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A lot of what Stephen Covey writes in his bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People applies to the habits of the top influential Twitterers. So here are seven behaviors to repeat regularly to increase your influence on Twitter.

Habit #1: Make Each Tweet Count

Mark sure each tweet or update you send is relevant.  There is an increasingly amount of noise on Twitter so you need to make sure each tweet you send grabs the attention of your followers.  With limited time and lower attention spans, compelling tweets are a must.  Hint: try to follow the 9 simple formulas to creating killer headlines.

Habit #2: Know Yourself

Discover and clarify your values and goals. What are your trying to accomplish from Twitter? Think Guy Kawasaki and his Twitter strategy.

Habit #3: Plan Ahead

Plan and execute your tweets for the week ahead. Schedule some tweets using a third-party platform like Hootsuite or TweetDeck (which is now part of Twitter).

Habit #4: Know Your Following

Know your Twitter followers and what they like about your tweets. The third-party platforms mentioned above show you which tweets are the most popular and shows which topics your followers like and don’t like.

Habit #5: Listen

Listen well. Follow trending topics on Twitter, popular hashtags and take advantage that Twitter inherently reports news before traditional media does. Create a reasonably large amount of Twitter lists to better segment your followers so you can better understand your different types of followers.

Habit #6: Grow Your Influence Slowly

Your following won’t dramatically increase overnight.  It is a marathon not a sprint.  Follow these tips on how to grow your Twitter influence (another post I wrote).

Habit #7: Develop a Sustainable Strategy

Twitter takes a lot of time and effort to be successful.  You are only as good as your latest tweet. You have to continually to produce re-tweetable content.  Know how to get more retweets by taking advantage of research by social media scientist Dan Zarrella.

What habits would you add to this list?

Social media is a game changer for public relations.  It is bringing new challenges and opportunities to the profession and to savvy pros.  I have outlined seven ways that social media is changing PR.

1. Two-way conversation. PR pros can no longer blast out information about their brand or client and expect to succeed.  Consumers and journalists have come to expect that they won’t be “spammed” and will be answered quickly and in a personal manner. Timely, two-way communication is the “new normal.” Listening, engagement and thought leadership are now three areas that PR pros manage.
2. Digital communication. PR pros need to know the latest digital tools, including social media monitoring tools, Twitter, Google Analytics. They need to understand blogging and the tools that come with that.  We need to understand the nuance of communication for different online communities.  (ie. between communicating on Twitter and/or Facebook.)
3. Research. The social networks offer a wealth of information to PR pros on target markets, customer service, and media they want to pitch.  They can now create new opportunities that may not have been available before without social media.
4. Journalism is changing. Traditional media is no longer the “go to” source for information.  The news can “break” from anywhere and the general public has become citizen journalists. For example, look at the U.S. Airways crash into the Hudson River or Michael Jackson’s death.  The consumer no longer relies on big news organizations to be on the scene for news. Companies are, in essence, becoming media companies and their PR pros are becoming publishers.  Be sure to read How is Social Media NOT Journalism?
5. Faster and more visible communications. In our 24/7 customer-centric world, social media has increased the potential for complaints and the visibility of this negative outcry.  Since we live in a social network, crises happen faster, and response time must be as well. It is important for PR pros to develop their organization or client online presence BEFORE a crisis happens. Because technology is always changing, the crisis plan needs to become a “living” document that helps  give an immediate and well-informed response to the latest information.
6. Analytics. PR pros need to understand and use math everyday. Social media can better help track the return on investment, including direct costs of staff time spent using the tools, and measurement of the traffic it drives to a company’s website.
7. Organizational hierarchy change. Internal and external communications have been democratized thanks to social media taking out the extra layers such as a direct line to the CEO if you are an internal or external stakeholder.

What would you add to this list?  How do you think social media has changed PR?

This post originally appeared on the blog Spin Sucks.

In doing research for this post, I saw many other top viral video lists varied based a number of variables and criteria.  Basically, the list depends on how you slice and dice it.  In other words, these types of posts are very subjective.  So what really makes up a viral YouTube video for this list?

Here’s my criteria:

1. The video needed to reach a large age range
2. Be a part of pop culture
3. You can watch it on YouTube
4. Ranked by number of YouTube views

To help create this post, I referenced the YouTube Chart of all-time most viewed videos.

