All's Not Quiet on the Tech Marketing Front

For me the best aspect of social media is the ability to customize the news I receive, including news, links and updates from my Twitter feed as well as my RSS feeds through Bloglines. Rather than relying on the broad and scary headlines in daily newspapers which scream about disappointing holiday sales portending cutbacks among retailers, I am able to zero into my marketplace -- technology -- and get a more accurate depiction of the state of the industry. Techmeme...

A New Year of Social Media

After the highs and, unfortunately, many lows of 2008, many of us are looking forward to the New Year that begins this Friday. As one of my colleagues just said, we are hoping for "that Obama bounce" for the economy and to settle people's nerves with his zen-like quiet confidence. We are hopeful that our families and friends will be healthy and happy -- and employed in good situations. We are ready for a steady stream of good news. Take...

We are on Alltop

If you haven't yet checked out Alltop, a new venture started earlier this year by Guy Kawasaki, you should. I have found it a very useful service based upon its model of mashing up RSS feeds for blogs by specific topic areas. I've moved to get client blogs fed into Alltop as part of a blog visibility plan, and finally got around to submitting the feed for our own blog to the PR Alltop topic area. Alltop calls itself the...

Santa's checked his list; now he's going out for a jog

One of the funnier holiday-related posts I've read this season came from the Scholarly Kitchen blog. It's contention that "being naughty has a network effect" swung its sites around to Jolly Saint Nick himself who may be judging naughty or nice, but isn't setting a great example himself for the children he visits. "Santa is out of step with the times. Does he even realize what his own obesity, smoking, and break-ins represent within the community built around him? His...

Renewables - Investing and Building Gets Us Only So Far

Om Malik's post today on the group think mentality running rampant among technology venture capitalists. I just visited a some VC firms in the Bay Area a few weeks ago, and it was interesting to hear the complaints about the recession and see the similarities in the questions and interest levels between the firms. But one of the more uplifting things noted in Om's post was speculation about clean tech investments. It still looks positive for next year, despite the...

Actors Without a Script Really Need Media Training

The much anticipated "rematch" of Today Show host Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise occurred this week, It came about 3.5 years since the dustup in which Cruise passionately decried Brooke Shields' use of anti-depressants for post-partum issues and called Lauer "glib" for his defense of Shields and psychiatry in general. If people were expecting fireworks, they were sadly disappointed, as news reports and blog posts including one from Gearlive.com noted. Now over three years later, the Valkyrie star is proving...

Customers leaving marketing behind?

That is an assertion made in the subhead of an article in a special section of today's Wall Street Journal on Web 2.0 and marketing. While it may be exaggerated (what headlines aren't?), the article -- written by professors from Babson College and Bentley College -- drilled into the fact that consumers (including those of enterprise products and services) are getting the information, knowledge and valuable interaction with peers online in order to make decisions. The implication is that this...

12 Days of PR Value

Since today marks the twelve day mark before the Christmas holiday, it's only fitting that we reflect back on the year using the "12 days of Christmas" song as the theme for today's post. Given the recent scrutiny around the true value that PR brings to businesses, this is a fun reminder of the the value we bring to our clients day in and day out. On the first day of Christmas my PR Agency gave to me... 12 bloggers...

Why don't people trust corporate blogs?

Josh Bernoff caught some attention today with the release of new Forrester research data on the trust factor of various information sources. Corporate blogging came out on the bottom of the list. I'm still reading the full report that accompanied the chart on Josh's blog, but I reflected on it and shared it with a client with whom I've helped just start a blog. I thought I'd convey the essence of what I shared here as well. As Josh rightfully...

Do-it-yourself Corporate Publishing -- the new trend?

Social media has had enormous impact on our society and the tech industry in general. The fact that you are reading this blog post right now signals that we all are now aggregating and analyzing information and events in a different way. We are choosing our filters. We are gathering viewpoints from sources we trust. Those sources are not always the vehicles of trust from the past, the traditional publications. This week in my Twitter feed, I saw a reference...