Why Media is Alive and Well

It's been a noteworthy week on the media landscape. It started with the news that the venerable enterprise IT publishing shop Ziff-Davis Enterprise is being acquired by QuinStreet and reportedly letting go 80% of the staff. It's sad news for many of our contacts at outlets like eWEEK, Baseline, CIO Insight and Channel Insider. Yet two other bits of news contrasted that and tells me that media is alive and well. Yesterday, GigaOm announced it is acquiring the assets of...

In the Real World, Who Cares about Search Plus?

This week's announcement by Google of "Search Plus Your World" was one of those times where Silicon Valley is great spectator sport. In case you missed it because you're at CES, or getting ready for NRF, or heads down after the holidays, Google rolled out its deepest level of integration of Google+ -- content and social signals from Circles, +1's and reshares -- to core Google search results to date. The bottom line, as Danny Sullivan put it, is that...

Simplicity in Messaging: Learning from Amazon and Nest

One of my favorite authors on "new marketing" is David Meerman Scott. One of his core "new rules of marketing" is to avoid "gobbledygook" -- or jargon that makes messages and positioning almost incomprehensible. It's a hard thing for marketers to change, but simplicity in messaging is sorely needed. To see how it can be done, it's worth looking at two recent examples. Amazon Positions Kindle Fire When Amazon announced the Kindle Fire it posted a message at the top...

5 Reasons Why Companies Shouldn't Dismiss Google Plus

There is a pattern to the responses I hear when people first try out Google+. "I'm on Google+ but I don't know what to do with it." "I'm not sure why we need to spend time on this when our audience isn't on here." "Why should we dilute our social presence when we have Twitter and Facebook?" It all sounds awfully familiar. That's because it's the same thing we heard when Twitter got started, and a little bit with Facebook...

What We Are #Thankful For – and NOT!

One thing for which social media is great is providing a platform for anyone to share with the world what they are thankful for at this time of year. We agree and have been doing that on Beyond the Hype for five years. In 2011, we have many important reasons to give thanks: Our loyal clients and long-time friends of the agency that have been the most important part of our success and the reason we could celebrate our 25...

Snippets on Social Media from @PubClubofNE Event #pubclubofne

Last night I attended the Publicity Club of New England's panel discussion, "Tools and Tips for Social Success: Taking Your Social Media Program to the Next Level." The panel was moderated by my colleague, @TedWeismann. The panelists were: Janet Aronica, Head of Marketing at Shareaholic (@JanetAronica) Eric Leist, Emerging Technology Strategist, Allen and Gerritsen (@EricLeist) George Snell, Senior Vice President of Digital and Social Media, Weber Shandwick (@HighTalk) Andrew Teman, Vice President, Social Media Strategy, Hill Holliday (@andrewteman) Anne Weiskopf,...

Taking Social Media to the Next Level With #PubClubofNE

Social media is not new. It's so much a part of mainstream culture with "Find Us on Facebook" signs on nearly every business' front door and Twitter hashtags on the screen during TV programs like X Factor and the World Series. Social media is now part and parcel of most communications programs, but measuring the business impact is something with which most practitioners continue to struggle. Given that, the Publicity Club of New England is hosting a great panel discussion...

Ziff Davis Enterprise Goes All-Digital: Why It's a Good Thing for PR

Folks that have been in tech PR for 10 years or more may have intially met the news earlier this week that the Ziff Davis Enterprise publications, including the venerable eWEEK, are going all digital in 2012 with consternation. More fuel for the "PR is dead" fire, some may have thought. This is the exact wrong way to look at it. Here's why. Validating Pew's State of the Media Report In March, I blogged about Pew's must-read State of the...

Social Media Strategy for B2B Technology Companies

We've cited Forrester's Social Technographics research several times on this blog. It's useful because it helps answer questions that should be asked as the VERY FIRST step in developing social media strategy: Who are my buyers and what are their personas? What sources of information influence their buying process and where does social media rank among those sources? What social computing behaviors do your buyers have? Over the summer, Forrester updated its Social Technographics research for business technology buyers (purchase...

New Facebook: Are You Ready to Tell the Story of Your Company?

Thanks to today's cultural beacon, Mark Zuckerberg, storytelling is going to replace 'liking' and 'sharing' in terms of how we'll be spending 55 minutes or more of our day. That was the number one message from Zuckerberg at the f8 2011 Conference as he unveiled the most sweeping changes to Facebook in the last 3-4 years. Up until now, the most important thing for Facebook was user growth. It's now at 800 million, but recent signs have pointed to growth...