In today’s interview we talk with the founder of Brodeur Partners, John Brodeur. Over twenty years ago John parlayed a career as a journalist and congressional staffer into the development of a small boutique firm that focused on technology. This, of course, was well before anyone was focused on technology. In this short interview which took place in the summer of 2009 we catch up with John and his comings and goings.

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Please join us next week for another Brodeur Partners Podcast

In this week’s edition of Social Media Monday, we take a look at why Bit.ly keeps growing in popularity among tweeple and bloggers alike.

What it is: Bit.ly is one of many free URL shorteners online – allowing you to turn a 15+ character URL into a more manageable one for sharing among your social network.

What it does: Bit.ly gives you much-needed room in the twittersphere where we are all constrained by the limit of what 140 characters we can fit into a message. By shortening the URL, we the tweeple (I love that word) can pack more information and commentary into the tweet, and less room for the link itself. Though there are many competitors to Bit.ly, here’s a run-down of bit.ly’s most basic offerings:

Track click-thru’s: Bit.ly gives your URL a unique identifier, and lists it on your account page. By accessing this account page, you can see how many people have clicked on which links. This works in your favor when testing out which language works best to garner attention, or which topics are of little interest to your followers.

Easy user interface: Hootsuite, Tweetie and navigation bar interface capabilities have made posting to bit.ly almost the default choice. If you are tied to a laptop or stationary computer, for example, clicking on the single navigation bar button while on a specific page will set everything up for you to post. This will also show you if other people have already used bit.ly to link to this page, and what the CTR has been on their posted link(s).

Track trends for your links: Bit.ly allows you to track very basic trends, such as how many people have clicked on your links, when they clicked on them, and where they clicked from. As I’ll mention soon below, this offering will be expanded greatly in the coming months…

What it is good for: Bit.ly is an excellent way to track real-time progress of your marketing tactics and goals. Are certain messages working? Does your intended audience have no interest in what you’re tweeting? Are you reaching your desired target audience, in terms of geography? Bit.ly gives you the chance to turn on a dime and adjust your campaign accordingly.

In a real-life example, we regularly use this to track what is working for clients. We may have three potential messaging sets for a given event, but only when we put them out there can we really see what is valuable, and what just is not catching on. By concentrating our ongoing efforts on the messages and stories that people are clicking on, we save our clients valuable time instead of continuing down an ineffective route.

Moving Forward: Bit.ly’s blog says it best… there is a lot more coming. Seeing the success of twitter’s trending topics, bit.ly is moving in that direction – giving us the opportunity to slice and dice the data a bit more. One of their main competitors (Digg’s Tr.im service) is also trying to adjust its service in a similar manner. In truth, all of their most serious competitors are moving in this direction, and we should see some interesting innovations in this space over the next few months.

However, when looking at the bevy of bit.ly competitors, the one big differentiator which stands out is its stability. There have been multiple times when bit.ly’s competitors have gone dark, or switched their “terms of service” – redirecting all your past links to their own homepage. Bit.ly however has kept your links moving to the right page the whole time… and there’s something to be said for that level of consistency.

Final thought: If you’re not already using a URL shortener for your tweets, Facebook fan pages, etc., it’s time to start. Bit.ly is a great starting point, thanks to ease of use. It also happens to be growing in a very useful direction for online marketing folks like us. If your client is asking about ROI and real-world click-thru numbers, familiarize yourself with bit.ly now and impress the pants off them with solid numbers – which can often be so elusive in online campaigns.

What’s your final thought on bit.ly? Do you have any gripes about the service? Do you use it in an innovative way we haven’t covered here? Let us know in the comments below!

In our second installation of Social Media Monday, we’re taking a look at a long-time favorite resource of ours here at Brodeur Partners – Radian6.

What it is: Radian6.com is one of the tools necessary to break down conversations across social networks, websites and traditional media sites – offering the ability to see “big picture” trends or go as granular as you wish.

What it does: Track relevant conversations about your brand or topic, identify major influencers in your space, build quick and easy cloud tags, and monitor conversation volume and share of voice. Though these are some of our favorite ways of using Radian6, the service also provides other helpful monitoring tools:

Track the tone: Despite claims to the contrary, there is no solution yet for effectively tracking tone automatically. However, Radian6 provides a well-executed CMS to manually track positive/negative tone for an article, resultant comments or even a specific author

Integrate into outside feeds: RSS software makes integration easy for in-house desktop monitoring systems

Effortless UI when tracking specific topics and trends: Radian6 has made significant strides in improving its UI for agencies, giving you the ability to effortlessly move through the abundance of information at your disposal without getting lost

Drilling down by region, language and media type: Narrow your results by geography, languages and platform (even members-only forums)

Influencer Weightings: This allows you to prioritize your results based on what factors most dramatically affect your campaign

Radian6 Dashboard

What it is good for: Based on our experience, Radian6 really does qualify as a full-service online monitoring tool – giving you multiple ways to slice and dice information, track trends and easily package reports for clients.

While Radian6 provides a great deal of information, it takes very little time to grasp how to use it (thanks to the great work on the system’s UI).  The ease of setting up a regular automated report system is particularly appealing when clients want to be more engaged and informed about what’s going on online.

In a real-life example, we regularly use this in new business pitches to quickly grasp the online landscape for potential clients.  Though you can drill down deeply, the ability to see trends emerging from a 30,000-foot level is also a compelling reason to use Radian6 as a “go-to” resource.

Moving Forward: Overall, Radian6 is a must-have for any agency serious about comprehensive tracking of social media trends. In part, because – unlike other services which often only provide a portion of the potential data cuts in Radian6 – this service uses actual internet traffic to drive its data. The alternative of extrapolating from online audience samples seems almost absurd in today’s online market where immediacy is often key to success.

When it comes to pricing, Radian6 offers substantial value… but with one caveat.  The pricing structure is based on flat-rate seats plus data volume.  So, for a relatively small client, you could easily pay the seat price ($100/month at present) and a $500 data stream fee. However, if you’re working on a Research In Motion or Coca-Cola, the data stream will almost certainly exceed the general pricing parameters, and you’ll need to negotiate with your customer representative.

…which brings me to the next point: customer service. As long-time users of Radian6, we remember when it seemed like it was a couple of guys out of their garage, and customer calls were addressed immediately. Given how comprehensive and user-friendly their software is, it’s not surprising they’ve grown tremendously since then… but the growing pains are apparent. If immediate responsiveness is an absolute must for you and your team, you may want to reconsider whether Radian6 is the right tool for you… at least until they sort out some of their staffing issues.

The Radian6 Blog is absolutely worthwhile. It offers useful insight on best practices – whether you’re a newcomer to the social media scene or a die-hard maven who’s been around since BBS’s.  How many times have you been asked how to handle negative online comments, for example? Well, here’s your answer.

Final thought: If you’re a data fiend, who needs the ability to dice apart social networking trends and present them in a client-friendly way, Radian6 is a must. For teams researching new business opportunities, even more so. However, before you build Radian6 into your budget, talk with one of their customer service representatives to get an estimate on what your monthly data feed will cost. Otherwise you may find an unwelcome surprise in your invoice box at the end of the month.

Really interesting article on the front page of the New York Times’ business section this past holiday weekend. From the headline and lead, I thought it was going to be about the transformation of the public relations business:

“This is the new world of promoting start-ups in Silicon Valley, where the lines between journalists and everyone else are blurring and the number of followers a pundit has on Twitter is sometimes viewed as more important than old metrics like the circulation of a newspaper.”

The protagonist of the story is an impressive woman who clearly has a speed dial to be envied. Larry (Ellison)? No problem! Michael (Ovitz)? We vacation together. We see her shepherd a start-up through its launch, by putting its CEO in touch with her “dear friends” at Amazon, Twitter, Digg and elsewhere.

