Posts

Persuasive Picks for the week of 07/27/09

in /by

Three Instantly Effective Social Media Strategies
Alexandra Samuel, CEO of Social Signal, outlines three great options for building a robust social media presence, regardless of budget. Her article in BusinessWeek suggest companies use simple and quick innovations, building on existing tools and established best practices.

Facebook and MySpace: Beware Of The Mommy Bloggers
Mediapost’s Catharine. P Taylor reviews how mommy bloggers inadvertently, perhaps, uncovered a central truth about social media marketing: it isn’t at all about carefully targeted display ads, or search ads, but about relationship-building.

Who is responsible for your social media strategy? This article by Wayne Kurtzman on Media Bullseye debates whether or not you should hire an entry-level person to manage your “dances with the public” and reminds us that “They are speaking for your company on the world wide stage.” Other important caveats: “One: These are not small companies. Two: Nothing personal, but these companies do not understand social media. Three: as a good friend reminded me, this is all too new – there are no experts.”

As a remote workforce, we’re more than familiar with the importance of self-discipline and internal motivation as critical success factors. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at these and other crucial elements of success for future workers facing the disappearance of traditional office environments. Alexandra Levit asks, “What’s in Your Future?”

If you still aren’t convinced that social media is a strategy you should add to your marketing, customer service and sales mix, read “Managing an Online Reputation” from Kermit Pattison in The New York Times. “Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening.”


BusinessWeek says smart companies are using Twitter and Facebook—are you? We can help.

4 Comments/in , , /by

I am honored to be featured again in BusinessWeek as one of 50 CEOs Who Twitter, as a part of a larger story on social media. As I was just discussing the growth of interest in social media campaigns this morning with the PerkettPR crew, this is a timely article. We continue to receive incoming queries from companies in many industries that want to learn how to elevate brand awareness with social media campaigns. The opportunities are both allowing us to expand the industries in which we work, the brands that we work with and the work that we do. We’re going far beyond traditional public relations and as I mentioned last week, we believe that this is the natural evolution for the PR industry.

That being said, so many of the brands that we speak with have no idea where to begin. They still aren’t convinced or sure of the value of “social media” and they want to approach it with kid gloves. They are worried about time, resources, control and execution. And we understand why – we’ve been there! We’ve also helped a lot of companies come from that place and embrace the opportunities of becoming a “social company.” And we love doing it because as you can see, we’re heavily involved in social media ourselves. We believe in it, we appreciate and understand it, and we continually see value and results from it.

Social Media U

To share our enthusiasm, we’re pleased to announce a new program designed to help companies in any industry understand and embrace social media for business. Our “Social Media U” offering was born out of the interest and feedback we’ve received for speaking on social media for business and social media for communicators. Sharing our best practices, experience and insights, Social Media U will help any executive make sense of the noise and clarify just what types of social strategies can work for your business. While articles like BusinessWeek’s are helpful, many executives need more than a DIY guide. And as the CEO of Forrester Research, George Colony, recently wrote, “You can’t understand Twitter, Facebook, or blogging by reading an article in a magazine or a report from your CMO. Sure, they can tell you what they are, but you won’t be able to truly understand how they could change your business unless you actually use them.”

That’s where we can help.

Quick facts about PerkettPR’s Social Media U:

  • Social Media U is an affordable, intensive half or full day workshop
  • While we prefer to meet face-to-face, we can (and have successfully done so) execute the workshop via web conference
  • We offer three levels of engagement to choose from – based on your knowledge level and needs
  • We’ll teach you what social media is and how to engage and embrace it for your business
  • Appropriate for any business that wants to understand social media, the potential value to their business, how to get started and how to maintain effective social strategies

What you’ll learn:

  • From the C-Suite to the front desk – why social media strategies involve everyone at your company
  • Why Facebook isn’t just for keeping up with friends and family, LinkedIn is so much more than a rolodex and how Twitter benefits your brand
  • How to effectively  monitor and respond in social media communities such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo! Answers and more
  • Which blogs matter to you and how to participate in the blogosphere even if you don’t have your own
  • How to easily create content for your blog, website and customer communications
  • Effective and realistic strategies for engaging customers, prospects and partners: from blog posts to video, Twitter to microsites
  • How to trust the community and build positive relationships for your company

Why we’re qualified

  • We’ve been integrating social media into PR campaigns for years now and have been recognized as one of a handful of PR firms leading the charge (many call it PR 2.0)
  • As senior PR professionals, we understand communications and the larger picture of how it must all come back to your company’s business goals – read here about why we think this matters
  • We’re heavily involved in social media for our own business
  • We’ve trained clients in many industries and of many sizes – from SMBs to public companies; fashion to technology – on effective social media strategies
  • We’ve presented strategies at numerous conferences for thousands of executives

For more information please email SMU[at]perkettpr.com – or call me personally: 781.834.5852.

Persuasive Picks for the week of 02/16/09

in /by

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 Myths – B.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 six “Top 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.

The Corporate Twitter Discussion Continues at BusinessWeek

in , , /by

On April 3 I wrote a post asking the community for opinions on corporations establishing a Twitter presence. We have been pleasantly surprised at the continued reactions and comments to this post and we have learned about some really cool trials taking place within the community. A good deal of folks – including some from Zappos, Stanford University and Mzinga (client) – have all chimed in with opinions and examples.

