Over the last few weeks, we’ve all read our share of posts criticizing Burson-Marsteller and Facebook over the smear (or, if you prefer, whisper) campaign. We’ve also seen the posts that have tried to legitimize the smear.
Let’s get one thing straight: Continue reading
Are the days of “Dear Madam,” and “Sincerely” over? We already know that communicating with a human voice on social media channels leads to a higher retention rate, according to a University of Missouri study. But will this trend trickle down to other facets of corporate communication?
Now I wouldn’t stretch as far to say we will begin seeing LOLs and FMLs in press releases, but we may see more companies including the human element in other areas of their business. Without question, a PR professional’s job is becoming more difficult, as businesses try to incorporate the human element in communication while still maintaining professionalism. This is a difficult tightrope to walk for many PR pros because there are consequences for being “too human.” Continue reading
A few weeks ago, Ilyasha Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, the revered Civil Rights icon, was interviewed by Michel Martin on National Public Radio about a controversial new book, that claimed her father had at one time worked as a male escort.
When confronted with that very sensitive question Shabazz, simply got up and walked out of the interview. I said to myself, “I sure feel sorry for her publicist.”
Anybody who has worked in the public relations industry knows that this is a major faux pas that can do irreparable damage with the media, if you ever have to work with them again. Continue reading
I recently had the pleasure of reading Katie Paine’s latest book, Measure What Matters, during some otherwise long and boring plane rides. Through 14 succinct but detailed chapters, Katie walks you through how to get started with basic measurement and some good examples of specific situations or types of campaigns you may need to measure.
From tackling finding the right measurement tool to measuring the impact of a conference sponsorship, each chapter can stand on its own as a detailed and real-life example. One problem I have had with other books about measurement is the lack of real examples or instructions to help you go beyond the theoretical math. Not so here. Continue reading
I recently had the pleasure of seeing my two good internet buddies, Danny Brown and Gini Dietrich, try to get a room full of bloggers and PR folks to play nice. As someone working on the brand side, I was an impartial witness to what is clearly a big, heaping pile of infighting.
Clearly, the explosion of Social Media and blogging has changed the landscape, with bloggers looking to be taken seriously and PR reps not quite sure how to handle this new Fifth Estate. As an outsider in both camps, I wanted to share some unemotional insights into what is clearly a highly charged subject. Continue reading
Klout recently announced its latest feature: +K. Similar to Google’s +1, Klout asks that you give users a +K for each topic for which they have influenced you. In theory, Klout scores will now include context and topical relevance.
For example, if you look at my profile topics, you could give me a +K if I have influenced you on social media measurement or public relations. Each user gets five +K’s each day, which means you have to be registered to give others feedback and cannot give unlimited feedback. You can also give a +K to each topic for a person once each week. So if I give you a +K for social media on Monday, then I cannot give you another +K for social media until the following Monday. And +K’s will not last forever, they have an expiration date.
Klout explains that influence can change over time. While there are plenty of people who are influential about SXSW in the first few months of the year, there is hardly anyone talking about it right now. So I may give you a +K for SXSW in March, but a +K for summer beers in June. Influence can be fleeting, and it can grow and shift over time, and Klout is trying to account for that. Continue reading
Creativity need not be intricate design on the inside of a gum wrapper or hurling a bucket of paint against your ex-girlfriend’s family photos. You don’t have to age bread and – I don’t know – build the Brooklyn Bridge out of it.
The ‘C’ word is about improving an existing process or creating a new, more desirable one altogether. It’s wondering, “Isn’t there a quicker, more efficient way of doing this?” Or, “How can I get people that use X to switch to Y?” Most of have these thoughts pretty regularly, but rarely do we sit down and really try to answer them. Creativity, then, is as much about thinking about the “what” of an idea as it is about the “how,” or how you can take it out of the clouds and turn it into something tangible. Continue reading
As the title suggests, “How To Market To People Not Like You” is all about understanding people who are very dissimilar from yourself. In my case, that would be the entire world, more or less. Author Kelly McDonald does an excellent job of opening your eyes to entire audiences you aren’t getting. In other words, increasing your business by expanding into new markets rather than increasing your existing one(s).
I found the book extremely readable. My biggest fear when reading a “work related book” is that the material will be a bit dry, making it tough to get through even if the information is great. McDonald cites many examples of various businesses and people who had their eyes opened to audiences they weren’t even considering, targeting those audiences, and reaping huge benefits. Continue reading
mBLAST recently launched a free version of its tool mPACT which claims to find influencers based on topics or keywords. mPACT looks through, “a database of over 25 million articles, 8 million blog posts, and 753 million social media entries.”
So there’s no doubt that there is plenty of data to be had. But does their algorithm work? mPACT assigns an influence score as well if you sign up for the Pro account, but it’s unclear what metrics factor into this score.
I ran a couple of tests to see how well the tool works for finding influencers. Continue reading
Happy Memorial Day Friday everyone!!
We know why you’re here – you were expecting some fantastically insightful blurb with a length of between 300 and 500 words on somethings communications based, like you’ve been getting every weekday for nearly 2 years, right?
We thought so. Well, keep on reading… Continue reading