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The rather clever Jasmin Tragas reminded me yesterday that even though it’s a new communication landscape, we bring to it our old, ingrained habits.

To wit: I often add pictures to my blog posts; usually these pictures are mashups of retro images and text, but every now and then I use pictures of attractive young women. Not without reason and to support a point I am making in that post, but they are young, attractive and female.

Jasmin pointed out that she very occasionally (i.e. hardly ever but at least once in a blue moon) forwards my emails on to higher/other management. Some of those images might not be wholly suitable for such distribution.

Because Jasmin works at IBM in a senior role that means other key people in the tech-comms world.

But I confess right here, right now, that the thought that someone would forward a post of mine to others simply never occurred to me. Honestly. Not even on my radar.

By letting me know that she occasionally does forward a post, Jasmin reminded me that even though this is a new communication landscape we still behave in ways that we are comfortable with.

So posts will still get forwarded, just like emails have been forwarded around the world since emails began.

And just as forwarded emails have the potential to attract all sorts of unwanted consequences, so too with forwarded posts.

Notes to self:

1. treat my readers with more respect

2. treat myself with more gravitas — sometimes being a ‘work from home office’ (step-)parent of teenagers, without the daily conversations with peers that an office-based role brings, means that your own self-esteem takes a hammering and you forget that other people might actually be interested in what you have to say

3. thank Jasmin publicly for taking the time and risk to contact me privately about it via Twitter

4. wish Jasmin a very happy 1st birthday for her WonderWebby blog

5. work harder at deserving to be on to her ‘wonderpeeps’ blogroll

Filed under: PR, blogging, customer service, ethics, marketing, nonverbal communication
3 Comments

I received a follow-up email from an organisation I don’t actually remember being contacted by, but the overall campaign has been so well executed that I place it in full here:

Hello again, Lee

On Sunday I asked if you would kindly help me spread the word about 200 inner-city children I have yet to place with host families in August. I apologize for following up so soon, but time is of the essence and you know how funny email can be. To make things simple, everything is collected into an online resource page http://freshair.smnr.us

This appeal comes straight from the top, so please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Yours sincerely,

Sara

–
Sara Wilson
Fresh Air Fund

www.freshair.org

The Fresh Air Fund has used the Social Media News Release concept to provide me and fellow interested ’sneezers’ with exactly the right tools to help spread the word.

Well done, Sara, and well done the Fresh Air team.

Let’s hope your goals are met!

Filed under: PR, marketing, tools
2 Comments

And it’s not just me who says it!

An email from Ragan advertising the legendary Steve Crescenzo says so, too!

Best blog practices

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 • 3-4:30 p.m. Eastern • With Steve Crescenzo

Use Preferred Customer Code TEPN2 for special $309 pricing.

Learn how blogs fit in with your overall strategic communication plan, and how to integrate blogs with your other communication vehicles

Steve Crescenzo, Crescenzo Communications can show you. In this dynamic, 90-minute Webinar, you’ll learn:

• What makes for a successful blog … And how you can duplicate that success within your own organization.
• Three roles that the modern communicator can play when it comes to blogging.
• How to convince management that blogging can help the organization achieve its business goals.
• And so much more!

Visit our Web site to learn more!*

*Don’t forget to mention your Preferred Customer Code TEPN2 for special $309 pricing!

Can’t attend the Webinar on the scheduled date?
Order a CD recording of this event. This CD includes all presentation handouts.

Naturally I assume that Steve C and Mark Ragan had this blog in mind when shaping their message and will use it as an exemplar!

Filed under: blogging, humour, marketing, miscellaneous, tools
No Comments

The author of the brilliant ‘The AdSense Code‘ is just about to release his follow-up, the brilliantly-titled ‘Click Here To Order‘.

The book promises to show you how door-to-door salesman became millionaires by applying their sales techniques to the internet; how tiny little classified ads in the bulletin board of the late 1980’s evolved into the sales pages of today.

Learn the history of the internet from the 1960’s to present day and you’ll even get to read what is arguably the first spam message ever.

There’s a Facebook group dedicated to it (which is a brilliant way of building ‘buzz’ before an actual launch, by the way!)

Available for pre-order soon, the book is scheduled to ship on August 1st.