Yet, as I read it and read it again, I realized that the article was not what it purported to be, i.e. about “turning the entire idea of P.R. professionals as gatekeepers on its head.” The woman with the amazing speed dial is just as much a gatekeeper as the hardboiled stereotypes of yesteryear. My goodness – she even embraces the term “publicist!” The cast of influential characters may have changed, from reporters to CEOs and VCs, but what’s going on is the tried and true business of cultivating important people and leveraging those relationships on behalf of your client.

There’s nothing wrong with that model – but it’s not transformative. What interests me even more is the way that the social Web will embrace compelling content – no matter who it comes from – and give fascinating but heretofore unknown soldiers their day in the sun.

I’ve seen this happen twice in recent months in a social network I follow: e-Patients.net (http://e-patients.net/). In the first instance, one of the blogs most prolific writers, the self-styled e-Patient Dave, took it upon himself to test the new services such as Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health that purport to store your medical records in a secure environment. Dave was brave enough to risk his personal privacy for a greater purpose, and what he discovered was little short of shocking. The records his hospital uploaded to Google Health were rife with errors, including procedures he’d never received and diagnoses he’d never had. The revelations not only made Dave a hero in the Health 2.0 community, they attracted the attention of the Boston Globe, which ran a feature on his tribulations. Pretty good PR results there!

The second, tragic tale is that of Regina Holliday, a blogger and newly minted activist whose husband succumbed to cancer last month. Regina blogged about her efforts to get a complete copy of her husband’s medical records so she could seek a second opinion. She was told it would take a month and cost her $.73 per page. She had neither the thousands of dollars required, nor the month of time. While she fought the system, her husband Frederick lost his battle with renal cell carcinoma. Regina’s story helped galvanize a group of healthcare stars to create the Health Data Declaration of Rights. The Declaration got coverage in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and the Huffington Post. Again, not a bad day’s work for a previously unknown mom/wife/poet/artist.

There’s room for all type in this big, wide world of ours – and room for plenty of schools of public relations. But if you want to see how the Web is truly moving the force, don’t look to traditional publicists, even if their rolodex IS on their Blackberry and Twitter account. Look at the power of words, images and ideas to break through the clutter in a radically democratic and exciting way.

Many clients and personal friends just don’t “get” twitter. Are you one of them? Well, it’s important to know that it’s not all “what I’m having for breakfast” or “song of the day” posts. In short, you might be missing valuable opportunities.

The key when it comes to using twitter is that you should visit the homepage very rarely. Use it to sign up, and clean up your followers list from time to time, but other than that, you should use one of the myriad twitter services out there to offer you the full range of twitter interactions necessary for a successful feed.

Why? Because twitter conversations move at an astounding rate, and unless you’re a quickdraw on the refresh button, you may soon realize that you’re barely keeping up, let alone contributing to a conversation. Sarah Silverman star @SteveAgee promoted his new twitter feed through a stunt: He promised to read the names of his first 5,000 followers live on webcam once he reached 5,000… in his underwear. It took minutes to accomplish.

In order to have a successful twitter feed, this kind of speed is essential. Anything from media opportunities to breaking stories is happening right now. If you’re not paying attention, you can easily lose out. The best remedy for this is to find a twitter service that works for your needs. We all have our own personal preferences for our daily dose of technology consumption – BlackBerry vs. Apple or browser vs. desktop applications. Don’t try to fit a square peg through a round hole, but rather find what fits into your daily routine, and use that to tweet.

I’ve included a short list of twitter services people here at Brodeur Partners use – and why they use them. We’d love to hear what you’re using and why, so please let us know what works for you in the comments section below!

