If you’re like me, you have Brett Favre fatigue. The ongoing saga of “will he, won’t he?” has grown tiresome at best, and you’ve vowed these are the last words you’ll read on the topic until something concrete has been decided. As of this posting ESPN has reported Brett had surgery on his arm weeks ago; and the Vikings have set a deadline of this week for him to decide on his playing status of the upcoming season.

Yes, it seems like every imaginable angle on the Brett Favre saga has been covered. Except one I haven’t heard discussed much, and that is Favre’s impact on the local economy – particularly the media. It’s no secret news outlets like the Star Tribune and local broadcast stations have been losing money and laying off employees. If Brett Favre comes to town, we would likely see enormous increases in readership, viewership and listenership for the short term. Not only that, but the national media circus would come to town – helping downtown hotels, bars and restaurants, just to name a few.

The Vikings currently have one Monday Night Football game scheduled – coincidentally against Green Bay at the Metrodome on October 5. And with the flexibility of the NFL’s Sunday Night schedule, any number of games down the stretch could be moved to the national prime-time slot. Make no mistake, with #4 playing under center, Minneapolis/St. Paul would be at the forefront of the sporting world from now until the end of the season, and our local economy would be the big winner. While I can’t throw out a dollar figure, it would be its own stimulus package.

So, do you think the local news media is ready for some football?

-Jeron Udean

This week marks the one-year anniversary since my first update on the micro-blogging
site Twitter. During the past year I also joined LinkedIn and started a Facebook
page.  I also began using new search engines that scour social media such
as Addictomatic. I did all this to stay current with the direction that communication
technology and virtual networking is headed. I wanted to experience it directly
so I could understand it deeply enough to include it in appropriate doses in
our clients’ strategies.

Twitter has been by far the most interesting experience of the three and I
thought I would take a moment to summarize several conclusions I have drawn.

There are some pretty clear pros and cons to Twitter. I’ll start with the
cons:

• There is a relatively small percentage of people that do most of the tweeting.
  Currently about 10% of the registered Twitterverse do 90% of the Tweeting.
  I am not in this heavy user category but I am way above the average Tweeter
  who barely utters one tweet every 74 days. The heaviest Tweeters are generally
  the least interesting. I have averaged two or three tweets each day the past
  year. Over the past six months I have averaged about 4 or 5 a day.
• Way too much of Twitter is essentially voluntary spam. Most of the tweets
  are preposterously useless. I have endured people tweeting about their sore
  knee, their hair, golf scores, their favorite beer, what they had for breakfast
  and of course how much they love Twitter.
• There are people on Twitter who seem to do nothing else. They have thousands
  of tweets and tens of thousands of followers.  As I said, the more people
  tweet the less interesting I find them. I generally unfollow most people
  that tweet more than 10 times a day. There are exceptions of course, but
  only a handful.
• There are pseudo-experts in every category imaginable. Did you know that
  there are hundreds or even thousands of life and business coaches in America?
  They have flocked to Twitter. There are also thousands of experts in SEO
  and MLM (Multilevel Internet Marketing). There is a “Personal Branding Guru”
  who touts his six years of experience. Apart from the preposterous superficiality
  and dehumanization that the increasingly insipid “Personal Branding” represents,
  six years of experience in anything is barely a toe dip in terms of being
  a master (much less a guru).
• To pad their tweet count many Twitterers resort to platitudinous quotes.
  On any given day on Twitter there are thousands and thousands of quotes,
  most of which you have already heard but if not, they are repeated endlessly
  and are at best moderately interesting.
• These are just a few of the things I have noticed that bother me. Fortunately,
  Twitter has both an unfollow function and a block function. So over time
  many of these cons can be substantially eliminated, it just takes time in
  editing out the noise until the signal is stronger.

Let’s look at the pros:

• Twitter has very interesting, nice people from all over the world available
  at your disposable 24/7.
• Twitter is fantastic for productive use of waiting time. For example, at
  my son’s swim meets, between events I can read articles that fellow public
  relations pros recommend and also hold short conversations online with interesting
  people anywhere in the world that happen to be available. I can do all this
  on a Tweety application on my iPhone.
• As I had hoped, I have learned an enormous amount about communication trends
  from Twitter. There are many successful people on Twitter that generously
  share valuable blog articles and links that have timely research or information
  that is extremely useful in running a marketing communications company.
• Twitter has helped keep me current with the popular culture, politics,
  and technology.
• I think Twitter is the most extraordinary real-time system of communication
  human beings have ever created.
• Twitter is good for your writing. The 140 character limit is like writing
  headlines. It forces you to be mindful of your writing efficiency. It is
  consistently amazing how much is communicated on Twitter given the character
  limit. Of course you can link the Bible to a Tweet if you want, so the character
  limit is a bit misleading.
• Twitter is civil. If you go too far and say something offensive the market
  is efficient and punishes quickly by instant unfollows. People are generally
  careful with their language because anything you say can leave a permanent
  record on Google and since most of us use our real name on Twitter that can
  seriously hurt your reputation.

I try to contribute to the Twitter community primarily with substance and
dialogue. I focus most of my Tweets on business, marketing, leadership or other
related subjects that I think might interest or be useful to those that follow
me. I ruthlessly unfollow people that over-expose me to drivel or are overtly
self-serving. I am approaching a mix of people that I follow and interact with
that is both manageable and rewarding.

I don’t think Twitter is the final form micro-blogging will take. There are
an estimated 20 million people on Twitter but most of them don’t actually use
it for a variety of reasons. In the end I think the barrier to entry is rather
low for a competitor to build a far superior, more integrated microblogging
site. It wouldn’t surprise me if this happened relatively soon. Twitter is
not monetized and in the end that will determine its fate. It is also my belief
that in the end LinkedIn will serve a more useful purpose for business people,
but currently it lags both Twitter and Facebook by a substantial margin.

It is clear that social media is here to stay and people will find their own
personal level of comfort and value with each iteration it takes. For now,
I find Twitter the most interesting and useful for business, but am keeping
a close and interested eye on LinkedIn.

www.twitter.com/patrickstrother

-Patrick Strother

Right now on the Internet there is an ever-increasing amount of Content Management Systems (CMS) available and a lot of web firms are using them so they can crank out websites in an assembly line fashion. CMSs are great, for the right kind of websites or even just portions of a website but there are many drawbacks to these “simple” inventions of modern technology.

Depending on the CMS chosen you may find that it is difficult or impossible to place good SEO meta tags on the site or be limited to one set that blankets the whole site. Most CMSs create their websites dynamically on the fly, which can provide issues with some search engine results. The whole site is usually stored in one database. Guess what? If that database gets corrupted, your whole site is lost. Compare that to a non-dynamically created site, if one file gets corrupt it just affects that one file.

CMS websites also have to conform to the guidelines of their backend programming. For example, the CMS may require that your navigation be in a certain place such as only horizontally across the top or only have four main sections. The layout of the design also has to be completely uniform through out the whole site. So no pages can have any special circumstances, such as a secondary navigation on a few pages.

What about the support you get with a CMS website? Most companies that offer them (and especially the ones that push them) offer no support for the website after the initial completion. If you do not know how to use the CMS after the initial introduction you are probably going to have to pay more to have someone do your updates for you or to show you how to do them. Also if you do not know how to edit images you are probably going to have to pay for that too or even hire someone to handle updating your website with the CMS. Otherwise, you may update an oversized image and it “breaks” the whole site. Without the design eye that a experienced person can provide to your website it can easily degrade into something less than attractive. A CMS website is much like the visual WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that comes with them and not a lot more.

I am not saying that CMS websites are not good (I use to work for a company that exclusively worked in CMS websites). In fact, there are situations where a CMS website is ideal. But there can be limitations to them and for a lot of companies the drawbacks can out weigh the benefits. I am merely trying to state some of the issues that should be considered when deciding whether to CMS or not to CMS.

So you need to ask yourself if a CMS website right for you?

-Chad Breske

It’s construction season in downtown Minneapolis and my blood pressure is rising in direct correlation to my wallet thinning. And we’re only two months into this last phase of the resurfacing, repair and beautification project known as MARQ2 (a name that references both Marquette and 2nd avenues which are now so torn up the city looks more like a war zone than peaceful metropolis). The official scoop is the construction will make way for more bus lanes and speedier commutes, wider and greener sidewalks, and other improvements on these two major arteries. This is all good and likely necessary, but for now, it makes me want to scream trying to get in and out of downtown on a daily basis.

The other day, it took 30 minutes just to get out of my parking garage and onto 2nd Avenue. I actually did scream when I realized I was going to be late to an important meeting. Then there have been the three separate occasions when access to my contract parking garage has been closed so I had to pay to park beyond the construction zone. It’s not that I’m cheap, just a tad indignant to be double paying for parking and often doubling my commute time.

But crankiness about the MARQ2 construction seems to be a shared sentiment these days. Those in cars are honking at their fellow commuters more and making riskier-than-usual maneuvers to get through traffic lights. Folks on foot don’t seem at all amused navigating the dirt and potholes in their open-toed shoes and business attire. But I think the off duty traffic cop who passed me on foot the other day said it best, as he left the tangled mess of cars, buses, bicyclists and pedestrians behind for the evening: “I wouldn’t want to be trying to get somewhere in this crap!”

I agree with you, officer.

-Steph Haugan

I had a fantastic professor in college but he had two very strong pet peeves, which he shared on the first day of class to minimize any offenses. First, since he was born and raised in Canada, we were not to joke with the phrase “eh”, as in “It’s gonna be a really tough exam, eh?” Of course we students thought this was hilarious—how could anyone be annoyed with our American ribbing?!

The second pet peeve was a bit harder to avoid—grammatical errors. And he punished any mistakes he found in our exams quite severely. After all, we were third and fourth year journalism students who’d soon be entering the work world—it was high time to get rid of any lingering bad habits. He was the most irked by the (very common) misuse of the word only.

Consider this example:
A. I only have three dollars
B. I have only three dollars

Are both options acceptable? Nope! As my professor explained, the word “only” must be placed directly in front of the word it modifies. Therefore, Example A is vague and incorrect.

I learned my lesson early on and made sure to double and triple check my work, which absolutely helped me succeed in his class and others. Even today I see this grammatical mistake often (OK, so it’s possible I’m reading US Weekly) but it probably sticks out like a sore thumb because the correct use was so drilled into my head.

So what does this example from my collegiate years teach us? It’s important to remember that as professionals our writing is constantly judged, even in seemingly informal styles like emails or internal memos. So do yourself and your brand a favor and review the basics, refresh with a writing class, use a dictionary when it doubt and always use a proofing system. Our rule is that nothing leaves the agency without at least 4 pairs of eyes reviewing the project. It’s easy to miss something and we get only one chance to make a good first impression on editors and clients. So make it a good one, eh?

-Jenny Silgen

Toward the end of December in 2005 I had a heart attack and quit smoking. Becoming smoke-free was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I had smoked since my sophomore year in high school. The only time I quit was while I was pregnant with my daughter and once I was done breast feeding her, I started again.

After being smoke-free for close to four years I don’t miss cigarette burns on expensive clothes, coughing, difficulty breathing, smelling like smoke, stained teeth and everything else that goes along with those nasty cigarettes. You could not have told me any of those things when I started spending my allowance on cigarettes thinking I was cool. My friends smoked too, and we’d always find a place to sneak off to, and have a smoke. However we never smoked at home or at school. Smoking at home would have been death; smoking at school would have been an execution. My parents did not smoke and I could not smoke.

On that dreadful day December 21st in 2005, early that morning I was walking through the Hyatt Hotel on my way to work. I felt a slight pain in my chest. That pain was my first warning sign which I ignored. Later that day I picked up a salad on my lunch hour and went to do some errands. I felt pains in my chest again, but more severe. I told myself that if I would just sit down outside for a few minutes the pain would go away and I would return to work. As I sat there the pain continued and worsened. I got up and quickly went across the street to the medical arts building. There was a gentleman in front of the building who coordinates rides for patients going to doctor visits. I went up to him and told him that I was having chest pains and asked him to call an ambulance. The paramedics came right away, they starting checking me, and put me in the ambulance. I asked them if they knew what was wrong with me and one of them told me that I was having a heat attack. All that I could think of was my daughter and my granddaughter and not wanting to leave them. When I arrived at Abbott Northwestern Hospital they took me to the Heart Institute. The Cardiologists took me into an operating room immediately and put a stent in my heart. Since that stent was put into my heart I have not had another cigarette. I thank God I’m alive and I thank God I quit smoking.

-Carol Payne

Until recently, my perception of the Facebook brand has been overwhelmingly positive. Facebook has built trust for its brand based on the principals of transparency and an approved friend network. – a distinctively different model than social media’s earlier darling, MySpace. You are implicitly offered assurance that you (or your child) are conversing with people they know and you know who is saying what.

This is no longer true. Consider Facebook applications.

Managed by Facebook, Facebook apps www.apps.facebook.com is a separate site from Facebook.com that allows greater engagement among users. Facebook invites developers to create new applications within a series of ten guiding principles (http://developers.facebook.com/) Harmless enough, right? Well, if Facebook monitored its apps against these standards, maybe so. But check out the anonymous Bathroom Wall.

As written by Liz Perle, Editor-in-Chief of CommonSenseMedia.org on May 3, 2009, “Bathroom Wall” is just what it sounds like: a public space within Facebook where your “friends” can write anything anonymously on your wall (about you, mostly), and all your other friends can see it and add to it. It’s the number one anonymous application, with more than 150,000 monthly active users. While it would be divine to think that people were using this tool (which wasn’t developed by Facebook) to give positive shout-outs to their friends, instead it can get savage and dirty. The worst of it? Whatever is posted is from someone your kid knows and has already labeled a friend.

I believe Liz is misinformed about who can post on the Bathroom Wall. There is a waiver than allows posts to be transferred to the broader Facebook community, and I believe you can view posts from the greater community. My examination of the Bathroom Wall was extremely negative – not only based on the cheap content but that Facebook allows an application that violates its very principals, specifically Guiding Principle #5

Applications should be Trustworthy.

5. Secure: Protects user data and honors privacy choices for everyone across the social graph

Facebook users are deliberate and specific about which data they choose to share, how they share it, and with whom. All applications must respect users’ choices and the choices of their friends by only accessing, using and sharing data users have explicitly allowed. Users put their trust in Facebook, our Platform and your applications. This trust enables us to provide with social information for your applications. So it is up to all of us to earn and maintain user trust.

The Bathroom Wall app is not only a big black eye for Facebook but perhaps the beginning of something worse. While there are several ways to block this application, don’t you think the Facebook would be better served by staying true to its brand principals?

-Pat Henning