PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: November 8, 2022

Follow

Here is this week’s of interesting articles. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues:

Dell Pulling Out All the Stops – According to Now Is Gone, Dell is taking social media/conversation a step further with the launch of Dell Shares – an investment relations related blog. Maybe transparency and conversation is currency for this economy. Hmmm, consider buying some Dell stock.    

Digging It – Pro Net Advertising provides some simple tips for creating an interesting digg title. I haven’t tried venturing onto Digg yet, so if you have other helpful hints, let me know.  When New Best Practices are Old – CK brings up a good point about a recent B2B marketing best practices report that was just published. From her perspective, these reports merely add to the echo chamber of what is believed to improve a product launch, versus truly unveiling best practices on what is happening around us. She plans to unveil her top ten best practices shortly.

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: November 1, 2022

Follow

Here’s this week of interesting articles. Enjoy! 

What’s Your CEO’s Name? Seth Godin brings up a good point about the accessibility or permeability of a CEO to his/her customers. But since we only use the phone line for the fax, I guess I won’t have to worry about telemarketers in the future. Now, how do I get a hold of the Citibank CEO again… 

What’s the Story Morning Glory? I’ve been reading Collaborative Thinking from Mike Gotta. He has some interesting thoughts. His most recent post highlights the backstory on products and the relation to corporate responsibility. This highlights how transparency is becoming an important component of every facet of business; thereby, enabling consumers to trust and participate with your brand, company and product. 

What are You Doing on November 8? David Meerman Scott posted about this totally free event to hear from some of the best marketing gurus out there. Great way to get leads and phone charges for the sponsor, Conference Calls Unlimited. Heck, I actually remember the article, “A Brand Called You,” when it was first published in Fast Company. Does this date me? 

Leave out the Welcome Mat Allen Stern of CenterNetworks did an interesting test of the power of welcome. For those coming from social sites, Allen greeted them with a welcome [site name]. Through his test, he increased the number of  subscribers and ad clicks from these visitors. From a PR perspective, this raises some interesting questions in terms of how “social outreach” can have an impact on your client’s/company’s site traffic.  

Tweet Tweet – Be Sweet B.L. Ochman writes about some Twitter dos and don’ts. Why do I have a feeling more people will be following in her footsteps? Frankly, I haven’t started this and don’t know if I want to get mired into another time suck! =) 

Telling a Story Through Social Media Now Is Gone wrote how they posted a slide show from American Red Cross (I assume this is a client or someone is directly associated with the organization) regarding the recent fires in San Diego. The article highlights some thoughts before jumping into social media – all good PR tips. 

So You Want Face Time? I like MarketingSherpa – they provide good, basic insight on how to leverage new tools for marketing and PR. Today’s lesson – how to market yourself and your company on Facebook. Damn, this means I probably have to spend more time on Facebook, which I was trying to avoid from an online reputation perspective.   

Shorter Sentences Please I attended an internal seminar that said optimal sentence length was no more than 16 words. (16 words exact!) Mike Volpe of Small Business Hub highlights this for readability of online copy. Now to cut down my paragraph length pitches… 

 Technorati Tags: blogging Facebook marketing PR public relations reputation management social media Twitter Weekly Articles 

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: October 18, 2022

Follow

Here are the weekly articles that I found interesting. There were so many that I’m posting a day early. I may revise my schedule to get this up on Thursdays instead of Fridays, because frankly, I can think of better things to do on my Friday. Here you go: 

Hello, hello hello? Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim points out the problem with the multitude of top blog lists and the risk of creating an echo chamber of self-importance. 

All a Twitter B.L. Ochman provides some great reasons why marketers should consider Twitter. As she highlights, it’s important to give as much as take for any tool you use. Alternatively, David Berkowitz writes on Search Insider that maybe listening to Twitter is more important than participating. The issue is, do marketers really listen? =) 

When Advertising Isn’t Marketing I just started reading David Meerman Scott and I don’t know why I didn’t start earlier. David points out the Forrester’s recent interactive marketing report if focused on the old rules of marketing versus the new rules. Check out David’s perspective on what new marketing means.  

