Friday Roundup 4th July 2008

The appetite of the MarCom Professional network to get its mouth round social media continues unsated. Everyone knows the game has changed with the social Web; if only we could discover the rules and establish new, creative and productive tactics sooner than later, to the advantage of the marketer, the customer and all stakeholders.

Philip Sheldrake's "The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008" asks many questions, and goes some way to answering a few. He also points you to those companies who specialise in teasing meaning from the social Web. Looks like he's intent on a 2009 follow-up too, and wants to collaborate with you!

Graham Jones takes (counter) inspiration from Brit Wimbledon would-have-been Andrew Murray on how you should convey yourself online. And Brian Solis suggests it's time to call it a day on Twitter.

Best regards and Happy Independence Day to our American readers, Andrew and the MarCom Professional team.

Identi.ca, a White Label Microblogging Network

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

It's inevitable. As Twitter experiences growing pains, new entrants will seize the opportunity to provide a more complete and open experience to communicating with, and at, the people you may or may not know.

Few will succeed, while others force evolution to inspire new features and capabilities in existing services. The truth is that the Twitterati are frustrated, worn, and undoubtedly impatient. At this point, any and all alternatives are starting to look attractive. When you're starving, all food appears appetizing, including the options that you wouldn't normally consider consuming. More...

Boost Your Sales with Customer Reviews

by Matt Ambrose of The Copywriter's Crucible

People might be ignoring overtly salesy marketing, but they still listen to each other. One of the most persuasive voices for selling your products can be your customers themselves. Whether you’re selling eBooks, renting skips or promoting your expertise, reviews and testimonials can enhance your credibility and build trust with hesitant buyers. Reviews ’social proof’ your products

Web savvy consumers now search for reviews as well as the products themselves. As Dean Rieck coined on Copyblogger, people look for the ’social proof’ More...

Marketing 2.0

by Chris Applegate of Outside Line

On Tuesday Ronnie, our marketing director, and I headed up to Manchester to present at the Marketing 2.0 seminar. We talked about the work we do for LG, including the LG Blog and the various social media outreach activities we manage for them. We’d been invited by Paul Fabretti of KMP and though the event was pitched as an introduction to the landscape, we found people attending had a variety of skillsets and knowledge which made for some interesting conversations. KMP chief Bill Daring kicked off proceedings with an introduction to the digital landscape, which while it may be meat and drink to seasoned digital professionals, taking stock of what’s out there - from MySpace to Flickr to Twitter to Wikipedia - you forget how much of it is is out there. More...

Andy Murray reveals Internet marketing strategy

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Andy Murray appears to have split the nation; in spite of winning his Wimbledon match against Richard Gasquet to get closer to the Wimbledon title than any Brit in years, there are still people who don't want him to win. Take a look at one of his videos on YouTube for instance and you'll find plenty of negative comment about him.

This morning on BBC Radio Five Live, Nikky Campbell said that the station had received several text messages from people who just don't want Murray to win. More...

Gobbledygook banned by English and Welsh local authorities

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

Valerie Conyngham points us to a fascinating story.

The Local Government Association (LGA), an association of English and Welsh local authorities representing over 50 million people, has told local government officials to ditch meaningless jargon.

According to an article in The Telegraph, the LGA has sent a list to Town Halls of 100 words and phrases that should be avoided. The list includes "empowerment," "synergies," "revenue stream," "sustainable communities," More...

Why a gender salary gap doesn’t exist within PR agencies

by Stephen Waddington of Rainier PR

Richard Bailey posted recently on pay equality the PR industry following Harriet Harman’s proposals on pay equality last week. Richard cites data from a PRCA survey from 2005 which reckons that there is chasm between the pay between the sexes in the PR industry.

Research for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in 2005 suggested a stubborn pay gap remained. The average salary for all men working in PR was recorded as £57,165. The figure was £39,507 for women (these figures are on page 50 of the report). More...

How the 80/20 principle dominates PR, social media and life

by Andrew Smith of escherman

Richard Koch’s book The 80/20 Principle was first published in 1997 and went on to become a cult business classic (500,000+ copies sold. He later wrote the 80/20 Way which extended the approach to life generally). I only properly read both books recently as a result of the suggested reading list in Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week (it made me realise what a big debt Ferris owes to these earlier works - in many ways, the 4HWW philosophy is a practical application of Koch’s 80/20 approach). More...

IR in The Age of Social Media

by Peter Prodromou of Racepoint Waltham, MA

By Peter Prodromou We hear with increasing frequency from companies wanting RPG’s corporate practice to take them through the pre-IPO process or support their ongoing IR strategy. And while the usual check box questions about capability are clearly front and center, the thing that really gets a lot of attention these days is the role of social media in investor relations.

We’re the first to counsel our clients to be judicious with a social media program in the context of IR and broader corporate communications as a public company. More...

The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008

by Philip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group UK

Social Web Analytics (SWA) is the application of search, indexing, semantic analysis and business intelligence technologies to the task of identifying, tracking, listening to and participating in the distributed conversations about a particular brand, product or issue, with emphasis on quantifying the trend in each conversation's sentiment and influence.

The advent of SWA is a pivotal moment in the development of the marketing communications industry.

It's just over ten weeks since I posted about my intention to write an ebook on social Web analytics, and now it's done. More...

Why your web site must be a good experience

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Visitors to your web site need to have a good experience. Firstly the pages must provide what they were looking for. Then you need good navigation so they can easily find their way around. And you need a search facility so they can look up specific items without having to trawl through everything.

OK - that's all common sense and any good web designer will tell you much the same. All of these features make your web site good to use and easy to get on with. Fantastic.

But there's a much more important reason for having all the right features in the right place. More...

Chad Hurley on the Rise, Acquisition, and Future of YouTube

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Social Media is our genre's Industrial Revolution. It is the era of new influencers and the ability for every day people to share their creativity, expertise, thoughts, ideas, and passions in order to participate in and build a community around common interests.

People are taking their destiny into their own hands and evolving their online, personal or professional persona and brands online.

While there are many user-generated or people-driven social networks today, none generate the traffic or exposure possible at YouTube. More...