Everyone, including me, loves the status update. In fact, a new Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that one in five Internet users use Twitter or some other service to share status updates about themselves. Unfortunately, status updates have turned into the ultimate tool to share mundane details about your life from what you are eating for breakfast to what you just watched on TV. This is a perfectly acceptable use of a status update if you are a college student. However, if you are a professional doing this, you are throwing away a valuable opportunity. For you, the status update is the ultimate expert positioning tool.

How do you use the status update as an expert positioning tool? First, you must change the way you think of it. Status updates should answer the question “what has your attention?” rather than “what are you doing?” This opens up the door for you to:

• Comment and link to a recent news article
• Comment on a recent trend
• Link to an article or blog post you just wrote
• Mention an event you are speaking at or attending

The key to successful status updates is balancing self-promotion (e.g. links to articles you have written) with sharing relevant and valuable information (e.g. commentary on a recent news trend). It’s a tough balance to find but your network will tune you out if you only use status updates to promote yourself. However, if you continually provide them valuable information, they will view you as a thought leader and be more inclined to read your articles/blog posts and attend your events. So, next time you are thinking of Tweeting about the hot dog you ate for lunch, resist the urge and use the opportunity to comment on the recent hot dog trend.

~S

Shortly after launching Cut Me Some Flack, we caught the eye of a very forward-thinking and proactive network of bloggers on Brazen Careerist.

Through this powerful network, the CMSF girls have been able to share our ideas among a peer audience and have met some pretty awesome Gen Y professionals who will no doubt make an enormous impact on this world in their respective industries.

If you haven’t visited this site and experienced the community on Brazen Careerist…GO NOW!

Brazen Careerist launched today a fresh new site enhanced with career management tools for Gen Y. So whether you’re just getting into the job market, working to become a better professional or just developing your personal professional brand this bigger, better community is a powerful resource.

This collaborative, professional site is an unprecedented approach to professional development. Brazen Careerist realizes that while the job market is competitive, the path to career success and satisfaction shouldn’t be. So here is this unique community which shares its collective experiences and offers solutions and ideas to help each network member.

It’s an “it-takes-a-village” attitude toward personal and career development.

This idea and anecdote sharing space has been an incredible resource for me personally, giving me insight for how the PR industry is shifting for other Gen Y practitioners all over the country. And it’s an opportunity to connect with people whose thoughts I really respect. If it weren’t for Brazen Careerist I might never have had a chance to interact with innovators like @ryanpaugh, @MsCareerGirl @danschwabel or @caitlinmc to name just a few.

Don’t be surprised if you start hearing A LOT about Brazen Careerist. The impact this online community is set to create is like nothing else in social media. The combination of career management tools and close-knit community are powerful…one might even call Brazen Careerist Gen Y’s secret weapon.

~R

It’s safe to say we know that newspapers are a terminally ill institution. But for the sake of learning from a mistake instead of being doomed to repeat it, it’s important to ask “Why?”

I was directed to an excellent essay by Tim Connor by @mike_padgett. The essay, “Who’s Killing the Newspapers?”, is a hard look at how newspapers themselves contributed to their own demise.

We know already that a generational shift in the way people choose to procure their news robbed newspapers of their strength. But Connor supposes some other internal and fundamental factors dealt some of the biggest blows to bring the industry where it is now.

First some facts that caused me to lift my eyebrows:

1. A 2006 Pew Internet & Life Study found that 43 percent of people read an actual newspaper. In the 2008 edition of the same survey only 39 percent do
2. Since 2007, approximately 12,000 journalists have lost their jobs
3. According to Pew, in 2008 90 percent of newspaper revenue came from print advertising

It’s the third fact that really struck me and also happens to be the impetus for one of the reasons Connor feels newspapers have contributed to their own sorry state. It stands to reason that with 90 percent of newspaper revenues coming from advertisers, newspapers probably don’t want those generous sponsors being irked by certain kinds of coverage.

