360PR Blog

Case studies too often focus on what was done and why it was done well, but it is just as valuable to learn from others mistakes, particularly in the newER area of Social Media. So, needless to say, I was happy to see that David Spark threw up a post last week on Mashable.com that listed blunders made by “Social Media Gurus.” The post shared a handful of valuable stories (and a couple funny ones – like David Meerman Scott’s Facebook goof). I’ve pointed out a few of these below, but you can also check out the rest of the post here.

DON’T Send a specially selected mass mailing to your friends – Susan Bratton, co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media, is still having a problem trying to scale individual relationships with social media. Even when she pares down her mailing list of 8,000 to a personally selected mailing of 250, she still gets nasty messages telling her to “take me off this list”.

DON’T Post a comment on your own Facebook profile wall - David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and the upcoming book World Wide Rave, needed his teenage daughter to point out his massive social networking faux pas. After setting up his Facebook profile, he showed it to his daughter to which she responded, “You’re not supposed to write on your own wall. You’re such a dork, dad”.

[Read more →]

Filed under: Digital PR, Internet by EliciaBasoli - No Comments →

I was out at the Marketing to Moms Conference in Chicago last week hosting a panel entitled, “Brands, Blogs & Beyond.”  Joining me were some of the smartest people I’ve met from both the giving and receiving end of blogger relations: Carmelle Druchniak of Stonyfield Farm, Jeannine Harvey of PBS, and Liz Gumbinner, co-founder (with Kristen Chase) of Cool Mom Picks.

There’s a lot of interest in working with bloggers and that’s great.  But before jumping in, it’s important to take stock of which brands are doing it right and some do’s and don’ts learned in the blogosphere trenches.  First rule:  no blasting.  There are (apparently) lists of bloggers floating around for purchase, and anyone can easily pull a list of top bloggers in their space on a site like Alltop.  As Liz spoke about, blasting out a template “Hello Mommy Blogger X” pitch can seem like an easy way to catch up.  But it can also land you on bloggers’ PR black lists, which are growing by the day. [Read more →]

Filed under: Blogger Relations, Digital PR, Events and Conferences by LauraTomasetti - 3 Comments →

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question:  Which comes first, content or community?  No contest, according to Teresa Hanafin, director of community publishing for Boston.com.  “Content is queen,” Hanafin told a room full of bloggers and PR people at BlogHer Boston over the weekend.

Turnout was huge for the first-ever BlogHer event held in Boston - more than 200 bloggers from Boston, New England and well beyond attended the event.  The New England region is fast-becoming a hotbed of activity for bloggers.  Established bloggers like Erin Kane and Kristin Brandt of Manic Mommies, Christine Koh of BostonMamas, Merideth O’Brien of WickedLocal and Lydia Walshin of The Perfect Pantry were there talking about building their following (all already have a strong following). [Read more →]

Filed under: Blogger Relations, Digital PR, Events and Conferences by LauraTomasetti - 2 Comments →

I’m a fan of RSS. There is so much great content on the web and so many bloggers out there who deliver thoughtful and entertaining posts – how can one person even try to keep up? RSS feeds do make it a little easier to stay ahead of the curve with your favorite online news sources and blogs. If you’re not familiar with RSS feeds, check out this article.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to hear from SearchEngineLand that Google, my (and billions of others) go-to search engine, will be offering RSS feeds for basic web search results in the future.

We use a variety of paid tools to monitor online and social media coverage for 360 clients, but Google is often a PR person’s best friend – it provides a quick, free, and reliable search of what’s being said online about a company or product. I think just about every person at 360 subscribes to the current “Google Alerts” service. Adding an RSS feed capability to Google Alerts will be a great benefit. I couldn’t have said it better than ReadWriteWeb: “(Google Alerts) are widely used but are…like training wheels for people not yet comfortable with RSS feeds. There’s nothing wrong with that, but many of us want our feeds.”

Filed under: Digital PR, Internet by EliciaBasoli - No Comments →

I attended the recent Sandbox Summit on technology and playtime in New York.  The first Sandbox Summit was held at CES earlier this year, and founders Wendy Smolen and Claire Green moved it to Manhattan for round two.  Starting with a presentation by Google Creative Labs’ Andy Berndt, much of the discussion focused on the opportunities for collaboration and creativity online.

MIT Media Lab’s Mitch Resnick discussed the Media Lab’s Scratch, a site that lets kids upload and add to each other’s projects, such as stories, games and animated characters, all created by kids.  Dizzywood founder Scott Arpajian shared Dizzywood’s use as a classroom tool to get kids working together on projects in the eco-friendly virtual world.  Offline, Leapfrog’s Jim Gray presented the company’s Tag Reading System, which lets parents know what their child is learning and interested in even if they can’t be there to read the bed time story. [Read more →]

Filed under: Events and Conferences, Parenting, Video Games, Virtual Worlds by LauraTomasetti - 2 Comments →