It was the best of times, it is the worst of times in this tale of two culinary crises. The first has the potential to be truly cataclysmic, while the second could balloon into a major corporate catastrophe.
How both incidents have rippled through the social media world makes for an interesting study.
Brandtology – The World’s First 24×7 Managed Services Provider
As social media platforms and applications gain mainstream prominence, organisations should pay increasing attention to what people are saying about them online. We have seen in recent weeks how social media can either result in a lot of good or a lot of harm. Being oblivious to what your stakeholders think is probably the last thing to do, especially in these times when every customer relationship counts.
This is where social media monitoring, intelligence and participation comes in.
Courtesy of butler.melvin
This article first appeared in Marketing magazine in February 2008. I thought it would be useful to share it with you here.
And yes, I am back to blogging again after a super long hiatus!
By now, every publicist worth his or her salt would have heard of the wonders of new media. Anything imbued with the word 2.0, social media, conversational marketing, blogosphere or peer-to-peer is laden with the Midas touch.
Courtesy of mercer machine
In the age of social media, one particular trend seem to stand out more so than others. And that is our penchant for perversity.
Just look at the leading blog posts and stories in technorati, digg, ping.sg and other blog aggregators. What hits you first and foremost? Most of the leading ones are either about controversy, coitus or corruption. If you have a feel good story, chances are that your efforts will be relegated to the backwaters of the blogosphere.
After a brief hiatus, I am back to my favourite subject which is blogging. In the true tradition of a marketer, ad man and publicist, I have coined my latest post as the “Rs” of blogging.
What makes a blogger effective? I believe there are a few basic “Rs” to take note of.
Relationships
Let’s toast to more blogging successes!
Dear readers,
Thank you so much for your support, links and visits. I just found out that this blog is ranked 9th according to the Buzz Bin’s list of Top 15 Independent PR Blogs. While I do sneak in some personal bits here and there, my chief intention is to share my thoughts and those of others on PR, marketing, branding and social media issues here since I first started about a year and a half ago.
Oh yes, since we are on the subject of accolades, I do invite all of you to visit my other pet project yesterday.sg. That apparently is ranked the 5th museum blog in the world (out of 100 museums blogs) according to this list from Museums and the Web 2007.
Looks like its time to pop the champagne and celebrate! Definitely couldn’t do it without all of you!
Courtesy of Hugh MaCleod’s gapingvoid blog
I am currently attending a conference on Strategic Media Relations organised by Pacific Conferences. Its a good refresher on public relations and also an opportunity to broaden my horizons and network.
As usual, it covered the blogosphere’s growing influence (57 million blogs and counting), use of RSS, wikis, podcasts, photo/video communities, and so on.
“For a while, it seemed that every conversation about companies interacting with bloggers fell back on the same few anecdotes. It was as if our economy were based on Dell and Kryptonite. For better or worse, that’s changed now. We’re seeing more examples of bloggers calling out companies, and all too often, the companies don’t understand the culture. Today it’s the National Pork Board.
Jennifer Laycock is a work-at-home mom and founder of The Lactivist, “a site that aims to promote breastfeeding through humor.” One of her activities is selling shirts with funny slogans at CafePress, and one of her designs—The Other White Milk—was too close to The Other White Meat® for the eat-more-pig crowd.
Read this post by Long Tail’s Chris Anderson about how social media relations brings a different dimension compared to traditional mainstream media PR. He blogs about the dilemma faced by traditional PR practitioners as captured by this quote:
“So now imagine that you’re one of those PR professionals. What do you do? Stick with the world you know, and continue calling and emailing releases to the traditional press (trying not to notice that their ranks are shrinking and influence waning)? Start spamming bloggers, too, and hope for the best? Or just treat alpha bloggers like traditional press and shower them with love, while ignoring the rest?”
His suggestion to evolve the role of PR from external relations to internal relations is radical. Can we as PR professionals coach the numerous employees in our organisation to do the outreach through their respective social media channels instead of doing it ourselves? Chris suggested some possible topics for coaching: