Page 217 - Social Media Marketing

Even if a reporter is the “science journalist” for a magazine or paper, it’s unrealistic to 195
think that this person would simultaneously fully understand a nuclear power reactor,
the inner workings of a rocket motor, and the various competing ideas and technical ■ BEST PRACTICES IN SOCIAL BUSINESS
underpinnings for what to do about global warming. Yet, in the course of a week, that
reporter may be asked to cover all three.

This is the classic expertise-sharing problem that led Dr. Vannevar Bush to
conceive of the Memex, the theorized mechanical device that provided the fundamen-
tal insight in creating the World Wide Web. Peter Shankman has applied this same
thought to the job of the reporter and the challenges they face in getting accurate infor-
mation about a variety of topics, even within a chosen focus area.

On one side of HARO are reporters: Reporters need information. Typically,
information costs money (except online, where it’s assumed to be free!). So here’s the
dilemma: How do you get reporters the information they need without paying for it, at
least directly in cash, since that would introduce a whole host of issues with regard to
reporting?

The insight was this: Experts seek recognition, and being cited as an “expert” in
a publication can be very valuable as a way to advance the career of an engineer, doc-
tor, sociologist, prosumer (a sort of professional-grade hobbyist) and a lot of other peo-
ple. HARO puts these two needs together through a searchable exchange. Reporters
go looking for experts, and the experts—who have signed up and completed detailed
profiles about their expertise—are thereby available for interviews by those reporters.

HARO

You can learn more about HARO—and perhaps even sign up yourself—here:

http://www.helpareporter.com

You may also want to learn more about Peter Shankman, who developed HARO: Peter is the
author of Customer Service: New Rules for a Social-Enabled World (Que Biz-Tech, 2010). You can
follow Peter on Twitter (@skydiver).

Foursquare: Game-Based Sharing

Beginning with phones that included GPS or similar location tracking, applications
such as Brightkite, Dodgeball, Loopt, and Latitude have made the simple act of “being
someplace” talkworthy. (Just how talkworthy they are is, of course, left to the partici-
pants in any given conversation to decide!) Each of these tools in some way traded on
the value of knowing where others you knew were right now.

Early applications included things like meetups, coffee shops, and dinner dates.
Depending on your motivations, the ability to see where your friends are can be useful