What a surprising and incredible way to end an unbelievably tumultuous week. Good friend and co-author Geoff Livingston and I were informed that our book, Now is Gone, was awarded Silver in Axiom’s 2008 Business Book Awards. We tied Linda VandeVrede’s book, Press Releases Are Not a PR Strategy, in the Advertising/Marketing/PR/Event Planning category. More than 400 books were judged for the awards, and a little more than a 100 won medals. The official awards ceremony is in New York…
Discussing the Social Media Release
I recently had the opportunity to discuss the Social Media Release with Shel Holtz for IABC‘s official podcast, Cafe2Go. As Shel asks, “Why are we talking about the Social Media Release on Cafe2Go?” The short answer is that the IABC is assuming a role in the development of SMR standards. An official announcement is slated for mid-week next week that will go into more detail. I also was invited by Valerie Combs and Sandra Ponce De Leon of BuzzLogic to…
Lifestreams and Activity Feeds Channel Your Online Brand
Friendfeed officially launched this week making it the latest entrant into the foray of applications dedicated to channeling lifestreams and activity feeds. It also happens to be the newest ambassador for the emerging microblog and micromedia categories. FriendFeed offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends,” said Bret Taylor, FriendFeed co-founder. It’s a great way to sift through the overwhelming amount of information available on the Web. FriendFeed has the information that you care about, because it’s…
Should PR Agencies Blog?
Sam Lawrence lit a fire under those in Social Media and PR today by sharing a story about whether or not his PR agency of record should blog about working with Jive Software. Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan, Strumpette, and many others discussed it on Twitter (my favorite place for listening to and joining amazing and insightful conversations.) Sam’s headline says it all, “I want our new PR Agency to blog about us but they don’t want to.” He’s certainly no…
Social Media is Not The Final Frontier of Marketing
Pierre Far has a thoughtful post asking whether or not Social Media is the final frontier of marketing. He concludes that if you could answer the question, then you might be the next Seth Godin. Well, not even Google can help me turn up the consensus on the subject. However, the Holy Grail of marketing is an active discussion. To be fair, Pierre’s path to staging the original question and exploring potential answers is interesting and insightful. The history of…
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,…
Wire Services Bypass Bloggers and Journalists
Whether you like it or not, the headline is true… Looks like I wasn’t the only one to receive an interesting email from BusinessWire, ReadWriteWeb already ran a story about it. BusinessWire is a press release wire service that, among other things, is one of the largest players in the industry for distributing news and content between PR and journalists, analysts, bloggers, investors, and other wire subscribers. Basically, BusinessWire is proactively claiming that companies and marketers can use the distribution…
Social Media Releases In Action
I recently ran “The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases,” which has received some great feedback. Thank you everyone! Even though it’s a blog post, it doesn’t mean that its shelf life is merely limited to the brief period of time in between new posts. I’d like it to live on and evolve over time as we learn more about SMRs. And, you’re a big part of that evolution. I was planning on letting that post sit up there for…
The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases
The Social Media Release is back in the spotlight once again and its sparking conversations, inspiring experiments, and raising confusion along the way. This time, intent and distribution take center stage. Good friends Todd Defren and Christopher Lynn took the time to research how wire services are positioning their products for Social Media. Todd posted the results here. Great work guys! Basically, when you call your local representative, you’re presented with the following capabilities. Now, whether these stats are accurate,…
Alltop Aggregates Influential Voices Across the Web
I was alerted earlier by good friend Todd Defren, that I have been included in the Alltop index of top sites on the Web. Wow, thank you! I don’t know what to say. It’s a pretty incredible group of voices and I’m more than flattered to be included. So, allow me to officially introduce Guy Kawasaki‘s latest startup, Alltop. Guy at last year’s Gnomedex Like POPURLs, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites on the Web. They’ve grouped…