Don’t Be an Ugly American – Crossing Cultural Boundaries Ann Holland of MarketingSherpa provides an interesting look on crossing cultural boundaries for blogging. And who knew that she’s blogging from Serbia!  

Fox Pisses Off Blood Thirsty Fans For fans of Buffy the Vampire TV series, you’ll love CK’s recent post about how Fox just pissed off tons of fans by serving a desist order for a sign along event. And you haven’t seen it, it’s one of the best TV episodes that’s been copied by other shows. 

Trucking Down the Brand Fast Lane – Does Waggener Edstrom Have the Answer? KD Paine’s PR Measurement Blog had a quick post about this article in AdWeek. Waggener proposes an interesting brand management concept by visually mapping key words and their prospective impact on your company’s stock price.  

Tracking Your Online Videos Michael Pick writes an interesting review of Tube Mogul for MasterNewMedia. For anyone trying to start a video marketing campaign, Mike outlines the pros and cons of Tube Mogul’s service. The cool part? Submit your content to several video sharing sites while getting an analytics overview. Now where are those old salsa videos…Disclosure: My company has a service that shares videos, podcasts, webcasts and online demos. Though not directly competitive, I felt it was important to disclose this. 

  Another Sign of Web 2.0 Exuberance? The New York Times ran a story about the Silicon Valley’s fuzzy math. So add fuzzy math to my list of signs that the Web 2.0 Exuberance is upon us. And Brad Stone outlines a conversation with Carlot Perez, who provides a historical look at tech bubbles and busts.  

  PR Folks Starting to Get Bloggers? Robert Scoble had an interesting post about PR folks gaming Techmeme. What interested me more about his post was how he highlighted some interesting way to get bloggers’ attention, both proactive and reactive. But then again, he was massed email press releases. I don’t know – emailing press releases to a blogger you know or don’t know doesn’t seem to be the right way to approach bloggers. Food for thought.

Technorati Tags:  advertising blogging marketing Social media Web 2.0 Exuberance Weekly Articles

Party Like It’s 1999: Web 2.0 Exuberance?

Follow

 Lately I’ve been feeling a case of deja vu. Industry Standard is being resurrected. The umpteenth company being funded for video sharing, online video, social networking – select the focus and someone’s funding it. Here are the Top 7 Signs of the Web 2.0 Exuberance – the replay of the dot.com days?:

 1. Though the valuations may be lower, it’s eery how most start-up seem to have business plans based on – advertising. 

 2. And if the business plan isn’t based on advertising, then the hope is … acquisition. Previously the company of choice was Microsoft, now the likely dream company is Google or maybe even Cisco. 

 3. High flying IPOs anyone? VMware, Compellent are just the beginning. Maybe this time, these companies have actual revenues and strong business numbers backing them. Question is, will the next ones be as financially sound?

 4. During the dot.com boom and bust days, I saved money on alcohol and food with all the launch parties, cocktail events and other networking events. Now we have the LinkedIn lunch events, Ignite by O’Reilly  (by the way I’ll be at the Ignite SF event on Oct. 16) and others.

 5. If the answer to “What does your company do?” is Web 2.0, social networking or video, then you might be part of the Web 2.0 Exuberance. This is the new catch phrase whereas the previous hot answer was “my company is taking a brick & mortar model (remember that phrase?) to the Internet.”  5.a Your hipness factor is based on where you’re working. If you’re not doing Web 2.0 or social networking, forgetaboutit.

6. High flying companies going belly up. Not yet but TechCrunch is doing a good job with their dead pool. Takes me back to the days of f*cked company

 7. VCs are hot again. Need I say more? 

 Give me your take. Are there other signs of the past?

