Persuasive Picks for the week of 04/26/09

Swine Flu
Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform
The power of Twitter can be both good and bad. Foreign Policy examines the current Swine flu epidemic and how Twitter is rapidly fueling the delivery of incorrect information by lack of context.

FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster
Alison Driscoll explains (on Mashable)how to utilize Facebook’s privacy features to help organize what you share between personal and professional Facebook use.

What is Your Wikipedia PR Strategy?
At close to 60,000 page requests a second, Wikipedia is a highly utilized source of information. Mark Rose from PRBlogNews.com shares reasons why agencies should consider establishing a strategy for dealing with clients and Wikipedia.

Here Comes Twitter Spam And How To Fight It
Have you noticed the influx of spam on Twitter lately? We certainly have. Techcrunch reports that several Twitter client developers have some ideas on how to fight back.

How do You Build Value with Micro Updates for a Time-Starved, Information-Intensive World?
Valeria Maltoni taps into how the usefulness, credibility, and quality of content can help build community. She analyzes cause examples such as the Twitter stream by CDC – which went from a 1,000 to 46,000+ followers  in a matter of hours – and Tyson Foods‘ Hunger Relief.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 04/12/09

Magpie logoHow to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who’s Buying
The water in the Twitter stream will only get dirtier as it continues to take precedence in the mainstream media spotlight. Spam-based money making marketing schemes are a part of that filth, and Marshall Kirkpatrick chronicles one such abuse that has ties to the likes of Apple, Skype, and Flip.

5 Ways TurboTax Is Reinventing Tax Day With Social Media
Rohit Bhargava of the Influential Marketing blog shares 5 ways that Intuit is leveraging social media to help reduce stress for TurboTax Free Efile users during tax time.

“Social Media” is hype. “social media” is real.
While tons of companies are still struggling with how Social Media fits into their marketing strategy, Damien Basile of the Cause=Habit blog helps readers cut through the hype of it all and see it’s not really as complicated as it seems.

Bloggers Be Warned: FTC May Monitor What You Say
The decline of print media and the rise of “citizen journalism” via blogs is raising a red flag with the FTC. Michael Bush from AdAge.com shares new information on some new potential guidelines that will apply to bloggers and online writers who are compensated to promote or review products.

A Video of Google’s Data Center
Here’s a rare look look inside of Google’s new container-based data center. I had to throw this in just for the “cool geekiness cred.” 🙂 Get your geek on!

Persuasive Picks for the week of 03/29/09

LegoEngage different consumers in different ways – why segmentation is key
The FreshNetworks blog recaps Conny Kalcher’s presentation from the Marketing 2.0 conference on how LEGO segments consumer persona types to maximize their social media efforts.

Top 10 Reasons Your Company Should Not Tweet
Even though Twitter has received a lot of buzz in the mainstream media lately, it’s definitely not the right social media tool for everyone. BL Ochman shares 10 reasons why it might not be a right fit for you (or your company).

B2B Warning: One Persuasive Video May Not Be Enough
Brendan Regan of FutureNow’s GrokDotCom blog provides some food for thought to B2B marketers in the area of selecting the right type of video content to create for your websites.

5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence
Steve Coulson from The Advance Guard guest posts on Mashable and shares 5 tips on how companies can get better at building their brand’s presence with the recently updated pages functionality on Facebook.

How To Monitor Online Conversations
Dawn Foster guest writes on WebWorkerDaily and shares some helpful tips and techniques for monitoring online conversations (about your brand) on the cheap.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 02/22/09

forrester_graph.jpgB2B Buyers Dig Social Media
Jordan McCollum highlights the key takeaways from Forrester’s recent report on how B2B buyers interact with social media. Forrester clients can access the full report here.

Turning your feed reader into a powerful monitoring dashboard
I’m a big fan of using Google Reader to aid in some of my social media/brand monitoring efforts. Mack Collier from the Viral Garden blog shares some tips and techniques on how he uses it in conjunction with Bloglines.

5 Ways To Find & Acquire Customers On Twitter
These days, the economy forces businesses to get creative when trying to finding new clients. Brian Norgard writes this guest post on the ShoeMoney blog to share five ways you can use Twitter for finding new business.

Twitterville Notebook: Jeremiah Owyang
Shel Israel continues his Twitterville series of posts by interviewing Jeremiah Owyang on the topic of personal brand.

