Now, wait a minute: That’s bacn, not bacon.

Anyway … if you don’t know, bacn is a term that emerged from PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 last August and refers to e-mail you receive that isn’t spam but isn’t exactly a personal e-mail, either. It’s mail you want to receive — but just not right now.

Still stumped? Bacn comprises things like news alerts and friend requests you receive from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and your other social networks.

The real problem with bacn is that it quickly clutters up your inbox throughout the day and creates far too many not-so-urgent one-off requests for your already fractured attention span.

What you need is a system that empowers you to process your incoming bacn (is there such a thing as outgoing bacn?) all at once and on your own terms, so that it doesn’t constantly interrupt your work flow.

Here’s my suggestion on how to do that:

Filter, filter, filter

If you’re using Gmail, Outlook or another e-mail client that allows filters, create a set of rules that will redirect all of your bacn messages out of your inbox and into a separate folder that you can check and power through once a day or once every other day.

In my Gmail account, e-mail messages that contain any of the following phrases in their subject line are automatically removed from the inbox, sent to my “BACN” filter, and archived:

• “is now following you on Twitter”
• “added you as a friend on Facebook”
• “has added you as a business connection”
• “added you as a business connection on Pulse”
• “Invitation to connect on LinkedIn”
• “just started following your Utterz”
• “has requested your trust on Spock”
• “Add me as a friend on Pownce!”

Cooking your bacn

What’s the method to your madness in ensuring bacn doesn’t zap your productivity?

(Creative Commons image from Dulcie’s Flickr photostream.)

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• I’ve been Tumbling responses to my (almost-) daily questions to my Twitter pals. Tumblr is an easy-to-use tool for publishing not only text posts, but also images, audio (one .mp3 per day) and video.
• I continue to yap away on Twitter. This was my No. 1 tool for growing my personal network in 2007, and I expect more of the same this year.
• After wiping out all of my Google Reader feeds in late December, I’ve slowly begun to rebuild my account this month. I’m trying to be more selective when adding feeds, so that I don’t wind up (again) with an unmanageable number of posts to wade through each day. Along the way, I’m also sharing posts that I find compelling and thought-provoking. (You can subscribe to my shared posts, too, if you’re so inclined.)
• I’m leaving more comments to blogs, Flickr photos, Utterz posts, etc. than I had been at the end of last year. Being a true participant in the social media community should mean caring enough to reflect on and respond to what others are doing, writing, and saying, don’t you think?

So, what do you do?

If you’re a blogger and go through your own extended stretch of relative blogging silence, how else do you stay involved in the comings and goings of the social media world?

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Tuesday, November 13, 2007.

LISTEN

Running time: 17:36

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

SOCIAL MEDIA MINUTE

• A word from Sarah Wurrey of CustomScoop, New Comm Road’s sponsor.
• For a free trial of CustomScoop’s ClipIQ Service, visit http://www.customscoop.com/NewCommRoad

NEW COMM ROAD MAP

* Inspired by a comment and question from Jay Berkowitz, host of the 10 Golden Rules Internet Podcast.

* Good examples of multimedia conference blogs:

• 2007 PRSA International Conference, October 20-23, 2007 in Philadelphia, organized by Kami Huyse
• Connect. Public Relations and Social Media Conference. Hosted by the Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication University of Georgia.
• Great overview on creating a team conference blog from Josh Hallett.

Road Map for creating a multimedia conference blog

* Centralized model.

1. Identify your goals for the conference blog. Make them as measurable as you can.

2. Work with an existing blog of the organization.

3. Start getting out the word early through other marketing channels — e-mail newsletter, conference mailing, etc. Be sure to display the URL for the blog prominently in your print material, on your website, and in your e-mail signature.

4. Get content up before the conference itself — with blog posts about things to do in the host city during the conference, hotel deals, podcast interviews with presenters and keynote speakers (Check out Donna Papacosta’s PodcastYourConference.com. )

5. Get the right team together.

6. Use your conference blog as the “hub” but also incorporate other multimedia elements:

• Twitter feed/Twittergram
• Flickr photos
• del.icio.us items
• Video YouTube/Blip.tv
• Live video from uStream?
• Social media news release
• Audio (use podPress plugin on a WordPress blog)
• Facebook group or Facebook page
• Conference/unconference wiki

7. Give out suggested tags (for blogs, Flickr, etc.) that attendees can use when publishing their own content about the conference. Create RSS feeds for these tags and monitor them before, during, and after the conference. During the event, sprinkle in a couple of posts on your main blog that point to content on other blogs and sites.

8. If you blog platform allows it, make good use of categories (”videos” for all videos, ” hotels” for all hotel information, etc.).

9. Use a blog platform that allows multiple authors to post.

10. Make your RSS feeds easy to find your blog and easy to subscribe to.

11. Measurement. Use something like Google Analytics to measure visitors to the blog, incoming links, search terms, etc. Also, find a way to measure engagement — such as with user comments.

12. Evaluate how well you met your original goals.

NOTES

• This show can also be found on Blubrry.
• Original New Comm Road theme music created by Nikolay Simov.

CONTACT US

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 222-9130

Technorati Tags: Nikolay Simov, Sarah Wurrey, CustomScoop, PodCampBoston, PodCamp, PCB2, Jay Berkowitz, 10 Golden Rules Internet Podcast, Kami Huyse, PRSA, UGA Connect, Josh Hallett

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Tuesday, November 6, 2007.

LISTEN

Running time: 26:03

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

NEWS

• New theme music for New Comm Road from Nikolay Simov in Germany.

SOCIAL MEDIA SUGGESTION

• A word from Sarah Wurrey of CustomScoop, New Comm Road’s sponsor.
• For a free trial of CustomScoop’s ClipIQ Service, visit http://www.customscoop.com/NewCommRoad

NEW COMM ROAD MAP

The Conversation Continuum: Finding, following, joining, and creating conversations online.

A summary of a presentation I gave with Doug Haslam (from Topaz Partners, PRobecast, the Tech PR Gems blog, and Gischeleman’s Blog) at PodCamp Boston 2, held October 26-28, 2007.

I., II. Finding and following conversations

1. Search on Google Blog Search
2. Search on Technorati
3. Use an RSS reader such as Google Reader
4. Start subscribing and listening to podcasts through iTunes
5. Subscribe to Google Alerts
6. Reading blog comments
7. Jump onto Twitter and establish a presence in Facebook

III. Joining the conversations

1. Adding comments to blogs and podcasts
2. Knowing when to respond to comments and when to stay silent
3. Reaching out in a human voice
4. Add to the conversation
5. Building up your network of friends and followers in your online social networks
6. Become a part of the community

IV. Starting new conversations (blogger relations/outreach)

1. Personalize your pitches
2. Think about the best place to reach those content creators? E-mail? Twitter? Facebook? Blog comment section?
3. Keep your pitches short
4. Write in a conversational tone — no corporate-speak!
5. Understand that bloggers aren’t journalists and have different motivations for publishing
6. Make sure you’re offering something of real value to the blogger and community.
7. Offer your content in multiple formats — links of video, audio, Flickr photos, page of del.icio.us links, etc.

COMMENTS

• Nikolay Simov, the creator of the new music theme for New Comm Road, wants to know if you “have something that you’d like to say to everyone, everywhere?” If you do, e-mail your message in audio format (no longer than 30 seconds) to nik-DOT-simov-AT-gmail-DOT-com
• Christopher Penn talks about Google Gears.
• Marko Kulik reminds me that I didn’t include a link to the list of Google Reader shortcuts in the show notes of the last episode. Here’s that link now: Google Reader shortcuts.

RELATED NCR EPISODES

• Learning about Google Reader
• Soup to nuts of starting a podcast
• Managing a blogger relations campaign

NOTES

• This show can also be found on Blubrry.
• New Comm Road theme music created by Nikolay Simov.

CONTACT US

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 222-9130

Technorati Tags: Nikolay Simov, Sarah Wurrey, CustomScoop, PodCampBoston, PodCamp, PCB2, Google Reader, Doug Haslam

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And here’s the thing: The pitch wasn’t very good.

