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Digital Detox Time

My Self Prescribed Digital Detox

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Facebook. Twitter. Snapchat. Instagram. Pinterest. Facebook. Snapchat… This is the endless cycle I find myself repeating for hours every day. At 24 I am CONSUMED by media. If I’m not on my phone looking something up then I’m on my laptop scrolling through endless content. I can’t escape cyberspace. More often than not social media is flooded with either horribly painful news that makes me question the state of humanity or doctored up photos that makes me question what I’m doing with my life and how I look. It’s exhausting and draining to be consumed by such a beast, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. I need a digital detox.

“To remove social media from my life would be like cutting off a appendage that is poisoning me, I know I should do it, but I can’t bring myself to.”

I grew up in the early 90’s, which means as I emerged into adolescence and adulthood so did the monster of the internet and the boom of social media. At this point for me and my generation, social media is an extension of us and our personal brands. To remove social media from my life would be like cutting off an appendage that is poisoning me, I know I should do it, but I can’t bring myself to.

So how do you not let the internet consume your life? Digital detox.

It would be foolish to tell you to completely cut yourself off from your phone. But detoxing can be another solution. Like we detox toxins from our bodies we also need to digitally detox and clear our minds from the constant stream of information. Why? The average person spends four hours a day on their phones. Along with that shocking statistic another is that the average American checks their phone over 150 TIMES A DAY unconsciously! As someone who works in media and loves to be in the know detoxing seems like a near impossible task for me. It led me to wonder, how do you start to consciously unwind yourself from the constant need to know what is going on while still maintaining your online presence?

Some ways I try to detox social media from my life:

  • Delete negative people. Like spring cleaning your house, cleaning out your social media gives you a chance to take into stock what you really want to see and eliminate accounts that cause negative feelings.
  • Put your phone on airplane mode. By doing this your phone is still on but the need to check your notification disappears by not allowing any notifications to pop-up until you turn this mode off. This takes away the sometimes constant nagging need people have to check their phones.
  • Turn your phone off for an hour a day. By turning off your phone it becomes more of a hassle to turn it back on and check social media than to just scroll through your notifications with it on. Try doing this a few times a week and see if it makes a difference for you.

By the end of your digital detox you should be feeling refreshed and a little more at ease!

I couldn’t have said it better myself – lessons for anyone online

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Lessons for Anyone Online: Borrowed from the Washington Post Blog, ComPost:

ComPost logo

Amy’s Baking Company vs. The Entire Internet

By Alexandra Petri, Published: May 16, 2013 at 1:28 pmE-mail the writer

If you were, for some bizarre reason, to gather children at my knee and ask me to impart to them the hard-earned wisdom of my years, I know exactly what I would say:

“If you do something stupid on the Internet, children, never, under any circumstances, try to pass it off as a hacking. This just makes you look like someone who has done something stupid on the Internet AND who does not understand how the Internet actually works.”

I would go on to point out that seldom in history has any self-respecting hacker come dashing in and made you look stupider than you were to begin with. Sure, hackers take over news accounts from time to time and release startling tweets about assassinations and cause the stock market to fluctuate. But when it comes to private individuals, no hacker of note has ever gone waltzing in to your account and started firing off sexual innuendos, CAPITALIZED TIRADES or emailed Images You Would Just As Soon Did Not Reach The Public Eye to the more nubile of your followers.

The children would probably have wandered off by this time to seek sandwiches, but they would know I was right.  venn diagram

Well, if the Anthony Weiner scandal didn’t do it for the hacking excuse, the Amy’s Baking Company meltdown certainly has.

For anyone not familiar with Amy’s Baking Company, this is the most amazing non-news story that has happened all week.

In Scottsdale, Ariz., there is a restaurant so far gone that even Gordon Ramsay’s shouting cannot save it. In fact, its owners so terrified the man behind “Kitchen Nightmares” that he decided to quit working with them rather than endure them any longer.

If you haven’t been in the nooks and corners of the Web where this has been bouncing around, you are missing out. It’s brilliant and unhinged, in the way all things that go truly viral are. First, the “Kitchen Nightmares” episode itself, which features the classic lines from Amy, “We have three little boys but they’re trapped inside cat bodies. They’re cats.” It shows the owners taking the waiters’ tips, berating the customers and insisting that they do not know the kind of food they want, firing the waitstaff, shouting at Gordon Ramsey and completely refusing to accept any criticism of any kind.