Such in-the-pocket reporting is tantamount to Yellow Journalism and the corporate dictates mandating it are a flat out insult to the reporters dedicated to communicating an honest story to the public. But the fact is, this beholden relationship is rampant.

Connor points to an article in the Columbia Journalism Review called Blindness: How the business press missed the meltdown. This article points to the business press (it’s a blanket term, though there are a number of media outlets who do not fall into the following definition) who spent their time cheering the markets onward and upward in stead of doing their due diligence for the American public and uncovering the unethical practices and forecasting the fallout which soon resulted.

This corporate cautious reporting marred the face of the industry in a great many cases. And in combination with the generational shift and a movement toward a paperless (eco, I mean) lifestyle, how is it possible for newspaper to survive?

From where I stand, it’s not.

Media corporations must find a way to monetize the product they create in a way that does not hold them subservient to any company — not only for their business survival, but to re-establish trust as well.

If a media outlet had outstanding and varied reporting that represented multiple views and exposed me to issues and goings-on I might never find out about otherwise, why that’s excellent journalism, which I would gladly support and subscribe to with my dollars.

It’s one solution. I’m sure there are brilliant thinkers out there who are coming up with more lucrative and streamlined ways of creating revenue that would never occur to me.

The bottom line is (pun intended), newspapers may be dying away, but solid, honest journalism most certainly shouldn’t be.

~R

For those of us that are encouraging our clients, co-workers, and management teams to become more engaged with social media in an effort to increase business, we’ve all struggled with the same question  — how does engaging in social media impact the bottom line?

While there are several ways to measure the ROI of social media, it is notoriously difficult to show how social media actually impacts the bottom line.

But, a new  study released today by Charlene Li of The Altimeter Group may be the answer we’ve been looking for. Researchers found a strong correlation between brands that engaged heavily in social media and financial success. Brands that were considered by the study to be “Social Media Mavens” (those brands that had the greatest depth and breadth of engagement in social media) on average grew 18% in revenues over the last 12 months, compared to the least engaged companies who on average saw a decline of 6% in revenue during the same period.

The study critiqued the world’s top 100 brands as ranked by BusinessWeek/Interband on their social media engagement including not only what channels they were active in but how engaged they were. It also examined the brands’ financial performance in comparison to its social media engagement.

As we continue to try and make the case for why businesses must make social media a part of its integrated marketing strategy, this study will be an incredibly helpful tool. Check out the entire study here. You can even see how your company ranks in social media engagement.

~S

An excellent post on Brazen Careerist (a fantastic network of Gen-Y bloggers, which the ladies at CMSF happen to be a part of) gave me pause to think about a new job description — Social Media Strategist.

I was reading an article on Mashable the other day and somehow I ended up in the ‘Jobs’ section which I have never even seen before. I checked it out and was quite surprised when I saw some positions where one of the requirements was “at least 8 years in Social Media…” I sat and thought to myself what exactly this meant. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social network sites and even they haven’t been around for 8 years, so what do they mean by 8 years of experience in social media?

Touche! So then is the Social Media Strategist a Gen-Y specific person? I’d love to say yes– as the practice is native to our generation’s skill set — but I’m going to have to say that, no, this is not a position exclusive to one generation.

I know some EXCELLENT social media strategists who don’t fall squarely inside the lines of Gen-Y (a la @charschaff and @joePRguy).  They are stellar communicators. They understand that the right message is critical and social media is an opportunity to distribute those well-crafted communications effectively.  I’m sure that there are many, many non-Gen-Y  social media aces out there.

A company looking for someone with “8 years experience in social media” probably means they want an individual who has several years experience in communications and has been up-to-speed with social media since it’s emergence.

Gen-Yers are uniquely positioned to be social media strategists though, because, as I mentioned previously, it’s a native skill. We were the first adapters. We were the first target audience. We are still the main guinea pigs for new features, etc. So, as this medium evolves we will (presumably) be working with a knowledge base that makes new functionality and other evolutions easy to integrate into strategic planning and communications.

