For the past 100 years companies have had the luxury of deciding what products they want to make and sell, what their brand message will be and how they will deliver it to their audience. Communication in PR was based on a one-way, two-step flow of communication through mass media.
The Internet changed that.
We’re in the [...]

I liked Srinivas Kandikonda’s article in Technology News about the need for a social media strategy and although he is writing about media organizations, the lessons apply equally to  any business today.
Here are his main points:
The need for adoption of social media and delivery to multiple mobile devices is increasingly becoming essential for retaining [...]

 
If you are marketing to women and are not yet fully engaged in blogs and social networks, take note of the latest BlogHer-iVillage 2010 Social Media Matters Study. 
73% of online women are now active social media users, engaging weekly or more often with top social media platforms. Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the everyday lives of [...]

Back in 2006 while I was working a paper with Rok Hrastnik we called the phenomenon of online buzz and reputation The Power of Voice.

Since then many companies have felt that power – positively and negatively.  Dell, Dominoes, Naked Pizza, Motrin, Blendtec to name just a few. Nestle has now joined the list.
Nestle is embarking [...]

Predictions are that over 80 percent of companies and organizations will be using social media marketing in 2010.  Who is going to take these companies to the next level - move them from the random ‘dipping a toe in the social media water’ approach to a strategic business activity with actions tied to outcomes, benchmarks and measurement?
Will [...]

If you’re looking for some  hard evidence that companies are focusing on communicating directly with existing and prospective consumers with content placed in social media sites, the 2009 Survey on Marketing, Media and Measurement has the data.
This ability to use new media channels to reach audiences directly, and to measure the value of their response [...]

Paul Gillin makes an excellent case for the value of the press release:

Yahoo changed the rules of marketing more than a decade ago when it elected to define press releases as news. Google followed suit and the PR profession has never been the same since
The raw news feeds syndicated on thousands of publishing platforms across [...]

Over 1000 women bloggers gathered at BlogHer in Chicago this past weekend.  Despite some women bloggers feeling fed up with the pressure of approaches from PR people, the Ketchum survey of attendees found that one in four bloggers has provided marketers with information or feedback collected on their blogs to help the marketers address women.
More [...]

Just when you think you’re getting all the social media technology under your belt along comes mobile.
One out of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile devices, according to new research from IPG’s Universal McCann and AOL.  That’s expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two years.

The proliferation of [...]

I just read a post titles The Week the Media Crashed on the Communication and Leadership Policy blog from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC.  It’s one of the best posts I’ve seen about the shifts in media consumption and what this means for mainstream media news outlets.
This is a ‘must read’ for [...]