Then, if viewers had any nagging fear that this insanity was staged for the cameras, the Facebook page of Amy’s Baking Company lit up with insults, as co-owners Amy and Samy inveighed against all the Web sites where the “online bullies” had given them negative reviews. Most of them are unprintable, but some highlights include: “To all of the Yelpers and Reddits: Bring it on … Come to arizona. you are weaker than my wife, and weaker than me. come to my business. say it to my face. man to man. my wife is a jewel in the desert. you are just trash. reddits and yelpers just working together to bring us down. pathetic.”

“I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD. IT IS NOT UNCOMMON TO RESELL THINGS WALMART DOES NOT MAKE THEIR ELECTRONICS OR TOYS SO LAY OFF!!!!”

As a general rule, if you are the one typing in all caps insisting that everyone else is wrong, they are not wrong.

The couple has been doing this for some time, but suddenly they announced that “Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy&Samy.”

If so, this hacker has an awful lot of spare time and an uncanny ear for dialogue.

The Amy & Samy story is essentially a master-class in How To Lose An Argument on the Internet. The basic steps, for anyone curious:

  • TYPE IN ALL CAPS
  • Explain that God is on your side.
  • Call the other person a rude four-letter, three-letter, five-letter, six-letter, ten-letter, or twelve-letter name.
  • Explain that you are right because the other person is an idiot, while misspelling something.
  • USE ERRATIC PUNCTUATION OR GRAMMAR WHILE CALLING THE OTHER PERSON STUPID ALSO DO THIS IN ALL CAPS.
  • Describe your cats as “little boys in cat bodies” or “little people in cat suits” or “children, but actually cats, but really children” or “non-human children.”
  • Refuse to stop arguing.
  • When the backlash starts, insist that you were hacked.

They manage to do all of these, in some cases in a single post. They do everything short of comparing someone to Hitler.

Naturally, this has been blowing up online. To call this kicking the hornet’s nest would be an understatement. They poked and poked and poked the hornet’s nest while making disparaging remarks about the hornets’ mothers. No wonder there’s a swarm.

Folks, it’s not the Internet. It’s you.

 

Medium: A blogging platform for writers

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Last week I learned about a new social media platform called Medium and was given an exciting directive to explore their new website and report back to the rest of the team. I didn’t know much about Medium going in, other than it proclaims to be based on the belief that the sharing of ideas and experiences is what moves humanity forward. Sounds great!

Truth be told, after several days of exploration I’ve come to the conclusion that Medium is my kind of platform. It’s for the 1% of us that like to write opinionated quasi-intellectual notes on Facebook that unintentionally alienate half of your friends. The best part is that your parents, employers and colleagues haven’t discovered Medium yet, so it’s like Facebook circa 2006 when you could still get away pouring your heart out over the course of an evening (and a bottle of Chianti) with no repercussions.

Medium is currently in über beta start-up mode, but I thought it might be fun to poke and prod around their website with the proverbial stick. The following is what I’ve discovered.

Blogging Platform Reimagined

When I went to explore Medium, I did it from the perspective of their motto, ie, someone trying to move humanity forward, and I was immediately drawn to this post: Stop working (so hard).

medium logoYou don’t have to worry about that, Medium.

But in all seriousness, from what I understand, Medium is trying to reimagine the concept of a blog by making it more socially interactive than current designs allow and by facilitating longer conversations and extraneous dialogue in the process.

It became immediately apparent that this platform is geared towards a certain type of person. You know the Facebook friend who posts cute kitty photos and gets all twisted whenever someone talks about politics, science or demonstrates critical thinking? Yeah, this site is not for them. Medium is more accurately for people who like to write, or those who like to critique what other people write.

Comment Makeover

In a typical blog format (Tumblr, Facebook, Blogger, WordPress) all of the comments on a given post are archived at the bottom of each post. With Medium, the comments are displayed to the right side of the post, which results in a more fluid interaction. When you comment on a given post you can highlight the exact word or phrase you want to comment on, and subsequent users can comment further. This feature makes for more functional interactions with a post, and I like it.

Check this out:

medium image

Formatting blogs

Do you remember how crazy Myspace got when people could add pink backgrounds and floating sparkles and snowflakes to their landing pages causing your Pentium III computer to freeze up? Do you hate it when you arrive at a blog with an orange background with white typeface? Medium has simplified the way people format their blogs by eliminating choice, essentially subtracting a lot of the functional ability and formatting options that you may be used to with other platforms. They also allow only a single headline image for each post. I think this works because it makes their blog system cleaner and easier to read.

Here is an example of what I mean:

medium image 2This is what the blogging tool looks lik

medium image 3You’ll notice the following:

  1. You can only add one image
  2. Your title is large and bold
  3. The body of your writing is in smaller font

That’s it. You cannot change the font, add italics, underline things, create orange backgrounds or add snowflakes to accentuate a wintry theme. This is blogging simplified.

Categorizing Blogs

In the following image you can see that Medium allows you to review posts, and collections of posts (demonstrated below).

medium image 4

You can customize your own collection of posts under the heading “Collections” or if you don’t want to go with the ones that they select for you, you can create your own, which could be a fun way to stimulate conversations about topics that are relevant to you personally. My favorite category is “Armchair Economics” because the topics flatter my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and/or ego.

Who should use Medium?

I’m answering this question wearing my PR professional hat as clients are often asking for the return on investment (ROI) on social media platforms. I haven’t done enough digging around to fully understand Medium’s policies, but if you have a business or a brand that relies on the dissemination of ideas and information to relevant communities, Medium may be a good platform to keep your eyes on.

I’m a little conservative when investing too much time in new platforms – I like to watch others jump in to see how they may be benefiting before I invest my most precious commodity, time. It is unclear to me if writing a blog-like post in Medium will create any less or any more SEO for your brand.

Medium challenges the notion that attention spans are getting shorter or that people require all information to come in 140 characters or less. Medium is embracing the idea that everyone can write long, drawn-out prose, and that there are people out there that want to read your meanderings.

Go ahead, check it out and explore for yourself.  http://medium.com

MeetUp - the social site that encourages you to meet in person.

MeetUp – The greatest social network you’ve never heard of

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– by Cam Clark

One of the most prominent complaints I hear against social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter is that they actually make us less social. They suck you into interacting on a superficial, virtual basis rather than face-to-face.

There are arguments for and against this thought process, but for the past ten years one social network has been quietly and successfully nullifying these two assertions right under our noses by creating a network of people who meet virtually and congregate physically.
 

Meetup.com is one of the rare websites that actually encourages people to meet in real life. The website aims to help people create communities unified by a common interest, such as: politics, books, sports, movies, health, pets, jobs or other hobbies. Members just enter their ZIP code or their city and the topic they want to meet about, and the site helps them arrange a place and time to meet.

Meetup’s mission is “To revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.”

This under-recognized social networking site is the world’s largest network of local groups, with people getting together somewhere on the planet every 13 seconds. Meetup boasts an impressive 9 million visitors per month in 45,000 cities worldwide, and has 280,000 monthly Meetups on every topic imaginable. Sure, compared to Facebook numbers, 9 million is a drop in the bucket and the site could use a visual overhaul, but just because this site has been outshined by others does not mean you should ignore it.
 

 
I personally have made some great connections through this site, and in a very short time frame. I’ve pub-crawled with the “20 and 30 somethings in Portland,” happy-houred with the “Happy Hour Aficionados of Portland,” run with the “NoPo Run Club” and even sung my face off with the “Portland Karaoke Singles.” There is so much fun to be had.

If you don’t think you have time to check it out, do me a favor. Go to meetup.com, enter in a topic that interests you and your zip code, and just see what comes up. If you are unable to find anything interesting, come to one of our PR 3.0 meetings and I will buy you a beer. Or, maybe, just maybe, you will find a group of people that will forever change your life. Either way, what do you have to lose?

timeline timewarp

Let’s Do The Timeline Again

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facebook timeline

– by Jake Ten Pas

Alexis Dane loves cats. Cam Clark pumps out the party jams. Family is of utmost importance to Pat McCormick, and his daughter, Allison didn’t fall far from the tree.

These are the things the new Facebook Timeline profile format tells me, and perhaps in the bigger scheme of things, these are the most important things for me to know about each person. I sure hope so, because I’m not going to glean much else from the image-heavy, text-poor space “above the fold.”

If the phrase “above the fold” means nothing to you, then chances are you love the new profile format. You didn’t grow up reading newspapers, and it could be that your interest in words goes no further than the often unpunctuated, under (or OVER) capitalized, fact-check-free asides that pass for communication these days.