Some pre-release reviews:

“Click Here to Order contains story after story of regular people who saw the opportunity afforded by the Internet and began to think BIG.  Joel has done an incredible job of not only capturing and sharing their inspiring tales, but of also inspiring the reader to embrace their passion and become the next Internet success story.”

- Michael Port,
Author of Book Yourself Solid & Beyond Booked Solid

“Joel Comm tells the story of internet marketing as only a living pioneer can. He reveals a pattern of success in the individuals he profiles that you can follow. This is just the book internet marketing has been waiting for.”

- Dave Lakhani,
Author of Subliminal Persuasion: Influence and Marketing Secrets They Don’t Want You To Know

“Click Here to Order is the perfect book for anyone that wants to learn about Internet marketing. If you are looking for stories about Billion Dollar DOTCOM buyouts, this is not for you. If you want to learn from the real underground everyday people that
have made millions on the Internet and want to share their story with you, buy this book today! - Who knows, you may just find yourself in the Version 2.0”

- Mike Filsaime,
President and CEO: MarketingDotCom.com

“When people hear ‘Internet Millionaire’ they immediately think of IPOs, stock options, and how someone was able to sell their web site (even on one that made no money) to a larger company. The majority of the world doesn’t realize that there is an ‘under the radar’ group of online millionaires, like myself, that are building wealth in a very different way… by producing HUGE PROFITS. “Click Here To Order” is a book that finally tells ‘our’ story. As more people learn about this untold story, we’re going to see a whole new group of successful Internet entrepreneurs!”

- John Reese,
Founder of Income.com

Filed under: book review, marketing, tools
1 Comment

The NAB PR fiasco that I blogged about earlier in the week has still got ‘legs’, as they say in the football world (allegedly).

My good friend Gerry McCusker was finally granted an interview with the PR agency responsible (Cox Inall, who “coxed it up good an’ proper-like”).

As I have been banging on for a good few years now:

The communication landscape has changed!

As Hewlett Packard have just found out (tip of the battered Akubra to Gerry), ’social media’ means that your ‘little old audience’ is potentially no longer little. Nor silent. Nor acquiescent.

For goodness sake, put your egos aside and think about what is best in the long term for your business or your client’s business. If you or your agency doesn’t have the expertise involved do not be afraid to call in an expert. That’s what Clarity Communications in Perth has done with me, and I applaud their foresightedness and ethical responsibility to their clients.

As Gerry points out, it is now YOUR responsibility to check if we are recording our interviews with you, and in what form we may or may not publish them.

I strongly recommend you read Text100’s excellent survey on the blogosphere and how blogger relations should now be a definitive part of your strategy, be you client or agency.

Take note:

• The Social Media News Release [video introduction to SMNR] is key to gaining our respect. Use it, or lose it
• We want to be treated professionally, not just as an electronic deposit box for your endless releases
• We want to build up a long-term relationship with you, Mr/Ms Agency, therefore please start a conversation with us before you hammer our inboxes
• Be a part of the blogging community that you wish to engage with. If you don’t know who and what the key players and key issues are, we won’t take you seriously. And that goes for Twitter, too, as Nic Hac quite rightly points out

Several years ago Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing. It was a book that I devoured and tried to encourage clients of mine to read — none of them could be bothered.

Please don’t make that mistake yourself. Nip down to Dymocks, or order it at Amazon. Read. Inhale. Or hire me, or Trevor Cook, or Laurel Papworth, or Stephen Collins or Gerry McCusker.

Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers: Seth Godin

Filed under: PR, blogging, customer service, ethics, marketing, micro-blogging, tools
3 Comments

If you are new to the blogosphere, and especially if you are blogging about PR, Marcomms and business communication activities in general, the chances are high that ‘Amanda Chapel’ will eventually come and pay you a visit.

I banned ‘Amanda’ a long time ago from this site (back in 2006, no less), but that hasn’t stopped ‘her’ trying to leave comments via other IP addresses. After a while I stopped deleting them because I I figured my readers were smart enough to figure out ‘her’ game for themselves.

My colleague-in-arms Stephen (aka the always readable and often rightly controversial twitterlebrity ‘Vaspers the Grate’ and also aka PluPerfecter) has compiled a wonderful list of posts that ‘outs’ the less-than-delightful ‘Amanda’, and I strongly urge you to let yourself be forewarned (which is, after all, forearmed).

If you run a corporate blog, you might want to have your IT folk ban La Strump’s IP address from leaving any comments.

Oh, and you’d think someone would have told Brian that using images from SXC.HU (my favourite photo site, by the way, and source of many of the images I use in my presentations) ethically requires the user to acknowledge the photographer. But then ethics has never been Brian’s strong point…

Filed under: PR, ethics, marketing, tools
1 Comment

Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer at social media consulting agency Crayon, argues corporate brands should integrate social media and community capabilities rather than simply creating branded spaces. For instance, he pointed to successful interactive corporate applications by book publishers involving virtual author tours and readings with authors.

So says Enid Burns (Mr Burns’ sister?) over at Clikz in an article about corporate brands and how they have so far got it wrong.

Of course, Enid talks about a report but there’s no actual link to it. Bloomin’ frustrating that! Perhaps ClikZ might like to listen to the blogosphere and discover that we really detest that ‘old media’, ‘mummy knows best’, ‘mummy has secrets she must keep from you to keep you safe’ practice!

The report, "Serious Games for Marketing: Learnings from Corporate and Amateur Efforts in Second Life," from One to One Interactive’s T=Zero research division, compares the efforts of corporate- and user-built locations in the virtual world based on aesthetics, popularity, and marketing to analyze why user-built sites seem to gather more visitors than name brand counterparts.

You can find the report here at the One to One Interactive site.
[note: important info about the report at bottom of this post!]

Overview

"Serious games" refers to the use of games and game technologies for non-entertainment purposes. Traditionally, the education, health, and military sectors were the primary actors in this domain, but in the past few years, marketing has arisen as a major sub-domain of this area. Examples range from the selling of advertising inside video games to dozens of small, experimental corporate-sponsored spaces in virtual worlds such as Second Life, to the fully realized first-person shooter America’s Army, developed as a recruitment tool for the U.S. Army. The results have been uneven, as most of these early efforts have had an experimental edge. This report releases findings that compare player engagement in some of Second Life’s most successful user-generated areas compared with some of the more ambitious corporate-sponsored efforts in Second Life.

In making these comparisons, particular attention was paid to:

• Production Quality
• Publicity and Advertising
• Social Infrastructure
• Role of Commerce
• Population Density

From this analysis, we learned that the top corporate builds are as good as or better than user-created builds in some areas, while lagging behind in other areas. Based on our findings, we offer five insights for the design of future branding and marketing-oriented builds in virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Download the full report, free of charge, to learn more.

For which, of course, you will be required to hand over your email address, name, birth-date of first child and naming rights of your next SL island…

For a tech company supposedly on the leading edge of VW and web2.0, why does their marketing have such a heavy web1.0 stench?

Downloading the report — important info!

Colleagues: here’s how you get around it — feel free to enter any ol’ details because you then get taken to the pdf itself, no matter if you enter ‘Mickey Mouse’ or not.

One To One: just let us have it without the heavy-handed marketing guff and search the blogosphere for mentions of it; you will then find your target ’sneezers’!

Filed under: Second Life, Second Life & 3D virtual worlds, ethics, marketing, tools
1 Comment

Some PR flunkies with no sense and obviously no social media experience left some comment spam on some local aussie sports blogs.

It wasn’t just bad enough that they did this, but to add insult to injury their client was Australia’s most successful (by profits announced) bank, the National Australia Bank (“NAB” in the local market).

Local SEO guru Jim Stewart from StewArtMedia phone interviews NAB’s media spokesperson Felicity Glennie-Holmes.

Felicity does an admirable job of trying to blame the clueless PR agency, but shows a breath-taking lack of experience and understanding of the new communication landscape herself. I always thought the client was in charge or activities, not the agency? Perhaps Fliss has given them carte blanche to engage in activities without her express permission.

This is a new communication landscape, PR and corporate communicators! That means:

• New world
• New culture
• New rules of engagement

Several years ago Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing. It was a book that I devoured and tried to encourage clients of mine to read — none of them could be bothered.

Please don’t make that mistake yourself. Nip down to Dymocks, or order it at Amazon. Read. Learn.

And if you can’t be bothered to read that, at least read Text100’s very fresh-off-the-press Blogger Relations Survey.

Obviously Felicity and the PR agency haven’t. And you should read the comments to Jim’s posting of the interview: priceless insight into the minds of the blogging community, Fliss, including from an acquaintance of yours.

Filed under: PR, blogging, ethics, marketing, tools, videoblog
2 Comments