Straight Talk PR .com

Tools I Use: TweetDeck for iPhone

I don't Twitter or Facebook enough. But I know from posts like this on a blog I trust -- namely, TUAW.com -- that as I use these services more, TweetDeck for iPhone and for TweetDeck for Mac are the right tools for me to use to best read the traffic.

Below, the developer's video for the newest version of TweetDeck for iPhone:

UPDATE, just after posting: Another useful post is on Mashable.

Making Thoughts Apparent Globally is Obama's Internet Touch

UPDATED 11:30 a.m. 4 June 2009 -- I also liked receiving an email from David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, with a link to video of the speech. The White House is pushing this content out beautifully.

ORIGINAL POST:

It is thrilling to see how fluid President Obama and his team have become at making his thoughts and policies apparent to as many people as possible globally using the Internet. The latest piece of evidence comes from the White House's buildup to the Cairo speech today.

According to a New York Times report, "In a bid to make sure that Mr. Obama’s message will be heard, particularly among young people, the White House has mounted an unusually aggressive campaign, including a Web site created in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and English where people outside the United States can sign up to receive the speech via text message. The State Department is to translate the speech into at least 13 languages."

This is a great commitment. I like the idea of people worldwide debating the speech in its original text, even in a U.S.-disseminated official translation text, on their own phones or laptops today. Great move!

Telltale Signal that Social Networking has Become Mainstream

Online social networking was the subject of two articles in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune. That has to be a clear signal that the entire concept is going mainstream.

1. The business section sported a feature with inventive artwork about the use of social networking by charities to raise funds from young people. The feature by Wailin Wong was headlined, "How non-profits are using social networking to raise money and awareness: Charities see potential in tapping young Web users to promote their causes online."

2. In the lifestyle section, called "Tempo," columnist Steve Johnson's piece was headlined, "All praises to social networks." Johnson writes Tempo's "Hypertext" column on using the web.

How to Make Microsite and Blog Domain Names Attractive and Snappy

I've noticed something about great domain names for microsites, including custom URLs for blogs.

1. They have a call to action, or
2. They say something about the user.

Those seem to be two tricks to devising a snappy and compelling URL.

Two articles from a recent issue of PRWeek illustrate this.

Strategy: Why 50 Characters Max in Blog Headlines?

Suddenly, there's a method to the madness of writing blog headlines. Wired PR Works explains why I carefully counted to make certain there are 50 characters in the headline just above. And why I'll keep counting.

Online PR Featured in New Issue of Canright Communicates

Introducing: Canright Communicates for November-December, 2007.

We feature Barbara Rozgonyi, founder of CoryWest Media and blogger at Wired PR Works, who I introduced earlier. And a how-to piece on putting more interactivity into PDFs. Our milestones include showing off an ad for Blackman Killick atop the new Crain's Chicago Business list of largest accounting firms.

There's also a "web-only" piece -- as the MSM say -- that expands the discussion with Barbara Rozgonyi into blogging itself, as opposed to the wider topic of Online PR.

And no issue would be complete without the ever-popular Canright team's reading/watching/listening/viewing suggestions.

Which Came First - The New Employee or the New Employee's Blog?

It's a joy to see the devotion of cutting-edge companies like Cisco to a cutting-edge panoply of blogs.

But I had to chuckle when I read the Chicago Sun-Times story about Padmasree Warrior, age 47, who on Monday departed Illinois' Motorola, where she was chief technology office, to take up the same post at California's Cisco.

Howard Wolinsky reported on Tuesday in the CS-T that Ms. Warrior made the move on Monday. He added this: "In her personal blog at Cisco, she said: 'It is an exciting time to join Cisco. Cisco is the company whose leadership legacy defines ‘The Network’ in many ways. Today, it is a company driving many new paradigms in communications and information technology. In the future, it will be a company poised to lead the industry to the next phase of Internet.'"

Now, that's speed! She leaves on Monday and has a blog post on Tuesday. Kudos! (Here's the link.)

Back to Work: New Project

At the Wright Leadership Institute here in Chicago, I am being trained in a form of oral communication called "Grounded Leadership." It's a communications method that small-group leaders use to assist participants in the Institute's occasional One Decision workshops, which are a great way to begin the life, business, and leadership coaching and development work offered by the Wright Institute.

For the past few weeks, I have been toying with the concept that grounded leadership communications could be useful in the interactive world of Web 2.0 and social networking. I've started a project to write about this because it's something of a missing link. My thesis is that grounded communication answers some of the biggest objections that leaders and organizations have to the deployment of Web 2.0.