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Persuasive Picks for the Week of 03/24/08

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There were a lot of juicy bits to choose from this week. Here are a few that made our Persuasive Picks:

A Successful MySpace Social Media Campaign
While not all businesses will find MySpace to be suitable platform for their Social Media campaigns, those who might will find inspiration in this post on the Social Media Optimization blog. It details the success that Disney had during its recent campaign to promote its “Step Up” movie franchise.

15 Reasons Why Blogging Matters More Than Ever
If Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast aren’t on the top of your reading and listening lists each week, then you should take some time to work them to the top of your list. This week he touches upon why blogging still matters. While its a topic that has been beaten to death on hundreds of blogs already, Mitch’s points are all very relevant and are presented in a thoughtful way that keep the material fresh.

The Ready, Fire, Aim, Reload Strategy for Social Media Success
Brian Clark from Copyblogger touches upon a new a new style of thinking that should be understood when adapting to the process of creating content for your site’s visitors.

Case Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign
Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang analyzes Dell’s recent Regeneration Graffiti campaign on Facebook and shows that sometimes letting go and letting the community drive the “campaign bus” can yield very positive results.

The Beauty, Secrets and Utility of Twitter for Business
Social Media Strategy Consultant, B.L Ochman shares her experiences and love for Twitter and how it fits into her daily ritual as a favorite business tool.

Turning radicals into revolutionaries: the key to kick-starting your social strategy
More good nuggets from the Forrester camp this week with this post by Charlene Li who taps more content from her upcoming book Groundswell. This time Charlene speaks towards harnessing the power of your most passionate employees to lead the charge in engaging your customers online.

PerkettPR Turns 10

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Today PerkettPR is announcing a major milestone for our company – our 10th year of business! What makes this interesting though, isn’t just the years, but the resilience of the virtual model that our company was built on and that we continue to embrace – while companies and their employees are just starting to get comfortable with the idea of virtual working, PerkettPR has been pioneering the concept since 1998. Only recently, have other companies been warming to the idea of letting their business professionals work from home as marked by the recent articles in major publications touting the “new” concept that a central geographic location is becoming less of a necessity for the modern day web worker. But PerkettPR was built from the ground up with an all-senior team that physically spans both coasts and all regions in-between; with almost 30 employees located across nine states, we continue to thrive as a virtually operated company.

Our 10th year is beginning on the heels of our most successful year to date – 2007 was an extreme growth year for PerkettPR with an expanding client roster and a 50% increase in staff and revenue. We have added several new clients worldwide including companies in Web 2.0, healthcare, enterprise software and telecom markets spanning Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. – including businesses such as Aternity, Constant Contact, Mailtrust, Sosius and Mzinga and we have enhanced our Partner Program with marketing and design agencies, Internet technology experts, and international PR firms.

In addition, although we have always been first adopters of technology and concepts that will help us to more successful in working virtually, 2007 has been the year that we have truly embraced social media initiatives for both ourselves and for our clients. Jeremiah Owyang recently stated, “I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media. But with the power shifting to the participants, agencies must demonstrate they can participate before they can ever help clients with it.”

PerkettPR truly believes in this concept and agree with Jeremiah that “the agency of the future is a “connected” one.” We have taught ourselves first, and then helped our clients to engage at many level. In the past year and a half, we have made additions such as the agency’s corporate blog, PerkettPRsuasion, a corporate Twitter presence, @PerkettPR and Facebook group – to join and start engaging influencers in more meaningful conversations for the firm and its clients. We have also driven new media and viral campaign elements for clients including blogging, screencasting, viral videos, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn campaigns, interactive video channels and more.

We believe strongly in making sure we feel comfortable in the space so that we can help our clients – we even hired a Social Media Director, Jeff Glasson that works with our clients with how to participate in social networking and he comments on social media topics on our blog and on others.

PerkettPR has also embraced the social media and the tech communities by sponsoring several TechCrunch events in New York and San Francisco, and most recently, the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp where the agency executed the planning, promotion and sponsorship coordination – bringing arguably the hottest Web 2.0 networking event to Boston for the first time ever. PerkettPR also has worked closely with other new media thought leaders, such as Sarah Meyers at Pop17.

Our team is very proud about this milestone and the steps we have taken to not only be a “poster child” for the successful virtual model, but also for our leadership in social media initiatives for ourselves and our clients.

And 2008 is looking even better!

Mzinga Acquires Prospero – Come join the conversation!

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Mzinga acquires Prospero

PerkettPR client Mzinga announced today that it is acquiring Prospero, a fellow Massachusetts-based social media platform builder. Both companies excel in the creating white-label social media platforms that allow companies to create feature-rich online communities. This merger clearly places Mzinga in the spotlight as the leader in business oriented social networking. The true question lies in how this will affect other white-label providers in this space.

Notable social media bloggers such as Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Scott Monty have already posted on the merger and shared their views on what the future might hold in this space. What is your take on the future of white-label social media platforms or even social media for corporations in general? To help answer that question, leaders from the newly formed Mzinga along with PerkettPR and Topaz Partners will be hosting a Twitter-based Q&A session throughout today (Monday, March 3rd).

Feel free to follow and converse with any of us on Twitter:

Mzinga/Prospero: Aaron Strout, Jim Storer, Colin Browing, and Heather Strout
PerkettPR: Jeff Glasson, Lisa Dilg and our corporate presence
Topaz Partners: Doug Haslam and Sandy Kalik

Additional Reading:

TechCrunch – More Consolidation in the White Label Social Networking Space: Mzinga Acquires Prospero

Mashable – Mzinga Acquires Prospero to Grow Online Community Solutions Sector

ReadWriteWeb – Enterprise Community Provider Mzinga Swallows Prospero

CenterNetworks – Mzinga Raises $32.5 Million and Acquires Prospero Business Social Networking Platform Provider

Aaron Strout, Mzinga – Red Letter Day

Jim Storer, Mzinga – Following the Mzinga/Prospero News

Colin Browning – Social Media: Working Behind The Scenes

Tech PR Gems – What do you do when a social media client has big news?

This event is a great example of social media companies actually putting social media tools to use and engaging in conversation to benefit the community. We look forward to chatting with you. See you in the Twittersphere!

Tools of choice: Twitter vs. Facebook

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Social Media consultant Tom Raftery recently wrote a blog post about the power of Twitter versus Facebook as communications tools. Tom had recently used both tools to aid his search for a new job. Ultimately, he found the Twitter community responded to his to his messages much more frequently than his attempt on Facebook and he sites that the power of Twitter is in the network.

I couldn’t agree with Tom any more. From my own personal experiences, I have found Twitter to be a much more valuable networking tool than Facebook. For the most part, I think it comes down to the nature of the two beasts.

Facebook is Passive

When it comes to reaching our to your social graph for help or answers to questions, Facebook leans towards a very “traditional marketing” approach in the way that it lets you communicate. You can either directly contact someone with your message or post something in your status or profile. When you go down that path, your only hope is that someone is paying attention and sees it in between games Scrabulous games and warding off Vampire bites.

As echoed many times throughout the course of 2007, business professionals are adopting the use of Facebook at a rapid pace. That still doesn’t change the mostly passive way it operates as a communications tool. For the business professional, Facebook is a fun, great less formal alternative to LinkedIn. It allows you to build an online calling card of sorts and it provides the ability to keep your contacts up to date on the latest happenings in your life through photos and video. True conversation can be found through discussion threads within Facebook groups. Finding groups that both match your interests – and that are consistently active – can be a hit or miss situation.

Twitter is Active

On the other hand, Twitter does one thing and it does it well. It’s all about the conversation and there is always someone there to who will see your message. From the outside looking in, it’s often hard for people to understand the value that Twitter brings to the table. Its value is directly related to the quality of the people that you choose to follow. My Twitter network has grown substantially faster than my friends on Facebook. In fact, a good portion of my friends on Facebook are folks who I originally connected with on Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter are also fairly different when it comes to demographics. In October of 2007, Forrester’s Charlene Li presented that 34% of Facebook’s user base is comprised of business professionals. Twitter didn’t start as a student targeted platform and, from personal observation, I would bet that professional use dominates the platform by 90% or more. Younger generations are already deeply engrained in SMS messaging and standard instant messaging. This difference keeps the conversation on a generally more “mature” and honest level. Experienced Twitter users are always ready and willing to lend a helping hand, no matter if it’s with raising money for a friend in need, or voting on the best commercials during the Superbowl.

Who wins the battle?

In the end, I don’t think either Facebook or Twitter can be deemed better than the other. They both server different purposes and provide different mechanisms for communicating with your peers or target audiences. Facebook is feature-rich and offers passive and indirect communication tools. Twitter focuses specifically on the conversation and enables more immediate and direct communication with your all of your “Followers.”

Based on these reasons, it definitely pays off to put some thought into the tools you use when communicating with your social graph. Choosing the correct tool based on the your specific needs will give you the most “bang for your buck” – even when the tools are free!

What do you think? If you have a Twitter or Facebook success story, we’d love to hear about it!

Jump-start your Twitter experience with the Twitter Pack

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Following along our post last week about why to use Twitter, today we provide a bit more information on how not only to start, but how to maximize, your presence on Twitter.

Twitter Pack Screenshot

For many people, the experience of using Twitter for the first time can conjure anxiety similar to the first day of high school after moving to a new town. Everyone you see is a stranger and breaking the ice with someone seems next to impossible. If you’re like me, most of your real-life friends don’t fall into the “techie” category which makes getting started even harder.

By shear coincidence, the same week I joined Twitter, I also became a member of Chris Brogan’s Grasshoppers social network on Ning. At that point in time, Twitter was still very new and very few tools were available for searching to see who already had an account. After a quick post to the forums about my Twitter woes I experienced an influx of followings and my micro-blogging network began to expand.

Almost a year later, there are now a growing number of ways to find people to follow on Twitter. However, most involve finding matches to your existing social graph or searching for discussions involving select keywords. Keyword searching may work in some cases, but say you would like to meet fellow Twitter users in your local geographic area or maybe others who enjoy similar hobbies, such as running. Chris Brogan enters the picture again with a new experiment called Twitter Packs.

The basic idea of Twitter Packs is to allow the creation of editable lists of Twitter users grouped into categories like geography, company, events and identity. The lists are maintained by the Twitter community since the site was launched as a wiki. Definitely a smart choice of tools on Chris’ part. As a new Twitter user, being able to quickly find other people of similar interests to follow is fantastic and can get the conversations rolling in no time.

While the initial reaction from the Twitter community has been favorable towards the idea of this type of listing, it is not without potential flaws. The idea of being on a publically accessible list and grouped in a specific category seems like a great way to meet and connect with people of similar interests. I’m sure most would agree that it is. However, some folks fear that this will cause Twitter to become more clique-driven and work against the open nature that the platform originated with.

Regardless of any flaws that people may find with Twitter Packs, it’s certainly off to a strong start and it should be interesting to see how it evolves. If you are new to Twitter or have been thinking about giving it a try, this is definitely a great resource to help you get started. Feel free to follow PerkettPR on Twitter or any of our employees who are currently active Twitter users!

How Twitter Can Expand Your World – Frenemies and All

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We admit, Twitter is difficult to understand from an outsider’s perspective. You really need to participate in the community to understand its value. But once you do engage, the power of this eclectic community comes shining through.

Several of us at PerkettPR have personal Twitter accounts and we also have a corporate entity where we share news, poll the community, post blog entries, track events and more. Twitter has become a fantastic resource for our firm professionally and for many of us, personally. So what have we gleamed from Twitter? Everything from tips on restaurants, travel services, books, technology and more, to new relationships across the globe – including many with like-minded PR professionals – who we’ll call “Frenemies.”

Although we continue to compete for business with many of our Frenemies, we have also united with them in a way we never would have before Twitter. It has provided us the opportunity to see each other beyond the walls of the firms we work for – to appreciate our industry colleagues’ writing, strategies and accomplishments, and even to commiserate over similar struggles.

Through Twitter, we’ve had the opportunity to build relationships like never before – not only with other PR and social media professionals, but reporters, bloggers, analysts and others in relevant – and sometimes not-at-all-relevant – industries. Without Twitter, Jeremiah Owyang and Guy Kawasaki might never have chatted with us about various topics – professional and personal – much less visited and mentioned our blog and our website.

Participating in debates about the debates, rallying around a community member fighting breast cancer, supporting the case of a missing child, and even an unexpected death in the community have all been part of our various experiences on Twitter in the last few months alone. We share lively business-related discussions within the community that often extend to each other’s blogs – sharing ideas, “joining together” on issues such as “the death of PR,” the value of social media or something more personal such as parenting woes.

