Disqus - Latest Comments for MsHerr

Re: New Research: Do Pictures of People Increase Facebook Engagement?

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 14:51:32 -0000

Happy I could help triggers some ideas! I work for RightThisMinute (http://www.rightthisminute.com); we're a TV show and media organization tapping people into web videos. In many ways, we enable voyeurism. Our fans and followers can spectate, so my gut would tell me that having people in the picture is important.

Re: New Research: Do Pictures of People Increase Facebook Engagement?

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 15:33:23 -0000

I agree with the ponderings about how this would play out across other industries. I expect that images without people would perform well in auto and technology. I'm curious what this would look like for Red Bull, where athletes are as much assets as Victoria's Secret models. Red Bull has drawn such tight alignment between the brand and action-heavy sports, it would be hard to illustrate that action without having people in the photos.

As for media sites, where customers are not buying products but consuming content, I expect that images should align with the type of content covered.

Re: Tandem B.A.S.E. Jumping?

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:45:52 -0000

Ran a little search for base jumping today, and lo and behold, my friend's name pops up under "Image results for..." Love it. I want to do this!

Re: The Surprise Benefits of Waiting in Line

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:46:22 -0000

Suzy, I love this! I've been to SxSWi three times, and each time with a very different experience. This year, more than any other year, I dodged many of the official parties in favor of hanging with smaller groups of friends that included both familiar faces and new ones. Introductions abounded, but I had few serendipitous meetings this year. Hearing your experience makes me wish I waited in a few more lines.

I'm glad you enjoyed your first SxSW!

Re: You Want to Pick My Brain? Pay Me!

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:48:55 -0000

Hi Deb, I really appreciate this post. I feel this post. And I found myself struggling with the same issue almost two and a half years ago when I was unemployed. I'm not a freelancer, I prefer the structure of a company. The partnership I was coming from had dissolved at a time when we had all been taking pay cuts for over a year. The economy was crap, making finding a new gig difficult. I received numerous requests from people, most who had been referred to me, wanting to meet for coffee or lunch to talk about how to get started in social media. I was frustrated. I enjoy helping others, but when I didn't have the income to pay bills, it was hard not to view these people as slightly parasitic.

Fast forward 18 months, when I had a gig and could pay bills, I started offering "community office hours". Roughly once a week, I visit a local coffee shop before work, and anyone who wants to come pick my brain, can. For free. For one hour. I have a few guidelines: RSVP in advance, no NDAs and I don't do sidework (free or paid). The people who come are typically those who can't afford to hire the agency I work for, or friends who just want to bounce ideas off of another social media head or talk about things going on in the community and in the field. It's been a lot of fun. And I've found people are tremendously respectful of my time.

Re: Has Engagement Shifted?

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:24:33 -0000

Scott and Chris, I've also noticed the shift from commenting to sharing and trackbacks. Despite my love of bite-size media platforms, it makes me sad. I suspect that we - enthusiastic and highly active social media advocates - are partially to blame for this. We've talked about how great Twitter and Facebook are, and relished the expansion of each platform enabling greater versatility in what and how of sharing. We've encouraged companies and clients to pay attention to the medium. We've advised them to make their content easier for customers and readers to post on Twitter or Facebook. We've hyped conversation and reach, and trivialized discussion and rich community. We've created throngs of curators and lost our contributors.

I believe blogs are still relevant and needed. Longer-form channels are better for sharing insights, laying out arguments, and opening dialogue. And the comments, when utilized, provide one of the best channels for the discussion and cross-pollenation of ideas - something that is hard to achieve in 140, and even 420, characters.

Re: The Dirty Secrets of Time, Priorities, and Honesty

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:44:46 -0000

Effort. And depending on your goals, emotion. I definitely want to read that rant. I know we think similarly on many subjects related to social, yet you articulate in a way that always seems to hit the nail on the head just right. I've always appreciated that. Thanks, Jay.

And merry Christmas!

Re: The Dirty Secrets of Time, Priorities, and Honesty

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:28:09 -0000

To contribute my echo to the chamber, great post. I like your main point on prioritization, but even more, I like your sub-point on reciprocity. A measure of performance that only tracks results or output is incomplete; it must also measure input. No banks pays out interest on an empty account. How can we expect a return on anything that we aren't first contributing time, effort and energy to?

Re: Starting November 15.

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:42:35 -0000

Hi DJ, I'm echoing Zaid when I say this is an inspiring post. The fact that you aren't 100%, yet, is part of what makes it great. Goals like this aren't just about achieving something, they're about breaking habits and making new ones. Better ones. It's about changing behaviors. Goals like that aren't achieved with failures along the way.

One of the keys to strength training is maxing out once in awhile, so that you pushed your muscles to the point of failure. It was in the recovery from that failure that progress was made and strength developed. When it comes to your goals, it's the failing, and the subsequent recovery that creates the behavior changes you're striving for. That's inspiring.

Re: The WAH Factor

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:15:59 -0000

Great post C.C., and some really great comments too! I also like Steve's comment that not one of us is a nobody, and while some are true influencers, few of us have as much influence as our social profiles make it seem.

Each of us is highly followed by a few. These are the few who bypass their usual feeds, and elect to receive our updates through push notifications (SMS, email or application). From there, the degree of attention falls off rapidly.

I'm reminded of a comment you made on the How to Hire a Social Media Agency panel, that the ROI on social is smaller than people think, and no one is really reporting true numbers, largely because we don't want to destroy the hype about great potential ROI. Social media is a powerful platform, especially when you are able to tap into your most avid fans. After that, attention, once again, drops off rapidly. It's easy to care for the people that care for you. Building relationships in the long tail is much harder. It requires more finesse, more genuine care and more cognisance of how others receive both your good and your bad behavior. As I write this, I'm not even sure if those three things (finesse, care, and cognisance) allow much room for bad behavior.

In other news, I regret not saying hello to you at Blogworld. I enjoyed your panel, and would love to sneak in a hello and hug next time I see you. It's been too long since our meeting at LA #140conf.

Re: 8 Ways to Be a Thought Leader

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:41:50 -0000

Hey Kathy, just getting around to reading this. It's a fantastic post! Like TJ, the survey idea was new to me, but it makes a lot of sense. It's simply conducting research and sharing the lessons learned so that you and others can make more informed decisions.

This post is also a bit of a kick in the butt. Lack of time is the easiest excuse for not doing something, but we make time for the things that are important to us. If being a thought leader is important, we make the time. If it means cutting something else, so be it. Each of us should be pruning our own trees to get to what is most fruitful.

Re: I’d like to thank the early haikuists who made this site most awesome

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:21:15 -0000

It's been really neat to watching this develop, and really inspiring to see how passionate about developing haikuist.com. Thank you for letting me share in that.

Re: http://brianshaler.tumblr.com/post/564779663

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:05:16 -0000

That. Is. Freaking. Awesome!

Re: 3 Things to Do Before MashBash SXSWi This Sunday Night

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:58:16 -0000

I'm excited to start playing with the bloggie. Thanks!

Re: It’s Time to Engage: Please Help Share the News

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:23:12 -0000

Congratulations! Exciting news indeed.

Re: Please Help Me Pick a New Look For My Blog

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:48:05 -0000

Love that you're moving to headliner position on C & C. It's where you should be. A few critiques based on what I do & don't like about each of the designs.

Option 1: Dig how the left hand graphic fades into the image in the coffee shop, but don't dig that particular left-hand design. Feels too soft and glittery for you.

Option 2: Dig the pattern more, and OK with your orange aura, but that little white cutout between your fingers where your hands meet your face... methinks that needs some orange too. It looks forgotten the way it is.

Option 3: Dig how the orange fades into the coffee shop portrait on the left, and dig the C & C on the right, but don't dig the hard-edge transition from your portrait (on the right) to the C & C or the way your right shoulder (viewer's perspective) gets amputated.

Regarding comments about the search box location, I'm used to a left or central location on search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.), but a right-hand location on content sites. I completely missed it in the first two headers, but noticed it readily in the third. It was only after I saw others' comments that I went back to specifically look for the search box.