BlackBerry

Twitterberry is a simple twitter interface for your BlackBerry device. Use your BlackBerry’s browser to go to twitterberry.com, and download the application from there. What Twitterberry may lack in multimedia capabilities, it definitely makes up for in its simplicity and reliability. I have yet to lose a tweet in the ether, and there are not multiple screens to shuffle through. You literally click on the icon and start typing. Couldn’t be simpler.

iPhone

Tweetie is a multimedia powerhouse for twitter users. They’re upgrading the application all the time, but as of right now, you can *very* easily take and send pictures, watch for trending topics, and even track people close to you. And yes… it is available at the app store.

iGoogle

For some of us, iGoogle is the panacea to our daily communications challenges. While we need to track blogs, monitor offline stories, have our calendars handy AND have easy access to email… iGoogle also has a set of varied twitter tools you can integrate into your iGoogle page. TwitterGadget is our favorite due to its simplicity and well-thought-out interface. Once you spend a few minutes looking at what buttons do what in their help section, you will be amazed at how much functionality can fit into such a small space. To begin using twittergadget, click on “add stuff” in the upper right-hand area of your page, and then search for “twittergadget”.

Web Browser

HootSuite is a great option for people who have a web browser always open on their desktop. Plus, for those of us with multiple accounts to manage, hootsuite does a brilliant job of divvying up the screen space and clearly displaying which account you’re posting to. Tweeting to one’s professional account about last night’s beer pong match is – shall we say – generally considered bad form. Use hootsuite to avoid any confusion on that front, though it may require a little more of a time investment to understand than the ones above.

Desktop Application

Tweetdeck is for those people who prefer to have twitter off in its own little home, instead of taking up valuable browser memory. You launch it from your desktop, and … well … it is amazing. A little complicated, but amazing nonetheless. Tweetdeck allows you to group your contacts so that you do not have to read the less-than-interesting posters that can clutter your twitter feed. Know someone who constantly tweets about what they’re having for breakfast, but whom you’re forced to follow for some reason or another? Put them in your “fail” group. Tweetdeck is the one application that offers you so many options on how to structure your twitter experience – it has earned its reputation as the go-to twitter application for many twitter veterans… in as much as you can be a veteran of a service with such a short history.

Text Message

This is how twitter started… as a text messaging platform for RSS Feeds (for the tech-savvy folks out there). If you go here, twitter provides an easy step-by-step guide on how to tweet using a non-smartphone. So, for those folks who are not going to upgrade anytime soon, but still want to contribute to twitter, this is the option for you.

More on twitter to come soon…

The Effie judging for 2009 has been completed and the winners will be announced next week at the big gala event in New York. As a board member and chairman of the Global Effie committee, I got a little peak under the tent. This year’s winners shared something in common with last year’s. Social media and public relations in general were very important parts of the communications mix. In fact, advertising and a number of “traditional” media vehicles were conspicuously absent in the campaigns that produced the most effective sales results. Grassroots, “experiential,” event, and unpaid media will take center stage again this year along with programs that are in support of the last three feet of the purchase decision ( the in-store experience.)

This all bodes well for public relations and for social media in particular. Mobility is the next media that will join center stage and we’ll see a lot more of that outlet in 2010 and beyond. The Effie’s winners are very reliable indicators of what the most savvy marketers are doing. Good news for this side of the marketing mix!

Do you comment on your favorite blog posts? Do you need to register? I work for Brodeur as a developer/designer building many of our clients’ blogs. I am constantly plagued by the decision of whether to leave comments open and unregistered or to require a simple login to avoid spam.

As a user, I would obviously rather not sign up and would contribute more on a topic where I didn’t have to register first.

As a developer, and a person who hates spammers, I would prefer to require a simple login while making spamming punishable by death (ok life in jail).

The real question is – What works best for attaining contribution from your audience. Are you as a user, unlikely to comment on blogs that require registration?

Something to think about – Techcrunch recently removed the login process as requirement for their users and now gets 10,000 spam comments a day.

As part of our “open” theme here at Brodeur, and the fact that our readers (that’s you) are not participating in the conversation as much as we had anticipated, open comments will be coming soon to the Brodeur blog. 

Let us know what you think.

