Stevie’s Small World

Stevie, a bright-young friend of mine, is doing a science project. He is trying to get an email from EVERY country! Big task for this little guy, but he has high hopes that it will work out! He already has nine after 24 hours! I would love to help him out. He just needs an email with your name, what country you are in (yes, you must currently be in that country) and how you found out about his project.

Please send emails to: steviessmallworld[at]gmail.com

Remember Stevie is a young, innocent 10 year-old mind!… Please only send serious and helpful emails. We do not want to spam the poor boy who is only trying to connect the world!

Here is his email:
Hi, My name is Steve. I am a 4th grader in Greenville PA. I am ten years old. As a science fair project I am going to
try to receive at least one email from every country in the world. I am trying to discover how connected the world is through the internet. I am going to send this message to all my family and friends. I am hoping that they will contact their friends who will contact their friends in other countries and people will send me a email from those countries. Do you know anyone in France, Bhutan,Hong Kong or even Antarctica? Please write to them and ask them to email me. Maybe the person in France knows someone in Belgium and they will ask them to email me. My guess is that it is possible but the only thing we are having trouble with is translating into all the languages but we’re working on it. I hope I will be able to do it so please write back. I am depending on you guys. Thanks everyone for all your help

I’ll tell you how it goes.

Please send an email to steviessmallworld[at]gmail.com

VCU’s There Goes My Bracket PR

March Madness is finally over. As a fellow athletic Media Relations director, I know there are “SIDs” (Sports Info Directors) around the nation finally taking a deep breath! It’s over. The season is done. Interview requests will settle down. Now just to finish out the track & field, golf, baseball, softball… etc… seasons! ha!

We know UConn beat Butler (53-41) but who came out on top in the PR world? In my opinion, it was hands down Virginia Commonwealth (VCU). Yes, the cinderella story. They weren’t expected to get past the second round, yet their SIDs and media relations staff stepped up to the challenge and really kicked into high gear.

I wont bore you with a full SID breakdown, just know that I give props to the VCU staff. Take a peak at the VCU shirt that has also been turning heads. Great way to bank on the situation. “There Goes My Bracket”

Foursquare Day 2011 – Join The Fun!

It is time for the second annual Foursquare Day, April 16! Last year, I got together a group of foursquare users in Logan, Utah and we all met at a local restaurant, hoping for a swarm but of course unlocking the Foursquare Day official badge. We were one of only two groups to celebrate the holiday in the state of Utah.

I am now scouting for venues to host a group of foursquare-ers on April 16, 2011. We will be hosting in Logan, Utah and in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you are interested in hosting at your venue or interested in joining us, please leave a comment below or contact me at Jackieb3@gmail.com. Can’t wait to hang out & enjoy a fun day of social media!

5 Things I Miss About My BlackBerry

Ok, it has been about two weeks since I made the switch and joined #teamiphone (Verizon). I love my fancy new iPhone but there are a few things I miss about my blackberry.

1. Mark all as read – email feature that lets you mark everything as opened, so that your inbox doesn’t look full. When I wake up I usually have about 15 emails that I was cc’d on but don’t really need. On the BB I could open all of those in one click, with the iphone I have to open each one. No thanks!

2. Email storage – On the BB I could keep thousands of emails and choose if I wanted to delete text message or email when space was filling up. I always kept email, and as much grief co-workers give me for never deleting an email, they all loved it when I still had them two months later when they needed something! On the iphone I can only keep 200. boo!

3. I could throw that BB off a building and it was like a brick. If I just gently bump my iPhone I get nervous. I realize with time I will become more used to it but for now its like a glass child in my eyes! ha!

4. Blinking notification light – I liked on my BB that I could tell if I had a new email or text by just glancing at the indicator light. With the iPhone you need to hit the home button to see the screen of new items.

5. The keyboard! – I miss having the solid keyboard. I knew this would be an issue for me. I like the sleek touch screen and the predictive text on the iPhone is great but it was a lot easier to get out a quick email with the BB keyboard. I am hoping I become faster on the iPhone touch keyboard…I am sure I will but still I miss my individual key! ha!

Sometimes You Meet Amazing People

I met so many unique individuals in 2010. Some of them I still talk/interact (tweet, email, etc.) on a weekly basis and others it is few and far between and I am only left to reminisce about the awesomeness of him/her! For this reason I have decided to start a series called: Sometimes You Meet Amazing People (#SYMAP) to highlight the qualities about these great people I am lucky to cross paths with. That being said, amazing people are amazing for different reasons, some for their inspiration, their abilities, brains, talents or thoughtfulness and concern for others. There is no rhyme or reason for those I profile in this series. The only qualification is that after our encounter I parted thinking: Wow that is one amazing person! 🙂

#SYMAP No. 1 – Kristen Bowen. She isn’t going to wow the world with the newest tech mobile app, but she is going to take over with the best natural way of healing/living you have ever known. Kristen is a certified Foot Zone Therapist (and instructor) as well as Emotional Freedom Techniques…along side a whole line of natural soaps and essential oils, lotions, chap sticks, and much much more!!

