Airfoil Public Relations

Facebook combines Yahoo!, LinkedIn Answers to develop Facebook Questions

Recently, Facebook launched a new beta application called Questions. While Mashable has already posted five ways the beta feature can be improved, most users don’t have access to it yet. CNet says about 1 percent of Facebook users will have beta access.

For businesses and public relations pros, this will be an application to watch. Just ask consumers seek advice on Yahoo! Answers and businesspeople look for recommendations on LinkedIn Answers, Facebook Questions has the potential to combine both with input from its 500 million users.

Although Facebook says it doesn’t intend for this to be a development for brands, it will roll out access to Fan pages in the future, which means instead of individuals responding to questions, the Facebook fan/brand page can respond. In addition, monitoring will be available by following any question to see when other answers are posted.

For consumers, it’s important to keep in mind another privacy concern this feature. From the Facebook blog:

Keep in mind that all questions and answers posted using the Questions application are public and visible to everyone on the Internet. If you only want to ask a question to your friends or a specific group of people, you can still pose it as a status update on your profile targeted to those people.

It will be interesting to watch this evolve and see if consumers, the majority of whom consider Facebook as personal use with family and friends, ask business or product-related questions and are receptive to answers from brands. They’ve been getting used to this idea through fan/brand pages where consumers need to become a fan to receive special offers and incentives.

—Tonja Deegan

Detroit Rock City

Airfoil has reached the double digits – that’s right, we just turned 10 years old! In light of this accomplishment, our entire Silicon Valley office took a trip out to Michigan to celebrate the anniversary on Aug. 6.

Airfoil knows just how to commemorate this milestone. The company invested in leadership training, engaged in a scavenger hunt in downtown Detroit and celebrated its birthday with dinner and dancing at the Renaissance Center.

In honor of the 10^th anniversary festivities, I did some research, as it was my first trip to the Detroit area. A California native, I get anxious about leaving the Pacific coast, but I was so excited for the “Air”mazing Race and seeing the Michigan office that I couldn’t stay away.

Here are some of the fun facts I learned about Detroit and the surrounding areas:

• Was originally a French settlement

• Launched the famous Motown music genre

• Is home to the Big Three automobile companies: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler

• Is home to professional teams representing the four major sports in North America

• Is the only major city in the U.S. that is north of Canada (Windsor, Ontario, is south of Detroit).

Let me know what other Detroit fun facts of which I should be aware!

—Caitlin Cassady

Good metrics are meaningful metrics

As Airfoil’s research director, I’m the first to say that – simply put – measurement is great. We use data to strategically formulate, launch, adjust and accelerate each of our clients’ PR programs. It’s the heartbeat of the work we do because we believe it brings perspective and purpose to a company’s communications, moving them into their desired market position faster and smarter.

But all metrics aren’t created equal. I recently shared in PRWeek why I believe the practice of using Advertising Value Equivalencies, assigning a dollar equivalency to media placements, is a misguided approach to justifying a PR program’s ROI. In the full article, I explain why “quantity” isn’t bad -- it’s just that “quality quantity” is an even more strategic measurement of whether businesses are having a meaningful and desired impact on their audiences.

And for the top three questions to ask before making the AVE comparison, see my presentation here:

Great Ad Value Equivalency Debate

View more presentations from Airfoil Public Relations.

—Jennifer Becker

You always have a friend in social media

While on a business trip last week, I did a quick Twitter search to see if any events were taking place during my trip to Boston. The trip was fairly busy, in and out in two days, visiting clients, prospects and business associates.

I quickly found that Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference was hosting a Tweetup just down the street from my hotel, at the beautiful Colonnade hotel’s rooftop pool. Registering myself and my colleagues, we headed out to a fun evening of not knowing a single person, aside from one of our clients whom we told about the event.

True to social media form, people met and mingled and got to know each other in 140 characters or more. Knowing that everyone with a social media title sometimes gets flack for “thinking they’re all experts” to “no one knows how to do this,” it’s always refreshing to know that when it comes down to it, social media pros are social, sharing and friendly.

So whenever you find yourself in another town, another conference or even home alone, you can find comfort in the fact that if you need to talk to someone, a “social media expert” is willing to lend an ear.

-- Tonja Deegan