s 2011 State of Inbound Marketing report. The study surveyed more than 600 professionals about their company’s marketing strategy.

While both B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies acquire customers through all of these channels, Facebook is more effective for B2C companies, LinkedIn for B2B companies.

Industry matters.

Some industries are more effective than others using LinkedIn. Companies in these industries found LinkedIn highly effective:

• Communications and media
• Banking, insurance, financial services
• Manufacturing
• Professional services and consulting
• Technology
• Hardware

LinkedIn, blogs bring in customers.

But take the industry and segment out of the equation, and LinkedIn still scores better than Facebook or Twitter at customer acquisition.

How are you using this powerful social networking site to interact with other professionals?

Reach readers online

Want to master the art of writing for the Web?

• Get it off your desk: Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions. And find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Get the whole story in the latest issue of Rev Up Readership. And find dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.

When’s the best time to post to your blog? Before 10 a.m. Eastern time, says viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella.

BRIGHT AND EARLY: People are more likely to look at blogs in the morning, so post early for the best results. (Photo by Matt Blakemore)

Zarrella surveyed more than 1,400 blog readers and studied more than 170,000 blog posts and learned that people are more likely to view, link and comment on posts in the morning. Visiting blogs becomes decreasingly popular during the rest of the day.

Zarrella also looked at the best times to post updates on Facebook and to tweet.

Post often

But publishing several times a day “led to a huge increase in the blog’s success,” Zarrella found in an analysis of the 1,000 most popular blogs on the Web.

Specifically, frequent blogging at different times of day:

• Boosts incoming links
• Improves your Google ranking
• Attracts visitors
• Generates leads
• Increases customer acquisition

Most business blogs post weekly, according to HubSpot’s “State of Inbound Marketing” report (PDF).

Reach readers online

Want to master the art of writing for the Web?

• Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web-writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s Web-writing learning tools.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2011 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

You don’t have to know me for long to know that the crazy cat lady inside of me is just the tiniest nudge away from getting out. And, were it not for geography, “Sundays at the Shelter” would be that nudge.

BIG PICTURE: Maggie Swanson shoots snapshots of PAWS cats with a small Canon camera, available light and "lots of weird noises." Try that on your CEO!

“Sundays at the Shelter” is my favorite e-zine. (You can also follow the blog.) I forward it, archive it, respond to its every call to action, review old issues when I’m feeling low. I’ve gone so far as to fail to board with my zone just so I could open it the instant it arrives.

And it’s not just the cats that I love about this e-zine. The format rocks, too — and it’s a format you may be able to steal for your communications.

First, meet the author

Maggie Swanson is an artist so talented that Paper Source prints pieces right out of her sketchbook. You’ll usually find her in her studio, painting her in-demand children’s book and other illustrations. When she’s not working, she might be whipping up samosas on the fly or perfecting a risotto that requires no stirring.

And on Sundays, she heads to PAWS, the local shelter in Norwalk, Conn. There, she cleans the cages, pets the cats and shoots adorable photos. A couple of times a week, she posts one of these photos, along with an amusing headline and caption.

And that’s it. That’s the formula for “Sundays at the Shelter”: headline, photo, caption.

Are you writing about something visual? Could a headline, photo and caption say more about your subject than a million paragraphs?

Low-key calls to action

Once a year, Maggie asks readers to donate to the PAW’s “Bark in the Park” event. Last year, the event earned $44,000.

The shelter doesn’t track the number of cats adopted by people who subscribe to “Sundays at the Shelter” or cats that get adopted right after showing up in the e-zine. But who are we kidding? These cuties sell themselves.

In fact, if I didn’t live 1,250 miles away from Norwalk, Gigi would have a little sister named Sammi. And one named Orion. And Carina. And Hank and Hammie and Mickey and Pepper and Susie and Shadow and Izzy and Bootz and Muffin …

Rev Up Readership

Want to reach more readers by revitalizing your publication, website or blog?

• Bring Ann to your organization for a Rev Up Readership workshop.
• Ask Ann to help revamp your publication, website or blog.
• Get ideas for improving your own publication, website or blog with a communication review.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on planning powerful publications at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s Plan Powerful Publications learning tools.

Two minutes and seven seconds.

That’s the average length of time people spend viewing videos on Twitter, according to “Online Video Best Practices” (PDF), a new study by TubeMogul, Brightcove and DynamicLogic.