For starters, we are addressed as “Hi Corporate” — you can’t get much sloppier than that. (I can hear Scott Monty telling me now, “Don’t read another word!”)

Next, the PR pro — who works at an agency that sponsored PodCamp Boston last year and should know better — makes zero effort to personalize her message. No mention of what we do at Monster. No attempt to find a match between the event she’s pitching and our career advice site or the Monster Blog, neither of which she bothered to research.

Finally, no links of any kind for me to check out her client’s event and associated product online.

Clearly, a disastrous pitch and one I should be forwarding to Kevin Dugan at the Bad Pitch Blog, right?

And yet, what we’re being pitched is intriguing. It’s funny. It’s a perfect fit for our blog, and potentially for our discussion forums as well. I simply wouldn’t be doing my job if ignored the message.

This post isn’t meant to justify lazy, brainless pitches. There are still best practices that should be followed, and I’ve written and podcasted about them in the past. But occasionally, someone can go about pitching all wrong and still win us over. It happens.

So to answer my own headline question: No, I’m not selling out. I’m being practical.

Technorati Tags: bad pitch, good pitch, Bad Pitch Blog

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The five-week online course will cover all of the following:

• Learning about RSS
• Learning to use an RSS reader
• Blog monitoring
• Blogger relations and outreach
• Online social networking

The course begins on Monday, September 10, and there’s still time to register.

All you need to participate is a web browser. Each week’s lecture is asynchronous, too, so it’s not taking place in real time. That means you can jump in any time during the week that is convenient for you.

This webinar is part of the Shel Holtz Webinars series, which is led by Shel Holtz.

Technorati Tags: Shel Holtz Webinars, blogger relations, blogger outreach, RSS

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The webinar is called “Monitoring and Participating in Online Conversations” and is part of the Shel Holtz Webinars series.

Here’s an overview of the webinar:

Let’s face it: People are talking about your organization online. With more than 70 million blogs on the Web, opinionated supporters and critics are having their say right now about the way you run your business and the products and services that you offer. The real questions are: do you know exactly what they’re saying, and when—and how—should you respond to them?

In this Webinar, social media expert Bryan Person will explain the ins and outs of both blog monitoring and blogger relations and outreach, teaching you how to use web-based tools to follow the online conversations that are relevant to your business and industry, and then how to become part of those conversations by developing and cultivating new relationships with bloggers. In this Webinar, you’ll learn:

• Just what that little orange RSS button means
• How to “subscribe” to or manage RSS/web feeds and e-mail alerts that track blog mentions of your organization, your competition, and key industry search terms
• How to identify the most influential bloggers in your industry
• When to jump into online conversations and what to say—and when you should stay silent
• How to build meaningful relationships with relevant bloggers
• The dos and don’ts of blogger relations and pitching bloggers

No applications or downloads are required to participate; all you need is a web browser. Have a look at this video overview of a Shel Holtz Webinar from Shel himself to get a sense of the user interface.

Note that this is an asynchronous webinar, so it doesn’t take place in real time. That means you can jump in at the times that are convenient for you.

You can find complete details on my course at Shel Holtz Webinars.

The webinar costs US $195, and you can register here: “Monitoring and Participating in Online Conversations.”

Technorati Tags: Shel Holtz Webinars, blogger relations, blogger outreach, RSS

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But occasionally, I get fired up enough to respond with an electronic tongue-lashing, and this past Wednesday was one of those times. A company asking for me to blog about its product, even though — get this — “it might not be very pertinent to [my] site” deserves to be told off.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Staf [sic]:

You just sent me a terrible pitch. You have obviously never read my blog, or you would know that your pitch was completely irrelevant to me. I also don’t blog on topics/products in exchange for something.

If you’re interested in paying me to teach you how to run a good blogger relations campaign and send better pitches, then let’s talk. Otherwise, please don’t waste my time.

I also made sure to send a copy of my reply to Kevin Dugan, co-author of The Bad Pitch Blog.

