As the UK's first appointment to the new role of storytelling laureate said self-deprecatingly this week on the Today programme, listening is more important than speaking, else we'd have two tongues and just one ear of course.
With that in mind, and having read all of this week's top contributions to MarCom Professional, I'm going to shut up and leave you to browse amongst them.
Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.
Twitter is dead - long live Twitter
by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology
Twitter users love the system and are very passionate about the benefits it brings them. But increasingly, Twitter is looking like it is on its deathbed. High profile celebrities, such as Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) have left Twitter and Stephen Fry threatened to leave but returned. Facebook continues to rise, while Twitter remains stagnant Now, new data from the web intelligence company, Hitwise, suggests that Facebook is simply overpowering Twitter. Indeed, Twitter's initial growth appears to be falling. More...
Qwest has their social media launch lived up to the hype?
by Walter Adamson of NewLeaseG2M
In a recent article Forbes talks with Pieter Poll, chief technology officer at Qwest Communications, about the future of social networking technologies in the enterprise.
Besides being interested in his comment that "voice is now an application" the article didn't give too much insight into social media. "We still are at the tip of the iceberg, if you will, in terms of what the potential for social networking will be for businesses."
He stated what we often find when talking to large companies about social media especially if the technology people are involved - "When a business starts to think about social networking, they, first of all, are concerned about control and security types of issues". More...
'Column Inches' Argument Gives Weight to Another Dilemma: the True Role of PR
by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung
I read a good blog post this week by Sarah Emerson from Millward Brown entitled 'Stop Pretending PR is Worth the Same as Advertising Space' (the comments thread is also definitely worth a look).This blog post is not meant to be derogatory to Sarah's article. Hers is a good piece and well worth reading. Please do so :)
No, my post rant has its origins in the fact Sarah felt the need to write such a post.
Surely - now we are coming up to a decade on from the turn of the century - the whole notion of measuring editorial exposure by comparing it to equivalent advertising spend (aka AVE) is more than a little outdated? (Again Sarah, this is not having a shot at you). More...
The Competition for Your Social Graph
by Brian Solis of PR 2.0
This is the abbreviated version of my current contribution to TechCrunch, “In The Fight Between Facebook And Twitter, Which One’s The Mac And Which One’s The PC?“
Source
Facebook is much more than a social network. Twitter is much more than an information network or serendipity engine. Each represent a dashboard for your attention, a foundation for conversations and collaboration, and a matrix for your social graph and contextual relationships. In other words, Facebook and Twitter essentially represent the entrée to the future of the social Web as each strive to host, what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and others, refer to as our personal social operating system (OS). More...
Grateful Dead at the forefront of marketing technology
by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott
This week I had a chance to hang out with Jay Blakesberg, long-time Grateful Dead tour photographer, in his San Francisco studio.
We discussed how the band (now called The Dead) is at the forefront of using technology for marketing. This video is about 9 minutes and includes highlights from the discussions. Please take the time to hear Jay describe what a true marketing powerhouse of a band is doing more than 45 years after they originally formed.
I suggest letting the video load before watching. More...
Twitter Releases New Widget for Lists
by Brian Solis of PR 2.0
Twitter recently expanded its new Lists service to users network-wide and in doing so, injected a sense of excitement, confusion, and also utility. Lists represent a significant milestone for Twitter as it transcends asynchronous conversations and and broadcast messages into a form of intelligence gathering, education, entertainment, and news.
Twitter Lists are also stirring controversy as many believe that it sets the foundation for a new level of establishing a metric for influence. Whereas prominence was measured by the number of followers as well as the friends-to-follower ratio, now the amount of Lists that include any given entity factors into an equation for establishing authority. More...
The Evolving PR Crisis: The Future of the Embargo
by Brian Solis of PR 2.0
CreditIn media and blogger relations, PR typically wields two powerful tools to help boost the effectiveness of pitching and potential placement of news: the embargo and the exclusive.
In the case of an exclusive, a story is usually packaged prior to official release for one particular writer, fully understanding their style, nuances, and audience. If the story is accepted, it is not pitched to any other media outlets until after the story runs. The benefit for PR is that it can bank on the publishing of a guaranteed, high profile story. More...
Q&A with Durrants’ Jeremy Thompson on the Metrica deal, evaluation, aggregators and the NLA
by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications
I caught up with Jeremy Thompson this morning, managing director of Durrants, to talk about media monitoring market, PR evaluation, aggregators and the NLA.
Durrants has been on the acquistion trail. It acquired Metrica last week and the UK print monitoring business of Cision UK in July.
The media monitoring sector is oft regarded as the commodity end of the PR industry and is almost certainly under reported - if Durrants was listed in the annual PR Week League tables it would make a top ten slot. More...
Grappling w/the Social Media Back-Channel Conversation
by Jon Carlson of LSI
Most B2B marketers and support providers have become adept at carrying on multiple IM conversations during conference calls, one ear listening while producing a running commentary on the merits of the discussion, or even expanding the back-channel conversation well beyond the topic at hand. During meetings (digital etiquette aside), text messaging now consumes much more attention than the running dialogue. Conference call and net-meeting participants now expect the sidebar comments from guests attending. More...
Are you socially isolated?
by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology
Imagine teenagers in their bedrooms right now, hunched over their laptop, tapping away on their keyboard and checking out their favourite tracks on iTunes or MySpace. It's an image that many "do-gooders" would have us believe is all too common and which is really bad for youngsters.
Will using the internet isolate you from the rest of the "real world"? You can almost hear the Daily Mail headline screaming "Ban kids from the Internet" or some such diatribe. More...
Bloggers and journalists needed for annual Glide survey
by Andrew Smith of escherman
For the last few years, Glide Technologies (purveyors of the well known Online Press Centre product) have conducted an annual journalist survey to delve into the nitty gritty of what kind of information journalists want and how they want to receive it. The Glide surveys have tended to stand out from other similar, run of the mill research efforts in this area – they actually do seem to come up with some valuable insights. The 2009 survey is now getting underway – the key difference this year is that Glide is looking for input from both journalists and bloggers (sorry, no PR folk required). More...
Graduate Career fair for marketers
by Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets
I was a speaker at the Cambridge University Careers Advertising and Marketing Communications event last week. It was a nice format of three talks with a concurrent exhibition by agencies with graduate recruitment schemes.
I was asked to speak about the ‘family tree’ of the sector and what the job titles really mean. Thanks to all of you who contributed to my research panic post. I got more than enough material!
While hanging around the exhibition it was interesting to see who was present and how they were projecting their brand identities onto prospective graduate hirees. More...
It’s free, but what’s the price?
by Hamish Thompson of Twelve Thirty Eight Ltd
Over the last several months I’ve been involved in plenty of pitches for new business. A decent share have been successful but there have been occasions – probably half a dozen – in which the potential client has opted to go for a bit of DIY PR instead while times are tight.
In all these instances I’ve taken an active interest in the outcome, largely because they were almost all cases where I felt that there was a great opportunity and I could see the story working in the nationals or on TV. More...
eModeration's Social Round-up #11
by Tia Fisher of eModeration Blog
Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate). Check back soon!
THE HEADLINES ...
HM Customs and Revenue is clearly in a state of some denial about the extent to which their pet subject is a byword for catatonic boredom: they have allowed the Boss Of All The Taxmen to have a go at delivering their new YouTube ad, instead of getting a professional in. If you are currently experiencing the agonies of insomnia, I advise you save this treat till bedtime. More...
Social Media Influencers are not Traditional Influencers
by Brian Solis of PR 2.0
SourceGuest post by Damien Basille, follow him on Twitter | Read his blog
As more and more brands are moving all of their ad spend online, defining how influence affects their return on investment is necessary and must be done as soon as possible. While some are making inroads to define these calculations many are overlooking the fact that influence affects everything. Without factoring in the real issue of different types of influence you run into a number of problems, for instance focusing on one group of influencers over another or getting broad sweeping numbers instead of knowing exactly how effective your time and money has been spent on the proper target. More...
Shout! With Martin Brooks, MD of Work Club
by Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets
I founded an agency called Agency Republic in 2001 for Omnicom during digital boom times when clients were spending a lot on digital. We were smarter than the average – we had both really good digital and really good creative strategists so we could talk business.
I left in 2007 with Andy Sandoz and Paddy Griffin to set up Work Club. The drivers were the lure of self employment and “doing it for myself” – I asked myself, if not now then when?
What were the key decisions when founding the agency?
Having some money to back yourself rather than borrowing and having the right business partners is crucially important. More...
Rumors of the Death of Blogs are Greatly Exaggerated
by Brian Solis of PR 2.0
Source: feministingEach year at Blogworld Expo, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra presents The State of the Blogosphere as one of the event’s prestigious keynotes. For those who are unfamiliar with Technorati, it serves as a directory and search engine for the blogosphere as well as a benchmark for the ranking of blogs worldwide.
While there has been much discussion about the relevance and even demise of blogs as the statusphere and micro updates gained traction in addition to earning prominence in the mainstream spotlight, the reality is that blogs are a vital ingredient to the media ecosystem. More...