The researchers analyzed the average viewing time of more than 100 million random video streams on social networks and search engines. Among the takeaways:

1. Avoid the 2-minute mark.

Twitter was the only video source that broke the 2-minute mark. Average viewing times were:

• 1:54 on Yahoo!
• 1:50 on Facebook
• 1:27 on Google
• 1:09 on Bing

2. Avoid the 1-minute mark.

Talk about short attention span theater. According to a study by Visible Measures:

• Almost 20 percent of viewers abandon an online video after 10 seconds.
• More than 40 percent abandon it after a minute.

Visible Measures studied the abandonment rate of 40 million videos during 7 billion viewings.

Want visitors to finish your video? Keep it short.

Tip: You might also advertise your short video’s length — (1:15), for instance — to encourage viewership.

3. Don’t surprise friends, followers and fans with large files.

Use abbreviations like PDF, VID and PPT to identify links to large downloads.

4. Time it right.

The shelf life of online videos has dropped dramatically since 2008. Your video will get most of its views in the first week. So your time your release right and publicize your video fast.

5. Consider your objectives.

Choose repurposed TV spots for awareness, according to “Online Video Best Practices,” and made-for-Web videos for persuasion.

Targeting young adults? Go with custom content. Some 2.8 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds planned to purchase the product after viewing made-for-Web content.

Write for social media

Would you like to learn more ways to make your blog postings, tweets and other status updates more relevant, valuable and interesting to your readers? If so, please join me at PRSA’s Feb. 22 webinar, “Write for Social Media.” You’ll learn how to:

• Use the 70-20-10 rule for engaging your followers, plus other tips for making sure your status updates are welcome guests, not intrusive pests.
• Pass the “who cares?” test and four other techniques for becoming a resource, not a bore, on social media.
• Get retweeted and liked. Learn a dozen steps for expanding your influence and reach on Facebook and Twitter.
• Tweet like the FBI. Write dramatic, compelling status updates that draw followers and get clicks.
• Make your posts personable. There’s a reason they call it “social” media.
• Tweak your tweets. Get your message across in 140 characters or less. Plus, learn how to make 140 characters go further — and when you must come in under the character limit.

Keep up with all of my webinars.

___

Sources: “Twitter Video Streams Watched for 2 Mins,” Marketing Charts, Nov. 11, 2010

Alex Mindlin, “Drilling Down: Short Attention Spans for Web Videos,” The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2010

“Rule No. 716: Bars don’t have mayors.”

— Esquire’s “New Rules for Men”

Strunk & White were right, says viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella: Modifiers aren’t as effective as nouns and verbs. And now Zarrella has the data to prove it.

Adjectives and adverbs don’t perform as well on Facebook as nouns and verbs. Zarrella learned this by analyzing his Facebook data set to study the relationship between parts of speech and Facebook sharing.

Specifically, he says:

• Adverbs get shared nearly 3 percent less often than average.
• Adjectives get shared nearly 2 percent less often.
• Nouns get shared a little more than average.
• Verbs get shared nearly 2 percent more than average.

In Facebook, as in life, the verb is the story.

Reach readers online

Want to master the art of writing for the Web?

• Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web-writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s Web-writing learning tools.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

Let people target themselves

I once worked with an education advocacy group that blanketed all of its audience members with the same communications.

• Teachers got the same information as students.
• Community members got the same messages as administrators.
• The mother of Billy the third-grader got the same level of detail as Washingtonian policy wonks.

The problem is, the broader your audience, the more trouble you’ll have reaching audience members effectively.  In communications, as in so much else in life, the problem with trying to reach everybody at once is that you too often reach nobody at all.

So you need to segment your audience, offering relevant information — and only relevant information — to subsections of your targeted groups.

The Web makes it easier than ever to deliver the right information to the right audiences. Here are three ways to segment your content and let audience members target themselves:

1. Offer streams for different segments.

A person who lives on the north side of town doesn’t want to get tweets about south-side bridge closings, for instance. But those affected by the closings can’t get enough.

Discrete Facebook and Twitter streams let followers and fans get what they want — and not what they don’t.

2. Invite visitors to subscribe to e-zines of interest.

At Poynteronline I’ve signed up to get emailed updates on design, writing and editing and online communications. But I don’t ever want to get anything about photography, broadcast news or — heaven forbid — ethics.

3. Organize your website by audience groups.

You might structure your site into sections for:

• Doctors who prescribe your drug — and patients who take it
• Financial professionals — and individual investors
• Mothers of toddlers — and mothers of teens
• People shopping for insurance after having their first child — and those shopping for insurance after getting their first divorce

Don’t skip segmentation.

However you handle segmentation, it’s essential.

