PR Newswire… for bloggers features both original and third-party content relevant to a blogging audience, while also providing information about the range of services PR Newswire offers to bloggers, such as customized newsfeeds, listings of upcoming events, a news widget for websites and blogger media tour opportunities.

“PR Newswire recognizes the growing influence of bloggers and our goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to access the content, tools and information they need to develop their blogs and increase visibility,” said Thomas Hynes, manager, blogger relations, PR Newswire.  “PR Newswire…for bloggers is designed to be a one-stop shop, consolidating numerous resources into one comprehensive and easy-to-navigate space.”

Furthermore, each week, five new blogs are reviewed and profiled on the site. The compilation of blog reviews illustrates strong examples of blogging on a variety of subject matters. Currently, the site includes reviews of food, film and education blogs.  The chosen bloggers are also given a badge of recognition from PR Newswire to display on their site.

“There are so many great blogs out there – and that list grows daily,” said Hynes. “Our goal is to highlight some of those blogs we find interesting or influential – which ultimately comes down to engaging content.  Fortunately, there is no shortage of great blogs publishing just that so we shouldn’t run out of candidates any time soon.”

For more information on what PR Newswire is offering to bloggers, visit:

http://www.prnewswire.com/bloggers

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

PR Newswire Launches Dedicated Site for Bloggers is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Detroit to Former Yahoo Employees: Come to the Motor City
• A Few Noteworthy Social Media Campaigns
• Don’t Let Facebook Make You Post Content You Don’t Want to Share
• 5 Minimalist Static Blog Generators to Check Out
• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• 5 Content Management or Blog Publishing Systems Written in Node.js

DETROIT, April 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — A group of Detroit businesses are encouraging the more than 2,000 recently laid off Yahoo employees to consider bringing their talents to the Motor City.

Quicken Loans, Detroit Venture Partners, Rockbridge Growth Equity and Fathead.com are among the downtown Detroit-based companies interested in hiring hundreds of technology and marketing professionals formerly employed by Yahoo.

The group has created a website, www.ValleytoDetroit.com, for these technology and Internet marketing pros to upload their resumes.  The companies will immediately begin interviews and have committed to fly final candidates to Detroit to introduce them to the wide-range of established and start-up companies that have sprung up in the city’s emerging technology corridor over the past two years, creating the vibrant arts and entrepreneurial renaissance in Detroit that has gained the city national acclaim.

“Detroit is quickly emerging as one of the nation’s best kept secrets when it comes to technology, Internet and mobile-related jobs,” said Josh Linkner, CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners, a Detroit-based high-tech venture capital fund.  “We know that there is a great deal of talent inside of Yahoo – especially in marketing and web development, and we’re encouraging those who have been impacted by job cuts to consider Detroit as the next stop in their career.

“In the DVP portfolio alone we have 12 start-ups that we think would be attractive to those looking to regain the excitement of working in a creative, collaborative and entrepreneurial environment,” Linkner added.

The offer comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Twitter will be opening a Detroit office at the historic M@dison Building in downtown Detroit, a state-of-the-art technology and business incubator that houses many of the region’s top start-up companies.

“We are creating an exciting urban core for young, energetic and creative professionals who want to affect the outcome of an entire region,” said Bill Emerson, CEO of Quicken Loans, who has consistently ranked in the top-10 of Computerworld’s ‘Best Places to Work in Technology’ over the past decade.  “Not only does Detroit make for a great place to start or grow a business, but it’s also a great option for those who want to be on the ground-floor of rebuilding and reinventing a great American city.”

The businesses involved in the initiative will match candidates with hundreds of open positions and immediately begin phone interviews.  Face-to-face meetings will then be scheduled in Palo Alto during a recruiting event in May, and a smaller group of candidates will be flown to Detroit for interviews and a tour of downtown businesses and start-ups who are hiring.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

Detroit to Former Yahoo Employees: Come to the Motor City is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Digital Network: New Partnership between Yahoo and Starbucks
• Thompson Resigns as Yahoo CEO Due to Cancer
• Pushing Data, Not Pages is the New Model for Application Development
• The $550M Patent Trade Off: From AOL to Microsoft to Facebook
• Trapit Gets Yahoo Veteran as Chief Content Officer
• PR Newswire Launches Dedicated Site for Bloggers

So without further adieu, here is a list of three cool social media campaigns poised to generate buzz and a lot of attention (if they haven’t already.)

