A few months ago I met Kul. He is a recent immigrant, has three kids, speaks decent English, and works a transport job at an area hospital.

But that’s just his Twitter-like bio. Things get much more interesting when you start digging into his story.

Kul is one of 200 Bhutanese refugees now living in Austin, allowed to immigrate here last fall after spending 18 years — or about half his life — in the purgatory of a refugee camp in Nepal. Kul and his family are part of the Lhotshampa ethnic group from Southern Bhutan, a “forgotten people” who were stripped of their citizenship rights and forced to flee the country en masse beginning in the late 1980s.

How you can help

USA for UNHCR works with the United Nations Refugee Agency to meet the needs of refugees, many of them with story like Kul’s, all across the globe. And leading up to this year’s World Refugee Day on Monday, June 20th, the organization is using social media — from the #BlueKey hashtag to dozens of blog posts – to get out the word about its Blue Key Campaign.

The ultimate goal: to sell 6,000 Blue Keys in support of more than 43 million refugees around the world, as well as the 6,000-plus UNHCR workers who give them food, shelter, love, and care each day.

Can you help? The cost of $5/key is small. But the act of support is a meaningful one. Get your Blue Key now!

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It’s easy to pick apart businesses and brands for their EPIC FAILS in social media and on Facebook (Nestlé, anyone?). But shouldn’t the same be done with success stories?

After all, there’s plenty to dissect, learn from, and talk about when things go right.

Over on my company’s corporate blog last Friday, I published a short Facebook marketing case study about the smart online efforts of the Mayo Clinic in the face of a mini firestorm.

When scores of fans took to the Mayo Clinic Facebook Page starting on November 3 to voice disappointment and outrage over alleged racist remarks made by a staff radiologist, Mayo had to respond quickly and appropriately. And it did.

I also discussed the story on the Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable podcast last Friday with Jen Zingsheim, contrasting Mayo Clinic’s approach with the Facebook follies of company in the news for all the wrong reasons: Cooks Source. (Scroll ahead to the 6:45 mark.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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What better way to jumpstart the week than with a little haiku, right?

Or, even better: a whole chain of haiku entries from some of your favorite bloggers?

That was the brain child of friend Aaron Strout, who has included me in the latest of his fun online social experiments.

For this challenge, I’ve been asked to publish a haiku about a brand I like, and then point you to the next writer in the haiku chain. My choice of brands is Nike, in large part because its footwear (see my current pair of Nike Airs at left) is supporting my new running habit.

A haiku, if you remember back to your elementary- or middle-school days, is a three-lined poem broken into syllables: 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and 5 syllables in the third line.

So, here’s my entry:

Love my Nike sneaks
Been powering me for weeks
On the running trail

To keep you hooked on brand haiku, check out the entry from a fellow runner, Jim Storer.

Aaron has links to all the submissions in his round-up post. Many are also being posted on Twitter with the #BrandHaiku hashtag.

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I’m excited to be joining the Austin team for this year’s “Movember” campaign.

Every November, men around the world grow out their mustaches — or “mos,” as they’re called in Australia, where the campaign first kicked off several years ago — to raise awareness and funds to fight prostate and testicular cancer.

Some 32,000 men will die directly from prostate cancer this year. And not enough of us — myself certainly included — visit our doctors regularly enough for checkups. We need to be smarter.

Throughout the month, I’ll be joining friends and colleagues from Austin, and around the world, in asking for your attention. And your financial contribution.

If you can donate, please visit my personal Movember page, or our Team Austin site.

I’ll also be posting regular photos of “mo growth” and including some commentary on my Posterous blog. As you can see from the montage at the top of the post, I have some work to do!

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We’re in the homestretch of the public voting period for proposed panels at the 2011 SXSW Interactive.

And as much as I dislike the “popularity contest” method in place for propping up potential sessions, it’s hard to deny that the tactic helps keep online SXSW chatter going year-round.

For this post, I’ve curated a list of 29 sessions (there were more than 2,300 to choose from!) that I want to see make it to the stage next March, including my own plus one for my LiveWorld co-worker Mark Williams. Some of my recommendations are absolutely biased — I know, like, and respect the speakers and/or their companies — while others come from voices that are refreshingly new to me.

To cast a vote in favor of these proposals, just follow the link titles and then click on the thumbs-up button. You’ll need to create a SXSW account if you don’t already have one. The deadline for voting is 11:59pm on Friday, August 27, 2010.

Happy voting!

Proposed LiveWorld panels

1) How Brands Respond to Facebook Attacks
“What should brands do when their reputations are taking a beating in front of millions of eyes on the world’s largest social network?”
– Bryan Person, social media evangelist LiveWorld
Confirmed panelists: 1) Michael Lazerow, founder and CEO of Buddy Media * 2) Scott Monty, head of social media atFord Motor Company

2) Social Media FAIL: Lessons from the Dark Side
“Have you ever seen a social media FAIL in progress and wondered why the brand involved couldn’t see the mistakes they were making that made the situation worse? Doing everything ‘right’ in social media planning does not necessarily guarantee success, but doing the wrong thing will definitely ensure failure …”
– Mark Williams, senior community manager at LiveWorld
Solo session

Education

3) Universities Re-invented: The Future of Digital Learning
“This panel asks, what if our learning institutions were replaced by ones based on a startup mentality: innovative organizations building learning tools that take advantage of the vast resources of the web? …”
- John Jones, The University of Texas at Dallas

4) The iPad Classroom
“The modern day classroom is a 150-year-old model, built around having a regimented set of students meet at a pre-determined spot for a set amount of time. The iPad Classroom embraces the concepts of mobile, social and just in time to light a fire under the paradigm shift we drastically need in our education system …”
- Todd Marks, Mindgrub Technologies

Our digital lives

5) I’m So Productive I Never Get Anything Done
“Make the coffee, check the RSS, groom the avatar, freshen the blog, make nice with the Twitter, now it’s time to … do the same thing again. Meanwhile your job/project/spouse/story sits there, staring at you with big cow eyes and wonders if you will ever leave the grid and do something real, something productive, something that will yield cash money and not just more followers on Twitter …”
- David Carr, New York Times

6) “Daddy, You Should Tweet That”: Parenting Goes Digital
“The parenting web is on fire, with more parents tweeting and more family sites and services launching every month. Social media is fast becoming a huge part of modern parenting, but to what end? …”
- Charlotte Hillenbrand, Made by Many

7) Tweeting on Weekends: Are We Becoming Anti-Social?
“At kids soccer games around the country, hyperconnected Dads tweet about trivia to pass the time. Meanwhile, as you walk into a supposedly social event, people all around you pull out their devices to “check in” on Foursquare or Gowalla …”
- Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy

Copyright & intellectual property

8) I.P. Fearlessly: Copyright, Contracts, and Clients
“The decision to leave the comfort and safety of a steady paycheck for the uncertainty of owning a business would seem daunting enough to dissuade most people from ever trying it. Despite the unknowns, though, more and more of us venture forth into business ownership every year. Of all of the things we do our best to keep track of, intellectual property protection seems to be one of the most common pieces we simply let go of … ”
- Aly Dossa Dossa, Osha Liang LLP

9) Blurred Boundaries: Copyright and Creativity
“United States Copyright policy remains loyal to the concept of an individual author creating in isolation. Today, technology and digital interactivity is changing our notions of creativity and the creative process …”
- Meg Ambrose, University of Colorado, ATLAS Institute

Mobile

10) Mobile Health in Africa: What Can We Learn?
“We will focus on examples of how mobile devices are bringing healthcare to underserved communities in rural Africa …
- Douglas Naegele, Infield Communications

11) Without a Mobile Strategy You’re Screwed!
“There is no such thing as mobile media – or social media for that matter. Rather, the way we use the web is increasingly social and our means of accessing it and each other, increasingly mobile. For the next wave of internet users, mobile will be their first – and for many, their only – web experience …”
- Rachel Pasqua, iCrossing

Content marketing

12) Not My Job: The Ultimate Content-Strategy Smackdown
“OK. So let’s say your business has a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a blog (or lots of blogs), an email newsletter, some SEO stuff, and eighty bajillion landing pages you forgot about back when it was still funny to rick-roll someone. Who’s doing all this content?”
– Kristina Halvorson, Brain Traffic

13) Curators Aren’t Creators — Should They Shut Up?
“162 million posts a day are created by bloggers and content farms alike and not all of it has value. It can no longer be assumed that the best will rise unassisted. Panelists will define the spheres of content creation, curation, and aggregation …”
- Allison Worthington, Allison Worthington Media