Just in case your curiosity runs deeper, “above the fold” refers to the space above the crease in a newspaper. It’s the real estate that peeps through the window in the newspaper box you might still occasionally see on the sidewalk downtown. It’s where the most important, or at least most eye-catching, stories and photos run. In my former life as a copy editor/page designer, I was often committed to getting as many stories as I could above the fold.

chronicle vending stand
Facebook used to be committed to this idea, as well. If not stories, it at least prioritized interactivity and the sharing of information. At the top of my page were (are, depending on whether you read this before or after my transition to the new format) my vital stats: My name, birthday, where I live, where I went to school, marital status, etc. There were a number of photos, often a status update and some recent activity. In other words, there were numerous ways to engage.

Now, when I go to the page of one of my coworkers listed above, I’m slapped in the face with one gigantic photo. This slap is followed by quick jab in the eye with another smaller photo and, eventually, actual info about the person and ways to interact with her or him. Granted, I often work on a small laptop, and I can see twice as much information on Pat’s gigantic monitor, but the message remains the same. Image has superseded the written or typed word as the communicator of choice as far as Facebook is concerned.

Whether or not this is another step toward global illiteracy remains to be seen, but it is, at the very least, sad. Considering that more people now check Facebook on a daily basis than read a newspaper, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in drawing these kinds of comparisons.

Photos are more universally accessible. I get that. Anybody can grab a camera or digital phone and snap a picture. It takes practice to put words together in an order that makes sense and transmits an idea, information or feelings to others. People can take just about anything away from an image. Maybe that means that images allow the consumer more freedom of interpretation, and words direct us to specific conclusions. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but there’s certainly an argument to be made.

Personally, I like to communicate more with words than images. I love words, and I feel as comfortable working with them as an artist might with paint or Photoshop. As a movie lover, I understand the power of the image, and I understand the skill it takes to produce an image that is truly powerful. A great photo can tell a story as well as any combination of words. Just not in my hands.

This isn’t about that. It’s about Facebook tipping the scales of word-image equality. From my perspective, the social media behemoth is simply holding the mirror up to society. Most people seem less concerned with speaking or writing in either a proper or effective manner than they once were. People would rather speak with images, and Facebook is only too happy to enable that inclination. Also enabled are the rest of us, who’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t have time to read, but only to glance at a photo, and preferably one unburdened by caption.

Facebook image
Facebook devoured MySpace for a number of reasons, but one that’s always struck me was its streamlined, easy-to-read format. By not allowing an overabundance of customization, they created a user experience that was clean and consistent. Whether folks wanted to share with words or images, their profile and, more recently, the news feed, maintained an uncluttered flow.

Now, not only has written communication been devalued, but by allowing increased customization of the profile space, Facebook has allowed user profiles to look almost as messy and impenetrable as MySpace pages once looked. Granted, there are no fit-inducing flashing widgets yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In this online version of scrapbooking, some new visual corollary to the triple exclamation mark must re-emerge.

It’s not that I don’t get the Timeline metaphor. It’s that Facebook’s execution of this metaphor is shoddy at best. It looks less like a timeline than a dreamboard in a teenager’s bedroom.

Every time Facebook unleashes a new iteration on its users, there is backlash, and I’ve no doubt that some of you with the attention span to read this far are accusing me of simply contributing to the most recent wave. Could be. I simply ask that you consider that this new format represents a bigger change than most, and what that change says about how Facebook, and those of us who use it, view the shape of communication to come.

Meanwhile, I’ll be contemplating how to fit all these ideas into a single image that can be rapidly consumed by those who don’t have time or inclination to read below the fold.

Gen Y - brand agnostics and savvy

Credit unions need to keep it real to woo Gen Y from banks

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The Northwest Credit Union Association (NWCUA) recently invited me to present tips on reaching Gen Y. Like most organizations, they want to know how to attract the largest consumer group in history. With Occupy Wall Street and Bank Transfer Day leading the news, there’s never been a better time for credit unions to be heard.

The first step in building relationships with this generation is knowing everything about who Gen Y’ers are and what drives them.

Meet the Gen Y’ers:

  • Believe they can be and do anything.
  • Believe miracles are possible.
  • Want to live first and work second.
  • Care about servicing their community.
  • Don’t like to be told what to do or what’s cool.
  • Want to experience the world for themselves to develop their own judgement.
  • Don’t want to be marketed to.

Gen Y respects authenticity. If you want to be listened to, be real. This generation can see through B.S.