1. Bounce Energy just launched a Facebook contest where one customer and a friend could win free electricity for a year! Now there’s an incentive to get involved. The contest launched yesterday and goes through April 30. To enter, Facebook users must “like” the page and fill out the entry form. Those who already “like” the page, are prompted to complete the form.You can see it for yourself, here.
2. Urgent Animals at Fort Worth Animal Care and Control is a Facebook page that focuses on animals on the “E” list. The “E’ stands for euthanasia and through this Facebook page many of them have been  saved and found happy, loving homes. The mission of the page is to “give shelter animals extra exposure in hopes of getting them rescued or adopted.” According to a story in the Star-Telegram, about 1,000 dogs and cats have been saved through this Facebook page in the last year.
3. The Toronto Street Food Project is a campaign with one mission: Bring better street food to Toronto! It’s mission is further clarified in a post on Torontoist.com as this: “to try to ease the by-laws that are suffocating the Toronto street food scene.” The campaign makes it easy for Toronto residents to put pressure on their “councillors” by selecting their names from a drop down menu and submitting a pre-written from letter.  The Twitter hashtag #streetfoodto is another  major component of the campaign, with more than 1,000 tweets last week alone.

Those are three campaigns I found interesting over the last week or so. If you’ve seen any others, do share them in the comments. If this idea takes off I may consider a bi-weekly or monthly series of noteworthy social media campaigns.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

A Few Noteworthy Social Media Campaigns is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today
• How not to Land a Social Media Job in 2012
• When a Facebook Status Update Goes Horribly Wrong
• Who Will Be the First Social Sideline Reporter?
• Be Smart About What You Post on LinkedIn

Upon logging in today, I found a prompt asking me to add information about my employer, including position and city. Not alarming, I know but still worth discussing. While many of my friends do include this information on Facebook, I do not. Nor do I want to. So I decided to select “skip.” I was then asked to enter my high school. I hit skip again and then received three more prompts in the event I’d be more prone to share one piece of information over the other.

Again, no harm done….but it made me think about things a bit more. How often will they prompt me to share this information? Will there be other methods? Will people feel compelled to do it simply because they’ve been asked? In some cases, yes. They’re counting on it.

Facebook is probably going to do everything in it’s power to encourage users to tell the story of their lives through this timeline. And I suppose that’s the smart thing to do. They’ve basically taken the information provided so far and done as much as they can to get it started, so why not complete it with your entire life story?

If this is something you want to do, by all means go ahead. But you can still make your own decisions and opt-out of sharing every event of your life, even if Facebook is pushing it and your profile looks better because of it.

I think we sometimes forget that all of this is optional. Yes, Facebook is rolling out Timeline for Brand Pages tomorrow and it is all everyone is talking about. But as an individual – don’t get caught up in the hype and start sharing things you otherwise would not. A cool profile or pimped out timeline is no tradeoff for some semblance of privacy – IF – that’s what you want.

If not, post away. But remember, you always have a choice. Don’t let Facebook make you post content you don’t want to share.

I get it. They want Timeline to be a huge success.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategies]

Don’t Let Facebook Make You Post Content You Don’t Want to Share is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Facebook Timeline Becomes an Institution Today, But is it an Asset for Brands?
• Facebook: IPO, Soaring Ad Revenue And Timeline Movie Maker
• Facebook Deals With IPO, Timeline and Phishing Scandals
• Are You Guilty of These Facebook Follies? [Infographic]
• New Facebook Timeline Apps bring New Privacy Questions
• Users Split over Facebook “Listen With” Feature

Success is measured in “likes” and ‘comments.” Job descriptions mention the growth of a Facebook or Twitter community, when there isn’t one in existence in the first place. Fans and followers do not constitute a community. But despite how I feel about that, which is all based on experience, the jobs are plenty and that is a good thing. But community management is an art and a craft that must be fostered and developed.