A little of this; a little of that

14) Reputation to Go
“Reputation is a key dimension of online identity, but to date there hasn’t been a great way to carry online reputation from site to site …”
- Bill Johnston, Dell

15) Decision Trees: You Tube’s New Breed of Interactive Storytellers
“YouTube’s annotations tool opened up a whole new way telling stories, with the rise of interactive videos that let viewers “choose-their-own-adventure” as they navigate through the story …”
- Marc Hustvedt, Tubefilter

16) Why Nurses Are Vital in Emerging Technology
“Emerging media – from mobile apps to social media – are becoming important parts of healthcare. Of all professions, perhaps it’s the contributions which nursing can make to the adoption of emerging technologies …”
- Phil Baumann, CareVocate LLC

17) Stand Out: Investigative Journalism for Bloggers
“Much of blogging is linking to other posts or offering secondary analysis. But, how does one become the source of information everyone is discussing?”
- Gregory Ferenstein, guest writer at CNN, Mashable, Fast Company

18) How Blogs with Balls Are Saving Sports Media
“Film geeks, political buffs and gossip lovers may argue, but nowhere has the impact of blogging and podcasting been more dramatic in the past few years than the sports world …”
- Dan Shanoff, DanShanoff.com

19) Why Mexico Will Change Your Life
“Most Americans are not aware of the impact that the future of Mexico will have on the future of the United States. Understanding Mexico is the gateway to understanding the balance of the Western Hemisphere …”
- Gary Hoover, University of Texas McCombs Business School

20) iMatter! Online Communities Saving Lives in Africa
“Do we really value a life in Africa at the same level as we do in the US? Should where you live determine whether you live or whether you die? In this session we will show how e-philanthropy can be fulfilling and addictive.”
- Brian Cooper, A Glimmer of Hope

21) Let’s Get Naked: Benefit of Publicness v. Privacy
“In our current cultural obsession with privacy, we risk losing the benefits of publicness—of the connections the internet enables. So, in a discussion, we will consider the value of publicness in our lives and communities, in transparent government, and in truly public companies …”
- Jeff Jarvis, City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism

22) Team Dynamics with a Remote Team
“More and more, employees are working remote. One team shares their experiences managing a team in multiple locations — this includes working with round-the-world contract houses, and even volunteers …”
- Jon McCartie, LifeChurch.tv

23) The Steroid Culture of Social Media: You Use?
“Ever think about taking shortcuts to boost your numbers? You know, the numb that show the success of all those interactive social media marketing programs …”
- Tim Walker, BreakingPoint

24) Voting: The 233-Year-Old Design Problem
“Do you think the “butterfly ballot” was an isolated problem? How did the hanging chad become a world-class design problem? Did you know our 43rd president was chosen because of a decision made about font size? …”
- Dana Chisnell, UsabilityWorks

25) Surviving the E-book Revolution
“Len Edgerly, host of the weekly Kindle Chronicles podcast, will host a conversation with Joshua Tallent for the purpose of helping you take full advantage of the brave new world of e-books …”
- Len Edgerly, The Kindle Chronicles

26) Work Should Be Social, Too
“Collaborating with friends is easy with today’s public social tools. They require no training, and make the fun things in your life seamless to organize. So why is it more difficult at work?”
- Bryan Menell, Dachis Group

27) How the USPS Should Implement Social Media
“If there is one organization that should embrace social media, it’s the United States Post Office. Instead, the USPS ignores social media, actively shunning it …”
- Amber Hutchins, Trinity University

28) What the Government Can Learn from Amazon
“Have you ever bought something on Amazon and wondered, “Why isn’t buying a passport as easy as this?” With over 300 million people in the United States, there is certainly room for improvement how their lives are recorded, updated and exchanged …”
Adria Richards, ButYoureAGirl.com

29) Can We Educate Creative Technologists? Front-Line Stories
“Digital media is driven by tinkering, hacking, creative ideas and radical solutions. The exciting, interesting and profitable ideas are not coming out of research labs and big engineering. They are coming from creative uses of existing tools and technologies, and being built by a new breed of geek. One who blends the worlds of art, design, business and technology …”
- Dan Dixon, University of the West of England

Note: I’ve published a mostly separate list of 20 panel recommendations on our LiveWorld corporate blog.