Do You Have the ‘Four As’ To Be a Thought Leader?
Dana Vanden Heuvel writes this guest post on Marketing Prof’s Daily Fix to share the four “A’s” you might need to be a thought leader in your industry.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 02/16/09

Jeff Glasson is on vacation this week so I’m throwing up what caught my eye for this week’s Picks.

Debunking Six Social Media MythsB.L. Ochman of BusinessWeek claims that resistance to social media is futile, and that “If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.” This post covers many myths that surround social media that everyone should be aware of “before taking the plunge.”

Cece Salomon-Lee, author of the PR Meets Marketing blog, took it upon herself to dissect the social media prowess of O’Dwyer’s list of top 100 independent PR firms (of which PerkettPR is not a part only because we do not share revenues). Her findings caused quite a stir – 59 comments and counting as of this post. Seems to me that agencies are using some old reasons such as “our clients don’t need social media” and “it’s the cobbler’s shoes syndrome,” as defense against not being involved in social media. As I mentioned in my own comment to the post, they’re missing opportunities in this vein for their own relationship building, whether or not they’re executing campaigns for clients.

On the other hand, Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet took on a bit more comprehensive research, which she unveiled in a survey report “Is ‘Social PR’ for Real; Which Agencies Get It?” – also focused on PR and social media. Her takeaways were invaluable for both agencies and clients – and she kindly reminded us all that client results matter first – whether in traditional PR, social media marketing or both. We’re proud to be included among the firms recognized for having both – and as one of only sixTop Considered”consistently named as a viable consideration for clients considering an agency switch. (To which we say, give us a call!)

Our client Lotame continued the social media and PR conversation on their Social Media Remix radio show yesterday – hosting yours truly and PerkettPR’s EVP Heather Mosley. You can listen here to the recording.

And one of my favorite social media campaigns of the week combined two of my personal passions: technology and fashion. It was Fashion Week in New York and I had the privilege of being involved this year as a Board Advisor to Style Coalition, a new organization focused on advancing professional standards in content creation and increasing the effectiveness of advertising messages within this realm. We held a Digital Moda event on Tuesday night to bring together designers, bloggers and new media marketers – an innovative alternative to the traditional runway shows typically seen at NYFW. So I was thrilled to see a well-recognized fashion brand, BabyPhat, also embracing new media that evening. They Twittered from their runway show, including timely posts of photos, commentary and video – giving consumer fans all over the Internet a feel for being right there in the middle of the action.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 02/08/09

Open Source FundingThe Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan – Open Source Funding
This first pick strays a bit from the social media, PR and marketing space that I typically draw from, but its certainly relevant in these tough economic times. Mark Cuban shares his idea for “Open Source Funding” and invites businesses to present their plans directly on his blog! Startups that have been finding it hard to attract VC funding might benefit from this alternative route. Just be sure that your business meets the rules stated in the post!

Making Social Media Work (for your business to business marketing)
David Libby from the Inspiring Dialogue blog shares 5 tips to help B2B companies start getting their social media efforts working better for them.

Leading by Example
Scott Monty (head of Social Media at Ford) shares two stories that show how some simple gestures from CEO Alan Mulally have gone a long way to help build long-lasting relationships with a few customers.

Video – Participation Marketing, Social Media and Teams
Sports Marketer, Jason Peck shares the basics of Alan Rosenpan’s take on “Participation Marketing” and why it matters to pro sports teams and other businesses alike.

Feedly Mini Updated: Now with More Twitter and FriendFeed Interaction
If you’ve taken the plunge into social networking and are an active user of Twitter, FriendFeed and Google Reader, then you might be interested in taking a look at Feedly. Its a nifty little plugin for Firefox that not only allows you to more easily share blog posts back out more easily, but also allows you to see how many other people have shared it in Google Reader or Digg. It even tellls you how many people have had conversations about the post on FriendFeed – neat! This post from Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb gives a great overview.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 02/01/09

MC Hammer TransitionHow MC Hammer went from caricature to human being – the social media story
Jim Tobin from IgniteSocial.com shares a few simple lessons for corporate marketers citing how MC Hammer has leveraged social media to help build his business and reputation with social media marketing.

ROI (Results on Insights) of Online Communities
Beth Kanter consistently offers up excellent information on her social media blog for non-profits. This post includes several perspectives and great links to additional supporting posts around the topic of ROI and Online Communities.

8 Questions to Ask Your “Social Media Expert”
Using a product or service doesn’t instantly make you an expert. How do you differentiate between the knowledgeable folks and the snake-oil salesmen in the social media space? Dave Fleet offers up 8 questions to ask any “Social Media Experts” you might be considering doing business with. Be sure to browse the comments for additional advice and opinions.

The Importance of a Social Media Support System
Are you the sole evangelist for deploying a social media strategy in your organization? Have you given much thought to how much support you’ll get from the rest of the organization? This post from marketer Jacob Morgan provides some food for thought in that area.

B2B Social Media Marketing: Why should you start?
Kate Brodock from the Other Side Group highlights last week’s post B2B social media marketing post from MarketingProfs and expand on it in the areas of brand outreach and thought leadership.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 01/25/09

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Community Managers Must Deliver ROI: Commandments For Surviving a Recession
Jeremiah Owyang provides sound advice to Community Managers on how to step up their game, provide continuing value and (most importantly) help keep their jobs in these tough economic times.

Are we really ready to move beyond Social Media 101?
Many of us in the PR and Marketing space have been teaching the basics of Social Media for quote some time now. Some might think its time to elevate those teachings to the next level. However, LiveWorld’s social media evangelist Bryan Person shares some incite in this MediaBullseye.com guest post on why that’s not the case and advises those who teach to “keep beating the drum.”

How Lisa Genova used social media to turn a self-published book into a NY Times bestseller
Best selling author David Meerman Scott shares an abbreviated version of fellow writer Lisa Genova’s success in using social media to propel the promotion of her book “Still Alice” all the way to the top of the charts. Her complete success story and many others can be found in David’s latest book entitled “World Wide Rave.”

Podcasters report their top 3 podcasting tips (Part 1 & Part 2)
Marketing consultant Devon Dudgeon shares TONS of podcasting tips in this two part post. The tips were submitted by seasoned podcast veterans around the globe and are aimed at those who have been thinking about getting there own podcast off the ground.

Why blogs matter
“Q: Who reads blogs? A: Journalists”; Shannon Paul delivers another thought provoking post that shows why blogs might just be the ultimate tool in your social media arsenal.

Image Credit (sans modifications): Jade Gordon

Persuasive Picks for the week of 01/18/09

Our Persuasive Picks series returns this week with five social media, marketing and PR-related posts that caught my eye this week.

Online Reputation Management Done Right: What CEOs Can Learn From Hulu’s Jason Kilar
Marjorie Kase from Markyr Media chronicles how Hulu CEO Jason Kilar made the right moves in responding to the online backlash of an abrupt and unannounced change in Hulu programming.

How Not to be a Key Online Influencer
There is certainly no shortage of posts on the web about all the “right” ways to use Twitter as a communications tool. David Henderson shares an eye-opening story of one bad judgment “Tweet” and the importance of thinking before you type in the social media space.

A Crash Course in Comments
Chris Brogan shares 15 tips on improving blog comment interaction with your reading community.

Community building: Getting members active and addicted
Martin Reed from the CommunitySpark blog presents the 10th entry in his series of posts on developing a new online community from scratch. Be sure to go back and check out the previous posts in the series for more excellent advice.

Tech PR in Troubled Times
This pick actually came out last week, but definitely falls into the “must mention” category. Robert Scoble interviews Joshua Reynolds of Hill and Knowlton’s global technology practice and gets his take on the Tech PR landscape in the middle of the current economy.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 09/01/08

Podcastin TrendsPodcasting dead or alive? TrendsSpotting marketing indicators
Taly Weiss from Trendspotting.com dives head first into a well researched post about podcasting trends and whether podcasts still provide value as a new media tool.

A List of Social Media Marketing Examples
Peter Kim launched an extremely valuable list of brands that are currently using social media. He invites readers to contribute to this ongoing list via the comments section where he’ll integrate submissions into the main post on a periodic basis.

Making the case for social media in PR
Shannon Paul knocks another one out of the park with this great post on stepping back from the hype of social media tools and getting back to basic communication.

Social Punishment: The “Bozo” Feature
Every once in a while Community Managers need to deal with “troublemakers” within their online communities. Jeremiah Owyang approaches the subject by suggesting the “Bozo” feature as potential solution. Be sure to dive into the comments section for a good discussion on the topic.

A fresh take on the browser
One of the most blogged about topics this week was the release of Chrome, Google’s new web browser. This post on the Google blog started the avalanche. Continue the reading from these Techmeme links.