From the monthly archives:

July 2008

Social Media In Two Words Or Less

by Jason Falls · July 31, 2008

Yesterday afternoon I posted an entry on Twitter asking the crowd to define social media in two words or less. The responses were fascinating. Several people responded optimistically with words like “community” and “humans connecting.” But more than a few folks were surprisingly — at least to me — pessimistic in their viewpoints, hinting that social media participants are collectively egotistical, superficial or that it’s just a false world overrun with marketers.

I’ve pasted some of the responses below so you can see the assortment. I respect each of these folks a lot. You should follow them on Twitter if you don’t already. Please note that I’ve rearranged a couple of the tweets to show clarification and more than one response for flow and uniformity of thought.

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48 comments

How To Use Search Marketing To Lift Your Brand

by Ryan DeShazer · July 30, 2008

NOTE: Today’s post is a guest entry from Ryan DeShazer of HSR Business to Business, a leading B2B firm with offices in Cincinnati, Denver and Chicago. DeShazer is one of the leading B2B search marketers in the U.S. Ryan is set to launch Digimarketer.net to blog his considerable expertise soon. In the meantime, we’re happy to have it for you.

Google Reaction B2B Executive Summit

Tomorrow I have the privilege of speaking on a panel at Google’s annual B2B Executive Summit, Reaction, entitled “Brand Lift of Search Marketing.” Ahead of that live discussion, here are my thoughts on the subject. These are best-practice recommendations to keep in mind when attempting brand-oriented campaigns or quantifying the brand impact of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) programs.

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14 comments

Burn the Ships! Should Social Media Specialists Jettison Their Backgrounds?

by Kat French · July 28, 2008

This post actually started out in my head as a comment on Jason’s great post last week entitled Social Media Is The Responsibility of Public Relations. The post sparked some great discussion in the comments, with a lot of opinions on both sides. I think Jason’s main point was to cattle-prod his PR brethren into taking responsibility for all communications strategy, instead of leaving social media as the elephant in the room that they pretend isn’t there. Which is sadly the case, too much of the time.

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23 comments

Good Communications, Like Good Bourbon, Takes Time

by Jason Falls · July 25, 2008

The dichotomy between the making of bourbon and the marketing of bourbon is amusing to me. Working with some of the most recognizable brand names in the spirits category isn’t unlike working with any other top-tier company, product or service. Marketers, public relations counsel and even social media strategists have to be nimble.

[flickr style="float: left"]photo:2700727956[/flickr]“When can we get that done?” said in a tone that suggests tomorrow morning is too late is a popular question fielded by those in the advertising, marketing, public relations and social media industries.

This isn’t a bitch session about my clients. They’ll know this is all true. Bear with me.

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16 comments

Involver Wants to Make Video Widget Advertising Easy.

by Kat French · July 23, 2008

I won’t lie.  There are many sweet aspects to the gig here with Jason.  (Not the least of which is getting to hang out with cool folks like Jake McKee.)

Being a geek, one of the more fun aspects for me is getting to test drive and evaluate new social media tools. I’ve gotten the opportunity to do that lately with two very different new applications: SMC2 by Techrigy, a social media monitoring tool, and Involver, a tool for creating and deploying interactive video widgets across Facebook and other social media sites.

Let’s start with Involver. I’ll be covering SMC2 next week.

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6 comments

Bridging The Gap Between PR And Media

by Jason Falls · July 22, 2008

VocusJoin me tomorrow afternoon as I moderate the latest in the Vocus Webinar Series with a one-hour session entitled, “The More Things Change; Bridging The Gap Between PR And Media.” The webinar begins at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT and is free to all comers. I’ll moderate a discussion with two outstanding new media journalists — Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal and Colin Delany of Epolitics.com.

To register, visit http://tinyurl.com/6mj865.

Some of the topics we’ll cover include:

  • What has changed in the media landscape?
  • What makes good public relations professionals stand out?
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0 comments

Social Media Group Acquires Livingston Communications

by Jason Falls · July 21, 2008

While breaking news isn’t the central focus of Social Media Explorer, we caught wind of this story a bit before the rest of the world.

[flickr style="float: left"]photo:2676215559[/flickr]Maggie Fox’s Social Media Group has agreed in principle to acquire Geoff Livingston’s Livingston Communications and The Buzz Bin, one of the top social media and public relations blogs in the U.S. The purchase will make SMG the world’s largest independent social media marketing and communications firm and will be completed in August. SMG will now have offices in Toronto, Calgary and Washington, D.C. Livingston will become Executive Vice President, Americas and continue to head the Washington office.

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13 comments

Social Media Is The Responsibility Of Public Relations

by Jason Falls · July 18, 2008

A question I’m asked with increasing frequency at various meetings, conferences and gatherings is, “Where exactly should social media fall in the organizational structure?” It’s not an easy question to answer as different organizations have different strengths, weaknesses and established silos of discipline. The answer becomes even harder when my own honest answer is somewhat contradicted by my own agency’s architecture, with social media standing as it’s own department and almost stand-alone component of the marketing mix.

[flickr style="float: right"]photo:2466860959[/flickr]My honest answer is that social media should be the responsibility of public relations. Or at least that is how I see social media’s evolution.

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109 comments

Make Signal From Noise With AideRSS

by Jason Falls · July 16, 2008

AideRSS gets some kudos today. Not just for providing a service that helps bloggers determine which of their posts are the most engaging. Not just for building out a Google Reader plugin (plus integration with Newsgator and others) that lets you weed out the less relevant or active posts and cut down the noise to get a better signal from your feed reading experience. And not just for having easy to understand how-to videos on their website to show folks how to use their service. Sure, I’m going to talk about all of those, but I’ll also compliment them on devising a compelling reason for some of the top social media and marketing bloggers to write about their service. More on that in a moment.

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4 comments

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