So how do you take yourself from fancying Facebook to serious strategist?

Soak in everything you can on the topic. (Huge undertaking, I know.) The more you know about utilizing and monitoring social media, the more brilliant the plans you can hatch as a social media strategist.

I believe the social media strategist will hold an important position in nearly every company in the very near future, but for now, we should all be social media strategists for ourselves in crafting personal, on-line brands.

And certainly in this day and age, social media strategist is a competency that every good PR practitioner must be armed with.

~R

While we’ve all done it before, talking to yourself is not very interesting. When you’re writing a blog post, Tweeting or updating your Facebook status, you’re doing so in hope that someone cares about what you’re saying. And, you’re hoping that someone may even be compelled to respond so you can engage in a meaningful conversation. But, this can’t happen unless you have the right people reading your blog, watching your videos or following your Twitter stream. But, getting the right people to engage with you takes a lot more time and work than creating the content does. As I have embarked on my social media journey, here’s what I’ve found to be helpful.

Don’t be afraid to make the first move: Like dating, it’s tough to make the first move but once you do, you’re often surprised. If you want a fellow blogger to read your blog, read their blog first, engage in a conversation and then ask them to check out yours. Once you start, you’ll be surprised how receptive people are when you show genuine interest in the content they are creating. After all, they have the same desire as you do – to engage in the online conversation.

Quality beats quantity: I don’t have thousands of Facebook friends, but the ones I have are the important ones. They are the people who I want to be talking to and who want to hear what I have to say. It’s not always about reaching the largest group of people, but activating the core network or customer/client base that is going to engage with you and your brand. Ideally, this inner circle will become your brand ambassadors and help you branch out into new territory.

You don’t become prom queen overnight: It takes time to build up a strong base of friends, followers, blog readers, etc. You have to identify your core audience, provide content that is interesting and engage in a conversation with them. This requires a lot of work and consequently a lot of time. It may require reading other blogs, re-tweeting relevant information or sharing videos. Unless you do something really wacky or have an incredibly compelling product or story, you won’t see your web traffic skyrocket in 24 hours or your Twitter followers jump to 100,000. However, if you’re interesting and spending time engaging in the online conversation, you’ll be on your way to becoming a member of prom court.

I’m no prom queen but I am actively engaged online. And, while I’ve had moments of frustration where I have felt like I was talking to myself, I’ve overall found it to be incredibly rewarding. The one thing that I always remind myself – It’s a conversation.

For more helpful tips on engaging in the online conversation, check out this blog post by Ben Parr.

~S

I’m fascinated by social media. I read about it, read more about it, talk about it and think about it but when it comes to actually engaging in social media on my own time (not the time spent working on it for my clients), I have a tough time. Actually, the problem is more lack of time. I spend so much time learning about it that I don’t do it. And, the best way to really learn it is to do it.

As I’ve shared this challenge with others, I’ve found that this is a struggle that many people face. It’s especially true for those of us that have to be knowledgeable about social media and use it at work on a daily. We’re so busy keeping up with it for our jobs that it’s difficult to do it on our own time. To help myself spend more time engaging with social media and hopefully others like me, I created this list of tips:

1. Set aside time each day for social media: It can be 10 minutes or 2 hours but spend it using social media not just reading or talking about it. Update your Facebook profile, Tweet, write a blog post, share a video, etc. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do it.

2. Don’t try to be a rockstar with every social media tool: Take a cue from the Google philosophy to do one thing really, really well. Pick your favorite social media tools and spend your time there sharing meaningful information and building relationships.

3. Set a goal: Like everything else in life, it helps to have something to work towards so vow to blog twice a week or build your list of Tweeps to 1,000 in the next 30 days. Once you set your goal, get moving because you’ve got work to do.

In the spirit of taking my own advice, I’m going to publicly commit to blogging here twice a week. Hopefully, while accomplishing my goal, I’ll be able to provide some valuable insight along the way. Either way, thanks for helping me become a better social media doer.

~S