Engaging with and empowering your customers as an extension of your marketing efforts isn’t new. However, in the era of Social Media, there are new tools and philosophies to more effectively listen and engage with customers and in turn, cultivate a more significant community, enhance your brand, build relationships, and hopefully create evangelists along the way. Participation is marketing. Intention is everything. Actions speak louder than words. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about spam or doing what marketing seems…
Gary Vaynerchuk Puts the Social in Social Media
Shot at SXSW08 If there’s one person who personifies the words, “Internet Rock Star” or “Internet Famous,” there’s no need to look any further than Gary Vaynerchuk, host of WineLibraryTV. Gary is the epitome of the old adage, “If I can do it, anyone can do it.” Vaynerchuck’s passion, dedication, and perseverance has given way to success that has yet to reveal it’s full potential. He’s moving on up… The Web is fertile ground for those who can transcend its…
Get Rich Quick with Social Media Marketing
I guess Social Media has arrived and I should say that I’m not surprised by some of the things I see these days. It was bound to happen. Really good friend, and someone I admire, Erica O’Grady, pointed me to a very interesting conference coming up that has temporarily deflated my hopes for elevating and empowering marketing communications passionate marketers along with it. The conference is not in any way, attempting to mask its intentions… How To Use Blogs, Podcasts,…
PR for Startups Now Available as a Free ebook
I recently spoke at an SVASE StartUp University event in San Francisco to discuss PR and how startups can effectively leverage the right strategies, tools and tactics in order to gain visibility at every stage of their growth – without breaking the bank. Early stage and bootstrapped startups must embrace DIY (Do it Yourself) or outsourced PR as their product reaches advanced alpha in order to build strategic visibility without losing precious time. It all starts with answering a several…
New ebook: The Art and Science of Blogger Relations
Happy New Year everyone! The discussion around blogger relations is more relevant now than ever. And quite honestly, with every debate, exploration, and analysis, these conversations only fuel the advancement and improvement of Public Relations overall. It makes us think. Lest we forget, there is a significant percentage of bloggers, reporters, and analysts who think we’re useless – we’re merely spin artists who focus on pitching, blasting, and cranking out poorly written press releases. We contact people without caring or…
PR Advice for Startups
In celebration of Alex Iskold’s brilliant toolbox for startups on Read/Write Web today, I’ve decided to join the conversation to help startups make PR work for them now and in the long term. PR is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in the marketing department and many startup entrepreneurs and even veteran executives are quick to under estimate and under value it, or on the contrary, expect PR to solve all of their marketing needs all with just one email…
ebook: The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
After running the popular series that evaluated and discussed ThinkFree’s experiment in Social Media, I decided to compile all of the posts into one free and downloadable ebook for your reference. Download as a Word doc Download as a PDF The Series on PR 2.0: The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part I Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media Part II Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media…
Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media – Part III
Source Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls “The Great Social Experiment,” where he tested the art of online social networking to evaluate whether or not joining conversations across popular online communities would benefit his company. Crow created a roundtable featuring Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and advice to help ThinkFree and other companies learn from his experiment. Before you read below, make sure to first read, “The…
Experiments and Lessons Learned in Social Media – Part II
Source Jonathan Crow of ThinkFree recently conducted what he calls “The Great Social Experiment,” where he tested the art of online social networking to evaluate whether or not joining the conversation across popular online communities would benefit his company. Crow created a roundtable featuring Chris Brogan, Aaron Brazell, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, and me to offer feedback, constructive criticism, and advice to help ThinkFree and other companies learn from his experiment. Before you read below, make sure to first read,…
Don’t Throw Out that Social Media Rulebook Quite Yet
…use some of it as a reference guide instead. I have to hand it to Chip Griffin. His recent post, “Throwing Out the Social Media Rulebook” is thought provoking to say the least. In his post, Griffin assertively proclaims, “I’m here to tell you that most of the rules are bunk, and we as an industry to ourselves a disservice by frightening off potential participants with absurd proclamations of the way things must be.” I like it. I agree with…
