by Michael Brito Getty Images Wikipedia tells us that active listening is an intent to “listen for meaning”. Others suggest that active listening should “focus on who you are listening to, whether in a group or one-on-one, in order to understand what he or she is saying.” These are excellent definitions. But as it relates to customer interactions on the social web, active listening is only one half of the equation. Take for example, this brief illustration. A man gets…
Bloggers, Companies Must Assume Responsibility For Their Audiences
by Jason Falls Credit: NotSoGoodPhotography on Flickr Far be it from me to lament the ability for anyone to build or publish virtually anything now that the age of the consumer and age of information have intersected so gloriously. We are truly blessed to live in a day when, with a little time and instruction reading, even the tech-tarded can have their own blog or website and publish anything they want. The more adventurous and creative, or all-night code-bender freaks,…
Evolving the Herd Mentality: Wall Street Journal Bans Embargoes
Credit: Nick Brandt, Available for sale here According to Rafat Ali, The Wall Street Journal today amended its editorial policy to no longer participate in embargoed news herds and will only consider exclusives from this point on. In March, The WSJ introduced a new plan to grade journalists based on the stories they break for the newswires. For those who need a bit of clarification, embargoes are a form of PR where journalists and bloggers work on a story prior…
Are You Talking to Me?
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time touring the world in support of my ideas and thoughts on the direction of new PR, branding, service, and marketing communications. My reward and inspiration to continue is sourced from each person I meet and the experiences and challenges they share. I’ve learned that our greatest hindrance to evolve is not our unwillingness to do so, our indoctrination in new media and communications is truly obstructed by the executives to whom we…
A Week in PRWeek
PRWeek published two articles this week that I wanted to share with you… First, I am proud and humbled to have been named among 39 other incredible PR and communications thought leaders and practitioners in the 2009 PRWeek edition of the annual 40 Under 40 list. For the record thought, they added another year to my age before its time… 😉 Second, Eric Chandler published a great review on PRWeek of my new book with Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public…
Everything You Never Knew About Facebook
Shot at SXSW While I’m currently in the midst of writing my next book, I stumbled across some very interesting and useful statistics that offer a glimpse into Facebook behavior and activity as well as the state of the Facebook platform. I believe that they reinforce many of our hunches and assumptions and also introduce facts that may alter the ingredients of your next Social Media initiative. General: Facebook has more than 250 million users 120 million users log on…
I’m Not Talking to You
Credit: Natalie Dee Social Media continues to fascinate me. If you stop and think about it for a moment, we’re presented with something special…something almost too simple to appreciate. Essentially, we have been given a gift – a looking glass into the thoughts, opinions, feedback, and dialogue that represents a snapshot of market sentiment and behavior. So, what do we do with this gift? A few, but growing faction of businesses realize the value in listening and learning. Others focus…
The Influencer’s Dilemma: The Battle For Mindshare Amid Media Turmoil
Expert Series: Louis Gray Source Successful businesses are always making choices and sacrifices, strategically looking as to how they are going to prioritize their resources, including human capital, budgets, and, of course, time. As the world around them adapts, so too do they need to make changes internally to respond, or to predict where trends are going – and if they guess right, the business could catapult ahead of less-agile competition. Almost nowhere else in business has the radical transformation…
Breaking News: Twitter Debuts New Front Page
Twitter just rolled out its redesigned front page for those visitors new to Twitter.com. If you’re already a registered user, you won’t notice the new look unless you sign out and refresh the home page. The new homepage helps provide a frame of reference, expectation setting, and also offers a lens into the conversations populating the popular microcommunity that connects people through 140 character strings. Twitter now places an emphasis on search, the very functionality that helped Twitter earn prominence…
Full Disclosure: Sponsored Conversations on Twitter Raise Concerns, Prompt Standards
This is the unabridged version of my latest post on TechCrunch. This version dives much deeper into the challenges, pitfalls, psychology, and associated opportunities to more effectively navigate this complicated, but imminent issue. Source In light of the FTC’s recent scrutiny of Social Media practices and the activity that connects brands to influencers and ultimately consumers, we will soon see guidelines and corresponding penalties to serve as governance for future engagement. My views and opinions of how the FTC is…