* Disclosures: 1) LiveWorld, my employer, is a Buddy Media partner.

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Whether you’re part of a small nonprofit or a big brand, the decisions you face over where to create and publish social media content can be challenging.

There are so many questions to consider, after all:

• Where does your audience spend its time online?
• Must you create original content for each social channel, or is cross-posting status updates, articles, and announcements OK sometimes?
• Should you create an individual account on Twitter, or a corporate one? Maybe both?
• If a debate from your blog post spills over onto Twitter, a Facebook Page, and another blog, can you keep up with all three?  Should you?
• Is your “content team” just you, or do you have co-workers that can help?
• Does your job include responsibilities other than thinking about all this stuff all day long?

One organization that’s taking an interesting step in consolidating its social media content is LifeChurch.tv, which announced last week that it’s moving the content from its Church Online blog to Facebook.

Above: Screenshot from the LifeChurch.tv Facebook Page.

Admittedly, this was my first thought after reading that post: “LifeChurch.tv is moving its social ‘hub’ away from a its own domain, which it controls, and depending on the infrastructure of Facebook, which seems to change the “rules” every three months. That’s crazy!”

My second thought: “LifeChurch.tv is smart and savvy in connecting with its community. There’s clearly a strategic plan at work here.”

My third thought: “I want to find out what that plan is, because it could very well be a model that other groups and businesses are considering.”

And so I went to Tony Steward | @TonySteward, the online community pastor with the Church Online team at LifeChurch.tv., for answers. Our e-mail exchange is below.

Q&A with Tony Steward

Bryan Person: Can you take us through the decision-making process of moving the Church Online blog to Facebook?

Tony Steward: Well, we’ve had our main community presence for Church Online in Facebook for quite a while, with close to 30,000 fans on the Page. That in addition to our recent move to remove all the blog/community features off of our main LifeChurch.tv site for our 13 campuses, making their primary online presence Facebook Pages, contributed a lot. But it all comes down to, “How can the conversations we are leading increase in their value for our community?” Already, the focus of having that be all in Facebook has shifted how we write, lead, and share our voice there as Church Online.

Bryan: What’s unique about Facebook as a platform for community and ministry building? How is it changing what you do?

Tony: I think what is most unique is that all the metrics and measurements you have in Facebook have to do with actual people versus page views, unique IPs, etc. And since it is people Facebook can measure we, for instance, know that there are 238 people that are fans on our Page who are from Guatemala. That provides an opportunity to create content that connects with them, to get some conversation, and see how we can support their faith and ministry. The same is true for seeing which cities or metro areas around the United States are connected with us where we don’t have a physical ministry, and how could we connect with them for unique ministry opportunities, or meetups, etc.

How this shifts our content is something we are still learning, and trying to be as creative as possible around. But know that we can measure the success of content based on metrics and “meta-demographic” information makes our pursuit to leverage online tools for offline spiritual growth and impact much more tangible.

Bryan: Any concerns over losing “control” of your content, not to mention existing incoming links and SEO juice, by shutting down the blog on your main site? Why not continue to publish in both places?

Tony: Control isn’t a primary goal for us, but creating value is. In regards to incoming links and SEO, those things are very important, but with the momentum we’ve built on the Page, the social traffic in the Facebook community is MUCH more powerful. Having the content in both places is possible, and we’ve done that for a long time, but it was also two separate conversations to monitor. The diffusion of audience, our attention, and just one additional choice of where to find that particular content takes away from the traffic and social momentum.

Bryan: LifeChurch.tv has another blog, Swerve, that appears to be staying right where it is. Different strategic thinking there?

Tony: The Swerve blog and community is dramatically different than the Church Online community. A main difference is that our team’s focus for Church Online is leading the spiritual growth, community, and online services that make up our ministry. Swerve doesn’t have the same goals or intention as an expression of the leadership and innovative thinking found from LifeChurch.tv’s leadership.

Bryan: Online content creation and engagement, with all of its various phases (idea generation, scheduling, actual production, editing, posting to multiple channels, answering follow-up comments, etc.) can take a ton of time, especially when not done strategically. How does a church like LifeChurch.tv staff for that work?

