In this month’s issue of Her Nashville Magazine, I touch on a topic I’m often asked about: how to establish a consistent, relevant voice for your blog.

It took me years to find my blog(s) obsession, tone and style. Along the way, I discovered that while search engines love–and drive many, many random surfers to–my posts about nail polish and Steve Sullivan’s hockey comeback, my actual readers prefer less “stuff I like” and more teachable-geek-and-career-moments. My metrics spoke to me; I listened and adjusted my content accordingly.

If you’ve been blogging for a while, I’d love to hear about how you’ve found and continue to fine-tune your written voice. In the meantime, here’s a teaser from my May column:

Obsession is key.
Pick a topic and make it the only thing you write on and rant about. For example: my FlackRabbit blog is about PR and geek stuff. When folks visit my site, they expect to read about those things and nothing else. I love hockey, but I don’t blog about it. I also love my husband, but never write about married life. When we have kids one day, I will not turn FlackRabbit into a journal about motherhood. If I did any of those things, I’d lose my audience. The plain truth is that hockey, hubby and kiddos aren’t what my readers signed up for and I respect that. Read More…

There’s no shortage of SXSW Interactive 2011 “reviews.” Give it a Google; you’ll find all sorts of contradictory soap boxes, from SXSW has “jumped the shark” to O M G, it was “awesomesauce.”  Other than the mediocre panels, tsunami of street-marketers and QR codes, and an on-again-off-again AT&T 3G signal, three things about this year’s conference stand out:

1. We should all talk to strangers more. Seriously. It wasn’t the panels or keynotes that rocked my world, (could have skipped most of them, honestly) it was the limitless conversations with talented people. There were talkative geeks at every turn. And this wasn’t just a “shake hands and be on your way”-type of networking, these were hour-long talks where you walked away a smarter, more motivated person. I hated leaving before the closing party because I kept wondering not what, but WHO/WHOM, I’d miss.

2. You can solve your Meetup location crisis using only an iPhone and tha Twitter. About a week before the conference started, Dave had this great idea for us to declare a Meetup for DC-area folks attending SXSW Interactive. We called it DCxSW. He made a website; I filled out a Twitter profile, started a #DCxSW hashtag and got to spreading the word. We immediately saw a positive response from DC-ers, including retweets and offers to help.

The problem came about five hours before the event was to start, when I discovered that our venue, Shakespeare’s Pub, had been bought out by Maxim. Thanks, guys. But I didn’t have my laptop with me; Dave was at the hotel with the Team Newman iPad; all I had was an iPhone and a panicky feeling. How would I tell everyone? Where would we go?! Less than 10 percent of an iPhone 4 battery later, a new location at the Driskill Hotel bar was secured, the DCxSW Twitter profile edited and DMs and @ replies sent to every RSVPing person. Except Tod. Oops. Sorry, man. It really proved to me how powerful that tiny little Swiss Army Knife of a phone actually is. Oh, and 45 folks showed up! And Tod eventually found us.

3. The New York Times, Verizon and Quora need to have a frank talk with their marketing folks. I’ll sum this up this way: Read More…

South by Southwest Interactive–the geeky stepchild of the acclaimed SXSW Music and Media Conference held each March in Austin–is just around the corner. By this time next week, we’ll be neck-deep in geek swag, product launches and free parties. The Team Newman system of taking every-other-year off seems to be working out quite well.

Scan me!

There’s a lot I’m looking forward to at SXSWi 2011: talking to strangers, karaoke, random Guy Kawasaki sightings, stickers, morning Yoga, and learning more about new stuff like QR code marketing, #hashable and Quora.

Fortunately, the actual conference lineup looks great, too. I’ve already got Offline America: Why Have a Digital Divide; Social Policies and Company Culture; and Nonprofits and Free Agents in a Networked World on my schedule.

If you’re headed down to Austin, too, let’s connect! If you’re not, take heart: if you follow the #sxswi hashtag on Twitter, you’ll be hearing and seeing everything we’re seeing in real time. Then, you can go online and watch the podcasts of each session. It will be like the real thing, only sans hangover and outrageous hotel bill! Read More…

It’s that time of year again! For the geek and social media set, March means one thing: South by Southwest Interactive, or SXSWi for short. In this month’s issue of Her Nashville magazine, I share with you the new tech concepts and applications–including Quora and JumpScan–that I hope to learn more about next week. Here’s a teaser:

Quora:
The early adopter geek community is positively beside itself over this “continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” Once you sign up for a free account at Quora.com, you can “follow” and start conversations about topics and questions (and relevant answers) of your choosing.

