Mashable posted a fascinating article today about how McDonald's spent a modest $1,000 on a pilot Foursquare campaign resulting in 33 percent more foot traffic in one day, more than 50 news articles, and 600,000 people opting to follow and fan the brand on social media sites. McDonald's Foursquare Day on April 16 used 100 randomly awarded $5 and $10 gift cards to lure Foursquare users into McDonald's restaurants to check in. Foursquare is a mobile … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Conan’s YouTube Choice
September 2, 2010 by
My September 2010 video clip of the month features Conan O’Brien revealing the name of his new TBS series using a Sharpie and some white paper in a YouTube video. I picked the video because it shows how social media is changing the way major announcements are made. For most of the last century, major public statements were made through press releases and press conferences for the media. Today, press releases aren’t just for journalists anymore, and they are … [Read more...]
What Bad Web 2.0 Customer Service Looks Like
June 30, 2010 by
After my Verizon e-mail went down for several hours yesterday, I checked the Web 2.0 "newspaper": Twitter. I quickly discovered many tweets and even a few blog posts, such as Verizon Email Outage: Twitter and Central for Webmail, about the outage, which appeared to be national in scope. To my surprise, however, @Verizon, the official Verizon corporate Twitter account, and @VerizonSupport, the official Verizon customer service Twitter account, weren't … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: BP Commercial Spoofs
June 2, 2010 by
British Petroleum's (BP's) failure to adequately enlist social media in the communications battle over the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill made picking a single video clip of the month too difficult. So I've chosen two BP commercial spoofs, both highlighting BP's growing credibility gap as it desperately tries to control information and ignores the new (social media era) communication rules: collaboration, openness, transparency, and timeliness. While BP is … [Read more...]
Do-It-Yourself Media Relations: 5 Easy Steps
March 7, 2010 by
Public relations is vital to building your company and promoting your brand. If you're a small business, non-profit, or start up, however, your budget might be too tight to hire a public relations firm to publicize your products and services to reporters and bloggers. Here are five easy steps for successful do-it-yourself media relations: 1. Create a Press Kit Every company should have a press kit: a hard-copy version, contained in an attractive folder, and an … [Read more...]
Pentagon Uses Twitter to Announce Policy Change
February 28, 2010 by
Breaking with tradition, the Pentagon used Twitter Friday to announce major changes in its social media policy. Under the new policy, military personnel can Tweet, blog, and update their Facebook pages on the U.S. military's non-classified computer networks. More than a dozen social media sites the Pentagon blocked in May 2007 will now be unblocked. Price Floyd, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, broke the news of the … [Read more...]
Are Blogs King and Press Releases Obsolete?
February 6, 2010 by
UPDATE: As noted in my Is Twitter King and the Press Release Obsolete? post, Brokaw: ‘I Don’t Get Twitter…Just Stuff That Fills Air' post, and Video Clip of the Month: Conan’s YouTube Choice post, social media has the future of press releases in a flux. Stay tuned! Blogs are more effective than press releases, Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, said during a Q&A interview in the February 2010 issue of PR Week. “I … [Read more...]
HOW TO: Arm a Press Release with Magic Magnets
January 30, 2010 by
A snappy, eye-catching headline used to be the most critical part of a press release back in the day when a press release was—shockingly—actually a release to the press. Now that the Web has allowed people to read press releases directly, even the cleverest headline is useless on a news release that doesn’t generate traffic. In today’s Web 2.0 world, the most important thing your press release and its headline needs is keywords. Keywords are what Publicity Expert … [Read more...]
Your Brand: Taking Social Media Seriously
December 16, 2009 by
Now that Google has added live results from Twitter into searches, you need to face the fact once and for all that you can no longer control your organization's online reputation. Negative comments on blogs, Facebook, or Twitter have the power to tarnish your brand overnight in ways unimaginable a few years back. Even a small business should take social media seriously and try to influence conversations about its brand. A common concern, however, is managing … [Read more...]
Your Brand: 10-Minute Social Media Monitoring
December 9, 2009 by
Google is adding live results from Twitter into searches this week, forever changing the nature of brand management. Now more than ever, you need to monitor your organization's social media presence. You need to know right away if the live Tweet results include "worst service" or "sucks," so you can diffuse these conversations and "push down" negative tweet search results. A common concern, however, is that monitoring social media takes too much time, especially … [Read more...]
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