Gen Y socialize on smart phones

Where are they? On their phones. They are more than half of mobile users in the US. Also nicknamed the Connecteds and Net Generation, they’re almost all socially networked. They do everything online, including research before buying.

When purchasing a product or service they look for:
  • Low cost
  • Good quality
  • Fast service
  • An “experience”

Living in an era when information is everywhere and everyone is constantly connected, how can NWCUA members and your organization reach Millennials? Relate to what’s important. Know that they listen to their friends. They care about their community and they care about living life well.

Give them what they want and:
  • Differentiate credit unions from banks. Seize the 99%.
  • Offer tools for living well that Gen Y will want to use. Financial literacy hasn’t been taught to them in schools. Make money management “an experience” with an app that helps them manage their money and reach their goals of buying a house or traveling the world.
  • Communicate credit unions’ community involvement. Offer an online program teaching financial literacy and curriculum for teachers.
  • Engage them on social networks. Let them lead on Facebook, and be a real resource for them on Twitter.

As evidenced by the 690,000 people who dumped their banks in a single month around Bank Transfer Day, Gen Y will like what credit unions offer. Be easy to find, easy to use and make their decision to switch easy.

am:pm pr tips

As for any other organization? Anticipate what members of Gen Y will want from you and what they’ll look for on your website. Don’t add fluff. Make sure to give them something that they can recommend to their friends without sacrificing their authenticity.

Twitter sliced

Twitter becoming critical tool for crisis communications

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by Camrick Clark

As any firefighter will tell you, the best way to put out a fire is to prevent it. But when something does catch on fire, a quick first response can help keep things from going up in flames.

Using Twitter for crisis communications is fast becoming a critical component in any company’s strategy. Twitter is as much about preventing an isolated issue from becoming a full-blown crisis as it is about communicating quickly to key stakeholders and the public once a crisis has happened.

twitter image blue

Crisis communication is a public relations activity that, with careful planning, rarely needs to be implemented. Still, it’s very important to have a plan in place when an emergency rears its ugly head. When a product fails, an accident occurs, financial crisis arises or natural disasters happen, whatever the case may be, crisis communication plans keep the peace and give direction to chaos.

Social media has changed the landscape for the development of crises and offers a critical communications channel to address and abate a crisis. Social media can blow up a situation in a matter of minutes. When a story breaks, people are actively looking for answers, and more people than ever are turning to Twitter for those answers.

As in all business communications, Twitter needs to be part of a broader strategy, and one of a variety of channels you use to listen and share with your employees, customers, clients, and industry. This is true both when it comes to prevention and when it is time to react.

How to use twitter for crisis communications:

  1. Educate – Bring yourself and your staff up to speed on how Twitter works and the social norms of the platform.
  2. Plan – What will you do when something bad happens? Identify and plan for crises you can foresee, and those you’d never expect. Think about thinks that could happen to you – disasters, etc., and crises that are self-inflicted – product recalls, hazardous materials spills, etc. Who will be the one to speak on behalf of your company? Answer these questions and more by creating a crisis communications plan.
  3. Listen – Good communicators are always good listeners first. In other words, you won’t know what’s happening unless you’re actually listening. If you’re not on Twitter, then you won’t know who’s talking about your brand in that space, much less take part in that conversation. You shouldn’t join Twitter just to react to an issue. Creating a presence pre-crisis helps develop a network you know shares an interest in you and what you do.
  4. Be Active – Become part of the online community. Don’t wait for the building to be burning down around you to engage your public. Prevention is always better than reaction. There are also many great free tools for tracking what happens on Twitter. Use those to preemptively ease into the conversation before a crisis even hits.

Twitter, faster than earthquakes?

Distillers at AM:PM PR's first anniversary party

First Anniversary Party Video

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Scenes from AM:PM PR’s first anniversary party mingle with fire chief Pat McCormick’s speech to the friends, clients and family that showed up to support us and the community that is our home. Included among the participants were members of Distillery Row, Cascade Brewing, Zanzibar Cellars, Eat Your Heart Out Catering, Phoogoo, and the creative minds associated with PoBoy Art and Chris Haberman Art.

yogapose

We’re Better at PR than… “Yoga”

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In the latest installment of AM:PM PR’s “We’re Better at PR” series of videos, the gang tackles yoga, with typically inept results. AM:PM PR is a public relations firm based in Portland that believes humor is one very important tool of good communication. If this video makes you chuckle, drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter.