Drew B's take on tech PR

Bye bye status. Hello check in. Foursquare one year on

Back in March last year I started using Foursquare, which was back then a US-only service that seemed to plug nicely into Twitter and which I heard all the right people had moved over to. In October it launched in the UK, and this month, it seems to have hit its first UK tipping point. From my login anyway, as much is happening on Foursquare every day that used to happen in an average week last year.

So could this be the making of Foursquare? Will its ability to link brands with users in a much smarter way than Twitter be its golden ticket?

Background reading: My posts from April and August last year on Foursquare:

• Five new places online a PR person should get to know better
• Foursquare to launch in London
  

People moves

Some news on people moving about the PR and marketing social media game: 

PR Week has reported that Rob Boella, who left Immediate Future in the UK last year to join 3 Monkeys as an account director, has left there to join Publicasity as a director of online and social media

Chris Messina, the social media technologist, and a prominent voice in the interwebs, has joined Google to work on the company's open web team

David Armano has left Dachis Group in the US, the consultancy that recently bought UK company Headshift, to join Edelman as a senior vice president in the digital department

BL Ochman, formerly an independent consultant, and someone whose blog I had read for about six years it must be, has joined Burson Marsteller as MD of a new digital arm in the US called Proof, reporting into Proof's CEO

 

Five ways we are changing the way we use email

This morning I received an out of office auto-reply from someone on email that went a bit like this:

"Thanks for your email. I am busy in meetings today so might not be able to get right back to you...."

This is a rising trend that I'm noticing - to warn people that you don't sit on email all day so may not be able to respond quicker than, say, a business day. But since when was Email the same as IM? Is it right to tell senders that they should expect a slow response on a system that was never meant to be 'live'. As a consultant with clients and as an employer with a business to run, I think this is a bit strange. 

But even though my gut reaction was negative, I have myself toyed with the idea of training my inbox in similar ways. Tell people better ways to get hold of you and you might win the battle of email overload.

So I asked Twitter the question so that I could put my mind to rest: Is it ok to set an out of office autoreply email for when you're just busy?

The responses were enlightening.

At the moment of writing this post I have received precisely 50 responses via Twitter.

• 19 said yes, they would set an out of office when busy
• 31 said no, they would not

In other words, based on my sample of mainly PR, marketing and media professionals, 62% would consider setting an email out of office autoreply for when you are busy as unacceptible. 38% consider it acceptible.

Looking into the actual responses, the feedback is really interesting. Here is a sample:

• From @sheilaparry: definitely not OK. That's just lazy ...
• From @katehughes: If you are working exclusively on one project and cannot respond, then ok. Otherwise no.
• From @lexlacey: It's better than just ignoring emails when you're really busy
• From @brittneybean: if you really need something, you should ring not email. people are WAY to impatient now
• From @giless: not ok. Just dont reply!
• From @twocubedconsult: I vote "no". If emailers are in need of an immediate reply, they should make a phone call!

So in summary, what are some of the ways we are changing the way we use email? Here are some of my ideas:

1. IM: We expect live responses online now, mainly because of the way we have become accustomed to using instant messenger except many people it seems do not treat email like IM and prefer to wait until they are ready to respond. Result = friction
2. Social: We have our own idea of etiquettette and expect others to understand how we use email, like  on Twitter where everything is open and people pick up fast. Except email is closed, it's not like Twitter. We can't learn from each other openly. Everyone uses it differently and we still don't realise that
   
3. Mobile: We are using mobile email more, but we think that means we always read everything
   
4. Spam: We invite correspondence from certain people, like a business prospect, a journalist / PR person, a possible employer / candidate, but in the age of the lazyweb we attract all sorts of spam which renders our full to bursting inboxes useless
5. Rules: We are all becoming adept at using rules in our inboxes to snaffle away good and bad things and process information faster, whether it's Microsoft folders, Gmail stars, or whatever AOL does. But abusing rules is like hiding your bills. You just don't see what's important as quick as you should - it doesn't mean it's not there.