09 May 2008
Yesterday, James Clark and I had the pleasure of giving an “Understanding Social Media” presentation to the Colorado Ski Country Association. Roughly 95% of the PR and marketing communications experts for every ski mountain in Colorado were attending, eager to learn more about how they could leverage this thing called social media. The topics we covered varied from social media planning, understanding RSS, best practices for community participation and the use of new and emerging tools like Twitter. Despite the groovy buzz around social media, one of the main subjects of concern with our audience dealt with how and when to engage in online conversations. The typical problem relates to negative activity that gets picked up by the press. Something happens on the ski slopes related to closures, injury, even death, and before you know it the cameras are rolling and the phone is ringing off the hook. As a…
...Continue Reading
07 May 2008
Anne Mitchell at Internet Patrol pulls Vonage’s blog comment spamming punk card. So yet again another company that can’t resist the urge to go into blog comments without a thoughtful and authentic approach. Comment spamming is considered pure vile, so building on my “Resist The Temptation of Astroturfing Post“, I’d like to offer some very straight forward ways to avoid this kind of mess that Mr. Kariolis has gotten Vonage into. As you can see in Anne’s links she points out Mr. Kariolis posted the exact same comments on Internet Patrol and DownloadSquad. Mr. Kariolis Astroturf Trail: Posting the Same Comment on Several Blogs. By definition and common sense, that’s comment spamming. No Link in Comment Name. When leaving the comment on Internet Patrol, Mr. Kariolis did not provide any link indentifying him with a company, blog, etc. Most comments allow you to put in your name, and then ask for an associated…
...Continue Reading
06 May 2008
Embracing a consumer trend before the government demands it. Now that’s the entrepreneurial spirit that Marc German, CEO of Spicy Pickle embraced when he paid to have an independent company provide a nutritional analysis of 30 of his top selling dishes. It’s a smart move not only from a regulatory perspective (many cities are now passing laws requiring chain restaurants to post nutritional information), but simply from a customer service and marketing approach. As our level of awareness about the connection between our diet and our health becomes more ingrained, we begin consciously seeking healthy choices about what we eat. More, More, More The more information we have, the more active the conversation will be and consequently the more involved consumers become in embracing a brand. So more is better in the food industry, because what the mind doesn’t know it creates and it’s more than likely to create a conspiracy…
...Continue Reading
05 May 2008
TechCrunch recently posted a chart from Flowing Data showing the number of facebook applications by category. It doesn't come as much of a surprise that "Just for Fun" section has the most apps by a very large margin, with gaming coming 2nd. Without a doubt that's the reason behind the slew of random "what kind of fish I am" and "if you had a pet rock, would it be good or evil?" notices I get every single day from my friends. It is also a reason most professionals and people looking to connect and maintain professional relationships moved onto other social networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo. I hear it from more and more people that they only log on to accept a friend invite or quickly look somebody up, and run away in horror after having to sift through hundreds of notices just to find that friend invite. Facebook is still a great way to connect and…
...Continue Reading
BrettGreene:
jo_rogel:
JamesOClark:
mountainkat:
JasonCormier: