It’s pretty easy to use. You search for an interest whether it’s skiing or knitting or Star Trek and join the community. Then you interact with like-minded people. If there isn’t a community, you can create one in less than ten minutes.

So you know what to do if you like Star Trek but Google+ Communities is also a great place to grow your brand. You can set up a community based on your products and invite your brand ambassadors to interact with you, your brand and your product.

Don’t just create a community for your company. If people like something about your business like a service or a product, build the community around that. You want to get people posting, chatting and uploading pictures.

As Christina DesMarais of INC pointed out, Google+ communities offers private or public memberships, the ability to plan events with community members and participates can create their own topics or threads. You can also assign moderators.

One of the really promising things for brands is the ability to use the Hangout feature in Google+ Communities. A brand or moderators can have weekly or monthly chats. You can check out Hangout Help, which yes, is a Google+ community.

It’s a place to share content about your brand and your products to people who want to hear more about them. You can learn more about the new Communities with this video:

Here we are again. Another November full of moustaches. Of course I’m talking about MOvember, the month where men all around the world rent out the space on their upper lip in support of charity. MOvember has become the month synonymous with raising awareness of prostate cancer, and the number of participants and the money they raise for research continues to grow every year. Of course,  the Marketwire and Sysomos family will be participating again as well.

I did a little digging using MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics platform, on the social media lead-up to the start of MOvember. Over the month of October I found 261,570 mentions of MOvember. It was mentioned in 2,027 blog posts, 1,807 online news articles, 3,442 forum posts, and 254,294 tweets.

When I looked at those mentions over time, we can see that people have been getting ready by talking about MOember all month, but the biggest push has come in the last few days.

I also found that MOvember is being talked about the most by the countries that raised the most amount of money last year. We can see a lot of MOvember chatter coming from the USA (31.8%), the UK (26.1), and Canada (16.6%).

The best thing that I found in my little search though was the sentiment around MOvember. From all the talk I looked at over the past month, an astounding 44% of it was positive. Only 10% was negative, but most of that was from people’s fear of moustaches.

Last year the Marketwire family raised over $11,000 on behalf of the MOvember charity. This year we intend to do even better. If you’d like to help us raise some money for this noble charity we would greatly appreciate your donations. You can find our Marketwire MOvember network here and then donate to our American or Canadian teams as whole, or find your favourite Marketwire or Sysomos employee and donate towards their moustache. Thanks so much in advance!!

And, for anyone who wants a little more information on how MOvember started, how it helps and the role that social media plays, check out this video with MOvember’s founder and CEO Adam Garone I made last year:

Movember from Marketwire on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

2012-06-28 12.04 Stop calling journalists. Get them to call you! 10 PR musts for business owners. from Marketwire on Vimeo.

Check it out:

That’s the tool that brings the wire and social intelligence together in one place. Personally, we think it’s pretty spectacular.

We’ve also launched our brand new (and shiny!) Marketwire Publishing platform with the Small Business Enterprise microblog.  It’s a treasure chest of articles and videos to help you grow your small business or give you the boost you need to start one. We’ve sourced the best content from the web and we’re going to answer the questions you didn’t even know you were asking.

You can watch the full video by clicking here, or on the embedded video below:

Read our Sysomos case studies and discover how we help some of the world’s leading brands, from The Canadian Red Cross to BBC.com, use social media monitoring and analytics to strengthen their brands, build better relationships with their customers and drive revenue.

Meet Team Sysomos:

Meet our Chicago team and see how they go above and beyond for our clients and colleagues every day — click the video link below:

Meet Marketwire Chicago from Marketwire + Sysomos on Vimeo.

Watch another great Marketwire video, “Stop Pushing, Start Engaging,” and learn how we can help you stay one step ahead in the ever-evolving world of communications.

And be sure to check out The Pulse, our weekly look at the people, places and things that are cool in PR and social media. It’s shareable, share-worthy content with a twist.

Using Sysomos MAP, we took a look back at the social media activity from last year’s MOvember. Over the month of November 2010 we found 12,117 blog posts, 2,721 online news articles, 13,353 forum posts and 322,136 tweets mentioning MOvember.

While MOvember was started in Melbourne, Australia, it has since turned into a global spectacle. Men all over the world now look forward to growing hilarious soup strainers across their upper lips. This heat map below shows where all the tweets from 2010’s MOvember were coming from, and we expect this year to show even more.

While the rest of the world is getting ready to put their faces in upper-lip-lockdown for the month, we’re no different here at the Marketwire + Sysomos offices. We’re getting into the spirit by pitting our different regions against each other in a friendly competition to raise the most money and to sport the best moustaches. Feel free to find your favourite or local Marketwire + Sysomos office and cheer on their moustaches by donating. You can find our teams at:

• Marketwire + Sysomos Canada East (Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa offices)
• Marketwire + Sysomos Canada West (Calgary and Vancouver offices)
• Marketwire + Sysomos US East (New York, Boston and DC offices)
• Marketwire + Sysomos US Central (Chicago, Miami and Dallas offices)
• Marketwire + Sysomos US West (Los Angeles and San Francisco offices)
• Marketwire + Sysomos UK (UK offices)

You’ll be able to watch our progress on Facebook at the Marketwire Fanpage and the Sysomos Fanpage.

We’re also happy to announce that we will be working directly with the official MOvember team in helping them track social media conversations throughout the month. We’re very excited about this.

Interested in a little more info about MOvember? I had the pleasure of meeting Adam Garone, the founder and CEO of MOvember, a few weeks ago at TEDxToronto. We sat down to discuss what MOvember is all about and how social media plays a role in spreading the word. Check it out below (and please don’t mind the shoddy camera work; my normal camera man was out that day):

Movember from Marketwire + Sysomos on Vimeo.

Happy MOvember everyone and get those moustaches growing!

Gearing up for the 2012 election, social media is sure to play an even greater role – from a couple of different angles. Public-facing, many candidates will use social media to mobilize their constituents and publicize news, like Obama did in 2008. With the incredible pace and evolution of social media, none of us really know all of the channels and networks and technologies that will play a part. Beth Fouhy of The Huffington Post wrote, “Strategists also say the greatest digital innovation in 2012 may not even have surfaced yet, even as campaigns figure out how to do effective microtargeting ads for Facebook and work to develop ‘apps’ for smart phones rather than laptops and traditional TV.”

On the back-end, journalists can use social media to find out what’s trending and what issues are most important to voters, which could lead to a story idea, viable sources or new leads. But, because social media has grown exponentially since 2008, the vast amount of online information – some good, some not-so-good — has made the ability to listen to those conversations a difficult task, if all you have at your disposal is a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

As society becomes more and more invested in social media, journalists need to up their game, too, by automating their listening processes. Social media monitoring tools provide a way to efficiently listen to what’s going on in the social sphere and, because of them, allow journalists to concentrate on other aspects of the editorial process (i.e., reporting, writing, editing).

Strategists are paying attention

Political and social media strategists are already on board. Mark Blevis, a digital public affairs strategist, followed the 2011 Canadian federal election using Sysomos MAP (Media Analysis Platform) to mine real-time data that only social media could provide: where conversations were taking place, what issues were hot and for how long, etc. (Read Mark’s one-page case study or check out brief Q&A video segments that delve into specific issues.)

Similarly, social media consultant Paul Wittenberg and two colleagues analyzed the 2010 California gubernatorial race between Jerry Brown, an old-school politician, and Meg Whitman, a high-tech businesswoman. Initially, they wanted to validate their own hypotheses surrounding social media and traditional polling, which they did. But Sysomos MAP also came up with a zinger:  one of the possible reasons for Whitman’s defeat.

Both Mark and Paul feel that they have only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of what social media can do for campaigns, elections and the political process in general. Even this early in the game, it will be interesting to see how journalists will use it to cover the election, specifically, how they will listen – and respond to – the real-time conversations and data that social media affords.

Related articles:

• Ask the Expert: Jen McClure of SNCR talks about the relationship bewteen social media and journalism
• From the Editor’s Desk: 5 essential social media tools for journalists

Today, most people get their news and information from a wide variety of online and offline sources and it’s no longer best practice to think only about news editors and journalists as your prime targets for distribution.  To get real mileage from our efforts, we need to move our news through multiple channels simultaneously, combining traditional media reach with penetration into social networks. We need to make our content interactive and shareable, and we need to consistently rethink where our audiences are.  By rethinking how we share content, it will help to improve audience engagement. Mom was right:  Sharing is a good thing.

Marketwire’s free eBook, “Mastering Audience Engagement:  Reinventing Your Role in a New Media World”  is a great resource for communicators looking to bridge the gap between traditional and social media relations and better understand and succeed in the new media environment. 

Here are 10 tips and insights taken from Chapter 4, “Share.  Hello, My Name Is…”:

1. People aren’t tied to a single news source, or even a handful of them, and because it’s so easy to switch from one to the next, it’s crucial that communicators define audiences much more tightly and then speak to them in their “channel of choice.”
2. It’s important to remember that traditional media still has a contingent of loyal followers. So if you identify that a segment of your audience is still reading online or even offline publications, and turning to broadcast media, you may still want to incorporate press release distribution, offline marketing and advertising, and traditional media relations into your plan.
3. Whether distributing to traditional or new media audiences, you always need to think about making your content shareable—and share-worthy. A social media press release makes it easy to include photos or video, add tags and include links back to your website and content, add sharing functionality, keyword navigation and RSS. 
4. Rebecca Lieb, a globally recognized expert on digital marketing and media, explains that the Web has had an interesting effect on press releases: “Press releases used to be a private dialogue between established, traditional media and public relations professionals. Now when a press release gets distributed, it’s published.   There’s a whole new atmosphere when information goes digital. As a result, you need to build releases differently.”
5. Having an archive of content, including optimized press releases containing important keywords and information can drive journalists to your website to engage with your company and spawn other stories, conversations or transactions.  Websites can no longer function as digital brochures—static content does nothing to enhance engagement.
6. Readers aren’t just looking for a couple pages of text. Adding digital assets such as photos, videos, audio files or graphics can crystallize and add depth to your message, and increase your odds of having your content read, watched and shared.  Let audiences experience your news, not just read it.
7. When creating content or thinking about ways to distribute and share it, approach every opportunity with the question, “How can I make this more visual, interactive or engaging?”
8. Cisco estimates that by 2013 more than 90% of all IP traffic will be video.  It’s no surprise. Short videos can be embedded easily on blogs and Facebook pages, making them a huge part of what goes viral. And every day, more and more people consume information via tablet and smartphone, where visual content is crucial. If you haven’t already embraced video, this is a good time to start.
9. When considering the digital neighborhoods in which you might want to hang out, The Conversation Prism (courtesy of Brian Solis and JESS3) is a good reminder to think beyond the big three—Facebook®, Twitter® and YouTube®—to find out where your audiences are interacting and participating the most energetically.
10. The debate about putting valuable content (such as eBooks, white papers, research reports and the like) behind a registration requirement comes up again and again. David Meerman Scott says the “To gate or not to gate” debate is bit like debating religion or politics—each side believes strongly in their position and many are eager to argue passionately for their side.  It really comes down to goals. Do you want to gather email addresses? Or would you rather have as many people as possible exposed to your ideas?

For more great tips and insights from some of today’s leading experts in digital and social media, be sure to check out the entire eBook, “Mastering Audience Engagement:  Reinventing Your Role in a New Media World.”

Related articles:

• 6 great reasons to download our eBook, Mastering Audience Engagement
• 3 reasons to embrace and equip your internal brand ambassadors
• When it comes to social media monitoring, are you getting the whole picture?