Category archives for

– Online Public Relations –

Don’t Bite the Brand That Feeds You

by Stephanie Schwab · March 26, 2013

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the parenting/lifestyle blogosphere this past weekend, related to a brand’s blogger outreach program. The brand in question is KFC, and (from what I understand, as I wasn’t there) they invited a number of bloggers to an in-person event, with their children, to learn about KFC’s new kids meals.

I’ll disclose up front that I don’t ever eat at KFC because I’m sensitive to MSG and they put it in much of their food. This fact generally puts me in the category of people who think that KFC is unhealthy: if it makes me sick, it must be unhealthy.

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Social Media Risks Are Real, Not Managing Them is Irresponsible

by Nichole Kelly · January 3, 2013

For many companies the barrier to adopting social media or expanding their digital marketing strategy is risk. These are not small risks; these companies have come face to face with a reality that many of us can’t even fathom. Social media could literally destroy their companies, it could lead to huge regulatory fines, compliance issues and a variety of other issues that can put a choke hold on how many marketers would consider approaching a social media strategy. But the reality is that all risks can be managed if we look them straight in the eye.

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18 comments

Social Media Explorer Wins GLI Inc.Credible Award!

by Kat French · September 13, 2012

From the beginning, our mission at Social Media Explorer has been to help businesses of all sizes use technology and innovation to grow and prosper.

The Louisville chamber of commerce, Greater Louisville, Inc., is also a tremendous resource and supporter for business growth in the local community. In a metro that is home to companies as large as Yum!, Humana, GE, Papa John’s and UPS, you might think small business would be easily overlooked by the area chamber. But you would be wrong.

Since 2000, Greater Louisville Inc. has highlighted the outstanding Louisville small business ecosystem with the Inc.credible Awards, which recognize top small businesses in a number of categories.

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A Guide To Influence Measurement Tools Worth Reading

by Jason Falls · July 9, 2012

The fine folks at The Realtime Report have put together a very nice guide to understanding social influence measurement tools that should be rather helpful if you’re interested in understanding and leveraging influencers in your marketing program. And the fine folks at Appinions are offering a limited supply of those reports for free. Honestly, I missed this report when it first came out, but have recently read it and am quite impressed.

Not only is it thorough and thoughtful, but even breaks the tools (like Klout, Kred, Traackr and so on) down into personal influence and contextual influence spheres. I consider myself fairly well-read on the topic and I learned a few things here.

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8 comments

Should PR Representatives Be Allowed To Edit Wikipedia?

by Jason Falls · July 5, 2012

The Chartered Instituted of Public Relations (CIPR) released its first edition of guidance for use of Wikipedia last week. See the full guide in PDF form here. The standards are a collaborative and still on-going effort that includes input from both public relations professionals and wikipedia editors (whom someone has decided to cutely call “Wikipedians”) and has been endorsed by similar organizations in Canada, Australia and the Public Relations Consultants Association, a British organization similar to the CIPR.

You can see and even participate in future collaboration on this project on their project Wiki.

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13 comments

New Blog Research Shows Stark Differences in U.S., Europe

by Jason Falls · June 18, 2012

As global brands migrate from social media marketing activation in the U.S. to foreign shores for audience engagement, social activation and even blogger outreach, it’s imperative to understand the cultural differences from country to country and continent to continent. Overblog, one of the top blogging platforms in Europe and now available in the U.S., recently conducted a survey of 5,000 U.S. and European bloggers that helps define some of those differences.

The survey, conducted in the month of May of this year in preparation for the initial results presentation at BlogWorld and New Media Expo on June 7, asked a variety of questions about blog monetization, brand involvement and influence. The results show a vast difference in American bloggers versus our European counterparts.

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7 comments

5 Ways to Measure Blogger Outreach ROI

by Stephanie Schwab · May 17, 2012

A friend of mine recently emailed me to say that she has a new client but they’re wary of doing a blogger outreach program, and do I have any metrics about outreach ROI, especially for driving sales?

I wrote back: You’re asking for the holy grail.

However, while linking ROI to blogger outreach is not simple, it’s also not impossible. Think about the decades (centuries?) of PR people who have gone before us. How did they determine ROI on media outreach when all they had was “impressions” (a very fuzzy number that was, and is: self-reported from print and broadcast media)?

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7 comments

The Decline of Blogs (and How PR Can Help Avoid It)

by Stephanie Schwab · March 9, 2012

I returned from the Blissdom blogger conference about 10 days ago and am off to Dad 2.0 Summit this week. There’s a lot of blogger love happening out there, and it’s wonderful to be in the middle of it, helping to connect brands and bloggers in creative and fruitful ways.

Lately, though, I’ve been coming home from parenting/lifestyle blogger conferences both inspired and dismayed. There are some really cool ways in which brands are engaging with these bloggers, and some of those efforts come through at blogger conferences. For example, at Blissdom, ConAgra launched their Child Hunger Ends Here campaign, encouraging bloggers to add the hashtag #childhunger to their tweets to donate one meal per tweet sent during the conference. The hashtag was flying and 20,000 meals were donated, with ConAgra matching to get to a total of 40,000 meals. Bloggers for a cause … I love it.

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50 comments

Want A Master’s Degree In Public Relations?

by Jason Falls · December 7, 2011

Big thanks and welcome to Full Sail University, a new sponsor here at SME. Their online master’s degree program for public relations professionals is just a click away. Hit their advertisement over there in the sidebar and sign up to get some free information about it.

Frankly, I was impressed by the course offerings for the degree. There’s a fair bit of new media and social media learning to be had there. If a master’s degree in PR is something you might be considering, it’s certainly worth a look-see.

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