Twitter has not only helped us to extend our network and knowledge significantly, but provided us with a new avenue to prove that PR executives do have substance and can participate in industry conversations. We have also learned that we have more in common with our competitors than we ever thought possible. They are human, they are smart and we can learn from them. We embrace them as our “frenemies” because we still need to compete – which makes for another interesting future blog post …

The relationships may begin on Twitter – but they don’t end there. We have followed up and met face-to-face with “Followers” from “Twitterverse” at various industry events. Twitter is a great opportunity to expand not only your contacts database but your view of the world. Log on, join the community – we bet you’ll learn something new immediately.

Are We Too Old for Facebook?

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We are doing a lot of work on the social networking front here at PerkettPR – training workshops, new hires/social media staff and holding some really valuable analyst and media discussions. We’re following Forrester Research as you know, and their Groundswell activities, as well as watching closely for great examples of business use of social media. Many of these include YouTube and LinkedIn and some are extending campaigns to Facebook, MySpace and others.

A few weeks ago, Dan Costa of PC Magazine, wrote about social networking and indicated that perhaps some of the more popular of these sites do not hold credible value for the over-30 crowd. His column, “MySpace is Not Your Space,” provides a guideline (his opinion) on who should be on which site. While we don’t totally agree – we think some of his thoughts on the use of these sites are short sighted – it’s interesting to think about. (For example, he states “I am not trying to keep the 50-something, married software engineer away from the 17-year old coed cheerleader majoring in Art History—although maybe I should be.” We don’t’ think that’s what professionals are focusing on with their use of these sites – and can’t the two co-exist without crossing paths? For example, if we’re trying to reach high school students for a campaign, isn’t it better that we are involved in and understand the medium that we are using?)

We believe that social networking will continue to evolve as an industry and, while Facebook may not launch a separate site as Dan suggests, it has inspired many new sites that do provide a more laser focus on specific issues and groups. For example, our client Sermo focuses on medical doctors, other focused sites already exist for PR professionals, the town you live in and various hobbies – even venture capitalism, as today’s Boston Globe reported on next month’s launch of VentureNetwork.vc, an online social network for professionals looking for another channel to connect and talk shop. The user numbers on these sites may not reach Facebook’s level, but as we all continue to figure out the value and monetary possibilities for such communities, the value will increase regardless of the numbers – camaraderie, additional support and encouragement, new networks, collective insight and more are invaluable.

For example, Guy Kawasaki wrote a great blog post at AlwaysOn regarding how one of the less-understood social networking tools, Twitter, can add value today. Many people out there don’t get the value of Twitter (we just started exploring this ourselves) and may say, as Dan does about MySpace and Facebook, that it’s a better tool for the younger crowd with time on their hands. Guy shows that it’s so much more – already driving “tens of thousands of page views,” debunking rumors and extending networks. And, since no one person seems to really have the answers on social networking’s value to business – yet – keep exploring, keep trialing and keep sharing your insights.

Boston Bloggers Dinner Was Invaluable

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A few of us attended the Boston Blogger Dinner at Rattlesnake last night – hosted by EMC and Jeremiah Owyang (former blogger now turned Forrester analyst – cool).

It was a great event! I was blown away by the awesome passion and intelligence in the room. So many of these folks have “chucked” their day jobs (realtor, designer, marketer, etc.) and found a way to monetize their interest in social media. It was really inspiring to meet everyone and they convinced me to join the Twitter community – for which I am so grateful (although it can be too addicting, it’s a great resource community already).

We met a couple of great BU students who are, unfortunately for us, interns at another PR company (although we don’t hire interns). I was really interested by their passion and foresight – how many University students have had the insight to post thoughtful commentary and content on their Facebook page rather than simply party pictures or to join a Boston Bloggers Dinner in lieu of local bar hopping with their classmates? These ladies – Amanda and Amanda – impressed us enough to make us reconsider our stance on accepting interns at the firm. They were bright, engaged and very plugged in – who couldn’t benefit from working with them?

We met a few people who we had wanted to connect with after reading their blogs. Julia Patricia Roy, Carlie Flossberg and Laura Athavale Fitton – all super smart ladies rocking the social media world.

For more photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffglasson/sets/72157602524956994/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/sets/72157602518854364/

 

Talking Shop

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

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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