In celebration of Alex Iskold’s brilliant toolbox for startups on Read/Write Web today, I’ve decided to join the conversation to help startups make PR work for them now and in the long term. PR is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in the marketing department and many startup entrepreneurs and even veteran executives are quick to under estimate and under value it, or on the contrary, expect PR to solve all of their marketing needs all with just one email…
ebook: The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
After running the popular series that evaluated and discussed ThinkFree’s experiment in Social Media, I decided to compile all of the posts into one free and downloadable ebook for your reference. Download as a Word doc Download as a PDF The Series on PR 2.0: The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part I Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part II Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media…
Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media – Part III
Source Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls “The Great Social Experiment,” where he tested the art of online social networking to evaluate whether or not joining conversations across popular online communities would benefit his company. Crow created a roundtable featuring Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and advice to help ThinkFree and other companies learn from his experiment. Before you read below, make sure to first read, “The…
Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media – Part II
Source Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls “The Great Social Experiment,” where he tested the art of online social networking to evaluate whether or not joining the conversation across popular online communities would benefit his company. Crow created a roundtable featuring Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and advice to help ThinkFree and other companies learn from his experiment. Before you read below, make sure to first read,…
Don’t Throw Out that Social Media Rulebook Quite Yet
…use some of it as a reference guide instead. I have to hand it to Chip Griffin. His recent post, “Throwing Out the Social Media Rulebook” is thought provoking to say the least. In his post, Griffin assertively proclaims, “I’m here to tell you that most of the rules are bunk, and we as an industry to ourselves a disservice by frightening off potential participants with absurd proclamations of the way things must be.” I like it. I agree with…
Experiments in Social Media – Part I
Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls The Great Social Experiment where he tested and practiced the art of online social networking as a strategy for helping his company join the conversation across popular online communities and in turn, evaluate the business implications for doing so. Crow assembled a roundtable of those active in the Social Media landscape to offer feedback, commentary, constructive criticism, and advice for the good of all marketing. Those joining the conversation are Chris…
The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
This post is in memory of Marc Orchant, an amazing friend, father, and geek, whom I will miss dearly. Marc was supposed to participate in this discussion. His unexpected passing has us all devastated. Our prayers and support are with his family. Social networking, and social media specifically, have been painted as the new marketing landscape for businesses to engage with their communities of customers wherever they congregate. In my view, we’re starting to hit a ceiling of discussion versus…
The Blog Council, Intentions vs. Execution
Behind these closed doors, a virtual council of big business marketers will meet to discuss how to best engage with people through blogs and all forms of social media. The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs. Founding members include the leading companies from a diverse range of business…
Customer Service is the New, New Marketing
The topic of empowering your customers so that they become an extension of your marketing isn’t new. Transforming people into a surrogate sales force is the dream of any service organization. The difference today is that the landscape has shifted to the point where good customer service is no longer the minimum ante to play the game. Over the next decade, customer service will fuse with marketing to become a holistic inbound, outbound campaign of listening to and engaging with…
The Pitch is Dead – R.I.P.
Scroll below to read with a white background. We are gathered here to not mourn the death of “the pitch,” but to celebrate its life and how its misuse and oft irrelevance helped us improve the entire communications industry. R.I.P. Journalists and bloggers have had it and they’re fighting back. Quite honestly, it’s been a long time coming and we’re bound to see more blacklists and PR people called out for their mistakes. Hey, it happens to the best, and…
