Blue Helm

Thank you, American Idol, for providing us with yet another opportunity to watch awful (yet strangely awesome) YouTube videos of your aspiring singers. I thought William Hung was unstoppable, or maybe these guys. But Wednesday night’s episode of Idol proved to all of us that the viral power of America’s most popular television show remains in force.

The night this piece aired, “Pants on the Ground” had already made it into the top ten Twitter trending topics (try saying that five times fast). And yesterday morning, the song had stolen three spots on the same Twitter list. That’s very rare. But thanks to General Larry Platt’s catchy tune and hot dance moves, this video became viral within seconds of its airing on national television. Mashable put it nicely yesterday in a blog post: “Paula’s gone and Simon has one foot out the door, but nine seasons in, American Idol can still be counted on to deliver viral video gold.”

UPDATE: The best online covers to “Pants on the Ground” can be found here. Grunge, acoustic and, of course, Neil Diamond. Bravo!

Writer's block just destroyed this person's soul.

I tried yesterday to update Blue Helm’s blog but I struggled to come up with something decent or interesting to write about. What’s a poor soul to do when the slippery demon known as Writer’s Block veers his ugly head? You need to update your blog, but you have no idea what to say. If such an unpleasant dilemma occurs, try the following to come with blog ideas:

1. What are leaders in your industry talking about? Read through your RSS feed and the Twitter updates of opinion leaders in your field. Find out what topics are relevant to your business right now.
2. Search for topics in Google News. It’s one of my favorite tools on the web. Just use key words that relate to your business to find out what’s newsworthy in your field of work. Whenever I type ‘social media’ into the Google News search box, thousands of articles appear that I can use and cite for a blog post.
3. What are your customers saying? Do you often hear the same comments, complaints, questions and observations from your clients or customers? Then write about it! My BFF Dave Navarro further explains how you must connect with your audience to forever end the writer’s block disease. 
4. Ask someone for ideas. I just asked Chad for some ideas about what I could write about for this blog, and he recommended #5:
5. Stop thinking about it. If your writer’s block is acting particularly stubborn, leave the office and clear your mind. Go for a drive, take a walk around the block or treat yourself to a boat ride. Your creative juices will be flowing before no time.

What did I miss? Tell me how you cure your writer’s block.

Curse you Facebook! Curse youuuuuuuu!

I suspect those denizens at Twitter are shaking their fists and cursing the Facebook gods right about now. Twitter’s new niche in the social media world is rapidly losing its novelty thanks to the cool features Facebook ‘borrows’ from the little blue bird.

The newest Twitteresque highlight (by the way, I’m obsessed with making up words that have ‘Twitter’ in them) on Facebook is that you can now use the @ symbol to imprint a link on your status update to another friend’s profile.

For instance, instead of merely typing Chad Mustard is a goober in my status update box, I should now include an @ symbol just before I type his name and Facebook will allow me to choose his profile from a dropdown box. A link to his wall is then automatically included in my update and he is notified via email. So if one of my other Facebook friends wonders who Chad Mustard is and why he’s a goober, this person can click on his name within my status update and visit his profile. His gooberness will be perceptible almost immediately.

But it’s not just individual profiles you can now link up to your status updates. You can do the same with pages, events and groups. Just include the @ symbol before any name you type and a box will appear allowing you to choose who or what you want to link to.

So take that Twitterites! Your puny Twittersphere is losing power each day. Why would Facebook users want to switch to the Twitterverse if they can find all its features on a site they’re already familiar with? It’s a Twittastrophe!

Wow. I’ll stop now.

Come on Marriott! Jump into Facebook!

Making a Facebook page is like baking brownies. The recipe is easy, the end result is familiar and the overall quality depends on how much effort you put into it (baking brownies from a box vs. brownies from scratch).

But what if you don’t like brownies? Or rather, what if a large, prominent company doesn’t have an official Facebook page? Even when it seems like everyone else is stampeding to jump on the Facebook rollercoaster?

Marriott is one of these companies. I’m not sure why the hotel conglomerate doesn’t maintain an official Facebook page. Maybe it doesn’t want one. Or maybe it hasn’t gotten around to making it yet. I’ve found several pages run by local Marriott establishments, but nothing official for the whole company. Regardless of the reason, Marriott International should create a Facebook page. Here’s why:

Control the chaos: When I search for “Marriott” pages in Facebook’s search box, I get gazillions of results—everything from phony Marriott sites to local hotels to indie musicians. But nothing official from Marriott International. I can find a page for a particular Marriott hotel here in Provo, but not one in my hometown of Jacksonville. And there’s a page that advertises itself as the official Marriott Facebook presence—with over 13,000 fans. But it isn’t the official page (though I’m sure thousands of its followers think it is). Where’s the consistency? Where’s the authority? There’s none, and that’s bad for business.