Real community managers know this. The others are simply  playing community managers on the internet.  And here’s how they operate. Here, I give you the five habits of highly ineffective community managers:

1. They are constantly asking users to help them reach specific milestones. You’ve seen it before: “Help us get to 5,000 fans,” “Like this post so we can beat our record of 90 likes on a single post,” Five more comments to reach 100, come on..post!”  Does this sound familiar? I know you’ve seen it. This is the absolute laziest way to grow a community. It’s all about numbers to the people who do this. I hate to even refer to them as community managers. They could care less about actual engagement. They’re just looking for bragging rights.

2. They don’t bother to learn about community management as a craft, or how to improve.   I am not saying they don’t read or subscribe to blogs about social media. They do that. But they probably don’t read blogs about community management or take time to visit other successful communities to see what makes them great. They’re not reading Rich Millington’s Feverbee, Martin Reed’s Community Spark, Blaise Grimes-Viort, Connie Bensen, Alison Michalk, emoderation, The Community Roundtable, Dawn Foster’s Fast Wonder, or Patrick O’Keefe. When you care about community management, you connect with these thought leaders.

3. They don’t contribute as much as they should. Any community manager worth their weight knows that oftentimes you have to be the biggest contributor. The others fail to realize that they must  lead by example and if they would just communicate with members of the community, they’d soon become an influential force with the ability to make things happen.They’d rather ask participants to “share their stories” on some boring topic and deem themselves an expert at engagement once the entries start rolling in.

4. They phone it in, scheduling posts in bulk with no interest in real-time conversations.  These community manager-types don’t deal with the present or what’s happening in the real world. Timeliness is unimportant, as long as they reach those numbers. They automate it all, and set cruise control.

5. They spend more time searching for their next social media job than fostering dialogue and discussions. This one needs no explanation. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious. I certainly fit the bill. But why not focus on actually growing a successful community so that when you do get that next opportunity, you’re a shoe-in?

I’ve interviewed many people who tell me they know how to engage and they’ve run all sorts of campaigns that tripled a company’s fan base and ran a successful Twitter chat. But when the conversation gets deep and I try to hone in on how they engage and maintain a user base, the answers are pretty thin. It’s clear that they haven’t been in the trenches, or if they were, they didn’t want to be there.

So there you have the five habits of highly ineffective community managers. There are definitely more and I do plan to bring them to light over the next few months. In the meantime, if there are any others you’ve seen, I’d love to hear about them.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today
• Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions
• A Few Noteworthy Social Media Campaigns
• Tomorrow is Community Manager Appreciation Day
• How not to Land a Social Media Job in 2012
• Irrelevance isn’t Always a Bad Thing

I can’t remember a time when I felt more alone, under appreciated, but yet completely enthusiastic and exhilarated, than when I was the community  manager of GOLO, at WRAL.com.

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you are quite familiar with the ups and downs I experienced launching and growing that online community from zero to more than 13,000 members and the heart ache that came along with it. If you read my book, “18 Rules of Community Engagement,” you probably know even more.

Community Management is tough and it takes real comittment to see it through. It is not a job for the faint of heart or those who lack motivation and drive.

I can go on and on about what it takes to be a successful community manager, and I’ve done so in the past in posts like these:

• The truth about community management
• Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions
• When members go rogue and other community frustrations

But that’s not what tomorrow is about. It’s about you. If you’re a community manager, pat yourself on the back. If you participate in online communities, say thank  you to the folks who put out the fires and keep it interesting. It isn’t as easy as it looks.

And if you have the time, check out the hashtag #CMAD. I’m sure it will be blowing up the twitterverse as very well it should.

Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day to those on the frontline and deep in the trenches.I support you more than you will ever know.

Make it great.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

Tomorrow is Community Manager Appreciation Day is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today
• Irrelevance isn’t Always a Bad Thing
• The Truth About Community Management
• Live from a Community Manager’s Inbox
• Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions

Give it up.

Your heart was in the right place, but you didn’t do anything to support your effort.You thought that building the community was enough. You never hired anyone to manage it. You mistakenly believed that your brand was so amazing and beloved, that people would flock to your community to have all of these grand conversations.

It didn’t happen, and you still don’t know why, despite the fact that it was barely promoted, if at all. You didn’t engage.

You never posted interesting content.

