Write As You Speak? Or While You Speak?

I call this one “Ghost Writer.”
It was shot via Hipstamatic with the Salvador 84 lens and Rock BW-11 film, then processed in TTV PS and Noir. If you like this, definitely follow the 
Pinterest board of my iPhoneography for more image fun with iPhone apps.

Although some people are much better at verbalizing than writing, it’s just impractical to write in the same way that you speak. Ever since I heard that advice in grade school, I never thought it made good sense.

Now, if by “write like you speak” you mean “write clearly and to the point,” then yes, that is good advice. For anyone who has ever actually transcribed an interview or their own speech (go ahead and try it sometime) it’s very clear that the spoken word differs greatly from the written.

Catch A Dragon By the Tale

The whole reason I’m writing about this today – or rather, speaking  – is that I am dictating this via Dragon Dictation, the mind-blowing, powerful speech-to-text transcriber iPhone app. I’ve  used it for other posts in the past but not for one like this in its entirety. So if this prose seems rambling, that’s why. Before posting, I will have gone in and cleaned up some punctuation, added links, and added some graphics, but the bulk of this text has come to you first via audio. And I think that’s pretty amazing.

What do you think? Have you ever used Dragon Dictation or similar software? What’s your experience been like? Do you write as you speak, and do you think that’s good advice or not? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• Thus Spake the Dragon: How Useful is Speech Recognition Software for Writers/Bloggers? (doingthewritething.wordpress.com)
• Nuance’s Dragon Drive! Hopes To Reshape In-Car Voice Systems(hothardware.com)
• Speak to Type: The Best Way to Blog (quickonlinetips.com)
• Free iPhone Apps (priconnects.wordpress.com)

Fast Food and Fast Lessons in Public Relations

The new PR reality of social media and brand engagement means accepting the fact that the audience can drive the conversation, and that the days of top-down, message-from-on-high broadcasting of positions are long, long gone for any organization looking to engage in the digital realm. Because the whole point is...

Engagement, not broadcasting.

Big difference. This point is certainly not lost on McDonald's, a long-standing brand and corporate giant by any measure, who has long been making strides in new media. And their realistic acceptance of this new truth is serving them well as they recently experienced and rose above what could have been a major PR/digital disaster for the history books, what with having a promotional hashtag hijacked for unintended (read: negative) purposes.

As summarized at Ragan.com:

The promoted hashtag #McDStories led to some unwelcome comments about McDonald's experiences and some plain old trash talk….The hashtag was part of a campaign to showcase the company's food suppliers. Initially, the campaign used the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, but it switched midstream to #McDStories. Soon after the changeover, the conversation started to change. The brand saw about 2,000 mostly negative comments in about two hours.

Crisis! Negative comments! Oh noes!

But Rick Wion, director of social media for McDonald's U.S.A. puts this in its proper perspective:

"There are a lot of people who are trying to make a name for themselves by trying to be funny on Twitter," he says. 

McDonald's switched the promoted tag back to #MeetTheFarmers within an hour of noticing the adverse reaction, and in about 15 minutes or so, the whole thing was over, Wion says. He notes that in the time people were using the #McDStories hashtag, people mentioned Egg McMuffins five times as much. 

"The rest of the conversation that took place that day, #MeetTheFarmers, there was 10 times more conversation about that, and it was almost all positive," he says. 

The whole incident showed that some hashtags can open brands up to a beating. "If anything, the lesson of #McDStories is that we can be an easy target for people who are uninformed."

Good for McDonald's, staying on top of their messaging, then monitoring and quickly adjusting to avert a complete and total fail on Twitter. The company took an important step by reacting appropriately, and seeing the whole of what was happening with sentiment and their foray into digital PR via public engagement.

And this has only helped the company, in my opinion. Just last night I participated in #Pinchat, a weekly Twitter chat session about Pinterest, which happened to feature the corporate tweeters from the company. I got a kudos for a photo I once took in a drive-thru (don't worry; my car was in park) and, more importantly, got a look at the approach of the brand in the new social media world of Pinterest.

Taken at my local McDonald's drive-thru. Please Note: the car was in "park." Friends don't let friends photograph and drive. Click for more like this at Pinterest.

@rsmithing That's a cool photo!Thanks for sharing!!

— McDonald's Corp. (@McDonaldsCorp) May 17, 2012

So let this be a lesson for any company, business, or individual participating in social media: you are part of the conversation, but only part. It goes both ways, and you need to be ready to deal with both the good and the bad. Respect to McDonald's for working to get it right.

What do you think? Can you name another company getting it right by addressing the good and the bad in social media? How would you have handled this? What about your company or favorite brands? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• An inside look into McDonald's Twitter, blogger strategy (Ragan.com)
• Looking for a Job in PR? Know Your Social Media. (rsmithing.com)
• How McDonald’s Came Back Bigger Than Ever (New York Times)
• Can McDonald's Turn Its Twitter #McFail Around? (triplepundit.com)
• McDonald's Twitter campaign backfires into McDisaster (theprbuzz.wordpress.com)
• Brand #Fail (Adweek)
• Prevent a Social Media Crisis with a Simple Game of Devil's Advocate | Social Media Today (milleniumnews.org)
• How to Talk About Social Media In Business: 5 Points, Video Interview (rsmithing.com)

Link Instagram and Pinterest with Flickr

Flickr to Facebook: I’ll see your Instagram and raise you a Pinterest. Photo by Courtney Patubo / edit by rsmithing. Click for full size.

Flickr to Facebook: I’ll see your Instagram and raise you a Pinterest

Hot on the heels of my post on using Pinterest for Instagram images with sites like Gramfeed, Flickr has made this even easier by including Pinterest as an option under the “Share” menu at the top left of any Flickr image. And the best part is, all photos are automatically attributed to the owner – including all photos ever previously pinned from Flickr!

This is HUGE, because not only does it mean easy and proper posting from a site with millions of great images, but also it makes posting from Instagram easy as well, since Instagram users can easily link their accounts to post to Flickr when uploading at Instagram.

Just two steps gets any Flickr image on your Pinterest board. Click for full details at Flickr’s blog.

I personally only started using Flickr seriously as a result of Instagram’s integration, and I now swear by it as a great tool for managing your images with some neat social functionality thrown in. It’s highly customizable, easy to use, and a great value whether you subscribe for free or have a Pro account.

Bottom Line: Flickr Gets It Right… First

Maybe they were too busy being bought by Facebook to notice, but the folks at Instagram missed out on being the first major image sharing site to hook up so seamlessly with Pinterest. I’m fairly sure that day is coming, since Instagram already integrates with Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare, and of course,Flickr, but given the competitiveness in Silicon Valley these days, it’s not a given.

Pinterest’s growth is impossible to ignore, and Flickr did the right thing by integrating easily with the site. Rather than interfere with its own goals, this makes an already great platform like Flickr even better.

I don’t work for Flickr, but if you haven’t checked it out – and especially if you want to pin your Instagram images like a boss – definitely give Flickr a look… even if only to find cool images for your Pinterest Boards.

What do you think? Do you use Flickr in conjunction with Instagram? Do you use Pinterest and have you pinned Flickr images there? What has that been like? Will you be trying this now that Flickr makes it easy to share images originating on Instagram? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• At Flickr, All Things Just Keep Looking Better (betabeat.com)
• What’s Your Take on Pinterest? (The Artist’s Road)
• How to Use Pinterest’s New Flickr and YouTube Attributions(sproutsocial.com)
• All the Interest in Pinterest (Beagle Research Group)
• Flickr, Pinterest team up, signal movement toward better attribution(agbeat.com)
• I’m Starting to Like Pinterest… (The Buttry Diary)
• Pinterest launches new ‘Pin It’ button for Flickr (simplyzesty.com)

Single Image Sundays: High Five, Spider Style (colorfully)

Click to see the montage using this image at Flickr.

Here’s a macro shot I did a few days ago of a spider hanging out between a couple of bushes in my yard. I’m using a grayscale version in a montage that’s going to be part of a series later on, but just for fun I mixed it up with some color filters inPhotoforge 2 using the in-app Pop Cam pak (well worth the purchase). It’s like having Hipstamatic effects you can apply at will to existing photos. I also used the forever-awesome Photojojo macro lens.

Thanks for taking a look – what do you think? Are spiders too creepy no matter what, or does some colorful editing add to their interest? Leave a comment!

Related articles

• Photojojo’s iPhone macro/wide angle lens review.(thederbycityrambler.wordpress.com)
• Macro fever! (thederbycityrambler.wordpress.com)
• Mr. Crane Fly (mentalhealthed.com)

Soul Asylum – Cartoon

Check out this new band, Soul Asylum!

They do this song, “Cartoon” where you can really hear the influence of the Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, and even a little Nirvana/Foo Fighters in there.

Oh, wait. It’s the other way around. This is from 1988. Yep.

I used to watch this over and over after having videotaped it from MTV’s 120 Minutes on VHS back in the day. Thank goodness for YouTube. Enjoy.

Cartoon, from Hang Time:

Now everybody’s looking after me
If I’m dragging by some coat-tail, I can’t see, it’s too dark
But I’ve got to know what’s got the best of me

When the circus that you left goes on parade
In those bleacher seats of fire in your charades, it’s too far
But I’m feeling like I don’t dare look away

Don’t look away

Did it almost make you feel that something’s gotta happen soon?
When you wake up feeling lost in your own room

If you’re crying in your beer you’re gonna drown
If you think we’ll rise above, you better look around, you’ll see
It’s a mountain made of sand crumbling under me

Maybe I’m chasing shadows on your wall
They loom so large but make me feel so small somehow
When you’re chasing your own tail, spinning your own wheels

[Simultaneously]
Dan: On a night when the wolves were all silent, and the moon howled
Dave: And I tried to leave, and I tried to stay, tried everything, tried looking away (×2)

Did it almost make you feel that something’s gotta happen soon?
You’re in the movies now and I’m in your cartoon

There’s a ringing in my ear that’s heaven-sent
There’s a beast out on the ruins
Some broken down lover’s lament
It goes on and on but it won’t go away

Related articles

• Soul Asylum Rediscover Their Punk Roots (rollingstone.com)
• Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ Studio Set to Reopen (rollingstone.com)
• Music & Writing (deberelene.wordpress.com)

What do you think? Are there any acts from a quarter century ago that made a lasting impression on you? Who from today do you think they’ll be blogging about 25 years from now? Or will microchips in our head do the blogging for us? Let us hear from you in the comments!