It’s easy to lose sight of the beacons and milestones that resonate, influence and guide us as we navigate through these evolutionary times. After all, we’re deluged with education, lessons, and insight from so many brilliant leaders and inspirational voices, that it’s practically impossible to retain and reference all that moved us when we’re moved on a minute-by-minute basis. Our attention and relationships are more precious than ever. As 2008 comes to a close, I wanted to share with you…
SolutionsStars Video Series Helps Businesses Embrace Social Media
During Blogworld Expo 2008 in Las Vegas, The Network Solutions Team shot footage for SolutionsStars, its online Web series designed to help small businesses harness the potential of Social Media to identify, understand, participate, and excel in the communities that impact their bottom line. I was asked to participate by good friend Geoff Livingston (the man behind the book Now is Gone). Portions of the resulting footage were edited into two videos as part of the series, The Social Opportunity…
Social Media Predictions for 2009 – Introducing Social Syndication and Aggregation
My good friend Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Junta42 content and custom publishing network, has compiled an impressive list of 47 social media and content marketing experts to share their advice and predictions for 2009. The list includes insight from renown pundits and visionaries including: Paul Bradshaw David Meerman Scott Scott Monty Sally Falkow Jason Falls Toby Bloomberg Marc Meyer Ann Handley Paul Gillin Valeria Maltoni Here’s my prediction: Brand marketers will continue to experiment with existing and emerging forms…
Fear Kills Businesses, Dead
What follows is the unedited version of my most recent post, currently live at TechCrunch. Credit: Stuant63 via Flickr It’s official. We’re in a recession. Recessions naturally inject fear and panic, which is only heightened by every discussion of market losses, layoffs, bailouts, and somber predictions. We’re only human after all; of course everything affects us personally and emotionally. Fear is not a catalyst for productivity however. With valuable advice pouring in from concerned and sympathetic entrepreneurs and proven leaders,…
TechCrunch Kills The Embargo, But PR Holds the Smoking Gun
Disclosure, I am a contributor to TechCrunch and I have had my fair share of embargoes broken by various reporters and bloggers over the years. In some cases, we trusted the wrong people. Credit In what is sure to come as an absolute surprise to the tech PR industry, TechCrunch proclaimed that it will no longer honor embargoes, unless they’re granted exclusivity. The move was triggered by a growing pattern of underhanded and also irresponsible behavior in the backchannels of…
Saying More with Less: A Directory of Short URL Services
Source Through brevity there’s clarity. As marketers and communicators in the era of socialized media, we’re relearning how to summarize and illustrate what we represent so that we might briefly captivate the attention of those we wish to reach. Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Qik, Seesmic, 12seconds, Facebook News Feeds, and all other forms of micromedia communities prosper through a concise economy of language and forethought. It is the exchange of this richer dialog that flourishes through succinctness. This introspective and empathetic…
Introducing MicroPR, A PR Resource for Journalists, Analysts and Bloggers on Twitter
In the era of the Social Web, transparency, engagement, and a commitment to authentically connect people to your story are essential principles for practicing successful and meaningful Public Relations. Concurrently, the socialization of media is creating new communities and communications channels that are empowering journalists, bloggers, analysts, as well as everyday people, to actively and passionately contribute, share, and discover the stories around us. It’s changing the information ecosystem. Media and communications professionals must stay connected and work together now…
Reinventing Crisis Communications for the Social Web
Source Businesses, individuals, and organizations will, from time to time, make honest mistakes or in some unfortunate cases, intentionally support unethical decisions to dissuade or conceal something significant from its public. Whether it’s an oversight or a matter of deception, savvy companies usually employ and deploy a crises response team to prepare for, manage and attempt to positively spin the potential backlash from customers, partners, and employees related to almost anything. Crisis communications is a branch of PR that is…
In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers
Source Effectively organizing, curating, showcasing, and managing a strategically curated online personal, professional, and corporate brand is critical to how our peers, those we already know and the others we have yet to meet, perceive us in the real world. Everything we share online, the comments we leave, the posts we publish, the pictures and videos we upload, the updates we tweet, the statuses we broadcast in social networks and lifestreams, contribute to disparate digital recreations of how people perceive…
Nike, Just Do It: When a Local Story Runs Away on the Web and Leads to Change
Nike, this may be one of those times when you follow your own slogan. Every year, I attend the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco to support my wife and my mother who run this incredible event with conviction, passion, and diligence. It’s a privilege, they believe, to participate in a special and dedicated event such as this that celebrates each other as well as the athletic achievement and capabilities of women, past and present. It’s quite the spectacle and…
