Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

2010 Public Relations: Looking at the Past to Succeed in the Future

guest post by Beth Harte Understandably, some organizations struggle with the notion of being publicly ‘social’ with customers, prospects, stakeholders or investors. And the social tools—blogs, forums, communities, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc.—they are being advised to use can be a downright shock to the ‘tried and true’ systems that most organizations have in place. The good news is that the comfort level that has been developed and embraced in the past with public relations will actually provide an advantage when it comes to being social. For organizations to be successful moving forward, they need to first recognize that their comfort... Read more →

Todd Defren, SHIFT Communications

We met in person at BlogWell New York this past year. I've been a long time reader of his blog, PR-Squared, and have implemented public relations strategies inspired by his ideas on social media. He's a creator, a listener and the visionary behind the Social Media Release and Social Media Newsrooms, which many companies are now adopting successfully. He's a a Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and a a co-founder and Board Member of the Social Media Club. We both serve as Advisory Board Members for the SmartBrief on Social Media. Find out more about Todd here,... Read more →

The 7 keys to social branding

guest post by Tamsen McMahon Despite lip-service to two-way communication, branding has often been a one-way effort: we decided what we wanted people to think about our companies and designed marketing and communications that made that happen. Or so we hoped. But a brand is the collective impression people gain not only from you and your marketing efforts, but from all of their interactions with you—and the interactions others have as well (newly amplified through social media). That means we need to look at the process of branding in different way: through a social lens. Yes, we still need to... Read more →

How One Mid-Sized Business is Using Social Media to Build Awareness and Increase Sales

guest post by Tamar Weinberg Social media marketing takes many different forms. In one of its most basic executions, building brand awareness through social media communities and maintaining a presence in the more dominant social networks brings forth happier customers and translates into sales. Chris Heuer coined the phrase "participation is marketing." If you are a brand participating in the social space, you are inherently marketing yourself. Whether or not they know it (but hopefully goals are in place where they actually know it), a business presence using Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube to build relationships are furthering this goal of... Read more →

How To Fail Your Way To Social Media Success

guest post by Beth Kanter Over two years ago, I made a screencast about Web Analytics for Nonprofits that covered the basics of using google analytics, web metrics, and some nonprofit case studies featuring Laura White and the Idealist. That's just about when I discovered Avinash Kaushik's blog, Occam's Razor and his first book on Web analytics. I reached out to Avinash and he was very generous with his time, helping us understand traditional web metrics as well as Google Analytics. Through our conversation, we also touched on the metrics for blogs. I've learned a lot about metrics from Avinash.... Read more →

Happy New Year 2010

Focus on what's important. If 2009 was the year of making everything simpler, 2010 will be the year of picking the few projects that will really make a difference. If complexity slowed you down, so does volume. Doing more of less is not just practical, it's also wise. Wisdom comes from experience and you've rolled up your sleeves to learn and test while getting your ideas done this past year. Build to lead. Brands are the infrastructure that gives meaning to our choices of products and services, trust is built one day at a time. Leaders of the now are... Read more →