Here’s my list:

10.  Lazy Sunday – Saturday Night Live

Views: 5 million +++ (taken down by NBC from YouTube so not sure final count)

9.  Evian Babies

Views: 14 million +

8.  Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Views: 30 million +

7.  Will it Blend? iPad version

Views: 10 million + (note: many different versions of “Will It Blend” so I ranked this higher)

6. Numa Numa

Views: 41 million +

5. Miss Teen USA 2007 – South Carolina answers a question

Views: 49 million +

4.  Battle at Kruger

Views: 60 million +

3.  D&*K in the Box – Saturday Night Live

Views: 24 million + (owned by NBC so numbers are off – most likely tons more than listed on YouTube)

2. David after Dentist

Views: 85 million +

1.  Evolution of Dance

Views: 168 million +

What video(s) would you add to this list?

Managing a PR campaign takes a lot of hard work and effort.  To ensure success of your PR campaigns, you should avoid these seven common pitfalls or mistakes.

No integration. A campaign is more than a news release.  Most successful campaigns know how to take advantage of a multi-channel campaign that uses online and offline PR tactics, including developing a media kit, writing a blog post, producing a video and/or podcast, organizing a Tweetup or event for key stakeholders.  If all the components of the campaign don’t integrate, the campaign has a lower chance of being successful.

Lack of alignment and availability. Think about the key stakeholders in your organization and how they are going to be affected by this PR campaign. Is your key spokespeople who works in another department available to talk at moment’s notice on a blog, to traditional media, answer Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn questions?

Lack of proper positioning. There is nothing worse than not understanding how a PR campaign fits into your overall marketing strategy.  Marketing positioning is very important for a product, brand or organization.  What is your company’s identity and how will this campaign reinforce an image that has been branded into the minds of your target audience?  How will this campaign help with Search Engine Optimization? In other words, does the PR campaign highlight all the keywords that your audience may type into a search?

Too self-centered. Make sure that you solve your customer(s) problem(s) with the PR campaign.  Make sure you think about how this will help your target audience.  A journalist is more likely to write about something if the PR campaign can help its audience.

No newsworthy components. As a PR pro, you need to put on your journalist hat and think like the media.  Why should anybody care? Or what is in it for me?  Be sure to read: What Makes a Story Newsworthy? It is very important that you read, listen and/or watch the media outlets you are pitching for the PR campaign.

Not sustainable. Often times, a PR campaign is great at creating initial buzz but is forgotten months later.  You should create what is called the PR longtail on the Internet. Making sure that the content you write today can still be applicable in some way tomorrow is important for long-term success of the campaign.   Also, make sure the concept of the campaign is created in a way that it can be adapted to many different audiences.

Don’t know target audience. Who is the audience for your PR campaign?  Make sure that you not only know what target audience you are trying to reach with the campaign but what media outlets or online influencers would most likely be interested.  Make sure you do your homework.

What would you add to this list?

Image courtsey of DoktorSpinn.

Creating a domain strategy should be one of the first things you do when developing an overall Internet marketing strategy for your organization.

Organizations should make sure that they purchase multiple top level domains (TLDs) so that they all point to one primary domain name.

What does this mean?  If your company primary domain name has a .com TLD, they should also purchase the domain rights to .org, .net, .mobi, .biz, .jobs and .info.  You should also purchase some misspellings of your original domain name to make sure that your audience gets to your website.  For example, type in yahoo.org, yahoo.biz, yahoo.info into your web browser.  Do they all direct you to yahoo.com?   Yes.  If you type in yahooo.org with the extra ‘o’ do you get directed to yahoo.com?  Yes.  Yahoo is a great example of a company that successfully implements a domain strategy with multiple TLDs.

Why should you care?  One of the best mainstream examples of how a domain issue can affect organizations is the whitehouse.com controversy.  If you are trying to go to the White House website and type in whitehouse.com, you won’t find out about President Obama’s latest press conference.  You’ll need to instead go to whitehouse.gov.  A web page designer purchase whitehouse.com first and made it an adult site.  (It has since been changed to another site.)  CNET’s Whitehouse.com goes porn article summarizes this controversy well.