The conversation continues today at BusinessWeek as Heather Green wrote a post asking for examples of creative business use on Twitter – for a pending cover story. If you know of some examples, please pass them along to Heather by posting a comment on their blog. We are very interested in reading the article when it comes out, as well as continuing to learn – along with the community – about the best way corporations can successfully get involved in the social media landscape.

This is a fun journey!

PerkettPR TechCrunch Party Report; July 27, 2007 at August Capital

1 Comment/in , , , /by

Tcaugustlogo_3

It was a wild and wonderful time at the TechCrunch Party 9 on Friday. Thanks to the gorgeous hot weather in the early hours of the party, the PerkettPR–sponsored margarita booth had a continual flow of Silicon Valley’s “hottest” lining up to get some relief with our frosty beverages. Here’s a recap of our collective experience at the event:

Partypeople_6TechCrunch parties certainly haven’t lost any steam since last year. We pinched hit in the registration area for a good portion of the event, so we were able to really get an understanding for just how many people marched through the door (we’re guessing it was over 800). We caught up with one of the most famous invited guests, Sarah Meyers, before the party, (who was kicked out at last year’s event for sneaking in un–invited and filming the event). She filled us in on how although she had been kicked out last year, she was personally invited to the party by Mike Arrington this year to capture a new and improved video blog from the event. Check out her very entertaining blog post with the famous video from last year, and her much improved (though definitely not as funny), video interviews from this year’s event.

The annual TechCrunch Silicon Valley gathering is a great opportunity for our clients to get some exposure with all the right VCs and influencers in the valley, and also a great place for the PPR team to meet and talk with the many reporters and bloggers we usually only communicate with over email or on rushed phone conversations. WiredlanehartwellEric Auchard of Reuters was nice enough to take the time to speak to several PPR team members. He gave us the lowdown on what he thinks is hot right now in the tech world, but we won’t tell you, because you will all inundate him with even more pitches J. It was great to chat with Nick Gonzalez, Duncan Riley and Andrew Philips of TechCrunch. We had never met Duncan in person before, so he gave us a little history of himself and told us a little more about what it’s like to write for one of the world’s hottest tech blogs. (Don’t worry Duncan, we won’t share your secrets.) Dan Farber of ZDNet was on hand with his camera, taking some great shots of the party, and Dean Takahashi seemed to be bombarded with pitches from start-ups looking for local ink. The Scobleizer, Robert Scoble, was there with his son and posting TwitterGrams live from the party.

Several current and former clients of ours enjoyed mingling among the massive turnout out of SV types, and we were happy to spend some quality time catching up with colleagues past and present. It was great to see Pradeep Javangula, CTO of Tumri, taking in the chaos of the party and talking up Tumri’s most recent news coverage from BusinessWeek while Reena Jadhav of Conduit, was working the crowd with her tireless enthusiasm, educating the masses on the power of Conduit’s community toolbars. We also spent some time catching up with Jim Mansfield, Bipin Parmar and Ram Ramkumar from our favorite ringtone creation destination, Phonezoo. Phonezoo has been making waves recently with 1.2 million users and they continue to prove that creating and sharing personalized ringtones is always going to be hot! We also met up with former colleague, Ben Heskett, and caught up on his latest endeavor at Kiptronic. Benheskettcmajor
Parker Trewin of Genius was there too. In between pitches, Parker had a great time sneaking up on partygoers and labeling them with Genius stickers. We’re happy to see their efforts at the event led to a nice mention in Dean Takahashi’s blog post.

We met several entrepreneurs and executives including folks from the usual suspects, like Google and Ask.com as well as many startups looking for PR advice. We’re hoping to get a chance to work with them when they’re ready and so we won’t name them all here for obvious reasons. However, folks like Matt Maroon of BlueFrog Gaming was one of the more colorful characters to approach us – a former poker champion turned Internet entrepreneur. How cool is that? Fantasy Sports 2.0 was one of many companies in attendance looking to capitalize on the popularity of social networking – this time for fantasy sports fans. And at the end of the evening we had fun with Alex Tew, creator of the Million Dollar Homepage. He was a good sport about our ribbing on his “members only” jacket and while young, was quite humble and a great sport.

We absolutely have to shout out to the TC interns Mark and Andrew. They were great guys and clearly have good heads on their shoulders – check out their posts on the site covering everything from the iPhone to social networking. In addition, the gracious Mark Hendrickson took us to the local grocery store to get emergency water for the margarita machines when we arrived. And he helped us haul 30 or so gallons of it up to our booth. Thank you so much!

Chrismikeheather_3 Last, but not least, Mike Arrington. He was in great form, chatting with anyone and everyone that wanted his ear, posing for photographs and, in general, taking his growing Internet celebrity status in stride. He’s got to be a little overwhelmed (and perhaps slightly annoyed) with the sheer volume of attention he received, but he didn’t let it show. Maybe it’s due in part to the fact that he now has TechCrunch CEO, Heather Harde, working the business side of things. Heather not only helped set everything in motion before the party, but took the helm and addressed the masses at the end of the event. We look forward to hearing more from her in the future.

See Mike’s TechCrunch event recap post for more details and be sure to check out his pictures on Flickr. There are also several other good event summaries on WIRED’s Epicenter blog, and Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang.

Thanks to Mike, Heather and Jeanne Logozzo for your help so we could participate in this year’s event, and thanks to everyone that stopped by the PerkettPR margarita booth We hope to meet many more of you again soon and work together to build even greater “buzz” for your tech endeavors.

— Posted by Heather