Hope that helps. :)

Re: Committing Location Based Service Suicide

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:16:39 -0000

Friend requests (and acceptance) are not simple on digital networks. It's not so easy as do I know this person (or not), but do I want this person to have access to me. I'm sure we all have "friends" that we know well enough, but whom we rather didn't randomly drop in on us. Whether a geosocial app or a simple "excited or [fill in the blank] meetup at [blank] on Twitter or Facebook, we reveal more about where we can be found. There are both benefits and risks. For me, the benefits, namely of meeting new and interesting people, still outweigh the risks.

As online social grows, friends increasingly worry that I post too much and open myself to the very dangers you talk about. And while little more than a rationalization for an activity I won't [yet] give up, I tend to think that everything I publish leaves a better digital trail for authorities to follow should something happen to me. Twisted, I know, but true.

Re: The Tao of Tweeting

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:27:14 -0000

I love the notion of maintaining "the same enthusiasm at 5 followers as you do at 50,000." I think the converse, maintaining the same enthusiasm at 50,000 followers as you do at 5, is also applies. It is easy to get caught up in a desire for a higher follower count; it strokes our ego and makes us feel listened to and liked. Yet it can be difficult to scale meaningful personal relationships with mass amounts of followers. I sometimes miss the more frequent and intimate connection I had when my follows/followers were fewer. And I feel a bit guilty, that I am letting down my friends and followers because I am unable to give as much of myself to those who have chosen to include my tweets in their daily streams.

Re: Why Speakers Shouldn’t Be Paid

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:57:14 -0000

I have this horrible feeling each time I go to a conference that I've paid to attend that I *should* attend sessions because that's what I've paid for. As a result, I've often elected to not attend a session of a good, or great, speaker that I've heard before in order to attend one that had a title that sounded good given by someone I haven't heard speak before. More often than not, it turns out to have been the wrong choice. I attribute this to two things: 1) I find the new speaker dispassionate, inexperienced, and sometimes, and (since I've been playing in my space long and intently enough) only moderately more knowledgeable than me; and 2) I repetitively find a great speaker has the ability to deliver new insight each and every time they speak, even when I've heard them speak before.

@firewallender and @Jeremy both have excellent points. I do think speaking is like any other profession. It's fairly reasonable to expect food and lodging at paid conferences to be covered (even if by hosts as in @Suzanne's example). I also think it takes practice to hone the required skills and caliber of speaker can and should be reflected in compensation and caliber of event.

However, I suspect many speakers see these gigs as opportunities to attract new business or investment, in which case they should shoulder some burden in their own attendance. If we don't pay citizens to find a job, should we pay speakers to woo potential new clients?

Re: Local Home Exhibit

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:58:13 -0000

I've joked about having the first @tysoncrosbie house museum. I've really only been half joking, though I think @Erica is ahead of me here.

I agree that there is great opportunity to turn this into something even more social. I'd love to see this turn into a bit of a tour, where each week one or two of your selected exhibitors host a little shindig. I'd do it. Besides, I need an excuse to have people over so that I have an excuse to clean... ;-)

Re: What does it mean to be an educated black man?

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:07:48 -0000

There was a time when studying as an apprentice would have earned one the designation of "educated." In many fields, apprenticeship has lost credibility as organizations seek to standardized education, but that doesn't make it any less viable as a learning system. What separates the master alchemist from the pharmacist or biochemist? A few hundred years and vernacular. Many accreditation and licensing programs still require some form of apprenticeship, and any education unbacked by experience is worth little.

What separates the pupil from the layman is the aptitude for learning and the desire to apply that learning toward advancement. Knowledge is the first outcome of education, but refined mannerisms and social contribution also follow. If you consider these points your criteria for the "educated" designation, and LeBron and others who demonstrate them would qualify.

Re: Why Nerds are Unpopular

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:29:24 -0000

Note: Telling the popular kids "I can't help it if I'm smart" does not make you any cooler!

Re: Young and (Un)Impressionable

Ms. Herr / @MsHerr — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:23:25 -0000

By way of anecdotal evidence for how little we pay attention to ads on social media sites, I noticed an ad for Kodak on Flickr for the first time today. My Twitter community quickly informed me that Flickr for at least six months. I am not a high-frequency user, so there are few opportunities for me to notice such ads, but what does it say about our ability, and tendency, to block unsolicited advertising?