So do you want your organization’s clients and prospects go to a site that is not affiliated with your organization?  Worse yet, do you want to your audience (who may be young children) to encounter adult content instead of your content?  A cybersquatter took advantage of the popularity of the White House to promote his content.  Do you want your organization to fall victim to this too?

To learn more about the benefits of why your organization should purchase multiple TLDs and point them to one domain, I recommend you visit these two posts: advantages of multiple TLD registrations and why use multiple domain names?

Does your organization have a domain strategy?

In today’s ultra-competitive PR world you need to find ways to stand out. Following are 10 things that continue to help me become a more successful PR pro. I hope they help you, too.

1. Do your homework. A mass pitch never amasses a lot of coverage. Before you pitch a journalist or blogger, know what they cover. Research their past stories and fine tune your pitch to appeal to their audience.
2. Learn something new. Take a training course. Sign up for a conference. Go back to school. Take an online certification like HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Certification. You may find out you know more than you think.
3. Become a better writer. Practice being a “headline communicator” by learning how to hook your audience with your first five words. Find creative ways to flex your writing muscle. Become a contributing author to an industry publication. Start your own blog or write for your company’s blog.
4. Develop deeper relationships. Remember how powerful and memorable handwritten thank you notes are in today’s online world. Look for new and creative ways to keep yourself top of mind in the eyes of your stakeholders. Don’t forget that relationships are best built face-to-face than over the phone or on a computer.
5. Learn how to better manage the yes. This is a twist on managing the no. Learn how to better manage the expectations of others. Make sure that you set the scope of work and discuss desirable outcomes. Make sure you always under-promise and over-deliver.
6. Prioritize. When you feel overwhelmed by multiple large projects, step back and remember what’s most important to accomplish today. Create a to-do list at the end of every day, so when you come into work the next morning you know what you need to do first.
7. Be more resourceful. If you can’t reach a journalist or blogger over the phone or by email, search for them on Twitter and send them a message. Find creative ways to pitch beyond the standard press release. Seek out the stories journalists are working on by using services like HARO and NewsBasis.
8. Take advantage of social media. More journalists are using social media to find story ideas and sources. Use sites like Muck Rack, MediaOnTwitter, and Journalist Tweets to find out who’s online and how to contact them.
9. Network, Network, Network. Join professional PR associations like PRSA or IABC or Ragan. Become a member of your local Social Media Club. Participate in Twitter chats. You never know when a relationship may help you with your current job or finding a future one.
10. Use free PR tools. Read Jeremy Porter’s 13 PR resources you may have overlooked post. There are many tools out there that can help you deliver tremendous value to your brand or client – without spending a dime.

What tips would you add to this list?

This post originally appeared on the blog Spin Sucks.

One of my favorite books is “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.  It recently occurred to me that a lot of what he writes in the book applies to interactions on Facebook.

Facebook is having a tremendous impact on many of the top brands in the the world.   For example, Starbucks is one of the top brands on Facebook because it recognizes and rewards its consumers.

Here are seven ways you can help your brand or client win friends and influence others on Facebook.

1. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Figure out what the customer really wants from your Facebook page.  Why are they coming to your Facebook page and why do they ‘like’ it? Is it because of conversation?  Engagement with fans of similar interests?  Discounts?  Special offers?  To benchmark other top brands for ideas, check out the Facebook page leaderboard on the PageData section of InsideFacebook.com. According to the site, Texas Hold’em Poker is number one.  It is interesting to note that since Facebook changed its language from ‘fan’ to ‘like’, the entertainment brands have seen an increase, according to ClickZ.

2. Become genuinely interested in other people.

Contribute relevant content on your wall (and if you have a discussion tab) to stimulate conversation.  Make sure that each person who ‘likes’ your Facebook page knows that the brand cares about them in a genuine way.   Your Facebook page should be generating conversation among your loyal fans not spamming them with marketing messages that are irrelevant to them.

3. Be a good listener.  Encourage others to talk about themselves.

Update content consistently and ask a lot of questions.  Asking questions is a sure way of getting them to talk about themselves.  But it is important to make sure that when you ask these questions that you listen so that you can ask better questions the next time.  While the number of people who ‘like’ your Facebook page is important, those who actively engage with you is even more important for your brand.  To learn more about how to engage your fans, check out these two great Mashable articles: four ways to increase Facebook fan engagement and five inspiring case studies for Facebook fan pages.

4. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

Why do people want to become a fan of your page?  Why do they like your content?  Learn what interests your target audience has beyond just the interactions with your brand.  Conducting research is important to really getting to know all of the interests of your brand advocates.  Throughout all of your social media platforms, you can get a bigger picture of what really interests your audience.

5. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

It is important that you generate new fans and keep your current fans happy.  To keep them happy, recognize the people who create or share the most information about your brand.  For example, create a loyalty rewards card where your fan collect points or badges or stars.  Something where you encourage your fans to keep coming back for more and more.  Highlight on your Facebook page, stories that represent your “ideal fan.”  Perhaps develop a “fan of the day” or “fan of the week” on your page where you continually make your fans feel like they are an important part of everything you do as a brand. For more information, check out: how to recognize and reward your brand’s top fans.

6. Give honest and sincere appreciation.

In social media, it is important that you give sincere appreciation.  A simple “thank you” needs to go deeper.  You need to give them something of value such as free ticket, a coupon, exclusive access, gift certificate or a momento. Something creative to show them that you really appreciate them and are thankful that they are a brand advocate.

7. Throw down a challenge.

Create a contest.  Be creative.  For example, you can create a user-generated content contest about why they are your biggest fan. Or you can create a contest where they take a video or photo about using your product or service. Or create a contest with a large prize such as a trip, cash or meeting your brand celebrity.  Check out these posts: leveraging social media for contest promotion and five tips for creating a successful social media contest.

For more information on how to win friends and influence others on Facebook, check out these other five resources.

1. InsideFacebook
2. Mashable
3. AllFacebook
4. Facebook Blog
5. Facebook Developers

Justin Brunner, a corporate communications manager at Standard Parking, and I met over Twitter. So it seemed fitting to find out more about him in 140 characters or less. Justin is responsible for the construction of their intranet, creation of their publications, development of their corporate messaging and managing their social media platforms.

In honor of Twitter’s #FollowFriday, here is a quick Q&A with him on everything digital media.  I encourage you to follow him on Twitter (@justinspage) and subscribe to his blog, The Justinarim. Happy Friday!

Q: Tell me about yourself.
A: Recent Chicago transplant with a 7-year communications & marketing background; Texas native; Navy vet; lover of tennis, travel and fashion.

Q: Tell me about your experience as Standard Parking as the lead communicator.
A: My primary role is to oversee the delivery of information. My goals for year one: 1) assess 2) create strategy 3) implement and 4) measure.

Q: What has been your experience between understanding social media and implementing it?
A: Understanding what works best for your specific needs is hard. Constantly creating new content is tough. Implementation is the easy part.

Q: How do you define social media?
A: A direct, 2-way conversation across an online platform, primarily utilized for information sharing and creation of ideas.

Q: Who “owns” social media at Standard Parking?
A: Corporate communication oversees the company account & monitors overall company activity. Field marketing handles location-specific accounts.

Q: What is the purpose of social media?
A: It opens a direct dialog with your stakeholders (customers, clients, potential clients or competitors) and creates corporate transparency.

Q: How do you measure success in social media?
A: Success is the $40M question! I think it depends on the goals & objectives. Ask what can you get out of it then see if you’re measuring up.

Q: What social media metrics make the most impact on the C-suite?
A: I like things like influence and retweets. Twitalyzer and HootSuite are great for this.

Q: What social media tools/sites are you most comfortable with?
A: We currently utilize Facebook and Twitter. We’re still relatively new at this on the C-level.

Q: What is the biggest mistake that people make in social media?
A: I think there are two: Placing a dollar figure (ROI, etc) on engagement and whoever has the most friends/followers wins. It’s about quality.

Q: What social media tips would you give my readers?
A: Have a plan and be consistent. If you don’t know where you’re going then why go at all. And, if you go silent, no one will hear you.

Q: What are you favorite social media blogs?
A: Brian Solis, Copyblogger, Olivier Blanchard, Online PR, Scott Meis, Seth Godin, Strategic Public Relations, Todd Defren – PR Squared

Q: Who influences you the most on Twitter?
A: People that take the time to respond to your comments or provide a solution when you need it.