The content you did post was never updated. Okay, you updated it twice. Sorry about that.

You deleted comments that made your company look bad, instead of seizing the opportunities to connect.

Just quit. You’re giving community a bad name. Besides, you’re too swamped anyway. But you knew that going in.

I started off with the intention of giving you five reasons to shut down your community, but ended up with more.

You get  the point. Make a change or shut it down. I’m over it. And so is everyone else.

Stop faking it.

Now please, have a great day.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions
• A Few Noteworthy Social Media Campaigns
• Tomorrow is Community Manager Appreciation Day
• How not to Land a Social Media Job in 2012
• Irrelevance isn’t Always a Bad Thing

After all, sometimes the best advice on what to do, comes from focusing on what *not* to do. So here are my thoughts on what you should avoid during an interview, if you’re hoping to land a job ( a legitimate, good job that is) in social media.

If you do not want to get called back for a second interview, do any of the following, and I bet you won’t:

• Talk incessantly about growing Facebook and Twitter fans, particularly how you ran a contest to see how many “likes” you could amass in a 24-hour period. All that tells me is you’re a two-bit hustler, and tactic-driven. Not interested.
• When asked what blogs, trades and books you’ve read or read to stay on top of trends, go on and on about how much you love Mashable. Sorry folks, as much as we all enjoy Mashable, it cannot be your only source of news, period. I’m sure the great folks over there would agree.
• Act like you’ve run Facebook ad campaigns, when you haven’t. Trust me, once the conversation moves to targeting and click-through rates, you won’t be able to muddle through.
• Go on and on about blogger outreach and influencer relations, when you have not established relationships with influencers or connected with bloggers.
• Talk about tools you’ve never used, as if you have. Not everyone has had the opportunity to work with Radian6 or Sysomos and that’s okay. It’s not cool to fake it. Be honest. A lot of this is still very new.
• Discuss your internet fame for as long as possible. Chances are, the person conducting the interview is already familiar with it. You are not there for an ego boost.
• Tell the interviewer that you’ve been trying to get a job in social media for two years because you love to tweet.

I hope these seven tips help you in some small way.  There’s definitely more where they came from, but I bet you may have a few of your own. If so, share them in the comments.

And good luck.

BTW, I’m looking for a Social Media Account Executive. Interested, read more about it here. 

Happy New Year!

How not to Land a Social Media Job in 2012 is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• A Few Noteworthy Social Media Campaigns
• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today
• When a Facebook Status Update Goes Horribly Wrong
• Who Will Be the First Social Sideline Reporter?
• Be Smart About What You Post on LinkedIn

Community managers, particularly those connected to a consumer brand do not want irrelevant conversations in their community space. If it’s not about the company, the product or the service, they want no parts of it.

You may not see a problem with that perspective, but I believe that you should.

If you’re really looking to grow and sustain a community, and you really want people to connect, you have to leave some room for them to do that.  Is it really that bad if people go off-topic for a while?

If they’re doing it in your community, that means they feel some level of comfort there, which works in your favor.

It can’t always be about you. That may seem counter intuitive, but I am not speaking from theory, but practice.

People don’t connect on one topic alone. And the fact that other topics come into play from time-to-time proves that the wheels of true connections are in motion and good things are happening.

So, create your guidelines but don’t be so rigid that you miss opportunities for continued growth.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

Irrelevance isn’t Always a Bad Thing is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• Tomorrow is Community Manager Appreciation Day
• Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today
• The Truth About Community Management
• Live from a Community Manager’s Inbox
• Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions

I figure since there are so many people out there telling lies and spreading myths about social media, I am not needed to perpetuate the trend.

I did post a link to the presentation on Slideshare, but I’m also posting it here for those who may be interested.

Angela Connor’s presentation at Internet Summit 2011

Enjoy. And let me know if you have any questions. as you probably know, I can talk about this all day.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategist]

The Truth About Community Management is a post from: SiliconANGLE We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

• Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Community Managers
• Tomorrow is Community Manager Appreciation Day
• Five Reasons to Shut Down Your Community, Today
• Irrelevance isn’t Always a Bad Thing
• Live from a Community Manager’s Inbox
• Beware of misleading community manager job descriptions