While all that sounds great about Kristen her #SYMAP qualification came at local Social Media Club meeting. I met Kristen through the club and had chatted with her a few times, each time feeling her genuine sweet personality shine through. In May, days before I moved to NYC Kristen looked me in the eye and said, do this…repeat this. Without going into detail, Kristen’s ability to seen the stress in my face and overall ability to feel for others helped calm me during the biggest move of my life! Her kind heart and sweet spirt blow me away every time I see her!

Kristen is amazing! #SYMAP

Email Sigs – 4 Must Haves

Email Signatures. They seem simple and feel useless sometimes but I’ll tell you why they aren’t and the four things you must include in yours.

The more we use our cell phones to conduct business the less we are on our laptops/desktops which means more emails are sent via mobile exchange accounts and mobile webmail clients than ever before. It has become SO important to have a proper email signature and I don’t understand why some people refuse to include them. Example: Coworker forwards me an email (via her iphone) from an outside vendor, the vendor is in my coworker’s exchange address book and shows “John Doe” without the following his name in the email because on her account he is already listed, he is not a contact in my list. Now that she has forwarded me this email via her mobile exchange account, I have no way of contacting this vendor with out replying to her or doing research to find his info. Too many times recently this has become an issue and I would like to put out there what I think NEEDS to be in an email signature.

This may vary depending on your company or position by the key elements remain a necessity.

1. Name (whatever you prefer to be addressed by)
2. Title &/or Company (Tell me who I am talking to. Receptionist or VP.)
3. Phone number (Sometimes emails just aren’t fast enough.)
4. Email address (Yes! It should be included. You never know who is sending what info along and how many people will see it before someone needs to respond to you.)

That is simple enough. Right? Here are some other things you may want to include depending on your nature of work.

5. Website address
6. Twitter or Social Media accounts
7. Include “sent via cell phone” on mobile accounts if you would like people to be aware that you are on the go. Can be helpful as the recipient will understand a lag in response or shorthand typing.

Shellac Update

It has been about six months since I fell in love with Shellac by CND World’s nail polish. It is now more popular and found in many more salons. I have tried OPI Axxium and other gel brands and Shellac by far last the longest, is the quickest to apply and dry and keeps it shine the longest! Find out more about Shellac and locations here.

PageSocializer.Com

I feel like every link I go to these days has a multitude of “like it” or “tweet it” or “share it” or “digg it” or “stumble it”….etc., etc., etc., We are always doing something to send out more info. I wanted a way to send out info quickly (with the appropriate SM features on it) from any browser without having to download some tool bar on my browser or setting up html code in the background. Guess what?!?! I was directed to the answer (on twitter) today!

PageSocializer.com/

Page Socializer adds all the social media goodies to your page instantly. It is not 100% stocked with all the SM sites & features yet, but it has the full layout of twitter and facebook elements and I am sure the rest are soon to follow.

Brilliant!

Page Socializer will even give you three choices of links to pick from. All different lengths depending on what you want to do with them, tweet, post, link and so on. Thanks to @Codella for showing this in his #prnews10 presentation and helping Page Socializer get out there a little.

Social Media #Fail

A rather large PR/Social Media conference is happening in NYC soon. I noticed that three, what I could call, “PR Pros” I follow on twitter are speaking at this conference. As I looked more into the conference it seemed one major thing was lacking – HASHTAG! Yes, that is correct. A large, popular, SM-focused conference has no visible hashtag to be found.

I have looked on the conference website, registration page, speaker bios, speaker twitter profiles and tweets about the conference, conference brochures, and so on and not a single one of these resources has a hashtag available (that I could track down). Two key speakers have commented they are flying/landing in NYC and excited about the conf. but they listed the conference title or stated “A SM Conf. this week.” What a waste of attention for the conference! These speakers have thousands of followers and attentive industry viewers – Yet many will not take the time to research the conference. With a simple hashtag the follower would be directed to a flow of like tweets and info.

#LessonLearned: Everything needs a hashtag.

20 Social Media Resources You Might Not Think About

Most of us in the social media circle instinctively think: Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, HootSuite/Tweetdeck, etc. but what about the list below? While I know at least a little something about each of them (except “The Help Machine”), some of them I know better than others. Tell me what you think. Which ones do you use most often? Which ones are worth the effort and what do you use them for?

1. Upcoming
2. MeetUp
3. Eventful
4. Imeem
5. The Help Machine
6. Yelp
7. Epinions
8. Twitterlister
9. OLX
10. Digg
11. Mixx
12. Flickr
13. Zvents
14. MetroMix
15. We Follow
16. Twibs
17. Just Tweet It
18. Twellow
19. Ning
20. Grouply

I realize some of these are outdated/closed but I would still like to hear your thoughts & opinions.  We can’t better our current tools if we don’t know why earlier ones did or did not work, correct? I realize this is not a complete list. About 15 were suggested, I added some but kept it to 20 on purpose. Comments & suggestions are encouraged. I will be rating these 1-5 (5 being most useful/worth the time) and posting that next week.