Tony: Well, that is a pretty complicated question to answer. LifeChurch.tv has an extremely unique and significant investment in content creation and production, and a staff structure to support it. Church Online leverages a lot of the content already being produced, especially from our weekend, for two reasons. The first is that we want to create a pattern of learning retention in our online communities. So, instead of all original content, we leverage the weekend message, discussion questions, scriptures, etc for the conversations we lead online. The second is the obvious time savings from not having to be a catalyst for new content, but aggressively repurposing the talent, insight, and creativity of our leader and media/content teams.

Bryan: Any advice for other organizations — whether churches or secular businesses — on how to create compelling online content and how to decide which social media channels will be right for them?

Tony: Yep! I talk about that consistently on my blog. The one-sentence answer for that is, “Compelling content tells a story that creates a value for your community, and you pick the channels that give your audience their best experience and that matches your need to measure and report on progress towards your key results.”

–

I’m curious: Will other businesses and organizations follow suit in making Facebook their online social hub?

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Just because your business or brand can do something on Facebook doesn’t mean you should.

That’s how I feel about Delta this morning, on the heels of the announcement that Facebook users can now book a flight directly from the Delta Facebook Page.

This “social media ‘Ticket Window’” sounds glorious in theory, but the user experience when trying to make a booking leaves plenty of room for improvement.

Here’s a screenshot of that Ticket Window (click image to enlarge) from Delta’s Book a Flight Facebook tab:

The problem? It’s way too small, with all the content crammed into an iframe of just 460 x 460 pixels. That means I can’t see more than one flight at a time. Not so helpful when I want to scan multiple flying times and prices before making a selection.

In comparison, by going directly to the Delta website (click image below to enlarge), I’m given far more horizontal and vertical space to work with.

Next steps for Delta on Facebook

In its defense, Delta can only work within the parameters of Facebook, which is reducing the maximum width of a custom tab to 520 pixels. But then, maybe Delta needs to rethink how to make better use of that limited screen space.

Unlike some of its competitors (American | #mce_temp_url#jetBlue | Southwest), Delta also hasn’t been very active on its Facebook Page up until this week. Here’s hoping the Ticket Window announcement is a sign of more regular content creation and fan engagement on Facebook.

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Here are the two best ways I know to “keep up” with my RSS feeds:

1. Limit the total feeds to a manageable number.

Right now, that’s 142 subscriptions, well down from the 200-plus I used to follow–and always fall behind on. Your magic number, of course, will vary.

2. Treat your Google Reader account like an e-mail inbox: Open it every day, read as much as you can, and prioritize your responses.

I typically go through my feeds first thing in the morning (sometimes using NewsRack on the iPad), often before checking my corporate and Gmail accounts. And in 30 minutes, I get the pulse on tech/media/social media marketing news from people and sources that I trust. As time allows, I also peek back in on new, unread items during the afternoon.

Along the way, I star, share and add to Delicious the most memorable items, including content I’ll want to reference later for my own writing or presentation research. I also include a specific tag for posts I comment on.

Just like my e-mail accounts, I have buckets (see above) for what comes in. The a-Top Feeds folder comprises my own must-read list of 10 to 12 bloggers. On extra-busy/travel days, I make sure to at least read through that A-list.

The ‘Read it All’ Week Challenge

This system works for me now, but it’s taken years of practice and tweaking. If you’re struggling to keep up with your RSS feed, check out Justin Kownacki’s “Read it All” Week Challenge, which kicks off next Monday. It could be just the project to get you back on track!

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If this inspirational, tear-jerking JOLT from Andrea Ross is any indication, I missed one heckuva Podcasters Across Borders conference this year.

In her talk, Andrea shares stories of the relationships she’s built and the friendships she’s made through her work on the Just One More Book podcast and We Can Rebuild Her breast-cancer journal. Andrea’s message to content creators everywhere: Your work does matter. People are reading, watching, and listening (even if they don’t always tell you!).

[Click through to the original post if you can't see the video.]

For additional videos from PAB 2010, check out the PAB YouTube channel.

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Of all the events on my upcoming calendar, the one I’m most excited about is very much outside the social media echo chamber. It’s STORY, “a conference for the creative class,” taking place in Chicago this September 23-24.

The event will explore how to “communicate the greatest story every told- Gospel” (yeah, I’m very biased!) and will feature creative storytellers from the arts, business, and ministry. Check out this speaking lineup:

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