Tag Archives: facebook

Keith Trivitt

The Tech Industry’s PR Problem

Leave a comment

I love working with tech entrepreneurs. Their enthusiasm, innovative minds and passion for what they’re doing is infectious. But ask many of them what their business does, or their cool new product or service is all about, and you’re likely to get a variety of nonsensical answers rooted in geek speak:

“Well, we’re like Foursquare in that we allow people to check into their favorite restaurants, but we give them more social engagement options because our service places a box around their most frequently checked-in spots,” I actually heard one neophyte tech CEO say recently at the fantastic and very informative New York Tech Meetup.

Huh?

The tech industry has a big problem that seemingly few PR consultants or their clients want to address: tech people have no clue how to talk like normal humans when describing the value of their products or services. Continue reading →

Mike Schaffer

The Sore Thumb of Social Media

7 Comments

HammerOne recent evening, I was listening to a talk radio station while driving home after a business trip.

(As an aside, did anyone else think they would never ever ever listen to talk radio when they were kids?)

I don’t recall the exact topic of conversation, but it was insignificant until the host’s last line: “You’ve gotta be careful.  Twitter, Facebook, social media will hurt you.” At that point, I started making odd faces at my digital dial, because there was obviously a disconnect between the host and the actual concepts he was discussing.

You see, social media platforms like The Twitter (thank you, Betty White, for making that an acceptable phrase), The Facebook (thank you, Justin Timberlake, for reminding us why they dropped the “The”) and others are tools.  Tools can’t hurt you unless you make them. Continue reading →

Jeff Esposito, Keith Trivitt

Two Marketing Guys Walk Into a Branding Storm…

8 Comments

Ice cream vendor s bicycleFor marketers, 2010 has thus far been a tough year – at least on the branding front. We’ve seen the downfall of several of the world’s top brands, including the ongoing BP oil spill debacle and the ensuing fallout for its corporate image and brand, along with Google’s recent privacy concern issues and several other high-profile branding dustups.

A recent Financial Times article (PDF Version) examined the perils of a tarnished brand. After reading the article, we thought it might be interesting to examine the broader issues and implications from a marketer’s perspective, with Jeff Esposito coming from the point of view of a corporate communications guy working for a global brand (Vistaprint), and Keith examining this issue from the perspective of a PR agency exec who works with SMBs, global brands and everything in between. Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt

A Possible Facebook & Twitter Bubble?

12 Comments

Girl Blowing BubblesIn business, when is too much of a good thing just that: too much? More precisely, when it comes to online marketing for small businesses, when does too much reliance on the powers of Facebook and Twitter start to become a detriment to the long-term success of your business? Or even a bubble you should watch out for?

I’ve been giving this some considerable thought over the past few weeks. It always starts with a brief realization that despite the numerous marketing benefits of both platforms, each seems to be a bit overleveraged and oversaturated in terms of their true marketing benefits for small-business owners. In a world of 50 millions tweets per day and 100-plus million global users (only a fraction of whom are actually active), are we, as marketers, overemphasizing the benefits of Facebook and Twitter to the detriment of small businesses we represent? Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt

What John Wooden Taught Us About Marketing

8 Comments

Former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden waves before the start of the NCAA national championship game in Seattle, in this April 3, 1995 file photo. Wooden, the peerless U.S. college basketball coach who became known as the Wizard of Westwood while winning a record 10 national championships at UCLA, died on June 4, 2010, at age 99, a spokesman for the UCLA Medical Center said. REUTERS/Jeff Vinnick/Files (UNITED STATES - Tags: SPORT BASKETBALL OBITUARY)

“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” – Coach John Wooden

John Wooden’s death over the weekend, at the age of 99, got me thinking about the man they called “The Wizard of Westwood.” As someone who spent the early years of his career working in sports marketing, I thought about Wooden’s NCAA-record 10 national championships while coaching the legendary UCLA Bruins of Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) and Bill Walton and many others. I also remembered the man’s great humility and sense of humor, as well as his uncanny ability to get the best out of his players without overtly trying to put his ego or his own highly-respected reputation ahead of the game, his team or his employer (UCLA). Continue reading →