For one thing, it helps you battle information overload. Give readers information that’s relevant to them — and don’t bury them in irrelevant details — and your communications will be a lot more effective.

Plan powerful communications

Want to master the art of effective communication planning?

• Get dozens of tipsheets on communication planning at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s learning tools on communication planning.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

Move your audience to act

Want to deliver copy that gets read, understood and acted upon?

• Get it off your desk: Invite Ann’s team to handle a persuasive writing or editing project.
• Polish staff skills: Bring Ann to your organization for a Think Like a Reader workshop.
• Boost your own abilities: Work with Ann to Think Like a Reader in one-on-one writing coaching sessions. Or find out about Ann’s next Think Like a Reader webinar.
• Learn more: Read Ann’s Think Like a Reader toolkit. And get free writing tips every month when you subscribe to our e-zine.
• Join the club: Find dozens of persuasive writing tipsheets at RevUpReadership.com.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2006 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

“Make everything a conversation instead of a one-way megaphone, and go out of your way to be interesting and valuable.”

— Kelsey Childress, writer and SEO specialist, Awen Creative

WHY FACEBOOK? 500 million people and growing, that's why.

Talk about viral: Every time someone becomes a fan of your Facebook page or comments on, clicks the “like” link on or shares your post, that action shows up in the fan’s news feed for all of their friends to see.

So once you draw people to your page, you need them to become fans and share your content. How do you get visitors to respond to your content? Here are three ways to get started:

1. Give them what they want.

Here’s what Facebook fans are looking for, according to a recent Morpace Omnibus Report:

• 37 percent want to receive coupons and discount offers.
• 35 percent want to be notified of new product availability.
• 31 percent want to learn more about the organization.
• 28 percent want to meet people with similar interests.

2. Let’s make a deal.

Deals — discounts, coupons, specials and sales — are the No. 1 reason people follow companies through social media, according to the eMarketer’s 2010 “Popular Media Study.” So offer Facebook-only discount codes, give away merchandise and otherwise give fans a deal.

3. Take them behind the velvet rope.

The No. 2 reason people follow companies through social media? To learn about new products, features or services, according to the eMarketer study. And megafans also want to get a behind-the-scenes look at the organization.

So think of your Facebook fan page as your company’s VIP room, suggests Lisa Barone, chief branding officer of Outspoken Media, in “The Facebook Page Marketing Guide.”

Fans who “join the club,” get taken behind the rope and see the inner workings of the organization. That might include, Barone suggests:

• Never-before-seen footage of a new TV commercial
• The back story on products that bombed
• Details that didn’t make it into the story
• Access to products before anyone else gets them
• Invitations to comment on or name the secret test product

Get fans to spread the word.

Facebook is by nature viral. That makes it a great place to tap social proof, or the principle that people look to what others do to guide our behavior. Letting fans know “seven of your friends bought this; six of them loved it” is a great way to boost sales.

And don’t forget: Readability, timing and word choice all affect whether fans spread the word.

Will you be our friend? Please be among the first to visit Wylie Communications on Facebookand join in the conversation.

Reach readers online

Want to master the art of writing for the Web?

• Bring Ann’s team in to write Web copy for your organization.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web-writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills with one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.
• Read Ann’s Web-writing learning tools.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming webinars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.

___

Source: “The Facebook Page Marketing Guide — 2010,” Who’s Blogging What

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2010 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

The more you talk about yourself on Twitter, the fewer followers you’re likely to have.

Or so says viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella.

Using TweetPsyche data on more than 60,000 Twitter users, he looked at self-reference on Twitter. He found that Twitter users who don’t talk about themselves much tend to have more users.

“Want more followers?” Zarrella asks. “Stop talking about yourself.”

In other TweetPsyche research, Zarrella found that Mom was right about social media as well as so many other things. To get more followers on Twitter, Zarrella writes, you should:

• Be positive. Writing about sadness, aggression, morbid thoughts and negative emotions and feelings correlates with fewer followers. (What a shock!) So if you want more followers, cheer up.
• Be sociable. Social language correlates with more followers, Zarrella found. So use words like “you” and “we” and write more about relationships and communication.

And remember: “You” is the most retweeted word in the English language.

So on Twitter as in so much else in life, better “you” than “me.”

Get the word out on the Web

Want to master the art of reaching readers online?

• Read Ann’s Web writing learning tools.
• Get dozens of tipsheets on reaching readers online at RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s upcoming teleseminars on writing for the Web and social media.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a Web writing workshop.
• Work with Ann to polish your Web writing skills in one-on-one writing coaching sessions.
• Subscribe to our free writing tips e-zine.