Many thanks to Steve Hodgdon (CHECKMATE – the beaupre blog) for pushing me in the right direction!

With the growth of Web2.0 and the social media, press release companies are leaning toward the web and SEO for every release that hits the wire. What do you do for releases that aren’t a good fit for a social media release? They should still go on the web, right?

Companies should be making a SEO friendly PDF available on their website for every release that hits the wire. While many people have been doing this for years, I notice that they are regularly doing it incorrectly. If you are one of them, good thing that you’re here!

There are a few rules that you need to follow to make a PDF SEO friendly. Below is my checklist for every PDF I create that will live on the web.

• Complete the document properties. The title, subject, category and keywords can make or break your document on the web.
• Use a text format. Don’t scan a printed version; the search engine will not be able to read it.
• Keep the file small. People don’t want to download a huge document.
• Place links to your website. Users will many times download a PDF; let’s make it easy for them to find us when they want to!
• Backwards compatibility… Save files down using a lower version of Adobe Acrobat than what you have. Consider yourself lucky to have the latest and greatest. The rest of us may not be so lucky!
• Don’t make the user search for your pressroom. Make links available on the homepage! This will also give your site a non-static feel as the content will refresh with every release.
• Optimize the language for the web. Don’t use keywords. Instead, use search phrases in a natural tone.

The August 9 issue of The Economist discusses how Microsoft through the hiring of one of the premiere ad firms is planning on striking back at Apple, who of late has been using the computer giant as a punching bag the way Mohammed Ali abused George Foreman in Africa during the memorable ‘rumble in the jungle.’

However, has Apple secretly helped Microsoft by giving the giant an icon everyone can identify with based on Apple commercials? Everyone knows Apple as the hip, trendy 20-something with ripped jeans, an unironed t-shirt and chuck taylors and Microsoft being the corporate tightwad with a suite and skinny tie.

I am part of the Apple camp… I defected from Microsoft in the late ’90s and I wrote this entry on my iPhone while listening to my ipod. I wonder – as the article in The Economist suggests – can Microsoft somehow turn this icon to their advantage?

As PR professionals we’re often confronted with counseling clients on how to deal with their competitors. Do you go after them in the press giving them coverage in some fashion or go after then silently? I guess it just goes to show that even the biggest companies struggle with these very same issues.

It will be interesting to see how the Microsoft camp strikes back.

At Brodeur Partners we believe in work-life balance. Truth be told, we have a lot of work-o-holics.

Is it because we love our clients too much? Are we getting drunk with each winning campaign? Addicted to the adrenaline rush of the viral effort that infected just the right audience with just the right emotion at just the right time with just the right impact? The communications equivalent of crack cocaine … picking the tri-fecta … hitting the grand slam … drawing the ace card on an inside straight?

Whew. I just gave myself goose bumps.

You too? Well, watch out.

This type of stuff can kill you. Ask your Japanese friends. Blaine Harden of the Washington Post recently wrote a piece about Japan’s Killer Work Ethic where a judge ruled that a 45-year-old engineer at Toyota died of “karoshi” — too much work.

And if you have a penchant for gallows humor, read out Tom Stern’s review in Fast Company.

Dedication to work is one thing. When we confuse this with a life … then you’ve got a problem.

So here’s an idea.

Next time you get that email from a client or a colleague at 3:12 am trying to schedule three meetings before noon, do him or her a favor.

Pick up the phone. Ask them to tell you their favorite joke. Ask them about the latest movie they saw or sporting event they went to.

Ask them about the last time they hung out with their family and just did … nothing … just hang out.

And then tell them (gently) to get a life.

Send them Tim Ferriss’ book about the four hour work week.

Sure, the thrill of a new campaign can be exhilarating. And yes, getting that perfect placement, staging the once-in-a-lifetime event, developing the ideal brand strategy … all that stuff is great.

But it can’t beat spending time with family and enjoying friends.

Plus this work stuff can kill you.