Technorati Tags: dot com boom and bust Social media social networking Web 2.0

PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: October 12, 2022

Follow

I’ve been thinking about ending the week on articles that I find interesting throughout the week. Hopefully, you’ll find them useful for your PR and marketing efforts. I welcome any recommendations that you have to make this a useful list of articles. I will categorize this under Weekly Articles so you can just skip to the summaries in the future. Here we go: 

 Why CEOs Should Be Careful about Blogging
Jeremiah Owyang discusses the challenges of writing a CEO Blog. Jeremiah highlights the key points about why CEOs should be careful before starting a blog, from time, cool factor, to just being plain boring. 

Perils of When Marketing Buzz Hits Reality of Customer Service and Product Quality
Marketing Pilgrim highlights the perils of Apple’s reputation based on recent goofs and whether this will impact Apple’s marketing machine.  
 

Using Social Media to Raise Money
B.L. Ochman gives a refreshing look at how one nonprofit organization raised $1 million in 4 weeks. That’s more than some for-profit start ups out there! 
 

Falling Technorati Links – What’s the True Picture?
Mack Collier at The Viral Garden writes about the decrease in links on Technorati. Is this a good barometer of authority when twitter, Facebook and other types of incoming links are not being counted? Interesting question for our reliance on Technorati for pointing us to “popular” blogs for PR and marketing outreach. 
 

The Multiple Faces of Social Networking
I previously wrote about managing my online reputation here and here. Max Kalehoff posted to the OnlineSpin about this growing social network illness and what needs to be done to “cure” it. From a marketing perspective, the question I constantly ask myself is which network should you participate in, monitor or just plain ignore? 

 Technorati Tags: Weekly Articles  PR  Public Relations  Marketing  Social Media

Multiple Personalities: Balance Between Personal and Work Identities

Follow

I previously wrote about how to manage my online reputation. My challenge was how to keep my professional and personal personalities separate. Yes, yes you can say that they are the same but there are reasons to keep them separate. For me, ths is important when  commenting on blogs for personal and company reasons. 

My company doesn’t have a corporate blog but I have this blog. Yet, part of my day-to-day job is to monitor blogs and when apppropriate comment or contact bloggers. And when I do outreach, I definitely try to abide by the rules of blogging.

For me, I feel a need to differentiate between when I comment based on my personal perspectives and as an official spokesperson of my company. Here are my Four Rules for Managing Multiple Personalities that I follow:

1. In identifying who I am on posts, I use “Cece Salomon-Lee for my company name” to identify my role as a spokesperson for my company.

2. If I’m commenting personally, I don’t use that identifier – just my name, while using my personal email and blog as ways to reach me.

3. In the content of the post, I also try to clearly outline that this is my company’s position.

4. When I email a blogger directly, I clearly send the email from my personal or work email to keep the correspondence separate.

The balance I try to keep is when a connection from my blogging or personal comments can be relevant for my day job. So far, it hasn’t been too much of an issue to keep my multiple personalities separate. What do you think? Am I being to black and white in how I manage my reputation online?

Sincerity: The Friendly Ghost Stops By

Follow

In the meantime, I pinged The Friendly Ghost about my post on sincerity’s role in social media:

“I equate sincerity with authenticity. As a writer I cannot but help put some of myself into what I write, and generally I find people respond to that. When I go through even my own postings on my blog, I find the first tentative posts quite dull. it wasn’t until I gained confidence as a blogger – finding my blogging ‘voice’ – that it started to come alive. I also find that the more open I am in other written communications, and the more of my personality I use – in emails, internal documents, even the material I write for clients – I generally get a better response because people know there’s a real person behind it. 

Sometimes however it can be difficult to get across fine judgements. So much of our communication is visual and auditory that facial expressions and tonal inflections can totally change the meaning of a sentence compared to seeing it written down. This means you need to be precise with your writing as well as free-flowing. This particularly is part of the copywriter’s skill but anyone can do it: you just have to make sure you re-read what you’ve written and actually say it to yourself in your head. Make sure you don’t say anything that can be misinterpreted. But, by the same token, make sure you’re being honest.”