The blog that refreshes: Coke joins the conversation I noted last November that Coke was planning to launch a corporate blog. Well, here it is!

Looks like they've done a nice job, too. Clean layout, lots of graphics, design is well-integrated with the Coke brand. The content is mainly historical. A few facts from the press release:

• Phil Mooney, Coca-Cola archivist and resident historian, will serve as the blog’s primary author and will solicit questions and respond to reader comments;
• Content will include: New products and other marketing announcements, as well as a look at how this news fits into the context of Coca-Cola heritage and lore; future content will also include features on newly uncovered artifacts and the global phenomenon of Coke collecting;
• Readers will have many opportunities to engage in conversation: Open Q&As, submitting stories for publication, posting comments, guest blog opportunities and more "Coca-Cola Conversations” will feature photography and video of rare artifacts from the Coke archives, as well as content provided by readers.

Labels: businessblog, coke

  ¶ 11:01 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 01/30/2008

Guinness World Records Launches New Online Community - PRNewswire

1. This is going to be one cool social network.

2. This is gotta be one embarrassed PR firm. The URLs in the press release are missing an "n" and leads to a squatter site. The correct link is here.

Labels: businessblog

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 01/29/2008

Facebook-based apps can now run on other sites - Computerworld, Jan. 28, 2008

Facebook's apps community is one of its strongest selling points and anything it does to extend that franchise to other networks works to its advantage. It's hard to say how much of a breakthrough this is, but it's clearly a blocking tactic aimed at Google.

Labels: facebook

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 01/27/2008

Conversation Agent: Forget Influentials: in Viral Marketing, Context Matters - Conversation Agent, Jan. 18, 2008

Valeria Maltoni analyzes recent work by Edelman to understand the dynamics of viral marketing. Conclusions: It's the Network, Stupid. In other words, influence has less to do with individuals than with the patterns by which information is spread. Figuring that out will get you farther than understanding who are the top bloggers. Interesting stuff.

Web Ink Now: The New Rules of Viral Marketing - free ebook!

David Meerman Scott has another winner with this short e-book about viral marketing. It's already been downloaded 20,000 times and once you read it, you'll know why. No obligation, no registration, just get it.

Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games - Wired, Dec. 20, 2007

Labels: influence, social_networks, viral_marketing

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 01/25/2008

Scrabulous and the New Social Operating System: How Facebook Gave Birth to an Industry - Knowledge@Wharton

Labels: facebook

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Why you should never give an unrehearsed demo to a journalist with a video

Scott Kirsner blogs about a disastrous live demo by an executive at Nuance Communications, one of the biggest players in speech recognition. The demo went so badly that the exec posted a follow-up on YouTube explaining what went wrong. A lot of reporters carry video cameras these days, so know what you're doing before you agree to let them switch those devices on!

Labels: PR video journalism

  ¶ 7:55 AM 0 Comments

  The press release evolves again Maggie Fox's Social Media Group, which is one of the most innovative boutique agencies specializing in new media marketing, has developed a new version of the Social Media Press Release (SMPR), which was pioneered by Shift Communications in 2006.

The SMPR differs substantially from the traditional press release, which is often long, detailed and inflexible. The new format emphasizes many points of entry, so that journalists and bloggers can pick and choose the information - and the media - that they wish to use. The latter point is important. With so many media outlets today using images, audio and video to tell a story, the traditional press release doesn't meet their needs very well. The SMPR makes room for story-telling through whatever media the publisher wishes to use. It requires more work on the client end, but should result in much better results.

Another innovation in this new version is its use of popular back-end services like YouTube and Flickr to host content. This means that people can find the information through search engines as well as via the press release.

Maggie has made the template available for anyone to use under a Creative Commons license. She has a more detailed explanation here. Or you can just download the template in PDF format.