Danielle Cyr

Social Media Synonyms? Repurpose & Dilute

4 Comments

spinning topTo maintain our social media accounts, and help our clients do the same, it seems that we, myself included, have become advocates of repurposing content. Taking a press releases and extracting an e-blast from it. Sending post-event photos to print media and uploading them to Facebook. Putting links to YouTube in our press releases and putting the videos on our website.

Sure, it all makes sense. Social media takes time and time is money. So why not stretch your content when and where you can? It ensures continuity of messaging, keeps all of your communication platforms looking fresh and increases touchpoints with your target audience. But at what point does repurposing become synonymous with diluting? Can you post a new spin <gosh I hate that word> on the same news too many times? Continue reading →

Marie Baker

Preparing for the SEO of the Future

4 Comments

Do It YourselfWith less than two months to go, my away-from-work-life has consisted of registering for baby stuff, painting a nursery, complaining about maternity clothes, trying to avoid ice cream – everything and all things baby!

Now my husband just informed me that he bought a domain for our future son as a gift. My first reaction was “We don’t even have diapers yet.”  So, I sent out a tweet about his latest purchase, and got an immediate number of responses.  It seems he isn’t the only one preparing for our child’s SEO future.

Honestly, this would be the last thing I would even think about as I get ready for parenthood, but these days, should it be one of the first? Continue reading →

CTMichaels

Facebook+Privacy=#SoWhat?

7 Comments

Businessman Using BinocularsDo you ever feel like you are the only one that believes in something or honestly doesn’t care at all about something? For example, I feel that the botched Times Square bomber should suffer a public execution, regardless of if it was a failed terrorist attempt. I’m rooting for the guillotine, but a hanging or stoning would be fine in my book as well. When I say things like this people look at me like I’m so weird.  Umm, my words to you…you spend all day in the spot he tried to bomb and then come back to me. Anyway, that’s just an example of what I’m discussing here.

So what’s the big deal with Facebook messing up this week? Everytime Facebook makes one mistake the Internet blows up saying so much nonsense.  Ahhhh Privacy! I’ve been exposed, I have to run for the hills and bitch about it! People, it’s the Internet…as mentioned in previous posts nothing is private. Continue reading →

Danielle Cyr

Sampling Spells Success in SM

Leave a comment

Stacked shirts with sale tag attached on store counter, close-upIt’s evident that social media is a hugely successful endeavor for many brands and companies, while others may as well not have entered the SM sphere. After seeing the disparity in results first-hand, I started thinking about what makes the difference, aside from the obvious differences in levels of engagement, nature of content, audience and relationship building measures. That led me to start thinking about how bakeries use social media (shocking, I know.)  There I found the big difference – sampling.

When you have the opportunity to bait consumers to take their SM love for your company or brand and establish a real life relationship, you are golden. It seems elementary, but sampling is a great way to distinguish oneself from the competition and generate monetized ROI on your SM investment. Continue reading →

Keith Trivitt

Who Do You Trust with Your Client’s Biggest News?

3 Comments

Rolodex Filled with Business CardsDespite all of my love for social media, digital communications, community engagement etc., something that is beginning to particularly strike me as a clear fact of 21st-century PR is that yes, media relationships do matter. A whole lot. And dare I say it? It does matter who you know. More importantly, how well you know/trust them.

Let me put this into a bit more perspective: Say you’re working on a pretty time sensitive client announcement that has a lot of moving parts (e.g. 2-3 parties involved with multiple executives/personalities and many different times zones), which requires you to be both confidential with how closely you hold the client announcement/information and also proactive enough so you obtain the desired outcome from the announcement with a little extra audience reaction thrown in from a good pre-announcement story or two. Continue reading →