Q: What would you tell a “newbie” about the value of Twitter?
A: You only get out of it what you put in. Post relevant items that you feel are valuable to your audience. Try, try, try and you’ll get there.

Q: Your Twitter profile says you are an opinionated problem solver. What problem caused you to be the most opinionated?
A: When people told me to, “Stop asking ‘why’!”

Video

A refresh of the original Social Media Revolution video with new and updated statistics. The facts in the video come from the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

PowerPoint

This is a great presentation, courtesy of the Social Media Club of Greenville.

Database

A list of 126 social media policies, all in one location.  Also, another must-read for developing and implementing your social media policy: 10 Must Haves for Your Social Media Policy.

Quote

Chris Brogan from his new book Social Media 101: “Social media lets you go wide, but YOU have to make it go deep.”

Want more social media quotes?  Then, you should read 99 favorite social media quotes and tips.

E-Newsletter

PR Daily — a daily e-newsletter and website from Ragan Communications — that highlights the top stories from the web about social media, marketing and public relations.

What are some of your favorite social media things?

This blog post is courtesy of guest blogger Matt Lindsay (@lindsam8).  Matt is the director of alumni communications at The George Washington University (GW) in Washington, D.C.

We’ve been featuring Alumni Valentines in our GW Colonial Cable alumni e-newsletter for three years running. I typically have some trouble finding couples to profile, but this year was different.

We leveraged social networks and asked couples whose relationship began at GW to share their stories. I posted a message to our GW Alumni LinkedIn Group and on Twitter (@GWAlumni) and watched the messages rolled in.

We received 25+ stories, more than enough for our e-newsletter, and enough to spill over into a “More Alumni Valentines” story next month. The story received two to three times as many click-throughs as our traditional feature story in our e-newsletter.

On this Valentine’s Day I encourage you to show your constituents some love by engaging them across your social networks to help you tell more interesting stories.

Know Your Audience

We try to segment our social media outlets and target our messages accordingly. Here is how we focus our communications on each of the GW Alumni social networks (recognizing there is some audience overlap):

LinkedIn – Build awareness of career services, opportunities, and news, encourage peer connections, find story ideas, and open conversation through “discussions”

Twitter – Quick hits to build prestige around the university and its alumni (top news and prominent alumni), support relationships, and find story ideas

Facebook – Promote events, share regional-specific information, encourage peer connections

YouTube – Share highlights from alumni and university events, build awareness of leadership in the university and alumni association

Flickr – Repository for event photos, maintain engagement

Social media is by its nature not about simply pushing information out, but learning about your constituents needs and engaging them in dialogue. GW graduate and social media consultant Steve Goldner recommends bringing an “LCR mentality” to your social media outreach – Listen, Conversation, Relationships.

One powerful way to encourage conversations and build relationships is by soliciting advice and feedback from your audience on story ideas. In this case, the quality of our engagement through social media is just as important as the quantity.

Recognize Your Reach…and Limitations

For most organizations, social media provides another platform to reach a certain segment of your audience. Our largest GW Alumni social network – LinkedIn, with 10,430 members – only represents about 5% of our alumni population.

According to research by Forrester (see Josh Bernoff’s post on Social Technographics) 17 percent of U.S. online adults are “inactive” on social networks and the largest percentage group are simply “spectators” who read, listen and watch, but do not take an active role in a conversation.

It is important to use a variety of communication platforms in your outreach. For our Alumni Valentines feature I solicited names of couples during in-person conversations, through e-mails, and on social networks. The story was e-mailed out through our e-newsletter, featured on our website, and posted on our Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook pages. The piece included a call to action for others to share their Alumni Valentine stories, which allows us to build off the original story.

Create Winning Content Through Collaboration

Some people are more interesting in 140 characters than others. Some videos on YouTube become viral hits and others flounder. Some individuals on LinkedIn spark thought-provoking discussions, while others come off as completely self-promotional. And some stories in your e-newsletter receive more click-throughs than others.

Creating content that resonates remains crucial. Develop content with input from your constituents on a variety of social networks and share that content across several different platforms. You will engage more individuals, hear more ideas, and produce a better end product.

How have you seen success by engaging your social networks in developing content?