Quote of the day: Content is everything

From Mitch Joel of the Six Pixels of Separation blog."Once you start these conversations, you have to keep them going. You have to be clever. You have to be engaging. Not too many brands have, what I call, the "intestinal fortitude" to deliver on that very real conversation. Brands tend to be g...

By Maddie Grant • May 30, 2008

My Twitter Manifesto: Rules created by me for me

I did a search for "twitter manifesto" and I am sad to say that I was not the first to coin this phrase. Darn, there goes my legacy. For the last couple of months, my participation on Twitter has grown significantly and yes, I have become somewhat addicted. I tend to follow certain peeps who I ...

By Michael Brito • May 30, 2008

The Flack & The Guru

The Flack & The Guru American Airlines' announcement last week that it would charge $15 for a checked bag was met by disdain and contempt in the communications industry. It was fun to read AA's outside PR flack explain the strategy: "We understood that consumers would be frustrated with ano...

By Jonathan Salem Baskin • May 30, 2008

Who Says You Must Blog to Protect Your Good Name? A Case Study

In recent weeks, I've noticed a new theme amongst the social media digerati that goes something like "how do we get the rest of the world to understand the promise of social media? How do we get all those laggard companies blogging and tweeting with us?" I've always cautioned my clients not to j...

By Dana Theus • May 30, 2008

Groundswell co-Author Josh Bernoff talks Social Technographics in Austin

I attended a luncheon today sponsored by the Internet Strategy Forum. The invited guest was Forrester's Josh Bernoff. Josh's topic was "Winning in a world transformed by social media." He cautioned the audience to not focus on technologies, but rather relationships and the prevailing deeper soci...

By Susan Scrupski • May 29, 2008

The Startup Cowboy

Picture it- Wide open spaces, high rising mountains, and a social media startup smack dab in the middle of Cowboy Country. It sounds like a skit on the Daily Show, but it's actually what I'm attempting to do in the next few weeks.Get Along Little Doggies Historically, Wyoming has not been a hot...

By Jason Kintzler • May 29, 2008

Valuing a Startup Culture

Fuzzwich Co-Founder Rob FitzpatrickWhat does it take to get a promising social media startup or any startup for that matter off the ground? In the absence of capital, you need technical expertise along with knowledge of how to make a product scalable, how to market it and how to pitch your idea...

By Dan Greenfield • May 29, 2008

There's room for blogs to grow....

I've just spotted some research by Emarketer on US blog readership which shows that, despite the justified excitement and uptake of Twitter et al, blog readership is set to grow from 94.1 million readers in 2007 to 145.3 million in 2012. That figure is people reading a blog at least once a month...

By Dan Thornton • May 29, 2008

Are we ready for social computing aka collaboration?

Some statistics that emerged from Jive Software's Business Social Software Jeopardy show which I have lifted from a piece I wrote for IT Counts (closed community so no link): 10% of marketing budgets should be allocated to 'social' projects. Marketing budgets usually run at 6.5% of total revenu...

By Dennis Howlett • May 29, 2008

How do you find the right people? Recruiting Socialutions!

The economy doesn't seem to be improving and housing prices are dropping (though interest rates are, too). Common sense would say there wouldn't be too many folks looking to trade-in their current jobs for one that you are offering. The position is still vacant, and the Director is getting impa...

By Carter Smith • May 28, 2008

SEO Friendly Three Column WordPress Theme

A couple of you have asked me about the SEO friendly theme in the past. Now WordPress theme SEOpal is available for public download! This theme for WordPress created by me and Sprightly Media. It is absolutely FREE :-). It is a three column SEO friendly WordPress theme with using smooth colors a...

By Tilak Bisht • May 28, 2008

Social Media Marketing Mistakes And How to Avoid Them (1 of 6)

Earlier this month, I ran a daylong seminar on social media marketing, which was sponsored by the Triangle chapter of the American Marketing Association. It was sort of a "101″ class. We started at the basics and moved through it to best practices. About 75 people were there, and we had some ...