Set a precedent: Local franchises could benefit from a well-organized company template. Maybe Marriott International has already given its franchises instructions about creating a Facebook page, but many still don’t have one up. Is there uncertainty about how to make a page or what’s acceptable to include? Marriott can clear up any confusion and encourage its local establishments to utilize social media by maintaining a high-quality page.

Get ahead of the curve: Many of Marriott’s global competitors are not on Facebook. Yet.

Engage your customers: Marriott International maintains a great Twitter presence, regularly responding to customer inquiries and updating followers about discounts and promotions. Why not do something similar on Facebook? With over 300 million users (far more than Twitter), Facebook is the premier information hub in the social networking universe. Marriott may find more PR gurus and corporate travel planners on Twitter, but Facebook is where moms, college students and small business owners are flocking.

As far as what Marriott International could do with a Facebook page, well, that could easily take up another blog post. Advertise promotions, create a hotel locator, stream your Twitter feed, spotlight new franchises…maintain a useful page that attracts, preserves and rewards its fans. There exist few legitimate cons to creating a page for the company (despite what others might tell you). Marriott could at least throw up a basic Facebook page to take back control of its manhandled brand. At least make brownies from a box!

So why am I singling out Marriott? Because it’s a great company with limitless potential. And like so many other businesses I come across, it’s not utilizing all the powerful possibilities social media has to offer.

Bottom line: I’m a loyal Marriott customer that can’t find my favorite hotel chain on Facebook. How many other Marriott customers run into the same problem each day?

Elizabeth Bernstein wrote a marvelous piece in the Wall Street Journal today about the pitfalls of Facebook and how the site has the potential of ruining friendships. Now I can’t say that Facebook has ruined any of my personal friendships, but I have distanced myself from certain people (and fan pages) that post strange, annoying or inappropriate content on the site. And one of my absolute favorite Facebook tools is the ability to ‘Hide’ the status updates of a friend or page. With the click of a mouse, you can easily conceal someone’s updates without altogether ‘unfriending’ that person or group and without them ever knowing (just move your mouse to the right side of a friend’s status update and click on the ‘Hide’ icon).

But what if you’re guilty of being hidden? You’ll never really know, but if you spew out the following types of status updates, you’re probably not being seen by as many of your Facebook friends as you think:

“I’m so tired! I wish I could go back to bed.” Ugh. Status updates like these are pointless and repetitive. This is perhaps the biggest problem with Facebook updates—they’re boring! Before you post a useless statement like this on Facebook, think to yourself: “Would I care about this if I saw it on my news feed?”

“It’s Monday.” Yes, well of course it is. Most of us have access to calendars or brains, so we really don’t need updates like these.

“I miss my smoochy koochy boo so much! Come home baby boo!” Avoid the mushy romance talk on Facebook. No one likes it. Except your boo.

“I’m so hung over from last night. I haven’t been that drunk in a long time.” Now your boss, coworkers, grandparents and former elementary school teachers know you’re a boozer. Congrats.

“I’m having a really bad day. I wish I weren’t so lonely.” It’s fine to use Facebook as a forum to fume about a product, company or difficult situation, but don’t use it as a way to vent about how sad or friendless you are. It makes you look pitiful.

“Why the h*** do those d*** cops give out so many f***** tickets!?!” Profanity turns most people off. It’s best not to use it on Facebook.

Other topics to avoid on Facebook include potentially offensive religious or political rants, information about your sex life, disparaging comments about other friends (or your boss!) and shameless self-promotion (that last one is especially applicable to businesses and fan pages). Oh, and please lay off the quizzes! I don’t care what Muppet Baby you most resemble or what African mammal you would be in another life.

Bottom line: people want variety. They want interesting, genuine, unique and funny status updates. They want motivating or attention-grabbing comments. They want links to hilarious videos or relevant news articles. They want to see what you’re up to, but only if it’s intriguing or inspiring or amusing.

We’re all guilty of posting dumb updates sometimes. But the repeat offenders should beware. I’ve hidden over 50 of my friends over the past few months. Are you one of them? You may never know. Pwahahahaha!