Labels: shift communications, Social Media Group, social media press release

  ¶ 9:08 AM 1 Comments

  Daily reading 01/20/2008

ScrabbleWars: P For Piracy, Or E For Extra Exposure? - Media Post, Jan. 18, 2008

tags: facebook, social_media_useful

• Here's an example of a corporation fumbling a viral marketing opportunity. Instead of taking advantage of the positive publicity that a knockoff Scrabble app has generated on Facebook, the company is threatening to sue! What a perfect opportunity to tap into buzz created by somebody else! What a dumb move by Hasbo!
  
  Other interesting facts cited in the story:
  "As with music or video, free exposure can be invaluable in building
  fans. In 2006, shortly after CBS made clips of TV shows available on
  YouTube, the network said that ratings increased. “The Late
  Show with David Letterman” drew 200,000 new viewers, a 5% increase,
  after CBS placed clips of the show on YouTube, while “The Late Late
  Show with Craig Ferguson” increased its viewership by 100,000, or 7%."
  
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  A welcome measure of relief in endless metrics debate It has become almost cliché for media professionals to complain about the lack of measurement tools for new media campaigns. The Internet is the most measurable medium ever invented, yet marketers continue to squabble about which metrics are most meaningful.

So it was a pleasure to read Katie Paine’s newly released book, Measuring Public Relationships. Paine is one of the acknowledged gurus in this area, and her opinions command widespread respect. The reports and tools that her team produces on the Measures of Success website make it a must-bookmark for PR pros. In this compact (204 pages), readable book, Paine gives us her best stuff. After reading it, you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.

Paine boils down the issues to a few key factors. Outputs are the results of publicity efforts, such as clips and blog mentions. Outtakes are how people think as a result of experiencing outputs. Outcomes are how their behavior changes. All are measurable, she argues, so once you decide what tools you’ll use to measure them, the rest is just execution.

As Paine works through the various audiences that PR people must satisfy – journalists, bloggers, event audiences, local constituents and even internal employees – she uses repetition to drive home the point that measurement is all about sweating a few basics. Decide who’s important, figure out how you want to measure the results of your actions, set baselines and benchmarks and choose measurement tools. Although there’s good advice on the pros and cons of various online metrics, this book isn’t about page views vs. unique visitors. It’s about choosing the right metrics for your situation and then applying them in a disciplined manner.

Measuring Public Relationships brings welcome clarity to a debate that has become bogged down in complexity and minutiae. Read it and then pass it along to your boss.

Labels: katiepaine, measurement, PR

  ¶ 8:55 AM 1 Comments

  My Facebook foul-up Take a look at the image below. Is this the type of photo you’d want to put beside a serious business inquiry? I wouldn't. But I did.

It was an embarrassing experience, and perhaps my mistake can serve as a lesson for anyone who’s considering using social networks to transact business.

Last week was the first time I've used Facebook to direct a professional inquiry to a group of my friends. I was looking for some active Facebook users to profile in a book I’m writing, so it seemed a natural place to find them. I used a third-party application called FunWall, which is made by Slide. It looked straightforward enough: type the question, post it and then e-mail a notification to a list of your friends.

So I posted my question and send an invitation to everyone on my friends list, some 225 people. A couple of hours later, my wife sent me an instant message questioning the appropriateness of the image on my FunWall. "What image?" I said. I quickly logged on to Facebook and found my question next to the item below. There were already a couple of e-mails from friends questioning my good taste. I scrambled to delete the original message, which wasn’t all that intuitive, and to post an apology. I received a couple of more snickering responses from my associates, but have no idea how many people saw the offensive photo and thought I was serious.

As far as I can tell, the error occurred when I clicked the button to post my question, I inadvertently clicked the option just below it, which sent a postcard to accompany the question. For some unfathomable reason, the default postcard was the image below. I didn't bother to check the post after I submitted it, and would probably not have even known of my error for hours unless my wife had pointed it out.

So shame on me for not double-checking my work. And shame on Slide for making it so easy for even an experienced user to make such a dumb mistake. If there are lessons, it’s that you should beware of the new breed of third-party apps that Facebook and other sites are accepting. And use that preview feature! You don’t want your best intentions undermined by a stupid user interface.

I’ll just go crawl back in my hole now…

Labels: facebook, social_media

  ¶ 6:45 PM 2 Comments

  Daily reading 01/17/2008

Stop The Press Releases! - Mother Jones, Jan./Feb., 2008

tags: newspaper_death_watch, social_media_useful

• Mother Jones has another one of those opinion pieces by a journalist who is outraged - outraged, I tell you! - over the loose editing and poor fact-checking of citizen journalism. In this case, the villain is the Tallahassee Democrat, which published a popular blog by a local PR person whose topics sometimes touched upon issues that related to her clients. In one anecdote highlighted in the piece, the blogger supported a proposal to build a Wal-Mart near town while her firm was doing PR for Wal-Mart.
  
  Well, shame on the Tallahassee Democrat, and shame on the blogger, but please no shame on citizen journalism. The problem here is that the newspaper chose to feature prominently someone whose profession should have raised warning flags and then didn't fact-check her work. In a true citizen journalism environment, the blogger would be subject to community fact-checking, which would have quickly identified her conflicts of interest. She also wouldn't have enjoyed the unfair advantage of the newspaper bully pulpit. She'd have to earn respect and trust instead.
  
  In attempting to trash citizen journalism, this article actually does the opposite. It highlights the risks of the hybrid models now being tried by mainstream newspapers as they desperately seek a viable business model. Take the newspaper out of this story and, well, there's no story.
  
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  An interview with the geniuses at Eepybird As luck would have it, David Strom and I snagged an interview with the two guys at Eeepybird.com who make the fabulous Coke/Mentos viral videos. There's a 23-minute podcast over at TechPRWarStories where they talk about the secrets of their success and how they've bonded with the Coca-Cola company. Come listen!

Labels: coke, eepybird, mentos, video, viral_marketing

  ¶ 5:12 PM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 01/10/2008

Blogger Shel Holtz on Using Social Media as a Point of Customer Contact - Brandweek, Jan. 4, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

• Shel Holtz argues that customer and tech support people should report into public relations because those functions have become so critical to a company's public image. I agree. The #1 topic of blogger complaints is about customer support problems, yet businesses continue to outsource, scale back upon and marginalize this critical function. One bad customer experience can create a small tornado in the blogosphere and a pattern of bad experiences can undercut a company's public image and valuation. So we do we under-invest in this area?
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Please attend my upcoming Mass TLC presentation on The New Influencers I'll deliver a presentation about the dynamics of social media and online influence on Jan. 24 in Waltham, MA. If you're in the area, please consider coming and supporting the nonprofit Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, which is sponsoring the presentation. Mass TLC does good work promoting the growth of the technology industry in Massachusetts and throughout New England. If we've never met before, be sure to come up and say hello!

The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media
Thursday, January 24, 2008
8:00-10:00am Program
7:45am Registration

Where: Foley Hoag Emerging Enterprise Center
Bay Colony Corporate Center
1000 Winter Street, Suite 400
Waltham, MA 02451

The Mass Technology Leadership Council presents Paul Gillin, author of the book The New Influencers.

Blogging, podcasting and other social media are profoundly disrupting the mainstream media and marketing industries. Paul Gillin's The New Influencers explores these forces by identifying the influencers, their goals and their motivations. The book also offers advice for marketers at both large and small organizations on how to influence the influencers.

This presentation explores:

• Why social media are now so important in consumer decisions
• How to leverage the blogosphere to enhance your company's message
• Strategies for taking advantage of this new medium
• The need for transparency and how to make it work for your benefit
• Action items for both small and large businesses
• Whether and how your organization should use blogs, podcasts and other social media tools in your marketing strategy

Cost: Members $40.00; Non-members $80.00
Signup form: http://function.masstlc.org/programs_new/event_single.cfm?eventid=808

Labels: blogging, influence, Paul_Gillin_speaking, social_media

  ¶ 10:45 AM 0 Comments

  My Calendar Need to reach me to set up an appointment or just see when I'm available? I try to keep my Google calendar up to date. Browse below.

Labels: calendar

  ¶ 7:02 AM 0 Comments