By Jim Tobin • May 28, 2008

Marketing Landscape In Flux

A couple of recent items have me thinking about what is happening in the marketing landscape around us. We talked recently about the PR study done at Annenberg School of Communications concerning best practices and how the industry is not doing a good job of measuring its effectiveness. On the h...

By Harry Hoover • May 28, 2008

McClellan Comes Clean

In what can only be characterized as a cleansing of his soul, Politico today broke the exclusive that former Bush mouthpiece Scott McClellan, a once-frequent subject of this blog, has penned a tell-all. And we hear it won't be pretty for his former puppeteers. "The eagerly awaited book, while ...

By Peter Himler • May 28, 2008

Buy some top social media experts at bargain prices...

And it's all for charity. Social media type Jennifer Leggio is not only running the Nike Women's Marathon for charity - she's also persuaded some top social media figures to auction their skills to raise money for Team in Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And yo...

By Dan Thornton • May 28, 2008

Promote Fairness in Your Blog: Think Before You Post

Pito Salas raises some good points in his post, Asymmetrical conflict in the blogosphere. He talks about how the power of the combination of blogs and search engines can spiral a negative story, fair or unfair, into prominence on the web. There have been many examples of this in the business, po...

By Bill Ives • May 28, 2008

Connectivity, Transparency and Truth Telling

When HTML was first invented I got really interested in the precursor markup languages and did a bit of research on them. I discovered TeX, GML, SGML and learned how they had been used. Then I started to learn about HTML. It was elegant and simple, almost sparse. An ordinary person like me coul...

May 28, 2008

(Un)usability: The Social Web's Dirty Little Secret

I promised myself I wouldn't rant, but I will admit to being frustrated. I finally have to admit that "this social networking stuff" is not so easy to use. While I try to design and build the functionality for my own social network site, B2B Expert's Forum, I find myself explaining almost daily ...

By Dana Theus • May 28, 2008

Transparency and Blogging in the Business of Sports

Lately I've stumbled upon some good blog posts about being open and transparent in business. One of the reasons why I've always thought blogging was good for businesses (not all, but many of them) is that it lets you showcase your knowledge and be seen as an expert by your customers. Being t...

By Jason Peck • May 28, 2008

Bizzuka enters blogosphere with new blog component

Bizzuka, the company I serve as marketing director, recently rolled out its own blog component, part of its more comprehensive web content management system. Big whoop you say. In the world of all things blog, it probably isn't, but to us it's a big deal. The platform doesn't pretend to offer t...

By Paul Chaney • May 27, 2008

Blogger Social 08 - Going to the Big Apple

It's all CK's fault. She's the one who talked this timid traveler into venturing all the way to the Big Apple. To be fair, there was no arm-twisting involved. I wanted to attend Blogger Social '08 from the moment it was announced. But first I had to make sure I could swing it budget-wise. A...

By Connie Reece • May 27, 2008

Personality Not Included - a podcast with Rohit Bhargava

What if you placed a call to GM and the CEO answered the phone?You would think perhaps this company is too small to suit my needs. This is why the bigger a company gets the more faceless they become because they layer on infrastructure to foster a certain perception.But new media changes that p...

By Paul Dunay • May 27, 2008

Google Drinks a Fighting Problem

Google is screwed up. I say that not to be in any way disparaging of the world's most important search engine and online advertising platform (after all, this is a Blogger blog), but rather out of sincere, heartfelt concern. SEOs and online advertisers can no longer dismiss the search giant's r...

By Tom Pick • May 27, 2008

Has The Game of PR Changed?

Wikipedia defines Public Relations as the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics. PR aims to gain an organization or individual positive exposure to their key stakeholders. Public relations practices of the past have been aimed at coercing the publ...

By Jay Deragon • May 27, 2008

Communications Planning 101

Developing a communications plan requires a disciplined approach. Your first order of business is reviewing your current program for impact and efficiency. Review your program by: - Audience (employees, shareholders, in-channel audiences, consumers) - Vehicle (personal visits, telephone calls, l...

By Harry Hoover • May 27, 2008