The right way to pitch bloggers
As I and others have written and said before, good blogger relations campaigns should include the following tactics:

• Identifying the goal(s) of the campaign before starting it — raising awareness? moving people to take a particular action?
• Reading the bloggers’ blogs well in advance of pitch time (certain cases of crisis communications excepting)
• Sending personalized and content-relevant messages to the bloggers
• Pitching more than just the A-listers

And if you’ve already built a genuine relationship with the blogger prior to sending your pitch, even better.

More resources on blogger relations

• Reaching out to bloggers: dos and don’ts
• New Comm Road 031: Managing a blogger relations campaign
• The Inside Scoop on Blogger Relations
• Another Blogger Relations Learning Moment

Technorati Tags: blogger relations, pitching bloggers

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Wednesday, June 27, 2007.

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

MEDIA MONITORING MINUTE

• A word from Chip Griffin, CEO of Custom Scoop, New Comm Road’s sponsor.
• For a free trial of Custom Scoop’s ClipIQ Service, visit http://www.customscoop.com/NewCommRoad

LATEST NEWS:

• Recap of Podcasters Across Borders.
• Meeting with podcasters Mitch Joel, from the Six Pixels of Separation, the Twist Image Podcast; Donna Papacosta, from the Trafcom News Podcast; and Terry Fallis, from the Inside PR Podcast.
• Organized by Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche from the Canadian Podcast Buffet.
• My talk on “Managing Your Social Media.”

* PAB photos from Mark Kulik, host of the pets.ca and photography.ca podcasts.

NEW COMM ROAD MAP
How to step out of podcasting’s echo chamber.

1. Evangelize outside your regular online network. Here are some groups/people/places to start:
   • A club, organization, or religious group that you belong to.
   • A nearby elementary, middle school, or high school. Talk to the teachers or PTO about setting up a podcast for the school or your child’s class.
   • A local college or adult education center. Does the school’s communications program have a class on new media or podcasting? Offer to do a presentation — or teach a class.
   • Your local cable access station.
   • Your municipal officers/politicians. Perhaps create a podcast for someone running for school committee or city council.
   • Your family. Interview a different member of your family each week and turn the interviews into a podcast.
2. Don’t get hung up on explaining the technology at first. Concentrate on the benefits for that person or organization, using the “you know when … ?” style.
3. Dispel the common misconception that you’ll need an iPod to listen to a podcast.
4. Explain podcasting using concepts people are likely to understand quickly. For example:
   • “It’s like Internet radio that you can listen to whenever — and wherever — you want.”
   • “It’s an audio version of TiVo.”
5. Show the people you’re talking to that there are podcasts in the subjects they are interested in. Ask them about their hobbies and direct them to relevant podcasts.
6. If you are presenting on podcasting a conference, really make an effort to be welcoming to newcomers. Seek out their questions. Spend some time with them after their presentation.

OTHER PODCASTS MENTIONED

• Just One More Book
• FrenchPodClass
• ClipPodcast

NOTES

• Visit the New Comm Road Travelers group in Facebook.
• This show can also be found on Blubrry.

MUSIC

• From GarageBand.com: Still Holding On, by Rantings of Eva
• From the Podsafe Music Network: You Don’t Need an iPod, by Uncle Seth

CONTACT US

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 222-9130

Technorati Tags: Boston, Bryan Person, New Comm Road, Custom Scoop, Podcasters Across Borders, PAB2007, Mitch Joel, Six Pixels of Separation, Donna Papacosta, Trafcom News Podcast, Terry Fallis, Inside PR Podcast, Uncle Seth, Just One More Book, ClipPodcast, Vivian Vasquez, FrenchPodClass, Christopher Penn

LISTEN
Running time: 20:59

Direct download this episode, or listen using the player above!

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With 159 feeds to follow and new posts arriving by the hundreds each day, there’s not a chance I’ll have the time or the inclination to read every new item. So what do I do?

I scan the list and open the posts that have good headlines.

If, as I wrote last October, you write a clever title but not also a descriptive one, there’s a very good chance that your post will never be read. And that’s cryin’ shame.

Capture your readers’ attention with a meaningful headline; keep it with meaningful content.

Technorati Tags: RSS, Google Reader, river of news

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