Quora was co-created by Charlie Cheever, a former engineer/manager at Facebook, and the goal of the site is to create a sort of collective, ever-expanding database of all knowledge. It sounds good to me, but I’m not yet sold on how non-spammy and useful it will actually be. Stay tuned; I’m sure Quora’s marketing and development folks will be out in full-force at SXSW this year.

JumpScan:
I’m not sure how practical or mainstream this technology will ever be, but I’m intrigued by new applications like JumpScan, which turns Quick Response (QR) Codes into virtual business cards. JumpScan is in Beta, so it is still working out the kinks, but the gist of it is this: sign up, create a profile, receive your personal bar code-type thing and post it on the Internet somewhere.When folks scan your code using a smartphone scan-reader like ScanLife, their phone’s browser will open up your profile, giving that person easy access to the information you chose to share (it is a much more streamlined process than I’m making it sound).

I’m newly fascinated with QR code technology and hoping I’ll discover more creative marketing and reputation management uses for it this year.

Read the full column here!

Since February is the official month purchasing random tokens of affection, I figured now would be a good time to share with you my top technology crushes. Maybe you last-minute shoppers will find something for your soul mate. In this month’s issue of Her Nashville magazine, you’ll read about my obsession with likely suspects such as the iPhone and Kindle; however, it may surprise you to learn I’m just as keen on mobile banking. It just never gets old for me. Here’s a teaser:

No. 4: Mobile Banking (fees vary)
I giggle like a schoolgirl every time I check my bank balance from a balcony of a cruise ship, transfer money from savings to checking while standing in line at Starbucks, or pay a bill while brushing my teeth. For me, the magic of secure, real-time mobile banking never gets old. My bank, SunTrust, offers clients free mobile banking and even has a free iPhone app that allows me to do all kinds of cool, important banking-type things with just a tap of a finger. For the folks out there who do not “trust” mobile banking; I can assure you, your bank takes your online security seriously. Give mobile banking a try today.

Clearly, mobile banking is not an acceptable Valentine’s gift, but whatever. I still love it. Read the full column here!

{I can always depend on Joe Flood for informative, succinct guest posts. In his most recent FlackRabbit submission, Joe shares some marketing tips for all you creative, self-promoters out there.}

Last year, I published a book. Murder in Ocean Hall is a mystery set in DC about the death of the world’s most famous oceanographer.

Since then, I’ve experimented with social media to get the word out about my first novel. It’s been an interesting experience, one that has taught me a lot about product marketing in this consumer-driven age. Doing it yourself, without a staff or budget, helps you learn marketing tools in a very hands-on fashion.

Here’s what has worked for me:

Facebook – The most important audience for a new book is the author’s friends and family. Facebook is the ideal tool for reaching them. I promoted the book when it came out and at other key points spurring sales. My FB marketing has been simple – I’ve used my status update to tell people about my book.

Kindle – One surprise is that I’ve sold as many Kindle copies as print ones. The Kindle copy of my book is $2.99 (versus $9.99 for print) and people can buy it instantly. Also, Kindle owners seem to read more books than most people. Read More…

{Nashvillian, accredited PR pro and all-around rock star Mary Beth Ikard has received well-earned national props for her thoughtful and relevant management of the Nashville MPO Facebook page. In today’s guest post, she offers businesses, governments and non-profits five tips for managing–and engaging the public through–Facebook.}

I recently received some gratifying feedback from a national partner on the Facebook page I maintain as Flack for the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).  Transparent stakeholder involvement is critical to our success, and social media is proving to be a straightforward way to connect with interested publics, near and far.  A few thoughts on my approach:

1.  Think broad.  Our in-house experts collaborate, and are affiliated with, entities with a national footprint.  Several speak at nationally-organized conferences and Webinars. Say a Floridian learns about our efforts at a conference, and seeks us out on Facebook.  Posting local is key, but I’ll be darned if that Floridian ever felt like Nashville’s page was a bunch of “inside baseball.”  In a global economy, why would we only seek to be relevant to our backyard when we’re Kind of a Big Deal?  It’s the Flack’s job to relate our good work to multiple audiences. I seek out and share content that’s germane to our major policy initiatives – still informing locals, but there’s some universality there as other U.S. metros move in a similar direction.

2.  Don’t bore me.  It’s social media: show some personality! Use conversational, unfussy, even humorous language. Brevity = eyeballs.  If I’m looking at your post from my smart phone, how likely am I to read a four-sentence intro to your link?  If your brief intro is compelling (PR pros should cultivate intuition on what is compelling), I’ll linger on your update in my News Feed, and perhaps click on the supporting link to learn more. Facebook is also NOT the forum to put bureaucracy on display.  If your posts are about upcoming public hearings, with nothing additional that’s quirky, newsy, or useful: “Unlike.” Read More…